thelee
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Posts posted by thelee
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i do not trust writ of war or last word on how they are implemented. even if you could precisely time a last word crit and it worked as intended, dorudugan's AI script would almost certainly use it at the next possible opportunity, which would be very soon due to their 35 resolve.
central to chaining anything on dorudugan would be dumping their resolve. arkemyr's wondrous torment is good because you can double-cast it and it has a long base duration - cast once to get the initial debuff, cast again to get a much longer debuff because now dorudugan has significantly reduced resolve. psychovampiric shield also drops resolve by -10 but because i believe it's a transfer effect you can't do this double-casting, the second one doesn't do much (also much shorter base duration; base duration matters a lot against 35 resolve).
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5 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:
But Troub also benefits from Sasha's and Blightheart.
i'm allowing for possibly a language gap, but the point is that the troub doesn't benefit as much, because they already have phrase generation mechanisms (brisk recitation). sasha's and blightheart and weyc's close the gap for other subclasses. and frankly, bellower can make use of sasha's better than troub. pretty much the standard recommendation with sasha's is to enchant it to get back an empower point. with bellower, i'd say the opposite should be recommended, enchanting to restore all your phrases, because getting one invocation at +PL and then following it up immediately with another one at up to +7 PL is powerful.
5 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:So we are limited to one invocation, a high level invocation at that. Meanwhile, with troub you can swap and refresh skellies fast, clear debuffs, grants shields, etc. I feel like I am talking to a wall here, EVERYONE suggests troub. Why?
are you actually looking for answers on how other chanter subclasses (esp bellower) can have their niches? because this is an INSANELY bad faith reading of what boeroer and i wrote. we were simply highlighting one particular invocation - my post was even talking about how previously i thought that kind of invocation was bad for bellower until i gave it a try, which if reading comprehension was your forte made a clear implication of what other invocations were obviously good for bellower.
QuoteEVERYONE suggests troub. Why?
almost every other participant in this thread has commented on this. troubadours give you versatility.
edit: as i've said, that versatility means that troubadour is a default recommendation (literally CTRL-F in this thread and i said it before you made this post). i feel like *i'm* talking to a wall, because i'm literally repeating myself here: but this versatility means that it's very easy to have a good chanter, but it doesn't necessarily mean it strictly dominates any other subclass (though in base game i argue that it pretty much dominates vanilla chanter).
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8 minutes ago, Boeroer said:
A dragon summon with a base duration of 25 () secs and a PL bonus of 7 will suddenly have a "base" duration of 35 secs which can mean you can uphold a dragon summon at all times (didn't actually try but I guess this should be pretty valuable).
yeah i did a SC bellower once and you can get 100% uptime on dragon. it actually changed my line of thinking on bellower, originally thinking that you should only be using very offensive invocations (to get maximum PL benefit). getting PL just so you can get extend a powerful summon duration for maximum uptime turns out to be very useful as well. only other chanter that can consistently do this is a troubadour, but you'd have to give up linger on chants (which may not be bad if you're spitting out shields or resist chants, but would be bad if you have like a aefyllath ues=>ancient memory song)
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yeah, my original comment before i edited for length pre-submit mentioned that i was talking about the more extreme vanilla case, and it'd be way closer with bpm.
troubadour is a default recommendation because it's hard to get wrong, but it also doesn't mean it's a strictly dominant kit (except above vanilla changer probably). i can see that if you're just brisk reciting through shield chants while blasting invocations that can feel very powerful, but you can also do powerful things with other subclasses as well (even in base game), just with a bit more thought.
