Bosmer

Thanks that would be great! I see that this is a really difficult ability to balance: when you build for it it might become easily overpowered because, at the same time, it needs to have some value for all other builds…

Has someone tested how it interacts with Death of 1000 cuts?

I usually play with community patch and the balance polishing mod. In my opinion the BPM is a fitting expansion of the community patch, giving some of the basically never-used talents and abilities more value and hence providing additional builds and strategies without making anything overpowered or too easy. As an option it also includes some minor nerfes that further bring subclasses/abilities on par. Although it takes a "freer" approach in modding things than the community patch, many potential adjustments are also discussed in the according thread.

I thought that the crit bonus damage won't work for the Raw damage of Soul Annihilation.. did I miss something?

In my opinion that's whisper of treason.. and even whisper of treason gets respecced later on for ringleader or puppet master. I see how valorous echos is nice in the first few levels, but later on there should be better and/or AoE - buffs around. Another thing is that shred spells heavily benefit from 1000 cuts on SC ciphers. And for soulblades shred spells are cheaper.

I'm really curious what your comments and ideas would be, if we rearranged the question (in a positive manner) and ask "what should a PoE3 look like to be successful (again)?" In his blog Josh said that he didn't really have a good guess about the reasons why deadfire didn't meet the expectations. Personally I assume (without having any numbers obviously) that rearranging the budget could easily help: - cut large parts of the voice-acting: I enjoy it alot and would "pay extra" for it .. but I don't think that the sales would highly depend on it. - concentrate on the core features and mechanics: no ship battles (somewhere I read they were rather expensive) - build upon the existing engine and character systems: I think for the vast majority of (potential) players they are complex enough and personally I think this system is great and if anything needs some polish or some more abilities here and there What do you think? Maybe this discussion needs a new thread or maybe I just didn't find it yet?

This! It's so nice to see you guys, and Boeroer in specific, caring so much for this game and the community here. Thank you you might not be the ones this game needs (to be successful) but the ones it deserves

Boeroer, which of the hand mortars and what upgrades provide the "best damage" (against groups obviously)? I've been struggling to assess the impact of the "Chain Shot" upgrade on Fire in the hole, since the bounce-explosion seems to be a reduced damage (maybe exactly as driving flight?).

Strange, I seem to recall that Riposte did generate focus for my cipher. Btw, Riposte is a full attack, without the full attack penalty of dual-wielding.. with a pistol or blunderbuss in the offhand Riposte can do some decent instant damage when it procs (main hand could be seeker's fang for example).

Well, I still have some hopes that the potential success of Avowed might allow one obsidian team to PoE3 .. maybe without Josh if he doesn‘t feel like it. Let‘s see

Most of their employees in Belgium might be Dutch-speaking, although I assume that their work-language is English by now, with three studios over the world. Owlcat definitely have my respect for working on text-heavy crpgs with a group of mostly Russian employees ( I assume) and small budgets. I actually backed WOTC and I'm curious to see what follows.. but don't know if it's going to be my cup of tea.. I tried DOS1 and DOS2 and put them away after 1 or 2 hours. I can see how people might appreciate these titles and I am certainly looking forward to BG3, but if I compare these games to POE1 and POE2 I think they are inferior in every aspect: The PoE's outclass them in setting, world building, lore, art design, combat gameplay, companion depth, itemization and dialogue for sure. I cannot speak to the pacing of the other recent CRPGs, but it might be Deadfire's biggest design flaw. However, providing a compelling main story in an "open world" is a notoriously challenging task (look at the elder scrolls titles...).

Oh boy, I've been wrong all these years... so thank you for fixing this

Nice, thank you for your continuing work on this one! I think you found the sweet spot with the 8s on the beacon upgrade. But a question regarding the comment on persistent distraction: does this mean that all per affliction debuffs on deflection and AR won‘t stack for example with the pike modal or body attunement? If so, wouldn‘t this break with the rule that affliction and inspiration effects stack with similar “direct” effects?

Yes, however (at least in my testing) the on-all-kill-effect only occurs when taking the "blade feast"-upgrade.. so I fear this is an oversight by the devs and I'm a bit reluctant to use it .. I think it still fits thematically and won't make for a completely broken weapon (and it's supposed to be a mighty weapon in the first place) .. but still

Yes I just tested it .. indeed very powerful (at least against the console dummies). The base damage of the aoe is also quite nice, so even without the chain-reaction it could be something to consider. I recently tested some of the aoe weapons and found that magrans favor's aoe effect is also not bad, doing far more damage than other aoe-melee-effects, such as eager blade's, karaboru's and engoliero's (although engoliero also procs on kills with the aoe effect itself.. which sometimes might be nice.)

