Glass Cannon seems very bad for classic "glass cannons"

[Nope]

I'm very early into the game but for my understanding of the mechanics I can't find any reliable (read worth it) uses/strategies in hard difficulty even tough the idea is cool.
I have never tried it but on paper it seems really bad, here is why:


Hit Points measure how much damage your character can take at any given moment before dying, usually party members have ways to recover, protect, and control, which means that ideally I will always aim to outheal any damage I'm not able to prevent.
In this context, having high HP only role is for preventing enemy "spike" damage, the threat of having one character being taken from max HP to 0 outside of my combat turns.

If I have a character with Glass Cannon, it's imperative that he acts before others to C/C/protect himself/get out of danger, but to get the benefit from the talent requires to increase MAX AP, which means putting point in Constitution, if I put point in Constitution I'm not raising Speed/Perception and my Initiative falls behind. That's the first problem:

1) A character with Glass Cannon has lower initiative than one without, even tough he needs it more to prevent insta-death.

The second problem with Glass Cannon: he gets the benefit starting from the second round,
which means that for the first round he is just like any other character, except he has -50%/-75% less hp and lower initiative.

2) A character with Glass Cannon acts like a normal character in the first round, except with lower initiative and -50%/-75% HP. Insta-death threat much higher and no benefit.

Third problem: Skills are on cooldown, a character without glass cannon will select the best skills / spells / actions to use in the situation, a character with glass cannon will do the same but he won't be able to use the same skills in the same turn with his extra AP, he will choose other skills but they won't be as good as the ones he choose before.

3) Extra AP's on a character with Glass Cannon are worth less.

Fourth problem: a character without Glass Cannon will have enough MAX AP to store some action points for the next turn if he doesn't have any quality action to take, a character with Glass Cannon is likely struggling with MAX AP, and won't be able to store AP's.

4) A character with Glass Cannon can't store AP, unneeded APs are wasted for low quality actions.


Edit: Almost forgot:
5) Crowd controlled characters can't benefit from Glass Cannon but they still have -50%/-75% HP!!!!


Other obvious problems are surprise attacks from enemies and stepping on mines with a Glass Cannon character.
If anything I'd like a talent who does the opposite: trade some AP for some extra HP.


Everyone seems to say glass cannon is bad for warriors, would someone please explain? To me it seems like the best bet for a glass cannon would be to put in on a high defences / high survivability character with highest armor and hit & run tactics, but since I'm very early into the game I can't be sure.
Another viable tactic maybe a healer/stealth rougue with some survival skills and long range casting would benefit from it, if you keep him very far behind.

[Dorok]

Put some points in ♥♥♥♥, complement with few more ♥♥♥♥ points through some items, and it should solve your problems. At Normal difficulty Glass Cannon is OP, at Hard it's more balanced but still most characters could take profit of it and warriors too.

About your warrior and traps, the game has a special design for this. Unlike almost all RPG DoS doesn't requires that the character that leads is put in front for the combats. So use this. Put your warrior first but lead with a character that can detect traps.

About your argument for storing AP it shows you put no point in ♥♥♥♥. Each point in ♥♥♥♥, increase of 1 your AP max.

[naomha]

Glass Cannon and Lone Wolf are the way to go if you're going to do that type of playthrough. Glass Cannon is more for mages but tied in to the Lone Wolf skill as a melee you will become unstoppable. It boosts your AP and cooldowns.Put a $hitload of points into Str and Speed as a melee class and take Zombie and Leech. You'll be unstoppable.

[stretch]

I took glass cannon with my melee and mage lone wolf build. The hp penalty was NOT as severe as the 50% or 75% you mention. There are other factors taken into account although I cannot say what. Toggle the trait on and off and you can see the hp's you lose.
You can easily compensate for a few hp's lost with gear and a few points here and there. The reward far, far outweighs the cost. Try it. Save your real game and then select the trait. If you don't like it fall back to the original. Easy done.
By lvl 22 my melee toon had 5k hp's even with glass cannon. Mage had 2.5k.

[Syrris]

stretch a écrit :

I took glass cannon with my melee and mage lone wolf build. The hp penalty was NOT as severe as the 50% or 75% you mention.

This varies with the difficulty. On Hard, a glass cannon character is effectively at -75% vitality due to the -25% inherent to Hard. That's a huge drop in survivability compared to Normal where characters actually get a small boost by default.

As for their survival... if you aren't pumping ♥♥♥ (which works), the other way to handle the glass cannon character is to simply keep him out of combat during the first turn. This will often involve unlinking him and letting him walk up once a battle has started, allowing you to put him in a sheltered spot (and perhaps buffed with a protection spell or two that he cast before approaching).

[TheTrueKitty]

I use glasscannon on my archer, buffed with 50% bonus dmg and also picked points in resistance agains stunns and co... Feels really awesome to stand there and shooting 3-5 times in a single row, AND bursting as hell. Even in hard its funny - but I'm playing with lonely wolf. My second charakter is only tanked healer, which only support stand to sustain with large hp, heal and wash away debuffs on my main damage dealer.. :)