Can Phalanx Shield Replace Stone Skin?

[fallen]

agamon - great post, welcome to the forum!

I think the kind of play experience you are describing sounds perfect for normal. The difficulty scale is setup to force you to use more of the system to survive as you increase in difficulty levels. Especially in E1, you can get by in Normal difficulty by just picking a Talent and riding it. I am not sure how far you've taken Stone Skin, but I expect you're already using a lot of its strength in E1 at the expense of other Talents. As you hit E2, the AI becomes smarter, and you top out at Stone Skin 10, you'll find you are forced to face the challenges differently. That should be exciting!

You should consider raising skills to increase the duration of Burst of Speed.

[crimsonking]

I'd be interested in experiences with a DEX based BoS Vraes with Kyera's Warder's Shield added that focuses on preventing damage via dodge instead of enduring it via HP/Armor. I was planning on such a build but now I'm waiting for the duelist because he might fit my strategy of two dodging front liners better. The question for me is armor/hp vs. dodge/parry, prevent vs. endure.

My actual party is already close to this concept. It's just that I maxed Natural Mastery for the accuracy instead of BoS, so Vraes suffers somewhat against ranged attacks and severely against magic attacks. Added -AP curses from Kyera and Vincent as best way to cripple enemy offense.(all on hard difficulty)

[agamon]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I realize the game will force me to branch out, the latest as soon as I max out stone skin, at which point I can't help but wonder what I should raise next. But my concern is how little overall each of the other talents and buffs had for an effect vs stone skin when the game is much easier: surely an, at best, 30% less damage while the game is easiest is going to be worth a lot less when

1) enemies are harder
2) level gain is much slower, so achieving that 30% or whatever is going to take forever vs the low levels?

If I use my imagination, it's possible melee will start hitting so hard that not having tons of parry and dodge will be .. Unfortunate. But there are other possible scenarios based on what I've seen so far:

1) mage buffs + paladin armour buffs may continue to provide a stone skin like experience into the high levels (righteous fervour + pure flame shield), which should cover 10-20, at the very least. It's also entirely possible for this to cover significantly higher, since its possible the game was balanced around people who didn't pick all of these buffs together, or heaven forbid, actually picked the one that lowers armour...

2) melee damage is indeed super high, outstripping armour, but - accuracy debufffs are enough OR super high DPS renders them pointless: if Tamilin + Kjartian(sp?) can kill them before they can close in to melee range, and Vraes and either paladin chic or cleric can mop up the few that do manage to approach, then it still doesn't make sense to focus on any of the defensive Vraes talents other than armour.

3) melee damage is super high and enemies are super durable. Ok, fine, here we're toast, grab the damn shield and let's ever so slowly, get that 30% damage reduction.

4) ranged damage far outstrips armour buffs and the party always dies to large ranged ambushes XD

I'm reasonably certain it's going to be number 1, with a small dose of 2 during boss battles, but I don't, of course, know until I get there. My Max level has only been 10 so far after all

In my humble and inexperienced opinion, I feel the game would be more enjoyable if the other clearly defensive talents had a more noticeable effect in tankiness: ie if dual wielding or two handed, Vraes did crazy damage, but with a shield he'd be crazy hard to kill.

Due to the more expensive attacks AP-wise it feels like he now only does a bit more damage without a shield, and gains a bit of defence with one. (37-54 dmg x 2, vs 21-35 dmg x 3, or something like that, of course damage reduction affects the 3 attacks more, but the wizard debuff (only at rank 5 for full AoE shape) seems to keep things within reason. Since the low level AOE damage spell seems so unattractive, (it feels like I'd waste a bunch of talent points into an attack that's barely ok , until I get to the level where I get the really good attack, at which point I never again use the weak attack - if the weak attack ranks affected the big attacks dmg in some way then it would become tempting, but as it is... It just looks like a huge waste) , I don't see a problem with increasing the debuff and even armour buff while maintaining a fairly strong fire bolt.

Anyway, perhaps it's useful to learn how yet another newbie experiences the game, so that's why I shared

[contributor]

I'm not loving Phalanx Shield at the moment. The Ratkin fights are terrible (and the seem huge now) and I've died 5 times already which is just a bit to many. I hate to abandon the group at this stage because I'm working on a Tamilin that I'm really interested in, but I might just. This is no fun.

My suggestion is to replace Phalanx with a 1AP shield bash that wouldn't be powerful, but would let you use your last AP every turn.

I also find the fact that shields do nothing to help against archers one odd dynamic of the HoS mechanics. I really can't think of a much better defense against arrows, but I understand games are not supposed to be emulations of reality and somethings might be necessary for balancing.

[agamon]

Jul 16, 2014 16:38:42 GMT -5 contributor said:

I'm not loving Phalanx Shield at the moment. The Ratkin fights are terrible (and the seem huge now) and I've died 5 times already which is just a bit to many. I hate to abandon the group at this stage because I'm working on a Tamilin that I'm really interested in, but I might just. This is no fun.

My suggestion is to replace Phalanx with a 1AP shield bash that wouldn't be powerful, but would let you use your last AP every turn.

I also find the fact that shields do nothing to help against archers one odd dynamic of the HoS mechanics. I really can't think of a much better defense against arrows, but I understand games are not supposed to be emulations of reality and somethings might be necessary for balancing.

