Pillars of Eternity Support Blog

Loving the story mode: now I can play to test different outcomes for the quests. Please do fix the combat / dialogue re size window that is in the bugs section since the begging! 

The cypher change don't sound like fun at all.

 

Sixty focus for a L6 spell? Most of the fights will be over by the time you get there, unless you're playing on Damned. And if you are, then getting that much focus will be very hard - nearly impossible on boss fights.

 

Also, melee cyphers would need to remain locked in combat longer before being able to cast - playing a melee Cypher might turn into quite the pain.

 

It doesn't make much sense to me. If somebody thinks the class's spells are too powerful, weaken the spells somewhat, don't make the class duller by inhibiting it from casting at all.

can i activate story mode for just 1 fight and afterwards change it back ?

can i activate story mode for just 1 fight and afterwards change it back ?

You sure can! Just as long you haven't already been to the area. 

The cipher powers recent buff sounds actually quite good. There are a lot of fun and diverse tools now.

 

A nice and subtle change is what Obsidian did for Whisper of Treason and Tenuous Grasp. Now you have a CC followed by debuff versus a slighter longer CC with faster cast, but without debuff.

Both are nice, you will probably not select both, but each of them has its purpose.

 

Now it seems that Cipher are meant to be the top dog for Single Target CC.

They have a lot of excellent spells for this, with slightly different uses (Whisper of Treason/Tenuous Grasp for quick and cheap CC, Mental Binding to deal more demage to the target, Puppetmaster for complete, quick and long domination, Silent Scream to kill some stuff around.)

 

AoE CC are a bit less noticeable, but Amplified Wave is still valuable, and Mind Plague is still a crazy spell (It was the best cipher power IMHO, even if less convenient than the old amplified wave. Multi-target Hard CC with crazy duration is priceless.)

 

They also have a wide range of (mostly) ally friendly AoE damage powers, from echo to Detonate, which is rather cool too. 

But still no love for this poor stasis field ? 70 focus for a single target hard CC which prevents from attacking the target ? This power's concept is not bad, especially after adding immunities to the game (I don't think that a single creature is immune to stasis).

My suggestion would be either longer duration or greater bonus to accuracy.

 

60-70 focus will happen in most fights. Cipher will start at 45 at max level. So you barely have to deal about 45 - 75 damages to cast them (without even counting draining whip... or greater focus). That's not so much.

But I agree major Power will become more rare. But I don't think it's so bad. Spamming Amplified Wave was strong but boring.

 

But please consider that 10 focus from greater focus is a lower amount of focus if all powers cost more. It could be better to raise it to 15-20 bonus focus. 

Anyway, I feel that 3.0 will make the class probably neither stronger nor weaker, but nicer to play. I was tired of spamming Amplified Wave.
Nice job, Obsidian !

60-70 focus will happen in most fights. 

It might do on POTD with larger mob sizes but is rare on Normal difficulty as there aren't enough enemy squishies to harvest focus from. When it does happen it is usually because the fight was a walkover anyway and there is no need for a *nuke* from the cipher.

For Spell Mastery could it be raised from 1 use per encounter to 3? Right now it just forces me to grab longer lasting spells with a CC tied in, like Chill Fog for level 1 so it covers all my bases. Having it at 3 would open it up and make it more viable to choose a specialized damage spell like Fan of Flames. This would open up my options quite a bit.

Cipher:

• Disintegration from long to short cast, 5m range to 10m range.
• Disintegration Raw damage increased from 30 per tick to 40 per tick.

Oh... w... too strong.

Is everything detailed on that notes... i m ean, for example:

 

Some Chanter changes I've noticed:

• Phrases have been significantly shortened, to the point where a 1, 1, 3 chant can complete 5 phrases fairly quickly.
• The Dragon Thrashed phrase's base damage has been increased to 50 for each type.

There's no change to the Seven Nights She Waited Level 5 invocation however, which does a lot of damage. 

 

Put all of the above together and these changes may be overpowered. I understand that the amount of time it took to complete phrases made high-level phrases and invocations less useful but if you can complete phrases a lot faster, surely invocations need to be nerfed.

 

Would be good if a full list of the Chanter changes was provided. 

 

 But i dont see any of this on the notes. 

^ Nope. Notes are incomplete. Not the first time for a Pillars patch—they fix a thousand bugs and add a thousand features, so it's hard to keep track of everything and compile comprehensive change logs.

^ Nope. Notes are incomplete. Not the first time for a Pillars patch—they fix a thousand bugs and add a thousand features, so it's hard to keep track of everything and compile comprehensive change logs.

