Attributes and Skills

[BLUESTORM2112]

I'm trying to make sense of them and character creation. Some seem very vague or hard to understand what the perceived value is in game. I'm trying to make a Navy Officer. I want them to be primarily about buffing and commanding with high knowledge and intellect and a small amount off ability with ranged weapons and/or melee.

How much of thing like Weapon or Ballistic skill do I actually need for a support character? Does perception/awareness matter and how much do I need? Is toughness needed at all and what about Agility for Initiative? Willpower is recommended but I don't see how resistance helps that much.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Pierogolepca]

Pretty sure you can pick recommended choices and do just fine. The game generally gets very easy once your build gets off the ground, so don't sweat it too much and enjoy the ride.

For now I'd focus on your core stats (for Officers that'd be Fellowship). And if you're going support/buffer officer, I'd advise avoiding melee combat. Don't be afraid to mess up because:
- you can freely tweak the difficulty between fights
- the game allows you to respec on your voidship

Lastly, and this is subjective, I'd advise going for a more combat-oriented role for your Rogue Trader. Mostly cause a) I don't enjoy support main characters and b) you get phenomenal buffers/supporters later on. That of course doesn't mean a RT Officer/Support can't be fun or viable. Different strokes and all that.

[Voodoo]

Depends entirely on choice of weapons, if you use only aoe attacks you dont need any ballistic skill, your damage scales off intelligence and while enemy can dodge those just like any other attack perception reduces that chance.

Snipers also get hefty bonus to hit.

Melee automatically hits but enemy can both parry and dodge it and ws reduces enemy chance to do that.

You can build to not need any ws or to never even attack, just focusing on buffs.

Id recommend picking a plasma pistol or gun you will have good enough range and dmg that way.

During each career you will have enough advances to max out 2 attributes and start 3rd.
Generally it goes like that
Operative with aoe or pascal INT>PER>BS/WS
Operative sniper BS>PER>INT
Officer FEL>any
Warrior WS>STR>any
Soldier BS>AGI>PER

then some advanced classes
Assassin AGI or PER>as base class
Master Tactician FEL>as base class
Arch Militant BS/WS>as base class

[stax]

Ranged AOE attacks can still miss. A missed ranged AOE attack only deals 50% damage. Ballistic skill helps prevent that.

Originally posted by BLUESTORM2112:

How much of thing like Weapon or Ballistic skill do I actually need for a support character?

Ballistic: technically, you need 95 ballistic skill to max out the chance to hit with a ranged weapon at optimal range. Anything above that only serves to increase the chance of a crit (chance to hit above 95% is converted into a chance to crit), and to hit beyond optimal range (ballistic skill is halved if you shoot at max range).

Melee: unlike ballistic, there is no cap on what you might want, because your weapon skill is matched against enemy weapon skill: the more he has, the more you need. Of interest is that if the enemy is not wielding a melee weapon, your own weapon skill is only good for increasing your crit chance - even a total melee noob will never miss (but the enemy can still dodge! even if the attack did not miss. Confusing? :).

Originally posted by BLUESTORM2112:

Does perception/awareness matter and how much do I need?

Only perception matters for combat. Awareness is a skill that governs how likely you are to spot hidden stuff, and is based on perception.

As to how much you need: perception passively beats enemy dodge on a 1:1 basis. If enemy has 50% dodge, then 50 perception negates it completely. So the answer is, the more the better (some enemies have really high dodge), however there are other ways to defeat dodge (abilities, weapon stats, your own agility if the attack is melee...)

Originally posted by BLUESTORM2112:

Is toughness needed at all and what about Agility for Initiative? Willpower is recommended but I don't see how resistance helps that much.

Focusing on toughness is mostly for characters that are going to tank = getting hit a lot. For others it is nice but not needed if you can avoid gatting hit, either by having high agility (and thus dodge) or by positioning, using special abilities etc.

Initiative depends on agility, but the order at which characters move during battle is still pretty random. If you get a bad roll, you can reload from before the combat was initiated, and get a new roll. I wouldn't say pushing agility for initiative sake is important unless you want to play ironman with no reloads.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by stax:

Ranged AOE attacks can still miss. A missed ranged AOE attack only deals 50% damage. Ballistic skill helps prevent that.

chance of that is abysmally low, even with 40 bs im scoring 90% chance of full damage in chapter 2.

[stax]

Originally posted by Voodoo:

Originally posted by stax:

Ranged AOE attacks can still miss. A missed ranged AOE attack only deals 50% damage. Ballistic skill helps prevent that.

chance of that is abysmally low, even with 40 bs im scoring 90% chance of full damage in chapter 2.

Chance of that is the same as the chance to miss with a single-shot ranged attack. If you see a 90% chance with 40 ballistic, then you are getting extra 20% hit chance from somewhere.

