Boeroer

I nearly always use Edér as main tank (Swashbuckler or Fighter doesn't matter) and it works. He isn't the most effective tank - but with a second "off tank" like your Troub you will certainly be fine.

I mean it's ok to approach the game in whatever fashion you like - whatever gives you joy. But it's something else to then assume everybody has the same approach and that your struggles are theirs as well - which then leads to abysmal sales numbers. Especially if I follow a quite... pedantic way to play.

DEX does nothing for Ripostes - those attacks will get executed "invisibly" without an animation or recovery. But DEX is still an impactful stat for all offensive actions so I wouldn't drop it too low. You'll get +5 from Swift Flurry which is good. As Trickster you'll get enoug dmg bonuses so you don't really need high MIG. High PER is useful for an MC if you are going with official companions becaus non of them has very high PER - but you need high PER for some hidden secrets etc. CON doesn't need to be high. INT shouldn't be too low (but since you get some with Turning Wheel you can get away with good but not maxed INT) and RES should be high. It's indeed a bit tricky because you can't really dump an attribute. Something like MIG: 10 CON: 08 DEX: 10 PER: 16 INT: 16 RES: 18 could work I think.

Hey no worries! I didn't want to chastise you but just inform you. The thread got moved to the Deadfire forums nearly instantly by Amentep (the moderator I tagged) - so everything is nice and shiny.

Trickster/Shattered Pillar with Whispers otEP is indeed a pretty fun build. It's not tanky enough for the role of a main tank - but as sturdy secondary frontliner with good damage output it can be pretty exciting to play. Riposte from Rogue even procs a cone attack (doesn't generate wounds though) while the Offfensive Parry is a single target "riposte" that does generate wounds. They stack and that's cool. What I forgot: both Riposte AND Offensive Parry will be able to trigger Swift Flurry/Hearbeat Drumming which can lead to crit-chains quite often without you havinng to actually execute a "normal" attack. Ciphers do generate focus from Offensive Parry and the cone oE, too. I once played a Soulblade/Shattered Pillar (gaining both wounds and focus at the same time with Offensive Parries) with WotEP and that's viable, too. Especially because Soul Annihilation works with the cone AoE - giving every enemy in the AoE raw damage. Yes, INT is quite good for a lot of builds. There are some which don't need it but as soon as there's damage over time, debuffs, CC, buffs, healing over time, AoEs etc. involved you want more INT. One reason why Monks with their potential +10 INT are such good multiclass material.

It's the Diablo III approach where nothing about your character is set in stone, you don't have to commit or even decide anything and can adjust your playstyle on the fly at any time - which makes the character development incredibly flexible but also extremely unexiting and boring. It also seems to require a rather bizarre trail of thought to state a) "the game is too easy on hard" and then follow with b) "gotta retrain party every couple levels to cope with optimization" and "the game requires tons of meta knowledge and trial/error". And again there's little distinction between "I didn't like it, therefore I thought about not to buy Deadfire (but did it anyway so my point is moot from the get-go)" and "this is a problem that most likely happened to the majority of PoE players and therefore it's resonable to think it's the cause for dropping sales numbers". An "IMO" doesn't do the job (although better than nothing I have to admit).

INT influences all AoE sizes, including the AoE of hand mortars, Whispers of the Endless Paths and Lord Darry's Voulge - all AoEs really. But did you know that ranged weapons don't generate wounds for a Shattered Pillar? It has to be melee weapon auto-attacks. Cleaving Stance doesn't generate wounds either. Also Cleaving Stance doesn't proc off of ranged weapons only (one weapon - I think it has to be the right hand weapon - has to be melee in order to proc Cleaving Stance). Ranged weapons also don't work with Swift Flurry - so no crit chains. Swift Flurry procs also don't generate wounds (even if you are using a melee weapon). Mortars are great with Monks (especially with Stunning Surge), but Shattered Pillar is the one Monk subclass they are not great with I'm afraid. Helwalker or Nalpasca is what I would recommend when going for a Monk/Devoted with hand mortars. Use Dance of Death to gain wounds and use Stunning Surge and Penetrating Strikes. Lightning Strikes instead of Swift Flurry. Turning Wheel doesn't work with ranged weapons - the INT bonus does but not the burning lash - as long as you don't install the Community Patch (see my signature). If you don't use that you can skip Turning Wheel, spare the ability point and just use Duality of Mortal Presence (INT). Flagellant's Path is very good because it works with mortars, has its own recovery and therefore skips the whole reloading cycle of the guns. Whispers of the Endless Paths has an AOE which does geerate wouds for the Shattered Pillar. I also has a nice enchantment called "Offensive Parry" - those "Riposte" attacks from Offensive Parry do generate wounds for the Shattered Pillar(!) which makes that weapon a good pick - especially in combination with high deflection and with the armor "Nomad's Bringandine" which has an enchantment that makes you immune to disengagment attacks - meaning all disengagement attacks against you get turned into misses 100%(!). It allows you to break engagment and instantly do an Offensive Parry with the great sword, getting wounds in the process without wasting any time.

