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The Josip

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Everything posted by The Josip

  1. Aha, so wiki is wrong, ingame text is wrong, but writing is good, we just don't see it anywhere except in secret writer's notes in his bedroom. That's your story? Also, if you're writing for a computer game, and no one comprehends your writing (as seen on wiki, as seen on this forum) then that's bad writing. In fact, just look at this thread. Few of you are correcting each other, and this one guy is saying "I used to believe.." "but now I believe..". What is the writing for then? I can just as well say "well I believe Eothas is a lizard and Eora is flat". Hogwash. Btw, wiki isn't done by random people. Wiki is done by people most invested into the game, and most familiar with the lore. If these people get it all wrong as you say, then the writing is bad. It's like saying "I'm a great math teacher" and after 4 yrs the best students in your class can't do 2+2x3. I comprehended hogwash and saw it as hogwash. You saw hogwash and are now contemplating what great thing could it in fact be, even if you have to break the laws of logic, even if you had to add interpolations. See above.
  2. Unfortunately some of this doesn't apply to my playstyle. I know that most of the time you can use a chokepoint but the emphasis is on "most of". In PotD Ironman there is no second chance. Also, I play in a party which means that abilities have different values. For example, "Set to Their Purpose.." is much better in a party than solo for obvious reasons. I agree that you need less invocations if multiclassing with wizard (I had in mind pure Chanter), but I still have to ask - are there boss battles that are long enough for you to run out of wizard spells? Or Empower takes care of that? It's not that I'm underestimating Beckoner summons, but merely saying that Beckoner is going to be casting them twice as often because of shorter duration and lower hp. And on top of that has less utility, and usefulness drops as the game progresses because -1 for an invocation of a certain type is much more valuable in the beginning (33% cost reduction) than later on. Also, less useful in a party (compared to Troubadour, both being pure builds of course, easier to compare). I'm sure both Beckoner and Troubadour are good though, summons seem very useful. The reason why I'm not playing Beckoner is 1) I don't like tiny summons, and 2) I like diversity and versatility that Troubadour offers over Beckoner. As for ancient weapons, they seem good on paper, but I just can't use them, the concept is too silly for my mind. Weapons floating in the air, striking by themselves, as the top level summon of a Chanter.. Of a million things you could design as a summon..
  3. This has nothing to do with how I think gods should be or are. I'm not talking about real life theology here which is why I'm not using capital letters. I expect from every story to be internally consistent. Someone being a god of "justice" while no human considers it to be so, nor does the god act like it, probably does not even consider himself/herself/itself (add your favorite politically correct pronoun) to be so, and yet the wiki/game states "god of justice" - that's hogwash. You can call it poetic liberty. I'll quote Xoti and say hogwash. If humans were suddenly able to fly in PoE and there was no half-decent explanation (like in Superman), I would also say hogwash. You're basically saying that if it looks like a duck, moves like a duck, sounds like a duck, tastes like a duck - it can in fact be a rocket because not all ducks need to be the way I think ducks should be. And to that I say - hogwash. I don't like when people make excuses of bad writing, and in fact there are plenty of real life examples of this. Sometimes a paragraph in a religious text will be complete nonsense, or perhaps an allegory, but there will always be people who will say 'no no, it's not bad writing, this is eternal truth and we must stick to it'. No, it's bad writing that's what it is. When I open PoE wiki I don't see "An entity that claims to be x". I see "Z, god of x". So it's bad writing. Either on wiki, in game, or both. And as for a god being a god of justice or something else, that doesn't mean justice did not exist before that god, it means that an entity embodies some quality to such an extent that you can use the term "god of.. x". Anyway, I think this discussion is kind of a dead end. I got answers and that's all.
  4. All gods being massive hypocrites and their attributes having nothing to do with how their act is.. *drum roll* .. is bad writing. The attributes of the gods are not fancy letters on their robes. They reflect their personalities. You don't read Greek mythology and then about how Athena was a pupil with "special needs" in school. Either gods really do have some attribute, or others believe they do, and thus they are considered a "god of x", but here neither is the case. Alright, thanks. So tl;dr version is that Eothas is a sort of a good guy who is trying to destroy the Wheel, or at least he's better than the others. If I remember correctly, in the end you can convince him to destroy Eora as well, although he doesn't like that idea (which makes me like him less. Still, that means there's at least one "good" / semi-good god. As for Eder, I suppose I'm being too harsh on him because he's just a farmboy. What does he knows of the gods. He thinks "god of life and rebirth.. oh that must mean he wants everyone to live.. but then what can be reborn uh.. my head hurts." and "rebirth hmm.. does that include destruction of one world and creation of another.. ah I should lay off metaphysics and go tend my fields" and furthermore "oh god of life, so he must like the necromancers because they make sure things are always alive.. sort of". Ah Eder.. you are a fine punching bag as pure Fighter, just let the others do the thinking.
