How did you break Beta 301?

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

Action speed in PE doesn't increase movement speed.

 

 

You of all people should know how hard it is to tell if a slight shift in movement speed has occurred or not!

 

I didn't know that - so it's only combat actions that you take that are sped up? Still, important enough for me and for increased DPS.

[swordofthesith]

Hi Sens! Could you share your findings on Druids and Chanters as of 301?

[IndiraLightfoot]

swordofthesith: Pick a druid, shapechange into a bear (but not in enclosed spaces), and rip everything apart.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Details Hiro! Give us the breakdown! 

 

I made a couple of posts in some other threads about it.

 

Dump INT and Con and this is what a Might 21 Int 3 Cipher can do. Because you're using spells, It doesn't matter if you graze, because it still registers as a hit and your spell will go off. Resolve is your best friend and you can have enemies charmed for over half a minute. And you'll notice my party is pretty much on full health and on their way back to town. The Fighter has a small amount of health lost. And this is after going through Dyrford Crossing, killing a few beetles, killing the two spiders outside the cave, killing another two spiders inside the cave, charming the ogre and killing him.

 

Then I made a post about the Medreth fighter on Hard difficulty. Cipher casted a couple of spells and stayed on the sideline out of the fight. Druid casted one spell and left her on the sidelines. BB Priest casted Interdiction and was out of the fight on the sidelines. Wizard threw a couple of fireballs near the end of the fight but was mostly on the sidelines from the start and not doing anything. While I had my BB Fighter tanking and BB Rogue sneak attacking all over the place and mopping up. But this fight was an earlier save game near the start and the BB Rogue had starting equipment. Again, the BB Fighter took a small amount of damage. But it was the Cipher's spells is what changed a hard battle to an easy battle from the start.

 

Also, one good thing about the Rogue is the Escape power. I use it as a teleport spell to teleport into a flanking position. Once my Fighter and Rogue kill someone. I can teleport the rogue into another flanking position if need be. LOL.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Sensuki]

You of all people should know how hard it is to tell if a slight shift in movement speed has occurred or not!

Lulz. That was pretty funny. However there's nothing in the source code for Dexterity based movement speed

[mutonizer]

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?

 

 

Simple really, 3 things, at least for me:

1) Might is very limited in use: Damage and Healing. Perception is useful for EVERYTHING targeting hostiles, from attacks, special attacks, control, etc.

2) Might grants % based bonus, making it fluctuate in usefulness depending on your weapon base damage. Perception is a flat ACC boost, every point in it moving you away from grazes and closer to Critical hits.

3) Might gain is useless if you don't land at least a hit. ACC is only useless if your ACC > DEF +100, which is probably never gonna happen.

 

So yea, DPS will get both, but really, they need PER first, then MIGHT, because MIGHT alone can't do ****.

Others will get PER and ignore MIGHT, simple as that. Consider that at level 7, the largest single target heal, Restore Major Endurance from Priests, will heal, with 10 Might, for 102 Endurance. Maxing out Might would make this a 120 heal instead. Things like Holy Radiance will barely gain 3 endurance regen a tick between 10 and 19 Might. There is no situation that I can see that would require it. The only thing I might imagine would be a weak character getting massively gang banged but in this situation, Withdraw is by far better. Overall, even for Priest healers, Might is I think a poor choice and I'd go ACC first, then PER instead of Might as it negates some heavier armor penalties as well as INT for the boosted AoEs.

 

As a note, any testing against mobs as they are currently is, I think, not really useful because mobs are not balanced for now and actual combat makes things hard to test in isolation. Test between companions/hired recruits.

Edited September 29, 2014 by mutonizer

[Sensuki]

The math says otherwise, I'm afraid.

[mutonizer]

The math says otherwise, I'm afraid.

 

That's because you're doing your math wrong, most likely forgetting variables.

Edited September 29, 2014 by mutonizer

[Sabotin]

I saw that there's % damage resistance now in addition to DT, was that there before? If not that could be the reason for decreased MIG efficacy, as before it served as a form of direct DT penetration, thus increasing damage more than immediately apparent.

[Malignacious]

1) NO ARMOR:

 

This needs to be obviated as soon as possible. Have you ever seen a game where characters have to be half-naked to be effective?

 

It looks horribly silly, and it removes a huge aspect of the game - customization.

[Sensuki]

Even at Max Perception, you're only getting +11 Accuracy out of it. That's less than half of many class' base accuracy scores, less than the 1H Single style bonus and less than four levels of progression worth of accuracy.

 

You are right that Might scales with weapon damage, but technically so does Accuracy as the amount of DPS you can do is limited by the base damage of your weapon either way.

 

Matt516 is the mechanical engineer, he thinks mathematically. I think logically and then ask him if I am right or not

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

1) NO ARMOR:

 

This needs to be obviated as soon as possible. Have you ever seen a game where characters have to be half-naked to be effective?

 

It looks horribly silly, and it removes a huge aspect of the game - customization.

 

It's but a chimera, or should I say, "butt a chimera".

 

Compare this to magic-users in low-level BG1 for instance. Those robes aren't exactly protective, are they? I can easily undress a wizard there, and it will still be as useful. I 'm playing BG:EE right now (as well as WL2) - and in both these games, I can run around butt-naked with certain character builds and use them for various ranged tasks. This has always been possible.

 

In the BB PoE, you had certain benefits for not wearing armour, though. In the finished and full-feature PoE, you will have much more varied encounters, and enemies will also target low-armour player characters, and this won't be a problem any more.

Edited September 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 though. In the finished and full-feature PoE, you will have much more varied encounters, and enemies will also target low-armour player characters, and this won't be a problem any more.

 

 

There are ways around this.

