Virtue system is too restricting.

[dense jolt]

This has been an issue in the game before, but in P13 it's bigger than ever before.
Virtue allocation dictates way too many things that we can only control all at once:

• Which ability you want to focus on
• Which weapon type you want to use
• Which armor pieces you want to use
• Picking between health and cooldown reduction (and whatever grace does).

In many games there are examples of design that encourages or discourages the use of certain items together, but it has to be really well thought out and intentional to work properly. This system however feels like it narrows down your options for no good reason at all.

I don't want to be stuck using grace if I want to use a bow. I also don't want to click through all my armor every time I change my virtues, since all armor is the same and all that differs is the defense values it provides.

• The good:
  I think it's fine how virtues interact with pacts and their abilities (though grace is way too niche).

Virtue prisms are kind of ok too. Clicking the old + - buttons was annoying. Prisms solve that, even though I feel I'd rather just have a 3-way slider that I can control my virtues with.

• The bad:
  Even though weapons don't say you're getting a damage penalty for not meeting requirements now, a large chunk of their damage still comes from virtues. Another pain point with this system is flat enemy armor. If your non-virtue scaled weapon does 100 damage, and 300 damage with virtues, and the enemy you hit has 90 armor, you're only doing 10 damage vs doing a whole 210 damage. Even though the raw damage increased by 200%, your actual damage in practice increased by 2000%. So not matching weapons to virtues is still gonna make them all feel completely useless against higher end enemies.

The only real way to fix this if virtue scaling for weapons needs to stay in the game is to move to a % damage reduction from armor and also shrink the gap between max attunement and non attuned weapon damage.

[placid pulsar]

+1

[faint palm]

No it isn't.

You just have play your character as intended. Instead of making an "Atheist Cleric".

[drifting kiln]

+1

[lean umbra]

"Even though weapons don't say you're getting a damage penalty for not meeting requirements now, a large chunk of their damage still comes from virtues. "

The UI does show the requirement. It will also show +0 on the damage stats if you don't meet them. As soon as you reach the category req, the Virtues will then scale. You will get then a huge, huge boost on the weapon itself. The penalty is indeed quite there.

[neon wing]

+1

[plush hedge]

+1

[hard island]

+++++++1

[cyan panther]

-1.

The restriction and having to make choices about what weapons and armors to use is the point. It feels bad to go from no restrictions to having restrictions, but it's not like you can't use a bow at all anymore. You just have to build for it.

I do think having non-perfect weapons of each class being available for scaling in all virtues would be beneficial to addressing the pain point of "I want to use this weapon type but I also want to be courage." The tradeoff being it's not a very high scaling weapon. But the bandaid should exist.