thelee

Generally you first pull her two melee helpers back to the entrance where you can dispatch of them quickly. Then you try to take out the Cleansing sigil when it's up, healing through any of its attacks. I'd stack healing gear and spells on your toon/party and not use anything that the sigil can Cleanse until after it is down. On my Thaumaturge, I stacked all healing gear and healing spells and potions/scrolls of healing and focused the cleansing sigil (including combusting wounds and any DOTs that tick when it's not up, like Gouging Strike could work)....once it is finally down, take your drugs and go to town on the boss and the other sigils. I was already pulling them to the entrance, but found that stacking Konstanten's rest bonus with a bunch of spell reflect potions combined with completely ignoring the boss until I got all of the sigils down was key. Guess I was overcomplicating it, she died in one try today. Now for Dorudagan, who seems like a huge time sink more than a challenge. I tried him today, but got bored and decided to take a break. Any advice from anyone on that guy? My team wasn't having too much trouble surviving against him as long as we stayed close, but we also weren't able to really dent his health bar at all. From what I've read, lightning damage is key. Anyone know where the ideal place to position my team should be? Range or melee? that's pretty much the fight: a huge grind. it's a good ol' fashion vanilla World of Warcraft raid boss: a slight technical dimension that you have to keep perfect over an extremely long period of time, but not much challenge beyond that. I would recommend mostly ranged because otherwise you might have a hard time getting to safety when it starts doing Helstorms. Essence Interrupter (shock damage), Eccea's Pistol upgraded for multiple shots and imbued ammunition: force (raw plus crush triggered damage) are particularly good ranged weapons (I would say at least one of them is mandatory due to how good they are at dealing damage to Dorudugan). If you have a chanter who can use The Shield Breaks that will help with AR. or a melee person with a mace. You can make the fight a little shorter by bringing along a lot of instakill effects, if you haven't already been doing this for the megabosses. In one attempt, I hit it with a Marux Amanth just as it hit near death and ended the fight right there. I also once hit it with Petrification just as it hit Near Death, which while isn't technically an instakill, a perma-paralyze pretty much ends any need to pay attention to the fight any more. Death Cloud, Detonate, Touch of Death, and that chanter rip the flesh invocation should also work. Because of how tanky Dorudugan is, an instakill just at Near Death is still literally like thousands of damage and lots of minutes saved. (though you need to do some accuracy buffing and/or bring along a morning star since most of these target fortitude and dorudugan has huge fortitude defense) My take on the fight: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/dorudugan

I'm sure Unity is nice but man, if there's a bug with *Unity itself* you're just kind of boned. Reminds me of how in PoE1 even the smallest patch was gigabytes of data to download just how resource management was done, not to mention the longer you played the game the kinder your save/load times became, both issues that we're only fixed with a unity version upgrade for Deadfire.

I think the ship has sailed on this, honestly. I built a brand-new computer and before I had to RMA my gpu for the third time (nvidia rtx friggin sucks) and get something else, I had a 2080 Ti and the beefiest AMD cpu, plus loads of ram, and the fastest NVMe storage I could get. I basically had the same exact frame skips as I did on my 5-6 year old computer that it was replacing. Something in the game is just coded so inefficiently that at this point I have to write it off as just a systematic misdesign in the engine, since no amount of hardware can apparently smooth it out, and would require some deep re-coding to fix, something that they are definitely not going to risk doing so late in the game life cycle. According to some posters in the Steam discussions the problem is Unity didn't code multithreading correctly, so on processors with a lot of cores the game begins to starve itself of resources. https://steamcommunity.com/app/560130/discussions/0/2572002906843374108/ Yeah, I tried that before posting my complaint. Unfortunately, it didn't result in any improvements to my frame rate. I spent around 4 hours trying to get even a slight boost - testing all the options - but to no avail unfortunately. Let's hope Obsidian finds a solution. From what I can tell it's connected to big open areas (like Neketaka) where you can see shadows moving depending on the sun and weather effects. It's like every time the sun and shadows move, the game hangs for a microsecond and then continues relatively smoothly until 5-10 seconds later the sun moves again. I think the ship has sailed on this, honestly. I built a brand-new computer and before I had to RMA my gpu for the third time (nvidia rtx friggin sucks) and get something else, I had a 2080 Ti and the beefiest AMD cpu, plus loads of ram, and the fastest NVMe storage I could get. I basically had the same exact frame skips as I did on my 5-6 year old computer that it was replacing. Something in the game is just coded so inefficiently that at this point I have to write it off as just a systematic misdesign in the engine, since no amount of hardware can apparently smooth it out, and would require some deep re-coding to fix, something that they are definitely not going to risk doing so late in the game life cycle. According to some posters in the Steam discussions the problem is Unity didn't code multithreading correctly, so on processors with a lot of cores the game begins to starve itself of resources. https://steamcommunity.com/app/560130/discussions/0/2572002906843374108/ holy crap man I need to try that. AMD cpus in particular have tons of (logical) cores, so I might have actually made the resource starvation a bigger issue over my much older cpu. I can vouch for Special K: I spoofed my cores from 6 to 4 and noticed a significant difference in FPS. As of 4.1 I haven't needed it but it might work for you. I think this is a YMMV situation since it's literally hardware-dependant. Currently have an AMD vega 64, and on 4K if i cast a few wall spells my fps starts to suffer pretty badly. I just gave SpecialK a try and reduced my logical cores from 16 to 4 and tried a test battle where I summoned every single wall I could and wow I don't think my FPS dipped at all. Definitely seems like a unity-specific threading-related resource starvation issue (so not even GPU-related, which normally tends to be the culprit).

