Balance Polishing Mod Release 1.0

[Hoo]

Druids, including Shifter, is actually not a martial class, but the Shifter somewhat focuses on the martial parts with his Spiritshift abilities because the subclass cannot cast spell while being shifted so that the subclass barely benefits from the PL bonuses from BPM. I'd say Shifter would be considered as martial/caster hybrid class due to the above reason. Spiritshifts of Shifters are mostly for martial functionalities, aren't those? The forms never provides caster-beneficial effects for Shifter. So... 

A bit more mitigation of penalties from Shifter would be very appreciated. 

[Okkes]

Shifter/Helwalker is very good caster melee combo. I would go nature godlike using https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Lance_of_the_Midwood_Stag, you get +2 power level when you get beast or plant buffs, start with dance of death for getting wounds and accuracy and thunderous blows for penetration and +5 might. Than use your devestating area damage spells. Kill the rest spiritshifted, you ll get %25 wildstrike, %15 lightning strike and up to %20 fire lash with fast weapons. Overall very fun and powerful build.

[Elric Galad]

12 hours ago, Hoo said:

Druids, including Shifter, is actually not a martial class, but the Shifter somewhat focuses on the martial parts with his Spiritshift abilities because the subclass cannot cast spell while being shifted so that the subclass barely benefits from the PL bonuses from BPM. I'd say Shifter would be considered as martial/caster hybrid class due to the above reason.

Oh no, they are still full casters with no penalty to their casting. 

12 hours ago, Hoo said:

Spiritshifts of Shifters are mostly for martial functionalities, aren't those? The forms never provides caster-beneficial effects for Shifter. So... 

A bit more mitigation of penalties from Shifter would be very appreciated. 

They are still much better at their martial part. 

What you trade is flexibility between spell/martial. You trade it for more martial power, more flexibility for your martial sphere and periodical self healing as icing on the cake.

So they are perfectly balanced as they are. 

But you're free to use another mod if you want them to be more fun. 

I still see no issue. 

 

Edit : in case I wasn't Clear, I do think that Shifter is technically overpowered as a subclass in vanilla, since it is basically strictly better than animist. It does not break the game, but one looking for a generalist druid should pick Shifter (I made a SC Shifter once which was great despite not using shifts very often). 

The reason why it doesn't break the game is also because shifts aren't THAT powerful and many forms have meh abilities. 

BPM buffed shifts (PL for duration, dual damages Type) AND buffed most forms. This relatively benefits more to Shifters, hence making a nerf more necessary. 

Edited May 14, 2023 by Elric Galad

[Lunateric]

On 5/13/2023 at 7:56 PM, Okkes said:

Shifter/Helwalker is very good caster melee combo. I would go nature godlike using https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Lance_of_the_Midwood_Stag, you get +2 power level when you get beast or plant buffs, start with dance of death for getting wounds and accuracy and thunderous blows for penetration and +5 might. Than use your devestating area damage spells. Kill the rest spiritshifted, you ll get %25 wildstrike, %15 lightning strike and up to %20 fire lash with fast weapons. Overall very fun and powerful build.

I went with a forbidden fist/shifter build that was extremely resilient but was incredibly vulnerable to enemy casters, one hit and you are out of shift right after your spells, so no shift, no spells, in the middle of a fight. It may work much better in groups I think.

On 5/13/2023 at 7:56 PM, Elric Galad said:

Oh no, they are still full casters with no penalty to their casting. 

They are still much better at their martial part. 

What you trade is flexibility between spell/martial. You trade it for more martial power, more flexibility for your martial sphere and periodical self healing as icing on the cake.

So they are perfectly balanced as they are. 

But you're free to use another mod if you want them to be more fun. 

I still see no issue. 

 

Edit : in case I wasn't Clear, I do think that Shifter is technically overpowered as a subclass in vanilla, since it is basically strictly better than animist. It does not break the game, but one looking for a generalist druid should pick Shifter (I made a SC Shifter once which was great despite not using shifts very often). 

