thelee

it's ironic that however much effort they put into demurk a lot of mechanics from poe1, pl scaling is probably the murkiest mechanic between the two games. before i understood it i considered it a horrible systems design failure. now that i understand it, now it's more of a UX or UI failure.

i renamed the bug as you suggested, and added an extra note to OP about the bug.

yikes, maybe file a separate bug for this. i wonder if there's some additional keyword immunity interaction that's happening with gaze of the adragan.

i wouldn't personally put much stock into the blood mage's health's regen. it's soooo slow, and the blood mage needs to eat through health resource pretty quickly to really realize its potential. it only really works as part of a larger package of heal options. also, while brilliant indeed helps wizard/evoker catch up, it can be slow if not metagamed properly, and brilliant also works with a blood mage - it's not like the blood mage doesn't also benefit from it

i think this is for multiclasses - basically, for Priest/Someone-else you can pick SoD/SoF... and another passive on the same PL from second class, during one level up. Very handy sometimes. i would be more convinced of this explanation if priest also got secret of rime; they don't so it's clearly linked to a capability that they could have (berath's bonus spells) and it's poor design that it's also available to priest subclasses where it's very nearly a do-nothing. (it is also arguably an oversight that rangers don't get scion of flame now that arcane archers can launch fireballs... but perhaps the devs realized it would be too confusing to have scion of flame when only one ranger subclass can inherently take advantage of it. *sigh*) i don't know what a good solution for this would be. maybe just give everyone every spellcasting PEN talent. iirc in poe1 everyone could get the various elemental talents and it was on you if you picked one that was useless for your build. then again i really should go to bed so maybe i'm agreeing to things that a well-rested version of me wouldn't edit - heck why don't we just move Uncanny Luck to AL1!? If it's a D&D d20 homage, might as well let characters opt into at the very start, no? i don't know if i'm serious. but i mean balance-wise the numbers don't change much based on whether you get it at AL1 and AL5 due to how quickly you climb the early levels and maybe people will feel less "cheated" by it if its competition is arms bearer and/or monastic unarmed training and/or fast runner rather than when their class is entering its peak power curve.

frankly i think aside from maybe prestige or maybe great soul, i'm not altogether unconvinced that virtually every generic talent couldn't be at either like AL2 or 3. most generic talents in PoE1 were all available very early on, and i'm not convinced that the generic talents in Deadfire are really placed in higher ability levels for increasing power so much as "oh hey look you have more choices now." if people would really be happier with uncanny luck if it was earlier, i don't mind such a change. to me it's all the same really. for generic talents i think the main difference is the single class vs multi class cutoff. *maybe* the empower-based talents need to be higher, but personally i find that early on i'm rarely ever empowering abilities due to limited resources/spells so i tend to naturally only start empowering abilities later, so maybe having them earlier on would encourage actually empowering abilities. (though i don't know if my empower behavior is typical) someone else made the point that the current spread of generic talents is likely just a character progression/don't-overwhelm-the-player thing, which i think is reasonable. i'm not sure i ever made the point that lower/higher PL really mattered, if I did I made it in error because I had mentally agreed with the above perspective some pages back. i think the main thing that matters is whether or not is the class-specific vs generic relative strengths. though from a rogue perspective it is a bit weird to have them at the same AL, but what's also weird is getting spirit of decay as a non-berathian priest. so eh

i think that perspective lends better weight to being a "trap" pick, because i think as waski might have unintentionally demonstrated i don't think players are going to be completely aware that uncanny luck is not exactly great for a crit build. (i'm not even sure if it's obvious to players that the 5% "hit to crit" is not like a natural 20, it's much less then that). (edit - waski clarified) but even then in practice you would need a reeeeally high accuracy to not even see a minor benefit in increased crit rate for a crit build, at least from some numbers i just ran (curiously I don't think jayd is that far off, with my numbers even with an average net +30 accuracy against enemies on PotD you still get +14% more crits over the course of the game, though this heavily depends on how decent my estimated distribution of level-scaled enemies is and other assumptions i intially made in my script and am too tired to dig deep and resurface again for now). you have numbers i have numbers and i think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. i would argue that some of your numbers are context-free. what does dirty fighting (talent I would venture many people would happily take) do? I estimate dirty fighting provides net ~4% increase (along with more crit procs if any). In reasonable cases uncanny luck provides ~2% damage increase (scaling down at high accuracies) and an unconditional 5% resistance (and resistances have increasing returns with a much smoother curve than deflection). Accounting for uncanny luck being a generic talent i think that it is not too far apart from balance to justify a bump up. flat +2/health is basicaly like getting bonus CON, since health bonus from CON is additive. i always interpreted the talent as basically +2-5 CON depending on your class (or effectively letting you trade a future ability point for dumping more con at character creation). i don't see a point getting it for a barbarian, but for a glass cannon type or a blood mage (where +40 health literally means more free spell casts without the need for heals) i don't see why it's bad. (i reason that con is generally bad because in the long run the real constraint on your survival is your heal rate, but for squishy enough characters infinite heal rate won't matter if a bad burst of attacks crit-overpens you down to knockout from full health).

it's not just about spamming slickens at bosses you know. blood mages can also repeatedly cast your favorite evocation spell over and over again (along with other excluded spells). sure they won't be able to one-hit-end-combat in late game like an empowered [insert high-end damage spell] can, but I would argue most of the game is not about ending combat with one super-empowered AL8/9 spell.

best case scenario it's all hands on deck because they're trying to wrap up turn-based mode and do bugfixes so they're so busy fixing and tweaking things they can't log in and respond to forum posts.

