In the latest stream Josh answered a question "Why doesn't Sneak Attack and Carnage scale with Power Level?" with "Those things and everything should, let us know if that isn't the case."

So Sneak Attack and Carnage don't scale with Power Level, or if it does there's nothing in the UI that indicates it. What else is there currently that doesn't scale with PL, or isn't clear whether it does or not?

The scaling on summoned weapons and Spiritshift.

Power Levels are one of the most confusing things in my opinion and they definitely should either be better implemented im the game or better explained in the stats or in a tutorial, what they actually affect. For a chanter, for example, Power Level can affect the damage of invocations with a certain amount of +% (seemingly without any rule to it) but don't affect any duration at all, so that the Beckoner subclass doesn't really benefit from it.

Power Levels are one of the most confusing things in my opinion and they definitely should either be better implemented im the game or better explained in the stats or in a tutorial, what they actually affect. For a chanter, for example, Power Level can affect the damage of invocations with a certain amount of +% (seemingly without any rule to it) but don't affect any duration at all, so that the Beckoner subclass doesn't really benefit from it.

 

There are rules for PL with damage, project numbers, durations and etc, they are just black boxed

Sorry, my bad, just looked it up myself with my Chanter. It's still not really clear how they affect it, though. For one invocation the duration is +15% while for other it's +10% or even +5%. Summons also get a longer duration, but there is no explanation at all.

Sorry, my bad, just looked it up myself with my Chanter. It's still not really clear how they affect it, though. For one invocation the duration is +15% while for other it's +10% or even +5%. Summons also get a longer duration, but there is no explanation at all.

 

Yeah this is confusing, actually whenever you get more PL, your spells get more powerful, but the benefit you get from spells is (PL - spell level), so low level spell get more benefit from PL (in your case, +15% duration here), while high level spells get less (10% or 5% in your case). 

 

Hope this explains your confusion a bit, but yeah they are blackboxed sadly

Power Level is already an underuse concept. He has much potential, but now he is just a little adjustment.

What if! All skills were lvl1 and power level would scale them properly.

 

Power Level interacts on such individual level with each ability that’s tricky to figure out. Add to that that some abilities are tied to character level as well.

The scaling on summoned weapons and Spiritshift.

 

This. A thousand times this. Summoned weapons were nerfed in Deadfire because otherwise, in the hands of a Wizard dualed with a martial class, they'd be too powerful. If only there was some inbuilt system that allowed them to scale differently for single and multiclass Wizards. Oh wait, power level does that. As a bonus point that would make Conjurers suck a little bit less.

 

I hadn't thought about Spiritshift but the very same applies.

Some of this stuff already scales though.

 

E.g. sneak attack and carnage do a % of your damage so they scale with your damage.

 

Let's say we give sneak attack +5% damage per power level. This would make it do +95% damage at power level 9, that's without stacking any +power level bonuses which you surely would. That would be beyond broken.

 

Now let's say we nerfed it to 10% at lvl 1 to compensate. Now sneak attack (and rogues) sucks at low levels. There's no winning here.

 

It would work if sneak attack was a fixed amount of damage like in DnD though.

 

There's still a problem that some multiclass combos are able to stack ridiculous damage bonuses with no restrictions, but I seriously doubt power levels will solve this.

 

I do agree that conjured weapons should scale in quality with power level though up to a certain cap. Currently you can get better regular weapons but not conjured weapons, so I assume they would fall off at high levels rather hard.

Some of this stuff already scales though.

 

E.g. sneak attack and carnage do a % of your damage so they scale with your damage.

 

Let's say we give sneak attack +5% damage per power level. This would make it do +95% damage at power level 9, that's without stacking any +power level bonuses which you surely would. That would be beyond broken.

 

Now let's say we nerfed it to 10% at lvl 1 to compensate. Now sneak attack (and rogues) sucks at low levels. There's no winning here.

 

It would work if sneak attack was a fixed amount of damage like in DnD though.

 

There's still a problem that some multiclass combos are able to stack ridiculous damage bonuses with no restrictions, but I seriously doubt power levels will solve this.

 

I do agree that conjured weapons should scale in quality with power level though up to a certain cap. Currently you can get better regular weapons but not conjured weapons, so I assume they would fall off at high levels rather hard.

