thelee

afaict resources don't respawn, but merchants should generate mats for sale, i think that's an infinite (if slow) source.

i only have like ~10 h so far, so this is just based on early impressions and also for general discussion. i find might to be in a similar situation to poe1 and deadfire, a nice to have but not at all critical. it seems like this might be a "either useless or useful" dichotomy of an attribute? It will never ever ever help you survive a hit on PotD if you couldn't, but when you're up to >80 DR, it can mean the difference between taking an additional hit or not. i agree that the design is unintuitive. i think it would help if perception also helped with crit damage, to help with the bow/gun tension of getting auto-crits with weak points, or probably better still let weakpoints and crits be independent things so weakpoints can still crit (currently the fact that guns have a severe crit chance malus is canceled out by anyone with good twitch aiming skills or the ability that slows down time while aiming). i still come into situations where i'm far enough away that damage drops off with a bow or gun, but those situations come up much less frequently, so the returns are extremely diminishing. edit: it would also be more in tune with the poe/design attribute design philosophy of universality if spells could also crit (as far as i can tell they cannot), which would give perception greater overall utility. i think the fact that essence potions and essence foods are overflowing is the main killer here. max essence would still be useful because essence potion regeneration is pegged to your max essence, so the more you have the more you get out of them. but it's hardly a concern right now with my hybrid build because i'm tripping over sources of essence regen (i actually just sold half my essence potions). i don't know if resistances are useful from intellect because at my current modest intellect level it's not enough to prevent from getting basically one shot at times, and i'm not sure i'm willing to invest all the way to 15 to see if that situation changes. not sure what the better situation here would be that wouldn't just involve nerfing the player (like adding a cooldown to essence potions). i think this would be more useful if sprinting required stamina as well, at least in combats. that might be too punishing for lower difficulty. with a ranged hybrid build i'm spending most of combat dodging left and right, and i'm never short of stamina with only like 3 resolve. edit: i don't mind it working with second wind, it's not really a "betting on failing stat" so much as it is a parallel survivability mechanism to health (and both work together, essentially). my problem is that investing in resolve for this is not going to be totally effective because of just how frickin' long the cooldown is, combined with the obscure mechanics means i don't see a way in which this ever triggers more than once in a typical fight regardless of investment, so you get more clear survivability benefits from constitution. so it's not that "betting on failing" it's more like constitution gives you +X health and resolve gives you like +constitution/2 health, so it's always a worse choice if you want the survivability, if that makes sense.

that's actually kind of my point. i'm not saying paladin is bad, or even that druid + paladin in a party is bad, but simply that you don't need to be a druid/paladin multiclass, and in fact may be redundant or less powerful than some other druid or druid multiclass setup that happens to have a paladin or paladin multiclass elsewhere in the party. that's kind of the killer for several paladin multiclass options to me - most of its kit benefits other party members, sometimes exclusively so for exhortations. for example, reinforcing exhortation on a martially-oriented druid (or martially-oriented anything) would be very nice to have, but ironically you cannot do this as a multiclass, you have to have the paladin and druid separate. i said it was fine, but kind of like a meme build situation.

