thelee

Wizard doesn't give a **** about PEN-AR unless he's just spamming missiles. A single-class Wizard has a rough early game, but the moment you get Noxious Burst you can clear waves of enemies in two casts at most. I don't know what you consider "strong", but in my POTD playthrough the only weakness of my Wizard was that I had to be careful about not destroying my own team members by accident. Try wizard solo nemnok. Not the mobs, they are easy. whether or not a class can solo X creature is not a measure of its power, which at least in poe1 tended to be more of a technical combat issue (e.g. can you get enough deflection or sustain, haven't tried in deadfire). a cipher probably can't solo many bosses, but i'll be damned if their many charm/dominate abilities aren't so utterly good on post-1.1 PoTD even with the coming nerfs in 1.2.

On MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017). I have a level 11 Eder that I'm trying to respec. If I do it on my macbook pro, I get prompted with a "are you sure you want to reset eder to level 1" dialogue, and the moment I click "accept" or whatever, the game hangs and then my mouse cursor beachballs. If I do the same thing on my PC, I immediately go to the character level up screen after clicking accept. Dropbox link to save game and output_log from my mac (along with screenshot of my system information): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sr51p5ry2w5lmj2/AABCAXmnBlPqp2F8tqtV51Bma?dl=0

what's the streetfighter change? nothing in beta patch notes EDIT: i opted in the beta just to see what this change was, and I think dunehunter is just mistaken, I don't see anything different about the streetfighter. In case anyone's curious the new trickster spells are: PL1: Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights - 1 Guile PL2: Mirrored Image - 1 Guile PL3: Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage - 1 Guile PL4: Llengrath's Displaced Image - 2 Guile PL5: Confusion - 2 Guile PL6: Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment - 2 Guile PL7: Gaze of the Adragan - 2 Guile PL8: Kalakoth's Freezing Rake - 3 Guile PL9: Wall of Many Colors - 3 Guile Overall I think the trickster has become a much more interesting subclass. Sort of like a wizard-multiclass-lite, except you get high-level spells not normally gotten via multiclassing except at the cost of not having as many spells and competing with guile for usage. In addition, like pre-1.2 and unlike the wizard, you can still really spam the low-level stuff. Imagine a bajillion casts of Mirrored Image whereas a wizard only gets 2 + 1empower.

unfortunately, as mentioned in a similar thread, this is only tagged as "conjuration" so the fact that it doesn't benefit from spirit of decay is Working As Intended. again, this is different from how POE1 did things (and again, said as someone who mains a priest all the time and is annoyed that scion of storm and spirit of decay inherently benefits literally 1 and 0 spells, respectively)

the elemental bonus PEN talents align with specific keywords, not the damage type. draining touch only has the keywords "transmutation" and "concelhaut spell" so the fact that it doesn't benefit is working as intended. this is different from how POE1 did things, but there you go (said as a mildly befuddled priest-player who sees scion of storm and spirit of decay and literally 1 or 0 spells that benefit from them natively...). :|

To me, builds are an indication of interesting things you can do, not of power level. It's like in Magic: The Gathering. You go to random forums and find a bajillion variants of all sorts of crazy deck ideas, but they're all like B-tier decks at best. Maybe occasionally one or two rises to the top. And then there's like two decks that are S/A-tier and there's not much tweaking or discussion to do with them and those are the ones that dominate tournaments. (Back when I played Friday night Magic, most of the decks people would bring would be their own ideas or tweaks of existing ideas. Very few people actually brought tournament-worthy decks. That did not mean that those tournament worthy decks weren't powerful or that all those second-tier decks everyone was messing around with were somehow amazing.) But anyway, most of the builds I see are multiclass ideas, and this poll is about single classes. I don't think a wizard multiclasses particularly interestingly (other than for high-deflection degenerativeness), but that's not the entirety of whether or not the wizard is a powerful class.

frankly i think the wizard is pretty self-evident. also, # of posted builds is no indicator for how powerful a class is, and I'm not sure how you can draw this inference. edit - i'm not one of those people saying wizard is #1 most powerful, but i definitely feel that it is up there.

The selling point is not "power level scaling" (which is what you're referring to) but access to PL8-9 and access to other PLs faster than multi-class (i.e. raw "power level" acquisition). Power level scaling is mostly intended just to help low-level abilities keep up with game progression, not to be super powerful (except in cases of empower). (And even if multiclass gets PL7 by the end, the speed with which they get it is very relevant; at level 9 a single class has PL5 abilities whereas a multiclass only has PL3. that's a pretty stark difference. a multiclass only gets PL7 by level 19, whereas a single-class has had that since level 13.) But I mean, even with this correction this is a salient point because I feel like PL8-9 is kind of lacking for martial classes. I mean, druid/priest/wizard I would argue demonstrate a great trade-off between single-class and multiclass, because some of the PL8 and PL9 spells are just really good. By contrast, I don't see as many "must have" PL8/9 abilities for some of the martial classes, which makes multiclassing less of a trade-off. Similarly, there is a pretty stark power increase with each new PL-worth of spells, whereas it tends to be less dramatic for martial classes. The other thing is that casters have a built-in single-class buff because their higher level PL abilities don't "steal" space from lower-level PL abilities. A PL8-9 spell/invocation/power has its own dedicated per-encounter cast slot compared to a PL1 ability, whereas a PL8-9 martial ability--even if it were really good--has to compete for class resources with PL1/2 abilities, and frankly the way some of them are costed I would rather have 3x or 4x uses of a PL1-3 ability than one use of a pretty-ok PL8-9 ability (e.g. fighter's Mule Kick or Penetrating Strike vs some of their higher-level stuff).

knowing when to empower is also a strategy... i mean, sure in the end-game empowering a PL8 or PL9 spell is still sort of an i-win button, but knowing how/when to use empower is also a skill.

