Ymarsakar

Isn't that what people said about the split in black jack? More chances to fail and succeed.

I'd probably swap out Eder for a chanter, due to the various party buffs and summons a chanter has. 25% fire lash to all attacks is pretty good. And dragon thrash is also good with 18 might. And the second level range speed reload buff is also good for rangers. I would probably take hastening exhortation at level 9 if I wasn't worried about my party getting downed and not getting a revival. But I would cast it on the ranger, not on aloth. He doesn't need it with alacrity as you noted it. Sworn enemy is pretty good, although you have to use it on the special types as it is limited by 3 per rest. It won't help the party out as much as it helps out the paladin's offenses be magnified and multiplied against that one enemy for the entire combat. Whereas hastening improves the overall dps out of your heavy hitting dps class, the ranger, who can increase their overall rate of fire by just wearing no armor or robes. For the ranger, that itumaak pet does some huge damage with combo hits. Very nice synergy there. Way different from the Broken Ranger in 1.0

They were some raw data I put down as I was going to sleep and needed a record of it. If anyone needs to know something specific, they can always send me a message, running experiments can be fun. Assuming they don't want to know the methodology in order to duplicate the experiment (science).

For the attributes, they seem very close to the listed stats. 4 dex vs 18 dex is a difference of 42% action speed. And the number of attacks in armor closely relates to that, as in you actually do get 40% more attacks. I think this is more noticeable with fast weapons vs slow two handed weapons because the animation is just faster and you just notice yourself getting more attacks in 30s. Whereas the same works with two handed weapons too, it's just sometimes hard to notice that 10%-20% difference most people get with balanced stat builds. Since most people usually don't run builds with min dexterity and then another guy with max dexterity, they're usually running 10 dex or 15 dex, something like that. From previous tests using older builds like 1.06 and 1.4, action speed also affects the reload time on blunderbusses and such weapons, so it's like total frames over the sequence is reduced by the action speed. I haven't tested with 10 dex substantially. 42% is the difference between 18 and 4, so the difference between 4 and 10 would be 6. About 18% action speed difference if I have that right. Or 10 vs 18 would be 8x3 or 24% action speed difference. Generally might, perception, and dexterity all together multiply their effects and bonuses. So based on previous combat experience, if I had +30% attack damage multiplied by 10 attacks, it might be 13 dmg x 10=130 points of damage. Whereas if dex boosts the attacks to 12 over same time, that's 13x12=156 dmg. But these are just tentative estimates, for in game results I think more testing with different builds is needed to see exactly how much difference it would make for various different offensive or defensive builds. Certain spells have very low recovery time frames, so people have noticed that wizards/druids/priests with high attack speed buffs can start spamming a lot of spells, which aren't even fast cast. So it is as they listed it, 3 points of action speed per dexterity, up or down. There doesn't seem to be any exponential curves going on at higher or lower levels. I think that would normally depend on the weapon used, since the weapon speed may have a high limit and a low limit for attack rates. Speculating at the moment, but I think 18 dex probably almost entirely eliminates the debuff from the -50 recovery armor. Dexterity action speed affects all the frames of every action, including recovery it seems. Whereas the recovery just affects the attack speed, the delay between attacks. So dexterity affects spells, dual wielding, attacks more as it reduces the frames on each of those animations. Whereas for two handed swords or slower weapons, dexterity doesn't reduce the frames as much as the recovery portion is being reduced. That's because the slower weapons attack less, so they have less frames to be reduced. Well that's my explanation for why a high armor low dex two handed warrior doesn't get much dps malus.

Which ones are you interested in Tennis?

Two paladins make auras so much easier to manage. I was referring to just the bonus from the disposition, but if you combine it with the passive conviction the totals would end up like Torm listed.

For other content entertainment, check this video out of a person who wanted to get a rate of fire higher than Twinned arrows.

