Build focusing on Willbreaker

[foxinspace]

Hi! Recently I’ve been appreciating morningstars in Deadfire quite a bit, particularly the infamous Willbreaker. Since it gives you the ability to debuff both fortitude and will, I’ve been wondering how to best use this in a build. 
 

Barbarian/cipher seems like a pretty good candidate for willbreaker, or perhaps devoted/blood mage or barb/bloodmage? If you have some ideas on the build that utilizes this weapon in the best way - please share!

[Okkes]

I'll share a build soon Beguiler/Blood Mage using Willbreaker. It's just destroying enemies defenses, killing though enemies with disintegration and mobs with wizard spells. 

[foxinspace]

Thanks! So far I've been thinking about either devoted / blood mage (with a heavy focus on illusion and various corrosive spells that target fortitude) or furyshaper/beguiler (great accuracy buffs from cipher, lots of cc, disintegrate & Spirit Tornado) and I can't really decide between the two. Haven't thought about combining beguiler and BM though. I would like to focus equally on willbreaker melee and casting, but with cipher and BM combo perhaps it would be easier to give the morningstar debuffing function to a different character and focus on casts?

[Shai Hulud]

2 hours ago, foxinspace said:

Thanks! So far I've been thinking about either devoted / blood mage (with a heavy focus on illusion and various corrosive spells that target fortitude) or furyshaper/beguiler (great accuracy buffs from cipher, lots of cc, disintegrate & Spirit Tornado) and I can't really decide between the two. Haven't thought about combining beguiler and BM though. I would like to focus equally on willbreaker melee and casting, but with cipher and BM combo perhaps it would be easier to give the morningstar debuffing function to a different character and focus on casts?

Witch is really really good with morningstars

@Boeroer has talked about this build before, maybe he can elaborate.

I can give you the gist, cast borrowed instinct, secret horrors, and use brute force with morning star modal plus spirit frenzy which applies staggered on hit, together you debuff fortitude by like 45 points. The "will" debuff in willbreaker is also good because most of these cipher spells target will. At this point you crit a lot, also could cast some disintegrations and such. 

I like barbarian / soul blade for witch personally, not exactly sure the ideal stat spread but have used in the past max INT max PER low dex medium might high con low res. I feel like with frenzy barbarians have such bad deflection they're just going to get hit anyway so I usually dump resolve, but I guess you could also max it (lower con and might some) and with borrowed instinct defenses it wouldn't be that bad. You have pretty good healing once you get savage defiance and especialy stalwart defiance, which at 2 rage can be used multiple times per fight. 

On barb side I mostly pick +damage and +action speed passives like blooded, bloodlust, one stands alone, bloody slaughter, blood thirst, and defensive stuff like unflinching and thick skinned. Only actives I usually take are frenzy tree (stop at spirit frenzy, spirit tornado is bugged with stagger procs) and defiance tree, though the shouts are okay. 

On cipher side, spells mentioned already but also hammering thoughts, iron will, lingering echoes, draining whip, phantom foes, psychovampiric shield, mental binding, and one charm spell (i usually upgrade as i go along). Only direct damage spells you really need IMO are disintegration, maybe soul ignition, at least if you're a soul blade, because it's generally higher DPS to use soul annihilation

Oh and morningstars have good penetration already, with hammering thoughts and phantom foes that gives you +2 pen so you're effectively at 15 pen legendary, 16 mythic and it does crush/pierce. There's almost nothing in the game that resists crush and pierce at 16+, and even if it did you can use slayer's claw to upgrade frenzy's strong to energized to get 18 pen at mythic, and that will get through everything. You'll also crit a lot which adds 50% pen, so even on upscaled POTD you don't really need devoted. Compared to a witch it's the same pen bonus anyway (at least when phantom foes is applied), so devoted gains a crit bonus but has a bit less accuracy, much less CC, less fortitude debuffs. Devoted is sturdier though, with unbending, and disciplined strikes is a pretty good source for crits. If I were going solo a witch might be tough until you get the defiance tree but in a party the healing is plenty. 

I don't know much about warlock builds, I guess you would cast spells to debuff fortitude, otherwise I'm not seeing a lot of synergy there. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[foxinspace]

Thanks, I have been considering a soulblade, perhaps it would be better for a stronger focus on melee. Would you recommend a no subclass barb? I really like the furyshaper totems, specifically the 'Fear' one - really fits the witch theme IMO. Also - why the low DEX?

[foxinspace]

I guess the one thing that does not quite work for me in relation to the soulblade subclass is that the focus is perhaps too much on melee side. A weapon like WotEP would probably work better for it, plus you are always incentivized to just spam soul annihilation. I want to exploit debuffs provided by the Willbreaker via spells and still hit hard with the morningstar itself. I thought that ascendant would be too casting focused, and beguiler - a decent trade-off.

[Boeroer]

A Morning Star cries for anything that targets fortitude. For Barbs that can be anything that would target deflection (see Brute Force), for FIghters it's Knock Down and Clear Out, Monks have Force of Anguish and Skyward Kick which can all profit a lot from the fortitude debuff. Casters as Druids, Wizards and Ciphers ahve lots of spells that target fortitud as well. Barbarians as wielders of Morning Stars have the added benefit of Spirit Frenzy which staggers on any hit roll (-10 foritude) - this stacks with the Morning Star's Body Blows. Monks are also cool because they can use Enervating Blows and Stunning Blows to stun + weaken which is -20 fortitude.

Because of that I often play Barb/Monk or Barb/Cipher with a Morning Star.
But I also did a Stalker/Bloodmage solo because Willbreaker lowers fortitude for my Animal Companion's Takedown Combo and the lowered Will is perfect for my Essential Phantom which wields Concelhaut's Draining Touch (it targets Will and weakens for the Animal Comapnion - circle of synergy ;))

Furyshaper/Beguiler is maybe my favorite Witch combo with Willbreaker. That's a great debuffer and Crowd Controller. Since those are more valuable to me than dealing weapon damage I don't like using Soulblade in this case. There's simply no time and motivation to use my focus for dealing weapon damage but I prefer to spend the focus on CC/debuffing for my party. Casting Phantom Foes + Secret Horrors fills focus up for some mind control, debuffs with Stagger, Sicken and Frighten (-10 Will, -20 Fortitude already) before summoning the Fear Ward and then going in and dishing out Body Blows. Also it is a thematically nice roleplaying approach imo. Lil' terror dude.  

When Wizard is involved there is a nice little trick with Willbreaker: You can summon the Essential or Substancial Phantom and attack the same target together. The WIll debuff of Willbreaker normally cannot go higher than 5 stacks (-15 Will). But since your Phantom uses a copy of Willbreaker it creates it's own stack (also up to 5). That way you can lower the Will by 30 instead of 15 max. And of course it it way faster to down the Will of a single opponent that way. If you have a Black Jacket/Wizard you can also use both Willbreaker and a Club with modals and lower enemies' Will by 25 with the club modal, 30 with Willbreaker (+Willbreaker copy on the Phantom) and on top use a little Miasma of Dull-Mindedness for -40 Will. There are no immunities against this, so even most bosses will suffer greatly from -95 Will. Against most enemies the double Willbreaker approach isn't necessary I guess. You can always give your Phantom Draining TOuch as weapn instead which profits greatly from reduced Will.

