Larian Studios
Posted By: vivalafai New Skills Are Broken - 28/03/17 09:54 PM
Invisbility for Polymorphist: Only a 6 turn cooldown??? Accessible in character creation??????

How is this balanced at all?

1 turn cooldown on Totems???

I don't understand.

Posted By: Grondoth Re: New Skills Are Broken - 28/03/17 10:29 PM
Yeah they seem very silly.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 28/03/17 10:44 PM
Some of these I have a feeling aren't meant for the early game but are being given to us at this time to test it out.
Posted By: Baardvark Re: New Skills Are Broken - 28/03/17 10:56 PM
Probably wanted to make an exciting splash with the new skilltrees, though chicken polymorph ignoring armor definitely seems ludicrous.

I believe Swen said each point of summoning lets you summon 4 totems? That seems equally ludicrous. 40 Totems summonable with 10 ability points? My impression is each point should let you summon 1 totem, which will help make investing in the ability feel important rather than "Oh, now I can summon 20 totems, yay?" Even having 3 or 4 totems plus an incarnate sounds really strong. I also hope the incarnate's visuals scale with the investment in summoning (maybe at certain breakpoints, like level 3, 6, and 9 make them look more menacing and bigger.)
Posted By: Kalrakh Re: New Skills Are Broken - 28/03/17 11:00 PM
Totems don't live that long, that one player could ever have so many totems around. You amount of AP is pretty limited still and at least this skill isn't that cheap. Also at least at the start totems get easily killed too.

But yeah, some of the others skills feel far from improving the balancing, except if you want balance by making pretty much everything broken.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 05:29 AM
Not to mention that Totems do very little damage.

Also Chicken penetrating armor is a bug. The kickstarter video says it relies on magic armor being down.
Posted By: Tuco Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 06:54 AM
...Are you suggesting that a 6 turns cooldown is short?
That's pretty much as long as they come in this game.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 07:14 AM
Originally Posted by Tuco
...Are you suggesting that a 6 turns cooldown is short?
That's pretty much as long as they come in this game.


If anything that might be too long. To admit I can imagine the summoner getting abilities later on to ease that problem.

Kind of interesting the Summoner's summons are weaker than typical summons but they have a lot more potential.
Posted By: Kalrakh Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 10:15 AM
The description of the Chicken Polymorph does not mention magic armor.
Posted By: Seelenernter Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 10:32 AM
The 1 turn cooldown on totems seems fine with how they are oneshot kills for enemies.

I'm not saying I like that! (neither both the "incarnate's" nor totems designs...)

But it's clear what Larian aims for with their design, they want to force the player to do what the class is named after: summoning, and spending your AP for exactly that. I just do not think it's a good way to do it that way. It for example potentially prolongs the often already quite boringly slow battles even more with masses of weak attacks.
I actually would go with lower amounts of "full summons" instead, scrap the "totems" (+ give the "incarnate" a real elemental design as well as rename) and give them a reasonable AP upkeep in return.

Or as a narrow gauge solution at least... give them a way lower maximum number but higher protection, damage and slightly increased AP cost.
Posted By: Bullethose Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 11:24 AM
the only way they aren't 1 turn kills is adding both fortify and magic shell onto them.
Posted By: Pyrofox Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 12:48 PM
Chicken doesn't go through magic armour btw, just tested it. I also discovered the spell works really well with the opportunist talent because the chicken runs away, procing opportunist, and it doesn't break on damage.
Posted By: Kalrakh Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 01:25 PM
So the descriptions are lacking.
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by Neonivek
Originally Posted by Tuco
...Are you suggesting that a 6 turns cooldown is short?
That's pretty much as long as they come in this game.


If anything that might be too long. To admit I can imagine the summoner getting abilities later on to ease that problem.

Kind of interesting the Summoner's summons are weaker than typical summons but they have a lot more potential.


What's the cooldown for Walk in Shadows? 10 turns? Also, now that you have 2 invis spells with different cooldowns you can chain them together and basically wait for all your other cooldowns to refresh. This isn't even cheesing as it is directly possible via skills...
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 04:26 PM
Originally Posted by Kalrakh
Totems don't live that long, that one player could ever have so many totems around. You amount of AP is pretty limited still and at least this skill isn't that cheap. Also at least at the start totems get easily killed too.

But yeah, some of the others skills feel far from improving the balancing, except if you want balance by making pretty much everything broken.


If the totem doesn't survive a turn, that means you paid 1 AP to waste at least half of an enemy turn (if it was buffed, maybe the whole turn), as it's tanking X amount of enemy dmg. I still think this is a huge advantage for the cost.
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 04:28 PM
Originally Posted by Seelenernter
The 1 turn cooldown on totems seems fine with how they are oneshot kills for enemies.

I'm not saying I like that! (neither both the "incarnate's" nor totems designs...)

But it's clear what Larian aims for with their design, they want to force the player to do what the class is named after: summoning, and spending your AP for exactly that. I just do not think it's a good way to do it that way. It for example potentially prolongs the often already quite boringly slow battles even more with masses of weak attacks.
I actually would go with lower amounts of "full summons" instead, scrap the "totems" (+ give the "incarnate" a real elemental design as well as rename) and give them a reasonable AP upkeep in return.

Or as a narrow gauge solution at least... give them a way lower maximum number but higher protection, damage and slightly increased AP cost.