 

well, thank you, is just i read that this were the "full patch notes", so thought that maybe they removed some of that "changes" on the beta.

How to download 3.0 Update?

Been playing since the patch with my melee cipher, and while at first I was concerned, the changes have been pretty damn good. For reference, I'm using Tall Grass with the weapon focus talent, soul whip damage talents, and two-handed weapon focus.

 

On PotD, I've been able to deal decent damage, quite easily, to gain enough focus to cast several high level powers in combat (only access to level 5 powers, still costly but doable). The increase to mental binding means I can lock down a more dangerous foe for longer, and even make the largest brute on the field my focus battery.

 

In one fight, against 2 Ogre's and 1 Ogre druid, I locked down the druid while my other melee kept the ogre's engaged. I was able to cast mental binding (20), silent scream (40), borrowed instinct (50), and detonate (50), all in the same fight. I probably could've done more, but I didn't have to at that point. Focus gain isn't an issue, though I am annoyed that all the Blacsonn I bought is now useless for her...

 

About to enter the fight with the Ogre chief, Zolla, so I'll have to see how my powers stack up against her, but still, no real complaints here.

 

Edit: Zolla was a breeze. Melee tanks kept what Ogres got through at bay, while Aloth kept up oil slicks. I managed to raise upwards of 110 Focus quite quickly in the initial start of combat and dropped a borrowed instinct (50), 3 mental bindings (60), a silent scream (40), and 3 detonates (150) . Total of 300 focus used, with some to spare. Focus gain is fine, and the CC is crazy powerful now. Zolla never got a single spell off in that time.

Are people complaining that Cipher this patch is a ridiculously and oppressively powerful class ?

 

So far I've destroyed everything on my path with my min max Cipher

 

- ranged Cipher, Max Perception + Might + Int

-Amplified thrust 60 pierce dmg + fast cast speed + gain back 20 - 30 focus :D

-in case focus is not enough, Mental binding should rekt their defense + a few hits -> full focus again

-Psychovampiric shield (-10 Resolve -> -20 Will -> our Will attacks - trademark of Cipher - absolutely pummel their defense, also that -30 concentration, our melee will interrupt them- they cant even fight back ), psycho shield + whisper of treason trivializes many encounters early and mid game.

 

With the current scaling, Focus cost for the OP skills (which are at tier I and II Cipher skills like Antipathetic and Whisper of treason) are actually cheaper, I cast whisper of treason like 5+ times in many fights...

 

At mid game, tier III, IV and V skills are pretty much into the trash, I just picked those with fast cast time and save them for later.

 

tier VI, amplified wave and disintegration are still ok

tier VII time parasite is still ok (70 focus will be gained back in no time with our superspeed)

 

tier VIII, Cipher became literal god :D give Reaping knives to the rogue -> at this point it will be rather difficult to spend focus as fast as we gain it...(hence earlier i picked the fast casting skills)

Defensive Mindweb, combo with the above 

I totally hate this patch.

 

I really, really loved being able to use level 1 and 2 spells at every encounter without having to rest after every fight. When I reached that point in leveling up playing got a lot more fun. And I hoped for level 3 spells to maybe also get to per encounter at White March levels. To have it suddenly replaced with absolutely no warning with the practically totally useless ability to cast just 2 spells once per encounter is extremely annoying and takes a lot of fun away from playing this game. If I had known that I very much doubt that I would have paid for the White March extension. (I know that wouldn't have saved me from this patch, but at least I would have been at the game end sooner.)

 

So could you please change the so called Spell Mastery to something useful? For example so that this one spell can at least be cast per encounter as many times as you can cast spells of this level. That would make the fact that it does not have to be in the grimoire a real advantage. And if you could also extend it to 1 spell for every two character levels and make it possible to chose those not only in spell level 1 and 2 but up to level 6, then it might not be so bad anymore. (Or maybe at least starting with char level 6, so that at char level 12 we have 4 spells in the spell level 1 to 4.)

 

Or maybe you could make it configurable. (Like you made the injuries for being knocked down optional, which was a change with a lot less impact.) After all this is not a multiplayer game where everyone has to use the same setting and where the tanks might get understandably jealous of the abilities of the casters.

Hey! With with patch i lost my main theme in menu! How can i recover first one?

The Cipher "rebalance" is bad. You upped some of the dmg and some radius/duration but the +10 focus cost per spell lvl is too significant, there will be a point where focus cost vs efficiency will render higher spells useless when you compare the focus cost vs efficiency of the lower tier spells. What we end up with is ciphers not touching their high tier spells, and that's not fun!