Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Desiderius]

Wouldn't say "supposed to".
That's just one way to solve this encounter. Not an easy one to pull off.

Meant to say designed to.

 

[Lacrymas]

Blowing up barrels to any good effect is curiously hard in this game. I don't think it works in real time because by the time you've dine enough damage, they are already assaulting your party in melee.

 

[Haplo]

What do you mean, casters are ruined? Casters rock. Particularly Blood Mages.

Blood mages are an exception that basically removes the 2nd biggest problem of caster. The biggest problem is acc. Now, if you are high level enought to land your fireballs with 80% than maaaybe the caster is a tolerable member but not great. But for me the caster is looking at 20% acc on enemies that matter, so his 2 casts are worth about 0... even with Weycs wand that turns misses into grazes.
But wizards are ruined: terrible acc, 2+1 casts, long casts, no dmg afterwards, wet tissue, have to pick and chose spells to match books like an autistic moron. They are dead weight.

As Example, last fight for me against Nemnoks crew. Party is level 11, mind you.
I cant replace Eder with a wizard, the wiz will get fucked up even before this measly 2 casts of protections run out.
Cant replace Maia, ranger, since she has about 30+ acc on a wiz. And will deliver dmg long and hard, and has prone on graze with arbalests.
Cant replace Serafen, cipher, cause he is cruicial to turn low-will nasties who the wiz just cant kill even remotely with his biggest nukes. 2 eoten. Nice Ringleader at the start of fight controls a bottleneck that a wiz just cant control in absolutely no way.
Cant replace the priest cause he has acc bonues for whole party. Some heals too and emergency ressurect.
Whats left is the assassin who is a better stealth nuker with items and a backstabber with axes later. Because of the +25 assass acc bonus and items bonus and all the hit to crits.
So a wizard is gutter trash in this party.

And I have a feeling in just about any other party a wizard can be replaced by a better class.

Not sure which level they are when you're 11. At upscaled 20 some of these enemies still have 2 skulls. But noone is forcing you to face enemies with much higher level then yours (which has a big impact on Accuracy).

Can't say mages have more problems with accuracy then other classes. In fact, they have some rather OP means to improve it - like Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (-40 Will, - 20 Reflex).

One simple solution to significantly boost Accuracy (at the significant cost of high level spells) is to multiclass with an Assasin. +25 spell Accuracy from stealth goes a long way towards improving your odds for landing your spells. My Spellblade hits (and often crits with +50% Assasination damage bonus) all the time on PotD upscaled.

 

[Lacrymas]

If you are scaling down, beating these fights at lvl 11 isn't as impressive as it sounds.

 

[Horvatii]

Why would I scale down while tryharding? That doesnt make sense. The point is to see just how hard the game is.

Nemnok fight has these acc bonuses on enemies, so levels 16 to 20. There are 4 bats, 7 people, 3 nagas, 2 eoten.
naga fighter/archer 45
kali 45
guard 51
acolyte 51
eoten 51
naga shaman 51
elder bat 51
warlock 54
nemnok 57

The accuracy problem with casters is undeniable. I dont understand how one can argue that point even.
Any class that uses a weapon to deal dmg instantly has better acc than a caster... For 2 reasons.
1. the enchantment weapon bonus
2. it rolls vs deflection
If an enemy had 12 in all stats, it gets +2 deflection bonus but +8 for any other defense.
And what do caster damage spells roll against? Reflex and Fortitude. And what are the 2 highest enemy defenses typically in the game? I'd say I. Fort and II. Reflex.

And then comes the Penetration problem to boot...

Unfavorable Ranger example for all the acc bonuses you can have:
10 marked for the hunt
5 marksman
10 stalkers link
10 flanked, single target
10 survival of the fittest, vs <50% hp
5 hat
15 legendary weapon
15 arquebus modal OR 10 spearcaster arbalest, at 11 arcana skill
(20 accurate shot, 1 bond)
ALL of these stack! And roll vs deflection.

Mage example:
....
Eldrich aim!
...
and that ring, so you are a fire mage by default, Harry!

