Epsilon Rose

Huh. That is both interesting and annoying. That would make Flames of Devotion much worse on a blunderbuss, right?

This is only a serious impediment to gameplay if you insist that all your characters are perfect from the very first time you play. Accept that perfection is impossible, make choices that are interesting to you, play the game, try different things, make mistakes, learn from them, make better choices, and so on. If you calculate the optimum choice for every decision that the game presents to you before you play it then the game will hold no challenge for you and there will be no point to playing it. The journey is more precious than the destination. It's not about being able to calculate everything perfectly in advance, it's about learning. Without proper information, how do I guage how well something is working? Did my tank die because my tacktics were bad and I didn't support it enough? Was it's defense not high enough? Was it simply not doing enough damage? Even if I win, could I have done better if I had a different weapon? I don't know and I don't have an easy or intuitive way to find out. Even the battle log and pause on inefective isn't a particularly good tool, because it pauses when the enemy makes an inefective attack (why would I care about that enough to want a pause?). There are too many factors to simply try every permutation and see what works best in a feasible amount of time or at a reasonable skill level and to many degrees of success or failure for that to give you good informaiton anyways.

I have to disagree. With a well equipped tank or two you can pretty much bring whatever you want in the remaining four slots, or you could solo if you want. You could probably just ignore tanks too and just rely more on cc and pure damage output instead.I don't think cc in place of a tank, unless you're willing to rest constantly.

I don't have a problem with the temple being a place you have to come back to, but party comp does feel a lot more rigid than I'd like. I feel like I always need a tank, always need someone to heal (hello priest), need at least 1 form of aoe or cc, and everyone else is some form of ranged dps or near melee dps.

After watching the npc paladin drop an enemy with one shot from a pistol + flames and getting a look at her available talents, I got it into my head that it might be interesting to make a ranged paladin that uses the biggest weapon they can find to deal massive spike damage. At the same time, I was also getting pretty annoyed with how similar my parties were beginning to look, so I thought I'd use a fire-godlike barbarian as a front line. So far, things seem to be working well, but with how much information the game hides, there's a few things I'm unsure about when it comes to figuring out where I want to go with them. I'll start with the barbarian, because I think she's the simplest. Right now, she's using frenzy+carnage and a fine two-handed sword to hold the front line. However, I'm not sure what type of setup I want her to have going forward, let alone what type of weapon. Is she better off with a two-hander? Dual-wielding? Sword and board? Should I be going for fast, slow or average weapons? For my paladin, I have two questions: First, what kind of weapon does the most damage on a single shot? My intuition says it'll either be the blunderbus or the not!rifle, but I'm not actually sure about that or which I should go with. I'm also not sure about the talent that causes fear on kill. Does it proc around her or the enemy she killed? Also, how hard is it to consistently last hit? If it matters, my party comp is as follows: The barbarian takes point. Durance follows immediately behind her to provide support and usually opens with that wide area per-encounter daze. Aloath comes in a little behind them and mostly does cc with a bit of aoe damage. Immediately behind him is a firing line consisting of Kana, the paladin, and Mother, with the paladin using the acc+crit aura.

This is one of my problems with PoE. I have no real way to gauge how much a character is contributing or how good their build is, outside of things like spells, with any degree of precision. This makes it really hard to improve or plan out new builds. There really needs to be a base line dps calculator or a way to figure it out.

I think you missed my point about micro. Most, if not all, of the classes seem to perform significantly better if they're heavily microed. As such, if you are comparing the damage of a monk that is heavily microed to a druid that isn't heavily microed, you are not making a valid comparison, just like how if you're comparing the damage of a dps monk to a cc cypher, you're not making a useful comparison. And you are just assuming that I micro my monk more than I micro my druid, and nothing I say will convince you otherwise, so it's really pointless to argue. I didn't assume anything. I've asked several times now and each time you've refused to answer. What I am starting to assume is that you're more interested in proving your point than honest analysis.

Ah. So is that what happened to my two grimoires and my blunderbus (I really don't want to shell out for one when I should already have it). This is annoying. Have the devs made any comments about fixing it?

It's another hold over from D&D. In 3.5, at least, it made a tiny bit more sense, since wizard spells tended to be a bit better and clerics/druids still had to prepare spells per day (so it wasn't like they got to go into combat with everything available). It would be a bigger handicap if there were more good spells per level, but as it stands it's basically just a bit of a gold sink.

Shouldn't you have already gotten the wizard who also has way more abilities than a ranger?

