abysmalpoptart

Weirdly you can get more details on your profile at lastepochtools/profile/[username]

This may show you some more details, but yeah, the calculators are pretty lacking

All really good questions! The easiest answer for damage is focus first on your general damage (spells vs physical) and go from there. Remember that spell crit and regular crit are different, and damage over time cant crit. You typically want +stats in addition to your damage types, so lich usually benefits from +int, then probably +spell damage, and +poison damage.

Make sure to pay close attention to the skill tags, hover over your skills and see what they are. Lich in particular is cool but a little difficult to master, she excels in low life, ward based builds, and necrotic is a little easier to pump out damage usually.

Shaman is situationally fun once you figure it out! Flat totem damage, go thorn totem, get 5 points in beastmaster, use the spriggan form. Theres a way to get like 10 thorn and 2 storm totems :)

And get critical strike avoidance or minus bonus crit damage! Get one of those to 100%

What's your build? I'm happy to make some suggestions! I will say, for a first character the merchants guild is much stronger, but once you have some gold from selling items, you should be able to buy some decent gear. Eventually you'll have decent gold for stash tabs and whatnot, and shards for forging, then the circle can be more fun on a second character. Note that any item tagged with a guild can't be used by a character outside that guild.

Poison damage is in a weird place but it can work. If your main damage is damage over time, don't forget that's another modifier, so get that buff as well for even more damage!

Enjoy! I played in early access for a few years and I'm really enjoying the full release. I'll be honest, the falconer and warlock classes are way more fun than i expected them to be!

Remember, as long as you didn't select solo, your characters all share crafting materials, gold, and stash tabs, so leveling up one character first makes your next characters much easier to play through. I personally really enjoy having at least 1 of each major class, so I'm leveling up my warlock and rune Master right now (my falconer is maxed).

A few notes: flat damage is actually really good, because most percentage stats are additive. Elemental and fire, for example, get added together, but spell damage would be multiplicative with elemental.

Pay attention to item and skill bonuses like "added" and "more." Added is additive, more is multiplicative. So if you have +200% health, added health +5% would just add a +5 to the rest of your health making it 205%, but 5% more will multiply the entire end product by 1.05, which will effectively be more like 215%.

Also, +crit is base crit, which is very powerful, while +added crit is an added percentage of base (useful in the right build).

Most green set items aren't great, most uniques are situational. I try to save one of each just in case.

Enjoy!

Not to spoil it, but edward norton does a good job of playing an unlikeable main character. It was silly but fun and worth the watch i think.

I'm not entirely sure this is a fair take. Although i can understand where you're coming from, i think it's reasonable to consider that a decent number teachers (although certainly not all) are both passionate about their profession and also underpaid. This almost forces teachers to have a second job (side hustle) to enable them to continue teaching. The teacher in the article chose a less socially acceptable side hustle, but not an illegal one, and once found out, her employer activated a morality clause to fire her.

From a purely monetary standpoint, she's probably fine (assuming she continues her other job), but I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that money is the only thing she cares about. Being fired from her (probable) passion of teaching sucks.

Also, being unemployed sucks. It isn't really about being bored so much as not feeling like you're part of society. And for many, of course, it's a financial hardship, but it can definitely be mentally taxing when feel like you don't have a meaningful role in life or your community.

There is also added social connotation. For example, meeting people, you often ask what you do. "I'm a teacher" will elicit significantly different responses than "i used to be a teacher" or "I'm an onlyfans model." Whether or not any of us agree that it's "ok" has no bearing on her future interactions and life. Labels like these matter to a lot of people, so i could definitely see how this would be mentally and emotionally taxing.

For me, it was definitely when Kratos is speaking to Mimir to warn Mimir about seeking vengeance. Mimir snaps at him, saying of all people, you're one to talk! And Kratos replies:

“I am an authority on the subject. You would do well to listen."

Honestly, this interaction impacted my perception of people and when they have insight that is counter to their behavior.

I'm not the other commenter, but I'm fairly certain they're making a play on the title of this post, which just ends with "They."

I was a much less experienced gamer at the time, so I recall them being significantly difficult, but fun.

Well, when I say unhinged I'm saying that the content was pretty wild, and the freedom you have to do some messed up stuff is fairly open.

Ha! Totally! Fallout 2 is an underrated gem of a game, the amount of content in a single city (new reno) is staggering. It's funny, difficult, at times nonsensical, and arguably my favorite game in the series. Nothing about it is perfect, but it feels so right.

I don't want to give too many details in case i spoil it, but the game is really something else. I don't think any game in the series has been as unhinged since fallout 2. It is 2d isometric and uses an action point system, so be aware of that, but man is it wild. I think new vegas is the closest to really capturing the essence, but there's a certain tone that is missing from the new games. I also strongly dislike the nonstop shoot on sight gameplay in later entries like they're copying call of duty.

The first time i had an enemy offscreen one shot one of my party members with a Gauss rifle was a shock. An epic shock.

Ugh misread your comment and went on a fallout 2 rant. Woops. Totally agree with you! The early fallout games were excellent, and i think the only good one since the IP got picked up is new Vegas

Oh for sure. I'm not suggesting that those situations don't occur, they absolutely do. I'm adding that there's the alternative possibility that I'm legitimately curious as to the reasoning. I could also see some validity in the you don't want to be in a band comment, because that person or those people might wonder why the choice was made.

Not understanding something and asking questions isn't always the same as a personal attack. I think we all need to be a little better about giving the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

For the record, i don't think that's boring at all, that sounds pretty neat. Jam away!!