KDubya

+1 accuracy is weak (about +2% damage) compared to +3% damage or 3% action speed. Giving it a +1 deflection as well makes it a little better but doesn't make it overpowered.

Oh, what does Barbarian gain more?(have no beta access). If barb has some advantage, nothing should be changed! Have I mentioned that I love the current proficiency system and its just perfect? Barbarians are the only ones with Weapon Focus or whatever its called that gives +6 accuracy to proficient weapons.

I like the freedom that the current system has. As long as you are not a Devoted or a Barbarian (both of whom get big bonuses for using proficient weapons), you are free to use whatever you want as there are no penalties. Find a cool Great Sword? Go ahead and use it. Proficiency just gets you access to a modal that may or may not be useful. Its an extra bonus that is great if its handy and if not its fine as it was basically free anyway. Going to a system where you can only use proficient weapons seems really limiting and overly promotes and rewards meta-knowledge of what are the best weapons.

Governing both accuracy and deflection looks kind of weird. Easily explained in that your better perception lets you hit enemies while it also lets you see the attacks coming a little faster allowing you to gain deflection. Makes a lot more sense than the new Resolve being stronger spell casting and deflection because deflection used to be part of Resolve when it was all about concentration and stopping interrupts. I'd go the extra mile and then swap Intellect and the new Resolve. Intellect would cover spell damage and Resolve would cover duration and AoE.

The old system from PoE at least gave you the option of not abusing rest and marshalling your spell use such that you'd save the good ones for when you felt like you needed them. It suffered from the typical 'rest abuse' that every RPG with Vancians suffer from but at least you could self regulate. Now with per encounter and limited per level its a whole different vibe. In the Beta I've taken to console leveling up to max level, nine and having the game scale the encounters to try out higher level abilities. At level nine a pure Wizard gets nine spell casts per encounter, two at each level one to four and one at five. In a typical encounter you will probably kill everything before you run out of spells, at higher levels that will be even worse. Instead of this bastardized Vancian per encounter system, why not just go to a recharging mana system and be done with it? At high levels you will have so many spells that'll just be the same thing over and over - From stealth initiate combat with either biggest nuke or best CC Self buff with instant cast Infuse then Fleet Feet, and then Liengrath's displaced image, maybe an ironskin as well cast next most powerful nuke or CC until either enemies are dead or you run out of spells repeat as needed It'll be like PoE playing a Vancian as a rest abuser but with only half the casts per level.

The devs seem to be not that good at designing characters or teams that overcome the game mechanics. Look at how often every attack is met with 'No Pen' messages. They are playing on a really low level of difficulty as I've never seen just one of the big mushrooms, its always two and a much bigger crowd when I'm at Veteran or PotD. They should run a team dedicated to destroying quickly and efficiently. Berserker/Bleak Walker dual wielding daggers and switching to stillettos if penetration problem Skald pure or multi with a mage slayer or whatever and use the AR debuff to drop armor by 5. Dual wielding daggers and stilllettos Sharpshooter/Cipher dual wielding sceptres Druid lifegiver nature godlike to heal everyone Ogre/Corpse Eater for cool factor or add in a mage caster to show how ineffective spells are compared to the others A team like that will tear up everything it meets and highlight what probably needs to be tuned.

Yeah I agree animal should be tied to power level instead of character level. If you do that any Ranger multiclass will be gimped with a useless pet. If you make the Multiclass pet strong enough such that at its lower power level its adequate then the pure Ranger pet becomes overpowered. By keeping the pet tied to character level it becomes useful for both multi and single class and will depend on how many abilities you invest into it. plus there might be some tier eight or tier nine pet abilities that are really good that only single class Rangers will have access to.

The easiest fix for Perception is to give it the deflection that Resolve used to have. There is no reason as to why Resolve should have both spell damage, healing and deflection, so move the deflection over to Perception.

Sworn Enemy also does not affect Mind Blades for accuracy or damage.

I'm not sure if its a situation where: the AI is determining that eating a disengagement attack from your specialized disengage (An Unbroken with Guardian stance gets the standard +20 accuracy and +100% damage that all disengagement attacks get, plus a +10 penetration and a prone on hit) is such a bad idea that it is willing to stand there and let your ranged (including ranged melee like pikes) just tee off on them. Or its a situation where the AI never eats a disengagement attack and is happy just standing there even if your engager has no credible damage threat. The first situation would mean that the AI is being 'smart' while the second would mean that the AI can be easily exploited. My limited use of an Unbroken/Shattered Pillar and an Unbroken/Shieldbearer did not really highlight the effects of massive number of engagements leading to massive disengagement strikes (which is what I was hoping for) Instead they were just typical melee guys who were tankier than normal but still killed the enemy. Since the AI is not moving away from the engager they are stuck with either hitting the tanky guy or hitting the much less tanky guy (the Rogue) who came into their range. The fact that they are hitting the softer target seems like a good thing to me as far as the AI goes.

