Elric Galad

Still not too enthusiastic with Swift, but Energized has 2 great advantages : - Goes fairly well with Ranger interrupting theme - Reduces the anti synergy between Bonded Fury and Shadowed Hunters. Aware becomes useless but Intuitive and Energized synergizes which makes using both more neutral. Yeah! It costs 1 Bond. It involved a lot of maths to compare with accurate wounding shot as a benchmark DPS. Accurate wounding shot is still on top with single ranged weapons but isn't instant damages (through stacking with CP) and does not have the utility of double procs. Edit : another option for Bonded Fury would be 0 Bond, 0 recovery but a cooldown (as other signature abilities such as BPM spiritshift and radiance). With either 90s or 120s cooldown. With Energized and maybe 15% Bond or hit. Something like that.

@thelee mmm but if Swift becomes the "main reason" to go SC : - why would Maia herself go SC Ranger? - why would one go SC Ranger instead of Scout or Geomancer Maia (who get the engagement immunity and either better sustained DPS or caster utility)? Note that I have found no arguments against Energized. It remains a valid possibility even if it's not what I'm privilegiating right now.

Shadowed hunters cost bonds. My proposed version of Bonded Fury should generate bonds. This is the difference. Your proposed version of bonded fury would cost Bonds so it won't make sense to add recovery in this case. But I want to do it in another way. The reason why I'm pushing Bond generation is that ranger has a lots of nice Bond costing ability that makes it unique. So I want to reinforce this uniqueness. There could be other ways to buff SC Ranger, but I feel this would be the best. You said SC Ranger is Underpowered. And that my proposition with 30% Bond Regen on Hit is over the top. So there should be a number x between 0 and 30 that would feel balanced. By the way, - Swift on Bonded Fury would make Maia pet less unique. - Ghostheart summon is 30s, so Bonded Fury will always last less if cast right after it. Increase BF duration would be bad for this reason though. PS : I'm writing on a phone from holidays with 2 young children. So I try to Focus on what I feel to be the most important point. It costs me time and a bit of stress to provide answers the best I can. So next time you dismiss a written argument (that @Bosmerseemed to understand by the way) with such a familiar tone as "cuz reasons" be sure you'll be the first in 45 pages of thread that I will have to ignore.

Yes, pretty much what I think. Same for toughened fury and Divine Retribution (althought I even had to nerf it) Basically you're rewarded for doing something "challenging" but doable, sucha as getting crit with a rogue, or keeping pet alive and active as a ranger. Indeed. There is no active ability without time and without cost. Even in vanilla, Blood Sacrifice has a health cost. BPM Take the hit is basically instant and free BUT comes with a huge drawback (potentially concentrating damages on your fighter). I don't think there is a single ability that you can click mindlessly when available.

I really don't get why you are so obsessed in making SC Ranger a better pet healer. I mean, I see why you could consider the class underwhelming, but I fail to see why this would be the problem. SC Rangers already get better pet healing through Shadowed Hunter anyway, so I have no reasons to buff bonded fury in this direction. I don't think it would be OP indeed. But : - Courageous is quitte meaningless. - Brilliant has no effect and is therefore confusing (and this is a big No) - Intuitive is redundant with Shadowed Hunters. The 3 physical Inspirations could work though, even if it is not what I'm heading too. Distracting Training is just there to add up, no denying about this. This is way too weak. This would hardly compensate the Bond Spent. This is only 12.5% per Hit WITH Intuitive. Any solution based on On Crit Bond regen would be too fragile, especially since PER affliction can remove Intuitive. That's why I proposed Bond Regen based on Hit/Crit rather than Crit. You haven't say what you don't like with my proposal, which give me few reasons to move from it. If I make Bonded Fury a net Bond Gain and instant, using it will be a no brainer. Every active ability requires either time or ressource, or it would be Just a passive to refresh peroodically with a gameplay about as interesting as injecting larvas in your hatchery as a zerg (That's an insult). So I can't remove the recovery. It might have have to be compensate by 2 steps further (I could increase duration) , but I won't create inconsistent gameplay. There are buffs that require activation time, this is perfectly consistent with PoE2 gameplay. I'm not fully closing the door to Energized and Swift. This could be my own words. I will probably stop at this 25% action speed. This is still supposed to be a backup mode. Ahem... Shadowed Hunters? This is a nice idea. Still not fully sure how to tweak Bonded Fury, this option would thematically go well with Bond Regen. A tiny bit Stalker biased maybe. Not really. I share your doubt about SC being Underpowered even in a party. The only thing I suspect to be solo biased is your idea that SC pet healing should absolutely be improved. I really don' t get why it could be preferrable over more damages or Bond regen or whatever... Unless speaking about Solo where pet needs to tank. I need to think about all these. I'm sure other People could have something to say too, I can't base my change on a single opinion. Idem I think it is a good reason to take a ranger. Whether it is enough to compensate for the loss of MC is the real question. Really I think this point does not make a lot of sense for me. You're talking about the sustainability of an ability with a permanent effect. If you only have to cast once, why should it be sustainable? This is the most powerful attack of the game, it takes 30% base hp of a Megaboss away (and helps your Rogue Buddy to get their Sneak Attack / Deatblows) and hurts a lots in standard fights as well. Do you have to cast it Every fights? Probably not. Is it enough to go SC ranger? Probably not either. Hence this discussion about how to make them better.

