thelee

adding to boeroer's good perspective, i found grimoire switching PoE1 a non-starter. The delay--even with quick switch--was so freaking long, that it was almost always better just to have a good all-purpose selection of 4 spells per spell level and only have a separate grimoire if you needed e.g. backup corrode damage and your main grimoire was fire (by Deadfire combat speeds, default grimoire switch delay in PoE1 was around 20 seconds!!). I found this to be a broken gameplay design of PoE1, because it meant that while the wizard was supposed to have the most spell-casting diversity, in practice they frequently had the least. that is not to say that probably they went a little too far in the other direction. As others have alluded, I like taking fassina a lot as a character, and a single-class conjurer without much effort I can get coverage for all her higher-level ability levels just with grimoire switching. An un-subclassed mage might require a little bit more metagaming, but it's definitely a huge advantage over other casters.

probably need to post more about your system? I've used both weapons extensively and haven't had any such issues, even on my older 5-6year old PC.

One thing I've learned after working in a similar industry for a long time is that "strings" of text aren't cheap, especially if they are localized. Purposefully gameplay descriptions will be vague (for example, things that say "Restore 1 of each class resource" even on classes that only have one type of resource, or "High chance of blah blah" even if that chance is 100%) because that means you can patch in gameplay changes without having to do another cycle of updating strings (which may require review) and potentially localization/re-translation effort (which can cost money if contracted out, and certainly will add time). I think that's why there was effort made to make auto-generated tooltip descriptions, but clearly (as you've seen) they aren't 100% comprehensive. A real example is the loading screen tip about empowerment. Even though they eventually managed to update it around ~2.0, it's still wrong, it just has lagged the pace of successive gameplay patches of what empowerment actually does so it is still completely inaccurate. Imagine (from an employee perspective) having to do this for every single gameplay tweak that you do (and there are lots with every patch, not to mention a good amount with hotfixes). This is not really offered as an excuse just an explanation. I just picked up Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and the tooltip descriptions there make Deadfire's look like scientific white papers by comparison. (Also - Diablo 3 lists all units in the US as "meters" even though it doesn't make any sense at all - it was because too late in the process they realized it was too much of a headache for internationalization/localization purposes to have "feet/inches" in the US and "meters" everywhere else, so they just made it "meters" all the time and you just have to imagine that everyone is a freaking giant and everything is completely out of scale.) Anyway, to the original point: I think a significant complaint about new grimoire mechanics would be mitigated if the UI were better. It would be best if you could see all the spells for all quick-slotted grimoires, and then the ones that aren't actively equipped are specially marked to indicate that trying to use that spell would induce a 2s switch time. I use grimoire switching a lot, and it can get a bit old to constantly right-click on grimoires to remind myself if this grimoire had X spell or not.

time to turn on one of Eothas, Rymrgand, or Woedica challenges then edit: yeah, separating out trap detection to perception is one of the weirder decisions that they made that I don't fully get. It's the only stat that has an "environmental" effect... Mod idea - make sleight of hand also the trap detection skill somehow and rename it something like "thuggery" or something. would actually make it really useful.

traps would be completely forgettable otherwise in a game where you regenerate to full after every encounter. this was an issue that came up with PoE1 - environmental traps did like an order of magnitude more damage to the player than traps the player themselves set. And the answer was essentially what relevance does a 20 damage trap have to a 100 endurance/400 health character if they just immediately regenerate the endurance and have such a huge health pool? 200 damage, however, that might be a knockout and a significant dent out of your total health and has real consequences. to me it just sounds like some people don't really want to have to worry about traps -- maybe at most just as a surprise but nothing that's a big deal, or just not traps altogether. sure: those are opinions, valid like any other, but my opinion of the few things that I find core to the D&D-like experience, it's traps. (edit: that is not to say that I find PoE1/Deadfire perfect. I would like more puzzle traps like in the PoE1 intro area or in that island encounter with Deadfire with the floor tiles and the slowly-filling room. They are more satisfying and sensical than out-of-nowhere-there's-a-hallway-full-of-traps traps.)

