thelee

That's interesting - I tested unarmed training with both a single class and a multi-class character and got the exact same rate of fists improvement, which was particularly notable because it meant getting improvements to my fists that didn't correspond at all to a power level (for the multi-class). What do you think is happening here?

i actually made a critical timing error and monastic unarmed training is better than i original stated. it's actually .5s/3.0s weapon, not a .7/4.0. i'm about to update the OP with my thoughts and corrections.

I had a character accidentally take Monastic Unarmed Training and was actually surprised what I ended up with, so I dug a bit more. I can't seem to find much around the forums/internet about how monk fists and other weapon scaling works, so decided to create this post. NORMAL SUMMONED WEAPON/ARMOR SCALING are character level based. All summoned weapons/armor (including druid weapons) follow this scaling. They have a base effect, and then automatically get an enchantment based on your character level. levels 1-4: mundane levels 5-8: Fine (+15% damage +4 accuracy or +1 armor rating or +2 shield deflection) levels 9-12: Exceptional levels 13-16: Superb levels 17-20: Legendary Multi-classing doesn't affect this scaling, so a level 17 character summoning a weapon will get a +60% damage/+16 accuracy weapon regardless of whether they are PL8 (single-class) or PL6 (multi-class). MONK FISTS are power level based. They do 14-19 damage, 7 penetration, are effectively single-hand weapons that you dual-wield with by default, and have .5s attack and 3.0s recovery. You start off with +5% damage, +2 accuracy, and +1 penetration, and get an additional +15% damage, +4 accuracy, and +1 penetration every even power level (so PL/2 rounding down). So at PL2 you get +20% damage, +6 accuracy, and +2 penetration. At PL9 with Prestige for effective PL10, you get +80% damage, +22 accuracy, and +6 penetration (basically better-than-mythic quality fists). Notably, if you multi-class a monk your fists will be worse throughout the game because your PL will be lower. Unlike most PL scaling for martial stuff, this is actually a fairly significant PL scaling penalty, and so to get up to legendary level fists you must have some alternate source for +1 PL to jump up from PL7 to PL8 (like nature godlike racial, that amulet that lets you get +1 PL for rest of fight). Or if you're multi-classing you might rather just use weapons. BARE FISTS are crappy and don't scale. Something like 6-9 damage. MONASTIC UNARMED TRAINING are buggily power level based. Upon taking this talent, your fist damage automatically upgrades to monk quality fists of 14-19 damage, 7 pen, .5/3.0s attack/recovery. Then, you get a scaling similar to the monk's version except for two critical differences. First, instead of improving every even power level, it does it at every third power level e.g. PL3, PL6, PL9, etc. Second, it buggily always uses single-class power level scaling progression, even if you're multiclassed. In practice, this means that the scaling is fixed at: levels 1-4 (buggy PL1, 2): +5% damage, +2 accuracy, +1 penetration levels 5-10 (buggy PL3, 4, 5): +20% damage, +6 accuracy, +2 penetration levels 11-18 (buggy PL6, 7, 8 ): +35% damage, +10 accuracy, +3 penetration levels 19-20 (buggy PL9): +50% damage, +14 accuracy, +4 penetration This is different from what this post originally said (special thanks to mant2si for bringing some interactions to my attention and doing some testing), which was that it was fixed based on character level. The difference with the changes here is that things that influence your PL still affect the scaling offered by monastic unarmed training, unlike normal weapon scaling. If you manage to cobble together +3 bonus PL (remember that passives from your skill tree and items stack, active abilities and consumables do not) you'll be able to get better-than-legendary scaling by end-game and speed up how quickly you get other sources of scaling. CLOSING THOUGHTS Monastic unarmed training is a weird talent. When you can first get it (level 2), it basically grants you the best basic weapons available to you at that point in time and for a while. On its own, however, it doesn't scale well (staying at basically the "fine" and "exceptional" equivalent levels waaaay too long) and may not be able to match the legendary items you may find late game or even the legendary scaling that summoned weapons will have. However, with a few sources of bonus PL (at least +3) it actually can still get to legendary (and potentially even mythic) level scaling and solves that long, slow scaling problem. Regardless of whether or not you optimize for the +3 PL, it is viable (whereas the PoE1 version of this talent was extremely niche). A barbarian might get more mileage out of it compared to other classes because its highest base damage (14-19) combines well with the fact that carnage's damage is keyed off solely from base weapon damage. It also helps that this is a "fast" melee weapon (3s recovery) and normally to get close to this level of damage you end up with "slow" weapons (4s recovery). In fact, any class that relies heavily on weapon damage passives might get some mileage out of monastic unarmed training, because while a sabre does the most tool-tip damage of basic weapons, it has a slightly lower base damage (13-19) and gets up to 14-21 via its inherent +10% damage scaling. So e.g. rogues might like having sneak attack/deathblows/backstab/streetfighter damage scale directly off 14-19 rather than 13-19, and all of this on top of being a fast weapon. It is almost as if monastic unarmed training gave you better blunt sabres that also had a huge inherent action speed/recovery time bonus. You also have higher penetration early on (8 vs 7 for a sabre, then 9 vs 8 for a fine sabre). However this extreme early advantage is mitigated over time due to the slow scaling; you might be wielding legendary sabres with all sorts of additional abilities while you are still stuck with +35% dmg/+10 acc/+3 pen fists at which point does it really matter that fists are that fast? So again, to really get the most mileage out of the talent you need to cobble together sources of bonus PL (paying real close attention to stacking rules). For those taking Abydon's Challenge, monastic unarmed training might be more useful even without bonus PL because they are basically decent weapons that you will never have to worry about repairing (and don't need to be summoned). The cost is that without bonus PL you will still be behind the enchantment curve and won't get up to approximately superb or legendary quality (since it straddles the line between them) until extremely late in the game. PS. the sensitivity of monk fists to PL scaling suggests that even something basic like Shaken (-5 resolve, -3 PL) is a good way to weaken enemy monks.

