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scythesong

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Posts posted by scythesong

  1. Game mechanics simply hasn't progressed that far, sadly. Things like this are also much easier to implement on turn based games (like Divinity: OS), in games like PoE the effects of such changes are not going to be as drastic considering how much stuff is going on.

     

    Ultimately, it's just one of those things that would have been nice to have but were just not as high on the devs' priority list.

     

    As far as actual game mechanics, what you get is a rather simple non-stacking/suppressed mechanic for deflection (based more on game balance and the scaling of its attack-boosting buff counterparts) and global stat boosts/reductions based on buffs/debuffs. You won't get any special interaction between them (like in the previously mentioned Divinity: OS, where multiple effects can combine to give you something else), but the system works adequately.

  2. You say when the chanter gets dominated Dex helps him, but could you explain how?

    Your post is kind of contradictory for me but maybe I'm just slow. :p

    (Or are you trying to say because you don't use dragon chant like other people your char doesn't get dominated??)

    I usually just make sure to be either immune or have insane will or have a paladin to slap dominated chars back to their senses. :p

    (which is honestly one of the most ridiculous abilities in the game :p)

    It's an in-joke attempt with Boeroer, I've brought up Chanters with Dragon Thrashed being dominated with him before. There was a discussion about a chanter party with Dragon Thrashed/how powerful it was and a relative newbie poster was going to try and conquer Od Nua with such a setup. I warned him about the Fampyrs.

     

    As for what I would actually do if the Chanter gets dominated, then I simply Suppress Affliction or have a paladin/priest work on him.

  3. Oh there are. Like when one of those "The Dragon Thrashed" chanters gets dominated or something :p

     

    My Chanter is usually my go-to guy for such emergencies because everyone else just seems to have something better to do. Wizards have their crowd control spells/nukes, Ciphers have their debuffs, priests have their buffs, warrior-types need to stand in the front and hit something, etc.

    Chanters, on the other hand, are already doing their job just by being there/using their chants. Other actions are just a bonus, but because of how the game is set up (consumables, active items, LOTS of good weapons) you could do accomplish a lot with those bonus actions.

     

    As an example, against dragons I prefer to have "With All Your Strength, Slay The Beast" so all the party's attacks crit. I pop a scroll of Prayer Against Fear for the back/mid row (priest takes care of front row), use Dominate (Ring of Changing Heart) on key targets (like the dragon), and while chaos ensues, casters are activating their accuracy buffs and everything just comes together with rows upon rows of crits seconds later. Another example is against those annoying Broodmothers and Ogre druids - it's my chanter who usually ends up spamming effects Suppress Affliction to mitigate the effects of their spells. Finally, Chanters can be downright nasty with the right gear/self-buffs and my Chanter can very easily switch to assassin mode with "Their Champion Braved the Horde Alone" and a dual-wield setup.

     

    As for the healing, it depends. When you're relying on your Chanter for most of your Endurance recovery, then definitely. But you have other people with Endurance recovery abilities around, then meh.

     

    BTW, it's one thing to say that your starting Might isn't a big deal and to say that Might (in general) is not important to a chanter. What I'm saying is the former, since I still end up with around 20+ might on my Chanter when fully buffed up.

  4. I've beaten the game so many times as a chanter with a starting might of 10. While might is definitely nice to have, all it really does is make killing stuff a bit faster. When you have 5 other people to help you kill stuff, it starts to fall behind priority-wise. I don't really care if I can kill PotD dragons 2 seconds faster, but I would prefer it if my character had faster reaction times to deal with "oh ****!" moments.

  5. Actually, it makes sense that helping the looters would raise Defiance Bay reputation if you look at it from a romantic angle. "Random person *allegedly* helps looters and screws over shady merchant." Same for negative reputation and murdering desperate looters, even if in self-defense.

     

    Personally though, I also didn't like how the quest didn't give you a lot of options for dealing with the looters so I ended up just ignoring it on my first run.

  6. should I go with a race and that I feel most drawn to? This is for the min-max thingy, I really want to try out this game and I have already tried out all the classes and I am drawn towards Chanter the most. Gonna try out your tips, thanks!

    Sure. While some races definitely have better innates than others, if it takes looking at something like a dwarf character sprite to get you to finish the game then I'd go with that. The "best" race depends on what type of build you're planning for anyway, and for the general-purpose tanky chanter each race has its pros and cons.

     

    Just try to avoid fighting shadows at early levels unless your chanter is a Pale Elf or unless you have a priest around. Shadows/shades are the bane of any low endurance character in early game.

     

    Sweet Winds would be really neat if it transfered the endurance to the party.

