defense power. . .

[Icedfate]

I don't understand the damage formulas in this game,
because it seems like Gully, with 350 defense, while taunting (with "all defenses up") is taking the same amount of damage as Monika with 40 defense.

example.
an armored impaler does an attack that hits the whole party

Gully takes 705 damage
Calibretto takes 705 damage
Monika takes . . . 705 damage

wtf?

or does the impaler have a special "ignore defense poer" trait? I dunno.

the sky leitentant outlaw hits monika multiple times for 104 damage per hit, while gully takes 89 per hit, so there IS a difference, but wow, it's so small, how 300 points of defence is only like 70 points less damage.
600% more defence translates to only 10% less damage

[Koby]

I don't recall ever seeing something like this...

but then again, Gully's defense shields were so high by mid-game that enemies rarely damaged my party's actual HP ever.

And Garrison usually had the trash mobs dealt with before they got any attacks off due to his 1HKO criticals that could even take out every boss in the game.

Who doesn't love having by end game a 20,000+ defense shield before an enemy can touch your 30,000+ HP?

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by Koby:

I don't recall ever seeing something like this...

but then again, Gully's defense shields were so high by mid-game that enemies rarely damaged my party's actual HP ever.

And Garrison usually had the trash mobs dealt with before they got any attacks off due to his 1HKO criticals that could even take out every boss in the game.

Who doesn't love having by end game a 20,000+ defense shield before an enemy can touch your 30,000+ HP?

I don't understand how people keep saying that "by mid game" Gully can put up 20k-35k shields and garrison can "OHKO anything in the game"

what is defined as "mid game"?

my party is level 21, right after doing the deadwatch.
I feel overleveled and OP right now, but my Gully is only putting up a 750 damage shield,
when she does her lvl1 burst, it puts 550 on everyone.

my Garrison doesn't "OHKO" anything.

and i'm trying to optimize their gear.
they have level 22 weapons equipped.
level 17 armors and accessories.
minmaxed for damage output

I have their perks all set up for damage.

I put crit up 1,2 and 3 on garrison. put crit up enchantments on armor and weapons, and garrison's crit rate is 19%.

I tried all his attack skills, no idea which skill you are talking about.

and people are saying that red monika sux in comparison, but she has Execute. my monika has 21% crit rate and all the perks to increase her crit damage.

i specced calibretto for dps and use his wildfire in every encounter and he passively generates 10 overcharge with his weapons and carries over 10 overcharge so i'm only using up 4 mp per battle

I beat the x6 level in the arena. the enemies are 17-18, while my party is 21-22 and i almost lost. the game threw 2 hangmen at me and those guys could hit for 1500 damage in a single attack, while my party is between 2300-3200 hp, even gully would lose all her shields and half her hp in a single round against those guy and they have a ton of hp. and then there was the boss, wargolem lancer with 4800 hp, dealing 2k+ damage with a single attack and like, I would set up brettos wildfire an then he starts charging and then the boss gets his turn and puts up reflect shield an then brettos gun goes off, hits 8 times and leaves bretto with 200 hp left. . .gully was constantly putting shiels up and the enemies were shaving them off as quickly as i could put them up. I had 30 seconds left on the clock when i finished.

I'm assuming that the "35k shields" are endgame at max level. which I dunno what the max level is, I hope it's 99 because NG+ would get boring.

[Koby]

For one thing I said 20k+ was by end game, not mid-game.

Gully with the right perks will start every battle with a fairly massive shield already.

But anyhow from level 22 to max level would take maybe 15 minutes of grinding Air Pirates if you wanted to quick level.

Max level is only 30.

19% crit on Garrison is pretty low. Should get it to almost 30% by that point.

and it's true that Monika does in fact suck in comparison. She has high crits and good strength, but overall her damage is more about status damage over time than it is about wiping the field instantly.

Enemies with 4,800 HP are nothing when Garrison can do 7+x that in a single hit. I mean it's no joke when I say my Garrison killed the last 3 dungeon bosses on his first attack of each battle.

But I also had the ultimate weapons on every character.

Max level from the Air Pirates then the entire Arena is a joke. You'll breeze through the Arena without any concern.

One of the best ways of making your team a powerhouse is fishing every chance you get. Catch absolutely every fish in every pond. Trade those in for coins. Spend those coins on perk books. By end game of your first run you could easily have Garrison with 165-190 perk points to spend.

