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Blovski

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Everything posted by Blovski

  1. Hunting Bow Ranger with Penetrating Shot, Vicious Aim and one of the game's two good hunting bows (Persistence, graduating to Lenas Er), you will have a good damage dealer. Won't match up to the rogue on DPS because getting Sneak Attacks could hardly be easier but the accuracy's better and your utility stuff is way more fun.
  2. It's grand. I mean, it's not perfect but it's its own thing and often very good at being it. Baldur's Gate is the only one of those I might suggest is better than PoE but even then there are a lot of areas where PoE wins out and I suspect I'm kinder to BG because there's the sequel to go to once you're done with it. DA:O had some great reactivity stuff but never burrowed in my heart very much. NWN I did not like one bit. Well, maybe one bit but I think there's some really terrible ideas in it. DS is an interesting one. I mean, the technical side is really impressive but a lot of the gameplay's very counterintuitive. I think you probably need to pause less in PoE than in Baldur's Gate. Edit: ^^ I've encountered a couple of bugs. Nothing gamebreaking. It's probably less bug-prone than DA:O, which suffered a lot of crashes for me. The asylum quest chain one, which I think has been patched out, one with Ranger's Bonded Grief not going away until you've finished an actual fight if you knock out the AC out of combat (but that's an edge case thing where you're, say, testing Spellstrike weapons on your own party out of curiosity and maybe not a good example).
  3. AI needs fixing, basically, then the minmaxing two indestructible tanks and four casters will be less blatantly ideal.
  4. Mechanics gloves are a real problem, but I think that might be a problem with the gloves being stupidly useful for any party ever rather than the loot system.
  5. All the caster classes are kinda differentiated in their systems. I don't really think merging everyone down to the teeny-bit-overpowered Cipher model would help. Would be nice to have a spell like Wondrous Recall, though. Enemies having unlimited abilities is really a problem with the enemies more than anything.
  6. Trueish but skeleton casters tend to be in isolated parts of the game so you can switch over if you want to, and additionally have pretty terrible accuracy relative to squishy ones and I don't remember the DR being enormously inspiring. Animats (and maybe Wood Beetles) are the trickier enemies for Hunting Bows but with a ranger I tended to find I was just critting all the time against them so it wasn't actually that important.
  7. The Codex review makes a lot of excellent points (especially wrt story motivation not being reinforced adequately, encounter design and AI) but is riddled with factual errors and has really inconsistent conclusions.
  8. Wait. Your idea of role-playing is simply the choice of kill nobody or kill everybody? LMAO \Sorry, bub, role-playing wise the newer BIO games have more role-playing options. PERIOD. If you like the newer Bioware approach to roleplaying, I'd say that Telltale's The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are both vastly better examples of the same thing, really. Linear stories where you define your protagonist in relation to the story through dialogue choices. Unrest is a really interesting indie twist on this, with vast dialogue trees, genuine reactivity, compelling writing and a game showing you multiple characters' perspectives on the same events. If you only want to roleplay on the rails, the rails may as well be good ones. ---- Now, for the type of roleplaying I'm talking about, have you played the original Fallout? Baldur's Gate isn't as good at offering you roleplaying options as that but is a roleplaying game for the same reason - you define your character BY PLAYING THE GAME rather than by accruing blue or red points so you can do more blue or red things. In Baldur's Gate you could choose between serious and sarcastic options, except that it would generally have consequences there. Plying NPCs with gifts until they fall in love with you so you can see a terrible sex scene doesn't really qualify as roleplaying in my book. In Mass Effect you can't be a raving maniac on the run from the law (unless the story wants you to be on the run from the law, in which case you will have to be on the run from the law), you can't be a sneaking utility pacifist, you can't really do much meaningful self-definition at all. You're obligated to take certain companions (Morrigan and Miranda being egregious examples of characters who are written to push your buttons but whom you can't just refuse to take with you) along with you regardless of your gameplay style or your opinions about them, so you can't be a loner or a principled character. In addition, the approach to cut scenes forces you to stop roleplaying and sit back and watch Kai Leng shoot someone and run away, for instance, because your character has cutscene-induced paralysis. This is without even getting into Mass Effect's much vaunted TRILOGY-WILL-REACT-TO-YOUR-CHOICES concept that was completely undermined by ME 3 not having the resources or design philosophies to let any of your choices have an impact on the gameplay (see the Rachni decision, for instance). Now, I really like Jade Empire, which suffers from much of the above, because it had great worldbuilding, a really strong central story and excellent villains, innovative if flawed character-building/combat and offered you meaningful decisions that affected the world. Bioware could really still offer good games with a mixture of lightweight roleplaying with a focus on companion characters, light action gameplay, light character building and an emphasis on worldbuilding, which used to be their biggest strength. It's a shame that they seem to have stopped doing that. For the record, I quite like KOTOR, Dragon Age: Origins and Jade Empire. I sort of liked the first couple of Mass Effect games in places but at best they're choosing from takeaway options while the roleplaying games I tend to like are more like cooking.
