Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Suspect the phrasing you're looking for is "most optimized." The most optimized solution is the optimal solution; it's not just that optimal is superlative, it's that it's definitionally a unique solution; there can be only one optimal solution to a given problem.

You take extra 30% of damage if attacker's PEN is x2 or higher than your AR.In case of the mentioned Geist that would be: if you have 5 or less AR. Under the current system, you would take:> 30% of incoming damage, if you have AR of 6 or higher > 100% of incoming damage, if you have AR equal to: 5, 4 or 3 > 130% of incoming damage, if you have AR equal to 2 or less Ok, thanks. So against Xaurips, yeah, clothing is just as good as padded / leather. Against the Blights (fire, penetration 9) you'll take the 30% bonus damage if you wear padded (3x2 =6) but not if you wear leather (5x2=10). Against the Engwithan Titan, who I could be wrong but I believe has 10 penetration on his attacks, clothing will get you hit with the 30% bonus damage, as will leather (since it's weak to Crush), but any other armor in the beta from padded on up is equally good because all it does is prevent the 30% malus. Against the skulking terror you'd need six points of (piercing?) armor rating to avoid the +30% damage malus, so padded and leather are out entirely and you're better off with clothing, not sure without a chart in front of me what other armors would be worthwhile.

Well... There it is) I understand what you are saying. But I think lower cap of 75% damage reduction should not be touched. This guarantees that 25% of damage always goes through. That's 5% more than in PoE1, and 5% less than the 30% threshold set by Josh. This took me a second but then I realized you meant the other lower end! Low DR being high Pen and low pen being high DR etc. What exactly is the trigger for the 30% bonus damage? I suspect that not just the skulking terror, but a *lot* of enemies in the beta, you're probably better off fighting them wearing nothing but clothing (3 base AR, 0% recovery penalty) than bothering with armor. For example, all Xaurip weapons have a penetration of 5. From what I can tell of the chart above, there's no point in wearing leather or padded against Xaurips; just wear clothing.

I have tried to visualize this, as it's easier to get a wider view: poiler] Oh wow, I was not ex[ecting that kind of detailed response to my suggestion, I was just taking a stab. Honored to get that kind of response! Overall I actually prefer your v2 suggestion to mine (it seems less dramatic) BUT I think there's one issue that would need to be dealt with either way: the high and low end of the scale. Two examples from the current beta: Capping the extremes would keep that problem in -- in the first example, there's no reason to switch from Padded to Leather, and in the second, there's no reason to wear armor at all, you're taking max capped damage regardless. So that's the reason I was suggesting a sliding linear scale rather than one with capped extremes; with a slidiing linear progression, players always know that (for example) casting Bulwark Against the Elements and increasing their fire AR by five will always reduce incoming fire damage by 50%; there' s no weird gully where abilities or items become pointless because they player has failed to meet an invisible threshold. That said I'm not at all married to the five percent number -- I don't really care if it's 1% or 10% or a parabola function or the fibonnaci sequence, as such, so long as there aren't weird non-intuitive holes where sensible player actions like switching armor types or casting a Bulwark spell suddenly become pointless.

It also serves to backstop the system generally and keep everyone from just going full monty naked against high-penetration enemies. Like, why even wear armor at all against the Skulking Terror? It's only slowing you down! (unless you need it to prevent that 30% bonus damage).

What i'm wondering is: what's the point of padded armor right now? Or even of all lighter armors? Pretty soon we'll figure out the penetration #'s of all the monsters and it'll be fairly clear that there's a threshold you need to meet for armor to be worthwhile; below that threshold, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in wearing armor at all. So why not just go naked? Faster action speed. I'm not committed to any final decision but at this point I'm leaning towards suggesting a sliding scale for penetration, where each point above/ below defender's AR would add or subtract 5% damage (additively not multiplicatively). That way your armor would increase in direct proportion to the rate at which your recovery increased or decreased, at least approximately and not accounting for item to item variations. Each additional rank up in armor type you went, you'd lose 5% recovery speed but gain 5% damage resisted. Such a system would be easy to understand but complex in its effects and would avoid the "break point" problem that seems to generally end up confusing players and causing weird and non-intuitive gameplay (i.e., taking off all your armor against high penetration enemies). Example of how it would work in practice: It'd be easy and intuitive to understand (more penetration is more damage, low penetration is less damage ; each rank of armor literally trades recovery time for protection in a 1 to 1 corresponding relationship) but would prevent counter intuitive gameplay.