Sure, but in the context of Dorudugan it might help to further reduce its resolve (and will) besides psychovampiric shield etc.

Wow, I didn't know this! Is this true for all item afflictions? For example will breaker's shaken "affliction" would work even on immune / resistant enemies?

A Chanter could also provide "At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold" for a stacking +10 will +10 fortitude buff. Does someone know of any additional +will and/or +fortitude items and abilities? Then two members of the party could split the four defenses between themselves and the remaining party members could live in "god mode". Edit: Of course the respective inspirations should also be considered, again a chanter provides easy aoe access to all tier 1 inspirations. Edit: Weapons that provide will and fortitude buffs: - Griffins blade: either +5 will or +5 fortitude. - Engoliero do Espirs: +3 might and +3 constitution result in + 12 fortitude.

While you guys are at this: (Although it hurts me) Rust's poignard upgrade "shank" does also apply to the other weapon, maybe even to other weapon sets. I think this is a oversight as well

It depends, some of them are more situational, for example all the +2 pen modals should obviously only be "on" when you're targeting enemies that you'd otherwise underpenetrate. Other modals can basically be on all the time, like hunting bow modal. (be cautious that they won't stack with similar effects). See also "The big post of Stacking rules" in this forum. The formula behind recovery time is rather complicated.. when you're dual-wielding and stacking other recovery bonuses (like the streetfighter passive for example) than the 50 % recovery aren't that severe (see also the action speed / recovery time thread). I recommend that you look into thelee's guide.. you'll find answers to all the deadfire questions you never thought you'd have.. for me this research is part of the fun https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599

Hey! To 1) in general the accuracy bonus from one weapon should not affect casting (or other weapons) (however there might be oversights if you look to the recent threat on crossbows). So one way to increase your overall "effective accuracy" is to decrease the enemies defense. For Barbarians decreasing fortitude has additional benefits due to the brute force passive. For example the morningstar modal decreases fortitude by 25. hit-to-crit does stack, however not additively (e.g. 10%+10%=20% hit-to-crit). Instead it follows the probability formular, such that: (1-0.1)*(1-0.1)=0.81=19% hit-to-crit. So try to combine not too many but therefore larger hit-to-crit effects (e.g. ring of fortune or the berserker frenzy). To 2) You can easily meet the streetfighter conditions by using the blunderbuss modal and the decrease in recovery time is a huge effect. If you ask me I think that the streetfighter benefits are balanced for a more .. challenging way to meet the conditions (such as getting flanked or hurt in melee combat). Assassin is also nice, since the drawback isn't too strong and sometimes you really want/need to get the 25 accuracy, extra penetration (and crit damage) from stealth attacks. Works also with spells btw! Rangers have the highest accuracy bonus, so you might also look into these.. for melee the stalker subclass might be useful.

Is it possible that you accidentally broke the wiki page by doing so?

I would say that the -1 PL is more than offset by the faster focus regeneration of Ascendants. So if necessary I would always cast that -1PL cipher spell on your way to ascension! I think it would be best to try out if the ascended subclass fits your playstyle on the tutorial island.. my first deadfire build was a melee witch (berserker) and I really disliked the "fiddling" with the berserker drawbacks and the downtime after ascension. Right now I'm playing a Soulblade / Assassin (and enjoying it alot). If you want to multiclass a Soulblade, then Rogue might probably be the best choice due to it's passives but also because of the defensive rogue toolkit (smoke veil / escape). However, for my next playthrough I'm gonna start a single class cipher because it is far more generous in the choice of cipher spells from PL1 to PL7 and for the access to the interesting high PL spells that I'm curious to see, especially time parasite and death from 1000 cuts.

The cool thing about an alternative brilliant effect evolving around the empowerment system is that it might give more purpose to this underused feature (maybe it's just me playing martial classes a lot) while also being quite thematically fitting, since int inspirations increase power levels. Empowering more than once per encounter might be challenging for the game balance, but note that the brilliant effect, as it is right now, already breaks the game balance severly

That would be a clean solution, but aren‘t there any high hp enemies or bosses that use this ability? Would definitely make these encounters more challenging another alternative would be to apply a strong debuff while bdd is active: for example -50% action speed or similar..