Lokithecat

Don't forget, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, give everyone a +2% (stacking) Action Speed increase per Phrase. You can run a great Chanter without using Invocations.

With the food and gear (Banquet, Shimmering? Scale [shield has enchant to imm:Gaze]) that gives you immunity, its not terrible, if prepared. Theres also been talk of blinding your own party to get around it, but I haven't tested that yet.

Saying theres no points to any builds, because there are bugs in the game is pretty silly. Sure, you can ignore any sort of build, and just exploit the bugs, until they're patched. Doesn't really seem like a smart idea long term.

Any attack on a large 'scale' attack like this would be a balancing nightmare, with triggered effects. Thats why they removed attacks off it in the first place. If anything Charge + X damage, or additional effects, like Disoriented, for an upgrade.

True, I'm tired of all my characters being green. I'll think of a good solution and add to the OP. Because the game has 0 replayability due to being trivial AF atm? All of my characters are built using the most powerful / broken races and classes available. Game is too easy make it not. Or maybe stop trying to use the 'best' races and classes?

Cipher Ranger is another valid option, Ascendant / Ghostheart if you're into Subclasses. You can use all the 'target ally' stuff on your pet, which you can summon into wherever you need him, Ranger also has a lot of handy +Accuracy, which can make alot of the Cipher 'hard to land' spells stick even in PotD. And the Leap + Fire (0 recovery) is great for getting out of messy situations.

Yup, its a bit more obvious now, with more 'DLC content' in the icon, bottom left at the load screen. Mousing over it, I get... Free DLC *Greyed out* Critical Role Everything you need.... *Checkmark to the left, Colored title, white text* Rum Runners Pack New consumable.... *Greyed out* Beard and Hair Pack New beard and hair... *Checkmark to the left, Colored title, white text* Beard and Hair Pack New beard and hair... ******* In game, I know I have the Energetic pose, and more drinks, so I'd assume Rum Runners and Beard & Hair are working fine, although it seems very odd that the DLC tracker in game shows 2 copies of Beard and Hair Pack, one greyed, one with the checkmark. From the Origin launcher, selecting Dreadfire, and going to 'Extra Content', those two both show a Checkmark, and Installed. Critical Role shows a checkmark and unlocked.

Heartbeat is only melee, but Long Pain seems to really has some identity crisis going on. If it were somehow flagged to work with everything that is melee, and everything that is ranged, it would be a great ability / build idea... and then it would get nerfed.

Tutolios Palm, small buckler / shield, that you can attack with, and gives + unarmed damage (and wounds on hit) from Nekata blacksmith (I think?) is handy. Monk feels great as a Multi, helping to provide offense to existing abilities, and a lot of good defense buffs. I've found lately that building them with lower Might, High Per and Int really helps out. With a decent Int you can get some really big durations on Monk abilities (Blade turning is amazing). Although everyone shies away from it, the Con/ Armor side instead of Int / Fire is really not bad, esp. if you are dying a lot early on. There are loads of really high Armor with only 20% recovery speed penalties, even near the begining of the game. Those will help alot (I went Bers / Hel, so was taking in much more damage than you should be). Soul Blade isn't bad, whether its optimal isn't really all that relevant unless you're trying to figure out some gimmick for PotD. The SA isn't amazing, but you should be able to use it consistently (if you're in the habit of it). Don't wait til you've maxed Focus for it, since the SA hit will feed some Focus to your pool before calculations & emptying of pool. The decrease cost to Shred isn't bad either, and gives some interesting options. I haven't tested it specifically, but some other interactions with Long Pain make me think you won't get Focus from that (it seems to count as a rnaged weapon). I'd almost suggest trying some sort of Range weapons (at least something off start of fight, then switch) to help your Monk side, although it will screw with your Soul Blade (doesn't get focus from Range). I'd try using Cipher side for more debuff style effects, it doesn't realllly shine there, but its not bad. Nuking stuff with Shreds won't get you Wounds, same as Charms, but there are some nice 'over time' damaging effects that you might find okay since you'll be running around in melee. Anti Field might even be usable, pinning it to a back rank guy, and then positioning yourself so w/ever you fight is eating that at the same time. Since you probably don't want to be restarting, I'd look at making sure you have someone that can Confounding Blind (Rogue), and Persistent Distractions (Eder makes a Great Swashbuckler tank) for big fights, is a great way to get everything to land, especially without maxed Perception.

If someone has a lottery ticket and they check their numbers while watching a news show, and find out they have all but one of the winning numbers, and are going to win $100,000 they'll be Happy. Maybe sad for a second that they didn't have that last number, but that will be forgotten quickly. If they watched that show, and due to a mistake on the announcement, believed they had all the numbers, winning $10,000,000 and later find out that there was a mistake, and they only get $100,000 they will be pissed off. Maybe one day they'll get over it, but they'll be grumpy for quite a while, and have a serious case of hate for new show that 'screwed them'. A few things that would help with the 'bitterness' of things being changed... 1) Allow changes in difficulty to the game, but downwards only. If you were on PoTD difficulty, becuase your playthrough of Veteran was too easy, and have 30+ hours invested in a character that suddenly can't handle the content right now you're just screwed. If you could downgrade that toon to Veteran, to at least finish the playthrough (obviously no achievement credit for PoTD clear) thats something at least. 2) Consider playing the game on an earlier version. If you're using Steam (for example) you could re download the game, with autoupdate turned off, and go back to playing your preferred build. This might screw with achievemnts, I'm not really sure.

a) Becuase this isn't Poe1. b) As Boer said, if there is no name showing up, they are peons, and not worth knowing. Its even more streamlined than 1, because in a room full of random villagers + 1 person you see 1 persons name with tab, compared to 'Commoner' *5 'Peasant' *6 'Relvant NPC'. Much less clutter.

