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Elric Galad
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Posts posted by Elric Galad
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BG1 feels way more dated than BG2 somehow. Encounter design is the most dated thing in BG1, with a lot of dumb foes and is overall quite repetitive.
That being said, BG1 still has a few unique perks :
- It's a low level experience. You have no money, overlevelled foes and even your weapons sometimes break.
- You will free to explore, more than many game of the sub-genre, comparable to an Elder Scrolls. These area are reallistically depiscted as pretty empty from interesting stuff. The game is quite immersive because the city of Baldur's Gate is literally fully included which is quite rare for a city of this size in a videogame. Even the Witcher series won't let you enter most buildings. That makes a lot of these area not so interesting, but there are still surprises here and there if you search everything.
So you're more likely to reject BG1 than PoE1&2 or BG2. But I still cherish it.
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49 minutes ago, SenSx said:
It's from the current version.
But if you have any doubt I can just add those new modified lines to the next version of the mod.
No I trust you
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On 2/24/2024 at 9:31 PM, SenSx said:
Hello,
I have slightly updated the french translation again for the last update, I will list the change in french for more confort, sorry for the invonvenience.
- J'ai finalement changé temps de rechargement par délai de réutilisation: car j'ai par curiosité lancé Tyranny pour voir quelle traduction avait été choisie, et il s'agit de délai de réutilisation, donc j'ai préféré gardé ce terme par cohérence même si le titre est certes dissocié. Après libre à toi Elric de remettre temps de rechargement si tu le préfères.
- J'ai écrit le mot secondes en toute lettres sur certaines description, le s tout seul ne rendait pas très bien je trouve.
- J'ai enlevé une coquille que j'avais laissé en anglais.
I will host the files on the next posts.
I will probably start my new playthough with the CP and BPM.
Thanks again Eric for that amazing mod, rogue are always my favorite class and RPG, and it was obvious it was lacking love in this game, you made it justice hope it will be fun !
Sounds great !
Did you start from the current version files ?
Don't hesitate to tell me when you start working on these files, so we don't work on them in parallel.
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6 hours ago, SenSx said:
Btw I'm making a trickster /Soulblade and I'm a bit lost with the whip ability choice now.
I don't really understand which one I should choose depending of what I want.
I have always chosen draining whip because it has always been superior.
Now I don't know anymore, my cipher isn't really focused on cipher spell: just borrowed instinct, blind, and ancestor memory, when needed.
He just uses Soul annhilation the rest of the time for dps.
Thanks
New biting Whip compared to Draining Whip :
+20% raw lash damages
Only 62,5% of focus per damages compared to DW. But since you do ~120% damages, you generate 75% focus.
Soul annihilation bonus damages get x1.33 special multiplicator. Which compensate lower focus generation.
So in a nutshell BW vs DW :
x1.2 weapon damages
x0.75 focus
x1 soul annihilation bonus damages.
I your case, BW feels the better choices, but DW would give you more versatility.
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3 hours ago, Chaospread said:
Well, but corpse eater can eat only kith or wilder, so you'd need a chanter evoking some ogres at least
Nah, they can devour Beasts too.
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9 minutes ago, thelee said:
no kidding.
dorudugan has just collapsed from being a tough puzzle to crack for any given party, to being the easiest megaboss, that literally any setup can take on (with enough time). no needing to worry about resource management or generation, or stacking on defenses or accuracy bonuses, or timing knock ups, dodging fireballs, etc
To be honnest, Dorudugan has always been the easiest Megaboss. Provided you have half a priest and a source of Brilliant for them, it's over. Even Belranga still need a bit of Injury management to be an auto-win.
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Out of all the ways I've read on how to cheese Dorudugan, this one is arguably the most elegant.
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3 hours ago, Boeroer said:
Animal Companions cannot have injuries, cannot die and cannot be destroyed - so there's no danger of permanent Bonded Grief.
And you can't eat them with your corpse eater either.
There was something so dumb about a Corpse Eater / Ranger eating their own pet that I had to try.
