Nightmare KKKS

[xdesperado]

Party just reached level 7 working on training and need recommendations on Kincaid who I'm still learning.

Currently he's got Sure Parry 4, Darting Steel 1, Lunge 1, Cunning Footwork 1.
His main job in party is to shield the others from attack as much as possible, with offense being secondary. Selen is my primary attack option and has Pinning Shot 5 already, after this she'll split between Punishing Blades, Dance of Shadows and Quick Silver Defense.
Kjarten has Choking Ash 5, Burning Blades 1, Firebolt 1, Pureflame Shield 1. He'll be splitting future trains between CA and BB until level 18 when he goes Firestorm.
Kyera has Ethereal Anguish 4, Purifying Breeze 2, Smiting Blow 1, Myshana's Tears 1. I'll likely split future training between PB, EA and a rank or two of Holy Retribution that I'll later Re-Spec into Banishment.
So back to Kincaid, do I keep adding to Cunning Footwork, start spliting with Live by the Blade or give him more offense with an eye to futue AoE attacks from either Darting Steel (love this talent lol) or Crippling Strikes? If I go all defensive with him now then thinking Storm of Steel when it's available.

[wascalwywabbit]

If you're using it, DS is great to get at least lvl 5 when it gains 3 wedge AoE.

CS lvl 6 is a great AoE curse attack. Nerfs enemy ap AND dmg. Taking pressure of of Kyera for ap removal. Between this, MS and PB you can really nerf enemy dmg big time.

CF is Kincaid's primary dodge AND crit talent, plus gives up to +6 acc and parry both. His best self buff imho.

LbtB should be your next point inmo. It will really help maximize attack efficiency.

FU really helps weak weapons like 1 ap blades and TKs of any type. If you're going both CA and PB to nerf armor it's nonessential, but still helps speed killing things. I like lvling this after I get DS or CS to AoE.

Sure parry is probably good at 4 for a while until you really need that 3rd block. Don't forget to re-up it when he takes a melee hit or two cause it will weaken every melee hit he takes and completely expire once it has blocked its sure blocks iirc.

Lunge is probably -never- worth lvling. His other talents are just better.

Flashing blades is good, but I prefer CF, FU and his AoE attacks to maximize his and other's offense. CS is not as great offensively as the others, but it does provide good defense as well for the whole team.

CdrPlatypus likes CF first since it gives decent defense and offense to Kincaid - more dodge style, followed by some LbtB, SP and at least a point of SoS for AoE. I go max con and cursing AoE and/or FU for team boosting. Both work out for nightmare.

[xdesperado]

wascalwywabbit
Thanks for rundown.
Think this point I'll stick in Cunning Footwork, will start his Live by the Blade when I start Selen on Dance of Shadows and keep their +MP more or less even from there.
Crippling Strikes looks pretty tempting but wondering if the party will really get full benefit from it with Selen already having Pinning Shot 5 and Kyera taking Ethereal Anguish to at least 6.
Both Kincaid and Selen are going to be using 1AP light blades. Think I'll likely take your advice on Darting Steel though and run it up to 5, though figuring out the best time to do so is the issue lol. (Using 1AP throwing knives btw)

[matrim]

I really like the synergy that Kincaid and Selen have, and by that I mean they are both boss tanks and can let the rest of your team go hog wild. Suggestion: at level 9 respec Selen to straight QSD, every point, nothing will hit her till episode 3. Keep Kincaid semi-tank but save your next 3 skill points till 12 and dump them all into FU. Kjartan should focus on straight choking ash, after that slowly build his MS along with the offensive spell of your choice (I recommend firebolt as it keeps his spirit consumption at a minimum). Do not bother with Burning Blades as the fire damage is essentially worthless unless you can start dinging resist (you won't be able to with this setup). The handful of situations where it helps is not worth the cost. Kyera should probably be spirit battery build. Get sacrifice to 2 EA to 6 and after this WS to 10 (you can wait on Warder's shield for a bit because of how crazy tanky Selen is, you might want to opt for 1 point in early as it is a really good investment). Battery build obviously requires a lore focus but after that build hammers. Once you get to episode 3 and get the heartbeats of summer (I recommend keeping these) then melee with her (give her as much SP drain and accuracy as possible, with CA she should hit near 100%) she will have essentially limitless spirit to feed to everyone (Kjartan will need the most upkeep). Double tank is extremely safe for ironman and it opens up a ton of options making previously hard pincer fights cakewalks. Items to focus are +damage and acc, sp drain for maintenance but Kjartan will never be self running, it's possible for everyone else. 1ap weapons are king against low armor targets but keep a second weapon on hand for big armor warlords and trolls. Avoid elemental damage of any kind. 1 tank item for Selen and Kincaid at the beginning of episode 3 keeps them invulnerable till episode 4. I haven't played passed that so I cannot comment as to the effectiveness in episode 4.

