MaxQuest

Hehe. I'd just prefer there would be an option with silent charge, as if character was focused, yet with a sly smile on her face. The only combat sound could be just a slight heh, once the last of enemies falls down. I.e. something, something rogue style.

Imagine your group as members of some fantasy SWAT. They will use weapons and tactics that lead to minimal loses It's the developers task to provide an array of different, yet viable tactics to use. It's a player's task to find the most optimal ones

That won't be a problem as headbands were suggested as head gear that is available to everyone. The balancing is done via their lower stats. For example at the time you find Maegfolk Skull (with 4 Mig and Unbending), you also can discover a +2 Mig Headband. True. And technically they all scale at the moment: - (Fire) Battle Forged: as already mentioned - (Moon) Silver Tide: base_healing = 10 Endurance +3/level after level 1 - (Death) Death's Usher: indirectly and weakly but a bit scales, because as enemy hp gets bigger, so does their 0-20% hp range. - (Nature) Wellspring of Life: +3 Mig, +2 Con, +2 Dex - are all percentage modifiers. The problem is that godlikes might be balanced at some moment; but increasing lvl cap and adding stronger headgear options can destabilize their situation. So if devs will want to add more powerful hats later on, they will be more restricted in their design space, as they will have to take godlikes scaling into account as well. Tbh headbands don't solve this problem completely, but at least reduce it by a factor of 2.

Yeah. That'd be great) Or if it's too costly to look up for extra voice-actors, (for the preset lines); it would be cool to at least use some sort of voice modulator to do the task (i.e. new presets from the existing ones) Edit: And it would be absolutely awesome, if we could be able to mod/add such presets too. (something, something like portraits)

^ I.e. do chants and invocations suffer from accuracy malus of medium and large shields? Yes. Also it's worth mentioning, that wielding [1h+nothing in offhand] grants a +12 acc bonus to some of chanter's abilities (and not just his auto-attacks). For example it works with Dragon Thrashed. Thanks to Boeroer for noticing.

Nope. Those you have listed (reliable property/enchant, confident aim and zealous focus) are the only sources of graze-to-hit conversion. Flails have an embedded reliable property of 30% conversion. While other weapons with reliable enchant have 20% conversion.

Talents: - Painful Interdiction - Aspirant's Mark - Weapon and Shield Style / Two Weapon Style - Blast and Penetrating Blast As for abilities... here are a 'few': - Heart of Fury, Barbaric Blow - Aefyllath, Dragon-Thrashed, Sure-Handed chants - Whispers of Treason, Mental Binding, Echo, Silent Scream, Detonate, Amplified Wave, Disintegration, Time Parasite - Storms, Firebug, Embrace the Earth-Talon - Unbending, Charge, Triggered Immunity - Torment's Reach, Flagellant's Path - Sacred Immolation, FoD/LoH, Aegis of Loyalty, Zealous Aura, Liberating Exhortation - Shining Beacon, Cleansing Flame, Crowns for the Faithful, Minor Avatar - Twinned Arrows, Wounding Shot, Driving Flight - Deathblows - lots of wizard spells

I just hope there will be more voice presets. Or ability to slightly change pitch and speed. For example if I like 2 female VO presets out of total, and have 4 female characters (MC+hirelings) in may party; some will end sounding the same...

Yeap. Making godlike's bonus ability to scale; or rather giving them a race ability of similar power magnitude like other races have [plus] some scaling passive or active bonus (to compensate for the lack of headgear) could also be a solution. Or tier2 headbands. Whichever devs find easier to implement and balance.

In a way bashing shields already have better interrupt. A fast weapon like dagger has an interrupt duration of 0.35s, while bashing shield (which has the same attack_duration) has 0.5s. The problem is that bash damage doesn't scale into late game. An easy fix (V1) would be to make the following 3 changes: 1. make quality enchants on bashing shields to increase both shield properties and their damage + accuracy (like quality enchants on weapons do). 2. add a "spike shield" improvement which would mimic the lash enchant. 3. and re-balance the damage of bash itself: Bashing 1: 6-9 Bashing 2: 8-12 Bashing 3: 10-15 Bashing 4: 13-18 to something like: Bashing 1: 8-12 Bashing 2: 9-13 Bashing 3: 10-14 Bashing 4: 11-15 in order to make it closer to the damage of regular dagger (9-13), and sword (11-16). Other solution (V2), would be to change the 1). from V1 suggestion into: incorporate [damaging enchant] into bash base damage; and add a bashing_shield_talent that would increase it's accuracy.

