Boeroer

Torkar on PotD (not even upscaled) is maybe impossible with a lvl 5 party. I mean what's impossible - you could apply some DoTs like Bleeding Cuts maybe and then kite and cheese him to death I guess - or do some other game-mechanics-cheese. But it's nigh impossible to win a "normal" face-to-face fight against him if you are only lvl 5 (even more so if you are lvl 5 and your hirelings are lvl 4). First of all there are too many ads - lots of ranged, too. Those are deadly if they come in numbers because they can always reach you no matter chokepoints etc. All of the ads are like 8+ levels higher than you. And the guy itself wears that belt that lets him heal one time once he's near death. I like to do him early, but lvl 5 is just too much of a tedium to try it more than a few times. Weapon modals help a lot to win fights against high level enemies. Not using them and then complaining about high difficulty is like being a mechanic and complaining that the screws are hard to pull with your fingernails. Rogues can certainly not do everything better than a cipher. THey can't do support and they can't do crowd control. They can't debuff in an AoE (atm not even with AoE weapons) except with Smoke Cloud etc. Actually when thinking about it they can't do even few things that a cipher can do. My guess is that you don't utilize a cipher properly. They are not as good as single target dps machines like rogues are - but that's not their main role. One Whisper of Treason or Puppet Master (even better if cast from stealth to initiate encounter) can turn the tide. Can't say that about any of the rogue's abilites except his invisibility abilites and the Trickster's high level stuff. And I say that while not even being a big fan of ciphers in general. Haunting Chains... yeah I don't get it as well. Seems like a complete waste of ability points But maybe I'm overlooking something. Like Fractured Volition - that's also... "errrm?"

I agree. It's a slower approach than hitteing evertything directly but very reliable and very resource-friendly. You get good DoTs and also good HoTs (Healings over Time). Best played as Nature Godlike. In my opinion Pollen Patch is the best healing spell there is. But you have to move a round a lot to make it really good. Garden of Life is also nice, but the limitation on corpses can be a bit tricky sometimes. Like when you need healing but nobody's dead yet.

Exactly

Maybe it just glitched.

New patch notes for 4.1.2 are out and they don't mention this problem. Any news?

i have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually an intended nerf (e.g. the designers never intended for this aoe weapon interaction, and they took wayyyy too long to address it, letting people getting used to it) and the reason why no one official appears to be commenting on it is to try to sidestep the player rage at having such a big and late-in-the-cycle power-level cut. I don't know. Because we had the same situation a few patches ago where rogue abilites suddenly didn't work with AoE weapons anymore. And that got fixed pretty quickly. Also I got this response from QA: Doesn't sound intended. But maybe they changed their minds...

kk

I can't get duration from the Wall anymore iirc - only if the enemies have real buffs that can be drained.

Eh? It has a casting time of 3 secs base and a recovery of only 2 secs base (that's 1 sec faster than a light weapon). Overall it takes you 5 sec base to complete casting and recovery. As comparison: Eyestrike: 3+2 = 5 Mind Wave: 3+4 = 7 Whisper of Treason: 3+3 = 6 Tenous Grasp: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Phantom Foes: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Mental Binding: 0.5+4 = 4.5 Puppet Mater: 3+4 = 7 So why is it "horrendous"?

Yes, what about AoE weapons? This is pretty big and I wonder why this isn't a top priority. Same as Essence Interrupter. Good that the summon scaling is fixed though. Also no fix for the messed-up walking speeds? I mean turn based is nice and all and I get that it should get out of beta soon - but is that more important than fixing stuff of the non-beta part of the game? You know - the part that shouldn't have many bugs because it's not beta?

They do. But actually no cipher spell is untargeted (you can't target the ground). So it's not a special feature of Eyestrike. PoE's Mindblades had a problem that it wouldn't jump further if you missed or if one enemy died from it. Luckily they fixed that in Deadfire. I usually target the enemy with the weakest Fort. defense with Eyestrike. That should be the one I hit with a Morning Star and some Secret Horrors first. It is of course not as potent as Chillfog. But while you are limited to 2 friendly-fire Chillfogs per encounter you can cast Eyestrike over and over again since it's only 10 focus. A Beguiler usually gets a lot more focus from it than it costs. And it doesn't harm your teammates. Like Curse of the Blackened Sight basically.

You hate Pratchett, Boeroer. Your opinion does not count. Did I say that I hate Pratchett? If so then that was extreme hyperbole. I just think his Discworld stuff is not very funny or entertaining - I mean when it has the length of a whole book. I like some King books very much. Also partially because of nostalgia. "The Dark Half" was the first book of him that I read (iirc) and I liked it very much, same as "It" "The Last Stand" and "Christine". Also "The Eyes of the Dragon (The Napkins)". The Tower however... nay. It's like with Tad Williams: some of his books I really liked (Osten Ard stuff: very nice) while some othes were very ehhh for me (Otherland - jeez). Of course I was quite young when I read all of that. Maybe I would judge differently today. I wouldn't have guessed I would like anything from Brandon Sanderson after torturing myself with his Mistborn stuff. But I found myself enjoying his Stormlight books. Until now at least, the newest one is kind of tedious to read, too.

It's a supertedious read in my opinion.

Why did you post this twice?

