KDubya

Those unions actually have that kind of power? Isn't that a bit unconstitutional and contrary to the free-market ideals of the west? The power of a Union to control through fear and intimidation is directly related to its percentage of the market which it controls. In the US construction industry has like 15% or less Union control (highly dependent on the area) so Unions have less sway than they once did. In Hollywood the Screen Actors Guild, the Writer's Guild and whatever other groups there are have a near total monopoly on the market. Perhaps some superstar like Dwayne Johnson could buck the will of the Unions but the hundreds of actual workers who make the industry work are all members who would be blacklisted from ever working again if they stood against their Union comrades. You'd have a hard time blacklisting the Rock but Jimmy the carpenter or Suzy the soundstage manager would be easy to starve out.

Roleplaying a Paladin Rogue would be easy: Bleak Walkers believe that overwhelming violence and savagery will end a conflict quickly and are the best choice for conflict resolution. Rogues allow for a surgical strike capability that lets you kill the leader without killing the minions who are only doing their job. They'd be like a medieval smart bomb Goldpact Knights are all about taking out the one enemy and Rogues do single target damage better than most. Kind Wayfarers - drawing a blank on how to make that fit. Darcozzis like jokes and what better than a Trickster? In the previous version of Beta you could have two weapon modals running, one in each hand. The stacking was inconsistent and needed some de-bugging applied. Will have to see how it shakes out through the betas. The penetration problem would be the same as everyone else besides Devoted, Berserkers, Ciphers or Monks would have. The solution would be to swap to a more penetrating weapon like a stiletto or Estoc, or to use something like the Chanter's armor debuff invocation. I don't like squishy characters, especially melee types, and your Trickster multi-class sounds like a fun and effective guy to use. I could see an entire custom team made up of various Paladin multiclasses that'd have defenses that'd let you roll over the enemy easily.

A Paladin mix would have about the same deflection but could dual wield. Deep Faith would get you +20 deflection which would be as good as a weapon and shield style using Unbroken. An offhand dagger would give you the flexibility of activating the modal for more defense when desired. Dual wielding would make for a better full attack riposte. The trickster would get you those sweet illusion buffs. Bleakwalker would get you a powerful FoD or Goldpact would get you the nice +4 armor from gilded enmity to help with the tankyness.

Don't forget that Union rules and things like the Screen Actors Guild would not allow you to effectively hire 'scabs' for voice work. I'd much rather they leave the full VO games to the AAA market and keep PoE and DeadFire more on the lower budget but artistic fringe. Give me a tactically deep party based game set in an interesting world with good game mechanics, excellent writing and using older generation video engines like Unity and I'll buy everything they pump out. If there are enough consumers like me it can fund their endeavors forever.

Just say no to inventory Tetris!!!!! Reducing the amount of trash loot is fine. Making salvaged Xaurip spears worthless would be fine. Just don't force us to make multiple trips back and forth in order to sell it off. I always imagine that instead of a magic bag holding all my stuff I have a team of mules that follow along and carry my stuff.

Has anyone tried a Mage Slayer/Monk? I'm curious about how Torment's Reach would interact with Carnage and the Mage Slayer magic blocking. If the magic block applied to the initial target plus the carnage from that attack and then also included applying the magic block to the AoE cone from Torment's that'd be interesting and perhaps more viable?

You should write that up on the bug forum. Obsidian should answer and tell us which is right - treating all Berserks as spells or none.

What if two handed weapons got twice the benefit from Might? That'd make the comparison with dual wielded swords or sabres more favorable. The upcoming change from one to two second recovery on fast weapons looks to make them approximately equal to slow speed one handers like swords. That fixes that problem but two handers will still be out in the cold.

