Deadfire Polishing Thread

[Boeroer]

I agree that it doesn't really matter at which Power Level you pick Uncanny Luck. It doesn't scale with additional Power Levels, so generally it's no problem to move it down - eh... or up. Depends on how you look at it.

[Phenomenum]

i don't know what a good solution for this would be. maybe just give everyone every spellcasting PEN talent. iirc in poe1 everyone could get the various elemental talents and it was on you if you picked one that was useless for your build.

 

Elemental PEN + Deep Pockets for everyone - It will be fine in my book. I miss freedom of PoE 1 universal talents, but Deadfire UI is not designed for this. I mean, even if we give all universal talents to all classes at early levels, like in PoE 1 - UI can't handle this.

 

Besides, it will be not "polishing"

Edited March 26, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Taudis]

Spirit of Decay is useful for Vatnir, too!

 

Even though I don't agree in the instance of Uncanny Luck, I personally appreciate thelee arguing so consistently for a more conservative stance. Even if the end result of this exercise is modders building the changes, I'd rather see the more balanced version. I'm not great at modding (I've pretty much just figured out how to change values on specific abilities) but I've started implementing and testing some of the changes being suggested on here (well, basically the keywords (thanks to Phenomenum's mod!) and cast time/duration changes.) and while a lot of them feel about right (ie Ranger healing buffs are pretty much spot on, so are the keywords), I'm beginning to appreciate the more conservative stance.

 

WRT hit-to-crit: It's been a while since I've looked at Dirty Fighting (I remembered it being 15%! That's what I get for just blindly grabbing it instead of reading the ability each time I pick it up) but frankly it could use a buff too. I agree with thelee on class identity - Rogues have a reputation for being crit masters in RPGs - and I think that Rogues should be able to better compete with Fighters on the hit-to-crit front. I'd suggest bumping Dirty fighting up to 15% and knocking Intuitive down to 20%, in addition to the change to Uncanny Luck.

 

I also think that even if the design reason for abilities being higher level is to space things out and not overwhelm players, players will still have an expectation that higher level abilities ought to have a bit more oomph. I don't think lowering the level of higher AL abilities is useful either, for similar reasons: picking an underlevel ability can "feel bad" for a player. You'd have to heavily redesign the table and make it clear that you're expected to pick low-level generics at some point or another. How things actually look to players is fairly important in considering their design, even when the actual effect/reason might be a bit off from that view. FWIW, while I brought up how Uncanny Luck looks aesthetically similar to a Nat 20/Nat 1 as a joke, I actually think that the less useful but more aesthetically pleasing option of 5%/5% does hold value. I would never make it 8% because numbers that don't divide by 5 look bad. Or if it was 8%, it should be 8% HTC/4% resist to totally break from the expectation of being on the multiples of 5 scale. The paint job might not help the car run but it sure helps it sell!

Edited March 26, 2019 by Taudis

[MaxQuest]

Does the poll program allow for "Other, Please Describe: [insert form here]"? Because that should likely be an option on a lot things as well if it's implementable.

I have checked, and yeap it's possible. I will add it if you want.

 

But keep in mind, that the idea is to use the polls responses and aggregate the most voted options. And if someone will write a nice suggestion in "Other" it won't be visible to others to vote for. That's the reason I've gone with this thread and all preliminary stuff in the first place: to collect the possible response options; and additionally let them come through 'community review' in order to decrease the amount of situations when a suggestion looks nice on paper, but has some deeper issues.

 

While we're on the subject of Priest (again), I personally think the Prayers/Litanies could go from 0.5/3.0 cast and 60 sec duration to 0.5/0.0 cast and 30 sec duration (duration shorter to be more in line with other 0.5/0.0 buffs). It'd do a lot to make the priest list feel more full, since they'd become more desirable picks in the way that other classes' fast inspirations are.

Hmm, I don't really like this.

 

I totally understand why you would want this action economy. But I think this would overlap with paladin's field of expertise: i.e. being able to quickly remove an affliction from an ally. And paladins pay a hefty price for their exhortations: 2 zeal to be exact.

