Some build questions (for torment)

[kryft]

I started my first game on torment. I'm at level 3, prepared to go through the first portal. I have a few questions, mostly about building characters, that I haven't been able to answer completely by reading existing posts.

 

1. Are there any abilities or character builds that are particularly ineffective on torment? I've read that monsters have higher to-hit ("it's hard to make a character that can reliably dodge attacks on torment") and that summons tend to miss a lot later on, but I'm unsure about the exact implications.

 

2. Is there any point in pumping the first-tier skills that aren't linked to skills higher up, apart from lock picking? It would seem a 'waste' of points in the sense that those points don't contribute to unlocking higher levels of higher tier skills, but perhaps having a strong self-heal is worth it? My main character is a shadowwalker, and at level 1 the self-heal doesn't seem worth a turn.

 

3. I haven't pumped Locksmith yet because I wanted to make a beeline for the early aoe attack, but I didn't realize that lockpicks are apparently a fairly limited resource. I think I've used three lockpicks so far (two on Valna's door). Would it be wise to save locks until I have a chance to increase Locksmith?

 

4. Is there a list of abilities somewhere with detailed specs on what they do? I've browsed the Strategy Central topic, but I couldn't determine (for example) how thorn shield or the various curses work and how significant the effects are.

 

5. This partly overlaps with #1, but can you give me a general idea of what sort of stat distributions I should aim for with my characters on torment? My impression based on what I've read is that pumping dex may be the most powerful for everyone except the sorceress, but that more balanced builds are also doable; however, I don't know if this applies to torment as well. It's also not clear to me how much you should invest in other attributes if you do decide to pump dex - melee characters need some strength for equipment and encumbrance, and maybe having a few points in endurance is useful?

 

6. Can you respec more than once later in the game?

 

 

I'm not far into the game, but so far I've really liked it, and I'm still in the part that many reviewers considered boring. One thing that I appreciate is that the game system seems fairly balanced and that this is clearly a priority for Jeff. Planning character builds and finding powerful tactics has always been a big part of the enjoyment that I derive from computer RPGs, but I also want the game to be challenging. Far too many high budget blockbuster RPGs these days have systems with so many ways to make a ridiculously powerful character that I need to either mod them heavily or place lots of arbitrary constraints on myself to have fun.

[Lilith]

1) Melee builds are pretty bad on Torment, because you'll want Dexterity for defences and evasion, so use ranged/missile builds for your Blademaster and Shadowwalker. (Note that pretty much all physical ranged or area attacks key off Dexterity, even if you might expect them to key off Strength.) Summoned creatures are decent as damage-dealers early on (especially if you get Call Hellhound ASAP), but their damage output and especially their accuracy starts to drop off toward the endgame. They're still at least usable as meatshields. Also, around halfway into the game you get the option to retrain your characters' stats and skills from scratch, which can be used as many times as you want.

 

2) Personally, I avoided raising all those skills except for lockpicking. Some of them are actually useful (Shadow Charm becomes amazing later in the game), but pumping them above level 1 doesn't really make them much more useful.

 

3) Yes. Lockpicking skill maxes out at 4, which you can obviously get to very early. It's possible to get a fifth point from an item much later in the game, but don't hold off on unlocking stuff for that long.

 

4) This topic is the closest thing to what you're looking for. Also, when you're the subject of a status effect, you can mouse over the little icon representing the effect beside your character portrait to see exactly what it does.

 

5) Blademasters and Shadowwalkers should generally pump Dex and End in a 2:1 ratio and mostly ignore other stats (except maybe a few points of Str early on to wear armour). A shaman can get by with a similar build if you don't intend to use her attack magic (other than Call the Storm and Earthquake/Earthshatter, which key off Dex). Sorceresses do kind of need Int in order to be useful: you can pump Dex/Int/End about equally, or forget about Dex and try to keep her out of the way of attacks.

 

6) As many times as you like.

[kryft]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

1) Melee builds are pretty bad on Torment, because you'll want Dexterity for defences and evasion, so use ranged/missile builds for your Blademaster and Shadowwalker. (Note that pretty much all physical ranged or area attacks key off Dexterity, even if you might expect them to key off Strength.) Summoned creatures are decent as damage-dealers early on (especially if you get Call Hellhound ASAP), but their damage output and especially their accuracy starts to drop off toward the endgame. They're still at least usable as meatshields. Also, around halfway into the game you get the option to retrain your characters' stats and skills from scratch, which can be used as many times as you want.

