JibSail

Since someone already mentioned dota here, I thought I'd ask you to tell me whether a team comp matters in that game. I mean, if it were balanced, a 5 hard carry team would have a really fun time vs a 5 support team... Balance in a single player game is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Your game shouldn't be difficult because your auto attacks can't pen, or because you only have a 13% change to hit, but because (someone else made this amazing suggestion) they had rouges stealthed and they took out your back line.

Even after these things being nerfed you can still have fun in story mode thank you. Or how about the 1% just go mod their own games instead of assuming the backseat position of a developer. I'm even stomping PotD with Ranger anyway so none of these even matters to me. But of course the entitled Hardcore gamer will probably complain about it after 20 nerfs or so. Go play PoE 1 solo trial of iron on a naked ranger if the game isn't hard enough for you at the moment. Obsidian won't base their whole game direction all over the 1%. It's why they're taking time relooking at PotD instead of dropping the nerf hammers in a few months. Where did you get that 1% btw？ Look at PoE 1 Steam Achievement tracker and see how many bother to clear PotD, how many bother to solo and how many even bother to solo trial of iron with everything done. Only 0.6% even bother finishing PotD and 0.3% played it solo. The people trying to balance the game completely around "Hardest possible experience" is even less than 1% of the playerbase. Zeitzbach has a good point here. The issue isn't a balancing issue per se. It's a design and mechanics issue. The reason the game is easy isn't because my assassin evoker one hits a mob next to some barrels, but because 80% of the mob is stationed next to said barrels. It isn't because high end gear is OP, but because you can afford high end gear. The same with empower. Only OP, because there is no real drawback to spamming it. Balance by numbers in a game is an illusion. Mechanics beats numbers always, because we, the humans, never play as the devs intended.

This. Heavy handed blanket nerfs will ruin the experience, it's much better to wait and see where PotD ends up being in regards to difficulty and go from there.I'd much rather they buff encounters then nerf everything to the ground. That said, some things are way out of line like some swift flurry interactions, the brilliant inspiration, faith and conviction/deep faith etc. On the other hand there are some high level abilities which are garbage (looking at you sacred immolation). The thing I'm not quite sure on how they will get around to balancing (or if they will get around to balancing) is the fact that you can get some incredibly OP gear early on, personally I don't mind it being there but some might think it's another way to trivialize the game. I agree with you that high end gear early in the game is a problem. It is a problem, however only because of one thing: ship prices. Deadfire bombards you with gold, because ships cost a ton. So in stead of buying a new ship, or a hull upgrade and some sails, or traveling supplies, let me buy this legendary armour at the black market for 10 000. The problem here is the fact that ship economy is tied to the regular economy. Poe1 also had high end gear early on, but you could never really afford it and when you could, it was amazing to use (made the game easy)

Didn't they add islands to fluvanos journey in stead of floors to the endless paths in this one? Then that would be considered the spiritual successor to the endless paths, correct?

Two things, real quick. 1. I think trying to balance the game before the potd content fix is a bit of a noob move. Obsidian knows that there are issues with the difficulty and they've said they are working on it. This means that any suggestion that involves numbers, scaling and/or counters are premature. 2. There is more to balancing a game than fixing scaling and numbers. It's about creating a situation where the player (of any skill level) feels that they've earned a victory. This is something that, at it's core, involves mechanics and clever use of illusion. (A good example of this is how you only get the blue shell in mario cart when you are far behind, or how Max Payne's ai added aim assist without the player knowing after calculating your skill) What I'm trying to say here is that the thread is trying to address a problem that is actually a symptom. We need to try and look past buffing and nerfing and look at unique and clever ways of making the hard core number cruncher feel that they won a fight by the skin of their teeth.

Haven't done it myself yet. Have you tried putting it into a quick item slot and using it during combat that way?

I do hope you mean 24 hours of game time and not real time Hahaha. Imagine that binge! Yea. Sorry. Game time. Resting real-time is instantanious.

Since you guys seem to up for a challenge and seem to dislike rest spamming, I have two suggestions here. One decent and one a little radical. 1. Limit the player on the amount of food they can carry and only allow access to the stash from the ship, or an inn. 2. Make some quests instances where you are required to resolve it within 24 hours of starting it. Since resting takes time, it would not only fix that issue, but it would also counter the inherent awefulness and flaws of camping supplies. Anywho, I can't imagine these being implemented as defaults. They both attack the general quality of life deadfire set out to create. I can however see them added as options when starting a game. The same way expert mode is an option.

I love the new wizards. Have you had the chance to throw a fireball yet? Dude... Felt like I was punching a hole in my own ship. The resource system makes each cast count and when the spells do hit, they hit hard. I have never felt this satisfied with a spellcast in a game before. The restriction to spells in grimoires is a welcome change. Since wizards don't need to pre-cast/prepare spells in poe lore like in dnd, there was really no point to the oversized paperweights. The new mechanical change bolsters the need for wizards to carry around these books and also makes book hunting a really fun exercise. I do think that it would have been awesome if there were some way to customize/commission a grimoire and if there is in game, please don't tell me

Exactly, also to be noted inspiration can counter one affliction, so if you have Strong, Fit, Quick, you can not be stunned by one spell, stun and fit will first cancel each other. Then the next stun ability can stun u. Wait... Am I misreading this when I say that a single affliction will then cause both inspirations to cancel out?

Ooooooh! Nevermind. I completely forgot that inspirations give +5 to stats. Minor avatar is still bada**. Whoop whoop!

We'll, minor avatar got nerfed to death... I'm seriously considering abandoning this multiclass now. I'm not sure champions boon and barring deaths door will be enough to pull this off. It'll be like 8 seconds worth of actions.

Reading through this I was wondering how weapon damage scales, if at all, with character level. Also planning on having a look at that dps spreadsheet tonight. I might be able to get a quick js calculator up over the weekend. Will let you guys know if it pans out.

Woah! Awesome and thank you very much.

Ok. So in an attempt to figure out how much I'd need to focus on defence, I've been looking through forums and wikis and pausing playthroughs trying to understand what the new buff system is and what inspirations actually do, as well as how they interact with debuffs. I can honestly say that at this point, I'm even more confused than when I started. A few questions: - Do debuffs have the same naming convention inspirations have? - How do the stronger inspirations/debuffs work when affected by a weaker counter? - What happens when a debuff only targets one aspect of an inspiration and vice versa? - Do debuffs and inspirations cancel each other out in terms of removing each other, or just evening out the affected stats? - What do the inspurations we currently know of actually do? Any answers, or just a nod in the right direction would make my day.