Scything Sweep Bronze mod Knockback.

[idbeholdME 393]

I have a couple questions about this mod.

1)

In the game, all it says is that it increases the knockback chance. Pretty straightforward.

On the wiki, it says that it increases the knockback chance AND has an additional statement that "If they tumble against additional opponents they will inflict damage upon impact."

so

Does the knockback of Scything Sweep (not the gold Hurl mod), inflict damage ONLY if you take the Knockback Bronze mod, or does SS do that by default? If it is the former, then that might make it worth picking. If the later, then the Knockback mod is pretty useless because you can pump the knockback chance simply by leveling up the CA.

2) How does the above behave with ranged? I'd assume it works, but just to make sure.

Edited February 16, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

Knockback is strictly knockback. The enemy is moved slightly backward.  Only the Hurl property can actually cause damage from enemies hitting one another, and even then, only when the enemy dies and its corpse hits a nearby enemy.  This is why the tooltip is changed in PFP.

Scything Sweep does not have the Hurl property by default, only when the gold mod is taken.  So there's no such extra damage or use of enemy bodies/corpses in the base CA, only the semi-circle of damage and plain old knockback.

In EE I removed knockback as a base property but added Hurl.  This simultaneously made the Knockback mod more appealing to those who wanted it, and removed an irritation for those who did not want Knockback at all.

[idbeholdME 393]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Knockback is strictly knockback. The enemy is moved slightly backward.  Only the Hurl property can actually cause damage from enemies hitting one another, and even then, only when the enemy dies and its corpse hits a nearby enemy.  This is why the tooltip is changed in PFP.

So the text on the wiki is verbatim copied from the game description in the vanilla game? That really was confusing, as it makes it sound like it does 2 things. Thanks for the clarification.

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

And I assume Hurl works with ranged weapons?

Edited February 17, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

Yes indeed to both.  Original tooltips were not the greatest, and Wiki is faithfully reporting them from vanilla.  Hurl works with any weapon, or any spell that can kill.  Does not seem to trigger from DOT.

[Lindor 438]

19 hours ago, Flix said:

Only the Hurl property can actually cause damage from enemies hitting one another, and even then, only when the enemy dies and its corpse hits a nearby enemy.

I don't know if the token works differently on Scything Sweep compared to Raving Thrust or Clustering Maelstrom, but on these spells "et_hurl_enemy" (if combined with knockback from other sources) does damage no matter whether the enemy dies or not. It's the knockback part of "et_hurl_enemy" that depends on the enemy dying.

[Flix 5,116]

Raving Thrust and Clustering Maelstrom do work differently. They always cause damage because they have built in spell damage combined with the "Push" spell token.  But they will do even more damage if the enemy dies.  Hurl doesn't trigger otherwise.  There is no knockback inherent to Hurl, aside from the ragdoll physics death animation.

[idbeholdME 393]

Thanks for the clarification. Gonna go with the damage mod on Bronze then as the Knockback will just raise naturally with CA levels (0.5% per level).

[idbeholdME 393]

@Flix

@Lindor

Bumping this with a screenshot that proves that enemies do damage to each other when just colliding with each other from Scything Sweep knockback and not just when the enemy dies.

The damage listing is the result of one cast of Scything Sweep. 3 projectiles, the result is 5 damage instances. Both pigs survived the salvo, so the Hurl mod should be out of the question. The damage dealt by the pigs bumping into each other is roughly 57% or so of the original damage (any life leech gets precisely halved). This leads me to believe that the knockback damage also actually SCALES as you increase the level of Scything Sweep (which obviously does not affect life leech, which stays at exactly half).

So from the listing, it can be easily determined that the left pig was hit by one projectile and the right pig by two (the 4K hits). And as the pigs also bumped into each other and were very close together, they also received about half of the damage (would be half at SS level 1) from the collision. At least one of the 3 shots triggered the knockback and both the pigs actually received damage from touching each other during the process of being knocked back. I am however not sure, which shots triggered the knockback and which pig (or both) were knocked back.

I've been farming the pig fields and have been noticing a massive number of damage instances on Scything Sweep casts, which launches only 3 projectiles, whenever I fire into a huge group. Even when the group survives the first couple of salvos, so the damage is NOT from the Hurl mod.

This leads me to believe that Scything Sweep has some innate functionality that allows it to deal damage on knockbacks. And it also has me wondering, whether the Knockback Bronze mod would actually increase this collision damage even if in the spells.txt, all it does is increase the knockback.

