Service Announcement re: testing combat balance

[ctdavids]

I've seen a lot of posts talking about combat being hard/easy and people seeming to have varying experiences.  I just wanted to bring to people's attention the fact that there appear to be some pretty significant bugs which can affect how easy things are for you.  If you look at the attached picture, you'll note that my paladin has somehow obtained over 8000 in every defence.

 

 

While this is the most eggregious example of this bug I have seen, there are several more examples in that game (my priest has 50 DT while naked, for instance) and I'm sure it happens elsewhere.  And, by the way, these are the real numbers, not just a UI glitch.  My paladin can solo every monster in the dungeon. At once.

 

As long as stuff like this is happening, it's pretty hard to be sure we're getting the "real" combat experience.  Just putting it out there.

 

PS: Post the bug here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68299-very-wrong-numbercharacter-sheet-garbled/ if anyone else has examples they want to pass on to the devs.

[Qiushui]

Yes, I'm noticing a huge amount of 'inconsistencies' in combat. Nothing seems to be predictable from one fight to the next, one character to the next, one new game to the next.

 

Seems even with the latest patch PoE is still far from ready for actual play-testing.  

[Marceror]

There is definitely some whacky stuff that can happen in combat. The longer it lasts, it seems, the harder enemies sometimes are to kill.

[Sensuki]

There seems to be some issues with DT against humanoid enemies

[Razsius]

Yea the Skaen(sp?) Temple Guards are pretty wack their lowest DT is crushing at like 20.5 and they have like 114 Deflection baseline.  Basically means you do 4-5 damage on a good hit but mostly you graze for like 1.5 - .50 damage.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Razsius

[ctdavids]

Yeah, those temple guards are beasts, as is the dwarf with that party of thief hunters in the starting village.  Although it's possible there's also a bug where he gets buffed by player spells, so it might not be baseline crazy.  All sorts of nutty numbers out there.

[Tartantyco]

Yeah, I think this is an issue that was in 257 as well. I remember my BB fighter's Deflection changing from 74, to 12, to -82. I always felt like combat difficulty changed drastically from game to game, and from encounter to encounter.

[Caladian]

On my Ranger I noticed at one point that my accuracy dropped to 12 (with 20 dex).

[Hawkrose]

• Yeah, on my first play-through the Temple guards had Def of 226.    Impossible to hit.   Next game it was 85.