Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

What happens if you add in damage bonuses like Might, Soul Whip and the like? My worry is that the change to make it more granular and less punishing is that high penetration low damage weapons will be marginalized and it'll be back to damage is king just like in PoE. Having a reason to not take Sabres and Great Swords would be nice besides self gimping. Those *should* just multiply the effects. Since penetration modifier is a percentage, other damage modifiers should just all roll in and be increased or decreased the same way.i think.

Yeah, honestly the "No Pen" messages get spammy and annoying, they're so frequent now. More for my own satisfaction than anything else I went and made a little spreadsheet comparing the greatsword and the estoc under the new system vs. various AR's. Greatsword and Estoc stats: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1207831090 I think the math is accurate under the new (upcoming) system, but I may have made some mistakes: https://i.imgur.com/pD5uCL4.jpg conclusion's pretty straightforward: low pen, high dps weapons will be best at the very high and low ends of the damage tree, and also will probably function better (slightly) even one point under target DR (because their inherent 30% damage bonus will exceed the 25% penalty). That's a little counterintuitive so you might want to playtest a 30%/20%/20% penalty instead of 25%/25%/25% .

I kinda get it from a lore perspective but it'll be a royal pain if the Priest Companion has the same restriction; from what I understand she's supposed to be an eothas worshipper and that's a really harsh limitation. Mechanically right now it looks like the "best" option is a priest of Wael, but it's hard to say definitely and I haven't play tested.

Yeah, i'm basically taking "all of these cast times and durations are placeholder values" as a given. You're right that a lot of this discussion is probably premature pending the correction of weapon swing times and spell cast/times durations. Still,that never got me to shut up before

I haven't tried a multi-class cipher yet but a single-class cipher has it rough right now (especially if they pick Ascendant or Beguiler). The penetration system as currently implemented along with the lack of grazes together make it very difficult to gain focus quickly, cast times are very very long, most powers don't graze, and frequently miss (even with maxed-out Perception). I'm not sure how to fix the problem, since multi-class ciphers seem to be gaining focus VERY fast. Maybe the return of the general talents will help a bit, as might the upcoming tweaks to penetration. Other thoughts: Now that everyone is per-encounter on all abilities, the Focus-building mechanic is more hindrance than help in a lot of ways; you only get a chance to use one or two powers at most per fight, whereas other casters can dump their whole skillbook every battle with no reservations. One thing I'd suggest is dramatically faster cast times for cipher powers; since they have to build focus, they should be able to cast fairly quickly relative to other casters, who don't have to go through that first step. I'd also suggest letting a lot more cipher powers Graze; they're targeting the soul after all. Past that . . hrm. CIphers are also really limited in their ability to give themselves the Concentration buff; wizards have at least two different ways to get that buff in the first two spell levels (spirit shield and arcane veil), Ciphers don't have anything comparable, and it's really important given the new concentration/interrupt system on casting and the longer cast times. Similarly Ciphers don't seem to have a good way to Interrupt opposing casters unless Mental Binding does so de facto via paralyzation.

yes actually I'm pretty happy with this. Main thing I was looking for was a return of open talents in some form for all classes. We got that, that's great, that's the big thing. Plenty of time for further refinement moving forward. Maybe they'll need to fill in the class trees a bit further too, we'll see.

Well, currently, devoted aren't limited to a single weapon, just to the weapons they're proficient in. And they'll have a couple of slots, or at least they currently do. If you're going devoted / priest of Berath, pick greatswords at start.

Yeah don't know why I typed that already fixed.

The priest seems pretty important so far on the beta; the default party comes with a Berath priest and he's very useful. Main issue I'd point to is that for most classes the penetration mechanic really heavily encourages weapon switching, and priests are somewhat locked into their class weapon. Still that's not insurmountable and the class weapons have a potent lash for an added damage types which will help with that . Past that it's hard to say because all casters need third cast times tweaked; it's clear spell balancing isn't finished yet.

Ok yeah that's a good point re : penetration and I haven't seen raised; priests are kinda "locked in" to their weapon choices by virtue of their subclass magic weapons. You could of course take the proficiency for that weapon BUT the optimal strategy right now is to be proficient in one high-pen/low dps weapon and one high dps/low pen weapon and priests have a harder time doing that.

Well, that speaks to an additional reason I'd proposed using the higher-level proficiency slots for this: those are gonna be wasted anyway. I think most players aren't going to want six weapon proficiencies. They're gonna want, like, two, maybe three, and everything past that is wasted, and it'll just be people clicking random weapons because they don't care. So let people use those slots to individualize their characters further with some talents that let them build their character concept out a bit (i.e., "good at two weapon fighting" or "the resolve of a bear" or whatever) and give some small game benefit.

