Meditations on Melee

[Slawbug]

Melee sucks.

 

Okay, it doesn't totally suck, but it's at a disadvantage.

 

That's the last statement I thought I'd be making in a game that introduced the (fairly cool) Battle Discipline system. However, from what I can observe, melee sucks even worse than it did in A4. Battle disciplines are almost irrelevant since they work the same for melee, missile, and magic attacks. (Almost -- see below.)

 

The problem is Quick Action. Quick Action got totally nerfed. It used to be you could get it to 50% quickly, at about 10 points, and typically to a 2 out of 3 chance of working with a few items and a few more skill points. While that doesn't guarantee you hit every random chitrach twice on the first blow, it's reliable enough to, you know, rely on. Based on my testing, QA is much weaker in A5. QA of 10 gives about a 25% double strike rate. 15 isn't much better. QA of 20 gives about a 50% rate, but 20 is a pretty steep investment, and really isn't worth it. And the easily achievable 10 QA is inconsistent. Even the percent damage added over time against a boss isn't better than what you'd get by dumping some of those points into melee and pole.

 

If you're going melee, you may as well buy the first 6 or 8 points of QA, since they're so cheap. But after that it just isn't worth it.

 

QA was melee's one big advantage over archery in A4, as it allowed double damage a lot of the time. Combined with the halberd damage advantage it actually made melee pretty useful, despite archery's targetting advantages (particularly always getting two attacks off of 10 AP). With such bad QA, archery's just better.

 

Melee does have one thing going for it: Blademaster. Blademaster is better than it's ever been before. A score of 10 in Blademaster lets you recover 2 fatigue instead of 1 about 40% of the time. A score of 15, 75% of the time. A score of 20, you recover 2 fatigue almost every turn. And Blademaster is actually cheaper to acquire than QA is, later in the game. Divinely Touched and Elite Warrior both hand it out generously, so generously that I'm now considering EW for spellcasters and archers. (And if you're going for 20 battle skill, reaching 6 melee and 6 pole isn't the vacuous waste of skill points it was in past games.)

 

...and that's what actually makes melee start to seem a little better. If you're going to have 13 Blademaster at the end of the game anyway, you might as well have a melee attack. ...EXCEPT that you also have 8 free Sharpshooter and 8 free Magery. And the other problem is that you don't get such an amazing Blademaster bonus earlier, and it doesn't matter as much without the higher power disciplines. Especially the 20 skill one, the only one that stacks effectively with Haste and with bonus AP.

 

So I did out a few basic theoretical calculations. The values here are not tests and they aren't actual HP, but are what it looks like relative damage output from different investment strategies should come out to.

 

Without taking battle disciplines into account:

108 Nephil w/bow

125 Anyone w/sword with QA

150 Anyone w/Smite

163 Slith w/halberd with QA

 

With 20 battle skill and likely levels of Blademaster taken into account:

128 Nephil w/bow

158 Anyone w/sword with QA

177 Anyone w/Smite

207 Slith w/halberd with QA

 

When you take into account the fact that melee targetting can often make you attack fewer times than ranged targetting, Smite starts to look pretty good. Also, I don't know where you get the Heartstriker in A5 -- and it has been weakened slightly -- but it's still enough to put bow damage on par with melee damage.

 

This is too long and I need to stop. But somebody who's played through, please tell me if melee is really as unexciting as it appears here.

[Randomizer]

Melee weapons produce about half to two thirds the damage of pole weapons. With the best pole weapon (Slith bloodspear) available in chapter 3, and other decent ones there it's better than swords.

 

Shields do give a hidden bonus to reduce being hit, but this is only helpful past the demo in normal difficulty.

 

You do need melee for certain spell resistant monster like the unstable mass under the Harston Lowlands and other splitters.

 

Thrown weapons are better in damage than bows even with their limited number. The best bow, Heartseeker, isn't available until chapter 8 and you will probably have used up the ingredients.

 

Blademaster and fatigue reducing items are needed since single round battle disciplines (well aimed blow, mighty blow, and adrenaline rush) take time to reuse. Bladeshield and battle rage wear off before their fatigue costs.

 

I prefer divine touch for spellcasters since you get both magery and bladeshield. Jeff weaken parry so elite warrior isn't as helpful for spellcasters especially mages where the best armor (34%) isn't until chapter 7 and even before it's less than 20%.

[Synergy]

It is true that melee feels like the weakest link in attack. The Slith Bloodspear deals out massive damage by comparison, as does nearly any other pole compared to swords.

 

That said, there is a good sword (a Waveblade) available at the end of Chapter One, if you can make it past the very nasty Black Wight and fairly nasty Ruby Skeleton and his bony friends. For a little while, the melee warrior holds his own along with the pole fighter. The advantage of this Waveblade dimishes by Chapter Three or so, and swords never match up to poles after that.

