Loren Tyr

It doesn't as far as I can tell, just tried it out to verify. I posted it in the Technical Support forum, maybe they can fix it for the coming patch.

The stag carnage ability doesn't seem to work. When I activate it, the ability icon itself does give the usual "No uses left" and "Already in effect" messages, but no carnage damage is being done nor is a carnage AoE shown when hovering the attack cursor over an enemy (like you get with a Barbarian). The part of the Ranger's character sheet that shows the Animal companion also doesn't show anything under "Active Effects", so it just doesn't seem to actually be applied. Note that the "Already in effect" message does disappear after a while (I didn't time it exactly, but as far as I can tell it sticks around as long as it is supposed to, there's just no actual effect to go with that message). Edit: tried the Druid Stag Carnage, that one does work fine but also does not show up under "Active Effects" (or as an icon next to the character on the main screen).

I was thinking, it might be interesting to have conversation options and scripted interactions that are tied to having low stat values. On the one hand terms of options/interaction paths being unavailable for some characters, same as now but tied to much lower minimum values; ie. an intensely stupid character being unable to go for the more articulate or well-reasoned replies. And conversely, low stat values opening up other paths (instead of, or in addition to, the rest): a weak-willed (ie. low Resolve) character ending up meekly going along with an NPC's plan rather than opposing it, or accepting lesser rewards. Or a clumsy (ie. low Dexterity) character dropping a Dragon Egg when handing it to the NPC that asked him to retrieve it. Anyway, just a thought. It just seems to me that having particularly low values for certain stats should have some additional consequences, does add flavour. Though it doesn't (just) have to be in scripted interactions, we could also have a very low Dexterity character occasionally tripping and Proning themselves when walking around in combat, things like that .

Just as an addition, by the way, note that not all DoT effects work this way. Most of them do, the ones with a fixed base damage per tick. In some cases however, the total DoT damage is fixed instead, and these work a bit differently. For example Enduring Flames, which adds a DoT worth 50% of the original weapon damage (before DR; it gets the Might damage multiplier applied again as well, though crit/graze only extends duration). Given this total damage value, the damage per tick becomes (total damage) x 3 / (duration). This will actually add up to more than the total damage most of the time; for example, at a duration of 10s there will be 4 ticks at 0.3 x (total damage), is 1.2 x (total damage) in all. These "damage plus DOT" type effects don't get a fractional tick at the end. Curiously, this mechanism means that your character is better off being really dumb, because high INT means the same amount of damage is spread over a larger number of ticks. This means that it will take longer for the damage to be dealt, and since tick damage is deducted a flat 0.25 x DR the damage dealt can also be considerably lower. Anyway, hope this is helpful to anyone interested.

I did some tests as well just to get things straight for myself, I come to the same conclusions as Reent. Base damage (eg. 3 for Deep Wounds, 10 for Necrotic Lance) is multiplied by standard damage multipliers (Might, etc.), which for the last tick is also multiplied by the tick fraction. A flat 0.25 x DR is then deducted from this, the resulting number is the damage applied for that tick (values aren't rounded internally, even though they are displayed as such). This is recomputed every tick, so if stats like Might or DR change halfway through that is taken into account. I've also found that the fractional tick at the end doesn't occur if the fraction is too small, the threshold seems to be 1/3 of a tick, so 1 second (this seems to be tied to the tick fraction itself, it is independent of the amount of damage it would have done). And indeed, crits and grazes don't affect the damage per tick, just the duration.

Well, for just Wind Blights a bunch of Fan of Flames scrolls should be plenty, so you'd only need two lore. You can just get that with a resting bonus, no need to invest points. Though Blunt-resistant enemies later on might require a bit more than that, so it could be useful to invest some points in it later. Even if you put in just three, with resting bonus and +3 lore Rite you can easily get it up to eight when needed, to get more potent scrolls.

I'd say to some extent it doesn't matter, insofar you generally don't need to know the precise amount of damage being done anyway. But I agree that it is annoying not to know how something works mechanically, and DoT effects are rather murky. On the one hand it does in many ways behave and appear to be implemented as a single attack stretched out in time, but in others it does not, ie. the damage after DR is recomputed at each tick; if you apply for example an elemental damage DoT and drink a Bulwark potion halfway through, subsequent ticks will do less damage.