Plus, the chance to crit with ranged attacks (AOE included) is tied to ballistic skill- any hit chance over 95% is converted to crit chance. Even if your ranged AOE attacks hit 90% of the time, they will only have the base 10% crit chance (not counting any non-ballistic crit sources).

So i would only go with low ballistic skill on a ranged AOE user (any ranged gun user, really) if
1, i have a source of accuracy that will boost my hit chance to the cap, and
2, i have an extra 90% crit chance from somewhere other than ballistic skill (or the ability to auto-crit).

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by stax:

Originally posted by Voodoo:

chance of that is abysmally low, even with 40 bs im scoring 90% chance of full damage in chapter 2.

Chance of that is the same as the chance to miss with a single-shot ranged attack. If you see a 90% chance with 40 ballistic, then you are getting extra 20% hit chance from somewhere.

Plus, the chance to crit with ranged attacks (AOE included) is tied to ballistic skill- any hit chance over 95% is converted to crit chance. Even if your ranged AOE attacks hit 90% of the time, they will only have the base 10% crit chance (not counting any non-ballistic crit sources).

So i would only go with low ballistic skill on a ranged AOE user (any ranged gun user, really) if
1, i have a source of accuracy that will boost my hit chance to the cap, and
2, i have an extra 90% crit chance from somewhere other than ballistic skill (or the ability to auto-crit).

Thats what numbers say, also displayed hit chance takes into account dodge too.

Now plasma aoe on something like pascal? pop precise attack(90% was before that one), you get massive hit chance boost and largely ignore cover, but more importantly, if enemy is 10-int bonus(which with pascal or custom operative at end of 1st career is 50-60) thats automatic crit.

On master tactician it also not matter if you whiff or not cause youre doing magnitudes more damage than enemy have health, maybe some bosses will survive.

[stax]

Originally posted by Voodoo:

Originally posted by stax:

Chance of that is the same as the chance to miss with a single-shot ranged attack. If you see a 90% chance with 40 ballistic, then you are getting extra 20% hit chance from somewhere.

Plus, the chance to crit with ranged attacks (AOE included) is tied to ballistic skill- any hit chance over 95% is converted to crit chance. Even if your ranged AOE attacks hit 90% of the time, they will only have the base 10% crit chance (not counting any non-ballistic crit sources).

So i would only go with low ballistic skill on a ranged AOE user (any ranged gun user, really) if
1, i have a source of accuracy that will boost my hit chance to the cap, and
2, i have an extra 90% crit chance from somewhere other than ballistic skill (or the ability to auto-crit).

Thats what numbers say, also displayed hit chance takes into account dodge too.

Now plasma aoe on something like pascal? pop precise attack(90% was before that one), you get massive hit chance boost and largely ignore cover, but more importantly, if enemy is 10-int bonus(which with pascal or custom operative at end of 1st career is 50-60) thats automatic crit.

On master tactician it also not matter if you whiff or not cause youre doing magnitudes more damage than enemy have health, maybe some bosses will survive.

Everything you wrote is right, and basically the same thing i was saying - you can compensate for the lack of ballistic with other sources of accuracy and crit chance.

My point however is that this is not exclusive to ranged AOE. It is true for all ranged attacks. Your original post i was reacting to suggested that ranged AOE is somehow different in that it needs less ballistic than other ranged attacks. It does not.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by stax:

My point however is that this is not exclusive to ranged AOE. It is true for all ranged attacks. Your original post i was reacting to suggested that ranged AOE is somehow different in that it needs less ballistic than other ranged attacks. It is not.

and i still stand by it, you miss with burst or single shot, you do 0 damage you dont benefit from any abilities.

Your aoe does half damage, you still pop exploits, you still benefit from buffs and even if you never score full damage shot you can still do enough damage to oneshot any mook.

[stax]

Originally posted by Voodoo:

Originally posted by stax:

My point however is that this is not exclusive to ranged AOE. It is true for all ranged attacks. Your original post i was reacting to suggested that ranged AOE is somehow different in that it needs less ballistic than other ranged attacks. It is not.

and i still stand by it, you miss with burst or single shot, you do 0 damage you dont benefit from any abilities.

Your aoe does half damage, you still pop exploits, you still benefit from buffs and even if you never score full damage shot you can still do enough damage to oneshot any mook.

If the goal of your ranged AOE is just to trigger mechanics rather than act as a primary damage source, sure.
But if you want it as a primary damage source, you need hit chance and crit chance, same as any other ranged attack.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by stax:

Originally posted by Voodoo:

and i still stand by it, you miss with burst or single shot, you do 0 damage you dont benefit from any abilities.

Your aoe does half damage, you still pop exploits, you still benefit from buffs and even if you never score full damage shot you can still do enough damage to oneshot any mook.

If the goal of your ranged AOE is just to trigger mechanics rather than act as a primary damage source, sure.
But if you want it as a primary damage source, you need hit chance and crit chance, same as any other ranged attack.

Plasma pistol, beautiful 9-13 dmg, 30% arpen.

