thelee

relatedly i think mostly that black jacket is more skill-intense and metagame-intense to take advantage of. devoted and tactician are pretty straight-forward and easy to reason about. that being said, when i'm doing a custom fighter, 90% of the time it's a blackjacket. the other fighter subclasses are way too transformative for generic fighter needs, and the downside is not too bad and even without much metagaming or micromanaging the benefits are still nice to have that it function better as a generic fighter than the generic fighter IMO.

you should consider a psion. extremely early game their focus generation lags, but once you start getting 2 focus/second, it's great. it's not too hard to avoid the downside of having their focus generation shutoff, so long as you don't want to also melee. there's also stuff you can do with beguiler to easily generate lots of focus from using powers, but psion is more flexible and can pull stuff off that no other cipher can.

Gaze of the Adragan is still very powerful even with a short duration - and with intellect and possibly some sources of PL you can get some nice duration out of it. Confusion is lame, yeah. For one, most enemies are already dumb enough to hurt their allies with spells w/out needing to hit them with confusion. Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment is actually really good IMO - use it on bosses to enable all sorts of other debuff-based strats (such as a Gaze of the Adragan) or degenerate Combusting Wounds strategies. The fact that it drops Resolve so much for so long is really powerful, and because it targets will, it's easy to enable (club modal + willbreaker, for example). not sure i helped any with your indecision/restartitis, but I personally prefer to play Wael priests both because of the flavor and the mix of spells. In terms of debuffs, Berath only gets a couple unique spells (Rusted Armor and Spreading Plague) and honestly Rusted Armor isn't that great compared to what a priest can do at that tier and non-berath priests still have other good options at tier 3 (despondent blows is a personal favorite, but that divine mark or whatever spell is great against tough foes or bosses).

you know what that is a much better description than mine. tyranny also had taunting as well. very MMO-like, trying to manage enemy attention, especially since tyranny AI wasn't like PoE/Deadfire AI and would aggressively break engagement, which made it a lot more important to have a clearly-defined "tank" role in your party. actually that led to a major gameplay "trap" that I didn't like about Tyranny. Taunting accuracy is dictated by Athletics, which is extremely hard to train if you're not deliberately training for it, so your tanky characters (incl Barik) might be actually extremely terrible at tanking. You could do a lot better with magic (yes, I agree, magic is too dominant in Tyranny) and the Emotion school, which provides an easy taunt.

I consider Forgotten Sanctum to be a "dungeon" DLC and to that end it's part of why I like it so much - nicely focused with lots of interesting challenges and rewarding loot. I actually thought Endless Paths were a little flat in PoE1, it didn't quite have the "epic dungeon grind" feel (some of the levels were really tiny) and it didn't have much to do or IIRC to loot other than grindy trash mob fights. by contrast, WoTR's most recent "rogue-like" DLC is very unsatisfying - some decent loot but also endless uninteresting trash fights. a solid dungeon-type experience is hard to do I guess. yep!

Yeah, I've played both Tyranny and Deadfire and I think your criticisms hit the nail on the head. For reference, my Deadfire guide has slowly ballooned to a 700K text file, whereas my Tyranny guide has pretty much stayed at like two pages. It reflects both my interest and also IMHO the relative system depth between the two. 1. Absolutely. I know some people were big fans of the cooldown approach at the time, but it really gives Tyranny the feel of an ARPG that's been shoe-horned into a RWtP framework. There's no scarcity or management, you're just spamming whatever cooldowns you have as soon as they're available and not much more. To me, for martial classes this can be OK, but for caster classes, as you say, you only have a handful of abilities that actually reflect your "caster"-ness and you're just cycling between them, which is not very interesting. I also have a more fundamental problem in that the cooldown system, as designed, make it possible for battles to enter a stalemate - everyone has infinite spells and health and abilities so long as their cooldowns are set up right. I actually had this happen in a hard fight where I was knocked down to one character, and there was one enemy left. Lantry had just enough healing to not die, but also not enough offensive power to really take down the final enemy with any speed. Lantry leveled up like thrice before I finally managed to end the fight. Some people might find that "neat," but PoE and Deadfire have mechanisms that help battles be a lot more decisive, even if it's just the number of abilities you have running out. 2. Absolutely. It reminds me of final fantasy-style JRPGs in a bad way - where every spell's primary focus is on damage, and everything that doesn't do damage is garbage. In terms of the party-based RPG, BG and somewhat BG2 remains my ideal, where you had plenty of damage spells, but also all sorts of other spells, including "fluff" spells that the game actually incorporated (using Charm Person to get extra details out of NPCs, Detect Evil for the days back before gamefaqs and walkthroughs were easy to look up), and non-traditional spells that opened up interesting gameplay opportunities (Farsight to control summons from a distance, Limited Wish to get a special quest, etc.) Most CRPGs today are a little bit too combat-focused, but it's a compromise I accept if it means the available options are more fleshed out (some things in BG/BG2 just flat-out didn't work or were too fluffy, like "Know Alignment"). But Tyranny goes way too far in the extreme, and it's just not as interesting a system to me when the choices are just "damage, healing, or damage with extra steps." What I value Tyranny for is: great world-building and reactivity. The latter, including with companions, is imo unmatched by any CRPG that follows. What I did value Tyranny for, but is no longer special: this was like the first RTwP i really played that had big technical fights. PoE was pretty static, but in Tyranny in the latter end you had to watch for bosses with big wind-ups, big visual signals to maneuver around, etc. But Deadfire does this a bit too, and is generally better in every other way, so I don't really miss it.

