Loren Tyr

Ah, pardon my scepticism... this would be the same playthrough in which you failed to notice Bash and Thrust don't get Sneak Attack, I take it? Yeah, I'm a numbers guy, kind of my job. Exactly why would this translate into me understanding why it would be acceptable to ignore the main argument against using Barricade? If it's just the Riposte damage you're looking at, sure... absent math to the contrary, I'll happily grant that Barricade wins against any other shield. Wall might get reasonably close, but I would put my money on Barricade there. I fail to see how this matters. The point would be to maximize overall DPS, no? Why would I care if I do more Riposte damage, if it costs me more in regular attack damage?

Tuatanu has one as well.

Yeah, that's because Bash is treated as an ability (hence also no Sneak Attack), so it gets the usual +1/level ACC bonus, compensating somewhat for the lack of +ACC enchantments and Weapon Focus.

Except that you can't just discuss Riposte by itself, since the choice of Barricade vs Wall or other shield also affects the performance of the regular main hand attacks, with the Bashing ability effectively slows you down. You handwaving some numbers doesn't change that. My calculations show that in that respect the Barricade has a rather hard time compensating that, even with a fairly mid-range weapon; this disadvantage will only increase as the main weapon improves, and doesn't even factor in any status effects it may impart. This disadvantage relative to wielding a non-Bash shield would thus have to be compensated for in its entirety by the more potent Riposte attacks. Maybe it does, but you have shown no clear argument or calculation to support this so far, and it is far from evident. This would also very much depend on the ratio of Riposte triggers to regular attacks, a value which you have failed to specify. Please do try to support your support your claims with some semblance of fact and reasoned argument. Also: neither Bash nor Thrust trigger Sneak Attack, just Deathblows.

It's due to a quirk of raw damage ApplyOverTime DoTs. Normal ApplyOverTime DoTs (like Enduring Flames, of the Goldpact Knight Paladin) compute their total damage from the source damage (weapon damage, typically) before DR, just like lashes. The raw damage ones however, perhaps for reasons of balance, are computed from the total damage *after* DR. Therefore, immunity against the piercing damage nixes the wounding damage as well. Kinda wondering whether this is really intentional or not, I'll probably trace this through the code later tonight . Edit: yes, clearly deliberate. There's actually a separate PostDtDamagePlusDot type (normally they use the DamagePlusDot one). So also not inherently linked to it being raw damage, though I in all likelihood they have only used this for raw damage effects (and only for raw damage effects).

Actually, in terms of tankiness you should have no problem with your barbarian. I've been running a Barbarian tank in Hard recently myself, with a very strong focus on high CON and DR. He has base 19 CON (and 18 MIG), with Binding Rope and double Whispers of Yenwood for 25 CON, easily pushed to 30 or even higher with some chicken and resting bonuses. He's currently level 11, and with an additional +2 CON at the moment he has 385 Endurance and 2309 Health. I also have him in Exceptional Plate, which gives a base DR of 18 (with Crucible Knight talent), and against slash/pierce/crush he is 26/26/24 (with Thick-skinned and Crush-proofing). As needed, add Bulwark of the Elements potions. I also have Veteran's Recovery and Shod-In-Faith, though that starts to feel a bit redundant at this stage. Anyway, he gets hit all the time (only 44 Deflection, not going to waste slots on Deflection items), but that hardly makes a dent and mostly results enemies getting Stuck due to the Binding Rope. Also, the low deflection means many enemies are likely to keep attacking him rather than squishier backliners. He's also essentially invulnerable to Fortitude attacks, at 131 Fortitude at the moment (with Bear's Fortitude; not counting Body Control and Towering Physique, or +16 more from Frenzy), so you can basically just walk into combat without worrying overly much about what the enemy is trying to do to you; just have them crowd around and grind them into paste with Carnage. Plate Armour and 8 DEX doesn't make for a very fast attacker even with dual-wielding, but when you're nigh invulnerable (and Aloth keeps on lobbing in Rolling Flames) you don't really need to be. So yeah, with a high CON / heavy armour Barbarian tank your frontline should be fine (and you won't need much reviving or healing). The only real weak point are Confusion, Charming and Domination effects (though they often are), so you could opt to invest more talent like Bull's Will and Mental Fortress for extra will defense, and items with bonuses against those kinds of attack (or +10 spell defense). With Snow Cap you'd be reasonably protected there as well.

Even better actually, it's +20%.

@Kazuma: that's correct, only if your accuracy is sufficiently much larger than the deflection of your enemy does (normal speed) weapon + Barricade start to outdamage weapon + regular shield. And if you have a good main hand weapon that differential is going to be very high, in a range where you're probably ripping through them anyway. So the improvement of the Full Attack abilities is rarely going to compensate for that. Especially if you have a main hand weapon that imparts a status effect, because with the Bashing shield that's going to be attacking less frequently, something you'd realistically have to weigh against the Barricade as well. @Boeroer: a double Thrust would definitely shift the break-even points downwards quite a lot, I just ran that through my script as well. It also means the gap between the two widens much more quickly.

