KDubya

The downside from the Berserker is that friendly fire happens, which is not all that bad. Anyone standing too close gets hit with your Carnage. If you are a Kind Wayfarer and use your healing FoD you heal both your team and the enemy That's it. Its not as if you lose control and you randomly hit your team mates with your battle axe. The Berserker gets you the +2 armor and the +2 penetration over the normal rage, plus you take damage yourself and hit your team with Carnage. If that is too much look at the Corpse Eater or the normal Barbarian. (Can't really recommend the Mage Slayer as its malus to spells applies to its own abilities). All get the bonus damage from being blooded, faster attack speed from Bloodlust, extra damage from One Stands Alone, the Might and Con boost from Rage, extra armor from Thick Skin. Barbarians have a lot of useful powers and abilities. Blend it with something with a defensive boon like a Paladin, Priest of Wael, Trickster or Wizard and you shore up its weakness regarding poor deflection.

I started long ago with AD&D, actually my first experience was with actual D&D before AD&D came out. Nothing about those stats were balanced, a 17 str was barely an advantage and you needed an 18/76+ to actually start to see a difference. Best move was in Baldurs gate picking a 1/2 Orc and just getting a 19 for a massive increase. Strength controlled both hitting and damage and was the be all stat for any melee. A Wizard had best have an 18 int or else he was going to be hard blocked from getting the highest level spells. Getting a 20 con (dwarf or 1/2 orc after reading a manual) got you regen so you never had to spend weeks resting and healing after a hard fight. D&D 3.0 and beyond just changed how you rolled and ended up just making characters into clone builds. Want a Paladin who gets to use the top end powers? Best get your charisma to 25+. The same applies to every class. Add in required feats and you end up needing a separate program like a character builder in order to navigate your way through and get the feats that you want. Every stat not on the critical path was dumped. Now the SPECIAL stat system in Fallout was rather unique and seemed rather balanced. The character system in Fallout 4 had great potential but is ultimately brought down by the ability to max out every stat and get every perk through limitless leveling. In New Vegas the stats did a good job and promoted diversity and every character could be different from someone else's. PoE system allowed for different stats to all be useful. An effective Fighter could concentrate on Might or Perception or Dexterity and be relatively balanced offensively. It gave great flexibility in how you built a character. A Wizard using single target spells like missiles could go all in on Might, one wanting more AoE would need to balance in Intellect, while one concentrating on crowd control could forego Might and go all in on Intellect for duration, and all would need enough Perception to be able to land their spells. It was a deep system with many subtleties. Now DeadFire looks to be getting much more simplified. Wizards who won't be using auto attacks can completely dump Strength with NO DOWNSIDE. Anyone without spells or healing can dump Resolve, unfortunately most everyone has one or the other so they'd best leave it at base ten. If Resolve needs a purpose here are two options: Have Resolve decrease or increase the duration of negative afflictions or DoTs applied against you. Basically it'd act like how your Intellect increases duration on your spells but would effect your enemies spells. Split Intellect and give Resolve the duration part while Intellect keeps the AoE part. Either way they should drop the deflection boost from Resolve and give it to Perception.

I’m not sure how “pretty obvious” factors in this discussion; melee builds may be obvious but they are good and fun to play. In answer to your query: Yes The purpose of combat is “to compel our opponent to fulfill our will” (cit.), which in this case is for our opponent to die. Doing so with brutal efficiency is the entire point of DPS-oriented builds and it rewards your effective character building choices by making you feel powerful—which you are I appreciate that not everyone powergames or number-crunches. In fact, I expect the majority to roleplay and incur this issue to a lesser extent than most of us do here. However, I still contend that it should be possible for a full party of casters to be as powerful as a full party of melee combatants. Right now it is probably not even a viable choice for PotD, or it would require luck and crazy amounts of careful planning and micromanagement. You don’t have to build your party for maximum efficiency; you have to be able to if you want it. Currently that’s only possible in melee and not if you want to focus on summoned weapons. But if you can mopping the PoTD super easily, then there are something wrong here, either the difficulty is not enough or some build is too powerful now. Also u know that in beta u didn't have any good gears, you only using fine/excellent weapon and armor. If you're already wiping the map, then it will be even easier if u have full gear equipped. Imo PoTD should be the difficulty that requires you to plan carefully and do a lot micromanagements. But melee classes are too powerful u can easily solo mostly of areas with right builds, thus is the problem. Its not like PotD was difficult in PoE so why should it be different here? Once you got a good understanding of the game mechanics and a little meta-knowledge PotD was easily beatable. That's with the story companions, not dumping stats below 10, and not using consumables hardly. It surely did not require some awesome ability to micro. Now solo runs are a whole nother beast. Right now my teams are mopping the floor with PotD and the only common denominator is a lot of melee. It can be Paladins or Monks or Barbarians or Ciphers or Wizards or Rogues or Fighters or Priests or Chanters or Druids and as long as most are melee combatants, preferably dual wielding, then PotD is pretty easy. My all Monk hybrid team hit trouble with the Forest Lurkers as they all had 90+ Fortitude and my AI was set to use Force of Anguish all the time so hitting was tricky at level seven, I also discovered that not having any healing at all is a big negative for taking on the Broodmother. Still the Monk Ping Pong squad is progressing on. As always i find the ability to survive long enough to triumph is better than trying to kill quicker, hence my great appreciation for anything mixed with a Paladin and/or someone who has access to illusion buffs like mirrored image.

