thelee
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Posts posted by thelee
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1 hour ago, yorname said:
My understanding is that they are meant to multiclass with caster class, but what are the advantages of a psion over fighter/ranger/monk in supporting the other half? They can sustain Borrowed Instinct, and perhaps 1 or 2 other debuff on an enemy, that's pretty much it. I don't think they can even comfortably offer Ancestor's Memory. Borrowed Instinct isn't much better than what other classes can offer, and prevents another cipher from working efficiently if I want a cipher with full debuffing potential.
the advantage is that you get a cipher w/ basically zero downtime. it's less "what does this cipher add to the caster," it's "what does this caster add to the cipher".
borrowed instinct is good but is not the reason you want to do a psion/caster multiclass. more generally rather it's that you get the versatility of a multiclass caster w/out the negative action economy of having to actively generate focus, and a psion/caster multiclass mitigates the early game issues of having very slow focus generation (and late game issues where you take incidental damage or are waiting for high-level powers). you augment the cipher, not vice versa.
the question is more akin to "how does adding caster to psion compare to adding fighter/ranger/monk" versus your original "how does adding psion to caster compare to adding fighter/ranger/monk"
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20 hours ago, Elric Galad said:
Caltrop an Arterial Strike type DoT. The strange thing is that it is supposed to be already.
the strange thing is that this definitely used to work, i remember chaining caltrops together and doing a decent chunk of damage.
i wonder if it's one of the handful of things that got broken with the TB mode patch.
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9 minutes ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:
Something that slows them down even after they are no longer engaged would be awesome. Not sure how to code that, though, since it's not being proc'd by an attack.
isn't there some armor that has this effect riding on a disengagement attack?
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15 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:
There was also a question above about trap accuracy. Is it... satisfying ? I mean, from what I've read it benefits a lot from mechanics which is... okay, no ?
I think traps should have damages comparable to equivalent Priest Seals (Priest seals having the benefit of NOT using consumables).
The 2 problematic traps should have a proper duration. Caltrops is supposed to have infinite duration raw DoT and Hobbled debuff. Something not working at all.
Not sure trap effectiveness effect should be changed if the traps are given okayish damages.
On another topic, I completely forgot Guardian stance. This one can't be fixed by +1 engagement. Some bonus per engagement could work. I have to think about one.
trap accuracy is a weird vestige from poe1 imo, but i think it's fine. ideally it should function like other skills and each point grant correct bonus PL to traps - i think that would fix some of the damage weirdness, but i doubt this is fixable with modding.
traps should do more than priest seals imo - traps are expensive and (essentially, excluding tedious vendor resets) finite, whereas seals are repeatable for every single encounter (even more than once/encounter w/out berath's challenge and you break up a fight)
i think there should be a pretty good payoff for using one of the trap effectivenss effects. since traps are one and done for a character (unlike seals can't be set in combat). if traps are upgraded to do decent damage across the board (basically not a complete rounding error), it's still good to basically give traps-oriented characters a capstone. 25% just for damage is not meaningful IMO (it'd be a whole other thing if it also boosted durations, or actually granted trap PL, that would be better since currently most of the value from traps IME are long-lived affliction durations [once you have tons of scaling] or interrupts at start for free)
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8 hours ago, Elric Galad said:
Ahem, @thelee, what advice can you give about this?
I've read the caltrop and fire trap issue from your faq btw.
w/out knowing what the actual cause of the bug is, i think those kinds of traps need much stronger up-front effects (maybe long-lived durations for afflictions) [other traps have useful other effects i think] and all traps need significantly higher damage. the effects (was it jester's boots? and the sss soulbound rapier?) that increase trap effectiveness need to easily be 2x-ed IMO
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5 hours ago, Testlum said:
@thelee I noticed that your guide over at GameFAQs still describes Full Attacks as using only the offhand recovery when dual-wielding, though this no longer seems to be the case in the current version. Since I saw the last update being in Sep 2023, I assume the guide is still being updated, so it would be good to correct this. A quick test in-game seems to match the below post saying it instead uses the higher recovery of either weapon instead.
thanks! i definitely missed that post when it came up. i've been working on an update right now, i'll be sure to add it to the update as well.
wow i've been doing the wrong mini-strategy for dual-wielding equipment for literally years
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15 minutes ago, SenSx said:
Well Tekehu will have his lvl 9 summon beast, I hope it's good.
