HiddenWings

Spiritshift weapons are unfortunately not unarmed, but do not have a weapon type either (so there's no way for Devoted to be proficient with them). That's not to say that Druid/Monk is bad, but it doesn't get anything from the monk's unarmed damage bonus.

The Corpse-Eater Barbarian is a subclass I like in theory, but not practice. The primary problems are as follows: +1 Rage cost is an overwhelmingly bad penalty. Especially when multiclassed, this might mean you can only frenzy once unless you get a chance to eat something. The actual granted ability "Flesh Communion" is kind of not great. It's limited to 2 uses/encounter, and has a fairly long cast time and recovery. As far as modding goes, fixing point #2 is fairly easy. The engine doesn't seem to like class abilities with no usage type, but getting it to unlimited uses, a reasonable cast time and no recovery goes a long way. I'm considering also letting it be used on undead, but that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense. Point #1 is a little more difficult. Removing the penalty entirely makes it better than the no subclass barbarian, but barbarian doesn't have a lot in the way of basic class features to alter. Carnage would be an option, but honestly Carnage doesn't really need to be any worse. There are the usual things, like affecting recovery or deflection or damage (dealt or taken). Anyone have any ideas for what an appropriate penalty might be?

I know Pillars 1 had the infamous Wildstrike Belt, but I haven't seen anything that helps out spiritshifted druids in the items for Pillars 2. Is there something I'm missing, or did they get left out to dry?

The easiest way to remove the confuse would probably be removing the status effect entry for confuse from "Frenzy_Berserker" and the corresponding upgrades. "32ba648f-2aaf-4301-b4af-7f4fc3a6dbfb" is the id for the baseline confusion effect (Frenzy_SE_BerserkerConfused). Blood Frenzy, Spirit Frenzy, Blood Storm, and Spirit Tornado all have their own version defined separately; removing these entries from the status effect lists of the corresponding abilities should prevent confusion without causing other side effects..

As long as you have a unique value, I believe the ID can be whatever you want. If you don't want to come up with one yourself, someone linked https://www.uuidgenerator.net/ in another thread.

Long-term, you'd probably want to make an override rather than changing the files directly, but changing them does work to get started. You'd have to find the entry for the talent you want, then change it to whatever you needed. In "abilities.gamedatabundle" you would have to find whatever ability you're looking for, and change the 'UsageType' from 'PerRest' to 'PerEncounter'.

All of the spiritshift forms attack using the "Unarmed_Punch_01" animation (35abdf41-fc3f-4310-8d5d-5d7da644affc in attacks.gamedatabundle), which is defined on a per-model basis. This value is also in attacks, under the entry for their weapon damage. As for changing this, you might have to do some experimentation.

I think the answer to one of my questions was hidden in the other. Flesh Communion gets that extra use from the "ModifyResourceCost" effect of their subclass. It seems like that effect just adds to the "cost" value on class skills, but on abilities that are per encounter that value is instead uses and not cost. For the other part, it seems that the engine does not like class skills with unlimited uses. Defining it as not a class skill seems to work, but I'll probably have to do more testing before I can say it doesn't horribly break things. Thankfully, no enemies use this skill or any of these effects, so there's nothing to worry about on that front.

It doesn't even show up for the other class if one of your classes is Monk, as it turns out.

The ".gamedatabundle" files are just text files containing JSON. They have no line breaks, so pulling out one thing is annoying unless you reformat them, but it's fairly simple.

The Barbarian corpse-eater subclass is thematically interesting but mechanically not great at the moment. The biggest problem is that their drawback is gigantic. +1 Rage cost means that you are significantly more limited in ability usage compared to a no-subclass barbarian. In addition, Flesh Communion is limited to 2/encounter. While this will get you 6 more rage if you can do it, it has a cast time and recovery all on its own. If you're not fighting things you can eat, it's completely worthless, but that's the expected downside to the subclass. Attempting to address the easier parts of this, I took a look at altering Flesh Communion, and I noticed it's quite odd. It's defined as having 1 use per encounter, but in-game shows as 2. If I overwrite the entire ability, it ends up with one more use than whatever I specify. Attempting to make it free is also a no-go, because the Corpse-eater subclass causes it to then cost 1 rage. This leaves me with the following questions: Does anyone know why Flesh Communion gets an extra use automatically? Is is possible to exempt things from resource cost adjustments? Most other things that do this only do so for a sub-category, so I don't know if "exclude" is a possibility.

Could be really great for a non-shifter druid who wants to be in melee for some reason. Keep in mind that if you use spiritshift you'll lose the armor's bonus.

Despite being listed as 1/Encounter in the code, I find it's 2/encounter in-game. In fact, if I change it, it ends up being one higher than whatever I specify. I haven't yet figured out where this use is coming from.

For shifter it's 22 seconds baseline, increased by power level and intelligence. Investing in Intelligence is really important for that reason, because 22 seconds is just not long enough with how long recovery takes in this game.

I finally got around to checking this in the console. Health gain from unshifting (as Shifter), ability duration, and the boar passive health gain all scale with power level. The actual damage done by a shapeshifted druid is determined by the weapons, which have the "Scaling" property. This seems to give them a 15% damage bonus every 4 real levels, starting at level 5. Armor is simpler: Bear armor starts at 10, everything else at 8; these increase by 1 every 4 levels (starting at 5, again). I don't know if +60% damage at high levels is good enough, but it's certainly not nothing.

That passive gives you a third weapon set (an option to switch to in combat) but not another proficiency. You're stuck with whatever you picked at creation and your fists.

Wow, that's actually impressively bad. I wonder if they were concerned because of the 50-point heal attached. Maybe there was some secret build that no one knew about that was abusive with this.

Testing in the last Beta indicated that corpse-eater's drawback was kind of huge, and "Flesh communion" was not a sufficient balancing factor even if you're fighting targets it works on, because of a low number of uses/encounter and a long cast/recovery time. Has any of this changed for live, or is it still just a straight downgrade from no subclass?

The abilities you get from spiritshift scale with power level slightly in the usual ways (damage, duration, etc) but the effectiveness of the spiritshift abilities proper is governed by the temporary armor/weapons you're effectively granted. The armor seems to scale with character level (although I have not tested this), but I don't know how the weapons scale. They all have 13-19 slash (cat, bear) or pierce (stag, boar, wolf, shark) damage baseline.

Paladins have to take an active in addition to their automatically granted ability, so they start with 2 out of the 3 options at level 1.

During character creation I believe all classes are forced to take at least one active ability. If you're multiclassing this is per class. Final ability counts are pretty close.

I think whoever wrote that was confused. Bear armor is defined identically to all of the others in the code, except with a base value of 10 instead of 8. It seems to increase by 1 every 4th level, but that might be something to check with the console. I don't believe there is any component of power level scaling here, only actual level.

The best part of a wiki is that you can fix statements that are complete BS.

Those wildstrike upgrades are the single best argument I've seen so far for a single-class Shifter. The spells at those levels aren't bad either.

I have the same issue with Barbarian Subclasses for a Shifter multiclass. Corpse Eater fits thematically, but it's mechanically kind of bad. Mage Slayer is just bad; its drawback reduces the duration of Spiritshift. (As an aside, it also lowers the duration of Frenzy. I don't know why you would go with this one ever.) Berserker is probably mechanically the strongest, but it does seem like you would have to use frenzy very carefully. If I were to go Tempest, I might just use barbarian without a subclass.