Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
#596480 07/12/16 08:50 PM
Joined: Sep 2016
S
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
S
Joined: Sep 2016
Armor and damage:
The changes to these values overall feel much better. It takes longer to chew through armor and CC your enemy. The current system will now give rise to a party member role which focuses on armor damage, which I think is a good thing.

However, some spells felt under powered due to the base damage being so low.

Surfaces:
Burning- massive nerf and is now terrible. Anyone can walk through fire with little damage to magic armor. It seems to cause 1-2 damage and barely increases. I'm not a fan of the direction this one is taking as these types of surfaces are essential for control of the battlefield on higher difficulties.

Frozen- the chance to slip and fall seems to have been greatly reduced. This makes hail useless (more on that below).

Poison- love how poison attacks can convert water into poison now.

Early Game:
The leveling experience feels much slower in the early levels now. Apparently this was a glitch fix, but the combination of switching the talent and civil point to level 4 left me unable to access pet pal or thievery until after I left Fort Joy. This especially stunted the growth of the NPC characters where I have no control over the starting talent taken, or the civil abilities selected. I think this area needs more work.

Also, when I start killing well armed and armored magisters, I feel like I should be able to use more of their gear. I was stuck with crap 1-2 armor slots on some characters until after Fort Joy. This shouldn't occur. It would be awesome if there was some sort of armory in the fort that I could raid for magister gear towards the end of the Fort Joy segment.

Hail Attack:
Nerfed into the ground. 3 AP and 3 weak strikes which often barely affect the targets armor. Also, has issues with roofs in some areas. I think it needs to be switched back to 2 AP or increased to 4 strikes in a slightly smaller area. This attack was also negatively impacted because the enemies never seem to trip and fall on the ice surface it creates anymore.

Haste/Adrenaline:
I love the changes. Feels much more balanced and Haste now feels different from Adrenaline. I no longer feel like Adrenaline is a must-have on every character as well.

Ranger:
I like most of the changes. But it still feels like it is missing really interesting and powerful Source skills. Some sort of clone or self-teleport and shoot all enemies in range sort of thing would be really cool.

Leadership:
It feels too weak with the changes. Apparently you guys thought it needed some work, but I really liked the old system.

Under the new system, I think 5m is too small of an area to make it worth the investment. You have to keep your party close together which makes you much more susceptible to AOE attacks from the enemy (those armor-piercing grenades especially). I think this attribute needs more work to balance it.

Pain Reflection:
Excellent new attribute. Can't say enough good things about it. It makes a weapon/shield tank actually playable. Some sort of taunt ability would make this go even further.

Joined: Sep 2016
S
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
S
Joined: Sep 2016
One other thing:

Crossbows- Definitely not a fan of the 3 AP to attack with them. Massive nerf which makes them unusable to me.

Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Duchess of Gorgombert
Offline
Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Originally Posted by Spectre_777
One other thing:

Crossbows- Definitely not a fan of the 3 AP to attack with them. Massive nerf which makes them unusable to me.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with that. I'll normally only get one shot per round compared with two for a bow, typically giving me more damage against enemies as well as another chance if I miss. The crossbows just seem to be too much of a liability with such a high AP requirement and the slightly increased damage just isn't worth the cost.


J'aime le fromage.
vometia #596489 07/12/16 10:02 PM
Joined: Oct 2015
N
old hand
Offline
old hand
N
Joined: Oct 2015
The Developers NEED to know that the cost of a move should indicate the IMPORTANCE of the attack.

Sure Flurry is 3ap but it is a throw away attack.

But a 3ap main attack is a huge difference. I am actually against standard attacks taking 3ap on principal.

Heck, what is Crossbows's FIRST attack in a turn is 2ap but the second and third is 3?

---

The Water to Poison gives me issue... In that... It kind of kills Contamination.

Last edited by Neonivek; 07/12/16 10:02 PM.
Joined: Dec 2016
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Dec 2016
I actually like how they make Crossbow cost 3 to attack though. With this direction, they can try to make Crossbow into a heavier hitting weapon that is way more powerful when used with skills instead while Bow is the go-to multi hit weapon.

Assuming you don't Stealth-snipe before the fight begins, you can just Adrenaline Stealth Snipe on T1 and leave someone that isn't a boss half dead with no armor. Ricochet and Marksmanfang also deal way more damage.

And when combined with haste, 2nd turn double shot is actually really ridiculous.

If they do stick with the 3 AP direction, they can try to make Crossbow a high-crit weapon later and it will further seperate itself from Bow.

Last edited by Ellezard; 07/12/16 10:59 PM.
Joined: Aug 2014
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
3 AP crossbow does seem like too much for how little the damage seems to be improved vs. a bow of the same level. I think it's a good direction, but, may need more tweaks. Could be cool if crossbows had some kind of 2 AP melee bash, maybe with some crossbows coming with bayonets.

