Beta patch 1.1 important changes

[Braven]

While I agree the nerfing was pretty heavy-handed on fighter, I don’t think think the class is completely outclassed now in every way. People are only thinking about fighter as a DPS machine, but the defender stance can be quite good when synergized with other things. Granted, needs help from multi-classing to gain extra armor, defenses, and healing. But pretty much every class benefits a lot from multiclassing.

 

Unbroken/goldpact can have armor such that all damage gets cut down to -75%, combined with the armor that reduces damage scaled with the number of engagements, and combined with the ring that buffs defenses based on engagements. Then add in a shield modal adding another 30-50% in resistances... and suddenly enemies are hitting you for next to nothing and can’t escape without taking heavy damage. Discipline can be used to pull ranged into your engagement area or charge can be used to reach the ranged at the start of battle. This play style has no need for DEX so you can just dump it since you are just a black hole holding enemies back.

 

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Braven

[Enoch]

Sad that nerfs have come in over actual proper enemy balancing and AI tweaks, but there we are.

I'd argue that it makes more sense than the opposite. 

 

It's pretty universally acknowledged that classes/abilities/gear/etc. in Deadfire 1.02 are not in great shape, balance-wise.  They know that they're going to want to put some effort into addressing this.  But tuning encounters and enemy AI is almost certainly the more labor-intensive process.  If you do that before you've taken on the outlier balance issues, you're probably going to do a poor job-- either apex builds will faceroll the content, or "ordinary" builds will struggle too much.  Better to narrow the range of character power level before you put all the work into fine-tuning encounters. 

[knownastherat]

 

 

My current attempt I turned all scaling off to see if that makes a difference - nothing in this video would be possible with 3 skull boars. Eder would die before you got to do anything really.

 

There is a way to make that pack even smaller though - on my attempt I got wiped by just 2 3 skull boars and 2 young boars because their stats were just insane - couldn't be hit by anything and hit my guys for 50 damage with 'gore' which also did a DoT - you can pull that pack with a trap , ramp down on the southwestern side or so

The number of skulls doesn't matter, boars are merely bodies. They have a slow attack speed, a slow attack animation, a slow movement speed and they don't have engagement, so they can be evaded and kited around.

 

Also give Eder Xoti's chain mail, boars do pierce damage and these guys overpenetrate his saint scale armor. He can now tank 30% better

The skulls absolutely does matter because it impacts their defenses and accuracy. You aren’t going to beat that fight with 3 skull boars swarming you with story companions only and a chanter PC

 

I would have to tinker with the settings but I don’t use mods so it must have something to do with scaling - I’m about to get there in a no scaling job so we will see how it goes this time

 

That’s a good tip for the armor type though for sure

 

 

Just tried it with scaling, since I've learned this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101735-something-i-havent-seen-mentioned-about-new-patch/, and second try against 3 skulls with Skald and companions. 

[dunehunter]

While I agree the nerfing was pretty heavy-handed on fighter, I don’t think think the class is completely outclassed now in every way. People are only thinking about fighter as a DPS machine, but the defender stance can be quite good when synergized with other things. Granted, needs help from multi-classing to gain extra armor, defenses, and healing. But pretty much every class benefits a lot from multiclassing.

 

Unbroken/goldpact can have armor such that all damage gets cut down to -75%, combined with the armor that reduces damage scaled with the number of engagements, and combined with the ring that buffs defenses based on engagements. Then add in a shield modal adding another 30-50% in resistances... and suddenly enemies are hitting you for next to nothing and can’t escape without taking heavy damage. Discipline can be used to pull ranged into your engagement area or charge can be used to reach the ranged at the start of battle. This play style has no need for DEX so you can just dump it since you are just a black hole holding enemies back.

 

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

 

Agreed, I hate to see enemy has fighters because they are so hard to kill, and still doing steady damage output. Rogue? I just kill them in one or two blows before they have chance to use escape.

[Esajin]

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

 

If you ask me out of all Fighter abilities, which one was degenerate pre-1.1, I'd have said "Unbending Trunk" without a single second of hesitation. It's just a degenerate ability that turned you into an unkillable enemy, the kind that solos the Elder Fampyr Crypt with nothing but the AI and no pausing and no consumables.

 

Unbending Trunk was stupidly strong. See all those defenses and damage reduction abilities and shields that you were investing in and using? I didn't need any of that. I didn't need engagement because I was the lowest deflection target on the battlefield so enemies charged me instead. I actually wanted enemies to crit my fighter so I could regen discipline and self-fuel my invulnerability. I was simply healing myself back to full every second, passively, and triggering all "on being crit" procs that I could find.

