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Wizard Styles posted:Time to see what Ciphers are like now after the changes. I played a melee cipher (on hard difficulty) from around the time the patch beta hit until a few days ago. It worked very well, especially with body attunement, and where necessary, pain block from grieving mother. My cipher went down a lot in the early game but by level 8-9 could be fairly durable when she needed to be. Dual wielding fast weapons not only results in excellent damage output in melee, it also is ideal for using your powers as quickly as possible, since you not only have very short recovery times on your attacks, gaining focus quickly in (relatively) small increments means you can fire off a spell as soon as you have enough focus. Standing on the front line makes positioning for spells like ectopsychic echo and mind lance much easier as well. I ended up starting over, however, because I had a party of 5 casters and Eder, and once Aloth, Durance and Hiravias hit level 9, the game got very tedious to play since pausing the game to issue new spells to cast every second, while awesome for a couple of encounters, got old pretty fast. Rascyc posted:Supposedly you can cast suppress affliction before the charms hit and it'll block them, but I haven't tried it myself. Sounds buggy. In one of the beta versions of the 1.05 patch shortly before release I was able to use suppress affliction to cure all the dominates being thrown at me on Endless Paths level 11. So, I think it now works to remove those status effects.
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May 9, 2015 03:38
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So here's a rather specific question: how do secondary damage sources of the same type stack against DR? I know that all secondary damage is applied against 1/4 DR regardless of the percent added, making abilities like torment's reach very good, but I don't know what happens if you use torment's reach with the greatsword "Justice", for example. Would it first check 50% pre-DR total damage against 1/4 crush DR + 25% pre-DR total damage against 1/4 crush DR? Or would it check 75% pre-DR total damage against 1/4 crush DR? I have a monk with lightning strikes and I'm wondering if that makes shocking lash the best secondary damage type for a weapon using monk since if the secondary sources are added prior to DR, you would effectively halve the shock DR applied against your attacks. A Google search has people claiming claiming that both are true. I also wonder if Heart of the Storm would be worthwhile for that kind of build since it would boost your damage a significant percent further over enemy DR. That's assuming talents like Heart of the Storm affect secondary damage at all, which is another point about which I've seen conflicting statements.
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May 9, 2015 12:29
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Shakugan posted:After about 50 hours, I ended up uninstalling the game. I loved how strategic the battle system was, but for a game that reviews were claiming was "story heavy" I just didn't care about any of the characters or the plot. I think it's the combination of having a silent protagonist (yes, you choose responses, but it is done in a way that essentially eliminates any personality) and completely optional party members (so nothing they say is ever critical for the plot, and all other dialogue is written as if they never said anything). Like Elder Scrolls games, PoE places so much emphasis on world building, but completely falls apart when it comes to the playable characters and their reaction to the plot. I understand exactly what you mean. The party members are invisible to whoever you're talking to and while they might react to what you do, it seems more to remind you that they're there and tell you that they have a personality than to actually participate as characters in a story. The PC also has no personality that could extend beyond a 2-3 word description. Yes, you can choose your responses in dialogue and that affects what happens, but "benevolent smart-rear end" or "giant poo poo-head" don't constitute character building and personality. Charname can't have any quirks or subtleties to the way he interacts with people because he has to be a complete blank slate. Any actual character to the PC can only exist in the players imagination. The only one of these games that I've played for which this is different was Planescape: Torment, in which the main character, while still subject to definition by the player, was much more limited and clearly defined by the game itself. That said, this doesn't really bother me because I like the game for it's combat and interesting environments while I consider the story simply something to move me through the world. I appreciate the quality of the story and characterization, but it's not the main draw. From what I've read, Mask of the Betrayer might be more appealing for you, at least in terms of the companions, if not the PC. I've tried to play it a couple of times and never made it very far because while I thought the writing was interesting, I didn't enjoy actually playing it. It's certainly something I intend to make my way through at some point, however. -- A couple of pages ago, I asked about how secondary damage sources of the same type stack. I went and tested it myself and it turns out that each source is checked separately by DR. So a monk with lightning strikes and shocking lash will deal 25% of pre-DR damage minus 25% of shocking DR twice separately, rather than 50% damage - 25% DR. Therefore there is no special benefit in stacking multiple sources of secondary damage of the same type. What I found while testing, however, is that crushing lash on weapons like "Justice" is rather strange. It says +25% crush damage, but that's a lie. Against a character with no armor, it does 35% extra crush damage. But it interacts with DR very strangely. I tested by having one character with "Justice" hit another character wearing all types of unenchanted armor. For robes through breastplate, it consistently did 35% damage reduced by 50% crush DR, assuming things are rounding the way I expect. For mail armor, crushing lash's damage was reduced by 2.25 every time, so 45% of crush DR rather than 50%. For brigandine and plate, the damage was reduced by a different amount every time, although the range was usually between 5-6 damage, except in the case of a graze or other very low damage hit, when crushing lash was reduced by around 4. The only time I saw crushing lash negated entirely was on a low damage graze, where slash was reduced to the 20% minimum and crush did nothing. Does anyone have any idea how crushing lash works? At any rate, it seems safe to say that it's better than the enchantable elemental lashes except in specific cases of very high physical DR and a serious elemental weakness (e.g. animats).
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May 10, 2015 03:33
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:There's a super good rogue rapier in Dyrford called mosquito which has a strong interrupt instead of a weak one along with some other nice abilities like endurance drain, I might just make a barbarian that uses that. I have a barbarian dual-wielding that with the vile loner's lance (stronger interrupt spear with disorienting). It works really well against enemies with low defenses or very slow attacks. The interrupt isn't as good against things that are really hard to hit, but a dual wield barbarian with high intelligence and dexterity still puts out a lot of damage. He's also surprisingly durable because of the drain on mosquito and the fact that he dramatically slows down enemy attack rate with all the interrupt.