Seconded. And thirded.

Going into the Pit is a one-way street, you can't go back (without using the Console, anyway). The White March expansions aren't intended as something you do after the main game, they get added in and you go there in parallel to/alternating with the main game content.

But like I said, I don't think a Rogue (Riposting or otherwise) should be using Barricade to begin with. I've been crunching some numbers on it, but even with the Thrust the Barricade has difficulty compensating for the loss in main hand attack rate. In my earlier testing I came up with a Full Attack duration of Sabre + Bash at 50% more than just Sabre with regular shield. Comparing the damage for that same rogue, wielding a simple Resolution Sabre with Lash with or without Barricade, it turns out that you need to have a reasonably high (accuracy - deflection) differential for the Sabre+Barricade to even equal the damage output of Sabre+Shield alone, let alone exceed it. In this setup, if the target has 0 DR you only need +8 to break even, but at 5 and 10 DR that's already +20 / +22. But that's not counting Sneak Attack, which doesn't apply to Bash or Thrust. If you are Sneak Attacking the break-even points at 0, 5 and 10 DR are +27, +37 and +46. If you have Deathblows and it applies, this drops back down to +17, +22 and +29, since for some reason Deathblows does work on spells and abilities. And certainly you get a bit more mileage out of Full Attack effects if you have Barricade, but on the other hand your main weapon will likely improve considerably whereas the Bash and Thrust essentially never do. And this significantly affects the equation. In the above scenario, if I replace the Fine enchantment with an Exceptional enchantment, the break-even points at 0, 5 and 10 DR become: - normal attack: +22, +32, +38 - sneak attack: +37, +47, +58 - death blows: +24, +30, +37 So frequent Riposting might slightly increase the argument for Barricade because it is a Full Attack effect, and will increase the Riposte damage by something like 25% - 75% (again depending very much on DR, Sneak/Deathblows yes/no, and main weapon damage). But whether that's worth it will depend very much on how often Riposte actually triggers. Moreover, that's as compared to a medium shield of the same quality; the generally higher Riposte rate that a large shield like Old Gerun's Wall offers (which is already Superb and has hit-to-graze conversion on it) may well balance that despite the larger accuracy penalty (it also helps to keep you alive longer).

The .unity3d is fine, it's the loading code that needs to be changed. So that would indeed require changing the .dll. Should theoretically be doable since it is a quite self-contained issue and essentially involves just swapping one compound assignment operation for another, but I don't know how difficult that would be in practice. Not sure how far back you would have to go actually. For whatever reason Confident Aim always seems to have had some issues, I think it wasn't working at all (the minimum part, at least) in 3.02; but maybe that goes back further than that.

Not possible as far as I know, you're stuck with the portrait order I'm afraid. At least for the stronghold attacks though, you could just solve that my temporarily swapping your main character to a another slot, and moving him back after. Not ideal, but it saves a lot of running around during the fight.

I'd just go for Durganized Robe/Padded/Hide with some nice unique enchantment on it. If you can spare the ingots, why not? Seems a bit of a waste to use it on clothing when you have no armour speed penalty to begin with. Even if you go slightly higher with Hide and you don't quite get to zero recovery, the difference is still quite incremental, and the additional DR and whatever uniques the armour has might still be well worth the slight loss in attack speed.

I would tend to agree that Riposte is more something to add to the arsenal of a defensively minded rogue, rather than something to specifically build around. It still can be quite fun to go in a "Riposte Rogue" direction though, ie. a rogue build that does frequently utilize it. In any case, I still contend that the utility of Bashing shields remains debatable. I've checked now, it definitely does not count as dual-wielding, though bashing shields do have a short recovery (I tested with Larder Door, but I would assume this to be a constant across Bashing shields). In my testing (21 DEX Rogue, padded armour, no attack speed bonuses) the duration of a full main weapon + bash was about 50% longer than attacking with just the main weapon and regular shield equipped. Not as bad as I expected due to the short recovery of bash. Nevertheless, in general I sincerely doubt whether a shield bash is really worth half a main weapon attack, and once you get to the more powerful weapons it certainly isn't. A possible exception to that would be the Barricade due to its unlimited Thrust procs, but even then by very rough estimate I reckon you'd still need to crit on 50%-75% of Bash attacks to break even. Obviously a stunning hammer does help in that regard though, and the bash shield does get the usual ACC level bonus for abilities to help it along a bit. With regard to Riposte, it indeed works when disabled; when paralyzed at least, but we can safely assume that generalizes to prone and stun as well.

