Boeroer

He posted two tweets about it. Wouldn't insist that this means he played it a lot. But it can be a hint that he's doing some "research". If only the next pillars game would be classless. Archetypes (predefined set that you might alter) are ok though. Also: I liked Skyrim. It depends a lot how you play it. Josh plays it the stealthy assassin way as far as I could see. Exactly why I liked my Skyrim. It was like Thief + Oblivion.

Yes, but you'd have to open every build thread to see this. As far as I understood it would be nice to see if the builds use BBlessings directly in the build list. I would only mark the ones which use BBs and don't show normal stats though. Can't be too many...

Issue is : summoned creature (who are keyworded as Beast or Plant) are trash (in highter difficulty). Longer duration don't bring anything usefull to the table (i'm a bit hard, sporeling have good health, so they can serve quite well as meat shield early). Actual wildgrowth on trash invoc don't turn them in good invoc, so it's not an actual impacting bonus. If you compare lifegiver and ancien, the con of lifegiver are non-existent (trash invoc) and the bonus are non-negligeable (+2 to +7 Pl on rejuvenation spell Oo), while the con of ancien are a bit hard for the bonus. Plague spell (keyworded as beast) are... beastly, totally agree. You forgot that the Lifegiver suffers -5 Power Levels after Spiritshift wears off. This impacts all healing spells that are still active (still pulsing like Moonwell). On PotD fights are often longer than the duration of Spiritshift. So that's an additional disadvantage that shouldn't be swept under the carpet. Druids's summons are indeed not the best in the game - but still it's not correct that PL doesn't affect summoning. If you can summon a creature that can live for a long time because of PL you can for example withdraw it and block a chokepoint or block a boss from advancing. The +1 PL doesn't do a lot for the druid's beast/plant summons. But we should still be objective and not omit things just in order to make a point. The point is valid without doing that - maybe even more so. As I said: the good thing of "+1 PL for beast and plant" is not the summons but the other beast/plant spells like Plague of Insects, Venombloom, Pollen Patch and so on. Those get a lot better with additional power levels. I can't say if +1 PL is too low because I just started with the Ancient - but I would still like to discuss it with as much objectivity as possible. Since Obsidian already lowered Wellspring of Life from +2 to +1 PL I fear we will not see +2 PL for plant and beast for the Ancient - but we can hope. On paper the weakness against veil-piercing attacks seems to be bad - all gunshots are veil-piercing and those are the things a caster can be filled with pretty quickly at the start of a fight. Are there any veil-piercing vessels? I'll see...

With solo you mean single class or a solo game? In my opinion that's one of the worst combos you can do with a priest - unless you want to abuse scroll of Maelstrom + Deltro's Helm. But to each their own. I like single class priests. Getting Devotions a lot earlier in order to boost your whole party while shoving the enemy down has serious impact on its own. Very far from useless. You also get access to Spellshaping a lot earlier.

Just remember that the best beast/plant spells have nothing to do with summons and profit from PL a fair bit (Plagues for example - awesome beast spell). And even if you can get +3 PL to beast and plant early (with the Spine of Thicket Green): additional Power Levels are always good and do not have diminishing returns in any way. More is always better. Power Level increases dmg multiplicatively and also increased other important stats. Summonings do only partly scale with PL, but they do: only their duration increases. But here it's also the base duration which means that with high INT you can achieve very long summoning times. By the way: Ranger's Binding Roots has also plant as keyword and profits from the increased PL. +1 PL in exchange for weakness against veil piercing attacks and vessels doesn't seem to be too powerful, I agree. But doesn't the Ancient have additional pros? What about his sporelings and Wild Growth? I haven't tested him a lot, but isn't that an advantage as well?

Priest-specific trinkets would be so nice. Wizards have their grimoire which alter the mechanis of the class significantly and a a big boon. Why can't priests have a (or several) symbols of their faith that do something else than just adding one per rest-ability? Give them more spell uses per encounter, give them a few special priestly spells for encounter-use (not per rest - could be even unique ones), raise the Power Level of spells that fit their deity - you name it. That would be nice.

The one thing that I'm really sad about when looking at the Deadfire Priest is that there's no more "Inspiring Radiance". That was my favorite talent in whole PoE and it's a pity (for me) it didn't find its way into Deadfire as a passive ability. I also like Aggrandizing Radiance - but that never had such impact.

