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Brainstorming Balance Ideas for Mod


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Hi guys

A few months ago I started working on a balance mod for Sacred 2 CM 1.50 + Elite Mounts Mod.

Being a balance mod I tried to nerf the strongest options and buff into usability the weaker ones. For example, among the nerfed things there are:

  • 1H Weapons/Shields sockets
  • Damage Mitigation Bonuses
  • Percentile Life Leech (completely removed, replaced with flat LL)
  • Block bonuses on shield unlocked by Shield Lore
  • Among CAs: Divine protection, Expulse Magic, Acute Mind are the most notable ones

As for buffed things instead:

  • 2H Weapons sockets
  • Elite Mounts (but they need Riding)
  • Inquisitor and TG
  • CAs: Cleansing Brilliance, Raving Thrust and more

Almost all CAs have seen some changes. For many I took inspiration from the Enhanced spell Mod but I tried to keep replacements to a minimum as only 3 Combat arts were completely replaced: Shadow Veil -> Shivering Miasma, Dragon Form -> Dragon Strength (temp buff), Combat Trance -> Quick Mind (temp buff).

I'm posting this here in case someone wants to comment on the changes I made suggest other balance ideas or further develop this cause I don't know if I ever will, but it also felt like a waste to just leave it in my HDD forever unused... so you can do whatever you want with it.

Everything described in the changelog inside the rar is already implemented with the exception of text changes (where those are needed) to the english global.res cause I worked on the italian version.

 

UPDATE: A quick description of why I made some choices.

  • 1H weapons and shields are clearly overpowered. I don't recall a 2H weapon that was worth it. So I drastically reduced the slots on the former and increased the slots on the latter. You can now choose 1H weapon+Shield and 1-2 sockets or a 2H weapons with 3 (less bonuses, more customization).
  • Elite mounts have all 2 bonuses unlocked by riding to make this skill somewhat useful.
  • Damage mitigation, toughness, shield block bonuses become too good too fast so the numbers have been lowered. Conversely, Speed lore has always been quite crappy so it got boosted.
  • Temporary buffs must be temporary. Duration can't become higher than cooldown, and that's the main reason why things like Divine Intervention and Expulse Magic are among the most nerfed CAs.
  • Inquisitor and TG are buffed as a whole cause I improved/increased their amulet and rings slots. TG needed this badly: he had 9 Equipment slots (8+1H weap) 1 amulet and 3 rings. HE has 9 Eq.slots as well (7+2) but 2 Amulets and 4 Rings.
  • Something I tinkered a lot with are CA mods. I tweaked them or swapped them, mainly for one goal: I didn't want the choice (at each stage) to be obvious.
  • Raving thrust is kinda fun now. It's an Area of Effect centered on the inquisitor instead of a single target spell.
  • Dragon Mage can use his 2 new temporary buffs to become a decent attacker with weapons in addition to boosting his spellcasting abilities. I actually wanted to give him a hard-hit style CA but I can't remember why I couldn't make it work. The animation maybe?
  • I couldn't think of a way to nerf shadow veil into fairness (without making it useless) so I straight up replaced it with the lost shivering miasma.

Sacred Balance mod.rar

Edited by Caledor
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Good job.

 

I could translate the mod sometime, if you shared your altered global_texts file. I could compare it to the vanilla Italian texts and then run the changed lines through a translator. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least English speaking players could give it a try.

 

Dragon Mage shouldn't have any trouble with a weapon-based CA. If you can't find a good special move animation you could always set it to

animType = "ANIM_TYPE_ATTACKA",

which would just use the default attack animation for the equipped weapon type.

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Thanks Flix!

Well, if there's interest in the mod as it is I can do the translating myself. I originally posted this to hear the community's opinion on the tweaks... like if I overlooked something that deserves a nerf/buff.

