Pollaxe discussion

[Rev7718]

Hey guys,

I'm wondering which builds are the best in utilizing Lord Darryn's Voulge and Wahai Poraga respectively. In party and RTwP.

Thank you.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Rev7718

[dgray62]

I've never used Wahai Poraga, but I usually use the Voulge in every party. If you want to see fun AOE explosions due to static thunder you'll want a barbarian, as it is one of the few weapons (or only, perhaps?) in which an effect (static thunder) is distributed by carnage. Berserker/devoted (bound to barbarian) or Berserker/monk are the best builds for this weapon, I think. You'll want to crit a lot, so if you are playing on a harder difficulty like PotD you'll want to maximize your accuracy and hit to crit ratio through high PER, relevant abilities (like swift flurry for a monk, disciplined strikes for a fighter, etc,) and gear. Otherwise, it can serve as a fine stat stick for a druid, giving a boost to all of the storm spells.

[Haplok]

Barbarian / rogue (Streetfighter or Trickster) could be nice too. 

[Rev7718]

Ok, thank you guys. Any insight on the Wahai Poraga then?

[Not So Clever Hound]

10 hours ago, Rev7718 said:

Any insight on the Wahai Poraga then?

I've tried to make it work several time with no satisfactory result. My take is that its base damage is too low. Damage isn't drastically enhanced by its enchantments. The friend-or-foe AoE isn't super helpful in a party. Even with a hard-hitting AoE demultiplier like Clear Out, IMO you're better off with basically any other unique 2Hander. If you want AoE, okay-ish damage and a strong Riposte effect, nothing beats WotEP.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Boeroer]

Wahai Poraga would be a cool weapon for a Steel Garrote/Streetfighter if only the AoE worked as advertised. It says "primary target and up to +3 additional targets, friend or foe" but actually it only hits the initial target +1 additional target, no matter what (maybe something to fix for Community Patch?). The damage reduction and the attack speed bonus are nice though in combination with high AR (hence the Steel Garrote) and already high speed (hence the Streetfighter). Note that those enchantments are NOT mutually exclusive  It's a unique weapon where you can enchant all options.

The weapon cries for "lonely tanking" imo. The counterdamage combines well with Riposte. With Inspired Beacon and the Steel Garrote's life drain + some other sources of dmg reduction you can stay alive for a very long time and just do auto-attack in very quick succession (because flanked). The damage per hit isn't breathtaking but the enemies will die rel. quickly nonetheless.

Also did some tests with a Monk/Devoted bc. of Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming and it triggers quite often with Wahai Poraga - even if it only hits twice instead of 4 enemies.

I imagine that Monk/Streetfighter (with Riposte triggering Swift Flurry, too) could be fun. Or Monk/Trickster or so. I didn't test if the Counterattack triggers SF/HBD. That would be cool. 

Something/Wizard with Wall of Draining could be used to prolong both the dmg reduction and also the counterattack - so maybe that would be cool as well. Didn't try it.

I did try Clean Sweep which was fun, but Clear the Path with Spirit Lance or WotEP is def. better damage. Or Clean Sweep with Fire in the Hole + melee weapon. But as rescue ability to free you from too many attackers it could be useful. 

Nothing too wild so far. With 4 hits instead of 2 attacks it would be plenty good I think. With such low base dmg 2 friendly-fire attacks are just bad. I fear that too many hits might cause trouble with AoE stuff like Clear Out or trigger-stuff like Swift Flurry though.

[Elric Galad]

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Wahai Poraga would be a cool weapon for a Steel Garrote/Streetfighter if only the AoE worked as advertised. It says "primary target and up to +3 additional targets, friend or foe" but actually it only hits the initial target +1 additional target, no matter what (maybe something to fix for Community Patch?).

Either the number of additional attacks is wrong in the Gamedata and it would be easy to change.

Or it is a hardcode bug and it would be impossible. In this case, I think the base damages could be raised a bit.

[Boeroer]

48 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Either the number of additional attacks is wrong in the Gamedata and it would be easy to change.

Or it is a hardcode bug and it would be impossible. In this case, I think the base damages could be raised a bit.

I took a look into the attacks.gamedatabundle and found Wahai Poraga's AoE attack object which had this property:

"numHits":2

Seems like an easy fix. Will edit and then try out if it works. Will report later...

[Not So Clever Hound]

6 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Seems like an easy fix. Will edit and then try out if it works. Will report later..

Whether it works or not, thanks @Boeroer for helping me understand why I found the weapon underwhelming (damn I should look more closely at the combat log in those cases) and thanks for further investigating a fix. I really wonder if making it as advertised would turn it into a nice weapon. Happy to help if needed - though I'd probably be mostly useless. I can do some testing.  

[Kaylon]

Wahai Poraga does very poor damage (it hits like a stiletto if I remember well), even lower than WotEP. It has some interesting enchantments which might be exploited (25% of damage taken returned as raw when you're under BDD can be easily abused) but that's all.

Lord Darryn's Voulge is one of the best weapons a barbarian can use and does excellent single/AoE damage (you can bind it to other classes too, but you waste its AoE potential). Besides the obvious Static Thunder you have also 10% chance to proc Bolting Strikes on hit (which means it will be activated almost all the time). The only drawback is it can't be upgraded beyond superb. The damage/accuracy isn't a big deal but, depending on your class choice, you might have to switch to another weapon vs some bosses because of the penetration. The berserker/devoted can make it really shine.

[Boeroer]

I looked more deeply into Wahai Poraga's attack game objects and it's pretty weird:

First of all the dmg value from the tooltip (9-13 slash/crush) only counts for the initial attack.
The additional "AoE" attack is a separate game object and has a base damage of 5-9 slash/crush only (same PEN). 5 - 9

Wahai Poraga does the initial attack and only one of the weak additional ones. Not 3 as the tooltip says.

Besides that it's friendly fire as you know - and the AoE is fixed at 1.5m radius.

Somebody nerfed that thing into the ground for good. No idea if intended or not. 

The enchantments are cool.

I wonder why they made the additional attacks or the AoE part so different from other AoE weapons. And so darn complicated!
It should work like mortars imo: low base damage but (small) AoE. Done. No problems.

Anyway, I'm still trying to fix the number of additonal attacks. No luck so far. I can mod like everything of that weapon - but not the number of additional attacks. Why? Still have to find that out...

If I can't fix it the easy way (by simply rising the number of additional attacks) I will try to copy the AoE functionality of the blunderbuss mortars and make them fixed size + friendly fire. Screw that weird "up tp 3" nonsense...

Edited April 26, 2021 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

I found it! The additional attack triggers were implemented as ranged component and the projectile count was set to 1. I set it to 3 (like in the tooltip) and also set the base damage of those additional attacks to 9-13 like the initial attacks has.

Not it does exactly what the tooltip says. Maybe with stuff like Riposte and Swift Flurry or also Heart of Fury etc. it's too good now. Will test a bit.

Then I will clean up the mod and post it here.  

Edit: argh... now even two enemies get hit 4 times: 2 times each. Damn it, why did they have to implement it so stupidly?

Edited April 26, 2021 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

I don't know how to fix those mutiple hits on one enemy if there's less than 4. I now know why they reduced it to only 1 additional hit.

I tried to copy the AoE of mortars (which works) - but I can't remove the AoE scaling then it seems.

Atm the easiest solution would be to set the base dmg to 9-13 for both attacks and alter the description accordingly (not up to 3 targets but one additonal target). That would be okay dmg wise I guess because a normal pollaxe has 14-22 base damage and 2*9-13 would be even higher. Not so great against single targets but good against two. 

Or maybe sombody has a tip how to either prevent the mortar-like AoE from scaling or how to prevent double- and triple hits. 

 

 

[Kaylon]

A better fix would be to give it normal pollaxe damage and let the second hit unchanged. That way it becomes viable vs single targets and has a little bonus vs multiple enemies.

