grasida

And illusionist power level boost doesn’t apply to trickster spells anyway. Trickster conjuror could be fun for access to illusion spells in spite of the conjuror penalty. And there are some decent damage spells for conjurors that benefit from power level.

That’s a good idea, level 3 afflictions would probably be too powerful, but level three inspirations can really change how your character approaches combat (immunity to engagement, immunity to interrupt, interrupt on crit, etc). Having a random one could encourage you to change the way you approach encounters in an interesting way.

It’s not just the game is a little too focused on full attacks, every single martial class has a spammable full attack that either costs one resource or has a chance to generate resources equal to its cost. On top of those, the vast majority of high tier weapon skills are full attacks. The skill trees of martial characters have a ridiculous prejudice towards two weapon fighting. Remember, there is no comparable advantage for other fighting styles to full attacks. Dual wielders still deal at least as much damage with torment’s reach, mule kick or soul annihilation as users of other styles. The only advantage the others have with primary attacks is damage per resources spent efficiency, which pales in comparison to double damage or two chances to apply an on attack effect on skills like toxic strike. Clear out is an example of a good, powerful primary attack that’s more effective than full attacks and just expensive enough to justify the higher efficiency of a two-hander or single weapon style. If obsidian isn’t going to change the nature of full attacks, they should change most of the existing full attacks to primary attacks and buff them considerably, while increasing resource costs where appropriate.

Actually, paladin sounds cool not only for brand enemy, but also just getting the ability to heal and heal while doing damage, if you go kind wayfarer, would really add versatility to an already versatile build.

You missed the point. You're making an argument based on flavor and on how you perceive abilities, not on how they function. Let's imagine three characters in a video game. They all have 100 health and deal the same damage. One takes 1/2 damage from everything. The second has a heal over time spell that restores 5 hp per turn. The third takes normal damage. In flavor, one is a "tank" and the second is a "healer" and the third is a support build. But now lets imagine that an enemy comes along and attacks for 10 damage per turn: Character 1 takes 5 damage per hit and dies in 20 turns. Character 2 takes ten damage per hit, heals himself for 5 every turn and dies in 20 turns. Character 3 takes 10 damage per turn and dies in 10 turns. What is the difference between characters 1 and 2? Functionally, they are the same. It doesn't matter that unbending is flavored as defensive buff and lay on hands is flavored as a heal. If we can agree that the overall offensive and defensive capabilities of fighters and paladins are pretty comparable outside of these two powers, which is what people here have been saying, then it's perfectly fair to compare them. They both increase the number of hits until death regardless of how they are flavored. I played a lifegiver that could take significant punishment just because she healed faster than enemies could damage her. She went down the least number of times in my party. The number of times enemies had to attack her until she died was high. Even though the enemies couldn't kill her, was she not a tank just because she also made it hard for the rest of the party to die too?

I think an issue with using trickster as a gambit chassis is that since gambit runs off of your guile available, that means you don't get to use any of your trickster powers, at least until you fail a gambit. I'd like to run a trickster as a control specialist focusing on defense, disables and dots. I'm not sure what to pair it with. Cipher is an obvious choice. Borrowed instinct fully stacks with mirrored image and the deflection boost from llengrath's displaced image. You can reach sky high deflection and passively build focus with riposte while you stand in a crowd casting spells constantly. Monk is another natural pair for a defense and disable focused trickster. Conjuror is another interesting choice, since trickster gives you a lot of the defensive illusion spells you'd be missing out on, the familiar is a strong boost and there are some powerful conjurations for which the increased power level would make a difference.

