Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0

[NotDumbEnough]

That's a tier 2 spell cast you're expending though, and illusionists really want to use them on Miasma of Dull Mindedness

[Elric Galad]

Might be a semi-concern at low levels. I could rise the chances to 15%.
I'll think about it later. 15% will make it easier to test anyway  

Edited March 10, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

On 3/9/2021 at 3:01 PM, Phenomenum said:

Interesting. I've checked familiar buffs and:

1. Familiar are origin of this effects – these abilities belongs to familiar according to progressiontables.gamedata

2. If these effects tend to stick to character, this is some kind of program bug, because effects itself are OK, contain no mistakes and should be disappear with origin (familiar) death.

3. So "ClearOnDeath": "true" can make it work (or don't). Otherwise i see no workarounds.

ClearOnDeath works if familiar is killed.
I don't know if it works if it is "unsummoned" because of another summon, cause I've just changed the ability to not count as a summon.
Anyway, it doesn't work if familiar stay until max duration. A duration could do the trick but I'm unsure which INTELLECT is used (Conjurer's or Familiar's) so it could lead to discrepancies. It should be tested.

[Boeroer]

Maybe check out Frenzy Ward from Furyshaper? It's a summon, it gives you a buff as long as it's there and afaik that buff gets removed when the ward is removed - no matter how.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

On 3/15/2021 at 11:27 AM, Boeroer said:

Maybe check out Frenzy Ward from Furyshaper? It's a summon, it gives you a buff as long as it's there and afaik that buff gets removed when the ward is removed - no matter how.

I tried to copy the way ward worked but it didn't work. I don't know what is happening but I think I tried enough. The only difference is that the familiar checks if the target is the conjurer. It might mess up with hardcode or something.

I will implement a dirty duration on the effect to limit the consequences. The duration won't match exactly but will be better than nothing. Maybe someone else will find a better way but I personnally give up on this one  
Actually the effect is purged in a correct way when the familiar is killed. It's only if it stays alive the whole duration that it persists.

[Elric Galad]

On 3/19/2021 at 1:45 AM, Elric Galad said:

I tried to copy the way ward worked but it didn't work. I don't know what is happening but I think I tried enough. The only difference is that the familiar checks if the target is the conjurer. It might mess up with hardcode or something.

I will implement a dirty duration on the effect to limit the consequences. The duration won't match exactly but will be better than nothing. Maybe someone else will find a better way but I personnally give up on this one  
Actually the effect is purged in a correct way when the familiar is killed. It's only if it stays alive the whole duration that it persists.

A possible workaround would be to have newly cast familiar remove other familiar type effects. 5 times out of 6 it would purge an infinite familiar buff remaining from a previous cast.

It's not perfect since avoiding casting familiar spell would enable keeping the familiar effect forever, but preventing a conjurer from casting familiar is a drawback anyway, which kind of compensate the glitch.

Since I plan to remove familiar from summon limit, it would also mitigate the benefit of summoning a horde of familiars through brilliant.

[Atomic Dragons of Mars]

I've just started playing with this mod after finding it on the Nexus - it looks like some awesome, sensible changes! It's very cool that you have been keeping it up and continue to update it.

 

I've noticed some spelling issues in the abilities, though. Would you like a native English speaker to help with that? I have done a small amount of editing for articles published on Medium and have written a protocol manual for work before, all with the goals of simplicity and clarity. The language mostly looks perfect and so far I have only seen spelling and capitalization mistakes, but I've only just picked up Xoti. 

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

I've just started playing with this mod after finding it on the Nexus - it looks like some awesome, sensible changes! It's very cool that you have been keeping it up and continue to update it.

 

I've noticed some spelling issues in the abilities, though. Would you like a native English speaker to help with that? I have done a small amount of editing for articles published on Medium and have written a protocol manual for work before, all with the goals of simplicity and clarity. The language mostly looks perfect and so far I have only seen spelling and capitalization mistakes, but I've only just picked up Xoti. 

Thanks it would be nice ! I'm not a native English speaker indeed but I'm pretty sure I could have made the same kind of mistakes in French too.

I've completed a new package for delivery yesterday so I think I could include your remark in the release after this one.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Atomic Dragons of Mars]

Well, here's what I have so far. I focused too hard and went too deep, and that's a dumb idea. It's pretty clear no one edited the chanter's abilities for capitalization, and there are a ton of style inconsistencies. I saw some spelling errors in your text and thought you might need more help, but now I think you did almost as well as the original writers, frankly. I think your biggest error was capitalizing class names, which was not done elsewhere in the game.

