OP Classes

[thelee]

51 minutes ago, n00biwan said:

The solution to balancing is very simple, limit sot to a certain amount of casts unless solo mode is enabled.

this isn't a solution, it's a hack. there's no "systematic" rule about why you should be limited to certain casts except under certain game rules. solo mode shouldn't get any special "breaks" just because you're playing solo - solo should just be the same game except, well, solo. solo's supposed to be hard, and as a party-based game there's no real reason to guarantee that solo is infeasible, frankly.

 

i am honestly perplexed and don't get why for others who want to tone down infinite combos there's such a resistance in recognizing that the inspiration that regenerates resources is the problem here. are people just hooked on using brilliant's resource regen and still want it, even if one recognizes that it's broken?

 

edit: brilliant has been broken from day 1 way before anyone discoveed any interactions with other effects. when the developers removed it from the chanter invocation but didn't change brilliant itself, it seemed like they made the same error that some people here are making. it wasn't any related ability that was the problem, it's brilliant itself. only very late did OBS seem to realize just how stupid brilliant was, because weyc's robe (by the time FS came around, near end of development cycle) grants an extremely short brilliant buff - only with super high intellect will you get more than 1 resource regened out of it. but short durations are no protection in a world of WoD and SoT. The only really meaningful solution is to nerf brilliant. Then you could balance brilliant on par with other tier 3 inspirations. put another way - if the only way--in a vacuum--to balance a brilliant effect is to give it an extremely short duration but you can give a much longer duration to swift or energized or robust, it's brilliance that is the problem.

Edited May 18, 2020 by thelee

[Raven Darkholme]

59 minutes ago, thelee said:

huh?

tactician's brilliant has no duration. of all possible broken entry points tactician is arguably the one that cares the least about SoT.

blood mage maybe, but because they don't have to worry about brilliant per se (though all classes are helped by brilliant, even chanters, monks, and ciphers)

 

which goes back to the fundamental issue - there's no world--SoT or no--where brilliant is a balanced tier 3 inspiration.

you take virtually any setup, and you toss in brilliant and you can quickly make it degenerate. You tone down brilliant and SoT becomes weaker overnight. On the flip side, you get rid of SoT altogether and brilliant is still a stupidly good inspiration except you've eliminated one entry point to degeneracy. Remove SoT and WoD and brilliant is still stupid good, now it's just ciphers and tacticians who can exploit it.

If by "stupid good" you mean all the easy content of the game, than I totally agree, but megabosses are very tough without SoT or WoD.

Example Dorudugan, you can't get brilliant via knockup (mind affliction immunity), you either have to use invis cheese (I'm mostly talking solo btw because I'm sure there is many ways to make it work with a party) or flank him for real. (Phantome foes is pretty bad on him btw because of his massive res).

But getting brilliant is one thing, actually surviving AND killing him is another.

One of the real big dealbreakers vs doru is scordeos + either sod or wot, make it even crazier with scordeos + bleeding cut.

Sure if you wear the armor with enemy healing reduction aura, he won't fullheal of his fire, which is pretty big and if you wear cloak heals you for fire damage that also helps.

Not saying a fight with just brilliant is impossible I'd be one of the first to try it, I'm just trying to outline how much more broken the extension of duration is (especially wod since it doesn't even NEED brilliant) than the resource regen of brilliant.

At the end of the day both mechanics are super broken and not ok in their current state, but brilliant neither makes you immortal, nor does it give you anywhere comparable damage to what scordeos/bleeding cut does.

(bleeding is still quite nice without scordeos, but against doru being slow and mortal, especially if he reduces your max hp you can get surprised quite easy and die, unless you kite him all day with a chanter, but then again doesn't really have anything to do with brilliant.)

 

edit:

one could make it very clear by having a wot character fight doru without using brilliant and having a brilliant user fight him without sot or wod.

(spoiler first fight would take 10 mins, 2nd one an hour)

Edited May 18, 2020 by Raven Darkholme

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

I don't think tactician is nearly that hard with the right metagaming. Phantom Foes will get you there in most fights. On bosses with some perception resistence (for the ones that have persistent distraction) you're set.

OK, you convinced me about this one. Tactician is beynd the line of what I believe should be mitigated. And you didn't even mention quickly switching on/off Brilliant.

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Psion is just easy because you don't have to do anything but park far away from the enemy to get Ancestor's Memory. You don't need two psions - it just makes it easier. Just Ancestor's Memory the priest/wizard whenever it's up and you're set. Two psions simply just means you don't have to worry about getting hit.

