Sanctuary

I think the reasons you bring a Rogue are different then the reasons you have a Ranger, Wizard, Druid, Cipher in the party. The Rogue doesn't really have to be managed. The normal course of an encounter will get them their Crits and there Sneak Attacks. To do any type of damage with those other range classes requires you to actively manage abilities and spells. The Rogue can hold their own weight. Is it the best character to bring along in a fully optimized party? Probably not. This really is not true at all. You still have to use their abilities 4x per fight at least and you have to constantly force them to attack after a target dies, or they just stand there doing nothing. Simply putting them on some high health target while the rest of the group focus fires down others isn't really the way to go either unless your sole purpose is to inflate the Rogue's contribution in a really useless way. I mean, it's not so much a Rogue as it is ranged classes in general. They can all do what you're suggesting, while also adding significantly more damage overall per encounter. I'm also at a loss as to your last statement. Are you suggesting they only do well in unoptimized groups? That's not really helping their case much. edit: I know casters deal AoE damage, and I even pointed that out in the original post. I said I'm not sure how much single target damage the Rogue is actually doing, and all of the AoE stuff really skews the damage among classes. But 95% of the fights have 4+ enemies. You've already mentioned that, and I also already said that I was using offensive spells. I didn't just use blunderbuss auto attack with Mental Binding the entire time. Most of the early game was actually Soul Shock spam, or Mental Binding if really needed and then Soul Shock spam until I needed to fire. The main reason the Cipher was falling behind mid-game was because of where I had him placed in the formation. It was way too annoying having to slowly pull him from the mid-back around to the side in an attempt to Mind Lance. After one simple change, especially in the later dungeons, he started catching up to the Rogue (and then finally passed her). On my current playthrough I'm going out of my way to skip as much CC stuff with the Cipher as possible and focus on damage where applicable as well as opening with Mind Lance as soon as it unlocks. I'm also not using the 50% XP requirement of IE mod this time just to give a fairer assessment of what each class can do over the course of the game, since they will be unlocking more accuracy and abilities sooner. Honestly though, I'll be really surprised if the damage numbers are some night and day difference as you're suggesting. On the playthrough with the numbers recently posted, I didn't even get Amplified Wave until only a few hours were left in the game due to the XP mod.

So in other words, the use of a Ranger is to massively sacrifice their damage with letting their pet round up enemies and die, when a Fighter tank could round up the enemies and not die? When the pet dies, Ranger damage drops off the map; negating any reason to use them at all. It was suggested that they still offer "utility", but utility doesn't matter if you're doing 2/3rds the damage of a Cipher or Wizard that can offer way more utility and can shoot a gun or bow when they can't cast spells too.

Side note: I had absolutely no idea that IE Mod (console command) would allow you to respec companion attribute scores too, not just talents or skills. Was this always a feature? Because the main reason I never finished a few of the companion quests is because I just started making all custom characters on consecuitive playthroughs. I swear too that early on IE mod couldn't do this, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