Actually not. I distinctly remember 1.0 PoE1 and slicken was an absolutely broken level 1 spell, because it was like the Deadfire version except intead of prone being an instant interrupt, it lasted several seconds each time (and in earlier versions of PoE characters didn't try to stand up until the prone effect wore off--whereas later version they would stand up as prone neared its end--so in fact at release the cc duration was longer than the nominal prone duration). I have the digital strat guide (which has the 1.0 version of spells) and can prove it: They nerfed it quickly after to be a one-time prone for 4s and nerfed it further when they made it matter that effects were "ground"-based and some enemies were immune to ground and nerfed it even further when they made characters stand up near the end of a prone and not after the prone, but it was still one of the best wizard spells, period. (EDIT to add: they nerfed it in 1.03) Basically a long way to say that it was hilarious how everyone thought wizards sucked up during the backer beta and then at release the wizard basically had multiple level 1 spells that were basically top-tier all the way to the end of the game. (And this was back when casters got all of their level 1 and 2 spells to go from per-rest to per-encounter at high enough levels... prone-lock thaos anyone?)

I think something similar is going on with priests as has (already) happened with wizards. Both in PoE1/2 backer beta, a lot of people thought wizards were teh suck, and then shortly after release it was like "wow wizards are really powerful" and nerfhammers are falling all over the place. (Remember when back in PoE1 Slicken was an AoE duration repeating prone effect: and not like Deadfire prone; serious, multiple-second crowd control that repeatedly re-triggered over the aoe duration? Pepperidge Farm remembers). I strongly suspect people overvalue instantaneous damage/heal effects and undervalue crowd-control, de/buffs, and support spells, so people have been complaining about weak priests for months after release and it's taking just a bit longer for people to come around to the idea that "yeah, giving everyone in your party Aware for a long time is pretty sweet actually." (Though it doesn't help that Deadfire priest is definitely relatively weaker compared to 3.0 PoE1.)

i was putting together a new build and noticed that a lot of PL scaling has been stealth-nerfed at some point, so I updated the OP. TL;DR: at least the major culprits I checked no longer get more than 1/2 projectile per PL, they all get 1/2 projectile per PL. In addition, universally all damage/heal spells now only get +5% damage/healing per PL. The net effect of this is that PL scaling is less disproportionately in favor of projectile damage spells (though they still get more benefit than e.g. debuffs or buffs).