Set for what ? You're just transfering the regenerating ressources from 1 character to another. You're spending focus and casting time for it. That's very good, indeed. But I wouldn't count it as broken.
Beside I think reducing the effect of Brilliant for casters is among what I'm considering 

2 hours ago, thelee said:

edit: brilliant has been broken from day 1 way before anyone discoveed any interactions with other effects. when the developers removed it from the chanter invocation but didn't change brilliant itself, it seemed like they made the same error that some people here are making. it wasn't any related ability that was the problem, it's brilliant itself. only very late did OBS seem to realize just how stupid brilliant was, because weyc's robe (by the time FS came around, near end of development cycle) grants an extremely short brilliant buff - only with super high intellect will you get more than 1 resource regened out of it. but short durations are no protection in a world of WoD and SoT. The only really meaningful solution is to nerf brilliant. Then you could balance brilliant on par with other tier 3 inspirations. put another way - if the only way--in a vacuum--to balance a brilliant effect is to give it an extremely short duration but you can give a much longer duration to swift or energized or robust, it's brilliance that is the problem.

Because, for my part, I have no clue how to beat Megabosses without regenerating ressources. Cutting Brilliant (and Blood Mage, and Tier IX Chanter Invocation that I actually buffed to align it with Ancestor's Memory's level of power - give 2 Ressources except for caster in my mod ) would lead to as many problems as it corrects. Party of Monks, etc...

There will always been a couple of somewhat OP combos anyway (Divine Retribution + Beckoner + Light of Pure Zeal is an immortal enough combo). Fortunately even the most potent (boring ?) don't work for all fights (hey, arcane dampener).

And also because it is FUN.

That's why mitigation is a valid strategy IMHO. Tolerating a couple of obscure abuses isn't as much a problem as breaking the game just with 1 half-priest.


EDIT : What I'm considering at the moment :

1) Brilliant : only 1 ressource / 12s for casters
 

2) Blood Mage -> Blood Sacrifice Recovery to 3s (still have fun with Blood Mage, but now cost time to spam)
 

3) Tactician :

Brilliant -> Acute
+1 DIscipline per Interrupt -> +1 Ressource per class (small buff to still allow Tactician Combos)

4) WoD : +1s beneficial effects -> -1s hostile effects (I don't specially like changing the purpose of an ability, but this is the cleanest way I could find. Feel free to suggest anything not too "complicated" (understandable rule is a plus).

5) SoT : as already changed. Ask @Raven Darkholme for details  

Edited May 18, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

19 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Set for what ? You're just transfering the regenerating ressources from 1 character to another. You're spending focus and casting time for it. That's very good, indeed. But I wouldn't count it as broken.

cipher is more balanced around regenerating resource - a caster like priest or wizard is not. so "just" transferring the regenerating resource is powerful. A standard SC psion takes 15 seconds to regenerate an AL9 spell - which are already weaker than other caster AL9s because they are balanced on being able to use them more than a couple times in one fight. Another caster with brilliant will regenerate an AL9 spell every 6 seconds and their AL9s are like Magran's Might, Call of Rymrgand, Missile Salvo, Corrosive Skin, Petrification, Tornado, Maelstrom, etc.

 

19 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Because, for my part, I have no clue how to beat Megabosses without regenerating ressources

We shouldn't be making balancing decisions based on megabosses. They are so far the pale of a typical encounter. The fact that you can use brilliant to make fights against them feasible says more about just how stupidly good brilliant is, because no other inspiration will carry you in a fight like that.

To your point, these days for every megaboss fight, I bring along a chanter (or occasionally a cipher). I would not consider most of the chanters or ciphers I run with or provided by OBS to be very powerful or obscene (except for the one time I ran a herald), it's solely because chanter's ability to have infinite sustain and summons that overwhelms all other factors when you're talking about doing literally thousands of damage to an enemy. It says very little about the rest of the game, because most other fights don't last long enough where being able to summon a dragon or animated weapons umpteen times matters at all. Heck - I equip everyone with xbows or arbalests against HoW, and I literally would never would do that in the rest of the game. Megabosses shouldn't be considered normal, or really even fights - they're puzzles.

