unfairness curve

[xavieres]

ok, first, i like the game loop, otherwise i would not be commenting, i would just have uninstalled the game

but what happens with the enemies? i mean, is like they are the paying customer instead of ... me?

i am having skills that are a piece of trash, and i fight against enemies that have:

- better skills
- summons
- waves
- better stats
- infinite mana
- almost no cooldown to their abilities
- (for story quests at least) way better leadership

i am knowing the necromancer and honestly, why i am fighting him? i should be asking him to make me his apprentice! (no mana need anymore, no cooldowns and summons each turn plus incredible stats that would trible my current critters stats)

i am pretty sure that a party of 6 necromancers could beat anything in the game

and this is starting of the game, barely having scratched the surface

i mean, i had to fight a "few" bandits and they were demonic bomber high marshall bandits, this is not very cool (and i am not yet at the bandit king)

is there any moment in the game where the adventurers are the strong ones?

[Blood Flowers]

No worries, always happy to discuss differing opinions. I'm not so arrogant as to consider myself infallible.

I have tried the Quack title out in a couple of compositions, but I found more often than not it was more useful to have the Bishop restore 20SP than it was for it to deal 200 damage on their turn. Granted, I tended to run Clerics/Bishops only in compositions that didn't include a Bard (since Bard is ridiculously OP and functions as a buffer/SP restore/BP restore/healer/early game CC provider) or in Forest missions where Mass Divine Guidance was their immediate priority. Still, it does admittedly make Cleric/Bishop more versatile which is a nice thing overall.

The barrier skill is available to Bishops at level 16 which is too late for it to be useful in my opinion. A 30-60 damage shield is negligible on squishier classes at that point and by then tankier classes like Guardian don't actually need more damage mitigation (they need more AOE CC so enemies don't just ignore them).

To sum up Arcane Knight's flaws in a short paragraph, I'd say they suffer from being too versatile (though it is admittedly a super fun class to play). Firstly, there is a distinct dearth of skill points available to an Arcane Knight to make full use of their versatility. Secondly, with how the class has access to multiple blade enchantments, it's hard for your equipment to benefit all of those different enchantments (unlike mono-elemental High Mages with their specific titles, where you can invest so heavily into the element that you don't really have to worry about enemy weakness/resistances). Thirdly, the class suffers from dealing both physical and elemental damage, meaning you need to invest into both physical and magical penetration, but cannot get access to enough of both to really do good damage. Moreover, your damage is pretty evenly split so you can't even just invest into just one or the other. Fourthly, the class has incredibly high mobility with Teleport, but it lacks any real way to avoid retaliation damage (aside from positioning), which really just makes it feel like a much weaker Knight that has better AOE options (but where the AOE options are still weaker than a High Mage). Unfortunately, this just scratches the surface of the Arcane Knight's issues, so I find it to be an incredibly problematic class to play. Oh, and they guzzle SP like crazy too.

Dragon Knight functions as a stronger Knight. You get a free extra 15% strength and another 20% damage steroid in Draconic Fury. You can do something like 5000 damage in a single turn to bosses with a high strength growth Dragon Knight alone (by alone I just mean without chain attacks, this still requires proper buffs on your character and debuffs on the enemy).

Beastmaster is (in my opinion at least) supposed to be an upgrade to the Ranger class, not the Bard class. The summons are nice (but not worth investing heavily into) since they cost 0 AP to summon and can become a controllable unit (highly recommend that skill). The Eagle in particular is quite spectacular as it has incredibly high dodge and can function as a reasonably decent dodge tank even on Very Hard (especially when you have a Bard in the party to provide extra dodge, healing, and protection).

