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You've never used Seal of Repulsion + Seal of Paralysis now did you ? 'Cause that certainly stopped enemies in their tracks, and tactics never flew out the window... At the risk of derailing my own topic : what do players do during a fight ? I can't say for you, here's what I do : 1/ I pause the game 2/ I identify high value targets and order them by threat level : - spellcasters (mages, priests, druids, ciphers...) - burst DPS (rogues, frenzy barbs) - pesky annoyances (crowd controllers, rangers, pets) - actual frontline trying to distract me 3/ I arrange for my team to walk around the frontline, to take down the HVTs early ; wizards topping this priority list I find it only normal that the AI should try to do the same. Drop the wizard early, get home happy, goes a saying I just made up.

To go even further, this MMORPG called Ryzom (which ultimately failed because of competition) actually let players design their own spells. While in Tyranny you get some limited spell creation, in Ryzom you could ajust every single parameter of a spell : - area of effect - distance - duration - strength - effects - cost (mana ? health ? both ? cast time ?) Want a fireball imbued with paralysis ? Here you go, it's either 3x as long to cast though, or you pay double the mana, or it has a much shorter range... Want a heal which also hastes you ? OK, double mana. Want an AOE nuke which deals fire AND corrosive damage ? Here you go, consumes some of your HP though. Want to mana vampirize this pack of mobs ? But of course, here spend some HP and cast it at a reduced range to offset its cost. I for one have been waiting for years, for a new RPG to actually let me create my own spells however I want. While Tyranny was OK-ish in that regard, it's still far from enough. Dual casting wherein you can combine 2 spells to get their effects in a single cast, is porn for players.

How would you queue your actions ? Let's take the hypothetical example of POE1 : - Expose Weakness (wiz), followed by Fireball (wiz again) ? Surely if your Expose Weakness misses all targets, you won't be too happy with your fireball ? Queueing up actions assumes that they'll each be successful in turn, which is by no means a guarantee. Would still like a better queueing system here, but I just can't see it as the magic change you're envisioning

I thank you for the link. I'm afraid however this one thread concerns itself only with the disadvantages of such a system. Basically and without being judgemental, what I read is people griping about something prior to having seen it in effect. They're venting frustration without actually weighing the pros and cons of a new system. What I'd like to do, is for us to weigh the pros and cons, both individually (as I have done in the OP) and as a group (at which point someone is going to point out an obvious advantage nobody thought of). What I'd like to do, is for us to give Obsidian some credit. The guys are, IIRC, mostly veterans from Black Isle. We're talking about the people behind BG and BG2 here, we just cannot assume they're doing this on a whim. In fact, I'm fairly certain they've taken a lot of time to think about it. When proposing a change to something people are used to, you're always going to get roasted, just always. We can only assume Obsidian are very aware of that, so they'll have things to back their change against the massive backlash. I remain concerned about the change, but I can only hope OBS are planning accordingly for it. Different encounters and combat system, stuff like that, should offset the loss of a companion.

