Shadenuat

Just had to share. This guy always delivers.

Their sustainable DPS seems pretty bad to me, so guns are only useful while you travel around nuking solo enemies. Once you get to meet huge groups or clear large chunks of enemies, like in Od Nua for example, my pick is on bows with speed/damage/rending additions.

If you let spider-dude go, he takes the "vessel" away, so no spear for you.

I also tried to build a tankodruid but dropped the idea. I had some success with sword&shield with that door-shield that gives free bash. Animal forms, at least bear, turned out to be poor for tanking but broken for DPS - 30-40 damage hits at level 1. My second char was built in a lot more straightforward way: Stats: Mig/Dex/Int = max, else even. Perks: Lightning "claws" - both perks, Scion of Storms, WhateverItCalled Bonus Cold Damage (nice to have when you get per-encounter frozen wind spell), additional spells 3&4, the last perk was bonus to speed or something since there isn't anything useful Equipment: 2-handed weapon with reach (Durance's staff works well for beginning) & Warbow (there are a few nice Warbows in game and one actually shocks enemies on hit); clothes (0% speed), later I found robe with DR9 & -15% in a bounty, looked nice so I'm wearing it now. In the beginning you dominate by 2-shotting enemies in bear form, but as you get more levels you will have enough spells to carry party through any battle. Just keep lightning storm on and spam insect plague/venombloom/world's maw and whatever, everyone dies.

Progression is something I haven't felt about Wizard at all even after getting highest level spells. Many spells are just copies from previous levels. I found another spell kicking enemies from their feet at (spell) level 5 amusing in particular. You never feel like you're getting somewhere or becoming a magical machine like in BG2. Hell, with a rough start casters have in BG1, I think even in that game you end up feeling more powerful than in PoE. The buffs only work on yourself. Protective spells work in a weird way as they collapse after you get damaged. Summons just downright suck, there's only one. Many spells are hard to land right because they are ray-based or have small range. Some are even melee. I often found Aloth to be the one running in front to land a fireball, although it's not as bad as Clerics have it. And then there's a ton of underwhelming debuffs that add fear, and more fear, and weakness, and then combine two, or three, against will check... eh. Sure some spells can change combat, they're just not very fun to use.

I have no problems with FF. Throwing circles is easy. Yeah there are spells that are downright uncomfortable to use like Twin Stones, various Ray spells and so on, but just clipping everyone who's at the front fighting your tanks is not hard (esp. for casters with int >15). Clipping with "yellow" is very cheesy that way you can often harm everyone. Second, you may shoot through your own guys. Yeah they will take some damage but if you buff a bit or they're wearing good armor it won't do that much damage. I mean, you shouldn't even care. Even if they will get down it's just stamina, they'll jump back into fight right after you finish with enemies burning leftovers. You can also abuse the fact that ranger's companion is an infinite source of baiting and use Sagani's fox to gather foes around it and then unload your artillery. And yeah don't forget Slicken spell. Spam it and nobody gets to you, period.

I've got this one too but somewhere else. Screen also is a bit purple and I hear dead people - Watcher's "vision" stuck to the screen and nothing worked so far to turn it off. edit. got rid of it by exiting/entering game and resting.

Level 1, spammed Slicken against wolves and shadows. Level 11, spam Slicken against golems, dragons & WydChyFjrmiDdfjiu3rfj@@--- Interesting class.

If your main wasn't affected you can send companions who were to the keep and recruit them back again, it may help. At least I did that when Sagani's fox got that bug on it.

Only questionable part of Act 2 was that game urged you to rush save Imoen, while opening largest quest bag it had. 15k gold could be collected without leaving slums probably.

May not be inventory we truly need, but one we really deserve

You'll still need one, and probably an additional UI work, like making AoE different color or circles different color or possible damage done shown on characters, ect. Ofc just re-coloring is easier than adjusting spell sizes and shapes but as a player from simple or more difficult but elegant I'd choose difficult&elegant. Being natural egoist and all that. I agree that simple fix is better than no fix though. I still think range of spells is surprisingly short compared to possible AoE sizes however. I'll repeat though - making part of AoE friendly makes it easier to land compared to all over mass spells and could possibly be abused.

