SilchasRuin
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Posts posted by SilchasRuin
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I'd argue that stats IS the only context that matters. The whole melee rogue schtick that has been theorycrafted far too many times with NO context. Why? Because it is what happens in the field that counts. Intangible weaknesses of the melee rogue like not being able to burst down key ranged targets immediately or having to kite around resulting in a loss of dps, can only be translated from in-game stats as overall contribution. "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
If you want to talk about gear optimization, I have already stated that I have average gear having only progressed so far. In fact, Eder has the best equipment but there's no point comparing because each character serves a different role. As for attributes optimization, sure I'm min/maxed but I still have 3 CON so I have my own set of challenges.
If you want to compare with melee rogues or nukers, I say bring out their stats. I'm not saying my build or ranged rogues destroy everyone else but they are certainly not as terrible as the last few pages have made them out to be. As a final note, I would say only ranged rogues (maybe rangers too) are the only sustained burst in the game, having the best of both worlds. Why do I say sustained? Priest buffs. They'd still be dishing out fantastic damage even after nukers have used up their spells, sustaining dps not only for individual fights, and also being able to handle more fights before the need to rest.
Stats are the only context that matters... The stats you see tell very little as they're predominantly based on what your character could do compared to what the rest of your characters could do. Now, it might be possible to approximate a dps number by calcing damage dealt versus time in combat (for your character it's approximately .37 dps, that's per game second by the way, not sure how much each game second equals in real time) but even that has particular limitations, as whether you were playing on PotD or a lower difficulty would result in different numbers, and there's probably other possibilities that could change how much time you spent in combat other than damage dealt (such as whether the game is more difficult at particular sections). Numbers only matter in context, outside of it no matter how big a number looks it tells nothing. So simply posting a screen of your character sheet and saying hey look how good this is! Is completely irrelevant.
You say it's not as terrible, but the reality is that you have very little you're actually comparing it to. You have the pregen companions, so it may look to you like your ranged rogue is going lots of damage, but if you had a melee rogue in the same party you might see a very different story. When I get back home and can access PoE I'll see about posting stats and calcing relative dps numbers. Ranged rogue and ranger both have terrible sustained damage; their burst is actually where they are strongest at. Priest buffs will affect every party member fairly evenly, and only in the early game is there ever an issue of running out of spells. I've never had to backtrack for camping supplies and after around level 4 I've never had a problem utilizing spells in the majority of encounters. The only time spellcasters don't use spells in when encounters are trivial.
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I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but they're not accurate. A 20% reload buff and a 20% atk speed buff does not equate to a 40% damage buff. First, the attack speed buff presumably only either decreases recovery time or action time, and is likely additive with dexterity's modification to the same. Secondly, both the attack speed and the reload time are only affecting 1/3rd of the process. it's closer to around a 14% dps increase, not including if its additive with dexterity, (it's around a 21% damage buff, if the attack speed buff in total results in 20% greater atk speed without including reload time (as in it affects either both recovery time and action speed, or 1 such that total action speed is reduced by 20%)) not including the accuracy lost. This is a rough number since I assumed each part weighed the same, if reload time takes up more or less than 1/3rd of the total time it takes to attack numbers may be slightly off.
Driving flight only helps AoE damage, where ranger falls sorely behind casters regardless. It will also be pitifully behind barbarian in the same regard, though barbarians also lose out to casters. Marked target is once per encounter on a single target, good in boss fights, but almost certainly negligible in an average encounter. Further, melee ranger can use every one of these abilities except driving flight, and melee ranger will certainly outclass in terms of single target dps, and most likely overall damage as well. -
Stats only matter in context, and anything remotely optimized will look amazing compared to the very poorly optimized standard companions. The problem with ranged rogue is in comparison with other optimized characters, such as melee rogue and nuker wizard/druid.
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Honestly the main thing that animal companions need right now is better accuracy and 3 in athletics. It's pretty dumb that all animal companions have 0 in athletics so they get minor fatigue really fast (I used IE mod to give 3 athletics to my ranger's wolf and make its stats more in line with the wolf in the bestiary, while maintaining the 65 overall stats animal companions are supposed to have). The fact that at base their accuracy is like 20 lower than the ranger's is problematic for using them to deal damage however, and I'd like to see that buffed.
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Yeah I took this in my first playthrough because I didn't notice the short range. It was basically completely worthless. With such a short range the character who your swapping with has to be extremely close already and any enemy you try and swap with needs to practically be meleeing you already as well. If it had 6-10 m range it might be decent.
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Unless you are literally unable to progress in the game at all due to dying the results are the same. Given the chance of that, for most people the difference between dying and backtracking is negligible except that, if anything, backtracking may waste less of your time since if you had forgotten to save in a large area you could lose a fair amount of progress.
Your exasperation is irrelevant when you have not proved your point. If anything you have exasperated me because your points almost all boil down to effectively: no you're wrong, I'm right. Without making any progress at explaining why what I'm saying is wrong other than to handwave it away as: that's not the same and you're stupid to think that.
You're a poor debater who relies on pointless personal attacks because of your lack of ability to argue effectively and inability to critically consider the role of punishment and reward in the context of a game system. You can't effectively make a point because you're incapable of understanding and making logical arguments and your arguments fail to withstand even the most basic scrutiny. Now was any of that needed? I could just as well have simply made my points without attacking you; we're discussing a game system here, we're not even debating politics, if you can't keep civil in this context what do you do in arguments about things which actually matter?
even if your lack of progression is not infinite the results and the impact on the player are not the same. the player treats dying as a hurdle, in fact dying is the basic way to enforce difficulty. backtracking is, again, just tedium, it is not a measure of the game. and to the extent you make the tedium necessary as "punishment" its a bad design.
it should also be pointed out that lots of these tedious mechanics have been removed from games over the last 10 years, and that lots of people have pointed out that the rest mechanic in poe is basically just obnoxious tedium.
your arguments are nothing but poor conflations with errant reasoning. you basically say, "dying and backtracking are the same because they both take time." but that is not the only relevant factor and you are being ignorant and obtuse if you think I haven't pointed out numerous other factors.
btw its curious that you chose to insult me in the same post you say this, "if you can't keep civil in this context what do you do in arguments about things which actually matter?" your lack of self awareness is impressive.
Did you read what i wrote? The insult was intentional, I was giving an example of why it was unnecessary and that I could just as well do it and it would have the same effect, to be annoying and fail to convey anything useful. I specifically said, "was that needed?", after saying it. In other words I was flipping the shoe to the other foot and asking: does it fit?
As to the rest of the argument, I ask that if you wish to continue it to take it to private message, if you would cease with the insults or just agree to disagree as well, both would be great.
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Unless you are literally unable to progress in the game at all due to dying the results are the same. Given the chance of that, for most people the difference between dying and backtracking is negligible except that, if anything, backtracking may waste less of your time since if you had forgotten to save in a large area you could lose a fair amount of progress.
Your exasperation is irrelevant when you have not proved your point. If anything you have exasperated me because your points almost all boil down to effectively: no you're wrong, I'm right. Without making any progress at explaining why what I'm saying is wrong other than to handwave it away as: that's not the same and you're stupid to think that.
You're a poor debater who relies on pointless personal attacks because of your lack of ability to argue effectively and inability to critically consider the role of punishment and reward in the context of a game system. You can't effectively make a point because you're incapable of understanding and making logical arguments and your arguments fail to withstand even the most basic scrutiny. Now was any of that needed? I could just as well have simply made my points without attacking you; we're discussing a game system here, we're not even debating politics, if you can't keep civil in this context what do you do in arguments about things which actually matter?
Also I believe we've derailed this thread enough. If you must continue, please send me a private message, but at this point I think it would be best to agree to disagree.
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Dying and backtracking both temporarily halt progression. They functionally have the same goal. You died, now if you don't want that to happen again do better, either leave and get more experience or try better tactics. You had to leave in the middle of the dungeon because you used up your resources, now if you don't want that to happen again do better, either get more experience or manage your resources better. The functional effect is the same, you're being told that you are doing something wrong. The game is not designed around the idea that you should have to go back to town in the middle of content, if that's happening it's a failure on your part, the same as dying.
Also insults have no place in a discussion or debate. If you cannot argue a point without resorting to insults, you would be best to simply cease trying.
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If you're running back because of your wizard that is failure (and I consider the wizard's early game quite poorly balanced, so problems with resting early mostly have to do with the fact that wizard starts off with a small pool of per encounter spells and a just as small pool of per day spells, as they grow in levels, their number of per day spells increase rapidly, to the point where by around level 7/8 they have so many spells it's exceedingly rare to need even most of them). If you don't put 3 in athletics and have to keep running back because of fatigue that is also failure (that's the game telling you, put points in athletics! although i don't necessarily think its a good idea to have a requirement of 3 in athletics to reach reasonable fatigue levels). If you're managing your wizard/druid/priest's spells appropriately you will rest just often enough that at the point in a dungeon where you would find more camping supplies or would naturally return to town (end of dungeon/quest or grand staircase in caed nua) you will have exhausted your resources. If you are able to reach this point you will have optimized the value of both the resources of your per rest spells and of your camping supplies as you will not have wasted time by overconserving or wasted time by spending too freely and being forced to backtrack.
Resting and dying are not equivalent. Backtracking and dying are equivalent. Both of these indicate you are doing something incorrectly, in this case not spending your resource at the appropriate rate.
You keep saying resting is not a limited resource, but it is limited in the exact same fashion that inventory in the IE/Diablo/pretty much any other RPG ever is limited. The limit is a soft limit, it is completely possible to negate the limit (by returning to town early) but in all cases the cost of negating the limit is the same, time and loading screens (some more than others).
The game is clearly designed with an idea of how often you should return to town (hint: it's when the quest/dungeon is done or when you see a master staircase in Od Nua) and the placed supplies are clearly intended as a way to insure you make it to these points by extending the amount of time you can remain without returning.
I see no such clear design. I see a lazy haphazard unlimited resource that enforces tedium, not some subtle brilliance. running back is still not equivalent to dying, the main mechanic in the game is defeating the game, dying hinders that goal, running back doesn't. you're still wrong. parties that are inferior at "going longer w/o resting" are not worse than parties that aren't. they are in most ways equivalent, just one takes slightly longer due to load screens and other tedium.
your whole house in built on incorrect, lazy and wrong assumptions about huge numbers of aspects of the game.
How does dying hinder your goal other than to force you to reload? What is the consequence of not going back and instead pushing on despite not having enough resources? If the answer isn't death, then clearly you were not required to go back at that point.
Your arguments are fallacious and built on poor understanding of game mechanics and game design. See? we can both throw pointless insults at each other. You have yet to demonstrate that the points you are making are true, nor to adequately demonstrate that my points are false. You keep falling back to simply declaring me wrong and yourself right without adequately explaining nor defending your position. Would you prefer if going back to town was instead of a soft failure, a hard failure? You could simply have every mob respawn without dropping any loot. Now that would be a tedious system, but perhaps it would better illustrate that the idea is that the goal of completing the content is to do so in such a way that trekking back is a failure of yours to adequately conserve resources.
@Sanctuary
Honestly ranged weapon based damage dealers are pretty poor at the moment, their single target at best slightly outshines casters, but loses out vastly in terms of total damage done and utility, and is completely inferior to melee weapon wielders in single target damage, making up for that only in ease of play and lack of risk.
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If you're running back because of your wizard that is failure (and I consider the wizard's early game quite poorly balanced, so problems with resting early mostly have to do with the fact that wizard starts off with a small pool of per encounter spells and a just as small pool of per day spells, as they grow in levels, their number of per day spells increase rapidly, to the point where by around level 7/8 they have so many spells it's exceedingly rare to need even most of them). If you don't put 3 in athletics and have to keep running back because of fatigue that is also failure (that's the game telling you, put points in athletics! although i don't necessarily think its a good idea to have a requirement of 3 in athletics to reach reasonable fatigue levels). If you're managing your wizard/druid/priest's spells appropriately you will rest just often enough that at the point in a dungeon where you would find more camping supplies or would naturally return to town (end of dungeon/quest or grand staircase in caed nua) you will have exhausted your resources. If you are able to reach this point you will have optimized the value of both the resources of your per rest spells and of your camping supplies as you will not have wasted time by overconserving or wasted time by spending too freely and being forced to backtrack.
Resting and dying are not equivalent. Backtracking and dying are equivalent. Both of these indicate you are doing something incorrectly, in this case not spending your resource at the appropriate rate.
You keep saying resting is not a limited resource, but it is limited in the exact same fashion that inventory in the IE/Diablo/pretty much any other RPG ever is limited. The limit is a soft limit, it is completely possible to negate the limit (by returning to town early) but in all cases the cost of negating the limit is the same, time and loading screens (some more than others).
The game is clearly designed with an idea of how often you should return to town (hint: it's when the quest/dungeon is done or when you see a master staircase in Od Nua) and the placed supplies are clearly intended as a way to insure you make it to these points by extending the amount of time you can remain without returning.
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What does failure do except cause you to reload and run back to try a fight again? The rest system just institutes a soft, rather than hard, failure system, where failure is when you choose to run back early, rather than being forced to enter load screens and run back (possibly with the added tedium of losing additional progress if you failed to make a recent save game). In increasing difficulty, instead of resting more often, I would make use of better tactics, better utilization of my abilities. If I'm forced to rest more often than there are camping resources when playing 100% optimally, then there's a problem with the balance. Given that it is never the case in the game for a 6 party group that it is impossible to complete the content without trekking back to town early, this is a non-issue as harder setups, such as 1-5 man groups, are not what the game is balanced around.
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The game is not balanced (and should not be balanced for) around solo. The camping resource system IS LIMITED. It is limited in the same fashion that inventory in the IE games is limited. It is limited in that you can only carry so many resources at one time. You can subvert the limitation, but the price is backtracking, wasting time returning to town at a non-optimal time. Tedium is one of the primary ways you pay for any mistake in gameplay. Repeating a hard encounter multiple times can get tedious, if you're poor at the game but attempting higher difficulties, even relatively simple encounters can become tedious. Tedium is an entirely reasonable punishment for refusing to attempt to avoid it. it is certainly within your capacity to play the game, rest at appropriate intervals and never need to trek back to town to get more supplies. The IE games were arguably worse for a tedious punishment for failure, in that a single character being reduced to 0 hp prior to getting a priest with raise dead/resurrection meant a return back to town to get a priest to raise them, and required you to distribute the character's inventory between party members. The only advantage the IE games had was easy save-scumming to avoid this, if an iron man game mode was instituted. the IE games would be extremely punishing for having a party member die.
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The reward is not returning for camping supplies. if you have to return for camping supplies that is the game telling you you are not playing optimally. No, if harder difficulty can be solved by resting more, that's problematic since it removes the actual difficulty achieved by having an attrition based resource system. If you decide to backtrack to get more camping supplies so you can rest whenever your casters run out of spells, and opt to throw as many of your casters per rest abilities per encounter as possible. And perhaps for good measure, don't adequately manage your squishies to prevent them from taking damage, the backtracking is the price you pay to circumvent the intended functionality of limited resources reduced by attrition.
An example of how poor a 0 resource rest system can work is the IE games, they're good games, but the per day spells are functionally per encounter, but are balanced to be per day, because it is very easy, and indeed optimal to spam buffs/high power spells and rest every time the buffs wear off. For instance, I'm doing a run through Icewind Dale at the moment, the optimal strategy for most areas is to have my cleric and bard cast all of their buffing/summoning spells (in order from longest to shortest) then to cast haste, turn on Bard song, then have my characters shoot through the map murdering everything in their way. Once haste ends, I send a character with boots of speed to pick up any loot then rest and repeat. This strategy makes little narrative sense, but functions extremely effectively at trivializing all but the hardest encounters.
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Ideally the spells become encounter because they're no longer valuable enough to warrant conservation. As is the spells that become encounter are probably a bit too powerful, but this may be an issue with the early game of the wizard. Further, it does not remove the consideration of conservation of valuable spells any more than the existence of the wizard's arcane assault does. Frankly, even without per encounter spells at 9 and 11 Wizards and Druids are already fairly overpowered by those levels as the amount of resources they have by that point is fairly enormous. This is a balancing problem, but is not really related to limited camping supplies. Which are limited by the way, in order to bypass the limit you spend time returning to town to refresh your supplies, if you ever have to return to town in the middle of completing content, that indicates you are either underleveled for the content, and therefore should come back later, or are playing poorly and need to do a better job conserving your resources.
I don't see how you think a wizard, even a single wizard is useless. Once you get to level 5/6 I would argue wizard (and druid for that matter) begin to become by far the most powerful characters, possessing the greatest utility and damage output of any other class. Note, all of my arguments center around PotD, which in a way is both better and worse for Wizards/Druids. More limited supplies is an issue on PotD, but classes like Cipher become much less consistent compared to Wizard/Druid as battles take longer and it becomes more difficult for Cipher to generate resources, also the power of Wizard/Druid's aoes become greater game changers as a Wizard/Druid can pretty consistently wipe a large pack of trash in 1 to 2 spells, something Cipher cannot do consistently (at least until they get access to 6th level spells, at which point the balance of the game kind of drops out of whack anyways).
Inherently, when you run out of camping supplies, your health is getting low and your spells are getting low, if you are not near a point where return to town would be normal without camping supplies, or you find more supplies (there are quite a few of them scattered about, enough that I've often went ahead and nuked a few nearby fights and then ran back to grab the supplies because I had too many to pick them up when I found them) then you've made or have been making mistakes. Now, admittedly you may not realize you're playing suboptimally initially because the feedback isn't necessarily as strong as the feedback given by the gameover screen, but once you get an idea of the game's pacing and when you can expect to see more supplies, then if at that point you're still having trouble managing resources it's purely an issue of your capability at managing resources.
you still labor under the idea camping is a limited resource, it is not. you also labor under the idea that going "longer" w/o camping is somehow "optimal" that is also false. I will confess that if you continue to believe things that are simply not true then your argument is much stronger.
Exactly how is it false? I have yet to have to return to town because I needed camping supplies. Either your argument is it's not limited because it's already effectively free, in which case the solution would be to make it more scarce, or you believe it's impossible to optimally utilize resources such that you don't need to camp constantly, in which case you're just wrong. Or you think that the game should be balanced around single encounters rather than attrition in which case you disagree with the direction they took the game. Going longer without camping is optimal to the point where you are only need more supplies at points where you find more supplies, or when you would return to town for other reasons, optimal is reaching a point where your usage of resources precisely equates to the most optimal division of your time, which is that you never want to return to town in the middle of a dungeon (thus requiring backtracking) or otherwise need to turn back in order to continue onward.
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Ideally the spells become encounter because they're no longer valuable enough to warrant conservation. As is the spells that become encounter are probably a bit too powerful, but this may be an issue with the early game of the wizard. Further, it does not remove the consideration of conservation of valuable spells any more than the existence of the wizard's arcane assault does. Frankly, even without per encounter spells at 9 and 11 Wizards and Druids are already fairly overpowered by those levels as the amount of resources they have by that point is fairly enormous. This is a balancing problem, but is not really related to limited camping supplies. Which are limited by the way, in order to bypass the limit you spend time returning to town to refresh your supplies, if you ever have to return to town in the middle of completing content, that indicates you are either underleveled for the content, and therefore should come back later, or are playing poorly and need to do a better job conserving your resources.
I don't see how you think a wizard, even a single wizard is useless. Once you get to level 5/6 I would argue wizard (and druid for that matter) begin to become by far the most powerful characters, possessing the greatest utility and damage output of any other class. Note, all of my arguments center around PotD, which in a way is both better and worse for Wizards/Druids. More limited supplies is an issue on PotD, but classes like Cipher become much less consistent compared to Wizard/Druid as battles take longer and it becomes more difficult for Cipher to generate resources, also the power of Wizard/Druid's aoes become greater game changers as a Wizard/Druid can pretty consistently wipe a large pack of trash in 1 to 2 spells, something Cipher cannot do consistently (at least until they get access to 6th level spells, at which point the balance of the game kind of drops out of whack anyways).
Inherently, when you run out of camping supplies, your health is getting low and your spells are getting low, if you are not near a point where return to town would be normal without camping supplies, or you find more supplies (there are quite a few of them scattered about, enough that I've often went ahead and nuked a few nearby fights and then ran back to grab the supplies because I had too many to pick them up when I found them) then you've made or have been making mistakes. Now, admittedly you may not realize you're playing suboptimally initially because the feedback isn't necessarily as strong as the feedback given by the gameover screen, but once you get an idea of the game's pacing and when you can expect to see more supplies, then if at that point you're still having trouble managing resources it's purely an issue of your capability at managing resources.
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Costing them time = having to run back. How much time you waste is entirely dependent on how well you play. Playing on PotD, if anything I felt the resting system was too lenient, and I could easily get away with nova-ing in fights where it wasn't necessary and I would either find more camping supplies or finish the questlines in an area and need to return to town anyways. There are occasions where access to camping supplies feels strictly less consistent than it perhaps should be but thats to be expected. In order to have strategic resources, limited resting is a requirement, otherwise the game has to be balanced around a strictly pure encounter basis, which means any encounter less than the most challenging is functionally pointless as it has no actual effect on your gameplay beyond the context of that encounter. Within a per rest system, encounters can be more flexible and meaningful, as long as rests are meaningfully limited in some fashion, as it means even minor encounters can soften the players party up over time, which requires a player to manage attrition as well as large scale single encounters.
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Camping Supplies are an abstraction which serve to fulfill an important role, that of insuring per rest is a meaningful mechanic and that classes can be allowed the option of going nova at the cost of relying on a smaller portion of resources in later encounters. People who complain that it's easy to circumvent through busy work ignore the point, virtually any mechanic that intends to punish players for poor play, and thus reward good play, punishes players through time. From game overs to repair on death mechanics to the limited resting mechanic in PoE. almost all of these systems are fundamentally just time sinks that can be avoided with good play.
