Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Good question. I dunno. My instinct would be "let Devoted take non-weapon proficiencies but not specific weapon proficiencies", i.e, two handed style Ok, extra Poleaxe proficiency no. Devoted seem buggy and implemented weirdly right now though (you get two proficiencies in character creation?) so I'm not sure what direction they're going with that.

Yeah, I don't think you should have to mandatory multi-class fighter in order to be at least somewhat specialized in, say, two-weapon fighting, or two-handed-weapon fighting. I also don't think you should have to mandatory multi-class ranger in order to specialize in ranged weapons, no. I completely support your monk/cipher agenda. From what I remember two-weapon fighting on monks was something that was valid in the first game and I don't see why it shouldn't be in the second. I mean, you're still making tradeoffs. The monk/cipher won't have confident aim or stances, for example. I should probably also mention that "roleplaying" is a big part of this kind of thing. I understand why you want to keep the debate focused on gameplay mechanics and it makes sense to have that debate, but roleplay considerations do matter too. It's not so much that I "want the power" as that I want a character who's good at their job (which, to take the example of cipher, is at least half "dealing weapon damage") without feeling like I have to shove the round peg of my character concept into the square hole that is multiclassing. I don't wanna be a ranger! Where the *#@$# did this bear come from all of a sudden? (You say "take Ghost Heart"; I respond "Oh great now I'm haunted by the memory of a nonexistent bear. Eothas really %^$&ed my dude up!) I mean, I ain't asking for anything that wasn't already part of my character in the first game! If it was fighter or ranger or w/e exclusive then, great, they should keep those exclusives! But being arbitrarily locked out of stuff that was a core part of my character concept in the first game (for example, I really liked my dual-weilding barbarian, or my gun specialist cipher) just feels like an arbitrary step backwards.

Yeah, I feel like currently you have to pick either a DPS or CC cipher build, you can't do both any more (and you can't really do much CC at all). Partly it's the greatly restricted power selection -- with only one power slot per level and the fact that some of those slots have to go for supporting passives (not to mention having to choose between biting and draining whip), you just have a really restricted "spell book." It's also a lot harder to gain focus now than it used to be (partly due to the grazing mechanics, partly the armor penetration system, partly the absence of the general open talents like marksman and gunner etc). But even once you get focus there's not much to use it on. Mental Binding has a cast time of six seconds, a recovery time of three seconds, and a duration of . . . six seconds. You're functionally paralyzing yourself more by casting it than you are the target.

True, it's not an absolute requirement, but you're giving up a lot if you don't. It's easy to say you don't need two-weapon fighting but a 20% boost to action speed is huge. Similarly, yeah, you can be a ranged character without dual-classing Ranger -- but not having Marksman and Gunner will make a big difference in effectiveness over the life of the character. And the return of a few open talents to general availability doesn't take anything away from the specialist classes. Fighters still get stances and Confident Aim; rangers still get Driving Flight and (probably) Twinned Arrows.

Oh one additional point -- I will agree that I'd like to see a few more *active* abilities added to fighters and especially to Rangers. Rangers seem to have really suffered by having a lot of their prior defining class active abilities (rapid fire, powder burns) removed to become weapon proficiency modals.

Ok, this is very interesting especially in light of the upcoming changes to the penetration system. Right now, the Estoc does 40% less damage than the Greatsword, which leads to the counter-intuitive result that at AR 6, you'll actually be doing more damage with a greatsword than with an estoc, because under the upcoming graduated system it'll only be a -25% penalty at that AR. That -25% penalty is right in line with the damage malus on the Poleax and Morningstar though. So it does seem like it would be a good idea to bump the Estoc up to that damage category, especially since the poleax and morningstar are both dual-damage-type and the Estoc is single-type.