This seems more reasonable.
Posted By: Yun Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 06:27 PM
Think the new skills seem pretty well balanced overall, aside from the totems which are just plain annoying. They do little damage, attack random enemies, and their impact is aoe so they will do just as much damage to friendly melee while also setting off random fields.
There are already way too many random ways to trigger elemental fields, we really do not need more via totems.
Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 07:55 PM
Originally Posted by Yun
Think the new skills seem pretty well balanced overall, aside from the totems which are just plain annoying. They do little damage, attack random enemies, and their impact is aoe so they will do just as much damage to friendly melee while also setting off random fields.
There are already way too many random ways to trigger elemental fields, we really do not need more via totems.


Sounds like Totems should only be allowed to do direct damage to enemies, NO AoE or splash to ground surfaces.
Posted By: Kbot Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 08:49 PM
Initial impressions:

Like a lot of people my first impression of the chicken polymorph was it's too strong. No armor check and two rounds?

I've since changed my mind and find it pretty balanced.

It saves against magic (just isn't mentioned in the tooltip).

Chickens run for the hills. They don't just stand there like other CC. That's great if it's standing in next two several of your guys with opportunist, but a lot of the time, the chicken runs far off and/or around a corner. That detracts from its appeal a bit, as the target de-polymorphs and a ranger/caster/whatever is now pegging you from max distance. Alternatively you chase it or use another CC on it, but that often kinda defeats the point.

Same thing goes for the tentacle (disarmed npcs run off but only for one turn).

Bullrush seems broken. You can charge - multiple times - every round, for several rounds.

Summons seem fine. Long cool down. Doesn't hit like a truck, high mobility, a special ability but long cool down for it, can't tank.

I think totems are pretty balanced (maybe even hit too hard). If you get several up they do a lot of damage per round but are one-shot by everything. People are going to totally cheese them though and summon multiple pre-fight.

Asides that (haven't gone too far) decaying touch is now physical damage and I think infect now nukes physical damage instead of MR. If so, that's pretty awesome with necromancy being all - psychical damage, unlike the other schools.
Posted By: Baardvark Re: New Skills Are Broken - 29/03/17 08:55 PM
Would be kind of cool if you could set global behavior on your totems on whether they do direct attacks or AOE.

Originally Posted by Seelenernter

But it's clear what Larian aims for with their design, they want to force the player to do what the class is named after: summoning, and spending your AP for exactly that. I just do not think it's a good way to do it that way. It for example potentially prolongs the often already quite boringly slow battles even more with masses of weak attacks.
I actually would go with lower amounts of "full summons" instead, scrap the "totems" (+ give the "incarnate" a real elemental design as well as rename) and give them a reasonable AP upkeep in return.

Or as a narrow gauge solution at least... give them a way lower maximum number but higher protection, damage and slightly increased AP cost.


I agree that summoners should actually spend relatively little time directly summoning because that's not very interesting. Rather, they should spend time enhancing and directly using their summons in interesting ways. I think there's a good start with the existing skills, and I'll see for myself tonight how it plays, but I hope they continue to go in a more in an active direction rather than a passive one.
Posted By: Seelenernter Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 02:53 PM
Yes the base idea of the elementals ("incarnate", still think the naming and visuals are misplaced, tbh) is indeed interesting.
Especially with its interactions through the fiels combined with other gameplay elements like other skill sets.
But then there is stuff like dimensional bolt... totally screwing all this up, as it alone on the same school offers all you need in one go, terminating all the nice interactions that could creatively fuse together the skillsets instead of just generically add stuff on top of everything like adrenaline does for example (and so on).
So to enhance this IMHO this skill should be removed entirely, so not everything is served to the player, but a bit of creativity remains. There are enough ways to spawn specific surfaces, bombs, arrows, certain spells...
That's imho much more how skills schools should work together. Not like adrenaline, rage or whatnot.

Also, if it is true, that summoning points increase the totem cap, it's even more useless as they only live for about 4-5 turns (says 3 but seems to be bugged), so you can't have more than 5 per character.

I REALLY hope they remove totems alltogether and maybe fill that gap with a 0 turn cooldown on the by "farsight infusion" granted skill (underwhelming how it is right now), plus what they once talked about: a perk or two to increase "normal" summon limits to 2 or 3.
Maybe +1 summon from a perk and +1 summon from a skill-buff? Perk unlocks with summoner and fewer additional drawbacks, skill unlocks with necromancer and makes the player loose HP (maybe stats?) each round while active? (like the stances in DOS1 toggle on/off)
Just some ideas.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 05:21 PM
I do admit there is a genuine argument you can make that dimension bolt in many ways weakens the synergy Summoners have because they can supply all the elements they want (albeit randomly).

Mind you they can't really chose the element dimension bolt uses... so that could be the balancing factor. It wouldn't be advantagous to create poison floor when against the undead.
Posted By: Baardvark Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 05:36 PM
I like the dimensional bolt concept. You'll still have to work with other skill trees/characters to get more reliable surfaces and elemental interaction you want, but summoners should have some way to create a basic surface, even if it's random. Like Neonivek says, it could mean hitting undead with a poison attack. Or perhaps dousing and burning of an enemy with a water attack, or starting a stun chain reaction when you didn't want to.
Posted By: Swedley of Smeg Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 05:42 PM
I don't think I agree with removing totems although I think they should tone down the early limit of totems but that would increase based on Summoner level (and be more noticeable if it does already)

I do think that Dimension Bolt needs a change though, maybe instead of dealing random elemental damage and creating that surface it will deal elemental damage depending on the surface the target (or the user, which could potentially give a use to Elemental Affinity) is standing on. Would work with how Incarnate and Totem summoning on a surface works.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 05:51 PM
That would kind of be against the entire purpose of Dimension bolt Swedley.

