roguelike

On windows you only need Ctrl if you're assigning numbered groups. You can just press the hotkey while mousing over the ability to set it. I only use Q and W, but it seems to work fine. EDIT: I can't hotkey anything to Shift/Alt/Ctrl+Hotkey, is that even intended?

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to hotkey them as well.

Is anyone else getting a weird stutter on the end of the crossbow and arbalast reload animation? It looks like maybe they increased the reload time but didn't change the animation to compensate.

That seems a little shortsighted. 99% of players won't care since they'll reload after death anyway, but anyone who plays with permadeath will just gradually run out of characters.

There's a red cloud now under the cursor if moving would cause a disengagement attack, which I actually don't mind since the lines can often be difficult to see.

Please, please, please, please leave this in. This is the most amazing thing ever. I want to fight all my fights like this:

It's... different. Seems like it will snap onto nearby targets a lot faster than it would before, but it also seems to stand around doing nothing sometimes. Also you can now escape combat by casting withdraw on your last character and the AI will go back to it's starting position.

I like that character creation portraits now start at your race. Also they ditched some of the useless talents like Graceful Retreat and +10 against being charmed-- EDIT: Oh, they're still there, just level restricted. rip faith and conviction bonus. EDIT: you need to type 'Iroll20s' to get console commands now.

Unless they've changed things up, offensive characters are probably better off maxing all three offensive stats. Defensive stats just don't do anything for you. Also I just want to point out that it's dumb that +1% attack speed can give anywhere from +0.26%(arquebus) to +1%(dual wielding) actual attacks.

No. Even though a two-handed fighter might be doing double the damage of a hatchet and shield fighter thanks to not having an accuracy penalty and two-handed weapons being far better than one-handed weapons, they are still dealing a fraction of the damage that your damage dealers are. Wearing plate armor and using cautious attack they have a 140% recovery penalty and are getting about one attack in for every two that a naked fighter is getting. In the context of a six person party, having an extra 5-10% party damage just isn't as worthwhile as having someone who is twice as durable. Of course, you can ditch the armor or modal penalty, but at that point you're not really tanky at all.

A tanky fighter with a fine large shield and W&S style is going to be around twice as durable as one with a two-handed weapon, so that's going to be a tough argument to win. Unless Josh goes through with nerfing W&S and then shields are going to be terrible on PotD and still pretty good on all the other difficulties.

I'm not sure I agree with the claim that high survivability characters are worthless against high accuracy, high damage foes. Here's a chart of character survivability against the most dangerous unit of measurement I could find, a Path of the Damned Elder Bear (112 accuracy and 55 average damage), to give some idea of how various classes fair in melee. While the tank is far from invulnerable, they easily survive long enough to fight and be healed, far longer than any character not built for it could ever hope to. As far as other takeaways go, note that the tanky paladin's +DR aura and +5 deflection are worth 20-25% more durability over a tanky fighter (vigorous defense is not represented on the chart). Likewise, Plate Armor is worthless against high damage enemies for anyone who doesn't already have high deflection, but is very worthwhile for characters that do. I suspect that ultimatly the decision of having crits on the attack resolution (instead of being the equivalent of a natural 20), is playing a negative role by magnifying surviability on one end of the spectrum and dooming everyone on the other end to near instant death.