 

Thus I would leave 0.5/0s only for a subset of self-buffs.

 

Speaking of broken stuff, I don't really understand where the line is on bug fixing versus polishing. I'd definitely like to Arcane Archer's no-scaling fixed, and that feels like it could be on the list?

Regarding fixes vs polishing: I was thinking about adding the fixes section, but it looked so obvious to me that they need fixing, that it looked like Section Obvious) Although I haven't made my mind on this yet.

 

Starts at 3. Afflictions for me. Not sure if marking afflictions #3 instead of 1 is the error or if I'm missing points 1 & 2.

I've made this intentionally. Preliminary list #1, contained points p1 and p2, but they were later removed due to feedback.

 

I can make them start from 1 if it is confusing. But it will make it harder to compare the poll options with those preliminary lists. What you say?

 

I think a while back Boeroer suggested 10% instead of 8% for Uncanny Luck and I really think it should be. It's a high level skill so it could stand to be even that little bit stronger and non-round numbers look weird. Do it for the aesthetics.

Ok) Will add it to the list.

 

Iconic Projection could be 0.5/4.0. I also think it would be nice if it got boosted 20 base damage to be symmetrical with its healing effect. For what it's worth, Corrosive Siphon effectively has base damage 24/heal 24 in AoE and it's also AL2.

Ok)

 

Spiritual Weapon really ought to be a 0.5/0.0 spell. I feel like the devs made it cast slower to prevent it from being an effective super Quick Switch but it has a lot of action time competition for what is essentially a DPS spell.

Personally I find spiritual weapons (maybe with the exception of Woedica's gauntlets) as subcompetitive provided the possible alternatives. Yet I remember a thread were this view was not shared at all. And since I am not using priests as phys damage dealers, I just avoid using these weapons, and the topic altogether.

 

Math suggests that this is nigh impossible. First of all you are not converting all your attack rolls to crits but only hits. The higher the ACC the less hits, the more natural crits, the less overall conversion. Same when ACC is too low. That's 5% of an already smallish amount of attack rolls.

Secondly it doesn't stack additively. Since it's a PL5 ability it's likely that you already have some sort of crit conversion. Let's say you are a Shwashbucker looking for crits. You have Dirty Fighting and Disciplined Barrage and now want to add 5% with Uncanny Luck. This means your overall crit conversion raises from ~33% to ~36%. If we take the "normal" crit dmg modifier and pretend that 50% of your attack rolls are hits then this is an increase of a whopping additive 0.4%. Even in the best case, like +150% crit damage (Devoted + Streetfighter on the edge), only Uncannny Luck as conversion source and 100% hits (ridiculous, but just for the laugh of it) you will increase your dps by 7.5%.

Yeap. Uncanny Luck results in a really pitiful dps increase.

 

Lets take a concrete example:

- you have accuracy by 15 points higher than enemy deflection

- you have 10% hit-to-crit from Dirty Fighting

- and 15% hit-to-crit from that ring

 

i.e. -/25/50/100+ attack resolution shifts:

- from 24% chance to graze, 50% chance to hit, 1% chance to crit

- to 9% change to graze, 50% to hit, 16% to crit (due to +15 acc)

- and there are also two hit-to-crit rolls:

> 10% hit-to-crit: which changes 50% to hit, 16% to crit -> 45% to hit, 21% to crit

> 15% hit-to-crit: (which triggers if above didn't trigger): and changes 45% to hit, 21% to crit -> 38.25% to hit, 27.75% to crit

 

 

Now we also take Uncanny Luck for the 5% hit-to-crit, which has a chance to trigger if above conversions didn't, and we get: 36.3375% to hit, 29.6625% to crit

 

Yay! we have an extra 1.9125% chance to get +0.25 to damage coefficient, +0.25 to duration coefficient and x1.5 PEN.

On average that's like what? a ~0.2-0.45% damage increase?

