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Hi everyone, I have just finishined the first complete version (1.0) of my own mod which will aim at making the game more balanced. My main objectives are the following : - Make all abilities/subclasses worth including in a build, - Ensure that Tier VIII and Tier IX are interesting enough to go Single Class, - Correct a couple of weird mechanics to make them more consistent with generic rules. I plan to deliver it on Nexus Mod a bit later probably within a couple of weeks. Important notes ; - This mod is designed for RtwP. I "think" most of its content should work for TB, but I haven't tested it, - This mod is in English only. It will work with any language setup though, but modified texts will appear in English, - This mod has been designed and tested with the content of PoE2 Community Patch (I own no rights on CP, but I wanted to promote it). - This mod will apply to any newly created character. For existing ones : The files, version 1.0 : The ones with most of the changes, mostly buffs or minor corrections : BalancePolishingModBuffs 1.0.zip The ones with nerfs for a couple of broken features (such as preventing Salvation of Time abuse, or Troubadour nerf). They will be described in red in the notes below. You may not want to use this package. BalancePolishingModNerfs 1.0.zip The one with Summon Rebalance, with a lot of tweaks (buffs and nerfs) delivered as a stand-alone package : BalancePolishingSummonRebalance 1.0.zip Installation instructions, In order to get the intended experience : Detailed list of changes : I didn't include the full explainations in this thread, but feel free to read them in the "Project for a Balance Mod" thread. Most of the descriptions should be up-to-date, but there might have been a couple of changes. Therefore, the release thread should be considered as the reference. Discussion References per topic : 1) Class changes : A) Fighter Inspired Discipline : 3 Discipline -> 2 Discipline Power Strike & Inspired Strike : 4 Discipline -> 3 Discipline 6s Stun -> 10s Stun 6s Staggered -> 10s Staggered Inspired Discipline only : +200% damages -> +300% Take the Hit : 4s Recovery -> 0s Recovery Into the Fray & Upgrades : 2 Discipline -> 1 Discipline 10 – 14 damages -> 5 – 10 damages Mule Kick : Most upgrades use the PL of the original ability. A PL 3 upgrade of a PL 1 ability used by a PL5 character will for example get a scaling of +4. There was a glitch that counted Mule Kick as PL3 instead of PL1, so I corrected it for ruleset consistency. This basically gives Mule Kick +2 PL. Toughened Fury :25% proc chance, as announced by CP (CP implemented only 20%) B) Paladin Light of Pure Zeal : 5 Zeal -> 4 Zeal Exorcism : 4 Zeal -> 3 Zeal Healing Chain (complete rework) : 2 Zeal Range 5m + 4m Jump Friendly Target + 50 Bounce (yes, 50) Heal 10 health per bounce (no reduction per bounce) Can bounce several time on the same target (0,3s delay) Hastening Exhortation & Upgrades : 2 Zeal -> 1 Zeal - Hastening Exhortation : Nimble for 15s- Zealous Exhortation : Swift for 15s- Hastening Command: Nimble and Strong for 15s Liberating Exhortation & Upgrades : 2 Zeal -> 1 Zeal 20s Duration -> 15s Reinforcing Exhortation & Upgrades : 2 Zeal -> 1 Zeal 12s Duration -> 10s Glorious beacon & Upgrades : 3s/4s Cast -> 0,5s/4,5s Cast 1,5m AoE -> 2,5m AoE 8s Duration -> 12s Duration (for all effects, including upgrades) Sacred immolation & Upgrades : 4 Zeal -> 3 Zeal 32 raw damages per tick -> 20 damages (I overrode the 3,5m radius from Community Patch) Wrath of the Fives Suns (Pallegina special ability) : Penetration : 7->12 Penetration properly scale with PL (currently it does not) Damages : 5-7 -> 5->15 (x5 Projectiles) EDIT : 2 Zeal -> 1 Zeal Greater Lay on Hands : 8s Duration -> 10s Duration Hands of Light : 8s Duration -> 15s Duration C) Chanter Also refer to Summon Rebalance for changes specifically about summons. Troubadour : Brisk Recitation phrase take 4s instead of 3s. Set to Their Purpose, They All Knew Their Part : 6 Phrases -> 5 Phrases (as unupgraded version) (this was justified when it provided Brillant...) Far from Defeated, His Heart Filled with Joy : 6 Phrases -> 5 Phrases (as unupgraded version) +3 Phrases -> +2 Phrases Far from Defeated, His Heart Filled with Joy and Their Companion Braved the Horde Alone are now considered Offensive instead of Non-Offensive (important for Skald) ...Each Kill Fed His Fury : Contrary to the ability it is upgraded from, this ability provides mere +5 stats boost instead of inspirations. As it seemed really random, I replaced the stat boost by actual Strong, Fit and Steadfast Inspirations. Boil Their Flesh From Skin to Bone & Upgrade : Secondary Cones replaced by simple 2,5m radius AoE. This enables the Acid Explosion to be properly centered on the victim. ( I learned that the secondary Cones originated from the caster instead of from the actual victim. This changes also correct this glitch) His Laughter Rang Through the Halls : 8s Daze -> 30s Interrupt on Hit -> Interrupt on Graze His Heart Did Fill With the Light of the Dawn : +1 Ressource -> +2 Ressources Does not affect the caster anymore. D) Rangers Sharpshooter : +20% Range with all ranged weapons Hobbling Shot : Hobbled for 10s->15s Heal Companion & Upgrade : 2 Bonds -> 1 Bond Cast time : 3s/4s -> 0,5s/4,5s Range 4m -> 10m Note : I didn't follow Community Patch change for this one. Revive Companion & Upgrade : Revive with 50 health -> 100 health Vengeful Revival : +20% damage -> +30% Deadly Surprise : +100% damage -> +300% Bonded Fury : 3 Bonds -> 2 Bonds Cast time : 0,5s/4s -> 0,5s/0s Range : 6m -> 10m Twinned Shot : 2 Bonds -> 1 Bond Vengeful