i actually find this a funny point--very different views here, because i generally view Fighter/x as solid (if not necessarily S-tier) shell for any multiclass, fighter/druid included. better support across the board for any kind of druid kit in this case thanks to disciplined barrage+upgrades, armored grace, the stances, rapid recovery, and depending on the build a slew of other passives and even some mobility options. you can add damage, but you can only do it a few times on a few targets, until you upgrade it, and you're basically spending most of your class resources for that +20% additive damage, or else diluting it with very little uptime. speaking of fighter, i would much rather pick up tactical barrage, requires very little class resources spent (one discipline gives you boosts against every target), and gets you way more useful overall bonuses for offense or defense, in addition to protecting you against enemy afflictions. and i really just disagree on the utility of that lash. so much of what the druid does does not benefit from that lash. the lash story is so much better with other offensive casters. you can do those things, i do not say that most of those are great things. ancient has wild growth which can be good because it lasts literally forever (and even then i would only use it selectively) and ancient has the sporelings that have the duration that makes extended survival useful. chanter has chants that recur and benefit party and summons at the same time (and some of those chants are great even on shabby summons, like the silver knight one). expending a lay on hands on most summons doesn't strike me as a good use of it, for example. and more to the point chaospread raised, what makes a multiclass to you "worst?" for me, is it better than other permutations to do the same thing? and also for me the big killer is that for all these things the druid doesn't need to be the paladin. that's the big killer for most paladin multiclassing to me, the paladin itself doesn't need to be on the multiclass itself, and is it really better to be on the multiclass in question? for quite a few classes, no. for druid sure you get a bit higher defenses and sure you can pick up something like righteous soul, but most of the time it seems like you would be better served even with a different multiclass and having a paladin somewhere else in the party (even SC). even the sacred immolation story - having tried this i honestly found it very unimpressive and more like a meme build. you burn down all your zeal to give some oomph to nature's terror and sacred flame, which is... fine i guess, but it also comes in very late, and i'm not sure if it's worth all those resources compared to alternatives (hence me calling it more of a meme build). apart from fighter/druid points i made, rogue/druid is good! i would happily roll a trickster/shifter for shapeshifting mayhem, even-non-trickster/X for firebrand stuff, and even an assassin/X for casting mayhem over any paladin/druid kit.

we're not talking about useless, we're talking about worst, right? what you just described with righteous soul you can do as a single-class druid even better bc druids get a spell that grants poison immune. you can also use an item that grants poison immune (spider silk robe iirc, though that comes late) or just plain ol' antidotes. and you just burned two zeal on top of that to get 40% bonus damage for like... 3 ticks of damage, which is not a lot, it's not 40% of all venombloom damage (which would be nice), it's 2 zeal to get like a piddling amount of extra damage. i'd rather use the time spent casting inspiring beacon instead on any other damaging spell the druid has. (or on a better multiclass...) is this actually good about a paladin build? paladins get courageous but it costs 2 zeal. combined with the above you are blowing 4 zeal and so much of your action economy to do some bonus venombloom damage. sounds pretty bad to me. and a multiclass paladin will only have enough zeal to do this twice, and do basically nothing else.

bah i should have excluded wiz, i keep forgetting that it can do deranged things with paladin defenses. i argue that you're overrating the burning lash on DD spells. keep in mind you are getting opportunity cost to do 10% x damage on DD spells, which is a better multiclass or single class. And generally a lot of caster builds probably are not focusing too much on might, so you can get basically the same effect with a strength inspiration, except to more types of spells (i would much rather pick up barbarian + caster or monk + caster if i wanted to do more outright damage on my spells. or even chanter, priest or have either in party. even assassin for alphastriking would be better.) same thing with inspired beacon. you have to get very close to enemies, very tight aoe, and the duraiton is very underwhelming (edit: low base and keep in mind in reality you are facing lots of grazes and resolve effects from enemies). and as i mentioned, in particular for druid, paladin has glaring holes that don't impact priest or wizard as much - eternal devotion doesn't do anything for summons, dots, or hazards. (and sworn enemy doesn't do anything for summons or hazards.) and while inspired beacon does a lot for everything, it really should not be on the same class as a caster who wants to take advantage of it - by the time you finish recovering from using it, you've already burnt through a lot of its duration. [a lot of this from first hand experience from tryign to make various paldin/druid options work and in practice how underwhelming the effects frequently are. several abandoned runs from how uninspiring they were] edit to add: also one of the things i tried. goldpact is nice early on, but without the ability to scale up your defenses like a wael priest or most wizards, you just burn through your AR bonus too quickly. you can spike your damage a bit, but pretty much any other shifter/martial will do better more consistently. firebrand is OK for the extra fire synergy so you can be efficient with your talents and items, but even then it's hard to shake the unmistakable feeling of "i could just be a rogue multiclass and have better uptime on my damage"

