Boeroer

Will see what I can do. Scythe is a good idea. Here are some new icons for the Paladin's passives (look at the bottom):

That would highly depend on the implementation. For example you could simply say that you only get additional attacks if you overcome certain high thresholds and start with several weapon attacks per round right from the start. So that for example normal one handers and two handers do 2 attacks, light weapons do 3, dual wielding adds one additional attack. Attack speed bonuses wouldn't grant additional attacks unless you are the guy with the highest initiative who gets one additional attack. Quite balanced and no race for attack speed bonuses (excapt for one character who might want to stack it to be the first one all the time). I would say that it's even more boring that daggers attack as slowly as great swords and summoning phantoms takes as long as punching someone.

Outer Worlds is done by a different team than PoE and Deadfire were. Just because they are currently developing Outer Worlds does not mean they are doing nothing else.

We have several thresholds in Deadfire. Maybe the meaning ofthe word "threshold" is not clear? Currently there are: Wounds (Monk) Penetration Focus Unharmed/Healthy/Bloodied/Near Death Injuries/Death and certainly more mechanics that use thresholds one way or the other. Gaining additional attacks with a dagger if your attack speed + recovery fall under a certain value (e.g. 2 seconds while one turn is supposed to simulate 4 seconds) is reasonable and would make a lot of sense in order to balance the weapons and armor setups with each other. If this isn't granular enough you can always allow more actions per round in general. If you can for example cast one 9-sec-spell in one turn you should be able to strike thrice with a 3-sec-weapon, shouldn't you? I wonder why they didn't use "action points" per turn to determine the number of actions a character can perform (ability use, moving etc.). Costs of actions could have been derived from action speed/recovery just nicely I think?

What I just realize: doesn't the Fury have the automatic passive ability that kills (while shifted) prolong the Spiritshift duration? If a Fury now also picks Wildstrike Frenzy: will those effects stack? I mean with Relentless + Returning Storm and Heart of the Storm you can bring down enemies' health pretty quickly and then do some kill-snipes with your ranged wildstrikes. Will have to test what happens...

Atm speed vs. sturdyness is not balanced properly. I wonder if TB mode will see additional attacks per round if you overcome certain speed thresholds.

On kill also works on allies by the way, including summons. It's a bit cheesy but you can make it work very reliably then. E.g. Warlock with Blood Thirst who nukes a Beckoner's skeletons while they are distracting/engaging the enemies. Barb+Paladin has some really nice passive "on crit", "on near death" + "on kill" effect combos. Most of them are sub PL8. Too bad you can't combine any of that with Wikdstrike Frenzy.

Disables in PoE were OP mostly due to the grazes mechanic that didn't downgrade the effect of the disable but only the duration. Combined with the huge defense rebuffs that came with the disables. Immunities are ok if used wisely. For example it makes complete sense that a Flame Blight is immune to burn damage. But we could do with less if not only resistances downgraded afflictions but also grazes (and crits upgraded). No duration fiddling from graze/crit. That way an enemy with resistance to let's say constitution afflictions and high Fortitude would be kind of immune to Sickened and Weakened as long as you can't hit. You could buff the effects of afflictions a bit then. Not back to PoE values (was too good) but a bit more impactful that they are now. Just an idea though.

Let's see what we can do after the passives are finished. My problem is that I can/only want to do rel. simple B/W icons. Just because photoshopping with tons of gradients and stuff takes too much time. But those item abilities would be in the same bar as all the other actives and thus should have a similar style (in other words: not the one I currently use for the passives). Maybe just tinting or slightly modifying the current icons would be an option (that doesn't require a ton of drawing)? @Wildstrike: the icons themselves are fine, but now they look out of place because they work with colors, gradients and shadows while the other passives are all black and white silhouettes. I would prefer to give the Wildstrike abilities different backgrounds (green for corrode, yellow for fire and so on) but also stick to b/w icons for the claw symbol - with a bit of stylized flames, drips etc.

He was mocking another forum user who very frequently recommends heralds. And sometimes Helwalker/Ascendant with Essence Interrupter...

We will see some changes to TB pretty soon. Let's see what they come up with.

They are working on that. It's not supposed to be this way.