After playing a few games with the new changes, I still feel that they changes were not needed. Penalties add to the flavor of a class as much or even more so than its bonuses. Now Paladins alone have no penalties while every single other subclass does. Deciding between the bonus and the penalty in what Order to choose felt meaningful. Can I handle the reduced healing of a Bleak Walker while enjoying the extra potency of their FoD? Can I still follow a Kind Wayfarer's ideals of honesty and benevolence when it reduces my damage output when I take undue advantage of an enemy? Along with the huge boost from Gilded Enmity of +4 armor could i handle not having an aura? These were all meaningful choices and enhanced the roleplaying aspects of their particular Order. Now it all just more powah!!! Want more FoD damage? Be a Bleak Walker Want more armor? Be a GoldPact Want FoD that heal? Be a Kind Wayfarer, also helps with people who have trouble being a cruel and aggressive Bleak Walker. Want to be witty and clever and have a useless flame shield? Be a Darcozzi. Want to be rather weak and bland? Be a Shield Bearer They should re-think this change.

The new Resolve and Strength just makes the Orlan Wizard from Aedyr a dominant caster archetype. Dumping Strength to 2 just means that auto attacks are bad. You have enough spells that you can just cast one after another and finish combat before you run out of spells. Adding those eight stat points into Constitution keeps your Fortitude the same and gives you an extra 40% health. Basically your Wizard will be just less than a barbarian/paladin multi who has base 10 con. Max out Resolve to 20 and place the rest of the points as you choose. Just don't select any spells like summoned weapons or kalkoth's minor blights, stick to missile strikes, lightning bolts or fireballs. For my non casters I just leave Resolve at base ten and treat it as a nerf to healing and regen. My Ciphers just keep at base ten and stick with mainly melee attacks. It seems more effective to have an 18 Strength for damage and focus gain and a ten Resolve than to split it to 14 and 14. If they ever fix casting times I'll just concentrate on CC like paralyze and blind and do damage via melee rather than using damage based powers. Actually I've found that adding to dexterity makes a bigger difference now as it helps both melee and casting.

To address the situation with Ciphers: Make Cipher powers all instant cast but have some recoveryYou need to build up focus already so doubly penalizing with long casts is not warranted The ex-vancians can blast off all their spells with out pause so the Ciphers need instant cast to be more than better auto attackers due to soul whip. To address the combat speed problem Fix the slow speed at start of combat or whatever as it currently seems like it is perpetually stuck in fast mode Fix the auto pause on cast so that it works, currently it turns into a slide show as it pauses every frame Changing melee attack speed might not be too bad of a solution.Instead of 0.5 sec attack and 2 sec recovery for fast, try changing it to 1 second attack and 4 second recovery, Slow would go to 1.4 sec attack and 6 second recovery. Add some animation showing some feints and parries to fill the time and see how it plays. Regardless of what changes are made to casters, the current system is so dominated by melee that using anything else is just self-limiting. My last party on PotD were all Shattered Pillar hybrids (had a Bleak walker, a Wizard, a Trickster, a Soul Blade and a Devoted) who all had Force of Anguish with the Ai set to use every chance it could. The enemy becomes a mass of ping pong balls being knocked all over the place and quickly destroyed. What can you do to casting that will out perform that sort of pwnage?

WHY???? Its not like it was brokenly overpowered or anything. At +2 armor it could kind of compete with the mechanical advantages that dual wielding offers. At +1 it just seems way too underpowered, especially considering how unwieldy it is to try and set up situations where their massive disengagement attack would ever come into play. Now you might as well roll a Devoted who dual wields with a shield in the other slot for when you need extra tanking ability.