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4 hours ago, yorname said:
Do you think Forbidden Fist (ability) need a minor nerf from CM version? It's effectively a fist attack, so imo should be treated like other weapon abilities in terms of PL scaling - no bonus accuracy.
Okay no acc or PEN PL scaling makes sense for consistency matter.
I get why Damages scaling is a bit too good, but it still requires a bit of work and is consistent with other active abilities.
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2 hours ago, yorname said:
Do you think Forbidden Fist (ability) need a minor nerf from CM version? It's effectively a fist attack, so imo should be treated like other weapon abilities in terms of PL scaling - no bonus accuracy.
It doesnt' take Dual Wield into account, so PL compensate for that. Favors Sword & Boards but that's FF concept to be more defensive anyway.
It has a pseudo cooldown which limits its use but rewards High RES. I won't nerf something that favors RES.
Honnestly, I think it is fine granted how harder it is to generate wounds with FF (not that hard, just harder).
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Consider using Eager Blade that you can buy early and starts as Superb. You could transition to Engoliero later.
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1 hour ago, Chaospread said:
If I think a class which can work with all tens on every attribute, I'd say ranger: good accuracy without need of high PER, no need of MIG for healing, no need of INT because most of best abilities are instant or endless, good having high DEX but not essential, RES and CON if you go ranger as usual not needed at all.
So basically a melee ranger can have random stats.
(a ranged ranger is still very suboptimal with high RES/CON)
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13 hours ago, yorname said:
It also can't remove the actual HoT of Unbending.
Yeah, this is normal with BPM. Actual HoT of Unbending has fixed duration, can't be extended or reduced.
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1 hour ago, yorname said:
Probably unexpected but balanced consequence: tactician/caster can be worse than before even if the battlefield is completely under control, as hard CC can make enemies immune to engagement for a moment, the free brilliant can break every now and then, so the tactician may never get their high tier spells back without phantom foes/perception afflictions.
I don't think this is a problem since they get brilliant way too easily against few enemies. just an interesting observation.
Worse than before due to what ? Hard CC ? But there has always been hard CC, ney ?
Or worse due to having to wait for 3s for the first spell regen and 15s for the first high tier regen ?
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9 hours ago, yorname said:
It doesn't seem to benefit from multi-hit, with blunderbuss or Sun and Moon I can only reduce 30s. Why is blunderbuss recommended for it? Am I missing something?
Multiple rolls means several chances of success. Simple as that.
9 hours ago, yorname said:It has weird interaction with Refreshing Defense. With a few hits from a single-hit weapon, I increased it from ~100s to 600s. Doesn't seem to be exponential though.
It also can't remove the actual HoT of Unbending.
Several duration affecting effect can interact in a super weird manner. Hard code bug.
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2 minutes ago, Testlum said:
One thing that might be a reason behind having so many abilities under the per rest system could be that the developers wanted to encourage swapping loadouts. We already see part of that in the additonal proficiencies you get by levelling up. I can't say it worked out that way for me though.
Proceed rolling a Devoted
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9 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:
I think that's a helpful point you are both making - converting everything to per encounter would have a negative impact on game balance, or at least for the people who are interacting with the rest mechanic in a meaningful way (Rymrgand/Woedica's Challenges, no rest runs, etc.). Though I'm hearing you say that the trinkets are probably an exception to that, given their power level. Also, maybe 2/rest is the better fit here, at least for some of them.
Yeah, 2 per rest would make some sense.
9 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:Maybe the better question, though, is what SHOULD the rules or logic be to determine which are which? Is it the overall strength or impact of the ability? The amount of "enchant points" being spent on it in terms of itemization (if that's even a thing)?
There's a good reason why BPM never messed with general item balance. Are items supposed to be balanced in the first place ?
Situational items for example shall not consider bad IMHO. Reason is because you can swap items. That's how CRPG worked from the dawn of time.
Resounding call useless ? Tell that to Auranic.