Yes, this is exactly my point actually (see way, way above). In terms of game systems design or evaluating some metagame/strategy, "healing" in the conventional tool-tip sense is not a useful enough definition, because ultimately what matters is "how long you stay alive." In that sense, BDD and healing accomplish the same goals, but they do so differently by changing which variable they keep fixed to accomplish it (in the mathematical model). Similarly any other buff that does this is also equivalent to healing. How it's actually implemented in-game is not useful from this higher-level perspective because the game designers could implement it as a bunch of monkeys that come to your house and change the bits in computer's memory corresponding to your character's health like an old fashioned NES Game Genie but the math would still work out the same. We don't have to do that, because it turns out we actually agree. if you're talking about the stuff you mentioned about not caring about total health pool, it's because it's not mathematically very interesting a distinction. 1. the abstraction is posited when you're at 1 health and one hit of any kind one would knock you out. in this abstraction, total health is essentially irrelevant. 2. if we want to broaden the abstraction a bit to include total health, it's still not too interesting. i.e. "instantaneous" damage can be thought of as essentially a damage over time effect with an infinitesimal duration. in that sense, "instant" healing can also be thought of as healing over time with an infinitesimal duration. in that sense, the fact that BDD can stop a hit >total health pool is still functionally equivalent to an equivalent heal over the same infinitesimal duration. again this is from the mathematical angle. however game programmers want to implement it is an orthogonal issue.

I think I'm more fully turning to this perspective as well. On the spectrum of all combos that could exist in an RPG, I can survive with a two-person mid-late-game combo to generate immortality on a single character that also requires consistent focus generation on the cipher part of the equation. On the spectrum of systems design, having one busted single tier 3 inspiration that is only player accessible as a PL7 ability on a single class is not bad. In terms of general systems balance/brokenness, Deadfire is way more secure than BG2 could ever even aspire to be. Given that every major patch seems to introduce some sort of major regression in gameplay (I still have some high-level characters waiting to complete Ukaizo normally) I'd rather they spend their finite resources on only extremely major imbalances (which I don't think exist anymore, except maybe slight buffing for barbarian subclasses or the ranger class) or bugs or new DLC content that themselves have no major imbalances or bugs.

You know I also liked the DLC for Fallout: NV more than the base game itself. I suspect it's because for the base game all resources are going to just making the game playable, whereas with DLC--even with a smaller team--everyone is used to how the game tooling works, what the engine is capable of, and so they can focus more on the content.

I think the problem is that several people think the problem is either BDD or Salvation of Time, and not Brilliant. BDD itself is not so OP because it's short duration, and Salvation of Time--while situationally powerful--is arguably not OP because to get a powerful effect you have to couple it with another spell. Brilliant is what lets you chain it all together for arbitrary amounts of time. I don't know how else to compare it; to reiterate it's as if we were in the middle of Magic: The Gathering's affinity winter and people here were arguing that we should ban/fix Ornithopter (a dinky creature with no attack), not the actual affinity mechanic itself.

