Out of combat buffs

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I do not mind pre-buffing being gone, but the incredibly short durations of spells are already prohibitive. Forcing spells to be cast only in combat is unnecessary. My qualms are not with pre-buff itself, but with the ramifications its intentional absence impose. I was very vocal in the pre-beta discussions about this.

[Headbomb]

Limited prebuffing makes sense. Short duration takes care of that. Alternatively, make it modal. Or long with one active buff per caster only.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing. This has been a hilarious beta with so many people changing their minds on so many things and going against the design decisions for the last 2 years. Quest xp is now not enough of a reward, Classes don't work and need to be more D&D like (they did work before the beta and so many people had no problem with them), Bestiary kill xp to get rewarded for killing enemies, lock/trap xp like BG2 and now pre-buffing.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Quetzalcoatl]

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing. This has been a hilarious beta with so many people changing their minds on so many things and going against the design decisions for the last 2 years. Quest xp is now not enough of a reward, Classes don't work and need to be more D&D like (they did work before the beta and so many people had no problem with them), Bestiary kill xp to get rewarded for killing enemies, lock/trap xp like BG2 and now pre-buffing.

Really? I see maybe one or two posters in support of pre-buffing and the rest expressing they don't like it.

[morhilane]

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing. This has been a hilarious beta with so many people changing their minds on so many things and going against the design decisions for the last 2 years. Quest xp is now not enough of a reward, Classes don't work and need to be more D&D like (they did work before the beta and so many people had no problem with them), Bestiary kill xp to get rewarded for killing enemies, lock/trap xp like BG2 and now pre-buffing.

 

 

Do you have any proof that someone changed his mind here? From what I'm seeing, people against pre-buffing are still against pre-buffing, people who wanted pre-buffing just got a new thread to, once again, voice their opinions.

 

Currently, the problems with combat buffing is recovery time for buff spells (too long), casting times for buff (too slow), party members not doing what they are asked and stuff dying to fast because of imbalanced abilities/features. The last two have nothing to do with buffs, but they affect buff usages.

 

I personally don't see the point of pre-buffing unless the game is designed so it is necessary for most fights. It's not just a "don't do it if you don't like it" thing, it's something that directly affect the game balance of every players.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing. This has been a hilarious beta with so many people changing their minds on so many things and going against the design decisions for the last 2 years. Quest xp is now not enough of a reward, Classes don't work and need to be more D&D like (they did work before the beta and so many people had no problem with them), Bestiary kill xp to get rewarded for killing enemies, lock/trap xp like BG2 and now pre-buffing.

 

Do you have any proof that someone changed his mind here?

 

Yes. I do have proof. There's a lot of proof of people changing their minds since the beta went live and now allowing stuff that they argued against over the last two years.

[Namutree]

I liked pre-buffing with one exception: Buffs that last for longer than a rest. An example would be stone skin.

 

Normally, when you use pre-buffs you do so at the expense of a different spell. Want to pre-buff haste? Fine, but that means 1 less fireball or some other level-3 spell. If your spell caster focused on pre-buffs then the caster was more strategic and less tactical. 

 

Spells like stoneskin were broken though. One could cast it, memorize something in it's place, rest, and still have the stoneskin in place. That's dumb. 

 

As others have stated; the duration of buffs have effectively eliminated anything cheesy about pre-buffs. 

[Hormalakh]

  The lore reason is really the only reason I can think of that sholuld preclude pre-buffing. Otherwise, prebuffing is stupid. As in it lacks any mental effort whatsoever.

[Namutree]

  The lore reason is really the only reason I can think of that sholuld preclude pre-buffing. Otherwise, prebuffing is stupid. As in it lacks any mental effort whatsoever.

Not true if they have limited duration. Lets say you have six pre-buff spells. If you try to stack them all they'll run out of time so you can only really have three on at a time. Which ones do you choose? That's a strategic decision.

 

Then there's the issue of pre-buffs vs attack spells. Do you want another pre-buff, or another fireball? That too is a strategic decision. Plenty of thought can go with pre-buffing. 

[Hormalakh]

 

  The lore reason is really the only reason I can think of that sholuld preclude pre-buffing. Otherwise, prebuffing is stupid. As in it lacks any mental effort whatsoever.

Not true if they have limited duration. Lets say you have six pre-buff spells. If you try to stack them all they'll run out of time so you can only really have three on at a time. Which ones do you choose? That's a strategic decision.

 

Then there's the issue of pre-buffs vs attack spells. Do you want another pre-buff, or another fireball? That too is a strategic decision. Plenty of thought can go with pre-buffing. 

 

 

except your enemies never get to pre-buff. so what do you do then? give them all contingency spells?

 

any prebuff you place is better than no prebuff. ultimately making prebuff or not to prebuff not a question: you should ALWAYS prebuff.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Hormalakh

[Namutree]

 

except your enemies never get to pre-buff. so what do you do then? give them all contingency spells?

 

They'll have more attack spells. Also, yes the more powerful ones could use contingency spells.

 

 

 

any prebuff you place is better than no prebuff. ultimately making prebuff or not to prebuff not a question: you should ALWAYS prebuff.

 

Not true. You have limited spells. Every time you use a pre-buff spell; you do so at the expense of an attack spell.

[Captain Shrek]

Maybe making enemies have special powers to instant-rebuff would be the real solution? Makes sense in a tactical game where the AI can check for your attack type and protect itself. So instead of idiotic teleportation powers maybe make them smarter? It can be explained in the game by mentioning that it is one of the creatures at will power. 

[wanderon]

And then the next step is those silly mage on mage fights from BG2 buff vs debuff who will cast the last one? I hated that....

