Boeroer

When I look at the title of the thread, who opened it and remember what the intention was then I suddenly feel the urge to discuss per-encounter vs. per-rest and hardcore vs. casual elsewhere.

Rogue seems fine, fighter also works. You can either drop PER a bit because you have lots of ACC anyways or you build everything towards crits and pump PER. I'll assume rogue: Talents: - Veteran's Recovery - Weapon Focus Ruffian - Single Weapon Style - Vicious Fighting - Runner's Wounding Shot - Fast Runner - Bloody Slaughter - Marksman - Merciless Hand - Dungeon Delver Abilities: - Blinding Strike - Dirty Fighting - Reckless Assault - Deep Wounds - Crippling Strike - Deathblows - Sap - Withering Strike As weapon I would pick Resolution, later Purgatory for sabre and Dulcanale as pistol. Bittercut is also great, but then you should take Spirit of Decay instead of another talent.

Why not? mark the whole party, click on the sword icon left of the speed toggle and force the attack. Better way to use GM: cast Devotions + Inspiring Radiance on her, build a lot of focus on the xaurips, then cast Disintegration on the dragon, followed by Whisper of Treason. Disintegration will keep on working even though she is charmed. Also, the time while she's charmed is great for getting rid of the andragans and xaurips. If you have trouble hitting the dragon: Tactical Meld + Borrowed Instincts or Devotions + Inspiring Radiance + Zealous Focus stack to +56 accuracy. That should be enough. By the way: Tidefall is not the optimal choice for GM. Her MIG is too low and wounding doesn't generate focus. The soulbound arbalest from the Deadfie Pack is crap for a cipher (no lash). It gets slower instead of faster when leveling it up. Must be a bug. Better alternatives: Blade of the Endless Paths + lash, Drake's Bell + lash, Hours of St. Rumbalt + lash and any other arbalest or arquebus which you enchant with a lash. Lashes generate focus!

Oops - I missed the part where you said you wanted a heavy one hander and a shield. Dammit... Dwarven rogue with bashing shield and war hammer is quite nice. Endgear would be Godansthunyr + Badgradr's Barricade. It really rocks (for a rogue ). In the early game you an use Larder Door, mid game Scath Gwannek (if you can get it) and then later the Barricade. A typical strike ability like BLinding Strike will go like: bash -> apply blind -> Godansthunyr crit -> apply stun -> bash crit -> trigger Trhust of Tattered Veils with Deathblows -> enemy dead. It's a nice mixture of tankyness and offense. Also works very well on fighters with Knockdown and Disciplined Barrage and melee rangers with Stunning Shots + Driving Flight (Thrust of Tattered Veils will work with Driving Flight). The rogue however can also use Riposte and Adept Evasion and stand in the AoE area of your wizard's reflex based spells - he won't get hit or even grazed often...

Not really - but I don't oppose it either. I mean the Ghost Heart part. It doesn't add anything exciting to be honest (at least for me). Ranger + Blast (rod) in general is an interesting combo because of how Blast + Driving Flight works at the moment. Every AoE hit will be getting a second hit in the current beta. And since Wael's rod does +50% lash damage also with Blast, Ranger/Wael is pretty cool. Also because Wounding Shot + Blast is pretty awesome (if it stil works like this - it does with rogues' afflicitions so I guess it still works with Wounding Shot as well). My pick would be vanilla ranger or Sharpshooter because the extra PEN (or ACC) is pretty useful with rod and Blast and you'd have a permanent pet that doesn't need summoning (costs time and - even more importantly - bond points).

I first read "Amputations and Fractures". Where did that come from? Weird, since I never whatch splatter movies/war movies or even Dr. House or stuff like that. I didn't even break a bone in my whole life (only plenty or torn ligaments - curse you Basketball!). I have to agree that the picture looks really nice. I doesn't make a lot of sense for me (yet), especially with the party members all spread evenly across that disposition half-cirlce, but altogether it looks nice and interesting.