Jeez... Yes, 2 is the max use per encounter per spell level. For every former "vancian" caster class (priest/wizard/druid).

Maybe it wasn't the information itself but the form.

Not true. The level-1 harvest spell scales awesomely with Power Level.

It will even atone for people asking provocative questions and then say that they don't want to provoke.

They have a lot of damage potential. Especially the DoT and pulsing ones since MIG raises the damage per tick/pulse and INT raises the duration = number of ticks/pulses. The problem with PEN on spells is shared among all offensive casters. You have to debuff AR on the enemy and buff your PEN before nuking if you can't penetrate their armor. If that's your problem with priest it's also with wizards and druids. As I already said: the priest has some of those rare dmg spells that target will. That has awesome synergies with other abilites and items - for example Bewildering Blows (-25 Will) and Misama of Dull Mindedness (-40 Will). Crits are very common then and solve most PEN issues without any dedicated PEN/AR buffing/debuffing. That alone takes away bordedom and superfluousness. The summons are quite meh though. Although summons do get increased PEN (but with char level, not Power Level). Spark the Souls of the Righteous' damage is not based on the summons' PEN though (if you use it on summons). And this special spell is also best used in combo with a wizard who casts combusting wounds. Since this is a game with a party I'm always amazed how little people take party synergies into consideration when talking about the usefulness of classes and abilites - but rather discuss as if a class/build has to be doing everything on itself in order to be useful - or not boring...

Eh? I guess the point of forbidden fist is to have a monk who can get wounds without the need to get hit (Vanilla, Helwalker, Nalpasca) or to hit (Shattered Pillar). You can build the toughest turtle and still do damage and generate wounds although you are untouchable while shrugging off afflictions and getting even more tanky because of that.

I have a different opinion. First of all I don't think that Assassin, Trickster or Streetfighter are straight out better than a vanilla Rogue. Their advantages and disadvantages balance each other out - sort of. But there are several ways to circumvent the disadvantages and there are builds where certain subclasses are better than others - for example a Trickster is better for a tanky build than an Assassin. I also don't think that the Barb subclasses are worse than the vanilla class. More niche maybe, but there are niches where they are def. better. Berserker is praised - but only because people think the crit conversion and the better inspirations outweigh the self damage - which they don't in my opinion. If you play a high level Berserker it's a big disadvantage actually. And the fact that you can circumvent confusion... well as I said: you can circumvent the disadvantages with most subclasses as you would try to do with any build: build out your strengths, circumvent the weaknesses. Same with the Arcane Archer. I don't think he's worse than a Sharpshooter, Ghost Heart or a Stalker. Sharpshooters actually always suffer from a permanent speed malus that hampers their dps. Against enemies where AR is no problem they are straight out worse than other rangers. Stalkers are only good at melee range and require more micromanagement. With AI it's a pain to prevent Bonded Grief. Ghost Heart's animal companion can't do anything better than the normal AC but costs Bond AND counts towards the summoning limit. But you can find builds/cases where each of those makes sense and is a better pick than the others. The Arcane Archer can hit several enemies with multiple spells using only one shot. As I already said: Imbue: Death at high levels is one of the things that can currently wipe a whole group of dummies with two shots if you build the Arcane Archer correctly. Because of the Arcana-ACC bonus you'll generate tons of crits with your imbue spell, the dmg number of Death Ring can be over 100 for each hit roll, you can at least trigger two ones with Driving Flight and three with an additional jump AND it has the chance to destroy targets that have low health. You can maybe see the synergy with the multi-triggering... Three instances of Pull of Eora with one imbue shot with such high ACC will guarantee nothing leaves that area - especially when you combine it with Binding Roots(!). A very potent CC option - and you need no caster for that and not even a "dedicated" CC guy. The disadvantages can be circumvented easily as with other subclasses: low health isn't a big deal because you will be ranged and thus will plan to play with lowish health and defenses anyway. The ACC pen is non-existent with the right weapons (which are not hard to come by). I tested that class a lot now and I have not the impression that it's worse than the other subclasses. Same with the Furyshaper by the way. The others I have not really tried so I can't say. That there are subclasses that are indeed better than the vanilla class (see Troubadour) doesn't mean that this should be done with every new subclass. Because it's boring if you are forced to pick the same subclass over and over again when you're somebody who cares for power. At the moment I think it's just an assumed weakness than an actual one - like it was at the release of PoE where lots of people seriously found that Wizards are useless. Having to level up a pure ranger Arcane Archer (no multiclass) just to get Imbue: Death Ring seems like a long way to go. The impact at MC levels (stops at fireball/pull of eora) seems less impressive. Maybe I'm not using Pull of Eora right .... Hard to see how a pure ranger can feel satisfying as a solo POTD attempt, too, or maybe solo vet. I guess if you stack Arcana you just go scroll heavy on top of your imbues, and end up using Essence Interrupter or a similar weapon that doesn't suffer the acc penalty. Still, if you're going to stack Arcana and use scrolls, I get the sense that approach would better complement other classes, vs just using Arcane Archer to be able to three-cast or 4-cast death ring (I think if you use Kitchen Stove with the 2-jump ability and driving flight, you can probably 4-cast it). Open to see builds, though. As I said above: Imbue: Fireball works with Ring of Focused Flame and Scion of Flame. It should also work with Fire-PL-gear like Magran's Favor. Since the dmg of the Fireballs is not influenced by your weapon you can totally use a one handed ranged weapon in your main had and stuff like Sun and Moon or Magran's Favor in your offhand to gain additional PLs for the Fireballs (didn't test that). If you want to focus on that ability you can do that. You will generate a ton of crits with the double/triple Fireball. I think it will be a good use for 2 Bond points. But for multiclasses I think Imbue: Eora is a lot more interesting.

