Odd Hermit

False, you can position as long as you don't snap the girl's neck like some psychopath. I've done both ways just to see what happens, but if you don't snap the girl's neck you can open on them rather than being dropped into combat. However, I actually wrecked that group faster when being dropped into combat last time I tested it. If you look at all of them and see there's a cipher with an arquebus, you just gib that guy first and you're kinda sorta good to go from there 'cause your casters aren't going to be randomly gibbed. Anyway, positioning over the course of a fight is one thing, positioning at the start of fights being the deciding factor too easily is a problem. The player, in the majority of encounters, is allowed to open the fight with positioning favorable to them. It gets too formulaic and predictable. I cleared most of the Skaen out without resting last play-through just by chain will-o'-wisp pulling them.

Just had a perfect example of how fights are often completely decided by positioning testing a 3 person custom party vs. medreth's group. This is not an ideal party of course but - PC: Priest, Interdiction w/talent that adds weakness to it and Fighter: Savage Attack/ 2h style Wizard: Scion of Flame and Blast First fight, I go up to it as any noob might, just click on Medreth, go through dialogue, dropped into combat. Enemies split onto us somewhat evenly, my casters are too busy getting engage spammed while running away, there's a lot of desperate slicken casting and healing while my fighter has no support as the casters struggle for life. I almost made it, and probably could've had I played some cards a bit better and/or got a few less spells interrupted or engagement attacks hit. Second fight, carefully position my fighter in the center. Have casters a distance back. Fight starts, they mob my fighter, my priest and wizard debuff and AoE them to death easily. Fight over in very short order, piece of cake. All it took was moving a couple characters a few meters away and letting them all glue to my fighter at first.

Priest has some decent close range spells, but that doesn't mean I'm actually going to engage a target in melee or try to use my priest like a flanking rogue. I get in, burn something or throw down a seal, and get back out. I don't think I'm missing out on anything. I have tried to make melee priest and it just wasn't very good. OTOH taking Interdiction talents and Scion of Flame and throwing debuffs and damage spells is a much better use of a priest's time than making a weak attempt at being a battle cleric.

Praeses, Alia, Fero! Vita, Mortis, Careo! Incertus, Pulcher, Imperio!

I'd also like to see the Priest Deities all have at least one ranged weapon as a favored weapon. Right now Magran seems the no brainer choice for +10 accuracy w/Arquebus. I know I won't be using my Priest in melee, 'cause you really don't want your healbot in range of all the stuff aimed at your melee, even if they weren't so squishy it'd be a questionable decision.

I'm still doubtful Wizards will have value as a gish while they still have to spend spells/rest during combat to do so. I could more easily see Druid shifting being a decent backup melee/spell saver vs. smaller encounters because it doesn't cost them anything and takes only one action. This IMO is a bigger deal than Wildstrike which I still probably won't take - Josh Sawyer ‏@jesawyer 2h2 hours ago @spursadam shapeshifts have better armor (with no recovery penalty) and the base damage is better than all weapons (but dual-wielded) Sounds like druids could be a good early-game melee, which is nice while you've only got a small number of level 1 spells, then grow into a more caster role. I still really wish spells/encounter would kick in earlier(if they even have them anymore?) and/or be gained from talents. At level 8 in the beta you still don't even get a single per encounter 1st level spell.

Make them not fall over from a slight breeze and give them genuinely useful and powerful abilities. I made some suggestions here - http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70840-what-to-do-with-the-ranger-ideas-thread/ Problem is if the animal is weak yet the ranger suffers as an individual unit due to it, it just feels like a tacked on gimmick that ruins a class. The animal has to be reasonable strong or it defeats the purpose of it being a part of the class. Unless they just gave Ranger's non-combat bonus-y animal companions, such as stealth/scouting stuff. Personally I've tried Bear and Wolf, neither are great but I ended up getting more use out of wolf if only to cheese its run speed to distract melee enemies and divide and conquer. But that can be done with chanter summons that don't give you a huge debuff if they get knocked out, and can actually contribute a decent amount to a fight as well.

Oh, I didn't realize NPC's had a different health/endurance mechanic.... So no enemy health? Unless you would just call it health to begin with like most games do. Enemies at least seem to have the same health/endurance mechanic, it just doesn't come into play unless you're hitting and running. You can deal damage and run off until the enemy gives up, and if you come back that enemy will have regenerated its stamina. However I don't know if you could constantly peck away at a target's stam/health and eventually overcome the stam regen by outright killing a target.

Same experience with int 22 chanter. I gave my priest the +2 int armor instead, eventually. It's either not displaying right or not working in the BB.

