Worst talents

[Sensuki]

Nah, it would bump the DT penetration to 12 from 7. That would mean full damage to most creatures in the beta. That's pretty good.

 

Gonna give it a shot today.

[Sensuki]

 

Extra 5 damage per projectile, thankyou very much.

[Sock]

Right, that's on a crit. Roll 99's are always impressive.

[Sensuki]

That's not a crit, crits are 101+

 

It was a hit (for that roll). Look how high the graze damage is on the lower entries.

[Sock]

As far as the dice is concerned, it is a crit. It's 1 point away from being the highest roll. On a more average roll, most of those hits would've been grazes and misses, they wouldn't have gotten enough damage to reach the DR cap.

 

My point being that it's more valuable to get your accuracy up, as it will increase your damage, and also get your attack speed up. You'll barely be reaching the damage cap, and with higher accuracy you'll land more solid hits with less of a reliance on high die rolls.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Sock

[Sock]

OH, right, I forgot. You build your characters for maximum damage. Yeah, I could see how that would change your results compared to mine. I like flexibility as opposed to specialization. If you build around the lead spitter, then you can of course get very high results with penetrating shot.

[Sensuki]

It doesn't matter what the dice roll is. There are only four results: Miss, Graze, Hit or Crit

None of those attacks were a crit. Two of them missed. Two hit and three were grazes. The eight attack didn't even happen I think because the guy died on the seventh.

 

All of those damage rolls roll a number between the min and max damage independently of one another. Those individual results are then modified by the attack resolution roll (graze/crit).

The three grazes were 16-17 damage. For a Blunderbuss that's HUGE.

 

And yes that is a high Might character. Even still, Lead Spitter's default damage is 8-12, and that attack was a Blinding Strike (x1.25 and a Sneak Attack x1.25) so even without a High Might, it still would have done a fair bit of damage.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sock]

No, I know. It's not just high might. It's also rouge sneak attack and blinding hit, as you said. You performed a single extremely high power attack on a single target. That's not the entire fight, that's one blow, and then you're entirely reliant on your other characters to enable sneak attack conditions. 

 

In most of your balance issues, it's when they have ways to stop the whole party. Your future hits will do 33% less damage and also (assuming a "over long term average") 50% reduced chance to hit above a graze. With that low accuracy, you could never crit. So, you'd go from 3 grazes and 2 hits to 2.5-3 grazes, at 12 damage. 

 

It still contributes to the team long term for the whole fight, but it's not going to be as impressive as that screenshot shows except for in very special conditions.

[Sensuki]

This isn't part of balance discussion, if I wanted to make a statement about it's balance I would have pasted it in that thread I created. I didn't say anything about this being OP or not, I was just demonstrating that Penetrating Shot works and is useful with Lead Spitter.

My Blunderbuss Rogue got off two shots during the Medreth fight. The first one completely killed the Ranger at the start of combat, and the second one almost killed another character from full Health. The total damage was over 100.

It was not the highest damage dealt out of everyone, but the opening shot was super valuable for reducing the incoming damage to the party, as was the second.

In total I took very little damage during that encounter.

So as a result I would like to retract my original statement from my post on the first page about Penetrating Shot not being very good. Now I know of two builds where it's actually great.

 

TBH if anything, I think the -10 Accuracy reduction on blunderbusses is too much.

 

edit: For this particular build, you can choose Crippling Strike as well as Blinding Strike, and have three special attacks at x1.25 damage - that should be enough for most encounters, actually. If you drop some status effects on enemies after combat, you should also be able to get a sneak attack off on every hit.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

The most fun thing about this game IMO is making a build. There are a lot of options and a lot of combinations that you can pick. I'd say that's probably the single best thing about the combat side of the game so far.

The actual combat gameplay isn't really fantastic IMO, it's not reactive enough for my liking and the base game puts much more emphasis on initial positioning rather than reactive movement, but making builds is fun at least. The emphasis on build and strategy largely outweighs reactive tactics and execution as long as you know the basics dos and don'ts.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sock]

Oh, I agree.

 

And the whole reason why is because it feels like every second counts. You tend to have to ride the space bar to be effective. SOME kind of very basic AI, like one that would hand healing allies, or knocking down enemies automatically. That would help, that would make it feel like you don't have to manage 6 character's different timing.

 

Either that or making it truly turn based, like ToEE.

[Sensuki]

I don't think AI will make the game fun, it's probably still a bit too fast (the default pace), and it's also because per-hit damage is really high. Because of their split health system and the DR system, they've made it difficult to balance per-day health with per-encounter health along with integer damage reduction.