Edited May 19, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

23 minutes ago, thelee said:

cipher is more balanced around regenerating resource - a caster like priest or wizard is not. so "just" transferring the regenerating resource is powerful. A standard SC psion takes 15 seconds to regenerate an AL9 spell - which are already weaker than other caster AL9s because they are balanced on being able to use them more than a couple times in one fight. Another caster with brilliant will regenerate an AL9 spell every 6 seconds and their AL9s are like Magran's Might, Call of Rymrgand, Missile Salvo, Corrosive Skin, Petrification, Tornado, Maelstrom, etc.

I just said that I will lower it to 12s by the way , so I don't disagree entirely that Brilliant is too strong. As you said, I'm trying to mitigate things. Tier VIII- IX spells are approximatively Worth 3 ressources due to what I personnally call "Trickster equivalence table". So that make Casters better at receiving brilliant, but not really better than a multiclass martial.

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We shouldn't be making balancing decisions based on megabosses. They are so far the pale of a typical encounter. The fact that you can use brilliant to make fights against them feasible says more about just how stupidly good brilliant is, because no other inspiration will carry you in a fight like that.

To your point, these days for every megaboss fight, I bring along a chanter (or occasionally a cipher). I would not consider most of the chanters or ciphers I run with or provided by OBS to be very powerful or obscene (except for the one time I ran a herald), it's solely because chanter's ability to have infinite sustain and summons that overwhelms all other factors when you're talking about doing literally thousands of damage to an enemy. It says very little about the rest of the game, because most other fights don't last long enough where being able to summon a dragon or animated weapons umpteen times matters at all. Heck - I equip everyone with xbows or arbalests against HoW, and I literally would never would do that in the rest of the game. Megabosses shouldn't be considered normal, or really even fights - they're puzzles.

To be honnest, Brilliant isn't that relevant apart Megabosses battles either. 70 focus and casting time isn't that cheap just to recast a couple of spells on a caster who is far from being devoid of ressources. For 90% of fights, casting Ancestor's Memory is essentially bad action economy (or situational flexibility). At least this is my experience.
So should I ignore it for this reason ?

There are many things borderline OP in this game. I don't want to cut them all. Should I cut Unbending also ? Whispers of the Wind ?
Should I cut Monk class ?

Edited May 19, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

1 minute ago, Elric Galad said:

To be honnest, Brilliant isn't that relevant apart Megabosses battles either. 70 focus and casting time isn't that cheap just to recast a couple of spells on a caster who is far from being devoid of ressources. For 90% of fights, casting Ancestor's Memory is essentially bad action economy (or situational flexibility).
So should I ignore it for this reason ?

There are many things borderline OP in this game. I don't want to cut them all. Should I cut Unbending also ? Whispers of the Wind ?
Should I cut Monk class ?

I mean, now I think you're just being willfully obtuse. Brilliant isn't that relevant apart from megabosses solely because the rest of the game expects you to be able to beat it without using Brilliant, so yeah, you don't need it. It doesn't change the fact that it's super good. 70 focus and casting time - you can do that basically at the start of a fight on a wizard or priest or druid and just spam the #1 spell you have the rest of the fight; unless you're a level 20 party against xuarips, it's not bad action economy it is optimal action economy because now you can cast the perfect spell over and over, isntead of going from your #1 spell to your #2 spell, etc.

Brilliant isn't borderline OP, it is OP. 

 

20 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

+1 DIscipline per Interrupt -> +1 Ressource per class (small buff to still allow Tactician Combos)

I don't think you fully thought this one out - this makes tactician even better than before. A wizard with slicken will have an effect far stronger than anything brilliant could've given them.

[Elric Galad]

17 minutes ago, thelee said:

I mean, now I think you're just being willfully obtuse. Brilliant isn't that relevant apart from megabosses solely because the rest of the game expects you to be able to beat it without using Brilliant, so yeah, you don't need it. It doesn't change the fact that it's super good. 70 focus and casting time - you can do that basically at the start of a fight on a wizard or priest or druid and just spam the #1 spell you have the rest of the fight; unless you're a level 20 party against xuarips, it's not bad action economy it is optimal action economy because now you can cast the perfect spell over and over, isntead of going from your #1 spell to your #2 spell, etc.

Brilliant isn't borderline OP, it is OP. 

Yup, but does casting #1 instead of #2 is really better than casting #2 AND disintigrate in parallel (focus and cast time similar to Brilliant) ?

To get the effect, you're combining Cipher and another character strengths.

