yorname

nope. (or depends on difficulty) POE2 changed how armor rating works, basically getting a certain number will hugely improve your survivability, and for rangers, only stalker has a situational +1AR buff. They also don't have self healing and any hp boost. They have access to some defensive buffs, but that's pretty much it. I'd say a stalker can survive at frontline with some help from the party, but not tanking. By endgame animal companion is also quite squishy and doesn't do any significant damage, unlike in POE. Ranger in POE2 is mainly one of the two things: a) ranged weapon user b) high accuracy provider for multiclassing

I forgot to factor in the slower speed and bonus damage on SOM, and raw lash on veilpiercer. But those can be treated as an multiplier ≤10%, so the conclusion is pretty much the same. Frost lash on Frostseeker is even weaker. Edit: I also got two weapon passive on the character but didn't have 2h passive when resting. That's another <10% effectively. So at 50% crit chance we can say they are all close, I guess.

I wanted to run a SC ranger and while they can shine against mobs, for single target they don't get a lot of tools except for crits. So I wondered how much does crit bring them with various ranged weapons? I suck at dealing with speed inversions, so the speeds are based on a 20 DEX ydwin with no armor penalty and Acina's Tricorn. All weapons are legendary with no other damage modifiers like might, sneak attack etc, only +25% from crits. Also I didn't factor in penetration. The weapons are: Frostseeker. crits cause AOE freeze/slashing damage. Attacking + recovery time = 3.7s on said character. Veilpiercer and Saint Omaku's Mercy: 50% chance to ignore recovery when scoring crits. I think there's a slight delay when firing another shot, so I'll use 1s if this triggers, and 3.7s if not. Current's Rush which has a 20% chance to trigger an AOE damage which can further trigger itself. It's not ideal when fighting single target but I just wonder how it performs. When dual wielded the total time is 2.5s on said character. Eccea's Arcane Blaster. This has nothing to do with crits, but IMO is a baseline for single target. I treat Fractured Bullet as an 1.25x multiplier. When dual wielded with Imbued Ammunition on it has total attack time of 3.8s. At 100% crit chance, average DPS are: 15 for Frostseeker 12.6 for warbows 11.84 for Current's Rush 11.54 for EAB At 50% crit chance: 9.79 for Frostseeker 9.1 for warbows 9.2 for Current's Rush 11.3 for EAB In practice, against bosses it's usually somewhere in between, probably closer to 50%. I think it's safe to say high crit chance itself does less than I expected. Because EAB mostly can't graze, if the character at least doesn't miss, picking SC ranger doesn't offer much compared to basically any class using EAB, if using ranged weapons, in single target scenario. Not considering pets because they tend to face penetration issues by endgame. Maybe they're better with some melee crit weapons.

Can't edit OP probably because it's been too long? anyway, I was trying to figure out how good Wizard's Double is, so tested against it: its melee attacks all get Brute Force like barbarian so Wizard's Double doesn't really help in this case. Raising both deflection and fortitude above 200 requires max MIG/CON/RES which is kind of wierd even for a pure tank (maybe FF/wizard). Although I believe "not getting anything worse than graze" isn't neccessary at all to face-tank it.

When using an invocation, a chanter will have to stop chanting, and even restarts chanting a few seconds afterwards. It's roughly when the recovery of the invocation is about to end, but there's no clear descriptions on it. I wonder if anyone knows exactly how it works? Does action speed matter? This means that timing an invocation has benefits or punishments. if I cast one when a phrase is about to end, I effectively lose more than 1 phrase. Casting an invocation right after a phrase ends instead costs a little more than half a phrase. It also means using 2-phrase-invocations as a skald isn't as good as 1.5x invocations.

Is there any way to hide the default AI behaviors? How to change which classes are associated with an behavior? For example if I create a behavior on a cipher/rogue, but I only want it to appear on ciphers, I can't do that in game and it will appear for every rogue multiclass. It's nothing wrong but I'd want a way to make it more simple. Changing the filenames doesn't work, and I don't know how to edit the files directly, they're not text like other bundle files.

Outside of the cases @Boeroer mentioned, melee + ranged is only useful if you really want to only attack with a specific weapon and also get the dual wielding speed. And if you are not using full attack abilities as the core of your build. It's not like you'll be regularly alternating between swinging the sabre and shooting. For example when fighting vessels, using Grave Calling + ranged weapon is something I often do. Since there's hardly a better weapon in this scenario, why not attack with it all the time. Scordeo's Edge is an all-purpose weapon that's also probably worth doing this, Adaptive stacks significantly faster and Blade Cascade triggers more often this way.

Eccea's Arcane Blaster for single target, Fire in the Hole for multiple targets. Eccea's Arcane Blaster has Imbued Ammunition, if you combine it with dual wielding trick or pistol modal + one-handed, the total damage and speed is comparable to a melee 2H weapon (which is already better than most ranged weapons). Imbued Ammunition doesn't graze, has high PEN and very good damage types, resulting in high and more importantly, reliable damage. Reload weapons are better for a cipher, because you often need to immediately cast after attacking so that your buff/debuff don't expire. For example, when Psychovampiric Shield is about to expire on an enemy, recasting it before it actually expires or afterwards makes a big difference on its hit chance and duration.

