Odd Hermit

Did you level up before trying to hire adventurers? You need to be at least level 2 to hire level 1 adventurers, and from then on you can hire adventurers of up to one level lower than your character.

I just soloed Medreth's group with a Druid and it is substantially harder especially if you start it via dialogue near them. It involved a specialized build and enchanted armor and I had to run away until only 1-2 of them were still following me. The AI can still be lured but it's a lot more difficult now. I image I could do it easier w/a wizard just due to slicken, although it'd be a bit more random 'cause if you missed a single one... With druid I used a combination of fast runner talent + the cloak that gives disengage bonus, secrets of rime for nuking, and I used wolf form to help me run away too as well as KO anything I managed to pull solo along with heals. I had high resolve so I could pull off spell casts under fire as well. The real PITA though will probably be the spiders as they're faster than most things and I'm not sure you could effectively run away from those buggers.

Glory in Dragonfall was junk though. Seriously. The dog was better.

More thoughts on shapeshifting- -The models are still butt ugly.Would be nice if they could close their dorky mouths. They look like World of Warcraft mobs, constantly trying too hard to look like vicious animals but failing miserably and just ending up comically slack jawed. -Damage is good, but they're still not up to par with enchanted weapons. They need +accuracy. That along with the high base damage could be too strong at early levels potentially, so I'd scale their claws a bit with character level. -They could use their own attribute bonuses, to make up for lacking enchantments on their armor. These could vary based on form and/or scale with level a bit as well. - It doesn't need a duration. I've considered this, and it's really a nuisance being popped out of form all of the sudden but most fights are practically over by the time you're out of it if you have high int - which a druid should stack of course. The game also isn't currently displaying duration anywhere I can see at least. The form isn't overpowered enough to need a time limit, and it shouldn't be - it should offer versatility/utility without usurping actual fighters, rogues, etc. - There's no reason their special abilities such as roar/knockdown need to be per rest rather than per encounter. It seems an arbitrary limitation, more nuisance than anything. - A bonus to stamina and deflection wouldn't hurt. - Wildstrike doesn't seem to be updated or isn't displaying the changes in the text. It just says +10% freeze damage for base and greater, rather than: - JE Sawyer's twitter.

We requested hooded/helmed characters for people who might not've made characters that match the other portraits well.

More on shapeshifting: * Shapeshift is now actually useful, if only for recovery-penalty-free 8-10 DT from being in a form + form specific benefits. I like Wolf for the extra move speed as well, and you can use knockdown to break engagement in melee. It serves a defensive purpose as an on-occasion thing. It does decent damage and might conserve a spell or two if you're in an encounter where it's safe enough to use your druid as melee. * Building a Druid as a primary melee combatant is still a very bad idea. By taking stats making you more survivable in melee, you make yourself weaker offensively. By choosing generic melee talents you are reducing your effectiveness as a caster/ranged character. * Spiritshift is 1/encounter and seems to have a duration which is not that long(or it's bugged and I'm getting dropped out of it for odd reasons). It doesn't display a duration in the tooltip. I've gotten dumped out of it at inopportune moments. * Quite simply, you do way more damage as a caster and are more versatile. I have done a few tests on the early fights already. My caster druid easily tops damage(using the BB characters each time for consistency). My melee druid ... well he does not, at least not unless he just goes caster-mode and drops blizzards instead of running around being a werewolf. And in caster mode, he's less of a liability and I don't have to go emergency werewolf saving mode because I'm using a somewhat fragile caster class in melee. * If I need to cast any of the druid's support, healing, crowd control spells to react to a bad situation, melee is not where I want him to be. For one, you're often engaged, limiting your movement so you cannot easily manipulate things such as PBAoEs or conal AoEs. And of course, you're much more vulnerable to interrupts. * Claws do decent damage but still no accuracy bonus. This is a big deal, especially since Druids don't start with high accuracy. * No armor enchants while in animal form. This means -2 Might, -2 Intellect for my Druid while in it.

This is very true. Pre-made characters are almost always poorly built in these games. I'll hopefully find some way to customize the companion builds up to my standards, without taking away their "spirit" and keeping them the same class of course. I think it's more that developers aren't making games for min-maxers...and I approve. Well, in this game, min/max makes the strongest characters, easily. And you can make your entire party out of hired adventurers with min/max stats, potentially. Their point-buy system, and their emphasis on making all stats do something decent for all classes, seems aimed at removing the point in min-maxing. It just hasn't succeeded so far. Stacking either offensive or defensive attributes and talents is simply better.

