Matt516

This is definitely a bug, or at best an oversight. There's no reason they'd do this on purpose - probably just some story progression flag that got set wrong or didn't get referenced.

So I've been playing with a Barbarian PC on Hard. 16 MIG/INT, 18 RES, and 8 PER. Having a blast. Currently am lvl 4 (almost 5), with Barbaric Yell and Frenzy for abilities, Accurate Carnage and 2H Weapon Fighting for talents. I wear medium armor (padded or hide or Aloth's leather or Eder's scale, undecided as to a permanent set so far) and wield Justice (2H greatsword) with a Fine Quarterstaff for range and/or crushing. Modus operandi is to run to the middle of a fight, Yell (generally catching all enemies), then Frenzy and go to town. My questions: 1) Have I fallen prey to any "trap" picks? The character was designed as a blend of tanky and dps, with resolve dialogue options for RP and enough deflection/interrupt resistance to deal with the slow attack speed of 2H weapons. 2) Are there any "trap" picks coming up that I should be aware of? Really enjoying this character and not keen on restarting or cheating to "fix" my build later on. 3) Thoughts on Barbaric Yell? I'm of mixed opinions about it. It's a really nice debuff, but it makes it take a long time to actually get into combat due to the recovery time. And it looks like it might almost be redundant with the (minor spoiler) AoE frighten the PC gets and all the ways to apply frighten with other characters. Not to mention the Barbaric Shout acquired later. I dunno. If there's any build choices I'm really not sure about, it's Barbaric Yell. Am I undervaluing it?

To be fair, it's not the game's fault that the wiki is crap. ;P

Thisssssss issssss a problem. I don't ussssssse Grieving Mother for precsssssissssssely thisssss reassssson. Seriously, though. There's got to be some post processing you can do to fix this issue. The game is so polished in so many ways, but the female VO work sounds amateurish because of this.

Bah. That just makes Estoc even better for cleaving and Greatsword even worse. Obsidian y u do dis. At least give Greatsword wielders a 2H option for crushing damage with the weapon focus. :/

For ****'s sake.

Balanced does not mean homogeneous. You can have different weapons all of which have different areas of specialty, which are still balanced against each other. When each weapon is useful and best in different circumstances, and no one weapon dominates all the others, that's balance. When one weapon is the best weapon under 90% of situations, that's not balanced. Exactly. It's not about them all being the same - it's about there not being an obvious winner. Estoc is the obvious winner. Greatsword is terrible in comparison. Which makes Matt sad, because a Barbarian using Carnage with an Estoc just looks and feels wrong.

Yeah - my original post wasn't so much directed at the Poleaxe/Estoc pairing (since they are complements) but the Greatsword/Estoc pairing. Greatswords seem like they kinda get shafted, not having any 2H crush damage on the weapon focus and hardly ever being better than the Estoc. I like Greatswords... :/

Aww, I liked tanky Durance. Sad day. These really aren't retroactive though? That's silly. Can probably retroactively fix them with some mods though if Obsidian insists on keeping it non-retroactive.

Exactly. There's always going to be an optimum, but what PoE allows is for a great range of non-optimal choices to be perfectly viable as long as you play them right. This is a huge step up from the IE games.

That's... not a thing. The same set of armor will give the same DR to the wearer, no matter who is wearing it. Mind if I ask which armor, what the DR was, and which characters? Might be you found a bug.