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As soon as a Monk is involved I would however not pick Willbreaker but Saru Sichr instead. The reason is that Saru Sichr has an additional hit roll with its poison DoT (Poison Dipped) which can trigger Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming all by itself. And it targets fortitude. So with every strike of the Morning Star you get two chances to crit (one against deflection, one against fortitude) and thus two chances to trigger Swift Flurry and/or Heartbeat Drumming. Both then lead to an additonal attack which itself again has two chances of triggering and so on. Result is that it is much, much easier to create  deadly chain of crits with Saru Sichr than it is with Willbreaker.

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Boeroer

[foxinspace]

Wow, thanks for a mini-guide on Morningstar builds, @Boeroer! What a helpful summary!
 

Now I’m tempted to go for a wizard multiclass with substantial/essential phantom and take someone like mirke as a SC monk with Saru-sichr for deadly triple morningstar power

[Boeroer]

45 minutes ago, foxinspace said:

Wow, thanks for a mini-guide on Morningstar builds, @Boeroer! What a helpful summary!
 

Now I’m tempted to go for a wizard multiclass with substantial/essential phantom and take someone like mirke as a SC monk with Saru-sichr for deadly triple morningstar power

Unbroken/Wizard can profit from Body Blows with Knockdown early - and also from nasty disengagement attacks once you start terrifying enemies (they crouch around, you can engage and when they crouch out of engagement: boom). It can be a lot of fun but doesn't always work 100% reliably. Still it's a nice "free" source of additional damage output. If he Phantom has engagement (it has with some items like Reckless Brigandine for example) it works with the Phantom as well: It will follow crouching enemies, reangage and profit from disengagment attacks, too. Of course an Unbroken/Wizard will have more engagement slots than the phantom so the chance of triggeriung disengagement attacks its higher if multiple enemies are involved. Reckless Brigandine + White Witch Mask + Willbreaker is my preffered item setup for this. Also pretty tanky that one.

But: using the phantom for such things can become a bit tiresome - because a rather elaborate summoning/casting-setup is involved. It might be that you don't want to go through that process in every encounter and soon would prefer a more straightforward approach. For solo I find this totally okay - for a party game it might be too much preperation at the start of battle for some players. Depends on the level of micromanagement you can tolerate - or if you are willing to script this behavior with the AI tool which can really help to mitigate the micromanagement-fatigue.  

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I personally like to enchant Willbreaker with "Make them Flinch" (25% miss to graze) and combine that with Gauntlets of Greater Reliability (also 25% miss to graze). That way you can even graze (and apply Body Blows) enemies who have absurd defenses often enough. This can help to more easily crack very tough nuts. I value that over Battered Mind - although interrupt chance on hit is good, too.

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An even more potent "Swift Flurry machine" than Saru Sichr for MC or SC Monk is the spear Mohora Tanga. It has no fortitude debuff of course, but It also has a DoT that counts as separate weapon attack like Saru Sichr, but this one (named "Red Flag Flying") has the way more potent feature to trigger itself(!) on a crit. So it works like this: Mohora Tanga lands a crit -> this triggers Red Flag Fyling DoT getting applied, but it has to do a separate roll (which counts as a proper weapon attack of Mohora Tanga for the game logic) against Fortitude. If this roll crits it will trigger Red Flag Flying again - if this crits it triggers again... and again.. and again... as long as you crit. This is all without even Swift Flurry/HBD involved. Now - triggering Red Flag Flying on its own does not do much - because the DoT doesn't stack with itself. So one might ask "what's this good for"? Since all those rolls are considered proper weapon attack rolls they can trigger anything that gets triggeed by weapon rolls. Look at Boltcatcher Gloves, Gatecrasher Gloves or Hylea's Talons. Also look at Avenging Storm(!). And finally look at Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming. They will have the chance to trigger from Red Flag Flying every time it appliies (itself). This makes crit chains incredibly easy to unlock - and if you combine with Boltcatchers for example it's just a very devastating combination. 

In fact it it can be so devastating that all the rolls will lets your computer decide that it's best to shut down the game without further notice.  This happened to my latest Ranger/Monk so many times against not-so-tough enemies that I decided to stop that build. Crashing game every second encounter wasn't fun anymore. But that was also due to the fact that the Ranger/Monk had incredible accuracy. Once it is nearly impossible to not crit it becomes a problem with this spear. But if you go with lower accuracy it's a great weapon to still have superb Swift FLurry experience without breaking the game too often I guess.

Another great Swift-Flurry weapon (without crashing the game) is Sun & Moon. It has basically the same feature as Saru-Sichr because it has two separate weapon rolls (both target deflection) which can trigger a full Swift FLurry/HBD attack roll - and so on.

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My last Saru-Sichr build which wa s really fun was Berserker/Helwalker with maxed CON. Because the dps came from crit chains mostly I didn't need much starting MIG (helped with the self damage of Frenzy+Helwelker passive) and with maxed CON + Tough + Amulet of Greater Health, Death's Maw and Voidward it was a surprisingly sturdy build with lots of crit chains and decent debuffing and CC "on the fly".

   

[foxinspace]

4 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

But: using the phantom for such things can become a bit tiresome - because a rather elaborate summoning/casting-setup is involved. It might be that you don't want to go through that process in every encounter and soon would prefer a more straightforward approach. For solo I find this totally okay - for a party game it might be too much preperation at the start of battle for some players. Depends on the level of micromanagement you can tolerate - or if you are willing to script this behavior with the AI tool which can really help to mitigate the micromanagement-fatigue.  

I actually prefer more micro in this game, at least for your own char. Anyway, it seems like for some mundane encounters there are quite a few tools to fall back on for fighter/wizard, even just using clear out with the willbreaker. I also love how it fits a 'scarecrow' theme, terrifying enemies together with your ghostly double and relentlessly chasing them down.

9 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

My last Saru-Sichr build which wa s really fun was Berserker/Helwalker with maxed CON. Because the dps came from crit chains mostly I didn't need much starting MIG (helped with the self damage of Frenzy+Helwelker passive) and with maxed CON + Tough + Amulet of Greater Health, Death's Maw and Voidward it was a surprisingly sturdy build with lots of crit chains and decent debuffing and CC "on the fly".

   

Hmm, I also wonder if berserker + wizard or cipher would work for a character that benefits both morningstar melee and casting by capitalizing on debuffs. Tenacious and higher crit chance benefits both, but the scaling hp loss at high levels is so annoying...

[dgray62]

If you go with fighter/wizard you might consider tactician. A fun thing with tactician is you can get fighter resources back when you interrupt someone (with knockdown for example) casting a spell or activating an ability. Plus it's easy to proc brilliant with chillfog. Tactician is great if you like micro.

Edited April 19, 2023 by dgray62
additional information

[Shai Hulud]

10 hours ago, foxinspace said:

Thanks, I have been considering a soulblade, perhaps it would be better for a stronger focus on melee. Would you recommend a no subclass barb? I really like the furyshaper totems, specifically the 'Fear' one - really fits the witch theme IMO. Also - why the low DEX?

