toastification

Seems kinda low. I did 500-600 with Executioner's Charge, and it was a string of 1.5k-2k crits as soon as they hit half health. The real moral of the story is then it doesn't matter as long as you do upgrade it.

The sad thing is you are over complicating it. Empowered Geometry of Annihilation spam creates a self-sustaining loop of stun, stupid damage, and unlimited power as long as you have about 20% crit rate. The only reason to even use other skills by that point is because you can effectively stack Charged status from a lightning spell and the debuff from Creative Destruction to speed up the killing process. Though, in Reinhart's defense, every character becomes faceroll easy towards the end. The ability to spam your skills infinitely is too strong, and Focus/Power generation is too easy as it is in the game right now. They should tone it way down.

You dodged with Kat? Someone didn't take the damage-reducing-curs-O-s. Nice to know that blocking is useful late game, though. Though you shouldn't discount well built glass cannon builds. Dodging is annoying, yes, but you basically spam nuclear bombs towards the end of the game.

What average damage hits did you get towards the end with maxed out willful?

Pfft. For Lucas, "hit her and dodge her attacks" is about the most relevant and fastest thing you can do. Unless you can block her attacks, which is probably a bit faster. I guess I could have been more specific. "Walk into range, bait her attack animation, hit her, dodge away after a few hits."

I specifically leveled up the third skill on Anjali first to see if anything happened and the top left skill didn't gain any free points. Oh well.

I doubt Obsidian will subject this game to such specific balance changes, there likely isn't enough demand for it as every build is viable on every difficulty and this isn't a game with persistent multiplayer. At best I hope they will keep track for such multipliers in mind for the future. And nerf dodge. #1 enemy of action games, infinite dodge roll spam.

Your expectations for customer satisfaction and company conduct are ridiculously romantic and idealized. That's all I can say, really, without trying to turn this into a philosophical debate. I've seen this argument enough times and will politely agree to disagree from the get go. Your attempt to impose a universal standard on what constitutes the value of a game is amusing, but hardly has any weight behind it. Bioshock was some of the most fantastic 60$ I ever spent, I finished it in 10 hours and never touched it again, nor ever will I. Team Fortress 2 cost me 5$ and I have over 300 hours logged in it. Dungeon Siege 3 hit a point in between them - a decent game I played 4 times and enjoyed them; not great, clearly in need of more work, but not "zomg refund." A game like Halo, despite nigh universal acclaim, was one of the greater disappointments in my gaming history, even after I tried out its "amazing" multiplayer at insistence of friends saying "it will be great!" I see such (and much more varied/extreme) reactions from every gamer I know. There are games out of which I got maybe 10$ per hour, there are games out of which I got a cent per hour. There are even games where I paid for a vague, torturous expectation that the next hour will get better which many other people genuinely enjoyed. See the picture that paints? Unless the game objectively hurt your computer, unless the game was a clear-cut scam, unless the game is physically, unequivocally rendered unplayable by its technical/design issues, the "quality" of the game comes down to personal taste and subjective standards. To even consider a policy of refunding people based on "i dun like it" is insane on multiple levels. To proclaim the longevity of the game as the indicator of its "success" is not paying attention to the game's design. Impressive. You are capable of formulating an "I believe" statement, proving you have familiarity with concept of subjectivity. Consider, for the moment, that this game simply isn't intended to be placed in the subset of the genre you believe it to be in. That the missing features are missing not because of incompetence, but because of a conscious decision to not have them because its not in the direction they wanted to take this game into. That persistent multiplayer, replayability in form of NG+, pseudo-open gameplay with an army of branching side dungeons, etc. weren't included because they didn't want to turn it into that kind of game. Is it still "a bad game" that people "should be given a refund if they are not satisfied with?" From my perspective, this is looking like a complaint about orange eaters that the apple they bought is nothing like the orange. At worst, Obsidian's / Square-Enix's fault is that they didn't explicitly spend time and money educating people about what this game is not. Can't blame them, to be honest. The information they put out was plenty for anyone with an hour to burn, and word-of-mouth from like-minded individuals whose preferences mirror yours is a few clicks away. Are there criticisms you can make? Yes, and people make them, including you. Is the cost to content ratio a bit low? It's less than some games, equal to others, more than the rest - but acceptable ratios vary between people. Can you proclaim that this game went into a direction you dislike? Knock yourself out! But when such statements turn into repetitive whining and enter the chorus along with the standard "this game blowz f u obsidian" and more/less polite variants of such... it's trollish. Very trollish. Even if you made genuine posts before, when you start defending the blatant crybabies you paint yourself with all sorts of negative associations by condoning their behavior. If it makes you feel better (you seem genuinely offended when "fanboys" defend companies), my position that if these... design decisions turn out to be merely things cut because Obsidian ran out of time, I would accept their return in a potential continuation. I would be disappointed and probably not play this game beyond a cursory playthrough to see what happened in the sequel, as I strongly doubt that anything short of a miracle on Obsidian's side will distract me from Diablo 3; but I won't berate Obsidian for sacrificing what I consider to be the strongest direction of this game for sake of appeasing the standard ARPG urges from the hack'n'slash crowds. A not-to-subtle implication when making a generalized statement of "people should do this" is that you are including yourself in that subset, unless you do not consider yourself to be part of "people."