It exists almost purely as a way to get surfaces onto the field and the damage it does is minor.
Posted By: Swedley of Smeg Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 06:09 PM
Yeah that is true. Maybe another spell could have that sort of effect though.
Posted By: Ferrous Re: New Skills Are Broken - 30/03/17 09:16 PM
So far, in my experience, dimensional bolt makes it so eventually everything is just fire, it all eventually blows up, and its kind of annoying playing WITH someone that is a summoner when you are not.
Posted By: Naqel Re: New Skills Are Broken - 31/03/17 12:23 PM
Originally Posted by Baardvark
I like the dimensional bolt concept. You'll still have to work with other skill trees/characters to get more reliable surfaces and elemental interaction you want, but summoners should have some way to create a basic surface, even if it's random.

There is no scenario in which this skill is a necessary part of the Summoning tree.

You have 3 other characters, grenades, barrels, arrows, enemies and the almost excessive prevalence of environmental surfaced, to rely on for surfaces already.

On it's own it's a skill that could be interesting, but as part of that specific kit it's just superfluous and misplaced.
Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 31/03/17 01:38 PM
Originally Posted by Naqel

You have 3 other characters, grenades, barrels, arrows, enemies and the almost excessive prevalence of environmental surfaced, to rely on for surfaces already.

On it's own it's a skill that could be interesting, but as part of that specific kit it's just superfluous and misplaced.


You can play without other characters, or depart from the party to go do competitive questing. Grenades, barrels, arrows and enemies make surfaces which are MUCH bigger, and aren't people already complaining about the entire screen already blowing up in every big fight?

I think Dimensional Bolt is fine as a part of the Summoner's Kit. The surface it produces is about as small as surfaces get. If you don't want it to make everything blow up, you can find an empty space out of the way with no existing surface.

If you don't like the surface you get (i.e. fire), them's the breaks, try again next turn. You can always summon wood for physical damage.
Posted By: Seelenernter Re: New Skills Are Broken - 31/03/17 06:52 PM
I simply think DB streamlines things too much. Overly handholding in my book, and with that, imho, a bit too boring.

As for the totems... their design actually has even another problem. It's again something that actually tightens the extremes instead of mitigating it.
You need several rounds to build up a notable amount of them, unless you exploit the games AI routines by delaying conversation before fights for example. And even then you can't use that to full extend, as the engine doesn't allow for simultaneous casting of multiple player characters.
So you don't have them when you need them (beginning) and have them when you don't need them anymore (end of battle).
And all that doesn't even count in the fact that they mostly are killed by collateral damage not even offering real protection, as a lot of, especially indoor, areas are smaller than the AoE offered by skills.
Or that new summoned entities only act one round later, delaying their use even further. Multiplying these issues with the collateral damage aspect, as they often are destroyed before they can act at all.
I also don't want to even start talkin about dynamic fights, that shift into different rooms by fleeing enemies for example... so all of this starts twice.. or even more.

So far I played both a 1/4 summoner party and a 4/4 summoner one. And in the "balanced" party my summoner almost offered nothing notable. Enemies mostly prefer player characters to attack and the damage the summoner can dish out after 1-2 rounds when especially melee characters often kill the first enemies is prettymuch negligible.
(maybe 2-3 x 15 dmg (+ about 25 dmg from their skill) from lvl6 incarnate in the first round where a single whirlwind attack of my fighter easily dealt up to 150+ dmg, often more. Let's even add in a precast totem for ~25 dmg a round at that level. So we are looking at ~90-95 dmg single target, against 150 AoE... and that was just 1! attack of the fighter)
Similar scene compared to rangers and mages, just slightly less drastic.

So to make the summoner contribute something notable at least, the time he needs to unfold it's potential needs to be shortened while capping it. The best way to do that would be to lower their numbers and increase the values (damage and so on). More class instead of time consuming mass.
And with that we are already there ("normal summons" with, as said, a tad more adaptability).
So why burning down the forest if there is farmland left?
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 31/03/17 08:34 PM
An issue with the Totems is that they... Destroy the action economy of the enemy.

Their low HP is kind of deceptive and could better be thought of as "One hit" with only Revenge skills taking them down a peg.

For 1 ap you waste 1-3ap of the opponent.

So the fact that they only fire the round after, isn't really a point against them. I'd consider using a move that destroys the AP of my opponent.
Posted By: Seelenernter Re: New Skills Are Broken - 01/04/17 10:24 AM
Well, totems are 2 AP for me. Also IF it would be that way then MAYBE. But, a battering ram hits 2 pc or 2 pc and additional 3 totems... where exactly does this make the enemy waste any additional AP? Doesn't in my book.
Enemies only seem to (directly) attack summons if there is no pc within 2-3 screens (which is, no doubt, a clever move of the AI actually). That on the other hand means all these player characters are OOR and cannot act either, so you are hindering yourself too for several AP. Otherwise you would need to be in range, which brings it back to point one.
And all the other shortcomings still stand, like the dynamic or "warm up" time etc, or the fact that there is no need for an enemy to waste AP if he's already half dead and CCed by the fighter.

Also forgot to mention: an enemy can easily destroy multiple totems with for example a single battle stomp or whatever. Cost? 2 AP for the enemy. Summoner cost? 5 totems for example: 10 AP.
Posted By: hairyscotsman Re: New Skills Are Broken - 01/04/17 01:22 PM
Originally Posted by vivalafai
Invisbility for Polymorphist: Only a 6 turn cooldown??? Accessible in character creation??????

How is this balanced at all?

1 turn cooldown on Totems???

I don't understand.



It will be for testing. Alpha of the previous had, what became on release higher level skills, available in lower levels for testing in the last game.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 12:05 AM
Now in terms of the skill I SERIOUSLY have issues with...

