Boeroer

Hi, while Pernicious Cloud has impressive numbers when it comes to its corrosive DoT effect... it has 0 (!) PEN. That makes it pretty useless against anything that has at least 3 AR. I suspect that's 99.9% of enemies. Maybe 99% but I won't go below that. I hope that's not intended. Is it? I suspect it was originally set up as raw dmg? However - it's doesn't work very well with this configuration.

I think a SC Rogue could be very good if either Vanishing Strike and Gambit were cheaper (2 and 2 instead of 3 and 4) or the SC Rogue had the ability to get more Guile or to regain more Guile. That means that Gamit would cost 0 if it crit. I think that's ok if you look at all the other strikes you have. For example Crippling Strike does compareable dmg to Gambit beause of PL scaling but only costs 1 Guile and Arterial Strike even adds a great DoT effect. Gamit just adds whimpy additive dmg on hit and ok additive dmg on crit. That's nice against weak enemies but rel. meh against bosses. I already enjoy playing with Vanishing Strike very much. But you have to build around a certain playstyle. Vanishing Strike is very effective if you combine it with Assassin's Slippers and Backstab and Assassinate. You'll have a Full Attack + invisibility for 3 Guile. Other than other Full Attacks + Shadowing Beyond all attack rolls of the Full Attack will profit from Backstab + Assassinate because you will be invisible right after the first swing. And by all I als mean all AoE hits from mortars or Three Bells Through or Blast (Backstab only if you are near enough)! So it's a lot better than other Full Attack + Shadowing Beyond or auto-attack + Shadowing Beyond. If you like that sneaky playstyle of course. I do.

Only concerns if solo. Buffs allow enough acc and pen to make up for those. I just dislike single damage type weapons that much I guess. But if you don't need to use a PEN buff or AR debuff because nobody has a low PEN weapon (or a dual dmg weapon that actually has a good PEN modal like swords) you can use those resources in a more efficient way. Great Swords are only good against low defense / low pierce/slash AR targets and that's a problem. Mainly because the modal is really bad, especially for a Devoted who also gets higher crit damage. If I had a party and would want to use a two hander with two damage types as a Devoted I'd either go for Morning Star or Pollaxe because their modals are significantly more useful in a party setup than the Great Sword's. Besides that: in a party it also doesn't matter much if your Estoc can't harm a skeleton (underpenetration on non-immune but merely resistant is uncommon with +4 PEN on any Estoc with Devoted + modal). You can always switch to another weapon. -10 ACC may be bad, but after some levels it's not that great of a deal - especially if you are supported by a party that can boost your ACC. And boosting ACC is always benefical while boosting PEN/debuffing AR is only useful if you underpenetrate. And while the same can be said about the Great Sword's modal: in this case it doesn't only have to be occasionally while with the Great Sword you'll have to buff/debuff all the time on PoTD if you want to use the modal at all (and then it's still debateable if it increases your dps at all). I mean I like Great Swords generally and would also pick one as Devoted just because I like the looks and style of it. But from a mechanical point of view it's not that good. If the modal would do like +50% dmg but -10 deflection instead of -15 ACC or something that would be better.

I think they have highish CON (but not over the cap). But the meat comes from the flat values you can give each character. Look at CRE_Dummy: tons of HP but low stats.

No, because the healing received malus because of injuries, CON afflictions or burden of the body is multiplicative, or in other words gets applied after all the other stuff was taken into account. If you have Burden of the Body you receive no healing as if you were weakened - no matter your bonuses. Since I would vote for an additive "healing received" bonus for CON (same mechanics as MIG's "+healing done" bonus) there would be no problem in this regard (look at MIG that does "+healing done"). We had additive "+healing received" as well as "+healing done" items in PoE so I guess it's not a problem when it comes to implementation (code wise).

If I would design combat mechanics I would make it so that your action speed/recovery is very fast at the beginning of the fight and gets slower and slower the longer you fight - so endurance in its "real" meaning - to the point where it would be a tedious chore. Abilities and weapons would be rated so that they take different tolls (good way to balance weapons, too). Doing nothing (catching breath) would help you regain endurance/speed. More CON would give you more "endurance" and ultimately more dps if the fight takes longer. Too much of a change for Deadfire, so healing received is my favorite.

It's something new and interesting, but it's not reliable. And the more CON you have the less you will go down. THe less you go down the less you need that kind of effect. So... kind of redundant maybe? YOu could say the same ybout %healing, but it has the nice "downside" that you get healed less with low CON. What happens with your suggestion when CON is below 10?

Great, thanks! Wish I could play atm...

