draego

Wonder if this is Tim Cain's project we've been hearing about

And now their new announcement has me ready for new playthough especially New portraits for complete playthroughs nice stuff.

Ye this part is going to hard to resist. I was hoping they would release the portraits early for maybe another playthrough.

Ye i am actually doing a run with a version of this build. I dont min max though so i didnt put anything below 9 and it still works fine. but that build definitely has lots of dialogue option especially with rest and food bonuses and some gear (dont go crazy with the +attribute gear though later on gear with special bonuses are better then just straight + attribute stuff). This is the one of the things new players dont get right away when coming to this game, attributes are less important than abilities and gear when defining you character. They are not useless by any means but just less important. For instance since i am not min maxing my strength is 15 at start and the build says 18. That is a difference of 9% damage and healing. Not that big a deal. Ye that 9% is better but its not a build killer like maybe BG where 15-18 is the difference between missing everything and hitting something. It is a little tough though until you get one of the better offensive shields later in the game if you care about seeing great offensive numbers but there are some good defensive shields until you find the better offensive ones like Badgradr's Barricade and Dragon's Maw Shield. This is more of a tanky build which is not the norm for barbarians. So dont expect a powerhouse for the first couple of acts. But a very solid tank that defuffs the enemy. I am also using The Vile Loner's Lance and Strike Hard (with vulnerable attack) as my main weapons to further riff on the debuff build effects instead of the more offensive Bittercut but there are better weapons in the game than the ones i chose. So my guy isnt as offensive as that build i am sure. I also use a little heavier armor because i dont really care about the style in that build but there is lots of room for different equipment and armor even within build guides. I am also using an Coastal aumaua for their bonus. That race makes good tanks or well good any upfront melee build.

I guess maybe you mean active pet abilities. Half the picks were animal or animal centric abilities. I agree though animal companions were the funnest part of the rangers and any new combo ability would be cool. And as always Boooooo ghost heart sub class. Hey man i am just greedy like that. . Dont take your logic and obsidians badly thought out fighter and barb skills out on me I think the perception is the other way but ye when you actually build a melee ranger their abilities/talents work well for both ranged and melee. I count around 6 out of 29 abilities/talents that are specifically for 'melee' attacks (well melee for the ranger since pet is always in melee) and swift aim/Swift and Steady seems like a gimmicky accident since it specifically says its for shooting stuff so ye that works and i know the speed buff is king but still. So when it comes down to it 4 out of all possible abilities/talents are specifically for 'melee' attacks. All the other talents dont have anything to do with melee offensive fighting per se but those other abilities for the pet or defense or cc give the ranger great flexibility in ranged, tanking, and melee dps builds. So technically they also work in melee but they are not specifically for melee offensive attacks which you are correct isn't that big a deal. It doesnt stop melee centric build at all. I think rangers have a rogue envy complex because their burst damage when compared to the ranger (excluding the animal) seems 'greater' but when you include the pet and ranger damage on single target in melee it actually really good with the right setups.

I want to play stalker and hope they give ranger a couple more melee skills. Like stunning shots and others in POE1 that worked in melee

I really think you could make almost any build and make them work with the above companions. That is one good thing about this game, you can make pretty much any class fill the traditional roles of ranged, dps, tanks. Although pure tanks arent as prized in this game especially on the lower difficulties. I suppose if you are looking for more dialogue options look at boosting perception, intellect, or resolve. They have the most options but the other attributes have some to. I wouldnt worry about raising all of them. I am not sure how the game plays on console in terms of combat. If you find one of the classes interesting in lore and in the small data you get on the initial mechanics go for it. I am sure you can make it fit. I personally like the martial classes for my MC but that is just me. Ranger is my favorite but you have to add in a additional character with the animal. The standard build i suppose would be a bow ranger that tag teams enemies with the animal. I also find barbarians fun they can mix it up in melee especially against larger mobs because of their carnage hitting multiple enemies. Barbarians also benefit from intellect more so than other martial classes so that helps with dialogue. If you have a priest or paladin you can buff, heal, and cast protections for any melee focuses classes to do their stuff.

I wonder what you mean. The companions have no special talents. If a companion is a wizard they have access to same spells you do or any other random wizard I mean where he lists Aloth for instance as an Aoe CC build. I am wondering what are his preferred choices? I see wasn't reading in context.

