Razor Flinger: working right?

[stars2heaven]

The description of the first says the the regular bolt flinger can occasionally spray razors at level three and you can summon a full fledged razor flinger at level 6. But every single razor flinger I make only shoots bolts. It doesn't even occasionally shoot razors like the regular bolt flinger does. This seems to me to not be working as intended. Is this a bug?

[Randomizer]

I think the problem is the graphics used and not the damage. A boltflinger has a chance at level 3 of a cone attack. A razorflinger fires higher damaging razordisks every round.

[stars2heaven]

But I never see the razor flinger do area damage at all. I'm assuming that it isn't supposed to, then, and it is only supposed to fire a single razor at a single enemy?

[Lilith]

But I never see the razor flinger do area damage at all. I'm assuming that it isn't supposed to, then, and it is only supposed to fire a single razor at a single enemy?

 

Correct. It does more single-target damage than the boltflinger, though. If you want area damage, work up to the Freeze Turret skill: I think you'll be very pleased.

[ThricebornPhoenix]

I think the problem is the graphics used and not the damage. A boltflinger has a chance at level 3 of a cone attack. A razorflinger fires higher damaging razordisks every round.

I think the problem is the descriptions, which (to me anyway) imply that the Razor Flinger does what the level 3+ Bolt Flinger does, but all the time. In fact...

 

Correct. It does more single-target damage than the boltflinger, though.

Not by much, as far as I can tell! I wonder if any of the 'upgraded' turrets are actually better than the basic ones. The Inferno Turret

• costs nearly twice as much precious Tinkermage Vitality as the Freezing Turret
  
• only does the cone attack, usually hitting no more than two enemies even versus groups of six or more
  
• inflicts fire damage, which is generally much more commonly resisted (or nullified - how often is any other element nullified, throughout Spiderweb's entire catalogue?*) than ice, though I can't say if this is true for this game yet
  
• doesn't seem to do much more damage or take more hits or have longer range than the Freezing Turret
  

all of which, together, make it seem significantly worse than its precursor! The benefits of the Razor Flinger and Healing Pylon also seem dubious. The Temporal Pylon is good (especially if you don't have a Sorceror with Slow), but not so much an upgrade as a... sidegrade? Some other classes have these questionable upgrades, but none so consistently. Am I missing something?

 

 

*aside from Energy in Avadon, which is seemingly only done to ensure that Shamans cannot ever be reliably useful

[Hawat]

Razor flinger is still pretty darn good though. It only damages a single target, but it damages that target quite a bit. So far as I can tell, it hits for roughly 2x what the bolt flinger does.

[Lilith]

all of which, together, make it seem significantly worse than its precursor! The benefits of the Razor Flinger and Healing Pylon also seem dubious. The Temporal Pylon is good (especially if you don't have a Sorceror with Slow), but not so much an upgrade as a... sidegrade? Some other classes have these questionable upgrades, but none so consistently. Am I missing something?

 

The Healing Pylon is pretty good if you double its action rate with the Blademaster's Call of the Frenzy skill. 50 points of healing per round, every round, is nice to have: like regeneration, but stronger (and it stacks with actual regeneration).

 

I found the inferno turret did about 30% more damage than the freezing turret to most enemies -- not a huge upgrade, but enough to justify the cost in major fights. There are also quite a few enemies that are more resistant to cold than fire, particularly undead. Also, it's usually possible to hit more than two enemies with the cone if you position your characters to lure enemies into a cluster, and pick off any outliers so the turret won't get distracted by them.

 

I don't think the upgrades are meant to be better than the lower-level skills in 100% of situations, though: they're just an extra option. That's why you can still choose to use the lower-level skill.

[mouton]

Correct. It does more single-target damage than the boltflinger, though. If you want area damage, work up to the Freeze Turret skill: I think you'll be very pleased.

Temporal Pylon iz best. Might do less damage but hits everything and slows things.

[Lilith]

 

Temporal Pylon iz best. Might do less damage but hits everything and slows things.

 

Of course, you can always make one of each. With two Tinkermages, my preferred setup is two Freezing or Inferno Turrets, one Healing Pylon, and then either another Healing Pylon or a Temporal Pylon.

[mouton]

Of course, you can always make one of each. With two Tinkermages, my preferred setup is two Freezing or Inferno Turrets, one Healing Pylon, and then either another Healing Pylon or a Temporal Pylon.