 

I was lobbying for the human PC to have a melee advantage, or something similar, to make up for the complete lack of a reason to use a human otherwise. Still on my wish list.

 

-S-

[Skippy the bush kangaroo]

Quote:

Originally written by Synergy:
The advantage of this Waveblade dimishes by Chapter Three or so, and swords never match up to poles after that.

Well, I actually found the Flaming Sword [11-33] (with an option on the Oozing Sword or plain old Blessed Broadsword when dealing with fire resistant creatures) to be very good. It tended to deal out more damage than my Slith with the Slith Warspear [12-48] (or Molten Halberd or Chaotic Halberd which were my chosen swaps at the end for the Slith). The key was the fire damage - it really kicked butt.

Additionally, I was wearing the Mercuric Plate. This meant that I would reliably get two attacks when hasted even if there was some movement required.

What are the stats on Smite and how do they compare with the Flaming Sword against a non-fire resistant monster?

[Randomizer]

Slarty is referring to the Priest spell Smite, it's in the instructions under casting spells. It does 3 plus 1-5 per spell strength.

[Skippy the bush kangaroo]

Quote:

Originally written by Randomizer:
Slarty is referring to the Priest spell Smite

Here I thought it was some exotic sword that I had missed somewhere.

[Slawbug]

When I said "Melee" I was referring to all non-ranged attacks, NOT excluding pole weapons. Broadswords do an average damage of 2 per die, and halberds and slith spears do an average damage of 2.5 per die, an increase of 25%. This isn't huge, although Sliths also get the racial pole bonus to skill which will add another 8% or so in a typical game.

 

Even with QA, swords just seem like they have too little of an advantage in damage over bows to make up for their lack of consistency (both in terms of attack targetting capability and QA activation). I just can't see having a swordfighter at all. Even the Flaming Sword, while cool, really just casts a somewhat stronger Bolt of Fire at an enemy standing next to you.

 

I do remember monsters that resist all magical effects. Melee was incredibly useful against the pylons in A4. But again, with QA weakened, melee has less of an advantage over bows. With my calculations, a typical party of four attacking such an enemy physically will do a relative 542 if there are 2 slith pole-wielders and 2 nephil shooters, compared to 432 with just 4 nephil shooters. That's a pretty heavy investment for a less than 25% increase in total damage dealt -- ESPECIALLY when you consider that in round 1, the average damage of the multiracial party will be LOWER since the sliths will lose an attack running up to the enemy. They'll do an average 379 then. Against less hardy enemies that don't take 3 rounds to dispatch, or who come in groups so moving around after round 1 is required, using melee or pole is kind of a joke. So I'm unconvinced.

 

The best thing about melee skill is the ability to get Blademaster, but I really do think it's cheaper to just get Elite Warrior and spend the points that would have gone to that on archery or magic or whatever.

[Locmaar]

Somehow I am a trifle bewildered by the topic's title's assessment. I always felt it was part of the fun to run around with the merry foursome and pounding fell beasts to a pulp, where either of the merry men or maidens was more or less useful at a given point. Isn't this where tactics come into play?

 

On a similar note: every mass, stable or not, eventually gave in, and there was many a fight where my human (what?) melee (oh dear!) swordsman (madness!) was voted Employee-of-the-Month.

[Skippy the bush kangaroo]

As per my comment in another thread. You need at least one 'melee' character and, occasionally, two. This is for purely tactical reasons. You need a sponge to soak up the damage and tie up monsters in melee.

 

So, I don't think a party of four archers/spellcasters could make it through the game without some extremely tough fights (and fights that would otherwise be easy for a traditional 2 melee, 2 spellcaster party). A party with one melee/sponge character and the rest spellcasters might, however, do well... next game.

[Slawbug]

But melee has nothing to do with soaking up damage and tying up monsters! Melee and pole weapons, melee and pole weapon skill, quick action, blademaster, none of those protect you in any way. I guess strength lets you wear heavier armor, but dexterity lets you dodge, so there's little advantage over archery there. Similarly with nephils vs. sliths. (Ha, ha.) Elite Warrior does give you some Parry, but thanks to Blademaster's fatigue bonus, you don't need to be a warrior to pick Elite Warrior.

[Randomizer]

The advantage to combat skills is getting the battle disciplines. It's cheaper in skill point cost to get them a few of each one or wait to the trainer in chapter 4.

 

I never found the earlier bows doing enough damage to make archery a valid option in play. Thrown missles did enough to be useful, but I ran out of the found ones fairly quickly and learned to save them for the important fights.

 

The best use for archery is unstable monsters. Unfortuneately think pyroroamers in a small room.

 

Spell damage still is the way to go through out the game. With divine touch increasing magery from the start and being able to buy 3 levels from Shankar or in Exodus you up the damage level fairly quickly.