thelee

boy oh boy, if this is true i've been under-utilizing my high-deflection character setups. unless boeroer speaks up to confirm for sure, this definitely needs testing. there are two ways this bonus could be implemented - as a +10 deflection bonus that is conditional against melee, or a +10 deflection bonus vs melee. sounds subtle, but the former is the same "type" of bonus as a mirror image bonus, just conditoinal, and would get overriden. the latter would be a different "type" of bonus and would stack. i ran into a similar surprise when someone (boeroer again?) pointed out that the +15 all defenses bonus from things like circle of protection or symbol of eothas stacked with deflection bonuses. (the difference between "+15 to deflection, +15 to will, +15 to fort, +15 to reflex" vs "+15 to all" if that makes sense)

it's similar to PoE1 in that there are more enemies on as you go up - on PotD notably enemies can get "upgraded" into more elite versions of themselves. on top of that, on Veteran enemies get +12% health (multiplicative bonus I think?), +8 accuracy, +8 all defense, +1 PEN, +1 AR. This is basically half of what they get in PotD, which is +25% health, +15 acc, +15 all defenses, +2 PEN, and +2 AR.

i believe you have to activate the berath's blessing merchant to get the ring of greater deflection. you can get a cloak of greater deflection. the way to do it is to rescue the lone adventurer in old city, then pay him a visit in port maje afterwards. it's not an official task or quest or anything, but he gives you a cloak of greater deflection and some jewels iirc. (my current run definitely does not have berath's blessing merchant enabled and my mainchar has the cloak.) heavy armor is extremely slow. plus, while +3 AR vs PEN sounds great on paper, on PotD with upscaling, heavy armor can actually not be very effective, especially early on, because enemies have +2 bonus PEN from PotD which can safely put them out of underpen range unless you have things like hardy/robust or spirit shield active and/or coupled with PEN debuffs (dazed mostly). add to that, heavy armor is extremely weak (as weak as medium armor) to two damage types, so depending on the context heavy armor doesn't get you any advantages over medium armor and only downsides (much slower recovery). with lots of buff/debuffing and enchantment/looting heavy armor eventually becomes aces for survivability, but imo is decidedly kinda mediocre at first (except to specifically metagame certain encounters). also, due to the increasing returns nature of deflection, the +9/10 deflection of casita samelia's legacy can be worth literally +infinite AR. edit - imo, for potd+upscaling, armor is mostly about managing overpen for much of the game, until you start leveling enough that upscaling can't keep up with your improving enchants/gear (~level 10-12 or so). for much of the game my rule-of-thumb for armor types is: cloth: "i'm ok with with being overpen-ed by virtually everything" light: "i'd rather not be overpen-ed, and i'll take my overpen chances with spells [depending on armor]" medium: "no overpen anywhere exept on crits, with the option of like -25% damage every once and a while with buffs and support" heavy: "i want a little bit of survivability, with the option to become a god with lots of support" i don't know actually. but of the dual-wieldable ranged weapons only wand has a -10 unfit for melee penalty. so you can safely keep hand mortars in your off-hand. dagger modal wouldn't be great, because the +10 deflection would be overridden by all the vastly superior defensive buffs a trickster can get (escape, mirror image, llengrath's displaced image) the modals that reduce damage are just like another modifier, but it undergoes inversions, so -25% penalty can cancel up to +33% worth of buffs. i did mention that having two hatches might be really bad for dps (-25% damage on an already low-damage weapon), but a rogue is better positioned than other classes to have that modal on all the time since their sneak attack bonus can get huge and overwhelm the penalty. i mostly bring it up because a combined net +16 deflection bonus (+3 times two from dual hatchets, plus the effect of -10 accuracy on enemies you hit/riposte with them) could potentially give you such a huge survivability boost that it might be worth the reduced DPS (and it might not be that much of a reduced DPS if you're riposte-ing more because the enemy misses a lot more).

