Quadforce and Dragonlord (Full Version)

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PD -> Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/13/2021 19:36:35)

This item is amazing. Too amazing. For how much the upkeep costs combined with the ways to regen SP these days, is this really something that fits within the bounds of reasonableness for this game?

You could plausibly activate every stat for 708 SP/turn, which seems like a lot, only to remember that along with eclipsed dragonlord which is armor agnostic (unlike its wind variant), you can easily regain 100% of your SP to infinitely sustain the build.

The real crux of the issues that seem to appear is probably the fact that every single combination, while broken in of themselves, is now the new normal thanks for the Dragonlord items. Although adjusting dragonlord would probably put a significant damper on these interactions via limiting their ability to be used, even just activating a single or two quadforce attributes yields reasonable enough costs to question whether something like this is actually something we should have.




LUPUL LUNATIC -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/13/2021 20:08:18)

quote:

You could plausibly activate every stat for 708 SP/turn, which seems like a lot, only to remember that along with eclipsed dragonlord which is armor agnostic (unlike its wind variant), you can easily regain 100% of your SP to infinitely sustain the build.


Well activating INT to 250 makes no sense for a Warrior since it does not grant Mana and magic weapons are weaker than Melee weapons so why even have the option since its a non-option just like running Arcane Amplification on a Warrior char, literally no use.

So at least this stat isn't going to be activated.

The best use for the misc is 250 STR so that Mages can now use Melee Dragonlord weapon for its SP regen , Warriors simply cannot use the 250 INT toggle for the misc.
The Regen on weapons need to be toned down, and Cray confirmed that weapons and EoC are on the watch list.




J9408 -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/13/2021 22:15:32)

It definitely is too good.

My Lucky mage beastmaster has a problem with accuracy because of no DEX. But with this, that is no longer an issue with this misc.

As for SP regen, the new pet and essence orb covers that, leaving barely any weaknesses.

He could also use melee weapons if needed. Also a boost on all outgoing damage and +50 LUK on top?

Technically with the proper equipment, I could do nearly everything.




Vellup -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2021 1:18:30)

I mean, obviously no one wants to see this item go (even allowing it to only max one stat at a time with none of the other misc bonuses opens up a myriad of build possibilities), but if it's going to be nerfed, might as well do it sooner rather than later.

Honestly, I'd love to see the math that went into the creation of this item that places it within the sweep's balance limits.




OverLordOfDeath -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2021 1:47:14)

It's OP but we can choose to not use it. It's probably going to get nerfed anyway so my input means nothing.




lolerster -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2021 15:28:14)

Alright, so I'm actually going to make a case that this item is not quite as OP as everyone seems to be making it out to be. I admit, I too reacted and thought it was OP. However, I have meditated and come to the conclusion while this item is extremely powerful even without the active effects, the active effects' power are being blown way out of proportion and the item is not in fact as broken as many seem to believe..


Now I will look at some aspects of Quadforce to make my argument.

1. Boosting Charisma to power up booster pets/guests: Let's first address booster pets/guests. Elemental booster pets, barring Lepre-Chan and Manifestation, can already be boosted to their absolute maximum boost 45.32 with no Charisma, through the use of Arcane Intellect/Buffalot + Celtic Wheel/CIT. Where elemental boosters are concerned, with exception of Lepre-chan/Manifestation, it is worthless. Now, it does boost regular boosters a bit. At 405 main stat, Dunamis will boost you +23.48% (35.22% on guest). With Triforce, you can boost Dunamis to...+27.2% (+40.8% on guest). A whopping +3.7% damage boost on the pet and +5.6% on the guest, giving the misc. overall +29.3% (+32.4% on Poelala) boost for 177 SP. Now compare this to Blood Contract, which provides an incredible x1.2 (x1.2667 for magic) damage for 0 SP. For those that do not know, due to the way multiplicative boosts interact with additive boosts, these effects, especially for more optimized builds, are just about the same. The difference is that the former also gives 50 luck but costs 177 + 75 = 252 SP/turn while the latter costs nothing.