I'd have to disagree a bit on the stats and armor fronts. While I'd agree that there are some theoretical issues with the stats, in practice I really do feel like I can make any build work as long as I play it right. My main is a 16 MIG, 16 INT, 18 RES controller/AoE damager Barbarian, and she's wrecking shop on Hard. 8 PER, if you were wondering where the extra 2 points came from. Of course there will be *optimal* builds for DPS - the realities of math dictate that. But you are no longer just *stupid* for not following the optimal stat distribution for each class. Everyone gains something and loses something from every stat, so you pay for dumping stats. Could the stat system be better? Always. Is it better than in the IE games? Abso-fricken-lutely. And did Josh accomplish his design goals? I think so, more or less. Yes, some stats are optimal for some builds... That's the *definition* of a build, for goodness' sakes! But there's definitely a lot more freedom, and I'm loving that. As for armor.. My experience has been that it's a playstyle thing. Obviously you want your "tank" to wear heavy armor. That's just... Yeah. But other classes have some leeway. Naked is optimal for action economy, obviously - but there are enough encounters in the game where you can't fully control all the enemies that you might want *some* protection on your backliners. Aloth wears his leathers, and he's still the most downed member of my party. Durance switches between clothes and robes as the situation dictates. And Barbarians and Monks (I have one of each) are best in the light/medium armors - padded, hides, *maybe* leather or scale if it's a tough fight. In general, I've found that it's really a spectrum. The armor system lets you trade durability for action economy with a nice degree of granularity to find what works best for you. Some people prefer an all-or-nothing approach. Fair enough - but if anything gets past the frontline you're gonna have a bad time. I like to find the balance that works for me. Again - could it be better? Always. Is it good? Yup. I'd even call the armor system better than in the IE games as well.

Slicken isn't being nerfed to one target, it's being nerfed to a single shot (as in, doesn't create a persistent AoE). Also, Mind Blades is OP right now. There's no denying that. Thirdly, re: solo games - they are buffing solo characters by doubling the XP bonus they'll get. Beyond that, you should keep in mind that the game IS designed primarily around a full party. Solo mode is an edge case with very high difficulty - you may want to tone the difficulty level down to solo the game (and there's nothing wrong with that). Finally, you might want to modulate your tone. There may be good feedback about the difficulty and encounter design hidden in that post, but it's hard to find underneath the surface, which just comes across as whining.

Fair enough. And after playing a bit more, I've found a few more enemies who are heavily resistant to piercing (as well as a few more who have less than 5 DR), so it's probably not that big a deal. I may have overstated the imbalance - as I said above, theoretical concerns about the mechanics aside, the game feels fantastic to play and I haven't felt like I'm being punished for using basically whatever weapons I feel like using. I'm playing on Hard, not PotD - but I'm liking the difficulty (at least this time around). In the Eothas temple (only long dungeon I've done), I had a few fights necessitating a reload due to party wipe - but when I came back the second (or third) time with better tactics, I was able to pull it through (and without ever having to leave to use the inn ). Game feels good. Plays great. Much fun.

Eh... I wouldn't say that. Integer damage reduction may be hard to balance, but integer damage reduction with percentile damage reduction is even harder. If they really wanted to go with integer reduction, removing the percentile reduction was probably a good call. It's simpler as well. Granted, the fast weapons conundrum is still an issue - but in my experience, most enemies that aren't specifically super resistant to some damage type have DR that is below what even a fast weapon does on a hit - so it's not a huge deal. It could certainly be balanced better, and I'm sure they're working on it. But just from playing the game, I've found most of my initial concerns from the Beta about the armor system to be relatively moot. Theoretical concerns aside, the game feels very good to play, and I'm using a variety of different fighting styles to considerable success on Hard.

So are all the firearms. I'm sure they just brought down to be in line with the other slow but hard-hitting weapons. Yeah - the Arbalest is superior to the Arquebus in almost every way. That makes no sense. I'm glad it's being nerfed a bit.

I didn't even know you weren't supposed to rest after every few battles in BG1/2 until i visited this forum. I mean, it seemed logical. Why would my Wizard/Sorc auto-attack? He's not a ranger. Can you show me where this was considered cheating/exploiting? Or is it just your opinion? It's not cheating, it's just silly. The idea that a group of adventurers would camp for 8 hours every 2 hours or so is silly. I don't blame anyone for doing that - the way that game handled casters and didn't penalize rest-spamming, it was indeed the "right" way to play (as in optimal). And I hate that. As I said - it doesn't make any sense that a group of adventurers would rest constantly, and I hate that the game was designed in such a way as to encourage that. So along comes PoE, and simultaneously gives wizards a little more to do outside of spellslinging while discouraging rest-spamming by making you trot all the way back to an inn if you want to do so. It's great. I've been playing on Hard, and I just cleared the Eothas temple with 5 people (pre-Caed-Nua companions, no adventurer) at level 3. It certainly wasn't easy, but I was able to do the whole dungeon without having to leave (even though the inn was right outside). Made it just fine with the 2 wood I brought and the 1 I found in the dungeon. As I said - your perceived need to rest is directly dependent on how you do in battles. If you play a bit more tactically and conserve spells, you can do without rest-spamming. The game is quite well balanced on Hard.

