Deadfire Polishing Thread

[ArnoldRimmer]

• As well as giving everyone deep pockets everyone should also get an extra weapon set slot

Get rid of grimoires completely and go back to PoE1 style spells... lots of spells never get used as they are too situational to make worth taking

Mage-slayer should have a lower spell resistance for friendly spells, on PotD it can be really hard to keep them alive - I can't see why a MS woldn't want to be healed if they are dying. Or allow potion usage... I mean essence bombs work so why not potions. Potions aren't magic any more than essence bombs

Edited March 6, 2019 by ArnoldRimmer

[Boeroer]

Because that's totally not messing with the core mechanics...?

[thelee]

The reason is simple: reliability.

If I let a character spend 4.5s cast time and 3.0s recovery on something; it better be reliable. And a priest spending 7.5s on a 1s Prone vs Fortitude in 1.5 AoE, doesn't really strike me like a good bargain. Not to mention that with such a cast time, it can hardly be used as a timely interrupt.

 

As for Warding Seal - it's probably one of the last spells, a spell-damaging priest will use. I mean, only after all those Shining Beacons, Cleansing Flames, Storms, Symbols and Hand of Weal and Woe. Imo, having an extra accuracy won't make this seal OP; but it's one way to make it more competitive; plus this will provide consistency with the previous seal. And similar thinking goes for Searing.

 

And now regarding systematic approach: lets be realists here, changing 1 value in gamedatabundle takes less than 1 minute; i.e. it is much faster than dive in the code and try to figure out why hazard spells have such limitations, make the chances, and double-check if it doesn't throw off-balance any other hazard effects, or even breaks them, if their caster is not defined.

it's a hack. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I end up doing hacks all the time in my day job. But fixing game issues by layering hacks on top of that does not make for a better game design, it makes for a more complicated game design, especially considering the realities of coding where you are likely also making it more fragile.

 

Also: seals can be cast out of combat and stick around for a long time; ever since PoE1 that has basically been their point. Warding Seal is not the best spell in later levels to cast in combat but remains a great spell to cast out of combat (even sometimes better than Searing Seal because Warding Seal's smaller aoe doesn't cause curious people to walk over it while you're sneaking). The only seal that I could see an argument for adjustment is Repulsing Seal, because laying a prone trap out of combat is extremely underwhelming and in-combat faces a tough competition to Pillar of Faith, which does damage and has a longer range. But in effect PL scaling already helps Repulsing Seal quite a bit because it gets +2 acc/PL on top of prone-ing on a graze, two benefits that do not accrue to Pillar of Faith. So... eh

 

Imho, for a quick, yet already beneficial change, enabling just perception is enough. Because scrolls will stop missing that often; while high-ranked spells will still have a better accuracy.

This is my problem with unsystematic changes like this. I don't think you're broadening your perspective enough and combined with other comments it seems you might have a personal bias on making effects more consistent (e.g. accuracy/reliability) versus enabling a broad spectrum of options (the core PoE philosophy). You seem to be mostly just focused landing offensive effects. It still leaves might and intellect as dead stats for people who want to use non-hostile consumables, even though those stats are supposed to be otherwise universal. Enabling might and intellect on top of perception will not break explosives or potions, and will it make it more viable to split your skill points a bit more instead of basically having to invest everything into explosives or alchemy just to get enough PL scaling to use a poison or grenade decently in mid-late game. Yes, scrolls will probably need a rebalancing - frankly the fact that you get arcana/2 PL scaling on top of more powerful effects (that are already gated by a high arcana) is broken game design, but selectively enabling perception will meaningfully skew gameplay choices in the name of "reliability" (hellooooo scrolls of gaze of the adragan).

 

Yet I can hardly agree with your argument, because I didn't suggest the same scalling as in PoE1. For reference:

- current: 10

- suggested: 6 + 2 * character_level

- PoE1: 10 + 3 * (character_level - 1)

 

At lvl 16, this would be: 38 vs 55

The fact that it's weaker than PoE1 isn't a good enough metric to suggest that it's "balanced." For one: Deadfire and PoE1 have different level progressions. Plus, no other heal in Deadfire scales with character level, it would still make the moon godlike effect stupidly good. In PoE1 the character scaling was an attempt to keep it relevant into the late game, and it was too good (and it wasn't unique; Holy Radiance also scaled with character level and combined with disposition scaling was stupidly good). With your suggested scaling you are supplanting PL scaling mechanism with character level scaling - adding more cognitive load about exceptions being made to systems that are allegedly universal. And at level 20, you're talking 46 healing per health "unit", totaling 138 health over a hard fight (and you haven't mentioned whether or not it's influenced by might, and either answer to that question is a bad answer). That is a huge amount of healing to get for free (especially with might scaling) - and at any given health "unit" 46 healing alone is still the strongest instantaneous heal effect in the game outside of consumable scrolls or potions. This is in contrast to PoE1 where however good Moon Godlikes were, you still had things like Restore Critical Endurance so while at any discrete health level the moon godlike healing was huge, it was not unique. The lack of any comparable healing in Deadfire would make it all the more powerful.

 

In addition, Deadfire--unlike PoE1--has a mechanism to try to keep things relevant as you go higher in levels: PL scaling. This should be the universal way that we make things stronger as you progress to minimize cognitive load and exceptions. You could make an argument that the moon godlike healing shouldn't be based on any class-specific progression, at which point there is precedent in the game for using a special single-class PL progression for these cases (and the fact that it's not more widely used in place of character-level scaling is a poor design decision to me).

 

It is weak because of the fixed value of "10".

It is weak because PL scaling is weak when you only have one or at most two effects that scale. There is precedent here in that carnage still gets +10% damage/PL (and it used to be more generally the case where effects that did not jump or have multiple projectiles got +10%/PL, but in a move that continues to baffle me they nerfed this almost across the board, making multi-projectile/jump effects all the more powerful). A moon godlike that has an AL0 of 10 with +10% healing/single-class-PL with might scaling would be more powerful and more consistent with the existing rules of the game.

 

Because some things make sense to scale closer to hp progression.

I disagree. If you were limited to the same abilities at level 1 when you got to level 20, then yeah, sure. But one of the consequences of getting higher level in a game like this is you get more options. So an AL1 restore or AL3 nature's balm do not need to scale proportionally to health as you get up to level 20 to still be useful at level 20 - instead of being your only heal, they increasingly becomes part of a larger toolkit of options.

 

But let's take the Improved Critical and examine the "+10% Crit Damage" in 3 scenarios:

1). Fighter with 15 MIG, superb weapon, using Penetrating Strike. On crit that's: 2.05 damage coefficient that becomes 2.15. That's a +4.8% damage increase... which occurs only on crit.

2). Rogue with 10 MIG, superb weapon, sneak attack + deathblows, devastating blow vs 25%hp. On crit that's: 4.7 that becomes 4.8. And that's a +2% damage increase... which occurs only on crit.

3). Wizard with 18 MIG, 7 PL casting a rank 4 spell. On crit that's 1.64, which becomes 1.74. That's a +6% damage increase. But than again, what's your crit rate in a challenging encounter?

There's a couple of interrelated issues here. The first is that these are funges of math, because you're not actually looking at the net effect.

 

Case 1: a fighter with might 15, superb weapon, penetrating strike is better seen as having a graze/hit/crit coefficient of .87x, 1.85x, and 2.1x which become .87x, 1.85x, and 2.2x with improved crit. This can be as little as a +0% increase in net damage (in cases where you can never crit) to as much as ~3% (in cases where you always crit). So in this respect I think you're overstating the effect.

 

Two: at the same, you're understating the effect. Flat damage increases are rare and because of their unconditional nature they should be limited in scope. Comparison: fighters get Weapon Mastery, which grants a +5% damage increase. Under the same scenario, this averages out to be a ~2% net damage increase on weapons you are proficient with. This seems quite perfectly in line with the magnitude of effect you get Improved Critical from some of these talents you're talking about. In one important way improved critical is even better, because it impacts spells which are otherwise extremely hard to boost damage-wise.

 

Re: potent empower, I could maybe follow along that potent empower needs a buff or accurate empower needs a nerf because as it stands they are roughly in line with each other, but accurate empower is more generally useful than either potent or penetrating (or even lasting). I would probably advocate nerfing accurate empower a bit (+8 acc instead?) and making lasting empower effect durational effect instead of just afflictions/inspirations (many martial classes will have very few of these making this talent all the more marginal).

 

 

 

 

Having a chance to look at some other things more deeply:

Fighter

1. Please do not adjust deflection bonuses. Deflection is already a weird stat because of its increasing returns and its general murk/meaninglessness for many non-optimized-for-deflection character builds. I don't think +4 -> +6 meaningfully makes this more generally useful and only helps out the high deflection builds all the more. If you want to make it more generally useful, maybe adding a hit->graze chance would be better (high deflection builds aren't going to be hit all that much anyway).

2. I think this is way too good. In even slightly metagamed scenarios this basically seems like it can mean a fighter is immune to crits. I also have to ask - what is the purpose of this change? Is it just trying to de-murk % chance of happening effects? Because this does not seem like it's explicitly intended as a nerf or a buff but rather a lateral change.

3. I think we should be really really careful about making it easier to regenerate class resources. Same with paladin Virtuous Triumph, and arguably this is an easier condition to meet/metagame. I don't see any systematic polish reason why these should be buffed - I personally argued for so long to make existing effects weaker over several patches.

 

 

Rogue

1. please no. Riposte is already a weird ability in that it is either virtually useless or extremely powerful. Instead of leaning into this more by providing what is essentially a win-more effect, i'd rather flatten this variability (that basically mandates metagaming) and provide a % riposte chance on grazes as well (even if lower than the % riposte chance on miss).

2. What would Perplexing Sap do? I think Sap is fine as it is, Perplexing Sap is fundamentally broken though. I would and have happily taken Sap as a skill, but after one ugly run where I discovered just how borked Perplexing Sap is, I will never upgrade. (maybe Perplexing Sap should be a redesign and that redesign could mean knocking the opponent asleep and when they wake they are hobbled and confused. A developer noted on my reported bug for Perplexing Sap that this was on their list of abilities that need a revisit so they are aware that it is also broken, but I'm guessing they just can't spare the time to retool it.)

4a. (lol at paying special attention to the cipher interaction. not judging, i paid special attention to the priest suggestions.)

5. I actually don't think it's too big a deal that flanked suppresses low stacks of confounding blind (mentioned as such in the bug forum thread), but this change smells to me like another hack, because it's possible that the designer who implemented this ability forgot that flanked suppresses confounding blind's early effects (or maybe flanked was added into perception affliction later in design and the interaction here was forgotten). I don't have another good suggestion though unless we're willing to go really strong or change the effect altogether, because with the current flanked/perception afflction/stacking system the ability at its core just doesn't work. (Go really strong: make each stack -10 deflection, so the first hit is equivalent to flanked, and it's all upside from there, cap at like 5 stacks. Change the effect altogether: one stack is -1 AR. So the first hit is a no-op (since Flanked also provides -1 AR), and it's all upside from there, though less generally obscenely strong as the previous suggestion)

 

Wizard

1. I fully agree that Kalakoth is way too weak, but I prefer a less-murky debuff (to me it's murky because it's a bunch of effects that don't seem like they are connected) of just a deeper accuracy penalty.

