Why scale ranged damage from intelligence?

[Chivinavy]

Intelligence gives you so much, so now it has also taken damage from a distance. I thought intelligence was an auxiliary parameter for leaders, but it turns out it's meant for shooters. You've forgotten about the talents of the Forge World, right now you can get anything from intelligence. Is this such an agitation for being smart?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

I assume that you're referring to this:

Intelligence now additionally affects the damage of Area of Effect attacks of ranged weapons, increasing their damage by 5% per every point of Intelligence Bonus. As a part of this change, Soldier now has a new talent - Battlefield Demolition. This talent allows the soldier to use Demolition skill instead of Intelligence for calculations of Area of Effect bonus damage. For example, a Soldier with this talent and 70 Demolition will deal 35% additional damage with ranged area of effect attack, same as a character with 70 intelligence

Note that this only affects AoE attacks, many of which are close range or point-blank, not single-target attacks or burst attacks that are generally more deadly and effective at longer ranges.

Also note that Soldiers get access to a talent that allows them to scale the bonus off Demolition, which in turn scales off Agility instead of Intelligence.

That means that if you want to make a Soldier who specializes in AoE attacks, you can without having to try to raise INT (which might not be a good fit). Instead you can raise AGI and Demolition, which is probably a better fit, and get even better results than someone relying upon INT alone.

I see this as basically a way to help out Pasqal, who took a damage nerf elsewhere in the patch notes, retain his ability to lay down some effective AoE fire. It also boosts AoE solder attacks, which were very much inferior to burst to the point of being pointless. I don't know yet whether this will make AoE competitive with burst, but even if not it is an improvement.

[Astronimo]

It's done mostly for Plasma rifle. And mostly for Forge world characters.

[Chivinavy]

I understand, but intelligence gives too much to such characters:
* All skills except those that depend on Strength, Agility and Endurance.
* Critical if you take an implant
* Area damage from firearms
* Enhances the abilities of some archetypes

[Aranador]

Oh no - they took a weak option, and made it so you could get some value out of it on a limited subset of characters - the sky is falling.

[Balekai]

Pascal and the Omnissiah approve of this change.

[Dragontoast]

It is dumb that Demo needs a perk and specific archetype to affect AOE when most AOEs are explosive, demo should be the baseline for this. Int already had too much going for it and this is absurd.
Plasma and Int are obviously the devs favorite while everything else gets snubbed hard.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Dragontoast:

It is dumb that Demo needs a perk and specific archetype to affect AOE when most AOEs are explosive, demo should be the baseline for this. Int already had too much going for it and this is absurd.

If it scaled off Demo base then that wouldn't help Pasqal, who normally will not have a very good Demo. That's why I suspect they did this to hlep Pasqal; using INT ties directly into something he's good at anyway.

Originally posted by Dragontoast:

Plasma and Int are obviously the devs favorite while everything else gets snubbed hard.

Plasma isn't the only AoE weapon. This also boosts Melta and Flame, and even shotguns.

Bolter bursts are still going to be better. This just helps nudge ranged AoE up a bit.

[Chivinavy]

Does Pascal need help? He has damage, armor, armor penetration, evasion bypass, and crit... Why does he need this increase in AoE damage?

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Chivinavy:

Does Pascal need help? He has damage, armor, armor penetration, evasion bypass, and crit... Why does he need this increase in AoE damage?

Omnissiah says so that's why!

We will have to see how the INT buff to area attacks performs. Especially in conjunction with the fact we can take his special talents on common talent slots now. :)

Also we should see how it combos with the Ancient Plasma Rifle.

[Chivinavy]

I am confused by the distribution of the load on the Characteristics. Intelligence gives you too much of everything.
Even if this is Pascal's enhancement, then do not forget that this also applies to the player. And it seems to me that a Rogue Trader from the Forge World can look very dangerous and versatile.

[oddball]

Originally posted by Chivinavy:

Does Pascal need help? He has damage, armor, armor penetration, evasion bypass, and crit... Why does he need this increase in AoE damage?

He kinda sucked with Melta. I slapped a multimelta on him and near immediately pulled it off again because his stats did nothing for it.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Chivinavy:

Does Pascal need help? He has damage, armor, armor penetration, evasion bypass, and crit... Why does he need this increase in AoE damage?

I can't say whether he needs it. However, they just fixed a bug that was causing him to potentially do massively more damage than intended with plasma weapons. My guess is that this change is a consolation prize, acting in part to restore a tiny bit of what they took away. I assume that there were other reasons for the change as well, like boosting AoE damage in general. However, note the key words "guess" and "assume".

Edit: Correction, the fix wasn't to Pasqal but to the Ancient Plasma Rifle, which he or anyone else might have been using to devastating effect:

Ancient Plasma Rifle now correctly deals (2 × INT bonus) damage, down from the crazy (2 × INT) damage. Sorry, Pasqal, Archeotech is powerful, but not THIS powerful!

[BrutalBeast]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Originally posted by Chivinavy:

Does Pascal need help? He has damage, armor, armor penetration, evasion bypass, and crit... Why does he need this increase in AoE damage?

I can't say whether he needs it. However, they just fixed a bug that was causing him to potentially do massively more damage than intended with plasma weapons. My guess is that this change is a consolation prize, acting in part to restore a tiny bit of what they took away. I assume that there were other reasons for the change as well, like boosting AoE damage in general. However, note the key words "guess" and "assume".

Edit: Correction, the fix wasn't to Pasqal but to the Ancient Plasma Rifle, which he or anyone else might have been using to devastating effect:

Ancient Plasma Rifle now correctly deals (2 × INT bonus) damage, down from the crazy (2 × INT) damage. Sorry, Pasqal, Archeotech is powerful, but not THIS powerful!

They did also heavily nerf the Filtering Protocols talent for Pasqal, which was a key point of the Ancient Plasma Rifle combo.

[[CA]deusex2]

Soooo... They've, already, turned Pasqal into Omnissiah... And then they've fixed the ludicrous plasma gun, but buffed the dage back up, from the int modifier... Smooth... Real smooth...

[BrutalBeast]

Originally posted by CAdeusex2:

Soooo... They've, already, turned Pasqal into Omnissiah... And then they've fixed the ludicrous plasma gun, but buffed the dage back up, from the int modifier... Smooth... Real smooth...

Nerfing something down from 2xInt to 2xIntBonus is not getting "buffed the dage back up" if you add 1xIntBonus. In total it is reducing the damage by 85 %.