Elric Galad

BPM and CP didn't touch Ancient Weapons though. They were always fine.

I've set Play Dead to 12s to get 2 round in TB. For Withdraw, I'm hesitating. Rounding up to 24s (4 TB Turns) would be the closest to the original duration, but I fear it could make Hylea's challenge very tedious. That's why I'm leaning toward 30s (5 TB Turns). With a reasonable Intellect and a few PL, that's what a Priest will get anyway. What do you think ?

That's what I'm going to tweak to only 10% less per hit indeed. It matters a bit, though, if you use a Whale of a Wand (and still cast it) But there's better spell to abuse with the wand anyway. I'll make sure it can boost twice on the same target. 10% reduction per bounce still lead to 43% damages on the 8th bounce (boucing reduction is multiplicative, not additive, fortunately). That's more damages on each of 2 targets than Sunlance for 1 target (provided PEN matches AR of course). It also benefits from higher PL. It targets Deflection, which is usually a good idea. I think the spell would be OK. Still a bit meh compared to the widespread corrode and utility from Circle of Death and sheer damages of MPPB. That's why I think bouncing back to the same target is necessary and sufficient to make this spell good. Yeah that's how it is displayed. Your hypothesis is believable. I don't mind the decreasing damages, provided the overall damages are OK. Eld Nary is also fun because it is so slow at bouncing that it is somewhat of a DoT. Bouncing damages spell are indeed more interesting with bouncing back to same target, because it is what make them different, and more efficient when only 2-3 targets. By the way, BPM did something similar with Healing Chain which was a meh and uninspired AoE heal : it set to bouncing back slowly between friendly targets for a high number of bounce and now it is a strange HoT that can be focused on a small detachment from your party. The bouncing mechanics are really fun toplay around, but it seems the devs didn't seize the opportunity to make fun spells based on the mechanics they implemented.

Sorry, I poorly explained. Damages shield does not require fixed duration. BPM's BDD is a 12s damages shield that activate when near death. The duration scales normally with INT and PL (the near death conditional has infinite duration, same as Watchful Presence). I thought somehow that Beetle Shell should at least have a greater base duration. Comparing fixed and non-fixed duration was a bit misleading. But now that I'm thinking about it, Beetle Shell probably does not require fixed duration as much as Withdraw and Play Dead. So I'm probably going to leave it alone with its 10s scaling duration. (Note that BPM set Beetle Shell casting time to 0,5s, which was quite necessary for it to be useful) Beetle Shell does have a much superior range (15m vs 5m). This is a good point.

Good point. I think this could be changed. For both.

I think this spell aren't top tiers, but I don't plan to buff spells unless really subpar OR in case they have a very similar spell on the same level (Nature's Terror was a case) in direct concurrence for ressources. The approach is different for other classes with a singel pool of ressources. Bounce spells are party friendly and can be described as top cast when only 2 foes are standing so I think there are more or less fine. That said Firebug damages/PEN/bounce damages reduction seems too low. Boiling Spray can save a clothling by pushing. Malignant cloud deals Raw damages and poison type can somewhat be abused with Poison Immune party memeber acting as lures. So I think most of these spells are okayish. There are not top pick, but if for some reasons you want to pick them for a build, they will probably be useful under the right circonstances. But I'm going to address firebug. You can make suggestion about this one. I'm currently thinking only about setting the bounce damage reduction to -10% per bounce only (so -19% on the second bounce, etc...) instead of -25%.

Well, it's not that shocking to have an ability that doesn't scale. Most brisk Troubadour chants don't. Ironskin doesn't. I have a tiny doubt about durations. I'm usually not concerned about Turn-Based (I haven't experienced it enough to pretend BPM is in line with it), but when it comes to fixed durations (which can't scale with any means), I tend to round them as close as possible for multiple of 6s (1 round) Therefore I propose : Withdraw : 30s -> fixed 30s Play Death & upgrade : 10s -> fixed 12s Beetle Shell : 10s -> fixed 18s ??? I tend to think low duration is a bit less critical for this one, and a bit more duration can be useful for soaking damages. Also I wished it could be superior in some way to BPM's BDD (which provide 12s of 300 damages shield without side effect)

Beware about KW. Missing the KW on the status doesn't mean the status does not count as tagged, since I think it carries the ability/attack KW property.

That being said, the question from the OP is interesting, even if we leave apart Megabosses. Writ of Sorcery is pretty clear about what it target, and probably prevent effects the same way as I have more interrogation about Writ of War though. I guest that a Priest of Woedica/Berzeker can be ideal to test it on your own party, and adding Druids / Chanters / etc... can help testing it on various (summoned) monsters.

Scordeo's Edge accuracy buff... and Blade Cascade too by the way. Beza's Toothed blade debuff Armor Rating on Crit... for the whole party including your own abilities.

You should be careful about another point : Megabosses have huge Resolve. Debuffs tend to not last for long. And their sky high defenses mean you won't even debuff them reliably.

