Boeroer

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.

Like... everything? But never mind - I just came home and checked ingame. It seems that the "only" nerf is that the creatures have 50% health now? Still an advantage over one single summon with 100% health. Two summons can do two things at the same time and they block more space (even if they are smaller). Especially if you use Brittle Bones this might not even be a disadvantage because after 12 secs the summons will disappear anyways. Before the nerf they were just "weaker" (not specified) - whatever that meant. Don't know if it's THAT terrible, but I will have to playtest first. Before this nerf the double summons where clearly too powerful.

I did it with a wizard (Concelhaut's Staff) and a monk (Torment's Reach). With the rest of the classes I failed so often that I didn't try it further. I really wanted to do it with a Bleak Walker but he wasn't able to really hurt Odema... so I quit. A pike or quarterstaff is def. the way to go. Once you have one of those weaklings in front of you you just keep hitting the enemy behind that one while he body-blocks for you. Obviously doesn't work with a barb.

Er... what?

To that a I agree mostly. They are possibly breaking more stuff while they want to patch up resolve which was a dump stat for almost everyone because concentration was no longer bound to it. But instead of adding something new and useful to resolve (like for example that it influences afflictions on you) while leaving the rest of the stats as they used to be - they toppled the whole thing over. While I'm not totally against the change when I only look at STR and RES I also fear that this change may lead to a whole string of consequences that are not intended. Like now we will suddenly have nukers and healers with a lot of deflection. Before the change they were strong, now they are masters of melee defense... and stuff like that. Still the druid is not really gimped with this change. Still works perfectly well. It's just not possible any more to min-max him in such a way that he can do everything very well that a druid can possibly do. Don't know if this is a bad thing to be honest.

Does rod's blast use RES as well? I don't think so...

By the way: a Bleak Walker/Skald with Shared Flames + Mith Fyr was fun to play. You party gets some good lashes that way. Had to console it in though because lvl 9 is not enough.

I didn't actually check the Beckoner nerf. What's it now? Longer summoning time? That would be stupid.

I also didn't check if Carnage crits count as melee crits for the Skald (I checked with Skald/Wizard with Citzal's Spirit Lance though and it doesn't!). But a Berserker/Skald can stack 50% + 50% hit-to crit conversion in an AoE through Tenacious + AoE paralyze - which is pretty great per se even without faster phrase replenishment. The conversion also works for successive paralyzes on the same targets. And with the frenzied attack speed + dual weapons the Skald/Berserker can easily keep whole groupes stunlocked. Also, a Mage Slayer barb with a Skald can combine the special interrupting effect with the Anti-Concentration chant. Such a Skald/Mage Slayer is really good at taking out enemies who use abilities a lot. I did a one-on-one with Broodmothers and Skulking Terror and so on and they couldn't get off their abilities. Quite nice in a party I guess. But yeah: that has nothing to do with weapon proficiency - sadly. I don't see that many synergies here. I did a test with Blunderbuss + Combusting Wounds, basically a Black Jacket/Wizard with 4 slots and 4 Blunderbuss, using Quick Switch. I was trying to cast Combusting Wounds on an enemy and then empty my blunderbusses on him to see if the 20 pellets would cause 20 instances of Combusting Wounds while the Powder Burns would hit the adjacent enemies at least 4 times for 4 parallel Combusting Wounds - but CW seems to not work at all atm. What works really well are all sorts of combos with rod's blast. Blast + Swift Flurry is hilarious as is blast + Driving Flight. Even combined that with a Monk/Sharpshooter and combined blast + Swift Flurry + Driving Flight. Which basically breaks the game a bit. I had to use the console to add Driving Flight though because lvl 9 is not enough to get it with a multiclass char.

The Skald and Beckoner are pretty powerful. The single class Skald gets Killers Froze Stiff pretty early and because of the reduced casting cost he can actually start with a cast of Killers and then go in and crit the heck out of everyone he's paralyzed. Also works great in multiclass with any melee class that either speeds him up (monk with Swift Strikes and Swift Flurry) or grants him melee crit conversion (Berserker, Rogue, fighter). Beckoner is the perfect body blocker. Actually it's too good I think. I didn't try the Ancient Brittle Bones with a Beckoner in the new beta version . In the first one Brittle Bones didn't work. But just imagine having 6 Skeletons on the map... They said in one of the recent vids that they will have to nerf him because he's just too good. So they probably did that.

I said that he lacks passive abilities. The problem is that the shifter has to pick certain spells because there is no other option. He's not very gimped just because he has to raise RES a bit if he wants to cast a damaging spell. Also, there is no loss of option in this case. There is oy a less min-maxing way of playing a shifter who can deal good melee damage and ALSO deal good spell damage. At least if you don't mean that min-maxing is the only option of course. I'm not even a fan of the new STAR/RES, I only think this whining about how classes like cipher and druid are gimped now is a bit exaggerated.

Or he's much more powerful than a ranger to begin with and can afford to have balanced attributes... Also, as a druid you can specialize. You don't necessarily be great with nuking AND shifting AND CC AND healing. The ranger can only do one thing with such focused attributes, and that's shooting stuff from afar. If you want a specialized melee druid you'd take a shifter and drop RES. You don't need it to deal damage and high INT and PER would be enough to make the Storm worthwhile even without a lot of spell damage. It's the disabling effect that's important here. A specialized classbuild can always drop a stat. If you want to be ok at everything then you obviously can't. Like a ranger who not only wants to shoot stuff but also wants to be great at healing his pet all the time and provide long lasting DoT-effects: he'd have to raise RES and INT. So, comparing a druid (who's supposed to be great at every druidic aspect) to a ranger who's only supposed to shoot stuff and then say "but look: the druid needs more stat points to be good at all those things" is not fair game.