    I actually thought that was what Sweet Winds did originally. I think the main reason it's remained the same is because its has situational early game OP-ness in a party of chanters. Personally I'd be fine if it didn't stack but had some other useful effect, like the endurance leech you mentioned.

  7. A tanky chanter will do just fine with a more balanced stat distribution, especially since you're new. I wouldn't min-max just yet until you're sure about what you want to accomplish or unless you want to solo.

     

    Go with 16-18 Might/Int, 10 Res and 10-16 Dex/Per/Con and see how that works out for you. Chanters start with above average deflection/accuracy, so you'll be OK as long as you pick a good shield and get defensive talents like Weapon and Shield Style and Cautious Attack for when you're being mobbed in early game. Note that the game allows you to respec your character, including your stats/talents, for a small fee. You should take low-mid leveling as your opportunity to familiarize yourself with what your stats do and how they affect your playstyle.

     

    Chanters are more of a jack-of-all-trades class as far as their general skillset goes, which is why you need to customize them to fit a particular role by choosing the right talents and gear. Once you get the "The Dragon Thrashed, The Dragon Wailed" (well into mid-game), for example, and decide that you don't want your chanter to do much of anything else you can start min-maxing your stats and focus on making a sort of "walking hazard zone" tanky character.

     

    Edit:

    -I was never a big fan of "Come, Come Soft Winds of Death" unless as a filler and never understood why people min-maxed their Chanters early on just for that phrase. I preferred"Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe", which allowed me to kite stuff.

    -White Worms works best if the chanter is using a ranged weapon (the targeting cone prevents you from casting the skill at a distant corpse when using a melee weapon).

    -Invocations don't benefit from a lot of +accuracy, which makes perception and +accuracy stuff even more important at early-mid game. It starts to become less important as everyone gains access to massive +accuracy buffs/defense debuffs by late game.

  8. Priests specialize in buff spells though they also have healing and a few damage, debuff and utility spells, as Boeroer mentioned. When it comes down to it, using priests to their full potential involves using both offensive and defensive buffs to increase party effectiveness (or personal effectiveness, if you want to play a damage-dealing priest).

    Essentially priests act as a sort of party effectiveness multiplier in the game (similar to chanters and end-game ciphers).

     

    Healing is really more of a band-aid solution for combat in PoE. Ultimately, you should be aiming for damage prevention using interrupts, crowd control, summons, threat management, zoning, etc.

     

    There's room for two priests in a party because the priest spell selection includes a TON of buff spells and as a general rule, you don't want to drag combat out in PoE. You also wouldn't want your combat talent-heavy priest to spend most of his time in combat casting spells. Just make sure you don't end up casting buffs that don't stack (generally buffs that affect the exact same stat don't stack, with the stronger buff taking precedence).

  9. A "talker" either has good int/per or res, and pretty much anyone who doesn't spend most of his/her time swinging a weapon can focus on mechanics.

     

    I'm not sure where you got "stuck with chanter" with that since there's a good number of characters builds that can meet those requirements (assuming you want them together), from fighters to wizards to ciphers. If you leave mechanics to Aloth, Durance, Kana and even Hiravias or Grieving Mother, then you can even try to make an int/per/res build out of any class. Personally, I prefer to just go with int/per and leave res at 10 or so since raising res using bonuses/gear is pretty easy by mid/late-game. I'd only start with res instead of int/per on warrior-type characters.

  10. I think the memory one depends on how you handle the personal quests of the WM NPCs, since all of them have some sort of problem with their past even after all the change they've gone through, though I wouldn't be surprised if other NPCs like Eder or maybe GM decide to pipe in.

     

    BTW, the entire conversation with the eyeless (including potential dialogue options) can be found in your "\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data_expansion2\localized\en\text\conversations\px2_04_eyeless_stronghold" folder. You just need a text viewer like Notepad.

     

    You might be able to figure out your options based on context.

  11. If you think about it Galawain (one of the Glanfathan main deities) is also the god of discovery. Galawain may be the god of the hunt/wild places, but he encourages mental growth as much physical - as far as he's concerned, it doesn't seem to matter which of the two you use to win your battles.

     

    Anyway you do have to be pretty smart and cunning to survive among Glanfathan tribes like the Three-Tusk Stelgaer, and mathematical/scientific exercises are probably just as natural to these kinds of folk as strength contests are to the more physical tribes.

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  12. The idea is that you want a few characters who will act as a sort of buffer between your guys and some of the nastier enemies in the game. It's a more basic form of crowd control that helps with aiming spells, minimizing the amount of damage your enemies do and just giving you more control over the flow of combat.

     

    It doesn't matter who actually does this, it just matters that they do it right.