Granted it is not as simple as this since Brilliant also provides INT and PL, and will regenerate several spells (even with my proposed nerf to 12s), not just one.
And also that if you want to regen the perfect spell, you have to restrain using others (that's a significant opportunity cost for a wizard - no DAoM, Mirror image, etc...)

EDIT : Also, tweaking brilliant so it doesn't automatically give you back max level spell slot (as blood sacrifice) might be an option too.

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I don't think you fully thought this one out - this makes tactician even better than before. A wizard with slicken will have an effect far stronger than anything brilliant could've given them.

Yup, I was not confident about this one (and others), that's why I'm telling about it before implementing it.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Elric Galad

[dgray62]

As a noob myself, perhaps it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a problem except for those with in depth understanding of game mechanics, and who thus have the know-how to exploit opportunities such as those discussed in this thread. For example, tactician/bloodmage is one of my favorite combinations to play. And this is not because it is particularly OP for a noob such as myself. Indeed, for noobs builds such as arcane knights are much more OP, since they are so durable and yet dish out serious damage. I like tactician/bloodmage because it presents a challenge, at least for those of us with less depth of understanding. For one thing, it is a somewhat mysterious build. For example, why does my tactician/bloodmage begin ship battles with brilliant, only to have it cancelled out almost immediately? It is also somewhat of a challenge, at least for someone with middling experience like me, to trigger brilliant. There are many battles in which I have not gotten it to trigger until the last enemy is dead; it triggers and then is immediately cancelled out. There's also some risk in this build, since you have to be careful about being flanked. I understand how to trigger it, and often manage to do so, using chillfog, phantom foes, etc., but there are still some mysteries, for me at least. For example, I do not yet fully understand how summons affect my chances of triggering brilliant. Importantly, brilliant is easiest to trigger when it is most needed, when fighting a single boss. So while developing a mod to tone down brilliant might be a great idea, and those who are interested could download it, such changes are not necessary for many of us.

Edited May 19, 2020 by dgray62

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Yup, but does casting #1 instead of #2 is really better than casting #2 AND disintigrate in parallel (focus and cast time similar to Brilliant) ?

sure. it doesn't even need to be an AL9 spell. if the #1 spell you need to cast is another slicken, then that's what you're better off doing.

in magic: the gathering there are plenty of effects that cost you mana and a card to get another card. they can be extremely powerful because they effectively thin your deck into the cards you actually want. similarly, a psion with ancestor's memory is an extra copy of N number of your best spells and effects and the cost is minimal (hence why i keep saying psion instead of generic cipher - psions have close to absolute resource generation, whereas a normal cipher has greater possibilities of getting screwed and unable to generate focus). They are your best spells and effects regardless of what they actually are - you can decide at the time what they are, whether it's just to spam some high level wizard spells, start off a priest combo, or just give your fighter/rogue extra interrupts.

I'm not making an absolute argument here. Changing brilliant down (or increasing the cost somehow) reduces that N and can bring it into line: at 12s (or with restrictions) it's merely very good instead of the best cipher power available. Even just making it AL9 (that would constitute increasing the cost) would make it more balanced simply because you limit it to single-class ciphers (on top of the extra focus cost). (edit - but this all still dodges around the fact that Brilliant is the only tier 3 inspiration that requires such balancing - i would argue virtually noone would think a 12second robust inspiration with cast time on a single ally target would be so very good as an AL9 cipher effect)

edit - as a historical note for the unaware, Brilliant used to regen a resource every 3 seconds. Imagine this on a chanter invocation that affects your entire party and one a multiclass chanter could even pick up - chanters in 1.0 were stupid (along with all items and consumables being OP). Given how much I generally respect JE Sawyer and the OBS crew, it was frankly stunning that anyone thought this was remotely balanced at any point. The six-second resource was the extent of OBS's efforts to balance it for when it came back as Ancestor's Memory.