[phaze]

I run this build and love it. It is my top ironman party.

Gotta disagree with matrim on BB. It is a feature on my party. The crit chance synergies nicely with Kincaid and Selen using area attacks. Crits all day long with FU pushing damage. Running storm of steel and pinning shot levels groups of enemies.

Running crit parties, elemental damage is multiplied through and definitely adds punch to their attacks. As many enemies are weak against fire, it matters.

Also, kjartan is limited to only 7 ap. You can through a curse and one attack, so pick wisely. BB passively to overall damage and increases overall party damage output for 0 ap.

[matrim]

A valid point on the BB. If you were to go this way I would prioritize crit over +damage. Kincaid and Selen should be able to hit 40ish%. With this kind of crit it makes your fire damage worthwhile plus the fact that everything has 0 armor means your crits are all going to be big. 2 AP weapons should be close to as good as 1 AP weapons in this case but 1 AP still trump because of the increased chances to get crits. Any crit is going to devastate mobs, eking out the extra 100ish damage a 2 AP weapon would give is not worth missing 4 possible crits a round.

[xdesperado]

As far as Elemental Damage goes, so far party has been very lucky getting gear with +Fire damage.
Selen currently has +14 Fire damage from gear, Kincaid has +4 Fire +4 dmg and 4% SP drain (7% in melee), Kjarten has +6 Fire, +2 Ice Lightning Earth and Holy, +4 dmg, and Kyera has +6 Holy.

If the this trend of +Fire damage gear continues Burning Blades at level 5-6 should add significant damage to plenty of attacks while ramping up the critical %.
It's a long duration buff that helps entire party deal more damage and allows Kjarten to focus first on hitting everything in sight with Choking Ash then lay on with his own attacks.

[matrim]

The only problem I have with elemental damage without resist cursing is that you need to get to pretty sizeable numbers in order to get value out of it. Everything with rare exception has fair resist (6-10 in act 1, 10-14 act 2, 14-20 episode 2, 20-35 episode 3). With those numbers you need about matching elemental damage to get consistent value out of it, ideally you want elemental damage of about 10-15 over for a good damage increase. Those numbers are really hard to reach even with burning blades and IMO generally require sacrificing other gear that would have been better if you had just ignored elemental damage (like just straight damage gear or crit gear). It can work, I feel though that with the breadth of itemization in this game it kinda pigeon holes you into specific items and it can sometimes hurt not being able to fit in some of the really cool straight damage/crit pieces.

[fallen]

Feb 20, 2016 17:46:30 GMT -5 matrim said:

The only problem I have with elemental damage without resist cursing is that you need to get to pretty sizeable numbers in order to get value out of it. Everything with rare exception has fair resist (6-10 in act 1, 10-14 act 2, 14-20 episode 2, 20-35 episode 3).

I think you are really over-estimating the resistance values of most monsters in this statement.

For example, Orcin you might fight near the Storm Brothers Bastion -- at level 30 they have 12 Resistance, at level 44 they have 17 Resistance.

Volpa Warrior -- at level 30 they have 7 Resistance, at level 44 they have 11 Resistance (with +12 Ice Res, +12 Earth Res).

Of course there are exceptions that are very magically resistant -- Necromancer from CoD, level 24 has 16 Resistance, at level 30 has 24 Res, and level 44 with 42 Res.

That said, I think it's worth watching the numbers closer to make judgments against elemental damage.

[En1gma]

Totally agree with matrim on the elemental damage aspect.

Unless you're running Strickening or now ToS, you're far better off just boosting standard damage. With enemy resistances absorbing almost all of your elemental, you need to focus so heavily on it that other aspects would begin to drop off.

BB for +crit is the only reason to invest in it, but again, KJ is far better off adding another point into CA, as it improves the base level of damage you're able to get past enemy soak. IMO if you're running support KJ, get him to CA 10 and MS 6+ before investing in anything else. Maybe PfS, but only if you need the soak. Again, another point in MS will decrease incoming damage more than a 2-4 point increase in your armor/res.
-- Maximize your talent point return until he gets ahead of the curve.

