Priests need urgent rebalancing update

[nouser]

Priest spells are currently very weak . some priest spells that were amazing in poe1  (such as consecrated ground) are now useless. consecrated ground (level 3 slow healing) slowly  heals 30 hp while restore (level 1 fast spell) auto restores 40 hp.  in future updates they need to rebalance priests. i suggest changing some spells (specially those related to healing and defense) and increase the duration of some spells (such as circle of protection). paladins are now way better than priests in almost anything.   possibly if they added "practiced healer" talent in a update it would make priest spells less  bad.

[Gromnir]

there won't be future balance updates. 

that said, while am agreeing priests deserve attention, am gonna disagree with the conclusion that, "priest spells are currently very weak." there is a problem with priest spells, but ain't weakness. there is strong priest spells at every level. the thing is, the strong spells tend to be obvious and o' limited number.  you mention restore, yes? recognizing how different health works in deadfire compared to poe, restore is an incredibly powerful spell available at level one and with a near instantaneous cast time.

when deadfire were first released, we mentioned how a few priest spells were underappreciated. 

didn't take long for folks to realize how powerful were multiple priest spells such as salvation of time... spells at every level.

the thing is, am always choosing restore and salvation. am near always choosing devotions of the faithful and pillar of holy fire. all our priests look the same, save for a few minor alterations when multiclassing. 

weak? no. 

limited? yes... definite. too many situational useful spells. multiclassing allows for a bit o' variation o' priestly characters, but given how few priest spell options there are per level compared to wizards, the paucity o' genuine strong spells which have usefulness in a majority o' encounters is curious... is unforgivable when one realizes obsidian initial had school prohibitions implemented. am honest not sure what the developers were thinking with school prohibitions for priests save as a kinda token distraction. knowing players would be angry with priests, josh added school prohibitions he never intended to implement? lift prohibitions would thus make fans feel like they won a victory o' sorts.

did something similar with paladins in poe. 

too cynical?

*shrug*

regardless, am thinking you are gonna find little agreement that priest spells are weak. far too many priest spells are o' such situational usage as to be of no value when choosing per-level abilities, and there are a few underwhelming spells, but priests got many o' the most powerful and useful spells in the game. not weak, but limited.

HA! Good Fun!

[Boeroer]

Besides that, stuff like Consecrated Ground scales its duration and healing per tick with Power Level (5% base each). That means double multiplicate scaling for the healing since it not only scales the healing per tick but also adds more ticks. This makes it a lot better at higher Power Levels than Restore which only scales its healing but has no duration (to scale). So... you can't judge several spells just by looking at the description at lvl 1. I mean you can, but then your judgement is false. You have to take into account how they scale.

@Gromnir is right though: The problem that priests have is that they tend to have 1 or max 2 very good spells at every Power Level - and the rest is situational or simply weaker. That leads to a kind of "railroad" effect where most priest builds look the same - when it comes to spell choice. There are some spells that would be nice to have in certain encounters, but they players don't want to spend and ability point for something they might need 5 times in a whole playthrough. Better go with consumables then...

As a Priest you can't "equip temporary spells" for certain encounters. Due to the mechanics of level-up you have a fixed spell portfolio that can only be changed via retraining. 

Druids suffer the same basic problem - but it's not that obvious since they have more spells and also a better balaced collection to pick from. e.g. It's hard to pick between Plague of Insects, Relentless Storm and Nature's Terror. 

Also it doesn't make your character a lot stronger if you pick a ton of spells at level up. It only makes him/her more flexible. This might not be desired.
All ex-per-rest casters (Wizards, Priests, Druids) don't have enough alternative passive abilities. This is very obvious once you play single class builds.

