Are fighters lacking late-level offensiveness?

[Slapstick87]

So I've always liked the offensive fighter who doesn't shy away from the front lines. However, I don't really seem able to build one in this game that is awesome in the end-game. This is only theory-craft (so I don't know if the talents would line up like this), but I think an offensive fighter would look roughly like this:

 

Level 1: Knockdown

Level 2: Weapon focus: Knight

Level 3: Confident Aim

Level 4: Two Handed Style

Level 5: Weapon Specialization: Knight

Level 6: Savage Attack

Level 7: Armored Grace

Level 8: Weapon Mastery: Knight

Level 9: Vigorous Defense?

Level 10: Superior Deflection/Vulnerable Attack/Some Defense Talent/?

Level 11: Unbroken

Level 12: Superior Deflection/Vulnerable Attack/Some Defense Talent/?

 

The last 4 levels is just void of any good damage talents to take. I can't see anything on par with rogues, barbarians and monks abilities. Now I'm not saying they should be as good, I'm just saying there should be something. I'm guessing a dps fighter would be decent up to mid-game, and then just fade into sub-par-land. Am I missing something?

[Voltron]

Yes, they do. I was trying Moon Godlike Fighter with 18 Per, 18 Res and 18 Might (dump INT) and although beginning of the game is walk in the park, mid and later game is pain in the azz since you damage is super low, you don't have ANY AOE damage like Torments Reach of Monk, you dont have any escape abilities like Rogues, you dont have AOE damage like Barbarians. So tanking group of enemies in bottlenecks and corners is SOOOO LOOONG AND BOOORING.

 

In same looong fights my fighter solo was loosing almost ALL HEALTH! Endurance was always high (Shod-in-Faith boots, draining weapon, constant recovery plus Silver Tide racial) but fights were so long that he was just dying from exhausting :D :D.

 

And at some point of game when you fight CC mobs, you have to find middle way between tank (to tank being CC and hit) and DPS (to mow them down fast enough to not risk perma CC), and fighter just lack DPS. Sure he is SUPERB against bosses and 1v1 but he kills group super slowly.

[b0rsuk]

Disciplined Barrage is a thing. There are weapons that stun or knock down on crit. You can emulate Knockdown by opening a fight with Disciplined Barrage and a single 1-handed weapon, too. Also, Disciplined Barrage has good synergy with Lore. What he loses by not taking Knockdown early he makes up by more accurate scrolls.

[Venatio]

Do Paladins fall into the same trap as fighters in this regard? I was just wondering. My thing is that I do not want to go through my next play through with a character with "dump stats" because I actually want to make many of the speech checks in the game (namely resolve). I also find that with the right equipment and a good meal (+3 food items and ale) that you can generally buff yourself up to meet any challenge no matter how average your stats. 

[b0rsuk]

Paladins don't have as many offensive skills and talents as Fighters. They have some very good ones, like Sworn Enemy which grants +15 Accuracy and +20% (I think) damage against that one enemy. Zealous Focus gives +6 Accuracy to everyone in a small area. On the other hand, none of Paladin skills reduce damage dealt. Fighters deal less damage with Knockdowns, Defender slows down attack rate, Guardian reduces Accuracy. Many Paladin orders have a talent which boosts allies while performing special attack Flames of Devotion. Even that doesn't slow them down.

[mazeltov]

Favored Enemy Talents. Probably Ghost Hunter and/or Sanctifier heading into lategame.

[CriticalFailure]

The last 4 levels is just void of any good damage talents to take. I can't see anything on par with rogues, barbarians and monks abilities. Now I'm not saying they should be as good, I'm just saying there should be something. I'm guessing a dps fighter would be decent up to mid-game, and then just fade into sub-par-land. Am I missing something?

 

Well, rogues and monks need more micromanaging (I personally find spamming Torment's Reach every couple of seconds a pain in the ass, regardless of how strong it is), while fighter's offensive bonuses are permanent and you can leave them on auto-pilot. So I guess that, plus the fact that fighters are generally sturdier, is -something-.

 

Not sure how fighter's offensive talents compare to barbarian's in terms of usefulness and power.

