Effusion
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Posts posted by Effusion
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The patch changed it to +2 pl (up from +1) for your school and -10% (down from -20%) recovery for other schools, as well as changes to a number of specific spells (mostly related to cast times) and the transmutation specialist ability (still benefit from gear aside from armor/weapons while transformed). The fundamental problem that different specializations have different benefits (how much they get out of increased power level and the special ability) and costs (which schools are lost) that aren't balanced remains unchanged.
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Nothing really changed. Evokers are good for blasting, illusionists are okay-ish if they don't plan to rely on weapons, and the other three shoot themselves in the foot with their lost schools.
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On the plus side, Berzerkers can safely Hulk Smash while using a ranged weapon (unless it has an AoE) without worrying about their friends. Some (not many) Barbarian abilities work off 'Weapon' Range, so using with a Range weapon works fine.
Most notably their only regular attack ability, barbaric blow.
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It was always like that. It has a shorter recovery time than other spells though so it's only 0.5s slower.
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Also why is the Barbarian's replenish-able rage on kill both a 50/50 chance and gated behind power level eight while the paladin gets automatic zeal on kill at power level seven?
Probably because the barbarian is generally better at getting last hits with their splash damage.
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A lot of the stuff that was over performing has been balanced down, difficulty has been tuned up, and now people are waiting for the patch that fixes things which are under performing. This means that some classes are in a weird place where they've gotten their nerfs but are still waiting for their buffs.
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Gaze of the Adragon: 6s -> 8s
It really should be a universal rule that CC and debuff abilities last at least as long as they take to cast.
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I've been pretty disappointed in my estoc on hard. Lots of enemies aren't affected by it; the damage isn't that great, and finding new ones is very, very difficult compared to swords or sabres. I jumped from a fine estoc (which I had to buy) to a superb estoc (which I also had to buy). I would have switched to another weapon if I wasn't a Devoted.
Devoted is definitely a meta knowledge based subclass. At least you didn't pick one of the weapon types that only has one unique.
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And indeed, there are some historical instances of dual wielding but they are quite rare (and essentially never seen in battle, shields are just sooooo much better). Mostly something like sword and dagger, or dual dagger, the main purpose of the off-hand weapon would be defense. Windmilling around in a flurry of cuts would get you killed quite quickly, as would trying to wield eg. two axes (hatchets would work though). I mean, a second weapon is better than nothing in most cases, but it really never was a recommend tactic. Hence why off-hand weapons were often knives or daggers; like swords, they're sidearms, so if you're just out and about that's likely what you'd have at hand. Hardly going to drag around a shield all day after all (though a buckler would work).
Parrying daggers (also capes and offhand gauntlets) weren't exactly rare afaik, but they were for dueling rather than warfare. They were (arguably) more effective than a buckler for that purpose because one can catch and control an enemy's blade rather than just deflect it.
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Imo the problem with two handed weapons isn't their penetration. It's full attacks, which favor dual wielding, and their recovery time, which make the character far less reactive than characters dual wielding. I was rather hoping to see many or most 1 resource full attacks nerfed to primary attacks for the sake of 2 handers (I'm sure much crying would ensue), but that hasn't happened. Perhaps obsidian actually think 2 handers are good right now, maybe they have other ideas and they just didn't implement them. Incidentally making full attacks into primary attacks would also buff single wielding and dual wielding a single ranged with a single melee.
Would that not just shift the problem from favoring dual wielding to favoring 2h weapons, or reduce the number of 'optimal' attacks for damage builds? I think it would make more sense to have full attacks do reduced damage while dual wielding but still hit twice, or have 2h/single weapons do extra damage on full attacks.
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One thing that might make 2H more interesting (and should affect all weapon types) could be having a Might related modifier that reduced recovery speed. A very strong character should be able to wield a 2H sword more easily than a very weak character could wield a 1H sword. That said, it would need to be balance carefully. And IMO, it shouldn't affect firearms, but should affect bows/xbows (because stronger characters can handle those things with greater ease than a weaker character could).
I would personally like to see quarter staffs changed so that they were quick 2H weapons, rather than reach weapons.
Might is deliberately not strength though, which is why it can apply to spells. If you want to have a faster swinging 2h character then increase your dex.
The stated idea behind the stat system is to make stats a choice of how players want their character to handle rather than something that just has to match up to their class/weapon.
The thing is to me, I don't care how dexterous you are, all the DEX in the work is going to make a weakling able to handle a heavy weapon more quickly. That's what strength is for. I don't care how dexterous you are, if you're a weakling, it's going to be more difficult to pull a bowstring or reset a crossbow's string than if you're strong. Agility will only take you so far. And sometimes what you need to do things more quickly is NOT dexterity, but actual strength.
You're thinking in terms of dnd stats, not poe stats. Might is not the same thing as strength. Muscles don't make a lightning bolt spell hit harder.
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One thing that might make 2H more interesting (and should affect all weapon types) could be having a Might related modifier that reduced recovery speed. A very strong character should be able to wield a 2H sword more easily than a very weak character could wield a 1H sword. That said, it would need to be balance carefully. And IMO, it shouldn't affect firearms, but should affect bows/xbows (because stronger characters can handle those things with greater ease than a weaker character could).
I would personally like to see quarter staffs changed so that they were quick 2H weapons, rather than reach weapons.
Might is deliberately not strength though, which is why it can apply to spells. If you want to have a faster swinging 2h character then increase your dex.
The stated idea behind the stat system is to make stats a choice of how players want their character to handle rather than something that just has to match up to their class/weapon.
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Players just talk about how OP one or two weapon is here, but it's more fair to just compare plain unenchanted weapons. In that case 2h weapons are inferior to dual wielding for sure.
It's more relevant to compare the weapons people actually use.
Nah, if base on your logic, it will just result in most of 2h weapon underwhelming while only one or two is ok.
Yes, that seems to be the consensus on the current state of affairs.
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Players just talk about how OP one or two weapon is here, but it's more fair to just compare plain unenchanted weapons. In that case 2h weapons are inferior to dual wielding for sure.
It's more relevant to compare the weapons people actually use.
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I don't think it's a great combination. It's doable, but the classes don't play off of each other especially well and I think you'll find yourself more pigeonholed than if you paired either with a martial class.
Ciphers tend to pair best with martial classes because they need weapon attacks to generate resources, and their soul whip passive increases weapon damage. The only weapon damage druids really get is from spiritshift (they lack the self buffs of other casters), so that's where the main synergy is. The animist subclass can only shift once for a normal duration, the lifegiver gets some stiff penalties when it ends so they want to be careful about using it, the shifter subclass doesn't allow spellcasting while shifted (all cipher abilites count as spells, but maybe your build doesn't care about casting them and just wants the damage boost from soul whip), and the fury subclass can extend its spiritshift duration when it kills things (it's ranged though so i don't think it works with the soul blade, and be careful of running out of spiritshift from slow casting spells as well).
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I put down no preference because, to me, it all comes down to implementation.
In a turn based game large parties are great because you can micro the entire team easily. In a real time game though, especially one with friendly fire and per rest/encounter abilities, the optimal party size to me really comes down to how much I can trust the ai to handle basic combat on their own. In pillars 1 I'm finding that I'm trying to minimize the number of per-rest based characters (wizard, priest, druid) in my party because I just can't trust them to manage their own resources intelligently. For story and role playing purposes it comes down to the writing and balancing their chattiness against party size.
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On the subject of Ezren dropping a weapon slot for an item, act 6 added a couple of weapons which might actually be useful to him, Chellan sword of greed and Karzoug's burning glaive.
But if you want to actually use them to hit things, you can only do so at the +4 difficulty penalty they incur for requiring weapon proficiency, which Ezren has no way of getting.
Something similar bothers me (even more so) about Ordikon's Staff, which seems like it's made for someone like Ezren (for having a way to pass a combat check in a chinch without having to worry about having an attack spell in hand, for example, or for dealing with banes immune to such spells), but then it requires Weapon Proficiency, which is kind of silly.
Yes, I think Seelah and Lini are the characters who can use these weapons to their fullest. Still, even with the non-proficiency penalty Ezren can still get a net 3d6+1 (sword) and d10+2d6+6 (glaive) when discarding them. That's enough for ezren to take down a minor bane in an emergency with the glaive.
My only guess with Ordikon's staff is that it's for a character from the physical game that we don't have.
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There does seem to be a few issues like this floating around. I have a Merisel whose hand got duplicated somehow so now she has has two venomous heavy crossbows and revelation quills (which should be impossible because it's a loot item) in her deck.
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On the subject of Ezren dropping a weapon slot for an item, act 6 added a couple of weapons which might actually be useful to him, Chellan sword of greed and Karzoug's burning glaive. These are both strength based weapons that can heal on an int check. Ezren doesn't need much healing but it's still nice to be able to get allies, spyglasses, and spells discarded with staff of heaven and earth/hungry shadows back.
I hope we get more weapons that act like magic items in the future to give that slot more value to casters.
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This topic comes up regularly in any RNG based game. Unfortunately, humans have evolved to be bad at estimating statistics thanks to a negative bias which causes negative outcomes stand out more to us than positive ones. This means that most of the time when a system is fair it will feel unfair. I think games tend to amplify this when the player has the agency to avoid situations where they're unlikely to succeed (eg, using blessings instead of hoping for a 15 on 3d6) because this causes them to experience more unlikely failures than unlikely successes. It's quite difficult to create a system which feels fair without actually tipping the scales heavily in the player's favor.
In this game I deal with it by ignoring average rolls and just focusing on minimum rolls for anything important. Aside from rolling the occasional 0 on a d10+2, this works pretty well for me.
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One thing that I didn't notice about Seelah's alternate version just by looking at her stats, it tooki until I actually started playing her to realize: Switching her spellcasting stat from WIS to CHA gives her a bigger die, true, but she has only room for 2 '+1' pips in the latter as opposed to 3 in the former.
So the maximum for her Divine checks are d10+4 for her alt versus d8+5 for her base version, which is pretty much eqivalent. That means, in the long run she actually won't be a better caster overall (but then, you really wouldn't expect a paladin to be a spell slinging machine anyway). What it actually means is that you no longer have to decide whether to maximize spellcasting (+3 STR/+3 WIS) or combat (+4 STR/+2 WIS). You can just go +4 STR/+2 CHA and have both.
Her melee bonus went down from +2 to +1 though so you're getting the same d8+5 melee as the 3/3 base build.
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I think giving armor a chance to prevent a failure instead of mitigate one would make it a lot more desirable. Something like "bury this card to reroll a failure" or "discard this card to change any rolled 1s to 3s" would be a more valuable kind of safety net.
Firebrand isn’t a Great Sword?
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Try it naked?