SLD

Just in case noone comes by who can answer this question... I don't know the answer, but you already know how to find out more, just look at what files such a mod replaces. Maybe that investigation could lead to your answer.

Seven edits of that post have already shown that I made it far past lvl 10. I thought it's time for a new post. Silver is done. Finished with Lvl 54. I took, in order, (Final number of hard points in, including the first) -Concentration (1) -Tech Lore (45) -Tech Focus (54) -Ranged weapons (1) -Armor Lore (41) -Toughness (45) -Tactcs Lore (1) -EW Focus (5) -Not yet chosen All attribute points went into stamina, ate Warding Energy to 175 and BFG to 125. Upgraded BFG as specified by the guide, warding energy with double reflect and "block" at the end, pelting strikes with extra damage(assuming double hit actually doesn't work) and regen reduction. All in all it took around 26 hours of time in game. Not fast, but at least it was safe. I guess it's time to go for gold now Already started with the airlines. I guess I'm gonna eat some kobolds next... Edit: LVL 58 now, killed some kobolds, loot wasn't great but I got a few nice set pieces. Moved on through the main quest line all the way to the Orc region, but not yet the Octagolamus. Did "feed the poor" and socketed my gear with phys mitigation runes. Not fully there yet, but I hope it's enough for farming the orc cave. Edit2: LVL 63 now, orc cave is no problem, orcs basically don't do damage anymore so it's kinda even easier than in silver. Sadly levelling and looting are kinda slow, but there is no better place. So now I have an endless grind ahead of me. Not sure if I can manage that Edit3: With toughness I have reached more than 80% phys mitigation now, still not quite there yet... I upgraded Divine protection (duration, cooldown, spellblock) and ate 37 runes there, in case I want to use that at some point... finished bfg and warding energy to 200 and ate 20 in battle stance though I won't be able to use that one for a long time... I also found one of the most dangerous mistakes one can make in hardcore sp campaign... Other than in reasonable game modes (like multiplayer), singleplayer games start the character where you left, instead of in some safe space like a town or the starting island. So when you log out outside the orc cave, you may have been safe there but when you log back in newly respawned orcs will be all around you and your buffs are turned off, so bfg sera spawns with no weapon and no energy shield. The fastest way to get out of that situation is to immediately hit F8 which in Singleplayer will teleport you to your monolith. Therefore another important thing is to always pick up a safe monolith not one in the middle of nowhere surrounded by enemies. I hate this hardcore singleplayer challenge Edit4: LVL 66 now. Still orcing. battle stance and divine protection raised to 75. Phys mitigation has reached 87.1%. Edit5: LVL 70 now. Still orcing. Battle stance and divine protection raised to 125. Finally got 2 socketed gloves and a shoulder piece with slightly higher mitigation, getting my phys mitigation up to 92.9%.

So in general he claimed that originally attack and defense value did exactily nothing. He also has an attacker and defender level in here that is absent in @Maneus' formulas. Certainly something for Maneus to look at... he's good at that Well I recognized the starting at lvl 25 part from the addendum, though I also noticed that you at least didn't reduce the number of item tiers like he did... All I know is that loot in the Addendum is so broken, especially the swimming in gruma's signets, glimborin's and mormorin's... Something really messed up how the game decides what uniques to drop etc. Obviously, there is no knowing what happens in D2F with that and with your choice to make all these items have a level jump of 1. I'll find out when I get to playing it... It's hard to tell what that block actually means in game. Again, I guess I'll understand it when I take a look at it someday.

And I'm just stuck in a singleplayer hardcore run to test my bfg sera guide What was broken there? We know how the attack vs defense and damage vs armor calculations work in the base game now(thanks to Maneus), so what is changed here? Oh, I'm already worried. The item stuff messed up the Addendum so badly... No! I hated that so much. If not constantly pressing alt, one will never see unlockable item mods, therefore not seeing the potential reason to ever take that crappy skill that might unlock it... As someone who bought a full set in the addendum, I would say this is not a wise choice. If everything can be bought, why still kill stuff? Also, trading is the far more efficient way to get what you want once the trading skill is high enough. And the trading skill gets high enough by... trading. It's kind of a full circle, the only thing you need to fuel trading is gold. But beyond that playing the game somehow gets less relevant. Also when trading you only have to pay that gold for stuff you actually want, so you basically always get something for it. But aspect lore skills should already have worked on dots, right? At least they do in the base game. Chance seems such a bad choice here. If the values could be lowered instead, they would at least be reliable. But effects that are only happening like 15% of the time could probably just as well be absent. A step in the right direction, yes, but I doubt it's an effective one. Well, those were my initial thoughts on that changelog, playtesting will have to wait till I'm done with other things. Thanks for making the test version available. I certainly intend to poke it a bit before it turns final. Edit: I checked the quest reward list and the rainbow facet seems to be missing...