Grief : Duration 15s -> Infinite (note that DEX and MIG affliction still dispell the Inspirations you get) Heart Seeker : 4 Bonds -> 3 Bonds Shadowed Hunters : Pet's first bite after using the ability apply a 30s DoT effect (20 raw damages per 3s tick). Note that first pet attack doesn't break invisibility (this is true in the base game). Distracting Training : 6s -> 15s (not that this is the base duration. It will be lower in general because the ability use pet's Intellect) Pet Abilities Keyword :Added Beast Keyword to all pet abilities cast by the Ranger so they benefit from equipment with bonus to Beast abilities.Applied to Heal Companion, Revive Companion, Bonded Fury, Master's Call, Shadowed Hunters & their upgrades.Not applied to Takedown and Play Dead cause they are cast by pet themselves (and PL can be detrimental to Play Dead cause it rise its duration) E) Barbarian Mage Slayer : Removed the Spell Resistance entirely. Added -25% Hostile and Beneficial effect duration. Corpse Eater : Greatly buffed special food (and also replaced bonus MIG and malus INT by more varied effects) : - Kith Meat : -5 Diplomacy, -15% Damages received, +3 Corpse Eater PL - Corpse Loaf : -3 Diplomacy, +3 Health per 6s, +10 Fortitude, +4 Corpse Eater PL - Forbidden Pie : -3 Diplomacy, +4 Resolve, Mind Affliction Resistance, +5 Corpse Eater PL In addition, Kith Meat and Vessel Flesh can be bought from Vithrack and Imp vendors (Kith Meat price set to 100 gold) Instruments of Boundless Rage : 3 Rage -> 2 Rage Added Fire Keyword Heart of Fury : 4 Rage -> 3 Rage Savage Defiance & Upgrades : 15s -> 25s Stalwart Defiance : changed to Gain Concentration every 6s Leap & Panther's Leap : 6s Dazed -> 4s Stun Dragon Leap : 6s Dazed -> 6s Stun Panther's and Dragon Leap are now correctly tagged as Leap upgrades (which basically makes them scale as PL5 abilities -> effective +3PL) Carnage : Can now Crit (so can apply Blood Frenzy ) Accurate Carnage : +5 Accuracy -> +10 Accuracy Blood Surge : 25% Chance -> 50% Chance, but only apply to Hostile Targets (same change as Community Patch did for its Paladin equivalent) Blood Thirst : Cleaned the mess that causes it to proc twice on the same target and prevented it from being stackable with Crushing Blow. Now proc only once except sometimes when 2 targets are killed in a row (it applies twice then, cause Recovery is cleared before second target is killed, so you keep one charge) Barbaric Blow & upgrades : Removed the PR and Damages bonus to make the ability more focused. Now Barbaric Blow & Upgrades do : - 75% Hit to Crit chances - +75% Crit damages bonus (note : Crushing Blow do get this bonus, even if it does not get Crit Damages Bonus in the base game due to a bug) - +200% Carnage AoE (so roughly 2.5m radius instead of 1.5m) - Barbaric Smash : no refund, but cost reduced to 1 Rage - Crushing Blow : no recovery (not conditional anymore) Spirit Tornado : Spirit Tornado applies Stagger on any hit, not only Weapon Hits (as the unupgraded version) F) Wizard Conjurer : Summon Familiar cast time : 3s/4s -> 0.5s/0s (It's not very well known, but Familiars provide a +1 stacking and generic PL Bonus, as well as random +3 to one stat and a minor bonus.) Transmuter : Form of the Fearsome Brute changes : - Form of the Fearsome Brute Armor : +100% Recovery -> +20% Recovery - Form of the Fearsome Brute Fist : 13-25 damages, 6PR -> 18-24 damages, 7PR - Form of the Fearsome Brute duration : 30s -> 20s - Form of the Fearsome Brute duration : +1 Engagement -> +3 Note : these changes also apply to Form of the Fearsome Brute Potions Bewildering Spectacle : Cast time : 3s/4s -> 0.5s/3s Confusion : Added Interrupt on Hit AoE : 2.5m -> 5m Note : these changes also apply to Confusion Scrolls, Wael's priest and Trickster's versions. G) Cipher Wild Mind : Miscast : set to foe only, but damages lowered to 0.5 x Focus. Tenuous grasp : 0.5s/4s cast time -> 0.5s/2s Fractured Volition : Change Weakened for Enfeebled. Haunting Chain : Duration 20s -> 40s. Soul Ignition : Target Fortitude -> Target Will (due to Cipher's passive, this is a buff) 16 damages per tick -> 20 damages Duration : 15s -> 18s Mindweb : Now break after being damages 3 times. Note that this erases the changes from CP that were supposed to make Mindweb break after a Hit (but didn't work) H) Rogue Trickster : Sneak Attack 20% + 5%/PL -> 10% + 5%/PL Streefighter : Indirect nerf : Blunderbuss Modal : Distracted for 10s -> -10 Accuracy for 10s Smoke Veil : 2 Guile -> 1 Guile Shadow Step & Upgrade : 3 Guile -> 2 Guile Paralysis 6s -> 8s Shadowing Beyond & Upgrade : 3 Guile -> 2 Guile +50 Deflection that was weirdly cancelled on 1st or 2nd attack (without any explaination) -> +25 Deflection for whole duration Smoke Cloud & Upgrades : Interrupt on Hit -> Interrupt on Graze Finishing Blow & Eleminating Blow : +3% damages per % health lost from 50% -> +1.5% damages per % health lost from 100% Devastating Blow : +6% damages per % health lost from 50% -> +3% damages per % health lost from 100% I did not change the max value, but I made these abilities count from 100%. Sap : Hobbled for 30s -> Shaken for 30s Added impossibility to receive Concentration debuff on target for 30s. Perplexing Sap : Removed the weird Confusion on target's attack effect. Upgrade Skaken from changed Sap to Fighten. This version of Perplexing Sap is basically a Silencing attack, or a cheap source of Tier 2 Affliction for Resistant foe. Strike the Bell & Upgrades (complete rework) : - Still Full Attack that Interrupts on Graze, with +25% damages and +2 PR. - Now all versions adds a 15s Dazed effect - Melee 1 Hander adds a -25 Will debuff for 15s - Melee 2 Hander adds a -25 