Thrum

I looked into secrets of rime and the other elemental damage talents. They all correctly display their bonus DR on the character sheet, but the damage bonus they apply is hidden in the sense that it is calculated into the base damage roll in combat logs. I tested 2 wizard spells for each element and they all applied the extra damage correctly. Marked prey gives a 50% damage boost to the ranger only (+20 bonus damage could be very unbalanced), making me think it may be bugged in that it doesn't provide a benefit to the pet.

I do find it strange that many people are readily using the excuse that the gaming industry standard is for any large game to have a huge number of bugs in the initial months/weeks before a patch. Not only is this rationale sort of silly to think about from a QA standpoint on a product years in the making for any industry, but it is absolutely not true; I've played maybe 10 or so games in the last year and one other than PoE has had more than a handful of bugs or performance issues. Incidentally, I've only been hearing this excuse commonly applied to new games relatively recently. More lines of code means more bugs, sure. Smaller developers also can't pay for enormous internal testing sweeps. But I'm assuming a large reason many AAA mega games (Skyrim, I'm looking at you) have so many technical issues has some part to do with developers forced to meet unrealistic deadlines by producers who care more about the bottom line than a quality game. As this isn't the case for PoE, by releasing a product (a great one, by the way, that I am very excited about playing) with hundreds of major and minor bugs/issues, many present in 100% of playthroughs (some not readily apparent to the average gamer), Obsidian is sending a strong message. Despite the frustrations a lot of us are feeling about not being able to legitimately pIay the game right now, I'm sure a patch will arrive soon and that Obsidian is not only trying their best to fix the situation, but also feels compelled to do so from more than a business standpoint. From start to finish, the developers really seemed to care about producing a quality game for gamers. The unfortunate thing this whole situation just goes to show is that caring about a product can't replace good QA/QC.

The wolf has +12 deflection bonus for breaking engagements and higher base damage than the other pets (it seems a 1.15X modifier like vicious companion). Both of these bonuses have no visible buff associated with them, though the deflection bonus shows in combat logs. All pets have the same high base move speed (+3 I think). The wiki may be confusing the pet wolf with the druid spiritshift wolf, which has a +1 move speed bonus. Pets other than the wolf have funny stats too, not all add up to the 65 total points it looks like they were intended to have.

After looking a little closer, I found I was off on some of the issues I thought I saw earlier. -Wounding shot does apply a DoT, but the damage isn't displayed in combat popup text or combat logs. This is similar to some other dots that are not channeled or from ground effects, so it may be intended or an oversight. -Marked prey does have an effect but it may or may not be bugged. The tooltip is incorrect (I'm assuming just outdated) and it looks like the ability gives the caster a 50% damage buff after DR instead of a static +20 damage (maybe to prevent balance issues with multiple hits from using a blunderbuss). It is not affecting animal companion hits, though, which may or may not be intentional. -Animal companion primary stats other than the wolf's are wonky and most have different total values. Wolf has 50, but others have 63-66. I can understand the total values being intentionally lower than those for PCs (I'm assuming they were meant to be 10 lower), but the differences make me think there were some tabulation errors and that the wolf just missed out on all his points.

Exactly. Buffs, "weapon" spells, and summons are combat only to prevent the pre-fight buff fest that happens in a lot of RPGs. I can understand HoT heals falling into this category, but any healing spells that don't affect enemies are also combat only (moot point because of OoC endurance regen). There are some attack/debuff spells which are unusual in that they can't be cast out of combat for whatever reason (crucible of the soul, returning storm), but they are rare.

Charm beasts can be useful in certain encounters, i.e. drakes. I'll have to check on the +spell damage talents. I don't believe they affect tool tips, are you sure there was no increase based on damage in combat?

The Takedown ability seems to just be completely buggy. My Sagani's is the same way, not sure if it applies to PC rangers too. With the number of major issues they have (pet stats, marked prey, wounding shot, bonded grief, etc.), I get the impression rangers may have been refined later in the development cycle and didn't get the level of bug sweeps some other classes did.