Again, that's "not all they can do." That is the whole point of these "intellectually dishonest" responses. Outside of a lack of polish of the PC version (keybinds/camera controls) and total amount of content, the vast majority of the tears are oriented around how this game isn't enough like Dungeon Siege even though it has the title Dungeon Siege 3 slapped on it. But a cursory search and viewing of a gameplay video could have told you all of that. You know why I got interested in this game? Because it obviously was made to be something different than the first 2 Dungeon Sieges. Why is this so difficult to grasp? As pointed out above, why do people have the time to sit on forums and complain when they could have spent an lesser amount of time avoiding the situation to begin with? It's YOUR money. The burden of how you spend it is up to you. Dungeon Siege 3 is objectively not a defective product. You may think its overpriced for the total amount of gameplay/story/voice acting/cinematics/content it has in it, you may dislike the direction of where its design choices it took, but to proclaim that it entitles you to a refund because you are an incompetent consumer is mindboggling.

That depends entirely on your build. If you go high agility, Willful Charge will obviously be better. If you neglect agility, Executioner's Charge should add far more overall damage.

Explain the mechanic of this to me. At what levels do you get these free points? I haven't seen anything like that happen on all 4 of my characters.

Shame. You are missing out on absolute lulz of a build. Haven't seen anything comparable in RPGs in general since Diablo 2 era Amazons.

It's the consumer's fault for blindly buying a game when they have multiple ways of ascertaining the game's quality and whenever its a game fit to their taste. It doesn't take "research" to figure this out. You have google, you know game developers have forums where people post feedback and complaints about a game. Not using it is about the same level of blatant stupidity as driving at night with your lights off.

Yes. Its fairest because I decree it that way.

That is probably the fairest criticism you can give this game. Which is also, incidentally, why you should want this game to sell well so Obsidian can get the time table/budget to give this game a real amount of content.

