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Epsilon Rose
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Posts posted by Epsilon Rose
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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.
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.
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I don't think cc in place of a tank, unless you're willing to rest constantly.
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 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.
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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.
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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.
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In order to get the numbers you are looking for it is necessary to record combat (using a 3rd-party program) and then manually count the frames between attacks. This process would have to be repeated for each weapon configuration you wanted to compare. I haven't done it myself, but I imagine it's a fair bit of work.
If you poke around the forum you may be able to find some people who have done this, and you may be able to read about their comparisons and make a decision based on that information. Or, you may not find information that specifically applies to your situation, in which case that effort would be wasted. For example: Dexterity and the armor you are wearing affect your dps, so even if you find a comparison of the weapon configurations you are interested in, that comparison may be taking place at a different Dexterity than you have or while wearing different armor.
Another complicating factor is that dps will be affected by the enemy's damage reduction, which is different for different enemies. So, unless you're going to test (or calculate) your dps for every possible damage reduction value and then switch weapon sets to the optimum one for each specific foe, the effort you put into precise dps calculations won't necessarily give you the information you need to make the "right" choice of weapon configurations.
The alternative is the less rigorous method of trying out different things and picking the one(s) that seems best. It may not get you hard numbers, but it will (probably) take less time and effort. I imagine it is a question of whether you feel compelled to be "the best", or can cope with merely being "good enough".
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.
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You don't really need to shoot your monk to generate wounds, just make sure he engages at least one guy, then if that one guy isn't generating wounds fast enough, force a disengagement attack. If you are fighting two guys, judge how fast you are taking damage, if it's to fast then blow one of them away with force of anguish. If you end up fighting 3 guys, you need to have your party CC one too (unless they are relatively weak in comparison to your monk), but CC from your party is why you have a party so I don't see the issue here. Monks require a lot of micromanagement, it's just that kind of class, if you don't like to micromanage characters then monk isn't the class for you. There are party synergies you can use with monk, a pale elf reflexes monk for example, put him in front of your wizards and use them to fry the enemies engaged with your monk and generate wounds at the same time.
I only play on hard, I can't speak for PotD, but I notice people commenting on monk accuracy, monk isn't a low accuracy class so if accuracy is an issue then it's an issue with PotD. On hard I always group buff accuracy with my priest as a battle starts, it just makes the fight that much faster, and my monk abilities don't miss. I imagine on PotD you have to do this even more, there is a tier 4 priest spell for example that adds +20 accuracy and reduces foe accuracy by +20, it's huge. It seems like buffing/debuffing is the key to fictory there. But I honestly don't think this discussion should be about PotD, it, as others have said, it isn't balanced.
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.
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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?
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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.
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Shouldn't you have already gotten the wizard who also has way more abilities than a ranger?
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You don't really need to shoot your monk to generate wounds, just make sure he engages at least one guy, then if that one guy isn't generating wounds fast enough, force a disengagement attack. If you are fighting two guys, judge how fast you are taking damage, if it's to fast then blow one of them away with force of anguish. If you end up fighting 3 guys, you need to have your party CC one too (unless they are relatively weak in comparison to your monk), but CC from your party is why you have a party so I don't see the issue here. Monks require a lot of micromanagement, it's just that kind of class, if you don't like to micromanage characters then monk isn't the class for you. There are party synergies you can use with monk, a pale elf reflexes monk for example, put him in front of your wizards and use them to fry the enemies engaged with your monk and generate wounds at the same time.
I only play on hard, I can't speak for PotD, but I notice people commenting on monk accuracy, monk isn't a low accuracy class so if accuracy is an issue then it's an issue with PotD. On hard I always group buff accuracy with my priest as a battle starts, it just makes the fight that much faster, and my monk abilities don't miss. I imagine on PotD you have to do this even more, there is a tier 4 priest spell for example that adds +20 accuracy and reduces foe accuracy by +20, it's huge. It seems like buffing/debuffing is the key to fictory there. But I honestly don't think this discussion should be about PotD, it, as others have said, it isn't balanced.
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.
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yes the problem to me is not that the class is weak or something, but it has a problem. All classes, when they get higher level spells, they're good to have. But in the case of chanters, the higher level phrases are not useful as they take longer to chant, thus delaying the real important incantations. So for most people, it's better to just use the same 3 level 1 phrases they got from the beginning of the game. That is bad design IMHO.
