Party Choices and Balance

[Crimson Shadow]

Love this game!

That being said it looks like I am going to need to start over after getting to the battle with the New Father. I seem to have triggered too many of the spawning spiders that are pumping out to many broodlings that I can't get to the breeders to kill them (and avoid V) without getting demolished myself. This persists even when you restart, so I think I am outta luck.

Figuring this might be a good time to start over, I would love to hear from the players what part member combinations/builds they suggest and why. My first party was the standard four with the tank, healer/rear-guard, bow, fireball mentality. It seemed to work really well until the spider onslaughts began. What are the players (and even developers if they want to come in since they play too) thoughts on what the most fun and survivable teams/ build are?

[fallen]

crimsonshadow - thanks for the post and welcome to the forum! Yikes, that sounds rough ... if you do a Restore Point, you should be put in a new place where you can rest, recover and chip away at it. We tried to set it up this way that you can beat it, even if it takes many deaths to push your way through. But, perhaps you've triggered so many summoners that you can't get out!

My biggest question:
1) What curses are you using? Hitting the summoners with Ethereal Anguish? Using Choking Ash against hard targets like the metallic spiders & summoners? Both of these curses come at Lvl 1 with new characters, and they are both amazingly effective even at that level, even if you've never put any points into them.

[Crimson Shadow]

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately, the board is so jammed... I cannot get to the summoners for any effect without biting the dust.

[fallen]

crimsonshadow - wow, it is wall to wall spiders?

[Crimson Shadow]

Wall to wall would be s bit of an overstatement, but there are about 20 plus some cultists surrounding two breeders that keep pumping them out.

[contributor]

Crimson Shadow, sounds like a tough spot. Two things I can think of trying are

1) If you happened to level Ethereal Anguish up to the point where it docks 2 AP, you can land it on those spawners and they won't spawn anymore. At least I've never seen one spawn with just 1AP.

2) If you've got enough room to run, back-up because eventually even spawners will move towards you if you're far enough away.

3) Ok, thought of another one. If you can doink V's AP, he's really not that bad. He won't spawn at 1 AP either (I believe) and he can't kill anyone in your party with just one hit. So don't worry about him too much. Let him pound away on one of your team mates who is otherwise isolated from other damage.

[fallen]

In terms of "chipping away" at it, you need to get those spawners dead!

[contributor]

As for overall team balance (your original question).

I think one non-negotiable is getting somebody or two who can curse enemies and make them hittable. You've got to have at least one or two good curses you can land.

Then you need to chose between offense or defense. If a team can crank out massive damage they need less defense because they are taking damage sources off the board quickly. These teams can be fragile though and you're likely to end up with some random losses here and there. They are however the most fun to play in my estimation.

If you go the defensive route (either through protective buffs or curses that remove enemy damage/accuracy) you're team might be able to make it through at least episode 1 with no deaths. However you'll probably end up with some really long drawn out battles. In some ways you have to be a better technical fighter with a more defensive group because you're likely to get surrounded by huge groups of enemies and placement is key.

With each character they should probably be really good at 2 things and then have a 3rd off talent too. Pick one major attack skill for each character and then a buff/curse/utility for them to be good at. And then maybe add a third thing in.

A really fun party I have right now is at level 21 and Vincent has level 10 Lightening Spear and Kyera has level 10 Ethereal Anguish. Vraes is using Savage Sweep (because I'm low on good curses), Stone Skin and Berserk Rage with one point in Burst of Speed. Selen is a melee fighter with all Frenzied Blows, QS defense and a little Dance of Shadows. This group loves large clumps of enemies. Both my melee fighters can hold their ground. Kyera is a total witch and puts serious hurt on big groups, while Vince just comes and devastates them with LS. But that's just one party, I have other, very different ones.

[Crimson Shadow]

Thanks Lurker!

Great recommendations and example.... Excited to see what others say before doing all the character IAP's and creating my 2nd team incarnation!

[johndramey]

Hey there Crimson Shadow

I pretty much can totally agree with contributor's split on the groups, you should choose between offense and defense. I, like lurker, prefer offense. Also just like lurker said, you should really try to get at least one or two decent curses up in any group, this is pretty much a baseline and required whether you are going berserker melee group or a stately hanging-back-and-lobbing-fireballs group.

