Burgfräulein, Paladin build in v12, discuss nerf in v13

[chattius 2,519]

7 hours ago, Androdion said:

So unless mobs have energy shields they're pretty much toast, even more with HF having 11,5k of damage.

I think Chattius uncovered a perfect storm with this build as everything seems to add on top of everything else.

Actually my daughter asked if an easy build like the buff Gladiator in Sacred1 was possible in D2F. All I said was that the Paladin looked like a candidate for a lot of synergies (after I read spells.txt). The rest was hers.

And the Burgfräulein 2-0 build has:

Conviction, gold modifyer: Nullify - Grants the Paladin the power to dispel enemy buffs when she lands a hit.

Mobs with energy shields? Never seen one in hell ;)

And yes, she replaced an item with +CA-Range for one with +x% Intelligence allready.

 

New spells.txt

Damage of Holy Fire was 42k now 7k,

Range was listed as 16m, now 4.5m

Holy shield seems to regenerate now? Or wasn't I noticing it before because the real high number and no enemies really doing damage.

What I would like to see: reducing the amount of damage redirected to the energy shield. It reads 139% directed to energy shield at my daughters character. My belly feeling says that this should be around 50% done by the shield at shield level 100. This would allow to make sense for wearing items with converting damage to shield damage and taking energy shield lore for unlocking the modifiers.

Now I have to tell her to stop working on her unfinished guide when she is bacl from full day school

 

[Androdion 875]

Dummy question, but since I have all the components for D2F enabled should I just put the hotfix directly into "C:\...Sacred 2 Gold\scripts\shared"?
 

3 hours ago, chattius said:

New spells.txt

Damage of Holy Fire was 42k now 7k,

Range was listed as 16m, now 4.5m

Holy shield seems to regenerate now? Or wasn't I noticing it before because the real high number and no enemies really doing damage.

What I would like to see: reducing the amount of damage redirected to the energy shield. It reads 139% directed to energy shield at my daughters character. My belly feeling says that this should be around 50% done by the shield at shield level 100. This would allow to make sense for wearing items with converting damage to shield damage and taking energy shield lore for unlocking the modifiers.

 

It should be the shield regenerating off-combat because before you couldn't really tell it doing so. With my shield at 177k I also can't see it going down. I wholeheartedly agree with the redirect damage to shield bit too, it scales too fast and nullifies the use for items with that specific modifier. I think that any part of a CA that can be increased via a gear modifier or a socket should have a low built-in progression value, otherwise it renders the use and hunt for said modifier useless.

Can't test the hotfix right now but once I can I'll post the results here.

[chattius 2,519]

Another reason for lowering redirect to holy shield: This way it lasts longer when the character is low level. Having holy shield out of power, all damage direct taken AND the damage mitigation, blocking from shield gone ... Could be too much loss of defense at once.

Perhaps do it like 10% +0.4% per level. Would be 50% damage to shield at CA-levl 100. And it would offer a longer lasting passive effects shield early in the game. The energy shield absorbing effect wouldn't be the reason for an early shield but it's passives to block and damage mitigation.

[Flix 5,116]

3 hours ago, Androdion said:

Dummy question, but since I have all the components for D2F enabled should I just put the hotfix directly into "C:\...Sacred 2 Gold\scripts\shared"?

Yeah, that will work fine. 

 

6 hours ago, chattius said:

What I would like to see: reducing the amount of damage redirected to the energy shield.

That makes sense. I started out long ago treating it like Divine Protection, with 100% damage diverted to shield. With every release it seems like I lower it the absorption, for the very reasons you listed. I think I will put it at 50% base and then make the scaling per level negligible, 0.1% or something.

[Androdion 875]

Sounds good to me.

[Androdion 875]

Hectic couple of days and only just now was I able to take a peek at this. First impression is worlds apart from what I was doing. The values on INT/WIL are around 1/6 of what they were, and with the combined nerfs on all three buffs I now have to use other CAs to kill most mobs. Elites now feel hardened in comparison and there aren't nearly as many crits as before (I mean, every hit was a critical). HF's damage is also down to around 1/6 and its range went from around 13m to less than 4m, which results only in danger zone burning sensations. Conviction still renders -77% enemy armour and both HB and FotH have their damage output at less than half of before. HS however is crazy nerfed, from the over 100k to a measly 17k (I think it should also be around 1/6 as the others), maxing out at 28k when mounted. So my first impression is that the super fast grinding is now definitely halted, or at least much much slower.