Ranged weapons can be used with Flames of Devotion. And an Arquebus with +100-150(talent to boost Flames)% of its damage can hit like a freaking truck. Not that an Arquebus on its own doesn't hit like truck though. I use my Paladin as a standard melee combatant that just opens with the Arquebus. The problem with Paladins as a more sustained damage ranged class is they have their class modal auras that are a complete waste if you use the Penetrating Shot modal for dealing decent damage with faster ranged weapons. You also only get 1 Flames of Devotion per encounter, while other classes have things that add damage more constantly like Biting Whip for Cipher or Sneak Attacks for Rogue. Paladins just aren't built for it IMO. Neither are monks. Best ranged classes are Rogue and Cipher, at least judging from the backer beta.

DT you mean, I assume? Damage Threshold. It makes some sense as a form of mitigation but if it's high across the board it just makes taking things that counter it the most reliable sources of damage. A high damage/hit weapon and/or high DT penetration weapon will still kill lightly armored targets fine, but the same can't be said of low damage/hit and no DT pen weapons vs. high. Mid-High DT just trivializes too many things that it shouldn't, both for and against the player. I think they could still work with DT, but they need to get creative with it. There aren't many DT lowering abilities available outside of modal talents.

Random is much less cheese-able. And having engagement come into tactical play more would be nice. I think it has potential anyway. Alternatively or in addition, a system where enemies have lore and prioritize certain vulnerable and/or low health targets when in range might be good. If an enemy caster gets a strong debuff on a character for example, priorities of the AI could kick in and have them focus fire that character while they're deflection/defenses are lowered. Random scouting actually exists just not many enemies use it. The lions move along a path for example and can bump into your party. But they don't have larger sight range. If some enemies used stealth, and the PC's party had to have decent perception levels, that would be interesting as well. I think perception values playing into stealth could help add variation without it feeling too random. Currently I get the opener on almost all enemies in the BB except for scripted stuff that drops you from dialogue into combat. Ideally I think AI of animals and humanoids/intelligent monsters should be a bit different as well. I can buy beetles being dumb, but it doesn't make sense that you can pull a single humanoid away from his group without a call for backup or a reaction or something. The random interrupts could easily go in favor of activated countering. Or they could keep the random interrupts, and players could build more passive or more active interrupters - as they seem to want classes to have active and passive builds possible. Although Priest/Wizard/Druid aren't possible to really build passively right now and be very successful on hard. High per hit damage is at least in part a problem with defenses though IMO. You can view it as a problem with damage output as well I guess, the point is there's high spike damage and talents that add a lot of damage output, but few defensive talents that do anything substantial without being stacked on already durable classes. I can give my druid with 35 deflection +5 deflection, but it's a waste of a talent because the difference in damage taken is extremely minimal. Meanwhile I can grab a straight +20% damage to my strongest elemental spells NP and just bomb things faster than they bomb me. High spike is fine on debuffed targets with focus firing, but in the BB right now you can simply shoot a gun with an ability and talents that boost the damage and one shot something with a single character no set-up necessary. Defenses don't need to be hit first, you don't need to flank them or CC them or anything. At least @ higher levels in IE games, significant fights often involved a lot of stripping of defenses while trying to manage your own. Granted, they were kind of "higher magic" games and casters had a weird curve where they started out weak and became monstrosities, but I think PoE could manage most of the good without most of the bad. Lower level casters seem much better in PoE as single classes, even the Wizard in spite of its problems.

Well it has been awhile since I played BGII, I suppose I probably had mods that may've changed the AI since I played it awhile past its release date. I remember some enemies targeting seemingly random members of my party with some devastating stuff. There was a particular dragon fight, Draconis I think, that I remember having that "to-and-fro" feel where you had to react to his actions more than just positioning. Or maybe I was just young and blissfully ignorant of many mechanic abuse possibilities.

The problem is Wizards have way too many spells that are useless because it seems playing a spellsword type of wizard was intended to be a valid/viable approach, but they just aren't realistically any use as such. I would be fine with Wizard being a pure caster. Probably only ~15-20% of their spells are actually useful for a pure-caster play-style though. Druids are in better shape, since their fighter-wannabe is a mostly separate and easily ignorable mechanic rather than plaguing their spell arsenal.

