Njall

It'd be cool if AE worked on deflection attacks as well, but only if you're not using a shield (or even just a single one handed weapon.) It wouldn't be as powerful ( since the talent works best when def-acc=50, and stacking that much defense, be it deflecrion or reflex , without a shield isn't that easy for a rogue, especially on PotD) but it would synergize with riposte and help make the single-weapon rogue/swashbuckler slightly more appealing.

Nah. We're not even talking "minor" changes in this case, we're talking "inconsequential changes". Really, the impact is so small that the only thing such a change achieves is making people feel less rewarded when they stick to their paladin's moral code. And the difference between "change for change sake" and "not changing for not changing sake" is that the latter costs a grand total of 0 resources, doesn't introduce any more bugs in a game already rife with them and doesn't require people to relearn/reevaluate the underlying math of the game every time a frickin' patch lands. This is not an extended beta, we're supposed to be playing a finished product.

Whilst I agree that it's a dumb nerf, I think it might also be the actual reason. Yeah, maybe. It's besides the point, though: it's still unasked for, unneeded, pointless and ultimately contributes to the rollercoaster of semi-random buff/nerfs/later-reverted-but-not-so-much-nerfs and so forth that the game's undergone since launch, and which makes it look like, sometimes, rather than aiming for balance they're just throwing random stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I love the game, and, while I can accept that some changes are needed, really, we're talking a single player game here: I bought the game 'cause I liked it, and I'd like the experience to be as consistent as possible. Instead, along with the much-needed bug fixes and sensible adjustments, we're also force-fed a bunch of (often seemingly random and/or mind bogglingly off- target, i.e. the 2.0 fighter nerf, later undone over the course of the next 6 months) balance changes nobody's been asking for. As things stand now, and as much as I like PoE, I'll probably wait until they're done with the patching to buy Tyranny when it's out, which, really, is a shame, because it means I won't be playing it for 1+ years after it's released.

Sure, a nerf intended to promote pointless symmetry. Sounds real neat.

...meh? I can understand the nerf to the other defenses, but why bother tuning deflection by what, 2 points? I mean, does anyone think that such a small amount even has a noticeable impact in actual play? Like, was anyone complaining that paladins were 2% more durable than intended? Honestly, that's the kind of nerf that leaves me baffled: it's change for change's sake, it adds nothing to the game aside from making players feel less rewarded when upholding to their's paladin's order tenets...

I installed it some days ago, but haven't played since. I noticed a couple of bugs ( stuff like Savage Attacker applying its accuracy penalty twice ) and at least one potential change ( Reckless Assault not stacking with the damage bonus from Savage Attacker anymore, not sure if it's intended ). Aside from that, I didn't notice any other major changes, but I only fiddled with it for like half an hour.

Characters in PoE don't need a weapon to actually deflect a blow: as you can see when you take off their melee weapon and wade into combat, their deflection score isn't penalized. Thus, we can infer that PoE's characters deflect most blows with nothing but their teeth. That takes a significant amount of resolve to execute properly.

Defender by any name would be a bad ability. +2 engagement for -5 deflection is just a terrible return on investment. Now if they combined the new prone attack on disengagement with Defender or Wary Defender then you'd have something interesting that'd open up new possibilities. I disagree. +2 engagement for -5 deflection would just be a bad return on investment. Now, +2 engagement for -5 deflection and being locked out of any other useful modal is actually terrible

Enemies don't engage no matte what I throw at them with my fighter..........they just run past the fighter even if my fighter hits'em like a truck and when they run past him, it doesn't trigger that passive knock down attack since there was no engagement to break to begin with........ The passive should work on disengagement attacks, IIRC ( I'm at work atm and can't check the wording ). Thus, it shouldn't matter if they don't engage you, disengagement attacks trigger when they move away after you've engaged them. I checked it, it only triggers if an enemy is 'engaged' to your fighter (when you can see red arrow shooting out from enemy red circle to your fighter green circle) but if the enemy is 'not engaged' to your fighter and is only running past him, then it doesn't trigger. At least that's what's been happening for me, for several hours..... Enemy needs to be engaged to you, if your Fighter is engaged to enemy it doesn't mean anything and its been going on since I have restarted playing the game after WM2, enemy doesn't get engaged to you as you engage him, he needs to engage you on his own otherwise he can still move away from you without any disengagement penalities (doesn't matter if your fighter is engaged to him) and that doesn't trigger that passive knockdown disengagement counter by the fighter......it has happened so many times now. Weird, it seems to be working fine for me. Did you try saving and reloading after selecting overbearing guard? It didn't look like it was working until I did.