um Tekehu loses access to normal summons (on both the chanter and druid side). i think you might keep lashing vine at tier 7, and you get his special water whip and watery double, but you miss out on pretty much everything else (though the watery double one is meta-game-able)
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please please please please please please please please please please please please fix traps before you close the book on this patch (who knows if we get another)
it is probably the single biggest mechanically broken thing in the game:
do this and i'll send a hand-written letter of effusive thanks to the obsidian dev team
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4 hours ago, Elric Galad said:
Coucou,
what does that mean? i guessed it might be french but my high school french is absolutely useless these days
4 hours ago, Elric Galad said:I'm going to buff it to 20%. It is Single Class locked so I feel it is justified.
sounds good, i almost never take the existing passive as-is
4 hours ago, Elric Galad said:So I'm planning to rollback over the 5s, and to change it to +1 AR for 3s without restriction over damage type (extended by INT, not by PL since it's a passive).
Yup it's significantly better, but I think it's not OP for Paladins either.my main concern is the symmetry; that mid-high level paladin-type enemies are already super annoying to kill because of how tanky they are and this would make them even more so.
4 hours ago, Elric Galad said:I simply propose to add +1 engagement to round it up. Most talents benefitting to disengagement get bonus engagement so this would totally make sense.
*thumbs up*. enemies consciously disengaging is so rare that i think the fighter disengagement attack boost (Overbearing Guard) also needs some kind of buff (if you haven't already), and that one's arguably much better than the monk disengagement.
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9 hours ago, SenSx said:
Oh wow ok thanks.
Were those summoned weapons as good in PoE 1 ?
I was told they were not great, so I admit I never really tried them an just kept the ogres.
But in Deadfire, even with the summoned swords, I guess Pallegina still needs the skeletons to build ressources ?
I need to see that Dragon summon at least once in my life
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I remember hoping for one in PoE, but there was only the drake...that wasn't great if I recall, neither were the weapons as I was told.
my honest response: "there were summonable weapons in poe1??"
i doubt they were as good, i stopped with the ogres and used them to solo the final boss fight.
summons need to die for pallegina to get resources as an SC paladin, and sumoned weapons aren't going to die nearly as quickly as the skellies from the skeleton chant (and frankly you don't want your weapons to die, they are far more useful alive than in the form of zeal for pallegina IMO).
that dragon summon is great. it's kind of a rough choice because multiclassing a chanter is very tempting, but the dragon summon is a really good payoff if you do choose to invest in an SC chanter. absolutely huge, has literally thousand+ health. i've said it before on these forums a bunch, but it's so tough i've used it to facetank megabosses (its natural immunity to corrode helps especially against the slime megaboss). and while it doesn't have a scaling weapon like the summoned weapons, it has tons of power levels so its abilities scale incredibly well: it has two uses of a fire breath attack, three uses of a knock down ability, and two uses of a cone-wide tail lash; while its sustained autoattack won't be nearly as good as the summoned weapons, it can burst out a ton of damage with those abilities since you can use them as soon as it appears, in a wide area. in easier trash fights you can probably one-hit KO a bunch of enemies with a single tail lash or fire breath.
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10 hours ago, Elric Galad said:
Oh I though the bounce were fixed at launch, but the expiration of Bellower bonus just caused the damages of the latest bounces to not benefit from it.
nah, my tests were a while ago, but i'm 99% sure that i did a test where i counted and it ended way too early.
if i were to guess, i'd say that every time a bounce spell is about to bounce, it checks num_bounces <= max_bounces and that max_bounce number dynamically changes. it just is very very rare (borderline impossible outside of bellower and eld nary) for this to actually matter.
edit: rather than try to search my memory, i checked my guide where pretty much everything in there has been tested or verified some other way, and i did indeed a note about it not working with eld nary back in 2019 (wow the years have really gone by!)
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the summoned weapons do tons of damage (they are the only chanter summons that actually scale their equipment with your level, so they get up to legendary enchantment), and each weapon comes with many uses of an ability - the important one IMO is the one that comes with knock down. you can spam up to 11 uses of knock down - give it a quick hotkey and use shift to queue up multiple uses on a tough foe and you can lock them down.
the fact that they scale their equipment means they basically outclass all other summons for damage once they become available, and likely even do better than the tier 9 dragon for pure damage (but the tier 9 dragon has other advantages).