You might want to wait until the loot bug is fixed. Currently Essence Interrupter destroys the loot of the target if it gets turned into a summon on death.

Secretly?

I absolutely agree. The more I play the higher I value single class characters. In a full party that is. Having access to higher Powel Levels earlier is much more important and has more impact in my opinion than having a bit more resources and a "perceived synergy advantage". Because most synergy effects don't need to be done in a "self-contained" build when you have a party.

It can be very tanky with Paladin passives and Exalted Endurance + Borrowed Instincts while it does pretty good single target damage with Soul Annihilation. So it can be a very good tank which also does good damage. FoD + Borrowed Insticts gives you +30 ACC, +40 with Ring of Focused Flames. Easy to stack up on focus with that. Then dump that focus with Soul Annihilation. That's a lot better than having a very good tank who can only slap a wet towel around. The good thing about Soul Annihilation is that it's does not depend on your build as much as other abilites do. It will even do good damage on a very defensive character (as long as you can land a hit). At the same time it also has access to all the nice cipher powers which can be used for damage, support or CC. It can be a great class combo for a party - even if the Whispers otEP-cheese is gone. Since making class tiers is nonsense it can't be #1 though. Therefore all discussions like "Class X is god tier trolololo class Y is trash roflmao" become superfluous.

That's not cheesy And that's hardly even exploit. That's a straight-up non-vague bug, since the description clearly tells "Sweeps the fighter's melee weapon in a large arc". So it's either implementation-bug. Or description-bug. And looking at the effect... I tend to think that it is related to implementation, because: - it's quite improbable that a character can reload the blunderbuss 5 times under 1s, when sweeping 5 enemies in melee. - the advantage gained is a bit too high, and doesn't look to be intended design. That said, I also find weird how Whisper of the Wind works with bows and firearms. I mean I can somewhat understand implements firing n shots without the need for draw/reload... but these... nope. But with the same argument "how can you reload x in y secs?" you could also call HoF and Whispers of the Wind with ranged weapons a bug. Basically you could call all AoE weapon abilities a bug - if reloading a crossbow doesn't work, putting an arrow on and drawing a bow should also be impossible - and so on. In this case I do think it's a smallish bug that Clear Out allows you to use a ranged weapon if you have a melee weapon in the offhand. But not because of "realism". It's a bit clunky: You still have to get into melee range but instead of using the melee offhand the main hand gets used. It works properly with other primary attacks like Taste of the Hunt etc. Whirling Strikes has the same glitch by the way. No matter though: it's in the game and it's very powerful. It just proves the point that there's always an effect x with class y that allows that class to be used with a more powerful build - while there are also bad choices which make a potentially great builds crappy.

Yes, but as I said: I was only getting the raw dmg as if I had only 10 focus or so - no matter how much I really had. Maybe I have to check again.

By the way: Does Sun & Moon have an issue wioth Soul Annihilation nowadays? I tried it yesterday with a Soulblade/Bleak Walker and it would only apply 29ish raw damage with the first attack roll and then regain some focus with the second - no matter how much focus I had collected...?

I think I will preorder it. Although SciFi and First Person are not my favorite things. But I liked FTL and Skyrim - so... hell why not?

I would say even in PvP it's totally pointless for a party-based RPG. For solo it's a bit easier - but still not easy to do. With a party setup any general ranking of classes is completely and utterly pointless in Deadfire. Just one example that proves the point: Howler is 30. But a Berserker/Beckoner is the fastest way to toally break the game and solves every encounter from mid to lat(ish) game with one single combo. Stack up on Fortitude and Freeze AR (eventually grab Effigy's Husk and enchent it with Eyes of Blackstone), Frenzy, Summon Skeletons and use Chilling Grave from Grave Calling to annihilate all skeletons (6+6 from Ancient Brittle Bones which get destroyed on the spot by the 6 Chillfogs and prodice another 6) and have 12 parallel Chillfogs which have all bonuses from weapon enchantments. And if you switch to Modwyr right after using Grave Calling all Chillfogs turn into foe only... Or just keep summoning skeletons into the fog - the fog also counts as Grave Calling attacks so it will spawn more fogs... This admittedly cheesy build should not be an example of how every Howler should look like - it just shows that there are so many different apporaches and builds with one class that you just can't judge and rank them just so. Another example: Fighter (47.) with Fire in the Hole (Chain Shot) and a bashing shield (or any melee weapon in the offhand really) using Clean Sweep or Clear the Path: destroys most mobs in an instant. "What?" you say "Clear Out and upgrades are melee only!" Ekera, but the bashing shield (or melee offhand weapon) makes it so that Clear Out thinks you are a melee guy and still uses the mortar to deliver Clear Out + mortar AoE I say. "Cheesy" you say. Per complanca - it still proves the point. There are too many roles, too many builds (with too many items which have special enchantments) in order to make an even slightly useful ranking. What you could do (and what might be helpful) is to rank builds (not classes per se) for special roles (e.g. "Tank that can withstand friendly fire" or "Healer who can also do CC" or whatever).

Like in Deadfire it was paralyzing the target only and applying stuck (now immobilized) to the AoE. So, not really paralyzing AoE - but I agree that it was too strong. Also because hard CC in PoE was too strong in general because of the graze mechanic. It allowed you to hard-cc enemies with hefty defense penalties even if your ACC (compared to defenses) was crappy.