Gromnir

hearth orlans is always our choice for melee rogues... and for most other characters as well. moon godlike sounds nifty enough, but our experience in hm were that moon godlike didn't make much difference based on our play style. combats were over too quick for the moonie's admitted very nice racial benefit to come into play... and they look like horribly failed concept art for the movie the abyss. ... oh, and "godlike" is a serious contender for all time worst name for a crpg race. godlike? make that suggestion in a meeting and you should be pelted with half-filled cheeto bags and mostly empty slurpee cups... or whatever developers have on hand at such meetings. HA! Good Fun!

I'm actually considering a Skaen priest with a Stilettos and the peewee sneak attack. skaen were kinda the defacto deity amongst the beta players who chose to play combat priests. the weapon dr bypass for stilettos stacks with vulnerable attacks talent. make a hearth orlan character for racial bonus. makes for a very potent (if squishy) combatant... who can spam repulsing seal that is almost guaranteed to crit. is a dangerous character indeed. HA! Good Fun!

keep in mind you will only have the equivalent of very high accuracy with a single weapon (actually, two, but if you wanna keep pace with the big accuracy folks, you need one o' the general weapon focus feats as well.) one. is an extreme narrow tailored choice. luckily, the theoretical combat priest is not limited to weapon use. all those underappreciated offensive priest spells are quite handy. even so, one is a small number. pick wisely to fit your playstyle and your priest. did we mention seal spells? am not certain why folks don't notice the wacky maths for seal spells and rage at how over-powered they is. am suspecting is 'cause so few folks play priests. HA! Good Fun!

And picking a WF that synergizes with your diety's weapon "focus" just stacks those accuracy bonuses (or at least I assume they do), which is a good thing indeed. it does stack, which is why a priest can have the highest possible weapon accuracy in the game with a favored weapon. HA! Good Fun! ps also, we forgot to mention that trap accuracy is far more forgiving than spell accuracy calculation, so while the aforementioned mechanics boost is substantial, you also get the benefit o' heightened trap accuracy calculation when using seal spells, which is worth another ~+20%-30%.

we played bg. we posted on the boards for totsc and bg2 as well as other ie games. balance were no less common back then as it is today. in iwd, the developers took steps to nerf the power o' ranged weapons. the ferelan ranger kit were dumped from bg2 'cause it were too weak. bg2 developers severe tuned down grandmastery benefits for bg2. oh, and ask josh how his kit suggestions for iwd2 were received... is a funny story. heck, josh tried to get the monte cook ranger in iwd2 because mr. cook's version were better balanced than the original 3e ranger... which caused a p00p storm o' geekly proportions. ye goode olde days nonsense is... nonsense. don't forget that many o' us were there in those days. Gromnir were there. HA! Good Fun!

you are such a girl. ... is not a criticism. that being said, given that we were thinking you were closer to Gromnir age, shouldn't your choice be more along the lines o' HA! Good Fun! ps edited out the soul-crushing supernatural images. nobody needs more o' that.

By no means would my suggestion for defense make them superior tanks to Fighters. Fighters would still offer endurance regen, superior engagement and superior support control (knock down, aggro pull). That's the point: you can safely apply almost all of these suggested tweaks without Paladin becoming superior to the classes they compete with in that area. With my defense suggestion, Paladin would be the superior class for raw defense, but not neccesarily the one for keeping your squad alive, or even for staying up for that matter since endurance regen and knock down can be useful for a lot of different things. My offense suggestion wouldn't break Paladins either, nor would the support ones. The point is Paladins are abysmally sub-par across the board, to the point where minor tweaks could be made to everything across the board and they'd still be balanced. You lose me the moment you stop speaking plain english and start speaking computer geek. What the heck is "aggro", FFS???!!! The only aggro I know relates to farming, not computer games. (And I've got nothing to do with agro related business whatsoever. Just some comon knowledge.) to be fair, d&d 4e were rather unabashed about adopting what had previous been mmo nomenclature. a rpg geek is also gonna be familiar with the aforementioned terms, though he/she might sneer derisively at their use. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna keep bumping this as am genuine curious about what the elemental talents modify. so, until a developer responds... bump HA! Good Fun!

