Saturday's Heroes of Steel Question - Basic or Empowered?

[fallen]

Every character has at least one basic and at least one empowered attack.

1. Which are you using?
2. How often for each?
3. What causes you to switch?

I won't say any more, as I want your honest answers

[Lesleyr]

It depends on the character. The thief and cleric (except for healing talents) I tend to use basic but the Outlander I use empowered. It depends on the strength of the enemy (primary consideration) and how much Spirit (secondary consideration) the character has left. I suppose it boils down to my perception of the strength of the basic attack.

[beuns]

1) I mostly use the empowered attack with my outlander since he don't need as many SP than the other 3 and simple attack for the cleric and the thief but only firebolt for the wizard.

2) the answer to this one is covered in 1)...

3) when I get back to simple (with my outlander) it's often to preserve SP and on the contrary when I use empowered attack with the cleric it's when I need to finish off some monster. I never use empowered attack with the thief and only magical with the wizard.

[slayernz]

Before I discovered camp fires, I relied heavily on basic attacks, saving my SP for more important things
After getting it,
Outlander - mix of Basic and Empowered
Thief - Almost always basic
Cleric - always basic (healing is so much more an important use of SP)
Evil shifty-eyed mage ... I don't actually think he's done a melee attack. He sends fireballs from the rear of the party

[rabidbite]

Pretty much the same thing as the last 3 posters.

[evmaker]

Pretty much along the lines of what slayernz said for me also.

I do shift to empowered attacks with the thief, or focus mainly on empowered attacks for the outlander if I'm fighting tougher enemies kind of deal.

[eldur]

I prefer to save SP for heals, buffs or utility talents. I will also use empowered attacks on harder enemies if I have spare SP.

The wizard uses fireballs, but I would prefer to use his SP for buffs if only his default attack was some sort of ranged attack rather than a staff thump that places him in melee. My cleric would also love some sort of ranged attack, even if it was much weaker than the thief.

My thief burns through SP so fast outside of combat because of the high cost of utility spells that I usually can't afford to think about empowered attacks. I've had to use spirit potions just to pick locks and I find myself just eating trap damage rather than trying to disarm.

I would prefer if things like lock picking and trap disarming were class perks that didn't use SP or if they were long term buffs. The same with farsight scouting. I love the idea, but it burns SP so fast. Maybe a buff that expands the scouting vision radius instead?

[fallen]

eldur - thanks for the feedback. We are smoothing out the SP costs of talents and hope that it improves the experience and makes some of these utility abilities more appealing!

[rabidbite]

Oct 27, 2013 9:38:36 GMT -5 fallen said:

eldur - thanks for the feedback. We are smoothing out the SP costs of talents and hope that it improves the experience and makes some of these utility abilities more appealing!

There is a way to solve this and still keep the game balanced. Significantly increase the difficulty of the enemies AND provide for more mana regeneration. That way the fights become very difficult without the use of the special skills. This forces us to use the spirit/mana consuming skills, but with the better mana/spirit regeneration, the fights don't break us if we survive.

Hope the suggestion is appealing.


rabid

[beuns]

[quote author="rabidbite" source="/post/61225/There is a way to solve this and still keep the game balanced. Significantly increase the difficulty of the enemies AND provide for more mana regeneration. That way the fights become very difficult without the use of the special skills. This forces us to use the spirit/mana consuming skills, but with the better mana/spirit regeneration, the fights don't break us if we survive.

Hope the suggestion is appealing.


rabid[/quote]


I find this appealing ! SP regeneration would be the way to improve costs without improving difficulty. +1

[eldur]

Oct 27, 2013 9:56:05 GMT -5 rabidbite said:

Oct 27, 2013 9:38:36 GMT -5 fallen said:

eldur - thanks for the feedback. We are smoothing out the SP costs of talents and hope that it improves the experience and makes some of these utility abilities more appealing!

There is a way to solve this and still keep the game balanced. Significantly increase the difficulty of the enemies AND provide for more mana regeneration. That way the fights become very difficult without the use of the special skills. This forces us to use the spirit/mana consuming skills, but with the better mana/spirit regeneration, the fights don't break us if we survive.
Hope the suggestion is appealing.
rabid

The idea of SP regeneration is one I've been thinking about.

As it is now, your SP pool is a resource pool of things you can do between camp rests.

Without any SP regeneration, you become reliant on knowing where your next rest is going to be.

What this means is that I tend to be very conservative with SP usage as I'd prefer to keep moving forward seeking new camps.

