Sensuki

You do realize armor has DR as well, right? If 2H style did x1.1 damage (I'm not saying it should, just an example), after DT that value would be reduced by the DR of the armor, higher the damage the more is reduced Personally I think improving what they do best is the best way to go - and that's what's been done for every style except 2H 2WF - speed 1H - accuracy Ranged - Reload 2H - Deflection :/

Well I think Gunner *might* work for all Ranged weapons, but it's difficult to tell. Honestly I'd have to check the source code to probably find out.

You didn't read what I said properly (or the graph, it seems). Att ACC-DEF +6 or higher, you can't miss. You ask yourself - how much extra DPS does +1 Accuracy give ? The answer is on the chart. +1 ACC gives a 1% chance of a better attack resolution, and at that point in the graph its a 1% chance of +50% increase in damage. The +2% Might bonus is on *every* hit that does damage, and since at that point in the graph, every hit deals damage, the Might bonus ends up being better.

Single Weapon style gets a +15 Accuracy bonus (that's the advantage of the style).

Yeah you will. At ACC-DEF = 0, you graze 45% of the time and hit 45% of the time. To even get to the area where the Talent starts to become less useful you need ACC-DEF = +25, and it still does something all the way up to ACC-DEF = +45 However I do think that it will become superfluous in some instances, because I think the Fighter has an ability that does basically the same thing. Need to try that build actually hahah - 5% grazes, 90% hits Might do that tomorrow.

It doesn't as implemented in the game anyway. 99% sure it's not supposed to though.

That would be too strong, that's like a roll 15-20 on a d20 to crit in D&D You can only do that with a Keen Scimitar with Improved Critical

No the 1H weapon style one is good, its a 20% chance of +50% base damage. If I was going 1H Single style, I'd always pick it.

That is the case as they are now in the game, but the word on the grape vine is that Two Handed Weapons are not meant to be the outright best weapons in the game. Josh has said that he's going to tune up the damage of 1H weapons so that they deal superior damage against low-medium armor. 2H will be better vs higher armor. Currently the weapons are tuned for ACC-DEF = 0 and 0 DT. When the tuning changes, 2Hers will be inferior vs light and medium armored targets. That is why I think that the talent should be in line with the other two. Quote (from PM) for posterity

If you've mastered every aspect of the IE games I don't think you would be claiming that enemy targeting was hard to manipulate. What? The actual party formations as in the ones that you use to move characters in the game world are not superfluous. I would always have my tanks first, Priests etc in the middle and my Thief and Wizard in the last two slots. However I only used the one formation (not the default one, the staggered version of it) and that meant that my Fighters/etc were pretty much always targeted by enemies first. I would have understood if different formations were cut and there was just one default one, but it was something Obsidian promised during the kickstarter, because I think Josh liked them. Enemies could not waltz in anywhere if you actually used TACTICAL POSITIONING and moved your party members in response to what the enemies were doing. It is evident that you clearly do not want to have to do this. Icewind Dale 1 and 2 had heaps of enemy archer groups. BG2 was packed full of spellcasters and enemies that had at least one ability, such as the Umber Hulk Confusion, which was a gaze spell. You can't really kite Umber Hulks around. You can kite a mummy or a zombie, sure. Many enemies were also immune to ranged weapons FOR A REASON - to prevent kiting :D But Josh doesn't like immunities. In PE though, if you want slow enemies to be resistant to ranged just put the Piercing DT through the roof - problem solved. Yes it's an attempt to solve some issues that were really not an issue in the Infinity Engine games, and a very lazy one at that. I think that they probably would have gone with MMO Aggro mechanics if they had their first choice, but the backers complained about the prospect of that during the Kickstarter, so they went with a D&D style system just because D&D. However this is a real-time game, not a turn-based game and Attack of Opportunity mechanics will not work here. Obsidian need to drop the mechanic in favor of sticky mechanics that actually work in real-time, and that will in turn actually enable tactical movement in combat rather than remove it.