Speaking of Rangers, they are one of the most well-balanced classes I have played (barring the fact that you need to invest into Strength with them rather than Dexterity). They have exceptional early game damage and versatility, decent SP costs that can be mitigated with good management + a single source of SP restoration (like a Bard), good power spikes at every single level, reward planning via the traps/skill to increase range for staying still, have access to crowd control, and can transition to an incredible vulnerability applier in the late game once other classes have outscaled them. Really, really well designed class.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by Blood Flowers:

I have tried the Quack title out in a couple of compositions, but I found more often than not it was more useful to have the Bishop restore 20SP than it was for it to deal 200 damage on their turn.

On very hard difficulty, especially with some of the elite changes rework, (And even more when those were bugged briefly...) and ESPECIALLY with the saint class, the Quack title becomes incredibly powerful.

2 action points heavy single-target or AoE damage that can't be resisted is pretty much unmatched. But even better is that it hits automatically.

On higher difficulties against certain elite foes I find that this becomes very valuable. There were several cases being able to spam damaging heal let me take out a boss or elite monster that would have caused a lot of damage otherwise. Because it only costs 2 action points , it is very efficient to just spam BP and kill something.

It ended up being much more useful than I'd thought. (And this was in my last playthrough when I had no bard and had level caps enabled, so my overall power-level was lower.)

But I admit that until you get it up to 100% damage and unlock saint it is often more efficient to just hit them with divine light.

To sum up Arcane Knight's flaws in a short paragraph
{snip}
Oh, and they guzzle SP like crazy too.

I agree with most of these, though it's still fun even on very difficult.

That said, I find that it's actually one of the least SP troubled classes because they also get so many abilities that restore it.

Against weak enemies you can leave the blade enchantments disabled and regenerate by using knight skills. (And the mage skill that regenerates SP on kills if you need it.)

And in tough fights Overdrive means you never have an SP problem.

All in all, arcane knight is another class that really shines only in the late game. You kind of need the gauntlets of strength/crown of the magister because getting both INT and STR up to max naturally is pretty much impossible. And you need Overdrive to really start doing damage.

[Adi]

In my experience, a lot of the slower classes like tanks, HP healers, and DoT attackers do increasingly good the weaker your party is relative to the enemies, so while their unimpressive with a solo super party on very hard, I found that above very hard and with multiple parties they have a much better chance to shine. Mostly, some of them are still kinda meh.

Also just for clarity, I do agree these classes are for the most part harder to build right, such as monk being basically a knight with some extra versatility in return for being harder to build and not having the sheer "Delete Boss" potential knights do.


Focused DoTs are probably the one I feel are the most situational, while in some circumstances their really nice, such negating cultist revival or dealing with the super beefy elites and bosses. Other times I ran smack into a new enemy with 999 DoT res and the character was basically just cherry tapping while their buddies did all the work.

If nothing else their a very tedious way to safely deal with the litch when he's at very high stats. Since otherwise his damage and teleport (especially dark nova) risk just oneshotting nearly anyone as you break the jars.


For HP healers unless your abusing perma invisibility/dodge on certain fighters or rocking a wildly optimized HO team, at +100% HP enemies are just too durable to rush down until very high levels. So your gonna end up taking some damage and bards just don't have the power to heal off the damage that the boosted enemies deal as well. (Not saying bards are bad, I'd still say their the strongest class in the game, just their healing can't keep up past a certain point)

As for post healing after quests I feel that doesn't really matter. If your running a single party your going to be drowning in money due to how cheap it is to run one main party and maybe a single backup party, and can easily pay to heal and then pay for mood (or just sit there and do nothing if you don't have progressive enemies) Or if your running a larger guild you'll have plenty of people to throw at a new quest.


Guardians are... weird? Honestly the enemy aggro is very erratic in who it decides is a good target (outside of the enemies that have the AI of "walk at the nearest character") And due only having a single AoE taunt that isn't very spamable sometimes they have a lot of trouble dealing with hoards of weak enemies. That said I have found their excellent for locking down specific enemies, either with repeated taunts or forcing them to stand still with opportunity attacks. Personally I found outside of very specific fights or me screwing up my positioning they were never really in any danger of dying in one round early or late game. And their overkill defenses later on is nice to just leave them alone to lock down some melee enemies for multiple turns when most classes' reaction to melee enemies is basically "Oh you got hit once or twice and now you're nearly dead?" due to how late game melee enemies have so much piercing.


