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gkathellar

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Everything posted by gkathellar

  1. Your reasoning is still garbage. Skill checks are rare. Rarely needed even if checked. And tend to be quite high. +1 making a difference will thus also be insanely rare. Just because youd make a dumb choice doesnt mean the choice isnt obvious. The only time you should choose a +1 to mechanics over something like +4 int is because you know a check is coming up and what that check is and that +1 is going to be enough. You never know when a Mechanics check is coming up. Or hell, sometimes you do know it's coming up, and you're 1 point shy. But you don't know if it's 1 point, 2 points, or 3 points. God, that will be frustrating, because I know it'll happen. "I know it's here! I KNOW IT'S HERE! WHY CAN'T I SEE IT?!". You do if you memorize all of those things like a crazy person. (Named gkathellar.)
  2. Well there is a reason why you can't get to Athkatla in Act 4 or 5 because you're at Spellhold or the Underdark. You've sailed away from Athkatla on a ship to the Pirate island. That's just basic comprehension. However, in PoE, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to go back to Defiance Bay prior to Twin Elms. You can travel along the country side for months before getting to Twin Elms, even walking past Defiance Bay multiple times and nope, City maps are still greyed out and can't click on them. But the moment you step on the first map in Twin Elms, Defiance Bay is magically open for business. In fact, you can turn around and go back to Defiance Bay and the city streets are pristine, people walking around going about their business. Going to the Crucible Knights, it appears nothing happened and they're just going through the motions like everyone else in the city. Dunstan the smithy mentions nothing about what happens in those weeks and months when the city was closed. And where did all the barricades, the fires, the scorched pavement go? So no, greying out the Defiance Bay maps served no purpose. Or maybe it was a way for the game to force you onto Twin Elms? No player, you can't go back to this city until you get to Twin Elms! Once you step on that map, then you can come back into the city. Right, I'm not disagreeing with this. But it's not like this is some foundational sin that Obsidian committed. It may be stupid, but while they do delay your returning to the city, they don't actually lock out its content forever without any warning. You can still get the Blade of Endless Paths, you just have to wait a bit (for reasons that are dumb, maybe, but that is what it is).
  3. Per isn't enough to put you over 170refl because you have no means to buff perception outside items. Right, but you can shift a point from one to the other, can't you?
  4. Well, the best one that's not a hatchet. Oooh, a monk using that off-hand spear trick could get a lot of mileage out of that.
  5. It does raise an interesting question - can the gods be reborn? They're artificial constructs, which suggests that the Cycle wouldn't handle them, but they're also made from soulstuff, which suggests that it would. Of course, the dead animancer at the beginning of the game notes that souls often break up while moving through the Cycle. What if Eothas did exactly that, and fragments of his being have been (or will be) reborn into hundreds, thousands, or millions of children since his death? That could be an interesting sequel hook. IIRC, nop. The whole reason it was important that the Watcher kill him is because the Watcher can shred souls. Thaos done got cheese-gratered.
  6. That's awesome. Why Dex 6? Unless I'm missing something, you could go Dex 4 and Perception 21, and still have enough Reflex.
  7. Your reasoning is still garbage. Skill checks are rare. Rarely needed even if checked. And tend to be quite high. +1 making a difference will thus also be insanely rare. Just because youd make a dumb choice doesnt mean the choice isnt obvious. The only time you should choose a +1 to mechanics over something like +4 int is because you know a check is coming up and what that check is and that +1 is going to be enough. You never know when a Mechanics check is coming up. Or hell, sometimes you do know it's coming up, and you're 1 point shy.
  8. I'd at least WAVE rather than MOON them, if only to give them a SILVER lining to their dreary existence. Pistols at dawn.
  9. No. Can you stop telling lies? If Acts 4 & 5 walled you off from literally every place prior, then how come I can go back and do quests from Act 2 AFTER I do Act 5? Just sayin'. Because Act 6 doesn't wall you off from those places. If I'd meant "acts 4-6," I'd have said, "acts 4-6." I'm sorry if that was unclear. I raise the comparison because, just like losing access to Defiance Bay in PoE, it's temporary. You just have to progress the story further.