 

Edit: And I just remembered you were specifically talking about late game (blame the beers I had earlier). Nothing for fighters in particular then, I guess.

Edited May 1, 2015 by CriticalFailure

[MoxyWoo]

Do Paladins fall into the same trap as fighters in this regard? I was just wondering. My thing is that I do not want to go through my next play through with a character with "dump stats" because I actually want to make many of the speech checks in the game (namely resolve). I also find that with the right equipment and a good meal (+3 food items and ale) that you can generally buff yourself up to meet any challenge no matter how average your stats. 

 

Paladins are good for about 2 attacks via Flames.  But the base damage of Fires of Darcozzi Palace (going retaliation mode) is only 10 Burn...  That means its great for Act 1, and maybe some of Act 2, or specific "flammable" monsters, otherwise, expect to do minimum even with vulnerable attack + savage + scions (assuming its fixed).  Arguably, the other paladin orders can be more offensive, but in practice the 10 accuracy from Inspiring Exhortation = more crits = the other orders don't really do as much as they rely solely on a 2/enc mechanic.  Plus Burn DoT from Goldpact seems to check vs DR, Bleakwalker corrode is the same too, etc.

 

Long story short.. Yes, they will fall into the same trap as fighters and with retaliation damage lowered along with Fires not being that great later, its only a matter of time.  That said, up to lvl 6 or 7, its all good and they tend to be the hardest parts anyway.

[Luckmann]

I honestly thing that they lack offensiveness across the board. They are far to focused on tanking overall, I think. They really could stand to have some more offensive Abilities that can be used independently of what weapons you choose.

[Crucis]

I'm a bit late to jumping into this old thread, but having just played an offensive fighter, I thought that I could add some insights.

 

Luckmann, I'm not sure that I'd agree that offensive fighters lack offensiveness.  My experience in with my recently completed last party with an offensive fighter PC showed that an offensive fighter can be quite potent, if you make some good decisions along the character's development path.  That said, I will heartily agree that their abilities are sadly lacking when it comes to offense (not counting the weapon group choices).  Oh, there are some offensive abilities, such as Confident Aim and Disciplined Barrage.  And I'd actually suggest that Armored Grace should be looked at as an offensive ability, albeit a minor one.  But, yes, there are no standout kick butt offensive abilities that even come close to matching the value of Defender (and Wary Defender).  And there's a bunch of abilities that I'd say fall more under the category of support abilities, rather than offensive or defensive, like Unbroken.  (And even that one only triggers if you've been getting your butt kicked.)

 

I won't denigrate the value of Weap Spec and Weap Mastery.  I think that they're very useful picks for the truly offensive fighter.  And the Two Weapon or Two-Handed Weapon styles are also worthy, albeit generic, picks.

 

Stepping away from the class' abilities and talents, I might suggest that a truly offensive fighter should have a higher DEX than you would usually see on a more defensively oriented fighter, and wear lighter armor with quicker recovery times (and add the Armored Grace ability on top of that when available) because the more often you attack, the more damage you'll do in the long run.

 

Two very related questions that I have though is are the various talents that give your attacks a +5 DR bypass at the expense of a 20% reduction in attack speed really worth it?  Or is 20% more damage worth accuracy reduction of -5?    In the first case, it just might be worth it for fast, low damage weapons that need all the DR penetration they can get.  In the second case, giving up accuracy lowers the chances of getting crits, turns what might have been crits into hits, hits into grazes, and grazes into outright misses, just so that for those grazes, hits, and crits you do manage to get do 20% more damage.  I'm not at all sure if you do better in the short or long run using this talent.  And back to the first case, if you're using higher damaging weapons, I strongly suspect that whatever little (5) extra damage you do to the target isn't made up for by the loss of attacks due to reduced attack speed.   Mind you, I wasn't tracking the data on this, but my impression from watching my offensive fighter was that without either of these talents, she was producing a lot of hits and crits and constantly doing a lot of damage with her individual hits, as well as hitting targets really really quickly because she had a moderately DEX (19 at the end of the game, 16 for starters), had taken the Armored Grace ability, and was wearing leather armor for at least the last 1/3 of the game with only a -30% recovery time, rather than a full -50% recovery time.  And I suppose that if I'd been really ballsy, I could have tried putting her in even lighter padded armor, though at the end of the game, she was wearing the Kerdhed Pames leather armor that also gave her a +3 bonus to Resolve, meaning a +3 to DEFL, which was hard to ignore.

