Erik Dirk

Obsidian made two mistakes that make it almost impossible to balance the difficulty. 1. They built an open world RPG. 2. They added mid game DLCs again.(Seriously why did they do this again?)

I think you're forgetting that the start is aburdly hard compared to end game.I know a few people who quit POE1 because Veteran felt like story mode halfway through chapter 2. But they couldn't get past Caed Nua in POTD.(They didn't buy deadfire) Pretty sure the number of players who'd have liked chapter 2&3 in POTD would have been pretty high, but we'll never know as early game is leveled to the hardcore minority. Since the early really difficult battles can be skipped in deadfire it would have been a better test if POTD was reasonably difficult.

At the moment I'm generally not inspired to take many active abilities, especially for multiclass. In most cases selecting another passive seems a better choice than an active, simply because the added utility will rarely add much since you'll have less casts of another ability. Personally I'd like to see all abilities changed to per encounter, single cast for high cost abilities, 2-3 cast for low cost abilities. Class resource is only available to multi class through empower. Single class would have additional class resource so they can choose abilities that they want additional uses. The benefits I see are: It encourages using different abilities and therefore stratergies Spamming a single ability isn't maybe possible, but only on a single class character. Single class will have something very unique to separate them. Picking all active abilities is still a decent build. this may make it harder to balance the game though as the devs will no longer be receiving quite as definite feedback on the most frequently chose abilities. P.s. I know there are some build that people do choose many actives, e,g, many damage over time abilities. However these seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Not sure how anyone could possibly still think charge is TOTALLY useless, after some of the examples. Try charge on a melee alpha striker, like a monk. (Also works defensively as you can quickly stun & push enemies away from casters) It's pretty much the only fighter active, (non-buff) I use on my devoted/monk.

So, the game says that the monk doesn't have a Dexterity Inspiration when in fact he does have this buff, only suppressed? That definitely sounds like an oversight. On the other hand, I am curious if there are cases when we would want to know whether the monk is benefitting from Dexterity Inspiration? For such a question the answer should be YES if it is active and NO if it is suppressed. Fixing this could also fix the nalzpaca drug crash bug

Well monks only make a full attack on the target and not every target caught in between like charge did. If I am not mistaken. You are mistaken unfortunately Doesn't Flagellants Path just deal damage to enemies, but not perform an attack? I.e. Any additional effects will only proc on the final target. Charge which can proc any additional attack effects is obviously OP. There's a reason why carnage deals raw damage and it isn't to control barbarian damage.

Any chance of this getting fixed soon? Surely a quick patch that permanently removes all drug effects from the character wouldn't be that hard.

While where at it multiclass and grimories seems a bit overpowered. I.e a self buffing rogue can just buy the one from the dark cupboard and not spend a single point on spells. Single class isn't as bad as they don't have as many good alternative picks but multi seems to encourage gaming the system.

The fact that you said this says it all. It' doesn't add anything to the players experience and makes the game almost impossible to balance as those one or two points can make an absurd difference in difficulty.I can hardly believe the original binary system of the beta even lasted long enough to put into code. The other suggestions are better, but making penetration a random variable like damage could also work, anything just so long as there is never a point where heavy Armour could do absolutely nothing in a under levelled fight.

I'd say that the example used really should allow polyamory. Sefaren Maia and Tekehu all seem like they'd be ok with that. All the others should probably be monogamous.

Pretty sure the technical difficulties aren't insurmountable. I.e once you visit an area the difficulty gets locked in. Given the balancing done for POE1 I kind of struggle to believe that the problem is too much work.

Tuotilos palm. Does it still work with both dual wield and shield passives

Would that matter though? You might end up with Veteran 1.5 difficulty I.e. Higher stats but no additional enemies. In regards to technical issues I'd have thought it'd be the same as level scaling. I.e. Areas you've already been to but not cleared don't get harder. Finding veteran hard doesn't mean you suck, just you haven't figured something out yet. Armour penetration mechanics can be brutal for example. Also after 1.1 it's mid game that balance completely goes out the window. Although experienced Poe players will reach this much quicker. Also some classes/subclasses are pretty lacklustre. I.e. Single class priest

They decided to implement Blessings of Wael?

I know this keeps coming up but what is the logic of this? The first chapter of POE1 is by far the hardest. While POTD players are a very small percentage I think a significant portion of casual gamers would like to ramp up the difficulty late game. Has Josh Sawyer ever directly addressed this? P.s. I easily beat POE1 in POTD with 2 companions so this isn't about me.

I think where obsidian went wrong with this update is increasing enemy stats at the same time as nerfing. If suddenly you're under penetrating & your enemies are penetrating the game suddenly became twice as hard. Add some nerfing on top and suddenly "my class is unplayable" Pretty sure a good part of OPs issues are not just because of nerfing.

POTD players are and should be a minority. Most of the players I knew didn't enjoy POE1 because Veteran was initially stupidly easy. But they couldn't pass Cad Nua in POTD I'd say the vast majority of players are those who want some semblance of challenge throughout the game, like a bit of role play, but certainly aren't min-maxers. I really don't understand the tendancy of these games to lock players into a difficulty, sure disable POTD achievements, but let players monitor their own difficulty. Sure the game should have been released as an early access or perhaps some similar term, but I still think the majority of players are happier with a relatively balanced game. Perfectly balanced probably isn't necessary though,

I don't believe deleting all trace of cut ideas would be a good idea either. As was pointed out some of these can be activated using console commands and could also be good material for a modder.

I wouldn't say a full party should be necessary for the 0.01% of hardest-core gamers, but demanding that the very hardest difficulty cater to your wish to be able to finish with a very harsh, self imposed handicap that goes against the original premise of the game, is more than a tad petulant (Not saying this is necessarily so in your case but there were a few of these in POE1). A "3 Musketeers" achievement would be a much better ultimate hardcore difficulty for the devs to aim for.

I think the penetration system is also way too rigid, that one or two levels doesn't just give slightly better stats or skills, you'll usually also have better gear, that extra 1 armor/pen is a 25% difference in difficulty on its own. A linear armor/pen mechanic may be less interesting, but it will be a lot easier to balance. At least change the steps to incriments of 2 points Attrition based combat is a tedious mechanic. I support Health/Endurance on a per encounter basis, but the POE1 rest system was just a chore.

So currently priests aren't very powerful because most classes have their own self buffs which do not stack with other buffs. Rather than giving priests low level +5 inspirations they should get (or have options for) +2 or 3 which can stack with any non-priest buff. Chanter or Paladin buffs are ok if they suppress each other because that isn't supposed to be their primary utility. This should also apply to drug effects, ripple sponge seems entirely useless to most classes unless you invest heavily into alchemy, Including Nazpalca monks. Although Drugs should scale a LOT slower than they currently do if this change is made.

No. Why are so many players obsessed with solo gameplay? This is supposed to be a PARTY Rpg, if they boost the difficulty so that it's practically impossible to complete the game with less than 3 characters this should be a good thing. If they eventually tune POTD so solo is impossible play a roguelike, don't complain that they're not catering to your playstyle.

I'm surprised fists didn't get hit. They should be the highest pure dps weapon as they don't have additional enchantments. However their current dps is insanely high. My devoted monk had 5x the damage of any companion when I got bored mid run.

Exactly, POTD is looking to be a touch too hard for myself. However I think it might be perfect with Blessings of Berath.

Everything that was nerfed was required. However in a few cases they target the wrong thing. I.e Time parasite. This needed to not stack as it gave ascendant an absurd speed boost. Instead they reduced the values. Monk swift flurry seemed ok to me, the damage v.s. Speed of fists though...