poe paladin is a support class. compare tanky capacity to fighters or dps ability to striker kinda classes is wacky and misguided. our suggestion is to do opposite o' what longknife suggests. am tired o' watching as the paladin slouches toward bethlehem. the paladin were a fine class as first envisioned by obsidian, but the community wants the support class to be better tanky or better at killing stuff, so obsidian has incrementally expanded the role o' the paladin. stop. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63968-update-56-paladins-and-wild-orlans/?hl=paladin give us back the paladin we were promised. make paladin improvements so that it is better in support. perhaps make the class less boring by offering options to be a more active support character, but efforts to improve the paladin should not be to improve dps or tankyness. HA! Good Fun!

axiomatic-- the priest is, fundamentally, a support character. is easiest to build a priest without much concern for weapons. focus your efforts on being a better spellcaster is easiest route for a priest. that being said, you can make a very competent combat cleric in poe. am not certain why folks keep saying that it is a bad idea. we played the beta with dual wielding flails priest o' eothas (make sure to take vulnerable attacks somewhere along the way) and made combat priests o' all the other deities as well. in the full release o' the game, we has advanced a priest o' berath and a priest o' wael deep into the game, and we made both o' the priests combat focused as we like to have durance in our party. suggestions: 1) max mechanics. doesn't matter if your priest is gonna be the guy who opens locks for you. mechanics has synergy with priestly seal spells... all of them. a 10 mechanics results in a +30% accuracy boost to all seal spells. is ridiculous useful. 2) if you make a combat priest, you will need more party support. is our opinion that it is ideal to have two priests in a party if one is combat focused. have one priest focus on combat and offensive spells while the other buffs, debuffs and heals. sure, your combat priest will still be buffing and debuffing, but you are gonna use your few talents to maximize combat strengths rather than boosting your support abilities, so work to your strengths. 3) attributes is less significant that talents. as a priest, if you wanna be effective with a weapon, you got hard choices. take the deity weapon focus talent and then a general weapon focus talent to boost further. with eothas, you have morningstars or flails, but that means you should also choose either adventurer weapon focus or knight weapon focus... again, this is assuming you genuine care about weapon use. with adventurer focus you get a boost with war bows, which is actual a decent ranged weapon. crossbows is part o' the knight weapon focus talent, so if you would rather use morningstars for melee, you will be decent with crossbows as well, albeit not as good as with morningstars. two weapon fighting is a must for the flail user. two handed weapons is decent for morningstars. we recommend scion of flame for all priests, but that is a personal preference. scion doesn't appear to boost your seal spell damage, but you will have a goodly number o' fire spells, and if you already have high might, you will see most impressive damage totals from your flame spells. we mentioned already that if you pick up flails, you can go the dual wield route, and if you do so, it is almost essential that you choose vulnerable attacks. flails don't do enough damage to regularly overcome the kinda dr you will see routinely in the game. vulnerable attacks helps... though we find it works better with a mace wielding priest o' berath. our priest o' wael has the following attributes: m 10 c 10 d 10 p 16 i 16 r 10 our attribute choices were meant to maximize rp/dialogue opportunities. is our talent choices that made the character effective in combat. a priest o' wael gets quarterstaff and rod as deity favored weapons, so can either focus efforts on staves or rods. both is fantastic choices if you choose talents correct. point is that unlike fighters or wizards or some other classes, you can't just sorta choose what talents feels right and still be effective. if you are wanting to make a decent priestly combatant, you will do yourself a favor to plan your talent choices from 2-12 before you start playing. HA! Good Fun! ps durance makes a decent dual-wielder o' swords, or (our preference) a viable gunner. give durance inspired flame and knight weapon focus as well as a few gunner talents such as gunner and quick switch.

