Teioh_White

Well, they'll use new abilities without having to..reset the AI or anything? For example, for my Pld MC tank, I flipped him onto his defense/support AI right at creation, never touched the AI settings again, and he'd do things like turn on Zealous Endurance and use Liberating after learning them without any input from me. They might not use the ability though, if it's not on the AI's list. Some things the AI will just never use. I'm not sure if sacred Immolation is one of them.

Oh, not saying Blessing or Armor of Faith are bad spells, they're just not really powerful, but. Perfectly in line with what a spell should do, unlike say, Chill Fog, which gives a group of dorks -20 def/acc/reflex, -2 speed, essentially giving a stronger buff to your team than the priests can, while still doing damage and making sure they can't rush the back line. The level 2 spell i'm mostly thinking of though, is Repulsing Seal, for similar reasons for why Slicken is nice. Sure, slicken has 10m range instead of 5m, so the Priest will need a fairly bulky frontline to get it off, and as far as I can tell, Int doesn't affect it's AoE ranger, so it'll be stuck at 1.25m compared to Slickens 5ish, so it can't lock down a large group at once. What it does do though, is get a hilarious large boost to Acc (seriously, it's like +50), and stuns for 2.5x the length of Slicken. It'll have a pretty fair change of knocking something down everything in the area for 20+ seconds, which is pretty crazy. Works really well if using a wizard, as the wizard can do a slicken to get things down quickly, then a priest makes sure everything stays down, and then everything is dead, and you do it all over again.

Yeah, Wizards are amazing from the word 'go', really. The level 1 spells they have are amazing, unlike Priest, who has to wait for level 2 spells to get the borked goods. As for Ranger deeps, hard to quantify for me at the moment. I'm not real sure exactly how much the damage the pet is doing. Like...how does it do that damage? I know it can hit really high at end game, but does it have a really high base, or a really high mod? I actually never even bothered to check what it's Acc is on 14, or if it's weapon counts as fast or slow. Stormcaller is pretty nutty though, and their 13 stance is basically +100% post mod damage. -10 acc, which compares pretty well with Rogue's +1.2 mod, +8 acc, + 10% crit rate. Course, Rogues boosts work on Dual Wield, which is more raw damage than bows. I'm sure we could math some numbers out though.

Optimal lazy man party for me would be 5 rangers and a chanter. A priest or wizard or something would be better than the chanter, probably dropping one ranger for both, but that'd take micro to work. For this, just put a pistol on the Chanter so it'll stand between the pets and the rangers to get them both with the chants, and then just let the AI murder it's way through stuff. If something slips through the pets, swap the Chanters gun to a hatchet+big shield and have him hold it steady till the pets are done. Put Shod in Faith on the Chanter, so if something tosses an AoE behind the pets, it'll auto heal the team. Keep the chanter with some Para/Revive/Moonwell scrolls in his quick slots. Normally won't need to do anything, just let the AI handle it, but some fights can be rough. If 3 pets die, use a revive. With the Chanter's stacked Int, it'll hit them all. If a fight gets really out of hand, throw down a para scroll with it's massive AoE, then revive the pets, and let the AI take back over. If it's an obvious though fight, can drop a Moonwell on the pets at the start. Have the rangers with Idols as you get them to summon stuff. If a fight goes really sour, pop all the idols, then follow Chanter fix it solutions above. Rangers can also carry para+revive scrolls for back if you wish, and put haste/power potions in the Moonwell spot for those fights you know are going to be nasty. While that sounds like a fair bit of instruction, the overwhelming number of fights will just be be walking along, team sees an enemy, AI kills the enemy. You might need to select all Rangers, click on a caster or something, but that's about it. The stuff above is just for when stuff goes really squirrly, like a Banshee para'd the whole team and the backline started getting munched on.

One thing I've wondered is if Rending effects apply to it, at the same 25% rate. For example, using Drake's Bell with 5+3=8 rending, does a lash on it get 2 armor pen? It's mostly a concern with Blunderbuss, as that lives and dies on it's 12 armor pen, and if the lash isn't getting 3 armor pen that, really lower it's damage, as with a chanter lashes are 33% of your damage.

