Artifact buffs and tweaks!

A lot of much-needed artifact love! Probably more after DG is back from vacation :)

Mighty girdle finally mighty

Doing something I've been meaning to do forever. FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT.

Then maybe you should do it you bastert

copy paste code op pls nerf

NOW TRULY MIGHTY LIKE A FIRE DRAKE!

Why was adding luck so hard

Copypasting the whole thing is probably a bad idea!

Thanks for the help Shib!

had to fight DG for 2% chance to proc

Fire Dragon Shield: Consider removing the damage affinity. It's a dangerous stat (to stack) and doesn't really fit the dragon theme (No dragons have affinity). It would also be more interesting if the breath went off even if the target is out of range or dead, both because it can hit closer targets and give players a warning about the shield when attacking an NPC with it.

Black Mesh: I didn't realize how OP this thing is in the right circumstances. Consider reducing the activation range to 10 (normal sight range), and the pull range to 5 (and check knockback immunity on the target).

Block is weak and unrewarding so shields have to be fairly interesting and strong to be worthwhile, that said shield artifacts are generally garbage. Affinity is fine because that's all that shield does, protect against fire, what are you gonna stack it with anyways? And I don't necessarily disagree with the second point but procs aren't supposed to always be under your control.

Black Mesh was modified to be actually good at its theme which is fighting against ranged opponents, if we make that only work at range 5 then what's the point?

Block can be quite powerful when used correctly (by the player usually).

Rather than give the Fire Dragon Shield affinity, give it an increased resistance cap (~ 10%) instead. My suggestion on the proc reduces control actually. Also note that it will increase the user's equilibrium when it goes off.

I'm suggesting the Black Mesh work at range 10 (max bow range) but only pulls in 5 grids. Remember that it constricts opponents in melee range, which makes it quite powerful against both ranged and melee attackers alike.

Block is powerful... in normal maybe :D and balancing around normal is poor balance. I'll look into the fire breath proc specifics later for sure, don't want it increasing equi, and going off regardless of the target being dead could be good, I still think the affinity is fine however, and you honestly have next to nothing to stack it with, other than primal which is bad and costs you a slot and a whole stat to be effective. I'll think about the range on Black Mesh but it's probably fine considering the number of ways you have of closing a gap as anything that uses a shield, making it into an attractive shield skill seems fine to me, that's what this shield is supposed to be doing. It pretty much always did that, just not 100% of the time and any number of targets per turn. You can't really control what you pull in unless you're only fighting one enemy, it'll also stay relevant into lategame as a swap item which is fine honestly. Thanks for the feedback!

Edit: Pretty sure flame breath isn't increasing equi since I just tested on a wyrmic, and when would a target being dead after proccing block happen anyways? I keep being told these effects -need- a target to proc, so even without the "dead" part of the code, and painfully killing things through retaliation damage a few dozen times it produced no results.

Added 1 commit:

• de4e6d0d - This probably won't do anything but eh, also woops spacing issues.

Well, remember to nerf the shields when Block gets fixed.

Hrm, Is removing the apr field from Spellblade safe? Cos those values overwrite the base item's combat table and I think the game might implode if there isn't an apr field.

It's fine, nothing breaks if you don't have that field.

That's cool then. (and weird. How are you supposed to know which things are gonna break if they are missing around here XD )

Umm.. the whole game is balanced around Normal :) It's the only difficulty level for which all player classes are required to be viable.

RE: Equilibrium on the Fire Dragon Shield: My bad on the equilibrium usage, the GitLab file view cut off the ignore_ressources flag setting.

RE: The Black Mesh on higher difficulty: Consider that a NPC will equip this if it can, and so there's a fair chance that it can be used against the player sometime in the campaign. If a player shoots (or uses a ranged melee attack against) said NPC (How about scatter Shot against a room of things with the shield bearer out of sight range?), he/she gets pulled in, constricted, and then it's the NPC's turn. This is pretty much automatic death. The only defense for the player is to actively inspect the equipment of almost every NPC that might have this shield, which is absolutely no fun at all.

Normal is a difficulty that can be cleared with pretty much no talents, Nightmare is a difficulty that can be cleared with antimagic archmage, so close to nothing. Insane is where what sucks and what doesn't starts to shine so balancing around insane is a safe way to have something be solid at both insane and lower difficulties.

Balancing for normal guarantees your stuff won't be fun or viable in anything higher, like the old bulwark, rogue, etc. There's no point in balancing for the lowest possible denominator, good examples of this are shibari's brawler and sun paladin designs.

As for Black Mesh, that's a problem with ranged combat and the class being weak and having no counters to being pulled-in, I don't really see a reason to hinder creative space because of those edge cases, there's already plenty of talents that do this. These days you can just mouseover and see things wearing an artifact or not, maybe you should play more often hachem! Shields are also pretty much the worst fixedarts in the game, even worse than ammo when compared to randarts, so some big, fun buffs is just what they need.

Anyways my changes have been tested and have been okay'd by DG beforehand, it'd be nice if there were a little less secondhand policing in them.

DarkGod's most common commit message is a tie between 'plop' and 'oups'. He makes mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. This is a collaborative effort, so people are going to give your submissions a quick look over.

Things becoming unevenly unreliable in Insane is why I don't think you should balance around Insane and why I think it will be harmful for lower difficulty levels. You are building on an unbalanced foundation. Insane is a cludgy inflation of zone levels at its core and this makes various things weaker at different rates. If you want to balance Insane, you need to start at the bottom and address the causes of the imbalance, not start at the top and adjust things that affect every difficulty level.

Normal is the highest played difficulty and DG has said that it is the balance point. Your consistent claims that buffing things to make them work on Insane won't detrimentally affect other difficulty levels is either shallow or selfish.

That's not how difficulty works HousePet, not that you would know since you don't play the game.

Insane is a difficulty where in theory every class and race SHOULD be viable. Changes based around insane don't detrimentally affect other difficulties and my examples make it clear, if you think Sun Paladin or Brawler are an issue at all as opposed to things like Ogre that make the game easier by existing then you're wrong, did you even play those since they were remade? What separates insane players from normal players is being able to differentiate the good and bad options, knowing what mechanics are stronger than others, how to prepare for situations, and when to do or not do things, so unless you make stuff braindead powerful and frontloaded it won't have a negative impact on lower difficulties. If something works on insane it will definitely work on lower difficulties, and if it's too strong you nerf it, doing the opposite is harder and takes more time.

My merge request has 18 comments at the time of you posting, every other has 0 even if they're a way bigger deal to the game than some artifact buffs. I have a far more solid grasp of balance than you or DG have, and DG trusts my sense for things, and even if I'm not sure I'll always contact some other people like Shibari and Stunt and random players for their input on it, so you can rest assured that I'm not pulling anything out of my ass. I've played several thousand hours and have wins in all the "real" difficulties, naturally excluding madness, and all the experienced players will tell you that this is how things work, in fact I'm sure you've been told similar things before. Calling people shallow or selfish because you have no idea what you're talking about isn't an argument. You've been known to break the game and not test your code several times, so you should triple check your changes instead of trying to find faults in someone else's work.

Also I've had this discussion with you many times before, I'm absolutely tired of having to respond to your trolling. You figured you can't do it on the forums so you'll do it here. I've asked you nicely and I've asked you badly, but it'd be nice if you could stop going out of your way to take shots at what I do or say, I don't find your feedback particularly insightful or helpful since you clearly lack actual game experience, I'm not willing to cooperate with you anymore at this point, and I'd appreciate if you'd keep to yourself. You most certainly won't since that's how you work, but your opinions don't mean anything to me.