intellect not working as intended for area of effect?

[clouseau64]

Intellect does not work in the same way as in POE1 when it comes to area of efffect. i did a couple of test and it looks like the x% percent bonus is no longer applied to the radius of the circular area of effect like in poe1 but directly to the surface (pi * r^2). If this is intended it is a very serious nerf of intelligence as impact is reduced from x% to Sqrt( x%). no point in maxing out intelligence, for my skald with 20 intelligence ( so alledged bonus of +60% the actual bonus is only 26% in radius. pretty ridiculous.

 

Is the change intended?

[Boeroer]

Whoa. Nice catch. And nobody else noticed yet?

 

This would be a heavy nerf of INT indeed. Maybe this is not intended as it may be that the function got rewritten from PoE and somebody else was implementing this. And obviously two different people might interpret "+x% to AoE" differently.

 

I hope it's an oversight. Else all nuking casters will have 20 RES and 3 INT at some point.

[hilfazer]

It was changed already in PoE1:
https://youtu.be/fvyrEhAMUPo?t=2468

So, yeah, pretty intended
 

 

 

so alledged bonus of +60% the actual bonus is only 26% in radius. pretty ridiculous

 

Bonus is to area, not radius, AoE = area of effect.

If AoE is 20 m^2 and we increase it by 60%, what it will become? 32 m^2.

 

[Boeroer]

Yeah we know the math.

 

Actually in PoE it's still the case that INT raises AoE via radius. It says +6% of "AoE increase" per point of INT. But what really happens:

 

I have Aloth in my party with an Arcane Assault which has a base AoE radius of 1.25.

With 16 INT he's having a bonus of (6*6%) +36% (says the char cheet).

 

1.25 * 1.36 = 1.7
His Arcane Assault's tooltip shows: 1.7 radius.

 

The radius got increased by 36%, not the area. The area (radius * radius * PI) got raised from (1.25 * 1.25 * 3.14)  4.9 m² to (1.7 * 1.7 * 3.14) 9.1m².

 

4.9 m² compared to 9.1 m² is an increase of area of ~86% (!).

 

This is PoE version 3.07

 

Now if in Deadfire AoE calculation with INT gets changed like so:

 

4.9 * 1.36 = 5.6

 

Or in other words from radius 1.25 to 1.37 meter radius -which is an increase of 1.6% radius per point of int in Deadfire comared to 6% in PoE.

 

So in short clouseau64 states that:

 

- PoE raises radius by 6% per point of INT

- Deadfire raises radius by roughly 1.6% per point of INT

 

If this is really the case (didn't test it yet) then it's a hefty, hefty nerf to INT.

Of course one could always adjust the percentage values and say 1 point of INT raises area by 15% or 20% (not radius). Then it's not as bad anymore.

 

But I always thought while the tooltips were wrong (not area gets increased by 6% but radius) that the radius approach was good enough and also more easy to understand. Because the infomation that your actual area increased by x% is less useful to a player than knowing that your radius got bigger by y% - in my opinion.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Boeroer

[hilfazer]

Yeah we know the math.

Then there's just one way to interpret "+x% to area of effect"

 

Actually in PoE it's still the case that INT raises AoE via radius.

A bug. Too bad Obsidian was busy destroying retaliation + focus generation and didn't have time to fix it.

[Boeroer]

Haha - true.

 

Yeah, but as I said: I actually find the "raise radius" approach better/more intuitive. Just the tooltip saying that INT raises area is wrong. 

[AndreaColombo]

Well, at least there's one less attribute Ciphers need to pump...!

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, this is a nice bug catch, but a pretty nasty nerf if somehow intended. I really hope CDiaz and the others still go through our bug posts here. I can see tonnes of bug reports unconfirmed going back for weeks and counting.

[Boeroer]

Yes, unfortunately. Well, that also means that my game breaking Soulblade + Citzal's Spirit Lance combo will be in for my first playthrough - yay! 

[clouseau64]

It was changed already in PoE1:

https://youtu.be/fvyrEhAMUPo?t=2468

 

So, yeah, pretty intended

 

 

 

so alledged bonus of +60% the actual bonus is only 26% in radius. pretty ridiculous

 

Bonus is to area, not radius, AoE = area of effect.

If AoE is 20 m^2 and we increase it by 60%, what it will become? 32 m^2.

 

 

I agree that bonus to area is consistant with what is done in poe2, that's actually what made me test the formula. the point is as boeroer puts it clearly that the intellect bonus becomes way too small.

With combat lasting 15 second at most, there is currently limited benefit to increase int for buffs ( buffs are either very long like some wizard spell or fairly short but spammable like displined barrage or swift strikes) and now even less for area of effect.

i am not sure it is a dump stat but it got seriously nerfed and it is not a stat to max out by any means.

i don't feel that intellect was op in poe1 and don't really see the rationale for the change.

