Workaround for Battle Standard, Triump, Ravages of Time

[Ganelon]

Originally Posted by GuardianWarrior

Good job "Ganelon", i have tried out your new version and it works as you described it. I just tested it on my test map, cause i have no time to make extensive field tests, which would show, how it works on low-, mid- and highlevels. Any volunteers ?

Danke! I appreciate getting independent confirmation.

If i understood your version of Triumph correctly, you let it cast just once with the "specialAttackDelay" in the battlestandard_XX.dbr´s and hold Triumph up with "skillActiveDuration" in your "battlestandard_petskill_triumph.dbr" ?!

Yes. My Triumph follows the same casting rules as Rally. I set the duration to an arbitrarly large number. The Triumph effect ends when the Battle Standard goes away.

Right now, these are the only two differences our versions have, according database entries.

Well, the battlestandard_petskill_triumph.dbr skill uses ShadowLich's custom template, which makes it possible to inflict -physical damage on the enemies. I thought that you were still having problems with that one, or did you also end up using SL's template?

And yes, our methods are very similar. I used a lot of your ideas when making this mod.

Only that my version works the other way round and does cast constantly over the BS duration.
Though i have not this "flesh eating banner bug".
On the other hand, i have the small "lingering duration", which could be seen as compensation for the even lasting "4 sec. start delay" of Triumph.

I suspect that the root cause lies in the templates being used. Are you using Skill_BuffAttackRadiusToggled.tpl for Triumph? If you are, are you also getting the -physical damage effect to work? In my experiments, that those two parameters seemed incompatible.

3 remarks:
"battlestandard_10.dbr"
DBR Link missing:
".../Skill Tree/skillName3/" empty entry, should be "Records\Skills\Monster Skills\Defense\Trap_Resists.dbr".
".../Skill Tree/skillLevel3/" entry value is 0, should be 1.

Ooops! Good catch! Probably a simple copy/paste error.

"battlestandard_petskill_triumph.dbr"
Distance profile is set to "Maximum".
So Triumph gets triggert before the enemy is in the range of the BS, but the debuffs do only apply within range.
So that doesn´t matter much.

I wanted Triumph to trigger so soon as possible, so I cranked up the range profile as high as it would go. There is nothing lost by having Triumph trigger early.

Filenames
One file editing could have been spared.
If you would rename "battlestandard_petskill_triumph.dbr" and "battlestandard_petskill_triumphBuffRadius.dbr " vice versa, you would not need to edit "battlestandard_petmodifier_triumph.dbr".

Yeah, my naming conventions could have been more parsimonious.

I think that we're very close to a "perfect" solution. The input from you and ShadowLich helped a lot.

EDIT: ShadowLich: I don't fully understand your remark about the template path. I put the custom template in the Working\Database\Templates folder and everything worked on my end. Apparently it worked for you too, but you had to move some files around. What changes did you have to make, exactly?

EDIT AGAIN: Guardian Warrior, I just saw your remarks on the other thread. We must've been posting at the same time. I see that you did use ShadoowLich's template, and that you do have -damage effects working properly.

[yerkyerk]

Just wanted to interrupt you guys to say: "Great job!". These are probably one of the most important bugs in the game. Good to know they're almost completely done for.

Originally Posted by JudgeMan

If it's not too much to ask, could you explain how to install that latest triumph fix and the RoT ones in clear steps (especially the template, i'm totally lost with that).

Thanks and great job guys.

If all is well, a new unofficial patch with these fixes is on its way, so if you're patient (and lucky) you won't need to fix it yourself, just install the patch.

[ShadowLich]

Originally Posted by Ganelon

EDIT: ShadowLich: I don't fully understand your remark about the template path. I put the custom template in the Working\Database\Templates folder and everything worked on my end. Apparently it worked for you too, but you had to move some files around. What changes did you have to make, exactly?

Yeah it's not a problem for me, that was just a suggestion (since in the zip file it's not there but here => Working\CustomMaps\Triumph2\database\Templates).

