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Author Topic: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf  (Read 6527 times)

Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #25 on: August 16, 2018, 03:24:19 AM »
To those unsure of the mechanics of the feat;

Prerequisite: Turn Undead.
Specifics: The character may spend one of his turn undead attempts to increase his base speed by 20 % and gain 2 temporary hit points per divine spellcaster level for a number of turns equal to his Charisma bonus.

The feat itself triggers instantly, like Divine Shield or Might and consumes a single charge of Turn Undead. Using one of my characters as an example; I have a level 5 Paladin with 11 uses per rest of Turn Undead due to the feat granting additional uses. On use, the feat grants him 10 temporary HP and 20% extra movement speed. If I am hit for 8 damage, I still have 2 temp HP left and retain the 20% movement speed buff and cannot reuse the feat. The moment I lose all temporary HP, the feat may be reused to give yourself the speed buff and the additional temp HP once again. However, this only means you have a potential pool of extra HP if you are getting needled by sufficiently small damage to constantly refresh the effect. If that same level 5 Paladin is consistently hit for high amounts of damage above what the temp HP grants, they will quickly drop. Even moreso if they are hit for a massive single crit or large pool of damage that overwhelms the HP pool entirely.

I felt the need to write this out as a lot of people seem to be under a misconception that you can essentially spam all your uses of this feat and instantly gain hundreds of temporary HP or something to that effect, or that you can continually refresh it even if you've not lost all of your temporary HP. Hopefully that clears this up and lets people understand that this feat isn't particularly amazing if your opponent plans for it.

EDIT: I've just been informed by someone that it's possible to chug a Heal potion and gain ~100 HP per turn through healing. If we're entertaining the idea of nerfing Divine Vigor for a potential gain of 40 HP a turn with a number of things that curtail it's usefulness, are we going to nerf Heal potions?
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 04:57:56 AM by Grendel »

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #26 on: August 16, 2018, 03:27:32 AM »
To those unsure of the mechanics of the feat;

Prerequisite: Turn Undead.
Specifics: The character may spend one of his turn undead attempts to increase his base speed by 20 % and gain 2 temporary hit points per divine spellcaster level for a number of turns equal to his Charisma bonus.

The feat itself triggers instantly, like Divine Shield or Might and consumes a single charge of Turn Undead. Using one of my characters as an example; I have a level 5 Paladin with 11 uses per rest of Turn Undead due to the feat granting additional uses. On use, the feat grants him 10 temporary HP and 20% extra movement speed. If I am hit for 8 damage, I still have 2 temp HP left and retain the 20% movement speed buff and cannot reuse the feat. The moment I lose all temporary HP, the feat may be reused to give yourself the speed buff and the additional temp HP once again. However, this only means you have a potential pool of extra HP if you are getting needled by sufficiently small damage to constantly refresh the effect. If that same level 5 Paladin is consistently hit for high amounts of damage above what the temp HP grants, they will quickly drop. Even moreso if they are hit for a massive single crit or large pool of damage that overwhelms the HP pool entirely.

I felt the need to write this out as a lot of people seem to be under a misconception that you can essentially spam all your uses of this feat and instantly gain hundreds of temporary HP or something to that effect, or that you can continually refresh it even if you've not lost all of your temporary HP. Hopefully that clears this up and lets people understand that this feat isn't particularly amazing if your opponent plans for it.

This. Thank you for posting this.
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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #27 on: August 16, 2018, 04:06:40 AM »
To those unsure of the mechanics of the feat;

Prerequisite: Turn Undead.
Specifics: The character may spend one of his turn undead attempts to increase his base speed by 20 % and gain 2 temporary hit points per divine spellcaster level for a number of turns equal to his Charisma bonus.

