EternalLurker
..In Ge.Ne.Sis you're playing with a party, not with one character. Sisily's damage output is pretty crappy if you focus solely on Magic, but most people do so anyway because that makes her an overwhelmingly powerful battery for the rest of the party so that can dish out dam
pyromania
Well, anyway. It is odd to have green's scheme be "Evade and movement" all the way up to the end and then you get hit with an evade *nerf*. If it was to be on one of them then the Blue Dodge+ skill should have been on the Green center perk instead. Of the perks...Gelyon's Green gives him resists and +15% HP Regen (for a total of 30) and +5 Power/Magic. He loses one range though, which sucks. Castling can help with that though. And the +5 Power/Magic is pretty nice since more energy and more physical damage if he doesn't want to rely on Soul Pact.Gelyon's Red perk gives him 7 Range, -1 Endurance, and turns 60% of his physical damage into healing. By the time he gets that, assuming a power build, that is liable to be some pretty bloody awesome parasitic healing.Sissy's Blue gives her +4 Power (nice), -2 Magic (sucks), and Slows a target by 33%. The 33% is on top of a -4 already for blue, so she reduces all enemies down to either 1 (11 or less speed) or 2 (12 or greater speed) actions. That is pretty dang nice (and is on top of the already hax Rainbow Blood). She has to give up the magic from her initial perk though, which does suck for energy reasons. Still with Rainbow Blood and all the speed debuffing Sissy becomes a real honest-to-god tank. I didn't think it possible for all three characters to be tanks but that is really cool.Sissy's White gives her 150% damage reflection and +800 HP, while bringing her resist to 0... This one feels really weird too. Unless the reflection actually means she takes 0 damage (which I don't think it does) this means she is sacrificing the benefits of her Level 1 and 2 perks for offense. This doesn't feel in-line with the white series at all, honestly. And I can't see her HP*2 damage registering on the damage scale very much by the time she gets to L3 perks, so it just strikes me as a bad tradeoff. Healing isn't very strong in Ge.Ne.Sis outside of HP Soulbursting, so the extra damage you squeeze out of this probably isn't worth putting Sissy and all of her Energy-generation at risk. Maybe if it reflected all damage instead of just magic?Nera's Green has been covered. +1 Move and flying typed. I noticed though that it keeps the "Power increases max HP". Why not nix this and instead keep or improve upon the "Dodge rate up" factor from the Blade Dancer perk? That fits more with the green tree being "Dodge and movement" and it probably doesn't change her overall durability since it makes her more susceptible to accurate attacks.Nera's Red... is another odd one. Does the power being set to 35 stack with the L1/L2 Perks for 40 Power? Ignoring all defense is certainly sweet, and the defense/resist being set to 0 isn't as big a deal as it looks like for PCs. The dodge being set to 0 sucks hard, though. Still with Fool out Nera probably can parasitic heal very very effectively. This is incredibly valuable against enemies high defense, too. This one is weird but pretty cool.Have I mentioned I love how this game uses skills to very cool eff
EternalLurker
QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecOut of curiosity, are you FORCED to change central perk if you take all green/red/blue perks?QuoteEndQuoteEEndYup, at least with the current code. I definitely like it that way.quoteo(post=2665:date=Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM:name=Pyro)QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecIt is odd to have green's scheme be "Evade and movement" all the way up to the end and then you get hit with an evade *nerf*.QuoteEndQuoteEEndNo, you're not getting hit by an "evade nerf". You're trading some Dodge for Movement. All of the mono-color trees require that you give up something for specific rewards. That's the price of such single-minded focus. N.G trades Dodge for Movement; N.R trades defense for physical offense; G.R trades Endurance for Range; G.G trades Range for Endurance; S.B trades Magic for physical offense; and S.W trades Resist for magical damage reflection.quoteo(post=2665:date=Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM:name=Pyro)QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecI didn't think it possible for