Giant Octopodes

Just a few easy examples from Act 2, since that's where the inter-faction stuff really heats up Reymont tells you the gem is part of a bidding war between the Dozens and the KotC. I can go up there and steal it myself (even after warning him about the plot, really he should get on closing that window faster). Why can I not then turn it over to the Dozens or KotC for some positive rep? Or even better yet, tell them Reymont has offered to sell it at a "discount" to them, collect a fee, and then turn it over? Or how about setting up a bidding war between the two factions for it from me, instead? You stopped the KotC member from being killed by the Dozens and recovered the research. Why can I not then turn around and hand it over to the Dozens after all? Or better yet, go to a Scrivener, get a copy made, hand the copy over to the Dozens for positive rep with them, and turn the originals over to the KotC with them none the wiser (at least initially)? Or how about commission an imperfect copy of the research from that same scrivener, and hand that over to one party (getting the rep for handing over the research, but actually sabotaging their efforts), or both parties, if I want the research to fail? Anyway that's just some quick examples, I absolutely love the game, I just wish at times you could go more non-linear with some of these quests, especially those which involve things multiple parties want. Hopefully deadfire will feature more opportunities for that kind of mischief.

Wiki seems pretty reliable to me, I've rarely to never found egregious errors in there (and if you do, you can always fix them ;-) ) I am a firm believer that *someone* should grab the Cipher multiclass talent (Whisper of Treason) ASAP, as the 5 second combat time is not excessively onerous and the effect is absolutely magnificent. 1 less enemy to deal wih, all their actions used to slay your foes during a relevant part of the combat instead? Yes please. I'm sure others will have advice which is relevant and great. As to skills specifically, there's 5 skills, and 6 party members. Everyone should ideally have 1 rank in Athletics and Survival, for front line fighters I find movement speed to be critical to ensure they determine their positioning so I shoot for 3 survival, but honestly the Accuracy bonus is so incredible if resting pre-boss and you know what you're about to face that I can't imagine anyone saying going for 4 survival all around is "bad". Beyond those universally useful skills, unless you're going for something specific (like an all stealth, ambush force, which I personally love) you only need 1 person to specialize in each, so as to overcome challenges and puzzles based on them. That would still leave room for 1 skill to be doubled up on, which is probably going to be lore, if you want some flexibility in who is using scrolls. Just keep in mind that it's probably not optimal to have the lore focused people be your primary casters. They have plenty to do already. Characters with slow starts (like Chanters or Ciphers) or with relatively low impact actions to take at any given time (like Rangers or frontline folks in a fight where it's difficult / impossible for them to get into a good position) are FAR better off being the ones to fill their "down time" with scroll usage. Primary casters focusing on Mechanics or Athletics or something instead makes far more sense, from an optimization standpoint.

So as I'm getting close to finishing my current playthrough, I've got my eye on what I'd want to try next. There are many options on the table, but the one I find most intriguing is the idea of doing an Insomniac Run, wherein the challenge is to never sleep. I'd be playing on Hard, I'm not sure such a run is possible on PotD and from what I've heard of it I definitely would not have fun personally trying to make it happen on that mode. Has anyone tried such a run? What characters did you use? What was your overall strategy? Any key difficulty spikes you found, and how did you deal with them? For the party, I'd be using 3x Ranger for sure, the healthless critters are 100% key to this being even possible. I'd also bring along a Chanter, for the faster ranged attacks (more interrupts) and the summons, he (and everyone else) would hang in the back with the rest of my party, and everyone would try to ensure no one ever even targets them with an attack. I'd bring along a Cipher, as the only class which generates its per-rest abilities in encounters, giving me (hopefully) some of the raw power needed to win boss fights, if I can delay long enough. For the last slot, there's a good chance it would be priest early game (for the AOE per encounter heal) and Druid late game (per encounter spells). Obviously the biggest challenge will be winning boss fights with low to zero health damage, without the use of per rest abilities. I don't know if there's formalized guidelines for such runs, but personally I'd be ok with using per rest abilities for party members in the amount they actually have (so it'd be fine to bring along Aloth and cast every spell use he had, as an example), but I certainly wouldn't be ok with abusing Caed Nua party switching to refill those abilities (so once he's used those spell uses they count as gone and can't ever be used again). Consummables and crafting will likely prove to be the key to the success or failure of the run, which is unfortunate for me as I normally just hoard consummables until the very end of the game then blow them all at once in spectacular fashion. This is all just speculation though, if anyone has already attempted this I'd love your insights as this will likely take a few attempts to get very far at all with it. Your time is greatly appreciated.

