Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

<-- Pale Elf

I posted this on SA first but I'll cross post it here:

I wouldn't care for most games but this franchise is different.

Yeah, I picked up a copy at the local B&N just because, hey, an actual magazine Only "new" info I saw was a very small screenie of a large Junk ship with four cannon slots. No cosmic dog or parrot code, North American edition, sadness

Yeah that seems like a design flaw / bug.

Actually that reminds me: a lot of cipher powers don't list the Penetration value of the damage attack.

Just to verify, summoned weapons give the proficiency automatically, right? Or not?

Is there any way to respec characters with the console?

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/928179527045115591/5B2DEFF45BEF563F0D007FC28DA1E66A05809538/ Eyepatch doesn't line up with the eye.

Overall the "feel" of the game is dramatically improved. Like, this feels like a release candidate. A release candidate that still has room for polish, but the feel is there. This is my list so far: character creation: Nobody who isn't a ranger can pick ranged talents, which is kinda annoying -- make Gunner, etc. open talents also multiclass characters need more first level choices the ai could use more preformatted stuff; there should be an AI preset for each class pairing (i.e., one for Swashbuckler, one for Herald, etc) mental binding could still use improvement -- six seconds effect, 3 sec cast, 3 sec recovery! it would be really helpful if there were some numbers on the weapon proficiencies in character creation. It would be really helpful if we could see the stats for the equipped weapon in mouseover just like we can see armor and defenses. Would be nice if we could copy paste behavior AI sets. It would be nice if we could script weapon switching and weapon modals in the AI The eyepatch hat doesn't line the eyepatch up right with the wood elf head edit: the Ascendant subclass can't pick "has Ascendant buff" in the AI scripting as a conditional to determine when to cast powers

The example for rares or unique passives: Retribution, deep faith, dirty fighting, hold the line, ancient memory. There's no immediate overlap between of those in the classes I've seen so far. Of course, I haven't checked monk, barbarian or ranger yet so maybe they'll surprise me. If your problem is that there is usually only one 'best' choice, then I agree with you. Usually you do only have one universally good choice whereas the rest is bad or very situatutional. But that is a seprate issue from the generic passives being selectable by other classes, which I still highly prefer over them having no passives at all. Well, mostly what I'm thinking of is that the various "weapon style" passives were added to a wide range of classes -- ciphers, rogues, etc. can pick two-handed style or whatever -- but the "ranged" talents haven't been, so if you want to make a ranged rogue or a ranged cipher it's inherently less optimal. The "bull's will" type passives seem mostly a nonissue. I would suggest moving a lot of the gimpier passives to lower-level choices, so that people have more flexibility picking them.

In the AI behavior editor, it would really be convenient to be able to copy/paste behavior sets between scripts. I'd like to be able to combine, say "paladin agressive" and "chanter aggressive" into one script for my herald, for example, or copy the "charm" behavior list out of "cipher cautious" and put it in "cipher aggressive" without manually retyping everything. EDIT: also wait is the bestiary working now in the beta?

The expansion of choices is good but I'd like to see more. For example, let people who aren't rangers take "gunner" and "marksman." I also think a lot of the choices should be lower-level, so multiclass characters can pick them earlier when there aren't as many other choices available.

The descriptions for "two handed style", "weapon and shield style," and "one handed style" should specify that they only apply to melee weapons (unless indeed they're different now and apply to ranged weapons also)

Sadness: Ciphers cannot choose the Gunner talent

There were two things: you can't auto-attack a team member, and this one. Feeling strange about this one ^^ because:- a cap of 100, would achieve the same thing, i.e. prevent "from scaling away into infinity" - in PoE1 we could achieve up to 43 dexterity; although do note: it was not worth it - hard caps do smell bad. Sometimes it's indicative that the game loses it's balance outside of certain range; and that the system can't handle it gracefully itself. No hard cap in PoE1 was a healthy sign in my book, and it was really well handled, as dropping attributes was stinging, while maxing them to the roof was affected by intrinsic diminishing returns; not to mention that there were often wise to smooth the spread a little: think of MIG and DEX both contributing to dps, and at a very simplistic level: 15x15 > 20x10. It's no big deal though) I was a lilttle skeptical of the attribute cap at first but 35 is pretty high -- that's about where the "soft cap" of effectiveness was anyway in the first game. If it were lower I'd have more concern but at 35 it seems almost more like a UI feature -- "it's ok, you can stop bothering now" -- and it might make character planning a little simpler and give the designers more room to play around with weird bonuses (like drugs, etc.) I mean I see where you're coming from and it's definitely the most interesting change listed but it might work out to be a good thing iafter all.

That all looks great!

In short, none of that has to mean anything, but one can watch the patterns and make educated guesses when something might be coming down the line. Every time there is a change to a steam title, the fact that there was a change goes on something of a public record. By watching the timing of those changes you can get a feel for when to start expecting updates. With regards to the Backer Beta, updates on the Public branch (what we see) have followed shortly after there were updates to the (internal only) Stable and press branches. Again, you can't read too much into the logs. Maybe the internal team finds a bug as they're gearing up for Beta 4. Maybe the updates only concern the GM version. Maybe this is just all prep for a PAX East press build. There's honestly no way to know for sure. But in any event, its just another tool to glimpse the pace of development. What I'm hearing is: if there isn't a beta by the end of the day, I should get so angry my underwear twists itself into tight little knots

That's why you aren't a drug monk with maxed alchemy skill!

I don't want to get into a I don't want to get into an SA derail but I honestly think it's one of the best discussion forums on the internet now -- ironically a much better forum than it was five years ago. The paywall and the active moderation and the relatively small size mean it hasn't gone toxic in the way a lot of other places have.

I liked it but I wish there were more game elements to manage, like wind direction and a weather gage; it's a bit shallow and thus not as engaging as i'd like. Still it's there and there's boarding for those who don't want to deal with it.

Yeah I'll give the new proposal a go if it gets implemented but my preferred system would be that Resolve gives you a chance to earn new empower points that you can then use as you choose during the fight. You'd have to change the way empowers refresh your spells but that'd be doable.

Only to Cipher powers. (specifically, it's +3 to Cipher Power Level while ascended, -1 cipher power level otherwise.) Thanks for the reply. It's too bad that it only applies to cipher powers; if it didn't, it would make a multiclass ascendant/??? a perfectly reasonable pick, especially with a Nature Godlike to counteract the drawback of the subclass. If they get Ascendants working they'll be a natural pick for multiclassing, yeah. You can use the other classes' abilities while you ramp up to full, then go to town with cipher powers.

Yes, but I don’t think cutting resolve will happen, it would throw off the inspiration/affliction system, etc. And even if resolve became valuable to crit specific builds, it would still be useful for “tank” builds, and others. Your concern about perception and resolve interacting, while valid, is not that far from how annihlating builds functioned in PoE. Even if someone pumped per, res, and dex to the detriment of other stats, they would still be increasing a lower base damage due to low might or lower base duration due to low intellect. Yeah it's too late in the cycle. I'm outta ideas though.

The other big problem with this change: where does this leave Concentration and Interrupt for non wizards who don't have a way to build concentration?