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

[Falksi]

The mage/cipher multi is useless because of this. Just stupid.

not if you pick the Psion subclass

Psion? Like a Lion? In Irons?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Sawyer did favor realism in the areas he cares about, like damage types and weapon modals.

 

[TedNugent]

Sawyer did favor realism in the areas he cares about, like damage types and weapon modals.

Triggered

 

[AwesomeButton]

But only if it didn't interfere with balance.Therefore we have this perfectly balanced solution where we have "wizard weapo with pierce", "wizard weapon with crush/slash", and "wizard weapon with slash/pierce", and it's the same for all one-handed and all two-handed weapon types.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Like already discussed, unless there's some specific synergy that you want to exploit, I wouldn't multiclass caster with another caster. There's only so much spells you can cast before duration of average fight is over.

 

[Delterius]

Blood Mage is a pretty good multiclass in general and it's a Wizard. Evoker is also a good match for Priest.

 

[Yosharian]

Heaven forbid there be multiclass combinations that aren't optimal, Sawyer would have a fucking fit if he found out

 

[TedNugent]

Wow, crawling through The Old City is like jumping into a portapotty shitter.

But only if it didn't interfere with balance.Therefore we have this perfectly balanced solution where we have "wizard weapo with pierce", "wizard weapon with crush/slash", and "wizard weapon with slash/pierce", and it's the same for all one-handed and all two-handed weapon types.

I was thinking more a saber having more penetration than a sword? And it has a modal called "Windmill slash" that increases your recovery time for no discernible reason while increasing the penetration? By base values, that means it penetrates full plate. How, pray tell, does a saber pierce full plate while only using "windmill slashing" attacks?

I can't imagine the concept because it is so stupid. Windmill slashing is more effective against plate than half swording, an actual technique used to exercise leverage to finesse a point into armor gaps. It is not realistic, it is videogame nonsense, the same as everything else.

On the one hand, you may imagine an idiot slashing a saber erratically in wide arcs, and stumbling over himself, and on the other hand you can imagine a knight gripping the blade as per the period artwork and combat manuals and driving the point into the unprotected groin of his adversary. Both are in the same game. Oh, and by definition, you cannot half sword with one hand, but you can in this game. With a shield.

PoE had far more nuanced interplay between different armor and weapon types. This one definitely feels more gamey.

Sidepoint, nearly all of the modals are ridiculous in this game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I was thinking more a saber having more penetration than a sword? And it has a modal called "Windmill slash" that increases your recovery time for no discernible reason while increasing the penetration? By base values, that means it penetrates full plate. How, pray tell, does a saber pierce full plate while only using "windmill slashing" attacks?

That's what I meant with my example. And what I meant with "But only if it didn't interfere with the balance".
The balance explanation is that the sabre does only one type of damage (slash), and the sword does two types of damage (best of slash or pierce), therefore the sword is penalized by having a lower penetration. Same with other weapon types if you compare how many types of damage they have vs how much penetration.

About your example of sabre vs sword penetration against plate: sawyer manages to stay on the realism side as best he can. Although the sabre has higher penetration when Windmill Slash is activated, than the sword has penetration with Half-Sword activated, the plate armor has equal Armor Reduction to Pierce and Slash damage, so neither type will be preferred by the game when using a sword.

Some stream of consciousness below:

Regarding the penalties, I guess the +50% recovery time symbolizes the wider slashes, which mean higher power at the cost of increased time between slashes, and the -15 deflection of the Half-Sword symbolizes how the sword is less useful to parry if both hands are busy with the sword, and one of them normally holds the shield, but just as much as that, the lowered deflection designates that you are closer to the enemy when halfswording.

When halfswording, the sword is usually used for pushing or pressing the opponent, and this is performed with all sides of the sword - both the blade, the handle or the point. Most useful in close quarters when there isn't room around you to hold the sword normally. Another use of halfswording is when trying to strike joints in the armor, then you'd be more accurate with a shorter blade, by holding the blade closer to the point. The third use case is when you want a less flexible blade, when you need to stab against a harder surface, and this I guess is the use case envisioned by the penetration bonus. But pressing against plate armor without the strength of a good thrust doesn't seem to have much more penetrating power thanks solely to the fact you're holding the blade at the midpoint.

I don't know from experience, I don't do fencing. I imagine this third type of halfswording would be used against chainmail more than against plate, with the intent to pierce the armor. Against plate, it would have the effect of pushing. The sabre's wider slashes may actually have a higher chance to hit an unprotected joint than a push with the sword point. On the other hand, a well-aimed push with the sword point into a joint should actually negate the plate armor completely, because it's in a joint, I guess?

So in the end the sabre having one point higher penetration in its special mode than the sword in its special mode is a bit abnormal, but it can be explained with the sword's innate "penetration penalty" to offset its having two damage types. Under normal circumstances you are better off boosting your sabre penetration to 7 and then finding ways to boost it by another two points, than looking for means to boost the sword penetration by 3 points after the modal's 2. But this comes as a cost to the convenience of having two damage types on the sword. So yeah - Josh sticks to realism whenever it doesn't interfere with the balance.

 

[Haplo]

Cool analyses.
But the game reality is that the saber modal is never useful due to its crippling penalty, while the sword modal can sometimes be used by characters that do not prioritize defences.
In general I consider the modals with the slight Pen boost the least important of the bunch.
Better focus on modals that debuff an enemy defence by 25 (!) points, apply a huge stacking bleed or increase Accuracy by +20 (!).

For Penetration, there are much better solutions then modals.

 

[Yosharian]

Cool analyses.
But the game reality is that the saber modal is never useful due to its crippling penalty, while the sword modal can sometimes be used by characters that do not prioritize defences.
In general I consider the modals with the slight Pen boost the least important of the bunch.
Better focus on modals that debuff an enemy defence by 25 (!) points, apply a huge stacking bleed or increase Accuracy by +20 (!).

For Penetration, there are much better solutions then modals.

Except in turn-based, where some modals affect your initiative and thus are basically free boosts

 

[Haplo]

Cool analyses.
But the game reality is that the saber modal is never useful due to its crippling penalty, while the sword modal can sometimes be used by characters that do not prioritize defences.
In general I consider the modals with the slight Pen boost the least important of the bunch.
Better focus on modals that debuff an enemy defence by 25 (!) points, apply a huge stacking bleed or increase Accuracy by +20 (!).

For Penetration, there are much better solutions then modals.

Except in turn-based, where some modals affect your initiative and thus are basically free boosts

Right, good catch.

Still, these are among the least valuable modals. In turn-based I'd rather use the axe modals for huge bleeds for example.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Bleed that slowis down attacks by 50% isn't exactly super useful either. Melee modals are mostly shit.

 

[Haplo]

Bleed that slowis down attacks by 50% isn't exactly super useful either. Melee modals are mostly shit.

Yosh mentioned Turn based mode and its great there.

But it has some uses in normal game mode as well. Its great for melting bosses with high AR and huge health pools. And its a fantastic for retaliation/riposte builds. Can also work better if your char can skip Recovery (like a Barb on a kill).

The modals that lower enemy defences by 25 are fantastic also. They come with a big damage reduction, but in some cases (like a Brute with morningstar) can even be a net gain in damage due to hugely increased Crit rate (Barb can target Fortitude instead of Deflection, fighter has abilities that target Fortitude, like Knockdown and Clear Out). And are simply great for party synergy in any case (morningstars - Fort debuffs - I found the most useful in general).
I normally have Pallegina as a support Herald with a morningstar with the modal active. Helps a ton to land nasty spells (Disintegration, Amplified Wave, Death Ray, possibly Takedown Combo for maximum damage).

Then rapiers get a huge Accuracy boost with modal (+20, which stacks with rapier's innate +5, I think) and while they are slower with the modal, if you're dual-wielding the difference between dual fast rapiers with modal active and dual standard speed arms is minimal - while the constant crits from stellar Accuracy can be a huge boon (also Penetration wise...).

 

[TedNugent]

Slashing attacks would be utterly useless against mail, and actually significantly blunted even by gambeson.

Plate often had mail in the joints, if not, gambeson.

That's why I like DC as a concept when it comes to armor, representing working into weak points in the armor. If you shoved a point into a breastplate, it would glance off. If you shoved a point under the armpit, and there was chain underneath, you could drive the point in and potentially stress a link or use a sharp enough point to get inside the link.

Overall, both POE's damage reduction system and the armor rating/penetration system are busted in different ways. The DR in POE needed a diminishing returns system or something else to prevent the excess at higher levels, the AP/AR system in POE2 is too binary with too hard of breakpoints from a gaming standpoint. That's why I prefer penetration modals, going from -50% damage to 100% damage is a big deal. Going from 25% damage to 75% damage is even bigger, a threefold increase.

A rigid, spring-tempered European style longsword would simply be better for piercing armor joints. A saber would literally be useless if you were slashing against a chain hauberk, brigandine or breastplate/full plate, and still pretty shitty against a heavy cloth gambeson. The penetration values make no sense.

Even if you were using a saber, you would still either aim for uncovered areas or be forced to use the point at an angle identical to how you would with a longsword or an arming sword.

So it makes little sense from a gameplay or a realism standpoint.

It's also much shallower than it was in POE1. For some reason, brigandine is weak to piercing but not crushing. Brigandine would be strong against a thrust, as it's literally sandwiched steel plates, unless you could somehow work the tip under the sandwiched plate, which is just unrealistic. It's just a dumb system and reduces down to rock-paper-scissors. I hate reductionist RPS systems, as well as systems with excessively unreasonable hard breakpoints. PoE 2 has both. PotD even goes further and breaks the remaining delicacy of the system by introducing free +2 penetration buffs for NPCs.

 

[Haplo]

You want to go for high realism - and there is nothing wrong with that. I like such an approach also.
But please understand that Deadfire is not that game.