Unless you're grinding undead mobs as HB's splash damage to them is still brutal. Right now grinding outside Clearview and HF can't instaburn a single rat, but every skellie is pretty much one-shooted by a HB that's otherwise hitting for 1,1k of damage. I understand the thematic for the Paladin being a warrior of the light and banishing undead and all, but even an elite skeleton legionnaire goes down in one hit of HB. And I have the Augment gold modification so it's three projectiles and still they all fall down. I assume that with T-Monsters it'll be the same thing, and guess what, payed old Gar a visit in LAN and while HF didn't cause him immense distress HB snapped him in half with two hits. Those bonuses against undead and T-mutants really need to be lowered, otherwise they're acting like HF was prior to this hotfix.

One tactic I had to re-adopt was my initial one when I started building up the toon, which is to go by mobs and then circle back and forth for HF to hit and then finish them off with FotH (and HB since it homes in). So what this nerf did was force me to actually play instead of just walking around pressing Q constantly. I need to pay attention now, and it shows because I really haven't changed my gear since I left Normal, so with two levels above it's definitely lacking. It also reminds me that there's need for investment in certain other aspects of the build instead of just putting points or modifiers blindly because everything works. I think that now having Trading would definitely do an immense diference since +All Skills would greatly improve the output of the build.

I'm going to browse around in Nightmare a bit more and if I have something else to add I'll do a post-scriptum. Can't do a long session tonight because it's already late and tomorrow is Black Friday at work... 

[Flix 5,116]

Thanks for testing it man, I really appreciate it. And sorry for derailing your character's hot streak.

I will tackle Holy Bolt and Fist of the Heavens next.  Just using your Paladin (you didn't even name her!) for testing, I found those two skills overperforming.

What I envision in terms of damage is the following (the further to the right, the higher the damage):

Holy Bolt vs. normal enemies ------------------> Fist of the Heavens -------> Holy Bolt against Undead/Demons/T-Mutants

Right now FotH is higher than anything, and both it and HB vs. its nemesis races are too high.

[Androdion 875]

Ha ha, yeah no custom name. I thought my interest was going to fizzle out quick so I just went in with the flow.

You're correct in your assessment about FotH trumping the rest in terms of damage, it really is the mob killer right now. Small update on the testing, Grunwald made me redline twice because shield down and you're in trouble really really fast! But I still managed to kill the local dragon without any gear updates, though I did have to use HS twice and keep casting FotH until it dropped dead. It wasn't a hard fight, more of a long one as HS still provides a decent line of defense.

Funny thing I did was (finally!) equip Glacial Defender and Nlovae's Mystery on a secondary slot for added range, at the expense of the shield (the unique one from the Whoops quest) and weapon (Parashu) bonuses to +All Skills (+7 combined out of +16 total). And I'll say I have mixed results because if on one hand the range is higher on the other the "intensity" of the CAs decreases rapidly. For instance HF now has a wider range, but since I'm down a few levels it's like it doesn't hit as much. FotH on the other hand hits for less but has a visible wider range when hitting mobs and doesn't solely concentrate on a few mobs and hits most of the groups. All of this makes me feel like this build really really needs Trading to shine, otherwise its performance can have a serious drop.

It's curious because I'm past mastery level and have a solid build in terms of skill set and gear (eh, mostly I guess), but it makes me think about how this build would perform now in pre-mastery form. When you think of it the major boost for levelling was HF, but with its range and damage dialled down a ton how is one supposed to go up the difficulty ladder? Weapon hits are a no go, there's no room for it past the initial mage staff playing which is rapidly rendered useless in terms of damage. HB at higher levels has little killing power on most mobs, on lower ones it'll be weak. And if FotH is next in line in terms of nerfing then how is one supposed to be a deadly killer? There are no snipping spells here and HF will only work in very close range. All I can see right now is using Thorns instead of HF as a pre-mastery countermeasure, but if you go down that road then why use HF at all? I think that in its current form it's too weak to be a main aspect of a build, and pre-mastery I think it'll be mostly useless. Opinions on this?

