JerekKruger

Not necessarily. Perhaps it's representing them aging as they level up

I'm rather disappointed with the Shapeshifter. What I'd have preferred to see is the following: Spiritshift becomes a modal rather than a limited duration ability. Spell casting is disabled whilst Spiritshifted. You start with one Spiritshift form but can learn the others at the cost of an ability point. Spiritshift is better than for non-Shapeshifter druids (bonus to power level perhaps?) Ideally there should be some abilities and passives that improve Spiritshift, so that a Shapeshifter who focuses on it can choose them over spells.

I've been so focused on the Deadfire beta I hadn't even really looked at these new items yet. I'm thinking of start an import run and I look forward to trying some of these out (and probably voluntarily not using the three uniforms).

I don't really think you need Arms Bearer to make the benefit of Firebrand's flaming damage negligible. With two weapon slots you could carry a Great Sword and a Morning Star (or a Pollaxe and a Pike) and cover all three of the physical damage types. I highly doubt there will be any enemies in Deadfire who will be highly resistant to all three physical damage types, so the only time Firebrand will give an advantage is when enemies are specifically weak against flaming attacks. If Firebrand was just another weapon you could carry around with you and pull out in those situations it'd be great (paired with a Pollaxe for example), but at the cost of an ability, a spell cast and whatever casting duration it ends up with it's really not. Gromnir mentions Bittercut as an example of why Burning/Piercing is so good and in doing so completely misses the point. Bittercut was good because it was a Sabre with dual damage types i.e. it still benefited from the Sabres inherent +20% damage whilst no longer having to worry about Slash immune enemies. Great Swords are already dual damage type so moving from Slashing/Piercing to Burning/Piercing is a sidegrade.

I also have this issue.

Yeah Skaen and Wael aren't as obvious as Magran, Eothas and Berath. I like your suggestion for Skaen and if it's not too much hassle a random lash would be great for Wael.

If we are given the option of killing him (or at least fighting him) I wonder how it would be done. I can't imagine him being present on a normal map as the statue is just too big. It could be done in a dialogue perhaps, but I imagine a lot of people would find that unsatisfying.

Oh my bad. Given the hatchet proficiency doesn't improve your defences I assumed (without checking) that hatchets no longer did either.

Probably. I certainly hope the weapons get more unique graphics. It also has +3 Deflection against melee weapons as an added bonus too, which is nice.

That's true, until that's added it's hard to say for certain. I'm still not sure a 50% drain would be worth the cost of an ability point but then I was never that keen on draining in Pillars so perhaps I underestimate it. Nope, you're remembering correctly. A burning lash would seem like a good addition to it and couldn't really be called overpowered (unless the Spiritual Weapons are too). As a side note I'd really like to see the Magranite and Eothasian weapons have burning lashes rather than corrosive ones, and perhaps the Wael one could have shocking (corrosive fits Berath and Skaen reasonably well).

No argument from me on that front. I don't think the Priest Spiritual Weapons need anything more than that. Even if the lash isn't supposed to affect spell damage (which I suspect it's not) a 60% lash is pretty damn good.

It was shown briefly in one of the dev blog videos, along with a handful of other full ability trees.

They won't necessarily be fixed, or more specifically their current implementation is what Obsidian intended.

Agreed. For a multiclass Wizard, particularly one who's focusing on the very fast buffs, I'd probably stick to non-subclassed. The Enchanter's bonus is nice but I'd prefer the wider spell selection.

Faster cast time would go a long way to making them more appealing to me. That's a very good point. We haven't really had a chance to see how effective grimoires are going to be. Oh no doubt. I'm not sure summoned weapons, even if made instant cast, would fit in there though. The Evoker's bonus is pretty decent, although it's a bit too random for my liking. When it goes off it can be pretty devastating though. Irenicus, is that you?

And that would be fine if you weren't spending an ability point, a spell cast and the casting time on it. Personally I can't ever see myself using Concelaut's Staff or Firebrand in their current forms (Citzal's is more of an edge case). It wouldn't take much to change that though: make them scale with the Wizard's power level and make the quality enchantments come a little earlier (set it so that for a multiclass Wizard they come at the same character levels as they do now) and they'd suddenly become a lot more appealing.

Me too.

Exactly. What else you read into it is up to you. I want them to be effective in Deadfire because they are fun abilities. Despite what you claim, the non-Priest summonables are not currently Exactly.

Funny thing is I didn't even say their base damage should be increased in the thread I started on them, just that they (the Wizard summonables as well as Firebrand) are currently weak.

I started to reply to your post Gromnir, but it's so full of misrepresentations of what I actually said in my own I really don't see the point.

Very unlikely. Most people who do play the expansion will want to do so with their existing characters, and are not likely to be happy to see new options they can't take. Extra classes and subclasses are great for the sort of people who discuss the game on these forums, but we are very much the minority of players.

In which case I agree entirely

Why would I spend an ability point, one of my limited per encounter spell casts and the time taken to summon the weapon when I could simply use a non-summoned version that's just as good? That's the problem. In the hands of a druid firebrand was nowhere near highly effective. In fact it was pretty bad. In the hands of a martial class it became good, though it wasn't going to outperform something like Tidefall. Only in the hands of a Barbarian was it ridiculously overpowered, but the thing that made it so has already been fixed in Deadfire, namely that Carnage attacks don't use the damage of the base attack anymore, they simply do a scaled amount of raw damage (this also means they don't proc on hit effects). EDIT: also the fact that summoned weapons will be more useful to, say, a Wizard/Devoted is precisely why I think they should scale with the Wizard's power level rather than character level. It'll take longer to get them to fine, exceptional etc., and they may never reach the maximum tier of enchantment.

I think you're assuming that for something to be rational it must be rational under the rules of our world. That's not the case. The creation story in the Silmarillion is perfectly rational within its own framework. So long as there are rules there will be people who seek to codify those rules, and who look for deeper principles that govern those rules. Those people are doing science. Personally if I lived in a world with dragons I'd want to know their origins, how they breath fire and, if they do, why they eat virgins. That doesn't mean every story that is set in such a world has to explain any or all of those things. After all, there are plenty of other interesting things to explore in such a world. As for there being no rational explanation for why dragons eat virgins that's nonsense. There wouldn't be a rational explanation in our world, but then dragons themselves wouldn't be rational in our world. In a world where there are dragons, where the rules are different to those of our own, there can easily be rational explanations. Indeed, it's easy to come up with some by drawing upon myths surrounding virginity in our own world e.g. virgins have some sort of purity to them which dragons need to live.

I'd let him off wrecking Caed Nua if he agreed to allow me to build a new keep on to of his shoulders and go where I told him.