OP Classes

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

 

*Heart Seeker - infinite until target gets con inspiration?

Yes. Better in case you hit your friends.

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

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

Phenomenon did it for Carnage in his CP Add-On. Check for it. I don't plan to do it myself (the mod has been a lot of work honnestly).

[dgray62]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

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

That's funny, thanks!

[Elric Galad]

I have made futher tests on Blood Sacrifice and it appears that it doesn't regenerate ressource exactly like described in Thelee's Gamefaq.

When used, it procs following effects randomly (and causes a proportional health loss :
- "Minor"     Blood Sacrifice : Recover a Spell Slot from Tier 1 to Tier 3, 
- "Medium" Blood Sacrifice : Recover a Spell Slot from Tier 1 to Tier 6,
- "Major"     Blood Sacrifice : Recover a Spell Slot from Tier 1 to Tier 9.
But each effect will randomly select a Spell Slot from the possible range among the Spell Slots already spent. For example, Major Blood Sacrifice will randomly choose between a Tier 1 Spell Charge and Tier 9 Spell Charge if they are both available.
Major Blood Sacrifice does not select the higher tier slots in priority (that's the difference with the Gamefaq description, which is still a better description than Obsidian's , hey !).

It leads to interesting consequences. Using low Tier spells will give more chance te recover a charge but can decrease the chance of recovering an higher Tier.
For example, if a character has only spent a Tier 9 charge, Blood Sacrifice will have 1/3 chance of regenerating it and 2/3 chances of doing nothing.
However, if a character has only spent a Tier 1 charge and Tier 9 charge, Blood Sacrifice will have 1/6 chance of regenerating the Tier 9 one and 5/6 chances of regenerating the Tier 1 one.

Spoiler

Minor Blood Sacrifice would regenerate the Tier 1
Medium Blood Sacrifice would regenerate the Tier 1
Major Blood Sacrifice would have 50% chances of regenerating the Tier 1 and 50% chances of regenerating the Tier 9.

I think the optimum (in term of spell level regenerated, of course, in certain situation some lower tier spells can be better) is probably reached by only using Tier 6 and 9 (or 7 for MC).
This way, you have Blood Sacrifice has 1/3 chance of doing nothing, 1/2 chance of restoring a Tier 6 spell and 1/6 chance of restoring a Tier 9 (7 for MC) spell.

Spoiler

Minor Blood Sacrifice would do nothing.
Medium Blood Sacrifice would regenerate teh Tier 6 charge.
Major Blood Sacrifice would have 50% chances of regenerating the Tier 6 and 50% chances of regenerating the Tier 9.

The overall effect is great, but not as much as what Brilliant ticks provide.
I think I will still nerf Bloodmage by giving Blood Sacrifice a 3s Recovery and a 6s sef-target Hostile effect preventing any healing for its duration (the later is to avoid the Tactician Unbending + Bloodmage WoD infinite Combo which is the only Immortality Combo remaning once SoT and WoD are tweaked). This would be sufficient while not removing the subclass its access to potentially unlimited powers.

I am considering using the exact mechanic for Brilliant ticks (and a couple of similar effects) for Caster Ressources. It would prevent spamming Maelstorm every 6s and mitigate spamming of Tier 6- spells (2/3 chances of getting a Tier 6+ slot back is closer to martial 1 ressource ; even if slightly better, it comes at the price of randomness and commitment to not use lower Tiers).
Also this would be good for ruleset consistency since the effect does not come from nowhere.
EDIT : errr, it does not seem to be possible. It seems that Status cannot be randomized unless they com from an attack. Brilliant Ticks are not attack.
EDIT EDIT : might be not totally impossible with a few tweaks (I'm going to remove ressource regen from Brilliant and put it on Ancestor's Memory instead, but as a 1-time effect)
 

Edited May 23, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

good find, @Elric Galad!

it means that if one wants to regen a level 9 spell it matters all the more to specifically game it, since this means you potentially have a brutal 1/27 chance of getting it back (worst case of having cast a spell from each spell level).

[Venatoris78]

So after getting some tips for a friend of mine, i want to try another walkthrough.  But this time im interested in a very powerful (OP?) caster class. Now this thread often mention priest + brilliant.

How exactly would one build look like?

[Elric Galad]

16 minutes ago, Venatoris78 said:

So after getting some tips for a friend of mine, i want to try another walkthrough.  But this time im interested in a very powerful (OP?) caster class. Now this thread often mention priest + brilliant.

How exactly would one build look like?

Pick Priest

Pick Barring Death Door

Pick Salvation of Time

Have someone in tout party cast Brillant on you once (Cipher's Ancestor Memory or Robes of the Weyc )

Profit.

