Doppelschwert

There is not much to add to what KDubya already said and reiterated throughout the thread - my opinion aligns perfectly, and for the same reasons. Regarding the argument that this is about roleplaying instead of mechanics: I hope everyone realizes that we still have attributes that give mechanical advantages as well. If you want that extra deflection, attack speed or accuracy to flesh out your character concept, how about putting more points into resolve, dexterity or perception? If those attributes are already high, you don't really need them higher just to differentiate your role, because you already did so through the attributes. And if those attributes are low, you're only trying to game the system, since from a roleplaying perspective, you should not be good at these things in the first place. Most of the roleplaying people here are basically asking for the talents to be able to remove the consequences of their attribute spread, which should actually be much more important in defining the character from a roleplaying perspective.

Let's be real here - would you rather: Have 5 weapon proficiencies, or 2 weapon proficiencies and a boost to reflex, foritude and will? Spend a talent to get a passive upgrade, or a weapon proficiency? I'm pretty sure I know what the answer will be 90% of the time. Besides, the class trees will feel as empty as they did before, because literally nothing changed. In fact, this has just worsened the problem for all the classes with access to those passives, because why would they spent a talent to get them when they could just use a prophiciency instead. It's almost funny, but if people start claiming now that the single classes have been redeemed through this change, they are beyond redemption.

I hope you are all happy now Now everyone can metagame, get a single weapon proficiency for the chosen endgame weapon and fill the rest of the proficiencies with the dire needed passives. Have fun with the power creep... At the same time, you missed the opportunity to campaign for more class related talents rather than a pool of generic talents. I'm also looking forward to all the complaints about the fighter being a boring / weak choice for (multi)class.

You make it sound like RP and experience of variable story elements would not be enough reason to pick them up by themselves, or did I get that wrong?

My only hope would be that they use the two-handed animation while wielding a single one-handed weapon without a shield. Currently, it's the same animation as one-handed with a shield, just without wearing the shield. No one in their right mind would not use the second hand to steady the weapon, and the animations should already be there for the two-handed weapons anyway.

I never used scrolls and potions and seldom buffs from casters, so the mage slayer has no disadvantage for my playstyle. No matter what bonus they'll give it, it will be strictly better for me over a standard barbarian, so I'm pretty satisfied. The defensive bonus is definitely scaling: LV1: +7 LV2: +7 LV3: +9 LV4: +9 LV5: +11 LV6: +11 Since those align with powerlevels, I'm pretty sure the formula is spell resistance = 5+2*(Mage Slayer PLVL), which would cap them at 23 for single class and 19 for multiclass mage slayers. I'm very grateful for the mageslayer to be in the game for two reasons: Devoted mage slayer lets me finally play a kensai, and a mage slayer monk is closer to a classic DnD monk as a counter for casters. Before the beta, I was planning on making a kensai with devoted monk, but devoted mage slayer fits the concept much better.

There should be a small, but meaningful window for damage modifiers based on penetration; a range that feels good could be 60% to 120%. This gives an incentive to care about penetration without outright punishing you if you don't focus around the mechanic.

To be fair, the current system of armor categories is an improvement of the linear ordering of PoE in the sense that you have more freedom in choosing an armor inside your class that looks cool without suffering mechanical consequences. From a mechanical point of view, it's more about a horizontal differentiation rather than a vertical one. In the end, the current system would probably also work if the minimum value of damage that went through was in the 50-70% range, but I still think it's mechanically awkward.

Sure, I only took your example as an illustration. My point was that regardless of actual numbers, additive upgrades don't work well with mechanics caring about the ratios of numbers. You're right that such a system works well with static numbers, but I don't think that's where they are heading. I agree that armors should differ by resistance against damage types rather than armor rating versus recovery time. A trade-off between armor rating and deflection would be fine for me as well; at least, that would open the door to a couple of archetypes not currently represented well. For everyone without beta access: Currently, armor in PoE2 seems to be sorted in categories of constant armor rating for a given recovery penalty (in contrast to PoE, where armor covered an interval of damage reduction values with the trade-off 1 DR = X% recovery penalty), differing by boni and mali to certain damage types inside those categories. There seems to be 4 categories: 3 armor, 0% penalty (robes/clothing) 5 armor, 25% penalty (light armor) 7 armor, 50% penalty (medium armor) 9 armor, 100% penalty (heavy armor) The current values make absolutely no sense: Neglecting talents and proficiencies, you'd need a legendary weapon (+4) to be able to deal normal damage to a mundane plate armor (+0!), given that the standard penetration is 5 (it only has 5 armor rating against crush and shock though, but legendary equipment barely getting through seems rather strange).

This is how I understood the initial idea as well, but asides from the current implementation being unbalanced as hell, the math still dictates some rather unintuitive effects for the lower end of armor of your example: When you upgrade both weapons and armor (so +1 to +4), the difference stays the same, but the fraction shifts. That's fine for normal hits vs reduced hits, since they only care about the difference, but introduces effects for the bonus damage. For each +1 on armor, you need +2 an weapons to keep the bonus damage. Put differently, if your (light) armor is only supposed to keep you from taking the bonus damage instead of reducing damage (the difference is constant, so you can't hope to reach the next breakpoint), then every second bonus to armor is useless against that weapon. That's mostly a problem for the lowest tier armor - in this case robes - since you may not even feel the difference of upgrading it for the most part. Talents that grant +1 to your armor can have similiar strange effects as well - they can create big intervals where you upgrade your armor without it having an effect, making them less effective on low armor, against all intuition. On the flipside, it makes scoring the bonus damage much harder the further you are into the game, at which point you might just drop a lot of excess penetration altogether. Ideally, a buff should always be useful, not only if the numbers align (that's kind of a bold statement though - a buff to damage is not useful if it doesn't reduce the hits needed to take down an enemy as well). In general, you have the following issue: If buffs to armor can bridge the gap to the next breakpoint, that devalues the choice of armor, and if they can't, that devalues the value of armor buffs. This could all be resolved by making the damage reduction a continous function of the difference of armor and penetration rather than having the arbitrary break points. You can still have differenct slopes between break points, so your damage might still plummet downwards quite fast once you're under a specific threshold, but at least that would make upgrades into armor and penetration more useful past fixed values.

This is a very good argument - I'd like to see that as well.

I take it that most of the problems could be resolved if you were able to give your class a custom name?

I do consider myself a roleplayer, but I don't care what the talents or classes are called on a technical level. To me, playing a role relates to how I can interact with the game world, which is mostly unaffected by all the complaints people are having. I'd understand the complaints if the multiclass forced you to interact with the gameworld differently, but it doesn't. I can agree that if having appropriate names are such big issue that it impairs your ability to enjoy the game, PoE2 changed things for the worse. However, that seems rather stubborn to me, and I'd rather like the devs to stick with their original vision instead of bringing the general talents. More options for all the classes? Sure, but I don't need the general talents back. If you feel like focusing on implements is central to your concept, maybe you should consider taking that multiclass. If it's not worth the high level spells, maybe just play a regular wizard and use implements... without the minor buffs from another class. The game will hardly become unwinnable due to the lack of a couple talents, and there will still be spells and equipment to help to support that role. How do you people play pen and paper rpgs? Usually, there is not a class that does exactly what you want, so you have to build around it somehow. The names often don't align as a result, but if you have all the tools that the concept you had in mind needs, why wouldn't you go with it and have fun anyway?

If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's a duck. You can build the same character in PoE, only difference is that he's not called a wizard anymore. What's the actual problem? Why does the regular wizard need to be the guy to pull it off? You even keep all the wizard related dialogue options. I'm not trying to mock you, that's a sincere question. Because it's *not the same character*. It's not a pale elf wizard. It's a wizard ranger. The kind of people who care about that distinction are the kind of people who are the bread and butter of companies like Obsidian. With all due respect, that is ridiculous. Who cares what's written on your character sheet? Wizard being part of the multiclass, you get to keep all the wizard exclusive dialogue options - the character is a wizard for all intents and purposes regarding gameplay. By investing into the ranger skills only every 4 levels, you also keep the same amount of spells as if you were a single class wizard. The only thing you are missing is earlier access to higher level spells, and in exchange for that, you get to be even better at using implements than in PoE due to ranger talents that weren't even accessible in PoE. I even tried it out right now. Furthermore, if you care about less than 7 ranger talents, you can use the remaining multiclass talents to learn even MORE spells than a singleclass wizard. You can't be serious about claiming that pedantry is obsidians bread and butter - they care for a much wider audience.

Thanks; I actually read the article when it came out, but somehow missed this. All is well then!

I've watched the video, but I can't recall any explicit mention of the AI system. I'll be cautiously optimistic that they meant the customizable AI, but they could have referred to anything, really. My impression is that they've been refering to the customizable ship and corresponding mechanics instead when they talked about a cool feature to come (not that I'd think that's cooler than customizable AI, but I'd reckon most folks would). Anyway, thanks for confirming I didn't miss it.

Well, they are adressing everything but penetration, which seems to be one of the bigger issues currently.

I'll remind everyone that the 2.0 Million goal of the FIG campaign promised there would be a simple AI scripting in the form of a series of simple IF THEN conditional statements or something similiar. Either I'm missing how to access this in the beta, or it comes later, or the concept has been canned. I seriously hope it's one of the first two, since this was one of the major features that would vastly improve the first game. Any (official) feedback on this?

