Ouroboros226

I love playing healers and I love playing support builds. I've completed the game thrice as Herald. It's been a long time and I want to try and beat PoTD, but I also don't want to play a Herald for the 4th time. Any recommendations for a DPS build? I really enjoy enchanter/spellblade builds in RPGs. Like in DAO I had this awesome arcane knight thing going with miasma aura and... well I can't recall I'm getting old I also like more tactical single target focus builds. Something like a mage slaying rogue with high burst who can take down dangerous priority targets fast. Not a big fan of straight up fighter or ranger types builds where you just hack'n'slash or fire your gun all day. So something more spell based, pure wizard nuker or wizard hybrid melee/ranged which has more options. Or something surgical like rogue+X. Anything that might suit me that you guys can think of? I reaaally want to break away from Herald. But it scares me because my DPS would really have to make up for the lack of healing. I mean is a single Priest or druid even enough to outheal encounters in PoTD? Can you even approach PoTD with high damage builds? I basically regret not saving Herald for PoTD but I really want something more oomph.

Cept sustained dps don't mean much. I'm not a veteran to this game like others here. So someone correct me if I'm wrong. But my experience from PoTD is that the assassinate ability is extremely powerful and loss of sustained DPS don't mean crap. Why? Because burst damage and taking out priority targets, strong single threats fast, is the biggest tip of the scale. In POTD if you start a fairly difficult encounter, and you lose one party member early. You have an exponentially lesser chance to win. Taking out a high threat dangerous enemy single target fast, gives you the same advantage. Dealing 40% damage to 7 enemies is monumentally worse than killing 2 enemies faster and having 5 enemies left on full life. Assassinate, despite only getting to use it free once, and maybe 3 times on average during a fight midgame out. Is ridiculously strong for burst damage. It excels at what matters most. Being able down enemies rapidly. Your total damage over time dealt to the enemy encounter as a whole is not meaningful generally. Against bosses and super bosses you still have gouging strike which is a perma damage debuff, this allows you to focus your main dps elsewhere while still contributing to damaging a boss. Don't need to be an assassin for that but in context it is still relevant. This is my opinion after.... I think I have 350 hours now. Like I said, I'm open to being wrong so someone correct me if so. But from experience, on a POTD perspective, instantly being able to take out 1 enemy fast. And having crazy single target 2-4 times when needed. Is gold worth. I'm not sure if party composition alters this factor by tons. Could be. My preferred setup is 1 main tank hybridized for damage, 1 pure healer/support, 1 pure dps, 1 hybrid dps/support and 1 hybrid off-tank/dps. Averaging CC abilities out divided on the entire team. I like to have 2 pure roles and 3 1/2*2 roles so I have more flexibility if one character dies. I feel like hyper-specializing a character creates too much of an achilles heel because if that character dies, the main contribution they provided to the encounter is also gone.

The third most difficult fight in the entire game after Gorecci street triple crown and the drake, is the mist island bridge with Fampyrs imo. In that fight you get swarmed, rushed, flanked etc. IMO the safest build in the game Vs that encounter and most others, is 3 beefy characters of any kind, including tanks. 1-2 "squishies" in the middle of them. Thing is - in my experience this game rewards you heavily, and punshes you minimally - for STACKING your party CLOSE to each other. I noticed that the game is significantly easier on all difficulties, if you just keep your entire party hugging each other close. Because soooooooo many of the heals and buffs are very low AOE range. Edit: I actually hoped the game would reward stuff like splitting up, multiple chokeholds, send one solo etc. Buuuuut ... and feel free to disagree. It's always a huge advantage to just keep everyone tightly stacked.

If you are a shifter + fighter. What happens to boar form? 1) Fighter regen pauses, boar regen counts while shifted, fighter regen continues after. 2) Fighter regen and boar regen both count at the same time, giving you double regen. 3) Fighter regen and boar regen both count, but do NOT stack, WASTING the fighter regen (hence boar should never be your first shift) - Out of Battlemage and Arcane Warrior. Which one is in your opinion, objectively strongest for triple crown? The 1 discipline tactical barrage, and perma +5 ACC/Deflect from conquerer alone seems very strong not even counting the regen or anything else. I've taken a long good look at both BattleM and Arcane Warrior, and to me fighter looks statistically / raw strength stronger. While paladin gives more flexibility. Both offer great passives. - I'm wondering because I'm starting a new triple crown run and these 3 are my preferred picks. Having some difficulty in deciding.

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My favorite Serafen build is the +1400 gold one

Ah yes reroll indecisiveness hell. Been there bro When I started playing Deadfire I rerolled so many characters I had to force myself to pick one if I was to complete it before being burnt out.

I used him as a healing / support bot in my first completed playthrough. Theurge. Healing chants, and he gets more than sufficient healing skills pretty early anyway. But IIRC I did somewhat regret it because his unique skillset seemed more offensively oriented.

Doesn't seem like it will happen anyway, there's like zero interest Maybe it's the having to record it or stream it that does it. I know that this was the big "Ugh... " for me when I was wondering participating in something similar with Fallout 2 a long time ago.