PS: Do you guys remember this High Elf guide? Playing this toon right now is reminding me of it.

[Flix 5,116]

We can always make more adjustments.  I intentionally cut the spells down to match vanilla Sacred 2 spell values, with the intention to slowly increase if needed until a sweet spot is reached.

Bear in mind that Prayer is granting you significantly less Intelligence and Willpower than before.

You're also playing Inferno which is supposed to be punishing.  If you say it feels "right" in Inferno it's probably too easy.  I am not testing with Inferno loaded myself.

If I consult the "Sacred Book" of Diablo 2 itself, I recall that Holy Fire was a very powerful killer at low levels and then tapered off significantly at high levels, becoming almost useless unless aura stacking was done (creating an Auradin), which is basically what is happening for "free" in Sacred 2 (in D2 the Paladin could only use one Aura at a time, unless using items/mercenaries granting extra Auras). So I could always increase the base damage but keep the scaling lower.

I'm not sure how much Holy Fire should be a main killing skill on its own (as opposed to support) without requiring a lot of effort from the player.

[chattius 2,519]

I knew that I forgot to install something: you have elite mount patch installed?

I only installed D2F and the two mods which came with it. We wanted to test D2F on its own. Elite mounts add multiplyer to energy shield power and extra damage to undeads/t-mutants?

 

Changed topic title to: Burgfräulein, Paladin in 1.2, discuss nerf in 1.3

Think the title fits better. Anyone with a better one?

[Androdion 875]

Funny, I was thinking the same about HF. That it could have a fast start and then slowly become more of a support aura like how it's working now, like having a high base damage and a slow progression. That would make it useful as a jump start and with increasing difficulty levels it would normalize a bit due to high HP/resists on mobs. I realise that Prayer isn't doing the same boost, I mean the attributes went down to a sixth of what they were, but putting it against the base values with SB being accounted for the bonus from Prayer does little more than doubling those values with an already high investment. It's your choice now how you want these auras to function, and I'm not versed in Diablo lore so I can't add to that conversation. But since the Paladin is an aura-centric character maybe having all auras be good on their own would be interesting, but I get it if that's not the game plan.
 

3 hours ago, chattius said:

I knew that I forgot to install something: you have elite mount patch installed?

You didn't forget anything, Elite Mounts are integrated into CM 1.60. I wasn't sure if they had been kept in D2F but I went for a stroll in the Jungle and found the vendor still sitting there. The additional bonuses on the Galvanic Tiger are +max energy shield and +damage to demons, and both are very high.

Your topic your naming mate.

[Flix 5,116]

6 hours ago, chattius said:

Changed topic title to: Burgfräulein, Paladin in 1.2, discuss nerf in 1.3

Think the title fits better. Anyone with a better one?

One nitpick is that it's actually v13, as in thirteen. I'm just naming the builds sequentially.

6 hours ago, chattius said:

I only installed D2F and the two mods which came with it. We wanted to test D2F on its own.

As Androdion said, the mod is an all-in-one package. Elite mounts are part of it.  D2F won't have compatibility with any other standalone mods.  You should investigate the Temple of the Gods in The Jungle.  

[Flix 5,116]

Ok here's another spells.txt candidate for v13.  I restored Holy Fire's base damage and chance to burn values back to v12 levels, and only reduced the scaling.  Hits per second and range remain reduced as with the previous test version.

I bumped up the Willpower/Intelligence boost on Prayer from 1 point to 3 points per level.

Holy Shield's Energy Shield Absorption is set to 50% + 0.1% per level.

Fist of the Heavens has reduced damage scaling per level. Base damage is the same.