  5. You can tell a badly written story by the fact that no one knows wtf is going on because everything is vague, incomplete, incoherent, things contradict one another and so on. Just look at the forum - endless debates on "what the writer had in mind". A good writer writes what he has in mind, and then if you have a deep mind you get even more out of it. A bad writer writes a lot of mumbo jambo and throws a bunch of "deep" words in in order to create an appearance of depth and meaning. Positive example here is Tolkien - his works are the result of clear and powerful mind. You know who is fighting whom, why, and what are their goals. If you have a sophisticated mind, you can get out of it a lot more than someone who only sees battles and adventure. His works produce awe and clarity. PoE story has the opposite effect on mind. So, that being said, can someone explain to me who is who in PoE because wiki is useless. 1. I supposedly promised something to Berath in PoE1. What exactly would that be and why is she still mentioning that? I played PoE1 a bit but I don't think I finished the storyline. I don't even know what Berath is about in any relevant way and as I said a wiki description of "oh that's a god of death / reincarnation / whatever" is by no means helpful in gameplay terms. These attributes are added to gods in some randomized pointless fashion, and thus for example Woedica seems to be a goddess of justice but she doesn't act like it at all, not in the least (bad writing is what it is). 2. What is Eothas doing? He wants to destroy the Wheel? Ok cool, and what does he want to achieve with that? I've seen countless pages written on this forum about that because no one understands anything (bad writing). So I'm supposed to make choices in an RPG game not knowing what it's all about? How can I side with or against Eothas if there is no story whatsoever? Gods don't explain anything because 'I'm only a Watcher so I don't need to know anything' (great writing), and Eothas also says "oh yea, you just let me do this thing and it's all gonna be great". Amazing approach, every justice system in the world should implement this. Forget witnesses and evidence, just go with the feeling and pick one side and rule in their favor. 3. What is Xoti about? Collecting souls in her lantern and trapping them there? Oh wait no, she's in fact freeing them! Spectacular writing, every totalitarian measure is introduced the same way - 'no no, we're not limiting your speech or freedom of movement, this is for freedom and protection!' Ok so what happens later? There are apparently some choices I can make with Xoti in the end, but what are those choices? Or do I need to let her trap souls whole game to find out in the end that she'll use them for some nefarious purpose? Why wouldn't I kill her right away and not risk it? And then I even read that, no matter what I tell her in the end, she might not listen to me. What? 4. What do I do with Eder? Oh that's right, I don't know, because I don't know who Eothas is and what he's doing. This guy fought against Eothas if I'm not wrong, and then if I'm not wrong it turned out that Eothas was doing something.. that's good? Whatever that is. And Xoti as a Priestess of Eothas is drooling all over this guy. Err, didn't he fight against her god, what am I missing here? Shouldn't she put Eder into the lantern? Right now I'm leaning towards endgame choice "Eothas, destroy everything", but I have a feeling the writer would be back in PoE3 or PoE2 DLC's.
  6. I've yet to see how their survival is later on, so can't comment on that. So far my summons do die, in a full party of 5, although I don't think I had all of them die yet. Later on summons do seem to have very high hp, but whether they die or not I've yet to see for myself before commenting. Still, as for not dying later on, at higher PL level Troubadour/Shildbearer could cast "Set to their Purpose" while skeleton Chant is on and with Brisk Recitation, and then just spam Lay on Hands on recharge (you become immortal, unless I missed something). Put combat speed on maximum and sooner or later skeletons will kill everyone unless there's some ridiculous hp regen that I don't know of. So, yeah. Btw you don't get interrupted as solo summoner? Or you use concentration ability/chant?
