MaxQuest

It depends.Different enemies have different target preferences. And there are 16 target preferences: Here's a mini FAQ: Q: What is the most common preference? A: The most common is None. Majority of enemies have this one set for their auto-attacking. For example melee xaurips. Q: How does preference "None" work?? A: During combat each AI periodically scans for all enemies in 30f range, and calculates a special coefficient for each enemy found: coef = 2 * distance_to_target / 30 + 0.5 * target_current_endurance_percentage / 100; coef-= 3 (if AI is already engaging that target) coef-= 2.4 (if AI is already being engaged by that target) The enemy with lowest coef, will be selected as new target. Q: What about "LowestStamina"? A: Some spellcasters have this set for their single-target spells. Iirc it's used for Ooze Spit for example. Instead of the above None, this coefficient is calculated in the following way: coef = 0.6 * distance_to_target / 30 + 1.75 * target_current_endurance_percentage / 100; The enemy with lowest coef, will be selected as the target for that spell. Q: Can an enemy have multiple preferences? A: Yes. For example Shade has 3 abilities and also can auto-attack. All these use different preferences: - Draining Freeze: LowestDamageThreshold (Freeze) - Instant Teleport: LowNumberOfEngagers - Summon Shadow: no preference - UseWeapon: LowestDefense (iirc either will or deflection is checked here) Q: LowestDefense? How does this one work? A: coef = related_defense note: majority of preferences do factor distance to target; this one does not Q: What about LowestDamageThreshold? A: coef = related_DR AI will target the one with lowest coef. What if there are several enemies with same DR? It will take the first one scanned. Btw, that's why I often advocated for Hide Armor and Freeze-Proofing, as a mean to help the squishies vs teleporting shades. note: this one also does not factor distance to target. Q: What about LowNumberOfEngagers? A: The coefficient is calculated in the following manner: coef = distance_to_target / 30 + number_of_enemies_engaging_the_target * 5 coef-= 5 (if AI is already engaging the target) AI will target the enemy with lowest coef. Q: My rogue is often targeted over my fighter, why? A: Rogue could be targeted because he has lower DR, or lower current endurance percentage, or lower defense, or simply because he is closer. 15 out of 16 preferences do not make an implicit check for rogue. Only "FastestClass" does: coef = 1f - distance_to_target / 30; coef+= 5 (if fighter) coef+= 10 (if rogue) coef+= 8 (if barbarian) coef+= 7 (if ranger) coef+= 6 (if paladin) coef+= 9 (if monk) Afaik this preference is used for rooting/stuck spells. AI will target the enemy with highest coef. Q: What about spellcasters? Is there a preference that targets them explictly? A: Yes, it's the "Spellcasters" preference. coef = 2 * (1 - distance_to_target / 30) coef+= 6 + random(0,2) (if priest, druid, wizard, cipher, chanter) AI will target the enemy with highest coef. P.S. Now you know what to do with shades)

The first requirement rules out rogues and glass-canon wizards. Also you can't have 1 cipher (either 2 or 0). So the following comes to mind: frontline: chanter (tank + passive dd), paladin (sup + maintank), chanter (tank + passive dd) midline: druid, wizard backline: fire priest - chanters built as: 18/18/4/8/20/10 moon-godlikes, plate armor, 1h + small/medium shield. Wound Binding. Dragon Trashed. - paladin: 18/16/10/4/20/10 wild orlan, plate armor, fast 1h + herald shield. Wound Binding. Lay on Hands. - druid: 16/10/16/10/18/8 pale elf, cat form, plate armor, fast 1h + small shield. Built for Relentless Storm + Spiritshift dps. - wizard: 2/14/16/18/18/10 wild orlan, plate armor, fast 1h + small shield. Built for cc. Take Infuse Vitality. - priest: 16/10/16/13/20/3 moon godlike, raiment of wael eyes or wayfarer's hide, soulbound scepter. Wound Binding. It may be tough on levels 4, 5 and 6. But it will get easier from lvl 7 once you get Shining Beacon and other rank 4 spells. And a cake-walk from lvl 9 onward, due to Dragon Trashed. The general idea is to repeat the following sequence: Painfull Interdiction -> Relentless Storm + Slicken/Shadowflame -> 2xDragon Trashed. And if you need even more dps, there are Cleansing Flames + Shinning Beacon; or you can make your priest just keep buffing. Regarding chanters: - let chanter1 use the following sequence: Blessed Was (+10 reflex) -> Dragon Trashed -> Dragon Trashed (ad infinitum) - let chanter2 use the following sequence: At the Sight (+10 will/fort) -> Dragon Trashed -> Dragon Trashed (ad infinitum)

