72 replies to this topic

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Well, Littiz I hope you are sitting down.

I tried out Aura Cleansing last night ? and I?m worried that it might be just a bit too powerful!

OK now for the specifics. Using CLUA I leveled up my party gradually to 8 mil XP then went to the Pocket Plane to rest. Then I saved and got ready for a tiny bit of testing madness.

The first time I tried AC I couldn?t get it to work. I tried to cast magic missile at Sarevok several times & just couldn?t get it to work.

My second try was a bit more successful. I got MM off two or three times, but I thought to myself that this couldn?t be right.

So I reread the HLA documentation and decided that my problem was that I simply wasn?t reacting fast enough. So I went back in the game and enabled pause when spell cast.

The difference was huge!

I was able to unload all my magic missiles and most of my flame arrows at Sarevok before the AC effect ran out.

Awesome!

I played with it a few times and everything looked really good. My initial impression was that this was a very nice and very cool addition to the game & that it looked fairly balanced. Compared to Improved Alacrity, It reminded me a lot of the contrast between Greater Whirlwind and Improved Haste.

Then I thought to myself ? now what would a power-gamer do? (WWAPGD)

So I used CLUA to give my Sorcerer the Robe of Vecna and the Amulet of Power.

Oh My %$#....

With these two items (and having picked the HLA to increase spellcasting speed) Pi, my sorcerer, was able to unload *all* of her 5 or 6 Incendiary Clouds *and* 4 other spells.

I don?t think that even a pre-refinements Sorcerer with these items, IA and Timestop could have done that.

I really like AC ? but this may be just a bit much.

I would also suggest adding a note about enabling Pause on Spell Cast in order to take full advantage of this HLA if you don?t change it much.

[Andyr]

I have not played the Refinements beta, but when playing Sorcerors I have often used the Amulet of Power, Robe of Vecna and Improved Aclarity. You don't even need Time Stop. Dragons fall in seconds, with repeat castings of Lower Resistance (which is instantaneous), and then Magic Missile, Flame Arrow and Acid Arrow. Damage is only really limited by how fast you can pause the game.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Andyr, I?ve never used Pause on Spell Cast before ? so obviously I?ve never taken full advantage of AI in the past, however I?ll grant your point. With these items and a high level non-refinements Sorcerer the game can easily become:

1. Cast Timestop.
2. Cast IA
3. Cast lots of spells
4. Timestop ends
5. Watch things die

There were a few key limitations though. While Dragon?s Breath was instantaneous lots of other mega-damage spells like Abi?s Wilting were not even with those two items. In other words you couldn?t dump your whole spellbook & some spells just weren?t really worth casting in TS+IA.

With refinements a Sorcerer can now increase spellcasting speed via HLA. Three ticks of this reduces spellcasting times by 3. Then add the robe and amulet on top of that and most spells become instantaneous.

That?s not really a problem when you are limited to one spell a round.

It?s huge when you have an ability like AC that lets you cast as many instantaneous spells as you can in one second.

Really both the Spellcasting Speed Increase and Aura Cleansing work fine together by themselves. And they work fine separately with the items. However when you put all three together ? it?s a lot.

It may not be too much, but I did want to raise a flag to Littiz and TG to take another look at this three headed combo.

[Littiz]

IA lasts 20 times as Aura Cleansing.
The fact that you just discovered how to use the Autopause doesn't mean a Wizard can't do things just as amazing, or more.
Aura Cleansing lasts only 1 second, this means the sorc can't move while using it, he can't do any mistake.

All in all, it depends on who gets the robe of Vecna, which is a player choice.
Without considering that item, things seem balanced.

EDIT: BTW, after all of your *#$%$"!"£, I wouldn't change it back even with a gun pointed right at my head...
You wanted it, you keep it

EDIT2: I didn't the consider the possibility of loads of Abi Dahlzim's though...
Ouch, no matter, Aura Cleansing needs 4 other picks before being pickable...

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Without considering that item, things seem balanced.

Agreed.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

EDIT: BTW, after all of your *#$%$"!"£, I wouldn't change it back even with a gun pointed right at my head...
You wanted it, you keep it

[Jinnai]

EDIT: BTW, after all of your *#$%$"!"£, I wouldn't change it back even with a gun pointed right at my head...
You wanted it, you keep it

Let's find out it that's true....

EDIT2: I didn't the consider the possibility of loads of Abi Dahlzim's though...
Ouch, no matter, Aura Cleansing needs 4 other picks before being pickable...

Still lowering the spellcasting speed decrease bonus or perhaps making these speed increases non-stackable.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

You know, this isn't really an issue with Aura Cleansing.

Is there any way to prevent the HLA Spellcasting Speed increases from stacking with the Robe of Vecna? Do that and all is well.

I also want to throw out there that Aura Cleansing is pickable multiple times.

Picture this:

1. Timestop
2. AC
3. 5-8 spells
4. AC
5. 5-8 more spells
6. AC
7. yet more spells
8. Finally Timestop ends and *everything* dies.
9. Just for fun you wish your spells back.

My point is that with multiple ACs you can actually pump out *more* spells in a shorter period than you can with IA ... even without the items.

Maybe there should be some sort of cap on number of times you can select this HLA or it might even should be selectable only once.


