Deadfire Polishing Poll pt2

[Wotcha]

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Tenuous Grasp : Its main utility is to be a quite long Will debuff IMHO. Focus cost is a non issue, but casting time is. It's already quite low so setting it to 0.5s/3s would be enough IMHO. Quick affliction spamming has its use, especially for a ranged mindstalker.

I’m not entirely disagreeing with you, but I don’t find your analysis complete. For debuffing Will, Secret Horrors gets you halfway (debuffing resolve only), does it as an AoE (you want quick affliction spamming? How about something that afflicts half the board in one go!), gives Frightened instead of Shaken (a major upgrade in terms of CC), and Sickened to boot. There just aren’t enough ability points to go around to justify a point spent on Tenuous Grasp when you could get something else more generally useful in the short term and then wait till Secret Horrors. 

Theres also the problem of your “can opener” vs. Will itself targeting Will, so if you were having problems hitting without it, you will have problems landing the can-opener hit too! I forgot to mention that as a nod to that issue, I modded it to be able to Graze, which I thought was a simple and effective way to improve such an ability for, as you rightfully point out, one of its prime use cases. 

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback, but it’s a bit of a digression for this thread. I will be starting a thread for my mod when i’m a little further along. I’m sure that many opinions will come up, and I may even listen to some of them!

[Elric Galad]

On 9/7/2019 at 10:53 PM, Wotcha said:

I’m not entirely disagreeing with you, but I don’t find your analysis complete. For debuffing Will, Secret Horrors gets you halfway (debuffing resolve only), does it as an AoE (you want quick affliction spamming? How about something that afflicts half the board in one go!), gives Frightened instead of Shaken (a major upgrade in terms of CC), and Sickened to boot. There just aren’t enough ability points to go around to justify a point spent on Tenuous Grasp when you could get something else more generally useful in the short term and then wait till Secret Horrors. 

Theres also the problem of your “can opener” vs. Will itself targeting Will, so if you were having problems hitting without it, you will have problems landing the can-opener hit too! I forgot to mention that as a nod to that issue, I modded it to be able to Graze, which I thought was a simple and effective way to improve such an ability for, as you rightfully point out, one of its prime use cases. 

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback, but it’s a bit of a digression for this thread. I will be starting a thread for my mod when i’m a little further along. I’m sure that many opinions will come up, and I may even listen to some of them!

I thought most if not all spells do Graze and "Can Graze" was an obsolete parameter. Are you sure Tenacious grasp can't ? Another solution would be to give it an Accuracy bonus (such as Thunder Rolled upgrade which has +15).

Juste made a list of Cipher powers which could need a little Care :

Antipathetic and Tenacious Grasp as you Said

Soul Ignition (desintegrate is far better, maybe if it targetted Will instead ?)

Fractured Volition (another Bad secret horror)

Hauting Chain (hard CC is nice but this one is so inferior to some wizard spell that it hurts) 

Note that some others have already been buffed by Community Patch.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Wotcha]

You could very much be correct regarding CanGraze being an obsolete parameter. I only just started modding the game a few weeks ago, I’m certain there are plenty such little things I don’t know about. 

My Frac Vol I tacked Daze onto as a third affliction, and I made Haunted Chains give Terrified, Paralyzed, AND Stunned, as a sort of trifecta of hard CC, so unless the target is resistant/immune to all three, it WILL get locked down.  And I’m still doubtful either of them are worthwhile even with such boosting. There’s a real high bar to clear for single target debuffs.

I agree that Soul Ignition needs some love but haven’t decided what to do about it. 

[Boeroer]

CanGraze is a relict from the times right after release (or beta?) where we had only miss and hit and crit for normal attacks and only certain ones could graze. This was changed to the ols mechanics like in PoE (sort of).

[Elric Galad]

Well there are plenty of ways to buff a spell :

A) Reduce Casting time (especially good for low level spells which tend to be bad at action economy)

B) Add an Interrupt/Prone (especially good with the above) or lower the interrupt threshold (such as Hit->Graze)

C) Give it an accuracy bonus (but no idea how to display it on tooltip) and/or possibly change the defense

D) Increase duration

E) Add an AoE (I have no idea how tricky it is to mod)

F) And ultimately, changing the actual effect. But in my opinion, this shall be limited to extreme cases because it somawhat "change the feeling" of the spell. 

I would simply have set Haunting Chain to 30s because I like the "so horryfied that moves slow" feeling of the spell. Even downgraded to Frightened, a 30s Frighten is still very relevant versus non resolve immune bosses.
Fracture Volition is probably beyond redemption and could require a "F" change, because these afflicitions are not worthy of a PL III single target spell. Not sure about adding Daze, but no "better  idea" at the moment.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

I wanted to share a proposal about Brilliant/SoT nerf : what about changing SoT to a lasting beneficial effect that increases duration of beneficial effects rather than the Flat duration increase it currently provides. It would still be very powerful (I would even say more convenient) but less abusable. That would also limit its interaction with very short effects such as Blade Cascade.

The added ressource tick duration of various classes could then be tweaked according to classes to make Brilliant itself more balanced.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Ancelor]

Is this thread actually a thing? I mean should we expect a second community patch?

(loved the first one)

[Elric Galad]

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 8:56 AM, Ancelor said:

Is this thread actually a thing? I mean should we expect a second community patch?

(loved the first one)

The latest news were the following :

On ‎8‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 11:49 PM, Boeroer said:

I don't know. I wrote down some ideas about priest trinkets (based on the requirements I explained in length in this thread), Phenomenon didn't like the direction where my trinkets were going and I said he should maybe discuss with MaxQuest what they really want from trinkets/want to do with trinkets. That was the last thing I heard about that topic. 

The recent posts are mostly by some other potential modders discussing balance in general.

I think I will try to make my own mod starting from the community mod basis, because it is great and goes in the right direction. But it is something I only plan to start in a couple of months. And I can't declare it as an "official continuation" of the community patch. 

Anyway, if anybody is interested, it might be better to gather different opinions, because it is the best way to prevent powercreeping and introducing some new OPness. I think the mod will include nerfs too, probably in a separate package because some players may not like nerfs in Single Player games  

[3x0du5]

Every ability should have separate files within the mod like in community patch for example , in case you dont like some changes you can remove them one by one .

Also modding nerfs onto single player game might not be the best idea

Edited September 12, 2019 by 3x0du5

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, 3x0du5 said:

Every ability should have separate files within the mod like in community patch for example , in case you dont like some changes you can remove them one by one .

Also modding nerfs onto single player game might not be the best idea

To quote the Community Patch description :

"Additionally if you don't like a specific change, you can easily find it in <mod_name>/design/gamedata/, and delete the respective .gamedatabundle".

EDITED (cause I answered too quickly) : I believe this is too much a hassle to make separate package for every change and that they made packages for good reasons (including consistency and testing).
It doesn't feel that complicated to remove a specific change this way. I will follow the same principles.

 

Nerfing is part of balancing, which is the purpose of the mod to begin with. The community patch already nerfed some abilities (such as Resonant Touch stack capping).

But I think you express a common opinion among players, and that's why making a separate package for nerfs seems the best idea IMHO.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Elric Galad

[Ancelor]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

The latest news were the following :

The recent posts are mostly by some other potential modders discussing balance in general.

I think I will try to make my own mod starting from the community mod basis, because it is great and goes in the right direction. But it is something I only plan to start in a couple of months. And I can't declare it as an "official continuation" of the community patch. 

Anyway, if anybody is interested, it might be better to gather different opinions, because it is the best way to prevent powercreeping and introducing some new OPness. I think the mod will include nerfs too, probably in a separate package because some players may not like nerfs in Single Player games  

I'm all for new additions.

You go for it

[LegendaryWyatt]

Hey all, just wanted to thank the game's community for the patch you made a few months ago. It's very good and I'm grateful. Especially you, Boeroer! You've been very helpful in the past and you deserve great respect.

[Boeroer]

Oh thanky you, too. You are most welcome.