I will not go over all the stylistic or capitalization inconsistencies. That just seems ticky-tacky because Obsidian didn't watch that well themselves. I don't blame them; I bet editing this amount of text from so many stylistically different writers already drove their editors mad. I'll just point out the more noticeable gaffs.

Issues of greater importance are marked with an asterisk.

 

General:

Extra Pocket (PL5 passive): The "p" of "pocket" in the title is not capitalized. "Tab" is an unusual, anachronistic word choice here.

Fast Empower (PL7 passive): The final clause "gain +15% action speed until end of combat" is independent and should be its own sentence or linked to the previous clauses with a "then gain..." or "then the character gains...".

Great Soul (PL8 passive): "Resource" is spelled with only one "s". The phrase "Also resources per class:..." could be clarified by adding a verb, such as "Also gain resources per class:..." or "Gain bonus resources depending on class:...". Also, class names are capitalized here when they are not elsewhere.

 

Barbarian

Berserker (PL0 subclass descriptor): In the Bonus section, "carnage" should be capitalized. Note that the word "carnage" does not need to be capitalized in the upper description text because it is not necessarily referring to the literal game term.

Frenzy (PL1 active): In the Berserker's subclass bonus description "carnage" and "confused" should be capitalized.

*Flesh Communion (PL0 subclass descriptor): A comma is needed between "corpse" and "healing". This is also a very confusing skill to read. What does costing -1 Rage mean? When it says "+3 of each Barbarian resource" is gained, what does that mean? Just Rage (the barbarian resource) or all resources this barbarian character has access to? Does that mean they gain +4 Rage? Also, class names are not usually capitalized in ability text, so this is not stylistically consistent.

*Mage Slayer (PL0 subclass descriptor): It'd be cool if "Spell Disruption" had a tooltip or was described specifically.

Brute Force (PL5 passive): "Fortitude" is correctly capitalized in the summary but not in the description paragraph.

Vengeful Defeat (PL8 passive): The parenthetical sentence needs a period.

 

Chanter

Bellower subclass description: "Collections" should be "collection" (singular) and the final sentence's "the" should be "their".

Shatter Their Shackles, Cast off Their Chains! (PL2 active): The summary says it makes characters immune to Dexterity afflictions, while the description text says it removes them. Does it do one of those things or both?

...Its Crash Could Not Be Denied (PL4 active upgrade): Description says it gains an Accuracy bonus, but how much is not stated in either the summary or description.

Together They Slew Forth a River of Red (PL5 active upgrade): Does not specify how much bonus damage the charmed enemies get.

*...Each Kill Fed His Fury (PL6 active upgrade): The summary says it grants the Fit Inspiration, but the base ability does not and the upgrade description does not mention this either.

The Foul Thing Gave One Final Gasp (PL8 active upgrade): The upgrade description should have parentheses. "Gaz" should be "gas" and "sickens" should be capitalized and blue.

 

Cypher

Echoing Shield (PL5 active): The summary says "Foe AOE: Immunity to Concentration attacks." I know that's in the base game, I'd just like to know what the hell it means. This is just the dumbest wording, gahhhhhhhh.

Ancestor's Memory (PL7 active): "Allies'" should be "ally's".

Defensive Mindweb (PL8 active): The description ends with two periods.

Biting Whip (PL2 passive upgrade): This is a little hard to parse. I think the summary might mean "+20 Damage with weapons, +20% of weapon Damage dealt as Raw", though it's not clear if the second 20% is the base or total damage. Also, "raw" should be capitalized in the final sentence and that sentence does not need a comma.

Psychic Backlash (PL3 passive): The summary says one use per encounter but the description makes it seem like it is activated every time the cypher's Will is targeted.

Keen Mind (PL5 passive): The summary says +1.5 focus. That's tiny! I have no idea what this means.

Brutal Backlash (PL5 passive): Needs a comma between "traumatic" and "inflicting".

Protective Soul (PL9 passive): "Self when critically hit (when critically hit):" is redundant. The second comma in the description is redundant.

 

 

Whew. Is this valuable at all? Going over the chanter ability names broke my head a little.

[Jayd]

What are people's feelings about the buff to Paladin Beacons?

Glorious beacon & Upgrades :
3s/4s Cast -> 0,5s/4,5s Cast
1,5m AoE -> 2,5m AoE
8s Duration -> 12s Duration (for all effects, including upgrades)

 

Having played with it a while I'm beginning to think it's too much. Inspired Beacon's debuff is so strong and this makes it trivial to apply it to big groups of enemies for a long time (even with just Pallegina). I understand from reading earlier in the thread that the idea was to make the base ability comparable to Eyestrike, which is a good intuition, but when Inspired Beacon comes into the picture I feel this is such a strong, no-brainer, no-downside effect as to make many/most fights significantly easier than vanilla/Community Patch, which isn't what I want from the mod and I don't think is what you want, @Elric Galad.

