Brand Party Play Bugged or needs re-coded

a friend and i have been playing Brands lately, and partying. we have found though that Brands have a problem.

An enemy can only have 2 brands at most applied to it.

This includes from different players.

so for open area / maps everything is fine, but when we run into a boss or a unique, or a hard Yellow. We end up having the damage of one of us completely removed.

We are already dealing with the life penalty for being grouped, and now we both can't attack the same mob.

I'm thinking this is just a slip up where the devs might of used the curse system's coding and applied it to the brand system, but it's completely different. Curses it makes sense you don't want to have 6 people running 2 curses fully cursing the entire map.

Brands are a characters means of attacking / doing damage. Needs to allow each players limit to be applied. Basically the limiting factor / control shouldn't be based on the monster, but on the character. I however can see where this is a problem to code around.

As players aren't coded / tied to the monsters. So tying the limits together could be really challenging. Most things that impact / have a limit are counted for on the monster. Bleeds / Poisons / brands / curses.


So i would see if it's possible though to setup the brand system to look at brand source and track that as well into the brand limiting code.

So Monster gets brand applied, it creates a bucket

Keeper applied brand
keeper applied brand
keeper applied brand - fails to attach no room for brand
Party 2 applied brand - party 2 has no brands apply brand.

It makes the system much more complex than i think the intent was, but it really does make the game feel broken from party play. Our current work around is to use links, and debuff skills to try and make up for the half damage loss, but we shouldn't have to lose damage, just cause our skill choice ends up being the same.


Other option is to increase brand max count on enemies by number of party memembers in an area, around something. I say "around" cause we know people would just portal bot, to get 12 brands. Could possibly use the same "area scan" used for the kill rewards for beastiary. On brand attach attempt, scan area if player count = 3 then 6 brands attach allowed. Granted this could add a bunch of overhead. When you have a bunch of brands all attempting to attach, but would it really cause they have to be ticking and trying to attach anyways, just a quick proxy scan to see how many nearby players there are. This type of scan has to happen for EXP on every kill as well for distance of players, So game has mechanic to quickly find player distance from monster killed, just need to apply that for brand attach attempt.


I'm sure this happens with other skills but we haven't noticed it and we have played almost every skill in the game.

Thats how it works. It is same with curses too.
Each time an enemy is inflicted by a curse or brand the enemy's limit can only overwrite the last person who inflicted the brand or curse.
Heres how it goes:
when I inflict a curse or a brand on enemy, if I have only 1 curse limit available, when someone with just 1 curse limit inflicts another curse it overwrites my initial curse, if they have two curse limits their first attempt to inflict a curse would add the curse to the enemy instead of deleting mine.
I believe brands must work this way. An enemy can only have the amount of brands that the initial person branded them. Maybe if you had 1 brand limit and your friend had a 2 brand attachable mod then he could add the additional brand to that enemy. Unless your brands expire on that monster your friend can not breach the maximum amount of brand that can be put on a monster.
That should be the logic of it.

its really gross i wish they would come up with a better solution like curses not having a literal limit but a limit as to how many "full" curses you can support on an enemy and any thing casted over your limit on the enemy(counting other players curses) would reduce the effect of the curses a great deal both (over cursed) and normal curses.

shrug, that would probably just make people uninstall the game lol.

for real though this is a super negative for anyone who plays with a group of people that has almost any overlap.. most builds rely on curses and many rely on brands not only as dps but to apply various mechanics.. Something really does need to be figured out to if not entirely fix at least alleviate the issue slightly.

"

MrsDeath_ wrote:

Thats how it works. It is same with curses too.
Each time an enemy is inflicted by a curse or brand the enemy's limit can only overwrite the last person who inflicted the brand or curse.
Heres how it goes:
when I inflict a curse or a brand on enemy, if I have only 1 curse limit available, when someone with just 1 curse limit inflicts another curse it overwrites my initial curse, if they have two curse limits their first attempt to inflict a curse would add the curse to the enemy instead of deleting mine.
I believe brands must work this way. An enemy can only have the amount of brands that the initial person branded them. Maybe if you had 1 brand limit and your friend had a 2 brand attachable mod then he could add the additional brand to that enemy. Unless your brands expire on that monster your friend can not breach the maximum amount of brand that can be put on a monster.
That should be the logic of it.

The problem is when you have a single boss

2 players+: the boss can only at any time ever have 2 brands down.

Unlike curses though Brands can be the characters only means of doing damage.

Curses are massive debuffs where brands are a damage skill.

They are 2 completely different things.

So the result isn't losing out on the ability to debuff a monster 2 times, but literally removing all damage from a party member.

You could have 6 characters, in a party with brands, and only be able to ever attack with 2 brands at 1 time. Yet you have the full party's life bonus penalty applied. So you lose out on the ability to really party.

I would even sudo be ok with it if they set it to 2 brands per brand type. aka could have a penance brand and an armagedon brand, each with the two limit.

Then at least you could go hey guys, I'll do armagedon, you do storm brand, and you do arcanist or wintertide.

Then at least the party could be creative, and possibly get to doing 1 or 2 gem swaps and being able to still have boss dps. Or each of them specializing in each type of brand, for a highly effective party.

