Boeroer

ROFL - I somehow lost track and at the end thought you had fighter/wizard. So not that many defensive passives to pick from, right? So forget that please and pretend it never happened. Then I would focus on spells that you really want to cast in every encounter and the rest in Grimoires. Arcane Dampener will supress existing as well as future buffs/benefits on all targets in an AoE. Enemies' AI only realizes that buffs are gone and will try to reapply buffs, wasting time/abilities/spells the whole time. Arcane Cleanse removes buffs entirely but will not prevent future buffs from working. Because of that I think that Dampener is better in most situations (also considering the earlier level). Having both is totally ok. Or just get a Grimoire. Dampener is very common in Grimoires. Stats look good to me - with regard to your build idea.

I use her as long range interruptor and that works pretty well. That means: I don't shoot as soon as I can but wait until an enemy tries to cast stuff and THEN shoot him - either with an Accurate Wounding Shot (in hopes that the 80% interrupt chance of the Gunhawk triggers - when the cast isn't too powerful) or with Concussive Shot. And removing buffs with Concussive Tranquilizer is pretty neat as well. Of course not as good as Arcane Dampener. One ability of the Animal Companion that I like a lot is Takedown Combo (1 Bond for interrupt and +100% dmg for your next attack). As a Scout you can combine it with Sneak Attack and Deathblows (even Assassinate and Backstab if you want). Sure, it is a bit of a tedium to time it right, but boy do they explode!

Hm, but a Troubadour pays +1 for his invocations while a Skald -1 for offensive ones. So actually he pays -2 phrases compared to Troubadour. That means that the Troubadour needs more time for low-level invocations and less for high level invocations (only if he uses Brisk Recitation). Plus the Skald can generate phrases with melee crits. Is this really worse? With a decent melee build one can do crits pretty often. My next apporach will really be to use WotEP to see if crits with the cone produce phrases. Edit: fixed a brainfart.

What about Arcane Dampener (at the moment one of the most powerful debuffers), Slicken (prone effect is not a one-time effect like in PoE but pulses), Rymrgand's spells (terrify with big AoE and long duration - terrify now being a very powerful debuff). Use Grimoires? I think I would try to take more passives/buffs and use Grimoires for the CC spells mostly. The biggest advantage of the wizard is his flexibility when it comes to spell selection. He can actually spend all ability points on something else and still cast a whole bunch of spells via Grimoire. Switching Grimoires is like retraining a wizard on the fly. Besides that I think it will totally work. Being not only tanky but also being able to debuff is very useful. And in my opinion the wizard has the coolest debuff/CC spells.

Yes - PL duration and dmg bonus is added to base and this works multiplicative. That makes the +7 PL for Livegiver's spells (when shifted) much more powerful than one would expect as soon as you add other healing bonuses as well. This also explains why empower was so ridiculous in beta and had to be tuned down. And also here I guess: the designers didn't know how empower/PL actually work "under the hood".

I think this is near certain. Obsidian showed in the past that designers don't understand the programmer's math or simply how some mechanics worked. Some examples: - PoE: Josh didn't understand (during a stream) that a bashing shield usually resulted in less dps than having a normal shield (when using auto-attacks) because you get no speed bonus (no dual wield info bonus) but alternate your normal weapon damage with very low bash damage. - PoE: Designers put lowish elemental lashes (10%) on several abilities/items without knowing that lashes don't get added but rolled against DR seperately and don't profit from DR bypass and have no MIN dmg - the result was that lashes under 15% usually didn't make it through DR at all. - Deadfire: Blunt Criticals had a -25% crit damage malus. Crits in Deadfire do +25% bonus damage. Somebody at OBS thought that would result in +-0% crit damage while it really leads to a situation where crits do less damage than hits. - Deadfire: giving weapons that do raw damage a lot less base damage (most of the time only half the base dmg). This would make sense in PoE where armor had DR reduction - but it makes not much sense in Deadfire where you have no DR. With raw dmg you can't underpenetrate, but you also can't overpenetrate - not even when critting. - Deadfire: the Gunhawk has a 80% chance to interrupt with a shot from an arquebus or pistol but 20% per blunderbuss pellet. Blunderbusses shoot 4 pellets, so 4 * 20% chance per pellet is a 80% chance like with the other guns, right? Eh no, it's ~60%. One pellet needs a 33% interrupt chance in order to land near 80% after 4 attack rolls. This shows (in my opinion) that the guys who balance the game or make "mechanics" decisions don't always fully understand how the underlying systems actually work. They see that something is too powerful or too weak - and then, when trying to determine what might be a better value, are wide off the mark because they assume how some mechanics work without really knowing. This whole double inversion shenanigans is very unintuitive and can't be understood by the player (and the designer) by just looking at the tooltips. Whoever made the decision to introduce that: I hope you have a permanent itch on your back that you can't reach, seriously...

Because he doesn't have Chanter summons, and Druid summons are inferior. So if I don't use summons anyway it's actually great?

