Analysis - Shaping Balance in G2: Infestation

[Genernumlover]

That's an alarming change. So, Battle Alphas are now the best Battle Creation?

 

Is this a potential Steam update we are discussing here?

[Archaeolagent]

It's not potential, it's already happened.

 

Battle Alphas are probably the best battle creation now, overall, yeah.  They have some ability to try and use statuses to control things, they have a leap, which makes wasted early turns less likely, and they are adequately sturdy.  Less sturdy than rots, but also cheaper than rots.  If you really wanted to go battle shaping, you might still run 1 or 2 rots for the DoT and to have slightly sturdier frontliners.  But I'd lean most on alphas.  (But I also wouldn't go battle shaping in the first place, not anymore.)

[Lorn]

The nerf to battle creations means that I will be using 1.01 for playing. The only fix I will be missing is the pylons repearing instantly (hopefully one in this forum will tell me how I can change that). I like variety and having to spam drayks for the second game too is not that great.

I actually wanted to write to Jeff to tell him if some fixes (including tooltips) could be ported to the first game but I don't think he would care about my idea; and to be sincere the tweak he made reminds me of Blizzard gutting playstyles instead of encouraging more.

Anyway, I'm hoping it is possible to port the "values" for Roth to the Battle betas in mutagen. It would be really cool to have a decent alternative to Drayks. 

edit: By the way, it's so odd that many things are hidden behind knowledge gated in this forum, rather than being accessible through the game.

Edited May 9 by Lorn

[Genernumlover]

3 hours ago, Slariton said:

It's not potential, it's already happened.

 

Battle Alphas are probably the best battle creation now, overall, yeah.  They have some ability to try and use statuses to control things, they have a leap, which makes wasted early turns less likely, and they are adequately sturdy.  Less sturdy than rots, but also cheaper than rots.  If you really wanted to go battle shaping, you might still run 1 or 2 rots for the DoT and to have slightly sturdier frontliners.  But I'd lean most on alphas.  (But I also wouldn't go battle shaping in the first place, not anymore.)

 

I've been playing offline for a bit, and so I haven't seen any recent updates. So I have this to look forward to the next time I go online, and just when I was building a character that was going to go heavy on Battle Shaping.

 

Battle Alphas as the best Battle Creation is rather odd. They aren't a bad creation so much as they are a bit of a boring one, in my opinion.

 

With the changes to Fire Creations, did Vogel just make the strong creations in that category stronger? And with these changes to Rotghroths, doesn't that put Battle Shaping back at the bottom of the Shaping list?

Edited May 9 by Genernumlover

[alhoon]

1 hour ago, Lorn said:

The nerf to battle creations.

What is that nerf you all talk about? Are you talking about the Rots requiring a full action to hit now? Or the stats of battle creations went down?

[Lorn]

On 5/9/2024 at 7:42 PM, alhoon said:

What is that nerf you all talk about? Are you talking about the Rots requiring a full action to hit now? Or the stats of battle creations went down?

I didn't answer you before because it seems to me that you've already exchanged some replies with Slariton. 
 

The issues here are two-fold: The battle creation stats went down, while the haste power went up. Basically fire shaping was buffed even more.
 

I have got 0 clue on why they were nerfed and the post by Spiderweb on steam gives me 0 hope that the nerf will be reverted: "If you're on Torment, min/maxxers still have plenty of ways to conquer their foes and still allow me to fix bugs."

Who cares about min maxers; it's for the fact that I do not want to min max that I wish for more choices.

 

Recently I read a reddit topic that tells you that in every Geneforge game you should simply get revealed where to get a drayk canister, go get it asap, and simply spam drayk from the moment you get them. Double confirmation for this one.
 

 

[alhoon]

47 minutes ago, Lorn said:

Recently I read a reddit topic that tells you that in every Geneforge game you should simply get revealed where to get a drayk canister, go get it asap, and simply spam drayk from the moment you get them. Double confirmation for this one.

 

Wrong information! In GF3, you should do that for a Vlish canister. 😁
You think Drayks are powerful now? Vlish back then could beat tier 4 creations. 

