yorname

For a functional ranger half, I think (unupgraded) mark, (unupgraded) Hunter's claw, stalker's link and driving flight are really necessary. Which isn't that bad in comparison, considering accuracy helps anything offensive, a MC with such abilities is good enough as a supporting half. Protective companion - stalker's link is the part that's probably problematic. MC Barb is similar in lacking an op ability and relying on small upgrades. Even non-tactician fighters. Unbending is op but that's rarely why people pick a MC fighter Resilient can be something more situational, but I think vicious does serve a purpose of distinguishing "SL only pet" and "having any offensive potential", and it is a meaningful choice imo. Not sure what can be done to stalker's link, does switching SL and protective's effects make sense to you? Even if give pet default 1 engagement, +2 engagement can be situationally useful if I want to get accuracy on more than 1 enemies, or just in case multiple enemies jumped to the back. Makes more sense if this one is behind a mandatory pick.

On the topic of that 2 passives, Confident Aim, Weapon Masteries, Marksman, Gunner vary greatly in terms of importance despite all being "non-core" passives. Weapon mastery is better than before and good in it's own, but weapon specialization is so weak that I practically never find a reason to pay the 2 points. Especially at a pretty high tier when fighter has a lot to pick. Confident Aim I just never picked in BPM, because it only helps a little in extremely unfavorable situations. If my accuracy is so low, I'd never want to waste resources on a one-hit ability if miss chance is so high. For repeated attacks like weapons or pulse AOEs, it feels slightly better but is essentially a pit I really want to crawl out of. When ACC = defense (which is not hard to get except for early game), Confident Aim only moves 6.25 rolls from miss to graze, and loses value with every additional ACC. Compared to Dirty Fighting, the latter is much better because it keeps its value until ACC is 50 higher and there're so many ways to make use of a crit. On the other hand Marksman and Gunner I pretty much always pick. If I'm using ranged and reload weapons. So if we compare "3 or 5 dmg per hit from a pet" with them, I think it's better than weapon specialization and confident aim, but much worse than Marksman or Gunner. Pets are stuck with their weapons so factor in underpen, despite being pretty fast, the power increase is limited and there's no way to scale except making the pets even faster. It's made worse by the already demanding ranger tree, that you need to squeeze a couple points only to get these very mid passives.

Does MC ranger need a better default pet though? They already have +20~40 accuracy over other classes, Driving Flight has huge synergy potentials, a cheap reposition and a non-spell dispel. That's a lot and already holds their own as a multiclass, albeit with pretty heavy investments. Sometimes for a MC combination, it's perfectly fine if they don't have a pet at all, so I just pick Ghost Heart and never summon them. Now if their pet AR and PEN get increased by default, they seem to be getting too much for free. The one thing that I do think is mandatory but shouldn't be, is Protective Companion. By default animals don't have engagements so even if I don't need it to do damage and not pick Vicious, I have to pick this so the animal companion isn't completely useless. Instead of AR and PEN I'd want them to have 1 engagement by default so they can "cover the flanks temporarily" without any investment. That seems to make more sense than a default pet that "can survive and do some damage by can't engage", it would be better if the default pet offers ultility, instead of being a mediocre striker. But the order of Protective Companion and Stalker's Link makes less sense then, if you don't touch the ability tree.

MC ranger can usually get away with minimal investments on their AC, but SC have to make good use of them. Currently the biggest difference between MC and SC animals are energized and intuitive, as other inspirations are either less important or can be (at least partly) accessed in a party. I think it can be pushed a little further, like have the bonuses scale with ranger's PL, so MC's animal don't get too good, and make prestige slightly more attractive.

I personally don't have a problem to be forced to pick a few passives if it's worth, and if I want to go heavy animal companion, like if I don't feel like it, only getting the +engagement passive as GH or using vengeful grief is a choice, so I don't have a problem with their base AR and pen. In theory one ability for pen, one for AR, two for damage isn't neccessarily wrong. Ideally getting the latter 2 passives should be choosing extra good pet over focusing on the ranger themselves. The problem is they kind of never get to be that good pet. Sneak attack and DoT are so common in a party that in like 95% cases their restrictions are not restrictions at all, and with the current numbers, having Merciless Companion + Predator's Sense only feels like a normal, basic hit. Vicious + Resilient turns a temporary engage tool / living +10 accuracy to something that can penetrate and survive, that's fine. But the other 2 combined only adds +8 per hit from animal, which is always worse than +8 per hit from the ranger. Compared to other strikers, 2 ability points for such a small improvement that can't scale and is single-target only is unacceptable. I don't have an idea though. Changing base damage feels too radical, maybe changing the passives to be harder to achieve and better numbers, so I'd need to work to enable my pet? It feels wrong for animal to get deathblows way before rogues actually get deathblows though.