 

but it's a perspective that really just wants the pure vanilla experience that developers intended, minus bugs or obvious defects

The thing is: it's hard to tell what magnitude for an effect X, developers originally intended, when part of changes to underlying mechanics was done after certain entities (encounters, talents, abilities, effects, etc) were added to the game. Not to mention that devs:

- don't always track the possible ripple consequences; like in the case with Riposte and graze range change for TB

- are not always aware of underlying mechanics themselves; for example: when asked how do crits work in PoE1, Josh answered multiplicatively; even through there was an additive +0.5 damage coefficient. Another example being how recovery in PoE1 is calculated. Or Blunted Criticals in Deadfire.

- do occasionally shift their philosophy towards how powerful certain effects should be. for example at release majority of items had stronger enchants, perhaps in order to provide an ompf effect. But Obs quickly found some multiplayer-guy who severely nerfed that stuff in v1.1; which is not that bad per se, but we get some players like Red Knight whining about equipment bonuses not progressing strongly enough.

- don't always know what the exact values should be themselves. Or even what an attribute should do. They often rely on iterative approach and sometimes on player's feedback. And such approach makes evaluation of 'vanilla intent' kinda moot. I also remember Avellone (although a writter and not a dev) mentioning:

 

Most importantly, game development is an iterative process. Our goal is to entertain our players. No one knows more about what they consider fun than the player themselves

Edited March 26, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Ensign]

The major problem, design-wise, with uncanny luck is that it looks like a balanced minor boost to offense and defense, but the bulk of the power of the talent is on the defensive side. You have to have great systems knowledge to even evaluate it correctly!

 

Also let's not talk about Dirty Fighting like it is some amazing talent that you should prioritize. I'd price it at as comparable in value to Weapon Mastery's 5% damage bonus. Sure you take it on most builds, but that just demonstrates how low value a passive offensive talent can be and still be picked up consistently.

[MaxQuest]

You have to have great systems knowledge to even evaluate it correctly!

Yeah. I don't quite understand how a regular player would make a connection between displayed 5% and:

- the actual change in his attack resolution

- the relative dps increase

without calculator and notepad.

Edited March 26, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Taudis]

But keep in mind, that the idea is to use the polls responses and aggregate the most voted options. And if someone will write a nice suggestion in "Other" it won't be visible to others to vote for. That's the reason I've gone with this thread and all preliminary stuff in the first place: to collect the possible response options; and additionally let them come through 'community review' in order to decrease the amount of situations when a suggestion looks nice on paper, but has some deeper issues.

 

Seeing this explanation makes keeping the "Other: Please explain" responses to the forum make sense to me. I think there should at least be some sort of "This should change but not in these ways" option. Possibly also a "skip this question" option because it's not obvious that you can just not answer a question - people for example defaulting to "do not change" on things they don't care about might give extra weight to that option.

 

Litanies and Prayers

 

I went and actually just tested these. 0.5/0.0 feels like a little much, even with the reduced duration. I still feel like they're underpowered in their current form. I thought they felt right power-wise at 15 secs but IMO that's too far off from their origins - they're basically different spells.

 

I don't actually feel like it's overly stepping on the toes of Pallys. Buffing others/removing afflictions is a pretty big niche for Priests, so they ought to be pretty good at it.

 

I've made [afflictions start at 3] intentionally. Preliminary list #1, contained points p1 and p2, but they were later removed due to feedback.

 

I can make them start from 1 if it is confusing. But it will make it harder to compare the poll options with those preliminary lists. What you say?

 

It's a bit confusing. Where are you planning to link the polished survey from? The context of seeing it from page 9 of this thread versus say page 1 is obviously different.

 

Personally I find spiritual weapons (maybe with the exception of Woedica's gauntlets) as subcompetitive provided the possible alternatives. Yet I remember a thread were this view was not shared at all. And since I am not using priests as phys damage dealers, I just avoid using these weapons, and the topic altogether.

 

I'm testing this out now but I think I might be the wrong person for it as well. It is a pretty big boon on Port Maje when it's quite a bit better than some unenchanted garbage weapon but when I test it for SSS fights, I'm thinking "why am I not spending my time casting more spells?" because I also prefer my Priest as not a physical damage dealer. I'm also not a professional developer and don't really have the time to test how changes through the whole game, so my testing is heavily biased towards the SSS challenges as a sort of "these are medium difficult and require a character to show enough different skill sets" arena. And the Digsite Drake if the ability is PL1 or PL2.