I currently have the mods Force, Intent and Hurl. I have no way of testing whether the collision damage would increase if I had the Knockback  Bronze mod. But I'm am beginning to believe, that this tip on the wiki is actually true:

• The Knockback and Hurl modifications can combine to create some very dramatic and effective enemy deaths. A chain reaction can start where enemies are knocked back, and if they or the enemies they hit die, they are launched back as projectiles, with the chance that they too will hit and kill enemies, who will in turn be knocked back/hurled. With these mods, a large mob is like a mass of bowling pins waiting to be bowled over.

 

Along with my recent findings on Frenzied Rampage in the PFP thread, it is starting to seem that many of the CAs have more to them than simply the definitions in the spells.txt. And I am only digging deep into the Shadow Warrior CAs. Who knows what other special quirks other CAs from other classes might have.

 

EDIT:

Good testing subject are mounted enemies. If the knockback triggers on them, they instantly receive the knockback damage because apparently, the mount and the rider count as 2 entities. Here is a screenshot of a Boar Rider getting hit by 2 projectiles from Scything Sweep where both of them triggered knockback:

Again, 2 damage instances from the 2 projectiles, and 2 damage instances from the "bump".

What I would like to test:

1) Does the Bronze mod Knocback also increase the bump damage besides the knockback chance.

2) Do these bump damage instances count towards the bonus damage if the Gold mod Rage is taken. Here the rider enemies would be the prime test subjects. Look at the damage of another CA before using SS. Then use SS on a single rider so only one projectile goes off and list the damage when the hit does not trigger knockback (1 damage instance) and when it does (2 damage instances).

I have unfortunately picked the mods for SS a long time ago, so if anybody has a blank Shadow Warrior on hand, would be great if this could be tested.

Edited March 20, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

It has nothing to do with knockback.  You have the Hurl modification.  That's why you're seeing that extra damage. It was edited to cause splash damage from non-dead targets in PFP (as well as dead targets which is vanilla behavior). This was done in order to compensate for reducing the damage that the original Hurl effect caused because it could kill allies via friendly fire, and also to bring the combat art more line with the original CA description (which mentioned nothing about having to kill an enemy to get the benefit).  I'll see about improving the note in the changelog.

 

[idbeholdME 393]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

It has nothing to do with knockback.  You have the Hurl modification.  That's why you're seeing that extra damage. It was edited to cause splash damage from non-dead targets in PFP (as well as dead targets which is vanilla behavior). This was done in order to compensate for reducing the damage that the original Hurl effect caused because it could kill allies via friendly fire, and also to bring the combat art more line with the original CA description (which mentioned nothing about having to kill an enemy to get the benefit).  I'll see about improving the note in the changelog.

 

Oh, that makes sense. Well, the "should no longer kill allies" is in the change log but that it was done through reducing the hurled corpse damage is not.

When it comes to actually dead enemies causing damage when hit by the Hurl mod, it mostly seems to cause only extremely low amounts of damage. I am seeing single to double digit numbers pop up from time to time when something dies in the middle of a huge mob of enemies when I'm dealing thousands normally. I think those extremely small numbers are the reduced original damage from the Hurl mod.

So it seems that the damage reduction was something like 99.9%, correct? Might as well have removed it completely to prevent the tiny numbers from cluttering up the screen. I've been wondering what they are for quite some time now.

If this behavior is set in stone, then I would change the tooltip of Hurl to say something in the vein that it makes the knockback cause damage. Because the original description "The sweep hurls slain opponents away as projectiles." is no longer true as the damage has been moved to the knockback.

Although as far as PFP goes, makes me think whether the original behavior should be restored :/. Because this change does alter the original functionality of the mod quite a bit where it no longer relies on enemies dying but simply the knockback. Did the firendly damage affect only the NPCs that can join you in quests, or also stuff like Nether Allegiance Spectral Soldiers?

 

EDIT:

Ah, I see it now. It was originally:

entry8 = {"et_hurl_enemy", 1000, 0, 5, 9 },

now it's 

entry8 = {"et_hurl_enemy", 1, 0, 5, 9 },

 

So indeed, a 99.9% damage reduction. Does it have to be at least 1 to function properly?

Either way, restoring the original damage would be quite simple. Out of interest, If I wanted to go back to purely vanilla behavior, how complicated would it be to remove the damage from the knockback?

Edited March 20, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

23 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Although as far as PFP goes, makes me think whether the original behavior should be restored :/.