 

If sneak attack had +5% per power level that'd work fine if you did not also have deathblows.

 

Start at +50% and scale to +85% for multi and +95% for single. Sounds fine to me.

 

The issue would be if Deathblows was still available and it added an additional +50%.

 

Some of this stuff already scales though.

 

E.g. sneak attack and carnage do a % of your damage so they scale with your damage.

 

Let's say we give sneak attack +5% damage per power level. This would make it do +95% damage at power level 9, that's without stacking any +power level bonuses which you surely would. That would be beyond broken.

 

Now let's say we nerfed it to 10% at lvl 1 to compensate. Now sneak attack (and rogues) sucks at low levels. There's no winning here.

 

It would work if sneak attack was a fixed amount of damage like in DnD though.

 

There's still a problem that some multiclass combos are able to stack ridiculous damage bonuses with no restrictions, but I seriously doubt power levels will solve this.

 

I do agree that conjured weapons should scale in quality with power level though up to a certain cap. Currently you can get better regular weapons but not conjured weapons, so I assume they would fall off at high levels rather hard.

 

If sneak attack had +5% per power level that'd work fine if you did not also have deathblows.

 

Start at +50% and scale to +85% for multi and +95% for single. Sounds fine to me.

 

The issue would be if Deathblows was still available and it added an additional +50%.

 

 

Now add a multiclass cipher to this which has biting whip for 85% SA AND let's say 65-75% biting whip. That's  +150-160% damage from just 2 passives. This is waaay too much.

 

+85-95% from a single passive is over the top as well. And who told you deathblows or equivalent won't be available at a higher level? Anyways, you can always find some other OP multipliers if you multiclass.

 

Scaling % modifiers with level is a bad idea, but if they would go that route they honestly should nerf them heavily at lvl1, then it would at least be manageable. I don't think it's they way to go though.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by MadDemiurg

I was coming at this more from what was intended by the devs to be scaling, since they say everything should be, but I see your points.

Deathblows is definitely still in, from the patch notes. Before release Josh said something along the lines that Sneak Attack would be weaker at lower levels and scale. I think something like 30% at PL1 scaling to 75% at PL9 wouldn't be so bad?  From what the more experienced players say (my experience is somewhat different), PoE Sneak Attack is great at low levels but at late game it's not as good, even with Deathblows. If they're right, I think scaling Sneak Attack might work.

 

It does raise the question of what other class passives should (i.e., are intended to) get PL scaling. Backstab? Ascendant mode duration? Assassinate? 

Yes, all of it. It doesn't need to scale like +5% per PL or whatever. Sometimes even 1% might be ok. But it *all* should scale with PL, not char level.

 

Summons also scale with char level atm. Not the summoning spell itself (gets more duration) but the actual creatures that appear will have your char level. No bonuses from PL.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by Boeroer

Well, 1% would be ok balance wise but the effect would be purely cosmetic then.

 

My gripe with the current situation is that you still get full power passives from both classes if you multiclass, so it's possible to get sneak attack on top of carnage etc. This is probably solvable by giving all classes progressively more powerful passives with levelups so that single class characters get them faster (which is logical), but this is not the case currently for many classes and would result in overall powercreep. My another gripe is that with how easy the damage passives are to come by, spell damage builds are generally non competitive, bar a few exceptions. You can do more damage with a single autoattack swing than with a 2/encounter ability if you have a good build in most cases. Power levels don't look like a solution to this though.

 

SA does get relatively weaker lategame as it's additive with other damage bonuses, including weapon qualify bonus, but +50% damage is still a lot no matter what stage you're at.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by MadDemiurg

Well, a lot is relative. 50% base damage is not that much if you stacked a lot of other dmg mods like superb, MIG and this and that. It would be nice if it scaled to 75% till lvl 20. It could start lower than 50% so that multiclasses won't get such high dmg mods when combining it with other stuff like Soul Whip. Single classes would reach 50% and beyond more quickly then.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by Boeroer

The scaling on summoned weapons and Spiritshift.

Absolutely agreed. Unless there are very strong martial self-buffs at higher ranks, these need to scale, in order to keep shifter-sc and shifter-mc (like /monk/barb/devout) at somewhat equal footing; and some for sc-spellcasters focused on summoned weapons.

 

 

Regular weapons get +15% dmg/+1 pen at character levels 4/8/12/16/20.

