thelee

Then they missed out on all the dialogue options.I think a lot of people preferred to wreck house in combat instead. Which ppl? most of the discussion i was a part of back in the day, resolve was a dump stat. in terms of dialogue options while it did give you a few alternative quest endings, it was only in a few cases. it's nothing like charisma/speech in fallouts 1-NV.

In terms of dumpability, you're also not generally mathematically wrong. For anyone else just listening in: my simulations only took into account stats of 10+ (my omission). I haven't updated for the full range of stats, but because of double-inversion nonsense when you bring might and dex down you need a much larger amount of equivalent damage or action speed boosts to counter that penalty, whereas with perception--even though though the penalties have increasing returns--you can counter accuracy penalties with accuracy bonuses 1:1. Perception had such a minor edge over might on net effects for stats >= 10 that I feel comfortable saying without running more simulations that the double-inversion means that might becomes a more precious stat than perception when deciding what to take below 10. So when it comes to which of might, dex, or perception you can dump, perception is the most dumpable. Though personally to me it doesn't make much sense to dump perception below 10 just to boost might some more (dex though). Double-inversions, boy... nice way to come with situations where 1 + 1 = 3

Xoti's PL1 priest subclass spell is probably one of the best PL1 spells in the game. Virtually I couldn't care less what other subclass bonus spells she got. Though I do agree about monk; don't mind the monk subclass penalty so much because it's easy to build a viable monk character that isn't a huge wounds spender.

Performance issues aren't universal though. I have like a 6 year old processor but an nvidia 1060 (though apparently people are struggling with nvidias) and I have 0 performance issues.

Then they missed out on all the dialogue options. I think a lot of people preferred to wreck house in combat instead.

I will be honest Boer I have been less active in the game, it just seems worse. Talk me off the ledge man. Res sucks again not even for lessening debuffs??!?! I think Prince of Lies put it best earlier upthread "suboptimal does not mean unusable." This isn't BG or BG 2 where a bad stat allocation makes for a literally unplayable character. I have made at least two decent characters that valued res and they came out pretty well. It's not useless (*cough* BG/BG2/IWD charisma *cough*), it's just niche. (And those niches can be very, very powerful, since Res gives you deflection which has increasing returns) (one of those characters was a support tank that could get up to 30+ res with very high uptime ~100%, which is some pretty serious debuff reduction; basically meant every hit was turned into a graze, and anything that grazed barely even registered)

bottom line is Perception > Might (but it's close). similarly, +1 acc > +3% damage (but it's close). (though this ranking breaks down at very high accuracies, though that is rare for much of potd) for martial classes, Dexterity > Perception or Might. For casters, it might be closer to Perception > Might > Dexterity depending on your build/playstyle (basically when you have a finite number of spells, getting the most out of each of your spells may be more important than simply emptying your spellbook faster) That's quite counter-intuitive? I thought the conventional thought has been that casters need Dexterity most because of the need to prevent being interrupted and thus cast fast. Like I said, it depends on play style and build. For example: enemy AI is relatively predictable and gameable. If you have suitable engagement and stats/distance, interruption may be less of a concern because you're only taking incidental damage at best. You can also cancel spellcasts before they get interrupted. Another example: if i have a martial/caster multiclass, i might privilege dexterity alot to spend less time casting (and risking interrupts) and more time attacking. but if i'm a safe single-class debuffer, all dexterity lets me do is empty my spellbook faster and then i'm stuck with a relatively crappy autoattack. in such a case it might be more useful to make each spell I do cast much more impactful by increasing perception. (this also depends on difficulty because on PotD with upscaling running out of spells and still having a decent amount of combat left is going to be more common than on, say, story mode)

