That was your own character you had to balle. Not a boss. Maybe he tanks like a boss though.

The fact that caster can easily overcome regular encounters by using 2-3 spell per PL is in my eyes pretty much irrelevant because, well, its trash mobs and trash mobs are killed by sneezing at them. Prolonged fights, usually boss fights, is what matters and there 2-3 casts per PL, in comparison to classes with high sustain or refreshing resources, fall apart. 

 

It's great to have a caster to clear trash, but how does it compare to unhittable and unkillable pala/X is beyond me. 

Edited December 26, 20187 yr by knownastherat

As I said: if you can't kill a boss with a whole party with 10+ casts of your caster(s, each) you are doing something horribly wrong. I can't even use all spells until the fight ends (most of the time). Against any enemy.

 

Not talking about solo. Obviously classes with refreshing resources have a big advantage when going solo.

Edited December 26, 20187 yr by Boeroer

It's not about whether I, as a caster, can kill a boss with a whole party. It's about running out of resources in such fights. If you are not running out of resources, then I am indeed doing something wrong. 

See?

Not really, I just got a cipher who does not much else but give me Brilliant. Brilliant .. design.

Mirrors my experience.  Playing again with a full party and I can't remember the last time I've had to worry about my resources running out. 

 

It really comes down to fight strategy and how you approach things. Then again playing solo PotD with a resource constrained MC really forces you to learn how to extract every bit of value from an action.

Yes, solo punishes fixed resources. Like PotD punishes everything that doesn't raise PEN...

It's one of the reasons why I'm experimenting with a mod that drops Rogue guile costs on certain abilities and gives a passive perk at PL5 which gives one guile per kill.  It makes a more stealth focused approach much more fun to play in general.

Edited December 26, 20187 yr by guildwriter

Vanilla Wizard gets 17 spell casts at max level, plus 9 from empower.  Even casting low level invocations it takes a good 7+ minutes for a Chanter to dump that many spells, and a Cipher needs to dish out in the ballpark of 1000 damage with weapon attacks to cast that much.  Those are some crazy slow fights where that comes into play - Belranga, some of the endurance trials in SSS, or a purposefully noodly party composition.

Indeed, some crazy slow fights, but in my opinion, they are what matters. Also, XY spell casts tell little about let's say power potential because while it is nice to cast Infuse with Vital Essence, twice, does **** all direct damage. XY cast of any spell or group of spells. well, that is a different story, that is chanter. So again, yeah its nice to have wizard lagging the screen when killing trash but when it comes to crunch time Infuse with Vital Essence 2x will not cut it.  

Indeed, some crazy slow fights, but in my opinion, they are what matters. Also, XY spell casts tell little about let's say power potential because while it is nice to cast Infuse with Vital Essence, twice, does **** all direct damage. XY cast of any spell or group of spells. well, that is a different story, that is chanter. So again, yeah its nice to have wizard lagging the screen when killing trash but when it comes to crunch time Infuse with Vital Essence 2x will not cut it.  

 

Most of the time 2x casts will work.  The number of fights where that becomes an issue you could probably count on two hands at the very most.  And those fights are so outside the norm of the game that they don't reside anywhere on the critical path to completion.  (And in those cases you can still make it work with limited casts if you know how to make it work).

 

Personally I find boss fights to be the least interesting fights in the entire game.  Mostly because there isn't a lot of creativity involved in beating a boss.  Most of them are either straightforward or gimmick fights.  There are not a lot of options for how to beat them due to the specific efficiency constraints with no catch up mechanics going on at all.  

 

Indeed, some crazy slow fights, but in my opinion, they are what matters. Also, XY spell casts tell little about let's say power potential because while it is nice to cast Infuse with Vital Essence, twice, does **** all direct damage. XY cast of any spell or group of spells. well, that is a different story, that is chanter. So again, yeah its nice to have wizard lagging the screen when killing trash but when it comes to crunch time Infuse with Vital Essence 2x will not cut it.

Most of the time 2x casts will work. The number of fights where that becomes an issue you could probably count on two hands at the very most. And those fights are so outside the norm of the game that they don't reside anywhere on the critical path to completion. (And in those cases you can still make it work with limited casts if you know how to make it work).