some alternate approaches (i'm not saying these are better than what you have, just things for others to consider as possible tweaks). armor - casita samelia's legacy. gives you +5 deflection, plus +.25 deflection per point of intimidate. ring - ring of (greater) deflection; either +2 or +4 deflection back - cloak of greater deflection for +7 deflection. for weapons, it might be fun to dual-wield hatchet - xoti's sickle and acolyte's. the +3 melee deflection bonus stacks, and the -10 accuracy from modal is effectively another +10 deflection for yourself. this hurts your dps a lot though, so maybe one hatchet (xoti's) with modal on plus kapana taga or a heavy hitter like an axe with bleeding cuts. for abilities, it might also be fun to consider glorious beacon. blinded affliction provides an additional -10 acc penalty (doesn't stack with hatchet debuff) that acts as another way to boost your defenses. for pet, might be worth considering ooblit. the +3s duration plus escape after many power levels means being able to spam for +50 unconditional deflection (unlike arcane veil which is +50 except against veil-piercing) can almost make you into god-mode. only worth doing this if you're in a situation where mirror image isn't good enough (or has been suppressed). lastly, riposte can also trigger full attacks from ranged weapons. if you have a hand-mortar in your offhand, you can trigger aoe attacks as part of your riposte (works real great in dense fights, though be warned that you need a decent GPU to keep up with all the explosions).

she gets a very small amount in SSS, and possibly FS if i remember correctly (it's been a while).

it's ok if you learned a lot of spells - grimoires are still useful because there are several "unique" spells that can only be gotten from a grimoire.

important to note that whatever interactions sidekicks have are mostly self-contained to the DLCs (in fact, each DLC has a recommended sidekick). just calling this out because if you're expecting some interactivity, you'll get basically zero in the base game, but then all of a sudden one or two of your sidekicks will be real chatty in a DLC. (even mirke gets some reactivity)

depends on what exactly you want out of an archer build. i would personally say that single-class sharpshooter is great, but you have to be willing to melee a bit. pick up hunter's talon, hunter's fang upgrade and dual-wield some melee weapons in one weapon slot. when you enter a new area, spend the first few encounters just using up all your bond on hunter's talon/fang-ing the most common enemy type for the area, burning self-empower points to replenish resource as needed, until you get to 18-20 stacks. (technically, with a save/load cycle there's no cap on the stacks, but i think that's too exploitive.) couple that with stalker's link on your pet, marked prey, and survival of the fittest you can get up to a whopping +50 accuracy bonus against an enemy type (plus an additional +20% damage from hunter's fang). couple that with Stunning Shots on a fast weapon like a modal-ed hunting bow and you can virtually stunlock enemies (especially with driving flight to get +1 bounce with projectiles). the sharpshooter gives you additional hit->crit to help out with even more crit, add in being a hearth orlan for add'l hit->crit on anything your pet is attacking.

in theory, yes. but if you actually want to do something practically effective and not just theoretically effective, you need to yell at Versus Evil.

I mostly meant it never occurred to me that guns would get both benefits from sure-handed components. It would deserve a test; I don't recall seeing a double bonus, but I didn't pay close attention. Also for stacking here: it's a hell of an unintuitive system. You invert the recovery time bonus to translate it into an action speed bonus, and then combine them, and then reinvert them back into a recovery time reduction. -20% and -20% invert into .25 and .25, add them up to get 1.5, then reinvert to get -33% recovery time. The pinned action speed post or my gamefaqs guide goes into detail about this

yes. my umezawa build (which is my #1 favorite build) relies on this mobility (and the hyuuuuge +50 deflection bonus from escape) no. escape doesn't count as movement. afaict riposte effects are distinct. my umezawa build used riposte and the BoW large shield that triggers attacks on enemy misses, independently of whether or not riposte triggered.

wait what?

For console release, you should be directing it at Versus Evil, not Obsidian. From what I gathered, Versus Evil is aware of this issue and is desperately working on a patch.

they are none

yeah, especially puzzling because i thought unity was suppossed to make multi-platform development easy. but bizarre things are apparently broken (like lay on hands not working). but +1 to what @draego said. Obsidian handed this off to Versus Evil, so your ire should be focused on Versus Evil to get some patches out. PC version is pretty stable, all things considered.