Yet, Wizards don't suffer that "spell railroading" - why is that? It's because of grimoires. Those let you equip (and switch to) certain spells that you didn't pick at level up. And since you can swap them (you can equip up to 7! of them via 6 Quick Item slots + Trinket slot)  you can basically build a Wizard or Wizard/whatever who wouldn't need to choose a single spell at level up (if that would be possible) but only passives and/or abilites of the second class and would still be able to cast spells from his grimoires left and right as if he picked them at level up.

Many players didn't and still don't understand what an immense advantage this is. They equip one single grimoire like Vaporous Wizardry and then never switch. But even this single one already adds 14 to 18 spells to the Wizard's active portfolio that he don't need to pick during level up anymore. So - even if you don't swap grimoires you get 12 bonus spells for free. But for certain encounters - let's say against creatuires vulnerable to fire, you can still switch the grimoire so you get more fire spells.

Priests and Druids get 7 to 9 bonus spells "only", and those are fixed. This is not balanced. One could argue that if the spells themselves would be more powerful on average than it would balance this issue out - but they are not. 

So what Priests desperately need (and Druids as well, just not as desperately) are trinkets which contain spells and which you can swap. Of copurse they shouldn't contain as many spells as grimoires. Priests/Druids already get 1 bonus spell per PL after all. But those trinkets (think of prayerbooks, written sermons, bulla, holy symbols, relics...) can contain some spells that work like grimoires' - preferably thos situational spells that nobody picks. For example Prayer/Litany for the Mind/Body. So imagine a Prayerbook with those 4 spells which you could swap with a sermon that contains three punishment spells per Power Level. Suddenly your priest wouldn't need to pick those punishment spells at lvl-up - nor would he need to pick the prayers. But during a playthrough he could still switch to the prayerbook, cast a prayer if needed and switch back to a good old Shining Beacon. Of course one must be careful not to add too many trinkets with too many spells. The spel collection of priests is a lot more narrow than that of wizards. You maybe don't want to make all priest spells accessible via grimoire. We are also adding some unique spells that you can't get at level-up. Just to make the collection of spells a little wider. 

This would open up a lot more paths for priest builds (und druid builds) that don't go the well-trodden paths of former priests.

Fortunately some forum dudes (including @Phenomenum, @MaxQuest, several others and me, @Boeroer) work on a collection of mods we call the "Community Patch". Mainly it's about bugfixes and polishing/balancing abilites as well as fixing typos, fixing incorrect keyword distribution and so on. But it's also about unique icons for every passive abuility in the game (currently they all share a few generic ones) and about trinkets for Priests and Druids! The "patch" will get released as seperate small mods as I said. So you can pick which changes you want and which not. First will be "Basic" - it contains all alterations and fixes that are quite conservative and found big agreement in the poll we did before. Then comes "Extra" which includes further balancing and polishing which was also based on the poll, but those received a bit less applause (still the majority was for it). Both are alredy finished. Then we'll have Passive Icons (also finished) and later trinkets (am currently working on that). 

In a few days @Phenomenum will release the first version of those (not trinkets since not finished yet).

You can follow the development discussions here: 

 

Concerning the "weakness" of Priests and their spells in general: there is a reason why all "The Ultimate" attempts so far were tried with a priest/something (afaik)... Some of their spells are gamebreakingly good, first of all Salvation of Time and Barring Death's Door.

Because of that we didn't buf a single Priest spell I think. Only thing Phenomenum did was rearraning the keywords so thy fit the spells properly. For example "Protection" should only be applied to spells that raise defenses or prevent damage etc. "Inspiration" should be given to spells that well... grant you an inspiration. But OBS gave keywords rather randomly. Prayers, which give you an inspirationy were keyworded with "Protection" (and nothing else) and so on. Phenomenum tried to apply the general keywording rule to all spells and succeeded. This leads to a situation wher Priest spells in particular have more keywords than before (on average). So they can be buffed more if you can combine Power Level bonuses for more than one keyword (think about Triumph of the Crusaders which only had "Restoration" but now has "Restoration" and "Inspiration" since it not only heals but also makes the party "Strong"). So if you have a PL bonus from items for Restoration and Inspiration this spell would gain from both. WHich is kind of an indirect buff of certain spells. But we didn't directly buff Priest spells since nobody thought they were weak - generally.