I like this idea! A 1AP weak attack would be useful, but then so would be a -1AP 3AP shield bash.. 

Regardless, I do think Vraes with a shield is a bit underwhelming. I mean at least the paladin shield buff provides dodge, so it's significantly more useful (imho!) in that situation, and I can't help but feel that either the talent should be replaced completely as suggested here, or his shield should be made to protect from arrow fire. How about an additional armour rating that only applies to ranged damage?

[En1gma]

IMHO. Since there are two different sets of self-buffs (Leadership and Lore), it is my request that the skills in one tree be balanced to stand entirely apart from those in the other. Phalanx should level out to be as effective at preventing damage as SSk is at absorbing it... I'm not sure how this would be in terms of balance, perhaps make there be a penalty for splitting the talents (even if it just means you aren't as effective at either one), or that we have to (loosely) choose which path to follow.

Or, like agamon just suggested, give us some sort of ranged defense! The only thing that really throws me off in this awesome game is that there is no real defense against ranged attacks without dedicating much of your effort and points into doing just that. At the expense of your entire build, sometimes (by trying a Dex based Vraes, or using Frigid Air when you could be using those points on offense or buffing). Really the only thing stopping me from progressing past hard is the sheer brutality of the enemy archers.

[fallen]

Thanks for the all the feedback. We won't be replacing Phalanx Shield, but we will be improving it's bonus set and allowing it to provide unique bonuses against ranged unattainable elsewhere.

[tenbsmith]

The penalty for building a Vraes using both Lore-based and Leadership-based talents is the need to split points between Lore and leadership in order to improve duration of buffs.

fallen, the stats for my Vraes who used Phalanx are below. His main talent was Natural Master at 4. Phalanx 3 was his second highest talent. I seem to recall Orcin missing him regularly.

Natural/Phalanx Vraes Level 19
Attributes: S 10, D 5, C 7, W 5, I 7, K 3
Skills: Bl 12, Ham 3, Pol 3, Lea 5, Lor 4
Talents: Crush 3, Savage 1, Stone 1, Phalanx 3, Natural 4, Berserk 2

I've just realized the entire party is cursed with Savage Weakness (-6 dodge, -14 armor), which may have played a roll in Tamilin's instant death upon entering the Orcin stronghold. I'll have to revisit this group once you've upgraded Phalanx.

[tenbsmith]

P.S. I agree with others that shields are good for blocking arrows so, intuitively, it makes sense for a shield talent like Phalanx to provide bonuses versus ranged attacks. A cool unique feature would be if it provided bonuses versus ranged magic attacks as well. that would really make it worth while.

[CdrPlatypus]

I think perhaps a good fix would be to have phalanx shield and some higher lvl shields to give +evasion since evasion is a strong die against all ranged

[agamon]

Jul 18, 2014 12:47:17 GMT -5 CdrPlatypus said:

I think perhaps a good fix would be to have phalanx shield and some higher lvl shields to give +evasion since evasion is a strong die against all ranged

I support anything that makes using a shield protect vs arrows. I personally think it should not grant parry at all, but dodge to begin with, or a special parry vs arrows, or - anything at all vs arrows X-D

I'm very happy to hear they have something planned.

[fallen]

agamon - while it is natural to think of a shield as a arrow-blocking, it would be a loss to ignore the fact that one of its primary purposes is defensive bonus in melee. That seems like we'd be trading one issue for another one that is even larger.

Phalanx Shield with grant +Parry, +Armor, and auto-block a % of incoming arrow attacks. Auto-block indicates no accuracy roll is made.

[En1gma]

fallen- that sounds awesome! Will this be Phalanx only or will all shields be receiving some sort of bonus, plus what Phalanx grants? Either way, my current build is all set, I'm just wondering =)

[fallen]

En1gma - Phalanx only.

[agamon]

Jul 18, 2014 15:24:36 GMT -5 fallen said:

agamon - while it is natural to think of a shield as a arrow-blocking, it would be a loss to ignore the fact that one of its primary purposes is defensive bonus in melee. That seems like we'd be trading one issue for another one that is even larger.

Phalanx Shield with grant +Parry, +Armor, and auto-block a % of incoming arrow attacks. Auto-block indicates no accuracy roll is made.

This sounds like a great fix.

however, I'm afraid when I said "it shouldn't grant parry" I meant it should instead grant something that protected vs both, such as dodge, but did not phrase it very well. Clearly only removing the parry would indeed create a new issue while trying to solve another.

but this auto-block got me thinking, that I really would like to see more combat feedback. Is there any possibility of getting a combat log window we could open and check to see combat being dissected? For example:

You dodge an Orc's attack!
You parry a Rodent of Unusual Size's attack!
You are hit for 0 damage by a nuisance's ranged attack!

...with words like dodge, parry, hit, and damage underlined so we could get more in depth info on why we parried, missed, or got the damage we did?

failing this, is there a chance we can have it display 0 damage when we get hit for 0? It will get awfully confusing knowing when we get no damage vs when the enemy missed due to auto block.

and just in case I'm not the only one who loves more combat feedback: in my ideal world, I think I'd love to see 30+15 floating over a monsters head, ideally colour coded for element, rather than you hit for 45. Or 35+0, if the critter resisted it all.

Anyway, seriously loving your game, can't believe I found it by accident and never heard about it since I specifically look for games like this.