Now I'm back to believing it wasn't changed and wondering how you manage to get the execution speed so slow that it can target more than 2 or 3 targets. Also the fact that you got a shadow warrior with an energy staff to a point where he can oneshot all his enemies seems just as absurd. I mean it's possible as EE has unlimited attribute points so you could farm airlines for an eternity, but other than that way I don't see that happen at all. That pelting basically slams all shots into the same target is normal, but from my experience it should be the same with frenzied. The energy weapons' projectiles have unlimited range. Though they might need some aiming help to shoot that far, which means you can't use combat arts for that. Yes you can hit the whole crowd if you find a crowd in game which is rare already, but you'd have to cast that spell over and over as usually spells don't do enough damage to kill anything in one blow... For all normal spells the range is btw not farther than ranged attacks go. That the EE specific one might be broken there would not surprise me though. Yes, there are some spells that do enough damage to kill bosses without leech, though you would still be missing the recovery from leech. Meteor Shower, Glacial Thorns, Edaphic Lances and Gust of Wind should all kill bosses fast enough that they can make it past the Forest Guardian's dps check (He has a full heal skill with a certain cooldown, so you have to kill him fast enough). But they are nowhere near as fast as killing bosses with leech%. Which gets worse with EE raising the attack/cast speed cap from 150 to 450. Attacks can use low level CAs or regen per hit to utilize that speed, spells just suck at that point. Sadly I nowadys always try to build the strongest stuff and all those fun spells are basically lost to me. I did originally play almost everything though so it's not taht I never tried, it's just that after trying the same fun skill a few times the fun goes away and what remains is a skill that is worse than another so I slowly pidgenholed my gameplay to perfect repetitive boringness It's not just CAs, entire character classe are just unplayable because I can't come up with anything anymore that would be "worth a try" ... I haven't seen an Inquisitor in an eternity But I have determined the best character is always called a "shadow warrior". With CM-Patch, with EE, with the Addendum, just not with D2F - there he is called a "barbarian" The combination of attack and buff combat arts and the available gear just outperform every other character. Though every now and then I try something else I haven't found anything as OP yet I would say getting %leech is quite hard for this build. It's basically Khral's Scepter, Denderan or Kanka set and the "Tooth and Nail" set. I don't think EE has any other source that fits the build. You can of course always use a throwing star for that. With EE the unique one that gives leech% should be a fixed quest reward somewhere so you can create it at will. unlimited blood supply?

Thanks for clarifying that one. I'll go and track down all the other spots I can find where I suggested the wrong value. chances are bad... But proving "any effect at all" sounds like a reasonable attempt. Thanks for following the nose

