How did you break Beta 301?

[swordofthesith]

Disclaimer: 

 

I am a huge Pillars of Eternity fan boy. I love the work Josh & Co. have put into bringing us a CRPG in the spirit of the Infinity Engine games. I especially like the great writing, the unconventional lore of this new setting, some welcome additional races that steer away from common RPG stereotypes, the art style and the music - my goodness the music! I am thoroughly enjoying test the PoE Beta and making my small contribution towards helping Josh & Co. field a polished and fun final product. 

 

---

 

I set out to Beta 301 and I think I succeeded. I cleared the entire dungeon and 60% of Dyford Crossing without needing to rest once - and I did this without even trying very hard. Here is how I broke BB V.301

 

Mutonizer made a post about how accuracy is KEY to melee success in the current beta. Accuracy is critical to helping you land attacks in combat and both fighters and rogues have the highest base starting accuracy at 25. Perception is critical to augmenting your accuracy, the more perception you have, the more accurate you are and the more frequently you land hits in combat. He also mentioned that fighters and rogues with maxed perceptions just chew through things in the beta.

 

I tested out a perception maxed fighter and was impressed with the character. He was indeed landing more frequently in combat and putting out some good damage. But there was no comparing the DPS of the fighter against the explosive Sneak Attack damage of the BB Rogue. I decided to create a Rogue to complement the BB Rogue and BB Fighter. Here is my initial setup:

 

Main Character = 

Race: Orlan

Class: Rogue

Culture: Living Lands

Might: 18

Con: N/A

Dex: 18

Per: 20

Int: N/A

Res: N/A

 

Talents:

 

Weapon Focus - Soldier (Greeatswords!) 

 

This character is designed to never miss in combat. With the Orlan bonus perception and weapon focus this character has sky high accuracy. Now that I had my character I started the game.

 

1) NO ARMOR:

 

I ditched all the armor on my characters except the BB fighter. If you are careful you can position your BB Fighter to absorb all the aggro from the various enemies you can encounter in the Backer Beta. They will almost NEVER target your other party members. Armor just slow your other party members down. Ditch it and you can greatly increase the frequency of your attacks and your overall DPS.

 

2) Smash the DT:

 

The next thing to do is get rid of weapons that have poor DT. You want your rogue to hit everything and hit it HARD and high DT weapons allow for this. Don't worry about the hit on attack speed. You will be naked and 2 handed weapons have a pretty high default attack speed.  I immediately sold all the starting armor, loot from the group of thugs at the starting village and purchased Justice from the blacksmith. With Justice in hand I turned 301 into easy mode. 

 

3) Combat Strat:

 

Draw aggro with the BB Fighter, setup the two rogues to either side of him, attack and watch the butchery begin. My rogue was hitting for 50+ up to 100 on a REGULAR basis. Enemies would fall within seconds under the assault of my two rogues. It was so easy combat had been reduced to pushing my BB fighter forward and then click dragging the rest of the party to focus fire on whatever enemy was nearest to them. I just steamrolled everything in my way. 

 

*

But I was wiped once. In the quest to retrieve the drake egg you run into a rival adventuring party in Dryford's Crossing. I began combat as I usually did expecting the rival party to swarm the BB fighter. I sent my rogues to take care of the enemy wizard while the BB fighter engaged the melee characters from the enemy part. This time, the AI divided it's attention between the fighter and my naked rogues. With no armor they were almost instantly taken out of combat and I was well on my way to party wipe. 

 

The second time around I started combat and then ran south near the drake bodies. This let to the AI breaking again. Instead of the entire enemy party pursuing me, I was able to pull enemy adventurers one or two at a time and easily defeat the rival party.

 

Anyway. Orlan + Rogue + Max Perception + Greatswords = Easy mode. That's how I broke the Beta. How did you break 301?

 

** Videos incoming of the slaughter! 

Edited September 29, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Sensuki]

You know I think it would be nice if we were able to get an idea of the expected gear that the party should have at this stage of the game, as it seems like testing with underpowered weapons is not producing the correct results.

 

Do Rogues now have 25 Base Accuracy? Previously it was like 20 melee and 15 ranged or something lulz. They must be awesome with ranged weapons now.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Sensuki

[swordofthesith]

Hey Sens! /salute for the incredible work mate.