The reason why it doesn't break the game is also because shifts aren't THAT powerful and many forms have meh abilities. 

BPM buffed shifts (PL for duration, dual damages Type) AND buffed most forms. This relatively benefits more to Shifters, hence making a nerf more necessary. 

Part of vanilla shifter's versatility was being able to access any form at any point as long as you hadn't used it yet. With your implementation you only get one form per "cast and then shift" cycle, or maybe none if you get knocked out of it by an enemy caster, effectively leaving you enjoying that oh so nice universal cooldown with no spells and no spirit shift. Enemy casters really like saving their casts just to kill your form in PoTD seems like.

I ended up trying the mod that was mentioned in previous posts and like it more, the cooldown is much longer (180s) but it's also not universal, so losing an animal form hurts but doesn't break the flow of the class completely. 

Like you said, maybe that change should have been left in the nerfs package along blood mage's blood sacrifice, a much more egregious and possibly game breaking thing than having the ability to freely swap forms (and it exists still without that nerf balance file).

Edited May 15, 2023 by Lunateric

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Lunateric said:

I went with a forbidden fist/shifter build that was extremely resilient but was incredibly vulnerable to enemy casters, one hit and you are out of shift right after your spells, so no shift, no spells, in the middle of a fight. It may work much better in groups I think.

One hit of what ? Arcane dampener ? 

1 hour ago, Lunateric said:

Part of vanilla shifter's versatility was being able to access any form at any point as long as you hadn't used it yet. With your implementation you only get one form per "cast and then shift" cycle, or maybe none if you get knocked out of it by an enemy caster, effectively leaving you enjoying that oh so nice universal cooldown with no spells and no spirit shift. Enemy casters really like saving their casts just to kill your form in PoTD seems like.

I don't get the "vulnerability to enemy casters" thing here, neither do I get the reason why you would be out of spells in this context.

You get back your spell after the shift.

1 hour ago, Lunateric said:

I ended up trying the mod that was mentioned in previous posts and like it more, the cooldown is much longer (180s) but it's also not universal, so losing an animal form hurts but doesn't break the flow of the class completely. 

Like you said, maybe that change should have been left in the nerfs package along blood mage's blood sacrifice, a much more egregious and possibly game breaking thing than having the ability to freely swap forms (and it exists still without that nerf balance file).

I know. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to separate all changes, and displacing the whole spirit**** package for all subclasses to nerf package would not have make sense. Sometimes the packaging might be imperfect, I already admitted it.

[Hoo]

BPM also improves Wildstrike and Greater Wildstrike that provides corresponding elemental PL bonuses, so I think Shifter is not better version of Animist anymore, since Animist can cast several elemental spells with the boosted PL while being spiritshifted, which cannot be done by Shifter due to its innate penalty. 

That's why I felt that Shifter needs something more in the current BPM. Shifter has versatility and flexibility for the spiritshift forms, but the cooldown changed by BPM makes this advantage somewhat obsolete comparing with vanilla version. The forms are generally buffed which means every Druids subclasses can benefit from the forms, so this change is not retricted to Shifter. However, the PL bonuses from Wildstrike/Greater Wildstrike are barely useful for Shifter. This is obivously a new relative drawback of the Shifter in BPM imo.

[Lunateric]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

One hit of what ? Arcane dampener ? 

Yeah, it takes you out of spirit shift and the cooldown goes regardless.

Also you can't just spam spells on druid MC like you can on a blood mage, for example. That's why I said on previous posts the shifter as a whole runs out of juice pretty quickly. Maybe single class is much better considering you have access to the stronger storm spells. Even then you don't enjoy the PL bonuses you could get with wild strike because you can't cast while in animal form.

Your mod as a whole is great, I just find the shifter changes anti synergistic.

