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

[Infinitron]

DR isn't random in PoE1.........

But the damage from your weapon or spell is.

If you carefully read what aweigh (and everyone else) has posted, maybe you won't appear so ignorant.

Everyone else who think the problem is the 30% damage bonus for overpenetration

 

[Lacrymas]

The damage is always random, that doesn't have anything to do with Penetration or DR! Even if the 30% damage bonus was the only problem, which it most demonstrably isn't, the combat is still going to revolve around Penetration and the stacking thereof. That is after you equip everyone with plate armor and are dual-wielding.

 

[FreeKaner]

The fact that the ideal situation right now being that everyone wears plate armour and dual wields two high penetration weapons is an issue of numbers. I think it also has to do with them slowing combat down with recovery times instead of just increasing everyone's HP & Defences.

I also still think that armour values should be increased across the board so that getting high enough penetration except for specialists should be in diminishing returns.

 

[jungl]

Lol if I was a developer at Obsidian I wouldn't bother reading the complaints here and obsidian forums. Spell damage being pointless uhh hello you can 2-3 shot end game bosses with direct damage cipher spells or wipe entire trash mobs with druid spells. Penetration complaints, you can switch weapons on the fly in infinity style games to use whatever is optimal in a given scenario don't have to use one.

 

[Infinitron]

Let me elaborate on PoE1 DR vs PoE2 Penetration in a reply to Maculo's post.

it looks to me that either hitpoints need to be massively boosted or base damage toned down as combat is hardly lasting more than 5 to 6 rounds ( assume a round is 3s). In poe1 armor always reduced based damage and armor piercing modals only added back 5 damage, not a whopping 25 to 75% of multiplied damage, so damage look much bigger in poe2. We need combat to last much longer and not by overinflating recovery.

Yikes, that makes a big difference.

The full penetration buff of 30% is overkill on top of overkill it seems.

This is just the mathematically inevitable result of moving from threshold-based to percentage-based damage reduction. Notice this from earlier in that post:

for high armor/low pen the system worked just fine, it was for late game high damage that it somewhat broke. The reason it didn't scale late game was notablity because weapon quality increased at faster rate.

A threshold-based reduction works until the numbers get too high and the threshold increasingly becomes meaningless. 100 damage spell vs 10 DR, lol. Conversely, a percentage-based reduction might seem weak in the early game, but later on you might be encountering enemies with high armor that take 75% off of your triple-digit damage attacks.

Threshold-based - better at early game balance. Percentage-based - better at late game balance. But both are biased.

The guy actually realizes this and suggests that characters in PoE1 should have received bonus DR points on level up to fix it, which would be a serious departure from D&D conventions.

if armor had scaled with level of the character by a multiplcative factor or that constition or resolve had applied a multiplcative factor that armor would have scaled just fine.

The truth is, if these side effects of damage reduction annoy you, you should be rejecting BOTH of these systems - and calling for a return to traditional D&D mechanics where there is no damage reduction, only accuracy vs dodging.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, of course it's a damning thing when the penalty for not reaching the very specific Penetration the mobs demand of you is so high, so your first and foremost priority is stacking it. Penetration is too binary, even if you are only 2 points below the AR you are doing 50% less damage, 75% less if below that. Sure, that is fixed by a Hel Hyraf (and only for melee), but what if you are 6 points below or more? Like I said previously, these are the three scenarios that are going to happen if Pen stays how it is - either you stack it as high as possible, using up your precious spells to debuff mobs and buff your own Pen and all builds revolve around it; OR if they reduce the AR across the board, it becomes a non-issue at all, with the very occasional mob that will require one debuff to pass; OR you are always in the very fine line between penetrating or not, so casting some spell that buffs your Pen is the usual and repetitive tactic with which you start every fight, i.e. an unnecessary button to push every time. That guy who suggests increasing DR every level is right.

Everyone who creams their pants at the prospect of changing weapons to combat Pen - why? You are always going to have an estoc in one slot and your usual weapon in the other. Not to mention that on PotD, some mobs (like skeletons) are immune to a variety of damage types anyway. There were many reasons to change weapons in PoE1 that didn't revolve around an automatic and needlessly micromanage-y response. Even in BG1 there were a few reasons, like Spider's Bane against Web or Kondar against the werewolves.

 

[Jenkem]

someone message me a link to access the beta ifyouknowwhatimeansaynomore

thanks

 

[Infinitron]

Penetration is too binary, even if you are only 2 points below the AR you are doing 50% less damage

See, I don't think 2 points is "only". I think the game is supposed be designed around you encountering a fairly narrow band of armor values at any given time. That's the advantage of the system. With damage there's the expectation that numbers will go ever up, but penetration can be more easily controlled. You ever notice the armor system in Wasteland 2? Similar thing.

