Companion's Builds, ouch.

[Warwolf]

I agree NPC followers shouldn't be min/maxed, on the other hand, I'd like them to be a bit more optimized. My biggest gripe is their attributes, you can't do anything about those as you level them. So, I used the console command to swap some attributes, like raising Aloth's Might to 16 and reducing his Perception to 12. Nothing Earth jarrig but, enough to make me feel like Aloth can throw a decent Fireball 

[Whipstitch]

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. 

Don't worry, it's just a temporary condition.

[Voss]

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later.

 

 

Fight some and check the hit calculations.  +6-8 points of deflection won't help you.

[lucid1222]

I think a good portion of the companion's stat lines were made when perception still added to accuracy as this would have made alot of these builds less painful.  Maybe just an oversight on a rule change???

[Koiju]

 

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later.

 

 

Fight some and check the hit calculations.  +6-8 points of deflection won't help you.

 

 

Yeah but you are assuming its my only source of deflection, getting some perception, resolve, as well as some + deflection enchantments, combined with the deflection granting spells will alow a wizard to effectively 'deflection stack' like a shield wielding character might... at least, as far as I can tell, I've not actually tested trying to pump deflection on a wizard.

 

If it really had that little effect, then not even tanks would bother, but they do have more effect than just deflection bonuses, seeing as they also boost will/reflex, concentration, and interruption. Concentration in particular I can see being a handy thing to have on a caster for if they do take some aggro, interruption less so, though if it is also rolled on spell damage (havn't checked) it might be usfull to use fast cast spells and potentially interrupt an enemy spell caster.

 

Honestly, in a little testing and looking at the numbers, an extra 3% damage per point doesnt excite me much, Id rather take some out of might and put it elsewhere for better versatility. Id rather, for example, have 16/12 might/con than 18/10, 6% DPS loss isn't much for giving you more room for error.

TBH I'd put it down to play style, some people preffer the glass cannon, which is fine, but I don't see anything wrong with taking might down a notch to improve survivability. Damage makes combat go faster, but survivability gives more margin of error.

 

Yes I understand the point of you optimising for the most common senario (ie where the caster isn't taking any damage due to good tactics) but in practice I find this to be frustrating the moment you make a mistake or some enemy has the ability to teleport right into your wizards face (I'm looking at YOU SHADES!) I've been known to put plate on Aloth in such situations, just to give him some DR

 

Note: I'm not by any means saying that going full Might + Int is wrong, its good, just, imo, not the only way to be successful.

[cctobias]

Yeah the companions are pretty bad.  I personally like making my whole party from scratch like in the old Might and Magic or Bard's Tale games, but I am ok with pre-made companions when I know what they were made for ahead of time and there is enough choice to make some kind of interesting party.

 

This is a party based game.  The combat is meant to be interesting due to the interactions between your characters.  There should be certain things available;  a competent tank, a good AOE damage guy, a good debuffer, a good striker, maybe one or two generalists, etc.  Do these need to be min/maxed?  No but they need to be competent.  

 

Is it necessary that they are all be particularly competent on Normal difficulty?  Probably not, I have a suspicion that a pure tank pure summoner Chanter can, eventually, solo or very closely solo most of the game on Easy.  So said build can probably do normal with bad companions.  But is this is not the issue.  The issue is that incompetent and poorly made companions limit they ways you can play the core of the game which is party based interactions.

 

These companions are mostly incompetent except for the Chanter.   Some of them make one attempt to go in one direction and then completely sabotage that with another thing.  Grieving mother takes Biting whip going down the Nuker route and then has crap might and negates that.  Every single companion is either just crap or is a generalist.  There aren't any that are reasonably good at a role and some of them seem to have meant to be one role or another and then just got their legs cut out from under them.

 

I don't expect Aloth to be able to be an amazing Nuker.  But either Aloth or Grieving Mother or Sagani should be like 70% towards a good Nuker.  None of them are.  One is OK at best at Nuking and two are terrible at Nuking.  Even worse all three of these could have been, instead, a debuffer style of build.  But they are all are mediocre at best at that as well.  Sagani is not even a generalist, she is just bad.  She is incompetent at everything.  Let me ask you something does this utter incompetence fit with the way her character is written?  I think most of will say it does not.  This very jarring from a story perspective.

 

Let us take Sagani as a specific example.  As others in the thread mentioned it appears like her stats are based upon RP idea of what perception is and not what perception does in POE.  I mean in a general RPG context if someone said "Hey I wanna make a high perception ranger, a scouting/shooty type guys should have good perception right?", my reply would be "Yes that seems to make sense and for most RPGS perception is usually a decent stat for a scout/shooty type".  Perception is, weirdly, a terrible stat for a Ranger.  Maybe, just maybe, if interrupts were worth using there might be some kind of argument.  Or if she came with the Talent for interrupts it might possibly make some kind of sense.  Instead we have a stat that does nothing for her striking.  Perception, for whatever reason, is a tanking stat and even its non-passive defense portion; interrupt is defensive.  Even worse Rangers are extremely hard to make into a tank, not impossible and do have some engagement advantages, but extremely tricky and she is clearly not made for that.  The interrupt line of things, well she is clearly not made for that either and even if she was, and just speaking purely practically here, that build is not very good as far as I can tell from in game testing.

 

So why do we have literally half her stat allocation completely wasted?   I dunno there are only two reasons I can think of, both already mentioned here,  either this was done because of accuracy and then not updated or its for RP reasons that rangers should be perceptive because that is a ranger characteristic.