Disintegration is probably the best for a no-subclass cipher. Death of 1000 cuts + Antipathetic Field is a good trick that kills bosses in seconds, if you can find another enemy to set this up. The problem with lower tier spells is that while they can be focus-efficient, you're spending your time doing less impactful things even though SC ciphers won't lack focus when facing multiple enemies. IMO when fighting multiple enemies, the best thing for a SC cipher to do is to make use of Shared Nightmare and AOE weapons. Open with Thunderous Report or something similar, cast Borrowed Instinct and/or Time Parasite, attack with hand mortars to remain at a high focus level, and occasionally use Amplified Wave to quickly consume focus when focus is near/already full.

A faster LoH is really interesting, great idea. Retaliation on all damage can be occasionally broken if the party take enemy AoE, but I guess it's also a justified reward for intentionally getting into trouble. A healing-heavy party with mediocre defenses and a Darcozzi seems fun.

I noticed berserker's version of Blood Storm still says "kills increase duration", is the description wrong, or it didn't get the change with the normal version? Edit: it's working correctly, just the description didn't get updated.

Darcozzi still needs an identity IMO. Something that makes I pick it because there's something only they can do. Like other subclasses more or less change how and when an ability is used. Passive healing bonus feels too generic compared to Steel Garrote's passive, which works with hard-hitting classes and provides something such classes don't ususally get, while a healing bonus on a paladin feels non-existant. I think the original direction of "offensive LoH" is the right call, it's just that their flame shield is kinda pointless and barely does anything (does their version also get frost immunity in BPM? nontheless it's back to a defensive bonus). My proposal is either giving the target a flame aura that pulses with each LoH tick, or a one-time fire damage + interrupt around the target. Maybe even something like an action speed boost, or a very short (like 1.5s) ignore recovery effect, to fit the "passionate" theme.

Or you can change LS to be more "safeguard" other than "a stupidly good defensive buff that I can't immediately get". Like limiting the duration when it's actually triggered? I have an idea, (on top of making the buff weaker) making it clear the caster's recovery when triggered. It's too good if it removes hostile effects, but clearing recovery is useful when chain-interrupted by multiple rogue abilities, and makes the caster ready to do something when it triggers, IMO it's thematic with the pushback part of the spell. So it might be something like this: a longer base duration, still +5 AR and 20 defences, ~10s fixed duration after triggered to prevent working with WoD, and clearing recovery once when triggered. This way Spirit Shield also won't be completely useless.

What about making Bleak Walker's FoD without fire (still buff its corrode damage and probably rework its upgrade)? It can serve as a choice if I want to play an agressive paladin but don't want to deal with fire immunity (which is indeed the only reason that I don't play such characters), at the cost of +10 ACC from the ring. Of cource the helmet is there, but it's a more contested item that usually has better uses than on a paladin. Powerful or not aside, Goldpact, Steel Garrote, Kind Wayfarer and even Shieldbearer has traits that change their playstyle in some way, but BW and Dracozzi only have slight improvements that you basically forget. I'm pretty sure I'm still not going to use Flame Shield, not sure if there're any advanced uses for it, but if used "as intended" even with a damage buff it's only worth on those punchbag characters like SC fighter or barbarian, which can't get it from a spellbook. I personally would like a Flame Aura that just pulses damage and offers maybe some protection, but it's a big design change and I think it's probably not a good idea to change Flame Shield into that. I like the Llengrath Safeguard change you proposed. Adding a recovery makes it more costly when cast mid-combat. Although I think maybe Ironskin can be higher AR but less stacks, so it's better as emergency spell, and nerfing the numbers of Llengrath Safeguard just a bit so it's a more "cast and forget" buff, so these two become more different. With current numbers Ironskin is still useless when LS ever triggers, and there're very few cases, for a wizard at least, that I really want to avoid getting below 50%.

Maybe I misunderstood OP, but it's worth pointing out that SA consists of an primary attack, what you're calculating was only the bonus raw damage. SA is strictly better than a weapon attack, the problem is just how much. I personally found it too much of an luxury to use a soulblade if they're the only cipher in a party. Ideally you don't need to use Borrowed Instinct or Ancestor's Memory on this character, while also already having Disintegration on every enemy you want, only then it's ideal to use SA. I didn't try many builds with it TBH, the one that I felt okay was trickster. Passively generates focus with Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage, and has a decent amount of additional multiplier. Playing without blunderbuss modal I found the streetfighter passives too hard to trigger.

