Resolve! Huh, What is it good for?

[SaruNi]

 

I've made this point elsewhere so apologies if I'm repeating, but mechanically, any bonus you give to ciphers to "balance this out" -- extra damage, etc. -- can be reduced to the equivalent of X number of stat points (i.e., an additional 20% damage boost = 7 additional might). And then you run into a problem with multiclass characters, who can rely on their other class for powers and abilities and just use the Cipher for the bonus. It's therefore really hard to give anything additional to ciphers without making multiclass ciphers overpowered (for an example look at the current Assassin/Soul Blade build). 

 

 

You can solve the multiclassing issue by making the bonuses scale strongly with power level (or you could just nerf it for multiclass characters but not single class).

Edited November 30, 2017 by SaruNi

[Insidous]

Yeah instead of asking ourselves whether hybrids, priests or whatever will be nerved, what do you think about this:

Is it more fun playing a hybrid were different elements (healing, spell- and weapon-damage) synergize with a single attribute, meaning you are always kinda the jack of all trades, or do you feel classes like ciphers could use more specialization, which could also allow for funkier builds?

 

I mean being the jack of all trades is for some part the point of hybrids, but I feel dividing healing, spell- and weapon-damage can make for a bigger build variety and ultimately be very fun to play. Also a generic cipher aka grieving mother should be still very possible

[Sedrefilos]

Just to remind, today there's gonna be live stream about multiclassing so many questions can be aked and hopefully answered there!

[takamorisan]

Just to remind, today there's gonna be live stream about multiclassing so many questions can be aked and hopefully answered there!

In 5 hours and 20 minutes from now. Someone will be playing marathon after class >:v

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Yeah instead of asking ourselves whether hybrids, priests or whatever will be nerved, what do you think about this:

Is it more fun playing a hybrid were different elements (healing, spell- and weapon-damage) synergize with a single attribute, meaning you are always kinda the jack of all trades, or do you feel classes like ciphers could use more specialization, which could also allow for funkier builds?

 

I mean being the jack of all trades is for some part the point of hybrids, but I feel dividing healing, spell- and weapon-damage can make for a bigger build variety and ultimately be very fun to play. Also a generic cipher aka grieving mother should be still very possible

 

 

Yeah to the extent that changes just force a choice, that's not necessarily bad. Pick a role: you do weapon damage, or you do spell damage, or you heal, or whatever.

 

With ciphers though it's more complicated due to the focus mechanic; they can't just decide "ok, I'll do spell damage instead of weapon damage" because weapon damage is mandatory if they want to do anything else. There are some ways around it and the class is still playable (especially once and if they get spells generally rebalanced) but it's a more complicated problem for ciphers than for other classes. 

[AndreaColombo]

If you mean make it harder to excel at both healing and damage dealing then yes, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

 

If it hurts the Lady of Pain build, it's a bad thing

[JerekKruger]

If it hurts the Lady of Pain build, it's a bad thing

 

You know I'd think someone called the "Lady of Pain" would like getting hurt

[AndreaColombo]

You know I'd think someone called the "Lady of Pain" would like getting hurt

 

She wants her pain to be inflicted on others

[JerekKruger]

She wants her pain to be inflicted on others

 

What a hypocrite she is 

[Ganrich]

 

Yeah instead of asking ourselves whether hybrids, priests or whatever will be nerved, what do you think about this:

Is it more fun playing a hybrid were different elements (healing, spell- and weapon-damage) synergize with a single attribute, meaning you are always kinda the jack of all trades, or do you feel classes like ciphers could use more specialization, which could also allow for funkier builds?

 

I mean being the jack of all trades is for some part the point of hybrids, but I feel dividing healing, spell- and weapon-damage can make for a bigger build variety and ultimately be very fun to play. Also a generic cipher aka grieving mother should be still very possible

 

 

Yeah to the extent that changes just force a choice, that's not necessarily bad. Pick a role: you do weapon damage, or you do spell damage, or you heal, or whatever.

 

With ciphers though it's more complicated due to the focus mechanic; they can't just decide "ok, I'll do spell damage instead of weapon damage" because weapon damage is mandatory if they want to do anything else. There are some ways around it and the class is still playable (especially once and if they get spells generally rebalanced) but it's a more complicated problem for ciphers than for other classes. 