I really do not see (or hear) what other people are complaining about. The delivery sounds fine to me. It's literally like "oh hey, what a fun surprise, it turns out the other guy (whom I just killed in cold blood) is right after all." that being said, LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE.

VTC you don't have to work with slavers. If you resolve the slaver situation by killing everyone Castol basically doesn't even acknowledge anything; plus you can always go along with the coup that unseats him. Also, "leaving the balance of power" is itself not a great moral option, because it's not like the status quo is particularly good. Also, the principi literally make money from plundering property that isn't theirs. That being said, only with the Principi can I get a whole room full of people completely sloshed and also recruit a perpetually drunk character (who finally in SSS and FS got some interactivity). Also only faction where I can gain tons of reputation just by giving someone candied nuts. So whatever, let's greet the end of the world with drinks in hand.

Generally you first pull her two melee helpers back to the entrance where you can dispatch of them quickly. Then you try to take out the Cleansing sigil when it's up, healing through any of its attacks. I'd stack healing gear and spells on your toon/party and not use anything that the sigil can Cleanse until after it is down. On my Thaumaturge, I stacked all healing gear and healing spells and potions/scrolls of healing and focused the cleansing sigil (including combusting wounds and any DOTs that tick when it's not up, like Gouging Strike could work)....once it is finally down, take your drugs and go to town on the boss and the other sigils. i don't know if it was already mentioned in this thread, but the #1 thing you can do on auranic is recruit konstanten (so his room becomes free) and then rest in the wild mare in his room, which grants +30% spell reflect that can't be cleansed. craft a bunch of arcane reflection potions (doesn't even have to be the 75% one, even the 50% reflect chance one is fine). you need multiples just so that you can re-use them when they get cleansed or expire. all told you end up with 1-.7*.5=65% chance to reflect any targeted spell with just using the lower arcane reflection, up to 82.5% or the better one. after that and some source of resolve resist i feel like the fight mostly takes care of itself (two of the obelisks will literally kill themselves from attacking you; the missile one won't kill itself (can't penetrate its own armor) but you'll take way less damage from all the spell reflect), and auranic doesn't become that much scarier than any other high-level mage fight.

best of luck with the rest of your run

I think this is more just a function of the role of the priest having changed in Deadfire. I just have made peace with the fact that the priest of Deadfire is just nowhere near like a priest in PoE1 for debuffing (much of that is a function of how differently prones function in Deadfire).

+13% in january is not nothing given the normal trend of games and attach rates, but it's not going to be a cure-all for sure.

FYI: Fampyrs use dominate at will via a gaze. Against Fampyrs, the best solution is actually to use blind (or have a dedicated Aegis of Loyalty paladin). Like the affliction description says, if either you or fampyr are blinded, the gaze attack will not work (if it's the fampyr, they cannot use it; if it's you, the combat log shows you as immune to the effect). But yes, you can actually have multiple copies of an inspiration or affliction (they don't stack, they are just extra "layers" to get through). My current party has mirke with Disciplined Barrage, and I have Xoti cast Dire Blessing regularly. 99% of the time it's never relevant if I hit Mirke with Dire Blessing, but on occasion it is relevant that Mirke has two sources of perception inspiration (intuitive and aware). I don't know what determines the order in which thigns get dispelled. It could be as simple as first-in, first-out. The only wrinkle here is that perception affliction multiples is a little buggy, because you only get the "free" Flanked once, so a second perception affliction will not apply flanked, which is weird if the first one lasts for a very short time but the second lasts for a long time, you end up with a long-lasting perception affliction with no flanked, and you can't use it again to re-apply flanked (you have to either manually flank or apply a different perception affliction source).

