OP Classes

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Noqn said:

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.

Good to know it works anyway.

Problem is that solving Brilliant OP isn't good with the current status of Megaboss fights. And yes, I think these encounter design could have been better. 

But that's why I wanted to keep this possibility in my mod and solve only the most broken parts of it (combination with SoT and Wall of Draining).

Here is what I did with SoT :

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.

For Wall of Draining, I think the best Solution would be to change the +1s beneficial effect into -1s hostile effects. This would prevent any abuses while still keeping some usefulness.

Wall of Draining isn't very good apart crazy combos IMHO (BDD, Scordeo's, Unbending) cause most Wiz buffs already have pretty good duration. Hostile Effects purging would be arguably a better effect outsider of thèse abuses.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Phyriel]

10 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

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.)

Haven't seen You quote or address what I said per se, I've  seen your point and honestly you somehow disagree with me but in explanation why, You agree with me lol. I mean I don't know what's more to dissect here - you summed it up pretty well - Brilliant is key buff that opens up OPness of otherwise not really OP stuff. Wall of draining + bloodmage is more or less the same mechanic but copy pasted under different name and rearranged  Sure we can disagree for the sake of e-peen and turn the cat upside down saying "Yea, no, Brilliant is ok but SoT is op"... I mean sure resource regenerating skill would not be OP without OP resources to regen to begin with and in turn OP skills would not be OP if their effect could not be indefinite - thats not really productive, we both know the drill so I guess you're right. Derp.

Ofc its a mix of skills vs encounters design. 10 sec SoT is not OP in fights that last 30 minutes, it would be in fights lasting 10 seconds but it's a whole different subject but there is a reason Brilliant was removed/nerfed to the ground initially when Deadfire launched - because it was plain broken and then it go rereleased in form of Brilliant Tactician and Bloodmage +Wall combo when mega bosses came out - they re-released bad design skills (when the knew beforehand they were ****) to justify bad design encounters (even tho they are small portion of the game) without care that it damages the whole rest of it.

I'm sorry if that upsets You somehow but I can't be a fan of that. I mean if I was then I guess I could be sold anything, including giving me DLC item that gives "godmode" and pass it as legit. 

Anyway In the end if it passes as fun then its alright... I guess.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Phyriel

[Phyriel]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Problem is that solving Brilliant OP isn't good with the current status of Megaboss fights. And yes, I think these encounter design could have been better. 

We shouldn't go down this path - not fixing one broken thing because it would highlight other flaws 

But despite the above I think it should be prio to fix mechanics that are usable for the whole game and worry about optional content for 0.1% of playerbase afterwards. (Not to mentiont that if You have content for 0.1% of playerbase then its already some sort of fail itself but I'm not sure about this one, could we wrong)

I got a feeling tho that a lot of us here focus on solo aspect of the game despite that Deadfire was designed and balanced for party play. In that regard I think we shouldn't really defend mechanics that open up / allow solo play as it simply wasn't the goal, like, ever. Mega bosses aren't really that big of a deal without broken resource regen / immortality combos if you play as party (as the game was designed to be played).

 

I'd get rid of whole resource regen mechanics what so ever and instead implement more items that give +X casts of spells of lvl X or range of X-Y and make it possible to change items in fight triggering recovery, this way you'd need to actually have knowledge about game and equip accordingly to have enough resources that you know you need for the fight and think about tradeoff aka "Do I rather equip items that give me few more SoT uses or I need to keep my immunity X ring - heck lets go for few more SoT and hope for reflex save this time". 

-As for brilliant I'd change it into some pure powerful casting steroid

 -for bloodmage i'd change his active to make % spell damage heal for duration

-wall of draining - i'd stick to its name and steal buffs from enemy (probably longer intervals to make it useful) / drain hp / stats 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Phyriel

[thelee]

15 hours 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.

just to add on to what boeroer says - all this really says is that blood mage is an obscene class. i should've noted it instead of trickster in my older post.

