Queer Parry results

[Slawbug]

So I ran some testing with a fresh character. OK, not quite fresh; I maxxed out his experience at 60,000, for level 61. I doubt that would have any effect on this, but it's worth taking into account. These tests involved the guards in Ft Monastery attacking me. (Edit: he was naked, of course.)

 

Average damage, rounded (% reduction) -- stats improved

 

35 (00%) -- none

29 (17%) -- 10 Hardiness

23 (34%) -- 30 Hardiness

36 (-3%) -- 10 Luck

35 (00%) -- 30 Luck

28 (20%) -- 10 Hardiness, 10 Resistance

29 (16%) -- 10 Hardiness, 30 Resistance

7 (80%) -- 10 Parry

5 (86%) -- 30 Parry

 

Conclusions:

• Luck and Resistance don't reduce physical damage at all. This is very strange for Luck, since Luck increases your Armor rating!

• Hardiness probably acts as 2% armor per point, with the regular 10- and 20- skill effect ceilings.

• Parry is truly gross.

 

Parry also did some *really* weird things with dodge rate. Parry rate maxxes out at 50% (at 9 points, I believe) and this was the highest parry rate I ever observed, or saw displayed. The guards had a displayed hit rate of 67%. However, with 10 Parry, they hit me only four times out of the first ~40 attacks. With 30 Parry, they hit me only twice out of the first ~40 attacks. (Yes, I am taking into account the Dex and Defense I had to buy to access Parry.)

 

I also ended up observing some magic attack damage thanks to a sometimes nosy Lark. I didn't see this for the Hardiness or Resistance tests, unfortunately. But Parry *does* reduce magic attack damage (at least for single target spells). 10 Parry reduced damage by ~10%, and 30 reduced it by ~22%. Not a huge reduction, but it's something.

 

The actual parry rate against targetted magical attacks appears to be 1% per effective point of Parry, maxxing out therefore at 18% with 29 or 30 Parry.

[Slawbug]

Update: Perhaps I should have named this thread "bum luck." Luck does not seem to increase resistance to any kind of magical attack, either. Sheesh!

 

All the other stats and protective spells function about as expected against magical attacks. Resistance is very effective. Prismatic shield seems to vary randomly against each individual attack; I got results ranging pretty much from 0% ro 50%. Steel Skin and Protection were both a solid 25%. This was with a combined spell stat of 30.

[Alorael at Large]

So luck is probably good for everythiing but combat? Okay. Sure.

 

—Alorael, who knew he liked Parry. 10 points seems to be quite sufficient for ordinary immortality, though.

[Contra]

If luck increases dodgeing, it is obviously a worthwhile trait to invest in for combat purposes (even though I never do, because it costs far too much)

[steelytan]

I have a question about reducing the damage my Nephil Archer is taking on Torment mode.

 

I started out ramping up Dex, Bow, and then sharpshooter. By the end of the intro (Motrax Caves) I was pretty happy with the damage he was dealing out; what hits he took I could heal without difficulty.

 

I knew that life was going to get tougher in the Chitrach warrens, so I started investing SP in strength and then gymnastics in the hopes that I would be able to somehow dodge Chitrach attacks. The idea was to be able to use light armor--the Mercuric Leather at one point, the sniper's vest later on.

 

The problem was that I didn't seem to be able to do much to keep Chitrachs from hitting me (I know, it's torment mode, they'll hit more often), and then I was taking huge amounts of damage from poison. More than a couple of Chitrachs could get me into trouble. And while I invested SP in Gymnastics (and a few in hardness), I wasn't boosting sharpshooter, so he was becoming less effective as a fighter. (Meanwhile, my mage was dealing out huge amounts of damage with firebolt and lightning, and my priest was dealing huge damage with smite).

 

Once I got to the great cave, I put on the sniper's vest. This came in handy for the battle with the vahatani in the basalt caverns: I was doing good damage to the crawlers in the basement, and I think that Gymnasics might have kept me alive when the vahatani mage delivered a lightning bolt spell that took out my elite warrior (who had plenty of parry ranks).

 

But again, when I started fighting the wyrmkin in the Scree caves, my archer was getting hit every time and taking upwards of 50 pts of magical damage with each shot. Yes, he was wearing the sniper's vest, so I'm not that surprised, but I was hoping that with 5 or 6 ranks in gymnastics that he would have a chance of dodging at least some of those attacks. (My 4 points in hardness didn't seem to make a difference with the magical damage; I've read some posts that council against investing too much in this area, though).

 

I was looking for a way of buffing his defensive capabilities that didn't require swords and shields because I like having him be able to use the Chronos spear. With fast on feet, he usually gets another action point, and 2-3 arrows per round are nice to have.

 

I'm going to try starting again from the end of the intro section and instead boost dex and luck in the hopes of increasing my dodge chances. I wonder how two points of SP in luck plus Bragg's clover boots will help out versus the Chitrachs. I'm hoping that a smaller investment (compared to investing in gymnastics) in dex and luck will allow me to put more SP than before into bows and sharpshooter.

 

Sure, I know that I probably can't get away from having a glass canon, especially if I'm eschewing shields, but I was wondering if people had any thoughts on whether gymnastics was more useful than dex + luck. I've seen people recommend gymnastics over parry, but I'm pretty happy with what parry has done for my elite warrior who, with his 90+ armor rating, only faces threats from magical attacks.

 

Maybe I'll just have to reconcile myself to balancing out the character a bit by dropping the sniper's vest and equipping a massive breastplate once I get to the great cave. But--did anyone do some concrete tests comparing gymnastics with high dex?

 

Cheers,

[Lilith]

By the later stages of the game, I find that the best defensive strategy for non-fighters is to just pump Endurance, wear the heaviest armour you reasonably can, and suck up whatever damage you take.

[mikeprichard]

Excuse my necroing this truly ancient topic, considering it's pinned and my question is directly relevant - but could Slarty or someone else who had tested the effects of Luck in A4 confirm whether Luck is actually practically useless as implied in the current topic (posted by Slarty on 6 Jan 2006), or is in fact pretty amazing as described in this other topic (posted by Slarty on 25 Dec 2005)? The two topics directly contradict each other as to whether Luck actually increases character armor (+1/point), to-hit/dodge (+2%/point), F/C/E/mental resistance (+1%/point), and stun/poison/acid resistance (+3%/point). I'm planning another playthrough of A4 after many years, and remember it was almost the last SW game that was released with fairly glitchy/broken mechanics and UI systems (in my opinion), so I wouldn't be surprised to find Luck in fact does not grant the bonuses implied in the in-game skill description - I'd just like to confirm before I plan to pump 10 or so points into Luck for each toon.

(And of course, this was only 11 years ago, so I'm sure people will remember exactly what was going on... I'm an optimist.) Cheers!

[Slawbug]

Haha, indeed, this is a blast from the past

 

Rereading these threads... I would wager that this thread is more likely to be correct, and that luck may be bugged out in A4.  I say this because we know more about other relevant factors (like Torment directly impacting armor/resists) now than we did then, and I can imagine a scenario where one of those impacted my data without my realizing it.  But my inclination would be to not bother testing -- A4 has wacky enough game balance as it is -- and just skip Luck.

[mikeprichard]

Thanks, Slarty! I just loaded up character creation to mess around a bit, and had forgotten how expensive Luck was in A4 (at 4 skill points/level to start) compared to most other SW games - so that's yet another reason not to bother with Luck in favor of other useful skills that definitely aren't bugged. Appreciate the quick reply!