AndreaColombo

Druids have a spell that can AoE knock enemies prone (on top of damaging them.) can't recall its name but I love using it. 4th level, IIRC. Curiously, I was never a fan of CC. In POE especially, as countering it ranges from hard to impossible and enemies wouldn't even try anyway.

The way I see it, that's not a problem with EE; it's an awesome strategy. Sure, it is extra powerful but it only applies to a specific party composition employing a specific strategy. It is not an unintentional win button in which you could stumble by chance; the extra power is your reward for executing the strategy you described (and which I really want to try now :D)

Honestly I found all companions in PoE to be vastly better than any companion in the BG saga. Of course it is mostly a matter of personal preference but Bg companions suffered a lot from being tied to D&D's overly simplistic alignment system. As a result, they were all more or less sullen, one dimensional, and stereotyped. Minsc had a bit of originality because of Boo but other than that he wasn't anything more than the good giant trope. PoE companions may not be perfect, but they are a lot more relatable and less clichéd, imho.

I think it's more than one person. We could always ask them, once 2.0 is out

My .02 Having two stats governing Deflection and zero governing Accuracy doesn't make a great deal of sense. Plus duplication is boring. "Perception" was always meant to be an offsensive stat ("Interrupt" is an offensive ability; Perception used to carry "Accuracy" during the beta and was changed only later.) If you remove the Accuracy bonus from spells, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The initial claim is that Perception would become a must-pump stat for everyone if it carried Accuracy (which is wrong; more on that later); from this the (incorrect) assumption is made that everyone would automatically max it out on every character. To counter that, the Accuracy bonus is removed from spells—and now spells would almost always miss unless casters maxed out Perception. Perception would therefore become a must-pump stat for casters not because it carried Accuracy instead of Deflection, but because Accuracy was removed from spells and you need it for them to hit. We've been playing PoE so far with no stat governing Accuracy, yet people complain that even PotD is too easy. Why would you feel like you have to max Perception to gain bonus Accuracy, if Perception was changed? Would the game suddenly become more difficult to the point you couldn't win unless you had +10 Accuracy from Perception? Not at all. In fact, if you max out any stat, you are willingly power-gaming. Nothing wrong with that, but the very purpose of power-gaming is to make the game easier, so you can't really complain the game's too easy if you power-game. The norm should be jack-of-all-trades builds, not min/maxed builds. Min/maxing is not inherently evil. It is a perfectly viable play stile that doesn't warrant any more or less attention than any other play style. This means that it should not be prevented, but also not encouraged. The main issue with the current Attribute System in PoE is that it encourages min/maxing by making min/maxed builds overwhelmingly more combat effective than jack-of-all-trade builds (the reason being that the penalty from dumping certain stats is disproportionately inferior to the bonus from pumping others.) Min/maxed characters should be viable, but hazardous—the penalties they get from dumping stats should be proportional to the benefits they get from pumping the others. The fact that enemies are too dumb to take advantage of your weak points if you dump certain stats is not the fault of the Attribute System, and is therefore not a problem the Attribute System should be tasked to solve. It is an enemy A.I. problem and it should be solved by fixing enemy A.I.. So any criticism to the Attribute System that stems from the argument "I can dump this because enemies will do that" is fallacious. As for CON, I still disagree it should mitigate recovery penalty as DEX already does that better. Sure, I would be prevented from dumping CON, but would I be encouraged to invest points in it? Most certainly not, since I could spend points in DEX instead and speed up everything, rather than just counter armor recovery penalty. As I see it: CON benefits the most those characters that need it the least. This stems from its effects being percentage based, so the obvious solution would be to make them integer based instead. The impact of CON is too small. Dumping doesn't really cripple your character and pumping it doesn't give any significant advantage. The solution is to increase its effects. In a world where 10 is average, a score of 3 in CON should be barely enough to stand on your feet when there's no wind. If an enemy so much as looks at a 3-CON character sideways, the character should be maimed already. As I mentioned above, duplication is bad and right now we have two stats for each defense. MIG is already good enough with damage and healing, and CON should be the only stat governing Fortitute (with ±4, rather than ±2.) That would make CON more attractive. Likewise, Reflexes should only be on DEX—this would assist in mitigating Perception as the "must-pump stat" that many believe it to be with Accuracy attached. Will should only be on Resolve (INT is already plenty good and RES would become more attractive.) I guess the penalty for dumping RES could be steeper too, but if PER is changed to ±Accuracy monsters will also hit harder so... yeah.