I am tempted to throw a firebomb in here about backer content, that we had to -choose- to click on, ending up being quite a little issue. To be serious though, I'd agree the backer content is rather terrible, and detracts from the game. It's a bit of hoop-jumping to claim otherwise. Of course, it's minor enough to ignore, but that's not really an argument that in the abstract it lessens the experience. It doesn't overly get in the way, and after awhile you just learn to ignore the presence of the poor written stuff lying around and just have it awkwardly blend into the background. And from other kickstarted games I've played, it seems that's just going to be the norm for them, little minor bits of fan-fiction popping into games. Nothing huge, just more eye-rolls while playing, a small price to pay for something that wouldn't be made otherwise. Wouldn't complain about a toggle button though, at the least for those of us who backed it. We put money down as well into that kickstarter ether, be nice to at least have an option to not have see that stuff if we don't want too. That whole, all the funding being important, thing, right?

You should be just fine with the NPC char's in the game, especially on hard. If anything, the game seems balanced around thinking that's what you're rolling with. (For example, much of the Act 1 encounters seem based around only 4 people in a team, and are quickly steam rolled if using custom PC's to get up to 6). From personal experience, I've cleared PotD plenty of times using only the NPC's, and they do just fine. (the only times I haven't were for joke things like 6x Rangers or Chanters). They won't be all stars like the min/maxed MC, but I've always just assumed in these games that's the MC's right as protagonist. Though, I've never let them auto level up...which actually could be interesting. It is fun working within constraints, so I think i'll give that a shot next time. So, the mid range NPCs are fine, but I guess it could be an interesting idea to think of a custom team made -worse- than the NPCs could succeed. I guess that could go multiple ways of bad, first from party composition, to initial stat selection, to talent selection on level up, and finally to poor gear choices. Not sure how many layers we could go down before it just becomes untenable, if it ever reaches that point.

Oh, yeah, I agree, the game does a very bad job of explaining the details of how stuff works. I wonder if that means grazes are supposed to half final damage, rather than just add a -.5 mod onto the base. Would certainly make graze->hit stuff more important. (Not sure about hit->graze, dunno if mobs have multipliers for their attacks, or if it's all just base damage for them.) Either way, it would likely push perception up in importance, as instead of end game crits being a +1.7 mod, it'll change to +170% damage. Not counting class specific stuff, about 2.2 mod or so is reasonably attainable for anyone. That'd make it more like that 1.7 mod a 3.7 mod once fixed. Rogues will be getting a really huge boost, changing crits from about 1.7 mod to a 5.4 mod, to go with their base 18% higher crit rate. Should be pretty nutty.

I've always thought it was intended that crits just add a mod to the base, not the end damage. Not much outside of lash or things that basically have a separate listing in the damage log are based on total damage, as far as I can tell. The descriptions are a little wonky looking at it now, so I'm not sure if it's intended. The tool tip for crit says 50% of final damage...but the crit boosting stuff speaks in terms of mod boosting, which would make no sense if crits were supposed to multiply the final damage, and not just be another mod effect.

