People defend the mechanics without understanding them?

[dhxjarsyl]

I started struggling with my play through a bit into act 2. First against a space hulk that apparently I should have avoided, but then just against regular enemies on the main quest chain, so I started doing some research. What i found out is that literally no one understands how this game works. Every comment, every reference, every site all contradict one another. People say to stack debuffs, except debuffs don't work on deflection so even if you strip all the enemies armor you still can't do damage. People say to stack ballistics skill, except 99% of the guns that drop are garbage. I literally just saw a comment talking about our Plamsa guns become super good in the mid game once you get enough ballistics skill...exccept all the references say ballistics skill doesn't affect plasma guns, flamers, or melta guns. Speaking of which, that means if you have a solider with a high ballistics skill you are stick with basic guns, because a mediocre boltgun with a high ballistics skill does more damage than a plasma gun.

[corisai]

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

exccept all the references say ballistics skill doesn't affect plasma guns, flamers, or melta guns.

a) Plasma guns have not only AoE mode but a single-shot too.

b) Excess hit chance is converted into crit chance on 1-to-1 basis.

[Marcos_DS]

If they say high ballistic skill improves weapons, its mostly about crit rate since anything over 95% hit rate will add to your crit chance.

However there are builds that benefit directly from high ballistic skill. E.g. a soldier has the talent "Comraderie" that is directly tied to ballistic skill (bonus damage%), a fire mode ability "Concentrated Fire" that can vastly improve damage by 2xBS bonus percentage.
Arch-Militant can both raise BS via versatile and gain boni to damage from BS.

So high BS doesn't automatically increase damage, but it increases hit chances, then crit chances, and with the right talents&abilities also damage output directly.

[corisai]

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack debuffs, except debuffs don't work on deflection so even if you strip all the enemies armor you still can't do damage.

I don't remember anything with Deflection of 100 and more but Operative have a talent that allow him ignore Deflection completely once he have 100+ Perception.

[🍉Sesmu]

Werglia, and cRPG bro have some good mechanics advice if you need it. cRPG bro is good about telling you if a feature/ability/whatever is bugged

[Marcos_DS]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack debuffs, except debuffs don't work on deflection so even if you strip all the enemies armor you still can't do damage.

I don't remember anything with Deflection of 100 and more but Operative have a talent that allow him ignore Deflection completely once he have 100+ Perception.

Yeah, combat insight is pretty great, not just for this but also for getting +1 AP on top.

[Muertington]

I dont know but my soldier arch militant does wonders with plasma guns.
Single shot/aoe shot rotation whenever possible to stack up versatility which at the same time gets buffed and buffs other things from some other talents you can pick when levelling.

If anything, the progression system with the plethora of talents is a bit overwhelming and does not do much in terms of explaining things clearly.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

To be fair the games mechanics do suck, but stacking buffs give you bonuses in other areas like some users have mentioned.

The TTRPG has a much better combat system that is more like Xcom than Pathfinder.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack debuffs, except debuffs don't work on deflection so even if you strip all the enemies armor you still can't do damage.

First, there are debuffs that reduce deflection. Second, there are some attacks that do damage that bypasses armor and deflection. Third, I'm partway into act 2 and I haven't encountered any enemy with so much deflection that they couldn't be hurt, even without bypassing or debuffing it.

Full disclosure, I did nope out of the hulk before finishing it, so maybe the final battle there features an enemy with tons of deflection. I won't know until much, much later if at all.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack ballistics skill, except 99% of the guns that drop are garbage.

I don't know what you are talking about. There are good guns. Maybe 99% of the guns are not better than the ones you happen to be using, but that's true of all gear because most drops are vendor trash as expected in an RPG. Just looking at guns in general, though, guns are fine. Naturally some characters are going to be better at using them than others, so either design your character to use guns well or equip them with something else that they are designed to use well.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

I literally just saw a comment talking about our Plamsa guns become super good in the mid game once you get enough ballistics skill...exccept all the references say ballistics skill doesn't affect plasma guns, flamers, or melta guns.

That's news to me. I'll have to test this, but I assumed it applied to all guns. This might be a case of me just not knowing how the game works. At least in the case of flamers, it makes sense that ballistics skill would be less important. If that's the case, it will be a revelation to me that has a profound impact on my gearing and character builds.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

Speaking of which, that means if you have a solider with a high ballistics skill you are stick with basic guns, because a mediocre boltgun with a high ballistics skill does more damage than a plasma gun.

No, that's bad logic. If you have a high ballistics skill you can still use a weapon that doesn't require ballistics skill to do damage... and you might want to, in cases where other features of the weapon make it a better choice than the ballistics-dependent weapon you normally use. For example, firing a bolter burst into a cluster of enemies mixed with friendlies might be a bad idea, but a well-positioned line of flame might hit several enemies without any friendly fire. (Sorry for the pun.)

[GuiGuix[Pedro]]

So you don't understand the mechanics, and decided to take it to steam to complain about people who do ?
Ok

[dhxjarsyl]

Originally posted by GuiGuixPedro:

So you don't understand the mechanics, and decided to take it to steam to complain about people who do ?
Ok

The comment above yours, explaining the mechanics in detail (something you didn't bother with) even admits they didn't know ballistics skill doesn't affect flamers, plasmas, and meltas (either that or literally every website is wrong) because there is nothing the game that even attempts to explain that.

