KDubya

An unbalanced single player game is just as bad as an unbalanced multiplayer game. Things should not be equal but balanced. Currently dual wielding does 50% more dps than any other fighting style. Is that a problem? In my opinion yes as it highly incentivizes you to dual wield as anything else is self gimping. In PoE I self gimped on PotD by not using Priests and other Vancian casters and used four melee types using story companions. I'd rather not have to roll with single class only because multiclass just breaks the game. Maybe they can change how powerlevels affect things to make them relevant. Also as suggested above having an upgrade add more than the base power would be a good start.

I'd like to see them take questions from the forum rather than from random people who logged into their stream and ask dumbass questions like 'are their going to be elves?' and the like. They could have a post where people put well thought out queries and the Devs can then look them over ahead of time and answer the ones they like.

How were Paladins in PoE bad? I thought they were one of the better classes and liked to have two of them in my team. Now this is after the big Paladin patch which was the same as the Defender patch. I'd say Paladins now are top tier or maybe even the best. For sure they are the best choice for a multiclass where you care about self sufficiency or survival via better defenses. Since they've taken away their flavorful malus they next need to nerf them hard as they get too many free abilities and are too powerful now with no downside. I'd much rather have a bold color Paladin with a big malus than a bland pastel Paladin that are all various shades of vanilla.

I think if they lowered the innate +50% attack speed from dual wielding and/or added some sort of malus to accuracy and/or damage that'd go along way towards some parity. Then give two handed weapons double bonus from Might/Strength and maybe bigger magical bonuses as they're bigger and all. Additional penetration could also have a place here. Have Two handed be the choice for the really strong and have dual wielding be more appealing to average strength types.

Regardless as to the why, the net result was that everything could be fairly well balanced. Paladins had big restrictions on their roleplay actions to go along with their powerful abilities, Barbarians had big armor restrictions and if I remember correctly the original version set forth in Dragon magazine restricted all magic item use. The unrestricted multi classing lets you make some real Frankenstein monsters which are fun but game breaking.

I did the math when the last update came out. DPS in ranked order Dualwielding accurate fast weapons 9.54 dps Dualwielding Sabres 9 dps Dualwielding fast weapons 8.67 dps Dualwielding spears 8.0 dps Dualwielding slow 7.95 dps Single wielding fast accurate 6.97 dps Single wielding Sabre 6.63 dps Two handed weapons 6.62 dps Single wielding fast 6.45 dps Single wielding slow 5.86 dps Single wielding spear 5.79 dps Fast accurate with shield 5.72 dps Sabre with shield 5.35 dps Fast with shield 5.2 dps Spear with shield 4.76 dps Slow with shield 4.73 dps I adjusted damage based on increased accuracy as trading misses for crits in a situation where acc=deflection, which gives +2% damage per accuracy. I also ignored penetration as its weapon based not style based.

I'd like to hear the Devs comment on how they seek to balance multi-classes. The more I look at it I just don't see how it can be accomplished. Sure its a single player game but balance still matters. If some combinations are massively more powerful it sort of ruins the experience. Since cancelling multiclass is non-starter, maybe they'll disallow subclasses or a few specific classes from multiclassing.

That is intended yeah. But imagining a Cipher/Rogue, u get both sneak attack and soul whip at lvl 1 so you will do more damage than single rogue or cipher with auto attack. Unless the +1 power level ability/spell is > the double passive u get, I don’t think single class is more powerful. Presumably it will be properly balanced over the long haul as you level up so that a single class grows more powerful than the multi-class. First level abilities are irrelevant in that case. The innate bonuses from classes will never be irrelevant. Consider what is in my opinion the best melee the Paladin/Berserker. They will always have carnage and the +20 defensive boost to everything that Paladins have. They will always have Frenzy and Flames of Devotion. They will have all of this at 2nd level. This gets them extra damage, extra penetration, fire lash, extra attack speed, extra health, and better defensive boosts than four separate abilities would yield for defense, plus their attacks become AoE due to Carnage. Unless the highest level abilities are some sort of 'I win button' I don't see how a pure Berserker or a pure Paladin will be as good let alone better. I'm starting to understand why AD&D restricted classes like Paladin and Barbarian from multi-classing.

I don't know, I'd say that Resolve now is more unbalanced as a powerful attribute at least for spellcasters than Might was in PoE 1 as it offers spell damage and healing and Deflection and Will. I'm not sure how moving so many benefits into Resolve has solved the problem of their being an overly powerful attribute. It hasn't solved whatever problem they were trying to solve and instead has made for a whole series of cascading problems that will now need to be addressed. The stats are now more dumpable, hybrid melee/magic are nerfed as are healing melee and the net gain is ......... I'm not sure what was gained.