-Wizard's Double As I said in the OP, Wizard can't easily get enough deflection for this deflection to matter much. It's also only a single attack. -Spirit Shield It's 3 DT at the moment I believe, at the cost of 1 of your spells per day, for one encounter. It's not very cost effective. -Fire Shield Freeze DT isn't going to save you from a big 2h or a gun. The minor damage you deal when enemies hit you is also negligible, since most enemies will negate much of it with DT plus your wizard can't get tanky enough that you'd last for many hits anyway. -Ironskin Probably the least terrible of these, it's a decent amount of DT. -Llengrath's Displaced Image Same issue as Wizard's double. -Citzal's Martial Power Problem is you'd have to build your wizard like a fighter to get much out of it, and he still wouldn't fight as well as an actual fighter, on a time limit, using a spell/day. Overall PoE doesn't currently have mechanics that allow for you to buff-up your casters and enter combat. Combat outcome is usually already decided before they'd have the time to buff themselves up to something passable as a fighter - since you have to cast most buff spells while in combat. Better to spend your spells disabling of exploding things than waste them on trying to be another class temporarily.

I would put a Wizard in Plate, but it still won't allow him to really play a gish role, and sometimes won't even necessarily save him from being gibbed by a gun - what matters is not having him targeted at all. I have my Druid, the squishiest character I take now, in Fine Breastplate. But he still isn't going to be fighting on the front. In IE games enemies didn't all swarm around your fighter with 100+ deflection. It might not've been advanced AI but your whole party was fair game and you had to adapt on the fly. Wizards / Clerics w/pre-buffs were also the tankiest characters. I'm not saying PoE needs be the same, but right now the way fights play out is just too predictable. And class roles are a bit too rigid and in some cases simplistic. Someone in my power-game party thread pointed out something that I was rather disappointed to find out was true - Turns out this guy is entirely right. If felt like an important part of tactics until I build a fighter w/out it and enemies still just went after him ignoring all my squishy targets most of the time, as long as he "pulled" and was in the front. What I though was engagement at work before, was actually just enemies trying to circle my fighter to get within range, they were never actually rushing for my casters.

Here are my current issues with the game's defense system, after testing a variety of tactics and builds on a few of the tougher BB fights: High defense stacking characters are all well and good, each point of defense matters as long as you keep up with enemy accuracy - which on PoD might be nigh impossible but on hard and below it works at least for the BB content. Outside of the fighter-y classes it's just a total waste even trying to make your caster characters - Wizard, Priest, Cipher, Druid in roughly order of most -> least fragility - durable enough to be anywhere in harm's way. The problem is that many of the talents and abilities are almost useless when applied to lower defense characters. +20 deflection doesn't mean jack if you're still low enough deflection to get hit/crit frequently anyway. Same goes for Fort/Will/Reflect and such. There aren't many options for mitigating burst damage other than getting as much DT as possible and then positioning. Due to this, many encounters are going to be entirely decided on squishy characters being placed out of the way, and taking advantage of AI limitations to keep them unharmed. It doesn't add up to interesting gameplay, fights will too often be decided by simple mechanic knowledge, opening tactic and positioning. There's not much room for too-and-fro reactive situations. It also prevents one of the things JE has talked about a fair amount with all characters being versatile and having viable build options for many play styles. You cannot make a reasonably successful melee Wizard the way the system currently works, at least not on hard+difficult. It's a dead weight character. Same goes for Druid, Cipher, Priest IMO. I'm sure you could run a party through with them but your other characters would be baby-sitting your wannabe gish characters. Miss/Graze/Hit/Crit are big jumps in damage and you need too much deflection to bother trying to get much out of the deflection stat on many classes. There really need to be better abilities/talents for mitigating spike damage, not just talents that you build up one uber-durable character to take all the hits.That's boring. That's MMO style gameplay, not what the target audience of old IE game players probably want. Granted, there is DT. But putting everyone in heavy armor with +DT enchants is also a bit dull. There's a similar issue with Fort/Reflex/Will. If you can't stack them high enough, they're rarely going to matter. What inspired this post was some testing of the various defensive talents related to these. I found they were mostly a wasted talent on anything but characters that already had them up fairly high. It's also worth noting that the constitution attribute isn't doing its job. It's got a similar problem to the 2h debacle where high base gets way, way more out of investment in it than low base. But, honestly, my high base stam/health characters don't need the extra health either. It's just a bad attribute as is. Example: Wizard with 40(30+10/level) stam, 120health has +15% from 15 Constitution = +6 stam, +18 health. Fighter with 56(42+14/level) stam, 280health has +15% from 15 Constitution = +8.4 stam, +42 health. Fighter is getting much more gain when you also consider they get higher stam/level so the gap just gets bigger. Then factor in the fighter having better defenses in general, and you get the idea. I think general durability really, really needs to be looked at and fixed before many other balance changes. If you have something broken at its base, building on it is foolish.