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18 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:
Can I just say, that compared to a Troub, the bellower is just outclassed in almost every way? I am playing with he BPM and I hate how I am always longing the Troub even with the nerf it got.
in comparison to other kits, bellower doesn't suffer particularly compared to troubadour. it's more just that troubadour is a pretty good flexible kit compared to all the other kits, and the "downside" of having chants cycle faster but no linger is not really a downside for several chants (as you mention).
one thing i'll note that for bellower, it almost never makes sense to charge up chants beyond what you need for an invocation just for the bonus PL. you should be using invocations when you can - the bonus PL makes each invocation really good, but not good enough that it's worth making invocations less frequent in exchange for a handful of extra PL. bellower also benefits from sasha's singing scimitar letting your recharge all your chants after empowering an invocation. and all non-troubs benefit more from blightheart and robe of the weyc's chant boosting than a troub does, which helps close the gap.
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On 1/18/2024 at 12:57 PM, Wormerine said:
RPG nature of the game still seems to be mostly sidelined
i'm vaguely concerned the mechanics will be relatively shallow like the outer worlds but we'll have more updates till fall to learn more
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yeah gibbing is weird (annihilates the corpse, which might affect the game's ability to rez them later). Normally party members can't get gibbed, but if you do get annihilated otherwise (disintegrate from enemy cipher) they disappear from your party and you can't res them.
i wonder if ship boarding assists--because they're not in your party--can get gibbed (regardless of being a crew or companion) and that can (unintentionally?) cause permadeath.
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i've literally never seen this item in my playtime (~2000h), and i don't see it on the wikis.
Are you sure you have nothing else? Adding a new item doesn't seem like something either the CP or BPM would have done (nothing on the nexus mods page that i can see that indicates it), though adding spellcasting trinkets was something that was discussed on these forums a while back. -
actually i was revisiting something and - are we sure that crew (not benched party members) are in fact perma-dying in boarding encounters? i have a note in my guide explicitly saying crew members don't permadie, and i don't think i would've written that without testing.
edit: is it possible that they're being gibbed and that's causing the permadeath? -
i noticed crew/party members dying in berath's challenge relatively recently ("relatively" like at some point in 2023 i think).
i suspect mostly that you/we didn't notice before, because typically you can end up with tons of crew and when they die their loot is pretty crappy so in the post-ship rewards screen you don't notice any obvious tells. it was only obvious to me because after a boarding encounter i noticed some very familiar gear, and it was because a level 4 aloth got wrecked and dropped whatever gear i had put on him at the digsite way back 1 and then i started paying way more attention to everyone during a boarding encounter.
i do think it is an interesting dynamic, in line with the theme of berath's challenge. since discovering permadeath during boardings i make sure to either avoid boardings or level up my party members/crew members.
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20 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:
Holy crap - man why did I never put this together. For the spells/invocations to hit - you increase accuracy. So Cipher, and Monk have ways to increase the chance of hitting. I thought it only effected weapons.
Just wow. Never knew this. I've been in a form of paralysis trying to make Bellower work, Troubador really is the best. Just increase the accuracy via Cipher or Monks Dance - then done you will hit with the spell more.
WOW.yeah, thinking about the game mechanics really benefits from taking a "lawyer"ly approach to reading the descriptions and seeing where loopholes arise. you can find some surprising interactions that way, instead of assuming that something won't work with something else because of an assumption of how that something is "intended" to be done.
i would say that a decent chunk of the fun of theorycrafting and toying with the mechanics of deadfire is the joy of discovering new interactions, it's like a treasure hunt.
anyway for the reasons you mention, both fighter and monk (especially helwalker) are very interesting classes to multiclass with a caster. they have tons of passives and buffs that are ok for a martial but really open things up for a caster.
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
Honestly I don't know, because I tried to attack some Neketeha guards after upscale enable, and they seemed strong.
TBF they are always pretty strong
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10 hours ago, Boeroer said:
for example the +50 deflection from the Mask of the Weyc on top of the +50 deflection from the Escape Cape + 25
For OP, just some reminder text that this stacking with mirrored images only works with the escape cape. Because it’s tagged as an item ability it stacks with active abilities. You wouldn’t be able to stack with the rogues normal escape ability.
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1 hour ago, SenSx said:
How good riposte could be if I max out deviation with all the trickster buff (Mirror Image, Llengrath's Displaced Image for hits to graze), borred instinct from cipher spells, and blind on ennemies with eyestrike on top of that (yes many spells to cast, but the rogue will be fast, and I will max out intelligence for maximum duration benefits), and stack the 5% avoid attacks from talents and gear ?
maxed resolve would be my main tip - i don't have a lot of experience with a riposte build so i'm not sure if you'd be better off with a bashing shield + weapon and shield style for full attack ripostes or whispers for the lower deflection bonus (+4) but an additional riposte.
escape would actually be the best defense that a rogue has, +50 deflection unconditionally. hard to keep up though, but if mirror image isn't enough for tough fights, escape could probably fit in at a pinch.
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8 hours ago, SenSx said:
I think that blessing should have been default and pickpocket rewards should improve with your pickpocket lvl.
yeah i agree. i honestly don't think it would've been too hard to make sleight of hand functional (what you talk about is pretty much it), but the history of deadfire is that sales at launch underperformed and it took a while to do well, but because of that they just couldn't give deadfire the patch-love it deserved.
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
I would like to know what is the max Sleight of hand needed to pickpocket all npc in the game,
you only need 1 sleight of hand for like 95% of pickpocketing. the highest i've seen is like 7, but for like literally hardtack or a fine stiletto. the difficulty isn't based (at least very heavily) on the value of the item, but some stat on the npc themselves, and most npcs have garbage for that stat.
most of the value from sleight of hand anyway comes from enabling the "loaded pockets" berath's blessing so you have a chance of getting some decent ingredients or mid-tier magical items for free from pick pocketing, and for the same reason as above you only need like 1 sleight of hand. just a badly designed skill unfortunately and obs never had the time or budget to fix it.
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
I guess the dlc in question with frost resistant ennemies is Beast of Winter ?
yeah that's right.
thinking more on it, it's not as bad as i make it out to be - there are sections of that DLC where you actually fight fire-immune enemies where frost would be useful. it just stands out to me for two reasons - this DLC is particularly hard compared to main game so even if main game has like element-immune sections as well, it's not as bad bc they're comparatively easier. and second, this BoW dynamic is obvious if you pick up Vatnir, since that is when you can pick him up, and it's a bad time to pick him up because half of his bonus spells as a priest are going to be of lower use in the DLC (since half of his bonus spells are frost/water spells) so the elemental immunity/toughness just feels particularly acute.
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There's a very comprehensive list here:
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29 minutes ago, yorname said:
This time and a year ago I both newly downloaded from steam before the runs, then added some mods, outside of CP and BPM none of them should change rules and mechanics.
what mods?
never can necessarily rule out a mod having some stray other behavior, though this seems more deeply rooted into the game.
i'd see if you can strip down to just CP/BPM and see if that fixes it.
i run a limited CP (bugfixes only) and a german translation improvement mod, and no issues with this for me.
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8 hours ago, SenSx said:
I don't reallt know which wild strike I should pick, in PoE 1 corrode was the best...but rp wise, ice/water makes more sense for him, I hope it does not gimp him too much ?
ice/water makes sense rp-wise, but there's a DLC where you'll basically run into frost-immune or extremely-high-frost-defense enemies almost non-stop. it's a strong, strong argument against picking up wildstrike frost. (similar to wildstrike fire. wildstrike shock and corrode are pretty generally useful in comparison).
you can still have success picking that wildstrike - it's basically a little bit like becoming a glass cannon. you give up the ability to wreck a certain class of enemies, but you gain the ability to wreck a different class of enemies (there are also frost-vulnerable enemies, and a handful will actually become debuffed with afflictions if hit by a frost effect)
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the only similar thing i've ever experienced is weapon proficiency modals persisting even though i've switched weapon slots. but they still go away if i completley unequip the item.