Thanks for your quick and detailed reply! I'm in a hurry, so I'll only ask one quick question; I may come back for more later.

What kind of build would you recommend for my shadowwalker? For instance, should I ignore shattering blow and backstab, if I will be pumping dex and focusing on razor disks? Is the right tree worth investing in?

[Lilith]

Shadowwalkers are kind of interesting to build. Neither of their top-tier abilities are super exciting, so I actually like to max out the centre column, put enough in the left column to get the razordisk cone attack and put the rest of my points in the right column (not necessarily in that order). Shadowstep's group-stun effect is amazing for getting you out of trouble, and the self-buff in the right column has its uses too, especially early on.

[Randomizer]

Also the ninja jump that a Shadowwalker can do especially later leaving a decoy can be effective to get away from monsters and absorb some attacks like charm. Then you can attack the monsters while they are surrounding your old position.

 

As Lilith says pumping dexterity for the first 8 levels on torment will make even a single character have a very good chance of getting through the first main mission without taking lots of damage. The next area needs endurance because now you are running into things that can poison you.

 

You can't see it, but during beta testing the to hit percentage was visible and you could see how most monsters had no more than 40% chance of hitting.

[kryft]

Ok, so basically both shadowwalkers and blademasters should ignore the melee damage skills and focus on ranged attacks?

[Jerakeen]

For Torment that's probably the best advice, although a high-strength Shadowwalker's backstab is potentially the best single-target attack in the game. Trouble is, that means your SW is out there getting beat on.

 

For some reason, backstab bonuses apply to Searing Pot and Lightning Pot, though, which combined with high Dex, can result in eye-popping damage. Very nice against bosses.

[Quiconque]

Actually, even accounting for Backstab damage, the best potential single-target attack in the game is a Shadowwalker's ranged attack.

 

It's true:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsh...uthkey=CKOl1PUF

[Jerakeen]

I bow to your superior knowledge, Slarty, although I have no idea how to read that spreadsheet. I admit that my assertion was based on purely anecdotal evidence.

 

Just curious, did you test Lightning Pot with Backstab?

[Quiconque]

No. Also, that spreadsheet presents calculations that follow the game's, not test data.

 

How does Lightning Pot use Backstab? Does that happen if you are standing next to another ally, or the target is?

 

Either way the (linked) cooldown time on the pot abilities makes them rather less relevant than basic attacks, but if you can backstab with them, that's pretty cool.

[Jerakeen]

Only if you're set up for a backstab as normal, so both you and an ally must be next to the target. You can still use LP when you're adjacent to an enemy, even though it's technically a missile. It's true about the cooldown, but if you find your high-dex SW in that situation, it's a great way to soften up the target before jumping out of there.

 

Edit: And in extreme cases, you can justify quaffing potions to spam this attack.

[Jerakeen]

Wait, Slarty, does ST refer to the relevant stat (Strength, in the case of melee)? So you're showing the range from 10 to 40?

 

And I assume that BS is backstab damage, since only the SW has it. If that gets added to the damage in the yellow column, it exceeds the missile damage by quite a bit. Of course, it's possible that I'm completely misinterpreting that chart.

[Quiconque]

Hmm. No, you're right, I misread my own chart!

 

The base damage number is average damage, factoring in critical hits. I kept the backstab damage separate because I wasn't entirely sure how it was calculated. The numbers there are just a % of the average damage, but it's possible backstab damage is added separately from % damage increases and critical hit damage increases, for example. Not sure.

 

However, since we're discussing Torment in this thread, we really need to compare the 10 strength melee attack versus a dex disk throw with something like 30 dex. That gives us numbers of:

 

1H Melee: 697 when Backstab takes effect

2H Melee: 764 when Backstab takes effect

Razordisk: 736

 

So I guess what I really ought to have said is that the missile attack is the best in practice, but the melee backstab is the best in theory

[Quiconque]

Oh, and NB:

 

The damage protection sheet was done before the 30% resistance reduction on Torment was recognized. This makes the Blademaster's Parry significantly more valuable. On the other hand, it also increases the disparity between higher and moderate resistance scores. We end up with:

 

Sorceress: 28-67% elemental, 54% armor

Shadowwalker: 45-55% elemental, 57% armor

Shaman: 45-49% elemental, 39% armor, 44% HP bonus

Blademaster: 21-39% elemental, 44% armor, extra 40% Parry, 60% HP bonus

 

This changes a lot! The Shadowwalker, Sorceress, and Shaman now look relatively similar: the Sorceress has better magic/ice/fire resistance, but is reliant on Shadow Charm for her defenses. The Shaman has worse physical armor, but gets more HP. Meanwhile, the Blademaster has the best physical damage blocking by a little bit (effective 66% versus effective 59% of the Shadowwalker) and also gets more HP, but has atrocious special defense (21% against anything that's not energy) and will take almost twice as much damage from magic attacks, compared to the other classes.