Is there any indicator after the convesation/action choice? There's an indicator on the character sheet for current disposition, like 1-5 or something. It's invisible if it is 0. And I don't remember it ever actually taking points away. The disposition handles certain npc introduction flavors and bark strings over npc heads, as it stands for your reputation Roleplay wise. Most of this stuff is permanently invisible on expert mode, but in the normal mode you can toggle many of them on or off. @Ymarksar ... i didn't use the term Carebear that was someone else. But its a general gaming term as far as i know that means coddling or making things easier. Usually in the MMO world Oh I see. Sorry for getting the wrong post mixed up. I'm not sure what other people do, but I just use a max ranged ranger to pull using wounded shot, works relatively work. For larger groups, the chill fog and hobble aoes are pre cast between enemy and the ranger out of line of sight. The wizard's rolling fire and lightning is also great at pulling, because it'll keep on going past the line of sight. Sometimes way too far and hit something it wasn't intended to hit. Early on when the casters had few per rest abilities, I had everyone do the ranged run and gun strategy. They would run the mobs around in a big circle or wait until they de aggroed due to los/range, and then keep hitting them with ranged dps. It's also nice for pulling the faster casters forward while the slower big enemies got delayed. It's much easier to pull now in 2.0 at level 9-11 though, because of more classes and powers to choose from. Ranger was pretty broken back when I first tried kiting tricks, and that didn't help. I try to keep the ranger's pet out of the first line because I need that one alive to get the ranger to do the extra damage with the pet thing. Now that Itumaak has something like 20-24 DR at higher levels, he can absorb quite some damage, if paladin or aoe heals are available. Which they will be. But if your party has no speed buffs, I think itumaak has a natural move speed buff on so that might be useful. The move speed and move speed debuff spells are very important because in 2.0 I think enemies will never pull out of aggro range if they see you or if they see an enemy (ally) you are shooting. So the only way to stop them from catching up and de aggro is to run faster than they do. Not a problem in open field fights that you've explored, but might be a problem in those dungeons. I don't rely on any single strategy, so that's why my party is more balanced and not 1 chanter + 5 rangers, which is the orthodox run and gun strategy. "Is that decent or should i maybe not put RES so high at the start and put a few more points in CON or MIG? Maybe a smatter in DEX or something? Is DEX worth anything to a pally? I'm also wondering if this is like KOTOR and some other games where it takes more points to raise your stats once they get higher ... i.e. i would have to spend like 2 or 3 points to get it to 19 once in game. " If you don't want to min max, then having 10-12 stats around looks good. I prefer the perception dialogue options over the resolve for most of the Pillars crit/sub quest paths though. So that's why I picked a cipher, because perception was supposed to give 1 accuracy per point, then they changed it to deflection... and so on. Dex is useful to everyone but less so to slow moving plates of armor with a big gun on top. And normally for dex builds, you want a lot of dex, like +5 points of difference to see a noticeable change in 30s battles. Might is more important to a paladin because of damage+heals. And no, they don't use the DnD point distribution system like in KOTOR. This is a pure point for point attribute system. With disposition role play for a main paladin, you can get 3/3 points of disposition for your two favored. Which ends up being... 6 deflection and 12 defenses to the rest? I think. So 18 resolve gives 1 deflection per point above 10, but the concentration bonus is really good if you are say, trying to cast exhortations or lay on hands on somebody and you're still getting hit. The concentration reduces the chances that you'll be setback in your action for .25 or .5 or 1.0 seconds depending on the enemy attack strength. Resolve is also probably very paladin like in its role playing dialogue too. More so than passionate and aggressive I thought.

