thelee

cross-class comparisons aren't great though. wizards are just a better aoe (damage or debuff) class, ciphers are more narrow and single-target focused. ryngrim's is probably too strong at AL5 (heck the AL3 one is also really good), but more importantly, I wouldn't use a cipher to fulfill the role of a wizard or vice versa. like I said, it's not going to knock my socks off, but I'll never downplay a hard-CC. (also a subtle distinction is that haunting chain targets will which synergizes with some cipher passives. it's not much, but it's something)

my thoughts as no one in particular: I agree. I've said it before elsewhere, but BoW also has my narratively favorite pillars sequence in the entire game (the bridge ablaze sequence), which explored an area of the lore that most games and game worlds would be content to leave as mere mythos. And the lovecraftian setting in FS has surprisingly been underdone in these types of RPGs and I really liked it (the closest equivalent I can maybe think of is the illithid lair in BG2, but there wasn't much plot to that area). I totally convinced Wael to let the spore colony grow and thought the ending slide for it was great. From a replay perspective, though, FS is my favorite. Better dungeoneering, high-level encounters, interesting fights (whereas BoW sometimes gets real repetitive with the umtpeenth soul collector or big beast guy, and all those burning archers that keep popping up from the ground gets old and feels a bit unfair at times). Plus, even if it doesn't have the same kicker of story that I thought BoW did (and Rymrgand got fleshed out way more interestingly than Wael I thought), well, now tayn I can get into! I didn't care much for SSS the first time through, but I like it more on replays for this reason. It's fun having these isolated battles just to throw my parties at and see how they perform. The story is thin, but for replays that works out fine for me since I'm skimming/skipping through text anyway. I really hate the seeker challenge where you get transformed, though... just awful. You spend so much time carefully leveling your party and then they all get replaced by the same transmogrified group of creatures that any party gets, and you're expected to fight with that, not to mention that the transmogrification is imperfect so some classes do obscenely well (paladin auras, martial classes with lots of passives).

Haunting Chains... yeah I don't get it as well. Seems like a complete waste of ability points But maybe I'm overlooking something. Like Fractured Volition - that's also... "errrm?" Fractured Volition seems like one of those abilities that didn't survive the transition to Deadfire very well (much like Mind Plague imo which used to be amazeballs in PoE1). I used Fractured Volition a bit in PoE1 because it was a great way to do -20(+) all non-deflection defenses and keep enemies from barely moving. In Deadfire, there are more ways to debuff defenses, and Hobbled and Weakened don't do nearly as much defense lowering as they used to. Haunting Chains is alright... it's a lengthy hard-CC and I'll never kick a long duration hard-CC out of bed. I remember picking it up on one of my Ydwins and it wasn't bad (though was annoying because this was early on in my Deadfire career and at AL9 I was fully expecting it to be a bounce or aoe spell and was disappointed when it wasn't).

...why are you returning to the hub? you can repair whenever you need. is it just that you're out of gold?

I don't know about this as in RtWP you could cast many spells directly in a row. For example, if a round is now 6 seconds, that's equivalent to casting 15 wizard spells that are currently marked as free actions. Not to mention a lot of instant class buffs you could stack really quickly in RtWP by simply pausing after each activation. thing is in RtWP there's a difference between "instant" (like disciplined barrage or thundering blows are so instant they can literally be used while the game is paused) and merely "very very fast" (like frenzy or the fighter's pull effect). In RTWP, the very very fast still consumes animation time (and could even be disrupted). TB doen't seem to distinguish between these, and both are free actions. So while you could spam thundering blows to your hearts content in TB just like in RTwP, you could also spam the fighter's pull ability or spirit tornado as many times as you want in one round without anyone acting, which has no real equivalent tactic in RtWP.

