Boeroer

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.).

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.