2. Boosting Charisma to power up regular pets/guests: Admittedly, this is quite a big power boost, as boosting your Charisma from 0 to 250 is about a +50% melee in effectiveness per turn (more if we look at stuff like Shogun&Ansatsu, Hedgemog, Mimic, etc). This means that for 252 SP/turn, you are getting +50% melee in damage. Is it worth it? Arguably, yes, this is pretty strong. But you know what else can do that? Just a regular Beastmater running 250 Main Stat/Dex/Charisma. But Lolerster, you can boost your luck or endurance to 250 and use Quadforce to boost your Charisma! Yes, yes you can. But let me tell you why that's trash. Endurance is worthless when you can get a 10K+ mana shield/barrier in a single turn. Luck is fine, always having 250 luck for the initiative and lucky strike damage is nice, but the cost is 177 SP/turn. You and your 252 SP/turn are still worse off than your true beast master counterpart who can use a different misc. such as Blood Contract or Rattle to boost their damage further than what you are able to with your extra luck.

3. Boosting STR on Mages/0 Strength Characters to Use Melee/Ranged Weapon: Congrats, you are spending 177 SP/turn to do what Warriors/Rangers do for free. If your character also depends on booster pets/guests/boost spell, you now need to run another set of boosters to effectively take advantage of your newfound strength, costing even further buy reducing the number of slots available.

4. Boosting INT on Warriors/Rangers/0 INT characters: This is even worse. You still has no access to MP, magic weapon attacks are weaker and armour skills now cost more.

5. Using Quadforce as Status Potency: Admittedly this is fairly strong with quick-cast effects, as you can actually turn off the active to refund the 177 SP after you gain the benefit of the boost on your status roll. However, your selection is quite limited as the majority of QC statuses are in the misc. slot, which cannot be sued with Quadforce - so no Love Potion, Shadowfeeder Pendant, Zfinity Gauntlet: Power, Prime Chaos Orb, etc... However, for the QC statues locked in other slots like Mesmerize and Snarl, this is indeed very strong potency boost while not needing to "waste" a slot solely for potency (as the misc's +20% damage, *0.5 Light res, 50 LUK is very strong on its own). Other major rolls that come in mind are Purple Rain and Father Time, but I don't think anyone in living memory has ever failed a roll on those as they can be spammed. For non-QC status rolls, ye, it's fine. You do get a significant boost to you roll on some rolls, but at the cost of 177 SP/turn, which I would argue is fine.

6. Interaction with Leeches/Metroid Pets/Infinita Staff to have Infinite Uptime: OK, yes, you get Infinite Uptime on these boosts. But WHY do you want that? The Leech/Metroid deals 8% melee in damage just to keep up your Charisma boost or so you can run 250 END/LUCK, which as I explained in point 2, is not really that good. This is literally worse than running a regular pet, Dunamis and co. or better yet, an Elemental Booster. Ofc, leech pets can heal SP outside of this, but you are still giving up damage for it. Infinita Staff is a similar story as it has a -25% damage in the SP regen modes. Mages will also need to toggle strength to use Infinita Staff's SP regen, doubling the cost, but it's not a big deal as Infinita with the right setup can always full regen your SP. Think of it this way - you are using items that do less damage in order to sustain an effect to help you do more damage.

7. Dragonlord full heal: OK yes, you can infinitely sustain yourself and the item, but you can infinitely sustain yourself without Quadforce, and as discussed above deal just as much or even more damage with other miscs.

8. Interaction with Level 5 EO/Purple Rain: Right, because interaction with Quadforce is the biggest problem with those item.

9. Backlash Builds: At last, we have situation/build that truly benefits from Quadforce. Unlike mage/warrior/ranger builds, Backlash builds makes is able to make full use of more than 3 stats - Endurance, Charisma, Luck and a main stat. However, Backlash is still a niche build and at best situationally very powerful. I would argue it is a good thing that they are getting a buff.

10. Hybrids: Traditional hybrid builds and even Werepyre Hybrids will get a lot out of this item. However, they are kind of in the same situation as Backlash. Traditional hybrids are so far behind pure builds in terms of performance that I would argue it's a good thing that they get something OP. Even werepyres can use a nice buff compared to the pure builds.


