The new "Arcane mechanic"

[toruvinn]

Is it me, or does he... suck? I really have trouble killing higher hp targets on hard. Meanwhile mobs literally melt my bots. I kinda feel that after all the VH2 fun they simply killed that class. Am I right, or am I simply doing this wrong?

Also: I'm still not fully leveled up on that, but my assassin's playthrough was much, MUCH easier. This here is just... painful.

[Psojed]

Assasin is considered the strongest class from Van Helsing III (after the Thunderblast nerf anyway), so yeah, playing as either of the mechanics might seem a little "hard". But you didn't include anything about your gameplay style, so I can't tell you much more

[toruvinn]

Hmm, since Mechanic was painful (I tried speccing into minions, also towers - all of those turned out rather weak and definitely squishy as hell) I tried Defender next and this one's pretty strong and almost immortal. And pretty fun, too.
I really hope Final Cut will be more balanced. I really enjoy the lazy playstyle of minionmaker (although it was hardly lazy in VH2, with me having to spam spam spam all the time), but VH3's Mechanic is just awful for now.

Is speccing fully into that mobile platform worth it? That platform seems... a bit lazy. At least on its melee attacks, which seemed interesting but turned out hardly ever used...

[datguy13]

"Assassin": Umbralist

"New Arcane Mechanic": Constructor

"Defender": Protector

^ That right there tells me quite a bit about your play style. The Constructor is not exactly the same as an Arcane Mechanic. The AM could focus one aspect and stack it. The Constructor cannot. It needs a solid spread of Ability points across Body, Dex and Wisdom and it needs a range of Skill selections to be effective. Equipment augments the Constructor in a different way than most other classes, providing greater strength to the minions. The key is that the minions themselves are throw-away, so mana needs to be conserved in order to keep summoning.

My most effective Constructor build from VH3 included Lead Storm 10, Transmodulator Ray 7, Dismemberbot Pack 7, Gun Platform 4, and Ornithopter Patrol 5 with an even split of Ability points across all three of the mentioned Abilities, with any extras thrown into Luck. Gear choices always included +xx% to Minion Health and +xx% to Minion Damage where available, as well as as many Ability bonuses as possible. The only reason I didn't take the turrets is personal choice: I prefer to kite across large areas, which means a turret would have been ineffective.

I use this build to farm Fearless Mode Scenarios and to do my testing for the game.

You're going to quickly find in Final Cut that the stack-build tactic most players use across VH 2 and 3 don't work for any class. Points need to be spread across a grouping of Skills and across all three available Abilities. Right now, I have 4 different Constructor builds I'm testing, and although I'm not as satisfied with the state of minion durability as I would like to be (health is okay, but Defense and Resistance needs work in my evaluation), each of these four builds includes at least 5 different Skills by the time I reach level 40 with them. I also have spread my Ability points out on each build dependent upon where it needs to be: for the minion summoner builds, Mechanical Aptitude and Weird Science are higher, as an example.

Final Cut is going to heavily stress adaptability: can your character change tactics during the course of a map, or do you need to return to the Lair in order to respec each time you run into a new pack of monsters? We saw hints of this in VH3, but it's going to become somewhat of a necessity in Final Cut.

As for the Umbralist, he got a few major nerfs in Final Cut. He's closer in power to the other classes now, instead of just being the two-Skill faceroller he is in VH3.