v333 introduced some Weapon Style talents (familiar from D&D Proficiencies and Feats) Two Weapon Style - (+20% Attack Speed when wielding Two Weapons) Single Weapon Style - (Converts 20% of Grazes into Hits) Sword and Shield Style - (+10 Deflection & Shield Deflection bonus to Reflex) Two Handed Style - (+5 Deflection) Is it just me, or out of all of these very good talents does the Two Handed Style one seem pretty bad in comparison to the others? Personally I'd like to see the Two Handed style talent be offensively oriented. Two handed weapons emphasize damage, so I'd rather the talent did something to enhance that rather than tacking on a meager Deflection bonus. Both the TWF and 1H style talents give a pretty nice DPS boost in comparison. The Gunner talent is probably the closes thing to Ranged Weapon style, since it offers faster reload speed, although I'm not sure if that works on Bows and Implements or not. If that isn't the case, I'd like to see a Ranged weapon talent that does. What is your feedback on the weapon style talents?

Age of Decadence is going to be awesome when it comes out. Completely the opposite of Josh Sawyer design style though, and that's not a bad thing. Looking forward to it.

Yeah that's right. They have a few badly designed abilities that are supposed to offer extremely limited movement that is resistant to or free from disengagement attacks. Big ****ing whoop. Why on earth would I want to pick most of those? The cost is simply not worth it. It's like in the first three patches with Recovery time paused while moving - if you want to move in combat you're going to have to pay dearly for it. What a complete joke. Luckily they took my advice and tried playing the game without it. Surprise! They found it felt better. Then they must be superfluous in Pillars of Eternity as well? Anyone who fails to screen/defend characters is just bad at the game. It's not difficult at all. If you want to learn how to do it, I have a full IWD playthrough. Not even close. If you have to kite to win you're pretty bad, OR it does allow you to make something out of nothing if you're in a tight spot. Nothing wrong with that. This is bull****, all you had to do was move your units around a bit. The conceptual stage is where Melee Engagement fails, because half of the problem that is described in the Melee Engagement update AND by people making the same complaints you are is that you simply didn't understand how to manipulate the enemy AI targeting clauses. The Melee Engagement system offers you nothing. What you want if it is to 'control' combat, is for enemies to attack you when you send melee units in. That has nothing to do with the Engagement system, it has everything to do with the Targeting Clauses in the AIController class in the game code. You will not benefit from Melee Engagement, only enemies will. There's one difference between how the game plays when Melee Engagement exists and when it does not when you play the game the 'Captain Shrek' or 'Mr Magniloquent' way, and that is that when you move a unit to attack another unit who is moving, they will ignore you if they have already acquired a target. All Obsidian have to do to fix this is to make enemies attack their melee attacker, and it will act the same as it does now.

Don't worry mate, you're not alone there. Pretty much everyone on the RPGCodex (not necessarily casual gamers, but many play RPGs more for the story than the combat) straight up hate the combat as well. I fully agree with you - it is frustrating, punishing and there is a steep learning curve for new players, particularly those not familiar with the Infinity Engine games. The combat is too fast and requires too much pausing. I have probably the most hours of in-game time than all of the Backers (sitting around 90 now I think) and I would consider myself pretty good at the game by now and while I don't think it's necessarily difficult, I definitely do not think it is very good, or very fun. For a new player I can see people really struggling with the speed of combat, the lethality of combat (per hit damage is super high), the amount of activity/micromanagement required because all classes are more active than the Infinity Engine games, the User Interface is not particularly intuitive in many places and does not promote player engagement with the game mechanics as the designers want it to. There are also a tonne of systems to learn and understand, and many of these systems are not exactly intuitive and pretty 'gamey'. I showed some of my casual gamer friends the game a few weeks ago. They loved the Infinity Engine games, and one of them I met because he heard us talking about Baldur's Gate 2 at school. They both thought the game looked like a 2014 Infinity Engine game, but the combat looked horrible, and felt nothing like the Infinity Engine games. The reason I know what I do about the game is because I have been following every detail from the first day of the Kickstarter - every thread, every post, every interview that the developers have done - I have read it, probably more than once. While I only test the game on Hard, I will keep raising these issues on the forums and on my youtube channel (speed, lethality, UI feedback, intuitiveness) and hope that by release - they are improved. edit: Stone Beetles (and probably the other ones too) were given +50 Deflection in this patch, they now have 63 instead of 13. That's why they're harder.

