Update Discussion: November 6, 2020

[Yaffy]

So I was finally able to play a decent amount, and I realized that elemental ward's elemental mitigation is only direct damage, so it doesn't protect you against burning damage. This makes it significantly less useful against enemies that apply DoTs. The wording makes it sound like it's all elemental damage, so that's why I assumed it blocked burning damage.

To be fair it is more balanced this way (Negating the DoTs is too strong), but it does make the ability a lot less useful and burning DoTs are quite nasty now with elemental ward not blocking them and burst evasion boots being nerfed so you can't avoid Droach DoTs as consistently.

[Mikhaila]

I'm glad to hear about the other skill benefitting from transmutation buffs. I actually got extremely lucky with my rolls and was able to experiment with the new cow/unarmed. Universal mitigation % is nice, but I await your changes to unarmed.



Transitory issue, but will you adjust drop rates as well? I'm afraid that the math (ease of execution vs profit/hr) might not work in favor of grouping up if you increase our time to clear by 50% or so.

I don't think we can add something like profit into the equation. Players might let it affect their actions, but it's not something on the development side when trying to fix combat. One theme running through a lot of the feedback is "longer fights vs dps burst". If each fight is longer, it's going to have to make clearing a dungeon longer.

The biggest thing affecting the economy right now is a lot of money in the system. Why are stomachs 1k? (I've paid up to 1800 lately even.) Because long term players have a ton of cash and we drive the price up. If I need a stack of stomachs and the only ones available for a day or two are 1800 each, then i pay that. Because I have plenty of money. And then I charge 4k for fets, because 1) the cost of milk and stomachs is going up 2) people have plenty of money and can afford to pay 4k for a snack.

As we get more money, prices on luxury goods will keep going up. If fights being longer means less money, prices won't go up so fast.

And I too am interested in how things changing will affect unarmed. I've used it as my main skill for a couple of years.

[Ranperre]

I don't think we can add something like profit into the equation.

The return in terms of councils from sold loot needs to be considered at some point though. This is a decision many players will make every night they log on: Do I group up with others and kill elites for their gear, or do I farm for resources to sell or craft/do WO's. If clear times increase with no change in loot, the decreased profit/hr will push people into other parts of the economy (WO's/skinning/fat). I believe that the balance between killing/selling and farming/work orders is pretty good right now and might be thrown out of whack if we increase our clear times too much (with no appropriate loot change).

The too much money issue is a symptom of the current state of the game more than the economy. With the wipe and expected price of skills/etc for 90 and 100, we'll most definitely be poor for awhile. The rate at which skill costs increase seems to be higher than the rate at which we can farm for money increases (the addition of things like aurest are unforeseeable), so it makes sense that we're all loaded at 80 even after skilling up everything. This is also why I imagine we don't have access to all 70-80 work orders and our industry is held back.

And also, tangentially related (luxury items), the fox in a box is most certainly not worth 4-5 million.

[Mikhaila]

Players make those decisions all the time. "where is the best spot/way to make money?". If things change, then player behavior changes. But again, it's not a variable or concern for how to make combat better. That's tough enough as it is. ot something the developers should worry about when adjusting combat.

And even if elite fights take twice as long, it's not going to make much of a difference. Farming other things will also take longer. So it takes 6 seconds instead of 3 for a group to kill a wartroll? We add 5 minutes per 100 mobs killed to the time. Minor compared to the overall time.

"Worth" is something decided by each person For someone with no money, A Foxnbox isn't worth 10k. For someone with 20million, it's of no consequence. We are spending pixels, so it's up to the individual what it's worth to them. If you measure it's value by what it can make you, it's a poor investment. If you measure it by "Teloch has one, I don't, I'm jealous and want one!", then 4 million is cheap.

[Mbaums]

A major part of the economy isn’t just money moving between players, but money being added to the world via vendors, quests, and work orders. I think the amount of council being added through NPC sales is significant enough that doubling mob HP really should be looked at as possibly cutting that number in half. I’d argue that doubling mob HP, however needed, would reduce the money coming in by a lot more than you’d expect. Three major effects of slower fights would be: 1) regen mobs becoming much harder to kill 2) all crowd control effects become less useful if you use them twice+ in a fight and 3) more deaths because someone is going to misjudge risk. This all means so much time spent on money earning. It could force solo players to group more and it might actually have the opposite effect as I’m describing to global wealth, so I don’t think flat out doubling possible drops is the answer, but allowing for more monsters to drop a 2nd item more often would be welcomed. But the major way to think of any of this is global wealth vs individual.

There was that other thread about Bulwark and players wanting it to go to the side bar. At first I thought, no way I’m sure this is balanced to be on the combat bar, but after reading how it was designed for Dwarfs first, I gotta join the Bulwark side bar club. Shield has a few mods that really support bashing left and right, but there just isn’t enough slots for everything. However in it’s current state shield might already be the most popular tank-skill, but I don’t think that’s the best measure of success. How it feels (2nd hand info) is good, but it can be better with this tweak. To balance it out, maybe disallow flying while Bulwarked?

One of my favorite lines in the patch notes is about how Unarmed, Deer and Ice magic are next. I really forgot ice magic is thought of as a tanking skill. Deer’s place was just strange with taunts but minimal mitigation IMO. Unarmed is good with heavy mod investment, but would just love to what can be done with a skill that can technically work with no hands, 1 hand and 2 hands open. I hope that weapon choice changes how the combat skill plays beyond “barrage or no barrage”.

[Glythe]

Flat mitigation on players makes a lot of sense because monster damage scales almost linearly. (This is very different from player damage, which has multiplicative elements, so mitigation on monsters is much less powerful.)

Giving out tons of flat mitigation does create new problems. I'm especially worried about granting literal invincibility against lower-level monsters.

I would argue that the current levels of flat mitigation make almost no sense. Before this update it was pretty easy to stack flat mitigation and be extremely safe against melee enemies. With level 70 gear as a reference point building for flat mitigation gives you : immunity to level 50 melee elites (except crush+knockdown who can still be problematic) and level 60 normal melee enemies. Level 70 gear/mods give you minimal survival bonuses vs lvl 70 elite enemies. When you compare to say level 80 elite enemies you notice nearly no difference in survivability only considering flat mitigation.

There are multiple builds for example able to solo through DC in level 70 gear and be extremely safe.

One mechanic I'm considering to fight over-mitigation is something from Asheron's Call 2 I called "armor chipping".

Long story short: I've always been pretty hesitant to give out meaningful amounts of mitigation because of the abusability of it for farming lowbie monsters. But I think flat mitigation -- in large amounts! -- is going to be necessary to make high-level group combat work.

Introducing armor chipping will push player builds more towards the already extremely popular trend to ignore defense and build only for damage. Is that what you want for the game?

It's also important to realize that monsters can serve different roles, and you aren't supposed to be able to tank them all! The "Multipurpose Utility Elementals" in the newest dungeon are a good example. They have an opening move that sprays acid which will shred armor in seconds. But that's their opening move, and then they can't use it again for 30 seconds. And it does no health damage... so... one simple solution is: don't tank that!

Is it good design to ask for non tanky dps players to be pulling? The design philosophy of saying "this monster was not meant to be tanked" pushes players into the build suggestion zone where they might ask - why bother tanking at all? Just build elite dps groups that have movement powers and status effects (roots/stun/slow/knockdowns). Tank nothing and kill everything in sloppy AoE style. Currently this seems like the most useful option and I hate that tremendously.

[Mbaums]

Citan has flat out given examples of other games that tried bleed and I don't believe it caused people to totally abandon tanks. I'm kind of against bleeding, but I get that the goal is to allow tanks while allowing lvl 100 content to thrive when it comes out. The problem that I believe he wants to avoid is the best farming build at 100 being something like cow+warden just solo AoEing+damage shield murdering old group content. What this update kind of shows, to me at least, is build diversity comes from when more builds feel strong. So many more people put together tank builds and they seem to enjoy them because their group contribution feels significant.

And not to be picky, it's not like all of WT is made up of those elementals. The non-tank method of pulling kind of trivializes them, but I think most groups still have their tank pull them anyway. The individual+ hard "tank at a range" mob has been around for awhile in PG, like the golems in Labs which are really rough for an at level group, and the best way to deal with them is carefully run around.

[Chilton]

Gday Chilton here.

Getting pwned at work atm (although I shouldn't complain about having a steady job that is giving me lots of overtime), and only just managed to play enough to form an opinion on the latest patch.