Aarik D could you repro? If not, I'll try to create a saved game and repro steps.

Kurren is a member of Dunryd Row, the cipher "police" of Defiance Bay. Their headquarters are in Brackenbury, in a building called Hadret's House. Kurren is inside that building.

My output log for your convenience: link It is my opinion that fixing the issue for one ability (e.g. Wounding Shot for rangers in the case of my saved game above) would fix it for all other abilities as well. However, if your programmers require saved games for peddroelm's other test cases as well, please ask here and I'll try to provide them.

Those scores are very easy to obtain legitimately in-game. Here's a saved game for peddroelm's first test case (post n. 2): link This includes: Protagonist wearing Exceptional Plate Armor (bought from Dunstan) and Blunting Belt (found adventuring; it is also sold in Gilded Vale.)* A ranger with 20 MIG, 3 INT A ranger with 20 MIG, 10 INT A ranger with 20 MIG, 20 INT All rangers hired at the Goose and Fox inn in Copperlane; you can easily use console commands to level them up as appropriate/required (they're level 1.) * note that in this game I have completed the Crucible Knights quest and therefore have the Second Skin talent that grants me bonus DR. Hence, the protagonist's DR is higher than what peddroelm mentions in his post. If you want the same DR, you can hire a Fighter at an inn and equip them with those items. Because you'll be using "real world" weapons instead of weapons whose minimum damage is the same as the maximum damage, testing this is going to take a very long time as you'll need to get the exact same damage on hit from all three rangers in order for data to be comparable. If you want to enter combat state, use a console command to create a hostile creature (example: BSC cre_blight_earth 1) and make sure the protagonist engages it. You may remove the protagonist's weapon to make sure the blight isn't killed too quickly (perhaps also give a shield to the protagonist; there is one in the stash.)

Hi Archaven, there will be minor improvements to enemy A.I. mostly coming from subtle bugs having been fixed while the devs worked on party A.I. (for example, enemy A.I. never made use of modal abilities, but it will with patch 2.0.) However, major improvements à la SCS are not part of this update, sadly. But we can still hope in The White March pt. II

Thanks, Durlachion! "amica" should be "aimica". Screenshot there's one "the" too many in this sentence. Screenshot

This very much. If there was only one stat per defense, alongside the comeback of Accuracy on PER, the attribute system would be pretty darn fine. Of course attributes affecting defenses would have to provide twice the bonus/penalty they do now to compensate for the fact that you could only get them from a single attribute as opposed to two, but CON and RES would definitely become more important. Top that with greater Health/Endurance numbers tied to CON, and the system would be really good (though integer numbers would probably make the most sense for the very reason Luckmann mentioned: Right now, those who need CON the most are also those who benefit from it the least.)

I don't think it would be that great, actually; it would only solve half the problem. If CON governed recovery, you wouldn't want to dump it anymore lest it would slow you down and hurt your DPS; but you wouldn't want to pump it as those points would be better spent on DEX, which makes everything faster rather than just recovery.

No idea what happened to cause this, but I can't seem to access my inventory anymore. SAVED GAME: nvm OUTPUT LOG: nvm Just load the saved game and click on the Inventory icon; nothing happens. EDIT: Never mind, restarting the game fixed the issue so I guess you wouldn't be able to repro anyway. All good; nothing to see here.

^ Just tested this. DEX applies to recovery as well, not just the speed with which you attack. It does offset the recovery penalty from armor.

I think soulbound weapons definitely qualify as "new content" that will only be available through the expansion. It wouldn't super make sense otherwise. Besides, I take it they're supposed to be kinda rare and prized; suddenly scattering them across the whole world would run counter that notion.