Two interesting observations I've made: Dual wielding a sabre and a fast accurate dagger, club or rapier does more dps than dual sabres, still has the bigger hitting sabre for primary attacks, and looks cool (not the club so much but ... ) An offhand dagger also gives you the option of using its modal for extra deflection when desired. Dual wielding a Sabre and a pistol or blunderbuss gets you the dual weapon attack speed boost to both. So if you have only one good sabre you can dual wield a pistol, shoot at the start and then rush into battle while getting the attack speed applied to only your good sabre.

Without looking at the one-handers, just here, there's a reason the greatsword needs to be 25% damage superior to the other two handers -- it's got lower Penetration. Now that being down a point of Pen means a 25% damage loss, without the 25% damage penalty on all the other two handers, when you run the math really counter-intuitive results start popping out vs. various AR ranges. If you moved the Estoc down to the same damage as the quarterstaff, for example, the Estoc would be clearly superior vs almost all damage ranges because it would hit overpenetration bonus damage much faster. I think the appropriate "fix" would be to move the quarterstaff into "group three," collapsing the calculation into two "groups," and just consider "+25% base damage" one of the Greatsword's two perks. Every weapon gets two perks, for the Greatsword it's two damage types and bonus damage, for the Estoc it's double extra penetration, etc. for the quarterstaff it's reach and accuracy, etc. edit: I'd probably collapse a lot of the one-handed weapon groups too, there are just too many tiers and it's too confusing. That problem is more complicated though Comparing the polax or Morningstar with the great sword. All have dual damage types, the great sword does 24.5% more damage compared to +2 penetration. Being one penetration short gets you -25% multiplicative damage which sort of equates to one of the two extra penetration. This makes the band where the great sword is not the best choice very small. Where Great Sword has adequate penetration it does a massive 24.5% extra base damage which gets multiplied by all the rest of the damage adders. When missing by one you'd do the same damage, when missing by 2, 3, or 4 penetration it'd be better for the poleax and anything greater than missing by 5 would be better for the Great Sword. This is not considering a situation where slash/pierce is better than slash/crush or pierce/crush. An Estoc would hold the bonus for values where the greatsword missed penetration by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. As it stands now, barring a roleplaying choice, metagame knowledge of elite loot, or an overwhelming fascination with their weapon modals, choosing a Great Sword is a no brainer versus a polax or a Morningstar. An Estoc has enough extra penetration to expand its niche to a large enough range to make it a better choice than the other two. If the 24.5% difference was more like 12-15% it'd be a better balance in my opinion. I also agree that the Quarterstaff is weirdly placed between the two and should be in the same group as the polax, Morningstar and estoc.

I'd like to request a conditional that checks the various defenses of the target. Example - Force of Anguish targets fortitude not deflection. I'd like a conditional that will use Force of Anguish only when fortitude is less than deflection. I'd also like a conditional that would keep a character from moving and incurring a disengagement attack. As it is now I specify 'closest enemy' and 'not' if enemy health less than 25% for conditions on spamming out Force of Anguish. (The health check is to not waste it on guys about to die anyway) If I could specify target biggest threat or spellcaster, not necessarily closest but with the condition that he won't run across the screen and get massive disengagements that'd be great.

Not sure what icons you are talking about but penetration is simple. All armor has specific armor values for specific damage typesExample - plate armor has 9 armor for pierce and slash and 6 armor for crush All weapons (and spells) have a penetration value as well as their specific damage typeExample - sword has penetration of 5 and slash and pierce damage, while a Mace has a 7 penetration and does crush damage You attack the enemy in plate with your swordYour 5 penetration slash and pierce is less than the 9 armor value. Each point of penetration less than what you need causes a reduction of 25% so in this case you are short 4 penetration so you get the maximum under penetration penalty of -75% damage (I think this is the number, it used to be 70% but the concept is the same) You attack the enemy in plate with your maceYour 7 penetration crush is greater than the 6 crush armor and you do full damage You are a Witch (Soul Blade/Berserker) using an Warhammer (7 pen), the weapon modal (+2 pen), the Cipher ability Hammering Blows (+1 pen), while frenzy is in effect (+2 pen) and using a Fine weapon (+1 pen)Your 13 penetration crush/pierce is more than double the 6 crush armor of the plate. You over penetrate and get a multiplicative 30% damage add (you calculate your damage and then multiply the total by 1.3) That's pretty much it. Armor is now useful and penetration is something to look for.

