How useful is Intellect in Deadfire?

George_Truman · April 5, 2018

A change in area is proportional to a change in radius so you can convert it using magic

JerekKruger · April 5, 2018

A change in area is proportional to a change in radius so you can convert it using magic

~~Yes but Intellect now affects area directly, not radius, and the two aren't linearly proportional.~~

My bad, reread your post and I realise you realised that.

Edited April 5, 2018 by JerekKruger

George_Truman · April 5, 2018

I didn't convert them linearly

JerekKruger · April 5, 2018

I didn't convert them linearly

Yep, corrected my post. I assumed that, since Yosharian mentioned radius you'd treated it as radius in Deadfire too.

I'd say dumping is pretty similar between the two. In the old system you lost a little more than 10% area per point below 10 at first, but this slowed down to a little less than 10% per point as you went lower. So for mild dumping the new system is better and it only becomes worse if you drop to Intellect 4 or 3 (and even then, hardly by much).

It's a lot worse above 10 though definitely.

George_Truman · April 5, 2018

Does the AoE dissapear if you get debuffed to 0?

JerekKruger · April 5, 2018

Does the AoE dissapear if you get debuffed to 0?

In believe that in PoE you couldn't go below 1. Probably the same in Deadfire.

NerdCommando · April 5, 2018

If NC couldn't dump INT, he would dump something else. Minmaxers need 20+ in their damage stat to be competitive in PotD/TCS.

He probably LOVED being able to freely dump STR/RES last patch!

So much hate, lol.

Try not to stereotype me, plz. I play games for fun and for fun only. That's the sole point of their existence. But fun, for me, is the gameplay. Sure, lots of people play these games for story and atmosphere - great for them. But I'm just finding the writing and thus the atmosphere in the majority of games (Pillars included) to be utter schlock. Like, I'm reading through Philip K. ****'s bibliography right now. And it's awesome. But I have no idea how to enjoy game writing right after that. The discrepancy in writing levels is just devastating.

Even the ability to roleplay doesn't compensate for much because all the options I'm given are trash. From my point of view. I'm pretty much forced to agree with the Skaenite priest. I can't tell Iovara that she's stupid trash and no one cares about her preaching. I can't even join Thaos or make peace with him - like, what do I have against the dude? And that's not to mention that I'm not interested in having the tired hero's journey, I want to have a more subdued and existential experience. Call me snob or whatever, but I'm in this stuff for gameplay 'cause that's the only tasty part.

And see, strange it may sound, but I want to have my cake sweet. 'Cause that's what the cake is ought to be as far as I know. And you say - no, you're a bad person for enjoying your cake sweet! Immediately, immediately add lots of pepper and salt, otherwise, you're maxing too much! It's unfair!!!

What is unfair? If I'm playing the fighter whom I want to see stabby or shooty, he oughta be stabby or shooty. If intelligence doesn't help him to be this, why should I pay the tax? More so, even in terms of the story it has zero bearing - there's no dumb dialogue and stat usage is wholly comsetic. It doesn't truly affect anything. That's just the sad truth. So I should salt and pepper my cake so I can imagine that it's a fair cake and thus it's somehow better?

Now yeah, sure, as the game designer I agree that min-maxing is ugly and should be avoided. But, well, if min-maxing is so bad then maybe they should've just disallowed to make stats lower than 8 or something. Or maybe made the system where all stats are actually useful. If something is mostly useless I just refuse to make-believe that it's useful. That's ugly.

Mind you, I'm not blaming the Josh for this. PoE is a big game and it's problem that it's supposed to serve just too much people. Too many category of players. It should please all story-no combat crowd, it should please party players, it should please solo players, ironman has to be there, etc. It also shouldn't stray too much from the BG but at the same time it can't copy it too much. However nice BG is (theoretically, I hate it), the majority of fans here have played the living hell out of it and I doubt that the same gameplay would've actually pleased them much.

Now, back to the fighters. They're just not gaining enough from the int. They just don't.