I guess that I just don't get all this wailing and complaining about so-called trash mobs. They don't bother me a bit. Every battle can't be one boss fight after another. That's be annoying and frustrating and boring as all hell, at least to me. I don't mind them that much because I like the combat and play on POTD, but to the folks playing on story mode who don't like the combat, they're just a waste of time. Ideally you want every encounter to have some kind of story attached to it. I guess that I don't have much sympathy here. To me, these games are all about the combat, and the story exists only as the backdrop, entertaining as it can be. I play the game for the fights. The story is, to me, just a way to give some context to the fights. sure - i'm in this camp. i skim the dialogue enough just to know which option to press to get me through quickly. but it can still be awfully tedious or boring to fight the same or similar encounter over and over and over on a single map. BoW comes closest to offending my sensibilities here: there are just so many soul collectors or mini-beasts of winter, and they are not interesting fights on top of being bullet sponges. if they had more of those mobs it would become just a slog to get through the DLC.

Anything blood mage, really. So much better than just a normal wizard (who is already good). Multiclass with wael, lifegiver, or paladin for some self-sustain. (Also makes it a safer class on triple crown)

I guess that I just don't get all this wailing and complaining about so-called trash mobs. They don't bother me a bit. Every battle can't be one boss fight after another. That's be annoying and frustrating and boring as all hell, at least to me. i think it's less about any trash mob fights, it's just when it's excessive and it's basically filler to extend play time. PoE1 originally had a lot of these--on PotD it sometimes felt you couldn't walk a foot without triggering another beetle fight or something. When they toned it down you still had a bunch of fights, but now it felt a little less tedious. I think Deadfire is pretty good on the balance, though I think some dungeons could be a wee bit denser with enemies (I actually wouldn't count Forgotten Sanctum in this, I thought there was a good density of fights).

It's there, I don't know why it's not listed because those tool-tips are autogenerated. I think it's because it's a conditional effect that only triggers on a successful paralyze. From https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/paladin "Garrote (AL0, The Steel Garrote only): costs 2 Zeal to target an enemy and Paralyze them for base 6s. If and only if you successfully Paralyze them (if it gets resisted or it misses it doesn't count) then the enemy also takes 4 base raw damage per second and at the end of the Paralyze they are proned. No other paladin order gets such a great debuff and even with the 2 Zeal cost a Woedican paladin can keep spamming this on a critical enemy to keep them out of the fight. The main drawback is that this ability comes at the expense of a free AL1 ability, so if you are a more defensively or supportively minded paladin you are much better off with a different order." (emphasis added) I verified this in-game, which is how I got the numbers.

just makes the chants extra weird though because IIRC non-damaging aoe spells with crits under energized will interrupt, no?

good point - line of sight pretty much has to be mutual if b could see a. consider the speculation murdered.

I would have just settled for a combat tool tip that I could lock in place and scroll as needed.

uh.... in PoE1 the longest interrupt was like 1s (morningstars maybe longer) and you could not interrupt someone already interrupted. In Deadfire the standard interrupt is +2s (prone is +2s recovery with a simultaneous 3s animation to stand up), and you can repeatedly interrupt the same target and push them back to the longer of their current recovery or 2s. in Deadfire it's not too hard to interrupt-lock a boss until they die. Such a thing was virtually impossible in PoE1. interrupts in PoE1 were pure murk. edit: it's not unreasonable for mountaintiger to speculate that chants don't count as attacks. chants literally function like nothing else in the game. they don't even PL scale, they use a very chanter-specific level-based scaling that occurs nowhere else in the game. even in PoE1 chants occupied a really weird zone (they benefited from single-weapon style accuracy bonus, but not other weapon accuracy bonuses). i don't think it would be too hard to verify with a come, come or dragon thrashed which of you is correct (but i'm at work now)

i'm not sure boeroer's characterization is completely correct. the problem is that aoe and range detection on the UI is flat, but in-game targeting (not UI treatment) takes into account line of sight and elevation changes. this is frequently notable with ramps - if you try to target an aoe effect you'll be able to affect targets well outside the aoe circle, and it's because effectively the ramp is the hypotenuse of two different triangles: (side view of ramp) \a \ |\ --\-- <= targeting circle \| \ visually a character standing at "a" will look like they are standing oustide the targeting circle, which is flat series of horizontal lines, but they are still included as a target because if you were to flatten the elevations they would be in it (the vertical line indicates where parts of the ramp collapse to on the targeting circle. i wonder if in your situation with tarkir something similar is happening but with line of sight checks; i've been in different-elevation situations where i get an X-ed out targeting circle instead of a normal targeting circle despite things being in range, and I think it's because line of sight does take into account elevation changes so that even a very small cliff, depending on the angle, can "block it.", e.g. a -- \ \ \b \ just last night i had my wizard standing at "a" in the digsite fight trying to target at boar "b" and was unable to despite the boar being in range, and it seemed to be because if you were to draw a straight line of sight line from a to b, it would intersect with the edge of the platform i was on, even though the fog of war was appropriately revealed. I had to move to the edge of the platform to target b. this is some speculation on how the engine works, but aligns with what i've experienced in-game over many hundreds of hours.

