lord_wc

Some people just hate to leave xp go to waste and love to level up. Why do you want to convince them that they actually don't like it and everything is great this way? It is not, the game with the low level cap doesn't give a full experience to those that like to explore and finish everything and get rewarded for it. See the whole point is having no level cap would satisfy both parties - you could go and get your items and stay level 12 and those that like levelling up would get to 15 or 16 or whatever the amount of xp is available in the game. Their fun wouldn't affect you the least bit. However with the artificial level cap one party is flat out shafted of their fun. It serves only one side and deprives the other. It's not good this way, you can argue about it but you are wrong. It also is highly unprofessional. I mean you just go and sum up all the xp available in the game. Then you artificially cap it lower because? well, why exactly? The only logical reason that comes to my mind is because you are lazy to add in content for the classes for those levels.

Nice thread! Just a few questions about your build: - stag form says it gives defenses - wouldn't it be better instead of bear? It also has AoE. Or bear gives you DR? - fire godlike ability really gives 36DR? or it's level dependant? It seems extreme. It is also active on you while you have full hp, shouldn't it switch off? - how slow cast times are with a full plate? I'd like your subjective oppinion (like not too bad or something) not exact numbers. Would the added speed justify dropping to medium armors and losing a few DRs? I mean most of it comes from fire godlike anyway

It was 89k xp if I remember correctly, level 7 or so. But that's beside my point. My point was: - that in this system due to the lack of dual/multiclassing you can't make a jack of all trades character which will be able to properly solo. A monk will be a monk only he will be level 20 instead of 12. But he won't get chanter ablities ever. And that's what I'm missing the most - 2nd and especially 4th edition is so much fun due to the abilities to mix classes and find synergies. Why should I get a simple monk when I can get a monk/priest/sacred fist getting multiple times the benefit of high wis? - that the depth of the classes is way less. There were hundreds of spells in BG for wiz or priest. There are a few dozen here. And we are solely missing utility spells which are numerous in D&D. If we start to compare feats, well, classes feel empty here. The base ideas are awesome, but they need much more content, they need choices. We barely have those now. - that the AI is dumb plain and simple. Fights are difficult due to the superiority of the enemy (their numbers or their stats) not because they make a good team which you have to break up. Fights here are tank and spank. Due to this and my point above combat is stale - you have one or two approaches for a fight and the whole system feels rigid. Don't get me wrong I'm not hating on the game, but - for me at least - there are serious underlying issues which cannot be patched with a 'we dropped 10% hp off the adra dragon' kind of balancing.

It didn't work for me. I made a 10 mig adventurer. When he grabbed a great sword he got the bonus. When he used a war bow he didn't.

If you don't go out she'll live. Just stay inside. Another plus is that the game will last MUCH longer that way.

BG was 'easier' as character progression wasn't capped so low. Also multi and especially dual classing multiplied the possible synergies - here you have to have 2 characters for that, in BG you could solve it by yourself. Also itemizing is vastly different. Here you have superb equipment giving you basically 48% damage. In BG you had a Crom Feyr tripling-quadrupling your damage output. Here you have +10 to saves, there you had the cloak of mirroring. Here you have +10 save against spells there you had protection from magic scrolls. And let's not get started on how good simmies, clones and mislead was. Also PoE has a fairly simple system while D&D is so much more complex. The possibilites you can use are simply less here than it is in D&D resulting in less gimped but also less extremely strong characters. About soloing - I had fairly good results with a cipher solo heavy CCing, aggro juggling, running and using a war bow (firearms were simply too slow and not usable). However the game is poorly designed from a solo perspective - convos resulting in fights in small enclosed spaces are the main reason you can't use the nimble or sneaky approach and you must have a bruiser at least or even a tank. I don't know, maybe I suck but fights like that raedric or something the guy in the castle's called are plainly depressing to solo. And honestly I think this was an extremely bad design decision and the game feels less from it.

You could do it about once per encounter from level 2? Then die to disengage attacks?

