Project for a Balance Mod

[Powerotti]

11 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I love this idea.
But I think Interrupt would "feel" better than Prone (would look weird to have a target falling for no reason).

It feels like an echo. A persisting sound.

You know what it remind me ?
A freaking Bell !

I think this may be the best effect to add on Bell Strike.

Prone is about enemy being so confused (in real life meaning, not deadfire affliction), that he can tripp over his own feet

Charmed part would be especially useful for debonaire

[Phenomenum]

23 minutes ago, Powerotti said:

Charmed part would be especially useful for debonaire

Indeed. My vote for Charm for Sap upgrade. A Charmed enemy hits other enemies and they become Confused. It's will be very easy - just replace initial Confusion with Charm. Works fine as CC in my book.
Guile cost 1 > 2 because ability will be more powerful.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Phenomenum

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, Powerotti said:

Prone is about enemy being so confused (in real life meaning, not deadfire affliction), that he can tripp over his own feet

Consider that I was desperately looking for an idea for Bell Strikes, and I think that Interrupt over time is perfectly suited.

1 hour ago, Phenomenum said:

Indeed. My vote for Charm for Sap upgrade. A Charmed enemy hits other enemies and they become Confused. It's will be very easy - just replace initial Confusion with Charm. Works fine as CC in my book.
Guile cost 1 > 2 because ability will be more powerful.

Well, I feel it would sort of remove Debonnaire uniqueness. (Side note : I would consider lowering Roguish Charm Duration and have it affect all targets.)

Raising the cost for the upgrade only is against my principles (well my design principles). It could be a different ability like Greater Lay on Hand though.

Still thinking about the perfect idea for Sap, but I'm not discarding Charm. The base Sap also needs some care.

[Phenomenum]

I think, i'll just reduce Bells cost to 1 Guile in CP Addon - the rest is up to you.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Phenomenum

[Powerotti]

On 2/23/2020 at 12:00 PM, Elric Galad said:

For your information, my next Steps are Barbarian then Rogue.

Mage Slayer require some care. Throw out spell resistance of friendly spells completly or make it scale with power level? 3-5% resistance for hostile per PL and 1.5-2.5% for friendly?

[UltimaLuminaire]

I wouldn't exactly call that care if all you're doing is making the resistance friendly and increasing it with power level. It's not a popular subclass to begin with and the identity of the class has always been in conflict with itself since you'll kill most casters faster than you can actually benefit from its features. As it stands, even the usefulness of Spell Disruption is underwhelming due to how most enemy spell-like abilities are not actually spells for the purpose of the subclass feature. The drawbacks are also beyond just indiscriminate spell resistance, as you are also unable to use poisons and other non-magical consumables.

 

I think Elric has a blank slate on their hands in regards to Mage Slayer. It doesn't have much going for it aside from the magic resistance, and that's coming from someone who decided to do a solo Mage Slayer run. Probably the most I got out of the resistance was in SSS and only in a few fights. Armor still mattered more.

[Elric Galad]

About Mage Slayer :

First I have a problem with Fire Pokemon subclasses : a Fire Pokemon subclass is a subclass that is good at killing Ice Pokemon, just because of the Fire and Ice Keyword.

Debonaires are a bit this way vs Kith (even if they have some bonuses that work vs everything), but that's the reason why I'm suggestion to make their Charm universal (at the cost of half duration).

 

Mage Slayers are really a Fire Pokemon subclass : they are good vs Spell casters and... that's it.

Furthermore, their Resistance make friendly fail randomly... and to be honnest, most people don't like random abilities, especially when it could block Healing spells.


What I have in mind is simply replacing their resistance by :
-25% Hostile effects duration (so it would be useful in much more situation, including Forbidden Fist buildsfor example) 
-25% Beneficial effects duration. This lower many effects, but is at least predictable.
They would still have their signature spell disruption. Maybe it could be added to the effect of barbarian abilities (Leap, Shouts, etc... ) ?

Edited February 24, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Powerotti]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

-25% Hostile effects duration

But most of the hostile effects doesn't comes from spells. Also it won't help with fireball flying at you.

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

-25% Beneficial effects duration. This lower many effects, but is at least predictable.

I'm fine with that if you change subclass name as well. My proposition is "Selfbuff Slayer" 

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Furthermore, their Resistance make friendly fail randomly... and to be honnest, most people don't like random abilities, especially when it could block Healing spells.

