kmbogd

Agree that it makes no sense to dual wield daggers when enabling the modal. However, I think it's more like a design flaw than a bug or miss-implementation of the system rules that they conceived. Since it's harder to modify the game's system rules (in this case stacking rules), maybe it would be better to modify the modal so that it makes sense with the current format (even when dual wielding).

In my opinion we currently have a flaw in the design regarding the interactions of some ranged weapons and weapon styles. Most notable is the situation in which we dual wield a pistol/blunderbuss with something else: it makes no sense that when using a single pistol the reload time is greater than in the case when you are using 2 pistols. Even the description of the pistol states that: "...despite their size, they require 2 hands to reload properly". The way I see it, it's fine to keep some ranged weapons as one-hand weapons, but in this case dual welding bonus to recovery(and two weapon style bonus) should apply only to melee weapons (as a side note, I would consider all weapon styles to apply only to melee weapons, and have the ranged style apply to ranged weapons). In addition, for pistol and blunderbuss, I would even add a negative reload time modifier if you are not using it as a single weapon of attack (in the case you are dual welding it with other weapons or using it with a shield). Alternatively, but I would like it less, make all ranged weapons two-handed.

You can, but if the enemy is in the range of the melee weapon only the melee weapon is used. Consequently, if the enemy is out of the range of the melee weapon only the pistol will be used. Dual welding bonus to recovery/reload applies to both weapons (which IMO is a flaw in the design, particularly for the pistol for which even its description states that the reload is faster when using two hands).

Yes, all of them.

As far as I see, some ranged weapons (arbalest, arquebus, pistol and blunderbuss) have the so called "Blunted Criticals" feature which is worded as "-25% dmg with crits". One of the benefits of a crit attack resolution in Deadfire is that it has +25% dmg. So, my understanding is that the designer wanted to negate this additional benefit with Blunted Criticals type of weapons. Unfortunately, due to the way damage is calculated in Deadfire, this is not the case. In reality you have the situation where a crit does less damage than if it was a hit (given the same rolled dmg). I will simplify a bit the very detailed explanation of MaxQuest(https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94713-compilation-thread-balance-classes-feedback-game-mechanics/?do=findComment&comment=1974567), and say that damage modifiers are computed in steps and then summed up. What is the step of the crit extra damage? Since it's a supra-unitary modifier, with value >1 (in this case 1.25), its step is 1.25-1=0.25 What is the step of the "blunted critical" feature? Since this is a sub unitary modifier, with value <1 (in this case 0.75), the formula is: 1-1/0.75=-0.33 As it can be seen, the sum of these 2 steps is not 0 but negative. Which I am not sure that it's the intention of the designer. If it was intended, it makes no sense to me from a functional perspective. Attached are some in-game situations which show that a lower rolled dmg with hit resolution translates to more final damage than a higher rolled dgm with crit resolution. In order to alleviate the problem, "Blunted Criticals" should be "-20% dmg with crits". In this case the "Blunted Criticals" step would be: 1-1/0.8=-0.25.

At least stacking rules are consistent You have a point there. But then the -25% damage shouldn't get applied to both daggers as well. Actually I think it does because the modal is worded this way: "-25% dmg with dagger weapons". So it does not affect the single dagger for which the modal is activated but all daggers with which the character is equipped. IMO this works as intended, stacking rules suppress the second dagger's modal to apply an additional effect (additional +10 deflection and additional -25% dmg with dagger weapons).

This is a good observation. I went ahead and introduced in the file I shared with you the following scenario: dex 35, might 10, perception 10 no armor for dual welding, two weapon style for two handed weapons, two-handed style fine quality no weapon modal Due to the "diminishing returns" nature of the formulae, dual-welding bonuses get diluted. Attached is a brief comparison of the average DPS of 4 weapons against various enemy AR's in the above scenario. This being said, I believe that it will be too late in the game until one can experience the diminishing returns for dual welding (unless one really likes a glass character with no armor whatsoever and lots of recovery bonuses) to make two-handed finally on par.

This weapon modal is heavily bugged at the moment. Reported it here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96886-bb-4-bleeding-cut-is-heavily-bugged/

It seems that this modal is heavily bugged. I'm not referring to the fact that all DoT's stack with each other (which might be intended, but is kind of too powerful in my opinion) and the duration is quite long (60s). Unfortunately when several bleeding cut DoTs are active, one of them will generate their sum as raw damage, while the others still do their own damage as well. For example, in the pictured attached I performed 3 attacks all of them generating each a DoT of 1 raw dmg per tick (don't be fooled by this petty amount as the character performing the attack was a tank and not a DPS). Unfortunately the result was that at each tick I was seeing 3,1,1 as float text damage instead of 1,1,1. This happened in all my tests. I'm not even sure that each DoT has its own duration or all of them are refreshed to 60s after stacking a new one as the attacked character dies quite fast.

I think the explanation is that the area is increased by 50% not the radius. The base area is a circle with radius 5m, which is equal to Pi*5^2=25*Pi sqm. If we increase this area by 50% we would have: 1.5*25*Pi=37.5*Pi sqm. This correspond to a circle with radius approximately equal to 6.1m

You can get my file from this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1u8I7rBUPJuwI9CaS-uQ4hmK1IY8uCI7E. I didn't manage to get the selectable fields working in google sheets so, unless you know how, you'll have to download the file and open it in excel. For some fields I've implemented some minor data validation: for example a weapon modal can be enabled only if the proper weapon is selected and if the no other modal is selected. For others I did not do this sort of data validation. Like I said, it's a work in progress and excel is not really the easiest way to do it (I'm also not a very proficient in excel as I'm learning along). Maybe someone could expand on this and create a small piece of software with a basic GUI.

