Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition - A Dance of Masks epilogue DLC coming June 13th

[Yosharian]

And he has extra combat feats, so he can be passable archer/melee too.

Do you think there is any value in that though?

I just gave up trying to make mine do anything useful, he hits like a wet noodle and there's just no point

 

[Daidre]

I just gave up trying to make mine do anything useful, he hits like a wet noodle and there's just no point

Depending on the party you are running, I guess. For Trickster, having extra body fishing for crits with Fauchard and Ever Ready would never hurt, and his AB will be high enough under his own buffs. And Sun Marked spell from Angel heaps a ton of divine damage on any hit, you just need to connect it. I have also went for Heavenly Host sword upgrade for the party I was preparing against DLC 3 secret boss, so my Skald attack stats looked like that:

Spoiler

Well, his chances to hit the boss were 5% but he was more than adequate against everything else.

 

[Yosharian]

I just gave up trying to make mine do anything useful, he hits like a wet noodle and there's just no point

Depending on the party you are running, I guess. For Trickster, having extra body fishing for crits with Fauchard and Ever Ready would never hurt, and his AB will be high enough under his own buffs. And Sun Marked spell from Angel heaps a ton of divine damage on any hit, you just need to connect it. I have also went for Heavenly Host sword upgrade for the party I was preparing against DLC 3 secret boss, so my Skald attack stats looked like that:

Spoiler

Well, his chances to hit the boss were 5% but he was more than adequate against everything else.

Could you provide a breakdown of the AB bonus please? I assume a large percentage of it is MoJ?

 

[Daidre]

Could you provide a breakdown of the AB bonus please? I assume a large percentage of it is MoJ?

No Moj, but he got his own Song, Sensei song, Angel's Army of Heaven + food, and looks like +1 from Haste on Skald's capstone stacks with normal Haste

Spoiler

What I've tried to say is that any body could make some martial input with enough buffs, and mid BAB Skald who can start with 18+ in DEX/STR without too much harm for his main function is not the worst body to build upon.

 

[Yosharian]

Alright I see what you did there

 

[Desiderius]

Could you provide a breakdown of the AB bonus please? I assume a large percentage of it is MoJ?

No Moj, but he got his own Song, Sensei song, Angel's Army of Heaven + food, and looks like +1 from Haste on Skald's capstone stacks with normal Haste

Spoiler

What I've tried to say is that any body could make some martial input with enough buffs, and mid BAB Skald who can start with 18+ in DEX/STR without too much harm for his main function is not the worst body to build upon.

You’ve got enough buffs available to start with 14/14/19 and do fine in melee/intimidating/casting by midgame. I like Med + Shield + Scimitar (Skald gets Martial, Bard doesn’t) on Skald backed up by Image to offtank after casting/intimidating first round.

Absolutely essential to be able to distinguish between regular mobs and bosses. If you’re designing around bosses and throwing up your hands on any character that can’t hit them/beat their saves regular mobs are going to swarm you.

3/4 Hybrids with slow spell progression are perfect for taking out the trash so that your specialists can take on the boss unmolested. Then with Skald you can either upgrade the spells with Azata or the melee with something else to do more than that.

Even vs boss you can crit fish with 15-20, advantage, and autoconfirm effects to have an effect regardless of AC. Or use SR bypass/no save spells etc…

 

[LannTheStupid]

Is this game even playable now? I booted it after a looong break and in many fights in TB every other enemy seems to freeze for like 20-30 seconds with "???" status icon over their heads after they do what they do, forcing me to T+T all the time and making TB mode p. much a no go. I also get shitload of visual glitches (enemy corpses t-posing, cloaks of killed characters waving) that I never had before. Latest patch and no mods. Screw this shit, seriously.

The main game is stable, fun, and well designed. I'm on something like my eleventh run. I have experienced zero game breaking bugs in the last week. However, numerous minor bugs exist.
Some archetypes do not work at all. Many of them have minor bugs of some kind. Some of those are advantageous, others detrimental. Some items don't work. Most, probably 95%, are fine. The weirdest of each group are most likely to have issues. Generic classes like Cleric are perfectly fine.
Angel, Aeon, Azata, and Lich are all stable. Trickster is completely playable, but (somewhat appropriately) has a couple bugs and odd interactions. Legend is good, Devil is stable but bad, Swarm is stable but clearly unfinished. No comment on Demon or Dragon.

