JerekKruger

Yeah, the cast time is another problem with these spells. As for synergies, I suspect they won't survive to release as Carnage already doesn't proc on hit effects etc. The thing is, in PoE the thing that made it good wasn't really the draining (though that was nice), it was the high damage and accuracy bonus. Yeah, Firebrand really relied on its high base damage to be good. I hear good things about the Priest summonable weapons though, apart from their long casting time of course.

In Pillars of Eternity one of the defining features of the various Wizard summoned weapons (Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff, Citzal's Spirit Lance etc.) was their higher than normal base damage (Concelhaut's Staff had a base damage of 20-30 vs 14-20 for a normal Quarterstaff). This made all +Damage modifiers (in particular Might) that bit more powerful for them. In Deadfire they have the same base damage as their non-summoned versions. Moreover these weapons now have scaling bonuses. For example, at level 1 Concelhaut's Staff has no quality enchantment at all: the spell simply summons an (admittedly cool looking) normal quality Quarterstaff with the Draining Enchantment (actually at the moment it simply summons a normal quality Quarterstaff with no other properties). Again, one of the things that made this spell good was the fact that it gave a hefty Accuracy bonus (+ at a low level (admittedly Wizards now have the same base Accuracy as everyone else, so this is less important). It seems to me that these spells are much less powerful than they were in PoE. What are peoples' thoughts on them? Unrelated to their effectiveness, who would like to see some summonable single handed weapons or shields? Also who feels the new graphics for Citzal's Spirit Lance are a downgrade?

Essentially yes. The increase from Might 39 to Might 40 is 1.6%, and the increase from Might 2 to Might 3 is 3.95% (yep, you actually get the biggest relative increase going from Might 2 to Might 3), and Dexterity will be a little less. However the irreducible delay makes the Dexterity calculation more complicated as the relative increase changes depending on what other +Attack Speed bonuses a character has (the same isn't true with Might and other +Damage bonuses). The closer your Recovery is to zero, the less relative increase a point of Dexterity gives (essentially because that irreducible 5 frames becomes a bigger proportion of what remains). This is why in PoE, characters who could reach 0 recovery usually left their Dexterity at 10. Perception seems to me to be a lot more complicated to assign a value to since it depends on things like +Crit Damage bonuses, Miss>Graze>Hit>Crit modifiers and, of course, the difference between your base Accuracy and the enemy's Deflection.

@Hieronymous - ah I see what you mean. Part of it is, as you say, the irreducible delay frames (this is why the increase from Dexterity 10 to 11 doesn't give a 3% increase). The other factor is that MaxQuest is giving the relative rather than absolute increase in DPS. The absolute increase would be the percentage increase in DPS compared to Dexterity 10; the relative increase is the increase in DPS going from Dexterity X to Dexterity X+1 and this does go down as X increases. The absolute increase gained from Dexterity 21 is 29.34%, not that far below the stated value of 33% (and the difference here is entirely due to the 5 frame delay). Note that there are a similar diminishing relative returns from Might in Deadfire. To see this suppose a character doors 100 damage with Might 10. Then with Might 11 they'll do 103 damage i.e. a 3% increase. At Might 20 they'll do 130 damage and at Might 21 they'll do 133 damage, so the relative increase from going from Might 20 to Might 21 is 133/130 = 1.0231 i.e. 2.31%, less than 3%. TL;dr: Multiplicative Might does have a diminishing return in relative increase to DPS in exactly the same way Dexterity does.

It's not a curving function. The Action Cycle Duration (the time it takes for a full Action Cycle to occur) decreases with Dexterity in a non-linear fashion, but that's not what's important for DPS. What's important for DPS is the Action Rate (the number of Actions per second), which happens to be inversely proportional to the Action Cycle Duration. Think of it this way: suppose a character with Dexterity 10 takes exactly 1 second to Attack and Recover (let's ignore the 5 frame delay for now). Now suppose that character increases their Dexterity to 43. They now take 1/(1+0.99) ~ 0.503 seconds to Attack and Recovery, which means that their Attack Rate has increased from 1 Attack per second to 1.99 Attacks per second. All else being equal this results in an increase of 99% to their DPS i.e. the increase to DPS is linearly proportional to the bonus to Attack Speed given by Dexterity. The fact it's multiplicative was determined through testing and through looking at the code, with MaxQuest being the one who worked it out fully in this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86684-mechanics-the-big-attack-speed-conundrum/ TL;dr: each point of Dexterity increases the number of times you attack per second by 3% (compared to Dexterity 10) and hence increases your DPS by 3%.

Interestingly there are two versions of the Great_Sword_Naga_Coral, one of which is one handed. If you equip it on a Stoic character they will immediately stab themselves in the chest with it. I suspect this tells us that that version is not intended as a player usable weapon, but perhaps the two handed version is.

I just came here to report the same bug. I'm not sure if it starts off kinda dead but as soon as I summoned it a huge stream of damage numbers appeared over its head. That said, mine was quite happy walking around in spite of having in the negative billions.

It should probably actually be: "Deadfire cancelled, Josh Sawyer's Cats in Medieval Outfits, Obscure Early Christian Saints, and Bike Simulator 2018 greenlit"

I often find myself in the same situation. I'm afraid I don't have a solution either.

Corrected that for you.

The thing is, whilst true there comes a point where extra strength isn't an advantage. Someone who is weak may indeed struggle with the recoil of a gun, but Worlds Strongest Man competitors aren't at any advantage over a typical infantryman. That said, the same is true of weapons like swords, although the threshold is probably a little higher. My guess would be that the weapon in PoE for which strength is most important is the Warbow.

If you thrust the gun forwards at the same time as firing it you can impart more kinetic energy on the bullet

If you thrust the firearm forwards as you fire it you increase the kinetic energy of the projectile

Another flaw with the proposed change to the proficiencies system in my opinion.

I think that, to an extent, anything combined with the Helwalker is a little broken at the moment due to multiplicative Might.

Under PoE's rule set no: due to the way the old damage reduction system worked, attacking with multiple weaker attacks was not as good as attacking with fewer strong attacks hence multiplicative Might would definitely have been better there. In Deadfire it's less clear thanks to the changes to the armour/penetration system. Moreover if the action speed system is changed that might make a difference too.

As far as I could tell, you only get the devoted bonus to one of your proficient weapons. It wasn't clear to me how this was decided (first one picked, first in the list, other). I assume it's a bug that you get to pick more than one.

Thing is, you'll pretty much be forced to build an active Fighter anyway, unless you want a crapload of weapon proficiencies you're never going to use.

There was a list of (most) Afflictions along with their tiers in another thread and the only hard crowd control ones were tier 3, and softer crowd control (things like immobilization) were tier 2. So yes, tier 1 are fairly minor.

@fiddlesticks - you're comparing the wrong values. The important value is not the Action Duration (the time it takes to perform an action), but rather the Action Rate* (number of actions performed per second). This value scales exactly as you would expect i.e. going from Dexterity 10 to Dexterity 20 increases your Action Rate by 30%, and going from Dexterity 10 to Dexterity 30 increases it by 60%. To show this let's assume, for simplicity, that an action takes 1 second. Then at Dexterity 10 you perform that action once per second. At Dexterity 20 that action takes 1/1.3 seconds and hence you perform it 1.3/1 = 1.3 times per second. At Dexterity 30 that action takes 1/1.6 seconds and hence you perform it 1.6/1 = 1.6 times per second. Thus the absolute value of each point of Dexterity is the same i.e. an increase in Action Rate of 3%. Of course the relative value of +1 Dexterity does indeed diminish e.g. 1.3 is 30% more than 1, but 1.6 is only 23.1% more than 1.3. Actually the story isn't quite that simple thanks to the delay portion of an action cycle. You see, each action cycle is made up of several parts: the action itself, the recovery, sometimes the reload, and the delay. The first three of those are affected by Dexterity exactly as described above, however the delay is always 5 frames long no matter what your Dexterity is. This does in fact cause the absolute value of additional points of Dexterity to diminish, although if you actually run the numbers for realistic PoE values (Dexterity between 2 and 30) the difference is fairly minimal. *In Pillars of Eternity this is called Attack Speed, although it applies to actions other than attacks and doesn't involve distance travelled so I prefer Action Rate. EDIT: as a side note, if the bonus to Action Duration (not Action Rate) from additional points of Dexterity didn't diminish then you would, with high enough Dexterity, reach negative Action Duration. Hopefully it should be clear that this would be unwanted behaviour.

Yep. I wanted to see the old universal talents become universal again but this solution is bad. There is essentially no cost to taking these passive talents. I don't know exactly how many proficiencies characters will get in Deadfire, but based on the beta I'd say it'll be at least six and more likely eight or more. Very few characters use more than two weapons (and given the way the new weapon proficiencies work you don't even need to take them to use a weapon) so that means almost every character will take at least four of the old generic talents (more likely six or more). For a lot of characters that'll be enough to get everything they want and, perhaps, more. If, on the other hand, you simply added those talents to all classes passive ability trees and made them spend a point on acquiring them then there would be a cost. Would a Wizard really want to sacrifice a spell pick to take two-handed style? Well if they intend to focus on using summoned weapons then maybe, but it won't be a no brainer pick anymore. And, as you say, Fighters are really hurt by this change.

The same argument would apply to all other damage bonuses though, and either you make them all minuscule or you have a serious problem with damage bloat.

Yes but most spellcasters had lower base accuracy than martial classes. Now everyone has the same base accuracy.

Well we don't really know what other +Damage bonuses will be available at higher levels/with better gear. It's why I am in the "on the fence" camp. I like Might being multiplicative but could definitely see a situation where it leads to problems.

I mean, if Healing is removed from Might, Might should surely become exponential right? Otherwise it's just useless.