Honestly I'm not sure -- I just noticed it happened in that spot, tried to reload a save, and it was still there in my save file. I *think* it happened randomly but it could've been a save/load. Sorry! Would've typed more info but that's what I got.

Yeah the party I'm messing with has a crit build hearth orlan skald/ranger and a mace carnage barbarian and I gave the wizard Expose Vulnerabilities and yeah it's all a bit formulaic. I really recommend cheat-engin-ing a few thousand copper and replacing the rogue at least with a hired merc, makes things much more playable. Still I'm confident the system will get improved. Mostly because there are so many obvious imbalances and flaws right now that it's really clear they intend to do more balancing passes.

Just uncheck auto-level companion in the options before creating a new character. You can manually level all the mercenaries. Thanks, that's actually a really good tip. Wish you could multiclass 'em though. Looks like you get a fair number of bonus spells this way because the merc wizard's grimoire keeps the spells it has in it.

Almost all of the subclasses that I've actually tried (excluding a few wizard subs, & priest of Skaen) have proven to be a lot of fun to play. Assassin is brutal, especially matched with Devoted or Sharpshooter. Right now at least, it feels like most of the subclasses are great options with various multiclass combinations, but not so good solo. It kinda depends and some we might not be getting a good picture of yet due to the constrained nature of the beta.

Yah, a lot of the caster spells and cipher powers (also chanter phrases) feel like they're badly in need of a couple rounds of balancing passes. I don't think the new system is necessarily going to be anti-caster but as currently implemented casters need a lot of rebalancing.

A big part of the problem is the merc wizard's spell selection. Hire a wizard and give them the old combusting wounds / expose vulnerabilities combo and things really take off.

A lot of the brick wall penetration problem in the early beta is because the beta characters are badly under-geared. Console-command yourself a set of Fine weapons and a lot of the problems go away. Also, everything on the main island by the starting town is high level for the starting party -- go east to the dungeon, that poko kohara zone is appropriately levelled. Final thing you can do is have at least one party member with an ability that breaks open armor. A barbarian weilding a mace, a chanter with hel-hyraf's, or a mage with expose vulnerabilities, all are good ways to solve the problem. I mean, I agree there are some polishing issues there that need to be addressed, but don't dismiss the system based on the first few fights of the beta -- I had the same "F*ck This" reaction at first but it's growing on me. It's a threshold that has to be crossed over yes but once you're past it there's a lot of depth to be explored in the new system (especially with afflictions/ inspiration and concentration/ interruption). I kinda agree on the talents issue and I hope they rework that a bit.

In the doorway, level 2 poko kohara: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1205082903

This is what I am thinking while reading posts in the beta threads. As a non-beta tester and a big fan of the Pillars 1 system (by far the best system for party-based crpgs ever, imho) I'd like to ask the beta -testers: In general, do you believe the new system is better, worse or just as good as the old, just doing things differently? At the moment: Potentially much much better. The bones of the affliction and interrupt systems add a great deal of tactical depth to the combat. It still needs a lot of polishing, but this is a beta. Personally, I'd like to see, in approximate order of priority: 1) Some sort of generalized proficiency / "talent" pool return to add a different kind of depth to the character building. 2) tweaks to the casting times and effects for various powers -- lots of stuff seems like it's still not fully adapted to the new system but just using PoE 1 numbers 3) Armor penetration system is solidly structured but needs a lot of polish and balancing passes. At the moment I kinda preferred the old system but this new one isn't necessarily bad and I might just not be used to it yet. 4) Injury system needs tweaking so you aren't just resting constantly. Overall the underlying system in place has a lot more potential but PoE 1 had a LOT of polish and refinement both before and after release and all that hasn't happened yet with this iteration. There are still some things they could get wrong and screw up but if they get the things right going forward that they need to this game will be excellent. I'm not really sure where the comparisons with Tyranny come in.

