Elric Galad

I didn't like Bonded Fury costing Bond because you could run out of bond, but setting the bond regen to infinite duration solves this. I didn't like Bonded Fry costing 1 Bond (even with a duration balanced around it) because you could use it to purge afflictions too efficiently. To be fair, the ideal solution would be an actual passive with 15% Bond on Graze/Hit/Crit. This one won't be particularly overpowered compared to other SC Passives. As part of an active effect, it's weird to evaluate because active aren't supposed to give back ressource, so I have no ability to compare. At best, some have a refund. So the 15% Bond on Graze/Hit/Crit part can be seen as a "class buff" to SC Ranger more than a buff to Bonded Fury. I only use Bonded Fury as a "host" for this effect cause it is more or less pickable by any build. The point is to make the buffing (not bond regen) part of Bonded Fury "exactly as desirable" compared to the other active, since it is the part that would cost Bond in the long term in this design. Or more accurately to make it desirable in the right situation and less desirable in the wrong situation (as for all active abilities). Of course, the "right values" have to be found to accomplish this objective. To avoid complex calculation about whether it cost bond, allow marginal or big bond gain. As I said, the point is to make the pure buff part balanced for 2 bonds which leads to following point... You don't like buff that aren't active all the time. I do think it is important for defensive buffs though, since you don't want your defense to sometimes drop. But Bonded Fury is more all around than defensive buff. Shadowed Hunters and Hardy Companion are there to play the role of defensive buffs for the pet. More Offensive buff can be active "as much as they can" and still be relevant to that extant. Basically an offensive buff active 75% of time is 75% of the efficiency of the same buff active 100% of the time. This is actually the question I am still unsure about : we can still discuss about the level of power (mostly tied to duration) of the active buff part of bonded fury. Bonded Fury level of power is not that easy to compare to self buff from other classes because : - It is about the pet which only has a fraction of power of a character. If pet is "half a character" in terme of power, it needs to have "twice the effect" in term of power. But that factor is up to debate. - It comes in the form of a multiple Inspiration buff, which sometimes feel redundant (a problem shared with Inspired Discipline). Hardy Companion and Shadowed Hunters make a third of the ability not that relevant (Intuitive / Energized do synergize though). Resolve and Acute are not that great for a pet (still useful and needed to promote pet active 🙂 ). Since 2.5 it is a bit compensated by the uniqueness of Energized, but it might not be ideal. I'm still thinking about this point, the closer comparison I can find is Inspired Discipline, but it isn't that intuitive because of the 2 issues above. I do think Shadowed Hunters (because it provides healing for pet and offense for ranger) and Heal Companion (because healing) are inherently better suited for your playstyle (pet tank, ranger spank). So they will have natural priority over Bonded Fury. Which doesn't discard the question about when you'll want to cast Bonded Fury. One need to feel "Bonded Fury buffing part" good enough for 2 Bonds, even if not necessarily no brainer to cast.

I don't understand your concern about 0 bond, but maybe I expressed it confusingly. My proposal for bonded fury (second thought taken into account) : - 2 Bonds, no cooldown, 0.5s/0s cast/rec - Energized and all tier 2 inspirations for 30s (not 45s or it would compare too well to some other active) - 15% chance of bond on Graze/Hit/Crit until the end of encounter. This effect won't require any refresh. You will just have to refresh the Inspirations. So once Bonded has been cast once, there won't be any issue about zero bond anymore. Your pet will always get %15 Bond chance, and when you hit zero, you will still have as much chance to generate bond. Granted you may have to make some choice to maintain Bonded Fury all the time, but you will generate more bonds than currently (chance 10% to 15%, and 100% uptime for the bon regen). So in a way it is more versatile (it would be super easy to have 100% Hardy Companion uptime). In the rare case you hit 0 Bond without having cast Bonded Fury even once, well... you still have Empower point... or Potion of Enlightenment... or just you shouldn't have made this mistake anyway. Well, I've made clear why I don't want 1 bond cost for Bonded Fury. Nice 🙂

Okay, for Bonded Fury, an alternative idea would be to : - Set it back to 2 Bonds with no cooldown - Set the Bond regen mechanism as lasting till the end of battle. So once you cast it once, you won't have to think a lot about whether casting it again will result in a big Bond gain, marginal gain or loss I would consider being a bit more generous with other parameters (inspirations set to last 45s instead of 30s, 15% Bond gain when dealing damages) to compensate for the upfront cost. Better than 1 Bond cost in my book to avoid a "semi immunity" to Afflictions. Basically it would be "2 abilities for 1 Point", an active to reasonably buff your pet and a passive to regen bond. Both would fill balanced as individual abilities, so it is a bit generous to get both for 1 point, but you still have the constraint of casting it once to get the passive effect. I would aslo set back Healing Chain to 2 Zeal with no Cooldown, with a minor buff to 12 health per tick. I had the concern that even at 2 Zeals it could be too strong in favorable conditions (targetting only 2 narrow targets) granted the potential infinite Zeal of SC Paladin, but this issue was solved by Divine retribution rework. The recent Jump range reduction was also made to allow easier focusing. The ability isn't easy to use, but giving 300 base health to 2 targets for 2 Zeals feel quite good to me. This would completely eliminate Cooldowns, except for Spiritshift and Holy Radiance since I have no good alternative for them (and Cooldown is a strict improvement from once per encounter anyway). Since I'm buffing Bonded Fury to 45s, I plan to do the same with the sorta similar Inspired Discipline. It feels sometimes hard to optimize since Tier 1 inspirations feel a bit redundant with some Fighter self buff or Party buff.

So you're telling me that a Wiz / Monk is now able to gain Monastic Unarmed Training and Trasncedant Suffering through normal levelling ? Ahem, I should check this one, I bet there's a way to prevent it from happening. OK, basically it is becasue I didn't include the "not Monk" condition in the added ability. It is easy to correct. That's part of the point. With a lower cooldown, PL/INT won't get any benefit ! I thought about it again for 2.5.1, but until now, I haven't found an alternative way that fits what I was trying to do (allow a "clean" way to gain bond) If at some point I get an idea that fully satisfies my views, I will consider removing the cooldown. Hey good luck !

Indeed. Corrected.

Just before anyone ask : it is not technically possible to mod with BPM. I did the change for Conjurer's Familiar (not counting toward summon limit) which resulted in a Familiar almost unable to fight. It was OK because the familiar is quite bad at combat anyway, and you use it mostly for the passive bonus. But for pet it would be another story.

Version 2.5.1 just released to tweak down a couple of overtuned ranger stuff, correct the immortal Paladin bug and make Wall of Flashing Steel Guile gain less confusing. Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

I don't think it's technically possible unfortunately. In the same fashion, it is impossible to get 1 handed bonus with fists (no way way to tell the game that you fight with one hand only 🙂 )

It depends too much on foes Deflection, pet own buff, pet category (cat and stag with intuitive...) to give an unique number. INT has especially big impact. Without Bond cost, the Bond gain is proportional to INT. With Bond cost, it is even worse since the first Bond gain with just put you back at zero gain. The ugly things that one has to do just to prevent multi-hit weapons from being an issue... Could have put a cooldown like for Divine Retribution Zeal gain. Because it costs 3 Bonds in Vanilla 🙂 Actually Bonded Fury was added later so no foes in the base game has Bonded Fury. I haven't check the DLC. It's complicated because it won't help with Holy Radiance and Spiritshift use Cooldown too, and I can't think about an alternative for them. At least it means that I should avoid using Cooldown from now on.

Not that complex, but depends on foes, type of pets, etc... It is complex fur ultimate users, less for us that can discuss it quietly here. That said, there is quite a big major reason to put a cooldown on a free/cheap Bonded Fury, and that's afflictions. Bonded Fury cures any affliction. So it could be used to cure anything. At 2 Bonds, it isn't that big of an issue, but even at 1 Bond and granted that it also refresh duration, it would be still quite a powerful positive side effect of an already powerful ability. All Ranger Active Abilities involving pet (including Ghostheart summons) are tagged beast. Not Play Dead and Takedown since they are not ranger's but pet's abilities and won't benefit from any bonus PL (since even a Good Boy Wolf can't carry Spine of Green Thicket in his mouth). By the way about Deadly Surprise and Takedown : Pet are ALWAYS Single Classed, so their PL always scales as Single Class would do. The effect is super marginal in Vanilla (only affects Takedown PL multiplicative attack damages) but applies in BPM to pet inflicted statuses.

Hi all, I found an hilarious bug with 2.5. Divine Retribution chance to get Zeal back based on Health (equal to percentage of Health Loss) also applies when knocked down. So when Knocked Down (0% health) you gain exactly 1 Zeal every 12s. What's even more funny is that you will always gain enough zeal to trigger Providence. Basically, in "Balance" Polishing Mod v2.5, Single Class Paladin ALWAYS revives. Expect an Hotfix quite soon 🙂

Basically this, with a party 🙂 Or maybe drugs? That is what I was thinking. Lower proc to 10%. Initially plannned 15% on hit/crit only but implementation failed so I rounded up and added Grazes too. I basically rounded every thing up for ranger with this version 🙂 Since it is an ability to get back ressouces, it makes more sense to make it free. Ot it would involve complex calculation to check if beneficial. I will also put the cooldown to 90s (to reward high INT and PL ; spine of green thicket is somewhat of a decent choice for SC Ranger Now, especially as a caster stick before transitionning to ranged / backup crush damages. Works on Binding Roots too) Overall I might have gone a bit too far with 2.5 ranger buff. I might lower a bit heal/hardy companion to 10s and Vengeful Grief to 33% speed (48% with Nimble). Yeah, I didnt figure about script (I'm a Control freak that don't use script even if using FF12 gambit was a Smart move from Obsidian IMHO) but Cooldown mechanism has becomes somewhat of a base mechanic for BPM. I use it for "signature abilities" that deserve to be cast out of normal resource system. Implemented mostly for Spiritshift and Holy Radiance, but pet can be considered as signature for ranger too, so it fits my views.