That sounds incredibly boring. It would limit build variety and throws away an opportunity to add an interesting tactic to gameplay (i.e., What do I do when my melee squishy gets attacked?). Can't have squishy melees, they go down too fast. No point in having dedicated tanks without melee squishies, enemy AI already doesn't want to disengage. The only viable option for melee, then is somewhat tanky damage dealers. "Want to play a Rogue with two daggers and robes? Too bad! Your options are (semi)tanky melee or ranged squishy!" Boring. I think your dismissal of minor discouragements like decreased accuracy towards attacking other party members as equivalent to taunts is flawed; Nothing's actually forcing characters to attack the Fighter, and there are still buffs and immunities to counteract these discouragements. It's just a nudge towards protecting those vulnerable characters that adds some nuance and let's one more type of build be more viable. A moot point for me, though. The real solution I want is to be able to rely on Guardian Stance. My melee squishy is being attacked? Perfect, I can spin that negative into a positive (melee squishy targeted -> retreat -> get chased -> enemy goes prone -> attack). Non-tanky melee is viable. Still at risk of being creamed in melee, but it's not a deal breaker. Dedicated tanks exist for a reason, and get a neat new role of doing more than just standing still: they're now a set up machine. Tanky damage dealers are still viable and worth using, and way more reliable. Bam, everyone's happy, and the whole problem of whether or not to include these discouragements to attacking melee squishies would be unnecessary. I'm more than willing as a player to eat disengagement attacks given proper context, and if Aramintai is to be believed, eating a disengagement attack isn't a tremendous detriment on enemies, either. So why oh why can't I get enemies to chase after my retreating or ranged squishy more often? Someone please clue me in here. (Or tell me that it's going to be changed. That'd make me happy). Besides not being squishy as a solution your Rogue can do the following: Escape gets you clear of a bad situation Blinding Stike can make the enemy inaccurate enough to miss on the disengagement attack allowing your Rogue to move away Use a reach weapon like a pike or staff and stay out of retaliation range. If the enemy moves they get the disengagement from your Guardian I think one of the 'strike the bell' effects is a stun Seems like there are lots of ways for your Rogue to avoid taking undue damage. I believe that entering melee combat wearing a dress (robes) should have some risks to go along with the greatly increased attack speed that you will have.

The solution to how to have squishy melee survive in melee is to not be squishy. As players our tactical doctrine is usually 'kill the guy in the dress' because the caster is more of a threat than the meatsacks protecting him. The enemy, especially intelligent enemies, should do the same. Slap some armor on your Rogue so they can avoid penetration or invest in some Constitution or grab a shield. Your Rogue shouldn't get a pass from getting attacked because he can't take a hit.

I like Gromnir's suggestion of Devoted lose the penalty but don't gain the bonus when using a summoned weapon that differs from their chosen weapon. If your Devoted chooses Pikes at creation he gets the bonuses when using pikes, he summons the staff when desired during his first ten levels and then he gets to where he can summon his Citzal's Lance which gets massively buffed by his Devoted bonuses. Let him summon Kalkoth's Blights without penalty as well. Seems fair to me. If you get effectively bonus proficiencies for summoned Weapons you could choose Estocs for massive penetration and then summon the staff when that much penetration is not needed and then later summon the lance for the AoE mayhem it brings. Seems like here there are no downsides to going with Devoted.