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May 12, 2015 07:57
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I've never had a problem just dropping seals right on an enemies head. Those spells are so good. They're almost guaranteed to crit and really mess things up when they do. Slicken into repulsing seal is a great combo for locking down a group of enemies for just about the whole fight.TorakFade posted:Hello guys, I got this game because I love Old school rpgs. For that matter, priest of Magran might be a good idea for you. Magran is the goddess of fire who also likes guns. So a priestess of Magran is good at both setting people on fire and shooting them with guns, though you might not end up being on fire quite so much. You do get an NPC priest of Magran very early in the game who in spite of being a flaming rear end in a top hat, has a lot of interesting things to say. But you can either not take him along or just have two priests. Priests are incredibly good, especially as you get to higher levels and get more awesome ways to light things on fire (seriously, they have some really incredible fire damage spells at high levels) and having two priests just means that rather than spreading out the job of making your party invincible, locking down the enemies and destroying them between one priest, you can have two priests do it twice as fast. The only issue is casters can be a little overwhelming at first with all the spells available and only getting them per rest. A tank priest of Magran with high perception, intelligence and resolve will have access to lots of dialogue options, can open a fight by shooting someone in the face with an arquebus, then switch to sword and small shield and be priestly on the front line. Wear medium to heavy armor to avoid dying.
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May 16, 2015 03:16
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I find rogues to be one of the lowest maintenance classes, probably tied with barbarians and paladins and surpassed only by chanters and fighters. They aren't like rogues in most games where you attack from stealth to assassinate a few targets. Rather, the deal with them is that they hit ridiculously hard, if not extremely fast, all the time. Then, if you flank an enemy or hit a debuffed enemy, then they deal even more damage. But, they can't take a hit in return. So if you want to use one in melee, you have to think a little about when and where you should use them, or else they'll get swarmed and die. But the only real management they require is in the first 5 seconds of the fight. You keep him out of reach and fighting from range at first, then once the lines have been established, you run your rogue around to the side and he eats everything alive. I would caution against having too many casters in the party. Not because you will feel weak. Not at all. But rather because that's an awful lot of pausing and clicking every two seconds to make your casters useful. If you play on normal, or even hard, really, you don't need to use your casters most of the time, so my experience is that a party that's very heavy on casters feels like dead weight in most fights, then gets really annoying to manage in difficult ones. Personally, I feel an important part of party balance is how much strain it puts on you to manage what's going on. What works best for me is something like this: Fighter (no maintenance required), rogue (low maintenance), monk (medium-high maintenance), three casters (high maintenance). You can take the official party members even on path of the damned. They occasionally say funny or interesting things and have some cool dialogue. They don't interact all that much, however, and they never make a huge difference in what's going on, so if you would rather have a party composition that's not provided by the stock NPCs (e.g. 6 rangers with bears), you can make your own and not miss out on too much. For difficulty, I would also recommend normal over easy. The game is not difficult once you get used to it. I started on hard and am now playing through again on path of the damned, which, as many people here have said, feels like the ideal difficulty. That said, the first part of the game is the hardest part, and some mechanics might take some getting used to, so if you really just want to coast through, you might prefer starting on easy then moving the difficulty up as the game goes on. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 10:21 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 10:10
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Well, don't be discouraged by the first fight as a druid. They're ridiculously powerful, especially at higher levels. If you use them well, a lot of fights can turn into the rest of the party just holding everybody down as the druid blows them all up. But if you'd rather not deal with the per rest spells, paladins can benefit fairly well from every stat, but they're generally focused on defense and tanking. Perception and Resolve are the best defensive stats because both improve your deflection. Resolve helps your offense slightly by preventing you from being interrupted while attacking and perception helps your defense slightly by allowing you more opportunities to interrupt your target. Constitution is another defensive stat, but is generally somewhat less important because its impact is lower. You won't have cripplingly low hit points with 3 con, nor will you have an unassailable mountain of stamina with 18. If you're building a tank, perception and resolve will likely increase your effective hit points against physical attacks more than constitution. Might and dex are both important if you want to deal a lot of damage. You'll never consistently be the best at this as a paladin, but you should be able to hit someone really hard a couple times per fight. Flames of devotion benefits more from might because of the way the added fire damage works and you only have two uses per encounter, so contrary to what most weapon damage characters want, you may prefer might for a paladin. Intellect is useful for characters that rely heavily on buffs, debuffs and AoE. Every class can get some benefit from it, but I don't think it's super useful for a paladin. I would probably build a paladin as a tank and go high on perception and resolve, drop con a little bit and spread points out between might and int to taste. Take defensive talents, especially hold the line to help protect more fragile party members, and you'll be more or less invincible. Krowley posted:No need to overthink it unless you're playing POTD. Just go for the gold/silver stars in chargen This is true: stats matter, but not a huge amount. Feel free to ignore everything I just wrote and do whatever looks cool with your stats.
