Attributes problem

[shaurun]

I've started investigating which attribute scale which skill's parameter and I think some things are not obvious and unbalanced.

For example, perception often scales damage for skills, while I would expect that from Strength. From the orger hand, I expect Dexterity to scale my dodge and counterattacks, but it gives more hit chance to my skills. And if I want dodge and counterattacks, I will scale it with Perception again. Skills block chance will rarely scale with Strength, and so on.

So while an attribute boosts one parameter purely, like Strength = weapon damage, for skills it won't correlate this way. Probably this is inetded to be a min-max protection, but to be honest this makes not much since now whatever I will deal with my attributes, I will be "average" for melee builds. I can't be "very good at one thing" to build some archetype.

There's also a balance problem with attributes. Perception is the winner for every melee build cause purely it gives you hit change, visibility range, and within skills it gives you many other things from damage to different control effects/dodge/blocks. So every build if you want to be effective is just "go Perception".

And if you want to combine things, Perception will also be your choice - it absolutely shines with range weapons, if scales well with melee, and you want it for magic because for magic you only have Willpower as the other important stat.

I don't like this situation. For sure I've played no-perception builds and so on, but comparing non-perception to perception builds it feels like "am I a masochist"? I understand that not every build should be able to deal with everything, and actually choices should be wise. But to make wise choices, things might be more obvious.

Strength = damange, block, traumas, maybe stuns, etc.
Dexterity = dodge, counterattacks, maybe bleeds, etc.
Perception = hit change, range, crits

It's simple and nice to make different atchetypes out of that. Why each skill spreads this? If I want to be Strength + Vitality barbarian, it clearly means I don't want to invest into Perception or Dexterity, I want to simply be brutal and to survive due to my HP pool and high damage, I want to have tons of damage for my attack skills instead of "same boost as from basic strength + nothing because you don't have perception but you have a better hit chance".

Do you guys share this attitude? Or am I alone?

[0000]

Hmm... Dunno, I play rat class (rogue/archer) so perception is really good.

Perception does give crit+% which is very important for rogue to replenish their stamina with 6 hit from dual wield dagger that mean free stamina Regen.

[brown29knight]

It varies (pretty wildly) depending on the weapon you are using and the build you are working on.

In some cases what you are saying is very true. in others, not so much.

For example, A shield tank build IS all Strength and Vit. Perception does not add to the damage or crit chance of shield bash or breakthrough. (crit chance is based off block chance, and damage is based off block power. Crit chance does NOT use your base crit chance for either skill, so perception adds 0% to crit.) Hit chance for both skills is fixed at 100%, so perception adds nothing but vision.

Meanwhile, you need strength for block chance and block power, and vitality for block power recovery. They are the only two important attributes for that build. EVERYTHING builds off those two attributes.

Status effect builds (like flails) often benefit more from hands eff. than other stats, so agility becomes more important than any other attribute.

Mages and ranged, without a doubt, do benefit more from perception than any other attribute.

Many skills like adrenaline surge or the survival tree skills actually get a lot of benefit from investment in vitality, so much so that they make a character almost unkillable by level 30.

It would be nice to see what specific skills you were looking at, to see where this unbalance is. I absolutely agree that it can be there with a number of builds, but without the evidence, it is hard to make broad overall conclusions. (And so much can change from patch to patch that I cannot be sure of any skills I have not personally played with in OBaS)

[shaurun]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

It would be nice to see what specific skills you were looking at, to see where this unbalance is.

Okay, let me be more specific. For example I'd like to be a dualweilding barbarian (STR + VIT) with axes for traumas.
Dual Weilding requires hands efficiency for all tier 1 abilities = scales from Dexterity. Tier 2 Enough for Everyone dodge chance scales from Perception (why if you've already forced people to invest into Dex not to make it Dex based too). Anyway I clearly see two-handed barbarian with STR is not even an option.

Okay, let's see axes.
Tier 1: Mutilating Lunge - PRC for traumas. Why not Strength? Because Strength here is used for stagger, and dexterity with strength for bleed, so I believe they've just decided to scale at least something from perception.
Tier 1: Cut Through - DEX to block chance. PRC and AGI for extra damage.
Tier 3: Execution - extra weapon damage is spread evenly between PRC, AGI and STR, so whatever attribute I'll go, benefits are same.