Hm, let me see if I get you here. I think you mean that almost all those passive talents only change numbers, like, they're only minor adjustments under the hood of a machine? And then something like Deep Pockets at least alters gameplay a little bit? I respect your opinion on this, but know this: Most people who played PoE 1 had factual and lasting alterations of their playthrough because of their choices of the aforementioned passive talents. Compare this to a computer. It's like one of them makes the sound system slightly crisper, or the motherboard a bit more reliable, or perhaps, you do get a somewhat faster response time on your hard drive. And for tech nerds (in this case build enthusiasts), all this tech and all these numbers make up fun and important choices for how they build their machine or character. As for the single classes getting exclusive talents. Well, yes, at the end, but I've played through PoE1 a number of times, and it was never necessary for me to reach the top levels. It's too little, too late, I reckon. I appreciate the simile, but I'm well aware of the enjoyment of all these passive upgrades. As a matter of fact, my characters in PoE mostly used the passive talents just because higher numbers were greatly beneficial if you stack them. That being said, increasing numbers is already a thing for equipment, so I don't necessarily need it on my character development as well. Conceptually, it is kind of a boring choice. For the most part, this discussion reminds me about the automatic bonus progression from the pathfinder rpg. In the rpg, it is an unwritten rule that you periodically need to buy magic items that boost your attributes to stay competitive. The bonus progression is an optional rule that just gives you this bonus scaling with level automatically, but also removing a corresponding amount of wealth and access to these items. Gameplay stays more or less the same, but gear suddenly becomes a much more interesting choice, since you can only choose actual effects that alter gameplay as enchantments. The approach to PoE2 is more or less the same in terms of character development, at least when they work on a couple more class-based options. All the numerical upgrades from the general talents can be properly merged into the new balancing (and necessarily will be), leaving you with choices along a different axis with regards to character development. Again, it's far from perfect at the moment, all I'm arguing is that from a design point of view, those general talents are hardly necessary.

I'm not disagreeing with you, as you may see in this quote: This IS a problem, but rather with execution than with design. If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's a duck. You can build the same character in PoE, only difference is that he's not called a wizard anymore. What's the actual problem? Why does the regular wizard need to be the guy to pull it off? You even keep all the wizard related dialogue options. I'm not trying to mock you, that's a sincere question. Let me get this straight, you dismiss 50+ general talents (You even give us the link), since you, personally, only liked three? The rest are "ACTUAL boring talents that generically increase your stats". From this, you conclude: "Claiming that single classes lack build options is ridiculous". This is not very objective of you. How about stepping back and consider the impact for all sorts of players: -The newbies (who I mentioned earlier may be content in picking those talents you described as "boring") -The casuals (They often pick whatever, and they like a lot to pick from, and don't care about system sleekness or effectiveness) -The experienced PoE players (They love to adapt their characters to their playthroughs) -The build experimenters (They thrive on choice and numbers.) I want Deafire to fit and accommodate for all these groups. PoE did a good job in that department, and now with multiclassing, I reckon only the sky is the limit. Then we have the PoE2 of all of our hopes and dreams. I disregard the passive talents because they don't change how you can play the game. All the active abilities come from class talents, and those have stayed roughly the same in number. My conclusion is that all the general talents have achieved is shifting some number upgrades around. Do you have a different build when you trade a talent that adds accuracy for one that adds deflection? How can anyone claim the general talents opened up more builds when they don't change your toolkit in the slightest? I don't even like quick switch, deep pockets, and arm bearer, but I can acknowledge that they allow you to approach the game differently. The passives all just depend on the assumptions the game makes about your stats. If you take them away and the game balances accordingly, what have you truly lost in terms of options? Nothing, you can play the same characters as before. And the single classes will still get exclusive access to the two highest power level abilities. EDIT: Also, regarding the weapon styles: You still get the benefits of all the styles, just like in the original game: Two-handers deal more damage, dual wielding slightly reduces recovery, shields increase deflection and one-handed increases accuracy. The only thing you are missing is having bigger numbers, but the tactical considerations of each setup are still there.

Gracing can be permanently learned by fighters. I think that the penetration system is a good idea, but pretty badly executed. Having discrete cut-off points just promotes min-maxing, and I'm thinking more about the defensive side for the party. If your overall armor rating is too low, you might as well be naked, since it doesn't matter. Conceptually, I think the new system is better than the one we had in PoE, but imho, there shouldn't be discrete cut-off points but rather a continous transition. I shouldn't need to constantly look at all the numbers in the combat log to decide whether Endurance Aura should be temporarily disabled since the 1 point armor difference does/doesn't matter for the foes I'm currently fighting against. The trade-off for better armor, which is now a discrete measure, is recovery, which is a continous measure. That alone strikes me as awkward. Buffing armor while potentially not getting anything from it seems like a bad concept as well. Damage should just be a piecewise linear function depending on the difference between armor and penetration. Josh can make the slopes around the turning points arbitrarily harsh for all I care, but at the very least make this a continous quantity. From a more personal point of view, robes feel worthless now in melee, which wasn't necessarily the case in PoE. I'm expecting to take more damage while wearing them, but the current values are too high, at least imho.

