Boeroer

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.).

I won't say RTwP is bad. I like it. It has several advantages compared to TB and vice versa. Besides that it's all trends and circles. I just don't think that die-hard RTwP fans behave any better than TB fans, hence my "nuts" comment. If you have the impression that TB fans are worse: it just might be that there are more of them, especially in the Larian forum. But when I look at that forum: the RTwP guys were def. the more unreasonable ones by far - which is understandable because they were mad (while TB guys got what they wanted). But still that illustrates my point: one group isn't better than the other.

If I would go for Offensive Parry I would max RES - because deflection has increasing returns. 10 points of stackable deflection is a lot. Mirrored Images is nice but it gets lowered per hit (also includes spell hits that don't target deflection) and it also doesn't work when Arcane Dampener hits you (which is common at higher levels against wizards and wizard-like enemies like liches, fampyrs and so on). Also if you get hit by Minor Missiles all Mirrored Images will be gone. If you take Blade Form then you can leave RES where it is.

If you have high Deflection (e.g. Paladin/Trickster) then Offensive Parry is always the better choice because it's an attack with 0 attack time and 0 recovery which can take place while you are casting stuff or drinking a potion or are in the middle of recovery. It procs on 100%(!) of melee misses and stacks with Riposte which has only a 20% proc chance (you can trigger Offensive Parry AND a Riposte from the same miss). This is very good with a Steel Garotte/Trickster because WotEP dazes automatically with Offensive Parry - which means the Steel Garotte can drain life with his parries without doing anything. Blade Form is okay if you don't have high deflection. But then I'd also skip Riposte. It is also better if you play with Turn Based because in TB mode very few misses occur (the grazing range is much bigger than in RTwP mode where misses are much more likely to happen).

That highly depends on the abilites/perks etc. available. In theory a classless system should lead to a bigger variety of builds - because everybody has access to everything. Think of a Deadfire where your character had access to all abilities of all classes. If a system pushes you to only take a certain type of abilities because else your character would suck then it sounds as if that system wasn't designed with much synergy between different abilities in mind. Or it uses a lot of deep vertical trees which also prevent good "hybrid" builds. Classless doesn't mean you can't have archetypes (basically a pre-defines package of values and abilites which can emulate a class - can be nice for beginners who don't understand mechanics too well yet).

He also prefers classless. PoE only had classes because of "spiritual successor of BG" limitations. Same as RTwP (with which I'm fine). Would you also be ok with the removal of classes (and an big ability pool - with prerequisites I guess) or would that be too much? The TTRPG changed quite a bit during the last year. I don't know if the inverse initiative is still a thing. Makes sense though. I find myself passing on my turn in Battle Brothers a lot because it's often beneficial to have the last turn - especially during phases of tactical movement.

This is such a red flag when writing down an opinion piece. Writing down ones opinions is fine. But please don't claim it's fact or "the truth". I'm also posting a lot of opinions but you'll never see me claiming that it's the unwithspoken truth.

They went nuhuuuuts. Nutsy nutsy nutsy nuts. But now they cooled off. One can read the BG3 forums again without seeing a rant about TB in BG3 (or one about BG3 looking like D:OS 3) in every single thread. What also cooled down: "Please Larian don't push a leftist political agenda in BG3" - as if Larian ever did that in the first place. Or as if they would listen to some guys who think that everything they don't agree with is "shoving politics down their throats". "Grand Wizard" or not: you won't see me getting ridiculously mad about developers' decisions for a game. Obviously it's easier to be reasonable if you don't get mad. It's also a lot easier then to refrain from personal attacks.

Sure, it's all guesswork and opinions. The difference is that some people try to look at this objectively and try to weigh the arguments - which sound reasonable and which sound unlikely, which infos and data do we have? They try to guess regardless of personal preference. They don't try to blame something they particularly didn't like for the low sales alone. They are trying to make educated guesses. In the older thread we had stuff like "it's the main story because I hate it", "it's the bugs because they ruined my playthrough", "it's the constant nerfs because it screwed my build", "it's the narrator because she sounds awful" (or maybe that was another thread) and also "I didn't like PoE in general and that means the majority didn't like it so they didn't buy Deadfire" - despite critical acclaim and good user reviews. That's not educated guessing. If personal preference meets solid argumentation: fine. I think being a sequel can be a problem. Don't think it's the main reason for flopping, but it can contribute. But often personal preference seems to interfere with solid reasoning and then it's only obout "I didn't like it and since my taste is paramount this must be the reason". I don't have any problem with the setting. Yet I suspect it to ba a (not THE) major reason for Deadfires low popularity. Also I don't have any stakes in the marketing - yet I believe that this has a bigger impact than some bugs, stutters, some nerfs or a somewhat lame main story. I make sure to say "I suspect" and "maybe" and "could be" instead of "fact is", "no doubt" or "unmistakenly", "useless" (my secret pet peeve) and such. My biggest gripe with PoE and Deafire are the pretty bad descriptions and tooltips when it comes to abilites or mechanics in general. Also some overly complicated mechanics. Yet I would not insist that "this is THE reason why Deadfire tanked".

