[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

Can you make the shield from old "cannot die" effect visible, at least the duration?

Also priests' resurrection still has cannot die effect, is it intentional that only they have access to it?

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

25 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

2.5 multiplier is super hard to get with anything but a mindstalker. 

x2 multiplier is a reasonable assumption I guess.

with *2 multiplier and 25% raw lash, the difference is 8%. IDK, if BW is "overall" 8% more damage it's probably worth considering, but we're only looking at a very specific use and the advantage is still so small that if we just occasionally cast a spell it disappears.

But I agree the lash can't be too high because the AoE applications you mentioned. I'm still rooting for your 0.625 SW/BW solution

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Ok, but I suspect it is wrong for this part because I checked the code and it shows standard PL progression. And Standard PL progression is 5% multiplicative per PL above ability level.

(can't check in game now)

did a quick test, it's indeed 5%, and weapon part also benefits from PL.

the corrected result would be M<376/(108+135L), so even with a lash, DW needs a ~300% multiplier to match BW.

still, with 250% multiplier and no lash, the difference is very small:

DW 153.0625 vs BW 158.3625, a 3.46% difference

if change BW to 30% lash the difference is 10.7%, slightly more visible but probably not good enough

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

Yeah the argument for BW would be "why wouldn't I want more focus". There're so many high tier spells that couldn't fit into a build because focus isn't enough for everything even with DW.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

Quote

primary_weapon_final_dmg + [10 + (focus - 10) / 4] * [1 + 0.1 * (pl - 1)] * (1 + damage_bonuses + weapon_damage_bonuses)

from here

I think I probably saw PL affecting the weapon part when doing tests earlier today (20.3 roll with a sabre). Not sure as I'm not on computer right now.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

That's a pretty elegant solution. Other lashes will still make the end result favor DW a little bit, but with reasonable amount of lashes it's at least 15% more damage and 70% focus gain, not bad at all.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

If we buff it to 30% raw lash, for a typical cipher with 8 PL, 2.5 multiplier (low for mindstalker, pretty high for others) and no other lashes, the attack + SA combo damage will be BW 163.5 vs DW 154.375. The difference is only 6% and I still would never take it.

suggestion: base 25% raw lash, another 25% if target is affected by shred spell DoTs (if it's possible). Or just bonus attack and/or PEN vs said targets on top of lash. Double focus from DW simply is this impactful.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

trying to get it clear from the basics:

set M = (1 + all_weapon_and_damage_bonuses), L = all_other_lashes_ratio, let a PL8 cipher do the alternative attacks with a sabre with average base damage of 16, look at 2 attacks:

DW: 16*M*(1+L) + 16*M*(1+L) + [4*M*(1+L)+7.5]*1.7*M

BW: 16*M*(1.2+L)+ 16*M*(1.2+L) + [2*M*(1.2+L)+7.5]*1.7*M

If we want DW < BW:

32*M*(1+L)+6.8*(1+L)*M^2+12.75*M < 32*M*(1.2+L)+3.4*(1.2+L)*M^2+12.75*M

M < 160/(68+85*L)

 

Every other lash or damage bonus makes BW worse by comparison. To make BW as good as DW, the total damage multiplier can't be higher than ~2.35. Legendary weapon + Soul Whip is already 1.8, if we add just one lash, the difference is unnoticeable. Not to mention we naturally want more damage bonuses on any damage dealer, and it only makes DW better.

Also yes, CP BW works on weapon abilities.

Personally I think BW needs to be a clear winner in this case to compensate for the severe lack of flexibility in all other cases, and 25% lash is far from enough. Maybe even a redesign so it doesn't punish getting more damage bonuses.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

1 hour ago, NotDumbEnough said:

This example is too extreme, most characters cannot deal 200 damage in a single blow. Because Soul Annihilation is most efficient at low focus, usually you are using it every other attack, so even in late game you are only going to reasonably deal maybe 60 weapon damage at most in most scenarios. That is roughly 36 vs 60 focus, for SA that is 16.5 vs 22.5 damage in the next hit before PL and damage modifiers. It is a 6 damage difference (before modifiers) on every other attack, whereas for Biting Whip you are dealing 12 damage (after modifiers) from the lash on every attack assuming you always hit for 60. For Draining Whip to keep up in terms of sheer damage you need about +300% damage on your weapon, which is pretty difficult to reach even for a level 20 rogue using the best weapons. Most likely it is somewhere around +200% or +250% bonus. Biting Whip therefore usually deals a small amount more damage, and is less prone to overkill damage for Soul Annihilation, while Draining Whip obviously favors casting spells.