The only feasible situation I've heard where the DR penetration talent is bad is when the extra attack or so is worth whatever damage the talent would have penetrated. Usually that only applies to things like sabres, because their base attack is higher or exceptional/superb weapons. It's definitely more reliable and up front damage, as even a graze might do more damage depending on enemy dr and base attack dmg. Whereas an extra attack might just miss or graze. So it would be that extra graze plus whatever faster attacks for interrupts you needed earlier, against the extra damage from DR bypass. With faster weapons and higher stacked attack speed buffs, it'll be more than 1 extra attack of course. New stuff 4 DEX 8.5 over 30s vs 10 over 30s No ARMOR 18 DEX 12 over 30s vs 14 over 30s No Armor It's Vulnerable attack on vs off. 15% difference in attack speed. 14.28% difference in attack speed for 18 dex no armor. In this test with estocs, there wasn't much difference between high dex or low dex build. Still got a 14-15% difference in attack speed, as in difference of number of attacks over x time. Some of the numbers are a little bit fuzzy because they aren't exact and the timer sometimes ended after or just before an attack. And there's always that .1 or .2 of time difference for when the clock starts, I can't usually time it exactly to 30s Second trial with no armor vulnerable attack off was 9 attacks over 30s no armor 4 dex vs 13 attacks over 30s no armor 18 dex. I run the tests through a lot of variables just to see if there's some extraneous factors I'm not aware of affecting things, like the speed of estocs vs morningstars. These ones are probably more accurate because I've taken the interrupt issue out, by having a punching target up that doesn't hit back. Overall, accounting for some percentage errors due to the number of attacks I might have miscounted, we had 8-9% difference and 14-15% difference, so the actual difference for 20% attack speed is probably closer to 10%, modified by the recovery of the armor a little, or maybe that's just statistical error. Now the extra fun begins for when stack attack speed up past 50% and more. A great place to test things in combat is at an inn inside (so you can hire and rest) and then find a chokepoint, then aggro everything. That'll start the combat timer but if you have a bottleneck, you can just tank them while your other characters do tests on each other. Or as I prefer, on the inn residents. Remember the opening sequence of Baldur's Gate 2 the Shadow of Amn? I was a little bit disappointed the Caed Nua dungeon didn't have something like that, except we would do the testing on the "subjects". Then again, there are alternatives.

That was an old effect, I think they didn't use it for the wizard spells after 1.0 If you're looking at the mushroom effect when they used it against the undead, that was a pretty old video. If not, then they might have upgraded some of the effects then.

Retaliate does benefit from the DR bypass talent, although I'm not sure if it is just the melee one. Attack speed is basically the same as -50 recovery = 30-33% attack speed, it delays the next attack. Dexterity affects the actual speed at which attacks are made. And I think that's the only one that does it. It may affect recovery as well. Two handed swords don't benefit as much from DR penetration as faster weapons do. Here's a quick test, doing some more. Identical paladins level 1, except one has a dex of 4 vs a dex of 18 using -50 recovery brigandine and maces vanilla. By the time the seventh attack of the dex 18 paladin had landed on the other, the dex 4 paladin had made 5 attacks. No interrupts were counted. 18+24=42% difference in action speed, for a difference of 7/5 attacks with only a few frames of difference in the last attack landing. For morningstar two handed it's about the same 7.5/5 split in attack numbers. Now it should get interesting with vulnerable attack and various other stuff on... 15 attacks vs 10 attacks morning stars, 18 dex vs 4 dex + vulnerable on. I got something like 7.5/5 the first time but it was a few frames off so I counted it up to 10 on the right side. 4 dex side interrupted 3 times, so that might be an issue as well affecting overall hits. Now we'll do the reverse with vulnerable attack on the 18 dex side. I'll bump up resolve on both and see if it'll stop the interrupts. 6.5/5 13/10 6.5/5 for mace/shield+vulnerable attack vs mace/shield. Taking a different methodology single weapon attacks are 2.8 seconds vs 5 seconds. Vulnerable on, it's about 3 seconds per attack vs 5 seconds. Tentative conclusion is that -20% attack speed hurts people with higher dex or rate of fire builds. Now moving unto armor differences. Naked 18 dex 4 attacks in 10 seconds (using a better method here by casting a spell on somebody and using that as a time stop watch, my old technique with cipher) using morningstar +vulnerable -20% attack speed. Almost exactly 12 attacks in 30 seconds. Morningstar in 30 seconds, we got 13 attacks with 18 dex and naked. 8.33% difference in total attacks after 30s between using vulnerable and no vulnerable naked with two handed morning star. 4 dex 9.3 attacks every 30 seconds. With vulnerable on, it's about 8.4 That's a 8.7% difference. -20% attack speed will probably cripple anybody using fast weapons though, or if their attack speed is buffed to 50%+ like the wizard's alacrity or via potions, while naked. I changed the methodology on the last few experiments, so will have to redo the brigandine armor sets, although my tentative conclusion is that attack speed debuff/buff matters less if you are already at -50 recovery. I also tested vulnerable attack with the fire retalation at 50% endurance, and it does penetrate through to people around you if you turn on that modal. The dexterity or action speed, makes a much more accurate representation of how many attacks you can get per x time. Of course this doesn't factor in the arquebus and arbalest reload times, but dexterity affects reload times as well.

Interrupts just make one enemy waste like 20-50% of their time. It's not really an offensive skill, most of the interrupt you need is bundled up in perception along with the accuracy buffs. Interrupting blows is like a utility talent, except unlike the scion of flame stuff, it doesn't make you do more damage and it doesn't significantly decrease incoming damage either. If you want to interrupt enemies, people with fast attack bows like the Sagani ranger or Wizard's firewall spell, now that's the interrupts. Vulnerable attack is the bread and butter of most melee dps builds, with some exceptions. Weapon focus is another solid one early on for offense. For dual wielding paladin dps Vulnerable attack > Focus/20% attack speed For two handed weapons 15% damage > focus > Vulnerable attack There's also some pale elfs living in the second city. And whatever your race is, sometimes npcs will comment on it if it is mentioned in their plot lines or arguments. Although Orlans tend to come up more on the negative side. One time the main character who is an Orlan, walked into a bar and asked what game the dart throwers were playing. And they replied "Orlan's Face" because the dartboard is basically the face of an orlan and they would throw knives at it, getting points depending on whether they hit the ear, nose, or eyes. So even if you don't know anything about pale elf culture, you might encounter some lore in game if you pick it. Have fun with the combat tactics in Pillars, it's a good slice of the old school setup from way back. Reminds me a little bit of the xcom tactical difficulties, although very different world settings and physics.

For mass aoe, a chanter's speed buff, druid aoe hobbles, and wizard slicken plus aoe damage noxious is a pretty good combo. The only time I need to hold them back in a line is if there's no place to run to or I'm fighting in tight corridors.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844 Detailed build break downs and some game play mechanic explanations. Applies to 2.0 not 2.01 though.

I think I remember the good old hatchet/shield combo, had to use it to get past Caed Nua on PotD. They had something like 80-90 deflection after they cast their drain spells. Party was level 2, Kana was level 3, skipped every content from the other areas. That was some pretty hard engagements.

IE Mod allows Pallegina to get the conviction buff from disposition, customized for any 2 favored or disfavored. No order talents though, those have to be added manually. The way I dealt with the mushrooms was to pull all the mobile adds off screen to Eder and then kill them. Then I would move to the first mushroom and attack it with spells and range (this was back when wizard had horrible spell range and the ranger was broken). The issue was generally that Eder would get mind controlled and then he would run up to the other 4 mushrooms and their adds, drawing them back in. That mushroom cave took a few reloads in the crit path dungeon. For the fampyres and what not, I alphaed them using mental paralysis and a lot of aquebuses on my casters. Getting hit by 1 blunderbluss +2 arquebuses and some spells, isn't good for their health given their deflection and reflexes were debuffed. It was pretty easy to see who they were trying to charm and pull that character back, thus essentially giving me more time as the fampyre sometimes got stuck in the swarm of undead and took some time to switch targets, and when it did, it sometimes didn't even use the charm any more.

For dps I find the weapon with the largest damage per hit and put a lash effect on it. The lash effect is based on the initial damage hit. Flames of devotion procs on each hand, so I think if you want to do the most damage, you need dual weapons. Both with high damage or high crit damage. FoD + cipher debuffs or wizard debuffs or druid debuffs, will allow in the most damage if you can time it like that. Two handed weapons get 15% extra damage from the talent, but if you aren't using that, then you can just do about the same damage using dual weapons with flames on. Probably Resolution sabre + that mace might be a good combo.