 

You want these terrible mechanic disadvantages due to RP reasons?  Fine make the stat actually line up then.   Sagani is literally crippled compared to even a decently made Ranger.  Stat are strong in POE and more than half of hers are a complete waste.  Don't call the people who are pointing out facts "munchkins".  There is a bit of a "pee on my foot and tell me its raining" effect going on here.  I don't mean to cast any aspersions here.  But things are just not lining up between how these guys were made and what they should be doing.  Possibly for multiple reasons.

 

I am fine with RPers wanting a ranger to have high perception, but when perception's current implementation has very little value for 90% of ranger builds this winds being well, frankly, just dumb.  Form follows function not the other way around.  All serious RPs who are good at RP stuff should probably be very dedicated to this idea.  If anything the RP-focused people should be MORE upset because Sagani is crippled even though she has a stat that makes RP sense.  Why is she penalised for having stats that most long time RPG players would say based on the words used should make sense for a Ranger?  You see what is happening here?  Even people inclined towards RP-focused playthrough will discard Sagani even though from an RP perspective her stat do make some sense but from a gameplay perspective she is terrible at doing what she is.  This is the worst possible case for RP.  If your character is supposed to be something but acts entirely like something else in function then it is impossible to actually RP that in any sort of believable manner.  In a table top game with real people and a creative player this could perhaps be turned into something rather amusing.  But make no mistake in the current context its a rather serious issue.  It doesn't "ruin" but it is a very serious mark against the game.  It seriously detracts from the core features of party play AND the soundness of the RP itself.  

 

There is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem going on.   And personally I don't particularly mind that perception won't fit the stereotypes of most RPGs.  But this is clearly causing some major SNAFU here.  Wires are obviously getting crossed here both mechanic and conceptually.  I hope that mods can address this.

 

But there are also just some mechanics that don't work that well.  Conceptually a high resolve priest makes some sense in that it gives high concetration and therefore they should be able to cast spell when put under duress.  Considering the priest comapanian takes the pseudonym Durance this makes sense from an RP perspective.  But from a game mechanics perspective this just does not have high value unless you built your priest in a very very particular way that he is not made.  Essentially you need to make a tank that is completely min/maxed in certain ways to make up for the inherent problems of the class (bad vitality, poor deflection and accuracy).  In order for the way Durance is built to have much value he NEEDS to be getting hit a lot.  If he is getting hit a lot he NEEDS to either be tanking OR you are playing like crap.

 

Durance is not built for tanking.  So in order to get value out of his stat spread you LITERALLY HAVE TO PLAY POORLY.  Just like Sagani he has a HUGE amount of his stat budget dedicated to this concept, but the concept itself is not just executed poorly, its executed just plain wrong.  It doesn't work.  He has a concept, the concept is OK, maybe not the way I want to build a priest but its OK.  That concept's implementation simply doesn't work.  How do I RP something that doesn't work?  Without a DM I can't.  Therefore this is a major problem with a core of the game.

[Nodor]

 

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later.

 

 

Fight some and check the hit calculations.  +6-8 points of deflection won't help you.

 

 

 

 

I have found that deflection scales well.  5 points of deflection is valuable - and as it continues to reduce the damage you take by reducing (or eliminating) the hits you take, you never stop wanting more.    

[Nodor]

Yeah the companions are pretty bad.  I personally like making my whole party from scratch like in the old Might and Magic or Bard's Tale games, but I am ok with pre-made companions when I know what they were made for ahead of time and there is enough choice to make some kind of interesting party.

 

This is a party based game.  The combat is meant to be interesting due to the interactions between your characters.  There should be certain things available;  a competent tank, a good AOE damage guy, a good debuffer, a good striker, maybe one or two generalists, etc.  Do these need to be min/maxed?  No but they need to be competent.  

 

Is it necessary that they are all be particularly competent on Normal difficulty?  Probably not, I have a suspicion that a pure tank pure summoner Chanter can, eventually, solo or very closely solo most of the game on Easy.  So said build can probably do normal with bad companions.  But is this is not the issue.  The issue is that incompetent and poorly made companions limit they ways you can play the core of the game which is party based interactions.

 

These companions are mostly incompetent except for the Chanter.   Some of them make one attempt to go in one direction and then completely sabotage that with another thing.  Grieving mother takes Biting whip going down the Nuker route and then has crap might and negates that.  Every single companion is either just crap or is a generalist.  There aren't any that are reasonably good at a role and some of them seem to have meant to be one role or another and then just got their legs cut out from under them.

 

I don't expect Aloth to be able to be an amazing Nuker.  But either Aloth or Grieving Mother or Sagani should be like 70% towards a good Nuker.  None of them are.  One is OK at best at Nuking and two are terrible at Nuking.  Even worse all three of these could have been, instead, a debuffer style of build.  But they are all are mediocre at best at that as well.  Sagani is not even a generalist, she is just bad.  She is incompetent at everything.  Let me ask you something does this utter incompetence fit with the way her character is written?  I think most of will say it does not.  This very jarring from a story perspective.