Holy Bolt should have normalized damage between Undead/Demons/T-Mutant. I don't know what I was thinking but the fire damage vs T-Mutants was twice that of the magic vs. Undead, which itself was twice that of the magic vs. demons bonus.  Compounding the bonus against T-Mutants is the fact that it is fire damage which would already get a huge boost from Holy Fire.  The racial bonuses should all be lowered to be around the same as the demons bonus now.

Didn't test yet, back up your character.

Download:

spells.txt

[Androdion 875]

Went for a stroll with the new spells.txt between the Orcish Byway and Entruag. Main impression, killing mobs is harder and takes longer. And in some cases it's actually slow, like with Blunderbone mobs. Elites take a lot more punches to die by the same means as before. As for spells, HF does well enough against regular smaller mobs without much resistances or with sensitivity to fire. Other than that the fire damage is but a small tick on wide HP bars, so it's not your main killing art. Enter FotH which is a lot less deadly and HB which seems to only have a decent effect on its nemesis. Sure I haven't updated my gear in many levels and I know this could perform better with the same skill set, but the game feels distinctively harder. It's not a stroll in the park anymore. HS still provides the main line of defense and though I wasn't redlined even once the amount of damage indicators floating above the toon are much more when compared with before. Stun and root from mobs are a sure way of getting yourself killed.

At some point I did one thing, I switched Conviction for Reflective Emana... I mean Thorns, and since I had three spare mod points I used it for spell/ranged reflection and further melee reflect. Funny thing is that it seems to work because with the reflect mobs suffer more damage and smaller ticks from reflect together with HF cause a more distinctive amount of damage. Enter a Wendigo Champion and it seems like I'm hitting a brick wall with my bare hands. Old Gar still falls down easily with HB though. Bottom line, right now I feel like restarting because the game plan is different and I can't rely on just three active CAs anymore, nor just the passives to do my dirty work. I'm not sure if that was the intended desire but it's what I'm getting.

I'm curious about raising this build as a tank with Thorns instead of Conviction, while keeping the passive damage profile. Any thoughts on that?

PS: HF without Prayer active has 3,1k  of damage, with Prayer active it has 3,5k. Funny thing here, Prayer has become dispensable as a damage booster for spell-based CAs.

I've picked up the backup toon, changed its name and save slot and started toying a bit with the Character Editor. So, Ancient Magic at mastery level has very little effect on boosting the damage for HF (it does however allow HF to apply its effect more often). Without Prayer it's the diference between 2,4k and 2,7k. I thought the difference was much bigger but alas it isn't. I then switched Riding for Blessed Defense Lore for the HP bonus it gives to Prayer. Then I used S2CE to invert the mods on Prayer for the HP and CA regen bonuses, which in turn granted me over 5k hp regen/sec. Is that intentional or totally OP? Because I only have 1 hard point in the Lore skill, imagine at mastery! I went in further and switched Ancient Magic with Constitution, which even at mastery level didn't seem to make a significant effect on the toon's HP regen. In fact it goes from 5380hp/sec to 5462.1hp/sec with Constitution having a +46% HP regen bonus, so Constitution and Prayer aren't working together as the Constitution bonus is applied over the base HP regen value and then the Prayer bonus is summed to it. Don't know if that's how it should be or not but that's that. I remember playing with the High Elf with Constitution mastery and a high level Grand Invigoration but I've never did the math on how the bonuses are applied, so this may actually be normal. Still, the 5k HP regen bonus? Seems way off.

Just tried raising the Lore to mastery, over 9k hp/sec on Prayer.  I teleported to Grunwald and my HP wouldn't drop below 85-90%, being instantly returned to its max value. That can't be right...

[Flix 5,116]

This is why I need testers!  

Yeah... looking at the HP regen, it looks like I gave Prayer the "Goldenglade Touch" values, which was really meant to be a brief, intense burst of healing. 

Other vanilla buffs with HP regen (and even those in D2F) seem to have anywhere from 1/2 to 1/10 those values.

Hp Regen is the main point of Prayer, I think I will keep the base regen and reduce the scaling down some a lot.

Try this one on for size and let's see how the HP regen is now:

 

spells.txt

[Androdion 875]

Slightly less than 3k, even with Constitution and Lore masteries. Seems fine to me.

