Guardians need help

[MrRoivas]

Seriously, the Guardians need some buffing for G4. In G3, melee was shafted, along with parry, so the hardcore, torment playing people used missiles. Now, as detailed in the deadeye shaper thread, even the shaper is better ultimately in the end at missles than the Gaurdian. Gaurdians don't have any strategys for torment that others can't do better. The creatures that the gaurdian can shape are weak and die easily, using magic is just stupid, melee is a puny 1-4 damage counter, missle is done better by the other classes, parry not longer saves you. Where does this leave the guardian?

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Not really.... They're perfectly fine if you're an experienced enough Gaurdian player.

[Slarzahl]

Guardians got weaker, but it's not as bad as you suggest.

 

Quote:

Originally written by Maxmillion:

In G3, melee was shafted, along with parry, so the hardcore, torment playing people used missiles.

Average melee damage got reduced from 4.5 per die to 2.5 per die, but almost every magic and missile attack (shaper or creation) got reduced as well, albeit by less. Melee damage is still easier to pump, as you have two stats (Str + Melee) in addition to Quick Action, whereas spells and missile have just the two stats. Plus, high level melee weapons have base damage that adds many dice on. Spells don't -- at all -- and missiles have the drawback of having to carry and stock them. For that matter, spells have the drawback of having to pump Intelligence and keep leftover essence in addition to pumping the spell skills.

 

Also, note that since ALL melee attacks were weakened, but armor and HP levels were not, this also made it significantly less dangerous for the Guardian to stand out in the front lines, where he is most effective.

 

Finally, Parry was not shafted, it was just UNbroken. It's still a powerful skill.

 

Quote:

Now, as detailed in the deadeye shaper thread, even the shaper is better ultimately in the end at missles than the Gaurdian.

The Shaper is NOT better at missiles in the end than the Guardian is. Period. The build may be better overall, but that's just because creations are powerful -- and that's part of Geneforge; it's been that way since the beginning.

 

Quote:

The creatures that the gaurdian can shape are weak and die easily,

Uhh... is this a joke? It's true that if you're going to rely on shaping, you may as well be a Shaper. But Guardians are not significantly worse than shapers at it. If you pump one shaping stat, a Guardian will be 1-2 points behind a Shaper for the same investment of skill points. Since the shaping skills became extremely uneconomical once they get to 10, what this means in practice is just that a Guardian will spend 10 skill points more than a shaper would to make the same creations. If he spends those ten extra skill points, his creations will be EXACTLY THE SAME as a Shaper's.

 

Guardians do get 75% the essence of a Shaper, but since they have trouble accessing spells, they are unlikely to use as much, anyway. Lack of spells makes it harder to support their creations, but that's a separate problem.

 

The real problem is as follows: Melee + Creations is a much less effective combination than either Spells + Creations or Melee + Spells, and the Shaper and Agent obviously do the latter two better. Since Melee + Creations is the definition of the Guardian, there isn't much to do about this one.

[Delicious Vlish]

Pardon me, I beg to differ. My Bullseye Shaper was considerably better than anything the Guardian could muster. His blessing magic allowed him to do consistantly more damage, and Strong Daze allowed him to do it in complete safety.

 

By the time the guardian pumped Blessing Magic enough to get Mass Energise and Mental Magic to get Strong Daze, his other skills would suffer greatly.

 

Anything the Guardian can do the other classes can do better.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Except melee.

[Delicious Vlish]

No, the Agent can do melee just as good, if not better. Somebody went and crunched the numbers on that already.

[MrRoivas]

Thats my point exactly. Why bother being a gaurdian if other classes can do the same things better? The gaurdian needs help.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

I dought it. I've done up 500 damage with two attacks and QA. I could beat a Rot by the beginning of Gull Island. With Melee. Nothing else. Could an Agent do that?

[Slarzahl]

Again, the Guardian is slightly better than the Agent at melee skills, and purely in terms of skills themselves, he is very mildly better than the Shaper (but not, in fact, the Agent) at missile weapons.

 

The problem is that spells are invaluable support no matter WHAT your primary offensive strategy is, and the Guardian is left behind rather royally when it comes to accessing spells.

 

In my mind, the problem isn't that the Guardian is too weak, it's that support spells are too important and too powerful.

[MagmaDragoon]

Quote:

Originally written by Delicious Vlish:
Anything the Guardian can do the other classes can do better.

That isn't true. Otherwise, why they are ratend "Strong" in Combat Skills?

Anyway, I think the Guardian is strong enough. I had problem in GF3/2 only at the benginning.

But is true that is a little rude with strategies. You can only assaul the enemy, in front, like medieval duels (except when there are packs of enemyes) and occasionally heal yourself. Simple but efficient.

[Slarzahl]

Quote:

Originally written by MagmaDragoon:
like medieval duels (except when there are packs of enemyes)

So basically, not like medieval duels at all.

