Climhazzard
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Posts posted by Climhazzard
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Personally I just set one counter per enemy type, like crippling strikes on whichever enemy my pet is attacking, blinding strikes on ranged attacker, etc. I would set one for each of those with a cooldown equal to the affliction they do, then if I want to do more I'll do it manually.
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So in my OP example:
it'll start with "sap" then find the nearest target?
In such a script, when would "withering strike" ever get used, so long as I have sap?
Yeah if sap is first It'll target the nearest spellcaster with sap. Using different skills on the same AI set doesn't work unless it's a skill that gets replaced by a better version. So if I have both torment's reach and raised torment on the same set it'll just use whichever of the two I have since you can't have both.
Another thing you can do with sap or similar skills is set a conditional to prevent it from being used on the same target twice, like follows...
Target: Is a spell caster Sap Nearest
Target: Has intellect condition (not)
Target: Has dexterity affliction (not)
Then it would cycle through spellcasters that it hasn't hit yet until they are all afflicted by sap, it runs out of targets, or you run out of resource.
I tend to use cooldowns on the sets because I don't like the AI to dump all it's resources at once. Then you can copy the whole set if you want it to be used more than once in a time period. If sap lasted for 18 seconds and you want the AI to sap 2 targets every 18 seconds then you can use an 18 second cooldown with two copies of the whole set. Which is also what you should do if you want it to use whithering strikes as well, just make a separate set for it.
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If multiple targets meet your conditionals it'll check the priorities next to choose a target.
So if you set..
Target: Is a spellcaster
It'll check for enemy spellcasters, then pick from them based on your priority.
Set to "nearest" it will target the nearest spellcaster.
Set to "greatest number of enemies" it will try to target the spellcaster with the most enemies around it.
Set to "lowest fortitude/reflex/deflection, etc..." it will try to target the spellcaster with the lowest of those scores.
Etc...
And yeah, some conditionals aren't to picky. I think as long as the target has a spell like ability then it's considered a spell caster. If you pick "only has a ranged weapon equipped" the same thing happens with various enemies.
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Ideally you probably want something exceptional for your main damage dealers by level 7, superb by level 10, and legendary shortly thereafter. If summoned weapons are nowhere near that progression they'll probably always be second rate, at least until endgame where the progression meets.
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The best dps ranged character is the dual pistols chanter/rogue, by a large margin... You'll have eventually all the possible buffs from chanter, recovery+reload speed chant, burn lash chant, crowd control, armor debuff, pets and all the passive dmg bonuses from the rogue, invisibility, etc... Pick Maia's armor, the hat with bonus to reload speed, ring of the marksman, the speed gloves, the pet with 10% ranged dmg and all items with +dex you can find and with pistols modal you can easily go under 2s attack (even after the patch I think). A monk(helwalker)/rogue can achieve slightly better dps but he's very squishy...
What exactly does a Rogue bring that a Barbarian doesn't? Rogues have Sneak Attack, while Barbarians give 25% haste as well as Barbaric Smash, which is better than any of the Rogue skills you can get with a multiclass. Ranger also has Driving Flight and a higher Accuracy than either the Chanter or Rogue (Aside from the Assassin bonus from stealth). Most of the Barbarian damage increases are gained very early too, and then later the on kill passives are some of the best in the game.
Blind (with great upgrades), hobble (with good upgrades, costs 1 resource), sneak attack, deathblows, deep wounds, escape, smoke veil...
Not to say rogues are better or worse than barb, but rogue is honestly a great multi class for ranged characters.
Hobble, really? Deathblows comes extremely late too for multiclassing. Also not exactly easy to setup reliably. Blind essentially only really matters for the Rogue itself for more Sneak Attacks, but if you're playing Assassin (why wouldn't you be as a ranged Rogue?), you're better off spending all of your resources on restealthing for the Assassination bonuses. If you want a ranged Rogue that excels at burst damage, you would want an Assassin/Bleak Walker anyway. Or hell, just go Assassin/Barbarian and get the best of both worlds, but I was assuming the OP was focusing more on the Ranger side of things.
edit: Finishing Blow was always good, even before the patch, but essentially on Verteran or below when scaling wasn't working correctly. I don't know what difficulty the OP plans on playing, but I wouldn't bother with it on PotD.
