Elric Galad

Or maybe a more simple solution would be to only apply Strand of Favor/Cabalist's Gambeson/Ooblit bonus while in combat. It sounds like a general interest change, quite close from a bugfix/glitch purge, so I think @MaxQuest and @Phenomenumcould be interested to include it in CP.

Sure, one just has to make all buff with duration clear out of combat (makes drugs unplayable)

And bringing 2 ciphers would be even better The effect is at max 20% additional regen over a continuous application of brilliant for a single character. The non-stacking does not look too much necessary. The point is to make the cipher not stricly necessary for party building (especially because your healer has finite ressources, or your wizard relies on a very specific spell). The cipher is still incredible support. Cipher is an infinite ressource class, so it is meant to be top tier for "infinite duration fights" (I'm looking at you, Dorudugan). Note that "self-infinite ressource classes" such as Tactician or Bloodmage also contributes to the party sustainability for such fights, but they can't prevent others from being dead weights. Note that the balancing might cause reasonable power creeping. But there are mods to rise the difficulty anyway, and getting rid of major cheeses also make the game more difficult.

Proposed price : 3000 gold Proposed receipe : 1 reagent, 1 awakened Adra, 2 Vithrack Brains and 1000 gold (worth less than purchase price, but still a lot, ratio comparable to other crafting receipe)

Ok, so for the design of the said Potion, for your reviews : I would call it Potion of Enlightment Duration : Infinite, as Potion of Ascension. This potion is meant to address super long fights and can be considered as a key part of combat mechanic design. I don't want it to be too sensitive to dispells and such. Also I don't want it to force characters into speccing in Alchemy. It still costs a consumable slot, which is valuable for boss fights since you can fill it with 5 Maelstorm or something like this. Effect : +1 resource every 30s. A fraction of what a dedicated Cipher can provide to a party, and a fraction of what Infinite Ressource Classes do get but if everybody takes 1, it would provide about the benefit of 1 Cipher to a party spamming ancestor's memory (a dedicated Cipher may be able to do better) No +1 ressource on initial tick : this potion is not intended to enable chaining several Maelstorm in a row at the beginning of the fight. It is meant to address long fights. The first effect will happen 30s after the potion is taken. Cost : expensive, very. Something at least in the range of 1.5k gold, but I wouldn't oppose a cost around 3-5k. Vendors : Deck of Many Things, Treasure Trove, Splindle Man, Imp vendor at Forgotten Sanctum, Una. Not necessary all of them, but that's where I would expect such a product to be sold. Receipe : Don't know, Reagent for sure (always 1 for potion). I would suggest Awakened Adra and a bunch of Vithrack Brains (these ones are super tedious to get early on). Could have been Luminous Adra but I wanted a bit of variety. EDIT : If it is made with Vithrack Brains, I think the Splindle Man shall not sell it

To click or not to click, that is the question

Other question about the potion/drug : Should it be a long duration/slow rate (something like +1 ressource every 30s for base 180s) which would limit max regeneration rate for a single character or shorter duration/fast rate (basically like 1 cast of Brilliant : +1 ressource every 6s for base 12s ) which would limit total max regeneration in 1 battle by virtue of consumable limit ?

Ok, so a few brainstorming ideas : Tier VIII Paladin Passive : Inspiring Blows : x% chance of restoring 1 ressource to party on melee crit. Fury Shaper : add a x% chance of restoring 1 ressource on melee Crit with Blood Ward (since it's quite expensive at 3 rages, I think a buff wouldn't be bad). Basically a life + mana steal. Anyway I think I'm going to set Fury Shaper penalty to -1PL for something like 180s instead of until end of combat. Add somewhere in the priest ability tree : Infinite cast ability called "Prayer" : x% chance of restoring 1 ressource on OTHER ally without another effect. Cast time/recovery 6s/2s . Somehow I feel priest may be in need of a defining ability. This one seems validated. I can add it, unless another modder want to make a Stand Alone "Mana Potion" Mod. Mmm maybe@Noqncould be interested ? Maybe @Boeroercould create the icon

Technically impossible, it's hard-coded. What is possible is an effect that would start after Empowering an ability. But since I've already tweaked post-Empower effects a lot, I fear it would favor a bit too much early Empower. Still a decent option to keep in mind.