It makes a lot of sense to use potion right before the combat, a-la battle preparation in Witcher 2 style, at least RP wise. On the other hand players would just prebuff a lot. Still not good. So I am rather neutral on this. I am completely with you on this. Drinking potions being so slow was very annoying. Not to mention that they don't really queue well, and any interruption forces you to recheck if the potion was applied or not. Tbh, I'd like drinking a potion being instant, with a delayed effect of 3s during which it's bonuses are not yet applied, nor you can use another potion. It would make me hoard them for some uber hard fight, only to never actually use them. Same thing happened with majority of Caed-Nua adventure rewards that had non-replenishing charges.

From the last Q&A Twitch session: Source

I was thinking... some godlikes were intended to have stronger racial abilities, because they can't wear headgear. In a way making them stronger than other races in the early game (when there simply were no head items to be found) and weaker later (because of headgear extra stats). This feels a little bit askew, especially with all new items that came with WM1, WM2 and raising of the lvl cap. What if there were headgear items of tier 2. Twice less powerful than coifs, helmets and so on, but which can be equipped by everyone, including godlikes. For example headbands. So, what do you think?

Depends on what kinds of dps. If you mean from auto-attacking, than yes you can have high dps with [1h+shield] if you have reached zero-recovery (so, late in the game). If it doesn't matter, than there are few decent (per-encounter) dps options: - chanter with [1h+shield] + Dragon Thrashed chant - paladin with [1h+shield] + Sacred Immolation - rogue with [1h+Badgradr's Barricade] if you can make it proc often, with deathblows condition. - barbarian with [1h+Dragon's Maw] as already mentioned And ofc there are vancian classes, that can wield [1h+shield] and dish astonishing amount of damage via spells: - druid, wizard, fire priest; provided they have high might and int.

There are 6: +2 lore backgrounds: Aristocrat, Artist, Clergyman, Mystic, Philosopher and Scholar There is 1: +2 survival background: Colonist Thus I'd like 1 background with +2 mechanics RP wise, hmm: Sailor, Thief, Headhunter, Doctor/Healer.

Tbh I really like the orchestra stretch goal. Especially if it won't simply add orchestrated version of existing soundtracks, but will add new ones. Having a few "special saves" for testing purposes, you can't imagine how annoying hearing the very same piece of music every time you enter a combat can become; even if you liked the soundtrack for first (let's say) 100 times.

It does. Square root of distance from enemy to each of your party members plays a huge deal in their target preference. Placing 2 tanks at the start of combat in the frontline (due to formation) will help a lot your 3 squishes in the 3rd row from being attacked right of the bat. And even more if you would unstealth them immediately after main threats have engaged your frontline. Proper formation (or more exactly: proper order of portraits) made Od Nua bandit fights much easier during my very first playthrough. Enemies might sometimes ignore those who engaged them. But they don't really like to ignore those whom they engaged themselves. With the exception when their special abilities (with custom targeting) came out from cooldown; or you broke engagement via cc yourself (and they have to seek for new target after coming from stun/paralyze/etc) Hmm, how do you imagine that? Select formation before each formation HOMM style?

Lingering bugs I am aware of: - various ways of stacking defenses and damage coefficients by enemy mobs on game reload. - inconsistent red/yellow areas for aoes. For example powder burns still hits everyone in the yellow zone. - envenomed strike is not applied (although the charge is wasted) if you are unarmed and attempt to envenom a crush-immune enemy. - dots's not benefiting from Scion of Flame talent and alike (i.e. elemental talents) - dots's not benefiting from Beast Slayer talent and alike (was a total surprise for me, when Disintegrate was ticking for the same damage) - being unable to normally queue potions. - if you are interrupted during potion drinking, character won't try to drink it again. - charm effects sometimes being dispelled on the enemies (that are off-screen) for unknown reason. - occasional roundelay (running in circles) pathing. - wounding-shot and wounding enchant working best with dumped int. (not really bug, but just... wrong) - second-skin talent providing zero DR bonus if your character is naked. That's right. The only thing that has to do with unity is inter-action delay. DoTs afaik either: - have their raw tick_dmg set appriori. (and there would be no problem to take elemental talents into account as well) - have their tick_dmg reevaluated on each tick, in which case the game would need to have access to attacker and defender objects anyway (hence elemental talents of attacked could again be taken into account)