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May 16, 2015 12:42
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TorakFade posted:Oh boy this game is fun, last 4 hours just disappeared. I just finished my first real boss battle in the starting town (you know what I'm talking about, the sidequest where you kill the maniac Raedric who is ruining everybody's poo poo from his keep in the east, barely made it with a 4-man party comprising my firefirefire paladin, the warrior, the priest and the wizard. Lots of people have already mentioned good wizard spells. I'll talk a little about good low level priest spells. The priest is more than just a healer and buffer, they have some very strong options for debuffing and dealing direct damage. Though their offensive magic is often limited in range or area of effect compared to wizards, it's also party friendly, accurate and very effective. For priests, you can't go wrong with the level 1 buffs if you think you'll need the help but aren't quite sure what else to cast. The other level one stuff is pretty situational, though I find prayers against fear gets a lot of use, since a lot of the nastiest enemies hit you with fear effects. Level 2 has some great spells. Someone already mentioned divine mark as a massive single target gently caress you. Iconic projection is also great, it's easy to position it so that it heals your whole team and damages all of the enemies. Consecrated ground is very strong and reliable healing as long as your priest is close to the rest of the party. Repulsing seal is a small AoE prone spell with short range and a long windup. But it's practically guaranteed to work and will take anything it hits out of the fight for a good long time. Casting slicken with your wizard to knock down a bunch of enemies then repulsing seal with your priest to keep them knocked down is a good combo in tough fights. Level 3 has warding seal, which does very high damage in a small area. Dire blessing is a nice boost for the team and it's fast to cast, meaning it's a good way to open fights for a priest. Pillar of faith hits hard and knocks enemies down. Watchful presence is a nice, low maintenance healing spell for the whole team. I don't find other level 3 spells all that great, however. Circle of protection looks good, but the duration is too short. Priests actually go mad with power when they get level 4 spells, but I won't spoil that experience for you.
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May 17, 2015 04:25
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Wizard Styles posted:Also, I remember that there's a Quarterstaff with increased attack speed that I let Kana use for the longest time during my first playthrough; that seems like it should be a decent weapon for a Cipher. Unfortunately, the speed property on weapons is bugged and has no effect. I managed to play the game quite a fair bit while highly valuing that effect without realising this until I read it on the Obsidian forums.
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May 18, 2015 01:13
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Wizard Styles posted:So what low level Druid spells is everyone using now that Winter Wind and Blizzard are reasonable? I like Talon's Reach and Dancing Bolts for the party friendly AoE damage in easier fights. Vile thorns is great. Sun Beam is an excellent spell for it's level because of the damage and blind. Wizard Styles posted:I tested it just now and it seems to do something, but that doesn't amount to anything near 20%. Not even 10%, although I don't know what exactly the difference is and if it's the same for all weapons. I personally have only tested with the quarterstaff you mentioned with the speed effect, and only did that after seeing the comment (confirmed by a developer) on the obsidian forums. But it's not like I did any kind of super thorough testing. I just had Durance attack 10 times or so on slow mode with his quarterstaff and the one with speed and timed the attacks with a stop watch. Both resulted in an attack time slightly over 4 seconds. I think all the speed increasing effects except dexterity only decrease recovery speed, not animation speed, so something that says 20% increased speed will actually do less. But, effects such as two weapon fighting make a noticeable difference. Dexterity makes a very noticeable difference as well. Perhaps the speed property is working on ranged weapons but not melee?
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May 18, 2015 15:41
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User0015 posted:This is something I miss quite a bit from BG/BG2. In PoE, casting spells feels like they all come out relatively fast. Either instantly, or nearly so. Then they incur a long recovery based on armor plus other factors. In contrast, BG2 usually had wind-up being the determining factor in spell speed, with you being able to chain 'fast' spells back to back without recovery. Fast spells like low level spells and certain high level ones were extremely useful, but on the other end, listening to a mage chanting a spell for 5 or 6 seconds meant you knew something serious was about to happen. Both for your own team, and when the enemy started in on a long chant. Actually, all spells in the IE engine games had a recovery of one round. Speed only influenced when in the round the spell came out and how easy to interrupt it was, not the number of spells you could cast. Even if you had the Robe of Vecna and could instantly cast fireball, you couldn't throw more than one of them per round without first casting improved alacrity. In this sense, I prefer PoE because you can chain cast fast spells and casting speed is overall more relevant. Perhaps there could stand to be more slow spells, however, and the length of the animations could be increased compared to the recovery time.
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May 20, 2015 10:39
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I thought I read somewhere that suppress affliction and related abilities are supposed to work on confused/charmed/dominated targets now. Is it really intended that those afflictions are the only ones that are impossible to heal? I can't use either liberating exhortation or suppress affliction to get rid of them and I'm playing the latest version. Given the infuriating way these abilities interact with the AI, it would be simply baffling if this is the intended design.
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Sep 23, 2015 10:55
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Tenuous Grasp is really good against them if you have a cipher. It's cheap, doesn't need a long cast time and will at least take them out of the fight, if not make them fight each other. It's not impossible for one cipher to keep two ogres locked down with tenuous grasp. There's no questioning that they're real bastards, though, so there's no shame in coming back later if you just don't want to deal with it. Another question, in case anyone knows. How exactly does "bash" work? I've read it doesn't benefit from two weapon fighting, but other than that I don't know how close to a real weapon the shield bash is. Does it work with backstab, soul whip or other such damage boosts? Does it trigger on full attacks? I've tried making sword and shield characters before, but I feel like they fall seriously behind in damage output compared to other combat archetypes. What's more, the defense is typically overkill on characters like fighters or paladins while everyone else wants ranged weapons, reach weapons or something that will give them serious damage output. I've thought a monk might be a nice compromise, but the sword and board monk I did in the past was good early game, but seriously lagged behind other characters in the late game. I used a buckler, however, and didn't try a shield with bash. If bash works with torment's reach, that might change things. Has anyone had much success with shields on characters other than dedicated tanks?
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Sep 23, 2015 11:57
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Yeah, I'm not sure what happened there because I've subsequently used suppress affliction and it worked. I could swear it didn't a couple times I tried, but maybe that's my mistake. Liberating exhortation definitely doesn't work, however. You can't target party members with it if they have a red circle.
