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Erm, like, for example, via magic items say ? *cough* *cough* Haha exactly... that ability alone made that armour probably the best in the game. However to have it be part of another classes ability tree would cheapen it imo The problem is, you just cannot give that specialized class too lousy an ability, or people just won't pick it (outside of RP). It has to either : - be (moderately) powerful, so that you can use it in a bind to try and recover from a bad situation - be distinctive, so that your character/class feels and plays a bit differently - or unlock some kind of unique/interesting interaction with another class or ability, some synergy Bad examples include : - all melee attacks now deal +5% fire damage on primordials wearing halloween hats, if made between 2 AM and 7 AM ^--- yeah so... yeah ok... any other garbage you wanted to throw in our faces ?

Yeah... corrected. No hard feelings, you know I had to

Making enemies more likely to engage refers back to my un-elegant solution above where they prefer your tanks. The drawbacks I can think of on the fly of such an approach are : - it only applies to the IA (I mean, really, a human's never gonna let himself get tied up by a 3 damage per second tank, while a cipher's nuking them at 30+ DPS) - either terrible if the probability isn't high enough or - too strong and taking away the challenge of the fight in the first place which means it'll have to be fine-tuned, thus becoming - unreliable, chancy (very much) More punishing disengagement attacks mean you actually have to take a gamble, do you risk losing 1/2 your health pool, and perhaps even worse suffering a Hobbled condition, or do you properly approach the situation ? If caught in a bind, you can take the chance, but if not, you know you'll have to deal with the engagement correctly to avoid possibly game ending damage. And by "game ending damage" I do not mean HP loss, it could be your character gets knocked down (hello bloodbowl fans !), or they get hobbled, or weakened. Either way, there would be an actual penalty for disengaging, as opposed to a lousy Graze for 10 damage.

The wording is confusing IMHO, it is unclear whether what was said was "casters are going to be able to get more than 2 more spell casts per encounter per level", or "casters are going to be able to pick more spells". Would you be able to clarify ?

Erm, like, for example, via magic items say ? *cough* *cough*

As in, threat management to dedicated frontliners, but no engagement system ? In that situation the problem remains that, if your battlefield flow control ability fails, your MT is standing there like a retard. A simple and very un-elegant solution would be for enemies to "prefer" attacking your tanks, but that nukes realism, the challenge of the fight and, let's face it, reasonable judgement. A good solution might be to make disengagement attacks (very much) more punishing, so that when the AI (or you !) take the decision to disengage, you actually think twice. This would push players and enemies (as in, it'd have a heavier weight in the decision algorithm) to : - try harder to get an engagement on priority targets - try harder to break engagement in a safe manner (remove the engagement altogether with CC, use evasive abilities) - or lower the threat of the disengagement attack (lower the hit rate with debuffs, cast defensive abilities and spells on the engaged character...) That, in my opinion, would make engagement meaningful again and allow for smoother battle flow control, and more tactical decision making both on the part of the AI and of the players. Edit: A parallel may be drawn to XCOM's (or shadowrun's) Overwatch system, whereby if you cross an enemy's line of fire (and they're in Overwatch mode), they get to attack you. There, you think twice about moving your sniper (the fck is it doing in the range of an overwatch attack to begin with ???) or medic.

The thing is, there are dialogue and immersion constraints on that one. I mean, Eder tells you about his life and fighting alongside his friend Masha who died when she was 17 but he still had time to bang her so it's cool, and he was there standing shield by shield next to her blablabla and it was heroic blablabla ... ... and you've made him a mage ... shield mage, yep, right in the realism -.- I for one would love for companions to be entirely tunable, like has been done in Divinity Original Sin 2. I'll still take a restricted selection over nothing, though

On the left as you leave the starting village my friend. It might be that you only spot him if your Survival is high enough during the scripted interaction ("examine your surroundings"), I wouldn't know, I never failed the check with the premade fighter bloke

That would be sweet aye, and totally in line with roleplay I also definitely agree it's too early to judge, a point I've made in a couple threads already, things are going to change very much before release, that is a given. It is, however, not too early to debate

My apologies if it sounded like an attack. It was meant to be a suggestion that we focus more on how/if engagement needs improvement, and he seemed to me to be talking about that engagement needs to be fighter only to make up for general talents, which seemed unrelated. I ask again, and clarify that I'm talking about balancing engagement for fighters only vs general weapon talents for fighters only, how does that make the discussion on engagement being underpowered better? From a roleplaying and realism (haha, in a game, realism, I kill myself I do) point of view, it does make sense that only some people very proficient at melee may be able to tie up an enemy sufficiently that, should they try to run, one would get the opportunity of trying to score an attack. You're used to melee combat, you're used to going close quarters, you can recognize your opponent's going to try to bolt, so you prepare to hit them (for free mind, remember that disengagement attacks are free, as in, no recovery) when it happens. Obviously a counterpoint could be made that those less skilled in melee are less likely to land the attack in the first place, so they should still be able to engage. I'm afraid I do not consider the change to engagement important enough to put much thought behind which version I like most, POE1 or POE2. In the current state of the game however, it is clear that there isn't enough ability for frontliners to tie up opponents and keep them away from the backline by themselves, which is one of their main roles to begin with (the second one being soaking up the hits).