Yes. And the answer to that question is: it depends. And thus my previous post was intended to elaborate a bit on that.

I rather doubt most people will agree with that actually, which stats are most important for a given class will vary considerably across classes as well as different builds of the same class, and also depend on your preferred play style. Might, sure... good for dealing damage and healing. But not every character is primarily focuses on dealing a lot of damage (a tanky meat shield or crowd control oriented wizard, say), and may benefit more from other stats. But also rogues, which with the various damage multipliers they tend to get can deal a lot of damage without investing in Might. Similarly, intellect doesn't matter too much of you have little or no AoE effects and don't overly rely on effects with a long duration. Accuracy boosts from perception, always handy, but it will depend on other factors whether that's the main concern. Damage output is ultimately a product of accuracy, attack frequency and attack damage, so which combination of the three is most effective isn't an absolute. On the other side we have Dexterity, good for fast attack / compensating armour penalties. And sure, when dual wielding you can go quite fast already, but a) getting to low or zero recovery takes time and dictates certain choices, b) not nearly everyone is interested in dual-wielding, c) Dexterity affects attack speed rather than recovery speed, so you still get a benefit even at zero recovery, and d) it's one of the few things that speeds up casting, I believe. Resolve is of course very useful for characters likely to be in the line of fire, since it is the only stat that affects Deflection and having a high concentration can really pay off as well. And finally a hardy Constitution, quite beneficial if you plan on getting hit a lot. Again, it rather depends on play style and build how important it is, but having sufficient endurance is obviously crucial. Also note that in a sense effect you can use high Constitution to indirectly improve your recovery speed as well, since having a lot of endurance means you can get away with using lighter armour. Anyway, just some thoughts. In summary though, Statis_Sword had it right: each stat has its benefits, and you can go a lot of different directions with it. That's one of the things I really like about how it is set up, you just have a great deal of freedom to do things in a lot of different ways, and still end up with a fun and viable character.

Don't think there's much you can do to modify Fist damage type, so if weapons are out I'd say your best bet would be to use some scrolls. If those are off the menu as well, you're probably down to retaliation effects or possibly proc on hit effects; as far as I know the latter still trigger even with immunity to the main attack damage, though there probably aren't many to be had for an unarmed, ascetic monk.

Hmm, given that he wants to avoid spoilers, the Build Guides may not be ideal. They don't generally contain many plot spoilers of course, but do contain more general spoilers and such. Anyway, one additional key aspect I wanted to point out is stacking: if multiple bonuses (or penalties) affecting the same value (stat, defence type, etc.) are active on a character (or enemy), they may not all apply. In some cases only the highest bonus (or strongest penalty) actually applies; the weaker bonuses (and penalties) will be grayed out and noted as 'suppressed' in the character sheet, and when you look at active effects on the main game screen; bonuses and penalties don't suppress each other (though of course they can cancel each other out). There are four broad categories of effects: passive (permanently active effects from talents, resting bonuses, etc.), effects of weapons, effects of other equipment, and active/modal effects (afflictions, most spell effects, modal abilities, food, potions, etc.). For any specific value, the total bonus is the sum of all bonuses from passive and weapon effects, plus the highest bonus from equipment effects, plus the highest bonus from active/modal effects (and the total penalty is computed in the same way). So it's those last two categories you have to pay most attention to. So for example, if your character is being affected by the +3 DR Paladin aura (modal), there is little point in him drinking a +1 DR glass of beer (active), since the net result is still only a +3 DR bonus as they are in the same category (it would stack with eg. a +1 DR helmet though (other equipment) as well as any bonuses from your weapons and passive effects (eg. Fire Godlike Battle Forged at <50% Endurance). Note that suppressed effects are still there: if you did drink the beer and then walked out of range of the Paladin aura, the beer effect stops being suppressed and you get the +1 DR. Similarly, two Deflection penalties from spells or status effects like Stunned won't stack on an enemy (since they are all active/modal effects), but if the duration of the first one runs out the second one will still remain (until it expires as well, of course). If you are unsure whether some things stack, it's usually easiest to just try it out and check the character sheet for all the currently active effects; if any of them are suppressed you can see it there. Especially when it comes to Accuracy it can be a bit tricky, since for example two active effects with "+5 Accuracy" and "+5 Melee Accuracy" probably will stack because they technically affect different values.