Enemies don't engage no matte what I throw at them with my fighter..........they just run past the fighter even if my fighter hits'em like a truck and when they run past him, it doesn't trigger that passive knock down attack since there was no engagement to break to begin with........ The passive should work on disengagement attacks, IIRC ( I'm at work atm and can't check the wording ). Thus, it shouldn't matter if they don't engage you, disengagement attacks trigger when they move away after you've engaged them.

Fighters now get a level 7 passive that knocks down an opponent who breaks engagement. Coupled with Hold the Line and/or Defender you can probably actually hold the line properly now

Not to mention that defenses generally grant increasing returns, so increasing your squishies' deflection by such a trivial amount isn't even a big deal. Yeah, it's like they were intentionally shooting for the title of "worst modal of the game, hands down". Well, congrats, I guess...?

That'd actually be semi-decent. Or at least, not so terribly bad that you shouldn't even consider it. Unfortunately, the deflection bonus doesn't apply to the fighter, it only affects his allies (yeah, this modal is strictly worse, and a lot worse, than the 9th level chant nobody uses, ever: it comes with a penalty and doesn't even increase your tank's deflection); it's a losing proposition on both a dps fighter and a tank.

I don't think they're compensating in any way; this is a straight up nerf, the decrease in power is, to my understanding, very much intended.

I feel for you, OP. Yeah, pouring a lot of time into a game, coming to enjoy the mechanics and then having the rug pulled from under one's feet sucks. Don't misunderstand: I think that per-encounter spells as they were before 3.0 were too good, in the context of how the game was (supposed to be) balanced; OTOH, a change of this magnitude is, IMHO, more suited to a sequel than a DLC/expansion. Just my two cents, anyway; I really hope you'll enjoy the second part of the expansion despite the disappointment.

Sorry, missed this post Just so you know, one of the camping bonuses is "increased consumable duration" (+120%/+140% consumable duration, depending on the rank of the bonus ). As for shades and co., nope, their immunities are clearly listed and include both "ground" and "prone"

My bad then ( again ). As for chanters, I'm afraid I'm missing something: don't you recite a phrase, then linger starts and you move on to the next phrase? I don't think INT ever affected recitation time, otherwise increasing INT would've made casting slower. So increasing int with Brisk Recitation still increases the duration of the buff by the same static amount, and while the total duration of the buff is shorter, you can also chant the phrase more often. By the time you're level 16, for example, you can chant twice as fast: just cast the same buff twice and it will last as much as it used to and generate twice as many phrases, while taking the same time to recite.

Weird, considering it is not optional. So it's basically a nerf to your chants' overall duration (which tangentially works counter your bonus from INT) in exchange for faster spellcasting? So it seems, yes. It's weird, but I'm not sure how increasing linger time might affect balance, since you're reciting much faster and, aside from generating more phrases, you're also buffing your party much more frequently. On an unrelated note, Flames of Devotion seems to be 2/encounter now ( am I misremembering? It used to be 1/encounter, right? )

I've just checked and Outlander's Frenzy was always like that. Pity it did not receive the per-encounter treatment; it might have made it a worthwhile talent (which it currently oh-so-isn't.) EDIT: Does Brisk Recitation increase linger length by the same amount the recitation time is reduced? E.g. If a phrase has a recitation time of, say, 4 seconds and a linger of 4 seconds for a total of 8—does Brisk Recitation change it to, e.g., 3.6 seconds recitation, 4.4 seconds linger so as to maintain the total duration of 8 seconds? My bad, I didn't remember it also increased might and constitution. As you say, as a per-rest ability it's nothing to cry home about, so I didn't end up grabbing it often ( if ever ). As for brisk recitation, it doesn't look like it interacts with linger, it only seems to affect recitation.

Happy new year! Brisk Recitation reduces phrase recitation time by 10% at level 4, when you first get it. Every 3 levels, you get another -10% ( so it's -20% at level 7, -30% at level 10, -40% at 13th and so forth ). Also, it seems that they took the time to buff quite a bit of the less used multiclass talent; many are now usable per encounter, rather than per rest, and some have better effects ( like outlander's frenzy, which is still per rest but also increases your might and constitution by 3 aside from increasing attack speed ) or scale with level (Acolyte's Radiance).