And it's ****ing retarded. Enemies do not disengage. They never do and never will because it is pointless for them to do so. The disengagement mechanic is only relevant to players UNLESS you exploit it like I have in my video. Outside of those instances you will never score a disengagement attack on an enemy. This creates banal standstill gameplay where no one moves and all you do is sit there and click abilities, that is horrible combat style in a real time game. The only games that have combat that bad are usually RPGs because people are forgiving of terrible combat in RPGs. You will never see anything that stupid in any other type of real time game that puts any emphasis on good combat at all. You're talking theoretics not actualities. The situation Cubiq described is a possible concern if targeting clauses are improved and targeting reacquisition is added, because if targeting clauses are designed around Engagement, these classes can only engage one enemy and are thus much worse than the Fighter at taking aggro. Currently though all you need to do is make sure your tank attacks first, and you're set (which is pretty dumb in the first place). Barbarians are only good at tanking IF they are being healed. Chanter's passive healing is very minimal and possibly not working as intended as I uncovered a strange default value for Ancient Memory when I was looking at the ability file in Unity today. initial positioning is not tactical positioning, it is strategical positioning. Nothing that happens before the fight is tactical. Initial positioning should be (and is) important in both the Infinity Engine games and Pillars of Eternity, however controlling the position of the tank in the Infinity Engine games (more important depending on which game you are playing) is also a part of the equation as combat is more freeform and there is movement in combat. This is not part of the equation in Pillars of Eternity due to the Melee Engagement system and thus makes the combat less interesting and less fun. This has nothing to do with Melee Engagement. CC in Pillars of Eternity comes in the form of status effects and nearly all of those status effects do something to Attributes and Derived stats. Those are all valuable without even mentioning kiting. However anything that slows movement speed doesn't matter because no one moves in melee - that was Cubiq's point. I disagree, and I believe it does. Use sleep icons all you like but the fact is, the system is creating some serious problems, removing it literally makes the game flow much better and actually start to feel like playing an Infinity Engine game. Maybe you don't want that style of combat (as not every backer enjoyed the IE combat or the fact that it facilitated tactical movement), but many of us do. Both Cubiq and Captain Shrek (who is not necessarily against the Engagement mechanic) both agree that my mod does make it feel more like playing an Infinity Engine game. I will get more people to try my mod and see what they think as well. I don't understand why people are being so defensive about the mechanic, it's clearly broken and there are clearly better solutions to sticky melee characters. The way it seems people who are against the mechanic play the game doesn't seem like it will be affected by the removal of the mechanic - the targeting clauses will still be there, your initial positioning of your fighter will still matter and you will be able to stand still in combat if you want.

Tactics are not exalted, they are penalized. PE's combat is more about initial strategy and execution. There is little room for tactics, actually. Certainly not tactical movement in combat. The only positioning that matters at all is the initial positioning. That is _terrible_ and so much worse than the Infinity Engine games.

In this image I have a Fine Dagger Equipped I have a Level 5 Monk with 18 Perception The Inventory screen (inaccurate) says 60 Accuracy. 25 (base) + 12 (level 4) + 8 (Perception + 15 (1H Style) = 60 Daggers are naturally supposed to be Accurate weapons, as that is the 'perk' that they and several other weapons have (Rapiers, Clubs and Spears). This bonus is represented by the property "Accurate 1" which is a status effect/buff and enchantment bonus that follows the buff suppression rules. When you have a Fine, Superior or Superb Dagger such as I have here, let's see if that Accuracy bonus stacks with the Fine property, if it does my Accuracy should be 69 (+5 from Accurate 1, +4 from Fine) Doesn't look like it. This makes Daggers, Clubs, Rapiers and Spears inferior choices for weapons when you have access to Fine quality or greater weapons. These weapons should be given a different / inbuilt accuracy bonus exempt of the buff suppression rules.