 

[aweigh]

obs needs to have a -- Boys will be Boys -- for boosting Pen bonus

 

[Lacrymas]

It is "only" and the only thing that matters is the highest values since that is what you are going to be determined to penetrate, everything below that is inconsequential due to that.

 

[aweigh]

SRSLY PENETRATE

WHAT A WORD.. !!

im dead SURE in A FEW YEARS, ,,,word peneTraTe in POE deadfire will b only thing ppl remember about iT, u

 

[aweigh]

DEM MAX PENETRATION BUILDZZZZ

 

[Immortal]

Let me elaborate on PoE1 DR vs PoE2 Penetration in a reply to Maculo's post.

it looks to me that either hitpoints need to be massively boosted or base damage toned down as combat is hardly lasting more than 5 to 6 rounds ( assume a round is 3s). In poe1 armor always reduced based damage and armor piercing modals only added back 5 damage, not a whopping 25 to 75% of multiplied damage, so damage look much bigger in poe2. We need combat to last much longer and not by overinflating recovery.

Yikes, that makes a big difference.

The full penetration buff of 30% is overkill on top of overkill it seems.

This is just the mathematically inevitable result of moving from threshold-based to percentage-based damage reduction. Notice this from earlier in that post:

for high armor/low pen the system worked just fine, it was for late game high damage that it somewhat broke. The reason it didn't scale late game was notablity because weapon quality increased at faster rate.

A threshold-based reduction works until the numbers get too high and the threshold increasingly becomes meaningless. 100 damage spell vs 10 DR, lol. Conversely, a percentage-based reduction might seem weak in the early game, but later on you might be encountering enemies with high armor that take 75% off of your triple-digit damage attacks.

Threshold-based - better at early game balance. Percentage-based - better at late game balance. But both are biased.

The guy actually realizes this and suggests that characters in PoE1 should have received bonus DR points on level up to fix it, which would be a serious departure from D&D conventions.

if armor had scaled with level of the character by a multiplcative factor or that constition or resolve had applied a multiplcative factor that armor would have scaled just fine.

The truth is, if these side effects of damage reduction annoy you, you should be rejecting BOTH of these systems - and calling for a return to traditional D&D mechanics where there is no damage reduction, only accuracy vs dodging.

AC system is shit. The whole Take zero or take full damage is such a pain in the ass.
Flat DR punishes quick attacks for small increments - So also not great. (Pushes people to use large / slow hits to bypass the DR)

Also, I disagree that % System is biased towards end game. It's all relative.
- 40 Health, 10% DR, 10 Damage.. You take 9 damage
- 400 Health, 10% DR, 100 Damage.. You take 90 damage.

This is essentially the same thing. Not sure why it's less useful early on.. Unless you mean the inflation of % values or one of the values in that trifecta scale faster than the other two.

 

[aweigh]

Infinitron

u can read a document inside an owned chest, it'll trigger any flag-script-quest-update, then just close the owned chest

no one is the wiser.

someone tweet this to JOSH !!!!!!! heh

 

[Infinitron]

"Essentially the same thing" is still better than "gets worse".

Not sure why it's less useful early on..

I mean compared to threshold-based. In the early game a high threshold-based armor can absorb your entire damage.

You're right about the whole punishing fast weak attacks thing of course, that's a whole other can of worms.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem with PoE1's DR at high levels is that it isn't a percentage, it's a flat value that doesn't naturally increase and you have a limited means to do so, but it's paltry compared to the exponential increase of damage received. What I'd do is reduce damage by ~10% for every ~1.5, maybe even 2, points of Pen below the AR rating, for a minimum of 30% damage. Maybe, just throwing numbers around, but those are way more palatable.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Flat DR is more important at the beginning of the game, because the numbers are smaller. %DR works better for end game because it keeps the armor values relevant.

Deadfire's PEN system is not as a good as a %DR system because it will railroad you to choose specific weapons and abilities. If you make a chanter, you better pick up Hel Hyraf, because otherwise what are you doing?

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

This whole penetration debate is half-baked if we don’t consider the armor ratings of enemies. If the average armor rating for enemies is 5 a and the base penetration for most weapons is 7 then pen is less of a big deal, if the numbers are reversed, then it means the world.