Yeah, Feedback would be appreciated. I'm slightly worried about having overbuffed bonded fury, although a mere 90s cooldown instead of 60s would be an easy fix. Would allow INT higher than 30 to be useful, and it would still be somewhat covered by going invisible with Shadowed Hunters in solo.

It is a spell for Skaen priest. Tactician can get Brilliant from their passive, which is better than Acute. Intuitive is less redundant. In general Tactical Barrage has more raw power than Displined Strike... But Disciplined Strike fits better in the majority of build because you can get INT inspiration from other sources.

Display only Bug confirmed (apparently for all instance of Brilliant this description may happen) but seems to be a Vanilla thing (cause it also appears in French. I haven't modified anything in French, modified stuff appears in English. Anyway I won't correct it this time. New version 2.5 has just been uploaded : Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Feel free to test, especially SC Paladins and Rangers (and Fighters for Take the Hit) You may be interested in @NoqnStandalone Seeker Slayer Survivor mod to try new builds : S4 - Standalone Seeker Slayer Survivor at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

Experience, and a bit of forum help I guess. Basically the gamedata files are structured around objects that call each other using ID in UUID formats. UUID numbers can be generated from website (they are random enough to be unique). Each of the files have different categories of objects. The 3 main ones (the ones that are basically always opened on my PC) are : - abilities, with cost, link to description files, passive/active, link to attack and link to SELF INSTANT (0.5s activation isnt instant, but Savage Defiance is self instant) status and passive status - Attacks with casting time, recovery, Pen/damages/range, bounce, Aoe, target, link to inflicted status. Used by most actions including non instant buff, healing, summons to set their number and nature, etc... - status which governs the properties of active and passive status such as stats buffs, healing/Dot values, tick period, duration Special conditions are a bit split between the 3 files. The Type of summons is actually a Special property of the "attack that summons". Check the attack file with the name of the summons. Also there is a website that describes ALL parameters. It won't give you all the tricks but it helps. It isn't easy on the beginning. That's why I was suggesting to allow self exhortation, because I know how to do (you have to find and change 1 parameter per ability) and it is a good first step. I honnestly have no experience about scripts so I can't tell.

Okay, since I want to release a new BPM version soon, I'll go with the following : - 0.5/4s cast/recovery, 12s base duration, 1 discipline, 2,5 radius - Take the Hit grants 33% less damages taken by the to allies in the AoE - Take the Hit transfers stacking 33% more damages taken by the fighter for each protected ally (so +66% damages taken for 2 allies affected, +99% for 3 allies, etc...). I think it's less volatile than a 50% reduction in term of balance (I slightly buffed duration to compensate a bit, not much since you don't want the penalty to last forever). I'm pretty sure it won't break the game this way (33% damages reduction is great, especially for self-inflicted damages, but is it that much greater that +20 Deflection and +20 all defenses ? It is only more reliable vs High Accuracy and stacks better with other buff - there are not many active buffs that reduce damages) and that it would be useful. I also expect Fighter to be able to tank even with some active charge, by the virtue of Unbending (might require a bit of CON to avoid spike). We'll see how it goes, and if it requires further tweaking.

It's technically doable, even rather easy. The issue is that it enables to use all active abilities on items equipped by your clones. Which is broken for an "official" mod. But you could still tweak it yourself and rules out using active item abilities on your clones. This order of magnitude, yes. I'm actually thinking about +2 Zeal per downed ally with a cooldown of 30s, so the ability would mostly work as well as in vanilla for parties without many summons. You could. PoE2 is not hard to mod, I think. Consider it's my first mod ever and I'm no dev IRL. You can give it a try by enabling exhortations on oneself. It's not very complicated using the many tutorials. It could even be a nice small mod on Nexus (I've not found this by quick research).

Somehow Yes, but I've tweaked Tactician several Times too so it could be messed. Tactician should get the normalna brilliant Now (but under new condition : needs also to have more than 50% health, anf he gets Confused and longer recovery under 50% health. Not sure, but anyway it would mess with monk and wiz who only have non controlable summons. Honnestly the safest way is to put a Cooldown on Divine Retribution Zeal gain, so it works well on "normal party"

I think it works that well in this fight because the Megaboss has AoE Attacks that systematically kills your skellies. But in a larger party, a barb could have done the job. The annoying thing is that it is really only the skelly chant that leads to such absurd Zeal gain. Other summons work great, but not to such extreme extant. Brilliant is still 1 resource per 6s. The only BPM tweak was to make higher spell Tier more rare to regen (and it starts giving back resource 3s avec the start, not immediately).