 

Yes! Rogues do have 25 accuracy now! Rogues = Instant death. Especially given how easy it is to get condition needed to setup sneak attacks.

 

Back @ you Sens: Anything that you tried out in this current version of the Beta that you found kind of game breaking? ^_^

Edited September 29, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Hiro Protagonist II]

These are the sort of posts that bring a smile to my dial. As a fellow min-max powergamer, Well done.

[Sensuki]

Back @ you Sens: Anything that you tried out in this current version of the Beta that you found kind of game breaking? ^_^

Not yet, I've been doing modding and arguing about mechanics and UI on the forums. I have played v301 and I found it easier, mostly due to the fact that they nerfed the encounters in the Dyrford Crossing, and poison DoT is not as strong anymore.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Swordofthesith: I broke it the same way as you, only earlier, hehe! And indeed, welcome to the fun world of tinkering the system in your favour - one wonderful aspect of character creation, aside from all the great RPG possibilities.

[swordofthesith]

Thanks Hiro! Yap. Time for us all to brag about how we're all ragdolingl .301. It makes for interesting forum fodder AND it is VITAL feedback for the Devs to understand how their game system is playing out. Hail to the powergamers baby!  

[Matt516]

I'm still a bit confused as to why Perception (Accuracy) is all the sudden perceived to be so much more powerful... it should be on par with Might, especially if the Deflection of enemies has been nerfed across the board (since that would mean most attacks would fall in the positive ACC-DEF range where Might is more powerful than Accuracy). Are people just not testing with Might as well? Or are the heaps of Accuracy-boosting spells and modals tricking people into thinking it's their high Perception that's producing great results instead of just balls-high Accuracy, of which Perception is only a small contributor?

 

Anyone mind trying two versions of the same character, with the only differences being that one has 10 PER and 18 MIG, and the other has 18 PER and 10 MIG? Keep using all the same abilities, etc. The Might character should be on par with the Perception character. Unless enemies just have Deflection that is much higher than your average Accuracy. It really comes down to the relative value of Accuracy vs Deflection, to be honest.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Matt516

[IndiraLightfoot]

For this patch, I switched glasses, from my BG1-glasses to my D3-glasses, as it were. I focussed entirely on DPS, and for that I apparently needed accuracy and speed and high damage overall, so Perception and Dex and Might, plus a few abilities all raising damage, and a high damage weapon. Done! And it really worked this time. What we have here is perhaps a RTwP ARPG as far as the combat goes, heh.

 

EDIT:

 

Matt516: I don't know the math in much detail, but you do need both. *Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, slaughter, mayhem, kill, kill, kill...*

Edited September 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

I'm still a bit confused as to why Perception (Accuracy) is all the sudden perceived to be so much more powerful... it should be on par with Might, especially if the Deflection of enemies has been nerfed across the board (since that would mean most attacks would fall in the positive ACC-DEF range where Might is more powerful than Accuracy). Are people just not testing with Might as well? Or are the heaps of Accuracy-boosting spells and modals tricking people into thinking it's their high Perception that's producing great results instead of just balls-high Accuracy, of which Perception is only a small contributor?

I wonder if it's because increasing Perception not only increases DPS through increasing Accuracy but also raising the Might bonus at the same time.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

hahaha. Indira is right. I have no idea about the maths either. I just know how to make OP builds, especially in pnp. If the character I'm creating ~feels~ OP, and it turns out it is. Then great.

 

Too many people I see focus on arguing against with things like, 'oh but you'll have less defences, less this, less that'. Well, when you're slaughtering everything in less than 10 seconds, then defences of my characters don't come into it.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I wonder to what extent Josh will go to squash OP builds. Will he keep balancing the game as soon as a new OP loophole is discovered until everything is balance - a vast equilibrium void patrolled by some never-sleeping DPS blood hounds of his?

Edited September 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[swordofthesith]

Sens said:

I wonder if it's because increasing Perception not only increases DPS through increasing Accuracy but also raising the Might bonus at the same time.

 

 

HI Sens! I don't think Perception raises the Might bonus for damage and healing. Perception solely increases accuracy and range and with more accuracy it is indisputable that you hit more frequently. 

