Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Keep in mind that the names of the difficulty settings are a bit rhetorical. Practically speaking it goes "I just want a choose your own adventure book, but with graphics" -> "I am a father of children and do not have time to reload fights every twenty minutes" -> "I am fine with reloading but do not understand how the game works yet" -> "I am fine with reloading and also have put some time into understanding how the numbers work". Actual real difficulty comes from Ironman or similar self-inflicted personal challenges (solo, etc.)

Unless my party is built around alpha-strike, I spec my wizards for crowd-control, and leave "total spell damage" department for priests, druids and in case of poe1 also: ciphers and dragon-trashed chanters. In beta4 my favorite wizard spell so far is Repulsive Visage. Even through terrifying is only partially working at the moment (as it doesn't prevent enemies from using all hostile spells like some aoes), it still prevents enemies from auto-attacking you and afaik from using single-targeted offensive stuff. The next spell I like is Miasma of Dull-Mindedness due it's decent malus to will; which helps with landing charms, beacons and also helps that visage. Other than that there is Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, which was UP in PoE1, but decent in Deadfire, since it guarantees that your armor won't be overpenetrated, if penetrated at all. And the rest is survivability ones like: Arcane Veil and Spirit Shield, because they have good effect/casttime ratio. Special note about Confusion and Bewildering Spectacle: in PoE1 I sometimes used those as oh-shi- emergency buttons, since it could quickly transform a 10x6 into 6x10 fight. And was really disappointed with them in deadfire. But I can see a situational incentive to pick them after beta4 came in. For example Confusion could be good vs Scirocco as in: let them kill and blind themselves. THanks, that's interesting. I'e been choosing based on, roughly, "what's going to be so useful that I want it in EVERY fight," since lots of things are available in grimoires now, and "what works well with scripting," i.e., what's easy to program my wizard to use effectively. That means Eldritch Aim (a *perfect* prebuff), tattered veils ("if there is enemy caster, poke"), Arcane Veil for scriptable defense (if enemy engages, Veil Up) and then the Foe-AoE powers -- combusting wounds, blackened sight, etc. Expose Vulnerabilities seems like a must-pick given the penetration system. Bounding and Concussive seem too valuable to miss; they're too useful for burning down single targets and I miss them every fight I don't have them. If my wizard is a Nature Godlike I pick one of the self-buffs that will trigger her powerup (generally the second rank one that also buffs Int) and script that to cast regularly also. Enervating Visage is a good spot, I'd neglected that one. There is a better version of it available at 9th level, though, so I'd probably take that instead. I hadn't realized how potent Dazzling Lights would be either. If they improve the scripting slightly and add a way to set them to cast to "max enemy targets AND avoid ally targets" then I'd probably replace tattered veils with that, but as it is it seems like something to get from a grimoire instead.

I'm not sure. It feels like a pure beguiler probably puts out more consistent CC than an ascendant, at the cost of focusing purely on that at the expense of damage dealing. Though the ascended window is very long. E: Though thinking of it, how much of that is that I deliberately build beguilers to be better at CC, I don't know. Well, Beguilers are going to be built more for CC just by virtue of their bonuses. The main thing the Ascendant gives up is the opening chunk of the combat, which is the most tactically valuable. The Beguiler can *open* the fight with an Eyestrike, etc., whereas the Ascendant generally doesn't want to. The other thing that makes Beguilers effective CC is that they don't necessarily have to pump and dump -- if they have their stuff together they can cast cast cast and regain focus from casting, without having to take weapon breaks.

Even if this theory is valid, it's not clear that it *doesn't* apply to Deadfire. Hell, the starting beach is plenty pretty., Edit: Yeah I watched the video and all it really does is assert that there may be a biological basis for beauty. Ok, sure, but that doesn't get you anywhere by itself; the guy doesn't have a theory of aesthetics, he can't say that X is pretty and Y isn't because biology, he just says "if yo think thing is beautiful, there may be biological reasons for that." His theory explains causation but it isn't descriptive; nothing in that Ted video can be used to judge if X is beautiful or not (except perhaps for values of X that are equal to "stone hand axe.") You also can't use that theory to reason backwards; if X thing IS beautiful in your perception, you can't therefore argue that it's biologically beautiful universally (because you might be the only weird fluke who thinks that). All it can really do is outline why, if almost everyone thinks something is beautiful, why that might be. It's a why theory, not a which or a what or a how theory.