What it means overall? In case I'll go pure STR 30 I'll increase base weapon damage for 30%, but my weapon skills won't be more than +30% more powerfull. In this build I overall benefit more of DEX.

As you mentioned, STR + VIT would be beneficial for Shield builds. We can call it "proper build" but the thing is, balance is not about proper, balance is about lots of viable options, right? And in your case perceptive shield basher is same bad as my strength-based dual weilder.

Archery is sumply insane because it absolutely depends on PRC.
Tier 1: Taking Aim - PRC for damage, Distacting Shot - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction and PRC for dodge.
Tier 2: Startling Volley - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction, PRC for Daze chance and enemy's fumble chance.
Tier 3: Long Shot - PRC and AGI for weapon damage and traumatazing...

And it can be continued. Some attributes just better than other for no reason, there's no synergy except of some cases,

[0000]

Interesting take, but does 2Handed Sword benefit more from Perception over Strength for block and parry?

I mean having 25 str is more benefit for 2H since you have high amount of block and since you have high attack power per swing +30% is huge.

Meanwhile, when using dual wield, you need 25 perc only give you +15% crit.

+15% crit is huge for dual wield since you have 6 strikes. That mean, you throw 6 dices with 1/6 chance to hit crit.

Again I never play 2H sword. So I never know it's worth it to get +15% crit for 100% crit rate?

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by 0000:

Interesting take, but does 2Handed Sword benefit more from Perception over Strength for block and parry?

I mean having 25 str is more benefit for 2H since you have high amount of block and since you have high attack power per swing +30% is huge.

Meanwhile, when using dual wield, you need 25 perc only give you +15% crit.

+15% crit is huge for dual wield since you have 6 strikes. That mean, you throw 6 dices with 1/6 chance to hit crit.

Again I never play 2H sword. So I never know it's worth it to get +15% crit for 100% crit rate?

For 2H Sword: (only showing the parts that attributes effect, everything taken from the wiki.)

Hewing Strike: Delivers a strike to one of the target's hands with +(40 + STR + AGL)% Bleed Chance and +(2.5 * PRC)% Bodypart Damage.

If the strike does damage, applies the target with -(STR + PRC)% Move Resistance and -(AGL + PRC)% Bleed Resistance for 4 turns.

Parry: Activates "Parry" for 3 turns:

+(AGL + PRC)% Block Chance
+(STR)% Max Block Power
+(10 + PRC)% Counter Chance

Arc Cleave: Delivers a strike to five adjacent tiles with +(10 + PRC)% Weapon Damage, +(50 + STR)% Stagger Chance, and +(20 + (2 * AGL))% Bleed Chance.

Reduces the ability tree's cooldowns by 1 turns for each enemy hit by the strike and replenishes (-5 + WIL)% Max Energy for each enemy Staggered by the strike.

Heroic Charge: Performs a charge towards the target and delivers a strike with +(70 + STR + AGL)% Stagger Chance.

Each tile traveled with the charge grants this strike +PRC% Weapon Damage and +((0.25 * STR) + (0.25 * AGL))% Crit Chance.

No other 2H Sword skill is altered by attributes.

So, Hewing strike does more bodypart damage with perception, and bleeds with strength and Agi. Win for Perception, as badly wounded body parts will bleed on their own. Parry needs Strength and Perception, as you need both block chance and power in good amounts. Arc Cleave gets damage from perception, stagger from strength, and bleed from Agi, and returns more energy based on will (+ Str, as it needs to stagger to do so), Finally Heroic charge gets damage from Perception, and stagger AND crit from Str and Agi.

This does work like shaurun suggests: Perception increases damage of heroic charge and arc cleave, making it a very valuable attribute. Of note is the fact that Strength increases base weapon damage, block chance and power, and crit damage all by itself, all of which are useful for 2H sword, and then it goes on to add more block power, stagger, and crit chance to the skills, making it also extremely useful for a 2H sword build.

Given how important stagger and block are to a 2H sword user's survival, I would suggest 30 Strength, 20 Perception as the optimal way to build it, using jewelry to deal with fumble chance.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by shaurun:

Originally posted by brown29knight:

It would be nice to see what specific skills you were looking at, to see where this unbalance is.