Beza's tooth ? Good vs spirit, and for Eothas' sake, that -2 AR stackable with other debuff on Crit !
Scourge of Bezzelo ? Best in slot for interrupting (but you get it so late).
Weak items are a worthy subject of discussion. But some (Gladiator sword, Reflex Boots) are supposed to be early game items. So should they be good ? Okay weapon quality can help fixing that : an early game item can have good unique properties if the quality is low (you can always improve them later). And maybe blue items (Reflex boots) can be bad as they are not unique.
BPM fixed broken stuff for items, not bad stuff. I didn't want to engage on this path. It's extremely hard to define a general rule. You may want all items to be somewhat "balanced", but I'm warning you it is a huge task, comparable to what BPM for abilities.
So I'm just going to point a few case where it would make sense to give them a little rework :
- Trinkets, for the reasons discussed above
- Sad weapon category as a whole (e.g. we can discuss case of the warhammers)
- Sad design of a particular ability (Quieting, most of that Godlike amulet properties)
- Really scarce per rest ability. Maybe all per rest should be x2, unless they are very great.
- Absence of legendary quality on Soulbound equipement. Partially done by this : FG Soulbound Upgrade at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
- Bad concurrent upgrades (shall be really strictly worse... Steadfast on Kill for Quieting just replaces 1s of Quieting, so I will NOT tweak it if it was me)
- Absence of weapon/armor scaling for item summons (same as BPM Summon Rebalance did for abilities summon)
- Also consider making more obvious obscure display. Too many items have been designed by Wael ("Grants random Mind Inspirations" and the likes...). It would not change gameplay but such a QoL improvement ! Why do I have to navigate through gamedta files get an exact idea of what an item does ?
7 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:Looking these over, and I agree on Resounding Call and Glacierbane. Last Word I always thought worked fine for an engagement tank, but looking at it again, I think it's lacking. Specifically, effects that only work on lower levelled enemies are contradictory design at best. They do nothing in the case you most need them, and out-levelling content to make them work more often undermines the whole project of paying close attention to the items you're using. The smallest adjustment would be to add a lesser effect that works on same and higher level enemies. The best case, though, is to just change it to an effect that works on everything.
Using Last Word as a test case (Lower level enemies cannot use active abilities for 2/3.0 sec on Critical Hit), I think it's probably fine to just make this work on everyone. Writ of War and Writ of Sorcery exist now. Even if it did work on everyone, 2.0/3.0 seconds is very short. Prone is a stronger effect, and prone on crit exists for a few items. I'm thinking upgrade it to 3.0/5.0 seconds.
The other enchantments could use a pass, too (Steadfast for 6s on kill is pretty weak - should be at least 8s, if not 10s).
My opinion on warhammer :
- Resounding Call : not the greatest, but there are a couple of very annoying battle where it is BiS. Nagas, 1st SSS fight, Auranic, FS final boss. Almost a "quest item".
- Glacierbane : 2 great upgrades : one is basically Animancer blade with a twist (not 100% raw but can overpenetrate). One is suspension of beneficial effect. Does I have to comment why it is great ? Still not your "main" weapon, but these 2 abilities are great.
- Last Word : just remove the lower level condition. This is ill design. The reason it would great is that it works vs anything. Affliction and Interrupting effect can get somewhat resisted. This not. And bosses get a lots of resistance/immunities. Maybe Splintered Haft shoul be aligned with BPM/CP tweak to Wounding Shot (if using a different status).
So yup, it would end up as a situational/backup weapon category, but is it an issue ? One gets several weapon slots for a reason.
7 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:Can someone remind me how duration of item proc abilities scale in terms of duration? Is that "classless" power level? Universal power level?
The answer was implicitly contained in my previous post. They don't.