It would probably be Wings.

It is a skill that gives you unlimited teleportations for a generous period of time... AND gives you immunity to surfaces.

I don't mind there being a best teleport (Heck, the Ranger's version is flat out better than the Warrior's version)... But there is no close contender... not by a long shot.
Posted By: Baardvark Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 12:15 AM
Originally Posted by Neonivek
Now in terms of the skill I SERIOUSLY have issues with...

It would probably be Wings.

It is a skill that gives you unlimited teleportations for a generous period of time... AND gives you immunity to surfaces.

I don't mind there being a best teleport (Heck, the Ranger's version is flat out better than the Warrior's version)... But there is no close contender... not by a long shot.


I can't get over how stupid strong this skill is. I mean, even if the jump cost 2 AP or it had a 1 turn cooldown it'd be vaguely reasonable. It either needs toning down or some serious downside attached to it. I could see an elemental resist penalty, especially for fire and air. Maybe cloud effects deal extra damage to you? I'm not sure anything besides a straight up nerf, perhaps in addition to a downside, can make this not gamebreaking.

Although I'm not sure what you mean by the ranger's teleport being better than the warrior's one. You mean phoenix dive? One's offensive and the other is defensive. Do you mean the rogue teleport? That one at least doesn't break sneak/invisibility, but the ranger one is probably overall more versatile and useful. I don't think there needs to be an overall best teleport or mobility skill, just better teleports for certain situations.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 12:50 AM
The Warrior's teleport creates a fire surface but the damage is so low that using it as an attack is silly. (If anything it is a tiny bit of a liability)
-In fact this is the major reason why the AI kind of completely fails in using this teleport. They use it as an attack.

While the Ranger's teleports AND gives Haste... Meaning not only do you get a teleport but also a powerful buff.

And the Rogue teleports and gives invisibility.

---

Yet even those pale in comparison to the ability to teleport for 1ap for a few turns AND immunity to surfaces for the entire length.

Actually it is kind of funny because the fire immunity warriors get is so short lived that it is, as I said, a liability.

---

Kind of funny that Air... the skill tree BASED around manipulating movement and space... doesn't have a pure teleport.

Though its enemy teleport... and Netherswap... are REALLY powerful in exchange so I can't REALLY complain.
Posted By: Kalrakh Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 10:04 AM
Phoenix Dive is a strong offensive teleport, but only in combination with oil/poison surface. In the Arena is it kind of the basic opening as a warrior: Impale + Phoenix = Boom!

For itself of course it is weak, similar like the racial skill of lizards and only works to setting stuff ablaze, but with good preparation it mattersless than the weakness of the lizards racial.

Perhaps those teleports should be give longer buffs now, to compete with the 'new' skilltree.

But we would really need infos if skill restrictions will be planned. Now you can learn at least 4 kinds of selfteleportation without hardly any skillpoint investmentm that is kind of insane?
Posted By: Dexord Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 01:31 PM
Originally Posted by Kalrakh

But we would really need infos if skill restrictions will be planned. Now you can learn at least 4 kinds of selfteleportation without hardly any skillpoint investmentm that is kind of insane?


i think all skills in early access have low skill invenstment requierment because we are suppose to test them,like in D:OS 1 when pheonix dive was cheap at first and then in the full release was more of a mid-late game skill.

i just assumed that was the case for all skills since they want us to test them.
Posted By: Kalrakh Re: New Skills Are Broken - 02/04/17 05:34 PM
Probably but for a more accurate feedback it would be essentiel to know what they are planing regarding skill Tiers. It would also allow for a more realistic test of the balance in the first act, because players could chose to follow those restrictions for the purpose of testing.

Many of the balancing issues are caused by the fact, that there are no restrictions at the current state.
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 03/04/17 09:17 PM
For some bizarre reason Chameleon Cloak and Skin Graft simply don't work for me. In and out of combat, after using the skill and selecting myself as target there is 0 effect. Has this happened to anyone? I have 3 points into Poly.

Edit: this randomly stopped happening. Hopefully the data got uploaded to Larian and somehow they notice this bug.
Posted By: Meppy Re: New Skills Are Broken - 03/04/17 09:47 PM
I have not tried much of the summoning skills but I have extensively used poly (I play solo not with companions).

Wings: Honestly I find this to be the least useful of all of the skills. I am not entirely sure why everyone is making a fuss about it. I hardly used it actually. I used the "movement" abilities from the other trees far more often. I pretty much only used Wings for running away.

Chameleon: Extremely good skill. Hopefully in the main game they give the rogue tree an earlier invis and chameleon comes later in poly.

Chicken: decent spell, fun to mess around with. I honestly didn't find it that overpowered.

Tentacle: Very solid awesome skill. Loved it. Made less use of it later on.

Skin Graph: This skill is ridiculous. At first glance I thought it was garbage but after messing around with it is has the potential to be completely broken. As demonstrated:

Elf rogue: first turn ---> Flesh sacrifice, Adrenaline, Burn My Eyes, Haste --->Vault(backlash), Sawtooth Knife, Throwing Knife(at this point whoever you targeted is pretty much insta gibbed or really close to it)--->Chameleon

Turn two: wait.

Turn 3: Skin Graph----> repeat turn 1 minus Burn My eyes---->Chameleon---> Walk in Shadows out and run away at mock jesus speed.

wait for cooldowns and repeat until everyone is eating carpet.
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 02:07 AM
Originally Posted by Meppy
I have not tried much of the summoning skills but I have extensively used poly (I play solo not with companions).