  7. It's 4x more hp, but since Beckoner can have twice as many, it's effectively 2x more hp versus single-target attacks. Versus AoE Beckoner's summons do much worse unless they're spread out. Surface area is irrelevant except for bodyblocking because there's enough space for attack, especially since you can cast summons behind enemies. Some summons are also ranged so it's a non-issue, and I'm not sure Drake takes any surface area (just flies?). This is another case of win-more. If you don't have enough surface area to attack, you probably won the battle and now it's just a matter of how fast you finish it. Beckoner may be better than I think it is, but you're not making a good case for him. Skeletons splitting into two is not relevant in the comparison with Troubadour because Troubadour can use the same ability as well, so you'll still have the same ratio of 1:2 in damage and 4:1 in hp, and I don't know how much exactly in duration. Also, these Skeletons have to compete with higher level summons and I'm not sure how well that goes for them, despite scaling. But again, we need to differentiate between win-more builds, and builds that get you through tough battles. If you're winning easily anyway, you can as Troubadour increase battle speed to maximum and that's that. But if that's not the case, you want summons to constantly be out there. Perhaps this is currently always the case with some high level summons who have high hp (I can't speak of endgame yet other than limited experiments with the console) and so going for double damage instead of double total hp is fine. However, Beckoner vs Troubadour is not only about 2x total hp vs 2x total dmg. If it were so, you could argue that there are (theoretically speaking) cases (rare as they might be) in which killing enemy faster is more beneficial because otherwise he would jump directly on your character with teleport, ranged spells or who knows what, and summons wouldn't be able to soak damage in any significant way. What Troubadour has over Beckoner is Brisk Recitation and I think you greatly underestimate the Invocations. "Set to their Purpose.." alone is incredible not just for the Chanter - allied casters will never run out of their spells as long as they are affected by the buff. CC invocations are all great. I would also add corpse explosion and tornado invocations, but I only experimented with that in a limited way with console and not in endgame areas and so I have to be reserved here, but both seemed great. Moreover, all of these invocations target different diffense (fortitude, reflex, will) and thus you can pick and choose. Healing/burn invocation also seems good, and turns your Chanter into priest with "Set to their Purpose..", with unlimited amount of healing 'spells'. I've noticed Skalds like Hel-Hyraf but I didn't use that much so can't say. You're saying that Beckoner is so good that after the summoning invocation he can just go AFK with full defense gear and it's gg, which also means you traded something else for Concentration buff because otherwise you get interrupted and you're done. That all put together I just don't see how Beckoner can compete with Troubadour who has so much going for him. Not to mention, versatility. If you can win every battle by summoning those weapons and going AFK, then okay, but as I said, that's just a win-more situation. I play PotD Ironman, and can't afford having my summons die in 2sec (especially to AoE) and then "ooops, no problem, I'll just reload the game, then spread out my summons so that with their great dps I win fast next time". I'm going to test stuff more and revise my views accordingly.
  8. I just had the same reaction! Those skeletons were just... I mean they are probably strong, been hearing a lot about the greatness of beckoners but... Size matters ok?! :D Actually, I would say that in serious encounters Troubadour's summons are stronger. Beckoner's summons are win-more summons. If battles are easy, Beckoner will win faster. That's all there is to it. Troubadour's summons have 4x more hp, last much longer, are much bigger and so they can block corridors more or less just as well as more numerous but smaller summons, and at PL7 Troubadour can block enemies much better because he can summon 2x more skeletons with Brick Recitation + whatever is the name of skeleton Chant. At around 20 INT that's 5 skeletons that Troubadour will have, plus whatever Invocation summon he chose. On top of all that, Troubadour is more versatile and can cast other invocations more frequently than Beckoner. It's not like Beckoner can spam invocations without overriding previous ones. And yes, size matters!
  9. What exactly do Wisps do? I tried the basic version and they do almost no dmg and no additional effects. Is it about their upgrade and how good is that? Also, if someone is in the last 1/3 of the game, do higher level summons even die? They seem to have a lot of hp, but their damage is very disproportional (low). At least that's the case with Dragon, Drake and Swamp plant. It could be by design that Weapons and Ogres provide more damage, but still, they die? PS: As for animated weapons.. Boring. They may be the best numbers-wise but come on, I just can't believe that top level summon is a.. standalone weapon. That's as criminal a design as character creation face selection. Not a single good one, and you only have 1 choice. For example, human and elf #2 face is a female face with I'm-in-love eyes. #3 face is scarred. So you only have 1 male face in an RPG game. Also, Both PL1 summons are skeletons. At least in PoE1 the ghost looked differently. Now it's pretty much the same as skeletons. Again, boring.
  10. No, because Beckoner's summons are so tiny that ogres probably look like midgets. I created Beckoner just to see how much smaller summons are, and as soon as I spawned those skeletons on lvl1 I said no thanks. Wyrms look like mosquitos. Although, in all fairness, Ogres are so huge that maybe even with Beckoner they would look okay as some kind of human-sized barbarians.