 

Edited June 6, 2019 by Boeroer

[Phenomenum]

58 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Because of that we didn't buf a single Priest spell I think. Only thing Phenomenum did was rearraning the keywords so thy fit the spells properly. For example "Protection" should only be applied to spells that raise defenses or prevent damage etc. "Inspiration" should be given to spells that well... grant you an inspiration. But OBS gave keywords rather randomly. Prayers, which give you an inspirationy were keyworded with "Protection" (and nothing else) and so on. Phenomenum tried to apply the general keywording rule to all spells and succeeded. This leads to a situation wher Priest spells in particular have more keywords than before (on average). So they can be buffed more if you can combine Power Level bonuses for more than one keyword (think about Triumph of the Crusaders which only had "Restoration" but now has "Restoration" and "Inspiration" since it not only heals but also makes the party "Strong"). So if you have a PL bonus from items for Restoration and Inspiration this spell would gain from both. WHich is kind of an indirect buff of certain spells. But we didn't directly buff Priest spells since nobody thought they were weak - generally.

Indeed. That's a general idea. After we add trinkets, all Priests will gain even more power and versatility.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Raven Darkholme]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

 

Concerning the "weakness" of Priests and their spells in general: there is a reason why all "The Ultimate" attempts so far were tried with a priest/something so far (afaik)... Some of their spells are gamebreakingly good, first of all Salvation of Time and Barring Death's Door.

 

 

I do not think there is a stronger multiclass option than the priest atm, because of SoT.

Single class is a very different story and obviously party play is very different from solo.

My point is: I can only agree with @Boeroer Priests are the opposite of weak, they are just super limited and straightforward, use the wrong spells and they may seem weak.

[Elric Galad]

Also PL II has no great spell, which may lead to the feeling that priest are weak in the early to mid game, especially if multiclassing.

[Boeroer]

Honestly Salvation of Time is only OP if you combine it with Brilliant. In itself it's totally ok balance-wise. 

[nouser]

If possible (not causing bugs)  you guys should add the Polishing mod to STEAM WORKSHOP.  it makes download easier and more practical.  also, does the polishing affects the npc characters/enemies ?

Edited June 6, 2019 by nouser

[Raven Darkholme]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Honestly Salvation of Time is only OP if you combine it with Brilliant. In itself it's totally ok balance-wise. 

While that is true it's not that hard to get brilliant.

Most people won't play on the Ultimate, so triggering it out of combat is super easy with both ability and hp regen out of combat.

And even with Woedica's challenge the tactician priest can activate it super easy.

(And pretty much all priest multiclasses can get thru the cloak for some it is just way too tedious and maybe even dependent on consumables, but once again most people straight up don't play the Ultimate and the only reason the Ultimate is worth mentioning is because it requires you to play the best class and it quite quickly became clear priest is required, while some single classes MAY be better, ther eis no better mc)

[Boeroer]

Yes, but the OP portion that breaks the game comes from Brilliant, not SoT. On it's own Brilliant is already OP (for casters that is). If you combine it with SoT (and then Barring Death's Door) it becomes ridiculously OP.

I personally would totally nerf Brilliant to +5 INT and +3 PL instead of resource regeneration - and then make it more accessible. Obsidian's approach was to nerf the tick rate a bit and make it less accessible. Don't agree with that. Making an OP thing less accessible isn't a good way to deal with its OP-ness. If we hadn't today's Brilliant we could also easily rebuff SoT back to 20 secs as it used to be in the good old days.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Boeroer

[Phenomenum]

18 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I personally would totally nerf Brilliant to +5 INT and +3 PL instead of resource regeneration - and then make it more accessible. Obsidian's approach was to nerf the tick rate a bit and make it less accessible. Don't agree with that. Making an OP think less accessible isn't a good way to deal with its OP-ness. If we hadn't today's Brilliant we could also easily rebuff SoT back to 20 secs as it used to be in the good old days.