Yes. I think TB mode adjustments will be the biggest slice of the patch. Hopefully followed by a lot of happy bug fixes. TB mode currently is in beta status and Obsidian asked for feedback when they released the beta. So it is very unlikely that we won't see some solid changes to TB mode.

Besides the "basic" abilities that all had their own icons (which didn't fit the style of the other passives though) I also redid Unbreakable and Unrelenting since those also had their own "flashy" icon which looked out of place now. Will have to do the same with Wildstrike I guess? Any feedback on the icons above (e.g. the simpler B/W versions of Constant Recovery, Sneak Attack and so on)?

Action and recovery speed translate to initiative in TB mode. So with more DEX etc. you will be further up and can act sooner (but not more often).

I agree that SC druids lack martial capabilities. Especially shifters who can't even use Taste of the Hunt. A few more dedicated passives would have been nice, maybe an active melee ability or two which are not spells. But you can of course use spells to lower enemies' health and then finish them with a melee strike. One thing with my testing though: I didn't make sure that it wasn't DoT ticks that killed the enemies. Maybe that prevented Wikdstrike Frenzy from triggering. I doubt it but to be extra sure I will run another test later today.

I just tested Wildstrike Frenzy. Only kills with your wildstrike-infused claws/tusks/horns/etc. will trigger the effect. Not kills from spells.

Back from Sicily, did some rework on the existing icons (no additional ones yet except a few of the PL-0 abilites). I rearranged them all and sorted them by class:

I think the base dmg of Delayed Fireball is quite ok. I use the delay (which of course is a downside in general) for: - moving party members out of the AoE. I don't have to wait with the cast. - I can cast Delayed Fireball first and Pull of Eora after (instead of the other way round) which gives me a somewhat longer use of PoE. - timing attack rolls from one wizard so that the rolls happen at the same time (or close). What I mean is: if I fight some enemies with healing it's better to have attack rolls with not too much pause in between. So I can cast a delayed and a normal fireball and they go off at the same time, making healing in between impossible (and possibly killing the targets). - what I didn't test but which might be a good use of the delay: if not the casting but instead the explosion breaks stealth (?) you maybe could first cast two delayed fireballs and another dmg spell right from stealth (remember the 85% recover bonus you get from stealth).

I also found that if you can curcumvent the recovery malus of bleeding cuts (eg. with Full Attacks while holding the axe in the main hand, Barbaric Retaliation, Riposte, Blood Thirst etc) there's not much else which is better. Barbaric Retialiation is best with Battle Axes even if you use non-unique ones. That's how good Bleeding Cut are.

What do you mean by "class suggestion"?

Optimal... depends. There are many ways to build a ranged cipher. Going Ranger/Cipher will give you more ACC and Driving Flight (and I didn't even test if Arcane Archer's Imbue spells generate focus), Black Jacket/Cipher can mean a big focus spike through switching, a Helwalker will give you additional dmg and duration and PEN, a Beguiler means you don't need to use a weapon that much anyway and so on. Streetfighter with Blunderbuss means very high dps but it also has rel. low ACC and low range. And it's not very sturdy. If you can overcome or accept those disadvantages it is a very powerful combo for an Ascendant. Because as I said the recovery bonus also applies to casting and you want to cast as many spells as possible while ascended. For Ascended I think Streetfighter/Blunderbuss or Helwalker are some of the potentially most powerful combos (if you are not going single class which is also very good due to great abilities at higher PL8+ levels).

Too bad. But don't let that demotivate you.

You shouldn't forget that you not only get Power Level scaling from additional (item) bonuses but also from your own level progression. Fireball is a tier 3 spell with 7 PEN. At the time you can cast it 7 base PEN isn't the end of the world. The you'll add PEN with every additional PL over 3 AND the bonuses you accumulate. A PL 7 char already gets a bonus on Fireball of +4. And I think to compensate for all that burn resistance in the game Obsidian put all those burn bonus hear into the game: +4 PL from weapons, Scorched Cloak (heal yourself with fire), Otto Starcat (+2 PL) and Ring of Focused Flame (+10 ACC - crits do help with PEN)... If then also can add Scion of Flame and get the Tenacious Inspiration then PEN is not a big deal. Also because you will always have backup spells to fireball. If you specialize in fire damage that will give you plenty power with those - but that doesn't mean at all that you suddenly can't cast a frost spell as backup option.

Yes.