Scaling for Weapons
1) Passive scales with weapon quality
2) Active scales with weapon quality AND "classless" Power Level
Reminder of the general scaling rules for other equipment abilities :
1) Passive scales with nothing (so are bad if they are attacks)
2) Active scale with classless Power Level
Passive only scales with weapon quality (if applicable). And weapon quality is not about duration. So they don't scale (proc are passive). But consider class passive don't scale either (except exceptions
). Even BPM which gave some scaling to all passive (accuracy, damages, penetration) but never made the duration scale.
Active ability duration scales according to normal active ability rules.
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4 minutes ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:
Good example. It's slightly better than a vanilla weapon when you enchant it to remove Fragile, but it's so marginal that you're honestly better off saving the money you would use to upgrade its quality and just using a vanilla exceptional/superb Battle Axe until you get Magran's Favor.
To fix this, I would add an additional enchant to the base item. Option A) play up the obsidian angle and steal one from Kahua Hozi, probably Knapped Glass to make it more unique relative to other Battle Axe options. Option B) play up the imbued with souls of warriors and priests angle and give it a defensive On Crit effect - a small heal over time, or bonus defenses.
Great points here. Fixing the action economy seems pretty easy - most of these could be moved to .5s/4s or even 1s/3s cast times without doing any harm. They are late game items (some literally gained from the hardest encounters in the game), so increasing their power level doesn't do much harm to the overall difficulty or pace of the game. Their opportunity cost is relatively low, because they use an item slot that has nothing else in it (for non-wizards), so that frees up some design room. Once we fix the general use case issue, we can look at each one and try to balance them with each other and their relative challenge level to acquire.
The thing I can't stop thinking about, though, is how offensive On Rest abilities and items built around them by definition fall into this category of Rarely Used/Built Around. They are a limited resource, which creates a base level psychological barrier to using them ("What if I use it in this battle, but need it in the next and don't have it?"). But even if you can clear that barrier, let's say, and are committed to using them, you then have the added work of creating a decision tree for when you use it. What are the conditions when you should use it? Which fights? How many enemies? Etc. This problem is largely not an issue for defensive on rest abilities. If you're at risk of dying, you use the ability. The decision tree is much clearer there, and the risk for not using the ability is obvious - I might die, which might lead to more deaths and a reload. This second barrier is much less of an issue for per encounter abilities. You know you should use it every fight, so what's the best time in any given fight to use it. If you make a mistake on any one particular fight - oops, used it too early when I hit less targets, or when their defenses were too high, etc - then it's okay, you try again the next time.
All of that is a long winded way of saying - why not just make most on rest abilities into per encounter? It seems so clear to me in terms of how I see the game, I'm curious what I'm missing, or what other perspectives there are on this.
In term of balance, you can always rest so it shouldn't be too much of a problem out of... Eothas challenge I guess ?
But Per Rest items are sort of mutually exclusive with a "no rest" approach where you try to stack as much "until next rest" bonuses as possible. That's quite niche in term of gamer population but it is still a bit of powercreeping.
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1 hour ago, Boeroer said:
Then, with the right apporach you can quickly get +3 to 3 attributes which isn't bad either.
Works on summon kills too, I guess ?
3 minutes ago, Kaylon said:Besides the tricks Boeroer mentioned, the proc is affected by the same damage/accuracy/penetration bonuses as the weapon (becoming much stronger than the original spell) and can be increased further with sneak attack, deathblows, etc. Since the proc is considered a weapon attack it will also replenish focus for a cipher allowing a rogue/soul blade to chain kills very easily.
Reminder of the general scaling rules for weapon abilities :
1) Passive scales with weapon quality
2) Active scales with weapon quality AND "classless" Power Level (classless Power Level scales as Single Class Power Level and ends up at 9 for every character, also used for Monastic Armed Training)
=> That's why Thunderous Report and the likes have such disgusting damages
Reminder of the general scaling rules for other equipment abilities :
1) Passive scales with nothing (so are bad if they are attacks)
2) Active scale with classless Power Level f
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2 hours ago, Boeroer said:
The early Blade of the Endless Paths is an excellent unique weapon to me. The potential -20 deflection on (4)crits synergizes very well with the auto-accumulating ACC bonus it gets. The debuff stacks with all other deflection debuffs - such as the pike modal. It even stacks with itself if you have two or more BotEP on the field (Wizard's Phantoms, Watery Double, Living Illusions). Theoretically one can stack unlimited instances of the deflection debuffs because every newly added phantom/double adds a new stackable instance. If you prolong them all (e.g. with Dispersed Suffering) you can theoretically drive anybody's deflection into the realm of sub-zero. Not that this is practical... just saying.