Extra info on some of the more complicated mechanics would be nice, I'm sure a lot of gamers appreciate that sort of transparency. Obsidian's done a great job explaining and displaying most of the game's base combat mechanics. Luckily they are usually nice and simple (including most status effects), but charm/dominate and confuse effects are inherently trickier. For these, it seems extra rolls are taken periodically (either on some sort of timer or after the affected character's recovery is finished) to determine how the effects work or remain. Something else helpful would be some way to access detailed information on pet/summon stats such as damage and attack speed. There might be UI issues preventing this, but maybe a document or forum post outlining some of the important details would be an option.

It actually does work, but only applies to companions. The talent seems very under budget, though, as it only triggers when the paladin makes the killing blow, does not scale (even with might), and has a small radius of effect (about 4-5 m, which may not scale with int).

I don't know if it is combat state related as you can still cast other combat spells while the fast breaking charms are in place. From my own testing and what you and others have seen, it sure looks to me like it is intended for charm to break as soon as there are no more uncharmed enemies in combat and (maybe) within a certain range. I feel this is more for convenience than balance, as you can't damage charmed foes without using aoe spells and 12 seconds of invincibility might be annoying to wait for (although 12 seconds to heal/re-position could be useful in some situations).

Werecat form gives the character "ignore 5 DR" ability, even though it's not listed anywhere. I tested this thoroughly against various slash DR values. The DR ignore applies to all spiritshift forms' melee attacks. The boar DoT seems to be raw damage (ignores all armor) and the stag carnage ability ignores 0 armor (and does 1-6 damage which makes me think it is lower than intended).

I've seen it happen when charming 2 out of a pack of 3 spiders. One of the charmed spiders didn't even have time to walk over to the one that was still hostile. I felt like I've noticed this too, so I did some testing. I think I may have figured out what is happening and it seems to be an intentional game mechanic, though maybe with some funny execution issues. When there is a single enemy left, there is 100% chance of charm breaking early. When there are 2+ enemies left and they are all charmed, they will all break early. When there are any charmed plus any uncharmed enemies in combat, the charms should remain for the full duration. There does seem to be a factor of range or aggro/combat dropping in the charms remaining or breaking. I had two beetles remain charmed while a third was close, only to instantly (I'm guessing on their next action) break free when I kited the third away. The charm on the two lasted full duration when I pulled the third one back in closer. I'm not sure if all charms/dominates behave the same, but two other spells on my cipher seem to have similar mechanics.

In case the threads never get merged, I'll post some bugs I listed in another thread. -The common issue I've seen for druids is the tooltip error for spiritshift listing it as modal. Sort of related and maybe intentional, but all spiritshift forms gain 5 passive DR ignore, which is not listed in the tooltip for spiritshift or weapons gained through spiritshift. -Cat spiritshift attack speed seems the same as stag and wolf. This may be intentional, but every other spiritshift form has an active and passive benefit (except boar which has 2 passives), so it seems odd that cat form would only get one benefit. -The boar spiritshift passive health regeneration ability (druid boar regeneration) lasts after the spiritshift expires, until the end of combat (it behaves just like fighter constant recovery). This happens even through knock outs. -The stag defenses passive lasts after the spiritshift expires. This seems to be permanent, so free +7 to all defenses. -The stag spiritshift ability druid stag carnage has a few issues. First, it has a longer base duration than spiritshift (it does not list a duration in its tooltip), so it always lasts after spiritshift ends. It also behaves oddly in that it is activatable from pause (the only other action I can think of that can also do this is weapon set shifting) and does not provide a visible buff (it does give a deactivation message in the combat log though, like other combat passives). Incidentally, the ability has incredibly low base damage unrelated to melee damage: 1-6 with no DR ignore compared to 16-25 spiritshift melee base damage with 5 DR ignore. It seems to behave similarly to the ranger pet ability stag carnage instead of the barbarian passive carnage. -I've had the double character model happen before but I also couldn't consistently replicate it. I think it has something to do with other actions going off when spiritshift occurs -As for the charm beast duration issue, I think it is an intended game mechanic. The spell lasts the full duration if cast when multiple enemies are in combat. It looks like all charm and dominate effects have a 100% chance to end the effect when the target performs its first action (it lasts 1.5 seconds on a wolf with a 1.5 second recovery time) if there is only a single opponent left in combat. I'm assuming this is so that you don't have to wait around for the last enemy to become targetable.