[Delicious Vlish]

Quote:

Originally written by Bobby Pendragon:
I dought it. I've done up 500 damage with two attacks and QA. I could beat a Rot by the beginning of Gull Island. With Melee. Nothing else. Could an Agent do that?

Yes, with out breaking a sweat, on Torment, where it matters. Agents can take out whole packs in melee. With the right buffs, Augmentation, Steel Skin, Essence Armor, etc, an Agent becomes for all intents and purposes, physically immune. Something the Guardian can not do.

If the Guardian becomes swarmed, he dies most of the time.

The Guardian needs a way to process mobs. Multi enemy attacks.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

No, but but can the Agent do that much damage with melee?

[Student of Trinity]

I've been replaying G2 as a squad leader missile Guardian. I haven't put anything into melee, and I don't even carry a sword (though once or twice I've finished off an adjacent wounded rogue with a Fiesty Slap of Pain). I have kept two Fyoras alive from the very early game, and two Vlish made after reaching the Magus Complex. I'm now at level 20, having cleared out the demo and most of the Awakened lands.

 

This team works fine, I think. The creations aren't exactly a legion of doom, but they pretty much pull their weight. Actually the Fyoras don't do nearly as much as the Vlish, but I'm keeping them out of sentiment, and because sometimes the Vlish run out of energy. My Guardian does actually use the fact that he's a Guardian, not a Shaper: with good armor and Parry, he stands in front of his creations and takes most enemy attacks. But he uses War Blessing and Protection constantly, and they make a huge difference. Overall, gameplay is somewhere in between the Shaper's 'micro-manage the army' and the Agent's 'shoot and run'. I named my Guardian 'Aubrey' with prescience, because combat feels like Nelson's navy: firing broadsides as we gradually close, then finishing with a short-range brawl.

 

I think the reason this group is working better than what I've tried in the past is that everybody in the party is fighting, and fighting together. I still think it's very hard to keep battle creations alive on Torment, unless perhaps you're a Shaper with enough essence to make a mob of them. And a melee Guardian with a few artillery creations can also easily lose them, because if anything targets them he's often too far away to help them. But with my Guardian standing off and sniping along with his guys, everyone seems to be able to support each other.

 

Perhaps part of my greater satisfaction with Guardian creations in this game, though, may be because my Guardian's missile attacks don't do as much damage as a melee Guardian's sword. So more enemies are getting pulled down with help from creations. With a melee Guardian, I find nothing dies until I hit it myself, and when I get around to doing that, it will die without help from creations.

 

Anyway, though, the missile Guardian with a small squad of creations works, and is a different playing experience from an Agent or a Shaper. So my conclusion at this point is that the problem isn't with Guardians; it's with melee. Melee is just too dangerous on Torment. With armor and Parry you can pump up a single melee Guardian enough to handle it, but your creations can't get those, so they die.

 

Is this problem really a problem? Maybe not. Maybe it's fine for Torment to force ranged tactics, with solo melee Guardian as an 'iron man' option for greater challenge.

 

Or maybe there could be a skill, cheap for Guardians, that gives your creations extra armor, maybe also other combat buffs. It could represent your training and skilled command, or something. Or maybe just let Parry extend to creations in some degree.

[MagmaDragoon]

What about a new kind of Magic, like Blessing, but only for Guardian... Some kind of magic that give you decent increase at your Combat Skills?

[Delicious Vlish]

Quote:

Originally written by Bobby Pendragon:
No, but but can the Agent do that much damage with melee?

Yes. They can.

Somebody did the numbers, and the Guardian's melee advantage with pumping skills burned out way to early and from that point on, both the Agent and Guardian spend the same number of skill points raising melee skill. The Guardian starts out with a small advantage that only lasts for a short time, and then the Agent not only catches up, but one ups the Guardian with the ability to self buff, use strong magic like Daze, and so on.

And there is the problem. The Agent can pump all of her melee skills just as high as the Guardian can, and not suffer at all, just become more well rounded and deadly as time passes. The Guardian on the other hand, if he tried to pump magic to a level of support that the Agent has, he would cripple himself and make himself useless as a character. The Agent can have her cake and eat it too... You can make a jacked up melee based Agent and not suffer in the slightest.

Melee characters need some kind of specialised magic, like Commands or something, like SoT touched on. I am really not sure how to fix this issue, but magic it self is the overpowering element. It is just to strong.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Then why don't you prove the numbers right? I don't think that the agent does that much damage 30% of the time.

[Delicious Vlish]

Somebody else has already done the numbers, math isn't my thing.

 

And where on earth did you get 30% from?

 

Melee skill is a fixed set of factors. If both an Agent and a Guardian have 10 melee skill, say, 5 strength, and a bronze sword, they both do the same damage. It is really very simple. Are you incapable of figuring this out for your self?

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

My Guardian roughly 30% of the time did 500+ damage.