I think you're skipping too much on multipliers. A MC cipher with 8 PL and 10 MIG, legendary weapon and no other bonuses makes the difference into 6 * 1.7 * 1.8 = 18.36. And it only gets better with every bonus you can add. It's in fact really rare that a cipher only has this few bonuses.

Also before getting to late game it's just worthwhile to waste focus on SA as they already struggle to keep the usual cipher spells.

 

Edit: I forget the lash applies to the weapon part of SA attack, but still:

if we can hit 60 weapon damage without other lash, the bonus would be much more than just 0.6 from legendary, for example with a multiplier of 2.5, it's 6 * 1.7 * 2.5 = 25.5. If they have other lashes, BW also becomes less important.

this pattern also doesn't take up all of the cipher's total combat time. Borrowed Instinct is the bare minimum, and Disintegration is always more efficient for single target. Taking all these casting and focus generating time into account, the attack - SA loop is even less important. A BW cipher will have a much harder time to sustain BI and Disintegration that if they have any advantage with SA at all, the end result is still worse.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

On 2/3/2024 at 5:11 PM, Elric Galad said:

Beguiler may actually want Biting Whip for their (rare) weapon attacks when their spell really works poorly. 

 

Soul Blade may see it as a more flexible alternative to soul Annihilation that kind of stacks with it.

Beguiler really needs focus from weapons when enemy numbers is low, e.g. in many boss's case. They aren't much different from vanilla cipher in that situation, and Biting Whip just heavily underperforms as usual.

Even though SA is already not very efficient by damage per focus standard, it is still pretty easy to reach at least 1 focus -> 1 damage.

In this case, let's say a SB with Draining Whip and no other lash deals 200 weapon damage to get 200 focus, and uses SA to deal another 200 raw damage (plus the primary attack)

A SB with Biting Whip in the same time deals 200 weapon damage, 40 raw lash and 120 SA damage.

This is an extreme case because we don't really want to dump focus into SA every time. For every other purpose BW is much worse. Even in this extreme case, BW is still worse than DW. If the cipher has other lashes or has a DPF better than 1:1, the numbers favor DW more.

IMO DW cipher as baseline is fine, I don't mind a slight nerf like down to +80% focus, but BW really needs some buffs to be viable, because it's less flexible by a mile and still strictly worse than DW.

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

2 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Dispersed Suffering from Frostfall also target will, and against skellies it is the surest way to increase hostile effects on him (6 skellies + thunderous report with frostfall equipped mean potentially 6*20% of the effect on enemies, + many lives skellies sacrified for the cause during the fight with a frostfall set).

is this effect multiplicative like Enfeebled? seems like something can be abused. Also this doesn't have to be a kill from the weapon?

[2H Rogue Watcher transition into Deadfire]

I just finished a Berath run, actually there're very few special interactions for them, maybe slightly more than other priests but much less than I expected.

If you really want to play it, I highly recommend go single class. SC priests have a very different playstyle compared to MC ones, and Berath is one of the better pure casters among all subclasses.

[2H Rogue Watcher transition into Deadfire]

The main advantages of DW are:

1. you get special effects from 2 weapons. and some of 1h weapons have very powerful effects.

2. because everything in deadfire is slower, you'll have much longer recovery time with 2h, that makes you much less responsive.

3. when you use an ability with full attack, DW makes it easier to apply the effect.

In terms of DPS, 2H and DW are surprisingly really close, usually around 10% difference.

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

I've tested it, Writ of War can stop Dorudugan from using any ability, all the way down to 0hp. Also with 25 INT character it lasts ~15s on it, so keeping the effect on is very practical.

I think this is somewhere between perma-paralyzing and normal kiting strategy. After debuffing Dorudugan only has 90+ will, so keeping all the debuffs on is much easier. Tanking auto-attacks is also as not difficult as dodging barrage/dealing with the pull.

