Myst42 Posted August 13, 2019 Posted August 13, 2019 I'm looking for opinions on which are the best combat/leveling mods out there according to personal experience. Basically I'm tired of a few things: -Playing a mage is impossible due to the lack of any kind of magic leveling outside mods. And when mods are used, it's still a delicate balance between enemy mods such as OBIS or PermaZones, Immersive Creatures etc, and magic damage, since every time it's a lottery where one can end up with either an overpowered one-shot killing machine, or enemies get turned into HP sponges in which magic is completely useless. -Speaking of which; HP sponges. Those are the worst thing that can possibly happen to a game. In reality, I dont care how many HP points an enemy has, if he gets a sword blow to the neck, he dies, or at least takes massive near-death hit, not get 3% of his health diminished as he continues to soak up damage. And these little fucks are usually not even bosses, but just random spawns. -HP sponges also have the nasty habit of being able to deal normal damage to player. Meaning if player hit them, they only drop 3% of their health, but if they hit the player, player's HP bar is already down 1/2. -Archers that one shot player. Which would be fine and realistic... if it wasn't for the fact that these abominations are also HP sponges that you can turn into pincushions without even dropping 1/5 of their HP. Not even mentioning using a bow is rather a crappy choice, since even enemies who aren't HP sponges, still take about 6-8 hits to die. -Same deal with some mage enemies. While player's highest tier magic spells doesnt do jackshit to enemies, HP sponges can one shot with a single fireball. While fighting an HP sponge with magic, mana and stamina ran out long before the enemy is even down half his massive health bar. I guess these can all be summarized to a single item. I really hate HP sponges more than anything. They're disgusting and annoying. Just feel like toggling god mode on and spamming endless firestorms and meteor strikes and whatever else mods allow to make the fuckers die already. I wouldn't have a problem with these fuckers if they were end-dungeon bosses. But they're random. Any bandit or draugr in the world can be an HP sponge thanks to some mods. So I find myself in need of ways of stopping this instanity. I'm using Ordinator + SPERG, plus my own compatibilty tweak to both making sure I'm using Ordinator's magic leveling feature. However, it still became overpowered in higher levels. Most combat mods I've seen, focus on stagger and stamina consume but I'm more interested in something that allows class building, specifically balanced magic. Also arrows. I know a few mods individually take care of leveling magic or increasing arrow damage, but I want compatibility and most of all: a way to get rid of HP sponges and one-shotters. In a perfect game world, fighting is about skill, and can end really fast, and it's never about how many HP you have. Especially if you carefully try to design a character that's oriented to mixed combat styles, and instead you find out you should've just worn heavy armor, a two handed sword and put all your level upgrades to health. That is not fun character building, that is lazy and boring. Nexus search for combat, lists a few most endorsed mods, among them Deadly Combat, and others. But I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on this matter, and hopefully get some recommendations for good combinations.
27X Posted August 13, 2019 Posted August 13, 2019 The game you're actually looking for is Dragon's Dogma with this mod: Destruction Magic in Skyrim is broken, simple as, and no amount of flexing the variables will change how broken it is, other magics are simply far more effective or scale better. Apocalypse is probably the mod you're looking for. Secondly there is actually a curve there, and that curve swings sharply in the player's favor after about level 30. As for combat mods, mods that actually change combat are Combat Behavior, Attack Commit, Combat Evolved, TKTK/Ultimate combat and Dark Souls Combat, both of the Korean and american variety (they are separate mods) most other combat mods tend to be script barfing trainwrecks (duel, combat realism) or smoothly scripted schizophrenia where getting stabbed in the foot after arbitrarily missing an attack that goes through your opponent gives you blindness for an in game week. (wildcat) or vanity mods with an even spammier and more fetishy damage curve than vanilla (requiem) I would recommend getting the ones that aren't broken and trying them solo on a clean profile before trying to mix and match.
ASlySpyDuo Posted August 13, 2019 Posted August 13, 2019 1 hour ago, Myst42 said: I really hate HP sponges more than anything. They're disgusting and annoying. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/96817 51 minutes ago, 27X said: smoothly scripted schizophrenia where getting stabbed in the foot after arbitrarily missing an attack that goes through your opponent gives you blindness for an in game week. (wildcat) If you are referring to the injuries, pretty much everyone except extreme masochists toggles that off. Even the author himself has stated that the injuries were a mistake (actually that the whole mod was a mistake but he tends to hate literally all his own mods).