 

Let us take Sagani as a specific example.  As others in the thread mentioned it appears like her stats are based upon RP idea of what perception is and not what perception does in POE.  I mean in a general RPG context if someone said "Hey I wanna make a high perception ranger, a scouting/shooty type guys should have good perception right?", my reply would be "Yes that seems to make sense and for most RPGS perception is usually a decent stat for a scout/shooty type".  Perception is, weirdly, a terrible stat for a Ranger.  Maybe, just maybe, if interrupts were worth using there might be some kind of argument.  Or if she came with the Talent for interrupts it might possibly make some kind of sense.  Instead we have a stat that does nothing for her striking.  Perception, for whatever reason, is a tanking stat and even its non-passive defense portion; interrupt is defensive.  Even worse Rangers are extremely hard to make into a tank, not impossible and do have some engagement advantages, but extremely tricky and she is clearly not made for that.  The interrupt line of things, well she is clearly not made for that either and even if she was, and just speaking purely practically here, that build is not very good as far as I can tell from in game testing.

 

So why do we have literally half her stat allocation completely wasted?   I dunno there are only two reasons I can think of, both already mentioned here,  either this was done because of accuracy and then not updated or its for RP reasons that rangers should be perceptive because that is a ranger characteristic.

 

You want these terrible mechanic disadvantages due to RP reasons?  Fine make the stat actually line up then.   Sagani is literally crippled compared to even a decently made Ranger.  Stat are strong in POE and more than half of hers are a complete waste.  Don't call the people who are pointing out facts "munchkins".  There is a bit of a "pee on my foot and tell me its raining" effect going on here.  I don't mean to cast any aspersions here.  But things are just not lining up between how these guys were made and what they should be doing.  Possibly for multiple reasons.

 

I am fine with RPers wanting a ranger to have high perception, but when perception's current implementation has very little value for 90% of ranger builds this winds being well, frankly, just dumb.  Form follows function not the other way around.  All serious RPs who are good at RP stuff should probably be very dedicated to this idea.  If anything the RP-focused people should be MORE upset because Sagani is crippled even though she has a stat that makes RP sense.  Why is she penalised for having stats that most long time RPG players would say based on the words used should make sense for a Ranger?  You see what is happening here?  Even people inclined towards RP-focused playthrough will discard Sagani even though from an RP perspective her stat do make some sense but from a gameplay perspective she is terrible at doing what she is.  This is the worst possible case for RP.  If your character is supposed to be something but acts entirely like something else in function then it is impossible to actually RP that in any sort of believable manner.  In a table top game with real people and a creative player this could perhaps be turned into something rather amusing.  But make no mistake in the current context its a rather serious issue.  It doesn't "ruin" but it is a very serious mark against the game.  It seriously detracts from the core features of party play AND the soundness of the RP itself.  

 

There is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem going on.   And personally I don't particularly mind that perception won't fit the stereotypes of most RPGs.  But this is clearly causing some major SNAFU here.  Wires are obviously getting crossed here both mechanic and conceptually.  I hope that mods can address this.

 

But there are also just some mechanics that don't work that well.  Conceptually a high resolve priest makes some sense in that it gives high concetration and therefore they should be able to cast spell when put under duress.  Considering the priest comapanian takes the pseudonym Durance this makes sense from an RP perspective.  But from a game mechanics perspective this just does not have high value unless you built your priest in a very very particular way that he is not made.  Essentially you need to make a tank that is completely min/maxed in certain ways to make up for the inherent problems of the class (bad vitality, poor deflection and accuracy).  In order for the way Durance is built to have much value he NEEDS to be getting hit a lot.  If he is getting hit a lot he NEEDS to either be tanking OR you are playing like crap.

 

Durance is not built for tanking.  So in order to get value out of his stat spread you LITERALLY HAVE TO PLAY POORLY.  Just like Sagani he has a HUGE amount of his stat budget dedicated to this concept, but the concept itself is not just executed poorly, its executed just plain wrong.  It doesn't work.  He has a concept, the concept is OK, maybe not the way I want to build a priest but its OK.  That concept's implementation simply doesn't work.  How do I RP something that doesn't work?  Without a DM I can't.  Therefore this is a major problem with a core of the game.

 

I built Sagani into a speedy bow using interrupter.. and it's effective (on normal).  I use a hunting bow on her and gave her interrupt talents/equipment. 

 

I also build a might based ranger that uses a War Bow instead of a hunting bow, and while she does more damage, she doesn't stop nearly as many spells in progress.

[Warwolf]

This could all be solved if devs would implement a "Total" respec button, meaning both attributes and abilities/talents. This would of course be optional, if people like myself want to min/max characters, we can, if there are people who don't want that, well don't press the button.

 

Now there are console commands to change abilities/talents, but they are really wonky, you lose racial bonuses and any unique story related skill 

 

WHAT???? Does this (the italic & underlined section) mean you loose all the NPC conversations? Could you be more specific? Let's say I only change the NPC's attributes, I know that disables achievements but, would that disable other stuff?

 

Thanks 

[cctobias]

 

Yeah the companions are pretty bad.  I personally like making my whole party from scratch like in the old Might and Magic or Bard's Tale games, but I am ok with pre-made companions when I know what they were made for ahead of time and there is enough choice to make some kind of interesting party.

 

This is a party based game.  The combat is meant to be interesting due to the interactions between your characters.  There should be certain things available;  a competent tank, a good AOE damage guy, a good debuffer, a good striker, maybe one or two generalists, etc.  Do these need to be min/maxed?  No but they need to be competent.  