Fair enough and fair points all around. Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, it's certainly appreciated and your insights are definitely valued, please don't think that my desire to debate over points which don't match my personal experience means that I don't hear what you're saying or value the opinions of those with a different experience and especially a different level of experience. I certainly do! I also agree that the classes are overall quite well balanced and support a wide variety of playstyles, depending on your goals, which is very nice. The lone exception for me is Monk, and that's also the one class I have no experience in, so perhaps eventually I'll come around and see how awesome Monks are with more experience under my belt. Again thanks very much for the replies, would you say it's fair to have as the biggest takeaway the following? 'most of the advice given relates to PotD difficulty, or when specified solo runs, as generic playthroughs on hard or under can experience success doing pretty much whatever you want, it's simply not challenging enough to warrant giving advice, in the opinion of the most experienced players'

I bracketed out your points so they would be easier to reply to, I hope you don't mind. 1. Oh I totally get it- btw didn't know it still had to make an attack roll, that's less awesome even than I thought, so I was actually overestimating it. However please keep in mind that before it stacks up to 3x, he has to have chanted into his 3rd phrase, which means you're at least 15 seconds into combat. So you do 6.67 dps, then 13.3, then 20, building up. And that's before DR, which still applies in some way shape or form (it's not RAW damage after all). Yes it's AOE and yes it's passive and on top of whatever you're actually doing. But when fights are over before 15 seconds comes around, you can see how it would be unimpressive. Great PotD ability. Like most of the chanter's kit, way too slow for anything else. 2. Meh. Mind control is able to be talented into, and indeed it's the best part of his kit. Otherwise (personal impressions) he's like the Chanter, too slow to build up to be really powerful in non-boss fights, unable to continuously unload like traditional casters in boss fights. If all my enemies are knocked down, blinded, and / or dead before he gets out his 2nd spell, what does it even matter what that spell is? Again I get that in PotD he would be more useful, since he basically generates additional per rest level abilities the longer the fight goes. So the more drawn out it is, the more competitive he is with traditional casters. Also his damage comes nowhere close to a Rogue. Even assuming you're not investing heavily in Intellect for longer mind control duration, he maxes at around 50% bonus damage whereas a Rogue is doing 150% consistently. And it's not like applying debuffs like knocked down or blinded is such a burden anyway, action denial and debuffs are always helpful to everyone. 3. I don't take damage. Typically, in non-boss fights. In boss fights, on average 3 people take damage (1 minor, 2 major), from the boss, before I can finish clearing all adds and lock him down. The requirement to take damage to power up is excessively onerous under those conditions. You are indeed correct in that Monk is the only class I haven't had personal experience with- haven't bothered yet, my party does not feel lacking, and what it does lack he does not have in his kit. I will absolutely eventually try him, and maybe my opinion will change drastically. More likely, I will feel like the reason I'm taking damage all the time, and therefore the reason I'm getting value out of him, is because I have a monk in my party instead of a better character who could help me avoid taking damage in the first place. Due to lack of personal experience I can say that I absolutely could be 100% wrong about this. 4. I dealt with that in another reply to you (which with my time delay is further up, sorry again for that), but I mean if he was SO useless why have him around at all? For me, on hard, I find the damage to be insane, and given a situation with the chanter, if they are both against 3, the Chanter will be doing his mild AOE damage which can ramp to something useful around the time the Rogue has finished killing 2 of them and is hacking away at the 3rd denying any actions at all to him. I get that PotD is different but to claim it's anything other than 2nd tier on lower difficulties seems disingenuous. Top tier being of course the primary casters, we can certainly agree the ability to blow as many per rest abilities as you want, and rest at will, makes them the most powerful option if you don't mind resting as needed. 