[dunehunter]

 

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

 

If you ask me out of all Fighter abilities, which one was degenerate pre-1.1, I'd have said "Unbending Trunk" without a single second of hesitation. It's just a degenerate ability that turned you into an unkillable enemy, the kind that solos the Elder Fampyr Crypt with nothing but the AI and no pausing and no consumables.

 

Unbending Trunk was stupidly strong. See all those defenses and damage reduction abilities and shields that you were investing in and using? I didn't need any of that. I didn't need engagement because I was the lowest deflection target on the battlefield so enemies charged me instead. I actually wanted enemies to crit my fighter so I could regen discipline and self-fuel my invulnerability. I was simply healing myself back to full every second, passively, and triggering all "on being crit" procs that I could find.

 

 

Nice, you shall definitely post your build here The unkillable magnet maybe?

[Esajin]

Oh, the build is simple:

 

Pick the Fighter class

 

At level 9, pick Unbending, you're now very hard to kill for 20 seconds on demand

 

At level 13, pick Unbending Trunk, you're now immortal for 25 seconds

 

At level 16, pick Toughened Discipline and stop using deflection/resolve gear

 

do whatever you want with all other details. I think you need about 15 might with gear and buffs for it to work properly, and Int is probably another stat you want for the duration.

[Braven]

 

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

 

If you ask me out of all Fighter abilities, which one was degenerate pre-1.1, I'd have said "Unbending Trunk" without a single second of hesitation. It's just a degenerate ability that turned you into an unkillable enemy, the kind that solos the Elder Fampyr Crypt with nothing but the AI and no pausing and no consumables.

 

Unbending Trunk was stupidly strong. See all those defenses and damage reduction abilities and shields that you were investing in and using? I didn't need any of that. I didn't need engagement because I was the lowest deflection target on the battlefield so enemies charged me instead. I actually wanted enemies to crit my fighter so I could regen discipline and self-fuel my invulnerability. I was simply healing myself back to full every second, passively, and triggering all "on being crit" procs that I could find.

 

 

I never tried it without chanter cheese, so you may be right.  You are also right that it is intended for the polar opposite build... a fighter that focuses all on DPS and no defense at all.

 

Part of what made it powerful was the fact you could kill enemies so fast the cleave mechanics so the low duration didn't matter.  If you tried to use it now, particularly if soloing, I think you would run out of discipline before killing everything.  Also, it is a late game power so you are relatively weak until you get it... in my opinion something you get that late should be really powerful.  There are lots of ways to basically be invulnerable at that point in the game, even after all the nerfs.  I am currently running a monk/wizard that literally never gets hit at all, not even grazed, because defenses are so high from abusing the never ending per-rest bonuses and never resting (along with all the other ways to increase defenses).  That is even better than healing where you could get disabled or something and run out of duration or get interrupted.  Also, that is good from pretty much the start of the game (as long as you avoid certain enemies until higher level that target fortitude).

Edited June 4, 2018 by Braven

[Esajin]

 

 

I never tried it without chanter cheese, so you may be right.  You are also right that it is intended for the polar opposite build... a fighter that focuses all on DPS and no defense at all.

 

Part of what made it powerful was the fact you could kill enemies so fast the cleave mechanics so the low duration didn't matter.  If you tried to use it now, particularly if soloing, I think you would run out of discipline before killing everything.  Also, it is a late game power so you are relatively weak until you get it... in my opinion something you get that late should be really powerful.  There are lots of ways to basically be invulnerable at that point in the game, even after all the nerfs.  I am currently running a monk/wizard that literally never gets hit at all, not even grazed, because defenses are so high from abusing the never ending per-rest bonuses and never resting (along with all the other ways to increase defenses).  That is even better than healing where you could get disabled or something and run out of duration or get interrupted.  Also, that is good from pretty much the start of the game (as long as you avoid certain enemies until higher level that target fortitude).

 

 

I didn't solo on my fighter back when I was level 9 or level 13, so I can't comment on that.

 

I am soloing on 1.1 at the moment and even with Mirror Image up on my Black Jacket/Trickster (some sort of stupid riposte build with long range pikes, just testing please ignore), and I get hit/crit all the time whenever enemies have engagement. I didn't think about those per-rest bonuses to boost my deflection. I'll look them up, thanks.

[merkmerk73]

 

 

 

My current attempt I turned all scaling off to see if that makes a difference - nothing in this video would be possible with 3 skull boars. Eder would die before you got to do anything really.