That's why I would scale summoned weapons and spiritshift claws in the following manner:

- get +1 pen at character levels 4/8/12/16/20 (same as regular weapons)

- and +15% dmg when they reach power levels 2/4/6/8/_. And additionally: a). add a good dmg passive on rank 9; or b). some small quest that you can get at character level 20 for an extra boost (like Anitlei); or c). just add +15% dmg on character level 20.

 

As for carnage... it's too weak at 30%, comparatively to PoE1 variant. Making it 25% + 5% per character's base power level would bring it up to 70% for sc and 60% for mc barbarian at max level. Which at the moment looks fine in my opinion.

There is a simple way :

 

Fixed amount + Variable amount

 

Variable amount = Power Level.

 

Like :

 

Base 35 % Fixed + Power Level

 

Single class level 20 = +35 % (=70 %)

 

Multiclass level 20 = +15 % (=50 %)

 

In short, you have less bonus than actual with multiclass level 1, but you finish with the same amount (50 %).

WIth single class, at level 10, you have ~50 %, and you finish at 70 % atr level 20.

 

it also means that the power level takes on a whole new importance ...

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by theBalthazar

The thing is, multiclasses are only 1-2 power levels behind, which is not that much, especially since there are effects that boost power level and I'm assuming there will be more of them.

 

Allowing damage passives to scale with power level opens a whole new can of worms though since now it's possible to stack even more damage on top of what you already have with +power level boosts, that can even buff several multiplicative modifiers. We'll have characters hitting for 10k damage like in some Diablo clone pretty soon.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by MadDemiurg

As for carnage... it's too weak at 30%, comparatively to PoE1 variant. Making it 25% + 5% per character's base power level would bring it up to 70% for sc and 60% for mc barbarian at max level. Which at the moment looks fine in my opinion. 

 

 

True, when I have do the complete analysis of classes. I have found a good compromise :

 

50 % of damage.

 

30 % is too small. 66 % is too much because multiclass combo.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by theBalthazar

There is a simple way :

 

Fixed amount + Variable amount

 

Variable amount = Power Level.

 

Like :

 

Base 35 % Fixed + Power Level

 

Single class level 20 = +35 % (=70 %)

 

Multiclass level 20 = +15 % (=50 %)

 

In short, you have less bonus than actual with multiclass level 1, but you finish with the same amount (50 %).

WIth single class, at level 10, you have ~50 %, and you finish at 70 % atr level 20.

 

it also means that the power level takes on a whole new importance ...

 

I don't see how your math works as multiclass will have power lvl 7 @ 20 and single class power lvl 9.

 

So single class would get 7/9 ~= 77% of whatever variable modifier single class does, not less than 50% like in your example.

 

It gets worse when you think that both would get a bunch of equivalent +power level boosts from other sources, and multiclass character potentially even more since he can cherrypick power level boosts from both classes if any.

I give an idea, precise number come after, it is not my problem. You can down to 30 % the fixed variable, it is not a true problem. You understand the idea, it is the main objective.

 

And if possible, with for each ability a clear indicator of evolution in sheet ability.

 

---------------------------

Sneak Attack

Damage under affliction : 60 %

 

When you put your mouse click on 60 % : (tooltip)

Base 35 % + Power Level 25 %

 

Just bellow

Power Level : +25 %

When you put your mouse click on +25 %: (tooltip)

(Single Class Level y * x % = 25 %)

 

----------------------------

 

Because if not, actually, It is extremely obscur if I am a three years child. I don't understand anything.

 

It gets worse when you think that both would get a bunch of equivalent +power level boosts from other sources, and multiclass character potentially even more since he can cherrypick power level boosts from both classes if any.

 

 

Yes, but it is not a critical problem. It is a great problem if you have a system with full "Power Level" and all is dependant of that. Here, you have a part of damage which is fixed. That already cut back a little bit the problem. You can even put the cursor to 70%, 80 % of fixed damages, as your wish. Secondly, Atm there is no specifically major boost in Power Level. So it is not an argument. After that, it is more the choice of dev on the game overall. But this system is far more enjoyable than strict equility between single and multi. I prefer an open system than :

 

- Awful stacking rules.

- Locked numbers between single and multiclass.

Edited April 3, 20187 yr by theBalthazar