Really? I don't know man, sneak attack (and eventually deathblows) gets you pretty far along the power curve imo. Also streetfighter = most fun I've had with a rogue-type in quite a while. Rogues are weak because they can't tank. They lack the versatility of all the other classes because they're stuck in a single glass cannon role. Even wizards can be built to tank, and yes, rangers with their pets can, too. But um I don't need versatility if I've already DPS-ed everything down. And versatility comes in many forms. I find the rogue to have some of the more interesting possibilities for multi-classing compared to some other classes.

I don't care for broken combos, I don't care for Empowering spells and I don't care for Wizard buffing martial multi-class. I understand and agree with what you say but I don't understand how Wizard is the strongest. It has terrible passives, it has terrible subclasses, it has PEN and ACC, unlike weapons users who can grab a weapon with PEN and ACC, dependent. Because it can Empower Meteor Shower? Well, then I guess its the strongest. Great, design. "i don't care for XXX" where XXX is the reason why a class can be so powerful... O_o if you're not empowering spells you're missing out on quite a bit.

Really? I don't know man, sneak attack (and eventually deathblows) gets you pretty far along the power curve imo. Also streetfighter = most fun I've had with a rogue-type in quite a while.

I haven't read though this thread but it feels like anyone who votes cipher as weakest has never tried charming/dominating things on 1.1 potd. Barring an utter and complete nerf or giving intellect resistance to every enemy in the game, it can't possibly be the worst.

Considering that for much of the game it's a +30% lash and that depending on the priest subclass you can get somewhat interesting variations (mostly skaen, wael, and magran) I would put them in the same ballpark. I would chalk up variations in favor of the druid to be an artifact of the fact that the druid is expected to be a little bit more martial than the priest. (E.g. even though a berath priest also gets a great sword spiritual weapon like firebrand I would put that as worse because a priest is more poorly suited to being up close with a sword compared to a druid.) That being said, I'm honestly surprised that firebrand *didn't* have a lash until now.

1/2 duration but double the lash doesn't seem balanced to me. it seems like we could take it to absurd levels otherwise. 1/5 the duration and 5x the lash? A base 12s weapon with a +125% lash I would not consider remotely balanced to the same level as firebrand.

lolololol i played the waelite priest several times and never knew about this (probably for good reason).

in my experience over-penetration is so hard to achieve mid-to-late game against reasonable enemies in 1.1 potd that you should be rewarded with a +30% multiplicative damage bonus. in certain situations it would make weapon modals useful to try to get to overpenetration, whereas right now the likely hit to your recovery is going to far outweigh the small relative increase in damage from overpenetration.

Honestly, I'm not sure I have too much of a dog in this race. I use the conjured weapons as is, but I also liked the poe1 summoned weapons. I'm pretty ambivalent about this whole discussion and buffs/nerfs talk. Maybe the best thing Obsidian could do from a make-the-players-happy standpoint but also from a balancing standpoint is make the lower level ones more powerful, but also make them last less time (going from 30-60s of situationally better weapons versus 15-25s of strictly better weapons). (I strongly believe the higher level wizard ones are fine as-is. The blackbow even post 1.2 nerf is probably going to be an autocast for me in virtually any fight.)

Confirming Dr<3 reply regarding priest spiritual weapons having only +20% lash. They are listed as +20% lash, but they can get up to +30% lash in-combat depending on your favored reputations (I've confirmed this in-game). Also: how do you get Woedica's Fists? They nerfed spiritual weapons and buffed firebrand, but to about the same point. IIRC, firebrand used to have no lash, and spiritual weapons had a +50% lash. firebrand gets buffed to have a +25% lash and spiritual weapons get nerfed to have a variable +20-30% lash. seems like they are being balanced to virtually the exact same point. the main difference being that firebrand can benefit from some elemental talents/items, whereas spiritual weapon substitutes with subclass-specific variety. With a +50% lash, spiritual weapons were at an "always a good choice" point. With a +20-30% lash, spiritual weapons are more of at a "sometimes a good choice" point. Currently it seems like Obsidian is deliberately balancing towards that latter for lower PL conjured weapons, even if they weren't seeing much usage. also: Watershaper's Focus does a terrible amount of damage, even if it bounces. I don't know why you would think it's directly comparable. Watershaper's Focus is a situational weapon. For that matter, the spiritual weapons are also mostly situational weapons as it is (and it seems that this is what Obsidian is deliberately balancing for). Also the lash you get from a sword of magran is theoretically better than a watcher's blade, and you don't have to be actively equipping it. (I say theoretically because pre-1.2 the lash doesn't work so it is strictly worse than any unique sword right now.)

i don't think obsidian actively monitors this thread, you should file bug reports as new posts in the forum.