The AI is too bad and exploitable at the moment for stacking defense on your frontline taunters to not be amazing. If that ever gets fixed--and the fact that the game is launching without any evidence that they've laid the slightest groundwork for a decent AI doesn't make that seem likely--there are still a lot of design decisions that favor specializing in either offense or defense to the exclusion of the other: * The attack resolution naturally favors each additional point of deflection more than the next one. This isn't really a problem on its own, but compounds the other issues. * Every decent defensive ability comes with a steep cost in offense. Shields, Armor, Cautious Attack, anything that gives a respectable defensive boost comes with an arbitrary tax to your offense in addition to the opportunity cost you already paid by not using a two-handed sword or picking a +15% damage talent. This is actually a big problem and you can immediately see why after taking one defensive talent that makes your offense terrible, it becomes attractive to just assume that you won't be doing any damage. Likewise, dabbling is a terrible idea since you lose 20% of your damage if you even think of picking up a shield or learning a defensive talent. Lowering the offensive penalties or transitioning to them to neutral or defensive penalties would make them more attractive to non-specialists and give specialists a more intersting choice to make beyond 'well my attack speed is already -60%, I guess I don't care if it goes down to -90%'. * Deflection is overvalued as a defensive stat. Deflection abilities come with either tiny values (Superior Deflection) or large drawbacks, precisely because deflection is far better than the other three defensive stats combined. In theory, it shouldn't be a problem if you manage to make a character that is virtually immune to attacks that target def because there should be a variety of other kinds of attacks. In reality, deflection is overtargetted in spells and abilities meaning there are many encounters where no other defenses are ever seriously targeted. This is an encounter balance issue that is probably not easily addressed. * There are no abilities that improve both offense and defense. Every offensive ability makes other offensive abilities better and every defensive ability makes other defensive abilities better. Give rogues an ability that improves their def by a percent of their accuracy or give fighters a charge that gets a bonus from DR. Talents like these could shore up characters weakness rather than just further strengthening specialists.

Yeah, sure. I doubt they'll have time to tweak anything for the zero day patch, but once they've finished fixing all the hair on fire problems, it'd be nice to have a list. It might help find bugs on some of the more rarely taken talents too. Like Accurate Wounding Shot only applying to the hobbling status effect, not the original attack.

Yeah this is off topic but I've seen a few folks say that class stuff needs 'a little' tuning and that seems really optimistic. I haven't gone out and counted but probably a third to half the class abilities/talents are just trash, not even niche talents that you could maybe fit into a cool build someday like Gunner or Quick Draw but stuff like Adept Evasion and Faithful Companion and Arcane Veil and Into the Fray. Stuff that no one should ever take. Wizards are 'viable' in the sense that they have ten spells per level and 8 of them are strictly worse versions of lower level druid spells and two of them are decent to amazing. Like yeah, they work but they don't really work in a pleasing manner. I'm not sure I would say Paladins are weak. They serve their mechanical purpose excellently, but don't quite capture that spark of 'this class is fun to play'. Lay on Hands is okay to have if you're playing a tank paladin since your accuracy is terrible and you're using a hatchet and you have to choose either it or the damage boost. Greater Lay on Hands is the real joke.

Was Shadowing Beyond not combat only in v392? Cheesing things with shadowing beyond was like the first thing I tried in 435 and it went really, really poorly. The AI will still run up to you once you're invisible, so to disengage you have to actually wait for everyone to come touch you, then run away. The duration seems really short, although that might be because of the new idle AI that loves to ignore commands and randomly attack the nearest enemy for no reason. The same AI will cancel casting Shadowing Beyond if you're interrupted or engaged. I dunno, I didn't try very hard but it seemed hard to cheese with, especially with only 2/rest. Any class with a move speed bonus (Chanter, Monk, Paladin) is better at escaping combat and Rangers can actually die and come back as long as they leave their animal companion sompeplace safe and get far enough from where the enemies are anchored.

That seems like a fair way to look at it. I think to me the fact that the ranger *could* be the best ranged dps class with just a few tweaks means that I'm not really concerned even if he is currently the worst at fulfilling his role. In comparison, Druids fulfill their role fine (which is apparantly aoe damage dealer? I haven't played a game with druids in it in a long time, but 'really good at blowing things up' was never how I thought of them, did I just miss the point where they became this?), but seem to have even more acute build diversity problems than rangers and that's a problem that will need new abilities or talents or mechanics to resolve, not just higher numbers on a modal ability. Likewise, it's hard to see an easy way to turn Barbarians into... whatever they're supposed to be.

