AndreaColombo

My .02 after trying the Brilliant inspiration, the healing chant, and other things. Brilliant didn't change my play style or break my game at all. By the point you get it, you're already powerful enough that you can auto-attack your way through any fight (except perhaps 20th-level boss fights, which still require a modicum of thought and manual intervention if you're level 15) and I wasn't really starved for resource points anyway. I understand how it can make a difference for solo play, where resource points are much more scarce, but I thought we agreed the game shouldn't be balanced around solo play? Ultimately, I'm OK if it's nerfed but also if it isn't. The healing chant is indeed very good, but again it doesn't make a difference if enemies can't already kill you without it. I agree it would still be plenty useful if it was nerfed to 75% or even 50% (my suggestion would be to try 75% first; if it still feels too powerful, then nerf again to 50%), but there are other things that must be fixed before the chant becomes a real problem, IMO. Unbending and its upgrades shouldn't benefit from anything that boosts healing, as someone else has already pointed out in this thread. At 50% and 75%, they are crazy good abilities—which I think is fair given their cost and how late they come, provided that they stay like that and don't scale up all the way to 100% or more via boosts. Clearly anything that makes you immortal should be unintended. No ability should be able to proc itself. I'll never grow tired of repeating this. A single ability that chain procs until everyone is dead with a single swing of your weapon is obviously a no-no. Charge could be changed from Full Attack to Primary Attack to enemies on the path. Not the main source of concern, but I understand it makes DW Fighters too good compared to non-DW Fighters. No ability, empowered or otherwise, should be able to one-shot bosses. Either reduce the impact of Empower, increase bosses' HP, reduce the damage of certain spells, or any combination of these but no one-shotting bosses, please. As for Empower, 90% of the time I either don't use it, or use to replenish my resource pool if I ran out. I rarely use it to actually Empower a spell or an ability. A matter of play style, I'm sure. My experience with PotD so far: The moment you reach 10th level, nothing's a challenge for you anymore unless you deliberately pick way over-leveled fights. I'm not particularly good at this, and PotD in the first game was too hard for me from 1st to about 5th-6th level; yet I could beat Deadfire on PotD the first time, with little to no meta-knowledge. At 15th level, you can beat anything without too much effort (and that's with story companions and a non-min/maxed character.) I found enemies' HP to be adequate, but they could use a slight increase to their accuracy, damage, defenses, and armor rating. Some could stand with a slightly faster attack/action speed as well. Dragons should have a powerful alpha-strike breath like in the first game. Enemies should be able to identify and counter at least some of the player's combos, and/or execute good combos themselves. Can't fight high-level enemies who only use low-level abilities with no strategy; of course there's no challenge like that! Until this is resolved, nerfing abilities won't do much good as you can win any fight via mere auto-attacking. First, force me to think over my moves to win fights; then, rebalance abilities so that I can't one-shot bosses or chain-slaughter packs of enemies in one swing.

Here's what I have on GoG (obviously no Scavenger's Hunt goodies, since they're not available on GoG): The first three are the pre-order bonus items (that I know of, all three are part of the Captain's Footlocker; the first one includes St Drogga's Skull and a bird pet.) Then there are three bonus items for being a Fig backer. Matakau is a unique battle ax made of obsidian that has its own unique enchantment path. Vox Machina Pack is the Critical Role free DLC they announced before launch. Gaun's Pledge is a gift to those who own the first game on the same platform. As for items that you get from importing a save—you get the fragments of Whispers of Yenwood, though I'm not sure which choice unlocks them (I always got them), which can be reforged. Depending on your choices, you also get the fragments of the Blade of the Endless Paths, which can also be reforged (but it's either bugged, or you need to not have forged it in the first game? I reforged it and didn't get the fragments, so I had to console them in.) You can also combine the two into a great sword which is one of the best weapons in the game.

Extra "in" should be removed: "Fee" should be "feet":

I *think* I have the Red Hand; need to check my stash next time I play. Unfortunately I’m not sure how I got it as I’m doing a completionist run :-/

^ Heh. I also like to feel powerful and play a Fighter/Monk :D

Missing "with":

Lueva Alvari's Vailian accent is the closest I've heard in the game to a real Italian accent. It sometimes feels forced, as in it's obvious that the actress isn't Italian and has to make a conscious effort to speak like that, which leads her to sometimes stress it too much; an Italian person speaks more smoothly but it's a very good rendition of the stereotypical Italian accent, I say

Missing "of": "not" should be "no"; "of" should be "on": Extra "on his" should be removed:

Dunno, guys. I find RES rather desirable in Deadfire—much more so than in the first game. At the very least, I have no desire to dump it.