 

2 hours ago, dgray62 said:

As a noob myself, perhaps it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a problem except for those with in depth understanding of game mechanics, and who thus have the know-how to exploit opportunities such as those discussed in this thread. For example, tactician/bloodmage is one of my favorite combinations to play. And this is not because it is particularly OP for a noob such as myself. Indeed, for noobs builds such as arcane knights are much more OP, since they are so durable and yet dish out serious damage. I like tactician/bloodmage because it presents a challenge, at least for those of us with less depth of understanding. For one thing, it is a somewhat mysterious build. For example, why does my tactician/bloodmage begin ship battles with brilliant, only to have it cancelled out almost immediately? It is also somewhat of a challenge, at least for someone with middling experience like me, to trigger brilliant. There are many battles in which I have not gotten it to trigger until the last enemy is dead; it triggers and then is immediately cancelled out. There's also some risk in this build, since you have to be careful about being flanked. I understand how to trigger it, and often manage to do so, using chillfog, phantom foes, etc., but there are still some mysteries, for me at least. For example, I do not yet fully understand how summons affect my chances of triggering brilliant. Importantly, brilliant is easiest to trigger when it is most needed, when fighting a single boss. So while developing a mod to tone down brilliant might be a great idea, and those who are interested could download it, such changes are not necessary for many of us.

i appreciate this perspecitve but i want to use an analogy to blizzard's balancing efforts. they recognize that there are multiple "levels" of play, ranging from just-starting to esports-player. Different skill levels will get wildly different things out of e.g. starcraft 2 or warcraft 3 - rookie or lower-level players may play games/units/strategies that don't even register for esports players. They don't skimp out on a nerf or a buff that affects one tier if such skimping negatively impacts another tier.

similarly - even if there are many (even most) people who are really unable to take advantage of a degenerate combo, it doesn't mean we should just ignore it if it poisons the metagame at the top. the best solution would in fact be to tweak tactician s.t. it still gets great rewards for newer/rookie players while not being degenerate for min-maxers. this is what shops like blizzard (and to a certain extent wizards of the coast) do when they're at their best - going back to magic: the gathering, wizards will make tons of cards they know will have no impact whatsoever on pro constructed play because they know it'll work great in scenes that lower-skill or more casual players play in (like commander, drafts, pauper, etc).

but i would argue even without resource regen, tacticians really have a great ability already - fighter resource regen on an interrupt. this even works great in multiclass.

 

though this all really hypothetical anyway because OBS isn't going to do any balance patching here, so like you say we're just talking about making voluntary balance mods.

Edited May 19, 2020 by thelee

[dgray62]

I agree with you completely, thelee. Ideally the game would be balanced in a way that doesn't sacrifice playability at any skill level. I find this discussion fascinating as it relates the metagame experience which I am only just beginning to understand. I also agree that fighter resource regen on interrupt is great for tactician. But this feature is also a bit mysterious. I try to interrupt with knockdown/mule kick when an opponent is beginning to activate an ability or spell. However, when the attack is successful and I knock them down, I do not always get discipline back. This may be due to timing, but it does not seem very reliable when attacking a single opponent. Needless to say, it clearly works better with AOE attacks, such as a mule kick with Citzal's. This points to what is probably an obvious point, that tactician is best in multiclass builds.

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

sure. it doesn't even need to be an AL9 spell. if the #1 spell you need to cast is another slicken, then that's what you're better off doing.

in magic: the gathering there are plenty of effects that cost you mana and a card to get another card. they can be extremely powerful because they effectively thin your deck into the cards you actually want. similarly, a psion with ancestor's memory is an extra copy of N number of your best spells and effects and the cost is minimal (hence why i keep saying psion instead of generic cipher - psions have close to absolute resource generation, whereas a normal cipher has greater possibilities of getting screwed and unable to generate focus). They are your best spells and effects regardless of what they actually are - you can decide at the time what they are, whether it's just to spam some high level wizard spells, start off a priest combo, or just give your fighter/rogue extra interrupts.

Yup, but if you know MTG, you also know that casting a card draw spell may give you ressources (cards) advantage, but you may loose the tempo by spending a whole turn without putting/removing nothing on the table.
That's what I'm refering here too. Casting Ancestor's Memory has a cost. You're not conjuring ressources out of thin air and you may loose an advantage while spending time to cast it for later better ressources (although it is not as critical as in this MTG example).

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I'm not making an absolute argument here. Changing brilliant down (or increasing the cost somehow) reduces that N and can bring it into line: at 12s (or with restrictions) it's merely very good instead of the best cipher power available. Even just making it AL9 (that would constitute increasing the cost) would make it more balanced simply because you limit it to single-class ciphers (on top of the extra focus cost).

Yup, that's what I'm trying to do. I think Ancestor's Memory is fine when given to a SC Martial, around fine when given to MC Martial (but it's complicated to change the balance between these two anyway), vaguely useless on Cipher and to a lesser extant Chanters (maybe Chanter MC likes it a bit) and clearly overpowered on anything involving a caster (both when compared to effect on others and in absolute value).