Hello guys, I stumbled across this article in which I read Obsidian wants POE2 to break from the tradition, and shrink the party to 5 instead of 6 characters total. Now, I'm not saying it is bad, I'm not judging, because the simple fact is that one can not judge before trying it out first. I would however, like for us to discuss this planned reduction in party size. How do we feel about it ? How is it going to impact our play style ? Do we think it will be detrimental, particularly at higher difficulty settings ? What's positive about this change ? How are other RPGs doing it ? For the purposes of this discussion and with regards to my point of view on this matter, I'll be talking about Hard difficulty. I for one, am worried with regards to available skills and abilities. On Hard difficulty (and excluding cheesy stuff like TCS / FCS runs), my party typically consists of : 1/ 1x main tank, usually a warrior or monk This character's role is to control the flow of battle with opponents, engage them, block doorways, pin down melee characters. He's not here to deal damage, he exists to soak it, so that my backline remains safe. 2/ 1x offtank, usually a chanter, paladin, monk or barbarian This character's role is to intercept and control any enemy that may have slipped past the main tank. He also handles additional monsters which have escape or teleport abilities and directly threaten the backline. The advantage of using a chanter or a paladin is that it also doubles up as : 3/ 1x buffer, usually a chanter, paladin, priest This character is here to provide the party with combat bonii, as well as some utility. Obviously a priest is a much stronger buffer than a chanter or paladin, but he gets limited use per rest. 4/ a melee DPS, usually a monk, barbarian, rogue or cipher This character is here to dispatch enemies in melee once they've been properly engaged by MT and OT. The reason I take a melee DPS over a ranged DPS is that, in my experience, they dish out more damage. Obviously the risk is higher for going in melee (AOE spells on the MT/OT can hit you, enemies can turn around and rush you), so it follows that the reward should be greater as well. If at all possible, I like this character to have some crowd control or debuff ability as well, so he can stand his own 1v1. 5/ a crowd control / debuff specialist, usually a wizard or cipher This character exists to debilitate enemies, lower their defenses and generally make the fight easier for my party. Blind, knockdown or paralyze effects, charms and dominations all work very well. In addition to lowering the enemy threat, this character also sets up any present rogue for sneak attacks. The question of wizard vs cipher actually depends on your play style. A wizard is a burst caster which can empty all his repertoire in the one fight, but find himself bereft of abilities for the next fight. A cipher is a more paced caster which actually builds up as the fight goes on. 6/ an AOE damage specialist, usually a wizard or druid, or even a barbarian or cipher This last character's role is to weaken the enemy as a group. The rationale behind this character is that the quicker I can dispatch enemies, the less time they have to deal damage. Less damage taken translates into a lower burden on my (limited !!) healing capabilities. It also allows me to kill 2 (or more) birds with one stone. When faced with 3 Nearly Dead enemies, a quick Fan of Flames can finish the lot off, instead of my picking them one by one with single target damage dealers. This character either uses direct damage abilities (fireball, fan of flames...) or powerful damage over time effects (hello druid ?). How do I feel about this party reduction ? Obviously I'm gonna have to let a character go. The question is, which one ? Whatever choice I make, I'll be unhappy about. Leave my rogue out ? But I did like these 120+ damage crits. Leave my offtank out ? This is going to make frontlining a super chore for my main tank. Leave my MT out ? Well, that means my OT because my MT, and again I'm short an offtank. Leave my buffer out ? He kinda was there for a reason in the first place, like, you know, buffing maybe... ? Leave my cc/debilitator out ? Again he's here for a reason, he's making enemies more susceptible to my ah... sermons. Leave my damage specialist out ? As for my melee specialist, I did like these big numbers... This is going to change my playstyle, I do not like it. How is it going to impact my playstyle ? I can only speculate here, because obviously the game is going to be tuned towards a 5 man party. Obviously however, I'm gonna have to eschew some utility or damage, and make use of less specialized characters. I may have to transform my wizard or cipher into a hybrid cc/damage dealer, or I may have to let go of my melee DPS entirely. Either way encounters will be changed. As is the default human behaviour with regards to changing an established and working item, I do not like the idea. Is it going to be detrimental ? I would think so, yes. Using less specialized characters means them having less power, less impact in their particular field of expertise. If I spec a wizard as a crowd controller, you can be assured he's gonna be sitting at low Might, but high Perception and Intelligence. If I have to drop my damage dealing caster and merge that with my debilitator, obviously I won't be able to dump Might too low. While this is hardly an issue on the lower difficulties, the impact starts showing in Hard, and POTD. Such a change will also mean more items are merely cash money. Remember all these items that you found, and you were like "fck me, if only I had a cipher" (or a barbarian, or a rogue, or whatever) ? With one less party member, expect to see even more of those. There is, in my opinion, not very many things more frustrating than selling an absolutely awesome item just because you can't use it. I therefore, do not like it. What positive effects can be expected ? In my opinion, this change would ease party management. You'd have fewer members to keep alive, which means more opportunity to focus on giving correct orders to your other party members. You'd also be able to min-max equipment more. Less people to equip means you can keep them all decked with best in slot items as you find them. Comparison with other games ? Know one of the common points between Shadowrun, DA:O, D:oS and Tyranny ? Yup you've got it, limited party roster of 4 members. However, and this is very very very key here. All of these games also have another trait in common : cooldown-based spells. Shadowrun and D:oS use turn-based cooldowns. DA:O and Tyranny use timer-based cooldowns. End of the day ? Your characters can use their abilities over and over again, provided they are still alive to do so. Cooldown-based systems encourage the player to be mindful of their decision to use this or that ability, without being exceedingly punishing. Usage-based systems however, actually discourage one from using abilities : I won't have it for the next fight ! I mean, even immersion-wise, how does this one sound ? NO MAN WAIT NO WAY, I CAN'T THROW SAND IN PEOPLE'S EYES ANYMORE. SAY WHAT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'RE ON A BEACH ? YEAH BUT I'VE ALREADY DONE IT TODAY, NO CAN DO MAN ! A higher party member count makes the game more forgiving to the player, because you get more abilities to use per rest cycle. A lower party threshold however, seems to me to accentuate your blunders even more. Not only do you not have this or that ability available anymore, but do you remember ? You're also expected to fill this or that role now. Ultimately this comes down to each of us' appreciation of the change. I for one am curious about it. On the one hand I trust Obsidian to deliver a balanced and fun game. On the other hand, we're talking about changing the way I play here. I play that way because I enjoy it. I dislike the idea that one would change something I actually like in the first place. How about you ? Are you excited, or fearful of that party downsizing ? How is it going to affect your game ? Share your feelings on the proposed change, and let us see what benefits it would bring. I'd like to thank you for reading thus far. I know it's a long post, but there was a lot to cover.