I've seen a few related suggestions, and the most I liked are: v1. - have these weapon style talents given to all classes - while fighters get some sort of Greater Specialization starting from power level 4/5. v2. - have these weapon style talents distributed around martial classes: - paladin: can get access to TwoHanded and 1H&Shield styles - rogue: TwoWeapon and OneHanded - monk: TwoWeapon - cipher: TwoHanded; and TwoWeapon (but at power level 5+) - barbarian: TwoWeapon and TwoHanded - fighter: all four This would be better than the current implementation sure but it'd still be fairly limiting -- for example, you've left Rangers out, as well as the ranged talents, so what about the gun paladin or gun cipher? What about the melee ranger? And for that matter, what about wizards and priests using summoned weapons? There's no reason for arbitrary class role limitations and both games have studiously avoided them otherwise --- see, e.g., wizards wearing plate if they want to. Restricting ranged weapon skills to only Rangers or locking paladins out of two-weapon fighting or whatever just seems like a step backward.

I think that's a premature assumption; focus gain right now isn't really balanced at all; for that matter, most cipher powers aren't balanced at all (Whisper of Treason takes six seconds to cast for ten seconds of effect, and misses half the time now with no grazing!). I'd suggest actually playing a pure cipher right now -- given the miss rates it can take an extraordinarily long time to gain focus. I don't think I've cast Domination yet, I've never gotten up to 30 focus in a fight, it takes too long. Fighters are always going to have the stances and the other fighter abilities; they don't need every weapon skill. More importantly though it's just a roleplaying thing. People want to be able to say "My paladin is skilled in guns" or "my barbarian is good with two-handers." Yeah, the weapon proficiencies do that to an extent but it's a matter of being able to personalize your build beyond just clicking the "multi class into fighter" checkbox. For a lot of people, multiclassing is just an option they're not interested in, for personal or narrative or roleplay reasons.

A few answers. First is that people want their characters to be skilled at their jobs without having to multiclass. For example, someone might always just play barbarian characters with huge two-handers in every RPG they play, want to replicate that in this, and feel shut out of that build because they don't want to play a fighter/barbarian, they want to play a pure barbarian. You run into the same issue with almost any "RP" style build, especially builds carried forward from the first game -- for example, if someone wanted to make a Bleak Walker paladin that specialized in guns (which would have been perfectly viable in the first game, if a bit niche), they couldn't really do that in this game without dual-classing their paladin as a ranger, and where did this pet come from, I didn't have a pet in the first game, etc. Second answer is you should be able to have some degree of "weapon specialist" in your party without having to have a fighter in the party. If you have a paladin and a barbarian instead, they should perform "well enough" to fill in. They don't have to be equally good but they should be able to play in the same ballpark so that fighters don't become a requirement. Allowing some degree of open weapon talent selection makes it easier for non-fighter classes to fill the fighter role in a pinch. Third answer is that some classes have to be relatively good at using weapons even if weapons aren't their specialty. For example, ciphers have to be good with a weapon to generate focus, so requiring them to multiclass into ranger or fighter or whatever to gain weapon talents makes it a lot harder to play a single-class cipher. Basically the short answer is people shouldn't have to multiclass if they don't want to, and if you have to multiclass to get effective weapon talents, people are going to feel compelled to multiclass rather than playing the characters they envision and want.

I think the notion of "paying a price for multiclassing" is the wrong approach. The original game has probably the most flexible class-based character building system of any cRPG ever sold. It's amazingly flexible, both in the stat design, talent design, class design; you can make muscle wizards and melee rangers and high-Int barbarians and there's a valid way to make everything work; pretty much any character build you can dream up, within the confines of the system, you can find a way to make it work. The new system adds multiclassing and takes away open talent selection. If those changes add more depth and freedom to the existing system, they're a step forward; if they don't, they're a step backward. They aren't, necessarily, a package deal, not at this stage; that's what beta means. My personal take is that the current implementation is a step backward, mostly because locking what were previously open talents into specific class trees makes for more regimented, less open builds; for example, if I want to build a Cipher who specializes in ranged weapons, I am now strongly encouraged to multiclass as a ranger, even if I have no interest in roleplaying a ranger, dealing with a pet, etc. It's a more regimented, pre-plotted, locked system. In that sense, it doesn't really matter if X number of builds was possible under the old system and Y number of builds are possible under the new; what matters is that the builds in the old system were less regimented and the builds in the new system are moreso. It's the difference between driving a car and riding a train: you might be able to get to plenty of places either way, but in a car you have more freedom as to how you get there; in a train, you're on rails. To build a bit on my earlier suggestion, what I would suggest is returning general talents to the proficiency pool, specifically as follows (presuming I'm correct that you get a new proficiency slot every five levels): Such a system would preserve the free-form character building of the first game through the "talent layer" without really touching the multiclassing system; multiclassing would then be an additional way to specialize your character, rather than a replacement for the prior game's freeform character building. The limited number of additional talents would also reduce the balance implications -- you're talking four non-weapon talents total over the life of your character, significantly fewer than in the first game. Edit: I should probably note that each individual class retains a lot of specialization under this system. I haven't looked at each new tree in detail, but nothing in this proposal would (for example) give stances to paladins or let ciphers use Twinned Shot. It would just give players a few tools to shape their characters a bit and wander a little bit "off the rails," which is important for a lot of reasons, not least of them the sense that your character reflects your unique choices.