Fortitude debuff for 15s - Ranged Weapon adds a -25 Reflex debuff for 15s - All other effects removed. - The upgrades now allow their respective -25 defense debuff to last for the whole Combat (in a similar fashion as Gouging Strike) Confounding Strike : Start at -10 deflection malus, -2 per hit up to a total of -34 (doesn't stack with flanked) Fix the stacking not working from CP. Thanks @Frykas for pointing it. Persistent Distraction : - Deflection and AR malus doesn't stack with similar effect anymore, as for all others Distracted Afflictions. Thanks @Frykas for pointing it. Deep Wounds :Now applies 20% fixed amount of weapon damages in 4 ticks (2s ticks) as announced by CP. CP implemented 3 ticks (3s ticks) for a total of 15%. I) Druid Also refer to Summon Rebalance for changes specifically about summons. Wall of Thorns : No actual changes, but this ability displayed a base PEN of 7 which was wrong : it is actually base PEN 9, so I corrected the display Nature's Terror : - Casting time changed from 4,5s/3s to 3s/3s. Sunlance : - Casting time changed from 4,5s/3s to 0,5s/4,5s. - Added Interrupt on Hit. Nature's Bounty : - Now its effects (20 health restored, +2 PER and MIG, +20% Action Speed for 30s) will apply directly instead of summoning potion. - AoE reduced 5m -> 2,5m to compensate that it now affects summons and everything. Entropy : - Added 3 Base Bounce (Base 4 Targets) - Number of procs raised from 3 to 5. - Charges are not consumed by Graze and Crit anymore - Removed Interrupt part Tornado : - AoE set to 10m radius. - Range set to 20m - Added a true "Interrupt on Graze" effect, which is consistent with the Vertical Launch part. - Casting Time tuned from 6s/2s to 4.5s/3s Touch of Death : - Set casting time to 0,5s/3s instead of 3s/3s. - Add a +25 Acc modifier for this spell. So if your accuracy is equal or greater than foe's Will, the kill is guaranteed. Wildstrike Frenzy : - Changed from Procs on Kills to Proc on Kills Fury Strom Blight Weapons : - Now properly count as weapons (generate focus, etc...) J) Priest Also refer to Summon Rebalance for changes specifically about summons. Divine Terror : - Duration 20s -> 30s Salvation of Time : Change to a lasting beneficial effects which adds 0.5s to every beneficial effects every 1s. That effectively halves their ellapsing speed of buffs (including SoT itself : it lasts 20s with a base duration of 10s). Basically still add 10s but : - Now benefits from PL and INT - Now applies to effects cast after it (especially useful for Vanishing Strikes...) - Useless to cast several times in a row - The most important : now a single effect cannot have its duration more than doubled. It is still a very good spell, even better than before, but it is now impossible to abuse by combining it with Brilliant, and all other buffs will also have to be re-cast again at some point. Hand of Berath : - 5PL -> -10PL - Now auto-hit. Revenge of Skaen : - Range 5m -> 10m - Added a -20 Accuracy effect in addition to Blind. The -20 Acc does not stack with -10 Acc from Blind but the idea was to create an effect that goes through Perception Resistance Blessing of Wael : - +5 All defenses -> +10 - Now works vs any kind of attacks (not just melee ones) - Now targets Will - Changed the Blind affliction (which was too redundant with Skaen's Revenge) for a random effect of -10 PER, INT or RES. Symbol of Berath : Added acid Keyword Gaun Spells : - Added Plant Keyword (bugfix from CP, not base game) Wael Confusion : - Added Illusion Keyword (bugfix from CP, not base game) K) Monk No changes but fixed the glitch from Community Patch that prevented Shattered Pillar to get max 10 wounds after picking lesser Wounds (note that Community Patch add-on also fixed it in parallel) 2) Summon Rebalance : Nerfs are hihjlighted in red, but are part of the same package. Weapon & Armor Scaling :The biggest change is now that all summons weapon and armor scale with level (as Animated Weapons, Summoned Weapons, Companion Pet's Weapons and a handful of other summons already do).They all follow the rules of the table in the link below (+1 PEN, +4 Acc, +15% damages for their weapons and +1AR at level 5, 9, 13 & 17) https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/non-pl-scaling(Only exception are some of the Tier IX Summons because you get them after level 17. But most of them will have legendary quality weapons, or strong enough weapons anyway. ) Wizard & Monk : No Change Druid : Ondra's Whip, Watery Double, Lashing Vine : no changes. I think these abilities are balanced as they are (and they all scale at levels 5, 9, 13, 17 ).Summon Sporelings :Added Weapon & Armor scaling. All Blights Summons :Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Call to the Primordials :Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Reduced the number of oozes from 3 to 2. Reduced the duration from 30s to 20s. Bog Ooze removed from the list of potential summons, replaced by Lesser Bog Ooze (but with the added scaling, it's actually somewhat stronger).Fire Stag : (Weapons and armor already scaled) (minor) Change its fire shield so it procs on "damaged" as other fire shields, and not on Hit/Crit. Set Engagement limit to base. Adjust base damages to 13 - 19 with PEN 8 (equivalent of a sword with +2 PEN and fast attack rate).Explosion is now triggered by death instead of ability activation. That means Barring Death Door will prevent it from exploding and doing any damages. But when Fire stag is killed by foe, it explodes as if the ability was triggered. Fire stag can still kill itself to trigger the explosion. Explosion has been set to foe-only.Aspect of Galawain :(Weapons and armor already scaled) Adjusted