Of course, I'm not saying this item is weak. By no means - even without the active effects, it is a good item. However, whether or not the active effects are so strong that they need to be nerfed does need some very careful consideration to how useful these stats/costs actually are. For me, the biggest strength of the item is the versatility it brings. It allows you to do things that are normally off-limits to your build, which is of course very powerful. It can even lead to new builds. However, in pretty much every case other than maybe the backlash case, you are doing it less effectively and less efficiently by a decent margin than another build.




PD -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2021 21:49:07)

An idea for a Quadforce that doesn't give any stats:

quote:

Quadforce of Hope: Passive HP Regen worth that SP cost in HP
Quadforce of Wisdom: Passive MP Regen worth that SP cost in MP
Quadforce of Fortitude: Grants Status Resist worth that SP cost in roll resist
Quadforce of Rejuvination: Grants passive extra SP regen every turn




icetears -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/15/2021 2:12:35)

I don’t think it’s that op at all. Didn’t find much use on my warrior and bm. Even if I’m gonna use quad force , I still need to find the means for the sp upkeep by going into DL gear which takes me way more turns to kill.




Primate Murder -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/15/2021 6:37:35)

If I may, I'd also like to put in my two cents.

The misc is powerful, no doubt, but it isn't really as broken as people seem to think.

- Pure FO builds can use it to gain 250 Cha, which grants +25% damage via booster pet+guest (before accounting for auto-hit and omni-elemental penalties). You pay 45% melee to get 25% damage boost. Useful? Yes. Broken? No, not really.

- FO mages can use melee/ranged weapons. Again, you pay 45% melee to get a 25% melee boost.

- 0 Dex hybrids can use armors outside of werepyres. Again, useful? No doubt. Broken? Average autohit penalty is 35% - less cost for a greater benefit.

- Pure builds can use beastmaster pets and guests. Overall, 250 Cha gives +50% melee. Quadforce's Cha toggle costs 45% and requires keeping the misc constantly equipped. Whether you call it a penalty or a decompression bonus, I'd say it evens itself out more or less.

Overall, the best use of the Quadfore misc seems to be enabling alternative playstyles (rather than further boosting an already broken meta), and I fully support anything that adds diversity and versatility to the game.


Edit:
quote:

with eclipsed dragonlord... you can easily regain 100% of your SP to infinitely sustain the build.

That's not really an issue with the misc - rather, it's the DL weapons (and other resourse gain items) that are broken.




Armsman -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/15/2021 6:53:37)

^This. SP-based enablers like the Dragonlord weapons and Essence Orb are the real problem with the misc and many others (Purple Rain loop anyone?).

Once the player's ability to generate far more SP than is reasonable for a single turn is addressed, a lot of "problematic" items and strategies stop being such an issue.




J9408 -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/28/2021 20:31:37)

The Quadforce has now been updated.

Here: https://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=22387534&mpage=6&key=

From IMR

Update to the QuadForce:

quote:

- You'll no longer get an SP refund if you activate a stat boost, do something, and deactivate it in the same turn.
- Wisdom now modifies your MP.
- Upped the stat boost upkeep costs by *4/3.


Now warriors can become mages.

What does everyone think about it now?




Bao Zi -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/30/2021 16:28:31)

quote:

Now warriors can become mages.

What does everyone think about it now?


It costs even more sp now. I think it is not necessary to use more sps change into mage for a few turns. Instead, You can just use those sp for skill attacks.




J9408 -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/30/2021 16:56:06)

^That would indeed be a wiser choice. I say the one thing that warriors can now have is access to status effects.

There are so many spells with useful effects, and now warriors can use them too.




sobodobo -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (2/11/2021 19:40:39)

That one time when warriors get a buff is when they get the ability to become mages




Sapphire -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/14/2022 17:26:22)

I have defended quadforce a bit based on the SP upkeep. The dragonlord changes made for a pretty good rebalancing of quadforce, really. The existance of Fae's and The Ghost Hound now means upkeep has become quite easier again.

