phaze
Exemplar
Posts: 368 
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Post by phaze on Oct 3, 2016 6:24:39 GMT -5
True regarding Kincaid avoidance builds. Both Kincaid and Selen have the capacity to raise Dodge to high enough levels to avoid nearly all ranged attacks, especially if supported by -Acc. Stealth armor with +evasion is a component of that. I use Kincaid in this way.
Building a superior avoidance character is one of the prime ways to navigate the game and make battles efficient. If enemies miss the main character over 90% of the time, you can heal with potions and let the rest of the party focus on talents.
Vraes can be tanky, but a maxed phalanx and maxed BR leaves Vraes at a total of +6 parry and -12 armor, not nearly enough to tank melee groups reliably. Thus, he needs an entire 10 talent points to restore his tankiness. I feel really stretched with Vraes. My current test is an original party set-up with dex-based Vraes for the added 9 dodge to help with melee. In stacking Dodge gear and talents, I think it may allow Vraes to actually dodge ranged attacks at some level combined with phalanx may make him as reasonable in avoiding damage as kincaid or selen.
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Post by CdrPlatypus on Oct 3, 2016 13:40:49 GMT -5
I vote NO. Juggernaut / Beserk Rage / FEROCITY. Vraes is ment to be a rampaging single target High Damage Character. Maintain the differences between the Heros Rather than push them closer together.
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Post by fallen on Oct 3, 2016 13:43:58 GMT -5
I vote NO. Juggernaut / Beserk Rage / FEROCITY. Vraes is ment to be a rampaging single target High Damage Character. Maintain the differences between the Heros Rather than push them closer together. Cheers! |
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Post by richard on Oct 3, 2016 14:57:05 GMT -5
may I have miss something, but Vraes does not seem to do significant more damage on a single target.
Tamilin seem to do about the same amount of damage as Vraes. (Althou at this stage, she had a awesome range 8 bow).
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Post by Cory Trese on Oct 3, 2016 14:58:23 GMT -5
may I have miss something, but Vraes does not seem to do significant more damage on a single target. Tamilin seem to do about the same amount of damage as Vraes. (Althou at this stage, she had a awesome range 8 bow). Keep exploring those builds  |
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Post by wascalwywabbit on Oct 3, 2016 23:18:49 GMT -5
may I have miss something, but Vraes does not seem to do significant more damage on a single target. Tamilin seem to do about the same amount of damage as Vraes. (Althou at this stage, she had a awesome range 8 bow). DI plus RO is great, but per target nothing comes close to BR and ferocity. |
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Post by wascalwywabbit on Oct 4, 2016 0:02:35 GMT -5
True regarding Kincaid avoidance builds. Both Kincaid and Selen have the capacity to raise Dodge to high enough levels to avoid nearly all ranged attacks, especially if supported by -Acc. Stealth armor with +evasion is a component of that. I use Kincaid in this way. Building a superior avoidance character is one of the prime ways to navigate the game and make battles efficient. If enemies miss the main character over 90% of the time, you can heal with potions and let the rest of the party focus on talents. Vraes can be tanky, but a maxed phalanx and maxed BR leaves Vraes at a total of +6 parry and -12 armor, not nearly enough to tank melee groups reliably. Thus, he needs an entire 10 talent points to restore his tankiness. I feel really stretched with Vraes. My current test is an original party set-up with dex-based Vraes for the added 9 dodge to help with melee. In stacking Dodge gear and talents, I think it may allow Vraes to actually dodge ranged attacks at some level combined with phalanx may make him as reasonable in avoiding damage as kincaid or selen. That just demonstrates that a lot of the perceived issue is dex vs str rather than Kincaid vs Vraes though, or AoE vs ap returns, doesn't it? Kincaid even with the AoE advantage has the tendency to need more talent points to raise his offense in regards to dmg output per target. So Vraes only needs BR and an empowered attack, while Kincaid needs CF, FB, FU and an empowered attack to maximize his offense - AoE is perceived to make up for this but I'm not so sure it completely does, it sure does feel satisfying to AoE a lot though. So certainly it makes sense for Vraes to need an extra talent for D, and you can hardly ever maximize Kincaid's offense without sacrificing his D just the same as Vraes, but instead of being through direct penalties of BR, it's by the opportunity cost of not being able to put enough talent points together, which ends up being the same problem in either case. The 2 warriors both want 6-7 talents at max levels by end game, but 4.5 is max available throughout the game, less still than that as it's unfinished and reaching lvl 64 is not there yet. Finding a satisfactory balance of points is certainly hard for me with Vraes at any mid game point too, but if the data shows that's an unfair assessment, it may come down to the way we think about building our teams. The design wants us to heal with the cleric/pally but that takes away from party offense and efficiency so we try to avoid that - high hp just means more healing and/or camping and boo to that. If ssk had higher armor and some less hp I might go for it more often. Vraes in particular calls out for a str build, but then that makes him more likely to seem to be a glass cannon, but that is not unique to him. I do think the brothers have managed to get around a lot of the issues, sp drain, extra camp sites, new str rules and crit dmg increases etc., but some are likely to remain unless core assumptions could have been undone, which they plan to rework for LoS. I wouldn't mind lower dmg enemies doing a bit more dmg and str adding to toughness for example to make str/soak builds a bit better against mid-upper enemies while keeping all enemies a threat. Maybe just toughness and str being applied to the enemies the same way, I dunno. |
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phaze
Exemplar
Posts: 368
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Post by phaze on Oct 4, 2016 6:55:37 GMT -5
I don't disagree that Vraes can do a major amount of damage. I question the feasibility of that in light of actual game play and how this compares to other character's output. Is the trade-out off single target damage versus area damage fair and other abilities?
