Re-balancing the Exploit Meta of Berserk Tokens and Uncreator Psalms is Easy

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The current exploit meta abusing 2 Berserk Tokens and Uncreator Psalms is out of control and it is fair to say they need to be re-balanced and soon.

It is really easy to destroy the mechanics as viable if not properly approached.

Fortunately, it is actually pretty easy to re-balance both of these exploited mechanics.

1) UNCREATOR PSALMS

Suggestion: Don't allow these to stack at all. 


Problem solved, and still a viable mechanic/buff to add to your build.

2) BERSERK

Pre-seasonal patch the token limit did not exist, and with the seasonal patch this was dropped to 150 tokens max. the berserk mechanic by itself isn't broken per say until you abuse equipment rolls that can stack to be out of control.

Currently the only enchantment that breaks this mechanic is found on signums and it gives up to 6% damage per berserk token. This is a stacking bonus that can hit +1800% damage, effectively making the game a cake walk and not challenging in the slightest.

So this enchantment needs to be cut down or changed.

Because Enraged has similar enchantments but off of a maximum stack of 10, yous till manage to get several hundred percent extra damage if that is all you focus with an enraged build in terms of enraged bonuses, and it isn't that broken, it's fairly balanced all things considered. But with1 50 tokens to play with, even on 2 items only, this breaks the game.

Suggestion 1: Change the damage percentage to 1 (ONE) Percentage Point per berserk Token, for a maximum of 150% extra damage on each signum or 300% total damage. 

This is still overpowered to my mind as your other item slots are still open for critical hit chance and strength and other effects working off of berserk, whereas with enraged to get the high damage stacks, you forfeit other benefits.

This leads to...

Suggestion 2: Change the Enchantment on the Signums to be a flat damage bonus regardless of how many berserk tokens you have. I'd go with +30%. This is in line with pre-existing bonuses to specific damage types such as against poisoned enemies, against stunned enemies etc. +60% damage bo9nus from 2 signums whilst berserk alongside the 150% damage increase from max stacks of berserk is 210% damage bonus. It's quite significant but not over powering.

Suggestion 3: Replace the 1% damage Reduction per Berserk Token with 1 Suppression Regeneration per Berserk Token. 


Damage Reduction is supposed to be hard to get. Berserk eliminates that. Suppression manipulation has been challenging for a lot of people (not all of us mind) since Augmented Body 2 changed. This gives you up to 150 extra suppression regeneration at any one time, a significant amount that will allow people to play the hit and run style that the game tries to encourage, a lot more and to retain effectiveness of extra abilities in suppression state green. It's also more fluff friendly as when you go berserk and rage you still take damage, you just fight through the pain to ignore being slowed down or otherwise hampered, having high suppression regeneration allows this to happen by preventing being stunned etc.

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The danger Berserk in particular faces right now is that over-nerfing occurs to make it an unviable strategy to even contemplate - obsolete mechanics are not what we want in the game. The above suggestions would make it still useful, still powerful, but not overwhelmingly so.


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8 comments
4 years 100 days ago
+1
We will think about these suggestions, thank you for your feedback!


Berserk token is currently under our scope, actually. We also felt the need to make some changes on it.

4 years 103 days ago
+1
Ditchboy
No, just a flamer with a plasma cannon for heavy armored stuff that doesn't burn well. I have stun on crit doctrine which works wonders on the flamer, lotsa passives in the debuff tree. Even really hard to damage +10ish I basically just stand there and pound them with plasma, they stay stun locked, eventually they die. It's just when I get mobbed by too many regulars that things go to hell. If I am lucky I kite and survive, otherwise it's me who dies :P
4 years 103 days ago
Posted by Ditchboy 4 years 103 days ago
Explode build?

Or precognition-psyker? ;-)

This comment was edited 4 years 103 days ago by Wolfilein
4 years 103 days ago
Posted by Toadbat 4 years 103 days ago

I must be doing something wrong then. I haven't used either berserk tokens or uncreator psalms and my endgame content is fine. Weird.

Explode build?
4 years 103 days ago
Ditchboy

I must be doing something wrong then. I haven't used either berserk tokens or uncreator psalms and my endgame content is fine. Weird.

4 years 103 days ago
As long as theere is some way to get decent damage and survive, without it being too overpowered, it should be fine.. Preferably multiple ways , but then that causes difficulties in balancing if those multiple mechanics can be combined.  I'm taking there lack of any response to anything on this forum or on steam for an entire week to mean they're working on it. Eitehr that or they all went all summer holiday.
4 years 103 days ago

Very reasonable suggestions. Berserk and uncreator-pslams need balancing. As do some other mechanics in the game.


Regarding uncreator-pslams:

An easy fix that i would support. With enchants from gear players will still be able to get to around +100% effectivnes. This would result in a pretty strong but not too overpowered mechanic. 


Regarding Berserk-tokens:

Balancing should include a change in the number of tokens. Somewhere around 100 should be fine. They decay pretty fast so players nee a little buffer. The enchants need to be lowered to account for the high number of possible tokens. When calculating with 100 tokens "+%damage per token" chanchants should have a range from 1% to 2%. This would result in damage numbers slightly above enrage-builds. This would be fine because managing enrage-tokens is not as troublesome as berserk-tokens.

The damage-reduction enchant dont need changes in my opinion. As long as it cant go over the cap it should be fine. Berserk-builds need to be hit a lot so it is a nice supporting enchant.

Crit and regeneration per token should be reduced in value. The endresults at maximum tokens should be somewhere around 50/50 for crit and 200 for regeneration. An additional enchant for suppression-regeneration would be nice. The crit-enchant should be split into 2 seperate enchants. One for chance and one for strength. 


My general problems with the game-balance is that we get bottlenecked into certain builds if we want to do difficult endgame content. Not every character/build can make use of vulnerabilty-stacking or token stacking. The same applies to crit. Besides the damage bonus there are way to much mechanics that need crit. Be it healing, debuffing, class-recource-management or vulnerability-stacking. Most non-crit builds cant do missions above +6, because they lack the tools for surviveabilty and the damage.(berserk is one of the few builds that can^^)

Endgame-difficulty should not be balanced around 1 or 2 broken mechanics that only a few builds can use.

This comment was edited 4 years 103 days ago by Wolfilein
4 years 104 days ago
Not allowing Uncreator Psalms to stack nukes endgame damage from orbit, can't agree with you on that bit.