Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Rebalanced Glass Cannon

I think we can all agree Glass Cannon is pretty unbalanced. Here's a simple solution: make the AP recovery and maximum bonus 50% instead of 100%. So if you had 8 AP and got Glass Cannon, you'd end up with 12 instead of 16 per turn. That's still a big advantage, but not enough AP to cast two powerful spells. You'd have to invest more points into speed and constitution if you really want to get up to even 15 or 16 AP per turn.

Does this sound like it'd balance Glass Cannon out? Perhaps the vitality reduction could be cut down a little bit, or perhaps it would be fine to stay as it is now. Perhaps Glass Cannon would STILL be overpowered and players should take a hit to their elemental resists.

If Larian doesn't address GC in the next patch, I'll probably add this rebalance to my artifacts mod. While you cannot modify talents directly because they are hardcoded, you can apply an effect to a character for taking a certain talent.

Thoughts? Would people like a mod or official change like this? I like GC a lot as a concept and would like to use it in my next playthrough, but I feel like it is too extreme right now to balance effectively. Even if a character had 1 health point from taking GC, having 20 (or more) AP from the 100% bonus lets you apply so much CC and damage that you're probably not even going to get attacked.

Edit: Another possibility would be to have a sort of reverse-stench effect where monsters are more likely to attack characters with Glass Cannon.

I think if you made that change that those who pick glass cannon would still pick it. The benefit it simply too good even at 50%. Perhaps a -25% resistance to earth and poison, boulder vulnerability!

Earth and Poison resistance are separate things. A penalty to Earth Resistance would be a complete joke because basically nothing at all does Earth-type damage.

Perhaps a diminished armor or physical resistance would be more thematically appropriate. Or -1 to bodybuilding and willpower. 50% less of a bonus is significant, but it is still powerful. But at least you couldn't cast two good spells AND a weaker spell or move in a round. A lot of the time you'd want to use your extra AP for defensive positioning or spells like invisibility, especially if GC also increased the chance enemies attacked you.

When I think about glass cannon, I oftentimes end on the same conclusion than you: I'd simply nerf the bonus amount (and vitality malus). But I'd intuitively go with 20% or 25% instead of 50% (compared to original 100% bonus).

Having a resistance tradeoff that is not just HP (vitality) might be a good idea, I guess it depends whether you think talents should have tradeoff or not (some have, some don't, why?).

I'll have a look at your artifacts mod.

I can agree that cutting the Glass Cannon bonus to 50% extra AP instead of 100% extra AP would be fine. Other than that, I am not sure that it needs an extra penalty on top of the -50% health.

It's not extra penalty, it'd be a replacement. Instead of less HP, you'd have less resistance. Maybe OP considers that being more vulnerable to cc is more dangerous than having less HP.

Anyway, one need to evaluate how much speed/con this talent is worth, and compare to the demon trade (1 talent = 2 attributes). This method of comparison helps milking out useless talents.

I actually was suggesting the elemental resist or physical resist penalty as on top of the health penalty. Probably for initial testing I'll just cut down the AP bonus by 50% and leave the penalties as is. Maybe I'll tack on -1 to bodybuilding because as Chrest said, being more vulnerable to cc is more dangerous (or about the same) as not having enough health. Maybe cutting down the AP bonus to 25% and reducing the penalty to 25% or so would be a lot easier to balance, but I do want a little extremity of the talent. It's cool and special when a talent drastically changes your character instead of just having some minor change.

Personally I think the whole demon trade thing is problematic. Trading 1 Talent for 2 attributes is pretty fair, and two points in speed certainly isn't going to match even a 25% bonus to AP, but to me it's more of the 10 ability points for 1 talent that's a problem. When you can go from 0 to 4 points in a weapon skill, that makes that 10% damage of Anaconda look like a complete joke. I'd drop the ability trade to 5 points while buffing the weaker talents that still pale in comparison to that.

Maybe 75% AP bonus and a small penalty, like -1 Body Building/Will Power?

Well if you break it down by the numbers:

AP per turn Base
Speed/AP Total = 7/7, 9/8, 11/9, 13/10

Glass Cannon 50% (assuming rounding down)
Speed/AP Total = 7/10, 9/12, 11/13, 13/15

Glass Cannon 100%
Speed/AP Total = 7/14, 9/16, 11/18, 13/20

Effective Speed given by Glass Cannon
Speed 50%/100%
7 = +6/+14
9 = +8/+16
11 = +8/+18
13 = +10/+20

The other thing to consider is that there is an additional way to mitigate Glass Cannon with 1 Talent and Man-at-Arms. So for the price of 2 Talents (Glass Cannon and Picture of Health) and between 3-15 Skill Points you lose between 40-25% Vitality and gain +6 Speed. I'm pretty sure that even the most unlucky of player would find at least 4 points to put in Speed or supplement with equipment by the mid-late game allowing you to spread your points on your primary stat and Con as needed.

At 50% it is like having a free haste every round, this seems at least within the realm of fair. -1 BB/WP would definitely make it a trade-off talent which is what it seems intended to be.

Bodybuilding and Willpower are 10% per stat. I'm not sure that a -10% penalty would be enough. What about BB/WP -2 (-20%)? Would that be too much?

-50% to the bonus AP and -1 BB/WP is probably enough of a nerf. Subtracting 2 from BB/WP sounds a little harsh, but just 1 is a little light. Maybe -2 BB and -1 WP? Not the most elegant solution, but might be a good medium. I'd figure GC would affect the body more than willpower. Possibly it could even just be -3 BB and no change to WP so you have to be extremely careful of fire, poison, knockdowns, etc, but you're not any weaker to the likes of charm and mute. It'd take 6 ability points to have even no penalty, and maxing BB out would basically be impossible.

Note that you're still spending a talent to get the effects. It's meant to be a net gain. As for the exact numbers, I cannot fairly say: I've avoided this talent so far since I play on Source Hard.

It's true that Talents are meant to be a net gain. The issue is that the way Glass Cannon is currently balanced, the gain is considered to be incredibly overpowering to the point of breaking the game's balance.

There are certainly a bunch of Talents which are not net gains, and thus are in need of improvement: Demon, Ice King, and Walk It Off, for example.