Matt516

"Carnage now works better." As a Barbarian main, I'm quite curious. What does this mean? More damage, more AoE, no base Accuracy penalty? Will we finally get to see the stats for Carnage attacks in the ability description?

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.

It's ok for a weapon to be good, but the different weapons in the same tier (fast, average, 2-handed) are all ostensibly balanced against one another. It's a bit odd to have one be such an outlier, especially with the emphasis in the game on making various builds viable. That said, I'm happy to hear that they are fairly rare and that greatswords are more numerous - gives me hope that my 2-handed sword barbarian will have a fun time. Now I just need to figure out how/if Carnage scales with weapon damage..

So if the Morning Star doesn't have 2 damage types... what is it's "thing", now? I don't see any special quirk for the weapon that sets it apart (2 damage types, DR bypass, etc). Am I missing something?

Estoc seems like quite a strange choice for Adventurer - I'd think it'd fit in with "Noble" much better. That's neither a super sturdy nor easy to use weapon. Sorry all for the triple post. I should've read the whole thing before starting to reply.

Guh. 3 DR reduction? That's crazy... I just made a post about the Estoc having 5.. I didn't realize the hyper-fast version had 3. These DR penetrating weapons are a little silly, IMO. You've already taken care of the "vulnerable to different types of weapons" thing with the DR types system - which is awesome, by the way. But the DR piercing weapons just seem so... good compared to the other options. Maybe only slightly better in some cases.. but definitely better.

See, I'm actually quite happy they didn't do this. Having to specialize in one damage type when the combat so heavily incentivizes picking your damage types carefully for each encounter is rather silly.

I see in the patch notes that they're "making Carnage work better". I wonder what that means....

So. I see that there are a few balance changes going into the latest patch. Awesome. I'm a bit confused by the absence of the Estoc, though. It's the best 2H melee weapon in the game as far as damage goes - the only edge case in which it's not better is the case in which Piercing DR is more than 5 higher than Slashing (for the greatsword) or Slashing/Crushing (for the poleaxe). Or if the enemy has less than 5 DR, which, let's face it, is hardly ever going to happen. Am I the only one surprised that this weapon got left off the balance list? Am I greatly overvaluing it? I should note that the game is fantastic and this is really a nitpick. Not a huge deal - I just noticed that they were still making balance changes so I thought I'd ask if anyone else thinks our favorite piercing dynamo of a weapon is an obvious choice for a wee bit of nerfing. Maybe just tonight the DR reduction down to 4 or something. As is, I feel like an idiot if I give my 2H wielders anything but an Estoc.

And yes, Bash seems to convert the shield into a weapon - though whether its fast, average, or slow I'm not sure. My comment about the tooltip was that its possible Bash gives an extra 3 accuracy to the shield for some reason, but I have no way of knowing if that's the case so for now I'm assuming its a bug.

Nope. The shield has a -8 accuracy penalty, and the difference between the two is 3 (hatchet has 28, shield has 31). Eder is lvl 3 and a fighter, so he has 30 base accuracy +6 from 2 levels -8 from the shield = 28 accuracy. The shield is indeed being affected by its own accuracy penalty - it's just getting 3 accuracy from somewhere else.

Nice catch.

Bump. Anyone else experiencing this, or is it just me?

Yes. Though in the inventory, Kana's 3rd slot occasionally has the locked symbol on it (behind the weapon). Doesn't affect functionality, but is another visual bug related to that 3rd weapon slot so worth mentioning.

Doing some walking around in Gilded Vale (don't worry, no save/reloading unless I'm inside ) when I decided to toggle Eder's Defender mode on and off, y'know, like you do... and there was no fun shieldy FX or shield shattery FX. Made me sad. I'll try and watch to see if I can notice any other specific triggers for this bug, or if it persists. I'm not sure exactly when it started - could be an area-dependent thing. Will update if I find anything else out.

If your characters are in stealth mode and you switch weapons with someone who's wielding a shield in the switched-to weapon slot, the shield isn't transparent. Obviously not a big deal - but I figured I'd report it anyway. Still in that "Beta" mindset I guess. Is this the right subforum for bug reports? NCarver, you still around?

When I select any of my other characters, the 3rd weapon slot appears with whatever Kana has equipped in that slot. If I click on the slot, Kana changes to it (even if I had a different character selected). Not a big deal as it doesn't actually help or hurt me in any way - but it is a strange display/UI bug, and I'm not sure what would happen if I had another Amuaua with a 3rd weapon slot in the party.

So I got the "Larder door" shield (won't say more so as to not spoil people), and I've equipped it on Eder. He's lvl 3, and is wielding a hatchet in the other hand. At the moment, he has 28 accuracy with the hatchet, and 31 accuracy with the shield. No, it's not the stat stacking bug - I don't have any talents or items that grant accuracy! And I haven't loaded the game once in Gilded Vale anyway. Anyone experienced this with this shield? I reloaded the save right after I acquired it, and I still had the same accuracy numbers (28, 31). Where is that extra 3 accuracy coming from? It doesn't help that there's not a tooltip for the "Bash" enchant.

Is it really +100% damage, though? That seems awfully excessive, and Sensuki's testing from earlier in the Beta suggested it adds +20% damage instead.

Nice work! Very observant. I'm sure they'll get this fixed soonish - at least it's a minor thing though (not like the 2 big stat bugs at the moment).

Is this finally the final version of the tables? If so, I'll see about updating that old spreadsheet I made that calculated your effective DPS in pretty much any situation. Let the powergamers rejoice.

There are super niche options? You don't know how happy this makes me. I've been hiding all the conversation options I don't qualify for, the qualifiers for the ones I do have, and the dispositions the options affect. I like it better that way, helps me RP. I'm super pumped that there are apparently a ton of niche options. That's amazing. Kudos to Obsidian. :D If it bothers you to see all the ones you don't qualify for, make it so it doesn't display them. It's a checkbox in the "Game" sections of the options menu. You'll have a lot more fun that way. EDIT: So I guess what I'm saying is.... I have no idea why you're complaining about this. There is literally no downside to more interesting and niche dialogue options. None whatsoever.

It's not a bug. You are getting the bonuses correctly, it's just applied in a confusing order. Yes, they should've put culture before stat point assignment to avoid the issue where you have to go back and fix your stats after picking any culture that doesn't have "+1 Resolve" for their bonus. Would this ruin the symmetry of the character creation screen? Yes. Is it a big deal either way? No. So... yeah. Not a bug. Just a confusing UI choice.

Does everyone here realize that sneak attack always triggers on the Rogue's first attack within the first 2 seconds of combat, regardless of whether or not you are engaging from stealth? Just.... thought I'd point that out. Are you sure you're not talking about Backstab, which does actually have something to do with stealth?

You think PoE's mechanics are byzantine? Compared to 2e? Heh. Maybe if you're a veteran of the old D&D rulesets. I challenge you to find someone who *hasn't* played tons of the IE games who finds PoE's mechanics "byzantine" in comparison, though. For goodness' sake. On a (completely un)related note, we talked about Monte Carlo simulations in class today. That was fun.