After we'll done all essential things with CP, including Trinkets, i think i may try to divide Brilliant Inspiration to 2 separate effects:
1. For non-casters: it will still the same +1 resource every 6 sec.
2. For casters, i believe, i can use effect similar to Blood Mage subclass ability: +1 additional cast to random PL every 6 sec.

I think it will be fair enough.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Manveru123]

I feel like my Templar is more than fine...

[Boeroer]

Wait until the Council of Vienne...

[indika_tates]

Priests are fine. Every time I play Xoti is the most useful NPC I have in the party. The point is that single-class priest is not worth it but multiclassed are excelent characters. Devotions for the faithful + dire blessing make the class a must  have in almost every party. Priests are not what they were in POE1 but they still remain very useful.

 

Edited June 7, 2019 by indika_tates

[AndreaColombo]

Oddly enough, I love SC Priests. They get the good spells earlier and can get more spells in general (they tend to be a spell-starved class.) Their high-level stuff can be pretty good too (perhaps Xoti’s to a lesser extent.)

[heldred]

1) Priests are nowhere near what they were in POE1... to be fair, besides Monks, what is a "clear" standout for performance?  (opinion, moving forward)

2) Priests are perceived to be "fine" because of a few spells (BDD, SOT, T8/9 Signature spells, some summoned weapons, etc.)

3) Priests (without mods) are mediocre due to horrific cast and recovery times for a lot of spells, combined with multiple substandard spells littering every level

4) There are a handful of good spells and you ultimately end up with homogenized shi-te (that is French, for bad...) each play-through, regardless of deity

5) In addition, the Druid is in many ways a better healer... so that title is gone

6) Damage dealer?  Well, my money is on a PL-ed Wiz, but that is just me... and let's not forget grimoires.

7) So what is a Priest good for?  Besides being a trick build for Monks and other nacho-cheese fun (see point #2), I find myself hardly ever picking it since a Druid or Wiz does it better (and often faster).  I guess role-play...  

 

In short, nothing is going to change at this point in the dev cycle, but Priests were poorly constructed from the start and were probably overlooked due to a few standout spells or the stigma of being true deities in POE1.   Can you play them and be effective?  Absolutely, but that doesn't excuse the noticeable flaws in their design and implementation...  

Edited June 8, 2019 by heldred

[Boeroer]

They are the only ones with AoE party inspirations that not only can buff but also remove afflictions.

I think they are in a good spot balance-wise. The only gripe I have with them is the limited spell choice (if you are looking for effectiveness). And they have nothing to balance that out (trinkets were dropped during development because Full VO and Ship Combat took away too many resources - I think it's safe to say that after Josh's post mortem talk).

[Gromnir]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

They are the only ones with AoE party inspirations that not only can buff but also remove afflictions.

I think they are in a good spot balance-wise. The only gripe I have with them is the limited spell choice (if you are looking for effectiveness). And they have nothing to balance that out (trinkets were dropped during development because Full VO and Ship Combat took away too many resources - I think it's safe to say that after Josh's post mortem talk).

will also note that heldred comparing poe priest to deadfire and finding deadfire lacking is hardly convincing. the obsidians were clear recognizing, admitted a bit late, just how powerful and flexible were their poe priests. priests were not only good at everything, they were the best at multiple things. broken.

as you note, priests are in a good place from a balance standpoint, which is a relief considering how busted they were in poe. make druids better pure healers? fine. reduce the powha o' holy radiance and make interdiction a low-level spell? the right move...'course we miss such on a certain level, but am recalling just how powerful painful interdiction could be. nevertheless, beyond multiclassing and deity choice, there is current little meaningful variation possible with priests.

deadfire priests don't need power up. need power spread.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[baldurs_gate_2]

21 hours ago, heldred said:

1) Priests are nowhere near what they were in POE1... to be fair, besides Monks, what is a "clear" standout for performance?  (opinion, moving forward)

2) Priests are perceived to be "fine" because of a few spells (BDD, SOT, T8/9 Signature spells, some summoned weapons, etc.)

