Level 7 and Combat Rework Talkback

[Bobonga]

As someone who likes to be tanky, tough skin is my favorite. I really like the thieves' perks as well. Perfect positioning is not only a good perk, but also thematically fitting as well. Two-turn stuns with eye for weakness is very juicy as well. Powerful binding sounds like the fun way of overkill. I'm playing a leadership warrior, and even without powerful binding Talsenne wrecks everything already.

For the combat stuff: Making consumables like conjurers concoction usable outside of battle is awesome. Now they are not just dead weight. The petal got the perfect nerf. Most thrown weapons lack AP (except the Francisca), giving the petal a niche where it still shines. Even with the club and light Hammer as light, cruhing and high AP weapons, the Petal has the benefits of dealing holy dmg and being a thrown weapon. The griefmaker nerf is justified, and the royal leathers are in a good place now as well.

While the deflection power of the Dawnsword got a massive buff, I'm not sure if the following interactions work as intended: When an Imp Shanker tries to disarm you, you don't negate and counter the attack and you get disarmed. A minotaur miner uses the group knockdown power and doesn't get counterd as well. Resulting in dmg and a knockdown. In both cases it was either the first or second attack against my champ. I was kinda hoping that deflect would work on those powers. Those are the reason why my weapon based champs never enter the undemountain without Equilibrium.

By far the worst part of the rebalance is how hard the Caranbrot got gutted. I know how unbelievably tanky that thing could make you. But a shield equal to 1/2 toughness? That's just cruel. Toughness is already the least desirable stat. Even min/maxed that would be an 11 point shield per attack. The Caranbrot might as well have no special effect now. Even if it were a shield equal to your toughness, it would be mediocre at best. Just a suggestion: The Caranbrot gives you crit immunity while you have shield HP or no shield HP and passive crit immunity.

 

[Tide Hunter]

Checking the poll results, and it really makes sense that Overflowing Health is nobody's favorite.

A lot of the perks seem really interesting and/or strong, and then there's the trio: Cleaving Strikes, Enchanting Acts, and Overflowing Health. CS and EA themselves feel pretty weak and underwhelming (aside from their descriptions being bugged lol). They only work with the basic things, with normal attacks and teases. The damage of normal attacks and normal teases are relatively mediocre compared to your abilities, and even with high damage and stat allocations, 20% of mediocre is garbage.

But then, we get to Overflowing Health. Even if it weren't completely broken (as in, it does nothing, at all, whatsoever, I made a bug report about that just before typing this) 20% of crit heals only sucks. I thought it might've been only on critical heals to balance it out potentially being usable with things like Great Heal and Cleansing Bell, but it doesn't. The text describing its effects only shows up if you get a crit with the basic heal spell. Great Heal, the otherwise straight upgrade, can not trigger that text (and again, that's ignoring the fact that it doesn't do anything from a mechanical standpoint). So assuming the bug got fixed, it would still feel pretty much awful, because it only triggers on crits and only when using the basic heal spell. It has limited activation conditions and only even activates if you use the spell that's worse in every way than the heal you can get at level 6. It is completely terrible compared to every other level 7 perk.

Why did two of Cait's sets end up with this? Even aside from it still not working when she uses it, she's not built for crits. She can barely ever activate it, to the degree that she might as well have not gained a perk at all for level 7.

 

[Afier]

Overflowing health totally works for Cait. I've had it proc several times in game, and for a lot (as a leadership focused black mage, she has crit for almost 500 health, resulting in a nearly 1000 hp swing for the team). If used on a crit focused healer, it would actually need to be nerfed, because healing everyone to full every 2 or 3 turns, regardless of who's getting swung on means that if the enemies can't down someone in a single turn, they can't down anyone at all.

Sure it's not as flashy as many of the other perks, but to say that it's as bad as the warrior or charmer "basic" talents, where they only see use in very niche builds is disengenuous. Healing is almost always relevant. Furthermore, improving healing in this way actually allows for better stabilization in longer fights which offsets some of the problems the combat has, as well as improving the action economy of healer characters in longer fights.

Really, unless every fight takes very few rounds (like no more than 5) Overwhelming Health is probably the strongest level 7 perk because it acrues value to the player as more healing is done, when most other perks have a static, marginal value proposition (Eye for Weaknees is a ~33-100% increase to debuff uptime, with no other benefits beyond synergies, for example, and it's still a strong perk).

