This one skill makes a mockery of this game challenge. It's a forced crit multiplier that can be stacked with anything in the game for only 1 AP. With this kind of damage stacking, you can go pure wit, always go first and still 100-0 gib enemies before they even get to act.

It also makes using magic a joke because the strongest magic damage skill in the game atm is "Staff Whack" because Rage is OP and can be used to both buff yourself (have someone do it) and then debuff enemies for a *3 elemental damage (*1.5 crit, * 2.0 negative resist). Even bosses will have a hard time surviving 2 angry mages casting "Staff whack".




This is my char at level 4 in an "All-magic damage" run with poor gears. I don't even need those fancy 20+ damage weapon to already start dealing 100+ AoE a turn and this will easily go up to 200 or 300 per turn when I actually get those 20+ damage weapon like Tide Turner (Zaleskar).

Also, for a "1-turn" buff, if you're the one casting it on yourself, it works on 2 action phase (On the turn you use it on yourself and when it cycles back to you). This works normally and disappear the next turn though if someone else casts it on you.

Outside fixing that probably unintentional "1-turn buff effective 2 turns", Rage itself needs to either

-Be more expensive to use (2AP).

-Limits the amount of guaranteed crits you can get so you can't just abuse it with Warlord and execute people one by one with a basic attack that is gauranteed to crit and wipe their remaining health pool after Crippling-Whirldwind

-Or silence the user while it's active but increase the amount of damage they can do as well to compensate for this nerf as they can now only basic-attack instead of just wiping the whole enemy team with AoE. This will give me a reason to try and cleanse the Rage off my damager with Burn-my-eyes when I want to AoE.

===

Another example of what it's like to gib the whole team beore they even act. The one that got hit for a balance of whooping 219 got raged to have -100 resist.





"Magic"

They need to make Rage not usable on enemies.

Rage is probably the worst 'nerfed' skill so far. I thought they redid a bit with the debuff part, but perhaps they put it back in? Rage being both a heavy buff and even a heavy debuff is far to much versatility. Perhaps it would be better if it were only a selfcast or at least only a friendlycast.

Warlord is also still to broken and needs a nerf. Giving enemies more armor made it less broken, but not much if play extremely on it.

Tbh, this hurts the enemies more than it hurts the player because enemies love to use Rage as a debuff tool so the mage deals a crap ton of damage, especially those Source spell type.

It's just that the concept is so broken (derp and cheap final multiplier steroid) that it's questionable why it exists. We also still need some kind of Taunt-related spell anyway for a warfare-tank type so Rage should be the candidate that gets reworked into that instead of the current super mega steroid for only 1 AP.



Even if they remove the 100% resist, it really doesn't help that Rage is still the most broken steroid in the game followed by Elven Racial. Physical party don't really care about the 100% resist anyway and most of them will only use it as buff.

Warlord also needs to have a limit on how much it can generate per turn (like 2->1->0) instead of the current flat 2. Combined with AoE, it doesn't help that a 2 AP crit-pling Strike can generate 4 AP easily from killing 2 targets at once.

The skill is 'Rage' it is meant to be buff and therefore nobody should be able to use it as a debuff, it defies its concept. For debuffing resistances we had 'Oath of desecration' if I recall the name correctly. It was a nice skill and even nicer in the high tier form, where you could try apply it to a group of enemies. But this is the difference, you could 'try to apply' but they could still resist. But you can't resist against 'Rage' because it is treated like a buff even if used a debuff and buff always get applied.

But true, even if made friendlyonly it could be still be to strong. Therefore my suggestion would be make it last longer again, but don't make it guarantee crits. It should support crit-builds, but not make them redundant.


For Warlords my suggestions remain: Either making it only give 1 AP per point or just make it trigger only once per round.

I think the main problem with warlord is actually rage. Warlord itself doesn't seem so broken unless the user is enraged. So nerfing rage would also nerf warlord enough.

Rage is only broken for one specific build which is 2h warlord warfare user. For all the other builds it's just a nice buff.

For rage nerf I'd just make it selfcast only and 2ap cost. Also fix it to only last one turn. 2ap cost would make rage+warlord massacre a bit harder.

