Octoplus sets out to provide players a more interesting variety of options than the vanilla game by buffing underpowered skills in an attempt to bring them up to par and make them worth using and building around.

Octoplus+ is a separate branch of the mod that was made because I wanted to make changes that went beyond the philosophy of simply buffing
underpowered abilities. Octoplus+ is the home of abilities that
outright replace vanilla ones that I think weren't worth keeping, or
outright new additions.

The 1.2 release includes the following changes:

Warrior:

Piercing Thrust:
Now applies the auto-critical debuff on the target for the remainder of the current turn.
Reasoning: Piercing Thrust is painfully bland as the only base class spear skill in the game, and almost never worth using over another damaging option. With this change, it becomes a combo tool, letting your warrior deal damage while leaving the target open to subsequent attacks by the rest of the party.

Ultimate Stance:
Self-Target > Single-Target
Reasoning: Solidly one of the worst EX skills in the base game, Ultimate Stance was begging for some kind of change. Hikari's kit is very strong as it is, so I didn't want to make it a very powerful option (such as by letting it apply to warrior skills), so it now is a targeted buff. Hikari can pass it to another character who can make use of it the same turn, making it a more interesting option for breaking groups of enemies. Accordingly, it is now affected by Sealticge's Seduction.

Octoplus+ Only:
Ultimate Stance
Effect replaced with "Raise your critical rate for the rest of the battle, but reduce your physical defense and elemental defense for 5/4/3/2 turns."
Reasoning: I was dissatisfied with the previous buff to Ultimate Stance after playtesting it for a while. After a while, I had this idea. My main hurdle in creating a new effect for this ability was to make something that was useful but didn't contribute too much to Hikari's dominance in the late game. Critical rate ended up perfect--It caps at 100% chance around 600, meaning near the end of the game, Hikari will be critting most of his attacks without a buff, especially seeing as how both the battle-tested blade and spear have high critical on their own. However, earlier in the game, a permanent critical buff could be quite useful for boss fights, while also having an interesting downside you have to manage or mitigate. I think it achieves my goal of giving this ability more use without further overpowering the character it's attached to.
As a self-target ability, it's also spread by Seal of Diffusion, and the debuffs can be reversed with Seal of Inversion, so it allows for some fun little combos, too.

Brand's Blade:
Now reduces physical defense and elemental defense for 3 turns.
Reasoning: While Brand's could be useful early game before Hikari gets access to better nukes, it falls off very quickly and very badly. Its sole purpose is damage, but it's a single-target, single-hit move, so lategame it isn't even worth consideration. In keeping with the theme Piercing Thrust set, it's now more of a heavy duty combo tool, letting your warrior nuke the target and leaving them vulnerable to the rest of the party.

Apothecary:

Poison Axe:
Duration 2 > 2/3/4/5
Reasoning: While a solid early game damage option, Poison Axe falls off quickly for burst damage compared to Castti's other options, and other characters rarely equip Apothecary for the purposes of damage. Letting the poison duration increase with boost gives it more of a purpose than just a single-hit damage move, and indirectly buffs Weakness to Poison by giving you more opportunity to stack the two without poison constantly running out.

Scholar:

One True Magic:
SP Cost 75 > 35
InvocationValue 170 > 190
Reasoning: We all know it. The One True Magic is real bad. Osvald struggles to do good damage with it despite it being one of the most expensive skills in the game. It loses badly to double and triple boosted elemental spells, which are cheaper and available much earlier to boot. The cost reduction makes it much more practical to actually use, especially with Price of Power, and the damage buff makes it slightly stronger than a triple boosted elemental spell. This gives Osvald much more freedom in his build, instead of competing for Armsmaster solely for triple element boosting, or choosing a subjob solely based on ability to double boost.

Elemental Barrage:
Now affected by Price of Power.
Reasoning: Consistency change. There was no reason for barrage not to be affected by Price of Power.

