Devil of Caroc far worse than other rogues? (gameplay discussion only, avoid story spoilers pls)

[Tomice]

TLDR summary:

Even when not looking at the attributes (which we can't change for any voiced companion and which might be good or bad), the devil is worse than any other companion considering gameplay.

 

Pros & Cons for the devil:

- can't switch armor, is stuck with a variant of breast plate (without any unique trait or advantage)

- is therefore stuck with unenchanted armor when most of your other companions already wear uniques at that point

- can't use food, drinks or drugs (potions work)

+ Immune to disease and poison

 

That's it. The minimal, situational advantage of poison/disease resistance replaces the far more useful racial traits of other companions.

Yet we still have to live with all the disadvantages. There are no extra attribute points, no other unique traits, no special skill.

 

Considering all the downsides, I would at least have expected her to be free of armor recovery penalty (zero development time!).

She would have offered so many opportunities for unique gameplay, but there's nothing.

Her story is cool, but her gameplay is very disapponting.

 

Suggestion:

Make her armor 0% recovery in the next patch. It fits with her "living machine" trait and would compensate for her armor-related drawbacks. It would be a very quick fix (changing a value for a single item, maybe change the the text for her unique trait). There's no unexpected consequences or balance issues (she would only be a bit quicker in her actions, nothing out of the ordinary)

 

If you think 0% is too much, remember that other armors have "second chance" and other useful, unique traits. Also remember that her current racial trait cancels itself out (having at least as much negative as positive effects) - meaning that she actually has no racial advantage right now !!! The resulting extra attack speed would have to compensate for both the lacking unique racial trait as well as the lacking unique armor trait.

 

 

EDIT:

She even has two stat points less than all other companions (those two you get for your race)!!!

Edited September 13, 2015 by Tomice

[MunoValente]

Field Triage doesn't work on her either.

[Doppelschwert]

Pros & Cons for the devil:

- can't switch armor, is stuck with a variant of breast plate (without any unique trait or advantage)

- is therefore stuck with unenchanted armor when most of your other companions already wear uniques at that point

 

It's true that you can't give her unique enchantments, but you can enchant the armor just like regular armor. You can make it superb, give it an attribute bonus, proofing and even the durgan steel upgrade.

 

There are still plenty more cons than pros, but just to clarify for people who might get the idea that you can't enchant at all.

[gkathellar]

+1 to the OP's suggestion. Devil is terribad.

[AndreaColombo]

Yeh, her body being - you know - her body ... it shouldn't really have any recovery penalty. Just like a Druid's Spiritshift has 0% recovery penalty. This would make her special, since she cannot wear any unique armor with cool properties (and you need to invest an adra dragon scale to make her body Superb, whereas other party members can wear unique armor that already comes with the Superb quality.)

[PIP-Clownboy]

Her voice acting owns which makes her superior. Why does it even matter if she isn't super min/maxed? The game is already jokingly easy on POTD.

[Tomice]

Her voice acting owns which makes her superior. Why does it even matter if she isn't super min/maxed? The game is already jokingly easy on POTD.

 

It's not about min/maxing, that's why I didn't mention her attributes.

It's more about missed opportunity, lack of thought by the devs and the ingame implementation not living up to the amazing concept.

[abaris]

She's OK though. Definetely not worse than the custom rogue I created till recruiting her. If you level her the right way, she can take quite a bit of aggro.

[Bill Gates' Son]

I guess she could use some QoL improvements, but it's not like she isn't sufficient enough.

[abaris]

All the companions aren't top of their class, but with being able to level them by yourself, you can iron out most of the flaws.

[rheingold]

Its really hard to go wrong with a melee rogue, the only talent you actually need is sneak attack.... And attributes don't matter that much, most of their damage comes from sneak attack/deathblows. But yeah it would be nice from a role playing pov, if there was something special about her build. Maybe a special ability of some sort?

[Darkpriest]

the only thing she is missing is her body to be with armor that has 0% recovery penalty... it is HER BODY after all...

[Tomice]

Its really hard to go wrong with a melee rogue, ....

 

She's OK though.

 

... it's not like she isn't sufficient enough.

 

Of course one can finish the game even with bad chars on lower difficulties (maybe even POTD if you play really well).

 

This doesn't change that her "race" is the only one that consists only of weaknesses.

 

 

EDIT:

She even has two stat points less than all other companions (those two you get for your race)!

Gonna post this to the bug forum.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Tomice

[rheingold]

 

Its really hard to go wrong with a melee rogue, ....

 

 

She's OK though.

 

 

... it's not like she isn't sufficient enough.

 

 

Of course one can finish the game even with bad chars on lower difficulties (maybe even POTD if you play really well).

 

This doesn't change that her "race" is the only one that consists only of weaknesses.

 

 

EDIT:

She even has two stat points less than all other companions (those two you get for your race)!

Gonna post this to the bug forum.

I'm not suggesting that they don't tweak her, just that she is far from useless, the fact that she is a rogue makes her strong.

[Sannom]

the only thing she is missing is her body to be with armor that has 0% recovery penalty... it is HER BODY after all...

It's not her body, her soul was forcefully transferred into it.

[Darkpriest]

 

the only thing she is missing is her body to be with armor that has 0% recovery penalty... it is HER BODY after all...

