Purudaya

Definitely not, but the casting speed/recovery bonus is cool enough I've played it vs. other trickster multis and it makes a surprising difference considering that that we're only talking about roughly half a second. Worth it for avoiding interrupts alone.

I don't know if this is the intended behavior, but I've been testing this build and Swift flurry currently affects trickster spell casting times... which is awesome.

As much as I love two-weapon style, I don't appreciate that Deadfire all but requires me to play it if I want to maximize DPS for martial classes. The main problem is that full attacks are just too good — even abilities that provide resources or other bonuses on crit are typically full attacks and benefit more from the two proc chances and higher damage offered by TWS than the hit-to-crit conversion offered by one-handed style. Assassin is the one class that would really stand to benefit from OHS, but its weak innate passive and high combat stealth costs totally kill its DPS potential. Assuming Obsidian doesn't give it a much-needed buff, has anyone had any experience crafting one-handed builds that can compete with TWS?

It's not your character's imagination, Berath is actually calling your consciousness to speak before the gods. It happens every time you complete a milestone on the critical path.

Given that they haven't changed it after two patches (in fact, didn't they actually unlock the trinkets slot for non-wizards after release?), I would be really surprised if this content doesn't make it into upcoming dlc.

The ranger in the PoE series is basically the beastmaster in every other rpg. I don't know why they needed to hinge the ranger on the pet/ranged offense combination; no other martial class is as restricted in what it can do. 1. Get rid of the pet. When I think of a ranger, I think of Aragorn or maybe Legolas, not Siegfried & Roy. It should be a subclass feature at best. 2. Create viable melee and ranged ability paths. 3. Augment with secondary stealth/nature abilities. It's not that hard. I don't know why they keep insisting on a formula nobody seems to like.

Lol assassins have been screwed for a while. Thanks for the tip, I forgot all about the beta branch after 1.1 dropped Edit: looks like they went a little overboard, imo. With only a 10% sneak attack damage difference in exchange for free spells at every power level, there's basically no reason to choose a vanilla rogue anymore.

Which buffs do you mean? 1.1 came out a while ago and I haven't seen much new in 1.1.1.

The main issue is the resource pool - there's no reason that a level 18 rogue should have fewer resource points than a level 18 Barbarian/Rogue. If anything it should be the other way around to balance for synergies. I know power level is supposed to make up the difference, but the game is unclear about how the advantage is applied so single classes feel comparatively starved for resources without really feeling the benefit of what they're getting in return.

Confirmed, smoke veil works now. There's just no point in using it vs. full attack abilities because backstab is so pathetically weak.

One option would be to give all primary attacks a damage bonus and remove damage bonuses from full attacks (I'm thinking especially of 1.1 rogues, who now lack what little motivation to use one-handed style there already was). Dual wield is OP as it is. That or add an accuracy penalty to the off hand and make dual-wielding a multi-tier ability like in every other CRPG, but that's probably not in the cards.

It is beyond amazing to me that anyone would actually be upset by this. 1. There are players who care about how their main character and party members look, both for purposes of immersion and raw aesthetic appeal. They also like to customize their characters with abilities and bonuses they earn through the acquisition of loot. 2. Some of the hats and capes in the game look ******* stupid. 3. Amulets, rings, boots, and belts are already invisible. Allowing players to apply the same to hats so they don't have to choose between optimization and appearance hurts exactly 0 people. 4. Does Eder smoking his pipe while wearing a frog helm make sense to you?

Endless Paths was the epitome of a quantity-over-quality development mindset. If I want to play Diablo, I'll play Diablo. There are some great dungeons in older CRPGs and even the PoE series that I'd love to see them draw inspiration from for the DLCs, though. Watcher's Keep is obviously the gold standard, but Durgan's Battery, Durlag's Tower, or even shorter dungeons like the Temple of Amaunator are great examples. Most of all, I'd like to see more dungeons in the vein of Splintered Reef, just larger - an island city map that unlocks in stages and set pieces rather than a deep dive that unlocks in bland and repetitive layers.

Even the multis are underwhelming compared to most other multis, though. Cipher needs something to set it apart from other caster classes given that it's the only one that has to build up/replenish its resource pool (boon in PoE1, malus in PoE2). Given that most ciphers only reach max focus once per battle, I'd like to see their casting/recovery times halved. They still wouldn't be able to cast spells as powerful as a wizard and are further limited by not being able to cast much of anything early in combat, so they should be able to make up for it either through a uniquely rapid casting effect or higher damage passives. The 10% damage difference between biting whip and soul whip in 1.1 make the former basically useless, for example – either give ciphers more combat viability to fill the striker role or improve casting so they can better fill a CC role, because right now they don't really excel at either.