A hybrid is also an option: open with a firearm for a quick boost in Focus, switch to warbow if the battle goes on that long. Has anyone tried a crossbow Cipher, by the way? It generally doesn't seem to get a whole lot of love I think (in general), it's perhaps a bit too middle of the road for its own good. But it might actually be a reasonable compromise between speed and damage.

The real disadvantage in this comes from the fact that you are a wizard, so while you are poking them with a staff for alright damage you could be knocking down, paralizing, blinding or otherwise shutting down whole encounters. As DreamWayfarer said, the damage is more than alright, and it also heals you. But aside from that, why would it matter what else you could be doing? Even if a Staff Mage isn't the optimal wizard build, it is still a viable build that can be quite effective and fun to play. Given that, the roads not travelled seem fairly irrelevant (especially since you can travel them in another playthrough anyway, or even in the same one by adding a second mage).

If having options and allowing more customization is wrong, why stop there? Why should we be able to change the NPCs attributes but not race, gender, or class. Or for that matter, why not give players the option to give their characters more than the current 18 additional stat points we get? Or give us the ability for any character to take any talent, so we can make whatever multiclass hybrid concoction we want? Anyway, the discussion seems kind of moot, it's for the developers to decide; to be honest I can't imagine they will implement it, but we'll see.

Another thought for the wishlist, since my mind was on traps: the ability to craft traps of your own, and one or more (maybe rogue/ranger-specific) trap-boosting talents.

Actually, you can have multiple traps these days. There is a limit of one trap per character, but every character can have one so you get up to six. Trap accuracy will of course vary across characters, and is computed similar to spell accuracy: ACC = (base accuracy) + (perception bonus) + (4 x level - 3) + (3 x mechanics) - (2 x trap accuracy penalty). Like spell accuracy it is also affected by general accuracy bonuses/penalties, including shields (slightly weird, I know). This is evaluated at the time the trap goes off, it isn't fixed when the trap is set. But as you can see mechanics is hardly the only factor in accuracy, and the character with the highest mechanics is not necessarily going to have the highest trap accuracy. Note that as shown the trap accuracy penalty actually seems to be twice as high as their descriptions claim. A peculiar exception is the poison dart trap, which during my experimentations just now showed a massive +41 on top of the ACC as computed above (ie. rather than a -30 penalty it has a +11 bonus). This actually makes it potentially quite useful, since it attacks against Deflection and causes Weakened status, thus resulting in a potent Fortitude (and Will) debuff that doesn't actually target Fortitude itself (whereas usually Weakened effects and other Fortitude debuffs do seem to target Fortitude). Not sure whether there are other traps with this kind of accuracy boost, though I assume this is just a bug of some kind. Finally, though you can have multiple traps they can't overlap. If you do place one on top of the other the older trap is automatically disarmed and returned to inventory. Traps can also not overlap with Seals, though a character can have both a trap and a seal active. Anyway, since this thread resurface I thought I'd share some trap trivia . Edit: oh, and trap damage is of course affected by Might as well, so the ideal trapper is probably a high Might, high Perception rogue not using a shield; or a similar fighter with Disciplined Barrage active, of course.

Cool! Didn't know disassemblers gave such readable code. Logically, the 'this' in that code block refers to an attack against an individual enemy; note that the Tooltip says "the target", singular. And in terms of implementation it makes much more sense to code it that way as well, generating attacks against different enemies as separate objects. All sorts of parameters will vary across enemies after all, depending on all sorts of conditions, so it will tend to be easiest to generate a stack of separate events rather than one big compound one (that's how I'd do it, anyway). Case in point, the 'num' on the third line will presumably be conditinally increased by Minor Threat as well.

No shortcuts, a pity. But the roundabout way does get there eventually. Aldemar is the Justiciar you see right as you enter Crucible Keep. Not much special about him, but he was handy at the time.