When you need to make an explanation like that to players as why you went for some confusing decision instead of an obvious one it feels like not efficient design to me. Already have journalists saying that +2 Might on Amaumas makes them most powerful warriors, isn't that enough. Some ummutable law of soul-physics lmao

I don't get your logic. Friendly AoE increase or just AoE increase that can be turned off have equal value (or rather, none) as long as there are no enemies or friends there. Your design gives it more value but it also means that, basically, player can "cheat" and move the margin over enemies and his comrades and suffer no liablity whatsoever, making damage and ignoring friendly fire. That defeats tactical challenge of landing an AoE. Yeah, you're not using full circle, but concidering how player can sometimes cluster mobs it makes circle spells better than, say, fan of flames that always hits friends and enemies.

Changing Cones degree by increasing their range to a more like wide ray or decreasing it and shaping cone into more like a fan form would also be kewl.

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one. Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

It's an idea for Talent but it's very unintuitive to make different parts of radii friendly fire or not. An option to increase&decrease radii with a mouse would be ideal.

On first glance Josh's idea just switches dump stat for characters without particularly large set of %duration abilities (like Fighters) from INT to RES. I agree that set of +Duration +AoE is basically a set of modifiers for classes with spells, but you're just kinda moving it around that way. Unless +Duration means that all buffs&heals cast on character also last longer or something like that. Then I can imagine a CON/INT/RES ultimate tank or Gish with RES for longer lasting arcane eyes/mirror image whatever.

In IE interrupted spell wasted your spell slot, which was punishment enough. For archers, no clue.

If Concentration would matter for back row aka archers&casters, then it would still be a useful stat even if it's purely defensive, as long as AI would work well. Spell interrupt was a bitch in IE and would be here.

I still find +damage for everything Might aesthetically poor, but ideas to increase speed of characters and pump per&res the way presented are better than what we have now. I'd also add better health ratios somewhere into there, con or res maybe.

As a fan of IE I am used to a more proactive role of fighters and all physical classes - like running around clouded in defensive buffs and Haste, chunking everything with a two-handed sword into little pieces. Less controlled and more lethal combat probably added to experience. God I'm almost in the "make combat more visceral" territory here. In the end there are just too many classes. Smaller amount of core classes with multiple specializations would have probably worked a lot better. But we're past that I get it.

Wouldn't it be more flexible to tie health/stamina ratio to Constitution and let players themselves decide if their character would be good at taking damage or not. Can add useless Resolve there too. So chars with highest Con&Res would have best hp&stamina values.

In Temple of Elemental Evil, 1st level Magic Missile can be spread out between targets as soon as you get at least a second missile, so one spell serves these purposes while also growing in power. There's different saving throw and shockwave, okay, you could probably make another spell out of it. But it seems inefficient to spread out these minor tactical options on conceptually similar spells, and it clutters spellbook. Bellyfeels. Probably as long as player feels that he gets actually fresh things to play with, function and form, and feels that every spell has a unique place in combat that can't be replaced completely by different spell. For example, Mirror Image & Stoneskin, while acting somewhat same (lower amount of attacks you suffer) are still very different - in duration, in what they block and how, what magic can counter or breach them, and so on. If you compare some of Deflection+ spells in PoE it feels they're more replaceable.

They are all crushing damage spells affecting Deflection, are they not? And even if some of them vary slightly in saving throws or an additional bouncing effect, in principle they are comparable. Say I meet the murder beetles. Is there a reason not to cast all these missiles on them or prefer one type over another? Same goes for Sunbeam and Sunscorch. They are not as different from one another like, say, IWD's Sunbeam and False Dawn or Sunray. Sunbeam has little radius and blind effect, does say, 20 fire damage. Sunscorch is a little bigger and does 30 or more. For me they are both just a source of fire damage. And Blights. Are minor blight and medium blight as different as a wardog and a brown bear? Or a winter wolf, fire elemental and nymph? In function & form they probably would act more or less same compared to summons I mentioned (sorry, can't get BGT out of my head and just think in BG Vanilla terms, since there was such an improvement over it when BG2 and things like Spell Revisions came out). I worry for some other spells in a way too. Would Garden of Life be really that different from basic AoE Stamina Regen, and will it be worth of a high level slot, if it is just a more exotic way of restoring stamina? Will Venombloom be really different than just a pumped version of Insect Plague? Etc.