New Dorudugan approach spotted
2 hours ago, Boeroer said:---
Anyway: a weapon type I almost never use (as tools for melee dmg) are hatchets. The modal is not very useful imo.
The unique are quite niche, that's the main issue IMHO.
2 hours ago, Boeroer said:Wands are also kind of meh to me.
Both unique wands are quite nice. A Whale of a Wand is very strong with pulsating spells, and Weyc's Wan is a good Empowering casting stick. Granted you don't want to use them as actual weapons.
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Estocs are okay, and have the distinct advantages of universally good ones being accessible early (BofEP and Eager Blade) , which is priceless for a two hander (No purchasable Stalker Patience or Sun&Moon).
BofEP has excellent properties, I think.
Granted, yeh, they are more about PEN, but so are half of two hander, and two handers as a whole are more about PEN.
Probably not top tier for a optimized DPS, but works well for reliable DPS. Estoc modal also doesn't trade damages for PEN but deflection. Having base 12 PEN on demand is neat.
The issue is Pierce damages type is often resisted, so you need a backup weapon. No way for Devoted, but apart for them, I think they are okay.
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3 hours ago, Lamppost in Winter said:
I've been wondering if blunderbusses are ever viable as a primary, damage dealing weapon. Not hand mortars, not special abilities like Thunderous Report or using Powder Burns to trigger Streetfighter; just using regular old blunderbusses to shoot guys. I've tried it once or twice, mainly on Maia (and then mainly for Concussive Tranquiliser), but I feel like they're always at a severe deficit in penetration and base damage.
Blunderbuss (and Frostseeker) trades DPS (and a bit of PEN) for multi attacks. Multi attacks is a bonus on its own and has a lot of combo potential :
- Tranquilizer as you said. Bane of Auranic life IMHO.
- BPM Gambit
- Really any condition inflicting or interrupting attack, just for getting more rolls. Worth mentionning Stunning Surge (almost guaranteed refund vs single target) and Confounding Blind
- Combusting Wounds, Avenging Storm (28-40 additional base damages per attack), resonant touch,
- Dispelling mirrored image, iron skin, etc...
Without this advantages, they are indeed meh.
Worth mentionning Kitchen Stove cone attack is one of the most potent per encounter weapon activable ability.
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On 2/9/2024 at 9:37 AM, SenSx said:
Ok thanks.
Do you plan to make other changes that will only be effective on new characters ?
I'm hesitant to start a new game or wait.
New version availble,
Mostly addressing Wild Mind and Biting Whip reworks, so feel free to test them.
By the way, Wild Mind works with existing save by re-adding the "ability" by console command.
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Cipher's Whip abilities are supposed to turn off at full focus (except for Ascendant).
But Draing Whip does not turn off at full focus for Vanilla Cipher, Soulblade and Wild Mind. You still get +20% weapon damages (focus drain bonus is of course irrelevant).
This is clearly an oversight since it does turn off for Soul Whip and Beguiler's Draining Whip. (ascendant does not turn off but this is normal and it's a different ability).
Note that the error in the data file was pretty obvious once the issue was spotted, so it will be corrected in next BPM version.
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Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by Elric Galad
Technically, no, it isn't possible.
I tried. It failed. That's why it is the way it is.
Why would have done such a weird design if there were an alternative
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Edit : to be more specific, it is because Spiritshift is a modal that it works. Holy Radiance is the holy class bound ability that isn't a modal and should be given infinite use : this specifically doesn't work, hence the x999 uses per encounter which mimics its gameplay.