Yes: 87.5% - if all three attack rolls critically hit. The only Full Attack for a Tactician/Skald would be Penetrating Strike (and Cleaving Stance procs... but I believe those don't generate phrases - not 100% sure though). So thinking about One-Handed Style isn't unreasonable. Sun & Moon with Clear Out + One Handed Style is def. better for crits than S&M with Clear Out using dual wielding & Two Weapon Style. On the other hand Scordeo's Edge is very strong, not only because auf Blade Cascade but also because of the ACC bonus of Adaptive. Offensive chants only interrupt when they are applied (when the attack roll is done). How long those chants linger or overlap and also their tick rate won't matter. Ticks of DoTs never interrupt, only attack rolls do. A Troubadour with Brisk Recitation reapplies his chants very 3 secs (because his chant phrases only last 3 secs and then comes a new one with a new attack roll) while a Skald will do that every 6 secs (new attack roll every 6 secs). So Brisk Recitation is the reason why a Troubadour works better when we talk about "interrupting with chants". An attempt to interrupt every 3 secs in an AoE is better than the same attempt every 6 secs. Of course you must crit with the chants in order to interrupt. So I would pay attention to what defense is targeted by each chant and which defense of the enemy is the worst. For example Dragon Thrashed targets Reflex, The Long Night's Drink and Come, Soft Winds target Fortitude, Dull the Edge and Thick Grew Their Tongues target Will (remember the Wizard with Miasma + Dazzling Lights ->it just is good combo) and also removes Concentration(!). So you can have a dedicated chant for interrupts against the weakest defense ready at all times.

You can somewhat circumvent the action economy problems of ciphers in TB mode with either a Beguiler or a Psion. Both don't need to attack with weapons in order to gain focus. A Beguiler gets plenty of focus from casting big AoE deceptions (like Phantom Foes and Secret Horrors) so you can cast those spells non-stop - and the Psion simply gains focus with time (the focus gain scales with Power Level). If you combine a Psion with some other caster class you can always alternate between cipher and non-cipher spells without pausing - which is very nice because there's nearly no casting downtime. The advantage over pure wizard/priest/druid is that you have at least one unlimited resource pool. I played A Troubadour/Psion as pure caster which game me two unlimited resource pools which refill automatically and it was lots of fun. I reckon it works equally well in TB mode. But I can also see a Wizard/Psion working nicely.

I don't actually prefer RTwP in general. It's just so that it was the only mode when Deadfire came out. If Deadfire would have been shipped with Turn Based as main combat mode I would have used that. Usually I prefer TB combat because I'm starting to grow old and everything that induces hectic in games starts to annoy me (like Action RPGs, shooters, platformers... ewww). The pausing obviously helps... I played countless hours with RTwP and my expertise lies there - there is so much obscure knowledge I gained about RTwP in Deadfire... I'm not motivated enough to do all that again and dive into TB mode now. The main difference between RTwP and TB is everything related to durations and attack/recovery speed. It's true that all the things that makes you faster (DEX, action speed buffs, recovery reductions) have a lot more impact on RtWP than they have in TB. Haplok will get a forum notification (usually E-Mail but also the bell icon in the upper right will show a notification) from me tagging him. No need to contact him further.

I have zero experience with Turn Based Mode, sorry. Iirc @Haplok played some TB Bloodmage or so.