 

Try playing the game to have your melee agent do 500+ damage 30% of the time.

[Delicious Vlish]

I see speaking to you in logical and rational terms is pointless. You are a fool, there is no sense in arguing with you. Think whatever you will.

 

Answer me this though... With the same stats, skill levels, and weapons, why would a Guardian do more damage? Both the Agent and the Guardian are capable of achieving the exact same numbers in physical stats and weapon skills...

[Slarzahl]

DeVlish is right. I've already typed reams on this. Look for the Guardian vs. Agent thread. Guardians are only better melee fighters if you are going to ignore magic entirely, and if you do that, you will die, period -- and even then they are only mildly better at melee.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Guardians can get melee skills higher cheaper. I completely ignore magic and the game is quite easy. Guardians aren't better at melee just because of QA and Melee. Having high Parry, Strength and Endurence help to. Also, it has a lot to do with how you play. Most people seem to have trouble playing the Guardian. I find it quite easy. The Guardians don't need a boost. People just need to figure out how to play them well.

 

I have read the other topic. In tougher battles the Guardian can use items to allow them to do more damage and have higher HP. This gives them most of power that BLM would give them. I'm not saying that the Guardian is better. I'm just saying that he doesn't need boosting.

[Delicious Vlish]

And you have done this on Torment?

 

With out cheating, using a character editor, etc? Cause that's the only thing that matters.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Yes, unless you count healing myself when I don't feel like going to town. It doesn't affect fighting or gameplay at all.

[Student of Trinity]

I forget, was the Agent also going to be able to match the Guardian in Strength (for damage and for carrying armor and weapons) and Endurance? Those are very significant factors if you want to be a slugger.

 

Having said that, I concede that Augmentation and high spell strength makes Endurance pretty much irrelevant, and I did buy the original argument that by pushing combat skills while keeping enough magic to enjoy the buffs, an Agent could slug it out as well as a Guardian.

 

That's probably a problem, but I wonder. Ideally, if the Agent is using her magic strength to boost her minor suit of combat, then the Guardian should be able to compensate with some decent creations. But that's a lot harder to quantify, since there's no easy way to weigh a pair of Vlish against 3 points of Melee Weapons.

[Slarzahl]

*sigh*

 

Okay, here is why creations don't work well with Guardians:

 

In any kind of game like this, there are two basic strategies: offensive, and defensive. Offensive strategies involve having enough firepower to do relatively more damage to your opponent than they can do to you in each round. Defensive strategies involve preventing most or all of your opponent's attacks in some way, and then picking them off at leisure.

 

Defensive tactics usually work by minimizing the opportunity for the enemy to hit you -- minimizing the surface area, as it were. When defensive spells and skills have to be cast or built up or equipped for each character individually, the most effective way to produce a strong defense is to just use one character. This allows you to maximize the return you get out of defensive measures. A single piece of armor can reduce damage from all blows, not just one out of eight.

 

Offensive tactics, of course, desire the reverse -- maximum surface area. The more characters you run, the more attacks you get to make each round. And if you aren't building up anyone's defenses, it doesn't matter too much who gets hit; having more bodies just means each hit you receive counts for a smaller proportion of your total resources.

 

Defensive PCs will often find it useful to augment their attack and their defense as much as they can. Doubling their attack means they are twice as efficient at dealing with enemies. If you are part of a team of eight, on the other hand, doubling one character's attack isn't going to do much at all.

 

But if you are running a whole party, if you are running creations, it is purely and simply a waste to spend your resources helping just one of your characters when you have options available that could help the whole party. You could buy a point of Strength -- or you could buy a point of Magic Shaping, which will make up to seven creations one level higher, and half a point better in four statistics! You could buy a point of Strength -- or you could buy a point of Intelligence, probably providing enough essence to add Strength to each of your creations individually!

 

It's not that Melee + Creations can't be done. It's just a very inefficient strategy that makes poor use of your resources as a PC. You wind up with a weaker offense than an offensive party, without having better defense; and you wind up with a much weaker defense than a defensive singleton, with only a somewhat better offense.

 

--

 

As for melee guardians:

Of course it can be done, and of course it can be done on Torment. Nonetheless Bobby, no offense, but I am a little skeptical that you have played the entire game on Torment. Your comments sound like the things someone who playing on Normal would say. Why don't you post your Guardian's stats, and we can discuss whether it looks able to handle a swarm of Torment Rotdhizon?

 

Items can substitute for some effects, sure, but there are others that they can't make up for. DAZE is the most important of these. If you are playing on Torment, not all the Glaahk shields in the world will stop you from getting stunned to death; you either need to take out enemies at hyperspeed -- unlikely as a singleton on Torment -- or you need to have some way of incapacitating them.

 

(Blessing magic is not actually the issue, since you can buy 2 points for money, getting you War Blessing and Protection. Speed is at what, 3? And even getting to 6 or 7 for Steel Skin and Essence Armor is doable, though if you spend those skill points a comparable Agent can reach or exceed your combat skills in the meantime.)

 

The Missile Guardian build gets around this by using Madness Gems and other such powerhouses, if I remember correctly. The Melee Agent uses Daze and Strong Daze, often repeatedly. The Melee Guardian is helpless.

 

Whereas Quick Action and Parry drop off rapidly in usefulness after getting to 10, and there are LOTS of good items that boost them both, Mental Magic and Spellcraft need serious attention to make Daze viable, and there are few items that boost them. An Agent can drop 6 points (= 14 skill points, if you buy the first two) into each of those skills and be quite happy with the results. A Guardian who has 28 skill points to spend on magic skills -- let's assume he ignores blessing magic and just uses items wisely -- can get up to a whopping 5 in Mental Magic and 4 in Spellcraft. At that point, there's no reason to bother; Daze won't even work on the enemies you need it to.

 

A Guardian will, of course, have higher battle stats than an Agent, if that's the only place you put points. Specifically, each stat (Str, Melee, QA, Parry) will be somewhere between 1 and 4 points higher at any given time. I did the math out in the Guardian vs. Agent thread; you can google it. But again, a QA of 13 vs a QA of 10 is not much of a difference at all. Strength is only 1 point higher. HP are higher, but this is more than made up for by Essence Armor and Steel Skin. The Guardian ends up with no real advantages and a disadvantage in available strategy which, on Torment, is crippling.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Equipment

 

-Symbotic Cloak

-Quicksilver Bulwark

-Lightning Girdle

-Guardian Claymore

-Quicksilver Sandals

-Talisman of Might

-Emerald Chestguard

-Gloves of the Rock

-Avenger's Ring

-Gazerskin Vambraces

-Lucky Charm

-Skein of Wisdom

-Charm of Mental Focus(2)

-Blademaster's Charm

-Inflitraitor's Charm

-Cryoa Claw Charm

-Esscence Charm

-Puresteel Charm

 

98% Armor

Resistances

 

-77% Fire

-80% Cold

-77% Energy

-148% Stun (only the Shambling Rotbeasts could stun me)

-66% Mental

-105% Poison (effectively immune)

-60% Acid

 

Health 504

Essence 156

Spell Energy 106

Action Points 13 (19.5 when hasted)

 

Skills

 

Base Skills

 

-14 Strength

-7 Dexterity

-5 Intelligence

-16 Endurance

 

Combat Skills

 

-15 Melee

-7 Missile Weapons

-16 Quick Action

-13 Parry

 

Magic Skills

 

-0 Battle Magic

-0 Mental Magic

-3 Blessing Magic

-2 Spellcraft

 

Shaping Skills

 

-1 Fire Shaping

-1 Battle Shaping

-1 Magic Shaping

-6 Healing Craft

 

General Skills

 

-12 Leadership

-15 Mechanics

-8 Luck

[Student of Trinity]

I sympathize with the desire to simplify a complex problem into two extreme cases, of lone tank versus ratpack. But I don't quite buy it. There are a lot of factors in the game.

 

Against boss monsters, you need at least one strong offense to be in the game at all, and this means an Agent or Guardian, or some third or fourth tier creations. Against swarms it really helps to have several creations, and even weak attacks can combine to take things down.

 

Solo Agents and Guardians can generally avoid getting swarmed by tactics cunning to the point of engine abuse. Shapers can wait to fight the Bound One until they've gotten some high-level creations. Everybody can make it work. But the intermediate route, of having one hard-hitter plus three or four decent back-up creations, is a flexible strategy that mixes offensive and defensive modes, and lets you cope with everything the game throws at you without having to resort to dubious tricks.

 

And this is exactly what Guardians are supposed to be doing. They're the middle class.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

That's not what I do.

[chibi kaie]

So if we're not playing on torment, we're not supposed to contribute to discussions? Okay. Can I still ask questions?

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Sure.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by chibi kaie:
So if we're not playing on torment, we're not supposed to contribute to discussions? Okay. Can I still ask questions?

No need to be snippy. It's just that the real test of a gameplay strategy is how well it works in the most difficult situations. So people with a lot of experience playing on Torment will naturally have more to contribute to a discussion of strategy.

[Slarzahl]

About Torment. Torment is much harder than Normal. This has affects strategy a lot. Generally, there are a wide variety of strategies that work in Normal. In Torment, only the most efficient strategies are going to be successful.

 

People who don't play Torment can definitely have good things to say. Usually, though, it's somebody saying "I gave my guardian stats x y and z and it worked great I don't know what you are talking about." Just don't say that. You can do fine in Normal with any mildly intelligent strategy. So, successes in Normal have very little bearing on discussions of what strategies work best... because everything works in Normal.