  9. I hesitate to say that bows are gimped. But then again, I'm picky about the use of language. Rather I'd say that the DR mechanism hurts faster firing, lower damage weapons more than slower firing, higher damage weapons, simply because each hit gets dinged by DR. Put into numbers, if a bow hits for four times for 10 damage each against a target with 5 DR, it will lose 20 points of damage to DR, whereas a arqabus that does 40 damage in a single hit against the same target loses only 5 points of damage to DR. Thus, high damage weapons have a significant advantage in this regard. Of course, guns come with base accuracy penalties which cause them to lose some damage if you factor this in over a larger number of shots (i.e. more misses means lost damage), though I'm not sure that this is a major penalty if the user of the gun is a ranged specialist like a ranger or a rogue and has taken various talents that offset those penalties. And yes, "overshooting" (I prefer overkill. Overshooting sounds like missing.) is definitely an issue. The problem is though that you have no real idea (that I know of) how many actual END any target has left. An enemy that's "near death" may still have a pretty fair number of END left, so it's probably still well worth shooting it even if there is the potential for overkill. It's slightly more complicated than that once you add in Penetrating Shot and start asking *who* your ranged character should be shooting at. Also, greater accuracy doesn't just mean more hits as opposed to misses, it means more crits and less grazes as well. There's good reasons to use an Arquebus if you're so inclined but if your archer has penetrating shot (which they really need) and is generally prioritising either the enemy backline of Priests, Wizards etc, who have very low DR or opponents who have very high deflection and usually not exactly stellar resistances that your other characters have trouble hitting, bows are actually pretty good.
  10. To be fair, until you realise that Animal Companions are affected by fatigue you'll find they mysteriously have half as much durability in some battles as others. I suspect this is a lot of the root of people being frustrated with it.
  11. In Baldur's Gate you can actually roleplay your character using the systems of the game rather than just selecting between RED and BLUE options. In Baldur's Gate if you're in a town you can flip out and kill people if you want to, which makes it meaningful when you don't, while in modern Bioware games you can only kill sanctioned targets (and are usually obligated to), you can stealth past many enemies in BG that in a Bioware game would lock you in cutscene out of stealth and then force you to fight them however you'd approached it. And hell, even the choice between RED and BLUE options is often utterly miniscule. What Bioware are making nowadays are interactive stories, really, with as tight a straitjacket as they can manage, and which don't stand up to the better executed Telltale games which are built around a leaner version of the same system, rather than CRPGs.
  12. Agreed, but I think it's recoverable. It needs to be more of an attack-of-opportunity and not a death-grip. Sadly the review in the OP chooses not to look past faults and posit solutions. Agreed AoO's would have been better where you still have the 5 feet of movement you can use. I don't know if tank and spank was a intended design choice, but it appears that most engagements boil down to this because of the engagement glue system. The AI is fairly terribad in general and only slightly better in encounters with balanced kith parties, so munchkins with 3 might tanks can just bait and hammer. It's not the engagement glue so much as the fact that two tanks can and will stop far more enemies than they can ever engage, even in an open field.
  13. This entire board looks like such battle for quite some time already. Why not give a little rest to poor Baldur's Gate and argue over DA:O for a change? Btw, I got bored with DA:O within 10 hours, dropped and never felt like trying it again. Would someone try to convince me it's an awesome game? Anyone? On topic, though, PoE couldn't "destroy" any of the Dragon Ages to begin with simply because they're playing in different leagues, let alone have entirely different design filosophies. Comparing them is just not right. DA:O did have the balls to let you miss a ton of content because of real, good roleplaying choices. I'll give it that. Also I liked what they tried with the Origins bit. Combat system was a bit of a drag sometimes and balance was odd to say the least.
  14. You need Penetrating Shot and debuffs that affect DR or add damage, once you've got those two both Hunting and War Bows hold up pretty well, with less overkill, higher rate of fire and application of debuffs and more interrupting than a gun.