I've never played a furyshaper, but it does sound interesting. Also you don't have to go soul blade, but barbarians are melee focused anyway so it's a good match. If you want a more mixed style barbarian / ascendent would be a good choice.

Low dex is not because we want low dex but because action speed has limited returns and for a barbarian there are so many ways to stack action speed you can get away with low dex. With berath's blessing, amira's boon, various items, your actual dex will be around 10 or 11 and with frenzy always active that's +25% action speed (equal to about 8 dex), bloodlust is frequently up (+20%, equal to about 7 dex), and when you get blood thirst that actually procs for two attacks in the vanilla game negating dex entirely for two attacks after killing something. Also I usually don't wear much armor with a barbarian, at most like devil of caroc BP with abraham so he still is pretty fast. Or even better high harbinger robes if you fight bloody will give you +10% or more action speed.

You can certainly put points into dex but I don't think you gain a lot maxing it compared to say around 9 or 10. It's just a matter of priorities.

I'd definitely max INT for carnage (blood frenzy and spirit frenzy effects are pretty good), longer duration of your self-buffs like frenzy + stalwart defiance + various cipher spells (including duration of body blows from morningstar)

PER you want max so you cipher spells crit and so you will hit things early game and later crit things, which gives you +40% damage with improved critical, +70% if you overpen, and when the spells crit the effects last longer and don't have to be cast as often. 

CON I usually have pretty high so I can take some hits dumping RES, but barbarians have high base CON and if you use hylea's bounty you could probably keep this pretty low if you want. 

MIG you can really go however you want, if you fight bloody you get +25% damage from that, and one stands alone is +20% damage, you get +5 from frenzy for combined effect of roughly +65% damage, also bloody slaughter adds some damage, so you can get away with low might, or you can go all out with high MIG but MIG has diminishing returns, particularly late game when you have a mythic weapon and you're critting things, your damage will typically look like: + X from MIG, + 40% crit, +30% overpen, +15% two handed,+25% blooded, +20% one stands alone, +75% mythic, +5% infamous captain (if you use or get that), +Y% other item/armor buffs, so even with MIG at 35 the damage contribution for X is +75%, which is significant at this point probably only 1/3 of your overall damage, so you don't lose out that much if your ending MIG is 20 and X is +30%, and you can even dump it and still do okay damage. 

RES you probably want to either max or dump, because to deflection tank you need really high resolve plus borrowed instinct up, I prefer dumping it with barb because frenzy makes high deflection harder and you tend to get hit anyway, if you have a party you don't really need your barb to face tank it's more of a striker role / off-tank

So that leaves DEX, put whatever's left into it. One stat spread I used recently for a barb/ranger is 7/18/11/18/18/3, but this build focuses on interrupting things so high MIG was not a priority, there are lots of valid stat spreads for a witch, just definitely max INT and PER, the rest is mutable based on equipment and playstyle. 

You do not need WOTEP, it does distribute soul annihilation (usually just to 2 or 3 enemies) but the base damage is meh and you won't crit as much with it. I never use it and it takes 3 to 4 hits to max focus at L20, plus soul annihilation is mostly for burst damage vs hard to kill enemies, your base barbarian /cipher abilities are fine for crowds. 

I wouldn't mess with berserkers. Tenacious is easy to get with slayer's claw. Just stick it on your barb and switch weapons when you frenzy, then switch back, you can go up to energized with the game paused. Berserker / wizard is flat out going to die from the self-damage unless you have characters constantly healing it, and not being able to see your health is really bad with blood sacrifice (and in general). The gains are just not worth it. The hit to crit is nice for low accuracy builds but witches have very good accuracy, you can gain like +40 accuracy vs deflection from phantom foes, borrowed instinct and psychovampiric shield so you will crit most of the time anyway especially with the right items (cap of the laughingstock gives +10 vs deflection, blinky is +5 melee, gauntlets of accuracy +3), and with brute force and borrowed instinct + body blows + secret horrors + staggered you can debuff vs fortitude for effectively +65 accuracy (though cap of the laughingstock won't help v fort). Really you will crit even bosses most of the time if you spec for accuracy. Stacking accuracy is much more reliable than stacking hit to crit because accuracy stacks additively and hit to crit does not. 

Oh and for the "hardy" part, you can put bardatto's luxury with death and taxes enchant in one of your weapon slots, just switch to this occasionally when a party summon is about to die (a chanter with many lives pass by will proc it quickly and reliably), once it procs you get hardy for like 90s, it isn't hard to keep up if you like micro, though personally I don't rely on high armor that much with a witch so I might not bother

Make sure you get the nature's resolve boon. This gives +10 accuracy and +2 resolve. There's an encounter on tikawara island where the delemgan gives it to you if you're nice to her and don't have a cruel or aggressive disposition. The boon goes away on rest, like all boons, which is a good reason not to rest, ever, once you get the foods and characters you want. Dawnstar's blessing is also super useful with +50% healing, these two boons are the best but there are many more. Since dawnstar's is available so early you may want to skip it until you have the party you want and the foods you want, then come back to maje for it after resting. 

No rest guide if interested. The only truly forced rest in the game is at the very end so it is pretty easy to avoid resting. If you get injured just drink luminous adra potions. Probably want to stay away from drugs.

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Boeroer makes good points about monks, ravagers are quite good. Definitely would not use mahora tanga though. It it a cheesy bug but more than that if you use it to proc crit effects it will likely crash your machine, maybe not always, but enough to be a pain, even if you have a pretty modern computer. 

4 hours ago, dgray62 said:

If you go with fighter/wizard you might consider tactician. A fun thing with tactician is you can get fighter resources back when you interrupt someone (with knockdown for example) casting a spell or activating an ability. Plus it's easy to proc brilliant with chillfog. Tactician is great if you like micro.

This is true, the description says "restore discipline when successfully interrupting an enemy action", but to be clear the effect does not proc on most interrupts, it only procs when you interrupt spells and certain types of abilities. But it is very easy to interrupt with this build, cast slicken now and then and mule kick things (interrupts on graze) and you can have a constant supply of discipline, then as long as you keep unbending up you can blood sacrifice a ton on the wizard side, even without potions of final stand.

Blood mage / tactician is an insanely good build, but I wouldn't use willbreaker with it. I like it for a lot of reasons but mostly because I can mule kick crowds with citzal's spirit lance and often it's free if at least one person in the crowd was casting something. If running with a party I'd seriously consider stealing party-friendly chill fog spell from a watershaper druid like Biakara, then you can just cast it on top of yourself. To do this you use minor grimoire imprint (from a grimoire like aloth's grimoire, do NOT memorize it), then when you get the spell swap to another grimoire and it's permanent. She also has nature's mark.

I also like to steal escape from beina so I can use it to zip around the battlefield. Actually when I play multiclassed blood mages I like stealing just about everything I can. If I'm doing pure blood mage I don't use major grimoire imprint this way because it is considerably more overpowered when you're stealing things like shadowing beyond, barring death's door, and salvation of time. It is also more tedious stealing spells with major grimoire imprint since it targets seven spell tiers vs minor imprint targeting just 3. 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Shai Hulud

[Boeroer]

DEX has linear returns by the way, not limited.  

