MaxQuest

Understood now. The effect of +12/+17 heavily depends on the current [acc minus def] value. But yeah, +2% per 1 acc on average will do. Dualwielding fast weapons 8.67 dps | 13 / (0.5 + 2/2) Two handed weapons 6.62 dps | 24.5 / (0.7 + 3) | or 30.96% less Multiplicative: Dualwielding fast weapons (in plate) 6.34 dps | 13 / (0.5 + 2 * 0.5 * 1.55) Two handed weapons 4.58 dps (in plate) | 24.5 / (0.7 + 3 * 1.55) | or 38.42% less Additive: Dualwielding fast weapons (in plate) 5 dps | 13 / (0.5 + 2 * (1 - 0.5 + 0.55)) Two handed weapons 4.58 dps (in plate) | 24.5 / (0.7 + 3 * (1 + 0.55)) | or 9.17% less Yeap you are right nevertheless of how dw bonus is applied. But the gap is getting bigger or smaller depending on the way it is implemented. And two-weapon style gonna be a beast. In PoE1, weapon recovery was on average x1.66 times the attack duration (which meant that you can get up to x2.66 dps increase by achieving zero recovery) In Deadfire, weapon recovery is on average x4-4.2 times the attack duration. Thus if we indeed can achieve zero recovery we can get up to x5-5.2 dps increase.

Am neither pro or against this change (at least at the moment), but I do find part of the argumentation a bit odd. Intimidation is more related to the sense of threat. An NPC could be afraid of a mighty brute, resolute inquisitor, or of 2 MIG / 2 RES cipher who could potentially charm/dominate and send him to death. Could you elaborate on the 'extremely important' department?

Need also to compare these weapons dps as if character was in plate) In case there are no other modifiers, dual-wielding will likely lose a bigger part of it's dps compared to single-wielding. But generally it repeats the PoE1 pattern when it comes to weapon auto-dps at zero recovery (assuming that we can reach it): 2h > 1h > dw And that when zero-recovery is close but not reached yet: dw > 2h > 1h, because dw is the first to achieve it. Don't these weapons have 0.5 attack duration followed by 2s recovery? 13/2.5 = 5.2, or I have missed something?

Agreed. Spellcasting is still horrendously slow. I understand that the idea was to make some AoE damaging spells have BAMF effect and balance them out via long casting time and a reliable interruption system. But I don't get why this affected the majority of spells and powers. Spending 6+2s for a chance to charm the target for the base 6s doesn't sound like a good deal. Imho making single-target cc and buffs of 1.5-2s casting duration and their AoE counterparts of 3s wouldn't hurt. And similar thing for summoned weapons: 6s => 1s (and even instant with a new talent)

Does this work with any hotkey, or only with "K"?

So, I've made a table of how I personally perceive (at the moment) the relative "powerfulness" of classes based on stat in comparison to each other: (for beta1, and somewhat extrapolated for beta2 based on the changelog) Does this match your experience as well? Or you feel different?

I'm glad that grazes are back. Even if you didn't succeed in landing a lasting cc, you at least get a x0.5 time-window to recast it. (imho it's better than downgrading, provided that you want to keep hard-cc viable; because hard-cc requires a certain degree of reliability) Also it's nice to see having recovery values and penalties brought closer to those of PoE1. Although casting durations on summoned weapons and some of the spells and powers is still atrocious. E.g. Whispers of Treason: [6s + 2s] in Beta2 vs [2.8s + 0.27s] in PoE1. Speeding these up x2 wouldn't hurt. And it won't even feel that fast, because of the Slow mode and pauses. Regarding [MIG + RES] vs [sTR + RES]. Personally I like both directions. Although both of them have their own shortcomings, I think that balance related problems can be mediated for both of them via additional tuning and talents. So it all comes to what we want?: - weapon damage dealing casters to be also able to deliver decent spell damage | (high MIG/PER/DEX) - cc-focused offtanks to be also able to deliver decent spell damage | (high RES/PER/DEX)

That is certainly much better! Though i'm not yet sold on the whole water blob thingy, it is nice to know the spell bonus is less restrictive. Thank you. Fury druids don't look like spherical blobs during spiritshift. They have a pleasant to the eye semi-transparent/celestial/anthropomorphized form. With zero recovery penalty.

Right what I was thinking about, after re-reading Josh's quotes) The pumped stats being of first concern; and dumped stats of second. And Josh does additional comparison, taking into consideration melee and ranged builds separately. Although it feels a bit weird for ranged barbarians, fighters and constitution-based builds. P.S. Thinking about doing a stat viability check for current beta. Feel free to check sheet 2. Although it's a WIP.

Chanter could go with some portable music instruments. E.g. a lute that speeds up your chanting by x%; or a lute let's call it 'of thunderous accord' that increases damage of your invocations... or of lightning based spells. Rangers could get quivers. And melee rangers have scabbards like warriors. Ciphers could have some kind of resonating crystals, that could be used for focus accumulation, beam augmentation and accuracy or effect increase.

That's understandable Tbh I don't mind changes to stats even if it results in a sensible re-drafing. Ofc provided that these changes are fitting and balanced. Reason being: planning your character is fun so fiddling with stats is not a problem. So long as you can transfer the spirit of your PoE1 build to Deadfire, I'm ok even if changes go beyond minimal. It's kinda late to go classless now) Not to mention that's a good classless system is not an easy task to do. If it's implemented so so, players will find the best combination that will rule over all other variants. And iterative nerfing will mostly lead to a new fotm rising each patch. Obsidian no doubt will arrive to a balanced state. But it may take many iterations. For instance PoE1 was overally really well balanced, but sometimes it looked like a pointy rock resting on a rock OT: Have made a quick comparison table of "how viable a class [x] would be with stat [y] at it's extremes" in my opinion for PoE1 PotD: link Would be interesting to hear if someone has different point of view. TODO: do similar thing for current beta.

Racial traits are still there, just not shown in Character Creation in current beta. Check this related post and thread.

As was already answered: confirming that in PoE1 it is: [offhand_attack -> mainhand_attack -> mainhand_recovery]

There is a common trick that can keep hybrids viable, even with STR/RES. I am speaking of stat overloading. Remember Zen Archery and Combat Insight from NWN2? Imagine if cipher had a talent that would enable him dealing phys damage with RES instead of STR. Exactly. And this is what Josh means by: Although this means that we also need: - good build for ranged constitution-based cipher, wizard and priest - good build for ranged strength-based chanter and priest

I think that's exactly what happened. The status effects are different, and were processed separately, resulting in 75% hit-to-crit conversion with weapons, and 50% hit-to-crit conversion with anything else.

I do. I find it a bit strange that: - you deal twice less damage on graze - and deal only a quarter more on crit Although it's understandable, that critMult was nerfed because: - there are talents that increase it - there is x1.3 multiplicative bonus from overpenetration and 1.3 * 1.25 = 1.625. But we do not overpenetrate on every crit; nor can easily estimate how often did we get this bonus due to crit. If there are no grazes, no over/under penetrations, and critMultiplier = 1.5, then going from acc = def to acc = def + 1, provides the same relative gain as going from 10 MIG to 11 MIG, i.e: 3.0% But dunno, perhaps will have to remember how to derivate equations, or make a more detailed table for PER, before asserting anything related to it.

Few questions related to this suggestion: - do fists quality as weapons? - do carnage hits benefit from STR? It deals raw damage now. - what about torment's reach? The damage that is inflicted to main target is affected by STR; while cone damage by RES? - damage of fighter's Charge and monk's Flagellant's Path is affected by STR or RES? Still thinking on it. Atm trying to define the actual end goal, in order to spot the best idea when I see it. Also, when you note down exactly what you want, the answer often comes by itself. Quoting a few Josh's twits as starting point: So the stat system that we are looking for should result first of all in: - no bad builds (at least not because of stats) - various builds - there should be more than one stat viable spread per class - and preferably it it would wrap nicely extreme cases as well - ... And a few secondary concerns: - no dump stats - judging by Josh's examples: RES should be useful for ranged builds as well? Uhm, what about CON? - intuitive stats (as I understood some had associations between might and muscle wizards) - ... Edit: hmm, looking at the last quote, it looks like we need a system that would also justify: - ranged constitution-based casters - ranged strengh-based priests

Cross-linking a related thread. Maybe some ideas from there will be of use.

Pretty much it. Although it rises the question of how to tell that effects in question are of the same type) Btw, have taken a look a bit at the current auto-attacking action cycle. The spotted differences from PoE1 are: - damage is inflicted at the end of attack duration, not somewhere in the middle as before. This makes it almost impossible to 'abuse' Quick Switch like we could by switching weapons right after shooting and thus eliminating both reloading AND recovery. - I haven't noticed the inter-action delay. After recovery end, the attacking animation was starting immediately. Still can't assert that there is no delay at all, since could achieve only ~26 fps during frapsing instead of constant 30.

Have been avoiding posting in this thread for awhile as could not choose between the variants asked in the starting post. Both approaches have their pros and cons, neither being perfect. In the end have arrived to conclusion that there can be a middle ground, and this mixed approach appeals most to me. So: - First of all let's take a look at DEX contribution to our auto-attacking dps: The absolute gain from 1 extra point in DEX is the same. But relative gain keeps going down due to intrinsic returns. But the important part are the values, which will be used for comparisons below - Now let's take a look at MIG contribution to our auto-attacking dps: Multiplicative MIG seems to look as a more desired approach, because it's relative gain: - does not change on crits/grazes and does not dance around - is decoupled from weapon quality, and does not get diluted by it - is equal and consistent with relative gain of DEX Also we can take a look at relative dps increase from PER (around the acc-def = 0): On the other hand if we would have multiplicative MIG it would hurt builds that deal phys damage while having low MIG score, such as cc-ciphers and deathblow rogues. What gives?: TL.DR. Am suggesting a mixed v4 solution to the might problem from the top post. I'm aware of the idea to beta test the new STR-RES in the next update. And those could use this as well. P.S. In case one questions, why Deadfire does not use additive MIG like PoE1 did: it is because of lack of DR. Vs zero/low-DR targets MIG impact is way lower than that of DEX, when it comes to weapon-based damage. Mainly because it gets heavily diluted by other effects. But the existence of high-DR targets could skyrocket the relative gain of 1 MIG point, e.g: If all dmg coefficients stayed additive in Deadfire, MIG effect would be too low for weapon based damage.

Not sure that penalties will promote roleplaying, but yes I do agree that orders should keep penalties. All subclasses have them and it's generally nice to sit and have to weight all the pros and cons. But the penalties could be lessened though. For example: - Bleakwalker: lesser healing reduction, like -15% instead of -30% (or how much it is there now?) - Goldpact Knight: cannot upgrade their aura - instead of not being able to use them at all - Kind Wayfarer: if the blow would kill the target if it was a crit - it automatically crits. But auto-attacks no longer benefit from Sneak Attack damage bonus. Also there were mentioned paladin-priest restrictions. I like Jeker's suggestion and would prefer a warning shown to the players that would mention this. And generally (if kept) these restrictions could be lessened to something like: - Bleakwalker: Cannot multiclass with priests of Eothas, Berath, or Skaen. - Darcozzi: Cannot multiclass with priests of Berath, Magran, or Skaen - Goldpact: Cannot multiclass with priests of Magran or Wael. - Kind Wayfarer: Cannot multiclass with priests of Berath, Magran, Wael, or Skaen. - Shieldbearer: Cannot multiclass with priests of Skaen, Magran, or Wael.

Thinking that it is ok. A character (aside from chanting and body-blocking) can perform only 1 active action at a time. And if you notice that he is mostly casting just cc, or healing, or buffing, you better specialize him in that. So he becomes better at what he does, and worse at what he does not. Still though, aside from specific builds and cases, maxing a stat up to 18 is not always the best solution. For example you have 30 stat points left for investing into MIG and DEX. And if your character is used only for auto-attacking 0-DR targets (a situation in spherical vacuum) then he would rather go for 15 MIG and 15 DEX, because 1.15*1.15 = 1.3225 and it gonna result in higher dps increase than at 18/12 or 20/10. As Sedrefilos mentioned min-maxing is only bad, when it's clearly the only option. Like straight-up maxing STR in NWN2 because you need that BAB, or taking +1 INT over epic spells in wizard because you need high CL and DC.

A few possible advantages, from the top of my head: - ability to heal-up from wounds, or a chance to resist gaining a wound - lower damage from incoming overpenetration - lower incoming damage from diseases and poisons (my favorite so far, as it could potentially lead to appearance of few niche builds) - incoming affliction duration or crit-to-hit conversion (although I'd prefer this to be linked to RES rather than CON) ..but none of these are group-fight only. Not to mention that I'm still not convinced that current +5% should be nerfed, and "+3% Health per point" is balanced even in 1x1 situations, because: - my previous examples were more suiting for pvp; in single-player RPGs CON has a tendency to become irrelevant past a certain point. Like Boeroer has mentioned: you need just that amount to not die, and if you have more it's probably overkill; Sure having high MIG can be theoretically an overkill as well (for example there multiple enemies and you one-shot each of them anyway, so no point in rising MIG further). But we don't really face such situations in practice due to encounter design. - deadfire is a game with limited resources. For many classes you can cast only that many abilities per encounter, e.g: 2 shining beacons, 4 flames of devotions (if you are lvl x), etc. Pumping the damage of these limited abilities often results in higher impact, because you can move on quicker. - existence of hard cc. If you can completely control enemy, your CON becomes less relevant. Not to mention that by bumping MIG you can deliver more damage in the same time-window offered by cc effect. - existence of DoTs that benefit from both MIG and INT. +3% increase from MIG can translate into +5.45% if you cast a DoT at 20 INT. I have been mentioning a couple of times that it feels to me that PoE1 promotes party specialization into either [high-dps/burst + hard-cc] agile team or [sturdy/steady + soft-cc] party which grinds enemies down slowly and mostly via periodic damage. And... it is great that both approaches are viable.

Hmm, I'm not convinced enough about necessity of halving the CON bonus from 5% to 2-3%. But, being able to get rid of injuries over time could be handy. E.g. it would take 24h of ingame time for a 10 CON char to auto-heal from his injury, and only 18h (or 12h) if he had 20CON. What I'm currently thinking, is: - imagine 2 characters: [A] and ; They have 100 hp, and hit 10 damage per second. - if you put them to hit each other, they will end up in draw by killing the opponent in 10s. - now imagine that they have got some free stats. And [A] has doubled his damage. While has doubled his HP. - they will still kill each other in 10s. But if you let them in the game world, and assuming their hp is enough to not get killed, [A] will be finishing combat twice faster than . And if it's an n vs n situation, on average [A] character would be killing his target faster, and be able to help another party member by making it a local 2x1. That's also the reason why many games have defensive stuff provide a higher bonus than a mirrored offensive stuff. - and then there is also character [C], who embraced a balanced approach, with: 150 hp and 15 damage attack per second. [C] is able to kill [A] in 7s, while [A] would need 8s to kill [C]. [C] is able to kill in 14s, while would need 15s to kill [C]. - our task as a player, is to find this [C] (since he's not always an arithmetic media between the tank and the glass cannon) and then shift his dps/sturdiness depending on our playstyle and party composition.

Indeed. Although it sounds a bit weird if one wants to make a multi-classed melee cipher, and arrives to conclusion that it's better to build cipher/x... without cipher in it. The focus generation rate was ~ ok so far. The problem is, that at the moment casting cipher powers doesn't feel worth it enough. It takes long time and is unreliable. At best I might use some high-costed powers of "fast" category. In rest... it feels like it's better to keep auto-attacking + dumping any focus excess into soul annihilation. Gonna see how this changes in the next beta update though.