3) Priests (without mods) are mediocre due to horrific cast and recovery times for a lot of spells, combined with multiple substandard spells littering every level

4) There are a handful of good spells and you ultimately end up with homogenized shi-te (that is French, for bad...) each play-through, regardless of deity

5) In addition, the Druid is in many ways a better healer... so that title is gone

6) Damage dealer?  Well, my money is on a PL-ed Wiz, but that is just me... and let's not forget grimoires.

7) So what is a Priest good for?  Besides being a trick build for Monks and other nacho-cheese fun (see point #2), I find myself hardly ever picking it since a Druid or Wiz does it better (and often faster).  I guess role-play...  

 

In short, nothing is going to change at this point in the dev cycle, but Priests were poorly constructed from the start and were probably overlooked due to a few standout spells or the stigma of being true deities in POE1.   Can you play them and be effective?  Absolutely, but that doesn't excuse the noticeable flaws in their design and implementation...  

Wrong.

Priests can deal heavy amounts of damage and are pretty much better than druids. Wizard has the problem, that his spells have low pen. I think, you can not get much more than 13 pen.

 

Edited June 8, 2019 by baldurs_gate_2

[heldred]

Yeah, I respectfully disagree.

1) Any class can own Nerisc with fire... um. just craft 5x scrolls of any of the following:  Holy Fire, Meteor Shower, Great Maelstrom, etc.  (super weak to fire).  The only difference is, a Wizard could face tank it with 3 buffs and not need to leap around... or bother with Revku's gear.  

2) Any class can own Nerisc... in a variety of fun and creative ways (without scrolls or consumables), it doesn't make the class design any better or worse, it is just tactically making use of the right gear and skills.

3) A SC Wiz can own Nerisc faster I think, especially with the right PL spec gear, buffs, skills, and grimoire picks... possibly stun-locking him with the right roll to prevent Llengths going off.

4) A SC Druid, dropping 2 Maelstroms and the right gear/spec shifted might be able to do it as fast as the Wiz, but might need to drop some healing.

 

To my earlier point, I think the priest class has a lot of junk... super slow buffs (recovery) and few signature spells, that everyone takes.  Again, any class in the game can solo anything with some thought, including Priests, but it definitely wasn't a well developed class.

[thelee]

On 6/7/2019 at 6:16 PM, heldred said:

1) Priests are nowhere near what they were in POE1... to be fair, besides Monks, what is a "clear" standout for performance?  (opinion, moving forward)

2) Priests are perceived to be "fine" because of a few spells (BDD, SOT, T8/9 Signature spells, some summoned weapons, etc.)

3) Priests (without mods) are mediocre due to horrific cast and recovery times for a lot of spells, combined with multiple substandard spells littering every level

4) There are a handful of good spells and you ultimately end up with homogenized shi-te (that is French, for bad...) each play-through, regardless of deity

5) In addition, the Druid is in many ways a better healer... so that title is gone

6) Damage dealer?  Well, my money is on a PL-ed Wiz, but that is just me... and let's not forget grimoires.

7) So what is a Priest good for?  Besides being a trick build for Monks and other nacho-cheese fun (see point #2), I find myself hardly ever picking it since a Druid or Wiz does it better (and often faster).  I guess role-play...  

 

In short, nothing is going to change at this point in the dev cycle, but Priests were poorly constructed from the start and were probably overlooked due to a few standout spells or the stigma of being true deities in POE1.   Can you play them and be effective?  Absolutely, but that doesn't excuse the noticeable flaws in their design and implementation...  