 

 

As someone that likes the idea of giving spell damage/healing to Resolve (mostly anyways) while leaving physical damage on Strength, I definitely see the issue with Ciphers more so than any other class.  My recommendation is make Soul Whip flat damage instead of a percentage of melee damage.  I would have its power scale off of Resolve.  Then have the class gain focus based on the damage of Soul Whip.  Soul Whip's damage should retain the damage type of the weapon being used.  Piercing for Bows, Blunt for fists, etc.  You will have to tweak numbers and rebalance the class a bit, and Strengh would be a dump stat, but it would be better for the class with this change IMHO.

 

Now for casters getting the Deflection bonus and Damage bonus with Resolve... I have some issue with.  When PoE1's beta started Resolve controlled Duration and AoE size.  If I were making this change, I would give Resolve Duration/AoE size and Deflection.  Then I would give Intellect the damage/healing bonus for spells.  This is because if you are making a Gish you will mostly care about Duration of buffs and Deflecion (Resolve),  if you are making a nuker then you would want damage (Intellect), but it would make Intellect a dump stat for pure melee/archer types.   As it stands casters will have a definitive dump stat in STR, but many a pure melee have no such luxury.  With Resolve covering Deflection it has some value to frontliners, even if marginal.  Most will likely dump it or leave it close to 10, but it is what it is.  It makes more sense from an RP standpoint because now you would have an excuse to make a stupid Barbarian.  That is just my two cents. 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

 

As someone that likes the idea of giving spell damage/healing to Resolve (mostly anyways) while leaving physical damage on Strength, I definitely see the issue with Ciphers more so than any other class.  My recommendation is make Soul Whip flat damage instead of a percentage of melee damage.  I would have its power scale off of Resolve.  Then have the class gain focus based on the damage of Soul Whip.  Soul Whip's damage should retain the damage type of the weapon being used.  Piercing for Bows, Blunt for fists, etc.  You will have to tweak numbers and rebalance the class a bit, and Strengh would be a dump stat, but it would be better for the class with this change IMHO.

 

Now for casters getting the Deflection bonus and Damage bonus with Resolve... I have some issue with.  When PoE1's beta started Resolve controlled Duration and AoE size.  If I were making this change, I would give Resolve Duration/AoE size and Deflection.  Then I would give Intellect the damage/healing bonus for spells.  This is because if you are making a Gish you will mostly care about Duration of buffs and Deflecion (Resolve),  if you are making a nuker then you would want damage (Intellect), but it would make Intellect a dump stat for pure melee/archer types.   As it stands casters will have a definitive dump stat in STR, but many a pure melee have no such luxury.  With Resolve covering Deflection it has some value to frontliners, even if marginal.  Most will likely dump it or leave it close to 10, but it is what it is.  It makes more sense from an RP standpoint because now you would have an excuse to make a stupid Barbarian.  That is just my two cents. 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

 

There have been a few proposals around modifying Soul Whip in one way or another and I'm not sure they really work. For one thing, they'd have secondary effects encouraging people to play particular types of cipher (for example, a flat bonus per hit would encourage fast weapons, etc.) If you're talking moving Soul Whip to an additive rather that multiplicative bonus, that just seems like an outright additional penalty to no purpose. You *could* make it scale with resolve, but then you're forcing ciphers to dump Might routinely -- there's no build for a might-based Cipher. You could also let Ciphers just use the higher of Might or Resolve for all damage checks, but then they're still going to dump one or the other, so they'd have one dump stat regardless, it'd just be an easier choice.

 

I agree that if we stay with Strength, it's too much for Resolve to also get the Deflection bonus -- that would need to move back.

 

My preferred solution though would be a return to Might, and then something new for resolve (either incoming Crit to Hit conversion, or affliction duration reduction, or something new with Concentration / Interrupt). Primarily because Might as the single unified damage stat makes the game dramatically more "hybrid friendly" than other RPGs -- ciphers are the extreme case but it's also true for multiclass characters, and moving away from Might at the same time that multiclass characters are introduced seems like you're heading in two different directions design-wise. Plus, it was one of the really distinctive design features of the first game, to the point that it almost felt like part of the branding. 

 

But resolve definitely needs something. And once you make resolve good, you're inherently, passively, nerfing hybrids (who would have dumped Resolve, but no longer can). So one way or another it'll need to be worked out. I'm just holding out hope they get creative.

Edited December 2, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Raenvan]

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

 

 

 

Yeah, I didn't realize how problematic Perception was now till I crunched the numbers and realized that each point of Per gives you at best about 2% additional damage (by changing misses to crits mathematically) whereas increasing might or dex (or even str/res) gives you a 3% bonus (roughly). 

