Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0

[Elric Galad]

29 minutes ago, Torm51 said:

@Elric Galadlove the mod.

 

Question: how do you feel about the damage absorb shield Shieldbearers get on top of their prevent death mechanic for lay on hands? Do you feel that it’s a bit OP? I have not tried it yet just curious because I noticed it. I think before your mods buff it was still one of the better subclass abilities Paladin got.

It's not on top. It's instead (unless something isn't working as intended)

[Torm51]

25 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

It's not on top. It's instead (unless something isn't working as intended)

I just saw it but have not tested.  Been playing a Goldpact lately.  If it’s instead it’s  good to me.  Thanks! I’ll try it out today.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Torm51

[Elric Galad]

42 minutes ago, Torm51 said:

I just saw it but have not tested.  Been playing a Goldpact lately.  If it’s instead it’s  good to me.  Thanks! I’ll try it out today.

Good. Don't hesitate to provide feedback, especially for SC Paladin.

 

For next version, I also intend to :

- provide Avian Godlike Immunity to PER afflictions (instead of Resistance). Resistance to INT and PER feels a bit weak, especially since you can pick them as Paladin. Not worth the Headgear slot. I will let INT resistance only 

- provide Marine Godlike an actual fire immunity once every 12s (through a regenerating Water Keyworded status) instead of the very obscure fire status purge they get every 6s.

[Elric Galad]

16 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

 

- provide Marine Godlike an actual fire immunity once every 12s (through a regenerating Water Keyworded status) instead of the very obscure fire status purge they get every 6s.

By the way, has anybody ever seen Tekehu purging himself from a fire Keyworded status (such as Brand Enemy) ? I got the impression this part of Wave Walker racial just doesn't work at all...

[Boeroer]

7 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

By the way, has anybody ever seen Tekehu purging himself from a fire Keyworded status (such as Brand Enemy) ? I got the impression this part of Wave Walker racial just doesn't work at all...

He purges himself regularly from Aefyllath Mith Fyr.  The passive doesn't distinguish between benefical or hostile fire effects it seems. 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Boeroer

[dgray62]

Elric, I have a suggestion for a minor buff to ciphers. Among the spell casters, wizards are by far the most OP IMO, since they have such a great mix of damage, CC and offensive and defensive buff spells. But what really makes wizards beasts is their versatility via grimoires, since via them you can access any spell in the game. Druid, priests and ciphers, however, are somewhat hobbled by the fact that they can only cast the spells that they select when they level up. For druids and priests, however, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the various subclasses get a free spell per PL. I propose that cipher subclasses should also get a free power per PL. The choices should be obvious, namely shred spells for soul blades, deception spells for beguilers, the damage spells that ascendants spam while ascended, maybe party buffs for psions, and a mix for vanilla ciphers. This would make playing ciphers a bit less painful, since leveling up would be a bit less constrained.

[Elric Galad]

19 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Elric, I have a suggestion for a minor buff to ciphers. Among the spell casters, wizards are by far the most OP IMO, since they have such a great mix of damage, CC and offensive and defensive buff spells. But what really makes wizards beasts is their versatility via grimoires, since via them you can access any spell in the game. Druid, priests and ciphers, however, are somewhat hobbled by the fact that they can only cast the spells that they select when they level up. For druids and priests, however, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the various subclasses get a free spell per PL. I propose that cipher subclasses should also get a free power per PL. The choices should be obvious, namely shred spells for soul blades, deception spells for beguilers, the damage spells that ascendants spam while ascended, maybe party buffs for psions, and a mix for vanilla ciphers. This would make playing ciphers a bit less painful, since leveling up would be a bit less constrained.

I think the big difference here is that Ciphers get one single pool of ressources instead of separate ones per Tier. You can play a decent Cipher with no more than about 5 abilities provided you pick the less situational ones.

Priests, druids and wizards can cast more different spells, but they also HAVE TO.

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

He purges himself regularly from Aefyllath Mith Fyr.  The passive doesn't distinguish between benefical or hostile fire effects it seems. 

Thanks for your answer. I probably messed up with my testing. Maybe because I added Wave Walker with Console Command to Aloth... ?

Anyway this is bad and shall be tweaked.

[dgray62]

7 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I think the big difference here is that Ciphers get one single pool of ressources instead of separate ones per Tier. You can play a decent Cipher with no more than about 5 abilities provided you pick the less situational ones.

Priests, druids and wizards can cast more different spells, but they also HAVE TO.

That's a great point which didn't occur to me. Thanks for considering this!

[Zeraphil]

I have a question regarding the Summon Buff / Nerf Package for the mod: Are their additional changes not included in the patch notes?  Because the change of the optional "nerf" package is color coded in the patch notes on nexusmods but the summon package isn't.

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, Zeraphil said:

I have a question regarding the Summon Buff / Nerf Package for the mod: Are their additional changes not included in the patch notes?  Because the change of the optional "nerf" package is color coded in the patch notes on nexusmods but the summon package isn't.