[Boeroer]

Hm...

so I did a little trick:

I raised the additional attack's dmg to 9-13 like the initial one's. Then I added a 1.5m pull effect to all the attacks. That means that if you hit an enemy in the 1.5m AoE that enemy will get pulled towards you. I didn't increase the number of additional attacks - because I can't tell the game to only hit an enemy once with them - but instead I let that additonal attack bounce up to 2 times. The bounce distance is 0.5 meter and it bounces in range order (so the intial target ususally doesn't get hit by the bounce again) and you can determine that those bouncing attacks don't hit the same enemy twice. With the pulling and the bouncing I get pretty good results that are in line with the description (most of times): you will hit up to 3 additional targets like the description says, friend or foe. The pulling is a nice side effect for such a weapon I think. Its one echantment only works well if you don't move - so that pulling should be nice. It's just there so that I can get away with very short bounces though. If I don't do that I have to make the bounces a bit longer and then they ofen bounce out of the AoE and into your party or so. 

I also gave the attacks a slight delay (0.1 secs each) so that they are a bit in line with the whirling animation. Just a visual touch. Before they were all hitting simulaniously which was a bit odd imo.

If somebody wants to test: just copy that folder into your override directory.

I guess I could raise the pull to 2m just in case an attack bounces from a 1.5m distant enemy to a 2m one. But that's details. Would be cool if this solution worked in most cases and make it a valid weapon (even if only for rel. specilialized builds). I didn't try AoE attacks or Swift Flurry etc. with this new version yet...

 

Edit:

did try Swift Flurry/HBD and it's a bit bonkers. Each attack roll from Swift FLurry or HBD leads to 4 new attacks... yeah...  
Stuff like Heart of Fury isn't too bad. Maybe I can prevent Swift Flurry and HBD from working with the additonal attacks by tagging them as non-melee.

   

Edited April 26, 2021 by Boeroer

[Not So Clever Hound]

Thanks so much Boeroer! Great work.

It's interesting that devs put a lot of efforts to give this weapon a unique effect/animation but somehow botched the implementation of the attack.

I tested your mod and I really like what you did. Just a note on Clear Out which becomes (as you might suspect) bonkers when surrounded.

Below I did 28 attack rolls with one Clear Out .

I don't think it's completely broken in this case because the base damage is so low that you don't one-shot the entire screen. But if you apply on-hit effects like Combusting Wounds or, god forbid, Avenging Storm, it might become interesting . Also didn't test with Carnage...

Edited April 27, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound

[Boeroer]

I tested with Carnage and only the first attack triggers which is good.

Clear Out is especially weird because initial target enemies will get pushed and pulled several times which looks funny. I thinkt I can fix this by removing the pull effect from the initial attack (which has to be done at 0.75m anyway so it isn't part of the 1.5m AoE.

The AoE*AoE with Clear Out is always bonkers (see WotEP and mortars) so that's not too special for this solution I think. Good thing that the weapon's AoE doesn't grow in size.

I tried Heart of Fury with Avenging Storm and it wasn't as wild as some combos with mortars or blunderbusses or Frostseeker.

Clear Out with Swift Flurry/HBD was extremely devastating. 

I think I really should make the additional attack non-melee or find another way to proc Swift Flurry stuff.

[Rev7718]

Thanks guys. Very interesting new look at the weapon. Too bad they didn't focus more on the viability. As you said, the enchantments might be cool, but it doesn't feel like a good weapon in current state. LDV Is clearly superior. And Barbarian/Devoted or Barbarian/Monk looks definitely appealing. That static thunder gizmo can be really overpowering. I wonder how brutal it can be with Clear Out. Does carnage apply after landing a Clear Out? That would be hilarious.

[Boeroer]

Carnage only procs from the initial attack. Also Carnage doesn't stack if there are multiple triggers simultaneously. It then days something like "effect with longer duration already applied" which doesn't make a lot of sense but I guess that's just the generic description if some effects suppress each other. 