Thanks, I forgot to mention that autopause option. Yes, that's yet another good thing to know about so you can avoid having multiple mechanics, and put those points in something better for those other characters (like Lore). As for the secrets, you say some of them appear outside of scout mode now. Do some still require scouting? I haven't actually tested that. From what little I remember, some secret loot (random day loot containers) I missed because I wasn't in scout mode so never checked for them, others I might have missed because my mechanics skill was low. But I prioritized most of my cipher skill points into mechanics. Then I reload the game in 1.06 and start running around and I start getting loot spots I didn't know were there before, automatically. Can do a lot of running around on fast speed with scout off. What I heard is that out of scout mode, you can still detect secrets at -4 mechanics or whatever it was. So I guessed it applied a debuff, so some containers needed a higher mechanics for active searching. But that's only speculation, really. Another surmise is that only the containers with special stuff in them require a higher check. Like Tidefall or something like it. Someone posted a random loot table telling us what each day gives out for each "random" secret container before. Just rename it to .xlsx and get a free excel viewer if needed. For testing purposes, if you or anyone wanted to isolate this down, you could probably just hit the cache in search and out of search mode, with low mechanics or high mechanics to see if there's a difference. PoErandom-no-pics-1.01 - Copy.txt

There's less reason to stack deflection because PotD doesn't give normal enemies 90-110 accuracy, except for White March high level content. Stacking deflection was primarily popular because it was difficult to get through Potd in the 1.02 runs without running out of health and downed tanks, without that deflection. Now for most of the crit path in Pillars, 60-80 deflection is fine. 100 for bosses. Slightly more for 11+ high level content stuff in White March. The old tank term in Pillars meant a meat shield with like 10% of norm offensive potential. Now tanks are more like the military term, something with a big gun that fires slowly but still needs support from the party/infantry. While still providing a shield against the enemy. It serves the same role still more or less. Also the monk dps tank is pretty fun to play along with the paladin. Just thought I'd throw that out there for people that get bored with the paladin's lack of dps. As for weapons shatter star + small shield and pike/greatsword combo works well, depending on situation. I tried experimenting with the fighter using a two handed sword or dual wielding, but I think Eder's stats are not quite good enough for that. His talents probably need to be respecialized for offense, not deflection too.

Passionate is like Lawful Good in that they tend to make emotional reactions to certain... things. It doesn't decide how you deal with quests, it's just a reaction in dialogue... mostly. I haven't seen most of the dialogue options. Not sure how you could see it without going through all the stats maxed. Benevolent provides some helpful options for quests, but generally if you are merciful and like to give people a break, you solve quests that way and you also get pts in benevolent. Diplomatic is the peaceful way, you try to talk yourself out of fighting people or phrase things in a way that is civilized. It also gets you in trouble at times, because you're honest no matter who you're talking to, friend or enemy. In dialogue you get some options, some are flavored differently and will get you disposition points on the axis for so and so. There are also quests which, depending on how you handle them, will give you a through z disposition points. I think the crit path has a lot of that stuff on it which gives big points one way or another. They aren't mutually exclusive, so technically you could have 3 in cruel and 3 in benevolent. How you explain that is.... up to you. As for paladin order talents, you still have to take up a talent pick with it. And they don't give you the exact numbers from the description. So strange mercy is good in longer fights against many many spiders or wildlings, but is only around 25 aoe heal compared to the single 100-175 heal over time you get from lay on hands. As mentioned before above, it's power only procs if you get the last blow in and that takes some micro. But can also be fun if you like to be the person with the last hit in. Btw Kenshin, when you use "carebear", is that because you're from Something Awful forums, play Eve Online, or is it due to something completely different? Detailed build break downs here. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844

I read every single lore book article on the game wikipedia before the game was out. So the in game lore skill was starting to tell me stuff I already knew. For mechanics, I moved everyone into a box or rectangular formation. That allowed the trap to be detected before the front row ran into it, but barely. The detect trap auto pause option must be on for that. The secrets are a lot easier to get now because you don't need to be in scout mode to see some of them. I'm getting a lot more secret spots now just running around.

