Bosmer

Thanks a lot - then I agree that you reached the best possible solution already

Hi @Elric Galad! I haven't given up yet on getting Recall Agony to work with Soul Annihilation and Carnage.. so maybe you could briefly help me out here? I can't understand why abilities like Blood Ward and Old Siec are able to recognize Damage from DoTs but Recall Agony (unmodded) and Pain Link are not? (I'm using the Apotheosis Editor by @Noqn btw). Blood Ward and Old Siec are working by "ApplyStatusEffectToSelfByDamageDealt" with the "StatusEffectType" "Health". Recall Agony is working by "ApplyStatusEffectToSelfByDamageRecieved" and Pain Link "ApplyStatusEffectToEnemyByDamageRecieved" with the "StatusEffectType" "Damage". So is the problem that "Damage Recieved" cannot recognize Damage by DoTs (and thus SA / Carnage) but for some reason "Damage Dealt" can? Or is the problem about the difference in StatusEffectType?

So I assume that carnage damage is not affected by the new BPM Recall Agony as well? your greatsword proposal sounds great. Would make greatsword a strong Soul annihilation weapon, but that’s ok

Somewhere I read 1.5 or 1.6 seconds Minimum reload animation. It’s definitely reachable

Nice idea. By doing so you would allow it to work with kills by soul annihilation or carnage.

Thats such a cool finding! Any chance for a similar workaround for SA?

I understand your point and I’m quite unsure about this myself. I just notice that at least in my playthroughs I tend to take the ability but never use it, maybe on large bosses, if I remember it. And since applying debuffs and dots on bosses is more important it sits in very niche spot, although being a cool ability on paper. I would consider not stacking with the paladin ability a plus. At least they would differ in the AoE / Single target dimension.

I don‘t know if it should work with Dots, but it should at least work with Soul annihilation (I didn’t even know that it didn’t work with SA because I seldomly use it). Almost seems like an oversight. Elrics proposal would allow more potential build synergy. I don’t think that the effect would be generally stronger. It would be stronger for dot damage, but weaker for direct damage, especially for martial attacks (albeit contributing to focus generation). Would it stack with the Paladin debuff?

Thanks for the clarification, that’s a really smart solution

Hey @Elric Galad, I got the chance to play with your 3.1 changes to cipher whips and soul annihilation. After some thoughts I think that the 1.33 buff on biting whip soul annihilation is a bit too strong. It would be the right value if SA damage would increase linearly with focus spent, but that’s not the case, since the return to focus is decreasing. (Iirc the formular for the base value is 10+1/4*(foc-10) hence the first 10 focus points are four times more valuable than the additional focus. So especially in early game and when you spam SA with low focus BPM biting whip SA is far superior to draining whip SA. I think there are two easier ways to address this 1) make SA completely linear in focus spent. So instead of the current formula the base value could be something like 0.3*foc. Than the biting whip 1.33 multipler would reflect the differences in focus. A nice side effect would be that spamming SA wouldn’t be the obvious damage maximizing strategy anymore. 2) decrease the biting whip SA buff. There is no “right value” since the performance difference depends on the average focus spent on SA. Intuitively I would say that a 1.2 or 1.25 multiplier is still strong enough throughout the course of the game and especially early on. What’s your opinion?

Yeah, it’s definitely not overpowered and also a bit boring. BPM buffs Con afflictions, such that the effect, when applied, is indeed quite nice, as an on-the-fly 30% health drop. However, there are other cheap ways to get it, e.g. forbidden fists can spam the third tier version. One could think about applying directly the attribute malus, such that it cannot be resisted. What are your ideas? Depending on this effect the corrode lash could be slightly buffed.

Nice rework of the biting whip, a much tougher choice now. Personally I modded the biting whip to be a + x % weapon damage as a function of your current focus. Thus, a soulblade is not required to just spam SA in order to maximize damage. Also encourages to use weapon attacks and cipher spells. I think obsidian missed the opportunity to use your focus pool more as an empowering resource, such as they did with shared nightmare.

Before @thelee chimes in: I think you need to account for the changing base, i.e. being faster by 1 second from initially 2 seconds makes you attack far more often than being faster by 1 second from initially 5 seconds. Hence, if you calculate the relative increase in speed, for example from 10->20 and from 20->30 you'd see: (4.7-3.6)/4.7=0.234 and (3.6-2.9)/3.6=0.194. So increasing dex is still worth it and at this stage the difference could also be partially explained by deadfire's rounding of seconds. If you'd log-transform your y-axis (Attack Speed) you would see probably a rather linear relationship in your plot.

Yes, I think they really missed the chance to write some "stop signs" into the Eothas Main Plot.. some event (like Eothas needing time to recover for something or whatever) that would allow to explain why the Watcher and his crew has the time and need to deal with all the exploring and the sidequests (and DLCs..). To be fair, that's my only negative point on the game and yeah the first one was better in that regard.

I saw Josh twittering that he has still time to decide on his next project (after pentiment's successful release). So maybe we'll know more in the upcoming months Obviously it depends on how much people are currently working on the other large rgp projects Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.

My question was only targeting the technical feasibility. The idea would be: AoE-Pain-Link on allies, but instead to "reflect" damage on attacker, to reflect it on the tank. But as pointed out by @Shai Huludpain link itself is too troublesome to use it as a basis, and if I understand you correctly it's not even possible to change the damage "reflection" direction. So never mind I thought into a similar direction and that basically shows that Take the Hit does need some relevant opportunity costs, otherwise it is too convenient and you would want to have it on all the time. 50% resistance is better than 50% increased damage even if the Fighter and ally are targeted, if Fighter is not targeted it's just a very very strong buff without drawback. Maybe it should break on mobility (such as Blade Turning)?

Sounds great! I think the implementation is straightforward and it would work as expected. I'm not sure on the exact value of the 50% stacking bonus, because I don't know how it plays out with decreasing returns (the difference between 200% and 250% should be minor I guess?) and how it interacts with damage reducing effects, such as defender's stance (and similar item effects). 50% - 50% looks cleaner of course. Out of curiosity: Would a "AoE Pain Link"-implementation also be possible? I.e. allies in the AoE have 50% resistance and damage on them is 50% raw on Fighter" Regarding recovery: I think 4s it fine (maybe 3?), makes also sense from a thematical point of view: While trying to catch the hits, the fighter is not expected to dedicate his time too much on other stuff (similar to blade turning I guess).

Nice idea and I think the values seem right, but regarding the technical implementation.. why make it a 12s tick? Wouldn't it be more transparent to have a faster tick (1s or 3s) that provides accordingly lower chances, such that the exact timing of the tick becomes less relevant. It might feel a bit tedious to try to make sure that each tick lands on a low-health moment in order to maximize resource generation. Just brainstorming here: Would it be possible to combine the two effects (since they lie both on devine retribution), such that they kind of exclude each other? Meaning: Divine Retribution providing zeal for downed ally in 5-Meter AoE and at the same time number of allies in 5-Meter AoE lowering the chances to get the on-health-lost zeal generation? By doing so you would make sure that summon-killing is not the superior (and overpowered) strategy.

Hahah, now I'm curious. I thought that the BPM made Barbarians very strong single-class and multi-class material. I have to agree, however, on the general notion, that Single-class paladins still feel lacking. In my current run I'd really love to see Pallegina as SC Paladin, I just don't see how it comes close to Heralgina in terms of utility, damage or party support. Can't Divine Retribution be modified to only work on Party Members and not summons? Such as some items do iirc? This way it might still be useful for non-summon-parties?

Oh I just saw that berserker’s hit to crit is only provided while frenzy (Active!) .. hence I’m not so sure anymore if it stacks with intuitive hit-to-crit. Would be a bummer if not, but maybe @Boeroercould chime in here?

1) yes it applies carnage, and in my opinion it's a powerful enough ability. It used to be a AoE-Attack on all surrounding enemies until it got nerfed. And it will apply carnage so fighter and berserker work nice together. However, I'm not 100% sure if a carnage kill triggers Cleaving Stance.. Soul Annihilation for example does not! 2) berserker hit to crit stacks with barbaric blow hit to crit, since berserker's hit to crit is passive! It also stacks with rogue's passive hit to crit -> However: stacking hit-to-crit chances has decreasing returns (they don't stack additively) and hence the rogue's 10% should definitely be of second order here -> I.e. increasing Accuracy by 5 points would lead to a stronger increase in crit-rate (and overall DPS of course.). Intuitive inspiration will stack with all passives, but I'm not 100% sure how it stacks with the hit-to-crit of an active ability... in my opinion it should, such as bonus accuracy or bonus penetration of an ability (e.g. accurate wounding shot) stacks with active (and passive ofc) accuracy or penetration buffs, but I didn't test it yet.

1) no it's a full-attack (with weapon effects) on one (random?) close-by target. 2) I'm pretty sure it triggers SW/HD (didn't play too much fighter/monk). I'm not sure if I would say that it's easy to get "infinite chains". For me, personally, SW/HD don't proc as often as I'd imagine and like them to proc, even if I build for it (with huge accuracy values, deflection debuff etc..). Albeit some unique weapons help with that - however, none of them is a Great Sword. 3) Only guessing: It should work like that. However: Base damage of WotEP is significantly lower, such that the carnage hits will be weaker as well ..

Yes, I changed it for my own game to +30% (based on your mod), which definitely doesn't feel too overpowered. +20 all defenses (that stacks quite nicely afaik!) is a huge buff for a defensive build, +40% damage might be very powerful for caster multiclasses, however they usually have a harder time using melee abilities, so could still feel rewarding and fair enough.

In my opinion a fast 2H-Build needs Barbarian and due to Carnage you have build-in AoE Damage. Personally, I find Berserker a bit too difficult for beginners (my main problem is that the Health Pool is hidden - although there are still other health indicators). However, combined with a Fighter (and Constant Recovery) I think it's fairly manageble. Fighter has even more AoE Damage potential due to Mob Stance and Clear Out and provides even more speed bonus that stacks with Barbarian Speed: Mob Stance and Armored Grace! So my personal recommendation would be Furyshaper or Berserker + Devoted. If you go for Furyshaper + Monk you need some more Crit Potential: One option would be to make sure a party member has Morningstar+Modal running such that enemy Fortitude is lowered to benefit from the Brute Force passive! Apparently it wasn't mentioned before: You should seriously consider to install the Community Patch (!) and Elric's Balance Polishing Mod even if this is your first run. EDIT: Oh, I see that you already mentioned Fighter! For Fighter/Barbarian I would try to raise INT(!)/DEX/PER/CON, keep MIG at 10 and lower DEF (maybe not too much otherwise neg. effects run too long).

Well, ultimately it's Eric's Mod, so.. but I think there is enough evidence in this thread (45 pages long..) that he involves in a frequent and thorough discussion with other people on how to improve the game. But if it's "quite arbitrary", then why shouldn't he do what he wants anyway? Personally, (might be just me, because I'm lying ill at home) it's hard to follow your key arguments, since I feel that some of your points contradict each other. The discussion changes too often between the extremes of "(singleclass) rangers suck and are beaten in each and every aspect by 10 different classes" and "bonded fury providing one net bond after 60 seconds is completely unbalanced" (again, just my loose interpretation!) On a different note: How does bonded fury work with the ghostheart pet? If the duration is too long and the ghost pet cannot be sustained long enough than it might be close to a trap choice for ghosthearts.