That's what I'm trying to address.

But people like the infinite ressource generation, so I don't want to cut this possibility. Fun matters.

FYI Putting it on AL9 is extremely tedious to do in a PoE2 mod though, because it would conflict with basically any mod revamping Cipher ability tree.

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(edit - but this all still dodges around the fact that Brilliant is the only tier 3 inspiration that requires such balancing - i would argue virtually noone would think a 12second robust inspiration with cast time on a single ally target would be so very good as an AL9 cipher effect)

Yup, but it's written nowhere that all Inspirations (and Afflictions) of a given tier should have the same level of power.
Blind for example is extremely meh as a Tier 3 afflictions. But the spells inflicting it are good enough.
It would have been "more beautiful" if they were, but it doesn't seem to be an underlying principle.

Brilliant, however, is so much above the curve that it still feels weird even after admitting that Tier 3 inspirations could be of different powers.

But I'm not the designer of the game, so I cannot really address that (and I don't really want anyway).

 

4 hours ago, dgray62 said:

So while developing a mod to tone down brilliant might be a great idea, and those who are interested could download it, such changes are not necessary for many of us.

For your information, here is the mod :

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/114861-balance-polishing-mod-release-10/

The nerfs are in a separate package, so they are optional anyways.
And the files are all separate too, so if you don't like the changes I made for an ability, it's easy enough to erase it.

It's a Single Player Game after all. But I still think a couple of nerfs (or tweaks) could help give a better overall experience, so that's why I include them (it also helps this bunch of powercrept stuff to feel more legit)

 

49 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

I agree with you completely, thelee. Ideally the game would be balanced in a way that doesn't sacrifice playability at any skill level. I find this discussion fascinating as it relates the metagame experience which I am only just beginning to understand. I also agree that fighter resource regen on interrupt is great for tactician. But this feature is also a bit mysterious. I try to interrupt with knockdown/mule kick when an opponent is beginning to activate an ability or spell. However, when the attack is successful and I knock them down, I do not always get discipline back. This may be due to timing, but it does not seem very reliable when attacking a single opponent. Needless to say, it clearly works better with AOE attacks, such as a mule kick with Citzal's. This points to what is probably an obvious point, that tactician is best in multiclass builds.

That's why I'm so happy with my change to Salvation of Time (even if some finds it unsufficient )
It is improved for people who don't like to abuse it, and still prevent Broken combos from expert users

I still don't have solutions as clean for most of what we are discussing now.
 

Edited May 19, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

6 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Yup, but it's written nowhere that all Inspirations (and Afflictions) of a given tier should have the same level of power.

hm, yes that is very true. i suppose i assumed they were trying to be roughly symmetric (roughly like attributes) but failed. but i think i can sleep better at night thinking that they never tried to be symmetric in the first place  

[thelee]

7 hours ago, dgray62 said:

I try to interrupt with knockdown/mule kick when an opponent is beginning to activate an ability or spell.

part of what make mule kick great is that it *always* knocks up the enemy upon a graze, regardless of whether or not it actually "interrupted" the enemy (unlike prone). this can be misleading. if the enemy has concentration, or is immune to interrupts, they'll get knocked up by a mule kick (and lose a concentration if any), but they won't be "interrupted" to qualify for the discipline resource regen, despite the fact that you literally interrupted something they were trying to do (and in some cases the AI will abandon the ability it tried to use, just as if you had actually interrupted it). i suspect that might be what you're running into, more than timing. again, this is why supplementing tactician with another class or using an aoe weapon works great.

Edited May 20, 2020 by thelee

[dgray62]

16 minutes ago, thelee said:

part of what make mule kick great is that it *always* knocks up the enemy upon a graze, regardless of whether or not it actually "interrupted" the enemy (unlike prone). this can be misleading. if the enemy has concentration, or is immune to interrupts, they'll get knocked up by a mule kick (and lose a concentration if any), but they won't be "interrupted" to qualify for the discipline resource regen, despite the fact that you literally interrupted something they were trying to do (and in some cases the AI will abandon the ability it tried to use, just as if you had actually interrupted it). i suspect that might be what you're running into, more than timing. again, this is why supplementing tactician with another class or using an aoe weapon works great.

Thanks for the explanation, thelee, that makes sense. Concentration is somewhat funny as well. On a number of occasions I have noticed that, when landing a killing blow on an enemy, the game informs me that the enemy's concentration prevented the interrupt. You would think that a killing blow would *always* interrupt whatever one was doing!