base damages to 13 - 19 with PEN 8 (equivalent of a sword with +2 PEN and fast attack rate). (Wolf gets higher base damage, and Lion has bonus attack speed as previously). Adjusted armor : - base 5 AR -> base 8 AR, - 25% recovery -> 0% recovery. Bear gets +2 AR on top of this as previously. Added an Interrupt on Hit effect to its base attack. Priest :Spirtual Ally :Added Weapon & Armor scaling (its armor scales up to equivalent of legendary plate). Tune down duration to 25s because scaling weapons make him much better at high level and it was already a decent summon. Incarnates : Changed -5 PL for 35s into -1 PL (stacking if used multiple time) for 120s. This counts as a hostile effect and is decreased by Resolve and similar feat. Now for specific Incarnates : - Eothas : Equipment set to Legendary Quality. Replaced one of the priest incarnate by a copy of the first since it had an infinite recovery and could only act once. Duration reduced from 35s to 20s (triple summons would be too strong for 35s). - Berath : Equipment set to Legendary Quality Duration reduced from 35s to 25s (double summons would be too strong for 20s). - Magran : Weapon and shield set to Legendary Quality. Buffed to be a defensive juggernat : Set her CON to 25, RES to 25Armor changed to 14 AR without weakness apart Cold and its Recovery would be lowered from +67% to +34% (this value is the one from a Fighter with Armored Grace wearing a heavy armor). - Skaen : added +2 weapon PEN, +10 Acc, damages set from 14-20 to 18-25 (fast attack speed). +2 AR. (Basically similar to a scaling from Exceptionnal to Legendary.) - Wael : get scaling bonus (+4 PEN, + 16 Acc, +60% damages with weapons, +4 AR). I also gave him +10 CON so its health pool is more in line with other Single Incarnate, albeit still the frailest. I also added +5 DEX, +5 PER. - Rymrgand : No changes to this monster. Chanter : Skeletons : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. They start as poor so they have "exceptionnal" weapons at level 20. Note : "Many Lives..." phrase skeletons don't really scale anyway. Phantom : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Phantom upgrade duration : 25s -> 60s. Wurms : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Base Duration lowered from 25s to 18s. Upgrade cost : 4 phrases -> 3 phrases (I have already aligned all chanter upgraded invocations with the cost of their original ability) Wisps : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Ogres : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Set their active abilities to 1 per encounter. I didn't want them to be better than Drake at AoE or better than Wisp at Interrupting. Changed their "Down the Hatch" ability : it doesn't provide Tenacious and Robust anymore : this would have lead to too much AR and PEN if added with the scaling. Now "Down the Hatch" is renamed "Ogre Defiance" and only provides 10 health per 3s for 20s. Disoriented drawback has been removed. I added 2 PEN to their attack abilities to compensate for the loss of Tenacious. Drake : Added Weapon & Armor scaling. Duration 25s -> 35s. Added : Ground Immunity, Fear Aura and Dex Resistance that all other drakes have (Dragon Summon gets an improved version of Fear Aura). Knockdowns : - 2 per Encounter -> 3 per Encounter - Damages set to 15 - 25, base PEN set from 7 to 10. - Only affects Hostile Fire Breath : - 1 per Encounter -> 2 per Encounter - PEN set from 6 to 9 Dank Spore : Added Weapon scaling. AR already scaled, but I aligned it with other summons progression. Duration 25s -> 35s. Foul Thing explosion on death : - added 40 - 55 raw poison damages - set Sickened affliction to Infinite duration as announced by the ability. - only affects Hostile - corrected a bug that prevented the Sickened affliction from being displayed. Animated Weapons : Are currently already fully scaled. No change. Dragon : Will receive the benefit of full weapon / armor scaling. In addition to scaling, I'm going to change Dragon stats because they currently don't make sense, with a bottomless pit of health but lower AR and attack than the drake : - Armor 7->10(+4 from scaling) with resistance to Fire and Slash and vulnerability to pierce. (Based on the (scaled) version of the Drake, +1 AR) - Health 200 + 50/level -> 100 + 30/level - Attack : 16-22 CRU/PIER, 7 PEN, normal attack speed -> 20-26 CRU/PIER, 9 PEN, fast attack (+scaling) (this is based on the drake attack, but slightly improved). 3) Miscellanous Changes : Fire Godlike Fire AR : 2 -> 4 Martial Casting : 15% Action Speed -> 100% Action speed when casting summoned weapons. Quick Summoning : 15% Action Speed -> 25% Action speed when summoning. Adra Ban in shop :Added Adra Ban to Una's Shop, for 10000 gold per unit.Binding Block :+15 Accuracy -> +20 Lasting Empower :Corrected CP bug (duration increase applied to many stuff including non-empowered attacks), but I had to go back to base Game version. Bashing Shield : Now Bashing Shield (Magran's Blessing and Best Defense) Accuracy, PEN and Damages upon attacking increase according to the shield quality (example for excptionnal shield : +8 ACC, +2 PEN, +30%) Special thanks to @Noqn for implementing this very clean ruleset. Not applied to Tuotilo's Palm (its stats increase according to Transcendant Suffering / Monastic Unarmed Training as in the base game) Damages and PEN set to base 7-10 with base 7 PEN to match their scaling. Magran's Blessing Fire Shield slightly reduced to compensate for the scaling applied also to retaliations : - 5-7 damages for base Fire Shield - 8-12 damages for greater Fire Shield Last but not least, the expected Cuttlefish nerf !!! : +1 Crew Morale -> +0 Morale

