JerekKruger

A simple change you could make to increase the number of melee classes your using would be to make your Cipher, Druid or Wizard into a melee character. Melee Cipher's are a little tricky to run, particularly in the early game, but are perfectly viable; melee Wizards are straight up great since their summoned weapons are so powerful (Citzal's Spirit Lance is possibly the most powerful weapon in the game); and Spiritshift focused Druids are capable of the highest single target damage in the game. I ran a melee Cipher in my last play through and went with Mig 18 Con 8 Dex 10 Per 16 Int 18 Res 8 In the early game it's tricky because enemies will switch from attacking your tank to attacking this Cipher. I'd strongly recommend wearing some decent armour and using a shield to make yourself a little more survivable during this phase. At levels 2 and 4 you'll want to take the talents that improve your Soul Whip because and at level 6 I took Weapon and Shield Style. Once I had this, my Deflection was high enough that whatever algorithm enemies use to select their targets stopped prioritising my Cipher, and I dropped down to lighter armour. You could forgo the shield and dual wield, but honestly I found my Focus generation was good enough with a single Sabre (at least once I'd gotten a Fine one). Also always have a high damage ranged weapon to use at the start of combat before switching to your Sabre to generate a nice chunk of Focus. Powers wise, the big ones at the early levels are Whispers of Treason (amazing single target crowd control) and Mental Binding (ditto, and useful if there is only one enemy left). You'll use these all the time. Other than that whatever powers you found useful on ranged Ciphers will remain so on melee Ciphers, with the possible exception of Antipathetic Field which, since you're in melee, is a lot harder to use effectively. I was somewhat surprised to find that I didn't get a lot of use out of powers like Psychovampiric Shield, as I didn't actually get targetted that much. I've never run a melee Wizard, but as I understand it it's a fairly simple build: you focus on the various buffs that make you better in melee (particular Deleterious Alacrity of Motion and the summoned weapons), spend a little bit of time buffing at the start of combat then wade in. For melee Druids, take a look in the build list stickied at the top of this subforum. Actually that list is well worth a look regardless. EDIT: one thing I'll say about taking more than 3 melee characters is it can get crowded in dungeons, and you might find one or more of your melee characters being forced to use a ranged weapon (actually this happens with 3 sometimes, though less so). This becomes less of an issue at higher levels as several melee classes get mobility skills that allow them to move past obstacles.

No harm in clarifying it. By the way, I am not 100% certain that Flick of the Wrist (the +4 Accuracy with Daggers and Stilettos talent learnt in Stalwart) applies to Soulbound and summoned weapons. I believe it did at some point, but have this vague memory that it was changed in a patch. I am fairly certain both do yes.

Oh I know, I was only talking about Weapon Focus talents, not other talents that add accuracy. To be precise, Priest weapon talents stack, as does the bonus you get from that knife throwing game in Stalwart Village (unless that has been patched away).

You only get the benefit once so, for example, if you are wielding Abydon's Hammer and have Weapon Focus: Soldier and Weapon Focus: Adventurer you'd only get +6 Accuracy (not +12). Yep (unless something has changed recently). Summoned weapons are like Soulbound weapons yes. They do replace the equipped weapon and, as far as I know, you can't switch out of them whilst they're active (I might be wrong on that, I haven't run a summoned weapon Wizard yet).

I'm all for the addition of a walk toggle, and I say that as someone who wouldn't use it. I try to support options that would make the game more enjoyable to other people so long as they wouldn't make the game less fun for me or obviously take a lot of development time, and this seems to fit both bills: I could simply not use it, and since walking animations are already in game it would surely be as simple as adding a button somewhere on the UI that tells the game "use walking animations and speed", plus a bit of QA to make sure it works and doesn't cause other problems.

Indeed. Presumably hostage rescuers avoid the use of grenades, even though grenades are rather handy in room clearing operations. It doesn't seem that strange that in the situation described by the OP we should avoid using AoE spells that do friendly fire.

Or perhaps Obsidian don't want to be seen favouring one type of backer over another.