Ah ok. I though the Barricade triggered when you got crit yourself, this indeed makes it more suitable. Though I'd still wonder about the loss of attack speed in terms of DPS. I'm thinking of going with a tanky Riposte Rogue after my current playthrough (maybe even do PotD for once), I do rather like Old Gerun for that. Disengagement attacks are at a bonus to accuracy and damage by the way (they should, at least; come to think of it I never actually checked how high it is), that does compensate the additional defense a bit (though not nearly the +32, of course). As far as I know Riposte triggers regardless of status effects (somewhat counter-intuitively). I checked this a while ago when someone suggested it then in connection to the Preservation enchantments as well (quite possibly you, actually), and as I recall it did work. I think it's basically just implemented like any other retaliation effect, except using a standard Full Attack rather than a custom one. I'll recheck tonight though.

Well, Larder Door is an early bashing shield so that would work with it. But I'm somewhat hesitant about bashing shields to be honest. I've been pouring over weapon speeds lately, and though I haven't looked into the bashing shields specifically yet, but since they decrease the attack rate of your primary weapon (and bashing itself isn't that potent) you'll end up doing less damage with them. As far as I'm aware it also doesn't yield the dual-wielding bonus (well, doesn't avoid the non-dual-wielding penalty, technically), though even if it did it I'm fairly sure it would still drop DPS. Like I said, I still have to do the exact math on it, but I'm fairly sure my initial impression will hold. Which means this is really something they should fix in PoE2 as well, since having Bash on a shield should be a bonus rather than a penalty (though I'd prefer if they didn't put it on shields at all, and made it more like a Fighter-specific talent they can take after Weapon&Shield style). Anyway, Riposte and Strike abilities obviously do benefit from the fact that the bashing shield adds another attack, but you have to wonder whether that is worth slowing down your normal attacks for. In terms of a Riposte Rogue I'd probably go with a Durganized Old Gerun's Wall instead. You lose a bit more ACC of course but the extra deflection and 25% hit-to-graze is going to result in a nice boost to your Riposting (also, helps with the not dying). A potion of Wizard's Double can be quite helpful for that as well I'd say. If you're building for high Deflection that extra +40 can really put you over the top. It'll probably come down at some point, but you can get a lot of Riposting done in the meantime (and against enemies who have ACC at least 10 points lower than your Deflection, it won't come down at all). Not sure whether the OP would really want to go for a Riposte Rogue of course, but just a thought.

Doesn't activating Firebrand break stealth though (I don't recall exactly, but most abilities like that do)? That would only make it an option for backstab through invisibility effects like Shadowing Beyond. Though it'd still be a nice option for a Pike-wielding rogue regardless, to break out the Firebrand as needed after the initial backstabbing is done.

I've recently rather come to like the quick switch Blunderbuss rogue, myself. Blunderbuss plus strike abilities is a good combo to begin with, because you have an enormously increased chance of applying the status effect and even if there was no sneak attack-enabling status effect on the target the first pellet that even grazes with one will enable the pellets after it (add Vambraces and/or Penetrating Shot, and you're shredding enemies left and right even if they do have high DR). Moreover, if you have the auto-pause option enabled that triggers when a character finishes an ability, when you're using a Strike the game is automatically paused at the point you'll need to switch so the micromanaging isn't as much of an issue (and yes, I know you can avoid recovery by switching earlier; that's just cheating though).

In principle you get a Backstab on the first two attack, so with Dual-Wielding it would be with one with each weapon. Note that you also still get one if you became unstealthed before the actual attack started, IF you clicked to attack that enemy while under stealth. See my post here for more details and some caveats regarding Backstab with Strike abilities: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87866-backstab-rogue/?p=1823318 If you're going for backstab ranged isn't ideal; it does work with ranged weapons but you still need to be within 2 meters, and with ranged weapons it is more of a hassle to ensure that you're close enough. Though the high base damage of pistol or arquebus does make for a lot of backstab damage. Sabre is good as well (though heavy-armoured kith do tend to have quite high slashing DR, so keep an eye on that). One alternative you could consider is using a reach weapon (quarterstaff or pike). As a two-handed weapon it has high base damage for your backstab to multiply, and what you could then do as well is to come up to the enemy from behind your tank, keeping that tank between you and the enemy and your rogue relatively safe during combat. You still get two backstabs this way (unless the enemy dies before the second one occurs, obviously). Since you're not flanking the enemy though (not with your rogue at least), it would be advisable to get some status effect on enemies to enable sneak attack (Painful Interdiction is nice for this, and gives a good range of debuffs to your enemies as well). On the other hand, stilettos would indeed not be advisable. The DR penetration is certainly useful, but fast weapons like stilettos get their damage from doing a lot of weaker attacks in a short time. Backstab is still going to only boost the first two, so it won't do nearly as much extra damage as it would with weapons with more base damage. Whatever you choose though, do get a Lash enchantment (fire or otherwise) on the weapons you're using for it. Damage for those is calculated after damage bonuses from backstab, sneak attack, etc. are applied, so they get a nice boost from the backstab in particular as well.

