Does Kyera's Sacrifice Talent Need Slight Adjustment?

[samopop]

I posted this in the "Kyera's Talent Table of Tears and Retribution" thread by John Robinson but I didn't get any responses to its content.  I'm posting it in its own thread here (sorry if that is poor form).

I think there is no benefit to going above 2 (or 3) Sacrifice when you have reasonable Lore.  To expand, I generated the plot below:

I see two reasons why you would want to increase Sacrifice.  The first is that you would want to increase the "efficiency" of sacrifice (i.e. the amount of SP gained per SP spent)   From the left plot, we see that with no investment in Lore, there is a continual increase in the "efficiency" of Sacrifice.  In my opinion, it is extremely unlikely to have lots of Sacrifice with no Lore increase because the gain in efficiency is larger by investing in Lore than investing in Talents.  Also, Lore increases the effect of the other healing Talents.  So, assuming you are investing in Lore, it quickly becomes true that Sacrifice 2 is a "sweet spot."  As you invest more in Lore, 2 becomes more and more of a sweet spot until at maximum Lore there is basically a negligible increase in efficiency from increasing Sacrifice even to 10.

  The other reason you would want to increase Sacrifice is to be able to transfer more total SP (without considering the SP cost).  The right plot indicates how much you can transfer by depicting the SP gained per AP spent.  Similar arguments apply here except the sweet spot is at 3 Sacrifice (right before the AP increase).  After a few points into Lore, you have to hit Sacrifice 10 before being able to significantly transfer more SP per AP spent.  Sacrifice 2 still allows very high amounts of total transfer and at max Lore only Sacrifice 6 and 10 significantly out-perform it.  However, if you want to transferring the maximum amount of spirit points per turn (instead of per AP), you should not go above Sacrifice 3.  With a cost of 1 AP, you can cast it 7 times (or any number between 1 and 7 to transfer just the amount that you want and mix it in with other actions).  With a cost of 3 AP, you can only cast Sacrifice 10 twice and thus the total amount transferred per turn is only 26 higher than at Sacrifice 2 and 30 lower than at Sacrifice 3.

  So, that is my argument for why I think higher levels of Sacrifice need some improvement.  (alternatively, lower levels could be nerfed . . . but that would destroy my current build so please don't do that).  Did I miss something or is there little point to higher levels of Sacrifice?

[slayernz]

No nerfing is needed as it is well balanced at lower levels. At higher levels, there does need to be a buff - whether it is improved SP given for SP consumed, OR HP given on top of SP ... OR AoE.

Actually, AoE could be a very very valuable reason why you'd invest in Sacrifice ... with it coming at level 7 and above. Yes, you have 3AP cost, but you're becoming the ultimate support agent. My vote would be for this over any other buff

[John Robinson]

samopop

I thought it was a fascinating analysis and certainly deserves it's own thread.  None of my group builds have ever used Sacrifice because I thought the cost in Kyera's sp was
not a high enough return on the receiving target.  I have never used it in a group build so didn't feel qualified to comment.

slayernz comment about converting it to an AoE is a really great idea and would certainly be more attractive to use, although as an AoE it might be a good balance to 
have a single cast have a smaller amount of SP restoration than currently listed in the Talent Table.

I think enough players use it to support Vraes that opening this discussion as a new thread was a smart decision, I am looking forward to hearing new ideas.  
   

[fallen]

samopop - thanks for moving this to its own thread. Really interesting analysis. I've added #HOS-2823 to re-evaluating the balance of Sacrifice. I think a likely outcome is that 1 AP Sacrifice will be going away, and all levels will require 2 AP -- I hope that was not the nerfing you were mentioning.

Great post! +1

[En1gma]

:/ :/ Not too much nerf I hope- I built an entire party around Sacrifice... I'm sure it will be balanced, my group is doing just fine, mostly casting it out of combat anyway. Will there be an overall increase in the lower levels, do you think?

[fallen]

En1gma - I won't know until we rework the math against it. TBD, as we are working on finishing the CoD atm.

[samopop]

Oct 29, 2014 8:06:24 GMT -5 fallen said:

 I think a likely outcome is that 1 AP Sacrifice will be going away, and all levels will require 2 AP -- I hope that was not the nerfing you were mentioning. 