BDD isn't just another form healing. It imposes a state in which a character cannot fall unconscious regardless of incoming damage. Which mean incoming damage per instance can be infinite and rate of incoming dmg can be infinite per unit time. And it also does not depend on the target's Health Pool. Honestly, I think healing and BDD are quite different. And I can't really realistically draw a comparison. Like I said to AndreoColombo, mathematically they're the same. Healing accomplishes one fundamental thing: prevents you from dying/knockout for a period of time. This is somewhat of an abstraction (in this abstraction, you are at 1 health and any hit would kill you/knock you out), but is also fundamentally true: healing 20 health accomplishes literally nothing in the game unless that 20 health would have prevented you from dying/knockout at some point. And how long that healing prevented you from dying/knockout is what lets you measure the relative strength of a heal. The difference between BDD and a straight-forward "instantaneous" healing is how they accomplish that fundamental thing. Instantaneous heal effects gives you fixed numerical healing, so the effective duration of its dying/knockout protection is contingent on how much damage you're taking. So like in my earlier post, if you Restore someone for 30 health, against a weak fly doing 1 damage every 3 second, you basically prevented knockout for 90 seconds. However, if you are up against twenty Dracoliches, that Restore will prevent death/knockout by a mere fraction of a second. On the flip side, BDD gives you a fixed duration of protection from dying/knockout, but that means its numerical healing is the one that varies. Like I mentioned in the previous post, BDD is extremely effective when you're fighting twenty Dracoliches because it effectively is giving you a Restore for 1000s of health. But it's extremely ineffective against that weak fly (worse than Restore, in fact). I think some people are getting hung up on the fact that BDD 's tooltip doesn't say that it "heals you" but that's really just an in-game semantics difference. If Deadfire was just a gigantic spreadsheet that you put numbers into, it would be extremely clear that BDD is just another form of healing. I would say that people who have taken high school physics or watch pop astrophysics on TV/youtube might be able to pick this up better, because you might already then be used to equations where you're treating "different things" (like mass/acceleration, mass/energy, or space/time) as essentially interchangeable because what ultimately matters is that the terms in the equation balance out and they're describing the same physical phenomenon. Except here, instead of E= mc^2 or F=ma or K=.5 * mv^2, it's immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec: a spell like Restore sets damagePrevented so the final immortalityDuration varies by damagePerSec whereas BDD sets immortalityDuration which means the damagePrevented depends on damagePerSec. To further clarify, let's talk about Druids. Druids are probably the best way to illustrate the similarities between BDD and a Restore because Druid heals are essentially all periodic heals. That means that depending on the situation, their heals are more BDD-like (inelastic duration, elastic health restored) or more Restore-like (inelastic health restored, elastic duration). Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active." It is not mathematically the same. There is a condition to check if a character is qualified to be unconscious. Which is If (HP == 0) Then Char is Unconscious. Healing counters the damage taken in order to ensure the above condition is not reached. BDD straights up impose another condition which is HP is always at least 1. It does not take into account dmg received, it does not take into account total HP of the character (such that 1 hit KO can occur). The limitation is duration of the effect. It is completely different from the way healing is implemented. Sorry but I disagree that this is semantics. Because you use a double-equals sign, I'm assuming you know at least a bit of programming, so given that I'll use a very specific phrase: these are literally just implementation details. The game developers could have coded BDD to instantaneously heal any damage you take for its duration and BDD would functionally be the same. The game developers could have coded BDD to be 1 hit point shield (like the chanter aura) that regenerates as frequently as needed to prevent knockout and BDD would functionally be the same. The game developers could have coded it as a universal blade turning that also doesn't reflect the damage back onto attackers and BDD would functionally be the same. The game developers could code it as a one-off conditional e.g. a simple "if (!statuseffect.BDD) return STATUS.Unconscious;" and BDD would functionally be the same. How BDD is implemented in game logic is an orthogonal issue from how BDD performs mathematically, which is like any other healing only instead of a fixed healing amount resulting in variable knockout duration protection it's a fixed knockout duration protection with a variable healing amount. No one has actually disputed the math, because as far as I can tell the math is sound. Everything else is essentially semantics that don't change the actual fundamental truth linking BDD and Restore as two ends of a healing continuum (with periodic heals in the center).

There is one fundamental difference that sets BDD apart from any healing source in the game: It can't possibly be out-damaged. mant2si basically got it right, but just to elaborate here, this is not a pivotal difference. BDD and an instant heal are connected by the same equation. The flip side to "BDD can't possibly be outdamaged" is "Restore can't possibly be dispelled", which is what mant2si was basically saying with regards to Arcane Dampener. Druid heals are again the illustrative connective spell here, because a spell like The Moon's Light can be both out-damaged and dispelled. If this were the world of physics, I'd package up "immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec" with a sexy science name (The Lee's Universal Law of Healing) and go for a Nobel prize

HA! that's a fun implementation detail. Reminds me of how in BG2, kill-undead effects (like sunray) or the special ctrl-k death command (turning on cheats) were actually implemented as doing ~1000 unresistable damage to get around the fact that some undead had anti-instakill protections on them.

