Kinesis Skills and Stand Still Builds

[bruce777]

I've been noodling around with this game for more than a year and have more than 500 hours in, I'm shocked to see. In the last day I've had a breakthrough in understanding and have won three times and am up to Cycle 15, having now mastered several kinds of builds.

But one very basic question still vexes me about this excellent but poorly documented game:

Do the various kinesis skills do any good for pure stand still summoning builds?

For example, I just won as a Apophis/Goblin/Druid/Ill Prophet. My skills were: Astrokinesis 6; Ooze Monsters 30; Innervation 1; Spider Monster 2; and Star Cult 1. I made it all the way to the Astrolith without taking Vigor once, and it was a romp.

But I'm wondering if the Astrokinesis added anything at all? I understand from comments in this forum that this skill does not boost damage from allies. And it doesn't boost damage from me if I'm just standing still by mashing the spacebar. So is it good for anything?

The cryptic skill summary says it procs on Hit or on Attack. What's the difference?

I'm now going to see if I can win with the same build with nothing but Innervation and Oozes.

Comments?

[Draken]

"On hit" and "on attack" are two different things.
"On attack" will trigger if you do an attack. This is primary through the attack action, though there are ways to trigger extra attacks.

An attack that isn't dodged will produce a hit. This will trigger any "on hit" effects.
So generally speaking, the "on hit" by default will be triggered by an attack.
But there is a big difference. While "on attack" only has a few ways on getting extra attacks, there are a lot of ways to produce additional hit triggers. Pugilism for example gives you an additional hit per skill level. So with Pugilism 10, you will trigger any kinesis skill 11 times on an attack. Maybe even 12 if you dual wield (don't remember if bare fists count as dual wield).

Kinesis also generally have additional effects and not just an "on hit" trigger. Fire triggers on kill, Frost on applying freeze, Lighting on dodge, Poison on applying sickness, death on getting healed, blood on applying bleeding, life on applying entangle, psycho on standing still.

They are generally a good way to cheaply add a bit more damage to a build or trigger additional status or "on damage" effects. For your build, no, it doesn't look like it would actually help you. But you could change that by taking a single point in Projection, which gives you one range 4 hit per skill level on standing still. If you had the space for it. :D

I will add that most kinesis skills do kind of seem like 1 point wonders to me. They usually scale with 30 damage * skill level, so each skill point is only worth 30 damage + your willpower boost. Flat damage boost like that is generally not as useful as things like applying more debuffs/buffs, getting more hits or summoning more allies. I might be wrong, but I usualyl only put a single point into them. Though I suppose they are cheap.

Edit: Block might also prevent "on hit" effects to trigger. I am not sure though.

[JackThejil]

Originally posted by Draken:

I will add that most kinesis skills do kind of seem like 1 point wonders to me. They usually scale with 30 damage * skill level, so each skill point is only worth 30 damage + your willpower boost. Flat damage boost like that is generally not as useful as things like applying more debuffs/buffs, getting more hits or summoning more allies. I might be wrong, but I usualyl only put a single point into them. Though I suppose they are cheap.

Psycho's the obvious exception to that, but yeah, further investment in them generally isn't huge. The first point you put in them is the most important by a long shot, heh.

The damage scaling is more impactful than you'd think with how point efficient the powers are and especially if you're proccing them a lot (morbu/cryomancy builds are least fiddly on that front but most of them can pop off pretty hard if you happen to be outputting a lot of hits or somethin'), but it's not likely to make or break a build.

[bruce777]

Thanks much for learned replies. Last night I reeled off my fifth win in 24 hours, ascending to Cycle 17. I won with Apophis/Goblin/Templar/Ill Prophet.

Templar had been my nemesis--this was my first Templar win after about five defeats. The trick is to strip the character of ALL gear, including the weapon, before making the first move. Trust me. This character had my highest glory yet (85) and took a total of 6,000 damage for the entire run; had 0 divine interventions; took 0 Vigor; and didn't even get the Staff of Chaos or the Staff of Life.

Apparently the maximum starting number of points is 13 and I always reroll to get that. This was an absolutely pure Stand Still summoner build with NO kinesis skills. My stats at the end were as follows:

Strength 78
Dexterity 10
Willpower 78

Burning Ooze 43
Innervation 1
Poison Familiar 1

It helped to get the Robe of Vigor to boost ally HP. It would have been good to get Bracers of Command to boost ally hit.

I suspect I can march this exact build all the way to Cycle 32. But now I think I'm going to look around for other candidate Prestige classes.