It's random, but I recently replayed BG1 and BG2 with SCS for the first time, and I didn't expect I'd say this, I hated it. Yes it makes the games more fair and mages are doing what they are supposed to be capable of, but in a non-competetive game, fairness ≠ fun. There was no skill involved in the so called mage chess, you just remember what dispels what and go through the same automated process for every mage. Or don't and cheese them like unmodded. As a side effect non-casters can't even keep simple buffs like protection from fire on themselves. They must use the whole gear sets through the terrible inventory to have a chance to survive. As much as I hated Owlcat games, I could at least use mods for these repetitive things. The funny thing is as I understand it, you aren't supposed to fight dozens of beholders at a time in DnD, that's why their abilities are so ridiculous. Now for the sake of "challenge" in SCS they become closer to their tabletop version, but you still fight dozens of them each time. Same thing as mage chess: doing it once in a while against your DM is probably fun, not in a video game where you run into a mage every five minutes. No wonder Obsidian got out of their way to forbid pre-buffing in PoE, and didn't copy the fifty degrees of dispelling from DnD. I believe Larian deliberately avoided putting dispel magic in BG3 too. It's very much an unnecessary layer for the game.

I wouldn't hate pirate theme if it's a new game, but when first time playing POE and 2 back to back, personally I just thought "They thought adding guns was a genius idea (it was) and when all out on it". The gameplay was great for me but "sold less" is something objective, probably what we (people are still here after these years) like just doesn't matter that much. It's been repeated too many times but if POE2 and DOS2 were listed side by side it's not a hard choice for a "new" player. Same thing for BG3. After all we're talking about why it wasn't as successful, not whether or not I think it's good. If we put Deadfire, WotR and DOS2 together, I'd say people just like full 3D and being well-designed in specifically RTwP combat won't save it. I took a quick look at steamdb and both WotR and DOS2 have a 10x more currently playing compared to POE or Deadfire. Even DOS has a higher number than both.

Maybe it's unnecessary for OP now, as for BG1 and 2, IMO there isn't a huge reason to even play 2 today. 2 was great because of a relatively compelling story and amazing amount of choices and consequences at the time, but today POE offers much better gameplay while maintaining the overall style; BG2's story, characters and freedom aren't really dated by now, but also no longer groundbreakingly good. You can certainly play it, you won't regret it, but IMO it's better if you're interested in its influence on the history of RPGs, otherwise there are much better choices.

I'm not sure about 2), for example there are already tons of push/pull effects in Deadfire, I found the reason I never use them is purely that they don't do anything beneficial for me, moving enemies away just means I have to reposition. not because I can't find an ideal chance to push them in the direction I want. Also for things like barrels, the problem is other isometric CRPGs don't let players to move them at all, not necessarily because it's hard to aim in real time. In comparison Larian maps feel much more alive even outside of combat. But for being chaotic, that's a fair point. Limiting party size and making encounters of less but stronger enemies can help. I also noticed something else: PoE games have very dull sound effects and animation, while Larian makes every action comically impactful, both visual and audio. That's probably another advantage of TB to make the game attractive. Other than maybe Obsidian was just bad at it (character voices also have awful recording quality), it would be so messy if everyone is doing the Larian style animation and bombarding my ear at the same time.

Do you think RTwP games can learn at least something from Larian? I've finally tried BG3 (didn't finish it though, computer can't handle it mid to late game), it's clearly by far the best combat from Larian and even for a TB "hater" like me, I have to admit I can't complain about pretty much anything except for it being TB. I've seen people arguing that the Larian style of terrain utilizing and verticality are hard to adapt for RT or RTwP, but I don't know, isn't using Z-axis already in modern ACT or general RPGs? Maybe it's something technical, rather than a design problem? It's kind of funny that BG3 as a turn-based game allows saving mid-combat, while I've seen at various points in Pathfinder games, the auto-save checkpoints Owlcat put there don't work because they conflict with a cutscene or combat has begun, so a reload means going through cutscenes and dialogues again and again. I think this choice from Larian also helps reduce the punishment on player's mistakes.

I have some off topic questions, how did you solo with furyshaper? Limited resources and expensive healing, no pet or summon... Even the terror ward has awful ACC that I had trouble hitting mediocre enemies even with a party for debuffing, that I ended up just using the frenzy ward and it felt very general when I played one.

The thundercat build in the forum is great since cat form+wall of draining is one of the few ways to actually make use of shapeshift. Conjurer has all the damage spells a wizard needs (as multiclass, at least), as long as you focus on them sorcerer is one of the best offensive casters in the game.

Do you think it's possible to make a build *really* good and fun at the same time? Like if you can delete everything with a few spells, it being noninteractive is the result of being overpowered so there is no need to consider survival, strategy etc. Other builds are more interactive because they are not powerful enough to neglect other aspects, or have to do extra things to reach the same level of survivability or damage. Got me thinking if we have to deliberately go for "weaker" builds to have fun.

Do you mind using exploits? I found that without them, viable classes are quite limited. After running out of those I went back to party.

I realized I've procastenated finishing my sorcerer run for months. The class isn't boring, quite the opposite in fact, but my problem is that combat becomes really uninteractive and repetitive. It's always queueing up a few buffs from Xoti, then blindly throw whatever spells I have and it's over. It's one of the few runs that I almost never needed support from the paladin. Not the case with Deadfire, "having to do something" is also unfun imo. Like in Pathfinder WotR it's either stacking buffs then breeze through with melee, or use exploits, or suffer.