[Are bows gimped?]

On the other hand, many casters and bowmen in the game are skeletons, and piercing damage doesn't even tickle them. A scepter might even be better. Rods are slashing/piercing, both damage types equally bad against skeletons.

Only the fighter skeletons seems to have decent DR. Doesn't the wizards have something like 4 standard DR, 7 piercing DR? Not really worth optimizing damage type then imo.

 

 

I like war bows, with good damage boost I believe they have fairly competitive damage against targets with low to medium DR and they require very little micro compared to gun switching or just trying to not overkill too much. Using them with the NPCs can be problematic though because you really want high might.

 

Hunting bows seem kind of meh though because the enemies they are useful against tend to be very easy to kill with AoE.

 

If any ranged weapon is gimped it's probably the regular crossbow. There is probably no situation where it wouldn't be more effective to use a war bow or an arbalest.

[Viable healer apart from Priest? (Dwarf company)]

If you're playing with custom characters you don't really need a healer, even on PotD. I have played with fighter+paladin tanks, a barbarian and three rogues (no godlikes). A good fighter can pretty much stay alive with self-healing, especially if you add a draining weapon and maybe retaliation. Paladin and healing gloves was plenty to keep the others alive. That's even without any strong cc. If you start to add cipher(s) to the mix you should have even less trouble.

[Shades vs Wizard]

I don't have a problem with the temple being a place you have to come back to, but party comp does feel a lot more rigid than I'd like. I feel like I always need a tank, always need someone to heal (hello priest), need at least 1 form of aoe or cc, and everyone else is some form of ranged dps or near melee dps.

I have to disagree. With a well equipped tank or two you can pretty much bring whatever you want in the remaining four slots, or you could solo if you want. You could probably just ignore tanks too and just rely more on cc and pure damage output instead.

[hard vs POTD - what are the differences?]

POTD enemies have 15 more in accuracy and the four defense stats, they also have 25% more endurance. DR is the same and I believe they have the same damage too.

 

Edit: Ofc I haven't checked every enemy type so there might be exceptions.

[fighter tank: might vs. con]

With good defense stats fighter tanks rarely take damage in most encounters (even on PotD), but they really don't deal any damage either. I would probably just take constitution for the extra health and endurance. As far as race goes just take the one you want to play unless you really want to min-max, in the end it won't make much difference for your combat performance.

[Does your accuracy affect your spell's chance to hit?]

Spells get additional caster level * 1 accuracy.

[Combat Mechanics? Attack Speed, Recovery]

Here's my $0.02, reposted from Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/app/291650/discussions/0/618458030677032991/

Do I miss something? If not, here are my conclusions:

• because crit damage is a percentage boost, faster or higher damage weapon will not benefit from it more, unless DR is so high, that in some cases not only base, but also crit bonus of a damage will be absorbed by DR (not the case in my tests, the DR would need to be much higher than 16)

    

• because arbalest has a penalty to crits, war bow benefits more from higher accuracy

    

• because DR is a flat value, war bow benefits more from higher accuracy, as it decreases chances of grazes and criticals (so increases damage)

    

• war bow has higher dps in any case except DR higher than 16 - in that case you probably want to switch to a wand or rod for their alternative damage type

    

• while dps of war bow is higher, you must be aware, that arbalest deals its damage sooner; this way you can possibly kill a target quickly enough, to deny some damage for the enemy; also in case of your ranger's quick death, his total damage may be higher with arbalest, than with war bow

    

• if you use a loading spell a lot, arbalest crits will be a decent way to start any encounter.
• keep in mind that because arbalest will overkill enemies by higher amounts of damage, it means it will waste more damage and so it's real DPS decreases.

Final conclusions:

• weapons seem very balanced in Pillars of Eternity; if you see two weapons of same quality and think one of them is better in all situations - you probably don't understand all game mechanics

    

• weapons like arbalest, crossbow and firearms are designed with melee fighers in mind - the purpose of these weapons is to make a single strong attack at the start of the battle and then switch to another weapon, not wasting time to reload it

    

• similarily to above, your ranged characters could have one of these weapons to start a fight and then switch to a bow or a wand.

If you find it interesting, I may also write about my experience with pistols and blunderbusses.

• Faster weapons have higher dps against DR0 so accuracy generally benefits faster weapons more.
• Arbalest has prone on crits which might be worth more than the extra damage. Especially when the prone helps others deal more damage (sneak attack, lower deflection).
• Which weapon has higher dps depends on DR, accuracy vs deflection and damage boost. High damage boost benefits the war bow more. Of course there are talents and other buffs that can make one weapon better too.
• Arbalest benefits more from per encounter bonus damage abilities like the rogue ones.

[4-man party on Hard]

I'm not a big fan of paladins because they just feel buggy. The DR aura for me has no radius, only applies on the paladin for some reason. Not sure if the other auras work, haven't felt like trying. The delay bad effects ability doesn't seem to work very well either, sometimes it feels like it just makes enemy cc even longer.

[Learn Penetrating Shot, never turn it off...]

 

With good damage bonus and average accuracy the bows are roughly equal against (effective) DR5 enemies. Boosting damage bonus and accuracy increases the DR threshold. If you have penetration you have to add that to the DR number. Lower DR means hunter bow is better, higher DR usually means that war bow is better but if the DR is so high that the war bow deals minimum damage the hunter bow becomes better again because of higher rate of fire.

 

I won't deny what you say here.  But I think that one also has to factor in whether the bow-user in question has a weapon focus on only one type of bow, but not the other.  For example, if you have a charcter with the WF Adventurer but not WF Peasant, he'll have a +6 accuracy on his warbow, but not on the hunting bow.  And in this case, it seems that it wouldn't be all that wise to throw away a parfectly good +6 acc bonus, just because you find yourself in a situation where a hunting bow might be a little better, if not for the WF issue.

 

Ofc there are many things you have to consider, I only wanted to check how the weapons compare when you're just shooting basic attacks with everything else identical. It can be useful for determining what type of weapon focus you want to pick though.

 

I just realized something that gives Hunting Bows an edge. Marked Prey is +20 damage per hit. It's one of very few damage boosts in the game that is not based on percentage. +20 damage * fast is better than +20 damage * average.

Sadly the description is wrong, it's only 20% extra damage. Hunters would be really strong with +20 damage per hit though.

[2 Fighters to hold multiple enemies or barbie instead?]

Tanks usually take very little damage in this game, even on the most difficult setting. So you don't really need to get as much damage as you can, better to have an extra tank and make life so much easier. I can even see having three tanks being a perfectly viable option but I use a barbarian instead to keep any stray enemies away from my squishies.

[Learn Penetrating Shot, never turn it off...]

With good damage bonus and average accuracy the bows are roughly equal against (effective) DR5 enemies. Boosting damage bonus and accuracy increases the DR threshold. If you have penetration you have to add that to the DR number. Lower DR means hunter bow is better, higher DR usually means that war bow is better but if the DR is so high that the war bow deals minimum damage the hunter bow becomes better again because of higher rate of fire.

[Melee dps doesn't seem worth the risk]

I'm running a no caster party through PotD (fighter, paladin, 2h barbarian, 3 ranged rogues). The barbarian consistently does almost twice the damage of a rogue and she is definitely a valuable member of the team because she is the only non-consumable source of AoE damage. She also has decent survivability with the large endurance pool and the self-heal so she can help protect the rogues when enemies get past the main tanks.

 

In a normal party I think having an extra melee that is more focused on dps but with some resilience can be valuable as well, but of course wizards and druids are better suited for pure AoE damage.

 

It would be fun to try a 6 melee party with something like 2 main tanks, 1 single target dps and 3 barbarians. I think it could be very powerful, especially against shades and the likes because they don't have any overly squishy targets. It does make it more difficult to focus down important enemies like casters though and it's always nice to have some ranged damage dealers for chokepoint fights.