No I absolutely did not say all of that. That's why I offered demonic blow, that does have area when used with a ranged weapon. From CM Patch onwards both start with at least 4 hits maybe frenzied has 5. With EE both have mods that supposedly increase the number of shots, not sure by how much/ if it grows with CA level. They basically do the same thing and as far as I know take about the same time to execute. The "details" that differ don't really matter as one is on a SW and the other on the Sera so you don't need to chose. The Sera just already comes with a bfg weapon and the two classes obviously differ in the available buffs and gear options. In general the builds function the same. The flat mod gets boosted by tactics lore's "%damage bonus". So a factor of 4 or 5 may be reachable in the end. The wiki says the asymptotical maximum would be a factor of 7. The Frenzied Rampage's Vampire mod supposedly gives 2+1per level leech. Assuming the value didn't change with EE, we'd get 202 from an unreachable level 200 CA multiplied by an unreachable factor of 7 by tactics lore, so 1414 is the upper limit. There is still no evidence for any of that. So far all it does is increase the "spell resistance" value which is than compared to the attacking caster's spell "intensity" in an unknown way to determine wether a spell does full damage or a reduced value. As far as I know the reduced value is supposedly always a reduction to 66%. So far there is no special interaction with burn poison freeze or weaken known to me. Maybe we should ask @Maneus about willpower and these elemental side effects, then we'll soon know for sure. While we're at it we can ask about the damage reduction through failed intensity check. I'm sure he'll follow our call, he goes everywhere the nose points him to I still don't understand it. Maybe it is changed with EE. Are you claiming it can change targets without the first one dieing? Because otherwise I don't see the 360 degree stuff or the difference between ten or two enemies happen at all. All shots should basically be out before the first one connects. There must be something off with frenzied in EE then. With the CM-patch both pelting and frenzied fire more or less in the same way. I can't test this now so we'll remember that something is odd and all my statements were based on the assumption the skill wasn't functionally different. I used bfg pelting in EE so I knew that one worked normally, but if frenzied is different there than it explains all our differences about that skill I guess. Yeah frenzied must have been changed somehow. Sry for all the confusion. But how does a spell ever manage to compare to an attack with leech%? At least against bosses the pelting strikes should outclass everything else a sera could use. Wether you would do that with a BFG a Khral's Sceptre or a throwing star is a different question, but killing a single target in EE will always be the fastest via "leech%" wtih "many hits per timeframe". Spells could only shine because of their area potential but then they usually fail because even in challenge mode with superspawn there aren't enough enemies in this game. Well, it's a large community and a few people in it are "alive"

Scything sweep is not a spell. It also has no area of effect when used whith a ranged weapon. Demonic Blow however could be modded for area, though it would still not be a spell. It's an Energy Staff, just like the Seraphim's BFG. Frenzied rampage and pelting strikes are great with those from the cm-patch onward. The change from EE allowing to mod for even more projectiles is just a welcome overkill What is your thought here? Against what is that needed? On this one I'm curious I'd rather get another hit with the %leech than a couple thousand of the flat mod. Since when does Willpower give "elemental resists", whatever that may be? What the hell? 2-5 seconds. Also the number of enemies shouldn't affect this at all unless you're basically in melee range and oneshotting the initial enemy. 2 seconds when your cast speed is slow, ok. But 5? Thats insane. It always fires a fixed amount of shots at the targeted enemy, automatically switching targets if you're close enough to kill the original target before all shots are out. Baseline should be 4 or 5 shots I think, in EE moddable for more. So they get a male version of the BFG Sera to get tired of Don't take my criticism to seriously. It's nice you wrote a guide, as you have seen already, not many people do this. You are therefore already one of the few productive people here If you want to return the favor of "constructive hatred" , I recently wrote some loose guides myself that are also potentially EE viable. The parts of my guides are linked together in this summary post: https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72710-an-easy-character-for-a-returning-sacred-2-player/page/3/#comment-7146227 Let us share in the joy that is Sacred 2

Or people would look at the reward in the questlog and reload until they get what they want

It's not about the recovery from leech. By the time you're in niobium you should be able to watch a horde of angry orcs dull their axes on you... You have enough regen in combat without constitution or leech. The leech is most powerful against bosses anyway. Maybe on some future character you'll "risk" playing without it. There is still hope As long as I'm not getting bored (or killed?) I'll keep updating my progress above on my totally regen and constitution free hardcore seraphim. Maybe it'll inspire you

This was common knowledge to everyone but the cm_patch team, which is why they added a wrongful % to the tooltips It's nice to hear the two of you are getting along so well. I'm sure that comes from a deep understanding of each others "values". And what a nice picture of the two of you sharing your values All those barbaric players and campaing quest npcs just wanted him dead. Turns out all this time Mr. Gar'Colossus was just misunderstood. That is interesting. That would basically mean against someone with that skill one would almost always have a crappy hitchance. From the wiki: lvl 200 =>+61.4%evade ... now I know what we got those 300% hitchances for...

