The Clan Lord Sentinel

With the help of two of Puddleby's Champions, I'm developed the suspicion that Balthite doesn't work as advertised. As far as I can tell, Balthite doesn't provide nearly the amount of balance it should, and this needs to be investigated by GMs and fixed, if it is actually broken. Maybe some people can help me figure this out, I might just be very confused. (I do that to myself sometimes).

To test my theory, I compared the amount of balance taken by one swing of the same weapon with and without Balthite equipped. Both Champions have enough Channel Master to support their Balthite ranks.


Case A is a Champion with nearly 550 Balthus and 27 Dansel. That should contribute an additional 81 Balthus. The difference between the two cases is only 2 pixels, which equates to roughly 9 Balthus (2/124 [number of pixels in bar]*550), as far as I can tell.

Case B is a Champion with roughly 330 Balthus and 24 Dansel. That should contribute an additonal 72 Balthus. The difference between the two cases is 4 pixels, which equates to roughly 4/124 * 330 = 10.6 Balthus.

It seems to me like I measured something wrong, or made a bad assumption. Can someone point out my mistake? Is there actually a bug?

Thanks in advance.

-Usagi

I don't notice anything wrong with it. And I use it all the time with Daimoth.

Did you make sure that said Champions have every rank of channeling to cover for that much Dansel?

Daimoth wrote:Did you make sure that said Champions have every rank of channeling to cover for that much Dansel?

I edited my first post to clarify: they do. Thanks for pointing this out.

-Usagi

I'd be interested to know how many swings both cases have. And what the increase is with the Balthite equipped as opposed to without. It's possible that the balance visual is faulty but the actual outcome is not.

Your math is flawed.

You need to look at the percent of balance you're using without Balthite vs the percentage of balance used with Balthite.

I don't know what those percentages are as I don't have the time to look at them pixel by pixel right now, so I'll give an example of how to do it:

If before using Balthite you use 60% balance per swing...
And after using Balthite you use 40% balance per swing...

You know your Balthite training gives you a 150% bonus to your balance (60/40 = 1.5). Thus if you have 300 Balthus you can determine that the Balthite increases your Balthus by 150 (300 * 1.5 = 450. 450 - 300 = 150).

Also the Champions in your examples probably have more like 650 and 450 Balthus respectively due to their racial bases (The Dwarven base Balthus is around 100 ranks, though it will probably vary slightly for the other races).

Gorvin wrote:Look at the percent of balance you're using without Balthite vs the percentage of balance used with Balthite.

A: Without Balthite: 38 pixels taken.
With Balthite: 36 pixels taken.

38/124/36/124 = 38/36.

B: 49 pixels taken without/45 pixels taken with.

Let's give each of them an additional 100 Balthus for initial stats.
A: [650 * (38/36)] - 650 = 36 extra Balthus (for ~27 trained Balthite).
B: [430 * (49/45)] - 430 = 38 extra Balthus (for ~24 trained Balthite).

What gives?

-Usagi

I think the problem is you are assuming that your total balance is the same with and without the Balthite equipped. In case A, you actually have 631 total Balthus on the top bar. For the bottom bar you only have 550 total.

Diomedes wrote:I think the problem is you are assuming that your total balance is the same with and without the Balthite equipped. In case A, you actually have 631 total Balthus on the top bar. For the bottom bar you only have 550 total.

Would Gorvin's suggestion solve this problem? If not, what am I supposed to add?

Hmm. When you did the test, did the Champions make sure to do a quick equipment swap to freeze their Regia before swinging? If not, in the frame they swung they would have regenerated one frame's worth of balance, which would have thrown the numbers off.

Gorvin wrote:Hmm. When you did the test, did the Champions make sure to do a quick equipment swap to freeze their Regia before swinging? If not, in the frame they swung they would have regenerated one frame's worth of balance, which would have thrown the numbers off.

Yep, everyone was fully balance-taxed.

-Usagi

Gorvin did my math and has determined that when Daimoth equips his Balthite it gives him 11 ranks of Balthus at most, though realistically it's about 8. When it should give him 20. 19, at the very least. (100 fell, 7 ranks of Dansel. 20% fell bonus into channeling is assumed).

GM commentary?

Edit: Numbers.

Daimoth wrote:GM commentary?

I don't like the Kenya coffee blend at Starbucks.

Oh, and I've no idea about Champion numbers, but I just wanted to pipe in and give feedback so I wouldn't see 7 posts about "It's been X months with no GM comments!"

I just went over Usagi's numbers that he listed. For case A(1), a swing took the equivalent of 168.5 balthus. To get the same number for A(2), the balthite would give about 31 ranks equivalent (compared to the 27 dansel and 81 channel master). For case B(1), a swing uses 130.4 balthus. For case B(2), the balthite bonus is about 30 ranks (compared to 24 dansel).

This is assuming no balthus other than trained. If each character had 50 balthus before training, then in each case the bonus is about 34 ranks. (If the characters started with more than 50 intrinsic balthus, then case B gets a larger balthite bonus than case A.)

So lets assume that no mistakes have been made by the testers. On the face of it, it looks like balthite gives the equivalent of 120-150% of Dansel ranks in balance, at a cost of 3x the ranks in a support trainer (channel master). Note that these numbers match up with what Daimoth said, as well.

Eldon wrote:

Daimoth wrote:GM commentary?

I don't like the Kenya coffee blend at Starbucks.

Oh, and I've no idea about Champion numbers, but I just wanted to pipe in and give feedback so I wouldn't see 7 posts about "It's been X months with no GM comments!" :roll:

So could you possibly pass this on to the GM responsible for it? If we're correct about this Balthite is about half as effective as it is supposed to be. That's a pretty major bug.

Bakunan wrote:On the face of it, it looks like balthite gives the equivalent of 120-150% of Dansel ranks in balance, at a cost of 3x the ranks in a support trainer (channel master). Note that these numbers match up with what Daimoth said, as well.

Gorvin also did a comprehensive analysis on that test, and came up with something very similar. Thanks to Gorvin for going through all of that work (for me and Daimoth, and possibly others). I'm glad to know that I'm not crazy, but I'm also annoyed to learn Balthite sucks even more than it's supposed to. At the very least, I hope Eldon is passing along the message as I speak.

-Usagi