Master tactician gains at the start of combat 20% of momentum as stacks, i cant from memory say how much it is so ill assume 0

But you gain +1 stack per enemy in combat and you count every ability used as if it was had felb more stacks, with 60 fel and 50 int and 10 enemies that gives our beautiful plasma pistol
9-13 average 11, 50 int adds +25% dmg, miss will be -50%, and 16*4=64% dmg for a nice round total 11 dmg. Thats with minimum stacks if you have something like 100 stacks that will be 36 dmg, with 300 stacks thatll be 91 dmg.

Honestly worst plasma weapon in game.

But how do you get 300 stacks, isnt that alot? yes and no.
you have 2+felb resolve, officer talent adds +3 with above stats thats 11 resolve at start.
Linchpin takes 1/4th of stacks and adds +1 resolve(to max of 100) for every 5 stacks you had and make it so you gain stacks equal to (20+felb)% of momentum gained as stacks.
Fervour resets cooldown on linchpin and adds resolve stacks to you.
You also have talent which gives you +1 stack per hit, half damage aoe still counts as hit for it and 1 resolve per kill and officer have +5 fel per attack.

So the longer combat goes the more you can stack those bonuses by turn 3, having over 300 stacks is the norm.

Now for operative, its much easier
again 50 int, 50 per, lets not do anything crazy here.
if enemies have exploits its (5x perb +10 per stack-1)% bonus damage and you put on enemy 1+intb/2 stacks with each analyse +1 passively on every enemy we can see(or just every enemy period with 1 talent)
we also have tide of excellence where every exploit we pop adds +1 dmg and +2% arpen.
so we put on enemy 3 stacks with analyse for a total of 4

11 average dmg, +25% from int, -50% from "miss", +55% dmg.
11 dmg on first hit, 14 dmg on second hit, 18 dmg on third hit and so on.

Thats naturally ignoring passive learning(hard to guess how itll distribute), fact that every operative applies exploits which can be used by every operative, any additional abilities etc.
Frequently hitting fresh targets with 11 stacks is commonplace, thats 15 dmg on first hit 31 dmg on 2nd, 46 dmg on 3rd.

Even soldier have a buff and nice talent, demolition eengineer means you stack bonus damage based on demolition skill isntead of int, demolition scales off agi and buffs for next area attack to do (50+BS)% more damage and (10+2xbsb)% dodge reduction.
so lets say 50 agi + 20 demo, 30 bs.
same pistol 11 dmg, +35% dmg from demo, -50% for miss, +80% from concentrated fire.
13 dmg on average on miss.

This is not only talent that buffs damage and honestly you should get bs on soldier, but that just shows you can do damage even with crappy bs.

[BLUESTORM2112]

Okay. You've all been very helpful. I think will focus on Fellowship and Intelligence with some points in agility and perception here and there. I will add ballistic skill and and toughness as required if I feel like I'm dying easily or don't have high enough hit chance after bonuses from other sources. I will take into account the aoe weapons using INT.

I may have missed it. But I don't think anybody touched on Willpower. It is marked as recommended for Officer but I don't see the value in it unless you're a psyker. Am I mistaken?

[Pierogolepca]

Ignore it. When you're getting new skills, you can see if this one you wanna pick scales with Willpower. Then you can consider levelling that.

[stax]

Originally posted by BLUESTORM2112:

I may have missed it. But I don't think anybody touched on Willpower. It is marked as recommended for Officer but I don't see the value in it unless you're a psyker. Am I mistaken?

Willpower is the stat from which the character's resolve is derived: Resolve = 1+WP bonus. Some officer abilities are scaling with resolve (for example, "Air of authority").
Some of them also scale directly with willpower, for example "iron discipline".

It is also used for resisting some enemy abilities.

However it is entirely possible to build an officer who completely ignores everything officer-related except "Bring it down" (since that one he gets automatically), so don't stress about it too much.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by stax:

Originally posted by BLUESTORM2112:

I may have missed it. But I don't think anybody touched on Willpower. It is marked as recommended for Officer but I don't see the value in it unless you're a psyker. Am I mistaken?

Willpower is the stat from which the character's resolve is derived: Resolve = 1+WP bonus. Some officer abilities are scaling with resolve (for example, "Air of authority"). Some of them also scale directly with willpower, for example "iron discipline".

It is also used for resisting some enemy abilities.

However it is entirely possible to build an officer who completely ignores everything officer-related except "Bring it down" (since that one he gets automatically), so don't stress about it too much.

Resolve is 1+felb, willpower doesnt increase it.

Originally posted by Pierogolepca:

Ignore it. When you're getting new skills, you can see if this one you wanna pick scales with Willpower. Then you can consider levelling that.

You mean none, cause no skills scale off wp.

[stax]

Originally posted by Voodoo:

Resolve is 1+felb, willpower doesnt increase it.

/facepalm moment :)