And putting the points into toughness or armor lore would also give more than putting them in constitution. At least it would give something that will still be useful in the endgame, where constitution will do exactly nothing. You could also put those points in tactics lore which increases Grim Resilience's hp and regen, so it basically does was constitution does and damage on top. Or put them into the focus for a higher Grim Resilience that would also result in more Hp and regen but also phys mitigation and damage through willpower... So many good options and you take another skill to waste both a skill slot and a bunch of skillpoints How about you take it last, so you can see how little you need it?

If you go full Kanka only the full set bonus should matter here. Those few hitchance mods don't matter much, as all of them can be socketed and probably will have to be socketed anyway. If you don't have a smith take forge... It's actually a percentage not a flat value but it's added with all other attack and defense percent bonuses you might have. The point here is that attack and defense values are not that interesting in Sacred 2. You can solve hit and evade chances far easier with other mods. Well "Tom-felde's" isn't great but it can be summon once per difficulty as I said among the unlock item stuff somewhere. A bargaining character could also easily buy rare %leech fist weapons, should you have such a character somewhere. NOO! Why? You already have a buff that gives more life and life regen than constitution ever will What do you mean? That level 10 lightsabers can have two sockets and lower level ones can't? That one I tested myself, grinded the quest with a character than leveled one level and grinded again. Started at level 1... Or do you mean the attribute bonus workings? That one only very few people knew about until recently. when it was properly documented by Maneus over in his thread with all the frightening numbers Open wounds is a dot effect that when triggered does some damage based on the hit that triggered it. It has a duration and only one instance can be on the enemy at the same time. So if the dot is "ok" compared to one hit, it would still be crap compared to the number of hits you can get in while that first open wound instance is still running. But it gets even worse... While so far Maneus only tested the poison and fire dots that I expect to work similar though, the poison and burning effects get "replaced" each time you trigger a new instance. And this replacing can happen before the dot does its first damage tick. That means with a high enough hitrate you will cause new open wounds before the first ones did anything at all... that's why it's absolute crap. If that level 10 sword has 2 sockets it should be great all the way to lvl 200 as mainhand weapon. The rare from the quest I suggested would be worse for sure. If it doesn't have 2 sockets it might be nice for the start but should be replaced with a 2 socketed level 10 lightsaber. I've had characters of similar types keep the CAs at level 1, I also had characters eating them to the "maximum without penalty". Technically you can at some point eat more. My main goal is to keep the regen low enough that I don't need many sources of "regen per hit" and that if something goes wrong like the enemy blocking/reflecting both hits from demonic blow I wouldn't want to have to wait long for the next one to be ready. So the goal would be basically that the kanka gloves give enough regen per hit that you don't need more than that in the end. At least that's what I would aim for. Well, I started more than that... I'll show you how great characters without constitution are

Wow, my post made it through peer-review Neither would really matter here I guess. The balance.txt values remain constant while normally playing the game and noone cares about rounding as long as the enemie ends up on the floor. We also don't care which floor they end up on. That is all stuff for your thread, where we want the details "for science" Thanks for coming by and have fun with Mr. Gar'Colossus.