 

As Matt pointed out there are probably a host of enemy types in PoE that do have low Deflection stats that eliminate the need for sky high accuracy but if you do run into an enemy mob with high Deflection then you and the rest of your party will be stuck swinging at air and consequently lowering your overall DPS.

 

The Perception Rogue with Greatswords takes care of all possible scenarios. It smashes through high Deflection and high DT.

 

 

Returning to Matt's note. He also brings up an important point when it comes to accuracy values. He is right that Perception is a secondary consideration when it comes to overall accuracy. The most critical determinant for accuracy is class base accuracy (BC).

 

This has been made clear in the current version with Rogues now getting Very High BC (25) as compared to previous versions where as you pointed you out, they got far less. They now land much more frequently withe new BC values and have a much higher DPS.

 

But where the Rogue truly breaks the game is the ease with which a player can setup Sneak Attacks.  And when you start machine gunning MOBs with Sneak Attack in combat, they drop dead ASAP. 

Edited September 29, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I wonder to what extent Josh will go to squash OP builds. Will he keep balancing the game as soon as a new OP loophole is discovered until everything is balance - a vast equilibrium void patrolled by some never-sleeping DPS blood hounds of his?

 

Welcome to the darkside Indira. Looks like D3 had a great effect on you.

 

They have to lock the attributes in once the game is released. No more changing attributes. If they did, that would mean changing things like game manuals having to be constantly updated. Characters that you're currently playing 6 months after release now play differently because all the attributes changed? Your tank fighter is no longer a tank because you just got a Steam update. No thanks. And it'd be better for Obsidian to squash more important bugs than changing the whole system because Josh saw a Youtuber making an OP build and killing something in 5 seconds.

 

But there will always be OP builds no matter how much is changed. You can even create OP builds with S&M's system. Whatever system is implemented, it won't stop the powergamers finding ways to min-max and make OP builds. 

[Matt516]

 

I'm still a bit confused as to why Perception (Accuracy) is all the sudden perceived to be so much more powerful... it should be on par with Might, especially if the Deflection of enemies has been nerfed across the board (since that would mean most attacks would fall in the positive ACC-DEF range where Might is more powerful than Accuracy). Are people just not testing with Might as well? Or are the heaps of Accuracy-boosting spells and modals tricking people into thinking it's their high Perception that's producing great results instead of just balls-high Accuracy, of which Perception is only a small contributor?

I wonder if it's because increasing Perception not only increases DPS through increasing Accuracy but also raising the Might bonus at the same time.

 

 

Well but that works both ways. Increasing Might raises the Accuracy bonus at the same time as well. Same for Speed, in fact (though the effect of DT makes Speed the worst of the 3 in terms of DPS increasing).

[Sensuki]

HI Sens! I don't think Perception raises the Might bonus for damage and healing.

But it increases Accuracy. The percentile DPS gain from Might is higher with each point of accuracy, so therefore when you raise perception, your might bonus (if higher than 10) is also better for it.

 

Well but that works both ways. Increasing Might raises the Accuracy bonus at the same time as well. Same for Speed, in fact (though the effect of DT makes Speed the worst of the 3 in terms of DPS increasing).

Yeah I know. And also the bonuses that you get from attributes are now waaaaaaaaaay less than v278bb

 

Did people not build max might and dexterity builds last patch or something?

Edited September 29, 2014 by Sensuki

[Matt516]

 

Sens said:

I wonder if it's because increasing Perception not only increases DPS through increasing Accuracy but also raising the Might bonus at the same time.

 

 

HI Sens! I don't think Perception raises the Might bonus for damage and healing. Perception solely increases accuracy and range and with more accuracy it is indisputable that you hit more frequently. 

 

 

Sorry, this probably isn't immediately evident if you aren't familiar with my spreadsheets and graphs haha... he was talking about the effective increase. Basically, if you hit more often (and crit more often), your Might bonus is worth more in terms of true DPS. Similarly, if you do more damage with each strike (AKA Might bonus), the additional DPS from hitting more often and critting more often is actually greater.  You're right, it's not a direct modifier - but it is an effective modifier that can be (and has been) quantified precisely.