Another idea

Bonus: spell disruption, hostile spell resistance,

Penalty: remove carnage (instead of potions) and scrolls,  increase melee and ranged damage taken by 15%

Edited February 24, 2020 by Powerotti

[UltimaLuminaire]

Spell Disruption has synergy with Carnage. When it was useful during my solo Mage Slayer run, Carnage was an abuseable factor due to how Carnage grazes work. If you keep Spell Disruption, don't get rid of Carnage arbitrarily.

Edited February 25, 2020 by UltimaLuminaire
Clarification

[Elric Galad]

9 hours ago, Powerotti said:

But most of the hostile effects doesn't comes from spells.

Yeah, that's the point, giving Mage Slayer an advantage that works even when not fighting Mage (but still works well vs them)

Quote

Also it won't help with fireball flying at you.

Barbarian already have what they need vs damage spell : an enormous pool of HP. I don't think it's critical for this reason. What @UltimaLuminaire seems to be saying is that Spell Resistance isn't that helpfull cause they're simply not so many spells. We're not in DnD where Magic Resistance apply to various effects.

Quote

I'm fine with that if you change subclass name as well. My proposition is "Selfbuff Slayer" 

Well, a possibility would be to filter this so it doesn't apply to Barbarian Self-Buffs. It will make some multiclassing meh (especially Wizard, but I guess it's normal), but that still leaves many build possibilities.

Quote

Another idea

Bonus: spell disruption, hostile spell resistance,

Penalty: remove carnage (instead of potions) and scrolls,  increase melee and ranged damage taken by 15%

Yurk, the bonus are still a bit situational and the penalties very heavy. It sounds like a nerf IMHO.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Powerotti]

My point is that i like "fire pokemons". I think making all subclasses good for all type of encounters is a bit wrong way. Teamplay needs som sort of rock-paper-scisors style builds, to be fun. Mage slayer should be useful when fighting wizards, so turning up spell resistance to 30-50% or scale it with PL could be better. 15% more physical damage is not that bad - it literally means that, you need 8.5 hits instead of 10 to kill you, but healing spells and potions can save you from that. Carnage is most useful when close range fighters surrounds you, and as a mage slayer you want to do your job in the backrow, where enemies are more spread out. But despite that it's still viable in no-mage encounters (more than corpse eater without kith meals). Eventually don't get rid of carnage completely, but decrease its damage, like it is with trickster sneak attack.

[Elric Galad]

4 hours ago, Powerotti said:

My point is that i like "fire pokemons". I think making all subclasses good for all type of encounters is a bit wrong way. Teamplay needs som sort of rock-paper-scisors style builds, to be fun. Mage slayer should be useful when fighting wizards, so turning up spell resistance to 30-50% or scale it with PL could be better. 15% more physical damage is not that bad - it literally means that, you need 8.5 hits instead of 10 to kill you, but healing spells and potions can save you from that. Carnage is most useful when close range fighters surrounds you, and as a mage slayer you want to do your job in the backrow, where enemies are more spread out. But despite that it's still viable in no-mage encounters (more than corpse eater without kith meals). Eventually don't get rid of carnage completely, but decrease its damage, like it is with trickster sneak attack.

That's an interesting statement, because if we have different expectations about class balance, it's pretty hard to find a consensus.

First, for me, it depends on the level of Fire-Pokemoness. Mage Slayer is a problem (and Debonnaire a bit too) because all of his subclass feat are dedicated to well... mageslaying. In my version, I want to keep spell disruption which is all about mage slaying, and gives Hostile effect resistance to open up the class. So eventually, it will be a Fire-Pokemon-with-generic-feats type.

Then there is the occurrence and level of risk of Spellcaster.
BG2's Inquisitor was great because the mages were really a critical danger (and a major headache).
Crowd fighting is great because there's Crowds in like 80% of the fights.
In PoE2, spellcasters are a small part of foes and a medium level of dangers IMHO. Auranic, Maerwald'SSS party and a few others still matter. That leads to Mageslayer being not so great IMHO, because Mageslaying is important, but not so critical. 

Finally, I don't consider my planned change as a strict buff, so I will include it in the "second package" of my mod, along with nerfs. So easier to remove if you don't like it.

Anyway, I would like to know if your opinion is shared by other players.

(By the way I plan to buff corpse eater kith meals too)

Edited February 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

While I was trying to improve and debug Shadowed Hunters, I found something strange (that also apply to the base game version) :

The pet was able to stay invisible after his first attack and the Shadowed Hunter status was still active. The second attack dispell the status.
The same is partially true for the ranger, unless a Multi-Hit weapon is used (because the cancellation is based on the second attack roll). For some reason the ranger was visible after the initial attack, but the status effect still displayed.