as someone who once spent a lot of time on priest and now spends a lot of time with druids i will say that in practice the wiz getting lots of fast self-buffs is in fact pretty handy and does synergize pretty well with various priest or druid strategies. i would put these multiclasses in the "actually pretty great" bucket. i personally cast a vote for druid/paladin. i think paladin/[druid, wizard, priest] are all on the weaker side, but druid in particular. druid has a saving grace in that paladin sworn enemy boosts the damage of many effects, but it leaves behind summons, which make up more of a druid's kit than priest or wizard. flames of devotion leaves behind dots and hazards, which again makes up more of a druid's kit than priest and wizard. you get a lot of ally-boosting stuff, but... you don't want to burn it on summons, and you're making your own ally-boosting stuff weaker by being multiclassed (no pollen patch, no revive, much later spells every where else) so it's of dubious benefit. the one good outcome is probably going all-in on fire damage and firebrand and flames of devotion, but you're honestly probably better off just buying and scribing scrolls of firebrand and using a single class paladin or a better multiclass (devoted fighter? rogue?). it's the one druid multiclass i can't get to work in a satisfying way.

i agree, and frankly given all the various RPGs i've played before and since, it's frankly a minor miracle that the tooltips are as accurate as they are in deadfire for those fundamentals.

yeah are you seeing 13s in the tooltip, or 13s on your character in combat? resolve isn't incorporated into the durations of effects until it's actually applied.

alas no. i completely forgot about helmet/godlike conflict. hmmm so no death godlike bonuses, but you would still be able to get +2 PL from potion and cheesily stack it with +1 PL from resting bonuses, so that's something. if you're willing to include eder with a berath blessing, you could add one more pet with a lash (amanita, +3% corrode lash to party)

just to repeat - Recall Agony would probably be the biggest lift you can add on top. It would functionally be a 30% lash on top of all the damage you do, if i understand correctly. But at this point you might try power level stacking, because you would be boosting a part of your equation with a lower base (prestige + empower). Death Godlike at near death, with stone of power, with potion of ascendancy, possibly with one of the foods that gives you +PL (you'd have to save/reload or something to get it to turn into a passive), etc.

you could effectively further boost the functionality with a con affliction on the target, and something like recall agony. i wonder if it hits a territory where you can one shot a troublesome boss of some sort. also lol if you had a chanter or furyshaper to get health restoration off damage, healing 150 health on a single hit would be insane.

i would also add that various streamlines mechanics have actually allowed for bigger mechanical depth. replacing most of the random buffs/debuffs in poe1 with the inspiration and affliction system is at, first glance, a huge streamlining. but it opens up the door for a lot more interesting combat interactions (since afflictions and inspirations counter each other), it also makes a lot of stuff easier to reason about. also a lot of mechanics (esp the ones that boeroer mentions - PEN/AR and interrupts) benefit from i think what sawyer called "de-murking." Making them more obvious and impactful. Interrupts were barely worth paying attention to in poe1, but are really critical for mastering deadfire. Same thing with PEN vs AR compared to DR.

deadfire community patch does fix the roll-to-hit the corpse part of white worms, which is an oddly annoying aspect of it.

yeah the qualifier that it's from an enemy hit is something i didn't think of. i find it a bit odd that such a qualifier exists, it's apparently optional, and that some instances of "on being hit" don't have that qualifier. probably an oversight on those few items. though i did find it amusing with a test paladin/druid i spun up that would trigger Inspired Defenses and stacks of Retribution while standing on their wicked briars. not sure i can do anything decent with that though.

dang is this another Constentin discovery? I didn't know this. I wonder if there's some metagaming/new-cheese potential here. Surely there's more "on being hit" effects from gear. I only knew about Auroch.

even though it's extremely cheesy, there's something very satisfying about seeing a chain of lightning bolts get triggered off a proc, especially if your crit rate isn't maximized so it doesn't always go crazy. it's like playing a slot machine. if you add in an energized inspiration (very easy with least unstable coil, synergizes with avenging storm, as if avenging storm + effort needed any more help) you also stunlock the enemies as you bolt them to nothingness.