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Sep 23, 2015 16:46
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Heithinn Grasida posted:Another question, in case anyone knows. How exactly does "bash" work? I've read it doesn't benefit from two weapon fighting, but other than that I don't know how close to a real weapon the shield bash is. Does it work with backstab, soul whip or other such damage boosts? Does it trigger on full attacks? I've tried making sword and shield characters before, but I feel like they fall seriously behind in damage output compared to other combat archetypes. What's more, the defense is typically overkill on characters like fighters or paladins while everyone else wants ranged weapons, reach weapons or something that will give them serious damage output. I've thought a monk might be a nice compromise, but the sword and board monk I did in the past was good early game, but seriously lagged behind other characters in the late game. I used a buckler, however, and didn't try a shield with bash. If bash works with torment's reach, that might change things. So I went ahead and tested this myself, at least partially. Bash does work with Torment's Reach. You'll still have less DPS than a dual wield character because of the weakness of bash itself and the longer recovery as a result of losing two weapon fighting, but it might well be a decent compromise between damage and defense on a monk. I'm going to try it out. There's something about this game that makes it impossible for me to keep playing past the end of chapter 2 and forces me to restart and try new things.
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Sep 24, 2015 10:42
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precision posted:Melee shield wizard with The Larder Door Unfortunately, the larder door seems to be a trap and is strictly inferior to a normal large shield in most circumstances. It does very low damage and slows down your main hand attack since you have to alternate with bash. It will significantly lower the damage of most characters that use it. It might be decent, if not really optimal, on a monk since you can spam torment's reach, which activates bash without slowing your main attack. I just fought Raedric at level 4 (on hard, not PotD) with a larder door monk who tanked Raedric, both mages, the priest and the archer while killing most of them by himself. His accuracy really sucks, though, so high defense targets are a problem.
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Sep 24, 2015 19:11
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How do people usually build monks? I've played one before, but I'm never quite sure what abilities to take. I'm absolutely going for a monk that stays at high wounds and spams Torment's Reach, so I've got Swift Strikes, Torment's Reach and Turning Wheel, but I'm torn between two builds regarding the rest of my talents: an affliction resistance, relatively stationary tank build or a mobile back row striker. On the first, I'd go Clarity of Agony, Crucible of Suffering and Duality of Mortal Presence, but the issue here is that Clarity of Agony is per rest so I'll always forget to use it. On the second, I'll go Long Stride, Flagellants Path and probably Rooting Pain, but I've never taken any of those abilities, so I don't know whether they're very good or not. Either character will probably forgo the new summon, since even though I've read it's really good, I'm not a big fan of summons and I want to stay at high wounds. Does anyone have any thoughts or other recommendations?
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Sep 25, 2015 08:35
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Thanks for the monk advice. When I played monks in the past I avoided turning wheel, but in practice I find if I play aggressively and use only torment's reach as a wound-consuming ability, I can stay at high wounds in most difficult fights, which is why I decided to take it this time. I guess I won't take rooting pain or clarity of agony. I didn't realize the description of crucible of suffering is so misleading, if it's whenever you take damage, that makes it a lot better than I thought. I still might prefer duality of mortal presence for a tanky monk, though. So many decisions. Do the monk defense boosting powers stack with priest defense buffs like circle of protection?
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Sep 26, 2015 03:38
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Dick Burglar posted:Also I had no idea that Larder Door's Bash basically alternated swings with your main hand instead of acting like a pseudo-2WF. That's a huge bummer. I love that shield. Well, in essence it does alternate swings just like two weapon fighting. One of the ostensible disadvantages of two weapon fighting is it slows down the swing rate of each specific weapon in return for an overall higher rate of attack. Therefore, supposedly, if you have one weapon you want to hit with as much as possible (e.g. a stun on crit weapon, a weapon with unusually high interrupt or a spell striking weapon), two weapon fighting weakens your primary weapon. In practice, since the weapon focus talents are pretty low impact, very few weapons have unique, highly desirable on hit effects and the crafting system makes it very easy to make both weapons good, that particular disadvantage of dual wield never comes into play. Bash, however, has no special effect, can't have a lash and doesn't improve with weapon quality. Therefore, except perhaps in the very early game, before you can get the larder door, bash will always decrease your damage output rather than increase it. Its one saving grace is that it has very short recovery time, which is why it might actually be helpful very early. However, I'm pretty sure that its recovery time is not affected by anything that increases attack speed, so that's another way that bash is a trap. If you want to use the larder door effectively, make a shield monk. It's actually quite good once you can boost your accuracy decently. Bash's downsides don't apply at all to torment's reach or stunning blow, so it's a strict increase in damage output over other shields. I've switched larder door for badgradr's barricade, a shield with bash that you find in the white march, but it served me quite well throughout a lot of the game. The new bash shield is especially good for monks, because it has pillar of faith on crit and the pillar inherits your innate lashes, so it can do up to 120% more damage on a monk with torment's reach, max turning wheel and lightning strikes. Unfortunately, it's on crit once per rest (wtf?). So it's very unlikely to have much impact on your game except to occasionally be hilarious. Shields in general actually seem pretty good now. The durgan steel speed effect on a shield is multiplicative with other speed boosts, not additive, so a sword and buckler character will swing 15% faster than a character with a two-hander. Some of the special small shields have very nice unique abilities, too. I'd be willing to be a character with a fully pimped out resolution and the new buckler in White March will out-damage a character using Tidefall in most cases.