 

[Lacrymas]

The worst design decision in this system (both PoE1 and 2) imo are accuracy and penetration (in regards to PoE2). ACC isn't a problem in of itself, but that both ACC and the defenses scale with level, making it unnecessarily artificial to not be able to go against higher level targets unless you stack ACC up the butt. Penetration is just a shitty concept in general, especially since there are very limited ways to boost it. I haven't encountered a system so far that has SUCH obvious downsides from the get go. You really have to dig deep in D&D to find where its faults are (and there are many), the faults in both PoEs are displayed proudly for all to see immediately.

 

[Butter]

They could've had Penetration influenced by Might, but Sawyer would've had an aneurysm if any of his attributes actually did something useful.

 

[luj1]

The worst design decision in this system (both PoE1 and 2)

• getting no EXP from enemies
• per-encounter garbage
• Endurance
• miniscule gains from stats
• too many conditions with too many effects
• grazing

 

[Lacrymas]

You get xp from enemies (just not human ones). I'm ready to excuse the pre-encounter degeneracy because there was no way they would've made resting actually matter (not that it was impossible, but that this wasn't their target audience), so whatever. Doing away with the health/endurance thing is bad, but it's not the worst thing in the world. The gains from stats are actually bigger and more varied than D&D3E+, depending on stat though, so I'm not sure what you mean here. They removed most conditions, but the way they did it made a lot of class abilities weaker and flavorless, which made the already bloated class selection look even worse. I don't see the problem with grazing.

ACC and Pen are the worst because it affects the thing this game is allegedly best at - build customization and itemization. It forces every build which wants to have any negative effect on the enemies whatsoever to stack ACC and get Pen from whatever measly sources there are. They also artificially gate higher level encounters and at least the beginning of the game's encounter design revolves around retardedly high levels of armor that can only be penetrated either by specific classes or use of specific abilities. The specific abilities aren't enough to kill the enemies, so you end up doing chip damage and spamming healing. Something Sawyer wanted to get away from in PoE.

 

[Haplo]

Why do you think Deflection is the best defense to target?
I mean vs some enemies, sure. But pretty much no enemies (save megabosses maybe) have both high Reflex and Fort. Best case (for them) both average.

Ranger can get huge Accuracy bonuses, sure. But its single target! A mage targets multiple enemies at once.

A wizard can't buff his Accuracy that much... big deal! He CAN get 50% Graze-to-Hit conversion and 15% Hit-to-Crit. AND he can majorly debuff the enemies. And always target their weakness, if you're observant.
Sure, early game it might be a problem, when you have fewer spells and enemies might have the stronger defense AND have higher AR vs their weaker. Later on you can cover all elements and attack types, though.

With Crusted Swordfish (and Assassinate and raw Ningauth's Death Ray) I've never had issues with Penetration. No reason not to eat it every time you rest.

Also if you play in a party and use offensive casters, its a good idea to take advantage of weapons which heavily debuff defenses: someone with a morningstar to debuff Fortitude by 25, someone with a flail to debuff Reflex by 25... Can even use aoe abilities like Clear Out or Heart of Fury with them.


A caster can do well in the Nemnok fight... well grinding that boss down and removing his Arcane Reflections will probably take a while... but he's not that dangerous once the hordes of his minions are down.

 

[Lacrymas]

Some of the lore books aren't that bad, the story about how women who die during childbirth are revived as the birds which sing to Hylea is sweet, but the way they are concentrated in a few rooms is overwhelming. I'd rather find them as loot on enemies or in dangerous places. That cuts down on the need to consume them all in a short period of time. It can be an extra reward.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Currently replaying this after rushing through it the first time. TB system is still a little buggy, but I like it. Just finished the crucible and liked it more than I was expecting.

Something that really bugs me though. There is almost never a reason to utilise the boat as a base. There are a couple of letters in the captain's cabin early on, and I kept checking back to see if they'd keep arriving there, but nope. Companions will talk to you while adventuring anyway, and the Steward is completely silent except for a conversation at the beginning of the game, and a short message later on. I love base buillding in RPGs, but what the fuck was the point of this? The Shelter Plane in D:OS was great because you had new characters and mini quests as you developed more areas and they were also spell merchants. It really added something useful and fun, and the art was fucking lovely.

