Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Plus the elemental talents add a lot of versatility in character building. They aren't just for casters -- they work with Stormcaller or a fire godlike monk or any number of other things too. Just great flavor all around.

Yeah to the extent that changes just force a choice, that's not necessarily bad. Pick a role: you do weapon damage, or you do spell damage, or you heal, or whatever. With ciphers though it's more complicated due to the focus mechanic; they can't just decide "ok, I'll do spell damage instead of weapon damage" because weapon damage is mandatory if they want to do anything else. There are some ways around it and the class is still playable (especially once and if they get spells generally rebalanced) but it's a more complicated problem for ciphers than for other classes.

This is a great idea. Only problem is that now you want to make sure your con is an odd number; no upside for even numbered con values. You could also index this to the current "lose a percentage of health with each knockout" such that (for example) a hero with ten con would lose 20% of their health on a knockout, while a char with 20 con would only lose 10%.

Yeah, you could probably crunch the numbers and figure out exactly how much damage mitigation / extra damage this maths out to and how each point in Resolve would compare to a point of Constitution etc. But it's different enough to not be a 1:1 parallel (it'd be a bigger deal against monsters with on-crit effects, for example). And non-tanks could probably afford to shave a few points, but like Con, you wouldn't want to dump it to 3 or you'd get obliterated. Keep in mind that crits give penetration currently, so tanks in heavy armor get a big benefit from crit to hit conversion; it keeps enemies from critting through their armor. Anyway I'm just spitballing here. This particular idea wouldn't solve any problem except the "Make Resolve Important" problem. You'd still have all the other problems hybrid builds suddenly face when Resolve is important.

Alternate idea: Have each point of resolve above / below 10 give +/- 3% incoming Crit to Hit conversion i.e., someone with 18 Resolve would reduce 24% of incoming crits to hits; someone with 3 resolve would increase 24% of incoming Hits to Crits Then you tie critical hits into the concentration / interrupt system somehow.

Idea: First, they make resolve useful Then, they give everyone five more points in character creation

I'm holding out hope that they can make a concentration - based change work. Even that won't really solve the "Ciphers need a dump stat, everyone else gets one" issue, though, because if Resolve is suddenly useful, you can't dump it. But at least it would preserve the elegance of the Might system.

Plus, some people might want to make ciphers that used a blunderbuss, so you don't want to explicitly disfavor any weapon either. I've made this point elsewhere so apologies if I'm repeating, but mechanically, any bonus you give to ciphers to "balance this out" -- extra damage, etc. -- can be reduced to the equivalent of X number of stat points (i.e., an additional 20% damage boost = 7 additional might). And then you run into a problem with multiclass characters, who can rely on their other class for powers and abilities and just use the Cipher for the bonus. It's therefore really hard to give anything additional to ciphers without making multiclass ciphers overpowered (for an example look at the current Assassin/Soul Blade build). The main downside is that it then forces Priests to split their stats between offense and healing. Relative to the current setup it's a priest nerf. Maybe a tolerable one, I dunno, I'd let people who play priests speak to that. I think raising the base focus gain rate from Soul Whip is probably a good idea regardless of the stat change issue -- it's currently at 25% instead of the first game's 35% -- but remember that in the current game you can't take both biting and draining whip, you have to pick one.

Witcher series handles this well by having in game books give bestiary knowledge.

Darn... I got ahead of myself because of that update... It got us all. I was checking the vendor in the town and everything.

My guess is that it created an imbalance with Dex, which was inherently multiplicative (though also not fully 3% due to irreducible frames etc.). They seem to have moved to multiplicative, percentage based calculations across the board (see, e.g., AR vs DR). Note that in Deadfire you also cannot take both Biting Whip and Draining Whip: you have to choose one, and given that they have also reduced the base focus gain rate from 35% to 25%, Draining is preferable if you want to cast. So the above calculations that include Biting Whip need to be changed to reflect that also. This isn't a change in isolation; it's on top of a lot of other things that also contribute to the Cipher problem.

Brainstorming: The problem would seem to be "how do we graft Concentration/interrupt onto the Resolve tree" Options: 1) Make some sort of system where you start out from -10 to +10 concentration and you need a value greater than 0 to cast. Changes over time, interrupts bring it down. (This would make it hard for some builds to open a fight with powers/abilities/spells; could have weird results in play. 2) You could tie it to critical hits. Critical hits that Penetrate break concentration; Resolve gives increasing/decreasing chance to resist critical hits. 3) tie it to Penetration and damage past armor in the same way;. Hrrrrm. None of this really solves the CIpher problem but at least it keeps Might (which is just a more elegant stat than Strength).

