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Skill Tree Gripes and/or Requests


Jerakeen

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Let me say up front that on the whole I like the new skill system. It's a radical change for those of us accustomed to previous Spiderweb games, certainly, but it's very well done and carefully balanced.

 

I actually found that the simpler system let me immerse myself more fully in the story rather than being distracted by nuts and bolts of character stat optimization.

 

That said, I do have one request for Avadon II:

 

Please don't force the Sorceress(/er) to waste 5 or 6 skill points on something as useless as Daze in order to unlock higher tier skills. The only time I ever used it successfully was in the first dungeon. And by the time I got Charm Foe, not even the lowliest minion I encountered was susceptible to it.

 

The other classes' lower right skills remain more or less useful throughout the game; either Charm Foe should be more effective, or some other skill should be substituted.

 

That's my two cents. Anyone else have a gripe or suggestion?

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I saw Stunning Bash cause stun... once!

 

Powerful disabling status effects are a problem for game designers. For effects which are strong enough -- instant death/petrification, multi-round daze/stun, etc. -- abilities that work a reasonable percentage of the time become overpowered and possibly even broken. That's why most such abilities, in most games, almost never work and so never get used.

 

Geneforge dealt with this by making Daze very effective, but only if you invested VERY heavily in Mental Magic. This meant you could get this powerful effect, but you had to give up other capabilities to do so.

 

It's hard to force that same choice in Avadon.

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Based on the few times that I've used it, Shadowstep even at the lowest level seems to be more effective than Stunning Bash. Much more. I intend to test this in my current play-through as a Shadowwalker.

 

Anyway, I wouldn't mind Daze being less useful if I had a choice about investing in it. Or if Charm were any good.

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I found daze/strong daze pretty well-balanced in Avernum 5/6. I didn't use them in every fight by any means, because most stronger enemies resisted them frequently, but they had a definite role in combat: controlling large crowds of monsters with low mental resistance. There were a fair number of fights in which they were useless, a fair number in which they were moderately useful, and a few (the chitrach fights in mid-A5 come most vividly to mind) in which they were absolute life savers. That strikes me as a balanced ability, so it seems Jeff can balance crowd control abilities in party-based games.

 

I think group control abilities (daze, shadowstep, stunning powder) were balanced in Avadon: they didn't work all the time on anything you couldn't just one-hit kill, but they worked often enough that they'd hit a non-trivial segment of enemy groups, and they were generally worth using. It was more the single target control abilities (stunning bash, charm foe) that were noticeably underpowered: they worked about as often as the group control abilities, but on only one enemy, and those aren't good enough odds to make them worth using regularly.

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Originally Posted By: FnordCola

I think group control abilities (daze, shadowstep, stunning powder) were balanced in Avadon: they didn't work all the time on anything you couldn't just one-hit kill, but they worked often enough that they'd hit a non-trivial segment of enemy groups, and they were generally worth using. It was more the single target control abilities (stunning bash, charm foe) that were noticeably underpowered: they worked about as often as the group control abilities, but on only one enemy, and those aren't good enough odds to make them worth using regularly.


This makes good sense. So the superior effect of shadowstep is just due to the larger sample size.

I agree with the rest of FnordCola's comment as well.

The purpose of Charm Foe is basically to distract your enemies for a few rounds (hopefully causing them to clump together nicely for an area attack), and to nullify a summoner's advantage. This was handled well in A5 and A6.

You could easily prevent abuse of Charm in Avadon with a long recharge time and/or high vitality cost.
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You actually stun him twice. First he's stunned, then he's stunned that you stunned him.

 

The number of targets is a huge deal. There's no reason to use Stunning Bash on weak enemies, except for damage, because if you're targeting them specifically you want them cleared out. Area of effect spells are built for hordes.

 

—Alorael, who has now considered the possibility of statistical random assignment for AoE. You could actually guarantee that, say, one in four enemies, exactly, rounded down, would be affected. Then he considered a game in which damage is normalized and criticals come in tiers: above the mean, one standard deviation above the mean, two standard deviations above the mean...