Yes, that's exactly it, it lets the casters make an utter joke out of every encounter. Pre level 9, my Wizards use a few small spells to tip a fight their way (as was mentioned, a single slicken or chill fog can go a long ways), and slowly add more to the fire as the fight depends, ending up with going Nova towards the end of a camping supplies, or a tough fight. With pre encounters? Basically every fight becomes a mini nova. Wizards are the most notable, and I'd put them a tier higher than Priest and Druid, but all of them get far stronger compared to the other classes with these (Repulsing seal is a smaller but more deadly slicken, after all). (And no, the fact it doesn't effect max strength is no argument unless you just don't care about resting. That's been gone over in both threads plenty already). But yes, on level 9(and Wizzy get 7 uses, not 5, to be even crazier), anything in the Slicken's AoE range is basically taken out of the fight right there. Drop a slicken, drop a chill fog, drop a slicken, fan of fire x4 or keep them locked down for the rest of the team. Every fight, anything in range of a slicken is immediately game over'd. Nerf slicken to useless ness? Every fight, free massive AoE blind+damage, free 75 fire damage AoEx5+. That's just the first level. Then it gets worse. And that's just trying to use no per rests, per encounters even stretches those further. Popping a single level 5 sleep, or a level 3 haste (which later becomes per encounter) gets far more value in a normal fight than it would without the ability to spam those per encounters. Part of this seems as if the low level spells are being underestimated. This isn't the old IE spells, where any level 1 spell at max level was a joke. Level 1 spells are not jokes in this game like they are in old IE games, which is funny. Casters in this game have low level spells that remain useful the entire game, can fight almost as well melee if they wish without the need for any spells (and often surpass them with spell buffs), making them not just filler outside of the required caster fight/boss pull, but per encounters were add on top of that. It's silly if balance was an intended goal. (Which is doesn't have to be, plenty of people don't care, and just want to have fun. I think this has been discussed multiple times as well.) Scrolls and Potions are another issue (I myself limit it no buying/crafting, only found in the wild, and even that is dicey), but you can't say with a straight face their the same ease of use as per encounters. Yeah, crafting tons of para scrolls and having one guy spam those while the rest of team takes haste potions is also terrible gameplay and should be reworked. But that's another issue, bringing it up is either just engaging logical fallacy, or willful obfuscation. If we want a discussion on reworking the overpowered scrolls and potions, I'm on board with that as well. (it's really the scrolls that are really really bad, even the haste pots at least let the enemy fight back. Stun lock tactics by either team aren't really to be encouraged). And the melee thing with overpowered gear and potions? The way this game is set up, casters aren't some joke melee. The only significant differences between classes is the class abilities. they could use the same tactics as well as any melee and get similar results, with the occasion to throw spells in there as well. It's not like casters can't do anything without spells here, they just do what the other classes already do, but slightly worse. Really, if balance is a concern, it clearly was poor idea from the start. The main support is folks not caring about that, which is great, and why I always espouse three difficulties for a game. An easy mode for fans of walking around simulators (not a barb, that's a growing genre now), normal for folks who like gameplay, but don't really want a challenge, and a hard mode that alters the rules for more balanced and tuned gameplay. (which BW attempted in some of it's games, but backed off a bit from, for some reason).

Right now, the caster classes are clearly the strongest classes by a long shot. Cipher is up there as well, if we're going strictly by using all the tools at hand. But unlike the casting classes, which are just built powerful all around, Cipher is pretty decently balanced, but has a few completely cheesy powers that can wreck things. Basically, it takes a pretty constant effort to not be OP with casters, where a Cipher can be just fine if you don't choose a few of their powers on level up. Between the non casters though, balance is pretty solid, with everyone having a decent niche. Rogue does the single target damage thing very well. Barb does the melee range trash cleaning duties well. Paladin stands tall as the last pure tank+support. Monk does a great job of being a solid tank+solid single target damage.Ranger's a good compromise between wanting half an extra body up front, but still wanting some ranged, and gets some nice CC ability with Twin Arrows. Chanters....well, they get the job done with one amazing group buff and then do a meh job at one of the above niches, though would be nice to have the mechanics for them reworked in PoE 2. Fighter's the only real standout class that's got issues for it. It's like they let us select the filler class that generic mooks are all.

Not sure I'd call a Rogue OP by any stretch. They do about twice the single target damage of anyone else, of course, but they need team support to do so. They don't CC or Tank or Buff or AoE anything else particularly well while doing that crazy damage, and they need help to reach it. If one just cares about the damage number in the party screen, a Barb or a Caster will have a bigger number, but the Rogues damage drops one target from the fight quickly and moves onto the next, where the others leave them up longer. Great class, of course, wonderful in a party and being the only real mechanic monkey in the game is a boon, but they're no caster class in OP'ness. As for weapon choice, I still like the Saber's I hawked in last post, with back up club/stillettos for things with crazy Slash DR. Just sabers though, as Rogues are one of the few (maybe only?) class that can consistently get mods high enough for fast weapons to overcome slow ones on the average DR. (I guess tech one should plays with expert mode off/memorizes mob DR, and hits 'C' to swap between fast/slow pair of weapons depending on the target.) -edit- I see I said up there to take Deep Wounds. That was wrong of me, that's a very underwhelming talent. Not saying it shouldn't be taken, ever, but I should never mention it in a 'must have' up there with those actually good rogue talents.