all three characters to be tanks but that is really cool.QuoteEndQuoteEEndMy preferred party build is going to be Sisily.tank, Gelyan.tank, Neraine.wtf, where Neraine is Magic-focused to act as the team battery and Rave Dancing to crush low-health enemies when necessary.quoteo(post=2665:date=Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM:name=Pyro)QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecSissy's White gives her 150% damage reflection and +800 HP, while bringing her resist to 0... This one feels really weird too. Unless the reflection actually means she takes 0 damage (which I don't think it does) this means she is sacrificing the benefits of her Level 1 and 2 perks for offense. This doesn't feel in-line with the white series at all, honestly.QuoteEndQuoteEEndI thought that was the case as well, since "resists" was pluralized, but An clarified that general Resist drops to 0 while the buffs of her level 1 and 2 perks remain. Even without that, however, it's a pretty powerful perk. Look at Reciful's perk, Heaven's Child. It only reflects 50% of all damage. Divine Retribution reflects 4 times that amount; even if it's magic-focused that's pretty incredible.quoteo(post=2665:date=Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM:name=Pyro)QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecWhy not nix [her HP-from-power buff] and instead keep or improve upon the "Dodge rate up" factor from the Blade Dancer perk?QuoteEndQuoteEEndA: Because the Green perk tree would be broken as all hell. Nigh-unhittability and the ability to retreat to the High Priestess for heals whenever something manage to damage her a bit? Really?B: Because the flavor of all the central perks is that they share one characteristic. Neraine gets more HP from Power than other characters. Gelyan gets +Range at the cost of not being able to move and attack in the same turn. Sisily gets +1 range.quoteo(post=2665:date=Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM:name=Pyro)QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 06:16 PM) quotecNera's Red... is another odd one. Does the power being set to 35 stack with the L1/L2 Perks for 40 Power?QuoteEndQuoteEEndNope. Neraine's Power is set to 35 after all other effects, stats and other perks included. If you really want to max out your Power at 40 feel free to Moon Waltz again just for the hell of it. The High Priestess' Grand Blessing works
pyromania
QUOTE (EternalLurker @ Feb 25 2010, 07:42 PM) quotecYup, at least with the current code. I definitely like it that way.QuoteEndQuoteEEndDoesn't make much of a difference from where I am standing, but I was curious.quoteoQUOTE quotecNo, you're not getting hit by an "evade nerf". You're trading some Dodge for Movement. All of the mono-color trees require that you give up something for specific rewards. That's the price of such single-minded focus. N.G trades Dodge for Movement; N.R trades defense for physical offense; G.R trades Endurance for Range; G.G trades Range for Endurance; S.B trades Magic for physical offense; and S.W trades Resist for magical damage reflection.QuoteEndQuoteEEndOutside of S.W you don't trade down in what you have been building up. Better to sacrifice HP for Dodge/move.Evade nerf is a very good way to describe it. Neraine's evade with the L2/L3 Green perks at higher levels would be ~75% or so. Giving up 160 dodge, say, would mean giving up about ~40% of her durability to evadable attacks. That is more significant a sacrifice than... anything besides Sissy's Resist?quoteoQUOTE quotecI thought that was the case as well, since "resists" was pluralized, but An clarified that general Resist drops to 0 while the buffs of her level 1 and 2 perks remain. Even without that, however, it's a pretty powerful perk. Look at Reciful's perk, Heaven's Child. It only reflects 50% of all damage. Divine Retribution reflects 4 times that amount; even if it's magic-focused that's pretty incredible.QuoteEndQuoteEEndReciful's is powerful because your damage-to-HP ratio is high (that is to say, you do damage on a larger scale than you have HP). If Reciful has uh 70K HP that means you must *take* 35K damage to kill him. That is many times your PC's HP totals. By comparison Sisy with say 7K HP would be 14K damage, which is good, but she must die to do it, and it must be magic damage. Sisy just attacking would do ~9K/round surely, and likely much, much more in her blue build. Don't get me