Ymarsakar

For a party paladin, I wouldn't max per. I was focusing on a solo paladin build's stats. But that must have been another thread.

lol, "Japanese-ish", "Japan-esque"... Its a Japanese word 平常心 I don't see Zahua as particularly Japanese though. More like an 80s hippie. Yeah, I suppose the pain/suffering is about the death of physical desires. People first run from pain, then seek pleasure, so I suppose when you're in pain, pleasures are far from your mind. Zahua is indeed a play on that hippie drug culture combined with warrior philosophy, that normally people don't expect to see together. What I was referring to is Japan's stoicism and warrior culture (honor culture) juxtaposed and compared against the ascetic nature of Western cultures, like monks who prefer poverty or suffering. The key aspect in common is Willpower. The ability to control your own desires and self, since naturally people drift towards pleasure and away from pain. Thus those who can master themselves, demonstrate this self mastery by doing what others would not be capable of doing. Hence Hara kiri or scarring yourself or inflicting punishments on yourself, or depriving yourself of wealth or luxury or water or food. It is a fundamental precept in some lines, that the greatest enemy to a person is themselves. Thus they fight and "kill" themselves via mortification of the flesh, and thus by conquering their greatest enemy, themselves, they gain greater heights of power or self mastery. Whether due to religious customs or warrior rituals, either can apply. (Jibun no katsu) From the Hagure Kure I think. "Cause pain before you injure. Injure before you maim. Maim before you kill. And if you must kill, make it a clean kill. Squeeze every drop of life from the opponent. Because life is so precious, it cannot be wasted, even in death." “Let him cut your skin, and you cut his flesh. Let him cut your flesh, and you cut his bones. Let him cut your bones, and you cut off his life.” "'He either fears his fate too much, Or his dessert is small, Who fears to put it to the touch, And win or lose it all.' - Montrose's Toast

Violence has a negative social reputation, well in some societies. Raiders, vikings, and Aztecs probably prized it, as well as warrior cultures. But even in a peaceful culture like the United States has become, voter intimidation in the form of Black Panthers patrolling the area with night sticks and clubs, when the Justice Department refuses to prosecute them or acquire evidence against them, exists. Riots still exist, plus extortion, political or just greed motivated. So all these civilizational benefits, like iphones and smart phones, still certainly do exist. And yet people still use violence to get what they want, because it is easier or just because a lot of rich people tend to throw money at thugs. So violence being something a crude drug gang uses exists. But violence being something the intellectual or political elites use to get what they want, also exists. It's just a different scale, more clever or subtle, with more money behind it. Violence is akin to wealth or influence. It's a personal resource. Some people have it more than others, and others are more willing to use what they have. If a guy with 5 billion, like some mega rich Soros villain, came into your neighborhood, he has a weight and presence, because what he offers to people might coerce or persuade them to do things his way. But if a death squad came to your neighborhood and was singling out X types of people for execution and demanded information from the neighborhood, it would have about the same effect. If people don't have the resources to fight some giant real estate developer, they will lose their edge and interests. If a person doesn't have enough personal power or violence to counter other people's personal violence, they will also lose. And it's not something civilization can recreate or recover easily. Violence has the benefit of metaphysics and entropy on its side. No amount of wealth or propaganda can re attach a dead person's head back on their body and then have everyone act as if that person was resurrected. He's not alive again, at best he's just a zombie now. Violence can easily destroy what a nation has spent decades or centuries creating. That is its power or threat. Destruction is easier than creation. If anything, violence is more effective in an advanced civilization because those citizens or subjects have abdicated any personal desire to obtain violence or physical power. As there are less limits on those who use violence, violence becomes more effective. The internet itself is always interesting to me. Because it allows the creation of sub cultures that can almost guarantee that physical violence is no longer effective or convenient. But that doesn't reduce the violence, all it does is increase people's incentive to use verbal violence. As people can witness on any number of social media or exchanges.

Ah, yep. I only recently unloaded the early game's special backer weapons out into my stash, so I had those two rapiers side by side often. I actually don't recall what Daenysis had, but it was useful for something or other. They also seemed to have updated the models on them, but I didn't really look at their original versions. I tried to take on the barbarian/fighter guards at Cragholdt with my level 5 party. Hilariously difficult, and died when fighter was at 60% endurance and barbarian was at less than 25% endurance. Just didn't have enough healing, no fighters or chanters or druids even. Just a priest and 2 monks, plus ranger, barbarian. The marksman they had patrolling around, I ambushed and he just got interrupted so many times. But fighters are really good for those difficult and long fights like that, since they can hold their own and add their self regen to external healing sources, and just hold that line.