This is the best description of the current state of the game I have found. Surely, you can clutch to your non-reproducible glitches and go play Animal Crossing; however, the sad truth is that WotR will never be as polished as some console releases. So you either take it or you play something else. There are plenty of other games out there.

 

[Desiderius]

Is this game even playable now? I booted it after a looong break and in many fights in TB every other enemy seems to freeze for like 20-30 seconds with "???" status icon over their heads after they do what they do, forcing me to T+T all the time and making TB mode p. much a no go. I also get shitload of visual glitches (enemy corpses t-posing, cloaks of killed characters waving) that I never had before. Latest patch and no mods. Screw this shit, seriously.

The main game is stable, fun, and well designed. I'm on something like my eleventh run. I have experienced zero game breaking bugs in the last week. However, numerous minor bugs exist.
Some archetypes do not work at all. Many of them have minor bugs of some kind. Some of those are advantageous, others detrimental. Some items don't work. Most, probably 95%, are fine. The weirdest of each group are most likely to have issues. Generic classes like Cleric are perfectly fine.
Angel, Aeon, Azata, and Lich are all stable. Trickster is completely playable, but (somewhat appropriately) has a couple bugs and odd interactions. Legend is good, Devil is stable but bad, Swarm is stable but clearly unfinished. No comment on Demon or Dragon.

This is the best description of the current state of the game I have found. Surely, you can clutch to your non-reproducible glitches and go play Animal Crossing; however, the sad truth is that WotR will never be as polished as some console releases. So you either take it or you play something else. There are plenty of other games out there.

Non-reproducible glitches my ass. Elemental Engine is not weird, it's the default nuker Kinnie. Winter Witch isn't weird, it's the main Prestige Class they added and promoted. The basic ability on one of the three general types doesn't work.

We gave them a list of basic errors/vaporware on their own fucking forum with most of the most accomplished and productive posters all chipping in in both Alpha and Beta (these are people who've probably all kicked in well over the purchase price in financial backing - I know I did - and were willing to playtest their own game for them for free) and one dev showed up once in beta to say thanks they'd get right on that. In neither case did they do shit. Half the stuff still doesn't work.

I've been faithfully reporting bugs using their in-game system since I bought P:K and never have I gotten the sense that there is anyone reading them. Most of the stuff eventually got fixed in P:K, not so much in Wrath, but never in a time-frame that felt like they were using the bug reports and most never made patch notes.

Go. fuck. yourself.

 

[Desiderius]

How hard is it to test something that you've just added to the game to make sure it works? I mean have some fucking pride in what you're doing. You deserve that - the ideas in the game are brilliant. The execution is just utterly maddening.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

There is no excuse of having class feature not working. And as Desi said, it's not that those bugs aren't being reported either.

Their pipe lining of fixing bugs are just so inefficient and its magic guess on which bug get squashed on patch. Not to mention those very patch usually introduce some new bugs too.

A lot of modders implement a lot of class features better and even fix bugs by Owlcat. There is liking Owlcat and then there is letting them get away with shoddy QA. If you really like their game you really should support them having a way of squashing these bugs from the game as they are basic game feature not some obscure feature.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Do any of young male russians even have a day job other than shitposting for $0,01 per post for one "cause" or the other?

 

[IllusiveBrian]

How hard is it to test something that you've just added to the game to make sure it works? I mean have some fucking pride in what you're doing. You deserve that - the ideas in the game are brilliant. The execution is just utterly maddening.

I have to wonder what their pipeline is. In my experience this is sort of thing happens when you either have poor version control or you have a tendency to make a lot of changes without tickets properly recording what was done. It's possible they just have bad QA, but 95% of the game works pretty well so I think it has more to do with keeping track of what changes are actually being made to make sure they are tested.

It would also be helpful if their bug reporting system created tickets in some public repository and they had someone assigned to moderate and prioritize them. Otherwise like you're saying it just feels like they're going off into the ether.