Withering Strike is bad. Too expensive. Luckily Toxic Strike is very good, but the base ability is bad. I also don't think that Ring the Bell etc. is good. Barbaric Blow is too expensive. Power Strike is bad. The new Ranger ability Hunter's Claw is not really bad but too tedious to play with. Brutal Takedown is bad. Takedown Combo can be used for nice synergies, but Brutal Takedown is just a waste of Bond because for 1 Bond I can use an Accurate Wounding Shot - why should I send my pet to do a low dmg attack with ok PEN for the same cost? Hobbling Shot: meh! Uncanny Luck: meeeeh! And lots more obviously... Funnily enough I really like Vengeful Defeat (also did in PoE). In Deadfire there are several items which retaliate in an AoE when you go down. If you build around it a bit you can be a powerful suicidal Barbomb. I don't mean that you have to go down in every encounter, that would just be tedious - but for example I'm running a high AR, VERY low deflection barb right atm because I want to use Barbaric Retaliation to its fullest potential. I did some hours of testing and it's insanely powerful and fun (and comes so late unfortunately). However - naturally I will go down from time to time. And then Vengeful Defeat can often ereadicate the rest of the enemies. SHow them your middle finger. It's great to add: Effort: Full Attack AoE (like HoF) Cape: either raw dmg retaliation when getting crit or one that does a burn AoE or Shock AoE when going down (three different capes) Armor: Effigy's Husk (raw AoE) or Godhammer Plate (burn AoE) Vengeful Defeat (like HoF) Even better when you get Shroud of Phantasm and let loose 6 low-hp copies of you that all do several AoE attacks + 2 Full AoE Attacks + Carnage when they go down. Supernuke basically. You have to let go of the AoE capes then of course.

I suppose the AoE dmg gets reduced by the Wall. Does it also help somehow against the Symbiote? Thanks for answering all the questions by the way.

Erm... at low con there is no added HP. There's substracted HP. Or did you mean Iron Wheel - which can be used to outbalance low CON and thus is more valuable with low CON?

You mean the ones that drop from blowing in their direction? Hooray!

Thanks! Meh, no bonus PEN, no ACC.

Bonus question: the Fool's shoes from the Deck of Many Things "increase the efficiency of traps". What does that mean?

Please have a look into your PoE directory where the savegames are stored (don't know the path on Mac). May it be that there are two directories with the same name but different larger/lower case? And in one would be your auto saves and in the other the manual saves. But the game can't loose them because of case issues (which don't matter with Windows but with Mac/Linux). Just an idea though.

And I forgot to test it at all.

Pollen Patch Else you are not a Honey Lord but merely a Honey Badger.

You really want Pollen Patch. But you can't get it as multiclass.

If you add [healing received] to CON it would of course be a second effect, seperate from the effect on max health. So you could easily tweak it to a number that MIG has: 3% per point below/over 10. Iron Wheel would be much more popular I guess - without being terribly overpowered. At the moment everybody takes Turning Wheel despite its nerf. Every. Body.

Sorry, I edited again. Too many thoughts. Please reread a last time. Generally I think it's better than the current implementation. Just doing a bit of Devil's Advocate here.

Afaik the PL bonus is influencing the base healing. So it's actually multiplicative, not additive. In this case it would have to alter the percentage-value to have a similar effect. Like raising healing from 10% max health to 11% with one additional PL. In general I agree that it's solveable by tweaking the numbers. But don't forget that you can boost PL quite a bit through Empower (+5), Wellspring of Life (+1), Power Surge(+1), Prestige(+1), items like Xoti's Lantern or the Spine of Thicket Green (+2), Death Godlike near death (+3), being a Lifegiver (+7) and so on. Then add abilities like Practiced Healer and an item like Physiker's Belt to your MIG bonus. Because of multiplicative bonus combined with additive bonus combined with percentage-of-max-health-based healing this would get out of hand really quickly, wouldn't it? So you either have to make PL scaling additive or make the increase manageable with baby steps of 0.5% or something. Also, items like Ring of Greater Regeneration would become a lot more powerful. You'd have to tweak the game a lot. Maybe it's easier to give CON the bonus healing of MIG and find something better for MIG? Like reducing the recovery penalty from armor (like Abraham et al. or Armored Grace do, but maybe to a lesser extend). Or simply leaving "healing done" with MIG and giving "healing received" to CON. You won't even need to rebalance because CON can be low or high but it's average won't change and thus the average healing wouldn't. I think that's way better than tinkering with MIG. Giving healing received to CON is basically doing percentage based healing. But I think it's more manageable because it's additive like MIG?

I don't know. There are a lot of Great Swords - but how many of them are really good? Maybe I feel this way because the rel. low PEN is a problem on PotD as is the lower ACC of the modal.

No, don't say that! Too late... They are going to nerf it. To nerf it? That's like nerfing Baubles of the Fin. Oh wait... By the way: do Baubles and Cog of Cooh stack? Would be +8% dmg to all party members including summons I guess?

Will test again today. My knowledge about this is from beta where I was annoyed by this. I never tried again. If it works now I will have to do a Wizard/Druid.

No. Foe only.