What you're asking is basically a regeneration rate with fluff. The regeneration rate is the target and the fluff is about making a mechanics designed to provide performance around this target without consequences on the class gameplay. Easier said than done, I would say, especially for 5 classes (let say Monk has his ways) and to be robust vs all focused exploit, etc... And what about casters ? Providing another class/subclass a similar effect than Ancestor's Memory is easier IMHO. It's a solution for long fight, but not solo. Yup. And this is simple solution for Solo, also very much in line with solo gameplay which is quite based on Consumables anyway.

I don't think that even a slight regen would leave the balance unchanged. You'll get ressources back even in mid-difficulty battle, 2-3 point isn't negigeable. What I mean is it has a "cost" in term of balance. The question is : is the benefit better than the cost ? That is the reason why I added it to Single Classes that didn't have it : because they needed these 2-3 points anyway. About Solo runs, I tend to agree with Phenomenum : The game hasn't to be balanced for "Solo" (or even TB), because the initial design hasn't been made for it. More specifically, what I mean is that it shouldn't be the goal of Community Patch (but that's up to them) or Balance Polishing Mod. I think it is too difficult to balance simultanneously for every styles of plays. "Balance it too much" for Solo and you loose Party synergy and specialization. That said, another Mod dedicated to make Solo runs more viable with all classes would be great. But everybody feels forced to use it or feels suboptimal because it becomes a key feature of the class. (having to pick the talent has drawbacks too. I don't feel particularly satisfied with my modded SC Rogue and Ranger talent, especially because forced Tier IX is meh). But if it was, would you do it ? What I'm leaning to address is a possibility to replace Ancestor's Memory for party design. And it seems that Creating a Potion could be a popular part of the answer.

In vanilla game, Single Class Fighters and Paladins are technically infinite ressource classes due to toughened Fury and Divine Retribution. (I don't count On Kill effect.) Multi Class ones are not. This was the reason why I added similar effect to Rogue, Ranger and Barbarian. But only to SC ones. I don't say one has to do the same but I would find very hard to justify to grant this possibility to MC rangers and rogues but not other martials. And that wouldn't solve casters being dead weight without a Cipher. That's why I'm suggesting to provide an ability with similar effect to some other classes.

The thing is that these 0,5% of fights are likely to be the hardest ones, so you have to keep them in mind when building a party. Most players are completionnists, and don't like the idea of facing a brick wall at some point. There is arguably not a single ability in the game that is harder to replace than Ancestor's Memory. No class has equivalent except Tier IX "His Heart did feel..." which is a tweak away from being a good substitute. As you said, I really don't like the idea of changing the fundamentals of class balance because of 0,5% of the fights, but I think a couple more options wouldn't hurt.

I can relate with this. The only issue I see with all this is that the current system sort of force you to take a Cipher just to handle these particular fights (I mean, I'm not speaking about the minority of players who can solo Megabosses etc...)

What about Penitent's Massage which gives back ressources when hitting allies with monk's fists ?

Could be with a new dedicated subclass. I'm not very fond of adding new subclasses, but it could be an option to address a very specific flaw of the overall class balance. Yet another approach could be also through "potion of mana" or whatever they could be called. Someone has opened the brainstorming window, so I run free now

Another possible Route would be to have a couple more classes apart Cipher able to ressource ressources to others. The obvious one is SC Chanter with his Tier IX "His Heart...". It can be buffed a bit. But what about some other traditional supporting classes or subclasses such as Paladin or even Fury Shaper ? The tricky part would be : "how classes with finite ressources can help other classes with providing ressources ?" And I don't see Monk giving ressources to other from his generated wounds. It would require less changes than providing each individual class a mean to restore ressources. Just like a couple new effects. And it would favor Party Synergies.