I had Arcander do the left-side path. Two turretmages seems like an overkill, exploit, ez-mode (=

[Kordanor]

I think the Tinkermages are actually the biggest flaw in balance. The turrets are just too strong compared to everything else. Most combats could be won by just placing two turrets and wait till everything dies.

I am missing the challenge of the fights from Avadon 1 and Avernum.

[Lilith]

The turrets don't scale as well with level as other classes' abilities, so they become more reasonable (although still powerful) by the late game. You can certainly trivialise the early game with freeze turrets, though: I think the game was designed around the assumption that most players would dabble in a wide range of low-level skills, rather than rushing straight for top-tier skills.

[Edgwyn]

The limitation on turrets is your characters vitality. I do not like running back to the Pylon to recharge, and so that limited my deployment of turrets. I played most of the game with just a single TinkerMage and enjoyed the healing torrent/freezing turret combo. The two turrets would absorb a lot of attacks and then heal away most of the damage each round. On Normal I rarely found myself needing to heal my turrets, the healing turret kept the other turret and my party alive for the duration of the fight.

[ThricebornPhoenix]

Razor flinger is still pretty darn good though. It only damages a single target, but it damages that target quite a bit. So far as I can tell, it hits for roughly 2x what the bolt flinger does.

I don't think the upgrades are meant to be better than the lower-level skills in 100% of situations, though: they're just an extra option. That's why you can still choose to use the lower-level skill.

It sure would be nice if you could tell from casual observation that there is a difference at all (I'm pretty sure the Razorflinger should, at least, fling razors instead of bolts. Boltflingers already fling bolts. Except when they fling razors). Hard to do a side-by-side comparison when they use the same cooldown and the cooldown lasts 1/3 longer than the turrets. It's possible that I started using Razorflingers just as enemy physical resistance jumped again, and I definitely got Inferno Turrets right around the first time demons and such appeared, somewhat diminishing both through unfortunate timing, with the unfortunate result of discouraging me from bothering with them much since.

 

I don't think that the 'upgrades' need to be superior all around, even though they invariably cost more, and some of them are superior; I do think that a reason to use the higher level skill over the base skill, at least occasionally, should be apparent even for those who don't want to spend hours performing experiments and writing up a detailed analysis. At least when other skills are in conflict, you can see the numbers and effects. The turret skills' verbal descriptions aren't as helpful.

[stranger]

The Razor Flinger clearly does more single-shot damage. You have to balance that with the higher fatigue cost and the lack of area attack.

Hard to do a side-by-side comparison when they use the same cooldown and the cooldown lasts 1/3 longer than the turrets.

Summon Bolt Flinger, shift+D "rechargeme", Summon Razor Flinger.

 

I don't think that the 'upgrades' need to be superior all around, even though they invariably cost more, and some of them are superior; I do think that a reason to use the higher level skill over the base skill

They are not upgrades, they are unlocked skills, and they vary in how you use them compared to their base.

Some of the unlocked skills are higher damaging than their base skills, like Bolt vs Razor Flingers. I would use one versus trash and the other versus toughs, not one all the time.

Many of the unlocked skills are alternatives - for example if you invest in Freezing Turret, then you gain a fire-damage turret to use when cold is less effective.

Look at the alternatives for Sorceress: Fire, Energy, and Cold damage base skills, and the unlocks are Cold, Physical, and Fire skills.

Whereas the Acid skill is more of the standard upgrade, giving more damage and aoe instead of cone.

Most of the blessing and curse skills are not upgrades, but give different effects to provide the player with options.

[Lilith]

Look at the alternatives for Sorceress: Fire, Energy, and Cold damage base skills, and the unlocks are Cold, Physical, and Fire skills.

Whereas the Acid skill is more of the standard upgrade, giving more damage and aoe instead of cone.

 

It's also probably the Sorcerer's least useful direct-damage skill, precisely because so many things resist both acid and poison.

[stranger]

Just trying to list an example of an unlocked skill which does not change much in use from its base.

[Lilith]

Yeah, I'm just sayin', I was pretty disappointed in it because it seems like everything is so heavily resistant to poison that Corrupting Cloud ends up doing half the damage of Firestorm to most things.