Personally I'm not wild about caps; I don't even like the fact that stats are capped at 35 because it seems like a design flaw in the Deadfire version of resolve that it needs a cap to be functional. It seems like in addition to avoiding 0/negative damage, this is also a way for Obsidian to make underpenetration and grazes much more meaningful than in PoE1 (ok, there was no underpenetration, but grazes can become trivialized). Though IMO it would've been a lot easier if Obsidian had just said "screw consistency, we'll make weapon modal penalties/graze/underpenetration multiplicative modifiers"

This is a really minor bug, but from a role-playing sense seems important. At the end of the Storms of Poko Kohara quest, when you're inside the corrupted adra, you are talking to the souls there and you can try to convince some of them to leave before fighting. There's one dialogue tree where you try to explain that there's nothing divine here. One of the choices, for example, is to show them Beza's Pages. Another is unlocked, in part, if you're a Priest: Magran. (See screenshot below) Only problem is that this Priest: Magran option is a "diplomatic" option, and "diplomatic" is a disfavored reputation for a magranite priest. It seems like an oversight and an error that being a magranite priest opens up an option that Magran herself would disapprove of. It should probably not be a diplomatic option, or it should not be unlocked as a possible option for a magranite priest. Here's a dropbox link to a save right before the dialogue in question: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/di7yxu0zeps0abm/AAA_eXgWHivZTQtpf1RsbN3ta?dl=0

honest question: how does this matter? summoned weapons scale with character level, not power level, so i'm not sure how multiclassing fits into this (i don't know how ogre form or spiritshifter scales, just summoned weapons.) in one of my more recent post-1.1 potd runs i picked up fassina and used summoned weapons all the time. i didn't have any particular penetration issues (except with kalakoth's minor blights which has a stupidly low pen value but is being fixed in 1.2). Of course it matters, you need to pick some class with pen bonus if you plan to build around summon weapons. Like I said, I ran with fassina throughout doing lots of summoned weapons (lit. custom AI script that would summon different weapons in different situations) and didn't notice any particular penetration problems except against enemies that anyone would have penetration problems against. I don't see why it's necessary. Summon weapons are among the weapons with the lowest pen in the game, because when it has fine enchantment, you will already get exceptional weapon, when it has exceptional, you will already get something superb. If someone can get through Potd with lowerst pen weapons, it's an issue of Potd too. Summon weapons lagging behind stuff you find can certainly be true, but imho the vast majority of my levels were/are spent at par with weapons I find, barring some special cases (e.g. doing ship bounties and getting a superb saber at like level 6-7). That alone doesn't mean you need to multiclass (and what would you multiclass to, a devoted?); for the wizard in particular their summoned weapons do enough special stuff that even if it lags behind by an enchantment level it can still be worth using. Yeah definitely the dumbest part of the conjurer subclass is that you get like +5% to base duration of already very long spells and lose a lot in the process. That's why I feel like conjured weapons and summons really need something extra to scale with power level. 1.2 beta bumps it up to +2 bonus PL, and while that certainly boosts other subclasses, going from +5% base duration to +10% base duration doesn't really change that much. (Similar with Enchanter, though they have a wider variety of spells.) That being said, Llengrath's Warding Staff and the Black Bow were so good that I used them almost unconditionally even when I had legendary unique weapons. Wow I totally didn't notice that it changed from poe1 from a direct-damage-at-melee-range spell to generating-a-one-shot-weapon. That's a lot of opportunity cost. :| It seems like an oversight because most of the other weapon summoning spells have 0 recovery (except for e.g. llengrath's warding staff, but it has an on-cast effect unlike most other weapons), and at the very least it seems like you shouldn't have to wait 4s to attempt an attack with a one-shot weapon.

honest question: how does this matter? summoned weapons scale with character level, not power level, so i'm not sure how multiclassing fits into this (i don't know how ogre form or spiritshifter scales, just summoned weapons.) in one of my more recent post-1.1 potd runs i picked up fassina and used summoned weapons all the time. i didn't have any particular penetration issues (except with kalakoth's minor blights which has a stupidly low pen value but is being fixed in 1.2). Of course it matters, you need to pick some class with pen bonus if you plan to build around summon weapons. Like I said, I ran with fassina throughout doing lots of summoned weapons (lit. custom AI script that would summon different weapons in different situations) and didn't notice any particular penetration problems except against enemies that anyone would have penetration problems against. I don't see why it's necessary.

honest question: how does this matter? summoned weapons scale with character level, not power level, so i'm not sure how multiclassing fits into this (i don't know how ogre form or spiritshifter scales, just summoned weapons.) in one of my more recent post-1.1 potd runs i picked up fassina and used summoned weapons all the time. i didn't have any particular penetration issues (except with kalakoth's minor blights which has a stupidly low pen value but is being fixed in 1.2). am i missing something about multiclassing would do or how summoned weapons work?