Then I checked the gamedata files and spotted this :

"TriggerAdjustment": {

                "TriggerOnEvent": "OnPostAttackRollCalculated",

                "TriggerOffEvent": "None",

                "ValidateWithAttackFilter": "false",

                "ParamValue": 0,

                "ValueAdjustment": 0,

                "DurationAdjustment": 0,

                "ResetTriggerOnEffectTimeout": "false",

                "MaxTriggerCount": 2,

                "IgnoreMaxTriggerCount": "false",

                "RemoveEffectAtMax": "true",

                "ChanceToTrigger": 1

 

The most curious is that this "MaxTriggerCount": 2 seems to be there for every invisible effect of the gamedata file.
 

Did anyone notice that invisibility (or part of their related ability) don't break on first attack ?

 

It seems weird that it is coded this way. But there might be some reasons.

It makes Shadowed Hunters tweak a bit more complicated to balanced, given it could apply an attack bonus twice... or not.

Edited February 29, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Phenomenum]

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Then I checked the gamedata files and spotted this :

Everything seems right. This how ability designed:

"TriggerOnEvent": "OnPostAttackRollCalculated", - means that all status effects triggered 1st time after attack 99ad5e70-b423-4883-9b9f-ef65f9773a5a for 30 sec. OR if you'll launch second attack - in this case all SE will be triggered 2nd time and clear.

I mean, it's logical and fine on paper. Also "MaterialReplacement" status effect can be buggy sometimes.

[Elric Galad]

2 minutes ago, Phenomenum said:

Everything seems right. This how ability designed:

"TriggerOnEvent": "OnPostAttackRollCalculated", - means that all status effects triggered 1st time after attack 99ad5e70-b423-4883-9b9f-ef65f9773a5a for 30 sec. OR if you'll launch second attack - in this case all SE will be triggered 2nd time and clear.

I mean, it's logical and fine on paper. Also "MaterialReplacement" status effect can be buggy sometimes.

You're right, Shadowed Hunter triggers an "attack" to activate the effect on the pet.
The status on the ranger should indeed break on the next (2nd) attack launched by the ranger.

However, the status on the pet is identical to the one on the ranger, and the pet itself never had to lauch an "attack".
That's probably why the invisbility seems consistently persisting on the pet while it is not the case on the ranger.

Cleaning the ability could require duplicating the Ranger status into Pet status, and lowering  "MaxTriggerCount" to 1 on the pet status only. 

[Phenomenum]

For pet's it works different, because pet don't perform any attack during ability activation, so he still have 2 attacks triggers before effects dispell.

Yes, there should be separate SE's for pet with "MaxTriggerCount"  = 1. Basically, you should copy all SE's from Ranger add different ID's to them and put into "99ad5e70-b423-4883-9b9f-ef65f9773a5a" attack instead of existing SE's. This should work.

[Phenomenum]

"Lazy programming and copy-paste. It's just works". (c) Obsidian.

Edited February 29, 2020 by Phenomenum

[Phenomenum]

Or... maybe it's worth to simply delete all triggers and just set "ClearWhenAttacks": "true"? Seems the easiest way.

ClearWhenAttacks

If set, this effect will be cleared if the owner launches an attack.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Phenomenum

[Heukalyptus]

Alright, I have been playing around the changes

 

Fighter - I find the original skill design to be muddled 

* Inspired Discipline giving all T1 Inspirations is fine for 2 Disciplines, but I never understood why this skill existed in the first place. Perception (and possibly Intelligence) Inspirations are already provided by a PL1/PL3 skill, so it feels bad to double down on it. Inspired Strike at PL9 gives you Nimble and Acute, so even more redundancy. 

I would like to see some clean-up, for example Inspired Discipline would give fewer Inspirations, maybe it only give Body Inspirations (Might/Dexterity/Constitution), but T2 ? If the Fighter want Perception or Intelligence Insp, they go for Disciplined Barrage&upgrades. If they want Resolve Insp, they go with Unbending.

* Power Strike and Inspired Strike : The big single target nuke and CC, feels good - I would remove the Insp from the upgrade and go deeper it that "I will kill you, single target" theme, and give it an even bigger %dmg inscrease

*Take the Hit, Into the Fray&Upgrade all fell good and fine

 

Paladin - I like that Pladin is a poor ranged healer, with their main direct heals (LoH, Healing Chains, Divine Immolation and LoPZ) all having short range or being PBAoE

* LoPZ feels very expansive, and kinda similar to Sacred/Divine Immolation : Same PBAoE, damages and heals. Immolation is duration-based, while LoPZ is bursty, but I would like to see more separration between the two skills. Maybe LoPZ should only be a strong, burst PBAoE heal skill, while Immolation is a strong, duration-based PBAoE dmg skill, with Divine Immolation upgrade not healing any longer.