I'm pretty sure that using The Shield Cracks on an enemy affected with the plate aura only further reduced AR by one on my last run, something I kept forgetting and upgrading it into. Can't remember Beza's though. Yeah the animal issue I realized is probably more about the ability tree than specific ability. A scaling sneak attack does feel justified as the only thing similar is the real sneak attack. I expected it to scale back when first time playeda ranger.

Hmmm, I agree with you on Hunter claw and Stalker's link. I ended up with Shadowed hunter as the only healing ability maybe that's why I'm feeling the squishiness. One thing I didn't realize was that SC ranger is so starved of ability points. I didn't even have wounding shot, so that I could get Beast's claw and Concussive Tranquilizer and some of the passives for ranged attacks. This is the point that I'm still not quite convinced, for the 4 abilities that buff animal attacks, missing even one of them makes the animal perform very bad (and is the reason why MC animal is mostly not worth sending forward), what's the point of getting 14 PEN if their average damage per hit is below 20 at lv20? And for such a high price they're still just okay, and this is only the price on the offensive side. So I'm feeling I need to invest a lot to make the animal not a liability. As for penetration, not only megabosses, for many tougher enemies piercing and slashing tend to be "high or higher". I'm pretty sure Blackened Plate doesn't stack with active debuff, so except for situational stuff like Sundering Blow or Rusted Armor, a party usually can only apply -2AR I think. An animal's 14PEN already includes active buff and can't switch, so there's not much more to do about it. Or maybe I should just accept that SC ranger is OP against mobs but more about ultility rather than damage against single target? Although if that's the case I think Heart Seeker is just slightly lacking. It's pretty rare that healing makes a huge difference on enemies, except for solo run, so if the party has a cheap access to weakened, now ranger loses their unique debuff. It's like the modded "XXX the bell" abilities, while having a rogue always frees up a weapon slot for better choices, having say a melee monk or a high accuracy chanter kills most of the point of Heart Seeker, only except for perhaps Doru because 35 res. Something similar to Revenge of Skaen can make it more unique and rewardingI think, like a -7 or 8 CON debuff that doesn't stack with the -5 from affliction. Also does Concussive Tranquilizer work with blunderbuss? I think I'm only getting -30s on multishots. Can't remember if it works for AOE weapons.

I'm wondering the role of animal companions for SC ranger, when fully buffed, they end up with 14PEN piercing/slashing and 130+ACC against marked target, which is good enough for mobs but usually can't penetrate bosses even with the common -2AR debuff, so they really need to score critical hits to do any meaningful damage. A normal party (without going out of the way to stack Blade of the Endless Paths) probably can apply -30 or -40 to deflection with flanking, -10 resolve, -10 from Cap of the Laughingstock, not sure if pike modal stacks with flanking. Which then usually translates to 30% -40 crit chance. There's then also easy intuitive for SC equals 12.5% crit chance. So against such enemies, about 50% of their attacks are meaningful. Now they have energized, but the ranger should already interrupt the hell out of the target. The damage is still less than ideal, a crit is about 20ish damage with all the passives, factor in the severe underpen for non-crits, for a lion that's about 30 dmg per 4s (2 hits including animation) which is pretty hard to further improve. I kind of feel that's too expensive for what we get, a ranger needs to pay a lot to reach this number: vicious companion and bonded fury are absolutely necessary, while merciless companion and predators sense are relatively less impactful. That's 4 ability points, and keeping it alive is also a bond drain, when the whole party can easily have over 150 defenses, animal companion with bonded fury only has 90~110 and hard to further improve. Many times I feel I'd just let it die and use the new vengeful grief. Maybe I'm asking for too much, I feel animal companion is at an awkward position, I either invest a lot and try really hard to keep it alive for mediocre gain, or just go for vengeful grief which is also not bad, but kind of kills the point of ranger, on both "high accuracy" and "animal companion". I wonder if sharing Hunter's claw and/or (mutual) stalker's link is too much. It kind of bothers me that some of the buffs are shared but some are one-way. Hunter's claw only makes a difference in really tough fights where the animal companion either just sit besides the ranger or stays dead, so I think it will make them more relevant, with the +defense upgrade at least.