Advanced Magic:
Stacks 2/3/4/5 > 3/4/5/6
Reasoning: Scholar suffers early and mid game from needing excessive setup, and lategame from lack of damage. The OTM buff helps Osvald's lategame damage, but the class remained awkward to use early on. Increasing the amount of stacks Advanced Magic gives makes it more practical to use, requiring fewer resources to set up your scholar to deal damage.

Analyze
Weaknesses revealed 1/2/3/5 > 1/2/3/All
Reasoning: Just a quality of life change. Hikari's Analyze clone, Deep Analysis, already did this, so I thought it weird the actual scholar version was worse.

Octoplus+ Only:
Stroke of Genius REPLACED with:
Elemental Break
9 SP
Unleash a staff attack on a single foe that reduces elemental defense for 2/4/6/8 turns.
Reasoning: Look, we have our fill of gambling on an ability with Bewildering Grace. Stroke of Genius was unsalvageable. It only gave stat up buffs, many of which were useless to Osvald because they only affected physical attacks. You basically only used it to hope for an elemental attack boost or a defense boost, or to meme with scholar Hikari or warrior Osvald.
Scholar, additionally, was the only dps focused base class that lacked an effective way to statistically increase its damage. Advanced magic is more of a requirement to get the class's actual potential than a bonus on top, so I don't count it. Elemental Break was a Sorcerer skill in Octopath Traveler 1, and it returns now to Octoplus+ as a way for scholar to reduce elemental defense without relying on very niche support like specific Hikari learned skills or certain monsters from Ochette. It makes Osvald a much more self-sufficient character, letting him set up his own damage in the same way warrior or thief is capable of.

Octoplus+ Only:
Teach REPLACED with:
Flash of Inspiration
20 SP
Partially restore (28/37/55/80) your own latent gauge.
Reasoning: Teach was one of the worst ex skills already, and with Stroke of Genius removed from Osvald's kit, it had even less of a reason to exist. In its place is a self-targeting latent restore. Osvald is very reliant on his latent power for his damage, and this gives him a tool to manage that for himself without constantly devouring lychees. Its numbers are tuned so that no boost takes 4 uses to completely fill his gauge, single boost takes 3, double boost takes 2, and max boost comes close to completely filling it. The values are slightly lower overall than Tin Horn (20/40/80/100), so it doesn't take away Inventor's utility.
Oh, and it's affected by Seal of Diffusion, giving Arcanist Osvald an entirely new role to fill.
Note: As of 1.1, Flash of Inspiration uses the correct voiceline.

Hunter:

Abating Orb:
Buffs removed 1/2/3/4 > 2/3/4/5
Reasoning: An underwhelming ability all around. Allowing it to remove two buffs unboosted doesn't make its rare use any more common, but it does mean it's more effective at its niche when the situation does come up, letting you use resources to purge an enemy's buffs.

Octoplus+ Only:
Mercy Strike REPLACED with:
Abating Arrow
9 SP
Unleash a moderately powerful bow attack on a single foe and nullify 1/2/3/4 of their augmenting effects.
Abating Orb REPLACED with:
Blinding Burst
18 SP
Blind all foes for 1/2/3/4 turns.
Reasoning: This is another change to an ability I already made a marginal buff to. When I moved on to change Mercy Strike, which is largely a dead slot, I decided to move the buff purging effect to it (along with giving it the ability to actually kill the target). This reduces the opportunity cost of nullifying buffs, as you can also do damage and potentially hit a weakness as you do so, making it much more satisfying to use.
That left Abating Orb as redundant. I turned it into a Blind ability, since no class abilities already inflict it. A short duration aoe blind is useful as quick crowd control, lessening the threat of a group of physical enemies, and pairing well with the Enfeebling Amulet.

Draefendi's Bow:
InvocationValue 140 > 175
Reasoning: Draefendi's just sucked. It had terrible damage. Now Ochette has an actual decent damage skill in her base kit outside of monsters.