Comparing Tenacious from Berserker with the effects of Slayer's Claw is pretty... wild. The Berserker's Tenacious via Frenzy comes at lvl 1 - while Slayers Claw is late game material. Then Slayer's Claw will upgrade your Tenacious inspiration to Energized like it would upgrade Strong to Tenacious, so it isn't really a substitute but an addition even for Berserkers (if one wishes).

Imo the best argument against Berserker/Monk would have been that Monks can get Tenacious via Thunderous Blows - which will come way earlier that Slayer's Claw normally. Of course I skip Thunderous Blow's when using a Berserker, spares an ability point...

My Berserker was meant as an example for a Saru-Sichr/Swift Flurry option instead of SC Monk, not a general recommendation for Berserker. Berserker's self dmg combined with concealed health is indeed a dangerous combo most of times.

Anyway, here the strong synergy of Berserker/Helwalker (or any monk besides Forbidden Fist and Shatters Pillar) comes from the fact that Berserker's self damage fuels wound generation... a lot. Forbidden Fist could also work bc. the confusion from Frenzy is separate from the beneficial effects and gets shortened by RES and Clarity of Agony, so you only become confused for a short time and then get healing + wound. This also works... but back to the Helwalker variant.

So as I said the self damage of Berserker fuels the wounds of the Helwalker. It already works well at low levels, but since the self damage scales so steeply while the wound threshold doesn't change, you will figuratively drown in wounds at some point. 

Now high accuracy is better than crit conversion most of times, but with a build I described that is about Saru Sichr and Swift Flurry/HBD the added conversion also helps. You want to create as many crit chains as you can after all. If one doesn't play juiced up with potions and special food and multiple resting bonuses in a "no rest" run but rather normally and with a party, it's not that easy to crit all the tough enemies all the time. Then a good base of conversion is not lost. Berserker's conversion does not additively stack with Bloody Slaughter, Willbreaker and Barbaric Blow - but it will stack. So in cases where a crit chain could end prematurely because you rolled low it still has a chance to go on bc. the roll gets converted up. It will not make a ton of difference but I take it. 

Of course the combination of Berserker and Helwalker, even with maxed CON and damage reduction, is a dance on the edge, but that's also part of the fun for me. Of course more MIG via high wound count and up to +50% received dmg will raise the self damage of Frenzy even more - and that can hurt a lot while it also leads to a violent eruption of wounds. To mitigate frustration I described the variant of maxed CON and using some sources of damage reduction (helm, ring, maybe food) which works very well. If one adds some form of healing on the fly (like a pet with +20 healing per kill, maybe supported by an Edér pet that adds +10 per kill party-wide and then Devil of Caroc Breastplate for example, best armor for Berserkers in most cases anyway). Lastly taking Blooded makes sure you have an easy indicator for when your health drops below 50% - and you get +25% dmg (again good for wounds and bad for your health). I like to take humans for such a build because there are added bonuses when going blooded. To get a further indicator you can also use an item that triggers if you are near death. I didn't need it but they are there in case one needs more info about the health status.

Since Barbs have such high base health and Barb/Monks are not far behind the maxing of CON adds a ton of absolute health. While I tend to drop CON in most builds in this case its a staple. A huge health pool means a huge wound resource in this case. And with the right approach (as I said I also added Amulet of Greater Health and the ability Tough to the mix) you'll have more health while Bloodied than Edér has when unharmed.

Now, it's still absolutely beneficial (I'd say mandatory) to have a good source of additional healing in the party. In my run Tekehu, who just cast Nature's Balm at the start of battle, was enough to substitute the Berserker/Helwalker with his additional self-healing properties via pet and stuff in most fights. Sometimes he had to get out the Moon well, too. Xoti dropped some additional healing as well. But I didn't even have to take Savage/Stalwart Defiance with the Berserker/Helwalker, which spared me some precious ability points again. Especially at the higher Power Levels there's just too much good stuff to pick.

I didn't use Iron Wheel by the way - because neither the CON- nor the AR-bonus of it stacks with Frenzy's +5 CON and +2 AR. Turning Wheel doesn't have that problem. Since wounds are so plenty the wound counter is a 10 a lot of times. So you can get away with mediocre base INT - something that I normally don't do - but so is maxing CON.

Another upside of such a Berserker/Helwalker is the comically high fortitude defense. The MIG bonuses of Frenzy and Helwalker passive do stack and maxed CON + Frenzy and some items add on top. Fortitude is a nice defense to have. It works against most effects that mess with your health pool, like weaken. You don't want to get your healing restricted when relying so much on it and stellar fortitude is a nice way of not getting struck with such afflictions in the first place.

Can still be a thrilling experience of course - but I liked that for a main character. I have played many Berserker variants in the past though (also Berserker/Helwalker before) and this was one of the most easy-going ones when it comes to dying from self damage.

Still this isn't supposed to be a glowing recommendation. I found it enjoyable but it maybe isn't for everyone.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

DEX has linear returns by the way, not limited.  

Linear? This didn't seem right to me, so I did the appropriate hyper nerdy thing and graphed attack times (attack + recovery) vs dexterity values from 2 to 35, wearing robes and using a sabre. Not linear, it's some kind of polynomial fit. Clearly there are diminishing returns the more you invest in dexterity unless I am really bad at plotting graphs...
2 6.2 3 6 4 5.8 5 5.5 6 5.3 7 5.2 8 5.1 9 4.8 10 4.7 11 4.6 12 4.5 13 4.3 14 4.2 15 4.1 16 4.0 17 3.9 18 3.8 19 3.7 20 3.6 21 3.5 22 3.4 23 3.4 24 3.3 25 3.3 26 3.2 27 3.1 28 3.1 29 2.9 30 2.9 31 2.9 32 2.9 33 2.8 34 2.7 35 2.7

 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Comparing Tenacious from Berserker with the effects of Slayer's Claw is pretty... wild. The Berserker's Tenacious via Frenzy comes at lvl 1 - while Slayers Claw is late game material. Then Slayer's Claw will upgrade your Tenacious inspiration to Energized like it would upgrade Strong to Tenacious, so it isn't really a substitute but an addition even for Berserkers (if one wishes).

That's true, I tend to build based around how things can handle megabosses and DLC material (particularly FS which is harder than the other two IMO). If I were playing this character I would avoid difficult combat until I had the appropriate gear. I realize most people don't look at it this way. Still, given how easy it is to reach high(ish) levels with little to no combat I don't place a lot of value in getting tenacious at L1, especially since you don't have any healing at this point. I tried many builds trying to make berserker work and I couldn't find any where a vanilla barbarian wasn't superior. And if the raw damage is bad the health concealment is really bad.

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Imo the best argument against Berserker/Monk would have been that Monks can get Tenacious via Thunderous Blows - which will come way earlier that Slayer's Claw normally. Of course I skip Thunderous Blow's when using a Berserker, spares an ability point...

I meant in general, but yes there is absolutely no point in going berserker/monk given it is easy to keep up thunderous blows, and the remaining benefits (hardy plus some hit to crit) are definitely not worth the downsides. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

My Berserker was meant as an example for a Saru-Sichr/Swift Flurry option instead of SC Monk, not a general recommendation for Berserker. Berserker's self dmg combined with concealed health is indeed a dangerous combo most of times.