Okay, let me be more specific. For example I'd like to be a dualweilding barbarian (STR + VIT) with axes for traumas.
Dual Weilding requires hands efficiency for all tier 1 abilities = scales from Dexterity. Tier 2 Enough for Everyone dodge chance scales from Perception (why if you've already forced people to invest into Dex not to make it Dex based too). Anyway I clearly see two-handed barbarian with STR is not even an option.

Okay, let's see axes.
Tier 1: Mutilating Lunge - PRC for traumas. Why not Strength? Because Strength here is used for stagger, and dexterity with strength for bleed, so I believe they've just decided to scale at least something from perception.
Tier 1: Cut Through - DEX to block chance. PRC and AGI for extra damage.
Tier 3: Execution - extra weapon damage is spread evenly between PRC, AGI and STR, so whatever attribute I'll go, benefits are same.

What it means overall? In case I'll go pure STR 30 I'll increase base weapon damage for 30%, but my weapon skills won't be more than +30% more powerfull. In this build I overall benefit more of DEX.

As you mentioned, STR + VIT would be beneficial for Shield builds. We can call it "proper build" but the thing is, balance is not about proper, balance is about lots of viable options, right? And in your case perceptive shield basher is same bad as my strength-based dual weilder.

Archery is sumply insane because it absolutely depends on PRC.
Tier 1: Taking Aim - PRC for damage, Distacting Shot - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction and PRC for dodge.
Tier 2: Startling Volley - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction, PRC for Daze chance and enemy's fumble chance.
Tier 3: Long Shot - PRC and AGI for weapon damage and traumatazing...

And it can be continued. Some attributes just better than other for no reason, there's no synergy except of some cases,

Thank you for your examples, I better understand your issue now. Before, I thought you were saying that some attributes, like perception, were universally better than others.

Now, as I understand it, you are saying that in a specific build, there will always be an optimal set of attributes, and that the optimal set may not be obvious because of the hidden bonuses that skills gain, and furthermore you do not always know what skill will gain which bonus from a given stat, therefore you could build a character sub-optimally and suffer for it without knowing you are doing anything wrong.

Am I correct?

[ESPRESSO_DecaF]

-_-

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by shaurun:

I've started investigating which attribute scale which skill's parameter and I think some things are not obvious and unbalanced.

For example, perception often scales damage for skills, while I would expect that from Strength. From the orger hand, I expect Dexterity to scale my dodge and counterattacks, but it gives more hit chance to my skills. And if I want dodge and counterattacks, I will scale it with Perception again. Skills block chance will rarely scale with Strength, and so on.

So while an attribute boosts one parameter purely, like Strength = weapon damage, for skills it won't correlate this way. Probably this is intended to be a min-max protection, but to be honest this makes not much since now whatever I will deal with my attributes, I will be "average" for melee builds. I can't be "very good at one thing" to build some archetype.

There's also a balance problem with attributes. Perception is the winner for every melee build cause purely it gives you hit change, visibility range, and within skills it gives you many other things from damage to different control effects/dodge/blocks. So every build if you want to be effective is just "go Perception".

And if you want to combine things, Perception will also be your choice - it absolutely shines with range weapons, if scales well with melee, and you want it for magic because for magic you only have Willpower as the other important stat.

I don't like this situation. For sure I've played no-perception builds and so on, but comparing non-perception to perception builds it feels like "am I a masochist"? I understand that not every build should be able to deal with everything, and actually choices should be wise. But to make wise choices, things might be more obvious.

Strength = damage, block, traumas, maybe stuns, etc.
Dexterity = dodge, counterattacks, maybe bleeds, etc.
Perception = hit chance, range, crits

It's simple and nice to make different archetypes out of that. Why each skill spreads this? If I want to be Strength + Vitality barbarian, it clearly means I don't want to invest into Perception or Dexterity, I want to simply be brutal and to survive due to my HP pool and high damage, I want to have tons of damage for my attack skills instead of "same boost as from basic strength + nothing because you don't have perception but you have a better hit chance".

Do you guys share this attitude? Or am I alone?

There is a lot to unpack here.

First, the primary reason why Str, Agi and Prc don't appear to affect their respective advanced stats values for attack skills, is due to balance.

