Burgfräulein, Paladin build in v12, discuss nerf in v13

[Androdion 875]

So what exactly is the behaviour of the Ward modifier in Holy Shield?

[Flix 5,116]

3 minutes ago, Androdion said:

So what exactly is the behaviour of the Ward modifier in Holy Shield?

It provides a chance to block spells.  I've never actually tested whether DOT or Area of Effect are blocked by this modifier. I would think they should be, so long as the source of the damage is from a spell.

[Androdion 875]

I think the problem here is how I worded things. Isn't Ward on Holy Shield the same as Protection on Expulse Magic? Both are gold mods which give a chance to block CAs. Yes HS can't "banish spells" like EM, that's why where I worded it wrongly, so indeed it may work like Chattius mentioned before.

Damned that sleepless night...

[Flix 5,116]

54 minutes ago, Androdion said:

Isn't Ward on Holy Shield the same as Protection on Expulse Magic? Both are gold mods which give a chance to block CAs.

Oh ok. Yeah that's the same thing.  The only thing that gets tricky is when observing the behavior of Expulse Magic modified with Protection, is it may be hard to tell what spells are banished and what spells are blocked by Protection.  So you may have observed Expulse Magic protecting you from Area of Effect or DOT but it may have been the banish spells property and not the Protection mod.

[Androdion 875]

Yeah, precisely. I realised my own mistake after you replied. So I guess the more conservative choice of breaking the cooldown should be the better option.

I'm still experimenting with the build, but since I don't want to loose myself in boss runs and bargain shopping in MP I guess my HF and HS won't be nearly as effective as Chattius'. So I guess I should compensate with some weapon damage, just to be sure.

We'll see, I got my toon to level 14 last night and my lady is away for the next few days. Guess I'm going to spend some time with this build in the next few days. 

[Flix 5,116]

1 minute ago, Androdion said:

We'll see, I got my toon to level 14 last night and my lady is away for the next few days. Guess I'm going to spend some time with this build in the next few days. 

Awesome. Let me know how Inferno Edition feels.  Your feedback on EE's Challenge Mode weighed heavily on how I approached difficulty increase in these latest releases.  "Easy" is not much different than vanilla but it will start to ramp up in Normal difficulty and above. 

[Androdion 875]

The fact that my toon, the mobs and the music are indeed different gives the game a freshness and feeling of being something new to discover that I found pretty cool to be honest. Vanilla Sacred 2 I&B was feeling boring with my last few toons because I had seen it all before. Now I'm actually curious to see what's out there, so yeah I'm definitely going for some mileage right now. Can't promise how much time that feeling will last but so far I'm game.

Easy with SS and Inferno kind of seems like Silver in vanilla, so if that's any indication of what I should expect I guess I may need to fine tune my build before I go crazy into the next difficulty level. I'm thinking of sprinting-questing with every couple of difficulty levels (sprint Easy, quest Normal, sprint Hard, etc), but we'll see how it goes.

[Androdion 875]

Another sleepless night... 

I actually have Philos as my Paladin's deity but the god spells aren't really my thing. I've played around some more with the build and things started to get interesting at the Carnach Caves, well with all the fire resistant folks around there. But I made my way to the Swamp, which apparently isn't going to be as easy as I thought due to those pesky Olms with root spells. But that's a story for tomorrow. Coming back into the Tactics Lore discussion, I'm forgoing it because this build really isn't made for weapon fighting. In fact my weapon of choice is just about the one with the best bonuses on it (right now it's an Azurewrath which was a nice surprise). When hitting the caves I made my decision final since Zeal wasn't cutting it anymore, so I switched tactics and replaced it with a level 1 Holy Bolt with a 1 second regen, which goes hand in hand with a level 5 Fist of Heavens with a 3.4 second regen. Holy Bolt is nice for bosses, it helped me a lot against the Carnach, from which I had never ran away as much as this time. But you know Holy Fire wasn't doing anything, and I suppose it'll only get worse with higher difficulty levels until I get Concentration mastery for using Conviction. Until then I need to work my way around it, but HB is doing the trick. Holy Shield, Holy Fire and Prayer are all at the highest level without penalty and my unique mount is a complete life saver indeed. I've chosen Concentration, Devout Offense Focus, Blessed Defense Focus, Devout Offense Lore, Ancient Magic, Armor Lore and Toughness (not in that order though). For the missing three skills I'm choosing Damage Lore (duh) and two more. Right now I'm trying to decide between Blessed Defense Lore to boost Prayer's HP values, Energy Shield Lore to boost Holy Shield and Riding for regen penalties on the unique mount. I'll need to choose two out of those three but I'm still on the fence with that choice.