The feat itself triggers instantly, like Divine Shield or Might and consumes a single charge of Turn Undead. Using one of my characters as an example; I have a level 5 Paladin with 11 uses per rest of Turn Undead due to the feat granting additional uses. On use, the feat grants him 10 temporary HP and 20% extra movement speed. If I am hit for 8 damage, I still have 2 temp HP left and retain the 20% movement speed buff and cannot reuse the feat. The moment I lose all temporary HP, the feat may be reused to give yourself the speed buff and the additional temp HP once again. However, this only means you have a potential pool of extra HP if you are getting needled by sufficiently small damage to constantly refresh the effect. If that same level 5 Paladin is consistently hit for high amounts of damage above what the temp HP grants, they will quickly drop. Even moreso if they are hit for a massive single crit or large pool of damage that overwhelms the HP pool entirely.

I felt the need to write this out as a lot of people seem to be under a misconception that you can essentially spam all your uses of this feat and instantly gain hundreds of temporary HP or something to that effect, or that you can continually refresh it even if you've not lost all of your temporary HP. Hopefully that clears this up and lets people understand that this feat isn't particularly amazing if your opponent plans for it.

This. Thank you for posting this.

Thank you for clarifying that. I wasn't sure how to explain it properly.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #28 on: August 16, 2018, 08:46:00 AM »
Quote
If that same level 5 Paladin is consistently hit for high amounts of damage above what the temp HP grants, they will quickly drop. Even moreso if they are hit for a massive single crit or large pool of damage that overwhelms the HP pool entirely.

This is why I say if you're having to spam it, you're likely about to die anyway (which was exactly the scenario described in the initial post, including outcome). You die a little too slowly for impatient wizards :)

I think the argument can be made, however, it's still a bit strong because of being able to re-use it so rapidly, regardless of the PC's current state. I mean, I don't see it as grossly over-powered in that it doesn't allow you to do anything to your opponent. Yet people have been comparing it to heal, for example, and the latter provokes attacks of opportunity (I think the potion does too) and can't be used when immobile. In comparison to Divine Might and Divine Shield, Divine Vigor requires less investment to obtain it (no strength minimum, no need to take Power Attack). It also auto-scales with level, whereas the other two do not.

It's a new feat, so it's easier for me to believe it needs adjusting than feats that have been around a long, long time...long enough for them to become the bread and butter of certain classes and builds.

ETA: Also, regarding making each a full action, in the case of Divine Vigor, that's less of a penalty because it can have a much, much longer duration.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 08:50:15 AM by Iridni Ren »

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Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #29 on: August 16, 2018, 09:34:16 AM »
The feat itself requires you to sacrifice charges of turn undead for the benefit of temporary HP. Every one of those maximum 11 uses is one less use of Divine Might or Shield. In addition, players can craft CL 11 Heal potions that instantly restore 110 HP. You can drop two of those in a round and instantly heal 220 HP. Divine Vigor isn't in need of a nerf when there's other heals that are far more potent and require less restrictive investments in my opinion.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #30 on: August 16, 2018, 09:55:53 AM »
Heal potions require a lot of time (and failure) to learn to craft, plus the herbs must be gathered to make them. Divine Vigor restores automatically with a rest. Divine Vigor lets you go over your normal allotment of HP, heal potions don't. Anyone can use a heal potion, whereas DV is restricted to classes that can Turn Undead.

At the end of the day, they're apples and oranges and not really similar at all.

I don't *want* Divine Vigor nerfed, as it is a staple for both Iridni and Suspiria, and I even took it on my AMPC. But it's more important to me that Devs not take this discussion as a reason to nuke all three Divine feats (and perhaps Heal) because they introduced a brand new feat that is now being argued as over-powered.

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Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #31 on: August 16, 2018, 10:06:00 AM »
The initial input of levelling herbalism to unlock heal potions may seem like more effort, but it has no upper ceiling of impact. Players by comparison only have so many feats. Ontop of that, all the other turning charge-reliant feats all sap from the total amount of charges available. The point being that Divine Vigor is actually anemic in comparison to other options as well as being an outright detriment in a drawn out fight. You're sacrificing temp HP for less AC or offense.

Dante101

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #32 on: August 16, 2018, 10:06:35 AM »
Let's not overlook that the reason why this came up is that one player found it difficult to kill another equally powered player.

And still won.