Darkpig Posted August 13, 2019 Posted August 13, 2019 Balancing an RPG is nigh impossible and even non RPGs like Super Smash Bros have trouble balancing things on a tournament level. That said I have come up with a few things to reduce this issue somewhat which may include reducing options. Nevertheless. The author of Ordinator released a much more balanced perk overhaul called Vokrii. however this isn't a full fledged replacement for Ordinator as it lacks some very unique playstyles that Ordinator offers so you gotta make a choice. An example of a benefit is the fact that one of the perks in Vokrii is one that makes your wards cost 1/5 the amount of mana unlike Ordinators odd choice of having your first ward free. I would recommend a balancing mod like Simply Balanced to tweak things so they aren't too easy or too hard. Trust me on this it can be too hard then too easy; I recently saw a video of people 1 shotting bosses in Darksouls and I lost my friggin mind but I betcha they can't do it on New-game +7 which Skyrim is sadly lacking so you'll have to change the difficulty as you get stronger. There are ways to change the way HP works for your character the idea is to have a high enough base Magicka, Health, Stamina to make it through the base game + DLCs but keep stat changes minimal per level up so those changes in stamina or magicka don't feel wasted. I would suggest a mod for that but I think one of the posts above has suggested something better. If it isn't then I know there is a mod on Loverslab that does the exact thing I'm talking about but I can't seem to remember what it was called.
Myst42 Posted August 13, 2019 Author Posted August 13, 2019 10 hours ago, 27X said: The game you're actually looking for is Dragon's Dogma Friend already recommended this game, and I intend on playing it one day. 10 hours ago, 27X said: vanity mods with an even spammier and more fetishy damage curve than vanilla (requiem) Checked Requiem... first thing I notice is it negates all dragonborn content from the start unless a patch that does not yet exist for the latest version fixes it. That's a deal breaker. Also agreed that wounds and getting crippled is not my idea of fun games. 9 hours ago, ASlySpyDuo said: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/96817 Now this looks promising. Maybe it makes archery and magic work again on enemies' health bars. 9 hours ago, Darkpig said: The author of Ordinator released a much more balanced perk overhaul called Vokrii I hadn't noticed it was by the same author. My favorite thing about Ordinator actually is necromancy. When using Undeath with it, I was somehow able to raise up to 8 minions and have a stable army of skeleton followers which for once made necromancy look like an actual thing. As much as I liked my Ordinator + SPERG combination, it always felt like it touches way too many things. I prefer minimalistic things. And perhaps if Vokrii was designed to be closer to vanilla I'd like it more... I could even add features I like from the others myself should the need arise. I guess I'll have to make some tests and consider it. 9 hours ago, Darkpig said: I would recommend a balancing mod like Simply Balanced So theorizing somehow I manage to fix HP sponges, have a decent perk mod and magic leveling feature, maybe this could help to properly level damage from other things like bows and melee weapons.
yatol Posted August 20, 2019 Posted August 20, 2019 On 8/13/2019 at 6:10 AM, 27X said: Destruction Magic in Skyrim is broken, simple as, and no amount of flexing the variables will change how broken it is, other magics are simply far more effective or scale better. Apocalypse is probably the mod you're looking for. Secondly there is actually a curve there, and that curve swings sharply in the player's favor after about level 30. you aren't supposed to go around casting the same spells on everything most npc in tamriel are nords, casting ice spells on them... they are resistant to ice breton are resistant to everything, you see them around markarth imperials... you won't see much outside the civil war, if you don't side with them, but casting spells on them.... your siege is over if you hit x too much and he turn hostile others npc take a lot of damage, trolls are vulnerable to fire, fire elemental vunerable to ice... it's complicated to make those warlock dangerous for high level dragonborn, without making them deadly for low level dragonborn (you enter a room with 3 warlock, one is a boss, they cast 2 fireball and one ice shard, there's nowhere to run, you are dead) one way is to replace fireball 10 fire damage, by 5 fire damage and 5 fire damage that can't be resisted you still take some damage at high level, even in tempered enchanted dragonbone, and you didn't boost the damage so much you have to flee warlocks at low level weapon damage is worse than that, in tempered enchanted dragonbone, most npc can't damage the dragonborn with their iron sword of whatever boosting weapon isn't the solution either, or you have a very hard game at low level, that become... not much harder at high level hammer have armor penetration, but once npc run out of stamina, they mostly look at you waiting for their stamina to regen, another problem give a perk with 10% armor penetration to level 10 template, 15% to level 20, 20% to level 30... that will help npc damage you, with their crappy weapon and edit the global value for npc stamina regen (not too much or you reverse the role, you look at npc with your shield, waiting for stamina to regen, stamina you lose blocking, but if you don't block you take too much damange, so the only solution against too many npc, it's the shout to jump away from there, run around waiting for stamina to regen since npc can follow everywhere if you allow them too, looking for a spot where there's not enought room for them, and take them one bye one there, hoping it's you that won't run out of stamina)
