Character Building: in light of action economy

[claudius]

PS4

Difficulty - regular (not story mode not enhanced difficulty)

Experience - I've played to level 18 so far and going through Magran's Teeth area starting..

 

I'm noticing that there's a huge amount of action economy that means that in most battles only a fraction of abilities or spells get used.  Particularly in my party that has a Druid/Conjurer, a Barbarian/Cipher, a pure Priest of Eothas, and a Priest of Wael/ Conjurer...  

And that's not to mention any consumable or gear activated abilities.

Does this action economy effect how you build your parties composition?  I guess it doesn't matter as I'm in some ways playing moderate difficulty as a "virtual story mode" aside from difficulty spike encounters.

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, claudius said:

Does this action economy effect how you build your parties composition?

Yes, absolutely. For example: just because of better action economy I sometimes think really hard about bringing two priests - so that I can get out a party-wide PER inspiration and Devotions for the Faithful (or any buff really) in less than half the time. Also why I like to have Priest and Druid in the same party and not use a Priest/Druid. Casting Devotions at the same time as Moonwell at the start of battle is way better than doing it one after the other.

Class builds are often "self contained" so they can do some synergistic things one their own, which is cool - but in terms of action economy it's almost always better to achieve that synergy with different party members. 

That's also why good solo chars aren't necessarily very good in parties compared to a well composed party - an vice versa. 

[thelee]

the action economy is looser in higher difficulties, because enemies will have higher defenses and health so you'll have more time to do stuff.

but yes, even then there's still action economy concerns. adding on to something boeroer said, for this reason i generally stay away from most generic caster/caster multiclasses. really early on, the extra casting on a caster/caster can be a life saver, but by mid-game you just have so many spells and so little time, and if you made one caster double up on two roles you could be in an extreme pinch trying to decide between healing or debuffing, for example.

Exceptions to that rule are generally setups where you can avoid action economy clashes. I've done a few wizard/caster multiclasses, and the wizard side focuses on fast-cast (near-instant) buffs and only occasionally other spells. this limits how much action economy constraints i have while still giving me the benefits of having add'l casting pool. psion/caster is another favorite multiclass, because with a psion you naturally have phases where you're not doing anything with the cipher because you're generating focus.

Edited May 26, 2023 by thelee

[claudius]

Perhaps also having more situational spells is advantageous.  For example Minor Avatar is very generally a good spell because it buffs every stat, but resurrection is situational to counter high burst damage, neglecting buffing/protections, or "whoops" button.  And cleaning flame (at that priest spell level) is situational to removing enemy buffs, but also does fire damage over time.

Therefore thinking in this line if you already have a list of things you will cast generally (eg devotions of the faithful) then at level 7 might not take minor avatar and instead take resurrections or cleansing flame as they are more situational counterpleas.  The use of minor avatar as a counter to every stat (might, etc) affliction would be an argument to keep minor avatar nonetheless as it's also counterplay role that counters specific things rather than value cast for every fight.

[Shai Hulud]

You can also start fights stealthed, or alternatively lure away a weak enemy, then use this time to cast combat-only buffs, before going in and killing everyone. Sounds like it may not be necessary in your party on that difficulty.

For the megaboss fights you're probably going to run out of useful spells even on "regular", but I'm unsure. Dorudugan has like 16k health on POTD upscaled, Hauni O Whe can split and regrow indefinitely, etc. 

[masterty66]

@thelee points this out in his gamefaqs guide but in general action economy is a big reason why if you are going to multiclass a character you should make sure the synergies are worth the sacrifice of doing two classes. For instance I ran a Ranger/Priest recently. It was fun but I would not call it optimal. The extra accuracy helped my spells a bit and the pet added some dps but I don't feel like the benefits there were worth losing PL 8/9 spells.

On the other hand, in the past I ran a Berathian/Helwalker multiclass that focused on melee and some offensive magic and that was a lot of fun and felt synergistic. The key there was doing what @Boeroer mentioned above and bringing another Priest along. If I had to use my Berath/Helwalker character to do all the buffing then I wouldn't have been meleeing or casting offensive spells as much as I would like to. So instead, I brought Xoti or Vatnir along frequently to do that. That freed me up to play that character more like a gish and get in there and melee and occasionally toss a nice offensive spell out. And that was fun and effective and felt worth the tradeoff of losing spells. 

I also think it's important to not get too habit driven when doing combat in this game. It's easy (for me at least) to fall into a trap where I approach every fight by casting certain buffs and then attacking. Sometimes it's actually more efficient to skip the buffs if I don't need the extra accuracy or if I need to CC or otherwise attack certain enemies in a hurry. One example of that is the fight against those burning enemies in Beast of Winter in Eothas' realm where you get ambushed after speaking to Waidwen. I like to get onto those archers and CC or get in their face ASAP because when they spam confounding blind on my party and snipe me I feel like party members go down rapidly. So if I spent some time just sitting there grouped up buffing I feel like my party would die. Instead, I get on the enemies asap to disrupt what they're doing to me. Yet on a lot of other fights I might just unstealth Eder and keep the rest of my party stealthed while I get buffs up. So it depends.

And of course, sometimes you don't even need those buffs either if it's a trash encounter or what not. It can be more efficient/fast then to just get to bashing immediately instead of wasting time buffing.