Finally someone not hating Magran's challenge! I like Magran's challenge, combined with Barath's it makes the game pretty exciting or maybe stressful, depending on what you want up to the point. Biggest gripe with Barath's challenge is that keeping companions alive I do not directly control becomes a matter of dumb "luck" in ship boarding battles. Abydon's is a tad too much money realistically for the game's economy if playing in a full party (for solo you should have enough money not to worry about it) should be halfed I think. It get's really expensive maintaining superior and legendary pieces. Unless the point is to scavage random armor as you progress and use it untill it falls apart and than switch to the next armor you randomly picked up in an encounter. I'd say as long as player can't use best available stuff all the time Abydon's Challange does its job. I'd like to chime in with further thoughts now that I've had more time to play with some of the god's challenge, and I agree with this comment about Abydon's Challenge. I was worried that Abydon's Challenge would be an annoyance early game and completely forgettable by end-game, but so far with my mid-level party I am pleasantly surprised at how expensive it is to repair exceptional+ items, and how frequently they can start breaking down in drawn out fights. I think it adds a lot of fun intentionality to what you carry into combat and tightens up the game economy a bit. It also has a neat side effect of making summoned weapons more valuable (since an equivalently-scaled summoned weapon can become great when your physical weapon becomes damaged in the middle of a fight, plus you never have to worry about repairing a superb or legendary summoned weapon). I'm not sure I'll flip this on in most of my playthroughs, but it definitely adds a nice parallel challenge to the game. Also I am liking Skaen's Challenge way more than I thought I would. Just the slight extra push to making sources of illumination relevant (and it's fun that Xoti's Lantern actually acts like a source of light) as well as making me care about time of day adds a lot more to the gameplay than I thought. When my tank gets hit with a lot of arrows in the middle of a fight from a bunch of archers I didn't know were there, I'll be like "GAH! I shouldn't have switched away from her sword+torch" which is a phrase I've literally never said about combat in an RPG before. This one is closer to a god's challenge I might flip on more often than not in future playthroughs. Berath's still sucks though even if they never increase the permakill duration from 6s to 10s (I'll even settle for 8s, just let me have a second or two to actually start casting and completing a Resurrection) I might go all the way with it just to say I did it. Magran's is still so terrible that I am fine never completing this challenge and leaving a "9/10 challenges complete" on the magran's fire screen. Anyone who knows me IRL knows how much of a completionist I am for RPGs I like (literally the only reason why I did The Ultimate achievement in PoE1), so this should speak volumes as to how much I hate Magran's challenge.

BDD isn't just another form healing. It imposes a state in which a character cannot fall unconscious regardless of incoming damage. Which mean incoming damage per instance can be infinite and rate of incoming dmg can be infinite per unit time. And it also does not depend on the target's Health Pool. Honestly, I think healing and BDD are quite different. And I can't really realistically draw a comparison. Like I said to AndreoColombo, mathematically they're the same. Healing accomplishes one fundamental thing: prevents you from dying/knockout for a period of time. This is somewhat of an abstraction (in this abstraction, you are at 1 health and any hit would kill you/knock you out), but is also fundamentally true: healing 20 health accomplishes literally nothing in the game unless that 20 health would have prevented you from dying/knockout at some point. And how long that healing prevented you from dying/knockout is what lets you measure the relative strength of a heal. The difference between BDD and a straight-forward "instantaneous" healing is how they accomplish that fundamental thing. Instantaneous heal effects gives you fixed numerical healing, so the effective duration of its dying/knockout protection is contingent on how much damage you're taking. So like in my earlier post, if you Restore someone for 30 health, against a weak fly doing 1 damage every 3 second, you basically prevented knockout for 90 seconds. However, if you are up against twenty Dracoliches, that Restore will prevent death/knockout by a mere fraction of a second. On the flip side, BDD gives you a fixed duration of protection from dying/knockout, but that means its numerical healing is the one that varies. Like I mentioned in the previous post, BDD is extremely effective when you're fighting twenty Dracoliches because it effectively is giving you a Restore for 1000s of health. But it's extremely ineffective against that weak fly (worse than Restore, in fact). I think some people are getting hung up on the fact that BDD 's tooltip doesn't say that it "heals you" but that's really just an in-game semantics difference. If Deadfire was just a gigantic spreadsheet that you put numbers into, it would be extremely clear that BDD is just another form of healing. I would say that people who have taken high school physics or watch pop astrophysics on TV/youtube might be able to pick this up better, because you might already then be used to equations where you're treating "different things" (like mass/acceleration, mass/energy, or space/time) as essentially interchangeable because what ultimately matters is that the terms in the equation balance out and they're describing the same physical phenomenon. Except here, instead of E= mc^2 or F=ma or K=.5 * mv^2, it's immortalityDuration = damagePrevented / damagePerSec: a spell like Restore sets damagePrevented so the final immortalityDuration varies by damagePerSec whereas BDD sets immortalityDuration which means the damagePrevented depends on damagePerSec. To further clarify, let's talk about Druids. Druids are probably the best way to illustrate the similarities between BDD and a Restore because Druid heals are essentially all periodic heals. That means that depending on the situation, their heals are more BDD-like (inelastic duration, elastic health restored) or more Restore-like (inelastic health restored, elastic duration). Let's say The Moon's Light heals 10 every 3 seconds, and lasts 18s. How long does it prevent death? Against anyone dealing exactly 10damage every 3 seconds, it is exactly like BDD for 18s. Against anyone dealing more than 10damage every 3 seconds, The Moon's Light is essentially a Restore for 10. Against anyone dealing less than 10 damage every 3 seconds, it functions exactly like BDD for 18s plus a Restore for any of the remainder. In effect, BDD is an alternate version of Robust/The Moon's Light that says "I will always heal you an amount every 3 seconds to prevent knockout, but the price is there's no excess for you to keep if you take less damage than needed to stay alive while I'm active." I think the suggestion to scale the amount of time needed to restore a spellcast is a good one. Here's how I imagine it would happen: single-class martial: every 3 s you get 1 resource restored. single-class spellcaster: every 3 s you get 2 PL worth of spells restored, which accumulates if nothing gets restored and can never restore more than one spell at a time. So if there's a PL1 to be restored, it gets restored. However, if you only have an expended PL3 slot, then you have to wait another 3s (6s total) to have total of 4 PLs worth of restoration "stored up" and then you get your PL3 spell restored. If you only have a PL9 slot available, then you have to wait 15 seconds to get it back. I chose "2 PL" worth of spells because spellcasters get PL9 and the most expensive martial abilities take up 4 martial resources (Trickster bonus ability/spells gives us a pretty explicit mapping), so I think that would roughly equalize the power level for Brilliant between martial and casters. multi-class: Brilliant goes round-robin multi-class martial A/martial B: at 3s, gets 1 class resource back for A, at 6s gets 1 class resource back for B, at 9s gets 1 class resource back for A, etc. If for some reason A doesn't have any expnded resources, then Brilliant just focuses on B. multi-class martial A/caster C: at 3s gets 1 class resource back for A, at 6s gets 2 virtual PLs back for C, at 9s gets 1 class resource back for A, at 12s gets 2 virtual PLs back for C, etc.

