Boeroer

I think the classes/subclasses plus multiclass allow a wide array of characters. I can't think of any new "class" that would be so unique and distinct and yet recognizable and agreeable for a wide player base that you couldn't emulate it with the current system. Maybe if they introduce different cultures (like Storm Folk) where there might be very "special" classes. More subclasses though: always nice.

Brilliant is broken. Mostly because it refills casters' spell uses. For fixed pools (Guile, Bond, Mortification, Discipline, Zeal) it's good but I wouldn't say it's OP. For rechargable pools (wounds, phrases, focus) it's not very potent at all as a tier 3 inspiration. For spell uses it's the total OPness. There's a reason why every wizard wants to use the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry - and Brilliant is like having a Grimoire of Endless Wizardry. Spells are balanced in a way that they provide more powerful effects - but in change you only have few uses. If you get unlimited uses... it's OP. Why does the Devil of Caroc Breastplate increase fixed pools by +2 but not spell uses? Becaus it would be too good. The simple solution would be to prevent Brilliant to regain spell uses. OPness solved. But maybe fun dies. A great solution that would also balance Brlliant for all pools would be to let it refill 1 fixed pool point every 12 sec, 1 refillable pool points every 6 sec and 1 spell use every 30 sec. Or something like that. No idea where the perfect balance would be. Just a direction. As it is it's totally OP and that's also the reason we don't see it that often while we see Swift and Resolute and stuff everywhere. Look at those powerful tier-3 inspirations: Swift, Resolute... yeah... PLEASE BUFF!

Not if you put him into a party with a Beckoner. Or what I did recently: put him into a party with a Beckoner/Wizard with Shroud of Phantasm. Divine Retribution is fun. You can cast Inspiring Beacon and Shared Flames for your party all day long... I mean you don't need that in the lateish game - but it's fun nonetheless.

Yes, the double inversion of Deadfire is neither intuitive nor is it fun. In my opinion it's just a bad choice. Sure it prevents dmg from dropping too low once to stack too many dmg maluses - but who wants to do that anyways? A bottom cap would have done well enough. Grazes and other dmg maluses work the same way. That also makes some modals worse than they seem to be (-25% dmg for some benefical effect).

A priest who can do decent melee damage (priest are awesome as nukers anyways) is something I called "St. Gangrene" build which circles around maxed out MIG and Tidefall. It's fun to play bit needs some levels to pick up speed (due to the lame starting values of priests which need to be compensated for with abilities/talents/spells). It's a Priest of Berath. Use a Mountain Dwarf (being resistant to poison and diseases fits really well) or Coastal Aumaua, max MIG to 20, pick Living Lands. Use Justice, then later Tidefall as weapon. At the start of the game use heavy armor. All gear that improves MIG (your goal is the Maegfolc Skull) and Attack Speed (Sanguine Plate can be nice). Blunting Belt. Pick Veteran's Recovery, Inspiring Radiance, Weapon Focus Soldier, The Pallid Hand, Runner's Wounding Shot, Aggrandizing Radiance, Two Handed Style, Savage Attack. You could also use Envenomed Strike early on and retain later (it's usefulness drops later in the game but it is very strong in the beginning). Cast Holy Power/Champion's Boon/Minor Avatar + Devotions and go into melee. You can reach 35 MIG without consumables with 21 starting MIG, +4 from skull, +10 to all stats from Minor Avatar + Aggrandizing Radiance. The damage bonus from that is +75%. Also the +10 (and more with items) to INT is *very* beneficial for DoT spells like Shining Beacon and Holy Radiance (destroys most lesser vessels on the spot if it crits). Wounding damage from Tidefall gets boosted by MIG. That means that the 25% raw lash get boosted to 25*1.75=~44% raw lash. And that's multiplicative dmg in addition to the +75% (+15+20) you do with the physical damage of the sword itself. Unfortunately the high INT lowers the dps (not the overall damage) of Tidefall but it also opens up some nice synergy with Cleansing Flame: if you cast Cleansing Flame on an enemy whom you hit with Tidefall several times (wounding DoT stacks) the ticks of wounding get doubled. This melts most big bosses very quickly. Especially if you combine it with Runner's Wounding Shot. This will apply two parallel raw DoTs on the target right away. It's fun to play. Sure - a priest should maybe nuke the heck out of every fight with Minor Avatar and Shining Beacon, but it's lot of fun to see such how high melee dmg numbers on a priest. Also the accuracy is top notch with +10+6+10+5+20+superb+level. I would pick Doemenel for even nicer crit damage. This also works well with a Magranite who uses the Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer and Forgemaster Gloves to use Firebrand. It works with Inspired Flame since it's a universal weapon. Just pick Scion of Flame and keep a backup weapon for the Flame Blights (immune to burn/piece aka Firebrand/Arquebus).