The cipher and wizard in the party. can blind, flank, and paralyze. Which gets you automatic sneak attack. You want all of them crits to be sneak attacks/deathblows as well. I would probably go soldier. You can use the Arbalest and the Arquebus. Once they fix the Speed Mod on weapons the 1st Arbalest you see will probably be one of the best ranged weapons in the game. If not you have the Wrecker as well. And the Arquebus are extremely good as well. Especially 2 of the named ones. Or go Crossbow, the Wendgar has 10% crit chance (your chance can get upto 40% if you go orlan) and speed mods once the devs patch it. To take advantage of crits you want to bring out the biggest damage dealer. Since the Game Engine uses Percentages for everything you want a high base damage to start with. So then you can apply lash damage, talent damage, crit damage, sneak attack/death blow damage etc. My Rogue was a sniper just 1 shotting enemies all the time. Just make sure that wizard or cipher are doing some kind of AoE debuff for to activate sneak attack/deathblow. Then you can swap out penetrating shot for gunner. And again once the Elemental Talents are fixed by devs you could take one of them as well to increase damage. There is also an accuracy boosting item you can drop on your Rogue as well. Then anything that improves Rogue's critical chance or critical damage multiplier. I don't really understand how the game engine using a percentage for everything favors slower, harder hitting weapons. Sure, each crit will do more damage, but you're also going to hit (crit) much less often with either the Arbalest or Arquebus and often when you do it would be overkill and completely unecessary other than for an opening shot. I used to actually do all opening shots with an Arbalest and then switch to the War Bow, but eventually it just felt like too much busywork and not needed at all. Also, when you mention other classes using spells that add debilitations, you're just suggesting limiting their own damage for a utility spell as if it's actually going to help the group damage overall more than simply doing 60 - 80+ damage to 5+ enemies at the start. It's not. The Rogue is single target damage and will be single target the entire fight, and they aren't going to make up for the AoE damage the other classes can do on larger fights. The enemies are usually already blinded from Chill Fog anyway, and the Rogue can add a secondary defuff by themselves for the extra Deathblow damage. The only time I ever bothered to add long lasting debuffs were on boss fights, and those were rare. FWIW, almost all of the attacks the Rogue landed were at least normal Sneak Attacks for almost the entire game. I was expecting this reply. Anyway, all I ended up doing was repositioning my Cipher in the group (I use kind of an upside down cross formation with the tank one character space further ahead) so that he was on one of the sides instead of the middle. It made opening up with multiple Mind Lances much easier in dungeons. So much so that for many trash packs, I'd just pull with him too.

Somewhat back on topic: What's the point of a Ranged Rogue, over just using another Wizard? Maybe I just built my Rogue wrong, but the skills I took were: Blinding Strike Crippling Strike Deathblows Deep Wounds Dirty Fighting Withering Strike Vicious Fighting Weapon Focus: Adventurer (War Bow) Penetrating Shot Marksman Wood Elf Racial Ended up with 21 Might, 21 Dex, +10% crit damage helm, +10% sneak attack damage boots. Used a Fine War Bow until Cloudpiercer, then switched to The Rain of Godagh when it became available. For a while the Rogue was usually 10% - 20% ahead, then jumped up briefly, but near the last fourth of the game dramatically started losing ground. It's hard to tell how much single target damage she was actually doing compared to the two Wizards and Cipher I was also using, but in the end it came out to: Rogue - Total Damage: 61,804 (701 crits, 770 hits), highest single target damage: 97.1 Bow Wizard - Total Damage: 69, 440 (1,039 crits, 2,247 hits), highest single target damage: 100.0 Wizard - Total Damage: 61, 437 (667 crits, 2,220 hits), highest single target damage: 138.5 Cipher - Total Damage: 64, 644 (638 crits, 2,113 hits), highest single target damage: 94.5 < jumped way up when Mind Lance spam on 3+ targets became common. This wasn't a matter of neglect either. I would try to use all cooldowns on the Rogue when possible. Sometimes the fights would be over though with 1-2 of them remaining. I would even pull with the Rogue for an opening shot for about 75% of the game. I haven't taken a bow Rogue through PotD yet, so maybe that will change things?

This keeps being repeated over and over again as though if it's said enough times that it will somehow make sense. Explain why the Druid, Priest and Wizard suddenly get level 1 spells as per encounter at level 9 and the same with level 2 spells at level 11? Why does this mechanic exist (extremely limited spells early on and all per rest) at all if it's just going to be removed, making an already mostly trivialized game even more trivial than it already was? And you know what? As obnoxious as it is, and with how ridiculous it is playing a Wizard at the lower levels (and the class most hurt by limited resting early on), the more Wizards you stack in a party, the more trivialized the game becomes. That's just with level 1 spells too. One Wizard in a group feels semi-useless. Each Wizard you add though makes the previous more useful. Why? Because you get more casts of the most useful spells. And on Hard - PotD, the most important spells are CC. It's also more useful to have ranged than any melee at all outside of the tank, despite how much you really want to play a wet bag Rogue. For the majority of the fights, you can simply stack Chill Fogs and watch enemies just melt while aimlessly attacking your tank. Those 3 - 10 ticks add up when it's hitting everything at once and lasts 20+ seconds (while also blinding and snaring). It's like Obsidian really had no idea how to balance the class at all. But at least they aren't Rangers and Paladins, so that's something?

