Buffing bad prodigies

[Sheila]

There's no point in balancing for the lowest possible denominator because then insane would be another madness, and madness would be impossible.
Also if you make something bad better, it benefits everybody, not just insane players. So I don't really see any sensible arguments against this anymore.

[grobblewobble]

Back on topic.. I would love to see some of those changes you're proposing here bpat, especially the ideas for Mental Tyranny and Worldly Knowledge sound fun.

You Shall Be My Weapon: Increase weapon damage to 450% + 90%/size cat.

Instead of a straight boost to damage, I would propose to have this talent damage the monsters that have been hit by the thrown monster as well, instead of only stunning them. In other words, change the text as follows:

Attack for 350% weapon damage and 6 knockback, stunning all in path of knockback and damaging them for an equal amount.
Add +80% weapon damage per size category over "big".

I think this would be an appropriate fix, given the name of the prodigy.

Tricks of the Trade: Unsalvageable because Stealth is bad, invisibility is bad, and losing access to the randart merchant is bad.

Well, there has to be a creative way to make it work. Perhaps it could give the character access to another skill tree as well, such as Lethality for instance?

[HousePet]

Does a Prodigy really need to be better than an inscription slot or an item slot? Everyone is happy to grab another inscription slot because its good. Nobody says that another slot has to be better than their existing slots.

I've said already that balance hardly matters on Normal and Nightmare so there's no point balancing for it.

It might not matter for you, but it does for most players of the game.

There's no point in balancing for the lowest possible denominator because then insane would be another madness, and madness would be impossible.
Also if you make something bad better, it benefits everybody, not just insane players. So I don't really see any sensible arguments against this anymore.

First sentence is pure hyperbole and is countered by your second sentence. And are you sure that madness isn't supposed to be impossible?

[Sheila]

Balancing things to be worthwhile on insane feedbacks to them being good on normal/nightmare, I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Madness isn't impossible because archmage can win it and archmage will never be nerfed

[Stuntofthelitter]

A prodigy doesn't NEED to be better than an inscription slot or item slot, but considering their limited nature it's kind of bad design if they're not. Also the reason we should strive for them to be close-ish to each other in regards to usefulness or fun. You only get two and you get them at higher levels.

[bpat]

Okay here's a different way of wording it. For 90% of things, balancing for Insane is the exact same as balancing for Normal and Nightmare. I don't see how anyone who hasn't played on Insane can dispute this beyond just speculation, which is not helpful at all. I didn't even touch Insane for about a year and now I only play on it so I have the experience to back this up. Also again, there isn't any "rule" that a prodigy point has to be better than an Inscription slot or whatever, but the best prodigies are worth so much more than an Inscription slot (Flexible Combat and a some others that I've mentioned a bunch of times). There also isn't any rule that says a prodigy point has to be better than a generic point, so we should nerf all prodigies until they're as good as 1/5 Combat Accuracy /s. Since the bar has already been set by the good prodigies, barring completely gutting good prodigies, it is ridiculous to not make the underpowered ones better than an Inscription slot.

grobblewobble thanks for trying to un-derail this thread. I thought YSBMW already worked that way though I guess it doesn't now that I look at the wording again. It's probably still a little weak but I don't really know how to make non-passive damage prodigies good aside from straight buffing their damage. Maybe if it knocked the people hit by the primary targets in random directions too, creating a kind of ripple effect? Also a stun or something would help too.

I don't have any real ideas for fixing Tricks of the Trade but perhaps it should give a secret bandit shop or something to replace the randart crafting, some kind of gold sink would be required I think. Like allow you to buy any artifact of your choice for 1000 gold per item tier. Possibly too good but it really could use the buff. Giving access to Lethality probably won't work since it's a class category but the idea is pretty cool. I'm can't think of anything that Snap would make overpowered since Unstoppable has a fixed cooldown, but I still don't think it could give Lethality since it's a class category. Maybe something else like Acrobatics?

[HousePet]

So balancing on normal is basically the same as balancing on insane.

Tricks of the Trade: Granting build important categories at level 30 is a bit late to be useful for most characters. Worldly knowledge sort of works because by then you tend to get short on good stuff for generic points (unless you have acquired another category already) and generic categories tend to synergise better with random classes.

[Sheila]

No, balancing on normal is not like balancing on insane.
If something works on insane it'll work for sure on normal and nightmare, 100%.
If something works on normal there's no guarantee that it'll work on insane. Stealth/defense/saves are good examples of this.

[bpat]

It's the other way around HousePet. If something is good on Insane, it will always be good on Normal. However if something is good on Normal (Block, Stealth, etc), it may not be good on Insane. This is because pretty much everything is decent on Normal so it's harder to properly evaluate things. Insane just highlights the differences that are less apparent on Normal. Basically balancing for Insane makes the lower difficulties balanced by extension, but balancing for Normal will break higher difficulties because it's impossible to tell how good something is by its performance on Normal.

An example of this is Bone Shield vs Mitosis. They both let you autopilot on Normal for easy wins, but Bone Shield is tougher to use effectively since you need to put up damage shields against retaliation damage or multiple hits. This would give some players the misconception of Bone Shield being worse than Mitosis, when in fact Mitosis is weaker but just easier to use. Since both let you autopilot to victory, it's easy to miss the difference in strengths if you fail to take higher difficulties into account.

Level 30 for Worldly Knowledge is too late for the same reason it is for Tricks of the Trade. Generic points are more tight than class points on most classes anyway, especially late game. Neither are good prodigies, Tricks of the Trade is just way worse. Worldly Knowledge is worth about as much as a category point, while Tricks of the Trade is so bad that even if it was free it wouldn't be used often because merchant randarts are too good to pass up.

[HousePet]

So it isn't exactly the same then.
Which means that something that is decent on Insane could be OP on Normal.

[Strongpoint]

I don't have any real ideas for fixing Tricks of the Trade but perhaps it should give a secret bandit shop or something to replace the randart crafting, some kind of gold sink would be required I think. Like allow you to buy any artifact of your choice for 1000 gold per item tier. Possibly too good but it really could use the buff. Giving access to Lethality probably won't work since it's a class category but the idea is pretty cool. I'm can't think of anything that Snap would make overpowered since Unstoppable has a fixed cooldown, but I still don't think it could give Lethality since it's a class category. Maybe something else like Acrobatics?

Survival\Acrobatics\Conveyance\Thuggery\Mobility\... Those are 5 "rogueish" generic trees not counting Scoundrel that is given by the current version of the prodigy

How about giving each of those 5 locked if character doesn't have them, unlock them if they are locked and give +0.2 to mastery if player has them unlocked? It fits the theme and isn't that huge buff because player still needs to buy a tree with a category point to get that conveyance or thuggery

It opens many new interesting builds like reaver\Temporal warden with conveyance or robe wearing caster with mobility or bullwark\Berserker with thuggery. Prodigies should do exactly that - create new kinds of builds, right?

PS. I know that it is way too good for adventurers but those aren't supposed to be balanced.

[bpat]

So it isn't exactly the same then.
Which means that something that is decent on Insane could be OP on Normal.

Except that isn't the case for anything and you're just speculating. Name an example.

Edit: Also this is not a valid argument on the subject of prodigy balance. Rather you should discuss specific instances instead of making blanket statements contingent on assumptions.

[HousePet]

But blanket statements that balancing something for Insane makes it balanced for Normal are fine. Okay then.

[bpat]

Mine is coming from experience and yours is coming from speculation. I am not assuming anything. Again, name an example or stop assuming things.

[HousePet]

Can you name an example where it hasn't happened?
Has anything ever been balanced based on Insane?