Skalds can't generate more than 1 phrase from an attack - no matter how often you crit with that attack. It is true that Sun & Moon and Clear Our etc. will give you a lot more chances to gain 1 phrase via crits in the first place, but you can't get more than 1. Still good though. Scordeo's Blade Cascade is great with a Skald: every (auto) attack is seperate so every one of them can generate a phrase but at the same time they are coming so fast that you can refill your phrase count very quickly. Due to the lower cost of offensive invocations a Skald can perma-paralyze with Killers (only 2 phrases) which is very cool, especially with highest INT. I nearly always end up ONLY using Killers Froze Stiff - unless enemies are immune or resistant to DEX afflictions. So maybe don't "waste" too many ability points on other invocations. But everybody plays differently so maybe that doesn't apply to you. Keep in mind that your max phrase count will be determined by your most expensive invocation - so at some point it's benefical to pick a costly non-offensive invocation even if you don't plan to use it. A Wizard with Miasma and Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights is a great partner for a Skald with Killers Froze Stiff because the -50 Will debuff is excellent to force crits with Killers - which gives you a huge duration increase. Variantion: Interrupting with offensive chants + Energized is better with Troubadour because he will interrupt every 3 secs instead of every 6 secs with Brisk Recitation. He can cast Killers as fast as a Skald if you ignore the Skald's extra phrases from crits (iirc).

Hello, you posted this in the wrong forum. This is the subforum for PoE, you want advice for Deadfire (PoE2). Maybe a mod like @Amentep can move this thread for you. Tanks should max Resolve. The returns for every point of deflection are increasing and Resolve directly improves your deflection. It's the same with the other defenses, but those can be buffed more easily and also don't get attacked as often as deflection. More about defenses and their increasing returns: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/defenses-are-increasing-returns DEX and PER are good offensive stats but also raise Reflex. But Reflex can also be raised with Weapon & Shield Style. Also large shields have a modal named "The Wall" which reduces damage from AoE attacks (spells for example) considerably. Most of those do target Reflex. So with a large shield the defensive impact of DEX and PER are not that important because you're already covered. The most important defensive stat in Deadfire is armor (AR). You should try to get the highest AR possible. The potential damage reduction it gives you doesn't sound like much, but the mathematics of maluses is quite complicated and obscured - let me just tell you that it makes a massive difference whether you receive a strike that penetrates your armor or a strike that has an underpenetration of 3. If you want to know more about the math read this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/armor-and-penetration Summons are very strong in general. If you want to mainly call summons and/or give support via invocations you don't need high accuracy/PER. Same with healing. Only when you want to hit enemies with debuffs, damage and CC you will need higher accuracy. Passive healing like Ancient Memory is very useful, too.

Lords of the Eastern Reach wasn't done by Obsidian but Zero Radius Games and before Deadfire/fig.co times. LotER was announced in May 2015 and fig.co only opened doors in October of that year. As I said before: Josh Sawyer writes the TTRPG in his free time (currently) so I wouldn't think we'll see any crowdfunding for this.

You mean with a Spellblade? With mortars I would prefer dual because both mortars complement each other very nicely: Hand Mortar + Blinding Smoke unlocks Deathblows and then Fire in the Hole with Chain Shot gets all the nice Deathblow bonus. Also: Full Attacks are just better with dual mortars and the Spellblade has plenty of Full Attacks. Generally pistol + modal is better than dual pistols when it comes to auto-attacks. But again: Full Attacks like dual weapons. But imo mortars are a lot better than pistols on a Spellblade in general. Also because of dual damage. I like pistol + modal on chars that don't use Full Attacks - like Ciphers, Chanters... I would always go for Eccea's Arcane Blaster at least as backup weapon because pierce-only weapons can be so frustrating.

With a Witch both Veilpiercer as well as St. Omaku's Mercy are viable because of their 50% chance to skip recovery on crit. Borrowed Instinct + some crit conversion from Barb in combination with attack speed and Blood Thirst let you shot quickly. Hunting Bows now also work well with the modal, especially with Borrowed Instinct. Guns and crossbows are a bit suboptimal because Blood Thirst doesn't work with them. I also like to make Serafen a SC Barb and go ranged with a bow, aiming for Driving Roar later which is an extremely good ranged dmg/cc ability (given its low cost). Spellblade: any AoE weapons like mortars or Minor Blights are great when you want to apply stuff like Toxic Strike to many enemies at once. Infuse with Vital Essence makes the AoE bigger. Alacrity speeds you up, Combusting Wounds amplifies the AoE dmg... Blightheart is also good on a spellblade. One of the best ranged single target dmg weapons in terms of dmg is Nannasin's Cobra Strike - but its range is very short, like a reach weapon basically. But it is a ranged weapon (with high base dmg and a nasty DoT).