I found another one, this one in the Oathbinder's Sanctum. This one looks like a troll. Dropbox link to save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eltgh01ny3lkbty/AABRxnMeISJtSHmhIwfdclGwa?dl=0 Should I be opening new threads for this? Or just adding all these data points here.

I personally wouldn't mind. I never even pick BDD because the B stands for Boring. None of this matters anyway; in a patch or two, all of this will be nerfed so far into the ground it will come back up from the sky. Normally I think I would agree with you on this... part of the fun of tinkering with complex game systems (and deadfire is way more complicated than poe1) is to find these "opportunities" to exploit some interesting interaction, and there's a lot of metagaming for this particular combo. I think the reason why I come out really hard against Brilliant in particular is for the reason I alluded in previous post: it's just not symmetric. No other tier 3 inspiration is this remotely good. And that really bothers me from a systems perspective ("balance" from a symmetry perspective).

To me, using up two abilities, one of them a PL6 spell (which arrives at level 15 for multi-class characters, which is basically end-game), should be powerful. It's close to the main reason why Salvation of Time has any worth as it is. Brilliant is what lets you take a powerful effect (BDD or Ascension + Salvation of Time) and turn it into a degenerate combo (perma-immortality+ascension). Having Brilliant scale with the PL of the spell being added is a decent idea, but I suspect it's just fundamentally broken as it is (i'd be perfectly happy with getting PL1 spells back every 3 seconds in certain situations; not to mention I can get a lot of mileage out of the 1 point every 3 seconds you get currently for martial classes). I've followed Magic: The Gathering enough to know that free resources are just incredibly hard to balance meaningfully, to the point that at least in an M:TG setting they basically all get hit with ban hammers or restrictions (or are nerfed to the point they're not even worth using). Even just from a symmetry perspective, do people seriously think that Brilliant is on the same power level as other tier 3 inspirations? Like Swift or Energized? (Maybe it would be closer to other inspirations' power levels if it took more time to regenerate higher-PL spells.)