Clear Out with Barb/Fighter is great with LDV. Also because Clear Out hits the initial target twice and the initial target is pushed into the Carnage area and also gets Carnage dmg. So it's not only a good AoE too but great against single targets even.

LDV also has devastating potential when a Berserker/Monk uses it. Because Turning Wheel lets the Carnage AoE grow and more importantly because sometimes Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming can cause a chain reaction which results in a while series of critical hits.

LDV with a SC Barb and Heart of Fury can also be lots of fun. 

[Elric Galad]

I'm not sure about the reason of the added Pull ? Is it because you need targets to be close for the bounce effect ?

[Elric Galad]

It's a bit off-topic but how would you feel about increasing Kapana Taga base PEN from 5 to 6 (+3 for Superb) ? 5 PEN is really low, even with dual damage type so I would tend to think it should be increased to be in line with other dual types (swords, Kahua Hozi, etc...)

[Boeroer]

30 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I'm not sure about the reason of the added Pull ? Is it because you need targets to be close for the bounce effect ?

Exactly. It was the only way I could think of that avoids the short bounces to just cancel - despite enemies being in range of the 1.5 AoE.

A longer bounce would reach targets way outside the AoE - so that wasn't a good option imo. Especially since it would also jump to your own fellas. 

I also thought it's a neat "tanking" effect. Pulling enemies back into engagement - or keeping them close if you haven't much engagement in the first place. I even think it's so useful that the additional attacks could be lower base dmg like before (5-9) and still be useful just because of the pull (and other on-hit effects of course). 

The pollaxe looks quite odd and has a lot of hook-shapes with which you could pull somebody towards you - so I thought this even makes sense from an aesthetical as well as and "in-game-logic" point of view. 

Two handed tanking weapon. The enchantments point in that direction, too. So why not?

Edited April 27, 2021 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

18 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

It's a bit off-topic but how would you feel about increasing Kapana Taga base PEN from 5 to 6 (+3 for Superb) ? 5 PEN is really low, even with dual damage type so I would tend to think it should be increased to be in line with other dual types (swords, Kahua Hozi, etc...)

5? I thought it had 6.

Checked in game: it's 6.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

12 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

5? I thought it had 6.

Checked in game: it's 6.

Never trust the wiki.
Kapana Taga - Official Pillars of Eternity Wiki (fandom.com)

Edited April 27, 2021 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

30 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Exactly. It was the only way I could think of that avoids the short bounces to just cancel - despite enemies being in range of the 1.5 AoE.

A longer bounce would reach targets way outside the AoE - so that wasn't a good option imo. Especially since it would also jump to your own fellas. 

I also thought it's a neat "tanking" effect. Pulling enemies back into engagement - or keeping them close if you haven't much engagement in the first place. I even think it's so useful that the additional attacks could be lower base dmg like before (5-9) and still be useful just because of the pull (and other on-hit effects of course). 

The pollaxe looks quite odd and has a lot of hook-shapes with which you could pull somebody towards you - so I thought this even makes sense from an aesthetical as well as and "in-game-logic" point of view. 

Two handed tanking weapon. The enchantments point in that direction, too. So why not?

Also the Item Mod is called "Reckless Cyclone"

So now there are 3 separate attacks (just to summarize and think about the numbers) :

- 9-13 with "9 PEN dual types" main attack (11 on average compared to 18 from a regular Pollaxe)
- 1,5m² square Pull 1,5m effect (friendly fire)
- 5-9 with "9 PEN dual types" 3 bounces with bounce distance 0,5 meters (friendly fire) => Is 0,5m enough to reach most targets (I know it is a compromise to be sure it doesn't hit something further than 1,5m) ?

Hitting 1 target is exactly enough to match the damages from a regular Pollaxe. Spread damages aren't the best, but it allows spreading special attack effects (does it ?).

Edited April 27, 2021 by Elric Galad