Grand_Commander13

Their damage is actually amazing considering their reload times. Even after the nerf the arbalest is still pretty good (though it's behind the guns now).

Well the +25% damage enchantments you can put on your weapons only face 25% of the DR. That makes me assume that damage over time spells have the DR taken out of them just once, when the spell is cast, but I don't know.

Yes, fix this please. Just make it check to see if the status effect is already on him. It makes fights against spiders quite comical, but also very irritating.

Sorry, did you say something? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my tavern-hired rogue picking a lock.

Then color me impressed to find someone else around here who isn't crying about the much-needed arbalest nerf.

Despite your sarcasm, your words taken at face value are actually half-true: the arbalest was by far the best ranged weapon. Not only did it have the excellent spike damage to remove a threat as soon as the fight began, it also had the highest sustained DPS in the game. Even with one third of its damage taken it's still equivalent DPS (but still better at bursting enemies down) to the crossbow at about 5 DR and higher relative DPS as DR increases. Of course they didn't nerf the Arquebus, which wasn't far behind the Arbalest. It, and probably the pistol, need some nerfing while the hunting bow, war bow, and crossbow need some buffing.

Nerfs to: Arbalest damage (and arbalest is currently far and away the best ranged weapon) Mind Blades Slicken Chill Fog Sure-Handed Ila Beloved Spirits Brilliant Radiance Buffs to: Monk damage Fast melee weapons Sabers Many wizard spell ranges Curse of Blackened Sight Goldrot Chew Rangers (via Bonded Grief being reduced) Bulwark of the Elements Heart of Fury The party (by weakening enemy rogues) You're right: nerfs 2 stronk.

Thank you so much for reminding me. This irritates me so much but I keep forgetting by the time I've closed the Stronghold menu.

Mine shipped a few days ago but is still tied up in the post office's processing facility in California for some reason.

Clear out levels five and six of the Endless Paths.

Yeah, scrapping those was kind of the point. It's a horrendous system that adds nothing except busywork for the player. Yes, I'm smart enough to get Weapon Focus: Adventurer and to hover over the enemy's stat block before I fight, please quit making me prove that I have mastered weapon-switch technology. It's not as satisfying in the same way that, say, landing the perfect fireball or choosing who to Pain Block is.

I stand by my earlier suggestion: start it at level five rather than level nine, and have it improve every four levels rather than every two. Level nine is a long time to wait in a game that ranges from level 1-12, but at the same time means casters will become truly absurd by level 20 if the spell level they cast per-encounter increases every two levels.

No, for two reasons: rapiers and daggers wouldn't have accuracy bonuses (remember, the intention of my suggestion is for there to be just three weapon choices), and having an empty second hand wouldn't give you an accuracy bonus either. Heck, the shield probably wouldn't have an accuracy penalty. Even if it did, putting a shield in your hand would be prioritizing defense anyway, so if it lowered accuracy or increased recovery time it wouldn't be the end of the world. I'm open to there being some differences between the weapons, actually. I don't see much benefit (I mean, you can look at your character's accuracy and the deflection of your enemies and decide if an accuracy boost, a damage boost, or an increase to critical damage is more helpful and the entire point is to get rid of those fight-by-fight optimization problems), but if some cool differences could be found I'd be down. I mean, "these enemies are all over me, I need my shield" being followed by "he's alone, time to try to stun lock him"? I think that's a good use of the quick slot. A bad use of the quick slot is "this guy is vulnerable to crush damage, but some guys in his group are strong against it".

I feel the complete opposite way. As much as I like the game I hate the damage type and DR systems. All it does is force me to gauge the enemy's DRs and switch to the weapon that does the highest DPS to it, which is just a chore. If weapons just had a few niches (probably high-interrupt [two-weapon], high defense [shield], high damage [two-handed]) and otherwise were just aesthetic choices I'd be much, much happier. The other matter is how incredibly annoying flat DR is. I've tinkered with some RPG systems of my own in the past and found that, just like the video game Gothic demonstrates, that a system of flat DR is incredibly difficult to balance well. You touched on PoE's big problem earlier in your post: heavy armor is too common, which means the high damage-per-hit weapons are the clear choices (long live the Estoc/Poleaxe combo!). Of course if heavy armor was too rare then dual-wielding would be the obvious choice, but that wouldn't be so bad since the toughest fights tend to have more DR so who would kit themselves out based on how to handle the easy fights? Armor should just be a simple increase to deflection. It's much simpler and doesn't bias the game towards one weapon type or another.

You should probably tweet someone about that, so it at least goes into 1.05. If you're really lucky they might have time to get it into 1.04.

Obsidian didn't invent the Leaden Key, they merely tried to alert us to their existence.

Well OP at level nine probably regrets rushing the game. Anyway, my party was level twelve so I could drop that spell three times and it was plenty of time to kill Thaos. Of course I also had three people with heavy ranged weapons under the influence of the still-not-nerfed gunner's cadence, so my DPS was looking pretty good too.

In a game where the gameplay is all about the combat, having clear Best Solutions kind of undermines the fun of putting together parties from the varied classes. The developers are clearly concerned about the balance being off, so letting them know what we think is too good and too weak is a good thing, not presumptuous.

I got annihilated in the final boss fight enough to go to YouTube to find the solution: have Aloth use a level-six spell, the one that petrifies the enemy, on Thaos while you take the two statues out one-by-one (the guy recommended killing the headsman first but I find the judge to the more dangerous: kill the guy with the hammer!). Just tank the one you don't want to kill first while everyone unloads on your chosen dead statue, and keep Thaos petrified. When he's alone he's easy pickings.

... This isn't the tech support forum though.

Fine implements exist.

What if they became per-encounter at levels five and nine? Then the pattern could continue with third-level spells at thirteen, and fourth-level spells at seventeen. The current pattern would be ridiculous, with 19th and 20th-level wizards casting sixth-level spells per-encounter. This way wizards get a power boost earlier, but don't become so insane in the sequel.

Well if you're condensing it you'd be turning multiple options into single ones. Like I'd take the talent that gives you an extra quick weapon slot and the talent that makes you switch weapons more quickly and put them together. I'd give Field Triage the power of the one that can only impact the user but still allow it to be used on anyone. Etc...

At forty hours on the Steam clock I felt that Pillars of Eternity was in danger of being too long. It's alright as it is, but I certainly wouldn't want it to be significantly longer.

Has Obsidian indicated a desire to do serious balancing? Because the game needs serious balancing. The talent list needs to be condensed, big time. So many trash-tier picks in there it's not even funny. Still, I'd rather not draw up a list of suggestions if there are no plans to fix anything.