Firstly I love the suddenness of it all. We were having a whinge about tanking, and out of the blue, a patch drops that dramatically shakes up tanking in more ways than I have seen since I have started playing about 5 years ago.

I am what you may called a major beneficiary of this patch. My main build is Sword/Shield but I do also have Staff maxed out, with max Hoplology. I had 47 universal event keys saved up from Halloween and 2500 quality phlogistons. On the day the patch dropped I rolled a full set of purple tier equipments and was able to reroll the mods until I got perfect mods on them.

Then I had no time to actually play , it took me this long to be able to play for a total of a couple of hours so I can form an opinion on the patch.

I want to offer a few comments, echo one of Yaffy's feedback, and offer a warning of what I would recommend against doing.

Comment/feedback on the patch. I will have to focus on using Staff/Shield as a combination.

1) Lower tier content is beyond ridiculously trivialised when soloing. I can solo the casino dailies offered by Qatik with no preparation and only having low tier food. I agree whole heartedly that something has to be done to fix this. The idea of "armour chipping" sounds interesting and I will wait until I see it before forming an opinion, but I suspect it won't do enough to overcome the problem. Although I gained a new appreciation of the nuances of the balancing process through Citan's reveal that mob damage scales linearly with level, I am still of the opinion that percentage based mods is the way to go, particularly if we are going to aim to limit the number of mods available to players (I still think that is a good idea and would be healthy for build diversity and the game in general).

2) Partying in lower tier content is a mixed bag. If I have a party of lower level players, they are awed by my ability to pull an entire room and tank them while slowly chipping away at the mobs' hp. However when I am running with a high level party, I feel I am almost a liability because I do less damage than compared to if I was running Sword/Shield.

3) The +10 power regen per sec on bulwark form makes it possible to fly forever, and almost abolish the need to have good food. Although I do find some mid level food is still necessary, mainly because I am in full metal armour, but that might change as I upgrade to max enchanted leather armour. I argue it is still vital when soloing because it negatives your power issues, but you can get away with toggling it.

4) I am able to easily solo the elites in fae realm that don't have regeneration, with almost no preparation (just low tier food, no other buffs). I would say this is imbalanced. It's slow and it would be at least 2.5 times faster with a party, but the idea that I can solo them with almost no preparation, while only selected few other builds can do it with lots of preparation and buffs, does not sit comfortably with me.

5) I suspect just increasing the health of elites will not change pretty much any of my observations above. I would advocate that in the next patch, in addition to doubling mob's health they should also have some regeneration added, so that I cannot just slowly grind them down soloing.

6) I haven't had a chance to run a proper high level dungeon with my new build, but I suspect I will be able to solo 1-2 elites in GK, with good food and power regen, but I will not be able to solo WT because of regeneration of trolls, dark damage of ensigns, and DoT effects of a few mobs. I wonder if I can solo the frost hippogriffs and the bears/minotaurs area, once I run past the trolls and ensigns. In any case, the mob density and sheer health pool of mobs in WT will make soloing them very annoying, even if it is doable.

7) I wont comment on the balancing of the taunt component of bulwark form, as I have not yet had a proper high level dungeon run. Likewise I cannot comment on the power and "feel" of the build in high level dungeon.

8) Yes please make bulwark form a side bar skill, I miss having Shield Team....

Despite being a major beneficiary of this patch and so far loving my new found power, I am concerned about the direction this game may be going, if I am reading this underlying trend and Citan's comments correctly (I am concerned enough that I am posting this even before I had time to experience more of this patch).

I am concerned that we may move too far in the direction of making tanks too powerful/useful/indispensable for the party. As an extreme example, I point to World of Warcraft, where having a tank is mandatory for a party, and I felt it drove a lot of the toxic behaviour in the game. I was a druid tank/healer back in those days and I saw my share of tanks behaving badly, examples include belittling other players, rage quitting, booting out players that are seen as underperforming, charging other players to join the party, etc.

Now Project Gorgon has a much older and mentally mature audience than WoW is what I have noticed, but I think the fact that tanks are in high demand still gives tank players an attitude of superiority and creates tension. I have certainly felt annoyed when there are players in the party that are new/underperforming and I have called them out for it, but to the best of my recollection I have never rage quitted a party or booted anyone unless they are clearly griefing.