As for my group, I'm only playing on Hard because I prefer to have a little leeway in my build. I'm also not much of a min-maxer, so I'm sure others will critique the hell out of my build. However, it's a lot of fun. I do tend to suffer a bit in the way of setbacks from time to time, but nothing that is overly crippling.

Vraes is currently set up to be a bit tanky, he's blade focused and I'm spreading his skill points between Iron skin (currently 3), Phalanx Shield (currently 2) and Savage Sweep (currently 3). My main idea with him is to set him up a little in front of the rest of my group as bait, he still hits like a truck when I let him unload, but he's mostly there to soften the enemy up and draw fire.

Fyona is my utility build at the moment, she's one-hand hammer focused (although I'm considering trying out a two-hander on her) and her skills are spread between Blessed Aura (3), Zealous strikes (2), Hammer blows (2) and her Strickening (1). I'm just going to pump up strickening to 2 to get a basic AoE curse on her, then I'm going to home in on pumping Zealous strikes. She's usually set up to be my finisher, coming up beside Vraes to deal death blows to everyone with her hammer-o-doom.

Selen is my roamer, built for speed. Flurry of Blows (3) is her primary damage dealer, and I'll pull it out in a pinch, but mostly I have her set up to roam around and punish everyone. Punishing Blades (3) is her go-to skill, hitting everyone she can get in range of. She dual wields 1AP blades, so when I need her to open up she can deal out massive amounts of damage. However, in the interests of keeping a (relatively) even XP split in the team, I usually use her as a mobile curse factory.

Vincent is my one artillery piece. He sits in the back and casts Lightening Spear (3) at targets of opportunity. When nothing juicy presents itself, he will cast Flash Freeze (2) at strong enemies or Thundering Blades (2) to support Fyona and Vraes.

Is my build ideal? Hell no, I get killed once in a while and am, as I mentioned, weak to ranged. However, the team is a lot of fun and when it works it works very, very well. I also kind of cripple myself in the sense that I really want my team to have a pretty even spread of XP so I hold Selen back. Because she does a lot of disarming of traps and what not, she's usually sitting at +50XP and that flips the "NO MORE GAIN" switch in my brain. If I really cut loose with her she could plow through so many enemies, but I try to feed most kills to Fyona and Vraes.

[Gr8Scott]

Apr 10, 2014 17:02:02 GMT -5 johndramey said:

I also kind of cripple myself in the sense that I really want my team to have a pretty even spread of XP so I hold Selen back. Because she does a lot of disarming of traps and what not, she's usually sitting at +50XP and that flips the "NO MORE GAIN" switch in my brain. If I really cut loose with her she could plow through so many enemies, but I try to feed most kills to Fyona and Vraes.

I believe the individual xp only comes from bosses. Selen should be able cut through all your enemies except bosses without a problem.  Her crit bonus may keep you away from attacking the bosses because you never know when she might "accidentally"  kill that boss target.  Terrible problem to have when you accidentally kill bosses, right? 

[contributor]

Ha ha, yes Selen IS a thief and she is exceptionally good at stealing XP from poor Kyera. I can't tell you how many times I'm whittling down a boss and think "He's still got 150 HP left, I can let Selen have a go at him" and boom she lands a huge critical on him and gets the XP.

[hobiecat]

Hi Crimson Shadow!

I can totally commiserate with your pain on those Spiders of the New Father!  I had once gotten myself into a similar scenario while fighting through the Great Forges and got into an encounter where those spiders kept spawning more and more of those forged spiders.  Ultimately, I got around it by skipping the Great Forges altogether and going around via the Smith's Horde.  But, if you're already fighting the Big V, I can see where that can be showstopping.

As for how I built my party, here's my logic for my current party of the original 4 which has been working out pretty well for me.  They're all currently Level 23 and successfully fought their way through the Underforge.

Vraes - I built him for speed and so put his first 3 Talent points into Burst of Speed so that he would have +2 MP as quickly as possible.  By the time I finished Act 1, I had put 2 more Talent points into Burst so that he was at +3 MP, which is what he's still at now.  I supplemented this with Stone Skin (6), Natural Mastery (2), Savage Sweep (3) and Juggernaut (1).  He's using 2-H spears (currently an "off-the-rack" Cross-Hilt Runkah) with Savage Sweep as his primary attack and Juggernaut as a finishing move when he's fighting a group of enemies.  I've maxed out his Polearms Skill and have dumped all but 2 Attribute points into Strength so he's got a pretty good dice pool for combat.  (The other 2 points went into Intelligence to help keep up his Spirit needs.)  I generally use his speed to plow him into the center of enemies and try to draw all of their attention.  I also use him to chase down enemies that decide to bypass him and target one of my squishier characters (like Karjtan).  As an added benefit, the Dodge bonuses he gets from Burst of Speed are huge, especially when coupled with Kyera's Warders Shield.

