swordofthesith

HI Sens! I don't think Perception raises the Might bonus for damage and healing. Perception solely increases accuracy and range and with more accuracy it is indisputable that you hit more frequently. As Matt pointed out there are probably a host of enemy types in PoE that do have low Deflection stats that eliminate the need for sky high accuracy but if you do run into an enemy mob with high Deflection then you and the rest of your party will be stuck swinging at air and consequently lowering your overall DPS. The Perception Rogue with Greatswords takes care of all possible scenarios. It smashes through high Deflection and high DT. Returning to Matt's note. He also brings up an important point when it comes to accuracy values. He is right that Perception is a secondary consideration when it comes to overall accuracy. The most critical determinant for accuracy is class base accuracy (BC). This has been made clear in the current version with Rogues now getting Very High BC (25) as compared to previous versions where as you pointed you out, they got far less. They now land much more frequently withe new BC values and have a much higher DPS. But where the Rogue truly breaks the game is the ease with which a player can setup Sneak Attacks. And when you start machine gunning MOBs with Sneak Attack in combat, they drop dead ASAP.

Thanks Hiro! Yap. Time for us all to brag about how we're all ragdolingl .301. It makes for interesting forum fodder AND it is VITAL feedback for the Devs to understand how their game system is playing out. Hail to the powergamers baby!

Hey Sens! /salute for the incredible work mate. Yes! Rogues do have 25 accuracy now! Rogues = Instant death. Especially given how easy it is to get condition needed to setup sneak attacks. Back @ you Sens: Anything that you tried out in this current version of the Beta that you found kind of game breaking? ^_^

Hi Mutt! Thanks for this! I took your notes and smashed 301 with an Orlan perception rogue! RE Weapon Specialization. I think it is bugged. I took it for my fighter and it didn't show in the talent acknowledgments upon level and was no where to be found on the character sheet.

Disclaimer: I am a huge Pillars of Eternity fan boy. I love the work Josh & Co. have put into bringing us a CRPG in the spirit of the Infinity Engine games. I especially like the great writing, the unconventional lore of this new setting, some welcome additional races that steer away from common RPG stereotypes, the art style and the music - my goodness the music! I am thoroughly enjoying test the PoE Beta and making my small contribution towards helping Josh & Co. field a polished and fun final product. --- I set out to Beta 301 and I think I succeeded. I cleared the entire dungeon and 60% of Dyford Crossing without needing to rest once - and I did this without even trying very hard. Here is how I broke BB V.301 Mutonizer made a post about how accuracy is KEY to melee success in the current beta. Accuracy is critical to helping you land attacks in combat and both fighters and rogues have the highest base starting accuracy at 25. Perception is critical to augmenting your accuracy, the more perception you have, the more accurate you are and the more frequently you land hits in combat. He also mentioned that fighters and rogues with maxed perceptions just chew through things in the beta. I tested out a perception maxed fighter and was impressed with the character. He was indeed landing more frequently in combat and putting out some good damage. But there was no comparing the DPS of the fighter against the explosive Sneak Attack damage of the BB Rogue. I decided to create a Rogue to complement the BB Rogue and BB Fighter. Here is my initial setup: Main Character = Race: Orlan Class: Rogue Culture: Living Lands Might: 18 Con: N/A Dex: 18 Per: 20 Int: N/A Res: N/A Talents: Weapon Focus - Soldier (Greeatswords!) This character is designed to never miss in combat. With the Orlan bonus perception and weapon focus this character has sky high accuracy. Now that I had my character I started the game. 1) NO ARMOR: I ditched all the armor on my characters except the BB fighter. If you are careful you can position your BB Fighter to absorb all the aggro from the various enemies you can encounter in the Backer Beta. They will almost NEVER target your other party members. Armor just slow your other party members down. Ditch it and you can greatly increase the frequency of your attacks and your overall DPS. 2) Smash the DT: The next thing to do is get rid of weapons that have poor DT. You want your rogue to hit everything and hit it HARD and high DT weapons allow for this. Don't worry about the hit on attack speed. You will be naked and 2 handed weapons have a pretty high default attack speed. I immediately sold all the starting armor, loot from the group of thugs at the starting village and purchased Justice from the blacksmith. With Justice in hand I turned 301 into easy mode. 3) Combat Strat: Draw aggro with the BB Fighter, setup the two rogues to either side of him, attack and watch the butchery begin. My rogue was hitting for 50+ up to 100 on a REGULAR basis. Enemies would fall within seconds under the assault of my two rogues. It was so easy combat had been reduced to pushing my BB fighter forward and then click dragging the rest of the party to focus fire on whatever enemy was nearest to them. I just steamrolled everything in my way. * But I was wiped once. In the quest to retrieve the drake egg you run into a rival adventuring party in Dryford's Crossing. I began combat as I usually did expecting the rival party to swarm the BB fighter. I sent my rogues to take care of the enemy wizard while the BB fighter engaged the melee characters from the enemy part. This time, the AI divided it's attention between the fighter and my naked rogues. With no armor they were almost instantly taken out of combat and I was well on my way to party wipe. The second time around I started combat and then ran south near the drake bodies. This let to the AI breaking again. Instead of the entire enemy party pursuing me, I was able to pull enemy adventurers one or two at a time and easily defeat the rival party. Anyway. Orlan + Rogue + Max Perception + Greatswords = Easy mode. That's how I broke the Beta. How did you break 301? ** Videos incoming of the slaughter!