Maybe it's cultural difference or whatnot, but I'm truly not trying to act like I'm smarter than anyone and if I seem condescending, sorry I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm putting forth my best arguments, and I expect others to do the same as well. In the process I learn from what other people have to say, and I hope that maybe others can learn from what i have to say as well. "Ideas are the sparks of two swords clashing" or whatnot. I don't pretend to have a "truly objective" perspective, and everything I write should be seen from the perspective that I've laid out what I thought was pretty clearly throughout the course of this polish thread (which is generally skeptical of anything outside pure bugfix mods--I'm mostly interested in better realizing the vanilla vision of what the game designers intended by focusing on developer/designer intent, rather than coming up with a bunch of "house rules"... I was that kind of DM). Even minor cosmetic changes are not very justifiable to me personally, because they don't serve to me as a good case of distilling what that original design intention was, especially if it involves creep. (I've mentioned in other threads--not that I expect people to follow my posting history--that extended play experiences in games like e.g. Diablo 2/3 have really scarred me about out-of-control power levels [even if it occurs incrementally over many patches], enough to make me fairly absolutist about it.) So for me to get on board with increases in power level of anything I feel like it really has to be justified. A minor bump up to 8% hit-to-crit does not strike as a particularly justified increase. edit - anyway, philosophizing aside, like I said, I think there's a *low* bar, not that there's *no* bar for an unconditional damage increase. i also really want to re-emphasize the distinction between generic and class-specific abilities and how comparing them as a justification is not really as meaningful as one would think (relatedly it is my personal pet peeve when in any RPG people complain about a class not doing X as well as another class... well they shouldn't do X as well as the other class, it's not their role!). to use the paladin comparison example, if there was a generic talent that gave you +1 AR, hopefully we could all agree that that would be potentially extremely good---but it's much worse than AL2 paladin aura that gives everyone +1 AR (not to mention potential health regen)! Or similarly a generic passive that gave you +5 accuracy. I'm pretty sure that would be an auto-pick for every single character I roll... but the AL2 zealous focus is just way better as well! so just because a paladin can do something better to more people at lower PLs is not a meaningful basis of comparison, because, well, this is what paladins are supposed to do better than anyone else. edit 2 - this post was too rambly so i trimmed it down quite a bit.

Because that would be unbalanced compared to existing talents and is not even comparable. You've basically given everyone blanket copy of Dirty Fighting, and you've created an unconditional version of Spell Resistance. Also any individual increasing resistance bonus is increasing returns, so 10% resistance is much better than simply 2x 5% resistance. It's not a great argument you made here. Taken to an absurd level: one talent that increases damage by 50% and one talent that increase resistance by 50%, but each talent costs 5 ability points. I would still happily save up 5 ability points to take one or the other. Even if the "average" cost would be comparable to uncanny luck, you have to pay more attention than just to the average but also to the actual nature of the distribution: 50% is just extremely good unconditional damage bonus, unmatched anywhere else. This isn't exactly statistics 101, but it is simple statistics, maybe statistics 102. (There's also the joke about the statistician who drowned while trying to cross a river that was only on average 3 feet deep.)

That's not quite the argument that I'm making, though it is roughly similar, if a bit "spiky". By the nature of the game, you are weighted towards passives the further along you go, simply because of action economy and resource constraints. If you pick every active ability or spell, congrats, you wasted like half your ability points on stuff you will almost never use. Because of this, and because (relatively unconditional) damage boosts are generally rare, there's not actually a very high bar for a damage booster to be "relevant," which is why I don't really see the need to boost e.g. improved critical either. And again, the fact that this is a generic talent is relevant. A boost in Uncanny Luck essentially represents a global power creep and it ever-so-slightly crowds out class or subclass specific characteristics. One ability not much, but from a systematic perspective, it seems like you'd have to have an extremely good reason to permit any given creep, because then it makes it easier to justify the next creep, and then the next, until it's really optimal to mostly just be taking generic talents. Uncanny Luck is not an auto-pick, but at least in my calculation it's also not a trap pick, it's more of an accent or niche pick. As a general talent, I think that's OK. And I think you're being a little bit disingenuous with your arguments. Tough, for example, will literally accomplish nothing for dps if you don't need the extra health (though I have taken Tough for offense in streetfighter or other low health builds). Fast Runner may or may not provide a significant dps boost for you, but it depends on the general mobility of the character. And I mean, yes I would and have happily taken Fast Runner in various builds. And again, Uncanny Luck is both a defensive and offensive pick (stronger defensive) which gives it a special significance. I would consider Spell Resistance more of a niche pick than Uncanny Luck even from a defensive angle, simply because of how heavily the game favors offense.

that's weird. it's not on a party member you rotated out or something? you should probably post this in the bug forum along with a save and output_log.

man, just constantly assuming bad faith.... and anyway you can literally change you race and gender on top of your character and starting at level 1. it's more exceptional that you get the gift from the machine/sacrifice buff in the first place rather than that you're missing everything else.

