thelee

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?

i think the whole point is that in deadfire they are trying to avoid summoned weapons being "build-around," at least trivially. In PoE1 level 1/2 spells could be end-game-worthy spells, and that seems a little busted in terms of game design. I think in deadfire they're trying to shoot for "sometimes a good idea" for using summoned weapons instead of "always a good idea." i think there's merits to this approach. I certainly loved summoned weapons in poe1, and in deadfire it certainly is a little more of a stretch, though i will still cast spiritual weapon even mid-late game, depending (because lash damage is really good). +30% lash on an autoscale-to-legendary is kind of on-par with some of the blander legendary uniques, not bad for a PL2 spell (though obviously not POE1-style great).

They are reworked, you are just overleveled for all of them. We'll have to wait for more high-level content from DLCs at this point I think for challenging end-game stuff. No they are not. Only about 1/3rd of the game (predominately the early main quests and sayuka as well as beraths temple) are reworked. You notice this by seeing the special enemies that are always displayed red (with upscaling, not sure if its the same without). Nevermind the fact that these enemies have a massive difference in power compared to the ones that didnt get added after the rework. I also finished the game pre rework and post rework on POTD so you can be sure i know what im talking about. The mid/lategame and pretty much all sidequests have had no changes. I also finished the game pre-rework and post-rework and I'm pretty sure you're wrong, at least about the critical path and major quests. For example, one of my earlier attempt at the Ukaizo fight had no skulls and no additional engwithan witches and way less general health and danger. post-rework, at level 20 you still see skulls over the dragon, and you get additional adds (though they sometimes don't appear due to a bug, which seemed to be something that was a known issue at least when i reported it), not to mention that the dragon has basically a bajillion health. But, that being said, it was still a relatively easy fight at level 20 party because it was designed as like a level 15 or 16 encounter (the quest is level 15/16 iirc). Upscaling means the named dragon gets like +6 level so even at level 20 you'll get two skulls, but it has all the danger of a level 15 encounter. It's possible bounties didn't get any harder (i think they're just leaning on the change from +2/3 upscaling caps to +4/6 caps, which I believe means enemies gain +2 levels per your +1 level and i don't particularly remember any new factors to those fights). But to say that nothing in the mid/lategame and "pretty much all sidequests" have had no changes seems like a stretch. EDIT: btw, i don't think special enemies "are always displayed red" in the rework (i know this because i attempted the lady epero estate quest at different levels and got to see the enemies go from always red to nothing). they are just super high level at early levels and the new upscaling setup means they stay ahead of your level gain for a while (named enemies get up to +6). there are just so few quests that are tuned for levels 13-20 (the highest quest level is only 18) so there's a dearth of higher-level challenges once you get to like level 13 or so, even if you're fighting skulled enemies everywhere from upscaling, and it also means that once you hit level 18 there's literally nothing in the game that's designed to give you a challenge (assuming that a quest one level higher is a decent challenge and one at your level is "appropriate").

a summoned weapon does have to be substantially better, but that "substantial" is a pretty low amount in practice i think, and it has to be rooted in the PL that you get it. it doesn't even have to be strictly better, it can just offer something special. i.e. spiritual weapon, firebrand, concelhaut's staff, kalakoth's minor blights, and to a certain extent the snake weapon spell are all low enough PL that they only have to be slightly better, or offer something slightly special. e.g. an auto-scaling to legendary weapon with a lash (+30% for spiritual weapon, +25% for firebrand) is a decent effect for a PL2 spell. In PoE1, level 1/2 spells were basically end-game weapons even though they didn't scale. higher level weapons need to do more, and in practice i think they do. I haven't played with the wizard's stuff post 1.2-nerf, but the terrifying war bow, llengrath's warding staff, citzal's spirit lance are all great situational alternatives (the black bow was so stupid good against anything that didn't have resolve resistance, so the nerf/fix is needed i think). the only reason why i wouldn't put citzal's enchanted armory up there is because i don't actually want to wear breastplate on my wizard, even if it is scaled to legendary by endgame. (also it occasionally destroys my entire inventory, so that's a bummer) my main beef with summoned weapons (and summons) is that they really need something other than duration to scale with power level. it could be minor, but right now power level and empowerment and conjurer subclass are essentially pointless exercises, which is not really what you want to do with an entire class of spells/abilities, not to mention an entire subclass. EDIT: that being said, Obsidian buffed summoned weapons in poe1 because even though they were good, they weren't good enough that players felt like they were worth using. so maybe if enough of these types of threads pop up they'll buff them anyway, even if mathematically they appear to be generally good enough to me. i'm not sure how i feel about that, actually.

