MadDemiurg

Barbarian changes are not even balancing. They are bug fixing. It was never working as intended in the first place. If you don't agree you can use the same argument and set your might to 100 via console.

Actually played a bit with solo cipher on 1.05 and it isn't that much different, although a bit weaker overall probably. Weapon choices are also different now. I feel like cipher is going to suffer in a party on difficulties < PotD however in a same way people were complaining about chanters - being too slow to actually cast more than 1-2 spells in most encounters since everything is dead so fast. Being a spammy caster was what people liked about cipher in the first place, so I don't think this was a good design choice, even though it was an "easy" balance fix.

Actually it looks like they listen to the vocal majority. There were quite a few outcries about wizards being underpowered or ciphers needing to start with zero focus. The voice of majority is quite often misleading though.

Wizards deserve to be awesome. Autoattack peasants should kneel before wizard masterrace (please don't nerf it back until 1.06, I want to finish the run ). Really though, It mostly matters for solo which is played by like 1% probably.

Marked Prey and Sworn Enemy have been set to 0 recovery actions, so they can be used and the Ranger/Paladin can immediately act again. A slight buff, nothing major, I dont think they will ever buff Paladins. That's crazy to me. It's hands down the most in-demand class for seeing improvements. Wizard was a popular one too but I think it carried more of a tone of "Wizard is amazing when you fully utilize it but it often feels lackluster for the average fight" and had a tone of "why not bring a Cipher" (which falls flat in practice) similar to Ranger vs. Rogue, but the class itself was still solid. Don't get me wrong, improvements for Wizards sounds cool, it's just kinda weird to see so much focus on them and next to nothing for Ranger and Paladin. Ranger just needs some simple pet improvements and they're good to go, Paladin needs a world of help. I will say this, at the bleeding edge of optimization paladins are the best tanks. once your defenses get truly absurd you really do have no equal. No. It's wizard in 1.05 .

You can get enough deflection so they don't hit you at all now. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76328-solo-play-tips-not-exploits-potd/?p=1681427. Old standard tactics included blocking with figurine summon.

Same reason as mind blades. Both are (where) lazy mediocre spells that do damage without putting much effort into it. Soul shock wasn't hurt as badly though as it's meant to be cast on a tank surrounded by enemies anyway. lets make them spells that doesnt do anything then , why not the secret art of "balance" is way beyond me :/ I don't agree on these nerfs either. I was just picking soul shock to be lazy. It's antipathetic field all the way now (it's much stronger anyway). Probably I shouldn't have posted this, it will be nerfed in 1.06 now.

Yeah, wiz TCS is super fun now. I'm not going for pacifist though :D. I think essential phantom + dimensional shift is gonna be great for breaking from any combat for pacifist. Thaos actually should be not too difficult. He either attacks deflection or reflex and mostly elemental damage. I think you can 1on1 him as wizzy (would prefer a pale elf here though). Petrify is also still strong enough to mess up both him and the statues if you manage to land it.

Same reason as mind blades. Both are (where) lazy mediocre spells that do damage without putting much effort into it. Soul shock wasn't hurt as badly though as it's meant to be cast on a tank surrounded by enemies anyway.

Mental binding is not that OP. Maybe slightly. It's just the only good low level cipher's CC. And because it's cipher you can spam it. Compare to slicken/chill fog or cipher's own ringleader/mind plague/amplified wave.

Huh? Major buffs to spirit lance? Effectively physical invulnerability for limited duration (although that's probably mostly noticeable on solo PotD)?

