Playing Pillars without a Priest

[mosspit]

Well, hopefully I can squeeze in another playthrough with a Skaen dual-wield stilettos playthrough. Haven't tried that yet.

 

If we are discussing on straight-up nerfs:

 

Crown I believe was already balanced around its small AoE. In practice, it is very unlikely to cast it on all/most of your team beyond the starting phase of a battle even with maxed out Int. I actually value it for the Int bonus - it sets the foundation of all buffs / debuffs that follow to ensure their duration are all extended.

 

Devotions, I agree, is pretty darn good. Which is why I avoid using Devotions excessively on certain playthroughs. Well it does make Skaen temple quest arc a little more interesting

Edited December 13, 2016 by mosspit

[Elric Galad]

I never had practical problems to use Crown on my whole party. Sure, you have to do it before other buffs, but it works (too) well like this.

 

Devotion Accuracy buff has always stacked with anything apart : Borrowed Instinct, Reckless assault, Vicious Aim.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Elric Galad

[mosspit]

Maybe I should be clearer. Crown AoE is small enough to need a degree of micro to affect all / most of the team. Referring to what I mentioned about the starting phase of battles, the team is usually clumped together so it is ideal to use Crown. However once the battle proceeds and your party breaks formation to engage enemies / perform their roles, it is usually not likely to get them all in a single Crown cast. I find that this is true for most cases even if int is maxed out, bearing in mind this is for 6-man teams.

 

If my memory serves me correctly, you tend to play with reduced party size right? So maybe that is one of the reason why it is easier to affect all of your team.

[Livegood118]

 

 

I don't have any disagreement with how the priest functions, but rather with the fact the way stacking works in the game makes the priest OP.

 

Under the changes I've proposed the priest would still be a great buffer, but less OP.

 

For example under, what I've proposed a priest would be able to add +30 accuracy (Devotions, Champions Boon, Holy Radiance) rather than +40 (+20 Devotions, +10 Holy Radiance, +10 Champion's Boon), and other classes would be able to provide half this with a scroll of valour +15 accuracy. Devotions for the faithful wouldn't increase accuracy bonuses that other classes get, providing they're general bonuses.

The point was not about a Priest's functionality. But what possibly be done to distribute more of the support skills over the other classes so to lessen the need of a Priest.

 

As some of the previous poster said, unbalance breeds flexibility and creativity.

 

 

I think I agree with you.

 

In my opinion, Paladin's and chanter's buff should be made stronger. Chanter should have (more convenient) equivalent of prayer spells (their versatility limited by chanter limited selection).

Druids could get one or two more strong party buff too (they already have form of the Delemgan and Moonwell which are really great).

 

 

Even then, Crown and Devotion are sligthly accross the board in my opinion.

Crown's Resolve buff could be halved (maybe its AoE could be bigger to compensate).

And Devotion Accuracy buff (and debuff) could be halved too (maybe be fast casting in exchange ?).

 

The rest is OK.

 

By the way, it could save priest from their "buffbot curse".

They have good offensive spells too, and it would certainly cool to use them a bit more...

 

 

I did actually make a thread about buffing chanter's support abilities but it didn't really get much love:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90507-rebalancing-chanters-or-the-makings-of-a-mod/

 

I'm still planning on making the changes when I get a free weekend, but I had to work on the weekend I was planning on doing it and the run up to christmas is super busy 

[Elric Galad]

Maybe I should be clearer. Crown AoE is small enough to need a degree of micro to affect all / most of the team. Referring to what I mentioned about the starting phase of battles, the team is usually clumped together so it is ideal to use Crown. However once the battle proceeds and your party breaks formation to engage enemies / perform their roles, it is usually not likely to get them all in a single Crown cast. I find that this is true for most cases even if int is maxed out, bearing in mind this is for 6-man teams.

 

If my memory serves me correctly, you tend to play with reduced party size right? So maybe that is one of the reason why it is easier to affect all of your team.

Hehe no I tend to play with 19 Int priest ^^ I guess it would be more complicated with poor Durance.

 

I play with 6-7(pet) party members. I admit clumping them at the start of boss-like battle to apply Crown is a constraint but I almost always manage to buff everyone.

 

For buffs, I tend to think that small AoE is more annoying than tactical. Something like Crown could have been a Single target buff (or more crazy : a 3 target jumping buff) if they intended to balance its effects with its number of targets.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Elric Galad

[mosspit]

Ah... must have mixed you up with someone else. Making it single target will be a pretty harsh nerf. I like the idea of bouncing targets but then again it will probably be subjected to some RNG for the additional targets. Can't decide which is more annoying then.

[Elric Galad]

Ah... must have mixed you up with someone else. Making it single target will be a pretty harsh nerf. I like the idea of bouncing targets but then again it will probably be subjected to some RNG for the additional targets. Can't decide which is more annoying then.

Yeah, I am not saying Crown should be made Single Target or Jumping.

 

I am just saying that if you really want to limit number of buffed target, these are better design choice that a small AoE.

 

Making these changes for Crown would require a big rework of the spell.

[mosspit]

Hmmm you do have a point on design choice. But for me a small AoE is still a noticeable disadvantage to a spell like Crown. Covering a number of characters is one aspect, but it also mean there is a need to reposition to get the effect you want, or only use the spell optimally at certain phase of the battle. If Crown had an AoE equivalent to, say, Blessing, it will be definitely be less limiting in its application.

 

Well I think I might be getting a little tunnel vision here but I still think that Crown having a small AoE is an intended penalty to offset its power. Whether the small AoE size is enough to balance the said power, that's up in the air.