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Hello, guys Have not played Deadfire for long time, and if there is anybody still here, could you say please is this intended that Arcane Archer pen does not scale with his PL?

Hey, I've finally had the time to play Deadfire, and while I like it very much, there are still a few things, which could increase my enjoyment even more. Please don't take this as a complaint post, I just wanted to share some of my ideas, on how certain things could be improved (at least in my opinion), maybe you find something in it, that you also think might be a good idea. Maybe not, then I've just wasted my time writing this wall of text . Probably most of these changes are too big to be implemented at this state of the game, but who knows, maybe for the next game... ------------------- 1) Recovery: In general this is my biggest problem in the game, combat just feels way too slow currently. I know I could play the game in fast mode, but I don't like the idea of it, because it also speeds up animation speed. So I'd suggest to reduce the recovery of EVERYTHING to half of its current value. This also means dmg should be reduced by ~50% (bit less, because attack/cast speed is intact). This way the dps remains around the same as before (less burst though). If this is implemented resource points should be doubled as well, so in total we can deal the same damage with the available resources as before. There is still one problem though, namely the healing and defensive spells, because twice as much could be cast of these in each encounter, which might drag out some fights. Unfortunately these are much harder to be updated, because some are tied to attacks (like kind wayfarer heal), others share the resource pool with other abilities (like priest spells). For this a possible, but indirect solution would be 2) a). ------------------- 2) Constitution: Probably I'm not the only one who thinks Constitution is an unimportant stat in this game. I'd not say it's a dump stat, because no1 wants to be die in seconds, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find many builds which are focusing on Con. I really would like to increase its impact a bit, here are some possible solutions for that: a) Re-introduce endurance from POE1 (it could regenerate after every encounter tho). I'd prefer this one, because this way we give a limit to each character, like a total beating they can take, even if healed. Probably not all classes could stay alive to effectively use their whole endurance pool, but that's ok, since this is mainly a tank stat anyway. b) Add damage reduction to constitution like 1-2% per point. c) Add increased healing received to constitution, again around 1-2% per point. ------------------- 3) Armor and penetration: In general I like that you've separated penetration from damage, in POE1 armor was losing much of its efficiency by the end game. On the other hand I don't understand why the scaling of armor vs. pen was implemented like this, currently it feels like an all or nothing mechanism. I'd really prefer if it could be changed, so there are no breakpoints in the system (diminishing returns are ok tho). One example: Each point of armor could give 10% damage reduction relative to the previous value, which means: armor damage reduction % = 1 - 0,9^armor. Also some suggestions on initial values: Weapon penetration could be somewhere between 8-12. Light armor: 14 (~34% damage reduction vs avg pen weapon) Medium armor: 17 (~52% damage reduction vs avg pen weapon) Heavy armor: 20 (~65% damage reduction vs avg pen weapon) Additionally the system should be somehow symmetric, meaning that the maximum possible penetration increase should be around the same as the maximum possible armor increase (classes can vary, just in general). ------------------- 4) Ability cost: In my opinion there is too much difference between the costs of certain abilities, e.g. some abilities cost 4x as much as others, while not giving enough benefit to justify this. Possible solution: The resource pools could be increased of certain classes. For example, the resource pool of a multi classed rouge could be increase from 9 to 90 (or 180 in case point 1) is implemented). Abilities that cost 1 guile now would be increased to 10 guile, which would be the basis. The good thing in this is that it's possible to increment costs for different abilities in smaller steps, so for example a previously 2 guile ability could be 13 guile (just to justify the 10 multiplier ) in the new system. This leaves more possibilities for balancing ability costs, also each level up could give some resource increase instead of every 2 or 3. There are some classes for which this change is unnecessary, like ciphers, chanters, wizards, priests or druids, maybe monks as well, these are following different mechanisms. I'm pretty sure that most of these were somehow discussed previously, but who cares, I don't feel like checking every topic on this forum, sry . At least devs will see what we (or maybe in certain cases only me) think are important things, if multiple topics were created about them.

