MaxQuest

I was thinking about starting such a thread, and there it already is After taking a look at the presented subclasses I find majority of them quite interesting, and will briefly note down the first impression on each of them. Since we don't know the numbers behind them, plus they are subjected to changes, this preemptive evaluation is going to be approximate at best. But here we go anyway: BARBARIAN: 1. Corpse Eater - Targets unconscious enemies to devour their flesh and gain power. Powers cost more to use. - we don't know what "power" exactly, but I suppose it's the power to use abilities (as in the previous system). And since there are no "power_sources" in the new system, it will likely allow barbarian to recuperate resources required for usage of abilities of: paladin, rogues and fighters as well. - in Deadfire health and endurance have been mixed into a single pool; meaning that healing will become much more important. - a corpse-eater could easily prolong the fight for a long time if he had access to Lay on Hands or Unbending. Especially if corpse-eating would restore not only rage, but also discipline/zeal. 2. Berserker - Has a more powerful Frenzy, but attacks can damage friends as well as foes while Frenzied. - it could be an interesting idea to have a frontline of 2-3 such berserkers. It's ok if they end up carnage-hitting each-other, provided that they multi-class into a tankish fighter or monk. Also giving them weapons with Penetration just slightly lower than their AR should help vs them killing themselves. 3. Mage Slayer - Gains spell resistance and can disrupt enemy spells, but cannot use potions or scrolls and beneficial spells have shorter durations. - interesting, will the shorter duration of beneficial spells lead to higher HPS with healing over time abilities? - how good or bad this subclass gonna be, completely depends on numbers and on the enemies we will face. CHANTER: 1. Beckoner - Summoning invocations are cheaper and summon more creatures, but the creatures are weaker. - thinking of body blocking - weakness to enemies with AoE - good vs enemies that would waste their charms/dominates/directed stuns on these summoned creatures - synergy with priest's spark 2. Skald - Offensive invocations are cheaper and melee crits grant phrases, but all other invocations are more expensive. - think of such skald/barbarian focused on HoF and Seven Nights - think of such skald/mage-slayer played like interrupt barbarian (with min MIG / max PER,DEX) who is also able to spam: Killers Froze Stiff and The Lover Cried - another variant would be to mix this skald with a control-freak variant of wizard with DAoM and Merciless Gaze; together they would make a great cc-offtank. 3. Troubadour - Phrase linger is 50% longer, Brisk Recitation as a modal that increases the rate of phrase elapses, but shortens linger. All invocations are more expensive. - a great chanter subclass, focused on either dealing damage via DoT chants, or on keeping as many simultaneous buffs as possible. - has a built-in synergy with any class that is able to buff own MIG and especially INT. Thinking of Minor Avatar. Not to mention that priest of Eothas gets access to storm spells, and those provide a great setup for chants like Dragon Trashed, because they do provide a solid reflex malus, plus stun the enemies, allowing to kill them overtime remaining almost unscratched. CIPHER: 1. Ascendant - Powers and Soul Whip are more effective when used at Max Focus, but Focus drains quickly if left at Max for long. - am a bit dissapointed that it doesn't just increase your might or damage coefficient, because it could be great to arrive to max focus, and then start casting spells from your second class - other than that it's a great subclass, and I actually fail to see how it's penalty is a penalty at all, because cipher never wanted to idle at max focus anyway, because in PoE1 Soul Whip turns off once you achieve max focus, as simple as that; and thus I wonder what "Soul Whip is more effective when used at Max Focus" means exactly. - another thing is: "focus drains quickly if left at max" - but than it quickly becomes below max - and thus immediately stops draining, no? 2. Beguiler - Illusion powers are more powerful, but Soul Whip suffers when used against targets that are not vulnerable to Sneak Attack. - we were not yet presented with a list of "illusion powers". Looking at PoE1 it will probably include "Phantom Foes", "Secret Horrors" and "Fractured Volition". If so - this subclass will end up strictly worse than pure cipher. On the other hand if Illusion powers also include charm and dominate stuff - now we talking. 