Retraining is the exact opposite of immersive. At least give it a meaningful in-game mechanic, like a divine device that reprograms your brain or Cipher surgery. Dat immersion again... if they don't belch, fart and puke in the tavern the game breaks my immersion. Better to invent meaningless proficiencies so that nobody feels offended if they find a weapon they are not proficient with. Errrr... However - retraining doesn't have to be implemented in that "brute force" way like in PoE where you simply do a complete level-up right from the start again. instead you could also do it in a way that you go to a special trainer for proficiencies (think of Osric in Defiance Bay's Expedition Hall in PoE) and simply ask him if he can show you how to use XY better. You would then pick a proficiency you want to lose in order to free up points and then put them elsewhere. That will cost some money and that's it. In Tyranny you had special trainers for stuff. So basically like this but not to improve things but to retrain special stuff. Superimmersive for those who need that to be happy.

As it is now, Assassin/whatever former "vancian" caster is like the perfect combo for nukers. You get good enough PEN, high damage and all time in the world to place and cast your most powerful but also most sluggish spell.

Well, you will have to deal with that burning barbarian of a virus, mind you...

Yes, I think those "wrong" approaches to per-rest spell use on the players' side was the biggest problem. Same like hoarding consumables by the way.

If they introduce cooldowns I swear I'll delete the game and never touch it again. I'll also hack the forums and will install the equivalent of a PoE Barbarian with Vengeful Defeat + Firebrand as a virus.

Some are ok and do their job when it comes to handling special situations. For example dagger, qaurterstaff, morning star and others. But others are simply bad - like sabres' modal for example. Basically all modals that give +2 PEN for +100% recovery. The damage you gain via more PEN will get eaten away by the slower attack speed at best. So it's just bad in every situation except Full Attacks. Single sabre users and war bow lovers are crying... More modals like scepters', swords and so on would be better. Something that does not give you the malus in the same field (like dps) as the bonus. But rather modals where the malus is in a different field (see sword or dagger or scepter: survivability) than the bonus (dps).