If I haven't found a new camp and I'm low or out of SP, I end up circling back to the old camp which slows down the pacing of the game a bit. (camp, explore/kill, circle back to camp, explore/kill, etc until I find a new camp to work from)

With some sort of regeneration, you are not as reliant on camps or potion supplies which might encourage some diversification into skill usage. (rather than: outlander focus on damage mitigation, cleric focus on healing, everyone else stay out of trouble and help with the kill or we need to head back to camp)

Some ideas for SP regeneration:
1) Tie SP regen into a stat so that your spirit bar gradually fills up over time. Maybe use a stat like Knowledge or Will and tie the regen amount into the total spirit percentage (rather than a flat number to encourage diversification of stat points)

With this idea, your characters would have the option to balance damage vs sustainability.

2) Give certain characters the ability to cast a spell that provides regeneration effects (SP or HP). Maybe the cleric would cast this on single players (perhaps herself) and the bard would focus more on AoE regen effects.

3) Allow the characters to take a breather by setting a mini-camp when no monsters are around. The only benefits would be regenerating HP/SP. Perhaps there would also be a risk of a random encounter.

4) More potion drops? I've never really been a huge fan of this, but I've seen it work in diablo-like games.

[fallen]

Oct 27, 2013 10:44:49 GMT -5 eldur said:

3) Allow the characters to take a breather by setting a mini-camp when no monsters are around. The only benefits would be regenerating HP/SP. Perhaps there would also be a risk of a random encounter.

This is the one that we have been considering for a while now. Resting is currently not available in the game and we are still discussing it.

tresebrothers.blogspot.com/2013/09/heroes-of-steel-rest-and-recovery.html

EDIT: in a turn-based game, SP regeneration does not appeal to me unless it is tied to a compelling event. Otherwise, you are given an incentive to stand around after each combat and wait until you are fully regenerated. This greatly impacts the game authors ability to push you quickly through hard areas, enforce starvation mode, and cause you to have a constant stop-and-go turn cycle. These are some other things to consider when thinking about this section of the game!

[slayernz]

Oct 27, 2013 11:31:45 GMT -5 fallen said:

EDIT: in a turn-based game, SP regeneration does not appeal to me unless it is tied to a compelling event. Otherwise, you are given an incentive to stand around after each combat and wait until you are fully regenerated. This greatly impacts the game authors ability to push you quickly through hard areas, enforce starvation mode, and cause you to have a constant stop-and-go turn cycle. These are some other things to consider when thinking about this section of the game!

THIS is why you get paid the big GP! I was pondering on the SP regen thing until you quite rightly pointed out the logical flaw with a game such as this. I've put a suggestion in on another thread regarding SP regen just for the wizard, which might work so long as it wasn't guaranteed regenerating.

Anyway, if you had SP regen, people would start suggesting we have HP regen, and again, standing in a corner of the dungeon for a few minutes or longer might be sufficient to fully recharge your squad of lowly bad-asses.

[beuns]

Maybe that SP/HP regen problem could find a solution in a spell : cleric could have a spell that allows it during some turns (say 3/4) but only to other, that way it becomes a strategic issue : "should I spend SP with my cleric to allow my wizard to kill those monsters but I'm not sure to be able to heal every wounded afterwards ?"

[johndramey]

For the record, I'm against SP/HP "passive" regen. If there is some skill or ability, well that might be a different story.

Oct 27, 2013 16:39:19 GMT -5 beuns said:

Maybe that SP/HP regen problem could find a solution in a spell : cleric could have a spell that allows it during some turns (say 3/4) but only to other, that way it becomes a strategic issue : "should I spend SP with my cleric to allow my wizard to kill those monsters but I'm not sure to be able to heal every wounded afterwards ?"

As far as I remember, there is currently a cleric skill the replenishes SP? Granted, it is one of the later talents that we don't have access to at the moment, but boot up your game and look at the talent Sacrifice[/b]. I think Cory and Andrew had your exact thought

On to the question of the thread....

1) I find myself almost always using the emopowered attack. Basically, unless I'm fairly certain I can kill the enemy in one/two hits without the extra oomph of the empowered, I choose empowered every time. It seems other's aren't really doing this, but I don't really see the risk in it. My Outlander starts with 80 Spirit at level one, and a Crushing Blow/Savage Sweep takes 2 spirit to cast. That's 40 uses before I even need to think about using a potion, and more often than not I can run back to a fire if I really want to be totally efficient about using my items. The Cleric and Thief each use 3 spirit for their empowered attacks, which is really just beans. I pretty much use SP skills every round on every character unless I'm dealing a coup de grace.

2) How often? Pretty much..... 90% of the time?

3) I'll use basic attacks if and only if I know that the empowerment will be wasted. Let's say I just dealt 13 damage to a spider, I know 1 or 2 damage will take it down. Shoot it with a basic arrow!

I gotta start work right now, but I have a couple comments on empowered attacks that I'll post when I get a bit of a break.