Let's not forget that rest seems to be much more spammier in this game. And Fighters don't have good skill targets for empower. So refresh is the way to go, essentially giving a lvl 9 fighter 10 ability points. That's 30-40 seconds of both Vigorous Defense and Disciplined Strikes. And it's not even a given that you need to use Vigorous - it depends on how much of a tank your fighter is. Depending on your squad, that'll wary. Considering how swift the majority of the fights are (even on PoTD), that's just enough duration.

Rapid recovery reduction is a non-factor. Even at 30 seconds it's long enough because, once again, the fights are fast-paced and by that time you'll probably crush all major opposition. So it still helps you to get through the toughest spot and then it's, like, whatever. Another thing is that there are tons of good healing sources in the game. Great, even. So losing a bit of virtual health is not the end of the world.

Mob stance is highly annoying to use in the party playthrough. It's difficult to guarantee that it's your fighter who gets the last hit unless you go into full microcontrol mode - like, stop the game every time and order everyone else to change targets. If you don't do this then you'll rarely get those whirlwinds. If you do this, it's cool but it's annoying.

Outside of that, the fighter just doesn't have any worthwhile abilities. He doesn't even have that many abilities in the first place and most of them are meh. You'd rather pump more self-buffs. So why invest into a stat that's not truly used?

Losing will is annoying and even on POTD 14 will actually matters - with Determination, Vigorous Defense and Bull's Will you can reach more or less reasonable levels of resistance. But, as the others have said, there are other ways to prevent domination. Or you'd just better invest into Resolve.

The final angle here is that the best hope of intelligent fighters are the goold old "stun on crit' weapons. That is, if they exist in this iteration of pillars. Given how sparse the disables are in this one, I'm not sure if we'll see something like that. Mb interrupt or prone, but probably not stun. And even if it's here, another major issue (not in favor of intelligence) is that the combat is really, really rapid right now. Any decent build deals tons of damage. And fighter is an excellent damage dealer. So why bother locking a foe with something like Dex-Int build when you can just shred him with low-int, high damage build? Dead enemy needs no stuns.

George_Truman · April 5, 2018

I don't know about you guys but I always salt my cake lest I fall victim to temptation.

Boeroer · April 5, 2018

I put carrots into mine. I'm so special.

CENIC · April 6, 2018

Plebs. Por que no los dos? Salted-caramel cake.

Yosharian · April 6, 2018

If NC couldn't dump INT, he would dump something else. Minmaxers need 20+ in their damage stat to be competitive in PotD/TCS.

He probably LOVED being able to freely dump STR/RES last patch!

So much hate, lol.

Try not to stereotype me, plz. I play games for fun and for fun only. That's the sole point of their existence. But fun, for me, is the gameplay. Sure, lots of people play these games for story and atmosphere - great for them. But I'm just finding the writing and thus the atmosphere in the majority of games (Pillars included) to be utter schlock. Like, I'm reading through Philip K. ****'s bibliography right now. And it's awesome. But I have no idea how to enjoy game writing right after that. The discrepancy in writing levels is just devastating.

Even the ability to roleplay doesn't compensate for much because all the options I'm given are trash. From my point of view. I'm pretty much forced to agree with the Skaenite priest. I can't tell Iovara that she's stupid trash and no one cares about her preaching. I can't even join Thaos or make peace with him - like, what do I have against the dude? And that's not to mention that I'm not interested in having the tired hero's journey, I want to have a more subdued and existential experience. Call me snob or whatever, but I'm in this stuff for gameplay 'cause that's the only tasty part.

And see, strange it may sound, but I want to have my cake sweet. 'Cause that's what the cake is ought to be as far as I know. And you say - no, you're a bad person for enjoying your cake sweet! Immediately, immediately add lots of pepper and salt, otherwise, you're maxing too much! It's unfair!!!

