the streaker

Is the weapon switch bug (to eliminate the recovery penalty) truly still a thing in this game? I thought this would have been fixed ages ago. Right now with Devil of Caroc using quick switch + coil of resourcefulness, switching between two pikes yields zero recovery time or any kind of pause between attacks. Between that and deathblows on scrolls/item spells, she's my MVP and I have to hold myself back from abusing it to make the game interesting. Definitely nice to have a monk or barb to cull the masses of enemies in some encounters, admittedly.

Ignoring the hit-crit bonus for durganizing weapons, has anybody worked out whether durganized armor or weapon gives you faster attack speed?

It used to be very easy to tank, because enemies would rarely disengage or run past your front line. Also, some abilities were a lot more powerful than others, so you'd use them a lot. Cipher's mind blades and amplified wave comes to mind.

In the original game you could take 5/8 companions into your party. In the sequel, 4/7. Pretty solid, you get 3 non-used companions either way. Considering the returning companions will have brand new stories and dialogue they're basically new.

I personally wouldn't even take one fighter. A paladin and chanter/monk/barbarian make a better combo. Cipher is the only class I usually take more than one of, because their powers are very good and can be spammed without need for rest. Priest spells are usually duration-based, which one priest can keep up by himself. I think gunpowder teams are great, but not optimal and it's hard to find enough good enchanted guns compared to all the other weapons. Also, you have to screw around with quick switch and manually cycling through your guns if you really want to make the most of it. It's tedious.

Companions and the main antagonist should be voiced. Helps give them character and humanity, IMO. The rest can be non-voiced, I don't care much.

I hope highlighted lore text sticks around for good. I seem to remember it in Morrowind, but oddly it never showed up in any other games I've played, except with the latest Tyranny. It's quite brilliant.

Congrats, guys. This is great news.

Invest more time into making the animations look great! Gaming is a visual medium, and an RPG with lifelike animations really gives life to the characters that you grow attached to over the course of the game. If they're just moving pixels that swing a sword two different ways and run three different ways, it pulls you out of the immersion. Lots of developers seem to under-value animation, but it's so important and gives the game the appearance of high production values.

Yup, the outworn buckler is too good to lose. Many status effects completely slaughter your deflection (and/or accuracy), so non-deflection defenses are arguably as or more important than deflection.

Paladin, chanter, wizard are probably the easiest, maybe in that order, but don't confuse easiest with easy

There's a rogue build posted in the builds list at the top of this forum, it's not optimized but it's pretty good, called "Don Juan". Just move quick switch & extra slot further up the build queue and you're good to go. Same with the paladin, all you really need is quick switch, the rest is a pretty basic paladin build.

Did anybody catch the post on reddit about guy who got The Ultimate achievement with a wizard? https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/5pf5o6/beat_pillars_of_eternity_tcs_the_ultimate_as/ Josh Sawyer also tweeted about it yesterday. Pretty damn impressive for a spellcasting class! Build is in the link. He even uses frenzy! Imagine the nerves, not knowing how much health you have left...

Rogue. With an Aumaua (whichever one gives you the extra weapon slot), quick switch & extra weapon talents, and the belt of resourcefulness, you can machine gun 3 arquebus shots at the outset of combat (no wait time in between, just click - Q - click - Q - click) and then go to town in melee. Reason for rogue is that you have the best accuracy and crit rate, sneak attack/backstab/deathblows to add +% damage, and activated abilities that add +%. Nobody else can add that much damage onto a gun shot's base damage.

Honestly you should probably just drop the druid. Druids aren't a good class for beginners. They're the weakest spellcaster (from priest, wizard, cipher), and since you rarely use your per-rest spells, they're going to be the worst class in the game. Poor defenses, poor accuracy, shapeshift can't just walk into the melee and expect to live for long. I recommend you go with a cipher instead - simple, powerful spells (dominate or paralyze enemies, raw damage AoE), basic attacks do more damage than other classes, and no fancy builds required so you can increase your "dialogue" skills (per/int/res) for more story options. Or do a wizard with the massive +deflection boosting spells if you get in trouble. Their basic attacks are also good once you get the blast talent, and their spells are just better overall, plus you can summon powerful weapon spells that stick with you during the fight.