I think you missed my point about micro. Most, if not all, of the classes seem to perform significantly better if they're heavily microed. As such, if you are comparing the damage of a monk that is heavily microed to a druid that isn't heavily microed, you are not making a valid comparison, just like how if you're comparing the damage of a dps monk to a cc cypher, you're not making a useful comparison.

It isn tbh. I can quite easily live with 20 seconds of my speed chant/fortitude chant to get out two ogres then switch to my aoe Fire nuke. Its just tactical. TBH i wish other highlevel spells came with similar consequences, because it keeps the lower level spells more competitive. I think the problem is that most classes dont need to min max or make any real choice strategically, as a wiz or druid you unload you high level spells first and work down, as a chanter you have to make a choice about faster invocations with weak chants, or slower invocations with more powerful chants.IMO chanters realllly shine in longer fights Sure, but how often do you have those longer fights where you can use a longer song to power down an enemy and then take advantage of weaker songs to power an invocation? In my experience, fights barely last long enough to get out a first level song with first level phrases. On it's own, the chanter may not have a bad design, but the rest of the game isn't built in a way that allows that design to work. Yeah they definitely get stronger the longer a fight lasts but that does not make them good or balanced, IMO. If every, or most, fight(s) lasted a while, instead of being over in less than a minute, than it would be fine. Unfortunately, that's not how PoE works.

Ok, so how much micro does your monk see versus your other characters? If it's significantly more, than that could also skew things. For number 2, aren't you effectively arguing that you should decrease the dps of another class so the monk can function?

It isn tbh. I can quite easily live with 20 seconds of my speed chant/fortitude chant to get out two ogres then switch to my aoe Fire nuke. Its just tactical. TBH i wish other highlevel spells came with similar consequences, because it keeps the lower level spells more competitive. I think the problem is that most classes dont need to min max or make any real choice strategically, as a wiz or druid you unload you high level spells first and work down, as a chanter you have to make a choice about faster invocations with weak chants, or slower invocations with more powerful chants.IMO chanters realllly shine in longer fights Sure, but how often do you have those longer fights where you can use a longer song to power down an enemy and then take advantage of weaker songs to power an invocation? In my experience, fights barely last long enough to get out a first level song with first level phrases. On it's own, the chanter may not have a bad design, but the rest of the game isn't built in a way that allows that design to work.

On hard my monk consistently outputs more than any other class I've played, without excessive knockouts. I don't use things I consider broken so that statement doesn't count certain barb builds, but it does include ciphers because I always use them, though usually for control. Some people I guess are just going to keep theorycrafting about how bad monks are until they get buffed, then they'll be OP, people will realize they were great in the first place, and they'll get nerfed as a result. I'm not really looking forward to the process tbh. Give monk a try for a full playthrough, and you'll realize he's just fine how he is. Just a hint, don't build him as a tank or a glass cannon. Try dual sabers + torment's reach if you really want something fun. Does it really make sense to talk about how much damage a monk does vs. another class if you're explicitly not using that class for damage? Similarly, how much do you micro your monk vs your other characters? That seems to be a rather telling indicator for which character does the most damage.

So, two related quesiton: How is shop inventory handled? Does it refresh at certain intervals or do you eventually lose access to some shops? How are Taxes Vs. Bandits actually handled? Right now, I'm getting basically nothing from taxes, due to bandits, but I've also heard stories of people spending on hirelings and actually losing lots of money, because hirelings get paid more frequently than taxes and the taxes were only earning them about 1 round of payments. Yeah, that was not particularly well thought out on their part; which is silly, because it's a fairly obvious problem.

You could maybe do it, but it would require some significant re-tooling of the game. I think, it would have to look something like this: Monsters respawn, so if you leave and return, you won't have made any progress. The passage of time matters, so if you're constantly resting you'll be disadvantaging yourself. The ability to gain a full rest in the field (i.e. camping supplies), is rarer or harder to employ. At that point, you could implement short rests in one of 3 ways: 1) you get a limited number between full rests, 2) they don't restore everything a normal rest would, 3) The have diminishing return (e.g. you take HP burn, in addition to damage, and only a full rest clears is). Of course, at that point, the game would play very differently and there'd still be a host of problems endemic to per-rest abilities in a game that doesn't allow you to act on a per-rest scale. This is why I'd rather see the main split be between at-will and per-encounter abilities, with per-rest abilities being outliers for any class.