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Sep 28, 2015 03:16
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You can do all that stuff with sword and shield too but you get a further speed boost from the shield. After further thought, it's quite possible I was mislead by the description and the speed boost from a durgan reinforced shield is the same as any other speed boost from equipment. But it's still significant. I think it's pretty likely that reliable, annihilation, faster swing speed and warding seal procs will outdamage Tidefall's DoT and dual damage types in most cases. Of course, dual wield is, as is typical for fantasy RPGs, the best for damage output. Two-handers are nice because of the cool special abilities, like reach or 5 DR bypass. Great swords are overall a very weak weapon type (why take slash/pierce when slash damage sucks and the estoc has 5 DR bypass anyway?), but they get quite a few powerful unique items to make up for it. Weapons actually seem remarkably balanced at this point, except that single one-handed weapon is overly situational. Has anyone played with spelltongue much? It seems like a really cool unique weapon. The speed boost stacks with the boost from other sources (or from swift strikes, at least). It took me a while to figure out what the game meant by stealing duration from beneficial effects, but it seems it decreases the enemy's effects by 5% on each hit and increases the duration of your effects by 5% per hit. Swift strikes never runs out as long as you keep hitting things with the rapier. Now I'm trying to think of a class that has limited, but very powerful short duration effects that you can prolong indefinitely with spelltongue. It might be really good with a barbarian for permanent frenzy and AoE slow on every hit. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 06:00
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I just fought the Adra Dragon for the first time. After reloading about 10 times to work out a strategy to kill the Alpine Dragon, I was expecting a nightmare and thought I'd just run it once without preparation to see what I'm facing. Eder ran up and hit it with knockdown on the first attack. It never got up again. I wasn't expecting the adragans and they gave me a scare with returning storm, but it didn't matter in the end. Give Aloth enough time to set himself up and he can win any fight by himself. I thought I remember reading before the game was released that Obsidian was trying to avoid caster supremacy, but it exists in full force in this game. Especially with the expansion. Ninagauth's shadowflame is simply bonkers. I'm amazed that spell was allowed to exist at all. And I just hit level 13 and I haven't even started chapter 3 yet, so I imagine the rest of the game will consist of Aloth casting fireball until everything is dead.
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Sep 28, 2015 16:44
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Rascyc posted:I think their exact goal was to avoid D&D wizards who are useless for a majority of the game That makes sense. However, the power curve is quite similar to D&D, but perhaps not quite so steep. The wizard still goes from occasionally contributing significantly to a fight while otherwise being useless to more or less winning every fight by himself. And we haven't even hit the levels at which wizards were completely absurd in BG2. If the trend continues as it has in the next expansion, casters will become even more absurdly powerful in comparison to other classes. It's an inevitable result of the number of abilities they get. What's more, because low level spells never stop being useful (which is good), per encounter spells get more and more ridiculous. If level four spells become per encounter, shadowflame will be able to win practically every fight in the game by itself. This all sounds very negative, but actually I think the class design is one of the strongest aspects of this game. However, I do think Obsidian was far too conservative with the abilities they gave other classes compared to caster classes. Consider binding roots: 5 per rest fast casting stucks. It doesn't sound that bad, but compare it with what wizards get at the same level. Slicken alone outclasses it by an enormous margin, you can cast slicken more times per encounter rather than you can cast binding roots per rest, it's far more powerful, you have access to quite a few other very powerful abilities like fan of flames and chill fog also per encounter and that's not even to mention your per rest abilities. I don't think rangers are weak at all, but they don't get anything that can shape the outcome of a fight like a wizard. My personal, it's late at night and I really should be going to bed opinion is that for fighter classes to stand up to casters, they need far more active abilities and casters need far fewer. I think the grimoire should limit wizard to 6-8 spells total. As it is, you have no reason to switch grimoires ever. Priests and Druids should also have restrictions on the number of spells they can access. Other classes active abilities at mid-high levels need to have much more impact, need to consistently stack with caster buffs (this is a particularly absurd point of the current design) and need to be per encounter or even at will for low impact active skills. As it is, wizards, priests and druids, and wizards most of all, get such a gigantic toolbox that as the game progresses, they win fights all by themselves more and more while the rest of your party stands around taking hits for the wizard (who actually can tank better than all of them if he feels like it). Ravenfood posted:I think a front-line Cipher would work okay with it if you're using some of the other stat-stealing powers like Psychovampiric Shield or Borrowed Instinct, plus attack speed is always nice for more focus-gain. I don't know whether they'd be better with that than dual sabres or an Estoc (especially the soulbound one) though. Maybe I'll try it for my next run. I thought about that. I love ciphers in concept, but every melee cipher I've tried just instantly explodes as soon as something looks at him funny and I end up simply using the same powers over and over again every fight. Maybe I'll eventually try making a cipher with spelltongue and a buckler that can actually stand toe to toe in melee combat, but for now monks are still my favorite, for whatever reason.
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Sep 28, 2015 18:19
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rope kid posted:In the relatively near future, the current switchover of low level spells to per encounter is going to be changed. Instead, the "Vancian" casters will pick a spell of that level or lower as a mastered spell. A mastered spell can be cast 1/Encounter in addition to all other uses. Wizards do not need to have this spell in their currently equipped grimoire to take advantage of it. I saw this idea mentioned on the official forums and thought it was really good. I think this change will make the game a lot better. Nelson Mandingo posted:Fighters though are by design made to emulate D&D fighters- who are pretty passive and easy to play. I think it was a good idea to have a throwback but I suspect they realized upon adding Sundering Blow that fighters needed another active beyond knockdown. One of the odd things about party composition in this game is that you often design your party as much around how much micromanagement you want to handle as around how well the characters complement each other. My first party was a PC cipher, Aloth, Eder specced for full tanking, Hiravias, Durance and Grieving Mother. They were ridiculously powerful, but managing five casters all the time drove me completely crazy. Combat is quite fast paced in this game, so unlike in the IE games, where your casters were doing one spell every 6 seconds, you're constantly pausing and issuing new orders for everyone and it starts to get pretty annoying. One really nice thing about fighters in the current system is that specced for offense, they don't deal absolutely the most damage, but they hit hard and reliably while still remaining very tough. You just point them at the enemies, the enemies die and the fighter doesn't. While I do think the fighter would be much more fun and interesting to play with more active abilities, the game as it currently exists might not be better if every character in your party required serious active management. That's why I think a better system would be one in which casters can do less, but classes like fighters, rangers and barbarians play more like monks and paladins (which I find to be overall the most satisfying classes to play).
