Boeroer

That's also the case if RES boosts spell damage an healing. A ranged weapon build doesn't need both too much. I also suggested and supported the "RES influences the durations of afflictions on you" because I think it's an elegant and easy solution. I also had an idea where more RES gives you more charges of Concentration, making it more difficult to interrupt you (making it valuable for casters as well), but I guess that's too complicated and not implemented easily. Even glass cannons might not want to dump RES when that means that afflictions might last a lot longer. In the end it's afflictions like stun, paralyze and petrified that kill your glass cannons. From melee attackers you can simply run away, at least in PoE. Also there were many people who dumped RES in PoE because they could compensate with powerful healing and concentration buffs. Now it's even worse: a melee powerhouse doesn't need RES at all once you have a priest or Livegiver in the party. Deflection is meaningless, loss of health can be healed all the time by the Livegiver and concentration is of no use for melee guys. Truly a dump stat for them now. If dumping RES would lengthen afflictions on them they would not dump it I guess. Long disables are simply annoying and bad for your dps. Really bad.

For example the club is good if you use it as a Skald who is casting Killers Froze Stiff. That invocation targets will. I can't remember now but I think that Carnage does not work with the club's modal, so no AoE will debuff.

It is working as intended. And that is: fists do get the bonus. It's not a bug and not an oversight, but working correctly. Don't mind the somewhat misleading description of Two Weapon Style. In fact you should take all descriptions concerning game mechanics with a grain of salt. The game got patched a lot and the descriptions seldomly got updated properly. Also things like Wounding "Shot" or Stunning "Shots" work in melee or Psychic Backlash says it procs 1/encounter while in-game it really procs unlimited times per encounter. Fists are considered to be "unarmed weapons". You can also see this when looking up "Weapon" Focus Peasant. Fists aka unarmed is included there as well and get +6 accuracy.

Just checked on windows, same beta build: not an issue here. I totally forgot that I still have a windows partition and thus can continue to use the beta. But the linux version seems to be completely broken atm - at least for me.

One of the best things Torchlight has is the pet that runs off and sells your trash loot, then returns with the money. Great idea, although I was asking myself how that pet communicates with the shopkeeper. My cat can't even tell me that she doesn't want to be petted, instead she has to scratch me. Don't think that shopkeepers respond to that in a very civilized manner...

Fluffle old chap! You are German? Hohe Fünf! Could have written all those past messages in German then, dammit. It wouldn't bother me a lot to see weird translations concerning ship's articles in German. But that's mainly because I play on English.

Good joke with the .exe. No, I did not yet try to start the game out of steam. Maybe I will try that next. But I don't think it's a problem that's caused by steam. But I will give it a try. I didn't change anything on my system before encountering this bug. But even if: how could it trigger the chargen screen to appear inside a game? This seems to be a problem of the Deadfire Beta, not something on my system's part. I guess it's simply the new patch. Maybe I never tried to reload a save after it came out since I was only creating chars and testing them against consoled dummies. Only when I tried to do a proper run I did run into this reloading issue - I guess. Maybe I should try to revert to the first version of the beta and see if the problem persists.

Aw man! Good that you tried that class (which nobody likes to play atm because it's so bad).

They really should watch out for consistent benefits of empower for all abilities/spells. At the moment some profit immensely while others don't get anything out of it.

Still in the soulbound factory. They can't automate the animancy process yet and have to assemble the soulbindinding parts by hand. But the boss, Ethon Beaver, promised they are close.

Open console, type Iroll20s, then reopen and type SpawnPre[hit tab to complete the command] cre_dummy. This will place a cre_dummy where the mouse cursor is. If you reopen the console and hit the arrow-up key you can cycle through your command history, repeating the spawn process very quickly. It only takes a few seconds to place a small army of dummies. They also get spawned into the fog of war if you cursor is there (not visible for you yet) and might trigger combat with "civilians". The cre_dummy can't move and has a lot of health but low defenses. He starts hostile and will trigger combat mode if you get close.

