Boeroer

Exactly my kind of humor.

Yes, Berath only.

Sword with Benefits?

Moin und willkommen im Forum, yes, go ahead and do it. It got confirmed several times that it's totally fine to do that. I'm not with Obsidian - so if you want a "proper" source I can search the post from Aarik D (community manager of Obsidian) and link it here. By the way your English is fine... so far.

So you were that guy in the ocherous bathrobe who wanted to show me his "young snake"? And I was like:

I don't know if they are a lot better, but I think they have more potential in the late game due to attack speed, more/higher crits and lashes.

Shifter/Nalpasca: drunken were-boar master.

Well in three seconds you may be able to execute three or four attacks - not so bad I think. But I also think that 15 or 16 is enough since you also want decent MIG and DEX. High INT is really good for AoE in PoE though. With every point of INT your AoE size grows exponentially - good for storms and so on. And also for non-woundig DoTs like Venombloom, Plague of Insects etc.

But they all would need to attack you at once to overcome layers of concentration and do at least a graze - or in case of rogue - a hit. I guess few enemy rogues with Blunderbuss will fire at you with a Blinding or Crippling Strike while you try to cast Returning Storm. In a moba it would be a serious issue, but hardly in Deadfire. And even if you meet such gods of interrupts: you might still have Hands of Light.

Dance of Death will give you a wound every 3 sec as long as you don't get hit. With the upgrade you can take three hits until it ends. And you can use an ability to self-inflict wounds. Or you just shoot your Helwalker in the back. What also works decently is to use dual scepters with Destructive Channeling - you'll have 10 wounds in no time. But watch out: due to the increased damage you get you can knock yourself out very quickly.

Although I'm a big fan of the Long Pain there are of cours reasons to not use them (in certain situations or with certain builds): - no ACC bonus with abilities - quite long summoning time - mediocre duration - needs wounds that you have to aquire first - crush only - no Turning Wheel bonus (that's up to 60% multiplicative damage) - no engagement slots (ranged weapon) - no Savage Attack - no Enervating Blows If those are important for your build/playstyle (e.g. solo/party?) everybody has to decide for themselves. The damage itself - especially with stuff like Merciless Hand and other dmg mods - is quite awesome. It's also awesome that it works with all melee abilities despite being a ranged weapon. The statement was that fists (Transcendent Suffering) do more damage than weapons and I think that's not generally true. A decent and viable weapon choice of course, but not a no-brainer.

Maybe it was a silent scream...

No - well I said it wasn't overly powerful. I did so right after the nerf, but that was the disappointment speaking because I put a lot of work into playing and writing that stuff and suddenly it was gone. Here's what I wrote after some time when I had a chance to think about it: It was quite powerful and maybe a case where there's different opinions. But nobody complained when they nerfed the Jolting Touch/Carnage mechanics. That was clearly OP and when it got removed the game was better. That depends. If it would make other multiclass options for monk strictly inferior then of course it would be better for the game if that was nerfed. But I doubt that this is gamebreaking. Stunning SHots get paid by Mortification which is not endless - so no endless spamming. That's just nice to have.Another example: you can still use Kalakoth's Minor Blights + One Handed Style + Swift Flurry to one-shot whole groups of enemies. One shot and everybody in range is dead. That IS gamebreakingly overpowered and needs a nerf. The game would be better without this. Sure, it's fun for a few times but it gets very boring to enter the map, rally up the enemies and do the *pouf-they-are-gone* action. Same goes for the afflicton + Blast in Deadfire. It was nerfed because the rod would be too powerful and the weapons unbalanced if you'd leave that in. Might be that it was not gamebreaking, but the game hardly got worse because of this nerf. I've played Baskeball against 5-year olds and for about 10 minutes I had IMMENSE amounts of fun because I was so OP. After that it got pretty lame though... I played Basketball against Gunther Behnke and friends and I had IMMENSE amounts of fun although I was really bad compared to them - but every point felt like a huge victory - but I wouldn't want to play like that all the time. It's totally possible to play a game with OP or UP builds and for some it may be even fun to do so longer than a few hours. The statement that I questioned was that the game is bad because balancing happens. And I didn't say that a game is bad if balancing does not happen. Both statements are balderdash in my opinion.

It scales with level. Or so I strongly believe. Everything else would make not much sense. But in the beta it's kind of weird: lvl1 to 9 hirelings get a fixed amount of +13 to all defenses with Faith and Conviction while MC lvl 6 to 9 always gets 12.5. I guess in the beta it's just hard-coded.

