Madscientist

In the battle against Naroc the prophet in Cilant Lis was the normal background music of this area, not the usual combat music.

https://imgur.com/a/5hp9I I got the item via a stronghold adventure. It is labeled as pet and I can equip it in the pet slot. All other pets are creatures that follow me on the map. This is just an item that gives me some charges of some spells. I think it would be better to make this an item for the quick slot. I expect a pet to be a creature who follows me on the map.

oops Yes, I mean you cannot please everyone. Well, at least now I know why nobody likes me, if I cannot please anyone

OK, I remember Gromnir from ToB but until now I did not know he was based on a forum member ( or that internet forums existed at that time ) Many things in computer games are inspired by real world things. As long as the game is good I do not care if the origin of a char is an ancient king or a forum member. Yes, 95% of all players will never know and most of the remaining 5% likes it or does not care. Its just that the few remaining people make lots of noise. Well, you cannot please anyone

@gGeorg: - PoE is a fantasy game, not a historical simulation - Haches had the bonus for game balance reasons. Each weapon type has a special bonus. Some of these bonusses make as much or as little sense as the hatchet bonus, but I can live with that. Games will always have a certain level of abstraction. - The romans were fighting in formation. Lots of soldiers with the same equipment moved forward as a wall of shields and swords or spears. Their effectiveness came from constant drill to fight as a team with standartized equipment. In PoE2 you have up to 5 characters and not all of them will have a shield. To compare this with the roman army makes no sense. I do not know much about vikings. Shields have a acc penalty because of game balance. You have to chose if you want more defense or offense.

Some comments to the things above: - I agree that the implementation of backers ( golden NPC, gravestones) was terrible, because it was disconnected from the rest of the game. TToN did it better. They had a gravestone for each backer, but you never met them in the normal game. You had to go through this area an you can spend hours reading all those graves, but you never see the rooms with the graves if you follow only the story. The best thing would be to use good ideas from backers in the game (like the BLB) and accept that most people will never know that those were made by backers. All others are just mentioned as a name in the credits. I have no idea which content of PoE, TToN or other games have been made by backers and thats good because it means that the content fits to the game. PS: I created a character for the game Glitched. When the game is released and you find a mad scientist there he could be from me. But even the beta is so full of crazy ideas that you might miss some. I do not care, its enough when I know that I created something. PPS: Where did Gromnir day he created a part of BG2? I could not find this. - About the story of PoE. Somebody compared it to MotB. Well, story wise I liked MotB more. There your soul eater thing was a game mechanic so you were always reminded that you have to find a cure. I did not like the mechanic as I had to be a good char who suppresses his hunger all the time because I play so slow that the hunger would kill me fast, but story wise it made lots of sense. In PoE it is mentioned that you will become insane a few times, but nothing of this created any sense of urgency or even lots of desire to continue because of this. I know that I have all the time in the world and the bad guy will wait at me at the end of the dungeon forever. The worst thing were the expansions in this regard. By themselves the expansions were great, even better than the base game. But if you can go to a different area and spend lots of time there with things unrelated to the main story, the idea that you have to find Thaos in order not to become insane felt not that importent. BG1 (and it looks like PoE2) make it better. You have a clear goal, but you are invited to explore a large world where you will find interesting things that may or may not be related to the main story.

I have the newest version of the game. ( deadfire helmet does not confuse on heal anymore, not sure about the number ) Two members have a cape that goes down and back in a straigt line, which looks bad. 3 other members wear a cape that falls down normally while the last one does not wear a cape. Both chars with the strange cape have a soulbound weapon on their back (redeemer and stormcaller), but equipping a different weapon changes nothing. The effect stays there all the time. https://imgur.com/a/DAPBn

https://imgur.com/a/sddb5 Auf englisch sagt sie korrekt: "You are among the ovates of the golden grove." Auf deutsch wäre das: "Ihr seid hier bei den Ovaten des Goldenen Hains." Ich selber bin aber kein Mitglied von denen.

https://imgur.com/a/QsGaX Nicht wirklich ein bug, aber es sieht irgentwie seltsam aus. Beinahe wurde er überfallen, aber da ist kein Text wer da beinahe überfallen wurde. In allen anderen Fällen kam solch eine Nachricht zusammen mit der Info welcher Besucher da kommt.