I don't know that Fae's and the hound need too much of a nerf, as precedent suggests status eaters are the most powerful aspect to this game. Maybe they need a relooking into, maybe not. But I was playing with quadforce some today, and I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere and I don't really know where, but I am sure this issue with quadforce is known.

Quadforce *is* overpowered, afterall. The decision to allow MP to fill broke it even further. Today, I was bored and was testing a 250 End/Char/Luk build using backlash and charisma weapons, where my main misc decision would be frostval crown. In having no MP to have MP guest upkeep, I switched several MP cost items out for SP, namely the dread fiends, runics, etc. I was about to switch arms of dragonguard for dragonguard invocation, it's SP cousin, and a thought occurred to me.

My plan was to SP heal with a pet, use SP guest, doomlight armors/shield, and charisma weapons. This build lacks BTH. And the traditional 250 INT/END/CHAR build does so even more. This is why I bought New Year's Surprise. It *is* swappable to the SP version, but it uses dex as it's booster, so here it doesn't work.

But if you equip quadforce and toggle wisdom, you're MP fills. And you can keep MP guests all day long. You can quick cast all MP toggles, like new years surprise.

So I could essentially use MP-based effects for free. New years, use arms of dragonguard, then next round switch to the crown..to avoid using SP. So you go 132 MP->2632-> Cast whatever, Purple rain if you want, then remove quadforce and this means all those quick casts *actually* costs 132 MP. (With PR, free, but you see what I'm saying)

There is also Imanok Edoc, moonwalker's grace that becomes free. In addition, you could abuse "set ups" such as mandate spell, Paladin's Resplendent Surge (vs earth;light) to gain unhittable status, then get rid of the misc, though this is less problematic than quick casting.

I don't know if the MP add-on should be removed, or if there is another answer in some form such as loss of a turn per toggle turn-on, or what, but *this* aspect *for sure* needs a hard look.





roobee -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/15/2022 19:52:39)

My build uses INT, so I used astramorph for some testing. Which might cause some discrepancies in my results.
I enter astramorph to have small MP (mimicking a 0 int build). Use quadforce to increase MP. quickcast spells. remove quadforce causing MP to go to 0 and losing some HP!
It looks like if you can't pay back the MP you borrowed with quadforce, it takes it out of your HP. I can't figure out what formula is used for how much HP is taken.




Sapphire -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/16/2022 9:58:17)

Just equip quadforce, self buff with Mp cost quick cast buffs, unequip. You'll have 0 MP.

This can also be done to cast MP based healing. Sure, it will still cost 1 round of Quadforce's SP upkeep, but for a warrior that sure is better than a full SP cost on an SP based heal skill.



I kind of think quadforce needs changed. Maybe if you keep it as is, after you're done selecting the stat or stats, and back out, that is your turn. So, loss of a turn. You could also be forced to have it equipped for a number of turns.

Or a potential change could be it gives you 200 total stats in 50 increments and you can assign them however you want. 200 to one stat, 100 to 2, 50 to 4..however. And the upkeep depends on how much you assigned, taking standard upkeep of miscs based on a simple single +50 SP uipkeep standard, where for every 50 used the upkeep is added on. You could also force a skipped turn, and keep the MP. Just make it a hassle if you want to use these quick casts







arcanum37 -> RE: Quadforce and Dragonlord (1/16/2022 10:12:18)

You need to understand that if you use items that increase your INT and also give you MP, if you use that MP and then unequip/toggle off the item that gave you that INT, you'll have to pay a certain amount of HP since you have less MP than since you first got it. So if you gain 1000 MP and spend 500, toggling off the item will make you lose the 1000 you got. But since you now only have 500, the remaining 500 has to be paid in HP (the amount will depend on the conversion rate).


The initial balance interaction with Dragonlord equipment has been resolved. While bumping of old threads isn't permitted on forums, in rare cases where new mathematical comes to light shall an exception be made. However in this case no new maths has been provided, with the thread divulging into battle strategy and anecdotal data. Locked.

To all the recent posters in this thread, I highly suggest re-reading the Game Balance Issues Forum Rules and familiarising yourselves with the rules.

~Anim




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