On office social call got tired of being nagged to turn on webcam, so finally did. Turned it to face the sun.

So she cuts you and you dye?

I'm happy to announce that 1.0 is released !

You have no hard evidence to make this claim with such certainty. This is just another example of, "PoE2 sold poorly because of the things I don't like" reasoning.

I don't know if multiclassing a mechanic and a druid is a good thing but good luck to ya.

Sweden's numbers aren't really "respectable". They have 314 deaths per 100k, way higher than any of her neighbors. Meanwhile the US has 233. We have 561. Italy 499. China... 3 (three). It's a complete crapshoot. Someone will make sense of it at some point, maybe.

Starts at 7 minute mark and ends at around 53 minutes. Rest of the time is spent on Q&A.

TheGuardian - The Real Lord of the Flies ; What actually happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months on a deserted island

Among other things: That's the back section of armour, as raw freshly printed PLA and just the first basic sanding to get rid of the immediate rough edges. * Yes, some builder's putty to fix a crack as seen there as well. Now all coated with fibreglass resin, and a couple of layers of filler primer. So potentially breaking out the mouse sander tomorrow and seeing what other small holes and gaps might need putty and filler. And re-smoothing.

There is nothing to do. Your only option is to drink 10 vanilla coke and 5 fanta wildberries. Seppuku is also acceptable, infact it is the more popular choice.