faky Posted August 20, 2019 Posted August 20, 2019 Maybe it's just too obvious to state but im going to do that anyway: SkyTweak in there you can adjust nearly every variable, curve and multiplier so....think it's unrealistic that you can not instakill an npc by stabbing them in the neck while they are sleeping? crank up that sneak damage multiplier (just for daggers....or swords and axes too....or everything! except magic? your choice) NPCs are bullet sponges? crank down their hp bonus, buff all weapon damage...you can even adjust how levelled zones work. it also lets you adjust sneaking values, magic values, actor values....you name it. it's like the ultimate skyrim balancing tool that you have to set up instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you (you can even make npc archers have better or worse aim....and disable their retarded projectile dodge)
goaway Posted August 23, 2019 Posted August 23, 2019 Vanilla magic is worthless because it does not scale. Your fireball does not grow stronger by leveling up destruction. Your atronachs do not become more powerful by leveling up conjuration. But your sword hits harder by leveling up 1-handed. Strange, no? Besides that, magic is harder to balance because it requires values that function in the presence of multiple resistances. With weapons, every non-animal enemy has some amount of damage resistance. With magic, it's sort of random whether an enemy has any resistance. If you are, for example, using fire magic that is tuned to scale with level, it will generally be exceptionally deadly against non-resistant enemies and far less powerful against enemies with resistance. Why? Because both fire resistance AND magic resistance contribute to resistance. As you get higher level, a significant number of enemies (boss NPCs especially) get the generic MagicResist70 perk which gives 30% magic resistance. If they have any magic or fire resistance from equipment (unusual for vanilla), perks (several mods add fire resistance to augmented perks), or race (dunmer), that spell that was highly effective against normal enemies becomes flat out useless against that one foe. You can stack up to 85% magic resist and 90% fire resist, so there is a lot more room for damage reduction when compared to physical damage, which has a single resistance it checks against and maxes at 85% reduction. So it's a little difficult to get the balance just right to where you don't hit absurdly hard vs. some enemies and absurdly weak vs. others. Regarding combat, I agree with your assessment, vanilla combat at high levels in skyrim ends up being pointless to do more than stand in 1 spot and click spam until stuff dies. For re-balanced combat I prefer Ultimate combat https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36006, since it is generally the cleanest in terms of adding additional features like location damage targetting (hit in head for more damage) and timed blocking, and allows for hardcore-fast-paced-damage options that aren't skewed by the author's masochistic bias (cough requiem).
yatol Posted August 25, 2019 Posted August 25, 2019 On 8/23/2019 at 3:50 AM, goaway said: Vanilla magic is worthless because it does not scale. Your fireball does not grow stronger by leveling up destruction. Your atronachs do not become more powerful by leveling up conjuration. there are mods to make those spells scale... but that will also scale on npc, helping them destroying you, you didn't thought of that? once you get to level 50, game can now pick level 50 from the leveledlist, but it can also pick the level 10, or 15, or 20.... it's that the problem, mods like high level ennemies that unlock some level 100 when you get to level 100, do nothing about the problem, there's more low levels npc in the list, game mostly pick low levels npc, for your dragonborn that gain more and more stats, perks and gear there are mods to make those npc stronger, but it can't make the level 10 a threat, or that would make the level 50 too strong there are mods to make npc more offensive too, editing their combat style, that, you must have it (useless to make those npc stronger if they hide behind their shield, or magic shield) armor penetration, level 10 bandit can now damage you despite his gear, level 50 npc only do a little more damage spell penetration, level 10 warlock can now damage you despite your resistances, level 50 warlock doesn't 2 shot you with his stronger spells boost by perks
Slorm Posted August 26, 2019 Posted August 26, 2019 Balancing has always been an issue. I'm 250 hours (lvl 46) into my current game playing an assassin/conjuror/archer. Problem now, is once I got the Twin Souls perk I can just spam Dremora's or Storm Atronachs which is pretty much an "I Win" button, so I'm having to look at artificially gimping my pc by using the console to remove Twin Souls or set Conjuration to legendary, (which will probably make the pc too weak then) Mods like Encounter Zones Unlocked I found helpful in the earlier part of the game https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/84924
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