The Grand Powers Balancing Thread

[swordofthesith]

Hi Beta Backers!
 
In the interest of helping Obsidian refine Pillars of Eternity for release I thought it might be a good idea to provide extensive feedback regarding the different class powers. I am appealing to the Anti-Troll Pack led by Sensuki of Headbomb, mutonizer, PrimeJunta, IndiraLightfoot, Waywocket, Matt516, Dray Truoc, CatatonicMan, Hormalakh, Ink Blot, Ark Evenson and the rest of the Goodfellas and Goodladies of the Beta Backer to add feedback to this thread!

 

Please approach this with the same rigor as you would a bug report. Videos, screenshots and detailed descriptions of your observations would all be very helpful in helping Obsidian refine class powers over the Beta. 
 
I would like to start off the thread with a video examining the Priest's level 2 power: Consecrated Ground. With the BB Priest casting CG, you can restore over 700+ stamina to ALL your party over the course of 1 minute of combat time. That is an eternity and makes many fights in the Beta extremely easy. As it is implemented CG is an InstaWin button for most encounters. I would recommend that it be toned down somewhat. 

 

To illustrate my point I will upload a series of videos demonstrating the out sized prowess of this spell.

 

PillarsOfEternity BB278 - Consecrated Ground 

Edited September 8, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Sensuki]

Suppress Affliction has a huge AoE as well.

 

On that note I just noticed that the Stone Beetle's ability is called Teleport through earth .. WTF, that is the most convoluted name ever for a burrow ability.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Sensuki

[swordofthesith]

This video highlights the power of the Cipher's 2nd level ability: Mental Binding. A single cast and the Ogre battle is turned into a cakewalk. Please note that if I wished, I could have kept the Ogre stun locked throughout the entire fight with MB. 

 

[Matt516]

Great post, and I'd love to see more of this kind of thing.

Specific power balance and such is an area we backers can be very helpful.

 

Unfortunately, I have nothing to add atm as I haven't played beyond Dyrford, and have done very little combat thus far.

Good post, though!

[Kjaamor]

While we're on the subject of Ciphers...

 

"Whispers of Treason" + Out-of-combat resets focus + Ability to see the enemy before they see you = Hideously overpowered.

 

I did both Spider caves without taking a hit (apart from the undead spawn). I'm fairly sure that qualifies the above as needing a bit of a nerf.

[Karkarov]

While we're on the subject of Ciphers...

 

"Whispers of Treason" + Out-of-combat resets focus + Ability to see the enemy before they see you = Hideously overpowered.

 

I did both Spider caves without taking a hit (apart from the undead spawn). I'm fairly sure that qualifies the above as needing a bit of a nerf.

Yeah, all power uses need to trigger combat.  Once they get that in place we will be gtg.  Or simply fix it so enemies have the same view distance we do.  My understanding is enemy view distance is based on the old fog of war view distance from before the backer beta was released.

[Ink Blot]

I've nothing to add yet either, but this thread is a great idea. It's quite interesting at the very least to see some of the things the players have found (as an example, that 'Whispers of Treason' thing is pretty out of control).

[Matt516]

 

While we're on the subject of Ciphers...

 

"Whispers of Treason" + Out-of-combat resets focus + Ability to see the enemy before they see you = Hideously overpowered.

 

I did both Spider caves without taking a hit (apart from the undead spawn). I'm fairly sure that qualifies the above as needing a bit of a nerf.

Yeah, all power uses need to trigger combat.  Once they get that in place we will be gtg.  Or simply fix it so enemies have the same view distance we do.  My understanding is enemy view distance is based on the old fog of war view distance from before the backer beta was released.

 

 

This is the main issue IMO. Being able to see "packs" of enemies and consciously choose to "pull" them bit by bit is extremely "MMO-ish", and not in a good way. If you can see an always-hostile enemy, they should be able to see (and subsequently immediately attack) you.

 

Obviously stealth is an exception - but as I understand it stealth really needs to be fixed (Mutonizer has a more detailed post on this in the bug forum) at the moment as it currently does some extremely unintuitive and weird things.

[Fiebras]

4th Level Wizard spell Essential Phantom would probably be pretty good if only it didnt currently delete the wizard from the party as extensively detailed here:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68416-v278-essential-phantom-spell-deletes-wizard-from-party/

 

Shameless plug.

 

 

This is the main issue IMO. Being able to see "packs" of enemies and consciously choose to "pull" them bit by bit is extremely "MMO-ish", and not in a good way. If you can see an always-hostile enemy, they should be able to see (and subsequently immediately attack) you.

 

Obviously stealth is an exception - but as I understand it stealth really needs to be fixed (Mutonizer has a more detailed post on this in the bug forum) at the moment as it currently does some extremely unintuitive and weird things.

 

 

I think the purpose of stealth is exactly to scout ahead and only avoid some encounters. I think this is fine aproach to it and is working as intended. But as it is right now you can scout ahead, position your entire party, and throw a huge spell at them before combat even begins.

Preemtive strikes should probably be limited to autoattacks or low-key single target abilities, not spells (priest, cipher, druid, wizard, etc). Or make it so you either cant use abilities while in stealth mode or stealth mode gets inmediately cancelled once an ability is queued.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Fiebras

[Fiebras]

Cant edit my post anymore, welp:

 

Also heres the ability that terrifies everyone AKA Deep Wounds:

 

Its an 8th level Rouge passive that gives a DoT to all your attacks that ignores armor. Thats why characters die so fast againts the Skaen. With this ability theres no reason not to get a very fast ranged weapon and apply the dot to every enemy and just watch them die. Until DOTs get nerfed a bit its gonna be pretty OP. Then again we dont know what enemies await us at 8th level.