I wasn't criticizing any specific build just pointing out berserkers in general have very steep downsides for their benefits. Also confusion limits uptime of buffs, debuffs etc., though it does have some niche uses that are interesting. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Anyway, here the strong synergy of Berserker/Helwalker (or any monk besides Forbidden Fist and Shatters Pillar) comes from the fact that Berserker's self damage fuels wound generation... a lot. Forbidden Fist could also work bc. the confusion from Frenzy is separate from the beneficial effects and gets shortened by RES and Clarity of Agony, so you only become confused for a short time and then get healing + wound. This also works... but back to the Helwalker variant.

I've tried to make berserker / FF work and the healing is insufficient to tank things that a barbarian / FF can handle easily, and transcendent suffering and especially FF attack have plenty of penetration without tenacious, can also be increased with potions of ascension and other methods if necessary. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

So as I said the self damage of Berserker fuels the wounds of the Helwalker. It already works well at low levels, but since the self damage scales so steeply while the wound threshold doesn't change, you will figuratively drown in wounds at some point. 

I prefer blood mage / helwalker for a living on the edge monk ability spamming build. And you may drown in wounds with berserker / helwalker but you will also drown in your own blood

Unless you have a priest casting BDD and SOT on you, then it would be okay I guess though I still don't see the benefit over a generic barbarian, particularly since morningstars already have really good penetration and do crush/pierce, with basically nothing having high AR vs both (Hauani O Whe has 16 on upscaled POTD, a rare exception). 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Now high accuracy is better than crit conversion most of times, but with a build I described that is about Saru Sichr and Swift Flurry/HBD the added conversion also helps. You want to create as many crit chains as you can after all. If one doesn't play juiced up with potions and special food and multiple resting bonuses in a "no rest" run but rather normally and with a party, it's not that easy to crit all the tough enemies all the time. Then a good base of conversion is not lost. Berserker's conversion does not additively stack with Bloody Slaughter, Willbreaker and Barbaric Blow - but it will stack. So in cases where a crit chain could end prematurely because you rolled low it still has a chance to go on bc. the roll gets converted up. It will not make a ton of difference but I take it. 

Eh...the "special food" is available in Neketaka for under 1k, you can also craft it pretty easily, but even without the berath's blessing money it is affordable. You also start most of the time with 3 uses of hylea's bounty, so one can easily give half your party hylea's bounty and the rest buy hot razor skewers or captains banquet. Really isn't hard to do no rest runs, just takes a bit of knowledge, but once I learned where the boons were I never went back. The only aspect where this is harder with a party is you would probably want to circle back to Maje for dawnstar's blessing. All the companions are in neketaka and you don't get any boons before your opportunity to recruit them, besides potentially dawnstars. I used to rest a lot because that's how I always approached these kind of games, but since in Deadfire nearly all resources are per encounter and you can find/craft dozens of luminous adra potions there is really no purpose to resting aside from clearing drug crashes (but more drugs will also do that). 

I know the berserker hit to crit conversion has some value in low accuracy builds, and it's probably the best reason to take one, but the cost is too steep. If the raw damage didn't scale with might and power level, or you could at least see your health, I'd bite on berserkers in some cases, but that combo (plus confusion which shortens stalwart defiance uptime) is pretty serious. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Of course the combination of Berserker and Helwalker, even with maxed CON and damage reduction, is a dance on the edge, but that's also part of the fun for me. Of course more MIG via high wound count and up to +50% received dmg will raise the self damage of Frenzy even more - and that can hurt a lot while it also leads to a violent eruption of wounds. To mitigate frustration I described the variant of maxed CON and using some sources of damage reduction (helm, ring, maybe food) which works very well. If one adds some form of healing on the fly (like a pet with +20 healing per kill, maybe supported by an Edér pet that adds +10 per kill party-wide and then Devil of Caroc Breastplate for example, best armor for Berserkers in most cases anyway). Lastly taking Blooded makes sure you have an easy indicator for when your health drops below 50% - and you get +25% dmg (again good for wounds and bad for your health). I like to take humans for such a build because there are added bonuses when going blooded. To get a further indicator you can also use an item that triggers if you are near death. I didn't need it but they are there in case one needs more info about the health status.

The blooded thing doesn't really work for me because I have so many indicators on my characters you literally can't see new statuses unless you pause and check the character sheet. I like fighting bloody with barbarians anyway, and agree humans are very good. Fire godlike would also be a decent choice for berserkers since they get hardy.

I've tried scripting various indicators for health and the scripting isn't really versatile enough to work that way. One thing I came up with is to toggle modals on/off at various points, but they only toggle on so that doesn't work. With a ravager specifically one way to script it would be take both turning wheel and iron wheel, then use turning wheel above 50% health, switch to iron wheel below, and you could tell by the modal (very roughly) where your health is at. Your character usually says something about healing when they reach near death, so yeah that could work I guess. 

As far as the healing I did everything you said and more, can't even get them survivable in BPM where savage defiance line heals for twice as much. Ravagers and brutes were the most promising berserker builds I made but still felt inferior to their normal barbarian cousins. Brutes in particular might work in vanilla since unbending is so broken. I wonder, does the self damage count towards unbending? I'm thinking it doesn't, blood sacrifice doesn't, but if so that would be nice. But anyway, if you had high intelligence, wear devil of caroc BP with mechanical mind to negate confusion, you'd have reasonable uptime on unbeding and could probably keep up that and stalwart defiance enough to not die. Still all those resources just for tenacious/hardy and what, like 30% hit to crit? Brute can go devoted anyway and get bonus penetration.

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Since Barbs have such high base health and Barb/Monks are not far behind the maxing of CON adds a ton of absolute health. While I tend to drop CON in most builds in this case its a staple. A huge health pool means a huge wound resource in this case. And with the right approach (as I said I also added Amulet of Greater Health and the ability Tough to the mix) you'll have more health while Bloodied than Edér has when unharmed.

Yeah I have savage and brute builds where I have like 400 health bloodied, it's pretty nice. Amulet of Greater Health becomes kind of negligible after a while IMO though. Good early game. Later I'd rather have strand of favor or charm of bones. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Now, it's still absolutely beneficial (I'd say mandatory) to have a good source of additional healing in the party. In my run Tekehu, who just cast Nature's Balm at the start of battle, was enough to substitute the Berserker/Helwalker with his additional self-healing properties via pet and stuff in most fights. Sometimes he had to get out the Moon well, too. Xoti dropped some additional healing as well. But I didn't even have to take Savage/Stalwart Defiance with the Berserker/Helwalker, which spared me some precious ability points again. Especially at the higher Power Levels there's just too much good stuff to pick.

Sure if you devote lots of healing resources you can counter the self-damage. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I didn't use Iron Wheel by the way - because neither the CON- nor the AR-bonus of it stacks with Frenzy's +5 CON and +2 AR. Turning Wheel doesn't have that problem. Since wounds are so plenty the wound counter is a 10 a lot of times. So you can get away with mediocre base INT - something that I normally don't do - but so is maxing CON.