Dancer:

Octoplus+ Only:
Stimulate:
Now triggers Dance Sessions.
Reasoning: Stimulate loses a lot of steam as early as the second ring of areas, when Agnea gets Windy Refrain. Letting it trigger sessions lets it retain a niche, letting her manipulate turn order while spreading her sessions buff.
Note: Due to technical limitations, Stimulate now uses the Lion Dance animation. Sessions data is stored in the animation file, which I don't currently have the tools or knowledge to edit. If we get to the point where we can edit an animation file to trigger dance sessions, I will update this to retain the original animation. Sorry about that.

Arcanist:

Malice:
Invocation Value 100 > 120 (all variants)
Blessing:
Invocation Value 100 > 120 (all variants)
Reasoning: These were actually weaker than the scholar base spells, despite being nearly twice the cost and on an advanced class. I don't think the added effects are enough to justify the comparative nerf, so I gave them a little more weight.

Hex:
Increased the debuff extension by 1 turn across the board.
Reasoning: A cool concept for an ability that frequently goes unused because it needs double or max bp to be effective. Simply increasing the number of turns it extends debuffs allows it to serve its purpose in more situations.

Seal of Inversion:
Debuffs inverted 1/2/3/4 > 3/4/5/6
Reasoning: Same story as Hex, a good concept suffering from the fact that it often fails to be worth the turn without boosting.

Reflective Barrier:
Now self-targeted.
Reasoning: I went back and forth on this one a lot, but ultimately, I think making reflect self-targeted and both more consistent and more synergistic with Arcanist's kit. It takes away the ability to apply it at will to any character, but allows the Arcanist to make it AoE with seal of diffusion, with no need for Sealitcge's support. It was the only buff in the class that wasn't self-target, and making it consistent makes the class fit together better overall.

Seal of Eternity:
Buffs extended 1 > 3
Reasoning: This is a really cool idea for a skill and it sounds good on paper. In practice, it's extremely impractical. The obvious use is making divine buffs permanent, but this is a net loss of bp until the divine has lasted at least 3 more turns (4 if you count how Goes On), which is a long time in this game. This is because, for the same bp cost, you could just recast the same divine. Additionally, because it targets a random buff, to use it reliably, you have to keep the targeted divine as the only buff on the target, which is a massive pain. Something as simple as just having Throné in your party makes Seal of Eternity practically useless. And besides, battles in this game are mostly not that long. The two fights where you might get a net positive effect on this vs recasting the divine skill also periodically dispel your party's buffs, and permanent buffs are not immune to this.
Letting Seal of Eternity make 3 random buffs permanent instead of one goes a long way toward solving both of these issues. You no longer need to worry about the divine you want to extend being the only buff on the target (and 75% is still fairly reliable if the target has 4 buffs, such as Blessing of Darkness + a divine), and you can include something like an attack boost or even another divine in the package, making it a better value proposition.

Armsmaster:

Dancer's Blade: Mischievous Step:
Random-Target > All-Target
AbilityRato 80/110/140/170 > 75/100/125/150
Reasoning: Mischievous Step is in kind of an awkward position. It's seemingly meant for breaking and inflicting status ailments, but being a random target that does comparatively few hits, it is very unreliable at doing either. It needs a larger group of enemies to reach a workable number of hits, but then being random target means you just have to hope it hits the things you want it to. Compared to other dagger multi-hits like Thousand Blades and Fatal Fang, its lack of use case becomes readily apparent. Making it target all means it's unconditionally better against larger groups of enemies and becomes a useful breaking tool against dagger weak foes. Its damage was reduced slightly to compensate for the added utility.

Bulwark
Guard value 130 > 125/150/175/200
Reasoning: Bulwark was rarely useful outside of solo runs. Its damage is surprisingly alright, but without the turn order manipulation of the actual defend command, it rarely had a use case. I increased the amount of damage it mitigates after use based on boost level; at double or max boost, it significantly pairs down damage taken from even very powerful attacks, giving it more of a role as an actual tanking ability, and more strategic purpose.

