Eos
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Posts posted by Eos
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I need to ask: what does POTB stand for? Path of the Bamned? Path of the Braindamaged? Path of the Bibbidi-bibbidi-bu?
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Assuming a base of 100 starting health and an attack of 100 damage:
With 10% damage reduction, we get 10 end health, translated to 110 effective health, and thus a 10% health increase
With 11% damage reduction, we get 11 end health, translated to 111 effective health, and thus a 11% health increase
With 90% damage reduction, we get 90 end health, translated to 190 effective health, and thus a 90% health increase
With 91% damage reduction, we get 91 end health, translated to 191 effective health, and thus a 91% health increase
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.
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Suppose there is something that will miss you 98% of the time when it has 100 accruacy. Now suppose we change your defense such that it will miss you 99% of the time. This effectively doubles your defense simply by adding 1 point of defense. This is the extreme, but not unattainable case. Similarly suppose you will be missed 50% of the time by that something, when we add 1 point of defense you are missed 51%. This is not nearly as big of an increase. A good way to quantify this is to multiply your mitigation by your health. At 50% miss rate you, over time, have 2x your health in "effective health". At 99% miss rate you have 100x. As you can see going from 50% to 99% is a 50 fold improvement. But going from 50% to 51% is a very small improvement.
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:
1000 HP * 1.x.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.
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Sorry for derailing the thread, but while we're at it, I've seen some people use the word "alpha" a lot on this forums ("alpha weapon" was mentioned in in this thread, this post has a couple more examples, etc). I know what "alpha" means in general, but not in the context of gaming.
'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.
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Suppose there is something that will miss you 98% of the time when it has 100 accruacy. Now suppose we change your defense such that it will miss you 99% of the time. This effectively doubles your defense simply by adding 1 point of defense. This is the extreme, but not unattainable case. Similarly suppose you will be missed 50% of the time by that something, when we add 1 point of defense you are missed 51%. This is not nearly as big of an increase. A good way to quantify this is to multiply your mitigation by your health. At 50% miss rate you, over time, have 2x your health in "effective health". At 99% miss rate you have 100x. As you can see going from 50% to 99% is a 50 fold improvement. But going from 50% to 51% is a very small improvement.
This is
wrongcorrect.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.PreconditionI 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%).ConclusionEven 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. -
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.
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I see alot of nerfs in upcoming patch. I think nerfs are not the correct way in balancing a battle. A smart AI is the resolution for the poor combat difficulty.
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.
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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.
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I see alot of nerfs in upcoming patch. I think nerfs are not the correct way in balancing a battle. A smart AI is the resolution for the poor combat difficulty.
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'
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Because to the man who only has a hammer every problem looks like a nail. It's meta-accuracy
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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.
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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
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- Added a new color for unique items in the inventory.
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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Just out of curiosity.. why do you play PotD with Trial of Iron but not with Expert mode? Why the benefit of having exact AoE spells all the while you try to have the rest of the game as hard as possible?
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As I said earlier, very little, and you seem to agree now. I would only ever use melee or hybrid rogue, otherwise wizard or cipher are better.
I was expecting this reply.
Anyway, all I ended up doing was repositioning my Cipher in the group (I use kind of an upside down cross formation with the tank one character space further ahead) so that he was on one of the sides instead of the middle. It made opening up with multiple Mind Lances much easier in dungeons. So much so that for many trash packs, I'd just pull with him too.
Your numbers perfectly showed what you want a Rogue for. You have your three casters and your Rogue. All four of them have roughly dealt the same damage over the course of the game. But what is the one big difference? Your casters deal AoE damage. Whenever they cast a spell, they rack up damage by hitting four, five, six enemies at the same time, all of them contributing to the overall dealt damage. All the while your Rogue needs to attack one target at a time. Yet your Rogue managed to deal the same overall damage that all your casters dealt by dealing their damage to multiple enemies at the same time.
Oversimplified example: for every 10 damage your casters dealt to five enemies, your Rogue dealt 50 damage to a single enemy.
What do you want your Rogues for? To burst down single targets. Enemy casters, bosses, dragons. All the stuff you don't want to stand too long.
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Some thoughts/comments on your build:
Silent Scream beats Soul Shock as AoE DPS spell. More damage per focus, bigger AoE, stun on initial target
Penetrating Shot. Are you positive that the 5 bonus damage per pellet end up giving more focus than the -20% attack speed cost you? Feels iffy to me. Same with the Lead Spitter: do the 3 damage per pellet affect Focus generation? What's the focus gain per damage?
And in terms of DoTs. Someone tested the way the Rogue's Open Wounds ability works. He found out that it was only affected by Intelligence, which prolonged the DoT, thus resulting in more overall damage (but actually less DPS as the damage per tick is always the same). Might be that it's the same for every other kind of DoT effect
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The main priest isn't there? Mmh.. Maybe you're trying to go there too early? In both my playthroughs I got there to solve the third part of the main quest and on both occasions I found two guys sitting in the chapel. Some lesser 'don't talk to me, talk to the dude over there'-dude, and the main-'the ruins are over there'-dude.
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I really don't understand how are you guys OK with all that? We should be striving for a game that is excellent and different from other mainstream games today. Not the game that is mediocre and same like mentioned games (minus fancy graphics, cinematics and VO).
Call it cynicism, call it realism, call it the death of idealism, but to me it's like this: I can focus on the flaws of the game (and bitch and moan about them on the forums) and consequently lessen my enjoyment of it or I like it for everything it has done right and have 100+ hours of great entertainment. Now I can't tell you that one thing is strictly better than the other, but I know which one I enjoy more :D
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IIRC, you have to speak to the priest in the chapel in the north-west of the Dyrford Village before you can go there. He's the one who tells you where the ruins are
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Btw, was there ever given a reason as to why characters automatically switch to ranged weapons when they're under some sort-of control effect? Didn't they even want to fix that in v1.3?
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Thanks so far.
I had a paladin and he could resist the attac.
But enemies target the weakest char and I cannot give everyone very high defenses.
Eder was my second tank. (well, he is a damage dealer but with his heavy armor he can take some hits.)
The biggest problem was, that when the enemies dominated my char, they could walk behind behind him
because he could not block the path with an engaged enemy anymore.
At this place there was no position in which one or 2 chars could block the entire path by just standing there.
I found the Priest's level 2 trap which knocks target's prone is very useful for those kind of situations.
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How exactly are optional features hindering your enjoyment of the game?
And 'take everything' is dumbing down the game? Because clicking items one-by-one is challenging and intellectually demanding? wat?
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You get materials for two Superb enchantments? Doesn't the enchantment use some sort of eyes and you only get one pair of them?
Please check my party for The Master Below
in Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by Eos
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.