MaxQuest

PoE1 Resolve: +1 deflection, +2 will, +3 concentration Attacker was making an (interrupt) roll against defender's (concentration) (which had a base value of 75). Interrupt was getting a +25 bonus on crit; and -25 malus on graze.

I'm not necessarily against this, but I think you're underestimating how good it is. Dump RES to 3 and you have a 70% chance of getting the afflication the level above. Play an orlan/human, max RES and take the appropriate background and you have a 100% chance of downgrading any affliction you're hit with. Combined with something like a Wild Orlan's inherent resistance, this becomes insanely strong. Chance to upgrade/downgrade And only outcoming inspirations) At 10 RES - it's 0. At 20 RES - you have 100% chance get a next-tier inspiration, e.g. cast Fit get Tenacious instead. Tier 3 inspiration doesn't get upgraded. At 3 RES - you have a 70% chance to downgrade, and thus get a prev-tier inspiration, e.g. cast Tenacious get Fit instead. Tier 1 inspiration doesn't get downgraded. Or it could be made like so: At 10 RES - it's 0. At 20 RES - you have 100% chance get a next-tier inspiration, e.g. cast Fit get Tenacious instead. Tier 3 inspiration doesn't get upgraded but it gets applied even if you are affected by matching affliction. (i.e. you are affected by weakened, cast robust at 20 RES, and you get rid of weakened, and! apply robust) At 3 RES - you have a 70% chance to downgrade, and thus get a prev-tier inspiration, e.g. cast Tenacious get Fit instead. Tier 1 inspiration gets downgraded into nothing.

Here are a few quick ideas off the top of my head that maybe could fit into resolve: In STR/RES model: - +10% to upgrade/downgrade outcoming inspirations by 1 tier (although it's also random, it's not that game deciding) In MIG/RES model: - +2 deflection (which is ~4% damage reduction vs damage targeting this defense; and is better in line with CON) - +3% flat damage reduction - +2% to over-penetration bonus (30% bonus damage on overpen becomes 60% @ 20 RES) - +10% chance for your afflictions to overcome enemy inspirations (usually if the target has an inspiration you have to cast affliction twice: first to remove the inspiration and after that to apply the affliction; at 20 RES you would be able to affect the target from the get go; while at 0 RES you would not be able to apply an affliction on an inspired target (provided that inspiration attribute matches the affliction)) - +5% hit-conversion (at > 10 RES hits might get converted to crits; at < 10 RES to grazes) - lowers your graze_threshold by 2 That's an interesting idea. Have to note though that average enemy resolve is likely around 13 (at least that was the case in PoE1, and also 78/6=13). So cc durations would probably have to be increased slightly.

I didn't see enemies using empower. What I meant though is: imagine a dragon who randomly procs empower several times in a row (due to high resolve). Or think of Deadfire variant of Adra Dragon who would randomly get her aoe breath empowered; and if usually it would leave your tank at 20% (and you could heal-up), now it would kill him. It's not really satisfying if such random happens against us; and it's not really feeling deserved when it happens in our favor. Since this is new suggestion, and many encounters are probably already designed, such change would require re-iteration and re-balancing of majority of enemies with low and high resolve scores. Although there could also be complaints for having backline squishie one-shotted by a randomly-empowered necrotic lance, by an enemy with just 11 resolve. Btw, do I understand it right that this "+% random chance to empower" was thought to fit into current STR/RES system, and resolve would have 4 effects?: +1 deflection, +3% healing, +3% spell damage, +x% chance to empower? Edit: have moved a few quick alternative suggesions here.