I don't think that's a useful question to ask. Theoretically I'm pretty sure almost any given build could complete the game. But some builds are more effective than others and, generally speaking, people tend to view more effective and more versatile builds as more fun. It's variable from player to player and build to build,sure. But generally speaking, a build that puts out 25% more damage will be viewed by most players as more fun and useful than a build that's otherwise identical but only does 3/4ths of the damage.

Yeah I have. Ciphers have basically three core roles: weapon damage, spell damage, and debuff/CC. Splitting the damage bonus between Str and Resolve means that ciphers are going to have to give up -- all else being equal and depending on stat spread, -- either about 20 to 24% of their weapon damage (if they drop Might to boost Res), about the same range of spell damage (if they drop Res to boost Might), or a corresponding loss to their CC ability by reducing their spell effect durations and areas (if they drop Int to keep Res and Might both topped off). There are other options also -- for example, as you point out, they can just not use the half of their power tree that does damage -- but if they do that they're surrendering a function (spell damage) that before this change they didn't have to surrender. They do get pick which class function they surrender but they have to surrender one of them. (Where "surrender" in this context means "take a 20% hit in effectiveness") That's presuming optimal play and stat allocation elsewhere and ignoring secondary effects (i.e., if Ciphers drop Might to boost Resolve, they'll lose focus gain in a corresponding proportion, etc.)

I see your point, but mine is—right now there are builds you can make that kick ass, right? Once the new beta drops, you won't be able to kick as much ass because you'll need to max out on too many attributes. Play the same build without maxing one of the attributes it needs, then comment on your experience: Was it good all the same? Was it more challenging in a good way? Was it frustrating because you weren't as powerful as before? Was it a total drag? If most people complain that their hybrid builds now suck (and Ciphers suck even more than they already did), perhaps Josh will reconsider. Right now the build I'm planning on trying is a 10 str / res, 7 con, 16 dex 16 int 16 per build. Dex will give the most bang per stat point since it will still effectively boost both damage output and casting speed, nothing's taking a penalty except con, and you can get dex int and per to 21 with a +5 buff which seems fairly common. You're still losing a lot of offense and a lot of focus generation though so we'll see how it works out. One big problem is that there are so many different changes that have negatively impacted ciphers (even, for example, the elimination of Vancian casting making them relatively less effective) that it's hard to draw lines and connect up precisely why the class is having problems.

Yeah, mechanically it'd be not bad. Some of the debuffs and CC would be useful just for helping land crits and the like.

The proposed Resolve changes probably bring ciphers in closer correspondence with their lore, actually. Mechanically it's a huge problem but lorewise it seems to line up better. Only issue I can think of re: Cipher lore is that Soul Whip isn't coded as a lash, but rather as a straight weapon damage bonus.

That isn't an argument, it's just a snort. Theoretically with enough willpower and time you can make almost any build work. You could probably finish a solo POTD run with a character who never took any stats past 10 and just abandoned all the starting ability points if you wanted to and had enough free time and patience to keep reloading. Just because something can be forced to work doesn't mean it's a good or even a functional design. I could clean my kitchen floor with my tongue if I wanted to, but I don't want to, I'd rather use a broom, it works better. However you slice it, this change means ciphers, especially single class ciphers, have to give up some critical class role that they had before -- either weapon damage, or spell damage, or CC ability, or something else -- and due to the "pipeline" nature of the focus mechanic, that's going to have secondary effects too, resulting in an overall dramatic loss of function for the class.

Yeah I'm not going to go build by build and compare vs. every other problem the game has. :shrug: Like, those other things probably need fixing too. I'm just frustrated because they're breaking an elegant system and in the process making my preferred class dramatically less effective. Maybe they'll be able to come up with some sort of theoretical fix but they haven't yet and I can't figure out any potential fixes that aren't extremely complicated or wouldn't cause even more secondary issues somewhere else. Ever try smoothing out bubbles in linoleum? Push it down one place, it pops up somewhere else? All the cipher fixes going forward from here look like that to me.

That's essentially Pillars' system, except Resolve rather than Dexterity increases Deflection. Wasn't Deflection originally on Might and Dex, and it just got moved to Resolve later to try to achieve some minimal usefulness for the stat?

