Bear or War golem? Which is better for damage soaking?

[sdshadow]

I had always a bear, but the armour/resistences of the War golem seems nice too. But the war golem has way to poor health.
Anyone with a high level arcane user (never made one myself) can check if the war golem gets more health? Even at level 3 character with 17 int he has the same 50 health...

[spencerws88]

Bear enthusiast here :) At lvl 24 and 200 int, a bear has 940 hp and a golem 345 hp. As far as I've seen, war golem will always offer a bit more of a hp/armor bargain, especially if you boost his armor with skills like Hold the Line (Exemplar does not work). He also resists poison and wound, which is cool, and can be healed in a pinch. It also costs less energy to summon with a smaller cooldown. Much better for your everage grunts.

However, bear has some niche utility. Firstly, it can take hits that pass right through armor, which is particularly useful on the Shattered Stair (though I wonder if complete armor-piercing is a bug, since the enemies have "10 armor piercing"). Secondly, it has a latent +25 enemy attention, making it the preferred target of enemy attacks. The Faithful companion buff gives the bear some armor, small health regen, and raises its attention to 75. Rather than try to heal it, I usually just put down another one if the first one falls. Bear is useful for distracting enemies from my somewhat squishy back row.

[Parabola01]

I prefer Dire Wolf to both. It can help redirect attacks to itself by increasing it's attention while the main tank's Shield Wall is down and does more damage than the bear, for me at least.

[sdshadow]

I tried Dire Wolf, but he is not real good at higher difficulties. After one hit he is always dead.
The worst summon for a meat shield and he has no starting attention, so the good thing is that he dont die before you activate the taunt ability.

But the only reason to cast a summon is, that he draws attention from your weaker units before your tank get his round to taunt (and your tank is always a lot slower then any other because of his high armour/speed penality) and a dire wolf is useless for this.

Damage is not really much higher then bear (for me it is only 15 % higher). And if he gets one attack (after you use his taunt ability he is dead anyway fast) the attack is not really so much higher then a attack of your summoner ...

But if you dont see him as a tank/meatshield, more like a Damage Dealer i think he is a real good addition. But at higher difficulties at which the damage from him would matter he dies too fast, the bear is way better because a dead wolf cannot make damage, so a almost dead bear will make more damage at the long run.

War golem is a gamble. With his armour and resistences he can survive more then the bear, but almost every caster enemy kill him with one hit. Even with AOE Attacks. But if there are no casters at the enemy group, he is way better then a bear, but he also needs a lot more points into one tree...

Bear is the best allrounder. Cheap to get (only two skillpoints), cast him and if he dies after 2 rounds cast him again. The perfect meatshield.

[Immortalits]

I just simply use good gear and oneshot mostly everything, especially with mage (magelord with -50 enemy attention flag - also using magelord for the sake of command first 'stance' for int buff) aaand in addition with combat tree magelord can even be a good healer/anti debuff.
Since crit gems are nerfed and 100% crit chance is no longer possible, magelord with 3-4 artifacts are the most powerful dps characters (not burst damage with exhausting strike, then sleep mode) fire spells being the highest damage output spells, having flag, cube, chest and one of the wands givin insane ammount of int... also having the best raw damage skills (best raw AOE - lightning storm; best raw SINGLE - that mele fire spell with 25% crith bonus; best 3 target with fire wall and best 2 target with some position restrictions from double lightning (cube blink to solve problem), so it has the best tools for every damage situation.
I'm using a blademaster, but I've skipped a lot of time and now the crit enchant are nerfed (balanced out a bit, but still the best dps enchants) without being able to make 100% crit chance it's quite unreliable, but for now I keep it because of a need for high phisical damage source, but I might change it to some kind of archer soon... oh the waster quickness tonics :/
So anyways, sumons are only good for super early game, but you can even skipp that phase by simply exploring the island and looting battlefields, then buying some stuff from shops, with full blue gear you don't need summons that much, with epic gear it doesn't even worth it, with better gear... you just waste damage and time, because you will go for ultra quick 3-4 action wins by that time and maxing out your team or gathering gold for your to be maxxed out team, like me with mine :)
Spellwarden tank pwns.

[sdshadow]

Then you should really play custom 300% difficulty Immortalits.
You will need damage soaking pets. You will never stay alive with only blue gear (or you skip all harder fights). Even with purple gear 6 man enemie groups of your own level are nasty.

[Parabola01]

I modded my game to make the Shattered Stair more difficult (the three normal enemies got removed and I added three other bosses instead, including The Executioner). The Bear really started to shine.

For one, I needed my front line filled up because The Executioner's AoE could one-shot my mage. I tried using the Wargolem but it would die much faster. My guess is due to armor penetration, because The Excecutioner deals strong damage against my main tank, who's at 90% armor. The Dire Wolf would actually last longer than the Wargolem, but still not as long as the Bear.

Now I start any fight against The Executioner by summoning one Bear and one Wargolem, and then get a second bear up after the golem dies. It works fine... until I have to fight two Executioners at once...

Anyways, consider me a convert. The Bear is the best damage sponge summon.

[spencerws88]

Originally posted by Parabola01:

Anyways, consider me a convert. The Bear is the best damage sponge summon.

That's whats uuuuuppp.

I wish I knew how to mod that way. If its straightforward, can you point me somewhere that would explain how I could do that?

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by sdshadow:

Then you should really play custom 300% difficulty Immortalits.
You will need damage soaking pets. You will never stay alive with only blue gear (or you skip all harder fights). Even with purple gear 6 man enemie groups of your own level are nasty.

300% difficulty is not for blue geared fresh groups, that's obvious...
Once you're in full epic and at least tier 4-5 all of them (lvl 11-14 req) you can start geting artifacts, then the game is done, you're only min-maxing at that point, you try 300% for a while to get some challange, then switch back to 50% for quicker farm speed (I've played out the game in the hardest base diff from start... then figured out from some posts, that the diff can be changed withing a game and is not set at start :) ).

If modding the game to ultra hard ahd things... well, then in a close to infinite fight, and with realy big numbers, it realy come to the absolute specialized members, where summons become important, but with my fullgeared team in a regular 300% diff game, I have no problem killing a cyclops by 1-2 hits if I critt (with annoint buffed mage), or any bosses around my lvl, maybe soul harvester with it's double HP compared to other bosses takes bit more beating, but since my tank is practically immun to damage and regenerates back all damage when it takes it's turn, I realy found that summoning anything is just don't worth it, even legendaries got down in few hits with my weaker farming team.

[sdshadow]

Really sad that the balancing is not real good after you have real good gear.
Monsters den book of dread was way better at this regard.
Even at level 200 is was fun and with hard battles.

But starting this game with 300% difficulty (only speed at 100%) and without save scumming/chest reloading is real satisfying :). But i hate fights at which i dont die a lot of times to have to think about my strategie, so my opinion is a little bit masochistic...

[Parabola01]

Originally posted by spencerws88:

Originally posted by Parabola01:

Anyways, consider me a convert. The Bear is the best damage sponge summon.

That's whats uuuuuppp.

I wish I knew how to mod that way. If its straightforward, can you point me somewhere that would explain how I could do that?

I started a thread called Intro to Modding Godfall a few days ago that talked about how to mod equipment as a start. It's the best entry point because there is the least risk involved with screwing the game up. It's also really easy to make or modify any weapon you please once you understand what the numbers are calling.

Modding monster groups as I have done is not hard, but is more involved. Perhaps I'll add to that thread this weekend with that part. I'll go more in-depth.

I'll say straight-up that Godfall is the very first game I've decided to mod by myself. I've used other people's mods for other games, and cobbled some together to form my own, but never took a vanillia game and started modding it without using other mods as a base.

My point is: I'm new to this, too. So don't feel intimidated!

[casinoman2000]

My choices-bear & veil sprite. Their durability make them good shields AND decents fighters. Then at the end of a battle, I swap the bear for another sprite (dependant on my HP/MP levels ) to aid heath farming.