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That is another concern regarding the balance on stunning bash. Even if the stun doesn't work (and that's apparently the normal way of things), it still does damage. In a lot of ways, I think charm foe is the most useless control ability, and one of the least useful abilities in the game. There are fairly cheap scrolls that duplicate its effect for a lower AP cost, and anyone can use them; it rarely works on the kinds of enemies one would want it to work on; if it doesn't work, it simply does nothing, unlike stunning bash. One has to get it to access higher level sorceress skills. Whether this works for or against it is mostly subjective.

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So the consensus seems to be:

 

1. Charm Foe is (almost) completely useless.

 

2. While Stunning Bash is underpowered for what it advertises, it's not a complete waste; even if you fail to Stun you can still Bash pretty good. Besides, you get it from boosting your main weapon skill, which you would be doing anyway.

 

3. Daze is OK for the early game.

 

Now, what about the top tier skills? I haven't tried them all, but so far I find them underwhelming. The offensive abilities don't seem to do as much damage as the lower tiers, and who's going to sacrifice most of their offensive potential to use the defensive ones?

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Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
So the consensus seems to be:

1. Charm Foe is (almost) completely useless.

2. While Stunning Bash is underpowered for what it advertises, it's not a complete waste; even if you fail to Stun you can still Bash pretty good. Besides, you get it from boosting your main weapon skill, which you would be doing anyway.

3. Daze is OK for the early game.

Now, what about the top tier skills? I haven't tried them all, but so far I find them underwhelming. The offensive abilities don't seem to do as much damage as the lower tiers, and who's going to sacrifice most of their offensive potential to use the defensive ones?





Fill the middle column to capacity then worry about the other ones.
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I don't actually want to get sidetracked into a discussion of optimized builds here. The idea was to identify specific skills and abilities that could be improved for future Avadons.

 

Future Avadons will, hopefully, give us more skill points to play with, so we may have more opportunities to make use of the top-tier skills. Meanwhile, I'm not sure I know enough about them to say whether they're worthwhile or a waste.

 

Searing Spray is a nice addition to the sorceress arsenal, but it doesn't seem as good as the shaman's acid attack. Corruption may be much better (I don't know), but those skill points might be better spent elsewhere.

 

And so on. Comments?

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My vote for the most useless skill is maxing out the bottom middle skill for the Shadowwalker, which gives you a chance at going into battle frenzy when you are hit in melee. At least for me, since I'm pumping Dex like crazy to avoid getting hit and for better razor disk attacks, I think I got a free battle frenzy maybe twice and I'm now at level 26. This would be much more useful for the Blademaster who isn't likely pumping Dex.

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Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves

Searing Spray is a nice addition to the sorceress arsenal, but it doesn't seem as good as the shaman's acid attack. Corruption may be much better (I don't know), but those skill points might be better spent elsewhere.

And so on. Comments?

I find corruption to be very useful, since it does a considerable amount of damage, in addition to damage over several rounds. Unlike Searing Spray, it's an AoE instead of a cone, so it has much better targeting. It's also nifty because most NPCs are not immune to it.

Originally Posted By: Colonel Haste
My vote for the most useless skill is maxing out the bottom middle skill for the Shadowwalker, which gives you a chance at going into battle frenzy when you are hit in melee. At least for me, since I'm pumping Dex like crazy to avoid getting hit and for better razor disk attacks, I think I got a free battle frenzy maybe twice and I'm now at level 26. This would be much more useful for the Blademaster who isn't likely pumping Dex.

That ability also gives a backstab bonus, which is pretty much necessary for the shadowwalker to do considerable melee damage.
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Originally Posted By: Colonel Haste
My vote for the most useless skill is maxing out the bottom middle skill for the Shadowwalker, which gives you a chance at going into battle frenzy when you are hit in melee. At least for me, since I'm pumping Dex like crazy to avoid getting hit and for better razor disk attacks, I think I got a free battle frenzy maybe twice and I'm now at level 26. This would be much more useful for the Blademaster who isn't likely pumping Dex.
Strong, strong disagree.

