Boeroer

I repeat: only invocations. There are no other classes with invocations, so...

Only one of the three incarnates that appear is bugged. The other two will work fine. And the buggy one can still soak damage.

Of you want to play something similar to a Stormcaller Ranger then I would take a look at the Frostseeker war bow. Use a Single class Ranger (aim for Twinned Shots) or a Ranger/something multiclass - preferably one that lets you crit more often and does increase your damage (Devoted Fighter, Rogue, Cipher, Helwalker Monk, Furyshaper Barbarian and so on). Judging by your post a Scout (Ranger/Rogue) might be your thing. The bow shoots three projectiles and every one of them can crit which causes an AoE blast of frost. With Driving Flight (and Twinned Shot) you can crit 6 (12) times per attack in theory, causing massive AoE dmg. If you invest in Arcana you can then also use Avenging Storm which will trigger with each projectile and also on the AoE blast. It's not a Stormcaller but a Frostseeker - but the basic idea and vibe are similar. A bow that does shock damage and is focused on single target dmg (and summoning creatures on kill) is Essence Interrupter. It's also quite powerful. Actually there are some really nice bows in the game.

Which is what every developer/publisher should do if there's a good chance that it will sell well on the respective platform. PC grogs who don't play a game just because it was also released on consoles or other platforms - and all those other gatekeepers really - can bite the dust* for all I care. "But it's going to get dumbed down!" :eyeroll * not literally of course.

BG grogs went completely nuts because of TB combat in BG3.

And most of those are from the Deck of Many Things.

Unfortunately that ring does not really counter the self damage from Voidward (recently tested - but other sources of raw damage it does counter).

There is a difference in wishing for something and being sad that you won't get it on one side and being driven away on the other. How can I be mad at Obsidian if Deadfire sells so poorly so that they have to make RPGs which sell better then? It's not like they didn't try. That comparison is flawed because judging by the sales numbers Deadfire is what nobody wanted while Skyrim and other first-person RPGs like Outer Worlds is what everybody wants at the moment. It's just not what you want. Well... yes. Like PoE was jumping on the bandwagon of Infinity Engine games. If you want to make successful RPGs you must either do the goofy D:OS style with multiplayer and silly writing - or a more actionesque first-person RPG it seems. Or pure action RPGs maybe. Skyrim is just a popular example of a first-person RPG. I could also have said Outer Worlds on Eora or Witcher on Eora - but that sounds a bit misleading for different reasons. It has a Metacritc score of 94 (which is pretty impressive) and sold extremely well (over 30 million copies - one of the most successful RPGs of all times). So clearly the majority of users and critics differ from your opinion. I liked it, too. I didn't play it as often as PoE/Deadfire but it was fun nonetheless.

But then it would be bad for everybody who doesn't use Monastic Unarmed Training or Transcendent Suffering, wouldn't it?

Why would it drive you away? Simply not buying would be reasonable if you don't like those types of games. I personally would like to see those games. I'm not limited to isometric, party based role playing games. And after all: if they would aquire two million new fans but lose those 200K who bought Deadfire - should they care (as a company that has to earn money)?

In general this can work well. Only the modal of Quarterstaff doesn't stack with the usual deflection buffs like Mirrored Images. Chromoprismatic Staff comes a bit late, but before that you can use the Spine of Thicket Green which has a nice enchantment for Restoration spells.

I don't doubt that you have those problems. Deadfire IS heavy on the CPU - I just don't experience that magnitude of heating-up (and the game runs pretty nicely for me, too).

Wael is really good on the defensive side though. No (desperate) need for thick armor or/and shield if you can have some quick Mirrored Images. That can make you cast faster (less armor recovery) and more precisely (no ACC malus from shield).

It's like saying that the Witcher has a truly nice beard in the third part and judging by all the people who bought Witcher3 that must be the reason for its success. Could be totally unrelated. Even if the beard is superdandily nice (which seems to be debatable) this doesn't mean that it's a prominent reason to buy the game. You have a theory but no data to back it up - like most theories we might come up with in this case.