Especially since, in all likelihood, the pre-made companions will not be min/maxed.

So druid Teeth/Claws do decent damage and the Spiritshift gives you some free DT w/no recovery penalty: However, I tried using my Druid in melee with Vulnerable Attack, and it went very poorly anyway. He did decent damage, landed a couple knockdowns, then quickly got knocked out inside of a knockdown of his own. I don't imagine it would go much better if I built him more defensively. His deflection is low but as I've ranted about in my defenses thread, there's no happy middle ground and going for substantial enough defenses would nerf his offensive/casting ability into uselessness. That said I might use the form for the free DT and/or to mop-up easy enemies without spell casting.

This is very true. Pre-made characters are almost always poorly built in these games. I'll hopefully find some way to customize the companion builds up to my standards, without taking away their "spirit" and keeping them the same class of course.

Voices were too quiet for me before heh. I had to turn my system volume up. OTOH everything else is too quiet now I've noticed, so you're probably more right than I am. I still need more portraits to really fit my party, but I can get by w/out using IWD portraits now. Plus there'll be companions in the actual game so I won't be picking portraits for a full party of customized characters unless I want to get really power-gamey later on.

There's ambient sound in the inn New portraits are nice and include helms and hoods for "vague" characters which we asked for - albeit the males are all helm no hood. They changed Nature Godlike Racial and I don't like it. I dislike things that only kick in at lower health values though. They're now kinda like Humans, but can't wear helms. Chanters have a new UI that I'll be trying out along with Thrice Was She Wronged to see how nerfed it is. Generally things look a bit nicer, and the character models are nicer in-game, more smooth/less sharp looking to better match how they look in game rather than the character generator. Overall I like it. I'll be basically throwing all of my time at this for awhile, minus 30mins here and there for food/dog stuff. And sleep, I guess.

LOL

Dual wield needs more talents to do good damage in my experience. 2h is better damage if you're not spending a talent on a modal for melee on a primarily ranged character. Savage Attack and 2 hand style are nice but you'll still hit through DR with a high might character w/out them. Using two 1h weapons without Vulnerable Attack OTOH seems like a bad idea as DR will mitigate a lot of your damage. Especially if you don't have high might.

It all adds up to an extra 5% bonus XP per missing party member on the BB right now, from my testing. Party of 3 completes the Medreth/Nyfre quest. They each get 4140 XP. Party of 6 completes same quest, in the same way. They get 3600 XP. Character levels/average party level doesn't affect it so there's no "muling" or "squatting". The BB is pretty extreme on the XP granting so it makes a big difference there, I can 3 man it and hit level 8 early and then hire 3 more level 7 adventurers. In the actual game though I think it probably won't be worth playing with a smaller party unless you want a challenge and/or just like controlling fewer characters.

Chanters and Druids are the two best classes in the beta. Chanter for their summons, constant healing AoE, and of course the chant buffs and debuffs. Druids for their crazy AoE damage and of course movement control via Tanglefoot's giant AoE and long duration. Fighter and Paladin not far behind, Fighters have very strong damage output and are tanky enough for small encounters. Paladins are the best purely tanking focused class. Rogue is also strong if you want to gib stuff with guns or are good with a high risk/high reward melee damager. Priest is useful, the best healer but Druid can handle it most of the time. Some good buffs and debuffs, but very squishy. Ciphers I really liked for awhile but I'm not as sold on them now. They have decent CC but I've been finding it's too small AoE and often unnecessary. Monk, Wizard, Ranger, Barbarian aren't considerations for me unless they get buffs. Monk has some good abilities, but they're stuck in an odd place where to use them they have to take damage, but I find them inferior as a tank choice. Wizard's spell selection is too full of worthless self buffs, they deal less damage than Druids considerably especially at low levels, and they're more fragile. Barbarian are melee AoE, which is just not as good as ranged, placeable AoEs. And Ranger is just kind of "meh" with an animal companion that isn't much use in combat.