 

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

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".

let's not forget that tactician already has what i consider a killer ability - successfully interrupting an enemy restores a fighter resource. with mule kick you can literally interrupt-lock enemies for the entire fight - with aoe interrupts it gets even better. the brilliant buff being as good as it is distorts tactician gameplay to maximize that aspect of the tactician. if brilliant gets significantly weaker, then managing flanked status still becomes important so that you're not just constantly shaken and confused, and it becomes a nice buff (still particularly in caster multiclass) if you manage it, but most importantly it no longer makes making tactician all about that brilliant buff.

 

in addition to brilliant being extremely good - as argued extensively here - i think it's understated just how unbalanced it is. for a martial class, a top-level ability might cost 4 resources. it would take 24 seconds of brilliance to get that high level ability back. a caster can get a level 7-9 spell back in 6 seconds. i think it would actually help a lot if brilliance actually had to account for this somehow. if a caster had to wait 24 seconds to get back a powerful high level spell, that would go a long way to balancing brilliance on its own. but that's well past what can be done with modding i assume.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by thelee

[Phyriel]

4 minutes ago, thelee said:

in addition to brilliant being extremely good - as argued extensively here - i think it's understated just how unbalanced it is. for a martial class, a top-level ability might cost 4 resources. it would take 24 seconds of brilliance to get that high level ability back. a caster can get a level 7-9 spell back in 6 seconds. i think it would actually help a lot if brilliance actually had to account for this somehow. if a caster had to wait 24 seconds to get back a powerful high level spell, that would go a long way to balancing brilliance on its own. but that's well past what can be done with modding i assume.

True but it wouldn't change much, already grindy fights would just become 4 times grindier as it would still be just about locking down SoT into infinity. 

[Rimiu]

thelee's post are always fun to read. So much Gameplay Knowledge.

[Elric Galad]

11 hours ago, Noqn said:

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.

By the way, I'm curious about how you did it. Did you altered the AddRessource status ?

I'll be curious about the possibility to change Brilliant for casters without changing it for other classes. If it also has consequences on other +Ressource effects such as Chanter Tier IX Invocation, I think it deserves to be known (but would still be OK cause the problem is the same).

6 hours ago, thelee said:

just to add on to what boeroer says - all this really says is that blood mage is an obscene class. i should've noted it instead of trickster in my older post.

What about adding a Recovery to Blood Sacrifice ? Won't make the Infinite Ressource less tricky, but at least it would come with a (true) cost.

Quote

let's not forget that tactician already has what i consider a killer ability - successfully interrupting an enemy restores a fighter resource. with mule kick you can literally interrupt-lock enemies for the entire fight - with aoe interrupts it gets even better. the brilliant buff being as good as it is distorts tactician gameplay to maximize that aspect of the tactician. if brilliant gets significantly weaker, then managing flanked status still becomes important so that you're not just constantly shaken and confused, and it becomes a nice buff (still particularly in caster multiclass) if you manage it, but most importantly it no longer makes making tactician all about that brilliant buff.

Or just replace Brilliant by Energized, so it has fun interaction with the 1st effect ? Not sure about it but still an idea.

Quote

in addition to brilliant being extremely good - as argued extensively here - i think it's understated just how unbalanced it is. for a martial class, a top-level ability might cost 4 resources. it would take 24 seconds of brilliance to get that high level ability back. a caster can get a level 7-9 spell back in 6 seconds. i think it would actually help a lot if brilliance actually had to account for this somehow. if a caster had to wait 24 seconds to get back a powerful high level spell, that would go a long way to balancing brilliance on its own. but that's well past what can be done with modding i assume.

What about replacing +1 ressource by an effect similar to Bloodmage that will randomly restore a spell from ALs 1-3, 4-6, OR 7-9. At least it would prevent Tier VII-IX spamming (18s to re-cast Maelstorm on average). It would still be a better effect than martials' version, but less so, and with a random component to make it less predictable.

My mod tuned down martial abilities cost, so 18s is a kind of maximum.