The second. Altough a system of counters might make the first doable. But oh boy tedious. I think there is a reason why I never seriously considered it. Would feel complicated compared to just adding Bond on Hit. Currenly, I'm thinking about setting Bonded Fury to 1 Bond and 4s recovery (as original, so it's not just a pseudo passive, you need to take action economy to activate ; if not Bonded Fury won't require a "choice" from player ; it's important that an active ability is a choice) and 30% Bond on Hit/Crit (Bonded Fury comes with built-in Aware, so it shouldn't be too hard to get Hits). For the general power level adjustement of the pet itself, I could add x% action speed on top of Nimble to Bnded Fury (which leads to more Bond). It could be 25%. Cat's Advantage is mitigated by its mediocre PER, Antelope interaction with Distracted Training, Bear synergy with Hardy, and Stag Bond from AoE Hits, wolf benefitting the most from attack speed and Boar... from stacking various sources of heal I guess ? Bond generation this way could stack with Distracting Training, although Distracting Training should contribute less. Bonded Fury would basically be a "pseudo-mandatory" pick (but not too constraining since it is a Tier 8). Distracting Training would be more "optional icing". Other than that : Vengeful Gried will add a %Action speed (passive, stacking) on top of Nimble. Thinking about 25%. Not compensating for pet's fall, but would start feeling decent backup. Heal Companion would be buffed (duration to 12s), for a reliable heal. Not sure about Hardy which would feel redundant with Bonded Fury. I could go for a flat damage reduction on top of Hardy. 25% would be enough. Removing a CON Inspiration would be infortunate for a heal, since heal+CON inspiration saves you from CON Afflictions. Instant heal (at least without action from Ranger) should remain the unique property of Play Dead.

Shield Bash Quality Fix at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Check this mod (which is also incorporated as a component of Balance Polishing Mod) Basically there are common object for the scaling, then these propreties are attached to the candidate shields (Magran's Blessing and Best Defense. Tuotilio's Palm scale with unarmed Abilities).

I all started as a joke, though. But for the implementation, it would be based on Arterial Strike implementation, DoT while moving. So it is likely to work by checking if moving with short periods of time.

The same semi-disappointment applies to inspired discipline as well. A MC Fighter/Priest basically has access to the same buff through Minor Avatar, not to mention AoE Tier 2 Inspirations. To be honnest, the Intuitive part from Shadowed Hunters was more for the ranger themselves. Ah and also for Stag pet Good to hear. I also don't think that BPM SC Ranger is in a so bad position right now. But is arguably the worst SC Martial for ressources spent and with low regen. OK, I'm going to bed now. Just one final dumb (but technically doable) idea for the day : The pet could give Bond while it is moving (with a similar implementation as arterial strike). So you get Bond for walking the dog.

It's an option indeed. Would be close to Savage Defiance in term of Gameplay except... For the pet. Play Dead uses pet action economy instead. Really good ability, but sometimes prevent pet from acting as a meat shield. It Worth noticing that it is a full heal for 2 bonds. Auto picks arent that bad. There are plenty. Deathblows, monk's twins, one tier 9 shout upgrade, etc... On tier 8 it's okay if it can fix a class. Tier 9 is more constrained so I don't love tier 8 autopick. Then it would make Maia's pet less unique. But I see your point. Anyway, if I change Bonded Fury completely, there are indeed plenty of possibilities...

