Elric Galad

When I download again on my pc, the file is named "cl.cipher.screaming_souls_all_targets_scream_gamedatabundle.ea525d8649bd18f588c2f686212f990a" It should be "cl.cipher.screaming_souls_all_targets_scream.gamedatabundle". This unexpected change of the file type might cause problem. It is weird that the name changed. I might avoid this kind of rogue sharing, or make .zip when I do.

Mmm, have you placed the file within a directory such as C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity II\PillarsOfEternityII_Data\override\BalancePolishingModBuffs\design\gamedata ? (you can replace "BalancePolishingModBuffs" by any other mod)

Yep, but pushing effect tends to cause the target to "walk back" to its initial position. Which might help getting Arterial ticks. It shall be pointed that the damages are among top tier DoT when the target actually moves.

I'm skeptical about a build relying on Destructive Channeling only. As an Evoker, you'll want to cast spells, and that won't do channeling self-damages. At least you'll have Deleterious Alacrity of Motion which could help a lot. Provided you have any source of party regeneration (Druid spells, Ancient Memory, Paladin Auras - which are really good to have for your whole party) and you are on the backrow, you're likely to not always be under 50%. You'll have to skip these and use mostly (Paladin's) single target heals. 20% raw damages isn't that high. It's like, well 10 damages per swing max ? With around 250 endgame health minimum, that's about 12 swings before getting the effect you build is meant for. I have a caster/scepter user with Destructive Channeling always on and I don't even notice the self-damages. But that's just my (paranoid) opinion.

It is not directly linked to the question, but I would go Blood Mage just because it can get bloodied so easily. Wizard has a spell called Llengrath Safeguard that adds a lots of defense when you become Bloodied. It remains active for the entire duration once you have become Bloodied once, so no needs to stay under 50% health. But that's still a good synergy.

Ok, so I started again. Basically I "grafted" a copy of Spark the Soul of the Righteous attack to Screaming Souls ability. Then, step by step, I modded it to redo the Screaming Souls effects. Now it's working fine, with original Vessel/Spirit only AoE, secondary raw damages AoE and Distracted status. Can be applied several times and affect all valid targets. Basically it works, but I haven't copied the original visuals yet. Needless to say that I have yet no clue why this works and why it didn't, but I don't really care at this point. (note that because I had to re-create the attack completely, I might make imossible the split of the changes between 2 separate files) I'll complete the ability and the mod version later. I have a plane to take 🙂 But if you want to try (Edit : Mechanically it should be the same as final version, except cast/recovery time should be 3s/4.5s instead of 4.5s/3s ; haven't changed yet from Spark the Souls). Edit : Some feedback about how the ability feels now would be precious. Oh, Screaming Souls also works on Spiritual Ally that any priest can take. cl.cipher.screaming_souls_all_targets_scream.gamedatabundle

Ok, still don't work, the holidays are about to end, I may come back to this... when I could. I'm leaving the files here, just in case some fellow modder has time and will to investigate what is going on : Here is the non-working file : cl.cipher.screaming_souls_all_targets_scream.gamedatabundle Somehow, the secondary AoE attack (the one that does the damages) seems to call back the initial attack (no obvious element that could cause that). You see the auto-hit of the first attack again in the combat log. This usually doesn't trigger the damages AoE once again. But the Status causing the attack seems to be caughts in an infinite loop that prevent future re-application. This should work like Spark the Soul of the Rigteous (except no ticks involved), but it does not. Here is the file reducing the AoE. This one is pretty surely not linked to the problem. cl.cipher.screaming_souls_aoe.gamedatabundle

The content of the Summon packae is described in the "2)Summon Rebalance" part of the patch note. Whatever is in this chapter is in this package. Whatever is not is not in this package. I didn't use separate color for this part to avoid overloading the description with too many colors

Thanks for your answer. I probably messed up with my testing. Maybe because I added Wave Walker with Console Command to Aloth... ? Anyway this is bad and shall be tweaked.

I think the big difference here is that Ciphers get one single pool of ressources instead of separate ones per Tier. You can play a decent Cipher with no more than about 5 abilities provided you pick the less situational ones. Priests, druids and wizards can cast more different spells, but they also HAVE TO.

Sorry for failed annoucement but I have just spotted the new Screamin Souls only work once per target. Recasting the spell has no effect. I have no idea why but I'm still working on it. It might take a while, the bug seems kind of deep.

By the way, has anybody ever seen Tekehu purging himself from a fire Keyworded status (such as Brand Enemy) ? I got the impression this part of Wave Walker racial just doesn't work at all...

Some notes about BPM : - exhortations are much more cost effective. Hastening exhortations upgrades are 25s Nimble+Strong or Swift for 1 zeal (this is locked behind SC wall, HExho itself is only 15s Nimble). Exhortations are a blast for action economy compared with priest buffs. And you don't have to keep your party grouped to use them. - basically all summons are good with BPM summon components. I've done an entire run with a beckoner and I used Wurms most of the time. You only need a backup for fire resistant foes. Ancient weapons are still a super well rounded pick. - I wouldn't care to much about the damages. This is indeed not your role. Sacred Immolation is a good source, but then there is fire resistant foes... I would consider picking glorious beacon damages upgrade Vs these foes (better too with BPM).

Good. Don't hesitate to provide feedback, especially for SC Paladin. For next version, I also intend to : - provide Avian Godlike Immunity to PER afflictions (instead of Resistance). Resistance to INT and PER feels a bit weak, especially since you can pick them as Paladin. Not worth the Headgear slot. I will let INT resistance only - provide Marine Godlike an actual fire immunity once every 12s (through a regenerating Water Keyworded status) instead of the very obscure fire status purge they get every 6s.

