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Originally Posted by Fumihiko
Originally Posted by Hayte
It should do friendly fire to be honest. It would still be s-tier. It would still be a complete no brainer must have skill for every build that uses a melee weapon.


This was probably play-tested and discarded. Singleplayer you can work around that, but think about multiplayer. People would constantly stay in each other ways, making the skill a no-go or even worse, player stun each other constantly (either because that is the best tactic or they don't care).
Magic spells have quite some friendly fire, but they are either single target or you can place them wherever you want.

So for short, I don't think any spell in the game is overpowered as of right now.


Hm, I would argue that "overpower" is the one skill that truly lives up to its name - at only 1 source point.

But other than that, Battle Stomp is a close contender, along with Chameleons Cloak and Chicken Claw.

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I would actually like to see 70% of other skills buffed to be as efficent and doing its job well as battlestomp is instead.

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Originally Posted by Alexo
I would actually like to see 70% of other skills buffed to be as efficent and doing its job well as battlestomp is instead.


This is how power creep starts.

Battlestomp is good because there are so few conditions on its use and so few opportunity costs.

Movement, offensive actions and defensive actions cost AP. You can therefore think of spending AP to CC an enemy as costing you AP to damage them because the cost is paid from the same shared resource.

With Battlestomp, you don't have to sacrifice damage for hard CC, you get both. You don't have to think about party positioning and lines of sight because it doesn't do friendly fire.

This messes up the risk/reward part of tactical combat. Setting off a shock/stun combo has much stricter requirements in terms of AP investment and the positioning of allies. You might think the more elaborate setup would have the bigger payoff but it doesn't.

This is where you have to be careful when buffing and nerfing numbers. Battlestomp being strong isn't about the damage numbers or the hard CC. You won't make it less of an outlier by making it do less damage or soft CC instead of hard CC because that was never the problem to begin with.

Its ok to have skills that do multiple things really well like damage + CC. However, if you want a tactical combat system with a reward mechanism that promotes tactical play, you have to make your biggest payoffs require the most elaborate and technical setups. There must be opportunity costs and conditions on use and the player must be aware of what those conditions are and be required to create those conditions on the battlefield before they can benefit.

I like Battlestomp. Its powerful and it has a satisfying crunch when you smash your weapon into the ground. It looks good, it sounds good, it has a tide turning effect in combat.

But when I first used it, I thought it was going to hurt/KD my party members because the cone highlights allies as well as hostiles. For the first couple of hours I played with Battlestomp thinking I had to plan around friendly fire.

Then I decided the cost of KDing 1 of my guys was worth the tradeoff of KDing 2 of theirs. That was when I realized there was no price to pay because there was no friendly fire. I could stomp right through my entire team to KD any number of hostiles on the other side. I was a bit disappointed. A tactical aspect of the game vanished when I realized this.

Last edited by Hayte; 04/11/17 02:27 PM.
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Yeah, the highlighting of friendly units it pretty irritating.

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They should make it cost 3 AP.

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I wouldn't say "overpowered" (because you still need to destroy the physical shield), but "better than every other cc" :

- KD is the best form of CC no contest (no buff/debuff to resistances, only a fat CC ; only rare spells can save you from it, unlike the other forms of CC and magic shell/fortify, spells that can be used by even a random magister swordman)
- Battle Stomp only costs 2
- Only 3 turns of CD
- No build up (unlike chilled/stunned)
- Easy to apply (electric water is a bitch sometimes), and huge range
- No friendly fire (that's crazy when you think about it) : I thought at the beginning of the game that it had FF, but well...
- Only 1 point into warfare needed (and let's be honest, warfare is the top dog of physical school)


But I think Larian knew it was crazy strong, so they decided to NERF IT.
Yeah, you hear me, it's a nerfed ability : enemies can STILL DODGE YOU when KD.
I'm pretty sure that, irl, nobody can evade an attack if unconscious and lying on the ground.

Last edited by CollaSama; 05/11/17 10:52 AM.
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Originally Posted by CollaSama
But I think Larian knew it was crazy strong, so they decided to NERF IT.
Yeah, you hear me, it's a nerfed ability : enemies can STILL DODGE YOU when KD.
I'm pretty sure that, irl, nobody can evade an attack if unconscious and lying on the ground.

I never got the impression being knocked down meant you were unconscious. If you're on the floor, you can still roll to the side to avoid an attack, I think.

The issue is that that isn't animated, so it looks silly as hell.

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Originally Posted by Hayte
With Battlestomp, you don't have to sacrifice damage for hard CC, you get both. You don't have to think about party positioning and lines of sight because it doesn't do friendly fire.

Applying Friendly fire is the change I made in my balance mod.

It does force you to be a lot more careful about where you use it and positioning, but honestly I think that didn't help it enough. I think you'd need to reduce the range or cone angle or bump the AP Cost to 3 for how incredible an AoE Hard CC is.

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Ah! I don't care about BattleStomp, I just spam KD/charm arrows till divinity! wink

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It doesn't do FF? Really? Well, there's 100 hours wasted.

(It definitely should though, it's extremely easy to aim, unlike those pulsating AoE spells which still get me from time to time, even if not doing their horrid lock-on-target thing)

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I don't find Battle Stomp to be overpowered at all.

IF you happen to have targets in rather narrow cone of average length..

..and IF they happen to have their physical armor already removed..

..and IF the attack is not dodged or avoided..

..then you can force impacted targets to miss one turn with a knockdown using an ability with a 4 turn cooldown (an ability that is already being used late in the battle due to the necessity of removing the enemy's physical armor first).

I've not been in too many battles where I've gotten to use it more than once.

On top of that, it removes elemental states in the impacted area, which can be a boon, but can also be annoying if said elemental states happen to be beneficial to your party or battle plan.

And unlike the claim in the original post, from what I've seen it does not affect targets on different elevations.

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Originally Posted by Gyson
..and IF they happen to have their physical armor already removed..

Simply not true. The CC is applied after it's damage effect, so often I use it to shred their last armor and instantly cc them afterwards. There's absolutely no need to wait till armor is completely gone.

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Originally Posted by Hassat Hunter
Originally Posted by Gyson
..and IF they happen to have their physical armor already removed..

Simply not true. The CC is applied after it's damage effect, so often I use it to shred their last armor and instantly cc them afterwards. There's absolutely no need to wait till armor is completely gone.


I disagree, and I am also speaking in terms of reliability.

I've had the knockdown component resisted on an opponent that had 1 point of physical armor left. It was pretty face-palm worthy and I ranted about it for several minutes to the "delight" of the friend I was co-op'ing with. However, I have also had knockdowns successfully trigger on opponents that have several points of physical armor remaining. You are always gambling whenever you use it on opponents that have physical armor remaining.

While there are skills that do remove armor prior to applying the CC effect (such as Chloroform), Battle Stomp does not appear to be one of them. A knockdown resist is not guaranteed to be avoided unless your target has 0 physical armor remaining before you use the skill, and even then the knockdown can still result in a "miss".

I am not implying that the skill stinks, but I would certainly not call it overpowered (especially when opponents are scattering and you end up impacting only a single target, only to regret not having it at the ready two turns later when an opponent's ability has managed to convert the battlefield's terrain into a environmental hellscape).

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Could he be, that those with 'remaining armor' regained armor because of Perseverance or how the skill was named?

If you destroy all armor the effect will apply. If the slightest amount of armor remains, it won't in my exprience.

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