I feel like they started from the PoE 1 release state rather how they ended up after balancing as a template for a number of the class powers. The ranger pets are one example of that. The paladin's reviving exhortation is another, since if I recall at release in PoE, it revived someone for a time, then killed them, then they changed the delayed damage to be more reasonable. Single weapon style was also giving graze to hit in the deadfire beta, just like PoE at release. I could be wrong about this, but development seemed pretty rushed in some areas, and it's possible obsidian just didn't really have the time to review or balance some abilities beyond the template they used to start with. Of course, it's also possible that telemetry data suggests some multiclass ranger builds deal bonkers amounts of damage (and it likely does, given frost seeker at release), and obsidian isn't sure how to balance the pet so that it's a useful and capable addition to weaker or lower damage rangers, but doesn't push very powerful ranger builds even further over the edge.

I don't want to state my opinion either way because I've only played paladins a little, but it's perfectly fair to compare lay on hands with unbending. The important thing is how many times the enemies have to swing in your direction before you keel over. Both abilities make that number go up by a lot. The fact that lay on hands can be used on other party members is just a point in its favor, not a reason that it can't be compared.

I haven’t played enough characters to weigh in on a tier list, particularly since I’ve spent far more time calculating, theory crafting and messing around in the console than I have actually playing the game. I’ll say that fighter, on paper, looks really boring. It’s tanky, but lots of class combos can match it and bring more interesting abilities to the table. It has quite mediocre damage boosts and the resource costs of some of its abilities are higher than they should be (into the fray, power strike, inspired discipline). But some of its powers are a lot better than they seem on paper. Clear out and its upgrades are really, really good. Not only do they spread on hit effects in an aoe, which becomes quite large when upgraded, they also interrupt, push and prone, and on top of all that, they hit the primary target twice. For 2 discipline. Clear out at power level 6 is on par with power level 8 abilities on other martial characters and it gets better when upgraded. Still, I was considering psyblade vs transcendent yesterday for a soul blade, and monk just offers so much that I couldn’t find a reason to take fighter. In theory, fighter could be really fun, with lots of active things to do, like using tactical meld from cipher to get a huge engagement limit with mob stance to boost recovery, then suck enemies into your engagement with into the fray, drop cipher spells at high speed with your recovery boost, then blow everyone away and build up a bunch of focus with clear out. But at the end of the day, into the fray costs too much discipline to use frequently and doesn’t generate focus for some reason, and the fighter has no serious damage boosts on its own. So the huge damage and the boosts to intellect, might and dexterity from monk is just too good to pass up.

Level 2 has lots of good picks! I haven’t tried it, but with good dex and int, mental binding is probably really good. Phantom foes makes the whole field vulnerable to sneak attack and helps everyone in the party deal more damage with their weapons. Recall agony is one of the single strongest damage boosters in the game. Psychovampiric shield debuffs resolve heavily, which makes all your spells affect the target for longer, applies a heavy deflection debuff and an even heavier debuff to will. Level 3 looks like it has a few more duds, but still gets secret horrors, for an aoe save or suck against enemy casters and ectopsychic echo for very solid aoe damage with good positioning. And there’s no need to mention puppet master. Level 7 has one really weird spell I’m not sure anyone would ever pick (stasis shell), the game’s premier anti undead spell, which is pretty situational, and quite possibly the strongest single target buff in the game with ancestor’s memory. Cipher still has some really weak spells that make you wonder what the designers were thinking (wild leech) but overall it has very strong picks at every level.

I can't stand the look of fist + shield either! That's why I'm annoyed it seems fists have better DPS than weapons you'd expect to see paired with a buckler. And it's true other weapons can offer a lot of utility that fists can't offer. Magistrate's cudgel is really nice! But there are only so many uniques with strong utility enchantments and only so many monk builds wielding that shield that you'd want to put them on. While it's true that fists only have crush damage, crush damage tends to be very useful and fists have an extra base point of penetration. The fist modal is bad and the sword modal is good, but aside from fists having two points more penetration than swords at comparable levels, monks get tenacious fairly early, which makes both modals pointless. Of course, at the end of the day, what you think looks cool is more important than what's strictly the most effective. I'm just in the mood to complain since I liked the design of unarmed as a cheap, effective option that was on par with or only a hair short of other weapons in damage. I don't like the design of unarmed almost always being the best source of damage at the expense of fun modals and enchantments.