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5 hours ago, Boeroer said:
Some high level stuff like Eld Nary's Curse is very potent with a lot of bonus Power Levels.
unfortunately doesn't work with bellower in RTWP, only in TB mode.
eld nary is so slow to bounce that the bonus power level effect from the bellower actually expires before you actually get extra bounces from it even with really high int (you basically need salvation of time). you get some scaling for the initial couple hits, but the potential is wasted on a bellower.
TB mode is different because the game politely waits for the spell to fully finish before advancing time and expiring the bellower buff.
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5 hours ago, Kaylon said:
Pallegina heals using chants and auras, not Lay on Hands. Her Zeal is best used for Sworn Enemy, Shared Flames or Inspired Beacon. Pallegina isn't a damage dealer, she's a support tank. If you build her well she becomes almost unkillable and can carry your party through the entire game by herself.
i would say that lay on hands is great for occasional burst healing against something stupid happening, but upgrading lay on hands is utterly unnecessary on pallegina as a herald.
for newer players, i suspect ancient memory and zealous endurance seem like really subtle sources of healing, and numerically they do seem low, but the fact that you can keep them going for free throughout the length of an entire fight is truly astounding. chanter has even more sources of defense and sustain, but those two on a herald are easy-peasy and available early.
and kaylon isn't exaggerating. way back early in deadfire's history when the first two megabosses were released, i had pallegina as a herald and i basically stumbled into beating both the spider and slime because pallegina could carry my party indefinitely with her sustain and chants (and repeatable weapon summons).
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10 hours ago, SenSx said:
Must admit I did not really get it.
So the recovery of Patinated plate gors from +70% to -7% ?
It's great, it makes it super fast ?
it's pretty complicated. if you want the gory details, you can read the pinned post in this forum, or my best attempt here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/inversions and then a section specifically about action time and recovery: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-recovery-time
the tl;dr is that it's the dual-wielding and 2w style that are great, because they give you tons of speed for "free." So yes, they make patinated plate tolerable, but they would make any other armor much faster. You are still suffering a lot from patinated plate, it's just that dual wielding with 2w style talent makes it a bit more bearable than if you were 1h style or weapon + shield style or 2h weapon style. but anyone who's dual wielding with 2w style would be even faster (much more so, in fact) with medium or light or no armor.
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14 minutes ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:
Yeah...I dont know I just love the huge shouts and dont want my character only shouting all the time. Because the phrases come in quicker with troub, I sense that I am shouting all the time and not doing auto attacks as much. Then I cant focus on my wizard or the other custom heroes I created.
you can also just let troubadour chant at normal speed. then it's like a normal chanter (albeit a bit slower on invocations bc they all cost +1). i tend to just let troubadour chant at normal speed so i can get a lot more chant uptime and only switch on the super-fast invocations if i need to spam a shout for some reason (or to trigger resistance/shield chants repeatedly)
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21 minutes ago, mjo2138 said:
So essentially, you agree that Painted Plate's +2 AR upgrade is not worth it, considering how slow you are? The only ideas that come to mind would be:
i'm more saying that you need to have something specific in mind. i mentioned SC barbarian retaliation because that's not a "tank," that's someone who blindly charges in and aggros as many enemies as possible because they want to get critically hit by bad guys. if you don't have something specific in mind, you're probably better off with well-enchanted medium armors. Eder (and other fighters) also get automatic recovery for a while, which makes medium armor extremely viable at all stages even as tank (though i'd get a shield in that situation, back to that conundrum).
Quote- a Paladin/Rogue Holy Slayer that uses Offensive Parry on Whispers of the Endless path (WoTEP) along with Riposte (I think offensive parry AND riposte could theoretically proc at the same time)
- Paladin/Wizard which insane Deflection who does not need to "worry" about attack speed, since their role involving buffing to the high heavens ,being surronded my mobs, and then perhaps relying on Tactical Meld to get +3 engagements
- Streetfighter/X -- I am not a math major (hehe) but the attack speed bonus of streetfighter may greatly negate the malus of painted plate. Perhaps with Bloodlust from a barbarian, this is even less.
