Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0

[Hoo]

1 hour ago, NotDumbEnough said:

That sounds a bit excessively powerful for multiclassing. I do think that some form of PL scaling with Wildstrike would be good for single class Druids as they currently lack any sort of martial ability outside of Taste of the Hunt, and therefore hit nowhere near as hard as martial classes with Mule Kick/Crippling Strike/etc. But multiclass druids having access to PL scaling lashes would cause double dipping (i.e. PL scaling for both martial abilities and the lash, causing exponential damage growth) which might be too powerful later on. e.g. an Assassin/Druid would probably start one-shotting most enemies on PotD at higher levels even with upscaling.

I think it is probably better to address Spiritshift combat's lack of PL scaling by simply giving each form a martial ability (maybe the same, maybe not) from other classes, as mentioned above. The point is not to make Stag Form feel like a barbarian, but to keep up with martial class damage output, without breaking the scaling when multiclassing with a martial class. Even something really generic like Fighter's Penetrating Strike would be helpful.

How about adding some bonus like additional Penetration, AR, Deflection, or something like this on Spritshifter while bieng Spritshifted?

For example, Devoted gets increased Pen/Crit Damage and Stalker gets Deflection/AR bonuses. The current Spritshifter is not actually BETTER than the other subclasses while being spritshifted, since the bonuses of the current Spritshifter are increased number of chance to be spritshift and healing after being Spritshifted. I think those simple stats boosts while being Spritshifted would be enough for boosting Spritshifter's martial part. 

[Exanos]

11 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

My proposal :
Set Shifted attacks to Slash / Pierce
Set Wildstrike to ~5% +3/PL lash damages
Set Greater Wildstrike to ~10% +5/PL damages

The idea is to boost Spritshift as an endgame "weapon set", but not early on where it is very competitive.

For a MC, you end up with :
- 12 AR +0% recovery.
- 13-16 Slash/Pierce damages, 9 PEN (sword + 3 PEN, but no modal)
- +45% elemental lash, a bit more with Potion of Ascension & the likes. (For SC, it will end at 60%+, which is very high... but you're a caster)
- 2 unique abilties per form, +1 engagement for Boar and Bear

Seems fine for me, will definitely make melee spiritshift worth considering. Don't think it will be uber broken when you look what other class can do.

For unique abilities, do you keep the existings one (like +2AR / Roar from the bear form), or do you plan to have one  or two passive and one or two active abilities  ?

I throw some ideas for new effect (don't want to implement all, maybe one or two /form) :

- Bear form : Resistance to might affliction / Might inspiration / Barbaric shout / Stunning blow / Crushing blow,

- Boar form : Res to Con / Con inspiration / Charge / Wild sprint / Crippling strike

- Cat form : Res to Dex / Dex inspiration / Finishing blow / Crippling strike / Escape / Smoke veil

- Stag form : Res to RES / Res Inspiration / Clear out / Blade turning 

- Wolf form : Rest to Per / Per inspiration / Penetrating strike / Strike the bell

- Blight form : Res to Int / Int inspiration / Static thunder (from LDV)/  Ball Lightining / Cracling bolt / Chain Lightning / Storm of seven bolt / 

[Elric Galad]

15 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

That sounds a bit excessively powerful for multiclassing. I do think that some form of PL scaling with Wildstrike would be good for single class Druids as they currently lack any sort of martial ability outside of Taste of the Hunt, and therefore hit nowhere near as hard as martial classes with Mule Kick/Crippling Strike/etc. But multiclass druids having access to PL scaling lashes would cause double dipping (i.e. PL scaling for both martial abilities and the lash, causing exponential damage growth) which might be too powerful later on. e.g. an Assassin/Druid would probably start one-shotting most enemies on PotD at higher levels even with upscaling.

I think it is probably better to address Spiritshift combat's lack of PL scaling by simply giving each form a martial ability (maybe the same, maybe not) from other classes, as mentioned above. The point is not to make Stag Form feel like a barbarian, but to keep up with martial class damage output, without breaking the scaling when multiclassing with a martial class. Even something really generic like Fighter's Penetrating Strike would be helpful.

I'm not set on the values yet. 45% might be a bit excessive. Maybe 35% lash for MC would be enough. Maybe I'll go halfway to 40% (that's a +10% with Potion of Ascension)

A "good" DPS unique should provide around 40% lash. Well, there is no 40% lash, but Mowdyr, for example, has 20% lash, up to 20% action speed and a few utility.