1. priests are nowhere near PoE1 and that's a good thing. some poe survey showed priests as like one of the most under-selected class amongst the player base, which is a shame, because priests were frankly amazing in PoE1, straight out of the gates. Devotions in PoE1 was also stupidly obscene with its +20/-20 acc buff/debuff.

2. that's not why priests are "fine", those are why priests are powerful.

3. see this complaint a lot, and I wonder how many people would generalize this to all casters. Honestly I never have a problem with priest cast times - my main complaint was the litany/prayers, and they fixed it in a patch by giving them almost insta-cast.

4. i've debated this at length on the forums, so I don't really care to relitigate it, but I don't think priests are nearly as homogenous as people make them out to be... it might just be an artifact of underplaying priests. If you only occasionally play a wizard in BG, you might always take sleep/mirror image/fireball as a "safe" good choice and then wonder why wizards are so homogeneous. same thing I suspect here. I think both the PoE1 survey, an early Deadfire telemetry tweet, and my experience with numbers from WoW show that people in general tend to avoid support classes, so I don't think the underplaying is a Deadfire-specific phenomenon but may limit perspective.

5. Druids have always been a better healer. The difference is that by and large they have to do theirs over time. Priests have ways to more instantaneously influence the fight, either with direct heals like restore/holy radiance/minor intercession/light of eothas or indirect effects like BDD/Withdraw. They do have Consecrated Ground, but the position is stuck where you cast it, which is more limiting than druids (though a side benefit is that you can't counter priest heal over time with Fire-keyworded abilities).

6. Priests aren't expected to be top notch damage dealers, though they can have a decent niche.

7. Priests are: top-tier party buffers/dispellers, revivers; second-tier debuffers, damage dealers, healers, cleansers, and arguably summoners (chanters obv best, but I find there to be massive utility in Spiritual Ally). If you play on lower difficulties or without challenges, the impact of buffing or revives maybe so muted because you can just brute force your way through fights, at which point yeah, sure, maybe you can do better debuffing/damage with a wizard or healing with a druid. 

[dunehunter]

On 6/6/2019 at 6:10 PM, Boeroer said:

Honestly Salvation of Time is only OP if you combine it with Brilliant. In itself it's totally ok balance-wise. 

Hmm when you can use SoT to extend Blade cascade and 200%+ Lash bonus from Deltro's cage helm i don't think it's balanced.

[thelee]

6 hours ago, dunehunter said:

Hmm when you can use SoT to extend Blade cascade and 200%+ Lash bonus from Deltro's cage helm i don't think it's balanced.

by default you only get +20s, +30s with self empower from one priest. (maybe +40s with some luck with echo effects). without brilliant, that might sound like a lot, but it's not. sure you can blade cascade your way through a trash mob, but an empowered high-level symbol will also do the same thing. even if you combine with other effects at the same time (e.g. BDD, Escape, aefyllath, wecy's hood, blade turning) to get extra mileage out of the stretched duration, you are certainly very powerful, but not--imo--that much out of line for multiple casts and an empower point of a mid-high level spell with lots of metagame setup.

salvation of time is a very swing-y spell. it can certainly be powerful when metagamed, but it can also be utterly useless if not set up correctly. but it's not truly degenerate unless you can brilliant your way to stretching short effects to infinite duration.

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, dunehunter said:

Hmm when you can use SoT to extend Blade cascade and 200%+ Lash bonus from Deltro's cage helm i don't think it's balanced.

My mod add a cap for SoT effect : Blade cascade (or any other effects) can only have its duration doubled by my version of SoT. It's very strong, but less than normal. Blade Cascade is extremely strong by itself anyway.

Edited July 2, 2020 by Elric Galad

[dunehunter]

Yes, specially when u combine Blade cascade with a potentially 200-300% lash buff, it’s devastating. Almost all combat can end in 30 sec with both activated. And SoT is the key.