I guess what I am trying to say is similar to the points made by Yaffy in that we should aim for a sweet spot where having a tank is not vital, but is desirable. We can't make it too desirable either (for example if having a tank allows you to pull 4 mobs while without a tank you had to pull only 1) because it will have the same effect of making tanks indispensable.

Addressing some of the other comments made:

I think the value of having a tank in the party goes beyond the number of mobs a party can handle at once/clear speed. Having a dedicated tank takes out a lot of the mental strain of playing, healers can easily focus on one target to heal, dps can not worry so much about accidentally attracting aggro, pulling one extra mob than you intended to doesn't result in a party wipe. In that sense even if having a tank does not dramatically increase clear speed, I feel its still worthwhile.

I like the idea of having "situations where a player is useless" as a game design, provided of course it's not too often. The Davlos fight brought a few high level players down a peg or two (myself included), having to concede the role of primary damage dealer to the person who is doing least damage on the post fight autopsy report. I support the idea of having bosses or mobs that are "untankable" or just untankable with a particular build, so that you have to find alternative ways to handle them. It encourages us to accept players with unconventional builds, who might not be high level or optimally built into the party. It encourages us to have more than one build/set of equipments so that we can potentially change skills on the fly for a particular fight. Most importantly, it gives someone else a chance to be the indispensable part of the team.

In summary, I think currently Staff/Shield as a combination is too strong, I think the power regeneration component of bulwark form needs a nerf. I suggest introducing a small amount of regeneration to elite mobs in addition to increasing their health. Please don't take away the ability of a full dps party to do a dungeon without a tank and a healer.

Sorry for long post. I will update it when I have had more time to play with my impressions of the build in WT.

[Yaffy]

I would just like to make another feedback post about tanking, since I've gotten some more time to play through Wintertide with a variety of groups. This was all done through Unarmed/Shield, just for context.

1. The change to elemental ward removes the ability to cheese out large groups of enemies (Ex. Pull 10 enemies at once in the cold area and being invincible via elemental ward) since it no longer has long term invincibility which is great.

2. Bulwark mode seems to apply before flat mitigation, this makes it scale a lot better with flat damage bonuses. This is also why it allows you to reduce the damage of mobs affected by elemental ward so much (Fire/Cold/Darkness). This honestly makes the flat mitigation from elemental ward way more helpful than I thought too.
For example, if someone has the 25% darkness meditation resist, bulwark mode and +54 darkness resist from elemental ward and they get hit by an Ensign which does 247 damage with a normal attack and ignoring armor, the result looks like this:
247 *0.75 *0.73 -54 = 81 damage

Slap on flat mitigation from armor, a darkness resist potion and thick skin, and you can easily reduce Ensign damage to close to 0 damage. Honestly I thought that Unarmed's darkness passives were what was reducing the damage by so much, but in this scenario it's shield doing most of the work due to Bulwark mode applying before flat mitigation. Unarmed's darkness resist applies last, so in the same scenario if you had both darkness resist mods you would just be reducing the 81 damage to 44, which isn't that impressive considering you would get the same result by just having a darkness resist potion and 500-700 armor or so. This is why in cases like Celerity's Unarmed/Shield is able to tank so many Ensigns at once. This also happens against elemental mobs if you're stacking fire/cold resist as well, which works especially well with elemental ward blocking 99 flat damage. However if you don't have a lot of flat mitigation then Unarmed's darkness resist gets considerably more helpful.

I'm a bit iffy on nerfing Bulwark mode because it's Shield's main option for reducing damage universally which it seriously needed to be anything more than a utility skill, but I think in this case a good way to tone down scenarios like this would be to make all percentage based mitigation apply after flat mitigation, similar to how Unarmed's works. I'm guessing inherent vulnerability works the way it does because it makes more sense for enemies to reduce damage that way, but on players it can be combined with flat damage mitigation to hit single digit damage numbers much more easily.

3. Elemental Ward having no effect (Aside from the first three seconds) on DoTs makes damage over time effects much more dangerous. Before you could use it to negate 10 seconds of burning DoT, and the old Poison/Trauma resistance mods let you use it for posion/bleeding to a lesser extent. Now it's very hard to build mitigation for DoT effects outside of getting the fire/indirect damage meditations. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because it puts more importance on DoT cleansing effects or effects that specifically target indirect damage, but I do think there could be some more options out there. For example on Shield I switched over to using the fire shield indirect damage reduction mod which works great, especially in combination with fire resist bonuses. I do kind of like how there's some variety in that Shield is good vs fire while Cow is good vs Poison/Trauma, but aside from the one mod each of those skills can get there isn't too much else (I don't think staff has anything!). You can chug consumables, Unarmed has poison resist and Generic/Endurance has some stuff here or there, but I wouldn't mind seeing some more options to handle indirect damage types spread around since I have to assume we'll be seeing more of it.

