Lokithecat

In this (and many) fantasy settings you can often be any sort of character as any sort of class. If you want to play a wizard that is a moron, you aren't barred from it, you might just end up terrible at your role. Games are generally built to be inclusive, more than 'you / your character can't do that'. As for some sort of specialized 'lore' reasoning for wizards, the game provides many. However those examples, aren't things that a character who is busy saving the world has time to explore in a meaningful way. The Wizard that runs that Dark Cupboard, is obviously 'a wizard'. He's got a magic shop that sells his creations, an apprentice, an army of Imps, and constructs, and spends time wandering around casting illusions on himself for kicks. He has a scrying pool to chat with his wizard buddies, and is part of some sort of wizard council. I don't know how you can claim that there isn't any sort of 'lore' about wizards with character like this in. Other wizards are running an observatory, and trying to figure out the secrets of the universe. This is all obviously very much different than what the other classes do. You need to remember, at the end of the day, this game isn't an 'in depth exploration of an open developed world' as much as 'a Hero has to deal with an emergency in a small province'.

Haven't tried it, does a Devoted Shifter count their claws as specialized? Monk works, but everyone can access the unarmed Modal (Haymaker) and I don't think that Shifters even have a Modal.

On my very first ship combat it went like that. I destroyed their sails, they turned and began running away and it took ages to catch up to them. Due to my low level crew (?) the opponents seemed to always have the advantage, so I was only able to get 5 to 10m closer each action, and the starting distance between us, when they started running, was near 400. This only happened one time though, out of a few playthroughs. Since then I've just attempted to close the distance to the ship, and board it. Ramming it off the start (especially with recent changes) is a valid tactic. Killing off the crew (to make combat easier) didn't use to work, haven't tried with new changes though, could be valid. If you don't want to try ship boarding combat, I'd consider getting close (somewhere close to your minimum range) and just aiming at their hulls. If they attempt to run, you should be able to stay close enough to finish them off.

So, record your game, edit out all of your pausing? Make some decent AI Scripts, and autorun fights, record this? Seems easier to just do it yourself through one of these methods, than hoping they'll screw with the engine enough to do this for you...

Berath's Blessing for lvl 4. Also with G Street (spelling?) you can sneak past everyone, get to the guy at the end, speak to him, give him 40 copper, win. Get 1000 copper for doing the quest. Totally counterintuitive, but you don't get xp for killing stuff.

Sneak Attack + Summoned Weapons is a thing... just not that amazing. Assassinate is super useful though, no question there.

You can allow (or support) Eothas in his rampage, the world doesn't end or anything after, the 'credits?' still talk about the future, and repercussions of your choices.

While that bug does sound like something that exists, we don't know that its from a Captain yet, just that it might be from a Naval event, possibly tied to negative faction.... If there is a bug (or they intentionally didn't put the wpn in Live) that causes the event to not occur, killing every Captain you meet isn't going to help.

Doesn't really feel like there are actual hard weapon damage numbers. Like the Poleaxe with the Area / multi target attack has the base damage of a dagger. The 2h endless path Greatsword does less base damage than the 1h version.

Per is basically your 'how effective am I' stat for every build, except for a pure buffer. A few classes can get away with lower, due to in class mechanics allowing them to have +Accuracy, but that won't help with traps. I figured they made the companions all (fairly) incompetent to make the MC feel like its a better character. Maia can see the majority of the traps, although dressing her up in +Per gear to try to get everything will hamper her combat ability (Compared to better options). But if you know about a trap / check, you can always drug up for it specifically.

100% Bug free.

That bug (or really badly implemented bad idea), with Alchemy affecting 'Poison' dot spells was pretty scary... a decent score, and you can wipe out most everything with a single Plague of Insects cast

Plus the UI glitch when you're turning modals on / off. eg. Brisk (Troubador) is on. Switch over to my Arbelest, and pause to turn its modal on. Click. But now (still paused) Brisk is showing that its turned off (it isn't). That caught me a number of times, its like pausing, and attempting to change one modal makes the display show all others turned off. If you then try to turn it back on, and then return to normal time, you will have turned it off.

I hear 'Oregon Trail' is a great sim that doesn't have magic. Give that a shot.