That's not really what I meant by "incidental," sorry. I meant more that the multiclass hybrid could use Paladin (or Berserker, or w/e) abilities and just not use cipher powers till later in the fight. No matter what you're doing, as long as you're using a weapon in some fashion, you're going to get focus. Multiclass characters have a lot of other non-cipher things they can do while waiting for the focus bar to fill up; ciphers don't. Basically it's the same issue as why Ascendants are a really good pick for a multiclass cipher right now but a really bad pick if you're a single class cipher. Alternative example: multiclass priest/cipher who stacks resolve. Start the fight by buffing and casting the area of effect heal, with some ranged autoattacks mixed in. By the time you've blown out your priest spell list, your focus meter is full from incidental autoattacks; now you cast those already-overtuned cipher powers with your additional Resolve bonus. Multiclass ciphers can use the other class as a crutch to get through the weak side of their character, whatever it is; single class ciphers can't.

Theoretically . . . maybe? If you get *really* complicated maybe there's a way to patch it into functionality, but at that point it's like adding epicycles to the geocentric theory: technically it works on paper, but it's absurdly overcomplicated and non-intuitive and most of the player base will never understand it. You're basically writing a set of asterisks by all the game rules that lead to "except for Ciphers, which" footnotes.

They could buff the spells, that doesn't affect multiclassing much That's the other option -- just make Cipher powers have really big damage numbers. But then someone goes the other direction, makes, say, a Resolve-stacking Paladin/cipher that does take the cipher powers (Say, an Ascendant build). Use paladin powers for the inital phases of the fight, then once you've built up focus incidentally, go crazy casting overbalanced cipher endgame powers. Multi-class builds can use one class as a crutch for the other; single-class ciphers can't.

I did that in the other thread already (or was it in this one?) Roughly half of all cipher powers in the current beta are damage powers that will be based on Resolve in the new system. That of course includes a lot of "crowd control" powers too -- as a "hybrid" class, cipher powers overlap. What this change means, therefore, in numerical terms, is that ciphers can no longer consider Resolve a "dump stat" -- you can't just take it to 3 and move on; even if you're playing a mostly-pure CC cipher (inadvisable right now anyway for other reasons), enough of your powers will have a damage component that you'd be dramatically reducing your effectiveness if you ignore it. That in turn means that those seven points aren't added to a different stat. Seven points in Strength is a 21% physical damage bonus; seven points in Dex is a 21% action speed bonus (which is also functionally a damage bonus); either one of those taken down means a corresponding loss in damage dealt, which means a corresponding loss in focus gained, which means a corresponding loss in power list. Imagine if Wizards suddenly lost a fifth of their spell slots per fight -- that's what a 20% reduction in focus is for a cipher. Seven points lost in Con wouldn't be a big deal, but most cipher builds are already taking Con down to between 4 and 6 anyway; any lower and you get oneshotted. Seven points lost in Intelligence is a dramatic reduction to power durations and areas of effect, horrible for a caster. Seven points lost in Perception, well, the math gets complicated, but given the new higher miss rates and the fact that higher miss rates hurt ciphers doubly (since it reduces their ability to gain focus AND their ability to cast effectively), reducing perception is even less of an option than reducing Might or Dex. In short, this change basically means you have to pick a core class function that you're bad at. Either you're bad at dealing damage with weapons (and hence bad at everything else due to lack of focus), or you're bad at casting powers (because they'll miss constantly, or have miniscule durations / areas of effect, or do minimal damage). Incidentally, the fact that you're pointing to penetration issues as the sole cause of cipher problems right now tells me you haven't played ciphers much in the beta. Penetration's one issue out of many (and one that's solvable in the right party, in a way the other issues aren't). Bigger issues right now are lack of grazing, the move to per-encounter casting on all other classes making the Focus gain system a relative liability rather than an advantage, very restricted power selection due to the need to take both powers and passive abilities, reduced focus gain rate from 35% to 25% vs the prior game, etc. This change comes on top of all those.

Right, ok, sure, but . . . Let's say you do that and you just give Soul Whip a huge resolve-based damage boost to even it out. Heck, make all Cipher weapon damage resolve-based instead of might-based. What happens then? What happens is you get crazily overpowered Paladin / Soul Blade builds that just stack resolve like crazy for megadamage from the Soul Whip bonus and use the focus just for bonus Soul Annihilation damage, and don't bother with powers. That's the thing -- mechanically, any bonus you give ciphers to "balance" this, can effectively be reduced to "the equivalent of X number of free stat points," and then those bonuses -- whatever they are -- will in turn make multiclass ciphers overpowered. They're putting ciphers in a nerf box and I don't see a way out of it.