Spear's skill tree

[Adruk]

Tested all the abilities in the tree, it is as the devs said: a weapon that gives you a lot of control over single enemies, it let you use at best choke points, walls and other obstacle at your advantage, the damage seems also pretty good, piercing damage make short work of armored target but suffers against skeletons, nothing new, but it still works pretty well, skeletons don't have resistence against immobilization, so what I couldn't lost in damage I regained with control.

Now the bad side: this skill tree is similar to the dagger skill tree in many way and shares most of the same problems: the abilities are heavily mana hungry, there is also no way to regain mana by either killing, hitting or afflicting the enemies and also it lacks a charge skill that can work as follow up in certain situation after using nail down and impaling lunge.

[Natacha Gronlova]

Will they add alchemy to the game?

If so, you can surely make potions for mana with plants.

[Rabid]

I loved using spears but the lack of energy regen hurts a ton, also it feels bad that the best way to take advantage of your immobilise is to run away and shoot the enemy with your xbow because you can't consistently make attacks from 2 tiles away (due to CD and energy restraints)

Also determination is probably the most unimpressive ultimate skill in the game, it's a mostly worse version of a tier 2 sword ability.

[Natacha Gronlova]

Originally posted by Rabid:

I loved using spears but the lack of energy regen hurts a ton, also it feels bad that the best way to take advantage of your immobilise is to run away and shoot the enemy with your xbow because you can't consistently make attacks from 2 tiles away (due to CD and energy restraints)

It is true that the demand for mana is extremely high.

I think a crossbow is not enough, reloading lowers your guard plus the change of weapon consumes one turn, a total of 3 turns to immobilize, equip the crossbow and then equip the spear again.

Keeping this in mind and knowing that enemies generally come in groups of 3 or 4, he leaves the spear with enormous restrictions for the necessary mana.

This could be solved by increasing the range of the spear and its basic hit 1 space for a range of 2 spaces in total. Make the ranged strike do half the damage and the close range strike be the normal damage.

[Juicy Jerry]

Bump, Im a huge fan of spears in DnD and also Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and their extra reach and control of area really makes it feel rewarding to space, control space, and use reach properly. But in this game the high cds and lack of attacks at more than one tile away makes it feel really and frustrating. When a spear is meant to keep distance all I can do is pin them and kite, in larger groups of enemies the lack of energy regen means I'm kiting for energy rather than mana, just kind of feels mundane.

Has anyone looked into a combat mastery/spear combination? I feel as though that may be a better use of skill points rather than dumping them all into spear skills that are pretty lackluster beyond the first skill book

[Juicy Jerry]

Originally posted by Las Noches:

Will they add alchemy to the game?

If so, you can surely make potions for mana with plants.

There's an herb that recovers energy atm, but you're right hopefully with the addition of alchemy energy isn't such a big problem.
I feel like the tree itself needs tweaking imho tho

[funkmonster7]

If you get a passive in Combat Mastery that makes you get +accuracy and weapon damage upon skipping a turn, it should make your Spear build more viable. Also, standing your ground makes for a good Spear build too, due to its own passive.

There will be other skills later on with 2 attack range.

[Adruk]

yep, I had the same impression, the only drawback is that you have to take defensive tactic, while offensive is more useful because of the cooldown skip.

However I do actually like more athletic tree for spear, mostly because of the dash skill, but leg sweep on the other part gives you both a free attack and extra means to immobilize your enemies en masse

[Atma]

Originally posted by Adruk:

yep, I had the same impression, the only drawback is that you have to take defensive tactic, while offensive is more useful because of the cooldown skip.

However I do actually like more athletic tree for spear, mostly because of the dash skill, but leg sweep on the other part gives you both a free attack and extra means to immobilize your enemies en masse

Well, Defensive Tactic also offers energy return, which was one of the key issues you listed for Spears.

[funkmonster7]

Just get both Offensive and Defensive Tactics if you want skills on both sides. I haven't quite decided which to go for but I generally go for Defensive, and it's not because of stance stacks but because of the passive bonus that you get from holding your ground, and also enemies walking into an adjacent tile which procs a debuff for one turn. Defensive goes a long way, although right now with arrows not being affected by dodge (I sincerely hope this is a bug) that kinda dooms all characters facing archers.

[Juicy Jerry]

Definitely an energy burner weapon but really fun once I found out how to deal with some of my issues first.
The most fun I've had with the build is three enemies in a 1 tile hallway and nailing one after another with crits that make then bleed and shove them into the enemy behind them damaging both, so rewarding.
Of all the weapons I've used so far the spear has taken the most time to feel decent and also required the most foreplanning.

Defensive stance is great for it and offers a little bit of survivability, definitely what I'd go with. Hold your ground syncs with it amazingly. But ya archers are your worst enemy and harder than some bosses if youre in an open area.