Edited May 10 by alhoon

[Archaeolagent]

To clarify:

 

Battle creation stats did not go down.  At all.

 

The Rotghroth basic attack no longer costs 6 AP.  That's the only nerf to battle creations.  It's just a big nerf, due to the rot being by far the most attractive battle creation.

 

40 minutes ago, Lorn said:

Recently I read a reddit topic that tells you that in every Geneforge game you should simply get revealed where to get a drayk canister, go get it asap, and simply spam drayk from the moment you get them. Double confirmation for this one.

FWIW this is not good advice for most of the original Geneforges.  (And that topic is from 7 years ago, so it's not talking about the remakes.)  Heck, it's not even something you can really do in the second half of the series, given how they are structured.  In G2 there are better creations to dash to, and in G1 essence cost + xp mechanics prevent drayks from being all that dominant until later in the game.

[Lorn]

5 minutes ago, Slariton said:

To clarify:

 

Battle creation stats did not go down.  At all.

 

The Rotghroth basic attack no longer costs 6 AP.  That's the only nerf to battle creations.  It's just a big nerf, due to the rot being by far the most attractive battle creation.

I guess your definition of statistics is different from mine, in the sense that I consider a statistic all the values that are related to a certain creatures, included the amount of AP needed for an attack.

 

What are stats for you? 

[Archaeolagent]

"The battle creation stats went down"

 

1) This suggests all battle creations had stats go down (they didn't)

2) Stats is plural here, which suggests more than one number went down (it didn't)

3) Creatures have stats.  So do items.  So do abilities.  If v1.0.3 nerfs the Firebolt spell's damage, we wouldn't say the PC's stats went down, even though the PC can cast Firebolt.

[alhoon]

But rots have haste now, so they could 50% make a 2nd attack. Is that reduction so big of a deal, according to your calculations? Keep in mind that in the first round Rots wouldn't probably manage 2 attacks. 

[Archaeolagent]

Yes.  As explained many times already, yes.

 

Previously, rots cost 18 (or 23 with Overload) and attacked 1.5x more often than a regular hasted unit.  (Possibly missing an attack in round 1 is worth considering, but it's not quite a "probably" situation if you invest in Stealth.)  Now they cost 23 (or 28 with Overload), since you have to pay for the haste augment, and they attack 1.37x more often than a regular hasted unit.  (They can land acid, but it's just regular acid unless you pay another extra 5 essence.)

 

Compare to battle alphas.  Battle alphas are cheaper; they come with both daze and cleave, and they have stun and leap abilities which are both pretty useful.

 

Compare to drakons.  Drakons cost 24 essence, nearly the same as a just-haste rot, deal much more damage by default even after accounting for the haste (142 vs 102), attack at range, and apply a better DoT.  A rot with Overload can deal a bit more damage (178 vs 142) but in exchange for that, it (1) costs more, (2) loses HP each round, and (3) is stuck with melee range.

 

For any scenario with >1 enemy, the drayk comparison is even more damning.

 

It's not that rots are worthless now, it's that they used to do one thing (single target DPS) more efficiently than any other creation.  Now they don't.  And because they were the only battle creation that had that distinction, them getting worse makes battle shaping as a whole less enticing.

[Lorn]

10 hours ago, Slariton said:

"The battle creation stats went down"

 

1) This suggests all battle creations had stats go down (they didn't)

2) Stats is plural here, which suggests more than one number went down (it didn't)

3) Creatures have stats.  So do items.  So do abilities.  If v1.0.3 nerfs the Firebolt spell's damage, we wouldn't say the PC's stats went down, even though the PC can cast Firebolt.

You are totally right. 
 

By the way, what's the fastest way to get Create Rotghroth? I'm in G2, and I still haven't pumped battle shaping :P

[Snallac]

Both Tuldaric and Kima can teach you to make Rotghroths, and they're about the same distance from Freegate - Kima is 6 zones away and Tuldaric is 7. Getting to Kima first requires getting through higher level zones, but it's not hard as long as you've pumped up your mechanics skill, and Kima only teaches Unaligned and Servants, whereas Tuldaric only teaches Awakened. I don't recall off the top of my head what their respective prices are, or if Kima is cheaper if you're a Servant.