- offensive parry/riposte only procs on misses, so AR is largely not important for riposte strategies. in fact you're better off with medium armor bc there's a unique medium armor that gives you +deflection that scales on your intimidation.
- same as above, if you have insane deflection why bother with AR? you can just ignore attacks and put on a robe or something for amazing speed.
- you could do this, but you're honestly nerfing the best part of streetfighter, which is just stupid fast speed. in addition, many people find it easy to trigger streetfighter bonuses using a blinding effect like chill fog - this only works because the streetfighter bonus is so huge that it overwhelms the malus from chill fog. you add a huge additional malus from patinated plate to that and you lose a lot of the point of being a streetfighter.
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18 hours ago, Zone Jiujitsu said:
If you were to go Bellower - how would you play him?
Cantor?
frankly i like SC bellower. getting massive scaling on lower-level chants, and getting a massive-duration dragon at tier 9.
but cantor (helwalker), war caller (tactile barrage and conqueror stance to boost chant/invocation effectiveness), or even a melee wildrhymer (stalker, extra defense and lots of accuracy abilities) can be all good imo while leaning into bellower playstyle.
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
Patinated plate is great but slow, I can get it to -40 speed instead of -70 with enchant and dual wield.
nit-picky follow-up post
i would be very careful about how you talk about maluses. "-70 speed" is very different with deadfire math from "+70% recovery time penalty", which is what patinated plate actually is (+55% from heavy armor and additional +15% from malus).
also i'm not sure about your math. do you know about deadfire's inversion math? with the enchant that grants -15% recovery time bonus and 2w style + dual wield, you actually take a +70% recovery time penalty and get it down to a -7% recovery time bonus. (dual-wielding grants you a -30% recovery time bonus, and 2w style grants you a further -15% recovery time bonus. the -15% recovery time bonus from the enchant doesn't simply take away 15% from the recovery penalty because of inversions, it actually overpowers it.)
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
Ok thanks I'll think about it then.
I still don't know if I go medium or heavy armor for Eder.
I wanted to make Rekke the pure fighter one handed with fast recovery, he might get the reckless brigandine.
It's a bit a struggle because I would like to know which heavy armor Eder can have and still deal some damage as a fighter/rogue.
depends a little bit on what difficulty you play and what settings.
IM(very extensive)E, on potd with upscaling, heavy armor is generally just a niche choice regardless of character build:
- on POTD enemies start with such huge boosts to PEN that the bonus AR from heavy armor doesn't typically help mitigate damage, but you suffer a significantly larger recovery penalty all the time
- further hurts that you getting magical heavy armor is very slow, so it doesn't keep up with enemy scaling
- further hurts that you can easily steal an exceptional medium armor as soon as you land on nekataka, which actually gives you better than normal heavy armor protection[1], for less recovery penalty, at a time when normal heavy armor is hard to come by
- [1] even with equal-enchantment medium and heavy armor, heavy armor has weaknesses as bad as medium armor (medium armor has 7 AR by default, but only 5AR against two types. heavy armor goes up to 9AR, but still only 5AR against two types).
- on top of that, the most common heavy armor at first is brigandine, which has a weakness to pierce. this is actually pretty brutal - pierce is very common, and notably a major source of ranged damage. normal breast plate (medium armor) will actually probably give you better all-around protection because it doesn't have pierce as a weakness.
it's basically not until you stat finding exceptional plate armor (which doesn't have a pierce weakness) that the tough defense really comes online, but at the same time you're starting to find great medium armor as well. magnera's chain is fantastic medium armor because you can enchant it to basically cover every weakness possible, and it's extra tough against pierce damage. contender's armor can be enchanted to give an unconditional +1 AR, which puts it in spitting distance of heavy armor, but with less vulnerable weaknesses and faster recovery time.
tl;dr - on POTD go with medium armor unless you have a very specific synergy in mind (patina's plate is useful for a sc barbarian taking advantage of retaliation - you're going to get hit tons so the stun effect on enemies can be a huge survivability boost). on normal/veteran, heavy armor is a better survivability boost, but i would only switch to using heavy if you're actually finding survivability in combat difficult, and even then mostly rely on plate armor (the "actually" is important because you might be able to be just as survivable in combat with decently-enchanted medium armor). tl;tl;dr: - wait to see how it plays out in-game.
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40 minutes ago, SenSx said:
As for Eder, I'm still not convinced with the Magram shield or anyother bash shield...