None of that has to do with the ranger's fundamental kit though. The only thing preventing the ranger from doing more damage is some numbers tweaks. Also Deep Wounds is terrible and doesn't stack (if it's giving 5 stacks on blunderbuss shots that seems like a bug?), Dirty Fighting is worse than terrible, finishing blow is... I don't know what this ability does or is supposed to do, and I haven't seen the other abilities, I guess they're level 9+? Also, a lot of that is not sustain. I think in an 'ideal' world rogues would do more burst with their higher damage abilities but less sustained damage and rangers would do more damage with their better ranged modals. Right now that balance isn't quite there, but it seems like it's visible. I guess that's why I don't understand why everyone thinks the ranger is in so much trouble. They're like 1 patch away from not being bad at all. Meanwhile druids have no worthwhile class abilities, no worthwhile class talents, and extremely limited neutral talents to improve their spellcasting abilities. Wizards best role role is 'guy who is good at attacking with wands'. And Barbarians lose out in melee dps to rogues in exactly the same way that rangers lose out in ranged dps except much worse.

Uhm, what about rogues? I don't think rogues get any relevant ranged class abilities other than deep wounds, which is pretty bad. Early on they're going to be better just due to sneak attack, but by level 5 a ranger should have two useful ranged talents over a ranged rogue: swift aim + stalkers link for +13 acc, and whatever 20% attack speed and 50% reload speed averages out to be when reload speed bonuses aren't bugged (maybe 30% more attacks?). The naive breakpoint for whether +.5 damage is better than +30% attack speed (or whatever it really is in addition to the accuracy bonus) is going be around +.9 damage which seems a little high but not completely unreasonable for a 5th level character to have in between weapon enchantments, might, and buffs. I mean, rangers could probably use a numbers buff, but it's not like they're in a completely different ballpark. If anything, rogues who want to be ranged probably need more options instead of just wasting their 3rd and 5th level class abilities on not terribly relevant stuff.

Right now they're the best class for ironman soloing so I'd prefer they stuck around. Honestly I'm not sure why everyone hates rangers. Their 'archer' role is clearly defined, wounding shot is a great fight opener, driving flight is fun, their modal ranged abilities are about as good as any class gets. Having a dog follow you around is fun even if having it die and crippling your stats is not. They seem like the best choice if you want ranged, single target, sustained dps. I mean sure, that's not actually a great thing to want right now, but their archer role is far clearer than whatever role barbarians or wizards have, both of whom are overshadowed by other classes doing everything they do but better. Sure, their pet stuff is a complete trainwreck, but that's only because obsidian isn't willing to bite the bullet and make them good. If pets shared defensive and accuracy stats with the ranger, then you could make them good at off-tanking or good at interrupting and they'd be fine. Also Marked Prey should be party wide and Bonded Grief should end when combat ends.

Maybe rogues just shouldn't have two talents that are mostly worthless without each other in the first place. Give Shadowing Beyond some kind of damage multiplier (your next attack does 1.5x damage) and make backstab a damage bonus on top of sneak attack (close range sneak attacks deal 1.75x damage instead of 1.5x). Now they're both useful for a variety of builds and they complement each other without being necessary.

Yes, but it's bugged in a way that makes it way more amazing than it will be when it's fixed.

I made another chart, this time it makes the amazing prediction that fireball is a bad spell. Don't take fireball. This has been your public service announcement for the day. Consider Fan of Flames or Wall of Flame for your flame needs instead. In fact, you're probably better off just not being a wizard at all unless you really love attacking things with wands. Also Wall of Fire is amazing right now with the accuracy bonus/bug from being a trap. I kinda hope they don't fix it, it would actually give wizards a decent spell. Does anyone know whether the DR bypass on spells implemented as 0 second DoTs is intentional? Seems weird that Ionic Projection just randomly ignores DR.

Here's a video. It only happens every other shot though because modal abilities don't seem to activate at the first possible opportunity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzxWhyQfdDY

Modal abilities will only activate after recovery is finished, but can be deactivated at any time. For penetrating shot this means that you can turn it on, wait for the arrow to hit, then deactivate it before recovery begins. It can then be activated before the next shot. With proper micro, penetrating shot has no downside whatsoever. This probably effects other modal abilities as well, though some benefit from it more than others. Modal ability deactivation should be governed by the same rules as modal ability activation and require you to be out of attack animation and recovery.