Nerf Dex pls k thx bye.

[Kexin]

Y u no like melee characters Spiderweb Software? My heavily armored tank does less damage and must be invest in two different stats and armor just to barely compete with Shima, who dodges everything and does insane damage at both range melee.

 

Lets have some tank love in a patch or something.

 

 

 

[Earth]

Shima doesn't dodge everything (unless you have used most points on dexterity), against some enemies spell damage is higher than melee damage, Blademaster is basic fighter while Shima is like ninja.

[Kexin]

I used most of Shima's points in dex and some in str. Now he tanks better than my blademaster which kinda defeat the purpose of having a meat shield.

[Jerakeen]

Yes, you have a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if this gets tweaked in Avadon 2, but don't expect a major change to game mechanics in a patch.

[Superba]

Shima may hit harder than Sevilin but he's nowhere near such a stylish dresser as him :-)

[Randomizer]

Jeff ran out of time trying to adjust the game between high dexterity and low dexterity characters. I'm guessing Avadon 2 will have more diversity in monster types so you can't get through most of the game relying on one stat to avoid damage.

[Earth]

high dex + all possible armors etc evasion bonus = can't touch me

[Lightning Spammer]

Hrmm. I must not be to the part in the game that Shima hits harder than Sevilin. He almost does with ranged, but definitely not with melee. Even with me having him use a polearm. Could be how I decided to develop Shima down the right-hand path, though. But I did the same for Sevlin... so... *scratches head* I have no idea.

 

Nathalie does by far the most damage out of anyone. It's ridiculous and amuses me quite a lot. *laughs*

[*i]

Nathalie does the most damage, until she doesn't. I always snag the Wizard's Bow and boost her dexterity a bit so that she doesn't just spend rounds sitting there doing nothing once you come up across things immune to fire.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Lightning Spammer

Hrmm. I must not be to the part in the game that Shima hits harder than Sevilin. He almost does with ranged, but definitely not with melee.

Since you can almost always just take a step away from your opponent and use a missile attack, there isn't actually much of a reason to use melee at all, ever, if you're focusing on Dex.

[Archaeolagent]

Originally Posted By: Lightning Spammer

Hrmm. I must not be to the part in the game that Shima hits harder than Sevilin. He almost does with ranged, but definitely not with melee. Even with me having him use a polearm. Could be how I decided to develop Shima down the right-hand path, though. But I did the same for Sevlin... so... *scratches head* I have no idea.

Your build definitely affects this. The middle column has most of the damage boosts, so if you haven't been investing much in it, the only difference between Shima's damage and Sevilin's is going to be your stat allocation. (Well, that and items.) If Sevilin has more strength (or better weapons), or more points in his melee skill, then he'll do more damage -- without the middle column used, anyway. But that is obviously true for any character.

[Aeden]

The point is ranged can do the same damage as melee and more, but also barely ever get hit because of the dex allocation.

 

Sure you can pump str on Sevilin and do more damage, but you'll be dead pretty quickly without enough dex.

[Earth]

on my party Shima deals more damage via pole than Cordelia does with bow against those taunted hellhounds.

[Archaeolagent]

1) As stated many times, the build you use affects this, but when using similar builds ranged does more

 

2) We're talking about the two physical attack oriented classes. Sorceresses are worse off with bows since they don't have skills to boost them, although the +50% damage bow does help somewhat.

[Juan Carlo]

I have a maxed out strength blademaster and he does way more damage melee than my maxed out dexterity Shima's range attacks. Although, Shima dodges so insanely well that he basically makes up for his lesser damage with longevity. So I agree that Dexterity is kind of imbalanced in this game. They should maybe have considered giving some extra bonuses with strength in some way to make melee more worth playing--e.g. maybe every ten points you have in strength you get a significant boost in total health. That would make up somewhat for what a damage magnet the melee fighters tend to be.

 

That said, though, it does seem like you can make up for the lack of dexterity somewhat with magic items. I don't know exact stats or anything, so this is anecdotal, but I enchanted a bunch of my high strength blademaster's armor with "hard to hit" gems and he doesn't seem to get hit nearly as much as he used to.

[Lilith]

On higher difficulties, you basically want to be stacking lots of Dexterity and +evasion enchantments on your front-line characters if you want them to have a chance of dodging by the endgame. On lower difficulties it doesn't matter so much and you can get by with a little less optimisation.

[Alorael at Large]

If you really want an accurate comparison, try melee blademaster against ranged blademaster or melee shadowwalker against ranged shadowwalker. Damage isn't the same across classes and builds!

 

—Alorael, who spent a while trying to use Shima at range with a mostly melee-optimized build. It actually works fine, but it's much better if your tactics and your strategy match.

[kryft]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Jeff ran out of time trying to adjust the game between high dexterity and low dexterity characters. I'm guessing Avadon 2 will have more diversity in monster types so you can't get through most of the game relying on one stat to avoid damage.

Jeff says in the Appendix of the Avadon manual that he's considering making stat gain automatic (not player-controlled) in Avadon 2, effectively forcing balanced stat distributions.

