Pillars of Eternity 3.03 sans expansion: Final Judgment from the 1st Disciple of Sawyerity

[Starwars]

The Devil is a pretty cool character but it's a shame her quest was set up in a really shitty way. I mean, I completed it before I had even really dug into her regular dialogue trees. Clumsily designed.

The whole soul reading you do at the end of her quest is one of the best pieces of writing in the game though, it's awesome.

 

[FreeKaner]

Devil is worth having in the party just for her comments. She also starts with high mechanics, her stat distribution and natural armour makes her bad for a melee rogue but can play ranged just fine.

 

[Excidium II]

Monks are absolute beasts late game, just gotta baby-sit them for a little bit at the start of the combat until they build up few wounds and then just let them punch the strongest guy in the combat to death very rapidly. They also offer nice comboes with their kick.

They're not bad early on either. Don't really understand what people's problem with the class is. Tanky, deals good damage, has some reliable CC. Main mechanic is based on losing HP which is something you can control better than the Cypher/Chanter mechanic for example.

Fav class in PoE.

 

[FreeKaner]

Monks are absolute beasts late game, just gotta baby-sit them for a little bit at the start of the combat until they build up few wounds and then just let them punch the strongest guy in the combat to death very rapidly. They also offer nice comboes with their kick.

They're not bad early on either. Don't really understand what people's problem with the class is. Tanky, deals good damage, has some reliable CC. Main mechanic is based on losing HP which is something you can control better than the Cypher/Chanter mechanic for example.

Fav class in PoE.

They work fine early but are a bit lackluster in terms of damage because wounds are static value and are not percentage based. Late game is when they truly become beasts. Also the lack of powerful buffs from casters hurts the monk a bit indirectly, as they require a bit of babysitting to reach their true potential, while barbarians/fighters are just right click and forget.

 

[Jick Magger]

The Devil is a pretty cool character but it's a shame her quest was set up in a really shitty way. I mean, I completed it before I had even really dug into her regular dialogue trees. Clumsily designed.

The whole soul reading you do at the end of her quest is one of the best pieces of writing in the game though, it's awesome.

Yeah, her quest is too easy to wrap up too quickly. I essentially just pumped and dumped her for her quest then forgot about her, which is funny since basically all the other companion quests are designed in a way to avoid you doing exactly that.

Devil is worth having in the party just for her comments. She also starts with high mechanics, her stat distribution and natural armour makes her bad for a melee rogue but can play ranged just fine.

Sure, if you're willing to invest the time in respec'ing and equipping her to be useful (as you can with pretty much all the shittier party members), but by the time I got her I already had Grieving Widow fulfilling her niche, and GW had her cipher abilities on top of that, so I couldn't really find her a place in the party to be useful.

 

[Roguey]

(she's a rogue with shitty dexterity, enough said)

My rogue did fine with 10 dexterity (though after Raedric's Hold I usually had at least 12).

 

[Bonerbill]

BTW, what's the deal with all the Maneha hate? She's clearly not my #1 companion of choice, but I don't find anything actively offensive about her. Pulls her weight nicely too.

Her voice is annoying AF. Also, she's a lesbo.

 

[Sizzle]

Yeah, it's not that Maneha's voice acting is bad, it's just that it feels like it doesn't fit her character at all.

Exactly. There's a real disconnect between her tales of swashbuckling, raiding and pillaging, and her sweetly sick voice as she's telling you this.

It had such a negative effect that I permanently dropped her from the party as soon as doing her quest (with which I also wasn't very impressed because it seemed like a simpler rehash of Aloth's soul conundrum).

 

[Prime Junta]

You can make an extremely effective rogue with low Dex. Stack Mig and Per instead, then pick items and talents which buff crits and have cool crit effects, and get enough escape/disengagement/mobility type abilities to scram when needed. You'll hit like a freight train.

(IMO the class that most benefits from high Dex and Int is Barbarian actually. Pick a weapon (or even better, two) which do on-hit debuffs, and talents which enhance Carnage. That'll turn her into a mobile debuff machine, continuously debuffing everyone in a pretty big area around here. I dunno if that's the intent of the class but it works.)

 

[FreeKaner]

Maneha being a coastal aumaua instead of island aumaua is the biggest downside because you can't do 8-weapons heart of fury build with her.

 

[Excidium II]

(IMO the class that most benefits from high Dex and Int is Barbarian actually. Pick a weapon (or even better, two) which do on-hit debuffs, and talents which enhance Carnage. That'll turn her into a mobile debuff machine, continuously debuffing everyone in a pretty big area around here. I dunno if that's the intent of the class but it works.)

Why? Don't think barbs benefit much from dex unless two-handing.

 

[Prime Junta]

(IMO the class that most benefits from high Dex and Int is Barbarian actually. Pick a weapon (or even better, two) which do on-hit debuffs, and talents which enhance Carnage. That'll turn her into a mobile debuff machine, continuously debuffing everyone in a pretty big area around here. I dunno if that's the intent of the class but it works.)

Why? Don't think barbs benefit much from dex unless two-handing.

Debuffs are applied to Carnage attacks. The weapon debuff effects are very short-duration and your Carnage attacks will be lower ACC than the main one (meaning, you'll Graze more, making them even shorter), so hitting faster makes a significant difference. If you pump Interrupt as well, it's even more effective. A fast-hitting high-Int barb with a debuffing weapon (or two) will turn into a respectably-sized mobile area debuff who also does damage.

 

[Excidium II]

Yeah but the barb already has access a shitload of stuff that makes him attack faster. Makes dex a bit of a waste since attack speed has diminishing returns.

So wouldn't per be better, for the bonus interrupt and extra accuracy?