 

There is a way to make that pack even smaller though - on my attempt I got wiped by just 2 3 skull boars and 2 young boars because their stats were just insane - couldn't be hit by anything and hit my guys for 50 damage with 'gore' which also did a DoT - you can pull that pack with a trap , ramp down on the southwestern side or so

The number of skulls doesn't matter, boars are merely bodies. They have a slow attack speed, a slow attack animation, a slow movement speed and they don't have engagement, so they can be evaded and kited around.

 

Also give Eder Xoti's chain mail, boars do pierce damage and these guys overpenetrate his saint scale armor. He can now tank 30% better

The skulls absolutely does matter because it impacts their defenses and accuracy. You aren’t going to beat that fight with 3 skull boars swarming you with story companions only and a chanter PC

 

I would have to tinker with the settings but I don’t use mods so it must have something to do with scaling - I’m about to get there in a no scaling job so we will see how it goes this time

 

That’s a good tip for the armor type though for sure

Just tried it with scaling, since I've learned this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101735-something-i-havent-seen-mentioned-about-new-patch/, and second try against 3 skulls with Skald and companions.

I don’t understand this post - are you saying you reloaded and did the fight with 3 skull boars and level 4 story companions?

 

How did you recreate this?

 

And I didn’t see anything in the thread that covered the scaling - is that the issue? Or were you playing on veteran l?

[thelee]

 

+20 stacking accuracy(and +4 might) in an AOE, but its a level 7 priest spell(level 19 on a multi-class).

Devotions in version < 1.1 is a PL-4 spell, not PL 7. That's char lvl 7 as a single class and char level 10 on a multiclass character.

 

 

Can anyone with beta patch confirm whether or not this was a typo in the OP or has devotions been moved to a PL7 spell in 1.1?

 

How has deflection stacking fared? That was the most OP thing in my mind since you could get defenses so high that nothing could even graze you and have deflection to spare. Most of what I have seen mention are the offensive abilities being nerfed. Deflection would need to be nerfed quite a lot to really break those builds as I had like 20-30 more than needed with one of my builds. Both the wizard spells and tank items would need steep nerfs to break it.

 

Nerfing alone ultimately won’t really make the game balanced because they will certainly miss some things, maybe combos that have gotten less attention because they were ever so slightly worse or less interesting that the “mainstream” OP builds. It will just result in less build options. I think a better strategy is to mix in buffs and nerfs in equal measure; that way you switch up the meta and allow use of powers that previously saw no play because they were just underpowered. With only nerfs, the bad powers still won’t be used and instead continue to use existing powerful combinations that managed to evade the nerf bat. The only result is less viable options.

 

 

 

How is shields' scaling now?

Still +1 per enchantment level?

Deflection is broken in POE and POEII, I don't think it's fixable. The fact that you don't need a shield to deflect damage I don't understand. The fact that a person carrying a bow can be more effective in deflecting a shot or two handed sword than a person carrying a shield and sword because he is "higher level" is beyond me.

 

The only way to make shields effective is to give shields and weapons delfection stats and remove the deflection stat from characters themselves.

 

The main issue in this game is one that plagues D&D as well. People go for the "My Deflection is higher than your max accuracy" sweetspot making your character invulnerable. I think it is far better to make your character more relyant on the type of equipment and have your character focus on a specific fighting style rather than just boosting stats.

 

 

The fundamental problem with deflection is that it is the only "main" stat that has increasing returns. This means for balancing purposes, it sits in an awkward place where it is garbage for most characters, but can also be overly OP for others. (This is sort of the flip side to perception, which had diminishing returns and so it is useful on the low end but much less useful on the high end... though with Deadfire's numerous "crit matters" stuff, I'm not as sure if perception has notably diminishing returns.) Deadfire tried to cope with deflection being increasing returns by reducing the magnitude of many deflection-boosting items and buffs (can you imagine if a superb large shield still got like +12 bonus deflection on top of its +12 base deflection)? But there's enough items and spells out there that it can still be super OP if you have enough metagame knowledge to get specific items (like that ring with the stacking deflection bonus based on engagement), and I'm not sure there's a good way to really fix this without fundamentally changing how accuracy rolls work in this game. If they e.g. nerf things like Arcane Veil or Mirrored Image, all they do is make it garbage for more characters and just incrementally harder to get infinite% returns from deflection for the min-maxed characters.

 

 

Personally, so far from what I heard, I like the shape of this patch. My only beef is that, like others have expressed, they didn't fix the brilliant inspiration, they just removed it (from the player). It definitely needs to be fixed. Ideally the chanter invocation would still have brilliant on it, except brilliant is something that isn't just an "i-win" buff for virtually any fight in any party.