Arcane Knights are really cool but their so demanding for stats. It wants str, int, probably some end, wis, and a bit of dex isn't bad too. And then you need both phys and mag piercing... They do make excellent chain attack bots as the damage of their stacked swords does a lot of damage, but at that point your burning so much SP to keep the stances active your not doing much other than basic attacks until late game when you have trivial SP restoration. And yeah, multiple elements also means you can't easily buff their damage like other magic attackers. I'd say their damage is at least high enough to use, and sometimes even get one shots on +100%, but it never really reaches spectacular levels. The moonlight sword's super slash in particular is super disappointing. If your gonna make me search multiple maps and fight giant armies of cultists, the least it could do is have higher than 45% scaling on a once per encounter ability. At least its true damage I guess?


Paladins I'd put in a similar but worse boat, with even more demanding stat requirements and their whole "tank that can deal damage" thing just isn't strong enough at +100% HP. So they end up as a less tanky guardian with some minor utility. I'd say that at lvl 12 and especially lvl 16 their aura bot nature is good enough to at least give them something and not just "I wish I made you a guardian."


Rogues/Assassins are... yeah until you can reliably turn invisible their basically just helping to add some chip damage while hiding behind someone more durable. That said once you DO get the ability to reliably turn invisible I found they were very helpful with dealing with the mid game spike where enemies nearly double in number and elites are much more common, since they can body block choke points or protect a character from getting surrounded with minimal risk to themselves. And later on their damage starts to climb really high. Sure their not as good at just erasing a single enemy as a knight, but their much better at getting where they need to go and not dying while doing so. Also fan of knives is really really good.


Monks are probably the one I disagree the most with. While yeah, their damage isn't AS good as a knight, it's still good enough to deal heavy damage or one round even before their +75% str boost as long as you have the stances and ki strikes, and their better at not dying while doing so, with either dodges, HP regen, or straight damage reduction. The only case where I'd really say they start to fall into just being worse than the knight is if both have life drain, in which case both are immortal in melee but knight deals more damage. Although they still resist ranged attacks better and are better at diving at dangerous rangers. I guess early on their SP use is kind of demanding but potions exist for that and both healers and bards can help as well, and later on their SP is usually high enough they can last all of most combats anyways.


Earth mages are just not as good as the others, no disagreement there. Staggered in particular is a really lacking debuff compared to the others. Most enemies have enough accuracy their hit chance doesn't even change.


TL:DR As per usual for RPGs, HO rules the day in most circumstances. But I don't think the non HO options are without merit, especially as enemies get stronger and it's harder to rush them down.

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

2 action points heavy single-target or AoE damage that can't be resisted is pretty much unmatched. But even better is that it hits automatically.

Wait I thought quack did holy damage and not true damage? If so I think my character using it may need some... changes to her stacked holy boosts.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Originally posted by Adi:

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

2 action points heavy single-target or AoE damage that can't be resisted is pretty much unmatched. But even better is that it hits automatically.

Wait I thought quack did holy damage and not true damage? If so I think my character using it may need some... changes to her stacked holy boosts.

I might be wrong, holy resistance is pretty rare.

But it does seem that it deals a lot more damage in general than expected.

Testing on my saint (level 21) against a target with no holy resistance. Saint has 35% Holy damage boost and 145% healing boost. Only 15% magical penetration.

* Holy Light -> 115% MAB max -> 215 damage max against boar
* Heal -> 100% MAB max -> 305 healing on friendly target -> but 454 damage max damage on the boar!

(That's twice as much as holy light. Ouch. And even twice as much as my Witch deals on a firebolt, though the witch is not really mono-element focused but uses Swift Sorcerer. Does have full fire spec gear though.)