@DR. Hieronymous Alloy I'm still at work now but will change the armor selection in my setup to 0 penalty cloth when I get home. Do you have some particular combinations you want to get sooner? It will take me some time to complete the full table for all weapons, weapon styles and modals.

The combat log message for soul annihilation is indeed bugged. As per the image attached there is a discrepancy between the raw damage that is reflected in the combat log and the raw damage that appears temporarily on top of the creature that got hit. In order to determine which one is correct I used two methods. The first was to use the ability against one of my other party members and then check how many hit points were deducted. The result was the the combat log information was the one incorrect. The second method was to determine the actual damage by looking at the character's record window at the "Total Damage Done" field and subtract the value pre-attack from the value post-attack. Again, the combat log information was the one incorrect. That being said, I am not really able to find the exact formula for total raw damage. From my tests it looks like this: suppose that you start from 15 focus and use soul annihilation. The attack connects and generates 32 points of weapon damage which equates to an additional 32/2=16 points of focus (in the current beta focus generation has been doubled). In total, we now have 15+16=31 focus which will be dealt as raw damage. The problem with this method of determining the raw damage is that there are always 1-3 points of damage unaccounted for.

Just tested the shield block modal and indeed "resistance vs weapons" means that there is a chance for a crit/hit/graze to be canceled completely. IMO they should change the term to "immunity vs weapons" to correspond to what we know of resistance/immunity in the case of afflictions. Right now resistance has one meaning in the context of afflictions and another meaning in the context of weapon attacks (which is confusing).

Did anyone test uncanny luck? I am wondering about the 5% resistance. Should we interpret resistance as in the case of afflictions (downgrade of the hit resolution: crit goes into hit, hit goes into graze etc) or it's just a chance to completely avoid an attack be it crit/hit/graze?

The best discrepancy between crtis and hits can be observed at the other spectrum: when transforming a -75% penalty into a +25%bonus. Take a look at this snippet comparison for dual welding sabres at enemy AR11 and enemy AR12. Related to the affirmation that "one-handed weapons being the best for auto-attacks", my findings are different for any of the 13 enemy AR that I compared in my previous table: usually dual welding something is better, with the exception of the very high end enemy AR where estoc is the champ overall.

Check the table at post #28 (one-handed style was also factored in: 20% hits to crits). Basically two-handed seem to be better than one-handed in the lower range of enemy AR. But at the higher end spectrum one-handed wins. The exception is the estoc which looks to be the overall champ at very high enemy AR.

Yes, the fact that sabres are optimal when considering only hit resolutions but are not the best when taking everything into account is due to +5 acc. You can find a comparison of the weapons and the model I used for comparing them on post #28 here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96636-two-handed-style-seems-weak/page-2 For the spear it seems that the increased dmg with respect to daggers/clubs/rapiers is outmatched by the fact that it's slower (0.7 attack + 4 recovery vs 0.5 attack + 3 recovery). But the difference is quite small.

Correct

Well, sabre seems to be optimal when looking only at the hit attack resolution, but if you look at the full distribution of outcomes it looks like using the club/dagger/rapier seems a bit better.

2-handed weapons still do more burst dmg, but adding in the longer recovery they equate to lower DPS. "Primary attack" type of abilities will be better with 2-handed weapons though (higher burst). Overall yes, looks like dual welding is optimal in most of the cases.

I have made an upgrade to the model I was using, it now takes into account attack resolution (miss, graze, hit, crit), perception and weapon modals. The average DPS was computed as per the miss/graze/hit/crit distribution. In the table attached there is a comparison of the average DPS of the weapons against 1-13 enemy AR. The setup used in this comparison is the following: 10 dex, 10 might, 10 perception the difference between accuracy (before weapon modifiers) and enemy's deflection is 0 all weapons are fine quality When 2-handed weapon was used, two-handed style was assumed When dual welding 1-handed weapon, two-weapon style was assumed When using a single 1-handed weapon, 1-weapon style was assumed character is wearing heavy-armor The green lines represent the DPS for using a 2-handed weapon or for dual-welding 1-handed weapons. The yellow lines represent the DPS for using a 1-handed weapon in 1-weapon style mode. The white lines following a green or yellow line represent the same setup but with the weapon modal enabled. For some weapons the modal was not implemented. Among these only mace, battle axe and pike have modals that are potentially able to increase DPS in some setups. Looking at the results, it seems that dual-welding clubs/daggers/rapiers (without modal) is optimal against AR 1-8. Dual welding swords with modal is optimal against AR9. Dual welding stilettos (without modal) is optimal against AR10. And using estoc with modal is optimal against AR11-13.

Take into account that crit not only adds 25% extra damage but also 50% more penetration, so criting 50% of the time is not only 12.5% additive dmg. Depending on the situation it can be much more, the most extreme case I can think of is transforming a severe under-penetration -75% to a +25% bonus.

Also isn't it weird that every time anyone hits the enemy, its deflection gets reduced by 3 (while blinding is active)? Seems quite strong. Maybe they should limit the effect to stacking only 5 times or so? If you have 2 or 3 dual wield characters in the party you can shred even the strongest enemy's deflection to pieces.

It has an effect, it can be seen in the image that I uploaded (lower left)