Regarding Penetration - Fists start at base 5 which is the same as every normal weapon in the game, so at low levels fists are just as good or just as bad as any other non-specialized penetrating weapon. If you are concerned you can always grab a pair of stillettos or an Estoc as there are no penalties to using a weapon without proficiency. Then as you gain Power levels you gain penetration (or is at as Trancendent Suffering increases?) , either way your fists will stay on pace with weapon enchantments. So again you are not unduly penalized for using fists. Once you get access to Thunderous Blows all your worries go away as one wound gets you +4 penetration and +5 Might. Regarding Shattered Pillar: Taking damage to generate wounds predisposes you towards a low or at least lower deflection as going super deflection tank would keep you from gaining wounds. Shattered Pillar, on the gripping hand, rewards you for not taking damage (you're not flirting with death) and gets you wounds for dealing damage. To balance that out they put a limit of five wounds. We will have to see if there are abilities that take more than five wounds that'd be unavailable for Shattered Pillars. You can gain wounds (doing damage) by using Monk abilities like Torment's Reach and Force of Anguish. With the reduced cost upgrade for FoA I've been able to get ten plus FoA out of five wounds. This makes it so that so you endlessly bang out FoA and regain the wound spent, especially as you get better weapons or better Transcendent Suffering. People who want to go with the old take damage to get wounds mechanism have two subclasses and the base class to choose. Not knowing what the higher Monk abilities have regarding gaining benefits per wound ala Iron Wheel, currently only the Helwalker benefits from holding onto a large number of wounds and that comes at a steep cost. Only being able to bank five wounds makes it beneficial to make use of them as fast as you get them. I see Shattered Pillars being excellent when mixed with a high defensive class like Paladin, Shield using Fighters like Unbroken, Wizards for their defensive buffs and Priests of Wael for their illusion buff spells. You can make a deflection monkey that doesn't get hit at all and still has use of their core abilities like Torment's Reach. Mixes with Berserkers and Ciphers would gain in the damage output end but not much benefit from the not needing to get hit part but still would be viable and interesting. Overall I'm quite happy with the Shattered Pillar but we will have to see what the full skill tree holds.

Or maybe its two chances to convert the hit to a crit as in you roll for the first 50% check and then roll a second time to check the other 50% check? Regardless it needs to be clearly listed somewhere as to what should or should not stack so that we can look for mistakes.

In PoE you had to balance Ciphers with reduced focus and focus gain or else they'd be blasting their most powerful powers all the time, while Wizards had to ration(unless they were narcoleptics) their spell usage to save for the next fight. Now in DeadFire resting is for injuries only and everything is per encounter. Now Wizards can let loose with their most powerful spells every fight while Ciphers start a fight with maybe enough for a tier one power and then need several successful attacks to regain focus to get to where they could fire off a higher tier power. If the design goal for Ciphers are an augmented damage dealer who occasionally drops a psionic power then they've nailed it. If instead Ciphers are supposed to frequently use their powers then they need some adjusting. I'd start with increasing the starting focus and maybe increase the rate of focus gain or make Biting and Draining Whip both available. They probably need to do something with Soul Annihilation as well.

Monks are bugged right now with the save/load removing Transcendent Suffering. The messed up weapon recoveries also make it hard to rate a class. Still a fast attack speed weapon using Monk does very well. Personally I love the Shattered Pillar. A Monk that gets stronger doing damage not by taking damage? YES I'LL TAKE SOME OF THAT!! Combine with a tanky Paladin and make use of Dance of Death. Or make Captain America an Unbroken/Shattered Pillar fist and shield fighter. Limited to five wounds but if you are going to be a Torment's Spammer you only need three. Combine a Berserker with a Nazpalca or a Helwalker and gleefully take the damage incoming while dishing out massive amounts. You can even clear the confusion with clarity of agony. The possibilities are near endless with Monks. Once they fix a few bugs they will shine.

A Priest and Skaen/Kind Wayfarer would work pretty well RP wise as well: Your an ex-slave miner that has been used as a Vessle of Skaen, you have wiped out the overlords family and joined a caravan in order to hunt down a cousin who financed the mines. Your get caught in a biawak weakening the possession then exorcised when your sole is awakened... I'm not sure what a 'base class Paladin' would be? All Paladins belong to one of five (?) specific Orders. Each with bonuses and penalties. Except soon the penalties will be removed. When I contemplate building a Multi-class, Paladin is at the top of the list. They bring roleplaying (one of two classes that actually gain or lose power based on roleplaying choices), defensive power (Faith and Conviction and Triumphant Defense) offensive power (FoD and Sworn Enemy), team buffs (auras) and healing (Lay on Hands) plus a bunch more. And we've only seen the low level abilities. Their bonuses were more than enough to make up for any problems caused by their penalty. Not to mention that they get an additional free ability at character creation to go along with Faith and Conviction. Paladins are like ketchup, they make everything better when added My fear is that next there will be calls for nerfing Paladins. I'd much rather keep the interesting penalties they have now then face some future nerf bat which will do who knows what. I agree with your Priest/Paladin comments that all should be possible. A Skaen/Kind Wayfarer would be rich for roleplaying and backstory. Throw in a pop up warning at creation with specifics on how their preferred reputations will conflict and let the player make the call.