As a general rule, I don't like the idea of removing ressource regenerating effects cause it would alter too much the game. It would require cutting Divine Retribution for example, which is the best reason to go Single Class Paladin. What about infinite Gambit spamming ? What about toughened fury that CP boosted ?

Edited May 18, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

It's not regeneration of resources per se which breaks the game. Else Cipher, Chanter and Monk would break it all the time. It's the very special situation where the replenishment effect restores an ability that prolongs the replenishment effect. 

Divine Retribution is totally fine. I would even argue that Rogue and Ranger desp. need some form of resource replenishment at higher levels to keep up with the aforementioned classes that already have replenishable resources. 

[Elric Galad]

40 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

It's not regeneration of resources per se which breaks the game. Else Cipher, Chanter and Monk would break it all the time. It's the very special situation where the replenishment effect restores an ability that prolongs the replenishment effect. 

Divine Retribution is totally fine. I would even argue that Rogue and Ranger desp. need some form of resource replenishment at higher levels to keep up with the aforementioned classes that already have replenishable resources. 

I agree with you, but I was answering specifically to some suggestions of removing all ressource regen :

11 hours ago, Phyriel said:

I'd get rid of whole resource regen mechanics what so ever and instead implement more items that give +X casts of spells of lvl X or range of X-Y and make it possible to change items in fight triggering recovery, this way you'd need to actually have knowledge about game and equip accordingly to have enough resources that you know you need for the fight and think about tradeoff aka "Do I rather equip items that give me few more SoT uses or I need to keep my immunity X ring - heck lets go for few more SoT and hope for reflex save this time". 

-As for brilliant I'd change it into some pure powerful casting steroid

 -for bloodmage i'd change his active to make % spell damage heal for duration

-wall of draining - i'd stick to its name and steal buffs from enemy (probably longer intervals to make it useful) / drain hp / stats 

 

[Raven Darkholme]

Removing resource regen is a lazy solution.

(That would also turn part of the game into a consumable spamfest, at least for solo play, see poe1)

I really like the SoT change @Elric Galad made, if WoD got something similar, infinite loops would be gone.

[Boeroer]

What did Elric do again? Explain it to me like you would do to a five-year-old.

I really liked that Brillant "fix" @Noqn suggested: Brilliant gives more spell uses like Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry. Could be even +2 instead of +1 for all I care.

And make Blood Sacrifice cap at x per encounter (maybe 3... or up to 5?), but let it give back +1 spell uses for all tiers simultaniously instead of that random regain we have atm. 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

15 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

 

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.
 

 

[Raven Darkholme]

33 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

What did Elric do again? Explain it to me like you would do to a five-year-old.

 

Should I also explain "why chanter?"

[Boeroer]

Why did the Chanter cross the street?

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Removing resource regen is a lazy solution.

(That would also turn part of the game into a consumable spamfest, at least for solo play, see poe1)

I really like the SoT change @Elric Galad made, if WoD got something similar, infinite loops would be gone.

I really dislike the SoT change (aside from possible PL scaling). SoT is only broken because of Brilliant. SoT is only good because you can take powerful short-duration effects and make them much longer. A typical priest will add +30s to effects and that requires using up all AL6 casts and self-empowering for one more. As a mid-high spell that requires other effects to have any effect at all, that sounds about right. (I would also challenge people to list how many non-Brilliant effects they would or have combined with SoT. It's a pretty narrow spell, even if powerful when you line things up.)

It's only when you start interacting with tactician or things like Weyc's Robe that SoT becomes utterly obscene. If Brilliant, for example, were changed to be +3 PL or whatever Boeroer suggested, and and even if SoT was tweaked to allow for PL scaling, it would make SoT more powerful but you'd no longer have a trivial infinite combo.