On the Abilities themselves (leaving apart the question of refunding ressources for martial as a general principle) : I think this one is a bit complicated, and can unplayable in the heat of battle. The fact that it can be very detrimental, especially for Death Godlikes, does worry me a bit. Basically that's the right thing to do if anything is done. You know my technical concerns about its implementation Not sure about the values, but that's easy to tune. Good complement for the first. Similarly as Ranger's one, the value is easy to tune. Restricting it to Melee is a concern, I feel it is very limitating for Ranged Rogue. Maybe require a Sniper Alternative, such as %Crit against target above 75% health. But restricting to Melee reduces my concern about multi-hit weapons. And Vanishing Strikes (especially with Assassin).

I don't say it won't be an interesting design. But if all martials are tweaked into alternative Cipher/monk/chanter it would take the class design very far from its original form. It will reduce the uniqueness of infinite ressource classes. That said, it may be worth it. But I won't see it as a simple improvement of the current ruleset.

Indeed, with my mod, all Single Classes martials have some abilities to regain ressources (some had already before the mod) That's only true for SC martials and that's intentional. Say that to the guys who designed Megabosses

Are you using version 1.4.1 I released this Friday ? This was addressed among the bugfixes. But you may have to respec once more after adding the new version for the game to take into account new Passives.

Good question. RDC and Valian Republicans are pretty much 2 sides of the same coin. Valians have better animancy but RDC is more careful and willing to hire experts from anywhere if needed. If I was Obsidian it will be complicated for me to choose between the 2. RDC feels like the strongest nation during PoE2 time, the one on the rise. It would make sense and would also help having a fantasy world without humans leading. Aeldys is a big no given she leads to the only true bad ending. Furrente would tempting. He would be responsible enough to fix the wheel without leading to the interrogation "who's the best imperialist ?". I guess the Huana would feel the best default choice. But because they are so traditional, they would be the less likely to fix the wheel. That's why I rarely side with them.

Yup, sorry about that. I gotta wait a bit and listen to what other say I will just give purely technical advice and stop talking about my version of things for a while Will be an issue with Tactician who can "reboot himself". The "Add n ressources" give back n spell from the same spell Tier. So if you add 3 ressources, you will be capped. Also I've experimentated this a bit for Ancestor's memory : I remember adding several duplicated "add 1 ressource" status, but somehow they conflicted and only added 1 ressource.

I know it is possible. But I was following another approach. (and I answered about what I thought about your suggestions). Edit : "9s for casters wouldn't be my solution of choice. Still too strong with high level spells. And too defavorable for low level spell." Yup, I know that you edited your answer. I edited mine to give my feedback :

9s for casters wouldn't be my solution of choice. Still too strong with high level spells. And too defavorable for low level spell. Many people, including @MaxQuesthave been thinking that having some tick capped and some other non capped, based on % chance or cycle would fit. Currently, I'm leaning to : - 6s tick +1 ressource up to Tier 3 - 18s tick +1 ressource up to Tier 9 (cumulative with previous one happening at 18s) - No effect on initial tick (which would solve Tactician rebooting Brilliant to gain ressource faster) to compensate a bit for extra ressources generated this way. This would be probably easy to implement (so more likely to be bug-free). I'm not 100% sure how the cumulative part at 18s would work. There might be other solutions, just read the technical limitations I've found (there might be work around, but they won't be trivial) : Alternative effect for "Brilliant" - Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!) - Obsidian Forum Community My version of SoT addresses it. The effect is basically to halve buff ellapsing speed instead of adding a flat 10s. So no effect duration can be more than doubled. I think it is quite clean. There might be other solutions, but I would probably still prefer mine, unless somebody finds an issue with it. I don't particularly like the "timer" part of your solution. But if it works, I don't see an issue with it. I just prefer mine