Shapeshifting defenses are terrible; you melt pretty damn quickly if anything starts in on you. But the damage remains excellent, at least through what I’ve played with a Druid.
Magic in PoE is not weak at all. CC is the key to victory in most fights, and if you use CC in conjunction with damage spells that target reflex, you’re likely to crit for some absurd number. For example, see this video. Wizards (along with paladins and chanters) are considered the easier solo classes.
This is all true but I actually managed to get past this on my latest run - by sticking to high DR weapons and stacking rolls in my favor.Three out of six of my party members used slow ranged weaponry with high alpha and passive DR bonus on the weapons and the results were spectacular. On top of that I had my cipher with very high accuracy that was critting a lot and that made a huge difference in how fast the targets went down. In general I feel like stacking buffs with debuffs makes a really dramatic difference in PoE - 5 or 10 more accuracy for your party might not mean much on its own, but you can knock down or paralyze the enemy on top of that and completely nuke his defenses - and suddenly your rolls for the entire party skyrocket.
I wonder just how much damage spells would have to do in order to satisfy some of you guys? Should a single fireball obliterate an entire group of enemies? I feel right now like having a mage/cleric/druid (or all three!) is critical on the higher difficulty levels right now, and spells and magic in general feel really good. I was just playing and here is an example -
Aloth has Noxious Burst, a level 3 spell.
He targets a group of Lions, enemies that most of my party hits for between 9-18 damage looking back through the log, with their fine and fairly solid equipment. He hits them all for about 30 or more damage.
He also Sickens them at the same time, for essentially the duration of the fight.
Now, damage wise that’s a little more than a quarter of the Lion’s max health in a single cast. And let’s not forget Aloth only has a 12 in might, so a mere 6% bonus to his damage. When I had a Mage as my main that was 18 or 20 Might, and those numbers climb quick. To me, this is a pretty solid use of one per rest ability. He can do this 3 more times at this level, and has 7 additional spells to cast. Lions are hitting really hard, so I’m going to need to rest here soon anyway, so the next time I fight I may drop a few more spells to “burn them off” since my rogue is nearly out of endurance and most of my guys are getting fatigued from walking to the map.
I know there is a lot of folks that don’t like the “per rest” stuff, but I think it balances out very nicely. I’m curious how they change this going forward, that’s for sure.
It absolutely is balanced in POE1. I just don’t enjoy it.
I have to admit I didn’t care for the dmg aspects of magic in PoE either. So much so the one class I didn’t roll up a wizard. Until I saw how to create a melee wizard, and I rolled up the most powerful character in my 140+ hours of playing the game.
Have a link for that melee wizard build?
There’s a good one in this character guide:
HERE is one too. This guy has a lot of good stuff.
I’m probably going to use something similar to this when i start a new game to play through the DLC.
That’s the build I used right there. Crazy amounts of dmg once you’re buffed up, especially at the higher levels. High dmg, high AoE, high interrupt, high deflection. It’s insane.
So we’re just over 50k from the 2.6M stretch goal, which are Berath’s blessings. There something you can chose to start the game with, and apparently Berath will feature heavily in the plot. This deserves quotation:
[quote]Berath’s Blessings is a new feature for Deadfire that gives players special bonuses when they start a new game, based on achievements that have been completed in previous gameplay. Berath plays a large role in the story of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire that we don’t want to reveal quite yet, but she will aid you at the start of your adventure with her blessings. These can be used as a helping hand to defeat that next difficulty level, to provide additional challenges, and to increase the reward for chasing down and completing achievements. Each completed achievement gives the player points to spend on blessings when they start up a new game.
Players will be able to spend these points on a wide variety of unlocks. Some players may simply want a more powerful starting character - better starting gear or more attribute points. Other players may choose to more quickly advance through a part of the game that they don’t really want to repeat - bonus faction reputation, or starting the game with extra copper coins. Players will even have the option to start the game with some of their favorite things acquired during a previous journey – starting with a favorite companion or Soulbound weapon from an earlier playthrough. There will even be unlocks that make the game harder, boosting the challenge of the next campaign.[/quote]
There’s a minority portion of the people who are fans of these sorts of games who like to do multiple playthroughs. But it seems like something a lot of people won’t be able to take advantage of. Unless they give out at least some points from the get go.
Still, I am interested to see this in action.
It’s maybe important to note the bonuses come from achievements (not beating the game, though of course that would have some achievements in and of itself) and so you don’t have to complete the game to see these boosts. Plus, I’d guess most folks that are interested enough in a game like this to kickstart/invest in it would be the same audience that wants to play it a few times with different parties/builds/story branches.
That’s a really cool concept and a genius tie-in with the game’s lore. Love it!
That does sound really cool. I haven’t played the first game near enough yet, but I am loving Tyranny, so I just put money in. Really hoping it makes it to this stretch goal.
Now to finish Tyranny so I can tackle POE 1 before this comes out…should have loads of time.
Yep, this is me. Berath’s Blessings will make that second plus replays that much more interesting if the bonuses are useful throughout the game. For example, having better starting gear is usually hohum enough that it’s outstripped by the items you find pretty quick, and it’d have to be in order to keep loot finding interesting. However, additional attribute points would have a long-term effect.
I’m glad I’m not someone who goes out of my way to get achievements in games, though. I’d really dislike my gameplay to be steered off course by chasing achievements my characters would not normally do.
$2.6m achieved. Berath’s Blessing is in.
New stretch goal at 3m – Relationships.
Just a more elaborate influence system, not romance. Though I haven’t seen them explicitly rule it out (yet) like they have in the past.
I do like the idea of companions having more complicated relationships with each other, including potential romances. Considering that’s something that developers seemed to initially start working towards since the original Baldur’s Gate (when companions could leave/fight the party), it’s about time there was some more focus on that feature. Could add interest/consequences to actions/replayability
I never saw the attraction myself, but there’s no contesting that NPC romances were a huge part of Baldur’s Gate for many players, and PoE is nothing if not a BG nostalgia fest.
I’ve always liked anything that made characters feel more alive. This has been growing out of style though, not that it was ever popular. It seems most people don’t like when their party members have their own goals and desires that sometimes conflict with the player.