Yeah,but unless your opponents actually had the "concentration" buff going and active, as I understand it, your song wasn't really doing anything. If your song had actually been giving the "distracted" debuff, it'd have been a lot more effective. Which frankly it should be because that's a good idea for a build.

Yeah there are a couple of semi worthwhile phrases like Soft Winds or Ila's that might be useful for specific builds, but most of them are like "remove Concentration from enemies" and how often are you running into enemies with Concentration and does removing a single buff in those rare instances matter that much that it's worth a whole power slot? There are single powers in other classes that remove all buffs or remove all debuffs. Most of the phrases are too situational; they need to be generally useful.

I'll add one more issue I noticed last night. I don't understand why anyone playing a chanter would ever pick extra phrases on level up. Almost all of them are minimally and situationally useful at best, and with only one power per level, you're giving up a major opportunity cost to pick something much cooler, especially if multiclassing. What I would suggest is having each phrase grant a positive buff condition ("strong","concentration" etc) for the duration of the phrase. It's be a major increase in power for the class but not out of line, and would let chanters fill in a role as party buffers and debuff-removers if they specialized in phrases rather than invocations.

Nah, I think the biggest complaints are armor penetration / lack of grazes so everyone does less damage, and the longer cast times on everything.

re: spells, I think they need to do a comprehensive pass on casting times, effects, and durations. The low level powers need to cast faster especially. Minor Missiles and Whisper of Treason and other basic bread and butter effects need to be things you can get off the ground quickly, otherwise casters are twiddling their thumbs while everyone else fights. I think having SOME long cast powers is a good idea but they should be the higher level / more powerful effects and have correspondingly longer durations. Whisper of Treason is six seconds of cast time for ten seconds of charm, who thinks that's a good trade?

I'm a little confused by how buffing and debuffing works vs. the original game and what was proposed in earlier streams. I thought the system was going to be "buffs cancel resistances and vice versa", i.e., if you have Distracted you buff with Concentration, if your enemy is Concentrating you debuff with Distraction. But I also see that there's an interlocking set of "resistances" to specific stat area afflictions, which aren't always buffs. For example wood elves just have "resist dexterity afflictions," or Skalds have a phrase that gives "resistance against Resolve and Constitution afflictions" ( but no corresponding buff to resolve and constitution, just a prevent-debuff). That seems a lot more complicated than the originally described system and a lot less useful too (Nobody's going to take a rare one-per-level power just to remove Concentration buffs from enemies, that's ridiculous). Plus nobody knows off the top of their head WHICH buffs and debuffs buff which stats -- that takes a lot of system mastery time to learn.

The way they have things currently set up, my cipher is going to be drowning in weapon proficiencies they don't want by like level eight. Return some general "weapon group" proficiencies like Two Handed Style or Gunner to the "choose a proficiency" table everyone can pick from, seems like it would be a good idea. It's a nice character building thing too, you want the feeling your character has specialized in guns or bows or whatever, or hasn't.

Honestly it feels a bit like running into a brick wall but I can't tell yet if it's just because the starting party is undergeared / underlevelled. I feel like a few points should probably be shaved off across the board because it feels like the "extra penetration" talents are essentially required for all builds. To penetrate against same level enemies you need them, or at least you do with some weapons. Part of the issue though may also be the absence of grazing hits. It just feels a lot harder to do damage or have your powers take effect across the board, regardless.

Without getting into the rest of your post, this doesn't seem to be the case in the backer beta. Every class just gets some weapon proficiencies and you can pick as you will, there don't seem to be any particular class/level restrictions. Warriors can use wands at whatever level they get to pick a weapon proficiency and wizards can pick greatsword proficiency. Plus the main thing a proficiency does is just unlock a modal, you don't *need* it.

short answer: no long answer: if by "feels like a console game" you mean "simplified", hell no The game is, if anything, much more complex than before and more importantly game knowledge feels more important. I could blunder my way through PoE without really understanding the mechanics at all,, I'm already having to work to figure out how some things in PoE II work because they matter in a way similar mechanics didn't matter in the first game (example: armor penetration was ignorable at casual difficulties in the original game, is absolutely not now).