Would love to see this as well. Just reducing the sale value for all fine/exceptional/superb generics by half would make a huge difference in the mid-late game economy.

I really like Priest of Nemnok The rest I'm not so sure about; it's pretty niche and I'd probably like to see anything meta stick to in-game references.

I do wish the game would automatically append "the" when referencing my ship's name, though. No one says "we're sailing off on Gellarde" – it's a ship, not a pet...

The game was perfectly playable at release You cannot be serious. It *was* perfectly playable. I (and the vast majority of other customers) played it from beginning to end. Whether or not it was properly balanced or perfect as a game is a whole other debate, but to argue that a game is 'broken' or 'unplayable' just because its difficulty or some other factor isn't well optimized is grandstanding. PoE2 was flawed at release just as PoE1 was flawed at release, but that doesn't mean it was unplayable. Unplayable = cannot be played. It's an objective term. Unenjoyable, unsatisfying, unbalanced, etc. might be what you're looking for, but any game that can be completed from beginning to end is by definition playable.

You can do both to some degree by offering a limited or staggered open world with areas that unlock as the main quest is completed. Baldur's Gate 1 did this - the entire southern half of the map is available to you from the beginning, but you're soft-locked out of doing too much exploring by your level/overall squishiness until after you complete the Nashkel mines. Then the game opens up in stages: Bandit camp (act 3), Cloakwood (act 4), and finally Baldur's Gate (act 5). It's both open enough to give the players lots to explore while also being fairly tightly controlled. PoE1 does something similar - the western bridge to Defiance Bay is cut off so as to encourage players to finish Gilded Vale/Raedric/Stronghold before moving on, after which the gorge leading to Twin Elms is flooded until the player completes Act 2. The nature of Deadfire's setting makes it difficult to geographically block access to certain areas (they sort of do so with Ukaizo, but more than one 'impenetrable storm' would've felt cheesy), so I understand why the developers decided to leave it open. But imagine how much better the narrative flow would've been if a faction fleet had surrounded Hasongo and you had to complete quests/favors in order to get through, or if the shoals at Ashen Maw did gradual hull damage, forcing players to turn around after realizing that they needed to earn money for a stronger ship. That would have created both an in-game motivation to complete side content while also mitigating the urgency problem: it's no longer about whether you should prioritize going to Ashen Maw, but whether you are able to go there yet. It's probably beyond the current capabilities of our talented modders, but I'd donate good money towards a mod that does something like this.

Part of the problem is that "linear" has become such a dirty word among RPG gamers that developers are increasingly moving toward open worlds where narrative urgency is harder to convey. Josh Sawyer has a lot of great ideas, but the belief that games like Fallout: NV (choice, no restrictions) are more conducive to roleplaying than games like BG:II (narrative engagement, structured storytelling) is why we've yet to see a modern CRPG that lives up to the latter, imo. Giving players access to the whole map and virtually every quest from the very beginning of the game isn't just bad for the main story, but it creates scaling issues as well. Heck, even the FarCry series (which is as open-world as you can get) locks part of the map to better serve its narrative. Deadfire could have been better paced by at least imposing conditions on the player to reach critical path milestones (requiring a Galleon or Junk to navigate the islands surrounding Ashen Maw, for example; or a sea monster that requires the acquisition of certain resources to overcome). The game also lacked an antagonist to drive the narrative forward - another captain trying to reach Eothas for some nefarious reason would have gone a long way toward adding structure and linking side content to the main plot. I still like Deadfire a lot, but I basically have to headcannon some narrative tweaks in order for it to make sense to complete bounties/collect grimoires for Nemnok/put on a play in Dunnage while Eothas is tearing across the archipelago.

You can easily run a shieldless party in Deadfire. You just trade defense for offense - enemies can't shoot you if they're prone/stunned/paralyzed/charmed/dead.

How are all of you getting so many wild mind effects? I had Serafen my whole 1st playthrough and only saw a few mass charms/max focuses. If there was ever anything bad, I definitely didn't notice it (maybe because 1.0 was so easy that the effect was minimal?). I'd really like to see some kind of Wild Surge table to get a better idea of what the subclass actually does.

I've been having this problem as well. Also, would anyone know if it's currently possible to modify backstab so that it scales with level the way sneak attack does? There seems to be two status effects active on sneak attack but I have no idea how you would adapt those over to another passive ability and predict damage values.

I think it unlocks when you have two of them?

Omg this. Everything is so visually bland and boring now. What happened to Cipher's "lightsaber" from PoE 1? That was awesome. iroll20s giveitem Sword_U_Watchers_Sword But yeah, I do agree that the unique items could be a little more...unique.