When I look at the images, all stats change by a different number ( both absolute numbers and %) per point of alchemy. At the moment you cannot tell what bonusses you get if you increase your alchemy by 1 point. A description like "alchemy increases the effects of consumables by X%" makes no sense at the moment. By the way: Does alchemy increase the effects of drugs too? Would this make the drugged monk subclass very powerful? Porsonally I use only the shattered pillar, because getting powers by hitting things sounds better than getting powers by being hit.

I liked the concentration mechanics of PoE1, especially now when I compare it to PoE2. In PoE1 res had a use for any char (especially melee) because if you get interrupted often you do not do anything at all. There were builds with dumped res, but there came a downside with it. In PoE1, mig gave bonusses for weapon damage, spell damage and healing. Sice you need to damage enemies to win and a pure buffer/debuffer does not seem very good, hardly any char wanted to dump it. Using different stats for magical and physical numbers (damage, healing) seems to make sense. (importent note: There is a big difference between "it makes sense according to my personal theory how fighting and magic in a fantasy setting works" and "there is an understandable way to make a balanced game mechanic out of this") In terns of stat system, PoE1 was a huge step forward compared to the DnD games. ( I never played pnp and I had only computer games with DnD 2nd and 3rd edition) - In the IE games, most classes had dump stats. A physical char (no spells) should max out str, con, dex and ignore wis, int, cha. Casters needed their main casting stat maxed (int or wis). TBH cha was useless for any char (except for PST, but there you had a spell to buff it). The ultimate stat dumper was the sorcerer whose casting power depended on nothing but his character level. - NwN2 qas an improvement. At least every stat was useful for some chars, though most build still had dumb stats. Now we had the issue that some chars needed very few stats (max out one or two stats and its OK to dump the rest) while other chars were MAD (multiple attibute dependency) - In PoE1, each stat has at least some use for almost every char. I think MAD is good, because I think it is better if you deliberately priorize the benefit of one stat over the other than to mindlessly max out an obvious main stat. In the second version of the PoE2 beta I see the following problems: - Casting ciphers suffer most under MAD, because they need str for weapon damage for focus, res for spell damage and int for spell area/duration. I do not see a way to help ciphers in a system where weapon and spell damage depend on different stats. - I think druid class suffers second. Before you could cast a storm, shift and run amok. Now you must chose between being a fighter/buffer or a caster/healer. - Healers/supporters have been weakened. In PoE1 with high mig you could use auto attacks and cast heals or buffs when needed. In PoE2 your physical damage will be low. You can learn offensive spells too, but then you learn less heal/support spells and casting any offensive spell reduces your number of heals (ok, the last thing was true for PoE1 too). - If you could summom weapons much faster ( and the tranmuter ogre shifts fast like a druid ), fighting casters could be quite useful. With the exception of ciphers, I think the new system is not automatically better or worse than the old one. Its just different.

My 2 cents about style: I am a mad scientist in a physics institute full of other scientist. Nobody cares what we wear. It is beyond my understanding how why anyone wears something different than running or hiking shoes when leaving the house, those things are made for walking. I have the special ability to insult half of the universe because I need to be honest to keep my self respect. My 15year old self was already a nerd so it does not care. Fortuanatly for the rest of the world I am not a reporter or diplomat and I never work with those people.

OK, I make a simplified version of my suggestions from above: - basic shields and their modals stay as they are - For shields with bashing, damage should scale with item quality. (BTW, should large shields do more damage than small ones?) - It would be nice if you could have more enchantments for shields, not just quality. I have read that weapon enchantment of PoE2 is more like upgrading the properties the item already has, not giving it whatever standart bonusses you like. The same thing would be nice for shields. - It would be nice if at least some of the bashing shields have an extra effect, like status effects on hit or lashes. It could be a rare artifact or you can get it via enchanting. I still like my idea for the souldbound shield. Looks like I have to use it together with a weapon if something similar exists in the game.