"one's" should be "ones" without an apostrophe:

By the way, custom A.I. sets are saved to this path: C:\Users\[username]\Saved Games\Pillars of Eternity II\CustomAIBehaviors and can be freely shared with other users

When the Frostseeker bow is equipped, its arrow appears floating vertically next to the character.

Should be either "sounds those" or "sound that": Missing third period in the ellipsis: Should be "capital": The voice-over says "gains": Should be "put you through", not "put your through": Missing comma after "Well": Missing space after the ellipsis: This comma is separating the subject from its verb—either remove it or add one after "the trader": Should be "vertebrae" without the extra "t": "You show you him" should be "you show him": Missing "are": The voice-over says "swim": "what" should be "who":

Your ship's hull health indicator overlaps the border of the world map UI; should probably be moved slightly to the right so it can fit inside its given space.

Few more missing icons:

You can reach similar results with a Brawler using Armored Grace and Lightning Strikes/Swift Flurry (with or without a pet that decreases armor recovery.) I'm using DoC's breastplate, by the way. It's a really good setup

To give you my perspective (again, for what it's worth.) My maximum enjoyment of a roleplaying game comes when I'm at max level with endgame gear. I enjoy it the most because that's when I'm the most powerful and look the coolest. That's when I face the coolest enemies. In general, I like it better when I'm a 20th-level Fighter facing a dragon than when I'm a 1st-level Fighter fighting a xaurip, even if the relative power should ideally be about the same. By the same token, I'd rather have powerful abilities to use against powerful enemies than to nerf my abilities so they can be on par with weak enemies. With that said, I am not opposed to nerfing in principle. I don't necessarily agree that everything listed in the OP should be nerfed, or that it should be nerfed to the extent suggested, but I do agree that even if PotD is rebalanced, some things will need a rethink as they're too good. I just prefer a gradual, step-by-step approach to problem solving where we take a small step, test it in-game to see where we're at, and make a decision on the next step (e.g. before we nerf Swift Flurry, for example, let's prevent it from proccing itself and see what it plays like—if it's still too good, we can discuss further steps to ameliorate.)

Subbing.

For what it's worth, my opinion on the matter is as follows: Abilities shouldn't be able to proc themselves (I'm looking at you, Cleaving Stance and Swift Flurry.) This is regardless of any PotD rebalancing or A.I. enhancement. The devs have openly admitted to not having had enough time to properly balance PotD. As a result, PotD is significantly easier than intended. I believe this should be addressed before nerfs are considered. The above doesn't mean that PotD should be specifically balanced against abilities currently considered OP. It should be brought to where the developers had originally intended (if they admitted it's too easy, they must have had a point of comparison—too easy compared to what they had in mind. We need to get PotD to wherever what they had in mind is.) Generally speaking, if something is available to players, it should be available to enemies. If players can summon dragons and use the Brilliant inspiration, so should enemies. Before we nerf, let's get rid of iniquitous advantages where players have an array of stuff available to them that enemies don't. At that point we can call for nerfs as appropriate. Is PotD still too easy? Are specific abilities too powerful when used against enemies? Are specific abilities too powerful when used against the player? If we start nerfing abilities now, the we buff up PotD, we risk applying multiple fixes to the same problem at the same time—IME, a recipe for a bad result.

Does anybody have a list of unique spells that are only available in grimoires?

I assume the Blade of the Endless Paths' import bug is still in, right? Not super bothering as I can use the console to cheat the fragments in; just checking.

Aloth's grimoire clips through his body and floats next to his hand instead of resting inside it.

Here Aloth used Mirrored Image and subsequently summoned Concelhaut's Draining Staff. While the elf himself is actually wielding the staff, the mirrored images pose like they were wielding it but have it on their back. The mirrored images look like awkward tools in the eyes of the enemy.

Xoti's Lantern can be upgraded with an ability whose name is Light of the Dawnstar. The ability appears to be missing an icon:

"You" should be "Your": The voice over doesn't say "and." You could remove "and" and replace the comma with a semicolon to match the sound file: