Resolve, Strength vs Might and Casting Time

[Ninjamestari]

Maybe your biological role is to die in battle. Although I guess you wouldn't be of much use in such an event.

 

My biological role is to die on my sofa with a cold beer after propagation. Which I already did thrice. So where's my beer?

 

Smugness and Insults. I'm sure you've already began rationalizing reasons on why you should be considered manlier than me. I find it amusing how simple facts of life get some people so riled up.

[Boeroer]

I'm not riled up. I'm lying on my sofa drinking a cold beer while you postulate weird philosophical nonsense about true manhood in the forum of a fantasy role playing game.

[Ninjamestari]

I think that after all that disgust, mankini-comments and bravado about drinking beer and propagating, it's kinda too late for you to pretend you're not riled up.

[Boeroer]

If you say so. I must now go and comb my really dense chesthair. With a wire brush. Like Shan Yu teached me...

Edited January 9, 2018 by Boeroer

[Ninjamestari]

If you say so. I must now go and comb my really dense chesthair. With a wire brush. Like Shan Yu teached me...

 

You never had anything to say, you began a verbal conflict you couldn't win and now you retreat like a whipped dog, pretending to be the victor. Have fun with your chesthair, hope its real and not just disney-edition ^^

[AndreaColombo]

I take this to mean we can now go back to discuss how much the change from MIG to STR crippled Ciphers and most melee/caster multiclass builds in a game that advertised the class-building variety of multiclassing as one of its main selling points?

[Boeroer]

My brushing is done (and it turned out to be a nice piece of coiffure by the way) - so please go ahead.

[vanyel54]

 

In POE1, Magic do not came from body. How many times do we have to say that there was no Muscle Wizard in POE1. Might wasn't Strength.

 

But it does include Strength, and the more muscular Aumaua have more Might as their racial while the smaller creatures have a penalty to it. High Might means the character has both high physical strength and spiritual power, at least according to the in-game description. It really doesn't matter how many times you claim the opposite, it doesn't change what reads in the in-game description.

 

 

I don't claim the opposite  . I just say Might wasn't only Strength.

You could perfectly think your POE1 character of 20 Might a not so muscular man but with great spiritual power. The concept of Might really useful for the mechanisms of the game but was clearly ill perceived by a lot of people.

 

Let's resume my thoughts : until Obsidian find a way to adjust the hybrid classes, i still prefer Might as the one attribute source of damage. Even it means less characterization for the player. And give Resolve something else (there is a lot of threads about this).

[the_dog_days]

Wow. Don't look at a thread for a few days and POW! it goes way off the rails.

[hilfazer]

I find it strange spells somehow fire off faster if i have high dexterity. You no longer need to wave your hands like in IE games. Does magical energy flow faster through veins of creatures with nimble fingers?

Maybe cast speed should be moved from DEX to something else just like damage got split between 2 stats?

[AndreaColombo]

^ Was that tongue-in-cheek or are we really on a quest to make hybrid builds bad for the sake of simulationism (which was never a design goal in PoE to begin with)?

[Tigranes]

Hybrid builds were so fun in POE1, though - and weird ones. Muscle wizards were actually great fun to play, even more fun than standard wizards in some ways when going solo.

[Ninjamestari]

 

 

In POE1, Magic do not came from body. How many times do we have to say that there was no Muscle Wizard in POE1. Might wasn't Strength.

 

But it does include Strength, and the more muscular Aumaua have more Might as their racial while the smaller creatures have a penalty to it. High Might means the character has both high physical strength and spiritual power, at least according to the in-game description. It really doesn't matter how many times you claim the opposite, it doesn't change what reads in the in-game description.

 

 

I don't claim the opposite  . I just say Might wasn't only Strength.

You could perfectly think your POE1 character of 20 Might a not so muscular man but with great spiritual power. The concept of Might really useful for the mechanisms of the game but was clearly ill perceived by a lot of people.

 

Let's resume my thoughts : until Obsidian find a way to adjust the hybrid classes, i still prefer Might as the one attribute source of damage. Even it means less characterization for the player. And give Resolve something else (there is a lot of threads about this).

 

 

Two points:

1) The concept of Might indeed is BOTH, so you can't have one WITHOUT the other, leading to the muscle wizard. It's kinda like if you played a sorcerer in D&D and every time you raise either STR or CHA, the other one increases as well. Hence, you can't have a wizard that has great magical might without him being a pile of muscles as well.

 

2) This is the important distinction in my eyes, whic CONCEPT do you prefer, Might or Strength, and let's just ignore their actual implementation for now. The mechanics of PoE were always a bit wonky as far as build go, but I'm not in the beta so I won't comment on whether or not the current STR/RES setup makes things worse or not. I'm arguing purely from the basis of the concepts of the stats, and to me PoE 1 lost something fundamentally important when it went with the concept of Might instead of Strength.

[Boeroer]

I can totally agree to that (I have no strong opinions in favor nor against STR/RES or MIG by the way).

[Jojobobo]

Wow. Don't look at a thread for a few days and POW! it goes way off the rails.

IKR, I made the thread and then I come back and it's like, "What has happened here?!?"

[hilfazer]

^ Was that tongue-in-cheek or are we really on a quest to make hybrid builds bad for the sake of simulationism (which was never a design goal in PoE to begin with)?

 

, tongue.

[Tigranes]

 

Wow. Don't look at a thread for a few days and POW! it goes way off the rails.

IKR, I made the thread and then I come back and it's like, "What has happened here?!?"

 

 

When a thread goes on for more than 3 pages, it's not the same thread anymore.

[vanyel54]

 

Two points:

1) The concept of Might indeed is BOTH, so you can't have one WITHOUT the other, leading to the muscle wizard. It's kinda like if you played a sorcerer in D&D and every time you raise either STR or CHA, the other one increases as well. Hence, you can't have a wizard that has great magical might without him being a pile of muscles as well.

 

2) This is the important distinction in my eyes, whic CONCEPT do you prefer, Might or Strength, and let's just ignore their actual implementation for now. The mechanics of PoE were always a bit wonky as far as build go, but I'm not in the beta so I won't comment on whether or not the current STR/RES setup makes things worse or not. I'm arguing purely from the basis of the concepts of the stats, and to me PoE 1 lost something fundamentally important when it went with the concept of Might instead of Strength.

 

 

1) Exactly Mig was both Str and Res. But you could conceptually represent the Mig of your character as 10% physical and 90% psychical. So no "Muscle Wizard".

It's all about mental representation

 

2) I agree with you that on a blank board i prefer distinguish Physical damage from Mental damage. BUT :

• Poe2 is a sequel and people expect to find the same base mechanism of the first game.
• This change brings a lot of problems even for basic build (and i don't talk about min/max builds). Your POE2 cipher/druid etc... will be less effective than in POE1. So you have to expect some complains.

[Wormerine]

I take this to mean we can now go back to discuss how much the change from MIG to STR crippled Ciphers and most melee/caster multiclass builds in a game that advertised the class-building variety of multiclassing as one of its main selling points?

Except it didn’t. One particular purely DPS focused cipher build got nerfed (not crippled). Ciphers are still work just fine.

 

I would argue that they didn’t get broken but became a gold standard of how each class should ideally work - all attributes are valuable, increasing/decreasing an attribute will buff/debuff certain aspect of the class. Perception might be the only one really hurting if you dump it because than you can’t hit&you can’t cast spells. At the same time, every class needs perception.

[AndreaColombo]

Ciphers work fine? In the Deadfire beta? They were already terrible before the STR/RES change. Now you either play a ranged Cipher with spells or a melee Cipher with CC, the latter of which is especially bad. Melee with spells has become a substandard build that nobody would play unless they were willfully gimping themselves (them again, playing a Cipher altogether is already a clear sign of willfully gimping oneself in Deadfire.)

 

Hybrid melee/caster builds lost a key synergy; there’s no mechanical reason to play one now unless you’re doing something niche like focusing on summoned weapons or Spiritshifting (and with casting times as they are, focusing on summoned weapons isn’t great.)

Edited January 11, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[Wormerine]

Ciphers work fine? In the Deadfire beta? They were already terrible before the STR/RES change. Now you either play a ranged Cipher with spells or a melee Cipher with CC, the latter of which is especially bad. Melee with spells has become a substandard build that nobody would play unless they were willfully gimping themselves (them again, playing a Cipher altogether is already a clear sign of willfully gimping oneself in Deadfire.)

Hybrid melee/caster builds lost a key synergy; there’s no mechanical reason to play one now unless you’re doing something niche like focusing on summoned weapons or Spiritshifting (and with casting times as they are, focusing on summoned weapons isn’t great.)

From my casual, no-number-crunching yeah, it works fine. At least I more or less recreated my character from PoE and it worked pretty much the same (ranged focused on CC spells). Though now when you mention this I wonder if hybrid class like cipher becomes irrelevant with multiclassing. You can probably create a much more effective cipher-like character by combining physical and magical class, while in PoE they were a useful weapon&spells pick.

[MaxQuest]

 

I take this to mean we can now go back to discuss how much the change from MIG to STR crippled Ciphers and most melee/caster multiclass builds in a game that advertised the class-building variety of multiclassing as one of its main selling points?

Except it didn’t. One particular purely DPS focused cipher build got nerfed (not crippled). Ciphers are still work just fine.

 

I would argue that they didn’t get broken but became a gold standard of how each class should ideally work - all attributes are valuable, increasing/decreasing an attribute will buff/debuff certain aspect of the class. Perception might be the only one really hurting if you dump it because than you can’t hit&you can’t cast spells. At the same time, every class needs perception.

 

Hmm. Depends how to look on it.

 

I quite enjoyed ciphers in PoE1, even had 3 MCs of this class. And always had two of them in my party on all of my full-playthroughts.