Perhaps after some balancing it'll be different, but based on how things currently are I'm starting to believe that multi classing of two powerful melee classes effectively breaks the game. In PoE single classes had trade offs; Paladins were very strong defensively while Barbarians were very strong offensively. Now I can combine both and have none of the drawbacks, I'll have great defenses and great offense. They've already took away the minor malus that Paladins had, my hopes that they'll somehow manage to balance the classes are diminishing.

Should multi-classing be limited like it was in AD&D 2nd Ed? Specifically: certain classes like Paladin, Barbarian, Ranger and Monk either blocked or limited to a few choices such as Ranger/Cleric. No multi-classing two melee types such as Barbarian and Paladin I've had a lot of fun mixing classes looking for the most powerful synergy but I'm starting to think that maybe its too much. A Paladin/Berserker is just flatout better than either a Paladin or a Berserker, so much so that anything else would be handicapping myself. For the sake of game balance should the total freedom of everything mixes with everything be curtailed to a few specific blends?

The original problem was that once the devs took away concentration and interrupts from stats, that Resolve ceased to be useful. That issue should have been fixed by finding something for Resolve such as reduced duration of enemy afflictions. Instead they mucked up Might and now have all sorts of cascading problems due to that. If i want a stat system just like they use in D&D I can go play any of the many D&D games out there. Having something different for a different game world was a nice change as was adding guns. Like I said in another post I'd have been happy with no Vancians at all, heck I'd have been down with no elves, or dwarves either.

You seem to have written that wrong, I fixed it for you. You seem to have some sort of hipster fetish Did some hipster take your girlfriend or kick your dog or something? In PoE a caster did not need to have a high Might to be good, plenty of great builds concentrated on Perception and Intellect for accurate long lasting afflictions. Now in DeadFire a caster is actively encouraged to dump strength as it does nothing for them besides auto attacks which should never be used as you'll have so many per encounter spells from mid level on that you'll never run out. Now its back to the standard fare casters=weak. Hurray for being original

Don't forget that dual wielding does near 50% more DPS than two handed when auto-attacking. There just is no good reason to not dual wield in the game as it currently is balanced. If you really wanted to have a great primary attack you'd be better served with single wielding a sabre than using a Great Sword, better DPS and a +12 accuracy for more hits, crits and penetration.

It's the hated Muscle Wizard! I will see you destroyed, you hear me, DESTROYED! This battle was fought and won by Might back in the beta of PoE. Time to move on and accept defeat. Might being 'soul power' which fueled all the damage for all the characters was a nice refreshing change from the standard bog of strength for melee, and some other stat for magic. It gave PoE a distinct identity from every other RPG. Add in the unique Cipher using focus, Monks with wounds and Chanters building phrases over time and you had a new game system that matched a new renaissance themed game world. Personally I think they should have dropped Wizards, Priests and Druids from the entire game and just had all spell casting be from focus fueled Ciphers or Chanters. It'd been much more unique and made for a better game. PoE was plagued with the overpoweredness of Vancian casters late game and now DeadFire is plagued with the uselessness of Vancian casters who are now not Vancian exactly.

But casual players will be playing the easier difficulties such as normal where enemies are weak enough that it won't really matter. Even then how hard will it be for them to just switch to a stiletto, grab an estoc or activate a mace modal? For armor to be meaningful it has to stop damage at least occasionally. In PoE early game armor was huge as damage was low, wearing plate or brigandine at level 2 was a massive advantage, while late game enemies hit hard enough that enchanted robes or padded were way more offensive while being close enough defensively to the heavy plate. I preferred the first version of beta where under penetrating was a big -70% not the mushy -25% per point that they are going to now. Before penetration mattered, now its back to damage is always king and use a great sword and sabre for everything.

A Skald mixed with a Paladin does really well. He gets auras, chants, invocations, heals, way better defenses, he pretty much gets everything covered. Plus if the strength/resolve stays the way it is you can leave strength at base and add to Resolve for better heals and invocations.

How would that work, a negative that subtracts from the enemy Intellect for duration? Basically yes. Example: Enemy casts 10 second duration spell on you. He has 12 Intellect so gets +10% duration. You have a 15 Resolve so you get a -25% duration. Depending on how the math works you could end up with only 8.5 seconds of hostile effect or so. You dump Resolve to a 3 and you'd have a +35% duration so it'd be 14.5 seconds. It even fits thematically as a strong Resolve lets you shake off harmful effects while being a coward makes you more susceptible. The argument about Might affecting all damage was hashed out before PoE and all encompassing Might won.