Str, Agi, Prc and Wil all affect your base advanced stats (advanced stats here referring to bodypart damage, armor damage etc). If for example, your attack skill has a +crit modifier and you have 30 Prc, you end up with a skill that has very high crit chance due to Prc first giving you base crit chance, then the +crit modifier from your skill. This results in a snowball effect.

What usually happens is, the advanced stats you get from your SP (Str, Agi etc) will be higher, along with the advanced stats from stat breakpoints etc. But your skills provide an additional bonus and they are usually to compensate for whatever you lack, as well as the skills' inherent effects. However, this compensation will be weaker in comparison.

For example, if you have 20 Str 10 Agi, your skill might appear to have less +bodypart damage. But if you include the advanced stats from 20 Str (which is +30% bodypart damage), when including that +bodypart damage from your skill you actually have higher than what the skill tells you. If you instead have 10 Str 20 Agi, your skill might appear to have more +bodypart damage but you actually have less total; but your skill might have say, immobilization chance, and on that front you will gain slightly more of it.

Generally speaking, the game incentivizes you to weigh your build strategically, and across the board. If you play a no-Prc build, you must pad out your accuracy adv. stat with +acc gear. No-Prc just means less crit chance, but nothing is worse than missing your attack/shot entirely.

This is why for most of my melee builds, I go for a minimum of 15-20 Prc, this way I don't have to fully rely on skills and gear to get enough accuracy to not miss my attacks.

There are builds where I have no Prc at all but these are rare. Minimum 15 for me, even in heavy armor because heavy armor tends to weaken my accuracy. So even with 15 Prc I might still have only 80% net acc, meaning I need to pad out the gap between 80% and 100% with skills/gear (for gear, mostly the non-main armor pieces like jewelry, belt etc).

I can say for certain that Prc does have the edge at the moment due to it boosting accuracy, crit chance and armor penetration, making it more desirable than say, Str. But for builds that require some degree of block chance, Str is still good. And also, just like what I mentioned before, Str tends to boost attack skills' non-Str-related modifiers, meaning you can go with high Str and still get pretty good damage numbers.

2h axe is one such example. At first glance you'd think you should get as high Prc as possible. But 2h axe has several skills that grant +acc, and depending on your gear you can change your stats layout accordingly. So you can actually go with 30 Str and no Prc; less crit chance, but the upside is your normal attacks will hit like a truck, assuming you land the attacks. Thus, what 2h axe you use, how much +acc gear you have on you, what support skills you use, can improve your build. You will not crit as much, but if you do crit your damage will be through the roof. Not to mention because of 30 Str your attacks' bodypart damage will be sky high.

You just need to make sure whatever you do, you aren't hyper-focusing in one area and ignoring other areas that may weaken your build.

Of all the stats, Prc is definitely the safest option because you can never have enough acc. But with enemies having crit avoidance now, high Prc is not necessarily the best way to play. Sure, you have ways to reduce enemies' crit avoidance, but if you want the best of all sides, just run with balanced stats (15 everything) so you can change your gear on the fly. If you don't have enough insight on what gear to end up with by lategame, this is always the best choice.

[shaurun]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

Thank you for your examples, I better understand your issue now. Before, I thought you were saying that some attributes, like perception, were universally better than others.

Now, as I understand it, you are saying that in a specific build, there will always be an optimal set of attributes, and that the optimal set may not be obvious because of the hidden bonuses that skills gain, and furthermore you do not always know what skill will gain which bonus from a given stat, therefore you could build a character sub-optimally and suffer for it without knowing you are doing anything wrong.

Am I correct?

Not exactly. I actually see 2 issues:

1) not all atttrbutes are equal, and Perceptions is the obvious "everything in one attribute" thing because despite of pure bonuses to hit chance/range/crits it also has damage, control and defensive options hidden inside skills.
2) since most skills scale from unexpected attributes, it makes less sense to focus on some stat which should be directly responsible for whatever you want. For example, I know that Dexterity increases dodge purely and I want to invest into Dexterity only and pick all skills related to dodge. I would expect skill's dodge will also scale from Dexterity. But in reality skill's dodge scales from Perception. Which means I could actually make perception build and have a dodge chance close to Dexterity only, which is kinda sad. I want to be able to be overfocused on something specific, but at the end all builds end up with "everything is average" which makes the choices not impactful.


