limaxophobiacq

'Low effort' is not an opinion or a feeling, it is a statement about the work required to design a certain system. In this case you are simply wrong, it does not take less effort to design an elegant system than an 'interesting' one.

Not giving you 100% hit chance (which also isn't really true, you will practically always hit a paralyzed enemy in PoE) doesn't make a spell more 'interesting', just more powerfull, and no one can dispute that PoE spells are powerfull enough.

1. Yeah, but it overwhelmingly represents creatures you wouldn't think of as beeing the targets of a hunter the way creatures in the beast group are. Which is probably why hunters insticts was clearly originally intended to work against beasts and not primordials. 2. There's lions on that very map, and if you take a right into Stormwald Gorge and Dyrford theres more of them and then beetles and spiders.

You certainly seem to have made up your mind to what kind of system you prefer, but please stop calling the one you don't like a sign of "low effort". Designing spells with little thought for balance and just making up a new mechanics for every spell rather than making a coherent system that encompasses all of them is not a sign of hard design work. Also, the people actually making the IE games did none of that (IMO questionable) work, it was already done for them in AD&D, which was an evolution of years of work by many writers over the years since 1e.

Can only echo Abbzug and say that's a really smart use of spelltongue. Wouldn't you get better dps if you switch ring of overseeing for a ring of deflection so you can substitute bracers of deflection for gauntlets of accuracy or vambracers though? You already have pretty good AoE expecially if you are wearing Dunryd Demon over Gharod's Chorus.

Spells are boring and strong in a boring way. Spells give noticeable debuffs to enemies and help finish combat faster in PoE but they are implemented in a bad way that makes them seem bad. In IE games you have Sleep, Hold Person or Horror. All 3 spells let you finish combat faster but it was not through just reducing some enemy defenses but through changing the battlefield. Closest PoE has at low levels is Knockdown. In IE you have Magic Missile which was your dependable spell, PoE has Missiles of magic that just give a bit more accuracy. Magic Missile in IE has multiple purpose: it always hit, it did force damage which almost nobody was immune to and it was cast fast and you could interrupt enemy casting with it. I did low damage as a negative but you always had most lvl 1 spell slots so you could have many of them . PoE magic Missiles do nothing else but what 10 other spells in PoE do. PoE is full of same spells with a bit different flavor that at best change around the amount of numbers they change on enemy defenses while in IE games spells had different mechanics and changed how the game played. Being blinded meant no longer being able to target single target spells, while being invisible meant none could target you directly. Mirror Image didn't just give some deflection bonus but actually changed mechanics and gave you a chance to hit the caster or image. PoE took easy way out with spells when compared with IE, it is low effort game and it shows. I hope they overhaul the spell system for PoE 2. 'Every other spell has it's own entire system' I not really very elegant design, and D&D rules except for 4th edition can best be described as a glorious mess. I think PoE in general strikes a good balance at beeing something between 4e and other editions of dnd (more so than 5e does). Sleep and Hold person also have equivalents other than spells that inflict prone. Stuck, Hobbled, Stunned, and Paralyze all do something other than lowering defenses or accuracy, as does Confusion, and Horror effects in IE were such a pain having to hunt down fleeing enemies I didn't think anyone used them. The thing magic missile does where it always does a little bit of damage can be done in PoE with any spell that does Raw damage. AD&D 2e (the system in the IE games) is not really a system like anyone would actually set out to design, it is a collection of disjointed mechanics accumulated over the lifespan of D&D. PoE on the other hand is a more consciously designed system were thought was put in beforehand into what kind of effects one would want in the system, supporting them in the mechanics, and then putting those effects under different spells, instead of over years comming up new spells with new effects and then inventing new mechanics for each of them.

Also there are magic users other than wizards you know (not that wizards aren't tied for strongest class in the game), Some of the priest buffs are kind of ridiculous. Crowns + Devotions for the Faithful especially, and then when you are done turning your party members into gods you can throw down Storm of Holy Fire and burn everything on the screen.