 

I'm in the camp that one shouldn't need to worry about eliminating all resource regen. For the most part, resource regen isn't that obscene because it's limited to the class and most classes do not have access to a puzzle piece for infinite combo. It becomes more of an issue that either the wizard can regen a wizard spell (blood mage, brilliant) or a priest can regen a priest spell (brilliant). (there's also the cipher invocation that gives +1 resources, but it might actually be too slow to be useful)

possible idea for rebalancing brilliant: instead of resource regen, gives a echo chance to all effects, maybe 20%: a rate low enough to be unreliable for a trivial combo, but high enough to be noticable in a typical fight (this might actually require buffing some brilliant-granting effects, like weyc's robe, as they have extremely short buff durations)

Edited May 18, 2020 by thelee

[Noqn]

9 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

By the way, I'm curious about how you did it. Did you altered the AddRessource status ?

I'll be curious about the possibility to change Brilliant for casters without changing it for other classes. If it also has consequences on other +Ressource effects such as Chanter Tier IX Invocation, I think it deserves to be known (but would still be OK cause the problem is the same).

Only Brilliant is affected! I removed the AddResource parameter from INS_Brilliant_SE_AddResources and added references to individual Status Effects for each class. The other classes get their Resource per tick as usual.

Brilliant.zip

[Elric Galad]

40 minutes ago, thelee said:

I really dislike the SoT change (aside from possible PL scaling). SoT is only broken because of Brilliant. SoT is only good because you can take powerful short-duration effects and make them much longer. A typical priest will add +30s to effects and that requires using up all AL6 casts and self-empowering for one more. As a mid-high spell that requires other effects to have any effect at all, that sounds about right. (I would also challenge people to list how many non-Brilliant effects they would or have combined with SoT. It's a pretty narrow spell, even if powerful when you line things up.)

It's only when you start interacting with tactician or things like Weyc's Robe that SoT becomes utterly obscene. If Brilliant, for example, where changed to be +3 PL or whatever Boeroer suggested, and and even if SoT was tweaked to allow for PL scaling, it would make SoT more powerful but you'd no longer have a trivial infinite combo.

But this requires to break Brilliant, to make it completely different from what it is meant to be. I don't like to completely alter the purpose of an ability, even if I did a couple of times (and I propose to do .

There are still many combo possibility with my version of SoT, such as :
- Unbending (works even better, cause it applies to all stacks triggered after SoT)
- Vanishing strikes
- Quadruple phrases from 1 chanter
The fact that you don't have to time the cast so precisely makes it pretty good, I think. With reasonable INT and PL, you can easily add 15-20s to all active effects. 
But yes, the spell is not exactly working the same as it used to. So it's understandable that some can dislike it.

Either (Brilliant & Bloodmage) OR (SoT & Wall of Draining) shall be altered.
I have already changed SoT and I'm not too enthusiastic at barring access to infinite ressources so I want to go for the second solution.

But if you're leaning to another possibility, feel free to disagree and make the changes yourself, or simply use Noqn mod (which doesn't solve Bloodmage issue, but this one should be easy to change according to Boeroer idea of per encounter limit).

Edited May 18, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

26 minutes ago, Noqn said:

Only Brilliant is affected! I removed the AddResource parameter from INS_Brilliant_SE_AddResources and added references to individual Status Effects for each class. The other classes get their Resource per tick as usual.

Brilliant.zip 23.49 kB · 0 downloads

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.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

(Sorry, undue posting) 

Edited May 18, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

39 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

But this requires to break Brilliant, to make it completely different from what it is meant to be. I don't like to completely alter the purpose of an ability, even if I did a couple of times (and I propose to do .

to clarify, i think your change is fine and interesting as a tweak to SoT on its own, but it was more in the context of "fixing infinite loops" - you either have to break brilliant or you have to break SoT/WoD, and focusing on SoT is wrong, because it's brilliant itself that's overly powerful.

with your change to SoT, infinite loops are still possible, just a little less trivial (can't use weyc's robe or shroud of phantasm, have to use tactician or psion)

 

one has to basically make a decision:

1. infinite loops are fine

2. infinite loops are fine if they are non-trivial

3. infinite loops are not fine.

 

only in #1 or 2 would solely tweaking SoT be fine. Only fixing blood mage and brilliant would get you #3. it sounds like you personally are 1-2, which is fine. I'm approaching it from 2-3 - the blood mage is very powerful (probably too powerful) and brilliant is way too good. i don't particularly mind infinite loops if they require some work, but even without infinite combos brilliant is just way too powerful a buff - puts all other tier 3 inspirations to shame.