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Yeah, it all sounds great, in fact some changes are really good ideas that I hadn't thought of:



  • Damage mitigation, toughness, shield block bonuses become too good too fast so the numbers have been lowered. Conversely, Speed lore has always been quite crappy so it got boosted.
  • Inquisitor and TG are buffed as a whole cause I improved/increased their amulet and rings slots. TG needed this badly: he had 9 Equipment slots (8+1H weap) 1 amulet and 3 rings. HE has 9 Eq.slots as well (7+2) but 2 Amulets and 4 Rings.
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English text here: https://goo.gl/ieFvjq

I've also updated the pack on the first post. Nothing big... a few fixes to the changelog and a tweak to Forest Flight.

EDIT: Also, I forgot to add this before but here's the new Fay Drake Elite Mount for the High Elf (Niveus Drake).

72EwW17.png

 

Edited by Caledor
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  • 2 years later...

I know it's been 2 years but I started tinkering with this again and here's what I came up with (work in progress, will properly release the updated mod when I'm done).
 

  • "All damage" bonus base values lowered to 1/2 of single element damage bonus from 2/3
    • Single damage bonuses and all damage bonuses have more or less the same multiplier but with "all damage" being at 2/3 of single damage it was almost always the better choice.
  • "Wounded rage" bonuses (max values) greatly increased to compete with all damage bonuses
    • They literally stood no chance before. Why equip a damage bonus that has a prerequisite when the "all damage" has MUCH higher multipliers and is always at full strength?
  • "Chance to" burn, freeze, poison, weaken effects overall increased to the value of "chance to open wounds" (except poison forge and those that increase all of them)
    • Very simple. Open wound, poison and burn are identical save for damage type. They should have the same chance to proc. Weaken and freeze followed
  • Need to study how crit hit % fares in comparison to all damage bonus. Might also change the flat multiplier damage in balance.txt

 

  • Full rework of elite mounts. They all boost Hp, defense rate and decrease the regen time of the aspect they're tied to, plus I already gave them 2 more bonuses unlocked by Riding (one attribute shared between aspects and one bonus ), now they're all unique. They are:
    • Dragon Mage, boosts Stamina:
      • Dragon magic: All Damage; Elemental Magic: Spell Intensity; Mentalism: Combat Art Range
    • High Elf, boosts Intellect (Dragons are gone. Lonely Hippo is the aspectless one, see above for the new Mystic Stormite Drake):
      • Arrant Pyromancer: Chance to Burn; Mystic Stormite: Chance to Freeze; Delphic Arcania: Casting Speed
    • Dryad, boosts Dexterity:
      • Capricious Hunter: Attack Speed; Cabalistic Voodoo: Chance to Reflect Ranged; Nature Weaver: Chance to Block Spells
    • Inquisitor, boosts Willpower:
      • Gruesome Inquisition: Damage of Enraged Players; Astute Supremacy: Spell Resistance; Nefarious Netherworld: Chance to Block Close Combat
    • Seraphim, boosts Vitality:
      • Exalted Warrior: Regeneration Per Hit; Celestial Magic: Chance to Reflect Close Combat; Revered Technology: Regeneration Penalty from Buffs -X%
    • Shadow Warrior, boosts Strength:
      • Death Warrior: Chance to inflict Open Wounds; Malevolent Champion: Attack Rate; Astral Lord: Chance to Block Ranged
    • Temple Guardian, boosts Max Shield Energy:
      • Devout Guardian: Chance for Critical Hits; Lost Fusion: Chance to Halve Regeneration Time; Source Warden: Chance to Reflect Spell

Still need to decide how to handle aspectless mounts, especially on the unique bonus side. Defense, HP, Regen Time (for all aspects, lowered) and attribute bonuses will likely stay, maybe with different values compared to the aspect ones.

What do you think about those changes? Do the bonuses from mounts suit the rider and the aspect? Would you have used something else somewhere? Is Riding now appealing somehow?

BTW I know this is on the fancy side of balance changes... I think the most important one is by far the nerf to shields and 1H weapons and the boost to 2H weapons, achieved mainly by tweaking the number of sockets, and secondarily by nerfing the bonuses unlocked by shield lore.

Edited by Caledor
riding mention
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Looks good. I never thought about Wounded Rage being weak.

I'd probably increase the critical hit multiplier in balance.txt to 1.5 to make it more appealing.  A chance to do +50% bonus damage vs the current +20%.