The druid is also a good choice, but druid and wizard probably wouldn't use heavy armor. Cipher and priest would though. So the image of a battlemage as using heavy armor might conflict with the best combos for the class there, if druid or wizard.

Ayla as monk with outlander frenzy would be a good combination with the rage. The opposite, barbarian with monk multi talent, wouldn't work very well.

That's not what the in-game description says, although this may be construed from a certain angle and if we are considering derived meanings, synonyms and common dictionary definitions then its going to get really really confusing because then attributes like Constitution and Intelligence will cover heck of a lot more ground and there will be overlapping everywhere.........but even with your dictionary meaning, I don't see Resolve helping one to deflect incoming physical blows as a directly governing attribute...... To me Deflection falls more in the territory of either Perception, Dexterity or Might........but I guess you are entitled to have your convictions A lot of that would depend on personal experience. Have you physically deflected blows in martial arts or melee combat? If so, what did you use, dexterity, skill, determination? If role playing stats are supposed to be playing a role, then the argument is easily settled by going back to the source. The physical role itself.

I found that it was better for me to just use whatever weapon fit the class, and not worry too much about weapon focus talents. That's why I like wizard, his summoned weapons are universal. I delay picking weapon focus until probably level 5-7 now a days. The system is already much better than it was in more restrictive rpg rule sets like BG2 or Torment. There, you could get Axe. And that was it. Get a sword? No way, can't even use it.

Obsidian isn't going into the match making romance genres. For that, they would need a visual novel project.

FindCharacter player will tell you which name your mc is. But I normally just use "skill player" and it works. I recommend using the IE Mod if you want permanent skill changes and attribute changes on companions. http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/? The skill command in console, is a temporary bonus that gets removed on reload. It becomes permanent in IE mod.

I also noticed torment's reach aoe and debuff attacks reflex. Presumably because it's an aoe effect. So when I blind aoe debuffed the ogres in Endless path, I noticed the monks doing like 30-40 crit damages. That included the torment lash of course. 3 ogres hit, which helps out since trying to heal through their attacks, even in a bottleneck at 1v1, was getting dangerous. That druid aoe spell, insect plague or what not, kept doing raw damage to everyone in a large aoe. Proning them worked though.

I've also gotten the scepter in one of those webs at the V endless path level. But that was with an old save at the time, immediately after updating to 3.0. It may also have been 1 level above that actually in the mushrooms. For stats on this druid combo, 15+ per and 16+ int would probably be good. And 12+ might. A few points into dexterity might help as well, but that might be better put into per or int. Because when I used hiravias in this role, he just did single target damage, he actually didn't get aggro a lot. Or rather, he probably killed who ever tried to melee him. I use the druid shapeshift combos for fights that I don't want to spend spells on. Or when I run out of spells. Or when some enemy really needs to get primaried and die.