Your initial playthrough shows how weak/bad the spell limitiation is. If you don't hold back, you won't have what you need for bigger encounters, but if you hoard spells too much, you'll never actually be using them much; because you're too worried about what "might" be around the corner. Also, if you are talking about Wizards and Druids specifically, things change at , but I still think that's a bit too far into the game. Some posters around here love to call it "depth" and "strategy", but it really isn't. It's a class imbalance.

Completely agree. As it stands, I see zero point in resting for any other bonus other than the +2 MGT, +2 INT, +2 CON bonus you get from Dyrford. The +4 INT bonus is good too if you happen to be in the neighborhood, but I don't see how it's actually comparable for a group as the above buff. Even if you don't really "need" the extra CON, +2 MGT/+2 INT is still better generally. The only time I sleep at my keep is if I'm heading there anyway for some quest or bounty. The inn in Act III that gives you +2 to three stats at once is so much better it's not worth considering anything else most of the time. This is a shame. Everyone knows that sleeping in your own mansion makes you feel way better than any hotel room, no matter how nice it is It's actually Act 2, and the room is called "Dragon's Lair".

Camping supplies is one of the most annoying "features" with the game for me, and it has absolutely nothing at all to do with difficulty and everything to do with actually being able to have fun with specific classes prior to level 9/11. The custom made companions are pretty boring compared to the story companions, but it's just too bad that the story companions have completely ass stats for their classes and aren't worth taking after your initial playthrough with them, especially if you decide to play on Hard or PotD. There's just no reason to take Durance ever, over a custom Priest with 16 Might, 16 Dex, 16 Int. It's like the developers intentionally made their stats bad so that you had to pick between immersion and actual gameplay. And yeah, the "unique" weapons are super boring. Almost all of them just have a unique name, but copy/pasted abilities with almost none of them having anything truly unique about them. Zzzzz. You would think that some people are simply playing another game entirely. There's very few "strategies" in this game. The same tactic works for 95% of the fights, so the only thing camping supplies does is limits how much you can actually try something new for a change. As opposed to: tank runs in, group focus fires down/paralyzes biggest threat while a Wizard or two uses Chill Fog or Slicken every single fight; or a Druid does something similar? Because that's what's been working from Normal through PotD. Want to actually do something else? Too bad, because camping supplies supresses experimentation and the same strat you can do from level one and three respectively works for the entire game on almost everything.

I've been using the +50% aspect of IE mod now for my last three playthroughs, and it doesn't quite feel right. I like how I'm no longer going to be level 12 right as I hit Act 3 as long as I'm doing every available quest, along with some Endless Path levels, but I don't like how I hit level 12 right as the game is ending. It also makes classes that greatly benefit from levels 9 and 11 (which is the biggest boon, not level 12) comparatively weaker for a longer than needed period. Honestly, 35% - 40% would be closer to the mark IMO.

This is exactly what I do, then I try to use Puppet Master a bit before that expires.