[dhxjarsyl]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack debuffs, except debuffs don't work on deflection so even if you strip all the enemies armor you still can't do damage.

First, there are debuffs that reduce deflection. Second, there are some attacks that do damage that bypasses armor and deflection. Third, I'm partway into act 2 and I haven't encountered any enemy with so much deflection that they couldn't be hurt, even without bypassing or debuffing it.

Full disclosure, I did nope out of the hulk before finishing it, so maybe the final battle there features an enemy with tons of deflection. I won't know until much, much later if at all.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

People say to stack ballistics skill, except 99% of the guns that drop are garbage.

I don't know what you are talking about. There are good guns. Maybe 99% of the guns are not better than the ones you happen to be using, but that's true of all gear because most drops are vendor trash as expected in an RPG. Just looking at guns in general, though, guns are fine. Naturally some characters are going to be better at using them than others, so either design your character to use guns well or equip them with something else that they are designed to use well.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

I literally just saw a comment talking about our Plamsa guns become super good in the mid game once you get enough ballistics skill...exccept all the references say ballistics skill doesn't affect plasma guns, flamers, or melta guns.

That's news to me. I'll have to test this, but I assumed it applied to all guns. This might be a case of me just not knowing how the game works. At least in the case of flamers, it makes sense that ballistics skill would be less important. If that's the case, it will be a revelation to me that has a profound impact on my gearing and character builds.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

Speaking of which, that means if you have a solider with a high ballistics skill you are stick with basic guns, because a mediocre boltgun with a high ballistics skill does more damage than a plasma gun.

No, that's bad logic. If you have a high ballistics skill you can still use a weapon that doesn't require ballistics skill to do damage... and you might want to, in cases where other features of the weapon make it a better choice than the ballistics-dependent weapon you normally use. For example, firing a bolter burst into a cluster of enemies mixed with friendlies might be a bad idea, but a well-positioned line of flame might hit several enemies without any friendly fire. (Sorry for the pun.)

Thank you for the actual response, but I have a few counter points.

"except 99% of the guns that drop are garbage". I am into act 2, cleared the first system and I am securing the farming world. I have like 20 something hours into the game. Every single character is either still using the starting weapon or found a similar weapon that does 1-2 extra points of damage...that is it. Not a single gun that has dropped or that I have found hidden is better. Ya, I found cloak and trinkets and other things...but no better guns. Heck, I only found 2 better melee weapons, an office chain sword which was a minor upgrade for albert and a 2 handed mace from a boss.

"that means if you have a solider with a high ballistics skill you are stick with basic guns"
I am not saying there aren't niche circumstances where a different weapon is useful, I am talking about the go-to gun you use. Argenta is stuck with her starting bolter because no better bolter has dropped, and other types of weapons which should do more damage like plasma guns don't (even if I spec into them) because of her bonuses to ballistics.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

It's Math Trader. Honestly even if you know is going on pre combat once the buff start flying you only know you will be doing more damage.

Or you know yeah this debuff is gonna wreck armor.

Cause once buffs start flying your characters get insane attribute scores like +100 or higher. So the entire math problem would have to be recalculated.

It's more a general understanding like these buffs are good for every, these are good for area attacks these are good for 1 shots etc.

And you get the general sense of oh yeah I'll really be stacking this characteristic so it's good for this type of character.

But even if you have the math formulas you would constantly have to get info on your character to see what the scores are. They are vastly different in and out of combat. And even depends on length of combat.

There is stuff that buffs resolve and things that make resolve add to defense. The longer combat goes you become untouchable.


So yeah it's a bunch of math. But you can figure out the general ideas behind what to do

[Werdna]

I tried arguing about balance here but majority of players play on baby difficulties. Literally.
Only 5% managed to press "ultimate" skill as Argenta during prologue demon fight on at least true_medium difficulty aka Daring.
If short: If you want Unfair tips I advice picking Officer and learn how to exploit buffs and debuffs. More than 80% of your character stats have to come from other characters amplifying themselves and eachother.
As for youtube guides you will find almost nothing. Even for Pathfinder Wrath which is much more popular, I managed to find only a single guide to expanded arsenal(now nerfed).
You will find absolutely no info about new way to kill demon lords with DC spells, info about ring of triumph + court scald. Literally nobody plays Owlcat games on Unfair with builds that are good outside some basic smelodon abuse. People just install toybox(literally_cheats) instead.
Steam forums is THE absolute LAST you want to go if you want gameplay information.

[.//slayer]

As for youtube guides you will find almost nothing. Even for Pathfinder Wrath which is much more popular, I managed to find only a single guide to expanded arsenal(now nerfed).

You should've looked better, because this and other mechanical intricacies were widely covered on the Pathfinder subreddit.

[Aeon]

Currently playing on Daring and I'm pretty much breezing through the game. Argenta as an Arch-Militant with a Heavy Bolter turns into a Burst Shot monster especially when buffed by my Officer/Master Tactician RT.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

Argenta is stuck with her starting bolter because no better bolter has dropped

A basic Bolter should be fairly common in Act 2 from my experience (currently in Act 4) which is way better than Argenta's own Bolter because Argenta's Bolter has atrocious Recoil so her Burst Shot can't hit side of a barn. Soldier is all about Burst Shot.

Originally posted by dhxjarsyl:

and other types of weapons which should do more damage like plasma guns don't (even if I spec into them) because of her bonuses to ballistics.

Plasma weapons benefit from Ballistic Skill when using single target attacks.