Abilities and Mechanics I can't make to work

[Majorman]

I'm nearly at the end of the game (at Forgotten Sanctum, lvl 20 on nearly all companions) and I see abilities that either don't make sense description-wise, or are really weird to use in synergies. I was hoping for someone to change my mind, so I can have fun with new builds during a second playthrough.

So, without further ado (I am playing on hardest (not PotD) upscaled, for reference, some things might only make sense for PotD:

Mechanics: 

* Empower - I've barely ever used it. In fact, I've been spending empower points to restore class resources, but have totally forget ten about it once the Cipher got Ancestor's Memory. In what cases should I empower anything? Would empowering Hand of Breath for accuracy be a good use of empower points?

* Marux Amanth on a Priest - what does echo do and what do I have to do to procc it? I guess it should re-cast my spell, but never seen it do anything.

Barbarian:

* Blooded - what is the point? The passive damage bonus is juicy, but why would I want to take the gamble and play on Bloodied or Near Death? How can I even control staying on low health without dying when I view the AoE heal-per-tick effects to be the most reliable way of staying alive? I was thinking I might get a good synergy with the Bloody Links armor and Barring Death's Door, but even then I get 2 or 4 attacks with the buffed damage at the expense of a lvl V and potentially a lvl VI spell (if Salvation of Time is used) which is bad. I would rather cast Champion's Boon on the Barbarian and hope for an over-penetration instead.

It also plays terrible with Unflinching and the engagement bonus from Thick Skinned ( I've read somewhere it only works if healthy).

* Crushing Blow - it seems terrible, as it has the same effect as Blood Thirst. Barbaric Smash at least has a chance to be free-of -cost finisher.

* Vengeful Defeat and other abilities that procc on death - letting a character die in my experience means I've lost the battle either way. I know how to resurrect my characters, but usually, if someone does I'm on the backfoot already and about to lose the party soon anyway. So is there any point in taking on-death abilities? Also, is there a point in taking a resurrection ability when I can use scrolls? 

Priest:

* Barbs of Condemnation - the debuff is identical to Shining Beacon and it targets For instead of Will. Is it fine to learn both? I find that For is typically lower than Will, so it actually has a good chance of hitting. Is it a viable spell (actually looks too good for lvl 1)?

* Hearth of the Storm - why do priests even have this? Does it affect anything but Spark the Souls?

* Quick summoning - is it worth it if I use only one summoning (Spiritual Ally)? Spiritual Ally has a very long casting time, but still, I'll end up benefiting from Quick Summoning 10% of the time.

[masterty66]

Empower is really strong with powerful offensive abilities imo. Empower like a Maelstrom or Missile Salvo or something like that and watch the havoc that ability wreaks. Empowering is raising PL which could be raising pen/accuracy/damage/duration etc. Or if it's a melee ability it's raising pen which could help a lot. 

I do generally hold my empowers in reserve to regenerate resources but there are times where empowering a powerful ability can make a big difference.

Marux Amanth - Echo recasts a spell you just cast. So imagine like Two Cleansing Flames going off or Two Pillars of Holy Fire, etc. You can see how this might be pretty strong with the right spell.

 

[Majorman]

24 minutes ago, masterty66 said:

Marux Amanth - Echo recasts a spell you just cast. So imagine like Two Cleansing Flames going off or Two Pillars of Holy Fire, etc. You can see how this might be pretty strong with the right spell.

 

So, it works only with offensive spells? I don't think the description was explicit, but that might solve the mistery - I rarely cast damaging spells with the priest. Is there another restriction? I think I have only ever cast Dismissal, Blessed Harvest and Symbol of Eothas as offensive abilities while Marux was equipped. And never seen it working with any of them (granted, Harvest and Dismissal are insta-kill effects, so the target is dead). Will it work with AoE spells like Wall of Thorns? Will it work with Wael and Woe scrolls? Next run I'll bind it to Vatnir.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Majorman

[masterty66]

6 minutes ago, Majorman said:

So, it works only with offensive spells? I don't think the description was explicit, but that might solve the mistery - I rarely cast damaging spells with the priest. Is there another restriction? I think I have only ever cast Dismissal, Blessed Harvest and Symbol of Eothas as offensive abilities while Marux was equipped. And never seen it working with any of them (granted, Harvest and Dismissal are insta-kill effects, so the target is dead). Will it work with AoE spells like Wall of Thorns? Will it work with Wael and Woe scrolls? Next run I'll bind it to Vatnir.

I believe it will echo any Priest spell, but it's going to be more useful for an offensive spell typically. If you echo say devotions for the faithful, that's not terribly useful because that's just going to recast a buff you already just cast aka what's the point. If you echo a damaging spell, that might actually be pretty impactful. 