Rogues still have crits too right? Yes, but +10% hits upgraded to crits is not so hot. Considering a fairly common scenario that your accuracy is 18 more than the enemy deflection (same level you have +acc perks and enchantment) the total damage should be: Cipher: 0,32*0,5 (graze) + 0,5 * 1 (hit) + 0,18 * 1,5 (crit) = 0,93 Rogue 0,32*0,5 + 0,45*1 + 0,23*1,5 = 0,955 That's 3% difference or so, and the higher your accuracy becomes the less this difference gets. Pumping accuracy is way better in this game (and people do that) as spending talent slot on +crit. And this is obviously only true for trash mobs. Against bosses cipher dps is superior due to the -40 deflection with paralyze. That will mean a cipher will always hit and have crit 58% of the time. I found melee horribly underwhelming in this game due to the dumb aggro mechanics. I don't think going melee is extremely viable and it will require lots of microing. For not too much gain honestly as firearms deal great damage (and you can have a chanter sing the 'I will pwn you with my machine gun' song at lvl2). And yeah, cloth/no armor is the way to go for any class that wants to deal damage.

In a completely curious tone: Why is engagement limit important if you're doing nonexistant damage? Are opponents less prone to change targets if the engagement is mutual, or is there some other benefit to engagement than the opportunity for disengagement attacks? If you see someone breaking off you if you click them fast enough not only you get a free attack but you also reestablish aggro on him - this needs confiming though but what I found is clicking on them quick helps and they just stop and switch aggro back to the tank. A more important aspect though is that it immediately attacks ranged enemies that want to attack your back row (again switching aggro back on you). You can tank 2 archers with 2 engagement limit and keep on swinging on a third enemy - effectively bogging down 3 of them all the time.

For two man you probably would have the easiest time with two ciphers. You won't have enough damage output to dedicate one of your characters to tank and bosses don't have blanket immunities so you can debuff them to oblivion. Grab some dakkas to generate focus and just paralize/confuse/dominate/daze all your enemies. For 3 I would have a chanter tank and 2 ranged dps. Probably a cipher and maybe a paladin to oneshot casters. Or a wizard if you don't mind resting a lot. Actually that's how I started my current party as I hate micro just as you. Later on I picked up a wizard as 4th member as dps still was just too low. I still don't know if it was worth it or not, most of the time she just spams autoattacks for laughable damage, but she can lay out a world of pain when she starts spell spamming.

A rogue will do 150% damage with SA. A cipher will do 140% with soul whip+biting whip. That's only 6,6% damage difference and for this a cipher gets a plethora of A+ CC spells and a few which deal really heavy damage. So cipher is definitely more useful for a little less damage. I would go ranged with cipher, blunderbusses deal okay damage and they fill focus much better (with drainig whip it's a free 12 focus). You are too squishy to go in melee and due to your extremley low deflection everyone will just crit you to death.

You could swap the ring of unshacles with a higher deflection ring (I saw only +10s, but I'm at act2 only). Supress affliction is something your party members could cast on you. That opens up your cape slot where I'd put spellward amulet or a flat protection cloak. I also bought a warhammer (shatterstar?) in defiance bay that gives +1 Engagement limit which is much more useful than buffing up your nonexistant damage.

Firkraag was rough, but you could do it the first time. I mean if you didn't have technical shortcomings (you had a solid party with solid builds/items and you didn't start spamming fireball on him) you could do it. Later on you definitely was able to solo it. Problem with this game is that AI is the same amount of bad as it was in BG. But to have the illusion of difficulty enemies have huge/overloaded stats (bear in the second area oneshotting everyone), you don't have time to prepare (only one trap active, fight starts after a convo trigger so you can't position) or you have to fight in corridors so you can't position (whole skaern or whatever it's called temple area, endless dungeon, etc). Meanwhile the AI serves its purpose by blindly bumrushing the first guy they see and sticking to him until they see someone else with lower than 50% hp. I really hope they will patch the AI script or make something like David Gaider's mods were in BG, because combat right now is unfulfilling. I enjoy a challenge, I don't enjoy if I have to cheese enemies because they have 4x my stats and 5x my numbers to provide 'difficulty'. Btw Greater Wolfweres were bugged in BG and every time you save/load they would get their regen again - they had some 10hp/round regen only at first or so, if you did a save/load, it was 20, if you did two it was 30, etc.

It wasn't a problem for a 4 man group at level 4 (a chanter, paladin, cipher and wizard). Paladin basically oneshots her. CC seems extremely powerful in this game (and having a tank also), and cipher is as good as it gets. Buy an adventurer and make one, it makes life so easy.