I kind of always get them unless I can't even grab the core abilities without the points. I could never feel or quantify how important they actually are, it might just as well be placebo effect in many situations. How would you rank them in terms of priority?

Or just some penalty to engaged enemy. Like accuracy or recovery. I feel this is the thing that's not radical but keeps the tank theme. You get benefits when enemies naturally just don't disengage.

Maybe replace AR bonus with a hostile duration reduce? Either passive percentage reduction or -X sec when something something. Latter is better because not duplicate with Mage Slayer imo. It would be quite thematic if all fighters didn't already get push pull immunity in BPM. I feel their identity would be some kind of tank or engage master, but all fighters are eventually unkillable, and they already have several different ways to benefit from engagements. They even already have the ability to pull an enemy close so it's difficult to think of anything to add. It would be cool if a larger engagement distance is possible, but I get the feeling it's not. I'm thinking might affliction immunity + some penalty when using a shield. Like dex or per weakness or a slower recovery. So you can choose to be extra "engaging" with a shield or just have free engagement with other weapons. Maybe too radical.

I think the point of shorter ticks is to make it match the description/intention better, not only dividing it by 3, having 1s between 2 attacks is way more common, in this second the 1s-tick-CW just works normally. In comparison you'll practically never get the original CW to work normally at any moment. Say we have 2 hits/s on average with a party, on 3s ticks CW is doing 6× intended damage, on 1s ticks, CW will do 2× intended damage. Reducing the duration (if keep total damage unchanged) doesn't change "how wrong" it is if I'm not mistaken. The max stack count for a given party is reduced, but total damage per tick is unchanged because damage per tick is proportionally increased. If DoT behavior can't be changed, then probably making it not a DoT at all is the only way to match the description. Though I understand it's probably too far for the goal of BPM

I see. If you factor in the possibility difference of "accidentally" making use of the unintended effect, then a buff is indeed requied.

@Elric Galad I'm for it. I'm not sure if it needs further change because the total damage usually scales over 10, and as I understand it's always better than intended no matter the frequency of other attacks. Maybe? It's hard to tell how strong the intended effect actually would be. @BoeroerI did happen to have such party, but I planned it to make use of how I thought CW works. Maybe that's why I'm feeling it's too good. It is too good than it's intended or it should, I mean it's hard to have your whole party to have an average of 1 attack/s, and that's already tripling the effect. If it does what exactly it says, it can be a good addition to an AOE heavy party (that's what you'd expect from a tier 2 spell right? Situationally good). But the current implementation makes a thematic party into a exploit party, instead of empowering this kind of party, CW becomes the core of the party and is the reason it feels one-note. Like in my party I have a blunderbuss gambit rogue, which is typically pretty good at single target damage, but now he's become a support character. It's impossible to "legitimately" make good use of the intended effect, which could have had a place in certain parties without being the one trick.

That's probably when the fastest caster (cat + dex inspiration) is still not fast enough, because now one character needs to do everything. My experience with sorcerer is that they're very safe and are best on a large battlefield, but for specifically CW, casting all those spells is still slower than wizard's more direct multi-attacks. I didn't even realize CW is this good when I played it, too many spells to cast. Casting 3 of those AOE spells is effectively only 1 tick/s, but costs ~10s to cast. It's probably better when you send a tank to lure the enemy and the sorcerer do all the ground work in stealth.

Considering its requirement on the party (only need one or two companions to help really, and not even very specific in terms of their class), I think it's pretty high on the broken list. Not like the auto-win buttons like SoT/BDD, and pretty limited in terms of usage (bosses only), but I would probably rank it above Effort+AOE, crit chain or most tricks that need crits to work. And I do think it's the best thing a wizard do against bosses. For example against non-megabosses, I usually needed brilliant or got every close to being out of spells as a MC wizard. But with CW not only is it way faster, I also only needa handful of spells. Sorcerer is not very helpful in terms of CW, IIRC they couldn't have more than 1 wall active, and their other AOEs are just okay, not something a wizard can't do. I believe one tick of Venombloom only adds one CW stack, unlike 3 interrupts with energized. The only thing a loremaster helps is energized I think, other stuff are more or less accessible in a normal party as I consider them "general buffs/debuffs". If I'm playing a SC wizard, CW + wall + ray + Missile Salvo is arguably better.

