I dont know how you guys pick the "right" build and "right" talents

[Amateur Nitpicker]

Like I just want to do DPS and man... those skills i need to reread everything? Currently respecting since I messed up (not doing enough dps etc.)

EXcluding watching videos (currently doing that). How would you know your build is Ok or just wasting it with something useless. I get the concept of ability points/skill points (like what to invest) but to know which feature or talent can help you give big damage (yes i am reading it... very very slowly XD )

DnD/pathfinder i kinda get what I want (since i have a little experience with it) now with new terms its kinda hard to navigate which one should I choose.

[Sotanaht]

Get as many officers as you can manage (including main character and mercenaries), get all the talents that improve Bring It Down and/or bonus turns granted, and then stack those bonus turns onto one character who is designed to do damage. That character can be pretty much anything and with all the extra stats and turns the Officers give it won't really matter that much how you build them, although I'd avoid melee characters because actually getting to the enemy might be hard.

I say "won't really matter" because it doesn't matter if you are doing 300 or 3000 damage per action, everything is dead anyway.

[Amateur Nitpicker]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Get as many officers as you can manage (including main character and mercenaries), get all the talents that improve Bring It Down and/or bonus turns granted, and then stack those bonus turns onto one character who is designed to do damage. That character can be pretty much anything and with all the extra stats and turns the Officers give it won't really matter that much how you build them, although I'd avoid melee characters because actually getting to the enemy might be hard.

I say "won't really matter" because it doesn't matter if you are doing 300 or 3000 damage per action, everything is dead anyway.

Yeah... i made my officer as my "Main dps" - currently redoing it using this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmyBJmnfUU

just like a tiny bit of it since i am just an officer at the moment (have not unlocked the 2nd and 3rd ranks)

I'm just gonna shout to sister argenta to do more

[REhorror]

Basically there are recommended stats for each archetype, like Operative: Intelligence and Perception.
You would do good to pump any talents that utilise these stats that translate to either damages or buffing so other characters can do damage.

Hope this is understandable.

[Cutlass Jack]

This is how I pick the 'right' build for me.
I make a separate save at every level before I make my choices. If my choices don't work like I want, I reload and make better choices.

It saves me a ton on respecs and also the saves make for a handy rewind spot to different parts of the story. Just in case of the incredibly unlikely chance of a bug, etc.

[May XD]

I have no idea how people are struggling with this game. It's the most forgiving and generous game Owlcat ever did to the point it's ridiculously simple.

You just max out stats you need for a class, pick whatever skills sound fun and update your gear, have at least 2 officers, make sure your tanks can tank, that's it. Have Cassia. Cassia will carry everyone with her navigator powers, in worst case.

I beat game on daring without even trying very hard, and I haven't put a thought into my builds once. Whenever I leveled up, i just picked whatever sounded like the most gain with least specific conditions lol. I didn't even reach max level, and still final boss was easy (just tedious)

[talemore]

There are balance issues. Armour as a concept doesn't exist. The entire armour system is depending on a number who is called overpenetration and the more dangerous the opponent the higher their overpenetration goes. Yourself is hardlocked in gear and abilities that when they have 60 overpenetration you have 55 armour. They are bypassing armour by 205%

Since you know this laser weapons is not a thing. It is people who think they can rely on things who can't shoot through their armour. Once yourself start to stack overpenetration it becomes an uno-reverse. Solid and heavy weapons like heavy bolter or Argenta starting weapon is better than hitting them with your fists.

The overpenetration hits hard and it gets even better the more bullets are shot. They made this game the way it is. They ensured that armour is useless and why power armour has multiple of discussions why they constantly die. Because they are only useful as long some uses a laser weapon.

It is wasteland 2 over again where the armour increase your damage taken as you are less capable to dodge. The dodge is the most effective weapon against the best weapons in the game.

Next time do not think that any warrior is good in armour. The only thing that says is if you have the forge world origin. Soldiers are in practice better with swords than warriors because they get higher agility. If you are going to melee you are going to need dodge and protection. The agility is increasing the sword abilities. They are meant to be dodgy. Why? Because of superiority the cover becomes a wall who prevent melee from surrounding the melee, it is one less melee opponent. Cover does not prevent from shooting with a gun.