Edit:

Somehow in all the above posts I forgot to add that at least one spell did not do so well as part of an AC chain. I tried to do multiple Sunfire spells & my PC ended up disrupting herself. Apparently being in the chain disrupts the timing in Sunfire that makes you immune to the effect ... or maybe it was the speed increase. Either way it didn't work. Mabye another factoid for the readme.

[Littiz]

Oh my it never ends

I want to hear some final words: HOW MANY TIMES must it be pickable?
Caedwyr says 3 or more.
You say one.
How many?
I'd be content with one, myself.

Sunfire disrupts for the way it's coded. It inflicts 0 damage to the caster... the damage is zero, but it's still damage for the engine, so you get a disruption for the next spell (when they have 0 casting time and your aura is cleansed).

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Let me run another round of tests tonight & then I'll give you my 'final answer'

I want to see how many I can actually sqeeze into a timestop. Right now I'm leaning towards 2 but wouldn't mind 1 or 3.

[Caedwyr]

AC is an innate, so I don't believe that it is affected by spellcasting speed. This limits the number of times it can be used. Also, does the aura cleansing allow another innate to be used right away, or does this only apply to priest and cleric spells?

[Andyr]

Andyr, I?ve never used Pause on Spell Cast before ? so obviously I?ve never taken full advantage of AI in the past, however I?ll grant your point.

...

It may not be too much, but I did want to raise a flag to Littiz and TG to take another look at this three headed combo.

I don't use the Autopause features either, I just press the button really fast.

I agree about the potential for massive damage and stuff though.

Perhaps they should add a RoV Rebalancing component - don't make it speed spells up as much, but make it grant NPP or Vocalise or bonus spells or something instead?

[Caedwyr]

Yeah, I'd have to say that the real problem lies with the Robe of Vecna. The ability is fine, but this one item unbalances oodles of other things.

A casting speed increase of 2 would still be noticeable, but not as unbalancing. It should be greater than 1, since the dark elf chainmail +3 does the same, and the Robe of Vecna should be a bit more powerful than a generic piece of chainmail (generic for the DE's).

[Rathwellin the Bard]

OK.

That was abusive.

I think that I could have emptied my entire spellbook just now but I finally got tired of this. What I did was cast timestop. Then used AC & unloaded a bunch of stuff. Accidentally moved, so cast timestop again (first one was still active), used AC, unloaded more, worried that timestop was running out, cast it again, used AC again. At the end of it I had a few 5th & 9th level spells left & I spent a large portion of that third timestop just wandering around waiting for it to end. Got a killer screenshot out of it though.

My vote is that either Aura Cleansing should be selectable only once or it should have some sort of side effect.

Yes the Robe of Vecna is abusive, but I wouldn't change it.

Just IMO. YMMV.

[Caedwyr]

Yeah, but the thing is, you can do exactly the same thing with IA. In fact, I normally don't even bother casting time stop, since all of my spells that I cast will be insta cast anyways. I can literally unload my entire spellbook with a normal mage/sorcerer in under a second. I need to make the right spell choices, but it is doable.

The only thing I would suggest, is removing the little section from the readme that suggests players use the autopause feature. A large number of people call Improved Alacrity a useless spell because of the short duration; let the players discover the cheese for the ability on their own. It really isn't any different from the old cheese with Improved Alacrity.

Really, what is the difference between using Improved Alacrity and Aura Cleansing. In your above example, I would have had to only cast a single Improved Alacrity, wheras you had to cast 3 Aura Cleansings. With the new sorcerer table, they cannot cast any of the old Mage HLAs, which is where the mega damage can be done (Improved Alacrity followed by 5 dragon breaths and all the other damage spells you can think of).

[Rathwellin the Bard]

I can come close to that with IA + Timestop, but what happens is that AI & Timestop are coming out of the same pool & the more of them you use the fewer Dragon's Breath & the like you have.

With this setup I'm *only* using my 9th level spells for Timestop & have a seperate pool for AC *and* innates *can* be chained into an AC session.

Edit: Also my impression is that AC is almost like a mini combo of timestop and IA anyway. It's pretty powerful by itself.

Edit II: Caedwyr, I'm going to disagree with you. AC is *more* powerful than IA currently. Even without timestop you can really unload. With multiple ACs and Timestop it's more powerful than I've ever managed to do on my own with Timestop + IA. I may not have used auto-pause before, but my timing has been pretty good with the old combo.

[Caedwyr]

Are the innate abilities affected by the spell casting speed increases and aura cleansing effects?

[Rathwellin the Bard]

The Aura Cleansing yes. The speed, I'm not sure.

[Caedwyr]

Ok, I just tested Aura Cleansing, and I found that the very short duration makes it easy to not utilize the full potential of the ability. With a level 22 sorcerer, I did not find this ability unbalancing at all. Most of the time I was able to cast several of the lower level spells before the abilty ran out of time. Cranking the xp up to the max may not be the best way to test things, since pretty much any class is godly at those xp levels.

[Schatten]

1. you unleash all your spells, good. but you are powergaming and not roleplaying. you can kill anything within 3s without ref and 1s with ref. wow. no difference for me.

2. changing robe of vecna? why? is it an "official" item? i dont know. it shouldnt be changed just because you can abuse it. if something should be changed than the modded skill and not the item. (my opinion)