I actually never did check if the Carnage of the stag works with Predator's Sense or if only the initial attack roll gets the bonus.

I don't know what you did with the latest patch, but this way I can't play the Deadfire beta anymore. I simply can't load savegames without the char editor opening with every reload and messing up my main char. I uninstalled and reinstalled Deadfire, uninstalled and reinstalled Steam, even upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10: all to no avail. This beta is over for me until you put out another patch I think. Sad but true. And it seems that it's only me who has this problem. Weird...

I PoE one of the most interesting ranged characters is a bow cipher (if you don't like rangers). Other alternatives are a ranged rogue (more weapon damage than the cipher but no spells and literally no crowd control options), a wizard with implements (wand, scepter or rod) + Blast Talent and also a monk who focuses on the Long Pain (lvl 7). But a bow cipher has it all: nice weapon damage, good crowd control, not too squishy.

Erm... before this patch it went like so: fire main hand - fire offhand - reload

That's why most gun ciphers use Island Aumaua + Arms Bearer + Quick Switch nowadays.

Yes, Deathblows and Deep Wounds also work with spell from scrolls. THe source of the spell doesn't matter at all. Just keep in mindthat Deep WOPunds only triggers on spells that do either pierce, slash or crush damage. So, for example Concussive Missiles is a great scroll to use or Twin Stones. Both are also foe-only which is good. You don't want to cast a Maelstrom+Deathblows onto your party members. Other spells that trigger Deep Wounds are Overbearing Wave (there's one version that's 1/encounter and foe-only and that's from the Swaddling Sheet which procs when you catch a crit - and another 1/rest version on the White Crest Armor), MindLance (amulet) and so on. There are a lot of spel binding items. You can decide which ones you like best. I like Sun-Touched Mail and Amulet of SUmmer SOlstice best because they give you 6 Sunbeams per rest and Sunbeam also blinds in an AoE for a pretty long time - which is neat for a rogue. I once did a scroll based rogue build which might contain further information on rogue+spells: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86156-class-build-the-sorcerers-apprentice-twisted-sneaky-dps-scroll-user/ The spell-binding-rogue is quite fun and also works like a normal rogue (if you use dual sabres for example) when all spells got cast. So it's no problem to run out of spells, you can still keep on hitting with your weapons to great effect. A melee wizard, especially with Citzal's Spirit Lance, using Alacrity + Citzal's Martial Power, is very powerful. Also Infuse with Vital Essence can help you to not lose too much health while endurance can be healed with Veteran's Recovery and Concelhaut's Draining spells. Stats can be fairly balanced. I like to drop RES a bit, but the rest of the attributes can be useful. For the unarmed monkish wizard you want to have maxed MIG (so, 21 would be great) and can do with lower DEX because of dual wielding.

Ha! I found out how I can circumvent this issue: when I open the console and type CloseAllUIWindows that chargen window closes and I can start playing without ruining my character. So what's triggering this weird bug? Some visibility or layer-order issue? Edit: No - forget it. All my abilites and spells are lost then... BUMMER!

Does it need to be a blunderbuss? Because you are more independent in the choice of your targets if you use an arquebus. And you can get one very early from Kana Rua. With a blunderbuss you can only deal decent damage to soft targets while an arquebus rips through almost any armor and generates focus. You also don't need Penetrating Shot which is a must when using a blunderbuss. The cooler uniques are with the blunderbusses though.

Every pub of the base game except the Wailing Banshee in Ondra's Gift. So no pubs in the white march.

The really good ones are Acuan Giamas and Daybreak. The first is on the Llengrath map and the second you'll find after jumping into the pit, which is a really cruel joke for every morning star user. Others are Mabec's Morning Star which has stun on crit but also has that stupid wilder slaying enchantment. And the Rose of Salthollow looks really nice but only has a corrosive lash and draining. Which is not bad, but nothing special either. As MaxQuest said, there's always a better alternative in form of a great sword. Acuan Giamas is very good (probably the best weapon in the game as soon as you meet kith casters) if you know how to use it properly, but it comes too late to have a lot of impact. So yeah, pretty bad weapon choice unfortunately. There are other weapons that have the same problem: maces for example. Somebody at OBS doesn't like crushing weapons.