What would you think about adding to current Bonded Fury an effect "1 Bond per pet Hit / Crit" for its duration. Note it synergizes with Aware inspiration for Grazes. Would it be enough to fuel whatever needs to be fueled ? Would it be overpowered (could be reduced to a x%) ? If yes, what could be the value. Would it require some adjustment to Bonded Fury ? (cost, recovery, etc...) The idea is that it would lead to a significantly different gameplay from other classes (pet farm bond while Ranger spend bonds for damages, less relying on passive than other martials). Apart this buff, I would consider only some buff to Vengeful Grief and to heal / Hardy Companion (the later isn't SC).

Some at least. And Nimble enables running on the side up to your target. No one will engage you then. I think at 1 Bond without other change, Bonded Fury would be strong, if anything for the massive increase of secondary defenses. But won't fix ranger as a whole... which might be your underlying point. Good definition You're too much focus on high level role. There are much more details below this level. Applying long duration Enfeebled is a role on its own. Debuff/DPS if you want. No one else can do that at least. Not sure tons of MC can do the infinite Single Target CC of a built-for-crit SC Stunning Shot ranger. But you were implying it. For AoE damages (its own category of damages), Whirling Strikes will top most things MC can bring. At least for burst because it is ressource consuming. That said, at some point you convinced me that SC Ranger only have a marginally better role than the ranger half of a MC ranger, which was your point I guess. I remember thinking the same when people pointed "errr... SC Chanter can summon 4 Weapons instead of 3, wow" Depending on other classes is not an issue in a party. When it starts to matter is when it requires dedicated ressources from other member. In a party, you will spam AoE Heal anyways. Requiring Pain Block from time to time isn't necessarily dedication either, since another character could have required it if your pet didn't take the damages anyway. But see more below. I disagree. Pet isn't more significantly more frail than other non dedicated tank characters. And I play in PotD with a party, which is BPM target. Please note however that all these arguments absolutely doesn't change the conclusion : since rangers have been given dedicated pet heal, this absolutely needs to be significantly better that what another class can do for any character, not just for the pet. Heal Companion isn't strong enough to be worth picking most of the time, "the cipher will do better with Pain Block" indeed, as you point. So I will address it indeed. This is slightly independant from SC issue, even if it does help a bit since Heal over Time scale well with PL. Not with Robust though, I think since the biggest issue with Robust is that it doesn't stack with other Robust. The real issue is indeed not the name but similarity with Rogue. I don't want to create a Rogue carbon copy. Still not my experience. This is only true in Solo I guess, where the pet is expected to do the tanking unless going melee ranger I guess. That said, buffing Heal Companion will help. That is a valid point. At some point Distraction Training worked on any attacks. Which was good because Bonded Fury was excellent at buffing secondary defenses. But people complained your own AoE backfired when pet was Hit. It also works on Grazes because people complained of the relatively low deflection of pets. Most foes don't have 50 Acc above pet Def. I don't want people to be forced into Distraction Training though (one should not feel commited to a particular Tier 9 choice), and it should work okay with a bit of Heal Companion buff. But the conclusion is that Ranger requires another option for getting Bond. Distraction Training would be a complementary way. But yeah, a pet-based Bond regen shall not be based on pet Crit, for sure ! In POE1, it was sort of "broken". Among the top 5 non-caster most broken abilities. I could have name it second most broken non spell ability after Dragon Trashed honestly. Granted that martial classes worked with having a couple of quite OP abilities for each of them, which was not degenerated because of absence of Multiclassing. Basically it was "balance born from unbalance", especially when compared to the brokeness of casters. I don't want to copy Gambit and people here pointed Twinned arrow to be fine. Some even said it at 2 Bonds but that worked only during burst wit Frost Seeker, which I believe to be too narrow. Also basing it on Crit needs the obscure design you can see with Wall of Flashing Steel. Or it would be too good with multi hits weapons. This still is only true for solo IMHO. Which doesn't change that Heal Companion needs a buff. Probably to 12s for heal and Hardy after upgrade (to align durations). That is 100 base heal scaling with INT (minus initial tick), MIG, and double PL scaling. Pain Block is twice slower healing and heal base 70. So this should be enough. This is the order of magnitude of the buff, but I'm still wondering about Bonded Fury / Hardy Companion redundancy. Still a MC Seer could go Heal Companion + Pain Block... So that won't fix SC Ranger... But make it more viable for Solo, at least. And open possibilities to tie Bond regen to the pet. Also SC Ranger can go Heal Companion + Shadowed Hunter. As you can see, I'm not decided yet.

