DragonDrop

The PB effect is an affliction. The Street Fighter effect is a buff.

There's a really sweet build I theorycrafted a while ago that hinges on constantly expiring the powder burns debuff. It's aimed at making FF monk actually viable for reliable healing and wound generation.

When a character attacks with the Powder Burns modal, it places a debuff that Distracts them for 10 seconds. This is a hostile effect Resolve reduces duration. Intellect also increases its duration, which I am looking to prevent. My solution was to apply a StatusEffect (SE) that grants -10000 INT before the Distracted SE is applied. This guarantees 1 INT at the time of Distraction being cast, so you get -45% duration of positive buffs. I then increase base duration of Distraction to 18.181818 seconds so that when the -45% is applied, it goes back down to 10. The -INT SE is removed on attack, so it doesn't affect anything else. This gives larger numbers than expected using the calculation sheet provided and through in-game testing without the mod using a character that has 10 INT. When reversing the mod (adding 10000 INT and reducing duration of Distraction to 4.44444 seconds) we get smaller numbers than expected. Unexpected values only occur when there are multiple sources of Hostile Effect Reduction (RES + Solitary Ring of the Wanderer for example). Ideal solution SETS the character's INT to 10 but I don't know how I would achieve this since it requires a dynamic value and I don't know if attributes are compatible with dynamic values. Duration Formula.xlsx

The Blunderbuss modal "Powder Burns" is treated as a beneficial effect even though it afflicts the user. That affliction will be lengthened with the character's intellect. Please fix this, it's quite annoying and doesn't make any sense.

In the below photo, you can see that Blunderbuss's Powder Burns modal is categorized as a "beneficial effect". This makes no sense, and means characters with high INT will afflict themselves for very long periods of time. Please fix this as a QoL feature.

Bump... hopefully support isn't still being swamped by the bugs caused by turn based mode.

Most likely many elements of the game engine weren't properly isolated/decoupled from other elements, which was probably fine before turn-based mode. Adding TB probably shifted many fundamental elements of the game around, causing unforeseeable bugs. This is why when I develop anything I focus on isolating the different moving parts so that changes in A don't cause unexpected changes in B. Usually you see stuff like this because someone did a fast job writing some engine code getting it working in the short term rather than the long term.

I'd really love if they did. I know they're swamped with the bugs caused by the recent updates to the game. Patching this up would make combat cleaner and more logical, in addition to improving Forbidden Fist (which desperately needs improvement) and potentially Blood Mage too.

Shameless bump

It's true, the scaling described is consistent. It's also true that no player expects things to work this way because it doesn't make sense. The bottom line is that the game treats self-inflicted effects as both helpful and harmful at the same time. This is the root issue I'm trying to bring to the surface. It's not a logical game mechanic, and was most likely not intended to be this way. It's also not simple because you need to consider more factors when figuring out how much damage you'll end up taking. I'm not arguing that these changes will automatically make Forbidden Fist viable. That class needs a lot of work. This will certainly help, though, in the same way that it will help many other classes and builds.

Will you be looking into just Forbidden Fist or the overall issue with abilities that apply afflictions/damage to the caster? I made a post listing many of these and proposing a solution to the whole thing.

Revised list of effects to fix, and edited post for clarity and brevity.

If this is intended, I'll just stop playing the game altogether. Not only does it completely neuter my current team, but it also invalidates my next planned playthrough. Oh well, the DLC looked interesting enough, but there are other games.

Guess I might as well just kill Serafen then and dump his body in the sea along with his weapons... Might this have something to do with Fire in the Hole's +1 ranged bounces? If the game is only applying effects on the initial hit (not the AoE), then it makes sense since attacking the target in back won't bounce to the one in front, but attacking the one in front will bounce to the one in back.

Also INT increases the duration of curse in additional to RES reducing it. It only makes sense that RES would apply here. I made a thread covering many of the other effects that suffer from this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107987-stat-boosts-increasing-the-potency-of-self-harming-effects/. The problem is that increasing the player's helpful stats also increases the potency of self-inflicted harmful effects, which is bad game design, and probably not intended. The player shouldn't ever regret increasing their stats.

I would be interested to know how they rescale time based stats such as recovery time, helpful/harmful ability duration, damage over time, etc. Specifically, characters with lots of recovery time reduction should be able to attack multiple times per turn, otherwise it's just a wasted skill and everyone should simply dump dexterity and wear the heaviest armor.