Hey, that's fair enough. But if you insist on these two points, then you must also subscribe to the ethos behind that. And that, simply put, is: don't complain. I also don't lower difficulty, I also don't skip fights. I also play with extra challenges enabled. No problems, which is to say, it's all eminently doable. It's OK to get frustrated (I still do in some areas (*cough* Bridge Ablaze *cough*) no matter how many times I've run PotD+upscaling+challenges), but yeah, like someone else said, this is starting to sound like "one of those posts." Basically what I'm also saying is, you should read this JE Sawyer post on this issue: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/181220302256/someones-very-touchy-on-that-subject-it-seems-and#notes "Deadfire has five difficulty levels. At launch, Veteran and Path of the Damned were undertuned, so we progressively increased the difficulty by tuning encounters, first in the early game, then on the remainder of the critical path, and finally in the other prominent areas off of the critical path. Nick and Ryan have been attentive to player concerns throughout the process. At this point, if someone is having trouble on a higher-than-Story difficulty level and refuses to turn the difficulty down, the problem can be found in the nearest mirror." It's true. I don't think I've ever played any game where designers have been so extremely responsive to player concerns about difficulty tuning. There was a lot of collective grousing to increase the difficulty to where it is now (and it's to Obsidian's credit that they kept tweaking it up); the difficulty is now at a point that I feel like many players are adequately satisfied (and for the rest there's things like Deadly Deadfire). Path of the Damned difficulty is explicitly a difficulty designed to require more metagaming, more strategy, and punish suboptimal builds and tactics.

this is definitely wrong. there's 3 melee skeleton warriors this time last time there was only 2. and they have more skull icons this time too. three as you can see. It might have something to do with level scaling, scale up everything. I gained 1 more level and went in there so they over buffed vs if i went in there at level 3? They are literally impossible. I went back to town and picked up all blunt weapons and it makes no difference. what is "last time?" like myself and others have said, PotD got amped up in difficulty. also, encounters definitely are not randomized. the only thing that could be varying it is if you're pulling in a mob from a different encounter by getting too close somehow, a real possibility in that skeleton encounter (there's a skeleton warrior downstairs i believe, and if you don't take the fight to the far left of the area you pull them up the stairs)

Ya i beat it before no prob. This time i swear it got up rolled big time. These skeletons have 60+ deflection. Did you last play before PotD got rebalanced? Because yes the entire first act got much harder.

Any Perception inspiration will negate any Perception affliction for the duration of the inspiration, and vice versa. It's not even "for the duration of the inspiration" it's a complete counter/dispel. If you have like a 60s tier 3 perception inspiration, a 2 second distraction will completely dispel it. (Actually quite annoying against bosses with Persistent Distraction, your melee characters basically can't ever get a perception buff to stick.) The only exception are "permanent inspirations" like you can see with Galawain's Challenge, they can't be countered

I would like it more if it weren't for the fact that its duration is so short. In many PotD fights a single target debuff needs to be really good (because there are many more enemies) or be durable (because you're fighting a single tough target) and I think Barb's fails at both. I do like Divine Mark at 3 because -25 deflection is huge even if the duration picture isn't that much better (it's also fire keyworded which is more advantageous)

Dire Blessing *is* that spell.The low-level AL1 buffs (Holy Power and Blessing) are still relevant later on because enemies also get better about using might and perception afflictions. Am I like the only one who tries to counter or protect their party members from these effects? +50% recovery time in particular is extremely brutal for anyone and given how common blind and disorient is I will use Blessing (even after getting Dire Blessing) to cancel them out. I'm not following...doesn't Blessing just give you +5 Per? Are you saying it also removes or reduce Per afflictions? Even so, why not more strategic casts of Dire Blessing than taking up two slots for essentially the same spell, major and minor versions? For that reason I would not call Blessing "great". Man, it's the entire inspiration/affliction system... Any inspiration counters or provides a defense against a related affliction and vice versa. E.G. if you have Strong, a Stun effect won't Stun you, it'll only counter and dispel Strong. If you are Blinded then a Blessing will counter the Blind. (Similarly, you can block a dominate or charm by hitting yourself with a Prayer for the Spirit). And the point of it is that Blessing and Holy Power are good when you get it, and because of the affliction/inspiration system they stay pretty relevant even though there are virtually strictly better effects at higher levels (Triumph, Dire Blessing).

Dire Blessing *is* that spell. The low-level AL1 buffs (Holy Power and Blessing) are still relevant later on because enemies also get better about using might and perception afflictions. Am I like the only one who tries to counter or protect their party members from these effects? +50% recovery time in particular is extremely brutal for anyone and given how common blind and disorient is I will use Blessing (even after getting Dire Blessing) to cancel them out.

can't empathize with that viewpoint because every single-class priest i've ever rolled/recruited has picked up dismissal

As others have said, Gorecci Street can be very hard with very little room for error due to how few options you personally have so early in the game. Have you even tried the dig site yet on PotD? That might ruin your day even more and that's part of the critical path. Two things that will greatly make it easier to deal with: 1) hire some hirelings (to get up to full party of five). you can always ditch them as you recruit other characters, if that's your thing. 2) split up the west/east enemies into two encounters using sparkcrackers and sneak (you can also use traps or anything else that makes a lot of noise and attracts attention). Don't know if it's as easy to do this kind of pulling in TB, but an encounter against 3 followed by an encounter against 4 is way way easier than an encounter against all 7 at once. Both these tips (full party of five, splitting up the encounter via pulling) will help you a lot at the Engwithan Dig Site as well.

Restore heals only 30 health in a much tighter radius, without any damage, and is still a very easy first pick at AL1. Iconic Projection is slower but can heal an entirely spread out party, while also getting in free damage. It works especially well in multiples. And actually, 20 is quite a bit less than one hit for a non-tank character in any reasonably challenging playthrough, most of my non-tanks can barely withstand more than a few hits of dedicated punishment before knockout, even with Tough. The point is not sustain, but buying time or recovering after getting to safety. If you're relying on priest instant heals to sustain party in a tough fight, you're doing it wrong; I'm not sure I would even consider priest a top 3 overall healer, their main benefit to healing is selection and the instantaneous nature of most of their heals. And I stand by my assessment. What else is "wrong" about what I picked?

fun thing about resonant touch is that you can break carefully scripted encounters. bosses and megabosses frequently have health triggers, and with enough resonant stacks that you activate at once you can just blow through their health at once and bypass all sorts of health-triggered abilities. did this with the SSS boss, the BoW boss, and have read about someone doing this with Dorudugan.

I think in this respect druids gets hit the hardest. I actually don't see much of a problem for priests because subclass bonus spells are very varied and frequently pull from other class's ability trees (or are completely unique, like Woedica). Only Eothas kinda gets screwed. Druids, on the other hand, didn't get any really special free spells until 4.0 gave the Ancient. They had more interesting subclass bonuses than priests, but especially at AL8/9 the amount of variance you could have in a druid started getting really tight, especially if you picked a lifegiver or fury and can't even take some of those very few spells at those levels.

Litany for the Body is a super long way to get +2 AR pretty easily on a tank, I would say it's easily worth the point without much effort. Prayer, though... Also: with respect I always find your posts a little hard to follow, but are you essentially arguing that priests are "at the bottom" because single-class priests lack a lot of design space? That's an interesting take, sure, but even if there were only one optimal way to build a priest (a sentiment I would disagree with but for sake of argument), if that one optimal is really good I'm not sure I would consider it the bottom. But hey, I guess that's the point of "pick a loser, dare you" (alternative formulation: what do you call the person who graduated last in their class in med school? a doctor)

spells and consumables don't benefit from legendary scaling, and consumables in particular don't benefit from PER, so generic accuracy bonus (like which the ranger has huge access to) can be massive improvement. EDIT: though i find that even with top-end gear, in FS and with megabosses accuracy is still a concern even for mythic-weapon characters. acc buffs and deflection debuffs (either directly or in the form of PER/RES affliction/inspirations) are still useful.

I think for hte patient Hunter's Claw helps fill that role for rangers, but it requires a lot of metagame knowledge to when to and the patience to actually build up the stacks (and not playing on Woedica's or Eothas's challenge).