Significantly or a a bit harder, depends on your party) The thing about Magran's Faithful and Brynlod bounties, is that instead of having one really strong boss with many weak minions, there are many simply strong enemies.

So that basically leaves... Disintegrate, Mind Blades, and Soul Shock, and that (usually underwhelming) lance power? But in PoE 2 casting time is too long to spam lower tier abilities, and focus gain is too slow to rely on multiple Disintegrates..... Disintegrate damage was affected by INT. And also INT affected Soul Shock AoE. But yes, a 3-INT cipher could use: Echo, Antipathetic Field, Mind Blades, Mind Lance and Amplified Thrust without problem. And agreed on long casting times.

There are two ways to look at encounter difficulty: - v1. by their uhm, absolute difficulty (or rather from a lvl 16 party point of view) - v2. by their relative difficulty compared to level when you can meet them. By v1, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest) 1. Upscaled Brynlod 2. Llengrath 3. Upscaled Magran's Faithful 4. Alpine Dragon By v2, I would list the following as the hardest encounters: (from hardest to easiest) 1. Two bears in the cave on lvl 1 2. The Dweller on lvl 5 3. Lighthouse on lvl 5 4. Flissa (from Russetwood) on lvl 7 5. Upscalled Galvino's Cabin on lvl 9 6. Zolla on lvl 3 7. Alpine Dragon on lvl 11 8. Upscalled Battery Sirens on lvl 9-10 (iirc, there was a moment when you had to fight 3 of them) 9. Upscalled WM2 monks 10. Upscalled Elmshore on lvl 11 You can still switch to Hard. And even to PotD (although note: you won't be able to switch from PotD back).

Fair enough. Proposed suggestions would indeed take quite an effort to get implemented. If I'm not mistanken, concentration now is not simply binary, but comes in layers. E.g. if the character has 2 concentration charges, only 3rd interrupt would get him. In this case another approach could be, to simply give RES and PER their concentration related features from PoE1, but adapted for Deadfire. It's not perfect, but faster to implement, and kinda better than what we had in Beta1. Example: MIG: +3% damage, +3% healing CON: +5% hp base hp DEX: +3% action speed PER: +1 accuracy; +5% for interruption effects to remove one additional concentration charge INT: +5% effect duration, +6% aoe, RES: +2 deflection, +5% to gain an additional concentration charge Note: and if concentration charges are not int but float, the +5% could be substituted by +0.05 as it would make it more reliable, not chance-based. or in case of STR/RES it could be ~something like that:

Hmm not really. Having no threat, makes hard-cc and positioning much more important. Plus it makes enemy AI more nasty/challenging and sometimes even perceived as more sophisticated.

Voted yes. I think for PoE1 it was a just right amount. For Deadfire though, I would expect there to be more jokes and banter; as it's atmosphere is less gloomy. Personally I like humour in RPGs. Eder, Devil of Caroc, Varric, Alistair and Zoltan are my all-times favorite "companions" from this perspective.

It was same in PoE1. And I'd say it's one of those bugs that turned out to be a feature, because it enables 3-int cipher build. P.S. Actually I think it would be great to have beams duration be affected by INT (for consistency) by default, but only if there was a talent, some kind of Beam Mastery: you can have now 2 beams of the same type active at the same time, but their duration is no longer affected by INT.