[Elric Galad]

26 minutes ago, thelee said:

to clarify, i think your change is fine and interesting as a tweak to SoT on its own, but it was more in the context of "fixing infinite loops" - you either have to break brilliant or you have to break SoT/WoD, and focusing on SoT is wrong, because it's brilliant itself that's overly powerful.

with your change to SoT, infinite loops are still possible, just a little less trivial (can't use weyc's robe or shroud of phantasm, have to use tactician or psion)

 

one has to basically make a decision:

1. infinite loops are fine

2. infinite loops are fine if they are non-trivial

3. infinite loops are not fine.

 

only in #1 or 2 would solely tweaking SoT be fine. Only fixing blood mage and brilliant would get you #3. it sounds like you personally are 1-2, which is fine. I'm approaching it from 2-3 - the blood mage is very powerful (probably too powerful) and brilliant is way too good. i don't particularly mind infinite loops if they require some work, but even without infinite combos brilliant is just way too powerful a buff - puts all other tier 3 inspirations to shame.

My concern are Infinite loops of BDD + SoT/WoD + Brilliant.

The ability to generate inifinite ressources on its own is not a problem for me.

I don't get what is specifically wrong with Tactician or Psion. 
Tactician still need to activate Brilliant which I consider non-trivial enough to provide some reward (except vs Dorudugan ? This one is free to be cheesed).
What is so nice with Psion ? Passive focus regeneration + the one from Brilliant restoring 70 focus for another Ancestor's Memory ? Still need 2 Psions, cause you can't target yourself. And not being Hit.

I might miss something of course, but at first it seems OK enough for me (but again, I may miss something).

[thelee]

36 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I don't get what is specifically wrong with Tactician or Psion. 
Tactician still need to activate Brilliant which I consider non-trivial enough to provide some reward (except vs Dorudugan ? This one is free to be cheesed).
What is so nice with Psion ? Passive focus regeneration + the one from Brilliant restoring 70 focus for another Ancestor's Memory ? Still need 2 Psions, cause you can't target yourself. And not being Hit.

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.

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.

 

like I said it seems (and you are agreeing) that you are pushing a solution to mitigate a specific infinite combo, whereas it sounds like others are talking about completely eliminating it. i'm highlighting that what you're proposing won't eliminate it - it just makes it harder (and in the meantime changes how SoT works).

Edited May 18, 2020 by thelee

[Raven Darkholme]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

I really dislike the SoT change (aside from possible PL scaling). SoT is only broken because of Brilliant.

Well in that regard brilliant is also only broken because of SoT.

A tactician without SoT is nice, but not more op than some other classes (pretty sure a monk is stronger, some chanter combos are pretty insane)

As to WoD brilliant only adds convenience and is completely unneccessary, i keep repeating this because anyone who  really tried to play a bm without brilliant, especially a fighter/bm will soon find out you try to get brilliant only because you don't want to press that blood sacrifice button.

 

What I'm trying to say is brilliant would be a LOT less broken with nerfed SOT AND WOD.

Infnite loops of healing would be gone via unbending and infinite bdd and final stand would be a lot more obnoxious to keep up.

(keep in mind you also have to recast sot every 20 secs, brilliant gives you 3 resources in that time but you might want to spend resources for other stuff too, I've run out of resources with brilliant and sot in its current state already)

 

For most of the game it would still be broken but for megabosses it would start to be annoying compared to the current state, while once again with resource regen gone completely idk how you even solo them on potd, maybe even some party comps would suffer. (monkless ones mostly i'd wager)

[n00biwan]

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

Edited May 18, 2020 by n00biwan

[thelee]

33 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Well in that regard brilliant is also only broken because of SoT.

A tactician without SoT is nice, but not more op than some other classes (pretty sure a monk is stronger, some chanter combos are pretty insane)

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.

Edited May 18, 2020 by thelee