Elric Galad

Ok, let's go for Fighter's abilities review then ! Please note that this review is with party game in mind, and all this is only my own opinion ^^. Miscellaneous : Base stats 9/10 : fighters have great accuracy, deflection, endurance and health. They are second only to monks for base stats. Skills 7/10 : Well spread. The best part is +1 Lore which is great for martial classes. Constant Recovery 2/10 : One of the lamest base traits. Compare it to carnage or "faith and conviction" and cry. At least, it is not situational. Abilities : Knock Down 5/10 : An OK Tier 1 ability. Not comparable to casters CC, but never useless. Disciplined Barrage 3/10 : weak, a bit short and stacks poorly with buffs. Defender 7/10 : Even in 2.0, it is still an unique ability. But now, it has to be supported by real tanking abilities. EDITED : It is also not more powerful than a talent, now. Following the reaction of other people on this thread, I lower it to 4/10. Confident Aim 7/10 : Reliable DPS, specially efficient against ennemies with high defense, which is a bit unique. Guardian 3/10 : Why not for a little support. But not on par with Paladin's aura, and stacks poorly. Accuracy loss is a bit a problem for DPS. EDITED : KDubya convinced me to lower it to 2/10. Weapon Specialization 6/10 : Good, but other martial classes have better. EDITED : KDubya convinced me to lower it to 5/10. Vigorous Defense 5/10 : Not bad, but it stacks poorly with Circle of Protection. Without a priest, it deserves a better grade. Into the Fray 5/10 : Very funny concept, good synergy with engagements bonus, but it lacks a bit raw power for an ability of this level. Unbending 6/10 : An interesting skill, has the potential to cut half of the damages during big fights with instant casting. Stacks with everything. I think this is a good design for a per rest skill, due its epicness (per rest skills should be epic fight skills). A few more seconds for long term mitigation could still be nice. EDITED : Not convenient, usually less powerful than a good old Lay on Hand. In spite of its possible potential, I'm finally going to give it a 3/10. Clear Out 2/10 : Poor man's slicken. Fighter is not a wizard and this skill was developped to prove it. Knock Out is forgiveable because it is a Lvl 1 ability, and is spammable. This one is a skill with few uses that is as good as a lvl 1 wizard spell. Not situational at least : that saves this skill from a merciless 1/10. Armored Grace 5/10 : Armored Grace works also when your armor is a robe. Weird. Mathematically inferior to other fighter DPS passive (due to recovery being only about 60% of attack time) but works with various other action like scroll reading. Critical defense 4/10 : A good tank should not receives critical hits too often anyway. Stacks well, and probably works on build with low deflection. Works also against spells (I think). Not very impressive, but not bad. Unbroken 7/10 : second chance on steroids. Save Adra armor for your other tank. A good skills that would have been better, once more, if it stacked. I didn't test White March abilities, but they don't sound as good as other martials'. DR reduction strike sounds good, but now Wizards can do this 4x per encounter with AoE. Trying to imitate casters is not the best way for martial classes... Damage redirection sounds like a false good idea : Tanking is meant to redirect blows from characters with low defenses to characters with high defenses. This skills basically enables ennemies to strike a warrior as if he has the defense of a light armored rogue... Please Obsidian, redirect a percentage of blows, not damages ! Talents : Bonus Knock Down 3/10 : Not that much necessary. Fighters, like all martial classes, are talent hungry. This does not sound like a great pick. Sure, Knock Down is OK, but more than 2 times per encounter is a bit situational. Wary defender 4/10 : Not incredibly good anymore but still OK. It's like a good old +1 to all saves from D&D. Good if you pick Defender. Rapid Recovery 1/10 : This is able to cure the wounds from 1 single fly of the ogre druid swarm. Weapon Mastery 5/10 : Not bad. Not great. So my conclusion is : Fighters have a lot of very average abilities, with a few ones a bit above average. The good part is that many of them are passive, and therefore easy to stack. That means they don't need a lot of change. But they really really miss gamechanging abilities. Once more, this is only my opinion. Hey Obsidian, your game is really great ! This is because its mechanics are so great that I'm so interested in complaining ^^

By the way, I think there is still a kind of drug that adds a fixed amount of focus. But I don't care : my next PC will be a pale elf cipher with a 2h blade. I guess this choice has something to do with my pseudonym being Elric ^^

Grieving Mother : Tall grass seems optimal. Melee does more damages than ranged. More damage means more focus. Reach weapons are a good compromise for safer melee damage, as cipher tends to wear light armor. Tall grass is the best reach weapon.

It used to add a fix amount. Now it increased the percentage of damages converted into focus. That was done to make fast (or multishot ^^) and slow weapons equals for focus gain.

What is Durgan refinement exactly ? And how many weapons can you refine ?

I don't disagree but 2.0 buff to health recovery talents makes it a bit less critical.

I think something to take into account about balance is how everything stacks, especially with the omnipotent priest buffs. Priest gets a trillion spells per tier meanwhile martials get a single ability, so you have to make it counts. Unfortunately, vigorous defense does not stack with circle of protection, disciplined barrage does not stack with blessing or zealous focus, guardian stance does not stack with cautious attack, wizard buff, shield of the faithful... They might be a bit better, but it makes them less efficient. Wary defender was a passive and did stack with everything...