The item would normally show up at that chest. I bought the hiro cloak and it was there, from the stronghold interface. So it's probably a bug. I was using 2.00 but if you are using 2.01 just know that that's even more buggy item wise.

Well that depends on if you are going for the crit dps paladin talents like sworn enemy and flames of devotion. With a few sabres or some other weapon that has +.5 to crit damage, the +20% attack speed buff will make both attacks faster. So it's more like a +40% attack speed vs a two handed sword where +20% is just 1 extra attack every 5 hits. By itself, that's just a few extra attacks per battle. Combined with the fod attack and sworn enemy, and the paladin (with perception buffing accuracy now) can achieve reliable crits. As for whether it is worth it or not, that depends on what you use your paladin the most for. If he is protecting the backline from enemies using the two weapon attack to kill stuff faster, then you'll get good use out of the talent. If you're only using it on a defensive aura paladin, then you won't get as much out of the talent. Especially if your perception and might is lower than say 14 each. So if my paladin has sworn enemy and flames of devotion, and I'm going dual wielding weapons because there's some good unique powers on them, then taking the +20% extra attack speed will be multiplying my abilities. If all my talents are going into healing/support/defense, with no DR bypass talents or buffs, then +20% attack speed won't give you much extra dps in that context. The Pillars Paladin is very hybridy at this current build 2.0 (2.01 patch is to buggy to play for me). It's got great passive defenses and solid melee/martial dps, with very strong single target heals plus group buff auras. It's not a heavy hitting class like the rogue or the cipher or the ranger, but that's because its damage goes down once Flames and Sworn enemy abilities are used up. The great benefit with weapon focus soldier is that it has a warhammer, a pike, and the two handed sword that switches damage between 2 types. So depending on the situation, it can be very useful switching them up, with the primary limitation between actually having good weapons of those types. For example, a pike can be useful in defending the backline because it allows an engagement on target as the enemy runs towards your backline. So it sticks them down sooner and the area the paladin can control with the pike is thus larger. The pike can also be used in corridor fights for melee characters to apply dps without crunching themselves 3 in a row and getting stuck. The warhammer has a special one that gives +1 engagement, for those situations in which you actually need more engagement but wanted to save a talent pick. Two handed weapons are pretty versatile, especially with a low dex build. They're slower, but as a result, concentrates more damage into one small segment of time. Which means that paralyzed or debuffed enemies eat more damage in a single hit than other weapons that might take several seconds to apply their full comparable damage. That's more a consideration with a cipher than a druid or wizard though. I generally go with the two handed version for paladins and a weapon/shield as backup for more deflection or engagement. I like using the pike and the st Rum greatsword for prone on crits. Talentwise, my two handed paladins have +15%dmg if they are the dps version. For dual wielding, I would probably pick the talent with -5 DR bypass. So the dual weapon paladin would be like the greatsword paladin, except the talents needed to apply damage would be slightly different.

It's a full attack, like rogue crippling strike or torment's reach. So it procs both hands in a row, each time you activate ability. Generally for dual wield, the -50 recovery adds about 30-33% attack speed debuff, so you would want to increase the attack speed somehow or use the DR bypass weapons/talents, so that each hit you deal you deal 5pts more damage. Two weapon wield is very good if you have unique weapons in each hand with their peculiar special powers. I tried two weapon wielding on my cipher for a little bit, but I don't have access to many of the more powerful single hand weapons. If I did, I would probably dual wield.

It should have gone into the chest to the right of your steward. If you're running 2.0 the stash bug might have killed it temporarily. Then you'd just have to add it in via console. IRoll20s AddItem shimmering_cloak 1 the item ids can be searched in the objectbundle folder. Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\assetbundles\prefabs\objectbundle Use the windows search function to filter.