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

Originally posted by talemore:

There are balance issues. Armour as a concept doesn't exist. The entire armour system is depending on a number who is called overpenetration and the more dangerous the opponent the higher their overpenetration goes. Yourself is hardlocked in gear and abilities that when they have 60 overpenetration you have 55 armour. They are bypassing armour by 205%

Since you know this laser weapons is not a thing. It is people who think they can rely on things who can't shoot through their armour. Once yourself start to stack overpenetration it becomes an uno-reverse. Solid and heavy weapons like heavy bolter or Argenta starting weapon is better than hitting them with your fists.

The overpenetration hits hard and it gets even better the more bullets are shot. They made this game the way it is. They ensured that armour is useless and why power armour has multiple of discussions why they constantly die. Because they are only useful as long some uses a laser weapon.

It is wasteland 2 over again where the armour increase your damage taken as you are less capable to dodge. The dodge is the most effective weapon against the best weapons in the game.

Next time do not think that any warrior is good in armour. The only thing that says is if you have the forge world origin. Soldiers are in practice better with swords than warriors because they get higher agility. If you are going to melee you are going to need dodge and protection. The agility is increasing the sword abilities. They are meant to be dodgy. Why? Because of superiority the cover becomes a wall who prevent melee from surrounding the melee, it is one less melee opponent. Cover does not prevent from shooting with a gun.

Agree to disagree about armor. Simply put, armor is not a magic bullet that you get via gear but another line of skills and traits to invest into. Unfortunately, armor being investment heavy also means that probably only 3 of your main party characters at most should be using heavy/power armor, with 2 characters (argenta/ulfar) coming with their own power armor.

Currently there are 2 heavy armors I would consider end game. One of them scales deflection off coercion, The other carouse. The first line of defense is deflection buffs. My MC and Abelard basically runs around in 40+ minimum deflection and up to 100 when they 1v1 someone. The result is basically even the final boss did zero damage to my MC tank. Even buffed argenta casually tickling my MC with her heavy bolter does zero damage. The only person capable of accidentally doing any damage to my MC is Pascal, who does 1400 damage to the final boss but lovetaps the MC for 60 damage.

The second line of defense is temp HP, which is my Abelard's focus. I don't spend any officer extra turns on him because he automatically gets buffed as everyone else does their thing so I let him on idle until his turn. He's built for one thing and one thing only. Temporary HP. Mine is scaled to momentum. If the team is doing damage and taking names, he gets stronger. My Abelard usually ends up with around 350-400 total HP depending on how many people tried to take pot shots at him (him dodging or parrying generates 10 momentum each time, each momentum generates 2 temp HP, more HP = more strength = more armor reduction. He basically gets stronger the more you burst at him, even if that bursting is friendly fire). Combined with his innately high deflection and buffed up armor (usually around 200-300% by the end of round 1 thanks to pascal's running bounty hunter and using the extra turns to do technical knowledge), you can put abelard in front of anything that threatens the backline and he'll take care of it easy peasy.

Third line of defense is the armor percentage itself though I feel like my assessment only applies to archmilitants in power armor as certain perks in the archmilitant tree is required for this one. Let's just say my end game argenta ends her first turn (extra turn from the officer) with around 140% armor and around 180% dodge in her power armor. By the end of the first round, argenta has 250% armor and 475% dodge. Even in the event that the dodge gets ignored, she'll survive just fine. Though pascal accidentally love tapping her with his 1400 damage plasma damned near kill her. took out like 90 out of 140 of her limited HP pool. There is still the possibility of doubling Argenta's armor with monkeigh skin cloak if you are fine with giving up quite a bit of damage since that item scales with versatility.

Defensive builds are really REALLY REALLY synergy heavy. You can't just take an item and suddenly you're an iron tank. You have to actually make the iron tank.

Edit : Oh special mention to Jae. She comes with around 100-150% innate armor depending on your reputation progress with your trading partners and if you give her xenoplate armor (scales off lore:xenos) and the relic of some saint (lore: imperium), she easily gets another 50-60% armor for free. She'll easily reach 300% armor after the usual party buffs.