Ok, game on version CM160 is ready, time to make a Seraphim I guess. Rules: General Guide 1: only afk sb farming is relevant and not allowed. General Guide 2: Character creation: (Singleplayer. Seraphim, Light Campaign, Forens, Expert's Touch, Hardcore and Silver) Runes, Gold Starting gear Socketing and Bonus skill points: I started on silver, opened up starting chest, went to Sloeford opened all the chests etc. and did the airlines quest. I repeated the same on bronze, then returned to silver. If you are smart you'd do it the other way around, man the way to sloeford in silver is challenging. I'm used to such pampered gear I even needed to find the spacebar... After my return to silver I teleported a few times back and forth between starting island and sloeford and used the merchant to buy some cheap gear with phys resist, 2 relics with poison and an amulet with life regen. At this point I don't have enough gold for a full set of socketed stuff and socketing costs far too much gold to do that. I could "teleport" to the crystal region to get more gold, but I don't think that's gonna make the experience more legit so I won't I also ate the two runes from the silver start box (archangel's wrath and battle stance) to help with the way to Sloeford and now used the combomaster to create one bfg rune from the bronze runes and 2 lucky rune drops on the way. In sp chests and quests are saved so none of this can be repeated for farming anyway. General Guide 3 has nothing that applies. The BFG sera guide says I should put points in stamina so I will do that. It also says to pick Tech lore, tech focus, concentration, armor lore and toughness, potentially also ranged lore EW Focus tactics lore and who knows what in no specified order. I will absolutely go full coward mode and start pure tech, with the shield as second buff as soon as I get the runes Combat art mods will be chosen as specified in the guide. I will not use the "Far Shot" mode as that would be abusing a bug. I will only play SP campaign games no MP. All the rules are laid out, let's see if I make it to level 10 Edit: Have made it to level 10. My kobolds thinned out at level 9 but restarting the game solves that. Chose concentration->tech lore->tech focus->ranged weapons and put all my skillpoints in the tech skills. Fully modded BFG. Got both BFG and the shield buff leveled a bit and am using that combo since I had the first rune in it. Nothing has gotten my shield down since. Bought one -%evade ring on level 6. Since level 8 I have 100%+ hitchance on champion kobolds. Seems to go nicely for now. Will stick around and poke some more kobolds for more runes I guess. I can still take damage after all so I'm not OP enough yet Edit2: Kobold slaughter went on till lvl 16 where I could fully mod my warding energy buff as well(went "block" for uber coward mode). Took armour lore on 12. Started moving along the campaign path, took toughness at level 18 Jaftar could be facetanked without taking measurable damage and now finally shot the Gar'Colossus at level 19. 92% hitchance on him. Had 25 runes eaten in both buffs. Did run around and not let him hit me because I was still afraid So far everything seems fine. Edit3: Level 23, Orc-region is done, Octagolamus was defeated by my most beloved hardcore strategy - running away Now I definitely want to level some more in the orc region before moving on. I am really not made for hardcore... 34 runes in both buffs, tech skills capped, armor lore at 5, the rest in toughness(a bit more than 5). Normal Orcs should be oneshotable now. Still only using left click attacks... Edit4: Level 31, by killing Orcs and some Kobolds. Both buffs eaten to 55. Did "feed the poor" in both bronze and Silver for extra skillpoints and ran the mount quest in Silver though I didn't buy a tiger yet. Edit5: Did buy a tech tiger for now. Doesn't really matter as I still can't really use combat arts. But the movespeed is huge as I had no other source of movespeed. LVL 36 has been reached, still farming orcs. Edit6: Finally went Orc cave levelled all the way to 50. Picked up tactics lore and EW Focus. Skills are now at: tech focus 50, tech lore and toughness at 45, armor lore 25, EW Focus 5. Tactics, Ranged and Concentration still at one. Warding Energy 175 eaten and BFG 125. Archangel's wrath was a lot worse than I remembered so I moved on to pelting strikes. By now quite usable with regen per hit and so much better dps. Switched to EW Tiger. Did the Gahanka quest, though I probably should have done it earlier, before I outleveled him. Not much loot this way... Still crappy geared. One lvl 14 amulet is my only dot defense. Those things are far rarer than I thought and without bargaining they can't be bought either... Well I guess it's time to move further along the campaign now. Edit7: lvl 51, swamp has been reached. The bosses were a bit scary but only the dragon actually managed to hit me... the carnach died before he could reach me

