Boeroer

1. Sounds like an Ancient. 2. Mystic doesn't necessarily imply a favourable view of the gods. 3. Some are very good (for example Call to the Primordials), others are bad (for example Aspect of Galawain). The Blights are so/so. In certain situations they can be very useful - for example when you are fighting foes who mainly deal damage which the current blight is immune to (immortal tank then as long as it lasts). But it's like roulette. I personally never use them. Ancient's Sporelings are very good, especially in the early game. Fire Stag is generally bad, but it can be abused with the help of a Priest or Shieldbearer Paladin: if you use Barring Death's Door on the Fire Stag you can "explode" it over and over again without it dying which is like casting a lot of Fireballs for free. This trick makes it useful but not overly powerful imo. 4. No. Shifters get the best bonus spell selection if you want to make a caster that's focused on "Decay". There is no drawback to your casting as long as you don't shift, so it's not dumb at all. If nothing else you can use the shifting/unshifting as healing tool. 5. In certain encounters both can be very good. In others they are of zero use. My recommendation would be to take one of them or both until the mid game and later retrain (if you have the feeling you are not using them). 6. It's worse than in PoE (where it was really good) but still okay. But not impactful enough to build a character concept around imo.

Henlo it is I, the Rotghast with the negative deflection:

Ehehehe: Too bad "Living Illusions" only works 1/rest. This stacking with phantoms works with all stackable effects on enemies by the way. Ball and Chain's "Crushing Yoke", Blade of the Endless Path's "Marking" and so on. Saru Sichr's stackable DoT, too of course.

I can get it to 7 focus per sec if I use the Lance of the Midwood Stag (and a druid for Woodskin or Form of the Delemgan) and Stone of Power. But it's not really necessary since (as you said): generates very fast anyway. So I chose a shield setup.

I was sceptic when the Psion was released because I thought the focus generation was too slow (didn't realize it scales with Power Level back then). Now - at least with the Community Patch - it honestly felt too strong, haha. I only ran out of focus when I cast Time Siphon on 4+ enemies - because then my action speed was so high that I could spam Puppet Master more quickly than focus came in. Of course I could have spammed more costly powers - but this apporach was so effective that I hardly did anything else. As Multiclass (for example Psion/Troubadour) you can even alternate between resources which would lead to even more focus to use (also did that some while ago). I don't know if the original mechanic would have felt any different though. A defensively skilled "ranged" character who dominates everything that comes too near (and then the rest) hardly takes any damage in the first place. I wouldn't say cheesy. The CP solution is maybe just a bit too good - at least with my latest character configuration.

Yes, that's also cool. Or hot... I prefer Ben Fidel's Neck though with the Howler who's already carrying Ngati's Tusk and chants Long Night's Drink + Spirit Frenzy. That all does take no action time so he can use his phrases for Ben Fidel's Neck to apply frightened and lower enemies' defenses by 10 as well without using a precious Priest spell slot which I need for my Devotions. Shining Beacon and Ben Fidel's Neck unfortunately do not stack with each other.

I didn't try/test that. I'm using the Community Patch which alters this rule so that only critical hits will stop the focus generation. Combined with a tanky setup and keeping out of melee (weapon & shield, hatchet + small shield, good RES) I never even noticed that my focus generation stopped. With the same defensive setup I guess also a non-modded Psion would have no problems. Since I was casting Whisper of Treason first and then Puppet Master non-stop the defensive weapon set didn't pull me down (no need for weapon attacks). And I could drop MIG which made room for high INT, DEX and PER. It's good to have an alternative power once you meet enemies who are immune to mind afflictions. Like Mental Binding for example.

Once you switch the weapon Wild Shot will stop working. Yes - I thought about a Forbidden Fist/Beguiler who could make great use of both the Fortitude and Will debuff. Applying enfeebled, having +10 INT, Lingering Echoes and then casting Puppet Master will give you dominated ads for a very long time, especially if a crit is almost guaranteed because of the superlow Will defense. Or more simple: I recently had a SC Psion on the party and at some point (not too high a level) my focus was flowing in so quickly that I could spam Puppet Master nonstop. She didn't do anything else usually. The duration wasn't as long as you would have with a FF/Cipher, but it was superstraightforward and the action economy was great - as well as the ability to easily script the AI for that character. So simple yet so effective. She usually could keep every normal enemy in the fight dominated (except one who got attacked by everybody else). Now with a FF/Cipher you would need more setup and micromanagement but you would also be a lot more versatile I guess.

Indeed. I was just discovering this while I tried to build around the bow and figure out some ways to make an SC Wiz bow user more effective. Because during one of my latest playthroughs I found myself using Caedebald's Blackbow (+Phantom) all the time in the late game because it was just more impactful during the longer fights (esp. SSS). With decent INT and attack speed you can perma-terrify up to four enemies. And also with Ring of the Marksman and Spirit of Decay the PEN is pretty, good, too. By the way: without any consumables and party support the Test-SC-Wizard reached 140+ ACC (with normal PER) with the Blackbow. The Phantom 120. Combined with the debuffs it's effective enough for most encounters. Also because you can add another 10 with Devotions. A bit bummed that there is no more Coordinated Attacks for Paladins anymore...

Keeper of the Flame and Ngati's Touch would be great additions, yes. I also tested if those auras will stack when you put them on a phantom, but they will not. Still great because both auras do no hit rolls but the effects just get applied to enemies. I had a party with a Draining Touch/Kapana Taga Sage, a Ngati's Tusk Howler and a Willbreaker Brute not too long ago. Didn't have Keeper of the Flame - but should have. Maybe with Endre's Flog of Obedience on an SC Stalker (Whirling Strikes = AoE Reflex debuff)?

röfl This enemy had 44 Will to start with...

löl

Hello, just a quick discovery I made 5 minutes ago: if you use The Willbreaker with a Wizard and also with the Wizard's phantom you can not only stack 5 instances of "Relentless" (-3 Will per hit) on enemies but actually 2x5 stacks - which results in -30 Will (alongside -25 Fortitude if you use Body Blows of course).* This works really well in combination with Caedebald's Blackbow (I mean if a second Wizard uses it) since it targets Fortitude (weapon dmg) and Will (terrify). The Helm of the White Void applies its bonus to both rolls. In combination with the double Willbreaker dude it's really hard to mess up the Blackbow's shots... )* the Willbreaker also can apply shaken with "Oppressive Fear" which would lower Will even further (-10, stacks with Relentless). Bewildering Blows (-25 Will) also stack with those. Aaand even further down with Miasma...

It also gives +10 ACC to the roll that Spirit Frenzy's stagger effect does. No surprise, but cool. Also works for The Long Night's Drink. Therefore the Helm is kind of mandatory for my Howlers nowadays.

Same. Body- and Bewildering Blows: always on.

Instead of reflecting AoE effects (which isn't moddable if I understood that correctly) those spells could grant an additional resistance to all spells. Like the passive "Spell Resistance" but higher maybe? I don't think that it can be done in this substractive fashion like the original effect (like having 100% spell reistance and then the spell gets removed after a couple of hits) - and even if possible it's maybe too complicated, especially when it works in tanden with the original effect. But perhaps a 50% spell resistance as long as the reflection lasts could be good? An alternative to waht you suggested with "100% reflection to spells but low duration". You wouldn't have to touch the original effect then. Higher tiers of these spells could give higher resistance. Like Llengrath's giving 75% or so. and Minor only 25% or whatever percentage works well. You won't be completely immune to AoEs - but you'd have at least the chance to shrug off a percantage of those - and maybe more if you stack some more spell resistance (like with the passive ability and maybe Xoti's Lantern etc.)? So those don't become obsolete, too. At the same time it doesn't interfere with targeted spells because those get reflected 100% anyway. As I said: you wouldn't have to change the original effect at all. That would make those spells even useful when you don't get attacked with targeted spells. Maybe even more useful especially if you don't get attacked with targeted spells because the spell wouldn't get removed but would alst for a long time, giving you resistance against those AoE spells. Maybe abusable? Or are the situations rare where you get attacked with AoE spells but no targeted spells? What say?

Battle Brothers is turn based. With turn based games my point of added micromanagement doesn't stand because that's only a problem in RTwP (or without pause) games. By the way I played BB nearly as much as Deadfire. It's an awesome game with great general weapon mechanics where weapon types are really distinctive (more than in real life even ;)). But imo it isn't a great example for good unique weapon design. Also the MC is not in the focus (there is none unless Lone Wolf background is chosen) which allows more mechanics that don't put a focus on the character development but more emphasis on the combat system and tactical, turn based combat itself. It has no story and only rudimentary quests - so by design it's a nearly pure combat simulator - and all the systems have to cater to that - while a "proper" RPG like Deadfire (I mean wirb story, char development, quests, branching dialogue, skill use, consequences etc.) also has to fulfill the expectations of role players who want to see their character grow, pick up cool abilities and skills etc. So I don't know if everything that works well in BB would be transferrable to/work with Deadfire. But in general I agree that if the weapon modals (or the general stats) of the different weapon types of Deadfire would lead to more distinction/special use like in Battle Brothers that would be cool. As I said: it seems like the designers ran out of interesting ideas for modals or special properties (like the +Acc of daggers/rapiers/spear or the +PEN of stiletto/Esto etc.) of the different weapon types - or they simply didn't have enough time in the end.

Yeah, I never use it.

Tested it with the console where I can remove/add abilities at will. First of all: there is no water dmg of course. But damage that is done with abilities/weapons which are keyworded with "water" (most of times it's crush damage I think). Althought the Heart-Chime amulet always says "Lunar Heart" on your char sheet it will give you the proper effect, just named wrongly. In the case of Marine Godlike it converts 30% of attacks that are keyworded with water into healing (20% of the damage that would have been dealt). But only if you don't have Wave Walker... ... because Wave Walker does indeed prevent Water of Life from working. It will prevent any water-keyworded attacks from hitting in the first place. Water of Life expects a hit roll with an additional damage roll - so it can transform the dmg into health. But a damage roll will never happen for water-tagged attacks if you have Wave Walker.

Not necessarily, it depends on what gets checked first (Wave Walker or Water of Life) I guess - but it is def. possible. Usually immunity means that attacks get turned into misses. So if Wave Walker gets checked first then Water of Life will do nothing. If Water of Life will get checked first it may be that you'll get some healing. I suspect that Wave Walker gets checked first and makes Water of Life useless. I think somebody slept when designing the Heart Chime Amulet. I will try it out and report what happens later...

That is unfortunate since the Blade of the Endless Paths -in the right hands - is one of the best two handed weapons in PoE. As all weapons it's not overpowered - but it's pretty great because it has speed. Due to the multiplicative speed stacking in PoE, the speed enchantment is the best DPS enchantment (besides wounding). Tidefall is good as well, but it's not "much better" than the Blade otEP. For particular classes/builds the Blade is actually better (melee Cipher, marking Paladin for example). But yes: Tidefall comes earlier (with the right metaknowledge that you'll need 10 mechanics and the scouting mode to even find it) which might lead to the assumption that it should be worse. But that would not follow the basic item design principle I mentioned earlier so... It is a weapon that has exceptional qualities for certain builds - but is not especially good for others. Combos like cone AoE + afflictions and other special attacks like Soul Annihilation and cone AoE + AoE abilities (for example Clear Out) on one hand and Offensive Parry (retaliation) on the other hand make it a very good pick for certain effective (rather diverse) builds. Thus it doesn't "suck" per se but can be a cornerstone of a fun and successful playthrough. It depends on how you play Xoti. You don't need to use something else if you don't want to. Both weapons are tailored to her and her class combos. For me it's a good thing that you don't necessarily have to switch out those (style- and lore-wise) fitting weapons. But you can for example focus on kill-stealing/interrupting with her (and get 3 wounds everytime you do that because of her monk subclass which in turn is great with Rooting Pain) - then you would rather want to use something like Twin Eels for example. Or you focus on her Blessed Harvest spell and give her a Morning Star + modal instead of sickle + lantern so she doesn't miss the spell. Also works well. I once gave the Sickle away to the party Rogue/Barb (skilled him for max Religion) and paired all the speed buffs, Sneak Attack and Deathblow stuff with the up-to 60% dmg bonus and the speed bonus of the sickle. Made Xoti an SC Monk and used the Lantern to gain +4 wounds and +1 Mortification when killing squishies with Inner Death. I like that you can play around with weapons so much. This wouldn't be possible if weapons would be desiged more like in the BG series or so where they just become more powerful the further you go. Granted - this is more attractive to players who play multiple times/try out multiple chars and less for one-time players who couldn't care less I guess.

Lord Darryn's Voulge, Lance of the Midwood Stag, Engoliero do Espirs, Chromoprismatic Staff, Watershaper's Focus, Griffin's Blade, Blightheart, Twin Eels, Slayer's Claw, Sun and Moon, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, Xoti's Sickle, Xoti's Lantern, Frostfall, Ngati's Tusk, Weyc's Wand, A Whale of a Wand, Resounding Call... and I'm sure I missed some. Most of those are quite abscure in their quality to support casting though so I agree that there could have been more obvious "caster stat sticks" where even new players would go like "whoa this is nice for casting ma spells". Willbreaker, rods, Whispers of the Endless Paths, Eccea's Arcane Blaster, Scordeo's Trophy, Animancer's Blade, Essence Interrupter, Lover's Embrace, Pukestabber, Squid's Grasp, Baradatto's Luxury, Magistrate's Cudgel, Rännig's Wrath, Kapana Taga, Spearcaster, Cadhu Scalth, Dire Talon and many more don't fall into those categories and yet don't suck at all. Bad example imo because all three unique war hammers are nice and war hammers in general are a good pick for a Devoted. Also Voidwheel comes quite late. ot that much to have when the weapon you are supposed to have fun with comes to you when the game is in its last stage (sort of, at least without DLCs). Luckily there are other unique great swords before that. Maybe Great Swords vs. Crossbows would have been more revealing. Crossbow is a bad pick for a Devoted. You mean stuff like Essence Interrupter, Whispers of the Endless Paths, Grave Calling, Amra, Sun & Moon, Watershaper's Focus, Spearcaster, Hand Mortar, Gladiator Sword and more don't count? If the weapon/armor enchantments and the upgrading system do something then it's making sure early weapons do keep up. If anything then it's unusual that you can collect weapons that are top tier in terms of their special properties are so potent you will keep usig them from beginning to the end. In fact that is on point of criticism of many players: that you can keep using the early weapons without the need to change to better ones - so basically the criticism is that a lot of early uniques are NOT stepping stones. It's like the two most criticized aspects of the difficulty setting I suppose: "it's too easy" and "it's too hard"... "items can get upgraded and enchanted so you don't have to change them because they stay viable - i hate it" vs. "items can get upgraded and enchanted but you have to change them because they still won't stay viable - i hate it"... I think the basic idea of weapon modals is great. I personally don't need even more per-encounter stuff to micromanage. Party size got reduced from 6 to 5 just because having more active abilities (also with martial classes/builds) means a lot more micromanagement. Adding per-encounter-management to resource-pool-management adds more... well... management. Even with 5 party members I already find myself using "select all, attack" in numerous fights because - while it's less effective - it's just faster. I only wish the modals were a) treated as passives so that modals wouldn't stop to be useful once you swin in active buffs and b) wouldn't show signs of "we couldn't come up with any more interesting stuff so we gave +PEN and +recovery time to a bunch of them". But modals like Body Blows, Overbearing Shot etc. are awesome imo and do exactly what they are supposed to: you activate them in certain situations and then they will give you a real advantage - and you deactivate them when they won't have an impact. That's way better than some 1/encounter ability imo. --- Where I agree is that some weapons that have a special niche should have been more impactful. "Wood Bane" from Vion-Ceth for example used to do +60% (or even +100%? ) of bonus dmg against enemies with plant effects on them - so it was a great weapon once you had druids and rangers in the party. And since it's only additve dmg it wasn't OP with that bigger bonus either, just a really good pick and a nice synergy. I don't know why it got tuned down so much while you can have a lot of other weapons that have significantly more impact on nearly all encounters. Especially because you still needed to apply a spell/ability to the enemy which also is costing you. Other weapons that are supposed to be good against other types of enemies (beasts, vessels etc.) should have effects that are really impactful against those types on enemies and not just a lame dmg bonus or a bit more ACC (looking at stuff like Amaliorra etc.). At the same time you get an arquebus that does double barrel dmg to begin with and then also is THE bane of low level vessels if enchanted accordingly. I mean I get the From Dusk 'till Dawn reference but I would have preferred to see those effects on two different weapons, but whatever...

Okay, I can relate.

While I agree that the difficulty curve lurches around a bit I do def. not agree that a) the loot is indifferent and b) that you don't "suffer one bit" for not using consumables. a) The unique and soulbound items are balanced fairly well but several of them are different enough in form and function that they are worth building whole character concepts around them. If one can do that (and be happy with the result) they can hardly be indifferent. This is not the case for every unique item in the game of course, but for enough of them to call your claim exaggerated. Just because some unique items don't outshine the others in sheer power doesn't mean the loot is all indifferent. The balancing of the loot is not even boring per se - I'd say having a few superpowerful items that would kind of force you to use them or else you'd feel you're gimping yourself - that is boring. To prevent such things was/is one design goal of Josh Sawyer - which I am grateful for. Deadfire greatly improved the enchantment system of PoE. That made sure that no weapon became useless if you liked it for whatever reasons (cool imo) - or if you skilled for great swords and then found the sabre of awesomeness - which would both lead to frustration, especially with players who only play through such games once. So - nice decision imo - but the similar enchantment options made upgrading a bit bland. With Deadfire you get unique enchantment options for all unique weapons/armors which was a lot more work/more expensive but also is a lot more interesting. Because of that I can't see how the loot is indifferent... except when it comes to "power level". As I said that is a design goal which you might or might not agree with. b) It strongly depends on the player's skill level, the game mode, party composition, the meta knowledge and the difficulty settings (incl. god challenges and solo/expert/trial of iron etc.) whether you will miss consumbles or not. I almost never use consumables (because I want to avoid the added item management) except basic food when camping and I'm doing fine - but if I would use them they would make the game a lot easier for me. I think it's great that you aren't forced to use consumables to play the game successfully because you can tune the challange in so many ways to make it work. I would have preferred if consumables would have been implemented in a more inventive/unconventional way (especially scrolls!) - but I think not being forced to use them is a good thing. --- Tl;dr: besides the difficulty curve I think the other two things you mentioned are deliberate design decisions which worked out well - at least for me.

I do not agree because often there's less sturdy enemies in an encounter* and the 20% added duration in combination with other duration buffs (Lingering Echoes, INT, lowered RES, enfeebled) and Power Level scaling can be useful if you only use weapons as stat sticks anyway. Imo it's def. more useful than something like Griffin's Blade for a Cipher for example. Also in combination with the Helm (which is very good for affliction-slinging chars) it just feels right. )* which is also the reason why Blood Thirst can be better than one would anticipate at first glance. By the way: It also works with killing your own summons.