i get that that's what he was saying, but what was really frustrating me was that i kept on trying to say that that was not what i was saying was the net effect... though kaylon kept pushing it as if that's what i was saying and that this was undermining my conclusions, which it wasn't (and in fact he was selectively quoting me out of context to push his point), and also that's not what i was saying and in fact even if i had said something ridiculous like "the action speed reduction is superliminal and makes you travel back in time" it still wouldn't have affected the results from the simulations. grr anyway don't want to relitigate it. EDIT: in case it isn't clear, what i've been saying repeatedly is that it's a +42.8% through the recovery. maybe my phrasing is just unintuitive or confusing. i've even also said "ignoring the attack" to clarify that i'm talking about the recovery time only (and part of my aggravation earlier was kaylon selectively quoting the part RIGHT before my very very important qualifiers). i'm trying to illustrate how a single, increasing recovery time bonus has outsized importance (increasing returns) because of the inversion to get to the net action speed, which is a more comparable number to damage boosts and such and that failure to account for this on the part of Obsidian's designers is what probably led to the outcome where 2w was just basically the definitive choice for weapons for so long. i edited my OP earlier today to try to make this more clear.

Re: economy. You don't have to spend the money you accumulate on things (even on PotD with upscaling), but the major difference with PoE1 is that you can, and if you choose to you may find yourself constrained. In PoE1, basically once you started fighting enemies that dropped fine equipment, all considerations of cost flew out the window. My take on deadfire: - i don't miss the 6th party member (by the end, I was playing reduced party sizes in poe1 anyway just for the challenge). - i miss the talent system from poe1, but i like the larger build diversity/design space multi-classing has opened up. in the end, thumbs up. - combat feels a lot better. - the main story kind of ends anticlimactically, but the world itself feels much more like a place to explore rather than "ok now here's the next wilderness area". Beast of Winter DLC helps patch in the weakness of the main story (and honestly has a segment that I would consider narratively the best in the entire PoE/PoE2 franchise so far) - factions are much better fleshed out. (Honestly barely even registered the factions in Twin Elms, and it was way too easy to align/piss off factions in Defiance Bay) - there's no equivalent to the 15-level dungeon (closest is probably Old City or Oathkeeper's Sanctum, and both are just 3 maps each), but SSS DLC helps scratch my itch for grindy-combat. I thought PoE1 was the closest to my platonic ideal for a party-based CRPG, but PoE2 has edged that out. PoE1 is dead, long live PoE2!

clarification question: does hylea's challenge somehow automatically enforce that you kept vela for yourself in poe1?

5 priest/druids 2x withdraws per character, 2x beetle shells per character, plus +1/+1 each per empower. boy what a zany challenge this is going to be, i feel.

i had to make some assumptions about your character, but before I talk about what I got from trying it out with some simulations, in general where PotD isn't concerned because per/might are so close you want to balance them as much as possible that being said, you are right that it would be more optimal to distribute the stats like so. 16/16/16 yields more net damage on average, though the difference is really small (a couple percentage points) so it wouldn't make or break your character. as expected, the more you invest in dex (even at the expense of might/perception), the bigger that difference becomes. EDIT: for your follow-up question, i'm not sure I can answer that really well. it requires an amount of active metagame knowledge that I don't have. You should probably invest in stats that will be much harder to boost once you're actually playing the game, which depends also on what party members you have (and what buffs they can provide).

i addressed the ones that were relevant because they themselves were flawed, and the ones i didn't address them it was because they were entirely beside the point themselves, and only serve to demonstrate that you either didn't pay attention to what i said or (at this point i'm convinced, based on your selective quoting of what i said) are intentionally posting in bad faith for whatever reason that escapes me. and yes, i think people are able to judge by themselves at this point.

bottom line is Perception > Might (but it's close). similarly, +1 acc > +3% damage (but it's close). (though this ranking breaks down at very high accuracies, though that is rare for much of potd) for martial classes, Dexterity > Perception or Might. For casters, it might be closer to Perception > Might > Dexterity depending on your build/playstyle (basically when you have a finite number of spells, getting the most out of each of your spells may be more important than simply emptying your spellbook faster)

any screenshot anyone on beta can share? if this is true it would 10x my enjoyment of the game.