[Captain Shrek]

It was actually the best part of the game. The rest of the combat was purely filler. I never expected to have 100% replayability in that game. But to date I enjoy the mage battles. Once every year. 

[Caladian]

I am happy the game is balanced around to not have any prebuffing.

[Pray]

What you are discussing seriously negates a lot of the value of Action Speed - i am not a fan of this, and I find pre-buffing to be tedious and unfun.

[Hormalakh]

 

 

except your enemies never get to pre-buff. so what do you do then? give them all contingency spells?

 

They'll have more attack spells. Also, yes the more powerful ones could use contingency spells.

 

 

 

any prebuff you place is better than no prebuff. ultimately making prebuff or not to prebuff not a question: you should ALWAYS prebuff.

 

Not true. You have limited spells. Every time you use a pre-buff spell; you do so at the expense of an attack spell.

 

by definition pre-buffing means doing so before combat has started. there is no question between pre-buffing and attack spells. you can pre-buff and still thorw an attack spell.

[Namutree]

by definition pre-buffing means doing so before combat has started. there is no question between pre-buffing and attack spells. you can pre-buff and still thorw an attack spell.

 

 

 

 

 

You can only have so many spells memorized. Every spell that is a pre-buff spell means one of the others is unusable. Example:

 

 

 

If I have only 1 level-3 spell slot I can choose to memorize haste for pre-buffing, but that means no fire-ball. It's a strategic choice. The only exception are spells like stoneskin which are cheesy.

[gkathellar]

@wanderon Naw, man, that was the best. Rock-paper-machine gun-philosophy-enchantment-blindness-scissors for the win.

[Sensuki]

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing.

I haven't changed my mind I never thought it was necessary to remove anyway. It would however probably be a bad thing to add back in because the game has been designed around it not being there.

[PrimeJunta]

LOL at all the people who have changed their minds and now want pre-buffing. This has been a hilarious beta with so many people changing their minds on so many things and going against the design decisions for the last 2 years. Quest xp is now not enough of a reward, Classes don't work and need to be more D&D like (they did work before the beta and so many people had no problem with them), Bestiary kill xp to get rewarded for killing enemies, lock/trap xp like BG2 and now pre-buffing.

When I acquire relevant new information or experiences, I change my mind. What do you do?

 

Specifically, from your list:

 

XP. Yep, I did think objective-XP would be enough. Now I think bestiary XP and exploration XP would complement it nicely. Still opposed to kill XP and lockpick/untrap XP. (I never was opposed to bestiary or exploration XP though; bestiary XP didn't even figure in the discussion.)

 

Classes. I don't recall having very strong opinions on them before trying them out in the BB. I've always liked the stated design intent of allowing more freedom within classes, e.g. by using different attribute sets and equipment choices to make for various frontline and second-row builds, and that there are no required pump/dump stats for each class. My main objection to the classes in the BB has been, in fact, that some of them (notably the fighter and to a slightly lesser extent the rogue) are extremely role-limited. No major shift in opinion here; more like developing an opinion where I didn't have one before.

 

Pre-buffing. I was and am still strongly opposed to DnD style rote pre-buffing, where you spend a while after every rest casting the same set of long-duration buffs, or where you cheese fights by knowing what you're facing and pre-casting the correct counters. The short durations of the P:E buffs have addressed this problem already, though, so I don't see much harm in allowing casting buffs out of combat. So yeah, my opinion has shifted on this account.

 

Other things I've changed my mind about: no-friendly-fire fringes on AoE's from INT bonus (didn't like the idea, do like it in practice), the stash (thought it was a good idea to only allow access to it on rest, now I think we should be able to access it any time out of combat, or just get rid of it and have unlimited, self-sorting party inventory), individual stealth (thought it was a must-have, but now think the party stealth as currently implemented is OK).

 

Personally I tend to LOL more at people who pull an opinion out of their behind and then stick to it come hell or high water. No shortage of that here either.

Edited October 7, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Uomoz]

Hiro implying that changing ideas is laughable is one of the most stupid things I've read recently. The whole point of discussions is comparing ideas and reaching new conclusions, even changing your own starting point. Facepalm

Edited October 7, 2014 by Uomoz

[gkathellar]

Hiro implying that changing ideas is laughable is one of the most stupid things I've read recently. The whole point of discussions is comparing ideas and reaching new conclusions, even changing your own starting point. Facepalm

 

what nawww

 

discussion are for pwnz and being right all the time

 

oh man pwnd

[Captain Shrek]

Maybe being consistently wrong is also an off-putting thing?

 

But, I digress. 

 

I still see no reasonable argument here against out of combat buffs. I see some stupid argument (buffing is always good! Why won't you??? ITS DEGENERATE!!! Its boring!!). 

 

None of these is even close to correct. "It is boring" is pretty much subjective. "Why won't you" Is idiotic as I would like to conserve that spell slot for other things. 

[wanderon]

Maybe being consistently wrong is also an off-putting thing?

 

But, I digress. 

 

I still see no reasonable argument here against out of combat buffs. I see some stupid argument (buffing is always good! Why won't you??? ITS DEGENERATE!!! Its boring!!). 

 

None of these is even close to correct. "It is boring" is pretty much subjective. "Why won't you" Is idiotic as I would like to conserve that spell slot for other things. 

 

I think if you need the sort of boosts that pre-buffing gives you it should be available in some other manner - enchantment  - better gear - whatever - it shouldn't require spellcasters to be buff-bots that start every day casting long term buffs on the entire party.

 

If you DON'T need them to progress through the game then it becomes an easy button