kvaak
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Posts posted by kvaak
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Speaking of that tavern, I have words for that as well. There's no real plot important reason to go into that place. You can just saunter past it accidentally, as I did three times. I did the Monk Scroll quest and then left, assuming nothing more.
SPOILER ALERT: If you don't talk to one ordinary looking man named "Frightened Man", the entire city of Gilded Vale is exterminated in the epilogue.
Whoopsy. The village I went on a long, epic quest to save, defeating an entire castle of badasses over is now dead. Oh well. Sometimes a random NPC just spontaneously returns to life and invalidates all your work. If they'd wanted to live they'd have given a messenger five gold to actually deliver the message instead of relying on gossip, right?
You're absolutely right, there's no plot reason to go into that tavern. For most people that would fall into a category of "side quests" or "exploration". And no, you don't actually have to talk into a random, frightened guy in there to find out Raedric decided to give death the finger. Caed Nua gets attacked by Raedric's forces if you don't talk to the messenger or confront the zombie lord. In fact, I didn't even notice the frightened guy until my third playthrough but that didn't prevent me from being alerted to something being horribly wrong around Gilded Vale.
Well, then there's the other problem of the people of the Dyrwood. They're all horribly monstrous, evil scumbags barring maybe ten individuals and the Glanfathans. Cultists of Skaen, Cultists of Woedica, the Volunteer Anti-Cypher Nazis, the Knights, one cruel, decadent, evil group after another. And then, then, after you bend over backwards and ensure that everything is perfect to make sure the Soul Arts get a fair trial?
DIDN'T MATTER! An evil reincarnating wizard jumps into the body of the defendant lightnings to death the entire city aristocracy, causing a mass riot to break out and destroy everything, including murdering all the Soul Doctors.
The trial has a major impact on one of the ending slides. Which doesn't affect gameplay at all. So valid point, sort of.
If you switch off the evil machine in the Northwest of the city instead of blowing it up? OOPS! NO ONE STUDIED IT! SOMEONE SWITCHED IT ON AGAIN AND IT KILLED EVERYONE!This was fairly nonsensical yes. Why this particular machine turns living people into zombies instead of eating babies' souls like the rest was something that I either missed or that wasn't explained.
...Also I played it when it first came out so it was pretty dang buggy too, but honestly they weren't really that bad for me. If pressed for a rating I'd say Pillars was an above average game, but it could have been excellent with more writing and polish and... well, MORE in general.While I don't agree with many of your points the lack of polish is far too apparent. The game had a good number of bugs at launch which I guess is to be expected, but it has been out for a year and gone through a two-part expansion without fixing some of them while introducing many more. Load times have been improved (largely thanks to my new SSD for all I know) but they're still bad to the degree I do everything in an order that minimizes the number of area transitions required. Performance isn't exactly great either, and while my rig might no longer be top of the line I'm not really convinced PoE is in a position to demand a newer one.
Writing, meaningless decisions or lack of immersion are the last thing that bother me about PoE. It's the little things that prevent me from giving it a 9/10 or 10/10.
That being said, even an 8/10 is a fairly good score. Especially considering I expected PoE to be a spiritual sequel to some of the greatest CRPGs ever made.
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PC paladins max out at 8/17, custom adventurers max out at 7/14. Both get 2/3 from deep faith. The additional point of fort/reflex/will for the PC is probably a rounding quirk.
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You can rest anywhere, you still get the cutscene.
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Also the spiritual forcefields.
Plot armor, now finally a visible attribute. It sort of works for dialogue too if you think of it as "armor" in a very broad sense!
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Just for the heck of it, it's actually possible to reach a hit -> crit conversion of exactly 100%:
5% from Zealous Focus + Critical Focus (paladin aura)
10% from Dirty Fighting (rogue passive)
10% from Vicious Fighting (rogue talent, modifies Dirty Fighting)
10% from a predatory weapon of your choice (Tall Grass for bossfights anyone?)
10% from Hearth Orlan passive (attacking an enemy targeted by at least one other ally)
15% from a potion of Merciless Gaze
20% from Dire Blessing (priest spell)
20% from Durgan Steel
= 100%. Coincidence!?
E: Dire Blessing and Merciless Gaze don't stack. WTB +15% hit to crit.
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Raiment of Wael's Eyes. Either that crit just got downgraded into a hit or you got +20 free deflection. I'd probably use 6 of these if I could.