wrong, it isn't worthless by any means (Free damage never is), but it doesn't seem that good and should not be compared to a boss version for the reason mentioned above.quoteoQUOTE quotecA: Because the Green perk tree would be broken as all hell. Nigh-unhittability and the ability to retreat to the High Priestess for heals whenever something manage to damage her a bit? Really?B: Because the flavor of all the central perks is that they share one characteristic. Neraine gets more HP from Power than other characters. Gelyan gets +Range at the cost of not being able to move and attack in the same turn. Sisily gets +1 range.QuoteEndQuoteEEndI don't think A is true. Once Nera gets up to 75% evade she is already so tanky to evadable attacks that it barely matters. The problem for her of course is that she is not at all durable to attacks that are *not* evadable. And there are a lot of these. She is no more invincible than she was in part 1, just more specialized. This build eats it to enemies like Chio, the beholder, the genies, and... well tons of things that have ITE damage quite messily. I'm sure Part 2 would have even more of these. B doesn't really matter. The other two's static perks are simply range-related in the first place, whereas Nera's isn't and hence is already inconsistent. Another nice thing about giving up HP for Dodge for Sky Dancer is that it contrasts very nicely with Rave Dancer giving up Dodge for HP. Since I do believe that the 35 Power contributes to Nera's HP score (something I didn't realize till just now and makes me respect that build more).Evade is nice in Ge.Ne.Sis but enemies tend to bust out the evade ignoring attacks enough for it to be not broken. One of the very few games I've seen that has evade work for both magic and physicals where it was balanced well. Very hot but not so much so that it is potentially gamebreak
EternalLurker
QUOTE (Pyro @ Feb 25 2010, 08:30 PM) quotecReciful's is powerful because your damage-to-HP ratio is high (that is to say, you do damage on a larger scale than you have HP). If Reciful has uh 70K HP that means you must *take* 35K damage to kill him. That is many times your PC's HP totals. By comparison Sisy with say 7K HP would be 14K damage, which is good, but she must die to do it, and it must be magic damage. Sisy just attacking would do ~9K/round surely, and likely much, much more in her blue build. Don't get me wrong, it isn't worthless by any means (Free damage never is), but it doesn't seem that good and should not be compared to a boss version for the reason mentioned above.QuoteEndQuoteEEndAfter discussing this with Pyro for a while, this definitely seems to be a very valid point. 200% damage reflection is pretty low for Sisily, who can't take that much damage in the first place at Resist 0. What're everyone's thoughts on popping her third White perk up from 50% damage reflection to 100% and increasing her central perk from 150% to 2
pyromania
bviously I agree, although I think the specialization of it (vs. magic only) means that either it needs to be accompanied by some other boon or Divine Breaths need to be more availa
EternalLurker
on't need a Divine Breath. Power 15 / Magic 9 / Endurance 10 / Agility 20, or Agility 18 / Power 19 if you prefer, gives her 4-5 attacks a turn and enables Divine Retribution when fighting Magic-users or Petrifying Glare for Power-whores. She'll outdamage the former by adding 3x their damage to her own 5x Warp Tornadoes (or any better attacks she gets later), and she'll outdamage the latter by dropping their damage outputs immensely and hitting 'em with attacks at Power = 15 + (enemy Power
chamomileess
QUOTE (EternalLurker @ Mar 3 2010, 09:29 PM) quotecAfter discussing this with Pyro for a while, this definitely seems to be a very valid point. 200% damage reflection is pretty low for Sisily, who can't take that much damage in the first place at Resist 0. What're everyone's thoughts on popping her third White perk up from 50% damage reflection to 100% and increasing her central perk from 150% to 200%?QuoteEndQuoteEEndI think that would be fairly good, seeing as how with her white-perk build, she's meant to be a bit more of a tank than what she is now (with the resistance increase and a
mokona96
ctually, that would be kind of overpowered. She already needs 10 endurance to get the perk (which is a lot for Sisi), and she gets either 800 or 1650 extra health, which is more than most non-boss enemies (so far). And she can also either pull out or get healed if her health is low. I think it's f