 

Is it necessary that they are all be particularly competent on Normal difficulty?  Probably not, I have a suspicion that a pure tank pure summoner Chanter can, eventually, solo or very closely solo most of the game on Easy.  So said build can probably do normal with bad companions.  But is this is not the issue.  The issue is that incompetent and poorly made companions limit they ways you can play the core of the game which is party based interactions.

 

These companions are mostly incompetent except for the Chanter.   Some of them make one attempt to go in one direction and then completely sabotage that with another thing.  Grieving mother takes Biting whip going down the Nuker route and then has crap might and negates that.  Every single companion is either just crap or is a generalist.  There aren't any that are reasonably good at a role and some of them seem to have meant to be one role or another and then just got their legs cut out from under them.

 

I don't expect Aloth to be able to be an amazing Nuker.  But either Aloth or Grieving Mother or Sagani should be like 70% towards a good Nuker.  None of them are.  One is OK at best at Nuking and two are terrible at Nuking.  Even worse all three of these could have been, instead, a debuffer style of build.  But they are all are mediocre at best at that as well.  Sagani is not even a generalist, she is just bad.  She is incompetent at everything.  Let me ask you something does this utter incompetence fit with the way her character is written?  I think most of will say it does not.  This very jarring from a story perspective.

 

Let us take Sagani as a specific example.  As others in the thread mentioned it appears like her stats are based upon RP idea of what perception is and not what perception does in POE.  I mean in a general RPG context if someone said "Hey I wanna make a high perception ranger, a scouting/shooty type guys should have good perception right?", my reply would be "Yes that seems to make sense and for most RPGS perception is usually a decent stat for a scout/shooty type".  Perception is, weirdly, a terrible stat for a Ranger.  Maybe, just maybe, if interrupts were worth using there might be some kind of argument.  Or if she came with the Talent for interrupts it might possibly make some kind of sense.  Instead we have a stat that does nothing for her striking.  Perception, for whatever reason, is a tanking stat and even its non-passive defense portion; interrupt is defensive.  Even worse Rangers are extremely hard to make into a tank, not impossible and do have some engagement advantages, but extremely tricky and she is clearly not made for that.  The interrupt line of things, well she is clearly not made for that either and even if she was, and just speaking purely practically here, that build is not very good as far as I can tell from in game testing.

 

So why do we have literally half her stat allocation completely wasted?   I dunno there are only two reasons I can think of, both already mentioned here,  either this was done because of accuracy and then not updated or its for RP reasons that rangers should be perceptive because that is a ranger characteristic.

 

You want these terrible mechanic disadvantages due to RP reasons?  Fine make the stat actually line up then.   Sagani is literally crippled compared to even a decently made Ranger.  Stat are strong in POE and more than half of hers are a complete waste.  Don't call the people who are pointing out facts "munchkins".  There is a bit of a "pee on my foot and tell me its raining" effect going on here.  I don't mean to cast any aspersions here.  But things are just not lining up between how these guys were made and what they should be doing.  Possibly for multiple reasons.

 

I am fine with RPers wanting a ranger to have high perception, but when perception's current implementation has very little value for 90% of ranger builds this winds being well, frankly, just dumb.  Form follows function not the other way around.  All serious RPs who are good at RP stuff should probably be very dedicated to this idea.  If anything the RP-focused people should be MORE upset because Sagani is crippled even though she has a stat that makes RP sense.  Why is she penalised for having stats that most long time RPG players would say based on the words used should make sense for a Ranger?  You see what is happening here?  Even people inclined towards RP-focused playthrough will discard Sagani even though from an RP perspective her stat do make some sense but from a gameplay perspective she is terrible at doing what she is.  This is the worst possible case for RP.  If your character is supposed to be something but acts entirely like something else in function then it is impossible to actually RP that in any sort of believable manner.  In a table top game with real people and a creative player this could perhaps be turned into something rather amusing.  But make no mistake in the current context its a rather serious issue.  It doesn't "ruin" but it is a very serious mark against the game.  It seriously detracts from the core features of party play AND the soundness of the RP itself.  

 

There is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem going on.   And personally I don't particularly mind that perception won't fit the stereotypes of most RPGs.  But this is clearly causing some major SNAFU here.  Wires are obviously getting crossed here both mechanic and conceptually.  I hope that mods can address this.

 

But there are also just some mechanics that don't work that well.  Conceptually a high resolve priest makes some sense in that it gives high concetration and therefore they should be able to cast spell when put under duress.  Considering the priest comapanian takes the pseudonym Durance this makes sense from an RP perspective.  But from a game mechanics perspective this just does not have high value unless you built your priest in a very very particular way that he is not made.  Essentially you need to make a tank that is completely min/maxed in certain ways to make up for the inherent problems of the class (bad vitality, poor deflection and accuracy).  In order for the way Durance is built to have much value he NEEDS to be getting hit a lot.  If he is getting hit a lot he NEEDS to either be tanking OR you are playing like crap.

 

Durance is not built for tanking.  So in order to get value out of his stat spread you LITERALLY HAVE TO PLAY POORLY.  Just like Sagani he has a HUGE amount of his stat budget dedicated to this concept, but the concept itself is not just executed poorly, its executed just plain wrong.  It doesn't work.  He has a concept, the concept is OK, maybe not the way I want to build a priest but its OK.  That concept's implementation simply doesn't work.  How do I RP something that doesn't work?  Without a DM I can't.  Therefore this is a major problem with a core of the game.