But when casting a cone ability, you can rotate at will. It would requires a Cone Aura to work as you describe. But as far as I know, it doesn't exist. Because you mentionned a "fairly large radius" so I thought you suggested a larger radius than the current circle. Nevermind Maybe the issue is the 50% values is just too strong. You were suggesting to add positioning constraint, which Swift partially solves. But I think I didnt get your arc idea. It is actually the very first change I tried. The issue is that damages transferred have 0 PEN. I couldn't change it. Which is both too strong and weird.

Well, that's quite out of the box as a proposal. I'm not sure I want to base the design on AI behavior. At least you don't have to remove allies engagement. That's a bit too weird. If one wants to build around, one can simply not pick engagement (or pick a ranged weapon). What I like with the "-X% damages taken for allies/+X% damages taken for self per ally" is that it is quite straightforward, easy to understand and somewhat aligned with the feeling of the initial ability. But I also agree that it could be a bit broken. It's really hard to get an idea. That said, if 50% feels too much, I could go with 40% or even 33%. The ability would still be nice since -% damages is quite rare. -40% could feel right because of all opportunity cost I see with this design. Or I could lower the duration to 6s.

Sure, but also on a frontliner with Unbending active, or any combination of defenses that would make it survival with a massive damages increase. But that's what Take the Hit currently does. Indeed, you can't. You can't change the damage reflection. But Take the Hit currently redirect some damages to the caster. But as said, @Shai Hulud, it's gross since your clothinling will redirect half of its taken damages to your hevaily armored fighter. There are some hidden costs. First the recovery, which should lower your fighter utility. Second Toughened Fury (the backbone of BPM SC) would be much less convenient. You can still take damages, but +200% damages for 4 targets would hurt. Third, all your beautiful defenses as a fighter would be much less usefull. +3 engagements, +20 all defenses, etc... Still usable but one isn't tanky with +200% damages taken. Forth, super bad interaction with summons. If you have plenty summons around and are protecting them, your fighter would be even more vulnerable. I would even say that it could somewhat refreshing to have some party tanking NOT based on summons. And of course, the risk of loosing the fighter from some random AoE. I like the idea of lowering mobility. Breaking on fighter movement would be tedious to implement, but it could break on protected target movement. Arguably it would even be an advantage to prevent summons from being protected. There could also be a penalty for fighter such as -75% movement (or -100% ??) as long as at least one target is protected. Or both. I don't want to make it over complicated though, and I'm not fully convinced it's necessary to add a penalty. But lowering movement is a good direction to look into.

Don't think an arc would change that much I you sit on the backrow, you can have your arc in front of you and cover the front row. It is even easier than a circle. Also SC Fighter has access to Swift just in case (from inspired strike, not the most convenient but still). It is 50% more damages taken by the fighter (per ally, stacking), not done by them. And 50% less damages taken by allies, not done. So your allies take less damages and you take more. The more allies protected the more damages you take. I know about Divine immolation, I've done some forum research before my proposal 😉 This would still work fine with (any) Immolation by reducing by 50% the damages taken by the paladin (for this part, it would be as before). The fighter won't take immediate damages from Paladin self immolation, but since it would take more damages from any source, he would still be quite interested by the extra healing specifically from Divine Immolation. It doesn't break the interaction with Immolation, but it is supposed to make Take the Hit less combo dependant, although it works great with any self damages (better than Voidward). So my proposal : - 0.5/4s cast/recovery, 10s base duration, 1 discipline, 2,5 radius (basically these are unchanged) - Take the Hit grants 50% less damages taken by the to allies in the AoE - Take the Hit transfers stacking 50% more damages taken by the fighter for each protected ally (so +100% damages taken for 2 allies affected, +150% for 3 allies, etc...).

Well, it's additive, as always. So if you would take 10, it would be from 30 to 35. Note that these bonus damages should stack additively with other bonus damages (weapon quality, mig, etc...). The same way as double inversions in general. +100% damages cancel -50% damages. (5 SC Fighters would get +200% damages -100% (cancelled by -50%, so +100%). In this case, the bonus from several fighters doesn't stack while malus does. ) What do you mean, exactly ? Vanilla : out of 100 damages : - 50 goes to target - 50 goes to fighter Your proposal (???) out of 100 damages : - 50 goes to target - 25 goes to fighter It is doable with mathematical trick (hand werdish display): - 25% resistance - 33% of the 75% left to the fighter. Or is it something else ? Pain Link points to the attacker (hard coded, I checked it too yesterday). Deal