The "two-handed barbarian" has no proper scale from Strength, but it's not a main point of concirn, it's just an example of how this system becomes restricting to some archetypes. You can finish the game at any build (the only thing which can go wrong is some skills like tactic + counterattacks/dual weilding are not syncing well, or advanced tactics will last only for 2 shots at max with a ranged weapon) - but chosing right skills is what you call a build, right? While attributes should represent your character strenghth and weakneses, and scale skills accordingly. "Your have high strength? With the skills you can hit harder cause it's damage scales from the same attribute! You have high dexterity? Oh you will counterattack and dodge like insane with this skill!". This is what I want to see. I think this is what every homebuild-maker would actually expect.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by shaurun:

Archery is sumply insane because it absolutely depends on PRC.
Tier 1: Taking Aim - PRC for damage, Distacting Shot - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction and PRC for dodge.
Tier 2: Startling Volley - AGI to weapon damage penalty reduction, PRC for Daze chance and enemy's fumble chance.
Tier 3: Long Shot - PRC and AGI for weapon damage and traumatazing...

And it can be continued. Some attributes just better than other for no reason, there's no synergy except of some cases,

Actually, as someone who plays a lot of hunter builds, I can give you a better outlook of this specific example...

Archery doesn't absolutely depend on Prc. My current Hilda huntress only has 20 Prc, and then 15 Str and Agi, and 15 Wil. Fairly balanced stats.

The reason why only 20 Prc, is she is a sniper bow/xbow build, with no melee weapon at all. Sharpshooter Bow and Siege Crossbow (the weapons I'm using now) both have 11 range, with 20 Prc I have 13 range, with Taking Aim I have 14 range which is the max range in the game.

Later on if I find some artifacts I can even get myself Clear Vision buff which is another +2 vision and +1 range or something. So as you can see, I don't need 30 Prc. If anything, 30 Prc might be overkill, because accuracy caps out at 150%.

Currently with 13 Ranged Weapons skills learned, Taking Aim actually has +72% acc. Including my gear and stats etc, upon using Taking Aim I have something like 125% acc (I can't remember the exact number but it is well over 100%). So my chance of missing a shot is practically nil. This is only with 20 Prc.

The reason for the 15 Agi is to negate the fumble chance as Sharpshooter Bow has a huge +8%, although Siege Crossbow has none. The other reason is, Taking Aim has three effect modifiers: Knockback, Immobilization, Stagger, at (3*Str/Agi/Prc) respectively. So you can see, if I have 15 Str 15 Agi 20 Prc, I have 45% Knockback, 45% Immobilization, and 60% Stagger chances respectively.

Given how sniper bow/crossbows have high knockback and immobilization chances, Taking Aim will buff these two factors (and this scales according to how many enemies there are within 4 tiles). Now you see, running 30 Prc on an archer isn't really the best, because by the time an enemy is right in front of you, staggering him is barely useful, but knocking him back and immobilizing him (both can proc simultaneously) would be amazing.

Stagger also only lasts 2 turns (but 1 turn by the time you can take your turn), so you can't even exploit this as a ranged build. You have to stagger the enemy while he is directly adjacent to you, then swap to melee weapon (with Dexterity learned you won't spend a turn) and then smack him.

Lastly, +1 Prc = +1% weapon damage, but this is only with Taking Aim prebuffed. +1 Str = +1.5% weapon damage, with Taking Aim or not, or with any attack skill. (TA will not give you an additional +1.5% weapon damage, in fact it won't buff your weapon damage beyond the base +10% from 10 Prc if this is how much Prc you have.)

At the moment I think my Hilda is going for 20 Wil instead, because of energy replenishment (endgame heavy bow and xbow just cost a helluva lot of energy). I already use +energy drain gear on her, so most of the time her energy is topped up. However when she faces block tanks, she gets into a bit of a pickle where her bow damage can't blast through the shield (although the xbow can). This is where you see high Str shine for ranged builds, instead of high Prc. Because block-against-damage reductions come before damage-against-armor reductions. And many physical debuffs have to cause at least 1 damage or else no debuff can take effect.

[shaurun]

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

There is a lot to unpack here.

