AndreaColombo

I would sooner give up on MIG than on DEX on a Cipher, especially if using firearms. Firearms already have good damage and you get 20% more from your Biting Whip talent; you don't super need MIG to punch through DR ('sides firearms also have DR bypass.) OTOH, firearms are very slow and you need speed if you want to build up focus fast enough to use your powers to good effect. The main source of slowness on firearms is the reload animation and DEX is one of the few things that can speed it up.

Yes. With TWM pt. I you get an extra talent on level 14 and the Stormcaller soulbound bow, which imo is the best weapon in the game for a Cipher (plus it frees up another talent as he wouldn't need to take Gunner.)

I take it you will be playing the base game without TWM pt. I?

Indeed, that is the case. It should be fairly easy to repro with Durgan Steel because it's a 20% chance; a little harder with Dozens' Luck because it's just 4% but with some patience you'll be able to repro with both. I suspect that Agone is right: This appears to be a global issue and fixing it for one thing will likely fix it for all others too (e.g. fixing it for Durgan Steel will probably automatically fix Dozens' Luck, Llengrath's Displaced Image, etc.) It is also worth checking the Fighter's Critical Defense ability as well for the same issue.

I haven't really tried 2.03 yet, but I've always been a detractor of the engagement system. I stopped using the "Disable Engagement" component of the IE Mod only after 2.0 made the whole mechanic largely irrelevant. If it is now back to relevant, I may have to wait until IE Mod is made to work with 2.04 to do another play through (the bug with Durgan Steel and Dozen's Luck is a showstopper for me, so I'm stuck waiting for 2.04 to fix it.) Alas. I'm rather taken aback by the fact that such an important change was not documented or communicated in any way, however.

Hey Aarik, apologies, I might have worded my post awkwardly. To clarify: Durgan-reinforced armor should protect the wearer from critical hits by converting 20% of incoming crits to hits. To test whether it works, have A wear a Durgan-reinforced armor, and B attack A. You'll see that A's armor never converts incoming crits to hits, suggesting Durgan Steel is not applying the 20% crit to hit conversion. Now, have A (who is still wearing Durgan-reinforced armor) attack B (who is NOT wearing Durgan-reinforced armor.) You'll notice that sometimes, when A scores a crit against B, A's armor turns it into a hit. Basically, Durgan Steel is working in reverse. Instead of protecting the wearer from critical hits, it prevents the wearer from scoring critical hits against enemies. Wearing Durgan-reinforced armor is therefore a liability rather than an advantage. The same is true of Dozen's Luck. (In the screenshot above, Lady of Pain is the protagonist. She has the Dozen's Luck talent and wears Sanguine Plate. Both are turning the crits Lady of Pain is scoring against her enemies into hits.)

If I'm allowed a moment of blasphemy and sincerity, I still prefer Patrick Rothfuss to both

Note for anyone going for the crit build: The talent Dozen's Luck and Durgan Steel on armors currently work the other way around. Instead of converting incoming crits to hits as advertised, they convert the crits that you inflict on enemies to hits. For this reason, I strongly advise against them until they are fixed (I've already raised the issue in the technical forum.) The increase in DPS from Durgan Steel's speed penalty reduction is probably still worth it in other cases, but a 20% crit-to-hit conversion on a crit build is a big no-no. The talent itself is fairly easy to avoid.

All right, I've just tested this without the IE Mod that two do indeed stack. Will let the mod's maintainers know

So, I was testing Dire Blessing + Durgan Steel without the IE Mod when this happened: So, Lady of Pain here is the attacker and also the protagonist who has the Dozen's Luck talent. This means the talent is applying to YOUR crits instead of INCOMING crits. Same issue as Durgan Steel. Screenshot for Durgan Steel: Sanguine Plate is worn by the attacker; it should protect her but instead it turns her crits to hits.

Hah! You know what's ironic? Before I installed the IE Mod, I backed up my files so I'd be able to revert to a clean install any time. You'd think that would occur to me before I went bug-hunting ... but apparently it was too obvious for me to think about it I will revert to a clean install and rerun this test, the crit damage test, and the crit-to-hit conversion test; will let you know how that goes.