 

I built Sagani into a speedy bow using interrupter.. and it's effective (on normal).  I use a hunting bow on her and gave her interrupt talents/equipment. 

 

I also build a might based ranger that uses a War Bow instead of a hunting bow, and while she does more damage, she doesn't stop nearly as many spells in progress.

 

 

Do you think this is what Sagani's character concept was, as a interruptor?  It could be,  I dunno, Guild Wars Ranger are high quality interruptors its not unheard of.  

 

But if i feel that if the answer to the above question is "Yes" then if you let Sagani into your party at level 10 she should have the interrupt talent chosen as part of her leveling scheme and I will bet you a penny she doesn't.  Note: shipping costs for that penny are not included.

 

Do you find it strange that the item with a higher interrupt value is worse as interrupting?

 

How much value does single target interrupts really have, given kill times of heavy hitters and prevalence of groups?

[Hysterion]

 

This could all be solved if devs would implement a "Total" respec button, meaning both attributes and abilities/talents. This would of course be optional, if people like myself want to min/max characters, we can, if there are people who don't want that, well don't press the button.

 

Now there are console commands to change abilities/talents, but they are really wonky, you lose racial bonuses and any unique story related skill 

 

WHAT???? Does this (the italic & underlined section) mean you loose all the NPC conversations? Could you be more specific? Let's say I only change the NPC's attributes, I know that disables achievements but, would that disable other stuff?

 

Thanks 

 

This is what Doxy posted in another thread:

 

20. Respec your party members (This console commands requires the IE Mod to be installed.)

This console command allows you to respec yourself or your party members (drops them to level 0 and allows you to relevel them up), or you can do the same thing, but also change their class. Changing the class is optional.

The console command is:

ChangeClass <name> <Class>

As always, you must find the ingame name of your characters using the "FindCharacter name".

So let's say you want to respec your companion called "BB Wizard".

Type in "FindCharacter Wizard". You'll get something like Companion_BB_Wizard(Clone)_4 in the console. This is the name you should use.

Now do ChangeClass Companion_BB_Wizard(Clone)_4 Wizard - your companion will fall down to level 0 and you'll be able to level him up differently from how he was.

Or type ChangeClass Companion_BB_Wizard(Clone)_4 Fighter - and he'll turn into a level 0 fighter instead.

Warning: do not attempt to transition/quit/save game while your character is level 0. You need to level him up first.

Also of note that this console command removes all abilities from a character, including their racial bonus. It will be back though - just level him up, save the game and reload, the racial bonus will reappear.

Another thing to consider is if you get some kind of special ability during the game that isn't accessible during leveling up, you will most likely lose it if you attempt to respec yourself.

Exercise caution with this console command, consider it experimental.

 

It works but where it says that you have to reload the game for racial to appear again, well that doesn't work. I tried reloading, transitioning to another area, i tried everything, still didn't get them back.

 

Btw does anyone know console command to add and retract companion attributes ?

[Voss]

 

 

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later.

 

 

Fight some and check the hit calculations.  +6-8 points of deflection won't help you.

 

 

 

 

I have found that deflection scales well.  5 points of deflection is valuable - and as it continues to reduce the damage you take by reducing (or eliminating) the hits you take, you never stop wanting more.    

 

I've found the exact opposite.  Characters built to be deflection tanks take almost zero damage during fights.  Characters with a couple extra points from stats?  Waste of time/resources.  

Pallegina with a high base deflection from class, a large shield, a deflection ring, and a couple extra points from per/res items on top of her stat bonuses from resolve/perception is a fairly poor tank, because I didn't get her until level 8.  She takes a fair amount of damage from casual fights even with a deflection of 81.  My real tanks, built to purpose?  If they take more than 4-6 points of damage from lucky grazes over a casual fight, I either got bad results from the RNG, or screwed up in some fashion.   My damage dealers range at about 40-50 deflection.  My main (ranger) and my custom druid, , both with 10s in all defensive stats, both have 41 deflection.  Aloth, with his 17 Per and 14 Res?  A grand 42.   Sagani, with 18 per? 49. Woo.  Those attribute points on the companions are absolutely wasted.  

[Warwolf]

 

 

This could all be solved if devs would implement a "Total" respec button, meaning both attributes and abilities/talents. This would of course be optional, if people like myself want to min/max characters, we can, if there are people who don't want that, well don't press the button.

 

Now there are console commands to change abilities/talents, but they are really wonky, you lose racial bonuses and any unique story related skill 

 

WHAT???? Does this (the italic & underlined section) mean you loose all the NPC conversations? Could you be more specific? Let's say I only change the NPC's attributes, I know that disables achievements but, would that disable other stuff?

 

Thanks 

 

 

...SNIP...

 

Btw does anyone know console command to add and retract companion attributes ?

 

 

Thanks for the info, for the console command I used this:

 

Press ~ to enter a command.

Type "IRoll20s" to enable cheat mode (this disables Achievements)

Type "AttributeScore <playername> <attribute> <value>"

 

eg AttributeScore Aloth Might 18

 

Note that this will change the base attribute value and racial and origin bonus will be applied after.

 

Cheers

Edited March 30, 2015 by Warwolf

[Hysterion]

Cheers Warwolf, i'm finally gonna fix my companions

[Warwolf]

Cool, I actually just swapped Aloth's Might and Perception, all considered I didn't increase his stat total.

[cctobias]

 

 

 

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later.

 

 

Fight some and check the hit calculations.  +6-8 points of deflection won't help you.