[Matt516]

Cant edit my post anymore, welp:

 

Also heres the ability that terrifies everyone AKA Deep Wounds:

 

Its an 8th level Rouge passive that gives a DoT to all your attacks that ignores armor. Thats why characters die so fast againts the Skaen. With this ability theres no reason not to get a very fast ranged weapon and apply the dot to every enemy and just watch them die. Until DOTs get nerfed a bit its gonna be pretty OP. Then again we dont know what enemies await us at 8th level.

 

Theoretically that would be an issue that could be balanced by simple tuning of the DoT magnitude and duration. Also, depending on the duration and if it stacks (especially if it stacks), a fast weapon wouldn't necessarily be better against a single enemy - though your point about applying it to multiple enemies still stands.

[swordofthesith]

Hi Gang!

 

Yep! Would like to provide as much useful to intel to the developers as possible and your additional inputs go a great way in that direction! Special thanks to Sens for pointing out his video capture program, Bandicam. It's dead easy to use. I would encourage all of you to use it to video record gameplay featuring your feedback/bug finds. You can find it here: http://www.bandicam.com/

 

 

Suppress Affliction has a huge AoE as well.

 

Thanks Sens! Will try and illustrate your point in a future video!

 

 

4th Level Wizard spell Essential Phantom would probably be pretty good if only it didnt currently delete the wizard from the party as extensively detailed here:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68416-v278-essential-phantom-spell-deletes-wizard-from-party/

 

Shameless plug.

 

 

Thanks for pointing out this HUGE bug with Essential Phantom Fiebras!

 

 

Cant edit my post anymore, welp:

 

Also heres the ability that terrifies everyone AKA Deep Wounds:

 

Its an 8th level Rouge passive that gives a DoT to all your attacks that ignores armor. Thats why characters die so fast againts the Skaen. With this ability theres no reason not to get a very fast ranged weapon and apply the dot to every enemy and just watch them die. Until DOTs get nerfed a bit its gonna be pretty OP. Then again we dont know what enemies await us at 8th level.

 

Thanks for pointing out this HUGE power imbalance Fiebras. I will try and provide a video illustrating your point. 

 

 

To recap:

 

Priest - Suppress Affliction - AoE too large

Wizard - Essential Phantom - When cast it deletes the BB Wizard from the party

Rogue - Deep Wounds - DoT is overpowered

Edited September 9, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Elerond]

Chanter's summoning spells are overpowered when they don't bug out.

 

As currently summons exist until they die or player rests and new summon destroys previous one (although this isn't always case with phantom which can in some cases summoned multiple copies at same time)

 

With current AI behavior enemies attack always closest enemies or those that attacked them.

 

This gives player ability to sent summons in close combat making all enemies to agro them letting your party to kill them with ranged attacks (which is helped by chanter's chant that makes ranged attacks faster and more powerful and same time generates invocation resource to summon fresh patch of minion in end of the fight). 

 

This means that chanter's party can annihilate everything (given that character vanishing bug don't cause vanishment of your main character/hired chanter) in beta without losing any health or need to rest even single time at whole time or even use single strategic resource of any sort, outside of first battle where you need to wait for invocation resources to use summoning for first time. 

[Fiebras]

Summons should probably have less health and last only as long as it takes the chanter to be able to summon them again, maybe less/more depending on the summon. Though I think the summons lasting forever isnt a problem and you can work around it.

 

It is pretty nice to just walk around with a skelleton pose and have them for a long time. I like that necromancer feel very much and its something ive been wanting games to do for a while. But they should probably be more brittle so the Chanter cant use them to facetank everything for the party. Dont know how high the engagement limit of the skeletons is but it should only be 1 per skelleton and they should be pretty low on the agro list.

 

Id like to keep the eternal skelletons if possible, but nerf them in return.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Fiebras

[Elerond]

Summons should probably have less health and last only as long as it takes the chanter to be able to summon them again, maybe less/more depending on the summon. Though I think the summons lasting forever isnt a problem and you can work around it.

 

It is pretty nice to just walk around with a skelleton pose and have them for a long time. I like that necromancer feel very much and its something ive been wanting games to do for a while. But they should probably be more brittle so the Chanter cant use them to facetank everything for the party. Dont know how high the engagement limit of the skeletons is but it should only be 1 per skelleton and they should be pretty low on the agro list.

 

Id like to keep the eternal skelletons if possible, but nerf them in return.

 

I think eternal skeletons and phantoms would work fine as they are, if they were in wizard's, druid's or priest's spell list as they can cast only limited number of spells in day, but on chanter's, who can cast unlimited number of spell per day, I think they are overpowered. If they will be kept on chanters I would change them so that they don't have health but only stamina and that they lose one stamina per second.

[Ink Blot]

Thanks for pointing out this HUGE power imbalance Fiebras. I will try and provide a video illustrating your point. 

 

 

To recap:

 

Priest - Suppress Affliction - AoE too large

Wizard - Essential Phantom - When cast it deletes the BB Wizard from the party

Rogue - Deep Wounds - DoT is overpowered

Deep Wounds is a known issue. NCarver addresses it Here. One thing he doesn't mention is whether or not it stacks (it shouldn't, IMO). But anyway, they're aware that it's way out of whack.