[Matt516]

 

I wonder to what extent Josh will go to squash OP builds. Will he keep balancing the game as soon as a new OP loophole is discovered until everything is balance - a vast equilibrium void patrolled by some never-sleeping DPS blood hounds of his?

 

Welcome to the darkside Indira. Looks like D3 had a great effect on you.

 

They have to lock the attributes in once the game is released. No more changing attributes. If they did, that would mean changing things like game manuals having to be constantly updated. Characters that you're currently playing 6 months after release now play differently because all the attributes changed? Your tank fighter is no longer a tank because you just got a Steam update. No thanks. And it'd be better for Obsidian to squash more important bugs than changing the whole system because Josh saw a Youtuber making an OP build and killing something in 5 seconds.

 

But there will always be OP builds no matter how much is changed. You can even create OP builds with S&M's system. Whatever system is implemented, it won't stop the powergamers finding ways to min-max and make OP builds. 

 

 

Haha true. That said, what y'all are all describing is simply PoE's version of the classic "glass cannon" build - if the game is balanced properly, these characters will still tear through everything... but also drop very quickly if targeted. Therefore requiring extra tactics and micromanagement to make work.

 

EDIT: But yeah. Attributes need to be locked in before release to be sure. My personal prediction *looks into crystal ball* is that the boni will increase to +3% and +2 respectively. While I'd personally still prefer that they adopt Sensuki and I's system (switch Deflection and Duration basically) from an RP and general "feel" perspective, I think the current system is "good enough" from at least a purely balance perspective. Probably.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Matt516

[IndiraLightfoot]

Sensuki & Matt516: Perhaps there is an in-game aspect of speed (a big thanks for getting that one onto DEX in PoE, btw.  I really like it!) that you're missing - and it's something that's much harder to factor in mathematically. What am I on about? Well the movement speed increase makes my killing machine reach its targets faster - it's an uneven effect, thanks to pathfinding issues and the uniqueness of each encounter - but once again, I borrowed my thoughts from ARPGs - speed equals higher DPS (and higher survivability and general control).

It's no co-incidence that I had two speedy monks become my first hardcore characters in D3 - a knee-wobbling challenge I undertook, encouraged by no less than Hiro Protagonist! Small world!!

Edited September 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Haha true. That said, what y'all are all describing is simply PoE's version of the classic "glass cannon" build - if the game is balanced properly, these characters will still tear through everything... but also drop very quickly if targeted. Therefore requiring extra tactics and micromanagement to make work.

 

I know and this argument has always comes up over the last two years:

 

Too many people I see focus on arguing against with things like, 'oh but you'll have less defences, less this, less that'. Well, when you're slaughtering everything in less than 10 seconds, then defences of my characters don't come into it.

 

But every crpg I've played is exploitable. It's nice to try and balance the game, but you have to draw the line somewhere for a single player game.

[swordofthesith]

 

Sorry, this probably isn't immediately evident if you aren't familiar with my spreadsheets and graphs haha... he was talking about the effective increase. Basically, if you hit more often (and crit more often), your Might bonus is worth more in terms of true DPS. Similarly, if you do more damage with each strike (AKA Might bonus), the additional DPS from hitting more often and critting more often is actually greater.  You're right, it's not a direct modifier - but it is an effective modifier that can be (and has been) quantified precisely.

 

 

Hi Matt! Great work together with Sens on Beta Feedback! What you write is of course true. As currently implemented the bonus damage from Might does increase the DPS of a high accuracy class. Might is not a dump stat for damage dealers. However I maintain that the absolute key to a high DPS is Accuracy. Perception helps with this but the assigned Class Base Accuracy (CBA) remains the most important determinant. 

 

Returning to the original topic. Have you found some new ways to break 301 Matt? Share your exploits! :D 

Edited September 29, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Matt516]

Haha I haven't had a huge amount of time to playtest the newest build beyond some basic bug identification, but I'll certainly let you know if/when I find any!

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Cipher is an OP class and it's even more OP when min-maxed. 

[swordofthesith]

Cipher is an OP class and it's even more OP when min-maxed. 

 

 Details Hiro! Give us the breakdown! 

[Sensuki]

Well the movement speed increase makes my killing machine reach its targets faster

Action speed in PE doesn't increase movement speed.

 

Druid and Chanter are also OP.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Sensuki