 

 

 

 

I have found that deflection scales well.  5 points of deflection is valuable - and as it continues to reduce the damage you take by reducing (or eliminating) the hits you take, you never stop wanting more.    

 

I've found the exact opposite.  Characters built to be deflection tanks take almost zero damage during fights.  Characters with a couple extra points from stats?  Waste of time/resources.  

Pallegina with a high base deflection from class, a large shield, a deflection ring, and a couple extra points from per/res items on top of her stat bonuses from resolve/perception is a fairly poor tank, because I didn't get her until level 8.  She takes a fair amount of damage from casual fights even with a deflection of 81.  My real tanks, built to purpose?  If they take more than 4-6 points of damage from lucky grazes over a casual fight, I either got bad results from the RNG, or screwed up in some fashion.   My damage dealers range at about 40-50 deflection.  My main (ranger) and my custom druid, , both with 10s in all defensive stats, both have 41 deflection.  Aloth, with his 17 Per and 14 Res?  A grand 42.   Sagani, with 18 per? 49. Woo.  Those attribute points on the companions are absolutely wasted.  

 

 

This is correct.  Mathematically the D20, D100, whatever D you like systems work in such a way that each successive point gets stronger and stronger.  If we take d20 (because it has smaller numbers for the example) then when AC is at +10 you have a 50/50 chance and adding +1 changes it to 55% from 50%.  Going from +18 to +19 also adds 5% from 90% to 95%.

 

The trick is that the "effective health" increase from +18 to +19 is double and the "effective health" increase from +10 to +11 is not nearly so much.

 

At 50% miss rate 100 health becomes 200 effective health. (Because only every other swing hits so you operate similar to someone who has no defense but higher health on average)

At 55% miss rate 100 health becomes 222 effective health.

 

Thus +1 AC = 22 more health.

 

At 90% 100 health becomes 1000 effective health

at 95% 100 health becomes 2000 effective health

 

thus +1 AC = 1000 more health.

 

So the graph is an upward sloping exponential curve.  At a rather modest extreme(since I started at 50% and not 10%) +1 AC can literally be 40 times stronger.

 

 

So if you just put those data points into Excel and make a simple graph you can see why characters that have one tank stat and not the other really are radically weaker.  We are not talking a 20% difference between them.  We are talking a probably about 200% difference due to the nature the D# opposing stats system and the way bonuses are done in them.  Bonuses are always +(an integer) but the value of the integer is not constant or static.  It can do literally 10x or more the effect for one character versus the other.

 

So keep this in mind.  This thread is about far more than just "munchkin" stuff.  A 50/50 fighter is not an OK tank.  Compared to a fighter/pally with shield talents and full optimal investment in tanking stats that 50/50 fighter might wind up literally 5-10x worse in effective health

 

To have a suboptimal kind of ok tankish guy you probably would need something like 75% invesment to be half as good.  This might seem weird but the trend is not linear so that is the way it is.

 

Now obviously 50% is better than 0%.  But if you are going with a fighter that has 50% you might as well just get all 6 people to 50% and not have any real tank.  That one fighter at 95% can take 10x the damage of the other fighter.  He is literally two entire parties Vitality summations worse than that other fighter who may actually have considerably higher defense than your nuker wearing no shield and just clothing.

 

No one is saying the companions should be completely min maxed, but I think some people may be underestimating just how huge the gap really is for certain roles.  Note this is defense specific the might +damage and int duration/aoe should not be as dramatic. 

[angryglock@hotmail.com]

In the order I've picked them up:

 

1. Eder.

 

Eder is pretty mediocre but nothing particularly ruinous either. His first talent is one of the worst picks possible though, and he doesn't seem built well for durability or damage. He's very "meh".

 

2. Aloth.

 

Aloth's attributes are pretty really bad. He has 9pts spent in deflection attributes above the base, that he gets almost nothing out of while his might is very low. His spell selection is also awful. There's no Slicken. There's no Eldritch Aim. He has a useless touch spell and deflection boosting spell.

 

3. Durance.

 

Durance has very excessive resolve but whatever at least it's a bit more useful than Aloth's 16 perception since. Talent selection though... bear's fortitude? Ugh. There are plenty of no-particular direction priest talents that are way better. Interdiction is what I'd have put on him. Bear's Fort is like throwing that first talent away, and Priest is a class that's already talent starved due to so many Interdiction/Holy Radiance talents you want.

 

4. Kana Rua.

 

Poor chant and invocation choices, otherwise a decent build. He's workable.

 

Also Aloth or Kana really should have had mechanics boosted. I don't know why it got put it on Durance. He starts with 3 which is somewhat acceptable for early areas but a bit of waste to put it on a class with no bonus.

 

I really can't wait for a mod that lets us build them from scratch. I don't want to go without the banter and extra dialogue and so on but their builds are driving me a little nuts right now. I was hoping the early-game companions would be a little more practically built.

 

Hopefully the other companions are in better shape.

If you could respec them now, how would you allocate the points and skills/abilties? I'm having trouble with them both but I'm pretty new at this kind of game. I might try and build a tank from scratch to see if I can at least get going.

[squilenator]

Isn't Aloth suppose to be like this? Just like the official game guide?

 

[Magrusaod]

 

In the order I've picked them up:

 

1. Eder.

 

Eder is pretty mediocre but nothing particularly ruinous either. His first talent is one of the worst picks possible though, and he doesn't seem built well for durability or damage. He's very "meh".

