Boeroer

Right. It's an obscure mechanic and good to know. That's by the way thr reason why Driving Roar (Barbarian) is so good as well: it counts as PL 1 ability since its just an upgrade of the Yell - but it has the highest ability level at the same time. But maybe Divine Immolation is not worth 1 ability point if you don't actually heal anything. Although depends... 4 ACC and 1 PEN are hard to get with just 1 PL from Prestige. Even if you don't heal anybody. On the other hand the PL from Prestige works on all of your abilities, not just SI. Difficult decision...

Sorry, I meant PL doesn't affect the AoE size. It does always influence PEN (if there is any to begin with). There are some exceptions like Arcane Archer's Imbue spells - but iirc no exceptions for Paladins' abilities. No Divine Immolation for you? It's pretty good if your Paladin is not alone in the front line. If he is it's pretty useless though...

Generally speaking: with somebody who doesn't get attacked a lot (characters with ranged weapon, ranged casters etc.) you can drop Resolve and Constitution. All other stats do have an offensive component in one way or another. I will write down the stats and what they do and then you can easily see what you can safely dump and what not. MIG: influences all damage done (additive). influences all healing done (except draining) in the same way. influences your Fortitude defense. CON: influences your health pool. influences your fortitude defense DEX: influences your action speed and recovery time. influences your Reflex defense PER: influences your accuracy (for all offensive actions). influencens your Reflex defense. Influences your ability to find secrets (traps, hidden stuff) INT: influences the size of all Area of Effect stuff (spells, special attacks etc.), influences the duration of your applied effects (CC, damage over time, summons etc.). Influences your Will defense RES: influences the duration of harmful effects (the higher the shorter the effect), influences your Will defense, influences your Deflection defense. As you can see, only CON and RES have effects that are non-offensive. So - for offensive characters it is best to drop those. Of course: a dead character can't be offensive, so one might not want to overdo it. Getting one-shotted by an arquebus or arbalest is very possible if you are too shquishy and it's difficult to prevent that at the start of the fight. So... it's a balance act. The most important dps stat is DEX for most glass cannons, followed by PER in the early game (when you miss often). For MIG and INT it depends: for example for a fasdt melee Rogue who can stack a lot of other additive dmg modifiers MIG isn't very important. But for a Wizard who can only raise his spell damage with MIG it's often the only dmg boost - so he wants it. Also a Rogue who does mostly single target damage (no AoE abilites picked) INT might not be that important. It's nice to apply long lasting afflictions - but usually enemies don't last that long against a Rogue so a mediocre score is often sufficient. For a Wizard with Fireballs: he wants a huge AoE and thus needs INT. Tanky characters usually want to do it the other way round. If it's a pure tank he might want to drop DEX and PER since they are mostly offensive stats. Their only defensive capabilities are for Reflex - but for that there are large shields: they not only raise Reflex back up (and drop accuracy) but also have a modal that helps a lot against AoE effects - and those often target Reflex. MIG can be important because your self healing will be a lot better with high MIG. Also Fortitude is an important defense which protects against the most nasty afflictions. Same with CON: bigger health pool and higher Fortitude. Although as soon as your defenses are really high you don't need that much of a health pool if the healing is good. But for the earlygame it can be importent in order to not get one-shotted. Your defenses only develop over time. However: this is just generally speaking. There are enough special cases and subclasses or items and abilites where this might not apply. For example: A Forbidden Fist Monk has this awesome ability "Forbidden Fist". It's a great offensive tool but if you use it too often too quickly you get a curse that drains your health rapidly. However, the duration of that curse can be shortened with Resolve. So this guy wants to max Resolve in order to keep the curse very short so he can use his "oompf" more often which raises his damage output. Or: a Rogue who specializes in Damage over Time effects, applied to multiple enemies, wants to max INT and MIG. Not only can he reach more enemies with an AoE weapon (there are some like hand mortars, rods with a blast and so on) but also the overall damage of a DoT effect raises with MIG (every tick does more damage) and INT (longer duration so more ticks). Stuff like this you can find in many forms. But the general approach I described above is a good point to start I guess.