I'm not sure what percentage chance Riposte has in Deadfire, I believe it was like 30% in PoE. A 30% chance of a miss being riposted is pretty bad. If acc=defl and then add in the +30 from mirror image you get: 0-25 miss 26 - 50 graze 51-100 hit This makes a unit damage of 0.25x.5 + 0.50x1 = 0.625 Here Riposte would do .25x.3 = 7.5% of attacks get riposted. becomes 0-55 miss 56 - 80 graze 81-100 hit This makes a unit damage of 0.25x0.5 + .2x1 = 0.325 which is 48% less damage which is a massive boost and makes the use of mirror image great. A 30% chance of Riposte means that .3x.55 = 16.5 % of attacks will be riposted. At 16.5% chance of riposting which still needs to hit is better than nothing but not sure it is enough. I guess it comes down to the value of a single ability pick. Regardless of the value of Riposte I'm becoming a fan of the Trickster subclass. The defensive applications of mirror image are great.

Don't these weapons have 0.5 attack duration followed by 2s recovery?13/2.5 = 5.2, or I have missed something? The 5.2 dps would be with a shield. Single weapon fast tier one would be single wielding a rapier so I added in what effect the +12 and +17 accuracy would be on the dps based on 25% graze, 50% hit at acc=deflection and then converted misses to crits for the accuracy bonus. Armor makes dual wielding even better as the armor malus is applied to the base speed and then you factor in your bonuses. Before when it was +100% for plate it went like this = 3 sec recovery x 100% = 6 second recovery and then factor in -50% dual wield and you are back at 3 second recovery. Now Plate is only -55% so 3 seconds goes to 4.65 seconds which goes to 2.3 with dual wield. Basically you dual wield in plate faster than you can single weapon naked or with a shield. Also none of this takes into account any style bonuses like two weapon or two handed style.

I'm also a big fan of Lightning Strikes, speed plus dex for more speed and a 50% lash - gimme some of that!! My new experiment is going to be Wave of Anguish abuse (the upgraded Force of anguish that only takes one wound) I'm thinking dual wielded fast weapons or sabres with AI set to use FoA at every opportunity. Torment's damage is lacking so maybe mass FoA will be viable?

You are correct, Every ability uses resolve for determining damage now if it is not a direct weapon damage. Summoned weapons uses resolve too for determining values. I thought that Torments Reach would be strength based similar to Flames of Devotion being strength based. I just tried a Warlock with Concelhauts staff and his strength controls the damage done with the summoned weapon.

If its now only +2 penetration and +25% crit damage AND being restricted to one weapon, not sure its such a sweet pick anymore. At +3 it was slightly better, +2 penetration is what you usually get for picking a different damage type. As far as multiclassing goes, a Berserker is still the go to choice for damage dealing melee - attack speed, strength buff, armor buff, penetration buff, plus extra damage for being surrounded and extra speed on kill just can't be beat. As Devoted drops in value using Monks, Ciphers, paladin or Rogue starts to look more appealing.

The +12 accuracy from single wielding, +17 if its accurate as well trades misses for crits which adds up quickly. Sabres were worse in PoE when they had a bigger base damage as that then got multiplied by the damage adders. Compared to Battle axes just makes axe users cry, +20% on a crit compared to +20% all the time. Now imagine the disparity if/when two weapon style is available to everyone for another -20% recovery

It gets added up with sneak attack, weapon quality and everything else besides Strength.

With the new changes to weapons how do they compare? Two handed 0.7 attack and 3.0 second recovery Tier one damage 22 - 27, avg = 24.5Great Swords - dual damage Pikes - increased reach Tier two damage 20 - 25, avg = 22.5 (8.1% less than tier one)Quarterstaffs - increased reach and +5 accuracy Tier three damage 15 - 22, avg = 18.5 (24.5% less damage than tier one)Poleax - dual damage and +2 penetration Morningstar - dual damage and +2 penetration Estoc - +2 penetration and +2 penetration (+4 total) - Observation is that the tier three damage class weapons should actually be in the tier two class as they all have two extra abilities. ​One handed slow 0.7 attack, 3.0 second recovery Tier one damage 15 - 20, avg = 17.5Sword - dual damage Battle Axe - +20% critical damage Tier two damage 14 - 19, avg = 16.5 (5.7% less than tier one)Sabre - +20% damage Tier three damage 14 - 18, avg =16 (8.6% less than tier one)Spear - +5 accuracy Tier four damage 10 -14, avg = 12 (31.4% less than tier one)mace - +2 penetration Warhammer - dual damage and +2 penetration ​- Observation is that Sabre, Spear, Sword and Mace should all do the same damage as they all have one ability. Warhammers should do one tier less due to having two abilities. ​One handed fast 0.5 attack and 2.0 second recovery Tier one damage 11 - 15, avg = 13Clubs - +5 accuracy Daggers - +5 accuracy Rapier - +5 accuracy Hatchet - +3 deflection Tier two damage 10 - 13, avg = 11.5 (11.5% less than tier one)flail - 10% graze > hit Tier three damage 9 - 13, avg = 11 (15.4% less than tier one)stiletto +2 penetration ​Observation - flails should be in tier one damage class, and 10% graze>hit is like an extra 1.25% damage so its pitiful. Stilettos should also be in tier one damage as they only have one ability. ​Damage per Second ​​Two handed tier one does 6.62 dps One handed w/shield tier one does 4.73 dps ( 4.76 spear) Sabres w/shield do 5.35 dps One handed fast w/shield tier one does 5.2 dps (5.72 accurate) dualwielding slow tier one does 7.95 dps (8.0 spear) dualwielding Sabres do 9 dps dualwielding fast tier one does 8.67 dps (9.54 accurate) Single weapon slow tier one does 5.86 dps (5.79 spear) Single weapon fast tier one does 6.45 dps (6.97 accurate) Single weapon Sabre does 6.63 dps *Single weapon style based on +12 accuracy with acc=deflection, 25% graze and 50% hit. So it effectively trades 12 misses for 12 crits at 125% damage for +24% average damage. ** accurate weapons effectively add 5 misses>crits at 125% damage so effectively +10% damage 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 Conclusion - Two handed weapons still lag behind everything else unless you are getting close to zero recovery Fast accurate weapons are the damage kings for autoattacking Sabres are still the best choice if you also need primary or especially full attacks

It looks like Devoted were changed to getting +2 penetration instead of +3 but it applies to all proficient weapons, not just a single one. I guess it was easier to tone them down a bit rather than try and recode the proficiency pick system. Looks like a pretty easy solid pick now.

I'd request some sort of sorting function so that I can find what I'm looking for easier than scrolling and reading everything. I've found that setting up something like 'activate Swift Strikes all the time' needs to use the 'not' command and have it reference a dexterity inspiration. If you just tell it to activate Swift Strikes all the time it will activate it five times in a row which is stupid. If you tell it activate if not dex inspiration it will re-activate it immediately after the first one runs out. Barbarian rage can be set up in a similar manner. Could probably use something like this for Wizards and their self buffs too. Torment's Reach spam is easily accomplished with a activate all the time and target closest enemy. I was concerned about any enemy besides closest might make the guy move and eat a disengagement attack. Works great with a Shattered Pillar as you want to bang these out as often as you can. For my casters I've gone with a simple activate Second Wind if health less than 50%. I don't trust the computer to fire off spells but having it keep track of activating a heal is nice. Using the auto-pause on ability works well enough with spells, will have to experiment with the long cast pause instead of any ability pause. I haven't found anything that lets you fire a ranged weapon and then swap to your melee and engage/buff or whatever.

In the new Beta Monk's unarmed damage is still bugged. On creation it works fine but after a save/load it forgets what your damage should be and reverts to a very low number. The damage is low both in the inventory screen and in actual combat. EDIT- Torment's Reach now uses Resolve for the AoE part of the damage Which really sucks. It also looks to be completely independent of whatever weapon that you are using as far as damage goes, not sure if that is new or I'm just noticing it now.

Barbarians and Paladins go together like cocaine and waffles!!! The best offense mixed with one of the better defenses and you get a solid performer. Other contenders to mix with Barbarians to help shore up their defenses: Wizard - no subclass, brings the quick cast low level buffs like Fleet Feet (+5 dex), Infuse with Essence (+5 con, +5 int), mirror image or liengraths displaced image for a solid deflection boost. Even without adding anything to Resolve a free spell like fireball obtained via a found grimoire is a nice opener from stealth. Trickster - gets illusion spells like mirror image and gets lots of extra damage from Rogue abilities. Loses out on some sneak attack. Priest of Wael - gets illusion spells, plus the priest spells. Has a summoned rod which isn't very barbarian-like but makes a solid pick.

The summoned Priest of Berath hits for an extra +500 corrosive damage.

Monk's unarmed damage is still bugged. After a save/load the damage added by Transcendent Suffering stops. Before the save load damage was 30+, after goes to 8-13