  15. Systems - There are plenty of perks that let you increase accuracy. It's obviously intended to be the most limited part of the system, which is fine. Most of the system's problems in encouraging a tank-and-spank approach come from lousy AI. Skills are clearly useful throughout the game. In particular, Lore is massively useful, Survival makes buffs last longer. Combat - Encounter design is a weak spot, though the game has some highlights in this regard (the Temple of Eothas or the endgame bounties, for instance) and a lot of dungeons fail to present you with a crowning challenge and meaningful reward at the end. I like engagement, it's a shame that the AI never presents a challenge with all the options it has. In PoE you have tons of disables for anyone who breaks past the frontlines. Don't really get what that's about. Endurance isn't rewarding sloppiness, it's addressing the IE problem of having no middleground between total success and either time-consuming reload or time-consuming resurrection spells and re-equipping your party member. Per encounter abilities are precisely the sort of acknowledgement of developments in RPGs since the IE games that the summary deplores the lack of... Yes, a lot of Wizard buffs are terrible or counterintuitive in their applications. Wizard spells are often very good. Buffs in general are valuable; the change from prebuffing is problematic but I understand why it was in there. Writing - I really liked a lot of the writing and background stuff. That said, 'Supposedly, the problem with the awakening is that your character is going crazier with every day. But the game never, in any way, enforces that.' YES! CORRECT! This is the biggest problem with the plot's presentation. It's not likely to stick with me in the same way as Planescape: Torment and I agree that the main plot has problems and the general reactivity is kinda sloppy. On how we went from Alpha Protocol to this... Alpha Protocol was a semi-linear set of missions with a much smaller number of actors. It also, for all its brilliance, had some really pronounced problems in design and the dossiers. On the technical bit - savegame times and bugs have largely been ironed out, at least for me. Reviewer's take on POTD difficulty really doesn't correspond to my own experience of it. Summary - I think PoE clearly acknowledges and builds on a lot of the new things in CRPGs since BG. The self-created backstory of Kotor 2, Bioware's stronghold/camp, talking to companions yourself rather than waiting for them to chat to you, Crafting, mass item gathering. Hell, Endurance is obviously taking the modern RPG idea that having companions die, get resurrected and be re-equipped, having not received any XP from the fight, is not tremendously fun or meaningful. Not all of these are perfectly executed but most of them are better than previous iterations of it. Overall: some insightful and valid points, a lot of pretending not to understand things. Is the game PST + IWD + BG 2? Nope. Does it have good points from each of them... probably.
  16. Rogue archers are really strong as long as you can keep putting down debuffs and understand flanking for early fights. Blinding Strike and other duration effects benefit from Intelligence and Shadowing Beyond benefits from duration. Resolve is great for conversations but I'd say Int is more valuable from a combat perspective (and also used in Conversation checks). Also, any high might character is great with a few points in Lore for scroll use and Int obviously benefits that a lot.
  17. Use capslock and name the developer in the title. That'll definitely get your issues fixed. Have you tried sacrificing a beloved household pet and lighting a black candle yet?
  18. 4 for me. Would be 5 with better encounter/dungeon design and AI. Those two areas let the game down a bit.
  19. Eh, the key difficulty increases for POTD are defences and enemy accuracy. Rangers have the highest ranged accuracy of anyone and enemy accuracy isn't enormously relevant to a backline character. I'd be surprised if Rangers didn't scale pretty well.
  20. Pahaha wow. My idea of viable is something that A) fulfills its role (YMMV as to what you think this means) and B) has features the alternatives for the role wouldn't. This build meets both of those criteria. I'm not stopping people making a thread on Gun Rangers or Bow Rogues if they want to work out their perfectest most powerful DPS build to go with their minmaxed 3 might fighters that can't ever be hit by any enemy in the game ever. This is not really that thread, much as it's nice that the peripheral discussion allows you to pick out the little things a bow ranger build gives you.
  21. 1. Sneak attack is *really* easy to pull off. Charmed, Confused, Dominated, Dazed, Frightened and Terrified are the only status effects that don't allow it and it can be executed from any distance. 2. There are two real advantages Rangers have over Rogues as archers. A) marginally higher accuracy B) Not reliant on Crowd Control spells if you run with a party that doesn't sport tons of them (I was using two chanters, druid, ranger, fighter and paladin in my last runthrough). Compared to the advantages of Rogues these are pretty minor things. Making Sneak Attack even easier would even further reduce the relative value of Rangers. As far as I can see, the real problem here is that Rogues don't have the risk/reward thing that was in the AD&D games and IWD 2. Positioning and Stealth aren't very relevant to their playstyle and the way their talents work encourages static, ranged DPS. I'd love to see Rogues that get up in people's grills using Coordinated Positioning to surgically strike the enemy backline or the like but it seems like the two dominant builds are tank rogue (which is fantastic) and archer rogue (which is fantastic), both of which are more or less static. Correct me if anyone's made a proper positioning swashbuckler work for them.