[Darkeyedseer]

so I'm just getting into the game but already needed to restart due to screwing up. 2nd time starting over I watched a really long introduction to rogue trader and my so far I am slaughtering most of the encounters. https://youtu.be/keL7f8SEyWk?si=gGLzZh2mpv8nM8Ei

if you want a quick and dirty it really is just a read every thing and lean into the archtypes, and its kind of complex and bad at explain that skills are far more important than say +5 ballistic.

a gun that does 7 damage seems weak till you pop an ability now your all AOE volley shots will all hit (distance is also important on accuracy as well btw). now with that ablility your doing 7xshot damage with a single attack.

for example on prolog I had two soldiers I popped run and gun moved them close enough that their now two 2 AOE attacks from run and gun would all hit and ended up killing everything but the warp monster first turn meaning none of the support crew died and it died on the 2nd round.

[CynicalCanadian]

So it can be overwhelming and i think a lot of people who know builds are experimenting a lot since you can respec. I think the main thing to think about is direction of your build. You should have a basic understanding of the general play styles of your builds, and then hone in on singular direction. In your case you want DPS, so all your talents should be in service of hitting as often and as hard as possible with your class. So then your talents should focus on increasing your core damage abilities, and how often you gain additional AP. And either increasing the range you can shoot or the range you can move, depending on if your melee or ranged. At the end of the day its about experimenting. Save near a random encounter, then hard save before you respec, then play around with your build while testing it out in the same encounter, giving you pretty accurate data on how well each builds preforms.

Also to save you time on rereading, use the star system (favourites) it lets you select common and class talents you like, and are then able to sort only those so you can quickly find them and not forget about a talent you might want a few levels down the line.

Also be wary of the guides out there. The gaming media sites have terrible recommendations in this game, and almost every build they give is absolutely awful. Its going to take a while for people to find optimal builds, and while some people will stumble across strong builds, most are still not found out. One thing i keep seeing over and over is how the operator/bounty hunter is the best damage dealer, and while its good for single target damage its no where near as good a pyromancers and warrior/assassins. The latter of which i am pretty sure is the best DPS in the game, with builds that regularly kill bosses on a single turn and are able to clear upwards of 10+ mobs on a single turn.

[Sin317]

Don't stack Officers. It's lame. Only weak sauce players do that. Be better.

[pascal.difolco]

Originally posted by Cookie Eating Huskarl:

Originally posted by talemore:

There are balance issues. Armour as a concept doesn't exist. The entire armour system is depending on a number who is called overpenetration and the more dangerous the opponent the higher their overpenetration goes. Yourself is hardlocked in gear and abilities that when they have 60 overpenetration you have 55 armour. They are bypassing armour by 205%

Since you know this laser weapons is not a thing. It is people who think they can rely on things who can't shoot through their armour. Once yourself start to stack overpenetration it becomes an uno-reverse. Solid and heavy weapons like heavy bolter or Argenta starting weapon is better than hitting them with your fists.

The overpenetration hits hard and it gets even better the more bullets are shot. They made this game the way it is. They ensured that armour is useless and why power armour has multiple of discussions why they constantly die. Because they are only useful as long some uses a laser weapon.

It is wasteland 2 over again where the armour increase your damage taken as you are less capable to dodge. The dodge is the most effective weapon against the best weapons in the game.

Next time do not think that any warrior is good in armour. The only thing that says is if you have the forge world origin. Soldiers are in practice better with swords than warriors because they get higher agility. If you are going to melee you are going to need dodge and protection. The agility is increasing the sword abilities. They are meant to be dodgy. Why? Because of superiority the cover becomes a wall who prevent melee from surrounding the melee, it is one less melee opponent. Cover does not prevent from shooting with a gun.

Agree to disagree about armor. Simply put, armor is not a magic bullet that you get via gear but another line of skills and traits to invest into. Unfortunately, armor being investment heavy also means that probably only 3 of your main party characters at most should be using heavy/power armor, with 2 characters (argenta/ulfar) coming with their own power armor.