So this doesn't really seem like an issue, to me.

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #33 on: August 16, 2018, 10:10:13 AM »
Divine Vigor is buggy at the moment, it’s not a balance issue. It was never meant to be a healing spell so it shouldn’t be compared to healing spells any more than rage would be. It will be fixed so that the movement speed bonus doesn’t go away when the HP does so it can only be reused at the end of its duration, which was its intended effect.

Antonus Taran

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #34 on: August 16, 2018, 10:23:40 AM »
In PnP, it's a standard action; if it could become a standard action that doesn't draw an AoO, that would also be fair. After all, for a standard action you can drink a Heal potion.

All the Divine feats are standard actions in PnP, including Divine Might/Shield. Changing them all isn’t a bad idea but it’ll have to wait for a hak update.

You shouldn’t be able to reuse Divine Vigor until its speed effect has expired though, which I will try to fix again.

Complete Warrior lists Divine Might on p. 106 specifically as a free action. Divine Shield/Vigor are listed as standard actions, but Divine Shield lasts for 1 round/2 character levels instead of round/cha modifier. It should also be noted that in PnP, you can take a standard action feat instead of moving and then still complete a partial attack. This is not possible in NWN.

The best fix for Divine Vigour would simply be
Quote
You shouldn’t be able to reuse Divine Vigor until its speed effect has expired

Also, as an aside, it's kind of comical to read this
Quote
...when a paladin that was badly wounded started spamming it...
...while unable to move/use potions/cast spells....
...before finally dying....

You still held the best melee class in the game with the best saves in the game in place and killed it with spells to spare despite the use of this feat. Then you decided to make a thread about it because it made annihilating a paladin slightly inconvenient
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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #35 on: August 16, 2018, 10:40:49 AM »
It seems like the goal of my post was misunderstood and that was probably my fault in the way I phrased it, so I apologize. As EO stated above, the fact you can spam Divine Vigor when the temp hp is depleted is broken, and that’s what I wished to report and bring a discussion about. I never said nor proposed that divine might or divine shield need to be nerfed, As my initial post was simply about Divine Vigor.

If people see this as me complaining about a certain PvP encounter, you can go for it, but it’s very far from it. My goal wasn’t to point out a player or group of player, but it was the easier example I could bring for people to understand what I meant to say since it happened recently. If some people were annoyed/hurt hy it, again, I’m sorry about it, it wasn’t my intent at all.


Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #36 on: August 16, 2018, 10:48:03 AM »
Divine Vigor is buggy at the moment, it’s not a balance issue. It was never meant to be a healing spell so it shouldn’t be compared to healing spells any more than rage would be. It will be fixed so that the movement speed bonus doesn’t go away when the HP does so it can only be reused at the end of its duration, which was its intended effect.

One less feat to take then.

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #37 on: August 16, 2018, 10:52:41 AM »
I think Divine Vigor is still quite useful. I didn’t even realize it could be spammed the moment the bonus HP ran out to restore that amount - I never used it that way. I think the point Chab brought up is reasonable and the fix EO mentioned makes sense.

This is still a really useful feat. It’s saved my butt a number of times without blasting the bonus HP repeatedly.

Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #38 on: August 16, 2018, 10:58:33 AM »
The HP restore aspect as has already been covered is only useful in the context of taking a lot of small hits. If you take 20 hits of 1 damage and can precisely use it you raise your total HP ceiling. If you're taking hits for 30 or 40 damage then it's only going to stall for a round or two. The only context I see it being useful if that's removed is a ranged build that relies on an extra 20% movespeed for kiting, which can be useful but not as much as it is currently and not worth a feat investiture for a front-liner in my opinion. But if it's considered a bug, that's that.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #39 on: August 16, 2018, 11:12:57 AM »
Ironically, I discovered I could spam it only the last time I played...and it did save Iridni's life against the Cursed Swordsmen, letting her hang on at Near Death just long enough for the last to drop. Maybe it always worked that way, and I hadn't realized it.