With the current limited resting system, a balance can be constructed where players are encouraged to move forward until they run out of resources and to conserve resource. In the old IE games you could rest almost anywhere, and there was little incentive to not simply nova all of your spells and then rest immediately, thus trivializing all but the most difficult encounters. The IE games made use of a random encounter system when you rested which could be avoided very easily via save scumming. In my opinion, game designers should work to make sure that a player fully utilizing all available systems, that are accessible normally (without cheats/mods) will receive a properly balanced game experience. Limited rests mean that players must accommodate limited rests, either by maximizing the efficiency of their rest limited resources (health, spells, etc) or by spending the time to go find/purchase camping supplies.
The tradeoff given here insures that it is viable, and indeed ideal, to focus on the efficient and best usage of resources, rather than being able to spend all of the resources immediately, thus in effect reducing all per rest resources to per encounter. In order to balance a system where all resources are per encounter, on average every fight has to be more difficult and carry serious risk of game over, otherwise encounters become trivial and the difference between a player who adeptly manages their resources and wins fights by large margins is not being rewarded any more than the player who doesn't take care to manage their party properly and allows their party members to spend all of their resources and lose massive amounts of health, and indeed the more aggressive player is likely being rewarded with encounters that go faster because they don't take the time to micro each character to maintain resources.
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Dumping constitution and perception is a better choice than resolve, not only because getting interrupted will cut into your dps, but because resolve gives will save, which becomes very important in the mid-late game as monsters with charm, dominate and confuse abound. Constitution is strictly worthless on Rogues, and mostly terrible on any other class, slightly less so on classes with naturally high endurance but still relatively low value. Perception gives interrupt, which, while not strictly worthless, does run contrary to proper usage of crowd control, as you want the targets your melee engages to already be crowd controlled.
However, proper use of crowd control and micromanaging your characters should allow them to avoid being interrupted even with low resolve. Utilize casters to make use of disables on the targets you want your melee to engage, and on any ranged enemies who might focus them. Further, hold your melee back until the battle lines are drawn and most monsters have engaged your tank. When you gain a better understanding of pathing and the enemy ai behavior you can skip this step by placing the melee where the edges of the battle will form. Barbarian is also a natural choice for reach weapons, as they gain less benefit dual wielding relative to rogues, as well as less benefit in ensuring all of their targets are crowd controlled.
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how do you achieve 135 deflection without buffs with a priest??
16 shield + 12 upgraded +6 (shield + talent) + 5 raw talent + 10 ring + up to 30 stats(durance wont reach this) + 15 base deflection + 36 (level up) = 130, i am missing something?
+5 deflection from Hatchet, but still doesn't explain the stats, unless what he's saying is unbuffed is including something like the Paladin shield, maybe fighter aura too.
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managed to do some tests on this .. It adds precisely 26.6 damage per hit .. Not 20 .
It looks like it's scaling with might. 20*1.33=26.6. Not scaling with blooded is odd though.
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Wood elf 18/8/17/15/5/15.
There's no reason to not max dexterity here, if you're going down to 5 int, might as well take it all the way and go to 3 int and 19 dex. Personally I think you should also just drop con to 3 and spread the rest to Per and Resolve for more conversation options, interrupts (i guess they're better than nothing) and will save.
18/3/20/16/3/18
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My surivavability point isn't that Barb makes a good tank (or even off tank for that matter) but compared to my Rogue who died very rapidly if I wasn't microing properly vs single targets barbarian could last a significant time, especially with the Savage Defiance talent. Otherwise I agree with you on the whole.
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50% is good for one talent, yes, but other classes have enough damage modifiers as well, e. g. Cipher's +40% damage with biting whip, Barb's frenzy with +33 attack speed and +4(6) might, Ranger's +50% reload speed etc. Even fighter gets +25% damage along with +20% min damage and graze to hit conversion (which is not that great just as hit to crit)
Reckless assault is also quite good, but melee only, as I said I do see a point in melee rogue with SA + reckless assault, it's ranged rogue that strikes me not that great.
Deathblows are actually great, just not as hilariously broken as some other level 11 stuff.
20% hit to crit is not that impressive if you do the math. Unless you're going for some on crit effects, these would be among the last talents I'd pick. I don't know about 4 damage on application from deep wounds, certainly does not reflect my experience with it, but if true, it's quite decent.
