Daemonjax

I tested attack speed for a dex 10 character wielding one dagger (not dual wielding) attacking a wolf in the tutorial. Used fraps recording at 30 fps, counting frames between hits landing. Frame A: Hit landed 58 frames later... Frame B: Hit landed 59 frames later... Frame C: Hit landed 58 frames later... Frame D: Hit landed 59 frames later... Frame E: Hit landed I expected 56 frames between hits landing (20 animation + 36 recovery)... Maybe there's an additional frame spent at the start of each animation transition (one for starting the attack animation, and another for starting the idle animation)? I'm unable to come up with any explanation for the 58/59 alternating frames between attacks. I'm working on a dps calculator so I want to get the formula right (although I am willing to ignore the 0.5 frame discrepancy). Edit: after watching the video frame by frame a few more times, the number of frames that the recovery bar displays any yellow is exactly 32, and then 4 frames after it's empty, the attack animation begins again... so that seems to jive with 36 frames as expected... so the extra ~2 frames between attacks landing happen between the end of the attack animation sequence and between the display of the yellow recovery bar -- effectively, the attack animation is 22 frames long and I'll see how that fits (expectedAttackAnimationTime + 2) with other weapons with different attack speeds. Edit2: 1h sword swings alternate between 85 and 87 frames between landed hits. Using the formula: ((expectedAttackAnimationTime + 2) + expectedRecoveryAnimationTime) would equal 86... I'll see how it holds up to bows.

Do not know about melee weapons, but I believe ranged weapons do remember their loaded/unloaded states. Chanter companion reloads his weapon after combat ends, and it should finish reloading before next fight if he intends to shoot and not to reload at the start of next battle. So, I think, it is possible to take perks for wielding additional weapon sets, and one can carry four rifles or crossbows at a time, then discharge them at the start of battle one after another making good DPS at the beginning of battle, but then he would need to recharge a weapon instead of switching it to another. It is the optimal strategy to have both a slow/high damage ranged weapon equipped on every character. So, you open combat with that weapon, and then switch to the other weapon to ignore the reload time. The Quick weapon swap talent makes this strategy work better, but would only be optimal to get for your non-tanks unless your tank(s) also have extra weapon slots. The only thing I don't like is that there's no easy way to switch weapons for the whole party, so I think the above strategy wasn't playtested and so may not be working as originally intended by the devs. I actually like how the above works mechanically because it adds another layer to how you open combat and expands the meaningful choices to make regarding race and talent selection.

Dual wielding does seem sub-optimal in this game, unless you have effects that proc on hit (like cipher's draining whip, or certain enchants)... and dual wielding axes (at low levels before good shields exist) because the +deflection effect from both stack. 2H style also requires one less talent because you don't have to worry as much about enemy damage resistance, and the DR bypass talent itself is a tradeoff rather than a straight buff (which is unnecessarily punishing).

Rooting Pain is decent (aoe stun when taking a wound). The class needs more abilities like that that are active. I never said monk wasn't viable, it's just mechanically weak when compared to some other classes for a tank slot. There's a lot of things that could be done to make the class competitive, but they just aren't.

All true, and there's no good answer to why some classes are designed the way that they are. I'd also add chanter to the list of better tanks, just because it's a more useful class to have in the party if you're going to have someone stand around to be a meat shield.

The monk class relies on the very sub-optimal strategy of taking wounds to do more damage. The idea could have worked if the abilities that relied on wounds caused powerful defensive status effects like paralysis... but they do not. The monk only gets two decent enough defensive abilities, and they don't even use wounds to work. A missed opportunity. With that being said, normal is easy enough that your main character can just run away from every fight and let the un-optimized npc companions do the work of killing. So, the class is technically viable.

The engagement system prevents enemies from moving away from the tank. Nothing stops them from randomly turning around to engage a different character without moving. And they will.

DA: Origins tactics system actually sucked without using a player-created mod that extended the commands. But, to answer your question, I'm sure something like a tactics system was considered, but it would take development time that was better spent tracking down bugs (I jest). I think the decision came from the fact that most players turned off the companion AI in Infinity Engine games.