Tidefall does higher dps than Rumbalt (wounding damage is much higher than a +25% crit). But the wounding dmg does not generate focus. Also the prone on crit can help a lot. But so does draining. If you plan to use Time Parasite I would use a two hander then and also Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer with Firebrand (if only as backup weapon for foes who are vulnerable to fire). The belt itself is the best in the game anyways. But the 100+ dmg I frequently did was with maxed dmg bonuses (including Biting Whip and flanked bonus from survival and items, triggered by Phantom Foes). That might not be doable with a solo cipher because usually you need room for better defenses. Putting it all into dmg bonuses for Firebrand wouldn't work too well I guess. Sword of Daenysis + March Steel Dagger (later Drawn in Spring) with Vulnerable Attack is the highest dps combo as long as you can't reach 0 recovery with a two hander I think. The advantage is that the very short recovery makes it easier to react quickly with spells and heals and stuff. You can use Stormcaller as ranged weapon. It works with every weapon focus so you only need one of them. It's also quite good on a cipher. I'd say it's the best ranged pick if you want to spare enchanting resources for other weapons.

Yes - I'm 100% sure it wasn't planned as a rip-off. I mean the damage you do to your image is so much higher than the bucks you'd get out of this (not even mentioning that I think Obsidian is decent people). But I can understand why some backers feel ripped off. Not reacting at all leads to the assumption that Marketing/PR department is not affected by an INT inspiration atm...

Scordeo's 0-recovery enchantment + Salvation + Brilliant = finally permanent zero recovery for our AndreaColombo.

So maybe Barb/Priest is hot shice?

As with all RPG "romances" Deadfire's are cringeworthy. Really awkward. But maybe only if you actually have (or had) a real sex life. I can imagine that I would have liked that kind of stuff when I was 15 or so. So... maybe the best way to please all players would be to give us an option in the game menu to switch "romances" them off/on. Like: [ ] Gibs [x] Cage Cursor [ ] Romances [x] Send 1$ to Boeroer each time you load a savegame

Writing the backers some emails would have done the trick I guess. I personally received 0 emails from fig or obsidian after I pledged. No update info, nothing. I mean I didn't need any, but I guess others experienced this as well. And that's really unfortunate for Obsidian and the backers if they happened to pledge for a DVD and then got a download.

That's nonsense. A physical copy means a copy of the game on a medium that you can install it from, be it DVD or stick. The Fig campaign was worded so that you would assume you'll receive DVDs - not a card. There were rendingerings out there that showed DVDs in a box! And besides this people got DVDs with PoE. The wording and form changed after or even during campaign - nop idea why - but not every backer was informed about it. So while not being affected (like me) you can surely empathize how some backers are really frustrated by this. And it surely isn't a handful of people.

Maybe some of the BoW stuff?

Ah, great.

It is nice. Also because you can get it so early. If you look at dps over the course of a whole playthrough it surely is a top choice.

Yeah, technically - but that's not 0 recovery in general over a longer period of time. But yes, that's a way to experience 0 recovery. You can also get 0 recovery from Blood Thirst - but that is only 0 recovery for one attack. Maybe if you combine both you could end up aith a setup that gives you 0 recovery (regardless of normal recovery time) quite often.

