Boeroer

He wasn't saying the PoE world is over. He only said that he wouldn't do a third part of PoE as long as he doesn't know what went wrong with part two. But he also said a few days ago on stream (and several times before that) that nobody would do a third part if "nobody" wanted to play the second. Which is an exaggeration of course - but he still seems to be deeply disappointed. That also didn't indicate that the console sales did superwell. On the other hand there are still a decent amount of players that play Deadfire although it's 2 years old. We even got a new Ultimate run a few days ago. At the same time Feargus still wants to do a first-person RPG on Eora. Josh himself said a week ago or so that a) it's still what Feargus wants to do (and that he usually gets his way as I already said) and b) that he personally would not like to do PoE3 but a Pillars Tactics game. So while we might not see a PoE3 anytime soon we might see some other Pillars/Eora/PoE-world game. PoE3 seems to be off the table for now though, I agree. Maybe one can license the Pillars IP from Microsoft for a small CRPG.

Also: thank you.

Steel Garotte/Trickster does way more damage with Offensive Parry (and the occasional Riposte) but has lower defenses and limited resources. Keep in mind that the Bloodmage can stack Arcane Veil and Llengrath's Safeguard for +70 to deflection (and +20 to the other defenses and +5 AR) which won't get reduced when getting hit and can prolong that stuff endlessly (in theory) with Wall of Draining. You can trigger Safeguard easily with Blood Sacrifice. Also self damaging stuff like Sacred Immolation and Alacrity are no problem when you can prolong Hands of Light and such effects in addition to draining - while the Trickster "only" has a limited supply of +30 deflection from Mirrored Images at best. When I do the same encounter solo against not-too hard melee-foes like tigers - which might represent the common "mob" - the Trickster variant kills them faster. But if the enemies have even more ACC/defenses and/or the fight takes too long he will run out of guile and then die faster. This might be a problem in the later game - for example in DLCs like SSS where fights can take quite a while. The Bloodmage can go on endlessly. Both are vulnerable to Arcane Dampener. They usually have very high Will (due to maxed RES and high INT) but grazes can still occur. The Trickster variant is more fun (in my opinion) if you want less micro. You only need to position the guy somewhere in from of melee enemies, cast Mirrored Images and Inspired Beacon and he'll be like a meat grinder from hell. The Bloodmage variant requires a lot more micromanagement and setup with buffs etc. and takes a longer to finish most fights - but in the end I think it has a lot more potential.

Funnily enough I had one of those Benny Hill chases yesterday evening and thought: "Wait - didn't I tell people that this isn't a thing in Deadfire?".

I believe you can tint models even if they are usually not adapting to the char's color scheme. But I'm not 100% sure nor do I remember how. But I think I read something about it in the modding subforum - something about custom godlikes iirc. Edit - found it (may be too complicated): The important part I think:

