Teioh_White

Ah, thanks for that info on Powder Shot, I misunderstood it quite a bit then. Thought it made the gun shot itself an AoE, but instead does a regular shot, plus an additional fire AoE. There goes my dreams of easy Blinds for the team. And with no Swift Shots, guns are really bad dps. I'm not sure about the strength of the Fire AoE, maybe it's still worth it, but be hard to beat the easy 4 arrows a turn that stun from a bow. I'll give it a shot whenever I get around to another 6x ranger play through(still the most fun I've had of my dozen plus play throughs). I normally uses guns until Twin Arrows with that anyways, so this'll just let me not feel like I wasted money souping all those guns. Still a distinct lack of Superb guns in the game, but at least the Wax lets us make a 2nd one. Maybe with an entire team firing off 6, can make some fun stuff happen.

I haven't played through Elmshore without the level sync, so I don't know if it's the same number of mobs as it is with scaling on. But it's definitely more mobs in 3 of the pulls there in 3.0 with scaling than there was in 2.0 without it. The Ogre's outside the Ogre bounty cave are the biggest example. Before, those dudes were like a slightly scaled down version of the bounty fight. Now, they're like two of the bounty fight at the same time.

Probably the Dragon fights for me, Alpine more than Adra. Adra can be 'cheesed' a bit by killing all her dorks before engaging her, making it pretty trivial to control the fight. If you just try to make it a straight up, your team vs. hers, she's really rough. Alpine's a bit rougher to pull the same trick on, so I'd give him the edge. The rest of the tough fights in the game full of annoying enemies can usually be cheesed through a variety of manner, like pulling to choke points or using Charms/Scrolls against whatever their CC of choice is. Without cheese those fights can be hard, as they'll sure use some cheese tactics on you, so unless saves are boosted, it'll spiral out of control quickly. Some of the new Elmshore fights are a doozy, and I'd rec everyone make sure they level scale the place. It's got 3 rough fights now, both against 3-4 casters and 6-8 melee dorks. Pretty much are just harder versions of the Ogre and Delmgan bounty fights.

There's an Eye Patch I got that gives +0.1 Flanking damage and an Immunity to Blindness. I was wondering if they stops the self inflicted blindness of the new ranger Modal. Would be nice with that new blunderbuss that gives everyone Blind with out doing it to Sagani herself. On that note, does anyone have the specifics of that modal? I haven't gotten high enough to test it, and was wondering if it could out-do the already impressive Stormcaller+Twin Arrows spam that made her such a powerhouse. Is the Cone a decent size? Hidden knocks to accuracy? Does it stack with any of the other Ranger Modals?

Heck, Defender doesn't even work with something like Savage Attack, which is just weird. Just as well, Disengagement, while a good idea in theory, just isn't handled very well by the game engine, and can't even work in the limited intended range. Like, you know, having a hard hitting fighter whack everything good that runs by, and not a 0 dps unkillable tank soaking up all the mobs, for example. Just more Fighter talents to toss on the 'underwhelming or useless' pile. Which is where a lot of their crap resides. It's a good thing most mobs aren't the better classes, as those 12 mob pulls would get deadly if it was 12 casters or something.

Pretty much what it sounds like; get about 4 guys, have em spaced out to block as much real estate as possible, and the enemy will largely crash against them. They might try and go around the wall, but it takes them time, and the AI sometimes gets bored and sticks to the wall instead. Either way, it gives you time to see them coming, so your ranged can see them coming, then either just move around to the far end of the wall, fire of a CC at an enemy coming off the edge, or just use an Idol to temp make the wall bigger.

Engagements too clunky to be relied on, even just in the sense of getting free disengage attacks on things running by. It's more a tool for the AI to lock down a character trying to kite than it is for the player to have some sort of battlefield control. Unrelated to the core issues with engagement, I think leaving engagement is based on some defensive measure of the target, rather than offensive might of the engager. Zahua throws out some crazy damage, but that doesn't stop a mob from bailing on him to go beat up Grieving Mother if it gets into the mobs head to do so. I like the idea of the system, it just doesn't play out as written in the clusterduck that fights tend to be in this game. Generally better to just get a melee heavy team, and out buff/debuff the enemy and steam roll them, or CC spam them so they can't move, then steam roll over them. There's not a lot of back and forth going on, just making sure you're on the right side of a curb stomp.

Elmshore itself is incredibly nasty with level scaling on. I actually didn't notice much, if any difference, from Nalrend from my 2.0X games, so maybe the level scaling didn't buff her. The rest of that zone that is just crazy annoying fights. The ogre's outside Nalrend are basically just a souped up version of her fight with scaling on. And considering I was sticking to my old path, just with the new found scaling (Act1->Act2->Bounties->Act 3->Endless Paths->White March->Act 4), I caught those guys at level 9 with just exceptional level gear. Had to pretty much use all those cheese tactics I hate just to win, because the fights themselves are cheesy. I'm sure if I was level 14 and fresh of WM, be a standard rolf stomp, but the sheer jump in power caught me surprise. I don't remember WM or Act 4 scaling being quite so intense. I mean, it's an entire zone full of Broodmother level fights. Lots of incredibly strategic, see who fails their save action.

I'll admit, the 'incredible' part does kinda make it seem a bit sarcastic.

Dunno, maybe that old school Fallout style weirdness? I think I remember reading the team was split on adding that stuff in New Vegas, so made it an opt-in thing for the player. Maybe they don't mind getting a little weird in an expansion?

I'd just prefer a more tuned resting system on higher levels, parse out some of the per-encounter elements, and leave the lower difficulties without the restrictions. This no-mans land they currently design the game in makes it rough for them to do a good job.