[Icedfate]

but, Monika isn't just all about DoT's. . .
her wild shot hits twice for just as much total damage as anyone else does. each hit has an independent chance to crit. yeah, it's random who it hits, but it allows you to indirectly target stealthed enemies.

her Execute attack hits 8 times, regardless of whether she crits or not.
compare this to Garrison's Beserk attack which hits 3 times + up to 4 additional hits, depending on how often he crits.
My Monika has 22% crit rate , compared to Garrison with 18%

I have not seen the endgame yet so yeah, i admit that it boggles my mind how 8 additional xp levels can see me having a 2000% increase in combat effectiveness. . .
I guess it must have somethig to do with the gear getting really crazy inflated stats? I dunno.

what I do know is that at level 22, Gully specced for damage, plus having all the AP up perks selected in addition to the +40% to damage shields, while wielding a level 24 weapon, only shields for 1300.

Garrison at level 22 with a level 24 weapon barely does the same damage as my Monika wielding a level 20 weapon, with all the AP up perks selected.
My Garrison also has all the crit up perks selected and keen edge on his weapon and still only has 18% crit rate. given that as you level up, your crit rate actually goes down, unless you keep upgrading your gear to keep up.

Garrison doesn't 1 shot anything, much less being able to 1 shot a 5k hp enemy, as you say he ought to be able to.

what is this "one attack" you speak of?

[Icedfate]

also, I don't see how i could "power level from 22 - 30 in 15 minutes" by grinding air pirates.

my Gully and bretto are level 23 now and when i fight the air pirates, the pirates are level 23 and when i win, i get about 400 xp for each member.
and the pirates are annoying to look for on the world map, walking all around looking for them.

at the rate i'm going, it would take at least 45 more battles to get to level 30,

ao, unless you have some sure fire method to not only find the pirates, initate the combat and finish it in less than 20 seconds on average. . .
I just don't see how all those xp levels can be gain in "just 15 minutes".
the slow animations alone should thwart that process, not to mention the walking speed.

unless you know of some exploit that I don't know about because I have been trying not to read any guides

[Koby]

Even if it did take 45 battles for some reason, which to me seems like way too many... That's only 3 battles per minute. Considering Garrison should be capable of one shot everything.... that is perfectly do-able in 15 minutes.

I maxed out my characters on my first run then pulled out the backup characters and maxed their level. The Air Pirates level scales with your party. So having 2 level 30 and 1 of your weaker members.... means you'll be leveling up the weaker member practically every fight.

If your Garrison isn't gulfing Monika's damage output... you've got a severely terrible Perk setup on him and should respec. Because in my experience, at end-game Monika needed 5-6 turns of attacking to dish out the same level of damage Garrison is capable of with one attack.

As for why output increases so much across so few levels... well pretty much all the perks, etc... work on a percentage base. So instead of something just giving a flat +10 attack or something for example, it gives a 10% increase. Obviously 10% of 1,000 (100) is a far bigger increase than 10% of 50 (5). Now these are just random numbers tossed out there for an example. I'd have to actually load up the game to look at the actual specs between Garrison at the start and end game for a proper comparison.

How many perk points does your characters even have at this point? Have you been catching ALL fish at every pond possible throughout the game? Trading those in for coins and spending all the coins on perk point books greatly helps boost your characters. My first run through the game had Garrison over 160+ thanks to the fish.

[Icedfate]

but, Garrison is NOT capable of 1 shotting everything. I still don't see where you are getting that. I had him with level 24 equipments, at xp level 23 and he most certainly does NOT "1 shot everything"

when i complete a fight against air pirates my own level, they give me about 18-20% of the xp toward the next level. which was the basis of my math that to go from level 21 to 30 would take 45 battles.

I took issue with you claiming that it would "Take only 15 minutes"

I'm now level 25 on all my characters.
I can complete a battle against the air pirates in 2 rounds. about 4-5 attacks, but it's nowhere near what you are saying.
My Gully still only protects from 1500 damage with her shields, so I have no idea how she's supposed to go from fifteen hundred to thirty thousand in 5 xp levels.

my party has 90 perk points on each character, and yes, i catch all the fish and even have spent extra time getting the fish at the fishmongers places multiple times.
at this rate, i can get about 20 shadow coins in a half an hour. . . so getting everyone up to 130 perk points, should take only about. . .40 more hours. easy, easy, even a trained dog could do that.