No

Nope, Katarina is objectively the highest damage dealing character. Also is objectively the toughest. She is absurdly overpowered compared to anything else you can come up with. She needs exactly 2 stats - agility and doom. You need the following skills (rest is up to taste): Chosen Grave(debuff evolution), Caress of Suffering (debuff evolution), Flintflock Fury (damage evolution), Call of the Hunt (agility boost evolution). From the talent section, you want Steady Aim (agility boost), Calling Your Shots (your free-focus-from-skills generator), Critical Precision (damage for crits), and most importantly, Call of the Hunt (25% power restoration on a crit) Why is this so awesome? Damage Output Flintflock Fury scales really, really, really well with Doom. Its easily the strongest form of scaling in this game. It fires about 3-5 shots a second (not sure as to exact rate but its easily the fastest attack in the game). By the time I got a few doom items (Carbine of Brutality, 2 pieces of jewelry with +20 doom each); it hit for 400 damage PER CRIT. As the game went on and I slowly increased doom/will/attack/talents, this number eventually rose to 1,200 damage per crit under ideal conditions (both curses, empower). By the time I finished off Rajani, I had 50% crit on my Rifle. It never went below that again, hovering between 50 and 75% depending on how recent was my gear/call of the hunt upgrade. Bonus: Curse of the Grave, empowered, basically covers most if not all of your enemies with a massive slow. When they die, they explode for damage that, upon critting, is roughly the same as your Flintflock Fury shots. Caress of Suffering and Warding Rituals also do great damage, but I stopped bothering with them for it. Lulz Bonus: Katarina's "Damage by rolling" Talent has a funny synergy with Doom/Crit Rate - it deals about 1.5x damage of your Doom Value on a crit. Towards the end of the game, with just 1 point in it (doesn't scale beyond that noticably), I could do 300-350 damage by just DODGING through my enemies per roll. Just how hard does this hit overall? You will kill every non-giant/heavy knight enemy in ONE Volley (13 focus or 1 empowerment). At point blank range, you can kill every single non-boss enemy in 1 Empowered Flintlock Fury. Bosses? Warbeast? Foundry Cyclops Boss? Jayne herself? Can be killed in 2-3 Empowered Flintflock Fury volleys. As a side note - I literally managed to kill the Warbeast as it was performing its first charge, it died as it was crashing into me. Now, Practically speaking you can't always land *ideal* Fury volleys, but really, it's at most having to fire it an extra 2-3 more times. Still the fastest killer by far. Sustainability When you have 4 Orbs and maxed out Thrill of the Hunt, a single crit gives you a full power Orb. An Empowered Flintlock Fury fires what looks like 18 (or more) shots. With 60% crit rate, well, let's just say you will never run out of power ever again. You can literally use only Empowered Spells by this point, and it will be faster than with focus. But until you reach that point or if you really want focus or this will happen by itself, there is Curse of the Grave. Empower it to hit 6-10 enemies. Kill them. Get 60-100 Focus back from them. It's not quite as "infinite" as Lucas or Reinhart focus restoration buffs, but it is probably the fastest way you can build focus in the game. Survivability The big one. I thought it was impossible to build a tank on Hardcore. Apparently, the tank is the only character without a true melee attack with the worst heals in the game. The keys are Empowered Call of the Grave and Caress of Suffering. Early on you rely a little on Ward of Repulsion, but it becomes largely obsolete towards the end of the game. The life steal evolution on the healing spell basically makes you immortal against all but against 3 specific enemies. An enemy that is cursed by both CotG and CoS has its damage cuts by a ridiculous percentage. You can do what no other character in the game can do with this - you can stand there and take full hits from bosses. Archon of War? She hit me for 90 damage tops a hit. The War Beast? I let it charge through me for the lulz. There are exactly 3 enemies in this game that can actually kill you through these two debuffs and the healing. Jayne Kassinder (her standard melee attack will tear through you fairly fast), one of her Archons in her second arena fight, and the final boss because I don't think you can actually curse him. There are only 2 things that prevent this build from being absolute faceroll. One is the Gent Fight - you can't crit buildings so it takes a while to kill them with your ridiculously low base damage (high agility/doom means your standard rifle attacks hit, at best, for 30-50 damage). The other is the final boss fight - the boss is also immune to crits. Note, the fights are still easy as hell - Gent's Golems can be wiped out in 1-2 volleys; the final boss's summons can be either killed or ignored at your leisure because the boss kills them by himself before entering his "hit me" state. And as long as you bring along a secondary rifle with high Attack/Willpower attributes (this game is littered with them, many are very powerful uniques), these fights don't even take that along because you can just fire Empowered Heartseeking Shots at your leisure. This build has a quirk of basically being the only build where leveling up after a certain point becomes undesirable as you lose about 4-5% crit chance every time you level, and the benefits from skill points after completing your core evolution/talent picks is negligible. Only gear matters after that. I am fairly certain you could reach 90%-100% crit chance with Reinhart's +25% Agility Geometry of Evolution and by rushing through the game to maximize agility:level ratio, but that is just damn silly by that point. Overall, this build has only 1 weak point - at a certain point between the beginning and middle of the game, enemy Archers are going to be unbearably obnoxious.