Wings: Honestly I find this to be the least useful of all of the skills. I am not entirely sure why everyone is making a fuss about it. I hardly used it actually. I used the "movement" abilities from the other trees far more often. I pretty much only used Wings for running away.

Chameleon: Extremely good skill. Hopefully in the main game they give the rogue tree an earlier invis and chameleon comes later in poly.

Chicken: decent spell, fun to mess around with. I honestly didn't find it that overpowered.

Tentacle: Very solid awesome skill. Loved it. Made less use of it later on.

Skin Graph: This skill is ridiculous. At first glance I thought it was garbage but after messing around with it is has the potential to be completely broken. As demonstrated:

Elf rogue: first turn ---> Flesh sacrifice, Adrenaline, Burn My Eyes, Haste --->Vault(backlash), Sawtooth Knife, Throwing Knife(at this point whoever you targeted is pretty much insta gibbed or really close to it)--->Chameleon

Turn two: wait.

Turn 3: Skin Graph----> repeat turn 1 minus Burn My eyes---->Chameleon---> Walk in Shadows out and run away at mock jesus speed.

wait for cooldowns and repeat until everyone is eating carpet.


The only thing you must be wary of is not having a condition like Bleeding or Burning which will break your Invis. In your sequence, the melee attack can result in a burning/poison splash if your enemy bleeds fire or poison (ie. fire slugs, zombies). Now imagine this same mechanic with sneak+snipe as a ranger....it's ridiculously broken. Either the invis skills should be nerfed or there should only be one. Also, to be honest, I think sneaking in general is broken. The AI needs to be able to go on "alert mode" and run around to break your sneak somehow. I ran build without invis spells and realized you don't even need them. The AI just doesn't begin to look for you.

Also, in regards to Chicken, my opinion is that although Chicken itself is not broken, the fact that it's in the same kit as Chameleon and Skin Graft is plain absurd. The whole kit is broken. Also the extra attribute points for Poly are insanely useful if you're making a hybrid and need extra Memory.

Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 03:25 AM
Invisibility breaks if you take damage or attack. Combat-sneak fails if an enemy glances in your direction.

I'm open to nerfs if you have a suggestion for how to nerf them without making them useless to the point where it might as well be deleted from the game?
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 04:35 AM
Originally Posted by Stabbey
Invisibility breaks if you take damage or attack. Combat-sneak fails if an enemy glances in your direction.

I'm open to nerfs if you have a suggestion for how to nerf them without making them useless to the point where it might as well be deleted from the game?


I have been thinking about this passively for a few days, but I am not sure if my ideas are any good. I was thinking about starting a separate thread for this but since you have asked me here I will answer here.


Conjecture: given 4AP, 0 invis spells, and 0 points into sneaking (0 cone reduction) I can ALWAYS find a way position myself outside of every vision cone and have the 1AP required to enter sneak.

Facts:

1)The AI will not move to "look" for me. As a consequence, I can wait as long as I need to refresh my cooldowns and take as much time as I need to reposition myself. However:

2)The AI will cast buffs/heals on damaged allies. But, if my net solo damage is greater than their net healing on the lowest total armor+vitality enemy, I can always focus down a single enemy with this strategy.

Conclusion:

Fact (2) is not enough to mitigate the power of Sneak.

Let's look at a worst case scenarios.

The least sneaky character:

1) No points into Sneaking (normal cones)
2) No points into Scoundrel (no invis, no Cloak and Dagger)
3) No points into Huntsman (thus no Duck Duck Goose, no Tactical Retreat)
4) No points into Polymorph (no invis).

The character least likely to escape melee combat:

5) No point in Escapist
6) No Teleport
7) No Netherswap
8) Slowed (-1AP)

Optional difficulty bonus:

9) Not allowed to use Flee mechanic.
10) Blinded.

For now let's consider a situation where (1)-(8) apply. In particular, suppose you are completely surrounded by enemies. A good concrete example might be the Voidwoken that attack you in waves on the way to the Seeker Camp. In this situation, even if you are able to do enough damage in one turn to end the battle, you would not survive because the Voidwoken will explode on death and kill you. The only option is to escape, but you only have 3AP. Suppose you can survive as many attacks of opportunity (realistically 1-2) as needed. Depending on your movement modifiers, 2AP can probably get you PRETTY FAR. Since the enemies surrounding you are facing you, only the ones that attack you on your way out will shift their vision cones, but the enemies attack you the instant you enter their area of opportunity, not after you have walked out of the area, so these enemies will still mostly be facing in the direction of your initial position, or at most perpendicular to your trajectory.

I cannot tell you how many times I have managed to enter sneak DIRECTLY BEHIND an enemy with only 3AP.

Now that we have somewhat of a picture painted, I'll list my recommendations, which are mostly not really nerfs to sneak but buffs to AI.

1) You cannot enter sneak if you are within a 1-1.5m radius of an enemy. (Maybe different radii for different enemies i.e. zombie is dumber than human).

I am not very comfortable with this nerf, but it might be the easiest solution to implement. However, it won't make any difference if you have Cloak or Retreat, because you only need 1AP for those to get anywhere you want. You are really in trouble if you are Blinded, however.

Long story short: Not just a cone, but a cone+circle.

2) Enemies rotate to face you as you move.

This means you would need to move about 13-15m from your current position. This is impossible (I think) with 3AP. Therefore, you would NEED to reject at least one of conditions (1)-(4). (Wow!!! I have to invest points to play sneaky??? -_-)

3) Enemies look for you. "Where'd he go!??!"

In the same exact haphazard, panicked way NPCs do when they notice they've been pickpocketed. At least this way there's a chance they'll break your sneak. At least this way it's a challenge to exploit the environment as much as possible to discover an optimal positioning contingency.

