hilfazer

I thought extra PEN from crits is pretty bad for units relying on armor. But i'm not surprised to see absolute damage reduction is better than %. Too bad OBS didn't improve their poor implementation from POE1 but decided to go with system where DPH does not matter (not counting special attacks).

I want to agree with this but to my knowledge RES in POE2 is was even worse than in POE1 because it no longer had Concentration. And RES in POE1 was just bad. It had a reputation of being good only for tanks. Not all classes were fit for this role. Rogues had a reputation of being squishy so they were unfit for a tank role. It means RES was a dump stat for a class and that is a problem. I don't have beta access, maybe RES in better than in POE1. If every class in Deadfire can make good use of RES then, yes, i agree with you. I'm not saying replacing Might with Strength was a good idea. Might is better than Strength but OTOH new Resolve is better than old one. In a perfect world OBS would keep Might and make RES good for any class but Josh could not find a way to do this. New Resolve has a following problem: "All casters are tanks!" It's not neccesarily my opinion because casters have low max HP, but i've seen this more than once. But Might also has a problem: "All healers are DPS damage dealers!" This is why i really like moving healing to Resolve. I would keep magic damage on Might, however.

My point is you can make a caster build that will benefit from high Strength. An attribute being a dump stat to a build is not a problem. Ranged Caster is a build. We had this in PoE1 already - casters who only wanted to cast debuffs/buffs could dump Might. And that's fine because you can still make a caster that uses Might. Edit: Let's no forget taking both high Strength and Resolve is entirely possible.

Strength will be useful for weapon summoning wizards but first summoning a weapon can't be taking whole day. Strength will be useful for weapon summoning priest but first summoning a weapon can't be taking whole day. Strength will be useful for spiritshifting druids but first... wait, it's already useful, no?

If it works like in PoE1 then definitely no. 6s should be for spells with instant effects like Fireball (i hate overused examples) Blast of Frost. A spell with both instant effect and AoE is even better candidate for long cast time. But a spell that hits random single enemy and needs a lot of time to reach its full potential? No.

If Barbarian happens to also be a Berserker he will benefit extra from Infuse as it removes Confusion.

Yeap. Crit damage bonus is additive. As for graze, it looks like a multiplicative malus: example. But if might is multiplicative (see below) something doesn't add up. Graze is multiplicative while crit is additive. Graze is - 50% while crit is +25%. Crit increases PEN while graze does not lower it (or does it?). Are they trying to make this game harder to grasp?

That's how it works in D&D. In PoE martial classes have active abilities that you use. This is in fact the reason to lower party size to 5, there's many more thing happening in battle.

Can i use generic fully enchanted spear for this build? Or any other generic fully enchanted weapon? I heard generic fully enchanted items can replace uniques just fine.

Little known fact: PoE2 is way more vancian than PoE1. In fact it is more vancian than typical vancian system (think D&D). First, let's look at the problem vancian casting brings: "Caster has prepared wrong spell" (and not the right one). Is it a problem in PoE1? In case of druid and priests answer is obvious, in case of wizards - less so but it's still a "No". At worst a wizard will spent like 1.5s switching a grimoire, big deal. In D&D preparing spells requires a rest so it can not be done in combat. Now this is something players can have problem with. In PoE2 casters are choosing spells not per rest but per life!! Sure, wizards still have their grimoires but other caster AFAIK have no such options and are stuck with their choice forever.

Thank You, KDubya. Looks like you skipped attack time when calculating Arquebus DPS.

Big damage + high penetration is a big no-no with new armor system. % reduction is supposed to reduce damage from big hits and it would not if those attacks were penetrating armor. This is why dragon's breath will not have good penetration. Otherwise Obsidian would fail.

Here are screenshots of ranged weapons in the current beta: https://imgur.com/a/fC2wr I don't know what "blunted criticals" means right now because as I understood it criticals only give +25% damage anyway. I've also got a pet thing that the Arquebus should do blunt damage rather than piercing but that's a side thing Thank You. Looks like arquebus isn't better arbalest after all. Arbalest has slightly more DPS. And arbalests! They still benefit from extra penetration.

What about ranged weapons? I need a confirmation that firearm fanboys won and forced Obsidian to make arquebus a better arbalest.

Might be a feature in case of Wildstrike as it was their original idea for PoE1.

If you only want to cast spell once per battle, you can do that. If it's your only spell from given spell level then there are 2 possible reasons: 1. other spells from this spell level are not cool enough but that's another problem to solve, 2. you're powergaming so that's on you. As for casting one spell ad nauseum, there's already a solution in PoE1:Dyrwood - Spell Mastery. Only this time it would not turn per-rest into per-encounter but per-encounter into at-will. It would also solve issue some players have with traditionally vancian casters running out of spells too quickly. And let's not forget this problem is only going to grow bigger once cast times get reduced. BTW thank you for your first paragraph, OP.

Is Dex additive with other action speed bonuses?

But... death is a crucial part of the cycle. You guys are necromancers! "Necromancy Despite the assumed natural cycle of things, there are individuals in the world of Project Eternity who either want to know more about that cycle or who choose to alter that cycle" Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/328976

I'm 'only' 99% sure it is. Everyone and his brother says it is very important to not have Pen below enemy armor. I never saw anyone saying +% damage bonus could be an alternative. If it was additive it would not be that good for dealing with high powered attack (with big +% damage) and that is half of the reason for changing armor system.

Hmm, could be confusing since underpenetration is multiplicative and will stay this way.

That's not the only reason and also not primary one. Primary reason is preventing damage bloat. Perhaps i should have ordered my post differently.

Additive, easily. Cipher is going to need some love once Strength hits beta. With additive dmg bonus Cipher will not need Strength bonus as much. Rogue will also need Strength less and that's good because this class does not strike me as exceptionally mighty. They are more of an opportunists. Obsidian went crazy with damage bloat because they have % damage reduction now. But if player can penetrate enemy armor that % reduction does exactly nothing. And the game is designed around player being able to penetrate armor - this is why being below enemy armor gave huge damage penalty.

Looks like a Spiritshifting Druid. Spiritshift weapons in PoE had 5 DR bypass, it's estoc level of bypass. Don't Spiritshift weapons have estoc's penetration in PoE2?

Accuracy is rolled against all 4 defenses while Deflection is just one of them so ... kinda yes. Looks like suckage of Resolve and crappyness of casters had been dealt with in a single blow. Good job Obsidian!

Not likely. The point of % damage reduction is dealing with heavy hits. It means enemies with heavy hits should not have high enough Pen to ignore player's armor, especially tank's armor. If they had enough Pen they would be doing 100% of their damage so % damage reduction would not be handling those big hits at all! That would make Josh look really bad.