gkathellar

@Shdy314 - Bloody Slaughter is solid due to the increase in crit damage multiplier, which IIRC actually applies to all crits. But yeah, the rest of the list nicely sums up all of the truly useless choices.

@Longknife - That list is nonsense. It makes dramatic assumptions about build, weapon choice, and play style. Nope. My tanks/CC keeps my Barb and Rogues above 50% most of the time even on POTD. Besides, that Human bonus does not last very long at all. For a Barb, something Orlan/Death will most likely be used in the majority of encounters due to carnage. QFT. If you're getting below 50% on a regular basis, you're in bad shape.

"That'd be too complicated post-release!" Well, duration-based prebuffing is genuinely noxious. It's just that they've chosen to deal with that in the worst possible way, rather than recognizing that the DA model of "invest resources : maintain buffs" actually works really well. Whaaaaa Come on, everybody knows that Aloth's not a wizard once you ChangeClass him into a druid I actually don't understand this gripe. It's easy enough to target AoE spells so that they don't hit your tanks ... hell, I assumed Chill Fog would, and used it as such. Worked fine. I guess it might be harder if you're using one tank instead of two? /shrug Int really shouldn't decrease damage for DoT, if only because low attributes should only ever reward you via opportunity benefits. As it is, if I want to do something like run a Ranger with Wounding Shot, that ability is actually more powerful if I dump my Intelligence score. That's wrong and stupid.

It's mostly terrible because you have to be at less than 50% Endurance.

Why would anyone hang on to it? It's not like you don't find other pistols.

It's unclear. Someone should probably do some testing, or something. *walks off whistling*

wut Helmets have attribute bonuses. Especially at early levels (i.e. when godlike really should shine) that's very useful.

It's true, with the daughter picks, Defender is like a worse version of Faith and Conviction and a worse version of Cautious Attack that costs you multiple ability slots. Well, I was being sarcastic about Engagement not existing. But since Engagement doesn't actually help tanks, I guess it's a moot point.

Excellent then, thanks. Defender is a strong pick. If he skipped an ability or picked one of the bad ones it might be better to rush. What are you talking about? It's just Cautious Attack but worse. You must be thinking of how it was back when Engagement was still part of the game.

What about it? It's a good, free heal 1/encounter. Aye. If you're tanking, take it over Flames.

For a full tank, go all in with Perception and Resolve, and take some Con on the side. A Wild Orlan with a hatchet and shield and a 6/16/6/20/10/20 spread works nicely. Maybe drop Dex all the way for a bit of Might or Int, depending on what you want.

There are none, but one of her ciphers does bring it up.

Druid, hands down.

The best way to run a support character is with a setup virtually identical to that of a DPS character. (Also you can't really spec for accuracy beyond Wood Elf.) Condensed and then expanded. There are a lot of bad picks, but even worse, there are hardly any good ones.

I like all of the characters, but I'm with a lot of others on Durance and GM being my absolute favorites - Avellone's strengths as a writer really shine through in the weirdness and complexity of these two. Their sophistication really shows in the moments where their doubts are revealed. Eder is also fantastic, and gets special applause from me for working because he isn't a special snowflake, rather than in spite of it.

Well, for what it's worth, at least one person who was part of the BG2 modding community worked on Pillars (IIRC), and the devs are very much aware of Weidu, so there may be support from the top end if someone starts putting a management program together. But to the best of my knowledge. modding has to be done through Unity proper, and that may limit the scale of things. Depending on how user-friendly things become, I may be driven to learn some *hissssss* programming. I may have my gripes with mechanical particulars, but PoE does a lot of things right, and has a lot of potential.

Patience.

Modding is happening and will continue to happen. The IEMod is the main place where R&D is happening right now. Alas, due to relative complexity, it seems unlikely that we'll get a Weidu-style modding architecture for easier modding and greater compatibility.

Yeah ... but there are even opportunities for the PC and companions to actively speculate that Maerwald may have been especially vulnerable, and that someone better prepared might be able to take it.

Oh snap, this just got real. ... Unfortunately, Pillars is presently much much much more a VBS than a UBS. There are myriad reasons for this, but the big ones are that (a) the armor and attribute systems tend to reward extreme offensive and defensive builds, and that (b) the options for many build types are not abundant, resulting in pigeonholing.

Deflection on a ranged character is wasted, but yes, the Reflex is worth something.

Not often. Mostly when dealing with other ciphers or mind manipulation, actually.

Is that why you don't get any better at sword-fighting by having sword fights? The Bestiary system is perfectly adequate, but let's not pretend it makes any goddamn sense, because it doesn't. You get better up to a point. Then you gain nothing further since you are not doing anything new. I'm not sure how you can fail to grasp that. And yet you don't gain any experience from fighting humanoids, whose abilities and approaches have far greater variation than any other opposition. See also: "you don't get any better at sword-fighting by having sword fights"

Backer NPCS have yellow tooltips. Nobody else does.

Is that why you don't get any better at sword-fighting by having sword fights? The Bestiary system is perfectly adequate, but let's not pretend it makes any goddamn sense, because it doesn't.