Fighters 2nd level combat style: What did you pick?

[BackHandOfFate]

What have you tested out either with Lae'zel or your own character. How did it work out?

Archery
Defense
Dueling
Great Weapon Fighting
Protection
Two-Weapon Fighting Style

I'm very interested to know if anyone has used the Protection option and if it made a tangible impact in game? Did it help you defend your squishies? The AI does seem hell bent on attacking the low AC party members.

[Hades]

Great Weapon Fighting for the fighter in the party
i may had pick something else if there was not the level cap

[Zanarkand]

I did defense for the extra 1 AC.

I'm melee so i would never use Archery unless i REALLY need to but mobility isn't an issue.

I use a two handed weapon so didn't need Dueling.

Great Weapon Fighting is only useful if you roll a 1 or 2 so i didn't think twice about it since the chances are so slim making it the worst to chose.

Protection is good if you can position around it. ( 1.5 m ) so it's really good for party play if you use a shield

I do solo adventuring so the bonus 1 AC is huge and allows me to counter attack with Riposte easier.

Hope this helps :)

[ayrtep]

So far tried dueling, great weapon fighting and two weapon fighting style. Will probably have a go at archery once they implement crafting. I generally play solo so probably won't pick protection.

[Shale]

Originally posted by Zanarkand:

I did defense for the extra 1 AC.

I'm melee so i would never use Archery unless i REALLY need to but mobility isn't an issue.

I use a two handed weapon so didn't need Dueling.

Great Weapon Fighting is only useful if you roll a 1 or 2 so i didn't think twice about it since the chances are so slim making it the worst to chose.

Protection is good if you can position around it. ( 1.5 m ) so it's really good for party play if you use a shield

I do solo adventuring so the bonus 1 AC is huge and allows me to counter attack with Riposte easier.

Hope this helps :)

I think you've underestimated Great Weapon Fighting. A greatsword rolls 2d6 (plus modifier) for damage, which means each attack you have 2 dice with a 1/3 chance to roll a 1 or 2. Being able to reroll those low numbers keeps your average damage much higher.
Though granted if you're using a d10 or d12 2 handed weapon, the odds of rolling a 1 or 2 are much lower, but even so I've played a few fighters/paladins (in pen and paper D&D) who took it and never regretted it, since rolling a low damage sucks when it does happen.

Not that Defence is a bad choice, I've used that before as well for more tank based characters and it sounds like you've gotten it to work well for you.

[Tario]

Originally posted by Zanarkand:

I did defense for the extra 1 AC.

I'm melee so i would never use Archery unless i REALLY need to but mobility isn't an issue.

I use a two handed weapon so didn't need Dueling.

Great Weapon Fighting is only useful if you roll a 1 or 2 so i didn't think twice about it since the chances are so slim making it the worst to chose.

Protection is good if you can position around it. ( 1.5 m ) so it's really good for party play if you use a shield

I do solo adventuring so the bonus 1 AC is huge and allows me to counter attack with Riposte easier.

Hope this helps :)

On DMG ROLL. But with great swords you roll 2d6 sooo chances are preety high. And still, its better to reroll that 1 and 2, than save it. Still, with other 2h weapons its always useful, but not as much as with swords

[Zanarkand]

Very true it would gain more value with lower max dice rolls ,1 handed weapons being a perfect example.

Didn't think that through due to the dice roll max being high with the 2 handed weapons, chances are so slim so i skipped it.

I imagine max dice rolls going higher when full release comes out as you get access to higher tier weapons . So it's value would drop for my play style at least

[Arlen]

The gretaweapon fighting style is good for weps that have multiple dice, otherwise, it's meh, and the +1 AC is better all around. I kinda shy away from dueling, as the game description is not the same as the book description, so I am kinda hesitant to take it on a S&B fighter. (game description is off hand empty, book description is no weapon in offhand) The Archery style is if I build a dex fighter, and in this game, range is king, so its super powerful. Protection is more geared towards co op play, I see no reason to use it during a single player playthrough, and two weapon style, the ability to have your modifer for an offhand attack, is powerful as well if you use the hide exploit. another note about dueling, I am not sure if you can use a versatile weapon to proc the style, as you would be twohanding the versatile weapon automatically for the d10 damage. So swords, axes, and hammers would be out of the question, and you are left with tridents,warpicks, and morningstars -have not seen a flail (other then the flinds) in the game as of yet.

[Diablerie]

Protection in this game sounds good on paper, but the way BG is designed it's usually best to get your ranged squishies to higher elevation. In this respect having your fighter up there with them means the fighter isn't down on the ground dealing damage. 1.5m range means you have to be hugging them pretty close. This is kinda bad when most enemies have pockets full of alchemist's fire and other aoes, bunching up just tempts them way too much.

[Arlen]

Originally posted by Diablerie:

Protection in this game sounds good on paper, but the way BG is designed it's usually best to get your ranged squishies to higher elevation. In this respect having your fighter up there with them means the fighter isn't down on the ground dealing damage. 1.5m range means you have to be hugging them pretty close. This is kinda bad when most enemies have pockets full of alchemist's fire and other aoes, bunching up just tempts them way too much.

Funny that you point that out - typical fight is - Goblin throws grenade, gobiie archer shoots fire arrow or acid arrow, next gobbie throws grenade at barrel - this is especially apparent and frustrating in the blighted village, where the only way to trigger the cutscene is to enter the windmill area in the absolutely worst tactical way possible, whoever you send is an instant death sentence. Believe me, I tried every way possible to trigger that scene using different means of entering, and they all result in no cut scene, and having to kill everything there, and wyll getting pissed.

[Spritefall]

I greatly prefer Defense. It is perhaps not exciting, yet it raises core competencies.

[wendigo211]

Great Weapon Fighting is pretty weak. For the 2D6 weapons it changes the average damage from 7 to 8+1/3, which is the biggest damage increase you get from it. For a D10 it's an increase of 5.5 to 6.3 and for a D12 it's an increase of 6.5 to 7+1/3. So I'm not going to waste my time on something that's worth approximately a +1 to damage. For my two-handed fighter I opted for Defense instead (since I wasn't getting the +2 shield AC).

Last I checked (I haven't played since the last patch), dual wielding is adding your ability modifier to your offhand damage roll instead of your offhand attack roll. So taking Two-Weapon fighting style does nothing (you don't get twice your ability modifier added to your offhand roll). I did take it in Solasta, and it worked well there, but it's something that gives you diminishing returns as you get more main hand attacks and still only have one off-hand attack (probably not a bad idea for a Ranger since they only get one extra attack).

I haven't tried Protection, but bunching up tends to be a bad idea in this game.

Archery is +2 to hit, with 5e's bounded accuracy that's a pretty big bonus.

Dueling is good due to the current implementation. If you're going sword and board it gives you an extra 2 points of damage. So basically if you're using a 1d8 weapon, you're doing the same average damage as a greataxe but you're getting a +2 to AC from the shield on top of that. If you're wielding a versatile weapon two-handed you also get the Dueling bonus. So that longsword is now dealing 1d10+2 instead of 1d10. Granted a greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting will deal an extra 5/6 of a point of damage on average, but Dueling gives you the option of using a shield if you need the AC.

So right now the good styles are:
Archery
Dueling
Defense

The others are either bugged or not worth it.

[asdf]

Originally posted by Leynok:

Originally posted by Zanarkand:

I did defense for the extra 1 AC.

I'm melee so i would never use Archery unless i REALLY need to but mobility isn't an issue.

I use a two handed weapon so didn't need Dueling.

Great Weapon Fighting is only useful if you roll a 1 or 2 so i didn't think twice about it since the chances are so slim making it the worst to chose.

Protection is good if you can position around it. ( 1.5 m ) so it's really good for party play if you use a shield

I do solo adventuring so the bonus 1 AC is huge and allows me to counter attack with Riposte easier.

Hope this helps :)

I think you've underestimated Great Weapon Fighting. A greatsword rolls 2d6 (plus modifier) for damage, which means each attack you have 2 dice with a 1/3 chance to roll a 1 or 2. Being able to reroll those low numbers keeps your average damage much higher.
Though granted if you're using a d10 or d12 2 handed weapon, the odds of rolling a 1 or 2 are much lower, but even so I've played a few fighters/paladins (in pen and paper D&D) who took it and never regretted it, since rolling a low damage sucks when it does happen.

Not that Defence is a bad choice, I've used that before as well for more tank based characters and it sounds like you've gotten it to work well for you.

With some quick math, great weapon fighting increases the average damage from 3.5 per d6 to (2/3)*4.5+(1/3)*3.5 = ~4.16, so it increases the average damage by about 1.33 on a greatsword. I guess that's okay, but it depends on the context - without looking too deeply into any math my intuition would be that right now the damage is more valuable but at higher levels as damage values scale up from other sources AC probably becomes more valuable, because damage has diminishing returns as damage increases but AC stays about as valuable throughout the game. Of course, there's also the other consideration, which is that defense is useful for any type of weapon, and that's hard to quantify how valuable it is.

[Arlen]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

Great Weapon Fighting is pretty weak. For the 2D6 weapons it changes the average damage from 7 to 8+1/3, which is the biggest damage increase you get from it. For a D10 it's an increase of 5.5 to 6.3 and for a D12 it's an increase of 6.5 to 7+1/3. So I'm not going to waste my time on something that's worth approximately a +1 to damage. For my two-handed fighter I opted for Defense instead (since I wasn't getting the +2 shield AC).

Last I checked (I haven't played since the last patch), dual wielding is adding your ability modifier to your offhand damage roll instead of your offhand attack roll. So taking Two-Weapon fighting style does nothing (you don't get twice your ability modifier added to your offhand roll). I did take it in Solasta, and it worked well there, but it's something that gives you diminishing returns as you get more main hand attacks and still only have one off-hand attack (probably not a bad idea for a Ranger since they only get one extra attack).

I haven't tried Protection, but bunching up tends to be a bad idea in this game.

Archery is +2 to hit, with 5e's bounded accuracy that's a pretty big bonus.

Dueling is good due to the current implementation. If you're going sword and board it gives you an extra 2 points of damage. So basically if you're using a 1d8 weapon, you're doing the same average damage as a greataxe but you're getting a +2 to AC from the shield on top of that. If you're wielding a versatile weapon two-handed you also get the Dueling bonus. So that longsword is now dealing 1d10+2 instead of 1d10. Granted a greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting will deal an extra 2/3 of a point of damage on average, but Dueling gives you the option of using a shield if you need the AC.

So right now the good styles are:
Archery
Dueling
Defense

The others are either bugged or not worth it.

So dueling does work with a sword and board - thats good to know. Like I said the description says off hand empty - so I wasn't too keen about using it when I roll a S&B fighter

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by billybobtexan1000:

Funny that you point that out - typical fight is - Goblin throws grenade, gobiie archer shoots fire arrow or acid arrow, next gobbie throws grenade at barrel - this is especially apparent and frustrating in the blighted village, where the only way to trigger the cutscene is to enter the windmill area in the absolutely worst tactical way possible, whoever you send is an instant death sentence. Believe me, I tried every way possible to trigger that scene using different means of entering, and they all result in no cut scene, and having to kill everything there, and wyll getting pissed.

You can start that fight from stealth. Generally I split my party into two groups, two characters will get on to the roof that has the clothesline, the other two will sneak up on to the roof that has a ladder leading to a lone goblin archer.

I'll initiate combat by having a character from the clothesline roof kill the archer that's on top of the ledge/hill that building is built into.

[Aceroamargo]

I chose protection and cant see it activate, even when both the fighter and another party character, mainly Gale, are together and the goblin attacks him.