For now, I have nothing more to contribute.

Regarding the actual Invis skills, in my humble opinion, I think one or all of these nerfs would be fair:

1) Impossible to go into invis while Flanked.
2) Impossible to go into invis within Touch radius.

This way you have to do SOMETHING to get yourself into the right position before engaging in the massive cheese of waiting for your cooldowns.




Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 05:14 AM
Hmm....

First I have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about with cheese and cooldowns. If you are hiding somewhere not attacking because you are waiting for your cooldowns to end, YOU ARE NOT CONTRIBUTING TO THE FIGHT. You are leaving your team down a person, making success less likely.


Sounds to me like you've founds some kind of edge case where someone can be boring and exploit a game at the cost of making it completely unfun for THEMSELVES. Whoop-de-do. That, to me, does not seem like it is a problem which needs fixing when the cost of fixing it means that using sneak or invisibility in a normal way is not allowed.

***

1) You cannot enter sneak if you are within a 1-1.5m radius of an enemy. (Maybe different radii for different enemies i.e. zombie is dumber than human).

Well, given that basic attacks cost 2 AP, Sneak costs 1 AP, you get 4 AP per turn and moving will cost you 1 AP or more to reach an enemy, That means a Rogue would need to start 5 or so meters nearby an enemy, outside of any sight lines, the enemy can not move and MAYBE the Rogue can move to just outside of the circle with 1 AP, Sneak with 1 AP, move into the circle with 0 AP (assuming there's a free fraction of a move left), and attack once, after which they are out of AP and will take a beating.

The Guerrilla talent, already awful, is reduced to being useful ONLY for Snipe archers and will need to be deleted completely.


2) Enemies rotate to face you as you move.

You have now completely eliminated backstabbing from happening AT ALL except for Vault, which doesn't even require the Back-Stabber Talent.


3) Enemies look for you. "Where'd he go!??!"

This is the best solution of the three, but only if not combined with anything else. It also does have the similar issue of the others in that if the enemy starts looking around for you, it means that you are essentially forbidden from sneaking at the end of your turn.

Because once again, 2 AP to attack, 1 AP to Sneak, which leaves 1 AP for moving, and you have to spend that either to reach your target or to leave, but you can't do both. How many combat encounters have cover which is within the 5 meter distance you can cover with 1 AP but an enemy standing right beside you cannot when they are actively looking for you?


Quote
Regarding the actual Invis skills, in my humble opinion, I think one or all of these nerfs would be fair:

1) Impossible to go into invis while Flanked.
2) Impossible to go into invis within touch Radius.


You mean, the situations in which a squishy melee-range character MOST DESPERATELY needs to escape from enemies who usually have "Attack of Opportunity"?


Your ideas boil down to "I think Rogues should be completely useless. Delete Sneak and Invisibility from combat completely".
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 05:44 AM
Quote

First I have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about with cheese and cooldowns. If you are hiding somewhere not attacking because you are waiting for your cooldowns to end, YOU ARE NOT CONTRIBUTING TO THE FIGHT. You are leaving your team down a person, making success less likely.


Everything I have written is for 100% solo in mind. As it stands, this first Act with a party of 4 is a complete steamroll. I think a monkey could randomly roll all 4 characters and you'd still beat the Act. I can't say anything about the rest of the game because it's not there.

Quote
Sounds to me like you've founds some kind of edge case where someone can be boring and exploit a game at the cost of making it completely unfun for THEMSELVES. Whoop-de-do. That, to me, does not seem like it is a problem which needs fixing when the cost of fixing it means that using sneak or invisibility in a normal way is not allowed.


I'm not sure what you mean by edge case. What I have described you can do in literally every battle. You have inspired a different idea, which I will get to later.

Quote
Well, given that basic attacks cost 2 AP, Sneak costs 1 AP, you get 4 AP per turn and moving will cost you 1 AP or more to reach an enemy, That means a Rogue would need to start 5 or so meters nearby an enemy, outside of any sight lines, the enemy can not move and MAYBE the Rogue can move to just outside of the circle with 1 AP, Sneak with 1 AP, move into the circle with 0 AP (assuming there's a free fraction of a move left), and attack once, after which they are out of AP and will take a beating.


There is a difference between "not being able to enter sneak" and "breaking sneak".

Quote
You have now completely eliminated backstabbing from happening AT ALL except for Vault, which doesn't even require the Back-Stabber Talent.


This is absolutely true. Not a good idea.

Quote
It also does have the similar issue of the others in that if the enemy starts looking around for you, it means that you are essentially forbidden from sneaking at the end of your turn.


If you ARE a rogue, then at the very least you have Cloak and Dagger. That's 1AP to go anywhere. What's the problem? 2AP to attack 1AP to flee 1AP to sneak. In this case you can flee so far that if the AI looks for you chances are if you chose correctly you'll be able to stay in sneak.

Quote
Your ideas boil down to "I think Rogues should be completely useless. Delete Sneak and Invisibility from combat completely".


I'm not sure if your conclusion is correct. What I tried to illustrate is that if even in the WORST case where I am the least roguelike thing imaginable I can STILL sneak out then there's something wrong with that mechanic.

Here is a new idea, tell me what you think:

Cooldowns don't tick while in sneak/invis.

This way, boring (smart) people cannot exploit (use basic game mechanics that are there at your disposal) this mechanic.

Posted By: Meppy Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 05:46 AM
For sneak all you would have to do is make it so the enemy was alerted to your exact position and would move there. That way if you didn't want to get caught you would have to do a lot of maneuvering.