The content of the Summon packae is described in the "2)Summon Rebalance" part of the patch note.

Whatever is in this chapter is in this package.

Whatever is not is not in this package.

I didn't use separate color for this part to avoid overloading the description with too many colors

Edited August 27, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

So for Marine Godlike, I think I'm going to give them (or well him) a : 

- Keep slog zone and water immunity. These are circonstancial, but still nice to have around

- Set the Fire status purge to every 1s (so basically, only the initial tick will apply for any fire effect/dot). Also only purges Hostile Fire status (as Water Immunity only affects Hostile effects...)

- Add +3 AR vs crush damages as a new bonus. Godlikes need something a little less circonstancial than the previous effect to compensate for the lack of helmet.  AR vs crush fits the "resistant to wave/water pressure" theme, and is quite rare to find. Great synergy with Spiritshift (but even in this case less strong than good old Bear form). It can be completed with Pierce/Slash AR items for an overall resistance to physical damages.

[Not So Clever Hound]

12 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Add +3 AR vs crush damages as a new bonus.

Tekehu: "Now I'm resistant to Crush... but I have a crush on you, Watcher. Don't hesitate to give me a big sexy hug with your muscular arms. I can take it."

Edited September 2, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

Tekehu: "Now I'm resistant to Crush... but I have a crush on you, Watcher. Don't hesitate to give me a big sexy hug with your muscular arms. I can take it."

For those who care, I also added 1 point in both MIG and CON to his stats (as a part of Companions stats buff).

Sounded like he could get some use of them.

[Elric Galad]

On 9/2/2021 at 12:03 AM, Elric Galad said:

- Set the Fire status purge to every 1s (so basically, only the initial tick will apply for any fire effect/dot). Also only purges Hostile Fire status (as Water Immunity only affects Hostile effects...)

Setting the effect to purging only Hostile does not work for some reasons (even if I basically copied the Hostile-Only immunity to water).

So I'm going to replace this (rather obscure) bonus.

I'm going to add Immunity to Push/Pull instead, which feels right for a Wave Walker.

[Elric Galad]

New version available with :

- Some rework of Godlike (especially the Companion only ones). New passives correctly appear on Character Creation menu

- Screaming Souls reworked

- Purge of useless icons close to character portraits

 

You can check full details on the mod page :

Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)

[Elric Galad]

OK so I wanted to share some stuff I had in mind for next version. No new changes, just re-thinking about some previous design.

 

Sap and Perplexing Sap :

I tweaked Sap to inflict Shaken instead of Hobbled to avoid redundancy with Crippling Strike.

I tweaked Perplexing Sap to inflict Fightened as an upgrade to Shaken, instead of the dumb Confusion propagating effect that didn't work. I went for this simple solution because I was unable to evaluate the balance of a Solution that would "propagate some sort of charm".

I added a 30s debuff that prevented the target from having Concentration.

Now I'm thinking that the later effect make the original Sap a bit too convenient. I might having influenced by people who really didn't like the original Sap, but I feel that Double Affliction for 30s, Prone on Graze are already enough.

On the other other, the Perplexing Sap upgrade is a bit bland, so I think I'm going to let the Concentration preventing effect on this version. I think it's a good unique asset for better defining Single Class Rogue : the class that can remove Concentration by a simple roll vs Deflection for 1 ressource.

So the SC only upgrade would provide both Concentration prevention and Shaken->Frightened improvement.

 

SC Ranger Bond restoration :

My initial intention was to add a Bond regen to Distraction Training.

Unfortunately I had no idea how to do. But now I think I know

Therefore I added a 10% Bond on Crit to Stunning Shot. But now I think this makes this Ability too necessary and narrow SC Ranger build possibility. Also it works too well with Blunderbusses (and mortars) and is too weak otherwise.

So I'm probably going to remove thsi part from Stunning Shot.

And add a 25% Bond on miss to Distracted Training (maybe tuned done the duration I increase from base 15s to 10s - note that I also made Distracted Training on all attacks, not only melee/deflection ones.)

 

SC Rogue Guild Restoration - Wall of Flashing Steel :

I added 10% Guile on Crit to Wall of Flashing Steel

Same issue as Stunning Shot : works too well with Blunderbusses/Mortars and too weak otherwise.

I'm going to replace it by 15% Guile chance per 3s for the duration of WoFS Deflection buff (base 5s).

This represents 0.45 Guile per "isolated Crit" on average, but is hard capped to 1 Guile / 20s on average independantly from multiple crit you can get from attacks. This hard cap is paramount for this specific ability because Dual Mortar/Blunderbusses + Gambit could provide almost 1 Guile on average per attack with a decent Perception.