5. Sure, on PotD. Long drawn out engagements with lessened ability to CC and more facetanking puts a premium on healing. Makes sense. Buffs last for quite a while and can hit every party member, while debuffs tend to last shorter times, can be resisted, and are against a limited number of enemies, also having to work around immunities. I can certainly see how that would be true. Can you in turn see that debuffs, if able to be consistently applied, are instead more powerful? If you actually can blind / knock down / interrupt everyone, and pursue an effective strategy of action denial, it doesn't matter how strong the enemy is or how weak you are, they will do nothing and you can kill them at your liesure with zero risk or damage taken, which means there's absolutely zero value to healing. 6. See my reply to Abbzug above, it's not about the DPS, even if 2h were way superior it'd still be an inferior option imho due to interrupts. 7. I'm going to just respectfully disagree on this one. Every single weapon in the game, in addition to its other attributes, has "deals (interrupt duration) stun on hit, interrupt vs concentration". You have an at will stun usable by all characters at a rate of potentially over 1/second. If you have enough CC for that to not have value, then you have enough CC for nothing else to matter, and then Priests shouldn't be good since every enemy is so CC'd you never take damage anyway. If you take damage, that means enemies get actions off, which means you failed to have enough CC to cover everything. Which brings me to kinda my whole theme here- in all the advice I see, people talk like everyone's playing on PotD, and the action economy game is just unwinnable and not worth engaging in, and every fight is going to be a minute long slog or more. If people are not playing on PotD, I feel like it would be very helpful for them to know and understand the concepts behind managing an action economy, and why Mind Control is the best debuff in the game (better than death, even, in some ways, because in addition to denying all actions from that character for the duration you actually gain actions on your side), and how the best way for you to easily win fights is to ensure you have as many useful, meaningful actions you can engage in on your side, while they have as few, and as ineffectual, of actions possible on their side. This is universally true in virtually all games, but especially in turn based games or games like PoE. This is exactly why the Chanter's AoE is so good on PotD, he gets a "free" "attack" against all foes in his AoE radius every 3 seconds, stacking up over time, which over a long fight is a LOT of free actions. In the exact same circumstances, the "free" attacks granted by the Barb, which tick much more often (not only accuring free actions faster, but also denying more enemy actions) should offer as much or more value, not necessarily in terms of damage done, but in terms of how much he sways the tide of the action economy of each side, respectively.

Mostly because of the way damage reduction works. It's a flat reduction to damage taken per hit. There's plenty of reasons to go for dual wielding, but in general you want big hits. Also attacks are broken into attack, recovery and reload phases (reload only for guns and crossbows). 2h doesn't really attack that slowly, it just recovers slowly and with the right setup you can eliminate or greatly reduce the recovery period. Also bigger weapons have stronger interrupts anyway so you might be interrupting less often but you'll be interrupting for longer periods, I don't really know how it washes out though. It doesn't wash out. So here's some basic math for you: a generic fight between a 2h user and a dual wielder. We can safely ignore attack speed and recovery buffs, as they are equally available to all, other than dual wielding style (which we will use in this example). We will set DR at the most optimal for this fight, 12 when using base weapons with no modifiers (proportionally it's the same, the value changes but not the ratios), so the dual wielder does as little damage as possible (3 per hit compared to average 7 for the 2h weapons, meaning the 2h weapon does 2x as much damage). The dual wielder attacks with an 18 frame attack, 20 frame recovery (alternating