First, the primary reason why Str, Agi and Prc don't appear to affect their respective advanced stats values for attack skills, is due to balance.

Str, Agi, Prc and Wil all affect your base advanced stats (advanced stats here referring to bodypart damage, armor damage etc). If for example, your attack skill has a +crit modifier and you have 30 Prc, you end up with a skill that has very high crit chance due to Prc first giving you base crit chance, then the +crit modifier from your skill. This results in a snowball effect.

What usually happens is, the advanced stats you get from your SP (Str, Agi etc) will be higher, along with the advanced stats from stat breakpoints etc. But your skills provide an additional bonus and they are usually to compensate for whatever you lack, as well as the skills' inherent effects. However, this compensation will be weaker in comparison.

For example, if you have 20 Str 10 Agi, your skill might appear to have less +bodypart damage. But if you include the advanced stats from 20 Str (which is +30% bodypart damage), when including that +bodypart damage from your skill you actually have higher than what the skill tells you. If you instead have 10 Str 20 Agi, your skill might appear to have more +bodypart damage but you actually have less total; but your skill might have say, immobilization chance, and on that front you will gain slightly more of it.

Generally speaking, the game incentivizes you to weigh your build strategically, and across the board. If you play a no-Prc build, you must pad out your accuracy adv. stat with +acc gear. No-Prc just means less crit chance, but nothing is worse than missing your attack/shot entirely.

This is why for most of my melee builds, I go for a minimum of 15-20 Prc, this way I don't have to fully rely on skills and gear to get enough accuracy to not miss my attacks.

There are builds where I have no Prc at all but these are rare. Minimum 15 for me, even in heavy armor because heavy armor tends to weaken my accuracy. So even with 15 Prc I might still have only 80% net acc, meaning I need to pad out the gap between 80% and 100% with skills/gear (for gear, mostly the non-main armor pieces like jewelry, belt etc).

I can say for certain that Prc does have the edge at the moment due to it boosting accuracy, crit chance and armor penetration, making it more desirable than say, Str. But for builds that require some degree of block chance, Str is still good. And also, just like what I mentioned before, Str tends to boost attack skills' non-Str-related modifiers, meaning you can go with high Str and still get pretty good damage numbers.

2h axe is one such example. At first glance you'd think you should get as high Prc as possible. But 2h axe has several skills that grant +acc, and depending on your gear you can change your stats layout accordingly. So you can actually go with 30 Str and no Prc; less crit chance, but the upside is your normal attacks will hit like a truck, assuming you land the attacks. Thus, what 2h axe you use, how much +acc gear you have on you, what support skills you use, can improve your build. You will not crit as much, but if you do crit your damage will be through the roof. Not to mention because of 30 Str your attacks' bodypart damage will be sky high.

You just need to make sure whatever you do, you aren't hyper-focusing in one area and ignoring other areas that may weaken your build.

Of all the stats, Prc is definitely the safest option because you can never have enough acc. But with enemies having crit avoidance now, high Prc is not necessarily the best way to play. Sure, you have ways to reduce enemies' crit avoidance, but if you want the best of all sides, just run with balanced stats (15 everything) so you can change your gear on the fly. If you don't have enough insight on what gear to end up with by lategame, this is always the best choice.

That's exactly what I'm saying - any of my attribute choices doesn't matter because after all it will be "averaged", I mean if I go STR for damage - my skills will not scale well for damage, giving me some other stats like "more control" instead because "the game thinks it would be a balance". With such "balance" (and maybe overleveling + items) I don't need brain. But I want to use my brain and phantasy together.

I think "balance" is when you can do two-handed sword either with strength (for damage and blocks), or with dexterity (for dodge and counterattacks) or with perception (for crits and stability). And this way people will actually think like "ok I don't have a good hit chance, I need either proper skills or proper weapon stats, or to invest a bit into PRC". Right now it feels absolutely indifferent because skills will rebalance what you don't have by themselves.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by shaurun:

Not exactly. I actually see 2 issues:

1) not all atttrbutes are equal, and Perceptions is the obvious "everything in one attribute" thing because despite of pure bonuses to hit chance/range/crits it also has damage, control and defensive options hidden inside skills.
2) since most skills scale from unexpected attributes, it makes less sense to focus on some stat which should be directly responsible for whatever you want. For example, I know that Dexterity increases dodge purely and I want to invest into Dexterity only and pick all skills related to dodge. I would expect skill's dodge will also scale from Dexterity. But in reality skill's dodge scales from Perception. Which means I could actually make perception build and have a dodge chance close to Dexterity only, which is kinda sad. I want to be able to be overfocused on something specific, but at the end all builds end up with "everything is average" which makes the choices not impactful.