It gets capped at 1.00) Armor penalty reduction effects can only reduce the penalty up to 0. Sorry for an off-top, but as you mentioned armor... if I lack armor penetration and get -25% dmg, is it addtitive with damage bonuses such as an active ability bonus, for example +25% damage + -25% damage = basic damage or 1,25*0,75=0,93? it's additive, but you have to convert the -25% into the internal representation that deadfire uses, which is 1-1/(1+penalty). In the case of a -25% graze, it functions as a -25% damage modifier when it's by itself but when combined with other modifiers is weighted as a -.33 modifier before everything gets converted back. This means a -25% graze actually can cancel out up to +33% worth of damage bonuses (which are strictly additive). So damage maluses are worth more than bonuses. However, it's not all bad because the way things are combined iirc damage maluses are additive according to their internal representation, so two separate -25% maluses turn into -40% malus (instead of becoming a -50% malus if additively combined or -44% malus if multiplicatively combined). this means -75% underpenetration is really severe, because it can cancel out 1-1/(1-.75) => +300% worth of damage bonuses. it's weird, it's not really intuitive, and it's hard to do in your head. though it sort of "makes sense" if you see a -25% damage malus not as "do 25% less damage" but "require the player to do 1-1/(1-.25) more effort to achieve the same thing" which "makes sense" if you treat maluses as rate adjustments to a player's damage output. doing it this way is abstract, but it does let Obsidian provide a lot of damage maluses without ever worrying about the player doing 0 or less damage.

It gets capped at 1.00) Armor penalty reduction effects can only reduce the penalty up to 0. Sorry for an off-top, but as you mentioned armor... if I lack armor penetration and get -25% dmg, is it addtitive with damage bonuses such as an active ability bonus, for example +25% damage + -25% damage = basic damage or 1,25*0,75=0,93? it's additive, but you have to convert the -25% into the internal representation that deadfire uses, which is 1-1/(1+penalty). In the case of a -25% graze, it functions as a -25% damage modifier when it's by itself but when combined with other modifiers is weighted as a -.33 modifier before everything gets converted back. This means a -25% graze actually can cancel out up to +33% worth of damage bonuses (which are strictly additive). So damage maluses are worth more than bonuses. However, it's not all bad because the way things are combined iirc damage maluses are additive according to their internal representation, so two separate -25% maluses turn into -40% malus (instead of becoming a -50% malus if additively combined or -44% malus if multiplicatively combined). this means -75% underpenetration is really severe, because it can cancel out 1-1/(1-.75) => +300% worth of damage bonuses. it's weird, it's not really intuitive, and it's hard to do in your head.

I think this is a reasonable perspective, but Obsidian (JE Sawyer specifically) has made it clear that they want to err on the side of overshooting and then ramping power levels back up. I think this is also a reasonable perspective, because you might overestimate how effective a nerf was and you'll spend the next few patch cycles ramping the ability further down and pissing players off each time. So from a want-to-balance-the-game-but-minimize-players-getting-pissed-off perspective, getting players mad once and then making them slightly happy as you adjust back up is probably better than getting players mad repeatedly as you keep ramping down to find the sweet spot. I think even at 50% I would always pick Rooting Pain. At less then that, it becomes more of a decision, and to me that feels "right" where a skill or passive isn't an automatic pick but something that is actually worth weighing against other skills. But I don't play monks that much, so I totally concede that the right number could be anywhere under 100%; I just know that 100% was broken. I'm actually happy that power levels for some abilities and classes are climbing up in this patch because hopefully it demonstrates to players that Obsidian doesn't just want to nerfhammer/bash everyone's favorite stuff but is legitimately interested in leveling the broad playing field (thinking of how wizard subclasses, trickster, etc. got buffs).

The fact that all hazard effects appear to be underperforming seems to me a major bug. If it was just one ability here and there that's one thing, but seemingly all of them is a big deal. I'll see if anything happens while 1.2 is in beta. If it's still like this I'm going to keep filing bug reports.

It works, but it is bracketed. Going by memory, it’s +4/-4 for “generic” enemies and +6/-6 for “named” enemies. It works, but level scaling can only do so much. Even going up +6 for a named xaurip still leaves you with a xaurip with lame abilities (this is my go-to example). The xaurip isn't learning powerful new spells or martial abilities or anything. It just stays a little harder to hit and has a little bit more health and its lame spear abilities will still be able to hit you reasonably. So even with level scaling enabled, going in at level 16 for a level 12 encounter is still going to be a roflstomp fest. More encounters tuned for levels 13-20 is needed. (If you go look at quest levels, it is clear that the vast majority of stuff is tuned for like levels 1-12).