So my conclusions for now : - Bonded Fury needs a buff. Nimble is great in my own experience though. Acute works with several pet abilities, even if not great. Could be tweaked to 1 Bond with a bit of Recovery, since Bond is the issue. - Keeping the pet alive isn't that hard in my own experience. Granted my SC experience was with a bear Stalker with a druid in the party spamming AoE regen. Heal/Hardy Companion will probably receive (yet another) buff though, also because Bonded Fury buff could make Hardy obsolete. - Vengeful Grief could be buffed a bit, maybe without expectation that it will save the class. Maybe a slow Bond Regen. - I'm not too much in favor of pet independant Bond Regen. The ressource is called Bond after all. And on Crit would be too similar to BPM SC Rogue. The Vengeful Grief Bond regen could address the defavorable scenario when pet is down. - I'm considering setting Heart Seeker as per encounter instead of Bond costing. Would ease the Bond dependancy. Or intermediate solution such as cheap with long cooldown. To be continued

How do you feel about BPM SC Rangers ? I got recent complaints about it from @Shai Huludso I started thinking again about the class. The thing is, I've tweaked most of SC Rangers abilities and I was pretty satisfied with the results for each of them. To summarize BPM Considerations. Tier VIII : Bonded Fury is a 2 Bond instant pet buffer, with all 6 Tier 2 Inspirations. Basically 2 times stronger than BPM Inspired Discipline, but for pet. Whirling Strikes has not received major buff. Basically a better version of Heart of Fury, but that you can't use with dual mortars. Twinned Shot is a great 1 Bond attack, the best for damages apart accurate wounding shot (but instant). The nice thing is that it synergizes extremely well with weapon with per Hit/Crit effects such as the obvious Frost Seeker. Vengeful Grief is... probably not as useful as I imagined since it indeed works only in a ****ty situation where your pet is down, with all the abilities you invested on it. Probably a good enough ability on its own, but won't make SC that much significant. (Great Soul is slightly better for all classes) Tier IX : Stunning Shot : Not changed, does its job. Good ability, maybe not top tier, but good synergizes with stuff like... ahem... Frost Seeker again. Distraction Training : great now with a reliable stacking debuff and a roughly 7.5% chance of +1 Bond per attack. Good on its own, but won't fuel your build. Shadowed Hunter : good package of buffs (like 3 times longer Disciplined Strikes, Clarity of Agony, half of Savage Defiance and repositionning for both you and companion), worths its 3 Bonds. Good synergizes with... again Frost Seeker. As @Shai Huludmentionned, a not convenient aspect is that companion shall be alive to be activable, it could make SC Ranger slightly more versatile to remove the requirement (unless it works weirdly since it auto-target the pet, I'll check). Heart Seeker : the 4 Bond infinite duration Enfeebled, probably the game most powerful attack ability and the biggest trump card of Ranger. Obviously so expensive that can't carry SC Ranger on its own. I feel this ability is forcing a bit SC Ranger usefulness with a single special trick. (Prestige not changed obviously, probably not worth picking for Ranger) All in all, I find mostly good or very good abilities (I disagree with @Shai Hulud for that) BUT overall I still feel that something doesn't fully work. I think what causes this impression is the following thing : - Everything cost a lots of Bonds, from your gamechanging Heart Seeker to humble Marked Prey. Do you want to start with Bonded Fury, Marked Prey and a Heart Seeker Shot ? Good, you have 4 Bonds now (plus bonuses, but still). It's really hard to use these high tier feats without basically skipping every low level ones. - Ranger scales very poorly with PL. For all non Tier 8-9 abilities, SC Ranger is mostly the same as MC. The animal companion is the best example. - There is not something obvious and powerful that would make the SC a go-to solution. So what could I do ? I'm thinking about adding an infinite "pseudo passive" effect to Bonded Fury that causes companion attacks to give back Bond. The inspirations themselves would still be limited duration, but once the Bonded Fury has been activated, the regen will lasts the whole encounter. I could also buff a bit Whirling Strikes and Twinned Shots which are melee and ranged SC Rangers Bread and Butter. The special thing about SC Ranger is their special attacks. (MC Ranger does not have so much punch, by far, but can use their trick and passive to synergize with another class.) These unique attacks can be seen as Ranger true specialty, since they don't have an absolutely gamechanging passive. I'm thinking about buffing Whirling Strikes DoT duration, and for Twinned Shot... maybe add an additional bounce ? Could cause a bit of an overbuff with a certain weapon quoted several times on this post... I don't want to buff too much Tier 9, cause it could force certain playstyles since Tier 9 ability points are so limited... Having to pick a particular Tier 9 ability is a big constraint for a build.