With 21 might my Relentless Storm has 4.(6) DPS and that's with 0 DR enemy. Is it that much? Other lightning spells have more but they are single target. When you add in other aoe spells and shapeshift... then it's not 6. That's not how those combos work together. That's why the druid's dps is not in having high might. If anything, it's more like a wizard, in that per and int affects its overall damage more due to spell combos. You can read Boer's explanation of the druid combos here, although even early game just combining wild strike + shapeshift + outlander's, can be pretty potent. The fighter is much better these days with Fray, overbearing engagement prones with +10/+20 (can't remember exactly what other people's tests said) accuracy buffs on it, and that aoe redirection shield at level 11 I think. fighter seems to be the choice then , thanks for advice , what do you think would be a proper fighter build ( stats and talents ) for main tank ( hireling from the inn so can be min maxed ) who is using as much retaliation and engagement bonuses as he can to keep enemies on him and retaliate as much as he can ?Havent played fighters in poe yet always went with pala+chanter for tanks and i have no idea how to build one . Fighters can take 10-14 con and be okay, if you take constant recovery or get 18 might to make sure you self regen in time. Since might affects your self regen, that makes up for having a smaller con, unless you get hit by 2 crits in a row with no heals. Fighters can't drop int lower than 10, due to their abilities. 15 int can be nice, but not critical/necessary. Dexterity can be dropped to below 10 with less affect. They aren't casters, action speed just affects the animation frames of your potion drinking and specials/melee animations. If you want to knock people down reliably, get some per. Doesn't need to be 18 or 16. Shouldn't be 8 at least. Fighter has highest base accuracy, 30. As for talents, I would take Disciplined barrage, shield, constant recovery, weapon focus, and then fray if it is available at level 5. In more or less that order. The weapon slot would be Daenysis/shatterstar + small shield. And the second slot would either be crossbow/arbalest or some kind of two handed weapon or two dual wielding weapons for damage when you don't need the deflection. Keep in mind that +acc weapons do stack with other passives and modal/actives, and applies to your knockdowns. Knocking somebody down, then sneak attacking them with rogue, is one of my more reliable combos. Also helps to break engagment for some squishies. <NPC name="Eder" > <Might>18</Might> <Constitution>13</Constitution> <Dexterity>5</Dexterity> <Perception>13</Perception> <Intellect>15</Intellect> <Resolve>11</Resolve> </NPC> Is what I set Eder's custom stats to in the new IE mod xml text files. Just an experiment. I used him with Int 10, and it was pretty good. So I thought I would try the paladin shield or chanter shield tank stat spread, via dumping dex as well. EDIT: Level 7 is when the fighter class gets overbearing, I checked just now. So you have to save that. You won't need engagement slots until after then. Just don't aoe debuff (with your back line) enemies that are circling the fighter, to keep them on the fighter longer. Level 11 is indeed when "take the hit" modal comes out, so you'll want to reserve that as well for later. The fighter has some pretty good class talents now, so level 9 is going to be hard to choose which one. I took armored grace. For a pure single tank, unbending is hard to beat. Combining unbending with take the hit, might produce a good synergy, if they trigger each other. Aloth's stats seem fine, for range or melee builds. The wizard has naturally low accuracy, but a lot of their better weapons like 3rd level blight and citzal's lance tends to add a lot of accuracy buffs. But if you want to hit more reliably early on, getting 15 per will make it slightly less painful. Stat distribution isn't crucial for a mage, but like others said, try not to dump any stats below 10. Pillars was designed to make each stat important to all classes. And it has more or less succeeded, although people do have specialized builds that do dump some stats over others. To address the previous point made about how wizards might not need 16+ int, maybe 14 or less, that would affect the wizard's versatility a bit I would think. Their self buffs would probably still last long enough, but not if they wanted to cast spells or debuff for long times. Having 15+ per and not have to use the accuracy spell, can very convenient at times. That would translate 5+ attribute points into one extra spell per encounter, almost. But the muscle wizard, something built purely around self buffs and tank, would probably be the ones taking a lower int but higher con. Before 3.0 or 2.0, fighters were pretty one dimensional. So I would agree that the old fighters didn't offer much to a party in terms of group benefits or synergies. Although I personally found creative ways to use fighters in tactics, such as holding off enemies far enough away that they wouldn't target anybody else, but would also put the fighter out of healing range. These days, though, fighters can be pretty good. Very reliable, due to disciplined barrage and the high accuracy. At level 11 or thereabouts, they get a modal that halves damage people around them take, diverting it to themselves in the form of raw damage, which makes use of their constant recovery if nobody is attacking them. EDIT: When I started Pillars, I made much use of Kana and Eder as chanter and fighter, respectively. So it's good to see those classes get some balance changes to buff em up. Especially that broken ancient healer thing. I needed chanter as healer back when I dropped durance and went without a priest and often without a druid, for much of the game. However, ancient healer was broken/too limited and chanters didn't have any heal invocations...

Maxing might and per would provide a solid damage base to make the corrode lash effect as high as feasible.

Don't these contradict one another? By what you said above, if you are appreciating suffering then you are enhancing pleasure, but then this would mean that you can't be spiritually free since you're chasing pleasure. By that token, perhaps there are no stoic Buddhist then ... or maybe Zahua is confused (could be the drugs, man). Haha, you're right actually. I've probably misinterpreted why he embraces suffering. Need to go have that conversation with him again. Hmmm.... part of the point of the scars (and smearing himself with stinky fish) is to get rid of pride. And he regularly states that suffering is beautiful and leads to enlightenment, but I'm still getting my head around some of it;) Mortification of the flesh is normally found in religions as fasting and the death/denial of physical desires, and thus weaknesses. The Japanese and Ancient Romans took it to the ultimate conclusion via the stoic/loyalty of killing themselves, sometimes in the most painful of fashions. I interpreted Stoner's comment as a play on the previous poster's Japanese ish name, but the Japanese do also have a tradition of mortification of the flesh. Hara kiri, for example. The US Marines and other sub warrior cultures say "pain is weakness leaving the body". Physical conditioning and athletes also have their own personal goals for strength, inner or outer.