[EzekielMoerdyk]

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

 

 

 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

 

 

 

Yeah, I didn't realize how problematic Perception was now till I crunched the numbers and realized that each point of Per gives you at best about 2% additional damage (by changing misses to crits mathematically) whereas increasing might or dex (or even str/res) gives you a 3% bonus (roughly). 

 

 

 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

 

 

Good catch! At least Perception is required for spotting traps... but you only need one char with high Per in your party for that. To be fair though, either perception or dex was often a dump stat for defensive chars in PoE1, right?

 

So if Resolve is going to get spell/healing power, what the hell does Perception gain? Or are we going to go round robin on each attribute as the dump stat? 

 

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if the general power of Int, Dex and Might (Str/Res) is toned down that the effects of different attributes were not *that* noticeable, and mainly used for scripted interactions, RP and saving rolls. I know they already were not that NB in PoE1 as compared to other Infinity games, but still...

[Raenvan]

 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta. 

 

 

As Concentration was removed from Resolve, most of us think it's pointless. Interestingly, although Perception was also deprived of Interrupt, nobody complains. Perception has become almost equally worthless (at least, for a defensive character) to my opinion! +1 Accuracy is just the offensive version of +1 Deflection, after all.

 

Unless Interrupt and Concentration are restored, or Resolve and Perception receive something really valuable, both attributes could be expelled from Deadfire. If somebody complains about the lost symmetry of the defenses, let's just remove Fortitude from Might, too. It isn't a pure physical attribue, anyway.

 

 

 

Yeah, I didn't realize how problematic Perception was now till I crunched the numbers and realized that each point of Per gives you at best about 2% additional damage (by changing misses to crits mathematically) whereas increasing might or dex (or even str/res) gives you a 3% bonus (roughly). 

 

Actually miss-to-crit gives only 1.25% additional damage, plus extra penetration and duration. Nevertheless, we have three or four (with new Resolve) attributes that increase DPS various ways. This is a bit redundant, and Perception is most probably the weakest one. 

[Wormerine]

As someone that likes the idea of giving spell damage/healing to Resolve (mostly anyways) while leaving physical damage on Strength, I definitely see the issue with Ciphers more so than any other class.  My recommendation is make Soul Whip flat damage instead of a percentage of melee damage.  I would have its power scale off of Resolve.  Then have the class gain focus based on the damage of Soul Whip.  Soul Whip's damage should retain the damage type of the weapon being used.  Piercing for Bows, Blunt for fists, etc.  You will have to tweak numbers and rebalance the class a bit, and Strengh would be a dump stat, but it would be better for the class with this change IMHO.

 

Now for casters getting the Deflection bonus and Damage bonus with Resolve... I have some issue with.  When PoE1's beta started Resolve controlled Duration and AoE size.  If I were making this change, I would give Resolve Duration/AoE size and Deflection.  Then I would give Intellect the damage/healing bonus for spells.  This is because if you are making a Gish you will mostly care about Duration of buffs and Deflecion (Resolve),  if you are making a nuker then you would want damage (Intellect), but it would make Intellect a dump stat for pure melee/archer types.   As it stands casters will have a definitive dump stat in STR, but many a pure melee have no such luxury.  With Resolve covering Deflection it has some value to frontliners, even if marginal.  Most will likely dump it or leave it close to 10, but it is what it is.  It makes more sense from an RP standpoint because now you would have an excuse to make a stupid Barbarian.  That is just my two cents. 

 

Anyway.  Work has kept me away.  I asked during the Fig Campaign if Attributes would stay the same, and I was told they would.  LOL.  Then when I saw Concentration was removed from resolve... I knew something was going to change or Resolve would be almost pointless.  We just need Matt and Sensuki in here to make this just like the old PoE1 attribute threads from the first beta.

 

I saw similar suggestions throughout the forums regarding intelligence and resolve swap, and I must say you make a really convincing argument in favour of that idea.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

Actually miss-to-crit gives only 1.25% additional damage, plus extra penetration and duration. Nevertheless, we have three or four (with new Resolve) attributes that increase DPS various ways. This is a bit redundant, and Perception is most probably the weakest one. 

 

 

Right, but that additional 1.25% is roughly 2% of your total damage -- i.e., if accuracy and deflection are equal, the "expected value" of a weapon swing works out to be around 62.5%, and the additional 1.25% from +1 point of accuracy ends up being about 2% of that 62.5% total, so 2% additional damage. 

 

That's like the best case scenario for the expected value of an additional point of Per, too. Accuracy gets above 25, relative value drops fast. 