Conjurer:

Conjure Elements:
Duration 2/3/4/5 > 2/4/6/8
Reasoning: With the lack of power runes have behind them in this game, it only seems fair to give them the duration of a standard buff so you can apply them once or twice and keep them rather than constantly needing to recast.

Prayer for Rain:
SP Regen 10% > 10%/20%/30%/40%
Duration 2/3/4/5 > 3
Reasoning: At the point in the game you get Conjurer, 10% SP regen is just...very underwhelming. Giving its numbers some actual heft makes this filler ability an actual sustain tool more worth of an endgame advanced class, letting your Conjurer fuel SP-heavy teams.

BP Boost:
No longer a divine skill.
SP Cost 50 > 30
Duration 3 > 3/5/7/9
Can be affected by Sealticge's Seduction/All Together Now.
Reasoning: The main issue making BP Boost one of, if not the, worst skills in the game was the fact it needed an investment of 3 bp to generate a paltry amount in return, provided the recipient spent three or four entire turns refusing to boost. Its status as a divine skill has been changed entirely, with its cost adjusted accordingly, and its duration upped per boost. While it still falls behind BP generation methods like Castti's concoct, it is no longer so expensive and unwieldy to use that you'd never consider clicking it.

Rite of the Sun:
Now a divine skill.
SP Cost 1 > 50
Duration 2 > 4
Cooldown effect removed.
Reasoning: Rite was another skill you almost never wanted to touch, being an emergency heal with an absurdly crippling downside. Now, it replaces BP Boost as Conjurer's divine skill and no longer seals the character using it for up to 6 turns(!). The defense/elemental defense buff was also increased to last for 4 turns to better fit the investment of using it.

Inventor:

Elemental Bomb Bottle:
CriticalPower 125 > 200
Reasoning: Not a large change, but frankly I thought it'd be fun. As a magic attack, bomb bottle needs critical scope or a similar debuff to crit, and it now deals double damage when it does. It's not overpowering because bomb bottle has low base damage, but it gives Inventor a combo to play with. The like, 2 enemies in the game that are weak to 5 elements better fucking watch out now.

Latent Powers:

Tenretsuzan:
Critical power 125 > 150.
No longer triggers normal counters or evasion.
Reasoning: There is no reason to use Tenretsuzan over Hienka in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, the ability is constrained by its animation data and only calls the first entry in its ailment list, preventing me from adding extra effects to it. The best I could do was build off its perfect accuracy (it has a HitRatio of 999). It will ignore sidestep, won't trigger counters to physical attacks, and can't be redirected. Scripted abilities, like Tiger and Wolf, will still ignore this.

Beastly Claws:
AbilityRatio 100/200/300/400 > 120/240/360/480
Beastly Fangs:
AbilityRatio 120/240/360/480 > 130/260/390/520
Reasoning: Ochette's latent attacks fell off in power relatively quickly, and are not affected by physical potency boosts, such as from the battle-tested blade. Fixing that issue is possible but would have introduced further jank, so I opted to simply up the numbers slightly and give them a little more (cough) bite.

Learned Skills:

ALL of the spells Hikari can learn from NPCs now benefit from Price of Power. Go wild.

Hikari's various status inflicting moves (Poison Slash, Befuddling Arrow, et cetera) have been buffed across the board. Most of them had a 20%/30%/40%/50% to inflict status on top of a mediocre physical attack. They have all been increased to 100%, so, for example, Blinding Arrow will always blind its target for 2 turns. The exception is any skill that inflicted sleep, or targeted all foes (Dazzling Flash, Soporific Slash, et cetera), which have been giving status chances of 70%/80%/90%/100%, to make them reliable but not a guaranteed stunlock.

Shield Thief
SP Cost 80 > 40
Reasoning: A neat skill overshadowed by Hikari's plethora of other breaking options because of its obscene cost.