Btw I really dislike how needlessly complicated the attack speed mechanics is in PoE. Bonuses from abilities and gear stack multiplicatively and along with armor weight only applies to recovery. Dexterity attack speed bonus makes everything faster including attack and reloading (but in the case of recovery it's applied to whatever's left after all previous numbers are calculated)...and Dual wielding nobody seems to really know how it works but it also make both attacks and recovery faster.

Who comes up with this shit?

 

[Mazisky]

May i ask, in your opinion, which is the best location in the game in terms of atmosphere?

 

[Roguey]

May i ask, in your opinion, which is the best location in the game in terms of atmosphere?

I guess Cliaban Rilag? They really wanted that place to be iconic.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Mine would probably be Twin Elms. Those maps are so beautiful. I only wish that part of the game hadn't felt so rushed for me. I loved being in that place and I wish it would have come a little earlier in the game somehow.

 

[Bubbles]

Ondra's Gift, because the day/night cycle affects the gameplay there. Though the area's in dire need of flavour NPCs.

 

[Roguey]

Ondra's Gift, because the day/night cycle affects the gameplay there.

If they had more of this, the lack of a "wait until..." option would have been outrageous.

 

[Excidium II]

Pressing D then checking your alerts.

 

[Starwars]

Ondra's Gift was a great area. Beautiful and with great ambience.

Just in terms of pure looks, I also liked the area just north of Twin Elms.

 

[Excidium II]

The enviroment artists did a good job in general. Easily the highlight of PoE.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

A bit late to the thread, but I simply cannot play PoE. I've tried the original release and periodically with the White March expansion, and the combat kills the game stone dead. I could have persevered on easiest mode just to get through the story but there's nothing to latch onto at all. I might try again now patch 3 is out, but unless it completely overhauls the mechanics I think I'll end up running into the same brick wall.

It's a shame as I loved the original Icewind Dale - certainly my favourite of all the IE games, and one of my favourite RPGs ever, so I can tolerate RTwP.

 

[Prime Junta]

Bumvelcrow what is it about the combat that you can't stand?

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Bumvelcrow what is it about the combat that you can't stand?

I'm trying to remember back to how I felt when I last played it for any length of time, which would have been over a year ago now. First thing is that there's too much of it with too little variety. Second, and I know this is controversial, the lack of experience gained means it feels like each combat is a waste of time rather than an opportunity for success. Yes, I know, survival should be its own reward, but it's just a game. Third, the fact that your party is so porous means its hard to shield your more vulnerable members. Fourth, I didn't feel that I was ever sufficiently convinced that my stats and skills affected combat the way they should do, and that's probably an ideological problem rather than a gameplay problem and maybe I'm autistic. Fifth, I'm just not a fan of RTwP, although better games (Icewind Dale, and yes, even Dragon Age: Origins) have made me forget about this.

All that is just trying to itemise the fact that I found it boring and repetitive, and there was nothing else in the game that interested me enough to pull me through it. By the time I'd got to my stronghold I'd had enough, and three levels of the megadungeon convinced me that it wasn't going to get any better. I keep reading about it because I sunk a lot of money into it as a rabid first-five-minutes Kickstarter backer and want to like it. Rougey's opinion that the it's been sufficiently redesigned since launch to make it playable means I'll probably have another go soon.

 

[Prime Junta]

I see. That is a pretty big bunch of hurdles to get over. Regardless, for whatever it's worth, here are some thoughts. (TL;DR: play at Hard or Path of the Damned.)

The trash mobs were thinned out in 3.0. It's still a bit repetitive in places but IMO now no more so than in, say, IWD. So this is a little improved at least. However, what difficulty were you playing on? Normal is so easy that it's possible to grind through all encounters by repeating one of several rote tactics, which makes the whole thing feel dull and repetitive. Hard is hard enough that you need to shake things up sometimes, and Path of the Damned actually forces you to think about what you're doing, vary tactics, sometimes use consumables, and so on. I.e. I suspect at least a part of your perception of it being repetitive may be due to playing it at too low difficulty setting.

The XP thing is a matter of preference, so nothing much to say about that. If it's a showstopper, then that's what it is.

The "porous party" thing I don't understand at all. It's much less porous than in the IE games because of engagement -- on tight maps your front line will hold until knocked out or disabled, and on open ones intercepting a unit headed for your second line will actually stop it. This has in fact been one of the things most loudly criticised by the people who hate Pillars combat. The AI in 2.0 and 3.0 has been noticeably improved, so they will go after your softer targets more aggressively -- i.e., if you couldn't protect your squishies before, that'll be even harder now.

"Stats and skill" - the diff between the IE games and Pillars is that in Pillars all/most of the bonuses are linear and additive rather than multiplicative. I.e. the difference between a 12 Might fighter and a 20 Might fighter is much less than between a 12 Strength fighter and an 18/99 Strength fighter. On the other hand, the difference between an 8 Might fighter and a 12 Might fighter is bigger. So if you're looking for the huge swing from "practically unplayable" to "hammer of god," you won't get that. The differences are still most definitely there. The most visible one is Intellect: try rolling up a caster and seeing how the AoE changes between 3 and 20 Intellect. The difference is... kind of huge really. All the stats work the same way: going from 3 Perception to 20 Perception will make you go from whiffing most of the time to critting most of the time, and so on. So it is a real difference, and you do need to recalibrate your expectations if you want to enjoy it. The upside is that it gives you much more levers to pull when creating your character: trading off a few points of Might for a few points of Intellect can make sense, depending on what you're going after.

And dislike for RTwP... well yeah, that's what it is. Still if you managed to enjoy IWD which is basically a big dungeon crawl with about as much plot as your average porno, it's just conceivable that you might find your groove in Pillars as well. But if you don't like it, you don't like it, and I can't see much point trying to force yourself to like it.