We can agree to disagree on BDD (but mathematically I'm right ), but my point is that BDD isn't even the only issue. Brilliant breaks anything, because getting back a class resource every tick in a way that you can perfectly metagame is basically a combo winter (like a nuclear winter, except with combos). If one cares about balance, Brilliant needs to be hit, not BDD. If you want to be able to have "fun" by keeping Brilliant as-is, then you have to accept degenerate combos existing.

I disagree with this analysis: BDD is just another form of healing. Literally any healing makes you completely unkillable for a length of time in the game, the only difference is that with most heals the length of time is directly connected to how much damage you are taking, whereas with BDD the healing is variable and the length of time is fixed. (To put another way, a Restore for 30 health against someone hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds has given you 90 seconds of unkillable immortality, but a fraction of second against a huge enemy army. BDD against an entire army will give you like thousands of effective healing, but against that same guy hitting you for 1 damage every 3 seconds will barely give you double-digits worth of health even with huge intellect or salvation of time.) The problem with this specific combo, again, is Brilliant, not BDD. Brilliant is what lets you take BDD's variable healing effect and turn it into perma-immortality. If you don't have Brilliant inspiration, BDD + Salvation of Time gets you huge amounts of effective healing against dumb AI (a smart human player would just move onto someone else or use Arcane Dampener), but it's not eternal. If this were Magic: The Gathering, this would be like if we were in the depths of Mirrodin's affinity nonsense and people thought that the problem was Ornithopter.

I would veto this if I could. Most buff durations are long enough as-is that making SoT a simple multiplier would rarely ever influence anything of meaning. The fact that it's a flat +20s/+10s means that it actually has worth as a PL6 spell in lengthening short-duration-but-powerful effects. (Though I wish it benefited from some sort of PL-scaling.) That being said, the absolute fundamental problem is not mystic, ascendant, BDD, or SoT, it's that Brilliance is a busted inspiration and has been ever since 1.0. Instead of just removing it as a party-wide chanter invocation buff and adding it as single-target special buff the cipher gets access to at PL7, Obsidian should fix Brilliant and bring it in line with the other tier 3 inspirations. edited to add: when the patch notes about Brilliant being added back in dropped in the beta patch notes thread, there were already giddy people like me talking about how ciphers just became brain-dead automatic inclusions into any serious party. It's not like Obsidian couldn't have seen this coming. (Frankly, you don't even need to combine with ascendant to bust ancestor's memory. E.G. just put brilliant on a wizard and selectively keep re-casting level 4 Minoletta's crushing missiles. Unless they removed its interrupt since I last tried this, it basically means you can stunlock any boss in the game (even if they have a lot of concentration shields) while dealing crap tons of damage. brilliant is just fundamentally broken as-is, as this example illustrates you don't even need to metagame it that much to really wreck house.)

I have to say that I don't quite get the enthusiasm for Triumph around here (in either game). It brings healing in big chunks, sure, but it's also unreliable regarding who gets healed and when. Ideal use requires metagaming killshots, which is a pain. And, more fundamentally, healing matters a lot less when it comes after defeating an opponent. If a character actually needs such a huge shot of healing, waiting for them to score a kill is playing with fire. I suppose it can make an all-offense melee'er functionally immortal when surrounded by fragile enemies, but those kinds of situations aren't generally the fights that pose a serious enough challenge to drive build decisions. Hard spell for me to justify using, particularly compared with the others in tier 4. It's not so much about healing when you need to heal, it's more about the incidental healing over the course of a longish fight. It has definitely made fights for me that should have been close into blowouts as a result (even with the nerf from 200 healing down to 80). I actually don't think the PoE1 version is any good. In my analysis, the reason why the Deadfire version is so much better has in large part much to do with the strong inspiration they attached to it. In PoE1 it was essentially giving up combat time and a per-rest spell slot--one that it shared with the completely-bonkers Devotions of Faith--just in case you need a heal at some point (and like you said it's unreliable who gets it unless you perfectly metagame killshots so it's not even good for that), and PoE1 priests had a lot more healing options--even with just Holy Radiance--so the relative value of Triumph's value was much less. So, unless you had a high tolerance for rest-spam and loading screens that was not a good use of a per-rest spell slot. In Deadfire, it's a per-encounter effect so the conditional cost is less severe; spell heals are less plentiful and Holy Radiance less good so its heal is relatively better; but most importantly the mere fact you get a strong inspiration means you get something for it right now, so it's never wasted time. Basically, in PoE1 Triumph was a really crappy heal spell; in Deadfire, it's instead an OK party buff that will occasionally give you incredible heals. (It also helps that the way the affliction system works in Deadfire a strong inspiration also absorbs one strength affliction, like a stun, whereas there was no such defensive benefit for such buffs in PoE1.) I'll agree with you in the sense that for most people, it's just a win-more: I.E. it was a fight that you were going to win anyway, but people see huge healing numbers and full-health characters at the end of a fight and really like it. If it was popular in PoE1 (and frankly I didn't know it was, that's why I thought they added the strong inspiration--to drive usage), it was probably for similar reasons, not because it was any good. In Deadfire, it can be a win-more, but the strong inspiration gives it immediate value and--as mentioned above--the occasional (and huge) healing over the course of a longish fight can turn near-wipes into complete blowouts. I mean don't get me wrong, I still think that even the nerfed Devotions of the Faithful is a better overall spell vs Triumph any day of the week, but Triumph is still a very good spell.