other than big head modes, yes? ... is likely a good thing that they don't try more humor. some folks simple don't have a knack for funny in writing. am recalling a interview we read o elmore leonard speaking o' his influences. according to leonard, hemingway made writing look easy and getting into mood to write westerns were easy after reading passages from for whom the bell tolls. sadly, leonard realized that hemingway had no demonstrable sense o' humor in his writing and so he needed a new spirit guide as there were things leonard wished to say that were amusing or quixotic or whatever. am thinking that if the obsidians could be as unfunny as hemingway, it wouldn't be a bad thing. 'course lack o' humor don't result in increased writing talent. *shrug* for popular entertainment that spans tens o' hours, humor is something one should try and cultivate. keep reader or player on edge for +40 hours? am not saying that obsidian don't have such humor in their games, but as mc noted, obsidian humor is tending to be low-key or noticeably infrequent. that being said, we enjoyed morte as a humors jnpc. is perhaps a bit cliché, but the sad clown can be more tragic than a similarly preternatural serious character. morte were a good example o' black isle humor done well. side note: in retrospect, am thinking the voice acting actual helped morte considerable. authors can be funny, but if you have a voice-over, the actor better be good. if tiger woods had delivered morte lines, am doubting we woulda' seen the funny. HA! Good Fun!

the bg series included bg. ... thank goodness developers and consumers have higher standards than the benchmark set by bg insofar as writing is concerned. HA! Good Fun!

am not seeing a motivation to be creative. the game is predictably leaving more than a few folks with characters that do not play as any reasonable player would expect. numerous talents, abilities and powers do not work as they is described, or the descriptions o' such is based on beta builds in the 300s and is misleading at best. developer error has resulted in players having their role-play choices thwarted. so, as between offering a fix for folks who is understandably displeased 'cause o' mistakes not their own or accommodating the feel nonsense o' a bunch o' paternalistic nincompoops who thinks respec is cheating or who believes that the mere presence o' a feature they would never use diminishes their gaming experience... well, we think the choice is an easy one for any rational developer to be making. poe should be yet another example to obsidian why the console is inadequate and a respec function would be a boon to many... too many. HA! Good Fun!

bump

repulsing seal doesn't have a huge acc bonus. what it does have is synergy with mechanics. the priestly seal spells count as traps. therefore, if you have high mechanics skill, you get the same boost to your seal spells as you would get for setting a trap. this synergy results in potential near guaranteed crits with seal spells for priests who max mechanics. *shrug* go figure. HA! Good Fun!

no. HA! Good Fun! edit: made it look more like a vol response... for funsies.

lockpicking/trap xp is alternatively a pointless trinket to appease a group o' vocal malcontents or it results in the degenerative gameplay obsidian had concerns 'bout. in either case, it is a joke... is a bad joke. if the xp grants is so small as to be doing no harm, then it amounts to nothing more than a mere token. bloat. puffery. if the trap/lock xp does encourage folks to retrace maps looking for a few missed chests so as to achieve an all-important level-up before a big battle, then it is indeed the bane obsidian were attempting to avoid. *shrug* is no good argument to keep trap/lock xp other than feel. a group o' players claims they needs be enticed with a wizened sardine before they once more leap through poe' hoops. no sardine? then why would they bother doing the tricks, eh? ... were always a silly argument. is no less silly post release. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* is good to see that obsidian finally acknowledged that interrupting blows does nothing. more than once we pointed out that +15% were a meaningless descriptor after the post 430 beta changes and that regardless, nothing were showing up in the combat log to indicate interrupting blow had any impact. and am not being hyperbolic when we say we mentioned the interrupt issue a dozen times. every respec thread had us point out the problem and there were more than a few beta bug threads as well. the elemental stuff... well, am confused why a developer can't let us know what is and is not affected by the talent. HA! Good Fun! ps after some testing, am reasonably certain that the elemental talents do not alter damage output of priestly seal spells. however, am still unclear regarding any of the dot burn effects from all priest spells and abilities that include burn.