Alternatively rage should make it impossible to use skills (and still be a selfcast only).

The concept of "rage" usually involves "Loss of control". So far, this is the least ragey type of rage since you still have full control of how the character act and can still use skills like normal.

If you are silenced while enraged and can only basic attack then at least it will be a somewhat balance steroid (no AoE with rage build) and can be used with Warlord without breaking it (since you can no longer wipe the whole team and gain more AP than you lose in one rotation). It will also tone down the power of the rage-build and allow Knife to climb back up as the single-target type of physical damage because atm, it performs no where near Ranger (Rage build with range and even some multi-target thrown in like Ricochet) or warfare.

What if you lose complete control of your character and it just attacks the nearest enemies the next turn :P Tone down resist penalty to 50 or even 33% with that.

A more realistic solution would be disabling the use of skills, or at least giving skills a +1 or even +2 AP cost penalty.

Frankly, it'd be more manageable if they just dropped it down to +50% chance to crit, -50 all resists. I like that it can be used as a situational debuff, but -100 resists is just too much.

Whatever the fix, it's almost even more broken than it was before. And Warlord could probably use a limit of two activations per turn.

Like it!

Even with 50% crit chance, the issue will still be how strong it is for how much it cost that it's still mandatory to use in nearly every damage build. In a way, you can treat the 50% crit chance like a potential 25% final damage steroid that goes up even higher as you have more crit damage. Build like Crossbow will need it even more because they shoot much less often so every shot must count.

I would go with the whole "disable usage of skill" because if we only look at force-crit basic hitting, only 3x shot from a highground ranger really comes close to being super strong with rage.

Leaving it to "AI action" type or rage will make it extremely tedious to go against enemy swashbucklers that just leap into your face with Phoenix dive and cast it on you (they always do) and with how bad the AI is, this further forces everyone to have high-wit build or you can potentially lose the battle from getting enraged by the enemy.

Would rage be balanced as a 0AP... Source skill?

thats hard to judge as the source points are really rare atm

Source skill concept sucks anyway. A player should not feel like they're completely limited from playing the game by default. We don't even have 4 or 5 AP skills yet. If we're gonna balance a skill on how insanely powerful they can be, adjust the AP cost first.

But if they rework source point into something like "Every 4-5 mem point +1 max Source point" and "Max Source point is increased by 1 every X level and when certain quests are completed or items are used and you regenerate all your source point on level up or every 1 every certain period of time" then that might work.

I rather use a skill with 99 turn cooldown than a skill with 1 SP cost.

@Ellezard: Do you also mean to suggest we ought to be rewarded with source points for doing certain quests? (As long as said quest giver's not a Magister or some fanatic who sides with the Magisters.)

As it is: I see not much incentive for getting Source points.

And why not? You could get quests from ghosts(like that dead kid who was killed by Voidwokens could've followed her mother to the camp).

I mean as in everyone starts off with 0 Max source point instead of our current 3 Max Source Point from the start, or at least 1 point so we are still sourceror in a way.

And from doing certain quest or using a certain item, your max source point count will go up. When you're at a certain area (Like the blessed fountain in a seeker camp if you weep with Armadia), you can regenerate a certain amount of source point every hour or every level up (like merchant inventory reset).

Let's say you obtained 2 Max SP from absorbing 2 Soul jar, once you use the SP gained from the soul jar, you can go sit in a seeker fountain for awhile and have it regenerate back. However, the fountain can only regenerate once an hour so you will have to use the fountain and go do something for an hour or level up in order to regenerate the other point back.

An example of quest or situation that will also grant you Max Sp is the part where you first obtain Bless.

If we're still sticking with extremely limited usages, source skill must either be super broken to be worth using or they are absolutely worthless and will never be a part of an efficient strat as SP are probably better used for questing or treasure purpose.

Ok how about the fix I assumed Rage worked.

Which is that it only works with normal attacks and not skills.

You can even lower the AP cost in that situation... sure it is powerful, but not all powerful.

Rage is a status of mind coused by a stress. External condition.
Mechanics who activates rage on demand is wrong since beginning.
Rage should rather stance, or a long term buff.
When you get hurt then the real rage is activated.