Just checked -- it debuffs an enemy by -10 Resolve in order to grant the Steadfast inspiration, +5 Resolve. Base duration is only 20 seconds though, not long at all. Accuracy vs. Will. 3 second cast time, 3 second recovery. You probably could do a damage build using it but it'd be weird -- you'd have to build up a lot of focus first so you could cast PVS first then whatever else you wanted to cast next. I guess I busted on the recall of the details on Psychovampiric Still getting +5 Resolve isn't bad. At a 15 Intellect your 20 seconds will go to 25 or so which will probably last the fight. The debuff would get them -10 deflection and -30% spell damage which might be useful. Not sure if getting a multiplicative 15% damage boost is worth it, the 30% I thought it was seemed a more viable plan. I agree that you'll be quite limited in what powers you have due to competition for the ability point, for multi-classes it'll be even more competition. Not sure you get around that. Wizards get found Grimoires, Priests are getting their deity favored spells for free (which is needed) not sure about Druids but maybe shapeshifting compensates??? How you would get additional powers to a Cipher I'm not sure, maybe some sort of talisman that you can pick up from defeated Ciphers??? The plan for my melee dominant Cipher multis might be to just concentrate on a few good CC powers that are fast cast or really really good to justify spending six seconds. That and Soul Annihilation.

No one here is thinking that Constitution is OP at 5%. I'm sloppy with healing and like the cushion on PotD that a 15 con gives me. Others like Boereor and AndreaColumbo are more efficient than I am and tend to stress offensive stats more. The point Boereor was making is that all you need for health is enough = 1 to win the fight. If you factor in the ease of resting you can extrapolate that as long as one of your team survives with one hit point that that is all you need, any more is essentially 'wasted'. From that I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that Constitution is OP, instead what the message to take away is that winning with one hitpoint is the most efficient you could get.

I only see the upcoming change to Resolve leaving just the Nuker Wizard as being able to dump a stat without adverse effects. They'll be able to drop Strength. Pretty much every other character is going to not want to dump anything to a 3. Who exactly do you see dumping stats that far and remaining viable?

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94470-spoilers-interesting-console-command-finds/ The link above has all the details on how to use the console to level your party up and to acquire equipment. In one of the posts someone made a simple mod that gets you a million gold and expands the store to include most anything that you'd want to buy. I'd highly recommend reading the posts and then mod your game to facilitate easier testing of various character builds. I've found that using the leveling for all encounters and setting my team to max level, nine, lets me try out higher level abilities than I'd get normally in the Beta. With five custom characters you can find bugs and gameplay interactions that'd take a lot longer to find making only one character at a time and using the pre-made putzs.

If the Devs are worried about someone picking a Paladin -Priest combo that is diametrically opposed they can have a warning pop up that advises against it and detail why. I'd rather have the freedom to make something crazy like a Skaen Priest/Kind Wayfarer than to have it blocked.

I'd guess that for a Berserker/Fighter you'd be keeping Resolve at base anyway just to avoid a penalty on your Constant Regen. You lose the bonus that your pumped Might would have given you but it still is one of the best reasons to be a Fighter. Savage Defiance would work better on a Corpse Eater or a Mage Slayer as the Berserker's Frenzy is going to interfere with the Robust buff from Savage Defiance. Unless you use it after your Frenzy wears off .... I guess it comes down to how much healing support your team can throw towards the Berserker and how much he has to carry his own weight.

There is no real reason not to rest as often as you want so reducing the benefit of Con to 3% and having some sort of adjustment on injuries does not sound very appealing to me. If its -15%, -20% or -30% due to an injury the answer is always rest after the second injury and possibly rest after the first. In PoE it was shown that at 3% Health per Constitution it was a bad stat and frequently dumped as it made little difference. At 5% dumping is painful enough that you'd need a really good reason to do so. Your contention that a 20 con frontliner is better than a 15 con frontliner I find fault with. For me the use of those 5 stat points in strength or Intellect or Dexterity is more valuable than having another 25% health. I design frontliners to be durable damage dealers not some sort of meatbag target drone.