It seems the issue comes in two parts. First, there's the nonsense mechanic where increasing a beneficial stat makes negative effects stronger. But you're also right when you say the downsides would be negligible at higher levels without the proper scaling. A solution might be to make the damage you take based on your max or current HP so that the damage values have the same impact regardless of level and gear. They would of course have to be rescaled too, to make sure they aren't too strong or too weak.

Increasing a character's stats past the baseline value of 10 should have only positive effects on gameplay and combat. Following this is good game design and makes sense. In PoE, there are many abilities that have drawbacks such as afflicting the character for a duration or forcing them to take damage. In all of those scenarios I've found, the following things happen with regard to self-harming effects: Duration increases with the player's INT, beneficial effect increase (like from Strand of Favor, which contradicts its description), and Power Level (if class ability). Damage the player takes increases with player's MIG, Power Level (if class ability), and all percent damage increases such as the human race bonus when bloodied or near death. Why does INT increase the duration of these harmful effects while RES simultaneously reduces it? Now we have two stats that the player wants to increase, both contradicting each other. INT should have no influence on duration, which will allow RES to do its job properly. The reason it works like this currently is that the game treats self-harming effects as both helpful and harmful. This should not be the case. On the other hand, ability self-damage should scale as the character becomes stronger to keep things balanced. All the abilities I mention below are relatively balanced to Power Level. Because self-damage is almost exclusively raw and all +% bonus damage increases will scale this damage up, it's easy to see that things can very quickly get out of hand. Forcing this self-damage to scale from Power Level only will allow DPS characters to use abilities like Frenzy and Sacred Immolation without having to compensate with high CON. The following abilities should be changed: Monk Forbidden Curse duration. Should be RES only. Monk Forbidden Curse damage tick. Should be PL only. Blood Mage's self-damage should be PL only. It's almost certainly being affected, but there's no tooltip and since it's random damage there's no way to prove it via screenshot. Paladin's Sacred Immolation damage tick. Should be PL only. Barbarian's Frenzy damage tick. Should be PL only. Blunderbuss's Powder Burns duration. Should be RES only. Wizard Spell Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Should be PL only. Strand of Favor's passive effects both apply to self-inflicted effect duration. Only the Ward of Favor ability should apply. Fixing the scaling issues of harmful self-inflicted effects would be a strong improvement to combat overall. This will make the commonly ignored aspects of some classes and builds competitive, which would enhance the game's variety.

Monk with Serafen cannons using Stunning Surge. You can infinitely CC groups of enemies if you have enough INT and hit to crit.

The math works out, that's gotta be the reason. But it's kind of a misleading formula to use since there's no documentation anywhere (that I could find). Players will expect the multipliers to stack in a straightforward way unless mentioned otherwise. How did you find this out?

While testing some concepts revolving around hostile effect reduction, I ran into this unexpected issue. Stacking multiple instances of hostile effect reduction (through RES or otherwise) is done multiplicatively. This post will prove that there is an error in the game's calculation of that statistic. I made a new character to prove that this mechanic was behaving unexpectedly. Here are the relevant stats of the character: INT is 10, which is noteworthy because I'm using Powder Burns to test (you can self inflict it, but its duration increases with INT, so I remove that factor with ant INT of 10). My RES is 25, which provides a baseline hostile effect reduction of 45%. To test, I fire a plain, non-unique Blunderbuss at an enemy and pause the game immediately after the Powder Burns debuff appears in the character sheet. For this test, expected value is 5.5 seconds, which is correct (10 sec * (1 - 0.45) = 5.5 sec). With Monk's ability Clarity of Agony, which provides 50% hostile effect reduction, we get these results: This value is not correct (10 sec * (1 - 0.45) * (1 - 0.5) = 2.75 seconds, not 3.5 seconds. This ring provides 35% hostile effect reduction when there are no allies nearby (that condition was satisfied for this test). It also provides +1 RES, which will be taken into consideration in calculation below (45% reduction from RES -> 48% reduction). The weapon fire test provided these results: The expected value is 10 sec * (1 - 0.48) * (1 - 0.5) * (1 - 0.35) = 1.69 seconds. Again the actual value is off by a significant margin. These results show that stacking hostile effect reduction (and likely other similar stacking bonuses) produces incorrectly calculated values. The only test scenario that actually worked was the one where we only tested reduction from RES. Adding any additional sources of hostile effect reduction produced unexpected values. It seems that the way multiplicative bonuses are calculated is not correct when more than one of the same bonus is present. I highly recommend that this be investigated as a bug.