 
  That seems like a reasonable change.  Then, the benefit of increasing Sacrifice is straight-forward: each increase will allow a larger total amount of SP points transferred during combat.  This change will have no effect on use of Sacrifice outside of combat . . . so efficiency would still dominate that consideration.

  slayernz - I  do like the area of effect idea at high levels!  I think it would have to be limited to just a cross shape and coupled with an increase from 2 AP to 4 AP (limiting it to one cast per combat turn) to make it even remotely reasonable, though.

  If you wanted to smooth out the "efficiency" side of Sacrifice (the SP gained per SP spent), then an increase in dependence on Lore by 0.5 at every level would do the trick.  It could start at 1xLore at level 1 and by level 10 it would be 5.5xLore.  The min (2 Lore, 1 Sacrifice) and max (16 Lore, 10 Sacrifice) points would be almost unchanged.  However, all of the curves would become monotonic (an increase in Lore or Sacrifice would only increase the efficiency).

The same curves with a constant 0.5 increase in Lore dependence and constant 2 AP cost are here:

[slayernz]

Cross AoE is fine and 4AP cost doesn't sound unreasonable. Not sure if I really like the 2AP cost at lower levels though ... you don't get a ton of SP at the lower levels of Sacrifice, especially if you haven't heavily invested in Lore, so you get lots of cost for little benefit. Still, if it remains 2AP going up to when AoE starts to take effect, then I can't complain too much.

And yes, Sacrifice is a critical component in my main party as I finish up Ep 2 (can't believe I missed part of the content!)

[fallen]

Thanks for all the feedback, we'll be working on this one later next month. We'll keep you posted.

[vdx]

I understand the theory of Sacrifice but given the amount of potions and old available, I'm not sure it's the most useful talent. Use a SP potion at 1-AP and get a ton of SP, leaving 6 AP to attack etc. Even on Nightmare where rewards are a little less, there still seems to be enough potions to stay well stocked even for SP intensive builds.

It's a great talent for when your Cleric has AP and SP to spare but there seems to be more useful talents to invest i.

[mrsarfa]

Oct 29, 2014 18:41:32 GMT -5 vdx said:

I understand the theory of Sacrifice but given the amount of potions and old available, I'm not sure it's the most useful talent. Use a SP potion at 1-AP and get a ton of SP, leaving 6 AP to attack etc. Even on Nightmare where rewards are a little less, there still seems to be enough potions to stay well stocked even for SP intensive builds.

It's a great talent for when your Cleric has AP and SP to spare but there seems to be more useful talents to invest i.

That's interesting. My experience is the complete opposite -- I'm always running out of SP potions and, by far, they are my biggest expense. I usually buy the one or two pieces of equipment in each town that are a significant improvement over what I am using and then devote the remainder of my gold to SP pots. I've definitely come to appreciate Sacrifice and thought that samopop did a great job on the analysis. Of course, I'm a total Excel geek, so this was right up my alley. 

I do use sacrifice quite a bit in battle (like when KJ has 2AP left and runs out of SP. Sacrifice lets him get off that final FB.  ) and would be sorry to see the 1AP cost get nerfed, but the graphs do make it clear that something needs to be done. AOE sacrifice at the higher talent levels would be totally awesome. 

[vdx]

Yes, I agree with that final firebolt use of KJ. Nothing like using 1 AP to use a SP potion only to realize you don't have enough AP left to use a talent. In those situations, Sacrifice is nifty.

Great example of that type of situation is when an enemy closes to melee range (1 tile away). It's too close to use Firebolt so KJ has to step away (using 1 AP). If he has sufficient SP, he can cast 3 Firebolts (3x2AP), but he's short SP, he either has to use a potion which would mean he could only cast 2 Firebolts -or- Sacrifice can be cast on him, or someone can use a SP-to-all potion. As I don't use Sacerfice in my currently builds, I have to use the SP-to-all potions, which if Kyera uses, it uses only 1 AP and gives enough to cover the gab for KJ's Firebolt.

If your party doesn't have Sacerfice, it should keep those SP-to-all potions for the fights you really need to get SP to someone whose short AP.