 

Fast Spiritual Weapon was pretty fun on a Skaen Priest, though. Still trying to decide if 0.5/0.0 is a good adjustment or if the 3.0/0.0 is in the "not broken, don't fix it" category. I might try a few more multiclasses of Skaen and Woedica, seeing as they strike me as the most likely to profit. Single class I feel is still better off just casting more spells/having good weapons in the first place.

 

Iconic Projection is a little too good as a 0.5/4.0 cast once you figure in Footsteps of Ahu Taka giving you a third level 2 cast. It went from mild help to hero in endurance trials. Improving the damage to be symmetrical with the healing seems fine at 3.0/4.0, though. I know I'll be keeping that change in my own game.

[MaxQuest]

 

Litanies and Prayers

I went and actually just tested these. 0.5/0.0 feels like a little much, even with the reduced duration

 

I've initially read this as: "0.5/0.0 still feels a little long" ^^

 

Buffing others/removing afflictions is a pretty big niche for Priests, so they ought to be pretty good at it.

Definitely. I just feel that buffing/cleansing others should not be that fast.

An enemy spent 3s+4s casting a stun/paralyze/dominate that was going to last 8s, and you just remove it in 0.5/0.0 doesn't seem fair unless there is a hefty price attached. Paladin's exhortations cost 2 zeal and that's like 1/5 of their resource pool. Imagine if priest was consuming 2 spell usages per prayer.

 

P.S. If prayers/litanies feel too weak, I'd rather see their effect being buffed instead of speedified. This way a support/buffer can become a solid archetype by itself, instead of: this is a damage-dealer with several get-out-of-jail cards.

 

It's a bit confusing. Where are you planning to link the polished survey from? The context of seeing it from page 9 of this thread versus say page 1 is obviously different.

On first pages. Additionally either as a separate thread or here as a separate post.

 

But ok, I'll reset the questions ordering, for them to start from 1.

 

Seeing this explanation makes keeping the "Other: Please explain" responses to the forum make sense to me. I think there should at least be some sort of "This should change but not in these ways" option. Possibly also a "skip this question" option because it's not obvious that you can just not answer a question - people for example defaulting to "do not change" on things they don't care about might give extra weight to that option.

"This should change but not in these ways" option - is kinda same thing as "Other"

 

Ok, screw it, I'll just add the Other option to all questions.

And if someone doesn't have a strong opinion regarding some of suggestions they can just leave the answer blank. I'll add a related reminder in the begining.

 

Fast Spiritual Weapon was pretty fun on a Skaen Priest, though. Still trying to decide if 0.5/0.0 is a good adjustment or if the 3.0/0.0 is in the "not broken, don't fix it" category. I might try a few more multiclasses of Skaen and Woedica, seeing as they strike me as the most likely to profit. Single class I feel is still better off just casting more spells/having good weapons in the first place.

I'm neutral on this. But it's not hard to add this to the poll and see what we'll get. Edited March 27, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Phenomenum]

Fast Spiritual Weapon was pretty fun on a Skaen Priest, though. Still trying to decide if 0.5/0.0 is a good adjustment or if the 3.0/0.0 is in the "not broken, don't fix it" category.

 

I prefer don't touch it, becose in this case passive ability "Martial Caster" (speeds up casting times for summoned weapon spells) became useless.

[Verde]

Quick Switch and Deep Pockets should be available to everyone. Arms Bearer and Fast Runner are, I don't see why these aren't.

 

I'd love if one of the devs released a combat overhaul like one dev from CDProjekt did for Witcher 2. It completely polished the combat up, a year later. That was a smart move on their part - garnered lots of goodwill and made a good game ever better.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Verde

[Ensign]

I don't think prayers and litanies are workable at just one inspiration. 'Free action' speed would feel bad and the effect isn't worth the cast time for just one, even with ridiculous duration.

 

I think you have to move them to two, but then you get into design decisions.

