the streaker

Wat? Arbalest has no DR penetration, lower average damage than arquebus, and is nearly the same speed. Both have -0.3 crit modifier. The only bonus is +5 accuracy. It's nowhere near a clear choice, in fact the advantage goes to the gun if you ask me.

According to my calculations, arbalest is just a bit better than crossbow, and warbow is just a little bit better than both, and arquebus is a bit better than all. We're talking within 5% of each other vs. 15DR enemy. Pretty much up to personal choice. Arbalest/arquebus gets a bit better vs. higher DR, but the -0.3 critical hit modifier hurts the rogue particularly vs. things that are easy to hit or crit. Dangerous enemies typically aren't easy to hit. Also, arbalest/arquebus packs that bigger initial punch. I'm kinda leaning towards that one.

Since BG2? Never played BG1 so not sure about that one. The only D&D edition where casters are not overpowered is the 4th (which would make a pretty solid cRPG foundation tbh, with all classes having their at will, per encounter and per rest abilities). The part about ciphers being stronger than other casters in PoE is not really true either, partially due to the aforementioned issues with the rest system. Yes it is well accepted that magic is stronger than might. Nobody really debates this, unless you're trying to stir up a 30 year old debate that has been beaten to death a thousand times over. Ciphers are actually stronger than casters for most of the game.

Since when do people complain that casters in IE games are overpowered? Most of the complaints here were that ciphers were stronger than other casters...

Pretty sure you don't make up for the +5 accuracy, +1 dex and + 1 strength of elves with the +10% hit-to-crit of orlan. Also a few posts up there's 70-90 dps with ranged weapons? Holy crap that would be insane if true! Unfortunately nothing does anywhere near that much, I think too many people have been dicking around with that big spreadsheet and it's no good anymore.

How many spells are instant cast free actions? Most of the good ones (not the class abilities) take a full "turn". It is then not as simple as "I can cast 4 of these per encounter, so I should" but rather "do I cast a level 6 spell with far more power, or cast a level 1 spell and try to get by cheaply."

What are the numbers for raw DoT of wounding shot? Is it not a percentage of the damage? I haven't seen anything that proves them, and unfortunately shooting your own guys does not seem to trigger wounding shot. I have tried blunderbuss with marked prey and wounding shot, though, and it does in fact massacre most enemies. So hard to calculate though, the combat log shows very little about the individual pellets. Oh, I also don't think it's fair to take into account quick switching, because it is currently bugged in all likelihood. You clearly weren't meant to be able to take one talent that lets you bypass recovery period of weapons in 0.5s. You can micro the **** out of it, vicious aim for the increased shot damage, then swift aim for the reload speed right afterwards, and quick switch to skip the recovery time. Most definitely will get fixed at some point.

Why? On POTD everything has high deflection, which means the majority of actions will likely be grazes/misses. This halves status effect durations, and the rogue sure as hell can't supply his own for long. We are now considering a bunch of support characters dedicated to status effects just to keep 2 statuses on at all times for the rogue, so you can get sneak attacks and deathblows. These are not free actions, the wizard/cipher could be expending their spells to debuff in other ways or use damaging spells instead. They can do whatever they please in the presence of a ranger. Granted, you'll have one sneak-triggering status effect most of the time, but on higher difficulties not necessarily all of the time, and definitely not two effects all of the time. For example, on high levels once you get gaze of the adragan out, other CC is a waste. Damage spells is what you need immediately after that, not stacking hobbled and stuck on top of petrified.

Not sure what the point of this comparison is. So it's intended to be a fair comparison, but the the rogue got to use activated abilities and the ranger didn't (marked prey etc)? Or there was a third character applying two debuffs on the target for the rogue, but nothing for the ranger? On top of that, attack and damage rolls are 1-100, so taking ~10 samples is pretty meaningless. Oh and finally, what's the point in comparing highest target single damage? I thought this is the character builds forum. What do I care if a rogue can do ~25% higher damage per shot, if a ranger can pop off twice as many shots in the same timeframe?

would you care and tell us why? I'm not him, but I can tell you it's horrible advice. The arquebus is the only weapon you SHOULD be using on your ranger, unless you don't want to do the highest ranged DPS possible in this game.