  11. Although I'm no fan of skeletons and necromancy, I would currently have to go with PL7 Chant that spawns skeletons, on a Troubadour with Brick Recitation and as high INT as you can get. This is what I'm aiming at. There's so much utility and synergy potential here. Notable mentions: Dragon looks great, and the ground shakes as he moves. But his attacks are kinda meh. No special attack animation, nothing, just an ordinary number pops up as he deals damage. Swamp plant looks cool, and attack animation is better, but still a bit lacking in satisfaction. If we don't count those skeletons, I think this would be my favorite though. Ogres.. not a fan of barbarism. But this is a summon that actually has a smashing attack animation. Very satisfying watching them attack someone.
  12. Chanter Troubadour, solo class, full party (more or less, companions/sidekicks only). Reached level 5 (PotD Ironman). I don't badly need any Invocation or Chant right now (although I might select one for fun and then respec later on when I get a better chant that I actually want). This leaves me with 1-2 ability points. Am I going to get anything out of putting points in +10 Will, or +10 Fortitude, or +10 Reflex? Someone said enemies don't attack will defense much in PoE2. I am too early in the game to know what I'll need later on. So far I haven't noticed enemies attacking any of these three defenses. It's has been pretty much all about deflection. (Actually, I think Ikawha struck me with some spell, but can't think of much else, and don't remember what defense her spell targetted). I also can't exactly say what 'build' I use, because I'm all over the place in battles often testing different weapons, different armor, different approach and so on. From powergaming perspective I would mostly use a Pike, with Morning Star if I need to lower foe's Fortitude. Ranged weapon in a third slot (I like Arms Bearer). I don't use a shield and perhaps never will (for style). At PL7+ I will most likely be surrounded by allied summons (even if I go melee), which I assume will soak some of the enemy abilities (along with standard attacks). Also, 1H sword looks great. But from powergaming perspective it doesn't seem to offer anything. Too much risk compared to Pike, not enough benefit to offset being in melee range. Nevertheless, out of curiosity, how useful would it be to put 1 ability point into that 1H+no shield skill? Solo class Chanter doesn't have weapon abilities like Barbarian or Monk, but there's still plenty of time to do some simple attacks. Anyway, I know the game is easy but I still like to know what's more optimal, and from what's optimal I choose what's stylish and fun.
  13. You don't want Beckoner and here's why: 1. Beckoner summons are tiny. That was the first thing that I noticed in the description of a subclass, so I went to test it and was greatly disappointed. Wyrms look like mosquitoes. 2. There is a higher level chant that spawn skeletons. Troubadour can spawn 100% more skeletons because of Brisk Recitation. I'm not a fan of skeleton summons because I'm not into necromancy, but this ability is fun to use. I don't know how effective they are in end game, because I only tested it with the console by leveling up my character and then sailing around with my ship searching for enemies. These skeletons were able to win fights alone. You can literally go AFK with one character. Yes, drake kills them all in one breath, but you immediately spawn more so it doesn't matter. Even if they die fast in the end game, they still have hp, and can soak damage. That's a lot of damage mitigation, and also some damage. They can be buffed by some spells (at least the tooltip says they are affected) but only some - Spark the Souls of the Righteous will not affect these skeletons (I tested it), but priest heals that I tried did affect them. 3. Troubadour is much more versatile, and "Set to their purpose.." invocation is OP. It makes -1 summon cost less relevant. Reason to take Beckoner, maybe: 1. Your summons deal 2x more damage since you summon twice as many. The reason I said "maybe" is because I don't know how fast they die later (with 1/4 of hp of normal summons) on if they die at all. My quick experiment with the console showed that only the skeletons ever die, while dragons and the swamp plant don't. But I only tested on enemies on nearby islands. Summons also take a long time to cast, so having to cast them more often is damage lost. I'm not saying they don't make up for it, but it's still a part of the calculation. Reason to single class: 1. Set to their Purpose is so ridiculous that getting that much earlier is a huge difference. 2. Elder Dragon has boring attack without any fanfare, but it looks awesome and the ground shakes as he walks around. 3. You enjoy using ordinary weapons. Reason to multiclass: 1. You want to constantly cast some spell/invocation/ability, and lower level abilities are all you need. Don't count lvl VII abilities as multiclass gets them so late in the game. Right now I'm only into solo class Troubadour, and multiclass Skald. Because Skald benefits more from casting low level (low cost) invocations (such as Paralyze). The higher the cost of invocations, lower the benefit of Skald bonus (-1 of 3 is 33% benefit, -1 of an invocation that costs 6 is much less of a benefit). From powergaming perspective, the jury is still on on whether multiclass is better than single class, and when. From casual/fun perspective, (unless you're going solo) single class is arguably better because you get to play with more abilities of different kind. If you love summoning, you will at least sometimes want to summon that dragon, and you don't want it to be smaller than your character (ok, I don't know how small exactly is beckoner's dragon, but you get what I mean).