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Yep I know you did. But I wonder how damage bonuses affect the actual damage dealt. For example... The wiki says that armor defens worse from critical hits since damage is increased before armor calculation. If Damage +X% bonuses, damage of enraged players etc., are applied after armor calculation then criticals might be much better than what the numbers tell. Conversely if all percentile Damage increases work in the same way of criticals then crit bonuses are utter crap, as the formers go way beyond +20% and even +50% and they don't have an activation chance.

So I want to do some tests

Edited by Caledor
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  • 1 month later...
  • 7 months later...

@Flix I've been looking at EE 2.4 and I was considering to rework my mod using that as a base since it evolved considerably in the past few months. I want to hear your opinion about some balance aspects I addressed here that I haven't found in EE 2.4... At least for now so please correct me if I'm wrong about anything.

Mainly about weapon slots, riding and Shield block modifiers.

About 2H weapons... I haven't seen many nerfs to 1H weapons, but I've noticed a few boosts to 2H weapons, mostly about added bonuses. I went much harder on slots instead, so that in the vast majority of cases, 2H weapons would have more slots than 1H+Shield combined. I thought the only way they could stand a chance was by having more customizability, so I wanted to know your opinion on both approches balance wise, like if your's enough and I'm overdoing it.

Riding: I've seen you've boosted EP, somehow Alchemy, somehow DD... all the "minor" general skills. So the question is, did you do anything about Riding to improve it and/or do you think my changes make the skill somehow a worth pick?

Shield Block modifiers. I've noticed that despite a nerf to those modifiers the numbers are still in the thousands (so >100% in game). Doesn't this make for easy immunity? Or am I mistaken for any reason, like there are many ways to circumvent >100% shield block, or it doesn't reach 100% at all. The wiki says the bonuses on the shield stack additively with Shield lore mastery so I nerfed them by a lot... I think the best they can get to is 70%... so with SL you'd reach about 90%.

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14 hours ago, Caledor said:

I thought the only way they could stand a chance was by having more customizability, so I wanted to know your opinion on both approches balance wise, like if your's enough and I'm overdoing it.

I thought most 2h uniques and legendaries were pretty much maxed out in terms of sockets and bonuses.  I didn't really examine what you had done in blueprint.txt.  The weapon changes were mostly ported over from D2F.

14 hours ago, Caledor said:

So the question is, did you do anything about Riding to improve it and/or do you think my changes make the skill somehow a worth pick?

I don't know what you could to make the Riding skill more appealing, except to lock more bonuses behind the skill.  Certainly switching around bonuses or creature models would have no effect on that.

14 hours ago, Caledor said:

Shield Block modifiers. I've noticed that despite a nerf to those modifiers the numbers are still in the thousands (so >100% in game).

Didn't realize it was still so high.  Would have to test more to see the practical effects of the skill.

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28 minutes ago, Flix said:

I thought most 2h uniques and legendaries were pretty much maxed out in terms of sockets and bonuses.  I didn't really examine what you had done in blueprint.txt.  The weapon changes were mostly ported over from D2F.

It's faster if I sum it up actually. No changes to bonuses, only slots. Vast majority of 2H have 3 slots, quality depends on how good the actual weapon is. 2 Gold slots and 0 S/B is the bare minimum, for Legend-level good.

Vast majority of 1H have 1 slot only, with very crappy weapons having 2, never both gold. Shields have 0-1 slots. Reasoning is that good shields bring bonuses that eclipse those of a single socketed amulet so I thought the easiest way to balance things a bit was to make 2H having strictly more sockets than 1H+Shield in most cases.

First example that comes to mind is Nlovae's Mistery vs Shadow Viewer. Weaver is devastatingly inferior to its 1H counterpart from sockets alone. Spell intensity can be found anywhere and Nlovae can be still be paired with the likes of Kira's Wall or Glacial Defender. So I figured that maybe "Nlovae + Kira + 1 Gold Slot (between both: 1+0)" is more or less as good as "SW + 1 Gold + 2 Silver".

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