The "two-handed barbarian" has no proper scale from Strength, but it's not a main point of concirn, it's just an example of how this system becomes restricting to some archetypes. You can finish the game at any build (the only thing which can go wrong is some skills like tactic + counterattacks/dual weilding are not syncing well, or advanced tactics will last only for 2 shots at max with a ranged weapon) - but chosing right skills is what you call a build, right? While attributes should represent your character strenghth and weakneses, and scale skills accordingly. "Your have high strength? With the skills you can hit harder cause it's damage scales from the same attribute! You have high dexterity? Oh you will counterattack and dodge like insane with this skill!". This is what I want to see. I think this is what every homebuild-maker would actually expect.

First, let me say that we do need more transparency, and I believe that the only reason the developers have not done it is that they are tweaking these hidden values every patch, and do not want people thinking outdated information is still accurate and it becoming an issue. I suspect that by the 1.0 release, we will be able to see the hidden values.

That said, what about a "Two handed Barbarian" Who uses two handed maces?

The only time that perception scales damage in the 2H Mace tree is if using "Forceful Slam" on an already immobile/stunned/dazed/staggered enemy. It also adds armor damage to "unstoppable force" and stun chance and bodypart damage to "skull crusher"

Strength meanwhile scales knockback on "unstoppable force", crit chance on "forceful slam" and Stun chance on "Skull crusher"

The crit chance on forceful slam makes it the higher damage dealing attribute of the two using forceful slam, and neither adds damage to any other skill, other than what the stat adds to your character normally.

So this would seem to be an example where the hidden modifiers are so minor as to not affect your final build. A STR based warrior would still do more damage than any other, and a PRC based one would still be more accurate and crit more.

We both agree that there are places that this IS an issue, but I think overall, there are also a number of builds where the obvious way to play IS the best way to play as well.

Obviously more transparency will help, but I doubt we will get it before the 1.0 release of the game. (just my opinion)

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by shaurun:

1) not all atttrbutes are equal, and Perceptions is the obvious "everything in one attribute" thing because despite of pure bonuses to hit chance/range/crits it also has damage, control and defensive options hidden inside skills.

Well... Yes, in a simple nutshell. But like I said, you can get +acc gear later on. I will admit, getting some Prc early on will help you. And generally speaking if you don't want to rely on gear and skills to pad out your accuracy gaps, yes Prc is the most effective stat.

However, this also depends on what build you play. Many people consider Spear to be naturally good with high Prc, but I actually think high Vit/Wil is better for Spear, because you need to spam your attack skills to exploit your 2-tile advantage. High Prc is nice, but Pikeman Stance fixes your accuracy and you can use gear to compensate.

It is very difficult to make the argument that "Prc is not needed for a build" because every build needs accuracy and Prc is the easiest source for it.

Originally posted by shaurun:

2) since most skills scale from unexpected attributes, it makes less sense to focus on some stat which should be directly responsible for whatever you want. For example, I know that Dexterity increases dodge purely and I want to invest into Dexterity only and pick all skills related to dodge. I would expect skill's dodge will also scale from Dexterity. But in reality skill's dodge scales from Perception. Which means I could actually make perception build and have a dodge chance close to Dexterity only, which is kinda sad. I want to be able to be overfocused on something specific, but at the end all builds end up with "everything is average" which makes the choices not impactful.

This skill you're talking about seems to be Elusiveness. It does scale to Prc and Vit. Like I explained before, stats are meant to directly benefit your raw advanced stats (dodge chance, bodypart damage etc), while balancing out your sub-stats on your skills so that you don't end up as a complete glass cannon.

Take Elusiveness for example (which seems to be your example here): Elusiveness grants dodge chance per stack, at 0.4% per Prc. It also grants -dmg taken at -0.2% per Vit. Thus at 10 Prc 10 Vit, you have +4% dodge chance and -2% dmg taken. At 5 stacks, you're looking at +20% dodge chance and -10% dmg taken.

