Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Those sound like "Honest Hearts" "Dead Money' and "Old World Blues" to me! real tragedy: no fishing, no ydwin romance

I feel like the "correct" fix for this issue is probably some combination of: 1) rework the dual-weilding bonus (it's kinda overpowered anyway) 2) make the "sword in one hand, pistol in the other" bonus the one-handed weapon bonus, not the dual weilding bonus (since you're only using one weapon at a time)

1) We don't really know where the power scale is going to wash out. We do know that single class characters will have access to level 8 and 9 abilities, while multiclass characters won't. My personal suspicion is that the answer is going to be "it's complicated," but probably break down on roughly these lines: -- the earlier in the game you are, the better a choice multiclassing is probably going to be -- certain specific multiclass combinations (say, shattered pillar monk / soulblade cipher, or paladin / beckoner) are going to be extremely effective because the synergy will be potent enough to compensate for the lack of abilities -- martial hybrids are probably going to be generally more effective than caster hybrids because casters are more reliant on active highest-available-level abilities and because casters face a "too many things to do at once" issue where they run out of time to cast all their stuff anyway, and it's even worse when multiclassed -- in any given party you're probably going to want to multiclass your melee folks and single-class your casters. 2) Right now Melee (and to an extent Ranger) types pretty much dominate on raw damage, but casters dominate on utility, CC, buffing and debuffing, etc. It's not a clean split though -- even fighters have some CC options, etc., and some caster builds can be very effective DPS. 3) You probably want to play a paladin. Paladin/ Beckoner with Shared Flames and the Chanter AoE allied flame lash chant can be very very potent at least in the beta; you could also be quite effective as a single class, will depend on how much you want those top end abilities.

Just so the problem is stated clearly in the bug forum thread: Core issue is that, due to the way the damage formula calculates out, weapons with the "blunted criticals" trait (i.e., guns and the arbalest) can do significantly less damage on a critical hit than they do on a normal hit.

One trick you could do: Use multiclassing companions early on Switch to single class companions late game

The weird thing is, why did they give it to everyone automatically instead of adding it to the weapon proficiency menu like everything else? There must have been some kind of reason -- maybe an art asset or something? Maybe something technical?

It probably would be a minor improvement in "feel" if nothing else if people had to actually pick Unarmed proficiency on the proficiency picking screen. If nothing else, it would minimize confusion from people who don't realize they have it already for free, and anyone who wants to pick it probably knows why they want it and most characters get too many proficiency slots anyway so, there seem to be few downsides. I presume they implemented it the way they did in the beta for ~reasons~ though but who knows.

Kinda already a thread on this here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95275-lets-gather-feedback-for-ai-customization-here/page-3

I've had combat not end sometimes on ship battles. I thought it might be because I'd loaded a save from the start of the fight, since it autosaves at the start of ship fights.

As an aside, this is why I really hope someone is working on a DPS calculator. The attack speed and damage calculations are so byzantine that there are probably a lot of other cases like this in the math that we just havent' found yet because there's no visible DPS calculation.

I feel like this is an artifact of condensing melee talents and ranged talents down into just four weapon styles.

Is the basic issue that (1 X 1.25) X .75 = .93, not 1? Essentially? It's not *just* that because the penalty in the first game was 30% blunting on a 50% critical, which ended up netting (again, running it through the above math, (1*1.5)*.7) = 1.05, so a slight bonus, remaining, and different values throughout. I've never really *liked* it though. It's always seemed like an unnecessary penalty on gun users. I think the rationale was to moderate high critical damage on high-base-damage-weapons, but it's always felt like overkill to me, and it feels like it's even less necessary in this game given that the critical bonus has been reduced by 50% anyway.

it's a very slight difference, though, and Arquebus would be slightly preferable for use with abilities, since it has a higher base damage. I'd still like to see the Arquebus shifted over to Crushing damage type, I think that would make it a much more interesting choice. Yes and it also has tighter damage range and is a mutha****ing gun. It is also ignoring Arcane Veil unless Obsidian's The Great Unification desing philosophy removed it. There's a reason guns are mentioned way, way more than xbows (or arquebuses than arbalests if we want to be specific). Yeah, guns are more popular because they're cool, and they're situationally useful, but they have some real downsides that there doesn't seem to be much purpose for -- for example, the "blunted criticals" effect is unduly painful for little real purpose (and doesn't show up in that DPS chart, which is just a chart of base numbers).

Haha, I had no idea the effect was that bad. I hope this is something that gets fixed before release. I really dislike this effect anyway, because it means it's a lot harder to make crit-build gun users, and it's especially annoying given that the crit bonus in Deadfire was already reduced from 50% to 25% anyway. edit: note that that's a big nerf relative to the first game: in PoE 1, guns had a negative -.3 crit damage modifier, but the critical bonus was +.5, so there was still a benefit from critical hits; the penalty didn't zero out the bonus completely even then. Even if Deadfire changed the gun critical penalty to be even with the critical bonus, that would still be a significant nerf vs. the first game.

I use an off-brand Big Green Egg and mostly do pork shoulders. Vinegar injection, a rub, pecan chips. I have a neat wifi-enabled AI regulator for the smoke: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smobot/smobot-robotic-grill-and-smoker-controller On the other hand, there's a frequent poster in the SA thread for Pillars whose handle is "Bongwizzard" and, well, yes.

Are you sure? I remember to have tested it and found out that you could get only +10 deflection, even with both modals activated What about dagger + hatchet? On the other hand, dagger + shield should work, any shield modal.

Yeah, I checked, just 50% reduction in damage from ranged attacks and attacks that target reflex. Good if you're fighting a dragon. "block" on medium shields is "30% damage resistance" and a 25% recovery penalty.

Yeah, "design flaw" perhaps, or just "counter-intuitive mechanic". The Large shield would contribute to ripostes, though, right? Because it works by increasing your Deflection stats?

it's a very slight difference, though, and Arquebus would be slightly preferable for use with abilities, since it has a higher base damage. I'd still like to see the Arquebus shifted over to Crushing damage type, I think that would make it a much more interesting choice.

It may also be worth checking whether or not Riposte should trigger on other types of "misses", such as the medium shield modal block.

What about the medium shield modal? I haven't seen it trigger there either, no. (I might have just been exceptionally unlucky, but it did look like medium shield modal blocks don't count as "misses".) Thanks for checking that, that almost seems like bug.

Additional detail: It would be *really* nice if the AI was smart enough to not cast spells on targets that you know are immune to that spell -- for example, if you have revealed that the target is immune to Intellect afflictions, why is my cipher trying to cast Dominate on said target? For the Beguiler (and also, I imagine, rogues) it would be nice if "target has: flanked" were also a conditional you could script for.

What about the medium shield modal?

question is, can the PC goink it, and what proficiency does it use

Someone over on SA has already written a mod that lets you dual wield shields, so if it's really your thing, it'll be something you can make happen