Interesting! what do you mean by benefit twice from might? Also, would it be 25% of the full attack (with lash included) and is it vs. 25% of the target's DR? This goddamn game is so needlessly complicated..

I actually really like Pallegina's voice. Second is probably Kana.

There's no need to guess because we already know weapon attack speeds. Stilettos/daggers are much faster than 2handers and sabres, so when you (almost) remove recovery time from the calculation, DPS is all about the swing speed. Annihilation mods only add +0.5x damage onto a long list of damage mods, so they're not the ultimate weapon mod for a rogue.

Better to keep him with the highest DPS setup and rely on the high interrupt rating + fast attack speeds to keep the target "disabled" while the classes that are better at inflicting status effects are left to do that. Having the rogue try to do everything is not optimal.

To make most use of deathblows, 3 casters (combination of wizards and ciphers) will make it very likely that there are at least 2 status effects on enemies at all times. If you don't mind resting often, take two wizards, otherwise go with two ciphers. In terms of which powers to use, there are too many and they're all good as long as they have a decent duration. Just look it up in the wiki here, most of the best status effects you should be applying during fights anyways will also allow the rogue to sneak attack.

Well, if you enjoy bringing your druid along for the ride, it's not my place to get in your way Likewise, there is plenty of reason to consider bringing a top single-target DPS member along in a 6-man group. In many difficult fights, there are either a few high value targets, or one boss with high defenses. This is when you need single-target DPS, high accuracy, and to be able to do it in a brief window of time when your debuffs manage to penetrate the high defenses. Anyways, I found out why sabres weren't giving me the damage I expected - one of the latest patches reduced the base damage and added a +20% additive damage bonus instead... total nerf to sabre-wielding rogue, for god knows what reason. Stilettos are definitely the better choice, then. Probably Misery's End + Vent Pick, or Bleak Fang. Durgan-refined weapons combined with high dexterity put your attack speed and crit rate through the roof. Rogue actually ends up getting the useful talents in the early levels, so for the last two talents it makes sense to take quick switch and extra slots so you can fire 2 or 3 pistols (Aumaua or not) for a nice DPS spike while the front line settles down and the debuffs take full effect.

Exactly what I keep saying... in an optimized party, you'd take a wiz and a priest. Not a druid. If you're looking for flavor, you could go druid for fun, but there's no point in discussing what's fun and what's not.

Me? I don't think there's much point in continuing the testing, see page 3. Re: wizard vs. druid, it's pretty well unanimously accepted that the wiz is a better caster than the druid, so not sure why we need to rehash that same old arguments again, especially since they've only gotten worse in 3.0 due to spell mastery (can't spam those damage spells).

Right, wizard does CC and AoE better than druid. Cipher spells are amazing. Priest spells are amazing. There is no other niche that the druid does better than the others, so why would I choose him unless I'm going for a party of 4 casters and for some reason don't want to double-up on cipher or wizard? Hence, master of none.

Well, the cipher's damage multipliers come nowhere near the rogue's. Then you start looking at all the other amazing powers the cipher has to offer, and realize that the cipher is far better suited to only doing enough damage to build enough focus to use those amazing powers. There's no doubt the cipher is a stronger class overall, or if judged in isolation. Honestly the cipher + rogue is quite good, and is the main reason I hardly ever used druids. A druid has no place in my party. Part-time single target DPS when I can get a dedicated person for that role, part-time caster with substantially inferior spells to the wizard, cipher and priest. The jack-of-all-trades would be welcome in a 2-man or 4-man party, but not necessary in a group of 6 where I can have a specialist for every role. Having said that, the rogue suffers from the opposite, too focused on just one thing. They should get some AoE skills to round them out a bit. Rogue works well with opening arquebus shots while the rest of your party throws out disabling abilities, then go around picking off disabled enemies in melee. If you just throw a rogue into melee against monsters, he'll probably die a lot at low levels. Takes a bunch of micromanagement to make it work.