This post seems to be making some assumptions that I'm not sure are valid. Primarily, just because some passive abilities are becoming available through the proficiency table, doesn't mean all talents from the first game are. For one thing, the "Weapon Focus" groups no longer exist in deadfire; I'm not sure why they would be returning, as they've been replaced by the individual weapon proficiencies. (Edit: oh you mean the individual Barbarian class ability Weapon Focus. Why do you think that will become generally available? Not all passives are becoming talents). You also seem to be assuming a new proficiency slot every three levels instead of every four. We also know that not all passive abilities are becoming general talents; for example, fighters are retaining weapon specialization and (I believe?) Fearless as fighter-unique. So I'd suggest first waiting on implementation and seeing which actual specific passives become available as talents and which don't, because I think a lot of the fears you're describing are premature and won't be born out in implementation. All that said, I made my case for opening up the open proficiencies in the prior thread : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94357-removing-non-class-specific-talents-was-a-bad-idea/?p=1954672 I think the case for doing so is fairly simple: the first game had an open free-form character creation system, the new system without open proficiencies puts characters on rails. Without some kind of open proficiency, if you want a character to be good at ranged weapons, you're gonna need to multiclass ranger; if you want to be good at twoweapon fighting, you'll need to multiclass fighter. That ends up leading to more homogeneity, not less. That said, I'd agree that not all prior open talents should return. There's no place for the Weapon Focus groups in the new game, definitely. I think the main "unlocks" should be the four Weapon Styles, the utility talents like Deep Pockets and Arms Bearer, and then perhaps the elemental and slayer and defensive talents, but only with a high level requirement so that players can only pick one or two of them. I also dont think there should be very many total proficiency slots -- this stuff should be character gravy, not main abilities. Two weapon proficiencies at base level and four more over the life of the character seems plenty.

One thing that might add some perspective on this -- I didn't really understand the why of the penetration system until Josh explained it in some SA posts. So that's why the Pen system uses a harsh threshold and why they're unlikely to move to a purely incremental (i.e., +/- 5% per point or w/e). They basically moved to the Penetration system because 1) it's percentage based so deals with very high damage values better, and 2) they like that there's a clear line that tells players "whoops, time to change strategies."

Some of that stuff seems to have been added in with the new refined Interrupt system and the changes to the concentrate/interrupt mechanic.

Under the new gradual system, base values for weapons would have to be revised. But in order to do so, lets list the weapons and their effects first Here's a spreadsheet I started. Feel free to add missing stuff, as it's faster together. One correction: war bows and hunting bows deal slash/pierce damage not just piercing. I think the next step is a chart comparing each weapon's performance vs each AR from 0 to 15 or so.

1) One change you could make would be to set the penetration falloff thresholds at 40% for the first point, then 20% , then 10%. Then at 6 AR, the Greatsword and Estoc are doing roughly the same damage (some slight differences, but pretty close; estoc has a point higher max, GS has a slightly higher min). 2) Past that, I suspect that the majority of enemy armor ratings do fall within the range from 6 to 10 where the Estoc is superior. That can all of course be pushed around with debuffs though and the GS has an extra damage type and that matters. 3) Finally though there's an additional consideration that I'd have to tally up the math for: how much better is the greatsword or estoc at each damage value? Thing is, for a lot of AR values, while the greatsword is better, it's not better by that much, whereas for the armor values where the Estoc is superior, it's dramatically superior. For example, at AR 4, according to my original chart, the Estoc is doing from 14.3 min to 20.8 max damage, while the GS is doing from 18 to 29; in other words, the Estoc is doing 80% min damage and 71% max damage vs the greatsword (due to overpenetration). Meanwhile, at AR 9, the GS is doing 5.4 damage min and 7.25 max damage, or 49% of the Estoc's min damage and 45% of its max damage. Those are of course base values only but the describe an important differential: when the Estoc is bad, it isn't as bad, and when it's better, it's better.

Are the bonuses and penalties additive or multiplicative? I'd been assuming that the penetration penalty / bonus was "multiply all damage by 1.3" or "multiply all damage by 0.3", not "add 30% of base damage to total." If it's additive you're correct, if it's multiplicative I'm not sure might or other bonuses would matter -- they'd get multiplied down or up just like the rest of the total.

According to a Sawyer post on SA, basically they got a lot of feedback from players who didn't understand the mechanic or got confused by it. Basically every change in PoE 2 is a result of player feedback in some way. I'm kinda ehhh on it. I liked the old system but I like the abuseability of the new system too.