It gives you +1 Power Level. It is def. worth it if there is not a really good alternative at PL 9. For example with monks it can lift your fists to the next scaling level (fists scale ever 2 PLs). And that's without the effect that PL raises the base damage of all offensive abilites by 5% multiplicatively (very potent with lots of additive dmg bonuses in the mix), raises projectile count (Minor Missiles etc.), amount of jumps (Mind Blades, Eld Nary's Curse etc.), accuracy, duration and PEN. Not AoE size[edit] though. This is especially good with DoTs which then get a dmg bonus from the direct dmg boost AND the longer duration - both multiplicative. Of course, if you have to decide between really awesome stuff like Whispers of the Wind/Devine Retribution/Barbaric Retaliation on one side and Prestige on the other I would go for the first one. But you can have 3 PL 9 abilites by lvl 20 and thus there's often room for Prestige.

A bit of that as well, but I guess the somewhat lighter tone wasn't that much of a repellent. I suspect that the lighter tone (not goofy, but lighter than PoE) was established because of feedback from PoE and because the D:OS games have it and they were/are a big success. Again, no quote on or proof for that. Anyway - I presume what @kanisatha meant - and what I mean - is that many "hardcore" CRPG players prefer a "Lord of the Rings" setting over a "Pirates of the Carribean" setting. I use those books/movies because they show a much bigger picture than I could paint just with a few words. In PoE we also had a post-medieval, renaissance-ish world in the background, but it wasn't very obvious because the game took place in the Dyrwood... which is, culturally speaking, very different and fairly "behind" compared to some of the more advanced nations (Old Vaillia, Rauatai and so on). Basically in PoE it's just the guns that remind you of it. That and some rare Vaillian haute couture... The rest is gritty, quite dark, kind of backwards and medieval: the architecture, the common people, the items - even the tone is dark like the dark times (besides Edér, Hiravias, Zahua and Aloth sometimes). I mean Durance alone puts the whole setting back for at least a hundred years for the player. In Deadfire all that stuff (overall presentation, architecture, clothing, even the weather) is obviously fitting the more "modern" and light setting of Pirates! (Arrrr!). There are some cool things mixed in to loosen it up, but you can't know that by simply looking at screenies and stuff at the storefront. So - if you are not into that then you might be put off even before purchasing it. You can immediately see from screenshots and videos about the game what the setting is. This may influence your decision to give it a try. Lots of gamers really have to think about on what they want to spend their money. Lots of them are young and don't earn their own money - and if they do then it's probably not enough that they just can spend 40-50 bucks just to see if the game is nice despite that non-preferred setting. I would argue that if there are second thougths about the overall setting then that's bad for such game (which is not cheap compared to many others you might want to try). That's just my highly subjective and speculative theory though.

Josh said in his post mortem that adding TB mode was like nothing compared to the ship combat system and full voice over. Maybe also because some efforts were already made to introduce turn based mode since PoE1. Maybe because it was easier (technically) than we think it was. Iirc ship combat wasn't explicitly mentioned in the original fig campaign nor was a stretch goal. No idea why somebody would be so adamant and insist on its implementation then.

Same problem with the Fighter gaining discipline from conversion: sooner or later the player would use pulsing spells like Tanglefoot or Pull of Eora to generate a ton of rel. harmless attack rolls that would get converted eventually, giving the Fighter lots of Discipline. Like a Forbidden Fist can regain wounds and heal like crazy if he wanders around in a Pull of Eora or in an Area of Tanglefoot.

Afaik it's easy to put a cap on an ability. e.g. stuff like Stunning Surge, Gambit and Barbaric Smash have that. But in this case it's directly linked to the ability. If a Rogue had a passive that would let him regain guile by applying afflctions with any ability he chooses (like Spellblade uses Chillfog) one would need to cap the outcome of that passive somehow. I don't know if that's possible: to link the ability use of Chillfog (which pulses a lot in aould apply a ton of afflictions over its duration) to that passive... sounds complex. I guess you could put a cap on the passive itself so that you could only regain like let's say 10 Guile in total over the course of an encounter. But that sounds inelegant. Maybe that idea isn't feasible.