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Sep 29, 2015 05:54
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Darkhold posted:Yeah but why have the player trudge back and forth at all? If as you say there's no real disadvantage other than wasted time why waste the player's time? You're making a choice between making fights more tedious or making the player walk around. It might be heresy to suggest this, but perhaps MP is the solution. I don't mean as a primary resource, but rather as a strategic, per rest resource like health is to frontliners. Casters get all their spells per encounter, but each spell uses up a certain amount of MP determined by its level and after they run out, they have to rest. That gives casters more freedom to cast low level spells in easy fights, but encourages them to not go crazy and reserve higher levels spells for situations in which they matter. Something completely unrelated: Novice's Suffering works with spiritshift! The description of Novice's suffering is a little buggy (it says +0 accuracy, but it increases my accuracy by 4) but it's definitely improving my druid's damage. Shapeshifting druids might be able to put out consistently high damage all game while in melee now.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:22
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Dick Burglar posted:Using Steam's auto-patching, this does not appear to be the case for me. No damage or accuracy increase is noted on the character sheet of a cheated-up Druid with Novice's Suffering than a cheated-up one without. The damage and accuracy bonus correctly display when barehanded and not-shifted, as well. What form are you using? I wonder if the talents works with some forms and not others. I'm using the Cat form and it definitely works for me. Savage attack is probably worth it. The way the 20% bonus works is the same as all other +% damage bonuses, including critical hits and weapon enchantments. They multiply your weapon's base damage and add that to your total damage. I don't know exactly how the spiritshift weapons work, but I assume they have very high base damage and no "enchantment". That will make savage attack grant a lot more damage for you than it would for other characters. Adding on to this is the fact that "Lash" damage like wildstrike multiplies total damage, rather than base damage, and calculates it separately against a quarter of DR. That makes +% damage boosts very valuable for characters like druids and monks who have a lot of "lash" damage, but no in class access to +% damage. On the other hand, spiritshifted druids have very low accuracy compared to dedicated melee characters, so if you don't have a way to mitigate that, you might lose more damage than you gain, especially against high deflection targets. Edit: beaten on savage attack by Pellisworth, but I will note that greater wildstrike is not necessarily useless. After doing some calculations on my druid's damage rolls, it appears that the wildstrike belt adds 10% lash damage to both the 30% lash from wildstrike and the 15% lash from greater wildstrike, pushing it up to the magical 25% number, meaning it doesn't get extra screwed by the DR calculation. If you wear the wildstrike belt on your druid, greater wildstrike is the equivalent of a standard weapon lash and is worth it. Otherwise, it sucks. Edit II: Combat log evidence and calculations:  36*.4 = 14.4 // 14.4 - 1 = 13.4 (dr bypass does not apply to lash damage) // 36*.25 = 9 // 9 - 1 = 8 // 13.4 + 8 = 21.4  41*.4 - 1 = 15.4 // 41*.25 - 1 = 9.25 // 15.4 + 9.25 = 24.65 rounded up to 24.7 In the next to images the wildstrike belt's effect wears off (It is confusingly called wildstrike burn and only lasts for the first 12 seconds of spiritshift) and greater wildstrike starts to suck, though that is not in such evidence against low DR enemies  39.2*.3 - 1.25 = 10.51 // 39.2*.15 - 1.25 = 4.63 // 10.51 + 4.63 = 15.14 (I guess the game is generous about rounding)  34.7*.3 - 1.25 = 9.22 // 34.7*.15 - 1.25 = 3.985 // 3.985 + 9.22 = 13.205 Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Oct 2, 2015 |
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Oct 2, 2015 04:57
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Apprentice's sneak attack is good for everyone who hits things with a weapon. One of the elemental damage boosting talents would be good too. I don't know if they apply to lashes, I think they didn't in the past and they're supposed to now, but I haven't tested it. Even if they don't, they'll boost your spells nicely. Greater wildstrike + the wildstrike belt is almost certainly worth it as well.
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Oct 2, 2015 06:08
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Perhaps it was changed to 15% just so it would be good if you use the belt.