Currently there are 2 heavy armors I would consider end game. One of them scales deflection off coercion, The other carouse. The first line of defense is deflection buffs. My MC and Abelard basically runs around in 40+ minimum deflection and up to 100 when they 1v1 someone. The result is basically even the final boss did zero damage to my MC tank. Even buffed argenta casually tickling my MC with her heavy bolter does zero damage. The only person capable of accidentally doing any damage to my MC is Pascal, who does 1400 damage to the final boss but lovetaps the MC for 60 damage.

The second line of defense is temp HP, which is my Abelard's focus. I don't spend any officer extra turns on him because he automatically gets buffed as everyone else does their thing so I let him on idle until his turn. He's built for one thing and one thing only. Temporary HP. Mine is scaled to momentum. If the team is doing damage and taking names, he gets stronger. My Abelard usually ends up with around 350-400 total HP depending on how many people tried to take pot shots at him (him dodging or parrying generates 10 momentum each time, each momentum generates 2 temp HP, more HP = more strength = more armor reduction. He basically gets stronger the more you burst at him, even if that bursting is friendly fire). Combined with his innately high deflection and buffed up armor (usually around 200-300% by the end of round 1 thanks to pascal's running bounty hunter and using the extra turns to do technical knowledge), you can put abelard in front of anything that threatens the backline and he'll take care of it easy peasy.

Third line of defense is the armor percentage itself though I feel like my assessment only applies to archmilitants in power armor as certain perks in the archmilitant tree is required for this one. Let's just say my end game argenta ends her first turn (extra turn from the officer) with around 140% armor and around 180% dodge in her power armor. By the end of the first round, argenta has 250% armor and 475% dodge. Even in the event that the dodge gets ignored, she'll survive just fine. Though pascal accidentally love tapping her with his 1400 damage plasma damned near kill her. took out like 90 out of 140 of her limited HP pool. There is still the possibility of doubling Argenta's armor with monkeigh skin cloak if you are fine with giving up quite a bit of damage since that item scales with versatility.

Defensive builds are really REALLY REALLY synergy heavy. You can't just take an item and suddenly you're an iron tank. You have to actually make the iron tank.

Edit : Oh special mention to Jae. She comes with around 100-150% innate armor depending on your reputation progress with your trading partners and if you give her xenoplate armor (scales off lore:xenos) and the relic of some saint (lore: imperium), she easily gets another 50-60% armor for free. She'll easily reach 300% armor after the usual party buffs.

I'm in late act4 and didn't have any armor rating above 130% or so (even Jae)
Never saw these super armors anywhere
And armor seems to be mostly useless whenever you get hit.. So Dodge seems a best investment, Cassia has 200%+ and dodge everything
But best way is to avoid damage by preventing enemies from acting, and there's not really any other or best method than using/abusing Officers and Heroic ability spam
It's a bit lame but it's how the game mechanics work

[Khloros]

The first like 2 hours of the game, was me sitting in character creation/going through arc types to plan out my build and see what things wombo combo.

[Amateur Nitpicker]

I found a build (Pasqal Plasma Build) - like damn. I'm doing way more damage XD

Like how do these guys know which one to pick

[Grimkhor]

So the questions in these turn based games that help you.

1. How do I do more stuff per character than the opponent?

If a character can attack once per turn and you can charge and attack you do twice as many attacks which is really strong. What are other things that let you attack more than once a turn? Arch-Militant, Officers, Bounty Hunters, Warriors or Assassins.

2. Who goes first?

Going first is providing you with a permanent extra attack over your enemies. If your character will win it will be on your characters turn so if you go before your opponent you basically have 1 extra trun for free in every encounter you go first.

3. Which buffs/debuffs are best?

Permament buffs are the best. Stacking buffs are second best (do they maybe take too long?). Third are big short term buffs.

4. Should I go offensive or defensive?

Offensive is always the choice because you do not have to defend against a dead enemy. So if you have a defensive option it needs to be really powerful. If you have an about equal offensive and defensive options you should mostly go for offensive. Only pick the strongest defensive options.

