Thursday's Heroes of Steel Alpha Question - Which Talents?

[johndramey]

While I understand what you are saying, evmaker, I have to partially disagree with you. I tend to use clerics as I used my old PnP cleric, a tank. Now, we don't know enough about the equipment in HoS to know if this is totally possible or not, but I'll venture a guess and say that it is.

Basically, how I see my classes working is this;

Rogue - Primarily scouting and lockpicking with a secondary focus on ranged damage dealing. Kitted out with light armor and a good bow.
Wizard - Primarily ranged, single target damage dealing with a secondary focus on AoE. Kitted out with magic attack boosting... things.
Outlander - Primarily a melee damage dealer, secondary focus on tanking. Kitted out with a big 'ole Axe or Sword, 2-hander preferred. Medium armor.
Cleric - Primarily a tank, secondary focus on buffing. Kitted out with the heaviest armor and shield money can buy. 1 handed hammer nice, but low priority.

I sit my cleric and outlander on the front lines, letting them absorb hits while dealing out damage to enemies that get close by. The Cleric will focus on cursing/buffing the outlander and get occasional kills of opportunity.

Wizard and Rogue will sit in the back, softening targets and focus firing on the most dangerous of foes.

So, while I know what you are saying about the rising SP cost of heal, relegating the cleric to the "healing" class is not the right way to go about things. I think we should keep heal as one of her primary abilities, but it shouldn't be the head-and-shoulders above all other talents that it is now. I really feel that the talent, as it is now, is so much better than most of the other skills that players will basically just pump it up to the exclusion of other talents. Giving it some kind of (relatively small) downside will make it much less of a no-brainer and encourage players to weigh options.

Of course, this is all just my opinion Everyone can disagree with me, I just wanted to lay out what I thought while playing through on Normal. I'm starting a Hard play through right now, so I might change my tune

[evmaker]

Oct 24, 2013 19:15:02 GMT -5 johndramey said:

So, while I know what you are saying about the rising SP cost of heal, relegating the cleric to the "healing" class is not the right way to go about things. I think we should keep heal as one of her primary abilities, but it shouldn't be the head-and-shoulders above all other talents that it is now. I really feel that the talent, as it is now, is so much better than most of the other skills that players will basically just pump it up to the exclusion of other talents. Giving it some kind of (relatively small) downside will make it much less of a no-brainer and encourage players to weigh options.

Of course, this is all just my opinion Everyone can disagree with me, I just wanted to lay out what I thought while playing through on Normal. I'm starting a Hard play through right now, so I might change my tune

My thoughts on the 'roles' per se was mainly due to how the kickstarter reads where the outlander is described as the unstoppable tank of a warrior and cleric is called the healer, and the warrior has 2 damage mitigation self-only buffs while the cleric has one damage mitigation target-able buff (that and also that the cleric has less starting health then the thief does with 2 protection reinforced clothing, while the warrior starts in 6 protection quilted armor with a shield). The more options the better though, if a cleric can be turned into/built as a tank that sounds cool to me.

To the above part though, I'd agree that heal currently seems to be one of the best talents for the cleric (I am curious if the level 12 purifying breeze which lists it as healing for 8 is a "heal over time" since that seems a pretty small heal, though the spell does remove curses as well), and I could see people focusing on the spell.

But I also think choice is important, if someone wants to build a cleric as a healer then let them, if they want to build the cleric something else that can heal, let them do that too. If they just put points into heal then it would get more and more expensive to use, so I think it has a natural balance in putting in enough points to have it heal decently without being too expensive and put the rest of the points elsewhere by the choice of the person.

But anyhow yeah that's just my thoughts on the matter too, which boil down to player choice and what is fun.

[johndramey]

Nothing wrong with your thoughts, and in fact I can see exactly what you're saying. The discussion is fun though, and I always like hearing about other people's play styles. I'll admit that I tend to play in the unorthodox way, so balancing anything to my taste is a bad idea. I mean, I use soldiers instead of scout in TA. By choice!

[evmaker]

Oct 24, 2013 19:41:22 GMT -5 johndramey said:

I mean, I use soldiers instead of scout in TA. By choice!