 

[ArchAngel]

Do any of young male russians even have a day job other than shitposting for $0,01 per post for one "cause" or the other?

It is boring on the battlefield so they kill time by shitposting.

 

[Haplo]

I plan to start a Mystic Theurge+loremaster walkthrough: Legend Path, wizard/oracle.
Now I am ready to use gestalt leveling if needed (and remove caster level restriction, because fuck this shit with level 20 restriction for classes, I wanted to play wizard 40), but I cannot decide between Seeker and Philosopher subclasses for Oracle. I decided for Wizard to go Spell Master, although I can be wrong.
Now important question is race (thinking about aasimar or human) and how exactly ability scores should be distributed at the start of the game, because character will be MAD (fucking insane, if you ask me).
Any suggestions?
Perhaps it sounds crazy and convoluted, but I just want to play Legend as proper caster.

You want to combine two classes that use same casting stat.

There little problem with this - there no divine caster who uses Int as stat for casting (No occultist class or that one Inquisitor sub-class, Holic hasn't made a mod for WOTR). And why I want Int and not Char or Wis? Skills and also there plenty Char casters. And I decided against Wis caster because I have no inspiration to play one as right now. Damn this class level limit, otherwise I would be playing a single class caster.

Unless you are playing solo there is zero reason to make you main your skill monkey.

Well, I wouldn't usually make my MC a "dedicated" skill monkey... but normally I do invest in at least 3 skills, have decent to good Int. This also allows me to take advantage of the option "only skill user gets experience from skills" for some nice extra xp on the main char.

And becoming a skill monkey is pretty easy with some classes, such as the inquisitor. With archetypes such as the Sanctified Slayer, you don't actually feel like you're sacrificing anything for that.

 

[Yosharian]

Has anyone actually tested Unrelenting Assault? I'm reading reports (albeit a year old) that it never actually disappears and becomes permanent in some way

Reading the next feats, it gets even more op... unrelenting assault in mythic is broken too, completly op, and bugged since it becomes permanent bonus instead of just each combat.

 

[Desiderius]

Do any of young male russians even have a day job other than shitposting for $0,01 per post for one "cause" or the other?

It is boring on the battlefield so they kill time by shitposting.

LannTheStupid's not shitposting. If you're just playing the memes what he's saying makes perfect sense, and for all we know it could be the internal Owlcat rationalization for the poor QA. But the replayability is a major selling point and everybody stuck playing the same few "builds" kills that. Marketing understood this because they were the ones who promoted the race-specific archetypes and new classes like Hunter and Winter Witch. They fell flat because they were never properly implemented, not because they were "weird" or "niche."

There's an interesting parallel with the early Japanese automakers. The Big Three is the US were making some of the same mistakes the AAA Western game companies are making but the Japs struggled to take advantage of the market opportunities that opened up for them due to their reputation for shoddy quality. Then along came Deming and the rest is history (and a shit ton of money for the Japs).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

RUS gives the (human) race Gagarin, Chekov, Rachmaninov, et al and now you're all going to LARP as a bunch of stupid drunks who can't be expected to deliver the product you promised your kickstarters? C'mon man, nobody's buying that bullshit.

 

[Desiderius]

Oh fuck off Daidre, I'm talking about what you're already doing. The problem is how few other people are.

The heart of any game with staying power (and the sales that go with them) is an evolving meta, where people find something that works then everybody chases that then somebody else finds something else and people relog to try that, buy DLC etc. For that to work you have to have viable alternatives (which is different from nerf-a-mole balense) that solve common problems in different ways. See Diablo II for a common example. The PF ruleset comes readymade to provide that. The only thing standing in the way of that is Owlcat implementation.

Lets look at the Hunter Class, which was used to drive Kickstarter contributions to reach the stretch goal to unlock it. One of the best classes in CotW P:K, but Owlcat's implementation of it in Wrath undermines it's entire raison d'être.