2. Ghost Blades is fine as is. It is a party-friendly effect that also debuffs. It does not need a buff.

3. Probably better to shrink cast time. The effect and duration seem like in a good place for AL2, it is just weird that it has such a lengthy cast time considering basically every other wizard buff. I feel like this spell got missed in that one patch where they shrunk cast times for litanies/prayers and even Eldritch Aim.

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[thelee]

Re: Boeroer and trinkets - I'd rather any priest or druid trinket have no bonus spell or casting-related extras. It makes the differentiation between druids/priests and wizards weaker. I'd rather the trinkets be more like Xoti's lantern, where they just interact with the various keywords that druids/priests have and which are otherwise extremely rare interacted with (and for priests specifically used to be way more relevant back in the days of the backer beta). Something like "Trinket of the Purifier: 15% chance for Cleansing priest abilities to echo" or "Doohickey of the Damned: chance to restore 1 class resource on critical hit with Condemnation priest ability" or "Twig of the Decrepit: empowered Decay effects restore 1 empower point".

 

edit - looks like you added more about your trinket exampels

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[MountainTiger]

 

• Get rid of grimoires completely and go back to PoE1 style spells... lots of spells never get used as they are too situational to make worth taking

 

 

What does this mean? POE 1 had grimoires, and the mechanics were more restrictive with regards to ready spells since Wizards could only cast from their currently equipped grimoire and switching came with a much longer recovery. Between being able to have some spells always ready and faster grimoire switches, keeping situational spells available is much easier for Deadfire Wizards.

 

I guess "POE 1 style spells" probably means Wizards learning spells from grimoires with money and Priests and Druids automatically learning all spells on reaching a new spell level? This would fundamentally break Deadfire's progression system; while there were things I liked about the system as implemented in POE 1, it's not at all compatible with POE 2's approach to progression or the Priest and Druid subclasses as they exist.

[ArnoldRimmer]

Use the PoE1 system so that there are a set amount of spells (priest and druid) but maybe tailored to their subclass. Wizards should have a grimoire but just get rid of the idea of swapping them... neve did in PoE1 and am never going to in PoE2. It's a stupid idea.

[Boeroer]

Re: Boeroer and trinkets - I'd rather any priest or druid trinket have no bonus spell or casting-related extras. It makes the differentiation between druids/priests and wizards weaker. I'd rather the trinkets be more like Xoti's lantern, where they just interact with the various keywords that druids/priests have and which are otherwise extremely rare interacted with (and for priests specifically used to be way more relevant back in the days of the backer beta). Something like "Trinket of the Purifier: 15% chance for Cleansing priest abilities to echo" or "Doohickey of the Damned: chance to restore 1 class resource on critical hit with Condemnation priest ability" or "Twig of the Decrepit: empowered Decay effects restore 1 empower point". edit - looks like you added more about your trinket exampels

Imo the biggest problem with Priests and Druids is their very limited spell portfolio which forces you to forgo the circumstancial spells and always pick the same old spells. Grimoires solve this problem for Wizards - so it's only logical that trinkets that function somewhat similarly will solve that problem for Priests and Druids as well. They can be somewhat different (hence I only added on spell per PL or even a passive and added another bonuses) but in general that's what I think trinkets should be for. It's also nothing new that is difficult to implement/may cause balancing issues that are hard to foresee/easily understandable/uniform with grimoire trinkets.  

Edited March 6, 2019 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Use the PoE1 system so that there are a set amount of spells (priest and druid) but maybe tailored to their subclass. Wizards should have a grimoire but just get rid of the idea of swapping them... neve did in PoE1 and am never going to in PoE2. It's a stupid idea.

Wrong. It's an idea that seems stupid to you. But in reality it's a good solution that solves a problem that comes with the new ability system. That you don't use it doesn't mean that it's bad or stupid. It only shows that you don't like it and that you don't play your wizards effectively. 

 

Anyway those changes you suggest touch the core mechanics of the game and thus are not "polishing".

Edited March 6, 2019 by Boeroer

[thelee]

 

Re: Boeroer and trinkets - I'd rather any priest or druid trinket have no bonus spell or casting-related extras. It makes the differentiation between druids/priests and wizards weaker. I'd rather the trinkets be more like Xoti's lantern, where they just interact with the various keywords that druids/priests have and which are otherwise extremely rare interacted with (and for priests specifically used to be way more relevant back in the days of the backer beta). Something like "Trinket of the Purifier: 15% chance for Cleansing priest abilities to echo" or "Doohickey of the Damned: chance to restore 1 class resource on critical hit with Condemnation priest ability" or "Twig of the Decrepit: empowered Decay effects restore 1 empower point". edit - looks like you added more about your trinket exampels

Imo the biggest problem with Priests and Druids is their very limited spell portfolio which forces you to forgo the circumstancial spells and always pick the same old spells. Grimoires solve this problem for Wizards - so it's only logical that trinkets that function somewhat similarly will solve that problem for Priests and Druids as well. They can be somewhat different (hence I only added on spell per PL or even a passive and added another bonuses) but in general that's what I think trinkets should be for. It's also nothing new that is difficult to implement/may cause balancing issues that are hard to foresee/easily understandable/uniform with grimoire trinkets.

