[Barbarian Wild Sprint = Swift?]

So why make it so complicated to split Wild Sprint bonus into two? The only reason I can see here is to make Wild Sprint slight better than just pure Swift because the immune to engagement part cannot be encountered.

 

I assumed this was exactly the answer.

[The Black Jacket (and the increase of proficiency points)]

I think the secret is that the Black Jacket is actually bad, was bad before this change and will continue to be bad afterwards, because the benefit is marginal relative to the loss of constant recovery.

[Josh Sawyer's tweets and teasers, part 2]

 

 

Here are all the Companion and Sidekick multiclass options. 

 

Sweet that Pallegina gets Herald and Crusader options.

 

Edit:  Subclasses not included, with the exception of Fassina (whose Conjurer subclass is probably mentioned because he revealed that in a different post earlier today).  We already know that all the new-in-Deadfire companions have at least 1 unique subclass, but they're not mentioned here.

 

Edit2:  Seemed significant enough for its own thread, so I made one. 

So Eder can become a high-ranking Eothasian at the end of the PoE and can't multiclass as a priest of Eothas in Deadfire? Weird.

 

Not every single religious person is a priest.

 

Potentially even the MC, as there's a clergy background which doesn't require playing a priest.

[Companion/Sidekick Class Options Revealed]

Wael/Nalpazca really does seem like the secret best combination RP-wise.

 

So all companions/sidekicks (except one) cannot have subclasses and the one exception must be a subclass.

 

No. Most companions have their own unique subclasses they have to be. Eder and Aloth seem to be the exceptions, in that they have to be the base class (and potentially all the Ys in X+Y have to be the base class too). Maia's a gunhawk, Teheku's got a unique subclass for both his base classes, Pallegina's presumably either a Five Suns Palladin or a Kind Wayfarer, Serafen's a wild mind if you make him a cipher (not sure about whether he also has a unique barbarian subclass), Xoti's either a priest of Gaun or a sister of the reaping moon.

 

I don't think we know about the sidekicks beyond Fessina.

[Anyone tried a Barbarian/Ranger build.]

Also armor rating can be good (Stalker gets a bonus that stacks with barbarian's passive armor bonuses.

 

Berserker/Stalker's even better for AR, because the AR boosts from the barbarian's passive, the AR boost from companion bond and the +2 from frenzy all stack.

[Companion/Sidekick Class Options Revealed]

Hmmm...

 

For my first run, I'm probably going:

 

MC - female wild orlan - White that Wends - either pure stalker or stalker/berserker

Aloth - pure wizard

Eder - fighter/rogue

Xoti - pure priest

 

Then either:

 

Serafen - either pure cipher or cipher/barbarian (if I go pure stalker)

OR

Ydwin - pure cipher

 

It's tempting to hold Serafen back for an all faction companion playthrough (aka maximum backbiting and conflict) and just make the first playthrough #godsquad.

 

Second playthrough:

 

MC - male mountain dwarf - Old Valia - pure priest of Wael (with the obvious headcannon he's putting all these directly opposed people together to troll them)

Teheku - pure druid

Palagina - herald

Maia - scout

then either Serafen (barbarian) or Rekke as a brawler

[Customizing companions in POE2]

I'm almost certain you'll be able to level them from lvl 1, you could in Pillars. All that was set was their starting ability. Every level up after that you had full control. The devs giving their level 1 abilities gives them authorial control to ensure they have skills that they have to have for narrative reasons.

[The Black Jacket (and the increase of proficiency points)]

That also depends on the average enemies' AR.

 

Surely it depends on the range, not the average. The AR piercing weapons are inherently situational. Perhaps you can mop up basically everything with the greatsword, but if the one thing that's left is the massive titan with the high AR you're doing 30% damage against, that's the estoc's time to shine.

 

The average AR might be 5 in that encounter, but it's the max AR that actually matters for the weapon choice/switching.

[The Black Jacket (and the increase of proficiency points)]

 

I believe what hurts the Black Jacket is the way armor penetration rating works with weapons, and the result is there is very little reason to switch weapons.  A Full Penetration strike (penetration value twice that of the armor rating) yields a 30% damage boost.  In additional, attacks with an insufficient penetration rating receives from 25% to 75% damage reduction.  

