MaxQuest

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.

I've mentioned this in the above post) PoE1 (checked in v2.03 and 3.0+): offhand attack -> mainhand attack -> mainhand recovery Deadfire (checked in Beta1): mainhand attack -> offhand attack -> offhand recovery Afaik it's always the mainhand. Afaik in PoE1 it would be as following: - if you issue a special attack before your current normal swing deal the damage: current animation is discarded/interrupted and your start your special attack - if you issue a special attack after your current normal swing dealt damage: you go into recovery, and only after that your special attack will start And no, it doesn't matter what you did before. The hand-sequence will be as described in the answer on question 1.

Except it didn’t. One particular purely DPS focused cipher build got nerfed (not crippled). Ciphers are still work just fine. I would argue that they didn’t get broken but became a gold standard of how each class should ideally work - all attributes are valuable, increasing/decreasing an attribute will buff/debuff certain aspect of the class. Perception might be the only one really hurting if you dump it because than you can’t hit&you can’t cast spells. At the same time, every class needs perception. Hmm. Depends how to look on it. I quite enjoyed ciphers in PoE1, even had 3 MCs of this class. And always had two of them in my party on all of my full-playthroughts. I liked this class versatility, quickness and the fact that there are several different and more than viable ways to build one. E.g: - (melee) (aoe) damage-oriented (dw or 2h): 18/9/18/12/15/6 - (melee) cc-oriented (2h): 9/9/18/18/18/6 - (ranged) (aoe) damage-oriented (warbow or quick-switch blunderbusses): 18/7/18/18/14/3 or 18/7/17/14/19/3 (if you wanted very strong Disintegration) - (ranged) cc-oriented (warbow): 13/7/18/18/19/3 note: two thirds of damage inflicted by damage-oriented ciphers was coming from his powers (like Echo, Soul Shock, Silent Scream, Detonation and ~Amplified Wave). And expected that Soulblade will be an additional way to those above to play the cipher, specifically a damage oriented one (but who dumps focus mostly in Soul Annihilation and not in powers). So there will be at least 5 viable ways to play them. In reality though it's not as expected, because ciphers took the following 6 hits: - 1) doubled cast times compared to PoE1. (it's understandable that ex-vancian classes had to be nerfed somehow, once their per-rest abilities became per-encounter; but somehow this affected ciphers as well) - 2) afflictions provide weaker defense maluses. [-10 deflection and -10 fortitude] from the new stun is not the same as [-30 deflection, -38 reflex, -8 will]. Prone doesn't provide any maluses at all, and is not a disable any longer. Tbh, paralyze is the only decent cc left, but still it doesn't provide miss-to-graze conversion. - 3) one of the best cc pre-setter (Painful Interdiction) was not moved to Deadfire (and having enemies with -28 fort, -20 will was really handy when trying to charm or paralyze someone) - 4) even if landed succesfully, cc effect may not be applied if the target was affected by a matching inspiration already. So you will have to cast the same power twice. - 5) if MIG is multiplicative with Soul/Bitting Whips and TwoHandedStyle, leaving MIG at ~flat values for cc-ciphers is so-so, because you would be crippling your focus generation. - 6) change from MIG to STR, puts damage-oriented ciphers in an awkward position, since they need STR and RES now at the same time (while before RES could be kept flat or even dumped) And there are also affliction resistances which make the life of hard-cc'er a bit harder. Although if they came instead of immunities and not in addition to them, it's fine. So yeah... If it was only the #6 change (i.e. going from MIG->STR), it wouldn't be that much of a deal. Instead of dumping RES on damage-oriented power ciphers, I would likely dump PER (*) instead, and that's it. But as it is now, I would rather avoid building ciphers focused on cc or aoe power-casting altogether. (*) Why Per? Characters that are not limited by resource-limit (like ex-vancian casters), nor need high levels of reliability (like debilitators), can afford re-casting. Thus they will focus on getting attributes with the highest dps gain... which currently are STR/RES and DEX. So a cipher that is focused on dealing lots of damage via his aoe powers could easily end up with something like: 17/7/17/3/17/17. And one more thing: some powers currently have x3 and even x6 shorter recovery than casting duration. This means that you can equip heaviest armor without big slowdown. And if so, there is little incentive to be ranged, as you'd be more effective by dual-wielding sabres in melee in plate armor, even if you'd have to transfer a few points from DEX to CON. P.S. It turn'ed out to be a longer explanation than initially thought, but just wanted to describe the chages that affected this class.

Additionally: what should the interaction be if you charm-back a charmed team member? In PoE1: he would change alliance back (i.e. become friendly), but would not be able to use any abilities. Personally I would expect second charm to cancel the charm effect, even if other maluses (like minus defenses in PoE1 or minus 5 INT in Deadfire) are still in effect. In Deadfire Full Attack is even more powerful, provided that your recovery duration is above zero. In PoE1 (FoD with dual sabres, naked, no other effects): 1s (offhand attack) -> 1s (mainhand attack) -> 0.833s (mainhand recovery). You hit twice in 2.833s compared to 3.666s - time that would take you to make two consecutive normal attacks. In Deadfire (FoD with dual sabres, naked, no other effects): 0.7s (mainhand attack) -> 0.7s (offhand attack) -> 1.5s (offhand recovery). You hit twice in 2.9s compared to 4.4s.