Yeap. Tooltip doesn't really mention that all these bonuses do apply only to base damage, but it's so... Hehe, and that's also with multiple implemented buffs, that community in front with Elric was asking about) P.S. After 3rd playthrough, I stopped looking at rogues and wizards as competitive damage dealers for PotD. Barbarians, DragonTrash chanters, Fire priests and power-damage-oriented ciphers kinda trump them by a decent margin. P.P.S. Ok, you could make a decent rogue damage-dealer, around deathblows and damaging-scrolls spamming. But you would need to have unlimited amount of those.

Damage bonuses are additive in PoE1. 2HS, Reckless Assault, Might, Weapon Quality (fine/exceptional/etc), Sneak Attack and Deathblows for sure. Haven't tested Backstab though, but would expect the same. So:.. [14-20] * (1 + 0.15 + 0.2 + 0.15 + 0.51) = [14-20] * 2.01 ~= [28-40] damage on normal hit [14-20] * (2.01 + 0.5) = [14-20] * 2.51 ~= [35-50] damage on sneak attack hit [14-20] * (2.01 + 0.5 + 1.0) = [14-20] * 3.51 ~= [49-70] damage on sneak attack + deathblows hit [14-20] * (2.01 + 0.5 + 1.0 + 1.5) = [14-20] * 5.01 ~= [70-100] damage on sneak attack + deathblows + backstab hit

Well, not completely for everyone... A character can actively do one thing at a time: damage, heal, buff, debuff. A dedicated support doesn't need PER for healing and buffing. In current beta, he can easily get away with something like: 3/17/18/3/19/18. I'm still thinking of that change as an experiment. During Beta1, melee phys dps was quite ahead of spellcasters. So one of the reasons why Obsidian did the change, could be because it nerfs flexibility and self-sustainment of such dps'ers, while buffing pure casters. The thing is though, that casters suffered not because of lack of deflection, but because they had close to no comparable impact, being too slow to decently contribute to the fight. I think you've described it pretty accurately. As for the second question: you didn't mention how big of a problem it is,.. so can't say if you exagerated or not ;p Depends, what we compare. Between: v1: Beta2 with STR: +3% weapon dmg; RES: +3% spell dmg, +3% healing received, +1 deflection; and v2: Beta2 with STR: +3% weapon dmg, +3% healing received; RES: +3% spell dmg, +1 deflection; I would probably still choose v1. Because: - healing coming from strength is a bit strange (although yes, this argument doesn't really apply, since you asked: from mechanical point of view) - healing coming from strength would be in detriment for supportive spellcasters. Priests and Druids have quite a lot of healing spells. And if you don't need them to deal phys. damage, but want them only to buff, cleanse and heal your party, how would you achieve this? Nevertheless, you have a point when speaking of reduced self-sustaining of some phys. attackers (like barb, fighter, monk). It was a bit odd to realize that athletics won't provide decent healing to a pure-dps monk I'm making. A half-workaround could be make RES provide "+3% spell healing" instead of "+3% all healing". While another variant would be to revert back to MIGHT, and give RES something new, something useful, as suggested by KDubya.

Agreed. Resolve could get something useful. But after fiddling with different attribute bonuses, am a bit wary regarding: "RES reducing duration of enemy afflictions". In PoE1 it was rare to find an enemy with less than 8 RES, and there were quite a few with 17-18. Average RES of encountered creatures being around 13-14. And than there are also bosses with inflated stats (like Gafonerkos with 26 RES). So what I am trying to say, that this change could potentially hurt our cc-focused characters, unless base duration of all cc-spells is increased by ~15%. Btw, what do you think if RES provided a chance to upgrade the incoming inspirations and afflictions instead? Jumping on the "gief self-healing to CON" bandwagon. Kidding, already there

That's correct. Agreed. Current system is mushy, and hard to comprehend. The reason why they didn't go full additive, is likely because they have stumbled upon negative numbers. In PoE1 even if you had only 2 MIG you wouldn't go below 0 on graze: mult = 1 + (0.76 - 1) + (0.5 - 1) = 0.26 Now imagine full additive in PoE2 (2 MIG, graze, underpen): mult = 1 + (0.76 - 1) + (0.5 - 1) + (0.25 - 1) = -0.49; how do you interpret that? So they have introduced the conditional double inversion, which circumvents this, but actually has no meaning, it's basically a trick because resultant coefficients are not proportional neither to rolled damage, neither to final damage, nor to the intermediary damage value at the moment these coefficients are applied. Good question. I didn't have yet the time to explicity test them. This is how I would expect them to work: Example: - you have 5 PEN, and make a slash attack with 50% fire lash. - target has 6 AR vs slash, and 4 AR vs fire - system computes as if there was a under-pen attack with slash PEN vs slash AR. - system computes as if there was a normal-pen attack with fire PEN vs fire AR. After that multiplies the result by 0.5 (the lash perc) - so in provided example, let's say you could deal 20 slash damage (40 x 0.5, due to PEN-AR=-1), and 20 fire damage (50% lash) (PEN-AR=1) - that's it - ah, and if the damage type (of attack or lash) is raw - it doesn't take penetration bonus into account. Meaning it won't under, nor over-penetrate. It would be hilarious if lash damage would indeed ignore penetration. Need to check that. Haven't tested them yet. In PoE1 each tick was going vs 1/4 of respective DR. In Deadfire I would expect each tick to check for PEN vs AR, in order to multiply the resultant tick damage by x0.25, x0.5, x0.75, x1.0 or x1.3. But is it so or not - don't know yet. Need more free time v1 is indeed the simplest. But pure v1, won't work in Deadfire, because of ambundance of various damage maluses, that would quickly lead to negative multipliers. That's why I brought the v5 as a workaround. It keeps the spirit of PoE1, and avoids going into negative, by making modal and penetration bonus/malus an postAdditive multiplier (without inversion) (plus it better matches the plyer expectations; e.g: you have under-penetrated? your damage is multiplied by 0.25) (but again: v5 might be better than v0; but it's also not perfect; unlike v4, in v5 might bonus is diluted by crits and weapon quality)

Afaik, that's how FoD worked in PoE1. You was basically getting a buff for +50% fire lash and issued a Full Attack. There was also the Vent Pick stiletto, which had a chance of proccing Flames of Devotion. We expected it would be an extra full attack, but it turned out to be just a buff for the next attack.

Current system seem to have... "feel" attached to it. Like under-pen graze deals too low damage, let's increase it. But the damage can skyrocket, let's move over-penetration bonus to the preAdditive category. Either so, or it's a side effect of multiplier double-inversion shenanigans. It's float. Another question would be: why? I could be short-sighted on this, but I don't see any reason why rolled damage shouldn't have integer value. Well, the current system could get rid of double inversion in the first place. And have the damage to be easier to compute in mind. Or at least let us estimate in mind how bigger/less the damage is with current modifiers than without. E.g. we graze and under-pen: 0.5 * 0.25 = 1/8 The easiest solution with minimum changes, would be: to move all bonuses (except penetration) to the first group (i.e. DamageMultiplier) and let them be aggregated in additive manner (without inversion). While penetration multiplier (for both under and over-penetration) to be attached to PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier and be applied in multiplicative manner (also without inversion). Example: > a under-pen hit with 20 MIG, sneak attack, two-handed style: > finalDmg = {rolledDmg * [(1.3 - 1) + (1.5 - 1) + (1.2 - 1)] + AdditiveDamageBonus} * 0.25 ^ That's basically the same as in PoE1: all additive. Just the end result is being multiplied by penetration multiplier (x0.25, x0.5, x0.75, x1.0, x1.3) (and a variation of this could have MIG belong to PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier too; as consequence MIG would be more important and in-line with DEX's +3% bonus; but builds with Sneak Attack and Bitting Whip that used flat MIG value will suffer) Let's call this suggestion v5. I have updated the related post with system comparisons: link to img chart. P.S. I would still advocate for v4. But if there is a tight time schedule, v5 will somewhat do to,.. as it requires the least effort to migrate to.

Same here. I've mentioned it at the end of #3. Well, I'm not against) But tooltip should reflect that. Yeap, had a support chanter/paladin with Shared Flames / Aefyllath in mind as well. Interesting if this lash bonus is applied to DoTs now... Btw, are you sure there is duration?

It's... more complicated than that. But yes, overpenetration bonus is additive with the bonuses from: crit, weapon quality/type, and damage talents like sneak attack. P.S. I'd be aware of how graze diminishes the effect of might... At 20 MIG and graze, the PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier is only 0.588.

I've been testing how exactly is damage calculated ingame. First step was to check if tooltips lie and if yes how much: Result: + Final Damage is correct. It matches the overhead red numbers and is indeed the value that is subtracted from target's hp. + Pre-PEN Damage is correct. It matches the actual damage dealt when neither over or under-penetrate. + Rolled Damage has no reason to be incorrect, since it's the value we start from. - Over-penetration multiplication is incorrect. No way 26.8 * 1.3 will give you 32.7. That's because over-penetration bonus... is additive, as you'll see later. - Tooltip steps are incorrect. That's because might bonus is actually applied multiplicatively, but with a big twist, as you'll see later. The next step was registering various damage tooltips and trying to find the formula that would match them all. Few examples: And now I think I've finally figured it out. Tada: FinalDamage (in beta2) = (RolledDamage * DamageMultiplier + AdditiveDamageBonus) * PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier DamageMultiplier is influenced by: - weapon quality bonus (e.g. fine/exceptional/superb) - weapon type bonus (e.g. sharp) - bonus damage talents (e.g. two-handed style, sneak attack, soul whip) - crit bonus - over-penetration bonus PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier is influenced by: - might damage coefficient - modal malus (like -50% from daggers modal) - graze malus - under-penetration malus As for AdditiveDamageBonus, am not completely sure but it can include flat damage bonuses; think of Novice's Suffering from PoE1. Question: Now, how are these multipliers actually calculated? Additive or multiplicative? Answer: additive with a big twist: - all damage coefficients are broken into steps - now, if it's value is above 1, the step will be (value - 1) - and if the value is below 1, the step will be (1 - 1 / value) - after that all these steps are added up, into one big coefficient - if the value of this coefficient is above 0, the group multiplier will be (coefficient + 1) - and if the value of this coefficient is below 0, the group multiplier will be [1 / (1 - coefficient] Question: Isn't that too complicated? Answer: Yes it is. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: The presented formula is for Deadfire beta2. In beta4 the following changes were implemented: - maluses from modals, graze and underpenetration were moved to DamageMultiplier group. I.e. all effects are aggregated in additive manner, while might bonus is applied multiplicatively. And in release version (v1.0.1): - all effects (including Might) do now belong to DamageMultiplier group. I.e. all steps are aggregated in additive manner. Now a few examples: For example if you graze or hit with fine sabre: DamageMultiplier_Coefficient = (1.15 - 1) + (1.20 - 1) = 0.35 DamageMultiplier = 0.35 + 1 = 1.35 Or you have 20 MIG and graze: PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier_Coefficient = (1.30 - 1) + (1 - 1 / 0.5) = 0.3 + 1 - 2 = -0.7 PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier = 1 / (1 - -0.7) = 1/1.7 = 0.588 Or you have 20 MIG and graze, and also under-penetrate: PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier_Coefficient = (1.30 - 1) + (1 - 1 / 0.5) + (1 - 1 / 0.25) = -0.7 + 1 - 4 = -3.7 PostAdditiveDamageMultiplier = 1 / (1 - -3.7) = 1/4.7 = 0.212 And a concrete example: this tooltip RolledDamage = 17.2 17.2 * 1.35 * 0.588 = 13.65 ~= 13.6 -> pre-penetration damage 17.2 * 1.35 * 0.212 = 4.92 ~= 4.8 -> final damage Rounding errors are kinda big, most likely because of double inversion of damage maluses.

1). Paladins currently have their auras displayed in the ability tray twice: scr 2). Paladin team members can benefit from multiple auras at once, even if there is only 1 paladin in party. Removing team member from party doesn't clear his status effects. So you can enable aura 1 -> remove all team members (except paladin) -> switch to aura 2 -> add removed team members back (such that aura 2 effect will get applied to them) -> remove them again -> switch to aura 3 -> re-add them back. Voila all party members (except paladin himself) are affected by 3 auras now: scr 3). Shared Flames may work not as intended. Expected: > when paladin uses Flames of Devotion, all his party members get a Shared Flames buff - this buff is consumed on their next weapon attack, or weapon attack ability - the buff represents same thing as Flames of Devotion by x2 or x3 less in power. For example if Kind Wayfarer's FoD has +50% fire damage and +15 heal; Shared FoD would be +15-30% fire damage and 5-10 heal. How it is now: > when paladin uses Flames of Devotion, all his party members: - do not get any visual buff indicator - their damage is augmented by Shared Flames like by Aefyllath chant in PoE1. I mean all of their damage (including damage from spells) gets a ~+26% fire lash attached to it: scr - it is not a 1-time effect, meaning that is not consumed. - paladin himself can benefit from Shared Flames effect, even without using FoD. All his attacks already come with that +26% fire lash 4). The values of Flames of Devotion and Shared Flames should be stated in their tooltips

Yeah, soulblade aside, the following 3 directions come to mind: - 17/7/17/17/17/3: cc-oriented cipher - 17/7/17/3/17/17: aoe-power damage-oriented cipher, (with an awkwardly low PER) - 18/10/18/10/3/19: beam-oriented cipher (provided that echo duration is still not affected by INT) But currently these are quite behind the Soulblade, so why play them? And if Soulblade gets nerfed, the question would be: why play cipher? They can hardly compete with the current monsters like dw paladin/berserker in terms of total damage at the moment. I know that the damage from Soul Annihilation depended on current focus, might and hit quality (graze, hit, crit) in Beta1. Haven't played with ciphers in Beta2 yet. As for interaction with carnage: Soul Annihilation damage would be delivered only to main target. On the other Blast from Citzal (unlike in PoE1) now seem to deliver on-hit effects, and Soul Annihilation will hit anyone in it's AoE. It was found and reported by Boeroer here.

Hard to tell. 1. In damage tooltip: all intermediate steps are presented as additive. 2. On the other hand you can only arrive to the final value (shown in the same tooltip): if all(*) damage coefficients are additive, while MIGHT is applied separately, afterwards, in multiplicative manner. This was confirmed by BMac here, while #1 is likely to be an UI problem. 3. Have to note though, that by looking at source code, all such damage coefficients seem to be aggregated... in additive manner. Nevertheless, I would rather trust an Obsidian dev, than my ability to read and comprehend the decompiled code. oops, was inspecting old dll. (*) (According to final result in damage tooltips) Grazes are multiplicative now as well. Although we haven't arrived to formula that would match the displayed end result. Edit: Have figured how damage is actually computed now. More about it here.

Did you mean: > ex1: STR 10 RES 14 => 1.00 dmg coef. / 52% focus gen. coef. => swing for 100 base dmg results in 100 dmg and 52 focus > ex2: STR 06 RES 18 => 0.88 dmg coef. / 64% focus gen. coef. => swing for 100 base dmg results in 88 dmg and 56 focus or: > ex1: STR 10 RES 14 => 1.00 dmg coef. / 52% focus gen. coef. => swing for 100 base dmg results in 100 dmg and 52 focus > ex2: STR 06 RES 18 => 0.88 dmg coef. / 56% focus gen. coef. => swing for 100 base dmg results in 88 dmg and 49.2 focus Regarding Might in PoE1: it's damage coefficient was additive with other damage coefficients. E.g: you have 20 MIG and crit with a superb weapon: - a swing that would deal normally 30 damage, will deal 30 * (1 + 0.3 + 0.5 + 0.45) = 67.5 instead.

^ You are right, I have over-attenuated the effect of #6. And I understand what you mean by being tailored for your playstyle and preference. My favored playstyle of high-dps + quick-hard-cc party in general and ciphers in particular is not viable atm as well.

It would be cool to gather the list of all action/attack/recovery speed effects (along with their console ids). Maybe I'll have the time to make a calculator for current Beta as well. Although first need to check if duration tooltips (at least the end results) are indeed correct.