Now, imagine you have 30 Prc. This means at base (without including gear), you have 1% dodge chance (base chance is 1% I think), with Elusiveness at 1 stack you have +12% dodge chance, -2% dmg taken. If you have 5 stacks, it is +60% dodge chance, -10% dmg taken. Hence, net is 61% dodge chance. With gear, you can definitely reach past 100% dodge chance.

If you have 30 Agi 10 Vit instead, you have +20% dodge chance by default. This means with Elusiveness, you only have another +20% dodge chance, thus net is +41% dodge chance. It might seem like a weaker alternative, but once you factor in your gear and other skills, you still reach 100% dodge chance (endgame gear can get you around 60% dodge chance fairly easily) and the decay is slightly slower due to your base dodge chance being +20% higher.

This is my calculation and I don't really play much dodge builds these days, so there will be other people who can advise more. However, you can see how this works... And also, Elusiveness is not meant to be a tanking ability, it is just there to give you a moment of near-invulnerability so you can kill the enemy before you lose Elusiveness (it only lasts 6 turns I think).

Originally posted by shaurun:

The "two-handed barbarian" has no proper scale from Strength, but it's not a main point of concern, it's just an example of how this system becomes restricting to some archetypes. You can finish the game at any build (the only thing which can go wrong is some skills like tactic + counterattacks/dual wielding are not syncing well, or advanced tactics will last only for 2 shots at max with a ranged weapon) - but choosing right skills is what you call a build, right? While attributes should represent your character's strengths and weaknesses, and scale skills accordingly. "Your have high strength? With the skills you can hit harder cause it's damage scales from the same attribute! You have high dexterity? Oh you will counterattack and dodge like insane with this skill!". This is what I want to see. I think this is what every homebuild-maker would actually expect.

If you're saying the game seems to favor high-crit builds more, I can agree to some degree. The introduction of crit avoidance sub-stat is actually to counteract this. I think most of the time we don't see how effective crit avoidance is until we get to later stages of the game, and we don't really see how effective it is when we have specific builds that just deletes the enemies' crit avoidance (Flurry of Strikes + Intimidation, or Double Lunge + Intimidation).

But I used to dump on 2h axe... Until I fully play one instead of just dabbling. And I can say, 2h axe is very strong. The stats might not appear in a straightforward manner but I know once I break a bodypart, the enemy just gets wrecked.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by shaurun:

That's exactly what I'm saying - any of my attribute choices doesn't matter because after all it will be "averaged", I mean if I go STR for damage - my skills will not scale well for damage, giving me some other stats like "more control" instead because "the game thinks it would be a balance". With such "balance" (and maybe overleveling + items) I don't need brain. But I want to use my brain and phantasy together.

I think "balance" is when you can do two-handed sword either with strength (for damage and blocks), or with dexterity (for dodge and counterattacks) or with perception (for crits and stability). And this way people will actually think like "ok I don't have a good hit chance, I need either proper skills or proper weapon stats, or to invest a bit into PRC". Right now it feels absolutely indifferent because skills will rebalance what you don't have by themselves.

The stats aren't averaged.

The ratio is about 2:1. And the "1" portion only works when you're using attack skills.

Basically, +1.5% weapon dmg per Str, vs +1% weapon dmg per Prc when using attack skill. Massive difference.

In older versions of the game, stats used to stack on top of skill modifiers i.e. Str used to increase weapon damage of attack skills etc. It led to a huge imbalance due to players just dumping into Str, as long as they could secure enough accuracy (back then enemies didn't have so many dodge skills, more like dodge mechanics were bad at the time), you really didn't need anything other than high Str. I'm talking pre-CoG kind of old.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

Obviously more transparency will help, but I doubt we will get it before the 1.0 release of the game. (just my opinion)

If you're talking about stat scaling for skill modifiers being transparent in the game itself... unfortunately, devs don't want to do it. It clutters the UI, they said.

This is where I disagree with them. But personal opinions. :)

I get where they're coming from though. They're saying, casual players won't care much. Min-maxers will, but if they want to min-max then they can refer to a wiki or the game book (supporter pack).