Yep so, just cast a buff (Going Between) from my cipher to my main tank, and I interrupted her. Cause you know, she was shocked to receive a buff. Screenie below. Edit: oh great, I'm not allowed to use this image extension. Fine, then, open it yourself : https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/867356068271512959/B68AAC5FF62E7D91ADEEA57C309BB73BDDC5587B/ And yeah, I realize I ducked up and named my chanter "Danifae Yauntyrr" when the Bae'queshel bard is actually Halisstra Melarn ; I'll correct that once my main char hits a new level. While we're at it, am I the only one to think it's irrevocably retarded that monsters queue up to get to your main tank, when : 1/ there's plenty of room for everyone 2/ there's a whole party in the backline waiting to get rekt Because the 3 spiders you see in the back, they're not getting into position. No no, they're static. They're waiting to engage my MT. Because they're nice like that, queueing up.

Not gonna happen!! I'm going to suck this game dry of every quest possible! Actually, if I might weight in here. You want to skip quests, on your first playthrough. Do you know why ? Added replay value with another main character \o/

Are you absolutely sure about that one ? Because 2-handed weapons show as Slow here, while Sabres show as Average. Thanks for the input on damage calculation, that's handy.

Son, that's exactly what I said on Paradox's forums to calm down the raging kids. I happen to work in the sector so yeah, I should know. The problem here is the dev has identified the root cause but has stopped communicating on the topic altogether. To give you some perspective, the bug causes tooltips to cease functioning entirely. No more mousing over the combat log to see rolls, over words to see their lore entry, over spell sigils to see their use and bonii, over items to decide whether to sell them or not, or over buffs and debuffs to see what they actually do. I don't mind overmuch here, I've played the game enough that I know my spells. I'm still impacted but to a lower extent. Now new players though, those who bought the game following the update, are getting massively impacted. The least the community manager could do is tell whether this is going to be hotfixed in the coming days, or included in a bundled patch 3 weeks from now. That this kind of bug made it through QA is hard enough to defend (again I should know, I got flamed for defending OBS), the absence of further communication is undefendable entirely.

What was revealed about @TyrannyGame is how to introduce gamebreaking bugs and still not fix them 10 days later

My stance on this is it would make most interactions entirely unavailable, and thus deprive those who wish for more challenging encounters from a good portion of the rest of the game. Wanted to convince someone to sell you this ? Yeah no, monsters are too virulent around here you need to convince me harder. Wanted to push that wall down ? Son, dem monsters be tuf you know, wall be tufer too... Definitely no.