Kyera - I built her as a healer, buffer and light skirmisher.  From a healing perspective, I just put 1 point in Purifying Breeze to get the remove curses and then 5 into Myshana's Tears for my primary healing.  I also think of Myshana's Tears as a "Vraes buff" as I always cast it on him right after he activates his Stone Skin and so I try to keep the two talents in synch where Vraes' Stone Skin never requires more than one casting of Tears to fill his health meter.  As a buffer, Kyera has 1 point in Piety Ward (because the +4 Resist All was too hard to resist... no pun intended) and 8 in Warder's Shield as her primary party buff.  I find that the high Warder's Shield combined with Kyera's use of a real shield (and weapon's skill), Vraes' Burst of Speed (and weapon's skill) and Tamlin's naturally high Dodge from having a high Dexterity means that all three of them become very hard to hit.  I've successfully used both Kyera and Tamlin as off-tanks on occasion, and I feel that it's because of Warder's Shield that I can do that.  Lastly, I've been pretty successful using Kyera as light skirmisher despite only having 2 points in Smiting Blow.  To that end, I have made a concerted effort to put as much points as possible into Hammers (14) and Strength (12) so she has a lot of combat dice.  I oftentimes hide her behind Vraes and pop her out to make the killing blow on weakened opponents (and caused her to "steal" a lot "kill experience").

Tamlin - She's built around getting criticals, as well as thinning out crowds (once I got her to Level 18).  I mainly focused her combat abilities around Deadly Intuition (8) and Ranged Onslaught (2), with one level of Blacknight thrown in so that I can get the +2 Dodge / +2 Stealth bonus.  I've coupled Deadly Intuition with Karjtan's Burning Blades to give her a 26% chance to crit (which, anecdotally, feels like I get a LOT of critical hits).  Between that and Ranged Onslaught, she brings the pain to massed enemies and can really thin crowds (who've hopefully all gathered around Vraes as he's plowed into their midst). Anyone she doesn't kill outright is usually finished off by the other three characters.  If there are no crowds, her basic attack is the default Aimed Shot (1).  Outside of combat, she has Farsight (2), Precision Pick (2), and Disarming Touch (3).  I upped Farsight so that it would only take 2 AP during combat and Disarming Touch so that it had a cross AoE.  I just upped Precision Pick because I figure that locked chests would get harder to open and I didn't want to miss out.

Karjtan - He's built around pumping up everyone's damage and raining fiery death upon enemies heads.  However, my build of him is a bit unconventional (in relation to what I feel is often posted on these boards) in that he's NOT a debuffer.  Until he hit Level 23, he was still at the default Choking Ash (1) and it's only recently that I put a 2nd point into Choking Ash. Instead, he's maxed out on Burning Blades which adds to everyone's punch, including his.  This has actually allowed me to keep Firebolt at level 1 and still use it effectively throughout Act 1.  To help with this, I also upped both Knowledge (13) and Sorcery (13) as much as I could so that he could hit.  (Near the end of Act 1, he probably was beginning to really miss more than he hit, but since I can get 3 shots/round with Firebolt, usually at least one will hit each round.)  I then decided to focus on Immolation (4) so that he can have more flexibility than focusing on Firestorm, but hit more targets at once than Firebolt. In hindsight, I probably should've focused on either Firebolt or Firestorm as Immolation has been a little disappointing.  For starters, I wasn't really hitting much until I got to Level 3 of Immolation and it doesn't really "turn the corner" until Level 4 when you get the box AoE.  Even now, unless I purposely set up Karjtan to make the killing shot, he rarely kills off groups of enemies (but he does successfully soften them up!).  It's actually why now I've FINALLY started to put points into Choking Ash to hopefully help bolster Immolation, as well as everyone else's killing abilities.  I'm planning to get Choking Ash to the box AoE and then alternately boost Immolation and Ash.

I hope this helps your thinking!