Well, maybe. Josh Sawyer indeed declared that they might compensate for the nerf later. The point is that defender itself was more changed than nerfed. I think it is pretty balanced now. The real nerf was to wary defender. In 1.06, this talent was strictly better than NPC paladin defining trait. It was strictly better than 4 talents (bear fortitude etc... and the deflection talent) +5 to all defenses except deflection is a rather good talent. I could pick it for any class if available. For me it is now a balanced talent. So basically defender nerf made things more balanced. The real problem is that wary defender was hiding that constant recovery is a very weak defining class trait. A very weak class trait that was even more nerfed in 2.0...

Melee wizard is an active tank, I guess. And there should be a way to build fighter as an active tank (as well as a passive tank). But I agree with you, I doubt it will happen. The best reasonnable change would be a better scaling constant recovery.

Njall, I was speaking about unbending, not unbroken. It was only an idea. I think Unbending is quite an unique skill that fits fighter perfectly and could be a powerful defining trait.

Make Unbending always active instead of constant recovery as class default ability. Maybe at a lower percentage like 33%. Make constant recovery a class talent. Make the Unbending instantly dispell or suspend any negative effects 3-5 times per rest. That's all fighters need IMHO.

There could also be a new class specialized in slow casting prebuffing rituals. Some kind of scientist planning stuff in advance. Let's call it "animancer" )

Speed mod on unique weapons now works ^^

I don' agree. It's not just a problem of passive abilities or not. Armored grace, weapon mastery & specialisation and confident aim is no more DPS than a monk with swift strike & lightning lash. 3 abilities & 1 talent vs 1 ability & 1 talent (and 1 wound and instant activation, not stricly passive but not very active). Fighter's current problem is not comparison to rogue because they have different roles. Fighter's current problem is comparison to Monk IMHO. I don't think fighter's abilities are currently on par with monks'. By no means I think they are not viable in PotD by the way.

My thoughts exactly. Fighters do not have too bad abilities (even if their lvl 13 one is meh), but they don't have gamechanging default abilities of other martial class : carnage, sneak attack, faith and conviction or (now buffed) pets. Monk too has a meh default ability (suffering) but monks have 3 "OP" abilities to compensate : - swift strikes for constant DPS buff on par with sneak attack (with talent) - torment reach as Bread&Butter wound spender for even more DPS fun - force of anguish for "time of needs" infinite hard CC. It's not that other monk abilities are bad, it is just these 3 are the reason why you want to include a monk in your party. It was the same for (wary) defender : it was fighter gamechanging ability. If you nerf it, fighter needs something else. However, wary defender was indeed a problem because you HAD to take it to have a fighter on par with other classes as there were not other really powerful abilities. Nerfing it opens more playstyles. For example, I can now imagine a DPS fighter activating unbending (basically 50% less damages) during boss fight because he is not invincible anymore. But Dev should add something to compensate.

Does barbarian rage apply to spell ? I guess yes, as Alacrity and other attack speed buff.

How much damage, healing and damage to yourself is immolation by the way ?

Shoot twice seems sick. Basically double ranger DPS with bows. Well, not exactly due to accuracy, but almost. Double stunning shots... 1 stun is good but 2 stuns is better... Works well with on-hit effect weapons too. Hahahaha !

Just be aware vigorous defense does not stack with Circle of protection. Considering Circle becomes per encounter at lvl 13, it might be suboptimal in team build.

Call of the primordials could have summoned a Delemgane instead ) Ah good old Call Woodland Being from BG2... ! Thank you very much for the info ! You've gained a "Benevolent point"

I did do some tests with the pets attackspeed wise its Antelope>Wolf>Deer>Boar=>Lion(forgot but lion for sure isnt faster)>Bear ( lion is super slow for a dps pet) wolves also got less endurance so even if they only take 3 more dmg a hit they cant take as many and that 3 per hit adds up fast but i mostly want to know if i can safely pick a dps pet now without it dying too much or if its still bear just so u dont need too worry about it too much ( this is for Potd for hard and lower it doesnt matter i think) From your description, I tend to think that there are 2 different base attack speed for pet : - Very Slow for Lion and Bear - Not so slow for the other. According to pet stats that I found here : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/74152-ranger-wolf-pet/ (Wolf was bugged at this time, now they have 13 Dex) The different Dex from pets can explain the slight difference between pets of the same category. For Dexterity : Antelope > Wolf > Stag > Boar And : Lion > Bear But Lion has the same Dex as Stag, so there should be a different base speed. This is just for Maths ; unfortunately, I don't have PotD experience with pets.

Quoting from a previous topic "Wolf attacks every 3,4s vs bears 5,1 and lions 4,9" Given that wolf aslo does 13-19 base damage instead of 11-17 for other pets (I think), I think it could be a big difference for damage, but it would require confirmation ^^ I would be curious about other pets attack speed by the way. Bears only have 3 more DR (or am I missing something), so personnally, I would prefer wolf.

Very clear, thank you ! So they don't scale. And what do the boots do ?

For sure : fists have the same attack speed as fast weapons and do 10-15 base damages. Fast weapons have usually 9-13 damage range. Normal weapons have 11-16 except sabers which are 13-16. In other words, fists are the equivalent of saber for fast weapons : their intrinsic special is their better damage range.

Pain block looks awesome on a pet. 32.5 DR at level 12 (probably more at level 14) with regenerating endurance and infinite health... By the way, if my maths around wolf pets above are correct, I think rangers are now THE highest single target DPS class. However, they are probably harder to use than Rogue.