Anyone looking for help prioritizing enhancements I'd crit, fumble chance, and energy/energy regen
crit because the last passive of the spear tree doing % health on crit makes for GIANT damage against enemies with a large health pool (Bears, bosses, etc)

[DeEpWiCkEd]

Originally posted by Juicy Jerry:

Definitely an energy burner weapon but really fun once I found out how to deal with some of my issues first.
The most fun I've had with the build is three enemies in a 1 tile hallway and nailing one after another with crits that make then bleed and shove them into the enemy behind them damaging both, so rewarding.
Of all the weapons I've used so far the spear has taken the most time to feel decent and also required the most foreplanning.

Defensive stance is great for it and offers a little bit of survivability, definitely what I'd go with. Hold your ground syncs with it amazingly. But ya archers are your worst enemy and harder than some bosses if youre in an open area.

Anyone looking for help prioritizing enhancements I'd crit, fumble chance, and energy/energy regen
crit because the last passive of the spear tree doing % health on crit makes for GIANT damage against enemies with a large health pool (Bears, bosses, etc)

Haven't gotten that far in the tree yet so I'm curious how giant you are talking about since 4% of say, 500 health would only be 20 extra damage.

[Juicy Jerry]

Originally posted by DeEpWiCkEd:

Originally posted by Juicy Jerry:

Definitely an energy burner weapon but really fun once I found out how to deal with some of my issues first.
The most fun I've had with the build is three enemies in a 1 tile hallway and nailing one after another with crits that make then bleed and shove them into the enemy behind them damaging both, so rewarding.
Of all the weapons I've used so far the spear has taken the most time to feel decent and also required the most foreplanning.

Defensive stance is great for it and offers a little bit of survivability, definitely what I'd go with. Hold your ground syncs with it amazingly. But ya archers are your worst enemy and harder than some bosses if youre in an open area.

Anyone looking for help prioritizing enhancements I'd crit, fumble chance, and energy/energy regen
crit because the last passive of the spear tree doing % health on crit makes for GIANT damage against enemies with a large health pool (Bears, bosses, etc)

Haven't gotten that far in the tree yet so I'm curious how giant you are talking about since 4% of say, 500 health would only be 20 extra damage.

I'm sure other crit builds are higher numbers, I havent tried a dual wielding tree build yet, but the extra 4% of their MAX hp, and stacked crit efficiency, AND Jorgrim's passive that adds crit efficiency, it can get up there in extended fights.

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

I just killed the troll with a dodge spearman and this is where the tree clearly needs more work. The spearman tree's passive, especially no retreat which gives you more crit chance and wounding spearhead, the passive that stacks 4% of the target's max health are essential to defeating the troll due to the troll's naturally long max hp.

None of the active skills are helpful at fighting the troll, and I mean none of them. Pikeman's stance and the maneuver buff is a waste of energy, the two attack skills are literally useless against the troll. Don't even mention determination since the troll is literally immune to the very idea of what the spear is supposed to do.

How you defeat the troll is to get close it, hit it with seize initiative and then just hit it six times (or 3 if you spent the energy on offensive/defensive tactics) so that shockwave is now a CD 4 skill, which means you can just spam elusiveness after every shockwave and dodge every attack the troll throws at you. Repeat until dead.

After trying out the spear build, I can say with confidence the correct way to play a dodge spear is to take only enough skills in the spear tree to get all the passives, get seize the initiative, ignore tactics and stance training unless you really like pikeman's stance and just get athletics tree to max your dodge out.

Also sad that the governor doesn't have a spear reward.

[Kriminaal]

I am finding spear kind of sub par. First off, spear is awful vs skeletons. They are a pain until you out level them. But the energy to control them is too high and you do minimal damage to them so eventually they will kill you (especially archers and mages). I avoided doing the 2 dungeons with skeletons until I was able to crush them mercilessly by being OP. This would be OK if I could just swap out to another weapon for a mission but the lack of skill points per level pigeon holes you into a single build and if you choose spear, good luck.

I also don't find spear very controlling either. Sure, you get a couple skills that can immobilize them but then what ? Your normal attack is range 1 so you have to move into cqc to continue fighting or stand still until a skill pops back up or immobilize runs off. I don't see why spears normal attack isn't range 2, it does way less damage than other weapons, you choose it for the range/control!

The Troll being the end game of the game as of now is just impossible to kill with a spear using spear skills. The low damage, lack of range 2 normal attacks, high energy cost and immunity to the core use of spears is super apparent (as stated above by Cookie).

I dunno, overall I found spear frustrating. It should be good for survival but I found myself using every corner, tree and cheese tactic I could muster to survive.

[Bud Spencer]

Originally posted by Atma:

Originally posted by Adruk:

yep, I had the same impression, the only drawback is that you have to take defensive tactic, while offensive is more useful because of the cooldown skip.

However I do actually like more athletic tree for spear, mostly because of the dash skill, but leg sweep on the other part gives you both a free attack and extra means to immobilize your enemies en masse

Well, Defensive Tactic also offers energy return, which was one of the key issues you listed for Spears.

This was just the way I used the spear tree build with as it also grants you access to a passive skill that gives you bonus damage when you dont move away.