I'm not entirely sure why the damage on the healing is so much higher than the actual healing, though.

But the bottom line is: Doctor death kills things. A lot.

[Blood Flowers]

Hm, you guys are making a pretty decent argument for The Quack title. I've just never personally found a lot of use for it since by the time we have tier 3 titles, every fight was generally over on the first round. I think the only exception was Vorathax, which (due to his revive) survived with like 1,000 health at the end of the first round. Even then, it was mostly because I went in with a party that had just hit level 20/21 (and because I went into the fight blind... I didn't know he was immune to fire and both of my mages still had fire gear equipped...).
Knight with Ferdinand, always 6 (8 at level 20) empower stacks, and as many as 20+ stacks of vulnerable applied to a single target just absolutely shreds any boss.

Early game was always more about positioning to avoid ever letting enemies hit you (and the few rare instances could be tanked by your warrior or something). That usually made it so that Bard healing was sufficient until you reach the point where you just never get hit anymore because the enemies don't get to take their turns.

Bit of a tangent:
I don't know if any of you guys have tried it, but Misasa as a Sword Master is surprisingly really strong after level 16. In a similar vein, Daryl is probably the only character that genuinely makes a good Melee Archer user. Both function surprisingly well (especially if you have a level 16 bard with pacifist & impatient) at killing entire groups by themselves. You could genuinely make a pretty good "Elites" squad with those 2 and a bard.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Melee archer is pretty good in general, I find. It looks counter-intuitive, but if you have a fast character the damage boost is very notable. The monk skills add even more to this. It also combines really well with Beastmaster (run up to the enemy, shoot a bunch with multishot, summon a bear next to them, then hide in shadows and let them fight the bear.) Add in the skill that boosts damage per square moved and you're golden.

I always found rangers to be pretty underwhelming damage wise even if you focus on strength, but melee archer changed that.

[Pure_Poetry]

Really good quality content here, with (politely) diverging views. Loved it.

Not much to add, except maybe :
- all this seems indicate the game (/class system) is pretty well balanced overall, even so early after EA.
- classes and builds do not equally shine depending on difficulty settings (and depending on how heavily you maxed out STR or INT as someone already mentioned).

I'll likely soon do a new let's play series with maxed out difficulty settings, Ironman, Permadeath and doomclock (which probably won't be a win). I'll need some inputs for builds and some other minor stuffs, and will love to get insights from you (I will open a thread when I'll have time to start this new Series).

[Murphy's Ghost]

Some more small things. So most players are going to play on Normal, and things that are convenient there might not be viable on the higher difficulties. Monsters have 30% more health, so it will be more difficult to oneshot weak enemy types as an assassin for instance. With -30% loot I would be less inclined to use Quick Hands for spamming consumables.

Something to consider is specific classes being more suited for specific quests. If boss can bleed, "Artery Strike" combos into "Gut like a Fish" for bonus true damage per bleed, letting a new player one-turn their first troll. But it's useless against undead. Said undead get demolished by priests, making the lost fortress their ideal map.

Normally I wouldn't take a Bishop with my main team, but there are several big battles where I can expect to take some hits, often AOE/elemental, and the party-wide resist buffs come in handy.

I think it's probably best to assume any given player is going to walk into a situation with a suboptimal party, and work from there. This being distinct from the player who has entered the "one-shotting phase", who just wants to know the most efficient way to clear the map.

At that point it's all about optimizing AP and mobility, sometimes the enemies are spread far apart and something like the Infernal Armor makes a big difference. A spicy 1 AP 6-range teleport on heavy classes? Quite good.

One thing people might overlook: the Wand of the Archmage accessory which gives advanced spells to a character, has these temporary versions of the spells cost only 2 AP with a base 48-72 damage (2 uses per skill per quest).