Well, it's a question of whether we should try to honor the original description which had misled players for years, or else change the description, keep the original mechanics, and allow the player to massacre everything with friendly fire. It wasn't the simplest decision, but it wasn't all that difficult either.  The friendly fire affected literally everything.  It could kill ambient wildlife, NPC's, and even your mount.  The day I killed my Hellhound was when I realized something had to be done.

The hurl spell token was kept in order to preserve the ragdoll physics when enemies die.  This is what makes the corpses fly back and damage other opponents. The damage as you noted is nominal. I'll consider a better tooltip for the Hurl mod.

 

[idbeholdME 393]

4 hours ago, Flix said:

Well, it's a question of whether we should try to honor the original description which had misled players for years, or else change the description, keep the original mechanics, and allow the player to massacre everything with friendly fire. It wasn't the simplest decision, but it wasn't all that difficult either.  The friendly fire affected literally everything.  It could kill ambient wildlife, NPC's, and even your mount.  The day I killed my Hellhound was when I realized something had to be done.

The hurl spell token was kept in order to preserve the ragdoll physics when enemies die.  This is what makes the corpses fly back and damage other opponents. The damage as you noted is nominal. I'll consider a better tooltip for the Hurl mod.

 

So literally everything? Damn.

Does the hurl token have to have a non 0 value in the first spot ? If it could be 0 to prevent the random single digit numbers from popping up (unless zeroes would show up too), it would be a good change. I had no idea what they were from until now.

EDIT:

Just tried, the hurl token has to have a non-zero value for damage, otherwise it doesn't throw enemies upon death. So probably won't be able to get rid of the single digit numbers popping up.

Also tried running around with the Hurl damage at 10000 and tried killing a non-enemy character. Just managed to kill my mount  My life is complete now.

Just noticed that it has an additional token entry for the damage itself with the same ID as the hurl mod (I'm blind ):

entry8 = {"et_damage_areasplash", 500, 10, 5, 9 },

So anyway, I'm gonna try to find numbers that feel more balanced to me. Would probably be best if it was a set percentage and did not scale with level as the scaling was causing inconsistencies too (like not affecting life leech etc.)

------

The numbers for the et_damage_areasplash seem to be a chance of the area damage occurring and not the actual damage.

Either way, if possible, I'd reduce the damage numbers to say, a static 37.5%. As this was meant a compensation created for the loss of the original Hurl damage (which was not really that consistent in the first place), it currently offers a bit too much power IMO. 50% is already a lot and if it also scales per level on top of that.... Not to mention the multiplication of any and all life leech and regen per hit procs.

 

And just to make sure I understand the difference between et_damage_areasplash and et_chance_areasplash

et_damage_areasplash = Upon testing, it seems to just be a % chance that some (unknown amount) of damage will be dealt. Lowering the numbers for Demonic Blow for example does not seem to affect the damage dealt, only the odds of it happening. So how is it different from:

et_chance_areasplash = also seems to be a % chance?

Edited March 21, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

I think the two tokens are in fact the same thing, a chance to inflict area damage, the damage of which is defined at a set amount/percentage at the code level.  I believe this because the two tokens point to the exact same bonus in blueprint.txt (144 = bb_areasplash), which is a chance-based bonus.

It's not the first time I've seen two different spell tokens point to the same bonus/redundant bonuses in blueprint.txt. 

There is a difference in the final number of the two token strings (5 vs. 9) though, which plays a role in how the token is applied, but I can't make heads or tails of what the difference may be in application here. In this case I chose the same token that Demonic Blow uses (interestingly the only instance of et_damage_areasplash in the vanilla scripts).

[idbeholdME 393]

13 minutes ago, Flix said:

I think the two tokens are in fact the same thing, a chance to inflict area damage, the damage of which is defined at a set amount/percentage at the code level.  I believe this because the two tokens point to the exact same bonus in blueprint.txt (144 = bb_areasplash), which is a chance-based bonus.

It's not the first time I've seen two different spell tokens point to the same bonus/redundant bonuses in blueprint.txt. 

There is a difference in the final number of the two token strings (5 vs. 9) though, which plays a role in how the token is applied, but I can't make heads or tails of what the difference may be in application here. In this case I chose the same token that Demonic Blow uses (interestingly the only instance of et_damage_areasplash in the vanilla scripts).

Thanks for explaining.

I guess lowering the chance of the splash damage occurring would have the same effect as reducing the damage numbers (which is probably not possible anyway). I'll fine tune it to my taste on my end. Up to you whether to keep it as is or adjust the splash damage chance in the PFP too.

Edited March 21, 2022 by idbeholdME