Can I assume that you meant "to make all attributes usefull for all classes (such that there would be at least 1 melee and 1 ranged viable x-based build per class for each attribute x) you should have every attribute giving offensive bonuses"? If yes, I've came to a similar conclusion. Defensive attributes are more useful for melee builds as they are more susceptible to be targeted and damaged. While ranged characters can get away with lesser survivability. After a certain threshold investing points in CON and RES was providing for them a quite diminished gain. As example in PoE1 or in Deadfire Beta1, it was hard to justify a CON-based or RES-based ranged: ranger, rogue, chanter, cipher, druid, wizard and priest. Beta2 partially addressed the situation for RES and casters; but it did so on detriment of hybrid builds; additionally the state of CON-based casters and CON/RES-based rogues and rangers is still kind of moot. Making all attributes carry an offensive component will indeed make them desireble for at least 1 melee and 1 ranged build per each class. On the other hand, this offensiveness can be indirect. Let's take CON as example. If it gives "+4% hp base hp; +3% healing received" - it's defensive. But if there are: - weapons or modals, that are reducing your hp (like scepter's modal) - both hp and regeneration become a mean of offence. - or if there were spells that use your hp pool as resource, for example something like: "inflict to self and all surround enemies damage equal to 25% of your max hp" or "drain the target for 6% of your max health pool per second" - hp again would be helping with dealing damage. Additionally it could enable a new way to play a class: drain-tanking. (makes me think of Concelhaut by the way)

Ehh Gromnir. Am glad that you feel relieved. And at same time am saddened. Your reply style more and more resembles that of Litter-Bearer fan type (that is described in the bottom part of this article). There is really no need to be that highbrow and condescending. That said, I'll see myself out, as am no longer interested in the subject of this thread, nor in continuing such discussion.

Perfectly matches my experience with the Beta so far. > Create a beguiler/fury and travel with the 4 predefined mercenaries. Get completely crushed by anything that has a "lagufaeth" in it, despite of intensive micro. > Create 3 wayfarer/berserkers. Max PEN. Max AR. Dual-wield sabres. 19/10/18/3/18/10. Watch them destroy anything on an auto-pilot AI behavior, in less time a druid would conjure a Blight. It's kinda hard to estimate PEN (and AR), because the gain from +1 penetration keeps changing along the scale. It would be much easier if it was gradual. But Josh is adamant about it being not: link. The thing is it makes following estimations and conclusions a bit fuzzy. Also would like to add a few thoughts/corrections: - 12 perception is greater than 12 accuracy, since there is also 24 reflex. - 5 constitution may not necessary have the same impact as 8 dexterity or 8 might; as the latter help finishing the current opponent faster and switch to another, creating 2x1 local overwhelming; plus in case of might less limited resources will be spent. And if there is a high amount of incoming healing, investing in constitution becomes a little moot. But that's nitpicking) as I do agree with your conclusions about armor, dual-wielding and shield/deflection. Btw, when thinking about such heuristics vs Josh's approach, I tend to think of: - balancing a wood plank on a line (example), vs - balancing a wood plank on a point (example) In the first case it's easier to come up with a balanced state, and even if you shift some value, overall balance won't get altered if the values are tied by common heuristics. In the second case it's harder to balance stuff, but you can achieve some exotic state where unexpectedly everything works fine enough. Tbh I had this feeling when estimating (additive) MIG vs (multiplicative) DEX in PoE1. Unlike DEX, MIG was useful only for damagers and healers; and additionally it's effect was getting dilluted by other damage coefficients (like crits and weapon quality), but it still was on-par with DEX, because of the flat DR in general AND DR of the enemies we met in particular. Personally I like having some heuristics / association formulas. They make the whole system which is being constructed more robust. And only when the construction is almost finished / has a solid fundament, one can add one or two point-balanced features like an icing on the cake. (without going: oh we can't change x this way, because it will unbalance y, which will unbalance z, etc) (and the icing may be required such that the system won't feel too rigid, dull or boring) Speaking of game systems, neither did I. I mean I liked the story, the implemented ramifications, the idea of spell creation. But completely disliked the attack resolution and balance. It was too easy to break, i.e. come with a single best build, check it in solo PotD, and at that point replay'ability from powerbuilding point of view was gone, because trying anything else would be just gimping yourself. And one more thing: playing with a good build in Tyranny felt unfair for me, as if the systems were not thought/play-tested well enough and you are just exploiting them; while comming with a good build in PoE feels way more rewarding and without that guilt feeling.