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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 13:31:37 GMT -5
Flanking got nerfed pretty hard with the stealth update, up to the point where it feels like it's no longer viable as a main strategy. As someone who's build was entirely built around it (Flanking, two-weapon fighting to increase the odds of landing a proc, rapier to make the bleed proc stronger, animal training to have a buddy to flank with, etc), this hurts really hard. Damage was rather severly reduced (I used to do around ~10 damage at rank 50, now it would be 6, with the difference only growing with levels.), and lost the ability to apply special sneak attack options such as Death Attack and the like. (Which also makes it a lot more boring since now there's absolutely no specialization for it).
It now feels like it's something you can only do as a side-show if you're already pretty specialized into sneak attacking. A good show of this is how Stealth Combat (which is supposed to be the "+1 damage" equivalent to weapon and other such feat lines, the feat tax so to speak) is terrible compared to other "+1 damage" feats if you're just mostly flanking. Compared to the other flat +1 damage feats it.... only applies once per round max, doesn't help pierce through armor, is subject to bleeding resistance, doesn't tick until the next round... but it might possibly sometimes be x4 once per combat? That's not worth it at all comparatively. I'm not sure it's even worth taking on a flanker. Opportunist is the same, except you need to work doubly hard to maybe get that +1 damage. Flanking Attack is the only feat worth taking for a flanker, and it's certainly not strong enough to warrant building around, dealing low damage with no special effects attached.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 14:36:11 GMT -5
Any suggestions? Also much more interested in discussing what would make it viable now than what was gained or lost. Combining the old flanking attack with the fast pool growth line, particularly at the tier 5 knockdown level, was probably good enough so that every non tank PC should have done it.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 14:53:07 GMT -5
It's hard to figure out a way that makes flanking without making sneak attacks too good with how integrated they are right now. Stealth Combat would probably need to be at 2/rank to make it worth taking on a flanker (Similar to how Flanking Attack is now). If that makes it too good for regular stealthers, perhaps it could simply read "Your sneak attacks and flanking attacks deal +2 damage" and the active line could have a passive +2 sneak attack damage per rank?
The Flanking Attack line itself could, at higher ranks, have weaker versions of the active effects? For example, -1 AB/dodge, but only for 6? seconds so it only works as long as you keep applying your flanking attack every turn. Death Attack could probably stay the same, it's not particularly stronger on Flanking Attacks. Trip attack could have a very low DC on it's knockdown? Or the additional effects could also just be something different from what the active ones give. I can find some ideas once the general power and feat lines are known.
Opportunist in general probably needs to have increasing ratio of damage to fire/acid/bleed as you increase in ranks instead of just increasing the cap, since at these ratios you'll never even get close to the cap anyways. At rank V it's (on sneak attacks) +1/10, up to +25. I don't think anyone will ever have 250 fire/acid/bleed damage ticking on them. And if they do, the sneaker/flanker dealing a few more damage is the least of their concerns.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 15:13:50 GMT -5
I don't think changing the flanking damage on stealth combat threatens to throw off balance for people who focus on the big sneak hits, you can only do one of the two per round after all. I definitely wouldn't want to nerf it from the current +4 per sneak attack.
The reason flanking attack doesn't have active effects like it used to is the same reason stealth combat doesn't, you can get them by taking sneak attack and using the activated ability, or you can use other stuff (auto attacks or other stamina using abilities) to get your sneak and flanking damage in. I think this is really the only good way to address the issue of wanting sneak attacks to be good, but not wanting power attack, shield slam, and dual striking to be themselves plus all the good sneak stuff.