I think there is no reason why single wielding should increase defenses ( thats what shields are for). A change to ignore armor would have made sense in the DR system of PoE1, but not with the penetration system of PoE2. I think the suggestions of The balthazar are good. If they work in practice we can only tell if the current system is ever changed.

Since this thread has turned into a discussion about historical correctness: I have seen a video where one person in plate armor stands in the middle and 4 people with normal cloth stand around him, all equipped with long wooden sticks. The 4 guys attacked the knight in the middle one after the other and the knight had to block the attack and strike back. After some minutes the knight had to stop because of exhaustion. I am not making any combat sports, but I do long distance running. So I know that the body produces lots of heat when you do sports. Wearing too warm cloth while doing sports will lead to overheating. For me, even wearing long modern sportwear (instead of short one) may be too much and my performance goes down. Any of those middle age armors have a much better heat insulation than modern sportswear. Their weight comes on top of that. So somebody who is fighting in a full plate armor must sweat like crazy and death of overheating or dehydration seems as likely as being killed by the enemy. It is beyond my understanding how anyone can fight for some time ( more than 15minutes ??? ) in a row. OK, I am a light runner, not a mountain of muscles who is trained in combat. I guess modern players of american football or ice hockey have the same problem. At least PoE is "realistic" in a way that you can do everything while wearing armor but it increases recovery.

The suggestion that everyone likes helps us only to deal with full (and maybe primary) attacks We still have the problem that dual wielding does much more damage than any other style with auto attacks.

I did some thinking and I came up with an idea: Shields need to be more different. Using a shield normally changes nothing, but if you are profient with shields each shield gives a unique bonus. - some shields keep the modals they have now - some shields are used as bashing weapon that cause low damage but can cause another effect, like distracted -some shields have a very aggressive mode: There is a spiked shield and if you activate the modal, it does damage like a normal weapon and causes bleed on hit, but it gives a defense penalty instead of a bonus. So by turning on/of the modal you can chose if you want to more defense or more offense - some shields get a per encounter ability with a few charges, like one shied can interrupt enemies 3 times per encounter while another shield can confuse an enemy once per encounter. The effects, damage and amount of charges is different from shield to shield - some shields simply get a bigger defense bonus if you are profient - some shields may have shield bash by default, being profient adds damage or gives an additional effect - There is an epic soulbound fire shield. (being profient increases damage and defense) + Initial state: the shield glows, you can bash with it and it gives you minor ice resistance + first upgrade: increases bash damage, additional fire damage on hit, medium ice resistance + final upgrade: every time ( or a % chance) you land a critical hit with the shield you create a fireball that causes fire damage to all enemies around you. You also get 3 per rest charges of the spells fireball and fireshield. I want to have a devoted/paladin that is devoted to shields! In one hand you have the soulbound fire shield, in the other hand the spike shield. Activate disciplined strikes plus eternal devotion and you are a moving fireball that burns and bleeds everything around him while having a good defense. A char who specializes on using weapons might have bigger damage against the target in front of him, but you have better defense and you burn everyone around you. Of course this means that you should be able to dual wield shields. Edit: Changed bonusses of the final upgrade of the soulbound shield. When reading this I like my idea so much that I wish I backed the "design a soulbound item" tier. ( . . . basking in my own ego . . . )

Voted, sounds a good idea. One concern is primary attack ability are gimped after change I like the idea too. I think that a primary attack should only need half the resources than a full attack that causes a similar effect. so we get: full attack: when dual wielding attack with both weapons and both attacks have an additional effect, when having one weapon equiped you attack once and this attack does more damage/penetration than a normal attack and causes an additional effect primary attack: a normal attack with your primary weapon that causes an additional effect for half the resource costs of a similar full attack