I'm not a big fan of it because compared to tricks with similar power, just landing a spell once against fortitude is still way too easy. Being from a wizard makes it even worse, the character doesn't need to pay anything to be able to do this, so choosing not to do this (against right enemies) is like objectively wrong as a wizard, isn't that exactly the point of OP stuff ruining game experience? Also ironically it makes MC Evoker the worst blaster subclass choice together with Enchanter. You did remind me of penetration issue though, I'm playing a loremaster so it was never a problem. That being said against high AR bosses, wizard don't have many choices anyway, if they want to do damage. The raw damage spells only do like 100-200 damage per cast, other damage spells mostly have similar pen. Maybe Crushing Doom will eventually crit so that's something.

IDK it's pretty broken to me now that I managed to make more use out of it, scales too well in a party. When I think of near-insta-kills that're still possible with BPM, they're usually hard to achieve as enemy stats go up and some even doesn't work against single enemy, but this is too easy to set up compared to e.g. infinite crit chains, and is fully online as early as tier 4. The only real limitations are fire immunity and the shape of walls. I just feel a tier 2 spell shouldn't be able to end boss fights in seconds.

I see. I looked up the discussion on it and found that you also already knew about the chanter invocation scaling issue. I wonder if there's anything to be done to CW?

Yeah this is broken IMO. Saru Sichr has its own problem of infinite chain crits, at least axe attack speed is somewhat limited, factor in Barbaric Retaliation or Heartbeat Drumming it's probably like doubling the ticking speed on average I guess? Good but not ridiculously good. Combusting Wounds has the potential of triggering multiple ticks per second constantly and up to hundreds of damage per tick. All I need to pay specifically is several casts of any wall spells, and one cast of combusting wounds. Other things I may add on top essentially aren't part for this, like blunderbuss attacks are alright on thier own. IMO this is way over the power curve of damage spell in the game, like after a few seconds of walls, every projectile of Missle Salvo can do extra 200 damage (probably, I didn't test this, but I did try Minoletta's Concussive Missiles). The only problem is that only bosses can survive the build-up. My problem is that some of the game-breaking mechanics are at least as written, but this one is just messy implement and has a huge impact. One would assume it should effectively add a fixed amount of damage to each hit from the description.

To give a context, currently, the tooltip shows CW does "8.7 burn damage over 14.3 sec" on my character. If I got it right about how ApplyOverTime works, it should tick every 3s and about 4 damage per tick per stack. The damage part matches what I'm seeing. However when attacked frequently, it ticks way faster. For example CW + Wall of Flame not only adds one stack per second, also forces the damage to resolve each time a stack is added. This means all pervious stacks are ticking at triple speed. It's difficult to nail down the time in the game, but I'm seeing the growing CW damage tick after every small WoF damage. If this speed is normal, then the tooltip is horribly wrong and greatly understates its damage (on top of ApplyOverTime already being confusing). As for the multi-attack abilities, it really depends. For a single target, chanter's Her Revenge counts as multiple hits. Blunderbuss's 4 shots also count as one hit. Repeat effects from evoker or Marux Amanth count as multiple hits, and Eccea's Arcane Blaster + Imbued Ammunition count as 2 hits. I guess any multi-attack that has a delay at all can trigger multiple ticks. This really means CW is a party-defining spell, and can become the most important spell below tier 9 if built around. I started a wizard run to try how high I can reach with Crushing Doom, but it seems so irrelevant now, among all the bosses only that fire dragon and Dorudugan can't be melt in seconds.

I see. I was trying to get highest defense numbers with a hellwalker + fighter or wizard, so I guess most of the "hit self" tricks won't work.

Hmm, imbued ammunition should get PL scaling for auto-attack, losing to Thundercrack and Spearcaster is unexpected, especially the latter, since they have similar damage but pistol should be significantly faster. Are the base rolls more like 8-12, or 12-18 when you tested? I disabled mods then consoled a new one to try, and still got the PL scaling, so I guess it's not because of mod difference. Hunting bows are so sick!

I found that some offensive chanter invocations act weirdly: for example at PL5, when using Her Revenge, I got +4 ACC from ability level (indicating it's AT3), +8 ACC from power level. I knew for some reason it gets a special +2 ACC/PL, but this means it's treated as AT1 at the same time? It's the same for The Shield Cracks for me. They seems to be getting some extra scailing.

A while ago I lose most of my crew after sinking a lot of ships, not knowing why. Turns out when they're downed in combat, even though Berath's challenge doesn't apply, they get injured like party members (not ship combat injuries), and they get cured when consuming food and drink everyday. Thank god they don't need I do a rest. Because of how weak most of them are, fighting multiple ships in a short time can get them a lot of injuries and potentially killed.