Legend of the Invincibles

[Whiskeyjack]

#Dark Dragon Legacy
Is it so amazing only in chapter 9 on Elvish Seers against demons or overall?

It is amazing on any unit depending on arcane attacks (which is also reachable through Holy Sword etc.). On other units I personally think it´s rather weak, but I´m not sure about part I/early part II. On units that can AMLA arcane pen themselves and/or can use staves (for Lethal Staff) it´s friggin ridiculous as you can build units with strong arcane offense easily and then practically change their damage type to lightning by reaching 100 pen with ease (on a related note: pen only goes to 0 resistance or does it make the unit get negative defenses? I´m not entirely sure...). The changes to the skilling order are debatable, but I think Xellos suggestion of reducing the pen to 10 for the 3 AMLAs providing it is reasonable.

#Spell suck
Does it still fail to do its job on 3.1.20? Because I have found a bug there and fixed it, so I believe that it should be okay since Thursday (if you have started the scenario after the update).

I played a lot of scenarios yesterday and I think I´m on 3.1.20 since you published it.

@Xellos: Wouldn´t she have really bad resistances when you give her so much spell% and pen? I´m quite surprised that she can kill hordes of demons without going down herself in the process (my own Seer, though without highlander, is quite strong as well, but needs the healing and small defensive support of a Faerie Incarnation if there are some strong demons - and she has all resistances >50 IIRC). How did you get leech? That might make the difference when the damage numbers climb this high...

Regarding ways of building:

Spoiler:

They heavily depend on the items you have and your playstyle. That´s why I tried to point out that you can never get a true balance between your paths except for lategame, because especially early on those factors play a big role.
An example: If you get the suck+2 knife in the first few scenarios, knife is quite strong, but building a physical fighter with Efraim without that and strong defensive pickups wasn´t all that good (it´s also quite hard to get physical penetration early on, which makes him very vulnerable to some demons) early. Now that I´m in Inferno, can craft most items and have a good pool to choose from, it´s a different matter - you can look to it that (close to) endgame builds are equally strong, but "balancing" the rest is not really possible, especially not through subjective input from one or two players.
You always talk about how one playstyle is stronger than all others, but I think that is because you shoehorned yourself into that playstyle. As long as it is strong enough to solo and the others aren´t I´d be inclined to agree with you, but afterwards? I build a purely caster focused Lethalia on my last run and while she needed support because of sustain and was weak in meele, she was also my hardest hitting unit (on single target with a friggin big AoE attached - though my dwarvish berserker and highlander Lord were a little stronger if you only count single target) - it´s all a matter of play- and build style. Has anyone ever actually tried building a caster Efraim? Probably not, because physical was just easier for defense/sustain early on, but without trying...
I think dabbers calculation of AMLA strengths (after which Dugi buffed most redeem spells) a while back was a lot more helpful than subjective "feelings" on the matter.

This is not meant as a personal offense in any way, I´m just trying to explain my philosophy on balancing without objective data from hundreds/thousands of players for such a versatile game as LotI.

[Xellos]

Whiskeyjack:

(on a related note: pen only goes to 0 resistance or does it make the unit get negative defenses? I´m not entirely sure..

It can reduce to less than 0
Just hover your mouse cursor on enemy hp and you can see enemy resistances.
Lightning is weaker than good penetration.

About Seer:
I spend some of my gems (like most of good gems ) and crafted her Soul Render as Essence weapon(leech for weapon attacks).
She doesn't has the best risestances but i found 3 paranoia cloacks. She has one.
i also crafted her sorcery boots, sorcery gauntlets, dying dreams helmet and gave her tears of dead and ring of death aura
staff is lethal staff
She has following resistances while solo (not near my units(70 arcane, 70 cold, 70 fire, 65 blade, 40 impact, 58 pierce and despair 15 and leeches (healing from enemies at the beginning of turn)
Remember that if the enemy demon has only 60% arcane then she deal exactly 70(48 +45% because of penetration) damage per hit and heals by 7 that's really a lot.

