MaxQuest

We can also try confuse the enemies (esp. barbarians and AoEers). This way there is a higher chance they will hit our charmed party members.

Hard to tell. Both Streetfighter and Helwalker have their pros and cons. The biggest cons of Streetfighter for me is that you can't use Captain's Banquet; and have to pay attention when using Suppress Affliction. And those of helwalker: enemy rogues being able to focus-fire you; and slower 'ascension'. I'd say roll with the one you want from RP point of view. P.S. Regarding rogue abilities: I don't really find Pierce the Bell that useful on ranged ascendant/streetfighter. There is Devastating Blow - as one of the most time-efficient ways to max focus. And there is Confounding Blind which is quite decent with a multi-pellet blunderbuss in main hand. Enemy gets around 30 deflection malus, and Stormcracker from offhand greatly benefits from it. And lastly there is Debilitating Strike - which first of all is cheap (1 guile) and can instantly satisfy conditions for deathblows.

Nope. Have arrived to the same conclusion. P.S. And do like Boeroer's suggestion of removing +1 rage cost penalty; but reducing max rage pool by 2 instead. If needed, corpse-eater can have a small penalty to deflection and reflex while... consuming. Incendax's suggestion is also nice and looks better than the current state.

I don't quite see how Trickster can work with Ascendant. Character wants to max focus asap and start spamming cipher powers. If he uses trickster spells instead... than he's not better than trickster/fighter. P.S. Cipher dd powers have mediocre base damage. That's why spell-damaging ascendant wants max MIG, since it's one of the best ways to boost spell damage. And either go helwalker for even higher MIG (+lightning strikes) or streetfighter (for faster cast-spamming). Thundercrack may be not the best per-encounter focus-generating weapon. But it has the shock lash and can be enchanted with per-rest Storm Rune Shot. Rune Shot can max your focus alone, also it can win majority of deck-to-deck fights, which is nice in the early game.

I see that both #1 and #2 are ascendants. Since soulblade is not considered, I'd say definitely go for a ranged build. Because currently you can max focus in 3-6 seconds from the start of combat with firearms, and thus there is no need to put yourself in melee range. Even in the early game, one can take Hand Mortar in main hand, Scordeo Tropy in off hand; enable both proficiency modals and spam Crippling Strike. Mainhand reload is waved. Offhand reload (with modal and streetfighter passive) is around 1.3s. So you basically make 2 shots every 3s. Moreover, if you need max focus even faster, there are per-rest abilities: - Wild Barrage from Kitchen Stove - Storm Rune Shot from Thundercrack Pistol

Ok, just checked Turning Wheel. It does add fire lash to non-dot damaging spells; and to ranged attacks; even if localized tooltip mentions melee attacks only. Lightning Strikes add lash only to weapon attacks. As for Eternal Flame... never used it. But Shared Flames do add a lash to spells.

Xoti: priestess (of Gaun) / helwalker Aloth: wizard / unbroken Aloth: illusionist / unbroken Pallegina: wayfarer / skald Pallegina: wayfarer / troubadour

So so. Soul Shock gets only +5% damage per power level. And I wouldn't mind it's base damage increased by around 15%. As for damage output, here's my level 7 ascendant/streetfighter (22/9/19/19/17/7) in Oathbinder's Sanctum: screenshot 241 total shock damage, when hitting 5 enemies. I must confess I didn't even learn Mind Blades (in Deadfire) until your reply. Was expecting that it only has 5 bounces, and stops on miss like in PoE1. I have tried it right now. And through the total damage on average is x2-x1.5 lower than from Soul Shock... it has much faster cast time. I like it. Here's screenshot from the same fight: 116 slash damage. So rawly speaking: - soul shock hitted 5 enemies; dealt 241 shock damage; and can be spammed in my case every 4.3s - mind blades resulted in 1 hit and 7 bounces; dealt 116 slash damage; and can be spammed every 2.3s ... and if there are less than 5 enemies, mind blades seem to have an upper hand. Btw, have to note that each bounce gets an increasing damage penalty: That's a nice idea. Lightning Strikes + Helwalker might and int bonuses look sweet. But it's kinda hard to factor if they do outweight the already mentioned streetfighter percs: - Heating Up passive, which is basically same as +100% recovery speed - nice full attacks, especially Devastating Blow - Sneak Attack, Deathblows, Backstab Getting Ascended takes about 1-2 full attacks or 3-6s. I'll take my current cipher, will try to imagine if he multi-classed in helwalker, and make a rough comparison: Ascended/Streetfighter @ 22 MIG (dmg coef: 1.36 * (1 + 0.2 + 0.35) = 2.108): 36-51 Soul Shock every 4.3s (2.4s attack + 1.9s recovery) | ~10.1 dps Ascended/Helwalker @ 32 MIG (dmg coef: 1.66 * (1+ 0.2 + 0.35) = 2.573): 44-62 Soul Shock every 4.9s (1.9s attack + ~3.0s recovery) | ~10.8 dps Not bad. Helwalker might take a bit more time to get to ascendant state, but at least he doesn't have to be distracted and can use Captain's Banquet. Lightning Strikes and Turning Wheel tooltips mention that they add elemental lashes only to weapon attacks. Currently running in Deltro's Cage plate. I like heavy armor in early game on everyone. Plus there is +2 shock PL, and no one focus fires my cipher

I have that tab opened all the time ^^ Yes and no) It definitely has a great impact (and especially if solo'ing). Using it might feel even a little cheap. But have to note that by the time I got it (in my last playthrough with a 5-man party), I no longer needed it. I actually even avoided using Ringleader, because it was faster to kill enemies while they were susceptible to foe aoes.

It depends on perspective. Looking at power's impact during a fight, Disintegration/1000 Cuts, Ring Leader and Amplified Wave do stand out to me. But it also matters on the build and cipher's niche in party. Not to mention how early a power can be acquired. For spell damage-dealing cipher, my (favorite + most-used)/2 powers are: (from top to bottom) - Amplified Wave - Soul Shock - Silent Scream - Disintegration - Detonate - Echo - Puppet Master Streetfighter/ascendant damage dealer feels quite decent in v1.2. Not as OP as devout/ascendant prior to v1.1.. but still deals respectable total damage. P.S. I haven't tried a pure cc-focused cipher in Deadfire yet. They don't seem to be reliable and needed enough. But Dominate/WT/Ringeader and Secret Horrors do stand out for such a cipher.

Googling shows that "Norwegian Blue" is a fictional parrot species. (source) Russian version is correct, but feels weird. Writing норвежский синий like that, kinda means that almost everyone knows what it is. Like with russian blue cat. But this is not really the case. That's why it's better to either add quotes, or specify that's a parrot: > У вас есть норвежский синий попугай? Or even better switch that to plural, since the customer will likely want to view all available parrots before purchasing anyway: > У вас есть норвежские синие попугаи? Or, if you are 100% sure that the person you are talking with, will understand that you are asking about parrots: > У вас есть синий норвежец?

1. Nerilei class: ascendant/devout patch: v1.0.2 race: wood elf origin: explorer from Deadfire * the actual battle gear is Miscreant's Leather and dual-pistols (Scordeo Trophy + Stormcracker): 2. Na'mi class: ascendant/streetfighter patch: v1.2.0 race: human origin: mercenary from The Living Lands

Am guilty of examining weapons first of all from cipher perspective ^^ There are waves, but not of wotah)

Oh, that's good to know.I like this approach of lash scaling with deity matching dispositions. But dam, this really should be in the weapon's tooltip. Watershaper's Focus does a terrible amount of damage, even if it bounces. I don't know why you would think it's directly comparable. Watershaper's Focus is a situational weapon. For that matter, the spiritual weapons are also mostly situational weapons as it is (and it seems that this is what Obsidian is deliberately balancing for).Tehee, to be honest I just didn't notice that Watershaper's Focus has non-standard base damage.Was thinking: that's like a usual rod, but with bounce! Like Keybreaker which had base damage of usual scepter but also had bounce. I have checked Watershaper's Focus now ingame. And yeah, thanks for pointing out, it's a bit of dissapointment: - mundane rod base damage: 15-24 - watershaper's focus: 9-12 + 1 bounce (which deals damage to adjacent enemy with -25% damage coef.) The good thing through is it's property Ondra's Wrath, which: - seems to trigger from main hit, bounce, and blast hits. (vs 9 dummies it was triggering all the time) - aoe crush damage for ~12-15 base damage, seems to generates focus. (ascendant is happy; vs 4-5 targets with rod modal on, one swing can generate full focus)

Feeling the same. If there is an upper cap, it's like something is spiraling out of control and game mechanics can't handle it, which denotes a poor system. Although am ok with bottom caps. Like: at least 20% of damage always go through. An experienced player will find a way to deal more than threshold; but it might help someone less experienced against blocking in combat when they just can't deal damage and being forced to reload the save. Exactly this) -0.5 from additive graze is less stingy, when you have high MIG, can backstab or deathblow) Yup. Been suggested: v4 and v5 from here. Although if graze is to be multiplicative, imo crit should be too. If under-penetration is multiplicative, over-penetration should be too.

Cyberpunk 2077 The Elder Scrolls VI Skull and Bones Edit: forgot Dragon Age 4 P.S. Would be also nice to see Skywind, PoE 3, Warcraft IV and Neverwinter Nights 3 if they are ever released...

They didn't mention they fixed the Mob Stance recursion in changelog To be precise v1.1.0 writes: - Mob Stance - Only strikes a single enemy per kill. - Swift Flurry will no longer recursively proc infinitely. So Mob Stance is still recursive, just the chance of recursion happening was heavily and indirectly decreased. But Waha Poraga doesn't case) The 2 extra attacks on adjacent targets seem to also trigger Mob Stance proc. Since they were able to fix Swift Flurry recursion, I think it would be nice to do so for Mob Stance as well. If an attack is originated from Mob Stance (or has Mob Stance in it's, uhm, stacktrace) - it should not trigger further Mob Stance procs. And if it no longer be recursive, it can even perhaps be buffed to hit up to 2 adjacent enemies on kill... Yeah, Dota uses PRD for procs now. That would solve it, yes) But it would hurt a bit when you use weapons with procs. For example a Mob Stance generated attack hits an adjacent target, but your weapon proc/effect/debuff, won't trigger because it's a secondary effect. And there is no recursion in this specific scenario, nor balance-threat, thus I think it should be allowed... I think allowing chain-proccing should be examined on per-case basis. While recursion should be always eliminated. Btw, since you have mentioned Dota, imagine what happens when two tethered Wisps with "Attack Tethered Ally's Target" talent attack same target ^^ Or what happened with recursive blade mails, or cross-tether regen, before they fixed it)

And that's why you always stay away from recursive scenarios in video games... No matter the proc chance.

I'm pretty sure that's indeed the case Original design was making a heavy emphasis on "cool". Josh really likes to repeat this word ^^ At the same time, I recall Josh mentioning either on twitter or tumblr that they asked one of their min-max employee to go through all the abilities and items stuff. And these changes were incorporated in v1.1 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Brb, checking again what's Josh definition of trash options is ^^

Confirming Dr<3 reply regarding priest spiritual weapons having only +20% lash. Here are their tooltips/values for v1.1.1: Tbh I only find Woedica Fists somewhat interesting. While all other priest summoned weapons look to be strictly worse than regular uniques. I mean why lose an ability point, a spell slot and 3s of cast time to summon Sword of Magran when you can take Watcher's Blade instead. Or for example compare Rod of Wael with Watershaper's Focus. Btw, is there any difference between +x% lash (listed in weapon properties, like on all spiritual weapons) and +x% damage (listed in weapon's damage field, like on firebrand)?

You do have a point here. Rangers have lots of abilities and talents tied to their animal companion. But don't have enough of marksman stuff. They get access to Wounding Shot and Gunner in the early game. Plus Driving Flight and Twinned Shot in the late game. Although I find Wounding Shot and Driving Flight amazing, do still wonder if ranger can achieve 75% of dps of monk or rogue. Not to mention that the last two also inflict a range of various afflictions on the enemies, which additionally benefits the party. Edit: I think adding a few forked abilities focused on ranged combat and party utility would ameliorate the situation. Dunno, something like the following sketch ideas: > Marksman: +5 acc with ranged weapons; with 3 mutually exclusive upgrades: Marskman aura: +5 acc with ranged weapons to all party members in 4m radius Denting shots: +5 acc with ranged weapons; consecutive ranged critical hits on the same target, lower enemy crush and pierce AR by 1 (stacks up to 5 times) Steady shots: +5 acc vs hobbled targets with ranged weapons; +20 acc vs immobilized, stunned or paralyzed > Aspect modals (like fighter's stances):Aspect of the Viper: +25% taken and inflicted damage with raw dots from talents and weapons. Getting hit with melee weapons has 33% chance to sicken the attacker. Aspect of the Fox: +10 dexterity, -30% damage coefficient Aspect of the Wolverine: continuously alternate two states: "Rabid" and "Apathetic". Each has a 10s fixed duration. Rabid gives +33% action speed with weapon attacks. Apathetic gives -25% action speed with weapon attacks. Can't switch the aspect while rabid and in combat. > Which could be furthermore upgraded (like the already mentioned fighter's stances):Improved Aspect of the Viper: raw dots from talents and weapons also heal the ranger for 25% of damage dealt Improved Aspect of the Fox: evade the first weapon attack from every enemy, if not being affected by any body affliction. Improved Aspect of the Wolverine: critical hits while Rabid prolong Rabid duration by 1s and apply a stackable debuff on target that increases damage taken by 10% for 8s.

Nice balance changes. Do like most of class related ones, especially fighter, trickster, druid and cipher. There are a few questionable updates through: Ryngrim's Enervating Terror - cast time (average->slow) and aoe nerf (2.5 -> 1.5)- this is a plain overnerf Triumph of the Crusaders - healing nerfed by x2.5- is also a bit too harsh. It belongs to tier 4 which contains the beacon and devotions. It was already hard to justify taking and using triumph over them. And Their Fear Followed 6s Paralyze -> 4s- this also feels like a little bit overnerf. It's hard to justify taking cc with such low durations unless they have a decent bonus to accuracy. Whisper of Treason - range nerf.- tbh I'd prefer it to keep it's original range, get it's duration nerfed even more (down to 12s), (optionally) move it to tier 2 powers, but (!) have a +10 bonus to accuracy or make it benefit twice from character perception bonus. Greater Lay on Hands Zeal Cost 1 -> 2.- I find that it was very good at 1 zeal. While at 2 it is too costly. The upgrade bonus needs to be buffed slightly to compensate for the practically doubled cost. P.S. It would be also nice to see the Draining Whip nerfed from +100% focus gain -> +80% or +70%, but have the base damage of cipher powers buffed by ~20%.At the moment, you have plenty of focus as cipher, but the damaging powers are not worthy enough. The idea is to shift the situation a bit towards what we had in PoE1: if you have figured out how to optimize the focus gain, you are rewarded with ability to cast powerful stuff. P.P.S. I also echo Dr. Hieronymous Alloy remark about the need of keywords on ciphers powers (fire on Soul Ignition, acid/corrode on Anti.Field, etc).

Alchemy skill was intended to increase the effects from consumable drugs, potions and poisons. But afaik it affects everything that has the poison keyword, at the moment. I think the fact that alchemy affects insect plague and alike spells is either oversight, or the scalling is too far off.

It gets capped at 1.00) Armor penalty reduction effects can only reduce the penalty up to 0.

The first party was: - Eder (fighter) - Pallegina (herald) - Aloth (battlemage) swaped with Xoti (priest) - Maia (scout) - MC (devout/ascendant) Now I am thinking about going for: - unbroken/illusionist - shieldbearer/troubadour - wayfarer/skald - helwalker of wael or berath - mc: streetfighter/ascendant