 

SoT: And I, too, sympathize with the desire to acknowledge ambiguity rather than accepting convenient polarizations. But in this case I don't buy it

 

> Against boss monsters, you need at least one strong offense to be in the game at all, and this means an Agent or Guardian, or some third or fourth tier creations.

 

I don't buy this. ALL damage reduction in Geneforge is handled on a percentage basis, every last bit of it; so unless your team is so weak that they are missing a lot, several lower tier creations are going to do just as much damage as one strong one -- often, more.

 

> But the intermediate route, of having one hard-hitter plus three or four decent back-up creations, is a flexible strategy that mixes offensive and defensive modes, and lets you cope with everything the game throws at you without having to resort to dubious tricks.

 

I guess you can run a disposable creations model, running solo by default and recruiting helpers when they seem helpful. The problem is that you're worse off with the creations, as you can't offer them proper support from spells; and you're worse off without them as well, since your skills are so spread out. There are few areas that are really tough solo or really tough with creations, but when push comes to shove, you have to be stronger than the enemy.

 

Anyway, full on offensive and defensive teams don't all resort to dubious tricks

[Delicious Vlish]

It's funny how normal works and how it changes the game. Like, in the original Geneforge game, in normal, the Agent really did seem weak compared to the other two classes. The Guardian seemed to hit harder, and the Shaper was the end all be all character, the one whom the game, and the canisters, were the most designed for. In normal, you could just plow a Guardian clean through the game with very little effort or thought. The Agent didn't actually seem to bring much to the table. Many people claimed that the Agent was the weakest class, the worst class. She couldn't shape, and was by default, useless.

 

Of course, the real irony here is, shaping is not the all powerful element, it is magic, and where the Guardian is the most lacking.

 

Anyhow, on normal, everything seems fine and good and everything seemed balanced.

 

That is till you took the Guardian to Torment in G1 and things got... HARD. Even Shapers with an army had to get witty. Fewer creations typically, but with upgraded stats. Instead of an army of Fyoras starting out, you might make four Fyoras, each with a bit of str, dex, int, and end. And even then, a single Thahd could come along and totally ruin your day, and wipe out half of your carefully leveled and coddled army. Combined arms came in to play... Damage shields, artillery, and ancillary effects. Suddenly those Artillas that do damage over time and combat those insane regeneration rates became a bit more useful.

 

It's not that people who play normal opinions don't apply or don't matter, just make sure you let everybody know, hey this works fine on normal or hard. What works on torment doesn't always work in normal. In normal, I find that swarms work best for Shapers and Guardians. Many weak creations of any available type to apply the beat down on the enemy. You don't even really need to add anything to int, as there is no real need to actually control your creations on normal. They can beat the game for you with no effort. Things like Vlish and Artillas are not important at all in normal, because nothing lives long enough for the acid or the slow to really be of much use. You can take a single eye beast or gazer and completely lay waste to the end game with no worries. Combined arms, advanced tactics, and ancillary effects are completely and totally worthless on normal and have no real bearing on strategy. All that really matters is applied brute force and that's it.

 

I guess a lot of what some of us discuss here is probably worthless to most of the forum.

 

[Hume]

Torment isn't that hard for a guardian later in the game. With the right equipment, I got all my resistance above 100%, which reduces damage taken to a quarter. Able to cast haste is good enough. Get swarmed? Just hit and run. And the oozing blade is great. KEEP IT if you are playing melee.

[Student of Trinity]

Hit chance depends on the target as well as the attacker, and a 50% difference in base chance to hit can be adjusted into a difference between 100% and 150%, which is nothing, or between 0% and 50%, which is infinite.

 

I believe this wrecks the universal analysis that leads to only two optimal strategies. For bosses you need at least one guy with very high hit chances, while for swarms you want more guys shooting. Trying to have both may lose you some efficiency in the intermediate range of battles between swarm and boss, but it gains you flexibility to handle both extremes, and this makes it a good contender overall.

 

At least, in theory. As to practice, my current G2 squad leader missile Guardian is doing fine on Torment. He took out the Bound One by emptying a Terror Wand, a Reaper Baton, and a fat clip of Acid Thorns into him, while one of his Vlish landed one lucky hit that moved the Bound One's health bar less than a pixel. But right after that his Vlish and Fyoras saved his butt in Clawbug Canyon. The combination seems to have some practical synergy.

 

I am dismayed that the Missile Shaper works so well; that steals the Guardian's thunder, all right. But I disagree that the Guardian squad leader is doomed in principle; the concept seems sound, and a bit of tweaking should make it a solid third option for the game. Nerf the Shaper's missile skills, I suppose.

 

Perhaps the key to guarding the three classes' separate patches of turf would be to change how steeply their skill point costs rise with level, instead of just (or even, just instead of) their initial costs. That would keep Guardians ahead in combat for damn sure, no?

[Slarzahl]

I never said a flexible strategy was doomed, just that it was less desirable than picking one end or the other. A dedicated Shaper should not have any problem with bosses and a properly supported Agent should not have any problem with swarms. Picking creations wisely, and using Daze wisely, hardly count as abusing the game engine.

 

The thing is that well-supported creations do not have significantly lower chances to hit than comparable PCs. At the moment, Vlish-Thsss is about a third of the way through Dhonal's. He has a team of seven Vlish, who -- simply by putting 10 points in Magic Shaping and creating the Vlish as soon as he could -- are now at level 29. That gives them a base Strength of 14, increased to 19 from equipment effects (Claymore, belt, etc). Their missile attack has a base attack bonus of +3, and a base hit chance of 70%. Altogether, that gives them a hit chance of 180% before applying enemy dodge. A Guardian with 10 Strength and 10 Melee Weapons and the Claymore will have a hit chance of 210% before dodge. Bobby's pimped out Guardian, for comparison, has a base hit chance of 271% before dodge. Add another 8 Strength from a conservative 15 levels gained, 3 Strength from the Shroud, and 4 very reasonably priced points from essence, and the Vlish are up to a 255% hit chance before dodge.

 

These are not big differences. Heck, throw in the 20% bonus from War Blessing, and even the 180% Vlish have a 99% hit rate against anything with less than 21 Dex. At 30 Dex, they are down to 50%, but I'd rather have seven 50% attacks than one 80% attack. The Bound One isn't going to be a problem.

 

Quote:

Perhaps the key to guarding the three classes' separate patches of turf would be to change how steeply their skill point costs rise with level, instead of just (or even, just instead of) their initial costs. That would keep Guardians ahead in combat for damn sure, no?

Yes, and this is an important point. The classes were balanced for G1, when skill point costs were static and not increasing. The change was insignificant for most skills, but not for Quick Action and Anatomy/Parry, which went from being insanely cheap for Guardians to being just average. This was a real advantage down the drain.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmm, we may be comparing apples to oranges, since for the battles I reported I was less than a third of the way through G2. Still, my vlish were also made as soon as possible, but with Magic Shaping only 2 instead of 10. With a Shaper I would probably have had that. With that many high level creations along they might have gained levels a bit more slowly, but probably I'd have been seeing hit rates around 40% with them, and that would indeed have been a lot better.

 

You're starting to convince me, but let me argue a bit more. A Terror Wand was crucial to my Bound One victory. Normal Vlish don't apply Terror, and I don't think I could have gotten Terror Vlish at this point in the game. A Shaper who had pushed so much into Magic Shaping would have needed a lot more luck to terrify the BO. Vlish do stun, but the BO is pretty resistant, as well as very fast, and lives in a small space where it's hard to keep a distance. So I don't have time to try the experiment for comparison, but I suspect that the Vlish army wouldn't really have it so easy with the BO: I bet they'd lose a few, and if they lost them too soon the battle could turn.

 

So it remains true that your single hard hitter is good for delivering special effects to hard targets. Or?

 

But I'm pretty much willing to concede that even if that's true, it's not really enough. I guess what I'm left with is that a Guardian with a small team of well-aged creations should be a sound third option to the lone Agent and the Shaper army. It does work, and it makes for a significantly different game, having one hard hitter who hits not quite so hard as an Agent, and a few moderate back-ups instead of the Shaper's horde. It shouldn't be definitively outclassed by other approaches. And in my mind the ideal balance among the classes is not necessarily exact parity, but just for all of them having some hard zones and some easy zones, with the hard and easy zones being different for each. I don't want to struggle through every zone as a Guardian, remembering how much easier it was with another class; for some zones I want to breeze through and remember how much harder it was with the others.

 

Perhaps the Guardian could use some help, in the form of increased ability to enhance a small group of creations, or uniquely high chances to control a few powerful 'found' creations. I do think the right approach is to play up Guardian creations, and not only to try to raise combat skills until they compete with Agents' magic. We don't need another hero. Creations are the key feature of Geneforge, and there's room for a different creation game from the Shaper one.

 

But perhaps the problem is not so much with the Guardian here as with the Shaper: maybe the Shaper is too good at enhancing a large group of creations. Perhaps increase in level with Shaping skill is too great an effect, and it really benefits Shapers much more than anyone else, so toning it down would rein them in without killing Guardians. And perhaps there are too many items that boost creation stats too much, and thus boost Shapers over Guardians again. Shapers have the essence to make many creations or to make very advanced ones, and the high shaping skill to master the advanced creation techniques. Those advantages are great as well as cool; Shapers don't need to be able to turn Vlish into endgame killers as well.

 

We've worried about Agents for a long time. Precise balance isn't necessarily the goal, and I don't mind if Agents breeze through a lot of things, but there should be more zones that are hard for Agents, that force them to use up hoarded items or enlist allies or wait and come back at much higher level. I have never liked the Dazes because they are just too strong; the basic concept is fine, but at their current strength they make tough fights ridiculously easy. Daze feels wrong even when used as directed.