 

the problem is that wizards have *way* more spells than priest and druids, so if you have trinkets that provide even just 1 bonus spell per level, you are starting to severely crowd out meaningful choices upon level up and make the class/subclass more contingent on metagaming knowledge. Wizards have this problem a bit (more so on later levels), but it would be worse for druids/priests. (Wizards appear to have 2x the spells of priests and 2x to 1.5x the spells of druids, which means at level up a priest or druid spell selection is "worth" up to twice as much. At higher ability levels, priests would be extremely hard to distinguish, which would worsen the "same old spells" problem.)

 

If we're talking about trying to add variability to priest builds while not introducing unknown quantities for balance purposes, then we should bring back a weaker version of the original subclasses with their favored and restricted keywords. E.G. "trinket of wael: +1 condemnation PL. -2 cleansing, -2 restoration PL" or "a different trinket of wael because wael is weird like that: +1 illusion, -2 fire, -2 electricity". (not to be treated as real examples, i haven't thought through the balancing symmetry there) ideally for druids and priests you'd do something like the wizard schools specialization where there's an organized logic to them so it's hard to get a trinket that just boosts the "standard" gameplay.

 

edit - a possible zany idea are that trinkets have a simple +1 PL to some favored keyword (with a -somewhere to counterbalance) and bonus spells only for like ALs 1-3.

 

edit 2 - something that would help the "crowd out" problem which I've long thought was needed for the wizard is that you get some sort of bonus for casting a spell that you both know and is in your grimoire/trinket. A +1 PL maybe.

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[Verde]

Temples, merchants, loot drop? Like grimoires basically. My only gripe with grimoires is that only wizards can have them.

Wheres that gif of the shaking Duff beer can when you need it

Edited March 6, 2019 by Verde

[MountainTiger]

I'd rather develop Spiritshift and Holy Radiance more for Priests and Druids than trying to make them Wizard-like with trinkets. Those abilities are clearly supposed to at least partly substitute for not having a Wizard's versatility from grimoires, but they're pretty bare bones. Some ideas (some of these were already mentioned):

• Regenerate uses when using Empower to regenerate class resources: I think this would be fine as the default, but if balance is a concern it would be fine to gate it behind a passive
• Spend uses to get back spell slot(s): as an upgrade to the ability. Maybe disable on the Shifter, since it gets multiple Spiritshifts/combat?
• Change Holy Radiance effects: POE 1's Inspiring Radiance was probably too good for when it became available, but turning the ability into a buff you wanted to cast early in combat was a good idea.

[thelee]

 

I'd rather develop Spiritshift and Holy Radiance more for Priests and Druids than trying to make them Wizard-like with trinkets. Those abilities are clearly supposed to at least partly substitute for not having a Wizard's versatility from grimoires, but they're pretty bare bones. Some ideas (some of these were already mentioned):

• Regenerate uses when using Empower to regenerate class resources: I think this would be fine as the default, but if balance is a concern it would be fine to gate it behind a passive
• Spend uses to get back spell slot(s): as an upgrade to the ability. Maybe disable on the Shifter, since it gets multiple Spiritshifts/combat?
• Change Holy Radiance effects: POE 1's Inspiring Radiance was probably too good for when it became available, but turning the ability into a buff you wanted to cast early in combat was a good idea.

 

 

i think this is a good direction though I personally don't have any firm ideas. after I wrote my long posts I was reflecting a bit on what I considered to be "auto-select" priest spells, and the only real one I can think of is Restore at AL1. Almost every single priest I've ever run has picked it up, it's just too important. Whereas even though there are some clearly "more generally useful" priest spells later on, I think at some point I have comfortably not-selected any given spell for some priest build, so I don't think the "clear selection" choice is too much of a problem as Boeroer suggests so much as it's more of a "not enough of a baseline competency" problem for priests (if you have your bases covered you feel more freedom to innovate/take more niche selections). But I think the general thrust of focusing more on priest/druids unique traits rather than making them more wizard-like is a good idea.

[Boeroer]

All those PL bonuses and whatnot are nice and most people know I'm one of the biggest fans of PoE's Inspiring Radiance. But that will not solve the issue I was talking about: that Priests and Druids suffer from a very narrow portfolio of "picked" spells which leads to a situation where there's always an optional spell choice and thus a very narrow build variety. If Priests have half of the possible spells that Wizards have - how can give them only half of the bonus spells via trinket be a problem? Then wizards would have the same problem. Which they don't have. You could easily pick a nice trinket and invest more in passives for example.

 

It is indeed a bit meta-gamey. But grimoires are as well.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Boeroer

[Jayd]

3. I think we should be really really careful about making it easier to regenerate class resources. Same with paladin Virtuous Triumph, and arguably this is an easier condition to meet/metagame. I don't see any systematic polish reason why these should be buffed - I personally argued for so long to make existing effects weaker over several patches.

Surprised to see this argued. In my experience, the weakest part of combat and combat balancing in this game is long fights. Regenerating resource characters (Chanter, Monks, Ciphers) gain such an incredible advantage in really grindy fights and I don't see the justification for it - they are not comparably weaker in quick fights for balance. If there is one thing I would change generally it is making resource restoration much more common and easy. It doesn't really make a difference in quick fights in which you use your abilities freely anyway, and it prevents some characters from being systematically useless in certain situations. I don't see the downside.