Windswept Slash:
Wind damage InvocationValue 80 > 160
Can now proc Pursuits.
Reasoning: A very cool move with painfully low damage numbers, made worse by the fact that there are few swords with workable elemental attack. Increasing its wind damage component aims to solve its mediocre power. Additionally, it can now trigger runes. The fact that the skills a spellsword Hikari would want to use don't actually trigger runes, the primary reason to invest in elemental attack on him, was ridiculous.

Crimson Slash:
Fire damage InvocationValue 120 > 160
Can now proc Pursuits.
Reasoning: As above, an underwhelming hybrid move given a much-needed damage buff and synergy with runes.

Bolt Brandish:
Thunder damage InvocationValue 100 > 170
Can now proc Pursuits.
Reasoning: As above. The fact that Rai Mei's signature attack didn't proc the built-in rune on her signature spear was just sad.

Bloody Bonus:
Fire damage InvocationValue 120 > 160
Can now proc Pursuits.
Reasoning: As above.

Roundhouse Kick:
InvocationValue 135 > 150
Confuse chance 20%/30%/40%/50% > 100%
Reasoning: As it stood, there was little reason to use Roundhouse Kick over Befuddling Slash or Arrow. It had marginally more power in exchange for being unable to hit weaknesses. Increasing its power makes it an actual trade-off between the ability to strike a dagger or bow weakness and more raw damage. It has also been given the same status chance increase all of its peers were.

Dazzling Flash:
InvocationValue 100 > 125
Confuse chance 20%/30%/40%/50% > 70%/80%/90%/100%
Reasoning: The same buff all of the status moves were given, in addition to a slight damage increase for an otherwise very weak attack.

Dance Sessions:

All of the dance sessions that last a random number of turns now have a fixed duration, making them more reliable.

Raging Rondo:
Latent restore 10 > 25
Alluring Rondo:
Latent restore 25 > 40
Rousing Rondo:
Latent restore 40 > 65
Reasoning: All of Agnea's LP restoring sessions were painfully outclassed by Celestial Chorus (which gives 1 bp). With very low values, they simply took far too many uses to become meaningful (for example, Raging Rondo needs 13 uses to restore Hikari's LP from 0 to full, and 8 for even the smallest LP gauge like Castti's). Increasing their effect makes them a meaningful alternative to Celestial Chorus for Agnea. She can now restore someone's latent gauge in a reasonable number of uses, with the rare Rousing Rondo filling any gauge in two procs. This lets her trade the ability to grant bp for the ability to fuel latent-heavy strategies.

Concoct:

Fool's Leaf:
Effect replaced with Provoke (draw foe's single target attacks) for 2/5 turns.
Reasoning: Fool's Leaf is supposed to make you less likely to be targeted, but the effect is actually bugged and does nothing. Short of being able to fix that, it was effectively a dead slot that could be made into anything. I opted to go with the same theming of manipulating targeting, and give it the Incite effect.

Fumbling Flower:
Added accuracy down for 2/5 turns.
Reasoning: Critical down is a pitifully weak effect. Adding accuracy down lets it assist evasion strategies.

Whimsical Leaf (unstrengthened)
Moves action to end of turn > Moves action back 1 spot
Reasoning: This ingredient was relatively useless without a strength serum on top of it. In theory, you could use it to position a character in a better place to receive buffs or bp before acting, but the fact that it also made you act after the enemies made it very troublesome to use. Changing it so it only moves the character back 1 space in the turn order allows it to fulfill its intended purpose more precisely.

Octoplus+ Only:
Fumbling Flower:
Effect replaced with physical attack down 2/5 turns
Reasoning: Base Octoplus has a rule not to replace effects (unless they are entirely bugged in the first place), and I decided I wanted to do a little more with this.