As an additional note, the nerf of nimble shoes makes the Droach burning damage significantly more noticeable, since obviously you'll be set on fire more often. This is also why indirect damage is a bit more important to try and mitigate.

4. Trolls in WinterTide continue to be the most difficult mob to pull too many of, with things usually getting dicey at tanking 3 at once even with lots of support because of knock down damage stacking + crits creating the potential to randomly get gibbed even from high life. Ensigns or Fire mobs can be a joke if you build for it as I've mentioned in point 2, although the fire mobs can still be difficult if you aren't able to mitigate burning damage. I stand by the point that the acid elementals really don't do a good job at encouraging me to get someone else to pull them, because their armor damage isn't really a big deal and it's pretty risky sending someone else in who might get blown up by Ensigns/Cocks. The Minotaur/Bear area could be kinda dangerous and similar to the trolls with their knockdown + health cutting, but usually the mobs are pretty spread out here so it's not a problem, I'd say they're slightly less dangerous than the trolls.
The nightmare creature level is hilarious. I know they aren't meant to be terribly damaging, but with lots of healing and support it's possible to tank a ginormous number at the same time, and I assume with a staff build you could easily be invincible vs them and pull the whole section, probably by yourself. It's a complete waste of time simply because it takes way too long to kill them in those numbers, but it's really fun!

Edit: Fixed some typing mistakes

[Glythe]

1) Lower tier content is beyond ridiculously trivialised when soloing. I can solo the casino dailies offered by Qatik with no preparation and only having low tier food. I agree whole heartedly that something has to be done to fix this.

This has easily possible for many builds for years before the Bulwark change. If bulwark alone allows you to solo these missions then I would suggest you were not using the right build for the job.

I do not think armor chipping is the right design idea to discourage high level players from farming low level content. Most games make fighting in higher areas so rewarding that you don't bother going back to low tier areas. This is unfortunately not the case quite often with PG (in part due to material crafting). Ranperre mentioned this earlier in the thread and in short whatever you do in the game needs to be balanced as a function of time/reward.

When I started playing the way to make money was : go through each dungeon you can clear on reset and then loot the once per day chests. Later that got changed to : run the casino missions (with multiple characters?). The money you could make through the casino made the previous alternative trivial.

There is also an expected transition when I play these types of games that if I wanted to stomp level 40 content when I am level 80 that I should be able to do that. How heroic do you feel if content far below your level is a threat to you and offers trivial rewards? Would it be more fun or less fun to run around in PG if every zone had some kind of snare/root plants (maybe they are stun/mez whatever)?

3) The +10 power regen per sec on bulwark form makes it possible to fly forever, and almost abolish the need to have good food. Although I do find some mid level food is still necessary, mainly because I am in full metal armour, but that might change as I upgrade to max enchanted leather armour. I argue it is still vital when soloing because it negatives your power issues, but you can get away with toggling it.

There are 2 other ways to fly forever without food. If Bulwark is problematic in this regard then how about a simple fix? If the player is not on the ground then you do not get the +10 regen per second.

4) I am able to easily solo the elites in fae realm that don't have regeneration, with almost no preparation (just low tier food, no other buffs). I would say this is imbalanced. It's slow and it would be at least 2.5 times faster with a party, but the idea that I can solo them with almost no preparation, while only selected few other builds can do it with lots of preparation and buffs, does not sit comfortably with me.

Well geared ranged players can kite and kill them with substandard food. If the problem in general is : well geared players can solo level 80 elites without regeneration then why not just make sure by the time we reach that level that all elites have regeneration.

I am concerned that we may move too far in the direction of making tanks too powerful/useful/indispensable for the party. As an extreme example, I point to World of Warcraft, where having a tank is mandatory for a party

I guess what I am trying to say is similar to the points made by Yaffy in that we should aim for a sweet spot where having a tank is not vital, but is desirable. We can't make it too desirable either (for example if having a tank allows you to pull 4 mobs while without a tank you had to pull only 1) because it will have the same effect of making tanks indispensable.

If you want tanks to be defensive but not excessively sturdy compared to non tanks then what it sounds like you are asking for a defense limit. Imagine for a moment if you were given a 20% defense mitigation for using any tank class (instead of having mitigation power modifiers built into powers - simply as a simplification to say wow neat all the tank classes are balanced). Now imagine that you only get a 5% defense mitigation bonus for adding a second tank class. Would you run two tank classes? I think most people would not if they could get everything they needed defense-wise (taunts included) from one class.

That type of system could be achieved by having similar power modifiers on the armor that can only be applied for a single class. But it would dumb down the game and basically delete "full tanks". It would however make game balance easy.

As long as there is not a single source of easy solo elites for xp/treasure everything should be fine. Two tank classes should be more resilient than one by a large margin.

Having a dedicated tank takes out a lot of the mental strain of playing, healers can easily focus on one target to heal, dps can not worry so much about accidentally attracting aggro

Balanced group play for me at least creates some of the most fun you can have in a MMO. The content is easy because everyone has a specialized role. The only problem becomes finding the roles in the proper amounts. PG in theory could easily handle that because every level 80 character is typically a multi role character with multiple career paths.

I like the idea of having "situations where a player is useless" as a game design, provided of course it's not too often. The Davlos fight brought a few high level players down a peg or two

I found the Davlos fight to be the most boring boss experience for PG. Only one person was able to damage the boss so everyone else just stood around and waited for that to happen. With most other content you can at least deal light damage to the boss (going all physical vs Zuke is an exception but we have more or less been warned that you should never build for all one damage type).

Is it good design for a boss to be so damage type restricted that some party members may as well be afk?

*suggestion* You know how ghosts are almost invincible until stunned? Can we have a slight variation of that mechanic for Davlos? If you use 2 power combinations within a few seconds (4-6) of each other then you can deal 30% damage with a small selection of powers. Maybe fire+electricity opens up a vulnerability debuff that lasts 1 minute until both have to be triggered again at the same time. While the debuff is active the boss takes 30% fire and electricity direct damage and x% of dots (possibly mitigated on a skill per skill basis).

Let me remind you for a moment that the gear you and I are wearing is not what release gear is expected to look like (paraphrased quote from Jack : You will be in a very expensive all purple gear set - not yellows). This is in part problematic because the end game content is currently balanced around max level players wearing all yellows but the expected balance is to match players wearing all red gear.

Inventory in PG is extremely precious. I do not want to play where we use gear set A for the first section of the dungeon, gear set B for the second set of the dungeon and gear set C for the finale. When "purples become the new yellows" it will be far more problematic to have a second set of uber gear to throw on at a moment's notice.

I support the idea of having bosses or mobs that are "untankable" or just untankable with a particular build, so that you have to find alternative ways to handle them. It encourages us to accept players with unconventional builds, who might not be high level or optimally built into the party. It encourages us to have more than one build/set of equipments so that we can potentially change skills on the fly for a particular fight. Most importantly, it gives someone else a chance to be the indispensable part of the team.

Are you suggesting we need a level 80 boss that can only be killed by a necromancer skill for good game balance? And then we will need to have a level 90 boss that can only be killed by poison arrows?

It is one thing to say a boss takes 100% damage from these 3 damage types. Meanwhile these three damage types will do 80% damage and these three types will only do 60% damage. It is something else to say this boss takes damage from only these three damage types (that aren't the most common damage types - say fire, physical and whatever)

How much fun would you have in the game if on release day the level cap were 200 instead of 100? By the time you reach level 200 the cost would be so expensive that nobody could afford to play more than their favorite two classes together. Would you still have the same opinion about not being able to approach certain content?

Remember that a majority of people playing PG are stuck having trouble with their first set of 50-80 unlocks.

8) Yes please make bulwark form a side bar skill

Bulwark feels like it should be a side bar skill.

It doesn't seem quite fair to shield to have almost all of its mitigation in a skill that so severely limits offense.

Question : would it be a better idea to have bulwark be a powerful boost but have at least half of shield's mitigation be passive flat modifiers ( or /gasp maybe even make them % based?)

Making bulwark be a weaker side bar skill would also make it more fitting to be on the side bar in the first place.