thelee

lololol, so at negative deflection the enemy is actively moving into where you are swinging your weapon?

I think it would be more confusing if they tagged the spells appropriately and they still didn't work properly. At least the way it is now, by and large things work literally. I.E., there are no electrical priest spells in the BB and--perhaps unsurprisingly--Heart of the Storm literally does nothing for a priest. The way JE Sawyer was talking about it, it sounded like there's some mechanism to tag "secondary" effects from a spell with the keyword, current implementation (where that's not happening) is buggy. I hope this is the case, because one surprising thing about the old Heart of the Storm/Scion of Flame/etc from Pillars (and even from IWD/IWD2) is that they affected pretty much all of the matching damage sources, which opened up some interesting possibilities. Making it much more conditional would be a game design regression in my book.

I filed a bug way back in BB1 about this, but I'm guessing it didn't get much prioritization. I'm fine with "zoning-out" area of effect abilities, but boy does it need to be properly signalled to players.

In the twitch Q&A that happened very recently, someone asked about this and JE Sawyer seemed to suggest that this is definitely a bug. The ability tagging is a little complicated, it sounds like in some cases (like the summoned weapon or warding seal) the ability itself shouldn't be tagged, but the sub-ability effects (the shock lash, or the actual triggered seal damage) should be internally tagged or something. Anyway, I can definitely confirm that there's no "internal tagging" since I tested out these abilities just to make sure they weren't secretly working. But I hope JE Sawyer's answer means that they're aware of this and fixing it, because again to reiterate it seems silly that you can pick up talents that have zero impact on your character.

I guess I should elaborate that I have a 2017 Macbook Pro (with discrete GPU), in case hardware differences matter. On latest OS X update. I suppose next time I could wait for a long time to see if it quits on its own, but after 10-20 seconds of staring at a frozen game screen I take that as a clue enough that I should apple-option-escape.

The big problem is that the blights spawn in huge numbers without any announcement. If there's an element of surprise of such a huge swing in degree (versus a couple scarabs, or even a couple scarabs plus a blight or two), it is bad game design to not forecast it to the player. If a player is to lose, the player should lose because they weren't good enough, not because they lacked some particular metagame knowledge about the fight. I'd actually like to see you post a video of you taking on the fight as it is, on PotD. I reckon that it is essentially impossible without dissecting the fight into an encounter that was not intended by design (i.e. separating the fight in some way). Way to rewrite history. People cried about their party members being knocked out by beetles because the early PoE backer beta had a bug with them that made them hardier than intended. They were never supposed to be that hard. Obsidian has already confirmed in this thread that the fight as it is right now is already not the fight that they have intended, so I don't know what you're trying to defend here.

I mean, in real life if you manage to sneak up to someone and cleave them with a two-handed sword, that's going to be way more effective than a tiny dagger

I'd recommend asking this question on Pillars boards rather than the Deadfire boards (or asking a mod to move this). That said I'll answer your questions quickly. If you're okay with a fairly steep learning curve I'd say start on PotD. Hard gets too easy too quickly and whilst you'll have a tough time whilst you learn the mechanics and strategies necessary for PotD, at least it'll remain challenging for longer. As for dumping stats: I never drop them below 8 and have no problems. A very useful thing to remember is stats don't matter anywhere near as much in PoE as they do in things like NWN or BG2. If you see a build you like the look of with dumped stats you can probably modify it without any real difficulties. Stats do matter, but in a different way from BG2 and even NWN. BG2 stats didn't matter unless they were at certain critical thresholds or you were a specific class (basically all non-casters could dump wisdom, charisma, and intellect, strength under 16 was pretty much indistinguishable aside from carry weight and then you could get a bag of holding). 3e/NWN is a bit better but it was still a case where some stats were basically useless for certain classes. Stats in PoE generally always matter, but they are structured in a way that it's very hard to get a "trap build" i.e. a completely unviable character. Path of the Damned is a little bit more punishing so it is possible to create characters that are more readily to unviable (a fighter that has dumped con and resolve is one example I could think of), so you have to be a bit more considerate about your stat choices. But you can always respec your main character aside from your race, so if you think you messed up your stats you can pay some money and try again.

It is pretty ability/spell specific. There are rough guidelines, but lots of discretion on a per-spell basis. IF you have the backer beta, you can open a spell and hover over damage numbers or some such and get a breakdown of how your power level factors into it. Singleclass vs Multiclass: IIUC the experience per level is the same, but you get different power level rate when multiclassing, I think 2/3 of normal. (When I played with single-classing, you got a power level every other level, when I played around with multi-classing I got one every three levels.) In this way a multi-class character is not just strictly better than a single-class character. Though due to how differently power levels influence abilities and spells, it can be argued that 2/3 penalty isn't that much of a penalty for certain abilities.

