Help me understand Rogue.

[Vati.exe]

two questions;
1) is One Handed Style as garbage as it looks ? 20% hits to crits is nice but dual wielding without passive alone is +100%dps, with passive you get -15% weapon recovery time too

2) is this a heavy warrior class ? why is every ability pushing me to use heavy slow hitting 2 handed weapons ?
like Backstab giving +100%dmg to only the first hit of dual wield attacks, so backstab is almost half as effective with Daggers then with Greatswords...why ?
Same thing with most active abilities, they give % based bonuses so using slow hard hitting weapons is far more beneficial because you have a limited Power Pool and you want to make the most of it. 

Edited December 25, 2019 by Vati.exe

[omgFIREBALLS]

I can't speak for the full theorycraft of single vs. dual wield (I believe DW is considered better), but know that you also get +12 accuracy for single wielding (no talent needed); nothing in the off-hand and not a two-hander.

And yeah, you might find the game in general doesn't necessarily encourage stereotypical approaches.

[Boeroer]

Dual wielding is not 100% dps. That would mean that you'll get +100% action speed. But you only get +30%. Also speed modifiers don't get added but multiplied which means that 30% + 15% don't add up to 45%. You can look up the mechanics of action speed and recovery time in the pinned thread above by @MaxQuest.

But you are still right that one handed weapon usage is inferior - at least over the course of a playthrough (generally speaking, there are exceptions like pistol + modal). In the early game it's quite good though. But it quickly falls behind. 

Don't know what you mean with "warrior class" when using Backstab as example (from Rogue class) - but generally you are right that those additive bonus dmg abilities do most for heavy hitters if you also look as resource costs.

However, most dmg bonuses are of passive nature (MIG, weapon quality, Sneak Attack, Deathblows, Weapon Spec & Mastery and so on) and thus don't need any resources. So the dmg per hit doesn't matter (but dps).

Most of the dmg bonuses on active abilities are simply there to balance out the missing Power Level bonus of low level abilites vs. high level abilites. Every damaging ability gains +5% multiplicative dmg with every Power Level. So low level abilites (which are used with weapons) will scale better than high level ones. To compensate for that the high level ones often get a +x% additive dmg bonus. This is not the optimal solution since it favors heavy hitters - as you said - but I guess it was the easiest solution.

But still: those dmg bonuses on active abilities don't make up a big part of your overall dmg bonuses. Most are passive. So it's not too bad. There are some nasty ones though:

Backstab is an especially bad case because it's a very high dmg bonus and usually only works very limited times per encounter. Same as Takedown Combo (+100% dmg) by the way or Lion's Sprint (here it's accuracy and not dmg). They are limited in use and thus you want to Max out the dmg per hit.

This implementation favours stuff like arquebus and such and thus is completely unintuitive to use for somebody who associates Backstabs with daggers and such. Who really starts the game and realizes that Backstabs are best done with guns and two handers?

That's why the Community Patch (see my signature) replaced the percentage-based additive dmg bonus on Backstab with a flat raw dmg bonus. So it doesn't matter which weapon you use.

I do recommend that mod. It's conservative (no op stuff, even some nerfs) but fixes some issues with suboptimal or illogical game mechanics.

Edited December 25, 2019 by Boeroer

[Vati.exe]

Thanks for the help, that mod was exactly what i needed.

[Boeroer]

Great. It also has some nice icons for all passives in the ability tree.

[asnjas]

People get too caught up in balance. 

Id wager obsidian just wanted freedom in backstab choices and the harder hitting 2 hand wespsons just work better by coincidence. 

Id also make a hedge wager that obsidion meant for 2 hand weapsons to hit harder on backstabs cause it makes sense. Yea. It makes sense. What advantage does a dagger bring when it comes to damage over a 2 h axe? Daggers are easily concealed thats it. That aside, if you happen to find yourself 2 meters behind your target, you want a free swing with an axe or a dagger- with an arquabus pointed at the back of someones head or a stiletto? 

[omgFIREBALLS]

The thing with RPG combat in general is, if you don't bend the rules of realism a bit you risk reducing physical combat to shield wall formations and polearms. We had a similar discussion in another thread (started about here).

Anyway, let's look closer at the dagger. Yes, it's not going to deal as much damage as twenty other weapons you could name. But it has advantages for this particular scenario. Firstly, the dagger is a deceptive weapon. You can hide a dagger. Even if just sheathed-but-visible it's still less intimidating than carrying a loaded gun or a spear or what have you. So if you're looking to assassinate someone who isn't automatically hostile towards or particularly wary of you (think in public or at a banquet), it's a great weapon.

Furthermore, let's consider the actual sneaking. Again, the dagger is a very handy weapon for this, because it's, small. You can sheathe it or carry it 'tween your teeth, or just have it in your hand and it's not much of an impediment, as opposed to bulkier, heavier-hitting weapons. We could actually represent this by giving daggers and stilettos +stealth.

Anyway, let's go for the kill. If what you're sneaking up on has a throat that can be slit, do you really need to paint the walls with its brains? Covering your victim's mouth while you give them a red smile is a subtle kill, one that might go unnoticed (not in game mechanics, of course). Unloading a firearm at point blank range? Not only extremely noisy, but also making that weapon useless until you reload. Why would you want to?

For more "honest" combat, daggers are indeed difficult to justify as being a competitive weapon though.