 

Let's look at Heart of Fury and Whispers of the Wind. Comparable abilities in strength and cost. The biggest difference between them is that a monk can restore resources by taking damage (or not taking damage with dance up) and a Barbarian can only potentially restore with a PL9 talent which gives back one rage on kill 25% of the time! Not only is it on kill, which is an inherently bad trigger condition, but you have to win a little lottery as well! Why? Where is the tradeoff?

 

Seems to me that a blanket buff of talents that restore resources for classes that don't have that built in is a great idea. They currently don't have a meaningful tradeoff benefit and just become frustrating in long fights.

[thelee]

All those PL bonuses and whatnot are nice and most people know I'm one of the biggest fans of PoE's Inspiring Radiance. But that will not solve the issue I was talking about: that Priests and Druids suffer from a very narrow portfolio of "picked" spells which leads to a situation where there's always an optional spell choice and thus a very narrow build variety. If Priests have half of the possible spells that Wizards have - how can give them only half of the bonus spells via trinket be a problem? Then wizards would have the same problem. Which they don't have. You could easily pick a nice trinket and invest more in passives for example.

 

It is indeed a bit meta-gamey. But grimoires are as well.

 

The intent of PL bonuses and whatnot are intended as "nudges" to encourage build variety. If priests have half of the possible spells that Wizards have, then each ability selection on level is worth "twice" as much. When a trinket provides a bonus spell, it becomes extremely easy to saturate the mid-higher ability levels, especially for a subclass like eothas who frequently doesn't even get a unique bonus spell. (Notably at AL6 the priest only has 4 different spells; only Wael gets a free fifth everyone else gets one of htose 4 for free which leaves only 3 for selection.) A wizard would only be vulnerable to something similar if they could pick two spells for every one ability point. Instead for wizards their large amount of spells per spell level simultaneously means they have to lean more on grimoires for spell diversity and they are less prone to being "crowded out" by said grimoires (both of which are very class-specific design philosophies). For talk of adding priest build diversity, naively implementing trinkets like you say would actually all but eliminate it for mid-high level priests (and to a lesser extent druids, though they are a bit more insulated by having a wee bit more spells/passives and subclasses with greater differentiation).

 

edit - seriously though, is there really an optimal choice for every priest AL? it's starting to read to me that it's more of a "have a specific baseline play style for my priest that I want and it's too hard to deviate" vs "too many trap choices." Restore at AL1, Dire Blessing at AL3, and Devotions for the Faithful at AL4  are the closest things I can come up with that I would mandate any new priest player to pick up, everything else seems like a viable choice so long as you are flexible with what you think a priest in your party should do. (Except for Hand of Berath. That's probably a trap spell. And Prayer for the Body. That's probably too niche of a spell for general use.)

 

Regenerating resource characters (Chanter, Monks, Ciphers) gain such an incredible advantage in really grindy fights and I don't see the justification for it - they are not comparably weaker in quick fights for balance.

they actually are, though not necessarily sufficiently weaker. A cipher won't be able to spam out AL7-9 effects straight at the start of a fight like any other caster, and a chanter is going to have to do a lot of waiting in between high-level invocations. I don't actually see too much of a balance problem here except in some specific fights (megabosses mostly, but also to a certain extent Porokoa in SSS as well as some challenges in SSS; possibly the dragon in BoW if you aren't able to circumvent llengrath's safeguard) or in specific non-standard technically-leaning challenges (solo mode)

 

edit 2 - i do think martial classes in general are more constrained than caster classes in terms of active abilities and do agree that that is a bit problematic. it makes fighter/paladin regen all the more powerful due to how accessible they are. i'd rather a comprehensive fix for martial classes instead of leaning harder into buffing limited passives that only a couple classes get that are a) strong on their own and b) strong all the more because of a category-wide weakness. (the closest idea i had some time back was letting the first use of any given martial ability cost no class resource, so that it's less constraining to pick up a bunch of active effects in favor of spamming the same low-level one over and over. also some high-level martial abilities are likely overcosted. this is probably not something you could do with mods but has to be an obsidian-level change. also it may add too much complexity to the game.)

 

edit 3 - for your specific example, it's important to note that 1 wound != 1 of any other class resource. wound costs for abilities are a lot more generously expensive because you are expected to generate a lot more over the course of the fight. generally speaking, too, the wound-spending martial abilities are also weaker to compensate for their higher level of use (force of anguish/efficient anguish is just a primary attack and prone (and a push that is a double-edged sword so i'll consider it a neutral effect); fighter knock down/mule kick gets bonus accuracy, bonus damage, a more powerful interrupt, and an affliction; essentially you make up the weakness of the former with sheer quantity). in terms of general balance it feels like the fighter/paladin/barbarian all seem to target generating just 1-2 resources for a typical fight with varying ways to potentially metagame them for more.

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[Phenomenum]

Hello there! I desided to add another topic for discussion: Keywords.

 

In general, most abilities have proper keywords, with a few exeptions, but Priests spells is a mess. Looks like Obsidian wanted divide Priests subclasses in the same manner as wizards, then they dropped this idea, but spell keywords was not changed.

 

Yesterday i made a thoughtful inspection of all spells and made a conclusion about CURRENT rules:

 

Condemnation - spells with this keyword applies Afflictions and other debuffs. Seems logical.

Punishment - spells with this keyword deals damage - punish enemies. Logical too.

Inspiration - spells with this keyword grants Inspirations to allies of self. Fine.

Protection - spells with this keyword grants bonuses to ally's defences, summon creatures (for protection i presume), prevent death and reduses hostile effects duration.

Fire / Frost / Electr etc - this keywords used for damage/punishment spells with elemental damage.

 

Seems fine, but a lot of spells drops out of the general order. So here's my suggestions:

 

Priest general spells keywords:

Blessing: Protection >>> Inspiration (Grants Inspiration)
Iconic Projection: Restoration, Condemnation >>> Restoration, Punishment, Frost (Health recovery, deals Freeze damage)
Watchful Presence: Protection >>> Protection, Restoration (Health recovery when Near death)
Shining Beacon: Punishment, Fire >>> Condemnation, Punishment, Fire (Applies debuff on foes, deals Fire damage)
All "Prayers" and "Litanies": Protection >>> Inspiration (Grants Inspirations)
Triumph of the Crusaders: Restoration >>> Restoration, Inspiration (Grants Inspiration)
Champion's Boon: Condemnation, Inspiration >>> Inspiration (Grants Resolyte and Tenacious Inspiration - why is Condemnation here???)
Minor Intercession: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)
Ressurection: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection (Reviving, Health recovery, prevents death)
Sumbol of Wael: Inspiration >>> Inspiration, Punishment, Frost (Grants Inspiration to allies, deals Freeze damage to enemies in AoE)
Blessing of Wael: Inspiration >>> Protection, Condemnation (Grants bonus to all defences for allies, applies debuff on attackers)
Symbol of Eothas: Restoration >>> Protection, Punishment, Fire (Grants bonus to all defences, deals Fire damage)
Light of Eothas: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)
Call of Rymrgand: Condemnation, Frost >>> Condemnation, Punishment, Frost (Applies debuff on foes, deals Freeze damage)
Symbol of Berath: Punishment >>> Punishment, Condemnation (applies debuff on foes)
Hand of Berath: Punishment >>> Condemnation (applies debuff on foes)
Cleansing Flame: Condemnation, Cleansing, Fire >>> Condemnation, Cleansing, Punishment, Fire (Deals Fire damage, applies debuff on foes)
Symbol of Magran: Cleansing, Fire >>> Condemnation, Cleansing, Punishment, Fire (Feals Fire damage, applies debuff on foes)
Symbol of Skaen: Condemnation >>> Condemnation, Punishment (Applies debuff on foes, deals damage)
Spiritual Ally: Protection >>> Summon Creature Keyword, Protection (Summon ally for help and protect, attack have the same two Keywords but not Ability)
Incarnate spells: Punishment >>> Summon Creature Keyword, Protection, Condemnation (Applies debuff on self, summon allies for help and protect, attack have Summon Creature Keyword but not Ability)

Class specific spells:

 

Apreading Plague (Berath): Decay >>> Condemnation, Decay (Applies debuffs)
Rusted Armor (Berath): Decay >>> Condemnation, Decay (Applies debuffs)
Sunbeam (Eothas): Fire, Elements >>> Punishment, Condemnation, Fire, Elements (Deals Fire damage, applies debuff)
Fun of Flames (Magran): Fire, Evocation >>> Punishment, Fire, Evocation (Deals Fire damage)
Flame Shield (Magran): Fire, Evocation >>> Protection, Punishment, Fire, Evocation (Grants protection from Fire, Deals Fire damage)
Torrent of Flame (Magran): Fire, Evocation >>> Punishment, Fire, Evocation (Deals Fire damage)
Arcane Veil (Wael): Conjuration, Veil >>> Protection, Conjuration, Veil (Grants bonus Deflection)
Mirrored Image (Wael): Illusions >>> Protection, Illusions (Grants bonus Deflection)
Lliengrath Displaced Image (Wael): Illusions >>> Protection, Illusions (Grants bonus Deflection)
Confusion (Wael): Mind, Illusions >>> Condemnation, Mind, Illusions (Applies affliction)
Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (Wael): Mind, Illusions >>> Condemnation, Mind, Illusions (Applies affliction)
Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment (Wael): Illusions, Gaze >>> Condemnation, Illusions, Gaze (Applies affliction)

 

Sounds like fun, eh?

Edited March 6, 2019 by Phenomenum

[thelee]

Hello there! I desided to add another topic for discussion: Keywords.

 

In general, most abilities have proper keywords, with a few exeptions, but Priests spells is a mess. Looks like Obsidian wanted divide Priests subclasses in the same manner as wizards, then they dropped this idea, but spell keywords was not changed.

 

Yesterday i made a thoughtful inspection of all spells and made a conclusion about CURRENT rules:

 

<snip>

 

This is a great gathering of info and suggestions, but the game really needs more things that cares about the priest keywords because otherwise all this hard work is close to a no-op. (This is why I wanted to piggyback on Boeroer's idea of trinkets for items that provide specific effects based on priest keyword.) off the top of my head the most I think I can think of like three items that care about priest-specific keywords (xoti's lantern, mundane shell, and aloth's scepter, and "Cleansing" is never referenced as far as I can tell). druids only fare slightly better item-wise, but their subclasses interact more strongly with their keywords.

 

edit - you left out cleansing i think only cleansing flame, magrans' might, and minor intercession have it.

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[Phenomenum]

This is a great gathering of info and suggestions, but the game really needs more things that cares about the priest keywords because otherwise all this hard work is close to a no-op. (This is why I wanted to piggyback on Boeroer's idea of trinkets for items that provide specific effects based on priest keyword.)