Yes, hobble, that attack can be upgraded to setup deathblows by itself, and only costs 1 resource. If you're dual wielding the second hit will have sneak attack and deathblow modifiers. Plus these attacks interrupt. And if you hadn't noticed, they have damage/penetration/accuracy bonuses in 1.1, it's not just burst damage if it only costs 1 resource, you don't need to be an assassin, just blow people up from maximum pistol/blunderbuss/arquebus range.
I still recommend scout, for driving flight, the pet offtank, gunner, and accuracy passives, but there are plenty of viable options.
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The beginning and middle of the game gives a pretty good impression of encounter improvements, but many areas were pretty much untouched, only relying on the +2 armor/penetration and improved encounter scaling to make it more challenging, which isn't enough to make a lot of fights less than easy once your party is geared and specced properly.
The dragon at the maw for example, takes awhile to kill now because of his high armor but is never really a threat. He's charging up his big fire attack at the start for like 4 seconds and I'm like... oh ****... then it hits and my health doesn't even move.
Here's to hoping they eventually give every encounter some love, not just the ones that were on their mediocre "need to improve now" list.
EDIT: New update on the beta patch today. Something like the following. Who knows how many encounters this includes that I've already played, so I'm just starting over.
- All encounter changes for PotD are now in.
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The best dps ranged character is the dual pistols chanter/rogue, by a large margin... You'll have eventually all the possible buffs from chanter, recovery+reload speed chant, burn lash chant, crowd control, armor debuff, pets and all the passive dmg bonuses from the rogue, invisibility, etc... Pick Maia's armor, the hat with bonus to reload speed, ring of the marksman, the speed gloves, the pet with 10% ranged dmg and all items with +dex you can find and with pistols modal you can easily go under 2s attack (even after the patch I think). A monk(helwalker)/rogue can achieve slightly better dps but he's very squishy...
What exactly does a Rogue bring that a Barbarian doesn't? Rogues have Sneak Attack, while Barbarians give 25% haste as well as Barbaric Smash, which is better than any of the Rogue skills you can get with a multiclass. Ranger also has Driving Flight and a higher Accuracy than either the Chanter or Rogue (Aside from the Assassin bonus from stealth). Most of the Barbarian damage increases are gained very early too, and then later the on kill passives are some of the best in the game.
Blind (with great upgrades), hobble (with good upgrades, costs 1 resource), sneak attack, deathblows, deep wounds, escape, smoke veil...
Not to say rogues are better or worse than barb, but rogue is honestly a great multi class for ranged characters.
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AFAICT suppression affliction doesn't tick down the debuff duration; they are merely suspended (and duration frozen) while suppress affliction is on. At least that's how it was in backer beta 4. Thus there is still a good reason to use specific counters over Suppress Affliction, especially for hard CCs like terrified. If this has changed though, I'd be curious to know.I personally just use suppress affliction for frightened and terror. I guess it's nice to have other spells to counter things with, since you only get 2 uses of suppress affliction, but I really have to agree with others that the duration on Holy Meditation is to short for the amount of time you have to dedicate to using it.
Edit: though on pre-1.1 even on POTD some fights can be over fast enough that it doesn't matter that suppress affliction will run out of time.
In PoE it was like this, where the affliction has full duration after suppress affliction wears off. That's not the case in this game as far as I can tell. I have been successfully using it against afflictions of all types, they are usually gone when it wears off.
The one problem I have with it is it can't suppress afflictions on a character in which it is already active. So if a character is charmed and you clear it with suppress affliction, you can't cure them of a new charm until suppress affliction wears off.
Liberating exhortations works the same way, but I rarely need it since I use enlightened agony on Xoti so she's basically immune to afflictions herself.
I could be wrong I guess, and in that case... idk. But for me it's been working very well as an anti affliction tool and unlike something like holy meditation it counters all afflictions.