With freeze/chill/ignite/shock, each coming from a different party member.

But now it would be like playing any build, and when you walk into an arena the game randomly selects 1 player in the party and they are the only person in the party allowed to do any damage to the boss.

all other damage abilities are disabled.
That is what is happening with brands in party today.

"

keeperofstars wrote:

The problem is when you have a single boss

2 players+: the boss can only at any time ever have 2 brands down.

Unlike curses though Brands can be the characters only means of doing damage.

Curses are massive debuffs where brands are a damage skill.

They are 2 completely different things.

So the result isn't losing out on the ability to debuff a monster 2 times, but literally removing all damage from a party member.

You could have 6 characters, in a party with brands, and only be able to ever attack with 2 brands at 1 time. Yet you have the full party's life bonus penalty applied. So you lose out on the ability to really party.

I would even sudo be ok with it if they set it to 2 brands per brand type. aka could have a penance brand and an armagedon brand, each with the two limit.

Then at least you could go hey guys, I'll do armagedon, you do storm brand, and you do arcanist or wintertide.

Then at least the party could be creative, and possibly get to doing 1 or 2 gem swaps and being able to still have boss dps. Or each of them specializing in each type of brand, for a highly effective party.

With freeze/chill/ignite/shock, each coming from a different party member.

But now it would be like playing any build, and when you walk into an arena the game randomly selects 1 player in the party and they are the only person in the party allowed to do any damage to the boss.

all other damage abilities are disabled.
That is what is happening with brands in party today.

Curses might not deal damage but the damage increases they provide are almost as important though you are right its not the same because you're talking about a DPS skill.. both are frustrating for the same reason though!

I encountered this brand limitation for the first time funny enough this league despite playing 2-3 brand focused builds in the past trade leagues.

Some other skills also suffer from this inability to function with another of the same ability casted by another player, some overlap system with depreciating gains would likely be better? or at least allow all players to deal damage and contribute as well as be able to interact with MANY mechanics some of which keep you alive(leech etc)

you cant attack + you cant heal/regen mana or something on top of it.

This is one of the attributes that makes brands different from totems and such. It's an intended downside of brands.

When it comes to multiplayer games, things need to have real tangible effects on the game world. Otherwise, your stuff only really exists in your own UI. On the extreme end of this you get world of warcraft and such, where you're playing peggle with UI elements to raise DPS numbers, nothing of which is visible to or affects other players in any way.

"

kaijyuu2 wrote:

This is one of the attributes that makes brands different from totems and such. It's an intended downside of brands.

When it comes to multiplayer games, things need to have real tangible effects on the game world. Otherwise, your stuff only really exists in your own UI. On the extreme end of this you get world of warcraft and such, where you're playing peggle with UI elements to raise DPS numbers, nothing of which is visible to or affects other players in any way.

i get it being an intended downside, but is it a balanced one, where you can fully void off 5 players worth of damage?

i'm fine with their limits per character, but a skill shouldn't immediately make it 100% invalid for party play.

There are a lot of instances of player skills/effects conflicting, as most things are limited to 1 application by default. Some things like curses can have that limit increased, but some like ground effects can't. That's entirely by design and is unlikely to ever change. The problem is that PoE is extremely opaque about this with regard to party play.

But you want party members whose skills and effects synergize when possible and at the very least don't conflict.

"

aggromagnet wrote:

There are a lot of instances of player skills/effects conflicting, as most things are limited to 1 application by default. Some things like curses can have that limit increased, but some like ground effects can't. That's entirely by design and is unlikely to ever change. The problem is that PoE is extremely opaque about this with regard to party play.

But you want party members whose skills and effects synergize when possible and at the very least don't conflict.

true, but even ground effects typically come as secondary effects / damage.

Burning ground, chilled, etc.

The brand issue woiuld be like saying.

traps cannot be triggered if another players traps have triggered on the monster recently.

I think it is intended and probably GGG would change it.



Brand skills are the type of skills allowing players to DPS while maneuvering their own characters; a feature that is very similar to DoT skills, albeit Brands can leech while most DoT skills cannot.


Most non-poison DoT skills cannot stack, even if those skills were casted by different source. Vortex (which is mostly used as a main skill for its DoT damage rather that hit damage), Flame Wall, Bane, Ignite, Bleed. I guess that is one way GGG used to balance the advantage of those skills with high maneuverability compared with general direct hit skills.



Besides, brand skill damage from different players can actually partially stack with each other. Recalled Brand will deal damage once upon Brand Recall without the need to attach to an existing monster, allowing brands to deal damage to deal damage even if all enemies has been occupied.


Actually, this feature even offered a certain benefit for Storm Brand; in one player scenario, recalled Storm Brand usually cannot enjoy its "deal more damage to branded enemies" bonus, since no Brand would be attached to any enemies when they were recalled. However, when they are two or more players playing Brands, it becomes possible for recalled Brand to deal damage to Branded enemies; the total DPS this way may even be higher than simply DPSing while attached, if the player raises Brand number to maximum (7) and stacks Brand recall recovery cooldown.