Just wanted to get some quick thoughts and feedback re: turnbased mode down now that I've spent a bit of time with it (around 8 hours so far).

 

a lil bit about my perspective:

- I played POE1 & POE2 on Veteran

- I've gone through POE2 twice so far (once at release) and a second time about a month or so ago.

- I absolutely don't have the same level of game systems/knowledge that some people on these forums have, so please take that into account, and I welcome critical feedback on my own thoughts.

 

general thoughts:

• I'm actually having a fantastic time with this new mode, it's become my preferred mode of play and I love the way it really hones in  the focus on positioning, and controlling the battle through debuffing and crowd control.   This is a move away from the RTwP meta (stacking action speed, turn recovery etc), which felt more like a dps race.
   
• I am however sad that the changes to dex & initiative mean that certain old builds (ones that relied on lots of action speed and quick fast hits, or resetting turn recovery) no longer have the value at all.  I'd like there to be room for builds that have multiple attacks/turns per round to fit in, but I'm not sure how this gets balanced in the wider game without it being the 'best option' every time.
   
• I think some encounters could benefit from a re-work in terms of number of enemies on screen (some boarding encounters, that undead ambush in the undercity etc).  I'd rather fewer, more impactful enemies than hordes of slow moving enemies that mean combat can take a long, long time. 

 

Abilities and things:

 

• Free Actions:  this needs a bit of a tweak across the board.  I'm down with multiple free actions being cast per round (i.e putting on all your wiz buffs, or having swashbuckler eder use his teleport & then grab someone with into the fray) but not sure if I'm down with the same ability being spammable in a round (i.e multi-casting sworn enemy in one round).  Some classes have lots of free actions (wizards) while others (priests, druids) have like none.  I think there's some room here for this to be tweaked (spiritual weapons for priests & some of the single target buffs from ciphers/priests could easily be a free action).
   
• weapon swapping: due to the penetration system, I kind of wish that weapon swapping was a free action, but because of the way the blackjacket works (and can abuse this to do a huge attack, then swap to a shield & end turn) I can see why it's not.
• 
  Fighters: primary attacks kind of suck in turn-based mode, especially if you can dual-wield and just auto-attack and have both weapons attack in the same turn.  It really devalues any ability that's a primary attack (I'm looking at you knock down).  Which brings us to knock down being a bit flat, as it interrupts, but then the enemy immediately gets up when it's their turn.  a bit disappointing. not sure how you balance this one though without making power strike feel pointless?  both need a bit of a look at.
   
• Barbarians:  my main concerns here are that some of the abilities that revolve around resetting your recovery are just not as valuable in this mode.  (I'm looking at you crushing blow).   Frenzy's value seems diminished also considering how much deflection you're giving up.  There are other ways to get fit & strong buffs.
   
• Chanters: a few things have been said already about the troubadour vs other subclasses here, so I won't go too in depth.   I actually love how this class feels and plays in turn-based more than I do in RTwP.  Feels stronger partially due to how better it feels to aim cone-based abilities and the shift towards wanting lots of disables/paralyses/stuns and their easy access to these abilities.
   
• Monks:  my favourite class, feels a bit weird in Turn based. dance of death (Esp upgraded) is awesome now, but mortification of the soul costing an entire turn is a horrible feeling.  at the very least, it should be a free-ability.   Swift strikes felt class-defining in RTwP, and now feels like a trap ability.   Raised torment is dope and amazing now .
   
• Hunter:  feel so much better, by virtue of the pet being more tactical and enjoyable to control in turn-based mode.  Wounding shot feels a bit disappointing now that the dot tickets over one round only - I was going to go for a build that used predator's sense with wounding shot - and I'll probably respec out of it, simply because I can never line up Maia to attack before her pet and the the DOT is done by the next round.
   
• Cipher: I wish there were a few free actions in this class (maybe some of the single target buffs/debuffs - but only if there was a tweak to how free actions worked so they weren't spammable) because there is a strange feel between needing to alternate turns between building and spending.   Time Parasite on paper seems like it would be a bit of a trap spell now, which is a shame as it felt like an essential single-class cipher ability, it'd be nice for it to be re-worked to have some value that matched RTwP.
   
• Priests:  I'd like to see some of the spells become free actions.  single-buffs or summoning the 
   
• Rogue:  the graze/hit changes mean that riposte feels a lot less valuable now, same with any ability/item that works on this concept.  would be nice to have it re-worked to reflect these shifts.
   
• Paladin, all seems good here, not much feedback so far, but they feel stronger than ever (esp. with the amount of free actions they have available).
   
• Druid:  I think they're suffering a little bit like priests here, but I need more time with the game to really play around with them.

 

 

that's it off the top of my head, really enjoying this new game mode, has breathed lots of new life into the game for me, and has made me excited to potentially pick it up on switch later down the line.

 

Just like you mention with free actions being limited to once per round, you should only be able to swap weapons once per round on black jacket. Even just swapping fighter stances back and forth seems wrong. They already have something like this with grimoires, it's free to swap but you can't swap back the same turn. Not the it matters there since no one cares what grimoire you have equipped during the enemy turn (other than vaporous), should do the same with weapons.

 

If you want to make predator's sense work, I recommend gouging strike, lasts forever. It seems like the damage on wounding strike is bugged, most abilities that ticked once every three seconds got their damage/healing doubled in becoming per round since that's six seconds, but not wounding. Hopefully it gets fixed.

 

So many action speed abilities are worthless now, like swift strikes and time parasite. I'm hoping they swap to an ATB/speed based system so we can use them again. Letting you attack twice per round with sufficiently high action speed would just make every dps build aim for that breakpoint, a fluid system would be better.

 

Knock down is bad since prones are bad but mule kick with the knock up properly stuns them for a turn so it's quite useful.And I don't agree about dual wielding being strictly better. Before it was +35% speed now it's +100% speed but -35% damage so 2 x .65 = 1.3 roughly the same amount. Of course this is napkin math but primary attacks still have their place with two-handers, one handing is still trash.

Edited February 19, 20196 yr by arkteryx

They need to beef up two handed weapon damage before looking into multiple attacks per turn. Two handed lags way behind duel welding and is only slightly better than single one handed weapons and it needs to be implemented first to make sure it doesn't give rise to the two handed max dex meta.

Hey everyone!

 

Thanks for all of the amazing feedback with your Turn-Based Mode experience!  I'll be putting the information here into a report for the team to go over.  If you think of anything else to add, please feel free to do so as I will be linking this thread to the report to be used as a reference.

 

Thanks again for all the help to make Deadfire even better!

RE: Fighters - Just wanted to agree about Primary Attacks needing a bit more oomph. Could probably be fixed by giving more benefit to One-Handed and Two-Handed styles.

 

Worth noting Knock Down affects initiative. I frequently use interrupting abilities to prevent enemies from acting during the window to interrupt my own spellcasters.

 

RE: Monks - Swift Strikes isn't great but its upgrades are still amazing. Getting a mini-Heartbeat Drumming with Swift Flurry frequently resulted in my Shadowdancer launching off 2-3 Two Handed strikes which was nuts on the damage front. A lightning lash is also a solid way to bump melee damage. The initiative boost is underwhelming but it's still nice to act ahead of enemies when every turn offers the opportunity to lucky-crit pummel a foe into the ground before they do anything.

 

RE: Rogues & Riposte - I modded it to trigger 100% of the time which feels more in line with the new very low frequencies of misses to trigger. 100% is probably a little high for actual balance but bringing it up to 50% or 75% should make it feel useful again. Or you could just make it like PoE1's Riposte and have it get a trigger chance on Grazes. That'd be fun!