     

    Personally I just have my frontline types carry a good shield on a weapon switch and take a few key defensive talents (Weapon and Shield Style, Fearless for Eder, etc). The rest of the time they're on the offensive and use gear like two-handed weapons. Summons definitely help.

     

    Note that in PotD mobs tend to go after characters with weak defenses regardless of the presence of frontline characters, so make sure the rest of your characters don't completely ignore their own defenses. You don't have to aim for tank-level defenses on everyone, but you should try to have a defensive setup (even a temporary one) on all your guys to discourage that kind of behavior.

  13. Do you happen to have a "benevolent" disposition? That also causes Kolsc to appear (whether you want him to or not).

     

    Opposing dispositions are actually not exclusive, and the game allows you to be both benevolent and cruel. There are even unique reputations for people who do both good and bad things for different factions, like "Eccentric" and "Dark Hero".

  14. Actually, I almost always never agree to work with Kolsc in any of my games and my answers range from "I'll think about it." to "Leave me out of it.". He'll then just say something along the lines of "Well then... I hope you change your mind." and then leave.

    I tend to not trust random strangers who appear from out of nowhere and then ask me to kill someone based solely on their word.

     

    I've never seen those answers as implying that my characters have decided to "side" with him. I'd say most of them think probably think he's some sort of weirdo, or just very entitled (he pretty much doesn't even offer you anything in return).

     

    As far as Raedric goes, the man is on the verge on insanity and has resorted to mass murder, sponsoring bounty hunters/serial killers and killing his own wife. Personally, I've always seen his calm demeanor as more disturbing than anything and if not for the obvious, potentially exploitable paranoia I'd attack him on the spot on any of my characters. He's simply become too unpredictable and dangerous, though I suppose there is room for RP exceptions there.

     

    There's a lot more to the game that what's mentioned in the wikis, and I've had to edit more than a few inaccuracies in different quest articles. The details on those entries could simply be wrong.

  15. Most of PoE learning will happen from your dialogue/combat window - PoE is predominantly a numbers game, and your dialogue/combat window will tell you more about what's happening than what you actually see your characters doing.

     

    Check your rolls, for example: (note that you can click the numbers for details about how the game came up with these results)

     

    -Why are your guys not doing enough damage? Is your attack not high enough? Are you being debuffed? Are you not casting enough buffs? Is the dragon's deflection too high? Are you using buffs/debuffs that don't actually stack? Is the target immune to your attacks? Are you attacking the wrong kind of defenses?

     

    -Why are you taking too much damage? Are your people getting critted? Are you being sneak attacked/deathblowed? Is the dragon's attack too high? Was everyone hit by the same attack? What type of defenses does the dragon's attacks target?

     

    You are then supposed to tweak your gameplay to account for your party/enemy strengths/weaknesses.

     

    Also, those minions are actually there to help you. You're supposed to use the battlefield to your advantage, unless you're some kind of die-hard fighters-only player. The game gave you a TON off CC to use against your numerically superior foes - use them. You're not supposed to be able to just go toe-to-toe against these guys and win - in PoE you are not some sort of godspawn.

  16. Resolve also gets you better dialogue options, because as fun being able to kill everything in your way is it's also nice to be able get the type of results you DO want. Not everyone enjoys unfulfilling quest resolutions/bad endings. The thing about dialogue options is that the best ones are based on INT, PER and RES. Paladins can live without the first two, so RES is a good compromise since it meshes with their all-around melee/mid-range character default role.

    It's especially noteworthy that RES gives you a lot more dialogue options than INT and PER - in fact INT and PER usually need to go together just to match RES options.

     

    Also, recommended stat or no you're not supposed to max stats (resulting in a potentially debilitating malus elsewhere) unless you know what you're doing.

     

    Cautious Attack definitely has value for anyone who needs the deflection boost. I'm not sure why it matters that there's an attack speed penalty, given the option between an attack speed penalty and a dragon turning around to attack my character every time he approaches melee range (many enemies are like this - they will turn around to attack targets with lower deflection as long as they're within reach) I'd go with the attack speed penalty, thanks.

    Bottomline is that if you're that concerned about attack speed on your particular character then just skip it.

     

    You can just google game mechanics like attack speed if you're unsure of stuff:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/3yi9yp/attack_speed_explained/

    https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86684-mechanics-the-big-attack-speed-conundrum/

    There's actually several posts in the forums about the topic, someone even made an online calculator

    https://naijaro.github.io/poe-speed-calculator/

  17. It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. There are also fast weapons with unique enchantments, or more heavily enchanted fast weapons that show up relatively earlier than their normal speed counterparts. Non-weapon skill-dependent characters/spammy casters will definitely want faster weapons so you have a much easier time shifting between casting spells and attacking stuff.

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