What is unfair? If I'm playing the fighter whom I want to see stabby or shooty, he oughta be stabby or shooty. If intelligence doesn't help him to be this, why should I pay the tax? More so, even in terms of the story it has zero bearing - there's no dumb dialogue and stat usage is wholly comsetic. It doesn't truly affect anything. That's just the sad truth. So I should salt and pepper my cake so I can imagine that it's a fair cake and thus it's somehow better?

Now yeah, sure, as the game designer I agree that min-maxing is ugly and should be avoided. But, well, if min-maxing is so bad then maybe they should've just disallowed to make stats lower than 8 or something. Or maybe made the system where all stats are actually useful. If something is mostly useless I just refuse to make-believe that it's useful. That's ugly.

Mind you, I'm not blaming the Josh for this. PoE is a big game and it's problem that it's supposed to serve just too much people. Too many category of players. It should please all story-no combat crowd, it should please party players, it should please solo players, ironman has to be there, etc. It also shouldn't stray too much from the BG but at the same time it can't copy it too much. However nice BG is (theoretically, I hate it), the majority of fans here have played the living hell out of it and I doubt that the same gameplay would've actually pleased them much.

Now, back to the fighters. They're just not gaining enough from the int. They just don't.

Let's not forget that rest seems to be much more spammier in this game. And Fighters don't have good skill targets for empower. So refresh is the way to go, essentially giving a lvl 9 fighter 10 ability points. That's 30-40 seconds of both Vigorous Defense and Disciplined Strikes. And it's not even a given that you need to use Vigorous - it depends on how much of a tank your fighter is. Depending on your squad, that'll wary. Considering how swift the majority of the fights are (even on PoTD), that's just enough duration.

Rapid recovery reduction is a non-factor. Even at 30 seconds it's long enough because, once again, the fights are fast-paced and by that time you'll probably crush all major opposition. So it still helps you to get through the toughest spot and then it's, like, whatever. Another thing is that there are tons of good healing sources in the game. Great, even. So losing a bit of virtual health is not the end of the world.

Mob stance is highly annoying to use in the party playthrough. It's difficult to guarantee that it's your fighter who gets the last hit unless you go into full microcontrol mode - like, stop the game every time and order everyone else to change targets. If you don't do this then you'll rarely get those whirlwinds. If you do this, it's cool but it's annoying.

Outside of that, the fighter just doesn't have any worthwhile abilities. He doesn't even have that many abilities in the first place and most of them are meh. You'd rather pump more self-buffs. So why invest into a stat that's not truly used?

Losing will is annoying and even on POTD 14 will actually matters - with Determination, Vigorous Defense and Bull's Will you can reach more or less reasonable levels of resistance. But, as the others have said, there are other ways to prevent domination. Or you'd just better invest into Resolve.

The final angle here is that the best hope of intelligent fighters are the goold old "stun on crit' weapons. That is, if they exist in this iteration of pillars. Given how sparse the disables are in this one, I'm not sure if we'll see something like that. Mb interrupt or prone, but probably not stun. And even if it's here, another major issue (not in favor of intelligence) is that the combat is really, really rapid right now. Any decent build deals tons of damage. And fighter is an excellent damage dealer. So why bother locking a foe with something like Dex-Int build when you can just shred him with low-int, high damage build? Dead enemy needs no stuns.

I wish I could like this comment more than once.

I really hate it when I'm expected to role-play Intelligence on an honour system.

Dr. Hieronymous Alloy · April 6, 2018

So after watching NerdCommando's latest video (search for 'NerdCommando' on YouTube), I noticed that he is dump-statting Intellect on some of his characters.

As far as I can tell, the reasoning is thus:

1) The duration penalty (something like -35% duration at extremely low Intellect) is negated somewhat by Power Level. A level 7 single-class character has something in the region of +20% duration, which offsets the penalty significantly. A multi-class character at the same level has about +10%. So, for example, Disciplined Strikes lasts between 10-11 seconds for a character with extremely low intellect, as opposed to the 15 second default.