For once I completely agree with you I have absolutely no clue how the offensive and defensive values interact to lead to a hit chance. Well this just changed. We can always rely on Maneus: From this post: https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/18511-how-is-sacred-2-weapon-damage-calculated/page/8/#comment-7146261 There is more info over there in the posts directly before and after the linked one. So what does this complicated formula tell us? There are three things happening here. -First a value is calculated based on comparing attack and defense value which is more or less: [Attack/(Attack+Defense] and results in a nice sensible percentage. -Then the ChanceThatOpponentsCannotEvadeAttacks bonus from items etc is added to that. -And in the third step we multiply all of that with a value that compares the enemies "+%chance to evade" bonuses and our "-%oponent's chance to evade" bonuses. This comparison is basically [1 - (%chance to evade)] / [1-(%opponent's chance to evade)] So as an example the first step comparing attack and defense creates a base percentage like: Attack=Defense => 50% hitchance Attack=2*Defense =>66% hitchance Attack=3*Defense =>75% hitchance Attack=Defense/2 =>33% hitchance Attack=Defense/9 => still 10% hitchance To that we add the "ChanceThatOpponentsCannotEvadeAttacks" that we can get later in the game from higher quality items. This stacks additively from multiple sources so if we get like 4 rings with +5.5% each we get +22% added to the result of the first step. For example if we had the last line "Attack=Defense/9 => still 10% hitchance" and added 22% we would almost be at the second to last line's result "Attack=Defense/2 =>33% hitchance". So in cases where our attack value is really low compared to the enemies defense value this stat can have a huge impact, in this example's case more than a factor of 4 for the mere 22% of this stat. Now to the third step: We compare the enemies "+%chance to evade" modifier with our "-%opponent's chance to evade modifier". First of all multiple sources of these 2 modifiers are not additive, but have diminishing returns, so two rings with +15% each will result in less than 30%. The total amount from your gear is calculated for you shown under the sigma sign in your inventory, that lists all your stats. Some example values for this "comparison" as listed above: [1 - (%chance to evade)]/[1-(%opponent's chance to evade)] generally results in: (%opponent's chance to evade) = (%chance to evade) => 1 (%opponent's chance to evade) > (%chance to evade) => >1 (%opponent's chance to evade) < (%chance to evade) => <1 So when both mods are equal you get the hitchance from step 2. If your mod is higher you multiply step 2 by something larger than 1. If your mod is lower you multiply step 2 by something smaller than 1. For example if the enemy has 50% evade chance and you have no -%evade mod you get only half of step 2. if the enemy has 25% evade chance and you have no -%evade mod you get 75% of step 2. if the enemy has 25% evade chance and you have -20% opponent's chance to evade you get 93.75% of step 2. if the enemy has 25% evade chance and you have -50% opponent's chance to evade you get 150% of step 2. And if the enemy has no chance to evade mod but you have -50% opponent's chance to evade you get twice the value from step 2. Especially the last example is interesting here as many enemies probably don't have the evade chance mod at all or only at low amounts, you can easily multiply your value from Step 2 to crazy levels. So the lessons to learn are basically, that -the step 1 attack value can give a lot of base if the enemy doesn't have a lot of defense -the step 2 mod is more valuable when the enemy has lots of defense -the step 3 mod acts as a beneficial multiplier that can increase everything from step 1 and 2 if you got more than the enemy has. This also means it's absolutely crucial to have this mod if the enemy has +%evade chance because otherwise you'll always have crappy hitchance. Some other thing to note would be that if you for whatever reason had 100% or more of the step 2 mod you could only miss enemies that have a higher step 3 mod than you. Also if you don't have 100% or more hitchance against an enemy all three ways "+% or +attack value", "+% chance opponents cannot evade" and "-% opponent's chance to evade", will help in increasing this value. Which one does how much however, depends on how much of it you already have and what kind of values(defense, +%evade) the enemy has. So if you need to hit with your character get something from all three values. Remember however that you always have some attack value anyway and that later when using purely combat arts, those usually have a "hidden" attack value bonus as well(scaling with CA level). But combat arts aren't taken into account on the "last enemy" hit chance information. @Sethi22, man that took some time to first understand the results from Maneus and then make them more accessible. I hope I succeeded in both Edit: Though this guide is more for the attacker point of view, it is also accurate the other way around. For that however I wanted to add the "new" information on the combat reflexes skill from this source: https://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/18511-how-is-sacred-2-weapon-damage-calculated/page/8/#comment-7146292 We now know that the %evade chance from combat reflexes is a seperate multiplier in the hitchance calculation, so for example if the combat reflexes skill shows a 60% chance to evade you just multiply the enemies final hitchance(according to all the other stats) with "(1-0.60)".

Trying to understand that formula(yes I'm dumb so I need to "try") I got stuck on the last ", 2)". A recount of the brackets and some googling fixed my confusion. It's just the second value for the ROUNDDOWN function at the start, determining the number of decimals. Man this stuff is getting complicated, but it's certainly worth understanding. And it finally explains how I always reach bs amounts of >200% hit chance. An imbalance of the (ChanceToEvade, OpponentsChanceToEvade) values causes that. Well at least that one should rarely happen in a natural environment. The player's attributes should always contribute some attack/defense value. The tooltip lying here would suck in general because it would mean we'd never get a nice formula like the one above. Imagine how much dancing with the Gar'Colossus it would take to determine the hit chance formula statistically. I guess we just have to hope this one is a good, nice and honest tooltip

That is very possible. Evidence pointing to that gathered from this very thread: and a bit later: I still haven't read this thread but I searched all pages for "Willpower". So according to these quotes prayer once gave 30 points per level. That changes the calculations significantly as with a character level of 143 you can easily turn on a prayer aura of level 100+ giving more than 3000 bonus points to willpower, so you definitely had far more than 2.5k at some point. Because I did not read the thread I don't know wether that was the time where the overflow was reached but it would make sense if it was. It would also mean that with the current values you'd probably need to farm quite a lot of hellfire arenas to reach the overflow point so the problem might already no longer exist in the current D2F v15c.

So they either thought they needed to allocate more space for life than for shields or they thought they needed fractional shield values? Nah... they probably just forgot to change the shields away from the "normal" 3 decimals system. We need 2.2 billion life to confirm. 179838208 is not enough Nice pictures of your High Elf dating the Gar'Colossus!

The wiki says prayer only gives 35+3*Lvl willpower. Doesn't sound high to me at all. Maybe the wiki numbers are wrong again? Anyway lets say you manage to get like 2.5k willpower at level 143. "LifeAttribut"(balance.txt) in D2F is 25. now we turn to Maneus' glorius science: In the "BaseEnergyShieldHitpoints" we already have the +%bonuses from the skill and gear. So for a lvl 143 char with 2.5k willpower we get: WillpowerHitpoints = (1/15.3) * (2500/25) * BaseEnergyShieldHitpoints WillpowerHitpoints = ~6.54 * BaseEnergyShieldHitpoints That means that, without any willpower bonus at all, you would have had at least (Overflow/7.54) > 250k energy shield from the skill and item mods. First of all, why does a lvl 143 character need 250k energy shield? That's like 5 to 10 times the amount of life a character at that level would have. And you probably had more than 250k as you probably didn't have 2.5k willpower. The size of that base shield is just enormous. Or you went "uber ham" on the gear. I mean if that is what you can reach at lvl 143, by lvl 200 everyone would have that overflow problem. The enormous influence of high willpower could only be lowered by increasing the "LifeAttribut" value that would however also screw up vitality in the same way. Alternatively you could reduce/remove the values you can get from gear rolls and the warding energy lore skill. And the third multiplier is the base this skill gives. That also touches on the reason why scaling vitality does nothing in comparison, because there is no +%life modifier from gear and skills. That and that the baselife is probably a lot more reasonable than that holy shield So with three multipliers, willpower -> unchangeable, gear -> unchangeable if you want to keep the amount of player agency, that only leaves the skill itself as an option. I just checked spells.txt and everything relevant on the "notschild" seems to be lower in D2F than in the addendum or the base game. If there's nothing else affecting the CA than that would mean it should be even worse in the addendum or the base game. So at least I can rule out a typo there. Is there something else I'm missing? Otherwise it seems that CA has always been bricked.

If there's a way to limit all shields to a maximum of 2million that would make the most sense. Lowering the values somewhat only means that someone who stacks more +% shield amount would reach it again some time or that the shield without significant stacking of that mod would be completely worthless. Another balancing option would of course be to remove all bonus shield mods from gear and willpower, thereby making the possible shield amounts more controllable. But that would kinda screw up game balance as well...

Interesting. Sounds like testing ~3 million "life" for similar behaviour would make sense now

That is correct. Without Dark Mod skills 11-13 unlock at level 80, 95 and 120. Had to necro this as I couldn't find the answer anywhere and now that I know it, I want to put it somewhere others can find it. As I managed to find this question, I thought it would be a great place for the answer

Can it then regenerate into the unsafe zone and turn itself off? Does it only regenerate to the safe maximum? Or is this stuff really only ever checked after a hit? You have an amazing memory

I was thinking about trying that non-cheating SP-campaign HC BFG Sera in a CM patch environment to see how close my guide comes to reality. But somehow I doubt I could endure this endeavor for long I'm also still testing stuff in the addendum so I can't start right away either... Let's see wether I'll get over this idea or wether it bugs me until I try it I sure hope so. It was a lot of work after all.