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Divinity: Original Sin 2 >  Workshop > Liyalai's Workshop > Tempest Class (New Spear Skills) > Discussions
Tempest Class (New Spear Skills)
Description Discussions5 Comments358 Change Notes
Kyzer 29 Sep, 2017 @ 9:46am
Thoughts on Balance
@Liyalai: My $0.02 on the balance this time!

- Jab: Powerful but in a good place, in my opinion. Comparatively speaking, Jab does more damage than other skills with its AP cost, but as you've mentioned before, piercing damage can sometimes do more bad than good. It's a basic skill with a good niche, like Sawtooth Knife.

- Sweeping Slash: Unfortunately, this still has yet to show up in vendors, despite my manually checking for newest version and multiple level ups. Neither Fort Joy nor Reapers Coast.

- Deflective Stance: Too weak by itself. The shield variant is effective due to synergies with skills like Reactive Armor. On a spear user building finesse, I don't want to get targeted in the first place. It simply doesn't gel well with the other skills.

- Piercing Thrust: Could use a slight buff. It's a really narrow AoE with no CC effects, the damage is a bit too low to justify its memory slot compared to Battle Stomp. Also, perhaps make it always do piercing damage, to fit the theme?

- Wicked Spiral: Great work on fixing this! It's perfect as is. High piercing damage, powerful CC, but balanced with a higher AP cost.

- Poisoned Strikes: Weak. 2 AP makes it too difficult to use, and poison is a very common immunity. A single basic attack is a better use of that 2 AP. Compared to Geo/Scoun Venom Coating.

- Necrotic Strikes: Weak. Same reason as above, 2 AP is too restrictive. Compared to Hydro/Scoun Vampiric Hunger.

These are all the skills I have access to at the moment, will comment again once I get the next tier!

Overall, the self buff skills need to be brought down to 1 AP, with nerfs to balance. Unless I'm running Glass Cannon or Lone Wolf, I can't effectively use them. As a class, the focus on piercing damage makes them, amusingly enough, great anti-knights. The trade off is that they suck terribly at CC, which is a considerable problem unless I build my whole team around it (mages nuke away all magic armor, followed with a Wicked Spiral).

From a role playing perspective, those are the limits of the class. From a minmaxing perspective however... Rogues absolutely shred with Tempest skills. On a Glass Cannon rogue,

Backlash > Flesh Sac. > Sawtooth > Jab > Adrenaline > Wicked Sp. > Cloak

...destroys so many things, without any risk. It's hilarious, and amazingly fun!
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Showing 1-15 of 16 comments
Mirabelle 29 Sep, 2017 @ 7:18pm 
I'm guessing this is with the "Spears Do Piercing Damage" mod?
#1
Kyzer 29 Sep, 2017 @ 9:43pm 
Since the time I posted that, Liyalai's pushed out a few updates to correct some issues and improve the balance, so consider this post outdated :P
#2
Liyalai  [developer] 30 Sep, 2017 @ 8:06am 
@Mirabelle Some of the changes he suggseted had actually already been implemented a long time ago, but the editor was giving me trouble so I had to mess around with it for a while before I could get the changes to register.
#3
Briareos971 30 Sep, 2017 @ 10:59am 
Great Mod! I was just wondering if the piercing damage isn't to high? It feels very powerful. The skills seem balanced in terms of AP but I am not sure about the piercing damage numbers. Just a though of mine. Also have to test it more extensively just played for 30 min on a respec level 10 Char. Anyways Keep up to great work. Cheers!
#4
Briareos971 30 Sep, 2017 @ 11:11am 
Is there a way to make the skillset available in Game-Master Mode?
#5
Kyzer 30 Sep, 2017 @ 12:33pm 
Round 2:

1. Damage values of Jab and Sweeping Slash should be swapped. Doesn't make sense for single target to do less damage than multi, for the same AP cost.