Octoplus+ Only:
Dual Leaf REPLACED with Neutralizing Leaf
Nullifies 1/3 enfeebling effects (debuffs, not status ailments).
Reasoning: Dual Leaf was really bad. Its regen values were only 10%, making it not only redundant with Grape/Plum leaves, but also much weaker. Castti already has hp regen as an Apothecary skill, and buffing the values on this wouldn't make it less redundant with the direct restoration options she has available. Instead, I've replaced it with a new effect, playing into the restorative aspect of Concoct in a different way. Neutralizing Leaf gives you an earlier, practical option to remove debuffs as opposed to that effect only being easily available from Conjurer.

Monster Abilities:

Akala
Azure Claw:
Increased damage; added 3 points of guaranteed shield-break
Azure Fang:
Increased damage
Mahina
Azure Wind:
Increased damage; increases the party's speed for 4 turns
Azure Darkness:
Increased damage; inflicts blindness for 4 turns
Azure Light
Increased damage; inflicts confusion for 4 turns
Reasoning: The awakened abilities of Ochette's animal companions were...pretty mediocre. Requiring max boost to use, they did, at best, a single attribute in an area of effect. Their damage has been massively increased across the board, allowing them to easily hit the 9999 cap that monsters are constrained to, and most have received an additional effect to make them more worth considering. Azure Fang hits three times (doing 30K) and was thus not given any extra effect, instead serving as sort of a weaker version of the Dreadwolf boss summon (which hits four times and inflicts debuffs).

Support Abilities:

Incidental Attack:
Attack chance 50% > 100%
Reasoning: Did anyone use this skill outside of filler before Throne learned better things? Making the follow-up attack guaranteed makes it a worthy use of a coveted support slot and allows you to actually rely on it, letting someone hit a weakness and do chip damage while they steal or debuff.

Invigorate And Inspire:
Latent restore 5/10/15/20 > 20/25/30/35
Reasoning: I wouldn't have blamed you for not knowing I&I was dependent on boost level, since its values are so paltry you barely notice them anyway. It's an actual option for support characters now.

Inspiriting Break:
SP restore 20 > 50
Reasoning: Filler skill with pathetic numbers. Still won't earn a slot on teams later game, but it'll be more useful for the time you do carry it.

Preventative Measures:
Stat-down immunity replaced with status ailment immunity
Reasoning: This was actually what I thought the skill did when I first played. The reality was much more disappointing. 3 turns of ailment immunity is much more effective, helping with status happy bosses like Manymaws.

Invigorating Break:
HP restore 20% > 100%
Reasoning: Really, a 20% heal on break for an advanced class support skill? Healing isn't hard enough to get in this game that that's anywhere near worth the support slot. Now, Invigorating Break fully restores your health when you break a foe, making it something you might considering thinking twice about it.

Arms Refinement:
Latent restore 5 > 15
Reasoning: Same thing as I&I, a latent restoring skill that did so little you wouldn't notice it was there. It still probably loses to Latent Power Plus, but its effect remotely exists now.

SP Recovery:
% of damage converted to SP 1% > 5%
Reasoning: Has anyone ever used this skill?

Versions 1.2 and 1.3 of Octoplus+ also includes some minor aesthetic changes to certain learned skills, such as Level Slash. I repurposed animations from Warrior's base skills to make them a little flashier to use.


To install, drop AbilityBuffs_p.pak into Octopath_Traveler2 > Content > Paks
This mod edits AbilityData.uasset, AbilitySetData.uasset, DiseaseData.uasset, SupportAbilityData.uasset, PreparationData.uasset, BattleVoiceSet.uasset (Octoplus+ only), and GameTextEN.uasset, and will be incompatible with any mod that edits any of those files (for example, the version of unlimited followers which edits Alrond's Treasure Smell edits AbilityData and will conflict). However, my other mod, More Accurate Descriptions, is packaged into this one. Uninstall MAD if you're using Octoplus to avoid conflicts.

Thanks to Beepo for some technical help.