 

People complaining about the nerf bat should really consider that if there's an ability or item that is a "no-brainer" decision, it is likely too good, regardless of your personal emotional attachment to it. I mean, I love Devotions of the Faithful, but the fact that it is essentially an automatic pick for any and all priests who don't want to self-gimp since the beginning of Pillars of Eternity 1 means that it needed to be nerfbatted pretty hard, even though for much of the pillars franchise it's just been flying under the radar compared to more overtly OP spells/abilities/items. So far, I feel the same way about most things people are complaining about here. Rarely form the stuff that I've seen has something actually gotten crappy post-nerf; it's just not as automatic a pick for parties/characters as it was before, it is either still good or just not as obscenely good.

Edited June 4, 2018 by thelee

[thelee]

One more thing to add: negative reactions to nerfing is largely psychological. Human beings are more prone to feel strongly about losing something they already have, then gaining something they don't already have. (Simple example: give someone a task and offer them ten dollars. Or, give them ten dollars and threaten to take it away if they don't do something. Mathematically it is the same either way, but people are more prone to respond to the incentive in the latter situation. There are many, many other similar examples/studies/experiments like this.)

 

The alternative is something that I really don't like, which is basically what Blizzard has been doing for Diablo 3 forever. They rarely ever nerf. Instead, they buff everything and buff OP things slightly less (or not at all, or fundamentally change it into something else). This keeps people from (mostly) complaining about nerfs, but the end result is this eternal power creep with every single patch/season. I hate it. I would much rather have aggressive nerf bats.

 

So if you don't like a nerf, what helps me is to reframe it as just another way of doing something I would like: keeping my favorite abilities the same but buffing enemies. Mathematically it's the same, and I just remember that my gut reaction may be mostly a primitive, emotional one.

[Camonge]

 

If anything, making a custom party allowed you to completely trivialize PoE1 PotD. Part of the reason to stick with the story companions is that even with good builds, their strength would be middling at best - and that was fine.

 

 

 

 

 

PoE1 potd was never balanced around the requirement of having to go to the tavern to make up some new toons. It was always doable with story companions.

 

 

 

Let's put some things in perspective...

 

We are talking about one single fight which you are expected to bring one single hireling. This does not make the whole game balanced around the requirement of hirelings. 15 minutes later, you have a full party of story companions and can forget about hirelings.

 

It's a design choice for a one time thing, when you can take hirelings already but cannot have a full party of story companions yet. Designers had two options: trivialize the experience for 5 member parties that used the tavern, or make it insanely hard for 3 member parties without hirelings. According to my brief experience, they went for the middle ground: the fight is tuned for a 4 member party.

 

About knownsastherat video, the harder fight awaits below with some young panthers and a drake in adittion to boars and wurms. Indeed, my boars had 3 skulls and were a bit tougher.

https://imgur.com/a/YUPBfDt

[amiable]

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but soft winds of death no longer triggers Shards of Woedica on shattered vengeance.  This probably falls into the category of "bug fix" but was pretty great while it lasted!

[knownastherat]

With them awaits the Gunpowder barrel. It's doable, without hirelings, 3 skulls or not, period.

[AndreaColombo]

One more thing to add: negative reactions to nerfing is largely psychological.

 

Agreed (and I remember these psychological mechanisms from my studies.)

 

However, one thing is to react negatively to nerfs because they are nerfs—which can certainly happen, but it's not what the majority are doing on these boards AFAIA; another, rightfully pointing out that some abilities were over-nerfed, others (and most items) were nerfed with no need to. Beta patch 1.1 went way overboard with the nerfs, and frankly I don't see the benefit.

 

Sure, I could spend a few hours cherry-picking nerfs I agree with and restoring everything else, but I didn't back this game to be appalled by monkey work. I backed it to have fun, which certainly won't happen for as long as recovery remains as slow as it is (it was barely acceptable in 1.02 already.) YMMV, but me, I'm pretty bummed.

Edited June 4, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[Veolfen]

Some nerfs were needed guys, and while you say people are complaining about the nerfs, a lot of people are also understanding them even tho it happens to their class.

The thing is, sometimes, the nerfs are a bit too hard (unbending for fighter), or sometimes, the nerf touch most of the good tools of a class (fighter again).

