how does the penetration mechanic feels like?

[Katarack21]

Rangers have low accuracy? Man, that's a punch to the kidney, innit?

[Breckmoney]

Early days still but on first blush I enjoy the system more than DR. Some numbers obviously need tweaked, though. And first encounters against monsters are a bit rougher now until you learn their armor values and can adjust accordingly. After that though I have a lot of fun changing weapons and using my saber modal at the appropriate times rather than just pushing through the kinda mushy DR system cause I'm lazy.

[Breckmoney]

Rangers have low accuracy? Man, that's a punch to the kidney, innit?

 

Might be a bug or something. Mine shows 20 as the base for all of my characters, including a fighter and a fighter/ranger and a rogue. 

Edited November 17, 2017 by Breckmoney

[morhilane]

 

Rangers have low accuracy? Man, that's a punch to the kidney, innit?

 

Might be a bug or something. Mine shows 20 as the base for all of my characters, including a fighter and a fighter/ranger and a rogue.

 

Just reloaded and now everyone is at 20, even in combat (the 25 base was while in combat). This does look like a bug...now to reproduce it.

Edited November 17, 2017 by morhilane

[DCParry]

From my experience so far, it means that you can't multiclass as a caster if you want to do any damage with your spells because your spells being cast at a lower power level means your spell penetration will always be significantly lower than your enemy's armor class. Shame, I wanted to mc a paladin with an offensive caster, "templar" and "arcane knight" and "liberator" all sound like offensive classes but you literally do a third of the damage a pure caster does.

Are you sure this isn't a function of fighting out of your weight class? Some of the encounters are higher level than the party if you go there first.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Honestly it feels a bit like running into a brick wall but I can't tell yet if it's just because the starting party is undergeared / underlevelled.

 

I feel like a few points should probably be shaved off across the board because it feels like the "extra penetration" talents are essentially required for all builds. To penetrate against same level enemies you need them, or at least you do with some weapons. 

 

Part of the issue though may also be the absence of grazing hits. It just feels a lot harder to do damage or have your powers take effect across the board, regardless. 

[theBalthazar]

Don't forget an important thing :

 

The game must be accessible to new players.

 

- The concept of "no pen" (+30 % etc) etc, is not very accessible.

 

PO1 was perfect (Totally Soustractive concept = simple 10 - 5 = 5 DR). Personnally I was thinking Obsidian want to dynamise the combat and the immediate reading of this. Or with that this is the opposite. +Miss (No grazes = frustrating when you want to evolve in the comprehension of the game, like me in beta, so... like a new player) +Complex (Risk of lost new players with no patience).

 

Result of this metagame = the idea of Katarack. Rush to all +penetration. The game becoming "all or nothing" (+30 % or...No pen). Very punishing on the first game for new players. And counter the idea of universal pleasure for all classes. Here again (+) Multiclass (-) Singleclass.

 

For the idea of lappost : Can be an idea but... The system become more complex.

Edited November 17, 2017 by theBalthazar

[cheesevillain]

PO1 was perfect (Totally Soustractive concept = simple 10 - 5 = 5 DR). 

 

 

The old system certainly wasn't perfect. It scaled really, really weirdly.

I also found it deceptively hard to judge at a glance exactly how effective your weapons would work against an enemys' armour, especially when it was bound up with the miss/graze/hit/crit process. You say it's simple, but it's only simple on paper.

Edited November 17, 2017 by cheesevillain

[Nail]

Now there is a question: why two handed sword exists when estoc is so much better due high penetration...

[Boeroer]

The main drawback of PoE's DR system was how it worked with lashes. This was obscure and hard to grasp. Also that DR penetration didn't do anything for lashes and that lashes had no MIN damage made it very weird.

 

For example: a paladin with a burning lash, FoD, Intense Flames and Scion of Flame has lashes of 30%/60%/30% worth. He also has a blunderbuss and can shoot with it utilizing 16 DR bypass for his pellets. When he attacks a high armored foe with 20 DR it may happen that he deals great pierce damage (at least only 4 damage points get substracted per pellet) but VERY little burn damage (most of the time coming from FoD while Intense Flames and burnung lash couln't make it through DR at all). So he can decide to only shoot low DR enemies (for what does he need all that DR bypass then?) or to use an arquebus like everybody else (boring).

 

Things like that were not perfect.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Boeroer

[Sedrefilos]

From what I read throughout the threads, it seems they have tried to fix many mechanics that were not broken.

Does it worth it in your opinion?

[Boeroer]

No.

[PentaFlash]

No.

 

Seconded. I only played for about 90 minutes in the Beta so far, but the mechanical changes compared to Poe1 pretty much seem exclusively on the negative side for me. 

The penetration system is very counter-intuitive in my opinion. At the very least, they should change it so that being 1 point below armor rating does not negate most of your damage. 

[Infinitron]

 

PO1 was perfect (Totally Soustractive concept = simple 10 - 5 = 5 DR). 

 

 

The old system certainly wasn't perfect. It scaled really, really weirdly.

I also found it deceptively hard to judge at a glance exactly how effective your weapons would work against an enemys' armour, especially when it was bound up with the miss/graze/hit/crit process. You say it's simple, but it's only simple on paper.