Ups, I meant Withdraw.

This would also make these spells much stronger, Sanctuary would become strictly better than beetle shell, and play dead basically an instant full heal ! Basically they would become "other abilities", something that I ususally don't want to do. And yeah, from a technical point of view, adding an off button to Sanctuary and Beetle Shell feels quite complicated and possibly impossible to do (play dead should be doable, but as stated above, would be almost broken). Also I don't know how AI would handle them. So yeah, I think I will go with fixed duration

I would be tempted to say that Play Dead, Withdraw and Beetle Shell should have fixed durations. Scaling with INT and PL being detrimental isn't super intuitive. It would at least be still compatible with low INT builds. What would you think about it ?

Well I like Ooblit being a bit different from the other, and there's a couple of short duration effect that still benefit a lot from it (Escape, Blade Turning, Lay on Hand, probably most chants). It is also important as a selling point for Eder as a SC Rogue if one want to use Vanishing Strikes.

I previously set Wall of Draining to -2s buff to foes / +0.25s buff to self in order to prevent abuses. Now I'm realizing this makes this spell almost useless and I plan to set it back to -2s buff to foes / +0.5s buff to self. At least 3 foes would still be required for infinite duration (due to wall missing), which is not that easy to set up (and to keep for long). Previously, the greatest offenders using WoD have been tweaked/nerfed : Unbending secondary effects can't be extended anymore, BDD and Shieldbearer's version only gives a damage shield (so can be extended to limited effect)... So even if WoD could still be abused in some ways, it won't break the game through them. There are still a couple of effects that could theoritically break the game with WoD : Scordeo's Blade Cascade and the 2 remaning prevent death effects : Potion of the Final Stand and Resurection. I plan to set these to FIXED duration to avoid any side effect : - Blade Cascade : 5s -> Fixed 6s - Resurrection Prevent Death : 20s -> Fixed 30s - Potion of the Final Stand : 6s -> Fixed 18s (could be extended through Alchemy, so deserves a bit better) Anyway I think it's better that such poweful effects can't be extended by any means. Note that the durations are multiple of 6s for better compatibility with TB (though I have no idea how Blade Cascade works in TB) Also note that BDD problem couldn't have been fixed through fixed duration cause one can recast it potentially infinitely (Potion of the Final Stand is limited as a consumable and Resurrection is limited by Wound limit - and supplies of Luminous Adra Potions)

I think the main issue is that your copy won't get your ability, so no Wildstrike. Spiritshift weapons on their own are rather meh (compared to top tier weapons). Cat, of course, isn't too bad, but still inferior to best weapons. Spiritshift Armor on the other hand is awesome. 8 base AR 0% recovery is equivalent to a +5 AR robe. +7 AR for bear. Hard to get better.

OK, I've tried adding the "Offensive" KW to Thunder Rolled attack (after spotting the bug by myself on this ability) and iyt does not work. Arcane Archer penalty check for Offensive KW, so it should have worked. This was weird from the beginning because Attacks normally inherit KW from abilities even if not present on the attack itself. AA should have checked the ability KW before appplying the penalty. To make it short, there is something weird going on and I can't fix it.

That said, Xefa's Empirical can prone on Crit and Gambit Interrupt on Hit anyways. Scordeo's shall be loaded before reaching +20 Acc and Flanking can be obtained by other party members. Not to say melee is worse but I would suspect blunderbuss to not be that bad. Misses and Grazes from blunderbusses will also reduce the damages, which matters too. You're pretty likely to have some. And melee have a sheer diversity of possibilities.

Wall of Flashing Steel isn't tagged "weapon only" so it's normal if it works. "Empowered bonuses" work a tad weird sometimes. I suspect they simply don't apply to hazard spells...

Does anyone has experience with SC Rogue using dual Blunderbusses, but not mortars ? I would tend to think these 4 hits weapons would pretty much guarantee at least 1 Crit per swing, which is enough for infinite recursive Gambits.

OK, the experiment is going well for now. Faced the Lich Dragon and Nemnok (and his troups) and the Psion was doing his job quite well. Backrow though. Honnestly, I think this would be a good compromise. With a Hit or Crit pauses regen, I would add a Hit to Graze chance (somewhere between 25% and 50%) for the duration. That would reduce the chance of being paused again. This way, Psion would be worse at doing his usual job when (Off) tanking but a bit better at tanking to compensate. I can see a good justification for that : when under attack, the Psion psychic power protect her/him by reflex rather focusing on her/his usual powers. I might not be necessary, but it seems rather simple to implement and, maybe more importantly, simple to understand as a game mechanic.

This is what I've done in BPM, and the reason why I did so in a nutshell.

Ney, I tried to fix it before but it looks to be broken beyond repair for some reasons.

And investing on PER will also boost indirectly your spell damages (even if less so) while not hurting you and buffing your CC spells. DEX is very flexible and kind of good for any limitless ressource classes.