After the nerf, 
Except the Discipline Strike, the Stances (mainly the tank one now) and the penetrating strike, point a SINGLE cool and good ability left for the fighter.
There's nothing. Also those 3 are good/decent, but are not "cool abilities", they are just the reliable early level tools.
 

 

While I agree the nerfing was pretty heavy-handed on fighter, I don’t think think the class is completely outclassed now in every way. People are only thinking about fighter as a DPS machine, but the defender stance can be quite good when synergized with other things. Granted, needs help from multi-classing to gain extra armor, defenses, and healing. But pretty much every class benefits a lot from multiclassing.

Unbroken/goldpact can have armor such that all damage gets cut down to -75%, combined with the armor that reduces damage scaled with the number of engagements, and combined with the ring that buffs defenses based on engagements. Then add in a shield modal adding another 30-50% in resistances... and suddenly enemies are hitting you for next to nothing and can’t escape without taking heavy damage. Discipline can be used to pull ranged into your engagement area or charge can be used to reach the ranged at the start of battle. This play style has no need for DEX so you can just dump it since you are just a black hole holding enemies back.

None of those things were nerfed for that type of fighter except maybe unbending which I am still sad about. That skill was only broken when combined with chanter. With the chanter nerfs, the fighter nerf to unbending wasn’t needed. Basically, you just use stalwart defense instead now which provides better benefits anyway considering all the damage reduction Is anti-synergistic with unbending.

The problem is, unbending nerf was needed on fighter. But not that hard. Also he needed buffs on his other high level skills that are quite bad.
Also you point out the tank aspect, the only viable aspect the fighter had before the patch and has after the patch. (as a single class, but was way more worth it to multiclass anyway) 

Before the patch, the offensive cleave stance + devoted made him ideal as a secondary class for multiclass, and unbending was the icing on the cake. But as a single class, it was extremely lackluster as a dps (not saying it was a bit underperforming, it was at least 35-40% less effectives than other melee single classes, and when multiclass join the calculations, it was at least 2 times less effective)
The thing is, fighters lovers don't want to just be meatshields and forced to multiclass, but there's obviously little love for his tank aspect (in the end it will be an average meatshield with good agro) and no love for his dps aspect.

It's not normal that 90% of your active tools are bad but it's okay because you can just go in, take the agro and become the meatshield.


Players who enjoy fighters want something that can dish out decent damages when they go DPS with it. Before the patch they were enough (but still weaker then all the other alternatives) for the difficult/potd because it wasn't hard. But after the patch, with the nerfs AND the increased difficulty of the modes, it won't be average/ a tad weak, it will be bad. 
It will be outclassed in every way by everything (tanking/dps/hybrid, even as a secondary class for multiclass) BUT the amount of targets it can engage.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Veolfen

[Guest Jamila]

 

 

 

 

My current attempt I turned all scaling off to see if that makes a difference - nothing in this video would be possible with 3 skull boars. Eder would die before you got to do anything really.

 

There is a way to make that pack even smaller though - on my attempt I got wiped by just 2 3 skull boars and 2 young boars because their stats were just insane - couldn't be hit by anything and hit my guys for 50 damage with 'gore' which also did a DoT - you can pull that pack with a trap , ramp down on the southwestern side or so

The number of skulls doesn't matter, boars are merely bodies. They have a slow attack speed, a slow attack animation, a slow movement speed and they don't have engagement, so they can be evaded and kited around.

 

Also give Eder Xoti's chain mail, boars do pierce damage and these guys overpenetrate his saint scale armor. He can now tank 30% better

The skulls absolutely does matter because it impacts their defenses and accuracy. You aren’t going to beat that fight with 3 skull boars swarming you with story companions only and a chanter PC

 

I would have to tinker with the settings but I don’t use mods so it must have something to do with scaling - I’m about to get there in a no scaling job so we will see how it goes this time

 

That’s a good tip for the armor type though for sure

Just tried it with scaling, since I've learned this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101735-something-i-havent-seen-mentioned-about-new-patch/, and second try against 3 skulls with Skald and companions.

I don’t understand this post - are you saying you reloaded and did the fight with 3 skull boars and level 4 story companions?

 

How did you recreate this?

 

And I didn’t see anything in the thread that covered the scaling - is that the issue? Or were you playing on veteran l?

 

(Adult) boars in the video, judging from stats, are level 5 with PoTD bonus. He has scaling off, but that should not matter. What stats do you have in your game?