1 Guile / 20s is basically a slightly stronger but Conditional version of potion of Enlightenment.

[Testlum]

Hi Elric, we talked a while back about me adopting some of the changes in the BPM for my own mod. My idea for overhauling the Enchanter subclass was to replace Free Action with 'metamagic' style abilities. For example, I tried making an active ability that adds 30% bonus AoE to the next wizard spell cast, but couldn't get the code to work. If you like the idea, maybe you can take a shot at it.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Testlum

[Hoo]

I've been playing with latest BPM, and I felt that the base damage, both auto-attack and retaliation,  of Magran's Blessing seems a bit being over-nerfed... And it seems that the Enchantment quality doesn't affect retaliation's damage, so the nerf of  the damage looks redundant for me unless this is not intended. 

Could you improve the item slightly, or teach me which file needs to remove in order to replace the change with noqn's one? Thanks in advance.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Hoo

[Hoo]

Additional information what I've found;

The changed spiritshift ability, Wildstrike/Greater Wildstrike Frenzy/Wildstrike Frenzy, seems that it doesn't provide related PL bonus. I've tested Wildstrike Frenzy only, but the PL bonus from any spells were not changed at all whether or not being spiritshifted. 

Another thing is probably not a bug, but I'd like to share this information whether this is correctly working or not; 

Firebrand can get PEN + Accuracy Bonus from Scion of Flame/Ring of Focused Flame respectively, but Berath Priest's summoned weapon cannot benefit from Spirit of Decay. I'm not sure this is intended.

[Elric Galad]

16 hours ago, Hoo said:

I've been playing with latest BPM, and I felt that the base damage, both auto-attack and retaliation,  of Magran's Blessing seems a bit being over-nerfed...

Yeah, I've receieved this commet a couple of times. Their damages are based on the same ratio as Tuotilio's Palm compared to monk unarmed attack. The ratio is low because unarmed attacks damages are high. But their damages are high because unarmed attacks don't have any magical properties, meanwhile Tuotilio's has some.

That's why I now think I should have gone with a comparision between Tuotilio's and a normal fast weapon (such as Club) to determine the ratio. The new ratio will be 3/4 which will lead to following values for normal speed bashing shield (Magran's blessing and Best Defense) :

- 6 PEN double damage types + 10-14 damages (3/4 of a sword)
- 8 PEN double damage types + 8-12 damages (3/4 of a warhammer) 

I think I will go with the first for Magran's Blessing and the second for Best Defense.

16 hours ago, Hoo said:

And it seems that the Enchantment quality doesn't affect retaliation's damage, so the nerf of  the damage looks redundant for me unless this is not intended. 

This is unintended. Let me check.

10 hours ago, Hoo said:

Additional information what I've found;

The changed spiritshift ability, Wildstrike/Greater Wildstrike Frenzy/Wildstrike Frenzy, seems that it doesn't provide related PL bonus. I've tested Wildstrike Frenzy only, but the PL bonus from any spells were not changed at all whether or not being spiritshifted. 

This is a bug. Let me check.

EDIT : Can you confirm the ability description (both the short summary ones and the text below) are correct ?

EDIT EDIT : Nevermind, I've found the bug.

10 hours ago, Hoo said:

Another thing is probably not a bug, but I'd like to share this information whether this is correctly working or not; 

Firebrand can get PEN + Accuracy Bonus from Scion of Flame/Ring of Focused Flame respectively, but Berath Priest's summoned weapon cannot benefit from Spirit of Decay. I'm not sure this is intended.

Not all weapon with lash benefit from Elemental talent. Intended.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

On 9/12/2021 at 6:45 AM, Hoo said:

And it seems that the Enchantment quality doesn't affect retaliation's damage, so the nerf of  the damage looks redundant for me unless this is not intended. 

Checked it in-game.

The enchantment does affect the retaliation damages, BUT it does not show on the item description. 

The combat logs show it works correctly though.

Anyway, thank you for pointing it because I spotted that I had forgotten lowering the damages of the purifying flame upgrade. 

[Testlum]

I'm trying to understand how Unbending is programmed in Deadfire. In the DPM, it's reworked to regenerate 50% of damage taken per 1s over 12s. So if you take one hit of 100 damage, assuming 10 Might, 10 Intellect and no bonus Power Level, you'd eventually regain 100 x 0.5 x 12 = 600 damage. Is this how the calculations work, or am I missing something?

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Testlum said:

I'm trying to understand how Unbending is programmed in Deadfire. In the DPM, it's reworked to regenerate 50% of damage taken per 1s over 12s. So if you take one hit of 100 damage, assuming 10 Might, 10 Intellect and no bonus Power Level, you'd eventually regain 100 x 0.5 x 12 = 600 damage. Is this how the calculations work, or am I missing something?

No it's 50% total over 12s in BPM. So, well, 50.

There is a thread on this forum called Various Testing where I explain how it works in the base game. Annoying to post the link with a smartphone while carrying a baby, so Google is your friend.

[Testlum]

Thanks for explaining, that certainly makes more sense. I've actually read that thread, but wasn't too sure still so I figured I'd ask.

For reference, I believe you're talking about this post: