OP Classes

[Boeroer]

On Ultimate it will not.

Also you can just start the encounter with Lover's Embrace - so it won't stop if you become invisible. 

[Raven Darkholme]

  

3 hours ago, n00biwan said:

I did try to copy your tactician/bloodmage for some trials of the ultimate, but for the dangerous fights like various sss encounters and the forgotten sanctum maura fight it was so hard, if nemnoks cloak worked for vela also this would be a really really fun build!

 

Ye vela is the deal breaker, you have to keep her completely out of fights instead of just soting her with a priest, which is just so much more work.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Raven Darkholme

[n00biwan]

45 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

  

 

Ye vela is the deal breaker, you have to keep her completely out of fights instead of just soting her with a priest, which is just so much more work.

One way to completely take vela out of any fight is to activate the fight while in stealth with a trap, this way both vela and you will still be in stealth, then run to a corner and summon a phantom, and use the phantom to pull enemies to you. As soon as vela sees the enemy she will panick and stay in the safe spot, then you can withdraw her and cast arkemyrs departure on yourself. This method is very tedious, and doesnt work for some of the harder fights i mentioned before. I did use this way to keep vela out of the fight for nemnok & a few of the dlc encounters

[Phyriel]

I personally dislike all OP that comes from just abusing brilliant to become immortal with endless resources. I mean why would you even pretend you're playing legit this way and not pop god mode with console - pretty much same effect. Brilliant buff is hands down most ****ing moronic implementation in PoE. I feel it was added to game just as an excuse for making insanely boring, grindy fights with mega bosses.  Whenever someone posts a brilliant buff build im like "no, **** off with this bs, bring something creative instead of this copy pasta cheat build"

I like OP factor if it comes in a form of combos that require mixing synergy between classes, talents and items - then it functions as a reward for putting it together unlike ****ing brilliant which is just console "godmode" in disguise really, don't convince yourself otherwise, you're wrong and you should be whipping yourself as bodily penance for spreading **** ways to play the game.

Im sorry that I'm triggered but I feel I need to mock, flame on this design just so that no genius at obsidian find it a good implementation for PoE 3. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Phyriel

[Boeroer]

Same - except the profanity and ranting and blaming players for sharing stuff.

Brilliant is the most broken thing. And if you (as a designer) can't immediately see the gamebreaking combination of Brilliant and any duration boosting ability such as Wall of Draining and Salvation of Time then you have "tomatoes on the eyes" as we Germans say.

Wall of Draining itself also broke (even without Brilliant) as soon as the Bloodmage was introduced. 

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Boeroer

[Rimiu]

19 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Same - except the profanity and ranting and blaming players for sharing stuff.

Brilliant is the most broken thing. And if you (as a designer) can't immediately see the gamebreaking combination of Brilliant and any duration boosting ability such as Wall of Draining and Salvation of Time then you have "tomatoes on the eyes" as we Germans say.

Wall of Draining itself also broke (even without Brilliant) as soon as the Bloodmage was introduced. 

 

I'm no one to tell others how to play but brilliance makes me fall asleep. If it was a limited thing to x per encounter then yea, much better.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Rimiu

[Boeroer]

I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. 

Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus).

Anything that's not obviously destroying the resource economy.

I thought they got it when they started to nerf the Chanter invocation which originally applied Brilliant and now only adds +1 resources instantly (can't prolong that) - but Ancestor's Memory and other sources of Brilliant are still in, so...

 

[Boeroer]

@Rimiu: yes, German expat in Romania.  Soon to return to Berlin though (June 15th).

 

I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. 

Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus).

Anything that's not obviously destroying the resource economy.

I thought they got it when they started to nerf the Chanter invocation which originally applied Brilliant and now only adds +1 resources instantly (can't prolong that) - but Ancestor's Memory and other sources of Brilliant are still in, so...

Edited May 17, 2020 by Boeroer
I somehow posted that as a quote of mine? wtf...

[Raven Darkholme]

Ye wall of draining on BM is as broken as brilliant and with fighter can be completely played without brilliant if one is smart with their resources (I personally sometimes don't think ahead so I end up having to use it).

But let's be real Ultimate would not be possible without brilliant, unless you play like a chanter/ranger and do all fights entirely with summons. (not even sure if they can touch mega ukaizo)

[Elric Galad]

Preventing Brilliant from giving back ressources will make Blood mage even more broken and Megabosses borderline impossible to beat without specific party settup (I mean for "normal" players who don't play beyond potd upscaled with a party). The encounter design is currently not made for it.

My mod makes SoT unable to extand beyond doubling the duration of a spell. I believe this is enough for SoT. But Wall of Draining + Bloodmage + Priest is still there. Only Works on self and requires hitting though.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

53 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Preventing Brilliant from giving back ressources will make Blood mage even more broken

That is not logical.

Like saying: "Exterminating measles will make chickenpox more deadly".

Maybe you mean that if you remove Brilliant's resource replenishment then Bloodmage will be the only thing left that breaks resource economy and thus will have more appeal to powergamers - or something along the lines. Which would be correct.

But yeah - Bloodmage + Wall of Draining (you need to combine both things to break the resource economy of a Wizard) is broken as well. A solution would be to only allow Blood Sacrifice a certain number of times per encounter or to alter Wall of Draining so that it's proloning effect has a rel. low cap or gives a flat duration bonus like Salvation of Time. I would prefer the first one. You'll trade the ability to empower spells for Blood Sacrifice which will allow you to refresh resources more often than Empower would (but not infinite times).

 

53 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Megabosses borderline impossible to beat without specific party settup (I mean for "normal" players who don't play beyond potd upscaled with a party).

Megabosses are only a very small (and optional) part of the game and are made for 0.x% of players. Also they're kind of a PR stunt. Same as the Ultimate. This should not be a reason for messing up the resource economy of the game (or for not fixing it) for over 99% of all players.

Combining prolonging abilities with endless resources is clearly a broken mechanic. You shouldn't design encounters or challenges to justify that brokenness - but rather fix the break and design encounters accordingly then.  

Edited May 17, 2020 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

43 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Preventing Brilliant from giving back ressources will make Blood mage even more broken and Megabosses borderline impossible to beat without specific party settup (I mean for "normal" players who don't play beyond potd upscaled with a party). The encounter design is currently not made for it.

My mod makes SoT unable to extand beyond doubling the duration of a spell. I believe this is enough for SoT. But Wall of Draining + Bloodmage + Priest is still there. Only Works on self and requires hitting though.

Yes, removing brilliant would not be a smart and too simple solution to the problem, I like your approach to SoT, maybe something similar can be done with draining wall?

You don't need to hit self for draining wall abuse at all, you don't even need brilliant for draining wall abuse, all you need is either a fighter, priest or a simple potion of the final stand, that is what makes wall stronger in theory than brilliant (but weaker than Sot + brilliant).

[Boeroer]

You only need any healing effect over time (like Minor Lay on Hands from Healing Hand gloves) and Wall of Draining + Bloodmage. Then you are already breaking the resource economy badly because your healing will get prolonged - which makes the use of Blood Sacrifice risk-free - which leads to more casts of Wall of Draining. 

Everything that's turning a limited thing into an infinite one breaks the balance. Like Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy are completely OP if you are only willing to wait. If somebody woul make a mod where you can "wait until" in combat mode (or introducing a superfast combat time lapse option) it would be more obvious that they are broken. Only the tedium of waiting "balances" them.

  

[Boeroer]

7 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Yes, removing brilliant would not be a smart and too simple solution to the problem

It can't be done with Megabosses in place because they become nearly impossible to do. Same with the Ultimate.

It would have been smart to fix this BEFORE those things came up. It would have been smart AND easy then. Now it's impossible to do without taking Ultimate or Megabosses out. Which is not feasible.

[Raven Darkholme]

Ye I agree.

27 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

You only need any healing effect over time (like Minor Lay on Hands from Healing Hand gloves) and Wall of Draining + Bloodmage. Then you are already breaking the resource economy badly because your healing will get prolonged - which makes the use of Blood Sacrifice risk-free - which leads to more casts of Wall of Draining. 

Everything that's turning a limited thing into an infinite one breaks the balance. Like Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy are completely OP if you are only willing to wait. If somebody woul make a mod where you can "wait until" in combat mode (or introducing a superfast combat time lapse option) it would be more obvious that they are broken. Only the tedium of waiting "balances" them.

  

Well only prolonging unbending will actually increase the heal up to the point where you heal thousands per tick so it's not exactly the same when soloing a megaboss on the Ultimate, a paladin/bm will just die eventually IF the only means of healing is gloh, but ofc you are right it is enough for blood sacrifice and would be enough for time stop cheese in tb.

[Boeroer]

Yes, obviously some combos are more potent than others and are breaking the balance more obviously than others. 

I was speaking more generally about how the balance of any economy breaks down as soon as you turn something that's limited into "unlimited" or "endless".

Thus it's not very logical to introduce something like that into a system you want to be balanced.

Unless there are other benefits that outweigh breaking the resource economy of course.

 

[Kaylon]

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.

[Raven Darkholme]

7 minutes ago, 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.

Not entirely true, brilliant with infinite duration on the tactician is insanely strong and doesn't even need wall or SoT to be up infinitely, especially with the bug where you get it from invis, but even without that bug.

Wall of draining by itself is stronger than brilliant by itself tho, sot on the other hand "needs" brilliant to be op.

[Kaylon]

41 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Not entirely true, brilliant with infinite duration on the tactician is insanely strong and doesn't even need wall or SoT to be up infinitely, especially with the bug where you get it from invis, but even without that bug.

You talk about solo? Having access to brilliant is just nice, I'm not even sure there's a tactician combo who can solo every megaboss (without wall of draining/salvation of time cheese). 

[Phyriel]

To sum it up;

Brilliant is the only true OP as it simulates consoling yourself to "godmode".

When it comes to Ultimate tho, the only fights that you probably can't pull off without broken infinite resources are mega bosses because they are made too grindy health sponges. Rework them to be hard tactical encounters and voila! you can remove Brilliant completely. Honestly I never even touched Ultimate because it was apparent from day1 its gonna be totally dominated by moronic builds based on SoT and/or Brilliant. I refuse to play this garbage skill and I encourage others to boycott that even tho its probably too late. I mean atleast if you wanna play Brilliant consider yourself cheater and stop pretending to be smart and/or achieving anything 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Phyriel

[Raven Darkholme]

19 minutes ago, Phyriel said:

To sum it up;

Brilliant is the only true OP as it simulates consoling yourself to "godmode".

 

I'm not sure if you are ignoring me intentionally, but in case you don't one more time:

Wall of draining by itself is more op than brilliant by itself. Brilliant is only op coupled with other stuff like SoT or wall or if it is up infinitely via Tactician (this is a lot less op than wall without brilliant tho.) Wall + anything that makes you invincible is enough to win any fight with a bloodmage cause all you need is press blood sacrifice, brilliant only makes fights easier and is onviously very op in the early game before one even gets the wall, but your point about brilliant is wrong, the only thing op by itself is wall, SoT is useless without brilliant and brilliant without duration extenders has a lot less options (still viable but calling something only true op if it is in fact less op is just a wrong definition.)

 

1 hour ago, Kaylon said:

You talk about solo? Having access to brilliant is just nice, I'm not even sure there's a tactician combo who can solo every megaboss (without wall of draining/salvation of time cheese). 

I have never played this game with a party (but I'm sure at least with a smaller party you can make tactician still work) but there is quite a few tactician combos that can solo megabosses without duration extenders. On the ultimate it is a different story but on a normal solo potd upscaled game tactician + anything is very good.

Lets not forget how op it is to just turn on Berath's challenge use any char with invis and get brilliant, or use all the weird tb mechanics, or use something like gouging strike, but apart from the obvious cheeses there is a lot more creative stuff you can do.

I totally stand by your point of the duration extenders being more op than brilliant, just saying that brillian from tactician is in its own league and very strong. (and obv bugged)

[Boeroer]

9 hours ago, 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.

Of course Brilliant itself is not OP - as long as you assume that is has a finite (and not too long) duration.

Salvation of Time itself is not OP either obviously: +10 seconds of any benefical effect is nice but really not jawdropping.

It's the combination of both: A "replenish ability uses over time" (Brilliant) + B "extend time" (Salvation of Time) = C) "replenish ability uses, including the ones that extend time for replenishment" (infinite resource replenishment). It's a bit like recursion.

You have to change either A or B to prevent C from happening. Doesn't really matter which one (if it's only about the outcome).

However, judging from a software engineer's perspective I wouldn't want to introduce exceptions like "replenish ability - but only if that ability isn't x,z, or z".  It's not a robust approach and it's also not easily explained to the player. It's more robust, systemic and straightforward to remove Brilliant's replenishment over time. Of course that's mostly helpful when there's still changes/additions to the system which is not the case atm. But still... bad practice imo.

Besides that: how would you want to implement what you suggested? Brilliant is not refilling SoT/WoD directly. It merely restores spell uses for the respective spell tier. How would you make sure that all spells of that tier can get cast again after Brilliant got applied - but NOT WoD or SoT? Sounds very complicated rather than pretty simple - but maybe I'm missing something.

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

So to make a list of broken things :

1) SoT + Brilliant

2) Wall of Draining + Brilliant

3) Wall of Draining + Bloodmage

4) To a lesser extant, but still : Tactician in general

[Noqn]

12 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I proposed to remove the resource replenishment of Brilliant quite early and instead simply raise the PL bonus. Acute has +1, Brilliant could have get +3. 

Or increase AoE and durations by 50% (without any further INT bonus).

I've had similar thoughts, imo +3 PL > AoE/Duration since Inspiration and Attribute bonuses never overlap in vanilla.

Another suggestion is changing Brilliant so that it gives Spell Pool Classes +1 Cast/Level while the effect is active, à la Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry. Solves the resource issue while being faithful to the vanilla effect. I played around with this implementation a bit and it plays nicely with repeated buffing - if you use all of your lv9 casts while Brilliant, then get Brilliant a second time, you'll still have 0 remaining lv9 casts. Powerful but not abusable!

Doesn't solve Power Pool Classes though.

[Boeroer]

Good idea actually. Because I thought about how a nerf of Brilliant (+3 PL or whatever) would nerf the whole Tactician Subclass too much. But this way it's still great for non-caster classes as second class and okay for casters as second class.

Power Pool classes don't have any prolonging abilities afaik so they can't turn Brilliant into an endless resource generator "for free".