[Turn-Based] Modal Abilities With Action Speed Penalties

[Yosharian]

In Turn-Based mode, Action Speed is far less important, because acting earlier in the turn (Initiative) is of limited benefit to most builds, and actions are limited to one per turn regardless of your Dexterity.

This means that weapon modals that have Action Speed penalties are great because they essentially have no cost.

So, I thought I'd list them all.  Scores are just for fun and my own reference, use your own judgement.

Ranged Weapons

• Arbalest: knocks targets prone on hit.  Prone targets simply stand up on their turn, however it can still be useful because your allies can beat the crap out of the prone'd target before he gets to do that.  7/10
• Crossbow: interrupts target on hit.  Can be useful for interrupting enemy mages when they cast spells, however this requires being lucky enough to get your turn before they finish casting, which isn't likely.  4/10
• War Bow: +2 PEN.  Incredibly powerful against high-armor targets, or generally in the higher difficulties.  9/10.
• Arquebus: +20 ACC.  Insanely strong accuracy buff. 10/10.
• Rod: AoE effect.  Not sure how powerful this is, but it's almost certainly fantastic with on-hit effects.  ??/10

Melee One-Handed

• Battle Axes: 10% of Damage dealt is reapplied per 3.0 sec for 60.0 sec.  I've heard this is exceptionally strong in RTWP mode, so getting it for free sounds pretty crazy.  10/10.
• Mace: Target receives -1 Armor Rating for 10.0 sec when hit.  Very strong against high-armor targets, or generally in the higher difficulties.  Also, provides a benefit to everyone attacking the target, not just the wielder.  8/10.
• Rapier: +20 ACC.  Insanely strong accuracy buff. 10/10.
• Sabre: +2 PEN.  Incredibly powerful against high-armor targets, or generally in the higher difficulties.  9/10.
• Stilletto: +2 PEN.  Incredibly powerful against high-armor targets, or generally in the higher difficulties.  9/10.
• Warhammer: +2 PEN.  Incredibly powerful against high-armor targets, or generally in the higher difficulties.  9/10.

Shields

• Small Shield: +15 ACC after being missed with enemy melee weapon attack.  Seems rather weak considering how much harder it is to Miss in turn-based.  This could only really be useful on someone with super-high deflection, and would they be using a Small Shield? 3/10.
• Medium Shield: 30% resistance against weapon attacks.  This is the bomb for anybody who takes damage (and why else would you be using a shield?).  However, I wonder which enemy attacks don't count as 'weapon' attacks?  Could be less powerful than it appears, but even if it only works against kith enemies, it's still pretty great for a tank.  7/10.

Two-Handed

• Quarterstaff: +20 Deflection against melee weapons.  Fantastic Deflection bonus for melee characters.  However, one has to question whether a two-handed specialist using a reach weapon needs Deflection per se, as opposed to +2 PEN or one of the other bonuses that some other weapons have, which are tremendous for DPS.  Still, it's very nice to have.  8/10.

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Yosharian

[JackalTornMoons]

One thing to note is that any modal that gives accuracy, deflection, and/or penetration doesn't stack with buffs that give the same.

 

Also, using the arbalest modal to prone an already stunned/paralyzed enemy sometimes extends the stun/paralyze for an extra turn.  This may have been fixed in 5.0; I haven't really had the chance to boot up the game since the patch.

 

[MaxQuest]

4 hours ago, Yosharian said:

In Turn-Based mode, Action Speed is far less important, because acting earlier in the turn (Initiative) is of limited benefit to most builds, and actions are limited to one per turn regardless of your Dexterity.

Yeap, quite so.

Dex also adds 4% to Stride since v4.1.2, in TB, and although that's a smaller bonus compared to +3% action speed in RTwP, it is here to stay, because:  

17 hours ago, BMac said:

Yes, now that TBM is out of beta we won't be making any more content or balance changes.

 

[Yosharian]

17 minutes ago, MaxQuest said:

Yeap, quite so.

Dex also adds 4% to Stride since v4.1.2, in TB, and although that's a smaller bonus compared to +3% action speed in RTwP, it is here to stay, because:  

 

Yeah I really don't think 4% stride is going to get me to put points into Dex.  It might discourage me from dumping it completely.  But in any case, with my latest characters I wasn't going below 7 in any attribute.

[Yosharian]

On 5/10/2019 at 6:17 PM, JackalTornMoons said:

One thing to note is that any modal that gives accuracy, deflection, and/or penetration doesn't stack with buffs that give the same.

 

Also, using the arbalest modal to prone an already stunned/paralyzed enemy sometimes extends the stun/paralyze for an extra turn.  This may have been fixed in 5.0; I haven't really had the chance to boot up the game since the patch.

 

Ah, that's interesting.  I didn't know about the stacking issue.  Deflection sounds straightforward, as many abilities straight up grant Deflection as a bonus.  But, for Penetration, I'm struggling to think of any, outside of perhaps a Cipher spell?

The PEN modals stack with Tenacious/Energized, right?

[Sobric]

Large shield modal has no effective downsides since you can't move when it's not your turn anyway.

[JackalTornMoons]

On 5/12/2019 at 8:54 PM, Yosharian said:

The PEN modals stack with Tenacious/Energized, right?

Yup

 

Nope

Edited May 17, 2019 by JackalTornMoons
I wrong

[Waski]

@up,  are you sure? 

[thelee]

On 5/14/2019 at 5:28 AM, JackalTornMoons said:

Yup

no, unless something dramatically changed in 5.0. weapon modals are active abilties, so do not stack with other active abilities (tenacious/energized)

edit: historically this has meant that maces are useful because if you have a consistent source of tenacious/energized/potion of piercing strikes, you can still get mileage out of the modal for penetrating enemy AR, because it's a debuff of enemy AR versus a buff of your PEN.

Edited May 15, 2019 by thelee