5. How about synergy?

Synergy is usually not good. For a synergy to be good it needs to be more than twice as good as 2 individual talents as you first delay it and second the individual talents are usually not that good. Early game is usually harder than late game in almost every game so pick the talents that are good by themselves and do synergy later when it doesn't really matter anymore. If you need a setup it's almost always not worth it if it's not very very very strong.

Let's now look at some currently powerful things you can do and you will find a lot of these things. So to create your own powerful build just follow the steps. As an example that is not a common build you can make a psyker focused on flamers building an Arch-Militant using mostly inflame from pyromancer. You have extra attacks from arch militant and a pseudo extra attack from inflame (this does not count as an attack) which also stacks burn damage. Probably not more powerful than the burst attacks builds but it has the juice as mentioned above.

Argenta (Multiple attacks per turn, goes early because of high agility, lots of individually strong buffs and stacking buffs)
Officers (Extra turns on characters with multiple attacks, has talents or abilities to go first, strong individual and stacking buffs, ulti grants multiple attacks)
Bounty Hunter Snipers (Multiple attacks, stacking buffs, extra truns for buffs or debuffs, agility focus to go early)
Resolve stacking team (Multiple attacks due to officer ulti, very strong buffs due to sanctic psykers) -> This mostly works because of officers btw but still a twist on insane buffs instead of attacks directly.

[Amateur Nitpicker]

Originally posted by Grimkhor:

So the questions in these turn based games that help you.

1. How do I do more stuff per character than the opponent?

If a character can attack once per turn and you can charge and attack you do twice as many attacks which is really strong. What are other things that let you attack more than once a turn? Arch-Militant, Officers, Bounty Hunters, Warriors or Assassins.

2. Who goes first?

Going first is providing you with a permanent extra attack over your enemies. If your character will win it will be on your characters turn so if you go before your opponent you basically have 1 extra trun for free in every encounter you go first.

3. Which buffs/debuffs are best?

Permament buffs are the best. Stacking buffs are second best (do they maybe take too long?). Third are big short term buffs.

4. Should I go offensive or defensive?

Offensive is always the choice because you do not have to defend against a dead enemy. So if you have a defensive option it needs to be really powerful. If you have an about equal offensive and defensive options you should mostly go for offensive. Only pick the strongest defensive options.

5. How about synergy?

Synergy is usually not good. For a synergy to be good it needs to be more than twice as good as 2 individual talents as you first delay it and second the individual talents are usually not that good. Early game is usually harder than late game in almost every game so pick the talents that are good by themselves and do synergy later when it doesn't really matter anymore. If you need a setup it's almost always not worth it if it's not very very very strong.

Let's now look at some currently powerful things you can do and you will find a lot of these things. So to create your own powerful build just follow the steps. As an example that is not a common build you can make a psyker focused on flamers building an Arch-Militant using mostly inflame from pyromancer. You have extra attacks from arch militant and a pseudo extra attack from inflame (this does not count as an attack) which also stacks burn damage. Probably not more powerful than the burst attacks builds but it has the juice as mentioned above.

Argenta (Multiple attacks per turn, goes early because of high agility, lots of individually strong buffs and stacking buffs)
Officers (Extra turns on characters with multiple attacks, has talents or abilities to go first, strong individual and stacking buffs, ulti grants multiple attacks)
Bounty Hunter Snipers (Multiple attacks, stacking buffs, extra truns for buffs or debuffs, agility focus to go early)
Resolve stacking team (Multiple attacks due to officer ulti, very strong buffs due to sanctic psykers) -> This mostly works because of officers btw but still a twist on insane buffs instead of attacks directly.

Yeah... I currently doing Argenta thing as my main DPS. But honestly it became boring. Cassia is OP as heck so I removed her

Now trying to make Indira useful... I mean I know she is like unstable and can bring warp creatures randomly but I think her class is weird and unique. (Still having problems of her dying since some of spells she cast can explode on her face for some reason.) Kinda new on "Ward Degragation" mechanic of spells. Like when casting spells there is usually the aoe damage I need to think about but now... I am still confused on what is the balance of casting spells while not killing yourself as an UNsanction psycher

Also researching a build for Abelard (I want him to be like Argenta BUT melee mode).