Boeroer

Thank you.

Actually it was indeed Abraham. I confused Queen's Berth with Serpent's Crown. :oops:

Eh... whatever.

I found Lord Darryn's Voulge and thought: wow, that would be great with a Barbarian if Carnage triggers static charge. Next playthrough I might roll one. I found the small monk shield and thought: wow, that woul be cool with a monk/streetfighter with Riposte. I found the White Witch Mask and immediately decided to roll a new wizard based on Illusions. Stuff like that.

There is an "unarmed" small shield that counts as an offhand weapob, works with two weapon style AND weapon & shield style and also profits from Transcendent Suffering's bonus. I think that +3 base damage is not really too powerful. I didn't memorize the actual base dmg numbers yet so I wasn't sure.

Bonus ROFL points for using "D&D" and "prevents people from cheesing too much" in one sentence. I'm still playing my Aloth as a high deflection Spellblade who wants to use Riposte and Offensive Parry of the WotEP. It's not too easy to get him to very high values during mid game without the use of a shield.

Did you simply try to use Chillfog on the fampyrs AND you? Blind makes you immune to gaze attacks and as far as I know it won't get removed by Arcane Dampener (because it's no beneficial effect). And since you are all blinded it's not really gimping yourself in comparison to the fampyrs.

As long as your unconscious team members are near enemies they won't rise again after combat ended (if it ends in the first place). That prevents you from leaving the map. I agree that there should be an option to leave them (=killing them). Maybe a choice window that pops up once you want to leave the map like "Do you want to abandon your unconscious party members and travel on" or so.

I like the "auto max dmg roll" idea for Full Attacks with two handers a lot. It's something new yet easy to implement and understand and it's more powerful than a measly +25% additive dmg boost - since it would be a multiplicative dmg improvement. Maybe it's even too powerful, especially with Full Attacks that combine dmg bonuses and lashes (like FoD with an Assassin/Paladin for example). But it is the most interesting idea for me I've read about so far.

Why are you opposed to make it a bit more refined so that it really deserves the term "build description"? Look at how much efford others put into their build threads. I don't demand that every build discription is superpolished and shiny - but it would be nice to make it a tad more "complete". But maybe I'm the only one and a totalitarian schmuck, don't know... Edit: Then why don't you write that into your build description? That's all useful info that will help newcomers to understand how your build works.

Making gear part of builds is definitely not stupid. It adds a lot of replay value. The PEN system is also not my favorite mechanic in Deadfire. It's just too tedious to keep track if your PEN is sufficient or not all the time. I think that's why Devoted, Berserker or Sharpshooter are popular subclasses: just make sure you pile up a ton of PEN and don't bother further with PEN vs. AR.

I think there's alsways is a point to achive crits instead of hits if you can. Not only does if give you +25% additive damage (which isn't so overhwhelmingly good but still useful) but there are a lot of abilites and items that do something on crit (Evervating Blows, Blood Frenzy, interrupts(!) and so on). But that aside, a crit doesn't only give you "some" penetration, but multiplies your overall PEN with 1.5 - which leads to a better PEN quality (and dmg raise) in a lot of cases. The Guardian of Ukaizo has high AR, but if you yourself have stacked a lot of PEN (abilites, legendary equipment, Power Level boosts) you can improve your PEN quality with crits quite easily - even to the point of overpenetration. But it's true that in these extreme cases additional points of accuracy don't do as much for you as in the more "normal" fights throughout the game. Actually this makes the ranger more valuable for PotD than for lower difficulties where you will reach the point of "more ACC is not adding that much anymore" a lot sooner. Anyway: PoE's general rule of thumb "more ACC is always better" still applies. Even more so in Deadfire because afflictions' impact on enemies' defenses is a lot lower than n PoE. Accuracy is very valuable and thus the acc buffs of the ranger make him valuable, too. And never forget the additional body - it's very, very useful to have a body who can't be injured but needs no resources to be there - even if it only works as cannon fodder.

