AndreaColombo

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

Josh confirmed on Twitter that MOAR pollaxes are coming in TWM pt. II. That said, only Rain Blights are immune to piercing damage that I know of. You can use the Blade of the Endless Paths in all encounters, and an Exceptional pollaxe (or the Half Mast) against Rain Blights.

Not quite. It makes it harder for enemies to hit you with attacks that target the Will defense. To overcome enemies' defenses (regardless of which one) you need Accuracy, which you can get a bonus for from Perception.

It's up!

^ A frame by frame analysis is going to be quicker and more precise than recording seconds on a piece of paper (seconds vary depending on frame rate too)

That is indeed the case, as far as I'm aware.

Sen, just found your video in which you explain the global recovery modifier is 1.2. However, I can't seem to reconcile that with my observation in my frame by frame analysis. Have a look at the numbers in this post. On a naked, 10-DEX character with a two-hander I get a recovery time of 50 frames. That's including a 4-frame delay that occurs from the moment the recovery bar becomes empty to the moment the attack animation starts again. Using the math from your video, it should be 54 frames, so 4 frames off compared to the observed value. Revising my math with the Blade of the Endless Paths (where I also mistakenly counted Armored Grace as -16% instead of -15%) we get: Penalties: Plate Armor (50%) Vulnerable Attack (20%) Bonuses: Armored Grace (-15% penalty) Durgan Steel armor (-15% penalty) Durgan Steel weapon (+15% attack speed) Speed weapon (+20% attack speed) Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (+50% attack speed) 25 DEX (+45% action speed; applies to both attack and recovery) Expected: Attack: 30 * (1-0.45) = 16.5 Recovery: (16.5 * 1.2 * 1.5) * (1+0.5+0.2-0.15-0.15-0.15-0.2-0.5) / (1+0.45) = 29.7 * (1+0.5+0.2-0.15-0.15-0.15-0.2-0.5) / (1+0.45) = 29.7 * (1-0.45) / (1+0.45) = 16.335 / (1.45) = 11.26 Observed: Attack: 24 frames (seems to be hard-capped.) Recovery: 15 frames (11 + 4-frame delay) In this case, we get really close if we do not consider the 4-frame delay as part of recovery but animation speed is not what I calculated. Using 24-frames: Recovery: (24 * 1.2 * 1.5) * (1+0.5+0.2-0.15-0.15-0.15-0.2-0.5) / (1+0.45) = 43.2 * (1+0.5+0.2-0.15-0.15-0.15-0.2-0.5) / (1+0.45) = 43.2 * (1-0.45) / (1+0.45) = 23.76 / (1.45) = 16.38 This gets us very close to the observed 15 frames (really, I don't think 1.4 frames are visible to the naked eye.) But still, the math for a naked character doesn't return true for some reason. Same with my observations on wearing plate mail, where I got 75+4 frames versus your calculated 72 frames. Stuff is starting to get confusing...

Rejoice!

Console commands would be my pick for stuff I can't do without. I use many other things too, like cyan selection circles, disable engagement, movement recovery fix, etc.. But the show stopper than prevents me from installing 2.03 right now is console commands. I need them to test bugs and builds, so I'm not going to do without.

Quick update. I've exchanged a PM with tjayharvey on the Nexus and he is still willing to work on the IE Mod, but does not anticipate the update to 2.03 to happen any time soon. Main reason, besides of course his being busy, is that it seems like 2.03 changed a lot of stuff and updating the mod appears to be about as complicated as it was to make it work with 2.0. Take a time-consuming task, add a busy RL, and you get the situation The good news is that the mod is still actively being maintained. tjayharvey also said he's happy to coach any programmers who might want to contribute to the mod's maintenance, so if anyone's up to the task, you may contact him on the Nexus.

Heart of the Storm is very good for a Druid's spells, but melee talents only really apply to their melee attacks (whether Spiritshifted or not). Spells remain unaffected. Wildstrike, Greater Wildstrike, WF: Paesant, Two Weapon Fighting, Savage Attack, and Vulnerable Attack are all good talents for a Druid's Spiritshift. However, taking all of them means you're left with but one talent to spend on powering their spells, and Druids are still a spellcasting class—so probably not a great idea. Leave out the last two, perhaps, and go for 2-3 elemental talents. You'll still have a great damage output with your Spirtshift, and your spells will also be powerful.

I've run tests aplenty on speed and recovery. Dexterity speeds up everything but it is not additive; it applies multiplicatively after all other bonuses have applied. Everything in game that says "attack speed" only affects recovery time. Stuff that reduces the penalty while wearing armor, of course, only applies to armor recovery penalty. Armored Grace isn't going to do anything if you're wearing clothes with 0% recovery penalty. That said, I'm not sure what you mean with the two recovery times blatherskite. Plate armor makes your recovery 50% slower; with Armored Grace, it makes it 30% slower instead. Speed bonuses from Durgan Steel stack with everything, and so does the weapon Speed enchantment. Other attack speed bonuses from spells, potions, or abilities don't stack with each other. The values in the chart linked above are partly outdated. Two-handers have a 50-frame recovery time on a naked character with 10 DEX (including the 4-frame delay that can never be affected or eliminated.) EDIT: Original research. Some of my research.

For the record, Zahua was written by Eric Fenstermaker.

Everything in the game that says "attack speed" only affects recovery. Fighters can achieve greater speed because Swift Strikes doesn't stack with Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, whereas Armored Grace does.

^ The only thing that affects everything is Dexterity. Everything else only affects recovery, including the Monk's Swift Strikes. For all intent and purposes, Fighter is the class that can achieve the fastest attack+recovery time in heavy armor.