BTW, thelee, I noticed that FS's suggested companion/sidekicks are Aloth or Fassina. Is this the same as for BoW or SSS, due to some additional comments/observations from the listed characters? Side note: Speaking of "additional comments", I got a kick out of Ydwin landing a real zinger on Xoti near the end of SSS when she told her to be quiet, the adults were talking. ZING. Damn, I hope that Ydwin is a full blown companion, if or when they ever make a PoE3. yeah, pretty much. though even sidekicks that aren't listed will still get extra lines, if not as much. (i like running with mirke and the most recent time i ran with mirke through all 3 DLCs and even though she wasn't a listed companion in any of them she got extra reactivity in SSS and FS)

definitely does not. would be almost OP imo if it did - wizard wearing robes with some illusion magic would be hard to hit and if you could hit them virtually untouchable. (though i guess you've already figured out arcane knight can already replicate some of that anyway with some of the paladin's defensive skills) in my experience it's really encounter specific. it's not going to do much to salvage a random xaurip encounter or low level bounties, but IME the difference between SSS upscaled vs SSS not upscaled is substantial, similar with BoW. sounds like you're wrecking PotD more than I ever did, but SSS without scaling is good for level 16-17 on PotD; with upscaling SSS is still a challenge at level 19-20 instead of being completely trivial (with optimized mainchar and at most one hireling with full party of obsidian npcs which is my self-imposed rule to limit min-maxing).

at only 13k gold maybe you should try just skipping out on SSS for now and going to do FS. that'll get you a lot of money (tons of superb gear to sell) and powerful scrolls to use for the fight, and then you come back and beat SSS (and then beat FS).

are you paying attention to the range of your weapons and such? hunting bows, war bows, crossbows, arbalests, and arquebuses have very long ranges of 12m (i forget what the specific weapons being used in that fight are, but looking at youtube videos it looks like sharpshooters are using crossbows or arbalests). very few other effects in the game can match that range. pistols/blunderbusses have a paltry 5-6m range, and i think most spells naturally cap out at 10m. and i think grenade throwing range is less than that. edit - i don't think there's any concept of a high-ground or low-ground range bonus in this game

Much obliged. That seems really powerful with long duration dot or CC effects, and since they often target fortitude, enfeebled makes them more accurate as well. This makes FF better than I previously realized. I'll be sticking with this guy for a while, I think. My Bellower will have to wait (or get the tavern henchman treatment). yeah, FF before was marginal and seemed like it leaned real hard on a free enfeeble every once and a while, but with the improvements they made I think FF shot up to be a powerful subclass. Not quite the same wound gen as you can get with other monks, but "good enough" and now your window for free enfeebles is much more frequent. edit - in a rare case of increasing returns, you should whack someone with toxic strike on them with forbidden fist. toxic strike has superlinear returns on total damage done for extra duration, and +50% is a meaty chunk of extra duration. (crit duration increases are multiplicative, so single-class, prestige debonaire with high int using toxic strike on a charmed enemy with enfeeble seems like you could do total hundreds of single-target damage in one hit. not sure if this in and of itself constitutes a strategy, but it'd be fun to do.) edit 2 - running the numbers, with a PL10 debonaire with 20 intellect against 10 resolve enemy. without enfeeble, total damage done from DoT ~390. with enfeeble: ~652!! this is theorycrafting based on my understanding of toxic strike because frankly these numbers seem so high that i have to imagine there's some sort of internal damage cap. maybe not, but 48 seconds duration on toxic strike is brutal (15 base +50% int +50% enfeeble +25% multiplicative crit +30% separate multiplicative PL scaling). add in an arkemyr's wondrous torment and/or empower the toxic strike for extra pain.