  14. But I don't roleplay as a bad guy Others did nothing to me. I made sure during combat not to accidentally hit the fisherman. And I like Eothas from what I've read about him so far (including what happens at the end of PoE2, if I understood it correctly), even considered creating a Priest of Eothas as my character, but I'm not sure that would be fun. I always preferred Chanters, and besides, I'm not sure two priests would be that useful or interesting (Xoti seems like a nice companions so far, minus her mild cursing and affection for Eder (not liking Eder since he fought against Eothas)).
  15. Right, but I'm mainly concerned about what exactly is an "ally" in Deadfire. And the thing with these games usually is that until you test it you can't know for sure because of so many bugs, vague or non-existent descriptions, hundreds of different categories and so on. PS: I went to test myself because "pretty sure" is not good enough for me. It turns out that Circle of Protection works on everyone fighting on my side. On the other hand few other abilities that I tried don't. So it's yet again guesswork like everything else in this game. I've no idea how anything works in this game until I try it, which is tedious and I don't have time for that.
  16. Will I be able to fix the ship without Ikawha? Is she crucial at that point or later? Is there anything I'm going to miss? It's still early in the game so I can restart no problem. The story: I went to that village to talk to Mokeha and see what the fuss is about and why she beat someone so badly. It turned out that she's a 3rd wave feminist with an awful attitude and behavior, so through dialogue I chose to attack her. And subsequently killed her. That felt good. Then (spoiler!) Ikawha turned on me. Apparently this was her daughter and for her blood is thicker than water and more relevant than justice. I was only level 3 but I killed her as well, and her henchmen. That also felt good. But now I'm worried that politically correct townsfolk will not want to fix/repair my ship. In which case I'll have to tell them that '..I'm all out of bubblegum'.
  17. Regarding buffs, what exactly counts as "ally"? Are Chanter summons "ally"? Or just party members. Are creatures fighting on your side "allies" or not because they don't have green circle around them and you can't control them? This is the case, for example, with Charmed creatures.
  18. By "free invocation" you mean free to cast (per power level), not +1 additional point to spend on Invocations?
  19. And it's the number one character that gets you into these near-defeat situations because it's not doing anything during the critical moments of the battle. Description of Chanter class is: "Does nothing for x seconds. If you manage to survive because your party was handicapped during this time, you have 90% chance to instantly win battle." Chanter class is like Eagle class in Tolkien's world. They are nowhere to be seen but if you're doomed there's a 90% chance they will appear and do something useful.
  20. Which in a situation where every class can finish the game (in a group) - is the definition of underpowered. Chanters aren't even underpowered though, they are useless. Underpowered would be a class that uses abilities but they're not good enough. Chanter is a class that doesn't use abilities. By the time they can use an ability the battle is over or decided (or would've been decided if they weren't idling).
  21. Only if you use clothes, which you really don't have to. Put him in proper armor and he's going to do fine.
  22. If you're playing Ironman I would advise doing them.. later. If you're not doing Ironman and want to do this as early as possible you can always use ultimate open space party/tactic that I use which is pretty much 1 Chanter with Blessed chant, 1 Paladin with his own speed chant, and if you have Fast Runner on your characters that's good too (I didn't try it without Fast Runner though but might still be ok). This way you just do hit and run (with bows), and while you can do it with just one chanter you're going to do it faster if you have more chanters because you run until they can summon phantasm, then you summon those and shoot with ranged weapons while phantasm tanks. If you're not doing it that way expect some silly enemy abilities such as druid one-shooting your casters, at least if you're around lvl5 or so. And we're talking about guided missiles here.
  23. I'd really like test data on this because monks already take dual wielding which seems to reduce recovery only, and then swift strikes which might reduce recovery only.. you see where this is going right? A lot of redundancy can occur here and in the end it might be that the skill is really doing either nothing or it's some marginal improvement that you can't notice unless you count few fps's. Also, what's with fists and other fast weapons, did I read correctly fists have longer recovery? Why would that be and what are the actual numbers?
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