Carpone wrote on Jul 1^st, 2013 at 11:24pm:

Ya, I figured you'd bring that up. I haven't actually noticed a lesser number of offhand attacks while beating up the kobolds in the test dojo. Not sure whether that only applies to unarmed or also to actual two weapon use.

I'll check what happens when I use handwraps and get back to you.

Arkat wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2013 at 12:08am:


Woah . . . I can check that really easy on a tempest.  BRB . . .

Bigjunk wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2013 at 12:24am:

You could very well be correct. Maybe I'll fraps it or something and count.

HairyO wrote on Jul 1^st, 2013 at 9:21pm:


Disco/Web bot?  With the enhancement pass, you won't be able to pull that off; one is Enchantment and the other is Conjuration, and the days of the truly versatile Archmage are dead because the only thing you can achieve super-high DC's in is Necromancy.  Your secondary "speciality" won't even matter.

NOTpopejubal wrote on Jul 1^st, 2013 at 11:04pm:


You might be delighted, but it doesn't make it a good thing.  It is not a good thing, it's a fucking retarded thing.  What do you suppose Wizards are for, if it's not versatility of options?

HairyO wrote on Jul 1^st, 2013 at 11:11pm:


The whining right now is because they're not capable of doing any of the three.  And 1 of 3 does NOT fucking work.

The entire point of a Wizard is that their "speciality" lands most of the time on anything that isn't particularly resistant or immune to it, and that they have fallback options to exploit other vulnerabilities if their main schtick doesn't work.  A well-built and geared Wizard should be able to nuke or insta-kill anything they can't CC, CC or nuke anything they can't insta-kill and CC or insta-kill anything they can't nuke.  That's why they get all those fucking spells and feats instead of a crap-ton of spellpoints.

Full-retard saves and random (partial or complete) immunities on trash mobs means that you have to ultra-specialise in ONE thing, which then lands SOME of the time, and your fallback options are so weaksauce that you're basically not contributing.  A scenario in which there is, say, a 10-point difference between your best and worst DC's when there's only a 5-point difference between the best and worst enemy saves means that everything you can do that isn't your main speciality - and for Wizards that is, and is supposed to be, a lot of stuff - is actually useless.

I'm fine with Sorcs being able to pull off nothing but one of the three main categories, or one really effectively and one fallback.  The downside of being a Sorceror is that in exchange for the crap-ton of sp, you have a limited spell selection and not enough feats to pull off being universally effective.  That's OK.  It's not OK when your damage options are shot to hell and your fallbacks land no more than 10% of the time.

This is a generic problem with EE content (in fact, a generic problem with D&D) and any toon that invokes saving throws.  You can build a character with a variety of options - via splashes, feats, twists and so on - which allow you to be useful and effective in all content right up to EE, at which point you become a fucking one-trick pony.  If you're lucky enough for your most effective trick to work, that is.

The balance issue is basically the same thing as the original AC system, where the full-effort-invested AC was (much, much) more than 20 points higher than the moderate-effort-invested AC.  It's the same deal.  The gap between the highest and lowest DC's the enemies are defending against is on the same scale - or even bigger than - the random number generator used to determine the results.  A Bard can Fascinate with a Perform check result that can easily hit the 80's; which means that if you want mobs to have a chance at saving, you either have to make them immune to that sort of effect or give them a base save that is bigger than the DC achievable on any standard spell.  To a slightly lesser extent, the same applies to Stunning Fist/Blow: my first-life, low-geared Monk can hit a DC on his stunning fist that's easily 12 points higher than the very best I can do on the caster I've spent ten times as much effort working on.

There is absolutely no way - no way at all - that you can provide a reasonable chance of failure against the stronger option that doesn't utterly invalidate the weaker option simply by tweaking enemy saves.  The only way it can be done is by changing the mechanics.  This is why the recent EE's (and to an extent, even EH) blow goats from a DC-casting perspective, and why the "one speciality out of three" option is fucking useless.  Unless you can get your "non-specialised" options to within a relative hair's breadth of effectiveness of your main schtick, they are of literally no value at all.

And THEN you end up with Shiradi Clerics, Shiradi Monkchers, Shiradi Wizards, Shiradi Sorcs and Shiradi Druids: not because Shiradi is great, but because everything else is a steaming pile of crap.

Mokune wrote on Jun 30^th, 2013 at 12:19pm:


It's not every weapon, but lots of things (pally capstone included) break celestia

or fucking around,  for some reason double rainbow has a high chance of causing grease for me,  it's fun to shoot at madstone skelly and hear the screams on the the mic of who the cast grease.

Glenalth wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2013 at 1:59am:


Possible,  my first discovery of it was in a tod on my arti with it back when ed's first came out.  Greased the guild leader right off the edge of the platform shooting at the mob he was attacking on his barb.  Still makes me smile.

Darkrok wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2013 at 9:13am:


Rock Boots. 2 slots, some acid spell power and a superior lore along with a couple guards that you'll never see go off in EE.