Here all arms (and armors) were balanced to be useful and more-or-less equal (barring the unique properties - and some modals are also somewhat "unbalanced").
With this approach what you'd like to see is mostly impossible (unless you implement different kinds of benefits/penalties for weapon/armor choices elsewhere in the system).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Bleeds aren't "melting" anything, it's just some extra damage that's useful like 5 times during the playthrough in bigger boss fights. Debuff modals are okay but Barb can only target Fort instead of Deflection with a late game perk. Rapier modal is great, but rapiers only do pierce which is the most common immunity.

I could see a different argument on a player character that you can build to exploit a specific weapon and modal, but overall the melee modals are situationally useful at best.

 

[Haplo]

The bleeds stack. And add up to A LOT of damage. But okay, personally I prefer active participation in the killing also.
I guess the debuff modals are more important if you play a caster as your MC - particularly a cipher (or possibly wizard). They make a HUGE difference on PotD upscaled.

Piercing immunity being common is a bit of an urban legend IMO. Yeah, there are some high level skeletons in maybe 3 locations (mostly optional)... and maybe a few lurkers overall and...?
I played as a Swashbuckler Devoted to Estocs just fine. Also as a Blood Mage Assassin at higher levels I've mostly used Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst, which does... Pierce damage.

 

[TedNugent]

Cool analyses.
But the game reality is that the saber modal is never useful due to its crippling penalty, while the sword modal can sometimes be used by characters that do not prioritize defences.
In general I consider the modals with the slight Pen boost the least important of the bunch.
Better focus on modals that debuff an enemy defence by 25 (!) points, apply a huge stacking bleed or increase Accuracy by +20 (!).

For Penetration, there are much better solutions then modals.

How can it never be useful? I am routinely using it because there are frequently enemies with more armor than the penetration value. Even 2 armor rating over your penetration value cuts your damage in half.

Like I said earlier, going from -3 to -1 is a 3-fold increase in damage (from 25% to 75%).

I'm seeing very few ways of reliably increasing your penetration outside of modals. By contrast, an accuracy buff of +20 increases your hit rate by roughly 20% if the enemy's defense is equal.

An on-demand 2-fold or 3-fold damage increase for a 50% recovery speed penalty is absolutely worth it as a modal if the situation demands it and you can't switch to another weapon type to get penetration.

My thinking is - I know the game has a hidden +2 penetration buff on NPC's weapons on Path of the Damned difficulty. I haven't actually run the comparison to check, but I highly suspect there could be a +2 armor rating buff as well, in which case, well. That modal is going to come in handy, as is having different damage types.

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, Armor is buffed on PotD also IIRC.

But modals are not the answer. As far as I remember, they are even considered active abilities and therefore do not stack - for example with food bonuses. Better eat some razor skewers or something, rather then nerf your recovery rate.

I guess it depends on your class(es). The characters I played generally had significant Pen bonuses and Pen was never a big issue for me (except sometimes for Battlemage Aloth... and maybe Pallegina too, but she was support, so it hardly mattered). Both on my Swashbuckler and Spellblade I was frequently getting the Overpenetration (Pen => AR x2) +30% damage bonus. My Transcendant never struggled either.

Lets see: Monks get Thundering Blows, ciphers Hammering Thoughts, Berserkers get Tenacious from Frenzy, Devoted get Chosen Weapon, most rogue active abilities come with significant Pen bonuses, Assassins get +4 Pen when attacking from Stealth (and +25 Accuracy). Then crits also have +50% Pen (so crit chains can largely solve the Pen issue also). And of course, you can combine these bonuses when going MC.

Your example of 20% Accuracy giving 20% more crit rate is maybe true if you have roughly 50% to hit the enemy. But good gods, I hope you don't suck so much (except on the starter Isle and against some Megaboss maybe). In normal scenario I'd say it can be a 100-200% increase in crit rate.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Even 2 armor rating over your penetration value cuts your damage in half

... And increasing your recovery rate by 50% cuts your opportunities to do damage by one quarter.

I'm seeing very few ways of reliably increasing your penetration outside of modals.

Apart from debuffs like that from the Chanter (https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextralife.com/And+Hel-Hyraf+Crashed+Upon+the+Shield) which takes away 2 AR from enemies inside an AoE radius, you can buff you penetration directly with food items. Tahiwa snapper for +1 pen with weapons, hot razor skewers for +2 pen with weapons, +2 might and +1 to all power levels. If you are a fighter, you have an active ability - Penetrating Strike, for +3 penetration, which you get to cast an extra time with hot razor skewers, for a total of +5 penetration in each cast.

The chanter also has this +3 penetration for 15s buff, but it's quite high-level: https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fex...us+Vengeance,+Drove+Her+Dagger+into+His+Heart

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I think the modal that damages enemy armor (mace?) would better than +1 penetration.

 

[Delterius]

debuff thy enemies with wizard spells and weapon modals. that is the answer to armor.

 

[TedNugent]

debuff thy enemies with wizard spells and weapon modals. that is the answer to armor.

Wizards are lame though

And Aloth is a faggot

 

[Delterius]

debuff thy enemies with wizard spells and weapon modals. that is the answer to armor.

Wizards are lame though

And Aloth is a faggot

do you even expose vulnerabilities bro