I suspect that the self damage will be even worse at higher levels - because it will scale with Power Level (all other sources of self damage like Berserker-Frenzy, Sacred Immolation and Alacrity do). And PL scaling is multiplicative. That means with high MIG and high PL you might kill yourself more quickly at high levels than at lower ones (if you don't take countermeasures).

Yeah, since you can use your normal saves in the beta branch I can't see why it wouldn't work the other way round.

PEN and dmg scale with Power Level. A single class priest has more Power Levels and reaches PLs and thus certain spells earlier - which also means he can usually use them against enemies with less AR. Priests are rel. untouched since release, yes.

I feel the same. But of course reaching level 20 very early can feel a bit weird. But since there's so much optional content it's hard to do it right for everybody. A game option would be nice. But there isn't and mods can get rid of that problem quickly and with no hassle - so I understand that this problem ranks very low on their priority list.

Exactly my thoughts.

Nice testing. I guess you're not supposed to spam that ability. But wouldn't it get cleared very quickly if you have high RES and use Clarity of Agony in combination with Crucible of Suffering and Enduring Dance and a very tanky setup? You could get wounds quickly without getting hit, or not? Add the Lone Survivor Ring and the duration should reach 0.

I always thought they were less good than in PoE (were they were my personal no. 1 on the power list). But what isn't? I never thought they were superfluous or boring per se. Most priest subclasses have nice "special spells". And the usual suspects for power are there: Devotions, Barring Death's Door, Salvation of Time, Shining Beacon and Divine Mark: two damaging abilities that target will(!) and so on. I think the rejection stems from a) feeling of loss compared to PoE priests and b) lack of experience with playing a Deadfire (single class) priest. And I even don't think they are great healers... They are less mandatory nowadays - but boring or superfluous? No - not more boring or superfluous than any other class.

Especially if it's always the same stick.

1) fair enough 2) That's a problem that I identified right during beta release and that goes shared by all active abilities of a class that do kind of the same (e.g. deal damage) and are fed by one finite resource pool. Look at rogue, fighter, paladin etc: several abilities compete for the resource and usually you pick up one and skip the rest. It's not a problem that is unique to the Arcane Archer. 3) I think Eora and Binding Roots are a great combo. Especially those two effects (pull + immobilize). The one pulls enemies together and the second one prevents that they move by themselves. It results in very tightly packed hordes or enemies that a) pose no threat and b) can get rid off very conveniently via AoE abilities. Why is there Imbue: Web while we can have Binding Roots would be my question. Good question . Something else would make more sense, I agree. At least for me. Imbue: Sleep or something would be nice. Or Imbue: Combust or so. Edit: I write giant posts...?

Brother? Is that my sister speaking?