From what I understand it will only makes his active abilities faster, but I don't think I'd be using much of them, so far crippling strike and fatal blow when needed, bearly use knockdown (I should use it more), I don't know if penetrating strike is worth it, and second wind...
it's not just about making his active abilities faster, it's about making him entirely more responsive. if you're not playing RTWP it doesn't matter. but in RTWP, a medium-armor slow-weapon 1h will take 5.3s to recover (assuming +35% medium armor, eder's starting 11 dex). If you're 1.5s into recovering during which you get brought to near death, you have to wait another 3.8s before you can do anything else, like Second Wind or potions or whatever.
A medium-armor Eder using magran's blessing and 2w style will take 3.1s (+35% medium armor, -30% dual wielding, -15% two weapon style, eder's starting 11 dex) with either slow weapon or shield. In the same scenario, if you're 1.5s into recovering when something happens, you now only have to wait 1.6s to do anything else. That is a massive improvement in reactivity, and you'll readily notice it in hard fights - the second eder might do a little less damage, but you'll be able to respond quicker to changing circumstances (for me it mostly means needing to use a second wind or drink a healing potion).
the situation is more extreme when interrupts are involved. when interrupted, you end up having to recover for 2s. if you get interrupted multiple times, then that stacks. the only upper limit to this is your recovery time. the first eder can easily become extremely sluggish in a fight where interrupts are involved. extremely common with rogue-type enemies, who also like to dual-wield; a successful dual-wielded crippling strike will knock the first eder's recover back 4s. the second eder can only ever be knocked back at most by 3.1s, a significant improvement in interrupt resiliency. i.e., if both eders had 1.5s left before their next action (again, maybe a queued Second Wind to heal) and got hit by a dual-wielded rogue's interrupt, the first eder would reset completely to 5.3s recovery, whereas the second eder would get back to 3.1s; you only lost 1.6s versus losing almost the full 4s.
on especially harder potd fights you can definitely be in a situation where the first eder barely gets to do anything at all before getting knocked out. general responsiveness is a huge win.
edit: this is also why reloading ranged weapons are very good, even though they come with significant downsides compared to bows and implements. being able to do anything else in the middle of reloading versus having to wait for a recovery period is an extremely huge advantage in a complex fight.
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On 1/1/2024 at 9:15 AM, hansvedic said:
EDIT: It may have something to do with the Powder Burns modal and multiple enemies being nearby, I think; the Blast modal for rods also got me 5 inspirations with an empowered Imbue Missiles.
interesting! that opens up more classes that can trigger a lot of least unstable coil inspirations.
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On 12/31/2023 at 11:03 AM, Ti R² said:
I know this is a very old thread, but I did run into this issue of the "arbitrary member chosen for the skill check", and I've realized why it happens. At least it applies to all the times I've encountered this so far.
When multiple characters are selected, choosing to interact with something a little far off will often have just the nearest character go all the way while the others stay. Then, when the character interacts with it, the storybook section will only have them as an option. Cancelling out and bringing everyone close does it.
there are some other storybook encounters that select specific characters. what you're talking about is visible in the storybook encounter as greyed out characters. but IIRC, some examples include SSS storybook where an arbitrary character is chosen to suffer some consequences or make choices, or on the island where you can find eccea's blaster, there's a bridge where if you don't have adequate athletics like party member #4 is chosen to pass checks or die.
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if you're indecisive, troubadour is the all-around better choice IMO.
i have a lot of fun with bellower but it comes with limitations that you need to work with/around, whereas troubadour is a good all-purpose chanter.
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Psion ideas?
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by thelee
i'd also suggest that if you haven't played psion before but are interested, you really should give it a try.
when you're thinking about focus generation, keep in mind that a psion continues to generate focus *while you cast powers/spells* which i feel is a bit of an unobvious interaction, or at least easy to understimate in terms of impact. this means that with the right stats/gear as you progress to higher levels you can cast tier 1 and then tier 2 powers indefinitely (you literally generate more focus passively then consume... you can nonstop interrupt [from the telekinetic burst psion power] or paralyze-lock [mental binding] enemies) and you get a substantial amount of the focus on higher powers back. add in some other spell casting from a multiclass and you'll find yourself flush with focus every time you switch back to casting powers.