Hunter is a Ranger/Druid hybrid that focuses on making your animal companion the best in the game. It gets medium spell progression which is halfway between Ranger's Slow and Druid's Fast and the key spells from each class that the other is missing: Hurricane Bow/Lead Blades/Aspects from Ranger, Faerie Fire/Snowball from Druid for starters. Martial Prof from Ranger (so you get the Ranged Weapon Druid lacks), full pet from Druid. So far so good. But lets look at the specific abilities the class gets to make that companion something you'd want to play the class to get:

Lvl 1: Animal Focus: mostly fine. Making Focus Enhancement/Competence means it doesn't stack with the common buffs/items, but then it frees those up and is always on. Underrated ability (scales with class lvl which people are slowly figuring out is important) that Hunter trades away on some appealing archetypes anyway.

Lvl2: Precise Companion: for starters the whole point of this is to give your companion an ability, which Wrath doesn't. Major Fail, since the point of the class is to enhance the Companion. In the PF ruleset (and the CotW implementation) the Companion gets either Precise Shot or Outflank (along with the character), so lets look at each case and how Owlcat falls short:

Ranged Hunter: what is the point of giving the Companion Precise Shot? It's the main motivation to play Hunter in PF and CotW P:K and completely missing from Wrath. Not a bug, just missing. See lvl 3

Melee Hunter: Outflank (on both character and companion) is essential to make melee Hunter viable since Hunter is 3/4 BAB and unlike Ranger doesn't get any abilities to enhance it's AB (no Combat Style, Favorite Enemy, or Quarry). Getting Outflank at lvl 2 (on both Hunter and Companion, to turn it on since it's a TW Feat) is the only thing keeping Hunter from just whiffing throughout the hardest five levels of the game (2-6, since Companion can pick up Outflank at lvl 7). Omitting this ability leaves Hunter combat effectiveness on par with Druid, defeating the purpose of the class which was to trade fast spell progression to improve combat performance on both character and companion. Some Hunter archetypes share it via Hunter's Tactics at lvl 3 anyway, but some of the most appealing trade away Hunter's Tactics for other abilities so get completely hosed.

Lvl 3: Hunter's Tactics: as many players experienced on Sacred Huntmaster in P:K, sharing TW Feats with your companion is a powerful ability. The problem is that both vanilla P:K and Wrath lack Ranged Teamwork Feats altogether, which are the main tool that 3/4 classes like Inquisitor and Hunter have on Ranged builds to make up for not getting Flanking bonuses or Crusader's edge. The whole point of Precise Companion in PnP/CotW (which have Ranged TW Feats) is that it gives the Hunter's Companion Precise Shot which is a prereq for the Teamwork Feat Enfilading Shot and requires Ranger for instance to burn two (useless) Feats on their Companion to unlock it. But Wrath doesn't have Ranged TW Feats at all making Ranged Hunter a needlessly uphill battle, rightfully unappealing and thus "niche," which they evidently then use as a rationale to never meaningfully deliver that promised stretch goal.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Desiderius Well, if your "bug reports" have the form of "this class is missing the feature I deem necessary, so add it ASAP reeeeeee!" then I understand why you have been banned everywhere. However, you're probably one of a kind.

 

[LannTheStupid]

On the other hand, Owlcat Games priorities in development are like this:

 

[Desiderius]

Desiderius Well, if your "bug reports" have the form of "this class is missing the feature I deem necessary, so add it ASAP reeeeeee!" then I understand why you have been banned everywhere. However, you're probably one of a kind.

I got banned by the retarded Tranzi community manager (he went over and got me banned on Steam too) the week after winning the Owlcat Forum award for generating the highest level of likes on my posts for telling some guy (who wrote a comprehensive and insightful account of the things he liked about the combat etc…) that he could just give a favorable review instead of tacking on a perfunctory panning of the crusade piece (which unlike his account of the combat gave no explanation for what he didn’t like) so it would be “fair and balanced”.

That’s it. Dude got pissed and reported me evidently, then no warning, no personal message, just permanent ban. My tone there was different because its not Codex but mod still did me for free.

So no, that’s not what got me banned. There was a general consensus in the forum that important stuff was missing and we were willing to help them identify those things and get them fixed and general frustration that no one at Owlcat seemed to want to do anything about it or engage with their own forum in any meaningful way. I wasn’t even a leading voice in that.