I wonder what you mean. The companions have no special talents. If a companion is a wizard they have access to same spells you do or any other random wizard

waddle, waddle, waddle eder

Its good you are working on the wiki. I added some stuff a while back to the spells to make them more table looking because i couldnt stand having to click on each individual spell to find the info and i didnt even finish all those. So i get its a lot of tedious work to get the info down.

Don't love the giant logo at the top. It takes space away from the actual content and there is already a logo on the left. Don't want to have scroll to find the info i am looking for. There also seems to be dead space on the right that could be utilized. The layouts for the content like gameplay, races, etc look clean, i know that layout was pretty much there already. Gameplay also has to much dead space probably in this new style layout. I would put all those items under each gameplay heading on one row like classes and races. Yes POE1 tab looks better for sure between the tabs. I assume you are going to add icons to the bubbles or hope users add icons otherwise i would scrape that and go straight to the good stuff but i get it if you find some good icons so users eyes can differentiate the info. I had not been to the front page in a little while and i really dislike the logo at the top in the current version and in the link above. We already know we are at the pillars of eternity wiki we dont need to be slapped in the face with it.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/922611810485780482 Always remove the good stuff. Couldn't they just make this work for a quest.

agree. I like playing POE1 melee ranger and they have added a stalker sub class that seems to be more melee focuses. Hopefully the ability revamps allow for some melee flexibility as well.

Maybe they'll make up for it by making the abilities more powerful (and/or otherwise buffing the class)? I agree until we see the actual ability it just speculations. We know more abilities scale with level more than POE1 so the abilities may have the same name like flame shield but be way more powerful because they are not static like in POE1.

Oh i agree and almost wrote that to in the other post, Messier-31.

Question for josh i found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/6rwbwo/questions_about_poe_ii/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit Answer: This is going to be weird. I know the whole party contributed to dialogue checks but they also contribute to lock picking outside of dialogue. I guess this is one of those things that could make since from a game mechanic but seems weird on paper. if they want to make mechanics more useful and incentivise more characters taking it, allow users to drop more than one trap and then more characters may take it. You dont need to buddy up and hold each others hand while lockpicking.

And his last post on Obsidian forums was 1 year ago... i have posted this a couple of times but this is why. https://steemit.com/gaming/@badastroza/interesting-people-6-josh-sawyer-on-pillars-of-eternity-ii

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/ If you directly to his tumblr you will find the new infromation

I built a spear with rope/rod/knife on the ship something like that but it doesnt scale with strength so.....

It's party time...

Going to try a stalker first. hopefully the bonuses allows for a flanking strategy. If the bubble is to small it would kinda stink.

I was thinking the same thing about priest and paladins. That is why i dont like them as my MC. They get you to think of conversations in more of a meta/power gaming perspective instead of roleplaying choices and make the player worry more about what a writer thought was clever, aggressive, passionate. When in your mind you may feel those dispositions match different dialogue choices. I have heard that before about the permanent stats. I think this is just a playstyle difference. I never really worried about permanent attributes. I just picked on or two attributes that were really important to me like resolve or int or perc. and would just maximize that one with an item and resting and didtn worry about the other checks but i get your point.

I disagree. what you call obligatory, i call making role playing choices. You shouldn't be able to easily make all stat checks in the game. It seems to me you want the game to make it easier for you to power game. They are changing item attribute bonuses in POE2. They are making it so item classes like 'gloves' only have one type of attribute bonus to eliminate all stacking overlap issues. This will make attribute bonuses more rare i suppose. The thing about attributes in this game is they are less important than abilities, talents, and equipment for fighting mechanics so i would generally have maybe one item, sometimes two with attribute bonuses. It seems fine to me to have limited attribute bonuses since they drive both the role playing and mechanical aspects of the game. Then you can have more balanced role playing stat checks instead of having to design the game around extremely high outlier stats. Crafting in POE2 will also be more limited. You wont be able to do all the crafting you do in POE1. They are doing this to make equipment you find more unique. ( And they think players should have to switch lots of equipment around because thats more fun or something ) I dont love all the crafting changes but if they allowed crafting to include attribute bonuses then i would want it to be modest similar to POE1. And your final suggestion is also more about power gaming. i mean why should an aggressive person get more might. This type of stuff would heavily direct players to dispositions instead of letting the player get these disposition organically which would hurt role playing. I do get it from a power gaming perspective, I just skew toward role playing more. Not that i dont enjoy some crunchiness.

nice review.