[swordofthesith]

 

Even at Max Perception, you're only getting +11 Accuracy out of it. That's less than half of many class' base accuracy scores, less than the 1H Single style bonus and less than four levels of progression worth of accuracy.

You are right that Might scales with weapon damage, but technically so does Accuracy as the amount of DPS you can do is limited by the base damage of your weapon either way.

Matt516 is the mechanical engineer, he thinks mathematically. I think logically and then ask him if I am right or not 

 

 

But where your logic fails Sens is when it comes To Hit Chance. MIG does not influence To Hit Chance, PER does. You arrive at average DPS by caculating how frequently you can actually hit your target. A high MIG does influence the potential scale of potential DPS but it does not impact DPS averages. For that, you need to look at the To Hit Chance derived from Accuracy. 

 

And Mut argues correctly that having a high Perception is key if you want to be competitive for all melee scenarios; against both Low Deflection and High Deflection enemies. The absolute key to a high DPS is Accuracy. While you are right that it is only +11 at 20/21 Perception that still makes a critical difference when it comes to arriving at a high average DPS, especially when paired with the high CBA's of fighters and rogues.  

 

So in summary. Perception > Might OR Perception & Might > All when it comes to overall DPS in melee. And Mut is right, some builds can forgo Might entirely and still be perfectly viable - as long as they maintain high accuracy. You can mitigate a low Might score with high damage/DT weapons. 

 

Edited September 29, 2014 by swordofthesith

[swordofthesith]

 

 

In the BB PoE, you had certain benefits for not wearing armour, though. In the finished and full-feature PoE, you will have much more varied encounters, and enemies will also target low-armour player characters, and this won't be a problem any more.

 

 

Hi Indira! That really depends on how robust the AI will be for the release version. I am optimist and hope that they will implement a decent AI in time for release but there are no guarantees on that from the developers.  

[IndiraLightfoot]

swordofthesith: True. At least we know that Josh has said that they will keep on working to improve the AI (Adam), and that he has a basic plan for plenty of enemies targeting low-armour flashers behind the frontline.

[Uomoz]

You don't really need any minmaxing to steamroll this beta patch tbh. I mean, do it if you find it fun, but know that it's completely unnecessary. You can get 10-15% less damage on the fighter, maybe? It's just the general difficulty that is way off atm.

[swordofthesith]

You don't really need any minmaxing to steamroll this beta patch tbh. I mean, do it if you find it fun, but know that it's completely unnecessary. You can get 10-15% less damage on the fighter, maybe? It's just the general difficulty that is way off atm.

 

No Fighter can land hits around 60 to 100 points per pop. The Rogue DPS > the Fighter (by many miles). 

[Jajo]

I've read the opening post, but not yet the whole thread: what difficulty were you playing on? One could expect to steamroll on easy with a min-max party, so that quite an important bit of information.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I've read the opening post, but not yet the whole thread: what difficulty were you playing on? One could expect to steamroll on easy with a min-max party, so that quite an important bit of information.

 

Hard difficulty is also very easy.

[swordofthesith]

I've read the opening post, but not yet the whole thread: what difficulty were you playing on? One could expect to steamroll on easy with a min-max party, so that quite an important bit of information.

 

Hi Jajo! Good point. I was playing on Normal but think I could probably pull of the same feat pretty easily on Hard. Will do so later tonight and upload the videos! 

[Sensuki]

But where your logic fails Sens is when it comes To Hit Chance. MIG does not influence To Hit Chance, PER does. You arrive at average DPS by caculating how frequently you can actually hit your target. A high MIG does influence the potential scale of potential DPS but it does not impact DPS averages. For that, you need to look at the To Hit Chance derived from Accuracy. 

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity/Sensuki_Matt516_Attribute_Rework.pdf

 

 

Might is always better after ACC-DEF +6 or higher (where you have removed your 5% miss chance).

Edited September 29, 2014 by Sensuki

[curryinahurry]

I've read the opening post, but not yet the whole thread: what difficulty were you playing on? One could expect to steamroll on easy with a min-max party, so that quite an important bit of information.

 

I think the latest update dropped Deflection values...I pretty much steamrolled through Dyford Crossing, ogre cave, spider queen, and Sevis (Dragon Egg) without anyone but BB fighter taking more than a little damage.  

 

Rogue and DPS fighter build are wildly overpowered. Add in a Cipher using Whispers of Treason, and the game is pretty easy right now.  It will be interesting to see what happens with a lot of these builds when the AI starts targeting the squishier members of our parties.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Sensuki: Super-duper stupid question perhaps, but does your excellent report cover to hit chance, also factoring in the action speed times + animations, when calculating DPS? I mean, a bit like some number crunchers do for games like D3?

[swordofthesith]

 

But where your logic fails Sens is when it comes To Hit Chance. MIG does not influence To Hit Chance, PER does. You arrive at average DPS by caculating how frequently you can actually hit your target. A high MIG does influence the potential scale of potential DPS but it does not impact DPS averages. For that, you need to look at the To Hit Chance derived from Accuracy. 

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity/Sensuki_Matt516_Attribute_Rework.pdf

 

 

Might is always better after ACC-DEF +6 or higher (where you have removed your 5% miss chance).

 

 

 

... It has become readily apparent that accuracy is king as it gives far more consistent damage.  Accuracy isn't just +to hit after all but it's also +to crit.  Grazes are generally your worst nightmare and since they fall into the 6-50 range it's rather easy to get them.  On the other hand critical strikes are your best friend but are hard to get (my note: and more accuracy = more ability to land crits)   Abilities like confident aim and dirty fighting make a noticeable difference in how well your Fighter and Rogue respectively do in combat.

 

I'd take consistency over the chance to do more damage every single time.  I think might only outperforms perception when accuracy is a non-factor.