Seems like Iron wheel and frenzy should stack. Turning wheel stacks with INT inspirations so I don't get this, though I've seen it and yeah it's annoying. 

26 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Another upside of such a Berserker/Helwalker is the comically high fortitude defense. The MIG bonuses of Frenzy and Helwalker passive do stack and maxed CON + Frenzy and some items add on top. Fortitude is a nice defense to have. It works against most effects that mess with your health pool, like weaken. You don't want to get your healing restricted when relying so much on it and stellar fortitude is a nice way of not getting struck with such afflictions in the first place.

Can still be a thrilling experience of course - but I liked that for a main character. I have played many Berserker variants in the past though (also Berserker/Helwalker before) and this was one of the most easy-going ones when it comes to dying from self damage.

Still this isn't supposed to be a glowing recommendation. I found it enjoyable but it maybe isn't for everyone.

Haha yeah seems like the argument is with enough adjustments and resource diversion you can make berserker/helwalker playable, when a barbarian / FF would probably outdamage the berserker/helwalker and still generate lots of wounds without requiring all the resource diversion. Also agree high fortitude is nice, but tenacious doesn't give you any more than fit. 

I mean I can see the synergy with the wound generation, there are just easier ways to get wounds, and other suicidal classes like blood mage / helwalker can at least extend potions of final stand to not die while using blood sacrifice for both infinite wounds and spells. 

Man this is way longer than I intended. My intent was not to draw you into a debate, and I know you are incredibly knowledgeable regarding Deadfire, but I just can't seem to help but respond to these things point by point

[Boeroer]

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Linear? This didn't seem right to me, so I did the appropriate hyper nerdy thing and graphed attack times (attack + recovery) vs dexterity values from 2 to 35, wearing robes and using a sabre. Not linear, it's some kind of polynomial fit.

Heh - this is a case for inspector @thelee.
Looks linear enough to me, especially in the range of around 10 to 25 - which is the range we should be talking about when it's about deciding how to distribute attribute points at character creation. Besides that - I also often don't raise DEX too high. But not because of limited returns but because I value the effects of some other attributes higher for most characters (not all though - my Skalds for example often come with maximized attack speed). 

By the way here is a an attack speed calculator (done by @MaxQuest) which makes it rel. easy to experiment with the attack speed variables, incl. DEX:
https://naijaro.github.io/deadfire-speed-calculator/

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

And you may drown in wounds with berserker / helwalker but you will also drown in your own blood

Well - I did not. Berserker can lead to that no doubt, but I described the techniques with which I prevented this. 

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

there is absolutely no point in going berserker/monk given it is easy to keep up thunderous blows, and the remaining benefits (hardy plus some hit to crit) are definitely not worth the downsides.

As was shown the main point is automatic wound generation when it comes to Berserker/Monk. And that - together with the spared ability point for Thunderous Blows, +2 AR and crit conversion is def. worth the downsides in my book. Esp. because you can simply circumvent the Confusion part which would be the biggest downside (if you don't want to turn it into a cheesy upside).

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Really isn't hard to do no rest runs, just takes a bit of knowledge, but once I learned where the boons were I never went back.

 I don't think it's hard. I only think it's not the way most players tend to play the game. Hence I don't use no rest as a base for how to judge if a build might be enjoyable for other players (who didn't indicate that they are about to do a no-rest run - in that case I wouldn't recommend anything because I don't enjoy no-rest runs). 

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

The blooded thing doesn't really work for me because I have so many indicators on my characters you literally can't see new statuses unless you pause and check the character sheet.

Yo-rest runs tend to be lighter on the indicator space. 

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

As far as the healing I did everything you said and more, can't even get them survivable in BPM where savage defiance line heals for twice as much.

 I wasn't talking about any mods - and I also said I didn't even need Savage Defiance. Clearly your build was a lot different from the one I described.

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Sure if you devote lots of healing resources you can counter the self-damage. 

Yes - but as I described I didn't devote lots of healing resources to the Berserker/Monk. It was an amount of healing any regular party would be happy with and not excessive. That would be the case if I talked about a Berserker/Helwalker with dumped CON - did that, also was fun but was def. dying a whole lot without meticulous babysitting. 

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Seems like Iron wheel and frenzy should stack. Turning wheel stacks with INT inspirations so I don't get this, though I've seen it and yeah it's annoying. 

They are both considered active buffs and thus don't stack.
No, Turning Wheel does not stack with INT inspirations.
MIG from Helwalker does stack with MIG inspirations because that special MIG bonus comes from a passive.

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Haha yeah seems like the argument is with enough adjustments and resource diversion you can make berserker/helwalker playable, when a barbarian / FF would probably outdamage the berserker/helwalker and still generate lots of wounds without requiring all the resource diversion.

One is always doing adjustments and resource diversion to make a build idea work. You will put lots on RES into a FF Monk, you will give high ACC to a Skald, you will put a melee weapon and high dmg bonuses on a Soulblade, you will give special healing care to the Bloodmage, you'll make sure your Psion doesn't get attacked so much and so on and so forth. It is nothing special to make certain adjustments in order to create an enjoyable (main) character.
Besides that you ignored the main reason to bring it up: it was originally done to maximize the combination of Saru Sichr and Swift Flurry/HBD and I brought it up as an alternative for a single class Monk which was mentioned as a potential wielder for Saru Sichr.

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

I mean I can see the synergy with the wound generation, there are just easier ways to get wounds.

I think there is no easier way to generate that amount of wounds right from the start - there are more safe ways of course, but not easier. You just press Frenzy (which you would want to activate as a Barb anyway) and the wounds start acumulating very quickly. That's as easy as it gets imo. 

10 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

My intent was not to draw you into a debate, and I know you are incredibly knowledgeable regarding Deadfire, but I just can't seem to help but respond to these things point by point

I have no problem with that.  
 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Heh - this is a case for inspector @thelee.
Looks linear enough to me, especially in the range of around 10 to 25 - which is the range we should be talking about when it's about deciding how to distribute attribute points at character creation. Besides that - I also often don't raise DEX too high. But not because of limited returns but because I value the effects of some other attributes higher for most characters (not all though - my Skalds for example often come with maximized attack speed). 

By the way here is a an attack speed calculator (done by @MaxQuest) which makes it rel. easy to experiment with the attack speed variables, incl. DEX:
https://naijaro.github.io/deadfire-speed-calculator/

Well it isn't linear. If it were linear you could draw a best fit line and it would match the points. The attack speed does become more approximately linear the higher the the dex values.

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Well - I did not. Berserker can lead to that no doubt, but I described the techniques with which I prevented this. 

We are probably looking at different use cases. Like I said, if you are diverting sufficient healing resources I'm sure it's workable. 

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

As was shown the main point is automatic wound generation when it comes to Berserker/Monk. And that - together with the spared ability point for Thunderous Blows, +2 AR and crit conversion is def. worth the downsides in my book. Esp. because you can simply circumvent the Confusion part which would be the biggest downside (if you don't want to turn it into a cheesy upside).