@yorname do you have any steps to use to recreate this? because i, too, have never run across this despite looots of gameplay time.
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2 hours ago, yorname said:
Just for the healing part, do you need another chanter or paladin for prolonged fights? I always wanted to try something other than the go-to herald Pallegina as support but the class has too much infinite healing that I can't justify giving it up for something else. Running both seems to be an overkill. Maybe a paladin OR chanter, plus a druid is the right balance?
lol sorry, i've been only using this in conjunction with a paladin and a chanter, mostly passiv ehealing from chanter (ancient memory) and occasional burst healing from paladin (lay on hands).
the healing is decent, but on potd it's not enough on its own. a partial healer from another class (a priest if not paladin or chanter) is needed.
edit: if you want to stick with the general theme of the build, a lifegiver instead of an animist would give it a massive boost in healing effectiveness, and you'd trade off some general utility and summons (you can replace with some debuff/buff spells instead). between all the off-tanking and party support plus lethandria's devotion and a couple of lifegiver heals you could probably carry any party on potd (lifegiver is really good) with just a bit less overall dps
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A new build in the year of our lord 2024? Sure why not. Thought i'd post this build that i have for a merc in my current run, as an illustration of the fun you can have with a blackjacket, and charbuilds don't have to be OMNIPOWERFUL SOLO-CAPABLE BEASTS to be a lot of fun. This is a pure support character with lots of flexibility to slot into your party.
Warden - blackjacket, animist (cat form)
hearth orlan, stats: 9might, 10con, 15dex, 20perception +1 from bg, 17int, 6resolve
skills: alchemy : stealth in a 2:1 ratio, prefer investing in stealth at first
abilities:
- Disciplined Barrage, Winter Wind [get Sunbeam for free]
- Tanglefoot
- Fast Runner
- Fighter Stances (use Adventurer stance), Conjure Lesser Blight* [get The Moon's Light for free]
- Into the Fray
- Determination**
- Tactical Barrage, Spreading Plague [get Returning Storm for free]
- Snake Reflexes
- Arms Bearer
- Out of the Fire, Boiling Spray [get Conjure Blight for free]
- Quick Switch
- Unstoppable OR Secret of Rime if you have a source of dex resistance from gear
- Conquerer Stance, Cleansing Wind [get Plague of Insects for free]
- Rapid Casting
- Armored Grace
- Clear Out, Conjure Greater Blight [get Sunlance for free]
- Quick Summoning
- Reaping the Whirlwind
- Uncanny Luck, Weather the Storm [get Lashing Vine for free]
- Accurate Empower
*: respec out of Conjure Lesser Blight once you have two castings of Conjure Blight (so level 13). Choose Determination or Woodskin, whichever one you still need considering the below point.
**: respec out of Determination to Woodskin once you get Lance of the Midwood Stag enchanted with Lord of the Forest
Weapon slots:
I: The Red Hand, enchanted to push
II: Lance of the Midwood Stag early to mid to mid-late game (enchanted with Lord of the Forest), Street Sweeper late game or for special fights, or a Morningstar
III: Fire in the Hole main hand, Sungrazer or Keeper of the Flame or Sun and Moon
IV: Flail or Club mainhand (depends on party), Lethandria's Devotion offhand shieldSuggested gear:
Helm of the White Void
Swift Hunter's Garb enchanted with dex resistance, or Spider Silk Robe
Playstyle:
basically you fill all sorts of roles, and you are costantly switching weapon slots as the party needs it. basically impossible to AI script effectively, so you better love micromanaging
. i highly recomend that you have an easy-to-remember hotkey for switching weapon sets.
- You do some disruption and damage by either using Spreading Plague or Tanglefoot in combination with your various push effects (early on it's a handful of spells). Gives you some a minor amount of survivability assist by disrupting melee enemies, extremely effective if you can pair with a party member who can also hobble or immobilize (frees up your spell casts for more push). Use your Red Hand similarly so when you run out of spells. Clear Out also fills this push job in very well late game.