It must indeed have been a glitch with the ray, though it still seems strange that it would use the ray target's endurance at all; wouldn't expect it to do that when the ray target is still alive < 10% Endurence either, after all. But given that it stayed active for 8 more seconds clearly something went awry with it, normally it shuts off pretty quickly after the main target expires. MaxQuest, if I may ask: does the Death Godlike Death's Usher racial also kick in at 10%? It uses the same "enemies with low endurence" phrasing so I would think so, but it's rather difficult to tell (not sure it even shows up in the combat log when it adds damage). Is that C++ by the way? Or C# perhaps? Has a "C++ ish but not quite" vibe to it.

But then, why would the powergamer still complain given the available options? Flavour-oriented players have fleshed out, but therefore more constrained, companion NPCs to choose from; powergamers have fully customizable hirelings they can use, and a console command to change stats on companion NPCs. Obviously players aren't so dichotomous in their preference, but my point is: essentially all the options you could want are there, so what's the fuss about? That hirelings cost a bit more money / that using the console disables achievements (*gasp* no!!) and isn't as "official" as a menu option?

I thought there was talk of raising the threshold at some point. Certainly won't be 75% of course though, so maybe it's just a strange interaction with Ray of Fire. Could be that it checked the Bloody Slaughter against the Endurance % of the recently deceased target rather than your paladin. (by the way, I'm assuming you meant 75% endurance, rather than health)

Being able to change the level 1 ability would indeed be nice (though there obvious good reasons not to allow that in PoE, so I don't mind overly much). But for the rest, I definitely think it shouldn't be possible to change NPCs base stats (let alone other core properties). As Elric says, these define the character, which in my view goes beyond just the flavour aspect of it. It also forces the player to some extent to play the NPC in a way that fits the NPCs properties, it isn't a blank slate you can just fill in however you please. And that's rather how it's supposed to be, I would say. I also don't really see why this is such a problem for some people. If you really want more fully customized characters, that's what the hirelings are for; in this regard PoE strikes a very good balance between BG-style and IWD-style NPCs, it caters to both preferences. And if you really want to change the companion NPCs stats you can use the console as well, so it's not like it isn't possible anyway. Thinking about wishlists and such though, what I would like to see in PoE 2 would be to have some pre-made hirelings, something intermediate between companions and the blank slate hirelings (I mean in addition to the latter, not as a replacement). So like companions having fixed stats, portrait, some unique abilities/backgrounds/races etc. (and predefined levelling scheme, if auto-leveling) and being available (hireable) at only one particular location and at the same XP level as the protagonist. But like the regular hirelings, without their own quests or (much) direct involvement in the plot, maybe not necessarily their own voice set. Seems like a nice way to get some NPCs in there that are a bit more fleshed out and unique than plain hirelings, but without requiring the developers to invest too much time and money into making backstories and quests and interactions for them; they could just give some backstory in text form, when you hire them. This way they can also add stuff like more unique NPC races and such without having to balance them for customizable characters, so we could maybe get Tana the Xaurip as NPC, or Korgrak the Ogre (or an intelligent Ooze!). Anyway, just a thought.

Not sure how the OP got the health thing, because it really is a <50% endurance trigger, as per the ability's description.

No, engagement range of reach weapons is the same as regular melee weapons. They originally did have longer engagement, but that got kinda weird with enemies running past within reach distance getting hit with disengagement attacks rather too easily, so they changed it.

A pity about the push effects, though they can still be useful to push enemies that got past your fighter back into engagement range. Assuming the fighter re-engages quickly enough they'll either stick there again or trigger another Overbearing Guard attack. I agree it would be more of a controller type. The engagement hoarder + Overbearing Guard seems like an interesting direction to take it in, I think; the main think would obviously be soaking up engagement and tying a lot of melee enemies, the Overbearing Guard just makes him extra sticky. Especially if, as I'm assuming, when they are proned they're still close enough that the fighter re-engages them. In that case they can't just disengage and take the hit to go after your squishies anymore, unless the fighter actually misses (quite unlikely when dual wielding fast weapons). Would have to test that though, but I would think that that would have been the intention of the developers. Seems like fun to try this on a future playthrough, though probably with a hireling. I'd probably like more PER and INT than Edér has to offer, and my protagonists tend to be more glassy and cannon-shaped. I might finally try me a pike barbarian, with Tall Grass it'll be a slapstick fest of people falling down and getting up again!