I was thinking of simply deleting this file but, because I like the change to the base function of the ability, I'm going to try turning the duration of just the damage debuff back to the original base 8s (keeping in mind that even the CP set it to 10). I see that all the different effects are nicely differentiated in the files. Enduring Beacon is also probably fine as is with the long duration (compare with Shields for the Faithful).

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

Well, here's what I have so far. I focused too hard and went too deep, and that's a dumb idea. It's pretty clear no one edited the chanter's abilities for capitalization, and there are a ton of style inconsistencies. I saw some spelling errors in your text and thought you might need more help, but now I think you did almost as well as the original writers, frankly. I think your biggest error was capitalizing class names, which was not done elsewhere in the game.

I will not go over all the stylistic or capitalization inconsistencies. That just seems ticky-tacky because Obsidian didn't watch that well themselves. I don't blame them; I bet editing this amount of text from so many stylistically different writers already drove their editors mad. I'll just point out the more noticeable gaffs.

Issues of greater importance are marked with an asterisk.

Yup, the issue is that many issues you pointed are from the vanilla game (and maybe a couple come from Community Patch).

I can theoritically change them but :

- too much effort for the benefit

- If I change them I would have to copy the changed ability to basically all languages but English. This is something you can't see as a native English player but since the mod is only avaiable in English (plus translation mod in Russian) when I mod a description, the text will afterwards appear in English whatever languages is chosen. So slightly correcting a description basically cost the translation. That's why I don't want to do it.

 

However, I was able to take the following comments into account :

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

General:

Fast Empower (PL7 passive): The final clause "gain +15% action speed until end of combat" is independent and should be its own sentence or linked to the previous clauses with a "then gain..." or "then the character gains...".

done

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

Great Soul (PL8 passive): "Resource" is spelled with only one "s". The phrase "Also resources per class:..." could be clarified by adding a verb, such as "Also gain resources per class:..." or "Gain bonus resources depending on class:...". Also, class names are capitalized here when they are not elsewhere.

done

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

The Foul Thing Gave One Final Gasp (PL8 active upgrade): The upgrade description should have parentheses. "Gaz" should be "gas" and "sickens" should be capitalized and blue.

Not sure about what went wrong with parenthesis. "Gaz" corrected. Sickens capital added. Not sure what went wrong with Blue, probably I should have use the word Sickened. Changed it. It can't be worse.

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

Defensive Mindweb (PL8 active): The description ends with two periods.

done

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

Psychic Backlash (PL3 passive): The summary says one use per encounter but the description makes it seem like it is activated every time the cypher's Will is targeted.

Changed it to an effect with 60s cooldown for next version. This should overwrite the problem. It was vanilla game which had wrong description.

7 hours ago, Atomic Dragons of Mars said:

Keen Mind (PL5 passive): The summary says +1.5 focus. That's tiny! I have no idea what this means.

+1.5 focus per char level. There's a couple of effects like this that were tedious to change. The mod description is the reference for this couple of cases.

 

Of course, I will add the special thanks to your review in my next version. Feel free to make further comments if you want but probably better to do it based on the modded files to be sure you comment the mod and not vanilla game misdeeds  

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Jayd said:

What are people's feelings about the buff to Paladin Beacons?

Glorious beacon & Upgrades :
3s/4s Cast -> 0,5s/4,5s Cast
1,5m AoE -> 2,5m AoE
8s Duration -> 12s Duration (for all effects, including upgrades)

 

Having played with it a while I'm beginning to think it's too much. Inspired Beacon's debuff is so strong and this makes it trivial to apply it to big groups of enemies for a long time (even with just Pallegina). I understand from reading earlier in the thread that the idea was to make the base ability comparable to Eyestrike, which is a good intuition, but when Inspired Beacon comes into the picture I feel this is such a strong, no-brainer, no-downside effect as to make many/most fights significantly easier than vanilla/Community Patch, which isn't what I want from the mod and I don't think is what you want, @Elric Galad.

I was thinking of simply deleting this file but, because I like the change to the base function of the ability, I'm going to try turning the duration of just the damage debuff back to the original base 8s (keeping in mind that even the CP set it to 10). I see that all the different effects are nicely differentiated in the files. Enduring Beacon is also probably fine as is with the long duration (compare with Shields for the Faithful).

Yup, I am not that much at ease with it either. 