Or better in my opinion; enemy "awareness" increases per round where like within 3 rounds it is almost impossible to not be seen if you were sneaking and then once it hits its max it goes back to normal within 2 turns and then pulses back out again. Or something of the sort.

For invisibility they could give it a use cap per combat iteration and make it unaffected by skin graph or similar skills.

Or they could give it a proximity effectiveness.
Such as ---> can not use within x distance of an enemy(make it something small like 1m) or it wont work. That way your use of invis is tied to your movement abilities and requires you more AP investment to pull off.
Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 11:03 PM
Sometimes I forget to reply to posts.

Originally Posted by vivalafai
Everything I have written is for 100% solo in mind. As it stands, this first Act with a party of 4 is a complete steamroll. I think a monkey could randomly roll all 4 characters and you'd still beat the Act. I can't say anything about the rest of the game because it's not there.


It is an alpha, difficulty is going to go up and down. Also only normal difficulty is available. However, in the end, the game is likely to be balanced around being challenging for a party of 4 characters. Given that there is no level or encounter scaling, finding a difficulty level which is challenging for 1 characters and still challenging for 4 characters is likely to be nearly impossible.

Exploiting of mechanics for solo runs might be the only way to do the game solo. Of course the One Man Army Talent is not available right now.



Quote
Well, given that basic attacks cost 2 AP, Sneak costs 1 AP, you get 4 AP per turn and moving will cost you 1 AP or more to reach an enemy, That means a Rogue would need to start 5 or so meters nearby an enemy, outside of any sight lines, the enemy can not move and MAYBE the Rogue can move to just outside of the circle with 1 AP, Sneak with 1 AP, move into the circle with 0 AP (assuming there's a free fraction of a move left), and attack once, after which they are out of AP and will take a beating.


Quote
There is a difference between "not being able to enter sneak" and "breaking sneak".


I am aware of that. Moving costs AP, and so you would need to be within a specific range of the enemy to afford the AP cost, given that you start with a fixed 4 AP.

Quote
If you ARE a rogue, then at the very least you have Cloak and Dagger. That's 1AP to go anywhere. What's the problem? 2AP to attack 1AP to flee 1AP to sneak. In this case you can flee so far that if the AI looks for you chances are if you chose correctly you'll be able to stay in sneak.


I haven't checked in this patch, but I think that Cloak and Dagger has a cooldown longer than 1 turn. I am quite sure that enemies will take more than one backstab each to kill.

I have a Rogue in my party and I will test for the possibilities of running away and sneaking, and seeing how that affects damage output.



Quote
I'm not sure if your conclusion is correct. What I tried to illustrate is that if even in the WORST case where I am the least roguelike thing imaginable I can STILL sneak out then there's something wrong with that mechanic.


I ignored your example for being a hypothetical based on a lot of assumptions.


Quote
Here is a new idea, tell me what you think:

Cooldowns don't tick while in sneak/invis.

This way, boring (smart) people cannot exploit (use basic game mechanics that are there at your disposal) this mechanic.


I said elsewhere, but for the record in this thread, that will also punish players who are playing legitimately, not only those trying to cheese and exploit the game. For that reason, I dislike the idea.
Posted By: Neonivek Re: New Skills Are Broken - 04/04/17 11:24 PM
I have to admit when I think about it... Wings seems like a PERFECT skill for the whole "Source Skill Split" aspect we talked about earlier.

You know the one... Where you can use all source skills as normal skills... but you can also charge them into their more powerful version?

So the Wings have their normal "Hover above the ground, 1ap single teleport" and then they have their unlimited teleport version.

Though given Scoundrels don't have their winged shoes yet (then again that is a 0ap skill which I hope remains 0ap)
Posted By: Stabbey Re: New Skills Are Broken - 06/04/17 03:04 AM
Originally Posted by Seelenernter
Well, totems are 2 AP for me. Also IF it would be that way then MAYBE. But, a battering ram hits 2 pc or 2 pc and additional 3 totems... where exactly does this make the enemy waste any additional AP? Doesn't in my book.
Enemies only seem to (directly) attack summons if there is no pc within 2-3 screens (which is, no doubt, a clever move of the AI actually). That on the other hand means all these player characters are OOR and cannot act either, so you are hindering yourself too for several AP. Otherwise you would need to be in range, which brings it back to point one.
And all the other shortcomings still stand, like the dynamic or "warm up" time etc, or the fact that there is no need for an enemy to waste AP if he's already half dead and CCed by the fighter.

Also forgot to mention: an enemy can easily destroy multiple totems with for example a single battle stomp or whatever. Cost? 2 AP for the enemy. Summoner cost? 5 totems for example: 10 AP.



I haven't had a lot of time playing the game, so I've only gotten a bit of time recently. I've only fought a couple battles with the summoner, but I think you might be using the totems wrong, and some other people are using Dimensional bolt wrong. The totems are very fragile. Dimensional Bolt is a random surface which could have unwanted effects if you place it in the wrong spot and get the wrong result.

The way I'm using DB is to place it on a blank spot out of the way, not under an enemy or on an existing surface. That way I won't accidentally heal a zombie with poison, or a fire elemental with fire, and I won't trigger a huge explosion by placing DB onto oil/poison and accidentally lighting it up. I am using DB as a tool to make a surface, not as an attack.

Similarly, I also put the totems off to the sides, where they can shoot at the enemy, but the enemy can't really hit both the totem and me. If I'm putting the totems in a spot where a charge can take out multiple ones and hit me, I'm doing something wrong.
Posted By: Baardvark Re: New Skills Are Broken - 06/04/17 03:26 AM
Got around to playing the latest patch, and along the lines of Stabbey, totems feel decent if you position them right. They deal more damage than my regular attacks, and it only takes a couple of them to whittle just enough armor off of enemies to get CC on them. At least, up to level 4 (mostly taking on fights a level underleveled, as well).