[thelee]

58 minutes ago, Majorman said:

think I have only ever cast Dismissal, Blessed Harvest and Symbol of Eothas as offensive abilities while Marux was equipped. And never seen it working with any of them (granted, Harvest and Dismissal are insta-kill effects, so the target is dead). Will it work with AoE spells like Wall of Thorns? Will it work with Wael and Woe scrolls? Next run I'll bind it to Vatnir.

For something like Blessed Harvest, the echo will be very subtle - it'll give a slightly increased chance of it working, but either way you likely just straight out kill the enemy.

For something like Symbol of Eothas, it's weird IIRC @Constentin Lévine also found that each individual proc of Symbol of Eothas also has a chance to echo, not the entire spell, maybe they can confirm or correct me.

Wall spells are very special exceptions because you are only allowed to have one of a specific type of wall at any given time, so an echo there will be pointless.

I actually don't know about scrolls. I know the Vithrack slippers work with scrolls, but I'm not sure about Evoker and Marux Amanth echo.

 

10% is a pretty low chance - so if you're just casting a handful of offensive spells or debuffs, you can easily go many fights without seeing an echo, and if you're using stuff like Dismissal or Symbol, the effect might be extremely subtle. The win comes from playing the law of big numbers (casting lots of offensive spells and debuffs and heals) and dropping big spells (call of rymrgand, pillar of holy fire, pillar of faith, minor intercession, iconic projection, even buffs that you really want to land like cleansing flame, despondent blows)

[thelee]

8 minutes ago, thelee said:

10% is a pretty low chance - so if you're just casting a handful of offensive spells or debuffs, you can easily go many fights without seeing an echo, and if you're using stuff like Dismissal or Symbol, the effect might be extremely subtle. The win comes from playing the law of big numbers (casting lots of offensive spells and debuffs and heals) and dropping big spells (call of rymrgand, pillar of holy fire, pillar of faith, minor intercession, iconic projection, even buffs that you really want to land like cleansing flame, despondent blows)

also for a heterodox build, do a priest of magran/evoker.

the evoker 15% chance of echo does work with magran's evocation bonus spells (the bonus +PL from evoker does not). add on marux amanth and vithrack slippers and the bonus spells will have almost a 30% chance to echo at least once (fan of flames, ray of fire, torrent of flame are the relevant ones). in a typical trash fight you should likely get a bonus spell or two, and the very small times that you get a magran-specific evocation spell cast echoed twice (very unlikely to get it more than that, or for a non-magran spell to echo twice) can instantly change the tide of a fight.

Edited November 1, 2022 by thelee

[Constentin Lévine]

Salvation of Time, Consecrated Ground, Restore or Hand of Weal and Woe are friendly and make Echo of Faith very welcomed when that proc. 

In my previous test, I think I saw a "general" echo on pulse with Spark the Soul, I mean the pulse is echoed for all allies when proc.

 

For Blooded, if you have plenty of health and good AR, it is not tricky to stay under 50% of full health, dont need to barring death door for most of situations. There is many items/weapons that can be nice on Blooded (and Human passive), but if you dont build speciifically around, good healing is better than Bloodied for survivability Imo.

 

On-own-death abilities are nice also if you build around them, with Items on phantom etc. Vangeful Defeat can work on summons too (Living Illusions from the cape are a truly copy of the wearer, per rest) but this passive is, for me, more relevant on glass canon barbarian .

 

Barb of Condemnation can be useful also as alternative to Shnning Beacon VS fire immunes : this spell is tagged as Fire, so no only the damage is relied to Fire keyword. Action economy is also a good reason to use this spell (Devotions for the Faitful and Triumph of the Crusaders are also pl 4).

 

Empowering a spell or ability make them stronger but it is not the only point : especially with DLC items and Weapons (Weyc's items, Least Unstable Coil) empowering can be very powerful. 

Speaking of Spark of the Soul, if you empower the spell with the Least Unstable Coil,  and the robe of the Weyc, each 3 s you gain a tiers 3 inspiration, and each 3s your nearby allies gain Brilliant. 

So yes, this spell is the only priest spell that profit from Heart of the Storm, but this spell itself can be a good reason to pick the talent, and tiers7 talents related to Empowering (if you empower at first this spell, you can refresh it and then it stay empowered).

[thelee]

3 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

In my previous test, I think I saw a "general" echo on pulse with Spark the Soul, I mean the pulse is echoed for all allies when proc.

nice! does each party-wide proc have a chance to do this general echo (10%), or does each specific character proc have a chance to do this general echo (~%40 chance across party of 5)

[Constentin Lévine]

1 minute ago, thelee said:

nice! does each party-wide proc have a chance to do this general echo (10%), or does each specific character proc have a chance to do this general echo (~%40 chance across party of 5)

Based on the Least Unstable Coil proc (1 inspiration >> 1 spell), it is possible that each specific character proc have a chance to do the general echo (if i remember correctely, LuC proc an inspiration per character per 3s for the Priest). In this case, the Vithrack silk shoes will add ~20% too! Combined to Marux Amanth, for a regular party of 5 under StS, that mean 10 layers of echo check per pulse, I really want to try but I cant for now..