After putting together a list of reproducible early game ranger bugs/issues, I found a few for druid as well -The common issues I've seen for druids is the tooltip error for spiritshift listing it as modal. Sort of related and maybe intentional, but all spiritshift forms gain 5 passive DR ignore, which is not listed in the tooltip for spiritshift or weapons gained through spiritshift. -Cat spiritshift attack speed seems the same as stag and wolf. This may be intentional, but every other spiritshift form has an active and passive benefit (except boar which has 2 passives), so it seems odd that cat form would only get one benefit. -The boar spiritshift passive health regeneration ability (druid boar regeneration) lasts after the spiritshift expires, until the end of combat (it behaves just like fighter constant recovery). This happens even through knock outs. -The stag defenses passive lasts after the spiritshift expires. This seems to be permanent, so free +7 to all defenses. -The stag spiritshift ability druid stag carnage has a few issues. First, it has a longer base duration than spiritshift (it does not list a duration in its tooltip), so it always lasts after spiritshift ends. It also behaves oddly in that it is activatable from pause (the only other action I can think of that can also do this is weapon set shifting) and does not provide a visible buff (it does give a deactivation message in the combat log though, like other combat passives). Incidentally, the ability has incredibly low base damage unrelated to melee damage: 1-6 with no DR ignore compared to 16-25 spiritshift melee base damage with 5 DR ignore. It seems to behave similarly to the ranger pet ability stag carnage instead of the barbarian passive carnage. On the plus side, I haven't noticed any problems with any lvl 1 druid spells.

After noticing issues with Sagani in my monk's playthrough, I tried to pinpoint some bugs/errors I could find on a level 1 ranger. Got some interesting ones! -Wounding shot does not apply a DoT. This may be intentional and due to a tooltip update error. -Marked prey seems to have no effect. I know this one has been reported, but just thought I'd list it. -This may be intended, but wolf companions have no attribute allocation (all are set to 10), unlike all other companions. -The boar companion trait (Wounded boar damage bonus) tool tip is bugged and lists X1 damage while endurance below 50%, unless the effect is active. This may be intended, but no character icon buff on the pet or combat log indication occurs when the buff activates. The buff seems permanent after activation, even after the pet is knocked unconscious. The permanent activation applies to earlier save files. This last bit may be one of the more unique bugs I've seen in a while! -The stag carnage ability might be bugged or have missed an update sweep. The damage range is very low, possibly from an earlier build with lower companion damage. -This may be intended, but companions have very high, possibly maximum stealth score. -This may be intended, but companions do not take health damage. -Bonded grief does not occur or disappears if the ranger is out of combat/aggro range of the enemy that killed the companion. This may be intended and revolve around mechanics designed to prevent exploits of using companion auto-ressing to whittle down enemies while the ranger is safely out of combat range. -Defense scores seem to be off for some companions. This may be due to fractions in calculations rounding on the character sheet and combat stat display. -This may be intended, but lion and bear companions attack about 50% slower than the others. Most other companion stats are normalized, so it seems unusual that two of them would have half the damage outputs of the others. Side note, more listed info on companion stats would be useful, particularly damage range, interrupt value, and attack speed (DR, defenses, damage type, and accuracy are easy to find in combat logs). I know this may sound odd, but I'm actually having a lot of fun tracking down these issues! Ironic, seeing as how part of the reason I'm even doing this is because my main play through progression has been sidetracked due to the soul whip and Raedric's Hold bugs.