Good point with getting infuriated by crits. Also indeed fits nicely with Barbaric Retaliation as you said. Also good point that if something is too tempting (in this case Barb potentially getting back Rage on receiving crit) there will be few motivation to take other stuff. Good example: Whispers of the Wind (is nearly always awesome) vs. Inner Death (costs Mortification and is bad if it doesn't crit which you can only make sure with Empowered Strike). Still: I like the idea because a) Barb's do get crit frequently because of low starting deflection and Frenzy and b) is makes total sense to become enraged if somebody hits you harder than you would like. Hulk mode and so on. I think Paladin is kind of fine as is atm. I mean compared to Rogue and Ranger (and Fighter to a lesser extend because he has what the Barb should have had). Fighter's Discipline could potentially rise when downgrading received attack rolls AND when upgrading his own rolls maybe? Both are abilities of his. But graze to hit is not very good after the early game because the graze range is pretty small compared to hit and you ACC/enemy defense ratio gets bigger throughout the game. So graze to hit happens a lot less than hit to crit after some levels. Since Confident Aim no longer gives you a damage bonus it loses its power very soon. Would be nice to have a higher PL upgrade that added a (small?) chance for discipline regain...? Only thing is that this would make flails his favorite weapon choice (if the ability is too good or too appealing) - and I don't know if that is desirable. @Wotcha's suggestion for Rangers sounds fitting and in line with what I want from a regaining-Bond-mechanic - but I fear that this solution is a bit too complicated for modding and to communicate? Maybe something along those lines but a bit simpler (mechanically)? Like a 5% chance for every hit/crit of the ranger that was done while the enemy was attacked by both? Not counting the damage? Afaik that mechanic "are both attacking the same target?" is already there to determine stuff like Stalker's Link upgrade. And if you go with simple chances per hit you won't have to keep track of damage dealt (which maybe difficult to mod).

Of course he was slow to speak his mind. If he was a Sloth. Ah - the benefits of autocorrection.

Maybe now with the bigger company and thus more expertise on that matter they'll consider it. I don't need it but I played a lot of "private" cooperative multiplayer with RPGs on so called "LAN-Parties" when I was younger.

I agree on ship combat and VO. With "the biggest problems" of Deadfire I meant story and companions, their relationship system etc - I wasn't very clear there. I meant the things in Deadfire that might put players off after buying the game. Ship combat is not great and may have taken away a lot of resources - but I think it hadn't a lot of impact on the sales numbers (although it's difficult to determine what would have been in the game or what could have been done better if those resources would have been there). But... you can easily skip ship combat - so that might not be a reason for the game to not sale well. Crunch, early writing lock and other problems because of VO: maybe the same? Player's won't see/feel any problems that might have been attached to this - I don't know what could have been improved with the writing/companions etc if they didn't have to lock it down due to VO though. I'd say not too much but I honestly have no experience. The quality or "catchyness" of the story/plot/writing/companions/relationships etc: maybe that's the bigger problem. But those problems were addressed in his presentation as well. I also think the "Pirates of the Carribean" setting had an impact on sales numbers. But I have no proof whatsoever and nobody talked about it yet so maybe that's just me. I just hope (if they do a PoE3 in the first place) that they don't go the route they took from PoE1 to PoE2: reinventing the whole mechanics, redoing the whole engine. This obviously takes away a lot of resources which could otherwise have spend on story, quests, item-/character-/ability design and so on. It introduced a whole new nest of bugs and other issues again. Other stuff like loading times got kind of fixed, but you need more (beta) testing and so on and so forth. Maybe they had to redo most of the mechanics. Maybe it was good to reinvent the wheel for Deadfire. But now I think they are in a good spot (in that "technical" area) and should focus more on the content. With the DLCs they could do exactly that and I think they turned out pretty well. About process or culture: I guess Josh dosen't want to/cannot address those things in public as an employee. We know Josh is all for employees' rights, a game developer's union and against crunch and so on. Better processes would help that as well. I bet he's fighting for better processes and culture at the back of the stage.

Josh mentioned in a talk that the reputation system wasn't the best part of Deadfire and that Aloth's reactions are a bit too much. They were even more intense at release - I mean really over the top - and already got tuned down. But if you go through the dialogue trees a lot there might still be the impression that Aloth is super uptight.

Ah, I now see that I misunderstood your sentence with the buckler.