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Oct 2, 2015 07:28
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Pellisworth posted:The lagufaeth have been the nastiest part of White March so far. I haven't been to Cragholdt since that sounds like a really end-game challenge zone and I want to level up a little more first. I liked the fights in Durgan's Battery. There are enemies that teleport your party members and there are quite a few encounters where I suddenly was surrounded or attacked from another side. While it wasn't terribly difficult, it was also more dynamic and unpredictable than other areas in the game. I do think there were still too many encounters with basically the same group of enemies in the same situation, which is true of every area in the game and is, in my opinion, the game's biggest weakness. But overall it was fun. The lagufaeth are bastards, but I felt the fights with normal lagufaeth and redfins weren't bad at all. It's only when the sidewinders and the broodmothers show up that things go to hell. My first time through white march, I did the area to the right of Stalwart before Durgan's Battery and I think that was a mistake. Those fights are much harder than anything in the white march except the Alpine Dragon (which is also in the same area). Since the broodmothers cast minor avatar and cleansing flame, I guess you're supposed to fight them at high levels.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:54
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So I just fought the adra dragon, things were going well and the fight was almost over, then in spite of being both petrified and paralyzed, it breathes fire and wipes out my front line. Okay, reload. I fight it again and it doesn't cheat, so it dies. However, combat won't end even though everything is dead, maybe because hostile effects and suppress affliction bugged out. Third time is the charm maybe? Edit: Nope, attacked while paralyzed again. It doesn't even animate at all, just suddenly everyone is dead. Next Edit: Got it on the fourth try. Combat didn't end again, but apparently there was a Xuarip priest way over on the other side of the cavern that didn't join in the fight but still needed to be killed for combat to be over. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 10:56
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Mustang posted:Any tips for stat distribution for my dual wield cipher I'm about to start? First played part of the game a while ago on my laptop as a fighter but never finished and starting over on my desktop and don't really remember much of the game at all. I think perception is really important for ciphers now since if one of your disables misses, you usually don't have the focus to just cast it again. Your spells are usually high impact, but more limited than other casters, so you really want to make them count. I'd put perception as the top priority, followed by int and dex about equally. Might is nice, but you'll deal solid damage even with mediocre might. As a side note, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong about the mechanics here, I think dual wield becomes worse than shields or two handers for ciphers in the very late game. My understanding of why is as follows: base animation speed is determined by the specific action and your dexterity. Recovery speed, in the case of physical attacks, is either the same as the animation speed with dual wield or double the animation speed for other attacks. However, boosts to attack speed reduce recovery time up to 100% reduction, at which point recovery time is negated entirely and your character just continuously attacks. At that point, dual wield no longer has any advantage in speed over other attack styles unless you're using full attacks. This is pretty hard for most characters to attain consistently, but ciphers can reliably do it per encounter with time parasite and the right gear (durgan enhanced weapon with the speed property and a durgan enhanced shield together are already 50%), meaning that for a class that's likely to wear light armor, doesn't have access to full attacks, and can count on a huge boost to attack speed in every fight, dual wield is strictly worse than the alternatives.
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Oct 5, 2015 11:18
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Rascyc posted:I favor dual wield on cipher because you usually get the focus you need a little faster due to the incremental nature of DW attacks. I agree. And, the crazy attack speed stuff doesn't come until very late anyway, so dual wield is probably best for most of the game. But, two handed or sword and board is going to attack at the same speed as dual wield past level 13-14, so I guess if you want the most efficient character you hold off on Durganizing your offhand gear and respec once you get time parasite. Hollismason posted:There's a pretty good magic item for Ciphers called Talisman of the Unconquerable which I finally got on this play through but not on my last one. Seems pretty great. Haven't tried it yet though. It's random loot spawn though. I think it's guaranteed loot now in the white march, but you can possibly get another through random loot. And it is no longer bugged. It's a really good item. After playing the game until the end of act 2 to the beginning of act 3 and restarting at least five times as well as restarting in act 1 several times, I've finally seen the ending. Now time to play through on PotD! Made it through most of act 1 in a couple of hours and it's not as bad as I thought, though there have been some very long and annoying strings of misses. After playing an almost entirely support focused Darcozzi Paladini with rapier and dagger, I want to try a Kind Wayfarer who contributes a little more offensively. To that end, I'm thinking Sworn Enemy + Flames of Devotion + a crit two-hander like Hours of St. Rumbalt or Tall Grass. Any advice or other equipment I should look out for?
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Oct 6, 2015 02:52
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Yeah, I've found it in that same container next to Durgan's Battery in two games now.
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Oct 6, 2015 03:49
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I found that with scrolls of valor and protection against fear, you can at least graze dragons with CC before they kill your whole party, then once they're disabled, just make sure they never get to act again. Druids are especially strong against them with hold beasts, spreading plague and their level 5 petrify spell. Priests are good too: one repulsing seal and the fight's over.If you don't have any vancian casters at all, though, I guess it would have to be unending scrolls of paralysis. Surprisingly, I didn't have any trouble with the mercenaries at all. But I fought them with a custom gimmick party that sucked for most of the game then turned out to be super strong once they got white march stuff. High level ciphers with good focus generation are especially fun: time parasite > poke, poke, poke, poke > overwhelming wave > fight's over
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Oct 9, 2015 06:44
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It probably depends on your party. If you have a totally defensive specced fighter with a lot of squishy ranged guys, then defender is good. But if you're speccing Eder for offense, I suspect you're not counting on him to take all the damage for your team. In that case, defender and hold the line aren't worth it. Since enemies seem to be a lot more willing to eat disengagement attacks than when I started playing, the defense build doesn't seem worth it, in my opinion, especially compared with how awesome paladins are now. A bunch of people on the official forums are in a frenzy about this and think it makes fighters worthless, but the offense build does exactly what the loading screen tips say fighters are supposed to do: it deals very reliable, if not extremely high damage, it requires no maintenance and it never dies. Edit: It's possibly I'm not fully understanding your question, but defender doesn't make Eder take any less damage. Since 2.0 it makes him take more damage. Situationally, it can make everyone else on the team take a lot less damage.
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Oct 13, 2015 13:15
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I see, my experience is that Eder is still pretty much unkillable past the early game even without a shield on hard or lower. He will go down fast under heavy pressure on PotD without a shield, especially early on, but I haven't finished my PotD run and my party doesn't have any dedicated tanks, so I'm not the best source of advice if that's the difficulty you're playing on.
