thelee

if we're talking about buffs for weather the storm and blights, any consideration to something that actually works with the Fury's bonuses? Having them keyworded as Elements is kind of a real waste (for the increased range part i could squint and see the need to buff a far away party member or put a summon right next to someone, but i'm squinting pretty hard). i don't know what would exactly be on-brand, though. something similar could be said with the summons being keyworded as elements, but i have even less idea what to do there

ooo, i'm guessing the turn-based rounding is extremely favorable for the stun invocation, since it'll always get rounded up to a single round even on a graze, whereas in rtwp it's a pretty short duration (same thing with the paralyze invocation) relatively speaking. my recommendation would mostly be to get fighter talents that complement your chanter -> tactical barrage for extra intellect and +1 PL for your invocations, conqueror stance for +10 acc for your invocations. also given how brisk recitation works, if you pick up the various resistance chants (seven men hit the deck, one dozen, fampyr's gaze), you can make a song that alternates between two of them and they'll both apply in a single round, which makes you really hardy against enemy debuffs, which seems pretty unique to how TB mode implements it.

Late to the discussion, for Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment, what about making it so that it doesn't take forever and a half for you to get the bounce effects? It *should* split, but in practice I feel like I've rarely ever seen it because I'm either taking on a hard single boss, or the fight is over before even the base duration is up. being able to target far away foes or in party-unfriendly contexts might make it more useful. maybe in conjunction with either lesser miasma effect or duration that might be enough.

depends on what elric means by "everyone's unarmed attack." if it sets monk/monastic unarmed damage down, then it functions as a nerf. maybe a nerf for monks is ok, but monastic unarmed training is a niche talent as it is.

maybe just fast weapon damage. the +1 damage gives it a "special" trait that makes it comparable to an actual weapon (club). i think there should be a cost to going without weapon. this would nerf PC monks/unarmed?

this meshes with an oddity i've noticed - if you pick Xoti as a monk or monk-type (forget which or if both), you have to actually equip/unequip a weapon or do something else before she gets her improved fists. kinda shows how good the monk class is - even with nerfed fists enemy monks are frequently very annoying. is there anyway that a script or mod could trigger an event that would get enemies to get improved monk fists?

is it like a custom version of the ability that enemies get? just wondering because in vanilla there are a few abilities that appear to function slightly differently for enemies than for PCs.

over the pandemic, every time i've managed to upgrade a part of my computer i've been like "awww yeah, now to see how deadfire performs"

if you've never tried an SC barbarian (esp a furyshaper) i'd recommend it. the power is not totally obvious, but it can really wreck house: heart of fury, nuff said upgraded shouts. they still scale as if they were tier 1 abilities, so their actual damage/potential is much higher than on paper you can make a retribution build, where you get crit alot and get in a lot of free attacks with a slow weapon thanks to barbaric retaliation (2h axe with bleeding modal on is recommended) [and the dazing shout can give you lots hardiness against crits] sc furyshaper gets a totem that lets any damage source regen some health i did a SC konstanten on potd+upscaling, and honestly for half the game it felt a little underwhelming (konstanten's stats are also not great). but once I got to tier 8 and then tier 9 abilities, konstanten skyrocketed to top damage dealer of the party as a dazing shout + retribution build.

another thing is that the "downside" of losing linger when brisk recitation is on, is not always a downside. some examples: if you have a song that's just "thick grew their tongues" or whatever. the duration doesn't really matter, because as soon as the debuff is applied to enemies, they lose all their concentration. not many enemies generate new concentrate very frequently so the actual debuff doesn't matter. so if you just have a song with this one song on it, you double your chances of applying the debuff over the same time period. (also i think debuffs still have a duration, i forget) there's a chant that gives you a 10hp shield. it only gets refreshed when the song re-applies. so similar to the above, having a song with just this and brisk recitation on means you double your shield's effectiveness. (in fact, one of the early times I fought Huane O Whe, I just had this song on w/ brisk recitation, and it perfectly counteracted the Symbiote debuff that deals ~9.6 raw damage/tick) the song that summons a skeleton completely ignores linger mechanics. so you just double the amount of skeleton cannon fodder you have on the battlefield. all the resistance chants immediately downgrade all applicable afflictions when refreshed. so with brisk recitation on, you can rapidly clear away afflictions without much concern. for this reason, troubadour is an easy chanter to pick, whereas all the other ones require a bit more thought to use (and there's almost no reason to want to pick a vanilla chanter).

