Boeroer

Ok, you lost me there...

That's what I meant: this (good) tactic doesn't work because of carnage. Also as a chanter you might want to NOT use Soft Winds of Death.

Yeah, but they simply don't listen to MaxQuest!

That would have been my preferred approach. But there are also some really nice things in the beta. I guess a mix of the new features (that I like) and the old ones would have been great. But that's just me. The beta still feels a bit "tyranny-ish" to me. I didn't like Tyranny too much (only played it for 300 hours or so ).

This is true. 75% of the game mechanics were obscure and the descriptions either inaccurate, not clear enough or non-existent. But basically it's not like the mechanics are supercomplex.. It's just that PoE does a very poor job of explaining its mechanics. If they just could have done this better then there wouldn't have been so many complaints a la "I don't get how XY works". I mean look at the PoE forum (char builds subforum especially). Even today there will be a new thread that discovers how some hidden mechanic works and everbody (even the hardcore players, including me) will go "whooot? Didn't know that!". That's a pretty good example of bad documentation. But so easily solved... so easily...

What you wrote there is simply disgusting.

Huh? Who are you and when did you emerge? Doesn't matter though - I like your style!

THey should balance Soft Winds and Dragon Thrashed like so: Make Soft Winds do lowish damage (but maybe more than it does at the moment because it's superweak) but really "drain" some health for the chanter (as the description suggests when it says "drains"). Doesn't have to be 100% of the caused damage of course. Just a small healing effect. OR lower the damage even more and transfer all damage as endurance to the chanter. This would mimic somethin like COnstant Recovery as long as you hit enemies. Let Dragon Thrashed do more damage then Soft Winds. That way you'll have three distinct phrases and will have a realy choice: - Soft Winds: okish passive AoE damage, a bit of healing for the chanter OR lowish damage but more healing for the chanter - Ancient Memory: bit of passive healing for the whole party - Dragon Thrashed: more AoE damage It's true that the damage output of the phases had to be tuned because in Deadfire every ohrase takes 6 secs. But I think there is still room for improvement. Like... massive improvement. It goes without discussion that the behavior you described with Dragon Thrashed is a bug.

Confirmed. They can move and their fear aura works, but everything else always gets canceled. There's also no animation happening. They just move by gliding over the floor like some statues on rails. I guess they are supposed to fly like they did in PoE and to take off the ground once they got summoned? Anyway: totally bugged at the moment. Tested on Ubuntu 17.10 (steam) and Windows 10 (steam).

Great. THanks for testing. Then it works like in PoE1 - with the exception that it procs more often. So it got a little buff basically.

Yes, Blast's and Citzal's Spirit Lance's AoE got changed from a simple AoE-"spell" in PoE1 to a discrete weapon attack in Deadfire. Basically like carnage was in PoE1... while carnage got changed... because it caused so much trouble with on-hit effects and such in PoE1. Let me put it like this:

Crowns for the Faithful in PoE is pretty strong, yes. But there are stronger priest spells. It is strong though not only because of +25 resolve (which would add a stackable +25 bonus to every party member's deflection) but also because +6 INT is very useful for anybody who uses duration- and/or AoE based abilites - like barbarians with Heart of Fury, basically all casters and so on. The combination of +6 PER (= +6 ACC) and +6 INT makes it very good for DoT spells like Shining Beacon whioch gain damage multiplicatively from crits AND INT. Not so much the RES - but +25 deflection is nice as well of course. The OP thing is that it completely stacked with the spell that I believe to be on of the most powerful buffs on PoE1: Devotions for the Faithful. Together your whole party will get +4 MIG, +6 INT, +26 accuracy, +25 deflection and the enemy would get -10 MIG and -20 accuracy. It's like a win button. Priests' level-0 ability Holy Radiance stayed in while the wizards' Arcane Assault got removed. I wonder why? Maybe because with this new system grimoires as a trinket have a lot more impact than in PoE1.

I also tested a bit and a Beckoner/Paladin with any summons, + Zealous Focus + Shared Flames + Mith Fyr is very good in offense (all summons get a +45% burning lash for a good amount of time once you did a FoD attack) and you can easily switch to "survival modus" Ancient Memory + upgraded Zealous Endurance + Lay on Hands to keep summons alive passively and actively. For example if you want to body-block instead of doing higher damage. It's a great multiclass combo and very useful in every party - and also solo I guess. As somebody already pointed out you only get your starting ophrases once combat started, so no invocations from stealth (at least not if you are the one who wants to initiate combat with an invocation in order to circumvent the casting time).

Obsidian is putting out a beta and asking for feedback expilictly. So what's all that fluffy drivel about?

