Elric Galad

Changing the way an ability works is trickier than changing its values Rising Paralysis to 8s maybe ? 10s starts sounding too much, especially for SC upgraded version. Garrote has a prone effect that adds up to its 6s paralysis, and Stunning Blow has its refund upgrade + double chance to apply that both mitigate its cost so I guess it would be balanced. I also have Power Strike in my list of abilities to be buffed. First, its cost should be set to 3 Discipline ; a longer Stun (and staggered) would help too (8s, 10s ?)

Well, the deflection buff is short lived and the dash part situational. 0 recovery Smoke Veil would lead to abuse with Assassin/Caster. Current recovery is not very long either. I would not include it in a mod, but changing recovery of a single ability is quite easy (though tricky, recovery delay are coded as an ID, not a number, so you have to copy/paste the recovery ID of another ability). So if you want to do it, go wild ^^ Other Paralysis abilities (Garrote and Stunning Blow) currently cost 2. So I would align Shadow Step with them. Sure you don't get an attack or additional damages, but you have a Dash and Deflection instead. Also, Shadow Step upgrade also add a bit of AoE (SC only), so 1 Guile would feel too strong. Once more, it's quite easy to mod. Just to say, I'm trying to avoid Power Creep in my mod plan. I'm even planning a couple of NERFS, which might feel weird but I would include them in a separate package anyway.

I get your point about Smoke Veil but the No Recovery part contributes justifying Shadowing Beyond increased cost. You have to think about Smoke Veil as an excellent and cheap panic button with a positive interaction with Backstab while Shadowing Beyond is meant to be used more offensively thanks to its teleporting and no Recovery effects. Edit : Even if Blinding Strike is meant to be used more rarely, both its upgrades are extremely valuable against high prio target. Gouging Strike is even the Most Valuable ability against a certain Mega Boss. Blinding is a fairly good debuff even when decreased to Disoriented, and help Deathblow with ranged weapon and against Perception resistant foes.

That is also because most of Rogue active abilities aren't really worth their guile. Even as a MC you spam Crippling and Blinding strike most of the time in my experience. Maybe MC assassin spam Smoke Veil and Shadowing Beyond too but SC should indeed spam Vanishing instead. Gambit is tempting but require even more dedication. I plan to add a +2 Guile Bracer un my mod to help it a bit. Community patch already decreased Withering Strike Cost. Smoke Veil, Shadowing Beyond and Shadow Step should cost 1 loss Guile each. This should diversify Rogue Builds.

You can play a SC Rogue and build it around Vanishing Strike (which is basically the best way to play SC Rogue). Also, Community Patch makes Backstab additional damages, so it provides the same benefit with a dagger or with an arquebus (which fits better thematically). Full Attacks don't provide more damages (except for Vanishing Strikes) but don't provide less backstab damages than 2-hander with this modification.

This is... weird. So now it works only for Single Attacks and pulsing spell ? Does pulsing spell even consume Lion Sprint proc or can you still attack once with a +15 Acc bonus ? I wouldn't be surprise if isn't supposed to be consumed or applied by spell but somehow applied to pulsing for some reasons... Soubds like they changed 1 parameter in the data file with some impredictable consequence. Pulsing spell may simply be applying the caster accuracy (without filtering the spell acc bonus keyword) rather than the casting accuracy, which could explain this.

You may want to cast tier 1-3 buffs just to get something when blood sacrifice random effect restore a spell up to tier 3. Infuse Vital essence boost to Con might be handy for Bloodmages too.

As Tolkien would have said : "All that has an Antidote is not Poison."

Oh, I didn't know that. Bonded Fury has to be compared with Fighter Inspired Discipline which is... good enough. Same Tier, same duration, and same general principle. Difference are : - Recovery : inspired Discipline being basically instant. - Inspiration Tiers : Many Tier 2 are roughly twice as good as Tier 1. I would say it is true for Tenacious, Hardy, Aware and Nimble. But not for Acute and Resolute in the case of pet. So not really twice as good, but not much less. - Target : I would say that a SC fighter is roughly twice as good as a pet, but it might be underestimated. Some of the Improved Clear Out abilities combined with the right weapon really kick arses. I would say that Bonded Fury would be good if it had 0 recovery and 2 Bond Cost. Or maybe lasted twice. Or some combination of all these. The truth is that I would like SC Ranger Pet to be really superior to MC ones, and that a slightly OP Bonded Fury would really be good for this.

It's not that Playdead is useless. But it's only a (better) version of withdrawal that works only on 1 specific team member and cost 2 bonds from your desperately needed ressource pool. That plus recovery. Bonded fury is good on paper, but once more cost a bunch of ressources just to buff your pet and has a quite high recovey time. It's not exactly a Passive pet buff for SC rangers. Everybond spent on the pet is less spent on offensive abilities (which are quite decent for SC Ranger). Tier 2 Resolve isn't that useful on the pet, and I wonder whether Intellect Inspiration has an effect. Is the additional PL even apply to Takedown ? Do pets have a PL ?

The return of the Mad Hornet

OP counted Symbols, that's why I was also referring a pulsing spell. They are DoT too in the common sense even if mechanics are indeed a bit different.

Would you count relentless storm as DoT ? Might not been its primary use but it adds up. Druid are really Kings of Foe only DoT.

Twinned arrows was one of the most OP abilities in PoE1, good enough to make the entire Rogue Class obsolete as single target damage dealee. Stunning Shots were pretty good too, but Interrupt on Croit isn't Bad now that interrupt is basically 2s Crowd Control. Ranger abilities are pretty varied IMHO, with Single Target, AoE, dispell, improved Halt, mobility stuff, combo. "Pet heal/rez" are pretty unimaginative as well as bad and Play Dead feels/Shadowed Hunters are quite redundant though. The Tier 8 pet buff is overcosted and recovery is too long... The entire pet care Line is what makes ranger disappointing...