Not tried. New proposal : what about : - initial AoE 5m (unchanged) - secondary AoE set to base 1.5m instead of 2.5m but still affects everyone - for each scream, the screamer isn't affected. It sounds like a nerf, but setting the AoE to 1.5m would basically make the effects much more controllable (I might split the changes in 2 files : 1 to affect all targets and the other to reduce the AoE) The pros : - can be deadly Vs Spirits and Vessels but still can't be spammed mindlessly. Since the secondary AoE excludes the Spirit/Vessel, it can sometimes be worse for you than foes. But with careful positioning and reasonably tanky frontline you will still be able to deal absurd damages while taking fewer. (I suspect spirits won't be easy to maintain packed, but they are often weak to PER afflictions so it compensates a bit) - Vs every vessel/spirit free groups, reasonably good summons placement can lead to great effects and not too much hurt. Better than amplified wave at concentrating damages Vs 1 target. - benefit a lot from INT and Shared Nightmare. The secondary AoE could be made decent without hurting your party. - Can still be used to cause Street fighter flanking

It's not on top. It's instead (unless something isn't working as intended)

Is there a point to High MIG with Barbarians though ? Unless going for SC abilities, DEX is much better for auto attacking and you'll get +5 MIG from Frenzy anyway. Maybe for Frenzy upgrades damages ? I won't prioritarize it with a barbarian. Of course it depends on MC etc...

OK, it works now. Each Vessels/Spirits in the 5m AoE generates its own raw damages scream. Now we can discuss further about balancing the ability. Note that a creature can affect itself with the scream. I'm not 100% sure it was the case previously, but anyway it can be tweaked. I'm still with the opinion that foe-only might be too good, but the 1.5m radius suggestion from @thelee makes sense, so I'm going to think about it. Also reducing the initial AoE so it could be a bit more controllable is an option. It shall be centered on a spirit / vessel though.

Anyway, just wanted to confirm it is a bit pointless to address my modding. Overall it's fun, only Withdraw (+Beetle Shell ?) is a bit broken and it comes with some drawbacks : bad INT, usual Zerks' penalty, confusion on a priest (quite annoying) and ressource renewal a bit tedious since Brilliant interract poorly with Confusion. You might prefer your usual Devil of Caroc Breastplate. Also if you don't like it, don't use it on foes. It's different from some OP combos that could be interesting if they weren't broken (so you basically stop using Blunderbuss Modal with Streetfighter since it would lead to a pseudo-exploit). Of course, Strand of Favor was also a case of "if you don't like it ignore it", but Strand of Favor breaks the game in much more epic proportion.

Antipathetic Field + Party Members + Death of thousands cuts. Ok let's kill Dorudugan with this.

Ok, so conditional + AoE is possible, so either the non self target of the cipher powers somehow made it fail OR there is something rotten in the attack encapsulation. Anyway, first I need to fix the spell, then we could discuss more about further tweaking it.

Stasis shell (and temporal cocoon) are good on their own. Especially because there are so many hard foes immune to INT and RES hard CC afflictions, and MIG/DEX hard CC don't have comparable durations. Withdraw + Self confused is kind of half- Broken indeed (without any clean way to "fix" it), but at least require a precise set up. Still removing 2+ target from fight right at the beginning of a fight, without any roll involved is... Well... Combo go brrrr

It works also with Beetle Shell I suppose...

I can probably make it work by copying Dismissal (Edit : if anybody can confirm Dismissal is working normally, it would save time). I will try this evening. I'll keep you updated.

I feel slightly targetted by this post 🙂 OK, so basically we have a spell : A) That targets specific foes B) That is VERY unconvenient to use C) When A+B are fullfilled, deals tremendous damages (including to foes excluded from A) And then we have an alternate way to use it : A') That can use a not so complicated to fullfilled condition (pretty trivial in the right party) B') That not very convenient to use, but without risk to wipe your own party. C') When A' + B' are fullfilled, deals fairly good damages, but honnestly nothing that special for 70 focus. So, if the spell is set to foe-only : the second case would work fairly well, but it will IMHO trivialize certain encounters (Splintered Reef comes to my mind). Especially because, as a Cipher spell, you would be able to spam it when optimal. The root of the issue is that this ability sort of have 2 modes with disproportioned risks and consequences. I feel that foe-only and multiple AoE cannot coeists within this abilities. Alternate ideas (I'm set on nothing) : 1) We could imagine a pseudo-mindwave that only release 1 AoE, centered on a spirit/vessel target. This one could be foe-only. With appropriate summons, it won't be such much of a specialized spell. This would solve both A+B conditionality issue, but the spell would loose a bit of personnality. 2) We could also have the ability procs on EVERY spirit/vessel, including all allies, not only the initial target. This variant shall not be foe only. It won't be much better than the existing one vs vessels/spirits (but still incredibly good when you manage to set it up). But it would also have other use case with the right party. Granted this would basically rip your own summons (so not exactly a free cast) and possibly your own party, but I feel the risk/reward would be more balanced. 2b) Same but limitating the spell to spirit only. Why ? Because Chanters have a too easy time spamming vessel summons. Spirits leave a lot of possibilities (Wisps, Blights, Ghostheart pet, wizard's phantoms, monk's twins). I think 2 and 2b would also be an indirect buff to 1000 cuts, which sometimes feels a bit lacking when you need it (cough cough Dorudugan).