Edited May 11 by Snallac

[Archaeolagent]

Tyallea is the fastest, if you join Zakary.

Then Tuldaric if you join the Awakened (more zones, but half of those are 100% friendly)

Then Kima.

 

One of many cases where nlambert's index has a lot of useful information.

[Lorn]

Thanks to you both.

[Genernumlover]

I tried playing with a squad of Battle Alphas. That's a no from me. Fights become ground-and-pound events, and your Shaper is left casting Group Heal and Wrack while the Battle Alphas slowly beatdown the target. There are better, faster, options in the other Shaping skills.

 

Battle Alphas can close the gap and sometimes inflict temporary stun effects on an enemy, but they don't have what it takes to be the centerpiece of a team through the game. Like Slariton indicated, the team needs something else to support the Battle Alphas.

Edited May 12 by Genernumlover

[Jawaj]

Email Jeff that it was too hard, seriously (he reads the steam forum but I think not this one). He said hearing things are too difficult with some options might move the needle on addressing the balance further.

[Hyperion703]

39 minutes ago, Jawaj said:

he reads the steam forum but I think not this one

As an aside, anyone else find this particularly odd? You'd think it would be the other way around considering this forum is the official forum on his company's site. No biggie, it's just something I have wondered about for quite awhile.

[Archaeolagent]

For a long time Jeff deliberately avoided posting on any forum for his games.  This can pretty quickly become toxic for a lot of game devs, and I think he felt like it wasn't great for him.

 

He does read them occasionally though.  (As one example, he made a reference to this thread, in a thread on Steam.)  (I really wish he had gotten a different take-home message from this thread, but he definitely does read and take seriously the things that people have to say.)

[alhoon]

1 hour ago, Genernumlover said:

I tried playing with a squad of Battle Alphas. That's a no from me. Fights become ground-and-pound events, and your Shaper is left casting Group Heal and Wrack while the Battle Alphas slowly beatdown the target. There are better, faster, options in the other Shaping skills.

 

Battle Alphas can close the gap and sometimes inflict temporary stun effects on an enemy, but they don't have what it takes to be the centerpiece of a team through the game. Like Slariton indicated, the team needs something else to support the Battle Alphas.

For me, it is more than just "they can't finish the job". You can finish the game without Creations at all, so obviously you can finish with Alphas. BUT... 
Alphas are ... boring. 

[Jawaj]

4 hours ago, Hyperion703 said:

As an aside, anyone else find this particularly odd? You'd think it would be the other way around considering this forum is the official forum on his company's site. No biggie, it's just something I have wondered about for quite awhile.

Jeff had a pretty tense relationship with a portion of the community in the early days of this forum, especially some of the Blades crowd (not all his fault, some edgier members certainly played a part in stoking it). Things came to a head after Avernum 4 with some really nasty fights. I think after that Jeff decided to keep his presence on the official boards to a minimum.

Edited May 13 by Jawaj

[Genernumlover]

44 minutes ago, alhoon said:

For me, it is more than just "they can't finish the job". You can finish the game without Creations at all, so obviously you can finish with Alphas. BUT... 
Alphas are ... boring. 

 

True, they can do the job, for the most part, but they lack the flair of the other creations. Some variance in the abilities between Battle Alphas and Battle Betas may help that, I think.

 

[Archaeolagent]

Alphas have more to distinguish them than other battle creations do.  Leap, stun, daze, cleave, crit.

 

Alphas could be better for sure, but right now they are the least redundant of all the battle creations.

[Hyperion703]

@Jawaj Thanks for the explanation. Must have been a hell of a fight...

Edited May 13 by Hyperion703

[Genernumlover]

I've been playing a Battle Shaping character and using Battle Alphas:

 

They are not flashy, but they are reliable and strong. What they excel at is storming fortified emplacements. Turrets and Spinecores get shredded by them.

 

Their reliance on health over resistance makes their Enrage ability a poor choice for endgame battles. Virtually everything has AoE magic or single target burst damage that can incinerate them. You may need to use Essence Shield and Regenerate on them for fights against bosses.