And would you please change it back? " Boreal Dwarves gain Hunter's Instincts, granting additional Accuracy against creatures of the Wilder and Beast types. " - Sawyer: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66080-races/?p=1468913 Yes there is the obvious reason of dragons, which would probably make a +15 bonus to strong, but wouldn't nerfing it to a +10 vs beasts and wilder have been preferable? A bonus vs. animals certainly makes more sense for an ability called hunters insticts than a bonus vs. oozes. That would cover about half the hard fights in the game with a bonus slightly less than twice as strong as the wood-elf bonus (less since they also get reflex and deflection) which applies to all fights so seems fair. It would give us a third top-tier race up there with Wood Elves and Moon Godlikes.

So for a barb going for maximum damage without using consumables: Gwisk Glass (Durgan Enhanced, 0 recovery penalty) + Vulnerable attack & Durgan Enhanced Shield (5% penalty), gauntlets (15% bonus) speed enchanted durgan weapon (35% bonus) and Frenzy (33% bonus) would get you to 78% bonus, or *0.22 recovery while still ignoring 5 DR. Doing the same with a non-speed weapon would get you *0.42 recovery, making you attack (1.84/1.44) 1.28 times slower, but probably weapon choice and enchantments will get you bonuses worth more than a 28% increase in attack speed, especially with Speed taking up room for 2 enchantments. It feels like it not truly incredible unless you can stack it all the way to 0% recovery, which seems to require potions or being a wizard. And if you are a wizard it means you cant use your stupidly powerfull summoned weapons. Dual-wield barbarian should be able to get there too with Frenzy (20 + 33 + 15 +35), but thats without Vulnerable Attack. Gods help you if obsidian throws in enemies with retaliate attacks though.

From what its saying it works by adding and suptracting percentages, so minus 50% for the plate plus 33% for Frenzy would leave you at -17%, and then 15% from durgan enhanced would get you to -2%. Recovery penalty and attack speed basically work on the same 'track', so 20% attack speed always counters 20% recovery penalty, while dex is entirely seperate.

I like Avellones writing (Lonesome Road is probably the only writing of his I didn't like, well maybe that and the bit with Kreia about the beggar) and love Torment to death, but for linearity and player agency PST is honestly not that much different from PoE. Side quests have 2-3 possible outcomes you choose from, and the main plot has to move through a number of chokes. PST for me stands out on the writing being good and the setting being fantastic, but concerning non-linearity or player choice it wasn't really much different. The interaction with Ravel in the maze is wonderful, but what you do or say there has 0 consequence, you are just clicking your way through the extensive dialogue. Pharod gets his sphere and then he dies, and while you can explore some of your backstory talking to him there are no choices there. Fallout 2 is the only one of the old Black Isle games I'd say was truly non-linear and had lots of player agency, and it does that by having every area in the game be almost completely seperated from everything else so nothing much has consequences outside that area.

So cloth is basically obsolete once you get durgan steel, since robes can also have 0 recovery penalty with it. If it works with shields (from the wording it doesn't, but you cant always trust that) you could even wear Aloths Leather Armor with no recovery penalty, which would be nice for the AoE bonus. Actually even if it doesn't work for spells, it would work for a Barbarian for better carnage AoE with no recovery penalty once you've durgan enhanced the armor and your shield. Maybe just using Gwisk Glass and then using the shield enhancement to offset Vulnerable Attack penalty might be better though, and doesn't require you to use an adra dragon scale for superb.

So for casting, best you can get is 65% (or rather *0.35 recovery time) with Gauntlets of Swift Action + Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, and then just have good Dex on top of that? Or is there some way to decrease casting recovery further that stacks? Does durgan enhancement on armor affect spellcasting recovery (so you could wear robes and still cast spells at full speed) or does it only affect weapon recovery? I guess Minor Avatar isn't as great for casting speed as I thought if you already have good dex, at 22 base increasing to 30 with Minor Avatar is only difference between 1/1.36=0.735 and 1/1.6=0.625 or just 17.6% actual casting speed increase, about a third that of Deleterious Alacrity.