 

As an important side note, the reason that this build could get away with such light armor was that she had a fairly high DEFL when she was dual wielding, and very high when she went for weapon and shield.  If you can avoid getting hit much of the time, you can get away without wearing the most protective, but highest recovery armors.  It's also worth noting that at the same time, her ability to wipe out enemies more quickly reduced the time that those enemies had to do damage to her.

 

The offensive fighter isn't meant to handle multiple targets at once.  It's better at handling them in smaller numbers, preferably 1v1.  Also, for what it's worth, while I had taken Defender and Wary Defender, I never ended up turning it on, because I didn't usually want to take that -20% hit to her attack speed.    (In retrospect, I probably should have taken some other talents/abilities, but I didn't foresee at the time I picked them that she would turn out to be such a potent offensive force.)

 

I won't say that an offensive fighter can be as potentially beastly as a barbarian.  But I will say that they can be very potent warriors, and would be more so if the Devs had given them 1-2 abilities that seemed to be as potent offensively as Defender is defensively.

[AndreaColombo]

Disciplined Barrage and Bonus Knockdown are mandatory in my every Fighter build.

 

I usually take a second Weapon Focus talent to have more versatility in my weapon choices. Alternatively, the talent that increases movement speed is also viable; or Quick Switch if you switch weapon sets often.

[KDubya]

 

So I've always liked the offensive fighter who doesn't shy away from the front lines. However, I don't really seem able to build one in this game that is awesome in the end-game. This is only theory-craft (so I don't know if the talents would line up like this), but I think an offensive fighter would look roughly like this:

 

Level 1: Knockdown

Level 2: Weapon focus: Knight

Level 3: Confident Aim

Level 4: Two Handed Style

Level 5: Weapon Specialization: Knight

Level 6: Savage Attack

Level 7: Armored Grace

Level 8: Weapon Mastery: Knight

Level 9: Vigorous Defense?

Level 10: Superior Deflection/Vulnerable Attack/Some Defense Talent/?

Level 11: Unbroken

Level 12: Superior Deflection/Vulnerable Attack/Some Defense Talent/?

 

The last 4 levels is just void of any good damage talents to take. I can't see anything on par with rogues, barbarians and monks abilities. Now I'm not saying they should be as good, I'm just saying there should be something. I'm guessing a dps fighter would be decent up to mid-game, and then just fade into sub-par-land. Am I missing something?

 

 

Instead of vigorous defense I'd look at critical defense - you will get hit so it is better to lessen the severity. Also if you dumped intellect the duration of vigorous defense will be abysmal. 

 

If you have a high perception then interrupting blows might be a good choice, especially if you are going to use morning stars.

 

Envenomed strike can be good if you have a high might but your lower intellect will diminish the duration greatly.

 

The increase to the passive regen is not a bad choice either. Likewise superior deflection is ok as well.

 

I like fighters because they will still be standing dishing out damage, lower damage but still damage, while barbs and rogues will be taking dirt naps. If your glass cannon DPS can kill everything without taking any damage then it wasn't a tough fight to begin with. Fighters excel when you go blind into an encounter and have things go bad. When your backline gets dropped a good fighter can persevere alone and carry the day instead of a reload and buff first approach with a squishier character.

[AndreaColombo]

Envenomed strike can be good if you have a high might but your lower intellect will diminish the duration greatly.

 

Not necessarily a bad thing right now.

[Crucis]

Disciplined Barrage and Bonus Knockdown are mandatory in my every Fighter build.

 

I usually take a second Weapon Focus talent to have more versatility in my weapon choices. Alternatively, the talent that increases movement speed is also viable; or Quick Switch if you switch weapon sets often.