No, there is no acc penalty for dual wielding. Single wielding gives +12acc, but all other styles get no penalty. --------------------- Warning: Once again I am referring to history when talking about game mechanics (some people never learn ) There are many videos and texts that show: - There were some people who were dual wielding in history, but only a few ones. Usually it was 2h or 1h+shield - Usually there were two options: First is to use a larger and a smaller weapon and you use the smaller weapon as kind of shield, means you use it mostly to parry enemy attacks - The other way is to use two very small weapons so you can hold them in your fist and they don´t get in each others way, like small daggers - Using two large weapons does not make you attack faster, the two weapons will get in each others way instead so you get more problems. end of history lesson ------------------------------- OK, what does this mean for game mechanics: Lets see how other games did it: The best example I know was NWN2: - 2h weapons got an strengh modifier of 1.5 - 1h and 1h+shield got a strengh modifier of 1, there was the duellist class that gave bonusses (never used it) and KotoR had a talent that gave a hit chance bonus for single wielding (not sure about NWN2). Generally single weapon without shield was a bad idea. - dual wielding gave you a hit chance penalty, there was another penalty if the off hand weapon was not small and the strengh modifier for the off hand was 0.5. You needed high dex and spend talents to get more attacks with your off hand. In order to have as many attacks with your off hand as with your main hand you needed an epic char with lots of dex and several talents. Despite the very long list of penalties for dual wielding there were powerful dual wielders who could compete with 2h. Of course, at higher levels casters were much more powerful than most melee or ranged chars, but thats another topic. My favourite char who used mostly weapon attacks in combat was a buffed priest with weapon and shield by the way. http://nwn2db.com/build/?180624 Most other games have penalties for dual wielding too. Ok, what does this mean for PoE2: - dual wielding can be powerful even it gets large penalties. Since there are no penalties at the moment and dual wielding is OP now it needs a nerf. We could + reduce speed bonus for dual wielding + reduce damage for dual wielding + reduce acc for dual wielding + reduce penetration ( this one I like least, but I do not like the penetration system anyway) + a combination of the things above 2h can get stronger by + increasing damage ( I do not like huge numbers on weapons, but a bigger str modifier like NWN2 might work + increase penetration ( as I have written before, it makes sense from a physics point of view) + increase speed (not good, why should a 2h weapon be faster than a one hand) + I like the suggestion for full attacks by TheBalthazar + something else, I am sure there is something but don´t find a good idea + a combination of the things above

I voted no, I do not want more restrictions. I think the class system is perfect as it is. Some talents or numbers might be changed for balancing, but the general concept is fine. The restrictions in ADnD were completely arbitrary. - Why could some races only have some classes or class combinations? - Why could some classes be combined but others not? - Why did you have stat requirements at all, especially when dual classing? - Dual classing was extremely restricted. For beginners it was very hard to understand what is required for this and when is the best time to do it. - The restrictions for the classes felt arbitrary too. Clerics could only use blunt weapons because they do not want to spill blood. Even if they serve the god of war. And smashing skulls with a hammer is definitely not a bloody mess ;-) DnD3 ( like in NWN2) was better. But character creation remained science. You had requirements for prestige classes and taking one level from one class would make you much more powerful (cleric domains, shadow dancer, . . .) while one level from another class would be useless. PoE (version 3+) is much better in terms of game mechanics than any IE game ever was. PoE2 has the best class system I have ever seen, though I dislike the new penetration/armor mechanics.