is effectively a bump of this thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75683-scion-of-flame-heart-of-the-storm-spirit-of-decay-and-secrets-of-rime/?p=1636156 have been attempting to get visible results with priestly flame-based spells, to no avail. developer feedback regarding what the elemental enhancement talents actual boost would be nice as at the moment there is very little transparency. wizard spells? seems to work with wizard and druid spells... maybe. weapons with burning quality? no... or at least probable not... perhaps? paladin burn abilities? uhm... probably not. priest spells? well, priest spells is complicated 'cause some number o' them somehow get treated as traps, but we can't get positive results for the other priestly fire-based spells either. so which priest spells does scion of flame alter, if any? ... oh, and while you are at it, has anybody at obsidian yet explained what interrupting blows talent actually does post the 430 beta? josh changed interrupt mechanics, and now the interrupting blows talent has no visible impact in the combat log. have asked literal a dozen times or more 'bout the talent. HA! Good Fun!

that did the trick. saved us a couple dozen hours o' replay. thanks. HA! Good Fun!

unique abilities for joinable npcs? sure. better abilities for joinable nps? definitely not. have the joinables along for story reasons is more than enough motivation for many players. if story enhancement is an insufficient benefit to you, then the option to create joinables is available already. the problem, if it is a problem, already has a solution. am much in favor o' giving jnpcs mechanical individualized enhancements that reflect their character and make 'em different than any stock npc we might create, but am believing it is a mistake to make the joinables better than created npcs. have the joinables mere presence make the game easier is antithetical to developer goals and somewhat defeats the purpose o' the poe feature for adding custom jnpcs. unique is good, but better is bad. HA! Good Fun!

to say that Gromnir is disappointed regarding the absence o' a retroactive reckless assault fix is woeful insufficient to describe our feelings on the matter. ... fine. restart it is. currently we are looking at the beta for 1.04, and based on other developer feedback, 1.05 is envisioned as a much more substantial patch. am suspecting no less than a month will pass before a retroactive reckless assault fix is provided. so, fine. we can take a hint. for Gromnir this is the line o' demarcation that divides admirable patience from stubbornly obtuse. HA! Good Fun!

ah, am understanding the confusion. we has noted many times that with traditional game software, we typical wait six month to a year previous to purchasing... always wait til first major patch. in this way we could wait on the reviews o' the title in question from fellow players we trusted for feedback. also, our delayed purchase would invariably reward us with a more polished and a more stable game that would likely be less expensive than a pre-order or day 1. for example, we waited one year before playing mass effect 3 and we have yet to play da:i. however, we have also noted more than once that kickstarters is different animals. we were a kickstarter poe backer. Gromnir paid for poe years ago, so waiting to see if poe were worth our gaming dollar is kinda moot at this point. our advice regarding a poe purchase, freely given to more than once, were for those who had not already backed poe as part o' the kickstarter. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70121-who-is-going-to-wait-till-the-first-update-before-playing/?p=1560626 is a fault o' ours that we is tediously and foolishly predictable. can use us as a game forum compass if you wish. HA! Good Fun!

Just noticed your username. Are you the actual Gromnir that the Bhaalspawn Gromnir il-Khan is based on, or is your username based on the NPC? I remember a piece of trivia saying that Gromnir il-Khan was based on a moderator on an old forum named Gromnir (the username of the moderator, not the name of the forum). never were a mod, but yes, you have the dubious privilege o' bespeaking the original Gromnir who did indeed inspire the tob npc. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

after playing poe beta for s'posed more than 150 hours, and the actual release for a few dozen, it is our opinion that what poe needs most is a yakety sax toggle for when entering fast mode. HA! Good Fun!