Boeroer's Builds

[Boeroer]

Right. Comes last after all other rolls (at least in the combat log).

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I don't like several of the new design decisions. Biggest problems for me are the removal of the universal talents which makes leveling up/building up single class chars pretty railroady and boring - and the new penetration system which forces you to concentrate on penetration and nothing else. You can hit like a flying truck on steroids, but if you have 7 penetration and your opponent has 8 armor your truck turns into a very soft and wet noodle made out of 1-layered, recycled toilet paper.

 

A lot of the brick wall penetration problem in the early beta is because the beta characters are badly under-geared.

 

Console-command yourself a set of Fine weapons and a lot of the problems go away. 

 

Also, everything on the main island by the starting town is high level for the starting party -- go east to the dungeon, that poko kohara zone is appropriately levelled.

 

Final thing you can do is have at least one party member with an ability that breaks open armor. A barbarian weilding a mace, a chanter with hel-hyraf's, or a mage with expose vulnerabilities, all are good ways to solve the problem.

 

I mean, I agree there are some polishing issues there that need to be addressed, but don't dismiss the system based on the first few fights of the beta -- I had the same "F*ck This" reaction at first but it's growing on me. It's a threshold that has to be crossed over yes but once you're past it there's a lot of depth to be explored in the new system (especially with afflictions/ inspiration and concentration/ interruption).

 

 

I kinda agree on the talents issue and I hope they rework that a bit.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Boeroer]

Yeah, using fine/exceptional weapons REALLY helps a lot. Not only because of the higher ACC, but mainly because of the higher PEN.

 

Also, since I play a Skald/Berserker Howler now and frequently use Hel-Hyraf in combo with my priest's Blessing (-5! armor, can graze) all penetration issues have been removed. This is still bad though. It shows that the penetration system has to reworked - else all abilites/spells/effects that lower DR or buff PEN will always have no. 1 priority. Whis is boring. Everybody playing melee will multiclass with Devoted, every wizard will use Expose, norbody will use great swords, every chanter will pick Hel-Hyraf and so on...

 

And now the complete bummer: priest of berath can't use Devotions. Nooo! Simply no.

His sword is very good though (+60% corrosive lash at lvl 6, phew) - now I want to multicalss him with a Devoted of course.

Or with a Bleak Walker and bring a chanter for the PEN.

If it only wouldn't take 6 seconds to summons the blade...

Edited November 19, 2017 by Boeroer

[cheesevillain]

if the game stays like this I may not even play it... 

 

Keep a little faith. If people aren't enjoying the penetration system, they'll adjust it. If people aren't having fun without more talents, they'll add more. We're still months away from release, and these aren't hard changes to make.

 

 

If it only wouldn't take 6 seconds to summons the blade...

 

 

This is awful. There's a priest spell that helps you in combat, but if you can't get to combat in the first few seconds, you're not really being effective.

 

It's awful for the Priest of Skaen, who trades the 5 free spells for a weakened sneak attack.

Edited November 19, 2017 by cheesevillain

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Yeah, using fine/exceptional weapons REALLY helps a lot. Not only because of the higher ACC, but mainly because of the higher PEN.

 

Also, since I play a Skald/Berserker Howler now and frequently use Hel-Hyraf in combo with my priest's Blessing (-5! armor, can graze) all penetration issues have been removed. This is still bad though. It shows that the penetration system has to reworked - else all abilites/spells/effects that lower DR or buff PEN will always have no. 1 priority. Whis is boring. Everybody playing melee will multiclass with Devoted, every wizard will use Expose, norbody will use great swords, every chanter will pick Hel-Hyraf and so on...

 

And now the complete bummer: priest of berath can't use Devotions. Nooo! Simply no.

His sword is very good though (+60% corrosive lash at lvl 6, phew) - now I want to multicalss him with a Devoted of course.

Or with a Bleak Walker and bring a chanter for the PEN.

If it only wouldn't take 6 seconds to summons the blade...

 

 

Yeah the party I'm messing with has a crit build hearth orlan skald/ranger and a mace carnage barbarian and I gave the wizard Expose Vulnerabilities and yeah it's all a bit formulaic. I really recommend cheat-engin-ing a few thousand copper and replacing the rogue at least with a hired merc, makes things much more playable.