Cool you liked that Berathian Priest. Ouf... that highly depends on preference I would say. If you like less micro or more (casting usually adds more) for example. Personally I like Monks a lot - and Rogues and Ciphers (except Beguiler) not that much - so that's kind of a tie here. In my opinion Trickster is a very nice subclass though and Soulblade can be very powerful. Erm... I think I like Shadowdancer more due to his mobility (Escape is very cheap), the no-fuss damage output and the better survivability in the early game. I like Ciphers more in other multiclasses I guess. If you are willing to use Swift Flurry then some weapons are particular fun: Willbreaker Morning Star with modal + Force of Anguish, Stunning Surge and Enervating Blows: lower enemies' Fortitude by 45 points via stun/weaken/Body Blows and then use Force of Anguish wich targets Fortitude. The Willbreaker also has hit-to-crit conversion. Sun & Moon: hits twice and thus has double chance to crit. It procs Stunning Surge refund and Swift Flurry more often than other weapons. It's also very good with a Soulblade (either less risk of missing and also gain focus with the second flail head if the first one applied Soul Annihilation). Sungrazer: it has an enchantment which procs on kill-with-crit. Usually that's hard to proc - but with Swift FLurry it's rel. common to kill with a crit. And the following explosion is powerful and also gains from Sneak Attack/Deathblows or would also generate focus. The other enchantment that triggers on x% hits is also great when Swift Flurry procs (additional procs count). Usually it's best to only hit with this weapon then. So it's one of the few cases where one handed style can make sense. Stalker's Patience: it has an enchantment that removes recovery on 20% of crits. If Swift Flurry procs it will remove recovery very often. I had like 5 or more stabby-stabs without recovery sometimes. Also here one-handed style can make sense. Usually it's strictly inferior but here it's ok. Whispers of the Endless Paths: Offensive Parry procs 100% on melee misses against you. It stacks with Riposte. Both work with Swift Flurry. A Soulblade is especially fun because he can gain focus just passively while "parrying" blows and then burn that focus with a cone attack of Soul Annihilation. But of course the deflection of a Nalpasca/Soulblade wouldn't be too great unless you get Borrowed Instincts. Trickster has an easier time to get high deflection sooner. Soulblades can make good use of Tuotilo's Palm - because Soul Annihilation is a Primary Attack- You can use the main hand weapon but will not attack with the (weak) shield bash - yet you keep the recovery bonus from dual wielding. Nalpasca/Tricksters can also make good use of it - with Mirrored Images + shield deflection (especially with the +1 deflection per wound) Riposte can be used and you become even more sturdy.

There are no overpowered classes per se (just one truly overpowered thing which is Brilliant). Monk isn't overpowered as well. It's just good a many things. Steel Garotte/Trickster with Whispers of the Endless Paths is good and fun. But that also has its shortcomings. If you really want to name a class that can cheese itself into invincible mode then surely it's Priest - just because of Salvation of Time + Brilliant (and then Barring Death's Door). But it's also tedious to do all that SoT-casting in order to reach that state. Bloodmage with Wall of Draining is also a candidate but not as easy to pull off (because you need enemies to hit and drain from). If you want to cheese with invisibility + Brilliant then Tactician/Assassin might be your thing. Becoming invisible can trigger Brilliant Tactician. Applying Gouging Strike will prevent the encounter from ending even if you are invisible. So you can do every encounter like: shooting an enemy with Gouging Strike --> turn invisible --> become brilliant --> shooting an enemy --> turn invisible --> become brilliant and so on. They will all die eventually while you are quite safe. In theory every character could be OP if you just look at Gouging Strike, Brand Enemy and Lover's Embrace. All you need to do is hit an enemy once and then vanish (best is Rogue of course, but also Wizard with Arkemy's Brilliant Departure or somebody wearing Rust's Poignard), hide somewhere out of sight and wait till one enemy is dead. Encounter ends --> repeat. There are a few encounters where that doesn't work due to limited space, but you could win most encounters of the game that way.

In my opinion a Shadowdancer is better off with Lightning Strikes instead of Swift Flurry - but that also depends on the dificulty setting. Swift Flurry is better on lower difficulties than on the higher ones. Reason is higher defenses on higher diff. and because Rogue's dmg bonuses work very well with lashes in general (since they are mutliplicative damage) and he hasn't substancial ACC buffs and "only" Dirty Fighting. Mathematically you will have a hard time reaching the dmg output of Lightning Strikes with Swift Flurry - especially when it counts most: against tough foes. If your Shadowdancer will be hunting behind enemy lines (bringing down casters, archers etc.) then it's another story though because those ususally have lower defenses that the tough nuts and it's nice to be able to one-shot them with a cascade of crits. Transcendant can be better suited for Swift Flurry because (as you said) he not only has some paralysis which helps with Swift Flurry but also ACC bonuses from Borrowed Instinct, Tactical Meld and then debuffs which can lower deflection further. On the other hand: enemies who get hit with Soul Annihilation seldomly need Swift Flurry on top to die... But a good proc-chain of Swift Flurry can fill up your focus right away which can be cool.

It is not reasonable. Of course it's bad that your CPU heats up that dramatically. But you can't blame it on Deadfire alone because as I said: we don't have that. So some special "negative synergy" of your system, maybe your installed software and Deadfire has to happen there. Maybe you could check if it's the case with all Unity games (if you are willing to install another one) or if it's Deadfire alone. Deadfire is a bit heavy on my CPU as well, but it's not getting significantly hotter than with other stuff.

If you blame Tyranny for poor marketing you must blame Deadfire's marketing even more. Even Josh said recently that it felt that nobody new about the release of Deadfire. Surely a lot of players who didn't follow Obsidian or are part of the "community" had no clue that Deadfire was even out. This was different with PoE. Alone because of Kickstarter but also because it was a "new thing" and kind of a desperate story which naturally got the attention of all sorts of media. The guy responsible for the Deadfire marketing campaign had to leave the company... I also blame Versus Evil: outside of a very small "community AoE" like on Twitter or in the respective forums I saw very, very little of Deadfire before it came out. Add perceived "Pirates of the Caribbean" setting (which it is not, but you can't know from glancing over it on Steam or GoG etc.), more competition, direct sequel, maybe disappointed PoE players, even saturated nostalgia and a small target group to begin with (remember only 40% overlap between D:OS and PoE) and I think it becomes more clear why it might have failed - still foggy enough though. We will never know for sure, we can just make educated guesses. By the way: Josh constantly tried to hit the brake with the pirate stuff during development, but many developers were pretty exited about it and got carried away with it from time to time. So maybe if Josh was more of an autocratic director we would have a game with less pirate-vibes, but he is not so... I was a bit sceptical at first but I came to like it.

But that's the case for every Rogue. It's not that the Ranger/Rogue is without a party. No need to keep enemies afflicted all by himself. Most of times clustered enemies (and that's where Frostseeker is best) will be afflicted all the the time - at least the way I play. Doesn't mean that's how everybody's supposed to do it, but long-lasting or constantly reapplying afflictions come with so many spells that are also damaging or being beneficial in general (Fear Ward, Wicked Briars, Chillfog, Venombloom, Barbaric Shout and many, many more) that clustered enemy mobs are afflicted 99% of times in multiple ways. I also use a Swashbuckler "tank" (often Edér) from time to time to unlock Persistent Distraction on all attackers around him. That's very convenient when having somebody like a Ranger/Rogue with Frostseeker in the back row. It's unlimited dual affliction time on all who are engaged by the swashbuckler. If you use Hand Mortar with another character you might apply Blinding Smoke all the time. And so on. So I don't agree that there's no synergy with a Rogue in a Frostseeker build. It wouldn't be my pick either though. Also because Guile is very limited and Garland's Rake doesn't transport Rogue's strike effects. A mortar or rod would be better to put stuff like Arterial Strike, Toxic Strike, Finishing Blow onto all enemies in an AoE. A Scout (with Streetfighter) is indeed better with mortars and not Frostseeker. A Helwalker has near unlimited Stunning Shots in theory. And stuff like Tenacious Blows is very nice as well. When you mostly want to shoot the bow and not use other active abilities much (like spells) it's great I think. It's a combo which ensures long-lasting use of active attack abilites with minimal micromanagement. So I think a Ranger/Helwalker is a great substitute for a PoE Stormcaller Ranger.

Once you talk to the first guard at twin elms you can go back to Defiance Bay.

Well - as several of us now have said: we don't have those problems.

That wasn't an analysis, only a possible in-game explanation. Of course the real reason for lvl 1 has not much to do with the story. Only that it's more interesting to play from lvl 1 to 20 instead of 16 to 30 (or something similar, fighting Megabosses all day to keep encounters interesting). But one could argue that you start as a realtive weakling again because Eothas sucked up the biggest part of your soul. And as Eothas states himself: "I can't give back your soul yet, for I still have use for its great power." Gaining levels before getting parts of your soul back is a normal process. Souls grow more potent with proper experience as we know from PoE1. So it is to expected that the part of your soul that was left with you can grow again without Eothas. Nevertheless: it would have been nice to really "feel" (as a player), that you just got back a big chunk of your "old and already powerful" soul. As I suggested above: like to tie this Watcher/lost soul thing to real mechanical advancement like Watcher-levels or so. Taht might have led to more perceived investment and motivation. Most players like it if they get something cool - like for example a new Watcher level where they could pick a new (good) ability on their own - not some per-rest stuff that's predefined by dialogue options. You get a bit of that with Gift from the Machine and Effigy's Resentment (when you get them back - if you had them in PoE in the first place) - but in my opinion that's too weak to really get players excited.