Also, in the state of mind rage the person refuse rest of the world. So, the attack action who activets rage should be nulified. Even spell, even cc.
Its like>
B:I have chopped off your arm.
A: Aaaaaggggr , I'am going to rip off your head.
B: But, ... but .... but you dont have arms.
<head is rolling>

So the game mechanics >>>
1AP state rage (ability skill self, stance mechanics - same as power stance from DOS1)
When you get hit (by anything harmful) you have a chance 20% to get status rage. (attacks which cause several effects are counted as one rage roll chance)
The attack or a spell which activates rage doesnt have any affect at all. e.g. no dmg, no cc applied. Just ignored.
The raged person gets immediate free rage attack. (see bellow)
Status rage lasts 1-2 rounds. random
Basic melee attack is available.
Battering ram skill is available.
Ranged weapons, skills, spells, scrolls, consumables are not available.
On performing basic attack its 10% to get another free rage attack.
Free rage attack - another target in 2 m range is selected randomly and hit. Could be anyone. e.g. even friendly character. If there is no other target available in range, then the original target get the hit.

That is the badass rage :]

There probably is a missunderstanding. Rage has several meanings. It does not always mean that you are furious and run amok. Being Enraged normally just means, that you are really angry and therefore hit harder than usual, but you also act more careless and disregard your defence.

But if I think about, it does not do what it's meaning would suggest. Critical hits are normally well aimed hit on vital spots, if you are raging you will hit harder but will hardly aim better. In the concept of rage you would increase your damage and get a chance to break blocks (wich is sadly not possible anyway in D:OS2) so far. Perhaps your hit chance increases but your crit chance would decrease. Also dodge, parry and block (if those would exist) would be reduced, so that the enemies can hit you harder. (Reducing elemental resists made never really sense and guaranteed crits neither.)

It should be kind of like it was in D:OS1: +50% damage, +4% crit, -25% hit chance

But at the current limited battle system is would just turn out to be just different kind of flesh sacfrice and therefore could yield still unhealthy synergy for elves.

If you are seeing red you will hit harder. To me that means crit.

However you'll be less accurate. I think Rage should give you 100% crit (as it does) but possibly reduce accuracy. I might have a 80% chance to hit but if I do I'll have 100% crit chance.

It should definitely only last one turn not two.

I also think you should be unable to use skills (like Crippling Blow) as you obviously are not going to be in the frame of mind to do something technical. Perhaps Whirlwind would be OK (as comparatively the damage is feeble) and an enraged person could definitely spin around hoping for the best.

Warlord though is fine. Sure you can get multiple +2AP but that usually only happens when everyone else is dead anyway and the fight is over. Look at @Ellezard's pictures - everyone is already dead. Except the dog. No need to limit or complicate it.

@Ellezard, how do you put pictures in the forum like that? I much prefer it to links. In fact how do you take a screenshot at the exact second in the first place?

You can add images using the [img] tags: the URLs must contain a recognised extension such as .jpg or .png, though, so links to e.g. Imgur pages won't show up as images.

And I dunno what Ellezard uses, but I just use Fraps for screenshots, preferably using some form of pause since it's sometimes up to a second out.

Why does Wits make Crits more likely? Because you are smarter and can aim better for vital spots. Rage is more the opposite of Wits, so rage should not give crit, just increase damage. If you are enraged, you hit harder and not smarter.

Crippling blow just means for me, that you aim for the legs, so I wouldn't count that as that much technical. But stuff like Ricochet probably does fit less to an enraged player.

imo rage should have critchance+ lowered , to the point rage would only good when used with a dmg dealing character Wits focused build , crit build.

So in order to deal constant crits , one must wear gears with +wits/crits and make Wits thier primary tributes. Cause atm , i dont think anybody level Wits with thier mind thinking "oh i need those +1% crit chances".. nah, people just level it for Initiative.

My concept is something like this:
♦ a crit character dmg should be 20-30% weaker in general when scoring normal attacks compared to a normal build character but if he scores constant crits , then his dps is overall much better.
♦ Crit build should be weak early game but late game powerhouse.