I don't even find it necessary to spawn them in elements most of the time. So I personally do use the dimensional bolt as an attack most of the time, but I'm careful about what potential elemental reactions could happen. If there's a chance to explode or stun my team, then I tend not to risk it. But if the enemy is in the open, the chance for oil alone for the slow makes it a decent enough attack (I seem to find oil more common than other elements, but maybe that's just random).

Polymorph feels alright, but I really gotta say I dislike how there's just 4 skills to play with at the beginning for each skill tree. Makes it a bit slow going for any sort of pure class. That should change as more skills are released, I hope. Should be at least 6 starter skills for each tree.

Unrelated, but man the economy is whack compared to what it was before. Just weird how barrels have a 100 gold sitting in them randomly. Also, I'm really not a fan of the new skillbook icons. They look like worse quality, even if they maybe fit the aesthetic slightly better.
Posted By: error3 Re: New Skills Are Broken - 06/04/17 04:24 AM
I like playing as a Summoner. I find it most effective when paired with Elf, because you can use their racial to summon blood before any fight (and the pools won't disappear). The blood totems do the most damage and have the most health (about 50% more health). I didn't find much use for Dimensional Bolt; it wasn't very strong and the randomness wasn't helpful, but the Infusion spells were deceptively strong. The armor bonus gets huge and they have a hidden 15% damage buff each. At level 8 my Incarnate has 144 Physical and Magic Armor when Infused, and these can be refreshed for 1 AP each every 3 rounds.

Before a fight I would cut myself for a blood pool, summon the blood incarnate, buff it with the 2 infusion spells, and summon 2 blood totems. Then you can manually have the Blood Incarnate run in and initiate the fight. Usually the totems are far enough back they aren't in danger and get several hits off.
Casting all of this had the benefit of the summon being off-cooldown by the time the fight started. This means I could immediately resummon the incarnate if it died quickly.

The Summoner points increase the amount of shielding your incarnates and totems receive from all sources (as well as more damage), so the Summoner can focus on adding shields to the Incarnate to make it remarkably tanky, and CC resistant.
Early in the game an Elf can eat body parts to learn Fortify and Frost Armor, which saves a couple more points for investing into Summoning. Because the Incarnate becomes so durable, it can get up close to several enemies and nets numerous Opportunity attacks.

I just finished a solo run with a build like this, and it worked really well. I would also strongly recommend Pawn for a summoner. It's very helpful to generate distance between yourself and your summons, which reduces your vulnerability to AoE. This also encourages enemies to hit the Summons and leave the Summoner alone.

I focused my stats into Finesse and used a bow to spend extra AP. Because the blood summons do physical damage, using a bow prevented me from working on 2 separate sources of armor; all of the damage was physical. Even if no blood is available, the Wood Totems can be reliably summoned for Physical, and they STILL do more damage than the elemental forms. This also has added benefit of allowing the Incarnate to Knockdown enemies with its charge, which won't happen for Magic damage variants.

Alternatively, stacking Intellect will increase the potency of armor buffing spells like Fortify and Frost Armor, which has synergy with the bonus received armor on Summons. Intelligence does not increase armor gained from these skills.

I feel like the Summons which attack Magic Armor could really use a damage boost. They are probably weaker due to their potential to add statuses to enemies, but I found that they had so much trouble getting through armor that I rarely got the statuses applied in a timely fashion, not to mention summoning them in safe positions isn't as practical as a Physical damage totem. Then there's the inconvenience that enemies are often immune to the elements near them.

Of the Polymorph skills, the most notable is Skin Graft. Being able to reset all CDs can net a lot of extra action points for an Elf with Adrenaline. You can't double-stack Adrenaline on the same turn (gotta wait for the debuff to wear off) but you can use it again much sooner. For the summoner build, this allows getting 2 totems down in the same turn, in addition to resetting all of your buffs and utility.
Although I don't recommend it, Glass Cannon has huge synergy with this skill setup as the max AP increase from both the Blood Elf Racial and Adrenaline means you'll continue to net extra AP on the turns afterwards (it completely negates the drawback of Adrenaline, but enemies will make you a very high priority and their CC will likely negate any benefits).
Posted By: vivalafai Re: New Skills Are Broken - 06/04/17 05:00 AM
I really enjoyed reading through this, so thanks for sharing your experience here. I started solo run to test the summoner and poly skills, but took a very different approach, mainly investing 3 points into poly to put the extra attribute points into memory (also rolled Mnemonic and All Skilled Up), and so far putting 1 point into scoundrel, warrior, hydro, necro and summonner. My idea was to have access to as much CC and healing as possible, while being able to dish out heavy amounts of both physical and magical damage, using a shield/wand or shield/sword depending on the situation. Even without extra points in summoner and without using infusions, the physical damage from the wood totems and regular incarnate plus the AOE from the warrior skills guarantees multiple CCd enemies on the first or second turn. Now that the saving throw for Decaying Touch is Physical, this means I can nuke one target with Restoration and that's just 2AP. The remaining enemies that can attack usually waste their AP on the summons, and usually the incarnate survives. I actually haven't used any of the infusions, so the only other summoning skill I use is Dimensional Bolt just for the magic damage. Usually I'll always manage to keep up at least 1 totem, but I seldom cast a new incarnate after the first one dies simply because there is a more direct option. As the enemy pack dwindles, I'll have up to 3 totems and at that point the battle has long been won.
© Larian Studios forums