As a result the game has very high lethality, making it imperative that all of your actions count, and be correct. If the default game speed was the slow speed, but rather with full animation speed rather than slowed animations - that would probably be a lot more manageable for some people.

[Sensuki]

 

[aeonsim]

Backstab - It's a Rogue specific talent or ability that is supposed to give 2x damage when you hit from invisibility, however with the sneaking changes it seems to be impossible to sneak up close enough for it to trigger, so alternatively you have to use the Rogue Invisibility ability/talent which is 2 per rest...

[SergeantHans]

All of the creature-specific damageboosts seems som be terribly unuseful: Beastslayer, Primal Bane, Ghost Hunter, Sanctifier and Wilder hunter

 

Would be cool to have a specialist in the party but i think the damageboost needs to be like 50% to be big enough difference, doubt it would be abused either since we get so few talents.

[Sensuki]

I think they were added because someone wanted to have a favored enemy for the Ranger.

[SergeantHans]

I think they were added because someone wanted to have a favored enemy for the Ranger.

 

Not a good enough reason to make them suck

 

I would love to have a inquisitoreque Undead Hunter with rapier and pistol but as it is now there are lots and lots of better choices.

[Luckmann]

I think they were added because someone wanted to have a favored enemy for the Ranger.

 

This didn't even occur to me, my first thought was that they were for Paladins that wanted to focus on killing Vessels and Spirits, which.. apparently is two different Talents.

[Veevoir]

What works? Let me guess: switching weapons to get around reload speed?

 

Or is it just powerful, not broken?

Judging by Sensuki's video of blunderbuss build - it is powerful, not broken. There is no workaround for reloads (after firing guns are empty). But if you fire 4 guns into fray one after another with just 0,5 sec weapon change between that - most of the fight is over and you can reload freely.

 

If you roll sucky on damage though.. the character is reduced to a single ranged weapon per usual.

Edited February 16, 2015 by Veevoir

[Luckmann]

 

What works? Let me guess: switching weapons to get around reload speed?

 

Or is it just powerful, not broken?

Judging by Sensuki's video of blunderbuss build - it is powerful, not broken. There is no workaround for reloads (after firing guns are empty). But if you fire 4 guns into fray one after another with just 0,5 sec weapon change between that - most of the fight is over and you can reload freely.

 

If you roll sucky on damage though.. the character is reduced to a single ranged weapon per usual.

 

 

I actually asked before I saw that video, but yeah, it's plenty powerful. Thematically, I don't see anything wrong with it, though, and it's kinda cool to have the option (unless they "fix" this) to just switch weapon and keep shooting. After the last shot, you're obviously no better than anyone else.

 

That said, it does annoy me that it's the Aumaua that can do this properly, because I have no love for them.

[Sensuki]

You can do it with a Dwarf too, it's just that they have a glitch in their run animation atm, so I use the Aumaua just for smoother demonstration

[Veevoir]

You can do it with a Dwarf too, it's just that they have a glitch in their run animation atm, so I use the Aumaua just for smoother demonstration

Also one weapon set more, which is substantial in this build.

 

Out of curiosity - were those any special blunderbusses? (also, to reiterate previous question: why blunders, not arquebuses?)

[Luckmann]

You can do it with a Dwarf too, it's just that they have a glitch in their run animation atm, so I use the Aumaua just for smoother demonstration

 

I think you are mixing your vids up. We're talking about the Blunderbuss Rapist, not the Estoc Musketeer you just put up. An extra weapon set is important for this one.

[Luckmann]

 

You can do it with a Dwarf too, it's just that they have a glitch in their run animation atm, so I use the Aumaua just for smoother demonstration

Also one weapon set more, which is substantial in this build.

 

Out of curiosity - were those any special blunderbusses? (also, to reiterate previous question: why blunders, not arquebuses?)

 

 

Blunderbusses fires several weak projectiles that have problems punching through armour effectively, while the Arquebus fires only a single bullet, but does higher damage. Therefore, with the Penetrating Shot talent, Blunderbusses benefit exponetially more (it gets -5 DT on each of the projectiles, after all, while the Arquebus will always only do 5 dmg more at best).

[Bazy]

Out of curiosity - were those any special blunderbusses? (also, to reiterate previous question: why blunders, not arquebuses?)

Penetrating shot you get -5DR. Blunderbuss = 5 attacks = 5x5 =25 extra damage per shot = OP