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Are any of them immune to engagement? Ghost heart? That's one thing I like about Maia's bird. What's the cast/recovery on ghost heart pet? For most cases I would probably just take the bear.
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Since I'm bored. Maybe I'll post my thoughts on most cipher powers.
TIER1.
Mind wave: Low damage, average cast/recovery, small aoe, overshadowed by higher tier damage powers, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: ???
Whisper of treason: The main reason to make a cipher atm.
Valorous echoes: You'd think it could be a counter to charm with the insightful inspiration, but that doesn't work, bug? Suggestion: Make it counter charm/dominate.
Antipathetic field: Fast cast, low damage, low duration. Requires a lot of micro to use properly. Suggestion: Make it effect target to reduce micro. Longer duration.
Soul Shock: Low damage, average cast time/recovery, small aoe, overshadowed by higher tier damage powers, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: ???
Tenuous grasp: Fast cast, weak debuffs, low duration. Suggestion: Increase duration.
Eyestrike: Long cast, good debuff, compares poorly to chill fog. Suggestion: 3 second cast, 3 second recovery.
TIER2.
Phantom foes: Flanked debuff, fast cast, huge aoe. Suggestion: Fine as is.
Mind blades: Low damage, fast cast, overshadowed by higher tier damage powers, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: ???
Recall agony: Situational debuff, decent. Suggestion: Fine as is, would prefer a longer duration.
Psychovampiric shield: Fast cast, decent single target debuff, weak self buff. Suggestion: Tier 2 self buff.
Amplified thrust: Fast cast, backline protector. Suggestion: Fine as is.
Mental Binding: Cast/recovery time equal to effect, useless. Suggestion: Increased duration of effect.
TIER3.
Secret horrors: Decent debuff, fast cast time, short duration. Suggestion: Improve duration
Soul Ignition: Overshadowed by higher tier damage powers, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: ???
Pain Link: Fast cast, hard to make use of, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: Effects self as well as target, or longer duration.
Ectophsychic echo: Fast cast, high micro required, low damage, use time to auto attack instead. Suggestion: ???
Fractured volition: Single target, weak debuff, fast cast. Suggestion: Longer duration, immobilized.
Puppet master: Direct upgrade to whisper of treason... except it costs 3x as much and is marginally better, still great.
TIER4
Wild Leech: Random **** inspiration, random **** affliction, single target, fast cast. Suggestion: Random not **** inspiration, random not **** affliction.
Mind lance: Fast cast, interrupts, not exactly "major" pierce damage. Suggestion: Interrupts on graze.
Silent scream: Long recovery, AoE stun, low damage. Suggestion: 3 second recovery, perhaps more damage.
Pain Block: Nice buff, single ally only, fast cast. Suggestion: Leave as is.
Body attunement: Low self armor buff, low enemy armor debuff, fast cast, low duration. Suggestion: Longer duration
TIER5:
Borrowed Instincts: Just wow.... Suggestion: Please don't nerf this. See tactical meld suggestion.
Detonate: Exploding enemies, fun... but I'd rather wait and use amplified wave. Suggestion: ???
Tactical Meld: Oops... this is gone. Suggestion: Nice idea for a passive. Replace some of the accuracy bonus from Borrowed instincts.
Ring Leader: TIER5 IS LIKE CHRISTMAS Suggestion: Make this tier7? Or longer cast time?
Echoing shield: No complaints here, fast cast. Suggestion: Leave as is.
TIER6:
Mind Plague: Average cast and recovery for a weak debuff at tier 6... Suggestion: Longer duration, add frightened.
Amplified wave: Huge AoE. What you respec into after dumping all the ****ty lower tier damage spells. Suggestion: Fine as is.
Disintegration: Nice boss killer. Suggestion: Fine as is.
TIER7:
Ancestor's Honor: Please... rest is spammable.... Suggestion: Just delete this, or have it give an extra empower use in combat.
Screaming souls: Situational, is it even good against spirits? Suggestion: ???
Statis shell: Worse than whisper of treason, except against intellect immunes. Suggestion: ??? Perhaps a longer duration and high accuracy.