So, everyone knows these two abilities are not very good. Why? Low damage, no penetration, etc. It has been discussed, and nothing has changed. Well, with patch 1.1 on PotD we now have enemies with higher AR. So, even enemies with couple points or more of AR to fire almost negate these abilities. They will not do any damage whatsoever. First let's look at Dragon Thrashed. Once every 3 seconds you do 4 Burn damage, and once every 6 seconds you do 4 Slash Damage. However, because both have such small damage amounts, and no bonus pen you tend to do no damage. So, you don't have any reason to select Dragon Thrashed when you have Soft Winds. Period. Since Soft Winds does Raw damage it will always do damage, but only in really rare circumstances will DT actually do equal or more damage. Even if it does more damage... Soft Winds gives health back to the caster. So, I would say Soft Winds is always the better option. You will do about 3 damage (depends on might and level) and heal for about the same. So many enemies have some burn AR and that means DT cannot do equivalent damage to a level 1 phrase even if you don't count Soft Winds healing factor. Similar issues with Brand Enemy. The damage amounts are equal to DT's burn damage. 4 damage every 3 seconds. However, once again since so many enemies have AR vs burn you end up doing no damage or so little it doesn't matter. Once again no bonus Pen. Why take this vs Sworn Rival which does no damage but gives Zeal back when the target dies? Your guess is as good as mine. At least Paladin's have access to Scion of Flame to get some Pen, but I have been testing it the past few hours and 1 pen doesn't help much at all with this new patch. You still do no damage in many encounters. The low damage values + no bonus Pen + the buffs to AR in 1.1 = two absolutely useless talents. Prior to 1.1 they at least did some damage, but were pretty bad then. Solutions: 1) So, I think an easy fix is to up the damage values of these abilities. They probably need this regardless of what else you do to these abilities. 8-12 damage every 6 seconds in 4 point increments is useless given the AR system, and even if they bypassed AR wouldn't be the end all be all. Although if they did bypass AR they would be functional in their current iterations but not good by any stretch. 2) Casters get Pen for spells that scales with Power Level. Perhaps it would be wise for these abilities to do the same. Around level 10 a Wizard will have something like 7.8 pen for their spells. It would probably be wise to have this for both of these abilities. I am surprised by how little pen these things get, and it isn't like you can hover the damage when you do no damage. So it is admittedly hard to see what is going on. 3) Add a burn AR reduction Debuff to both of these abilities. Although, I don't know if they should stack if this is the way they go. Although, Chanters only have Mith Fyr, DT, and the heal with burn upgrade. However, if they stacked I would worry about the Paladin side of the Herald with Sacred Immolation. Also, if they stacked you could just bring a Burn focused Caster along with your Herald and it might be a bit much. I would recommend a change to Scion of Flame (and the similar talents for other elements), but it would throw off the hard hitting fire spells from Priests, Wizards, Druids, Ciphers, etc. It also wouldn't help DT as Chanters don't get access to the elemental +1 Penetration talents. Which I think is stupid in and of itself. Chanters have access to Burn, Frost, and Shock elements. I can't figure out why they don't have at least the 3 talents to boost the Pen of those abilities. In the end, I think either increasing the Damage or adding some built in Pen to the abilities is the best way to go. Or a combination of the 2. I was pretty happy initially to see that DT got nerfed from PoE, but this is just silly. So, any thoughts? Something has to be done to these or else they should be removed. Because, more so than prior to this patch (launch and beta included), these abilities have zero purpose other than wasted talent points. They weren't great before, but they did something. Now they don't in a lot of encounters. Hopefully some of you have some thoughts on this, or some thoughts that haven't been discussed ad infinitum.

If you have 8 Pen vs 8 Armor you deal full damage as if enemy has no Armor If you have 7 Pen vs 8 Armor you deal 30% damage as if you have no Pen 1 Pen/Armor either make a 70% damage difference or make no difference at all I think this mechanics should be more linear and make every point of Pen/Armor counts, for example: 1 Pen = 5% more damage and 1 Armor = 5% damage reduction