With the exception of Deadfire's Wild Leech, it's worth keeping in mind that even in PoE there were specifically-designated afflictions and we still had various custom debuff spells, and I think it was a deliberate decision to boost their power levels so they could stack on top of an existing Blind, for example. Similarly, while you could approximate Devotions of the Faithful with a might inspiration, a high perception inspiration, and the related afflictions on the enemy, I think it is intended that it uses a separate might and accuracy adjustment so it can stack on top of all other might/perception effects (with the additional effect of not countering/being countered by inspirations/afflictions). Sure, it might be a bit "messier," but I think the true fun of game systems can be where limited deviation is made from set norms, provided the norms are well-established. (That being said, however much I play a priest I can't help but confess that in both PoE and its current form in Deadfire, Devotions of the Faithful is ridiculously powerful.)

I do agree on deflection. It indeed had increasing returns. And in specific scenarios bumping RES could make a big difference. Although overall, I was and still am finding RES stat in PoE1 underwhelming. Now regarding "intrinsic" - it's just a word that I use (haven't found a better one yet), to denote that the "relative" gain per point is going down the more you invest: - from 10 MIG to 11 MIG: 1.03/1 = x1.03 - from 20 MIG to 21 MIG: 1.33/1.30 = x1.023 Quite often for an auto-attacker it's better to take 20 MIG and 11 DEX, than 21 MIG and 10 DEX. So even if a character selects 1-2 primary stats, he might want to smooth the stat-curve a bit instead of min-maxing too heavily. The idea was to point that the game already has a very soft mechanism against putting all attribute points into one single stat. Agreed. I wasn't saying that Resolve was a decent stat, but because of its increasing returns there were thresholds where it could go from "underwhelming" to "amazing and absolutely critical." I don't know what a better word is for "intrinsic" other than "when-you-are-multiplying-two-linear-stats-its-better-to-have-a-square-than-a-skinny-rectangle" but that's a mouthful . I mean, it's still technically not diminishing returns, but you are indeed shifting the curve around a bit.

My internet sucks so I'll need to wait another 3 hours for the patch, so this is for the most part baseless conjecture, but I have my reservations about all the passives being added being such a good idea. In games like this, I always pick few active abilities and a lot of passives, so it felt refreshing to me that I was actually forced to pick up some actives once in a while, or had to multiclass to get around this. Before, you could take several active abilities for different situations / strategies and use them on a situational basis without losing on anything on the passives side; you had a greater toolkit without sacrificing anything. The ressource pool worked as a way to let you choose the power that was the most useful, since you had several choices by default. But now that you get access to enough useful passives (?), it just makes more sense to make characters that excel in one or two specific powers and load on all the supporting passives, which makes for very one-dimensional characters, and makes the ressource pool feel limiting rather than empowering; in principal, it's the same as the spell levels from PoE1 (they also had a common ressource, casts per spell level), which only feel like a choice rather than a restriction simply because they don't allow you to sacrifice spell slots for passive effects. I also think the incentive for going multiclassing has been diminished greatly by this move, which I think is disheartening; I'm not even sure if there is a benefit in multiclassing for the character concept I had in mind now, but again, I'll have to look at the changes in details myself first. At the same time, the change probably increased what you can achieve with min/maxing, which is not necessarily a good move in my book either. All of this might all be just me being scared of change, but I'll get back to this thread once I had some time with the patch. I think this might be you overstating how powerful the new passives are. I'm sure there are some situations where picking up another active ability is worse, but in practice my experience is that the vast majority of passives are not useful for my specific character build, so over the course of the backer beta I get like one or two of the new passives and put the rest into existing actives or existing passives. At least from my quick cursory look at some classes, an example power level of passives is like: single weapon style, two weapon style, two-handed weapon style OR bear's fortitude, snake's reflexes, bull's will. I mean... I *guess* you can just pick up a couple low-level active abilities/spells and spend the next 3 levels picking up all those passives, but in reality you'll probably pick on average one at most from that row of passives. They offer opportunity for diversification and a little fine-tuning of your character, but generally not much more.

You have to reassign crew to work on the emergency, using Report! Wow this was utterly unobvious to me that "Report!" was that.

Subbing. The auto-pause on enemy spotted is really borked right now. In addition to sometimes triggering way too early or unexpectedly, sometimes it doesn't trigger at all (for enemies that turn hostile after an interaction or cutscene, like the titan or the enemies in the adra).