the challenges are just to make the game... more... "challenge"-ing the reason why there are no achievements is because a lot of people (including myself) complained about how some stupidly annoying challenges were also achievements in poe1. some people like to get to 100% achievements collected without having to: - triple crown solo - triple crown solo again after the DLC comes out because they added another triple crown solo challenge, but also have to kill all the dragons and bosses - rest less than 10 times. Stupidly annoying or just hard? They can implent a achievement for each challenge done. Even if you complete the game with 1 or 2 challenges, you get the achievement(s), you dont have to TCS with it. both. the pacifism achievement was annoying. The Ultimate was hard and tedious. magran's challenge, for example, is a challenge i never want to play (because I paid hard money to back a real-time-with-pause game, twice, not to play a twitch-click/scripting game). but i'm also a cheevo hunter. so if you made an achievement for magran's challenge i would go insane and have to play it just for the achievement. and there are plenty of people who are cheevo hunters and who may never want to touch magran's fires at all. i think that's why virtually all the achievements in deadfire are story based or simple things like crafting or finding things.

honestly i was expecting rymrgand challenge to be an increasing fatigue system. seemed pretty fitting with entropy/decay portfolio. i would love for a "no stash anywhere" option to come back. i always played poe1 like that and it really made me play more deliberately with my inventory.

Ah, so it's a realistic child simulator. in general i stay away from the beta branch just for my game's stability's sake, but man am i looking forward to trying hylea's challenge. i can't not stop imagining lolololol KEEP SUMMER SAFE-style moments. "GAH VELA NO *casts empowered tornado, end up hostile-ing entire nekataka*"

considering that obsidian is steadily amping up the mid-late game difficulty for PotD i think balance matters more than ever. i had an unoptimized potd party (because after several runs i just wnated to have "fun" insetad of focus on power) and after SSS came out i definitely struggled a lot more than a better party would have. with the oncoming megabosses, it's reasonable for players to be able to expect a wide variety of options to take down the end-game fights (that is, without having to rely on gouging strike cheese). though i disagree with some of the comments. i think druid subclasses are fine (though spiritshift probably needs late game help). though non-berserker barbarian subclasses definitely feel like they need help (and as someone who generally plays priests or casters, i hope it weights more when i think a martial class needs help).

the challenges are just to make the game... more... "challenge"-ing the reason why there are no achievements is because a lot of people (including myself) complained about how some stupidly annoying challenges were also achievements in poe1. some people like to get to 100% achievements collected without having to: - triple crown solo - triple crown solo again after the DLC comes out because they added another triple crown solo challenge, but also have to kill all the dragons and bosses - rest less than 10 times.

ciphers always have recieved 50% of weapon damage as focus. you may have had drainign whip and/or been an ascendant, which significantly increased the amount of focus you got.

While the word "speed" was improperly used by me, my math was perfectly right. In this particular case (no other bonuses involved) you can talk if you want about +42.8% recovery speed while the action speed increase is only +34% (the action includes the attack and the recovery). At this point I think you're being intentionally slippery, since you seem to be explicitly selectively quoting me to remove important context/qualifiers. And it's not just that your word "speed" was misused, your "perfectly right" math somehow manages to produce two very different answers between this post and the previous which reflects not a misuse of the word, but a misuse or misunderstanding of the basic concept. Not to mention that your "perfectly right" math in your original post was in fact wrong in most of its claims; to repeat: action speed has linear returns, not diminishing returns; and 2h weapons are in fact objectively worse than dual-wielding in most cases, the only reason why they are 10% better on average is because their +1 PEN can have outsize returns in the minority of cases where that will generally matter. No, frankly, you still don't get it. I've tried virtually everywhere (here, and in the umezawa guide, and elsewhere wherever this topic comes up) to qualify what I'm talking about, which you seem to be deliberately ignoring or eliding: skimming back up in my posts, you seem to be ignoring important phrases of "through the recovery" "attack is unaffected." You also seem to be misunderstanding the difference in my post between when I say X does +Y% over Z versus when I'm trying to illustrate the relative impact of specific variables (admittedly there are sometimes bonkers-sounding phrases where I say something "+10% damage => ~+6% damage" which will sound absurd devoid of any context). Action speed has linear returns, discrete recovery time bonuses also have linear returns (because they effectively convert into action speed bonuses), but a single recovery time bonus that grows larger has increasing returns, so a -30% recovery time bonus has a much greater impact than one might intuitively think (e.g. for similar reasons guardian stance's increasing recovery time bonus has increasing returns) and is overweight, and the fact that obsidian designers appeared to have paired a numerically (but not totally) equivalent 30% base damage increase to 2h weapons in an effort to "balance" the two weapon styles illustrates a misunderstanding of how much overweight a -30% recovery time bonus has. Assuming you aren't just ****posting and are truly confused, then I do truly regret being sloppy and quick with my initial post, because people are getting extremely hung up on minor technical analysis, none of which have any impact on the final conclusions--which so far no one has said anything that even begins to make me think could be wrong. I will probably take a pass through the original post and hide much of the technical detail behind spoiler tags and try to be much more rigorous with my wording.