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.
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Alright, I don't know how my monk compares to my cipher because I often use cipher for CC, I know how he compares to druids though whom I exclusively use for damage, and other melee classes whom I often use for damage, compared to pretty much everything but barb retaliation builds (which are broken as all hell) monk is performing great.
Ok, so how much micro does your monk see versus your other characters? If it's significantly more, than that could also skew things.
Yeah, IMHO any issues with the Monk and PotD are systemic of accuracy being removed from attributes late in the backer beta. Whiffing abilities is punishing enough, but abilities that require wounds are doubly so. I don't think anyone should expect knock backs, prone, stun etc to work consistently on PotD though.
The problem I have is people on these forums are saying "The Monk is bad." This is flat out untrue. If your only considering the highest difficulty then say so. However, claiming the class doesn't work as a blanket statement isn't helping anyone.
@The Josip
1) no more a liability than a melee Cipher, or other frontline squishes. The class requires positioning.
2). Don't move in with tanks, and you won't get aggro from the bulk of enemies. If you get focused use AoE CC from a caster. If you don't get aggro you can use your other characters to hit the monk. I use an archer to pop the monk once or twice to generate quick wounds, or (post level 9) Thrust of tattered veils is per encounter, or aim the AoEs so they hit the monk (not big damage AoE, but lighter damage ones). Not having enemies attack you doesn't mean you can't have wounds. It just turns into a cost vs rewards scenario. What will do more damage? That per encounter thrust of tattered veils, or 2 Torment's Reach on the cluster around the tank?
3). Fair.
4). Enervating Blows + a Rogue in party. FoA can push mobs into AoEs. It may not have a lot of synergy, but it can be made to have some. I have used my monk, with 0 wounds, as my archer's pin cushion in order to proc Rooting Pain + Use those wounds for Torment's Reach to kill the remaining enemies around my tank.
All of this is in hard difficulty. I won't argue the class's value in PotD, but I think that is an issue with PotD moreso than the Monk class itself. Especially after attribute changes in BB.
Class is great. You just have to play it a good bit different than any other class.
For number 2, aren't you effectively arguing that you should decrease the dps of another class so the monk can function?
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yes the problem to me is not that the class is weak or something, but it has a problem. All classes, when they get higher level spells, they're good to have. But in the case of chanters, the higher level phrases are not useful as they take longer to chant, thus delaying the real important incantations. So for most people, it's better to just use the same 3 level 1 phrases they got from the beginning of the game. That is bad design IMHO.
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.
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Barb and Cipher need dat' nerf bat.
Oh and I've read all the Pro Monk posts, those numbers are very underwhelming. They still need love. The game is easy enough for that not to matter much, but this is a class balance thread not a difficulty balance thread.
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.
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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.
I do think obsidian a play how you want / avoid fights if you want / xp is quest based is a bit undermined by the fact that if you want to afford shinies from merchants then you will want to slaughter everything in sight. Take Raederics (sp?) hold for example... I could don the disguises and avoid combat and wind up with the same xp... Or I could butcher anything that moves and walk out of there 20k richer.
Yeah, that was not particularly well thought out on their part; which is silly, because it's a fairly obvious problem.
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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.
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"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."
D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.
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.
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Low is less than 25%.
Finishing Blow has its own unique set of rules to it. I think it starts adding some damage around
66%target health, but I'm looking for the breakpoint chart.EDIT:
Can't find it. You figure that kind stuff would be in the manual, right? But that's crazy talk.It is in the manual... I must be tired.45% Health: +65% Damage35% Health: +95% Damage25% Health: +125% Damage15% Health: +155% Damage5% Health: +185% DamageIt would be a solid choice for a per encounter ability. At 3 per rest it's kinda unexciting... would be cool if the effect had a duration, like 8 seconds... at the very least it should be a full attack.In its defense, there's really no limit to the number of times you can camp in this game, but playing that way would be too tedious for me.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.
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"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."
D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.
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?
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Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?
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.
So... getting back to PoE...
I think arcane veil and mirror image are just fine. With hardened veil, you get like a +50 deflection to defense, making your wizard just as tough as a fighter.
The problem is, as the OP said, it sucks having to use valuable time within the fight to cast these buffs. If only we could buff a little before going in...