Yes i can agree that she has really good items (soul render and paranoia cloack). But i think that with the exception of soul render they are easy to get. I found 2 or 3 paranoia cloaks or lethal staves.

EDIT:
Balancing...
I use math.
5% is equal to +1 to damage when you have 20 damage on hit if enemy resistances are 0.
Efraim has blade ranged attack and blade melee attack
you can buy +1 melee and +1 ranged damage (2 normal amlas)
you can buy 5% penetration two times (2 redeem amlas)
so if your efraim has 10 melee and 10 ranged then he will has:
11 and 11 or 12 10
or
10 and 10 and 10% penetration
what is better? The answer is simple - you gain more from penetration. And i know that you can argue with 10 damage per hit but Efraim in reality has more damage and with his damage you simply gain more from penetration.
How hard is to get redeem penetration? You don't need a lot of redeem levels. It's harder to gain powerful spells than 1 penetration and weapons.

Has anyone ever actually tried building a caster Efraim? Probably not, because physical was just easier for defense/sustain early on, but without trying...

And about spellcaster Efraim - i read all his amlas and thought about some builds for casting spells (with set of destruction for +2 spells attacks and without)
I found few quite good ways to create him. But they are similar to your Lethalia - while they can deal really good damage - they need help against larger groups or they could tank really good but without broken damage.
And if you think that no one is going with spellcaster Efraim than probably there is problem with balancing? Because in chapter 6 you don't need sustain. You can easily go with spells if only sustain is a problem. Why you don't wanna?

Dugi said that he like tactical play (and i also like it) so i think that finding some things which are to powerful for solo mode is good. For example paranoia cloak - i think that even if this cloak would decrease your arcane resistance instead of buffing it ... This cloak still would be good.

Tactical play means that your units can't go and kill everything. They need support of other units. Your and my Lethalia need support. They have different roles in army and this is good. I don't wanna debating about which is better because it is like arguing about what is better apple or orange.

dabbers calculation

I also really like his input.

building a physical fighter with Efraim without that and strong defensive pickups wasn´t all that good

You can craft cheap item for sustain (soul hunter or malice). And i think that now it is easier than before (you can buy weapons as first amla because the cost is the same not higher)

EDIT2:
I don't try to say that Efraim solo is better than Efraim with some AoE spells and support of rest army.
I only think that If you want go solo it is better to go with blade and knife than any other combination.
And with last changes it is easier to go solo.

[Dugi]

#DDL and Elvish Seer
So how about making Elvish Seer be slightly less potent offensively, a less melee damage (her AMLA was set before spiritual essence was added) and slightly less penetration and splitting the penetration from Dark Dragon Legacy to require more advancements to build up?

#Efraim vs Lethalia
It's a bit logical that the guy is a fighter and the gal is a caster, but there should be some freedom to choose.
I have weakened Efraim's knives recently, are you reflecting that change in your considerations? Because that should cause Efraim to be weaker in ranged combat if he goes just for weapons. This change does not correct any pre-update Efraims. I have weakened Soul Drinker now, it gives 1 suck but increases the attack count quite significantly.

#Soloing
Is this still valid when it rains blood if you go slowly?

#Spell suck
Can you please upload a save file where it is clearly on the latest version and it doesn't work?

[Xellos]

Dugi:
DDL and Seer:
It is mostly combination of DDL and her AMLAs when she is really strong. I think that your idea about changes in DDL is good.
About Seer i don't think that she is incredibly strong without DDL. Just she has incredibly good synergy with DDL. She can't solo without DDL. And that's ok.
She has many problems (need a lot of AMLAs to work, she has weak resistancess). She need others to work. And she is lvl 5 unit.

So i have doubts about nerfing her. It is easier to create elvish assassin with similar offensive power.