This thread is blatantly blowing the 'limited' build options of characters out of proportions; at least if you treat PoE as the holy grail with this regard. The ratio of class abilities per level that you can take them in is more or less constant if you compare PoE to PoE2, at least for all the martials. If you're shoehorned into making a specific build in PoE2, you were as well during the uneven levels of PoE1; As for the general talents, which everyone can find here: The passives just increase your numbers, and technically don't give you an edge over another class in the first place - if a fighter and a priest take weapon focus, their accuracy has the same differences as if they don't take them. In the end, it only boils down whether the game is balanced around assuming you have them or not. Take a moment and imagine a world where PoE2 is balanced around not assuming everyone has +6 accuracy on their equipped weapon: mind = blown. Most of the modals have been kept for specific weapons, so you can still access them through weapon proficiencies. Which talents really added something besides flatout increasing some numbers? I'd say quick switch, deep pockets, and arm bearer, since the healing skills are obsolete now. Don't get me wrong - there certainly are classes that need more talents and most numbers need to be tweaked to make things more attractive alternatives, but in terms of numbers, if you remove the ACTUAL boring talents that generically increase your stats, you have as many options in PoE2 as you had in PoE, and the game is far from finished, and neither is there an expansion that could improve this even more. Claiming the single classes lack from build option is ridiciolous.

I think this is all very simple: 1) Single classes, as you are all insisting, are specialized packages that streamline you into a functional character. That's why they are recommended - you can't screw up easily, which is good when you are new. Multiclasses on the other hand allow for a lot of creativity, which can be overwhelming for new players but rewarding for experienced players. In PoE, single classes had to fill both roles, now they don't. 2) Casters and martials are closer to each other in terms of options. There ARE more class talents for the martials than they were in PoE, and less for the casters. I think this is the major reason for all the complaints here; not saying that is wrong, since some classes like priests and rangers really do lack options. 3) You get build diversity by going down different upgrade paths for the martials, and by choosing different spells for the casters. If an ability has multiple different upgrades, they are mutually exclusive in PoE2. This is where your build options lie. Stating that single classes don't have options is a blatant overstatement. Those choices also go a long way to the synergies with your remaining party members. If the abilities / spells are not attractive enough to make the choice hard, then that is an balancing problem, and not a design problem.

I multiclassed a Devoted to a Monk. Turns out the penetration of his devoted weapon would be lower than the penetration of his fists if it wasn't for the devoted bonus, so fists seem to be perfectly in line with the normal weapons every non-devoted character needs to use: Fine Sword: Penetration 9 = 5 + 1 + 3 (Base + Fine + Devoted) Fists: Penetration 7 = 5 +2 (Base + Monk) Base is the same, and the Monk bonus is already higher than the Fine bonus from the weapon. Also, since Fists don't have a proficiency, they also don't get the penalty -10 acc from being devoted. Using fists and a devoted weapon for dual wielding (equip the weapon in the off-hand) can be great fun and makes for a good concept of someone who fights streetwise.

I'm firmly with Gromnir on this, and I don't get why people are so nostalgic about the PoE general talents. Most 'builds' in PoE revolved around picking an enchanted weapon, taking all the general talents that were useful for it, and then adding some really boring talents that made your numbers go higher. Choosing between the class talents was straight forward most of the time as well. Just using multiclasses, you already have 55 configurations to play around with, and several classes have mutually exclusive class-talents, so there are some actual decisions to be made now, since you can't just pick the other options at a later level. I agree that the priest lacks a mean to customize, and also that some subclasses don't seem impactful enough, but there is already much more space for creativity than in PoE. I can now combine a Bleakwalker Paladin with a Beconer Chanter and only take the undead related summons/phrases to have an awesome Blackguard. I can make a kensai by combining a Shattered Pillar Monk with a Devoted Fighter. I can make a druid shifter / barbarian that rages while in animal form, disregarding the druid spells completely. I can combine any martial class with a caster to get just the selection of spells that are relevant and make all kinds of gish type characters. Even if the single class option wasn't there, you'd still be able to recreate almost everything from PoE and much more now. Best of all, there is an actual trade-off to playing a caster now. You remember all the discussions how the fighter sucked? That was mostly because all the talents that are now exclusive to him were general talents. The beta leaves several things to be desired in terms of combat speed and other issues, but the new character system is much superior imho.