[Slarzahl]

Level of creations doesn't affect how much XP you get, or how much XP they get. XP is determined entirely by your PC's level and the number of allies you have, approximately as follows:

 

Code:

# PC Creations0 50 --1 46 362 43 343 40 324 37 295 34 276 31 247 28 22

So even with seven creations, you get more than half the experience of a solo agent. However, once you account for the level-adjustment to all received XP, and the annoyingly high percentage of the time that singletons get 1 XP for killing things or completing quests, the seven-creation shaper never really loses out on more than 3 levels or so. The creations get 75% the level ups that the PC does. I made level 22 Vlish when I was at, I think, level 10, so they will keep up just fine.

 

Terror Vlish, btw, don't apply Terror either. Not anymore. But investing to 10 in Magic Shaping only costs 34 skill points for a Shaper. There's plenty left over to put into Mental + Spellcraft, or Dex + Missiles, as you see fit. I'm not fond of breaking AI scripting, but I am investing heavily in Mental Magic for Daze, so maybe I'll try Terror out.

 

The special effect of Vlish is not stunning, but slowing, and I don't think it's possible to resist slowing in Geneforge. The thing is, there are actually relatively few differences among non-fourth tier creations aside from attack method and base level. If you get Vlish up to high levels, they compare just fine with Drayks and Glaahks; they just have a different special ability. And because they are so cheap, you can actually afford to improve their stats, even with seven of them. A level 36 Vlish, unimproved and with no equipment bonuses, will have about 350 HP. With Group Heal to support them, I don't expect any casualties.

 

I thought about making a Glaahk or two when I got to Dhonal's Keep, but by that point, my Glaahk would be lower level than my Vlish, with a comparable melee attack; basically I'd trade a slowing missile and a poison melee for just a stunning melee, plus I'd lose essence and they would be harder to essence-pump.

 

If it isn't apparent, I think that Vlish have become overpowered in G3 -- not broken by any means, just a ridiculously good value. The flexibility their cheapness affords a Shaper makes this, imho, one of the most powerful builds the game has to offer.

[Student of Trinity]

I refer to the long edit I added to my previous post, which is basically a concession with some proposals for nerfing Shapers. I should have just waited and posted that here, but I didn't realize you'd reply so fast.

[Slarzahl]

Ah, the competition for lack of a life on Sunday mornings

 

I agree with pretty much your whole edit. I think it would be very nice, and very in-flavor, to give the guardian some kind of leadership capability that enhances the power of his creatures in a way different from the shaper's essence pumping. The problem is that this is inordinately hard to do when you insist, as Jeff does, that every character can potentially use every ability, spell, etc.

 

Perhaps Parry could become a kind of Bodyguard ability that gives a defensive bonus to creations 1 or 2 square away from the Guardian, in addition to the bonus the PC gets. That would explain the Guardian's name, and it would foster a playing style extremely different from both the Shaper and the Agent.

 

The funny thing is that shaping skills have already been toned down. Back in G1, freshly made creations received a bonus of +1 to their core stats PER LEVEL, rather than half a point per level as they currently do. If you pushed Fire Shaping high you could easily make a Drayk that started out with 30 in each stat. That was ludicrous.

 

I think the best way to fix this effect, now, is to re-balance the creations. In G1, Vlish had missile attacks that were slightly weaker than average, and melee attacks that were a complete joke. 15 essence was a reasonable cost. But because their abilities have never been weakened like the regular ones have been, they now fight as well as clawbugs and shoot as well as anything. With more reasonable pricing at, say, 45 essence, I wouldn't be able to abuse them so much. Or with crappier attacks.

 

Artilla are also pretty strong. Eyebeasts are broken, but that's clearly on purpose. Those are the only ones that really need fixing. Well, Clawbugs and Battle Alphas desperately need to be made stronger, too.

 

What I would really like to see is that the creations become less generic. Give the artila a penalty to Endurance, instead of just giving it a low HP bonus; that way it has significantly less HP even at high levels, rather than 15 below a Vlish at any level. Give the Battle Alpha a bonus to Endurance. Make the Glaahk's attack roll smaller dice than the Battle Alpha's, as it did in G1. And so on.

[chibi kaie]

I don't mean to be snippy, though I'm aware that I sound like it. I just want things clarified, since it doesn't exactly say anywhere that "board discussions should be restricted to torment level playing strategies." The discussions are interesting to read about in an abstract sense, but they're also getting kind of boring because everyone's convinced that they've already discovered the only answers that really matter. I don't really mind, because I really don't have anything to say about torment. But it is nice to know, because I do want to at least ask about general things.

 

I don't buy the argument that any strategy will work on normal. Most of my ideas end up with me dead. I guess other people have a much easier time with it. I still haven't pinned down exactly what I'm doing that is so wrong, but I die an awful lot. I've gotten better, but I think the game's also gotten easier, so that's not really much of an improvement.