 

Still I'm confident the system will get improved. Mostly because there are so many obvious imbalances and flaws right now that it's really clear they intend to do more balancing passes.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[MaxQuest]

Yeah the party I'm messing with has a crit build hearth orlan skald/ranger and a mace carnage barbarian

Do you feel that -1 AR is enough compared to the 100% Recovery Penalty?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

Yeah the party I'm messing with has a crit build hearth orlan skald/ranger and a mace carnage barbarian

Do you feel that -1 AR is enough compared to the 100% Recovery Penalty?

 

 

 

All depends. Some fights it makes a difference others it doesn't. Main benefit is it's always available so it's still there even if the skald misses with hel-hyraf's or the wizard misses with expose vulnerabilities. The AoE of Carnage feels smaller though so I'm not sure if the Carnage is procc'ing it or not effectively.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Boeroer]

Good thing about carnage is the raw damage - when it comes to PEN.

[AndreaColombo]

And now the complete bummer: priest of berath can't use Devotions. Nooo! Simply no.

His sword is very good though (+60% corrosive lash at lvl 6, phew) - now I want to multicalss him with a Devoted of course.

 

I'm trying this now (Devoted/Priest of Berath) but the blade really takes too long to be worth it. If they made the blade fast cast, then it would be a good build—but even then, better just give him a regular sword and get Devotions.

[Boeroer]

Hm, I found that if you cast it as your first spell in combat and let the enemy come to you it wasn't so bad. But I agree that summmoning weapons shouldn't take 6 seconds. You are already not using buffs or CC effects when deciding to summon a weapon - so it better be there fast.

[AndreaColombo]

Agreed. All self-buffs should be fast cast and summoning weapons should count as a self-buff.

 

I can let the enemy come to me, but in a party, by the time I'm done summoning the weapon the rest of my guys have already mopped the floor with my enemy. Unless of course my party is entirely composed of pure Wizards and Ciphers

[Boeroer]

By the way I only use cipher at the moment as deliverer of Soul Annihilation and nothing else. Because it feels that every other power the cipher could use is just worse than to simply keep on hitting stuff with your weapon and use the focus for instant raw damage. All the powers take too long and last not long enough.

 

Another reason why the chanter is currently so great: his offensive invocations are fast and have good effects. Did you notice the huuuge size of the AoE of the new White Worms invocation? Holy Moly...

Edited November 21, 2017 by Boeroer

[Phyriel]

Write a few words on wizards. After playing them solo on potd Poe1 i'm in absolute love with the class. With every other casters I found atleast one thing I didn't like... like with ciphers the need to use conventional weaponry to generate focus. Priests having to selfbuff 10 things every god damn fight. Wizards felt so good... im replaying poe1 again with solo wizard and with new items from deadfire its so OP like I don't even have words but thats beside the point. I guess the only pure caster other that wizard that I enjoyed was druid. However I tried druid as a shapeshifter and in end game it wasn't worth the massive investment needed to make it remotely any good (still squishy). I found pure caster druid much better and still used untalented boar form for DR pene vs high end enemies like ancient death knights and dragons.

 

So anyway how wizards feel like? I heard they change how fast you can cast in general in poe2. One thing i loved in poe1 is alacrity as 3rd lvl spell turning you into flashy spell machinegun. 

Edited December 13, 2017 by Phyriel

[Boeroer]

Besides their self buffs (which are still good) wizards in Deadfire suck. Alacrity doesn't give you attack speed any more but a boost to DEX instead. Atm it's a lot weaker than in PoE1 and I never use it.

[JerekKruger]

Yeah Wizards feel very lacklustre in Deadfire. Their self buffs are, as Boeroer says, pretty good as they are (mostly) near instant cast (0.4 seconds) and zero recovery, but all their other spells suffer massively from very slow casting and recovery times (typical is 6 seconds cast, 3 seconds recovery). At the moment, with a well built melee party this often results in easier fights being over or nearly over before the Wizard has cast a single spell, making the change in spell casting from per rest to per encounter less handy than it first appeared. Moreover the loss of graze has resulted in offensive spells missing altogether much more often meaning that even after a lengthy cast your spell might very well do nothing.