When you sail around you can see those coordinates change on the map - as you said. 8 degrees 4 minutes south and 56 degrees 56 minutes east is you goal. If you sail north you will see the first number (south) decrease, if you sail south it will increase. Same with west/east. What exactly is unclear?

My CPU is about the same as yours iirc - I have no such problems.

Ohhhhh - you didn't read the BG3 forums it seems.

I'm pretty sure Deadfire's non-success was a big disappointment for him. And who knows what followed after that (in the office). I guess nobody was happy about it... He even wrote on Twitter (today) that two years ago two big disappointments happened (and another one last year) - and that those prevent him from being truly enthusiastic and happy about anything nowadays. He didn't explicitly say it but I presume one of it was Deadfire (since the release was in May 2018). It's kind of weird because Deadfire still has good reviews and most people who played it do like it. It's one of my most beloved games of all times - but of course that's not much comfort for him. I also only bought it once - like everybody else.

No, no consumables besides food. It's not because I want a bigger challenge - I just don't like using them because it adds another layer of micromanagement in addition to active abilites and the rest of combat. Oh, I forgot unguents - those I do use if I have to pass a tight skill check in scripted scenes or if I have to pick a difficult lock or so. But they are mostly non-combat related and that's fine. And if I play a Nalpasca then I use drugs obviously because it wouldn't work without. Yes. The only time I didn't play PotD was my first run in PoE1 which was done on "normal" - which I shelved rel. early because I learned so much about the mechanics during that half-run that I wanted to try something else (and with a bigger challenge). Looking at the hours I put into both games that might be the case.

Unity3D games seem to be heavy on the CPU in any case (I mean if you look at the visial quality you get for that). NWN2 wasn't made with Unity of course, but POE and Deadfire were.

Yes, but what I meant was that if something competes with your game which already uses a small niche (and/or disappoints with the first installment and/or has bad marketing and/or has a setting that rubs players the wrong way and/or fed the nostalgia too much with a prequel) then you will sell very few copies.

As several people now did with your assessment of the Witcher games in that regard.

As I already said Microsoft is eager to fill its Game Pass portfolio. So maybe we will see some smaller Pillars/Eora games. Josh is still working on the TTRPG rules (part time at work) and he would like to do a Pillars Tactics game - so maybe there's enough material and motivation to make something smaller but likeable for Game Pass. And as I also said in previous posts Feargus is (or at least was) eager to make a Skyrim in Eora which is even more likely to happen now after the success of the Outer Worlds (even would use the same Unreal engine I presume so there's a foundation to build on). But PoE3... like a real sequel in more than the name... the more I listen to Josh and the more I learn about the figures of Deadfire sales the more I think it's not going to happen.

Small addition: some of the "non-subclass-related" offensive spells of Priests target the Will defense (e.g. Divine Mark, Shining Beacon etc.) which is rather unusual. Luckily it's pretty easy to reduce Will on enemies: club + modal (-25 directly), Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (-40 via RES/INT debuff) and Dazzling Lights (-10 directly, doesn't stack with club) for example do send Will down the drain pretty fast so that your Priest can then apply some good hits/crits with his a Shining Beacon. The other offensive ones often target Reflex which is also rel. easy to debuff (also with Miasma for example). So Wizard + Priest go together quite well in a party in general. Will and Reflex are often not as high as Fortitude on enemies. If you have a Furyshaper in the party then you want to pick Withdraw as a Priest: you can withdraw the ward which makes it invulnerable but it will still work its magic. You an even use it to block chokepoints that way etc. You see how some circumstancial spells can become quite important if paired with the right party members and their abilities. Death Godlikes and Streetfighters for example like Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time.

Yes, especially CRPGs with a good amount of writing and sophisticated mechanics usually take a lot of time to get into, play and finish. If there are several contenders at the same time they can hurt each other really badly because of that. It's not like Candy Crush vs. Solitaire (in terms of players investment of time and energy).