  22. On the gun discussion - I've not crunched the numbers, though with Swift Aim and Driving Shot and probably having the option to skip Penetrating Shot Gunner Rangers are perfectly fine.The point of *this* build was more to have a flexible ranger that works with a bow and have a few interesting utility things Rogues don't get. The bow ranger's advantage in ROF and not wasting tons of DPS on overkill is still there over gunners (also, anyone can use a gun and do pretty well, not many classes can really work with bows). I'd also note that having a gun-switching build is going to stop you using Spellbind stuff because of how many weapon slots you need to fill. The balance issue relative to Rogues seems to be mostly that sneak attacks are something you can reliably have triggering from whatever range on every hit off of virtually every status effect, which I honestly think is a problem with the Rogue rather than the Ranger. I'm curious as to what people think of Defensive Bond? I mean, it is a good chunk of blanket defence when it triggers but you're reliant on both your ranger and your pet getting hit. Also, the unique class items seem... underwhelming at best. Not just for the ranger. Anyone found any great ones? From writing this and playing, here are the changes I'd like to see on the ranger: Basically fixes: Animal Companion Fatigue - this feels completely unintentional and isn't very visible to the player and very difficult to work around. They need some Athletics points or not to be affected by it. Animal Companion Intelligence - The reduced intelligence makes sense but it also cripples AC abilities as choices. Talent Adjustments: Animal Companion Feats (we're seeing a theme here) - I think it'd be nice if Animal Companion feats added a little durability or stats or something (it'd be ideal if these were based on your companion's type but even just generic increases would be nice). I'd like to see a Beastmaster type build become more worthwhile. Marked Prey - Some people swear by it but I think it's kind of rare this is tremendously useful. I'd like a faster cast time to make it more applicable in more fights or a longer duration to make it more valuable when it's currently applicable. Dream perks: Elemental ammunition (fire/ice/corrode/shock) - Would be nice having a ranger able to hit lower DRs for a time period and differentiate them a bit more from Rogues as a utility archer rather than a damage one. Would also play well for Archery (and, admittedly, Blunderbusses) since hitting a much lower shock DR on Animats or something would make a much bigger difference for low damage weapons. Vampiric Link - The Ranger and AC have zero access to healing, I'd like a time activated thing that lets damage the AC does heal the ranger and vice versa.
  23. Ta very much : ) yeah, the thing is rangers do get some very nice utility stuff (binding roots, animal companion and so on) so I'm kind of OK with a properly spec'd Rogue doing better as a pure archer. That said, I think generating Sneak Attacks seems almost too easy and routine at the moment and Rogues kinda lack flavour for me right now as a result of that. I'm really bothered by the Animal Companion fatigue problem (sometimes you wonder why they're so damn squishy and then realise they have Critical Fatigue because they've been jogging lightly for ten minutes) but I did really enjoy the ranger build. I basically agree about Marksman and WF being essential, since sky-high accuracy is our business but I kinda wanted to keep the essentials list down to as few talents as I possibly could so people felt more at liberty to discuss and spec around it. I know people love their quick-switch, extra weapon, gunner Island Aumaua but I figure opening with a single bouncing, vicious aim Arquebus shot before switching to the bow for reliability is solid and interesting even if you don't go all out on the build. I also reckon that later in the game if you have, say, The White Spire and Tauntain's Staff as your backup weapon you can have a ranger that's both fireballing and blizzarding but, as I mentioned, spellbinds are kinda dodgy at the moment so I'm not sure how it would work in practice. Nature Godlike seems very underwhelming right now in general. Not sure if anyone's doing builds that make use of it. True about Sagani, I played for a bit with two rangers in the party with her having more of an Animal Companion focus, which was entertaining enough. 1. With 8 DR reduction with Lenas Er, a really high crit chance and 5 DR reduction earlier, stack on a few Combusting Wounds/Expose Vulnerabilities type things and it's very relevant to turning blobs of squishies into blobs of squished. The Crit chance from all the aim stacking is through the roof, which helps. 2. Swift Aim does seem interesting, I don't think it goes with Vicious Aim though and it requires two talents rather than one, so I never took it. 3. Yeah, this isn't a tremendously helpful change, much as it makes sense. Takedown is occasionally clutch if an enemy slips past but hardly great. 4. Yes indeed : ) that is going to really increase your damage on squishy blobs of wizards and the like. As you mention, Combusting Wounds, Expose Vulnerabilities, the Chanter DR reduction and flaming weapon thingies all add to your damage. @Looms: PENETRATING SHOT WITH YOUR HUNTING BOW. Most important talent.
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