[Let's talk class balance....]

several people seem to be overvaluing cipher/rogue because they perform so well in moderate fights. though I suppose you can have all sorts of ideas about balance. wizards/druids are still the workhorses of big important fights. 

 

I agree though that cipher feels like the best made class in this game. powerful, cool abilities, somewhat balanced feel-wise. too much of the game is too loyal to 20-30 year old rpg ideas like per-rest, accuracy, etc. and cipher is like their best attempt at a more modern rpg class.

[Let's talk class balance....]

 

best: casters

 

worst: people without spells

 

going to have neway probably: tanks, priest

 

 

Fighters are freaking amazing, ijs.

 

Yeah they kill much slower than other classes, but at later stages they do not go down. It's painful to watch and not exactly exciting since all they do is swing their sword at the enemy until it finally works, but holy crap they WILL get the kill eventually. Not to mention they single-handedly hold half of the defensive line for the team.

 

yah fighters are good tanks. I don't like any non-caster dps if we're talking "balance" though.

[Let's talk class balance....]

best: casters

 

worst: people without spells

 

going to have neway probably: tanks, priest

[Rogue & Cipher Builds for POTD Difficulty Please]

I think the most straightforward potd party is 2 tanks+4 casters. non-casters are inferior and 1 tank is really hard to make work in a conventional sorta way.

 

so just pick whichever 4 casters u like, tho, more conventionally probably make at least 1 a priest.

[So heres my party for Path of the Damned]

should get u through potd, but I would like to point out that non-tank, non-casters are probably inferior overall. u need tanks and spells are too good.

[Wizards Get Better?]

wizards get very powerful late game because of their per rest mechanic allowing them to vomit out an enormous # of powerful late game spells in important fights. but to be honest, I don't like the class having used it to bomb a bunch of fights. cipher is a much more fun and balanced class that is more enjoyable and still pretty good with some pretty strong stuff.

[My mage keeps dying.]

I told someone else this and he said it worked, make a chanter, cast the phantom spell. it stomps everything in the beginning part of the game.

 

otherwise just play better:)

[What is your "must have" class for a party?]

if ur doing things that u might consider difficult u prob need a priest, there just isn't another class that covers the same design bases as priest, its just the unique flower class of pillars.

[Slicken + Chill Fog are going to be nerfed in 1.03?]

wizards are still possibly better than ciphers, just because the per rest resource mechanic is superior for beating hard fights, and those are the relevant ones. but I imagine cipher is going to feel a lot better designed and more fun and consistent.

[Please Don't Nerf Spells with Patch]

 

It's like everyone collectively took a look at wizards in early DND and then said. "Yea, I'm gonna nerf the **** out of you until the only advantage you have lies in specialized lore, a few places to hang out with other wizards, and nostalgia." By this point the Cipher is better at CC (not reliant on rest), paralyze can be used with emergency scrolls, and the druid has better aoe.

 

 

I think it's a little of column A, a little of column B. The devs didn't like how arcane spellcasters dominated BG2, so they set out right from the beginning to stop that train before it could get going. Then they saw widespread reports that Slicken was OP (and it was, indeed) so they decided that needed nerfing as well. To be honest, I can't argue with them that much--a 1st level spell shouldn't be dominating the entire game to that degree, especially after the 1st level spells become per-encounter at level 9.

 

The problem is that right now the Druid will soon be doing literally everything better than the Wizard. Sure, the Wizard still has Confusion and the like, but it's not nearly as spammable as the Druid's very nice level 1 spells (which lost no utility in this upcoming patch). Sure, you can say that it doesn't matter as this is a party game, but my contention is there will soon be precious little reason to choose the Wizard either as your PC or as a party member (Aloth or hirelings) when the Cipher and Druid can do just about everything better.

 

 

the cipher might still be inferior just because his resource mechanic is not as suited for spamming down people in really important fights.

 

the one thing that irks me about poe is that there is no replacement for the priest, druids are 80% wizard and paladins are 80% fighter. priest is basically its own singular class/role and that kinda gives me a sad.

[Please Don't Nerf Spells with Patch]

 

I've posted about the Wizard balancing issue in a number of threads, and this is a poor 'balancing' decision, IMO.

 

Yes, Slicken was OP, but the wise solution would have been to nerf it and then either buff some other spells or change some core features of the class to make it more enjoyable to play. Instead, Slicken and Chill Fog were straight up nerfed and the only thing Wizard players got in compensation was... increased spell ranges. Now Wizards will be even more excruciating to play at low levels and the payoff will be even worse at level 9.

 

Meanwhile, the Druid is completely untouched. It still has amazing AOE foe-only damage spells, amazing CC spells, summoning spells, healing spells, and shapeshifting (though that may or may not be so amazing).

 

It's like everyone collectively took a look at wizards in early DND and then said. "Yea, I'm gonna nerf the **** out of you until the only advantage you have lies in specialized lore, a few places to hang out with other wizards, and nostalgia." By this point the Cipher is better at CC (not reliant on rest), paralyze can be used with emergency scrolls, and the druid has better aoe.

 

 

not being reliant on rest is pretty meaningless in a min/max consideration, the game is based around the hard fights. but yah slicken was holding up the wizard quite a bit, it'll probably no longer be as good as druid.

[Dual Wield rogue is trash on Hard]

melee dps are mostly kinda pointless, I mean they do high damage, but ranged do as well. having a bow doesn't hurt u in terms of taking damage vs having a poleaxe or two daggers and the pathing problems and lack of focus fire is at least a moderate disadvantage. 

[Difficulty setting bug]

I also lost my potd/toi to this bug, it is not cool, plz fix:)

[Wizard seem underperform compared to Cipher?]

wizard is probably the strongest late game char just because the game is about hard fights and a wizard w/ 10+ spells is one of the best chars at winning hard fights.

[Spells should all be per encounter]

I don't like the per rest spell system either. I thought it was really strange when I made a druid and was like, "oh damn like 8 spells! imma spell fiend!" skip forward to playing druid, its basically entirely auto attacks. you get some relief later because you kind of collect a large number of overall spell uses, but there should probably be a better way at this point.

[I have question on chanter]

Thanks, thats a bummer, it seems like lots of attributes aren't terribly desirable, I wonder if might increases the damage of summons.

[I have question on chanter]

chanter is my favorite char, seems really good, but I was wondering, does dexterity make your phrases go faster? like will you get more overlap if you have a high dex chanter?