No, it's not. Again, what would you propose? That enemies just blindly keep pounding on whatever tank you fed to them? Inherently DPS builds sacrifice defense for offense, of course they're going to be at risk if tanks fail to keep the enemy engaged and you have no contingency to stop them. Have an off-tank intercept them, knock them down, hobble them and run away, charm one of them, confuse them, get them stuck, maybe throw up some extra defenses and kill them... there are plenty of options for either even at the first wizard/priest/cipher spell level. And some nice item-bound options, like the Soulbound scepter you get early in act 2. Though your tanks really should be doing their job better if melee types break through that frequently. As long as you maintain engagement they really don't move off all that often (and with Overbearing Guard they also tend not to get very far if they do); good positioning and use of space and a judicious use of abilities like Knock Down should keep most mobs reasonably contained, and mixing in some crowd control and AOE from your casters and having a heavy hitter pick off stragglers quickly should usually keep your squishies in one piece.

It'd probably scare away quite a few potential players, though. I would certainly favour further increasing the amount of control over the game flow and giving more feedback, but turning it into a turn-based system would almost certainly put me off of playing it. And I can't imagine I would be the only one, I'd think turn-based gameplay is has mostly a niche appeal.

It's only frustrating if you keep trying the same tactic over and over. The whole point of it, I'd say, is for you to adapt to different challenges. If every encounter was just a matter of drawing aggro with some tanks and pelting the enemy with your heavy-hitting backline, where's the challenge in that? If combat doesn't have the potential to get out of control, it'll eventually just devolve into a grind. Besides, in this way it will also vary what will and won't be a challenge for a particular party. For example those Gwla's, in my current playthrough I can generally just have my main character tank breeze through them on his own, while in other playthroughs I did have to work harder on defeating them. So no, I'd say it's not at all like the BG2 Mindflayers. That was much a binary thing: either you had Chaotic Commands up and they were so feeble you could gouge them to death with a spork; or you didn't, and they ate your brain. There wasn't really a challenge in it, just a nuisance. Though not nearly as annoying as the stupid level-draining vampires, of course.

Except that if the weak dude at the back is actually a squishy but powerful mage with the ability to obliterate you and all of your allies much more quickly, it's hardly ignoring common sense to try and kill him as quickly as possible, even if that increases the risk of getting a sword between your ribs en route. Besides, it's a game, you do have to suspend some disbelief here as well. If you're willing to buy that, say, someone could survive getting repeatedly shot in the face from point blank range with a pistol, then surely a slightly simplified representation of the dynamics of combat manoeuvring and such is hardly a stretch. Aside from that, enemies *are* quite reluctant to break engagement to go beat on the squishy mage. And neither example the OP mentions actually feature that. He mentions a) a back line character being attacked from range by Oozes and b) ogres switching targets to his character when he walks into range. Neither involves breaking engagement. From a gameplay perspective it would also be quite predictable, boring and easy if enemies just stupidly attacked whomever they saw first. Which is precisely what they did in BG and IWD by the way, fixating on their target like an obsessive-compulsive and ignoring everyone else. How is that common sense?

I rather like the penalty that builds up as you cast. Though I'd probably do it explicitly as a kind of reverse Monk style of system, where the (let's call it) 'casting fatigue' builds up as an actual counter, with more powerful spells incurring greater fatigue, and gradually decreases as well; and also make it something that directly affects casting (duration, accuracy, damage, casting time; some combination thereof). So you can keep on casting big spells if you want to, but it would quickly start to deteriorate their effectiveness; but if you alternate more with lower level spells or non-casting activities (maybe even have something like level 0 cantrip-ish spells that incur no fatigue or even decrease it; or similarly have it interact with using implements, which I've always felt should do something more in that regard). That way you have to find a good balance between the spells you're using, and by making it an explicit (negative) resource you can also have things more easily interact with it (eg. high CON decreasing fatigue gain, an item that gives a bonus to highly fatigued casters, etc.), it is easier to balance individual spells, and so on. It also has a nice by-product of increasing the value of lower-level spells even at high caster levels (especially if higher level spells are more severely affected by fatigue). One further possibility would be to have the fatigue penalty vary across spells, instead of or in addition to having a general penalty; eg. one spell might have -5% damage per point of fatigue while another gets a much longer casting time (might get a bit complicated though). Similarly, you might also have spells or class-specific abilities (perhaps a class kit specific talent) that also give a bonus based on fatigue. I certainly would use this for just one class, probably the mage class. But I think druids, priests and mages should become mechanically more distinctive anyway, differ on more than just their spell selection.