TIER8:
Defensive mindweb: Long cast, long recovery, only good for one hit, useless on PotD. Suggestion: Make it good for more hits???
Reaping Knives: Kind of cool. Suggestion: If this were a self buff I'd only play single class ciphers.
Time Parasite: Nice buff/debuff, even after nerf. Suggestion: Leave as is or compensate nerf with a better duration.
TIER9:
Driving echoes: Nice penetration buff. Probably useful on new PotD, but tier 9? Suggestion: ??
Haunting chains: Tier 5 wizard has a much better comparable spell. Suggestion: Make it an AoE
Death of 1000 cuts: No idea here.
General thoughts. Many cipher spells are direct replacements for lower tier spells, basically all the damage spells with ??? after the suggestion. Wizards have much better spells in general, aside from the charms and borrowed instinct. They get 3 casts at every tier with the right grimoire so they don't have to wait to build up resource and generally have more than enough casts for every encounter even on new potd. They can also self buff. Every cipher damage spell is directly replaced by higher tier damage spells, making them useless. The main reason to go cipher atm is to charm enemies.
Soul blade was nerfed into the dirt in 1.1, while rogues were buffed, some kind of joke I guess, since soul annihilation wasn't really as good as many 1 resource full attacks to begin with. It did hit pretty hard by max level, and is unlimited use I guess, but they really overdid it imo. Hopefully body attunement gets some love in the future too, for now it was also gutted by the nerf bat, but I can sort of see why (the fact the duration often bugged probably didn't help).
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I personally just use suppress affliction for frightened and terror. I guess it's nice to have other spells to counter things with, since you only get 2 uses of suppress affliction, but I really have to agree with others that the duration on Holy Meditation is to short for the amount of time you have to dedicate to using it.
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Stone of power is nerfed in 1.1, as is Nature godlike. Also People mention the Woedica buff but I haven't figured out how to get it using custom history. I know just dedicating the souls to Woedica isn't enough, do you have to swear to Woedica as well? I guess I'll try that with my next character.
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It would be great if Xoit had some other MC option. Like Priest/Chanter, Priest/KindWayferer, or Priest/Lifegiver.
Priest/Monk with each level you have less time to do monk stuff.
What I do with Xoti contemplative is have her be a normal dual wielding fist monk at the start, she'll be fast which makes her reactive with her heal or suppress affliction. Then when she's higher level I spec her Monk side to be more passive and tanky. Enlightened agony by itself is worth the multi class imo, it makes her pretty much immune to status while having the tools to reactively cure status on party members, then give her iron wheel and a shield (hers or the monk shield) and she'll be one of your toughest party members as well.
Her active monk side becomes less and less viable as the monsters get stronger, because her wound spending is whack, I usually just end up with efficient anguish and enlightened agony but you don't even really need efficient anguish since it costs 2x more for her to use than it does for other monks.
It's also nice to have swift strikes on the priest side to recover and cast faster, to be more reactive.
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My ideal party has a priest multi class as one of the 3 front liners, then a wizard/druid in the back along with the ranged dps. So something like..
Herald
Melee dps/cc/interrupt
Priest multi class
Wizard or druid
Ranged dps (Maia scout)
Maia is fine for the scout role due to her gunhawk passive. Aloth and Tekehu are both fine for the Wizard/druid slot. Xoti is kind of questionable for Contemplative because her monk multi class sucks but it still somewhat works because enlightened agony and iron wheel make her very resistant to statuses and tanky so she can heal/buff/cure status in relative safety. I almost always use an adventurer for the Herald and play the melee dps as my MC.
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After 1.1 it's going to be harder to stack it to ridiculous heights. 95% damage bonus should still be easy with any race just using the stone of power amulet with the prestige passive.
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Monks and chanter's both can cause weakened passively, chanter's in an AoE with a phrase, Monk's with crits on their attacks. It should be kind of a no brainer for monks to take enervating blows if they use their active skills too because a lot of them target fortitude.
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Personally I pick whisper of treason because the other tier 1 spells are all ****, puppet master costs 3x more, has half the range, and is only questionably better. So I use whisper of treason until ring leader is available.
