SaruNi

Maybe they're waiting until Pax East next week.

Is there a specific time of day after which they're unlikely to post an update? What time of day did the other updates happen?...

One issue I don't think has been mentioned---base spell accuracy is really bad in PoE 2. Even with maxed perception. They've added weapon modals that decrease either reflex or will or fortitude by -25 on hit so spells will land. But assassinate gives spells +25 accuracy, so assassin/wizard lets you actually hit with an AoE nuke at the start of combat (which in terms of casting time is basically a "free" cast). There's a Bounding Missile spell that benefits massively from increased power level---possibly bugged, because unlike every other "jump" spell, it does more damage with each jump instead of less. Missile and jump spells get extra missiles and jumps from power level and so do much more damage, while many other spells barely benefit at all. Evoker Death Godlike gets +5 power levels when near death and could be very good. The Shieldbearer paladin subclass has a Lay on Hands that prevents the recipient from getting knocked out. Long casting time lends itself to setting up large nukes while debuffing enemies and buffing the caster.... On Ninagauth spells---Ninagauth's Shadowflame is one of the best nukes in the beta. Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring is also good... we don't have access to higher level spells except through some scrolls, haven't tested them yet but they seem to be strong nukes (Meteor Storm etc.).

Alas, no. Doesn't apply to the corresponding scrolls either. Wish it did. Weapon damage bonuses and lashes do, giving weapon using multiclasses powerful synergies. But caster-caster multiclasses? Nope.

Correction to my earliest post: spell progression happens at every power level increase, fills casts for your previous highest spell level, and adds one cast for your new highest spell level. After level 4 it's essentially +2 every two levels for single-class and +4 every three levels for multi-class. So the multi-class advantage should go from 1 at level 9 to 5 at level 10 (then back to 3 for two levels...). Level Single-class Multi-class 1 2 4 2 2 4 3 3 4 4 3 6 5 5 6 6 5 6 7 7 10 8 7 10 9 9 10 Projected: 10 9 14 11 11 14 12 11 14 13 13 18 14 13 18 15 15 18 16 15 22 17 17 22 18 17 22 19 19 26 20 19 26

This is what Cdiaz actually wrote: 'You guys made me read two pages? TWO? These were some really good insights though. I'm definitely on the, "This is awesome" train, but I've input a bug for Lash effects proccing off of spell damage. Now, it's in the devs hands. I hear they're easily bribed by chocolates.' https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95045-bug-lashes-from-wildstrike-and-priests-weapons-get-applied-to-spell-damage/page-2?hl=wildstrike And lashes for spells were removed at the same time that Priest and Druid spells got damage buffs (with Priest getting a significantly larger buff). Could be a coincidence, but it's really not clear whether it was initially intended or not. I just tested the single-class vs. multi-class spell progression in-game again. This is it: Level / Single-class casts / Caster-caster multi-class casts: 6th 5 6 7th 7 10 8th 7 10 9th 9 10 So I was partly wrong, there are some levels where the difference is 3 rather than 1. But the number of spell casts isn't equal to the number of resource points a non-caster would get. For example, 9th level rogue gets 7 guile, but 9th level single-class caster gets 9 casts.

Beta testers thought it might be a bug because it's different from PoE 1, but that was never confirmed by Obsidian devs. Caster-caster multiclass generally only gets one or at most two extra casts per encounter.

Many higher level spells can be viewed by adding their scrolls with the console. Only thing missing is casting time, which is currently much faster for scrolls than corresponding spells (hopefully that won't be true in the final game though...).

That's sort of how it was in Pillars. Spells had high base damage but spell casters had very few +damage bonuses (Priest's Minor Avatar was one). Worked fine there I'd say. Spells had high base damage, short casting time, and high accuracy. Now spells have long casting times, less base damage, and much lower accuracy. Having higher base damage but fewer ways to strategically increase damage using builds or abilities just makes the character creation aspect of the game more boring and simplistic.

Ah my bad. Do abilities like Swift Strikes reduce recovery or spells at all? I believe Frenzy did in Pillars. Doubt it. +50% multiplicative damage bonus is pretty huge. The higher level spells would have to be pretty insane. The Spiritual Weapon lash being tempered by the 6 second casting time, and Priest spells not doing much base damage before.... Anyone checked if Barbarian +25% damage from Blooded applies to spells? It seems to be the only +damage now that doesn't specify "weapon damage" only. Plenty of ways to increase weapon damage via multiclassing, no viable ways to significantly increase spell damage (not counting summoned weapons etc.) aside from bonus might or penetration and accuracy....

Not really. Monks synergise extremely well with Citzal's Spirit Lance as it currently is. More generally the Wizard has lots of instant cast self buffs that work well with any melee class. Specified DD caster Monk multiclass, not weapons user/melee. Cool unconventional concept that now seems mostly pointless (except for Dance of Death). Taking higher level spells into account, single-class Wizard and multi-class with lashes probably would have been balanced. Now it's not. The one extra spell cast you get from multi-class doesn't help much, and there isn't enough difference between Wizard and Druid DD spells for multi-class DD caster to benefit much from spell diversity relative to single-class.

Yup. As did the lash from Priest's spiritual weapons. As you might imagine, +50% damage was pretty insane, particular with Might (or Resolve) being multiplicative rather than additive. It seemed obvious that it was a bug to me. Did Josh actually saying it was working as intended? It could just be a coincidence that Priest and Druid spells got large damage buffs. Huge in the Priest case (now can do 50 base damage). Perhaps having less base spell damage but being able to use Spiritshift or Spiritual Weapon for a significant damage boost was just too complicated for some people. Now a DD Monk/Caster caster is also pretty pointless except for Helwalker (once Strength reverts to Might). Meanwhile, caster/melee multi-class still gets the same large boost to weapon damage from the lashes.

Lashes no longer apply to spell damage ("weapon damage" only), so druid/wizard DD spells are strictly worse than single-class DD. Major nerf for multi-class offensive casters.

Form of the Fearsome Brute doesn't disable Druid Spiritshift, but spiritshift removes Form of the Fearsome Brute and all its bonuses/maluses....

Wizards have good self-buffs and Kalakoth's Minor Blights is a good summoned weapon. The blunderbuss modal (Powder Burns) makes you "flanked" so that you can use the streetfighter bonus. It also applies to ranged weapons. And Kalakoth's Minor Blights can apply Rogue strike abilities and afflictions in AoE. Riposte gains a bit relative to PoE from weapon speeds being slower. And it's easy to get high deflection even without multiclassing. Being able to wear the heaviest armor and use the slowest melee weapon.... Some people seemed to think there's an internal cooldown secretly limiting riposte rate though, is that true?....

+4 strength +2 con -2 dex -4 int Can't cast wizard/druid/cipher/priest spells but can use all other spells/abilities including Trickster wizard spells and scrolls. Scroll use could be nice once spell damage scales with Might again. The con bonus iirc was decreased---unnecessary and reduces what little synergy there had been between transmutation spells (specifically AoE duration hazard fields targeting fortitude) and ogre form.

Can a druid/priest cast Spiritual Weapon while spiritshifted to apply the corrode lash to spells (for example, Fury/Priest combining the wildstrike lash while shifted with the spiritual weapon lash...)? Answer: no, Firebrand and Spiritual Weapon can't be cast while spiritshifted. Presumably the same applies to Wizard summoned weapons, and the scroll loophole is a bug. Too bad, it would make Firebrand slightly less terrible and Fury/Priest offensive caster non-suboptimal. And using summoned weapons with spiritshift would not be OP, would it?

This right here. The beta gives us a good logical and empirical look at what’s possible up until level 9. Everything past that is conjecture. The fact that you’re more comfortable positing that *anyone* (emphasis added, just in case you feel like trotting out “appeal to authority” again) who has played the full game is wrong rather than you is the problem. Oh ffs. Now you're retreating from misrepresenting your past posts with "all I'm claiming is we don't know, they're claiming they know!!" to your original "how dare you question the head game designer!!" now barely veiled behind the desire to avoid a blatant appeal to authority. Do you agree that we don't know, or are you just bsing because you want to "win" an argument on the internet? Either way, not going to bother with you anymore unless you present logic and evidence rather than whiny ridiculous outrage and derogatory labels.