As for the game, yeah when you add a class then don’t implement the features that make that class worth playing (Counterspell on Arcanist, Ranged TW on Hunter) that’s a problem (especially when you have the gall to come back with “who cares, nobody plays those classes anyway” - yeah, no shit, that’s because you half-assed the implementation, nobody would play Mutation Warrior without the Mutations either, but the bigger problem is stuff that’s supposed to be there but isn’t or worse is implemented in a way that does the opposite of what its supposed to, killing the class.

You’ve got a whole generation of gamers who expect games to consist of a few broken things you can do with everything else being garbage. The fun is finding the brokenness, exploiting it for a week or two, shitting on the idiots trying anythimg else, then *moving on to the next game* because all that gets pretty trivial fast. That’s what they grew up on so that’s what games *are* to them.

If you want a game that can support two years of DLCs you can’t settle for that though. Luckily you’ve got a ruleset that supports Diablo II style experimentation and people coming up with new approaches and ways to play the game and I think you’ve also got main devs who appreciate that approach. That’s why the Tailwinds encourage people to come up with unique party configs and try out new classes.

But if you’ve got coders who have botched the implementation of those classes and people making excuses for those coders by trashing anyone who tries them you’ll never get there.

 

[The_Mask]

That’s it. Dude got pissed and reported me evidently, then no warning, no personal message, just permanent ban.

Steam forums are a notorious cesspit of human filth when it comes to mods. I came here from the Dark Souls ones, and I can tell you they have the exact same issues.

 

[Acrux]

The heart of any game with staying power (and the sales that go with them) is an evolving meta, where people find something that works then everybody chases that

Wut.

This is a single player RPG, not an MMO. Why the hell are you talking about metas?

 

[LannTheStupid]

Desiderius I am not very interested in your personal drama. I have been banned from using statuses on this exactly forum for more than 6 months now. So what?

My point is that bugs and missing features are cardinally different things.

A bug is something that already exists in the game, that is expected to behave one way, but does not.

A missing feature is something that was never added - which means it was never planned, was never coded and the resources for that were never budgeted. If someone reports about missing features in the bug report interface, such a player deserves everything from a ban by IP to a nuclear strike by geolocation.

That is why I am extremely skeptical to all the whining about "mah bugzzz". If one of the most advanced players does not distinguish between asking to fix something and asking to add something - then what can be said about uncouth masses who complain about "bugs".

I remember seeing here a person from the Italian financial IT sphere; he did understand what bugs are and what bugs are not. Probably, he has too much on his plate now.

 

[Desiderius]

The heart of any game with staying power (and the sales that go with them) is an evolving meta, where people find something that works then everybody chases that

Wut.

This is a single player RPG, not an MMO. Why the hell are you talking about metas?

There are no single-player forums. If you wanted to play a single-player game by that definition you wouldn’t be here.

This is the motte and bailey the subjectivists use to rot people’s brains. They make statements that are objective in effect (about the game, not the player) but hide behind the supposed subjectivity of personal experience to avoid any engagement with those statements they don’t like.

 

[Desiderius]

Desiderius I am not very interested in your personal drama. I have been banned from using statuses on this exactly forum for more than 6 months now. So what?

My point is that bugs and missing features are cardinally different things.

A bug is something that already exists in the game, that is expected to behave one way, but does not.

A missing feature is something that was never added - which means it was never planned, was never coded and the resources for that were never budgeted. If someone reports about missing features in the bug report interface, such a player deserves everything from a ban by IP to a nuclear strike by geolocation.

That is why I am extremely skeptical to all the whining about "mah bugzzz". If one of the most advanced players does not distinguish between asking to fix something and asking to add something - then what can be said about uncouth masses who complain about "bugs".

I remember seeing here a person from the Italian financial IT sphere; he did understand what bugs are and what bugs are not. Probably, he has too much on his plate now.

The game has both problems.

The Precise Companion ability gives the Companion no abilities. Is that a bug? A missing feature? An intended nerf? Owlcat has zero engagement with their playerbase on mechanics so one can only speculate. The important thing is that it isn’t there and that’s why the class isn’t played, not because it’s “weird” or “niche” or whatever.

You brought up my ban, not me, and you are the one playing semantic games, not us. We just want the game to work as advertised and envisioned by the main devs.