 

I tend to look at Arms Bearer as a mandatory talent for almost every character (usually 4-5 out of the 6) in my parties.  I like having options.

 

I agree that additional versatility can be a good thing.  OTOH, with the offensive fighter I described above, I stuck with the Ruffian group, because the Saber is clearly the best 1H weapon in the game, as long as the targets don't have strong Slashing DR.  And if they do, that's why I like the Arms Bearer talent, because it lets me carry a backup melee weapon option (in my Ruffian offensive fighter's case, a club).

 

[MadDemiurg]

 

Envenomed strike can be good if you have a high might but your lower intellect will diminish the duration greatly.

 

Not necessarily a bad thing right now.

 

That's only for DoTs that do x% weapon damage. Other DoTs, Envenomed strikes included, work normally.

[AndreaColombo]

Two very related questions that I have though is are the various talents that give your attacks a +5 DR bypass at the expense of a 20% reduction in attack speed really worth it?  Or is 20% more damage worth accuracy reduction of -5?    In the first case, it just might be worth it for fast, low damage weapons that need all the DR penetration they can get.  In the second case, giving up accuracy lowers the chances of getting crits, turns what might have been crits into hits, hits into grazes, and grazes into outright misses, just so that for those grazes, hits, and crits you do manage to get do 20% more damage.  I'm not at all sure if you do better in the short or long run using this talent

 

Emphasis mine. I missed that question when I first replied to this topic.

 

My answer is, "it depends."

 

If you're using high-damage weapons (especially two-handers), 20% more damage per swing is often worthwhile. In most cases, I'll take 20% more damage guaranteed on every hit over 50% more damage if/when I crit. That said, a -5 accuracy penalty is something that can be made up for with relative ease—Disciplined Barrage being the most obvious way for a Fighter, alongside the Gauntlets of Accuracy (which are sadly part of the random loot table.) A Paladin's Zealous Focus is also a good way to overcome the accuracy penalty imposed by Savage Attack, since it gives you a +6 bonus (you'll need to keep your Fighter close to the Paladin for it to work, but I would rarely expect the two to be very far from each other anyway.)

 

The good thing about Savage Attack is that it is a modal to boot, so if you're fighting foes with a particularly high Deflection you can just turn it off and get back your accuracy. So all in all, it is a talent worth getting if you're doing an offensive build.

[Longknife]

It's not so much that they can't or that they lack offensiveness completely, so much as their offensive style is boring as hell.

They autoattack. Autoattacking with consistent damage isn't exactly as thrilling as watching a skill cast wipe a group of enemies.

[Kaigen42]

s are the various talents that give your attacks a +5 DR bypass at the expense of a 20% reduction in attack speed really worth it? 

Short answer: Yes

 

Long answer: Yes, though against enemies with super-low DR you can technically get more DPS with it off. I played around with the damage spreadsheet assuming a Fighter with a net 85% damage bonus (20 Might, Exceptional Weapon, Specialization and Mastery) and 20 Dex wielding an Estoc with an elemental lash, and Vulnerable Attack does more damage against DR 9+ enemies. For a non-Estoc two-handed weapon, Vulnerable Attack is dead even at DR 4 and does more damage at DR 5+. Naturally, as you move to faster weapons with lower base damage the value of Vulnerable attack increases.

 

As there are very few enemies with DR less than 4, and most of those are easy to kill anyway (Vithracks being a possible exception of note), this gives us some very easy rules of thumb: Get Vulnerable Attack and keep it on. If you're using weapons with built in DR bypass, you should have it on whenever enemy DR is 3 or 4 points beyond what you can bypass without it, which more or less amounts to the same thing, since anything with DR below 7 or 8 probably isn't difficult to kill anyway. Drake's Bell might be the one melee weapon that's an exception to this, since it has a native 8 DR bypass.

 

All of that's for melee weapons, specifically, but it largely holds true for ranged weapons and Penetrating Shot as well. Even the mighty Arquebus with its high base damage and built-in DR bypass can expect to do more damage with Penetrating Shot against anything with DR 10 or higher.

Edited May 30, 2015 by Kaigen42