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

I see. It does need some time to get used to, but makes sense. Ideally a tier 9 spell every 15s is still pretty good

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Yes, cyclical

Can the higher ticks prioritize higher tier slots? or are they just random? Also how does the time counter work when it's frequently reapplied?

When I set a very basic AI script to cast Ancestor's Memory on a caster whenever cipher has enough focus, if they have multiple slots to fill, the tier 7-9 slots can never be filled. Is this because the frequent reapply made the counter always cycling 3-6-3-6, or because the "9" ticks don't prioritize higher spell slots?

[Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0]

When a brilliant is longer than 15s, the max lv of spells regained is 3-6-9-3-6-9... right?

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

13 minutes ago, thelee said:

ah, i wonder if writ of war only functions for blocking ability selection, the game doesn't check again when the ability actually is going to be used? this is characteristic of how player AI scripts work (the script is checked after an action is completed, not after recovery when an ability needs to be selected), which leads to some lag in scripts incorporating changing conditions/triggers because an ability will be queued well in advance of when it actually gets used.

i wonder if frightened works like this for the AI? or frightened works better and writ of war is just implemented differently in this way.

I think frightened is different, it's very common to stop queued abilities with cipher's secret horror.

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

31 minutes ago, thelee said:

i'm actually surprised that it even stopped brutal cleave as well. hard to square with what boeroer said though about still getting hellfire barrage. one thing i wonder is that the AI can be weird on how it queues up abilities and it might have queued up an ability even though technically it wasn't allowed to and then was able to execute it because the writ wore off.

if anyone really wants to advance science they should take down dorudugan completely and report back

Yeah this happened once, it queued Hellfire Barrage before I could apply the writ and used it anyway.

I'm doing a Berath run, maybe I'll just add the spell to the spellbook and see what happens then. My party composition won't be able to fight it comfortably anyway.

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

Tested this for a while. At least with Unity Console refreshing spells constantly, Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment + Writ of War can keep Dorudugan doing only auto attacks for a few minutes. I didn't get its hp down so can't say this works for all its abilities, but even disabling Brutal Cleave only is a vast improvement.

This makes Priest of Woedica a very interesing MC choice, their spells aren't that great outside writs but they don't get symbols anyway, so I don't feel I'm losing as much as with other priests.

[Transitioning from Cipher in PoE1 to a multiclass Cipher (or something else entirely) in Deadfire]

That's a fair point.

By the way, nothing to do with cipher, but isn't White Flame's AOE super tiny? IIRC it's way smaller than paladin aura or chant, last time when I played one with 20ish INT he couldn't even cover melee characters if I wanted to flank a boss

[Transitioning from Cipher in PoE1 to a multiclass Cipher (or something else entirely) in Deadfire]

I mean the cipher is probably the last person in the party I want to do tanking or healing, so wasting the best stuff from the paladin side.

[Can Writ of War trivialize Dorudugan?]

Let's just assume accuracy, duration and brilliant isn't a problem, can Writ of War disable its Brutal Cleave or Magnetic Overdrive? These 2 are the only things that makes the fight tricky. I don't have a save near the boss to test on my own.

[Transitioning from Cipher in PoE1 to a multiclass Cipher (or something else entirely) in Deadfire]

Inquisitor is probably better for a solo character, since both paladin and cipher are very strong classes, but don't help with the other side, like at all.

Every cipher subclass has a different playstyle.

Soulblade and Beguiler are closer to a vanilla cipher, with Soulblade focusing on melee and Beguiler on casting. Soulblade works well with rogues, especially Streetfighter. Beguiler can work with almost everything, or as single class. The high tier cipher abilities are very powerful for a caster style.

Ascendant is extremely powerful as single class and can underperform with multiclass. The core spells and passives for them are mostly in tier 8 and 9. They are also the only subclass that can delete everyone in like 10 seconds for most fights.

 

Psion is the subclass I haven't played and also the most unique, works with caster multiclasses, but I think others that actually played it can explain it in detail.

[Bellower = underwhelming?]

I don't know how to make bellower work either. +PL makes most sense for offensive incantations, but why not use skald then, they are so efficient with low cost incantations that +PL can't compete