No you misunderstand. The PEN check is separate. There's a "total weapon damage" that goes through PEN/immunity. The lash is based on that total weapon damage, with its own PEN/immunity check. Put another way, the input for the lash isn't the weapon damage number you see in the combat log, it's a number BEFORE pen/immunities are checked. The weapon damage number you see (or don't see, for immunities) in the combat log as the final result is something else entirely that isn't directly related to your lash. This isn't hypothetical. Go get a spiritual weapon with contrasting weapon damage and lash damage types and use it against an enemy with immunity to your weapon damage. You will still do lash damage. You can get NO PEN alerts even if you have full penetration on the enemy, because your lash is underpenetrating.

lashes stack. additively. you can see this with like flames of devotion on a bleakwalker, you'll see three different numbers for each hit in your combat log. Edit: so two 15% fire lashes will combine into one 30% lash. A 15% fire lash and 15% corrode lash will still combine into net 30% damage, just as two distinct damage types. This matters for PEN issues and also how it gets rendered in your combat log. Two fire lashes will just show up as one bigger number attached to your weapon damage, whereas you'll see a distinct fire and distinct corrode number on top of your weapon damage. I don't think there's a limit. they are based on % total weapon damage (including bonuses like sneak attack or might); this is why lashes are really good in deadfire because they are multiplicative damage bonuses. they each have their own PEN/immunity check using their own elemental type and your weapon-based PEN. this is why woedica spiritual weapon is best spiritual weapon because their lash is raw, so even if the enemy you're up against is immune to your fist damage, you will still be doing full lash damage to them. Edit: also unlike all other sources of raw damage, it doesn't get a damage penalty compared to the alternatives, which is normally the case to balance its complete bypass of AR. Edit: this is all in my gamefaqs guide along with other mechanical stuff, if you're curious.

oh yeah, i missed out on spelling that out in my post. in all dialogue - your watcher always does the check. only party assist matters from allies, their specific skill doesn't matter. in scripted encounters - depends. sometimes your watcher, sometimes you can pick an ally, rarely sometimes you're forced to use a specific ally.

are you sure this actually works? Ancestor's Memory at last check can only be targeted on allies not yourself. So this could work for two separate characters, but not one multiclass. (And really, anyone plus ancestor's memory is powerful, I don't think assassin is particularly any more powerful than e.g. a priest being able to spam BDD and Salvation of Time on everyone.)

Party assist always works except: for actually using the skill (i.e. actually stealthing, actually pick-pocketing, your actual use of explosives or traps). the exception is mechanics, which uses your party assist mechanics to disarm traps (but uses your un-assisted skill to set traps). The oddity about skill checks IME has more to do with the fact that sometimes in encounters only your watcher is allowed to pass a check, and sometimes anyone can volunteer to pass a check, and it's not always consistent or makes sense with the encounter. (And in rare cases, sometimes a specific arbitrary ally is picked to have to attempt a check, which is extremely annoying). So it sort of depends on what @fced means by "dialog" and "can't pass." If you can select the dialogue option (e.g. it is not red) then you by definition you have passed the check. But not always does selecting a dialogue option unlocked by a skill mean a good resolution, so it might still seem like you "failed" even though you were able to use the dialogue option. If however by "dialogue" you mean "scripted encounter" then it's possible that a character has 10+4 diplomacy, but a different character is being selected to actually pass the check and they're failing.

Luca should be back in the office during the day. (FYI, there is a day-night cycle and people's locations and schedules can change) They won't talk shop until its day time.

To be even more precise, even if you're not getting the water dragon's help, if you abandon your allies at Ukaizo, then you don't have to fight the boss because the boss will be too busy taking out your allies (at least this was true in all versions before 5.0, I haven't tried this specific ending route in 5.0 yet). If you were promised help from the water dragon, but abandon your allies, I don't think the water dragon has a chance to come in and save the day, if that's what you're saying happened.

imo using summoned weapons a druid/wizard is "viable" but not great, and is probably worse than either a pure spiritshift/summon druid build or a pure conjurer build. A druid/wizard can be pretty great, but not in the angle you're going for.

depending on your actions with the watershaper's guild and in the lead-up to landing on ukaizo you can have a boss fight, or a limited fight with just two engwithan titans.

i think there would be less complaints about the grimoire mechanic in deadfire if they actually managed to build in the "Compare grimoire" UI that you can clearly see hints of. Right now it's pretty tedious and requires massive metagame knowledge to take adantage of all the spell selection, and i suspect that's why the complaint about customization crops up.