I compared the best builds for both classes. Ranger can make arquebus work only because of the big reload speed bonuses they get. Rogue cannot. The rogue shines with the warbow, which is the highest damage ranged weapon without absurd reload lengths or penalties to crit dmg. Overall, the ranger is far better as far as ranged DPS is concerned.

Losing linked accuracy and removing pet damage from the equation would still not bring the ranged rogue close to the DPS number the ranger is capable of. This is without counting non-spreadsheet considerations such as the ranger being able to immobilize and stun targets, and the pet acting as a makeshift tank in emergencies where one is immediately needed. Rogue, on the other hand, is pure spreadsheet DPS with no other uses.

Pets aren't as bad as everyone makes them seem. Assuming you sent it in after the tank has engaged, you play like a DPS melee rogue with no armor and 3 CON and reckless assault, i.e. carefully. Yeah it's micromanagement, but so is a melee rogue. The bear with maybe a spare talent point in the +pet DR ability does just fine like this. If not, get the priest to drop an armor of faith on your tank and hit the bear, or worst case scenario have the cipher drop a pain block on it and it's good till the cows come home. @Voltron, the ranger damage comes from the higher base damage of an arquebus, Might bonus, weapon lash and quality bonus, and damage rolls due to higher accuracy (not much). Most of the DPS is due to increased reload and recovery speed.

Well, all of the numbers are shown on the spreadsheet, and I haven't added anything that's not listed in the build section. Maybe you think sneak attack multiplies DPS by 150%? It "only" adds 0.5x base weapon damage, whereas your total DPS includes many other factors as you can see. Ranger, meanwhile, has a lot of speed increases which speed up all additional bonus damage, so they actually multiply with other speed increases and with damage boosts. Deathblows is a bit too conditional for me to justify adding it to the sustained DPS numbers. Even if you do, it still does not do as much damage as ranger primary + pet DPS, and nowhere near the total figure once you account for driving flight.

10dps is just the ranger's arquebus. I suppose you should add pet DPS, but I didn't because I didn't accurately calculate it. 15 DR for main damage, 10 DR for lash damage is shown on the spreadsheet. My goal was to compare DPS on tough enemies. Cleaning up trash mobs is more a job for AoE classes.

There seems to be a lot of talk about how rangers are ****, rogues do twice as much damage, and that a rogue is actually a better ranger than a ranger. Very few provide numbers for backing. I've created a spreadsheet to calculate total DPS produced by a ranged ranger, ranged rogue and three melee rogue builds. The builds are listed below. The spreadsheet lists all the builds, talents, abilities, stats, weapon mods and shows a final DPS number. There's obviously a lot of choices involved, but I think I've nailed down pretty good builds. Of course, this is open for commentary. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SxOGRbCPDMSV9RK_cGe-4xKVbjcnsReOIXffeQ-OwSU/edit?usp=sharing Below is quick description of builds and final outcome: Ranged Ranger: Wood Elf with Arquebus. 22 Might, 22 Dex Talents: Weapon Focus, Swift & Steady, Marksman, Gunner Abilities: Swift Aim, Stalker's Link, Driving Flight Ranged Rogue: Wood Elf with Warbow 22 Might, 22 Dex Talents: Weapon Focus, Penetrating Shot, Marksman, Vicious Fighting Abilities: Sneak Attack, Dirty Fighting Melee Rogue: Orlan with Estoc/2x Sabres/2x Stilettos 21 Might, 21 Dex Talents: Weapon Focus, Two-handed/Two-weapon Style, Savage Attack, Vicious Fighting Abilities: Sneak Attack, Reckless Assault, Dirty Fighting Results: Ranger - 10.4 DPS main target, 18.8 DPS main target + secondary target + pet Ranged Rogue - 8.7 DPS main target Melee Rogue - 20.7 DPS main target So, in my humble opinion, the ranger is number one in ranged single-target DPS, the rogue is number one in melee single-target DPS, and ranger compares very closely to melee rogue in total DPS. The claims that rangers are terrible are clearly not very true. No, I am not counting per encounter or situational abilities. They both have good ones, rogue probably moreso, but this is a comparison of raw long-term DPS. Yes, I am assuming the rogues are doing sneak attacks constantly, because with a party to support, that is reasonable (if not a bit generous to the rogue). I am also assuming the ranger has a chanter singing sure-handed Ila, because if you have a ranger it makes sense to get a chanter and a shooter-heavy party. I feel these two balance each other out. Yes, I guessed about the ranger pet's DPS being 20% of ranger primary DPS. It might be a bit more or less, but it's too much work to calculate for something pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The pet does do some pretty decent damage, with good accuracy. If you disagree, please show me the calcs. Yes, I assumed nobody is wearing any armor. Much easier on a shooter than a melee character, especially since rogue's deflection stat is poor, but whatever, let's assume you're a hot-**** micromanager who manages to never get hit. Let me know what you think. My sources are calcs that have been proven on these forums, but some of them could very well be wrong.