Efraim:
I take that into consideration. But i have different thoughts about it.
I think that going with weapons then blade penetration then absorb is really, really good.
So i take 4 amlas to weapons for +4 damage and +1 attack for both weapons and then i go with 5 amlas to penetration then absorb
They are cheaper then before and incredibly strong.
after 4 amlas i have 16 5 melee, 12 4 whirlwind and 12 5 ranged Efraim. That's without items. Only 4 amlas.

I don't think that using normal amlas is worth.
I need 4 amlas to gain +3 sword damage and +1 attack
i think that it is better to take weapons (+4 damage +1 attack for melee and ranged, cleave)
with that it is better to take penetration
I also like to take faster and fly and absorb
with that i used quite a lot of amlas. Only then i can start thinking about taking normal amlas.

If weapons cost like normal AMLAs ... Maybe they should give only +1 ?
That way it won't be obvious what is better. And still +1 to sword, whirlwind and knife is good as 1 AMLA. Really good.

[Whiskeyjack]

#DDL and Seet
Splitting DDL sounds good. Like Xellos, I´m not sure if Seer needs a nerf besides a little reduction on the Faerie Saber AMLAs (like you said, those where before the times of Otherworldly Essence and are a little too strong an upgrade IMO).

#soloing
My assessment:
Since the lethargy increases linearly, units with either wrath or high hitting attacks and good sustain are able to withstand it for quite some time. Besides some crazy combinations like wrath+a lot of hits+uber sustain soloing shouldn´t be possible anymore after a certain amount of time though. I feel like at the early turns, it hits my squad actually stronger than my "solo" units (most of whom only range around the squad because I mainly fight plants at the moment...) because it includes my healers (who get hurt real bad without other guys to heal them back up - and my two FIs are usually split up) and my units without strong attacks (who get to zero damage pretty fast if they cant get out of the rain).
As I said, up till now I´m mostly fighting plants. I retract my earlier statement and think for those levels it´s fine as is, if I should chance upon any levels that are problematic I´ll tell you.
Sadly, the rain doesn´t kill though - I tried to use it to turn an Exterminator to Lich and he stuck at 1 hp
(just found my second Tome of Liches and I love building a Lich with 5 weapons. I think that´s currently the strongest way to build any unit by far. I think if I tune him a little more, the Ancient Lich in the attached file should be easily able to solo - until he´s a long time in the rain...)

#spell suck
See attached file: just test Leth and the Elvish Seer with their faerie fire against the plants before them. As you can see in "unit information" the suck is only displayed for Leths gossamer (that is the only spell I found which displays it). Leth takes 7 damage per hit, but heals 3 back through absorb(1) and absorb(2) (if you are sure those don´t stack, the one spellsuck she has from Draingloves actually works). The Elvish Seer takes 2 damage and should heal 2 per hit, but is left without any healing whatsoever.

Edit: I told one thing wrong. The above mentioned Seer only has one spell suck, the second one is a normal suck.

Never mind though, I found and fixed the whole bug:
The problem was abilities_events.cfg lines #2054-2057:

Code: Select all

                [variable]
                    name=weapon.specials.dummy[$i].id
                    equals=suck
                [/variable]

That last filter for the final application of the heal was missing the spell_suck filter. Include the following below:

Code: Select all

                [variable]
                    name=weapon.specials.dummy[$i].id
                    equals=suck
                [/variable]
				[or]		#filtering for spell suck
					[variable]
						name=weapon.specials.dummy[$i].id
						equals=spell_suck
					[/variable]
				[/or]

I have tested this and it works.

This only applies to the actual effect though. I don´t know any lua (well I also don´t know WML, just copying from left and right), but your code for the spell suck looks fine for me, I have no idea why it isn´t applied. (If it would work it would be displayed strangely though as you took the % from devastating blow instead of the notation of suck.)
Now I wasted at least an hour searching for the reason why the lua code doesn´t display it, but I didn´t find anything except that stats.cfg line #1931 might have to be "spell_suck=$spell_suck" instead of "suck=$spell_suck" (I have no idea what the code even does, just grasping for straws here.), but changing that didn´t have any impact on at least the item menu...

[Inky]

Hey,

I finally got around to starting this campaign and just finished chapter 1. Incredible campaign so far, and I'm amazed at how much work has gone into the item system; it's really fun and adds a ton of replay value.

Some bugs (I played most of the chapter on version 3.1.19b):

-When removing items from units on the recall list, the item will be put into storage but the unit on the recall list will still appear to have the item equipped and receive the item's bonuses until it advances.

-Elvish sylphs and shydes can use both staves and otherwordly essence weapons (not sure if intentional).

-I had a crafted otherwordly essence weapon equipped to Lethalia before she turned into a preserved lich, and when she turned into a preserved lich, she still had it equipped and received the bonuses despite not being able to use the weapon type anymore.

[Dugi]

#DDL and Seer
Okay, getting all the penetration that DDL gives now takes 2 additional AMLAs. Also, I have reduced the damage of faerie sabre by 20%.

#Efraim
Okay. Now the +2 damage to attacks advancement does +1 damage and +1 axe damage instead (to compensate for Lethalia's absence of ranged weapon).

#Soloing
You seem to be forgetting that the rains can partially overlap. One rain has a radius of 1 hex, two rains can't have a centre on the same hex, but if a unit stands in the centre of a rain and has two more rain centres around it, it takes damage and lethargy from all three, stacking additively, and no wrath or whatever can fix that.
The problem with healers getting hit is indeed a problem. I might remove the damaging effect. If a couple of your units goes to harvest plants, it's all right, what I am trying to prevent is to have your units slowly mow through the demon hordes.

#Spell suck
Yes, there was not only one bug (that I have fixed), but also another bug preventing it from being counted. Thanks for finding it.

I have found the mistake in the lua file, it shows spell suck now for me, so you'll have it from the next version.

@Inky
I like that you like it.

When removing items from units on the recall list, the item will be put into storage but the unit on the recall list will still appear to have the item equipped and receive the item's bonuses until it advances.

Ehm, too bad, I didn't think about this. I will fix it.

]Elvish sylphs and shydes can use both staves and otherwordly essence weapons (not sure if intentional).

Intended. Staves were meant to be items for spellcasters, spellcasters who don't carry staves on them would be in a huge disadvantage.

]I had a crafted otherwordly essence weapon equipped to Lethalia before she turned into a preserved lich, and when she turned into a preserved lich, she still had it equipped and received the bonuses despite not being able to use the weapon type anymore.

This is very hard to fix and it allows quite creative possibilities, so I am leaving it there.

[Xellos]

Dugi:
1 fun thing about Faerie Incarnation
Her melee attack is very unique
She can pick essence weapon, but it won't affect her damage.
Additional attacks won't affect her damage, only additional base attacks.
She can use heavy gauntlets (-2 to damage) without losing damage.

[Dugi]

It was partially a melee spell and partially an attack, so it was quite a mess. I made an attack from it, I think that it would be quite buggy if I made completely a spell from it.

[Delicius169]

Efraim- attack The flying white mage. Kill him. Then drink a potion to sruvive next round. Take a look on his XP and watch how he kills demons in retalions, and how much XP (about 200 for each demone) he gets for killing them. (I have also given him Foul potion. ) He lvlede up, and got no advancement.

I have last version of LOTL, but I started this scenario in pre-last version, I dont know if its wrong or not. And I didnt understood if its fixed, or not.

[Dugi]

That matters. I have fixed that issue in the last quick fix, 3.1.20b and you must have started the scenario on it to avoid it.

[Whiskeyjack]

#Efraim
I´m not sure about that change as there are two things to consider: The basic spell AMLAs from redeem are as strong, but more numerous and %damage is very easy to come by for casters (getting 100% is quite easy, considerably more still possible), while physical fighters can only get close to such numbers by taking Gloomy set - which makes getting anough (magical) defenses very hard again. Therefore one point magic damage per AMLA equals at least 2 points on caster units, while the same can´t be applied to fighters (you could argue against this that fighters usually get more attacks, but at least for Efraim and Lethalia that´s not true (except with anger)). I´m not sure how strong you nerfed staff and never tried the old version because on my last run I played caster Lethalia, but it doesn´t feel so strong to me on the current version and I´m not sure if another nerf is warranted.
We´ll see what those changes bring.

#Soloing
No, I didn´t forget the overlap. That´s why I said that even soloing units can´t do it forever, just that there are some mechanics to delay it for quite some time.
At the moment the rain is starting so early, that I have to play quite reckless if I want to clear all/most of the plants before taking severe penalties, but finishing before the rain gets me too badly is quite easy (though I have an 18 movement hit and run + penetrates Gryphon Rider - reaching the end of a map with up to 28 hexes per turn (I think I could get this number up to 40 if I really wanted to) doesn´t provide any challenge ).

[Xellos]

Whiskeyjack:
Didn't you say that weapon Efraim is better than caster (because better sustain and easier patch) ?

Don't forget with weapons you have better sustain.
Additional Attacks for spells almost always reduce your damage while weapons advancement don't.
It's hard to get +100% magical damage and good resistances and penetration.
When using spells you must fight tactically (as you said: your Lethalia needs help) while going weapons means that you can easily go solo. And it's easier to have good penetration for only blade than for 2 different sources of damage.

I´m not sure how strong you nerfed staff and never tried the old version because on my last run I played caster Lethalia, but it doesn´t feel so strong to me on the current version and I´m not sure if another nerf is warranted.

Slightly. And she gained boosts with cheaper redeem weapons and redeem basic spells(better gossamer). She is still really strong.

[Dugi]

I have to play quite reckless if I want to clear all/most of the plants before taking severe penalties, but finishing before the rain gets me too badly is quite easy

Plant harvesting is not necessary, it's mainly for getting some extra items. I don't think that it's bad that it's more limited. But that Grpyhon Rider could be made a bit slower. Any suggestions what could be reduced?

When using spells you must fight tactically (as you said: your Lethalia needs help) while going weapons means that you can easily go solo.

But you kill faster. And you are now forced to kill faster.

Slightly. And she gained boosts with cheaper redeem weapons and redeem basic spells(better gossamer). She is still really strong.

Is she stronger than before with the staff and gossamer combination? I don't mind at the moment if she's stronger, the point is that the staff + gossamer option should not be the only viable one.

[Whiskeyjack]

Plant harvesting is not necessary, it's mainly for getting some extra items. I don't think that it's bad that it's more limited. But that Grpyhon Rider could be made a bit slower. Any suggestions what could be reduced?

The Gryphon Rider is already very fast and can also get hit and run, perhaps just reduce the max amount he can AMLA up his MP afterwards?

The crazy numbers stem from giving him some +2 boots and the outcast together with full Legacy of the Free. If you really go ham on his movespeed, you´ll have to be very careful how close you get to any kinds of enemies and can´t tag most of them for the hit and run extra (I have some defensive itemisation, especially an intoxicator to enable this and sometimes I still get hurt considerably). I don´t think that really is a problem as running through Inferno scenarios without fighting the enemies much was always possible and a nice option because players who are not especially interested in harvesting gems/items/xp could just skip the grinding (which I think I never did).

If you want to nerf him further, take away his inherent hit and run, then this option will only be available to a Gryphon Rider with LotF.

But honestly I don´t see the problem, as a unit solely going for movement speed would at max make it possible to "cheat" your way through the last chapter 9 scenario (not sure if this would work, chokepoints and stuff...) but as explained above would not really serve any other use (revealing the map I guess, but your normal units are fast enough to do that in sufficient time anyway).

At this point in time I try to kill every last enemy on the map because I´m rather playing for the potential I can unfold in some units than to actually beat the campaign - if that was my biggest goal I´d play hard instead of medium for the bigger challenge.