I haven't tried the Magran challenge, but it looks to me like something that could be manageable with an insane focus on pre-emptive AI behavior planning. Maybe even requiring you to modify the AI behaviors for each different encounter to survive them. The Magran challenge struck me more like a monumentally time consuming and annoying one, but with knowledge of every encounter in the game, perfectly doable. Whether my assessment is correct here, I don't know. I haven't actually tried this one.

I figured as much, but thanks for that I genuinely think I'd be perfect as a game tester and it's a job I would enjoy as well. I already have a job so it's no biggie. It would have to be contract or freelance anyway as I don't want to move to the US. Not sure if the media is blowing things way out of proportions but the health care system you guys have is a deal breaker. Not that I plan to do anything illegal but the justice and prison systems you have is also scary and dystopian. Lots of things I love about the US but the negatives are too negative so to speak.

I don't know how appealing it will be to people but I'll share it. The main premise of what I want the challenge to be, is rooted in the complaints I've read about the ranger animal companions. I thought it would be fun, to provide a challenge where the contestants need to treat 2-3 animal companions as their main characters. This means 2-3 rangers and 2-3 animal companions. Points gotten additively for content done, and a multiplier to the additive score is added to the contestant's final score. More to the one that has the LEAST combined party damage done. In other words. Your character and your party members are free to deal as much damage as you want. But you'd want your team to tank, CC, debuff and heal. And BUFF your animal companions into "raid boss modus" sort of. As if your ranger companion animals are the main characters. The idea is for the contestants to attempt and do the max amount of content they can, but with the goal of having their total party damage be as low as possible. So that the focus on buffing your animal companions to god status gives you the highest chance to win. If there are any faults to the premise of the challenge please share. Since the community here isn't that active anymore. I'd rather decided that the challenge starts the 26th, and lasts 1 week from that date. 4 people accepting the challenge or it's canceled. 8 people max. @Kaylon I was hoping that @Boeroer could help me decide on what's allowed and not in terms of exploits and such if this happens. If he is willing to help on giving me info on that. I want the challenge to be fair. So that exploits and cheesing can not give a player with insane meta knowledge an unfair advantage.

Is game tester a part of quality assurance?

Game tester would be my dream job perfectly fitted for me, as well as my employer's dream hire I think (as a game tester). I have Asperger Syndrome and I get hung up and obsessed with details that stand out as "wrong". I once argued with a dev at Creative Assembly, that a unit in Total War: Warhammer needed a +2 melee attack stat buff. This change was miniscule, but was actually implemented among some other suggestions for stat balance I gave them. Positive reception from the community in terms of balance would imply success I'd say. While game developers work on the bigger picture against the deadline clock. Even when specialized on a singular job. Many things on a micro level is often overlooked. Being on the autism spectrum, and having my one single focused hobby being gaming for over 20 years. I can play a game once and instantly see 50 small cogs that would make the whole machine much, much better. I can not say this without being perceived as arrogant. But if you are reading this Obsidian. Give me 3 games I haven't played which involves many intertwining factors and numbers. And I can, in just a week, complete them and give a professional and objective unbiased report on the many smaller details and numbers that would make the game balance as a whole much better. It's actually a handicap too. This is not a joke: I was once tormented for weeks because I was obsessively thinking over the many balance issues that made Diablo 3 a bad game in terms of fundamental gameplay balance. Though I didn't manage to get through to the devs in this scenario. Many, many miniscule changes can as a whole make games that require good gameplay balance - vastly more enjoyable. An issue many failed games have today is beautiful visuals and cool concepts and themes for gameplay loops, while lacking the fundamental numerical balance that makes games feel fair and satisfying. I also see the big picture of a game. For example, I could easily write a long article on how good the pacing of Deadfire is. Gameplay pacing also being of huge importance especially RPGs, often mishandled. I'll stop there. I could quiet literally write about this for hours on end to explain it all. My life experience and my mental illness is actually my resumè I can take a shower and be bothered by a unit in a 10 year old game having a defensive stat overtuned, or the movement speed of a unit in a RTS being slightly too slow. The most common complaint by gaming communities is the "nerf hammer". Things being too good becoming useless instead of balanced, because they don't have the time to analyze the numerical values indepth and in relation to other factors. So developers often end up approaching balancing very heavy handed, while a few slight touches was all that was needed.

1) Is this against the rules here in any way? I can't see how it could be, but this needs to be clear before anything else. 2) If I do this, is there no other way to make sure no one cheats - than have them stream and upload, or record the playthrough for download? I'm willing to watch through them to make sure no one cheated, it just means there would have to be a maximum limit to the contestants. 3) I need to get a feel for how many would be interested. So please let me know if you are interested in doing a deadfire playthrough with 1 week time limit (IRL) from tomorrow, with the rules I set for the contest. 4) Any suggestions that could help make the contest more fair in a way that does not give hardcore Deadfire players an advantage which makes it impossible for other players to even stand a chance? Some of the current rules I've decided on if it happens, is a ban on blood mage (subclass only) and Chanter (whole class). As well as a ban on charm spells, summon creature spells (but not weapons) and using exploits. Veteran is the planned difficulty. That's just the core rules, the actual challenge that would make it unique I'm not sharing yet. If enough people are interested - I'll announce it in a day or two, 1 week duration. If no one is interested... well - I'll save 111$ at least! Edit: I'm naturally not allowed to participate myself