I must say, until Josh pointed it out I didn't realize how great is Disco's mechanic of adding modifiers to stat checks depending on our previous action and choices... this is such a neat way of implimenting reactivity. Let's take something as underwhelming as convincing Saren to commit suicide, and instead of flat checks if you maxed out renedage/peragon add modifiers based on our interactions with him throughout the game, making such ending only possible if we made actions throughout the game that would support our argument there at the end, plus a high paragon/renegade check

In honour of V-E Day:

The male costumes for Malk PC were prescient, shirtless for the beach, pest exterminator for Downtown plague, sewer worker for the LA sewers and party boy for the Giovanni party. It's one of those attention to detail things that I love about that game.

The principles I used for my mod : - Base damages shall not depend on quality. As for weapons, Quality has an effect on +% Additive damage (+15, +30 +45, +60, +75%) not base damages. - Shield size shall not change DPS. Shield Size allow to trade Accuracy (applied to everything, shield bash, other weapon attack spells, etc...) for Deflection. Accuracy usually worth more than Deflection, but one may want more Deflection on a tank. That's why, in my mod, I set both shield to 7-10 damages, 7 PEN with dual type of damages. You may consider 1 more PEN for single type of damages. that's why I lowered Magran's Blessing base damages (but overall, the shield is better, because previous PEN wasn't good enough to do anything). This "magical" number is based on the same reduction factor from average speed weapon than Tuotilio's applies compared to fist damages. You may consider a Higher Damage per Attack for Larger Shield, but with similar DPS (so you'll have to reduce attack speed). So short answer : I would use 7-10 base damages, 7 base PEN, 4s base recovery, with dual type of damages for all you shields.

Fair enough. I'm not against that kind of texture. But there's more ways of achieving it than a direct sequel. Personally after completing PoE I didn't feel any sense of narrative incompleteness or lack of closure. Did you? Returning characters could have been integrated in other ways. For the record, I'm not necessarily opposed to PoE2 being a direct sequel. I don't think it was financial prudent though. And narratively it feels unnecessary to me. You're right, it's not fair. And yet it does make a certain kind of sense. This is an awkward point to explain, so bear with me. I think the difference is that Tolkeinesque settings can get away with it because it is the "every day" setting. For most people playing these games or reading these books, it's the default setting not just because of Tolkein's long shadow over the genre, but also because it roughly mirrors their own culture, their own history, and their own environment. As such, it's easier to drop into, and it's easier for an author to modify without confusing or disturbing the reader/player too much. So it made a good first setting for PoE, and it's likely to remain the standard in other fantasy settings for the same reason. The more complex the modifications you want to make to our own world in terms of ethics, theology, metaphysics, magic, technology, philosophy, politics, and so on, the less safe changing the environmental flavour of the setting becomes. It's another layer the reader/player needs to get acclimatised to. Not impossible of course, but the more you deviate from the standard setting, the more talented your writing team is going to have to be to do it elegantly and with minimal confusion. In PoE's case, the writers needed to convey some fairly unusual ideas like the way souls work in this setting and the nature of the Hollowing. That's the narrative focus. Having a heterodox setting could have muddled the focus. Keep in mind I'm not defending this per se, just explaining it as I see it, and why fantasy settings so often play it safe, even if in other ways they try to experiment with things. I think part of it is financial considerations. Try too many things at once and you risk creating a mess that people stay away from. So anyway, along comes the sequel. Now your setting is established. You can start experimenting more with the setting. You have a huge fantasy world to explore. You've already dropped some hints in the last game. Interesting possibilities you could explore; I like Raedceras and the Living Lands myself, but I'm sure there's others you could think of. And they chose... pirates. Maybe the second safest setting after Tolkeinesque? Maybe PoE3 will be zombie apocalypse... Why pirates specifically send a lot of people to sleep is difficult to say. It's a very subjective problem. It should be cool. But somehow it just feels tired. Blame Pirates of the Caribbean perhaps.

Quality enchantments don't increase the base damage if that's what you're asking? The Best Defense works as it should for me: Strange, could you send me the gamedata text? Fine: +1 Pen, +4 Acc, +15% Damage Exceptional: +2 Pen, +8 Acc, +30% Damage Superb: +3 Pen, +12 Acc, +45% Damage Legendary: +4 Pen, +15 Acc, + 60% Damage Mythic: +5 Pen, +18 Acc, +75% Damage You can see the bonus by hovering over the stats in the inspection menu.

That is Mitsoda in general though. I don't think he likes anything he worked on.

I'm in upstate NY and it's snowing... today... RIGHT NOW... ON MAY 9TH! I lived in Connecticut for 30 years and the latest I ever saw snow was April 19th or 20th or so. * Global pandemic * Trump about to be reelected * Snow on May 9th We really are in The End Times... Dear Lord up in heaven, I haven't always been the best person...

Huzzah!!!!! It does work! Thank you very much.