[gkathellar]

The fundamental problem with deflection is that it is the only "main" stat that has increasing returns. This means for balancing purposes, it sits in an awkward place where it is garbage for most characters, but can also be overly OP for others. (This is sort of the flip side to perception, which had diminishing returns and so it is useful on the low end but much less useful on the high end... though with Deadfire's numerous "crit matters" stuff, I'm not as sure if perception has notably diminishing returns.) Deadfire tried to cope with deflection being increasing returns by reducing the magnitude of many deflection-boosting items and buffs (can you imagine if a superb large shield still got like +12 bonus deflection on top of its +12 base deflection)? But there's enough items and spells out there that it can still be super OP if you have enough metagame knowledge to get specific items (like that ring with the stacking deflection bonus based on engagement), and I'm not sure there's a good way to really fix this without fundamentally changing how accuracy rolls work in this game. If they e.g. nerf things like Arcane Veil or Mirrored Image, all they do is make it garbage for more characters and just incrementally harder to get infinite% returns from deflection for the min-maxed characters.

 

This.

 

And of course, a central component of the problem is that nerfing deflection options simply decreases the number of builds that are going to bother with it at all, since the investment in achieving good or even middling deflection becomes unmanageable. If the pattern continues (and it's a pattern that's been ongoing since Patch 2.0 of PoE1), eventually deflection will reach a point where the only builds willing to invest in it are the ones that can still become functionally invulnerable.

 

Ultimately the only remotely plausible way to even pretend to have fixed the issue is to implement better stacking restrictions ... which PoE2 has largely dispensed with, so lolwut.

 

 

One more thing to add: negative reactions to nerfing is largely psychological.

Agreed (and I remember these psychological mechanisms from my studies.)

 

However, one thing is to react negatively to nerfs because they are nerfs—which can certainly happen, but it's not what the majority are doing on these boards AFAIA; another, rightfully pointing out that some abilities were over-nerfed, others (and most items) were nerfed with no need to. Beta patch 1.1 went way overboard with the nerfs, and frankly I don't see the benefit.

 

Sure, I could spend a few hours cherry-picking nerfs I agree with and restoring everything else, but I didn't back this game to be appalled by monkey work. I backed it to have fun, which certainly won't happen for as long as recovery remains as slow as it is (it was barely acceptable in 1.02 already.) YMMV, but me, I'm pretty bummed.

 

But also this.

 

To oversimplify, there are two reasons people get enthusiastic about options: they're strong, and they're cool. If an option is too strong, it makes sense to nerf it - but this shouldn't be done at the expense of what makes the option cool.

Edited June 4, 2018 by gkathellar

[thelee]

 

One more thing to add: negative reactions to nerfing is largely psychological.

 

Agreed (and I remember these psychological mechanisms from my studies.)

 

However, one thing is to react negatively to nerfs because they are nerfs—which can certainly happen, but it's not what the majority are doing on these boards AFAIA; another, rightfully pointing out that some abilities were over-nerfed, others (and most items) were nerfed with no need to. Beta patch 1.1 went way overboard with the nerfs, and frankly I don't see the benefit.

 

Sure, I could spend a few hours cherry-picking nerfs I agree with and restoring everything else, but I didn't back this game to be appalled by monkey work. I backed it to have fun, which certainly won't happen for as long as recovery remains as slow as it is (it was barely acceptable in 1.02 already.) YMMV, but me, I'm pretty bummed.

 

 

Thing is, this is why I was talking about "automatic picks." Obsidian gets telemetry data from players who opt-in. I don't know the full extent of data they get (maybe it is pretty coarse and just about party composition), but I would argue that if e.g. there was some modest ability on PLx that 90% of players picked over other abilities on that same PL, then even if that ability weren't overtly powerful, it would still need to be nerfed or retuned so it is not the obvious selection (because otherwise not picking it is in some way a "trap" choice, which a well-designed game should avoid). To go back to Devotions of the Faithful, it is not overtly OP, but was like the spell you definitely wanted to cast in PoE1 and I would argue the obvious first pick at PL4 in Deadfire. So even though it's not an automatic immortality button, it still needed some nerfing. (Though if it moved to PL7 I would be a little sad because I like the spell for its flavor as well and would like it available for more of the game, even in weaker form.)

 

This is essentially what happened in reverse in PoE1 with summoned weapons. At release, they were basically like summoned weapons in Deadfire: roughly equivalent to normal weapons at the same level, but with a special addon (like draining for Concelhaut's Staff). Clearly, by the fact that we're back to this at square one with Deadfire, and by JE Sawyer's own blog posts, that the design team thinks this is the appropriate balance for them. However, anecdotal usage in PoE1 was so low that they basically buffed them to promote usage, because regardless of their individual merits, players just didn't find them worth it. PoE1 is now at a state where summoned weapons are probably a bit less ignored and players who do use them get a lot of power out of it. With Deadfire they are probably trying to see if players use summoned weapons much before buffing them.