When a Rogue MC with a Monk, it gets up to +15%+20% lashes on top of what an Unique Weapon provides. Plus attack speed etc... MC with a druid replace your lash by Wildstrike's (and only when shifted), so I don't think it would compete.

 

I get what you say about active ability comboing less, but active abilities :
- Won't work on foe druid, cause IA. I really don't like that
- Would make Wolf less special (albeit it could get a passive instead)
- Is a lot of tedious work  

I tend to avoid creating new abilities for BPM. That's a principle I followed until now, and I don't see a clear reason to change for Shifting.

13 hours ago, Hoo said:

How about adding some bonus like additional Penetration, AR, Deflection, or something like this on Spritshifter while bieng Spritshifted?

For example, Devoted gets increased Pen/Crit Damage and Stalker gets Deflection/AR bonuses. The current Spritshifter is not actually BETTER than the other subclasses while being spritshifted, since the bonuses of the current Spritshifter are increased number of chance to be spritshift and healing after being Spritshifted. I think those simple stats boosts while being Spritshifted would be enough for boosting Spritshifter's martial part. 

Nope. I think Shifter is fine (compared to other subclass). I stated it earlier. Shifter subclass has never been about better spiritshift. You might have liked it this way, but BPM avoids changing the feeling of a (sub)class.

Shifting to "the right form" IS an advantage though.

5 hours ago, Exanos said:

Seems fine for me, will definitely make melee spiritshift worth considering. Don't think it will be uber broken when you look what other class can do.

Yup, that's exactly what I think. (bar minor number tweaking).

5 hours ago, Exanos said:

For unique abilities, do you keep the existings one (like +2AR / Roar from the bear form), or do you plan to have one  or two passive and one or two active abilities  ?

I throw some ideas for new effect (don't want to implement all, maybe one or two /form) :

- Bear form : Resistance to might affliction / Might inspiration / Barbaric shout / Stunning blow / Crushing blow,

- Boar form : Res to Con / Con inspiration / Charge / Wild sprint / Crippling strike

- Cat form : Res to Dex / Dex inspiration / Finishing blow / Crippling strike / Escape / Smoke veil

- Stag form : Res to RES / Res Inspiration / Clear out / Blade turning 

- Wolf form : Rest to Per / Per inspiration / Penetrating strike / Strike the bell

- Blight form : Res to Int / Int inspiration / Static thunder (from LDV)/  Ball Lightining / Cracling bolt / Chain Lightning / Storm of seven bolt / 

No. I don't think I've hinted at any point that I agree that Forms should get more bonuses. This would be a job for another mod  The druid active part is it's spell. Beast form is for me about brute power.

Maybe for fury I will add something.

 

Just a reminder : BPM is a lot of work. If you want me to do something, please try to start from what I consider to be the picture of the current situation, and that I shared earlier (recap below). You can challenge these statements, point some additional issues for you, or your can agree with some issues and try to find a solution. But if you give solutions to stuff I don't consider to be problems (and not try to convince me that there is a problem), well, I won't agree.
@Exanosconvinced me Fury weapon was unfocused, that's why it is currently in my list.

 

Now, what I consider satisfying (bar a couple minor adjustements) about Spiritshift in current BPM version :
- The cooldown for long fights.
- Balance between Shifter and Animist (so basically Shifter vs other subclass). Granted that Spiritshift has too become a bit more desirable to keep for Shifters to be satisfying.
- Wildstrike contribution to casting. Medium/Minor but helps using various spell (as I stated before, you should consider not using this to buff your "best spells", as some unique items can be better, but to boost secondary elements. The new Blight summons help toward that, I think.)
- Balance between the 5 main Forms
- Wildstrike Frenzy because Entropy (and party support, Stag's Horn, whatever)
- The way Lifgiver uses Spiritshift
 

What I should think more about :
- Focusing more Spiritshift about fighting better. 
- The exact role of Fury form (that I'm leaving aside a bit for now).

Edited April 10, 2022 by Elric Galad

[NotDumbEnough]

I wonder if you think Cat Form is a bit too strong relative to the others. The others have better defenses, but attacking much faster and killing the enemy faster is a form of defense in itself, and druids really want faster attack speed for Wildstrike Frenzy and Avenging Storm.

[Not So Clever Hound]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Yup, that's exactly what I think. (bar minor number tweaking).