Well I have to admit to being unorthodox too then, because I use soldiers over scouts by choice also (and yes, Neptunes rule and Hydras drool), my 'main team' is my Captain, Neptune, a Soldier and a Berserker, with some extra Soldiers and Berserkers if needed or people die.

But anyhow I'll stop there so we don't derail the thread

[hosh]

Oct 24, 2013 19:15:02 GMT -5 johndramey said:

So, while I know what you are saying about the rising SP cost of heal, relegating the cleric to the "healing" class is not the right way to go about things. I think we should keep heal as one of her primary abilities, but it shouldn't be the head-and-shoulders above all other talents that it is now. I really feel that the talent, as it is now, is so much better than most of the other skills that players will basically just pump it up to the exclusion of other talents. Giving it some kind of (relatively small) downside will make it much less of a no-brainer and encourage players to weigh options.

Not really a right way or wrong way, simply effective and ineffective strategies. One of my favorite things about Final Fantasy Tactics A2 was that you can pretty much use nearly every single character class and field multiple squad combinations and use different strategies within a single playthrough. It was more interesting to me to try a different strategy, even if it feels uncomfortable, in order to expand my own skills as a player.

A game that can generate a lot of heated discussion about what is the "best" way, means to me, is flexible and has a lot of fans. Hopefully, that's how it will turn out with HoS.

[johndramey]

hosh hit it right on the head, the fact that we are having this discussion about possible strategies is a good sign.

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2013 17:08:56 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Disarming Touch is pretty useless (at least at the level I am playing) because you have to constantly check lots of floor tiles (no, I haven't managed to figure out what pixel is slightly out of place to indicate a trap).

You don't have to use Disarming Touch so much, it's pretty easy to spot areas where traps are and then you only need to use it once or twice to safely navigate through. The next time you hit a trap look at the surrounding tiles, not the tile you've landed on - it's quite easy to see once you know what you're looking for.

The first thing that struck me was that Myshana's Tears seemed overpowered but after playing the game a bit I think that actually it's really needed. On the higher difficulties where the puniest spider will cause 50+ damage, you need to keep your heroes buffed up to full health most of time, because they won't survive more than one turn's onslaught.

[johndramey]

Oct 24, 2013 21:54:47 GMT -5 @jr8825 said:

Oct 24, 2013 17:08:56 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Disarming Touch is pretty useless (at least at the level I am playing) because you have to constantly check lots of floor tiles (no, I haven't managed to figure out what pixel is slightly out of place to indicate a trap).

You don't have to use Disarming Touch so much, it's pretty easy to spot areas where traps are and then you only need to use it once or twice to safely navigate through. The next time you hit a trap look at the surrounding tiles, not the tile you've landed on - it's quite easy to see once you know what you're looking for.

The first thing that struck me was that Myshana's Tears seemed overpowered but after playing the game a bit I think that actually it's really needed. On the higher difficulties where the puniest spider will cause 50+ damage, you need to keep your heroes buffed up to full health most of time, because they won't survive more than one turn's onslaught.

This is actually what I'm starting to see on my Hard play through. I'm having to be a little more conservative with my skills and being able to fall back on Myshana's Tears is a nice thing to do. I'll keep thinking about its use as I play, but for now I'm still thinking it could be tuned a little bit.

[beuns]

Just to throw my thoughts : I made a lot of use of stone skin as I really want my outlander to be a tank.
Thanks to @jr8825 I can now use disarming traps (before that, I putted my outlander in front to get into the trap and then...Myshana's tears ).
And lastly I use mostly crushing blow as the outlander is nearly always the one I want in front (sometimes my cleric is in front to back him up).
I tend to agree with johndramey to say that healing that easily is quite unbalancing the game. I can't remember who but someone said that with SP potion you can heal through Myshana's tears and keep healing potion for more dire time and that's exactly the point...in easy mode (that I start playing to get use to the game) I NEVER use healing potion but frequently use SP ones.
To me, one solution would be to downgrade a bit amount of HP it heals and still if you upgrade the skill you can heal more. That way, you can satisfy players who want to play more on the healing side and not restrain the ones who want to focus on other role(s) for the cleric. Of course it's just my opinion.

