thelee

I've been talking/begging about this since 2016, even added it as a begging section to my gamefaqs guide. I will literally re-install PoE1 just to take a look at this. With the last patch in 2024 I promised a hand-written letter of effusive praise if the devs got around to fixing this as well, and now I have it on this week's todo list to go out and buy some stationary. thankyousomuchomg

Been pleasantly surprised to see PoE1 getting a couple of patches (w/ some early reddit reports that a new public patch is available today). Will Deadfire get some patch love, too? I'll just suggest that if Deadfire ends up getting some patch attention, I think the two biggest negatively impacting game mechanics bugs are: characters will abandon using potions to do something else unless you disable their AI script or set it to passive (or you have another AI setting and there are no relevant enemies to engage). That is, they'll start animating the potion-drinking animation, but they'll end up doing something else or not consuming the potion. This was introduced at some point with or around 5.0/turn-based mode. Makes it very hard to use potions (doesn't seem to impact scrolls, grenades, or other in-combat items like summon items, only potions) traps are busted somehow (traps are my hobby horse it seems, since a double accuracy bug with traps that i've been harping on since 2016 is finally getting fixed in poe1 - thanks!) - their hazard effects trigger briefly and then never again. You can see this happen especially with fire traps and caltrops traps - they used to have long-lived effects (very useful especially for caltrops) but now they'll trigger, an enemy might get one tick of damage/impact, and then never again. There are smaller mechanics bugs and other non-mechanics bugs (like some sort of memory leak that degrades Deadfire performance the longer you play, the fact that when woodskin/form of delemgan wear off all your characters' models disappear unless you "refresh" them somehow [stealth or another cast], etc.), but IMO these are the top two mechanics bugs and if some dev somewhere at Obsidian is taking a look at some TODOs for a Deadfire patch, I'd love it if these got some attention.

I don't know how I missed this post, but HOLY HELL if this fix is going live I need to write a thank-you letter to the folks at Obsidian. I've been begging for a fix for literally years and you guys actually followed-up on the last patch commentary where I requested it again. AMAZING thank you so much.

is that from a mod? I don't think that condition exists in vanilla; there's like "has 10 focus" "has 20 focus" "has 30 focus"

i'm not quite sure if i understood you correctly, or you misunderstood boeroer but I just want to say that effectively Bullet Time doesn't work. It says -100% reload time, but there's a minimum reload time for all reloading weapons. If you're extremely slow, you'll notice a speed up, but if you're close to the minimum reload time (not hard to hit when dual-wielding with dual-wielding style) there's barely a difference. but boeroer's basic point is that once you're recovering from a non-reloading weapon, you're stuck waiting for recovery, so I don't quite see how a reload time adjustment would be useful here.

in fact, IIRC, the increased damage bonus from ascending is universal, so not just weapon damage. so even if you forget, you still will be doing more damage across the board than a normal cipher. though tbqh i would kill for a mod that puts a gigantic dialog box or message the moment you ascend, i do agree that it can be rough to remember in casual situations (e.g. outside of using a weapon ability that basically guarantees you max focus)

In general I always neglect Con and Res for non-tanks. PotD early on (when it is the hardest), the enemies so outclass you that Con and Res don’t feel particularly helpful to me versus better CC or killing enemies faster. If I still need help with survivability later on I end up taking Tough. Thrice is close range but good intellect still helps you hit without getting too close.

it's alright. Dazed is available at AT1 for priests and is good for engagement and survivability. i think it's mostly useful against bosses in longer fights [where longer duration from writ is useful] or in situations where you'd have a hard time landing a strength affliction [barbarians, might immunity, etc]

yeah. it's frankly a bit overtuned (given where other summoned weapons are at). from https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/priest they are the same as base monk fists, which are already above-grade - they do slow one-handed weapon damage at fast one-handed weapon speed, which for comparison purposes is basically like applying a 30%x multiplier damage compared to a normal weapon, which is insane. Add to that that priests can get up to 31% lash on their spiritual weapon, and that's adding on even more. Further on that, woedicans get a raw lash, which completely bypasses AR issues, making it generally the best possible type. The only thing holding them back against an actual monk with actual monk fists is the fact that they still scale like summoned weapons, instead of scaling like monk fists, but even then monks need to do a bit of work just to catch up to that raw lash.

eh, historically in other games the "builds" section of the forums was about diving into the mechanics of the game, not just builds, so i think that's what's happening here.

once i finish out my first run this is high on my list of things to test out. i've been operating under the assumption that it's like New Vegas, with DR first followed by absolute reduction, which is what Sawyer actively worked on and was a deliberate reversal from Fallout 1/2 (absolute reduction followed by DR).

i think i agree with kaylon in general broad strokes. it might be worth just having a SoT/WoD/SoF nerf on its own and let it simmer for a while. I don't think we've done that before, incl with Elric's stuff. Nerfing indefinite buffs might do a lot to rein in the extreme cheese. It's true that something like Unbending can be powerful w/out indefinite duration extension, but something like that is actually symmetrical with enemies, whereas enemies are incapable of abusing Brilliant or SoT/WoD/SoF. Beyond that, while balance is an admirable goal, there should still be opportunities to find interesting interactions for power, and it may be without indefinite durations the really powerful interactions aren't really that powerful. BDD with 2x duration from a nerfed Salvation of Time would be situationally good, but no longer the centerpiece for Ultimate runs, for example.