I recall someone talking about AI scripting, targeting Mages, will aim at basically anyone... Anyone try different classes in tavern fight club, to see what counts as 'spells'... I'd assume (pvp wise) that anything that follows the 'caster' logic of 2 Level 1 Spells, 2 Level 2 Spells, etc... instead of Resource pools (Guile / Zeal) would be suceptible to it. If it affects Resource style powers, then Corpsey might be worth using despite its clunkiness.

I'm honestly not sure if Dark is trying to just troll everyone by completely contrary, or if he was just trying to complain that PoE2 Wizards didn't match his version of a Wizard. I can buy that in some systems if little Timmy says 'I wanna do magical stuff' that he might have to go to Wizard school, putting in years of work, and finally being able to light a candle with a flame from his finger. Sure, seems reasonable. Probably not an experience anyone is going to want to play through... In that world, a Barbarian with 'magical' abilities wouldn't make sense. Other systems have Wizards as the frail, sickly guys, with books, who can only memorize a magic missile, and years (levels) later become very powerful, reality bending monsters. Again, reasonable system. And one wouldn't expect a low level rogue to be teleporting there either. Both of these are probably considered 'Low Magic' scenario's. In higher magic scenarios, more people have more access to 'Magic', and how they access it is more the defining feature. No one said, that in PoE2 that wizards are all about going to mage school for years, and come out as the only people able to perform magic. In fact many of the tropes (and even mechanics from PoE1) for Wizards aren't in place here. Wizards aren't less Healthy (same HP), less Accurate in combat, or people with more access to Magic or Spells than others (casts / uses per day). While they could easily be running around with Wands shout 'Pew Pew' a Barbarian is just as good at that here. In this setting, a Wizard can be a front line combatant, wearing plate mail, fighting with swords, and supporting himself with spells. Its entirely possible that someone could decide what 'Wizard' should be within the system, and build their characters that way. For Eg. I can decide I want Low HP, High 'Accuracy', Low Armor Use, and Slow, Powerful Spells with Long Durations, 'Traditional' Mage (Dump Con, Res, Dex, Raise Int, Per, Mig, wear Robes). Someone else can build their Wizard as a High HP, High Armor, Dodgey, Rapid Firing, Elf, that uses a Bow... And the system supports that. You can even build the same (thematically) character with different classes, and they will work slightly differently. You could have a party of non Wizards, that all run around with different classes, using Rods, wearing Robes, and call them all different styles of Wizards... or the reverse, build a party of Wizards, stat them differently, and make your whole party up with different styles, Tank Guy, Summoned Weapon Guy, Offensive Spell Guy... There's lots of interesting character build options to explore. All 'Wizard' means here, (and maybe this entire thing would have been avoided if they named it something else) is that your 'Magic' is governed by what 'Spells' you know, and what is in your Grimoire + Passive abilitys. They are the only class that can just swap out a pice of gear (even mid combat) and act as if they just had a (mini) Free Retrain. As a caster (Spells per Level) you can 'Do' more special things in a fight, than a non caster (eg. Mid level Caster might be able to pull off 10+ spells, Rogue might only have 6 Guile by that point, with some abilities costing 2 or 3). And, 'Wizard' here means that you have the largest selection of 'abilities' (spells) of any class, with the most options as far as Elemental Damage, Support, Crowd Control... (Not sure how to word that, other classes might have access to more of one of these 'categories' but no class has as much access overall) We all get that this is not what you want a Wizard to be, and that's fine. And since other classes have 'abilities' that you feel should belong to a Wizard (because only Wizards have access to magic), the whole thing just bothers you. No one is trying to tell you, that your view on what a Wizard is, in some games / systems, is wrong. Its just not what the system is in this game.

Oop, me too.... was thinking Heartbeat Drumming... First character I ran through was a Hel / Berz, thought that the Heartbeat was from Barbarian side, since monk is about Swift Flurry for extra attacks... Upon looking it up again, its Monk, and from Melee only. As for them working with Long Pain / Instruments I would think (haven't tested) that these function like Ranged, not Melee weapons... Should be an easy test though, use Barbaric Smash, at range with one of these, if Carnage triggers then they are eligible. I might check that. Well, that was Educational. -Smash is 'Weapon' Range, I use it an a Rog/Bers build that uses Spearcaster, and that works fine. -Long Pain + Smash forces you to run into 'normal' melee range. It also doesn't trigger Carnage (So I'd assume no Heartbeat either). -Basic Auto Attacks with Long Pain, had the 'extended' range working fine, but they weren't able to trigger Carnage either. Possibly some kind of bug with 'Weapon' range effects not correctly reading the actual range of Long Pain, and instead reverting back to 'normal' melee range. So, Long Pain = Ranged weapon, that has bugged range, at least with Smash, possibly other 'Weapon' range abilities also. Carnage is easier to test (esp. with a Berserker confusion) I'd guess Swift Flurry works the same way, but that's a % to trigger, so would require more time to check than Carnage.

Monk fist