Why does everyone do so little damage?

[deadbeef]

Am a good bit of the way through chapter 1. At first my characters all were doing decent damage and I was able to win most battles with some decent challenge. But as its been going on, everyone is doing less and less damage. In the battle I'm in now, vs a beastmaster with some gryphons, my characters are doing on average 50-60 damage per attack, if I'm lucky. Some characters doing 10-20 damage, or less. Considering the enemies have about 600 HP, this is just pathetic. And the enemies do a lot more damage than me, maybe 100-150 damage per attack.

I've bought all the best weapons available to me. All the characters are using weapons that they are skilled in (skill level ~6, character level ~9). There's no reason why they should be doing such pathetic levels of damage.

Magic is even worse. Spells do maybe 30 or 40 damage. There's no obvious reason that this is happening and there's no clear way that I can improve the damage.

Is this just a problem with this game? Seems like the only thing I can do is, whenever the party level raises, I need to grind my whole team to the max level, just to be able to proceed.

Am I doing something wrong or is this game just broken?

[Direct Crit]

The game isn't broken, but unlike the previous iteration on PSP you will need more heavy characters and a better mix. Also just LIKE the previous iteration, Named NPCs that join your party (Folcurt, Arycelle, Sara, etc) are stronger than generics, you'll want to use them over generics all the time.

Having a good mix of frontliners (Knights/Rune Fencers/Terror Knights/Warriors) with some ranged (Archers/Mages) is your best bet. So far I've found Rune Fencers to be super good, versatile units and a bit stronger than the previous version. Another perk about Rune Fencers is that since they can get Meditate they can spam their weapon art far more, in addition to healing/spells/utility. Frankly they're stupid strong.

ALSO STACK CARDS. Card effects STACK. Getting 2 crit cards, or 2 damage cards on a unit can suddenly have them slaughtering everyone on the opponent's side. Make sure you're keeping your gear updated too.

[Raimy]

Make sure to equip the appropriate weapon skill and raise it, it makes a difference as well.

[XcessiveNinja17]

armor actually does stuff now, so magic is more important than before. archers are less about doing everything, and more about picking off soft targets. i've been able to keep up decent damage with magic as long as Concentrate procs.

now that finishers cost MP instead of TP, you are supposed to use them a lot more. valkyries / rune fencers become pretty important for early game DPS since they have both Meditate and weapons with good finishers.

try setting up pincer attacks. it's the new big gimmick of this game.

[knockoffsoda]

I'll add to this that in the battle in question, you're facing several lizards (tough unit types) and a couple beasts (also a tough unit type). Some of the reduction in damage is that you're just facing heavily armored people in this battle more than others.

[Big Mistake]

To some degree, TO is just a lower damage game in general compared to other SRPGs, but I had similar issues when I started learning the game. Here's a few things:

Base stats and growths make a difference. If you recruit someone as a Wizard, and then decide to make them a Knight, they're going to deal subpar physical damage. So, if you've changed characters classes around a lot, they may be lacking in the important stats.

Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence are your damage stats, so if you aren't seeing returns you may want to compare a few units at the same level as the same class, and match whoever has the best stats for which role. Voltare, Sara, and Donnalto are good from the moment you get them, so training them up to the level whatever fight you're struggling with should ensure you have at least a few high performing units.

Magic is in general not fantastic for damage early game. However, mages with high mind are extremely useful for inflicting statuses like Charm or Sleep, which are both available super early game. One you get to rank 2 or 3 of a spell, like Deadshot 2, they start dealing better damage. That said, you will still want spellstrike and spellcraft on your offensive casters.

Don't throw scissors against rock: Archers won't be able to deal great damage to tanky frontliners, it's not what they're suited to. Mages are better for that, as units like Knights have lower resistance. Mages have higher resistance, but they die very quickly to archers. It's important to balance your party so that you have ways to tackle a variety of different threats.

[Big Mistake]

oh, also the first fight with Ganpp is intended to be kind of overwhelming. The second a gryphon goes into crit you win.

[DadTheNoob]

Originally posted by Direct Crit:

The game isn't broken, but unlike the previous iteration on PSP you will need more heavy characters and a better mix. Also just LIKE the previous iteration, Named NPCs that join your party (Folcurt, Arycelle, Sara, etc) are stronger than generics, you'll want to use them over generics all the time.