Yes, for the lore. And the dialogue options for Eothas are pleasant to play (benevolent and honest). From a powergamer's point of view it doesn't really matter which deity one picks. I can't count the playthroughs I've done so far. For NPCs I would use the ones that will also be in Deadfire: Aloth, Edér, Pallegina. Since I'm a priest I don't need Durance that much, but since priests are so powerful you can still bring him. He has an interesting backstory. But Kana Rua is also nice. Basically every one of the other companions will work fine for the last slot. I like to change the party all the time anyways.

Yeah it has to be some kind of error. It's totally useless at the moment. Soft Winds is also crappy at best. Same with Ancient Memory which heals around 1 (!) point of health per cycle. Whoohaa! While my Livegiver uses all those crazy moonlight-shmancy-mancy spells that heal like 50 points per 3 secs and whatnot. Also, as theBalthazar already mentioned, Mith Fyr got nerfed from 25% to 20% - while Lightning Strikes got buffed from 25% to 50% (!!!). At the same time some offensive invocations are so powerful now that it's not even funny any more. I don't know who does the balancing in the Deadfire team but that Nalpasca person should drink less Potions of Infuse with Mescaline Essence.

Well maybe some don't know, but I know exactly what I want... and like.

The Priest is the strongest class in PoE, so it's always a good pick. In fact: the char I wanted to carry over to Deadfie is a priest (of Eothas) as well. Sadly, priests in th Deadfire beta are a bit meh, so we'll see if I stick to taht char or maybe do another PoE playthrough before Deadfire finally comes out.

Scepters are also great because the modal is actually very good. For a bit of self damage (which can be healed easily) you get more damage and more importantly: +2 more PEN, which is powerful. Most other modals trade one dps stat for the other, like more PEN but lower damage or more damage but lower ACC or more PEN but slower recovery. Scepters don't do that but simply hurt you a bit for more damage AND more PEN. Only downside of scepters: they are really short-ranged. Rods are also very powerful because the blast works like Carnage in PoE now: it works with nearly all on-hit effects like rogues' strike abilities. This can be exploited pretty easily even if the rod itself is a rel. slow weapon.

An ultimate barb is a solo barb... Point is that RES was a dump stat for many builds if you knew the mechanics - and in Deadfire beta 1 it was even more the case. Now it's not - which basically is a good thing. The way to achieve this may be debateable though because it entails a lot of other changes that might be bad.

I've that ranged weapons are often omitted in balance discussions. Does it mean they are balanced well? Not really. Scepters for example are very strong while the hunting bow is kind of meh (maily due to PEN reasons and accuracy issues). I just think that because melee is so powerful atm it dominates the discussion - also because a lot of people don't test a wide variaty of characterb builds but instead do playthroughs with their favorite and most powerful builds - which are melee based.

That the invocatons take 6 seconds (see skeletons) is ok in my opinion (9 seconds is a bit long I have to agree). Because summons are one of the most powerful/useful things in the game. They prevent your whole party from getting attacked for example. You can easily keep summons on the battlefield for the whole fight as a Beckoner. During 12 secs of duration you can easily summon a new bunch of summons that replace the old ones - even with 9 secs of base casting time. Since summons only cost 2 phrases each for the Beckoner he can basically summon creatures all the time. The first 6 seconds of combat are filled with waiting (because of initial casting time), sure, but you can compensate for that if you for example use a scounting character who lures enemies towards your party's position while the Beckoner starts summoning. The enemies can then be welcomed by a bunch of summons. Plus: Chanter's offensive invocations nearly all have a casting time of 0.5 secs. So hardly slow and weak. If there's a caster that is powerful in this beta it's the chanter.

Those tiny ogres and phantoms of the Beckoner look really ridiculous (in a bad way) though. Would be better if they simply switched out the creatures so that the beckoner simply summoned weaker/smaller creatures instead.

Just played a Beckoner for a few minutes with the help of the console: still feels very powerful.

That's not true. I nearly finished an ultimate run with a barb who had 3 RES and only got killed because of a bug with Battle-Forged + Second Wind (making Battle Forged hit you - which is deadly). I only played PotD except for my first playthrough on normal (which I cancelled because it was too easy). I can't count my playthroughs but I put 3K+ hours into that game. So - I'm not a total noob when it comes to character building and mechanics in PoE. Lots of my melee builds had low or even completely dumped RES because you could easily counter it with items that boost concentration and/or spells/potions like Holy Meditation or Spirit Shield - while pumping self heals with tons of MIG and INT and Vet's Recovery, 14 survival, potions of Infuse with Vital Essence and whatnot. That way you could circumvent the problems of low deflection and concentration completely while focusing 95% on offense and stay pretty sturdy - which is fun I have to admit - but I don't consider it to be good attribute design. Resolve was quite unimportant if you didn't want to build a deflection monster. And now in the first version of the Deadfire beta it was even more unimportant because concentration wasn't even tied to it anymore and the endurance/health system got simplified because "some players didn't get it". Now you can be healed nonstop. So they had to come up with something they could bind resolve to. I just don't think that the current solution was the best way to do that.