I hate the whole resting mechanic in general in this game, although I don't believe 4x is that bad, but the 2x is just ridiculous, especially on PotD. I don't know what they were thinking. It's not actually fun or strategic, because if you have the patience to do it, you can bypass it by simply abusing Inns if you really wanted to. It just seems like they wanted to add in "depth" with it, but it just makes the game tedious and specific classes a slog/weak until the higher levels where the mechanic doesn't even really matter for the most part. I think it's basically a way of showing you when you're out of your depth and might want to go do something else for the moment. It works for me. Why do so many of the comments around here plummet into this "you just aren't good" at the game elitist nonsense? Not liking a specific mechanic says nothing at all about the player or whether or not they are having any legitimate difficulty. And those that criticize those who don't like the mechanic seem to ignore the fact that it penalizes some classes much more than others (some not at all). You also seem to forget that it becomes a non issue at level 9 and 11, so why even have it in the first place? "Oh, here's your reward for tolerating this for so long!". There was an entire thread where someone was asking for a camping mod, and of course a bunch of snobs jumped in and exploded all over him about how bad he was, how lazy he was etc. etc. when his biggest gripe was the fact that for the first 8 levels, his PC Wizard was resigned to using auto attack 80% of the fight. No one in their right mind picks the Wizard expecting to do that. He had already finished PotD with his Wizard, yet was still basically told to "git gud" as though he needed advice on how to actually finish. You misunderstand me. I think the camping system is a soft way to indicate to the player when they're underlevelled while attempting an area. If I need a separate rest for, say, every two encounters on level 8 of the Endless Paths, I realise I should come back later with bigger swords rather than brute-forcing it by eating a couple of wipes, save/loading a ton and hoping my Dominate spell gets the Fampyrs eaten by their friends. I personally tend to find that my tanks run out of health about as quickly as my casters run out of spells, it's only really secondary backrow casters and archers that I don't have that problem with, and even then, only if the engagements are going perfectly. If you take these mechanics out, you have a binary THE FIGHT IS TOO HARD TO PROCEED/THE FIGHT IS NOT TOO HARD TO PROCEED system of feedback for the player, in addition to which you cut out any sense of attrition and make the game somewhat easier. That said, I would support an option to have infinite camping supplies for people who want to play the game like that or anyone doing interesting caster solo shenanigans. there's a perfectly reasonable way to indicate an area is marginal in terms of clearing it, that a bunch of ur dudes are getting knocked out. u don't need a camping system to indicate difficulty. its really, like a lot of the bad things in this game, a 20 year old legacy that they may have felt obligated to include because of the promise of making this "baldurs gate 3" You take the resting out, you get rid of the persistence from encounters, make the game rather easier, especially making it easier to cheese encounters by fighting them piecemeal. It would also make encounters more monotonous because you'd have identical resources for all of them. Same difference as regenerating health in shooters, really. It's not even a BG legacy, really, just a decision on whether you want encounters to have any relationship with each other. Don't mistake difficulty with tedium. The game already allows you to fight each encounter "piecemeal" if you really want to go that extra mile (which is another form of tedium in and of itself). After you've finished the game at least once, and know what to expect from most encounters, it gets easier knowing when you should be using your spells and when you should be saving them for emergencies. The problem is, during a first playthrough, a lot of encounters never really need those emergency spells, and they end up not actually being used due to you not having any idea when you're actually going to really need them, and they are so limited in the begining. Or conversely, you could have used them all up, killing swarms that could have been dealt with another way, and then end up not having what you need at the right time. You want to talk about cheese? As much as I don't believe the Cipher is "god mode", they do entirely bypass your argument. Why even bother with a Wizard until you can recruit one at level 9 when another Cipher would actually contribute more most of the time? All I do with my Wizards on most fights is have them use Arcane Assault two times each (which adds up) and then just shoot a bow. On any fight with 6+ enemies I end up using Chill Fog, which ends up being around nine uses total until you need to find more camping supplies. Problem is, I shouldn't have to use nothing but that until level 9+ (yes, I realize they have more than just level 1 spells, it's just that the majority of the time they are either overkill or too limited to use that much). Then, you have other classes like a Rogue, who has multiple per encounter abilities or a Monk, who is similar to the Cipher in regards to being able to generate resources to use abilities every single encounter who laugh at camping supplies. Then there's the Chanter, who is always doing his thing. The game's difficulty starts to rapidly diminish after level 5, no matter the difficulty setting, and it's pretty much gone by level 9. So all of this talk of "tactics" and "depth" only applies to the earliest levels. The game in general is trivialized by many setups, so acting as though limited rests somehow mitigates those problems is just silly. To me it just seems like some of you want to be Obsidian apologists and that no matter what, "the developer knows best". If that were the case, Rangers and Paladins would not be in their current states. Also to a much lesser extent Wizards, Druids and Priests, who should get their first level per encounter spells much earlier than level 9. Even if that means cutting their current amount of uses in half. It's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. Auto attacking most of the time is not really fun. At least not to me.