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by Lunateric

[Elric Galad]

40 minutes ago, Lunateric said:

Yeah, it takes you out of spirit shift and the cooldown goes regardless.

Seems legit though. Arcane dampener removes other buff and your buff ressources (spell casts, etc...) have been used regardless.

40 minutes ago, Lunateric said:

Also you can't just spam spells on druid MC like you can on a blood mage, for example. That's why I said on previous posts the shifter as a whole runs out of juice pretty quickly. Maybe single class is much better considering you have access to the stronger storm spells.

But that's the same issue with any druid subclass.

The worst is for lifegiver which also suffers a penalty after the shift.

Shifter has no penalty after a shift, and it will even get back a form cast sooner than any other subclass. Arguably, it is still the druid subclass that suffers the less from arcane dampener. 

That's my point, to make all druid subclass balanced. You're not comparing BPM Shifter with other druid subclasses, which is my main point.

40 minutes ago, Lunateric said:

Even then you don't enjoy the PL bonuses you could get with wild strike because you can't cast while in animal form.

That's quite minor, and more intended as a Wildstrike buff/versatility option than a raw power buff.

There are many weapon/armor set than would do a much better job at buffing spells when not shifted.

40 minutes ago, Lunateric said:

Your mod as a whole is great, I just find the shifter changes anti synergistic.

Well it's a nerf. It is supposed to work less well. Although in this case, it is also a long duration buff. Against a megaboss, a BPM Shifter will spend a much greater proportion of the time Shifted than in vanilla (60%+ of time instead of a couple of minutes).

 

 

Note : maybe the issue is that Shifter should have been designed otherwise, with something like mostly unlimited shifts in exchange for most of spell casting power. But it is not BPM intent to redo subclass design. There are also other mods that do this  

Edited May 15, 2023 by Elric Galad

[Okkes]

4 hours ago, Lunateric said:

I went with a forbidden fist/shifter build that was extremely resilient but was incredibly vulnerable to enemy casters, one hit and you are out of shift right after your spells, so no shift, no spells, in the middle of a fight. It may work much better in groups I think.

 

I mean FF is not a good pair with shifter anyways.

[Lunateric]

8 hours ago, Okkes said:

I mean FF is not a good pair with shifter anyways.

It works perfectly fine, the high resolve you need means you have to lower INT and make druid's spells a bit worse, that you regain back thanks to monk. You can spam FF thanks to all the HoTs druid gives and you can actually cast it while shifted while doing superb damage. 

Forbidden Fist/anything melee should work to be honest. I didn't drop it because it was not strong, I dropped it because shapeshifting felt terrible.

Edit: now that I think about it, using forbidden fist while shapeshifted still uses fists, @Elric Galad?, not really sure.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Lunateric

[Okkes]

You should always use forbidden fist with https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Tuotilo's_Palm

It gives +5 accuracy to your FF attack, two weapon attack speed, +1 reflex and deflection for per wound, %10 chance to gain a wound when you get melee damage.

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Lunateric said:

Edit: now that I think about it, using forbidden fist while shapeshifted still uses fists, @Elric Galad?, not really sure.

Yes, FF is always a "fist" attack. It should count as a weapon and maybe applies Wildstrike IF using Community Patch. 

[Shai Hulud]

36 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Yes, FF is always a "fist" attack. It should count as a weapon and maybe applies Wildstrike IF using Community Patch. 

Doesn't your mod require the community patch?

I tested FF / Shifter some, it is actually really good because you can still use FF when spiritshifted, and you use the FF attack speed, so for instance as a bear in robes I have 17 armor with iron wheel and attack every 1.7s with FF at 10 dex (with swift flurry), and you use the FF damage with forbidden fist bonus, so you're doing like double bear damage, attacking faster, and healing yourself. LOL. I'm doing about 100 damage per attack, it's pretty good. Plus you can trigger Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming while spiritshifted. The stag is really good too since heartbeat drumming and swift flurry trigger carnage. 

