Manticore vs Feyshifter

[Saya]

Cant decide which subclass to take for my new playthrough. Which one is the strongest ?

[Eldariol]

ankou + lich = overpowered

[Trolleur_Durden]

Manticore. But for Wenduag.

[Mongooses]

Strongest is feyshifter.
Manticore is strong, but realistically a regular archer (Mutation Warrior 20) is a stronger ranged combatant.

[Eldariol]

ankhu is free 10d6 sneak attack + lich with great invisible and overpowered buffs from mystic book. Ofc u can select trickster but ankhu is undead.

[Eldariol]

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/CZ384wiMIm7OSQ <- portrait for ankou -)

[Trolleur_Durden]

Originally posted by Mongooses:

Strongest is feyshifter.
Manticore is strong, but realistically a regular archer (Mutation Warrior 20) is a stronger ranged combatant.

With only 4 levels, a Manticore shifter can have 4 attacks at full BAB, whereas a conventional archer will have iterative attacks, with incremental -5 attack malus. Arguably there's situations where a conventional two-weapon thrower will do more damage, for example when the target is really easy to hit, but the consistence of 4 full BAB attacks, which can become 5 with Rapid shot and 6 with haste effect, is quite hard to beat for a bow or crossbow user.

And the best part is that after that, you have a mythic ability to make the manticore transformation permanent and 16 levels to build around that, by taking for example fighter or slayer levels afterwards.

[Mongooses]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

Originally posted by Mongooses:

Strongest is feyshifter.
Manticore is strong, but realistically a regular archer (Mutation Warrior 20) is a stronger ranged combatant.

With only 4 levels, a Manticore shifter can have 4 attacks at full BAB, whereas a conventional archer will have iterative attacks, with incremental -5 attack malus. Arguably there's situations where a conventional two-weapon thrower will do more damage, for example when the target is really easy to hit, but the consistence of 4 full BAB attacks, which can become 5 with Rapid shot and 6 with haste effect, is quite hard to beat for a bow or crossbow user.

And the best part is that after that, you have a mythic ability to make the manticore transformation permanent and 16 levels to build around that, by taking for example fighter or slayer levels afterwards.

Manticore comes up to speed faster, but it's ceiling is lower. For the majority of the game, yep manticore is probably better, but as a completed build fighter takes it IMO.

Manticore:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944877806

Mutation Warior:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2944877911

Yes manticore gets 3 more attacks, but slightly lower AB and lower damage per attack and lower multiplier.

They both have the same buffs, but i was only use the gear you could get in the IE starting area. Both are mercenaries, with the main character being a trickster to enable the improved crit chain. The archer has more options gear wise to scale higher. The actual weapons are what push it over. If you only had a +5 longbow, yeah manticore takes it. But the good bow and good throwing weapons end up to a better endgame character.

Overall they're close but I would give the edge to Fighter damage wise at end game.
Personally I still prefer the manticore, quicker start up and much easier to get a good AC to allow offtank/skirmishing.

[Trolleur_Durden]

As I've stated before, the idea is to NOT go 20 lvls as Manticore shifter, but merely 4 to get the transformation, and then add to it 16 levels of other classes that are better to scale the damage, like Slayer for sneak attack or fighter for weapon specialization.

[Mongooses]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

As I've stated before, the idea is to NOT go 20 lvls as Manticore shifter, but merely 4 to get the transformation, and then add to it 16 levels of other classes that are better to scale the damage, like Slayer for sneak attack or fighter for weapon specialization.

Oops, fair enough, for some reason i read your post as taking 16 manticore =p

Lose the crit multiplier, damage dice, multishot though from not taking more manticore.

Would probably work as a sneak attack ranged character, but the spikes at level 4 are really weak compared to a bow/axe.

It does come back to what level ranges are we evaluating at. By mid 10s a weapon build would easily take over for damage. Early level Manticore blows a regular archer out of the water.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I haven't played enough to provide concrete numbers but I'm not entirely convinced, at lvl 4 the spikes do 1d4 damage, which is slightly below a bow doing 1d8 damage. So we are talking about a 2 damage difference on average weighted against 3 consecutive attack maluses of -5/-10/-15 for the bow. The bow can also benefit from some feats like Manyshot, but considering how much flat damage you can stack on your attacks through various sources, I'm pretty sure 4 full BAB attacks with a 1d4 weapon damage dice outperform 4 iterative attacks with a 1d8 weapon damage by a huge margin.

[Mongooses]

Originally posted by Trolleur_Durden:

I haven't played enough to provide concrete numbers but I'm not entirely convinced, at lvl 4 the spikes do 1d4 damage, which is slightly below a bow doing 1d8 damage. So we are talking about a 2 damage difference on average weighted against 3 consecutive attack maluses of -5/-10/-15 for the bow. The bow can also benefit from some feats like Manyshot, but considering how much flat damage you can stack on your attacks through various sources, I'm pretty sure 4 full BAB attacks with a 1d4 weapon damage dice outperform 4 iterative attacks with a 1d8 weapon damage by a huge margin.

If the 1d4 vs 1d8 stayed that way yep 100% agree.

Hope this isn't coming off as hostile, i just generally like these discussion and analysis!