Leadership is much more interesting I think, since you actually have to consider your positioning, though I do think its range is a little small. Maybe 7-8m would work.

I general, I find the ranger skills kind of boring. Mark target especially needs some love. Maybe could use something small, like everyone can always see the target, even when blind or they're behind smoke, or perhaps even make it neutralize invisibility. Slightly unrelated, but I hate how ricochet and the piercing shot can hit neutrals.

Joined: Oct 2016
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2016
On the "armory" part of your suggestions, check out Fort Joy needs another floor - it's relevant.

I did notice that burning surfaces were nerfed, but it wasn't too much of a bother for me in the early stages of the game.

The improved level HP scaling seems to somewhat address our concerns about the magisters being too easy to beat in Fort Joy as well. That being said, you still couldn't beat a group of them at Level 1 or 2 - will have to see whether putting them down at Level 3 is still a breeze.

Last edited by Kelsier; 08/12/16 12:43 AM.
Joined: Sep 2016
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2016
Originally Posted by Baardvark
3 AP crossbow does seem like too much for how little the damage seems to be improved vs. a bow of the same level. I think it's a good direction, but, may need more tweaks.


3AP crossbow is a step back to the old AP balance.
It's not strictly a bad thing, but it defeats the point of having less action points to work with(less math involved, actions scaled by significance) in the first place.

1AP per hand was a good system that really didn't need changing, but somewhere alongside the shield ability being added(which I'm proud of to have inspired) they decided that while they're fixing what wasn't working too geat, they might as well screw up what was.

Last edited by Naqel; 08/12/16 06:57 AM.
Neonivek #596679 09/12/16 08:47 PM
Joined: Sep 2016
S
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
S
Joined: Sep 2016
Excellent critique and feedback on my feedback people.

I agree that the 3 AP crossbow attack is salvageable. Right now the damage is too low and no additional crit damage makes it unappealing. Making it more like DOS:EE with the massive crossbow crits would make it worthwhile. I can foresee some amazing rage/adrenaline/arrow spray combos wrecking the enemies.

Originally Posted by Neonivek
The Water to Poison gives me issue... In that... It kind of kills Contamination.


Excellent point. I hadn't considered this. I feel that poison is a little under-powered as a whole right now due to the prevalence of poison immune undead enemies in Act 1. I'm hoping this will change later in the game. Contamination is one of the more interesting abilities to me, but I think the direct poison damage hit could use a little boost. I would also love to see more poison type abilities with rangers and/or rogues, and an increase in abilities that cause the acid effect.

Joined: Oct 2015
N
old hand
Offline
old hand
N
Joined: Oct 2015
To admit though having played the game a bit more...

I almost NEVER use contamination. Decent ability but using it is basically asking to hurt your own allies.

Even the fire version, while more manageable, is just asking for trouble.

To admit though with hazard damages being lower (which I am sure will be balanced again later) it isn't AS big a deal... But there are better options if I don't want to murder my friends that do a LOT more damage.

If I want Contamination I have better options.... Fossil Strike, Fissure (I forgot the proper name), Magic Poison Arrow...

---

Or rather... Contamination needs either a rework or just needs to be accepted as a move that you will probably drop for better later on.

Joined: Aug 2014
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
Surface damage definitely seems quite low now, though I've always thought it was quite excessive before. I like how stun water/blood actually does damage now, though. Damage maybe could be bumped up a hair.

Contamination is cool, but seems weak. In general, those mass "cause burning/bleeding/poison status" skills just don't work out very often because generally you're not going to have several enemies without magic/physical armor at the same time. At least in my case, I tend to focus fire, and CC and control everyone else with positioning and whatnot.

In general, a big problem with the armor system is that the first half of a combat feels like a lot of skills (especially AOE effect-only ones) are kind of useless, and you have to just auto-attack through the armor to get to the fun part where your skils actually function. I still think that armor maybe shouldn't totally negate statuses, but only reduce their effect (reduced duration, less damage, or just a weaker effect in general.) For example, using knockdown on a character with physical armor would apply staggered instead of knocked down, and which could reduce hit chance and dodge chance, or something like that.

Neonivek #596701 10/12/16 03:43 AM
Joined: Jan 2009
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
Originally Posted by Neonivek
To admit though having played the game a bit more...

I almost NEVER use contamination. Decent ability but using it is basically asking to hurt your own allies.

Even the fire version, while more manageable, is just asking for trouble.


Yeah, to me, neither of those skills look to be worth the trouble they could cause for your team.



Moderated by  gbnf 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5