[thelee]

I don't think prayers and litanies are workable at just one inspiration. 'Free action' speed would feel bad and the effect isn't worth the cast time for just one, even with ridiculous duration.

 

I think you have to move them to two, but then you get into design decisions.

 

honestly i feel like people should play with those prayers/litanies more. prayer/litany of spirit are perfectly fine (foolproof use: just use it at start of combat as a general purpose caster/barb/whatever buff and preventative shield against confuse/charm/dominate), litany of body is condiitonally really good (+2 AR, man, though much less good in a party with a pally+defensive aura or source of robust [e.g. druid]), it's mostly prayer for body that is pretty weak.

Edited March 28, 2019 by thelee

[Ensign]

 

honestly i feel like people should play with those prayers/litanies more. prayer/litany of spirit are perfectly fine (foolproof use: just use it at start of combat as a general purpose caster/barb/whatever buff and preventative shield against confuse/charm/dominate), litany of body is condiitonally really good (+2 AR, man, though much less good in a party with a pally+defensive aura or source of robust [e.g. druid]), it's mostly prayer for body that is pretty weak.

 

 

 

Eh.  I've played with all of 'em a decent amount (it's not like points are tight on a single class Priest) and the only one I've found at all valuable is Litany of the Spirit - and that owed a lot to the situational nature of everything else at PL5.

 

A good chunk of my dissatisfaction stems from their ostensible use as protective shields against effects or as emergency counters to dangerous afflictions.  I have seared into my mind a fight in the Sepulchers where skeleton rogues were hammering on the frontline, and enfeeble kicked in on someone at low health.  Perfect situation for Prayer for the Body to kick in and nullify that!  Except it had long since been stripped, and the clutch Prayer on a withdrawing ally...hit one of the redundant stacks of weakness, doing nothing.  I pretty much gave up on it after that.

 

Similarly I liked the concept of Prayer for the Spirit as a tool to deal with charm and dominate.  The problem?  Most of the fights where you have charm and dominate problems are full of Fampyrs, where vulnerable targets get hammered by free-action charm gazes, or some flavor of spores that charm as part of their regular attack pattern.  Prayer did basically nothing if a charm-vulnerable party member drew aggro, buying a few seconds before the re-application came in.  Plus you can't cast it on a charmed or dominated ally to remove the effect, as they're hostile!

 

I played around with Valorous Echoes for similar reasons, and was left disappointed.  The core of it is that very few encounters have diverse threats, and outside the highest tier afflictions anything a set of foes is going to throw at you is going to be thrown enough that it'll stick if you aren't immune.

 

The main thing though is the tempo.  Your first actions in a fight matter so much more for the outcome than later ones, and Litany is a low impact buff that cedes priority to a ton of other spells in your repertoire.  It doesn't create a new angle of attack or solve a problem for you.  Now sometimes you are pulling foes to you and have plenty of time to pre-buff, and in those cases dropping Litany for the Spirit on a monk or wizard can be a good use of an otherwise pretty niche PL.  Once the fight is joined, though, putting up a Litany has a priority just above auto-attacking.

 

Again, it's not like you're hurting for ability points on a single class Priest.  Taking LftS over one of the more marginal passives is a reasonable use of an ability point.  I wouldn't touch any of the others though - the Prayers aren't worth your time, and there's too much gas in PL4 for LftB to get more than a glance.

[anishar]

I like most of these changes, completed the poll.

 

However i feel like some of the suggested changes to improve terrible spells are not enough.

 

For exemple priest seals... Will you honnestly use them even if they had shorter cast times / higher accuracy?

Will you ever use a limited cast to buff ONE ally with a tier 1 inspiration? I wouldnt.... Imo all priest inspirations need to become AoEs, there are plenty of sources for inspirations in the game, Priest using an entire spell cast for 1 single inspiration on 1 single ally is a joke honnestly, while a wizard uses his limited spells to throw out things like Chill Fog, Shadowflame, Combusting Wound and so on... There's a HUGE value difference between a priest cast and a wizard cast... Overall priest spells are super mega giga uper trash! Except a few ones : Suspending Hostile Effects (tho it's currently bugged and does nothing), Devotion, Barring Death's Door, Salvation of Time, Spark the Soul, and that's basically it.