This is an issue without a one size fits all answer. Spells need an across the board rebalancing. Cipher powers especially are all kinds of messed up right now; many of them have cast + recovery times equal to their durations, plus the lack of grazing hurts ciphers doubly, since they miss while building focus then miss again while casting. Net result is that most spellcasters can dump their whole spell books in the time it takes a cipher to land one or two effects. I've also had a weird thing happen sometimes where the cipher power rebounds and hits.my caster instead of the target. Not sure what causes that.

I'm always going to use the slowest speed option available. If the game had a 'virtual turn based' setting where it auto paused after every action, I'd use that exclusively (and I pretty much do via the pause options).

Not quite -- exceptional plate has an AR of 11, which the Skulking Terror can penetrate. On the other side, even an Exceptional arquebus isn't enough to penetrate against a 12 piercing AR, not without some kind of help.

It's a legit concern I think. There are some monsters in the beta that have VERY high armor ratings (I've seen 12 piercing, for example), and some that have very high Pen ratings (highest I've seen is 11). No weapon or armor available in the beta matches either of those; the only way to cope is to stack buffs / debuffs. Still both are manageable if you have alternate strategies etc. I think it's going to be *really* important to have an alternate damage type weapon, so that might be an issue for some priests if they rely too much on their deity weapon. Still it's definitely something that can be managed through balancing and I'm sure Obsidian's aware of the potential dangers, so we'll kinda have to see how it plays out.

yet another brick in the anti-gun hegemony I feel like guns should do crush damage. Those giant lead balls pancake and mess stuff up big time. They're not exactly modern rifled bullets with jackets. Even if it's only like 50-75% dmg. You get hit with that wearing plate armor and you're going to have a mighty huge crater in that thing even if it doesn't fully penetrate. I could see it for the arquebus at least. Would make it very powerful though.

yet another brick in the anti-gun hegemony

earlier we made this same observation 'bout ap piercing weapon lack of diversity. warhammer isn't an ap weapon on par with stiletto or estoc, but is a possibility for a weapon-focused build which stacks ap. am suspecting is one o' the reasons why devoted, after the proficiency bug is fixed, may become far less appealing than it current is. take estoc and then face a high armour and high deflection foe immune to piercing. ... well p00p. now face the fire blight boss... of DOOM. "sorry guys. i am gonna need to sit this one out." HA! Good Fun! Oh, it's not even just a problem with the Devoted; it's a HUGE issue for rangers and ranged ciphers too, because like every single ranged weapon in the game does Piercing damage exclusively. That's why the Stormcaller soulbound bow was the preferred endgame weapon for pretty much all ranged classes: it did piercing/shock damage. A lot will depend on what unique & soulbound ranged weapons come available. A piercing / burning blunderbuss might be preferable to a piercing-only arquebus, for example, just because the extra four (five?) points of AR might not be worth getting locked into a single damage type. We'll have to see.

I think I would agree with this too, if the target has no armor I don't see why PEN should do anything. If it doesn't then there isn't really much to discourage the player from going around naked with all his non tank characters. Well I think enemies should do enough damage that they don't need a 30% bonus to be a threat to naked characters... Seems more logical and easier to balance to me, but I dunno. I certainly don't want everyone to run around naked to cheese mechanics. That was one of the big problems with the current iteration of the system that's getting phased out in the next patch; it made sense to do things like change into clothing to fight xaurips etc. Even with the new system there are edge cases; it'll make sense to wear all leather armor vs. the Skulking Terror; he has a Penetration of 11, so the only thing beta armor can accomplish is preventing the 30% malus, and leather does that just fine.