"a severely bad perk setup and it's time to respec". . .
the perks don't seem that complicated and i'm not seeing what i'm doing wrong. I took all the perks that improve attack power, crit rate and crit damage.
is there some other weird synergy i'm not seeing, like where there's a hidden effect when i combine one of the perks that upgrades one of the skills alongside using a certain potion that buffs a certain stat and then i have to keep potion buffs on me at all times, hauling around dozens of potions to reapply the buffs?

i'm not exactly "struggling" here, but i tried to do the arena in the x10 level, (second to last highest difficulty) and i didn't die, but I ran out of time, because I just couldn't kill the enmies fast enough and the boss at the end, did a skill that made his minions absorb half of all my dmaage and gave them deathproof so they coudlnt die and he just stalled me out and i ran out of time

[Icedfate]

anyway, this has gone so far off course.

I was mainly ranting about how the defense power caltulations didn't make an awful lot of sense, because gully taunts and takes almost as much damage as everyone else. it felt as if the extra defense power stats were doing nothing.

also worth noting, that i did look in the bestiary and that one enemy (the impaler) DOES, in fact, ignore defense with its attacks, so I was taking an abnormally small sample size.

there was another occasion where an air pirate hit Gully for 2000 damage and then it hit Garrison for 5000 with the same attack (which 1 shotted him, with his 2500 hp max. . .), so, i guess Gully is mitigating morre damage with her higher defense.

[Koby]

Where am I "getting that"? From actually playing the game. Not only did I see and do it myself, but plenty of threads in this forum have others making the same comment. So again, if you're not capable of doing it, then you need to re-evaluate your equipment and perk setup.

You can take issue with my 15 minute comment if you want, but I literally stated how 15 minutes was definitely viable if you managed to do 3 fights per minute... which again should be no problem with a good build setup since again Garrison should be fully capable of OHKOing everything by that point. I mean damn, my Garrison literally OHKO even the last 3 bosses he went up against.

90 perk points is pretty low for that point in the game from my experience. Like I said, I was nearly double that by the end of my first playthrough largely due to the books bought from coins earned from fishing.

You may have noticed you get bonus stats for hitting 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 perk points on each tree. These bonuses are pretty damn awesome. Lets look at Garrisons:

Every 20 points assigned to Swordsman perks will activate the following bonus perks:
Critical Mastery: Increases Critical Chance by 3%.
Attack Power Mastery: Increases Attack Power by 6%.
Swordsman Overcharge: Increases Attack Power by 10% per 10 Overcharge used. Stacks with other Overcharge perks.
Risk Taker: Increases Attack Power by 30% when health is below 30% of maximum.
Overpower: Increases Attack Power by 6% on a Critical Hit. Stacks 6 times.

Every 20 points assigned to Wanderer perks will activate the following bonus perks:
Haste Mastery: Increases Haste by 3%.
Dungeon Skill Master: Increases maximum charges for all Dungeon Skills.
Wanderer Overcharge: Increases Attack Power by 10% per 10 Overcharge used. Stacks with other Overcharge perks.
Survivor: Increases Attack Power by 1 for every 7 points of Stamina.
Life Leech: Heals self for a small amount of health on each attack.

Basically getting Overpower on Swordsman and Survivor on Wanderer will bring Garrison up drastically. Although that requires 180 perks which means it won't happen till NG+. But alternatively going for Survivor alone will still do wonders.

Also Garrisons ultimate weapon boosts attack by 2,784

As for Gully, getting perks like Empowered Shields, Defensive Start, Avenger Overcharge - Rank 1, Avenger Overcharge - Rank 2, Barrier Swing II, Guardian Overcharge - Rank 1, Guardian Overcharge - Rank 2, Shield Assault will really boost up her defense shields.

Also enchanting equipment with certain bonus stats will also be a good idea if you haven't already.

[Icedfate]

I'd understand if what you are talking about is endgame, with all the best gear equipped.

but you are contradicting yourself.
you are saying endgame, but then turning around and saying I ought to be that strong at the midgame as well.
you literally CAN'T have the ultimate weapons at midgame! I looked up spoilers and you have to wait until later to get them. parts and events you need, don't occur until later.

you never defined "midgame". I assume that "midgame" is where I am.
but ... I bought all the cheap books. if I want more perk points, i have to pay 45 shadow coins per point.
you say you "got it all easily, by fishing"

I assume you did the fishing spots at the fismongers place, because there are 20 fish total there.
the spots in the dungeons are random and inconsistent.