On other hand for my Artmanager pb, it seems it erases a lot of variables before saving it.
Though it works very well so...


@JudgeMan

- IT-Artmanager => Tools => Options => you define your build and working directory
Example: for both D:\TitanQuestFiles\mod\

- IT-Artmanager => Help => Install Templates
Example: It will create D:\TitanQuestFiles\mod\Database\Templates
You'll need also the templates from the Devs (pet.tpl for example) that you could find on this forum.

- Copy the SkillBuff_Passive2.tpl in your template directory

I think all our modifications use this path.

[JudgeMan]

Weird... I already had the dev's templates installed and I did try to copy your .tpl into the template folder last night and it wasn't working. Doing help -> Install templates made it work. Thanks.

[Ganelon]

ShadowLich

I have tested your Ravages of Time solution, and I can confirm that it works just fine.

Just like you had to alter the template path to get my mod working, I had to alter yours. Your template path pointed to a folder called Database\Templates.IT\SkillBuff_Passive2.tpl, which doesn't exist in my game. Trying to load the file in the Art Manager gave me a "no template" found" error. I used Notepad to change the path to Database\Templates\SkillBuff_Passive2.tpl, which worked fine. I think that there is a difference in the English and French version of TQ.

I much prefer solution #1. Splitting RoT into a separate but related skill to Deathchill Aura is a very small price to pay for a functional version of Ravages of Time. I integrated it with the Triumph fix and they work fine together. The -damage effects are cumulative, but they appear to stack multiplicatively , not additively. This is good, because if they stacked additively, the combo would be way too powerful!

[ShadowLich]

Cool that's not additive, I didn't test it yet.
About your remark on another topic, maybe Damage reduction is capped at 80% as resistances...? (just an idea, I sure don't have a clue about it).

For the Square for Ravages of time I thought about it, but as there's is still a thing I didn't manage to achieve... => Make Necrosis dependent of DeatchChillAura as it must be...
Maybe you or GW have better ideas than those I tried...

[GuardianWarrior]

@Triumph-Parameters
Found a little error.
"defensivePhysical" level 1 is set to -10, should be -15.
"Ganelon", i hope you don´t think, that i am pedantic, for having such a close look at your work.


@Damage reduction capped at -80% ?
Doesn´t seem so. I tested with more than that and it worked.
Very interesting thing about that was, at -100% damage reduction, my test-turtle did still hurt my char by 5 to 10 hitpoints. So the damage wasn´t reduced to zero, as everyone thinks it should be. I mean, if you have 100% whatever and subtract 100% from it, you have 0% as a result.
But then, with -101% damage reduction, just 1% more, the turtle didn´t hit my char anymore.
Well, i wonder what mathematics lies within game-mechanics.


@Stacking of "damage reduction"
What do you mean with multiplicatively and additively ?
Example:
Triumph -50%
RoT -50%
case A) T * RoT = 50 * 50 = -250%
case B) T + RoT = 50 + 50 = -100%
Normaly, TQ does add up modificators and apply it afterwards.
A multiplication of modificators would be to imba.
So, how did you mean it please ?
I´m a little bit here.


@"flesh eating banner bug"
Sorry "Ganelon", i didn´t go on with our discussion on this, so i want to continue after your last post here(same thread, first page).
Tests did show, that this one only happens with Triumph skilled. BS alone doesn´t have it. So, Triumph seems to carry the flat damage points of BS and hurts enemies sometimes, when they hurt the BS.
And not only the damage points of BS.
If you clear the damage points from BS and then cast it with ArtofHunt active, the flat damage points to beasts/beastmens are also carried, to hurt all enemies that hurt the BS.
So Aura damage bonuses are also affected!
Another idea on this is, that Triumph doesn´t carry the damage, but triggers BS to do it in some way.


@ShadowLich
I´m sorry, but i didn´t have time to try out your RoT-Fix.
Right now some things in reallife are more important and therefore i was not able to spend some time on it, but i will, as soon as possible. Promised !

