Teioh_White

The 3 casters are easily the strongest classes, and Wiz the best of best. Not sure why anyone would think them underwhelming.

Rending is a pretty awesome mod for a fast weapon, it's like a +0.3 mod, which probably makes it the best enchant after Speed and Wounding. For damage, of course, not utility. (And of course, Daenysis also has speed...).

I think I remember using a key to open a chest in the back by the dork who tells you the oath. Dunno if it was that key though. And nothing of value was inside the chest, anyways.

Yeah, I was a little shocked when that was put in WM. Wizard was already the best class, and then they go and give one of the few underwhelming spell levels the most crazy spell yet?

Hmm...I wonder, is there an ending slide for just murdering all three parties? I know right now, you get a slide for which ever you side with, but the other two don't get one. I'd guess if you kill them all, it just has no slide.

This is making me want to do the 6 Chanter playthrough again. It was fun in 2.X, and must just be hilarious now with faster Chants.

Which is still a damn stupid viewpoint, once you go beyond caveman-level issues. Eh? Stupid? It's just a true statement, not a judgement on it's merits compared to other options Stupid would be saying 'Violence is a good solution to all problems'. Or heck, even 'Violence is a good solution to a reasonable minority of problems'. Or maybe 'Violence can't solve all problems.' You're trying to argue against the possibility of something by pointing out it'd be a terrible idea, which isn't exactly how it works.

Yeah, I don' think anyone is arguing Violence is the best solution to all problems. Or even that it's a -good- solution. Just, you throw enough violence at something, that particular issue will go away. (Didn't X-Files or something just try to solve Global Warming with a Global death plague or something, anyways?)

I guess a fair statement is Violence is great at solving a problem, but it often has the side effect of creating a new problem. One that's sometimes worse than the original issue. Sometimes not though. And sometimes there is a better solution, of course. But yes, to be precise, enough violence can solve most any issue, from a point of view.

Hmm...well, a class suffering due to performing poorly in underleveled situations isn't really a problem with the class, more an issue of just not meshing with ones personal desire to play the game differently than intended. Considering we almost hit 15 just in the base game alone, not even counting the expansions, we have to go out of our way to be underleveled, so I'd assume the intended state of the game is for it not be an issue. Sorta like if I wanted to say Casters weren't that great a class because they depend on per rests, and my goal is to never really rest. The devs obviously intend pretty frequent resting, so can't hold it against the class that it has to rest. Cipher still has issues on something like Dragons, of course, but those generally come with ample trash to build up focus on. And of course, it can't just open a fight with Amplifed Wave anymore (even with it's heavily nerfed range), but that's what makes it more a balanced class compared to a broken class like the casters. At least these days; it was plenty broken in it's own right in previous iterations, and it still has a few OP things it can do that make it stray from an ideal balance.

Really? I just tried that the other day and couldn't get them to stack. Maybe the issue was I had the same dork dual-wielding both.

Yeah, engagement is just a really negligible gameplay mechanic. Which is kinda funny with all the whining about it I remember reading around launch, as if it was something that was seriously warping the gameplay, rather than something that by and large has no impact on an encounter.

Hmm...I've never gone 100% pure melee, always taking Kana along as a caster. And if a fight's got my knickers in a twist, he's perfectly capable of stun locking the entire thing if I want to cheese. Generally though, it's really not needed for most fights. A bunch of dorks in plate mail with good weapons and standard melee tactics can just roll over most fights in this game. And everyone can have Lore in this game, so if you really want some oomph for a tough fight, can have all your 'melee' start off a round casting. Two Scrolls of Para on the enemy with a Valor+Moonwell+Defense+Immunity is enough to effectively end any but the toughest of fights. But yeah, like Druid Plague spell, Moonwell plus shod-in-faith will balance that out while you chew through them, or any mob type that depends mostly on AoE damage. And while they don't have a ton of it, melee do have some CC, so can just spend it on the casters. For any Charm heavy fight, a single Pld now kills that entire plan for the enemy, leaving the only other 'common' tough enemy strat being stun locks. When fighting that type, I tend to just burn the related immunity scroll, then charge the relative offender before it wears. On crit CC weapons are also effective pretty much everyone but Kith type enemies from WM2, especially with a Valor scroll. A team of 6 dorks with those and a +30 acc advantage over the enemy can shut down whatever they're attacking, especially combined with standard interrupts from hitting things.

It really should be combined; engagement is a very weak tool as is, and it would help a slight bit if two talents aimed at trying to make it somewhat better could be combined. A bit of a hefty opportunity cost to spend two ability points to boost something that frequently won't even come up in a batter, and if it does come up is largely outside the players control.

I agree with the Cipher issue of, 'they all draw from same source, so only use best'. I dunno if a system where each power tier had it's own bar that got filled up as you did damage, and once it was full, could cast a power from that tier. Something like that so it's not just 'spam lvl 1 charm/level 2 para' or 'lol mindweb'

Well, you can't really compare the Casters to the martial classes, as the casters just blow them away. Even with zero back tracking, just using supplies found in the wild, only using Inn's and buying supplies when you'd be at the Inn anyways, you still get so many casts I have to go nova on fights just to use all the resting that's freely available. Where theB's wrong is thinking Barbs are horrible for some reason, when they're nice and balanced with all the other martial classes. Who by and large are fair compared to each other. I really just can't understand his inability to get this (or really, follow much of his posts in general.) They're still all below the Hybrid Cipher and Chanter though. Who are my two favorite classes, having interesting mechanics that work well, and just needed a bit of tuning. Reminds of Dimir from DotP 2014 as a great design and reasonable balance. Ciphers core gameplay's always been very balanced to me, unlike the Casters who just don't work, but they've had multiple powers that are just too good/cheezy that make them a bit too powerful. They're in a much better place now than they were, but of course, I guess now we can just Mindweb for 200+ defense for the entire team, too. Chanter's, for example, can pretty much keep a fight on perma lock down 13 seconds into a fight, which is a bit too good. And it's not like that's their only trick, they've got a lot of really broken stuff they can do. Maybe it's just the fact the devs didn't plan on folks spamming 2.66 level 1 chants to build up and use strong Invocations, expecting folks to use the higher level ones, and thus not get many Invocations.

I generally just buy all the food/drugs out whenever I hit a shop. I don't exactly try and farm it or anything, but if I'm in a merchants inventory, I'll clear them out of those and any crafting mats they have. I don't hesitate to Lash and Fine/Superior things, you get plenty of them and they help a lot. Normally first things I 'fine' are the Plate mails you get off those backers in Gilded Vale. As for potions, is there some way to get enough crafting mats to make that an every battle sort of thing? Even buying all the mats when I see it, and still don't have enough to just make popping haste potions every encounter. I generally resort to using Svef as a make shift, just popping out the real deal when I know a rougher fight is coming up.

Oh yes. Going back to my early saves, much of the towns and cities are a ghost town due to the locals giving their lives in defense of their shiny gold plated god-likes. I'm not sure what benefits it actually gives you in game to have high reputations with places, besides a few different ways to resolve quests. I know Twin Elms has at least two.

I guess it depends on the class. I'm always Second Skin for a frontliner, Hand for a ranged. Maybe Mob Justice is better than I give it credit for, but I just can't stand the Dozens.

Yeah, I don't do it these days as I've made my peace with them, but back at launch just murdered the backers on sight, ghosts among them. I haven't killed them in a long while, so they'll be alive on a recent playthrough to double check. edit: seems I'm unable to actually engage them now; immune to all damage and sit there alone in the now cleared out bar. Only way to interact with them I can find is through the console. Which technically works, but not what I'm looking forward. That's a bummer. Either that was changed sometime since April, or more likely, I consoled them dead back then when the rest were dead.

Duplicate? If you mean the Sanguine Plate, you get a 2nd one when your murder the backers again in the bar.

Does Disorinting and Interfering still stack? I tried dual wielding Vile and Strike, and even with 0 recovery or 3 chars using weapons with it, it never got the Fox down more than -5 defense. Interefering was a little weirder; I was able to get the Fox down to -30 acc after awhile, but it'd sometimes go back up. Maybe it just kept applying a different debuff each time, instead of growing the effect and refreshing duration.

Didn't think of it before, but does this buff work for Soulbound weapons? I've never really used a Soulbound on my main char before, so haven't thought to test it, but with the new Firebug Dagger being so awesome, it'll be nice to pick up an extra free 4 acc.

Ah, didn't even think about that. Will have to make note of that, see if I can scrounge up 6 for the whole team. Sanguine Plate x2 and that Padded armor in the lighthouse are two easy ones at the start of act off the top of my head.

One thing you can do if you don't want to keep getting supplies to always use Alacrity pots is to use Svef instead. It's not nearly as good, of course, only 15% not 50%, but it last 10 minutes, and easier to stock up on than potions. Also, bummer about 0.5 crit mods not working. I thought I just kept getting really bad rolls for the crits. 3.02 can't get here soon enough. (Ideally at least a week before Seige of Dragonspear.)