Then they should have inserted those items into the beta in order to get proper feedback on casters. At the moment they get a crapstorm - although a mostly constructive one. and as Gromnir pointed out some time ago, if you wanna analogize to self buff, then you should accept reduced durations. casting time and durations is all part how such spells is balanced. the summoned weapons, with durations equivalent to other self buffs, will sudden become far less useful in the more challenging encounters of the game. HA! Good Fun! No. Because the universal self buff would give you +15 ACC for everything - while the +15 on the weapon is only useful if you attack with said weapon. But if shorter durations are required to make the summoneing process faster then so be it. Somebody who wants to focus on summoned weapons can call forth one and the same weapon twice per encounter - or just use a summoned weapon from another spell level. I'd rather have a fast cast with a shorter duration than a long cast with a long duration.

The game gets balanced around classic mode. So it's a good approach to make casters enjoyable in classic mode I'd say. In classic mode most fights end before you can even dish out two 6-secs spells+recovery (not counting the ones from stealth). And even if they are not completely done - most of the time most enemies died or are near death so that a big and meaty AoE nuke would just be total overkill. Chanters in PoE were good in PoTD but most players who only tried them on normal were disappointed by their slowness when it came to invocations. I wouldn't want to repeat that mistake with superlong casting times. There are spells where I'd say that a bit longer casting times make sense. Especially those which always seemed to bee too powerful for their spell level. But those should be exceptions.