So you can pop Adrenaline, run in and cast a Chain Lightning, Ice Spikes, Fire Ball, and Earth Surge at 1 AP each for decent damage even if your dude has 3 INT. Damage is affected by buffs, costs no SP, is also affected by swift casting title. Useful early but I still find it useful clearing weak enemies at level 24.

[Adi]

Originally posted by Blood Flowers:

I don't know if any of you guys have tried it, but Misasa as a Sword Master is surprisingly really strong after level 16.

I did the same since I was like "Oh a dodge class for the dodge character!" and she's really good once she gets the initiative to damage skill. Before that her damage is kinda sad but at least she's near invincible, but once she gets it combined with the sword master's skill to restore AP on skill kills she can just leap around and chain skills together, all while still being invincible so you can just throw her at basically anything. She has some issues against enemies with high physical armor, but if you gem her weapon she can still do fine since their usually slow so more initiative boost. The hourglass item I also found really useful, since it gives her more dodge, initiative, and lets her haste herself for 0 AP for more movement and +50% initiative.


As for rangers I think their generally one of the better designed classes in the game. Their damage isn't "everything dies instantly" like knights or the T3 classes but as long a their set up right they can still do enough damage to get it done while having lots of movement and range. Early on their range helps a lot since most enemies are slow and have low range, and later on they get even more range and a bunch of other damage boosts. Their definitely a bit more planning based than other classes, since a lot of their abilities need support to work out best (multi shot works really well with enchantments, shadowstep lets you keep your stand still bonus).

As for their weird little subclass I think Iguana-on-a-stick pretty much summed up my opinion on it too. I gave the class to one of my worst characters (she wanted to be an assassin but her wil growth was so unlucky even with rerolls on every level) as a joke since "melee archer" doesn't exactly inspire confidence, and even with her mostly shoddy stats she's still able to reliably oneshot on +100% and is very hard to hit, especially with shadowstep or dodge. Also what Blood Flowers said about a Daryl based melee archer sounds REALLY good. His personal skill encourages him to either hang back at super long range or just dive in, and all the stacked evasion bonuses from his personal skill and the sub class means he could probably just do that while also blasting away with multi shot and getting easy group kills. I definitely gotta try that in a future run.

Originally posted by M-Werdna:

One thing people might overlook: the Wand of the Archmage accessory which gives advanced spells to a character, has these temporary versions of the spells cost only 2 AP with a base 48-72 damage (2 uses per skill per quest).

Huh, I always thought they were 3 AP. That sounds way more useful then.

[Rubidium]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

Originally posted by Adi:

Wait I thought quack did holy damage and not true damage? If so I think my character using it may need some... changes to her stacked holy boosts.

I might be wrong, holy resistance is pretty rare.

But it does seem that it deals a lot more damage in general than expected.

Testing on my saint (level 21) against a target with no holy resistance. Saint has 35% Holy damage boost and 145% healing boost. Only 15% magical penetration.

* Holy Light -> 115% MAB max -> 215 damage max against boar
* Heal -> 100% MAB max -> 305 healing on friendly target -> but 454 damage max damage on the boar!

(That's twice as much as holy light. Ouch. And even twice as much as my Witch deals on a firebolt, though the witch is not really mono-element focused but uses Swift Sorcerer. Does have full fire spec gear though.)

I'm not entirely sure why the damage on the healing is so much higher than the actual healing, though.

But the bottom line is: Doctor death kills things. A lot.

I believe the reason that Quack does more damage is that it benefits from both Holy and Healing potency (since it's Holy damage that comes from a healing source, both apply). So if you have any separate sources of both (and healers get a "bonus to heal" in their normal skill tree, which you probably got anyway for the ancillary bonuses of SP-restore/cure bleed anyway), they stack.

Also potentially relevant is that it doesn't seem to have a chance to miss (but on the flipside doesn't seem to trigger chain attacks), since it's technically "healing," not a normal offensive spell, so doesn't require you to worry about accuracy.