DEX already does that, as its Attack Speed bonus also applies to recovery. It would be kinda redundant :\ I agree CON needs help, though. As it is, the penalty for dumping it is negligible and so are the benefits of pumping it.

To be fair, Obsidian did fix a number of typos hereby reported in patch 1.05 and hinted at more fixes coming in the next patch on page 3 of this very thread:

Yeah, that would be pretty awesome thanks!

@Durlachion - They never told me anything about that, but the way quotation marks are currently used within the game text is the standard practice for the English language. Source Of course different languages would abide by different rules; in Italian, for example, I would put closing quotation marks at the end of every paragraph. So it totally makes sense for you to do so in the German game text if that's how German grammar works.

The quotation mark underlined should be removed. Screenshot - Screenshot - Screenshot Missing quotation mark at the end of player reply. Screenshot. "Self-rightous" should be "self-righteous". Screenshot

So, I've been doing some more testing. What happens if you take the Wildstrike talent and wear the Wildstrike belt (which, per its description, grants Wildstrike Burn)? The talent adds 30% elemental damage to your attacks. The belt tops that with an additional 10% of the same elemental kind (if you have Wildstrike Burn, the belt will make you deal 10% more burn damage; if you have Wildstrike Corrode, the belt will make you deal 10% more corrode damage; and so forth.) The way it is calculated is 30% of your non elemental damage (Wildstrike) + 10% of your non-elemental damage (Wildstrike Belt.) For example: 17.1 Slash 30% corrode = 5.13 10% corrode = 1.71 Total corrode (before DR) = 6.84 DR = 14 * 0.25 = 3.5 6.84 - 3.5 = 3.34 corrode damage dealt (Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot of this.) In theory, the same should happen with Greater Wildstrike (which gives you 45% elemental damage) except if I apply the same logic, I don't get the actual number I see in-game. This was done with Greater Wildstrike Corrode + Wildstrike Belt. My math based on the example with Wildstrike: 20.7 * 45% = 9.315 20.7 * 10% = 2.07 Total corrode (before DR) = 11.385 11.385 - 14 * 0.25 = 7.885 which is clearly too much. If I take the Wildstrike Belt's 10% out of the equation, however: 20.7 * 45% = 9.315 - 14 * 0.25 = 5.815 which is too little. Any insights?

Hi Aarik D, here is my output log: link.

Two-handed weapons with a listed speed of "Slow" actually attack at the same speed as one-handed weapons with a listed speed of "Average." SAVED GAME: link REPRO STEPS: Load the attached saved game. Select the two naked women (named "Druid 1" and "Druid 2"), go to their character sheet, and observe they both have the same DEX score. Go to their inventory and observe that one of them is wielding a Great Sword (two handed, "Slow" speed.); the other, a Sword (one handed; "Average" speed.) Back to the game, pause, and order the two naked women to attack the character in the middle (the death godlike wearing the Sanguine Plate) so that when you unpause the game, they'll start attacking simultaneously. Observe that the women's attacks are perfectly synchronized even though the Great Sword is supposed to be slower.

Exchanging PMs with BMac, I learned that their work on party A.I. highlighted a number of subtle bugs in enemy A.I. that patch 2.0 is going to address. For example, enemy A.I. was never making use of modal abilities, but with patch 2.0 it will. For part II of the expansion I hope they'll bring deeper improvements to enemy A.I. like: Stealthing and backstabbing Drinking potions Better targeting(no more passing by an unengaged squishy and ignoring them to keep pursuing a tank that's already been engaged by a thousand other enemies.) Smarter spell casting(right now it's something like "Cast X, then Y, then Z. Rinse and repeat."; should be more like, "If AoE hits my allies and my allies can take the hit, use damage types against which enemies aren't well protected; if my allies are below X endurance, only use damage types they're well protected against or single target spells" and so on.) Using items' spellbinding abilities if/when it makes sense Making intelligent decisions on whether to disengage and pursue a different target Helping allies to disengage(e.g. Mark wants to disengage 'cause it makes sense to maim your dying squishy; Stephan knocks down whomever is engaging Mark to free him.) You know, the SCS kind of stuff :D