Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Would you mind elaborating a bit? I have never done much of multiclassing but from what I saw and tried it works the best if ones combines abilities of both classes to enhance each other, rather than doing everything at once. Let’s take fighter/wizard. With new system it will be difficult to build a character who focuses on dealing damage with weapons and spells. But you wouldn’t do that right? Casting fireball from first raw of combat is risky as you can get interrupted. It is more likely you will buff yourself with magic to get better protection or better damage or debuf enemies. You won’t need resolve for that. You can also create tanks damage dealer - you engage enemies and lock them with you, and use spells like fan of flames to damage enemies. I did earlier in the thread in more detail, but the way ciphers work, mechanically, it's a hose -- they deal physical damage on the front end, then spells come out the other end. But if you pinch off either end, nothing happens -- no spells come out. This change basically means you have to pinch one end at least, because there aren't enough stat points to keep both ends of the hose open. Either you sacrifice weapon damage or you sacrifice spell damage. Either way, it's a dramatic nerf to damage dealt ,and ciphers are supposed to be a "striker" class for whom damage dealing is a core class element. The same general principle is true to a lesser extent for any other class that tries to do both weapon and spell damage, which is what I mean by hybrid. Before, you could easily build a damage-focused priest or druid or paladin or w/e because there wasn't a conflict between weapon damage and spell damage. Now there is, so you have to pick one, and if you're picking just one, you aren't a hybrid any more. That said you're correct that a lot of classes can just choose to specialize in one or the other now and it isn't as big a deal. But Ciphers can't make that choice.

Nope, dont have any specific numbers to propose. Also Soulwhip is how they collect focus according to lore. Without it they gain nothing from hitting people with various implements. "Soul Whip is the Cipher's passive ability that activates in combat as long as the Cipher's Focus level is below maximum. Causes the Cipher's weapon(s) to generate a field of parasitic energy that lashes out at the target, increasing Damage inflicted and generating Focus for the cipher. It can be used with ranged weapons." Yes, I'm aware of how Soul Whip is defined in the lore. In practice, Soul Whip boosts all cipher physical damage, and physical damage in turn generates focus. I don't buy his answer. I can't see how, for example, leaving Might as the sole +damage attribute but moving +healing to Resolve isn't workable. I think he just doesn't want to have the discussion right now: he wants to implement the change in the next beta patch and see how it goes. That's fine of course, but I don't actually believe his answer. Having Resolve reduce the duration of Afflictions is another great suggestion (it even fits with the name of the attribute) but I'm willing to believe that might be harder to implement. Leaving Resolve broken and useless would have been preferable to this change. He's fixing a dud-stat problem by creating the larger problem of making hybrid builds much less effective -- in a game where they're introducing multiclassing as a core selling point.

Thank you. So the stumbling block seems to be a number of hybrids, as well as much of cipher and druid in part? Perhaps you could add a "specific-hybride-unique" talent that you "must" take early on in the hybrids that really got boned this way. Then cipher and druid need to get a few bones thrown at them as well. It wouldn't be that hard to fix, no? I don't see a way to fix it because anything you give single-class ciphers to "Even it out," would end up making multi-class ciphers ridiculously overpowered. For example, if you gave Soul Whip a bunch of extra weapon damage to balance out the Might losses, then melee classes start taking Cipher as a second class just for the soul whip damage boost, and just ignore the cipher damage powers.

I don't really see where you're coming from on this -- do you have any numbers to back that up or is it just intuitive? Because if it's just an intuitive argument I'd ask you to look at the numbers instead. Mathematically, 18 might would give a 24% damage bonus; that's higher than the base soul whip bonus of 20%. Now with this change, those points need to go somewhere else (if, say, you ever want to do damage with a power cast, etc.) Remember: Ciphers gain focus from weapon damage dealt. A 24% drop in their weapon damage dealt means a corresponding 24% drop in their focus gained. This change doesn't just shift some numbers around. Imagine if wizards lost a quarter of their spell list every fight. That's the equivalent of what this change does to ciphers. And there's no way to "balance this properly" because if you gave Ciphers enough of a damage bonus to even this out -- say, an additional 24% bonus to Soul Whip -- suddenly Soul Whip is doing +44% damage! (Base, not counting Biting Whip etc). AT that point, multiclass cipher/melee classes become absurdly powerful just from the bonus damage, without ever bothering to actually cast cipher powers! It's a @#$@$ mess.

Alright, this is great to know. Just for comparison, I'd also like to know which single classes and multiclass combos gained from this. I mean, does it all even out, despite certain classes and hybrids getting the short straw? Or did this change make it all a bit harder? If so, is that necessarily a bad thing? There are good posts breaking this down in the other thread. Basically it's different but not necessarily worse if you're a "pure" class like wizard or fighter, arguably an improvement for Paladins and perhaps to a lesser extent Priests, but it makes it impossible to build a spiritshift druid who is also effective with spells or a Cipher who emphasizes spell damage.

