Boeroer

Although some of the "new" old abilities may be lackluster: better to have some meh stuff in between ok stuff than having no stuff to choose from at all. And if it's only for the weirdos like me who like to do weirdo builds. Sometimes they really work out, so where's the harm? Better have some redundant abilites than watching at a nearly empty tree of abilites while you do your third playthrough with the same fighter build because there's nothing else to pick... Of course it would be better to have lots of really nice, unique abilites with interesting effects. This would have been easier if OBS just polished the mechanics of PoE and added some new stuff here and there. But for several reasons they decided to make a complete redesign of all mechanics and of course that leaves no time to invent and test a lot of new abilites which may need new sound effects, vfx, balancing and so on. Understandable I think. Still: the beta4 is the best beta version so far. And I still miss my old PoE general talents pool...

ROFL! Downstairs... epic!

And another one! Welcome to the Club of Rash and Postponed Gentlemen!

I agree. In its current form DAoM is not worth an ability point - mainly because Swift is... lame.

Exactly. So you can have three healing bursts during an encounter. Nothing will happen - it's only 1/encounter for that "border". So if you drop below 75%, Silver Tide triggers and heals you back to 100%. Then you drop below 75% again: nothing happens. But if you hit 50% you will heal again... and so on. Yes, correct. And St. Borragia's Tears (+15% healing done) and items with a 25% healing received bonus (Fulvano's Amulet/Maneha's Armor/Belt of Bountiful Healing - don't stack, so one is enough) as well.

As long as there is active voting I can make suggestions! *activating super-self-entitlement power* Oh thank you, very kind. But I guess they giggled while they put it into the office shredder.

What do you mean? They scaled from beta 1 on. Or wait - I guess you mean that the scaling is new in Deadfire (compared to PoE): then you're absolutely right. Yes, pure nukers are not top notch. At least they felt underwhelming up to beta3 because of slow casting times. No it's a bit faster, but still: I miss my fast Fireballs and Iconic Projections...

Hehe, don't know. But you can trigger the on-kill upgrades of Berserker's Barbaric Blow with your own skeletons - so probably yes. I was really speculating for a Berserker who skyrockets his number of Heart-of-Fury hits with a Beckoner's skeletons.

Ah - never mind. I confused charmed/dominated enemies with summons. In PoE you couldn't cast "ally" powers on charmed/dominated enemies but on summons. I have no reason to believe that Deadfire is different.

Priest of Wael/Bleak Walker should work. Since the Blast also gets all the bonuses like lashes an FoD shot with +50% shock, +30% burn and +20% corrode in an AoE would be devastating I guess. I actually never tried, only Wael/Monk with +80% shocking lash with Blast. Swift Flurry + Blast is still better though...

Obviously this needs a shocking lash...

Yes, it's quite crappy atm.

I agree. I still find it horrible.

How should I know what you know? I'm just interpreting what you wrote, and that may go wrong sometimes. Since you said summoned weapons don't scale I assumed you could be mistaken with the nature of dmg mods, too. Anyway: the title "Spells don't do any damage" is highly exaggerated. I could agree with "don't do enough damage". Some could indeed be better.

Can cipher powers like echos be cast on summons now? The animal companion obviously works (like it did in PoE), but stuff like wizards' phantoms, too?

Even if Soft Winds is bugged right now so that it heals for every enemy it hits - the "normal" case would be that it stacks with itself and any other healing effect (it's a passive) - so you don't heal 2 base per tick but 4 with linger. A Troubadour could even stack 3 instances. Add some MIG and you are at 6 per tick (Troubadour 9). At the moment it's totally OP of course because it drains endurance from every enemy it hits. But this is a tier list of the beta 4. If it's so OP it should push Chanters into top tier.

Only Bleak Walkers can get +2 PEN with Scion of Flame and Spirit of Decay because their special version of FoD is keyworded with Fire and Acid. All other paladins only have Fire as keyword on FoD and thus can only get +1 PEN with Scion of Flame. Priest is the only class with a party-wide, inspiration-stacking ACC buff of +20. That alone puts him into top tier in my opinion. Why is the Devoted god tier? Just because of his +2 PEN with a proficient weapon? Still good, but not that important anymore after the latest PEN/AR balancing. Did you actually play any of your low tier classes? Because stuff like Ascendant and Beguiler is top tier at least with the new patch. The first profits immensely from the faster cipher casts and the prolonged Ascension status - and the second one can spam fadt-cast AoE deception powers all the time because he often gets back more focus than he spends (see Eyestrike). Also Chanter (+subclasses) is so top tier material that it hurts to see him put under mid/low tier. Just try Soft Winds in the new beta 4 and then reevaluate.

Summoned weapons actually scale with level. Damage mods are additive, not multiplicative (except MIG and lashes). So more dmg mods on weapon base damage is not as effective as a dmg mod on spell damage. Usually spell base damage is higher than weapon damage. A caster like wizard/druid/priest gains a lot of spells per encounter after some levels. Even with the somewhat reduced casting times it's kind of hard to spend all uses in one encounter with a full party. So the argument that you can only do alpha strikes loses its validity more and more with every level you gain. Basically the same as in PoE where casters had very limited options and grew stronger and stronger with every level.

I guess it's the same as with PoE: On release: "Wizards are pointless, rogues are so good". Three years later: "Wizards are so good, rogues are pointless". And that is despite the fact that spell mastery replaced whole-tier-on-encounter spells. If you use Pull of Eora and then lob two Fireballs onto the gathered crowd that's some AoE damage that's difficult to achieve for any melee guy in the same time.

Don't forget that CON influences Fortitude. If Deadfire is anything like PoE then Fortitude is the most important defense.

Well, a lot is relative. 50% base damage is not that much if you stacked a lot of other dmg mods like superb, MIG and this and that. It would be nice if it scaled to 75% till lvl 20. It could start lower than 50% so that multiclasses won't get such high dmg mods when combining it with other stuff like Soul Whip. Single classes would reach 50% and beyond more quickly then.

That would be nice.

Yes, all of it. It doesn't need to scale like +5% per PL or whatever. Sometimes even 1% might be ok. But it *all* should scale with PL, not char level. Summons also scale with char level atm. Not the summoning spell itself (gets more duration) but the actual creatures that appear will have your char level. No bonuses from PL.

That's a bit like asking if it's better to buy an adjustable wrench or a nail clipper. It depends on what you want to do. Please give us some more background infos on your character and how you want to play him and I'm sure we can give better advice.