I've still not seen anything better for Resolve than having it affect the duration of afflictions cast on you like a reverse Intellect. Then put all damage back into Might and move the deflection boost to Perception. There everything is fixed!!!! Imported characters will still be similar in the new game. Nothing is a dump stat. Order is restored to the multiverse

So if the Wayfarer penalty was a total reduction of sneak attack to no benefit, that'd be better for you? As in reduce damage by 50% instead of the 30% that it had? I could get behind that. Its thematically fitting and gets past the logic problem of just slightly pulling your punches. The big penalties plus the extra power at creation made Paladins a bold color not a pale pastel. Loud and Proud, its the paladin's way

I seem to remember a sorting tool in PoE inventory where you could have your stash sorted by value. That made selling off mass amounts of loot pretty simple as all the cheap stuff was at the top and you could click through it pretty darn fast. Is that feature not good enough anymore?

Keep in mind that the lack of a different bonus is functionally a "penalty." That being said, it doesn't mean there's definitely no reason for Order penalties, but sometimes, the whole "you get a bonus, but also a malus" thing is less valuable, because the malus is redundant when just a "because you picked A, you don't get B, C, or D" penalty would've sufficed. Also, a malus is only useful in this type of balancing when it makes things more interesting. I'm always a bigger fan of "you can do this cool extra thing, but you have this kind of crazy, interesting malus" over "You get +5 to this, but -5 to this other thing." I found the penalties to be fitting to the Orders, or at least the ones i can remember. Bleak Walkers being better at dishing out damage via better FoD but being bad at healing makes sense. Kind Wayfarers doing less damage when doing a sneak attack makes sense as they are honorable 'good guys'. Gold Pact not having auras ..... not sure of the why but their +4 armor ability is super powerful so they needed something punishing. Shield Bearers not being able to use Lay on Hands on themselves sounds fitting as they are all about helping others. Darcozzi having less zeal ...... I guess they just ran out of ideas. Only problem I have with these is that the penalty doesn't really match the bonus. For example, Bleak Walkers are better at offense but worse at healing? So, if you don't care about healing anyone (which you don't HAVE to do... you have 4 other party members to do healz), you just get a free offense bonus. Instead, just for example, if you were to, say, grant a critical damage bonus, but reduce attack speed, both of those things affect attacking. You can't be like "I want to do more DPS, but I don't care how quickly I attack, u_u...". Or, maybe your heals are larger areas, but are slightly less potent. Those are direct tradeoffs. "You get a cool bonus, but also you aren't allowed to wear spiffy boots" is not really a great tradeoff, no matter how thematically it fits, as statistically only like half the people are going to care about a cool bonus, whilst EVERYONE'S going to care about wearing cool boots! (I jest... obviously it's the opposite, ). Why should the penalty match the bonus? If a Bleak Walker got their better FoD but attacked slower they'd be a gimp. If instead a Bleak Walker heals -30% and is healed -30% that makes a choice. Paladins have or at least in PoE had, the best single target heal, loosing out on that is a big malus, not to mention that you yourself get healed at a -30% rate. With the big power comes a big price. Thematically Bleak Walkers are all about solving problems with overwhelming violence, it makes sense that they are bad healers. I think the penalties were fine and added to the choice of Order. Hopefully Obsidian will put them back into the game. If new players can't be bothered to read the Order descriptions and understand that they get a malus then perhaps this is not the game for them.

Pumping up Resolve for better deflection is a waste, but taking a Paladin mix into your multiclass is a quick and easy +20 deflection with one pick for Deep Faith. My best melee performers are Paladin/Berserkers with Goldpacts being very good due to their all powerful +4 armor buff. They perform much better than a Berserker/Soul Blade who does more damage but takes a lot more damage in return. Their reduction in durability is noticeable. The Lagefeth Broodmother is tough on PotD when you just walk up and start the fight.

Keep in mind that the lack of a different bonus is functionally a "penalty." That being said, it doesn't mean there's definitely no reason for Order penalties, but sometimes, the whole "you get a bonus, but also a malus" thing is less valuable, because the malus is redundant when just a "because you picked A, you don't get B, C, or D" penalty would've sufficed. Also, a malus is only useful in this type of balancing when it makes things more interesting. I'm always a bigger fan of "you can do this cool extra thing, but you have this kind of crazy, interesting malus" over "You get +5 to this, but -5 to this other thing." I found the penalties to be fitting to the Orders, or at least the ones i can remember. Bleak Walkers being better at dishing out damage via better FoD but being bad at healing makes sense. Kind Wayfarers doing less damage when doing a sneak attack makes sense as they are honorable 'good guys'. Gold Pact not having auras ..... not sure of the why but their +4 armor ability is super powerful so they needed something punishing. Shield Bearers not being able to use Lay on Hands on themselves sounds fitting as they are all about helping others. Darcozzi having less zeal ...... I guess they just ran out of ideas. I just figure that sooner or later paladins will be hit with the nerf bat and lose at least their starting ability pick since they get one free with each order.

Another reason is that previously Paladins all had a penalty to go with their extra powers. Bleak Walkers, Goldpact and Kind Wayfarers all had big penalties to go with their strong power while Shield Bearers had a smaller penalty to go with their weaker power. Now without penalties the other Orders just offer more.