First of all thanks for the nice feedback. I haven't used Frostseeker that much - but you need lots of crits for it to be great. A Ranger - in my opinion - is mandatory. Not only because of the increased ACC but also because of Driving Flight which doubles your attempts for a critical hit. Every projectile of Frostseeker can trigger the freeze AoE. So without Driving Flight it's 3 attempts per shot, with Driving Flight it's 6. Hard to beat that. I did quite some testing and also found SC Ranger to be viable because of Twinned Shot (=12 attempts). But to be honest I think something like Helwalker/Ranger would be best. Thundering Blows, Enduring Dance + Ranger ACC boosts is great, increased INT via Duality is great (bigger freeze AoE), increased MIG is great for the dmg, it's easy to get refunds for Stunning Surge because of the three projectiles + Driving Flight and so on. Stunning Surge is so good... I think both Ghost Heart and Arcane Archer can be nice. With Ghost Heart you can drop your animal companion right besides the dude you want to primarily hit (to trigger lots of crits) and don't care if it goes down. Arcane Archer can pull enemies together with Pull of Eora and doesn't get ACC malus with Frostseeker for his normal attacks. Also shooting Fireballs while triggering freeze AoEs is silly but fun. Maybe install a mod which fixes the PEN issues of Arcane Archer... I think I personally would pick Ghost Heart. Ranger/Rogue, Ranger/Cipher or Ranger/Devoted (great PENwould also be nice. I only tested those via console and did not do playthroughs with them, so others may have better advice. By the way: Avenging Storm procs also off of the freeze AoE hits. An SC Ranger with Twinned Shot and high Arcana (for the scroll) or Heaven's Cacophony helm can deal deadly AoE damage because he can produce so many hit rolls per shot. Red Hand is nice with any combination of Rogue, Ranger and Chanter. Chanter because of Sure-Handed Ila. Guns profit twice from it: the recover bonus and reload bonus both get applied. Looks like an oversight but leads to 2*-20% reload time which is neat - combined with the double-shot that's crazy fast arquebus shooting. Of course this also works if another char in the party is a Chanter. Doesn't need to be the user of Red Hand. Imagine a Scout with Gunner, Maia's Armor, Acina's Tricorn and all dmg bonuses of the Rogue + a Chanter with Sure-Handed Ila + Mith Fyr in the party: great reload speed and high dmg bonuses shout be impressive. What I think it best about Red Hand is the vessel destroy. So I can also imagine a Paladin or Priest multiclass using it. For RP purposes. Paladin also has FoD of course which is nice with Arquebuses anyway. Also here: I never used this weapon for extended durations but mostly did test runs with it and switch to it against vessel (where it rules). So again others may have better ideas from whole playthroughs with it.

I also thought so. But when I lately tested it a lot I couldn't reproduce the bug. So either it occurs very seldomly or it's truly fixed now.

To be fair they developed Deadfire pretty quickly. Also the whole mechanics got changed from PoE to Deadfire during that rather short period. Maybe that's why some things feel hasted. Potions are no problem as long as you don't use AI or don't drink them manually with AI on. I know: still not ok, but it's a bug that is circumventable. No idea why that's still in though. Seems to have been a difficult fix. Aloth's bug doesn't get encountered often so I guess it had a low priority.

Putting points into Arcana will raise the ACC of the imbue shots and spells. So it helps a lot if you use those a lot. With high Arcana you might want to check out the Arbalest "Spearcaster". It also gets bonus ACC from Arcana and that stacks. The imbue effects (Missiles, Fireball, Web and so on) will NOT proc thrice with Frostseeker (or four times with blunderbuss). As I said earlier multiprojectile weapons count as one in this case (I believe only the first projectile gets evaluated). The only thing that causes those effects to proc more than once are projectile jumps (see Driving Flight, Fire in the Hole, Wild Shot from Kitchen Stove and Waterhaper's Focus).

By the time you get Whispers of the Wind there's still like more than 30% of the game left - at least if you own both DLCs and do all sidequests. The nice thing about single classes is that they reach the cool abilities a lot earlier, you get access to awesome abilities (in some cases) and your abilities are more powerful due to higher PL. The advantage of multiclasses is nice synergies, usually more resources and often (positively) frontloaded builds which makes the early/mid game more interesting and fun.

Per rest stuff is weird in a game that eliminated per-rest casting in favor of per-encounter casting, I agree. If an item has a per-rest enchantment and an alternative passive or per-encounter one I will never pick the first but always the latter. I know that one powerful 1/rest ability might be a lot more useful in hard fights than a mediocre per-encounter one - but I still don't take it.

Which game hasn't? They patched it with 5 major patches (PoE only got 3) and they did 3 fairly big DLCs. You have to "walk away" from a game at some point. You can't patch it forever because it makes no sense to patch a game that barely nobody's playing anymore. There's no shame in that. There are still some things that should have been fixed and OP has valid points, but the bugs are not gamebreaking and there are not that many and the game is absolutely playable and fun (at least on PC).