[Ganelon]

Originally Posted by GuardianWarrior

@Triumph-Parameters
Found a little error.
"defensivePhysical" level 1 is set to -10, should be -15.
"Ganelon", i hope you don´t think, that i am pedantic, for having such a close look at your work.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I need to know. The truth is that I didn't do a whole lot of quality control on this. It's more of a proof of concept right now. I didn't really expect it to work when I threw it together!

@Stacking of "damage reduction"
What do you mean with multiplicatively and additively ?
Example:
Triumph -50%
RoT -50%
case A) T * RoT = 50 * 50 = -250%
case B) T + RoT = 50 + 50 = -100%
Normaly, TQ does add up modificators and apply it afterwards.
A multiplication of modificators would be to imba.
So, how did you mean it please ?
I´m a little bit here.

What I mean is this Final Damage = Total Damage * Triumph Reduction * Rot Reduction. If a monster does 100 points of damage, we get this:

100 *.5*.5 = 25

Instead of this:

100 -(100*(.5 +.5)) = 0

@"flesh eating banner bug"
Sorry "Ganelon", i didn´t go on with our discussion on this, so i want to continue after your last post here(same thread, first page).
Tests did show, that this one only happens with Triumph skilled. BS alone doesn´t have it. So, Triumph seems to carry the flat damage points of BS and hurts enemies sometimes, when they hurt the BS.
And not only the damage points of BS.
If you clear the damage points from BS and then cast it with ArtofHunt active, the flat damage points to beasts/beastmens are also carried, to hurt all enemies that hurt the BS.
So Aura damage bonuses are also affected!

If you add an elemental damage to Triumph, you can see Triumph hurting the monsters every pulse. Fortunately, the "flesh eating" bug doesn't act this way. It only attacks rarely, and only hits monsters that are very, very close.

Another idea on this is, that Triumph doesn´t carry the damage, but triggers BS to do it in some way.

I think that this is what's happening. If you add an elemental damage type to the base BS skill, you can see it proc when the "flesh eating" bug strikes. The flesh eater doesn't use any damage types added by Triumph (it does benefit from the resist debuff, if applicable).

@ShadowLich
I´m sorry, but i didn´t have time to try out your RoT-Fix.
Right now some things in reallife are more important and therefore i was not able to spend some time on it, but i will, as soon as possible. Promised !

I think that everyone understands that we're doing this in our spare time. Don't worry about it.

[Ganelon]

I fixed the flesh eating banner bug. I added a passive skill to the Battle Standard pet that adds massive penalties to its physical damage. After making this change, the bug seems to vanish.

I had tried this before, and it didn't work. I can only guess that somehow using Shadow Lich's new template changes the logic and allows this to work.

To my knowledge, this was the only remaining bug. The Battle Standard still hesitates for 4 seconds before using Triumph, but as far as I can tell ALL pets have to wait before activating their secondary powers.

I'll clean this thing up and repost the dbrs later (possibly MUCH later) today.

[GuardianWarrior]

@Stacking of "damage reduction"

What I mean is this Final Damage = Total Damage * Triumph Reduction * Rot Reduction. If a monster does 100 points of damage, we get this:

100 *.5*.5 = 25

Instead of this:

100 -(100*(.5 +.5)) = 0

Well, not really logical, but if the dev´s wanted it to work like that, then so be it and good to know it.
As soon as i have tried out the fixed RoT, i will give this combo a try too.


@"flesh eating banner bug"
Very good, that you found a way to fix it.
Thanks too for this info:

The flesh eater doesn't use any damage types added by Triumph (it does benefit from the resist debuff, if applicable).

I tried out to isolate, which entry does carry the damage, by deleting certain groups from the "Parameters_Defensive.tpl".
Found out, that it´s the "defensivePhysicalModifier", the one where the "-X% Damage Resistance"-values from Triumph are saved in.
First i experimented with "Parameters_Offensive.tpl", but without success. So thanks again for this info.