 

Their subclasses also seem weak to me. You lose access to two of the five spell schools, which can sometimes mean losing access to more than 40% of spells of a given level, and the recovery of spells from the two other non-specialised schools is increased, all in exchange for +1 power level and an ability which varies between useless and decent (but not amazing). Bear in mind that a Nature Godlike Wizard can get +2 power levels by casting a very fast self buff at the start of combat.

 

Also strange is the way spells scale, making multiclassing as a Wizard pretty good if you focus entirely on self buffs (you lose a bit of buff duration but nothing else) and terrible if you want to use any offensive spells.

 

All in all I think Wizards need a lot of work by Obsidian. They were too powerful in Pillars but they are horribly weak in Deadfire.

[KDubya]

Wizards are both too weak and too powerful at the same time which is hard to pull off.

 

By overpowered I'm talking about how many spell casts they will have per encounter. At level nine they have nine casts, at the same progression they'll have eighteen casts per encounter. So many that they'll never run out and can start every fight from stealth with their best nuke or CC, then bang out a few instant cast buffs and then work their way down from the top of their spell inventory.

 

The spell power gained doesn't seem to make much difference, the penetration gained is less than one so it doesn't help much.

 

The build I'm looking at is an Arcane Knight - Mage/Paladin probably Bleak Walker. Paladin defenses plus Wizard buffs plus summoned weapons when desired plus getting all the spells for free from found Grimoires looks to be solid. At max level i think they get to level seven for spells so that'll be 13 or 14 casts per encounter for a guy who'll be whacking things in melee generally.

[Skaddix]

I plan a similar build hopefully weapons don't take forever to cast especially since Paladin no longer have a negative.

 

I like the name of the Paladin/Wizard better still trying to decide whether Fighter or Barbarian would be better for the Archetype Magus, Gish, War Mage, whatever you want call it.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Skaddix

[Dr <3]

I request in advance a build for an evoker/priest. The B52.

With the upcoming change of resolve for spell dmg and crowns for the faithful + devotions for the faithful you should be able to achieve massive nukes capable to annhilate everything.

[JerekKruger]

I'd imagine you'd be better off being a pure Evoker but I might be wrong.

[Dr <3]

I'd imagine you'd be better off being a pure Evoker but I might be wrong.

If beign single class ( have +2 power level?) is better than give yourself +25 res ( --> +75% spell dmg? ) And +20 accuracy than there is something wrong

[JerekKruger]

If beign single class ( have +2 power level?) is better than give yourself +25 res ( --> +75% spell dmg? ) And +20 accuracy than there is something wrong

 

If Crowns for the Faithful remains +25 Resolve then maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being a tier 3 Resolve Inspiration i.e. +5 Resolve and some other bonuses.

[Naesaki]

One thing I'm curious about so far, what multi-class options are coming across well right now / standing above the rest?

 

When I saw the name list for the multi-classes and just the general idea of it, a Cipher/Chanter (Spiritualist) appeals to me from an RP standpoint but I'm now wondering if it will actually work well as a class combination?

[AndreaColombo]

My personal favorites:

 

Helwalker/Devoted

Helwalker/Shifter

Berserker/Devoted

Berserker/Shifter

Devoted/Soul Blade

 

If an unarmed proficiency is added:

 

Devoted/Shifter*

*though synergy is better with Berserker and Helwalker.

 

If summoned weapons become fast cast:

 

Devoted/Wizard

Berserker/Wizard

Devoted/Priest of Berath

Edited December 21, 2017 by AndreaColombo

[JerekKruger]

I like Berserker/Bleak Walker (or indeed any Paladin) for the simply reason that I discovered that it could remove the main downside of the Berserker's Frenzy completely through a passive ability. 

[dunehunter]

Paladin has: 

 

Good off ability, good def passive, lacking self buff, off passive;

 

Barbarian has:

 

Good self buff, good off passive, lacking def ability.

 

I think that's why two combine very good.