Can someone link to where the person mentioned hating d&d wizard designs? I keep hearing it said that he hates the old wizard designs but I want to see the context. That said, I preferred the older wizard designs, they were not balanced, but they were not SUPPOSED to be effing balanced. They were not some dude that's kind of fit and can twirl around a metal stick well. They are wielders of COSMIC power, beings that can project elemental energies from their fingertips, beings that can stop time, conjure wish makers, conjure armies of undead and elemental servants as meat shields, harness dragons flames and comets from the heavens, change the rules of nature itself. Of COURSE those classes are going to be more versatile and impressive and powerful than some standard fighter. THAT IS THE POINT !!!!!!!! We want to play as gandalf, not some elf sharp shooter or swordsman. So do not deny us that fantasy. The solution to wizards being powerful is to craft harder battles where even all that power is not enough to hold back the impending hordes alone. Or develop enemies that even a wizard has a harder time defeating where more martial fighters fair better. What is with this "I don't want balance" meme? Yes, all of that is great in a book. Not so much in a game, particularly one with pretentions of difficulty or teamwork. There are ways to do wizards, and make them feel magical and powerful, without unbalancing them and there are ways to design games so wizards have crazy powers, without overshadowing all the other options, but neither of those are what old-school wizards did. Breaking the game, just because it fits your fluff, is not a good thing. It trivializes the game and, if you're playing with other people (like actual D&D), ruins the experience for other players. Even if you're playing on your own, why are you playing a game where you can trivialize every chalange? That's an mmo model of mages where we have to pretend the guy who can incinerate his enemies with a thought is going to have a hard time taking out a warrior, this is a single player party based game, it's ok to have unbalanced characters in terms of power. baldurs gate might have gone a bit overboard with the knock spell where even rogues lock picking skills were redundant, but in terms of bringing destruction to bare there is zero reason a mage should EVER take a back seat to any other class. They are not bound by the constraints of the physical world, by Reality. They are gods among insects, any pretense to the contrary is just massaging the egos of people who prefer to play warriors/rogues as their primary archetype. As if a character that has mastered "stab stab" could EVER hope to match someone who can bring down the fires of heaven. No. No it really isn't and the idea that MMO can be used as a derogatory adjective as if it explains anything is almost as annoying as the "I don't want balance meme." Player classes should be comprable to each other is a basic tenent of game design, as a whole, because disenfranchising more than half of your player base is a bad idea. When wizards can be better than any non-mage class in every catagory, there is no reason to play any of those classes and you have wasted your time in creating them and slieghted your players by pretending they are viable. You have also revealed an unforgivable lack of imagination. Want to see balance done right? Go play a game of Legend. I have a level 16 magic-type character. She can teleport with nearly every possible action. Standard? I summon a tidal wave, everything in a cone takes damage and get's nocked prone and I can move to any point in the cone. Move? I can teleport next to anything that's burning and then open up with my minigun for unavoidable damage, because I felt like it. Swift? Myst aura for miss chance and teleport at the same time. 5-ft step? I'm treating a square on the other side of the map as coterminous; also, you're on fire, deal with it. Except I'm not actually teleporting; what I do is better. I can lift 12 tons of matter telekinetically. I have an array of at-will aoes that would make a sorcerer blush, allowing me to taget any save or damage type and apply nearly any condition in the game. I can raze armies. Tell me that does not fit the immage of a powerful mage. And yet, through all of that insanity, I do not normally overshadow the other players, even the more mundane melee players, because they are good at what they do. We have a fencer who's single target damage is sikening. Give me 4 mobs and I'll dwarf his dpr without even trying, but against a single target? Not a chance. I can regen a significant fracition of my health every round, but I still can't tank damage like our beast man, who can also apply slow just by attacking. My mage can do awesome thing, but so can the people she adventures with. After all, why would she adventure with them otherwise? All classes don't need to be good at all things, but they do need to be at comprable levels of power. You can write a game where mages are handsdown better than mundanes, several good ones already exist, but you better not offer mundanes to the players as an equivilent choice of character, because then you're lying to them and failing at your job as a game designer.

Yup. That's one of the reasons why I don't get how many per rest abilities there are in this game. On one hand, it makes it harder to predict how much power a player will be bringing into any given fight and it makes things harder for the player to use; on the other hand, a player can just rest as often as they want, so they're effectively per-encounter abilities. You're just trading RL fruteration for in-game power, which is never a good design choice, espesially when it's core to the game.