Right. But basically, with multiplicative Might (or Strength/Resolve), it's a build-dependent choice as to which is better; for most damage-focused builds,they're roughly equivalent, and even interchangeable. In some ways it seems like it matters a lot less in Deadfire than in PoE, because in the original game, you needed a certain amount of Might to help punch through DR. Now with the move to Penetration/AR, it seems like they're basically interchangeable, especially the longer the battle lasts, unless your build has something specific in it that makes you prefer one or the other. Counter-intuitively, I also suspect that the move to replace Might with Strength/Resolve actually makes Dexterity the best damage stat for casters. Hear me out: Casters are going to use their weapons a fair bit regardless, and Dex will help with both weapon and spell casting, and will help with non-damage spells also. This also seems like a strong argument for multiplicative Might: if Might isn't multiplicative, Dex is the clearly superior choice, mathematically. Also, since spell damage AND deflection is going to Resolve, only certain types of weapon-based offensive characters will favor Might. If it is not multiplicative, this type of character will not be very competitive compared to a caster or a hyrbid. Might should have SOME reason to dump points into it - if it's not a very good force multiplier then what is the point? Might was additive in PoE and was useful for anyone wanting to do damage. It just wasn't the no brainer max it that multiplicative Might is. Mathematically, a multiplicative Might is a much better investment than Dexterity or Perception for a weapon using damage dealer. Not to mention that the more you have the better even more will get you. An additive Might will still be useful but one could choose to keep Might a little lower and instead raise Dex or Perception and still be as viable. Sure enough the game is easy enough that one does not need to min max to be viable, but when one choice of maxing a multiplicative Might is so much better from an efficiency standpoint than anything else that you could do then it takes away from being able to be creative with the builds and things start to get really cookie-cutterish.

Someone perceptive might not have fast reactions. You might perceptively notice a blow coming and appreciate technique but it probably won’t stop you from being smacked. Resolve is still desirable for melee characters (just like strength could be for casters in certain builds). Resolve will influence non weapon based abilities so it goes beyond cypher/Druid/priest/mage. All classes will have to choose between melee damage (strength), ability damage (resolve) and ability duration (intelligence), accuracy (perception) and speed (dexterity). On paper it looks good but whenever this new division will play well with existing class design and balance remains to be seen. Oh and constitution. Constitution is kinda lame. Perception handling the deflection part of stat bonuses makes as much or more sense than the new Resolve which handle spell damage. Plus Perception used to handle deflection in the early versions of PoE so there is a precedent. Nuking Casters will be dumping the new Strength as they will quickly acquire more spells than they can cast in an encounter so auto-attacking will be a rare occurrence. Melee guys who don't have heals can safely dump the new Resolve. This would be Rogues, Monks, Barbarians (their heal has buffs that overlap with Frenzy so it might not be as great for many builds) and perhaps BleakWalkers who have bad healing already (this'd depend on where Sacred Immolation falls in the power tiers, if its single class only then multi-classers have less use for Resolve). My suggestion to change what the new Resolve and Intellect does is purely to avoid having timid geniuses as Barbarians instead of brave idiots. The game mechanics stay the same besides the swapping of bonuses.

Had a post in discussion but here seems more likely to get noticed. Premise: Weapons all get a 'thing' like +5 accuracy, better penetration, dual damage types etc. Weapons with two 'things' get a reduced base damage - Polax gets +2 penetration and dual damage types and thus gets a lower base damage than other two handed weapons. Weapons with incorrect damage based on the above premises. Quarterstaff - has both reach and accuracy but still does tier one damage like a Great Sword. Should be reduced to tier two like the Polax and Morningstar or take away the accuracy. Estoc - has penetration as its 'thing' and has extra penetration like the Polax and Morningstar but is down in Tier three damage. Should be increased to match Polax and Morningstar Flail - has 'graze>hit' as its 'thing' but does reduced damage compared to hatchets, daggers and clubs. Either give it better penetration, better damage or dual damage types. Stilletto - has extra penetration as its 'thing' but does much less damage than any other fast one hander. Should be increased to dagger and hatchet damage level, or increased to tier two flail damage level and given additional penetration. Mace - has extra penetration as its 'thing' Should have damage increased to match swords and spears or given a dual damage type or more penetration. Warhammer - has extra penetration and dual damage types as its 'things'. Damage should be moved up to tier two same as a mace. These adjustments would keep the weapons balanced and follow the damage conventions and precedents of the other weapons. For further balance between fast one handers, slow one handers and two handed weapons, the base damage and/or attack/recovery speeds should be looked at. Fast attack weapons like daggers do much more damage per second than slow attack speed weapons such as the spear (the only currently unbugged slow one hander). Its in the area of 50% more dps which seems unintended. In PoE fast weapons had trouble getting past the damage resistance, here it is only penetration that matters so fast one handers with adequate penetration hit almost as hard but much faster.

Perception having both accuracy and deflection at least makes sense in that being more perceptive makes you better at hitting and at not being hit. The new system will make either Strength or whatever handles spell damage (Resolve is what the devs are proposing) a dump stat, nothing will be changing that fact. Based on that I'd rather have Intellect and the new Resolve switched so that melee can be brave idiots instead of timid geniuses, mechanically that changes nothing but it makes a lot of roleplaying sense to me.

