Taking a break from Pillars II for awhile --probably until all the DLC is out in December--but I welcome this patch.
Some balance comments on classes I actually play and items:
Fighter
Glad to see some truly OP abilities go.
Rogue
Basically unaltered. Rogues still need a skill at PL 8 or so to gain class resource on kill (for single class only).
Priest
A step, but only a step, in the proper direction. Priest got the balance axe less than other classes and sounds like devs heard some complaints and agreed to make single-target inspirations cast faster. This move was only fair and fully in-line w/ existing single-target inspirations for other classes. But the cumulative effect after weakening Devotions will probably be that nobody plays priest except for flavor. Although Dire Blessing and Devotions still stack apparently (haven't tested).
It now also seems like Litany for the Body and Litany for the Spirit would be potentially useful spells.
That said, the priest now has some serious redundancies. Why take Blessing, Prayer for the Body, or Prayer for the spirit at all -- they each are replaced by a better version like two PL later?
Above all Priest needs more +1 spell/encounter trinkets or even higher-level passives that allow them to cast more lower level spells. Priest currently has no identifiable class feature that distinguishes him or her from the generic caster type. Ciphers have focus on hit, wizards have grimoires offering unlimited spell access, druids have shapeshifting, and priests have...radiance that sort of (barely) responds to disposition...
If priest is theoretically healing and support, enable the class to actually do that by granting more spells / level, at least for levels 1-4. The class needs a boost.
Paladin
Is still good. Was happy to see that the balance axe did not come down too hard. But the Shieldbearer of St. Elega special still appears too strong?
Wizard
Is still stupidly strong; a hold-over from POE1 and BG.
Items
My number one gripe w/ items is that the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry also avoided the rebalance axe, which is a facepalm since it is one of the strongest items in the game. Make different Grimoires provide a few extra spells per/encounter at different PLs-- this would add another tactical layer and difficulty. +1 to all spells/ power level / encounter is absurdly OP; the evidence is that it would be considered a no-brainer passive ability to take if offered at //any// power level. But no you still receive it for less than 10k gold and can easily steal it. Please rebalance the item; there is currently no other item that is as broken.
I was also sort of sorry to see a lot of the items have their proc chance weakened so much. Some were definitely broken but now it seems like some are just like, generic superbs with flavor text now. Sad.
Penetration and armor mechanics:
My impression during the original and beta 1.1 was that some weapon types are obviously bad, while others have modals that are entirely unnecessary or redundant or just bad. I like the notion of having to swap weapons but think the whole system needs scaling and tuning. I would suggest revisiting that balance so that low pen weapons are the obvious choice against low armor enemies while high pen weapons or modals are a necessary evil against high armor enemies, particularly on PotD, but offer merely respectable damage otherwise. This is intuitive and means there are actual tradeoffs while the current system appears to be that high pen weapons are always the obvious choice.
Edited by lpro, 10 June 2018 - 04:40 PM.