* I love love love having Exhortation to cost 1, it feels great

* Abjuration still feel expansive at 3 Zeals, but I honeslty don't know how to change it.

* Healing Chains is fun  But 50 bounces might be a bit silly

* Side note on LoH upgrades - its been a petpeeve of mine that the upgrades cost 2, how do you feel about it ?

 

Chanter - The Troubadour nerfed is well-thought out, it feel fairer, also thanks for the upgrades costing the same as their parent skill, I really prefer it

Ranger

* I don't think Sharpshooter needed the extra range boost

* All the pets abilities : I wish they had the same universal range  - you increased Heal to 10m, could you think about doing the same for Bonded Fury ?

*Vengeful Grief : Instead of Inspiration (being dispalable with Afflictions), maybe a unique beneficial effect ?

 

[Elric Galad]

6 hours ago, Heukalyptus said:

Alright, I have been playing around the changes

 

Fighter - I find the original skill design to be muddled 

* Inspired Discipline giving all T1 Inspirations is fine for 2 Disciplines, but I never understood why this skill existed in the first place. Perception (and possibly Intelligence) Inspirations are already provided by a PL1/PL3 skill, so it feels bad to double down on it. Inspired Strike at PL9 gives you Nimble and Acute, so even more redundancy. 

I would like to see some clean-up, for example Inspired Discipline would give fewer Inspirations, maybe it only give Body Inspirations (Might/Dexterity/Constitution), but T2 ? If the Fighter want Perception or Intelligence Insp, they go for Disciplined Barrage&upgrades. If they want Resolve Insp, they go with Unbending.

I think I agree, but it is also one of the reason why I wasn't too affraid to buff it. Also consider that casting it before Tier 3 Perception makes Tier 1 Perception redundant, but also makes Tier 3 Per last longer, so the anti-synergy is not so bad.

At least it works as backup Inspiration.

Also : my aim is not to change all abilities, by the way, unless they really don't have a purpose (such as Healing chain). So for now, I won't change this but I keep your ideas in mind.

Quote

* Power Strike and Inspired Strike : The big single target nuke and CC, feels good - I would remove the Insp from the upgrade and go deeper it that "I will kill you, single target" theme, and give it an even bigger %dmg inscrease

Same as above : I don't want to change completely Inspired Discipline, but if I was "designing the ability from scratch", I would agree with you.

But maybe I can leave the inspirations as they are in official version and indeed buff the damages to something like 300+%. This would reduce redundancy with Inspired Discipline too.

Quote

*Take the Hit, Into the Fray&Upgrade all fell good and fine

Great !

Quote

Paladin - I like that Pladin is a poor ranged healer, with their main direct heals (LoH, Healing Chains, Divine Immolation and LoPZ) all having short range or being PBAoE

* LoPZ feels very expansive, and kinda similar to Sacred/Divine Immolation : Same PBAoE, damages and heals. Immolation is duration-based, while LoPZ is bursty, but I would like to see more separration between the two skills. Maybe LoPZ should only be a strong, burst PBAoE heal skill, while Immolation is a strong, duration-based PBAoE dmg skill, with Divine Immolation upgrade not healing any longer.

Consider that Paladins have Divine Retribution passive that works on summon. Burst Healing (even if costly) + this is very very very strong. 

LoPZ is a kind of Deluxe panic button and has a clear identity as single best Burst Healing of the game.

Quote

* I love love love having Exhortation to cost 1, it feels great

Thanks ! This is arguably one of my small but favorite changes. I really like what Obsidian did with Paladins because I truly dislike them in DnD (Cliché Lore + basically Cleric/Fighter). Commands really feels like the uncomplete piece of their Battle Commander identity, so it was important for me to make it more viable.

Quote

* Abjuration still feel expansive at 3 Zeals, but I honeslty don't know how to change it.

Me neither. It is simply a situational ability, but it probably worths 3 zeal when used in the right conditions.

Quote

* Healing Chains is fun  But 50 bounces might be a bit silly

Maybe a bit silly indeed, but I still see it as the only way to work around randomness of the jumps.

Quote

* Side note on LoH upgrades - its been a petpeeve of mine that the upgrades cost 2, how do you feel about it ?

To make it simple : it's very annoying to change it to a mere upgrade. Like very very annoying. The code would be extremely ugly and fat with potential conflict with other mods. If I change this to 1 zeal, this would enable to have 2 abilities with same cost with one being strictly better. ANd this is ugly like ugliness. So I preferred keeping it like this (and buffing them a bit).