Edited December 31, 2019 by omgFIREBALLS
Whoops, ctrl+enter does indeed submit the post.

[thelee]

On 12/25/2019 at 12:15 AM, Vati.exe said:

two questions;
1) is One Handed Style as garbage as it looks ? 20% hits to crits is nice but dual wielding without passive alone is +100%dps, with passive you get -15% weapon recovery time too

2) is this a heavy warrior class ? why is every ability pushing me to use heavy slow hitting 2 handed weapons ?
like Backstab giving +100%dmg to only the first hit of dual wield attacks, so backstab is almost half as effective with Daggers then with Greatswords...why ?
Same thing with most active abilities, they give % based bonuses so using slow hard hitting weapons is far more beneficial because you have a limited Power Pool and you want to make the most of it. 

late to the party, but

1: like boeroer said, 1h style is not great. it's niche. it was better balanced in poe1, but in deadfire, i think they plain messed up dual-wielding (way too good) because they didn't understand how their own inversion system worked, and then they buffed 2h weapon style but never really touched 1h weapon style, so it's by far the most underpowered of the lot, unless you have a very specific reason to do want more crits/hits in a way that simply dual-wielding won't. I ran the numbers a long time ago, and even in PotD dual-wielding can give you more crits/second simply because you attack *way* more often with 2w style, and 1h only helps if your accuracy is really bad against the enemy (and even then, rapier has weapon modal that gives you a whopping +20 accuracy and the downside is not so bad when dual-wielding).

2: in terms of active abilities, dual wielding and 2h style are actually very competitive. it's not just because the bonuses are additive, like boeroer says, but because 2h weapons are balanced essentially to be on-par with dual-wielding full attacks (in fact, they had to add a -35% damage penalty to dual-wielded full attacks because they were just basically strictly better than 2h style full attacks for a while). even with dual-wielding nerf/2h buffs, ignoring backstab, i would actually prefer 2w style, because you have a faster recovery when using dual-wielding, and you get two separate chances to connect, which can be extremely relevant for abilities with powerful on-hit debuffs. In fact, Gambit is a high-level rogue ability that frankly only makes sense as a dual-wielded full attack, as otherwise it's frankly way too expensive.

Edited January 1, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Gambit also makes sense with any sort of AoE weapon (which boils down to rods and hand mortars) and blunderbusses. I mean single handed (for whatever reason).

Sun & Moon with One Handed Style can also be viable in combo with Gambit - but that's about it I think.

But generally speaking: yes.

I never tried if the Chilling Grave from Grave Calling counts for Gambit if you kill a vessel during the execution of Gambit and the Chillfog then crits... Because for all other purposes it counts as weapon attack.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Boeroer

[thelee]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Gambit also makes sense with any sort of AoE weapon (which boils down to rods and hand mortars) and blunderbusses. I mean single handed (for whatever reason).

Sun & Moon with One Handed Style can also be viable in combo with Gambit - but that's about 

But generally speaking: yes.

I never tried if the Chilling Grave from Grave Calling counts for Gambit if you kill a vessel during the execution of Gambit and the Chillfog then crits... Because for all other purposes it counts as weapon attack.

Yes, aoe weapons are great with Gambit, but I would argue Gambit is still too expensive unless you're dual-wielding hand mortars or blunderbusses. A little bit of extra damage for 2-4 guile doesn't sound great, versus for 0-2.

If hand mortars are any indication, I don't think the chillfog will count for Gambit - the bounce from Fire in the Hole doesn't count for Gambit for crits even though it's still the same attack. A tad annoying that we'd have to test to be sure  

[Boeroer]

Hm, with hand mortars and Watershaper's Focus I get absurd dmg numbers because Gambit internally seems to build up a ton of Guile per crit, even exceeding max Guile, which translates into hugh bonus dmg (see description of Gambit which gains bonus dmg from remaining Guile) and only after the execution is complete the refund gets capped.

That leads (or lead the last time I tried) to very high bonus dmg on the AoE hits - I got more than +200% often when hitting a lot of enemies. I could look it up in the combat log (with shift + hover etc.). With every crit the dmg bonus climbed up. Maybe I can even find a screenshot, I remember posting one...

So I'd say Gambit is especially good with jumping AoE weapons like Fire in the Hole and Watershaper's Focus. At least it was with my SC Assassin back then. Nearly always I could use Gambit with 0 Guile investment from stealth with absurd dmg numbers piling up because of the inner workings of Gambit. 

It may be that this was changed but I don't think so. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Boeroer

[mangamancer]

I'm trying Deadfire Community Patch but my Scout can't get Backstab to work even once.

Was the conditions of backstabbing changed?

[Boeroer]

It's a separate entry in the combat log. So you won't find it listed in the dmg bonuses of your initial attack. Look a bit further down in the log and you should see an entry that lists the raw dmaage it did. It isn't dependent on the weapon damage (so weapon types like arquebus vs dagger don't matter) so it can't be listed under the weapon dmg bonuses anymore as it used to be. Instead it's a fixed raw damage bonus that scales with Power Level. It is better than the original one (because of Power Level scaling) but harder to spot.

The conditions haven't changed. It's still:

- have to attack from stealth or invisibility

- needs to be a weapon attack from 2 meters distance or less.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Boeroer

[mangamancer]

^Thank You.