How are wizards becoming Jedi's? I played a fighter/mage in the BG series and it was one of my favorite classes to play. Are you saying wizards are now able to have a similar play style with the most recent changes? It is. Wizards got a major buff to base health/endurance, heavy buffs on all defensive spells and conjured weapons (staff/lance) are super strong now. I still don't understand how having 18 more endurance at level twelve compared to now is a "major" change... They start out with 6 more now over base, and gain +2 more per level compared to now. They also have health = 4*end rather than 3*end. And you know, all that separates them from a fighter now from endurance perspecitve is "just" another 18 endurance. Uh, no? Unless you're going to actually keep CON at 18. That's what seperates them the most from Fighters right now. Unless you're making a damage sponge, 3 MGT Fighter, you would need to have MGT, CON, DEX (at least don't drop it below base) at relatively decent levels, while also having a maxed out RES and whatever you can spare in PER. Wizards on the other hand NEED to max out MGT and DEX by default (or at least start out with 16+ in both). If you're going the melee route, you don't have to max out INT, but you still need it to be higher than base so that your buffs actually have an extended duration. You also need to raise RES as much as you can. That means you're going to be dropping CON regardless. Even with these changes, you wouldn't be using a Wizard as your sole tank. They could off tank pretty well, but they won't ever be tanking 4-5 enemies through most of your encounters, because those situations would be heavily dependant on limited buffs that the Fighter doesn't need. I don't think fighter tanks need 18 con either unless you solo. The only stat difference between fighters and wizards is that wizards need int much more than fighters, since most of their spells are int dependant. You can get away with low might (cc/tank wizards) and/or mediocre dex (you have aclaricity when you need speed anyway). Low dex/might hurts fighter's dps in the same way it hurts wizard's and you can make a damage sponge of either one. Fighter would still be a better sponge (at least in a party) since he does not rely on per rest spells to tank, so I wouldn't make wizard the main tank of a party. Still, wizards got 20% buff to their endurance and 33% buff to health which together with endurance buff results in like 40% health buff. 40% health buff = 40% more time until rest is needed unless you need to rest to recover spells. What's so hard to understand about that? I say that's pretty major and gonna help their survivability and staying power.

How are wizards becoming Jedi's? I played a fighter/mage in the BG series and it was one of my favorite classes to play. Are you saying wizards are now able to have a similar play style with the most recent changes? It is. Wizards got a major buff to base health/endurance, heavy buffs on all defensive spells and conjured weapons (staff/lance) are super strong now. I still don't understand how having 18 more endurance at level twelve compared to now is a "major" change... They start out with 6 more now over base, and gain +2 more per level compared to now. They also have health = 4*end rather than 3*end. And you know, all that separates them from a fighter now from endurance perspecitve is "just" another 18 endurance.

I'd rather prefer toning down cipher spells across the board and leaving the starting focus as is, since starting focus nerf hurt the interactivity (and thus fun factor) of the class, but from the dev perspective changing focus was ofc much easier.

Ok, new tactic for caed nua hall as of 1.05: Wizard: level 4: Base deflection 10 + 3*3(level) + 12 (fine small shield) +5 (hatchet) + 75 (hardened veil) + 40 (wizard's double - lasts 1 hit but doesn't matter if you don't get hit) = 149. This assumes an average sum of Per/Res (20 total). Phantom accuracy (PotD) = 61 + 100 (roll) - 15 (chance to miss) = 146. Sorry buddy. 30 sec of invulnerability at 20 INT. You know what to do.

Btw it's possible to make yourself completely immune to Caed Nua phantoms with a level 4 wizard for ~30 sec which is more than enough to melt them with rays of fire (146 deflection is needed). You don't even need higher than average Res/Per for this though. No figurines, scrolls or surgical positioning needed. All hail wizard masterrace! The only class that has it even easier is priest, he needs scrolls for damage though.

Hm, that's interesting. Don't think that would bother me, but I can see why it could feel be a little annoying after one is already used to being able to do it a certain way. Good question/point. It was an option before, iirc (unlimited Stash access). Maybe it's still there? Yeah, it I checked and it's enabled for me now. It's always enabled for expert mode (which tbh adds a lot of tedium and nothing else), but for some reason patch turned it on for non expert game...

Haven't tried the beta ... so can you be more specific? I've often disliked it when stashes have little "ordering" buttons, for example, because I tend to accidentally hit them. Is your dislike related to that or something else entirely? Edit: the overall patch notes sound great to me, tho. It's only possible to move items to/from stash during camping or in town now. If there's not enough space in the inventory items still go to stash though.

Who else HATES the stash changes? It's just plain annoying and doesn't improve the gameplay in any way!

Lance deals more damage than a fireball now though, in aoe, with comparable attack speed and no limit on charges. Single target staff is worse than spells for sure unless you care about conservation.

I think it's not as good for low levels as pure caster, but as for high levels, I wouldn't be so sure.

I dunno, 41-62 (buffed up) in 2.5m aoe per swing looks pretty good to me and a solid option for many encounters. Barb looks a bit sad now compared to this.

By default focus is smth like damage/4. Draining is now better with anything that deals > 24 damage per hit. And effectively obsolete as a combo with blunderbus.

I dunno, AOE lance of doom made out of pure energy looks pretty badass too.

Parasitic staff got a big damage buff, just as spirit lance. Lance is in the changelog, but staff is undocumented.