Exactly

Heh - glad you liked the Golden Dragon. We also have to thank Jojobobo for this. May I present the following: - Buttercut (cipher): cuts soul and tissue as if it was butter. Melee Cipher with the new Royal Deadfire Cannoner Belt + Foremaster's Gloves. I did this in one of my latest playthroughs and it's just so much fun. Firebrand is for damage/focus and spells mostly for CC (except the mandatory Silent Screams and the awesome Disintegration and Amplified Wave and so on). Firebrand with Soul Whip + Biting Whip + Apprentice's Sneak + Two Weapon Style + Savage Attack + Merciless Hand + crits (easy with Mental Binding for example) is just... wow! Even works nice in the late game. You will also spare some nice resources like dargon eyes/kraken eyes, durgan steel and stuff. Not on the tankiest of sides but his reliable CC prevents knockouts pretty well. Somebody hits you? cst Whisper of Treason, done. Or just kill him with oine or two strikes... I didn't use Vet. Recovery on this one but it could be cool. For Deadfire: Cipher is going to get a decent buff in Deadfire now after Obsidian did their inhouse playtesting week. Everybody and their uncle complained about cipher there. So I'm confident they will make him good again. Ciphers already have grea passives in Deadfire - only their powers were too slow casting and didn't last long enough. Also, the Soulblade subclass is a great melee cipher already (if you mostly skip the power use atm and dump all focus into Soul Annihilation strikes - which do a ton of raw damage). You could do Devoted/Soul Blade and have a great melee cipher in Deadfire, even if Firebrand is crap in Deadfire atm. - Cauterizer (barb): I know, I know: no barb - but I'm playng a barbarian with the same item setup like above (belt & gloves) atm, centered on Bloodlust + Blood Thirst, Battle Forged and Barbaric Ret. Combine it with somebody who can do good AoE CC like blind in order to trigger more crits. Blood Thirst triggers from kills through Firebrand and all kind of this stacked retaliations so your attack speed is quite fabulous - and that's with a non-enchantable great sword. Lots, lots of fun, too. For Deadfire: Berserker is a strong class and in combo with a paladin (who can simulate a burning sword via Flames of Devotion) even more so. Great, really great resistances and tankyness and great offense at the same time. - St. Gangrene (priest): Priest of Berath as damage character with maxed out MIG, using Tidefall: you may have read about this. Combine Runner's Wounding Shot + Enevenomed Strike + Tidefall + Aggrandizing Radiance + Champion's Boon or Minor Avatar and use Cleasing Flame... even dragons will die pretty quickly. It's frail at the beginning but a lot of fun (at least for me) after Act I. I really liked it - even if you will hit stuff less and less and cast more and more (max MIG and INT is also great with Shining Beacon and stuff ). Plus: Berathians are no jerks. I used Veteran's Recovery on this guy and also Tidefall's draining with a ton of MIG works pretty well so that he doesn't fall over all the time. For Deadfire: The spiritual great sword of berathian priests is pretty awesome and you could again multicalss with Devoted in order to do more penetration and damage with it. Another aspirant would be paladin or monk instead of Devoted. - The Shock Hog (druid): Shocking Boar druid with focus on regeneration and melee damage via Spiritshift. Circumvent the relative squishyness with a ton of healing and DR (and Relentless Storms of course ) and at the same time boost your melee attacks. Doesn't go down easily (not a real tank though of course). I also wrote some stuff about this here and there but never made a full build. It's also fun to play because it has good offense while being reasonalby tanky. For Deadfire: spiritshift works as good in Deadfire as in PoE and the healing spells are good. You can multiclass with monk in order to get three shocking lashes for your tusks = great melee offense - or with fighter in order to get Constant Recovery as additional healing source. - Arcane Spanker (wizard): unarmed wizard with maxed MIG. This is not the most powerful thing, but it's fun nonetheless. I aimed for a monkish vibe and good melee damage via Novice's Suffering + Citzal's Martial Power (the bonus of Novice's Suffering doesn't work with damage bonuses, but gets multiplied by the MIG bonus) . Due to the mechanics of Novice's Suffering lacking ACC is no problem since grazes and crits do almost the same damage as hits. And since yo cast more and more and auto-attack less and less anyways you could at least use some weapons that you don't have to enchant and which stay being viable at the same time. I tried to use a lot of the touch-based spells like Jolting Touch and stuff all in all try to use spells that somehow could be a monklike "thing", like spell reflection, self buffs, cones and so on. As A side effect I found out that Grimoire Slam and Arcane Assault are pretty awesome when used with Citzal's Martial Power and maxed base MIG. For Deadfire: obviously Wizard/Monk. The wizard has awesome defensive self buffs and the monk has the melee offense and tankyness. Should be a nice mix. - Scattergun (wizard): Island Auamua with Arms Bearer and Quick Switch. Use Expose Vuln. + Combusting Wounds and combine it with Penetrating Shots and Ryona's Vambraces. Get four blunderbusses. Cast Expose + Combusting Wounds and shoot every enemy once with the blunderbuss. THis leads to 6 parallel CW instances on each of the four and will grind down their endurance pretty good (if they don't have enormous burn DR). Every instance of CW will do more than 30 burn damage with decent MIG and INT vs. lowish DR, so you can apply 180 additional burn DoT with every shot . Even if enemies have high burn DR, one blunderbuss shot with max DR bypass and Expose Vuln. is already quite punishing. Combine with multiple-hit spells like Chillfog, Wall of Flames, Malignant Cloud and so on. It's fun but it's also a lot of micromanagement. Not only the buffs, especially the switching and the timing. On the upside you can quickly take out up to four priority targets like enemy casters or rogues pretty quickly. And Expose + CW also helps your party members a lot. For Deadfire: Multiclass Black Jacket and Wizard. With blunderbusses in Deadfire you can now also choose the modal that does Powder Burns (that also works with RES as damage boost instead of strength). With the right passives for resitances even the automatic distraction of Powder Burns for the shooter will go away I think. Also use Missile spells and stuff. I tried this in beta1 but CW didn't work at that time. But I'm sure it will work well in the finished game. So you could do awesome single target damage via the shot itself and additional AoE damage with Powder Burns. Those are the things I had the most fun with lately. They are not necessarily OP. But they are all viable and for me they were more fun to play than many others. If something sounds interesting I can go into more detail.

But it's the desire of most players to be able to master one particular weapon - or being better with it than with others. As I said: retraining would meet both needs.

Yes. Every class now has some resource pool that they can use freely until it's empty - if they don't have any unique mechanic like focus, wounds or phrases. It's kind of a mana system basically. Only the former vancian caster don't but have 2 uses per spell level. The result is you always choose the most oomphy ones and you always cast the same spells over and over in every fight. Why not give them a class resource pool as well and give every spell a resource cost? Maybe there are reasons and I just can't see them at the moment though.

That is goes against the aim of the new system is the best part. Also: retraining is a nice feature to ensure you can make best use of a weapon you found and have not the fitting proficiency. Better than making all proficiencies meaningless so that it's no problem to use a weapon with which you are not proficient. Also: getting one proficiency every 3 levels now means you'll have 7 proficiencies at the end of the game. It's very likely that you can spend enough points in the new weapon you found as you go along.

I think it's pretty easy to only trigger the healing once when you activate FoD instead of tying it to every strike.

Proficiencies are half-baked stuff atm. You can see that its not the best approach since the designers obviously had trouble to come up with meaningful and sensible modals for every weapon proficiency. Like rapid shot for pistol (why is reloading a pistol any different from reloading an arquebus? Why can you get +20 ACC with a non-rifled arquebus but not with an arbalest or crossbow?). Would have been better to create those modals for a whole group of weapons like guns (faster reaload)/bows (better aim)/crossbows (faster reaload as well) and so on. But now we have them... The idea of The Balthazar(?) that you can invest thrice in a proficency to: a) get the modal b) increase the bonus c) decrease the malus would be nice to see implemented. You could then leave the modal on all the time after spending at least two points because it would be better most of the time. This also would mean that you wouldn't be forced to take a lot of different proficiencies that don't match with your idea of your character. For example as a rogue duelist who wants to use single light one handed weapons like rapier, dagger and stiletto it's just awkward to be forced to choose mace or axe or whatever just because you don't know where to put the proficiency points. Of course this would render the Black Jacket even more meaningless. Besides Quick Switching builds that subclass is totally underpowered now. Especially since they plan to raise PEN of weapons (not of spells???). The Black Jacket needs something better to counter his harsh malus of not having Constant Recovery. Since the Black Jacket's theme is all about versatiliy, why not give him better versions of the modals - even if the aforementioned solution (a)b)c)) doesn't get implemented at least the Black Jacket could automatically get either b) or c) when choosing a proficiency. Meaning that a Black Jacket always suffers less malus from modals or gets a better bonus. For example: when choosing the proficiency for great swords (modal: Savage Attack) a Black Jacket coud either get +50% damage with only -10 ACC or +75% damage with -20 ACC instead of +50%/-10 like the normal modal would be. Sabre could give +2 PEN/+50% recovery or +3 PEN/+100 recovery instead of +2/+50%.

I can imagine on PotD even +40 ACC is not enough with an arquebus+modal + FoD to avoid grazes entirely. But if you take a single rapier and switch on the modal and use FoD you will have +57 ACC, am I right? Should work also well enough if you don't care about the damage anyways. But I agree that it's kind of stupid why the healing effect is tied to hit/crit instead of just executing the ability like it was in PoE.

I personally prefer the change as per-encounter. It was a big tedium for me that they use campfire as the resource. Could it be per-encounter was badly implemented in DF?. Maybe you should create a separate thread and it be interesting to read through your thoughts about it. Sorry for deviating the thread. And i would like to thank Obsidian team, at least they read through these feedback and concerns and are aware of it. Erm, the emphasis was on "elsewhere" rather than "I feel the urge to discuss". Ach, another ironic post gone wrong on the internt.

If you have ligatures activated then switch them off as well.

When I look at the title of the thread, who opened it and remember what the intention was then I suddenly feel the urge to discuss per-encounter vs. per-rest elsewhere.

Or you take a single rapier in the main hand and activate the modal before using Soul Annihilation. I never had a miss or graze so far when I tried this. Too much ACC. Great modal for a Soulblade "Duelist". But a Kind Wayfarer gets +20 acc when doing FoD. Do you miss/graze often? I don't. The real bugger is the low amount of healing. 14 points... pfff!

Hmm, from a fun point of view? Hard to say. Both will drop down pretty quickly once targeted, so this can be frustrating. From lvl 11 on this is pure fun - especially with a fellow wizard who can provide afflictions. Spell binding gear and scrolls will be rare in the early game, so the beginning will be more rough. But taking Prestidigitator's Missiles and Penetrating Shot early is nice.