 

2. Aloth.

 

Aloth's attributes are pretty really bad. He has 9pts spent in deflection attributes above the base, that he gets almost nothing out of while his might is very low. His spell selection is also awful. There's no Slicken. There's no Eldritch Aim. He has a useless touch spell and deflection boosting spell.

 

3. Durance.

 

Durance has very excessive resolve but whatever at least it's a bit more useful than Aloth's 16 perception since. Talent selection though... bear's fortitude? Ugh. There are plenty of no-particular direction priest talents that are way better. Interdiction is what I'd have put on him. Bear's Fort is like throwing that first talent away, and Priest is a class that's already talent starved due to so many Interdiction/Holy Radiance talents you want.

 

4. Kana Rua.

 

Poor chant and invocation choices, otherwise a decent build. He's workable.

 

Also Aloth or Kana really should have had mechanics boosted. I don't know why it got put it on Durance. He starts with 3 which is somewhat acceptable for early areas but a bit of waste to put it on a class with no bonus.

 

I really can't wait for a mod that lets us build them from scratch. I don't want to go without the banter and extra dialogue and so on but their builds are driving me a little nuts right now. I was hoping the early-game companions would be a little more practically built.

 

Hopefully the other companions are in better shape.

If you could respec them now, how would you allocate the points and skills/abilties? I'm having trouble with them both but I'm pretty new at this kind of game. I might try and build a tank from scratch to see if I can at least get going.

 

 

No point. I killed them and took their stuff. Sold what wasn't good, and used it to buy real companions. 

[TT1]

 

Yeah the companions are pretty bad.  I personally like making my whole party from scratch like in the old Might and Magic or Bard's Tale games, but I am ok with pre-made companions when I know what they were made for ahead of time and there is enough choice to make some kind of interesting party.

 

This is a party based game.  The combat is meant to be interesting due to the interactions between your characters.  There should be certain things available;  a competent tank, a good AOE damage guy, a good debuffer, a good striker, maybe one or two generalists, etc.  Do these need to be min/maxed?  No but they need to be competent.  

 

Is it necessary that they are all be particularly competent on Normal difficulty?  Probably not, I have a suspicion that a pure tank pure summoner Chanter can, eventually, solo or very closely solo most of the game on Easy.  So said build can probably do normal with bad companions.  But is this is not the issue.  The issue is that incompetent and poorly made companions limit they ways you can play the core of the game which is party based interactions.

 

These companions are mostly incompetent except for the Chanter.   Some of them make one attempt to go in one direction and then completely sabotage that with another thing.  Grieving mother takes Biting whip going down the Nuker route and then has crap might and negates that.  Every single companion is either just crap or is a generalist.  There aren't any that are reasonably good at a role and some of them seem to have meant to be one role or another and then just got their legs cut out from under them.

 

I don't expect Aloth to be able to be an amazing Nuker.  But either Aloth or Grieving Mother or Sagani should be like 70% towards a good Nuker.  None of them are.  One is OK at best at Nuking and two are terrible at Nuking.  Even worse all three of these could have been, instead, a debuffer style of build.  But they are all are mediocre at best at that as well.  Sagani is not even a generalist, she is just bad.  She is incompetent at everything.  Let me ask you something does this utter incompetence fit with the way her character is written?  I think most of will say it does not.  This very jarring from a story perspective.

 

Let us take Sagani as a specific example.  As others in the thread mentioned it appears like her stats are based upon RP idea of what perception is and not what perception does in POE.  I mean in a general RPG context if someone said "Hey I wanna make a high perception ranger, a scouting/shooty type guys should have good perception right?", my reply would be "Yes that seems to make sense and for most RPGS perception is usually a decent stat for a scout/shooty type".  Perception is, weirdly, a terrible stat for a Ranger.  Maybe, just maybe, if interrupts were worth using there might be some kind of argument.  Or if she came with the Talent for interrupts it might possibly make some kind of sense.  Instead we have a stat that does nothing for her striking.  Perception, for whatever reason, is a tanking stat and even its non-passive defense portion; interrupt is defensive.  Even worse Rangers are extremely hard to make into a tank, not impossible and do have some engagement advantages, but extremely tricky and she is clearly not made for that.  The interrupt line of things, well she is clearly not made for that either and even if she was, and just speaking purely practically here, that build is not very good as far as I can tell from in game testing.

 

So why do we have literally half her stat allocation completely wasted?   I dunno there are only two reasons I can think of, both already mentioned here,  either this was done because of accuracy and then not updated or its for RP reasons that rangers should be perceptive because that is a ranger characteristic.

 

You want these terrible mechanic disadvantages due to RP reasons?  Fine make the stat actually line up then.   Sagani is literally crippled compared to even a decently made Ranger.  Stat are strong in POE and more than half of hers are a complete waste.  Don't call the people who are pointing out facts "munchkins".  There is a bit of a "pee on my foot and tell me its raining" effect going on here.  I don't mean to cast any aspersions here.  But things are just not lining up between how these guys were made and what they should be doing.  Possibly for multiple reasons.