So as I said, main rogue features are SA, Reckless assault (doesn't work with ranged) and Deathblows. Maybe Deep wounds are also better than I thought, needs to be confirmed. From all this, Deathblows is level 11 and RA is melee only, so ranged rogue is stuck with +50% SA only for the most part of the game, Which is almost matched by say Cipher's +40% biting whip and completely overshadowed if you count the spells in.
I agree that melee dw brings out the most potential out of the rogue, but it requires a lot of babysitting on PotD, while nuking requires none.
Cipher is 20% base with a 20% increase from a talent. Compare that to 50% base, + any damage talent rogue gets, not to mention Cipher baseline 5 less accuracy, and Cipher is hardly impressive as a weapon user. Ranged cipher is better than ranged rogue, only because Cipher is a caster first and a weapon user second.
Further, it's not only 50% as deep wounds, and +20% crit to hit, which gets very substantive with the amount of +crit damage buffs that can be acquired (a total of around +90% damage on crit is not hard to get, annihilation weapon, Doemenal bonus, crit helm/gloves, and dungeon delver; which means +20% crit results in around 4.7% more damage (at any accuracy-deflection value between 0 and 50 and at 200% bonus damage not including crit) which is approximately equal to an additive 14% damage modifier at 200% bonus damage), and can both be used by ranged rogue.
As far as weapon damage goes, Ranged Rogue will outdo Cipher by a pretty substantive margin with proper support, of course Cipher is one of the best classes for giving this support so i almost always have Rogue + Cipher in team. Frenzy is an excellent attack speed buff, but a very mediocre damage modifier increase, 4 might is only an additive 12% damage buff, which is nonterrible, but compared to rogue 20% damage and +8 accuracy that also is a modal, instead of an active ability and Rogue will definitely win out damage wise, especially since most of barbarian's other damage buffs all require the Barbarian to get damaged or engage multiple foes, which is much more risky than what a rogue can do. Not to mention barbarian obviously is terrible ranged as carnage is melee only.
By level 9 Cipher gets much better accuracy than rogue with tactical meld if he wishes so and becomes a quite impressive weapon user. Yes, he needs to spend a talent to bring himself up to 40%, but that's hardly a big issue. As you've calculated yourself, hit-to-crit conversion is not that great even if you stack all the possible +crit modifiers (and hard hitting ranged weapons actually have negative modifiers). I've run a ranged rogue and a ranged cipher side by side, ranged rogue indeed does slightly more autoattack damage, but once the spells kick in it's not comparable. Cipher is the best class to enable a rogue, but if given a choice between ranged rogue + ranged cipher or 2 ranged ciphers I would pick the latter from optimization perspective. You're mentioning 20% damage modal, which is good, but melee only. Again, I'm not comparing cipher with melee rogue, as I said melee is decent.
As far as barbarian vs melee rogue comparison goes (no point to compare with ranged, because as you said most barb abilities are melee), attack speed modifiers are better than damage speed modifiers with enchanted weapons, and barb gets 2, plus gets aoe attacks.
But I'm not sure why we're arguing as we seem to have similar points. To clarify what I wanted to say:
- Ranged rogue is not that great as many seem to believe. He might slightly outdo cipher or ranger in terms of weapons dps, but cipher easily turns it around with spells, dealing far more damage in the end. No luck for ranger though.
- Melee rogue OTOH is pretty good with Reckless assault and fast weapons (if you can pull it off) and might indeed deal the most single target weapon damage, however it's not like he outdamages other melee dps classes like monks or barbs by a huge margin (and counting in aoe barb will likely do more damage overall)
- All in all i don't think that rogue's damage dealing capabilities need to be improved, as they are quite solid, their utility options however should be expanded and trash talents turned into something decent
As for my personal playstyle, I don't like squishy melee dps and I'd rather have another caster in place of the ranged rogue.
Meld is single target only, late game, and high focus cost. But yes, I suspect we do agree ranged rogue is inferior, although, and maybe you agree with this as well, it's not so much that rogue sucks at ranged, as it is that ranged, outside of casting, sucks.The only real saving grace for ranged auto is that it's very easy and lazy to play as it requires very little micro, and with certain buffs does passable damage.
As to Rogue vs Barb (can't say much about Monk as I haven't played it yet) I'm fairly confident Rogue deals substantially (I think my rogue was about 30% more damage than my barbarian and about 10% behind my Wizard in my completed PotD run) more damage overall without using the bugged One Stands Alone ability. Not to mention single target spike is generally more efficient than diffuse aoe, and Barb is outclassed by casters in terms of raw aoe damage output, again without bugged One Stands Alone, Where Barb seems to shine is that it's got quite high survivability even without any defensive choices, outside of the single extremely powerful regen ability.