While I haven't tried the encounters, I think I'm loving the willingness to have injury-inducing attacks on PotD. Really adds a parallel technical difficulty to the fights I think. Looking forward to trying Hylea's challenge

I'd be real curious to know how it interacts with something like supprpess affliction or salvation of time which afaict have no PL scaling.

I'm not posting to deceive or undermine you, I apologize if it came off that way. Anyways, back on topic: If the "In a Vacuum" assumption was correct; you posit that all players only roll auto-attack- which would be incorrect and leads to a miscalculation of damage. I'm just saying you should do the calculation with at least full-attack abilities taken into account. For your last point- Even on POTD, most people who complete 50% of the content will find themselves overleveled. There are also things like Ancestor's Memory, resource increasing items, etc. It's not quite "in a vacuum". Honestly i'm a little sloppy with some of what I've been writing (I just wanted to get it out pretty quickly because it was in the middle of a work day ), but my more recent post is more clear about the assumptions that underpin it. I'm not saying that players only auto attack per se, but that most combat is so long that martial abilities basically get dwarfed by passive effects (sneak attack, carnage, weapon enchants, inherent item bonuses of random kinds, stats, etc.). So when I say X does +Y% damage versus Z, it's really saying that X does +Y% sustained damage over Z. I've also been trying to couch things in terms of "average" or making claims to "variances" or "niche" or "general." Deadfire is an extremely complicated game and the only way for me to perfectly make claims is to basically re-simulate Deadfire itself. This is also why I frame things as "rules of thumb." Dexterity isn't always going to be very nearly +3% (sustained) damage, not only because other action speed bonuses and armor can interact with that, but it's a good enough "rule of thumb." Perception isn't always going to be +2% (sustained, mulitplicative) damage (it is more at extremely low accuracy, and much less at extremely high accuracy), but it's good enough of a rule of thumb for general practical cases. And single-weapon style, while objectively worse in general sustained damage than other weapon styles, is going to be infinitely better than any other weapon style for an e.g. interrupt build against an enemy that you normally would have a ~40% chance to hit (and thus would never crit in any other weapon style). Basically what I want people to take away from my post comes down to three things: 1) a simple way to evaluate very vague and ambiguous-sounding buffs and debuffs. For example, a lot of people thought Devotions for the Faithful, once nerfed to -+10 accuracy (from -+20) was going to render priests useless. With our rule of thumb, we can see that a nerfed Devotions--properly targeted--is still ~28% damage increase for your entire party and -28% for any enemies you manage to hit, which is still frankly really good (and should illustrate how absurdly broken it was in Deadfire at -+20 acc, though at that point we're talking so much of an accuracy swing that our rule of thumb starts to break down a bit). Similarly, there's the fast vs slow weapons section which our rule of thumbs helps illustrate that the +5 acc fast weapons is probably better than a lot of people thought. 2) perception is a lot better than probably what many people thought, especially for barbs 3) general guidelines to evaluate the different weapon styles (2h will on average do the most damage, but a lot of the interactions here are PEN-based) People can argue about the details in specific situations because i'm not trying to represent these as absolutes that are true 100% of the time (except the bit about action speed being linear returns). edit1: actually, our rule of thumb still holds up pretty well with the +-20 acc devotions case (actually understates it if anything). i only tested it for a narrow set of starting parameters, but i just wanted to verify the rule of thumb.