I'll eat my hat on Holy Shield's gold mod discussion. I mean, I know I'm playing with SS plus Inferno and in Easy difficulty, but even then those 15 seconds between the shield cooling down and being back up can be tricky. So no doubt about it, it's Boost for the win!

[Flix 5,116]

11 hours ago, Androdion said:

For the missing three skills I'm choosing Damage Lore (duh) and two more. Right now I'm trying to decide between Blessed Defense Lore to boost Prayer's HP values, Energy Shield Lore to boost Holy Shield and Riding for regen penalties on the unique mount. I'll need to choose two out of those three but I'm still on the fence with that choice.

I'd definitely do Energy Shield Lore and something else.

Can you do me a favor and remind how much the "Boost" mod actually reduces the cooldown in-game?  I thought the Wiki was wrong but if it is 15 seconds then it is indeed 25% and the in-game tooltip is wrong.

[Androdion 875]

I'll let you know tonight once I mod it. I think I'm still two levels behind, but I'm at the Swamp so it should be fast.

Out of curiosity, did you make the voiceover for the new NPCs that give quests?

[Flix 5,116]

3 hours ago, Androdion said:

Out of curiosity, did you make the voiceover for the new NPCs that give quests?

Yes all the new quests should have some amount of voicing for the quest givers and/or opponents. They're all imported from Diablo 1 and 2.  Are they working ok?

[Androdion 875]

16 minutes ago, Flix said:

Yes all the new quests should have some amount of voicing for the quest givers and/or opponents. They're all imported from Diablo 1 and 2.  Are they working ok?

You got it all wrong, I was asking if it was your own voice.  I only did that one in Seraphim Island as I'm not focusing on questing in Easy. In the next run in Normal I should be able to give you further input.

[Androdion 875]

9 hours ago, Flix said:

Can you do me a favor and remind how much the "Boost" mod actually reduces the cooldown in-game?  I thought the Wiki was wrong but if it is 15 seconds then it is indeed 25% and the in-game tooltip is wrong.

The Wiki is wrong and the in-game tooltip is correct. The decrease is 20%, down from 60 seconds to 48 seconds. So you can't have it running all the time, which is actually interesting since in vanilla you could do it with Divine Devotion. More micromanagement.

PS: I've updated the Wiki page for Holy Shield with the correct value.

[Androdion 875]

Small update on the playthrough and difficulty ladder.

I'll say it, Holy Fire is a freaking license to grind!  So I've finished Easy (hurray!), which like I said seems a lot like Silver. The main difference is that there's no SB going into the math since you outgrow the mobs very easily. So I was grinding mostly mobs two levels below, and not even bosses could match my level. Seems almost like cheating a bit, but I still had to be cautious here and there. The surprises in the Wastelands and Great Machine were interesting and that Baal dude in particular seems like it's going to be a hard pickle in higher difficulties. After shifting to Normal I realised mobs outgrew me by four levels, so there's your SB working! I've only done the typical Sloeford starter quests, Gahanka included. Funny thing I've noticed is that in Normal Gahanka already has somewhat of a 50-50 ratio of physical-fire armour, which means that resistances in Normal should be hard to counter if they scale that much! So far it's going well and I'm working my way into upping my damage output by raising Ancient Magic to char level. After I get that done (around level 50 with my ninth skill) I think I'll start investing in Devout Offense Lore for increasing Fist of Heavens' efficiency (and mod it for damage while I'm at it). I think I'll do just the mini-bosses in the first couple of areas for now, unless there are newly added quests in D2F. Still thinking about that last skill though...

On a side note, a good power move on this type of build is to socket a lot of Enhance to reap the benefits of critical hits. I have something like +40% by now and you can really see Holy Fire hitting mobs with crits. It's like bam bam bam, so nice.