How many weapons are there that aren’t outclassed by a monk’s fists? Even good damage options, like tarn’s respite seem like they’d deal significantly less damage. I guess scordeo’s edge might be better. But I doubt most monk’s could find a good reason to turn away from fists without feeling a heavy loss in damage.

Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating that monk has by far the best powers for a single weapon build, but has built in weapons that are superior to almost everything you can find and can’t be “single wielded”. Of course in 1.2 monastic unarmed training gives tons of builds access to monk fists, so most melee characters optimally should avoid using any weapons for most or all of the game.

The conjuror’s familiar summon grants +1 power level. It also gives +3 to a random stat and another random bonus. All the buffs are considered passives and stack with other buffs. The unique pike grants +2 to all power levels while under a plant (or beast?) status effect. It should be a great stat stick for druids that’s just want to cast spells.

Unless a speed boost says something like “+ x% action speed with weapons”, it typically works for everything. Also, one thing that’s easy to overlook about swift strikes and its upgrades is the dex inspiration, which is actually another 15% action speed on top of what the description says. Unless you mean that swift flurry is duplicating trickster spells on crit, which seems wild.

Unfortunately, the accuracy bonus from binding block doesn’t stack with anything else. I really hate that about weapon modals, since some of them provide unique effects that don’t have that problem and some of them don’t. A sufficiently tanky monk could get nearly the same accuracy bonus as from binding block almost all the time with dance of death.

Either single or multiclassed monk should be the most obvious choice for a single weapon character. Swift flurry and heartbeat drumming are a huge multiplier on the overall effectiveness of your crits. The math on exactly how much damage they’re adding is too complicated for me to figure out without spending hours, since I think each of the two can’t proc off itself, but they can definitely proc off each other and I think they can both proc at the same time. But they add a lot damage if you can crit a lot once you have both. Use stalker’s patience for even more fun, since if you get a huge flurry of crits, you’ll likely also trigger mercy strikes and be able to attack again immediately. All those together should push single weapon style far past dual wield with normal attacks or primary attacks. But there’s still a problem if you’re trying to make a single weapon monk. Swift flurry just by itself is pretty lackluster. It only becomes really strong once you get heartbeat drumming and the two can proc off each other. Heartbeat drumming comes at level 13 on single class monks, which is not too late, but the later tier monk powers like resonant touch and whispers of the wind really do better with full attacks. Still, with a single class shattered pillar, a single weapon might be a very solid choice if you can somehow manage to get enough accuracy and hit to crit to crit reliably. Since swift flurry and heartbeat drumming build wounds, when you spend wounds on attacks like torment’s reach, you have a chance each time to regain some wounds instantly. And whispers of the wind, while probably better with full attacks, has a synergy with stalker’s patience. Since you’re likely to crit a ton of times with it, you’ll probably build up a few wounds each time you use it and will have a good chance to trigger mercy strikes to eliminate recovery. I doubt a single weapon shattered pillar would get enough more uses of whispers of the wind per fight to make up for missing out on the full attack, but you would be able to use it more frequently. You could also multiclass a monk with devoted for accuracy and hit to crit and crit damage, ranger for accuracy, or soul blade for accuracy and a powerful primary attack. But then heartbeat drumming doesn’t come until level 19, which is just too late to be important. I really want to build that kind of character. I think transcendent, for soul annihilation, borrowed instinct, tactical meld and the ability to reduce deflection with psychovampiric shield looks quite fun. But I think I’m going to wait until the DLC comes out to try it, since that will hopefully make heartbeat drumming come at a more relevant time for multiclassed monks. Edit: Another (better) option compared to stalker’s patience is scordeo’s edge. The large, stacking accuracy bonus alone probably generates more extra attacks through swift flurry / heartbeat drumming than mercy strikes. Blade cascade is very unreliable, but if it procs, single weapon style supports it the best, gives you a better chance to proc it again once it’s going and helps you massacre everything before it runs out. Scordeo’s also benefits from fair favor, which is a great piece of gear for a crit focused build.