Rest of the post is lots of math and long... i don't blame if you don't read it. =p



From my screen shots above a long bow with buffs is 4d6 base dice (so the 3 extra arrows from multishot turns into 12d6).

Manticore above is 3d8, but a lot of those dice damage increase come from the extra levels of manticore. The spike progression, natural attack affinity or what ever its called (more increased dice). While the spikes wouldn't stay at 1d4, i think it'd would end up at 1d10.
1 size increase from manticore shape + 2 size increases from Legendary Proportions.

Also the loss of a multiplier on crits. Full fighter gets the capstone for +1 mult, where as you need 17 levels (i think) of manticore to get a x3 for spikes.

If we assume trickster for full crit chain fighter gets the above 15-20/x6 but a multiclassed manticore would be stuck at 15-20/x4.

If you don't go at least 6 manticore you don't get iteratives, i know your point is that 4 base attacks at full bab at mant 4 is enough but just as another talking point.

Manticore: 4 base attacks + 1 rapid shot + 1 haste + 1 ring
Fighter: 1 base + 1 rapid + 1 haste + 1 ring + 3 iteratives

Even if we say only 1 iterative has a decent chance to hit, that closes the gap to 7 attacks vs 5 attacks. By time you add in the crit multipliers the fighter starts to pull ahead in overall "attacks".


Math:
Manticore effective attacks = (0.05*0) critical miss + (0.65 * 1) normal hits + (0.3*4) critical hits = 1.85 attacks per attack

I know that looks weird but its bascially saying every time you attack if we assume a fair dice roll on average each attack would hit 1.85 times.

I don't want to do all the math to bring in more misses and crit confirmation so going to throw in the assumption that we're hitting on a 2, and confirming all crits.

Figther = (0.05*0) + (0.65*1) + (0.3*6) = 2.45

so each attack a fighter does is equivalent of 2.45 attacks

Manticore 1.85 * 7 attacks = averages 12.95 attacks per round
Manticore with 1 iterative 1.85 * 8 = 14.8 attacks (this is assuming you take 2 more mant levels)

Fighter 2.45 * 5 = 12.25 attacks per round.
Fighter missing all iteratives 2.45 *4 = 9.8 attacks per round
Fighter hitting all iteratives 2.45 * 8 = 19.6 attacks per round

This analysis fall a bit short when looking at sneak attack dice obviously because they're not multiplied. But its a decent quick check. I did actually think pure fighter would be a bit closer (figther w/ 1 iterative vs mant w/o iteratives).

I think the call here is to take 6 manticore for the iteratives, then focus more on the sneak attacks taking advantage of the more attacks. The fighter will end up higher >>IF<< they can get higher damage per attack than the manticore (fighter needs to do 130% of the manticore damage for base damage to pull ahead at 1 iterative hits). Base damage mean damage that will be multiplied by crits, so no SA, no elemental damage, etc.

[Trolleur_Durden]

Don't worry, I also like to understand the underlying mechanics of games, so feel free to contradict me since I honestly have no idea if I'm wrong or not. Currently I feel like the Manticore is way stronger than a bow user from the partial informations I have, but I would happily be proven wrong if it's not the case. However, I'm still not convinced by your demonstration.

First, how do you get 3 extra arrows with Manyshot? From what I'm reading ingame, the feat only applies the base weapon damage of a bow twice on the first attack of a turn, so this should translate into only a +4d6 damage bonus per turn. And if you are going to take into account specifics of the bow, the least you could do is to do the same for the spikes, for example the +2 damage bonus from the Bone fists spell which is specific to natural attacks or the +4 damage per spike the Manticore get at lvl 9.

Also, regarding Shifter's fury, it's a bit more complicated than that: this ability allows you to take one of your natural attacks and make iterative attacks with it, but by doing so, all remaining natural attacks that you have become secondary attacks, which means a -5 attack bonus. So at lvl 20, a Manticore shifter can have an attack sequence of +20/+15/+10/+5 (the selected natural attack chosen to be iterative) and +15/+15/+15 (your remaining 3 natural attacks becoming secondary), which translates into +20/+15/+15/+15/+15/+10/+5, before taking into account any bonus attack from rapid shot, haste and such. I have no idea if those bonus attacks are considered secondary and are also made at +15 instead of +20, but since there's a feat allowing you to reduce the secondary attack penalty to -2, the final attack sequence of a character having at least 6 Manticore shifter levels is:
+20/+18/+18+18/+15/+10/+5

And this is to be compared to the usual +20/+15/+10/+5 sequence of a conventional fighter archer.

[Trolleur_Durden]

I just tested it in the Gray Garrison with a lvl 6 character, both the Rapid shot attack and the Haste attack are part of the iterative attack sequence, so they aren't secondary attacks and are made at full BAB. Which means that all other things being more or less equal, a bow user is basically competing against 3 more attacks made at BAB -2 for a Manticore shifter. I really doubt it's possible to beat that, but if it's the case, I'm really interested in knowing how.

[thunda]

Originally posted by Eldariol:

ankou + lich = overpowered

Anything with Lich is overpowered

[Raikon]

Manticore proably wouldnt be a great lich. Lich can really capitlize on charging with natural weapons. Manticore doesnt really charge anywhere. A rage shifter would probably be a much better litch then either. Since frightful aspect gives master shifter, and liches are immune to fatigue.