[Boeroer]

Nope, the guy's simply completing the action in the afterlife.

[Elric Galad]

What I plan to do, second version :
 

Nerfs & tweaks :

His Heart Did Fill with the Light of the Dawn (already in the mod):

+1 Ressource -> +2 Ressources
Does not affect the caster anymore.

 

Blood Mage -> Blood Sacrifice Recovery to 3s
Blood Sacrifice regenerated Tier chances aligned with the table below.

Tactician :

Brilliant Tactician -> Acute (it shall not be as good as a Cipher Tier VII Power, so I see no obvious way to keep Brilliant)
Add passive negative effect "Tactician Prudence" : +20% Recovery to everything (subclass has more ressources, but uses them slower).
Add passive beneficial effect "Backup Plan" : 1/ressource per class every 30s (unconditional). This is to put a harder limit on ressource regeneration for both classes while addressing the trick to constantly "reboot" Brilliant to get the initial +1 ressource.

WoD :
Procs trigger a hostile lasting effect : for 6s ,-2s beneficial effect per 1s
Procs trigger a (non-cumulative) beneficial lasting effect on catser : for 6s, +0.66s beneficial effect per 1s
This essentially triples the duration of beneficial effects on caster, and divide per 3 the duration of beneficial effects on foes. Works better on ennemies crossing the wall, works better as a dispell, but nerf hard the self buffing part (but still better than my version of SoT at this)
@Raven Darkholme : this is close to what I did for SoT.

For Brilliant, Blood Mage, His Heart Did Fill, and the new "Tactician Backup", I want the ressource regeneration for casters to work like this (I have to check if possible) :
3/6 chances to restore Tier I-III
2/6 chances to restore Tier IV-VI
1/6 chances to restore Tier VII-IX (interestingly, this is WoD Tier)

I think there should still be ways to immortality (Tactician Unbending + Bloodmage WoD spamming), but most likely so tedious that it is below my alarm line. For a complete playthrough, they won't work well against dispells anyway.
@thelee : feel free to comment if you find Something Broken (not just slightly OP )

Buffs (to address the general problem of Single Class Martial ressources) :

Stunning Shot : add 10% chance Bond on Crit

 

Heart Piercer : back to 4 bonds (my mod tuned it to 3), Enfeebled set to infinite duration (sort of passive)

 

Distracting Training : in addition to my previous duration buff to 15s, I will allow it to work on any Attack (not just melee)

Wall of Flashing Steel :  add 10% chance Guile on Crit

Vengeful Defeat : add 2 Rages on Unconscious

Note that the On-Crit ressources have good synergy with Rogue's Gambit and general ability of Ranger to generate a tons of attacks through driving flight, Twin Shots or Whriling Strikes. That's why the percentage has to remain low. It would also favors Blunderbusses (even with their Acc malus), but I hope not too much.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Powerotti]

SoT+brilliant solution is simple - leave SoT as it is, and make brilliant restore highest used spell periodically for 1-3pl on 6sec after cast, then 4-6 on 12sec, then 7-9 on 18sec, then 1-3 again on 24sec, and so on.

So brilliant (or any other effect) can be prolonged for some time (by one priest), but not forever. e.g. if x<15 sec, it will end in 65th second of duration, and needs to be cast again. Long enough to be resonably powerful, but not infinite. Ofc priest must cast it every time if possible and ruin his action economy.

WoD could give 0.5sec duration of effect, every 1sec, and won't extend duration so good as SoT, but it's one time cast.

Still fun, still reasonable, but not so OP

[Elric Galad]

26 minutes ago, Powerotti said:

SoT+brilliant solution is simple - leave SoT as it is, and make brilliant restore highest used spell periodically for 1-3pl on 6sec after cast, then 4-6 on 12sec, then 7-9 on 18sec, then 1-3 again on 24sec, and so on.

So brilliant (or any other effect) can be prolonged for some time (by one priest), but not forever. e.g. if x<15 sec, it will end in 65th second of duration, and needs to be cast again. Long enough to be resonably powerful, but not infinite. Ofc priest must cast it every time if possible and ruin his action economy.

WoD could give 0.5sec duration of effect, every 1sec, and won't extend duration so good as SoT, but it's one time cast.

Still fun, still reasonable, but not so OP

Well, your solution is good, but does not work with 2 Brilliant priests.