I would also use Helwalker because the +10 INT is great for the AoE of Garland's Rake and the +10 MIG anyway. Stunning Surge is nice, especially with the 3/6 projectiles (3 chances to crit - or 6 with Driving Flight). But afaik Garland's Rake profits from Sneak Attack, Deathblows and such - so why isn't that a good synergy? E.G. with a Trickster who can first lure enemies to a spot with Dazzling Lights, then later rack the hit-to-crit rate up with Gaze of the Adragan.

That is not the story. It's more like: Eothas killed you, Berath revived you and forces you to follow Eothas in order to find out what he wants - or you will die. You just left out the "do this or you'll die" part. Quite significant part if you ask for motivation I'd say. Edér also says that they got you on the Defiant because the farther away Eothas got the worse your condition. If we measure the power of one's soul in character levels then Eoths took 93,75% of your soul when he crushed Caed Nua. Sounds like enough to care about. I guess players would have cared more if the whole Watcher thing would have been like a mini-class with a seperate ability tree on its own. And instead of leveling up that tree by XP you would have leveld that up by talking to Eothas and getting back parts of your soul. So it's not only meanngful for the character but also the player (even the powergamer).

Since you mentioned Paladin: I played a Bleak Walker/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster and is was an absolutely solid build. Also due to the fact that Flames of Devotion counts as elemental attack (so no Arcane-Archer malus), gets +10 ACC by itself and +10 ACC from Ring of Focused Flames plus the Arcana bonus for Spearcaster. Add Zealous Focus, Marked for the Hunt, Survival of the Fittest and Stalker's Link. It's very difficult to graze or even miss enemies. Also works with other Paladin subclasses of course. Bleak Walker just had the higher FoD damage. Also: Eternal Devotion puts its burning lash (10%) onto every direct damage you cause, including the imbued shots and the damaging procs (Missiles, Fireball). Imbue effects will proc with every jump of a projectile (Blunderbusses' 4 pellets count as 1 projectile), so Driving Flight is a must (imbue shots proc twice). An alternative to Spearcaster can then be a weapon which already has a built-in jump, like Watershaper's Focus. Then an imbue shot will proc thrice. This can be very potent (even with non-damaging procs): three parallel Pulls of Eora (applied with first shot from stealth), combined with three Binding Webs (second shot after stealth) packs enemies together very, very, very tightly and takes them completely out of the game for a very long time. As long as there are no immunities one of the 6 parallel procs every 3 secs will always hit. You can then shower that dense cluster with all sorts of AoE nukes while they can't get anywhere. I value this a lot more than Missiles or Fireballs. Also you'll have no PEN issues at all. Enemies with Escape, Evasive Roll or Leap might be able to escape randomly though (see Splintered Reef fampyrs) if the AI is smart enough to time the ability right. In this case an (or more) additional Slicken from a fellow Wizard can be great.

Why would that sound sarcastic? Rot Skulls is a ranged weapon which the Priest of Berath can summon. And the imbue shots of Arcane Archers only work with ranged weapons. Since Arcane Archers get an ACC malus when not using imbue or elemental attacks it may even be that Rot Skulls will prevent that (if it's tagged as corrode weapon) - but as I said I didn't test that combination.

I never tried Rot Skulls with Arcane Archer. Could be a thing...

Why do people debate Skyrim now? Doesn't matter if you liked Skyrim or not. Nobody meant that Feargus wants to make a game that's an actual Skyrim clone in Eora. Skyrim's just a symbol to quickly transport an image - to avoid having to say "first person action RPG" in Eora. Of course it wouldn't have the quirks of Skyrim. I mean come on... it would have others. But really: of what use is it to debate if Skyrim was better than Oblivion in your opinion - in regards to a new Pillars game? The reason why Obsidian thinks that a first person RPG in Eora (will not mention another game as placeholder again since the next random guy will write an essay on that game then, too) is simple: first person RPGs sold like hot cakes recently, Outer World's (which is the same but in Space) did very well. So they have the technology/engine, the knowledge and the (financial) motivation to make such a game. I'd say it's a given. Or how did Josh put it: "Feargus wants to make one - and usually Feargus gets his way."

Went. Completely. Nuts.