"casters are gods" as both a poe1 plus and minus: so funny and yet so true. edit: also, coors light? what the heck is wrong you.

blood mage and wizards are effectively different playstyles. blood mage is amazing because you can spam the same set of spells way past what any other mage could do. this can be way more powerful than empower. but if you're just going to play a blood mage like any other wizard except with a much slower and random self-empower mechanism, you're probably going to be underwhelmed. also +100. nature godlike is awesome, way worth losing the helm. wizards, druids, monks, barbs, priests all have super trivial ways to trigger the +1 PL it's not even conditional.

my explanation only requires reading comprehension of the what the guy is actually saying. the only clunkiness is the sort of cRPG trope that no game seems to be immune to of "let's do the option of what i was doing anyway, or let's completely change our minds based on a couple sentences from this random NPC who we don't know at all." that's not a bug so much as just forced quest design. people have dissected VO interpretation of specific lines over in other threads, and this doesn't even rise to that level of pedantry tbh.

Yeah, hidden among nonbugs...sounds like a bad idea, especially when you already established that it was expected for them to talk about the fleetmaster when that obviously never happened. It's a bug. You can stop witch-hunting now. it's not a bug. me, earlier: in case you're wondering, people get annoyed at you because you clearly seem to have an extremely bad faith approach to the game. i think your hit rate on actual bugs is less than stellar (though to your credit you do find some interesting bugs or non-obvious interactions) and everything else just seems to be mini-rants on soapboxes.

So I am not imagining that none of the suppressing abilities are working right now? When did this bug enter the game? I don't remember it ever being there. probably with like 4.1.2 or 4.1.1 (they kind of came close together) i've been playing pretty continuously since release and it definitely broke down after one of the post-4.0 patches. it's horrible to say the least. it's not just limited to liberating exhortation and suppress affliction. all sorts of affliction and debuff interactions are just plain busted. as far as I can tell you can still counter afflictions if the debuff is solely the affliction (no extras, no other afflictions on the same debuff), but if there are other effects, even visually dispelling the affliction the effects of the affliction just get carried by the rest of the debuff. and suppress affliction and liberating exhoration--as you've seen--basically don't work at all on hostile effects. not to mention weirdness with affliction resistance/immunity/weakness.

Please accept my deepest condolences. i mean seriously though at high levels what are you going to use those points on? another ability you won't use due to action economy or resource constraints? e.g. for a rogue i wouldn't pick it over dirty fighting, but i'd definitely use it with dirty fighting.

how do you know that "nobody" picks it? only obsidian knows that for sure with their telemetry. also, trivial counterexample - i have and do continue to take uncanny luck in varying builds.

kind of. rogue has a specific combat role. dirty fighting leans into that combat role. uncanny luck is a generic talent. comparing its baseline strength to a talent that is available only to a dps-y glass cannon-y class doesn't seem like an adequate point of comparison.

I had this same thought. I started a game with telemetry on, and while I did experience more stuttering than what I would consider normal, it wasn't game breaking like what I had experienced before. I can confirm that the old broken saves are still broken (on my PC) even though new games are entirely fixed, so it seems whatever is causing the problem is embedded in the old saves prior to the fix. A user on reddit noted that my fixed savegame on their PC ran flawlessly despite the rest of their saves or new games still being broken. They cleared everything related to POE2 on his PC and apparently the game is running better for them. I would be interested in seeing more cases of whether purging all local files related to POE2 and clearing the steam cloud backups (or at least preventing steam from redownloading said backups by running the game directly from the directory with steam closed) and starting a new game would yield the same results as using my save folder. you know what, i've been sitting on the bug forums occasionally trying to chime in and troubleshoot on posts where people have stutter problems, and even when our systems are near-identical i don't have the same kind of stutter problems they do. and this post brings to mind that i don't have steam cloud sync enabled. (i use dropbox+symlinks to sync saves so that I can play across platforms). i wonder if something about steam cloud sync is messing with save data and/or having an expensive extra process in the engine. this seems like a promising lead/root cause here.

if it stacked additively it would have really strong increasing returns though. i think comparison to dirty fighting is a bit unfair though, because dirty fighting is a rogue-specific talent, whereas everyone can get uncanny luck, i think from a mechanics perspective that has to dilute uncanny luck.

I don't think it's really been mentioned that uncanny luck is more than just a 5% hit to crit, it's a 5% resist as well (not even a hit->graze or graze->hit, just an absolute 5% generic resist). I think any considerations of its net effect on damage has to taken into account that it has a strong defensive angle (versus say weapon specialization).