 

So yeah, even if something is not overtly OP, if it is heavily used at the expense of other abilities, there is probably some nerfing or retuning that needs to be done regardless. Same thing flip-wise (like the priest prayers and litany spells, which got a cast reduction that no one was explicitly asking for but is probably designed to promote higher usage).

 

EDIT: you could also buff the under-used ability, but I think it's a philosophical approach, because for all you know the underused ability might be appropriately balanced for the encounters in the game and it's just something about the overused ability that gets teh underused ability un-picked. Personally (and it sounds like JE Sawyer's balancing philosophy is similar) I am way more concerned about power creep by unnecessarily buffing abilities than increased challenge from overly nerfing abilities.

Edited June 4, 2018 by thelee

[merkmerk73]

 

 

 

 

 

My current attempt I turned all scaling off to see if that makes a difference - nothing in this video would be possible with 3 skull boars. Eder would die before you got to do anything really.

 

There is a way to make that pack even smaller though - on my attempt I got wiped by just 2 3 skull boars and 2 young boars because their stats were just insane - couldn't be hit by anything and hit my guys for 50 damage with 'gore' which also did a DoT - you can pull that pack with a trap , ramp down on the southwestern side or so

The number of skulls doesn't matter, boars are merely bodies. They have a slow attack speed, a slow attack animation, a slow movement speed and they don't have engagement, so they can be evaded and kited around.

 

Also give Eder Xoti's chain mail, boars do pierce damage and these guys overpenetrate his saint scale armor. He can now tank 30% better

The skulls absolutely does matter because it impacts their defenses and accuracy. You aren’t going to beat that fight with 3 skull boars swarming you with story companions only and a chanter PC

 

I would have to tinker with the settings but I don’t use mods so it must have something to do with scaling - I’m about to get there in a no scaling job so we will see how it goes this time

 

That’s a good tip for the armor type though for sure

Just tried it with scaling, since I've learned this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101735-something-i-havent-seen-mentioned-about-new-patch/, and second try against 3 skulls with Skald and companions.

I don’t understand this post - are you saying you reloaded and did the fight with 3 skull boars and level 4 story companions?

 

How did you recreate this?

 

And I didn’t see anything in the thread that covered the scaling - is that the issue? Or were you playing on veteran l?

 

(Adult) boars in the video, judging from stats, are level 5 with PoTD bonus. He has scaling off, but that should not matter. What stats do you have in your game?

 

 

My previous game with the 3 skull boars was on POTD, with critical path scaling on, and my party had reached level 4 by doing all of the content available up until that point.

 

I am going to hit level 4 on my current POTD run WITHOUT scaling of any kind turned on and see if the issue persists.

 

In any case, I don't believe the tuning is appropriate - either on grocery street or some of the ruins encountered - in PoE1 you could get up to 5 companions before committing to anything very difficult - you weren't required to use hirelings. I don't care if you only have to hire them for a quest or two - I just don't like the idea of balancing being dependent on the (for me) immersion breaking of stacking up some hirelings to fill your party out because you can't physically get the story companions yet

[Climhazzard]

In reply to someone up above, Devotions of the Faithful is in the same spell tier it's always been in, tier 4.

[Boeroer]

But but... if there's an ability that gets taken all the time by people although it's not overly powerful but just "cool" - wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to buff the competing ability instead of nerfing the not so great (but for whatever reason appealing) one?

[thelee]

But but... if there's an ability that gets taken all the time by people although it's not overly powerful but just "cool" - wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to buff the competing ability instead of nerfing the not so great (but for whatever reason appealing) one?

 

I *just* edited my post to add this

 

"EDIT: you could also buff the under-used ability, but I think it's a philosophical approach, because for all you know the underused ability might be appropriately balanced for the encounters in the game and it's just something about the overused ability that gets teh underused ability un-picked. Personally (and it sounds like JE Sawyer's balancing philosophy is similar) I am way more concerned about power creep by unnecessarily buffing abilities than increased challenge from overly nerfing abilities."

 

That doesn't mean you don't have to also do some buffs to underused abilities, but it just means you have to do them cautiously and with great data. (Like maybe Spirit/Litany usage was at near 0% and it seemed obvious that a relatively safe buff like reduced cast time could help without being too powerful.)