 

[Maculo]

You guys are focusing on the wrong problem, overpenetration on PotD is something almost unheard of. I couldn't overpenetrate with my Priest/Devoted (focusing on stilettos, one of the most penetrating weapons) on PotD and neither could I with my Berserker/Paladin, at least I'm fairly certain of that. Even if that was the problem, the issue still remains - you'll stack Penetration and the whole game will revolve around dealing with that.

Even if over-penetration is rare on PotD (I am not 100% convinced due to better weapons, buffs, etc.) due to high armor values, it still is absolutely unnecessary. The damage reduction is enough by itself to choose certain weapons. Over-penetration just means there is zero reason to pick a greatsword over an estoc(or high pen dual-wield to be more technically correct).

On lower difficulties,not only is it unnecessary, it is completely overkill. The situations in which low penetration weapons could conceivably pull ahead (low armored enemies), over-penetration screws it.

Personally, I do expect a plethora of spells to either decrease armor rating and/or increase penetration. Similar to accuracy/deflection in the White March on PotD, I do not expect penetration rating to remain scarce. I would eat my shoe otherwise. Hence, I would like to see over-penetration gone.

 

[Lacrymas]

Unless you can overpenetrate with a greatsword.

This whole penetration debate is half-baked if we don’t consider the armor ratings of enemies. If the average armor rating for enemies is 5 a and the base penetration for most weapons is 7 then pen is less of a big deal, if the numbers are reversed, then it means the world.

I already addressed the three scenarios that can happen with this system while taking into account the mobs' AR, none of which are good.

 

[Maculo]

Unless you can overpenetrate with a greatsword.

If you can stack enough penetration rating to make the greatsword the better pick, then the issue simply swung in the other direction. The over-penetration strike is degenerate .

This whole penetration debate is half-baked if we don’t consider the armor ratings of enemies. If the average armor rating for enemies is 5 a and the base penetration for most weapons is 7 then pen is less of a big deal, if the numbers are reversed, then it means the world.

Unfortunately, we do not have the whole picture. Personally, I think the over-penetration strike screws up the weapon balance either way, because:

(1) If penetration rating is scarce and armor is high, then you will want all the penetration rating available, because the damage reduction is punitive. Plus, you have a better chance of obtaining the over-penetration strike. That means avoiding low penetration weapons like the plague.

(2) If penetration rating is plentiful, then you will want to use low-pen weapons to take advantage of the fact that low-pen weapons generally have a higher damage values.

Either way, the 30% damage buff from over-penetration just makes weapon choice a no-brainer. It simply forces (or reinforces) one way to play.

 

[Lacrymas]

Or you use either an estoc or a greatsword depending on the AR of the enemy. If you can overpenetrate with the greatsword for this particular mob, you use that, if you can't you use the estoc. I doubt all the mobs in the game are within 4 AR of each other and the greatsword would never overpenetrate. The issue is the same, regardless if you are aiming for 100% damage or 130%.

 

[Maculo]

If you know the AR, sure, but until then the estoc is the safer bet. You may not always know the AR in advance, so why take the risk with a greatsword?

I do not think it is the same issue, because the 130% strike creates an even greater incentive towards the estoc when it isn't needed. The damage reduction already is punitive enough for low pen weapons, why make it worse? Over-penetration just exacerbates the problem.

 

[Lacrymas]

The interface always tells you if you are penetrating or overpenetrating, so there is no confusion. Unless you are playing on Expert Mode maybe. If anything, the game forces you to have an estoc and greatsword and switch between them depending on what the interface tells you. The 130% damage is the same issue as the 100% one, you either overpenetrate with the estoc or both, exactly like you'll either penetrate with one or both. You will never be able to not penetrate with the greatsword, but overpenetrate with the estoc.

The issue is exactly the same, just moving the mark. The issue is even bigger at the 100% mark because if you match the AR with the estoc exactly, you'll be doing 75% less damage with the greatsword, as opposed to only 30%. If that doesn't scream binary, overly restrictive and automatic unnecessary micromanagement, I don't know what does.

You can also add the 8 Pen weapons on top of that. If you match their Pen with the AR exactly (or double that), you are doing more damage with them than the estoc, but the greatsword is doing 30/50% less damage. Isn't that what you want, actually? The game forcing you to swap weapons depending on the AR of the mobs, this system is exactly for you. Instead of, you know, swapping them to trigger cool spellholding enchantments or effects and getting only benefits on top of your usual damage for playing well.

 

[frajaq]

why did they feel the need to change the DR system in the first place? I found that PoE 1 worked alright...

no bully pls