Talents that need some love

[wascalwywabbit]

I figured the sp advantage was intended to mostly go to heals, sacrifice and ranged holy damage. It just seemed slightly off her having weaker attack, in acc if not dmg, and it costing more. I know she's not Fyona for melee, but still. It's not like I suddenly want ZS, CD or reckoning.

I guess I just don't see a reason to build her combined melee/support when after ten+ attacks she burned through an extra 100sp compared to anyone besides maybe storm strike vincent who doesn't need to heal or sacrifice. I'm sure others who have different sp levels also have similar cost to use their low lvl empowered attacks.

Maybe I'm not giving her enough credit for melee, but I didn't find her useful past normal in melee so had to switch to ranged, like holy rollers, or pure support like you use, Cory. Others probably have a better idea than I for it I guess.

[fallen]

wascalwywabbit - sorry that you dislike the balance. I've looked over the math and see nothing that I intend to change on our side. I don't think its easy to compare Talent to Talent across characters.

I've always enjoying playing Kyera as a melee striker, but it's one of the three roles she generally fills in my teams.

EDIT: That said, raise your Strength to get the most out of the Talent!

[wascalwywabbit]

Feb 21, 2016 18:50:19 GMT -5 fallen said:

wascalwywabbit - sorry that you dislike the balance. I've looked over the math and see nothing that I intend to change on our side. I don't think its easy to compare Talent to Talent across characters.

I've always enjoying playing Kyera as a melee striker, but it's one of the three roles she generally fills in my teams.

EDIT: That said, raise your Strength to get the most out of the Talent!

I think especially considering sacrifice you can compare sp per sp across characters... It's much more efficient to gives Kyera's sp to the more deadly characters than for her to spend it on melee attacks herself - using their more potent attacks becomes more viable when not in such a sp deficit. Even without sacrifice it will affect the total potions drank as a group negatively vs another more sp efficient attack by a different character. Sacrifice and Banishment, range in general, are why I play her vs when I'm playing Fyona. I just don't see her as a cost effective melee off-tank at all, though I'd love to have it a bit better 1 range option. I thought that even though she can't be as deadly, or as sturdy with a mace/hammer, she could at least approach the efficiency of Fyona in melee. Except for Tam and Kjartan, the other are gonna benefit from str too in many cases, so it's still comparable to the others to me.

I guess in sum I see comparability in absolute values too, in addition to relative sp, while you and Cory see it relative to each chars sp more or less exclusively I guess.

Oh well, not game breaking, guess I should view it as a challenge.

[En1gma]

Keep in mind also that she ends up with an absolutely massive SP pool once you get farther into the game. Bump up her INT and slap on a +SP Gear and get to work smiting the smite-worthy

[En1gma]

Kyera on my farthest team has 1020 HP and 812 SP (lvl 37), and acts as an off off-tank, cursing AP and closing the distance with a few ranged attackers to tank some hits. She hits pretty well, but she can just use any talent with reckless abandon, because she gets so much support from high end gear.

She will never be Fyona's peer when it comes to melee combat, but she can hold her own and dole out some damage when the situation warrants

[matrim]

I think the sp cost of Kyera's smite is fine. Part of the allure of a sacrifice build is is that you can transfer that sp extremely efficiently to a more efficient character. However for people that do not go sacrifice build there needs to be a balance in place to counter her much higher natural spirit pool.

[Cory Trese]

My current Level 37 has Smite 10, 994HP and 1104SP.

I use Smite all the time with her, tend to build either melee, buffing or healing about one third of the time.

I find her full support the most fun to play, but her Smite builds are very effective and she can do a lot of damage with SP and Holy gear, plus drain SP on her is great because she can then recycle it to SP or HP.

[fallen]

Feb 21, 2016 19:42:57 GMT -5 wascalwywabbit said:

I think especially considering sacrifice you can compare sp per sp across characters... It's much more efficient to gives Kyera's sp to the more deadly characters than for her to spend it on melee attacks herself - using their more potent attacks becomes more viable when not in such a sp deficit.

That's a really interesting thing to look at it. Sacrifice costs AP, and other character's attacks cost AP, so to use a Sacrifice-based strategy is sacrificing a lot of AP that could be used for other things. I don't think its as black and white as you're casting it

[fallen]

Feb 21, 2016 20:14:00 GMT -5 En1gma said:

Kyera on my farthest team has 1020 HP and 812 SP (lvl 37), and acts as an off off-tank, cursing AP and closing the distance with a few ranged attackers to tank some hits. She hits pretty well, but she can just use any talent with reckless abandon, because she gets so much support from high end gear.

She will never be Fyona's peer when it comes to melee combat, but she can hold her own and dole out some damage when the situation warrants

Great post - great to see your Kyera playing all 3 roles, curse, ranged, and striker!

[Cory Trese]

I think matrim states it well. And En1gma sees the importance of each character being unique. If they're all the same, if all SP costs and balance equations are calibrated to match then the variety of the game is lost.

I don't only "see it relative to each chars sp more or less exclusively" because I tend to look at the big picture of the game, in context, against the overall balance and design backdrop.

Like I said earlier, if you take any single element out of context it will appear broken. Context creates meaning. Without context, there can be not relativity which is key to comparative and quantitative balancing.

[wascalwywabbit]

Well at the very least I got some interesting posts to read outta this.

[xdesperado]

Steel and Shadow!
Selen is my favorite hero regardless just wish her level 18 talent was somehow better and would force me to make the hard calls that some of the other heroes do regarding what talents to level and when to do so.
Not that she doesn't have a bunch of awesome talents already that have you making tough decisions, but, and this is just my opinion, the level 18 talent for any Hero should be something really special and Steel and Shadow just doesn't hit the mark for me.

[wascalwywabbit]

So... quantifying the numbers since its used as an argument.

Compared to Fyona: Kyera gets 40% more starting sp. 33% more sp per level. 18% more per point of int. Smiting blow cost ~60% more than hammer blow and hammer blow does a bit more damage.

Hmm these grapes taste sour. :-p

[wascalwywabbit]

Feb 21, 2016 21:39:49 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

...Steel and Shadow just doesn't hit the mark for me.

Or anyone...

[xdesperado]

Feb 21, 2016 22:03:34 GMT -5 wascalwywabbit said:

So... quantifying the numbers since its used as an argument.

Compared to Fyona: Kyera gets 40% more starting sp. 33% more sp per level. 18% more per point of int. Smiting blow cost ~60% more than hammer blow and hammer blow does a bit more damage.

Hmm these grapes taste sour. :-p

Fyona is basically a warrior with some healing/cursing ability.
Kyera is basically a spell caster with some limited melee ability.

You can make Kyera a reasonable melee/off tank character but that's not necessarily the most effective/efficient way to build her.

Despite all the possible ways to build any of the heroes, the party as a whole will be stronger/more capable if you define a roll for each of them and focus them on that. Doing this while keeping their built in strengths in mind and creating synergy for entire party will give the best results.