As far as plain damage goes most classes are better off with non-soulbound weapons but Barbarians can get an insane amount of procs off e.g. the Grey Sleeper via carnage and a ranger using Stormcaller with Driving Flight + Twinned Arrows is a chainstunning lightning machine gun.
I don't understand how Dawn in spring is the highest DPS weapon, i thougt it was rimecutter ( have a lash and annilation and speed, Dawn in spring can not have a lash)
Edge of Reason all the way. Mister chop chop doesn't need speed to hit 0 recovery.
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With no "conversion" 110 accuracy vs. 100 deflection gives you:
- 5% chance to miss
- 35% chance to graze
- 50% chance to hit
- 10% chance to crit
With "20% of hits converted to crits" this turns into:
- 5% chance to miss
- 35% chance to graze
- 40% chance to hit
- 20% chance to crit
If you have a total of 20% hit -> crit every time you roll "hit" you have a 20% chance of converting that hit into a crit. These stack fully and additively, if you somehow manage to stack five different sources of 20% hit -> crit all your hits turn into crits.
Only one conversion can happen per attack so you can't convert a graze into a hit and then that hit into a crit. You can, however, convert a hit from Tall Grass into a crit and then trigger its "prone on crit" ability.
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Honestly, the only real way to get around DR is to just hit as hard as possible. Stilettos might have innate DR bypass but their base damage is so low it only matters against low DR enemies - if an enemy has 30 DR you still have 27 to punch through once you account for the bypass.
Using two-handed weapons (or the ranged weapons that require reloading) and pumping might is the obvious solution but even lower damage weapons are capable of doing the job if you e.g. pile enough (de)buffs to reliably land crits. DR is the (second) last thing applied so turning a 40-damage hit into a 60-damage crit against an enemy with 30 DR will triple your damage.
I never really bothered using vulnerable attack or penetrating shot, using a bigger stick and keeping the attack speed generally felt more efficient although if you can stack enough attack speed to hit 0 recovery vulnerable attack is strictly beneficial.
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OK, it makes a bit more clear some stuff. No one likes cryptic tooltip.
Yet, even for Triumphal Paladin, I would still prefer Hearth Orlan and a helmet. Something like +3 Might and 10% hit to crit will do the job, even out of conditional situation.
Might/damage bonuses aren't exclusive to helmets, you can just grab those elsewhere. If I wanted to run optimized characters I wouldn't have a triumphadin in my party in the first place. Death godlike's bonus is thematical and fits the job.
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^ triumph paladin best paladin. I find it rather annoying PoE is so obscure with the two killing blow abilities, death godlike's damage bonus kicks in at 25% which is just about right for popping Flames of Devotion. Bloody Slaughter on the other hand doesn't work until 10% which makes it pretty much completely useless, if your KW/BW triumph paladin can't finish off enemies that low that talent isn't going to help.
Both state "low endurance" which is simply misleading since it implies they share the threshold while in reality they're not even close.
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I believe they did a pretty much good job till now. Even in PotD. I'm playing both rogue and barbarian in PotD right now and they do their job quite efficiently.
I haven't played with these classes yet. Did they feel being close to mvp during the dragon fights?
Considering dragons are a damage race as you can only soak so many breaths, carnage's AoE scales with target size (which means your barbarian with Tall Grass can target the dragon and still crit-prone everything around it) and rogues get basically the highest single target DPS + (a ton of full attack CC) in the game I'd say yes.
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If you want to get the most out of Abydon's Hammer pump int as high as you can on a barbarian, wear light armor (the mirror image robe sold in Stalwart is fantastic) and back it up with some extra might and perception. On-hit effects apply fully on carnage so if you hit a total of 10 enemies with the Grey Sleeper you have a chance to proc 10 twin stones and you'll get at least one ~40% of the time.
Tall Grass probably does a better job overall at knocking stuff prone since it has reaching and you can glue durgan steel on it but Abydon's Hammer has a bunch of other fancy stuff.
Dex would be nice but int, might and perception are all more important. You have frenzy, bloodlust, blood thirst and deleterious alacrity for attack speed.
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Just remember, there is no in game reason to ever inspect a backer NPC or read one of the obelisks/grave markers. I know I don't. They add nothing to the game and are there purely because of the kickstarter promises.