it's powerful because it's a tier 3 affliction, though in all honesty the other tier 3 afflictions can be way worse (though blind can feel punishing because the durations are longer) rogue and ciphers are different combat roles, maybe you just prefer the play style of a rogue? that's fine, but to me the idea of "rogue does everything better [than a cipher]" makes no sense to me because what rogues do is very different from ciphers. edit: also, spells are useful without weapon-modal debuffs, take it from me (700+ hours of gameplay). boeroer is mentioning strategy. -25 debuff can take spells from useful to insanely good, even against targets that have no business being affected by that spell. (i've literally chain paralyzed megabosses with a -25 debuff modal) on PotD I would say that it's only really feasible for non-insanely-good people (nb. in case you think I'm about to gloat, I would also put myself in this "not-insanely-good" category) to beat higher-level enemies at lower levels if the overall encounter is actually targeting your level. What I mean by that is that an encounter might target level 5 but have a few level 8s, at which point I would consider those level 8s eminently feasible. Torkar, meanwhile, is a bounty targeting level 14, which is way above your level, a fact that probably isn't altogether clear because it's probably showing as just three skulls (the max displayable); with downscaling enabled it might not even show skulls despite the fact that it would only downscale to at most level 10. Personally, on PotD+upscaling I would be hard pressed to do it at level 10-11 and, not to sound arrogant or condescending, I would be hella impressed if you could manage it at even that level, much less level 5. PotD encounters are so intense that until I got really used to the quest difficulties I actually refered to this thread https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/98843-level-scaling-difficulty-potdcompilation-thread/page-3 there's a table halfway down that lists the "target levels" for each quest (though this doesn't cover DLCs). For a newish PotD+upscaling experience, I would personally stay away from a quest until you are at least +1 level from the target level. edit: if torkar himself is level 14, he at least has 79 accuracy, so your 80 deflection is a moot point in terms of defense (it just means torkar "only" has a 4% chance to crit you). he probably also has level-scaled weapons, so has +8 or +12 accuracy (up to 12 or 14% chance to crit). add in buffs or perception stat and 80 deflection doesn't seem that notable at all. add in all the other adds he has, and that would quickly obliterate your party methinks.

Maybe a higher-level cipher has a lot more action economy concerns, but for an ability at that ability level and for only 10 focus (with possible lots gained back for a beguiler) the cast time and effect seem in line with the other effects at that level (except maybe whispers, because charm is frequently way more powerful than even other T3 afflictions). Play styles may differ, but personally Eyestrike is one of only a handful of AL1 cipher abilities I would actually continue to use later into the game (along with Whispers and Tenuous).

yay, summons fixed! I can roll my bellower now i have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually an intended nerf (e.g. the designers never intended for this aoe weapon interaction, and they took wayyyy too long to address it, letting people getting used to it) and the reason why no one official appears to be commenting on it is to try to sidestep the player rage at having such a big and late-in-the-cycle power-level cut.

Possibly any effect that has a target plus an aoe will need to connect with the initial target for the aoe to actually happen. Beam spells are an exception, because the beam effect is automatic and they just check to affect the target at every "tick." Pillar of Faith is definitely like eyestrike (checks to roll for damage on main target, and only if it connects will the aoe prone effect kick in... and because the two effects target different defenses, it's worth targeting a low-reflex target just to make sure hte prone (targets fortitude instead) happens). I think Mental Binding or Fetid Caress (also target + aoe effects) do something similar. I could be wrong or missing some exceptions.

It's worth highlighting that I thought Fallouts NV handled this strength/accuracy conundrum that you all are going on about reasonably well. In that game (also in Fallout 1/2), all weapons had a minimum strength. For weapons like handguns or a sword, the strength is really really low. but for something like a gatling gun it's pretty high. If you have anything less than the minimum strength, you get a huge accuracy penalty (and in first-person mode there's visible weapon sway as you are apparently struggling to hold the weapon). Once you have the minimum strength though, strength doesn't matter one bit. If a weapon needs 5 strength, then 10 strength does nothing for you that 7 strength or 5 strength couldn't already do. In my mind, F:NV is closer to "reality" than what crucis is talking about, or what you're talking about. Strength is a threshold. If you can barely hold that rifle up, you're not going to be doing any precision shots with it (but you probably will be able to do some shots with it, even if they go wild). But once you have the upper body strength just to hold it in place, the difference between benching 100 lbs versus 300 lbs isn't going to matter at all, and after that it's your specific skill with the weapon and whatever accuracy stat you want to add in here (perception for fallout and deadfire). Strength might matter for repeat shots or swings or thrusts (e.g. fatigue), but really that's endurance or constitution, and again this is why I argue that "realism" is not a good metric for assessing a game mechanic because it's a hole with no bottom and you have to make some cutoff at some point, so why not just prefer a mechanically fun abstraction rather than being fetishizing realism as an end unto itself. (In terms of game play design, though, strength requirements for weapons were definitely a case of murk. Probably most people didn't notice that weapons had strength requirements, and the weapon sway and reduced VATS accuracy probably got lost in the action.)

