Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Why, yes.

Good evening sir, do you have a moment to talk about the personal initiative round, our lord and saviour ?

(Poor) jokes aside, I disagree with this widely admitted take on engagement.
First, and I read it again and again so it's time to really discuss this, you don't get fucked once an enemy engages your low health dude. If, for some reason that I wouldn't understand because it's so damn good, you don't pick the movement + disengagement talent, it becomes more difficult to deal with this situation. Yet, there are a lot of tools : potions of fleet feet which can be crafted at level one, chanter's specific phrase and, of course, disabling the engaging unit.
Besides, level 1 priest spell withdrawal is basically tailored for the situation you describe : when a dude's gonna get smacked to death and can't save himself.
Don't take this as a sarcastic comment, I actually think the following, and my, I could be much wrong about this : it seems that engagement uber impact on the flow of the fight is in people's heads.

So yeah, I feel like pulling out a sensuki point here, but I assure you that removing health and keeping endurance alone does not seem that great in my book.

 

So you'd go for 6(7) subclasses or pigeonhole 2/4 into melee/ranged from the existing?
It's "wrong" since subclass bonuses are mostly (1 is melee specialist for ciphers) melee/ranged agnostic across the classes, you'd lose an axis of customisation.

Cipher is the complete opposite of monk though - monk gets resources by taking damage (a subclass flips this), cipher by dealing damage.

Cipher is PoE's best designed class IMO, much healthier caster than the 3 vancian spammers.

 

I keep watching that stream. The twitch guy is telling a funny story how he would kite bounties with one party member and lure them into a bottleneck. He was actually proud of his strategic thinking.

Engagement, kids - not even once.

This all sounds pretty well and fine. Now, if you've actually tried this, you will know that due to the game not having personal initiative round drinking of any potions poses a huge risk. Unlike in the IE games, in PoE by the time your recovery time for your last action is over and you can actually start the drink potion animation, up to the time this animation finishes, you may very well be slashed to pieces if you are low on health. Why? Because no personal initiative round, that's why.

Chanter's specific phrase - I may not have a chanter, or he may not be ready with that song.

Disabling - My fighter may be out of knockdowns, I may not have slicken, I may not be able to apply "blinded", etc.

Engagement being an imaginary obstacle, I don't think so, that's an immediate attack, without delay, with a bonus to accuracy and a x2 bonus to damage.

 

So now I have to click like autist to save my low hp chars? At least when engagement was in I could've make some free hits.. but now what's stopping ai to constantly target mu squishy chars?
Also... I can select multiclass only at lv0? Or anytime during the game?

 

My, yeah, you may not have any of the numerous ways to nullify the enemy's engagement. Including the op persistent general talent that any character can pick and that a person who makes such a big deal of engagement would surely always choose - for his whole party. Every game. Level 2.

 

I don't give a rat's ass about the axis of customisation. In my view, there are 4 class groups - warrior, priest, rogue, wizard. Personified by Fighter, Priest, Rogue, Wizard in PoE. The rest of the classes are a flavor of one of these 4. Those are the 4 main tools, and they can't all be doing the same things equally well, or there is no point in having different tools. Their variations are doing mostly the same as the base class, with some bonus and some malus here and there, and with some in-character reason provided for these bonuses or maluses.

I know, but what does that change? They work the same way - gather mana, cast magic spells.

Not just click. You have to pause at the right split-second, then click the button, and if you're lucky there will be enough time in your recovery timer and the enemy's recovery timer so you don't get hit before you clicked action exectues. Genius combat design. Speechless!

 

What's stopping ai to just bumrush my casters ignoring muh tanks/druids/cleric in armor without engagment?

 

Engagement is maybe more bullshit than people realize. I purposefully summoned drakes/skeletons to eat up engagement slots on the titan, but he switched engagement targets to my Priest when I went near him. I'm not 100% sure if that's the case or he only switched engagements when I resummoned the mobs, so don't quote me on that. It's bullshit if he does switch engagement targets just because.

 

I don't know. I guess nothing stops it. How do you counter this in the IE games? Personal Wizard protection magic maybe.

 

Boots of Speed and right click away.

 

Right, there's nothing wrong with a well done flavor text - as long as it's self-contained within one game. Class-exclusive, background-exclusive dialogue options, NPCs reacting to your disposition and reputation, some folks you helped in a quest 10 hours ago show up to help you with another quest, all of that is welcome.

But expecting me to give a shit about flavor text that appears because 3 years ago I've made a rude comment during a minor sidequest in another game, now that's just silly.

 

Just noticed grimoire changes - decline.
2 spells per level? and you cant learn spells trough enemy grimoires?!

 

Wizard is the most versatile caster atm, not that a lot of spells are worth casting with the very few per-encounter slots they have now, though.

 

2 spells is also the number of spells at each level in the grimoire, as opposed to 4 in the first game.

 

Oh thanks for info (I don't have beta access (stopped enjoying alpha/betas some time ago))
Also... I can select multiclass only at lv0? Or anytime during the game?

 

You choose multi or single class at character creation, not at every level - think more AD&D than 3rd edition.

 

This should be "each other's." You use one when referring to groups larger than two. Which hack wrote this?

 

People like to laugh at those who fail or lose, because it makes them feel better.

Ideally aggro control, although that depends on how they've coded the AI. Works really well in IE games, all RTS games, Aarklash Legacy etc etc. In PoE 1.0 lots of enemies would auto target the lowest deflection character and keep re-targeting. For me that was Aloth, so I could micro him in and out of range/sight and enemies would stop what they were doing to re-target him / break engagement to chase him. Was p funny.

 

So basically engagement is flawed because you play badly. Got it.

 

this is a tragedy of the highest calibur...
he was even in the mood for some silly emojis...
sawyer, you monster

good night sweet prince (open) good night sweet prince (close)

1.0 was quite the buggy mess
I remember the char sheets would stack stats at each item swap, ending with a whopping 40 might and whatnot

 

That wasn't an AI bug, it was just lol AI targeting that didn't re-prioritize targets for long enough. From what I have read from various posters (PJ included) they still do that in post 3.0, pick the guy and go for that guy unless engaged - p funny / abusable if you know how

 

Yeah, I guess it was just a mess. It's like 2/3rd of the bestiary who just didn't have any ability. Not a bug per say, they just didn't implement them (maybe did not even design them )
Now, I'd really like to know how to trigger this script exploit, or see a video of it happening in 3.0, because enemies almost never break engagement from what I recall of my twm run.

 

The AI for Trolls is probably the dumbest, they do not change targets really and they will ignore AoOs so you can just switch to two handers and continuously score AoOs on them until they're dead. Gr8 design right there

 

Oh nvm, I got what you mean. You can engage with several dudes and have one of them trigger the aoos by getting the aggro yeah.
It's rare that it happens, unless you actively set it up, obviously.