Increasing DEX has linear returns. Besides that: Even if a few fractions of a second doesn't seem like much: an increase of attack speed - by let's say 5% - is a 5% multiplicative dps increase. Giving 5 points of MIG would lead to an additive dmg bonus of 15%. Additive bonuses only apply to (weapon) base damage while multiplicative bonuses apply to your overall dmg output. So 5% multiplicative can be way better than 15% additive. Best for dps would be if you raised both of course. Besides that higher DEX makes you more reactive which can be more fun. Deadfire's combat is already pretty slow. But I think 15 DEX is fine. You also get +5 from Swift Flurry and maybe a few points from items and food or whatever. No need to maximize all preferable stats. If PER is 20, 18 or 17 also doesn't matter that much after a while. Because raising PER ultimately has diminishing returns when it comes to dps, but it depends on your build as well (in this case it's important to stack as much ACC as possible for Swift Flurry) and it also lets you find traps and secrets. If you play with official companions this can be important because most of them don't have high PER. And stepping on traps gives you injuries which is sooo annoying. By the way: there are those things called Berath Blessing points: you get them as achievements when playing the game. They can be used to unlock cool stuff for all next playthroughs - for example +2 to all stats. Or starting at level 4 instead of 1. Or getting a unique vendor who sells special good stuff for a low price (for example a Cloak of Greater Deflection right in Port Make at the beginning of the game). This can help to get your build "clicking" much earlier in the game. Keep in mind that these are only my personal preferences. Other players may think differently.

Haha yeah, I had that every once in a while as well. But not very often. Deadfire has this nice little "push out of the way" effect that solves a lot of small pathing issues. They push only a little but it seems to be enough to avoid the really weird "Benny Hill Show" stuff.

With Frostseeker it's important to critically hit. Without crits it's not that great. If you are using Essence Interrupter then generally speaking it is worth it to raise Metaphysics. Lashes (like the one from Electrical Conduit) are multiplicative damage bonuses and every additional percentage point is good. IIrc every 4 points of Metaphysics you get one additional percentage point of shocking lash (so at 20 Metaphysics it will be a 10% lash instead of a 5% one). You'd be the judge if that's worth maximizing Metaphysics though. It's easier on a party member because their skills are not checked in scripted interactions as much. Maximizing one single skill as MC can mean that you will not pass a lot of other skillchecks. Although Metaphysics unlocks some pretty important checks.

The data that we rely on was not "seen somewhere" but presented here. Therefore claiming that an opinion is based on data and then showing the data makes it so. A difference also is that some claim that X was THE reason for failure while others just say that Y may have been A reason. It's quite baffling how you can't see the difference. And calling people names doesn't make it any better.

Depends a bit on the rough build idea you have and which items you want to use. Generally I would have high PER for more ACC and DEX for speed and also RES if I wanted to stack Deflection and use Riposte and Enduring Dance with Mirrored Images and a shield like Tuotilo's Palm for example. Because every point of deflection has increasing returns. If Mirrored Images etc. ist only there to improve your survivability a bit and you want to dual wield weapons or fists or so then I personally wouldn't invest too much into RES (although getting hit by Arcane Dampener as a Nalpasca is really bad - maybe you still want to raise RES and also INT a bit). MIG doesn't need to be very high because you have Sneak Attack already and CON doesn't need to be very high if your deflection is good. By the way: if you use Tuotilo's Palm or an offhand weapon you could think about a Battle Axe + modal in the main hand (at least before getting something else): if you use Full Attacks (like Stunning Surge) mostly then the long recovery of the Battle Axe will be skipped and only the one of Tuotilo's Palm/offhand weapon will count. Makes you attack as fast as without the modal but the damage will be significantly higher (because Bleeding Cuts stack - also with Swift Flurry as I said). Only with Full Attacks though.

Yeah, that's not cool. Won't get fixed - at least for PC - because Deadfire saw its last patch a long time ago. Don't know if this can get modded out, but since this problem seems to be deep-rooted I doubt it. Can't one do some weird AI-scripting magic to circumvent that problem maybe?

Uh. Was that Swift Flurry on taking offence because I corrected your abridged evaluation? I basically agree with you, but you might have missed that.

That is not generally correct. Lightning Strikes is a 15% multiplicative dmg bonus (also includes dmg bonuses, passives and so on - but not other lashes) while a secondary attack roll is somewhat between 0% - 100% dmg bonus depending on the hit quality. If the secondary attack roll is a miss it's obviously 0, a hit won't do the same dmg as the crit before (25% less base damage, maybe even underpenetrate or not overpenetrate) and only after a second crit it's a real 100% overall dmg bonus). If we take the best case and assume 100% and also assume you got maxed out Turning Wheel and some other lash on the weapon then it might be the equivalent of 10 Lightning Strikes. Most of the time it will not be. Maybe more like 5 - 7 on average I guess. And then the main problem arises: As soon as you don't hit a lot but mostly miss or graze (which can happen a lot if you fight overleveled foes or bosses - e.g. in order to rush equipment) you can't convert hits to crits either - which further limits the use of Swift Flurry. Swift Flurry is a typical "win even faster" ability. If you struggle it won't do much for you - but if you are winning anyways you will win faster. A bit like Bloody Slaughter. This can still be fun no doubt, but as I said it doesn't work so well when you would need it most: in difficult encounters. This is all with a "normal" item setup. Let's assume you have a weapon without any proc shenanigans and have a crit chance of 50% throughout your playthrough against the entirety of enemies (which is already very high): then Swift Flurry will proc in one third of those crits which means 50/3 = ~17% of all attacks will trigger Swift Flurry. And as I said 50% overall crit rate is quite high. I we assume the above 100% dmg increase (which is not really the case but just to showcase) then we have a 17% overall dmg increase while Lightning Strikes is at 15%. And most of times it will help you to win faster in fights you are winning anyways. Again, this is with a weapon/item setup which doesn't proc stuff on hit. Now: Swift Flurry becomes very interesting when combined with Heartbeat Drumming and then used with certain melee weapons that have a chance to proc something, preferably some AoE stuff but also stuff that usually has a low chance to proc but he proc is powerful. For example all Battle Axes, Scordeo's Edge, Sungrazer, Lord Darryn's Voulge, Stalker's Patience, St. Drogga's Skull, Karabörü, Marux Amanth and so on. For those weapons Lightning Strikes doesn't do much besides the 15% lash (and that might not even apply to the procs). Swift Flurry however can lead to multiple attack rolls (because Swift FLurry and HBD can proc off each other) with one single action which all have the chance to proc that special effect. That might lead to a Barb/Monk with the Voulge clearing a whole room with one strike (multiple Carnage attacks all applying Static Thunder, crits from the chain proc immediately releasing the charges and so on) - or a Ranger/Monk to proc Sungrazer's Extinction Event + Meteoric(several times) which is devastating as well. Or you get a literal flurry of attacks from Stalker's Patience with no recovery or Blade Cascade from Scordeo's Edge procs a lot more often. Battle Axes will apply Bleeding Cuts with every proc of Swift Flurry with o added recovery which is really nice. Chromoprismatic Staff gets its 5 consecutive attacks i a hartbeat and releases the raw dmg AoE. And so on and so forth. With such weapons I would totally recommend Swift Flurry. Also with Sun and Moon because procs are much more likely with it due to the double attack roll per swing. Even if it's still kind of unreliable the effects when it procs can be so massive and fun that it's absolutely worth it in my opinion. If you don't use such melee weapons or/and don't want to subordinate everything to ACC and crit chance (like giving max PER, stacking up crit conversion, debuffing enemies etc.) I would recommend Lightning Strikes - which also pays off earlier in the game. But it hasn't the "jawdrop" potential. There is a lot more "cheesy" potential with Swift Flurry and almost none with Lighning Strikes. That's just more reliable. I didn't play Veteran and have no experience with Swift Flurry on that difficulty setting. But it surely works better there than on PotD due to lower defenses. To be honest even on PoTD I almost always use Swift Flurry (if melee weapons are used) because it's more fun in my opinion. Even if it sucks agaist most bosses. Monks are good against bosses even without it - so no big deal if it disappoints on those rel. rare occasions.

I also played IWD EE and enjoyed it - but I wouldn't want those mechanics in any contemporary CRPG.

Sneak Attack scales with Power Level. A level 20 multiclass rogue ends up with 60% Sneak Attack (and 50% Deathblows which doesn't scale). Tricksters get 10% less for Sneak Attack. So that's something to consider when comparing it to Soul Whip. Soul Whip is nice, but it doesn't add that much damage as Sneak Attack in the long run. Of couse you can do otehr stuff with it, too. Not having enough Guile for active abilities is a reasonable concern. The advantage of the Soulblade is that he has unlimitd uses of Soul Annihilation as an active attack - as long as he can damage stuff - on top of the unlimited wounds. I mean threoretically - in a party it's not that bad with a Rogue - but also practically the refreshing resources are a plus, no doubt. With a Shadowdancer I usually use the Guile for stuff like Escape, Mirrored Images (if trickster) and stuff like that. Not the strikes so much. The monk side has plenty of replenishable actions like Stunning Surge, Torment's Reach etc. But yes: you hve to use your guile very economically if your fights turn out to be longer. Don't get me wrong with Swift Flurry: it can be a lot more fun that the plain old Lightning Strikes with a melee setup. Once you get Heartbeat Drumming awesome chain procs may happen (Swift Flurry triggering Heartbeat Drumming and vice versa). All in all I think there are only few builds where it is ultimately better - but is sure is more interesting and jawdropping when it works. Just don't be disappointed if it doesn't proc much in the tough fights. Nice thing with a monk is that he can choose which defense to attack: if the enemies fortitude is low he can use Force of Anguish, if deflection is low he can use Stunning Surge. So getting crits is even more likely if you pick the "right" attack. Also on Veteran it is def. more easy to proc it than on PotD. Your idea with high defenses-->longer Enduring Dance is solid I guess. Might not always work out (not only hits/dmg against deflection remove stacks of Mirrored Images/Enduring Dance but all hits) but in general it should lead to a longer uptime of Enduring Dance. The nice thing about Soulblade is that you immediately start with one of the most damaging melee abilities in the game - and a Monk usually has an easy time to refill focus quickly with his other attacks. As you can see I would also have a hard time deciding, hehe.

I guess I didn't have those issues with PoE because I tend to play "Pause with Real Time" instead of "Real Time with Pause".

"Char building simulator" is exactly what PoE and Deadfire are for me, hehe. That term never crossed my mind but it fits. I do playthroughs to see if the stuff I tested with console is also good (which mostly meansfun to play) in the "real" game - but it often happens that I abandon the run as soon as I hit a certain spot where I can see "yep, it works well" or "uh it doesn't play as good as I thought". Megabosses are not impossible but unfun for me because they need stuff I usually avoid: consumables, resting bonuses and so on. And because they are such huge bags of HP which makes it a tedious grind even if you have a good setup. Also heavily favours classes with unlimited resources which I find to be a bit lame. I would miss nothing without the Megabosses.

I agree. MIG doesn't need to be stellar because of Sneak Attack/Deathblows. Instead of the Casita Breastplate you can also use Nomad's Brigandine (if not solo). It will give you +10 deflection in melee if your buddies aren't too far away without skill requirements, it has higher AR (which is good on combo with the Paladin's AR passives and the dating from Offensive Parry). It also has a great enchantment that makes you immune to disengagement attacks (not engagement itself): that means that if you disengage the following disengagement attack will miss 100% --> Offensive Parry and potential Riposte. Although Casita's Breastplate with Intimidate fits a Steel Garotte nicely. Besides that you want Bracers of Greater Deflection, Cloak of Greater Deflection, RES items, Entonia Signet ring and so on. Inspiring Triumph, too At the same time you (and your party members) want to reduce ACC of enemies with stuff like Blind (see the Beacon abilities) but also Devotions for the Faithful and such. Escape can be prolonged with a Priest's Salvation of time and gives you +50 deflection, too. Again: not solo of course. A great late game item is the Mask of the Weyc because its +50 deflection bonus at the start of combat stacks with everything (except Escape). In solo runs it's a bit too short but with a party it's quite great (also because Salvation of Time etc.).