those are actually new abilities (not an upgrade to lay on hands) that just happen to have lay on hands as a pre-requisite. the game unfortunately isn't always clear when an ability is an actual upgrade or a new ability with a pre-req. (similarly it's not always clear if the branching lines for an ability are exclusive choices or not). the lay on hands upgrades are nice conditional alternates to normal lay on hands - not worth using all the time (like you say it's basically twice the cost), but e.g. greater lay on hands is worlds better than normal lay on hands on someone who is weakened or enfeebled (the robust cancels the affliction and lets the heal work at full strength).

DLCs are harder than main path, if you want to give those a try. if you have a completely custom party though you might be set. the game difficulty is not well-matched for a completely optimized party. if the encounter is already above your level (e.g. torkar at level 5) level scale up won't do anything. also - torkar at level 8, good job. Are you still on PotD? even with a completely custom party that ain't a shabby accomplishment.

FYI, both (a) and (b) work. If enfeeble wears off, you still keep the bonus duration. Basically I think the way it is treated in-game is a) for new abilities on an enfeebled target, the +50% duration is treated like an additive bonus when calculating initial duration. b) there's a special override when enfeeble freshly applies to a character that goes ahead and adds a +50% additive bonus to all initial durations. in this respect it's much like disorient and blind. you get the immediate +50% recovery time penalty, and even if it wears off if you were mid recovery you still keep the penalty for the current recovery. much like disorient/blind, there's probably some bit that gets flipped to make sure abilities aren't being double-counted for successive enfeebles, though i haven't tested this.

it might be for hotfixes they just want to get them out instead of adding a lot of turnaround and overhead with beta patches. i suspect for the next big content path (march?) we'll see another patch beta.

My suggestion is that you might not have a lot of sustain if you only have xoti as priest (you didn't mention what Konstanten had) and you have lots of meleers who are going to be whacked by porokoa's melee assaults. the first couple times I tried SSS I basically got wrecked because the fight is way more of a grind than virtually anything that came before and I was utterly unprepared for it (at least in BoW you have those assists that do hundreds of damage to the dragon). Couple ideas: - are you using consumables? I basically always go in with scrolls of moonwell, hand of wael and woe, and lots and lots of heal potions. that helps solve the sustain problem for me for any party. - do you use interrupts? porokoa is way less scary if you are interrupting it. ideas include: lots of scrolls of thrust of tattered viels, slicken spamming (along with weapon modals to make porokoa more vulnerable), chanter chant "thick grew their tongues" to strip concentration from porokoa, mule kick/knock down from fighter, lots and lots of explosives. if you don't have ancestor's memory on ydwin get it, and put brilliant on either eder or aloth (probably aloth) and spam mule kick/knock down or slicken as much as brilliant allows. (with aloth you can also cast wall of draining and try to really stretch out how long a single brilliant lasts. also to maximize this, make sure aloth only casts slicken that way brilliant will always return another slicken cast. at one slicken every 6 seconds you could keep porokoa locked down the entire fight) - do you have PEN/AR issues? it could be making the fight take a lot longer if you're using hte wrong weapons or your otherwise unable to surmount Porokoa's AR (I know on PotD it can be an issue). if konstanten can get the shield cracks invocation you can perpetually debuff porokoa with -2 AR. - as MaxQuest suggests, on normal try to apply a CON affliction, and get an instant kill effect. My first party run through I actually barely managed to scrape by with a final cast by Vatnir with Death Cloud (literally was my last party member standing, last spell, and porokoa was in the middle of an attack that would have been fatal to Vatnir). Marux Amanth soulbound to priest/rogue/paladin can also do near death. Ydwin has detonate. Aloth can also have access to Death Cloud, and at level 20 you can use Petrification that will only get resisted down to Paralyze and at near death is permanent.

I don't know why this is a maybe, because it accurately simulates the experience of having a room full of players and a DM yelling at you to hurry up or lose your turn. FYI like in tabletop you can be thinking about your next move during other players' (the AI) turns (slow down combat speed if needed). Unlike in tabletop you can also "bank" time by using the 10s on an "easy" character (like a tank who just needs to attack someone standing next to them) to think about the moves for a "hard" character (a complex caster build).