JerekKruger

Chanters are really powerful, I'm not sure where you get the idea that they're not. The whole point is that each build will only be able to unlock some of script checks, not all of them. If you decide that unlocking them all is important to you then that's your choice, but you are definitely not forced to do so (I don't think about them at all when creating characters any more). In case you're worried, you really don't miss out on much by not being able to select attribute locked dialogue options. Usually you get a single extra line of dialogue and nothing more; sometimes they provide you with an alternative way of completing a quest; very rarely they'll get you a better reward, but not one that actually matters in the long run (gold stops being scarce about halfway through the game, and none of the best items are locked in this way). Good news, they're allowing both in Deadfire.

How exactly are Paladin's unplayable? Also I'm really failing to see how Resolve is Charisma. Sure, Might is thinly veiled Strength, but Resolve is neither similar to Charisma is it's dialogue interactions nor in its in game effects. The only way Resolve is similar to (D&D) Charisma is that it appears last on the list of six attributes.

The stretch goal is rather misleadingly named, it really ought to be "More Sea Monsters". I can remember where, but I am fairly certain Obsidian have stated that there were already sea monsters included.

This doesn't seem to be the case. I was doing some testing with a Monk and as soon as he hit 50% Endurance he got the Accuracy and Damage bonuses. Perhaps it changed at some point?

Oh, that's a good point. I had forgotten about the 5 frame delay. As you calculate though, it's a fairly minor difference. The problem with looking at the reduction in frames per point of Dexterity is frames are (essentially) a measure of time, not speed/rate. Because speed and time are inversely related, the increase in action speed (number of actions per second) is not linear in the reduction of frames per action. Therefore comparing reductions in frames can be misleading. Taking your example we get the following (I've accounted for the 5 fram delay this time): Dex 21 = 5 + 25/1.33 = 23.80 frames per action = 1.261 actions per second Dex 20 = 5 + 25/1.30 = 24.23 frames per action = 1.238 actions per second Dex 19 = 5 + 25/1.27 = 24.69 frames per action = 1.215 actions per second In this particular case the increase in actions per second going from Dexterity 19 to 20 is the same (to four significant figures) as going from 20 to 21 i.e. 0.023, Let's look at the change going from Dexterity 10 to 11: Dex 11 = 5 + 25/1.03 = 29.27 frames per action = 1.025 actions per second Dex 10 = 5 + 25/1.00 = 30.00 frames per action = 1.000 actions per second Here the difference (to four significant figures) is 0.025, so you can see more clearly that you do gain more the earlier points of Dexterity than you do from later ones, though the difference is pretty tiny. Just for completeness, let's look at going from Dexterity 1 to 12: Dex 1 = 5 + 25/0.73 = 39.25 frames per action = 0.764 actions per second Dex 2 = 5 + 25/0.76 = 37.89 frames per action = 0.792 actions per second So the absolute most you'll gain from a single point of Dexterity is 0.028, only 0.005 (0.5%) more than you gain when going from 20 to 21. EDIT: to answer your original question, I'd say from a purely intuitive point of view that it's not worth exchanging Dexterity for Resolve when building melee characters. I think the problem is too complicated to really answer purely mathematically, since there are so many different situations you might be in i.e. enemy accuracy, enemy attack speed, number of enemies attacking your character, interruption value of enemies and, perhaps most importantly, difficulty of fight (if a fight's relatively easy, who cares about being optimal).

In absolute terms, every point of Dexterity gives exactly the same bonus i.e. for each point above 10 you act 3.003% faster* than you do with 10 Dexterity, and for each point below 10 you act 3.003% slower than you do with 10 Dexterity. In relative terms the bonus decreases with each additional point of Dexterity. By this I mean that the increase in speed from going from Dexterity n to Dexterity n+1 decreases as n increases. That said, the difference isn't all that much: going from Dexterity 3 to Dexterity 4 results in a 3.80% increases in speed; going from Dexterity 10 to Dexterity 11 results in a 3.00% increase; and going from Dexterity 19 to Dexterity 20 results in a 2.36% increase. However it's not clear to my mind that the relative increase is what matters. What we know is that for each point of Dexterity above 10 the number of actions you can perform in 1s increases by a flat 3.003%, and to my mind that flat increase is what actually matters. Yes the increase when going from Dexterity 19 to Dexterity 20 is only 2.36%, but that is 2.36% of an already faster speed. *Here x% faster means that in the time it took to perform one action with Dexterity 10, you can now perform 1 + x/100 actions. Note that because Dexterity effectively acts as a overall multiplier, this is genuinely an x% increase in speed (unlike + Attack Speed bonuses which only apply to part of an action resolution).

This implies that the Fighter is attacking slower than the Monk, yet your calculations assume the Fighter has the better speed coefficient so this is wrong. What you actually determine is this. Assuming that 30 frames is a second (which I believe it is, or near enough) you've determined that your Monk attacks once ever 1.33s and your Fighter attacks every 1.17s. This actually means that the Fighter attacks 1.14 times as fast as the Monk, or in terms without decimals, for every 7 attacks the Monk makes the Fighter makes 8. EDIT: another thing, your numbers for Lighting Strikes, Turning Wheel and Weapon Lash are all too high for the Monk (they should be 10, 20/10 and 10 respectively) reducing the Monks attacks by 8/6 for the ten wound and five wound variants respectively.