 

To go back to an earlier anecdote, Diablo 3 is a case study in what you do if all you do is basically buff things at various rates. Like I said, I don't think there's nearly as much vitriol about nerf bats, but it really ticks me off the ongoing power creep with each patch (most noticable in how high of a Greater Rift people can clear with less and less effort). Despite best efforts, PoE1 still had some power creep (mostly because of poor level scaling and the wierdness of when to do the White March dlc during your critical path, because this power creep happened even as casters lost all their per-encounter casting capabilities) and I think it suffered from it more than if it had stayed as challenging as it was in PoE1 vanilla.

 

EDIT: it's worth noting that I'm not saying that Blizzard game designers are bad. Diablo 3 allows for a lot of leeway in terms of overbuffing because it has a built-in endless challenge system (you do successively higher Greater Rifts, which have no upper limit and scale infinitely upwards). And their "buff everything" approach does let them do balance changes without provoking as much fan ire when a beloved item or ability gest nerfed. But even an infinite challenge system, power creep means that the sense of accomplishment you got a few months ago disappears when everyone and their neighbor can roflstomp the same greater rift now. With Deadfire, there is no infinite challenge system, and encounters are calibrated with some target party level in mind, so there is a huge downside risk to overbuffing. There's a fine line between "feeling naturally powerful as your levels/items accumulate" and "roflstomping/facemelting everything without much effort or planning" and that fine line is the difference between a great game system and one that can be at best be merely good. I mean, I'm sure there's a good faction of cRPG players who prefer the Final Fantasy VII approach of just facemelting everything including the boss with W-Summon Knights of the Round, but that's not the kind of game I'm looking for in PoE or Deadfire.

Edited June 4, 2018 by thelee

[theBalthazar]

an anyone with beta patch confirm whether or not this was a typo in the OP or has devotions been moved to a PL7 spell in 1.1?

 

 

Devotion for the faithful is line 4, in 1.1.

 

Actually +10 accuracy +4 might. (Doesn't stack with anything, conquerer stance or aura are supressed)

 

Negative reactions to nerfing is largely psychological. Human beings are more prone to feel strongly about losing something they already have, then gaining something they don't already have. (Simple example: give someone a task and offer them ten dollars. Or, give them ten dollars and threaten to take it away if they don't do something. Mathematically it is the same either way, but people are more prone to respond to the incentive in the latter situation. There are many, many other similar examples/studies/experiments like this.)

 

 

Drain the debate arguing there is a psychological aspect is also a way to cut any comments : p. With that the argumentation is hurted by a bias of non-legitimacy (same than "you are a troll, I don't speak with you"). It is a bad approach to speak with people.

 

We can also tell : and if there is a part of truth ? And if before 1.1, balancing was better on few aspect ? With that, the assertion is reverted. There is not a total and unniversal truth. Only the time can dispel ALL the psychological effects.

 

Balancing is extremely subtle. It is easily  far more harder than POE1. There are multi class / single class ratio. low level L1-2-3 / High level aspect L4-5-6-7 (Locked high level...L8-9). Class VS class battle.  Subclass VS subclasses battle... There is also kind of use for a class. For example, a Fighter DPS or a Fighter Tank.

 

Personnally, my main concern is more the role of each class. Because it is here where there is a chance to take a class because it bring something to my team. For example, chanter and paladin are interresting because there is a lot of shared abilities. So, even with a lot of nerf, they stay interresting. More "personnal" class are extremely sensitive to the concurrence. Mainly Rogue / Fighter / Monk for physical DPS. Here, the notion of trump card is important, if not, the numbers win. This special effect, this trump card is often passive (armored grace) or active/pseudo-passive (disciplined strike, cleave stance) and he is extremely important to create combination.

 

Cleave stance was interresting because no one had this thing. Now it is only an addtionnal maximum attack.

In fact, I think Obsidian should have give this thing to Barbarian (L5-L6) Barbarian have a crucial lack of active abilities (with passive buff) if you supressed all the upgrade choices.

And for replace that : Fighter Specialisation : 15 % and 10 % and revert 25 % hit to crit to 40% hit to crit (disciplined strike) for the second step. To create the best wall VS one target. But here again problem : Paladin and Rogue are on the board... So in fact, the fundamental error was to nerf disciplined strike.

 

A "safe" hit was a great added value. Accuracy + hit to crit on one target was the true trump card of fighter.

 

BUT ! After the first big nerf (50 % to 25 % hit to crit), cleave stance was the only thing remains for the sharpness of this class. Without that. A rogue / Paladin or Berseker / Paladin are better (I think so).

Edited June 4, 2018 by theBalthazar