My already implemented solution for SoT is actually close to what you describe for WoD (I knew I had to copy it in my previous post ) :

Salvation of Time :
Change to a lasting beneficial effects which adds 0.5s to every beneficial effects every 1s. That effectively halves their ellapsing speed of buffs (including SoT itself : it lasts 20s with a base duration of 10s).
Basically still add 10s but :
- Now benefits from PL and INT
- Now applies to effects cast after it (especially useful for Vanishing Strikes...)
- Useless to cast several times in a row
- The most important : now a single effect cannot have its duration more than doubled. 
It is still a very good spell, even better than before, but it is now impossible to abuse by combining it with Brilliant, and all other buffs will also have to be re-cast again at some point.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Powerotti]

Ah, yes. I see it now. Must dig into your mod more carefully

 

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Tactician :

Brilliant Tactician -> Acute (it shall not be as good as a Cipher Tier VII Power, so I see no obvious way to keep Brilliant)

So shouldn't it be called " A Cute Tactician"?

Fighter already can get acute insp by Tactical Barrage

 

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Heart Piercer : back to 4 bonds (my mod tuned it to 3), Enfeebled set to infinite duration (sort of passive)

*Heart Seeker - infinite until target gets con inspiration?

 

Are you planning to make Carnage and Clear out AoE visible? That would be nice QoL change, even if collide with AoE weapons

Edited May 20, 2020 by Powerotti

[Elric Galad]

12 minutes ago, Powerotti said:

So shouldn't it be called " A Cute Tactician"?

Fighter already can get acute insp by Tactical Barrage

Yep (anf from Inspired Strike too) but :
- Tactician can get Disciplined Strikes instead.
- The INT + PL part of Brilliant has always been redundant with Tactical Barrage anyway.

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

SoT+brilliant solution is simple

actually simple vs. totally not simple at all

0:3

[Powerotti]

Maybe i'm more conservative about nerfing metagaming-fun

[Boeroer]

I just meant that every time somebody in this thread said "it's simple" it turned out that it wasn't.

[Elric Galad]

On ‎5‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 1:08 PM, Kaylon said:

Actually Brilliant itself is pretty weak. The problem comes from Wall of Draining/Salvation of Time and the fix was always pretty simple, don't let Brilliant/Blood Sacrifice restore them.

0:1

On ‎5‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 8:07 PM, n00biwan said:

The solution to balancing is very simple, limit sot to a certain amount of casts unless solo mode is enabled. Lets be real there is no way to solo potd the megabosses without resource regen, or flame blight cheese with bm, unless you follow Kaylons strats as a herald or use a monk, but armor and weapons degrades with abydon enabled so you cannot do it on the ultimate. His video on herald vs ooze was so painful to just watch, who the hell would actually wana kill it that way.. As far as sc monks go, how to survive sss with vela on ironmam mode is another issue that I dont think anyones figured out yet

0:2

On ‎5‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 5:53 PM, Elric Galad said:

That's exactly the answer I needed.
Even if I don't want to prevent Brilliant from providing infinite ressource, I still believe that it is too strong for Casters. The easiest fix would be to slow the ticks for casters. It's extremely simple to do based on your file.

Pending, I've not actually tried yet.

2 hours ago, Powerotti said:

SoT+brilliant solution is simple - leave SoT as it is, and make brilliant restore highest used spell periodically for 1-3pl on 6sec after cast, then 4-6 on 12sec, then 7-9 on 18sec, then 1-3 again on 24sec, and so on.

So brilliant (or any other effect) can be prolonged for some time (by one priest), but not forever. e.g. if x<15 sec, it will end in 65th second of duration, and needs to be cast again. Long enough to be resonably powerful, but not infinite. Ofc priest must cast it every time if possible and ruin his action economy.

WoD could give 0.5sec duration of effect, every 1sec, and won't extend duration so good as SoT, but it's one time cast.

Still fun, still reasonable, but not so OP

0:3

[Powerotti]

We don't want infinite loop of Brilliant/SoT, or prebuffing to oblivion in solo and it works. If somebody wants to abuse game mechanics, it is possible no mater what you do. Instead using two priests one can spam Ancestors Memory and reaply every effect. There was some better and some worse solutions, but i wouldn't say they are all bad

2 hours ago, Powerotti said:

SoT+brilliant solution is simple possible

0:2,5

Edited May 20, 2020 by Powerotti