Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

The most powerful ability of the priest was crowns/devotions of the faithful which changed the tide of battles imo, and Josh said something along the lines of nerfing these bonuses? That makes sense but also leaves the priest with only 1 utility, countering dominate and stun/petrify.

Since the companion priest is a follower of Gaun (aka eothas) , he'll also be lacking protection spells (prayer / litany against shit I presume?) so he'll be a totally useless deadweight. Too bad since hunting eothas with his priest would've added a nice flavor.

 

The "of the faithful" line were all overpowered. The prayers and litanies also trivialized a lot of encounters. Withdraw countered Concelhaut hard. If I'm ever to replay PoE1 I'll do it with a party without a Priest, to see what the difference is.

 

I think they are copying Sven's update videos, in a good way though.

I'm indifferent towards the change of multiclassing at this point. I know too little to make an assessment.

Over the top animations were shit even in TWM. I agree. It's that wretched game Tyranny where they pushed this style even further.

 

If anything it does seem that Sawyer is learning from the mistakes of the first game. Hopefully he won't fall in the trap of balancing everything to the point of boredom again

 

PoE is far from balanced, lol.

 

True, but that was the intention and this is what led to some weird character development choices that made leveling kinda boring

 

FUCK JOHS SAYWR

 

The boredom in PoE was not the result of "balancing" IMO. It was the result of small maps, repetitive combat tactics and obfuscated core mechanics.

 

To this day I want to believe that Crowns of the Faithful is just a bug. +25 RES in an AoE? Just WTF. Should have been +6/+6/+6 and it would have still been swell, I legit thought it was a typo when I read it.

Outside of buffs priests spells do a surprising amount of damage, so I doubt she'll be bad. Storm of Holy Fire is ridiculous. Her subclass will likely be stronger than PC ones too.

 

Highly recommended. It's a LOT harder and you need to get much more creative, probably falling back on scrolls for the hardest fights.

 

Agreed about the "faithful" line being OP. Still kinda liked them that way, but eh.

Considering the hordes of enemies and skill spam, I consider the litanies and prayers a must, though. I actually thought that access to those immunity spells was too limited/came too late. Would be a major pain to have to play without them.

 

PotD generally starts showing where the cracks in the system/encounter design are, but playing without a Priest might burst at the seams altogether. I predict, like Prime Junta said, heavy use of scrolls of prayers and litanies, just to get their effects in there.

I assume it's going to be an easy fix to do if it was a bug, they not fixing it says a lot.

 

Not heavy. Only for the hardest fights.

Beating a dragon without a prayer against Fear is a bit of a handful though. Can be done, but not easy, so you will likely want to reach for a scroll there.

 

I've never touched a scroll in this game and I've beaten PotD with a no-priest party. It was with 5x custom companions and abusing summon items, mind.

 

It's a good illustration how redic priests are, Devotions + Prayer is 40 ACC, which is 13 levels, without much gameplay in them. It wouldn't be such an issue if other classes had anything in the way of ACC buffs, but there is practically zilch except the scrolls and pots (and sandals IIRC but that's +5[ or is it HtC conversion]). Guess chanters work vs fear, think they changed it to immunity.

You can semi-cheese dragons by using a Cipher with Psychic Backlash, it'll hit since the fear pulses frequently then you start the CC train. Tactical Meld helps since it stacks with everything too.

I don't think the combat system works at all outside of PotD. Higher enemy stats force you to use buffs/debuffs, otherwise you could just (even more than on PotD) spam damage/CC. Having to use a "round" for setting up changes things significantly.

Yeah, it's not a bug for sure, just really really sticks out. Some priest enemies in WM2 can get over 200 defense when they stack buffs, if it were commonplace there would probably been changes.

 

It's generally pointless to create a complex combat system if the difficulty isn't in place. Why have the most elaborate and well-thought-out system in history if the mobs can be defeated by just bullrushing them? So, yeah, PotD is where it's at.

 

I played without a priest and without scrolls, it was fine. Actually the way I'd recommend playing

 

Are the stats going to be like in the first game? Maybe it's just my primitive monkey brain, but I really had no idea what to invest in. Does my Paladin need action speed? Concentration? Uhhhhh. And then I just kinda put one point to everything, and rest to strength and constitution. Didn't really feel like a choice, everything is tied to five other things.

Like what the fuck is this:

 

It didn't feel like a choice because you didn't have clear best option..?

 

It gives you the illusion of choice. Lowering any stat by one (10->9) already made a character practically useless. The way everything is tied together, you might as well remove stats and auto level up.

 

not sure if trolling or 100% retarded

Most standard builds have several stats with 3 or 18. If anything, the worst part of the system was that it still incentivized dump- and focus stats rather than more varied spreads.

 

CON and RES are dump stats, best left at 3, only "useful" at 10 for tanks. Everything else is very important, so it's already better at that than D&D.

 

Res has best dialogue options however, plus it isn't really bad if you intend on making a frontline support type of character either.

 

*Barbarian interrupted by wolf, every single attack* Yes, this stats at 3 business is working well.

More in line with what I experienced.