[Androdion 875]

Quick feedback. I've found the Summoner in Tyr Lisia but strangely he wasn't being damaged by Holy Fire, though I could hit him with Fist of Heavens, and his resists were physical/ice/magic so what was that? If it was a case of high spell resistance I wouldn't be able to hit him with FoH as well right? And at the risk of being beaten (because it's already there) is there a list of new quests with new mini-bosses in the changelog? Oh, by the way, I'm not sure if it's intentional but the quest giver of the Summoner doesn't have a voiceover while the Summoner has when you approach him.

I've also found a piece of RNG gear with a bonus to Divine Devotion, I think it was a pair of boots. Maybe some instance of the code where it wasn't changed to Holy Shield?

[Flix 5,116]

2 hours ago, Androdion said:

I've found the Summoner in Tyr Lisia but strangely he wasn't being damaged by Holy Fire,

I will have to investigate. Can't think of an obvious reason.

EDIT: Two possible reasons: 1) He has an area of effect Weaken nova which will lower your attributes, thereby reducing your Intelligence/Spell Intensity.  2) He has a very sizable Block Chance: Spells modifier.

 

2 hours ago, Androdion said:

And at the risk of being beaten (because it's already there) is there a list of new quests with new mini-bosses in the changelog?

There are a few resources I put together, yes.  On occasion I also spiced up old quests with new enemies, like The Scarabs Lair, The Lich, or The Lost Crypt.

D2F Boss and Superunique Map

D2F Boss and Superuniques Listed by Region

D2F New Quest Rewards

 

Here's the list of all the new quests I scripted and where to start them, roughly in chronological order:

Quote

• "Den of Evil."  See Akara in the Gardens of the Seraphim to begin.
• "The Chamber of Bone." Read the Mythical Tome in the Thylysium Observatory to begin.
• "The Summoner." See the Desperate Villager in the village south of Garghadok's Destiny to begin.
• "Tools of the Trade." See Charsi in the Griffinborough military camp to begin.
• "Sisters' Burial Grounds."  See Kashya near the cemetery outside Artamark's Gate to begin.
• "The Forgotten Tower." Read the Moldy Tome in the Artamark church ruins to begin.
• "Poisoned Water Supply." See Pepin in the hut southwest of the Wargfels portal to begin.
• "The Butcher." See the Dying Paladin outside The Butcher's lair in Nor Plat to begin.
• "The Fallen Angel."  See Tyrael at Seraphim Tower to begin.
• "Archbishop Lazarus." See Wirt's ghost near the Northern Hissil'Ta portal to begin.
• "The Curse of King Leoric." See Ogden by the Ruins of Gazath soulstone to begin.
• "Radament's Lair."  See Atma in Khorum to begin.
• "The Tomb of Tal Rasha." See Prince Jerhyn in Khorum to begin.
• "Blade of the Old Religion." See Hratli in Na'Fian to begin.
• "The Blackened Temple." See Ormus in Na'Fian (after completing "Blade of the Old Religion").
• "The Lord of Hatred." See Ormus in Na'Fian (after completing "The Blackened Temple").
• "Lam Esen's Tome." See Alkor on the Aerendyr dockside to begin.
• "The Lord of Terror." See Tyrael in the Girvym caverns to begin.
• "The Lord of Destruction." See the Nephalem Spirits within the Great Machine to begin.
• "The Warlord of Blood." Read the Steel Tome in Khormynth's Refuge to begin.
• "Lachdanan." Find Lachdanan south of the Field of Eternal Pain to begin.
• "Death of a Demon" quest renamed to "The Maiden of Anguish".
• "Prison of Ice" (replaces "On the Trail"). See Malah at the Crystal Cottages to begin.

 

2 hours ago, Androdion said:

I've also found a piece of RNG gear with a bonus to Divine Devotion, I think it was a pair of boots.

Not to worry, Divine Devotion is the skill that boosts god spells.

 

2 hours ago, Androdion said:

Oh, by the way, I'm not sure if it's intentional but the quest giver of the Summoner doesn't have a voiceover while the Summoner has when you approach him.

Yes, that one has not much voicing because it's sort of a mash-up of two different quests, and neither really had appropriate voices so it's text only except for the Summoner himself.

[chattius 2,520]

I mentioned the 'The Holy Fire doing no damage' problem in an earlier post. Sometimes forcing the enemy to move helped. My first thought was that it could be that the auras don't notice some stationary enemies. But then I noticed some, not all; fire elementals chasing me and still not getting damage.

Burgfräulein 2.0 is in the making. A few changes are: Magic find is added, replacing riding. Even more self sufficient for new players. Energy Shield Lore is deleted and replaced by this combat focus. Daughter played first levels with bow and energy pistols. At level 25 neither Holy Fire nor Prayer was modified and used. She hopes to finish the campaign in easy with just weapon attacks using Fanatism and Conviction.

Blacksmith was taken early for one reason: to have a better hit chance when forging whet into slots. Trading is mainly for Reg per Hit. So the character is yet flexible in which weapon to use. She likes pistol and shield for its rapid fire the most. Fire damage converting with burn chance forged into the pistol. Conviction modded for reducing enemy fire mitigation, reducing enemy stats and debuffing.

[Androdion 875]

Oh my I confused Divine Devotion with Divine Protection...  Don't drink and drive as they say.

I would have to go against him again to be sure about it, but I just found weird that his summons were being hit and he wasn't. There was no visual effect nor on his HP, and I kept moving around but I'm not sure if he moved much. Thanks for looking into it and for providing the info I'd need to spend some time looking for otherwise. The lack of voiceover isn't an issue to me, but the moment I went to the NPC I thought it was a new one, but when she didn't "speak" I was doubting my memory. Then the Summoner "speaks", hence my question. But yeah, if you're using voiceovers from another game you're limited to what that game has.

@Flix

22 hours ago, Flix said:

Two possible reasons: 1) He has an area of effect Weaken nova which will lower your attributes, thereby reducing your Intelligence/Spell Intensity.  2) He has a very sizable Block Chance: Spells modifier.

So I loaded the game and changed the difficulty back to easy to go and find the Summoner again. When the fight began he got hit once for the aura and a chunk of HP went away, without any further damage. though Then he did a nova like spell and for a bit wasn't hit. Then he got hit two more times and died (level. 15 vs 48). But the funny thing is that the aura hits him once and it only seems to do damage once, when usually it hits again and again. So there must be something in that boss' AI that counters it for sure, because even at triple his level the fight wasn't immediate.

[Flix 5,116]

14 hours ago, Androdion said:

But the funny thing is that the aura hits him once and it only seems to do damage once, when usually it hits again and again. So there must be something in that boss' AI that counters it for sure, because even at triple his level the fight wasn't immediate.

Yeah it's the Block Chance: Spells he has no doubt.  It's an extraordinarily high bonus in this case.  Thanks for checking again.

I haven't fully updated the D2F Bestiary for v12 to reflect the superuniques that got upgraded to boss, or mention those that are now part of quests, but they're all there and I tried to fill in useful info such as what we've been discussing if you want more insight into a certain enemy you're fighting, for example the spells they use and other hidden things.

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:The_Summoner

[Androdion 875]

No biggie, I was curious too.

Had a run with Terus, Bone Chamber, Doloriel, Pindleskin and the Mutated Dragon last night. All went well but the T-Dragon wasn't an easy bone to chew... He's known to bite hard but even with a 14k Holy Shield he was able to redline me once, plus I had to go back and forth and renew the shield twice to be able to get him down. It was the hardest fight I've had since I began this toon, long and trickly. His blue fireball hits very very hard! The T-creatures at the pools were mostly OK to deal with but they were just five levels above me, and I remember than in Platinum that number used to grow big time so we'll see how it fares in Hard here. Still with the masteries and Conviction running I should have the upper hand. The two guys at the Bone Chamber and Pindleskin weren't too much of a fight though. Pindleskin seems to be just a tougher guy in the way, nothing like Ventar or the Phantom Dragon though, and I was expecting Bone Ash and Bonesaw Breaker to be hard boss level mobs since the quest is five stars. They could potentially be harder foes for close ranged toons because of their auras but to me they fell down pretty fast and without much hassle.

This is just feedback though, not critique. I know you intended to bring further variety and that's great in my book. Once I got the Bone Chamber quest I had to actually think where that was, and I actually went to the Golden Coast before thinking "oh wait, prison island" (yes it's in the docs you sent me but I didn't want to spoil the surprise so I looked for it myself). This added content is indeed a welcomed change of pace and brings more bang for the buck.