It sounds like you are playing your Shadowwalker as a ranged fighter. That's difficult, IMHO, especially early on since you can't pump the ranged attack skill higher than two skills (melee attack and backstab) that don't help ranged attacks.

The middle bottom skill -- backstab -- is AMAZING if you use shadowwalkers in melee. With 8 points put in plus a single specialization, you get 45% bonus damage for backstab. This damage moves shadowwalkers from having slightly worse damage output than blademasters, to better damage output. Backstabs are fairly easy to set up with my party (2 melee shadowwalkers + 1 shaman with summons); YMMV. The riposte chance isn't great but the battle frenzy chance is amazing. You get a 24% chance already at that level, and if your shadowwalker is in the front lines, it'll activate ALL THE TIME, doubling your damage output.

For skills with multiple abilities (backstab at level 1+, riposte at 3+, frenzy at 7+) once you get to a second or third ability, the previous abilities continue to increase as well.
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Q: It seems to me that there are enough evasion and dex increasing items, and points available to put into dexterity, that an evasion-based torment singleton should be viable. Is this correct?

 

A blademaster seems best suited to the endeavor. Or would poison, cold, and acid be to much for him?

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Backstabs are fairly easy to set up with my party (2 melee shadowwalkers + 1 shaman with summons); YMMV.


I play the more traditional Blademaster + Shadowwalker + Shaman (although someone -- I forget who -- convinced me to sub Sorceress for Shaman on my second play-through, which I'm just starting) and agree with this whole-heartedly. The trick is, you can't specialize in stats -- to take advantage of the backstab, you have to keep the Blademaster's Dex up with the Shadowwalker's because you always want the Blademaster to go first. But it's certainly worth it for the bonus damage.
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Q: It seems to me that there are enough evasion and dex increasing items, and points available to put into dexterity, that an evasion-based torment singleton should be viable. Is this correct?

A blademaster seems best suited to the endeavor. Or would poison, cold, and acid be to much for him?

I've tried this for sorceress, shadowwalker, and blademaster. Evasion works better for fighters since you don't need points for intelligence to increase damage. It works fine except for Zephyrine and Redbeard where even parry doesn't reduce the attacks enough to get through the scripted fights. Beloch is not a problem.

Poison, acid, and cold require some points to endurance, but that prevents you from dying in a single round where everyone gets lucky with their 5% autohit chance,
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Q: It seems to me that there are enough evasion and dex increasing items, and points available to put into dexterity, that an evasion-based torment singleton should be viable. Is this correct?

A blademaster seems best suited to the endeavor. Or would poison, cold, and acid be to much for him?

There are items and runestones to help with poison, cold and acid, too.
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Originally Posted By: Fael
Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Backstabs are fairly easy to set up with my party (2 melee shadowwalkers + 1 shaman with summons); YMMV.


I play the more traditional Blademaster + Shadowwalker + Shaman (although someone -- I forget who -- convinced me to sub Sorceress for Shaman on my second play-through, which I'm just starting) and agree with this whole-heartedly. The trick is, you can't specialize in stats -- to take advantage of the backstab, you have to keep the Blademaster's Dex up with the Shadowwalker's because you always want the Blademaster to go first. But it's certainly worth it for the bonus damage.

Agreed on keeping the Blademaster's Dex up. I always check every party member's Dex before I click on the + to use the level up.
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Why in the world would you ever increase a melee shadowwalker's dexterity?

 

Originally Posted By: Soul of Wit
There are items and runestones to help with poison, cold and acid, too.
The issue is that he's relying on dodging to survive, and Dex does not help you dodge poison, cold, and acid. At least, if the ability descriptions are to be believed. According to the descriptions, Endurance helps you dodge those three.

 

Is there are enough breathing room on the evasion front, even on Torment, that you don't have to put every available point into Dex? If so that makes this seem much more doable.

 

Also, I wonder if there is a way to do this by piling up massive quantities of Endurance -- only -- and relying on a combination of healing abilities to keep going.

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Dexterity with items and runestones over 35 at the end seems to be more than enough. Endurance about 18 to 20 is more than enough for the others. You can use runestones to evade attacks with items giving evade attacks instead of having so much dexterity.