One valid build choice now is to simply take one high pen weapon and one high dps weapon on each character. I think the real problems now are 1) penetration buff and debuff *powers* are overvalued And 2) armor choice has become counter intuitive and Byzantine; for example, it's a valid choice to take off chain and scale when fighting high penetration enemies (because downgrading to leather is just as good for avoiding the 30% malus), and it's pointless for a wizard in padded armor to cast bulwark against the elements vs the sand blights (they have 9 pen, and padded has 3 AR vs. burn, +5 is .

I feel the need to point out that the default cipher in the PoE1 character creator uses greatswords. It's basically the most standard cipher archetype. The lore talks about the original "mind hunters" using stilettos and hatchets, so that's why I said that. I admittedly didn't think of what the default classes have equipped. Well, you aren't far wrong. The most popular PoE 1 Cipher builds are probably either ranged weapons or dual wielding melee. The main issue is that regardless of which specialization you pick, if you're playing a PoE 1 Cipher you do have to spend a lot of level-up talents specializing in some type of weapon, because a weapon is a huge part of the class. That's not as big an issue in the current beta because it's low-level still and other problems are even more visible, but it'll become huge at higher levels unless they implement a lot of weapon choice options for Ciphers. Problem is 1) doing so as "powers" limits spell selection in a big way, and 2) given the current system it looks like ciphers will get railroaded into a particular build type (i.e., two handed, etc.) unless they choose to multiclass and cut off their top-level abilities. It's a mess all around but it highlights the limitations of the new system really well because it puts the class in between a rock and a hard place: they need to generate focus by attacking with a weapon, but they won't be able to specialize in using a weapon, or at least not the weapon of their choice. That's why I think the best option is probably to allow high-level "proficiency" slots to be spent on "general" talent proficiencies, as before. Make people take weapons at level one but after that open it up to defensive or specialist "proficiencies," i.e., PoE 1 talents.

I feel the need to point out that the default cipher in the PoE1 character creator uses greatswords. It's basically the most standard cipher archetype. Hah! Good catch. Ciphers have to do damage with their weapons to gain focus, so limiting their secondary weapon talents is actually a really big deal and a harsh pointless punishment for them. Without the secondary talents, they can't generate focus as quickly, can't cast as often, etc.

Everybody should have access to all of these. From a design perspective removing that wide-open choice is one of the biggest changes from the first game, and there's no particular reason you shouldn't be able to make a dual-wielding paladin or a mace-and-shield barbarian if you wanted. Or, hell, a two-handed specialist cipher. It's just an arbitrary limitation that seems driven more by UI limitations than anything else.

I like having a gratuitously slow combat speed option. I'd prefer turn based honestly but slow as heck with all the pause options turned on is a nice second.

Yeah, that's part of why i was thinking add a general talent pool to the "proficiencies" menu. It's already there so you wouldn't need a complete redesign.

It's too complicated and it doesn't really solve the problem, imho. It'll confuse people who picked single class, doesn't solve the problem for multiclass people who want more unique / diverse builds.

What I'd suggest is that after about level 10, allow players to take weapon passives or the defensive & elemental talents as proficiency slots. Slayer talents were usually a trap option, drop them. Defensive talents should probably be reconstituted as "resist _stat_ afflictions" but as talents.

Quadratic equations can have multiple optimal solutions. This is of course incredibly pedantic, but it's also a point about how the more complex the system the less likely you are to have definitive outcomes, especially when working with large numbers of variables. and the mathematics major defeats the english major yet again (With the quadratic yeah you're getting into how you define "solution"; you've narrowed the set of potential solutions down to two equally possible candidates).

Do you feel that -1 AR is enough compared to the 100% Recovery Penalty? All depends. Some fights it makes a difference others it doesn't. Main benefit is it's always available so it's still there even if the skald misses with hel-hyraf's or the wizard misses with expose vulnerabilities. The AoE of Carnage feels smaller though so I'm not sure if the Carnage is procc'ing it or not effectively.