I don't get the complaints about the nerfs. Even if I didn't feel they were warranted (which I do), if the game becomes too hard on you because you were relying on your cipher so much, just turn the difficulty down to easy or whatever, and be on your merry way. The nerfs would only have made the game unplayable if even easy mode wasn't doable with the rebalanced skills, and that will definitely not be the case. The only thing this really would affect is maybe stop some less that stellar players from beating POTD.

Can you guys post some numbers or something? Everyone says rogue does twice the damage, but where are the figures?

No offense buddy, but you question my numbers and then proceed to make up numbers yourself... wtf? Swift aim gets you x1.5 reload buff and x1.2 recovery buff, you can work out the weighted average. Since it's related to speed, it multiplies with dexterity, gunner and chanter's Sure Handed Ila bonuses. You assume reload is 1/3rd of the total attack time, but in reality it's longer than both attack and recovery combined. These numbers are available on this forum. DPS numbers are always important because in almost all battles, there will be more than one target. If there's only one target of importance, then you have marked prey, as you correctly pointed out... Barbarian and casters (except maybe ciphers) cannot keep up the single-target DPS that a ranger can, and melee rogues do not have the advantage of focus fire and safety from range. This is the ranger's specialty. High sustained ranged DPS. Not as high single-target DPS as melee rogue, but with the many advantages that come with ranged combat. Not as high total DPS as a caster going full-out, but can sustain for longer and has higher single-target DPS. P.S. a melee ranger is a waste. You can't stack any of the reload speed boosts nor get driving flight, which are the ranger's two best qualities. Melee rogue is better.

Ranger does have ultimate ranged dps. Driving flight itself increases your dps by about 60%. Swift aim by about another 40%. Stalker's link gives +10 accuracy, which shifts the entire hit table up by 10 points (not just hit->crit conversion). Marked target +40% lash damage once per encounter for a long time, not just 1 shot. Also, your mage or cipher doesn't need to debuff for the rogue to get his sneak attack, so instead I can kick it off with two amplified waves or all kinds of other nasty stuff instead, for more DPS. The rogue can only supply his own sneak-attack effects for so long, maybe good enough in easy-hard, but on POTD the battles are long. Melee rogue is a different story, but melee rogue loses out on the advantages of ranged combat and focus-fire ability. Oh I also forgot to add the pet DPS, which is probably on the order of 20% of your primary attack DPS.

Maybe I missed it in this thread, but why is engagement considered an objectively bad concept by so many people here? Maybe you'd prefer not to have it as a design choice, but that's just how the game plays. Kite before someone engages you, and give your front line characters +disengagement defense items/traits/spells if you want them to do so. It makes total sense that if a person is facing three enemies in melee, trying to turn and run would get him creamed. Isn't that how the majority of casualties in ancient warfare were inflicted?

Fantastic game. If you're really a fan of cRPGs, you'd have to go back 2 decades for a game that's in the same ballpark as this, and you've probably already played it. It's a no-brainer, really.

If this game is sh*t, point me to what you consider good! Judging by that kind of high standard, I expect this other good game will turn my life upside down!

Stop saying PERIOD! It's the "." on your keyboard, for god's sake. Also DA:I sucks. The controls are just horrible, and the "roleplaying" is more like an railroaded action game.

Mental fortress doesn't literally turn Eder into a mental fortress, just increases his saving throws by 10. Saving throws are kind of a last resort anyways, you should be proactively targeting threatening enemies with knockdowns, blinds, paralyzes, your own domination, and focus fire. The combat would be very boring if passive defenses did the trick and one talent pick meant you could ignore an entire class of enemy threat.