I liked this class versatility, quickness and the fact that there are several different and more than viable ways to build one. E.g:

- (melee) (aoe) damage-oriented (dw or 2h): 18/9/18/12/15/6

- (melee) cc-oriented (2h): 9/9/18/18/18/6

- (ranged) (aoe) damage-oriented (warbow or quick-switch blunderbusses): 18/7/18/18/14/3 or 18/7/17/14/19/3 (if you wanted very strong Disintegration)

- (ranged) cc-oriented (warbow): 13/7/18/18/19/3

note: two thirds of damage inflicted by damage-oriented ciphers was coming from his powers (like Echo, Soul Shock, Silent Scream, Detonation and ~Amplified Wave).

 

And expected that Soulblade will be an additional way to those above to play the cipher, specifically a damage oriented one (but who dumps focus mostly in Soul Annihilation and not in powers). So there will be at least 5 viable ways to play them.

 

In reality though it's not as expected, because ciphers took the following 6 hits:

- 1) doubled cast times compared to PoE1. (it's understandable that ex-vancian classes had to be nerfed somehow, once their per-rest abilities became per-encounter; but somehow this affected ciphers as well)

- 2) afflictions provide weaker defense maluses. [-10 deflection and -10 fortitude] from the new stun is not the same as [-30 deflection, -38 reflex, -8 will]. Prone doesn't provide any maluses at all, and is not a disable any longer. Tbh, paralyze is the only decent cc left, but still it doesn't provide miss-to-graze conversion.

- 3) one of the best cc pre-setter (Painful Interdiction) was not moved to Deadfire (and having enemies with -28 fort, -20 will was really handy when trying to charm or paralyze someone)

- 4) even if landed succesfully, cc effect may not be applied if the target was affected by a matching inspiration already. So you will have to cast the same power twice.

- 5) if MIG is multiplicative with Soul/Bitting Whips and TwoHandedStyle, leaving MIG at ~flat values for cc-ciphers is so-so, because you would be crippling your focus generation.

- 6) change from MIG to STR, puts damage-oriented ciphers in an awkward position, since they need STR and RES now at the same time (while before RES could be kept flat or even dumped)

And there are also affliction resistances which make the life of hard-cc'er a bit harder. Although if they came instead of immunities and not in addition to them, it's fine.

 

So yeah...

If it was only the #6 change (i.e. going from MIG->STR), it wouldn't be that much of a deal. Instead of dumping RES on damage-oriented power ciphers, I would likely dump PER (*) instead, and that's it. But as it is now, I would rather avoid building ciphers focused on cc or aoe power-casting altogether.

 

(*) Why Per? Characters that are not limited by resource-limit (like ex-vancian casters), nor need high levels of reliability (like debilitators), can afford re-casting. Thus they will focus on getting attributes with the highest dps gain... which currently are STR/RES and DEX. So a cipher that is focused on dealing lots of damage via his aoe powers could easily end up with something like: 17/7/17/3/17/17.

 

And one more thing: some powers currently have x3 and even x6 shorter recovery than casting duration. This means that you can equip heaviest armor without big slowdown. And if so, there is little incentive to be ranged, as you'd be more effective by dual-wielding sabres in melee in plate armor, even if you'd have to transfer a few points from DEX to CON.

 

P.S. It turn'ed out to be a longer explanation than initially thought, but just wanted to describe the chages that affected this class.

Edited January 11, 2018 by MaxQuest

[illathid]

 

 

Sounds like a personal problem to me. Maybe you didn't get enough practice with your IMAGINATION as a child?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

Actually I did, I also gained the wisdom to realize that not everything that comes out of an IMAGINATION is gold, most things it produces are actually quite stupid. Muscle mages being one of those things.

 

 

Hmm... it's become clear from this and your other posts that I have neither the time nor the crayons to having a meaningful discussion with you.

[AndreaColombo]

 

If it was only the #6 change (i.e. going from MIG->STR), it wouldn't be that much of a deal

 

However—and with this I'll clarify what I've written before—#6 is already enough to make most melee/caster multiclass builds invariably, necessarily mediocre—and, therefore, uninteresting. One can easily roll a number of very powerful melee/melee multiclass characters, but how many melee/caster combinations are up to par? None. In part it is the fault of the exceedingly long casting times that have been discussed at length elsewhere; in part it's because the key synergy of having a single stat control all damage is gone.

 

The moving of Healing from MIG to RES also made non-RES-based Helwalker builds a lot less viable. I had to give up on my signature build altogether owing to this change. Not that I won't survive, mind you, but I wasn't exactly ecstatic; there was a reason that was my signature build: It was tailored to my play style and preferences and now puf! It's gone

[MaxQuest]

^ You are right, I have over-attenuated the effect of #6.

 

And I understand what you mean by being tailored for your playstyle and preference.

My favored playstyle of high-dps + quick-hard-cc party in general and ciphers in particular is not viable atm as well.