[Flix 5,116]

4 hours ago, Androdion said:

The two guys at the Bone Chamber and Pindleskin weren't too much of a fight though. Pindleskin seems to be just a tougher guy in the way, nothing like Ventar or the Phantom Dragon though, and I was expecting Bone Ash and Bonesaw Breaker to be hard boss level mobs since the quest is five stars. They could potentially be harder foes for close ranged toons because of their auras but to me they fell down pretty fast and without much hassle.

Were you using Holy Bolt? It has a massive damage bonus against Undead.  They're also sensitive to fire, like most Undead.  I used to get complaints about Pindleskin hitting brutally hard so I toned him down some. Users reported the fight taking several minutes, they'd run out of health potions and then he would resurrect and they'd have to start over.  I suspect a character staying at range wouldn't have much to fear from him.

Same goes for the bone twins.  Their danger is in their auras.  The Chamber of Bone quest is marked 5 stars for a kind of hacky reason: it forces the guaranteed gold reward I gave the quest to be as high as possible, since the point of the quest is to find a "treasure" and I couldn't just plop down a treasure chest in the dungeon like I'd like to. 

There was also a semi-conscious decision to make Tyr-Lysia's enemies not so hard because that is the starting area and it can be hard to get off the ground when enemies just beat you down.

[chattius 2,520]

Daughter Burgfräulein 2.0:  39346 base damage per fire aura tick at level 136. Two hell and one nightmare item with +x% intelligence and prayer modded for intelligence (close to 7500 I think). The dilemma for her is 10% more combat art range or 25% more intelligence in the weapon slot.

 

Me: Barbarian Singer: 9100 base damage per warcry, 0.2s regeneration time, at level 118. But more important is my 0.2s howl. I do a Grim Ward and keep howling. In 2 of 3 cases the gryphon dies while the first grim ward is still up. It is interesting that doing howl/warcry combination is slower.

So I change my playstyle for turtle hunting: 2s howling followed by 1s warcrying. Since howl has a bigger range the enemies try to get to me in these 2s. Then most are in warcry range and die because they have very low attributes by now.

 

[Androdion 875]

9 hours ago, Flix said:

Were you using Holy Bolt? It has a massive damage bonus against Undead.  They're also sensitive to fire, like most Undead.  I used to get complaints about Pindleskin hitting brutally hard so I toned him down some. Users reported the fight taking several minutes, they'd run out of health potions and then he would resurrect and they'd have to start over.  I suspect a character staying at range wouldn't have much to fear from him.

Same goes for the bone twins.  Their danger is in their auras.  The Chamber of Bone quest is marked 5 stars for a kind of hacky reason: it forces the guaranteed gold reward I gave the quest to be as high as possible, since the point of the quest is to find a "treasure" and I couldn't just plop down a treasure chest in the dungeon like I'd like to. 

There was also a semi-conscious decision to make Tyr-Lysia's enemies not so hard because that is the starting area and it can be hard to get off the ground when enemies just beat you down.

Yeah it was most likely the combination of Holy Fire and Holy Bolt, and since I was hitting and running away since it's a narrow hallway and they came after me I must've avoided their (very visible) auras. It's funny that you mention the gold reward (treasure) because I actually went looking for a treasure chest.  You're quite right in stating that enemies in Tyr-Lisia shouldn't be too hard, I didn't even think of it in that way but it makes total sense to not have an unstoppable foe block your main quest progression so early in the game. For what is worth so far I think the mod has been great in terms of balance, and I'm curious to see it scale the higher I climb (and the SB as well).

[Flix 5,116]

Cool.  As you progress, I'd be interested to know if Holy Bolt's damage bonus against Demons & Undead feels too high. It's supposed to be very strong against them and only moderately useful against other enemy races.  I didn't intend to make every Demon/Undead fight a cakewalk though.  I haven't had much feedback on Holy Bolt except from early on when I had to nerf it because it was allowing boss one-shots.  I've no problem doing it again if needed.

[Androdion 875]

I don't know if this build will be a good measure for that since it aims for an early Ancient Magic mastery, so in theory HB should still hit every foe pretty hard anyway. I'll keep an eye out though, and since I'm in the process of modifying both HB and FoH for daily use I'll have a better understanding of how both hit when they're more equally levelled. Right now I have HB about half the level of FoH because I have it as a more "rapid-fire" alternative, so the damage between both is more or less 1 to 3. But with Focus and later on Lore masteries it should be easier to compare them.