There's another pet (forgot the name, I think it's a dog) that does the same as Cosmo - without the gunner buff. So no need to console around. Maybe somebody else knows the name of the pet. I found it pretty early but didn't use it because I had Cosmo. Of curse - I mean a piggy with a hat - come on! Edit: Kaylon you ninja! Then there must be a third one because I found the one I was takling about somewhere else. I know because I haven't been to Queen's Berth in this playthrough yet. And I also think it didn't heal on kill but did something else. Or my memory is messed up completely and I mix up two pets or so. I'll try to find it and report... when I find the time to load up the game. But yes: you don't need Cosmo for this.

I know - but then you could write down what you think would be optimal or most fun. Which paladin skills specifically? What is the best shield? What is the best heavy armor for this build? Which phrases are best for regeneration and so on. Doesn't the fire ring from the Dark Cupboard also raise the ACC for Dragon Thrashed (no idea)? You could addt he info that Brand Enemy is also very powerful because it has no hit roll and ALWAYS hits (great info to have). Just assume that a new player comes in, searching for a cool build, who didn't memorize all items and abilities in the game. In my experience it's the inexperienced player who will try out builds - not the forum veteran. Right now it's not really a build description. It's more like "use Brand Enemy lol". I mean it's powerful the way you use it, sure - but it's a bit... thin.

Yes, on PotD they are the weakest class overall if you don't want to use spell bindigs with them - but a rogue "behind the lines" can still be effective and fun. I like to dive behind enemy lines and take out casters and archers before the enemy can even react and vanish once he does. I combine movement skills like Escape with Boots of Speed and other movement bonuses (Fast Runner).

I added it, but honestly that's not really a build description but more a description of a "trick". Could you flesh it out some more - like with recommended stats, gear and skill for example? What race would be good, which subclasses (if any)? I did it.

So... if multiple action speed bonuses have linear returns you should be able to hit 0 action time and recovery if you get enough of them, right?

ROFL - I give up. Maybe Loren Tyr has more patience on this matter.

You will have the same problems with enemies who use Brand Enemy (do enemies ever use this? I didn't experience this so far). If Withdraw works that's a great tip.

Exactly. That's like saying a dagger with 10 base damage and +5 ACC does the same DPS as a hatchet with 10 base damage and +5 to melee deflection. Which obviously is wrong as you migh admit. The exact dps gain is different against different enemies, but there is one. It may be not that useful to approximate the dps gain for all situations and form an avarage number like 2% - but leaving it completely out surely is of even less use in any case. Making it simple and using a value of whatever % (maybe 2%) can make sense. It will not be exact in most cases but will give a better estimation for dps comparison than leaving it out.

Of course it exists. Accuracy does affect average dps. Higher accuracy means higher chance for an higher attack roll quality. This can mean graze instead of a miss, hit instead of a graze or crit instead of a hit. All of those entail a significant damage increase that's hard to achieve with speed or dmg mods alone. Putting it at 2% is just an approximation over all cases. I don't know if this is a reasonable approximation or not. Unlike MIG or other dmg bonuses (or attack speed) accuracy's impact on dps is hard to measure because it highly depends on enemies' stats. However there is NO doubt that more accuracy translates to increased dps (unless the difference between your accuracy and all enemies' defenses is so high that you ALWAYS crit. Only then it's not). And that leaves stuff aside that can happen when you crit (special procs like Enervating Blows, Blood Frenzy and whatnot). So, claiming that accuracy has no effect on dps is plain wrong. And saying that you can't use math to determine the average dps gain per point of accuracy - because that doesn't exist - is ignorant. Of course you can. It's very complicated and you'd have to take every weapon,every ability and all enemies' defenses into account. But I guess if you'd do that then wouldn't be too far off (of 2%). Even if it's a very generalized approximation and might not help you in certain situations. Accuracy has a tremendous impact if it is lower than enemies' defenses and looses impact the higher it gets (compared to enemies' defenses). But it will add dps in nearly all cases. Saying a hit roll is a hit roll and accuracy in this case doesn't help dps is like saying that a miss roll is a miss roll and all damage bonuses don't increase dps (in this case). You are not talking about dps in this case but simply about the damage per hit. That is not dps. Dps is an average value that you can only determine when looking at more than one attack (minimum two attacks). You can't determine dps with looking at one single attack resolution. Since damage per second is a value that's determined over time you have to look at a relevant number of attack resolutions to determine its value. You can't say "oh the dps for this single attack is not influenced by accuracy" - because there is no dps (damage per second) when you only look at one single attack. Only the damage of this single hit. The time aspect (seconds) is simply missing. You need more attacks to determine dps. And when doing more attack resolutions you will get increased damage due to higher hit quality due to higher accuracy. Thus dps will rise. Rangers can have the highest accuracy in this game - and that translates to higher dps. That is especially helpful on PotD (where defenses and AR are higher) and also against all bosses. If that's enough to balance out the shortcomings of the class I can't say. But I guess the complaints are hyperbole. I do think that single rangers have crappy high level abilities though and thus seem to be better for multiclassing.