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.
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Rangers dont need much to fix them.. the problem is they dont feel like masters of range... the rogue does...
How to fix Rangers?
My idea
Default passive ability
Measured Placement
Affinity and experiance with ranged weapons gives Rangers an almost supernatural ability to get the best out of a ranged weapon, and to do so from what appear to be the worst possible s h o t s.
PS-why is the forums censoring the word S h o t s.
Effect
When a ranged weapon rolls lowest possible damage it automaticly becomes a Max roll for the ranger.
Effects?
Pistol 22-30
Every other class has a 1/9 chance of rolling 30 damage.
Ranger has a 2/9 chance of rolling 30 damage.
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).
About the chanter, isn't it weird that they would be one of the worst classes if not for their summons? The latest patch having crippled their most interesting buffs actually made me wonder if people would even use one if they nerfed his summons too.
You could stick them in your party as passive support for other classes that actually do things or to help interupt enemies.
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well, weapon damage isn't that high, and the ranges are fairly limited, so if they just say, doubled the health of all enemies on hard mode and above, that alone wold make fights last longer, and require much more tactical thinking, and make the pacing of the chanters fit much better into your battle plans.
if you EXPECT your average fight to last say, 6-10 turns, you know that your chanter is always going to get at least one invoke in there, and you can really plan your chants with much better tactical sense.
seriously, having played this game for days now, the easiest thing to fix a ton of complaints would simply be to add more health to everything.
That might cause a problem with per day resources. I mean, assuming you care about resting...
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Do Bards cast spells as powerful as Wizards, Sorcerers, or Clerics in D&D?
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.
You have to look at the whole picture.
Chanters get the best combat stats out of any spellcaster. The fact they can't cast in rapid succession cuts both ways - they are also barely hampered by high Recovery, so are very comfortable in heavy armour. Infinite spells in battles, and the resource charges by itself almost always - I think Terrified or Paralyzed might interfere with that.
You also conveniently omit phrases, some of which are quite powerful, like 10 frost/shock Damage Reduction for free (you don't even spend time casting it!).
My current party leans on the side of glass cannons, even Eder. His only concessions to defense is Vigorous Defense and a large shield in one weapon set, often switched for a 2-hander, he wears medium armor and has 70+ deflection at level10. My typical opener is two Knockdowns (one from fox). Fights rarely last long enough for a level2 Invocation now, and when they do it's sure nice to revive my glass cannons or summon ogres. My glass cannons have a Plan B.
Chanter gets bonuses to Lore, so if you wish you can cast spells, just from scrolls. A wizard or priest doesn't necessarily gain much from Lore, it doesn't expand his options and he doesn't have that much time to use scrolls anyway. A chanter uses an Invocation only once in a while, he has free time to smack stuff or use scrolls.
Everyone can do melee in my team, even Durance smacks shades with Whispers of Yewwood, has Aggrandizing Radiance and I'm about to pick up another talent for a total of +16 Sword accuracy. I'm not limited by HP of my tanks, I rotate my wounded. Eder is a competent Adventurer, so he can pull back and shoot stuff with the wand proccing Jolting Touch (Bloody Mess talent helps). So in a party like this even a chanter can fit many roles based on circumstances. Try holding a line with a priest or wizard. A druid just might, if he casts Nature's Terror.
Your scaling as a chanter is more powerful phrases. Level3 phrases can be used at the start of a fight, with no waiting. They still power up your resource.
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.
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like some others noted... since chanters can basically do anything and still chant, I use mine as my scroll user.
you can make and find and buy a myriad of VERY powerful scrolls in this game, both offensive and defensive, but typically most of your characters are attacking, or shooting, or casting a spell.
but your chanter.... has both hands free.
give them a decent lore skill, and fill their pockets with scrolls.
then there is no need to wait for their invocation, you can have them "invoking" every turn if you want. even cheap scrolls can be very valuable in battle.
I suppose it takes a bit more micromanagement than a lot of folks would like, but I find it adds a lot of variablity to the game that I personally enjoy.
plus, Kana almost always has some off color remark to make everywhere you go.
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.
Does secondary (elemental) damage ignore elemental damage reduction?
in Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Huh. That is both interesting and annoying. That would make Flames of Devotion much worse on a blunderbuss, right?