[ArnoldRimmer]

4 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

So yes, this spell is the only priest spell that profit from Heart of the Storm...

Doesn't the electricity ward also benefit?

[Elric Galad]

I think the worst is the Corrode PEN talent that doesn't benefit ANY priest spell outside of Berath / Rymrgand special ones.

That said it can be helpful for some Multiclassing such as Bleak Walkers that get an Acid tagged Flame of Devotion but don't have access to the Corrode PEN talent by themselves.

[dgray62]

Blooded is very useful for Berserkers. Not only will a berserker likely be bloodied frequently and thus benefit from the damage boost, but the Blooded indicator will let you know when the char is below 50% health. But it's not worth taking IMO for other subclasses. As for Crushing Blow, I never take it, since the potential resource recover from barbaric smash is much better IMO.

Edited November 1, 2022 by dgray62
Error correction

[thelee]

17 hours ago, ArnoldRimmer said:

Doesn't the electricity ward also benefit?

nope

hazard effects are extreeeeeemly weird. they kinda forget who they were cast by, with very limited exceptions. the PEN perks are among various things they completely forget about. (they also forget various buffs, which i discovered when wall of thorns would not proc interrupts when my caster had Energized active). the seal damage numbers (ward, searing) are also weird in that they don't correspond at all to what the tooltips say.

[Majorman]

I have another question: does any of the offensive invocations get benefits from elemental perk. I checked "Thrice was she wronged..." and it wasn't keyworded as electricity (weird, but maybe that's the reason Chanter's don't get elemental perks), but then again I know the game isn't 100% accurate when it comes to keywords and sometimes omits to add them.

Also, does anyone know how the Treasure Throve inventory work? The Wiki suggests there's a random chance to find Pyrite there, but on my 3 trips in the span of an in-game month I was never lucky enough. Now I feel stupid for doing a  blind run and not planning my weapons in advance - no Pyrite means I can't upgrades the weapons I really want.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Majorman

[thelee]

4 hours ago, Majorman said:

Also, does anyone know how the Treasure Throve inventory work? The Wiki suggests there's a random chance to find Pyrite there, but on my 3 trips in the span of an in-game month I was never lucky enough. Now I feel stupid for doing a  blind run and not planning my weapons in advance - no Pyrite means I can't upgrades the weapons I really want.

you're probably better off just waiting for an entire day, sitting in the store itself. much faster way, forces vendors to reset inventory.

[dgray62]

You can also regularly get pyrite and other gems (including adra ban and sapphire when you are higher level, which are otherwise very rare) by pickpocketing people in towns like Port Made, Neketaka, etc. It's always wothwhile to invest in a few points of sleight of hand and max stealth for a single character to do this. It's particularly worthwhile if you invest in the Loaded Pockets Berath's Blessing.

In the theme of this post, I must admit that I after playing for years I still have only the vaguest idea of how poisons work. I know that they are boosted by alchemy, but the few times I tried using them with melee characters nothing seemed to happen. Am I missing something, or are they as meh as they appear to be?

[thelee]

17 hours ago, dgray62 said:

You can also regularly get pyrite and other gems (including adra ban and sapphire when you are higher level, which are otherwise very rare) by pickpocketing people in towns like Port Made, Neketaka, etc. It's always wothwhile to invest in a few points of sleight of hand and max stealth for a single character to do this. It's particularly worthwhile if you invest in the Loaded Pockets Berath's Blessing.

In the theme of this post, I must admit that I after playing for years I still have only the vaguest idea of how poisons work. I know that they are boosted by alchemy, but the few times I tried using them with melee characters nothing seemed to happen. Am I missing something, or are they as meh as they appear to be?

they got nerfed hard over the course of the game life.

effects got weaker (the confusion poison used to be a charm poison!), they removed stat influence from consumables* (so no int, perception, might), they removed consumable-specific scaling (alchemy used to add PL and directly increase the effects of consumables, if you've ever wondered why that +8 defense against afflictions potion exists, it's because you used to be able to scale it to like +30 defense so it's actually half-decent) and then they made it so that only half your alchemy skill is used for poisons.

you only get one shot to make it work, and most poisons target fortitude, which can be very hard to surmount early on.

