Luckmann

Specifically going to Twin Elms before doing more local quests and such would feel contrived and artificial. Your complaint is essentially a pacing issue with the game, and it's not your fault that you chose to do quests as you discovered them, or in an order that you felt made sense.

This would just overemphasize tanks even more, and you'd only transfer the issue from "One tank" to "Two tanks", it wouldn't change the system or address the issues in any notable way. Nevermind the fact that you're unlikely to actually engage that many enemies at once except in rare situations; positioning takes care of that.

Working as intended. Disengagement attacks a free, immediate, instant, and invisible.

Viable, definitely. But it is viable in spite of the Perception, not because of it. Any idea if he will be ranged or melee, what weapons, what style? It can be relevant.

Yeah, I can't say that I wasn't a bit disappointed at Twin Elms. After seeing Defiance Bay, Twin Elms was a definite let-down, and I'm not sure how they're meant to compare. Twin Elms feels like too little, too late in the game.

The question is how you solve a systemic issue like that. If you just increase the Accuracy of the enemies, you are only really putting even more emphasis on +Deflection as the go-to way to tank, and the game already suffers from overspecialization in that regard. You either stack Deflection or you go home. Increasing enemy Accuracy would just mean that the importance of Deflection is even higher. I think this might actually be quite hard to solve, at the end of the day, due to the underlying simplicity of the system. Accuracy is a scale that affects everything from Miss to Crit, and the only thing that affects it is Deflection, working in the opposite direction. I don't have a solution, and I'm not criticizing you or anything, I'm just musing on the challenges.

I really need no other post on this issue. This is it. Sure, I can make a pretty strong gameplay-based case for Immunities, hard counters and strong resistances, too. We can argue how it should be implemented, how it should work, what the merits are, how it will improve combat, and we can keep talking about how the combat is trivial or easy, and so on, and so forth. But to me, yes, it matters, but to me.. it doesn't matter half as much as the fact that it's ****ing stupid. I should not be able to knock amorphous blobs of ooze over with my weapons or shield. I should not be able to terrify automatons, or frighten rotten vessels that even lack the most basic of drive for survival, with anything short of holy light. I should not be able to set fire to fire elementals. I should not be able to make enemies that do not even touch the ground come flying down because there's oil on the floor. I should not be able to blind that which has no eyes to blind. There's a lot of arguments to bring up, but that is the fundamental issue for me. All the other issues surrounding this is really just systemic issues with combat, but the fact that the game world does not even take itself seriously, as Stun put it, is by far the most grating offender to me. It is nothing short of insulting that we're expected to put up with it and find it reasonable. To see people grasping at straws in attempts to rationalize it is flabbergasting, and feels like nothing but flimsy post-hoc rationalizations to try to excuse the situation. It makes no sense whatsoever, and the ruination of the integrity of the game world is far worse than any of the combat issues, as far as I am concerned. Couldn't agree more. Meeting trolls in PoE was a real let-down. Of course, PoE unfortunately does not have ammunition, so there's not even really the possibility for this sort of mechanic, at least not in the same way... unfortunately. No idea why they didn't include it. There's a point in that it's a meaningless annoyance to filling up basic ammunition, but is there no way to have infinite basic ammunition, and then special ammunition when it suits you? Of course there is, but not in PoE. Most opponents in PoE doesn't feel mechanically special. The only exception I've run into so far were the teleporting shadows/shades, but even those were rather predictable and tank-spank-able. I hated golems in BG2. But that hate was earned. I don't feel strongly about any enemy in PoE that I can think of. They do. Edit: Seriously, the more I think of it, the thing with how much I hated Golems in BG2, there more I realize that I can't apply that thinking to PoE at all. In any casual conversation with someone that's played BG2, I can ask "Oh, you've done that yet? How'd you like the trolls?" or "How'd you deal with XXX encounter?", and in any number of games, there are these situations where someone mentions something and everyone in the know goes "Ooooh, god, not those!" or "Haha oh wow, I friggin hated that." But we didn't really hate it. Maybe it frustrated us, but we remember them with hatred even though we loved the game. We remember the ridiculously annoying babies in Silent Hill, and we remember the Adamantium Golems in BG2, and we remember being murdermauled by gibberlings in BG1, and those broken ****ing Cliff Races in Morrowind, and the ridiculous speed of the Cazadores in FO:NV. But I can't think of anything that I'll bring up in a conversation about PoE that'll illicit anything resembling the same response. The Trolls? The Ogres? The Oozes? The drakes that supports the kobolds xaurips can rip you apart, but there's nothing special about them. There's nothing special about most anything. The only ones I can even imagine are the Shadows/Shades. "Remember the shades right at the beginning? That was mildly annoying.".