Action queue would be nice, yes. You don't have to tell your ranged attackers to attack every time though - the auto-attack works perfectly well.

I can assure you that you don't have to do that! I'm playing a wizard PC on Hard mode (max = 2 campfires, well short of 8000). I don't rest every time I've been in combat. I still manage to cast spells in most fights - the bigger the fight, the more I cast. If you're casting everything you have in every single fight, that's not how it's meant to be played. In PnP, most DMs won't even allow you to rest spam. In spite of playing the opposite of how you say I "have to", my wizard is the top damage dealer in the party by a wide margin, and that's on top of the AOE CC and debuffs he dishes out. It just takes a different style of play that rewards medium term thinking over short term thinking. ^ yup.

I think I've heard fairly authoritatively that it is affected by INT. I'm really curious about the damage, because as of right now I have literally no idea how that works. Last I heard it was 1-6 slashing damage, which isn't what it is any more (because that was terrible). And now they're apparently buffing it again - which is great! Long live the Barbarian! But I'd like to know how much they buffed it by.

The problem with this is that most enemies are going to have at least 5 DR, thereby benefiting fully from the Estoc's ability. You get no more benefit from using the Estoc against someone in Plate than you do from using it against someone in Leather. Which is silly. I'd prefer it if it was more along the lines of "penetrates 50% of DR or 5 DR, whichever is less". That way it's actually an anti-armor weapon and not an anti-everything-that-isn't-naked weapon.

I disagree. I think they did quite a good job. Not every single conceivable stat distribution is viable, and some are a bit more optimal than others (always gonna be true), but in general they've opened up a good deal of build flexibility. You can do what you want, as long as you adjust your playstyle accordingly with whatever your build is. Could they have done it better? Always. Did they do it? I think so. Especially compared to the D&D 2e ruleset the inspiration games were based on.

did u miss the part i said im soloing hard? also i said im fine with the difficulty in battle, of cus im not fine with the difficulty on the camping limits. thats the whole purpose of this post, i dont know why you feel with need to pointing that out to me. Because the difficulty in battle is directly related to the difficulty on camping limits. If you play battles better by losing less health/spells/etc, you don't need to camp as much. They're, like, directly related, dude. You can't complain about having to camp too much but say you don't think battles are difficult. That's.. logically inconsistent. But you're trying to solo the game, which is something I missed. That's cool! But it's also an extreme edge case. It's kind of silly to ask the game to be balanced around an extremely specific extremely challenging playstyle. There's a reason soloing the game is considered a serious achievement. More than 2 camping supplies would be too many for a full party on Hard. Should the devs be balancing Hard around people soloing the game or people playing with a party? Can't do both.

Endurance regen is really sneaky - you don't notice it being OP persay, but it's really powerful all the same.

My experience with Aloth has been completely the opposite. 2 free magic missiles every trash fight with incredible spells to whip out in the hard fights. Wonderful balance. You aren't supposed to fire spells off constantly - nor are you supposed to just save them and never use them. Playing a Wizard correctly is all about rationing properly - it's a resource management game. If you don't like it, there's always Ciphers or Chanters for unlimited casting. So it's by design that you have to spam auto-attack for most battles? I like IE game implementation better, casting spells is fun. What are you talking about? The IE game implementation was the exact same, except with no free magic missiles every encounter and no conversion of low level spells to per/encounter when you get to high levels. If you hate vancian casting, the IE games have literally nothing over PoE in implementation. Unless you rested after every combat to get spells back. Which was silly and I'm glad PoE removed it.