Transcendant Suffering should give exactly the same results with or without BPM. It gives 7 more PEN, but fists start at 0 PEN instead of 7. What is slightly better is that Food bonus systematically stacks, so you can stack 2 PL from Potion of Elevation with the +1 one from food.

Okay

It's 2 x PL. So 14 for MC and 20 for Prestiged SC. 14 per tick is a bit above what robust can regen, so isn't that big. Once more it has to be a significant drawback. SC gets arguably a harsher penalty which doesn't seem fair. PL scaling is annoying though since it makes any PL boost a drawback. I might be tempted to tune it a little to 3 + (char lvl x 0.5), up to 13 at level 20. 13 is a much more satisfying number than 14 (cause it's rounded 2/3 of 20). Not much of a boost but just cutting the PL boost drawback.

Berzekers isn't supposed to be a strict upgrade over barbarian though. +2 PEN, + 2 AR, and 30% Hit to Crit is top tier material. It has to have a significant drawback, not just one that forces you into Mowdyr/DoCB. I won't use Blood Storm with Zerkers cause you won't control the Frenzy duration as well. Voidward and BPM Moon Godlike help mitigating the damages as well. BPM Savage Defiance buff helps too. Also indirectly since it doesn't cancel/make redundant Hardy anymore since it is no more a Robust inspiration. At high level, you will have way more ways of mitigating the health loss, so the scaling is nasty but probably appropriate. But a Berzeker best interest may not be to be 100% of time under Frenzy effect. Basically you use it when you have health to spare, as for Sacred Immolation.

Good to know. That is a little detail, but Heart Seeker is an auto-hit. Yeah, I wasn't taking God challenges into consideration. BPM isn't balanced for this. It is still strictly better than Lay on Hand as long as pet healing is concerned. And can be upgraded with a rather long duration Hardy, while Lay on Hand can't (I mean you can grab one of the 2 Zeal improved versions, but that is a different ability). I think it is fine, just indeed not strong enough for solo, since pet is an offtank at best. Hardy is also mostly useless vs such High PEN foes as Dorudugan, and may anyway require Bear to start becoming relevant. SC Ranger is probably not suited for solo then (which is not a surprise, I just had some hope for this particular battle). Never had pb as a party member, the Line auto-hit enfeebled is contributing enough. I'm not sure there are many SC that can Solo as a general rule. Apart Wizards and maybe other casters. Monk maybe ? SC tends to give you more specilization in your class assets, but for Solo you need some degree of versatility. Need to heal (at least yourself), deals damages, tanks, etc... And I'm ot even speaking about God challenge which requires another level of specific skills (I'm not forgetting your request of Monastic Unarmed Training for everyone by the way).

BPM buffed Long Pain to recovery 3s. They are basically ranged fist with 5m range and +1 base damages. A bit like what you get for Instrument of Pain bar versatility (and plus Driving Flight). It's a bit off topic but sometimes I wonder if the easiest BPM class against Dorudugan could be non-Ghostheart SC Ranger. With Heart Seeker, you can cut his regen in half for the rest of the encounter (and lower its HP pool a bit) and Vengeful Gried gives you permanent Nimble and Tenacious once pet is down (at the cost of a bit of some accuracy). With the cloak, you can be immune to fire and you can find a way to escape magnetic overdrive disengagement attacks, and from there you only have to run and shoot while spamming some Twin Arrows with Potion of Enlightenment. Not sure how it works in practice ^^, I'm not into solo, and SC Ranger is probably not the best solo class for the rest of the game.

In case you want to try the new version of Blood Sacrifice (the proper description works with the complete mod, but isn't included in this particular file) cl.wizard.blood_sacrifice.gamedatabundle.zip@Shai Hulud

Yes, basically this. There might be other way to do but I'm probably not going to reopen the subject. You have to consider that I also worked a lot to make all shifts balanced which also increases the benefits of the subclass. Adding a cooldown on a modal would feel weird. But I fully get why one would prefer Jayd's version. No harm in modding a mod

@Noqnhas actually made a tool to simplify the gamedata files edition. Look in the modder subforum.

That's good (and sad) findings, but unfortunately this is about the harcoded part of the effect. Not something that could be addressed by tweaking Gamedata.

If we're speaking about Forbidden Fist ability, this might be due to following Community Patch change (refer to CP notes on Nexus) : Monk: [...] Forbidden Fist penetration decreased from 9 to 7.