I think backstabber is the only line that should really require you to be deeply invested in all of the stealth trees, even the other line is OK with flanking. The main issue I have with changing the ratio as your level increases is that I expect that to be taken care of by level scaling in the types of damage referenced. As long as the values and limits are reasonable then if a party member's demolitions attack is the source of your extra wounding damage the extra wounding damage scales up at the same rate as their demolitions output. If anything it's already scaling above that because time in effect for pools goes up along with damage. I could see playing around with the flat percentage value, though.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 15:27:53 GMT -5
I don't really see why being able to use flanking attacks with actives is problematic. Actives (AFAIK) can already benefit from any other passive feat line (Such as Two-Weapon Rend or Favored Enemies). As long as the bonuses aren't overpowered on auto-attacks, I don't see how they'd be overpowered on Active attacks. It's not like the two have any particular synergy.
As for Exploit Weakness line, the problem is that yes, while pools do get bigger as levels rise, even at level 100 you'll never have nearly a big enough pool to hit the cap, and since increasing the cap is the main feature of the higher ranks (+1 damage on knocked down targets is really, really niche), even at high level you can just take 1 or 2 points into the tree and call it a day since it will be just as effective as the higher ranks.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 15:54:24 GMT -5
The passive/active issue is that there's a limit to how good passive abilities can be and it's a lot lower than the limit on how good activated abilities can be. There is a ton of synergy here because activated abilities increase your chance of dealing hit point damage with your first attack out of stealth, so instead of doing something dumb to mitigate that I moved a lot of the benefits of sneak attack to its own activated ability that offers similar (probably better) synergy as well as some other stuff like debuffs, faster bleed, instant death, and knockdown that might be too good if they were available on a passive. On the auto/passive balance thing it's more like a passive may seem fine if you assume it's only ever used with an auto attack, but not fine if you allow other abilities to be used as well, just for the same reason that language saying "this passive doesn't work on actives" would be a net nerf.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 16:08:26 GMT -5
There is a ton of synergy here because activated abilities increase your chance of dealing hit point damage with your first attack out of stealth Except I'm talking about Flanking attacks, not initial attacks out of stealth. With how heavy-loaded sneak attacks can get, I can understand not wanting to to let the extra oomph version work with actives, but this isn't the case with the weaker Flanking attacks. In fact Flanking attacks do work with actives. I don't see how making them a little more interesting by having small tacked-on effects (Smaller then regular sneak effects) would suddenly make it unbalanced.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 16:12:54 GMT -5
That would be fine on its own but I want to avoid having that much overlap between passive flanking attacks and flanking attacks done with the sneak attack ability. Would get really silly if a flanking sneak attack had two knockdown attempts, provided two of the same kind of debuff, etc.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 16:19:17 GMT -5
A single attack can't both be a sneak attack and a flanking attack, can it?
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 16:22:49 GMT -5
I mean sneak attack the activated ability. The ability itself is just an auto attack, but what it does is modify the results of any sneak or flanking attack you get with it.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 16:31:49 GMT -5
The description says sneak attack only. I specifically asked you this question...
That's slightly less problematic then, but it's still very feat intensive and there is the issue that the stamina cost might be worth it when you are doing a Sneak attack (The % bonus damage is large), but a lot less worth it when doing a flanking attack. Can you do abilities with variable stamina costs?
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 17:11:00 GMT -5
No recollection of that question being asked or answered in the negative, but I'm happy to clear up the description in a later update. Variable stamina cost is no good but it could probably be tweaked around if it's not worth it.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 17:23:02 GMT -5
The problem is it's worth it for Sneak Attacks, but not at all worth it for Flanking attacks.
If it's going to be used on Flanking Attacks, then it needs to be as good as any other active ability when used in these circumstances, if not more since other abilities don't require you to be flanking. Right now it will give you a lot less then most other actives give.
There's also still the fact that it increased the feat cost to be able to do proper flankings up by a whole line.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 21, 2017 21:44:59 GMT -5
Oh, and it would also help if the non-feat things that boost sneak attack also boosted flanking attacks. (I'm thinking Precision weapons and Blue Moon off the top of my head)
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 21, 2017 22:31:35 GMT -5
Blue moon already does, just needs a description update. Precision weapons will deal +1 but I need to write a new subsystem in the item description library for that to work. I'm taking things out of the text description and adding them as "Special:" at the end of the property list.
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