THe problem with this idea is that the extra damage from soul whip is just a percentage, so you're talking a percentage of a percentage. You'd need a huge bonus to make a difference -- and then someone would multiclass cipher [resolve class] and suddenly cipher/priests are doing massive damage in melee AND with spells. Like I said above, I don't see any way to fix this for single class ciphers that doesn't create huge balance problems with overpowered multiclass ciphers.

Frankly, Sawyer want so much control the viable/optimal point, it is impossible to miss a character, even with a 3 in recommended stat. So, it is not completely an argument. There is a very clear loss for paladins, druids and cipher. One can not deny it. A quantitative loss, you who love numbers at 18 Might : 24 % if you are focus on Spells side. Yeah, Gromnir's making a feelings argument in response to a mathematical issue. You could make every stat choice feel meaningful by taking away all the discretionary starting points so that if you wanted any stat higher than 10 you had to drop a different one down, too. Think of how hard the choices would be! Wait, even better idea: only one ability point gained every other level. Half as many power choices! So much meaning felt!

This isn't "tough choices," it's "can't do the job."

I don't know that there's a need for another thread on this given the prior resolve thread, but to answer your question: As I understand it, the goal isn't so much "no bad builds" or "no dump stats" as it is making sure that any given build concept will be buildable -- if you want to build a muscle wizard or a resolve fighter or whatever, there should be a way to make it work; there's no stat that's completely useless for any class. So, what this does is make it so you can build a weapon focused (wizard, priest, mage, fighter) or a spell focused (wizard, priest, mage, fighter [using scrolls]), etc. So theoretically that's the problem it solves. The problem is it does so by creating the bigger problem of "hybrid builds and classes are boned."

I'm having a really hard time seeing how you can fix this without either giving Ciphers a ****load of free extra stat points or massively re-designing the class. Ciphers require weapon damage to function. Without it, they can't get focus. I just counted, and out of the 29 Cipher powers in the Beta, roughly 14 of them -- i.e., approximately half -- are damage powers that do damage and will be effected by Resolve. So Ciphers now have different stats for weapon damage (mandatory) and for spell damage (core class function). On top of that, they need Int for CC durations and Area of Effect on their powers (near-mandatory), they need Perception to hit (absolutely critical, since missing *either* while gaining focus or while casting means no spell effect happens). They also can't neglect Dex because it's effect on action speed means it's a damage stat both for weapons and for casting. So their only real dump stat is Con, and you can only take so many points off of Con before you start getting oneshotted. So everyone else in the game gets a dump stat, except Ciphers. And that's on top of all the other changes which have functionally nerfed ciphers (the removal of Grazing hurt them more than any other class, for the same reasons that Perception is important, as above; they have all the general caster problems where cast times are longer than power durations etc; the generalized move to per-encounter casting made the focus system a liability rather than advantage; etc. etc. etc). I'm not sure I know how to make a cipher under the proposed system any more. There's just not enough stats for them to be effective. Even if you decide to go pure crowd control, enough crowd control cipher powers have damage components that dumping Resolve is a poor long-term choice, and without a dump stat, you can't raise the other stats high enough to be effective, because the game is balanced to at least some degree around the concept that characters will have stats appropriate for their jobs. EDIT: plus if you overtune single-class ciphers too much, you make them too powerful when taken as hybrids. If you, say, give Ciphers an additional 15 % across-the-board weapon damage boost, so they don't have to put points in might . . . people will make berserker/ciphers or assassin/ciphers or whatever that stack might and only dip into ciphers for the passives and maybe a few damage powers.

I've got it: we give all the armor Resolve requirements also, we bring back THAC0

Yeah, especially with the increased miss rates now that grazing is no longer a thing. Currently I'd only dump Per on a Fighter who took the ability that gives you grazing. Maybe on a pure defensive buffer/healer.

Wasn't Deflection originally Might and Dex, Reflex was Dex and Per, Fort was Might and Con, Will was Int and Resolve? I think it makes sense to return Deflection to Strength if Str no longer boosts non-weapon damage.

Yeah that's probably what I'll try. Max Int, Per, take only buff/debuff/cc powers, shave Con, remaining points in Dex, since at least Dex will still help both spells and weapon. Problem is Dex isn't quite as effective a damage stat as either Might or Res will be.