IMHO Elric, don't hesitate to make it really good, really competitive . Whatever you decide (which seems to be focusing on the melee power), I think Spiritshift needs something a bit radical. It needs to be a true alternative at high level to very strong weapon setups. If Assassin/Druid becomes really powerful with it, fine - they still have to choose the right abilities and do a bit of setup for it. As they would need to by finding/enchanting the right weapons etc. Think that any random wizard/martial with the right grimoire can cast Zandethu's Draconic Fury or Citzal Martial Power, without needing to spend any ability point anywhere.

One thought I had: would it be insane to make every Wildstrike Frenzy attack Full Attacks?

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, Not So Clever Hound said:

IMHO Elric, don't hesitate to make it really good, really competitive . Whatever you decide (which seems to be focusing on the melee power), I think Spiritshift needs something a bit radical. It needs to be a true alternative at high level to very strong weapon setups. If Assassin/Druid becomes really powerful with it, fine - they still have to choose the right abilities and do a bit of setup for it. As they would need to by finding/enchanting the right weapons etc. Think that any random wizard/martial with the right grimoire can cast Zandethu's Draconic Fury or Citzal Martial Power, without needing to spend any ability point anywhere.

One thought I had: would it be insane to make every Wildstrike Frenzy attack Full Attacks?

I would not even know how to do this

 

Updates :

- Stag form : make the all defenses bonus passive so it stacks with similar effect.

- Wolf form : make the movement speed bonus passive so it stacks with similar effects

- Wolf form : add a passive +20 defenses Vs disengagement attacks

- Fury : kills while shifted also grant +10% damages (up to +30%) until the end of the shift (this and attack rised to 10-15 elec damages, 8 PEN, 3s recovery and 1 bounce 80% damages)

EDIT : I'm not a big fan of per Kill abilities, but this one reinforces some pre existing aspect. Also Fury will have a good auto attack for boss fight with the new damages, so the per kill bonus is there to complement them for more trash oriented fights.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

Updates :

- Boar & Bear form : engagement bonus set to passive (so it stacks with active effects, as for Form of the Fearsome Brute)

- Stag form carnage : reworked to an AoE triggered on Crit (including on main target) as Pet Stag companion (BPM made it works also on main target).
=> Base damage 10-18 Slash / Pierce, 9 PEN, 1.5 radius, scales as similar abilities (+5% multiplicative damages, +1 Acc, +0.25 PEN for each PL beyond 1).

Why this change : I think the issue with "Barbarian style" carnage is that it is a bit pointless. It is much less focused than cat attack speed bonus, and more annoying, combo with few other abilities. I worked quite a bit on Barbarian to make carnage feels a bit like PoE1's (making Frenzy upgrades applies to Carnage hits, the making Interrupting blows working with BPM carnage crit). This, obviously, isn't easily doable with Druid Stag form.

On the other side, I found this tweak for the stag pet : by working also on main target, it is an AoE passive, but also a Crit reliant damage ability vs main target. Crit fishing isn't easy with Stag pet nor with Stag form (except, well, entropy and some martial MC), but it is still much easier to build around  (especially with a party) than a bit of raw damage around. 

Basically it is an extra Wildstrike Frenzy without extra property. Since it has to compete with things like Cat x1.33 attack speed, it has to be good enough.

Finally Stag form working like Stag pet makes some sense.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Elric Galad

[NotDumbEnough]

Suggestion for Fighter's Toughened Fury: maybe instead make it a lower % chance to trigger regardless of miss, graze, hit or crit. I feel that the Fighter's role is to tie down and occupy the enemy, but whether or not you have high deflection or rely on healing varies depending on your build. That is to say, Toughened Fury is not that good for a shield-based Fighter with high deflection which is already not particularly strong.

[Elric Galad]

13 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

Suggestion for Fighter's Toughened Fury: maybe instead make it a lower % chance to trigger regardless of miss, graze, hit or crit. I feel that the Fighter's role is to tie down and occupy the enemy, but whether or not you have high deflection or rely on healing varies depending on your build. That is to say, Toughened Fury is not that good for a shield-based Fighter with high deflection which is already not particularly strong.

Yeah, I get it. That was a bit the reason why I changed it from On Crit to On damaged in the first place. That being said, I think including Misses would change a bit too much the initial feeling, and I believe On (damaging) graze is enough.

Note that an Unbroken has low reflexes, which might be exploited by standing in a wall of flame, even with a shield.

[Elric Galad]

The version is almost ready (might take time cause I don't have much time for the release notes though).

I have buffed Spiritshift, Fury subclass and Druids in general quite a lot, so it might require some tweaks later.