I am sure they do, they just don't post very often. If forced to take a guess as to why that is I'd say that, strangely, a developers own forums are like a minefield for them, and a developer has to be quite careful what they post.

I suspect that "too complicated" is actually code for "I don't like change, but want to back up that preference with a further argument". Anyway, in the Q&A stream last night Josh said that they're going to see how their new system holds up in dungeon environments and if it doesn't hold up well they'll change it. He also said that he liked the health/endurance system, so fingers crossed.

Yeah, this news was pretty cool.

Hopefully. Not only do I like the Health/Endurance system, the new system sounds less enjoyable than a traditional health system to me.

Yeah it was a mistake on my part. I knew that (some) DOTs lose DPS from higher Intellect and assumed this was by increasing the time between each tick. Turns out if I had read the mechanics post more carefully I would have realised that it's not that the ticks are more spread out, it's that each tick does less damage.

Ah I see what you mean. I don't know enough about photoshop or similar to modify a portrait to be more in line with the current in game ones.

My bad, what I should have said is it should increase the number of ticks, but the damage of each tick should remain the same. Essentially DPS shouldn't be reduced by raising Intellect.

Suboptimal? Yes. To the extent that it really matters? Not really. People really overstate the importance of optimised attributes but because of the way attributes scale in PoE, they're really not that important. On top of this, a few of the story companions get extra bonuses which make them arguably better than player created companions; and the fact that player created companions can only be created one level lower than the main character gives story companions a real advantage in the early game which, coincidentally, is the hardest part of the game. This isn't to say you won't find PotD hard, you likely will*, it's just not likely to be the story companions that are making it hard. The Paladin is probably the best main tank in the game (at least at higher levels), that's not something Priests can do better. It's true that a lot of Paladin support abilities can be replicated by Priests but that kind of misses the point. It's not harmful to have some of these abilities replicated since it allows you Priest to focus on doing other things (and you'll find your Priest has no shortage of things to do). On top of that, Lay on Hands is a brilliant single target heal (perhaps the best in the game) and Sacred Immolation is amazing (suddenly your Paladin is doing good AoE damage and healing as well as tanking). Chanters are also excellent. They make very good tanks (in the early game probably better than Paladins, and good enough to tank most encounters in the game) and their chants are very useful. The third level phrase The Dragon Thrashed is so good that a lot of people consider it enough of a reason to bring a Chanter alone. Take a look at Boeroer's builds on the build list in this forum for some more information. It does take a while to build up enough phrases to cast an invocation but luckily fights take longer on PotD, and the hardest fights take even longer. *Path of the Damned rewards knowledge about game mechanics. Actually all difficulties do, but it's most noticeable in PotD. To give you some idea of this, I found my first couple of playthroughs on Hard harder than my first playthrough on PotD, because by the time I made the step to PotD I had a pretty decent handle on the mechanics of PoE.

@Khagmas: what do you mean by lore friendly? The portrait looks perfectly lore friendly to me as it is.

Thinking about it some more I really think Intellect should increase the duration of DOTs by adding more ticks, not by increasing the delay between ticks. Yes, this would mean Intellect would increase the total amount of damage, straying somewhat into Might's domain, but realistically what matters most the time is DPS, not total damage, and that would remain the same. In shorter fights the affect of Intellect might not even be noticeable with this change, and in longer ones the main affect would be to save you a recast/reapplication of the spell/ability. Seems perfectly reasonable.

Yep, just tested it myself. Created a Monk, used the console to level him to 16 and give him 100 Perception, killed the Caravan in the prologue. In somewhere between 20 and 30 crits I never exceeded the maximum that one would expect if the crit bonus only applied to the base damage. Unless I am mistake, Might usually only applies to the base damage of a weapon attack, so this fact is rather weird. EDIT: actually this kind of makes sense. The crit bonus only applies to the base damage of normal weapons, so a Rogue with a legendary sabre and all the +X% damage mods he can stack still only gets +5.5-8 damage from a crit, which is basically the same as what a Monk gets from a crit with his fists (+5-7.5). Making the crit multiplier apply to the full Transcendent Suffering attack would have been a lot more powerful. Of course once Durganification gets factored in the fists fall behind, but they get more from Might so it's not all that bad.

Hah, don't worry about it, I didn't think you sounded elitist.

I thought it was only Novice's Suffering that suffered from crits/grazes being almost irrelevant and that the bonus damage from Transcendent Suffering counted as base damage and thus benefited a lot from % modifiers.

Oh I realise the importance to Accuracy in PotD, I just didn't realise Inspiring Liberation stacked with every other Accuracy buff. That is pretty useful. Perhaps it's time for me to play a Darcozzi.

Why out of interest?

I don't play on Trial of Iron, so a party wipe doesn't end my playthroughs, but I do play almost exclusively on PotD and whilst party wipes are pretty rare for me now, they do happen occasionally. So I don't think your situation is odd no.

Oh I always know where to find your staff of strength

I think because if it did, Intellect would increase the (overall) damage done, which is supposed to be Might's job. I think the end result was poor though, it would have been better to have Intellect not affect DOTs at all than have the current system.