This is also true for summons. It's definitely a little weird, but somewhat comprehendible when you think that conjured weapons (and summons) are essentially trying to scale with your progress in the game versus your personal power. I.E. if conjured weapons scaled with your power level, there'd be no reason for multi-class characters to use them because you'll be stuck at superb or exceptional when you're finding/enchanting legendary/superb. That being said, both conjured weapons and summons feel like they need something to scale with power level, maybe some sort of additional bonus (like how a priest spiritual weapon has a scaling factor based on your reputation with your diety's reputations). Because +5% duration per power level just ain't good enough for summons/conjured weapons and makes the conjurer subclass's bonus particularly lame compared to other subclass options.

Yup, I hate consumables for this reason. I do end up using some, but only in the very hardest fights, and only if I'm confident I can craft more. Now I'll probably never use figurines; items with limited charges, without any way to get the charges back, are incompatible with my brain. I agree. Especially since changing from a guaranteed 100% chance to 25% is a much more impactful change than just changing the magnitude of a flat number. You're taking a reliable ability you can plan around and replacing it with an extremely unreliable one. That sucks, a whole lot. I really dislike when abilities are too random, and this is an example of that, how many enemies do you realistically expect one character to kill in a fight? Even if they kill 4, there's still a roughly 30% chance that it will never proc. Even if you kill 6, there's a roughly 18% chance it will never proc. Even if you kill 10, there's a roughly 6% chance it will never proc. I really hate stuff like that, making a cool ability you can plan around into something that just happens randomly and has a good chance of never happening when you need it. Please don't do this kind of thing. I understand and am sympathetic to the general sentiment of not liking random chance abilities, but there's also a design difference. 100% magnitude at 25% chance means you have a 25% chance of doing something meaningful. 25% magnitude at 100% chance means you always do something mediocre. While on a long enough timeline the odds average out, and in general variance favors the enemy, a 25% chance of something meaningful means that every so often the stars can align in a way that greatly benefits the player, whereas that is actually impossible for a 100% chance of something at 25% magnitude. Imagine if e.g. Marux Amanth was like 100% chance of doing 1-2 aoe damage, versus 10% chance of 10-20. While in the long run they average out to be the same, there would be many people who would think the latter is more exciting and makes for more exciting events during combat (it would also mean that there would be occasional rare events where it would proc very rapidly in sequence which can be extremely powerful, arguably much more powerful than the power loss of long stretches of it not proccing at all). From a character design standpoint, just average out the odds. I think you're focusing too much on the downside and not enough on the upside. I mean, in the long run it all balances out to the average, but instead of solely focusing on "even if you kill 10, there's a roughly 6% chance it will never proc" also think about the times where it'll proc multiple times. EDIT: personally speaking, i think it's painfully clear that rooting pain as it was was way too good because it was basically an automatic pick ever since pillars 1.0. i don't know if 25% is a good level (time will tell), but I think a proc rate of anywhere between roughly 15-50% is justifiable to some degree.

That's an interesting finding. Still mysterious though why the damage is wrong... aren't the tooltips autogenerated from the programmed/scripted effects? The fact that both Searing Seal and Warding Seal do incorrect damage suggests some common bug. I wonder if Wall of Flame or other hazard aoe spells similarly underperform?

Hey mammasaura: are on you on the beta branch for patches? I'm curious to know if 1.2 fixed the Searing Seal and Warding Seal issues. (I only thought of this because they bumped up Warding Seal's penetration in 1.2 patch notes, and am wondering if while they were touching Warding Seal they also fixed its damage and non-interaction with Heart of the Storm.)

Wowowowow has Brilliant been nerfed at all or is a single-class cipher now a must-have for any power party?

1.2 patch beta notes this: "Magran's Faith Attuned Proc status effect now stacks up to 2 times to support dual wielding weapons with the exact same effect." I remembered that Magran isn't the only priest type that gets a dual-wield spiritual weapon, so does Skaen. So I just tested it out and sure enough on 1.1.1, the Skaen spiritual weapon is similarly bugged; the stiletto gets a lash (the main hand weapon) but the club does not (the off hand weapon). See below screenshot and circled parts: I suspect that since the beta patch notes do not mention it (and I am not on beta branch) that Skaen is still broken for 1.2, even if Magran is fixed. Attached is a dropbox link to a save right before I recruited a new priest of skaen, as well as an output_log from the combat I took the screenshot from: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mt0u6926je8a51r/AABEM4bDk-cXMEMhhFCL8G5Ga?dl=0

They are reworked, you are just overleveled for all of them. We'll have to wait for more high-level content from DLCs at this point I think for challenging end-game stuff.