I seemed to recall that Elric had a fix for it, but didn't see it mentioned in your post (I could have missed it, sorry if I did) so wanted to bring it up. Personally - eh... I haven't played with Elric's fix, but in my gut going from 2 to 1 damage doesn't seem like a significant enough change. an Unbending-like change might be quite good though.

MaxQuest is back! I wonder if there's an anti-cheese that can be made with Combusting Wounds. Used normally it's a pretty good spell, but used in a synergistic party it's abusive, for the same reason as Unbending - every new damage roll procs damage from the entire stack when the DoT gets a new stack. Maybe a max stack count (10?) - would not affect casual use and would still allow for some synergies, but not quite the "melting bullet sponges very rapidly" territory. Bleeding Cut may need a similar treatment, though in my mind it's only really an issue when paired with Scordeo's Edge (which is already being nerfed).

i have a similar gripe about Marius. You can upgrade Shadow Step so that it basically instakills stunned enemies. When it works it's great! But he'll just waste it on un-stunned enemies or not use it when there are stunned enemies! I tried disabling the setting for companions to use their abilities themselves, but this added way more radial micromanagement than I enjoyed. Other allies have similar problems, but it's less of a big deal w/ e.g. Kai's taunt, because at least he's still taunting. But Shadow Step has an extremely looooong cooldown and it's only really effective if it's smartly targeted! (Same goes for another upgrade that lets it do more damage the less health the target has) I wish there were slightly better smarts for companions, or at least have a system where if I put an ability on my hotkeys that they stop using it automatically.

Sweet jeebus, I must have just completely missed the option. I only ever saw the breakdown option, so I thought lower level mats were only if for some reason I wanted to upgrade extremely under-tiered uniques or something.

You can craft higher tier Adra?????

very important and want to +1 this. a new skill i had to develop with avowed on PotD is constantly glancing at the top left of the screen so I can see where all the red dots are, and (very importantly) what direction they are facing. this makes sure i don't get tunnel-vision on a single enemy while someone is flanking me from the side. also, really good to just pay attention to audio cues. this is probably the only RPG i've played where the random things your companions shout in combat are insanely useful. if Kai says something like "enemy to your right!" i dodge to my left instantly, without thinking.

lower the difficulty if you need easier opponents i definitely cheesed a few encounters on path of the damned, but largely play "normally." Early on you should strive very hard to get your armor and weapons upgraded to fine, it makes a huge difference. beyond that, you really do need to master dodging and aiming.

though with some exploration, you can ugprade several items no problem. it's upgrading across tiers that's really expensive. for this reason i think it's kind of a mistake that hte game was apparently changed to let you upgrade common items across tiers. it's basically a trap. uses way too many resources and basically means you never have to sell items or engage with vendors at all. IMO it'd be better if you had to find uniques or scrounge up cash for a tier up, and upgrading is a system in parallel with that, not in conflict.

it's also baffling because it's apparent that these people must not have played other big RPGs in the past few years. BG3 has probably changed CRPG gaming forever, and did not have a lot of the things I see raised negatively about Avowed not being skyrim-like (e.g. why doesn't avowed have no level cap, respawning monsters, custom enchantments, NPC schedules, etc). did they bash BG3 for those same flaws? More likely they didn't even play BG3. it's fine for people to not have a lot of genre experience, but I wish people had more curiosity and were willing to try out a game on its own merits.

With Avowed, something I've realized is that I think for a lot of people, the only RPG they've spent much time on is in fact Skyrim. There was a Sports Illustrated (?!) preview of Avowed that I found baffling, because it was written by an e-sports commentator who only does RTS's, who admits in their preview that the only RPG they've ever played Skyrim, didn't like it, and their preview of Avowed was "this is kind of like Skyrim... which I didn't like. If you like Skyrim, maybe you'll like it." (I don't mind people having their specialties and genre likes, but for goodness sake, please have some basic familiarity with the genre you're trying to cover for a job. Hilariously, I can't find the article anymore, it only exists on internet archive, so either they or their editor realized what a hack job it was.) But the more social media commentary I see, the more I see people who are like that journalist where I'm starting to realize they literally have no other frame of reference for an RPG. Whether they like Avowed or don't like Avowed, it's in the context of "it's like skyrim in this way... and that's bad/good" or "it's not like skyrim in this way... and that's good/bad." There are literally other ways to make RPGs. "NPCs in Avowed don't have their own day to day schedules" my brother in Christ most cRPGs do not do that.

here's the video link: the youtuber in question had an update and apparently by their findings it's not average, it's literally just the highest tier out of your loadouts and armor. so this would match with your theory. so higher armor only matters insofar as it's better than other stuff you got. so for casters, you can get away with just upgrading armor.

Sure, but I mean in games that have done well with this (BG3 and Deadfire loot) for casters things like weapons are just stat sticks, even if good or useful stat sticks. The ARPG philosophy is that weapon damage and quality is also part of being the stat stick, even if it doesn’t really make “sense” that a better axe helps your fireball. i don’t really express an opinion either way, I have enjoyed both approaches. It’s easier for item design to get lazy with the ARPG approach (BG3 itemization is probably the best itemization in a recent CRPG I’ve seen, D4 is very uninspiring despite everything being “relevant”), on the other side there is risk to have inadequate support for casters getting interesting gear (Solasta or core D&D/Pathfinder). armor is definitely odd though.

Armor being included into offense calculation seems to be assured. There was an unlisted video that got shared with me where the guy definitively shows him changing armor (and only armor), and getting a skull difference on his test target and his black bow ends up doing different damage. Im heading to bed but ill try to remember to link it here tomorrow.