There isn't really much to discuss, but yeah, you're right on most of those points. Difficulty sharply drops off past the Prologue and Act 1/Caed Nua, and most battles can be trivialized with tanking, especially - as you've noticed - with narrow pathways, due to various systemic issues and a general lack of reactivity. I'm not sure what summoning figurine you're talking about, though, and I'm not going to ask, because the forum is spoiler-free. Experience is doled out liberally and you easily overlevel for the content you're generally going to be facing, if you are (like I suspect most are) doing most quests you run into, and explore areas as you find them. If you are level 9 by the time you finish Dyrford, you can expect to be level 12 well before you finish the game, but your mileage may vary, it depends on how thorough you are. And the fact that all spellcasters get entire levels turning into Per-Encounter at level 9 is a well-known balance issue. I've seen very few people even defending that idea, it's completely broken, and I think most have realized that. No non-spellcaster class even has anything resembling that, and it's an unprecedented step up in power, even for spellcasters, who also continue to gain new spells and spell ranks at the same rate as before.

I don't have this, but in relation to the "hoverboxes", this is where I repeat the issue that resized text isn't getting centred properly, nor hoverboxes resized as appropriate, in the vain hope that it'll be fixed.

Benefit and be hampered by, as the case may be. I don't understand why it doesn't already work like this; the character associates him- or herself with the party, and should be affected by the party's actions (and by party, I mean the iron fist of the great leader).

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible. I think it's cheesey and fake. What you do in your own game is your own bizness tho; no skin off my back. What *would* be a problem is if that particular tactic were the only way to beat, say, Raedric. It's not tho. So it's all good. You still didn't answer the question.

Past experience tells me when they say "balance changes" they mean "nerfs galore". Rather than crippling existing characters, which people have invested time and effort in (including PotD, Iron mode etc.), by ruining their abilities that are somehow "imbalanced" (in a single-player game, yeah right), how about buffing classes that are currently made of suck and plainly uninspiring (looking at you, paladin)? TL;DR: instead of weakening good classes, how about strengthening bad classes? That way everyone wins! I agree with the general sentiment of buffing bad classes rather than nerfing good ones, but why is it illegitimate to balance in one way, based on the argument that it doesn't need balancing in a single-player game, yet legitimate to balance in another? Your argument makes no sense. If you said that balance didn't matter at all in a single-player game, you'd have a point - I'd disagree and argue against that point, but it'd be there - but first suggesting that imbalance isn't a thing in a single-player game and then call on balancing is nonsense. 1.04 isn't even released yet, so I would not hold my breath for anything even resembling solid information on 1.05 until after 1.04 has hit, and even then it'll probably take a few days at least. I doubt AI improvements would really help you in the "combat is samey"-department, though. Yes, the AI should be smarter, but the samey thing is systemic.

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible.

As someone who has beaten Bloodborne please allow me to reply with "Lol". Seriously guys the game is great and it is perfectly playable with or without the mod. My only complaint is that later in the game once your team levels up you are just too powerful with the right classes/abilities. I would rather shoot myself in the head than to play the game with the base solid UI after playing with yours, and the all-circles-green retardation wants me to pluck my eyes out. I could live without the fix to the movement recovery penalty, and I'm not playing without Engagement (even though I'd like to see it killed), but not the more basic, fundamental fixes. Everything-is-highlighted-everywhere also comes to mind.

Yes you do. Everyone does. All the time. Just the fact that you are aware of it makes you even more likely to do it while conciously trying to avoid it. Not only is generalization an integral and necessary part of the psyche and basic instincts, but there's been studies that show that if you specifically tell people to avoid stereotyping, they stereotype harder. So in your rainbow delusion, you're probably worse than most that doesn't care.

Why? O_O It's +6 Accuracy to a bunch of weapons. There may be better choices depending on what you want to do, but if you intend to use your weapons a lot, it's a great boost.

Actually, no. A better wand spam build would perhaps be high-Might, but it's mostly built around Talents and it's easy to make him into one. Also, Edér is actually a great tank, or at least he was before the changes (Intellect is arguably more important to him). Just give him a shield, a sabre and some heavy armour if he can't hack it. He could be built better, yes, but you get him at such a low level and none of his Talent are wasted.

^ This. "Light or Medium or Heavy Armor" is a trick question. The answer is "None of the above".