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

I kept the backstab damage separate because I wasn't entirely sure how it was calculated. The numbers there are just a % of the average damage, but it's possible backstab damage is added separately from % damage increases and critical hit damage increases, for example. Not sure.

I couldn't say exactly how it's calculated, but my observation is that critical backstabs are worth about twice as much total damage as non-critical ones, which suggests that the backstab bonus is added first.

Edit: Actually, a little testing indicates that while the above may be more or less true for damage actually inflicted, it does not hold for total damage including resisted. I found this hard to test rigorously, because with the level 30 character I was using, it seems very difficult to get a non-critical hit, even putting no points into Lightning Discipline. But with the caveat that I'm working with very few data points, total damage for a critical backstab looks to be about 30% higher than a non-critical.

What that means, I don't know; I just wanted to correct my statement.

[Quiconque]

Hmm. Okay, I have no idea what you're seeing about resisted damage being treated differently -- my guess is either data noise or some weird Torment modification to damage dealt by PCs, hopefully the former.

 

I'm pretty sure that critical hits just do 150% of normal damage. If your 30% estimate is correct, that would imply the following:

 

Step 1 - apply % damage bonus. Say our % bonus is 100, result = 200% base damage

 

Step 2 - get extra backstab damage as %, result = 110% base damage

 

Step 3 - get extra critical damage as %, result = 100% base damage

 

Step 4 - add all together, result = 310% damage for regular, 410% for critical, which would line up exactly with your 30% observation

 

However, with no statistically significant data observations it's hard to say if this is anything more than a reasonable guess

[Jerakeen]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Hmm. Okay, I have no idea what you're seeing about resisted damage being treated differently -- my guess is either data noise or some weird Torment modification to damage dealt by PCs, hopefully the former.

No, not differently. I guess I didn't express that very well; I only meant that my impression of double damage was a result of looking only at the damage dealt, since I don't routinely keep the text console open. For example, I'd see numbers in the 60's vs. numbers in the 110's. Not exactly double, but pretty close. But if you look at the totals, it might be more like 390 vs. 505 or so.

(Note that this was using a deliberately gimped character in an attempt to get non-critical hits.)

[Juan Carlo]

Wow.

 

I've been doing things completely backwards, it seems.

 

I'm playing torment and my main character is a melee focused blademaster and I pretty much just use him, the sorceress, and the other blademaster exclusively.

 

So I take it I've made things way harder for myself?

 

It actually hasn't been all that hard thus far (I just got done with the beast quest and the salamander dungeons were the hardest so far, but they were also really fun and I made it through fine so I didn't mind)--but I hope I haven't made the game unbeatable or something.

 

I just really hate meta-gaming before my first playthrough. And I really hate RPGs that force you to meta-game before your first playthrough (and I'm not thinking of Avadon here, but primarily of "winter's voices" as you can basically render that game entirely unbeatable if you don't have the impossible foresight to specialize in one or two skills at the outset).

[Earth]

how do you heal party during fights?

[Randomizer]

Blademasters have self healing ability and later it includes regeneration. Besides in the early part of the game you can use food and later potions.

 

There is also a self healing scarab.

[Alorael at Large]

Sorceress actually works fine with the self healing and group healing scarabs. It's rare that you'll need more than one round of healing, and those are the fights in which you're likely to get good use out of cooldown reduction anyway.

 

—Alorael, who still finds it very strange that blademasters are among the best buffers. You might think that's the shaman's job, but it isn't.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

It makes a certain sort of sense. Blademasters are supposed to be skilled at leadership and battle tactics ("Blademasters are natural leaders," from the class description), in addition to being skilled at hitting things, and shooting things.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Juan Carlo

It actually hasn't been all that hard thus far (I just got done with the beast quest and the salamander dungeons were the hardest so far, but they were also really fun and I made it through fine so I didn't mind)--but I hope I haven't made the game unbeatable or something.

I wouldn't worry too much. Even with a suboptimal build, you should be able to survive at least long enough to reach the retrainer around the midpoint of the game, at which point you can rebuild as you see fit.