 

As a summary :

- Spiritshift weapons now deals both Slash / Pierce (except Fury)

- Wildstrike now gives 10% + 3/(PL -1) lash

- Greater Wildstrike now gives 10% + 5/PL lash

 

Fury gets :

- 8-13 damages -> 10-15 damages (3s recovery, dual wield)

- Wildstrike buff

- +10% damages per kills up to 30% under storm blight shift (plus the regular duration extension). This is especially strong in situation where Garden of Life is strong for other subclasses.

 

Bonus :

- all spirit shift bonuses stack with everything

- Shark does +25% BASE damages.

- Wolfs added bonus Vs disengagement attacks

- Stag : a Stag companion like carnage effect on crit. Basically a pseudo Wildstrike Frenzy.

- Better Weather the Storm

- non random Blight Summon

 

So quite a lot of changes for druids.

And there are also changes for other classes / items etc...

Edited April 19, 2022 by Elric Galad

[NotDumbEnough]

Good to see that Spiritshift Shark is now worth using, previously it was only ever worth it for getting rid of hobbled/immobilized

[thelee]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

- Wildstrike now gives 10% + 3/(PL -1) lash

- Greater Wildstrike now gives 10% + 5/PL lash

i'm curious - what's the impetus behind this? is this the only PL-based scaling lash in BPM? % lashes don't strike me as something that particularly needs to scale by power level, since they already scale by base weapon enchant level

[NotDumbEnough]

SC druid spiritshift in its current state is frankly terrible at fighting so a PL bonus to its lash was deemed the easiest way to address this I guess. Namely because they lack martial abilities like Crippling Strike (outside of wolf form) they almost didn't scale with PL at all outside of Wildstrike Frenzy procs.

Personally I think it may be too powerful in a multiclass scenario but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[thelee]

12 minutes ago, NotDumbEnough said:

SC druid spiritshift in its current state is frankly terrible at fighting

hm, personally this is not really my experience, at least in terms of what they get, especially for multiclass set ups. perhaps the upper limit on power for non-druid martials is much higher, but to me druid spiritshift has a pretty decent expected value, especially considering it comes as part of a versatile spellcasting package.

wildstrike frenzy being janky and the spiritshift duration being too short (shifter base duration should be the standard) seem like sufficient angles to attack spirit shift from, since IME spiritshift is mostly frustrating because for most druids it lasts such a short time, not so much that its autoattack is weak.

[NotDumbEnough]

I don't think this is intended, but Steel Garrote's Garrote seems to be lasting permanently (like a very strong Gouging Strike) during my current fight in the Woedica temple, which I guess has to do with its recent change.

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

I don't think this is intended, but Steel Garrote's Garrote seems to be lasting permanently (like a very strong Gouging Strike) during my current fight in the Woedica temple, which I guess has to do with its recent change.

Yes, most likely a bug. I will look into it.

12 hours ago, thelee said:

i'm curious - what's the impetus behind this? is this the only PL-based scaling lash in BPM? % lashes don't strike me as something that particularly needs to scale by power level, since they already scale by base weapon enchant level

Basically : 

- Without form specific abilities, Spiritshift weapons have a hard time keeping up with unique weapons. Mowdyr (that I always use as a non build specific power weapon for comparison purpose) has a 20% lash and up to 20% speed up + 2 additional abilities. The values above are set so an endgame MC Spiritshift weapon has a slightly above 40% lash, with very good PEN.

- I made it scaling, because no one complains about low level Spiritshift

- I made it PL scaling so SC druids (who indeed don't get buff from a martial MC) still gets good enough in melee (granted that even Shifter should remain casters above all)

- It has to be considered that Spiritshift is the only druid self buff. And costs 2 talents to keep up. That's why I think it has to be good. Even priests get Minor Avatar eventually. And Wiz has an unique spell which adds 30% lash on top of anything their weapon has. Wizards have Grimoire swapping, Priest get "borrowed" abilities and Holy radiance, Druids have Spiritshift as a signature abilities. 

- PoE1 Druid did loads of damages. That was fun. This mod doesn't bring it to a comparable level though.

 

Now I changed so much stuff that it should be watched in next version. I'm potentially thinking about reducing Spiritshift duration or rising the Cooldown : better to have a low duration and always valuable Spiritshift than able to be kept up for a long time but meh value.

Not sure it will be needed though.