  10. I'm pretty sure that the monk is meant to echo Christian traditions of mortification of the flesh. Or non-Christian traditions of mortification of the flesh - this is something that's been around. But not really in Buddhist tradition, to the best of my knowledge. Suffering is generally held to be bad, there. Also, considering the whole "I have lightning reflexes" monk of older games is based mostly on Shaolin, a Buddhist order that actually existed, I'm pretty sure that you're talking nonsense.
  11. What it's supposed to be and what it is are not the same thing, for better or worse. (And frankly, I dunno where the image of a support paladin even comes from. Paladins have always been about smiting evil while providing limited support and having good defenses against magic.) Yeah, there kinda is something wrong with it. Two things, really. First, there's no reason to pick a frontliner for support duty, and for a support-frontliner to even be viable, they have to be what they are now - an almost totally passive tank. Second, the thing you're describing? That's a priest. Hell, I can make a battle priest that fits the role perfectly. The paladin as you're describing it is redundant. I get that it's Obsidian's view, not yours, but it's a stupid view and it doesn't work in practice, so I don't see why anyone should be interested in it.
  12. No, I don't agree. There's no theme of impermanence, no concept of the world as illusion, and no concept even resembling the Middle Way. Even the cosmology really doesn't match up at all, insofar as PoE's cosmology is distinctly physicalist and has no emphasis on consciousness. Frankly, the greatest similarity is the falsity of the gods - but since they're not personally subject to reincarnation, even that's a pretty superficial comparison. Certainly the writers were aware of Buddhism, but the game bears few marks of its influence. Neither of these things indicate Buddhism. Reincarnation features in a lot of belief systems, and PoE's reincarnation isn't portrayed as Hindu/Buddhist in nature (there's no Atman, no dharma, no karma, and no Hell Realms). Chi isn't even a Buddhist concept. It features in Chinese Buddhism, but it significantly predates the arrival of Buddhism to China. It can be mapped to the Hindu/Southern Buddhist idea of prana, but that's by no means a clear analog, and prana is not the source of supernatural power in Hindu/Buddhist systems - concentration is. Jade has no special properties in Buddhism. In fact, the spread of Buddhist funerary practices caused jade's value to decline in some parts of the world. Except that it doesn't. The Watcher's past life connects them to Thaos personally, but the plot revolves around reasserting the normal cycle of life and death - where Buddhism's ultimate goal is sometimes stated as "killing death."
  13. But they also need to pass accuracy check against will, so what's the point? It's not very difficult to get in a Graze, and once you land one, it gets progressively easier.
  14. I dunno man, I guess I'm just greedy that way.
  15. Forget portraits, the current mohawked head model makes me want to curl up in a ball and then explode. Better heads plz
  16. Nah. Woedica is a god. I think killing a god in the first part of a two part expansion is bad storytelling/design.I also doubt that they're going to go the whole "god slayer" route, if only because it's require them to rethink a huge quantity of the lore.
  17. Yeah, it makes the case for playing a Wild Orlan pretty well. Makes me wish they had bearable head models. Orlan mohawk auuuugh
  18. No it's not considering this game is paying homage to the IE games. And Petty? I'd consider it a major task in the endless paths and no where does it say you should finish it before Act 2. Acts 4 & 5 of BG2 completely walled you off from literally every place you had been prior. Just sayin'.
  19. Not sure this is reachable even if you min/max. Maybe with buffs from priest/chanter. Well, for reference, you need something like 158 for the Adra dragon to only ever graze or miss you on PotD. I'm pretty sure that pre-buffing and without any of the single defense-boosting talents, a balanced set of defences defenses tops out at approximately 165/115/140/115, +/-5 or so. Dunno how high they can get once you start throwing buffs on.
  20. Mask of the Betrayer was released in the 21th century you piece of ****. Now go and read that review on the Codex, learn the traits that makes a game great and educate yourself before spewing moronic remarks just to extract yourself from facing the harsh reality regarding this game. ITP: "What? You disagree with me? Obviously you must be ignorant slime! Revise your opinion, now! I command it!"
  21. Nah, it's Druid > Wizard > Cipher > Priest even if you never use shapeshifting. Druids are very much OP spellcasters once you get the hang of them. Look, the spellcasting tiers are clearly debatable, but what I think we can all agree is truly atrocious is that the reviewer thinks spiritshift is good.
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