 

Even the "strong" buffs like Champion's Boon or Shield of the Faithful feel SO TERRIBLE to cast due to their insanly long cast time / recovery time. (Especially Champion's Boon affecting 1 target i mean come on... At least be instant)

 

 

I'm also against making "boring generic talents" like Uncanny Luck or improved empower better... I think classes should have fun passives to play around with, not these kind of talents...

Oh and the 4 passives raw just to "make your 1 empower cast better" is also a joke. At the end of the day these 4 talents "options" just do the same thing, it makes your empower better, i find this raw extremely underwhelming and boring and i hate it. I'd merge all of these talents into 1 single "make your empower better" talent (increase PL by 7 instead of 5 or smthg), and replace all 3 slots by 3 super cool unique passives for each class

Edited March 28, 2019 by anishar

[Taudis]

 

honestly i feel like people should play with those prayers/litanies more. prayer/litany of spirit are perfectly fine (foolproof use: just use it at start of combat as a general purpose caster/barb/whatever buff and preventative shield against confuse/charm/dominate), litany of body is condiitonally really good (+2 AR, man, though much less good in a party with a pally+defensive aura or source of robust [e.g. druid]), it's mostly prayer for body that is pretty weak.

 

I pretty much always have a Priest in my party because IMO every party needs a group accuracy buff and Devotions is the best option. I actually do take Litany for the Spirit fairly often and think it's in a good place balance-wise, but that's the only one. I know a lot of people have a bit of an irrational dislike of Priests in Deadfire for some reason but I'm not coming from that place. They're probably my most played class and are only beat out by Rogue because basically every Companion/Sidekick has a Rogue multi (Escape+cheap interrupts is incredibly useful and I don't mind that I have a lot of Rogue options but there is a lot).

 

 

The main thing though is the tempo.  Your first actions in a fight matter so much more for the outcome than later ones, and Litany is a low impact buff that cedes priority to a ton of other spells in your repertoire.  It doesn't create a new angle of attack or solve a problem for you.  Now sometimes you are pulling foes to you and have plenty of time to pre-buff, and in those cases dropping Litany for the Spirit on a monk or wizard can be a good use of an otherwise pretty niche PL.

 

This is the issue. It's a pretty big caster issue in general because casters are kind of stuck with a pile of active abilities but it's definitely exacerbated by underwhelming effects. That was my idea in suggesting it be 0.5/0.0. What I discovered when testing that in is that it's way too far in the other direction. There's really two tempos going on here: the Priest and the buff-ee. Getting a totally free action buff basically instantly is amazing on the buff-ee (well, maybe not just +5 CON but that has more to do with the state of CON as an attribute). The Priest having to have some sort of recovery was definitely a balancing factor on that.

 

I don't think there's a solution that is "polishing" rather than rebuilding the class. My preferred solution here would be to entirely remove all of the strictly worse spells from the Priest list (the Prayers and Blessing are awful game design and just shouldn't exist) and to give additional effects on the litanies (maybe +1 HP/6 sec on Body and +1 sec duration of beneficial effects/6 sec on Mind? just throwing stuff out there, not much thought on this yet).

Edited March 28, 2019 by Taudis

[Verde]

Litanies take too long to cast. If they were faster it would be easier to get off at the beginning of battle *cough cough Exhortations*

[UltimaLuminaire]

On the topic of Uncanny Luck, I'm one of the guys who always takes that talent on solo class builds. I'm not usually speedrunning, so all the times it procs to help me resist enemy attacks just stack up and astound me. The hits to crits comes up way too often on a solo Barbarian, it's kind of funny.

 

That said, I find myself taking it on dual classes far less of late. I'll still take it on bruiser types that I don't put shields on.