WTF seriously? I made it very clear from the beginning and consistently throughout our discussion that we don't know, and listed several plausible factors (i.e. extremely powerful high level spells, or lashes no longer applying to spells) that could make multiclass nukers definitively suboptimal. The beta does give us good logical and empirical reasons to believe that Josh's guess may be mistaken though. Sure, the final game could be so radically different from the beta that any conjectures count as a "completely uneducated"; but it seems at least as likely that Josh isn't taking some of the game's counterintuitive features into account. (For example, intuitively one would think that higher power level makes a single-class wizard's AoE nukes do more damage than a multiclass casting the same spell, but the effect of druid and priest lashes on spells makes that false. Likewise, one might assume higher-level spells are much better than lower-level spells, but the combined effects of level scaling and higher-level nuke spells having longer casting times and/or situational restrictions makes that questionable, especially in short to medium length fights. Perhaps the rest of the higher level spells don't follow that pattern---it's possible, but seems unlikely.) Seems like you're projecting your own issues onto this discussion tbh.

Anyone on Twitter care to ask him if he's taking the effect of lashes on spell damage and the longer casting time of higher-level spells into account?

Were you duplicating spells between classes? Josh specifies "AoE damage spells from both the druid and wizard lists"---so he doesn't seem to just be referring to taking spells which target the same defense or do the same type of elemental damage.

Josh admits he doesn't know for certain: "Multiclass casters can very easily wind up with redundant spells if players don’t think carefully about what options are available to them. A sorcerer who takes AoE damage spells from both the druid and wizard lists is probably not going to be as effective as a single-classed druid or wizard doing the same." If higher level spells (taking casting time into account) or single-class boosting trinkets definitely made single-class significantly more powerful, he wouldn't need to qualify it by admitting that he's not certain. And the reason he gives---redundant spells---seems inconsistent with what he previously said was the main issue his developers were finding with casters, running out of spells. High-level spells not in the beta will presumably only be applicable late in the game, and (again) be limited by long casting times. While it's possible that there are early to mid game items that make single class superior, it doesn't seem especially likely. The idea that the head game designer can't possibly have made a logical or empirical error about an aspect of the game he hasn't empirically examined is partly an appeal to authority. (Appeals to authority generally contain the assumption that the authority does in fact know better than what otherwise available logical or empirical evidence suggest. Like many "argumenative fallacies" it's not necessarily fallacious, except as part of a rigorous deductive proof.)

Huh? I agree that it's possible. You're the one insisting that he can't possibly be mistaken. "He's an authority figure, therefore he's infallible. Putin Xi and Drumpf forever!"

So you think special items or higher level spells or some other factor not in the beta might make single class strictly better? It's possible. We've gotten a sample of high-level damaging spells from scrolls that you can add get with the console, though scrolls have much shorter casting times than the corresponding spell (for example, 8 second casting time spell = about 1 second casting time scroll iirc). But those higher-level spells will probably have long casting times. It's certainly possible that multiclass nuker is strictly worse, but logical and empirical evidence from the beta suggest otherwise. And that's a good thing. Since Josh admits he hasn't played (or presumably observed anyone else play) wizard/druid nuker it seems more likely that he just hasn't considered its advantages fully. He's probably more focused on other aspects of game design right now....

You’re defending the “bad build” that Josh is warning against. You may want to consider that the person who designed the game is saying that isn’t a good idea. But whatever blows your hair back. He admits he's never tried any caster-caster multiclass and doesn't cite any telemetry data. I guess it's possible that lashes affecting spells is unintended and they've just never bothered fixing it. He also seems to think that a Wizard/Priest multiclass would want to go with Wizard DD and Priest inspirations for self-buffs... even though the Priest inspirations take a long time to cast and the vast majority are AoE, while Wizard self-buffs are fast cast/no recovery and self-only. I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say that we can’t wait to hear how that works out for you. Have fun! Here's what Boroer wrote about playing Evoker/Fury (granted, with mod that reduces casting times): "Evoker/Fury Pure nuker. I wanted to expand the resource pool for damaging spells and only chose friendly fire spells that either do burn or freeze damage - as well as Returning Storm of course. I took a pale elf and gave him Bulwark and the Stormturner Cloak, too. He wore a breastplate then. With that much AR against burn/freeze I could easily cast Fireballs (also empowered, although that still hurts) on myself while doing a bit of baiting/tanking. Pretty nice - but only with the aforementioned mod that reduced casting times (and recovery) a bit. Else I could never spend all the spell uses during one encounter." https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94957-what-multiclasses-have-you-played-with-so-far/page-2 And multiple people have reported that healer/healer multiclass is good. The major benefit of single-class Evoker is that the missile spells gain a huge boost from power level. Though with the echo % nerfed from 30% to 10% it loses some of its edge....