JerekKruger

If you're a Boreal Dwarf it's not hard to land on Ogre Druids thanks to the +15 accuracy versus Wilder (I was reliably landing Whispers with Boreal Dwarf Cipher at level 4 against the Ogres in the Endless Paths); you'll also be pretty likely to crit charm regular ogres too. I imagine that, given the way Boeroer build Ploi (high accuracy for charming), the same should be true with him i.e. it should be fairly easy to charm Ogre Druids.

Personally, I find it strange that someone who's considering completely vetoing the sequel over these issues has completed the game multiple times.

Yeah, dichotomy and duality are not dissimilar words.

They're incredibly useful for solo play as well.

Indeed, it looks like Max's formulas suggest that the effect of dual wielding is to half recovery after all other recovery modifiers have been applied rather than to add a 0.5 to the recovery modifier. For example, previously I thought dual wielding and drinking a DAoM potion would result in 0 recovery, but according to Max's formula, it actually results in a recovery of 0.25*attack speed. Out of interest Max, how did you get the formulas? Were they obtained through testing or did you find them in the game code?

That's actually my problem with Drawn in Spring generally. There are relatively few classes that I don't think look silly using a dagger as their main weapon, and at least one of those classes (the Rogue) I don't enjoy.

Oh, I didn't expect that to be the case. If it is then Tidefall will definitely draw ahead.

Indeed, for a Barbarian you might be much better served using stunning or proning weapons, and since Wounding doesn't generate Focus, for a Cipher there are better options.

So the formula for the total Wounding damage is: DamageRoll*DamageModifier*1.25*MightModifier? A very quick, and probably flawed, calculation suggests that for auto-attacks, assuming zero reduction for both, Tidefall comes out slightly ahead of Drawn in Spring even when we take into account the faster attack speed of using a fast one-handed weapon. The differences is fairly small though. Depending on how full attacks work with dual Drawn in Springs, a full attack heavy class might be better served by dual wielding Hellwaxed Drawn in Springs though. Yup. It's why the Boar is capable of out damaging the cat in some fights.

I only really use story companions, but if I did go with custom ones this: Would be my thinking. The one weakness that custom companions have is only being hireable at a level lower than the main character, and since experience required for a level up is not linear this leads to a larger experience gap. Ideally you'd also want to hire your companions with your main character dead on 1000xp. If you have the backer ring (Gaun's Share) then you can sell that to Heodan for about 1500g. The Disappointer (the unique pistol you find in the hidden cache near the Glanfathan camp) can be sold for about 150 as well (it used to sell for a lot more). Beyond that make sure to return to Heodan before interacting with the waterskin but after exploring everything else on the first map, and sell anything you don't need. The reason for this is Heodan pays more than any of merchant in the game. That said, without Gaun's Share it might be difficult to get enough money to hire multiple (or even one) custom companion straight away,

Wounding is raw damage, so it ignores DR.

I know I've asked this recently, but I've forgotten the answer, does Wounding from Drawn in Spring stack? If so then dual Drawn in Spring is just ridiculous.

It's not as simple as the faster swing speed of a one-hander beating out the +50% damage from annihilation. To actually determine which does more damage per second you need to know miss/graze/hit/crit rate, overall percentage damage bonus ignoring annihilation and enemy DR. It's not at all hard to give examples of high DR enemies where fast one-handers will do a lot less DPS than even a non-annihilating slow one-hander, and ultimately a higher proportion of the tougher enemies in the game will have high DR. For example suppose a character has +200% damage. Against the Adra Dragon's 28DR the average crit with a fast one-hander will do 11*3.5 - 28 = 10.5 damage, so after taking into account the fact that fast one-handers attack 50% faster than slow one-handers (with zero recovery) that's 15.75 damage per second assuming all crits. The same character wielding a slow one-hander will do an average crit of 19.25 damage, which is higher than the fast-one hander even when its faster attack speed is taken into account. This difference grows larger with hits and grazes, and obviously annihilation will also increase it.