 

With those two factors in mind, now compare weapons with high penetration versus weapons with low(er) penetration rating.  Generally, I found that weapons with higher penetration rating values typically have lower actual damage, whereas low(er) penetration rating weapons typically have higher damage values.  For example, an estoc has a pen rating of 10 and a damage rating of 18-26, whereas a greatsword has a penetration rating of 6 and a damage rating of 26-32.    

 

One would expect the difference in damage values would strike a balance, but an estoc really is the safer bet.  With an estoc, you have an better chance to reach a full penetration strike with an estoc (30% increased damage), and less of a risk running into a damage penalty for insufficient penetration rating.  A full penetration strike practically mitigates the damage difference between estoc and the greatsword.   Arguably, you could stack enough armor penetration from other sources to make greatswords a superior choice, but you would need meta-game knowledge of enemy armor values in advance to make that decision.  

 

Other than to equip a weapon with an even higher penetration rating, why switch weapons?  Just stack armor penetration for consistent 30% increased damage.  Consequently, I truly believe removing that full penetration strike would help even the weapons out.  Reduced damage is more than enough reason to switch weapons, why snowball the need for armor penetration rating with a 30% damage buff?        

 

Edit:  Also, I do not know if there is a reason to ever not want to dual-wield weapons, but that may be another discussion.  

 

You know that the overpenetration bonus is an addtive right? So if you are a rogue doing sneak attack with an exceptional weapon, you actually don't get +30% damage, but something like +10% from overpenetration. So with the low base damage of high penetration weapon, it becomes totally meaningless to use them.

 

If they don't change overpenetraion bonus to a seperate multiplier bonus, imo there is NO reason to use high pen weapons like war hammer and estoc.

 

Apart from the fact that they'll be the weapons actually penetrating the high AR enemies?

[Is there a map of Deadfire Archipelago?]

And yet there is a reward of a detailed Deadfire map in the Ultimate Digital FIG version of the game.

 

There's also a pdf of the guidebook, and the if you read the first guidebook before playing the game, you could guess half the plot points in advance.

[Empower - Babe put in a corner]

I use empower constantly, on all my characters. I actually can't imagine not using it. Empowered Minoletta spells are incredible, and an empowered full attack with a melee is generally worth it (empowered accurate wounding shot is great). Never used it to restore resources, because I actually haven't had to. I've complained about its terrible documentation, and I stand by that, but it is powerful. Empowered melee abilities get increased base PEN and damage, for example.

 

Besides, every character gets two empowers per rest, not point only using it on the casters.

 

(Personally, I'd make it one per encounter per character rather than tieing it into the vestigal resting system, but it is what it is on that front.)

[Beta Speed Mod]

Btw, a question regarding weapons base damage balancing.

 

I see two ways:

v1. all weapon groups have same dps: 2H == DW_FAST == DW_SLOW == 1H_FAST == 1H_SLOW. And in this case Primary and Full attacks are adjusted in order to make all options somewhat equal. And ideally you can take anything, but the choice won't matter much.

v2. all weapon groups shine in some of their respective domain. For example fast weapons are best for plain auto-attacking. 2H for Primary Attack. DW_SLOW for Full Attack. But roughly they are ~20-30% atmost apart from each other in efficiency. And it's up to the player to figure out which is better suiting his concrete build.

 

Thoughts?)

 

Personally I think v2 is more interesting, but conceptually harder to explain to newbies.

[Beta Speed Mod]

Maybe single class melee classes are simply bad, but currently with the modded veteran, my wizard does 3x more damage than anyone else. Kalakoth's Minor Blights is really effective with 1.5 cast time - it was effecting even with a default cast time, though I am not a fan of waiting for my weapon to spawn.

 

I don't know how you're playing your wizard (this is more of a thing for non-conjuration focused wizards), but empowered spells are borderline broken at the moment, they're so powerful. To the extent that I don't know what people are talking about saying casters are underpowered. They utterly destroy melee at group damage and compete (though probably don't match) it at single target damage. Empower is basically limitless, as if you're getting about one character going down per fight (which, considering I'm bad at the game, on veteran I am), you'll be resting about as often than you run out.

[Is there a map of Deadfire Archipelago?]

Though, of course, in a game about exploration, the world map is potentially a massive spoiler in and of itself.

