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Eos

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About Eos

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    (3) Conjurer
    (3) Conjurer
  1. Killed him on my first attempt. Didn't really change anything with your chars. Put the Second Chance armor on Eder (but he never dropped below 50% anyway) and put Gaze of the Adragan (the petrify spell) into the Grimoire of your main character. Then positioned Eder in the north and the rest of your group in the south. Triggered the fight with Eder, who was now the only target of the dragon. Made him use his defensive skills and tank the dragon, while the rest of your party was standing in the south throwing spells at the dragon and tanking the adds with summons. Dragon went down after about 30 seconds. Mainly used the priest's AoE pillar spells, Gaze of Adragan and the mages' AoE nukes to kill it. Killed the adds afterwards. Ah and for cancelling: at the middle bottom of your screen, in the GUI, you have a button with a little cross inside a circle, between the Attack and the Select All buttons. That one cancels all ongoing actions.
  2. I need to ask: what does POTB stand for? Path of the Bamned? Path of the Braindamaged? Path of the Bibbidi-bibbidi-bu?
  3. Seems like you made the same mistake as I did. But your example should look like this: 100 Health, 0% Damage Reduction, after 100 points of (unmitigated) Damage I fall over dead resulting in 100 effective health. 100 Health, 90% Damage Reduction, after 1.000 points of unmitigated Damage (1000 * (1.00 - 0.90) = 100) or 100 points of mitigated damage I fall over dead resulting in an effective health of 1.000. 100 Health, 99% Damage Reduction, after 10.000 points of unmitigated Damage (1000 * (1.00 - 0.99) = 100) I fall over dead resulting in an effective health of 10.000. Every attack has it's damage reduced by damage reduction thus resulting indeed in an exponential growth of my effective health.
  4. This is wrong. Here is why: <condescending crap snip> I have 1000 HP. My defenses reduce incoming damage by x%. Thus my effective HP are at 1000 HP + 1000 HP * 1.x. <bad maths snip> So kids, stay in school, don't take drugs and stack your defensive stats. Unless you have diminishing returns. Then act smart and look at your overall gain. Would you agree that 100% mitigation means the enemy is doing no damage? If the enemy is doing no damage would you agree that you have infinite effective hit points? Hopefully you answered 'yes' to both of those, because that means that this formula is clearly wrong: Because that predicts that having 100% mitigation merely doubles your EHP. Rest of your post is garbage since it was based around that. FYI, the correct formula is 1/(1-x), and it's grade school algebra to figure out that result. Stay in school indeed. Guess you're right. Shouldn't do math late at night. Also shouldn't act condescending (but hey, at least I made someone new join the forums!). Sorry for both.
  5. 'Alpha weapon' isn't really a thing. But alpha strike is. It's the initial attack; not only in gaming but also in real life. It refers to using a slow ranged weapon to deliver your initial attack, before switching to a faster weapon for the rest of the fight. This gives you a big initial burst and circumvents the long reload time of the slow weapon.
  6. This is wrong correct. Here is why: In case of PoE it can be simplified: because it doesn't use percentage-based stats and thus has no diminishing returns on your stat gains. Deflect doesn't say: Negate 80% of all incoming physical damage. Or: Monsters have a 80% reduced chance of hitting you. Nor do the saving throws say: You have a 80% chance of resisting a certain effect. All of PoE's offensive actions are made by using opposing rolls and those work with absolute values. This means that going from 120 deflection to 121 deflection means just as much as going from 1 deflection to 2 deflection. You lowered your enemies chances to hit you by increasing the threshold he has to overcome by exactly 1. IIRC, your train of thought first came up when World of Warcraft hit the mass market and people started to theorycraft around its combat mechanics. In WoW all your defensive stats are percentage-based, i.e. your armor does reduce incoming damage by a certain % and your block does negate a certain % of all incoming physical attacks. This made it necessary to also introduce diminishing returns on your stat points to avoid getting any stat over 100% thus making your character immune to something and trivializing certain encounters in the game. Now the argument went exactly like you said: I'm at 80% in some defensive stat. So if I increase it to 81% (despite it's relatively higher cost due to diminishing returns) , I just reduced my incoming damage by 1/20 (i.e. I turned 20% into 19%), which is significantly higher than what I get if I increase my stat from 40% to 41% which reduces my incoming damage only by 1/60 (i.e. turned 60% into 59%). So clearly the later points in defensive stats have more impact despite their increased cost due to diminishing returns. Except that this isn't how percentages work. You gave the example yourself. Let's assume you're sitting at 80% mitigation. Ignoring diminishing returns, we compare this with sitting at 40%. In both cases we go up by 1% and look at effective health. Precondition I have 1000 HP. My defenses reduce incoming damage by x%. Thus my effective HP are at 1000 HP * 1.x. 40% to 41% I still have 1000 HP. My defenses reduce incoming damage by 40%. Thus my effective HP are at 1400 (1000 HP * 1.40). My defenses reduce incoming damage by 41%. Thus my effective HP are at 1410 (1000 HP * 1.41). A 1% increase in my defensive stat yielded me a net gain of 141/140 (~1.0071%). 80% to 81% I still have 1000 HP. My defenses reduce incoming damage by 80%. Thus my effective HP are at 1800 HP (1000 HP * 1.80). My defenses reduce incoming damage by 81%. Thus my effective HP are at 1810 HP (1800 HP * 1.81). A 1% increase in my defensive stat yielded me a net gain of 181/180 (~1.0055%). Conclusion Even if we take a %-based system, the effective impact of increased defensive stats isn't growing proportionally or even exponentially towards the end of the curve. Why? Because when you say you go from 98% to 99% you haven't halved your incoming damage. Percentage-wise you have just increased your reduction from 98/100 to 99/100. So the opposite is actually true. Your first point in a defensive stats is the most valuable, as it increases your defenses from 0/100 to 1/100, which is a gain of 1.01 whereas any later gain is always less than 1.01. So kids, stay in school, don't take drugs and stack your defensive stats. Unless you have diminishing returns. Then act smart and look at your overall gain.
  7. Because of the fixed nature of Damage Reduction, slower weapons tend to be more effective. Your highest damage option is the pistol Ducanale from the Act3 shop in Twin Elms. After that it should be Hold Wall (assuming the speed modifier works correctly). Don't really see why you would use a quick firing ranged weapon. IIRC, all damage and attack speed modifiers in the game are %-based, meaning that they scale appropriately with your weapon. The only thing that's fixed is Damage Reduction, which reduces your damage dealt no matter how quick or slow you attack, putting slow weapons that deal there damage in large chunks ahead of fast weapons. So unless you're making use of your faster attack speed via some other means (i.e. more interrupts, quicker application of status effects, some other weapon mod, etc.), you should stick to slow weapons for raw damage.
  8. These kind of posts always dazzle me. I've got my butt handed to me on PotD on several different occasions. Be it in a ambush fight at Caed Nua where a group of virthaks (verthaks? the scarecrow-like dudes from the Endless Dungeon) start the fight by paralyzing my whole group before dominating two to three of my characters, or against some of the bounty groups which have so many dudes that they swarm my two tanks and then go straight for my back line throwing around disables and nukes as if they were confetti. Or the fight at the top level of the lighthouse where you just cannot tank the mobs properly and have to rely on buffs/heals/disables to let your squishies survive the onslaught. Maybe it's just me, but on PotD (and even on Hard) the game offers plenty of challenging encounters where I had to think about my formation, setup and some buffs/debuffs/disables to keep the enemies from tearing through my softer party members. Or maybe I just don't remember every fight that I eventually managed to win after five reloads as 'too easy' 100% agree. The bounties and some Od Nua levels are extremely tough. I think the problem most people have with PotD is the critical path... which I agree is pretty easy in comparison. This, to me, seems to be the crucial point: how do you design a game to be challenging at all times, yet give the player the freedom to tackle content in his desired order. To me the game offered plenty challenges on PotD on several different occasions. Mainly when I did Raedric's Keep at level 3, when I did the Temple of Eothas right when I got to Gilded Vale, when I did the top floor of the Lighthouse soon after I arrived in Defiance Bay, when I went down as far as I could in the Endless Pat at level 8, etc. pp. Of course you can trivialize almost all of the encounters by stacking the odds beforehand, i.e. by out-levelling them, by abusing certain game mechanics (Cipher perma disable, choke points), etc. But that's completely up to you. If you want challenging game play (for the fun of it, not to flex your epeen online afterwards) PoE offers plenty of fights in this department. I was very impressed by PoE's rule set and combat mechanics when I first played it, because it offers challenging fights at almost every stage of the game. Does it also give you the ability to cheese them/avoid them? Yes. Does that mean that the combat is too easy? No. Just that you decided to go the easy-cheesy route. Besides: how does a game look like that is constantly challenging when the player is at the same time constantly adapting to and learning from said challenges? To me, challenge in a fixed game environment (as it is the case with a single player game) means to have to come up with a smart strategy to turn unbeatable/tough encounters into manageable/easy encounters. In overcoming this initial obstacle lies the challenge. Not in constantly getting my teeth kicked in because the AI/the game repeatedly changes the rules and thus forces me to adapt over and over and over again without ever reaching the point where I get to apply my adapted strategies and reap the rewards of them.
  9. I'll break it down: Offensive Role Might Max Dexterity Max Constitution Low Perception Low Intelligence Max Resolve Low Defensive Role Might Low Dexterity Low Constitution High Perception High Intelligence Medium Resolve High Hybrid Role Whatever you deem necessary There. PoE's attribute system in a nut shell.
  10. These kind of posts always dazzle me. I've got my butt handed to me on PotD on several different occasions. Be it in a ambush fight at Caed Nua where a group of virthaks (verthaks? the scarecrow-like dudes from the Endless Dungeon) start the fight by paralyzing my whole group before dominating two to three of my characters, or against some of the bounty groups which have so many dudes that they swarm my two tanks and then go straight for my back line throwing around disables and nukes as if they were confetti. Or the fight at the top level of the lighthouse where you just cannot tank the mobs properly and have to rely on buffs/heals/disables to let your squishies survive the onslaught. Maybe it's just me, but on PotD (and even on Hard) the game offers plenty of challenging encounters where I had to think about my formation, setup and some buffs/debuffs/disables to keep the enemies from tearing through my softer party members. Or maybe I just don't remember every fight that I eventually managed to win after five reloads as 'too easy'
  11. Because to the man who only has a hammer every problem looks like a nail. It's meta-accuracy
  12. Return to the fight when you're level 12 and you're good to go. Accuracy and Deflection play a huge role in PoE's fights and those values scale with levels.
  13. So.. Wizards have received a bit more HP and their armor self-buff was improved (but still has the same short duration) and now they're cream of the crop? Strange how that worked out.. If you want powerful go Cipher. Preferably offensively statted. So max out Might, Dexterity, Intelligence and distribute the remainder of your points as you please. Then just do whatever feels the most powerful to you - almost no way to go wrong with a Cipher
  14. Now we're even getting colour-coded for stupid? What does that have to do with 'stupid'? It's just convenience. Usually I had to mouse-over 3+ pages of items in my stash while selling after a big dungeon/longer time, because I didn't want to sell any unique items. Now this whole process is sped up a lot. But how is Draining Whip now working as intended? Doesn't it apply on Blunderbuss projectiles anymore? Or what happened? Great overall fixes/balance changes
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