From my understanding, your array contains X abilities and is therefore of size X. This, is an array with 2 entries : [ array ] [ entry 0 ] [ array ] [ entry 1 ] If you edit values inside these entries, you need not expand your array. If you want to add a new entry : [ array ] [ entry 2 ] Then you need to expand your array so the 3rd entry fits.

Any chance you'd share where the cooldown and type values are ? Cause I'm trying to do the exact same thing as a proof of concept

5 euros for a portrait pack, 7 for a DLC with minor extra content for the base game. Doesn't matter when you get the disease, the symptoms are still there. I've heard that "extra content" is really just stuff from the base game that's been unlocked or "finished", too. The expansion, Bastards Wound, is supposed to be all new but that DLC...not so much. As someone who has bought the DLC, I'm gonna write a steaming (haha, Steam-ing, get it ?) review very soon. The "additional content" consists of scripted random encounters while traveling, a few more NPC interactions, and... ? And I don't know, actually. Hell there's so LITTLE of it they've decided NOT to reveal what additional content there is. You know, to not spoil you...

Hey son, how you liking the disappearing tooltips bug so far ? 10 days and still no hotfix on this game breaking bug, yay... Sorry for going offtopic, had to get that one out.

Yeah, I'm not buying from a publisher who raises game prices before the Steam Sales. Look at the user reviews : http://store.steampowered.com/app/291650/Pillars_of_Eternity/ Is that how we want PoE to be perceived ? As a bad game, because of a greedy publisher ? PoE has 69% recent NEGATIVE reviews because of them. They got trashed so hard they've actually issued a statement, just yesterday, to roll it back : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pricing-change-rollback-information-thread-latest-news-here.1031635/

That's not necessarily true. It's just that their content creation tools may require the full open source of the game, the source of Unity and the Unity dev kit. Also they may not want to distribute their internal tools if it's what gives them their edge in rp content creation. Distributing content editors worked very well for the NWN and TES series so that is very very debatable. To each their own I guess.

That's my point entirely. In the BG series you could just load an item or spell/ability in NearInfinity and easily edit it, put it in your override/ folder and voila. Wanted to get shot of it ? Remove it from override. Yesterday I tried again to edit [1] Fearsome Strike to be 3/rest and ultimately failed. I would very much like to be able to mod for 5 hours and spend 65 ingame, rather than mod for 35 hours and spend 25 ingame I'm not trying to overhaul the game entirely here or change some hard coded behaviour. We were promised modding ability during the kickstarter campaign. What we got here is more akin to hacking the game's internals than actual modding support. Divinity Original Sin for example, has modding support. As in you can actually create mods, and toggle them via a useful ingame menu. What we "received" for PoE is nothing like "modding support". [1] https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86074-tutorial-editing-abilities-talents-and-items/