I just looked into the game and I wanted to have this: - use items from quick slots ( already mentioned ) - turn on and off modals (already mentioned) For my fighter I want something like: When there are two or more enemies in melee range and you have a melee weapon equipped activate cleaving stance, else activate warrior stance - change weapon set If engaged by enemies switch to weapon set 2 (melee) else use weapon set 1 (ranged weapon) - "at the beginning of combat " as condition (already mentioned ) - At the moment you can select several conditions, but they are all connected by AND and they can be negated. It would be nice to be able to select other logic operators like OR or ( if then else ), maybe others. When playing, I want to use the AI to keep buffs and modals on automatically and use emergency abilities (heal or status cure automatically if I do not press pause fast enough), but I want to use active abilities myself because: - I want to play myself, not watch a video - I do not trust the AI to move correctly and select the correct target all the time But I do not want to activate disciplined strikes every combat and look all the time if it is still active. In general, I like the AI customisation a lot. I did the same thing in DA:O and FF12: pause a lot, select abilities yourself and use AI for buffs and heals. Edit: Ok, we already have "if then else" You select one condition for one action and then you make a new slot with the negation of the condition for another action. But if the condition is complex, the negation will be complex too. Adding an "else" option might make some things easier.

@AndreaColombo The thing you quoted from me should show that the system of PoE1 was much better than WoW because WoW was full of hard limits. The problem is that dual wielding any weapon is stronger than using any other weapon ( see table of Kdubya ) You said that speed is king, dual wielding gives a huge bonus and the fighter talent makes it even faster, increasing the advantage of dual wielding even more. At the moment others styles have no chance to compete with dual wielding, thats why I suggested to nerf dual wielding and buff 2h. my first suggestion was: lower dual wielding speed bonus a lot and increase 2h penetration There is no DR anymore and players will usually have enough penetration, especially power gamers. so now suggestion 2: - Dual wielding get a damage penalty, like you do only 80% damage as base damage, but the speed bonus stays relatively high - 2h and single wield get a "whirlwind mode" that you can turn on and off. This mode lowers your damage and increases your speed. Edit: When reading this the suggestion for 2h and 1h sounds terrible. That might mean that dual wielding needs to be nerfed a lot, because at the moment I see no way to buff other styles so that they even have a slight chance to compete under any circumstances. Like TheBalthazar said: Dual wielding does not need to do more damage than other styles when using auto attacks with normal weapons, because dual wielding has other advantages: You get bonusses and special abilities from two weapons instead of one. All bonusses on weapons stack with everything else. Full attacks come on top of that. A paladin/monk with lightning strikes, eternal devotion and weapons that have on hit effects will always be better with dual wielding than with any other style, even if you nerf dual and buff others. some notes: - I have never reached zero recovery in PoE1 with a non dual wielder, but I do not play PotD and I do not like to use potions (and maybe farm items for them) every battle. - I am a very slow player. I like turn based games, in real time with pause in combat I have more pause time than real time and I am terrible in action games. - Although I like discussions about game mechanics, I am not really a power gamer and I play games mostly for the story and exploration. For me those discussions are more academic intellectuel training than about the I play games.

You have written that the formula is: FinalDamage = (RolledDamage * DamageMultiplier + AdditiveDamageBonus) * PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier and they used inversion to avoid negative numbers as end result. Well, in PoE1 they had the 20% minimum damage rule. ( It was against DR, not against negative multiplier, but hey ) Why not use the same thing in PoE2? Take the formula from above and make all modifiers additive like in PoE1. If the end result is below 20% of base damage ( or even negative ), you cause 20% of base damage as minimum damage. Edit: In PoE1, was it 20% of the damage before DR no matter if this was smaller or bigger than the base value? Anyway, since base damage is the only thing in the formula that can never be negative we need to take x% of base damage. X might be different than 20.

OK, I understand what you mean. All of our calculations assume a normal weapon without special effects. If you dual wield two weapons and each of them causes a diferent status effect ( like a weapon with stunn on hit and a weapon with confuse on hit, or a weapon with stunn on crit and the other one does increased damage against stunned enemies), it can be more powerful than using a single weapon (1h or 2h) that can only have one of those effects.

@TheBalthazar: - Why do you think it should be 2h -> single wielding -> dual wielding? - How do you want to achieve this? My suggestion to lower the dual wielding speed bonus and increase 2h penetration was to make the difference between 2h and dual wielding smaller. Please note than none of our calculations involves panetration, so this buff would not be visible here. How do you want to change single wielding in a way that it can deal more damage than dual wielding?