So the whole game turned bad all of a sudden because one single build option that was unarguably overpowered is impossible now? Guys... And it's me who's asking that (rethorical question) - the guy who posted that build in the first place. Leaving that option in would just lead to a game where everybody who wants to play a melee cipher plays a retaliation cipher. So boring. The game gets actually better once you nerf such things. Just a tiny bit, but better balance makes a game better overall. You just have to let go of that (in this case nonsensical) feeling of loss to see it. Just a sidenote: it's Backlash Beldam (like hag or old woman), not Bedlam (like chaos).

How else should it work? Companions don't gain dispositions via dialogue because the MC does the talking and makes the decisions.

Speaking of super fan: You obviously didn't read my critical posts when the beta came out... I mean Gromnir screamed "hyperbole" more than once... And while beta4 is a lot better than beta1 (and one had time to adapt and shake off some nostalgia) also my newest posts weren't full of praise. There's stuff I like a lot and stuff where I think a change was uncalled for or simply for the worse. I just think that voting Deadfire down only because Obsidian tries to balance things and removes OP mechanics is a bit silly.

Oy, maybe. It has been some time since I played that part.

Yes, cat for lower DR and boar for higher DR. They are equally good I think. Tidefall's wounding scales with MIG and nobody can achieve higher MIG than a priest - and although wounding's dps goes a bit down with high INT, in this case it can be benefical to have a longer DoT time: Cleansing Flame doubles the damage of all DoTs, including Tidefall's. So if you cast Cleansing Flame on an enemy and hit him with Tidefall, the wounding ticks get doubled. And because you can't do it all simultaniously the longer DoT gives you a bit more time to cast/attack. And also the damage of the wounding does not simply go away - it just takes a bit longer to get applied. So dps is a but lower than with low INT, but overall "damage dealt" stays the same. Hours of St. Rumbalt is also good. Less damage but a nice CC effect. Rot Skulls is very strong. If you want you could retrain a shifter into an implement user once you get Rot Skulls. Unfortunately it comes pretty late.

Or maybe if you build your monk wrong. With dual dual durganized annihilation sabres or Bittercut you can do more damage than with fists, not to speak of dual Drawn in Spring. Just because of the lashes (and wounding) and the increased crit damage and speed (of durgan steel). Also monk with fists suffer from a bug(?): the ACC bonus of Transcendent Suffering is not used for special attacks like Force of Anguish or Torment's Reach - which is a bummer. But of course you'd have to invest your precious resources for that - so I think most of the time you are fine with fists. Spares resources and is viable from start to finish. Long Pain fists are totally crazy because their base damage scales, they don't get a flat damage bonus like Transc. Suffering. But they suffer the same bug with the ACC.

A second-row Helwalker/Troubadour with +10 MIG and +10 INT (Duality) through Dance of Death does decent damage with 3 (partially) stacked phrases of Dragon Thrashed. It's still not jawdropping but an additional invocation here and there with 30 MIG/30 INT is quite the show... And of course you have to watch out like heck because of the +50% damage you'll receive.

Mage Slayer is very circumstancial but very good against enemies who make a lot of use of their abilites. You can completely lockdown bosses or other annoying guys like Engwithan Saints and prevent them from using their special abilites. But in multiclass with somebody who buffs himself Mage Slayer is not good because of the reduced durations. Did somebody test if Spiritshift also gets reduced?

Yes, but with a shield and smart stat setting you can raise your defenses quite a bit - and then some with passives. Abilities that interrupt on graze are rare. Out of my head I only know Knockdown. There are also the resolve inspirations Resolute and Courageous which will give you one layer of Concentration per 6 sec. Couragerous completely prevents interrupts. Resolute can already be gained from Holy Meditation (priest PL 2) for example and Courageous can be gained by Lay on Hands/Hands of Light (PL 3 paladin).

The MIG bonus is multiplicative in Deadfire. So every damage roll you do will get affected by your dmg mods like crit (+25% weapon base damage), overpenetration (+30% base) and so on and THEN the MIG bonus comes aorund and multiplies with that. In PoE is was simply an additive bonus. That's why MIG is much more important now. Imagine a Rogue with Sneak Attack and Backstab (+150%), doing a crit and he has 20 MIG (*1.6 dmg mod). Backstab's bonus of 150% gets multiplied by 1.6 and is worth 240% all of a sudden. Sneak Attack is pumped from 50% to 80%, the crit does +40% instead of +25% and so on. More INT will lead to a longer paralyze and also a bigger cone. And also a longer linger time of your phrases!

In Deadfire you can simply type a letter like "A" and then hit <tab> and the console will cycle through all commands that start with that letter. This way you can discover all commands if you wish so if you don't know what else to do. Usually I just type "giv" or "add" or "att" andthen hit <tab> - it makes testing stuff out so fast it's a breeze. Thanks Obsisian for that new and decent feature. It was also in PoE, but it didn't work that well.