I can see what he was saying though, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to being a shifter since the cooldown is the same as other classes. I mean yes you can take different spiritshifts which is sort of useful, but it's a questionable tradeoff for not being able to cast spells, particularly when the bear and stag are the only ones you'd want anyway with this particular build.

[Elric Galad]

5 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Doesn't your mod require the community patch?

Not strictly. But it is untested without CP

5 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I tested FF / Shifter some, it is actually really good because you can still use FF when spiritshifted, and you use the FF attack speed, so for instance as a bear in robes I have 17 armor with iron wheel and attack every 1.7s with FF at 10 dex (with swift flurry), and you use the FF damage with forbidden fist bonus, so you're doing like double bear damage, attacking faster, and healing yourself. LOL. I'm doing about 100 damage per attack, it's pretty good. Plus you can trigger Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming while spiritshifted. The stag is really good too since heartbeat drumming and swift flurry trigger carnage. 

I can see what he was saying though, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to being a shifter since the cooldown is the same as other classes.

Nope, the cooldown is 75s for BPM shifter vs 120s for other subclasses. 

And The shift duration is 22s vs 15s for other subclasses. 

5 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I mean yes you can take different spiritshifts which is sort of useful, but it's a questionable tradeoff for not being able to cast spells, particularly when the bear and stag are the only ones you'd want anyway with this particular build.

So you'll be able to use them more, or any other form for the matter. 

For other classes, shift is base 15s with a 120s cooldown. It seems hard to rely on it. 

22s/75s with INT and PL can be up majority of time at high level, which is really hard to accomplish with any other subclass. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Elric Galad

[Lunateric]

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Doesn't your mod require the community patch?

I tested FF / Shifter some, it is actually really good because you can still use FF when spiritshifted, and you use the FF attack speed, so for instance as a bear in robes I have 17 armor with iron wheel and attack every 1.7s with FF at 10 dex (with swift flurry), and you use the FF damage with forbidden fist bonus, so you're doing like double bear damage, attacking faster, and healing yourself. LOL. I'm doing about 100 damage per attack, it's pretty good. Plus you can trigger Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming while spiritshifted. The stag is really good too since heartbeat drumming and swift flurry trigger carnage. 

I can see what he was saying though, there doesn't seem to be much advantage to being a shifter since the cooldown is the same as other classes. I mean yes you can take different spiritshifts which is sort of useful, but it's a questionable tradeoff for not being able to cast spells, particularly when the bear and stag are the only ones you'd want anyway with this particular build.

I have that character at level 14 and it's a one man's army basically. I had to lower my INT significantly to make room for Resolve (30 right now with all bonuses but I found out I have no easy access to steadfast, at least yet), ended up with 12 INT (8 base + 2 Berath's +2 Alchemic Wits) but once you factor in the INT duality of mortal presence (+10) and enlightened agony (+5, hostile effect duration reduction) it's completely fine, you can cast all the HoTs from druid once your first shapeshift is over and immediately start pummeling again with stag or cat if versus a boss, assuming you use the shifter mod discussed here somewhere.

My annoyance was not having access to every animal form at any time (if it has no cooldown), that was how I remember it worked in vanilla. But I understand it's not what the mod maker wants or thinks is balanced. Also having issues properly scripting auto shape shifting for some reason (always true > shape shift > character is stuck not doing anything else for some reason).

I ended up discovering a really strong build though, rarely see Ascetics being discussed here. I'll keep going until I unlock heartbeat drumming just to see what happens haha.

Sorry for derailing your post so much @Elric Galad and thanks for your awesome mod, please keep updating it.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Lunateric

[Kvellen]

I don't know if this was intentional, but cl.chanter.each_kill_fed.gamedatabundle is still present in the current Buffs package as an empty file:

{
	"GameDataObjects": [
        {
        }
	]
}

This doesn't cause any errors in game, though it does prevent the mod from being opened with Apotheosis unless this file is deleted.

[Elric Galad]

1 minute ago, Kvellen said:

I don't know if this was intentional, but cl.chanter.each_kill_fed.gamedatabundle is still present in the current Buffs package as an empty file:

{
	"GameDataObjects": [
        {
        }
	]
}

This doesn't cause any errors in game, though it does prevent the mod from being opened with Apotheosis unless this file is deleted.

Arf,

I displaced Each Kill fed His Fury to nerf package.

Displacing files can result in errors if people copy the new version on the older one instead of removing the older version first. So I let this file to make sure people won't have both the old file from the buff package and the nerf file from the nerf package, which could have caused issues.

But letting this empty file also cause issue. I guess Apotheosis is for advanced users though, so they can just remove this file if necessary.

[Noqn]

39 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Displacing files can result in errors if people copy the new version on the older one instead of removing the older version first. So I let this file to make sure people won't have both the old file from the buff package and the nerf file from the nerf package, which could have caused issues.

Oh, that's a very good practice.

I think the file will load properly if the innermost braces are removed, would be nice if it could be included for next patch

{ "GameDataObjects": [] }

[Shai Hulud]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Not strictly. But it is untested without CP

Nope, the cooldown is 75s for BPM shifter vs 120s for other subclasses. 

And The shift duration is 22s vs 15s for other subclasses. 

So you'll be able to use them more, or any other form for the matter. 

For other classes, shift is base 15s with a 120s cooldown. It seems hard to rely on it. 

22s/75s with INT and PL can be up majority of time at high level, which is really hard to accomplish with any other subclass. 

Ah my bad I didn't check the cooldown time for other druids. Anyway I didn't mean it was unbalanced just that I got what lunateric meant in having to wait for the cooldowns. Probably be kind of imbalanced without universal cooldown, I just played around with it for like 30 minutes.

1 hour ago, Lunateric said:

I have that character at level 14 and it's a one man's army basically. I had to lower my INT significantly to make room for Resolve (30 right now with all bonuses but I found out I have no easy access to steadfast, at least yet), ended up with 12 INT (8 base + 2 Berath's +2 Alchemic Wits) but once you factor in the INT duality of mortal presence (+10) and enlightened agony (+5, hostile effect duration reduction) it's completely fine, you can cast all the HoTs from druid once your first shapeshift is over and immediately start pummeling again with stag or cat if versus a boss, assuming you use the shifter mod discussed here somewhere.

My annoyance was not having access to every animal form at any time (if it has no cooldown), that was how I remember it worked in vanilla. But I understand it's not what the mod maker wants or thinks is balanced. Also having issues properly scripting auto shape shifting for some reason (always true > shape shift > character is stuck not doing anything else for some reason).

I ended up discovering a really strong build though, rarely see Ascetics being discussed here. I'll keep going until I unlock heartbeat drumming just to see what happens haha.

Sorry for derailing your post so much @Elric Galad and thanks for your awesome mod, please keep updating it.

I've had issues trying to script things with cooldowns, like a ranger ability that used to have one in bpm. In the vanilla game there are no cooldowns and the AI is the same so it can hang on those blocks trying to use the ability not realizing it is unavailable.

I'd just hotkey the shifter forms I guess

Yeah ascetic is interesting particularly bear form with robes. I could quickly solo some SSS arena stuff but didn't test anything else. FF in general is extremely good seems you can multiclass it with just about anything and there's some kind of synergy...

[Kvellen]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Arf,

I displaced Each Kill fed His Fury to nerf package.

Displacing files can result in errors if people copy the new version on the older one instead of removing the older version first. So I let this file to make sure people won't have both the old file from the buff package and the nerf file from the nerf package, which could have caused issues.

But letting this empty file also cause issue. I guess Apotheosis is for advanced users though, so they can just remove this file if necessary.

Ah right'o, thought it was likely an intentional choice but thought I should bring it up just in case.

Just starting a playthrough with CP, BPM and couple of other mods having a great time. Thanks for your work on this!

[Elric Galad]

New minor version available on Nexus :

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

Fix a couple of items and descriptions.

Also should be fully compatible with @Noqn 's Apotheosis (not documented though since it could have been confusing  there's already a bunch of stuff in the mod description)

[TKDancer]

had an idea while messing with stuff, how balanced would it be to give ghost heart's companions the Veil-Touched(100% incoming crit-to-hit and halved incoming dmg from non veil-piercing attacks) statuses to their Ghostly Form passive or at least replacing the engagement immunity with the status effects from the generic Veil-Touched passive spirits have?

 

thematically it fits perfectly as every spirit or spirit-like enemy that isnt occupying a vessel has Veil-Touched, balance wise im not so sure, maybe use a weaker copy of those effects(reduced crit-hit conversion and reduced dmg reduction)? maybe keep the full values of veil touched but also add in -100%(or even higher number) healing received to make sure they cannot be healed ever(since the subclass prevents heal companion but other sources of healing can heal them)

Edited July 9, 2023 by TKDancer

[Elric Galad]

On 7/8/2023 at 5:54 AM, TKDancer said:

had an idea while messing with stuff, how balanced would it be to give ghost heart's companions the Veil-Touched(100% incoming crit-to-hit and halved incoming dmg from non veil-piercing attacks) statuses to their Ghostly Form passive or at least replacing the engagement immunity with the status effects from the generic Veil-Touched passive spirits have?

 

thematically it fits perfectly as every spirit or spirit-like enemy that isnt occupying a vessel has Veil-Touched, balance wise im not so sure, maybe use a weaker copy of those effects(reduced crit-hit conversion and reduced dmg reduction)? maybe keep the full values of veil touched but also add in -100%(or even higher number) healing received to make sure they cannot be healed ever(since the subclass prevents heal companion but other sources of healing can heal them)

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

I don't think it would be in line with BPM purpose, since Ghostheart works well as it is and the engagement immunity is fine.

 

But if I wanted to do it in a balanced fashion. I would personnally do it this way : halve the Summon HP (with a -50% health penalty) and add the veil resistance. It won't increase much durability, but would grant much better benefit from healing (that is harder to access as a Ghostheart) as -100% damages taken would make regen more valuable, all at the cost of firearms vulnerability.

[TKDancer]

okay what about this idea: give all helmets and things that look like they could realistically offer some protections(basically anything described as a helmet + those woedica masks+ mask of the weyc) some form of protection that isnt just +1 armor

 

my solution i made in some personal mods i use was giving them 10% incoming crit-to-hit conversion(weapon attacks only) inspired by the ol' crit protection helmets gave in baldur's gate, i personally also gave it a (free)recipe to make it work on already acquired helmets

example:

 

it's nothing major but it's *something* and it doesnt mess with AR balancing

Edited July 10, 2023 by TKDancer

[Elric Galad]

On 7/10/2023 at 4:47 PM, TKDancer said:

okay what about this idea: give all helmets and things that look like they could realistically offer some protections(basically anything described as a helmet + those woedica masks+ mask of the weyc) some form of protection that isnt just +1 armor

 

my solution i made in some personal mods i use was giving them 10% incoming crit-to-hit conversion(weapon attacks only) inspired by the ol' crit protection helmets gave in baldur's gate, i personally also gave it a (free)recipe to make it work on already acquired helmets

example:

 

it's nothing major but it's *something* and it doesnt mess with AR balancing

Either it has a substancial effect and it shift the balance while it is unnecessary to do so.

Or it has no substancial effect and it is not worth the effort. Well at least for me, it doesn't sound too bad if you want to go with own mod.

Just it is not aligned toward BPM initial objectives. I've worked a lot on the mod already  and I feel it is pretty complete now.