Boeroer

Carnage is raw damage - so only the initial target will feel the awesomeness of the rapier's PEN. Skald with Hel-Hyraf and Killers Froze Stiff (also 50% hit to crit conversion) + Berserker is basically the same with a bit more fuzz. But he can add some nice chants and quickly accumualtes phrases for more invocations.

By the way I only use cipher at the moment as deliverer of Soul Annihilation and nothing else. Because it feels that every other power the cipher could use is just worse than to simply keep on hitting stuff with your weapon and use the focus for instant raw damage. All the powers take too long and last not long enough. Another reason why the chanter is currently so great: his offensive invocations are fast and have good effects. Did you notice the huuuge size of the AoE of the new White Worms invocation? Holy Moly...

Hm, I found that if you cast it as your first spell in combat and let the enemy come to you it wasn't so bad. But I agree that summmoning weapons shouldn't take 6 seconds. You are already not using buffs or CC effects when deciding to summon a weapon - so it better be there fast.

from <= 2m range?

Skaen priest summons stiletto & club. Magran summons sword and pistol, Berath great sword, Wael rod and Eothas flail. The appeal of those weapons is that they scale now. They not only become fine/exceptional and so on with level, they also gain a scaling lash (in case of Berath and Wael it's 60% corrosive lash at lvl 6 which is powerful - the rod also has the lash on its blast AoE). So maybe being universal would be too good. I also don't see how the universal thing could work once you have more than one proficiency. How would you choose which one to use with that universal weapon? You would need the whole list of your possible modals once you equip that weapon. I don't think this is gonna happen.

Fighters themselves can already get a 50% hit to crit conversion with the upgrade of Disciplined Barrage. If you combine that with a Berserker, Rogue or whatever adds more conversion you can crit a lot. A Devoted with an exceptional weapon gets +5 PEN on top of the weapon's base PEN and the modal from proficiency. Then you want to have a Chanter with Hel-Hyraf in the party. It causes -5 AR in a cone, is a fast cast and only costs 2 phrases which you automatically get at start of combat. You also want a priest with Dire Blessing so that the Chanter can graze with Hel-Hyraf. Then you can have one char with maces. They cause -1 AR on hit (not +1 PEN!). This all adds up pretty nicely (and breaks the game, too).

Hm, something's off here. Not only the calculation is wrong (like, completely wrong) but also Biting Whip should only give +0.2 on top of Soul WHip, not +0.4.

Good point. There's something around 0.15 missing in that calculation. So here is at least a bug that is totally worth investigating. It's either UI or the calculation itself which is wrong.

Heh? Look at your combat log (the last frame down below, green markings from me) where it says 48.7 x 1.3: I guess it's not in the list above because those are all additive while the multiplicative part comes after that down below. So... what do you say now?

Yes, but he never will get the highest cipher powers and has a pet running around that you didn't want in the first place. But as I said: Given the few special items we saw in the beta I suspect we'll see some more of those that help with this issue.

I have limited time - and when I buy a game and find out that I don't like it that much I quit. Why should I waste my precious time with it? Of course this has something to to with the perceived investment. If 40 EUR would be a lot of money for me I'd be more determined to finish the game. But if it's not that much for me (and if I think my free time is worth more than that) my motivation to finish it - although I don't like it - very much goes down to zero.

I also think that it's ok to remove graze from weapon attacks if you are a martial noob. But when I think about a fireball and how it's supposed to hit the ground and explodes... at least those AoE spells should always have graze. It's silly that it's hit or miss with them. Same with grenades/bombs and so on.

Oh nice find! Does that also mean that when you multiclass a Berserker with any fighter and get the ability that gives you resistance against intellect afflictions that your frenzy will not confuse you anymore? It should shift down the confuse to a lesser tier - and since confuse is tier 1...? Although it can be benefical to hit friendly targets... Skald/Berserker could summon Skeletons and produce a lot more crits for his invocations I guess.

Yes, but to be honest: once the bug with the false 1-sec recovery for one-handed weapons is patched (should be 3 secs - so a melee char can only hit you times while you cast a 6-sec spell instead of 6 times) they won't get interrupted as much anymore. Also I'm pretty sure there will be items like that give you casting speed and also concentration. There should better be some...

Yes, you need Concentration for the longer casts - else you will get interrupted and be screwed. Maybe a passive ability for casters to raise PEN would be ok. Or they will introduce this effect on grimoires or other items (like giving you universal PEN bonus or so). I guess they will come up with something because complaints about casters is massive atm.

Yes, let's wait an see how that turns out. The difference between 3 secs recovery (should be) and 1 sec recovery (like it's now) is huge.

Yeah, maybe that would be better. Or give it only 15% more or so. You don't want to gimp estocs and the like either. They have a LOT less base damage than for example great swords in Deadfire and once you get exceptional (or superb or whatever awesome) gear then the difference between estoc and great sword in terms of penetration gets smaller (relatively). Or just make it additive. 30% addititve is not so powerful but still ok. 30% multiplicative is powerful because it also has a crazy interaction with crits. And crit chance + damage can be stacked like crazy with the right class combo (as can PEN). So if you achieve a boosted crit and manage to overcome 2*AR (which is easy with the right classes/abilites) your damage gets multiplied into ridiculous heights. This interaction between crits (higher PEN, higher damage) and double PEN (even more damage) has do be altered. Either remove bonus damage from crits or remove bonus damage from double PEN (or make it less or additive). THis is why it's so benefical to stack PEN atm (and crit chance of course - look at the fighter's Barrage and so on). I mean seriously: who wants to have 400+ damage crits? Of course it's fun and a "whoop-whoop" moment the first time (as was my first Soul Annihilation use), but it gets pretty boring and also is a balancing issue.

I didn't know that about the grimoires, nice. I wonder what trinkets for other classes may do. Looking forward to it. Of course, what Obsidian always can do is to introduce items that give you special abilites that usually your class wouldn't get. Like the gauntlets and the tricorne hat in the beta. If they compensate the loss of universal talents with such items then I'm satisfied. Because for me it doesn't matter so much how I can achieve out-of-the-box builds (also for single classes) that work but that it's possible at all.

It's nearly always better to stack PEN because a) you don't know what the enemies' AR is unless you have previously met them or have meta knowledge. Better be on the safe side. b) the multiplicative damage boost when having PEN=2*AR is very powerful.

It's great with Devotions and some debuffs and if you can graze.

Exactly. It's a passive and you get it as an Assassin. Called "Assassinate". It works on the same conditions as Backstab (and stacks with that). So basically it's a Backstack.

You really have to prepare your blasting now: you have to make sure your PEN>AR, that you can graze (making Dire Blessing very powerful) and that you don't get interrupted (get Concentration). And if you did all this you can finally let go of a fireball. Wait... encounter's already over? Oh well...

You mean like proficiencies for elements for example? Like Scion of Flame giving you a modal for fire based abilities (mainly non-weapon related spells I guess)? Maybe not a bad idea...

In some ways the new system is better than the old one. The problem I (and others) see is that penetration has become the no. 1 concern now, dominating everything else.

Well good luck with that. One could check if soulbound weapons are still universal without using a Devoted. I might roll a barb with proficiencies other than dagger and look if I can use any modal (am 99% sure I can't because the UI would have to list all modals I have) and then try weapon focus. Or fighter with weapon spec. Until I do that my guess is that this universal thing with soulbound and summoned weapons is gone and that you need to pick the fitting proficiency (might cause bad feelings for devoted fans if they find a cool new weapon and can't retrain).