weapons). The 2h user attacks with a 30 frame attack, 54 frame recovery. The dual wielder attacks twice as fast, sure, but that's not the important point- each time the dual wielder hits, if the concentration roll is failed, the current action the 2h user is performing is cancelled entirely. After a .35 second delay (30 frames per second so 10 frames) the 2h user begins the attack animation again from the start. That 40 frame total time before it completes? It's easily enough (without any other buffs) for the Rogue to recover, and begin and complete another attack. Which, if it hits, means another concentration roll, and another potential interrupt. If the dual wielder is accurate enough, and the concentration rolls are failed repeatedly, the two hander will never complete a single attack. So his damage could be 20x that of the dual wielder, it doesn't matter. Now, let's talk about what happens when the 2h user hits the dual wielder. Assuming an interrupt occurs, that's a complete cancel of the dual wielder's attack, and a delay of .75 seconds (23 frames). Add in the 18 frames for them to complete another attack, and you're looking at 41 frames all told, which means they still complete another attack before the two hander even begins another attack. The two hander can never deny them the ability to attack completely, even with the best luck in the world, they still get in an attack for each and every attack the two hander makes. And that's just vs each other, where the action you're trying to interrupt is a simple attack. When you can stop a knock down from occurring, a high level spell from being cast, or another critical ability of an enemy from going off, the disparity in how the interrupt mechanic works becomes even more pronounced. So even if the 2h users did more damage (which they really do not, even when buffed to the sky proportionally before interrupts they'll do about the same even in the dual wielder's worst case scenario, the 2h user will simply be much more impressive to look at damage number wise, especially on crits), I still can't imagine not preferring the action denial mechanics of interrupts

Sorry for the double post, I can't edit the post I made earlier yet since I'm a newb still. So I get PotD, and in a game with per encounter and per rest abilities when you're cranking it up to "the most difficult possible", that will always naturally mean using every per rest ability each encounter, and in a game with numbers adjusted to be more difficult to hit, the priority shifts to things which don't roll to hit. I get that. So the ideal party probably looks something like Druid MC, Priest and Wizard, and 3 Chanters as frontline. Sub out other classes for the chanters when needed / desired. But even still- look at your second to last sentence. In multiple PotD playtrhoughs, a Rogue made the party. You only have 6 slots, and there are 11 classes, meaning at any given time at minimum 5 aren't in it, assuming no double ups. It's worse than that though, because of the standard companions given to you by the game, the Rogue is not one of them. So in a situation where you have to actively make a rogue to have one, when there's not enough space for everyone as is, on multiple occasions they merited making one and including it. That means they were at least part time no worse than the 6th best option (out of 11) even on PotD. So why, again, is everyone talking like they're the worst? There's a big difference between "worst party member", which is subjective anyway, and "does not merit inclusion", which is what certainly is implied when it's routinely ranked 11th. What still doesn't really make sense to me, in terms of sure, if fights are dragging on, and you're relying on the Chanter's AOE to burn down normal mobs while your Casters are burning through their per rest abilities, Rogues are less useful. Doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but I understand. But then why oh why would the Barbarian not rate higher? A max attack speed dual wielding Barb can bring forth arguably the most useful effect the Rogue brings (the constant interrupts) in an AOE fashion, to drastically reduce the actions enemies take before you have time to burn them down over a long engagement. He has a powerful self heal as well, and a much larger health pool. I mean he could do zero damage and would still be incredibly useful. So why no love for that style, or interrupts in general? Do those also just not work against the bloated stats of PotD enemies?

Thanks for the reply! Yeah I'm "only" playing it on hard, seems odd to complain when a class fares poorly at a difficulty mode other than the one the game was designed around (which is normal btw). That might also explain why everyone drools over the Chanter's 6.67 dps AOE (before DR!), calling it "insane" damage which "melts" foes, since it doesn't require an attack roll. Higher defenses would also make debuffs harder to apply, which would exacerbate the situation (since if they're not routinely blinded, that effectively adds 20 to their deflection and 25 to their accuracy right there). OK, I think I understand the situation a little better, thanks much again! So here is how I view the classes, let me know what you think is correct and incorrect based on your experiences, and what does and does not apply on PotD. Druid- has great spells with total access to all of them, starting with an AOE Blind (15s!) at level 1, gets spells on a Per Encounter basis in mass amounts at higher levels, has a combat form equal to or better than what your frontliners are doing with zero investment, with a dual wield zero recovery attack with 2h level damage. Wizard- Great CC, ok-ish AOE damage, can unleash from the moment combat starts, and can burn through all their per rest abilities to drastically reduce the difficulty of a given encounter Priest- Buffs and heals instead of debuffs and damage, otherwise identical to Wizards. Rogue- Best single target damage. Kills high priority targets fast, applying the best debuff in the game (death) repeatedly. Barbarian- Less damage than Rogues (overall, and Especially to a single target), but does have at will AOE interrupts, which if properly utilized can lock down a whole group of foes until the cavalry arrives. Paladin- Effective frontliner, AOE buffs at will, good per encounter abilities, a solid "defender" of your backline. Also decent heals on a per encounter basis. Chanter- Passive AOE bonuses or debuffs are never a bad thing in a party game. Less impactful than the per rest abilities of top tier casters, especially since they need to wait before and between uses of their spells. Fighter- A less great Paladin in a lot of ways (lower defenses on a defender, heals themselves instead of anyone, etc) but they can do per encounter Knockdowns with decent frequency, which is pretty great. They also have fairly great positional control with stuff like "into the fray" or "Defender" combined with "overbearing guard". Cipher- Great CC and buffs available, but only on a very limited basis, they're kinda like a Chanter minus the Chants (which is as bad as it sounds). More accurately, like a Chanter whose only chant is +damage to themselves, on a character who is not a primary damage dealer and can't really compete with the big boys. Their best ability early (Whisper of Treason) is available for anyone to grab (and someone should), and a lot of their debuffs are single target instead of AOE beside. Ranger- Great in mass or on a solo, zero consumable run I suppose. They're a damage dealing type of class (they certainly don't do much else), but can't compete at all with the damage of a Rogue or Barbarian type, in exchange for what is essentially a free summon at the beginning of each encounter. Again if you have little to no recovery options, or are massing them and using summons as your entire frontline, that's ok. Otherwise, it's not great. Monk- The entire design of this class is backwards. This is the only class in the game I would say is actively BAD. It relies, to do anything really at all, on getting hit- and not just anyone getting hit, *specifically* the monk getting hit. And not just getting hit, but taking damage- large amounts of it! In exchange, they get to not use weapons, have ok (but definitely not great) damage, and have abilities which are roughly comparable to other classes per encounters (which don't require them taking damage to use). As an example of how backwards they are, their final level 15 ability is an inferior version of the Barbarian's level 1 ability, trading an always on ability whose biggest highlight is a constant stream of interrupts for an activatable, once per encounter aoe with better damage. /rant. So bad.