 

I agreed. For example, a Xoti's Lantern (+2 PL for Inspiration and Restoration abilities): with current keywords mess the Inspiration bonus simply don't work, becose first Inspiration spell is Dire Blessing, and this is on PL 4, then again - no Inspiration spells until PL 8-9. And not all spells with Health regeneration gains bonus PL (Watchful Presence for example have only Protection keyword).

 

With this changes Lantern's enchants finally starts to work properly. So i'd want to see more trinkets/accessories like this.

[Phenomenum]

edit - you left out cleansing i think only cleansing flame, magrans' might, and minor intercession have it.

 

It's not a final list of course)

About Cleansing: maybe we should add a new general rule - Cleansing keyword for spells which reduces hostile/beneficial effect duration. Seems logical to me. Agreed.

 

Currently only 3 spells have Cleansing keyword: Cleansing Flame, Might of Magran and Symbol of Magran. Minor Intercession curently is only Restoration.

 

So +2 Cleansing spells in a moment (need to look at whole spells list again):

 

Minor Intercession: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection >>> Restoration, Cleansing (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)

Light of Eothas: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection >>> Restoration, Cleansing (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)

 

The main question is: substitute Protection keyword with Cleansing OR add Cleansing keyword in addition to Protection keyword?

Seem like i need to count all keywords uses) Becose if we substitute Protection, then will be a less spells with Protection keyword.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Taudis]

Suggested Polishes Review (Spoilered for length):

 

 

Bestiary:

I really like both of these ideas. Sort of but not really on the same topic: I'd like better UI on the in-combat hover-over. Not displaying things like Fighter/Paladin resistances, and making it adjustable so that information isn't lost to the bottom of the screen. My biggest problem with Deadfire has been lack of transparency on exactly what is going on.

 

Level Ups:

Add another plus one to this suggestion. So much time spent on the level up screen...

 

Spell Shaping:

This is an auto-pick on a lot of the casters I build, but mostly for the utility of making friendly-fire effects smaller or turning AoEs into harder hitting single target effects. -5 PL is a pretty big penalty until you're hitting a couple extra enemies. I wouldn't mind seeing -4/+1.

 

Deep Pockets for All:

I've got no horse in this race but if enough people think this should be accessible to all, IMO that means that characters should begin with more pockets and not that this should be handed out to every character. More use of consumables is definitely a Rogue niche (for some reason) and they should keep it.

 

Bonus Spells:

Bonus spells per encounter is very powerful. I've run some mods that give these powers before and there's definitely a few spells that are balanced around 2/encounter. The fact that you brought this up and that like half the Wizard threads have everyone chiming in to say "play Bloodmage" speaks to there being some sort of problem here, though. IMO the actual solution would be to rebalance the spell levels. I know my Rogue is happy to use Escape and Arterial Strike from levels 1-20 even in the place of high level abilites. Meanwhile, an Evoker would never cast Fan of Flames when they still have slots for Fireball, and I think this is what causes this feeling of not having enough slots.

 

Changing spell balance by level is a major endeavor, though. I don't think it falls under polishing so much as a total system change.

 

Moon Godlike:

I agree with thelee; I don't see why this can't be PL-scaled. Sure it makes it better for single class but is that actually a problem? 10 is definitely not enough at later levels.

 

Mental Binding:

0.5 cast time makes it really easy to Immobilize melee foes at the start of combat and give your back-line room to breathe. I think this sits fine in its niche, especially given that you'll generally have enough time to cast a second power or refill some focus between uses.

 

Biting Whip:

Don't think Ciphers need the extra PEN but the Raw Lash is a great idea. Wouldn't mind seeing it be even a little bigger, like 15% and have the clear distinction between the two abilities be "doing damage" versus "generating lots of focus".

 

Defensive Web:

Just wanted to put in another thumbs up for hit instead of graze.

 

Riposte:

This really ought to just proc on graze, especially with the new wider graze range.

 

Backstab:

I really like option 4a, it easily gives the biggest advantage to light "rogue style" weapons without significantly taking away from people who like two-handers.

 

Confounding Blind:

Maybe make the malus passive so it stacks with Flanked? I also wouldn't mind seeing it start at -10, then apply stacks or be -10 and only stack 3 times.

 

Kalakoth's:

Just make it apply a steeper Deflection penalty. How about -25?

 

Merciless Gaze:

IMO the only thing that really needs to change is Merciless Gaze. That should be 0.5/0.0 like most of the other Wizard buffs.

 

AoE Applied Effects:

This fix can't come soon enough.

 

 

RE: The whole Priest/Druid thing:

I don't think they need to step on the toes of the Wizard and have a huge amount of spells accessible. Wizards being able to use books to expand their knowledge is thematic and fills a niche. The vancian casters all start to feel same-y (with each other not necessarily within their individual class) at the highest levels, and I think wider spell access for Druid and Priest would only expound on this problem.

 

I also feel like their spell access being off actually specifically a Priest issue. Druid subclasses actually have good auto-picks at every level and Druid spells in general (with one or two exceptions) aren't situational. Most of the CC has decent damage riders, and each spell is very good at what it's supposed to do. While I don't think one Fury is going to look very different from another Fury, it will look fairly different from a Lifegiver or an Ancient. An individual Druid will cast the same spells over and over of course but they don't step on the toes of other subs, which I think is a fairly successful design - you really shouldn't be able to use a trinket to rapidly change from being a Lifegiver into an Ancient. The only area Druids could use some buffing in is Shifting.