Interesting, you say cipher, but you mean a specific hybrid build, no? Given that you use almost all attributes. However you're building your cipher, the math works out fairly similarly; you need the same stats for the same sorts of things. Hrm. It might be possible to build a low-int cipher that just did damage powers by pumping might AND resolve, but you'd have to give up all the CC effects and durations, and all your powers would have crappy areas of effect. It might be possible to build a crowd-control focused cipher that did no damage with powers, but you'd have to basically rely on the weapon (whatever weapon you chose) for ALL your damage output, and ciphers get no weapon active abilities. You could theoretically have high damage output weapon and high damage output spells but you'd have give up Dex in the process so you wouldn't net out ahead -- each hit would do more but you'd have fewer hits. The same logic holds whichever build you're talking about, there aren't enough points to spread around any more. You have to give up something major, and you can't give up weapon damage without the whole thing shutting down. Other classes are faucets: turn off one faucet you can turn on another. Ciphers are a hose: if you close off either end, the whole process shuts down.

The way the math works out for a cipher, you can max Int (necessary), Per (necessary due to hit/miss changes), and then past that whatever points you add in one place, you have to take away from somewhere else -- if you want more Resolve, you have to drop Con, etc. Ciphers have to do weapon damage to gain focus. You can effectively shave . . . four or so at most . . points off Con IF you're willing to play ranged instead of frontline. So you can put those four points into one of either Might, Dex, or Resolve. Currently, the general build is to also cut resolve by about six to seven points, and put what you gain from cutting Res and Con into Might and Dex, because that helps casting speed and weapon and spell damage. Next patch, you'll basically have to choose between doing either weapon damage or spell damage .. . . except that isn't a choice because without weapon damage you'll never get the focus to do spell anything. On the other hand, if you don't pump resolve, your powers won't be effective no matter how much weapon focus you gather. I don't know how to build a cipher under the new system. Maybe just dump Dex and do everything like you're moving through molasses? Alternatively the answer might be to just drop all damage-based Cipher powers and play the class as a pure buffer/debuffer.

Yeah, there are dump stats either way, this is just more conventional and makes hybrids less viable.

I don't like that change. It basically makes an all out damage focused cipher or muscle wizard build impossible, because you'll have no dump stat and be forced to stack two separate damage stats, one for their weapon and one for their casts. It's going to be a *lot* harder to play any kind of hybrid character. You'll have to pick one or the other. The old might-is-all-damage system was one of the neatest things about the first game. Resolve needed something but this is dismantling the car to get replacement parts for the lawnmower.

It's as much of a choice as any of the other choices that go into the whole of "specializing in [____] weapons." Equipping a shield is a choice too, even if it's pre-determined because you've already taken a bunch of shield talents; choosing a background that takes your Dex to 20 is a choice even if your dex is already at 19; etc. I didn't say it was a big choice, but it's one choice out of the set of possible choices, which taken together result in a built character. Fair point. Open talents as proficiencies is a bit of a kludge solution but it's one that's possible given the current UI without throwing together a whole new character interface, doesn't require a rebalance of the total number of ability slots, etc. Presumably there will be a UI redesign / final draft before the end of the beta and stuff like this can get sorted out.

The main difference is that everyone uses a weapon, but different builds use weapons differently. Building a character to use two-handers is going to involve a lot of other secondary choices like favoring might over dex, or investing in heavy armor to mitigate loss of a shield. If you're making a two-weapon build, you're going to seek out a lot of other attack speed bonuses (probably). If you're going Ranged, you'll probably dump resolve and con, since you're not planning on being in the front lines. Etc., etc. *Everybody* would take a "more accuracy in the weapon I'm already using" talent. Almost everyone (except pure casters) might take a weapon style talent also, but they'll take different weapon styles. It's a real choice.

Sorry I misspoke -- in *lore*, soul whip is a weapon lash. I wasn't thinking about the actual formula, should have been.

Yeah, I think your case would be stronger if you compared rogues vs other classes and not just vs. picked subclasses. Still good points. What are the sources for those various abilities? I assume for the cipher 40% you're counting Soul Whip? (technically it's a lash effect).

Wait, Paralyze no longer gives a deflection penalty? That explains a lot.

"Look, two pommels." "Oh. I see. And most weapons only have one?" "Exactly." "Does that mean it's better? Is it any better?" "Well, it's double the pommels, isn't it? It's not one. You see, most blokes, you know, just one pommel. You're off the hilt over here, all the way up, all the way up, you're on the one pommel, just the one pommel on your weapon. Where can you go from there? Where?" "I don't know." "Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?" "Flip it to the other pommel?" "Exactly. Double pommel." "Isn't that just a club?" [Pause.]. "It's a double pommel."

What are the Resolve values of the enemies in the beta? I just had a nightmare where lagufaeth all have 30 resolve