F12 on Steam to take picture. (Hotkey probably varies based on person)

"[Im"g] directpicturelinkhere "[/im"]g without the " "

And crit can really mean more than just "Vital strike". In games with Vital strike system type of crit, they are "Defense ignoring" type of crit, always dealing full damage but have little to no extra multiplier. There's also the pure "Lucky Crit" but our game doesn't have that. Our crit is just a generic "Hit really hard" type of crit.

And I would consider the whole "Wit and crit" to be a special case of logic where they purposefully bend the rule around for balance purpose. Why does Wit grants Crit but not Finesse where moving around gracefully will likely give you more room to hit a vital spot especially when you view the whole thing in real time and it's much more likely to score a vital strike after dodging? Why does Str not grant overall crit damage in general but make physical armour tougher? Wit might as well be a pure roleplaying stat since it's for negotiation purpose or planning but they gave it ini increase and crit chance purely for min-max.

Rage should definitely be restricted to self-cast only. There should be a different (preferably Necromancy/Witchcraft) spell that serves the purpose of debuffing resistances. Rage's 1AP cost should not be increased to balance it, and I will explain why I feel this way.

I think the Rage's low AP cost being a problem is a byproduct of a much larger problem: it's too easy to gain AP. There's an abundance of AP generating skills (Haste, Adrenaline, Flesh Sacrifice, to a lesser extent Tactical Retreat) that are so dominant right now that there's really no reason for any of your characters to not dip into their respective schools to pick them up.

The most prominent example: Haste being a 0AP cost skill that gives you +1AP for subsequent rounds is incredibly powerful. A combination of Haste + Adrenaline completely eliminates the downside of Adrenaline and is a no-risk, high-reward option that excels on every character in every situation. Unless you want these two skills to be mandatory for every character to pick up this needs to be addressed, and this is without the consideration of Flesh Sacrifice on top of this combo.

In DOS:EE, Haste had a moderate cost (4AP) for a long-term benefit (+3AP for the next 2 Turns). This meant that you spent AP up front to gain more in the long run. It was a situational trade-off of immediate AP for the benefit of having more AP later. Likewise, Adrenaline in DOS:EE scaled with your total AP, rather than by a flat value (gain 50% of your Turn Action Points, but lose 75% of your total Action Points next turn). This scaling ensured that the benefit gained from the skill would always be proportionally relative with its downside. If you were hasted, haste's AP gain would play into the benefit and cost of Adrenaline, rather than nullify it's penalty completely.

In another topic here, Ellezard described how one could spend a total of 7 AP in one round as early as level 4. Not even 2 hours into the game, you can already spend more AP than your AP bank can hold at the start of combat (without banking any AP over from a previous round to save up) with no trade-off at all. If this character had Flesh Sacrifice, they would have a total of 8AP to spend in one round.

Of course these kind of skill combos feel rewarding to use, but they strain the balance of the game by redefining the standard "AP budget" characters have access to. This "AP inflation" will have to be balanced around (as we are seeing with the suggestion to increase the AP cost of Rage) until it is mandatory for every character to carry these skills in order to keep up.

The first problem is actually already that melee is again too strong in itself. So many skills with heavy damage, heavy aoe and even CC on top of that, ofc that interacts with other powerful options like warlord. That one should be simply removed. Reminds me of the old great cleave from dnd. It's actual function binds it to be broken as it comforts the extremes. Really bad.

As for rage... well, many ways to make it less OP, but needs a complete redesign most probably. The main goal should simply be to make it less mandatory for pretty much every build. The same goes for adrenaline, haste and some others.
And restricting the diversion is never a good idea...

Sadly this is a problem I already talked about even before the first game with it's skill layout.
There's more than one way to achieve a goal, so why not portraying that with the skills? Right now we have that only with some hard CC effects, petrify, freeze, stun... different yet similar.
For example fortify. Only effect to boost physical armor. Why not providing alternatives? For example: A bone armor spell, that also boosts physical armor, but you need to sacrifice a skeleton summon to cast it. Similar use yet an alternative with specific characteristics.
That mixed with higher requirements would be a better way.

Two-handed enraged fighter is op only cause of aoe skills. Silenced until enraged looks like the solution.