Trust Me, it's as lame as it sounds.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

Most "OP" caster without too much gymnastics is Bloodmage.

Once you get Wall of Draining and any healing over time in the party or yourself (Blightheart's healing or Healing Gloves will do) you can prolong the healing endlessly along with all buffs which allows you to spam Blood Sacrifice - which gets you back Wall of Draining (and the other spell uses).

You can't empower spells then but cast them more often (e.g. PL9 ones).

[Haplok]

That's late game territory, though. In case of my Spellblade, just Blade Feast from Engoliero provides enough healing in many encounters and I rarely even use Wall of Draining. 

 

Let's not forget fantastic early game on Blood Mage, with Concelhauts Corrosive Siphon providing enough healing to keep up the spell spam. 

[Noqn]

This is not entirely elegant, but how about making Blood Sacrifice Tiers selectable through a modal ability?

Inspecting each Tier for exact damage values (may not include conditional damage modifiers such as Death's Usher):

Strangely, it turns out that Tier 1 restores up to lv4 and Tier 2 up to lv7 spells. (Despite the status effects having correct values.)

AddResource seems to evaluate Spell Levels zero-based, contrary to the documentation.

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, Noqn said:

This is not entirely elegant, but how about making Blood Sacrifice Tiers selectable through a modal ability?

Inspecting each Tier for exact damage values (may not include conditional damage modifiers such as Death's Usher):

Strangely, it turns out that Tier 1 restores up to lv4 and Tier 2 up to lv7 spells. (Despite the status effects having correct values.)

AddResource seems to evaluate Spell Levels zero-based, contrary to the documentation.

You mean... buffing Bloodmage ?

Don't get me wrong, the change is nice, but this would be a good amount of powercreeping.

[Elric Galad]

Okay, I'm set on the idea to change Brilliant to +5 INT, +3PL and gives Ancestor's Memory +3 ressources on cast in addition to Brilliant (+3 ressources with random Tiers for casters, as for Bloodmage).

The question now is : how to rework Tactician ?
I want the class to be more balanced but still provide some ressource regeneration for both Tactician and a possible multiclass.

- I think I'm going to keep Brilliant Tactician with the "new" Brilliant. Still a very distinctive feature since +3PL is noticeable.

- Penalty vs non-engaged target makes sense. So no change planned for this one.

- Tactician Dilemna is weird. Shaken can be avoided by simply taking Fearless Feat. Confusion is avoidable too, or alternatively Flanked can be avoided completely. I am considering removing it completely : since I consider adding new feature, simplifying unecessary rules is an option.

- I am considering adding a +20% recovery to the class. This is a noticeably penalty, but it would be counterbalanced by the +3 PL from Brilliant and ressource regeneration. Act less, but with improbed abilities/more abilities. I think this one would make sense.

- Discipline on Interrupt could add ressource for both classes. But as Thelee pointed previously, it has gruesome interraction with things like Slicken. Maybe this combo should be limited too. I'm considering limiting it to Weapon Interrupt, but this would incitate a bit too much to go for Xbows/Arbs or certain magical weapons.

- Ressource on Interrupt might not be enough to keep the old vibe of Infinite ressources (especially vs Dorudugan. I know it is 1 encounter, but I don't like to make tactician nearly useless vs this one). I'm wondering if a ressource regen on certain event could be added. But it shall not be too frequent. 1 ressources /6s was way too strong. I'm aiming Something like 1 ressource / 30s. I can't make new icons for new active abilities though. 
If a ressource regeneration for all classes is added, I think it would be better to go for random Tiers for casters, as for Bloodmage. Problem is that the only possible implementation of cancels invisibility (for technical reasons).

Do you have any ideas about it ?

[Venatoris78]

So Priest i find very interesting. But i like to be more dmg oriented. Is Priest of Magran a good choice? Single or Multiclass?

[Powerotti]

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

gives Ancestor's Memory +3 ressources on cast in addition to Brilliant

So ascendant with time parasite can restore complete resource pool MUCH faster than current brilliant?

I think, you could leave regenerating effect for brilliant, but change it to restore one spell of random PL. e.g. (1-3), (4-6), (7-9)  or  (1,4,7), (2,5,8), (3,6,9). In addition block repeating the same tier, if it was restored before, or make them cycle. This forces caster to use different spells and keeps regen effect rather balanced

[Elric Galad]

49 minutes ago, Venatoris78 said:

So Priest i find very interesting. But i like to be more dmg oriented. Is Priest of Magran a good choice? Single or Multiclass?

Yup, in addition to the sarcastic answer I gave (which was still true about what you needed), I would say : go Single Class.