Liberating Exhortation(the Paladin temporary dispel) works and is nice to have in a pinch. It's particularly nice that it's an ability on the class capable of some of the highest "saves" - or fort/reflex/will defenses. They can target themselves with it as well, if necessary. Haven't tried the monk one.

I actually like having one uber-low damage character for the purpose of keeping my chanter in combat. Keep one alive on your tank, who can only poke it with a stick, keep chanting and sending phantom/will-o'-wisps to pull more enemies into shooting range. It's how I clear "trash" basically. It's cheesy but it works and it gets my various builds/party compositions to the more interesting fights faster. You can still interrupt things w/out even getting damage through their DR as well. As long as it hits or grazes it seems you can still interrupt. I will probably try max dex/perception/resolve next build along with the interrupting blows talent - fast attacks w/high interrupt. Interrupts are potentially better mitigation against single hard hitting enemies than deflection/DR so it'd make sense to add that to a tank. I've been using a Paladin, although I use the accuracy modal to buff the rest of the party rather than the DR modal which for the most part only helps my tank and the additional survivability it offers doesn't make a big difference for most encounters. I've used a Paladin with decent might score as well though, and it is nice opening with an Arquebus w/Flames of Devotion even w/out talents devoted to damage.

It's too late to remove resolve, it's involved in plenty of dialogue checks by now I'm sure. My take on the stats - ____ Might: Hard to judge due to damage modifier stacking being out of hand at the moment. Strongest stat for most classes. Fatigue resist is best left on athletics IMO. Con: Adding interrupt resist is a good idea, but it also needs to add more stam/resolve for squishy classes. % based isn't working. Dex: I personally prefer might for casters, because if you're limited to spells/day it's better to get the most out of them than burn through them faster. Cipher though is pretty nice with it. Adding accuracy could help it but last time we had +accuracy on stats I rolled everything with casters too hard(high accuracy on AoE CCs = on the overpowered side). Per: Pretty strong stat for tankers(+deflection helps, but interrupting is another way of mitigating damage) and dual wielders. Int: Super strong stat for casters and even fighters/rogues can get get decent use out of extended blinds and knock-downs. I think it could use a nerf, and/or Druid vs. Wizard/Priest AoE size needs more careful balancing. Res: Strong stat for tankers, a decent place to throw excess points for casters. ____ I'll have to wait until next beta build assuming we get one to really tinker though, since dex is borked and I believe interrupts are as well in this build. I've been leaving dex @ 10 just to not have its broken-ness factor into my builds.

It's not that bad, really. For a new system that hasn't had time to develop like DnD it's pretty good. Combat will still be fun as long as you don't take it too seriously, and the content itself will likely be very good considering the developer. I haven't put over 100 hours into the beta just 'cause I like complaining. The combat isn't as tactical as it could be but it isn't going to ruin the game for me. Worst case scenario, play on normal instead of hard and have silly fun while they patch up the combat system post-release.

There are a few counter mechanics(spells like Thrust of Tattered Veils for example), but you're right that it's a combination of things. The damage vs. defense issue may not be the root of the problem but without slowing things down I think it'd be hard to balance the rest of it. Many spells/abilities don't have any use right now due to the fast pacing/spike damage. The existing counter mechanics included - they don't come into play much because it's not cost effective relative to nuking things. And things such as lore and carefully choosing which enemies are more susceptible to CCs target will/reflex/fort aren't very relevant due to fights being short and bursty. Of course, the AI being poor is also in the way. If the AI were better/more aggressive/less predictable it'd highlight the weaknesses of the defense system more. Right now you can succeed easily enough due to limited AI and some players probably don't analyze as much when they're successful as when they're not. Oh, and as for tactical movement, I'd say it's actually pretty strong depending. Moving in and out of enemy visual range is very effective. OTOH it feels like cheating because the AI doesn't handle it well. So it's not in a good state. I still like the engagement mechanic and think it has potential, and I've had my moments where I screw up or intentionally place my casters in harm's way for testing purposes, and a knockdown from my fighter breaks the engagement allowing escape. It can add to tactical depth, it just doesn't most of the time. The lack of strong engagement escapes is part of the problem. You could call that a counter mechanic problem I suppose. They did allow interrupts to break engagement but it's unlikely the characters you need to escape engagement are going to interrupt a fighter-type enemy hugging them to death with any success.