I wanted to keep Paladin Point blank effects with insta cast time and 2,5m AoE (to align with Light of Pure Zeal and Immolation, and create a sort of class theme).

That said, 12s instacast Blind + secondary effect might be too much. I could put everything at 8s.

Maybe I shouldn't be too affraid to have the unupgraded version a bit underpowered. Instacast Blind still have its use.

Also, I'm not too sure about Enduring vs Inspired Beacons. The second one is arguably much stronger (at least if they have the same duration). 

 

I could go with 8s Blind, 8s damages increased and 12s +15 Def (while keeping AoE and cast time the same). I'm going to think a little bit about it.

Edit : the reason for it is that I don't like to have 2 effects on foes with different durations.

Edited April 14, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

Or I could limit AoE to 1,5m, except for the +15 Def effect from the upgrade which I would leave at 2,5m radius (but keep the 12s duration for Blindness, bonus damages and deflection buff).

Tell me if you have any preference or some other idea.

[xxxxd]

Could I make a suggestion on the blood sacrifice ability?

I don't mind the nerf on it, but would you eliminate the chance of 'failing' to restore a high tier spell, if possible? Since it's impossible to spam it by now, I don't think it would affect the balance too much, but really helps to reduce the frustration during a playthrough.

Better yet, give players a choice on the type of blood sacrifice to make (Minor, Medium, Major). It would be fairly OP in vanilla, but not so much with the nerfs. (IDK about the technical difficulties on those, though)

Edited April 15, 2021 by xxxxd

[Atomic Dragons of Mars]

I have a couple more typos and confusing bits that I found in the abilities:

 

Druid

Nature's Terror (PL5 active): Changed to foe only, but this is not reflected in the description. (The summary is correct.)
Sunlance (PL6 active): Interrupt on Hit added, but this is not reflected in the description or summary.
Nature's Bounty (PL7 active): The description is oddly worded because it says allies feel like doing something, rather than describing the action of the spell. To keep the color of the original and add clarity, it could be changed to something like "Grants allies the benefits of a wondrous nectar that gives combat bonuses and healing."

Priest

Spiritual Weapon (PL2 actives): Summaries and descriptions do not reflect the added Accuracy.
Salvation of Time (PL6 active): "Ellapsed" is correctly spelled "elapsed".
Hand of Berath (PL9 active): Description and summary do not reflect the change to make it auto-hit.
Blessings of Wael (PL9 active): "Loose" should be "lose" in the description.

Ranger

Sharpshooter (subclass ability): The summary notes the +20% range with ranged weapons but the Bonus section of the description does not.
Brutal Takedown (PL4 active upgrade): The summary reflects the Interrupts on Graze change, but the description does not.
Vengeful Grief (PL8 passive): The description does not reflect the change to infinite duration. The "are" in the first sentence should be an "is".
Heartseeker (PL9 active): The infinite duration of Enfeeble is not noted anywhere.

Rogue

Finishing Blow and upgrades (PL3 active): The summary is confusing. The line "+50% Damage regardless of target's Health" should come before the line "+1.5% Damage for each percent of target's missing Health" and noted that they stack together, or they could be simplified to something like "+50% Damage and +1.5% additional Damage for each percent of target's missing Health".
Wall of Flashing Steel (PL9 passive): In the second sentence, "give" should be "gives".
 

[Elric Galad]

18 hours ago, xxxxd said:

Could I make a suggestion on the blood sacrifice ability?

I don't mind the nerf on it, but would you eliminate the chance of 'failing' to restore a high tier spell, if possible? Since it's impossible to spam it by now, I don't think it would affect the balance too much, but really helps to reduce the frustration during a playthrough.

Better yet, give players a choice on the type of blood sacrifice to make (Minor, Medium, Major). It would be fairly OP in vanilla, but not so much with the nerfs. (IDK about the technical difficulties on those, though)

The ability to restore a Tier IX spell with 100% of chance with a 3s action would be OP, even with the nerf.
I think the best use of Blood Sacrifice is to spam Tier 6+ spells, which gives 2/3 chances of getting back a spell of a fairly high level. Restoring low level self buffs has its use too.

That said, I think @Noqn managed to achieve what you suggest about selecting Minor, Medium, Major Blood Sacrifice. Maybe he has some file to share. (but I won't include it in my mod) 

[Elric Galad]

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/438

Version 1.4.2 has just been released.

Fresh stuff such as Specialist Wizard rework, Drug Crash vs Arcane Dampener less dumb, Potion of Enlightenment by @Noqn (also exists as a standalone mod), Psychic backlash limited to once per 60s instead of per encounter, various improvements

The changes are easy to spot thanks to the <Version 1.4.2> tag in the mod description.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Bosmer]

Nice, thank you for your continuing work on this one! I think you found the sweet spot with the 8s on the beacon upgrade. 
 