Hey, it's better than the druid's aoe regen heal radius... I tried aura meter micro with paladin. Didn't like it. Not something I pay much attention to .Chanter is way up in the midst of things anyway, not a big deal given how the tactical fight goes. Clicking on that entry doesn't expand it? Usually does for aoe hits. That already addresses the question of duration for chants. 6s for death chant is 4s +2s. INT only affects the last part, so 50% duration won't increase 6s to 9s. As for dots, increasing the duration and the might, generally increases the overall damage over time. Because int increases duration, so it can add an additional proc to the dot. And might increases the damage of each dot proc. Most spells like cipher burn, calculates total damage of dot damage over x time. But I think death chant is still going by the old formula, which means it is -6 endurance damage each tick for x seconds. So instead of 6 damage every 6 seconds, it's more like 6 damage every 1-2 seconds, that lasts for 6 seconds. I would have to test it recently to see what's been going on.

You can both create wholy customizeable henchmen at any inn as well as respec your character and any companions you pick up. I'm referring to your own choice of WEAPON grouping for the weapon focus and weapon specialization talents not party grouping He means that if you make a mistake with your weapon focus, it's not game over. You can just fix it later. So pick now, try it out, see if it works, if it doesn't, respec at shopkeepers or Caed Nua. +6 accuracy makes a bigger difference early level, than it does later. Although accuracy is still pretty good all the time.

I was just thinking of all the resources they put into the second city in Pillars, and while the crit path quests were nice, some of the other stuff did feel like it was just more side quests. The crit path was ramping up and I was like... why didn't they just put that big city resource into a city specifically designed for Act 3? They had DF for Act 2, they didn't need another one for Act 2. When Fenster mentioned that Breg E had to be cut from Act 3, I thought that sounded funny, if the crit path had Josh's A priority. Why would an A priority be cut but then you would have the second big city right before then? It felt off to me at the time. That would only make sense if the end of the game wasn't done, but Big City 2 had already been half finished or was in production. So this was would be a mistake in pre production at a high design level. Once you decide on Big City 2, you can't change it when the crit path might need it later on in game. That's a lot of resources, and if game creation is zero sum, then making the best use of resources can be a solid tactical benefit. Of course, using conceptual art and backgrounds (colored ones, not just white sketches) for the adventure box might have fleshed it out as well. For a vision, the paper ish white look of the conceptual art would fit. Then when you start getting sucked into the crit path, make the backgrounds full color if 3d map assets were too problematic at that point. Would make a big aesthetic difference and capture the shift in something other than words or plot quests. The Kickstarter goals never required that the second city be in Act 2 or that it would have only a slight relation to the spoilerish crit path. They could fulfill their promises and also get more resources to flesh out some of the main plot arcs. My guess is that in pre production, they committed resources to things that could have been used for the crit path, but the crit path wasn't done yet. As Fenster, mentioned, they only had time to write it once, put it in, and release it. No iteration. The resources that could have iterated it, were already used up by then, from pre production on wards. It's like in Baldur's gate where people chose a strength 9 or 13 fighter, and thought it would be good. Torment Tides, with a longer pre production schedule and sooner access to the Pillars engine and coding tools, benefits from having a little bit more pre production time. Now that I think on it, the old Torment was like that as well, from what I've heard. The Infinity Engine had already been tested by BG or IW. Correction: Act 3 does have its own big city 2. The game feels like it split in two after DB. While big city 2 had the feeling of starting DB once again, exploring and questing, the crit path had moved far enough forward that it felt Act 3 was more about the crit path. Or should have been at least. I think some of the criticism concerning how Act 3 felt too distant from the plot were right on that. To me, big city 1 and 2 felt like they were in the same act, because the gameplay was more or less the same. The boss fights were pretty noticeable though. That part was done well.

The orlan PC was particularly funny when doing Orlan's face and knife game in that one tavern. It was like stabbing a mini hiravias. Hiravias also has some comments about when people talk about Orlans. The fighters have a new talent, overbearing guard, that prones people who break engagement. So that helps out. Don't need to take defender, just take the +1 engagement talent and use rapier of Daenysis or shatterstar for another +1 engagement. I was more into chanter tanks using their death chant aoe debuff. That was true since 1.0 even, before the AI changes. Although I didn't notice that the aoe was pretty good for drawing aggro until after the AI changes. The fighter also has clear out and fray, which does seemingly more damage now. I never used them before, so can't say how much difference they would make in a fight concerning aggro drawing. If enemies attack people who do lots of damage to them, it might be more useful now for a fighter. If enemies only pay attention to aoe or consider aoe attacks the most dangerous, the fighter may not be able to hold aggro against 3+ enemies as well as a chanter or aoe spot tanking wizard.