It's not her body, her soul was forcefully transferred into it.

 

 

technically it is HER body.... she is not wearing the armor. it is her new physical existence... she cannot just get it off, and put it on shelves, can she?

[Sannom]

technically it is HER body.... she is not wearing the armor. it is her new physical existence... she cannot just get it off, and put it on shelves, can she?

No. But she wasn't born with it, so it isn't her body. Secondary effects are to be expected. This isn't Fullmetal Alchemist, even if the soul stuff reminds me of it quite a bit. But then again, that happens every time something has "souls" as an important feature of their world. I already thought that FMA owed a lot to Final Fantasy 7.

[KDubya]

Upgrade her armor to at least exceptional, slap on a +2 attribute, slash or pierce proof for another +4 (like all armor enhancing a DR that is boosted by the base armor boosts your enchantment as well), and then use Durgan steel on her to drop armor penalty to only 25% but protects like plate.

 

Between her heavy armor and high resolve she was made for tanking. Give her a shield and a reinforcing exhortation and she is around 115 deflection which is decidedly not squishy.

 

For further enhancement durgan steel her shield and weapon for another +30% attack speed buff.

 

From a math standpoint she does fine as long as you embrace her strengths, which is tankyness.

 

From a role play and voice acting standpoint she is a definite keeper.

[Elerond]

Upgrade her armor to at least exceptional, slap on a +2 attribute, slash or pierce proof for another +4 (like all armor enhancing a DR that is boosted by the base armor boosts your enchantment as well), and then use Durgan steel on her to drop armor penalty to only 25% but protects like plate.

 

Between her heavy armor and high resolve she was made for tanking. Give her a shield and a reinforcing exhortation and she is around 115 deflection which is decidedly not squishy.

 

For further enhancement durgan steel her shield and weapon for another +30% attack speed buff.

 

From a math standpoint she does fine as long as you embrace her strengths, which is tankyness.

 

From a role play and voice acting standpoint she is a definite keeper.

 

But still she will be worse than any normal rogue 

[gkathellar]

 

 

Upgrade her armor to at least exceptional, slap on a +2 attribute, slash or pierce proof for another +4 (like all armor enhancing a DR that is boosted by the base armor boosts your enchantment as well), and then use Durgan steel on her to drop armor penalty to only 25% but protects like plate.

 

Between her heavy armor and high resolve she was made for tanking. Give her a shield and a reinforcing exhortation and she is around 115 deflection which is decidedly not squishy.

 

For further enhancement durgan steel her shield and weapon for another +30% attack speed buff.

 

From a math standpoint she does fine as long as you embrace her strengths, which is tankyness.

 

From a role play and voice acting standpoint she is a definite keeper.

But still she will be worse than any normal rogue

That's about the size of it. When you have to use valuable Durgan Steel that you could be using on a better character to make the Devil competent for a rogue at a role that rogues in general don't excel at, you've got a bit of a problem.

 

At least she's a decent candidate for the Deep Wounds/Retaliation combo. That's something.

[sapientNode]

If she is like other companions you can respec her into something else using iemod

http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fpillarsofeternity%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D1%26preview%3D&pUp=1

 

This way you can add or detract skills/abilities and redo attributes scores.

You can also turn her into another class.  To account for the loss of armor you could add offensive/defensive abilities with the console.

When I do get her I will be doing this so I can experience her story but also so she is another class because my custom made Rogue is so awesome.

[srlapo]

I found her strong enough, but she is built exactly for what I use rogues for: Retaliate/riposte mace and shield frontliners. Durgan steel really helps with that, too.

[Cottonmouth]

 

 

the only thing she is missing is her body to be with armor that has 0% recovery penalty... it is HER BODY after all...

It's not her body, her soul was forcefully transferred into it.

 

 

technically it is HER body.... she is not wearing the armor. it is her new physical existence... she cannot just get it off, and put it on shelves, can she?

 

But the Bronze body wasn't designed to be Hk-47. Because she looks and sounds cool, is a murderer and is named Devil people assume it's some perfectly constructed killing machine but her story doesn't indicate that she'd be especially deadly.

 

Still, she is worse than a regular rogue and that's bad. I like the basic principle that story NPCs have some unique feature that makes them a bit better than standard versions of their class. Not absurd and envy inducing overpoweredness like Edwin, but there should be something. And in her case, we've only got immunity to disease and poison which is nothing.

[Luma Akasha]

The Devil and Zahua are good examples of "zero sum" use of IEMod. You don't use it to turn tem into demigods. You simply use it to put them back on equal footing with the other companions.

[KDubya]

Why is she worse than other Rogues?

 

Make a Rogue with the same stats and place them in plate mail to get comparable DR. Her armor speed reduction is only 40% instead of the 50% from plate. She is not a dress wearing glass cannon, give her Weapon and Shield style, the retaliate buckler and a good Sabre with Fellbore for an alpha strike and she kick's ass.

 

Disease immunity might not be that great but there is a lot of poison around. Compared to broken super cheese that is Moon Godlike's AoE heal three times per encounter, everything is weak.

 

And what is bad about Zahua other than the drugged up tribal schtick? With heavy armor and fists or weapons he does great. I've got him in the Sanguine Plate, Shod in Faith boots and Durgan enhanced Tide Fall greatsword and he is a monster.