For Kincaid, FU (IMO) should wait until Footwork is maxed out. He needs to get his defenses squared off before enemy offenses get out of control. Footwork 10, Parry 4 will provide a near insurmountable defense, whole giving Kincaid a hefty crit base to improve upon.

[fallen]

Sorry to see elemental damage getting a bad beating. Yes, you have to get over a threshold, but I think it's being underestimated. It is probably due to my ability to see the combat logs, but I love the items that give +9 or +12 to all Elemental Damages, and work to stack from there with Buffs and Gear to get 2-3 Elemental Damages over 20, and then get one really high. Not a tactic to use with every character, but especially great for AoE from what I have seen. And this is not when combined with -Res curses, this is just normal.

It looks like you and I are playing more similar strategies xdesperado.

[En1gma]

I see what you're saying, fallen. It's not that they give a bad feeling, but your advice from the beginning still hits home for me: that you can't do anything in this game well unless you make it a major focus and part of the group strategy as a whole.

To devote the gear slots needed to overcome res soak would lower the other, more important elements of the group strategy, IMO. Once you hit E3, and great/abilities become far more important, you can start developing your elemental damages to useful levels, for sure. Before then, regular damage just takes it. For me anyway, and I know everyone plays differently.

[matrim]

I have no issues with elemental damage, I love it in fact. It produces, in my opinion, the highest damage builds in the game. That being said it is just plain math, if you ignore elemental damage then that is an entire factor of the mobs defense that is doing absolutely nothing. The more you can focus on the things overcoming their defense (armor in this case) then the better it is. Situations in which elemental damage shine: resist cursing builds and crit builds (because you have multiple numbers being multiplied giving you better average hits instead of the high highs and low lows). For instance, Kyera has 6 holy damage in xdesperado's group. That is virtually never increasing damage, even against deathkin, because it is never overcoming their resist, might as well be wearing anything else as there is barely any value to +6 holy damage unless you can get resist down to 3ish so it is consistently adding damage. Ratkin have 10 resist when your characters are level 10. They autoblock 5 of the holy damage and roll 1-5 for the rest...the absolute lowest they can get is 6 meaning that even when you roll your top number on the holy damage you are still doing 0 damage against their worst roll.

[xdesperado]

fallen thanks for support, think a long time ago you or Cory Trese made a post about how much damage your parties were doing with elemental damage. (Was around the time you started releasing episode 2 so been a while.) At the time a lot of us were ignoring or not using Burning Blades and gear that gave Elemental Damage arguing that it just didn't add enough to be worth it.

Bit rusty on the combat mechanics but if I remember right Elemental Damage once it passes any resistance goes straight to enemy HP whereas regular damage has a chance to be soaked by armor which even with high levels of Choking Ash and Punishing Blades can seriously reduce it. If Burning Blades gives you say +19 Fire damage your already past the resistance on a large number of enemy's, in that case an item giving you +4 Fire damage is going to likely contribute more than a +4 base damage bonus will.

Obviously getting lucky with gear drops and maintaining a coherent focus for character/party build will to a certain degree dictate direction, but everyone has to start someplace and find the strategy that best suits them.

I may eventually go down in flames with this party but I'll have fun doing so and any mistakes or lessons learned can then be applied to next party lol.

[xdesperado]

Feb 20, 2016 18:23:00 GMT -5 matrim said:

I have no issues with elemental damage, I love it in fact. It produces, in my opinion, the highest damage builds in the game. That being said it is just plain math, if you ignore elemental damage then that is an entire factor of the mobs defense that is doing absolutely nothing. The more you can focus on the things overcoming their defense (armor in this case) then the better it is. Situations in which elemental damage shine: resist cursing builds and crit builds (because you have multiple numbers being multiplied giving you better average hits instead of the high highs and low lows). For instance, Kyera has 6 holy damage in xdesperado's group. That is virtually never increasing damage, even against deathkin, because it is never overcoming their resist, might as well be wearing anything else as there is barely any value to +6 holy damage unless you can get resist down to 3ish so it is consistently adding damage. Ratkin have 10 resist when your characters are level 10. They autoblock 5 of the holy damage and roll 1-5 for the rest...the absolute lowest they can get is 6 meaning that even when you roll your top number on the holy damage you are still doing 0 damage against their worst roll.

My Kyera is going to be a staff wielding caster, majority of attacks she'll make will be Holy Retribution then Re-Spec into Banishment. Yes the +6 Holy doesn't add much if anything currently but I also don't have/haven't gotten any other Gear that would do more for her to this point and it will boost that Holy Retribution when I get it next level.