Glad you liked it) It's a matter of preference: - fix character survivability weakness - or maximize his power, and look for a survivability solution elsewhere. Personally for me... works best maximizing character's points forte, while making other team members compensate for their weaknesses. That's the reason I was advocating dw early. I once started with a frontline consisting of tank pal (1h+shield), tank barb (1h+shield) and cipher (1h+shield). But already by level 4 I have switched barb and cipher both to sabre-dw and was just solving all my survivability problems or inequality in health drop via crow-control means. In your case cipher is ranged, through. Btw, since he is in breastplate now; you can try to give him arquebus (or even blunderbuss) for awhile (mostly for early, early-mid game, until you get gauntlets of swift action and are ok with lighter armor). That's because reloading weapons dps doesn't suffer that much from armor penalties. And also because casting of Eyestrike, Whispers of Treason and Mental Binding specifically, is not as much hindered by heavier armor like regular fast/average spells. You can give him Durance's staff. Also... I understand that you took the bear form because of the extra 2 DR which is great early. But if you will respec in the mid/late game, you can also give Cat Form a try, because it attacks x1.5 faster, and iirc they both hit for the same damage (correct me if wrong) so the dps will also get x1.5 higher. (plus there is also Cat's Flurry) Btw, from lvl 9 onward, you might want to try Embrace the Earth-Talon for the benefits it gives to both your barb and cipher. Barb's burst will get doubled because of petrify bonus, and so will cipher's focus gain.

I was reluctant of using low-cost powers, by a plate-encased cipher at first. Well, because of recovery. I had a second cipher (a ranged one in a robe) who could cast these faster. But it turns out, that some of spells have almost the same action duration for both naked and plate encased characters. These are the ones I am aware of: Eyestrike, Whisper of Treason, Mental Binding and Ring Leader. (i.e. they have longer attack duration than they should for their UISpeed category; but very fast recovery; so plate is not a problem)

Pardon) Have added them to tally. Also for anyone interested, here's the transcript made by Fereed: link

Yes. Health can be a problem. A problem you have to take into consideration before even starting the new playthrough. There are 2 solutions to it: - improve this cipher weakness, and make him more tanky; partially in detriment of his offensive potential. - ignore this cipher weakness, keep his offensive potential; and let a dedicated cc'er cover his ass; in the end you have plate armor against targets that deal low damage; while all higher-hitting enemies are paralyzed as soon they reach your cipher. Tbh I don't like idea of 1h+shield on cipher (until you can reach zero-recovery with that 1h.

Nope, her stats/defenses where not changed. You are just likely having higher level now, or durganized weapons. Although there was something about her movement speed and hobbled effect. She had a slow crawling speed of 3. While hobbled enemies are slowed exactly by 3 units; basically rooting her in place. Do I remember right and some of the updates nerfed hobbled to -2ms? Or it's my memory failing me in favor of imagination?

^ Sounds solid. I am not completely sure on the paladin's niche through. I never played with a dw-paladin, but I am a bit concerned with his dps after the FoD alpha-strike. If those who have played with that build and it provided a decent dps contribution, while having zero problems keeping enemy frontline at bay, than it's ok. A backup/alternative plan could be to make your barb a little more dps'y, while paladin more tanky. My current party has a core similar to yours. Although I've gone for: - a dw-sabre-barb - tank-support darcozzi paladin (outwarn buckler + shame or glory) without FoD Barb is one of main dps'ers during trash fights. But will be able to tank dragons if needed, with 1H+Dragon Maw. Paladin is a pure tank. He deals like 5-10% of party damage; but is great at body/passage blocking plus has lots of buffs/scrolls. Alternative tactic I use is: send paladin to solo tank the dragon. While keep barbarian with the rest of group. Minions flock around. Get CC'ed and Carnage/HoF/BB served. I like the flexibility, when I can approach any encounter in at least two different ways. Btw, such tanky paladin requires zero supervision. While everything that jumps on Barbarian from another flank, gets instantly paralyzed by cipher. So their health even through goes slowly down over multiple encounters, does that at the same rate. There is no feel that someone drags the party down or force it rest more often than the other members do.

Tbh, PoE1 attribute system is quite deep. From related games I've played and enjoyed NWN, NWN2, DA:O, DA:2 and DA:I. And tbh Pillars' system is deeper than those. And a deep system is interesting in my book. Doesn't the second paragraph contradict the first one?