Champion's Boon gives a +10 bonus to PER, which in turns gives +10 to Accuracy so it is an "indirect" buff. It definitely stacks with the Paladin's abilities. Devotions for the Faithful gives +20 melee Accuracy and +20 ranged Accuracy, which means it stacks with direct buffs that generically apply to "Accuracy" without specifying whether melee or ranged. Hence, it stacks with the Paladin's aura; not sure about Liberating Exhortation because, IIRC, it does not buff Accuracy but rather suspend debuffs. Scroll of Valor is a direct bonus to Accuracy, and does not stack with the Paladin's aura. The aura's still relevant in case you run out of scrolls or the scroll's duration expires, though. As a side note, QA just confirmed that Dire Blessing does stack with Durgan Steel's hit-to-crit conversion, contrary to what I wrote in my post above. In light of this, you definitely want to spam that spell in every encounter on your crit build.

Plate is weak against Shock. It makes sense because metal is highly conductive. Sure, there are other armors made of metal in the game that aren't vulnerable to Shock ... but you know.

Shock is very good for this build imo, because the elemental talent also gives +5 DR and Shock DR is your weakest (even though it is true that you're not subject to a large number of massively damaging Shock attacks in the game.) To boost Accuracy, the best combination is Scroll of Valor + Devotions for the Faitfhul + Champion's Boon. That's +45 Accuracy. BOOM!

Here's a saved game in which I have just acquired Dozen's Luck. Link Load the saved game. Select protagonist and access character record screen. Scroll down and observe Dozen's Luck is among the talents she possesses. Scroll up and notice Dozen's Luck is not shown under active effects (other talents such as Gift from the Machine do; the same is true for talents acquired later, such as Dungeon Delver or Songs of the Heaven.) Back to the game, disable party A.I. for all members. Access inventory, take sword from protagonist and give it to Pallegina. Look for trouble to enter combat state. Cast Devotions for the Faithful and Scroll of Valor to increase crit chance. Have Pallegina attack protagonist and keep an eye on the combat log. Being just a 4% chance it might take about forever for it to trigger. I could not get it to trigger; worth checking.

SAVED GAME: link OUTPUT LOG: link REPRO STEPS: Load the attached saved game. Select the protagonist and access her inventory. Remove her mantle to get rid of the Retaliation ability; it will make this easier to test. Right-click her armor and observe it has been enhanced with Durgan Steel, which provides 15% crit-to-hit conversion. Access her record screen. Observe she possesses the Critical Defense ability, which provides a 20% crit-to-hit conversion. Further observe that in her record screen, neither Critical Defense nor the effects of Durgan Steel on her armor are greyed out. This suggests both are active simultaneously and stack. [Note: The protagonist also acquired the Dozens' Luck talent, which provides another 4% crit-to-hit conversion but it doesn't show up because of a bug I described here whereby some of the talents my characters have disappear from the record screen for no reason at some point.] * Now select the dudette wearing The White Crest armor and access her inventory. Right-click her armor and observe that hers, too, is enhanced with Durgan Steel. Back in game, summon a hostile creature or look for trouble somewhere to enter the combat state. While in combat, use someone other than the protagonist and the White Crest dudette (Paladin) to keep enemies busy while you conduct the test. Have Durance cast Devotions for the Faithful and Champion's Boon on the Paladin, and Aloth use the Scroll of Valor. You need the Paladin to crit as often as possible. Use the Paladin to attack the protagonist and keep an eye on the combat log. Observe the following: Never is Sanguine Plate (the Durgan-enhanced armor worn by the protagonist) shown to convert a crit into a hit. Never is Critical Defense shown to convert a crit into a hit. *** [*Never is Dozen's Luck shown to convert a crit into a hit, but I can't prove my character has it because of the bug mentioned above; this warrants testing separately, as I have reason to believe this talent too is not working properly.] On occasion, The White Crest (armor worn by Paladin) is shown to convert a crit into a hit. This means that Durgan Steel, when applied to an armor, converts YOUR crits to hits instead of converting INCOMING crits to hits as advertised. Basically right now applying it to an armor is a disadvantage. It also appears that Critical Defense and Dozen's Luck are not working. I suppose they should stack, and stack with Durgan Steel for a total 39% crit-to-hit conversion. I apologize for reporting what are essentially three issues in a single thread, but they are related and can be all tested separately with this save (well, Critical Defense can; just use a non-Durgan armor on the protagonist and follow the steps. I suggest testing Dozen's Luck on one of your fresh saves.) Please report your findings here as I am curious what the intended behavior is (If these are indeed bugged, I'll be pestering you to know whether they've been fixed in 2.04 when that is out ahah XD) *** EDIT : I've just tried to test Critical Defense by eliminating Durgan Steel from the equation. Occasionally there will be hits with nothing written next to them between parenthesis, so they look like regular hits, but when you hover your cursor over them it reads "Crit - [story Time] - Hit." That's rather weird but I guess that's Critical Defense? If so, I suppose it should read "Critical Defense" rather than "Story Time" and it should show between parenthesis next to the damage in the combat log too.