I *think* I've been able to dominate / echo enemies before now in Deadfire, not 1000% certain though.

They may have felt that +5 Dex was already such a strong Action Speed buff that it didn't need anything further. But yeah I agree that Deleterious Alacrity of Motion is a trash-tier power now. A lot of the things that were All-Star Powers in PoE got hit pretty hard with the nerf bat in Deadfire.

Here's a question I haven't seen discussed much -- Which are the best Wizard spells to choose as your "core" powers on level up? So far in the beta I've generally picked a few core utility powers that are always useful -- eldritch aim, thrust of tattered veils, pull of eora. What have other folks gone with?

That's a good point, Ciphers are kinda weak right now on Paralyzing since Mental Binding still has the "duration of six seconds, cast time and recovery of three seconds each" issue, and only Paralyzes a single target. On the other hand, chaincasting Dominate while Ascended gets just jolly

Try an Ascendant or Beguiler cipher out post-patch. You can get some crazy stuff going. The downside is you have to wait a bit, but that's true with chanters too.

Hrm. They're pretty comparable. A Beguiler cipher is VERY good at dropping affliction debuffs, but kinda has to specialize in that one role. Wizards have a lot of good debuffs, maybe not as ace as Ciphers, but also have a much wider range of available powers (especially given various grimoires etc). The main difference is that wizards get more powers, but they're mostly a little harder to use -- a lot more "aoe" powers with big areas of effect, instead of "foe aoe" powers, for example, so you have to worry about friendly fire and so forth. Cipher AoEs are smaller and more targeted but also generally "foe aoe".

I haven't seen this discussed upthread, so apologies if I missed it, but: Practically speaking, the AI scripting improvements are a huge wizard buff for me at least, because they make micromanaging wizard self-buffs and casting much easier. I'd previously found a great number of wizard abilities not worthwhile because I hated micromanaging them every fight, or else because i'd just forget about them, or "save" them for later fights if per-rest. Now though, I can set up a little script, cast eldritch aim if that is lacking, cast Tattered Veils at enemy casters, Arcane Veil if engaged in melee, expose vulnerabilities/ combusting wounds, etc. It makes using them for utility a LOT easier and time-efficient. Technically all that stuff was already in place but I never used it before because it was too bothersome. There are still some problems though -- for example, the AI doesn't do well with using spells that have friendly fire, so an AI driven caster wants to focus on "foe aoe" powers -- but it's a huge increase in playability.

Ok, yeah, I was thinking there was parity in total ability slots currently, I hadn't done out the math and realized there was a slight discrepancy. In my head at least, ideally, it'd be "both get same number of abilities; multiclass get a wider pool of abilities to choose from; single class get a deeper pool of abilities to choose from." I think it would be absolutely fine to give both the same amounts of talents to spend, though the question is how to distribute them. The discrepancy comes from the amount of powerlevels reached between single and multi. Giving 3 ability points per power level to multi would scew balance much in favour of multiclass. I things those 3 ability points shouldn't make that much of a difference, if it does, they can be added somehow. Easy way would be an extra ability pick at 20th, 14th, and 8th level.

Ok, yeah, I was thinking there was parity in total ability slots currently, I hadn't done out the math and realized there was a slight discrepancy. In my head at least, ideally, it'd be "both get same number of abilities; multiclass get a wider pool of abilities to choose from; single class get a deeper pool of abilities to choose from." As a practical matter in the beta, I did find that because multi-class characters advance slower, but have to pick wider, it's easy to get in a situation in the first few levels where you're having to pick stuff you don't want at all, just because you have to use up the ability picks, but you're advancing slowly through the levels so you haven't opened up much yet. I think the fix would be to just move a bunch of the open talent picks down a few levels so that people could pick Weapon Style etc. a little earlier. There doesn't need to be a huge change -- once you get a few levels under your belt and your choices open up, it's a non-issue -- but a little more choice at like levels 2-4 wouldn't hurt.