It’s really going to depend on which spells you take. If you mostly avoid damage spells, conceivably a case could be made to not max might. But it still is a crucial stat for soul blades, since the extra raw damage on soul annihilation scales with it. So for an inquisitor, might is: 1) multiplying the base damage of your weapon additively with other bonuses. 2) working multiplicatively with the lash damage on flames of devotion. 3) those two increase your focus gain, which determines the base damage of soul anniation’s raw damage. 4) might then multiplies the raw damage of soul annihilation. Compared to, say, a single class fighter or some other character with no lashes, you quadruple dip on might. That’s not to mention how it will improve your heals and damage spells. Dex is very important for you too, since first, you have a lot of high impact spells you’ll want to frequently use like cipher self buffs, and your choice of offensive powers like antipathetic field, ectopsychic echo, recall agony, mental bonding, whisper of treason, eye strike, etc. All of those can do tons of damage or swing fights heavily in your favor, have low resource costs and many have relatively short durations, so dexterity is really important for getting them out fast. What’s more, soul annihilation has a large flat damage component that benefits highly from fast attack speed, so dexterity your melee damage will also scale more aggressively with dexterity than many other characters. I would rate the stats in order of might, dexterity, perception, intellect, constitution, resolve.

Passives like stoic steel will stack with anything, but buffs like robust won’t stack with zealous endurance or gilded enmity.

What about in 1.2? I’m pretty sure alchemy no longer affects the strength of bonuses from drugs at all except healing from white leaf. I haven’t checked what it does with potions. A skill available to everyone shouldn’t obviate class powers, but I wish it boosted drugs a little more than duration.

Chanters no longer can give brilliant, but do have a level 9 invocation that restores resources. In 1.2, ciphers can give brilliant with a level 7 power. Fighters also have a high level passive that grants discipline when crit, and the upgrade to their self revive restores resources.

Actually, monastic unarmed training enables scaling on tuotillio’s palm. I haven’t really tested it all that much beyond seeing that you do get penetration, accuracy damage from it.

The shield benefits from both dual wield and weapon and shield styles and attacks as fast as a dagger. The only thing you lose from it is a little damage, and remember that the dagger modal has a damage penalty too. And you get a lot more defense in return. Also, if you use an attack cycle like fist, shield, fist, torment’s reach (the next attack will be fist because torment’s reach will replace the shield bash) the shield will only account for 1/4 of your total attacks. So the defensive gain even further outweighs the loss in damage, since you only occasionally attack with the shield.

I haven’t tested riposte. What I want to know is whether attacks procced from swift flurry and heartbeat drumming can generate wounds. That could still lead to constant ability spam for shattered pillars. It’s still a strong class. And it goes well with something like trickster that has a lot of melee support, but doesn’t necessarily want to use its resources on attack abilities.

Also it was possible to hit zero recovery in PoE even without dual wielding, and full attacks were much, much more limited for every class except torments reach spamming monks. Generally there were good reasons to take each fighting style, even if uses for single weapon style were rare. But the skill trees in Deadfire are just ridiculously biased in favor of dual wielding. Now, fighter, rogue, ranger and paladin all have one resource cost full attacks and monks and barbarians have two resource cost attacks that can replenish resources. The majority of high level powers like heart of fury, the ranger’s melee whirlwind, gambit and whispers of the wind are full attacks. The skald’s passive favors dual wielding. Even abilities not explicitly full attacks like resonant touch and soul annihilation add significant flat damage that gives an advantage to dual wielding. Meaning if your main role is to use active powers to deal damage with your equipped weapon, there are only a handful of builds that don’t gain a lot from dual wielding, whereas the only advantage two handers or single weapon brings is resource efficiency with limited resource primary attacks.