If you want to retain as much "character" as possible when trasitioning to Deadfire I would look at the actual Backer Beta of Deadfire and which builds are currently good. Then I would try to mimic somthing like that in PoE. Currently the following things are working really good: - multiclassing a melee guy with a wizard in order o get the really good self buffs and also Citzal's Spirit Lance (Paladin/Wizard, Berserker/Wizard, Devoted/Wizard, Unbroken/Wizard, Monk/Wizard and so on) - multiclassing a ranged guy with a wizard in order to use Kalakoth's Minor Blights + special abilites (like monk's Lighting Strikes or Paladin's Flames of Devotion for example) - multiclassing a ranger with a monk in order to combine Swift Flurry + Long Pain + Driving Flight (flying fists all over the place) - Sharpshooter/Helwalker with dual scepter + modal (wounds all the time and crazy ranged damage) - Priest/Paladin or Priest/Monk for using the sumoned weapon of the priest with Flames of Devotion or Lightning Strikes(+110% lash damage) - Paladin/Monk for using Lightning Strikes + Flames of Devotion - Druid/Paladin or Druid/Monk for using Wildstrike + Lightning Strikes or Flames of Devotion - Assassin/Soulblade: kill an enemy with a great sword out of stealth, get a ton of focus and kill the next enemy with Soul Annihilation: two enemies dead in the first 3 secs of combat. - Assassin/Evoker: cast a damaging spell out of stealth and get assassination damage for the spell (+200% damage and bonus penetration) - Skald/melee class that raises crit chance, dual wielding. Chanters are very powerful per se in Deadfire atm and the Skald gets phrases when he crits in melee. He also pays less phrases for offensive invocations. This allows him to spam things like Killers Froze Stiff or Hel-Hyraf (very powerful in Deadfire) all the time. - Ranger/Beckoner: having 1 pet and being able to summon 6 skeletons (that scale with level!) is very powerful. You are having your own army and won't get touched at all. and many more... The most powerful of those combos in PoE would be a ranged monk who uses the Long Pain mainly. There is a build in the list (Witch Doctor) which evolves around the Long Pain. One could alter it to get a more "rangerish" vibe. Another thing would be to play a melee wizard with good CON and Veteran's Recovery and aim for Citzal's Spirit Lance, using Concelhaut's Staff in the meantime and making heavy use of self buffs mainly. This is also a quite fun and powerful apporach in PoE. A melee chanter, dual wielding and with good self healing (Veteran's Recovery + Ancient Memory + Beloved Spirits) who focuses on short phrases in order to fire Killers Froze Stiff and Seven Nights a lot would also be good. This could mimic the Skald combo. A rogue with all spell binding gear he can get (Sun-Touched Mail, Amulet of Summer Solstice, Flames of Fair Rhian, Bittercut, Animancer's Boots and so on - spells work with Deathblows and crit conversion - spells which do pierce/slash or crush damage even trigger Deep Wounds) to mimic the Assassin/Evoker. This is also quite powerful in PoE. A rogue with Backstab, Cape of the Master Mystic, unlocked Nightshroud and Feign Death, using Tidefall as main backstab weapon and putting on Munacra Arret, Ring of Changing Heart and Spirit Spiral to mimic the cipher (Soulblade) part OR a cipher with Firebrand, using as many damge bonuses against flanked enemies as he can get (Apprentices Sneak 15% + item like Glanfathan Stakling Boots +10 and survival 12 or even 16 + 2 from item in order to get +20% or even +30% damage). This can mimic the assassin part because you can get up to +55% against flanked targets and that's massive with Firebrand. With Phantom Foes you can constantly trigger flanked on enemies. I also once played a melee unarmed wizard with Novice's Suffering and maxed MIG and heavy use of self buffs, especially Citzal's Martial Power. I tried to mainly use touch based spells (Grimore Slam, Jolting Touch and so on) in order to mimic "special attacks" of a monk. It worked quite well and was a lot of fun. That's because Novice's Suffering works really well with high MIG but totally sucks with crits and damage bonuses. A wizard won't have plenty of the last two ones, so it's perfect. Also, grazes with Novice's Suffering do almost the same damage as with crits. So the low melee ACC of the wizard is no problem at all. But it's easy to get high MIG with a wizard once you get Martial Power. In Deadfire you can easily multiclass a wizard with a monk and make use of the great self buffs of the wizard and combine that with the good survivability and melee damage of the monk. Maybe here the "drunken master" thing would be fun where you take a Nalpasca Monk and a wizard. That are my initial thoughts...

So, this one case where a fireball is good (when cast out of stealth which basically circumvents long casting times) justifies the current state of spells? Or what was the point of bringing up that example? The previous example on the other hand illustrates pretty well what the current problem with a lot of spells is. When will the designers realize that their approach of "long casting time vs. interrupts" deteriorates the combat experience? So either severely buff the spell effects (which still makes aiming and waiting a chore, but at least you get something out of it) or lower the casting times. It felt totally ok in PoE, why did they throw that aboard? Just because of that one idea that longer casting + interrupts make for a better tactical experience? Well that seems to go flooey. Please! Return to the casting times of PoE1 or even better adopt the stuff MaxQuest posted. You can still do that tactical approach if you intersperse some slow but POWERFUL spells where interrupting would be a wise thing to do. But they don't need to have 9(!!!COME ON!!!) seconds of casting time. If you want to be a spell interruptor you might want to have good timing and wait with your long recovery attacks until you see a caster doing his magic and only then attack to interrupt. Or choose weapons/abilities with short recovery so that you can react more quickly. No need to open a time window so big that even a mammoth/slugwalker can interrupt twice during casting times. This gives more tactical depth (since you seem to be into that). But even if there are spells that take 9 seconds to cast: please make them actually do something powerful. 9 seconds to call a summon or to pull some people together for some shirt timespan...? People where complaining about Chanters because they had to wait for ages until they could get off an invocation. How is this any different? You can now summon help when you accumulated enough phrases or/AND the abysmal casting time is over - which is basically 5 seconds after combat ended (watch out, exaggerating here).