A couple points: - Using the no rest achievement is a complete and utter bull**** metric. It's on the outside of what the game system does anyways, and normally done as a special run. Furthermore, it's easiest to do with a solo / sneaky character and based off skills anyways. Skills are not class-based. Murderbot 9000 is not going to get that achievement, regardless of class. That's why it's an achievement, and not you know, the normal way you play the game. - Yes, Monks have to lose health, but the wound threshold is only 100 points of health; 80 if specced for it. Monks get more far more HP than the average class to make up for it; only Barbarians get more. A level 16 monk usually has 260 points of health higher than a fighter, and far more than other classes with lower health conversion. At that point you're talking about reaching full wounds for 3 fights without penalty. Far more if you build your monk with more Con. - If you want to ignore a highly recommended stat, the game shouldn't go out of its way to support your build. It should allow it to be viable, but yes, build choices have tradeoffs. - There are not one but two feats that allow regeneration of health, that's pumping 60% of health back in one rest. On your average monk that's something like 1000 extra points of health; or full wounds for 10 - 13 extra fights. - It's true that the difference is lower earlier on, however Monks maintain a substantial itemization edge through the game with the potential damage and deflection increase largely nullifying the health drawback. Given this evidence, I'd hardly say that health is the liability you assume. Yeah no I'm gonna have to dislike the "bullshat metric" bit o_O By engaging in the discussion you're bound by the forum rules to respect other users, including their opinion even if you don't like it. Calling it (and thus my argument) bullshat is anything but respectful, so would you please edit that and, I don't know, see if you can use a slightly more empathic word ? You do make cogent points however and I'd totally forgotten about Field Triage (although I dislike the idea of burning a talent on that), that one's my bad. I still dislike this system anyway, it forces me to rest for no other reason than having been able to survive fights, having spare spells left, but just no hp anymore. And the worst about that is, again, what actual value does it bring ? See the thing is, camping supplies are plentiful, or you can just return to Caed Nua and deal with 4 loading screens. Is the provided value immersion and realism ? It doesn't work for me to be honest. I understand how it has appeal for some players who think "Look you just can't be hurt/healed 24/7 and keep going for 8 days". However, I on the other hand, really like the proposed system and traps actually inflicting wounds. That, would provide more immersion to me than the HP pool depletion. Step on a spike ? ouchie Get crit to the head and lose 2/3 your life ? son that's got to be leaving a dent eh ? Last, back to the topic of CON offering not much value : All the other stats, every single one of them, has actual use in combat. CON's value only kicks in IF you get yourself hit and IF you get bursted down (I'm not factoring in the hp/endurance split here because again, you can rest whenever you want basically). With proper positioning, use of consumables and/or spells, that is not going to be a problem very often. There is a reason CON has become a dump stat in 3.0. Obviously I'm not gonna try and force anyone to agree with my own, biased opinion. If we're gonna discuss the merits of the proposed system however, then this is my stance on it

This, most definitely. Single reason I stopped playing a Monk. No matter how good you are, how well you gear, how min-maxed you built, your Monk is going to need Rest for no other reason than him existing. This is needlessly punishing towards a class that's meant to be played that way. One has to ask themselves, what's the actual value of endurance/hp split pools, what core mechanic does it provide ? It prevents people from cheesing fights with constant tanking and healing ? So what if they wanted to play that way ? This is a single player game. It forces people to Rest from time to time for realism ? So what if they don't care about it ? It punishes them for playing a 10 CON monk ? Well maybe they are confident in their ability to keep him alive even with 10 CON. If the main incentive is to give the CON stat some measure of value, then the problem lies with the CON stat itself and not the need for split endurance/hp pools. As per my suggestion on the POE1 forums, CON should give +DR so people are discouraged from dumping it. Aside from that, I see no practical use to the split hp/endurance pool mechanic, and I for one would like for it to go away. It ruins Monks. I get where you coming from and it does suck for monks in the early game, but the early game is by far the most challenging part anyways. You perfectly describe the advantages already: It prevents cheesing and forces you to rethink your tactics depending on your health. It adds a long term strategic layer. Yeah it is a single player game, but like it has been discussed in countless balance threads, many people don't like cheese. It either makes the game way to easy or the cheese the only possible way to play. The health split surely wasn't executed perfectly, but I think many issues like it's unforgiveness (specially for monks) could be iterated on and I for one am pretty sad that they seem to abandon it. One would argue that people who do not like cheese are free to not cheese, in that case It's like the old debate years ago for devs to implement a respec character option. Some people somehow managed to say that while it would be an OPTION, its mere presence would offend them and diminish their experience... 'kay... I appreciate that you liked the mechanic, I for one shan't be too sad to be honest, Monks happened to be amongst my favourite classes. For example, it's practically impossible to get the achievement to rest < 10 times, with a monk. You just have to, you're going into fights with 33/105 endurance because you're down to 33 hp. You're actually getting punished for not resting, even though the core mechanics of your class require you to lose endurance (and thus, HP). You could always make a CON, RESOLVE, shield wielding monk but then what's the point in playing one ? I would definitely be okay with the mechanic if we had some way of regenerating it in combat. Want to last longer in fights ? 'kay, but you need to sacrifice DPS for that. That's a deal I would take. I don't get to Bless my party another 30 seconds, but instead I get to regenerate HP, works for me.

