koski

I've noticed a curious behaviour when combining Spiritshift and Outlander's Frenzy. Sometimes my character will do a single auto-attack on himself the moment spiritshift triggers. I've isolated its occurrence to the following steps: Pause Click to Activate Outlander's Frenzy Click to Activate Spiritshift Unpause The character will then proceed to shift into beast form, ignore the call for Outlander's Frenzy (its trigger gets deactivated) and instead perform a single auto-attack on himself. No wildstrike extra damage seems to be applied, only the physical part of spiritshift auto-attack damage. The order of the activations seems to be important, since it never attacks himself unless I accidentally press Outlander's Frenzy first. I am using the non-beta patch branch, so this issue is in the current live version.

I've been toying around about making a ranged fighter. Sure, there are classes that might seem more suited to it (such as ranger or rogue) but I feel they don't really incorporate what I'm looking for. Mostly because rogue talents seem a bit lacking in a sense (backstab doesn't really work etc.) If we look at the features of fighter, we can see that they have these things going for them: High base accuracy (30) Disciplined Barrage (knockdown does not work with ranged?) Confident Aim (reduce grazes count) Weapon Specialization Armored Grace (if you feel like wearing SOME armor) Aside from that, you're forced to take the generic talents available for everyone. Is it that bad though? I know you're not getting Vicious Aim from Ranger line, which might or might not be that great (due to being a modal). Rogue obviously has a lot more damage via sneak attack, but that requires setup.

I'm not talking about realism, I am talking about concepts as realism loses its meaning when magic is involved. But to be honest, most fantasy worlds still follow basic laws of physics, just with added methods of breaking them with magic. Magic is supposed to be special and powerful. That is what fantasy is all about. In a fantasy settings (all I've seen, aside from MMOs) warriors would get their asses handed to them by wizard spells or dragons breaths, the only reason they tend to survive is due to sheer luck of being able to dodge the actual attacks or by hiding behind a more or less magical shield and they beat these powerful & magical opponents by cunning (such as reflecting medusa's gaze from a mirror) or luck (being swallowed by a dragon but able to jam a sword between its jaws), never by actually being more powerful than them. This is exactly what is happening in PoE, in the form of fighters (and paladins) being superior to most in the form of defence, able to come alive from situations where others might have fallen. Complete balance in defence and offence between classes is a ridiculous concept best left for MMOs and PvP games, where such things are needed for competitiveness.

I had a similar issue once. It went away when I saved, closed the game and then started the game again and loaded the save. You could try that. If it does not help or if it happens again, you should follow the bug report guidelines and attach the output log and savegame so the development team can determine what is wrong.

If you add the pets damage, possible flanking bonus and the bonus for ranger attacking the same target together, you should have ranger doing a lot more damage than a ranged rogue would. People think of the pet and ranger as a separate entity way too much. The pet is one of the features that makes the class, you cant just calculate their damage and ignore the pet altogether. Its like comparing wizards damage to cipher but then tell cipher they can't use their abilities and announcing wizard as the winner. So yeah, they might actually be one of the most powerful classes around. They just have drawbacks in that power just like wizards have limited number of spells and ciphers need to generate focus every now and then. For ranger that drawback is having to manage their pet and make sure it does not die while still gaining the benefit of its presence (flanking & other bonuses). As for the topic at hand. Lets take vicious aim versus merciless companion. Vicious aim might be bad for a ranger using a hunting bow or war bow since you'd rather want to use Penetrating Shots modal, rendering most ranger Talents useless to you (as you can only have one modal on). Instead you can have a talent that increases your pets damage output. Now you're comparing a talent that does nothing (unused modal) to an ability that increases the companions damage a little. To me it sounds like the animal companion talents are actually useful. Are they as powerful as other talents (such as arcane veil from wizard)? Probably not. But they're quite good compared to some other things ranger has to offer. Then there is also the talent that increases accuracy when you're attacking the same target as your pet. Thats bound to give a decent bonus to any rangers damage output and it increases the pets damage too. Together those bonuses should make the talent quite good. Better overall damage than say, blinding shot from rogue etc.

They changed the focus mechanics from Draining Whip to be +33% focus generation instead of +2 focus / shot, so blunderbuss is not that great anymore. Blunderbus, which splits the shots into 6 separate small fragments will be dealing little to no damage/shot. That means you'll be getting really low amount of focus unless your target is wearing no armour. This is because you're getting 10% (without draining whip) of your damage back in focus and if you're doing less than 10 damage/shot you're not going to see major progress.

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It seems this is not entirely fixed yet. Though the stacks themselves are gone, the single buff seems to contain all the effects in the description. I am not sure if this affects the animal companion itself, but it looks a bit silly.