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Oct 13, 2015 14:56
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You might be able to make an argument for axes over sabers in some special circumstances. Edge of Reason could be preferable to an exceptional Purgatory depending on how much you care about accuracy. Purgatory obviously wins if it has no competition for upgrade materials. We Toki has prone on crit, annihilation and room to take a slaying enchantment, which might be more desirable than either of the annihilation sabers for a few builds. Rimecutter looks pretty nice if you actually ever get it (Azzuro doesn't show up nearly often enough. He should really come about four times as often once your prestige hits 50, at least so you have some reward for maxing the stronghold) Otherwise sabers are king. Bittercut makes that especially true since its special property completely negates the main disadvantage of either sabers or axes (slash is the shittiest damage type and corrode is probably the best) and its damage can be boosted further by Spirit of Decay against quite a large number of enemies. Hand Row posted:If you are playing Hard or lower I wouldn't ever bother with shields. On PoTD I haven't bothered with shields since disengagement attacks occur much more frequently since 2.0. But honestly he has still basically been unkillable even without the shield (assuming the fight is a reasonable time to do). My paladin uses the DR aura and has the ally deflection buff when he uses Flames of Devotion so that has skewed the results though. Shields can be really good for certain builds at high levels. Bucklers are probably the optimal choice for melee ciphers that don't use reach weapons once you hit level 13 and have durgan steel. Other classes do quite well with them too since durgan steel means you'll swing a good bit faster than a two hander. I had a saber and buckler rogue who was quite durable (on hard) and put out 90+ damage crits regularly. It's probably not optimal, but it's nice if you have a large front line and want a character that does loads of damage but doesn't need constant baby sitting.
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Oct 13, 2015 17:20
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Ravenfood posted:Retaliation doesn't stack anymore, iirc. At least, it popped up "suppressed" on my character with the Coat of Ill Payment and Hiro's Cloak. Retaliation on multiple sources of armor doesn't stack, but armor and the shield do stack. It does build focus for a cipher too, so the retaliation shield + retaliation armor with a good one hander is very strong for an endgame cipher. Dual wield or a reach weapon is probably better for a melee cipher than sword and buckler prior to level 13 and Durgan steel, though. I really like the sword of Daenysis for ciphers. Fast weapons are very good with them since gaining small amounts of focus very quickly is much better than gaining large amounts slowly. Hollismason posted:Helm of Endless Bloodletting or whatever it is called absolutely does not work for me. I had that on Eder for a while before I realize that the whole Helm doesn't work at all. Like all of it's suprressed and even if you kill something it still is supressed. Kind of sucks. I'm not sure which helmet you mean, but if it's the one I think it is, it has this stupid issue where the DR is suppressed by the quality bonus of the DR on your armor. That might be what you're seeing. Hollismason posted:Well I guess I should finish the game on my 2nd play through. I accepted Galawains favor then finished Cragholdt. Not much else to do now. 6 Druids. Constant 100+ damage crits in melee and everything is stunned forever while fighting you.
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Oct 17, 2015 07:29
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Spiritshift is incredible now, so you should absolutely try it. The damage output is probably only surpassed by a glass cannon rogue or a good monk. It doesn't hurt that the druid doesn't have much else to spend talents on anyway, so you lose little by building for shifting even when you don't use it. As for the forms, the difference mostly seems to be cosmetic. Of course, in typical Poe style, the descriptions are uninformative, misleading or outright incorrect and some of the abilities seem to be bugged (stag's carnage was quite buggy in my game), so it's almost impossible to know how the forms are actually different without meticulous testing. I can say the cat form has a per rest boost that makes a very noticeable difference when you use it. The game says cat shift has a naturally faster attack, but I'm skeptical.The wolf's speed bonus is not very significant and per rest knock-down is nothing to write home about. Stag is bugged, but the defense boost still works and might help a little. You still have to use the druid like a rogue, however. They melt fast under pressure in spite of quite good DR.
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Oct 17, 2015 17:38
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Dick Burglar posted:A problem with using them like a rogue is that they can only spiritshift after combat begins, so someone else has to initiate combat if you want to pop out of stealth and maul somebody without getting smacked first. I meant use them as a glass cannon flanking character. Actually, I never initiate combat with a glass cannon rogue, I always wait for the line to be established them run them around the side. If a Druid starts getting hit by more than one enemy, they'll go down fast, so a similar strategy is a good idea. Fortunately, unlike rogues, druids have tons of very useful stuff to do at the start of combat. I reported in this thread that Novice's Suffering works with spiritshift, but I think I must have been having an episode of extreme stupidity, because I've tested it repeatedly after that and I've never seen a difference. As far as I know, it doesn't work. Pellisworth posted:Worth noting that Greater Wildstrike is checked independently vs. 25% DR so is poop. Greater Wildstrike gets boosted to 25% with the wildstrike belt, which you'll almost certainly be wearing anyway to boost your normal wildstrike to 40%. That means it's a very good pick as long as you don't have more than two druids (unless there's a third wildstrike belt somewhere).
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Oct 18, 2015 03:07
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The Lone Badger posted:Wanna try an all-Druid party. Everyone casts Returning Storm / Relentless Storm, then turns into a kitty and rips the face off anyone who has the temerity to survive the lightning. I really like druids now; they're probably my favorite Vancian caster even if they might technically be the weakest, because they can be really useful even without per rest abilities or constant micromanagement. But then if you want to just sit in the back and cast spells for the whole fight, they're very good at that too. Wizards are even better about being able to take on any role, though they trade melee damage for on-demand indestructibility, but I find them a lot more fiddly to play. Returning storm is more straightforward than constantly managing confuses and shadowflames and you don't have to give up your casting to turn into a kitty and maul someone.
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Oct 20, 2015 13:45
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