MaxQuest

So... area increase is 5 times bigger than area decrease? Or is it not balanced? Increasing area: decreases PL by 5 Decreasing area: increases PL by 1 PL values were confirmed by SChin here. So yeah, it's an asymmetric effect from PL perspective. And according to Volsalex (source): - area increase is: +30-40% (increases safe/foe area) - area decrease is: -40-50% (decrease starts with decreasing safe/foe area) I would also echo Purudaya's suggestion to change this from +1/-5 to +2/-4 or at least +2/-5.

^ Even a smile is not always enough vs Poe's law ^^

A simply auto-attacking monk with dw-fists can deliver a hit every 2s. Applying 500 instances will take 1000s or 16.6 minutes. Now take 5 monks. Or 4 monks and 1 herald...

Seems so. And a cap of 20 - looks like a good spot. Although the fact itself, that it's possible to reach 500 resonance stacks in a such short time - is an indication that something is oversighted in mechanics department. As I understand you stack them via Whispers of Wind (with Garland's Tears/Rake)? If so... while I can imagine a monk hitting everyone in a blink of an eye with his palm; or slashing with a melee weapon, I have hard time imagining how he repeatedly skips the reload of his pistol or the pull of his bow, in melee range amidst a stack of enemies... I think making Whispers of the Wind use monk's fist if he wields ranged weapons - would also make sense.

I have tried a Helwalker of Berath. Sceptre (with modal on) + Tuotilo's Palm, Aloth Armor. And Magran's Favor + Tuotilo's Palm in offset. You get to +10 MIG/INT really fast and Shinning Beacons damage is amplified quite nicely to 230+. But in practice... this was still not good enough. The general fire-priest problems were: - enemies that are fire immune or have high fire AR - enemies on upscaled PotD have relatively high will; and you can't as easily debuff their will in 4m AoE as you could before. You will have to deal with grazes - and that's not good. - this priest easily kills trash... but so do other party dps'ers. And then there is relatively little he can contribute damage-wise vs remaining enemies. - in Deadfire priest can cast only 2 Beacons per encounter (3 with empower-resources). In PoE1 priest could cast 5 (4 + talent). - in Deadfire bosses have up to 7500 hp. While in PoE1 bosses had less than 1k endurance, and priest had enough spell damage to deal with them. Additionally scrolls no longer benefit from character's MIG, INT and PER. Additionally Helwalker of Berath struggled with: - focus fire from enemy archers, and requiring increased amount of healing. Figured that going for Helwalker of Wael was better due to Arcane Veil. Also he was a consistently the weakest link during Neriscyrlas fight. Dracolich was keeping tunnel-visioning him, so I stopped resurrecting the helwalker and it was basically a 4-man fight. - lower PL comparatively to single-class priest, and especially delayed access to next spell ranks. He was able to cast 2 beacons per encounter only starting from lvl 12, and by that time my mindstalker was consistently out-performing him damage-wise by a great margin. So what would I do now, if I wanted to go for a priest-nuker: - built him as a single-class priest of Wael (if companion or hireling) or Berath (if main character). Reason being: Wael provides access to Arcane Veil for extra protection; while Berath provides access to extra DoTs and Rot Skulls. MC can get away without Veil, because he gets extra stats, talents and is usually better supervised anyway. - although there is a late game bonus of going for priest of Magran or Rymrgand. As these are the only ones who have periodic damage spells at rank 9. - or perhaps ditch the idea of nuker-priest entirely, due to encounter design behind boss-fights in Deadfire.

^ Just checked. I have missed a closing </Entries> tag in gui.stringtable I have re-uploaded the mod's archive. Have also taken a look at Ascendant_SE_ResourceCostMult status effect for guidance, and adjusted Soul_Annihilation_Cost_Increase SE accordingly. I.e. moved class and keyword check from AttackFilter to StatusEffectComponent itself. But still, something is amiss, as it looks that SA ability doesn't apply the Soul_Annihilation_Cost_Increase SE, even when it's added to it's StatusEffectsIDs array...

You're welcome)

Josh says it is players feedback that made him re-examine AR/DR system in an attempt to make it less "mushy". Here are a few related links: - one - two - three - four

Afaik elemental talents (Scion of Flame included) still do not work with DoTs on current game version.

Agreed. Soul Annihilation idea is great. But Soulblade playstyle feels very bland because the player will spam SA and only SA. I have took a look at your suggested implementation, and made a quick mod (see attachment) using your blueprint: - Created an unique SA keyword (gui) - Attached that keyword to SA ability - Attached a new StatusEffect to SA ability, that gets applied to the player when you use annihilation - That StatusEffect is of ModifyResourceCost type with 989 value and 10s duration. It checks for SA keyword and cipher class in it's AttackFilter. The possible caveats are: - I haven't tested it yet - Duration might scale with INT While I do completely agree with the problem. I actually don't really like the solution. And am slowly moving towards an alternative approach. The main idea is: Soul Annihilation also deals damage to enemies recently damaged by shred powers. I have managed to do that. But now also need to decouple SA damage from weapon damage bonuses, and weapons that deal damage to more than 1 enemy at a time (like WotEP, Citzal, Rod with modal, and so on). AnnihilationCooldown.zip

I was under impression that they have 0.7s/4.0s base attack/recovery in Deadfire, no? And they had 1.0s/2.33s (aside from Bear and Lion) in PoE1 (source). That be good... Ideally ranger's talent tree could include some mutually-exclusive directions: - animal companion damage - animal companion sturdiness - no animal companion, but more bonuses to ranger himself (...I'd like to have an extra reason besides Driving Flight to multi-class with cipher... and AC doesn't generate focus)

Yes. - fix the Wounding Shot DoT damage calculation - make a new subclass, or adjust Ghost Heart dunno. But personally I'd like a ranger that can be played without animal companion, and has action speed or damage advantage over the base ranger.

Yeap, those are the bosses in BoW DLC. As for perma-stunning - I would not count on this. Majority of bosses have immunity vs half of afflictions and resistance vs another half. E.g: - Scyorielaphas: immunity: intellect, dex, resolve aff; resistance: might, perception aff - Jadaferlas: immunity: intellect aff; resistance: might, dex, resolve aff - Guardian: immunity: intellect and resolve aff; resistance: might, dex, perception aff - Neriscyrlas: immunity: intellect aff; resistance: might, dex, resolve aff - Belranga: resistance: body aff, perception aff, resolve aff. - Huani O Whe: immunity: intellect and resolve aff; resistance: perception, dexterity, might aff - Dorudugan: immunity: mind aff; resistance: body aff; Basically you can't stun or paralyze anyone notable (even if you overcame their usually high fort/will). Yeah, unlike in WoW, DoTs in Pillars start damaging at 0s. And yeap, Dance of Death gives you +1 wound and +3 accuracy every 3s, starting immediately from 0s. Multiple DoT instances from Wounding Shot don't stack in Deadfire. The current duration gets refreshed and that's it. Also I have quickly checked it right now, and it seems there is a bug with tick damage calculation. First of all it doesn't tick for base 20% every 3s as advertised by tooltip. Instead it uses those 20% as total DoT damage. So at base values, instead of ticking thrice for 20%; it attempts to tick for 6.67%. Additionally the total duration is increased by INT and power level; so the higher these are - the lower DoT dps is. And there is something more to it, since it looks that not only dps, but even total DoT damage gets lower when you increase INT values. But I don't have the time right now to accurately test it.

^ Iirc Beguiler's Soul Whip adds 20% dmg bonus, while Draining Whip only 10%.

^ You could also use related food/drugs: - Immunity to intellect afflictions: Captain's Banquet - Resistance to Intellect: Luminous Lobster, Svef

1. Effectiveness of Virtuous Triumph is limited first of all by amount of enemies in an encounter. In my last run I've used empower to replenish resources... perhaps 10 times at most. And the fights I really wished I could replenish resources a second time were: The Messenger, Neryscirlas, Beast of Winter, all with over-inflated health pools and... single. 3. Wounding Shot delivers damage and in addition to it places a DoT on the target. DoT ticks 3 times at: 0, 3s and 6s. Each tick deals raw damage equal to 20% of the shot's damage. This raw damage can be furthermore increase by MIG. So if you have 20 MIG and just made a shot for 50 dmg, the DoT will tick for: 13, 13, 13. Regarding Eternal Devotion: for some reason I thought it doesn't stack with Shared Flames. But huh... they are different effects, and you know? perhaps they might... 4. Fair point 5. Most likely Retribution works only with attacks that go through attack resolution. 6. If you intend to keep attacking with the same rod - yes. If you make an attack with rod_1 and switch to rod_2: nope. Afaik switch recovery is a strict 2s and is not influenced by usual recovery-affecting stuff. There is only black jacket passive (that reduces it by 1s) and Quick Switch talent (that reduces it by 1.5s) 7. My mindstalker started to feel decent right after leaving pierce-immune skeletons behind on the starting island. Good from lvl 7, and a beast from lvl 10 onward. But that's the thing with ciphers in general and ascendants in particular... they shine only if you have figured out how to generate focus really fast. More ciphers for me then ^^

Virtuous Triumph is nerfed to 25% now So if you face 7 enemies and lets say kill 4 of them - on average you'll get 1 zeal. And during boarding fights - you might get on average 2 zeal. That's not bad, but still a bit underwhelming. Got it) As for Ghost Heart dps... - Marked Prey is almost the same thing as Sworn Enemy. - Accurate Wounding Shot has +20 accuracy and a 60% raw DoT, which in my book beats +acc and lashes from Flames of Devotion. Plus I always take a companion paladin to provide Shared Flames anyway. - additionally ranger has claw abilities (for bonus acc/dmg), Marksman, Gunner, Survival of the Fittest and ofc Driving Flight. - and a minor bit of utility via Concusive Tranquilizer (which can be really helpful vs certain enemies). While Bleakwalker has upper hand in: - FoD applying Sickened (which on average will reduce enemy hp by ~15-25%; and fortitude by 10) - Being slightly more self-sufficient with Sneak Attacks - Retribution The idea was to quick switch rods with modal on, 2 times in a row and thus apply arterial/debilitating and gouging/confounding in AoE. Switch to x + blunderbuss (with modal on) and get the recovery reduction. And either stay that way or switch to 4th set. Regarding Arcane Dampener - true that. Although I wonder what the interaction is, if monk has: - Clarity of Agony: -5s, -50% hostile effect duration - Strand of Favor: -15% Hostile effect duration - Ring of the Solitary Wanderer: When there are no allies nearby, gain Self: -35% Hostile effect duration Does Arcane Dampener duration get reduced? or it suppresses these effects first? Ciphers are indeed far weaker in Deadfire than in PoE1. But my streetfighter/ascendant was still doing ~60% of total party damage with 2 other off-dps hirelings in it. He required a lot of supervision though.

First run: with companions only (Eder, Aloth, Pallegina and Xoti/Maia). Second run: with Aloth and 3 hirelings. Third run (planned): with companions built as custom hirelings.

The main benefit of stealth is -85% recovery time for that one attack. And assassins get additional bonuses ofc. Technically, an assassin could 'backstab' from stealth with a heavy hitting weapon (arquebus, great sword, pike, quarterstaff, hunting bow, or even better: rod with modal on). Almost immediately make a second shot (due to -85% recovery time) with Devastating Blow. Go invis (with Assassin's Boots passive). Rinse-repeat. And if he didn't kill anyone, he could switch to Red Hand, make two shots, and switch to his third set for some consistent dps. As for spells... you just do the same with fireballs and shadowflame.

Streetfighter is all about fast recovery. And if you multi-class with a class with limited resources you might burn through them relatively fast. Also you want to use blunderbuss modal (which means ranged, and rules out Shattered Pillar). I think going for Gunhawk, Ghost Heart, Bleak Walker, Kind Wayfarer, Black Jacket is ok. And Streetfighter/Nalpazka or Streetfighter/Ascendant being also a good if not better bet. Nalpazka has a better wound generation than base monk, without being as squishy as Helwaker (plus you already know that Turning Wheel works with ranged attacks as well) As for Ascendant... multi-classing with streetfighter allows to reach max focus really fast (here was a topic about it). And after that you just spam your powers at half recovery. For early and mid game this mostly means 1 Mind Blades cast (for 100-200 total dmg) every 2s. The catch though is: it is getting boring after awhile.

It's an oversight, but a good one in my book. Also been the same in PoE1. I would prefer the tooltip being accommodated, rather than effect.

That's a good question. But I don't have complete info on this. On the other hand, I have quickly looked through gamepressure guides (for BoW and main game), and when combined with what I recall of my last 2 runs... majority of checks seem to be for flavor. Especially Insight. Sure it pops up a lot, but mostly it displays some information that is either not needed in order to continue the quest, or you can get that info later or via using other checks. I have noted a few notable checks from those guides here: So to answer now your question: It looks that MC can unlock majority of more-or-less important stuff (in main game and BoW) with just: - Diplomacy: 8-9 - Bluff: 6-7 - Intimidation: 2 - Streetwise: 4-6 - Insight: 5-6 ^ These are including party assist And it's a good idea to have some party member with: - 5 Religion for shrine detection. One party member with: - 6 Survival, 4 Stealth and high Perception - for scouting. One anti-trapper, with: - Mechanics: 16? - Stealth: 4-6 - preferably frontliner - because he's closer to the traps - and either have high PER, or let the scout detect, and disarmer - disarm. And generally everyone having: - Stealth: 2+ - Athletics: 3-5 (to avoid injuries from failed climbing and stuff like that) Also would like to note (kinda obvious info, but anyway): - characters get 20 skill points as they level up - characters start with +2 in 5 predefined skills. Or if they multi-class: +1 in 5 predefined skills per class. - with Berath's Blessing they get +2 for every class skill. (but never +4) - background provides extra 2-3 predefined skill points - MC can get +1 in each skill via training (there are 8 trainers that give +1 in two skills) So at level 20, MC can have 69 skill points just from those above.

Any interrupt works, provided that it landed while the enemy was casting. And that can be a problem... a terrified/stunned/paralyzed enemy won't be casting anything. Also there are different abilities that interrupt. Some interrupt only on crit (e.g. Fan of Flames). Some on crit/hit (e.g. Crippling Strike). And only a handful interrupt on crit/hit/graze (e.g. Knockdown). Haven't tested. And can't say for now. In PoE1 for reference there were checks for "isAlly" - which would check just that (and even charmed enemies would be considered allied); and "isPartyMember" - that would take only companions into account.

I've never seen that item. What it does? Or do you mean Hearth Defender's Scale armor? (if yes - do agree, it's a really powerful item). Trickster is great, but soulblade is a bit too greedy for him. I mean: soulblade wants to squish as much damage as he can, dump the resulted focus in annihilation, and he won't be spending his time on crowd-control stuff. How about a soulblade/assassin with assassin's boots instead? @OP. I am in the early stage of planning a somewhat similar party. MC Cipher + Eder + Aloth + Pallegina + X. Although I'll be adjusting companions as if they were hirelings (because "I want to squeeze in as much as I can" by your own words ^^). Since I haven't made my mind completely, I can't lay down the final party composition, but can share a few thoughts on party building.

^ Afaik it's viceversa. You usually benefit only from your own skills. But in certain dialogues and scripted interactions you also get assisted by party members. As for Prismatic Quarterstaff - you get only +0.5% damage and action speed per 1 metaphysics point. Going to 20 instead of just 12 gonna give you only +4%. So if you want to invest more in the chit-chat stuff, you can invest only 12 points into metaphysics (get 3 more from assist) and put the rest in diplomacy/streetwise/whatever