 

Personally I find boss fights to be the least interesting fights in the entire game. Mostly because there isn't a lot of creativity involved in beating a boss. Most of them are either straightforward or gimmick fights. There are not a lot of options for how to beat them due to the specific efficiency constraints with no catch up mechanics going on at all.

I like them! Creating a team for the regular fights - easy. For megaboss - quite hard. Team to efficiently do regular content and megabosses - harder

Using a cheesy tactic to show the superiority of a class is questionable. With the same reasoning one could argue that the rogue is a better class than the monk because Gouging Strike kills every boss with 2 Guile.

 

Point taken. The game just isn't very cheese-proof.

Which one is?

 

To make a cheese-proof RPG you would need to keep the combat rules and abilities very simple or spend too much time on playtesting and balancing.

Edited December 27, 20187 yr by Boeroer

 

Indeed, some crazy slow fights, but in my opinion, they are what matters. Also, XY spell casts tell little about let's say power potential because while it is nice to cast Infuse with Vital Essence, twice, does **** all direct damage. XY cast of any spell or group of spells. well, that is a different story, that is chanter. So again, yeah its nice to have wizard lagging the screen when killing trash but when it comes to crunch time Infuse with Vital Essence 2x will not cut it.  

 

Most of the time 2x casts will work.  The number of fights where that becomes an issue you could probably count on two hands at the very most.  And those fights are so outside the norm of the game that they don't reside anywhere on the critical path to completion.  (And in those cases you can still make it work with limited casts if you know how to make it work).

 

Personally I find boss fights to be the least interesting fights in the entire game.  Mostly because there isn't a lot of creativity involved in beating a boss.  Most of them are either straightforward or gimmick fights.  There are not a lot of options for how to beat them due to the specific efficiency constraints with no catch up mechanics going on at all.  

 

 

So what you are saying is that 2x cast is enough, for you, because you can beat fights with it? 

 

I can also beat fights with it but I still have a cipher to Brilliant me all the time because I want to cast what I want 4x if needed. I don't care I can cast something I don't need 2x.

 

Even if there was only a single fight in the game where  2x cast per PL would not be enough, it still would prove my point: since killing trash is not a problem, the ability to kill it cannot be a measure for the strength of a class.

 

Wizard, the strongest class. 

Ooooohohoho u are all FOOLS I tell ya! The strongest class is clearly Lord of the Imps!

 

No question to it. I'm playing on path of damned and my team consists of 2 ghost heart rangers, 2 chanters and a priest. I'm level 5 and already defeated 3xred skull enemies like some weird wizard with book of storms, some pirate dude with some crazy loot and a steel preacher. Now my team has superb tier weapons and armor already. Nothing to it, I like challenge but I think chanter summons are op. It's because you can do them when in stealth mode and you can do them indefinitely. My team's weakest link is the priest. His spells are finite per battle and often the offensive spells miss because it's always accuracy vs whatever roll. Fights last sometimes very long time, a lot of damage gets dealt back and forth but in the end, priest spells are finite but chanters can just keep on casting and healing. They even get a revive ability.

 

So what are priests needed for?

Buffing

 

Quite fun till you get Arcane Dampener spammed on you.

 

 

No question to it. I'm playing on path of damned and my team consists of 2 ghost heart rangers, 2 chanters and a priest. I'm level 5 and already defeated 3xred skull enemies like some weird wizard with book of storms, some pirate dude with some crazy loot and a steel preacher. Now my team has superb tier weapons and armor already. Nothing to it, I like challenge but I think chanter summons are op. It's because you can do them when in stealth mode and you can do them indefinitely. My team's weakest link is the priest. His spells are finite per battle and often the offensive spells miss because it's always accuracy vs whatever roll. Fights last sometimes very long time, a lot of damage gets dealt back and forth but in the end, priest spells are finite but chanters can just keep on casting and healing. They even get a revive ability.

 

So what are priests needed for?

Buffing

 

Quite fun till you get Arcane Dampener spammed on you.

 

That too.

 

It's a very broken skill though. In most battles the enemy mage casts it right away, with no time to even interrupt it (0.4sec cast time). That needs patching. Either less long lasting, or hefty casttime, or a limit to how many beneficial effects it can negate.