Well, first off, using NPC will fine. I only ever play with the NPC's, and under fairly strict limitations on POTD, and they all do the job just fine. So, they won't hold you back much. As for the party composition, it looks good to me. Might be a wee light in the bodies up front, but nothing a little micro on the part of the casters couldn't fix. You're dead on the money about Monk, currently they're basically Good Fighter. And Barbarian's a nice class to have up front for cleaning up trash, which is sadly a lot of the combat in this game. Rangers are nice, let you have someone in the back who can pick targets and do decent damage, and gives another body up front to seal the edge while the numbers get whittled down for easy contain. And of course, Wizard and Priest are great classes, and go pretty well together. They can either just wreck face using their own offensive spells, or can buff the team/ debuff the mobs in tandem, and let the other 4 guys just rip of tons of on-crit CC effects for easy and efficient wins. I would caution that if you want to stick to 3 PC/NPC split, that maybe just use Aloth as the Wizard NPC, and create your own rogue PC. Not that anythings wrong with the devil, just she's the last companion you can get, so for much of the early game you'd be missing your mechanic monkey. It would also let you get all the folks you want except Sagani before even doing a real fight, as the first map you'll likely clear is Magran's Crossing, and Durances is right there waiting.

So...it's okay for casters to curb stomp every easy fight, and curb stomp the few hard battles as well? Is that our consensus here on the issue? As that's what exactly what per casts do. That's the current state. And depending on how strict you wish to play rest restrictions, per encounters boost max strength, as well. But that's more of an issue with a rest system in IE games, which have -never- been implemented well. It's always been sort of a floating in-game difficulty slider for the player, which isn't good game design. Not that it's impossible to have a working and tuned resting system, it's just never been fully tried. (Here, the only thing in the way is you have to go back spend 3 minutes for more as some sort of limit if 6+ rests isn't enough per outting)

Head...canon? *checks to make sure this isn't BSN* On a more serious note, Grieving Mother has a lot stuff about her that's not well explained and comes off as forced or arbitrary, and likely not because that's what they were going for with her. (Heck, the entire 'Watcher' thing itself isn't handled well, either). That said, she's still one of the bright parts in and otherwise blah narrative experience, the other being Durance. And both are brought down by how they don't fit very well into the larger narrative. Not sure exactly why it's the case, could be time constraints, too many cooks in the kitchen, not wanting to shackle a story to the player, less value placed on story v. gameplay, or just poor execution. Those few spikes in quality during those two's char quests makes it shame to me that MCA didn't want or wasn't given a larger role in the narrative, as this seems just like one of his stories. Present life being driven by a past life to slowly merge paths throughout the game, ending at the same point but with the present succeeding where the past failed. Of course, being so similar to his past works could've been the reason; it doesn't take a ton of imagination to see how this could basically been bit of a narrative retread for Obsidian.

Well, the casters at least get some nice benefits from the Elemental talents, which for everyone else are pretty much non-starters. So they get something to spend there talents on, if one doesn't want to pump a weapon or poor into defenses. If the devs insist on still having some form of per encounters, I would prefer the current +1 spell slots be turned into a 1 per encounter spell slot, giving some useful talents there for casters to burn. Just push back the minimal level to select those talents a bit. I can't really see how caster power isn't decreased by removing these per encounters, either. Assuming rest restrictions, of course (I do no inns/bought supplies, found ones only). Pre level 8, yes, my casters generally conserve spells, using the bare minimal, until the health levels hit red. Then they end the next few fights by going Nova, with minimal health lost, rest and repeat. Casters are still clearly the best class even in these situations, which makes the soon to come per encounters so nutty. With per encounters? Every single fight is handled by going mini Nova. Completely changes the balance curve. Sure, no impact on the 'big' fights, as those normally come at a time when I'd be resting anyways, but the small ones that would normally cause some wear and tear are rendered pointless. No one hits red hp anymore ever, and it's really the fatigue only that forces rest, as 'big' battles aren't often close enough to get too without hours of travel. (I'd prefer a system where one can't refill right before an end boss, making it more important to play smart beforehand, but that's something else entirely.)

It is a little strange that a game where everyone can use every the exact same gear, choose the exact same stats, have almost the exact same base stats/stat growth, and almost the exact same choice of general talents and skills, would introduce end game gear that is class specific. As to why it might be difficult to make them any class, I know the spell-on-hit proc changes based on what class has it is bound too, so that might be some issue. On the plus side, the weapons are all pretty bleh outside of Stormcaller, and Rogue is really the only notable omission on that, so it shouldn't be a huge roadblock for gameplay.