 

 

The old system wasn't good enough. Low damage weapons felt too weak. Armor felt too weak.

 

Better to tweak this one.

[Wormerine]

In PoE 1, you also had the option of switching out weapon types at will as needed to deal with DR or immunity problems, and *EVERY* character could select weapon proficiencies at level up whenever they wanted to help offset accuracy problems, so it was very easy and very fluid to adjust on the fly to DR resistance. You hovered over the enemy, saw what their DR was, and just switched to the weapon set that they weren't resistant to. I literally never had any problems.

The penetration system, not so much. The weapon proficiencies are gated behind certain levels or classes, so you can't adjust your accuracy with weapons as easily, which means you get locked into weapons more solidly. The penetration system also has much harder penelties for not beating the numbers. The talents to increase penetration compound this problem by becoming must-have talents, defeating the whole purpose of "make any build you want". It's just generally a harsher system.

But weapon proficiencies unlock modals and don’t increase your accuracy with weapons, right?

[Lamppost in Winter]

 

In PoE 1, you also had the option of switching out weapon types at will as needed to deal with DR or immunity problems, and *EVERY* character could select weapon proficiencies at level up whenever they wanted to help offset accuracy problems, so it was very easy and very fluid to adjust on the fly to DR resistance. You hovered over the enemy, saw what their DR was, and just switched to the weapon set that they weren't resistant to. I literally never had any problems.

The penetration system, not so much. The weapon proficiencies are gated behind certain levels or classes, so you can't adjust your accuracy with weapons as easily, which means you get locked into weapons more solidly. The penetration system also has much harder penelties for not beating the numbers. The talents to increase penetration compound this problem by becoming must-have talents, defeating the whole purpose of "make any build you want". It's just generally a harsher system.

But weapon proficiencies unlock modals and don’t increase your accuracy with weapons, right?

 

 

Fighters and Barbs at least have passives that increase Accuracy with Proficient weapons.

[FreeKaner]

I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with penetration being an important core aspect of the combat and penetration being designed around either penetrating or not. It will likely require adjustments to weapon use and very likely the need to switch weapons according to the enemy, which is a good thing. 

[morhilane]

Fighters and Barbs at least have passives that increase Accuracy with Proficient weapons.

Only Barbarians do. Fighters only get a +5 accuracy when using the Warrior Stance modal (Weapon Specialization is just +15% damage with proficient weapons).

 

Saying that, other classes have other way to increase accuracy for certain things, it just need to be balanced. Some examples. Berath's favored weapon summon grants a +4 accuracy at level 6 (using a fine greatsword would be better). Wizard/Priest attack spells have a +X ability level + X Wizard Power Level accuracy increase but that currently doesn't come close to weapon quality available at those level, aka attack spells have low accuracy and miss more than half the time currently and there is no graze.

 

 

The accuracy gain balance and removal of default grazing is one of the reason why I think talking against the penetration system is premature. They changed the systems, but don't seems to have done much balance tweaking.

[Dr <3]

Graze was one of the best mechanichs in poe. I hated the d&d stuff, where you could cast a super duper spell but a lucky roll could negate the whole effect. Graze was interesting both for melee attacks ( even if it favoured heavy armors) and for spells. You cast something on a high defences enemy? You can still aim for some effect!

[draego]

Graze was one of the best mechanichs in poe. I hated the d&d stuff, where you could cast a super duper spell but a lucky roll could negate the whole effect. Graze was interesting both for melee attacks ( even if it favoured heavy armors) and for spells. You cast something on a high defences enemy? You can still aim for some effect!

 

 I generally agree but the grazes were a little to powerful for some spells like paralyze but i dont think that justifies scraping it all. And there is grazing in this game apparently you just have to pick the right race. Boreal dwarf

Edited November 17, 2017 by draego

[Katarack21]

The lack of grazing *really* throws me, to be honest. That's one that just mystifies me entirely. I liked the mechanic, and I don't understand why they couldn't tweak it--why they had to just get rid of it entirely.

[morhilane]

 

Graze was one of the best mechanichs in poe. I hated the d&d stuff, where you could cast a super duper spell but a lucky roll could negate the whole effect. Graze was interesting both for melee attacks ( even if it favoured heavy armors) and for spells. You cast something on a high defences enemy? You can still aim for some effect!

 

 I generally agree but the grazes were a little to powerful for some spells like paralyze but i dont think that justifies scraping it all. And there is grazing in this game apparently you just have to pick the right race. Boreal dwarf

 

Or the right passive/abilities/spells.

 

The buff Aware grants "can graze" for example and it's available on a Priest at level 1 (Dire Blessing). Fighters have passive that allow them to graze with their proficient weapons too.

[hilfazer]

So getting through enemy armor is very important. Just as i expected.

 

But replacing grazes with misses, not hits, totally surprises me. OEI has gone a long way since POE1 beta.

[Breckmoney]

There are also relatively cheap gauntlets in the starting town for sale/theft that grant grazes.

[IndiraLightfoot]

There are also relatively cheap gauntlets in the starting town for sale/theft that grant grazes.

Cheap and cheap. They cost all of your starting money, like 2,000 gold.