Yeah. Did you see the IGN interview? Josh emphasizes how important IP is for a studio like Obsidian. I think even if Deadfire turns out to be disappointing (considering their internal goals) they won't drop the whole Pillars theme. It's too important for them.

Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed with where the game is heading and feel no reason to conceal my disappointment. Personally, I'm still on 1.0.2 - disabled updates after a quick glance at 1.1 notes. I believe I'm entitled to some fun in a video game, and trying to break through brick walls using wet noodles doesn't sound like fun to me. I'm not against nerfs in principle. There can be a rational explanation why something is indeed too powerful. But when a weapon provides 15% speed bonus and you nerf it to 5%, you make people like me a little annoyed. 5% - wow, that's noticeable. Turning every unique item into a total joke isn't a sane approach to balancing. It's not even about whether the game is hard or easy. I'm not one of those who think that challenge > everything else, but I don't mind hard fights. It's more about how bleaching everything to the same shade of irrelevance destroys the reason to try new things and turns the game into boring and tedious grind. Ok, fair enough. That explanation is not trollish at all and I can see what you mean. Not that I necessarily do agree with everything, but I can comprehend. Unfortunately Josh is a friend of "put it to the extreme and let's see what people are saying - if they complain a lot, we adjust a bit until people are happy" instead of "what might me a reasonable middle ground?" - as he once explained (forgot why the first approach is supposed to yield better results). And the history of PoE patches shows that they really do it: first nerf it down and then raise it back up eventually (Flames of Devotion, Ranger's Animal Companions, Druid's Spiritshift and so on).

No idea. For a game with a relatively small budget of ~4 million $ it sells well I guess. Even if it only sold 200,000 copies for ~45$ each that's roughly double its budget. Financial success, no?

I guess. I also think many people who played PoE1 don't use Slicken in Deadfire because they just assume it works like in PoE (one-time-prone) while prone lost its power. I was guilty of that too until I accidentally cast it one time (because it was in a Grimoire) and thought "woot?".

Haha - I see you read the the patchnotes-for-1.2 thread.

You could pick up WotEP - where weapon cone and invocation come match (and it's a reach weapon). I think ranger is even better for getting crits and repositioning yourself to the perfect place for launching your invocation: Evasive Roll is great for that purpose (very cheap) while your accuracy in general will be higher (=more crits) due to several passives and you can use Accurate Woundig Shots a lot of times for even more crits.

Eh? Why that? Is that an universal rule? It may also be that all subs are rel. equal. Or that one subclass is good when you want to play like this and another when you want to play like that.

Actually now you sound more trollish than every recent "Nerf moar!" guy on these boards. What crowds do you mean by the way? Most threads about balancing I read these days are from the "why balance a single player game?" faction.

Did you try to give your commands with shift? Maybe then they get pushed into the chain of command s that the AI also uses. Just an idea though...

It should work if you use tab: addability Player<tab> Esc<tab> The tab key should autocomplete your command. You can press tab several times to cycle through all options that start with those letters. And of course you have to type iroll20s <enter> first.

Why is Tekehu's Chanter subclass bad? I found it pretty cool to be able to cast powerful druid spells with phrases instead of 2/encounter.

I also don't agree on "Skald is/was worst". First of all he pays one phrase less for ALL offensive invocations and secondly: if you are planning to make a dps melee chanter anyway then it's good to take a Skald. Killers + high Accuracy = bonus phrases for more offensive invocations. That it's not a subclass for every build doesn't make it weak or bad in my opinion. I'm wondering if retaliation crits of any kind also lead to bonus phrases? Or crits on disengagement attacks (see Fighter with Overbearing Guard). Wizard/Skald with Spirit Lance does lead to a ton of bonus phrases by the way (last tested in beta3 though). Also Monk/Skald with Wahaī Pōraga - but that is only an assumption, didn't test that one.

Konstanten: replace Barbarian with Shattered Pillar. I mean he has gargantuan hands and likes to cause pain while he resolves tensions. I mean every kneader does, right? So he should be able to resolve tensions with Transcendent Suffering...

Yes, you forgot to switch off the auto-leveling of companions in the game menu. I don't remember if it is activated by default or not.

Eh? Why don't you just give her high mechanics?

Never heard of that. But good to know - thanks. I appreciate a decently spoofed song.

Oh, contrary to PoE where you could. Too bad: makes Wild Leech even less interesting.

Because of spells. Especially highly effective spells like both Rymrgand's or a lvl 1 spell that blinds in a huge AoE named Chillfog... And I think mainly because the dmg spells of Wizards work best with the empower mechanics. Since you can rest nearly whenever you want that's a huge advantage over classes that don't profit from Empower that much. IF you are willing to use Empower of course. If not then the wizard loses power - but only in your game, not in general. Also: Ciphers are dedicated mind controllers - and mind control is the strongest CC effect in Deadfire. I can't see how a Cipher can not be a valuable member in any party. Especially single class Ciphers who can pick the +ACC passive around will-based spells a lot earlier and also can regain focus per crit. Combine that with the Beguiler's special feature of regainig focus with deception spells and you have one of the best CC char in the game - in my opinion.