I have no problem with understanding DT. It's the difference between attacking an armored and unarmored target. Deflection though, I find confusing. But I do see Sens critique. With the current system it is much easier to simply use weapons with extremely high damage thresholds against any kind of target. Why muck around with Low DT speed weapons when you have to switch them around during every engagement?

+1

@ Sens & Matt. You both are Beta Backer legends. Thanks for rolling up your sleeves, crunching the numbers and putting forward a great suggestion as to how to solve the Resolve/Perception riddle in the attribute system. It is testers like you folks that end up making games better. <3 @ Josh. You're a developer legend. Thanks for rolling up your sleeves and gamely going back and forth everyone on this thread trying to offer reasonable suggestions on how to improve the attribute system. You're on the princes of CRPGs and it is great to see a developer like yourself be so ready to engage with devoted fans of your work. Keep making PoE great! @ The Paper. I am looking forward to sitting down, giving it a good read and putting it together with Josh's feedback on it's various points. If I have anything useful to contribute I'll be sure to post something in this thread. Again, amazing work Sens & Matt!

An ability name like that would instantly make PoE an CRPG legend. +1 to Knock Enemy Down Pretty Hard.

Hi Gang! Yep! Would like to provide as much useful to intel to the developers as possible and your additional inputs go a great way in that direction! Special thanks to Sens for pointing out his video capture program, Bandicam. It's dead easy to use. I would encourage all of you to use it to video record gameplay featuring your feedback/bug finds. You can find it here: http://www.bandicam.com/ Thanks Sens! Will try and illustrate your point in a future video! Thanks for pointing out this HUGE bug with Essential Phantom Fiebras! Thanks for pointing out this HUGE power imbalance Fiebras. I will try and provide a video illustrating your point. To recap: Priest - Suppress Affliction - AoE too large Wizard - Essential Phantom - When cast it deletes the BB Wizard from the party Rogue - Deep Wounds - DoT is overpowered

This video highlights the power of the Cipher's 2nd level ability: Mental Binding. A single cast and the Ogre battle is turned into a cakewalk. Please note that if I wished, I could have kept the Ogre stun locked throughout the entire fight with MB.

You just need your Priest and her Consecrated Ground spell. Check it out in action here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68442-the-grand-powers-balancing-thread/

And this why Sens is BB gold and a great member of the Beta forums: I think Sens feedback is so incredibly valuable because he provides very specific feedback about PoE's design or mechanics he feels could be improved. And he backs up his feedback by making a tremendous effort clearly illustrate these problems through his videos, pictures and math formulas. And most importantly he never just points out a problem, he almost always provides several solutions that Obsidian might consider in addressing the design or mechanics issues he is examining in his various posts. I also think Sens is very cognizant about what is possible or not possible at this point in the development of PoE and he does not get hung up on issues that at this point, cannot be changed or modified this late in the game. He points an issue out, discusses it, makes his suggestion and then moves on to the next design or mechanics system that he thinks he can provide useful feedback for. He's a Beta Testing shark and I very much do hope Josh & Co take notice of his very sensible work on behalf of the release quality of PoE. Thanks for the great QA testing Sens! Keep going mate! ^_^ Sen's Previous Suggestions: Inventory Mockup Dyrford Crossing Area Design Main HUD Mockup Backer Beta Version Review v257 bb Fog of War Inventory and Item Tooltips Combat Feedback Re-wrote CC Class Ability Descriptions Item Descriptions and Contextual UI Rant Area Map Functions Main UI Tooltip Stuff Selection Circles and Targeting Disable Vertical Sync *IMPLEMENTED*