Yeah, there's that with one or two enemies attacking the tank and the rest of the enemies in a line behind. example: But I'm actually talking about ring around the rosey. Example: I had a better example but forgot to save the screen shots as my ranged characters were nearly against my tank but the enemies kept targeting my tank. Also, my other characters aren't wearing any armour. I was able to move my other characters down below the crane and mop up all the wizards and continue around and then help out the tank. Pretty easy fight when the enemy concentrates on one character (tank) and ignores the rest of your party. Hopefully a modder will put in some enemy AI scripts to attack more than one person. Okay, I have a better example below. Following the yellow arrow, Lady Valtas completely ignores my other party members who aren't wearing any armour and goes around and attacks my tank. I'm not even trying to exploit the A.I. You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me. ...what? "Split up"? They're even still on the same screen, and he's not even zoomed out very far in most of those pictures.

Well... Just barely but with all the effects from spells or other in fight carnage it's really hard to see, huh. Don't understand how this wasn't spotted in playtesting. Someone else mentioned colourblind mode but your selected party members will still be the same colour as the rest of your team right? I overlooked that this might help if that's not the case. It was, and pointed out repeatedly. Happened to me a thousand times by now. An inability to see who's even selected and super-terrible pathing issues is the source of over 90% of the disengagement attacks my characters suffer. And the Engagement system itself, of course, but that goes without saying.

Something to consider for Durance is that as a priest of Magren, he has a special class talent that you can eventually select that gives him a +10 accuracy with Sword or Arqabus. They're not in the same Weapon Focus, but what the heck. (I think of it as the special Magren Weapon Focus!) So I have Durance using Sword (and shield) and an Arqabus. If Magren wants to bless him with a +10 accuracy with those weapons, who am I to turn away such a blessing? Please understand, the +10 accuracy talents only get a Priest up to the point they'd be with the weapon baseline without the talent as a "Very High" accuracy class. It's a compensatory talent, it's not really as much of a boon as people think it is. Once you're level 9 you never need to fire a gun again anyways. That's a bit arbitrary, though; +10 Accuracy is +10 Accuracy. It's fairly major, whether it's compensatory or not. While it's questionable whether someone wants to build a weapon-focused Priest or not, and I'd say it's doubly so for Priestesses of Eothas, due to the lack of a ranged alternative (which may still be entirely thematically fitting, so I'm not complaining), priests can spend a lot of time auto-attacking and similar, if you see no reason to expend their spells. It doesn't turn the Priest into a Fighter, for sure, but that Talent does put them on-par with the highest starting Accuracies (Fighters start with 30, Priests with 20). I'm getting *a lot* of mileage out of the Arquebus I gave Durance because of this. I think it's more likely that no-one is paying attention to the math, because PoE is extremely forgiving. Even when you sorta-miss, you hit, and you just sorta note that down as a "Eh, it hit" and carry on. Like I said in another thread, you can stumble through PoE like a drunken fool and not pay attention to anything, and still prosper. I would not depend on the Mechanics buff to Seals, though. It's obviously a bug, and they'll probably get around to fixing it. That said, I didn't respond to complain, but to actually support your idea and mention Aggrandizing Radiance, an excellent choice for a "Cleric" or "Warpriest" build of any kind. With a Deity Talent, Weapon Focus, Aggrandizing Radiance and a quick spell or so, I'm pretty convinced that a Priest could slug it out with the best of them, or at least to a reasonable degree. Consecration comes to mind as a truly great "in the dead centre of the storm" kind of spell, to boot. I'm not going to try it on my Priestess of Eothas (I just don't think it's fitting for her), but I really want to try a Warpriest at some point now. Maybe as a Priest of Skaen, all stabby-stabby, Prey on the Weak, Weapon Focus Ruffian (I hate that Ruffians get Stiletto instead of Noble, and I think that Prey on the Weak should get Dagger, not Stiletto, but it's fun to note that Prey on the Weak is one of the few Deity Talents that completely overlaps with a Weapon Focus).

I'll take "Made-up sh*t that makes no sense" for 500, Alex.

so... show me the classic old textbook from all the previous games that feature a cipher. oh, that's right... IT'S A NEW CLASS. gees. *rips hair out* egads, the comments are inane here. It's.. a psion or soulknife. Like.. what?

I also like the idea of Durance receiving a vision to meet you and join you, because of the implications of such a thing in relation to you being a Priestess of Eothas. It resonates with me, given his apparent crisis of faith and such, and Magran and Eothas working together on some level, given that by most accounts, both are fundamentally good(-ish).