Hmm, well, not sure what's going on. I've had 6 playthroughs since 2.0, and all of them end with a bunch of folks around 13 when I run out of stuff to do in vanilla, and I do most everything except the companion quests. The only thing off the top of my head that increases xp gain is less party members, so that could easily influence it if you're ever undermanned. Noticed complaints about the backer stuff. Yeah, that also was horrible in the game, but I'm not blaming the devs for that. Better game without them? Of course. Would we have the game without them? Probably not. Also don't want to sound like I'm calling the writing or characters or lore bad in the game. That's all very well done (well, the lore is pretty generic, I guess.) Looking at everything by itself, it's all rather nice, but it's just presented as a whole in a very poor manner. That said, it never gets in the way of the game. At no point in the game does it make one wince or take me out of it, and it's easy enough to space bar through on repeats. For some examples of games with just god awful writing, I recently played Lords of Xulima and belatedly got into Alan Wake, and the core writing in those games was so awful it just killed any immersion or flow with the constant grimacing it produced.

Well, the story is already so poorly told don't really mind the interruption. As for overleveling me, it works out mostly well. If one does everything right up to the point of no return before starting WM, I think it barely dings me 13. White March itself is somewhat scaled, so I like how it gives something to do with all the swanky high level stuff. Granted, WM itself gets me capped fairly soon in, but I'm fine with level caps for the system they have going.

Nice! Thanks for doing this. I was wondering if a Talisman of the Unconquerable had been moved someone where old world, or if it was now a WM only item (I don't do WM here till Act 4). I think we had a thread sorta on topic about this in the general section. Title was about Boots of Evasion (the 'joke' 'random' item). I do not believe a consensus was reached.

I usually carry both on my Cipher/Rogue whatever if I'm making them go guns, which works out nicely as they fall under the same Focus. Blunderbuss it's generally the mainstay, as the normal DR penetration one can get is sufficient for most mobs for it still be spicy. The pistol is only brought if I really need an extra shot now at something, or if the thing just has crazy DR. On a Rogue, anyways, Blunderbuss can get some funny high numbers. It won't be the best raw dps, of coruse, but it's fun seeing it shoot for 250-300 pretty consistently by endgame.

Really none of the Pld Order talents are something I'd wish to spend one of our mere 7 talent points on. Not that they do useless things, but I'd rather have a perma +10 to one of my Pld's saves to make sure they laugh off CC, then be able to give one of my allies a temp buff to deflection or acc. So I'd just go with what whatever makes you feel the most spiffy when playing, as you will have to be picking certain dialogue choices. For me, that's was Gold Pact. I would pick the Stoic, Rational, and Diplomatic choices if trying 'RP' anyways, and it goes along with that. It also lets me be Cruel, so I can sacrifice Durance annoying self for 10% more Health for my tank.

It's normally one of the 'random' loots, but I think there is a 100% one in Heritage Hill, and another item with the same stats can be bought in the Salty Mast.

Savage attack is always a good choice, so long as the -5 acc isn't pushing you into miss territory. Even with a 1.5 crit mod, it still give more than a .1 mod overall, so it's really only misses that are a concern. It's easier to work the Acc/def ratio the later one is in the game to completely push misses off the table, and there's other talents to take, so I wouldn't make it one of the early ones. But unless you want to stock up on defensive talents, it's a no brainer.

Fairly certain nothing in the base console does that, but it seems like something that would be right up IE Mods alley. That said, most of the Soulbound weapons are pretty forgettable. They all share the same issue of no Lash and no Durgen Steel, which'll make them underwhelming unless being put on a character that wasn't going to get any of the scarce resources anyways. Stormcaller, of course, is amazing, but most of the classes that would want to use it can use it right now. I guess Rogue might want in on that? Nightshroud doesn't do anything special. The Redeemer rocks against Vessels, but is mundane like Nightshroud beyond that. I guess Greenstone's free Nature's Mark per battle is kinda spiffy, but not that great. A big issue is a lot of these have a % of doing something on a hit/crit, and even if we assume they're hit/crit 100% of the time, it still adds up to less effect than just a straight 25% damage boost from a Lash. Or for the non-damage effects, with buffs+debuffs, it's much better to go with a weapon that does stuff on Crit, as those will fire off much more reliably.