I come on here and read what people write, and it doesn't make sense to me. I'm playing with a Rogue MC, with the rest of my party buffing my ability to stay alive, debuffing enemy deflection and DR, and increasing attack speed and movement speed whenever possible. I focus on things I can use on a per-encounter basis, and things I can use immediately at the beginning of a fight. So for me, I want the Rogue to have as fast of an attack speed as possible (avoid slow items or recovery reduction as much as possible, wear the "best" "light" armor I can) because increasing attack speed is always a direct, multiplicative increase in damage done. Increasing damage may or may not actually increase it (were you over DR threshold before? Did this put you over? What is this stacking with? What is the actual net difference between battle done before and after, and what percentage damage increase does it represent?). Also, when you're attacking fast enough, the enemy basically never gets to take an action, because of constant interrupts. In turn, I absolutely, positively, melt through enemies. The damage the MC does is insane. Pretty much every invocation my chanter has is 100% useless in a non-boss fight, because they're over in sub 15 seconds anyway, and he just can't ever get stacked up to use those abilities. The Cipher builds up enough for maybe 1 spell, and it doesn't matter anyway because everything is already dead. Add to that the positional modifications needed to ensure priority targets go down quickly, and basically the only time I ever need to rest is after boss fights, as I simply don't consume any resources at all during normal engagements. And after boss fights, the primary reason I need to rest is because I just went ham and burned through all my spell slots with my casters (who normally again use 0-1 spells in any given non-boss fight). So how do people have Rogues rated so poorly? I understand that any character can shine when all the love is poured on them. I also understand a party of all Rogues, or a solo Rogue, would fare poorly (or at least more poorly than a solo something else, or a party of all something else). Furthermore, during a boss fight, I'd never go without at least 2 casters with a healthy amount of high level spell slots available (why would I?), and it's certainly happened that the MC has not been standing at the end of a boss fight (though it's no more common for them to go down than my other frontliners, paladin included, given all the tools for survival the MC has). But this is a party game. You're given a frontline and a vatican caster right at the start. What you Aren't already given is a way to just absolutely tear foes asunder ruthlessly and immediately, and Rogues provide that. The best debuff available in any game is death. Foes to which that debuff is applied deal zero damage, apply no CC, and do not block movement. Rogues apply that debuff, easily, consistently, and repeatably, better than any other class. So how are they consistently rated instead as the worst? Also, why all the love for super slow weapons? The slower the weapon, the worse it is at interrupts, the more of a negative impact overkill is, the more time (and damage) is lost to CC, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and in any given engagement the more likely you are to suffer from the first hits, instead of attacking first (oftentimes snowballing to a flawless victory). Doing even 4x the damage but attacking at 1/2 the speed means effectively doubling the amount of damage you're receiving (due to 1/2 the interrupts), in exchange for dealing what ends up being 2x the damage, which is not a worthwhile trade. Why are interrupts seemingly so under valued by everyone? Anyway, sorry for the super long post, thanks for reading my rant, and I look forward to everyone's insights. I figure there has to be some things I am just fundamentally missing, because the game I am playing, and the conclusions which seem obvious based on its mechanics, simply does not match up to the advice and opinions I'm seeing online.

So I've been learning more about the systems, I'm on my first playthrough, and I just wondered if anyone has tried going full disengage riposte rogue. As in the idea is, you get engagement with an enemy, and disengage, and reengage, and disengage, and reengage, etc. Between attacks yourself of course, kinda like the "marine micro" or "stutter step" of mobas / rts games. The idea is that your deflection is so high for disengage attacks, you force virtually *every* attack to miss, or at worst graze, and you force *way* more attacks than their normal rate of attack, to greatly increase the value of Riposte, and in doing so ratchet your damage up beyond what would normally be possible with just attacking. This scales even more when engaging groups, since you can get a disengage attack from each and every enemy engaged with you. That's the idea, anyway. Obviously it may not actually be possible, or viable, much less optimal. So please, fill me in on how good (or terrible) it is, and what you tried out of the things below. Things that help: items: 1) A weapon that heals you when you hit. This helps offset the endurance loss on the grazes and hits you take, and keeps you healthy. Since you also would (presumably) heal off riposte hits, it should be easy to avoid getting overwhelmed. (Oidhrecht is a good early game weapon with that attribute) 2) an offhand which adds deflection, and is capable of dealing at least *some* damage (like a shield with bash, or a hatchet, or something) 3) Anything which adds deflection, whether all the time, or conditionally when disengaging. 4) Anything which adds DR, since you'll still be taking some hits 5) Abilities and talents which add to defelction, such as "graceful retreat", among others. 6) Abilities which lower enemy accuracy, such as a friendly chanter with the "fox from the farmer" chant 7) Abilities which enable sneak attack, usable on a per-encounter basis ideally This idea is still VERY raw, I haven't even yet decided what would be the optimal main character build to pull it off, much less what party members would be optimal, or what they should pursue. I'm just wondering if it's even worth going down this rabbit hole at all, or if I'll get to the end and be sadly underwhelmed. Thanks for your time, thoughts, and feedback.