I just figured out that the Active Effects section of the Character Record is pretty verbose and actually contains values for everything. So if you have a passive on or whatever, it shows the value there.

Probably known, but interrupts occur on non-damaging attacks such as Priest Interdiction Probably because it still has a damage component, but the damage is 0.0 The amount of lines that Interdiction pastes into the combat log also needs to be reduced to one line

Powerful Sprint (Barbarian) - Increases the Movement Rate of Wild Sprint by 2, from 5 to 7 (untested). Stalwart Defiance (Barbarian) - Gives +10 to all defenses of nearby allies, in the Unity Inspector it says "size: 4". (Actual in game size needs confirmation in game). Beloved Spirits (Chanter) - Adds the value of +2 to however it heals Stamina. Which is strange because the default Ancient Memory says it heals 0.2 Stamina (decimal or percentage ? unknown) per tick ? either way, this ability and talent are really confusing. Biting Whip (Cipher) - seems like it stacks the Cipher's Soul Whip damage by a further x1.2, so like Attack * 1.2 * 1.2

Posted on Something Awful asking for a direct reply as there is no exact quote, but I have read literally everything on the subject on the internet and that is my understanding how it's supposed to work. Do not know if I'll get an answer though.

No, it follows exactly the same rules since those abilities follow the same Attack Resolution system. If your attack is going to hit anyway (ACC-DEF +6 or higher, which is 0% chance to miss, 39% graze, 45% hit and 11% crit by default), then the MIG bonus is better..

It's not simulationist man, it's gamist. The fact that the game is real time (with pause) means that you do not have to implement any extra mechanics to simulate units being able to react to one another like you do in turn based. I can move up and attack a guy, he can hit me back. I can run away, he can chase me - in real time. Attacks of Opportunity were added to turn-based games to prevent the guy that acts first from losing against the guy that acts second (ie, guy spends his turn moving to you, and you act second and just move away). Engagement is a gamist concept aiming at giving melee units 'control' over a melee situation via AI targeting clauses and to penalize moving in combat. In real life, a guy cannot hit three different people at once in the blink of an eye without lifting a finger just because they move one step backwards, and in real life you cannot make someone attacking you from behind stay there because 'engagement'. There is no way the designers will make Engagement attacks incur a recovery time, because then any unit in the game that moves by you will trigger your engagement attack, stuff up your current action and then cause you to have to wait to make another one. Don't know what you mean by the second bit. Engagement attacks already interrupt by default (it's built into the attack) and that is partly what's causing the Fighter in the video to be helpless because of it. Disengagement attacks are designed to severely **** you up. And this is one of the byproducts of these design decisions. Moving in melee should not be penalized automatically, you should have to react to it.

Yeah good summary Cubiq

Engagement range is working exactly as intended because Engagement range is supposed to be independent of weapon reach. Josh Sawyer's design for Pillars of Eternity is 99% gamist over simulationist. You keep talking in simulationist talk as if this is supposed to be realistic or something - it isn't. You seem to keep ignoring the fact that those attacks have no animation, the characters aren't even facing the enemy that they score the attack against and they can instantly go in and make another attack independent of recovery time if they so wish. @ #3 - You can't stop kiting in a 1v2 situation unless you have an AoE Stun or you have faster movement speed than both of the enemies. However if the guard as a Fighter was able to actually hit back and/or use an Active ability such as a stun, net, or a slow - he would be able to catch up with and attack my Fighter there (if I did not apply those effects to him first). He has a Knock Down and when a target is in range he always uses it first, however he can't get in range of either of my Fighters to cast it there because all Disengagement attacks that score a graze, hit or crit cause a long interrupt (might be 0.75-1s).