 

Might and Dex both have similar diminishing relative returns for each additional point, but the curves start much higher and for most in-game ranges you're going to get between 3% and 2% dps increase per additional stat point, whereas for Per it's like between 2% and  . . . probably somewhere under 1%, I haven't crunched the top end numbers.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

Good catch! At least Perception is required for spotting traps... but you only need one char with high Per in your party for that. To be fair though, either perception or dex was often a dump stat for defensive chars in PoE1, right?

 

So if Resolve is going to get spell/healing power, what the hell does Perception gain? Or are we going to go round robin on each attribute as the dump stat? 

 

 

 

The best suggestion I can come up with is to (after returning to Might), give  Perception a hit-to-crit bonus on outgoing attacks, give Resolve a crit-to-hit effect on incoming attacks, and then make critical hits Interrupt.  There might be some secondary effects but it would give everyone a reason to take both Perception and Resolve, and you could adjust the hit-to-crit ratio granularly so that Per worked out to be giving an appropriate amount of additional DPS per point, and mathematically speaking it shouldn't change the game too much on average because you're just creating an arms race between Per and Res where they cancel each other out. 

 

edit: you could also go miss to graze to hit to crit for per, and crit to hit to graze to miss for Resolve. But at that point you're just adding Accuracy, just with more decimal points.

 

The mechanical issue is you can't add a half point of accuracy per Per point, and if you went up to 2 points of accuracy per Per point, then that's a 4% dps increase, much higher than any other stat.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[SaruNi]

 

 

 

Good catch! At least Perception is required for spotting traps... but you only need one char with high Per in your party for that. To be fair though, either perception or dex was often a dump stat for defensive chars in PoE1, right?

 

So if Resolve is going to get spell/healing power, what the hell does Perception gain? Or are we going to go round robin on each attribute as the dump stat? 

 

 

 

 

The mechanical issue is you can't add a half point of accuracy per Per point, and if you went up to 2 points of accuracy per Per point, then that's a 4% dps increase, much higher than any other stat.

 

 

Why not? Penetration goes up 0.25 points per power level and frequently has a non-integer value. 

[JerekKruger]

Why not? Penetration goes up 0.25 points per power level and frequently has a non-integer value.

 

I believe one of the goals when designing Pillars attribute system was to avoid the sort of situation where certain values would offer significantly bigger bonuses than most. Making Penetration work like this would go against that aim.

[SaruNi]

 

Why not? Penetration goes up 0.25 points per power level and frequently has a non-integer value.

 

I believe one of the goals when designing Pillars attribute system was to avoid the sort of situation where certain values would offer significantly bigger bonuses than most. Making Penetration work like this would go against that aim.

 

 

What I meant is that Accuracy could go up by non-integer values. Since they're already doing that with Penetration, there isn't any implicit rule that increments have to be integers to keep from confusing people or whatever.

 

And any scaling problems can be addressed... by scaling (the bonuses to make them sufficiently equivalent).

Edited December 6, 2017 by SaruNi

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

Why not? Penetration goes up 0.25 points per power level and frequently has a non-integer value. 

 

 

Yeah but if you have break points in character ability scores character creation gets complex and non intuitive and so does buffing . Plus every other ability score is all "each point gives discrete integer value bonus / penalty." Basically ability scores it's best if it's whole number benefits.

 

Penetration and power level is different because it goes up every level and it's ok to have break points at new levels. 

Edited December 6, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[KDubya]

The easiest fix for Perception is to give it the deflection that Resolve used to have. There is no reason as to why Resolve should have both spell damage, healing and deflection, so move the deflection over to Perception.

[tinysalamander]

The easiest fix for Perception is to give it the deflection that Resolve used to have. There is no reason as to why Resolve should have both spell damage, healing and deflection, so move the deflection over to Perception.

 

Governing both accuracy and deflection looks kind of weird.

[KDubya]

 

The easiest fix for Perception is to give it the deflection that Resolve used to have. There is no reason as to why Resolve should have both spell damage, healing and deflection, so move the deflection over to Perception.

 

Governing both accuracy and deflection looks kind of weird.

 

 

Easily explained in that your better perception lets you hit enemies while it also lets you see the attacks coming a little faster allowing you to gain deflection.

 

Makes a lot more sense than the new Resolve being stronger spell casting and deflection because deflection used to be part of Resolve when it was all about concentration and stopping interrupts.

 

I'd go the extra mile and then swap Intellect and the new Resolve. Intellect would cover spell damage and Resolve would cover duration and AoE.