I can see the synergy with the wound generation but it really isn't hard to generate wounds rapidly with a lot of builds. One spared ability point is nothing. And hardy is kind of worthless granted the defiance tree gives you Robust, and other characters can give you robust if they're diverting healing anyway, right? The main benefit for the berserker is tenacious and hit to crit. The tenacious part is largely irrelevant with the morning star except in vary rare cases because penetration is already good enough, and at the same time +2 isn't enough of a bump to start overpenetrating. The hit to crit is nice though, since a berserker/monk won't have great accuracy. 

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

 I don't think it's hard. I only think it's not the way most players tend to play the game. Hence I don't use no rest as a base for how to judge if a build might be enjoyable for other players (who didn't indicate that they are about to do a no-rest run - in that case I wouldn't recommend anything because I don't enjoy no-rest runs). 

Fair enough, but if people ask for advice on builds I'm going to suggest no-rest because it is superior, and I figure if they're asking for powergaming builds they want what is most effective. 

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

 I wasn't talking about any mods - and I also said I didn't even need Savage Defiance. Clearly your build was a lot different from the one I described.

If I can't get berserkers to work as well as generic barbs with a mod that doubles their healing, I probably can't do it in vanilla. Hence why I mentioned the mod. I wasn't running in a party with other characters diverting a stream of healing, but otherwise the build was similar.

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yes - but as I described I didn't devote lots of healing resources to the Berserker/Monk. It was an amount of healing any regular party would be happy with and not excessive. That would be the case if I talked about a Berserker/Helwalker with dumped CON - did that, also was fun but was def. dying a whole lot without meticulous babysitting. 

I don't even know what I'm arguing about at this point... just saying diverted resources as diverted resources. Berserker/monk may crit more but it requires your priests/druids/etc. to be doing less damage, debuffs, CC etc. compared to a regular ravager. All I'm saying is berserkers have serious downsides that are rarely (maybe never) worth the tradeoff, in my opinion, and if you're giving advice from the perspective of "the way most players tend to play the game" then I'd favor simpler builds that overall are as good or better and don't have hidden health and massively damage themselves. You can deal with it because you know the game inside and out, but I think most people are going to be happier staying away from berserkers, not worrying about their character dying all the time for some offensive gains.

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

They are both considered active buffs and thus don't stack.
No, Turning Wheel does not stack with INT inspirations.
MIG from Helwalker does stack with MIG inspirations because that special MIG bonus comes from a passive.

Not in my game. Clearly stacking here. And before you ask yes this is vanilla.

(EDIT: I figured this out, buffs acquired from items stack, buffs acquired from abilities do not, so mind over matter stacks with turning wheel, death and taxes stacks with iron wheel, infuse vital essence stacks neither)

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

One is always doing adjustments and resource diversion to make a build idea work. You will put lots on RES into a FF Monk, you will give high ACC to a Skald, you will put a melee weapon and high dmg bonuses on a Soulblade, you will give special healing care to the Bloodmage, you'll make sure your Psion doesn't get attacked so much and so on and so forth. It is nothing special to make certain adjustments in order to create an enjoyable (main) character.
Besides that you ignored the main reason to bring it up: it was originally done to maximize the combination of Saru Sichr and Swift Flurry/HBD and I brought it up as an alternative for a single class Monk which was mentioned as a potential wielder for Saru Sichr.

You don't have to divert resources from *other* characters to a barbarian/monk, unless it's a berserker. Ravagers are pretty solid solo builds actually.

Maximizing Saru Sichr's crit chains is a really specific thing to build a character for, but if that's fun for you and works that's cool I guess. I just wanted to point out the downsides to OP. 

Wouldn't a wanderer or transcendent also have really good crit chains? Or heck even a normal monk using fists...

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think there is no easier way to generate that amount of wounds right from the start - there are more safe ways of course, but not easier. You just press Frenzy (which you would want to activate as a Barb anyway) and the wounds start acumulating very quickly. That's as easy as it gets imo. 

Blood mage / helwalker just clicks blood sacrifice and gets 5 wounds plus spells. The build I'm currently running has functionally limitless wounds, can spam skyward kick with citzal's spirit lance, which is pretty awesome. Berserker is a good way to get wounds I acknowledge that, but I've made many monk builds and wound generation is rarely an issue for using whatever abilities I want to use. I don't mind scripting things, so admittedly it is harder in cases, but for berserker the downsides create a difficulty spike that I think outweighs easier wound generation in looking at the overall difficulty of running the build.

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I have no problem with that.  
 

Yay

Edited April 21, 2023 by Shai Hulud
clarification

[Bosmer]

23 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Linear? This didn't seem right to me, so I did the appropriate hyper nerdy thing and graphed attack times (attack + recovery) vs dexterity values from 2 to 35, wearing robes and using a sabre. Not linear, it's some kind of polynomial fit. Clearly there are diminishing returns the more you invest in dexterity unless I am really bad at plotting graphs...
2 6.2 3 6 4 5.8 5 5.5 6 5.3 7 5.2 8 5.1 9 4.8 10 4.7 11 4.6 12 4.5 13 4.3 14 4.2 15 4.1 16 4.0 17 3.9 18 3.8 19 3.7 20 3.6 21 3.5 22 3.4 23 3.4 24 3.3 25 3.3 26 3.2 27 3.1 28 3.1 29 2.9 30 2.9 31 2.9 32 2.9 33 2.8 34 2.7 35 2.7

 

Before @thelee chimes in: I think you need to account for the changing base, i.e. being faster by 1 second from initially 2 seconds makes you attack far more often than being faster by 1 second from initially 5 seconds. Hence, if you calculate the relative increase in speed, for example from 10->20 and from 20->30 you'd see: (4.7-3.6)/4.7=0.234 and (3.6-2.9)/3.6=0.194. So increasing dex is still worth it and at this stage the difference could also be partially explained by deadfire's rounding of seconds. 

If you'd log-transform your y-axis (Attack Speed) you would see probably a rather linear relationship in your plot.

[Boeroer]

Before doing extensive tests in game etc: If one uses the attack speed calc (derived from game code) I linked one can see the results in frames - and then maybe deduce whether the returns are linear (discarding little steps that are a result of rounding). I guess this makes it more easy to produce workable numbers compared to logging frames in the game or so.

Besides that of course DEX has increasing returns in the form of a bonus to the Reflex defense. But most players, including me, think that Reflex is one of the more unimportant defenses so it's maybe not really worth taking up a bigger part of the discussion about DEX and its benefits as an attribute.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Boeroer

[Shai Hulud]

4 hours ago, Bosmer said:

Before @thelee chimes in: I think you need to account for the changing base, i.e. being faster by 1 second from initially 2 seconds makes you attack far more often than being faster by 1 second from initially 5 seconds. Hence, if you calculate the relative increase in speed, for example from 10->20 and from 20->30 you'd see: (4.7-3.6)/4.7=0.234 and (3.6-2.9)/3.6=0.194. So increasing dex is still worth it and at this stage the difference could also be partially explained by deadfire's rounding of seconds. 

If you'd log-transform your y-axis (Attack Speed) you would see probably a rather linear relationship in your plot.

I'm too tired to think about this clearly. The log transform does look *more* linear, though I'm not sure exactly what this means. And yes that is a good point about relative increases being more relevant. Not really following your relative increase calculations at the moment. I mean they seem to indicate that the attack cycle drops by 23.4% from 10 to 20 and only 19.4% from 20 to 30, right? Hmm...