Oh man I totally missed that. I was so focused on the synergy I forgot about the other synergy! Well maybe someone can still make use of this concept. EDIT: Actually after some testing I can confirm that the Powder Burns effect applies to your character BEFORE the attack is fired. This means you do not need to have PB active when you fire the attack and this build is still viable! EDIT EDIT: Updated OP to be more concise and have better explanation.

I'm working on a build concept that is based around Powder Burns (PB) from Blunderbuss weapons. The weapons of choice for this build are the Hand Cannons from Serafen's quest line. This build is called the Infinity Monk because it can support infinitely casting both Mortification and Wound abilities. Multiclass for this build are Monk (Forbidden Fist) with Rogue (Streetfighter). Ffiring a Blunderbuss with the PB modal active flanks the player. This activates the "Looking for a Fight" ability of the Streetfighter, providing -50% recovery time and +50% damage vs afflicted targets. Because PB counts as a hostile effect, when it expires, the Forbidden Fist aspect of the build grants you +1 Wounds and some decent healing. Since PB lasts 10 seconds, you want to stack RES to make it expire before your next attack. In testing I found that PB is applied right before your attack is fired, which means that you'll still get the +50% damage bonus on that attack, even though you weren't flanked at the time. It seems that reload time is determined at the start of a reload, and isn't updated if anything changes mid-process. That means that as long as PB hasn't expired before you start reloading, you benefit from the Streetfighter recovery time. Further bonuses of the build revolve around applying afflictions in an AoE around your attack target with the Hand Cannon weapon(s). You can infinitely cast Monk's Stunning Surge with enough enemy density since you're bound to crit at least once. Rogue's Cripping/Blinding/Withering Strike abilities are also excellent to apply in AoE. This build greatly benefits from high INT so as to increase the radius of your attacks and the duration of afflictions and bonuses to yourself. You can easily achieve high INT with this build as you can get 10 INT from from Turning Wheel with 10 Wounds. Clarity of Agony is crucial to the build as it reduces hostile effects, which applies to PB. The lower you reduce PB's duration, the faster your character is able to attack (you need to make sure PB expires before your attack goes off). Further, you have access to Thunderous Blows at the cost of Wounds, which basically makes it a permanent +5 MIG and +2 PEN. As good as all this sounds, there is a major drawback in that you must carefully moderate your stats at any given moment. To support high DEX, you must have a lot of RES to make sure PB expires before your next attack. If you increase your INT, you will also inadvertently increase the duration of PB which is counter-productive, although still worth it. So the idea is to find the maximum amount of RES and hostile effect reduction possible and then regulate your attack rate accordingly. Here are all the items and abilities I was able to come up with that would reduce PB duration: Maxing RES in character creation (points/race/culture): 21 RES with Orlan race + Ixamitl Plains culture. Ring of the Solitary Wanderer: +1 RES, and -35% hostile duration if no allies nearby (only for solo play). Eviee pet: +2 RES. Clarity of Agony: -50% hostile duration. Cabalist's Gambeson enchant: -10% hostile duration. Reducing your INT would also work, but that's counterproductive to the build so I want to avoid this. Svef: Invalidates the build as it makes you resistant to PER afflictions, which PB is. Ideally avoid any temporary bonuses like food, drugs, resting bonuses, etc. It's personal preference, but for me it's super annoying to micromanage. Also if possible, it's kinda pointless to rely on items that you can only get late-game. For best experience, this build should be fully online early on in the game. NOTE: There's a strange issue with the way hostile effect reduction works. The actual duration of PB is usually higher than expected, when taking expected hostile reduction multiplicative formula into account. With 10 INT (10 sec PB duration), 25 RES (-45%), Clarity of Agony (-50%), Solitary Wanderer's (-35%), and Cabalist's Gambeson (-10%), the math makes it ~84% reduction. (1 - 0.84) * 10 second PB duration = 1.6 seconds. Actual in-game values were ~2.8 seconds. No idea why this is.