What Odd Hermit and Sensuki are complaining about here is basically that traditionally non-melee classes such as mages don't perform well in melee if you build them as such. At least, not as well as they'd like them to. Infinity Engine purists shouldn't have a problem with this, since in those games it wasn't really possible to build a pure mage that performs well in combat anyway. Not until you got cheesy spells at the high levels, anyway. This isn't at all what I'm complaining about. The problem with Wizard is that the game clogs the wizard spell selection with spells that are clearly intended for melee, but that's a side issue. The main problem is that damage is so high that if you get the starting attacks, most fights are over before they begin if you play your cards right. And on the flip side, durability is so low that builds are pushed toward extremes because there is no happy middle-ground. This creates combat where there's very little on-the-fly tactics, it's very formulaic. You take your high damage characters, you gib their high damage characters. Your tank soaks up damage from everything else while you take it down.

Yes that is true. Most of my characters can hit harder than their endurance value. Hits of 100+, and of course crits can get really up there. And then there's Leadsplitter, which I'm not even sure because it doesn't display in my combat log but it's one-shot some bosses for me. The best armor I've got(Fine Plate) has 20 DR vs. Pierce/Slash and a bit lower vs. Crush I think. It could be buffed a little more but you're never going to get armor good enough to protect a squishy class like priest, cipher, or wizard well enough to have them taking hits from multiple targets or even one high-damage enemy. And @ level 7-8 my characters hover in the 100-125 endurance range, with my one tank having about 200. So even with the best armor, I'm taking a 50% recovery penalty for only a chance at surviving one or two heavy hits before dropping, and/or further stack deflection and nerf every other aspect of those classes to reduce my chances of taking those heavy hits by only a small %. It's just not worth it.

I have played 300 hours of the game and Odd Hertmit and co have valid concerns that they have demised through playing the game. You don't wear armor on anyone that isn't going to get attacked, because it's suboptimal and reduces their DPS and you don't invest in defensive attributes or passively defensive abilities/talents unless you're going to make a pure defensive build that you specifically use to take hits, while everyone else pours on the DPS. Armor Class in Baldur's Gate and the Icewind Dale games actually meant something because it was one defense that protected you from all physical attacks. In general, hit chance, or change to actually deal damage on a melee attack was lower, so having more AC made that low number even lower and it didn't cost you any offense. In this game offense is better than defense and defense makes you WORSE at fighting in most cases and it's offense that wins you encounters. I'm @ 128 hours FWIW. It's not a matter of ignoring one and hoping the other will protect you. You can try to get decent values for both and still be very squishy. The only classes capable of taking serious hits are those that have class-specific high deflection/health/DR along with talents that sacrifice most of their offensive power. The difference between taking, say, 100 damage from a high damage spell/power/ability or gun and taking 85 because you have plate on your wizard is pretty negligible. And even with some deflection talents a class like a wizard or priest really cannot afford enough deflection to turn enough hits into grazes very often. This is why players advocate high offense on all but "tank" characters. It matters more that your offensive characters damage/control things more quickly, because even if they try they can't save themselves from burst damage because +deflection only matters on already high deflection characters, and DT is only substantial protection on high deflection characters. My plan is actually to take a Paladin as a tank now, because they have a class-specific modal that can't be active with the strongest offensive modals anyway. And they only get one use of their strongest attack which is fine 'cause I can pull with a high damage ranged weapon then swap to weapon+shield. That's become the deciding factor in who I sit up front to take the hits. We have something that's essentially like the Icewind Dale II Heart of Winter mode situation where the ideal parties involve extremely specialized characters: 1-2 exceptional defense tank/decoy characters to have enemies cluster around while the offensively built characters bombard them with damage.

Sure you are: better auto attack damage. Whether you're close or far away matters very little if you're not being targeted in the first place, which is pretty easy to accomplish in PoE. It's not a big enough difference that I'd bother changing tactics much if you prefer to let things practically run on autopilot, but compared to games where priests practically explode on contact it's doable. I don't have the spare talents to make priest melee autoattack worth it. Most small fights don't last long enough to worry about it either + priest can toss an interdiction and crossbow stuff and contribute well enough, while in tougher fights my priest is busy casting.