Tier VIII (Symbols or Hand of Weal and Woe) and Tier IX (Magran's Might) are a league of their own when it comes to damage dealing. 

I would go Berath rather than Magran. Magran offers more damage possibilities, but they are all Fire-Based. The main pb of damage priest is that they have poor Tools vs fire resistant foes.
Symbol of Berath is great and deals Corrode damages. Touch of Rot is nice as a Tier I too. Rot Skulls... needs Community Patch to work properly.
But Magran is great too, of course. Just be prepared to switch to Support/Healing vs Fire resistant foes.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

So ascendant with time parasite can restore complete resource pool MUCH faster than current brilliant?

Tweaks always lead to some benefit. It doesn't change much from before, I think, except for 2 people parties, since Ascendant can currently switch party members. 

Quote

I think, you could leave regenerating effect for brilliant, but change it to restore one spell of random PL. e.g. (1-3), (4-6), (7-9)  or  (1,4,7), (2,5,8), (3,6,9). In addition block repeating the same tier, if it was restored before, or make them cycle. This forces caster to use different spells and keeps regen effect rather balanced

Yes, that was my initial intention, I admit. But I had to face the technical possibilities of Gamedata files.

If you need to code an effect into [Possibility 1; Possibility 2; Possibility 3], you need to use an object qualified as "Attack".
Attack would break invisibility on the caster which would be weird. That's why I went with this twist.
Without using an Attack all you can do is [% Possibility 1 ; Nothing]

Cycling Tier seems impossible. Selecting Tier is also impossible, you can only use range [1 - X]. That's why I copied Blood Sacrifice way of working : because, well, it works.

I don't pretend this is the best design, but it seems to be the best technically possible design  

Sorry, it's hard to keep people informed about the technical limitations.

EDIT : I havven't been very clear that the reason behind the Brilliant change was in reality the introduction of this random Tier component. ..

Edited May 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Madscientist]

I did not read everything but I think:

 

brilliant: either it just gives 3PL or it recovers one use of the lowest used spell level. That means if you cast withdraw to keep vela save and you did not use a lv1 spell it will only recover one use of a lv2 spell. One problem is that it recovers ALL spell levels at once. It would also recover only one used resource for (multi) classes that have several resources. It would be a nerf, but I am not sure if this was enough.

Salvation of time: It does not stack with itself. You can increase the duration of any effect only once. If you have increased the duration of an effect once, SoT does nothing to this effect and it has to run out and you have to apply it again if you want to increase the duration again.

No idea about blood mage and draining wall.

[Powerotti]

29 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

So ascendant with time parasite can restore complete resource pool MUCH faster than current brilliant?

Tweaks always lead to some benefit. It doesn't change much from before, I think, except for 2 people parties, since Ascendant can currently switch party members. 

It moves cipher to close to ancient memory casting slave imo and some martial classes gets huge adventage. With classic brilliant, barbarian can use heart of fury 2x/encounter and then every next time per 24sec (excluding blood surge). Now he can spam it as long, as ascended goes on. Similar with rangers whirling strikes and monks inner death.

 

49 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Quote

I think, you could leave regenerating effect for brilliant, but change it to restore one spell of random PL. e.g. (1-3), (4-6), (7-9)  or  (1,4,7), (2,5,8), (3,6,9). In addition block repeating the same tier, if it was restored before, or make them cycle. This forces caster to use different spells and keeps regen effect rather balanced

Yes, that was my initial intention, I admit. But I had to face the technical possibilities of Gamedata files.

If you need to code an effect into [Possibility 1; Possibility 2; Possibility 3], you need to use an object qualified as "Attack".
Attack would break invisibility on the caster which would be weird. That's why I went with this twist.
Without using an Attack all you can do is [% Possibility 1 ; Nothing]

Cycling Tier seems impossible. Selecting Tier is also impossible, you can only use range [1 - X]. That's why I copied Blood Sacrifice way of working : because, well, it works.

I don't pretend this is the best design, but it seems to be the best technically possible design  

Sorry, it's hard to keep people informed about the technical limitations.

I don't know anything about technical aspects of modding, so every idea is guessing about what might be possible to do

In that case, i think, copying blood sacrifice is most balanced idea

 

[Elric Galad]

33 minutes ago, Madscientist said:

I did not read everything but I think:

brilliant: either it just gives 3PL or it recovers one use of the lowest used spell level. That means if you cast withdraw to keep vela save and you did not use a lv1 spell it will only recover one use of a lv2 spell. One problem is that it recovers ALL spell levels at once. It would also recover only one used resource for (multi) classes that have several resources. It would be a nerf, but I am not sure if this was enough.