Keep in mind that weapons shall be enchant able, while fists will not. A weapon user can get proficiency + a modal, and enchant it. A monk can not get proficient (hello ability to graze if you dualclass to fighter ?), does not get a modal, cannot enchant their fists. It's actually quite the trade-off really, even more so when the game features an entire class based around the concept of using their fists. With fists, you're kissing that +25% Lash damage goodbye, you're not getting bonus accuracy for higher crit rate, you're not getting extra damage from Superb. One may argue that you "do" as a passive for being a Monk, sure, you "do". You also do skip on getting another passive though, like Constant Recovery, or auras, or whatever else. You actually pay for the passive bonii to unarmed attacks by being a monk.

Cute. So how exactly does this improve the discussion on engagement being underpowered or not? Not very much more than your previous, uncalled for, personal attack on him, possibly ?

Counter-view, it should. It is only natural that people be punished for leaving their very fragile, very classy, very pompous wizard unprotected. You get a glass canon (altho in the current state of the game, we may debate the canon part), you protect it. Your reward for getting past the enemy frontline is dropping their wizard and priest ASAP so they can't have too great an influence on the battle via support, debuff and damage spells. It follows that the enemy should have the same goal and work towards it.

As I illustrated before, that's already an issue. Although I prefer engagement over taunts in this regard. That's what healers and potions are for. Still, agreed that it shouldn't be all or nothing. In Dragon Age, this was made into one ability for all, and one for individual. Agreed, don't care for this. Although I would like to have options to deal with the latter situation. Regarding point 2, I just cannot agree with your approach. Proper battlefield control replaced by healing potions just isn't a viable solution. "In this brand new game, forget the idea of having a tank, outfit your wizards in the heaviest armor possible, he gets platemail+3 (and potions)" won't sell a game, at least for me. Regarding point 4, you do have a solution to deal with the latter situation. If an enemy manages to close on your backline and Engage them, tying them up in place, well you have cc spells, you have debuffs to lower the accuracy of the disengagement attack, you have engagement breaking abilities...

Could explain why I always found these broodmother followed by the barbarian/monk laguafeth encounters difficult Titan's a walk in the park after that though, party's already hit L7 ^^

Okay as I thought, thanks The order in which I run actually goes : - Skulking-Terror - Spore lady for the grimoire - chief Echo whatever - broodmother - ruins

Yeah so guys, I'm confused here. When you finish the whatever ruins guarded by the titan, beta's over right, there's no other areas to explore ? Just wanna make sure I don't stop halfway through like a tool

Problems every game has with timed taunting include : - your taunt fails, you're fcked up (as in, your MT is standing there like a retard, and your backline's running away like headless chicken, for their lives) - you get ALL the aggro at the same time, and thus possibly a damage spike - also affects casters and ranged characters (which are then not free to select your backline as their target, for no reason other than your tank making a face at them) - your own backline can't be properly tied up if the enemy should chance to get close to them, just run away, wee First bitch you take down as a human, intelligent player in a fight ? Their wizard. Mage > priest > high threat melee > archer > tank High threat melee is a subjective term, as far as I'm concerned, an enraged barb rushing for my backline is high on the threat list. Edit: same as a rogue or a monk , can't let those go toe to toe with my squishies

From Josh's twitter, Walk toggle ! https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/933123351370805248

I asked if there was an unarmed modal in their live stream beta announcement and the answer I got was that monks bare fists are already OP so they don't have any plans to add one. I can't blame them because in my last playthrough as a monk I was one shotting mobs on PotD by the end of the game. That said, if you want to punch dragons to death (as is my preference ) you have to play as a monk. Ok I'm confused, perhaps the character sheet is just fcked up. Monk fists list 8-13 damage. Sabers list 21-33 damage. Long story short, I ended up playing my monk with sabers -.- Gonna have to double check that I guess... Edit: just to be on the same page here, when you talk about your last playthrough on POTD, you talkin' about DF or POE1 ?

+10 penetration on disengagement attacks, or +10 accuracy ? 'cause +10 pen seems broken as fck really given the current, tiny amounts by which we can increase pen right now.

Now now, while I understand your concerns and have those same fears here, it is much too soon to start worrying and speculating about this, to be honest

That character was indeed a Soulblade. Soulblade/Fury to be precise. But are you sure about that thing? I have re-checked Soulblade subclass description and it's not mentioned anywhere. Plus I've made a pure cipher, and he gets the same bonuses. Something's wrong here tbh. Not to mention that soulblade's starting focus seems to jiggle by +/-5; and that a x/cipher can learn both Bitting and Draining Whips (image1, image2), while other ciphers can select only one. But that's for a separate bug report. Will fill it later, once I test more. Yeah no my bad, double checked, soulblades get the regular +20% / +40% for soul whip / biting whip , I was sure they dealt more whip damage.

To clarify, how are you using Shadowing Beyond in this specific instance ? Ranged attacks could only backstab when they were made within a 2 (or 3 ?) meters distance in POE1. It may be safe to assume the mechanic is still in place in POE2.

Aye sorry for the dupe, you may safely remove the thread if needed ^^'