Ok, first impressions: I'm liking the changes to survival and athletics. The camping bonuses do feel valuable (even potent.... 4 points of DR, for example, seems like a lot, but I have no idea how much damage 15+ level opponents will deal, and the same could be said of the rest of the bonuses ), and I love the "accuracy bonus vs creature type" option, it makes the character who invests in Survival feel very...rangery, as it feels very reminiscent of D&D's "favored enemy". Athletics looks good as well, and is now worth increasing past 3, since the extra heal can end up being quite noticeable. From a balance standpoint I'm not sure how much impact these changes will have, but, in the end, the bonuses aren't free and there's an opportunity cost involved ( my party used to just invest heavily in Lore and Stealth instead, and I don't really either Survival or Athletics are as valuable as Lore, while Stealth retains its strategic value ); the only skill that seems to have fallen behind, unless I'm missing something, is mechanics, since you really don't need more than one party member focusing on it, presently. I'm not sure this is a problem, though. Constant/Veteran/Rapid Recovery: Veteran and Rapid do seem to scale with level now, but, in my game at least, Constant Recovery seems to be now a fixed 5/tick instead of scaling. Is this intended? Do you need to invest in Rapid Recovery for the scaling? Right now, Constant Recovery seems to be worse than Veteran's Recovery at level 14. Also, with the increase in magnitude of the ticks the chance of overhealing has increased as well. Shades, spectres and so forth are both immune to "prone" and "ground" effects, instead of only being immune to "prone" as per patch notes. Is this intended? Also, there's something weird going on with accuracy: my 14th level fighter's character sheet breaks down his accuracy as follows: "+25 fighter, +1 perception, +39 level", while my newly created 13th level mercenary has "+30 fighter, +36 level". My ranger's Character sheet puts him at "+23 Ranger, +36 level", and, later, at "+18 Ranger, +36 level", and Zahua's accuracy breakdown, again, shows "+25 Monk, +39 level, +15 transcendent suffering 4". Finally, the only Stronghold event I experienced thus far was a visitor dilemma, the one where it was nothing game changing, but did feel like a nice, worthwhile addition to the game. All in all, I'm liking what I've seen of the patch thus far ( possible bugs nonwithstanding ): good job, and keep up the good work, guys Edit: yeah, I also think the Cipher nerf was unwarranted.

Constant and Veteran's Recovery reduced from base 90s to base 45s duration Constant recovery was close to irrelevant at high levels already due to the lack of scaling. With the level cap increase this seems like a further, unwarranted nerf. As it is, it's already straight up worse than active healing abilities because you can't really control when it's used, so some of the ticks are often wasted; furthermore, a 45s base duration means that the total amount of the heal is now 45 endurance, tops, while Veteran Recovery now heals for 30. That's quite unimpressive compared to most healing abilities. I get that with the change to athletics they might prove redundant, but why don't you guys just remove them already and give fighters something worthwhile instead of just crippling it into uselessness? Also, is there a reason an ability with a set duration (and one that gets shorter ad shorter, it seems ) is still called Constant Recovery? The rest of the changes look good. Aside from that, I've been wanting to play a pig fighter watcher for awhile, so I'm glad that they're getting a melee attack :D

It doesn't stack, true, but with 6 chanters you can probably refresh it every few seconds if you take the time to adjust your chants and/or to micromanage your party. Since it absorbs damage it's better than healing, as it should prevent health damage instead of just endurance loss, and it's party wide to boot. Also, when you don't need to turtle up, you can switch to "the dragon slashed" and melt everything in sight pretty much without doing a thing... Chanter stacking can be insane in this game.

Neither it is universally liked because 4 people agree with it. Anedoctal evidence is hardly reliable.

Mainly because the game is supposed to be balanced ( and was supposed to be balanced from the get-go). However, introducing immunities implies a huge shift in both balance and gameplay. I don't see immunities as bad when the game is designed around them; however, PoE was designed with different premises in mind, and immunities were just added in without further adjustments. Thus, either the game wasn't really balanced without immunities, or it isn't balanced now. Aside from this, you don't understand why people who bought and played a game for months, and likely liked the way the game played, otherwise they'd likely have moved on to other games by now, might not appreciate a non-trivial shift in gameplay and design philosophy? To you, the introduction of this kind of feature might improve the game, but, to people who bought the game on the premise that flat out immunities wouldn't be implemented due to a precise design choice, and who liked how the game turned out that way, this is not only an unnecessary change but also something that was forced on them and negatively affects their fun. IMHO, this is the kind of change that should be optional, as it's clearly polarizing and, despite what you think, isn't universally considered an improvement. Implementing it as a toggleable option, a-la Trial of Iron, would have made everyone happy and solved the problem.