Let’s talk about Spell accuracy.

[matrim]

Loving me some Immolation Kjartan. I am taking a look at the number of accuracy dice he can get and it’s admittedly got me concerned. Spell accuracy is made up of staff bonuses, armour bonuses, accessories, knowledge, and the skill level. This has got Kjartan (and Vincent or Kyera) behind on 2 fronts. The first is the fact that there are no craftable staves (except for the 1 at the start, which is awesome but does not solve accuracy issues) and no craftable robes for them. This means they cannot get the benefit that the other characters get from all those Bloodstones. The second is that spells have no innate accuracy that comes along with the weapon. The spell scales accuracywise similarly to empowered attacks but misses out on the scaling accuracy of the weapon that those empowered attacks get. The end result is that by midgame, these spells are missing about 6 strong dice and endgame they are missing 10+ strong dice. This causes them to miss FAR more often and missing is so devastating. They are SP intensive and a miss causes you to lose any sp drain. Also, their AoE nature means accuracy is more important because missing the original target is an automatic miss on ALL affected monsters and even if I do hit the original target I still have to roll against every other monsters evade after. They get a ton of downsides to a missed target while working with less strong dice. By episode 3, Kjartan or spell Vincent is typically causing a quarter of the damage of Vraes/Kincaid/Selen/Tamilin. In fact, I often don’t bother casting with them because a missed spell (which is about 50% of my spell casts, and I have lots of accuracy buffs on them) costs about 1/6th of their sp pool.

Possible Solutions: Give spells the accuracy (in strong dice) of the staff that the caster is wielding.
Make knowledge give strong dice instead of normal dice for accuracy
Raise the accuracy of the talents.

[fallen]

Thanks for the feedback! Will take a look at it in the future after the story is finished.

[crimsonking]

Jun 4, 2018 17:12:55 GMT -5 matrim said:

The second is that spells have no innate accuracy that comes along with the weapon. The spell scales accuracywise similarly to empowered attacks but misses out on the scaling accuracy of the weapon that those empowered attacks get.

They get the dice from the staff though. Also you would have to compare enemy defense against magic vs. defense against weapons too. My characters get a lot more dice to defend against melee than ranged, and usually a few dice less to defend against spells rather than ranged weapons, but that's build dependent. If that also holds true for enemies that would compensate for a lot of attack dice. Also, Vince has a fantastic accuracy self buff. Kjartan is lacking that though, and would rely on others buffing him and debuffing enemy dodge.

The big issue is that staves and robes cannot be crafted, but that's a general issue, not only accuracy related.

[matrim]

crimsonking Spells do not get the accuracy that is base on staves, although they do benefit from ranged accuracy that appears on it. The problem with that is that those are missing on most staves. The stat issue I feel is also not true. You have more dice for physical defense because you build dex instead of knowledge on most characters (as you should!), however, I doubt the TBs have built monsters in the same way. I am not able to look at it but I suspect that if they even have separate values for spell and missile damage then they are probably a lot more even than the characters will be because monsters stat growth is probably pretty even. There might be a 1 or 2 normal dice difference but that in no way makes up for the 6-11 strong dice that weapons add from episode 2 on. One of the selling points of big AP weapons is the added accuracy so that big attack does not whiff, spells have no such advantage. Anecdotally, Kjartan endgame hits about 60% with maxed Immolation, 2 accuracy items, and 8 Flanking Unity, compared to any of the other characters which are about 95% (except against late orcs). Of note is that Kjartan is the only one I put accuracy items on (2, for a total of 12ish accuracy) and he still lags behind because the others have legendary and epic crafted weapons rolling in.

[fallen]

Jun 4, 2018 21:30:44 GMT -5 fallen said:

Thanks for the feedback! Will take a look at it in the future after the story is finished.

Seems like an area we could improve. matrim is correct that the accuracy stat on a staff (base, not the text in gold for Ranged Accuracy) is not given to Spells.

[crimsonking]

Jun 5, 2018 20:21:20 GMT -5 fallen said:

Jun 4, 2018 21:30:44 GMT -5 fallen said:

Thanks for the feedback! Will take a look at it in the future after the story is finished.

Seems like an area we could improve. matrim is correct that the accuracy stat on a staff (base, not the text in gold for Ranged Accuracy) is not given to Spells.

Which is probably easy to change.

Still, I am quite sure that Vincent with EotS and TB doesn't have that issue. Another option would be to give Kjartan some means to raise accuracy. Maybe switch the accuracy and crit buffs on BB and Vincent's TB.

[phaze]

I’m all for more spell accuracy given the shear need to consistently hit multiple enemies for impact. I think this most impacts kyera and Kjartan.

However I also have found reasonable success with their ranged attacks generally. With Acc pools of a 15s and generally 50+ regular dice both my kyera and Kjartan hit pretty consistently. Note, I usually stack multiple -dodge curses, usually 2-3. 3 on key targets resulting in -15 to -25 dodge to the enemies.

In battles where firestorm or banishment shine against summoners, I often would hit 5-10 enemies per shot which seemed reasonable. It is actually hard to get to the upper ranged because 15-20 enemy bunches are rare.

My bigger beef with spells is that damage doesn’t pace with AP powered weapon attacks when getting crits and crit dam.

My leading party uses the following attacks.

Kincaid DS - dam 39-148 with 48% crit, 120% crit dam, 7 attacks and hitting groups of enemies, plus assorted elemental that is boosted by crit dam

Selen - PS 45-220 dam (maxed special talent), 51% crit, 220% crit dam, 3 attacks, group attacks

Kjartan, Imm 76-249, 12% crit, some amount of crit dam from the new patch, 2 attacks

Kyera, banishment 93-286, 14% crit, 1 attack.

Ranged spells are powerful but really more of an opening salvo to soften enemies a touch while physical attacks clear the field with sheer damage delivery.

With enemy hp at the end game scaling into the thousands, spell attacks kinda took a back seat once crit and crit dam could be achieved at such high levels with low ap attacks.





Edit - I know this doesn’t address total character design. The caster characters have curses, etc. and are supports to enhance the party defensively or weaken enemies. The game design works beautifully. Kyera and Kjartan were never intended to be damage dealers exactly like the main offensive four (Vraes, Kincaid, Selen, tamilin). Vincent is an exception I think with LS and EotS and ability to get high criticals and a 2 ap spell.

[contributor]

I've got a high level KJ build right now. He seems to be doing fine hitting with level 10 Immolation. His supporting accuracy skills are all maxed but he doesn't have much for +Acc gear. We're heavily debuffing dodge which helps too. One balancing question I have is how deep enemy knowledge pools go. If they use the same formulas for determining magic attack avoidance as our characters, then it might balance out.

As for damage, I would second what phaze said. I really don't think about my Immolation KJ as a damage dealer. I use Immolation more to get that -16% crit debuff. Very rarely it actually kills someone and it allows him to take out some of the bonus XP mobs to keep up with the group. That's normally after everyone else has sufficiently whittled them down though. I wonder though what I could do with KJ if he wasn't Ironmaning and supporting with Ash. It's possible that with the right gear bonuses he could contribute significant damage. Right now though he is a very powerful force multiplier for everyone else.