I feel that you didn't consider the factor of critical attacks here, low pen high dps weapon has more potential than high pen ones when critical attack. So I think high dps weapon's overall performance is better than it is in the sheet. Yeah, I wasn't sure how to really account for that given how much variation there will be in a given character's critical hit chance; theoretically, I suspect it should even out -- if we say that, for example, a critical hit rate of 5% is statistically equivalent to a 10% boost in damage, then multiplying each of the values in that table by 10% should give parallel results. The actual math may be more complicated than that though since critical hits also give extra penetration, which will push the values on the table around a bit in a way I'm not sure how to model. Theoretically though yeah both weapons will outperform the sheet values because of other character factors -- weapon lash enchants, character critical hit rates, Might and Dex bonuses, etc. Comparison should just be considered a thumbnail sketch not a decisive comparison; other posters here are much better at that sort of thing than I am.

That is true. But it has nothing to do with the talents but all with the spells and abilites those casters have. FOr example a wizard can fill the role of a barbarian because he can summon Citzal's Spirit Lance and go wild with Martial Power. He can grap self buffs and replace the fighter tank. Those are all results of the spell design and not of the talants which only round the pickture a bit. I'll go a bit farther: I'm not sure that it's even a problem. If people want to make wizard fighters with summoned weapons .. .great? If people want to make fighter wizards who just use scrolls constantly . . . also great? I'm perfectly happy if any given class in the game can, with careful planning and character building, at least do an ok job filling in the role of every other class.

above quoted is the point. can't look at weapons with blinders affixed. estoc is superior 'gainst high armour, and 'gainst low armour it is hardly doing paltry damage. more significant, bosses will predictable have high armour. being able to mop up mobs a bit quicker with the great sword makes up for relative ineffectuality 'gainst high armour foes? play long game and estoc wins as particular with overwhelming ap it is doing good consistent damage 'gainst low armour adversaries and will continue to be a far more viable option 'gainst the handful o' heavily armoured foes. with the new announced scheme for weapon proficiencies, there will be a much greater motivation to choose a particular weapon with which to specialize. am not seeing such as a particular difficult decision making process. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, I'm not saying you're wrong. The main thing is that you get two weapon proficiencies to start (from what I can tell,we won't be able to pick open talents until 4th level), so the smart play is probably to pick a high-pen weapon as your primary, and a low-pen/high-dps weapon as your secondary (preferably of an alternative damage type). The modals will also play a role, too; for example, the club seems really nice for Ciphers due to the anti-will modal. One big issue is that most of the very high penetration weapons deal exclusively Piercing damage (Estoc, Arbalest, Arquebus, etc.) and there are piercing-immune monsters already in the beta, plus monsters with extremely high pierce armor (12 is the highest i've seen so far), so such may be fairly common in the general game. From what Josh has said on SA, there will be at least some "damage sponge" type monsters with low armor but very high health pools (though I'm a little skeptical of how much difference this will make personally). All that said yeah you're right that some kind of armor-penetration ability -- whether that's a high-pen weapon or a armor debuff or both -- is going to be a must-have option on every character. But mechanically speaking it will be advantageous to have an alternate, high-dps/low pen option also.

By Overwhelming do you mean over-penetrating? The 30% bonus from "over penetrating" when your penetration is double opponent's armor rating should be accounted for in the chart -- that's why the Estoc does 14.3-20.8 damage vs. AR 0, 1, 2, 3, & 4, instead of the Estoc base damage of 11-16. Thing is that's not enough to catch up to the Great Sword's inherently higher base DPS against AR 3 & 4, and then against very low AR's (0, 1, 2) they both overpenetrate and the Greatsword does 23.4 - 37.7 damage. The high penetration weapon (the Estoc) is still superior vs. anything with an armor rating between 7 and 11. It's also generally preferable because the downside risk is lower -- if your Greatsword can't penetrate enemy armor it drops down *dramatically*, but the Estoc still does an okay job against most everything. The real weirdness is that the Greatsword is superior against AR 6, because even though it's suffering a 25% penetration penalty, that's still less than its base-dps advantage. So those numbers probably need some addtional tweaking. To really do this comparison right I'd have to go through and make chart for every weapon -- there are slight differences between warhammers and maces for example (both high pen but different) and low-pen, high-dps options like clubs. On the whole though it looks like right now the smart play is to take one high pen weapon and one high dps weapon (ideally with different damage types in case you run into an immune foe).