If they are going about changing the stats that worked very well in the last game I'd suggest the following: Instead of Resolve controlling magical damage, have Intellect take that on and have Resolve control AoE and Duration. Move the deflection over to Perception. The benefit of my proposal is that pretty much all melee guys like increased duration on buffs, Now they need to have a high Intellect. The stat they can dump is Resolve so they end up as Timid Geniuses. With my change the melee guys could add to Resolve and maybe dump Intellect so they end up as brave idiots. I much prefer my melee to be brave idiots rather than timid geniouses. Moving the deflection to Perception gets rid of the whole 'mages will be tankier than others' argument.

If its that great to have another weapon slot then a normal Fighter (or an Unbroken (who has some good bonuses)) can take Arms bearer and have the third slot. Which is what a Blackjacket gets. Sure the Blackjacket can spend the point on Arms Bearer and get the fourth slot but he'll never get Constant Recovery. I believe that Arms Bearer is going to be available to everyone via the new General abilities with a weapon proficiency pick, or another way to put it is everyone can get a third slot for free.

Useful for what? Besides making the game intentionally more difficult, its only the mass gun swapper that has a niche over any other type of Fighter and for that they give up what is probably the best Fighter ability that they have in the Constant Recovery.

Right. But basically, with multiplicative Might (or Strength/Resolve), it's a build-dependent choice as to which is better; for most damage-focused builds,they're roughly equivalent, and even interchangeable. In some ways it seems like it matters a lot less in Deadfire than in PoE, because in the original game, you needed a certain amount of Might to help punch through DR. Now with the move to Penetration/AR, it seems like they're basically interchangeable, especially the longer the battle lasts, unless your build has something specific in it that makes you prefer one or the other. Counter-intuitively, I also suspect that the move to replace Might with Strength/Resolve actually makes Dexterity the best damage stat for casters. Hear me out: Casters are going to use their weapons a fair bit regardless, and Dex will help with both weapon and spell casting, and will help with non-damage spells also. This also seems like a strong argument for multiplicative Might: if Might isn't multiplicative, Dex is the clearly superior choice, mathematically. But in PoE where Might was additive, Dexterity was not a clearly superior choice. There Might was less essential the more damage modifiers you had, so for Ciphers and Rogues you had real completion between Might, Dex and Perception. It was only for spell casters trying to do a lot of spell damage and for Monks using fists (which had an increasing base damage but no damage modifiers like weapons had) that were really stuck with max Might everytime type builds. A 26 (21 base + 5 from buff or rage) Might Helwalker with 10 wounds has a 36 Might which is +78% damage additively or 1.78X multiplicative. Consider a two handed sword base damage 23 with +100% damage adds does 64 damage in an additive system and 82 damage in a multiplicative. To get to the same damage in an additive system would require 62 Might.

I could see Blackjackets given Weapon Focus (the barbarian ability that gives you +6 accuracy with proficient weapons) at creation. That'd satisfy the 'master of many weapons' schtick. Then you'd have Devoted with being the master of one weapon and Blackjackets being the master of many weapons. This at least would try and make up for the loss of regeneration which is massive. Much better than the current 'you can gun switch better than anyone else' niche they currently hold.

But multiplicative Might does not make builds more creative at all. It basically makes you max out your Might every time, not a whole lot of variety there. The old additive system had Might roughly equal to Dex and Perception so you could focus on something other than Might and be as or near as effective. Sure you don't have to max out Might when it is multiplicative but it is such a mechanical advantage that when designing for efficiency you'd be self-gimping to not max it out.

Constant Recovery has had a time limit since the big Defender Patch in PoE. In Deadfire it lasts like 45 seconds base and heals 5 per 3 seconds or a total of 75 points of health. Intellect can extend the time and Might can increase the heal amount (soon to be Resolve)

When the bug gets fixed you'll only have one weapon that you will be proficient with, so choose wisely. Something with two damage types is probably going to be a good idea. I'm curious as to what will happen with Devoted and the new general abilities that will be added to the proficiency choices. Will they get just as many picks as everyone else but be restricted to one weapon and then take seven or eight extra abilities instead? Having lots of free picks at weapon styles could let you have dual wield, weapon and shield and one handed with arms bearer. You could then have swords set up as a single weapon, a dual wield and a sword and board to allow you to adjust to different requirements, all without wasting your ability picks.