The #1 good thing about BB4 is that it is a lot more stable on OS X now, since I most play the BB on my macbook pro these days (since we got a switch my wife has been hogging the TV for breath of the wild so no gaming PC for me). That alone makes the game feel much more enjoyable and closer to release-ready. Agree with most of the other positives, especially the extra ability/passives. Also it's funny what a small difference a UI change can make; I definitely used empower somewhat in past-BBs, but now having this throbbing glowing UI element gets me to use it all the time. Before I rested mostly to deal with injuiries I accumulate. Now I also rest just to reset my empowers. I never really thought casters were underpowered before, but they are certainly more responsive now, thanks to all the re-tuned spell cast times. Still some balance issues, for example if I empower Minoletta's Concussive Missiles I can instakill the harder enemies in the BB on Path of the Damned; meanwhile if I empower Dire Blessing I get............ ? I tried ship combat out and found it mostly baffling and tedious; in the end I just charged and boarded. I'm hoping this is something that gets fixed in the main game with a tutorial or something.

Among Scion of Flame, Heart of the Storm, and Spirit of Decay for the priest, AFAICT Scion of Flame is the only one that actually has an effect, and even then it doesn't effect all the spells it really should. It effects Shining Beacon and Divine Mark, because those have the "Fire" tag. However, I have a Priest of Wael and just for test I took Heart of the Storm. In retrospect, this was a mistake, because here are the abilities I thought Heart of the Storm would affect: - Spiritual Weapon (Wael version has shock lash) - Warding Seal (does shock damage) In reality, here are the abilities it affects: Nothing. In fact, despite doing shock damage, the fact that the aforementioned abilities don't have "Electrical" tagged on them means they don't get any benefit. In fact, no priest abilities afaict in the BB have the electrical tag. Similarly, Scion of Flame seems like it underperforms for a priest, because Searing Ward has no fire tag. I suspect this is an oversight, and if not I highly urge folks at Obsidian to look at the value of these priest passives a bit closer. Maybe there are some powerful high-level abilities that are Electrical or Acid/Decay-tagged, but then it seems like these passives should be placed higher instead of letting me take an early-game "trap" ability. Attached a save with a priest ready to level up: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mb888m1nzukcs7n/AABcOODjCSNTKVytXrvS4DGca?dl=0 Again, maybe this is fully working as intended (because this is to-the-letter how Heart of the Storm and Spirit of Decay should function). But it seems to me slightly broken that one can pick up a priest passive at level 8 that has literally zero benefit for at least the next few character levels of the game, and another priest passive (spirit of decay) that only appears to have an effect if you are a berathian priest (as otherwise there are 0 acid or decay-tagged spells in the first 10 character levels of the game).

Odd, because in PoE, Wael's element of choice was frost.

I think that's the idea. A few enemies in the beta have abilities which force you to move. Scirocco is devasteting if you stay in place. I did beat it on veteran, by luring titan away. Titan was certainly the biggest danger, and mopping up Blights wasn't much of an issue, though three Greater Blights are a disaster. If this time they will balance game properly, it is possible that veteran will be a challenging but fair difficulty. I didn't feel compelled to try PotD in the Deadfire as of yet, which is a good sign. It is possible that Blights are broken in PotD. On veteran Scirocco is dangerous, but you just need to move out of the way. The problem with Scirocco is that it doesn't give you much response time, unlike say Engwithan Saint's Seal of Pain and that close-range spiky/icy aura. The Seal of Pain gives you a really huge UI effect and a few seconds to run out of it, and the spiky/icy aura thing ticks periodically at close range so you can stay back. Scirocco, by contrast, will lock onto anything that's within the blight's range, and ticks immediately. One greater blight is bad, but when you have ~5 (as on PotD for this fight), even if all you're doing is fleeing, what can happen is a) Scirocco lands, which instantly blinds and briefly stops movement. b) urgently order my party to keep moving c) Other Scirocco from other blights start landing, taking advantage of that brief interruption d) essentially stunlocked and wipe within seconds In the end what I did was send out a lone Mercenary Fighter to do all the kiting himself, stopping every once and a while to deliberately coax Sciroccos out of the blights. He was only able to do this because it was easier to order one PC through all that mess, and he had veteran's recovery and second wind for instant heals. Again, given how many attempts it took me just to deal with the blights alone, how on earth did they think this was a balanced fight with the titans.

There were two things: you can't auto-attack a team member, and this one. Feeling strange about this one ^^ because:- a cap of 100, would achieve the same thing, i.e. prevent "from scaling away into infinity" - in PoE1 we could achieve up to 43 dexterity; although do note: it was not worth it - hard caps do smell bad. Sometimes it's indicative that the game loses it's balance outside of certain range; and that the system can't handle it gracefully itself. No hard cap in PoE1 was a healthy sign in my book, and it was really well handled, as dropping attributes was stinging, while maxing them to the roof was affected by intrinsic diminishing returns; not to mention that there were often wise to smooth the spread a little: think of MIG and DEX both contributing to dps, and at a very simplistic level: 15x15 > 20x10. It's no big deal though) I was a lilttle skeptical of the attribute cap at first but 35 is pretty high -- that's about where the "soft cap" of effectiveness was anyway in the first game. If it were lower I'd have more concern but at 35 it seems almost more like a UI feature -- "it's ok, you can stop bothering now" -- and it might make character planning a little simpler and give the designers more room to play around with weird bonuses (like drugs, etc.) I mean I see where you're coming from and it's definitely the most interesting change listed but it might work out to be a good thing iafter all. I'm almost positive the cap was introduced just as an arbitrary restriction so that Resolve could be allowed to reduce hostile durations meaningfully per point without worrying about degenerative cases of high resolve <snip> I called it: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/172426990256/what-made-you-go-back-on-what-you-said-about-the#notes "What made you go back on what you said about the Resolve changes concerning status ailments?" JE Sawyer: "That’s in the patch notes. We capped Attributes at 35, which prevents percentile reductions from hitting 100%. At 35 Resolve, Hostile Effect Reduction hits 75%."

yes, i think it's related to some camera changes they also made with the "smart camera." there's a bit of an "easing in" of the screen scrolling. it took a bit of adjustment (and i had to disable smart camera), but i don't even notice it anymore.

Don't know where to find saved games or output_log.txt on OS X, please let me know so I can file a proper bug report. But basically, I bound Marux Amanth to "Mercenary Rogue", notice that one of the abilities is "Corona of the Soul" which grants . (literally says "Grants ." To unlock next rank I have to do 150 Burn damage. Don't know how I'm supposed to do that, but I assume it's related to the "Corona of the Soul" ability that "Grants .". I was hoping it was just a display error, but after a few fights that 0/150 Burn damage counter hasn't gone up.

Sorry to multipost, but I seriously just have to rag on Obsidian here. Trying to clean up the blights, and seriously: what were they thinking here. Sirococco is not an attack that is easily dodgable (it appears to have unlimited range and center on a specific character, isntead of an area), which means even if all I do is kite, I still almost instantly wipe when 3-4 Sirococcos go off around my fleeing party members. I'm probably eventually going to manage this, but I can't understand how this was suppossed to be a balanced fight when they were a part of the titan fight, given how insane this swarm of blights is on their own.

The fact that swamp_slug also has discovered that the way to deal with the newly upped titan fight is to kite the titan far away from blight spawn point suggests to me that the blight spawning may not be appropriately balanced...

Update, tried it again and succeeded on first try thanks to these two things: a) kiting the titan _really_ far away from where he spawns. kiting him just a screen or two didn't help because as soon as the blights spawned they beelined right twoards me. across the map, however, and they stayed put. b) TIL that unlike PoE1 you can actually run out of range of abilities that have begun targeting. So when I didn't have an interrupt ready I just ran whatever squishy was being targetted by his grab, since the titan drops engagement when he begins charging up with the grab. This wouldn't have helped with the blights but made the titan fight a bit more interactive and less "crap did I miss with my interrupt." I mean, I still have two screens full of blights and greater blights to clear out (and a couple of probably-very-confused scarabs), but it's way better than just instawiping at the titan. EDITed to add: once I accidentally figured out (B) (happened while I was kiting with the "Mercenary Rogue"), I actually really liked how the titan fight went down. Strategic interrupts (after working through his concentration x4), and then tactially moving targetted squishes out of ranges when I didn't have an interrupt ready. It felt like a really technical fight, kind of like classic World of Warcraft raid bosses, and I mean that in a good way (as opposed to like a classic BG2 fight where it's just the enemy and your best mage emptying out your spellbooks as quickly as you can while everyone else is potion-drinking-cannon-fodder). Too bad the sudden, unannounced swarm of blights kind of ruins that.

Has anyone done this? I haven't played the Backer Beta a lot so I am still raw to all these mechanics, but the other PotD fights up until the first Engwithan Titan along the critical path (lagufeth, delemgan encounter, boarding the enemy ship, everything else outside poko kahara) I've done already and they were nicely challenging and totally within normal possibility. In previous BBs, when the Titan gets to a low health, a couple desert scarabs spawn. Surprising, but not too bad. In the current BB, when the Titan gets to low health, not only do a couple desert scarbs spawn, but a crapload of desert blights, including at least three Greater Blights also spawn. The Titan fight is a slow and tedious slog in the best of cases (currently it can one shot any of my non-"Mercenary Fighter" PCs with the grab if I don't have an interrupt ready), so the extra scarabs are a challenging surprise. The army of blights that appear, however, well it's almost literally an instant wipe as soon as they appear. (The titan itself also appears to have gotten a bit harder with the latest BB.) Wondering if anyone else has done this on PotD yet, or if there's something I'm missing with my BB noobness (like some quest that disables the desert blight spawns). Because currently it seems like a complete miss on difficulty balancing and it seems like an impossible encounter, unless I go grind some levels and get much better gear elsewhere somehow. (And this is still the same path I did in previous BBs just fine.) Maybe I should just try to kite the titan far away from that spawn point...