[Dikiyoba]

The problem is, the two strongest personalities in this forum are Delicious Vlish and Slartucker (although Student of Trinity is right behind them) and they both play G3 on torment and have everything calculated out, so the rest of us are a little left out.

 

Then there are a few people whose contributions boil down to "My guardian is souped-up, powerful, and really cool!" That gets annoying quickly.

 

Perhaps all topics in this forum should be organized into three sections: Noob, Normal, and Torment.

 

Dikiyoba is joking, of course...but only because the logistics of it would be too difficult.

[Slarzahl]

Chibi, I'm sure your contributions would be welcome. You aren't presumptuous about your conclusions and you don't start fights. A lot of people do

 

Perhaps a better phrase than "any strategy will work in Normal" is "any strategy CAN work in Normal." A useful distinction can be made between strategy, and tactics. Tactics cover some details of gameplay that apply regardless of strategy, like positioning your characters well in battle, deciding what enemies to attack with which characters, what wepaon to use, what spell to cast, and so on. There is a lot of room for play style differences even within a given strategy, or a given build.

 

About dying on Normal: well, what kind of situations are you in that cause you to die? What do you do differently that causes you to not die? Asking yourself questions like that is the best way to learn. The game is frequently harder at the beginning. (This is characteristic of Jeff's games, because he packs them full of optional quests and goodies, but wants players who ignore most of them to be able to finish the game.)

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

There are other people who have played everything torment. Torment's quite easy actually. They need a harder level. There is also the group that doesn't know how to play Guardian and complains about it and complains more when someone else does.

[Slarzahl]

Quote:

Originally written by Learned Darikiyoban:
Then there are a few people whose contributions boil down to "My guardian is souped-up, powerful, and really cool!" That gets annoying quickly.

[MrRoivas]

I think the Gaurdians difficulties boil down to this.

 

-The other charactors can do everything he does the same or better(Missle Shaper, Melee Agent)

 

-No form of crowd control optimized for him. He can use crystals, but so can shapers, and they are just mini spells anyways(Agent) He can use creations, but the the shaper does it better.

 

The only situation in which the gaurdian rules the roost is the boss battle in which you can't escape, as this makes the agent's low health hazardous and its hit and run tactics useless, and the shaper's pets start dropping like flies. This situation doesn't occur much.

[Steel Angel]

Quote:

The only situation in which the gaurdian rules the roost is the boss battle in which you can't escape, as this makes the agent's low health hazardous and its hit and run tactics useless, and the shaper's pets start dropping like flies. This situation doesn't occur much.[/QB]

That no longer poses a danger to Agents. Augmentation, Essence Armor, Steelskin, and Protection take the sting out of an Agent's typically low health. At the end of GF3, my no canister (melee) Agent had around 400 hp fully buffed and could have had more but I ditched some items like the Symbiotic Cloak and Gloves of the Rock for more offensively oriented items since I just didn't need the Endurance.

The real danger to them is enemies with slowing effects IMO. As others have mentioned, there seems to be no way to resist slowing effects and having your haste spell reduced to nothing stings when you have no creation back up. Even then, I think it's more of an annoyance than a danger as long as you don't just sit there on turns you can't fight.

[Delicious Vlish]

Quote:

Originally written by Simon Yu:

Quote:

The only situation in which the gaurdian rules the roost is the boss battle in which you can't escape, as this makes the agent's low health hazardous and its hit and run tactics useless, and the shaper's pets start dropping like flies. This situation doesn't occur much.

That no longer poses a danger to Agents. Augmentation, Essence Armor, Steelskin, and Protection take the sting out of an Agent's typically low health. At the end of GF3, my no canister (melee) Agent had around 400 hp fully buffed and could have had more but I ditched some items like the Symbiotic Cloak and Gloves of the Rock for more offensively oriented items since I just didn't need the Endurance.

The real danger to them is enemies with slowing effects IMO. As others have mentioned, there seems to be no way to resist slowing effects and having your haste spell reduced to nothing stings when you have no creation back up. Even then, I think it's more of an annoyance than a danger as long as you don't just sit there on turns you can't fight.[/QB]

Yeah, what he said. Slowing effects make my Agents mortal... It is the only thing an Agent does not deal well with. It's very, very, very bad.

[MagmaDragoon]

Quote:

Originally written by Learned Darikiyoban:
The problem is, the two strongest personalities in this forum are Delicious Vlish and Slartucker (although Student of Trinity is right behind them) and they both play G3 on torment and have everything calculated out, so the rest of us are a little left out.

That's true. So stop make theoryes!

Seriously, how many time you two spent on Geneforging?
I thinked that I was a good player, but you two crushed me off. Expecially when you two showed me the Agents Power. For the first time, I'm not so sure to play GF1 as a Guardian...