It feels like they looked at dots, and had a brain fart. X dot will do 30 damage over its duration. 'But Timmy we don't want people with high Int to do more damage per casting with it, Int has +5% more Damage from extending the duration, and Might only has 3%. If these both apply thats a lot of damage, and Int shouldn't be increasing damage in the first place.' 'Well George, if we set it up, so that X dot will always do 30 damage over its active time, and still allow it to be affected by Might, that would be okay.' 'Hmm.... so if someone has High Int, or Low Int, the dot will still do the same damage, it'll just happen over different amounts of time?' 'Yes, that seems perfect, and theres no negative or balance issues.' One of the earlier versions the 'per 3.0 second' part ended up getting increased by Int, which slowed down the DPS, but since the duration was increased as well, you broke even on actual damage. All they had to do, is leave the 'per 3.0 second' part unaffected by Int, and change the overall duration with Int. This wouldn't affect DPS, but would result in lower overall damage if you had low Int, and higher Int would get you more damage. This would have Might affecting the DPS. Which seems like it is supposed to work that way. So, with a 30 damage over 30 second duration it is 1 DPS (say every 3.0 second ticks) ... a High stat being 15, and low being 5... High Might, Low Int; 1.15 DPS (3.45 Damage per 3.0 Seconds), over 23 seconds totalling 26.45 Damage Low Might, High Int; 0.85 DPS (2.55 Damage per 3.0 Seconds), over 37 seconds totalling 31.45 Damage High Might, High Int; 1.15 DPS (3.45 Damage per 3.0 Seconds), over 37 seconds totalling 42.55 Damage

Not sure if the concept is actually workable, but Fire Godlike would be a good addition, once you're under 50% you'll burn people that swing at you.

"Then other changes they made, like lengthening cast times across the board, indirectly nerfed CC and debuffs (because CC is trading your time for the enemy's time, and if you have to trade more of your time, it's a worse trade), etc. " If this were a solo game, that comment might actually be relevant. With 5 members, even occupying 10 seconds of one characters time to negate 5 seconds of an enemies, is still an advantage. Even using fairly silly numbers like that, it would mean 2 of your characters could lock down an enemy leaving you 3 other characters to act freely.

Yes, but almost no one used them even before the patch, not like there's suddenly a rush on them.

You can crew your ships with freaks, Vith, Bug people, Imps, Trolls....

Maybe they need a modal, that allows them to use 'generic' summons, at regular cost (or 1 less), or the double summons at cost + 1.

In character creation, once you've selected the Rog / Trickster subclass, click the Preview ability tree buttons. On the far left the abilities you get are listed. You'll cast them with the Rogue resource (Guile).

x of protection stacks, deflection stacks (to the point you can make an unhittable character).

Streetfighter is kind of clunky mechanically, and definitely not the choice of someone that is 'leaving close range for more sturdy people'. You'd be running a permanent -50% action speed, unless things went wrong (or you gimmicked the blunderbuss modal to 'Distract' yourself) and you were engaged by multiple people, or badly beaten up. Sharpshooter from Ranger, is considered bad, because the penalty (-20%?) outweighs the advantages. I'd consider not Subclassing Rog, and taking Ghostheart from Ranger (Unless you were really into managing a sub par pet, which cripples you if it dies). ​Scout (Rogue / Ranger) has a lot of good stuff for range characters, most of the Rogue debuffs apply from Weapon range, meaning you could be in the back ranks blinding / hobbling etc, which is nice, safe, and allows you to get sneak attack damage. Assassin is a good Subclass for Rogue, but you would likely be looking at backstabbing (yes with guns) mid fight once everything has been locked down. Rog / Cip isn't bad either, but you'll end up more focused on maybe charming someone, shooting for a bit, until you get your Focus capped, and then casting everything from Cipher side (Ascendant. Soul Blade wouldn't be good with range weapons, Beguiler isn't bad, but not as 'mechanically' useful). The game, especially in normal / Hard, should be enough that you aren't required to have 'best' builds to get through the game, and any of these should work.

For a laugh, lookup (Journal / Cyclopedia / Equipment / Soul bound) Looks like they just copy / pasted it from PoE1, and didn't bother any sort of programming to support it.

1. Don't open with a rogue standing by himself waiting to die. Have tanks engage, and the rogue backstab something that you have engaged. Bonus points if you can make the backstab Sneak Attack valid, which isn't that hard to do (Eder Swashbuckler Persistent Distractions, spells / abilities with Afflictions). 2. Yup, you will be attacking later than your tank, and losing a few seconds of DPS, but you won't be getting aggro. 3. Why is your Rogue being Engaged, he should be stabbing people in the back while they fight someone else. If your previous big stab (vs. an engaged target) causes them to switch to the Rogue, they'll switch back to original target, none of which should actually move them. 4. Even used intelligently, Backstab is probably a net dps loss, compared to just stabbing things w/Sneak, let alone spamming (the now buffed) Full Attack abilities. Backstab, should be a Full Attack action, to encourage Dual Wielding, most Rog stuff should be. Nerfing a sub par ability, because it had the ability to be used in some broken gimmick build is just not good.