So, in the comment section of the Josh' talk about Reputation Systems in western RPGs one can find comments by Marat Sar - dev of half-amazing Disco Elysium. He drop this interesting tidbit about BG3 when discussing games which might be taking inspiration from their work: It would explain the weird past tense being used for the PCs conversation choices (which I still don't like, if it continues through the game and isn't just a brief flashback or something) but could also hint at some interesting character defining in BG3.

If there's one sports league in Murica that will find a way to operate as usual during The End Times it's the NFL. It's probably for the best. I imagine suicide rates are already quite high right now. If we don't get our annual football fix, suicide deaths may outweigh whatever The Covid could do.

Change the "$type" parameter of Shield_test_bashing from Game.GameData.EquippableGameData to Game.GameData.WeaponGameData and it works!

Yes. Josh is a good guy and deserves a comeback.

Since you mentioned Paladin: I played a Bleak Walker/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster and is was an absolutely solid build. Also due to the fact that Flames of Devotion counts as elemental attack (so no Arcane-Archer malus), gets +10 ACC by itself and +10 ACC from Ring of Focused Flames plus the Arcana bonus for Spearcaster. Add Zealous Focus, Marked for the Hunt, Survival of the Fittest and Stalker's Link. It's very difficult to graze or even miss enemies. Also works with other Paladin subclasses of course. Bleak Walker just had the higher FoD damage. Also: Eternal Devotion puts its burning lash (10%) onto every direct damage you cause, including the imbued shots and the damaging procs (Missiles, Fireball). Imbue effects will proc with every jump of a projectile (Blunderbusses' 4 pellets count as 1 projectile), so Driving Flight is a must (imbue shots proc twice). An alternative to Spearcaster can then be a weapon which already has a built-in jump, like Watershaper's Focus. Then an imbue shot will proc thrice. This can be very potent (even with non-damaging procs): three parallel Pulls of Eora (applied with first shot from stealth), combined with three Binding Webs (second shot after stealth) packs enemies together very, very, very tightly and takes them completely out of the game for a very long time. As long as there are no immunities one of the 6 parallel procs every 3 secs will always hit. You can then shower that dense cluster with all sorts of AoE nukes while they can't get anywhere. I value this a lot more than Missiles or Fireballs. Also you'll have no PEN issues at all. Enemies with Escape, Evasive Roll or Leap might be able to escape randomly though (see Splintered Reef fampyrs) if the AI is smart enough to time the ability right. In this case an (or more) additional Slicken from a fellow Wizard can be great.

Why would that sound sarcastic? Rot Skulls is a ranged weapon which the Priest of Berath can summon. And the imbue shots of Arcane Archers only work with ranged weapons. Since Arcane Archers get an ACC malus when not using imbue or elemental attacks it may even be that Rot Skulls will prevent that (if it's tagged as corrode weapon) - but as I said I didn't test that combination.

My wife cuts my hair and I dye hers. Now that she works at home, she realizes her hair isn't as grey as she thought. At first it was like, "I'll have you dye it right before the big meeting." Now it's, "we can wait until I go back to the classroom." lol Just a quick aside: you're a real bastard, giftd! You and your full head of hair. Mine's getting pretty thin. Hope everyone is staying safe.

I will send you a completed layout for a bashing shield I created and maybe you can see why it is not working.

Yessss Josh. Analyse Disco Elysium and them give us PoE3

That sounds like it's been a long road, getting from there to here...

I see altering the quintessential RTwP series into TB one, fundamentally different than simply offering a new TB game. Fans of RTwP enjoy plenty of other TB games. It's understandable to be annoyed at such a switch. While TB people (at least the vocals ones) are diametrically opposed to letting RTwP games just be. We saw this with Torment and again with BG. At this point BG3 is just "A Forgotten Realms game set in Baldur's Gate." It's basically a marketing stunt to captivate new audiences off of the prestige of a series they would never actually take interest in. It's just fashion branding to be honest. So you might just say "well it wasn't ever really a BG3, let it go." And people are... but that's not how the game was spun when first being revealed, people had to attenuate to Larian's marketing garble. When RTwP advocates get annoyed you get the following: Yuppie trying to dismiss the merits of RTwP without engaging: "Ooh look I'm also "grognard" who likes BG, but I'm also hip and trendy who doesn't "reee" like those ugly old school grognards who can't get with the times." At which point the actual grognard points out that the yuppie is by definition not a grognard, and the yuppie responds "See what I mean, all that ugly gatekeeping. Good riddance." (I say this more as a yuppie millennial on the younger side myself, who prefers RTwP.) You have hoards of people who read lengthy fantasy books who would have no problem reading all of Pillars 1 text. Then you have people who moan about an RPG actually world building before their eyes; Who get upset that the game isn't mostly strategy, but then don't want to even grok the actual tactics and strategy of the RTwP system. I enjoy TB, but I'm frankly annoyed by how the vocal TB players portray RTwP games, and further how those same people want the rich text to be chopped down. PoE1 is really not a bad lore dump, and it's like reading a graphical novel at best. This isn't Game of Thrones. Live and let live, but this should go both ways. Why is RTwP always encroached upon? My point is vocal TB fans force preference falsification on RTwP communities, they manufacture consent, they lead devs away from the existing market base, convince devs that the market just isn't there. When in fact tons of people engage with all the aspects of narrative and tactics of these infinity-like games. At best you just need to offer an easy story mode for the few that just want story. Which Obsidian actually does! Bless them! Like, I can't imagine a more wholesome and thoughtful approach than Obsidian's, and yet you have InXile and Larian bending over backwards for people that really just prefer the flashy 3D graphics of Divinity to the flat look of Pillars. Once people actually play the games normally they cite Deadfire as being one of the most gorgeous games ever, but it looks flat in trailers. The problem is that these games can be a hard sell, especially in the manner in which the market understands marketing. How will you convince the fantasy reader to set aside FF14 and pick up Pillars when all you do is market it to people who most enjoy lighting barrels on fire to achieve sparkly dazzling easy wins, instead of DnD style tactical exploits. How do you draw in the RTS fans. How will you draw in the avid readers, the lovers of graphic novels, the lovers of visual novels? How will you make it a rich experience for grognards and new comers a like? I think Obsidian does, and mostly the issue is market exposure, not the market. Yeah, I'm saying a lot. But it's all true. Obsidian has been doing great work at modernizing RTwP and I'd hate to see it fall the wayside. A reason enough to be skeptical of fighting a two front war.