Bear's Fort / Snake's Reflexes vs. Body Control / Unstoppable? I'm stuck on a Druid talent 'cause I'm skipping Scion of Flame this time around. (Druid just has better Freeze/Shock spells). I think his Reflex score is hopeless so I was thinking shoring up his Fortitude could help. Or I could just give him penetrating shot and have him be better at shooting while not casting. Decisions decisions.

Anyone know if/how attack speed modifiers affect cast speed? I've considered taking Cautious Attack on my casters, I'm not worried about the attack speed of my Druid or Priest right now and would rather have them be more durable. But if it makes me cast slower, meh. The +5 deflection talent on its own though seems like too little for a talent.

Wizards cannot be so built around self-buffs. They talked about in pax like you could buff up and jump into the fray like a fighter but that seems like a total waste of time in the BB right now. You'd have to spend several actions and spells/day to make yourself an inferior version of another class. It doesn't work at all, especially not with the combat/non-combat situation preventing pre-buffing. If they had a smaller selection of per encounter self-buffs that were more substantial than junk like +20 deflection on a class that's made of paper, maybe the whole gish thing could work out. It seems like it'd be hard to salvage without some pretty dramatic changes though. ____ Priests aren't as bad, they are decent enough as a support/healer if you keep them in the back. At least priests have higher health than wizards so they're not as in danger of being actually killed rather than KOed. If they actually wanted them to be in the thick of things they'd need changes though. I would never build a melee priest as they are currently. ____ Barbarians I really dunno about since interrupts are borked, but the class relies too much on having melee-heavy fights for its main feature to work, and that makes it too much of a one trick pony IMO. What happens against a mix of caster/ranged and melee when there're only a few melee combatants? Casters are just a far more reliable source of AoE. I think they need a schtick other than AoE melee damage. ____ Main issue with Paladins is that you have your once per encounter flames of devotion and then you're spent and are basically an inferior fighter with one modal buff for your party until quite a few levels later. Their revival and debuff removal are nice to have but don't come into play soon enough. I also built a Fire Godlike Paladin of Darcozzi w/the Flame Shield ability, and I've got to ask what is the freaking point in small-damaging abilities if they're entirely negated by DT from most enemies that matter? I was doing like 0-1 damage against a lot of things with the flame shield. And that's with Scion of Flame(I went all-out fire theme). That said, Flames of Devotion can hit like a truck. I'm considering an Arquebus Paladin just to gib things with it for laughs. It'd be a bit difficult to balance multiple Flames /encounter but they need something else. Some of the defensive/escape abilties (like "escape" for rogue) are in need of tuning. I tried making a mobile rogue but it doesn't work too well when it takes too long to actually use your engagement breaking ability and you get interrupting trying to "cast" it. If an ability is meant to save your bum it needs to be quick and reliable. Worse I think is the shadowing beyond one, since it's only 2/day and incredibly awkward to use.

I really hope we can toggle the auto-attacking in response to getting hit AI off in the actual game. It's annoying the hell out of me lately.

It was good in post-HoW IWD w/out the entire druid spell package. I was actually thinking of that and not BGII since that was kind of a bug or poor implementation.

Puts your character into combat, so you can use charm/dominate enemies w/out needing to really be in combat. It can abused a bit. Easy to reproduce/test, take a cipher w/high stealth and cast it on a target - say a wood beetle. It won't come at your character, it will just stand there. Then you can Whisper of Treason it, and have it run off and get attacked by it's group. Here's a SS of it at work: http://i.imgur.com/jisJVsq.jpg

Quick question: Chanter summons - do they gain damage from the Chanter's might and/or any talents? IE if I summon Will-o-wisps, and I have 20 might and Heart of the Storm, do they deal more damage? They look fairly nice. In the character generator they're a bit rough, but in game you see them from more of a distance and they blend quite well. Some improvements could be made, and some race's models look nicer than others right now, but they're not going to detract from the overall aesthetic IMO.

What the heck are you guys doing that 20 seconds worth of base time isn't enough to help swing fights? Fighting Spirit isn't head and shoulders over other racials, but it's pretty nice on monks since they can serve as tanky dps who can convert incoming damage into crowd control, so getting knocked down to half health often doesn't necessarily mean they have to retreat to the back lines. And seriously, you think the dwarf bonus is better? Really, guy? Really? Is it 20 seconds now? It's still listed as 5 seconds on the wiki. That said, most of my melee rarely get down to 50% endurance, and I'd rather have something making it less likely for that to happen than something that requires it happen.