  

31 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Before doing extensive tests etc: If you use the attack speed calc (derived from game code) I linked you can see the results in frames - and see that the returns are linear (discarding little steps from rounding). 

I did check the link and as far as I can tell it had the same values I came up with. What do you mean you can see the results in frames?

 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Shai Hulud
Initially wrong data set

[thelee]

On 4/20/2023 at 1:52 AM, Shai Hulud said:

Linear? This didn't seem right to me, so I did the appropriate hyper nerdy thing and graphed attack times (attack + recovery) vs dexterity values from 2 to 35, wearing robes and using a sabre. Not linear, it's some kind of polynomial fit. Clearly there are diminishing returns the more you invest in dexterity unless I am really bad at plotting graphs...

Quote

The log transform does look *more* linear, though I'm not sure exactly what this means. And yes that is a good point about relative increases being more relevant

one thing i learned from taking doing physics and stats classes is that it's very important to be clear what your target units of measurement or that you are accurately selecting the correct metric. everything else will flow from that.

 

the correct metric: the RETURNS you get from investing in dex or attack speed is how much effective damage you do over time (generally per second, since DPS is the normal way gamers talk about this stuff). Not recovery time. Tracking recovery time will give you a curve, because it's the denominator. it's not the metric, just a part of the metric.

 

the correct units of measurement: what you should do is invert your attack speed, essentially, because that converts "seconds per attack" into "attacks per second" (which then is a straight-forward shot to "damage per second"). the original relationship is inverted (1/x), and an inversion will look somewhat loggy or polynomial, but it's neither, which is why neither a log transform or polynomial fit will work. there's a graph part way down this page which is a perfect line: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-is-linear-returns

edit: what bosmer said about relative differences is right, i'm speaking more generally about how those relative differences end up manifesting, mathematically, such that it becomes basically indisputable that action speed has linear returns.

Edited April 21, 2023 by thelee

[Shai Hulud]

10 hours ago, thelee said:

one thing i learned from taking doing physics and stats classes is that it's very important to be clear what your target units of measurement or that you are accurately selecting the correct metric. everything else will flow from that.

 

the correct metric: the RETURNS you get from investing in dex or attack speed is how much effective damage you do over time (generally per second, since DPS is the normal way gamers talk about this stuff). Not recovery time. Tracking recovery time will give you a curve, because it's the denominator. it's not the metric, just a part of the metric.

 

the correct units of measurement: what you should do is invert your attack speed, essentially, because that converts "seconds per attack" into "attacks per second" (which then is a straight-forward shot to "damage per second"). the original relationship is inverted (1/x), and an inversion will look somewhat loggy or polynomial, but it's neither, which is why neither a log transform or polynomial fit will work. there's a graph part way down this page which is a perfect line: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/action-speed-is-linear-returns

edit: what bosmer said about relative differences is right, i'm speaking more generally about how those relative differences end up manifesting, mathematically, such that it becomes basically indisputable that action speed has linear returns.

Ah. I have a math degree (one I haven't used in ages but still), and still I didn't invert the data set. Inverted attacks/second is indeed linear.

Might is also linear, though, right? It is just offset by other sources of damage. Damage = roll*(1+(MIG*.03+ b + c + d + ...) where b, c, d, ..., are things like two-handed, critical damage, overpenetration, etc., which is still linear with respect to might. Why have I heard dex described as multiplicative returns on damage? I mean dexterity's contribution towards attacks per second is also offset by other sources of attack speed and recovery time reduction.

Is there a DPS calculator using might or at least a thread talking about all this?

----

Also, sorry @Boeroer for wasting your time arguing about the attack speed returns. Should have suspected I'd made a mistake when the data went against your experience, but I only thought to recheck data points, and made a pretty fundamental error in looking at seconds / attack vs attacks / second, which is rather embarrassing given how many math courses I've taken. 

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by Shai Hulud
Wrong graph title

[Boeroer]

Hey no problem. We've all been wrong before and I will be wrong many times after.

The MIG discussion - besides the mathematical question whether increasing the dmg bonus has what sort of returns - is more complex imo because it also contributes healing and Fortitude (which I consider to be the most important defense beside deflection).

I personally don't consider MIG to be really worthwhile if it's solely taken for dmg - but I often raise it anyway - not only bc. of defense or healing but because it would feel weird to play let's say a two-handed axe swinging guy with 10 MIG...

Edited April 22, 2023 by Boeroer

[thelee]

On 4/22/2023 at 1:43 AM, Boeroer said:

I personally don't consider MIG to be really worthwhile if it's solely taken for dmg - but I often raise it anyway - not only bc. of defense or healing but because it would feel weird to play let's say a two-handed axe swinging guy with 10 MIG...

these days, even though it's not optimal, i will build an occasional 18-20 might character that can get even more points. i still have a lizard brain that takes joy in big damage numbers, especially in the early game.

 

On 4/21/2023 at 8:52 PM, Shai Hulud said:

Why have I heard dex described as multiplicative returns on damage? I mean dexterity's contribution towards attacks per second is also offset by other sources of attack speed and recovery time reduction.

i don't know about other people, but maybe you're thinking of poe1? i'm a little rusty on poe1 mechanics, but IIRC, in poe1 what action speed bonuses existed were handled really inconsistently, so there were some that basically were multiplicative with dex and each other, not additive. (i consulted my own poe1 guide and sure enough, things like Gunner and Two-Weapon Style were action speed multipliers, not recovery time adjustments, and Deleterious Alacrity of Motion was a 1.5x action speed multiplier, not an additive dex and action speed bonus). In fact I don't recall any action speed bonus in poe1 being additive, so dex was a pure multiplier on damage, making it even more of a king stat.

meanwhile in deadfire, things are much more normalized/rationalized for action speed.

[Shai Hulud]

14 hours ago, thelee said:

these days, even though it's not optimal, i will build an occasional 18-20 might character that can get even more points. i still have a lizard brain that takes joy in big damage numbers, especially in the early game.

 

i don't know about other people, but maybe you're thinking of poe1? i'm a little rusty on poe1 mechanics, but IIRC, in poe1 what action speed bonuses existed were handled really inconsistently, so there were some that basically were multiplicative with dex and each other, not additive. (i consulted my own poe1 guide and sure enough, things like Gunner and Two-Weapon Style were action speed multipliers, not recovery time adjustments, and Deleterious Alacrity of Motion was a 1.5x action speed multiplier, not an additive dex and action speed bonus). In fact I don't recall any action speed bonus in poe1 being additive, so dex was a pure multiplier on damage, making it even more of a king stat.

meanwhile in deadfire, things are much more normalized/rationalized for action speed.

Oh yeah, I do recall in POE1 calculating attack speed being more complicated. And it was possible with the durgan's steel to attack really, really fast. And many spells like deleterious, time parasite etc. have been heavily nerfed for Deadfire. 

I suspect some people carried over the terminology of dex being multiplicative into Deadfire, or else I just imagined it

Now I want to do another ultimate run in POE1. Have done just barbarian so far. Could do paladin but boring.