Quote

Chanter - The Troubadour nerfed is well-thought out, it feel fairer, also thanks for the upgrades costing the same as their parent skill, I really prefer it

Copyright @Boeroer. My idea was to increase +1 phrase malus to +2 but this one was better.

Quote

Ranger

* I don't think Sharpshooter needed the extra range boost

-10 Deflection feels bad even if it feels like specialization. And the subclass felt a bit bland for my own taste. I wanted to add Something cool, but not just another ranged damages bonus. I keep your point in mind though.

Quote

* All the pets abilities : I wish they had the same universal range  - you increased Heal to 10m, could you think about doing the same for Bonded Fury ?

Oh yes, I should have thought about this !

Quote

*Vengeful Grief : Instead of Inspiration (being dispalable with Afflictions), maybe a unique beneficial effect ?

Maybe unecessary change ? For some reasons, I'm fond of infinite duration inspirations (well, at least I like them on foes).

Just side message : I have not abandonned the project. It's simply that I have few time to do it IRL (because baby, work and now freaking quarantine - that doesn't even prevent me to work ) and I admit I used it to... well... play a bit. 


Small update by the way : I finally ended with Something clean about Shadowed Hunters :

I simply added an effect that cause the first pet Attack (which doesnt' break invisibility for some reasons even in the normal game !!!) to cause 16 raw damages per 3s tick for 30s. So you hide while your target bleeds, which sounds very Shadowed Hunters for me (and very Komodo Dragon too, which I like).

I did like this because it is mostly unique, doesn't feellike another backstab and also solves the current "first Attack doesn't break pet invisibility" issue.

There might have been other ways to rework the ability, but it has already many effects (including untargetability, effects that break on Attack...) so it quickly degenerates into weirdness when you add Something (and I really tried). I honnestly prefer to stop wasting more time on it, but I'm still open about changing the numbers (but no new effects, please )


And thank you very much for your review !!

Edited March 17, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Heukalyptus]

 

53 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Also : my aim is not to change all abilities, by the way, unless they really don't have a purpose

 

Fair enough ! 

I'll play again with FoPZ and Immolation, see if I can change my mind. About Healing Chain, the best case scenario would be to have a priority to target the most injured party member, good luck to find out to mod that

I'll find the strengh in myself to accept LoH upgrades costing 2, its okay !

I like Shadowed Hunters granting a stong DoT, feels very in theme for Ranger - but I would prefer if the DoT duration was stackable, and then both the pet first attack AND the ranger's first attack apply each 15s of the DoT - to emphasis the "hunterS".

Really weird to give Ranger that random invisibilty/untargetabilty tho, I wonder why they did this.

I just had a random thought - I never really thought much of it, but Rangers do have one Plant keyworded skill, don't they, with Binding Roots ? I wonder if we could push the logic, and give all the pets abilities the Beast keyword. Making them more powerfull with you multiclass with Druid, or a couple of weapons with Beast PL. What do you think ?

[Elric Galad]

10 hours ago, Heukalyptus said:

 

I like Shadowed Hunters granting a stong DoT, feels very in theme for Ranger - but I would prefer if the DoT duration was stackable, and then both the pet first attack AND the ranger's first attack apply each 15s of the DoT - to emphasis the "hunterS".

But this is what I wanted to do

I tried it 2 different ways :
- Adding a similar effect to the ranger, but the game counts the number of Attack roll to prevent invisibility breaking. Which means it breaks on Blunderbuss or similar Attack. Pets don't have this problem because its Attack is set in stone.
- Making Shadowed Hunters an Attack that proc invisibility such as vanishing strike. But it ended triggering invisibility on the target...

All this took too much time tbh. I won't change the ability again only for a slightly better fluff, even if I agree with your idea. Honnestly the result in-game would be more or less the same anyway.
 

10 hours ago, Heukalyptus said:

I just had a random thought - I never really thought much of it, but Rangers do have one Plant keyworded skill, don't they, with Binding Roots ? I wonder if we could push the logic, and give all the pets abilities the Beast keyword. Making them more powerfull with you multiclass with Druid, or a couple of weapons with Beast PL. What do you think ?

This is a good idea, but adding Keywords is more in the scope of Community Patch and its add-on. You should ask @Phenomenum

[Phenomenum]

No.

[Heukalyptus]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

But this is what I wanted to do

Oh Im sorry, and you are right, it would just be ~flavor~ at this point !

[Elric Galad]

10 minutes ago, Phenomenum said:

No.

Mind if I do then ? Just wanted to avoid overlap.