CF provides major avoidance, accuracy, and critical damage for a bargain 10 talent points. For 13 talent points, you get an even better tank and two guaranteed melee blocks. Kincaid does not have to sacrifice defense for offense. The rest of Kincaid is just gravy and only gains momentum as the game progresses. At level 52 and 34 talent points gained, I have a superb tank avoiding nearly all damage, major critical chance, high accuracy and added damage with CF and FU (plus party support) and enough room left over to raise a high level offense talent. My late game Kincaid can do an easy up to 1800 damage against a solitary target with 1 ap throwing knives while also cursing them. Multiply that times up to 6 per attack given he can hit up to six enemies. Up to 9600 damage over an entire battlefield is just pure destruction.
In making these discussions about Vraes, maybe Kincaid is overpowered? Having multiple game play throughs, I remain skeptical of Vraes until I can develop a late game Vraes for myself to test. A lot of this is just a paper arguments until I can play Vraes through but as mentioned in my longer post above and in other threads, I remain skeptical of Vraes and have't found an effective model that I like to date. I think this is like my 6 party of Vraes over the last year.
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Post by richard on Oct 4, 2016 12:04:37 GMT -5
At this time, Vraes without BR (because of the criticals) trails Kincaid, Tamlin and Fyona in the amount damage done on a single turn.
Vraes with BR is starting is get his damage up there to pass Tamlin and Fyona is damage output on a single target. (The criticals really help special a Dex Vraes with a 1AP weapon)
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phaze
Exemplar
Posts: 368
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Post by phaze on Oct 4, 2016 12:35:29 GMT -5
Hmm...I thought 1AP dex Vraes was removed from the game. That was discussed on the forum but not seemingly implemented yet. Enjoy! 7 attacks is fearsome.
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Post by En1gma on Oct 4, 2016 15:11:10 GMT -5
I think I figured out what it boils down to at least for me... The only way to buff his offense is BR. Kincaid has Crippling Strikes to AoE and affect AP/damage, DS to AoE and affect Dodge/Parry, Footwork to add Dodge/Parry, crit chance. He has Flashing Blades to self buff accuracy and crit. Flanking Unity buffs the entire team. Vraes has Berserk Rage and NM. Yes he has FEROCITY and Juggernaut to stomp around, but FEROCITY is restrictive to use, and Juggernaut relies on the dice to reward anything at all. What if Mastery got a buff, adding crit chances(?) or something useful? Why not give Jugg guaranteed returns on a kill? Reduce the SP cost of FEROCITY or give it a measure of SP return? Give consecutive hits with SSw a bonus similar to Flashing Blades in that it provides a one turn increase to something useful? If we want Vraes to be Kincaid's equal, then let's not bring their talents together, but solidify Vraes into the undisputed champion of single target damage. Seeing as he is the games most selfish character, I feel like it shouldn't be dragging the group down, but lifting it up. I'm not complaining about big V, he is the tankiest character in the game besides full defense Fyona perhaps, it's just that he is so selfish that either group damage falls apart at times, or he becomes unreliable on defense with BR because of its detriments and difficulty to work around given his lack of options for long term builds. I can see a dozen different Kincaids, but 3-5 different Vraes...es No matter what happens, I still love this game  |
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Post by fallen on Oct 4, 2016 15:17:45 GMT -5
What if Mastery got a buff ... Thanks for all the feedback team. Since the changes to Strength that added base damage, it has been in the plan to increase this with Natural Mastery, allowing NM to actually add +Strength for Base Dmg. This would be a unique ability to Vraes, and help him guarantee even higher damage rolls. We'll get there eventually, lots of hours going into Heroes right now, just 100% into the story. |
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Post by Cory Trese on Oct 4, 2016 15:53:31 GMT -5
Sometimes I think math is like facts, but really it is all opinions. People just see numbers very differently!
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Post by wascalwywabbit on Oct 4, 2016 16:22:02 GMT -5
Sometimes I think math is like facts, but really it is all opinions. People just see numbers very differently! That's because we're speculating for fun ... well some of are, not only because of math, much of which we don't have on our end... *holds finger like a crucifix* Back away with your math witchcraft and return will speculation fairies! You know what is truly unique to Vraes, it's not str, sans some items, some not yet in game perhaps it's ap returns and ranged auto block %. ;-p The fairies! The fairies are everywhere! |
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Post by wascalwywabbit on Oct 4, 2016 16:41:22 GMT -5
What if Mastery got a buff ... Thanks for all the feedback team. Since the changes to Strength that added base damage, it has been in the plan to increase this with Natural Mastery, allowing NM to actually add +Strength for Base Dmg. This would be a unique ability to Vraes, and help him guarantee even higher damage rolls. We'll get there eventually, lots of hours going into Heroes right now, just 100% into the story. I look forward to it all, genuinely. Unfortunately we having wet-wear brains and not perfect logic circuits means that things like Kincaid dancing all over the field throwing TKs feels really powerful, while Vraes steady, thump, thump every turn doesn't as much. I can say from experience that high mobility in BoS and Jugg plus high damage from BR makes up for that late game, but until those things gel the steady thump, thump *feels* less active towards progressing the battles. It's a strange thing, cause lots of energetic activity implies vitality, but if I have to do the same active clicking for heals it feels like a penalty for bad strategy rather than a necessary part of battle. |
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