Well, after a somewhat bumpy start my melee Cipher is going strong. He hasn't been knocked unconscious in quite a while now, does good damage, and his powers are very... powerful. I'm only part way through Act II, so he's yet to fight anything tough like Dragons but once I'm done I'll post up a build (unless Elric wants to post his, I think they're probably pretty similar and we don't really need two melee cipher builds in the archive). I intend to, for the first time, unscale everything, so I'm waiting till level 9 before going to the White March. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

Yeah, spells use exactly the same to-hit mechanics as physical attacks. Spellcasters often have lower base accuracy, but most spells have an innate accuracy bonus associated with them that results in a comparable accuracy to, say, a Fighter's physical attack. Of course spells usually target one of the three non-Deflection defences, which is why it's important to keep an eye on each enemy's individual defences and choose spells accordingly (you'll crit Trolls a lot more often with Will attacking spells than Fortitude attacking spells for example). As for perma-stuns, are you playing solo? I've encountered annoying fights where one or two of my party seem to get perma-stunned (e.g. Xaurip skirmishers in the early game) but never my whole party, so on party play it has never been game ending. On solo it could be, but Obsidian specifically said during development that they weren't balancing the game for solo play so if you want to play solo you have to accept that you'll have to be creative in beating some encounters.

I'll have to keep an open mind and look out for places where it might be more useful. By the way, I completely agree about Cipher's having great single target crowd control. I was really surprised that I struggled more with the fights on the Xaurip level of the Endless Paths than I did with the Ogre level. With the Ogres, being able to charm one or two of them (also a Boreal dwarf so charming a Wilder is pretty easy) then mental binding the last remaining one allowed me to beat most the easier fights taking almost no endurance damage at all. Meanwhile when you're fighting a crowd of 10-15 weaker mobs single target CC just isn't that great.

I think I prefer my charmed enemies to have the -25% debuff from charm than be full strength from dominate. After all, I'm going to have to kill them eventually, so I might as well let them be weakened by their friends first. Puppetmaster has a longer duration, but I can always recast whispers and at ten focus it's not hard to keep the focus in reserve or build it quickly. It feels to me that puppetmaster is just a worse spell, hence why I asked.

Good point regarding Wounding. I suspect dual Drawn in Springs is one of the best choices for a Rogue. Not sure about annihilating. You're trading +50% on a crit for +25% on every hit (including grazes) with Bittercut + Spirit of Decay, so the question is what sort of crit rate can you achieve and, perhaps more importantly, what kind of crit rate can you achieve against higher deflection enemies (who are generally the harder fights where performance matters most). Also all annihilating weapons are slashing only I think, so Bittercut also benefits from being dual damage. If you're dual wielding and have two-weapon style then fast is most likely only important if you want to wear heavier armour, as it shouldn't be hard to reach 100% recovery otherwise.

Out of interest Elric, when do you prefer puppetmaster to whispers?

The reason was that sabres were basically the only one-handed weapon choice, and I think that if you're aiming for a balanced system it wasn't a bad choice, but I agree that it probably hit Rogues disproportionately. I suspect sabres will still be the best DPS weapon for Rogues if, for no other reason, that there are so many excellent sabre choices in the game. Resolution early on is great and I think Bittercut is still the top tier one-handed weapon from a DPS perspective.

I like that idea. Fits with it being the defensive stat, fits thematically with the idea of having "resolve" and is fairly handy. Another option would be to rebalance accuracy and deflection values for all enemies in the game (to make the few points you get get from Resolve worthwhile) and/or increase the importance of Concentration.

Thanks for testing that Max.

This is the best I could find. Not sure if it's the one you meant.

Glad to hear everything's fitting into place better for you CJQ, sounds like you've gotten a good handle on the game!

I guessed it was Edér (pipe and wheat are his things, along with fluffy animals) but I didn't realise it was an existing symbol.