Ignoring the many lying tooltips/character sheet bugs, the problem with PoEt's (PoE is a different game) game mechanics are that there's a lot of stuff hidden under the hood. For example: exactly how is damage calculated (multipliers stack multiplcatively or additively? Which ones?) How does dexterity affect attack speed bonuses (how you imagine it works probably doesn't take into account the unmentioned global cooldown). Displayed weapon speed aren't precise enough (War bows are slower than Hunter Bows, even though both are listed as Average speed. What about all the other weapons?). Stuff like that. All of that should be ingame or at least in the pdf manual (it isn't). How hard is it really to keep the manual updated? It's not like a game based on D&D rules where we can crack open our PHB or DMG see how something is even supposed to work.

While there's a lot of things that can go wrong and I agree it's not easy to release a bug-free game, it is both possible and achievable to release a game where a number of serious bugs won't be found within the first week after release. Seriously. This isn't a problem with just Obsidian. It's become industry standard to release too early. Maybe the excitement gets to them? Internal pressure of hitting a pre-decided release date? Are paid testers aware of bugs that are spotted easily, but just don't care? Maybe they're given instructions to specifically look for certain kinds of bugs? No idea. If the game's great, the bugs are forgiven, but never forgotten. Then it lands on modders' shoulders to fix the problems... which can take years.

Paladins were overly nerfed shortly before release. Hopefully, modders can fix the class issues some day... but the game's engine is rather mod-unfriendly because developers can't redistribute the editor, so they'd have to develop their own mod tools to distribute (see Shadowrun: Hong Kong and their planned level editor/map creation tool). As far as I know, Obsidian didn't encrypt the game resources, so there's hope in that case... There's some really talented hackers in the gaming mod scene, so it's only a matter of time provided they really enjoy this type of game. Hacking this stuff is usually very time-consuming.

Higher stealth should increase the time it takes for your circle to fill with yellow and then red when you are stealthed and being observed. Yeah, you can test it yourself using console commands to raise a character to level 12 and raise his/her stealth to 6+ to test it out. It does make a big a difference.

The party stealth mechanics makes the rogue's class defining feature (backstab) useless outside of twice per rest. Currently, it's a very weak class. I've read that the devs wanted to make to make stealth work individually, but ran out of time (or something like that). So it wasn't a design decision, but a compromise based on available resources. In short: don't pick rogue as your main character. Just pick cipher. Hopefully, individual stealth will be patched in, or maybe we can mod shadowing beyond into a per encounter ability. That won't fix stealth being very sub-optimal to raise on a rogue, but at least it would make the rogue a decent main character choice. With that being said, the game isn't hard enough on normal for the class or build of your main character to matter, so you can just have him/her sit in safety during combat and twiddle their thumbs (heh, I just realized that I described the Chanter's class feature).

If you're going to do a ranged rogue, may as well be a cipher instead. Actually, cipher is just better than a rogue in every way.

I'd wait until at least the next patch comes out before starting a serious playthrough. Just my opinion. Save yourself a headache.

Regarding mechanics and searching to find hidden objects: I believe mechanics only determines how close you need to be while stealthed to find it. I don't know how that applies to finding traps, though.

Cipher, for relatively interesting gameplay mechanics that goes with the flavor of the class. I wanted to like rogue, but it's a redundant class (so is wizard, to a lesser extent) since anyone can stealth (in fact, stealth works best on tanks) and disarm/search.

Play a Cipher as your main character instead of wizard, then. It's a very strong (and interesting to play) class.

I agree, particularly regarding the rest mechanic being ineffective -- unless their design goal was to increase tedium. I'll go into detail: You're limited to X number of camps before you have to replenish your camping supplies. There's no penalty for doing so except for player (IRL) time (the time it takes to leave the dungeon, buy supplies, and return to the same place in the dungeon) and a little bit of coin (75gp, which is negligible). You're not sealed into the dungeon (cave-ins, magical barriers, whatever). Monsters don't re-spawn. Monster difficulty within the dungeon doesn't increase. New traps aren't set for you. Costs of camping supplies don't increase over time. No chance of ambushes during/after camp. There's nothing to prevent you from camping whenever and wherever you want. Essentially, there's really no limit to the number of camps you can do in any dungeon provided you're willing to deal with the tedium. Furthermore, the classes with on-rest abilities are potentially more tedious to play. And so, the game is either going to be too easy or too hard, depending on the amount of tedium you (the player, not your character) can endure. So, there it is. Fixable? Sure. Will it be fixed? No.