This is still an issue as of 2.1. Just got to this same cave in a new game, and sneaking around saw that this flame blight just starts off untargetable (i circled it and drew in a little targeting circle to illustrate what I should see): Here's a dropbox link to a 2.1 quicksave right before this encounter, along with output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/opse1toiqqn6lxf/AADh_FiyzWQ1Uka86lEhdTbOa?dl=0

I think on lower difficulties the game is not punishing enough that you can even ignore a lot of the affliction/inspiration interactions; things just happen, whatever. On low-mid-range path of the damned (with god's challenges) it's worth learning and getting used to countering afflictions/inspirations and learning what buffs are good. That said, you really should try some of the mid-high-level priest buff spells. The PL1 ones are a little subtle, but some examples of mid-range good spells: Dire Blessing is really good for most of the game, especially on Path of the Damned (where accuracy is more of a problem). To illustrate how good it is, priests are the only class that can do a party-wide "Aware" inspiration at that point in the game (and I believe ever: ciphers can only do themselves and one other party member at PL4, Wizards can only do themselves, and fighters can only do themselves albeit they can get up to intuitive). Aware is good because on top of +5 accuracy, it gives you a 50% graze->hit change, which is just bonkers for much of the game. It computes roughly to about a 22-25% multiplicative increase in damage output, not to mention the less tangible benefit of landing your non-damage effects at much greater odds. Also, even though grenades, scrolls, and poisons have been "reset" that your stats don't affect them, the 50% graze->hit part of Aware does affect them, which can make it much, much easier to land really powerful scrolls and bombs. Despondent Blows is just as good as it was in PoE1, which is to say, awesome at protecting your melee characters. Triumph at PL4 is way better than PoE1 because on top of the heal (which in PoE1 was frequently buggy) you get a basic strong inspiration (+5 Strength, approximately 10-12% multiplicative increase in damage output). Devotions in Deadfire isn't quite as broken as in PoE1, but is still a very good spell (the +4 might and +10 accuracy buff is roughly a 28% multiplicative damage increase [on top of landing non-damage effects more frequently], and the -4 might -10 accuracy debuff is analogously roughly a 22% multiplicative damage decrease for enemies). Like Aware, while grenades/scrolls/poisons have been "reset" that your stats don't affect them, they do still get buffed by the +10 accuracy, so Devotions can make it much easier to land effects.

I would actually argue that most of the priest subclasses change a lot how a priest plays out (with possible exceptions of Eothas and Gaun), but you have to play to its strengths. I think Magran has the most "obvious" difference because they are basically as good of a nuker as a druid or priest and you hardly have to do anything special to realize this; Rymrgand, too, but your mainchar can't be Rymrgand. But especially Skaen and Wael--if you play to their differences--are radically different, especially in a multiclass context. For example, assassin/skaen or streetfighter/wael multiclass: you could try an assassin/someOtherPriest or streetfighter/someOtherPriest and they might still be viable, but they wouldn't really shine in the same way. But the key thing is you have to actually play to each subclasses strengths. If you're just picking the same spells and doing the same thing, it's not going to be too different.