hang on, are you saying that when you cast avenging storm, that counts as an attack against the caster for veteran's maneuver?

i'm not aware of any guides, but it's relatively easy to sneak past the first island. i did so in my ultimate run (put it at 2x speed and skip like the first 10 minutes or so): i'm sure other ultimate video runs (if you can find them) will also feature sneaking on the first island, because it's frankly not worth the risk or the time to take on some of the big unnecessary fights. edit: if it's just a matter of being unenjoyable at low level, there's a berath's blessing that starts you off at level 4, have you given that a try?

the big problem is that deleterious alacrity of motion (which priest doesn't get) is a huuuge survivability boost for an up-close glass cannon that comes online much earlier. it requires some micromanagement, but it essentially means that you don't even need to rely on things like wizard's double or arcane veil for most protection (just for ranged) because you just constantly run out of range of melee attacks. (so you can spend those spell slots on other buffs or utility, like infuse with vital essence) eventually BDD + SoT is better than anything, but that also comes up against my general resistance to using cheese in my runs unless absolutely necessary

IMO universalist is pretty hard to make truly synergistic; "more heals" is a bit overkill given how good of a healer druid already is. i had a build in these forums that made it like a "keeper" from wc3, but what might actually be more synergistic is to go wael + whatever and make it a flameblade or spiritshift build that uses wael magic for protection. i got great mileage from doing wizard + druid with flameblade and ring of focused flame doing essentially something similar. priest lacks as many fast self-buffs so you have more action economy issues (and no deleterious alacrity of motion), but it might still be pretty good.

yeah the +1 AR from stalker is really good. i've done the same (with bear). but also with antelope (extra AC on top of higher AC). honestly i am not terribly scared of fort and will attacks, at least early on. better deflection and really good reflex (getting caught by drake breaths, man) do sound better to me than mostly irrelevant-in-early-game AR. i'll admit i've never done boar, but that regen seems too slow to be that good.

i don't doubt it might be outdated (that section probably hasn't been touched since 1.x), i'll add it to my queue for next update. yeah, though for me the damage of the animal companion isn't very important. i mean, it's important for ranger's overall dps in general, but overall i get more value for most situations just as a source of engagement (with protective companion), so survivability is more important to me, unless i'm ghost heart. yeah it's not bad, that's why i specified it's better mid-late game when you get some scaling. IME AR is just really hard to make relevant in the early to early-mid game in PotD, which is also the hardest part of the game. IIRC a bear companion will have 8 AR at game start (5 + 2 bonus + 1 default fine bonus). Against even a lower-pen attack (like 6 PEN) thanks to PotD scaling you actually get 0 survivability bonus compared to a non-bear (thanks to the +2 PEN from difficulty). it'll protect you a bit from overpenetration (esp crits) but not by much. and then against harder enemies, forget about it, even with zealous endurance or a tier 2 constitution inspiration you may still get 0 DR. it's only really as you keep scaling up and enemies start capping their scaling (or vs spell-based-scaling scaling up too slowly) and/or you get tons more reliable sources of AR boosts or PEN debuffs that it really helps alot. (edit: same goes for players, really. even when you first get heavy armor it's underwhelming the protection versus the cost because of how asymmetrically weak heavy armor weaknesses are. in terms of early armor, it's the exceptional medium armor you can steal from dark cupboard that imo starts having a real impact on survivability and almost exclusively because it covers its weaknesses better than heavier armor)

i'm actually partial to antelope for PotD. AR boost is kinda hard to see gains from until scaling from mid-late game, even with resilient companion, bc it's such an arms race against enemy PEN. Meanwhile +10 to all defenses helps all the time, even if subtly. But large size on Bear is pretty handy when you need a body to do some body-blocking (may be dependant on your willingness to micromanage though).

do you have any mods?