 

the nerfs mean that on potd, i find it's basically not worth crafting most poisons for the early-mid game. i'll still use poisons i find, but the likelihood that they actually land and that they'll do anything decent is pretty low. the will-targeting poisons i'll still bother to craft on any character interested in using poisons (there's the confusing one, and the one that got added in BoW dlc, i forget its english name). those actually have a chance against many of the foes you might find in early to mid-game encounters.

with some dedicated investment, around like ~10 alchemy poisons can start being half-decent and you stop having as unfair encounters on potd with enemies having fort defenses way higher than you can handle. mid to mid-late game is the time for poisons to shine, especially if you have some gear that gives generic PL (which basically functions as 2x alchemy points for poisons). really late game though, it's really easy to just blow through enemies with top-tier spells and abilities and gear, and poisons start getting lame again, aside from big fights where you can just fire and forget a single poison on like a healer or wizard or somnething.

 

* this probably remains the balancing change i most disagree with.

 

edit: assassinate still probably remains the best "vanilla" way to make a poison work, simply because you can get +25 accuracy if you attack from stealth, and poisons really need the accuracy help on potd until you get enough scaling

Edited November 3, 2022 by thelee

[dgray62]

So poisons don't benefit from accuracy of the weapon attack to which they are applied, right? If they did they'd surely be worth using.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, dgray62 said:

So poisons don't benefit from accuracy of the weapon attack to which they are applied, right? If they did they'd surely be worth using.

yeah nope. if you look at the combat log it can be extremely discouraging to see the drop-off in accuracy bonuses between your weapon roll (including perception and enchantments) and your poison roll (basically nothing at low levels)

[dgray62]

Thanks! It seems that this was a case in which the nerf went too far, since it made poisons virtually useless.

[thelee]

32 minutes ago, dgray62 said:

Thanks! It seems that this was a case in which the nerf went too far, since it made poisons virtually useless.

yeah i think they focused too much on the later game, because 1 PL per alchemy scaled *really* well with all the different dimensions of a potion. i think 1/2 PL per alchemy could've still worked if stats still influenced poisons, because then a high-perception (maybe paired with might or intellect) could make poisons viable in early game.

[Constentin Lévine]

I remember pre-patch 1.2, when alchemy was increasing poison & potion & drug PL, a simple Plague of Insects (Poison) was enought to close most of the encounters in solo !  

I throught pre 1.2 was too strong but really nice in theory : I liked the idea of Skills giving some bonus with spells/abilities (like Arcane Archer) and that the active effects from potions and drugs depending of the ability to use them.  

But instead of reworking them to balance purpose, they simply turned off in many way the influence of Alchemy. For potions and drugs, now only affect duration and healing done (excepted with the potion of Cleansing Purge) and poison KW from spells or abilities are now (in vanilla) useless, even from the spider silk robe (+2PL for poison KW). 

The poison I like is the Storm Toxin, because 1. I like storm, and 2. the per 6s paralyse effect is auto-hit, and even if that doesnt really hardCC an enemy for the poison duration, the repeated interrupt that cause is a good reason to sacrifice the long casting time the poison have, I mean in combat.

[thelee]

yeah, i think if the game had sold better up front, we'd have gotten a longer support cycle and probably some revisions to the early nerfs. i think it's also unfortunate that we completely cut off any potion effect scaling, because some potions really need the additional scaling to be effective (the +8 defense vs afflictions for example is utterly useless imo; the +2 to some stat potions, which are pretty much obsolete by the longer-lasting +3 to stat drugs), but it definitely would take a lot more design time to manually tweak those specific cases versus a wholesale "no more scaling" decision, additional staff time they probably couldn't justify based on initial sales.

Edited November 4, 2022 by thelee

[masterty66]

6 hours ago, thelee said:

yeah, i think if the game had sold better up front, we'd have gotten a longer support cycle and probably some revisions to the early nerfs. i think it's also unfortunate that we completely cut off any potion effect scaling, because some potions really need the additional scaling to be effective (the +8 defense vs afflictions for example is utterly useless imo; the +2 to some stat potions, which are pretty much obsolete by the longer-lasting +3 to stat drugs), but it definitely would take a lot more design time to manually tweak those specific cases versus a wholesale "no more scaling" decision, additional staff time they probably couldn't justify based on initial sales.

Are they necessarily obsolete though? Drug crash penalties are pretty severe. You can rest or just take more drugs, but there's a cost there to both compared to a potion which has no downsides other than the action economy of drinking it during combat instead of doing something else. Being able to use drugs pre combat is admittedly super nice and one of the main benefits imo.

That said you can rest any time or obviously take more drugs and neither is that big of a thing to deal with unless you're playing with Rymrgand's challenge. Losing high cost food bonuses can be annoying but you get so much money over the course of the game that by mid/late game it's not too big a deal to use food again. Early on it definitely sucks to lose a Razor Skewers bonus or whatever though.

[NotDumbEnough]

The recovery times for consumables are generally too long. Sometimes they are useful early game when your casters run out of spells, but otherwise it is often not worth spending 4 seconds applying a poison or drinking a potion in combat.