"faffing about"... Why would you say that? I merely stated my opinion about resource regain via crits and kills and wanted to underline that it would be nice if a mechanic that gives you back your resource named "Guile", "Discipline", "Zeal" or whatever could somehow connect mechanic to the theme of that resource pool and class. Besides that I just threw in some random ideas. Hence my idea that a fighter might gain discipline from conversions. That would happen automatically and on the fly. And it wouldn't need any killing and crits-only which are already plentiful and which I don't really connect with Discipline. You could have talked about that example. Or the one where I said that causing an affliction could give the Rogue back Guile (10% chance or whatever - sounds easy to implement). That would be more in line with what you said about "keeping the eye on the ball". I did merely brainstorm some stuff so naturally not everything is refined. You picked the one example with the traps (which would only be an addition of course - not the only way a Rogue might get back Guile) that doesn't meet your taste. But it was just a quick idea because traps are pretty meh and it would give them some meaning. Imagine you tactically set up a trap before the encounter, you then lure an enemy who is giving you trouble over that trap (or you placed it between front line and backline to surprise rushers) and get back 5 Guile when it triggers (and hits). That would fit the Rogue class/theme and could be very helpful. It would be like storing away 5 Guile per encounter as backup for later in the fight. It would cost nothing but a trap and maybe an ability point for a passive. I still think it's a nice complementary idea for the Rogue class - but of course I might be the only one. I'm totally in favor of a simple and "eyes on the ball" approach - but it would be nice for me if it also meets the spirit of the class. It is at least a Role Playing Game. It would also be nice if the mechanic wasn't too complicated in order to be able to work with a mod. I would also like if some random brainstormed ideas were discussed constructively without disparaging them - as long as they are brought forward in a decent manner. If that was not the case I apologize.

If it has the look and feel of D:OS I or II I'm out.

Well it wouldn't be of any use if they led enemies into traps right at the start of the encounter when they still have full resources, right? So, possibly a weird mechanic... Anyway just a random idea about a "guileful" thing to do - it would need additional means to get back Guile of course. If you could set a trap during encounter while invisible that would make things a little more interesting I guess. Nothing that I would want to mod into the game though.

Depends on your class...

Bucklers don't lead to an ACC penalty by the way.

No, that's not feasible. The blind (or disorient after resistance) effect from Chillfog has quite the long duration. What works quite well for Forbidden Fist is Pull of Eora (but that's not an affliction in the sense of the gear either) because it's very short but pulsing and stuff like Tanglefoot. And I just remember a build that somebody did: that a Berserker/Forbidden Fist can make great use of the boots "Footsteps of the Beast" (which also fit the theme very well of course). Your Berserker confusion will make sure that the hobbling effect of the boots will also afflict yourself (normally it's foe only). It's a very short lasting effect but it's basically endless instances as long as you move (and it's non-damaging). You can get wounds and healig all the time. Actually that might be the best approach: you will have afflictions all the time (good for the gear) but at the same time the individual effects expire very quickly (great for Forbidden Fist). So I'll settle for Berserker/Forbidden Fist as well! Of course it will only really come together with the gear. Before that you'll have to be very careful with the self damage.

But this mechanic even more favors killing weak mobs for regaining resources. Killing weak mobs is easy. You don't even need resources for that. It's the prolonged fights against a tough foes (dragons, megabosses etc.) where you need to regain resources. And with such mechanics you can't (if there are no weak ads). As I said: the main reason why ciphers stink in boss fights (with high defenses) is their focus mechanic - which is very good against enemies that can be hit easily. I wouldn't want to repeat that with Rogues. Actually it would be cool if Rogues could regain Guile by luring enemies into traps (and seals - amongst other things). Would make those nearly useless traps quite useful.

I said "it sounded like Turn Based is the way to go" (not "PoE3 will be turn based") because Josh stated that a) D:OS I and II have it and sold very well and b) that the TB mode was very well received and generally seems to be preferred by players - and PoE only had RTwP because the Infitiy Engine games had it. I know that Josh prefers Turn Based over RTwP and classless over class based. And that the reason why PoE doesn't have this is only because of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. So maybe I should rephrase "Turn Based seems the way to go for Josh". Since he doesn't want to direct a Pillars-like game any time soon it might well be that an eventual PoE3 will be led by somebody else and this person might have no problem with RTwP and classes - so that a PoE3 can be rel. similar to 1 and 2. The DLCs and the later added subclasses (Arcane Archer, Forbidden Fist and so on) were not designed and directed by Josh but other people and they turned out pretty well - so why not? Maybe - just maybe - we might see a PoE3 by non-Josh and a turn based, tactical game in the world of Eora by yes-Josh. Who knows? Since this is all speculation anyway one might as well reach high.