Random chance to add +10 power levels on spellcast / ability usage, sounds kinda unreliable. Unreliable can lead to frustration if the effect misses due to sudden depower; or the feeling of undeserved if an effect suddenly gets empowered. And this is a bit different from auto-attack resolution randomness, since here's more at stake. Additionally it will promote save-reloading during boss fights, for two reasons: - waiting till a crucial cc gets empowered, and if not: reload - being annihilated because the dragon with 26 RES suddenly empowered several times in a row. And if it was not random, but every nth spell/attack, I would just count them ^^, and it could be like: some quick buff, some quick buff, some quick buff, oh next one gets empowered: shinning beacon/fireball/gaze of adragan/whatever! Edit: forgot to add, that from rp (not gameplay) point of view, the suggestion looks really nice though. You are more resolved and are able to put more effort.

Josh didn't mention armor values. This makes me think about survivability of our frontline. Also have to notice that some enemies on PotD get a bonus to Penetration (e.g. Titan had +4) In PoE1 for instance, we could encase our tanks/offtanks in plate armor which was stopping 80%-50% of damage coming from low-hitting enemies, while vs limited-in-numbers hard-hitters we had [hard-cc] or [high-defenses + soft-cc]. AR buffs would likely become even more crucial. Also we'll have to see the new base damage values. As those of weapons that had 5 PER, are being tuned down.

I have a feeling that this goes beyond simple .gamedatabundle editing. Maybe the next backer's beta will introduce some bashing shields. This will open up the possibility to check if their property can be copied to the small shield modal. I usually fiddle with game files on weekend, as have little free time do so during the week. But can give a few pointers. Search bb_attacks for Crossbow's modal: Crossbow_Interrupting_Shot_Ranged, note down it's ID, and search all gamedatabundles for where it is used. Than do the same for the modal of small shield (don't know it's DebugName though). Once you've found the ability/effect that uses the ID of small_shield_modal, substitute it with ID from Crossbow_Interrupting_Shot_Ranged. And hopefully (if the effect is attached to character and not weapon attack itself) it will work as you want)

Weapons in beta4 will have 7 and 9 PEN respectively. A devout gets +2 PEN in selected weapon. He can take that 7 PEN one and happily live without switching. Becuase lower-pen weapons have higher base damage. And if you have an AR-debuffer in your party this could result in higher dps. This is especially essential for ciphers, who want to maximize their focus gain and will get aided in this by their team (e.g. AR-debuffs, Aefyllath, Shared Flames, etc).

Great news guys Source Am really glad that ciphers are getting closer to their swifty playstyle like in PoE1, and are more apt at protecting party backline. Must note that it's also an interesting remark about summoned weapons. Josh refers to these weapons as ludicrously powerful. Probably I am missing something, or maybe ex-vancian casters are getting some really strong martial-oriented buffs in the full game. But here are a few thoughts on the current weapons: - Opportunity cost - if we build a character around a summoned weapon it means we have to take a wizard/priest/druid class in the first place. Even if we multi-class, it cuts us from getting the passives of two martial classes, like in devout/berserker case, assassin/devout, and so on. - Dedication cost - if a wizard/priest/druid spent time on summoning a weapon he wants to stick with auto-attacking to make the most of it; and loses part of his versatility. Especially if he also taken a few purely phys-dps passives from other class he multi-classed into. Because they would be rendered useless if he would switch to spell-casting. - Spellusage and ability point cost. - Druid using firebrand doesn't use spiritshift for damage, and it makes his class passives kind of moot. And now a few weapons I have played with: - Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff - is basically a mundane quarterstaff, but with draining. A character could multi-class in devout instead and get better dps (with a regular quarterstaff + fighter abilities) and also healing from Veteran's Recovery. - Firebrand - also has the stats of mundane great sword; no special procs; the only difference is that it is fire/piercing instead of slash/piercing. It hardly provides a dps increase worthy of those listed costs above. Must note: I really liked (and probably am not alone at this) that Firebrand in PoE1 was unique via having a higher base damage. It allowed for creation of new, unique even if situational builds. And it's great when a few spells enable a new way to play the class. - Spiritual Great Sword - the main attractive part of this weapon is the sweet and big lash damage attached to it. But assuming there will actually be possibility to enchant some regular weapons even with a 25% lash, Spiritual Sword is in now way overpowered because crudely speaking: 60% - costs ~= 25%. Again imagine a priest-devout with Spiritual Great Sword vs rogue-devout with a Mundane but enchanted Great Sword. - Citzal Spirit Lance (and Kalakoth's Minor Blights) - now we talking. These are indeed powerful weapons, but when compared to the aoe spells a wizard could cast instead, their strongest part is actually their ability to affect not only the main target but also all enemies around it, from: a). focus generation point of view, b). delivery of onHit and onCrit effects (although yes, unlike with carnage this is limited only to talent passives, and is not limiting weapon design), c). and interaction with Swift Flurry and Cleave (but have to note here: the Swift Flurry recursion is dangerous from balance point of view per-se; and it's not really blast's fault) TL.DR: - Parasitic Staff and Firebrand might want a unique buff to justify the new 3s casting duration - Spiritual Weapons are fine - And Citzal/Kalakoth's Minor Blights would be fine too, if: 1). Swift Flurry is no longer recursive; and 2). Cleave is triggered only by weapon attacks (but not blast) That's actually a huge change. And it heavily changes the approach to balancing of cipher powers. For example: - if focus gain is low; and thus focus is scarce and very valuable, higher-costed powers would have to be way more powerful than the rank 1 ones, because cipher spent n times more time to build the required focus. - if focus gain is high; the difference between higher-costed powers and rank-1 stuff can be narrower. E.g. a cipher has 70 focus and can cast charm for 10 or dominate for 30. He will likely choose the second option because he can easier afford it. Looking at the effects/damage values of current cipher powers, this looks like a more fitting approach. I hope doubling the focus gain itself is just right and not too much. As the intention was to make ciphers quick, and if some party-member was jumped by an enemy, to be able to promptly react (specifically via WoT and Mental Binding). And short durations in themselves allow for more time spent on focus building. (on the other hand we could get both Bitting and Draining Whips in PoE1 and the focus gain was 0.35*1.33 = 0.465, so the new 0.5 is really close to it) In either case am excited and can't wait to playtest it))

Increased self-damage arguably makes sense on Sacred Immolation, since the whole amplitude (effect) is increased. I.e. you have high resolve can make a bigger sacrifice and get a bigger gain (in case of immolation: damage). But it doesn't make sense for berserker's frenzy. Self raw damage is increased, but what does the character get in return?: nothing. Imho in case of frenzy (at least) self damage should be fixed, as you shouldn't get a worse outcome from having a higher stat.

I was very excited about naval combat feature. Didn't expect that it gonna be text-based, so that came as surprise; but generally am ok with that and so far rating my perception/experience as "middle". As this feature will get more worked on, will for sure rate it higher, but at the moment there are a few (probably subjective) rough moments: Manoeuvre options are a bit confusing. I still don't quite understand why would I use Full Speed instead of Half Sail. I also don't understand how does distance calculation work, see: image. I would expect end-result to be 0 or 25. Manoeuvre options have no tooltips. I understand that it's my own problem of having to google what port and starboard mean, because I knew the terms in Russian and Dutch but not in English But it would be nice to see their definitions on mouseover. For example I thought that "turn to port" means turn in the direction of the port I started sailing from ^^ Load Game doesn't work during boarding combat If I understood right, jibe in the game is used as a simple "turn 180 degrees" move; as there is no wind power/direction indicator; plus you can't zig-zag at more acute angles than 90. At the moment scripted combat comes mostly to: (half-sail)x(as many times as required) -> start combat I don't quite see what fine tactics there are to employ. There were two similar games... I loved a big lot, called Corsairs: The Return of the Legend and Sea Dogs:City of Abandoned Ships, and one of the most used 1x1 tactics I used (vs a mightier opponent) was: manoeuvre at max distance against an enemy ship, such that he's rear is looking at you, while you are zig-zaging and shooting from both sides of the ships with chain-shot. Once he's manoeuvrability is severely decreased (and the ship is in "sitting duck" position) switch to canister-shot, and deal up with his on-deck crew. Once this is done, rapidly full sail from his back to abordage (boarding). Another interesting tactic was when going vs several ships at once, for example: 1 mighty and several light ones. Firing one chain-shot vs the strongest ship, and then full-sailing in winds direction. Reloading regular cannonballs (good vs hulls) and via jibbing in zig-zag motion annihilating the persecutors from cannons from both sides. All while counting the time between their reloads and showing them my ship's rear with a temporary brought down sails right at the moment when they fire. (in order to minimize their hit chance); and immediately full-sailing again. And once they hit the bottom of the sea, use the previous tactic vs that 1 might ship left. And the thing is: it was fun!) And now there could also be additional motivation and consequences.Motivation - as "why do I want to attack them in the first place?": - because they have good cargo and I could sell that for profit; or there are rare ingredients for alchemy/enchanting/explosives. - because they have nice ship and I would like to take it for myself, or add it to my armada (if possible) - because I heard a rumor that a captain X on a ship Y has a nice A (unique sabre, hat, etc). Especially if the difficulty is high but you could get something ahead of the curve (e.g. exceptional unique before lvl 8 - because the barmen at the inn told me (thanks to bluff/streetwise/coin/reputation/etc) that merchant X is going on isle Y and is going to deliver cargo of Z to a local store there. So you board, find and seize his ship, and either sell his cargo at some black market for half the price, or sail to that store and try to impersonate that merchant. Use bluff, rename the ship, whatever. And consequences, simply put: - if you sail under flag A and attack ships of faction B; B gets a bit angry on A in general, and very angry at you in particular. - also if we find a Pirate flag we could use that, in which case there is no faction reputation penalty, at least until your personal fame is not big enough. - very angry faction could hire head-hunters/warships to hunt you down. Stuff like that. TL.DR. Find current naval battles as "middle" (mildly satisfying), probably because had overly-high expectations, but see a nice potential if this feature will get polished and expanded.

There are around 1k abilities there. It's easier to iterate through weapons, and change their recovery categories instead. Btw, I have decoupled the categories of melee weapons from spells in the new update (below). In it you can modify Weapon_Recovery_Fast, Weapon_Recovery_Average without these changes affecting any of spells) Have updated BetaBalanceMod a bit. You can check the changelog (v2 => v3) below: GeneralStun affliction: increased deflection malus from -10 to -20 WeaponsIncreased range of spears to 1.3m Increased penetration of stilettos from 7 to 8 Adjusted damage values of all melee weapons types (including summoned melee weapons) to match the new recovery times, taking into account dps vs primary vs full attack situations: (here is the related post with calculations) CipherWhisper of Treason - duration reduced further from 20s to 12s to 10s Mental Binding - base paralyze duration increased from 6s to 8s WizardFireball - still experimenting. This time: fireball gets +20 acc bonus, but can no longer crit. (The difference between graze and overpen crit is too big, still looking for ways to make it more... consistent and reliable) Download link: new v3 How to install: P.S. Am thinking about iterating through ranged weapons, druid claws and priest spells next. P.P.S. And again: the general idea behind these mods: - BetaSpeedMod - just to provide a general look at environment where majority of spells are faster to cast (especially summoned weapons, situational spells and cipher powers). Also weapons do have a slightly faster recovery as well. - BetaBalanceMod - is an ongoing effort to come with a set of changes (done over beta3), compile the full list, and present it as assorted feedback in the form of "these feel good")

But if you don't want to waste empower[...] There seem to be items that restore resources. So far I am aware only of Marux dagger doing this (image). But maybe there will be more.

Hard to comment on this. I'd like to see whole talent trees and the resource pool progression, first.

If you are ok with increasing recovery times of spells as well, just change the mentioned recovery categories.If not: you'll have to decouple categories used for weapons from spells. This means that you would have to create your own custom categories. For example take: { "$type": "Game.GameData.RecoveryTimeGameData, Assembly-CSharp", "DebugName": "Recovery_Average", "ID": "566840d9-1561-4243-8ca7-889df9869847", "Components": [ { "$type": "Game.GameData.RecoveryTimeComponent, Assembly-CSharp", "DisplayName": 1475, "Duration": 3 } ] },copy it, generate new unique ID (link) and (optionally) give new DebugName: { "$type": "Game.GameData.RecoveryTimeGameData, Assembly-CSharp", "DebugName": "Weapon_Recovery_Average", "ID": "c16e417f-c01c-4272-9f27-6d227db74f4f", "Components": [ { "$type": "Game.GameData.RecoveryTimeComponent, Assembly-CSharp", "DisplayName": 1475, "Duration": 6 } ] },Now iterate through all weapons, and substitute their RecoveryTimeId 566840d9-1561-4243-8ca7-889df9869847 for c16e417f-c01c-4272-9f27-6d227db74f4f.Now repeat for other categories.

Well, if hard crowd-control got a buff / reliability boost, we would see some of characters opting for clothing / light armor instead ^^

Yeap, completely agreed. And was suggesting the same. Agreed again. I've found the THS of use on my cc-cipher with flat might in PoE1. But generally am ok with it being both additive or multiplicative there. For Deadfire though I would probably prefer it being additive with STR (at least in beta 3), as ciphers focused on spell-damage and resolve would like such a boost. Crits and grazes belonging to one group - would be only natural. Same goes for overPEN and underPEN modifiers. And as already mentioned SA and SW being additive with STR, would enable sneaky rogues / ciphers with flat might. It felt good in PoE1, could be same in Deadfire.

First I'd recomend simple notepad instead of hex editor for editing gamedatabundles. Or even better notepad++, sublime, atom, or whatever text-editor with json syntax highlighting you like) Second you can find: - recovery time categories in bb_attacks - casting time categories in bb_abilities You can pick a desired recovery_category, let's say Recovery_Average, and just change it's component duration to the value you want. At the moment: - fast melee weapons use Recovery_Fast - slow melee weapons use Recovery_Average Do not editing these durations will also affect ALL spells that have these recovery categories. A big note: you can find what categories a spell uses by it's CastSpeedID and RecoveryTimeID For example you inspect Wild_Leech_Target and see that it has RecoveryTimeID: 9d15e1c1-c6e1-4b25-bc1d-bf3707f6f534, and if you will look at categories IDs, this one corresponds to "ID" Recovery_Fast. Note: do not mix AttackVariationIDs, CastSpeedIDs and RecoveryTimeIDs. P.S. My understanding is that you need a global, rather than individual change. In this case you don't need to edit individual spells and weapons, but only the categories themselves. Make a search for following $type: - Game.GameData.RecoveryTimeGameData - Game.GameData.CastSpeedGameData they should be at the begining of the respective (bb_attacks and bb_abilities) files.

After first two play-throughs I had a similar oppinion: plate on frontline; naked (or durganized robes) on backline. After third playthrough: I'd say that medium/light armor has it's uses as well; specifically I really like Hide armor on my backliners in the early game now. The reason being that if you compute: the penalty is actually not that big (again we are speaking of early game), but the DR bonus is really handy, especially vs Pierce and Freeze (which helps not only when you are getting attacked by shades; but against being selected as a target for attacking in the first place). As for Deadfire... all my characters now are either in plate or brigandines. Yeap including backline. The difference between taking 100% or 25% damage is just huge.

It depends from what point of view to look at it From SneakAttack perspective: Graze and UnderPen is multiplicative; while Crit and OverPen are additive; From Strength perspective: Graze and UnderPen is additive (with double inversion); while Crit and OverPen are multiplicative. That's because: - Sneak Attack, Crit, OverPen and other bonuses belong to preAdditive group; while - Strength, Graze and UnderPen belong to postAdditive group. Yeah, it's not easy to answer your question without number-crunching. From weapon-dps perspective +1 PER provides less damage increase than +1 STR does. But PER also improves detection, and unlike STR also does indirectly increase spell-damage. So it makes one question how does a damage-oriented hybrid with 10(STR)/20(PEN)/10(RES) states does compare to a similar hybrid with 15(STR)/10(PEN)/15(RES). At the same time yes, I do have a strong feeling that I get less from PER than I did in PoE1. And I am speaking about reliability. In PoE1 I knew that if I max PER, I can completely eliminate misses on that character. This doesn't happen in Deadfire though, because: - base accuracy is lower - spells come without added acc bonus - threshold to graze was increased from 16 to 25 - there are no decent, quick and aoe soothing soft-cc spells, that would lower enemy defenses by a big amount; which you would use before landing your hard-cc Personally I would like to see a minor buff to PER. Something like: - One point of perception gives +1 acc, and lowers graze threshold by 2 (or at least by 1...) And now, some number-crunching: (on relative gain from taking +1 ATTR) * overPEN onCrit - assumes that you overpen on all crits Conclusions: - you really, really don't want to graze if you have high STR score, because grazes heavily dilute the STR bonus (due to double-inversion) - unlike STR, DEX doesn't play well not only with maluses, but it is also dilluted if there are other bonuses. This happens because there are no groups, and all speed related coefficients are additive in the end. - PER provides the least damage-bonus. And it becomes way worse once you have eliminated all misses. Because at that point you no longer trade misses for crits, but grazes for crits. - But PER does affect both phys and spell damage; and helps landing offensive, non-damaging spells. P.S Imho, what does PER need is something not damage oriented; but rather something that would improve the reliability of our crowd-control.

There is one minor difference. Imagine that Barbarian is affected by dex affliction. Now: v1. if Wild Sprint gives Swift -> using this ability will only cancel the current affliction. v2. if Wild Sprint gives Nimble + ImmToEngagement -> using this ability will cancel the current affliction, but will also give you ImmToEngagement anyway. Dunno though if the current state is intended or not.

Kind of many coincidences And if you try to redeem a code, GoG promptly finds you a related game. It shows "Apologies, this code no longer appears to work" once you try to continue, but my understanding was that this is because the codes were already redeemed, no?

Hmm, didn't these turn out to be just GoG codes in the end? And who the first spots and checks it - can redeem it?

Estoc deals 25% less base damage than Great Sword, but has 4 more penetration. At the same time having a 4 PEN deficit can result in dealing x4 less damage due to underpenetration. So if a player doesn't want to think about penetration / or looking for best performing weapon (math wise); he will be safer with high-PEN weapons in current beta. But yes, he can do whatever he wants)

Not going to contradict you, but just want to mention that weapons' base damage was stealthily changed (for some reason it wasn't added to changelog) (and for example I noticed these changes just a few days ago, despite the fact that beta3 came 19 days ago). Looking at base damage values (here's the list), it appears to me that approach to penetration system has changed. For example the relative damage difference between 5-PEN and 9-PEN was quite narrowed. And estocs deal only 25% less damage than great swords now (down from 39%). Basically if you don't want to give a damn about penetration, you can travel with an estoc and a pollaxe in offset; and in the worst case you will deal 25% less damage, than if you learned a priori enemy AR values and selected the best weapon using that knowledge; and in the best case you lose close to nothing. But yes, if you want to use 5-PEN weapons, you will have to learn that stuff. Also OBS will likely still re-iterate the penetration system as mentioned here. And there were also some plans to increase the penetration of low-pen and medium-pen weapons by 1 tier, as mentioned here. Although the last link makes me wonder about the tankiness of our frontline.