Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

The new difficulty comes from being harder to land your spells due to high base defenses on mobs and your limited spell selection at start. On below PotD, Tanglefoot + Sunbeam combo neutralizes scores of mobs easily and is basically an I Win button, on PotD you can't land Tanglefoot, let alone Sunbeam and the others, so you rely on Nature's Mark instead, which is weaker. Sometimes you are having trouble with killing even 1 mob due to missing constantly.

 

Rogues are head and shoulders above other classes, yes. I mean, +pen and damage and effect 1 point 1st level ability. Then 2 point blind. And they don't need any combos to work - they apply status effects themselves and kill things themselves. And the more overleveled rogue becomes, the more obvious the disparity shows. My rogue/ranger is outpacing barb/monk hard ("33% of base weapon damage aoe" yeeeeah much damage against 700 hp monsters lol, crowd control much)

It is no wonder that even underleveled rogues or rogue multiclasses are the only mook type that can reliably kill your characters before you react (which is why you should never wear anything with poor pierce armor, and slashing too if you can).

You can, you just need some help from team and items. For example there is druid staff +3 all plant & beast power levels.

You should balance your casters around targeting all 3 types of defences anyway.

Casters are a bit of a troubled classes atm though. Pure druid (no kit) is probably the most well rounded of them all. Wizard is mostly about just few broken spells/Evoker, Priests are somewhere in the dust, Cipher is about basically 1 thing (dominate), and Chanters are godly.

 

Eh, I've gotten great mileage out of single wizard Aloth. Because spells don't have bonus accuracy anymore, what you do is stack accuracy gear on your primary debuffer. So in my case Aloth can open with a debuff that targets enemies' weakest defence - e.g. Miasma or Arkemyr Hex vs. Will, Slicken for Ref - and then follow up with that horror spell which is perennially fantastic.

Lacrymas POTD isn't really a missfest when you do some optimisation, so I think the current rate is good. On veteran you can probably just cast anything you want.

This is why level-based acc/def gain matters; if you are level 14 or so and you encounter a bit weaker enemies sporting sub-90 defences, you know that your debuffs will land and the entire mob will be in disarray within two spells, just because of the level-based acc advantage.

It's telling that the best experiences happen when, say, your best stuff targets Will and you're fighting a dude who happens to have jacked up Will defence, forcing you to search for secondary options.

 

I just left Port Maje, so I don't really have a lot of options on items. My custom companions are indeed optimized for Accuracy, so I guess I just have to go to Neketaka and work my way from there. And we are still 4th level, so the spell selection is also limited.

 

Enervating Terror is one of those broken spells. Bizarrely, Will is the most often weakest enemy defence (THEY ALL DUMP RESOLVE!! ) even on enemies which you think would be resistant (say vampires). Also, Terrify is the only effect that does so much and stays for so long.

Fortitude for some reason is often very high (up to 120sh).

But before you're reasonably high level, your spells will fail >50% of the time, unless you stack like a motherfucker.

 

Well, Lacrymas, you're basically in prologue, so a bit early to make any conclusions. Leveling up to ~8 is very fast.

Fampyrs have pr. high defences across the board, no? And I thought they had immunity to resolve afflictions? I forget.

It's so weird that they dumbed down Confusion but kept Terrify, making the latter one of the most effective ways to disable enemies.

Honestly, even 40-60% accuracy on a AOE debuff is fine - you're usually going to be able to target 4+ enemies on POTD, and get a couple of them. It would be ridiculous if it was 80% THC.

 

On AoE debuff yes. But on say ray of fire or killing bolt with it's what, 9 sec cast, probably no. Spells mostly have same acc regardless of how they affect the enemy.

 

Btw, didn't they streamline the stacking rules for character builds? The Accuracy aura and Accuracy Fighter stance don't stack, however. Soooo, what's up with that?

 

Passives like items stack, actives like weapon modals, auras pick the highest.

 

it has saving throws against spells. you could argue its a form of accuracy

 

Smudboy was more correct than I had anticipated. I really, really don't care about anything in this game. Why is nothing interesting happening? The only vaguely cool thing was the gods talking about what to do about Eothas, Woedica and Skaen were delicious in that exchange. Also, some things are seriously nonsensical, what was the point of conjuring up the spirits for a theatrical display for a bunch of random thugs we could've easily taken on? Why did Berath insist on that? Wouldn't it have been more prudent to do it in-front of Onekaza II during the meeting? Ugh, it's so dull it makes me want to play something else.

 

I found the gods talking to each other boring, like they were trying to come up with the most one-dimensional ways to represent their portfolio. Port Maje and Neketaka introductions I thought were far more interesting in the colonial tensions.

The spirit show is retarded - but, as a rule, in POE1/2, if you ever hear narrations and if you ever start reading souls & seeing spirits, you know it's shit. (Of course, the two tend to come together.)

 

lol people are still paying attention to the dialogues and story

smh

 

What colonial tensions in Port Maje? The governor and the storm speaker exchanged 2 sentences and then you crashed that party. Nothing else was said. And even then, talking about something doesn't mean the themes are actually explored. At least the gods had a dimension and were actually concerned about what trouble Eothas might stir.

 

I've got half a mind to kick all companions and replace them with hires. I'll only leave Serafen.

 

SUDDENLY *DRUMROLL*

dialogue screen with a pretty pic pops up

blablablablablablablablabla

1. Reply that doesn't matter.
2. Reply that doesn't matter.
3. Reply that doesn't matter.
4. Reply that doesn't matter.

blablablablablablabla

dialogue screen vanishes

back to world map

muh dimensions

 

Lol, that's exactly what I did. I decided not to take anyone but Serafen and made a custom Evoker to fill the last spot.

Darth Roxor, the dimension is voyeuristic, you obviously have no agency in this story either way, might as well listen to the gods arguing with each other and Skaen and Woedica being over the top.

 

If you take a companion, it felt to me like Tekehu was the most relevant to the story. Serafen, works in that regard.

 

Okay, whats going on and why you all decided leave Serafen, the most butt pirate of them all? Even Tekehu a bit better in terms that he just retarded. Not to menton that "Wild Mind" subclass is not THAT good.

 

Lacrymas, you dismiss one thematic dimension because it's not actually explored, and then you're a fan of another thematic dimension where all you do is sit there and listen to some bad caricatures shout things at each other. My point wasn't even that the colonial themes are far better, but that it seems quite arbitrary to like one and not the other.

(Hilariously, the biggest question after the end of POE1 - how will the world respond to the news that the gods are fabricated - remains completely unexplored, even as the entire sequel is ostensibly about it.)

 

It's not a thematic dimension, it's just funny listening to them bicker and Skaen and Woedica being shady and dismissive of the others. That's why I wanted to take Pallegina at first, she's confrontational and likes to bitch and yell at the others. Fun. It might be personal fun, but I'd rather have personal fun than being bored listening to the others talk about nothing.

 

but the gods talk about nothing

 

Because it is written by a human and thus making him the only decent character in the whole game.