 

[Lacrymas]

I wouldn't call the end of time in D:OS great. Quite the contrary, I found it quite useless and just more of the same. The ship in PoE2 isn't much better, don't get me wrong, but at least it gets you somewhere and you get to fight other crews with it. I mean when you close to board.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

quite useless

It's a quest hub with unique interactions, unique encounters, and gathers almost all spell vendors in one convenient location by the end of the game. Fair enough if that doesn't appeal to you, but it's not at all useless.

just more of the same

Not even sure what you mean here.

The ship in PoE2 isn't much better

As a base, it's much worse.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's more of the same because it offers the same things the entire rest of the game offers - random items, a place to craft shit, and spell books. All of these things are widely available elsewhere.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Also the unique quests, events and characters who reside there...

 

[Lacrymas]

Characters you don't necessarily want to talk to. And what unique quests? The only events I can remember are the demon invasion and the imps that follow you around. Who were cute.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Multiple quests begin and haave checkpoints there, given by ZixZax, the Weaver of Time, and I think also one from Zandalor

 

[aweigh]

so is the turn-based mode for PoE 2 the best way to play the game? left my playthrough of PoE 2 hanging for more than a year now and I think I might as well restart it in TB, maybe?

my fear about committing to the TB mode is that I don't want to feel like I'm playing a half-baked mod, I want to feel like I'm playing the real game.

 

[Haplo]

In general I lean towards general real time preference, sadly. Barring personal preferences for more order and control, of course.

In case of using a main char mage, particularly a nuker, turn based does look attractive, particularly in relation to how much you can achieve each round (one spell is usually worth more then one sword swing PLUS you get lots of Free Action buffs as a mage) AND how some spells (fast ticking, particularly rays and freezing pillar) have been translated into rounds.

Still, there are issues that cannot be overlooked. Some enemies are noticeably bullet spongy - which is felt way more in Turn Based mode. The whole (innovative and interesting!) Action Speed/Initiative/Dexterity/armor speed impact system dynamics has basically been gutted with the "one action per round" rule, with extreme advantage to slow, heavy blows with slowest and strongest modal abilities and heavy armors - over light, quick ones.

 

[aweigh]

thanks, that's what i've heard.

i don't know if i'll ever go back to PoE 2, tbh, since i kind of hate the game, but i did waste money on it so i feel compelled to finish it. Also, i finally have a gpu that can run it with all the graphics turned up so there is that as an incentive as well.

 

[Haplo]

Well, overall I've found it a great journey. Character building is fun. Discovering unexpected ability/item synergies and broken combos even more so!
YMMV, of course.

 

[2house2fly]

I made a mod that cuts all health in half, and I found turn-based feels really good with it: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/418

It effectively means all healing is doubled, but I can't be bothered to weaken all the healing spells and potions in the game

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Haplo How would you rate PoE II to PoE? I have only played the first and not the second. I found the Cipher decent, but loathed the class concepts, ability, and spell design. I felt like it would have been a much better game if it were classless, or had only 3 or 4. The underlying systems did not seem beyond redemption though, so I have lingering curiosity about trying PoE II. Is it mechanically improved? In particular, are the spells better?

 

[Lacrymas]

I think Chanters and Ciphers are badly designed on a fundamental level. They exist outside of the mechanics of the game (limited resources for every other class), making them square pegs being forced into round holes. It's inelegant and could've been done better. Like we've discussed many a time before, a lot of classes (monks, barbarians, druids, rangers) should've been cut and their very few unique abilities reallocated to other classes as feats. Chanter and Cipher could've easily been a single class, summoning illusions instead of a random selection of creatures. They very obviously did not have enough ideas to go around, making the classes extra same-y. That's why people think it would've been better as a classless system (with which I agree if they weren't willing to cut classes).

As for PoE2, it's not mechanically improved, it's more of a side-step really. They changed too much and added another weird stat (penetration) in addition to accuracy staying the same. What I think is a step in the right direction is the overall slower combat, along with slower casting times. Adding multiclassing is fine, but it doesn't gel well with the already same-y class design that was in PoE2. They added stuff in, but they should've been taking stuff out. Unlike many people, I'm ambivalent towards making abilities per-encounter, I know what Sawyer thinks about that and considering their unwillingness to hardcore it up this was probably the better decision overall.