Good point on soulbound items Boeroer, though I think the simple act of not having Durgan steel would go most the way towards achieving parity between them and normal items. I also agree that limiting lashes is fine, and probably finishes the job of equalising soulbound items too. @Lorfean: I think I preferred the itemisation in the old IE games too (I definitely preferred it to vanilla PoE, which was rather bland, but the White March expansions added some cool items). However my problem with this new change isn't due to me being a power gamer, since I don't think I really am. Instead it's the loss of aesthetic options that it brings: I have a really cool looking sword or a weapon that has a really cool effect but it under performs so much as to make the game unenjoyable that I'll have to replace it with something less cool. This is pretty much the definition of anti-fun to me.

Why does the painful decision have to be between a cool property and a higher quality; why can't it be between one cool property and another cool property? How is the choice between weak or boring more desirable than the choice between cool and other-cool?

I'd like the see more meaningful gearing choices in PoE2, but I don't think this is the way to do it. Instead I'd like to see a larger and more varied selection of (genuinely) unique enchantments, and I'd like those enchantments to be sufficiently complicated so as to make it hard to know which one is better. Make the meaningful choice the choice between different unique enchantments, not between the quality enchantment and unique enchantments. By the way, if you made this change in PoE I don't think it would have the effect you're looking for. Accuracy is far too important in PoE and if you could only bump up the quality enchantment by one tier then it wouldn't result in a meaningful choice, it would simply reduce the set of useful weapons to those which start at at least Exceptional quality. Of course, perhaps the quality enchantments are being changed in Deadfire, but I wouldn't be surprised if they remain the same.

Sure, but then to my mind that's a personal problem: either learn to exercise self control or accept that you don't actually mind the option as much as you thought; don't limit other people.

The thing I don't understand is this: if you didn't like it, you didn't have to do it. Is the fact that it was possible really so bad that you want to remove that possibility for everyone who did like it?

Well that sucks. We're being given less choice in terms of weapon aesthetics and effects because of a perception that there's something wrong with not regularly replacing your gear. If you mean by that that you can't enchant early game weapons to Mythic then sure, but honestly I'd treat Mythic as something separate since not only can you not enchant weapons to be Mythic, the few* Mythic weapons there are in the game are fairly niche anyway. If you're a class that relies on your weapon to do damage then, realistically, Legendary is the top quality enchantment tier. *I am being vague because I know you didn't want spoilers in another thread regarding numbers.

As far as I am aware, this is what we know about Cadegund: she is female, she wears plate, she has a gun, she's a Priest of Magran, she's blonde, her name is Cadegund. That's it.

Here's a quote from Josh from the first Q&A stream: "Modding a lot of stuff will be easier in Pillars 2. Modding the party size from 5 to 6...certainly possible, if you want to do that that's cool. I don't know how the UI is going to react to that and everything because things are spaced out for increased legibility for 5 characters, but there you go." So generally speaking, modding will be easier, though Josh does mention a particular difficulty in modding the party size to 6.

Wish I could have donated more. Depending on the eventual deadline for this, I should be able to donate more next month.

I believe that at level 16, with Greater Focus, using Twin Sting for an alpha strike you can fairly reliably get your focus above 80 at the start of combat. This is a good thing.

Hey, no need to apologise, real life takes priority. Thanks for the info on this build as well.

Only if they genuinely fix bashing. At the moment in PoE, it's actually worse than a generic Large Shield.

Do you think that Cadegund is a complicated character?

Cadegund probably surpasses Ydwin is her number of fans to information ratio. I don't quite understand it.

No. That would be terrible.

Yeah, I think the reduction in number of backers is likely, in part, due to people becoming jaded (or at least less enthusiastic) about crowdfunding. Not necessarily PoE's crowdfunding (which was generally pretty well run) but crowdfunding in general. Still, some of those might choose to back closer to release if they like what they see.

You're prepared for your leisure time to turn into more parenting?

I hope that, as more details are released through updates, and Obsidian do more interviews with people like RPS, we'll see spikes in paypal backers. There are some 30,000+ PoE backers who didn't back Deadfire, I hope that a significant number of them will back eventually.