i've seen this happen with weapon modals (i end up with multiple weapon modals) - is it related/similar?

historical lesson - this "only in combat" effect was introduced in an early patch because apparently it was considered an issue that it was hard to keep parties including island aumaua together, because the island aumaua would get way ahead of everyone else. i don't really agree with that decision, because a lot of people were confused by it (and still are, apparently), but that's why it's the way it is.

if you don't want to rest-spam by vendors (i frequently use magran challenges that make this annoying), rathun (fire giants) are good sources for pyrite - you can go sailing and blast them and gather some this way as well. (though they have very annoying sailing fights - they charge at you and you have a massive penalty to your own attacks)

the action economy is looser in higher difficulties, because enemies will have higher defenses and health so you'll have more time to do stuff. but yes, even then there's still action economy concerns. adding on to something boeroer said, for this reason i generally stay away from most generic caster/caster multiclasses. really early on, the extra casting on a caster/caster can be a life saver, but by mid-game you just have so many spells and so little time, and if you made one caster double up on two roles you could be in an extreme pinch trying to decide between healing or debuffing, for example. Exceptions to that rule are generally setups where you can avoid action economy clashes. I've done a few wizard/caster multiclasses, and the wizard side focuses on fast-cast (near-instant) buffs and only occasionally other spells. this limits how much action economy constraints i have while still giving me the benefits of having add'l casting pool. psion/caster is another favorite multiclass, because with a psion you naturally have phases where you're not doing anything with the cipher because you're generating focus.

interesting. i have the same experience, but i just assumed that those characters were set that way, not that they gained spells from scaling. edit - so it would still be limited to kith-like enemies, though. no matter what level I do SSS on (probably the only thing I really change up in terms of order), the e.g. beasts always have the same abilities.

as you probably know, the scaling is limited to accuracy, defenses, and health (and occasionally increased enchantment levels on gear). that means like... a spider is going to be the same overall spider 4 levels higher, just with slightly more health and accuracy. so the scaling isn't nearly as powerful as true "levels." everytime you gain a level, you gain accuracy, defense, and health (and correspondingly better gear), but you also gain new abilities, those two combined give you your true power impact. meanwhile a xaurip priest will never learn new high level abilities*, even though a player priest will gains tons over 4 levels. so anyway, upscaling doesn't really help areas stay challenging, it just mostly makes it a little bit harder to easily out-level areas** (which is all i really want anyway). *apparently with enough scaling, some (kith-like) enemies will pick up new abilities, but i've only heard of this happening with a mod that unlocks the current limited scaling to be unlimited. **the one exception is that without upscaling, the priest Dismissal spell becomes really good. at a point in mid-late game, you overlevel all constructs and most vessels and you can just wipe them all out. with upscaling on, many constructs and vessels stay atleast at your level, so dismissal becomes less an auto-win in many fights.

i would second going all-in on explosives, if you go into explosives in the first place. explosives are really versatile, and at really high levels the scaling you can achieve on some effects is really great, and it's never not worth it to point a point in. but if you just want to scatter-brain some enemies, you can use cinder bombs with their auto-interrupt without having to worry about a single point of explosives.

huh... really? i've been thinking it was +15 for literally years

absolutely does. only bombs that don't benefit are precisely the ones w/out an affliction (grenade, concussion bomb, immolator, that healing bomb). tested/verified each one for that interrupt-focused druid build i posted a while back. ring of focused flame also boost sparkcrackers and cinder bomb (also immolator). cinder bombs end up being pretty great on top of the guaranteed interrupt because of how much accuracy you can stack with them, and how you craft 2 at a time.

Crossbows also benefit from the fact that they have a % chance hit to crit that applies to everything as long as you are actively holding that crossbow, so the idea that arbalests or arquebus's are just better than crossbows might be old advice.

yeah this is an example of that hard cap with reload times. Bullet time does set the gun reload time to 0, but you still end up spending some time reloading, and if you were already a reasonably fast dual-wielder or using the pistol modal, you barely see the difference.

