Blessings balance?
 

Personally, I agree that the Nature 9 berserk bless is suboptimal compared to, say, fire weapons and don't think I'd buy up to 9 with the vast majority of strategies I might use.

To me, the gold standard is Fire 9. All other things being equal (schools of magic being assumed to be equally desirable, lower level blesses being equally desirable), blessings should match up with Fire 9. Now it may well be that all other things -aren't- equal and I'm certainly open to discussion there.

Nature 9, though, seems sort of weak and even Kris seems to think that there might be room for improvement. One suggestion might be to have Nature 9 give a Sleep Vines attack or effect to existing attacks. Perhaps another might be a Gift of Health effect (which would work nicely with the Regeneration bonus).

I'm just tossing this out there to open the floor for discussion. It's likely premature, given that the game isn't even in release yet, but I figure brainstorming ideas isn't a bad thing and at the least it'll pass the time until release and perhaps give Kris an idea or two for a patch down the line.

Thoughts?

Re: Blessings balance?
 

Also, out of curiosity, I'm intrigued by the afflictions bonus with Death magic. I assume the Afflictions +100% bonus means that you're essentially doubling your chance to cause an affliction with a strike? Could someone remind me (I can't remember off-hand) how afflictions are determined/calculated in the system? Has that changed at all for Dom3?

Re: Blessings balance?
 

I wonder if the affliction formula is known at all...

Re: Blessings balance?
 

I thought Fire 9 was the most powerful bless. Are you sure you'd want every bless be that powerful? I wouldn't. Especially if the blesses would work with each other and not just add the same effect (like extra damage) many times. Double or triple blesses would become even more ridiculous than they already are.

Some things are known about the afflictions. I don't know the details, but I remember the exact numbers of how Curse and Regeneration affect it being mentioned few years back... At least regeneration has changed since then, though.

Re: Blessings balance?
 

Well, again, my thoughts are "all other things being equal" -- I'm fully open to the possibility that all other things are not equal. However, Fire's got a lot going for it as a school of magic and a bless - great evocation spells, decent summons, excellent lower-level bless (who doesn't want +attack?), and an outstanding high-level bless with flaming weapons.

So, I'm not sure how other schools balance against that. I'm open to discussion, but I'd prefer that if Fire 9 is going to be the most powerful bless, then other schools should either have better 4 blesses than Fire (tough to pull at this point), better summons, better spells, or some other balancing factor to justify the weaker 9 bless. Otherwise, if all other factors are pretty much even, I'd like to see the 9 bless effects even out as well.

Does that make sense?

Re: Blessings balance?
 

Fire got nurfed in Dom3 though. From 9 AP to 6 AP damage.

Re: Blessings balance?
 

I recall someone stating that he chance to get an affliction has to do with the amount of damage an attack deals relative to the target's total HPs, and maybe even the target's remaining HPs. I don't remember who it was that was speaking about it, though.

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Re: Blessings balance?
 

Death magic 9 gives Death weapon to sacred troops. Death weapons have a CHANCE to do additional death damage to the target. Not the same thing as fire weapons. Both are magical though.

100% affilction chance is basically double chance to cause affliction to the target.

Devs can correct me if I misremembered.

Re: Blessings balance?
 

That's wonderful. Combine the increased affliction chance with the increased damage, and you have guerilla tactics that death nations can use. They can send smaller, expendable armies of undead and priests earlier in the game to attack enemies, dealing a lot of damage and afflictions before they die, ruining the larger defending armies.

Cheap sacreds like flagellants might also be good for something like this.

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Re: Blessings balance?
 

My thoughts exactly.