2) A single-class character has enough resources over the course of a single encounter to keep using an ability, which again negates the duration penalty. If you have enough resources to cast an ability several times, you don't necessarily need a long duration on your ability, because you can just recast it - it's a little less efficient, but worth it for the bonuses one can receive with more points in other attributes. (Not to mention, recasting buffs is way easier with the new gambit/tactics system!) We talked briefly about Disciplined Strikes using a single-classed Fighter with 3 Intellect:

Combat lasts for about a minute and pure Fighter has enough discipline for that

Now dumping Intellect also harms your Willpower stat and gives you a rather large area of effect penalty, something in the region of -70% for an extremely low Intellect (pretty horrendous for any character that casts an area of effect ability, such as a group buff).

However these penalties can be worked around I believe. For example, focusing on abilities which do not use area of effect - rather easy for a Fighter, possibly?

In exchange for dumping Intellect, we can boost other attributes like Dexterity, Resolve, Perception and Constitution, which have clear, and in some cases incredibly powerful, benefits. NC touched briefly upon the fact that some of these attributes are multiplicative which means a character benefits enormously from boosting them.

So. Thoughts?

PS: Obviously, NC is a min-maxer, and thus opts to tune Intellect to an extremely low level in order to maximise the benefits in other attributes. However, you can use the idea of lowering Intellect without going to such extremes, if it offends your role-playing sensibilities (it does mine, somewhat!). For example, you could lower intellect to about 7, thus making your character a little obtuse, but not exactly a dimwit. This would give you more points to spend in other attributes. I guess what I'm saying is, it's unnecessary to respond with 'well I don't care because putting Intellect at 3 is just absurd', because you can simply make the same arguments for lowering Intellect and merely reduce it a little less.

I kinda lost track of the above debate about two-thirds of the way down the last page, but to answer this initial question:

I suspect it depens on the build. You can definitely replace Int with dex and spam-casting to an extent, especially if you have a way to get lots of resources. I could see a Beguiler build that had moderate int and just focused on chain-recasting the same debuffs and dots repeatedly, for example. Maybe Ascendant but I'm hesitant there because Ascendant is by nature feast-then-famine, pump-and-dump and after you dump it may take you an unpredictable length of time to get repumped up again.There are probably some monk builds that could get away with it too, anything where you can get a feedback loop going so you don't run out of casting resources.

This is especially true since with the enhanced scripting options, as the limiting factor is no longer "how much **** can I keep track of at once," but rather "how quickly can I recast until I run out of resources."

For traditional casters though (wizards, priests) I think Int is probably still valuable because you only get so many casts of each spell level per fight and if you max out dex and dump int completely, you'll just run through your whole spell list super-fast and then all your spells will expire and you'll have nothing left to do but sit on your hands.

morhilane · April 6, 2018

Are there still team immunity spells? From what I saw the priest spells were altered and only affect 1 fella at a time

Yes, but none of the classes covers all 6 categories (immunity is based on the afflictions/inspiration system) and I believe not all of the categories have a aoe affliction immunity spell. It's been a while since I looked at it and we don't know all the spells/abilities that will be in the final game.

There is a lot more resistance to and inspirations abilities though, but dealing with afflictions won't be as simple as in POE1 where you just dropped the very large Priest's immunity AOE as needed.

Dr. Hieronymous Alloy · April 6, 2018

Oh, and Int just adds more ticks of damage to DoTs now, it doesn't ever effectively reduce the DPS any more right?

Boeroer · April 6, 2018

I always did that. In PoE as well. There were just a few exceptions, mainly wounding (from Tidefall/Persistence/Boar Tusks/Drawn in Spring/Acuan Giamas).

Shining Beacon with maxed INT and MIG was doing tremendous damage with a crit.

Dr. Hieronymous Alloy · April 6, 2018

Right but once there are exceptions you have to remember what the exceptions are and complicated

Point is it's fixed now right? Right.

Boeroer · April 6, 2018

Right. I overread your "ever".

flazeo25 · April 6, 2018

So how useful is intellegiene in beta then?

SonicMage117 · April 6, 2018

How useful is Intellect in Deadfire?

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