I'll probably keep it even with the nerf (not worth re-leveling over), but the point above about diminishing returns is also true in that these Turn Undead-based feats reduce the usefulness of each other. You have to weigh carefully whether you want to have three feats that rely on the same limited resource.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2018, 11:16:31 AM by Iridni Ren »

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #40 on: August 16, 2018, 11:36:40 AM »
I would just like to point out that with all the feats and spells, and especially when in a buffed party, my paladin sits on something like+100 temp hp. Divine Vigor is fine as it was -meant- to work, that is, refreshable only after the full duration. It's a decent feat and the little extra hp on its own is more than enough as it was intended. There is no reason it should be refreshable after the temp hp runs dry.

And its nice when running to Vallaki for us who dont spend hours grinding speed/cowards pots.
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haifisch021

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #41 on: August 16, 2018, 12:41:26 PM »
I would just like to point out that with all the feats and spells, and especially when in a buffed party, my paladin sits on something like+100 temp hp. Divine Vigor is fine as it was -meant- to work, that is, refreshable only after the full duration. It's a decent feat and the little extra hp on its own is more than enough as it was intended. There is no reason it should be refreshable after the temp hp runs dry.

And its nice when running to Vallaki for us who dont spend hours grinding speed/cowards pots.

I can concede that fixing Divine Vigor to work as intended is acceptable. However, I think it is without a doubt a step in the wrong direction to change all Turn Undead feats to standard action. I understand the drive to make an experience as close to PnP as possible, but for some things a compromise must be made. One major difference relevant in this case is the real-time aspect of NWN. Forcing a cast timer on the feats would drastically hinder them in their function, effectively nerfing the classes that utilize them.
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Iridni Ren

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #42 on: August 16, 2018, 12:46:53 PM »
One major difference relevant in this case is the real-time aspect of NWN.

And server lag / yo-yo-ing.

Anything that is of so short duration that it can't be reasonably prepared ahead of time needs to fire pretty quickly or it's absolutely useless when the server is lagging and/or PC positioning is hopping all over.


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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #43 on: August 16, 2018, 01:32:51 PM »
If Divine Vigor gets changed, it will just become another useless feat nobody will take and a complete waste of Dev time. We have so many garbage feats already that might as well be removed from the game  completely.

Suggesting that Divine Vigor needs a nerf because it stopped a wizard from killing a character quickly enough is a complete joke and I'm stunned to see devs entertaining it. If you want some balance,  remove time stop and Isaac's.  :roll:

Absolutely  ludicrous.
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Super Sugar

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #44 on: August 16, 2018, 01:51:03 PM »
I don't understand this thread. Someone is suggesting to Nerf Divine vigor because a wizard had trouble killing a paladin?

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #45 on: August 16, 2018, 01:59:50 PM »
This is getting way off topic.

Nothing is getting nerfed. A bug will be fixed to have the feat behave as it was intended.

We're not modifying any other turn undead based feats.

If you have balance issues with other feats or spells. I suggest to have them discussed in their respective threads.
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Super Sugar

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #46 on: August 16, 2018, 02:24:05 PM »
Thanks for the clarification. It sounds like the only change to take place will be how frequently it can be cast. Like Divine shield and Divine might, they have a timer before they can be re cast.

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #47 on: August 16, 2018, 02:46:26 PM »
Considering this timer is actually based off of your Charisma, builds without a charisma bonus will still be able to spam it for temporary HP to soak damage, before it instantly goes away. Now the dynamic of spamming for Temp HP has simply changed.

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #48 on: August 16, 2018, 03:06:47 PM »
it sounds like what needs to happen is to maybe base both the timer and the health bonus off of the Charisma modifier in some way.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Divine Vigor is a broken feat and needs a nerf
« Reply #49 on: August 16, 2018, 03:13:18 PM »
Having a Cha modifier of zero would seem to make the feat unusable because its duration would be zero.

Also, I can't see why anyone would invest a feat in it because Turn Undead attempts would be only 3 per day.

You could up that with Extra Turning, but then that's two feats just to try to exploit something of questionable value.

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