Lulz. The more I stack doom the more absurd this is becoming. I have 500 damage crits on a skill that hits 4-5 times a second and I am only just finished Stonebridge (still haven't done Glitterdale). The Cyclope boss in the Foundry quest? Died in about 6 seconds. Robot groups? Die in a second or two. I am getting the high damage crits only with 50 Ability/Attack DPS and 143 doom. I wonder if I can raise my crit rate even higher at this point, I managed to bring it up to 66% with the second tier buff and +20% agility talent; and Curse of the Grave is suppose to boost it even further than that. I highly recommend trying to play Katarina and stack nothing but Agility/Doom. Your other spells and regular attacks will barely hit for any damage at all unless they crit, but Rapid Fire is obscene. Especially when you fire it into a large group of cannon fodder all with Curse of the Grave placed on them; its an orgy of purple bullets, explosions, and red crit numbers.

Blocking still needs to be scaled to be good towards later on. Plus, given how bad they are at dodging, I refuse to believe they are any good at blocking anyway.

It hits really, really hard, especially when Empowered. That's about the only use it has, you open with it; after which Heroic Charge is more efficient (though Heroic Charge with the +ability dps boost might end up hitting as hard which would make vanguard pointless for those builds, didn't test it). The slowdown upgrade is fairly useless (it has a wonky activation, I think it only affects enemies around you when you start the jump).

AI companions are cheaters. I had Anjali in starting gear up until Stonebridge and I swear she tanks three times as much damage as I do. It feels like the only thing that helps them is damage/chaos effects.

Have you actually managed to stack enough HP/Armor to survive getting a string of hits from heavies/assassins on hardcore? I haven't shopfarmed for armor items, but I have generally put highest +armor/stamina items I found on me. It didn't do squat for surviving the big hits (it reduced them from what was on 600 to 1200 Reinhart to 450 - 900 on Lucas)... which helped to not get flat out murdered by 2-3 lunge attacks, but it didn't really affect my gameplay all that much because 2-3 lunge attacks put me into near death state anyway. I don't see how you can make a build that can keep attacking while getting hit by the heavy hitters. The result seems to be that you block/dodge the exact same attacks you would as a glass cannon even if you build tanky.

It works as described, but it doesn't seem to work consistently between abilities - the two rifle shot abilities get proportionally different damage output boosts from the same attributes. Doom was just a massive surprise to me - it boosts Rapid Fire almost twice as well as it does Heartseeker shot. And overall DPS isn't exactly a useful metric - its muddied too much by empowerment, focus gains, AoE, and plain old having to constantly move to not get your face caved in.

... seem to vary from skill to skill. I did an little lab last night with Katarina. Rifle 1 - 70 attack - highest crits is ~300 on normal attacks; highest crit on heartseeker is ~500; highest crit is 100 (28ish average damage) on machinegun spell. Rifle 2 - 40 attack, 50 will - highest crit is ~200 on normla attacks; highest crit on heartseeker is ~650; highest crit is 110 (33ish average damage) on machinegun spell. Rifle 3 - 12 attack, 12 will, 50 doom - highest crit is ~200 on normal attacks; highest crit on heartseeker is ~500; highest crit is 190 (22 average) on machinegun spell. (So in this case my 50% crit rate makes Rifle 3 hilariously good for machinegunnin; Rifle 2 is ideal for Heartseekers, Rifle 1 is ideal for autoattacks) So, from my perspective, it doesn't make sense anymore to say "focus on this stat." It looks like every attack uses a different damage formula; unless someone can extrapolate or datamine or bother a dev to tell us, everyone is best off simply making comparisons for their main offensive abiltiies every time they upgrade their offensive stat.

Armor kinda sucks. Even if you stack it the most damage reduction you can wriggle out of it feels like around 30%.