- Use Woodskin and Lance for +2 PL uptime whenever you're casting. Make sure you have uptime on Tactical Barrage as well. With blackjacket it's extremely painless to switch out of Lance if you need to shoot someone or if you need to provide some sustain with Lethandria's Devotion or need to debuff enemies with modals, and switch back to Lance for more spellcasts.
- use Out of the Fire to save party members from danger, you can also target yourself to escape enemy engagement. Generally not worth the 2 resources to try it on an enemy until your accuracy is really high vs enemy reflex (missing on this feels real bad, very expensive and you probably needed this to save someone's skin)
- switch to your shield weapon slot if you need to stop an enemy from engaging a squishier party member. after you lock an enemy down you can generally switch away and they'll stay on you, i like switching to the Red Hand (when the enemy isn't about to make an attack) so I can then push them repeatedly.
- The Moon's Light and Cleansing Wind are good heal spells. Make sure you have +PL (tactical barrage, probably lance). Cleansing Wind is a little ornery around altitude changes and obstacles, so be warned. Supplement by switching to your shield slot if you need more sustain.
- Higher level, switch to your blunderbuss weapon slot to do Clear Out, yet another push source (make sure blunderbuss modal is on). Sometimes you'll just wreck enemies if enemy density is high enough. Easy to spam if needed. Switch away to a different eapon slot once enemy density is low. I pair with either Sungrazer or Keeper of the Falme for extra aoe impact, but an alternate is Sun and Moon for bonus PL when you get rid of Lance (see below).
- Late game, I give the Lance to another caster (they can still get PL from Woodskin) and I switch to Street Sweeper because of increasing need to clear enemy buffs. Also provides nice deflection bonus you can switch in and out of easily (again, Blackjacket is fun here). Depending on party need, you can instead use a morningstar here for switching into fortitude debuffs.
- With your shield prefer a flail or club depending on party need. My party makes great use of a flail because i have a cipher who loves beams, so I use a flail.
- conjure blight is a bit underrated (community patch makes them more generally usable if you're up for modding). early game the lesser and normal blights are a good way to waste enemy resources and time (toss the blights next to casters or rogue archers to soak up their spells or blinding/finishing blow attacks) and can also help run interference for squishy foes. greater blight later game actually comes with some handy abilities (most of the time) - e.g. sand blights can blind, ice blights can debuff enemy action speed by -40% in a huge part-friendly area, storm blights can swift your entire party while sickening enemies. greater blights are useful enough that even when you get lashing vine, i don't recommend respeccing out of greater blights.
- free druid spells work great when other stuff doesn't work, and is why i pick an animist despite lack of other bonuses. against sickness-immune, replace spreading plague w/ returning storm casts. if you don't need the healing, you can drop a plague of insects. if you already have a summon up, drop some sunlances. against frost/push-immunes or dense enemy packs drop a sunbeam.
- early game cat form is a nice way to assist with dps. mid-late game i just use cat form for when i need the action speed boost, your normal weapon capability will be a lot stronger for when you need it (most of the time).
- i choose stealth as an early skill because stayin stealthed while you buff up and summon blights and then open with a spell cast works real well. significant diminishing returns, hence why i don't go all the way with stealth (and you can't be stealthed for scripted or other fights).
- i choose alchemy because this character doesn't need more demands on action economy and with alchemy you can shift some of the action economy needs to outside of combat. Coral drugs for bonus action speed, or Taru Taru Chew for some bonus action speed (+3 dex) but also better healing/offense (+3 might). Early on I use some other potions at the start of a fight (being stealthed makes it easier to do this), later on once alchemy score gets higher and you have conqueror stance i instead supplement drug use with poison. Poison is easier to use when you get two shots/reload from Red Hand, have +20 acc to the weapon attack from arquebus, Conqueror Stance gives you +10 acc to the poison, and Tactical Barrage gives you +1 PL to poison (ordinarily very hard to scale up). Spider Silk Robe suggested as a possible gear choice as a late game way to boost poisons. I always stock a poison that targets will and another that targets fortitude and pay attention to the defenses of whatever target i'm attacking, which is generally either a caster that no one else can effectively dps down yet, or a really bullet-spongey guy in front that will actually be around long enough to suffer the effects of poison or needs to be hit with a powerful poison effect (like stone poison, or storm toxin). having a morningstar or a club can help with poison use, just make sure you don't apply the poison to your morningstar or club.
