My Shifter Dragon is stronger than my Gold Dragon,... WTH??

[Buyung Kilat]

The first and second defeat, I thought, maybe my Gold Dragon is just not a good match against this so and so opponent. Now after a few more Ls, I'm thinking, WTF is going on...??

My Shifter Dragon actually fares better when it comes to win lose ratio. When I was still a Demon; Demonic Charge, Channel Rage, and Abyssal Skin made me really formidable. Now as replacement, I've got this silly Dragon's Breath that's not worth a hill of beans! So even though my PC class is still stronger than my mythic path, it's a friggin' downgrade overall.

My Gold Dragon could not get past the pesky demons at the Laughing Caves. Even though my style of play has been pretty ad hoc, this is the first time that I'm having this much trouble here. I had to turn into a Shifter Dragon and actually cheese it a bit to finally get past them... at normal difficulty. How the hell am I going to get past Threshold?!

Now I know why people hate this mythic path so much. Listen my friends at Owlcat, do something to fix this! There must be a mod out there that improves on the Gold Dragon's abilities. Just copy from it and make it an official update.

[D-Black Catto]

never played gold dragon, but looking at description of perfect body, mind and soul it seems to be aimed at min maxed spellcaster

[ShayRey]

There is a mod actually called Path of Bling that improves Gold Dragon greatly. Why they haven't just asked the mod developer if they could add their mod officially is beyond me.

[Uzkin]

Laughing Caves is one of the hardest fights in the game.

[Chronocide]

Golden Dragon has merits. Some are more subtle than others. I think the basic Fighter is a good class for golden dragon.

The key is that most of it's bonuses are very basic. Like it has a lot of attribute point bonuses. It also replaces dump stats and saves with a minimum value. And it grants immunity to lots of things. Makes all your weapons into +5 weapons and makes all your damage holy (which means it ignores DR and resistances).

The problem here is if your basic class is already paying for these things. Then the redundancy hurts you (because redundancy doesn't stack). Like if your character is already paying several feats to ignore DR, that's now waste...

I will note that by making all your weapons count as +5 weapons, it does mean that unique effect low level weapons are worth saving if going this route. Something to consider.

PS: you don't have to transform into the dragon to take advantage of this class. The character is plenty strong without being in dragon form - dragon form is if you wanted the bigger size (which matters a lot for combat maneuvers) or if you wanted more attacks (since it has a lot of natural attacks)

[Buyung Kilat]

Originally posted by D-Black Catto:

never played gold dragon, but looking at description of perfect body, mind and soul it seems to be aimed at min maxed spellcaster

When it comes to character creation, I've been mostly winging it. Nonetheless, from my experience, the Gold Dragon is pure melee with multiple close range attacks in one round so I dunno if it's the right fit with a spellcaster. Maybe for buffing purposes.

Originally posted by ShayRey:

There is a mod actually called Path of Bling that improves Gold Dragon greatly. Why they haven't just asked the mod developer if they could add their mod officially is beyond me.

Well, I might as well temporarily use this mod as I predict a rough road ahead for me. Thanks for the info btw .

Originally posted by Uzkin:

Laughing Caves is one of the hardest fights in the game.

Yeah, but it's beatable though. It's not on the same level as Blackwater or Areshkagal, that's for sure.

Originally posted by Chronocide:

The key is that most of it's bonuses are very basic. Like it has a lot of attribute point bonuses. It also replaces dump stats and saves with a minimum value. And it grants immunity to lots of things. Makes all your weapons into +5 weapons and makes all your damage holy (which means it ignores DR and resistances).

The problem here is if your basic class is already paying for these things. Then the redundancy hurts you (because redundancy doesn't stack). Like if your character is already paying several feats to ignore DR, that's now waste...

This is probably the biggest problem with the Gold Dragon. In five previous playthroughs, I never thought about whether a PC class fits with a certain mythic path. Somehow, the combos just seem to find a way to gel together. My Demon run was a bit weak but I pulled thru just fine in the end.

That being said, picking the Dragon Shifter is probably a mistake. I did it because I thought it makes for an awesome narrative. I didn't care about functionality.

[D-Black Catto]

Originally posted by Buyung Kilat:

Originally posted by D-Black Catto:

never played gold dragon, but looking at description of perfect body, mind and soul it seems to be aimed at min maxed spellcaster

When it comes to character creation, I've been mostly winging it. Nonetheless, from my experience, the Gold Dragon is pure melee with multiple close range attacks in one round so I dunno if it's the right fit with a spellcaster. Maybe for buffing purposes.

it increases damage dice of spells, and you can cast in dragon form
attribute increases until 14 and then 18 help if most of your attributes are really low, as it usually is with min maxing

[Chronocide]

Originally posted by Buyung Kilat:

Originally posted by Chronocide:

The key is that most of it's bonuses are very basic. Like it has a lot of attribute point bonuses. It also replaces dump stats and saves with a minimum value. And it grants immunity to lots of things. Makes all your weapons into +5 weapons and makes all your damage holy (which means it ignores DR and resistances).

The problem here is if your basic class is already paying for these things. Then the redundancy hurts you (because redundancy doesn't stack). Like if your character is already paying several feats to ignore DR, that's now waste...

This is probably the biggest problem with the Gold Dragon. In five previous playthroughs, I never thought about whether a PC class fits with a certain mythic path. Somehow, the combos just seem to find a way to gel together. My Demon run was a bit weak but I pulled thru just fine in the end.

That being said, picking the Dragon Shifter is probably a mistake. I did it because I thought it makes for an awesome narrative. I didn't care about functionality.

I suppose if you aren't looking to optimize, the gold dragon could be fine with any class.

I'd say most of the mythic paths should be approached with optimization in mind, though some more than others. Lich, in particular, would face large problems with certain builds - by comparison to the lich, your gold dragon hardly needs to be specialized.

But choices like Ascendant Element mythic power, or taking Impossible domains to have each of the 4 elements so your cleric has all elemental immunity, that sort of thing is a waste for this mythic path.

As for your dragon shifter, looks like a redundancy problem more than anything.

[Raikon]

Angel to gold dragon is good. The sword powers are kinda crappy. It was nice when it lasted 24hrs, but they patched that out.

Since gold dragon keeps merged spells books, and gold dragon increases all stats, it's like having a super powerful healer/caster. Other then that, the gold dragon is pretty bad. Especially for lich. My lich dragon went from doing 700 damage per hit, to 130. It was horrible.

[Raikon]

My possessed shaman is going to be a gold dragon beast. Though, he's already a beast since his entire party has the commanders banner, they are basically immortal.