Supporting, attacking, supporting through attacking. The usual things a character who is not tanking does. Building overtanky weakens the key Paladin gimmick of support delivery: abilities that activate on killing blows. Which is not to say that a stereotypical tank build doesn't work well on Paladins. It does, but it also militates against the supporty aspects. Build diversity in action. On any difficulty lower than PotD, you'd have pretty much zero reason to use a Paladin for "support" or "support tanking" since their group support is supplanted by infinitely superior damage from either a Monk or Barbarian, both of which can "tank" relatively well if it's truly needed. Barbarian will more than likely be tanking an enemy or two most of the time anyway by default. There's also too much overlap going on with the Paladin and Chanter, yet the Chanter's chants have a ridiculously huge radius compared to the Paladin's miniscule aura range (which needs to be 2x as much if not more to even be a consideration).

I hate the whole resting mechanic in general in this game, although I don't believe 4x is that bad, but the 2x is just ridiculous, especially on PotD. I don't know what they were thinking. It's not actually fun or strategic, because if you have the patience to do it, you can bypass it by simply abusing Inns if you really wanted to. It just seems like they wanted to add in "depth" with it, but it just makes the game tedious and specific classes a slog/weak until the higher levels where the mechanic doesn't even really matter for the most part. I think it's basically a way of showing you when you're out of your depth and might want to go do something else for the moment. It works for me. Why do so many of the comments around here plummet into this "you just aren't good" at the game elitist nonsense? Not liking a specific mechanic says nothing at all about the player or whether or not they are having any legitimate difficulty. And those that criticize those who don't like the mechanic seem to ignore the fact that it penalizes some classes much more than others (some not at all). You also seem to forget that it becomes a non issue at level 9 and 11, so why even have it in the first place? "Oh, here's your reward for tolerating this for so long!". There was an entire thread where someone was asking for a camping mod, and of course a bunch of snobs jumped in and exploded all over him about how bad he was, how lazy he was etc. etc. when his biggest gripe was the fact that for the first 8 levels, his PC Wizard was resigned to using auto attack 80% of the fight. No one in their right mind picks the Wizard expecting to do that. He had already finished PotD with his Wizard, yet was still basically told to "git gud" as though he needed advice on how to actually finish.

It's pretty doubtful that you can hit level 12 before Act 3 without the bounties/Endless. I did literally every possible quest that I could find prior to finishing Act 2, and that included every bounty and level ten of Endless and I just hit 12 after doing one of the first available bounties in Act 3. On my current playthrough, I'm about 20% through Act 3 and I just hit level 10 using the +50% XP requirement option with IE mod. Actually seems almost right. Not quite, but almost.

I hate the whole resting mechanic in general in this game, although I don't believe 4x is that bad, but the 2x is just ridiculous, especially on PotD. I don't know what they were thinking. It's not actually fun or strategic, because if you have the patience to do it, you can bypass it by simply abusing Inns if you really wanted to. It just seems like they wanted to add in "depth" with it, but it just makes the game tedious and specific classes a slog/weak until the higher levels where the mechanic doesn't even really matter for the most part.

Tried watching the video, but due to either a very poor mic, or poor audio recording in general, I couldn't understand 80% of what was being said.