2. Celestial Spear needs a damage buff, or brought down to 1AP. It damages allies, so maybe balance it by increasing the AOE to make it harder to use.

3. Poisoned Strikes needs a rework. It's in line with other self buff skills now, but there's no synergy. Everything else is themed around piercing damage, so all it does is add a buff to slowly chip at magic armor. Perhaps some attack skill specifically dealing a high amount of MA damage, to combo with the Mad/Terrify debuffs?

4. Necrotic is awesome.

5. Deflective still needs work.

#6
Kyzer 30 Sep, 2017 @ 12:42pm 
@Murphyz: Piercing damage is a double edged sword. On one hand, no more dealing with armor. On the other, almost every single CC in this game needs you to first break through armor. The damage values have to be high, to justify their use.

Otherwise, it's better to just use Warfare skills to break armor and then chain CC with your party, because unless you're running a full team of spearmen, you're contributing nothing to them since they still have to break through armor to do anything.

It also means that Tempest skills have very little synergy with Warfare skills, as all their CC effects are blocked, and if you use them to break armor, then what's the point of piercing damage in the first place?

Right now, Tempest has two roles in a fight:

1. Assassin. With the extreme amounts of piercing damage, I can pick one key target that really has to die, and mark him/her with my Tempest. It's high risk high reward though, because if you fail to kill the target, they're not disabled and can still act freely.

2. Combo with your mages. The Tempest's CC effects are resisted by magic armor, so have your mages blast their usual targets, usually knight types with high PA and low MA, and finish them off with Tempest, without 'wasting' any damage on their PA.

Basically, the higher the target's PA, the more efficient Tempest skills are. Hence, their best friends are high damage mages. On the other hand, the more physical damage your team has, the weaker Tempest gets, as the piercing damage is redundant.
Last edited by Kyzer; 30 Sep, 2017 @ 12:58pm
#7
Liyalai  [developer] 30 Sep, 2017 @ 2:40pm 
Originally posted by Murphyz:
Is there a way to make the skillset available in Game-Master Mode?
I'll take a look at it.
#8
Briareos971 30 Sep, 2017 @ 2:44pm 
Does the mod work with every melee weapon? For balance I suppose it would be better to make it spear specific (also for immersion).
#9
Briareos971 30 Sep, 2017 @ 2:49pm 
@Kyzer, thats right the mage combo is awesome! I see now, lower damage values would make it useless, very nice explanation. Cheers!
#10
Liyalai  [developer] 30 Sep, 2017 @ 3:07pm 
Originally posted by Murphyz:
Does the mod work with every melee weapon? For balance I suppose it would be better to make it spear specific (also for immersion).
Works with all melee weapons due the inability to make them spear specific ;/
#11
Kyzer 30 Sep, 2017 @ 3:20pm 
@Liyalai: Any way to differentiate the damage scaling of a skill when equipped with dual wield vs 2H weapons? Dual wield daggers is better than a spear at the moment.
#12
Briareos971 30 Sep, 2017 @ 5:05pm 
Originally posted by Liyalai:
Originally posted by Murphyz:
Does the mod work with every melee weapon? For balance I suppose it would be better to make it spear specific (also for immersion).
Works with all melee weapons due the inability to make them spear specific ;/
I see, thx for trying though ;). This mod is still awesome, personally I will just pretend its spear specific.
Last edited by Briareos971; 30 Sep, 2017 @ 5:06pm
#13
Just Chill 9 Oct, 2017 @ 4:06am 
Sorry for stomping in here, I am just curious why this mod is linked in a formal warning on Nexus:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6053868-masterdmfour-formal-warning-issued/
oO
#14
Liyalai  [developer] 9 Oct, 2017 @ 10:14am 
@Just Chill I asked him nicely to remove the mod so I could upload it myself, and he didn't respond to me. Even though he 100% read it, because their messaging system informs you if they do.
Last edited by Liyalai; 9 Oct, 2017 @ 10:14am
#15
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