because perception doesn't influence grenades, classes that have other ways to boost accuracy or effectiveness can do better. i really like grenades on fighters, for example, because they have an easy way to get at least Aware (50% graze to hit) and +5/10 accuracy (adventurer/conquereror stance). Tactical Barrage grants +1 PL as well (which helps accuracy and overall effectiveness of grenades). Monks with Dance with Death can get up to +15 accuracy to grenades. Rangers can get tons of accuracy, but expensively. Priests can help anyone out with the still-OP Devotions for the Faithful (+10 acc), and/or Dire Blessing (50% graze to hit). explosives are definitely worth using, and i aggressively craft them so I don't have to worry about hoarding them. Cinder Bomb esp I find to be a great equalizer - not only is blind an effective affliction for survivability, but they always interrupt enemies when they explode (the interrupt completely ignores accuracy checks). A great way to mess up casters and to buy yourself breathing room. (Other bombs don't appear to do this)

in case it isn't clear (i don't think it was explicitly mentioned here but it is a part of the grimoire imprint spells), but in addition to stealing the spell, the grimoire trick gives you infinite uses of that spell. so even spells you might normally want to pick up manually, you'd be better off stealing, if you want to use the cheese.

you could still get to +6 PL pretty easily with: stone of power +1 conjurer +1 wellspring of life +1 weyc's wand empowered effect +3 (suppresses tactical barrage?) and you'd still get wall of draining so you could extend that wand effect and have it last an entire fight. haven't had to do the fist +6 or more PL math in a while (i'm happy enough for 3) so don't know if there's an easier way to do it, but that conjurer familiar does appear help. edit: this is still not necessarily an endorsement of going conjurer. like i said you lose a lot of defensive spells useful for a fist battlemage. merely that it's doable.

i'm inclined to very slightly disagree when it comes to single-class. it's undoubtable that blood mage is consistently powerful especially early game, but the game is not so difficult (that is, when talking about party mode + potd + challenges, a whole other story if you do solo or something) that you need the resource regen. In the end I've personally gotten much more bullish on empowering high-level spells + the empower passives. If the entire fight is already over as soon as it starts, you don't really need blood sacrifice edit - just to emphasize that this is only a consideration for single-class. multiclass don't get the really juicy high-level spells, or enough skill points to spare on all the empower passives.

i mean, the why bother is the +2 PL and the unique bonus (though that pretty much does not exist for transmuters). one can certainly go around and decree that any wizard build that doesn't pick up combusting wounds or wall of draining sucks, or is a challenge build, but in my mind cheese is cheese and exists in a separate spectrum from "effective", which is a much broader tent

having to craft/acquire potion of ascension a lot is a tax to pay, and much of the benefit of nature godlike and tactical barrage is getting faster and consistent fist progression in the early-mid game, which is arguably the hardest part of the game. acute isn't just a +1 PL, it's also the int bonus (which is huge for most playstyles), and it's also protection from intellect afflictions. i would frankly always take tactical barrage unless you have a specific crit build in mind (generally for me means some sort of monk or barbarian multiclass synergy). overlap with infuse with vital essence is immaterial since there's a lot of good stuff at tier 2 that can be cast otherwise. if OP is focusing on fist build, i would not dilute that by going disciplined strikes. it's only for wizard spells though, and i'm assuming OP is mostly going to be punching or supporting that punching.

those are all spells you can live without comfortably. Slicken, Combusting Wounds, and Wall of Draining I would consider spells to be so good as to be busted, but there's plenty of other good build/playstyle opportunities that you don't miss out on much by not using them. (Frankly I haven't used Slicken and Wall of Draining actually in ages and don't really miss them.) It's loss-aversion in a nutshell. There's too much focus on "oh man you lose these spells." I would challenge OP to just go with a specialist wizard and play it, in practice you'll rarely ever miss the spells you lose because you still have a lot of spells you can use to great effect (esp evoker). The only wizard specialization that feels particularly restrictive is Conjuration but I still end up using Fassina a lot to great success (and conjurers anyhow get that good familiar summon).

hardly ever, honestly. only reason i ever use a no-subclass wizard is because sometimes i pick up aloth and he's no subclass by default. yep! think of this way - you're not actually losing spells if all you ever cast are evocation spells (plus enchantment and illusion). you're losing deadweight. you're focusing! as an evoker, you'll look over at fassina summoning a staff and be like pffft who needs a staff when i just toss a bajilion fireballs into the fight. plus, it helps a lot that an evoker still retains access to almost all the unique spells in the game, so compared to a conjurer (like fassina) you actually give up very little. a big difference? not really. the bonus PL gives you a nice edge, and can help a lot when it means a avoiding underpenetration and/or getting an extra projectile, but it's not game-breaking. it might seem like a huge cost to pay to give up two schools completely in exchange for a little bit of extra damage with one school (and slightly longer recovery for two others), but if you were already going to cast the specialized spells a lot anyway, then the cost is almost zero and the benefit is greater than zero. the evoker echo bonus, however, is something else altogether. again, on average it won't really make a big dent in dps, because really how it plays out is that the vast majority of times (85+%) nothing big happens, but every once and a while you'll get a tide-turning duplication. You won't really feel it too much in early levels where duplicating some magic missiles is kinda meh, but later on duplicating stuff like Ninagauth's Shadowflame, Delayed Fireball, or a tier 9 evocation spell can just determine an entire fight in one go. No joke I got a lucky duplication of an empowered missile salvo in the first oracle boss fight in forgotten sanctum, and my evoker basically single-handedly ended the fight then and there.