You sort of missed the point, where being hit by lightning is bound to hurt a lot more (ie. deal more damage) than being hit by a sword. One leaves you as a lump of charcoal and the other makes a cut / hole. Realistically, both might be as deadly (such as putting a sword through an eye, into the brains) but a sword can in no way compare to a lightning bolt in actual damage done. The game is already balanced in this account by giving wizards/druids limited amount of times they're able to reduce a target to a lump of charcoal. No further balance should be needed. Literal 1:1 balance you're talking about would be more feasible for a competitive PvP based game, such as Guild Wars or WoW PvP. But it has no place in an actual single player roleplaying game. And fantasy is about warriors being able to take multiple foes and surviving (which they do) and being able to take on bears and dragons (which they can). It is not about swords dealing as much damage as lightning bolts and fireballs.

Nah, the tank "metagame" in most MMO's is a conscious design choice, not simply due to lack of advanced AI. The only "MMO" that I'm aware off where bad AI is part of the issues it's facing, is GW2. However, GW2 has so many mechanical problems when it comes to PvE that blaming it on just poor AI is mistaking the tip of the iceberg that's above water as the entire iceberg. Yes, I consider the actual design choices in modern rpg/mmo very poor and limiting. In my vision, any class should be able to achieve the same level of defense/offense if he chooses so, but by different means. Warriors should have high defense through their heavy armor/shield, rogues through dodge/evade and casters through magic. The damage level should also be the same - fighters through training/specialization, rogues through stealth/poisons/traps and casters with spells. From here you can have variations and combinations for any hybrid you want. The whole notion of fighter being as effective at dishing out damage as the guy who can call up lightning from the sky is ridiculous. Personally I think such balance has no place in an actual RPG. Some people are just better than others, whether they were born with it or trained for it. Its what makes things interesting. I want to play a wizard because of the raw power it holds in its fingers and I am willing to pay the price for it, which is generally the lack of physical endurance. Now if I could have a wizard who is as physically strong as a fighter (without the use of spells to achieve that) and still as good regular wizard, then I could talk about balancing, but only because it would make fighters entirely redundant (to a point where they should then be removed as a class). The problem is not really in the design choices of modern rpg/mmo games. Its the powerplay instead of roleplay mentality. People should roleplay their characters instead of whining that they can't play their characters because some other class/race/build is mechanically superior to the one they picked. If you can't handle fighters doing less damage than wizards, then don't recruit any fighters in your party, just play with a group full of wizards. If wizard suck and ciphers are the best, then by all means make a party full of ciphers (or just don't make/take any wizards). I finished my first game as a chanter, with spread around stats (I think I had like 12 dex) and zero summon invocations. Why? Because I didn't feel the summon invocations fit my character concept. I used one-handed weapons and no shield and used it as an off-tank and damage dealer. I had a rogue recruited NPC who used a crossbow instead of arbalest or war bow. I wore a sword on Edér because I felt he was not a hatchet (or flail) guy and I switched out the door shield because it looked silly. Sure my difficulty was only hard, but if you feel the difficulty is getting in the way of your roleplaying you can just reduce it. People are so overly concerned about effectiveness that they forget what roleplaying games are all about.

The stats in this game are what you're born with. They are not reborn when you recruit them so its natural you will not get to choose their stats. Should be noted that the companions have not had that bad stats since 1.03. They should be doable for most builds you can come up with their given classes.

Pet (or at least Itumaak) is quite useful already. Though the greatest benefit they bring is the instant flanking bonus. The fox moves so quickly it can be behind the opponent flanking before your frontliners would even reach the target. Damage wise, not so much. But you really have to think of their damage as an addition to the rangers and not as their own source.

Yes, it is not retroactive. Like I said before, expect this to be fixed when the stacks are gone. Peddroelm already confirmed its not retroactive fix but it does prevent new stacks from appearing. Expect your problems with the marked prey to go away once the stacks get removed. Either that or start a new game.

But its pretty much the only way to do it without causing option a) all the time.

My point was, that unless the AI would disengage completely randomly there would be no real benefit to it. Programming the AI to react to reasoning (like it does now) is easier. For example what the AI seems to do is: Attack the guy with the lowest defence in range while avoiding movement if engaged. If you remove the "avoid movement when engaged part" from the equation, its your squishies and non tanks that get targeted. Always. This is because your tank tends to be the guy with the highest defence in every category and there is little to no reason to target your tank. I do get what you mean. I would also like it if fights weren't just about a) "hug the corner to cover squishies"-shades b) stick your tank(s) on everything and they wont move for the rest of the fight But having things disengage only causes every fight to be like option a. No one would like that, there is actually a reason why they made the engagement system and that would just undermine the whole thing. To be honest the system itself is a lot better than what most games have. And I prefer it over the usual "aggro" mechanics that are in most MMORPG games. What needs to happen is that the enemies are actually smarter. Move into better positions. Don't just queue to the door but instead stay away from it shooting ranged weapons at the tank. You know far enough so they won't be able to retaliate without breaking the door blockage. Maybe even just fire a single shot from ranged weapons (towards someone else than the tank maybe?) before moving into melee range. Little things that the players also do to maximize their effectiveness in fights.