Having a good mix of frontliners (Knights/Rune Fencers/Terror Knights/Warriors) with some ranged (Archers/Mages) is your best bet. So far I've found Rune Fencers to be super good, versatile units and a bit stronger than the previous version. Another perk about Rune Fencers is that since they can get Meditate they can spam their weapon art far more, in addition to healing/spells/utility. Frankly they're stupid strong.

ALSO STACK CARDS. Card effects STACK. Getting 2 crit cards, or 2 damage cards on a unit can suddenly have them slaughtering everyone on the opponent's side. Make sure you're keeping your gear updated too.

^^^The stacking of cards is crucial, as well as remembering to use your skills.

[deadbeef]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

Originally posted by Rando:

oh, also the first fight with Ganpp is intended to be kind of overwhelming. The second a gryphon goes into crit you win.

Seems like this is what was going on really, cause I got past that fight finally and moved on to the next fight and its a lot more manageable.

[sorethroat]

Weapons deal different type of damage to different type of armors.
That's what I really like about this game with its complex damage mechanics.

[Pickleton]

Also never underestimate status effects. I always bring at least 1 enchantress with stun, sleep and/or poison. Mage damage is somewhat consistent, but their real power comes from debuffs.

[Ladius]

i had a knight hit for almost 900 damage with the ice hammer skill. and im in chapter 2.

[FireShark]

My terror knight critted an archer in the back for 650 in middle of chapter 2.

[SonofaGlitch]

I just had a battle where my berserker procc'd berserk then I hit three enemies at once, critically, and killed two of them in one blow and left the other critically wounded, so I dunno what OP's talking about.

I'll agree that at the Veeeeerrrry start you'll be doing low damage to surprisingly large health pools, but once you get even a modest way into the game with some +1 equipment, some finishers and some well grown character builds and you can do quite a lot of damage per hit.

[SonofaGlitch]

Originally posted by Rando:

To some degree, TO is just a lower damage game in general compared to other SRPGs, but I had similar issues when I started learning the game. Here's a few things:

Base stats and growths make a difference. If you recruit someone as a Wizard, and then decide to make them a Knight, they're going to deal subpar physical damage. So, if you've changed characters classes around a lot, they may be lacking in the important stats.

Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence are your damage stats, so if you aren't seeing returns you may want to compare a few units at the same level as the same class, and match whoever has the best stats for which role. Voltare, Sara, and Donnalto are good from the moment you get them, so training them up to the level whatever fight you're struggling with should ensure you have at least a few high performing units.

Magic is in general not fantastic for damage early game. However, mages with high mind are extremely useful for inflicting statuses like Charm or Sleep, which are both available super early game. One you get to rank 2 or 3 of a spell, like Deadshot 2, they start dealing better damage. That said, you will still want spellstrike and spellcraft on your offensive casters.

Don't throw scissors against rock: Archers won't be able to deal great damage to tanky frontliners, it's not what they're suited to. Mages are better for that, as units like Knights have lower resistance. Mages have higher resistance, but they die very quickly to archers. It's important to balance your party so that you have ways to tackle a variety of different threats.

What's really funny about this statement is that this is only due to the PSP version and thus Reborn.

The original PSX/SNES Tactics Ogre is a VERY high damage game relative to health pools. Keeping on par with the enemies in the game you'll on average see that Knights - the average damage dealer in that version who were *far* less tanky than the PSP version - can usually kill other knights 1-3 hits and only take 1-3 hits themselves. Mind you, in that version EVERY character had full counter attack capability from the start, so you were shaving off a third of another enemy's health in exchange for a third of yours for most melee attacks. A knight could kill a caster or an archer in 2 hits, or one if you got a crit. The game was a lot like XCOM with super high lethality, which is why you needed so many generic units for most of the game.

It's why the kind of low damage from casters was fine, because their INT raised the size of most spells and if you hit multiple enemies in one cast and did a quarter of their health bar to so many units (and most spells could cover a spread of 13 tiles by the end mind you) without retaliation, you basically made it so you could finish them off much more quickly with fighters or archers in one or two more attacks.

The PSP version is where they made the game far lower damage. This one's a bit closer to the original from what I can tell once you get past the first chapter, though everyone's still a lot beefier than they were in terms of HP.

[Black Hammer]

Didn't they do away with stat growth based on the class you leveled in?