Matt516

Thanks for the response... but.. it sounds like you're saying that abilities like Lightning Strikes (10% of damage vs 25% of DR) are intended to be utterly worthless. Is that true? I'm sorry... that just doesn't make sense.. I'm just stating how it's being calculated. Lightning Strikes is already in our database and is being addressed in a future patch to give it a bump. Oh gotcha. I thought you were saying that was intended behavior. So just to clarify - are procs supposed to go up against 25% of DR no matter what the proc damage % is, or are they supposed to go up against whatever the corresponding % of DR is for the proc damage %? Either way, good to hear Lightning Strikes is being addressed, I suppose.

Yes, see here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78228-lashes-all-go-against-25-of-dr-no-matter-what-the-lash-damage-is/ The dev marked it "solved" after he answered, and I marked it "unsolved". If he comments again saying they really intended it to work that way, I guess the issue can be dropped. But it defies all logic for it to work the way it currently works, so I figure we keep mentioning it until that is confirmed.

Thanks for the response... but.. it sounds like you're saying that abilities like Lightning Strikes (10% of damage vs 25% of DR) are intended to be utterly worthless. Is that true? I'm sorry... that just doesn't make sense..

This would be hilarious.

Yess nerf the uber op classes, Paladin, Ranger, Monk !! Nerf them to the ground .. Wait ... what ?! I fail to see how this nerfs Monk... seeing as Lightning Strikes is useless right now and would get better if this were fixed. As for Pally and Ranger... arguing to keep a highly unintuitive bug in the game mechanics is a strange way to balance classes at best and nonsensical at worst. As Elerond said, better to fix all the bugs, then balance the game.

So a 10% or a 40% lash will go up against 25% of the appropriate DR, instead of 10%/40%. This has got to be a bug, right?

The DR a lash goes against *should* be proportional to the lash damage, but isn't (it's always 25% DR no matter what the lash is). This is probably a bug and should be reported and complained about on the tech support Forum until they fix it. Right now lashes lower than 25% (like Monk's lightning strikes) are almost useless, while lashes higher than 25% are more useful than they should be.

Attack speed boni are still multiplicative no matter what parts of the animation chain they speed up - it's still increasing your total attacks per second, which effectively scales multiplicatively with all other damage modifiers. It just may not scale as much as the displayed numbers would indicate.. but it's still multiplicative.

Asking both about Pallegina and Adventurer paladins. Do they ever get bonuses or penalties of any kind from Faith and Conviction? If so, how does it work? Based on player dispositions?

If you want to be tanky, you'll be fine. Those stats will also get you some nice dialogue options as well. Take "hold the line" to up your engagement limit, then kit out in heavy armor, a shield, and tons of support abilities. You can also use IE mod to remove Defender from Eder and give him something more suited for a damage fighter if you want.

I've never heard of characters dying on missions, nor does the game mention anything about it whatsoever. I don't think I believe you without some evidence.

Well again - if it reduces recovery by the proper amount to increase total attack speed by the amount stated then there's no issue unless you're somehow reducing recovery to 0 and there's then no more improvement possible. But I'm not sure if that's even possible due to how attack speed modifiers work. Haven't heard anything about fists having longer recovery than other fast weapons. Don't know why that would be.

If I recall correctly, it only reduced recovery - but by the amount needed to increase total attack speed by the listed amount. So it offloads all of the speed increase to recovery, basically. Someone will have to get back to you with testing data if that's what you want. But that's how I remember it working.

Character screen doesn't display all active damage boosters. This is known. Doesn't necessarily mean they're not working.

You could just recall him if you really, really want him back and don't want to wait.

I must be in the minority - I tend to hate the big cities in those games. I'd be ok if there wasn't even a Defiance Bay in the game. That said, given that there was one... there could certainly have been more content. I think they did what they could with the time and budget they had, though. Hopefully PoE is successful enough that they'll have plenty of funding and motivation to make many, many more.

Act 2 is a cakewalk but Act 3 brings the sauce. Prepare to battle your own teammates with new and improved Dominated party members! Good to hear. I'll probably be there in a few weeks or so.

I find all the kickstarter NPCs kind of annoying. I can forgive most as replacements for crowd NPCs, but I find it very odd that so many are godlike. You'd expect such beings to be pretty rare and in-game dialogue (when it does pop up) about godlike make it seem that way, but kickstarter NPCs with flaming or blue heads litter the place ruining the feel of the race. This is the biggest problem IMO. They really should've either closed godlikes off to the backer NPCs, or maybe had a random drawing for 3 possible backer NPC godlikes. The amount currently within the game ruins verisimilitude completely.