3. Soul Blade - Offensive cipher that can dump Focus into a Soul Annihilation melee attack for extra Raw damage. Shred powers have reduced Focus cost. Lower Max Focus. - the question is: will this extra raw damage count towards focus generation? - and yeah, here again, everything depends on what are the exact numbers; we have no other way to estimate how good or bad this subclass is. DRUID: 1. Fury - Shift into storm blights and gain bonuses with elemental spells. Cannot cast Restoration spells. - restoration spells are going to be much more important in Deadfire than in PoE1, so these bonuses with elem. spell better be good. - we don't know if shifting in a storm blight comes with any immunities; nor if there are bosses that deal related damage types. - we don't know if druid can cast spells while shifted in these blights; nor what are the blight stats. 2. Lifegiver - Rejuvenation spells are cast with increased Power Level but cannot cast Summon spells. - that's pretty awesome; solo aside, druid's summoning spells never seemed useful enough on the PotD difficulty, so we just get a bonus to healing department. 3. Shifter - Druid can shift to any animal form, once each, per combat and heals damage each time they shift back. Cannot cast spells while shifted. - this means that we won't be able to shift for defensive purpose; and the only idea is to deal damage in melee. - we will need a list of stuff that affects the shifted form. And most important: will bonuses to unarmed damage affect it's dps. - think of Ascendant cipher or Soul Blade, who shifts -> deals lots of damage -> generates a lot of focus and unloads his powers once the shift ends -> summons Firebrand -> ... FIGHTER: 1. Black Jacket - Bonus weapon proficiency, reduced Recovery when switching weapon, but lacks Constant Recovery. - a great subclass for anyone who is focused on burst and alpha-strikes. - it's interesting to test it with dual-pistols (or other firearms if possible; especially arquebuses and blunderbusses) - it's also interesting to check it's synergy with Soul Blade and Shattered Pillar when pistols are in dual-club mode 2. Devoted - May only be proficient in a single weapon. Higher Penetration and crit damage with that weapon. Suffers Accuracy penalty when using other weapons. - there are [weapons with high-damage, low-penetration] and there are [weapons with low-damage, high-penetration]; taking this subclass might provide the possibility to have it all. - has potential to either be boring if numbers are low, or broken otherwise; needs a careful fine-tuning. 3. Unbroken - Bonuses to Engagement and Disengagement Attacks, but lower Stride. - these bonuses mean little. On other hand if this subclass would influence enemy targeting preferences... it would be another story. - also, what's Stride? (it's capitalized, so I guess it's not just movement speed?) MONK 1. Helwalker - Begin all combats with Wounds, gain Might for every Wound. Wounds require more damage to acquire. - getting up to 10 extra Might is great; especially for DoTers and characters that have high base damage, but not so high damage coeficients. - in update #40 video video we see that this monk starts with just 1 Wound. That's kinda low. - in the same video, this monk is shown to take 5% extra damage per wound. So the extra Might comes at a kinda great cost. 2. Nalpazca - Drug effects last longer and Wound cap is increased while under the effects of drugs. Penalties while not under the effect of drugs. - the most interesting thing about this subclass, is that it is able to get Wounds over time, simply by being under effect of drugs. This might be useful for some squishy ranged character - who actually doesn't want to get hit a lot. - unfortunately we don't know yet how useful Deadfire drugs are going to be. Their PoE1 v3.0+ analogs were not that tasty. 3. Shattered Pillar - Gain Wounds by inflicting damage with melee weapons (fists or otherwise). Lower Max Wound cap, does not gain Wounds from receiving damage. - that's a superb idea, and has huge dps potential with dumping all wounds into torment's reach spam. - we'll have yet to see is abilities do count towards Wounds gain, or only auto-attacks are take into account - there is a potential synergy with carnage, as well as high dps of ascendant/soul blade/assassin/streetfighter/devout ... to be continued

I haven't deep-thought all the consequences yet, but on the first glance on the new system, I felt a bit disappointed, yes. Basically how I see it at the moment is: a whole extra layer of character building complexity... was removed. There were 55 multiclassing combinations + 11 pure class options. And the layer I am talking about, is how exactly those multiclass combos could be built. At lvl 20, we could have 19/1, 18/2, 17/3... 20 final variations. Now we are basically stuck with 10/10. Additionally we are limited in how exactly do we want to progress. Imagine that Dragon Trashed is still obtainable at lvl 9 the earliest, and we want to take an Unbroken Troubadour. It's quite obvious that as a player I would want to either: - take first 9 levels in chanter, and only after that start investing in fighter, or - take 4/5 levels in chanter, 1 level in fighter (such that you start with 2 discipline), 5/4 levels in chanter, and only after that dump the rest in fighter. but not the alternating c/f/c/f/c/f route... So the disappointment mainly comes from: - the mentioned limitations - additionally I've considered the initial (power source) system as really new and ambitious, and was eager to see how Josh is going to balance it. - and ofc I am going to miss the potential sweet spots On the other hand, the new system has it's PROs as well: - it's far easier to balance (self-explanatory) - and thus opens the possibility of 'safer' addition of prestige-classes and extra subclasses in the future. - new system is more "new-player" friendly because of it's simplicity; although this reminds me of Hearthstone's "new players would be confused" argument a bit. All-in-all, [if on the levels that grant us +1 ability we are free to choose the ability from both classes we multiclass into; i.e. can keep taking abilities from class A only, without being forced into alternating selection] I am ok with the changes, as there is still plenty of room for build optimization. Andrea probably got a bit confused on the chant effect duration. Let's take Dragon Trashed for example. In PoE1 it has [8s base duration] + [4s base linger]; for total of 12s Effect (DoT) duration (@10 INT). > Brisk Recitation affects base duration. At max level bringing it to 4s. > While INT and Troubadour subclass affect linger duration. To put it into perspective (with Dragon Trashed dealing 20 damage per tick | all at 10 MIG): - v1.a. base chanter (10 INT, no BR): every 8s is applied DT DoT that deals 100.0 damage over 12s - v1.b. troubadour (10 INT, no BR): every 8s is applied DT DoT that deals 116.6 damage over 14s - v2.a. base chanter (20 INT, no BR): every 8s is applied DT DoT that deals 116.6 damage over 14s - v2.b. troubadour (20 INT, no BR): every 8s is applied DT DoT that deals 141.6 damage over 17s - v3.a. base chanter (10 INT, max BR): every 4s is applied DT DoT that deals 66.6 damage over 8s - v3.b. troubadour (10 INT, max BR): every 4s is applied DT DoT that deals 83.3 damage over 10s - v4.a. base chanter (20 INT, max BR): every 4s is applied DT DoT that deals 83.3 damage over 10s - v4.b. troubadour (20 INT, max BR): every 4s is applied DT DoT that deals 108.3 damage over 13s So as you can see Brisk Recitation is great. It just so that Troubadour is not that much focused on invocations; but rather on dealing damage via DoT chants. Btw think of Troubadour of Eothas: Minor Avatar -> Painful Interdiction (fort malus) -> Storm Spells (stuns + reflex malus) -> Dragon Trashed

I didn't, but I am 99% sure that Aefyllath will add to Spark damage as iirc each instance goes through attack resolution. Btw, besides cipher, there is also another synergy for the Spark. In theory it should be really good with a big number of allied targets: animal companions, figurines... the Deadfire Beckoner subclass... CW is no longer triggered by DoT ticks. Afaik the application of a DoT does not trigger it either, because no damage is dealt.

Happens) Btw, Spark of the Souls also generates focus for the affected ciphers; but uses priest's MIG for calculations)

Let's think. First of all flails are fast, low-hitting weapons the +30% graze-to-hit conversion. Whom can they benefit the most?: - someone who hasn't eliminated grazes, - and thus doesn't rely on critting, but still has high damage modifiers to overcome enemy DR (and make use of that micro-lash if present) - someone who auto-attacks a lot, but doesn't rely on Primary and especially on Full-Action attacks. There are not that many unique flails in the game... - Gaun's Share - draining - Starcaller - extra 10% damage as burn; stunning; spellstrike: Minoletta's Minor Missiles - Unforgiven - extra 10% damage as burn; speed - Forgotten Tear of the Beloved - very weak spellchance effect (10% to daze the target); spellbind: Prayer Against Treachery (1 per rest); spellblind: Suppress Affliction (2 per rest) > In terms of damage, flails (and specifically Starcaller/Unforgiven) could benefit only cipher, and a weird low-per melee rogue (without Finishing Blow and Backstab). > In terms of utility, there is the Forgotten Tear which one would use only for it's spellbinds and then would switch to other weapon.

Since v3.02 CW no longer procs from DoT ticks. CW still procs from periodic damage (where each instance goes through attack resolution) though.

Have found the post about CW mechanics: link That must be Dragon-Trashed or Shinning Beacon... CW is much more modest, but still at 20 MIG / 20 INT, an instance of CW DoT will inflict on average: 25.9 dmg over it's duration vs 0 DR. (or ~14.4 vs 10 DR). Now if barbarian is surrounded by 5 enemies, and uses HoF while dual-wielding, that's: 10 hits + 40 carnage hits. So if one would use CW before HoF, he would deal extra: 50 * 25.9 = 1465 burn damage (or 293 vs each) (if they have 0 DR) 50 * 14.4 = 720 burn damage (or 144 vs each) (if they have 10 DR)

Inb4 a lvl 20 pure druid becomes an archdruid)

Until you get respective scrolls and prayers of protection, you can invest into Aegis of Loyalty + Righteous Soul + Executioner's Hood/Redfield. Also specifically for such fights you can take a sceptre/wand/hunting bow in your offset. So if anyone is getting charmed/dominated you can attack him from distance and dispel it immediately. Depends. If you want to micro/alpha-strike with your paladin in every fight - go for it. Otherwise don't bother) You can also take a look at Gyrd Háewanes Sténes.

It's a matter of preferred playstyle. My preference goes to lots-of-cc + high-dps party. But I know that there also players who prefer a sturdy wall of melees + priest backup; wearing enemies slowly but inevitably so to say. So just try different approaches and see what suits your taste)

It will. You have 3 characters that can solo the game: Aragorn, Elrond and Galadriel. Together + the help of 3 others they have enough potential to securely beat the game. The thing about building a party for PotD is not to make a party that would beat the game, but to make a group that would do so in the fastest + less-coming-back-for-resting manner. Your party lacks reliable per-encounter cc. If you would switch one melee for one ranged, it will be harder to keep enemies from running towards your squishies. Ofc there still remains the problem of fighting in doorways. In this case give your barb a reach melee weapon (e.g. Tall Grass), and your paladin an arquebuss; for their offsets. It made me remember BFME. Glorfindel was great. But damn, when you were looking at post-game stats, Legolas was a true machinegun of death.

My very first run was without vancian classes, because I didn't like Durance, and considered Aloth to be weak back than. I started on Hard, and switched to PotD on level 5. My party consisted of MC (ranged cipher), Eder (tank), Kana (offtank), Pallegina (ranged), Sagani (ranged) and GM (ranged). Always started with a good alpha-strike, and followed with double echo on Itumaak. I had a few problems with enemy charmers, but have quickly learned to hard-cc them asap; and use Liberating Exhortation + potions of Major Recovery as the get out of jail card.

There were two Glorfindels iirc P.S. Just read that Glorfindel was intended to be a member of the Fellowship in the very first draft. But Legolas replaced him later.

Uhm, because everyone can use the power of Pork. The SaltymastEr on the other hand... is probably reserved for Durance.

Damn, again 'tomorrow'. Well I guess the update is gonna be really legen... It looks to me like the row/col classes are the following ones:

Gandalf is more of a melee wizard, dual-wielding longsword and a staff. Since there is no "Titan/Monkey Grip" in this game, he could use just a staff, and go for the midline-citzal route) Also how could you miss the hobbits A pair of ranged hearth orlans rogues or rogue + cipher... P.S. And if you'd want to fit Legolas somewhere in there, he could be a ranger... yes with a bear called Gimli)

There is not so much you can do about it, specifically use an SSD with good read speed. Preferably NVMe one. Also it was noticed that the following also does help a little: - sell most of your stash junk. - move majority of your (unused) saves to another location.

yes Great) Unless there is an opening bracket before it, it means that I smile, yes) But not from ear to ear like this one: Rather like this one: Hah, calling it an overhaul was a big stretch. I was always thinking that it would be great if chanter started at 1, instead of 0 chants count.

Am I understanding it right?: 0.6 - base 0.7 - with just ZC 0.85 - with ZC and DurganizedArmor 0.85 - with ZC and DurganizedArmor and Pilferer Gloves Do ZC + Pilferer Gloves result in 0.8? Indeed I had such an idea. Wanted to gauge first how useful will community find those bug fixes, and collect feedback. So far I've decided to check/fix/tweak stuff that affects my party directly; as it's quite time consuming. P.S. Btw, when you write OT, do you mean OnTopic or OffTopic?)

I am always reluctant when I have to use something per-rest, unless I am 100% that the party will rest after the fight. When I am looking at Binding Roots... it's either: - do I really want to use a per-rest resource in in this easy fight? or - ok this is a boss fight, but the ability is to weak to even get casted As for Durance staff: that's great ... but making it priest-only, ohh.. there goes my intent to use it on melee cipher or barbarian) 15% aoe vs 20% self with Confident Aim Armored Grace, wouldn't be too much? Or you feel AG is weak as well? Tbh, I was going to ask you in the Community Bug Fixes thread if anything like a Community Balance Patch was in the making... Armored Grace is great as is. And a major role in that plays the fact that it stacks with everything. Also it has no opportunity cost. While Zealous Charge does have such a cost - as you can't use Zealous Focus / Endurance at the same time. Also, ZC comes with aura radius. At the same time quite often you would like to place your squishies at 10-12 range, because distance is used in target preferences estimations.

You probably meant Armored Grace) The default ArmorSpeedFactor is 1. When you wear plate you get: 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 Taking Armored Grace results in: 1 - 0.5 + 0.2 = 0.7 And with extra -10% armor speed penalty: 1 - 0.5 + 0.2 + 0.1 = 0.8 Later on the game adds (ArmorSpeedFactor - 1) to the recovery coefficient. P.S. As expected, it stacks with Armored Grace. The question is: will it stack with DurganizedArmor enchant / Pilferer bonus. I wish... but Josh has mentioned extracting the stats and storing them in xml format, so at least that will be much easier to edit. I just hope that if there will still be unity3d assets, they will keep them "small" as in PoE1, and won't aggregate as they did in Tyranny. No. Armor penalties / penalty reductions do not apply to reloading duration in PoE1. Yeah, Pallegina herself does not benefit from the +20% attack speed buff. Also while I was initially fond of this ability, I've quickly found that it gets suppressed by a lot of things and is useful mostly for party rogues, as they don't have frenzy, time parasite, daom spell. Make it 15% instead of 10%

I've got a few...: - Allow cipher to cast Pain Block and Going Between on himself - Allow cipher to cast Amplified Wave on charmed targets - Mind Wave prone duration was stealhtly nerfed 5s => 3s. Imho it should be 4s. - Mind Wave visual cone originates from caster. Should be from target. - Mind Blades is quite weak in practice: early on there is a high chance to miss/graze which will stop it's propagation. - Make Frenzy instant. It's quite annoying to have to wait for it's animation before using BB/HoF. Not to mention that AI tends to use Frenzy AFTER Barbaric Blow. - Reduce lvl requirement for rogue's Sap from 11 -> 7 or 9. - Buff Dirty Fighting: 10% -> 15%. This will increase the extra crit chance from 5% to 7.5%. - Make Vielo Vidorio speed buff, affect Pallegina as well - Ranger's Binding Roots: 5 per rest -> 2 per encounter - Ranger's Thorny Roots: single instance of 15 slash + 15 pierce damage -> 5 slash + 10 pierce per 3s - Swap damage types on Durance's Staff: crush + burn -> burn + crush - Hold the Line talent: +1 engagement => +1 engagement and +1 to endurance-to-hp coefficient OR +200 health. Uhh. This -10% armor speed penalty from ZC will definitely stack with Armored Grace (ofc the finaly penalty still won't go below zero). As for stacking with DurganizedArmor enchant / Pilferer's Grip it's hard to say. And it's better to test it. For example: - take a naked character with 3 DEX - equip him in durganized hide armor - give him two sabres/swords/maces/warhammers - affect him with this modded Zealous Charge aura - drink DAoM potion, and watch him attacking If ZC stacks with DurganizedArmor, you will have: - 5 frames delay -> 38 frames attack -> 0 frames recovery And if they don't stack: - 5 frames delay -> 38 frames attack -> 6.3 frames recovery (you will be able to notice a quick line running for 0.2 seconds; if not you can use fraps) No, Armored Grace does not affect reloading duration in PoE1. It probably will in Deadfire though.

Well the White Crest Helm gives +3 Intellect, and Godlikes can't wear it, so actually they're arguably the worst race from this point of view. In fact Godlike's inability to wear helms has gone from being relatively unimportant in vanilla Pillars to quite a big disadvantage in White March II. On the other hand there is that +4 INT ring, and since it doesn't stack with the helm's +INT... I recall it was mentioned at some point that godlikes will likely have two racials. Strange, but can't find the source atm. /speculation on - one racial ability/passive will probably be inline with the rest of races - and the second one could be with some sort of built-in scaling mechanism, in order to start small but stay on par with various head items we can get through the game /speculation off Personally I am usually ok with rogues as a class. What I don't like in them is: if the game gives them some really unique possibilities. For example: Dragon Age and lock picking. It's great that rogue can do it and can really master this. But hey, maybe give warriors ability to bash some weak locks/doors as well? Or allow mages to cast a very long and costly channeling spell that they can learn somewhere on a specific quest? Sure rogue will do it easier and faster, but I am no longer forced to have him in party if I don't want to. Although yeah, there are only 3 classes in DA, so not really sure if "Bring the Player not the Class" should apply here. In WoW through I would consider normal if class buffs would partially overlap; e.g. you can get +x% stats from paladin or druid; you can get +x stamina from priest or imp; you can get +x mana from mage or felhunter; and so on. So the situation were you need exactly class Z happens less frequently.

While we are at it, going beyond 130% font size would be really neat; with the ability to set a custom font specifically for the chat/combat windows.

Hah, that was quite... an unexpected assumption) Yeap, it's food, and very potent at what it does. Even Dragon Meat Dish was adding only +3 MIG - an equivalent of +0.09 dmg coefficient. And this one adds +0.15. P.S. Now someone is asking real questions. In the end there is corpse-eater in the game. /speculation on: Release around march-april 2018 (iirc and as smjjames wrote, Josh indeed mentioned that they aim for Q1 2018) Early-access / public-beta: february 2018 Backer's beta: november 2017 - january 2018 / speculation off