 

I am fine with RPers wanting a ranger to have high perception, but when perception's current implementation has very little value for 90% of ranger builds this winds being well, frankly, just dumb.  Form follows function not the other way around.  All serious RPs who are good at RP stuff should probably be very dedicated to this idea.  If anything the RP-focused people should be MORE upset because Sagani is crippled even though she has a stat that makes RP sense.  Why is she penalised for having stats that most long time RPG players would say based on the words used should make sense for a Ranger?  You see what is happening here?  Even people inclined towards RP-focused playthrough will discard Sagani even though from an RP perspective her stat do make some sense but from a gameplay perspective she is terrible at doing what she is.  This is the worst possible case for RP.  If your character is supposed to be something but acts entirely like something else in function then it is impossible to actually RP that in any sort of believable manner.  In a table top game with real people and a creative player this could perhaps be turned into something rather amusing.  But make no mistake in the current context its a rather serious issue.  It doesn't "ruin" but it is a very serious mark against the game.  It seriously detracts from the core features of party play AND the soundness of the RP itself.  

 

There is a bit of a chicken and the egg problem going on.   And personally I don't particularly mind that perception won't fit the stereotypes of most RPGs.  But this is clearly causing some major SNAFU here.  Wires are obviously getting crossed here both mechanic and conceptually.  I hope that mods can address this.

 

But there are also just some mechanics that don't work that well.  Conceptually a high resolve priest makes some sense in that it gives high concetration and therefore they should be able to cast spell when put under duress.  Considering the priest comapanian takes the pseudonym Durance this makes sense from an RP perspective.  But from a game mechanics perspective this just does not have high value unless you built your priest in a very very particular way that he is not made.  Essentially you need to make a tank that is completely min/maxed in certain ways to make up for the inherent problems of the class (bad vitality, poor deflection and accuracy).  In order for the way Durance is built to have much value he NEEDS to be getting hit a lot.  If he is getting hit a lot he NEEDS to either be tanking OR you are playing like crap.

 

Durance is not built for tanking.  So in order to get value out of his stat spread you LITERALLY HAVE TO PLAY POORLY.  Just like Sagani he has a HUGE amount of his stat budget dedicated to this concept, but the concept itself is not just executed poorly, its executed just plain wrong.  It doesn't work.  He has a concept, the concept is OK, maybe not the way I want to build a priest but its OK.  That concept's implementation simply doesn't work.  How do I RP something that doesn't work?  Without a DM I can't.  Therefore this is a major problem with a core of the game.

 

 

 

This is the most reasonable message I've ever read in this forum . There is nothing more to be said . Just perfect.

 

 

Isn't Aloth suppose to be like this? Just like the official game guide?

 

Yep. All the companions are quite different from the strategy guide

Edited March 30, 2015 by TT1

[squilenator]

 

Isn't Aloth suppose to be like this? Just like the official game guide?

 

Yep. All the companions are quite different from the strategy guide

 

Well... guess i'll have to wait before really really buying this game. Gonna wait for some patches and some mods so i can change the npcs like their strategy guide counterparts. 

[mazeltov]

Isn't Aloth suppose to be like this? Just like the official game guide?

 

The guide is describing how to make a generic 'AoE Control/Damage Build,' not giving Aloth's stats.

[Mungri]

Those strategy guide stats for Aloth are perfect.

 

But still ... BEARS ENDURANCE ON DURANCE WHHHUYYYYYY???

 

This is why I will not use the NPCs.

[Dongom]

I used console commands to make them as good as my Hired Help.

 

I wouldn't consider this cheating since it's the same thing as my hired guys, except now I get to listen to their stories and stuff.

 

The only thing I havn't figured out how to change is their talents sadly. (Lol durance and aloth)

Edited March 31, 2015 by Dongom

[Odd Hermit]

If you could respec them now, how would you allocate the points and skills/abilties? I'm having trouble with them both but I'm pretty new at this kind of game. I might try and build a tank from scratch to see if I can at least get going.

 

 

Paladin Tank = 18+ Perception and Resolve, rest doesn't matter at all though might want reasonably high con just for occasional situations where raw damage is a threat.

 

Everything else = 18+ Might, Dex, and maybe Int depending on class.

 

Monk, Barbarian might go high Con to take advantage of their high base endurance, depending on build.

 

Chanter can be a bit more defensively built since their damage output doesn't matter as much.

 

Talents -

 

I take the elemental talents based on which their best damage spells are - Burn and Corrode for Wizard, Freeze and Shock for Druid.

 

Cipher I take Biting Whip, Penetrating Shot, maybe Draining Whip and WF: Ruffian and the rest is gravy once you have a good Blunderbuss. I tried Heart of the Storm and Soul Shock but it's not that great anymore and I just prefer Mind Lancing things anyway now.

 

Priest is weirder 'cause they have their per-encounter abilities that can be tweaked to your liking, but I just took Scion of Flame and WF: Soldier and Arbalest things with Durance mostly. +Accuracy from Holy Radiance is good too. Interdiction I used to like, but I just don't feel it's very necessary with a lot of party compositions where other classes bring good sources of the debuffs it can apply.

 

A damage focused Paladin w/Arbalest and Flames of Devotion talent(s) also hits pretty hard. Having 1 ranged paladin to give Zealous Focus to your caster/archer group is nice too. Hits hard even with Pallegina's awful might(it's like 12 or something).

 

I don't really build melee damagers currently, I put the more useless/weak companions in melee only to block them from reaching my ranged. They can be strong but require more particular party compositions for success and are generally higher risk for lower reward otherwise. Pike Fighter or Barbarian is kind of nice sometimes though, and Knockdown can save your squishies from time to time.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Odd Hermit