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The only problem with using always true to cast buffs at the start of battle is the reset timer is global instead of per encounter, so 300 seconds means you won't recast for the next 2 or 3 battles if you're moving fast. I set it to 120 and it's still a bit to high sometimes to cast every fight.
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Stars?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvq4LdngkD4
Boars do Pierce, and so do many of the combatants on Gorecci. Vendor in the middle of Maje sells both Scale (medium with Pierce AR) and Brigandine (heavy with Pierce AR) each for $200 per, and Xoti's Armor has Pierce AR. You can do it. I believe in you.
Aren't scale and brigandine actually weak to Piercing? I'm almost sure brigaindine is. I generally see crushing as the least common, especially when fighting kith. So my top choice for each tier is usually leather, mail, and plate.
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Pretty sure leather armor is actually a fantasy trope as well. Dual wielding equal length weapons actually as been a thing in history, it just wasn't very common. Either harder to learn, or less effective, whatever. I think we can take liberties with fantasy and assume it's equally effective, but in PoE and PoE 2 it's generally more effective. Imo mostly due to the full attacks mechanic..
Also apparently crippling strikes was buffed? Were rogues UP or something? I thought they were fine.
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^ You'll have to admit, however, that Devotions for the Faithful in its 1.1 incarnation isn't really worth the time it takes to cast it.
My first play through was without a Priest—and in the first game I never played without a Priest. The reason? It took too long to cast the buffs, so I didn't bother. Sure, Devotions for the Faithful was good; but 4.5s good? Not really. I never needed +20 Accuracy that badly.
Now it offers less benefit for the same overly slow casting time? The chances I'll bother with a Priest have just gone below zero.
I usually cast it from stealth. Something like, party stealths in, unstealth tank, Xoti activates lightning strikes then casts devotions while the rest of the party starts casting any self buffs they need, devotions hits then party unstealths. If I use it in battle I still consider it worth the time to cast as long as I can also hit a number of enemies with it, it's a nice debuff too after all.
Interesting. The fact it has an "attack" component means you can start casting it before combat starts from stealth and basically remove the recovery time too. Sadly, you can't do this with spells that only buff. This is a trick I think a lot of people miss. You get a "free" cast if you just do so from stealth and there is a (not well advertised) massive reduction to recovery time if you do so. With multiple casters, you can queue them all up at the same time for a big alpha strike.
Actually you can't, that's why I unstealth the tank first, to start combat. But everyone else is free to buff while stealthed after as long as the tank doesn't die right off the bat.
For battles where starting out in stealth isn't an option it's a bit dicier. I would just toss a lay on hands on Xoti then have her run into the front line and start casting either Devotions or Consecrated ground. Unfortunately the chances of getting interrupted are a lot higher even with combat focus, especially if you want to cast multiple buffs.
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To be honest it's kind of stupid. I'm sure I remember a developer interview where they said they were making it so bonuses on items would stack because it's simpler, easier to understand, more straightforward, etc.... Then there's a ton of active abilities that don't stack and you really have no idea that they won't until you actually try to stack them with each other.
What happened to keeping things simple? The concept didn't seem to last...
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This seems to be happening for me with anybody that I remove from my party and then add back to it. It's currently happening on Aloth, Tekehu, and Serafen. But everyone I've kept in my party constantly (Eder, Xoti, Maia) seems to be working fine. I haven't tested this really so it's only an observation/hunch on my part. Might have something to do with your inactive party members getting a different AI package when they fight in the ship boarding battles, or something?
Can confirm that AI stopped working after I swapped party members
Now that you mention it, I recall swapping Aloth out of my party to train up my out of party members for ship battles, so that could have been the cause of my issues as well.
AI scripting: what does "prioritize by" do?
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by Climhazzard
Conditionals are relative to the target, like Target: Allies in range > 0 will refer to the allies near your ally if you have ally set as the target. But priority "greatest number of enemies" just refers to your enemies so if you have ally set as the target you can use something like amplified wave (has to target an ally) to hit as many enemies as possible.