EternalLurker
The thing is that Divine Retribution doesn't do anything against physical attacks. Most enemy groups are a mix of physical and magical opponents. There is the worry that magic-focused bosses could be completely shut down by such a build, but really, if you're suffering through the game with a character that does nothing against 2/3 of the opponents she'll face, I think you deserve to have an easy boss fight every once in a while. Most bosses have both physical and magical attacks, so as long as Ge.Ne.Sis 2's enemies choose the right attack to use in combat, she'll have very few good matchups.My only concern with the Endurance-spam + Divine Retribution build is that with her ridiculous 13370 HP and Defense the High Priestess' aura might make her a decent tank even against physical foes. She still wouldn't be able to do any significant amount of damage to them, but just blocking them to allow other units to attack from behind her could be frighteningly effective.So I think 300% magical damage reflection would make Divine Retribution properly effective at what it does as compared to the current 200%, but I want a pure Endurance-spam Sisily to be less brutal against physical opponents. After all, the Blood->Glare tree is supposed to be the Power-killer whereas the Guard->Retribution tree should be anti-Magic. Allowing Endurance-spam to make the latter be anti-everything is a bit of an issue. What if Divine Retribution dropped both Resist and Defense to 0? I think that'd compensate nicely for bringing its magical damage reflection up another hundred percent. It'd make the White tree properly specialized against Magic like it should be so that it doesn't obsolete the Blue tree.To summarize, my suggestions for the White tree: increase Mirror Guard's magical damage reflection from 50% to 100%; increase Divine Retribution's magical damage reflection from 150% to 200% (total increase is from 200% to 300%); cause Divine Retribution to lower Sisily's Defense to 0 (in addition to the 0 Resist effect)
mokona96
And the Blood->Glare tree is epic enough with +4 Power, 4 Agility piercing, 300 resist and 150 defense piercing, 33% Power absorption, and 33% slo
EternalLurker
Endurance: I think dropping Defense to 0 makes sure this won't be overpowered.Power/Endurance: Relies on Essence of Slyness for healing, so dropping Defense to 0 is okay.Magic->Soul Bond: This is incredibly overpowered already (Soul Bond probably needs to be nerfed for many, many reasons), so dropping its Defense to 0 won't hurt it much at all.Magic: Doesn't have enough base Defense to notice the Defense->0 effect. Terrible idea anyway; not enough health to reflect much damage even at 300% reflection.I don't think it'd be "anti-Sisily&qu
kirbyatemyfood
i think sisi's white tree is perfectly fine, because if you throw your points into endurance(with maybe a few elsewhere) you should have close to 10k life and 500ish defense, meaning you take half from physical atacks, plus any extra damage thats more than your life is still deflected, because if not then when you beat Reciful with Isis her life should have droped to 0 before the move was over (because there was no damage to be deflected) in that small gap An made to ensure that it would kill him.with this in mind it would be nice if An could post his idea's for new abilities here because some move could change everyone's view of these perks.as for the Hanged man's agilty, it should stay at 2 actions because with 3 you could do 2 grand crosses and on an enemy with 0 resist, they would take 60% more damage from cold torment, which with about a 30% blue resist reducter, with the hanged mans max 16 magic(19 if HP soulbursts) would be deadly on a blue natured enemy, plus there could be who knows what bonuses from the new tarots, but his arctic call could use a buff, i was thinking 3 possible options, raise damage, increase range, or add an effect that makes the enemy skip their move phase, immoblileizing them or something similar.i honestly think that the fool and the HM are equally good, they just play different roles, the fool plays as a support naturally with his caslting being able to add alot to your possible options, his esscesnce causes black atacks to leech, which everyone but Magician and lover have atacks that are that element, and thunder rod and plasma solstice allow him to atack anyone on the field, the HM plays as tank/damage that copes well allies with his dark gravity pulling enemies to their doom with your characters well placed, his arctic call an aoe that doesn't hurt allies, high endurance with pain eater making him stronger the lower his life and with high life hes less likely to die with the damage bonus higher than someone with lower health, he has balanced atack stats, allowing better focuses for personal prefera
EternalLurker
A'right, I think we're all pretty sold on "Defense Reduction" => "Black Resistance Reduction".I'm rather busy on Memorial Day, but on Wednesday I'll run through Ge.Ne.Sis (the game and the code) and do some hardcore math to get a better feel for the balance of Sisily's Retribution tree. The issue I have with it (after Pyro pointed this out) is that the rate at which enemy health increases throughout part 1 implies that by part 2 enemy health will be fairly monstrous to balance the equally overwhelming player damage, so enemies may well average 2-3x her health. (Remember that stats are generally correlated to damage by stat-squared, not linearly; Endurance increases health linearly, by contrast, so Sisily will fall well behind enemy health quite quickly. Even Green.Gelyan will fall behind in health, so it's his 55% health regeneration that is integral to G.G's tanking; Endurance-spamming Sisily doesn't have nearly that level of regen.)Increasing Arctic Call's range is an option I hadn't considered. Good catch. I still think damage would be a more helpful boost, but range might help. I was thinking that Pain Eater's damage multiplier should be increased by about 1.2x to help out most of his damage, but that wouldn't be enough for Arctic Call (which is weak), so maybe a range boost to it a boost to the HM's Berserk effect would balance him. Of course, for a range that's so overwhelming, he'd probably have to be weakened by enabling Arctic Call's friendly fire.*sizeo:1/sizeoThis coupon is nonredeemable by any and all means. By owning this coupon you agree to our Terms and Services in their entirety and thus immediately relinquish all rights to the coupon as well as any other possessions you own including (but not limited to) your house(s), your family, your person, and your pet(s). Failure to comply may result in civil and criminal penalties. Thank you for your cooperation.sizec/s
mokona96
agree, but with friendly fire, people won't use Arctic Call as much unless there are a lot of enemies or no allies. It could be done though, it's just my opinion that it would be underu
obscurans
'Discovered' this since I completely gimped my party being a speed-freak. Yes, Nera went to 20, Sisi herself to 18 and even Gely hit 14. Well, eventually wizened up slightly, so pumped on Nera (5 attacks... at 0), magic on Sisi and originally power on Gely. Eventually stopped working halfway to Tale Memory, so used the divine breath and respecced Gely into 14 agility / max endurance. I practically never attacked with anyone in retaliation range unless it's an archer already - hence the useless speed-Nera.I'm pretty sure most of the fights just doubled in difficulty with no useful stats on the party at all (almost a no-stat game?), but this was remediable with the great priestess. Half of the later fights: try and block off everyone into a corner, Nera jumps out to blink-tank (maybe), Magician/Sisi/Emi as batteries for Fool/Gely to shoot and HP to buff. As long as you can regen+heal off one full round of attacks, grind your way towards max power on either of them, and rod twirl/armor crusher them out.For example, Armlus: rushed Nera forward to summon HP, everyone stands back and summons, eventually had a turn where he didn't kill HP in one go. Then, Nera runs back, castles Fool into place, with everyone else more than his full move away. Buff and fire. I ended that fight with ~30 power on the Fool.Armlus reloaded: boxed everyone in with Fool in one end and Gely on the other. One of the two tanked Armlus himself (switch when getting low), the others hunted his companions. By that time I had the regen perk on Gely, so armor crusher x3 + grand blessing + way too much regen did it. Close to 40 power on Gely at the end.Skylord, both fights: rushed the flying people over to the larger island, double-castled my way over there with HP and probably Emi as battery, he mills about getting shot to death progressively faster.Tale Memory: just even