Edit : Maybe 120s Cooldown for Druid, 75s for Shifters.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Elric Galad

[dgray62]

Please don't reduce the Spiritshift duration. It's already too low IMO. Raising the cool down period would be preferable I think.

[NotDumbEnough]

I think a short duration would help deter martial classes multiclassing with a druid just for the spiritshift, and encourage you to use it wisely rather than recklessly.

Would also help distinguish it from wizards who have pretty long durations for summoned weapons and Citzal's Enchanted Armory.

Maybe keep the base duration but turn off PL scaling for spiritshift duration? It would be similar to Ascendant's Ascended state duration scaling with intellect but not PL. I feel that spiritshifts should feel like the martial equivalent of a cipher's Ascended state.

Edited April 20, 2022 by NotDumbEnough

[Not So Clever Hound]

1 hour ago, dgray62 said:

Please don't reduce the Spiritshift duration. It's already too low IMO. Raising the cool down period would be preferable I think.

Yes, yes and yes! I whole-heartedly second that.

45 minutes ago, NotDumbEnough said:

I feel that spiritshifts should feel like the martial equivalent of a cipher's Ascended state.

I like the analogy but actually Cipher Ascended = God Mode. If memory serves me well, I think you had actually written about how you abandoned an Ascendant run because it was just getting a few Time Parasite casts then spamming Amplified Wave faster than enemies could get back up - stupidly powerful combo? I may very well be confused about who wrote that.

Even with pretty sweet buffs courtesy of Eric, IMHO Spiritshift is NOT God Mode. Or at least not Ascended Ascendant God Mode.

[NotDumbEnough]

Ascendant is much less broken in BPM due to Brilliant rework and Salvation of Time rework. In the unmodded game you can just repeatedly use Brilliant on Xoti who basically serves as a Salvation of Time bot and nothing else.

Anyways, spiritshift is not meant to be god mode, but on the other hand it is instantly available without needing any set-up or cast time like wizard summoned weapons. A shorter duration would be justified.

[Elric Galad]

Spiritshift won't be broken, even with recent changes. OP maybe, but not broken  

Currenly planning to set Spiritshift Cooldowns to 120s (normal) and 75s (Shifter). I can't find something else that satisfies me as much.

Changing Cooldown has too pratical advantages compared to lower duration : it is way easier to do for me , and it does not nerf a base game feature (which is good for a mod).

15s is a relatively standard duration for a relatively short Tier 1 self-buff, and its non repeatable nature should limit it. With INT and PL scaling, that would be still 90s downtime in the endgame, so you can emulate Martials, but not for long.

[Elric Galad]

On 4/20/2022 at 3:28 AM, NotDumbEnough said:

I don't think this is intended, but Steel Garrote's Garrote seems to be lasting permanently (like a very strong Gouging Strike) during my current fight in the Woedica temple, which I guess has to do with its recent change.

Confirmed and corrected for next version.

[Elric Galad]

New version is uploaded :

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

Feel free to experiment a bit these new Spiritshifts. I would really appreciate feedback to understand if they are now satisfying. Also I would like to know how non random blight summons feel for you (as usual, also a couple minor tweaks and bugfixes

[NotDumbEnough]

Did you remove the Great Maelstrom keyword so that it doesn't benefit twice from Wildstrike Freeze +PL? I don't see it mentioned in the changelog but I think you wrote about it before.

 

I also think that now that the rest of the Druid's kit is more viable, Great Maelstrom could use a minor damage nerf (maybe 10% less base damage?). It was sort of a compensation for Fury druids having very little choice for tier 6 and 7 spells but that's been addressed now.

[Elric Galad]

23 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

Did you remove the Great Maelstrom keyword so that it doesn't benefit twice from Wildstrike Freeze +PL? I don't see it mentioned in the changelog but I think you wrote about it before.

Eventually I didn't. The double keywords help Druid Water / Ice builds that are a bit limited beyond level 4 (even with Conjure Greater Frost Blight)

It would have been too much if I doubled Wildstrike effect on PL, but I didn't so... It's a CP KW change, not BPM, so I think I'll leave it as it is.

23 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

I also think that now that the rest of the Druid's kit is more viable, Great Maelstrom could use a minor damage nerf (maybe 10% less base damage?). It was sort of a compensation for Fury druids having very little choice for tier 6 and 7 spells but that's been addressed now.

I think it was sort of good Tier 9 spells, that's all. Plus not only Fury can use it. Why Wiz would get all the good spell ?

I doubt current Fury is broken compared to Evoker.