To be fair, just being able to solo a megaboss does not necessarily equate to general power. Solo-ing basically amounts to "is this class lucky enough to have the right inherent toolset to take advantage of some technical tricks." For example, my two solo runs (one Triple Crown, one The Ultimate) for PoE1 used a chanter and paladin, respectively, and it had less to do with any in-built power, but more just about their sheer ability to repeatedly use powers or high defenses themselves (e.g. infinite summons with chanter, bonus defense with paladin) and I would nowhere near put them on the top of the list of "most powerful PoE1 classes." That being said, I think lists like this are pretty useful if you acknowledge their shortcomings. They are essentially a crowd-sourced list of what casual Deadfire players think are powerful (because it'll basically be heavily weighted towards casual players), and if you contextualize it like that, it can be a good guide for other casual players to quickly figure out what are good classes to pick up and play. But if you start picking at it ever so slightly for more details, or expect some high-end guides on class/multiclass power, it's going to collapse really quickly. (Imagine determining Starcraft 2 meta or Super Smash Bros tier lists based largely just on what casual players like to play or worse think they like to play.)

Haven't watched this video, but watched some of their other stuff, and it seems prudent to at least wait for beta to be over, because there are certain mechanics that seem way too abusable and likely to be patched (free action spamming mostly).

that's a bloody good quote, had to immediately go look it up. Now i have a reading list, thanks!

you should repost this in either the main bug report forum or the turn-based feedback forum, since i don't think this forum is actively monitored unless there is an actual patch on the beta branch being evaluated.

sometimes i find it extremely hard to avoid feeding the trolls. sigh, like moth to a flame...

well, i'm glad you find something that works for you, but I think if you stick with the "cipher suck" attitude you're going to get a lot of push back here also i think Eurhetemec was making that comment of bleakwalker/wizard because I don't think there's many people who would argue that pal/wizard is a particularly notably powerful build but a lot of the fun of the game imo is discovering what works and what doesn't, especially for your own play style. best of luck/fun in your journeys

mate, u straight up failed to comprehend that no one asked u to correct their copy. u might want to work on ur own communication skills before going in studs up on someone else. who cares. a clown wearing a bowtie is still a clown. on that note, uve spelt ur username wrong. its supposed to be 'circus'. Why do people always ask this silly question, "who cares?". Obviously, I care, otherwise I wouldn't have posted what I did. I place a great deal of importance on proper use of the language. If you sent me a cover letter for a job with poor spelling and grammar, I'd toss both the cover letter and the resume straight in the trash basket. And I stand by the comment that proper spelling and grammar are important if you want your opinions to be taken seriously. And lastly, no my username isn't spelled incorrectly. "crucis" a name used in astronomy for some star clusters and star names. Furthermore, it was a name I used in some sci-fi related material, as well as used by friends of mine who used the name in a fictional race in a sci-fi series about 15-20 years ago, and still shows up once in a while when another book in the series is written. It's a name that has some personal history with me, and I've used it (or some derivation thereof) on forums for the past 20 or so years. This said by someone who in these small two paragraphs: - inappropriately did ["who cares?".] when it should have been ["who cares?"] (no full stop after), and many style guides would have probably suggested a colon preceding that quote (e.g. "Why do people always ask this silly question: "who cares?") - random extra spaces - missed commas everywhere, and excessive commas elsewhere - missed capitalizations - missed hyphenizations ("sci-fi-related" not "sci-fi related") - starts sentences with conjunctions - fails to properly use accented e's in "résumé" Get over yourself. forums where people sh*tpost about games they like or dislike are not job applications (and frankly even that hypothetical is moot given that I work in an industry where recruiters and HR folk would happily look over typos and grammar errors in a job application if you can code worth a damn, so your "high standard" would likely get you axed pretty quickly).

yeah, by having less to them, sidekicks are easier to be in to i think (though they get more reactivity in DLCs). companions are probably a matter of taste. as someone who grew up in the american south deep in the bible belt, i found eder and xoti to be really interesting characters (especially the very different ways their characters develop w.r.t. their faiths) anyway it's all moot because Grieving Mother from PoE1 is the best pillars character.

But this is highly subjective and changes a lot from player to player. For you the randomness makes it less boring, for others it's just frustrating. I think some randomness OK, it just depends on the scope and the context. In BG/BG2, most fights were over pretty fast, so if a wizard got off a lucky Hold Person on someone important, or I failed a Touch of Death save it's not expensive to reload. By contrast, PotD fights can be longish (many minutes) and the worst thing to happen in such a context is to have Serafen suddenly pull an aoe blast out of nowhere that causes you to wipe. Wild Mage was a thing in BG2 (and in BGEE) and it was nowhere near as annoying as Serafen's Wild Mind even though I'd hazard the distribution of positive to negative outcomes was way worse for the Wild Mage than for Wild Mind (though there was also a lot more upside potential... so again, it was swingier). similarly this is why graze mechanic works so well in poe/deadfire (and why it sucked when grazes were briefly not a thing in backer beta), because given the general intensity and length of fights in poe/deadfire world, without grazes outcomes just became a little swingy given how long and tough fights were. obsidian said that grazes made CC too good or too consistent, and in my mind that was the whole point - while you could still stack defenses and get lucky about dodging a hit or despite lots of buffs get unlucky and miss a hit, grazes really smoothed that out so it put more onus on straight up skill and strategy than blindly getting a string of lucky rolls.

Can I hit the sigil while it still has the globe of invulnerability up? Because I wanna shut it down before it even opens because once it's open it cleanses me immediately, Nope. Only real thing to do is to limit what buffs you rely on until you can DPS down the cleansing sigil.

nice. i played a ranger a long time ago, but i must've missed out on these encounters or skimmed too much. the little touches of class-specific (and sometimes sub-class specific) reactivity are real nice, even if they don't add too much to the game.

yeah, sorry. it was a nerf a few patches ago because the designers didn't like the idea of players leaning too hard on consumables or repeat-use items, so they got rest-limited and game-limited as well.

i know it's not a great solution, but in TB-mode you can also use the classic "hot-seat" style of multiplayer where you just hand the mouse to the next player. obv wouldn't be great if you're not physically in the same location, but I remember playing various worms games in college like this (maybe I'm dating myself now).

they said they are collecting feedback until end of february so i wouldn't expect any major patch related to TB until march. there may be a hotfix patch before then, though, but I doubt it will do much than important bugs.

I only like to argue when I think someone is wrong. I especially argue when someone is wrong and is being unwarrantedly aggressive about it. Hey, you know what? You were probably better than me at PoE1 PotD, because in the early-mid days of PoE1 I found it a hair-pulling frustration at how quickly the spectres in the Caed Nua lobby could get out of control and annihilate me (not to mention all the friggin trash mobs in the Caed Nua yard that I just ended up stealthing past), and I needed that 6th party member. Not to mention the higher level that one could only get by doing all the Act 1 quests. I don't have a problem with saying that. Maybe you're not as good at PotD Deadfire as other people and instead of feeling entitled to be able to beat PotD under whatever constraints with whatever sense of "easiness" you feel you must have, maybe some sense of humility about your limitations is in order. Translation: I shot my mouth off with a smarmy 'false' and can't back it up so now I'll move the goal posts No, your comment was objectively false. See above. You are not required to hire more hirelings, much like you are not required to hire hirelings in PoE1. But you may need to, depending on skill level and your chosen PC. I could probably take most PCs with just Eder and Xoti, but sure it will take many reloads in some cases, and be stupidly easy in others (Debonaire, Blood Mage). It's almost as artificial a constraint and varied an outcome as trying to solo the game because that's not the target balance. But it is objectively false that Gorecci St is just straight up impossible for many PCs. Also "lowering the difficulty" is a real option as part of the game. I'm not going to load up a Civ game on Deity and complain that the only way I can beat the game is by pursuing some specific strategy with some specific civ and everything else I'm going to die horribly and therefore the difficulty sucks. I'm going to lower the difficulty. This quote has been pulled repeatedly, but it needs to be pulled again: '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.' hire a hireling or two. and/or pull+split the encounter. if you refuse, be a little more humble about your own skillset maybe and act less entitled about it. PotD was literally balanced in concert with someone on the Obsidian crew who loves to powergame/min-max, they tuned and tossed him encounters to check for appropriate struggle factor. Therefore, act like someone who likes to powergame/min-max starting with Port Maje, not after. "this is inconvenient for me to consider, so i'll ignore it"