My theory 1: the crew needs a certain amount of xp in order to advance in ranks. If you have 4 ranks you can still gain xp. That excess XP doesn't seem to do anything further. 2: Some crew might already come with a higher rank. But they also start at 0 xp. Maybe it's none of that, maybe one, maybe both. Anyway you def. won't feel any difference between 4 stars with 29 xp and 4 stars with 108 xp so don't bother trying to demystify this (unless you really want to of course). You could check if the master crew you can get via breath's blessings (several 4 stars) start with 0 xp and if they still gain xp. That would explain a lot I think.

Since there's GamePass they don't necessarily need to only develop big games. Microsoft wants lots of content for GamePass which might lead to more small(ish) games being developed. Fingers crossed!

While I liked Dragon Age Origins I really didn't like Inquisition.

He was just taking (part time) parental leave.

I think that's not mutually exclusive. The detailed lore and nod to several historical events like colonisation etc. can be very interesting as well and you still can have a great overarching narrative. Detailed "history" and lore cam make a game feel more deep and alive. I think despite a lot of old RPG cliché like dwarves, elves, wizards etc. the world building of PoE/Deadfire is great. With BoW combining those two things worked a lot better. But maybe it was easier because it's shorter and more encapsulated. Maybe it would be a lot easier to do a game that consists of several smaller but nicely told "campaigns" and a very simple overarching "narrative" that just connects them.

I think because Obsidian vowed that they are only developing for PC they just didn't want to touch console ports - which I understand, it's really not their expertise. And maybe their "style" of implementation also makes porting difficult. It's easier to develop software for a single platform and completely ignore others - but it makes it a lot more difficult to bring it to those other platform then. I know from experience that's it an be very frustrating and enfuriating having to "fix" or convert somebody else's code. It's even bad if it's your own. I remember when I did my first browser-based administration software for a client (like... nearly 20 years ago I think) and at some point they wanted to switch from Internet Explorer to the new Firefox browser - holy moly that was bad. Nowadays with all the frameworks it's no biggy, but back then it was like having to rewrite more than half of the software. God it was a huge steaming pile of spaghetti with a thousand bandaids afterwards. Man I really don't want to remember that... So I'm sympathetic when it comes to bad ports. What I don't get is the poor communication though. You could just tell people what's going on and why. Most players will understand.

I guess most players don't know this, but making a good CRPG that feels like a quality game is extremely difficult. You can be a small indy studio and make very good roguelikes, tactic games, deck builders, platformers and so on - because with those games you need a good game mechanic and taht's basically it. Nice graphics, music, writing etc. will help, but they are not definig the game most of times. Look at Slay the Spire: its graphics are simple and not really breathtaking, the music is good but not jawdropping, there's nearly no writing. But it's a great, really great deckbuilder roguelike game. More than 1 million sold copies... Same with FTL (music top notch though in its own niche, pixel graphics good as well but nothing AAA-like), Among Us, Hotline Miami and whatnot. You need one or two really good aspects and that might be enough to land a hit. With CRPGs you need the whole package: good story/writing or else it feels like reading a cheap novella with Fabio on the cover. The branching dialogues are very complicated, you have to do quests with several outcomes, the world is supposed to "react" to what you do, companions should feel "alive", you need decent graphics that can be simple but don't look cheap, your game mechanics better be great, your char have to be customizable, you want lots of loot, interesting abilities, the balance shouldn't be off, the music can't be too awful. And then people also want VO because it helps their immersion. Imo CRPGs are the games which need the most comprehensive set of talent and experience to be done right. At the same time they are a niche product most of times so you won't sell millions of those. So who does these games must really be dedicated and passionate about it. If I were to make a game I certainly wouldn't start with an RPG, jesus no. The underlying systems alone... So I understand why there's not a ton of good new CRPGs out there.