Hi Beta Backers! In the interest of helping Obsidian refine Pillars of Eternity for release I thought it might be a good idea to provide extensive feedback regarding the different class powers. I am appealing to the Anti-Troll Pack led by Sensuki of Headbomb, mutonizer, PrimeJunta, IndiraLightfoot, Waywocket, Matt516, Dray Truoc, CatatonicMan, Hormalakh, Ink Blot, Ark Evenson and the rest of the Goodfellas and Goodladies of the Beta Backer to add feedback to this thread! Please approach this with the same rigor as you would a bug report. Videos, screenshots and detailed descriptions of your observations would all be very helpful in helping Obsidian refine class powers over the Beta. I would like to start off the thread with a video examining the Priest's level 2 power: Consecrated Ground. With the BB Priest casting CG, you can restore over 700+ stamina to ALL your party over the course of 1 minute of combat time. That is an eternity and makes many fights in the Beta extremely easy. As it is implemented CG is an InstaWin button for most encounters. I would recommend that it be toned down somewhat. To illustrate my point I will upload a series of videos demonstrating the out sized prowess of this spell. PillarsOfEternity BB278 - Consecrated Ground

Happened to me as well.

Someone has to turn that into a poster for the current PoE combat mechanics. <3 Josh & Co.

@ Sens. I noticed that several of your BB party members were running around in their birthday suits. Obviously to increase the attack/spell casting speed. So I booted up 278, stripped everyone except for the frontline BB fighter and just went to town on the first encounters most ass naked and PWNED the mobs without breaking a sweat. The way the AI is setup currently, there is no need for anyone else except the tank to wear any kind of armor. As long as you make sure the the BB fighter draws aggro, they will never ever chase down your naked magical/ranged backup party. You're much better of running butt nekkid. Hopefully Josh and crew start slowly cranking up the enemy AI to FORCE us to keep our party clothed. Pillars of Eternity 278. The nudist build!

Hi Sens! Agreed! The adventuring day is quite short! Would be great to hear from Obsidian if they have cranked the difficulty of the Backer Beta to get the most bang out of the class powers & talents in the game. However, if that is not the case I do think there should be some balancing down further down the line around your suggestions of a modified health and stamina ratio. And RE dailies/spells - right now I throw everything and the kitchen sink for each encounter. Not very efficient and it does again make a for a very short adventuring day but I enjoy it as a great to mix up tactics and powers during these testing phases.

Um. Whatever happened to your camp gear? Always make sure to bring some camp gear along to avoid having to haul back to the inn every time your party gets a little beaten out of shape.

For truth: +1 PJ

Hoi Sens! Thanks so much for your combat walkthrough. Stuff like that is immensely helpful to both Testers & Developers. Please do think of uploading more videos highlighting classes/powers that you feel are overpowered or underpowered in the latest Beta build. I wish I had a video capture card, otherwise I would be doing the same! RE what happened to your Priest. Beetle poison happened and yes, I agree that poison is just pure pwnage right now in the Beta. I hope they turn it down a notch for release.

Backers! Now that 278 is released, I just read that Obsidian has modified our first encounter at Dryford's Crossing. They have increased the number of beetles to 6. That is a huge increase in difficulty but I think that's exactly what they are intending. They want every fight in the Beta to demand players use their class, party, powers and talents to the fullest to figure what is working and what needs boosting or nerfing. So be forewarned, combat in the Beta will never be easy and will demand your complete attention in order to triumph. I would be very surprised if the current difficulty curve in the Beta carried over to the final release version of the game. I think they just need that feedback regarding mechanics and the only way to do that is to force players to use every trick in the book. Go On!

I think everyone is aware that Soul Ignition is totally unbalanced currently and is bound to get hit hard by the Nerf bat. And what you're describing above isn't even half of it. You don't ever need to engage in combat with SI since it has an almost unlimited range. You can safely burn down mobs with SI without ever drawing aggro!

Yup, Ciphers have some devastating abilities and have enough focus at the start of combat to use 1 or 2. Soul Ignition is just broken, and basically is basically a finger of death on whoever you target. That is exacerbated by the fact that you can cast it continuously with the speed at which Focus is gained. They gain focus way too fast IMHO, but that is based on the power of their spells. They have a nice variety of spells, but are limited by selected specific ones as they level (Like a Bard or Sorc in the 3rd edition DnD).... I've been experimenting with Ciphers, and I'm enjoying them a great deal. They are working well as the Gish the were obviously intended to be. I do not feel like they are overpowered though. Ciphers spells actually work. Ciphers are the bomb but some of their powers are not working as intended, I believe. Soul Shock for example, is perfectly useless. And then there is Phantom Foes, the in-game description makes it seem as if this power only affects enemies. This is not true, when cast this power affects friends and foes alike, diminishing the utility of the spell. Still, most of their stuns, charms and befuffs seem to be working. Great class, lot's of fun to play.

Yeah. I've been hearing that about Monks. I plan on testing out the Monk class myself tomorrow. And MAN the Druid's 2nd level power FIREBRAND! That blade makes Cloud's two hander from FF7 look silly.