 

stat distribution are becoming very stereotyped, max might or Res , max dex...

[Boeroer]

Well, if you only want to cast spells that have no duration (like all AoE direct damage spells like Fireball and friends) you could indeed dump INT because the radius would it drop by 1.6% per point. With 3 points of INT you would only lose 7*1.6% = 11% of radius compared to 10 INT. If you can pump RES and DEX and PER and even CON then it's totally worth it. Because 11% of radius is like no penalty at all.

 

So either they have to give more bonus to area increase per point of INT or revert to the old solution which is better anyways.

 

Who can imagine what +x% area really means on the battlefield compared to x% radius?

[clouseau64]

Well, if you only want to cast spells that have no duration (like all AoE direct damage spells like Fireball and friends) you could indeed dump INT because the radius would it drop by 1.6% per point. With 3 points of INT you would only lose 7*1.6% = 11% of radius compared to 10 INT. If you can pump RES and DEX and PER and even CON then it's totally worth it. Because 11% of radius is like no penalty at all.

 

So either they have to give more bonus to area increase per point of INT or revert to the old solution which is better anyways.

 

Who can imagine what +x% area really means on the battlefield compared to x% radius?

 

I wish i could disagree but it's not possible, you illustrate very clearly why the new approach makes little sense if it is intended. If it's not, then let's hope for a correction.

 

Area of effect when expressed in puny percentage is indeed no penalty ( or bonus) when one factors in how many more ennemy one can actually catch in practice.

 

If anything  this makes me question even more  the pertinence of devs focusing so much time and effort in buffing RES  when PER got sneakily debased through the unwarranted change of the interrrupt mechanism and INT value gets annihilated for any kind of damage-dealing build, either willfully or by oversight.

[Boeroer]

I guess we'll see a lot of patches coming after release.

[aartz]

Yeah, this is a nice bug catch, but a pretty nasty nerf if somehow intended. I really hope CDiaz and the others still go through our bug posts here. I can see tonnes of bug reports unconfirmed going back for weeks and counting.

We're still here! Lots of work to be done so it's kinda hard keeping up with everything 

 

I took a look in to this and came to the conclusion that 1: this is working as intended currently, and 2: I think it feels pretty bad that int has this little of an impact now.

 

I talked to the devs and wrote up a bug, bringing up this thread specifically and comparing it to PoE 1's int stat. At the very least it's in our thoughts now

 

Thanks a ton for the posts =)

[IndiraLightfoot]

Thx, aartz! That's great to hear! I do hope that Int gets to be more impactful when the game's released. This change makes Int barely affecting the radius of various AoE. The difference between having Int 3 and Int 12 is now almost negligible. 

[Boeroer]

3-INT barb finally working, yay!

[AndreaColombo]

Josh chimes in on the subject:

 

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/170317224881/deadfire-intellect-and-area-of-effect

[Torm51]

Josh chimes in on the subject:

 

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/170317224881/deadfire-intellect-and-area-of-effect

Sweet.  Good deal.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Josh is spot on about the weird exponential gain, and I now understand why this was changed, and since he intends to increase the significance of INT vis-a-vis AoE, all will be great, methinks.

[Boeroer]

As I said above: they will have to give you 15% increase per point of INT at least.

 

Good to know that this will get changed.

[clouseau64]

Josh is spot on about the weird exponential gain, and I now understand why this was changed, and since he intends to increase the significance of INT vis-a-vis AoE, all will be great, methinks.

[clouseau64]

Josh is spot on about the weird exponential gain, and I now understand why this was changed, and since he intends to increase the significance of INT vis-a-vis AoE, all will be great, methinks.

[clouseau64]

Totally agree. As long as the new approach get buffed by the magnitude suggested by boeroer, I see this as an improvement in gameplay balance.

 

Thanks a bunch aartz for arguing the point.

This is very much going in the right direction.

[clouseau64]

The only downside to this upcoming rebalancing is that it shatters my plan to do a run with a party composed only of 3 INT characters. I was planning to call them Moron 5.

[MaxQuest]

Josh chimes in on the subject:

 

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/170317224881/deadfire-intellect-and-area-of-effect

Thanks for the link.

 

I'd say Josh seems to exaggerate a bit) as the increase in area was not exponential, but polynomial (specifically quadratic). But that's nitpicking

 

I have played a bit with the numbers, and yeap +12-15% in area correlates well with the old +6% in radius. The only thing required is to cap the penalty at 0. Because if you had 3 INT at +15% area per point; that would be coef = (1 - 7 * 0.15) = -0.05

[Boeroer]

That's also weird.

 

See, the radius version is simply better.

 

If there were items or consumables that lower INT (like in PoE) you could get to 1 INT. With 11% per point of INT you would nearly reach 0 at 1 INT and wouldn't need to cap anything. 11% is a bit weak though.