In the next Beta update Priests are getting bonus spells based on their deity choice (which looks to be a good idea) and Paladins are losing their malus. Paladins have a great core class ability in Faith and Conviction, which when modified by Deep Faith becomes a +20 defense buff to everything. This is arguably one of the best core class abilities and blends well with any class with multi-classing. In addition each Paladin Order gets a bonus ability pick such as 'Lay on Hands' or 'Flames of Devotion', plus they get an Order specific bonus such as Bleak Walkers having extra corrode damage on their FoD which also imparts sickened, Kind Wayfarers get 'White Flames' which heal nearby characters when using FoD and so on. Paladins also get an Order specific malus such as Bleak Walkers having -30% healing received and given, Goldpacts miss out on Auras and so on. It was a big penalty but Paladins gained a lot as well, not to mention that it was very thematically appropriate and gave real distinction between the Orders. A Bleak Walker who heals or a sneak attacking Kind Wayfarer just doesn't fit well. Now in the next iteration Paladins get to keep all the bonuses but lose the penalty. This to me seems entirely too powerful. I think they need to keep the penalty for both balance and to promote roleplaying. Agree or not?

They get the tier four 'Savage Defiance' that gives them +5 Con, +4 armor and 10 health per 3 seconds for the 15 second duration. I'm assuming that the heal component there is adjusted by your Resolve. Granted its not 'Lay on Hands' but a heal is a heal and the other buffs are nice. Plus there is always 'Second Wind'

Both Necrotic Lance and the corrosive fireball which I can't remember the name of, target Fortitude and are popular spell choices for the enemy, at least based on what we've seen in the Beta. A 3 con, 3 str mage will be targeted and probably critted by an opposing mage as a first action. Getting one-shotted at the start of the fight looks like a bad idea.

Mmmm not sure if you will have enough points on other stats if u do 2 Str 18 Con tho, u need Dex for casting speed, Per for hit rate, Int for range and duration and Res is most important for you. Unless u sacrifice some points, you really don't have points in Con The points you place in Con are the ones you took from Strength. If you don't do that and just dump Strength then your Fortitude is going to be terrible. You can go something like Str 2 Con 18 Dex 15 Per 13 Int 15 Res 15 This keeps your Fortitude neutral while getting you +40% health. Effectively dumping Strength into Constitution makes you much tankier for free. If you don't care about bad Fortitude you can go with: Str 2 Con 10 Dex 16 Per 15 Int 15 Res 20 I personally prefer the tankier/healthier Wizard option, it has only benefits without any downsides.

A true min-max Wizard will dump Strength and add to Constitution at a 1:1 My Orlan would have a 2 Strength and an 18 Constitution. This will give a net zero effect on Fortitude but will get you +40% Health which will probably make your Wizard the hitpoint king which never hurts. Weapon damage will be terrible but who cares? You will soon have so many spell casts per encounter that you won't run out. At level nine you'll have nine casts, spend three on instant cast buffs like Fleet Feet, Infuse with Essence and the best defensive buff you can get like Mirror Image or Liengrath's. That takes 1.2 seconds or so and you'll then have six spells to blast out. At 3 seconds per cast that'll occupy you for 18 seconds which should be sufficient for most non-boss encounters. This'll only get better as you level up more and get more spell casts. With your damage so low anyway with weapons, activating some of the powerful weapon modals will not make much difference. Dual wield a dagger and a hatchet and activate both modals for a big deflection boost and hinder your attackers accuracy. Use a pike to debuff enemies to assist your team, or a staff and increase your deflection. As an extra bonus all that pumped up Resolve will also give you a deflection bonus. I further expect public outcry to force Obsidian to change scepters, wands and rods to gain damage from Resolve instead of Strength so ranged auto-attacking will still be outstanding for a Wizard. Meanwhile a Fighter will not be dumping Resolve as it'll affect their Constant recovery, shortages of points will probably mean that it'll stay at ten so this will just be a nerf of Fighter regen of 25%+. Paladins will also like to have a good Resolve for healing and sacred immolation so they'll be stretched for points. Barbarians will want Resolve for their heal so no dump stat for them. Monks might not have any sort of healing or spell damage so they might be able to dump Resolve but as long as its also tied to deflection this might not be prudent. Rogues might also fall in with Monks as being able to dump Resolve but going more glassy on an already glass cannon might not be a good idea. Bottomline only Wizards are going to have a true dump stat after this change, everyone else will just be stretched for points. This of course does not break the game and might even serve to give Wizards something that makes them better while also further separating pure nuker Wizards from melee hybrid multi-classes.