the spot in the fishmongers place are easy to fish at and i can do it pretty quickly, but it's still about 5 minutes to walk up there, wait for the load screen, walk to the spots, fish out all the fish, then walk to the fishmonger and sell them all for about 10-12 coins, then go back to the inn and rest so I can do it again.
it would take me an hour to earn the coins to buy 1 perk point for the party.

yeah, i "could" spend the next 90 hours fishing, to get myself up to par where you say I "should be". which is ridiculous, how could i be that bad at the game? I'm not an idiot. I know how to play games. how did I ♥♥♥♥ up that badly?

and again, you assert that I ought to be able to sleep at the inn, then walk the map, then find an air pirate, then sit through the attack animations and win the fight in 20 seconds, which is literally inpossible to do, because of the slow walking speed and the load screen and the slow animations.
I call BS on that.

[Koby]

Mid-game is when you're around level 20 and have completed anywhere from 4 to 6 of the dungeons. Which given your levels and whatnot I assumed you were at. I had max leveled my characters before hitting the 6th dungeon and my Garrison beat the 6th, 7th, and 8th dungeon bosses with his very first critical hit each.

I keep repeating myself, but you just continue to go "you're contradicting yourself, blah blah". Rather than listen to advice you just want to cry and deny it's possible just because you're having a hard time when I'm saying the game is a cakewalk unless you choose to not make it so.

Just know I max leveled my party from level 20 to level 30 and even the secondary party in no time flat thanks to the pirates. Like I said, you can easily level up a weaker party EVERY fight at that point. Considering the final pirates are actually higher level than the final boss.

And you can have the ultimate weapons for most of the characters after about 6 of the 8 dungeons being done iirc. Garrison gets his by one-shotting his way through the timed Arena battles, which I made it through all the rounds and came out with the top score with only about 5 minutes taken off the clock, because Garrison is a power house. Given your level, you SHOULD already be past that or fully capable of one shotting everything to easily get by, as you'll be overleveled for the areas.

Also the books aren't no 45 points, unless you're wasting points getting the "whole party books", which you shouldn't do at this point. Get all the individual point books. They're like 5 or 10 points each and each book gives you like 5 points on the character it's for. So your "12" points is enough to boost perks by 5-10 on a single character.

You don't even need to attempt to grind the fishing. Just make sure to fish at every pond you come across during your usual play. As you said, the fish Monger place has a lot of fish to get. But you're very much exaggerating about it being a 5 minute walk. Shoot you can go from one side of the map to the other in about a minute if you don't bother fighting the low level mobs. I often just traveled the map for the hell of it picking up the items laying in the road.

90 hours fishing? WTH... no this game is short. You can beat the whole game in about 25 hours if you're not trying to 100% max out everything. My first playthrough was about 55 hours and that was because I went out of my way to do all the sidequests, get all the ultimate weapons, and grind fishes to get Garrison up to around 160 or so Perk points. Gully and Bretto had about 130 with Monika, Alumon, and Knolan having around 100, because I focused on boosting my Garrison since he is known to be the DPS powerhouse that he is.

I've tried to explain to you how to play the game, but you just want to be a child and talk crap and remain in denial. So obviously I wasted my time. You keep playing how you want then and make yourself have a hard time on an easy game that you should be capable of one-shotting everything on.

[Icedfate]

if you would stop being smug for a moment.

I said i'm "not struggling with the game". I find this to be a fairly easy, albeit grindy JRPG style game.
The reason I'm annoyed is because you are saying things that are untrue. that I should have been "1shotting everything from the midgame forward"

but i'm not seeing the same grandiose claims you are claiming to see.
you are insisting I should be killing everything in 1 hit and finishing battles in mere seconds and I call BS on that.

My Garrison is not "1 shotting" anything. the sixth boss took 2 attacks. across 3 actions calibretto use wildfire, then garrison had to use his level 2 burst to get the +60% crit, THEN he was able to deal the last 7000 damage to destroy the boss. but that's not what you are claiming , you claim that all it takes is "1 critical hit from Garrisson to kill that boss".
Garrison's crit rate is still only 20%, which you insist is lower than it should be, but I enchanted his armor with inner fire 3, his weapon with keen edge 2 and took every crit+ perk and activated the bonus crit up master and he has the perk to get +crit every time hit hits etc. ..