Unfortunately someone like me who has inherited the habit of spamming tab from Infinity Engine games has a hard time ignoring the fact the first gold-plated NPC you run into right at the start of Gilded Vale is named "Zloxx the Usurper", something I'd except in Commander Keen or Calvin & Hobbes.
Don't even get me started with Palzerker and the rest.
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Nope, although it did change into "trigger once, ignore per encounter limit" mode again...
E: Actually, now it does both.
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Dazing like a lvl 1 wizard and weak shouts (too long to cast) don't exactly makes the class good.
I already quoted threatening presence as a good ability. But that's about it.
The colossal range/duration easily justify the shouts' cast time.
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I don't think barbarians require more single target DPS.
But just a bit of alternate utilities as endgame abilities would be nice. Currently they... daze about as well as a level 1 wizard.
And as I said I don't think this is such a huge problem.
Barbaric Yell, Threatening Presence, Barbaric Shout, Dragon Leap, Echoing Shout.
IMO those are plenty.
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I don't really think barbarians need buffing. While you might argue smartbarians are nonsensical and dumb they're brutally effective when properly utilized. Glue some durgan steel on Tall Grass and you'll keep a massive number of enemies prone while easily outdamaging other melee classes via carnage. PotD has a huge number of enemies.
Even if you don't pump int you still get a huge number of procs from weapons like Grey Sleeper. If you give barbarians better single target damage they'll be the single most overpowered class in the game (minus wizards). Their entire "thing" is AoE, even the loading screen tips tell you that.
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Those recommendations haven't been changed since the game's launch. Back then perception didn't increase accuracy.
Gimping yourself due to outdated descriptions is still gimping yourself. Also inspiring triumph isn't exclusive to KW/BW.
As for me, I find it entirely unproductive in so far as that no matter which topic, Brimsurfer will refuse to advance the argument beyond his own original, vague position. As for the reasons why: I'm not sure whether he's deliberately trolling, or in dire need of attention...The two often go hand in hand.
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^ Don't forget strange mercy, it heals for a rather obscene amount considering all it requires you to do is kill something, something you'll do anyway.
I'm currently running a strange mercy + inspiring triumph death godlike focused solely on killing blows. His flames of devotion can crit for triple digits at the start of act 3. On a kill that's free defenses and massive healing for everyone (except himself, sadly). On top of that he brings instant resurrection with huge range, accuracy aura with graze -> hit and whatnot.
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Druid spells are quite meh in general IMO, they're basically a mix between mage's offensive and priest's supportive/defensive ones without being very good at either. The passive storm ones are great but take ages to cast.
Wizard's shiniest spells feel to be the mid - mid-high ones. Shadowflame is so bonkers you basically need nothing else.
Priest gets a metric ton of resurrection, with the various immunities being spread out they have solid spells all over.
Overall I'd rate the WM spells bonkers/10 for priest, redundant/10 for wizard* and mehhh/10 for druid.
* = (yes, I know shadowflame a WM spell but it's only level 4)
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This was supposedly fixed but as of the latest beta patch it still procs multiple times (ditto the boots with consecrated ground). At some point it ignored the per encounter limit but didn't proc multiple times at once, now it seems to have reverted to its old behaviour. In fact, the number of procs in that screenshot is the highest one I've seen so far...
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Okay, so I tried throwing in a riposte rogue. I don't have too much trouble buffing his deflection up to the point where I get plenty of misses, his will/fort saves are fairly weak though and even if those aren't an issue riposte's proc rate is too low to make a difference.
A paladin brings much more utility with aura + outworn buckler and fighters have a much better damage/survivability ratio. Other melee classes/chars also get a better mix of the two.
This might just work if riposte actually did something but a proc rate of 20% is far too low to justify building a rogue around free counterattacks and if you don't build the character around it you'll never get high enough deflection to constantly get misses on PotD.
You also need to (de)buffs so unlike a paladin you can't charge into a group of enemies at the start of combat.
The fact hatchet is a bad basetype and there aren't any good artifacts or soulbound ones to compensate doesn't help. Why do hatchets give bonus deflection anyway? Their shafts are typically made of wood, there's no crossguard and you're not going to parry anything with the blade...
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A Frustrated Review From A Long Term Fan
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by kvaak
Because at the end of the game you kill the only member of Leaden Key who knows more about the organization than their own name.