interestingly, i used to stock heal potions on this character, but it turned out i never used them. even with the blackjacket's weaker fighter recovery, by not being a melee tank or not even a full-time off tank (just an occasional one), that drip of healing tends to be wildly sufficient for most purposes, and you can always switch to your shield slot for more defense and sustain. (even without weapon and shield style, lethandria's devotion being a medium shield gives you quite a bit of resilience against especially weapon-based enemies)
anyway, this build isn't going to go solo any fights, but has turned out to be a real effective glue for a party. blackjackets are an extremely fun class to try to squeeze into a party or multiclass. having no cost to switch weapon sets enables a lot of neat tricks (not mentioned here: an incredible cheese opportunity with lethandria's devotion, which i'm deliberately not using)
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45 minutes ago, yorname said:
He was generating 5 focus/s, probably slightly more if he got lv20 and some additional PL. In combat I just found his focus very limited compared to a normal cipher unless the enemies are somehow too powerful for weapons. Unless there's only one boss that the cipher can't reliably hit, I believe a normal cipher can always manage to generate more focus even factoring in downtime.
yes, it's true, even a slightly-optimized vanilla cipher will easily out-generate focus than a psion.
however, an optimized vanilla cipher/caster multiclass will never be able to out-generate the focus gen of a psion/caster multiclass.
an early psion build i did was a psion/lifegiver. that thing carried my party for similar reasons to boeroer's post. if my party needed buffs or healing, i excelled at that and did that. by the time i was done casting spells i had tons of focus for cipher powers. i would basically switch between being a psion or a support caster and i basically always had uptime with spell casting.
whereas a normal, un-cheesed cipher *has* to spend time physically attacking to generate focus, a psion/caster multiclass essentially generates focus by casting spells from the other caster.
also i think you're underestimating the power of being able to endlessly spam powers. it is true that objectively speaking a normal cipher can out-generate a psion, no normal cipher can indefinitely paralyze-lock an enemy - at some point they have to stop and attack for a while. a high level psion can in fact indefinitely do so, and in fact i set up some AI scripts at a certain point that would either spam burst or mental binding and it is shocking in how many fights you can get away with doing this and trivialize them.
that being said, a SC psion is not nearly as powerful as a MC psion IMO. if you really want to get to tier 9 powers you can, but you only get slightly more focus generation while still having a lot of drawbacks. a caster multiclass pretty much covers the main drawback of a psion, which is well worth losing tier 8 or 9 cipher powers.
edit to add: historically there was a lot of skepticism about psion when it was first released in patch 4.0. and the thing is, there's a lot to be skeptical about, if you imagine playing a psion is just like playing a normal cipher. but in truth, a psion ends up playing very differently than a normal cipher, and is very powerful at that alternate playstyle. for me it was really a "see it to believe it" kind of mental switch i had to do.
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. i highly recomend that you have an easy-to-remember hotkey for switching weapon sets.
Transitioning from Cipher in PoE1 to a multiclass Cipher (or something else entirely) in Deadfire
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by thelee
i believe it's comparable to restore or moonlight - 1.5m, centered on paladin. So yeah, it will be hard to cover a large area with it, even with decent int. won't help you if you're flanking a dragon, but worked pretty well for me in the typical scrum of humanoid-sized combatants.
edit: it's probably the same area as shared flames. 1.5m seems really tiny actually, it might be 2m.