longer. Double-castled Gely into the rock gap, Tale spammed Sisi and Emi dead, but to no avail. Gely only fights , Magician helps a bit if no attack occurred, Fool twirls twice a day. HP buffs either Gely himself or Fool then the others in rotation if Tale spams spell. I had 30+ power on Fool and 40 straight on Gely, hitting around 20k a single crusher. Near the end, HP didn't even have to do anything, he'd leech enough damage back as-is. That's when I started attacking for once. In retrospect, never even summoned Hanged Man for the soulburst.The whole point is, I overcame complete lack of power by grinding up the wazoo until I get it anyway. That time when I noticed HP now buffs by 2 was a happy-broken one. Not to say this is a very viable build, but the only real danger to this party, other than sheer boredom at 50-turn fights, is wide open fields - which just happen to not exist here. 3 tanks (Nera, Gely, Fool) can plug practically any hole and all three will drain off Fool's essence. OK, and field spells, but only Tale does it - even Beholder arms don't do much, as Stop doesn't disallow defensive fighting.So somewhere back in the thread someone was talking about powering up Rod Twirl... that would just make this (compensating) strat even more overpowered. Oh, and I'm using endurance Gely without Soul Pact for one.As a RPGer and wannabe-game-dev, I know having linear and quadratic power levels will eventually unbalance things, with the x^2 things dominating at the end however low the multipliers are. So basically the linear stuff wins at lower levels and sucks at higher ones (this includes spam-to-40-power), and you'd normally choose not to use it, except if forced, like endurance itself. Technically, even regen is quadratic as HP rises linearly then regen % also does.A (partial) list of stuff with just linear modifiers:- Frozen Steps (wondering why it was so weak later on)- Soul Pact (basically why I didn't use it)- Fiery Flowers (well, now I know why I used warp tornado)- Energy Sphere (um... more power for less? I knew both skills were doing equal damage on 50-energy battles)- Divine Retribution would be (linear on HP which is still linear on Endurance)Nonlinear stuff:- Moon Waltz (linear... but linear , part of why Moon Waltzing is so powerful)- Defenses and pierces (yes it's linear, but 1/(1-x) on top of that means high numbers rock)But I really have no idea, I'm still writing engine code so nowhere near testing mechanics
EternalLurker
eah, Grand Blessing should not increase Power by 2, only one. I have a major problem with that. It's a significant part of the reason the High Priestess is the most powerful Ta
pyromania
Check out how things look at Lvl 20 here: http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,4674.0.htmlYeah, buffing Endurance can eventually make you very very hard to kill without magic, since the HP buff is linear, the Defense buff gets progressively better the higher you go (just look at maxed out END Gelyan's defense game...) and the Regen kicks in. Very conceivable that you can reach a point where things just can't make damage stick past your regen. Of course you sacrifice your offense stat for this and since that MATTERS A LOT for damage it may be a fair tradeoff (except for Gelyan who cheats and has Soul Pact, which still isn't GREAT damage endgame and eats HP).The quadratic nature of some attacks is COOL for what you can do if the appropriate stat is buffed up (Moon Waltz being as great as it is? absolutely love the design), but may unbalance some builds that focus on stats that aren't offensive. This is one of the reasons I would like to see it be easier to rebuild someone on a whim (maybe make an item that lets you rebuild one PC per fight or something if you want to 'balance' it somehow.Also if you can manage to spend 15 entire turns buffing with the High Priestess to hit 40 Power than you know what? You deserve to win. If it is too easy to do this it just means the level design needs to be rethought so that it isn't just sticking in a cor
timbits1o1
ut you can do just that in the fight against the fool. he doesn't move and you can stay out of range
pyromania
ny thought given to implementing an enemy AI improvement where they will move to a range and attack if they start their turn right next to the target? This is a notable "That was stupid, thanks enemy!" moment whenever an archer (that can move and attack) decides to smack Nera from point blank ra