That's good. It's easy to implement, no animation has to be changed and it also makes sense - except the weapon & shield variant: why should somebody avoid misses when using a shield? Since bash is no longer part of Deadfire: maybe allow a single bash with the shield when doing Full Attacks? Don't know if this would require an additional animation. Alternatively a low tier affliction like staggered for a short amount of time (simulating a shield bash)? Or like the AoE Pollaxe: is gives you a short immunity to melee attacks after executing a swirl. Maybe that would be cool for a Full Attack for shield users: even more emphasis on defense while executing an attack?

DW should do more damage when executing a full attack than weapon & shield. And equal to 2h. As long as the dps over all weapons is balanced that's ok then. My proposal was to make Full Attacks a series of strikes. So two handers could do 2 strikes, light one handers 4, heavy 3 and so on so that the overall resulting damage of a Full Attack would be kind of equal for all weapon types. At least for melee.

For me it's just a bad mechanic. I never saw a good implementation of cooldown-on-ability and the fundamental idea also seems to be flawed. Ability A gets used and has a 12 sec cooldown till you can use it again - but you don't face any pause if you just use ability B that has a 6 second cooldown - then C with 6 and rinse and repeat. Horrible. This leads to the opposite situation that we have in Deadfire (and that I also don't like). In Deadfire abilities compete for Discipline/Guile/Bond etc. So you don't want to pick too many of them. In Tyranny you wanted to pick as many actives as possible to circumvent cooldown. Both variants aren't great but I prefer the first. If you then find a way to refresh resources (Wounds, Focus, Flesh Communion, Brilliant etc.) things get interesting. X per encounter like in PoE was also ok. Active abilities didn't compete for resource but also couldn't be spammed endlessly just by pickig enough to prevent cooldown pause.

No it's not - because we don't have dmg vs. DR any longer but PEN vs. AR. So dmase per hit doesn't matter as much as it did in PoE. Dps is more important. And being able to deliver Full Attacks. Atm two handers will do less dps on average compared to dual wielding, have less deflection and reflex than weapon & shield (while not granting overwhelmingly higher dps) and I guess due to crits giving +25% dmg and *1.5 times PEN (which leads to more dmg because you either prevent dmg reduction or even get overpenetration) two handers do even less dps than a single weapon approach. They don't have significantly higher PEN than one handers except the Estoc (which has quite low base damage). Great Sword even has low PEN. So why use two handers in the first place if they don't give you even a circumstancial benefit (morning stars excluded because their modal is great)? Mainly because of uniques I'd say. +1 PEN wouldn't topple over the balance of weapons but would give a reason to use two handers over one handers in certain situations (when enemies' AR is high). Of course this could lead to a situation where two handers are more valuable on PotD because there the AR of enemies is altered (which I find to be a bad decision for difficulty balancing).