I just commited a completely untested hotfix to our production system that touches two seperate processes, one of them business critical and happening over night, meaning quite frankly right now during night shift. I'm thinking about ordering this:

This thread is really going places.

Hello all, Kind of new here but just wanted to mettre mon grain de sel as we say in french. The continuation of the Watcher story was quite a plus-value to buy Deadfire for me. PoE1 ended on a cliffhanger and I wanted to have more time to react to all this new information about the nature of the universe I spent 120H getting into. Moreover, I wanted more change to involve my character in the world with this hard-acquiered knowledge. So, PoE2 was a great opportunity to do that ! I felt like it was a great gift to players to keep the same character and storyline (friends, history, linked with previous events) for those who were with the franchise from the begining. For my perspective (of a 30ish guy playing RTwP RPG since teenage but still have a job and not much time to game), the low-sale issue of PoE2 seem linked to the issues in the first game. Many people tried PoE1 thinking they were purchasing a Baldur's Gate game and instead got something they perceived as a novel-in-a-game style, with a lot of new mechanics (compared to classig D&D) and handful of lore to take in (instead of well known FR setting). Some (very much) liked it (*raising hands*), but many felt they lacked the time, attention or motivation to get into that new world and shelved the game. If I just introspect at my experience with PoE1, I feel it was from the attentional span PoV more akin to reading a book or playing chess than playing a traditionnal RPG. I loved it - It was high-investment, high-reward, but many didn't have the time or interest to do that. Add to that the fact that the first game was plagued with loading times issues and bugs at launch, so you really needed to be MOTIVATED to get it to the end. I think I saw some stats somewhere showing that less than 50% of people who played PoE1 finished it ? I don't know if the source was reliable (didn't archive it), but I have no problems imaging that this was indeed the case. I can't count how many of my friends were enthusiasts about PoE1, tried it but didnt finish it and didn't want to hear about it past patch 2. So don't talk to them about a possible sequel. I know devs fixed many things in PoE2, but it was CRUCIAL to get the word out on these changes and I think marketing failed at this point. I guess it's the drama of doing sequels : always carrying the burden (and success) of previous issues. In this case, it was quite necessary to turn the tide and it wasn't done in time. Result : only hardcore fans of the series purchased it, leading to a mess from a sale perspective even if the reviews and hardcore fans were in awe. Nevertheless, I hope it's not the end. Eora and the mechanics in PoE have potential to revitalize RTwP instead of always remaking D&D adaptations. But for future marketing campaign to change the tides (and perception of casual gamers) about the PoE series, I think they really need to adress core issues and present the game for what it is (and isn't) with strength and authenticity. For instance, in the case of Deadfire : it's different than Baldur's Gate, more mature in theme, grasping politics and religion and the overrall focus is a LOOOT more on combat and political strategy with pirates than friendships and dragon-related epicness. So be prepared to play with a coffee and immerse yourself for a few morning (or evening) to fully enjoy it. It's just my humble opinion, but I think if the dev tried to convey a more focused message regarding what PoE2 is and isn't, it could have been a different outcome since people would have known a bit more what to expect from it (and thus, less disapointment).

Aaand... that's why you block all trackers, always.

You're lucky that I know UK programming, the first headline when you search for Bill Bailey is a dead pornstar.

I shaved my hair completely once to be like Picard. I thought I could pull it off. I couldn't. The pics shall forever haunt me.

Demon's Souls if you have a PS3. Best of the Souls games I reckon. Persona 5.

A beloved corpse is reanimated apparently -https://www.microprose.com/news/microprose-is-back#

Taking the chaos spawn out for a walk: Ogre enforcing social distancing: