MaxQuest

Hah, probably because I confused him P.S. It's not the first time, the question about poison list appears... Imho such stuff should be included in spells' tooltips.

No. Just tried to apply it with fists upon Alpine Dragon (who is immune to crush, but not to poison). And envenom was applied. My bad for that false positive.

Khm, I've just noticed that Ice Blights are immune to poison. I've just checked. The problem was not in the fact that I was trying to apply Envenomed Strike with fists vs crush immune enemy; but in that that the enemy was immune to poison itself. Fort:Imm notice in combat log could be a little more descriptive. But yeah, should check my target for all immunities)

So to resume: Pros of no ceiling: - if there are 100 unique weapons in the game; all 100 will be available in late game as well. This increases the number of unique builds you can come up with. Pros of ceiling: - "joy of finding new equipment." "The sense of discovery and excitement." I can hardly empathize with the pros of ceiling, as there is also joy in getting "the right weapon" asap, like getting Bittercut as early as lvl 7-8; which kind of compensates for the joy of finding new shinny, because you have just found a shinny that is best-in-slot for your build. On the other hand there are players for whom permanently finding new stuff is important. I suppose both parties would be satisfied if: V1: - there was ceiling - AND there would be 5-7 times more unique weapons and equipment than in PoE1, in order to guarantee enough lategame item variety for building purposes. V2: - there was no ceiling - AND the unique weapons/items we find in the mid-late game would have even more unique properties.

I had a similar feeling. Like if clever somehow included {clever, sassy, clowny} responses, instead of {clever, witty, ingenious}. class: cipher (but could be also monk, druid, wizard or rogue) (tbh I never ever main a paladin, priest or barbarian in a rpg game, provided that all classes are balanced). disposition: personal preference goes for benevolent + clever. In PoE through I usually end up with benevolent + honest + diplomatic.

What we know precisely is that ciphers can interact only with housed souls, while watchers can see all of them. Are ciphers able to see the past of a soul, is a bit unclear. I will quote two questions from the last two Q&A streams: Stream #3 Transcript: Q: What's the difference between a Watcher and a Cipher? In Pillars 1 a Watcher felt like a weaker and less versatile Cipher. CP: So, this is something we've discussed a lot in the team as well. A Watcher is someone who can—a Watcher can do a lot things that literally no one else can do. I'm trying to stay out of things that are new to this game that we're not talking about yet. Watchers can see the histories of souls, and they can specifically see past lives. Ciphers can still interact with housed souls, which would be like a soul in a person. They can not see a free-floating lost soul like the Watcher can. They can't see into the tween, which is... you have a...the body has perished and the soul is moving into the beyond. A Watcher can see that...a Cipher cannot. [the recording was garbled for the end of this question] Stream #4 Transcript: Q: In the third Twitch Q&A stream Carrie answered the question on the difference between Watchers and Ciphers by saying Watchers can see the histories of souls and they can specifically past lives, and ciphers cannot, presumably. But it's a plot point in Pillars 1 that the Dunryd Row Ciphers check the soul lineages of Crucible Knights. JS: Just confusion among writers. Just an error. That was a reason why people were asking that question. People were like, "It doesn't seem clear which is which", and that's something in the beginning of Pillars 2 I said: okay, let's sit down and talk about exactly what people can and can't do, so that moving forward we don't confuse things.

There was a related question asked in the recent AMA. TL.DR: Q: Do you agree with the assessment that the games gets much easier towards the end even on higher difficulties? JS: Yes Q: Do you consider this an intentional design choice, or mostly a balancing issue. JS: It's mostly a balancing issue, largely due to the widening gap of bonuses and the increased gulf of efficacy that arises between system masters and non-masters. Q: Do you plan to handle the difficulty (curve) differently in Pillars of Eternity II? JS: Yes. We're paying much more attention to the widening of that gulf in the mid and late game to have more consistent challenge.

I wouldn't say that it is a priori clear. For example there are stunning spells that roll vs Fortitude (Relentless Storm,Overwhelming Wave) and also spells that roll vs Will (Silent Scream, Dimensional Shift). But yeah, stunning and overbearing indeed do roll vs Fortitude only. Here are the results of a few quick tests: Desiccating (Captain Viccilos Anger)(on hit) : roll vs Fort | duration: 0 on miss; 3.0s on graze; 6.0s on hit; 9.0s on crit Disorienting (The Vile Loners Lance)(on hit) : auto-applied | duration: constant 5.0s Interfering (Lost Thayns Reach)(on hit) : auto-applied | duration: 5.0s on hit; 7.5s on crit Overbearing (We-Toki)(on crit) : roll vs Fort | duration: 0 on miss; 1.5s on graze; 3.0s on hit; 4.5s on crit Persecuting (St. Wygelts Cudgel)(on hit) : auto-applied | duration: constant 6.0s Stunning (Starcaller)(on crit) : roll vs Fort | duration: 0 on miss; 1.0s on graze; 2.0s on hit; 3.0s on crit Stunning (Godansthunyr)(on crit) : roll vs Fort | duration: 0 on miss; 1.0s on graze; 2.0s on hit; 3.0s on crit Wounding (Drawn in Spring) : auto-appliedProperty meanings: P.S. All durations scale with Int. P.P.S. Marking and coordinating, do not make a roll, and also do not apply a visible status effect.

That's not a bad party comp at all. But since you play on PotD (i.e. there are more enemies) and since you don't employ an alpha-strike opening, a 3 melee + 3 ranged would be a better approach compared to 2 + 4; because with 3 melee and 1 charmed/stunned enemy you can body block quite a lot of passages/hallways. I like the idea of utility/main-tank paladin that is also used as reactive anti-cc. I've also grew fond of blasting wizard; as he can deliver a decent aoe-dps (during trash fights) even without casting per-rest spells. For off-tank I would advice either barb or monk, for that sweet phys aoe damage. Plus both are comfortable with the spell-holding approach. This leads to: one of [cipher, priest, druid] should be melee. - cipher can be played as ranged-dps with a warbow, or melee-cc with dual-sabres / botep. - priest can be played as ranged fire priest (providing huge amount of damage during boss fights) or melee "How I Buffed The Others" focused mainly on buffs and off-tanking. - druid... tbh, I don't actually see how a ranged-druid can be useful without casting. So it leaves us with melee only. Either Batsh!t Crazy off-tank. Or Thundercat if your cipher can cover his ass 24/7. But tbh, your party already has great boss-fight potential. Thus I would take a second cipher instead. Afaik, many players enjoy more sturdy and less min-maxed (in terms of stats) parties. Such parties usually include fighters, paladins, barbarians, monks, and especially druid + chanters. Storms + Dragon Thrashed are a great combo that will wear down most of the enemies hordes.

Hehe, something like: - you are a wizard, Frodo (© the innkeeper of "The Prancing Pony" probably)

Sounds interesting. Animancer is more suitable than bartender to do the job anyway As a compromise it could be made such that animancers would be able to reshufle only mental stats (int, per, res). If Aloth suddenly drops to 3 int, we could always blame them for it.

Edit: hrr, double-post. Thanks for noticing. That's just a typo. It is 1.0 For some reason I have divided the value by 1.5 (hence 0.67). I will re-check that later (at home). Edit: found one of my older posts. It should be a 0.5 multiplicative malus. Updating that post, so it becomes:

1. DoTs do cause an interrupt. They do it on initial hit. 2. Hmm, don't remember testing those. Iirc, marking and disorienting don't have a separate roll and are auto-applied if you landed a hit with your weapon. While overbearing and stunning make a roll vs fortitude (and that prone/stun effect can also miss/graze/hit/crit). Firebug proc also makes an attack roll (but vs deflection). Afaik Ironskin, Mirrored Image and Wizard's Double are not dispelled immediately on being hit; rather their protection is diminished by 10% of base value or something like that. Tbh, I haven't casted them at all yet.

Just a change of racial abilities is enough RemoveTalent Companion_zzz distantadvantage AddAbility Companion_zzz elementalendurance Makes sense, from RP point of view.

Not yet But we'll get there. The thing is that such errata should be well structured, and each listed item have to be accompanied by [title, expected_situation, current_situation, reason_for_change]. Also we need to take balancing into account. For example Wounding Shot's raw DoT damage being affected by enemy DR as mentioned by Kaylon, breaks consistency, but in a way is more balanced than if it wasn't. Otherwise we would probably see a heavy shift towards blunderbuss rangers. Yeap, all tooltips that mention "+x% Attack Speed" actually reduce recovery duration. "Reduces recovery duration by x% of base value." is a good start. Although the x itself will still be inexact, as it depends on the fact if you dual-wield or not, have durganized shield or not, as well as other recovery-modifying effects (because some do apply multiplicatively, some additively). The thing is: [1h + bashing_shield] was meant to be somewhere in between [1h + shield] and [1h + 1h] in terms of dps. The problem is: at some point [1h + bashing_shield] starts to deliver lower dps than [1h + shield] (provided we don't take onHit and onCrit effects of barricade and dragon's maw) Absolutely right. I would also like to mention a series of wizard buffs, that last until hit or critically hit, according to their tooltips. For example Ironskin reads: "+8 Damage Reduction until hit or critically hit". No one would use a per-rest spell if it would just block 8 damage Even if used by a very high-def character vs fast-hitting low-acc enemies, in a hope that they will graze or miss only. The message is almost always wrong for non-raw dots. It shows you the damage as if the target had 0 DR. And ofc it has no way to take into account something like Cleansing Flames.

1. Yes, stacking with itself. For example you can cast 4 Shining Beacons one after another, and no ticks will be lost. While with Envenomed Strike you'd better wait it's full duration before applying it again. 2. Depends on Int. If you have 12 int, coefficient is 1.10. If you have 20 int, coefficient is 1.5. If damage coefficient is 1 and hit_quality is 'hit', than yes total damage of regular dot is directly proportional with int coef. 3. Yes, no DR). Also a HoT is auto-hit. There is no attack resolution.

I've read the books. Thrice The thing is I imagine Geralt fighting in silence. While chanter always chants something under his breath.

All companions indeed have a couple of optimal builds that can suit them. But there are few scenarios when you need something specific. For example I may like Aloth, but he is not super fitting for Zeblastion or Bilestomper builds

First of all there are two swords. I'd say Blade of the Endless Paths vs enemies with medium-low DR, and Tidefall vs enemies with high DR. The character could switch them like witchers do. Second, there are signs: Aard, Igni, Yrden, Quen and Axii. Aard - basic sign is similar to Mind Wave; while sweep upgrade is somewhat similar to Amplified Wave. Igni - fan of flames plus ray of fire, and to a lesser degree soul ignition. Yrden - this one is hard, maybe Time Siphon for mass slow Quen - there are no phys damage preventing shielding spells. Perhaps Spirit Shield , Llengrath's Displaced Image, Ironskin and Psychovampiric Shield? Or maybe Unbending + Triggered Immunity? Axii - Whispers of Treason / Tenuous Grasp / Enigma's Charm I would go for: - wizard or cipher, if you want to play like a witcher of Griffin school. - cipher or fighter for Wolf School - fighter for Ursine School - and rogue for Cat/Viper School feel

Animancer class... hmm. ^ There is already a confusion between ciphers and watchers It was told that only watchers can see the past of a soul. Yet ciphers from Hadret House seemingly had no problems checking Penhelm's past life. Although it was more of a miscommunication between writers.

Who summoned me? DoTs and what we know about them: - they deal damage over time. duh - first tick deals damage immediately on 0s. - attack resolution is checked only once (when the DoT was being applied); but enemy DR is checked on each tick. - they do not benefit from elemental talents, like: Scion of Flame, Spirit of Decay, etc. - they do not benefit from creature talents, like: Beast Slayer, Ghost Hunter, etc. - their ticks do not trigger Combusting Wounds. (checked in v3.05) - dots should not be confused with spells that deal periodic damage (like Sacred Immolation, Storm of Holy Fire or Symbol of <Deity>) .- dots' description always specifies that they deal a set x amount of damage over y duration.. There are two types of DoTs (by tick-rate): - hazard DoTs have a tick rate interval of 1s (but afaik there are no hazard DoTs in the game; so forget it) - regular DoTs have a tick rate interval of 3s, e.g: .- if DoT deals damage over 12s, it means it will apply tick damage at: 0s, 3s, 6s, 9s, 12s .- if DoT deals damage over 11s, it means it will apply tick damage at: 0s, 3s, 6s, 9s, 11s; but the last tick will deal less damage. - notes: Cleansing Flames doubles tick rate of all applied DoTs, for the duration of it's effect. Meaning that DoTs will tick every 1.5s, yet they do retain their total duration. There are two types of DoTs (by the way they scale with Int) - regular (like Shining Beacon, Disintegration, Soul Ignition) - their duration is increased by Int, and so is total damage. - fixed (like Wounding Shot, Wounding) - their duration is increased by Int, but total damage remains the same. I.e. higher Int reduces dps. How the total (pre-DR) damage is calculated? - total_damage (regular DoT)(before DR) = base_damage * (1 + might_coef + deatblows_coef + fighting_spirit_coef + ...) * (1 + intellect_coef) * hit_quality_modifier - total_damage (fixed DoT)(before DR) = base_damage * (1 + might_coef + ?) - notes: .- we know that wounding DoT does benefit from might twice. First it amplifies the weapon hit, from which the 25% is taken. And second it applifies the DoT damage itself. Maybe deathblows affect it in similar manner, but I haven't tested, and tbh doubt it. How duration is calculated? - total_duration = base_duration * (1 + intellect_coef) * hit_quality_modifier - hit_quality_modifier = 0.5 (graze) - hit_quality_modifier = 1.0 (hit) - hit_quality_modifier = 1.5 (crit) - afaik stuff like bonus damage on crit (e.g. The Merciless Hand) does not affect duration in any way. How the tick damage is pre-calculated? - let's say we have Shining Beacon that deals 80 base damage over 9s of default duration - a character with 10 mig / 16 int, would deal 104 damage over 11.7s - the system first calculates the amount of ticks: count = (total_duration + 3) / 3 - in our case count equals 4.9. This means there will be: .- 4 full ticks for 21.22 damage (104/4.9) .- 1 incomplete tick for 19.10 damage (21.22 * (4.9 - 4)) How is DoT damage affected by DR? - each tick of non-raw DoT goes against 0.25 of target's current DR (checked at each tick; not when DoT is applied). - there is no MIN going through, meaning that a tick can be eaten completely. Fun facts: - although on first sight it might appear that hit quality does affect only total_damage but not the dps; for non-raw DoTs it's not completely true, because of ticks dealing lower damage, and thus more being blocked by DR. E.g. a character with 10 might and 10 int casts a Shining Beacon: .- hit : 80.00 damage over 9.00s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 4 ticks of 20 .- graze: 40.00 damage over 4.50s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 2 ticks of 16.00 damage plus 1 tick of 8 .- crit : 120.00 damage over 13.50s | 8.888 pre-DR dps | 5 ticks of 21.81 damage plus 1 tick of 10.9 - stacking seems to follow no specific rules: .- stuff like Dragon Thrashed, Wounding, Shining Beacon - does stack completely. .- stuff like Disintegration, Deep Wounds, Soul Ignition - uses an override mechanism. Afaik it is: if the new instance has duration greater than remaining_duration of existing DoT, new appliance will override the older one; otherwise not. But feel free to correct me on that. .- imho, there should be clear rules for stacking in PoE2.

Yeap. Adding additional/secondary effects could both adjust the balance, and be actually fun. Missiles interrupting / pushing. Fireball knockbacking or adding a small dot / short panic effect / whatever) I also had an idea of Empower slightly increasing penetration of the affected spell. But after some thought, decided that is should go to Might stat instead. As Might no longer has a counter-weight in form of flat DR. Exactly) v3.0+ is quite well balanced, but looking at old threads... *shakes his head*. I mean it is great that Obsidian is open towards keeping iterating. But some of potential problems we indeed can theorycraft in advance, provided we have enough info. So there would be no need in fixing it. Also it would allow forum mech posts and wiki of being relevant and up-to-date for longer.

Yeap it indeed doesn't hurt to point such stuff again) A newcomer could easily make analogy between herald and zealous auras. And the later do not stack. P.S. If herald property would be applied to non-weapon/shield equipment, it probably wouldn't stack as well.

RP-wise, ofc rogue, cipher and as already mentioned priest of Magran Also I see how alchemy could suit a druid or monk. But power-gaming wise... it's to early to tell)

Exactly) Intrinsic diminishing returns by themselves are not a problem. (imho well-balanced intrinsic returns are actually a god send) The problem is if there is too big discrepancy in relative gain that we get from +m to a stat in: - situation when that stat is low, versus - situation when that stat is high Let me explain, why I see the problem in Empower, but not in the aforementioned: accuracy, deflection, endurance. 1. Accuracy (in PoE1) 2. Deflection (in PoE1) 3. Endurance (Constitution) (in PoE1) So as we have seen, the above stats although do have intistic diminishing returns, do not result in a problem. Because their gradual decline in relative gain from +flat value; is counter-weighted. Now we have arrived to Empower. TL.DR. I've started from asserting that Empower providing +3 flat bonus to current power level can lead to problems. And ended up with... the conclusion that it can actually be balanced) But it heavily depends on scaling formula. P.S. Yeah, I know, I am overthinking it