Slicken, Expose Vulnerabilities, Confusion, Essential Phantom and Call to Slumber are pretty much the top of the class spells that don't really have an equivalent. Cipher has a few skills that are comparable, but the problem is a) casting time, b) they seem to get resisted more and c) Focus only allows typically for two casts in succession before needing to shoot your gun and pray you get the focus you need, and d) by that point, enemies can often be a bit more spread out than you want for your abilities, which almost all have a much smaller radius compared to Wizard spells. Of course, that's prior to Amplified Wave. But you're still talking level 11. Their biggest use is Mental Binding/Tenuous Grasp until then. Actually I wasn't debating but rather defending wizard's power there . As for Ciphers, their spells may "seem" to be resisted more to you, but actually a lot of their spells have higher accuracy and later on they have more ways to buffs their accuracy as well. Few good cipher CC you've missed prior to level 11: Mind Wave (needs proper positioning, but usually not a big deal), Puppet master, Ringleader. Wiz still wins in aoe CC and utility. Would be weird if he didn't. Cipher wins in spammability of his abilities. Another issue regarding "class balance" is how level nine and eleven are game changers for Druids, Wizards and Priests. You no longer have to worry nearly as much about saving spells. Once you hit level nine, the Cipher won't be casting too much more than either of those classes, unless you are fighting something that is taking a really long time. Until then, the Cipher is the Energizer Bunny of casters, but the gap is shorter at nine, and closed at eleven. But then you'll barely even need anything but Amplified Wave every other encounter at that point. Balance in general in this game is really odd, on any difficulty. PotD in general is harder in an inflated kind of way, but even Normal and Hard seem really off to me. Right now I'm using the +50% XP requirement per level mod because on my previous playthrough I actually hit level twelve as soon as I hit Act 3. The game felt kind of broken since I had all of this power, was level capped and still had a ways to go before finishing the game. With the mod, things felt somewhat more balanced, but it still doesn't feel quite right. Early game is a pain largely due to shades/phantoms/low accuracy, but it actually feels like things are gradually improving. Yet always around Act 3, either at level 8 or level 12, it feels like your power just skyrockets. I guess itemization is the culprit here more than anything else though. Still, I feel like the vanilla XP gains are too much for those that like to do everything, although I don't believe 50% more XP is actually where the game needs to be. I think 35% - 40% would probably be a more accurate number. I am halfway through Act 3 and only one character has hit level 10 yet. That's also counting the ridiculous XP gained from all of the available bounties too.

Slicken, Expose Vulnerabilities, Confusion, Essential Phantom and Call to Slumber are pretty much the top of the class spells that don't really have an equivalent. Cipher has a few skills that are comparable, but the problem is a) casting time, b) they seem to get resisted more and c) Focus only allows typically for two casts in succession before needing to shoot your gun and pray you get the focus you need, and d) by that point, enemies can often be a bit more spread out than you want for your abilities, which almost all have a much smaller radius compared to Wizard spells. Of course, that's prior to Amplified Wave. But you're still talking level 11. Their biggest use is Mental Binding/Tenuous Grasp until then. On a completely different note, what do you guys think of the Wizard buffs out of combat mod? It just lets you prebuff before a fight...like you could in all of the previous IE type games. I haven't personally used it yet, but I do think it would make Melee/Bow focused Wizards way more competitive and a fun alternative build. Or do you think that's somehow an unfair advantage, and that they should actually spend 5-8s self-buffing during combat?

I don't ever use them as just a "CC bot", because it would otherwise be an unfair comparison. I wouldn't however, simply have them doing nothing but damage at all times because it's wasting their utility. A paralyze/root or mass flank is much more important to the group as a whole; which makes it harder to judge their overall contribution. But similar could be said of Priest buffs. And I do toss in Mind Blades and make liberal use of Soul Shock (when applicable). They still don't pull ahead of the Rogue however. But I guess if you want to micromanage the hell out of your Cipher and use nothing but Ectopsychic Echo (which takes forever to setup) just to inflate what they are actually doing, while actually slowing down group progress; more power to you. I understand what you're saying about the Wizard/Druid combo, but on my current playthrough I was trying to use one of the Wizards primarily as a bow Wizard. So far that hasn't really been what he's been used for, yet he's still 2nd place in overall damage done (Rogue is only 8% higher), but that is counting all of the AoE stuff, not single target. Although with haste and other buffs up, he's still pretty damn close. The reason to go Ranged Rogue anyway is because I use it to pull from stealth and because it's simply not worth the effort to use in melee on Hard/PotD compared to a tank and all ranged group. You spend way too much time with micro compared to simply killing. I'm still not sold on the Druid though. Outside of Moonwell, I really just used a few AoE spells, and I would rather start a fight with Chill Fog since it's so much easier for the group to focus fire down enemies that are slowly walking toward you, clustered (and usually just end up on the tank) than it is trying to hit them as they are pushed back. Plus, it's not always easy to put the Druid right next to the tank, especially if you don't want to block whoever pulled on the way back (if it's not the tank). Can you use a Druid as the sole healer? No. Can you use a Druid + Chanter combo to keep the group up? Maybe, but you're just hurting yourself by not having a Priest, and if you have a Priest, you won't need the Druid for healing up until Moonwell. Maybe I am actually being a bit unfair though since my comparison is a full custom group, while not ever using a Druid other than Hiravias. But I simply wasn't impressed by his spell selection. I kept using the same four spells through the entire playthrough with the occasional heal or damage reduction, but those were extremely rare instances. I also had him use an Arbalest or stand behind the tank with the Tall Grass Pike. Even with all of that, his damage wasn't so hot.