I'd never considered, but that one Sherlock with lines actually woulda made a really nice companion. Especially over GM, since the rest of the story didn't really want to involve her, it leaves he feeling out of place to the rest of the game.

That's a disconnect I always seem to have when discussing the genre with other fans. The desire to make builds that fit some idea I have of a character, for reasons other than effective or interesting gameplay. I've never had desire to introduce headcannon a game, and any roleplaying I'm fine just sticking to what the story can reasonably provide for us. (Usually just to the extant to give reasonable excuses for a players decision). I like gear restrictions in games for the gameplay distinctions it can create, forcing weakness and strengths on classes the player has to account for, rather than optimizing all to the similar choices. Constraint often breeds better gameplay than freedom, just due to the sheer difficulty of designing a good system with total freedom. The actual reasons behind aren't of great interest to me; I wouldn't care if everyone just wielded a letter, but Class 1 could only use vowels, or whatever. More just that Class 1 has to take into account it has limitations, and work to ovecome or mitigate those.

I'm really not even sure what the discussion here is about. Class for classless systems? Pros/cons of limiting gear to different classes/builds? Strict adherence to lore for class/skills? Sufficient infrastrcutre to allow for headcannon in character building? It's all been a bit scattershot'd in here.

Yeah, generally I just try to +2 to all my guys in the relevant stats. (I.E, everything but con and res, and Int for some). Int is normally either going to come from that helm, or the body enchant, so it shouldn't matter much who gets it. If your priest gets the helm, he gets a perception enchant or something on this body, and the wizard gets a Int enchant on the body and the perception goggles.

I've always firmly come down on the side of defined class systems with custom options within the class, rather than a 'make your own build' classless system. The same gear/stat/talent/stat growth options for all in Pillars does make it a bit samey at times (or more, I can do what you do + cast spells), but it's not so bad to turn me off right now. I wouldn't mind if Pillars 2 did more to define the classes from each other, but I'd really dislike a shift further the other way. The distinction, of course, isn't as big a deal for single players games as it is for co-op/pvp games though, so I'm sure it'll work out.

I'm eager to move on to PoE 2. I like PoE a lot and all, but it's got a goodly number of flaws. Experience with the game, plus hopefully 'real' funding, should lead to PoE 2 going from 'good' to 'great.'

Haha, yeah, if you like big HP numbers, and cannot lie, go for it. Though I guess a Barb would have even bigger numbers. Size matters, right? Make sure to get Gift of the Machine and feed Durance to the pool for extra bonus! Though from a gameplay perspective, Con is of limited use. It's somewhat nice for how I play the game, but I only rest on found supplies, so the extra health it gives is useful in the early-mid game. The extra endurance is pretty negligible, at least if playing with a full party. It's rare enough to go down in a situation where the fight wasn't going to be resolved without further incident to not need any more in-fight HP. Of course, by level 12 or so, the team is clicking, and the extra Health isn't even needed, as it's just curb stomps till games over/get bored.

I'd agree with the hating on Baldur's gate (the city, not the game). Reaching that city has killed more of my replays than the ones that make it through. I do think Defiance Bay tries to mimic Baldur's Gate, and I really hate that portion of the game for similar reasons. It does a much better job than Baldur's gate, so I usually make it through, but it's a close call. About the only thing I found better in the original Baldur's Gate was it seemed....larger? More like a city and not just a stacked collection of side quests and merchants for the PC.

Yeah, I tend to view such things as against the spirit of the rules, if not the how they're programmed. Like, in these situations, I think of if I was at a Tabletop, and if the GM would let me get away my 'interpretation' of the rules. Doesn't mean I still won't use it, at least once for lolz. I had a great deal of fun with the OSA, 2x Retalation, Fire Godlike Barbarian with Jolting Touch scrolls on my 2nd playthrough. Which got fixed 4 times over, haha.

Probably should be posted in the Bug forum, as it seems just pretty off. Like the old Jolting Touch-Carnage thing, this'll probably be gone come 3.0.

Wait, does someone think spells are -weak- in this, or rather that just a complaint about how they're implemented in gameplay? I can't imagine the former, as spells are plenty OP in this game, much like BG, just in a different manner. If it's implementation, I don't see it, but could be an issue. Seems pretty standard IE system, really.

I don't mind resource based systems, but they seem harder to balance. PoE tried to balance resource with encounter based, and kinda failed to do either right. Prefer if it just chose one and stuck with it for PoE 2. (Of which encounter based would be a better choice, just for popularity sake. Or resource based with no actual limitations on resource, I suppose)

Wait, what mobs teleport your team around? I've been through the battery tons of times, and I can't recall every having my guys dorked away somewhere. Granted, I always save the Battery for the 3rd to last thing to do in the game, so everything is in curb stomp mode by then, so maybe whatever does it just literally doesn't get a chance.

Is there a place to pick up unlimited supplies for crafting potions? I've long tossed crafting potions and scrolls in the cheese pile, but back when I did use them, it seemed I'd craft about 30 or of the things before running out of supplies. But I wasn't really checking every merchant for them. But stacking speed is crazy good, as it is in all games with an auto attack based system (and some even that don't). As haste gets increasing returns, games need a hard cap on it, or gets nutty. It even gets to the point where on-crit weapons are pretty useless, as enough speed means the interrupt alone will stun lock. Especially a Barb, with a weapon with a big enough interrupt and enough stacked speed will lockdown and kill with out taking damage anything that wanders into carnage range. (i used speed stick myself, for this).