This, most definitely. Single reason I stopped playing a Monk. No matter how good you are, how well you gear, how min-maxed you built, your Monk is going to need Rest for no other reason than him existing. This is needlessly punishing towards a class that's meant to be played that way. One has to ask themselves, what's the actual value of endurance/hp split pools, what core mechanic does it provide ? It prevents people from cheesing fights with constant tanking and healing ? So what if they wanted to play that way ? This is a single player game. It forces people to Rest from time to time for realism ? So what if they don't care about it ? It punishes them for playing a 10 CON monk ? Well maybe they are confident in their ability to keep him alive even with 10 CON. If the main incentive is to give the CON stat some measure of value, then the problem lies with the CON stat itself and not the need for split endurance/hp pools. As per my suggestion on the POE1 forums, CON should give +DR so people are discouraged from dumping it. Aside from that, I see no practical use to the split hp/endurance pool mechanic, and I for one would like for it to go away. It ruins Monks.

Hey everyone, I don't know about you guys, but I for one think there were very little mods actually available for PoE. Aside from IEMod, which was a fine mod and is still maintained to this day, there were basically 2-3 gameplay mods, the rest were portraits. If you compare this to Baldur's Gate 2 which featured complete overhauls, new quests and companions, rebalanced stats and classes, new spells... we're talking about an absolutely massive difference here. Now, why would that be ? Would it perhaps show a lack of interest from modders ? I would have loved to mod a thing or two in PoE. I would have loved to be able to buff or nerf this or that ability to my liking, like I could in the BG series with NearInfinity. The truth is, PoE is hard to mod, at least to the less programming educated of us. I tried my hand at PoE modding back in 2015, I wanted to make the rogue's Fearsome Strike 3/rest instead of 1/rest. Now questions of balance aside, that would seem to be a very easy and straightforward affair right ? Wrong. I went over and downloaded the Unity editor, and I pored over the game files to find the ability I wanted to mod. Found it, made my edits, saved it. No changes ingame. Tinkered a bit, fiddled here and there, still no luck. Gave up pure and simple. Then, comes along IEMod and a lot of nifty features, including normal speed sneaking, yay I've gotta get me some of that. Thing is, even with IEMod's source code available over at github, one actually needs to compile it if they want to customize it a bit. Might we hope for easier, user-friendly modding in POE2 ? The game's potential can only increase with easier modding and more accessibility. People will create new quests, new maps, additional companions and spells and abilities. This ability to tinker with the game is part of what made the BG series the great success it remains even today. Devs, make it easier for us to mod the game, s'il vous please.

Your stats do seem a little bit unoptimised from where I stand, but then it all depends on what you want to do. Now, on to why I think so : 1/ MIG > INT You have more might than intelligence. Some cipher powers are raw debuffs without any damage component (blind, charm, phantom foes, paralyze...) so you're losing out on duration AND not getting any value from your higher might. I would recommend 16 MIG and (at the least) 18 INT. 2/ 10 DEX While MIG helps you deal more damage so you can generate more focus, DEX helps you deal that damage (and cast spells) faster. I would dump 3 CON and 3 RES in favour of 15DEX/15PER , 14DEX/16 PER, or 16DEX/14PER. Either way, dump some of that CON and RES into DEX and/or PER You don't want to dump MIG entirely as it helps you overcome enemies' DRs.

Be warned that a melee rogue requires A LOT of micro-management to remain alive and effective. However, a crit-focused hearth orlan rogue with Tall Spike is a force on the battlefield. Early on, you could get him the stiletto from the smith in Gilded Vale which inflicts Jolting Touch 1/fight on crit , very good damage spike. That one would last you a long time. I would advise against replacing your mage though. While a rogue would undeniably be effective, you'd be running almost only melee, which could present its own problems with regards to engagement.

Heya, Since a lot of people have already covered most of your cipher related questions, I'm gonna take the "other class for main dedicated tank would be superb". If I understand that one correctly, you're looking to play a Cipher, have a dedicated fighter tank, and have another character do the offtanking correct ? If so, I would suggest either a tanky chanter (bitches be so strong) or a monk (which you're going to need to micromanage a bit). For both classes, Amaua (prone/stun resist), Moon Godlike (healing waves) and Fire Godlike (DR + aoe damage) are good choices.