I'll agree on the last as I think a few of the rogue's utility options are just extremely meh. The swap position one for instance has way too short of a range to be remotely useful even if you could land it on an enemy.
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50% is good for one talent, yes, but other classes have enough damage modifiers as well, e. g. Cipher's +40% damage with biting whip, Barb's frenzy with +33 attack speed and +4(6) might, Ranger's +50% reload speed etc. Even fighter gets +25% damage along with +20% min damage and graze to hit conversion (which is not that great just as hit to crit)
Reckless assault is also quite good, but melee only, as I said I do see a point in melee rogue with SA + reckless assault, it's ranged rogue that strikes me not that great.
Deathblows are actually great, just not as hilariously broken as some other level 11 stuff.
20% hit to crit is not that impressive if you do the math. Unless you're going for some on crit effects, these would be among the last talents I'd pick. I don't know about 4 damage on application from deep wounds, certainly does not reflect my experience with it, but if true, it's quite decent.
So as I said, main rogue features are SA, Reckless assault (doesn't work with ranged) and Deathblows. Maybe Deep wounds are also better than I thought, needs to be confirmed. From all this, Deathblows is level 11 and RA is melee only, so ranged rogue is stuck with +50% SA only for the most part of the game, Which is almost matched by say Cipher's +40% biting whip and completely overshadowed if you count the spells in.
I agree that melee dw brings out the most potential out of the rogue, but it requires a lot of babysitting on PotD, while nuking requires none.
Cipher is 20% base with a 20% increase from a talent. Compare that to 50% base, + any damage talent rogue gets, not to mention Cipher baseline 5 less accuracy, and Cipher is hardly impressive as a weapon user. Ranged cipher is better than ranged rogue, only because Cipher is a caster first and a weapon user second.
Further, it's not only 50% as deep wounds, and +20% crit to hit, which gets very substantive with the amount of +crit damage buffs that can be acquired (a total of around +90% damage on crit is not hard to get, annihilation weapon, Doemenal bonus, crit helm/gloves, and dungeon delver; which means +20% crit results in around 4.7% more damage (at any accuracy-deflection value between 0 and 50 and at 200% bonus damage not including crit) which is approximately equal to an additive 14% damage modifier at 200% bonus damage), and can both be used by ranged rogue.
As far as weapon damage goes, Ranged Rogue will outdo Cipher by a pretty substantive margin with proper support, of course Cipher is one of the best classes for giving this support so i almost always have Rogue + Cipher in team. Frenzy is an excellent attack speed buff, but a very mediocre damage modifier increase, 4 might is only an additive 12% damage buff, which is nonterrible, but compared to rogue 20% damage and +8 accuracy that also is a modal, instead of an active ability and Rogue will definitely win out damage wise, especially since most of barbarian's other damage buffs all require the Barbarian to get damaged or engage multiple foes, which is much more risky than what a rogue can do. Not to mention barbarian obviously is terrible ranged as carnage is melee only.
Attribute per class importance
in Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by SilchasRuin
Honestly, the recommended stats in the character creation are pretty inaccurate. As far as it goes, there are 2 damage attributes (dex and might), 2 defense attributes (perception and resolve), 1 mediocre defense attribute (Constitution) and 1 utility/offense attribute (intellect).
Damage attributes are good for any character you want to deal damage, might is more important for casters (Wizard/Druid/Priest), dexterity is more important for weapon users (Rogue, Barbarian, Ranger), but both are very useful for both types. Might's healing bonus is okay, and is sometimes more valuable than constitution for Tanky characters with lots of healing.
Defense attributes are mostly useful for tanks, but resolve is overall the more useful of the two to have on damage dealers.
Constitution can basically be ignored for the most part, it's okay on Tanks and classes with naturally high endurance/health (Barbarian/Fighter/Monk). You probably won't want to drop it too low on an offtank who isn't a moon godlike, but strictly speaking this is the least valuable stat.
Intellect is useful for any class that makes use of AoE (Wizard, Barbarian, Priest, Cipher, Druid) but also for any class that wants to buff or debuff, either themselves or their allies, so Intellect can be valuable for almost any class, but is most important for classes that need AoE. it's acceptable to have low intellect on classes like Rogue/Fighter/Ranger as they lack any AoE and their need for longer debuffs or buffs are lower than other classes.