[Archaeolagent]

At that point, you may as well remove the stats and just use level instead. Unless, that is, stat gains vary by class.

[Malical]

Originally Posted By: kryft

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Jeff ran out of time trying to adjust the game between high dexterity and low dexterity characters. I'm guessing Avadon 2 will have more diversity in monster types so you can't get through most of the game relying on one stat to avoid damage.

Jeff says in the Appendix of the Avadon manual that he's considering making stat gain automatic (not player-controlled) in Avadon 2, effectively forcing balanced stat distributions.

That sounds awful. It would completely ruin the point of different game plays.
I agree that DEX is too strong (both ranged and defense) but I would rather have that then a shorter game.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Malical

That sounds awful. It would completely ruin the point of different game plays.
I agree that DEX is too strong (both ranged and defense) but I would rather have that then a shorter game.

It's not as bad as it sounds. The only thing the current stat system achieves is to ruin melee-based builds. If stat gain were automatic, there'd be more viable character builds, not less.

[Randomizer]

It would make abilities more important and you would have to be more careful about equipment since you could no longer adjust strength for those that want to tank up on armor.

[Kexin]

Switching weapons needs to AP based, and characters with ranged weapons equipped should suffer defensive penalty. Because right now "tank" based characters are underpowered.

[Malical]

The problem right now is that DEX is both an offensive and a defensive statistic. In order to get a 'tank' you need to upgrade 2 statistics (and a third, strength, to get any killing power). I agree that this ought to be dealt with. Perhaps a split in DEX into offensive and defensive would help.

[Juan Carlo]

Originally Posted By: Malical

The problem right now is that DEX is both an offensive and a defensive statistic. In order to get a 'tank' you need to upgrade 2 statistics (and a third, strength, to get any killing power). I agree that this ought to be dealt with. Perhaps a split in DEX into offensive and defensive would help.

That's another thing I thought of: split Dexterity into dexterity and agility and have agility govern dodging and dexterity govern ranged weapons.

Although, personally, I always like it when stats govern more than one thing. So I think just adding benefits to the other stats would be a more fun/interesting solution.

Or at least add another benefit to strength, anyway. I think Intelligence is powerful enough in later stages that it really doesn't need another added benefit (Nathalie, for example, can really dish out damage if you do nothing but put points in Int--which, in my view, makes up for the fact that she's also incredibly fragile). In fact, if they added another benefit to Intelligence I think it would become the uber-powered stat instead of Dexterity, so they should probably leave it as is.

[Juan Carlo]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Malical

That sounds awful. It would completely ruin the point of different game plays.
I agree that DEX is too strong (both ranged and defense) but I would rather have that then a shorter game.

It's not as bad as it sounds. The only thing the current stat system achieves is to ruin melee-based builds. If stat gain were automatic, there'd be more viable character builds, not less.

I don't like this idea. I think they just need to better balance the positives and negatives of each stat (and also make what each stat does very clear to the player at the outset to ensure that players can play how they want). So if you decide to put all of your points in strength, your attacks should be super powerful (powerful enough that this would be a viable way of playing the game), but you should also be pretty fragile.

Deciding for yourself whether you want super powered offense or more longevity is one of the things that makes RPGs fun--as it ensures that you can play however you want. So I don't think SW should consider making it automated as it would make it less fun to play. Especially since, the only real problem with dexterity is that it is almost all positives with almost no negatives at all, whereas investing in any other stat will come with definite downsides. So it's just a poorly balanced stat.

The only way that automating stats would be ok, in my opinion, is if SW also GREATLY expanded the number of skills and possible skill paths for each character along with it. That would at least ensure that there was still some customization to the game.

[Lilith]

I guess part of the issue for me is that I'm much more interested in tactics than strategy. I'm the sort of person who's perfectly happy to be given a set party build and work out the optimal way to play the game given that build; having to also work out what the optimal party build is, often far in advance of when I'd actually get the necessary information to know the answer, feels like a chore to me. So from my perspective, an excess of choice in character building overemphasises the strategic element of the game at the expense of the tactical element, since it's harder to offer tightly-balanced tactical challenges when you don't know what strategy the player is using.

[Archaeolagent]

I suppose I'd say something similar, but I object less to strategy -- especially when there is a nonexploitative code for free respecs.

 

The last sentence of Lilith's is key, though.

[Malical]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

... work out the optimal way to play the game given that build; having to also work out what the optimal party build is, often far in advance of when I'd actually get the necessary information to know the answer, feels like a chore to me ...

But that is the point of retraining. After you learn more about the game you can reassign your skill points to get the build that you believe will work best. By making it unlimited and free, Avadon does in fact let you figure out for yourself what is the most important skill sets.

In the very beginning (tutorial, dungeon) you aren't supposed to know what is the best (unless you are an uber-awesome player who can figure it out from a few fights). If the stats are chosen for you then you don't get the ability to mess them up and learn from your mistake.

I find that these games have two parts. The playing and the stat picking. Each is fun and it is important to have different combinations. To take away 1 of those from me would in turn diminish the other. I just like to have my options.