Ghostheart is good because of its animal companion, not as a way to ignore it. Spammable instant summon is a crazy ability and it is also good to help position it. Concussive Shot is the only 1 ressource interrupt on graze that works with RANGED weapons. Ranged interrupt are far more convenient than melee ones. Overall I agree with you that Rangers are better than the credit they get but that their tech tree is incredibly ability points hungry. Furthermore most of pet related abilities are meh, especially compared to Paladin ones that can target any party membres...

To quote the Community Patch description : "Additionally if you don't like a specific change, you can easily find it in <mod_name>/design/gamedata/, and delete the respective .gamedatabundle". EDITED (cause I answered too quickly) : I believe this is too much a hassle to make separate package for every change and that they made packages for good reasons (including consistency and testing). It doesn't feel that complicated to remove a specific change this way. I will follow the same principles. Nerfing is part of balancing, which is the purpose of the mod to begin with. The community patch already nerfed some abilities (such as Resonant Touch stack capping). But I think you express a common opinion among players, and that's why making a separate package for nerfs seems the best idea IMHO.

The latest news were the following : The recent posts are mostly by some other potential modders discussing balance in general. I think I will try to make my own mod starting from the community mod basis, because it is great and goes in the right direction. But it is something I only plan to start in a couple of months. And I can't declare it as an "official continuation" of the community patch. Anyway, if anybody is interested, it might be better to gather different opinions, because it is the best way to prevent powercreeping and introducing some new OPness. I think the mod will include nerfs too, probably in a separate package because some players may not like nerfs in Single Player games

I never realized Shared Nightmare wasn't limited to Cipher Powers...

But not spiders ? Kraken is akin to cephalopods which are among the smartest animals. So I suppose it is more about being 'ancient' than being 'simple'. It is a bit disturbing because apart kraken and imps, primordials as a group could have made more sense. Not that annoying, but other categories had strong logic (especially the reason why undead and constructs are grouped within vessels), so I would have expected something as consistent for primordials.

Kiths are humanoids. Wilders are sentient animal with a vaguely kith-like anatomy but too far away from kiths to be considered as such. Beats are... well... animals. Vessels are souls within a body that isn't linked to that soul (or not anymore). Spirits are disembodied soul (or group of souls). But what exactly are primordials ? It seems to be the only creature type that has no clear definition. At some points, they seemed to be plants, fungus, blobs (basically all non-animal complexe lifeform) and related creatures (delemgans...). Then imps were introduced and qualified as primordials with the rest of the group. In PoE1 (not sure about deadfire), kraken was a primordial too. I wonder if the scenarists have a clear definition. Maybe not. Maybe this explains these weird qualifications as primordials...

I wanted to share a proposal about Brilliant/SoT nerf : what about changing SoT to a lasting beneficial effect that increases duration of beneficial effects rather than the Flat duration increase it currently provides. It would still be very powerful (I would even say more convenient) but less abusable. That would also limit its interaction with very short effects such as Blade Cascade. The added ressource tick duration of various classes could then be tweaked according to classes to make Brilliant itself more balanced.

Well there are plenty of ways to buff a spell : A) Reduce Casting time (especially good for low level spells which tend to be bad at action economy) B) Add an Interrupt/Prone (especially good with the above) or lower the interrupt threshold (such as Hit->Graze) C) Give it an accuracy bonus (but no idea how to display it on tooltip) and/or possibly change the defense D) Increase duration E) Add an AoE (I have no idea how tricky it is to mod) F) And ultimately, changing the actual effect. But in my opinion, this shall be limited to extreme cases because it somawhat "change the feeling" of the spell. I would simply have set Haunting Chain to 30s because I like the "so horryfied that moves slow" feeling of the spell. Even downgraded to Frightened, a 30s Frighten is still very relevant versus non resolve immune bosses. Fracture Volition is probably beyond redemption and could require a "F" change, because these afflicitions are not worthy of a PL III single target spell. Not sure about adding Daze, but no "better idea" at the moment.

I thought most if not all spells do Graze and "Can Graze" was an obsolete parameter. Are you sure Tenacious grasp can't ? Another solution would be to give it an Accuracy bonus (such as Thunder Rolled upgrade which has +15). Juste made a list of Cipher powers which could need a little Care : Antipathetic and Tenacious Grasp as you Said Soul Ignition (desintegrate is far better, maybe if it targetted Will instead ?) Fractured Volition (another Bad secret horror) Hauting Chain (hard CC is nice but this one is so inferior to some wizard spell that it hurts) Note that some others have already been buffed by Community Patch.

Mule Kick and Leaps would be more for the purpose of having a bit more consistent rules. I've started a (quite long) list of abilities requiring some changes. Antipathetic field : I agree with your proposal, especially because Anitpathetic field would be very interesting for SC Cipher given that is the best way to trigger 1000 cuts proc. Tenuous Grasp : Its main utility is to be a quite long Will debuff IMHO. Focus cost is a non issue, but casting time is. It's already quite low so setting it to 0.5s/3s would be enough IMHO. Quick affliction spamming has its use, especially for a ranged mindstalker. Now the true question is : how do we keep on coordinating the balance effort ^^ ? The community patch has already been a really great common work, so how do we continue this ? Main issues of modding are : - Power Creeping - Lack of visibility of mods - Too much changes from the original game, so might not feel "legit" I think Community Patch has managed to avoid (mostly) these issues for now, especially thanks to polls, and I wonder how to continue the good work.

And don't forger the awesome Street Sweeper, aka Unbender's Bane. This weapon is awesome against any self buffing target. I feel it should be mandatory in any Black Jacket build (and Staff modal has it's uses).