It's it just like a line that hits through the enemy the monk is attacking? So if you group enemies in a bottleneck like a corridor or doorway, it would hit the most due to mob stacking on top of each other. I generally wear 40 or 50 recovery armor for a monk early game. But I always have a replacement armor when I'm noticing nobody wants to hit the monk or not enough damage is being done. I'm using a 3 INT monk however, mostly to see what happens. The damage early on is pretty reliable with high per on top of high base accuracy and fists. High con also helps out.

Probably sabre/retaliation cipher or wizard. The Skaen melee priest can also be interesting, given the passive sneak damage is almost like the cipher's 40% damage mods. The wizard stacks deflection to avoid getting hit and turns crits to hits, hits to grazes, etc to reduce damage. The priest just heals himself. Feels different.

Probably intentional with strange mercy. Flames on Pallegina with her order special, doesn't give her 20% attack speed either. More of a group support thing. They really buffed up that amulet. Was like 10-15% before, and didn't really know how to use it.

Either one could work, it's just a matter of managing the inventory items and slots that give retaliation. Well, also helps if it can have some engagement talents and abilities, to hold enemies better. In that sense, fighter + overbearing guard +1 engagement item/talent would probably work better as the paladin can lose engagement when it uses special abilities. So you may not get retaliation from paladin tank, if you keep using the abilities, not do any damage, etc. Until the 11+ levels, the paladin has no aoe damage abilities if I recall, other than perhaps from some of the special orders. Also retaliation is affected by DR bypass for melee talent/modal. Martial classes like barbarian, sometimes even rogue, can do a significant damage from the backrow. At the expense of some flexibility and speed. Tall Pike from Dyrford with Rogue's hit to crit, or barbarian's carnage with high accuracy, is one such build. These days, unless the 2H weapon has something special on it, I use crossbows and arbalests instead. Does more alpha strike than 2H weapons and I don't need to micro them in melee. The sabre has (nearly) the same base damage as a 2H weapon, even. For a much better weapon speed and recovery with armors.] The barbarian's carnage is like a mini AOE that is constantly on with every hit. So if you use a pike, it can stab at an enemy in the center, and then damage everybody else around them. And it applies proc on hit/crit effects as well. For some variety and spot tanking or spot dps from the backrow, I use the wizard. Buff the wizard with mirror images, cast citzal's spirit lance and maybe some Llengrath, and you got a pretty good second line dps. The lance is level 5, I think, and has reach like a quarterstaff or pike. Use 3rd level Alacrity speed buff for +50%, for really good dps, just cast that first as it makes it faster to chain spells. The wizard can also cast blight spell, for ranged aoe dps, especially if you take the Blast talent. These are high duration spells, so the longer they are on, the more dps the wizard can do. Plus, they can cast other spells. The Lady/Lord of Pain fighter builds can also use a pike from front or second row, of course. I don't know what would be fun for you, you'd have to test it out. You can switch out party members in game to test things out on enemies and friendlies, then just reload. Even make custom npcs with console money. I like to start fights at taverns to get the in combat going forever, then have two custom NPCs slug it out against the other and check how it works.

Chanters need longer fights to show their importance. They don't get that time if Balthazar uses Vancian casters to nuke the enemy quickly, after using a wall of melee meat classes to buy time for the spell combos. Things would work very different with another mix of party class tactics, as I've said before. The chanter is designed more for people who don't like resting or using per rest abilities. But for people whose playstyle is opposite it, it's not a problem with the chanter, it's a problem with their party arrangement not needing the chanter. It's like having 6 rangers, and then saying the chanter isn't a good tank, because ranger pets can tank and do damage too. Well, obviously, because there's six of them now. If the chanter doesn't have time to get to 5 verses, maybe it's because people are using 3+ vancian casters to nuke the enemy. Maybe that's how it works. Also, people who always use dragon thrash or second level chants and above, don't get the ogres. They spend too much time on higher level chants. That's how it is designed... if you abuse the rotation like that, it would be pretty OP if you could get 5 verses in a fight the way doing so with level 1 death chant for 5 verses would provide. Higher level chants take significantly longer to chant, but are powerful in their own right. People have always had to decide whether they want the invocations, or whether they wanted the higher level chant's power. Before, people endlessly complained that the chanter would never get to verse 5 or higher, but that was often times because they were using 2nd and 3rd level chants that took up too much time. So it felt to them that the chanter was useless, until the higher level chants. These days, they've figured out builds for just using a chanter singing 3rd level chants. I'm more in a middle, I don't use 2nd or 3rd level chants unless I need them in the rotation. I focused more on 1st level chants and used the invocations more.

The spirits usually stun lock due to the phantom and other touch procs. Which then allows them to crit. Maybe that's where the 30 is coming from, but the pale elf DR would negate some of that, as well as having a higher defense against stun/paralysis or higher deflection while stunned.