Not sure it would. How many different high level abilities are you going to spam realistically? I suspect no more than two. You'd have those anyway so it's not like having a bunch more would actually make you more powerful. A lot more tactical versatility. A lot of low and high level abilities overlap -- for example, low level powers and high level powers often give the same inspirations / afflictions, but with different costs or secondary effects. So there's tradeoffs and choices as to which to get at what level so you have a full spread of tactical options. If you could save points, you could blow that game out of the water and just take the highest level versions of everything. Said another way, yeah, in any one fight you're only using one or two abilities (generally in the beta, block pain and silent scream) but from fight to fight that changes depending on what you're facing and what you need and so forth.

Given the resource cost of abilities goes up at higher levels I don't know that that would be all that great an idea. I suppose high level passives might be more powerful, though at lower levels the passives don't seem to get better at higher power levels. Well, it would make Ascendants kinda whacky at least. I think the answer is more open talents at low levels. Once you get a few levels under your belt it's much less of a problem, but initially it's a bit ehh.

A few more open talent choices at low levels would help. Main issue I've felt with multiclasses was not having anything to pick at low levels. I think it makes sense for single and multiclass characters to have the same number of total abilities.

To an extent, yes, but this balance is skewed atm. a) The single target damage that weapon builds put out now is so much higher than the aoe caster damage that there's not much benefit to this aoe as single target allows you to focus targets faster b) Casters are severely limited in resources and run out of steam very fast, 2/eocounter per spell level doesn't cut it c) Even as far as aoe goes, a multiclass barb would put out a lot more aoe damage over the course of a fight. "Spell damage" wizard has better alpha but that's doesn't count for much. They could probably track this with stats, but they'll have to compare to optimized dps builds. The damage of an optimized and non optimized weapon build differs dramatically. Whereas there's not much to optimizing a caster. Compared to casual builds that don't optimize much casters should still do pretty well. Yeah, this is probably the difference: I suspect there are some optimized physical-weapon builds that are cleaning clocks, but I also suspect most people aren't using them, either because detailed build guides haven't been posted or because people don't want to make overbalanced characters.

This is something they should be able to pull out of the telemetric data. I know they've talked about single class rogues doing poorly and multiclass doing well, so they should have similar data on casters.

If you're having problems here, you can kite them over to the explosive barrels by the kobolds.

Oddly I felt more choice-starved with a fighter/rogue than with a pure fighter. If you're going fighter/rogue and not planning on much stealth or escape, there's not much reason to pick (for example) Backstab, and as a dual class you're stuck in the low level powers for longer.

My current plan is to test a swashbuckler shield riposte tank, partly because it looks very strong on paper and partly because the party may need a rogue in there somewhere. edit: I also plan on doing Pallegina as a Paladin / Chanter, it's a very potent combo due to the auras and summons etc.

Yeah, my "feel" is that maybe it should drop to a 15 second base instead of a 20 second base, BUT having to wait to cast effectively really is a big hit since the opening seconds of combat are the most tactically valuable, so i might be wrong and 20 might be fine. I also suspect there's going to be a late-game issue where it takes progressively longer and longer to hit max focus. Early game, a single blunderbuss blast might be enough, depending on build; by midgame even an optimized build is gonna need dual blundy's ; by late game . . . you're gonna need more than just the initial alpha strike damage to get your numbers up past rookie levels. So it might balance out. After this run I'll try a "scaled up" run of the beta at like 10th level and see how it differs.

Yeah, this is an issue, especially since when you Ascend you have a very limited time window in which to cast as much as possible. The funny thing is there are conditionals for "Has 90 focus" or whatever so for the first few levels . . .

You have to reassign crew to work on the emergency, using Report!

If they take out your sails you have to repair or you won't ever catch up. Also sometimes they'll get in a loop where they just sail away from you forever