Even Battlemage (Wizard/Fighter) is great with Spirit Lance. Main reasons are that Mule Kick + AoE is a great interruptor and Clear Out + Lance is a great damage tool (every AoE hit of Clear Out triggers AoE of Lance) - best be done from stealth after casting Dazzling Lights to lure enemies to a spot where they form a tight group. A great weapon and shield build who can tank well while doing lots of damage is a Trickster/Unbroken with White Witch Mask, Reckless Brigandine (+1 engagement, +5% speed for each engagement), Kapana Taga and Akola's Apex Ward (+1 engagement). Pick Mob Stance (not Defender), Persistent Distraction (+1 Engagement, unlocking Sneak Attack/Deathblows on engagement), and enchant Kapana Taga with "Champion's Relic" (+2 engagement, +5% dmg per engaged) and "Unblockable" (+4 ACC per engaged target), Reckless Brigandine with "Into the Breach" (+ dmg when health goes down) and Akola's Apex Ward with "Hide and Tooth" and "Shark Teeth Counter". Pick Riposte and Snake's Refelxes as well as Adept Evasion and Refreshing Defenses (stacks with Mirrrored Image and such). Also Deep Wounds of course. Escape can be a great emergency button. Once you hit Bloodied (50% health) your mask will trigger terrified on all nearby enemies, stopping them from attacking. But you will have increased dmg because of the enchantments and take them out quickly without getting attacked further. This will give you a character that not only has self heal, great overall defenses and very high deflection (+50 when Mirrored Image and Vigorous Defense are up) but also has a 20% chance to do a Kapana-Taga-Riposte on getting missed, a 25% chance to do a crush Riposte on getting missed, triggers Distracted on 5 engaged enemies (you can take Hold the Line to make it 6) and thus triggers Sneak/Deathblows automatically to everybody he ripostes to (and attacks actively). The passive "AoE" dmg output is great (tons of crits, too) and at the same time enemies get severely punished with hefty disengagement attacks as soon as they want to escape that meat grinder. Before getting Kapana Taga (it requires a good ship setup to beat the Black Isle Bastards, I did it with a Voyager with a long range gun in the back and two Hullbreakers in the front) you can use a spear + modal. The attack speed is great for somebody in heavy armor, too. AND you can cast Gaze of the Andragan at some point. Also nice: with Snake's Reflexes, Weapon & Shield Style and Adept Evasion you can nuke your own tank (and all engaged enemies) with AoE spells that target reflex all day long: the high AR and the 100% graze to miss on reflex as well as the +20 reflex from Refreshing Defense will make sure you don't hit your tank - and if you do he gets -75% damage most of times. One of the most fun and effective "tanks" I had in a party with very little micro involved. Also looks great (if you like the Huana style). Onlöy thing is that you really have to annoy the Huana faction so that they send a bounty hunter for you who has the shield. That's not difficult to do, but it might collide with the faction-decisions you planned to make. In this case the best melee weapon is Kapana Taga + Apex Ward because it fits best in every way. I used that one spear with +dmg and +PEN per Survival but since it got nerfed Kapana Taga is the best option.

Yes, it sounds like it. Although I'm not experiencing animation loops. Just a stuck char with a flickering ability icon who doesn't act at all. Like he's getting electrocuted but it too stubborn to twitch around. Actually the same flickering as the drake summons of the chanter in beta. Do you guys remember? Only those did slide around and flickered while my chars do run normally and end flickering when I command them to move.

I think I did report it but maybe I got interrupted and forgot to save the post... Can't find it.

Guns - like an arquebus (longest range = safest).

Miscreant's Leather gives you a higher speed bonus than it has a penalty, but technically it isn't lowering your recovery penalty below 0. Afaik penalty can't go below 0. You also can't achieve zero recovery because of how attack speed bonuses are calculated. Like you can't get 100% hit to crit when using multiple conversion sources (unless on of the abilities gives you a single straight 100% crit chance).

I also have problems with saving sometimes. Neither Quicksave nor manual saving work - but only sometimes. A restart fixes it. A maybe related problem: when leaving the game via alt+tab I can't get back. Kind of. I can come back to the game via alt+tab but then it's stuck. When I press alt+tab it runs again, but only until I release tab. Then it freezes again. This also happens only sometimes.

I have the same problem with the bugged ability use (stuck char, flickering abiliy/action icon, doing nothing).

I found a (somewhat poorly titled) bug report that describes the same issue: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/105727-bugs-after-last-patch/?do=findComment&comment=2097007

Hello, since 2.1 I experience something new and very annoying: Often when I command my party members to execute a melee (?) ability they just stand there and the small circular action icon above their head flickers between ability icon and auto-attack (I believe). They don't move to the target. The problem can be solved by manoeuvering them a bit further manually and then command again. AI is turned off. Am I the only one who experiences this atm? I couldn't find a similar bug report.