Meanwhile, my Monika has 35% crit, passive.

my Gully is still only putting up 1800 damage shields. .she does not have her ultimate weapon yet though, so I dunno. I gave her the perks for +40% shields and the one to start battles with shields. she has the level 27 lich fist weapon.


my characters are now level 29 and they have 110 perk points each.
I took pretty much most or all the perks you mentioned there and still not seeing the same performance you insist i should be having.
I got the ultimate weapon for calibretto and he has 7000 attack power and can tear through a group of enemies at his level.//but he still doesn't 1 shot anything, he just cripples them enough so the rest of the party can take them out with basic attacks .

I also got Monika's ultimate weapon and switched out Garrison. and she does a TON with her execute attack.

at level 27, a group of air pirates awards 259 xp, and you need 2000 xp to level up. I actually gained xp faster just grinding the trash mobs outside the manafont dungeon than i got from the air pirates

I hate that how in every game forum there are always smug sobs that go "yeah, I run through the game 1 shotting everything" and they lie by omissions because they should be qualifying it by saying "i run through the game 1 shotting everything. . . . once I reach max level, get all the best gear for everyone and stack every temporary buff in the book on them. . ."

I don't like when people lie. a lie by omission is still a lie.

[Koby]

I was being friendly and helpful. You decided to call me a liar and also an SOB. So yes, I'll act smug against someone attacking me for attempting to help them despite their denial and insistence that I must be lying. I'm not lying. I played the damn game, and I've tried to help you get the same numbers I do. Go look up some youtube videos.

I stand by everything I said 100%. It is without a doubt true and if you could be mature enough to hold a conversation without attacking the help, you'd see this same forum is full of past posts by people saying the exact same things I have tried to tell you. You're just stubborn so you take it out on the people trying to help.

Your Garrison is clearly understated. 7,000 damage? Really? Is he only level 13? What is his attack power? Never mind, don't answer that... No point in continuing this discussion further since you'd rather call me a lying SOB than actually absorb any helpful information.

You're flat out lying if you're claiming air pirates aren't the fastest leveling method. Even the devs of the game have said as such in old threads here. The air pirates go all the way to level 33 (which is higher than you can go), so they'll give more EXP than anything else in the game. You can literally level up every single fight nearly up until around level 27 in which it'll start taking multiple fights. Which is why my statement that it takes about 15 minutes of grinding max holds absolutely without a doubt true. Maybe you're just fighting the wrong ones? The ones that show up in the Northwest of the map, will eventually be one of the optional "bosses" in some regard.

I don't like when people call people liars just because they refuse to adhere to sound advice being told to them.

Have a good day sir.

[Icedfate]

see, now, while I quite enjoyed the fact that i found someone i could trade walls of text with (not sarcasm), Anyone who is willing to sit and write out multiple paragraphs again and again, can't be all bad, bur you clearly are acting like a jerk now.

you are not "attempting to help", only attempting to justify your claims.

example, now you claim that Garrison should have been hitting for 7k damage, back at level 13? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
you want to know how much attack power my garrison has at level 29, he has 5088 right now and 19.7% crit rate and that is with all level 24-27 gear, AP up 1,2 and 3, crit up 1,2,3. the perk that improves his crit rate every time he hits.
seriously, there are only so many perks and I took all the good ones.

I dunno where you are getting your numbers from , but it's obviously not the same game as me.

I started this thread about the defense power mechanics and how loading up on defense power with Gully didn't seem to be making a difference in the damage she was taking.
and your first response was along the lines of "oh well, i dunno what you're talking about because my characters are so OP. . ."

that's not trying to help at all. that's just bragging.

and you obviously have some lack of comprehension, because I only said you were "smug", not "a smug SOB".

the "smug SOB" comment was a generalized rant where I said that every game forum seems to have "A smug SOB" who goes around bragging about how easy the game is and how anyone who has a lick of difficulty with the game is just bad at it and needs to "Git gud".
now, whether you choose to identify as that person. . .is entirely up to you. All I did was ask you not to be that person.

this conversation could be endless. Neither side can win here, because the entire point of the discussion has been completely destroyed.

so, yes, I bid thee good day.

I said good day!

[munchies2x]

I enjoyed reading you two! But seriously, I don't see how Garisson can 1HKO by mid-game. My Garisson hits around 1,500 using some of the skill at around level 22/23 (not critical). I can hit higher if I use his level 3 burst and Gully weaken enemy ability, probably around 5,000 - 6,000, which is almost enough to kill the boss (but it is not 1HKO when you need help from the other team members).

I am in the quest to get his ultimate weapon but that will require me to complete the arena.