SAVED GAME: link OUTPUT LOG: link REPRO STEPS: Load the attached saved game. Select the protagonist, go to her inventory and right-click on the weapon she's wielding; observe it has been enhanced with Durgan Steel, which grants a 20% hit to crit conversion. Summon a hostile creature via console or look for trouble somewhere so you can enter combat state. While in combat state, let the creature engage someone other than protagonist and Durance. Use the protagonist to attack Durance and observe the attack rolls. You'll see Durgan kicking in and occasionally converting hits to crits. All good so far. Now have Durance cast Dire Blessing (2nd level spell) on the protagonist. Observe in the spell's description that it says it grants a 20% hit to crit conversion. Have the protagonist attack Durance. Observe that only Dire Blessing will occasionally convert hits to crits for the duration of the spell. Durgan's conversion has seemingly become inactive. As the spell wears off, observe Durgan resumes converting hits to crits. For all I know, this might as well be intended behavior. However, this is not clear at present as Durgan typically stacks with everything and Dire Blessing would be an exception to the rule. Could you please check with designers and confirm? EDIT: This is the same save game of my crit calculation bug thread. It should have the protagonist wield Hours of St. Rumbalt with Durgan enchantment. If that is not the case (I went by memory) let me know and I'll provide a different saved game.

Great question. I assumed from the get-go that it was intended, but for all I know it might as well be a bug. I'll raise it shortly so QA can have a look. EDIT: ICYMI

It seems to stack with pretty much everything, but when I ran tests for my crit build I could never get the Durgan enchant to convert a hit to crit for as long as the spell was on. When the spell wore off, Durgan kicked in.

Hi Mocker22, my favorite party composition for the Lady of the Pain includes KDubya's Juggernaut Monk to help in the front line (conveniently, Zahua's attributes are very close to the Juggernaut's), a pure-support Priest, a DPS/CC Wizard, a ranged Cipher mostly for CC/ranged DPS, and either a Paladin if you want more focus on the front line, or a Druid (Hiravias does perfectly well) if you want more focus on casting (plus a well-built Druid can be pretty powerful in melee when Spiritshifted.) Hours of St. Rumbalt can indeed be made Superb and have a lash. My bad for not thinking about it—clearly an extra 25% damage is a must on this build You may even want to skip the talent Bonus Knock Down (seeing as many enemies now appear to be immune to the Prone affliction; guess 2 Knock Downs per encounter are enough) and go for the elemental talent that matches the lash of your choice to get another 20% damage on top of it. The only issue I see is that the Corrode lash's green glow is going to look positively hideous with your red armor ahah

Drakton, what game version are you running? You can use the console to give yourself the piece you're missing if you don't mind disabling achievements.

These two don't stack.

Used to be Corrode because it's a kind of damage that isn't often resisted a lot, but things might have changed in the last few patches.

^ that was I but my math was off and Josh confirmed 3/level on Twitter.

"Form of the Helpless Beast" in TWM pt. II. You heard it here first