They don't stack. It's either nothing, Resistance or Immunity. Nothing in between like 2 tiers of Resistance or something like that. @Kaylon: what is the reason behind Berserker/Forbidden Fist? You won't profit from the Berserker's self damage as Forbidden Fist (as you would if you took vanilla, Helwalker or Nalpasca Monk) - and the cumulated self damage if you use Berserker Frenzy and Forbidden Fist Curse at the same time might kill you very quickly at higher Power Levels...? I think you can't shorten Berserker's self damage with high RES and Strand of Favor etc., can you? Would Alacrity's self damage also count as "afflicted" for the gear? Steel Garrote/Forbidden Fist is quite nice by the way: enfeeble target, then use Garrote for a longer paralyze (* INT bonus * 1.5 duration) and leech the life from that helpless dude with some attacks. Don't know if Forbidden Curse alone would trigger the gear in this case.

Regaining resources on kill or crit is always kind of unneccessary because you are already on the winning path and it works best against low defense mobs. Against single tough enemies it's quite useless. Unfortunately those are the encounters that take the longest and where you would need the additional resources. That's why ciphers usually suck at generating focus against such enemies (except Psions). Monks (except Shattered Pillas) and Chanters (except partly Skalds) have that unusual solution that the resource generation is not connected to their offensive performance in battle. And that's good. Of course for Rogues it kind of makes sense that they would regain resources via crits or killing since they are good at that. But if we look at the name of their resource (Guile) it would even make more sense for them to regain it if they did something "guileful". Like landing an attack from stealth and invisibility, applying a DoT or affliction and so on. For example a passive that gives a 25% chance to regain Guile when an affliction is successfully applied. But this has the risk that AoE appliances of afflictions would break it. So one has to think about it thoroughly. But you get the idea. Rogues can already regain Guile via Gambit by the way but you can't get back more than you spend. For Fighters I would have wished for a regain of discipline if they (for example) shrugged off some damage via conversion of hit quality - e.g. when a Fighter gets crit but it gets downscaled to a hit. Maybe also when they upscale their hit quality. THis would also make some of the poor performing abilites (graze to hit) more appealing. All that +x resources on crit and kill is kind of boring - but it seems to be the only thing the designers could come up with for those classes that don't have a resource replenishment from the start. Rangers should reain Bond from doing things that strenghen the bond between Ranger and Animal Companion. Like when they work together successfully. This could be that the Ranger profits from a Takedown Combo boost with one of his attacks (regaining that 1 Bond for Takedown Combo) or if the Animal Companion hits with Predtor's Sense which the Ranger set up with one if his DoTs. A passive that gives a chance for regaining Bond If the Ranger heals or revives the Companion. If an enemy gets attacked by both the Ranger and AC while the enemy is Marked for the Hunt... stuff like that. Just emphasize the sort of resource and "theme" the class has. Monks have the wounds (and mortification) mechanic because suffering is their whole business. Chanters collect phrases because they sing chants. Now Rogues should regain some Guile because they do underhanded stuff. Rangers should regain Bond by actually bonding with their AC in some way. Fighters should regain Discipline by pulling themselves together and such. With Paladins (losing allies) it fits quite well I think. That's a nice touch and also works quite well as soon as you employ summons. With party members only it would be not enough Zeal. I personally would exclude summons but make the Zeal gain a lot higher. But it's ok as it is.

It totally works - but Berserker/Beckoner is always reserved for Grave Calling (Chilling Grave) for me. Arcane Knight also sounds right. Pale Elf. Resistance against PER afflicitions. Stepping into your own Chillfogs and only getting disoriented while the others are blind. Profiting from the affliction. Or maybe even Streetfighter/Wizard (Pale Elf). Same principle, but way more offensive and you'll get -50% recovery time to counter the disorient debuff while all others are really slow with the blind. Also Riposte might work really nice in combo with Wintertide Bulwark's "Frostbitten Palisades". Wizards self buffs let you have high deflection. Beware Arcane Dampener though.