 

[Tide Hunter]

Overflowing health totally works for Cait. I've had it proc several times in game, and for a lot (as a leadership focused black mage, she has crit for almost 500 health, resulting in a nearly 1000 hp swing for the team). If used on a crit focused healer, it would actually need to be nerfed, because healing everyone to full every 2 or 3 turns, regardless of who's getting swung on means that if the enemies can't down someone in a single turn, they can't down anyone at all.

I specifically tested it. It is bugged. The text pops up saying that it procs, but it doesn't actually do anything. There is no healing. I mentioned that I submitted a bug report already, but just to be clear: Overflowing Health does literally nothing right now.

Spoiler: image

Etheryn was at 270 health before this triggered, and despite it saying she got healed for 177 by OH, her health is still 270.

Sure it's not as flashy as many of the other perks, but to say that it's as bad as the warrior or charmer "basic" talents, where they only see use in very niche builds is disengenuous. Healing is almost always relevant. Furthermore, improving healing in this way actually allows for better stabilization in longer fights which offsets some of the problems the combat has, as well as improving the action economy of healer characters in longer fights.

Like I said in my previous comment, assuming the bug gets fixed, it is still pretty bad for a healing-focused champ, because it only triggers the text when using Heal, Lay on Hands, and Holy Ward. Great Heal and Cleansing Bell do not work for some reason, despite Great Heal being an at-will.

Spoiler: images

Great Heal:
Lay On Hands:

Holy Ward:

 

[Resawar]

Cleaving strike works wonky it replaces my chosen hit target with my first cleave target, also holy shit it's terrible 248 crit got turned into 29 and 19 damage and an 97 crit got turned into 20 and 21, also no charge weapon or blue flame damage on the baby cleaves nor extra crit damage from criting in the first place. Enchanting Acts is buggy as fuck it has the same problem as Cleaving strike but it it only lists the name of the first extra tease target, also some times it just straight up does not display a crit but works. Its so shitty it took a 139 and 135 crit and turned it into 8 to 9 extra damage, one last test gave me 144 damage hit that only makes 10 extra damage, also the extra hit gains no benafit from crit damage nor song of splendor. I was testing if armor/focus affected the extra hit and it looked like those stat being higher or lower did effect the damage.

How I think Cleaving Strikes, Enchanting Acts, and Overflowing Health Trio should be buffed:

Spoiler: Overflowing Health

The extra heal amount seems fine but it should work with all healing spells.

Spoiler: Cleaving Strikes and Enchanting Acts

So I have Two ideas for this. Number 1: Buff the 20% to 33% and let other effects increase the damage like blue flame blade, bless, and song of splendor or keep it 20% but put a percent of the bonus crit damage into the cleave/extra tease. Number two: Keep the 20% but have consecutive uses increase the bonus from 20% by 5% up 4-5 times

 

[Tide Hunter]

Cleaving strike works wonky it replaces my chosen hit target with my first cleave target

Enchanting Acts is buggy as fuck it has the same problem as Cleaving strike but it it only lists the name of the first extra tease target,

It doesn't actually replace it mechanically, it only replaces it in the text. The actual main hit damage will still be whoever you targeted, rather than who the hit describes.

 

[Resawar]

The actual main hit damage will still be whoever you targeted, rather than who the hit describes.

Yeah I saw that after doing a bit more testing. Also the Enchanting Acts line I found out it outputted that way because the extra effect hit 2 cultist Psion's after hitting a DemonTaur which displayed as a Psion.

 

[Resawar]

0.6.3 Patch Notes: "Also buffed Cleaving Strikes and Enchanting Acts to 40% from 20%" "Fixed numerous bugs related to the new Cleaving Strikes, Enchanting Acts, and Overflowing Health level 7 perks"

Testing the buff out it's not strictly worse anymore, 40% is a neat chunk for finishing off enemies if you don't want to go down the longer self buffs or 20% resistance path for when cleave and allure are on cooldown. As a bonus Cultist Quin, Wayfarer Brint/Brienne, Honey Maiden Azyrran, and Dancer cait's now have decent bonus damage once they use up their ability's like cleave, allure, and enamoring.

In my testing with without Song of Splendor I have gotten a 56 after filthy tease into a Demon Temptress when using regular tease for 43 into a Psion, With Song in another fight I crit the Psion for 84 hit the other one for a 19 damage crit but hit the Temptress for a 60 damage crit, in the last test fight Splendor tease did 130 to Temptress but 18 on the extra hit to the Psion. I guess there is some wild variance with how much damage the extra hit does and if it crits that doesn't seem to effect the damage of the extra hit. I have not tested Cleaving Strikes yet but I assume it will have similar results.