 

Barbarian - Mage Slayer

I've messed around with Mage Slayer for 2 whole playthroughs, both turn based (solo) and real time. The benefits really shine with the DLC content because of all the non-standard casters that can be disrupted but who are otherwise immune to interrupts. The problem is getting the Barbarian to survive long enough to continue disrupting targets. Funny thing is, Barbarian is so tightly balanced that just one additional survival feature modded into the game was enough to significantly boost the speed and success rate of a solo run. I would propose a modest damage shield that activates when the Barbarian successfully resists any attack. Something like a 5pt all damage shield that scales with PL and lasts for 15s. Boerer also suggested raising the SR, which wouldn't hurt.

 

Barbarian - Corpse Eater

I would make Frenzy and Yell abilities immune to the Rage cost increase. Leave them at 1.

 

I've already taken the poll by MaxQuest. It looks like you guys have most things covered. I won't be able to contribute that much to discussion since my game knowledge is child-like compared to the giants on this thread, so I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who responded. It's been fun looking at where people stand on game design, particularly Thelee. I hope Obsidian is able to look at the survey results in some capacity.

Edited March 29, 2019 by UltimaLuminaire

[Verde]

5% is so measly tho. I think there better talents you can pick at any stage. 10 or 15% would def make it legit.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Verde

[UltimaLuminaire]

5% not accounting for multiplicative stacking, is the standard for a D&D player. That's 1 in 20. For a solo class, which usually has access to fewer resources, this just works. Not every solo class is a Rogue, man.

 

But it's understandable that anyone who does not regularly play D&D, particularly 4th edition, would be highly uncomfortable with 1 in 20. I swear by it just because I've seen it proc so many times in my log. It even tells you when something happens as a direct result of that talent in the log. It's hard for me to miss since I do as much as I can in most of my runs through the game. I don't know how the devs see the talent or if they will listen to the feedback from the poll, but I'm sure the majority of votes are with you, Verde.

Edited March 29, 2019 by UltimaLuminaire

[Boeroer]

The log may be bugged in that regard. It may be that it always mentions one particular conversion source although it was not the one that actually triggered. Example: Debonaire has a 100% hit to crit chance on charmed targets. But the combat log will always tell you that it's Dirty Fighting which converted your roll.

So yo can not rely on that info as soon as you have more than one source of conversion.

 

5% is 5%. It doesn't matter what D&D does. Besides catering to nostalgia I mean. What matters is that abilities are balanced with each other and towards the difficulty.

 

Also an impression of how often it triggers is not very reliable. Except if you also noted how often it didn't convert.

 

I think there were enough arguments made why the crit conversion is too low. I don't have a problem with the resistance. Resistance (without further sources) is like a 5% damage reduction. Which is cool.

 

But conversion does NOT apply to all your attacks (not like resistance which applies to all the hits you take). It only applies to your hits which automatically rules out half of all rolls you do. And in addition to that a crit does not have that much impact as a complete avoidance of damage has.

 

If you had a talent which would say "+1% dmg done / -5% dmg received", wouldn't you also think "why that imbalance?"

[Ensign]

Uncanny Luck is at best 1 in 40, since it only triggers on hits, and at best you roll a natural hit only half the time.

 

Then unlike the defensive side of the trait, which will sometimes convert what would otherwise be crits to misses, UL only promotes hits to crits, which limits its value.

 

In a best case scenario, that 5% hit to crit is worth about as much as +1 accuracy.  Yay?

[Boeroer]

Super Orlan Power NINJA!

Edited March 29, 2019 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Natural 1 in D&D works on all hit rolls. Uncanny Luck does not.

 

Jeez if it applied its conversion to 5% of all rolls (misses and grazes included) I would be so much better.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Boeroer

[Ensign]

You got me!

 

5% conversion on all rolls would be nice.  I'd price that at about a 4% (real) damage increase, as compared to the current 1.7%.  That's worthwhile.

 

Or hey go real natural 20 style - 5% of all rolls are converted to crits regardless.  Miss to crit gogo!  Yeah, it'd be well over budget (especially when you tack the defensive bonus on), but that's the flavor of it, right?

Edited March 29, 2019 by Ensign

[Boeroer]

That's what I meant when I said "misses and grazes included". :D