[evmaker]

Oct 24, 2013 23:18:58 GMT -5 beuns said:

Just to throw my thoughts : I made a lot of use of stone skin as I really want my outlander to be a tank.
Thanks to @jr8825 I can now use disarming traps (before that, I putted my outlander in front to get into the trap and then...Myshana's tears ).
And lastly I use mostly crushing blow as the outlander is nearly always the one I want in front (sometimes my cleric is in front to back him up).
I tend to agree with johndramey to say that healing that easily is quite unbalancing the game. I can't remember who but someone said that with SP potion you can heal through Myshana's tears and keep healing potion for more dire time and that's exactly the point...in easy mode (that I start playing to get use to the game) I NEVER use healing potion but frequently use SP ones.
To me, one solution would be to downgrade a bit amount of HP it heals and still if you upgrade the skill you can heal more. That way, you can satisfy players who want to play more on the healing side and not restrain the ones who want to focus on other role(s) for the cleric. Of course it's just my opinion.

That is on easy however, the skill doesn't scale with difficulty level and as has been said the weakest enemies can hit for 50 in the higher difficulties, it doesn't seem like a good idea to lower the healing of something based on a lower difficulty when things don't for as hard unless it'd also be possible to make skills scale based on the difficulty (a giant rat or deathkin on easy when they can be first encountered can take off most of the outlanders health in one round).

[beuns]

evmaker : you got a point here. Still, from what I read here, Myshana's tears seems a bit overpowered so (IMO as always) by making it a bit more costly (as it would cost more AP to cast it in combat and it would be less effective in its healing) it would prevent PCs from being always at full health. Of course, on brutal it would be a LOT more painful but...that's what brutal is for, isn't it ?

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2013 23:46:25 GMT -5 beuns said:

evmaker : you got a point here. Still, from what I read here, Myshana's tears seems a bit overpowered so (IMO as always) by making it a bit more costly (as it would cost more AP to cast it in combat and it would be less effective in its healing) it would prevent PCs from being always at full health. Of course, on brutal it would be a LOT more painful but...that's what brutal is for, isn't it ?

I agree with you that it normal difficulty too easy, but the problem comes when nightmare and brutal stop being ridiculously hard and start being utterly impossible. They're pretty damned difficult as it is! Maybe Myshana's tears can be downgraded a little bit, but it's pretty much the only thing that keeps my heroes alive on nightmare at the moment. The perfect solution would probably be to do some complicated balancing depending on difficulty, but right now I'd rather Myshana's tears weren't weakened too much.

[beuns]

@jr8825 : I was thinking about downgrading it to heal 20 or 25 per level (instead of 35 now) and adding 3x your level in the skill that govern healing (can't remember the name for now) this way it would greatly reward healing cleric and allows more fighting oriented ones to be effective anyway.

I will play a brutal game to make a better picture of the problem at that level and give thoughts later.

[beuns]

Ok. I've tried a bit of nightmare difficulty and...got killed at the 2nd combat I've done. Myshana's tears was pretty useless since my cleric was in front of 3 ratkins side to side with my outlander and got killed even with full health (damn rats ! ). I understand the need to have a good healing spell from the start but I wonder if buffing spells are not the problem. Let me explain : if my defense were better I could probably survive the first round and though would be able to heal through Myshana's tears... IMO the problem with high difficulty is more a problem of enemies being able to kill you straight away than a problem of spells being overpowered (or underpowered for that matter). Just my opinion of course.

[Deleted]

Oct 25, 2013 4:02:03 GMT -5 beuns said:

Ok. I've tried a bit of nightmare difficulty and...got killed at the 2nd combat I've done. Myshana's tears was pretty useless since my cleric was in front of 3 ratkins side to side with my outlander and got killed even with full health (damn rats ! ). I understand the need to have a good healing spell from the start but I wonder if buffing spells are not the problem. Let me explain : if my defense were better I could probably survive the first round and though would be able to heal through Myshana's tears... IMO the problem with high difficulty is more a problem of enemies being able to kill you straight away than a problem of spells being overpowered (or underpowered for that matter). Just my opinion of course.

On nightmare I spend half my time running away and picking off monsters one by one, I find it's pretty much suicide facing them straight on. Then I can use Myshana's tears to regroup quickly before taking out the next one. Not pretty, I admit!