I think I'm going to try this on a barbarian with a draining weapon. Gambeson (+50%) plus Rage (+33%) plus Durgan (+15%) minus armor penalty (-4% with Durgan Enhacement on shield) would get you to +94% which would be almost 3x actual attack speed if I understand this correctly. Using Purgatory for maximum damage and healing.

My computer's actually pretty stable, last i checked it could run OCCT linpack or graphic benchmarks overnight without a problem.

IMO it'd be fine if you were limited to one food bonus per character, just like you are limited to just one resting bonus. Eating lots and lots of food (like you can do now to stack bonuses) could give you a 'stuffed' condition with assorted penalties.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij8tqgbt0ctq092/output_log.txt?dl=0

Buff. Accuracy as debuff is pretty low since it has no +10 or +15 unlike most offensive priest spells and also doesn't seem to get the level-based bonus to accuracy which means it has 29 accuracy less than Shining Beacon at level 14. Edit: Well that's what it says, but now I actually tested it and it seems it actually has incredible accuracy. Mouseover says 68 but combat log says 130, which is a bit of a difference. So maybe using it as debuff is a good idea after all. OTOH the spell is really buggy for me for some reason so could just be something wrong on my end.

I certainly hope we wont get just another town but for some reason every city-guard and ruffian is an appropriate encounter for level 17+ characters, and spellcasters in every street corner are throwing 9th level spells. Preferably a high-level adventure should be set somewhere where an abundance of high-level threats feels at least a little bit plausible. Maybe the living lands? Its described as being full of giant nasty dangerous beasts. Or some other more out-there locale.

I'm almost certain they've planned to have PoE 2 to continue following the same watcher we played in PoE 1. For one thing the +1 Dex bonus from Skaen that you can get after the final fight seems kind of pointless if it's not planned that you're going to be able to import your character into PoE 2. One problem for PoE 2 is what level to start the character if its a continuation of PoE 1. With BG 2 the difference between base BG1 xp cap and Tales of the Sword Coast xp cap wasn't that significant, but for Pillars it'll be level 12 vs level 16 which is a huge difference. Also what will they do with caster progression? Starting at level 16 casters would get 9th level spells on their first level-up in PoE 2, and then pressumably only getting more talents and spells becomming per-encounter on level-up untill level 25 when they'd have 9th level spells per-encounter and then get nothing but accuracy/deflection/endurance on odd-numbered level-ups. Certainly they wouldn't be hurting for power but maybe some people would find not getting any 'new stuff' other than talents for the entire game unsatisfying?

Have reinstalled and verified. Savegame where it happens for me: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ee3bd65mtsnwrt/489b69f86b584ae8a591e429c0b9bf73%207664341%20Encampment.savegame?dl=0 Also here's a shadowplay recording to prove I'm not insane: https://youtu.be/C1CcibpGOgw?t=25

I tried it again hiring a new monk on another save, after re-installing and verifying, this time without using the console for xp and got the same result. Here's two saves, one just before hiring a new monk and one after a few retrains: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ka5idjthdncy4kk/59e276c78acc44f385b4c00a1c9ab83b%2019614787%20TheBlackHound.savegame?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqfyinhtsr3f4h9/59e276c78acc44f385b4c00a1c9ab83b%2019615409%20TheBlackHound.savegame?dl=0 I'm not running any mods of any kind. Running 2.03, though saves are from games started during earlier versions. Here's an output log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ij8tqgbt0ctq092/output_log.txt?dl=0

No, if I did that it wouldn't have seemed like a bug.

IMO Expert Mode is really just a bad UI and I would turn it off.

Isn't PoE's perspective* about what we had for Fallout 1 & 2? The perspective* in Pillars hasn't bothered me one bit controling my party, and it provides a nicer view of the scenery. *Well not technically a perspective since its a projection rather than a POV.