MunoValente

Maybe instead of limiting camping supplies, they could have made them more rare and/or expensive not that that is a terribly realistic either, but might be a better balance.

My biggest issue with Defender is that is doesn't stack with bunch of other good modals for fighters and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this. This goes along with the general problem of it being difficult to tell which modals stack and which don't.

I used Greenstone with Zahua once, was pretty good.

Ranger with stormcaller, twinned arrows, driving flight and stunning shots is an unstoppable juggernaut.

I have no idea what Reirnu Xalxijrei is referencing, so I could easily see how someone else could miss it as well.

Having the summons be shorter seems like a good way to balance them relative to the other invocations, which were for the most part not as useful as the summons. Also because the invocations come faster now, you can re-summon more often to help make up for it.

Sounds like everything you read was massive, overblown exaggerations. These might not be the most optimal, efficient things that you could do, but they plenty viable.

I give most of my backliners the fast runner talent, that way they can take off and run if someone gets through my frontline, but it's best to have them start fleeing before they are engaged.

One thing with monks I wouldn't mind seeing is perhaps a bonus to their deflection in lighter armor, perhaps shift some of their base deflection into the bonus, as it currently is, I think armored monks are a good amount better than more traditional light armor monks and crossover a bit much with fighters.

I haven't played it, but to me it looked more like Dark Alliance or Dungeon Siege III, but not as good from what I saw of it. I like Dark Alliance and DS3 well enough, so if it was good game of that type, I'd play it, but I haven't heard much good about it. NWN2 with years of patching, all of it's expansions, and modern hardware is very good in my opinion.

I think something like the injury system from DA:O would be good for making knockouts mean a little more. Pillars already has injury statuses related to the scripted events, seems like they could attach them to knockouts as well. Would make things like Wound Binding or Field Triage better as well, you could use those to eliminate injuries as well as health damage.

It requires a high level chanter but They Shielded Their Eyes 'Gainst the Fampyr's Gaze is nice because you can have active immediately at the start of an encounter.

So how much is all of this a problem with the fact that for Pillars -> hard is normal and Path of the Damned is the only way to play for something of a challenge? Or, in my favorite drum to beat, the fact that the upper levels don't have enough xp between them, so you can get over-leveled way to easily. Path of the Damned is more challenging, but in a way that is generally more tedious rather than tactically interesting. For me the biggest issue is encounter designed. White March is better here, particularly Lagufaeth and Mercenary Brawler encounters as those enemies are more dynamic than endless mobs that mostly just try to run up to your front liners and try to pound their face. In the main game many of the best encounters also involve enemies try to get around from frontliners in some way or another, such as spirits; I've also run into a few encounters where xaurips come at you from a few angles at once that I've likely. Encounters with enemy reinforcement mobs coming at you from a flank or behind I think would make battles more interesting. One thing I'm consistently underwhelmed with is enemy ranged attackers and spell casters, they just never seem powerful enough or smart enough as they need to be to be as scary as they are in a lot of games.

One thing with the combat being repetitive is that it's probably more common on the PotD, because the enemies have so much more brute force and resistance, taking certain risks and experimenting with certain tactics and abilities and being lax with preparation and micromanagement is much more punishing. This isn't really a situation unique to Pillars either, even playing better tactical games like XCOM or Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13, I've found my biggest tactical adjustment to cope with the overwhelming brute force on the highest difficulties, is usually to play in a more cautious, more structured and more repetitive style and while it's more effective tactically, I find it to be significantly less fun than playing on a next difficultly down and taking more risks and experimenting more, so while the tactics may be good from an effectiveness stand point, they aren't good for an enjoying the game standpoint.

Most encounters dont require nearly that much preparation. I think that if prepare that much for each encounter you are both wasting a bunch of time and making the game more boring by making easy encounters even easier. I feel like the game was largerly balanced for players that just kind of run around without much caution. If youre reckless, you're likely to end up interesting tactical situation, but if you're careful they are almost always easily avoidable. I do think the expansion encounters are better, particularly against the more mobile enemies.