I've run a Monk with some success. Fists are amazing - they're actually considerably better than Superb weapons by the end of the game - they gain up to +8 damage by the end, which is a lot more than 45% of their base damage. 4 less Accuracy than Superb, but it's whatever. You don't want to use them as straight-up tanks, they aren't built for that. Better to use a Fighter or Paladin. Monks are strictly tanky dps - you'll have to experiment to find the best armor for your playstyle, but with Monks you basically want to use the lightest armor you can wear while remaining alive. I use Hide, personally.

I mean... nothing in the game was added against the designers' wishes - they added what they felt like adding. But they did originally not plan to have any permanent health healing in the game, and they did add it in response to the whining feedback of some backers. IMO they should've ignored that bit of feedback like they ignored the people asking for lock/trap XP... should've stuck to their guns on design decisions like that. But it is what it is. Whatever.

Yeah - just learn everything. There's very little reason not to do so.

Please, if you could give me some feedback. I am still looking for someone to review my scripts in MATLAB. For one, you've got Grazes and Crits coded as multiplicative. They're not AFAIK. Just another +0.5 or -0.5 modifier to the attack.

Here's a formula to calculate the average damage mod based on your accuracy: =IF(Acc+WAcc>=100;1+DmgMod+CD+WCD; IF(Acc+WAcc>49;1+DmgMod+(CD+WCD)*(Acc+WAcc)/100; IF(Acc+WAcc>14;0.75+DmgMod+(0.5+CD+WCD)*(Acc+WAcc)/100 IF(Acc+WAcc>0;0.675+0.85*DmgMod+(1+DmgMod+CD+WCD)*(Acc+WAcc)/100; IF(Acc+WAcc>-50;0.675+0.85*DmgMod+(1+DmgMod)*(Acc+WAcc)/100; IF(Acc+WAcc>-85;(0,5+DmgMod)*(.85+(Acc+WAcc)/100);0)))))) where Acc = player accuracy - monster deflection WAcc = base accuracy of the weapon (-5, -10 etc. for firearms) DmgMod = damage bonus you have CD = critical damage mod (0.5+any bonuses you have) WCD = base weapon critical damage mod (-.3 for firearms) Maybe you could use it on your sheet to calculate the average damage based on a distribution around a targeted accuracy value, like for the damage reduction. PS. In your sheet I think you can't go over 20DR, maybe your tables should go until 28DR (for people to be able to see what are the best weapons against the adra dragon). This... is why I like the game less every time I play it. The mechanics are convoluted, over imagined and they've thrown in everything they can think of, along with the kitchen sink. There's no room for subtlety or simple mastery, and you spend too much time looking at numbers. That isn't difficulty, it's technicality and I don't much care for it. A simple, home-grown version of d20, ala 2nd Edition would have made the experience far more enjoyable to me. (Yes, they could do it. Game mechanics aren't subject to copyright, only the names and descriptions.) At this point I am convinced that Torment is going to be the better game since it runs on a system of which the formulas do not look like electrical engineering. It's really... not that complicated. You attack, you take your Accuracy minus their Defense, then you roll a d100 and add that to it. If it's between 1-15, miss and no damage, 16-50, graze and -50% base damage, 51-100, hit, 100+, crit and +50% base damage. That's it. Boiling that down to formulas can make the formulas look daunting, sure... but it's really not that complicated, and nothing like the convoluted mess that was THAC0.

And this would make perfect sense. If they hadn't included a mode called path of the Damned. Which could never have been targeted at anyone other than veterans of this kind of game. Even the description of hard mode suggests this. But path is far too easy, so no, it's not just right at least for that mode imo. That's just the thing - we're not the ones saying that Hard and PotD should be challenging for IE veterans, Obsidian is. If you look at the difficulty descriptions, they very clearly intended Hard and PotD to be A) targeted at IE veterans and B) very difficult to complete. So it's not ridiculous at all for people to complain the game is too easy on those game modes. No one is asking Normal or Easy to be made easier - just Hard and PotD, the difficulties that warn you before selecting them. Obsidian didn't fully achieve the clearly stated goal for those game modes, so we, the intended audience for those difficulty modes (ugh that sounds so pretentious, but I'm not the one who decided to draw that line ), are providing feedback to improve that. The bulk of the complaints aren't whining, but feedback. Feedback from the people those game modes were ostensibly designed to challenge.

Rapiers and Spears are also very good, because they add +5 Accuracy, helping you to really push Accuracy. Battle Axes (+0.5% Crit.Dmg), Maces (Pen 3) and Flails (30% Graze-to-Hit) are all potentially really good, but they don't really feel very... duelist-y, I think. Until they fix the One-Handed Style Talent working with shields, Flails are really good for sword-and-board Fighters, I think. They're going to have pretty low Accuracy, so they're going to Graze a lot, and converting 60% of those is quite powerful. Wait, does One-Handed Style work with shields? No way... if so that's got to be a bug (and should be reported).