Talking about class tiers is pretty strange, because the difficulty really matters the most. On anything below hard (at least), Wizards seem to play second fiddle to pretty much everyone other than the Chanter until around level 9. Below hard, there's not really enough enemies for their CC or damaging AoE to really matter. Once you start playing on at least hard though, they really start pulling ahead. Their basic, Arcane Assault really starts getting a ton of mileage, where it was pretty much useless before. Also, both Chilling Fog and to a lesser (but not by much) extent Slicken are two of the best level 1 spells in the game, from the start and until the end. I do think the Cipher is strong too, but I don't really think they are as OP as some claim, or even "top tier" until they get Amplified Wave, but then that's just cheese mode. Up until then, they are extremely strong support characters that can do more than adequate ranged damage (which is not equal to a ranged Rogue, depsite claims to the contrary). Funny thing? I think Hard/PotD groups with 2x Wizards and 1x Cipher is way stronger than a group with 0-1 Wizards and 2+ Ciphers. My strongest group so far has been: Fighter - tank (but not 3 Might, even if their overall damage is still not really a factor) Priest - duh 2x Wizard - CC/damage (one of which uses blasts, the other specializes on shock damage and uses self-buffs and Cloudpiercer) Ranged Rogue Cipher Ironically, the damage between the bow Wizard, Cipher and Ranged Rogue were pretty close until around level 8 where the Rogue started pulling ahead. This was using the +50% XP requirement per level mod though where they remained at lower levels for a much longer period. I don't really understand the hype for the Druid. Their wider AoE on like the only four spells you'll ever really use doesn't really matter that much. Their most useful spells are also the shock based that don't have friendly fire. Otherwise, they have a whole lot of spells that are just sitting there taking up space. If they didn't have Beetle's Shell or Plague of Instects, I'm not sure why I should really care about them at all. A Wizard offers way more control, the best debuffs for fights that matter and are definitely no slouches for damage either.

I just encountered a similar issue. I actually did the resolution before even getting the actual quest from Desthwn. After my journal updated and told me to go back to him, I don't get any new dialogue options to progress. I did find it quite odd that I was doing what appeared to be a quest, but once finished had me scracthing my head at what the point of that was. Then I find the quest giver... Fortunately, a five minute autosave reload fixed this issue.

Hmm, I was actually going to create a thread about which would be the better tanking weapon, when you are considering group benefit: Cladhaliath (spear with +10 Marking, +9 Accuracy and another +4 Accuracy when also trying to apply Marking) or something like the Starcaller or Unforgiven flails, which would be essentially for the tank only. For most fights, I have the Fighter tank switching targets while my ranged usually focus fire unless they are busy casting spells (which would be 50% - 75% of the time). I'm also not sure if AoE spells actually count as "targeting" if you don't have a name highlighted. Furthermore, I don't really know if Accuracy buffs actually do anything for spells. Some people say they do, while others say they don't. Those that say they do never really provide any kind of evidence though.

Yeah, this is pretty annoying. I used to just chalk it up as enemies shooting at uncanny angles (because it usually seemed to happen through doorways), but just now one of my party members was hit by Crippling Strike through a cave wall; the enemy was a room over and at an angle that would be completely impossible to shoot through a doorway (since my group was very far south of it). My ranged characters want railguns too!

Offtank Eder endgame snapshot: Eddie da real MVP. The only thing I can see from your picture, is that it looks like you have a low damaging group. Which is going to inflate whatever Eder contributed. Oh, and that you like R.A. Salvatore.