 

I think the Priest could use less situational spells and more passives. I'd love to see improvements available to Holy Radiance and possibly to have each subclass gain either a modified Holy Radiance or a similar 1/encounter thematic Power of the Deity ability. Some spell level rebalancing might be helpful too, I suppose. Priests definitely have certain levels that are underwhelming. IMO each level should have two strong damage options and two strong healing/buffing options. They could maybe also use some more Shock/Acid spells to justify having Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm.

[thelee]

I'd love to see improvements available to Holy Radiance and possibly to have each subclass gain either a modified Holy Radiance or a similar 1/encounter thematic Power of the Deity ability. Some spell level rebalancing might be helpful too, I suppose. Priests definitely have certain levels that are underwhelming. IMO each level should have two strong damage options and two strong healing/buffing options. They could maybe also use some more Shock/Acid spells to justify having Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm.

Speaking in a personal capacity, I feel like these changes could make sense but are probably a bit out of scope for a "polish" set of changes since I don't think MaxQuest is looking to get ideas for completely new abilities or passives. Though, it unnerved me to no end in BB and release that Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm are in priest talent tree at AL4 but the former has literally 0 effect for anyone not a Berathian, and the latter has 0 effect until AL8 (Spark the Souls of the Righteous) due to broken hazard keyword handling. For a class I generally like and find well-balanced, they are clear trap choice talents. I reported this soooo many times... (I mean it makes as much sense as the ranger getting Scion of Flame and Spirit of Decay just because the arcane archer has an ability or two that benefit)

Edited March 6, 2019 by thelee

[Phenomenum]

due to broken hazard keyword handling.

 

What did you mean?

[thelee]

 

due to broken hazard keyword handling.

What did you mean?

Hazards aren't consistently affected by many things but the big one is keyword interactions (so wall of fire and warding seal don't benefit from Scion of flame or heart of the storm) Edited March 7, 2019 by thelee

[Phenomenum]

Hazards aren't consistently affected by many things but the big one is keyword interactions (so wall of fire and warding seal don't benefit from Scion of flame or heart of the storm)

 

Then it's clearly a bug, becose all these abilities have proper keywords (Punishment and Fire/Electricity) in both abilities.gamedatabundle and attacks.gamedatabundle. I guess something in the code prevents game from reading/using these keywords.

 

U can create a topic in Technical support and write about it. If someone haven't done it already...

 

P.S. Checked remaining spells of all casters. Interesting thing: i have no questions about Wizard's and Chanter's spells keywords, and only a few about Cipher's and Druid's. So Priest spells keywords is the most broken.

 

Cipher keywords:

 

Antipatetic field: Shred >>> Acid, Shred (deals Corrode damage)

Soul Ignition: Shred >>> Fire, Shred (deals Fire damage)

Ectophysic Echo: Echo >>> Echo, Shred (deals Damage)

Ringleader: Deseption >>> Deseption, Mind (Whispers of Treason and Puppetmaster have Mind keyword)

Time Parasite: Illusions >>> Illusions, Deseption

 

Druid keywords:

 

Wildstrikes: Add corresponding keywords (Frost, Fire, Acid, Electricity)

Cleansing Wind: Wind, Elements >>> Wind, Elements, Rejuvenation (Restores Health)

Nature's Bounty: Restoration >>> Rejuvenation (it's the ONLY druid spell with Restoration keyword, which generally used for Priest restoration spells)

Great Maelstorm: missed Frost keyword (also deals Freeze damage)

Aspect of Galawain: Beast >>> Beast, Summon Creature

Conjure Blights spells: add Summon Creature keyword.

 

Priest keywords:

 

+ Holy Radiance: Restoration, Condemnation >>> Restoration, Condemnation, Punishment, Fire (Restores Health, applies debuff, deals Fire damage)

EDIT: Minor Intercession: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection, Cleansing (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)

EDIT: Light of Eothas: Restoration >>> Restoration, Protection, Cleansing (Health recovery, reduces duration of hostile effects)

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Boeroer]

@thelee: Well, my examples that added 1 spell per PL were just examples. As I said I can totally see trinkets that only add one single spell - or two or three. Not necessarily one per PL progression. And als not necessarily at the usual PL. You could do a trinket that adds a PL 8 spell to your PL 6 or so... endless possibilities basically.

A trinket named "Book of Prayers " that only adds the Prayer and Linany spells and gives them +1 PL could be a thing.

 

I also would like to add "unique" spells that only come with that trinket (I love the unique grimoires). That, added with some "special" features like bonus PL for certain keywords (+2 PL to punishment or whatever), bonus durations, bigger AoE, you name it - should solve the problem that some spell levels of the Priest and his spell selections are very narrow and motivate to use some spells that you normally wouldn't consider. Ot take a route with your build you didn't consider before. 

 

Same with Druids: no need to give them a 1:1 copy of the grimoire mechanics, but add some nice trinkets that are cool, fitting and help them a bit to develop more specific build ideas/routes that are fun. For example: currently there's not much motivation to build a Decay-Druid (not a single item with special Decay bonus afaik - besides Chromopr. Staff that does +1 PL to Acid) while Beast/Plant Druids (Spine of Thicket Green, Ancient), Healer Druids (Lifegiver, Spine of Thicket Green, diverse +healing items), Summons Druid (Ancient, Animancy Cat) and Elemental Druids (Fury, Fire PL bonus gear, Storms PL bonus gear, Shock PL bonus gear) get all the love. Hence my example ot the shrinkhead. 

 

Of course it would be nice if we could find a special approach for both class-trinkets that seperates them from each other (and grimoires) a bit but still keeps things consistent and kind of uniform.

 

 

@Phenomenum: great work!

Edited March 7, 2019 by Boeroer