[The Black Jacket (and the increase of proficiency points)]

If it were me, I'd have given them a flat damage/pen bonus for x seconds after switching weapons and offset it with a damage/pen penalty for not having switched weapons in y seconds, with x<y.

 

To keep it in theme, you could even make it so you only get the bonus/avoid the malus if the weapon you're switching to falls under a different proficiency to the weapon you were using before.

[Question for people with beta access (about multiclassing)]

 

Berath/Stalker would be pretty good since you can consider Lash and Wounding as two different multiplier. Berath offers a good summon weapon that gives 50% lash while wounding shot gives 60%+ wounding damage.

 

In summary, 50 lash + 60 wounding > 50 lash + 60 lash.

 

So I can see that I have even more to consider. ^^ 

 

What about multiclassing fighter with rogue? Any good combos? Especially for tanking/mechanics.

 

 

Devoted/Streetfighter with the hatchet specialisation makes a good tank/DPS combo. I imagine Unbroken/Streetfighter would be good too. Riposte, powering up and reducing incoming damage as more people engage, flanking anyone they engage with. I'm definitely making Eder a fighter/rogue.

[Your perfect world state for PoE2 (NEW QUESTIONS UPDATE!)]

Llengrath seems to have her/their **** together more than most.

 

She's still part of a creepy bog cult that traps people and "improves" them by rewriting their minds. Giving her the phylactory seems like the least wise thing it's possible to do in the game.

[Your perfect world state for PoE2 (NEW QUESTIONS UPDATE!)]

Poor Rymrgand. Forever misunderstood. He's the more morally questionable Eoran Bhudda.

 

Llengrath

What's with these tied scores lately? Kill or pact, it seems there is no major preference, but killing seems to take the slight lead. For a bunch of do-gooders you really like to kill a lot of people.

 

Super-powered mages are best uprooted whenever you find them. It almost never ends well.

[Customizing companions in POE2]

Knowing how Josh feels about ability scores, I am going to predict that they will be set in stone.

 

I for one would love it if everything about the character, aside from their race & appearance, was customizable.

 

At the very least we need to be able to customise their starting talents.

 

Given they already have limited classes, I'd be completely unsurprised if their level 1 talents are fixed for those classes.

[Josh Sawyer's tweets and teasers]

A side effect of that many proficiencies (1 every third level) is: of what use is the increased number of proficiencies the Black Jacket has?

 

Might be worth pointing this out to in the backer beta forum. It's entirely feasible that that's just not occured to them.

[Odd injuries during Wind-swept Shrine scripted interaction]

It's an issue with scripted interactions generally at the moment. It lists buffs as injuries. When you eat the mushroom the delemgan gives you north of Tikawara, the same thing happens. If you mouse over the supposed "injury" on the scripted interaction screen (the star on each character's portrait) it actually shows a stat boost.

[Ranger and pet discovered at different rates in stealth]

It appears that the ranger pet and the ranger themselves have different rates of detection when stealthed. I'd assumed they shared a stealth score, is that wrong? If so, where is the pet's stealth score shown?

 

(Bonus guess at what's happening: the ranger is using their own score plus the party bonus, the pet is just using the raw ranger score.)

 

Edit:

 

Test times:

 

Zaurip detection time ranger: 1:22.

Zaurip detection time pet: 0:05.

 

Okay, that's way beyond raw vs. derived. Are pets using the ranger base? (i.e. 2)

[Reputations and Factions]

Maybe they're not important enough to have tracked opinion of you. Alas.

 

I wonder more what the infinity snake faction is. I don't think they're been talked about, but they're put at the same importance as the other 4.

[Gimme your best and gimme your worst!]

Oh, and while I think of it, one more worst in the system that I otherwise really like:

 

Some subclasses are terrible - Specifically Mage Slayer and all the wizard subclasses but Evoker. The negatives all massively outweight the benefits. I'm sure there are other subclasses that suffer the same issue, but they're the only one's I've specifically touched. They either need a reduction in malus or a dramatic increase in bonus.

[Is there any chance equipment from the first game will reappear in PoE2?]

Weapon wise, I'm expecting the Blade of the Endless Paths (if you forged it) and the Disappointer to return in some form, perhaps Abydon's Hammer too. Beyond that, I doubt anything except Concelhaut's phylactory will come back.