But a question regarding the comment on persistent distraction: does this mean that all per affliction debuffs on deflection and AR won‘t stack for example with the pike modal or body attunement? If so, wouldn‘t this break with the rule that affliction and inspiration effects stack with similar “direct” effects?

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Bosmer said:

Nice, thank you for your continuing work on this one! I think you found the sweet spot with the 8s on the beacon upgrade. 
 

But a question regarding the comment on persistent distraction: does this mean that all per affliction debuffs on deflection and AR won‘t stack for example with the pike modal or body attunement? If so, wouldn‘t this break with the rule that affliction and inspiration effects stack with similar “direct” effects?

Afflictions and Inspirations don't stack with similar effects.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Bosmer]

14 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Afflictions and Inspirations don't stack with similar effects.

Oh boy, I've been wrong all these years... so thank you for fixing this 

[Elric Galad]

54 minutes ago, Bosmer said:

Oh boy, I've been wrong all these years... so thank you for fixing this 

That said there might be a couple of remaining cases where inspiration and afflictions comes from a passive (flanked through position only count as a passive origin... So Deflection and AR debuff from Normal Flanking should work. Per Afflictions or Phantom Foes should not work).

I think these ones do stack which may generate a bit of confusion. Persistent Distraction is one of them. Maybe I should check if Enervating Blows could stack with other Constitution debuff... The thing is I don't think there are "Pure Constitution" debuff. I'm not sure there are other cases. Maybe statuses from items ?

Edited April 18, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Dalzar]

I was playing around with nalpazca/berserker with the new patch, but I didn't seem to suffer from fortitude malus.

[Elric Galad]

10 hours ago, Dalzar said:

I was playing around with nalpazca/berserker with the new patch, but I didn't seem to suffer from fortitude malus.

Probably because subclass passives are applied at character creation. So if the mod wasn't active at this point, the passive won't be updated after that.

[Elric Galad]

For the next version of the patch, I'm planning to rework a bit Unbending (Unless CP does it first, since I know they planned to do it anyway ; CP has priority over this kind of stuff) so it provides a fixed % of damages received, most likely only buffed by Healing Received bonuses. 

Currently Unbending has an easy time healing for about 150% damages due to incoming attacks triggering additional ticks (and Unbending Trunk feels redundant).

I'm aiming for 40% for Unbending/Shield and 60% for Unbending Trunk (so 60%/90% with Mercy Chant). I have to check how it works exactly.

 

As a consequence, I felt that Fighters could get a buff. MC Fighters will be fine anyway so I'm mostly concerned about SC.

 

Toughened Fury has a really weird design. Receiving Crit is not the way of a class with such high defenses. So instead of 25% +1 discipline on Crit, I plan to go with 10% +1 discipline on damaged. EDIT : I will tune it down to 8% +1 discipline on damaged. 10% feels a bit too strong.

 

Critical Defenses had a poor synergy with it. Even with the change above, I plan to adjust it to 50% Crit to Hit. Why ? To give SC fighter a distinct edge for defense. Crit resistance is critical with high AR cause Crit PEN bonuses basically make them ignore AR. This passive will probably be "above the curve" but I think it's nice for a class to have a few ability above the curve. This has to be limited to SC though.

 

These are the main "generalist" buff, but I also think SC fighter needs a buff to their Tanking features. 

 

Take the Hit is meh. Even with my change which makes it almost instant, I fear that spending ressources just to redirect damages isn't going to be good, especially for a Tier 9. Therefore I plan to make it free. You won't use it every time but it will be there when you need to protect your allies.

 

Unrelentless could be buffed to +5 discipline. Yes, this is huge but the ability is Tier 9 and situational (you'll need to get a wound to get back ressources).

The 2 latest changes would work well together to make SC Unbroken nice to play.

 

With these changes, I hope fighters could be the enduring tanks they are meant to be. But tell me if something feels really broken.

Edit : also since I have already made many changes and points for tiers 8-9 abilities are limited, picking high tier abilities will require even more careful choices (toughened Fury will probably stay a must pick though). And I think this is good !

Edited May 14, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Ophiuchus]

Awesome to see the community still engaged in this endeavor. I've been out of the loop for a while - so I should get the new community patch + @Elric Galad's polish mod?

Thanks for adding Frost to Spirit Tornado. I've wanted to play a Warlock or Tempest that's not Fire or Electric based so that small bonus is welcome.