Can someone link to where the person mentioned hating d&d wizard designs? I keep hearing it said that he hates the old wizard designs but I want to see the context. That said, I preferred the older wizard designs, they were not balanced, but they were not SUPPOSED to be effing balanced. They were not some dude that's kind of fit and can twirl around a metal stick well. They are wielders of COSMIC power, beings that can project elemental energies from their fingertips, beings that can stop time, conjure wish makers, conjure armies of undead and elemental servants as meat shields, harness dragons flames and comets from the heavens, change the rules of nature itself. Of COURSE those classes are going to be more versatile and impressive and powerful than some standard fighter. THAT IS THE POINT !!!!!!!! We want to play as gandalf, not some elf sharp shooter or swordsman. So do not deny us that fantasy. The solution to wizards being powerful is to craft harder battles where even all that power is not enough to hold back the impending hordes alone. Or develop enemies that even a wizard has a harder time defeating where more martial fighters fair better. What is with this "I don't want balance" meme? Yes, all of that is great in a book. Not so much in a game, particularly one with pretentions of difficulty or teamwork. There are ways to do wizards, and make them feel magical and powerful, without unbalancing them and there are ways to design games so wizards have crazy powers, without overshadowing all the other options, but neither of those are what old-school wizards did. Breaking the game, just because it fits your fluff, is not a good thing. It trivializes the game and, if you're playing with other people (like actual D&D), ruins the experience for other players. Even if you're playing on your own, why are you playing a game where you can trivialize every chalange?

I actually think veil is a very strong wizard talent and at this point would probably always take it on a custom wizard. It does have two main problems. First, it commits you to spending two talent points. Veil is alright if you take it as your first talent at level 2, but mid-to-late game you need to also grab hardened veil or you may as well not bother. That's impossible to know ahead of time without metagaming. Second, in some sense it's a bad pick for Aloth because he already has blast and it's probably not a great use of points to get both. So without a custom wizard you're not going to see much point in getting veil. That said, after playing a wizard twice I personally believe veil beats all the other wizard-specific talents hands down. * The bonus spells which I took on my first playthrough are not very compelling in retrospect: there's easily obtainable rings of wizardry, strategic planning (ie when to blow your spells and when to rest) is a lot more straightforward once you're used to the game/have played through it before, and the talents come at an awkward time between being really powerful when you first unlock the spell level and being less powerful when the spell level becomes per encounter. I don't think it would break the game to open these up earlier, which would make them slightly harder to turn down. * Grimoire slam, which many people seem to like, is probably the worst option in my opinion. A per encounter damage spell is nice, particularly early game, but the melee range and pushback/disengagement mechanic make it as much a defensive ability as an offensive one. And it's terrible as a defensive ability: it's single target, it has a cast time and can be interrupted, it attacks deflection meaning it fails all the time, and unless you have everything else set up the way you want the enemy will just re-engage. * Blast is actually quite good, particularly with the blights combo, but it's a win more or win faster ability. If damage is actually important you'll be using a spell, not an autoattack. It doesn't help you win a difficult fight or turn a bad situation around; veil can. As a minor note veil complements Crucible of the Soul nicely if the wizard happens to be your main. Veil has no cast or recovery time. (Side note, it's also the only buff I can think of that can be cast out of combat, which is funny because no cast or recovery time means it's also one of the only buffs that doesn't benefit from being castable outside of combat). I wouldn't argue against veil being extremely potent, but I still think it's limited uses and durration are a problem. Most wizards are going to be back line, meaning you don't really need a dedicated defensive tallent, and front line wizards are going to want a more reliable defense, or you'll be resting every two fights. While the other wizard tallents may be less than useful, there are other tallents, in general, that are; for example, the +elemental damage or +acc tallents would both help a wizard and the +defense tallents would give a more consistent, if much smaller, buff to defense than veil.

This would be nice, but I'd also like to seem them pick up mechanics as a bonus. Right now, I find the ranger NPC competing with my rogue adventurer for the ranged DPS slot, but the rogue always wins because I can use her to open things and spot traps (or I will be able to once the bug gets fixed). You could stick them in your party as passive support for other classes that actually do things or to help interupt enemies.

That might cause a problem with per day resources. I mean, assuming you care about resting...

Bards sucked in all older D&D editions, but they're pretty awesome in 5th edition. Bards could be pretty aswome in 3.5 and they had a prc that could give them full casting in 10 levels while also giving them other stuff. I think the "Infinite spells" thing is a bit misleading. While they technically could cast infinite spells, realistically, they're only going to get off one or two before the fights over, and even that's only for the longer fights. Phrase power shouldn't be your only scaling, when it's only half the class and almost completely passive and visually inimpressive.

The problem with that is I'm never very comfortable using consumables and I have no idea what resources are actually worth in PoE or what items/upgrades materials can actually be spent on.