[Androdion 875]

Hey guys. I haven't had the time in these past few days to even start a Sacred 2 session, but I have to ask if there's anything else about the Paladin that needs reviewing right now or if there are any changes since the last spells.txt hotfix. I kind of want to play it again but not really if things will change the second I start playing with it.

[Flix 5,116]

11 minutes ago, Androdion said:

Hey guys. I haven't had the time in these past few days to even start a Sacred 2 session, but I have to ask if there's anything else about the Paladin that needs reviewing right now or if there are any changes since the last spells.txt hotfix. I kind of want to play it again but not really if things will change the second I start playing with it.

I mean, you're more than free to keep playing with stock v12 if that's what you want.  I'm continuing to develop the mod and make changes as always. I don't typically post every iteration but thought it would useful for you to test since you were actively playing it last week.

v13 is a long ways off from a real release. I'm still tweaking Prayer and Holy Bolt, not to mention some of the other characters and hopefully some hairstyles added for the Druid and Barbarian.

[Androdion 875]

You got it all wrong mate. I was asking if there was anything new on top of what's been changed already.

And to clarify, I'd like to start anew and try out a Paladin build similar to this from level 1 again including all the changes already made to spells.txt, except I don't want to start fresh and have another (possibly obvious) nerf a couple of hours into it.

Sorry if my post was confusing but it's been a looong day.

[Flix 5,116]

I bumped up Prayer's Willpower and Intelligence bonuses a little (5 points per level). Some of the other characters who gain those stats had them nerfed slightly. I also adjusted the Sorceress's Energy Shield scaling some.

This is the latest I have:

 

spells.txt

[Androdion 875]

I'll see if I can give it a run tomorrow. Thanks man.

[chattius 2,519]

My daughter says she has to start a bit difference and she would like the Holy Shield lasting longer early game. We should not be so fixated on a Holy Fire build. The Frost Aura drops when Energy Shield drops. To have more choices when starting the character Holy Shield should vanish slower in combat so that Holy Freeze is up longer. Currently most often the hitpoints stay high and shield drops quickly. We tried a start at 10% and 0.5%/level to reach 60% at combat art level 100. This allows for using Holy Freeze in builds. The animation time of Holy Freeze should be quick. If Holy shield drops you have to recast 2 spells...

So she will test a build with Holy Freeze and the 10+.5/level HS modification.

---

And now fear my singer barbarian, I have the feeling that around level 140 he will outperform the original v12 Burgfräulein build ;)

Well with looting the mules from my daughters. But he has a terrible frustrating start the first 50 levels or so. I hope that I have time to play it next week.

[Androdion 875]

3 hours ago, chattius said:

And now fear my singer barbarian, I have the feeling that around level 140 he will outperform the original v12 Burgfräulein build ;)

Well with looting the mules from my daughters. But he has a terrible frustrating start the first 50 levels or so. I hope that I have time to play it next week.

That build is like a Skeletal Fortification build with a debuff twist isn't it?

[chattius 2,519]

5 hours ago, Androdion said:

That build is like a Skeletal Fortification build with a debuff twist isn't it?

First levels yes: Grim Ward , then Howl, Warcry, Howl, Warcry, whatever was recharged

Once I could spam Howl and Warcry: it was Grim Ward. Howl, Howl, Howl, Howl, Warcry, Warcry, Warcry, ....

Currently I need GrimWard mainly if an enemy has a nasty buff, or a normal buff but nasty attacks. The Boar can be killed just with singing.

At140 I hope to have the defensive buffs at a decent level to go just with singing. At level 120 I read a single rune in Natural Resistance and Iron Skin. This is a bit low but I want to spam my attack songs.

[Flix 5,116]

9 hours ago, chattius said:

The Frost Aura drops when Energy Shield drops.

Yes, this is a known bug and something I'm currently unable to resolve. I'm hoping Dmitriy may be able to disable whatever function ties the two together. This is happening because Holy Freeze takes Warding Energy's place, and as you remember Divine Protection disables Warding Energy when it expires.

The best I can do now is try to give Holy Freeze a very quick casting animation.