They definitely do. It's not common, but it exists and it's annoying, precisely because there's not much you can do to stop it (other than an extremey well-timed interrupt, since it has a narrow window), and the action economy is rougher for the player compared to generally larger AI armies.

yeah, this is one of those things where it's most annoying that enemies get this benefit, versus yourself. i remember being really annoyed in some fight way back when that no matter what i did, i could not prevent a rogue from paralyzing one of my guys after a shadow step.

I also noticed that there's really also more to OP's question. To address the other: I consider anything from mid-late SSS and anywhere FS or from the main quest pre-Ukaizo to be "late/end-game gear." Anything starting level 17 or so on I consider "late-game ability." Definitely the bulk of the challenge is before then, so having a build that relies so heavily on late/end-game gear to be not great. It also is a bit of a balance issue; for SC wizard, druids, and priests their tier 9 spells are so powerful that the need for the "right" build kind of becomes moot -- many players will likely need the most help far earlier in the game. That being said, you can still have a build that takes advantage of late game stuff; like I said, even at level 20 FS is a challenge, and there's plenty of time to use gear you find there (especially if you decide to take on megabosses, which will also make the guardian of ukaizo harder). But it's kinda lame to have a powerful build that only comes fully online then; the builds I prefer also offer interesting things earlier, even if they might have certain components that only click at the end

This is how I break it down these days (level range by quests i typically take on): 1-4: "port maje zone" very hard, but avoidable (as @dgray62 says) 5-8: "nekataka tasks, benweth, initial sansa islands, oathbinder" can be very hard, but if you properly chain quests together, it it actually pretty smooth; there's also many non-violent quests or options to help ramp up. some of hte difficulty is simply similar to 1-4, where you just don't have a lot of options or your gear is outmatched (heavy armor on potd is still almost irrelevant at this stage because of enemy PEN scaling) 9-12: "tikawara, family pride, old city" reasonable challenge but a little bit less than the previous section, especially for an all-out violent option in family pride 13-20: rest of the game, OK challenge that can occasionally be easy. at this point you can juggle main quests and other faction quests and have tons of options so you're never forced into a super hard situation. i take Beast of Winter around 13-14 and depending on what potd challenges i have enabled it can brutal or an OK challenge (e.g. an unlucky roll with galawain's challenge can be brutal; a squishier party will get wrecked by the rogue archers in the bridge section). SSS around level 17. FS is the biggest challenge, I start at level 20 (sometimes level 19), and can be very hard depending on my party. Megabosses are always the technical puzzles that that they are at level 20. the most difficult battles are in the 1-4 range, and also FS. SSS and BoW have hard fights, but both can be over-leveled to make them easier. FS is special in that it's basically balanced at level 20, so you can spend the entire DLC at level 20 and face a decent challenge.

that being said, IIRC if you are bloodied, you can switch to eye of wael and it'll immediately trigger. but if you have summoned weapons, that's not really an option. that's right. though switching to get +2 PL on mirror image or displacement is not really worth it. gaze of adragan though...

i don't understand how shields are relevant? are you talking about protecting yourself from attacks while trying to use invocations? i don't think that's important to worry about - the more important is having concentration so you don't get interrupted. But even then, many (possibly even most) invocations cast very very quickly, so typically I don't have problems with front-line chanters getting their invocations off. As for troubadour vs skald, generally troubadours are able to generate phrases better, skalds mostly profit from being able to spam lower-level offensive invocations faster while still having linger. But possibly with a monk you might be able to generate tons of phrases since there's lots of melee crit/accuracy synergy.

bloodthirst and blood lust will also work for a cipher. getting kills from a disintegrate and free recovery out of nowhere can be nice. (though i think the free recovery applies on the next action if it happened in the middle of recovery) a furyshaper's wards also complement a cipher (on top of the rest of your party)

i think veteran would be a smoother experience. the big thing is that, in addition to buffing enemies further, PotD also changes the mix of enemies in an encounter, which can be significantly harder than simple adjustments to stats. both of the parties should be viable, though i would lean towards the "solid roles" party as a fire-and-forget approach (herald and paladins in general are pretty tanky and easy to AI script)

as a conjurer she still gets some quality debuffs from transmutation/enchantment, which includes a bunch of handy spells like slicken, chill fog, arduous delay of motion, expose vulnerabilities, pull of eora, call to slumber, etc. and of course C O M B U S T I N G W O U N D S which can be extremely OP in the right setup.

while keeping my earlier post in mind, having a herald in your party will go a long way into smoothing out PotD difficulty. i would not even consider it a "solid role" build, because you can easily make a herald that does a lot of summoning, which is not very tanky, but the summons you generate can be very tanky themselves.

if this is what you expect for path of the damned (esp if incl upscaling), you're in for an extremely rough ride even the extremely powerful builds are likely going to be something you have to manage manually a lot to pull off instead of hoping AI scripts will take care of it for you, at least until very late game (where certain spells/abilities or items become available).

if you don't know what to do, it's very very hard to go wrong with pallegina as a herald. tekehu's subclass is a little weird, konstanten has weird stats and uses a skald, fassina combines it with a wizard, vatnir combines it with a priest the latter two require a bit more care. a herald, on the other hand, is very easy to be powerful and resilient.

aoe scales, but nothing like poe1. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/races early on, this is crazy good, like a huge fraction of your party health, but by end-game even your squishies might easily have like 250-300 health and your moon healing only got up to like maybe 15-18 health from PL+might scaling. it's not nothing; i would not consider it completely obsoleted, but it does suffer in the comparison to some helms out there. that being said, moon godlike gets a +1 PL bonus from the heart-chime amulet, and bonus PL is hard to come by. CP takes a bit of a different tack; for me, the whole purpose of the fire godlike is the bonus +2 fire AR and the <50% health +1 AR, and that scales with you the entire game, provided you're using it on a class who's gonna have decent AR. IMO when i discovered that helm of the white wind applies +10 accuracy to so many things (on top of some additional minor enchantment) it has really hurt the meta for godlikes. it's real hard to compare against such a huge accuracy swing that is so generally useful. they've all become very niche racial bonuses now. nature godlike is def one of those victims. early on I would consider it S-tier, but now I think it's mostly useful if you want to be a monk or a monastic unarmed training build (real hard to get generic stacking PL to boost fist quality otherwise), or if you already have reserved the helm for someone else (in which case I think +1 PL is pretty decent, in contrast to constentin).

herald is notably one of the most tough-as-nails builds you can get out there. Pallegina as a herald can absolutely carry your entire party. Just very simply - exalted defense aura (for regen AND extra armor), plus lay on hands, plus ancient memory (for more regen) => your entire party can coast through anything other than huge spikes of aoe burst damage. and you still have tons of ability points leftover to spend on really powerful offensive stuff (like ancient weapons summon for chanter side) or to lean into the defensiveness (like chanter chant that grants +50% to healing recieved) for poe2, i tend to have two melee tanks, and one "flex" unit that can fill in a spot role. When I ran Pallegina as a herald back in the day (I only did it once because it honestly made so many fights too easy), she filled in a flex role, either staying back with some ranged weapons to stay in chant/aura range of everyone, and switching to a sword/shield for instant engagement if i needed to protect back line or there were too many bodies to hold back. My current run has two melee, a pet, and two flex characters, and I definitely have more crowding issues and have to make sure to pick up abilities that help me move around the fight. so you can definitely have more, but i don't think you really need more than two melee (or even one high-engagement build plus a flex) just based on how encounters are tuned in poe2. maia has a really good ranger subclass and will make for great long range DPS and make you forget about wanting another frontliner. equip maia with a good arquebus (there's one that lets you fire two shots per reload) and you can watch her shred foes and lock them down as well (free occasional interrupts). i haven't metagamed maia enough to know what the best set up for her would be, but i got a lot of mileage just from doing this and picking up good other abilities that interrupt (which scout will also get you more of from rogue). if you can micromanage, maia's pet has arguably the best pet ability in the game - the ability to avoid engagement (like a ghost heart, but you don't have to spend bond to summon the pet). So if you're fast and can tell your bird to stop attacking, you can tank literally megabosses by just engaging the boss, then flying out of range as the enemy winds up a melee attack (it'll cause the enemy to miss the target [the bird] being "out of range," which wasn't possible in PoE1). of the two i would lean towards the first one. i don't think assassin works too well with an ascendant, which really wants to cast a bunch of spells at a certain particular time that you have to build up to deliberately, whereas an assassin wants to alpha strike or cast a spell every once and a while based on being able to re-invis via a rogue ability or an item.

unless you add a mod, MCs are still locked out of tier 8 or 9 abilities. Frankly, it would be way too OP to let MCs do that, the trade-off of sometimes zany MC combinations is to give up tier 8 or 9 abilities, or else there's no point in doing SC. Konstanten, Fassina, Ydwin, Rekke, Mirke all have gotten a bit more reactivity with the DLCs, in particular Konstanten for SSS and Fassina for FS. They're still not going to be as much as "full" NPCs like Eder or Serafen, but it's quite a bit more than the blank slates they used to be.