Problem is that it is not doable.

All you can do is recover a random used slot between Tier 1 and Tier x (you can do it on initial cast, on event, on tick...) 
You can also add a random effect that :
- do it only with a % chance.
- add a random component that restore an used slot between Tier 1 and Tier x OR Tier 1 and Tier y OR Tier 1 and Tier z (but this breaks invisibility on the initial caster, so it's a bit ugly)

For class you can either :
- Restore stuff for pre-defined classes (for example, all non-casters)
- Restore stuff for all classes (so both in case of multiclass)

Edited May 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

19 minutes ago, Powerotti said:

 It moves cipher to close to ancient memory casting slave imo and some martial classes gets huge adventage. With classic brilliant, barbarian can use heart of fury 2x/encounter and then every next time per 24sec (excluding blood surge). Now he can spam it as long, as ascended goes on. Similar with rangers whirling strikes and monks inner death.

Memory slave. ROFL.

Heart of Fury is 3 Rages in my mod by the way (same as whirling strikes, which is still arguably better).

Does it makes Inner death preferable to disintigrate while your buddy simply poke ?
Does HoF spamming sounds worse than casting Driving Roar every 6s for a single use of Ancient Memory ?
Err hard to say, but it does not feel that bad.

Once more, I don't think Ancient Memory Slave would be more a concern than it is now. My last playthrough was often about saving Focus for it in important battles and casting no other spells.

And yup, it is not exactly like it is a design choice. It is simply the best way I have found to prevent Maelstorm spamming every 6s (with the "classic" party of 4 SC druids and their priest/ascendant "Memory slave")

Quote

I don't know anything about technical aspects of modding, so every idea is guessing about what might be possible to do

In that case, i think, copying blood sacrifice is most balanced idea

That's the best I can do. Of course, if another modder has an idea (which preserves the potential Infinite ressources without making it too spammy)

Edited May 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Powerotti]

33 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Does it makes Inner death preferable to disintigrate while your buddy simply poke ?

Why not both? Cast disintegrate on enemies and then poke, poke, poke. With time parasite it's matter of seconds, to cast disintegrate on all enemies. BTW i called inner death, because WotW is already OP. 40-80 base dmg + bonuses + lashes + 300% on crit - if spammable, it would be like Mike Tyson of Deadfire Archipelago

 

37 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Does HoF spamming sounds worse than casting Driving Roar every 6s for a single use of Ancient Memory ?
Err hard to say, but it does not feel that bad.

Driving roar every 6s now < HoF every ~2s after ancient memory tweak (even without combusting wounds and avenging storm) and the more enemies, the better it gets.

 

5 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Ancestor's Memory +3 ressources

As for casters - does it mean 3 random PL or 3 highest empty spell slots? Anyway, cipher could easly lead more than one caster, to throw high lvl spells all the time

 

I think brilliant restoring random PL spell every 6s is the best way to go

 

 

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

As for casters - does it mean 3 random PL or 3 highest empty spell slots? Anyway, cipher could easly lead more than one caster, to throw high lvl spells all the time

3 random PL. Implementing random PL on Ancestor's Memory is the reason for this change.

Quote

I think brilliant restoring random PL spell every 6s is the best way to go

Yes, I agree, but it does not work without side effects (break invisibility on initial caster... this one annoys me, I can't find a design devoid of bugs and problems. If only active status could use Random effects... I was this close ). But you might be right. Maybe that's preferable to instant refund. After all, there's a couple other spells (Magran's Might for example) that breaks initial caster invisibility on Ticks.

I might even leave Brilliant as it is, simply changing the refund to Bloodmagish random. My purpose is to try to be as similar as possible from original content.

I'm more annoyed by Tactician. Passive invisibility breaker is much more annoying than one from a spell. And 1 ressource per 6 second, even conditional, is far far too strong anyway. But I would need an alternate idea of ressource refund to keep the subclass vibe.

EDIT : What would you think about Tactician generating ressources on being missed (by any kind of attacks) ? Something between 10% and 25% chances ? (Bloodmagish random spell tier)

Edited May 25, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Powerotti said:

Driving roar every 6s now < HoF every ~2s after ancient memory tweak

No

[Powerotti]

31 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

No

Because?

With fire in the hole and axe modal + carnage dps is above decent, melee enemies clustered in one place without need of wall corner, so one can easily CC them. Driving roar have better rage economy vs dmg potential, but in that case it doesn't matter. 

Besides that, my point was restoring 3 resource instantly, with minimal recovery, would create the same problem with martials, that is with casters already - infinite spam of high pl abilities

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, Powerotti said:

Because?

Exactly

[Powerotti]

29 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Exactly