 

You can't evade acid with dexterity at that is a major problem since those attacks are quite common. The widowspawn in Khemeria are the first real fight where that makes a difference.

 

Dexterity at 12 and using a blessing crystal for the final battle in the Wretch Warrens seems to be the point that you take less damage per round so you can win that fight. After that you need to start increasing endurance as well as dexterity.

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As near as I can tell, +5% evade attacks is a blanket +5% evasion to all attack types: physical, fire, cold, magic (energy), poison, acid, and maybe mental. Of course if you are hit, then you could still need the resistance of endurance for poison and especially acid.

 

The older beta versions allowed you to see the to hit numbers. So I'm sure for everything but mental which might act differently since it uses intelligence for evasion before the mental resistance check.

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Originally Posted By: VCH
Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Why in the world would you ever increase a melee shadowwalker's dexterity?


Because dexterity makes them harder to hit?

The better answer is missile damage is more effective than melee most of the game. Over half the monsters only have melee attacks and at 12 range you can get at least two free attacks with more if you can retreat. You can also pick off stragglers before attacking the main force.

Melee backstab does more damage, but then you risk getting hit.

Endurance only adds 5 health per point so you take more damage than the extra health from endurance will give you. Avoiding damage in the first place seems a more viable solution because of the limited number of healing potions.
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Seconded on endurance/HP being less helpful than dexterity/evasion for avoiding many types of damage. My shaman actually fell noticeably more quickly than my shadowwalker, and about as quickly as my sorceress, despite having about 60% more HP than either. This was due to a mix of crappy evasion and physical resistance. The resistances endurance provides are pretty useful, but the HP bonuses are mediocre at best.

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I am indeed using my shadowwalker as a ranged fighter. I can't say whether it's optimal or not, although I do love the fact that Dex helps with both offense and defense, making the pump decision easy.

 

I'm playing on Hard, not a singleton, and usually go out with a BM and sorceress. At level 26 I don't think I've had to reload since the last fight in the Beraza pits, which took me two tries. In brief, my strategy is to spread the party out. In order to use backstab by definition you have to have two characters in contact with a single enemy. This makes you vulnerable not just to getting hit but also to cleave and area attacks. I prefer standing back and hitting with razordisks and area spells. I use the BM to block and get in close but have also given him a lot of ranged skill.

 

Another factor that rewards being able to hit from afar is that there are a bunch of boss fights so far where it is almost impossible to close to melee range. Offhand I can think of the one where the spell caster keeps teleporting around early in the game, and then later when you are fighting 8 drakes at a time in a big room.

 

Coincidentally however after posting that I didn't like the Battle Frenzy skill, in the next half hour I spent playing I got a free Battle Frenzy twice. And I am of course sometimes using backstab even if it isn't my primary strategy. So I'll take it back. But I don't regret starting this conversation, I do think it is interesting. I also think it is relevant to the other thread going on right now where the person is arguing that you can't specialize once you pick a class. At a minimum the shadowwalker has two viable builds.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Why in the world would you ever increase a melee shadowwalker's dexterity?
The better answer is missile damage is more effective than melee most of the game.

Actually, that is a much worse answer. Read the question again.
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Is the shadowwalker's missile cleave worth the loss of the blademaster's parry? My gut sense is no, but I haven't really looked at numbers. Getting frenzied frequently when you get hit is very nice too, especially with a singleton. It's a shame the dodge build deliberately minimizes your frenzies.

 

—Alorael, who actually found it useful at some point to have his tough and dextrous shadowwalker stand near easier targets around enemies with cleave. All you need to do is take some damage and you become twice as dangerous.

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  • 1 month later...
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There were a few things that confused me, including the Sorceress tree where Cold Ball, a tier 2 skill, can slow a group while slow as per a spell rather than a side effect is tier 4. I honestly found slow to be a tad useless because most characters who are hasted do not even seem to be affected by slow. At least Daze had a really low percentage of affecting anything rather than a zero percent chance.

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