 

Riposte isn't reliable enough to take. Most endgame enemies will use magic or ranged attacks.

 

Their knockback mechanics can be difficult to use until you've had some practice. Battle Alphas can move enemies away that they meant to stun or daze. However, against stun and daze resistant enemies this can be useful and fun to use. Bosses can be maneuvered around the battlefield. I managed to knockback the Bound One and keep it from fleeing. After that, I surrounded it and crushed it.

 

A perk of Battle Alphas is that you can learn them as soon as you reach the Loyalist Camp, and in Rising and the Radiant College you can get a canister and upgrade to increase your skill with Battle Alphas to level four. Endgame you can get that stat to level five. So they can keep up with enemies even if you have to spend a skill point on something besides Battle Shaping.

 

Overall, Battle Alphas are a strong creation. I think they'd be a little stronger if Riposte was replaced with Hardiness, to make them a little tougher against the enemies that do use melee weapons. But they were fun to play once I knew how to use them, and in most situations, they were able to handle what the enemy threw at them long enough for my Shaper to intervene with buffs or healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Archaeolagent]

You can access every creation sooner than the Loyalist Encampment.  That's only a perk if you are playing Taker, Barzite, or Non-Aligned and you refuse to temporarily join Zakary or the Awakened.

 

I would like to emphasize, again, that the analysis in the OP is a relative comparison.  Any creation of high enough level (okay, not ornks) can shred turrets and spinecores (which have practically no defenses anyway).  Any creation, with high enough shaping skill, can be strong.  But some will still be stronger than others.

[Genernumlover]

29 minutes ago, Slariton said:

You can access every creation sooner than the Loyalist Encampment.  That's only a perk if you are playing Taker, Barzite, or Non-Aligned and you refuse to temporarily join Zakary or the Awakened.

 

I would like to emphasize, again, that the analysis in the OP is a relative comparison.  Any creation of high enough level (okay, not ornks) can shred turrets and spinecores (which have practically no defenses anyway).  Any creation, with high enough shaping skill, can be strong.  But some will still be stronger than others.

 

That's true. I like to play as a neutral character until the endgame. That way, I can do most of the neutral or reputation building missions and access a number of merchants to sell my junk to.

 

The thing I like about Battle Alphas is that they can completely freeze a line of turrets, shrubs, or spinecores, by hitting them with a charge that stuns them. Just one move on their part and they can reach and stop enemy acid or AoE emplacements from attacking. It also gets them closer to the spinecore itself and makes those battles quicker and easier.

 

 

[alhoon]

2 hours ago, Genernumlover said:

 

That's true. I like to play as a neutral character until the endgame. That way, I can do most of the neutral or reputation building missions and access a number of merchants to sell my junk to.

 

The thing I like about Battle Alphas is that they can completely freeze a line of turrets, shrubs, or spinecores, by hitting them with a charge that stuns them. Just one move on their part and they can reach and stop enemy acid or AoE emplacements from attacking. It also gets them closer to the spinecore itself and makes those battles quicker and easier.

 

 

It is a game. If you enjoy battle alphas then all the power to you. 

 

That said... with a line of Drayks hitting the spinecores with AOE breaths (potentially 2 attacks/round with the perks), there would be no AoE/acid emplacements. 

[Archaeolagent]

10 hours ago, Genernumlover said:

The thing I like about Battle Alphas is that they can completely freeze a line of turrets, shrubs, or spinecores, by hitting them with a charge that stuns them. Just one move on their part and they can reach and stop enemy acid or AoE emplacements from attacking. It also gets them closer to the spinecore itself and makes those battles quicker and easier.

Yeah, this does not really seem like a scenario that speaks in favor of Battle Alphas, since other creation types can deal with it better.  If anything this is a scenario where needing to leap rather than breathe is a disadvantage, since often turrets or spinecores (especially spinecores) are spread out over a wide area, and leaping means you will be attacked that round by other spinecores further away, where your ranged attackers would not be in their range yet.

[Lorn]

I find it so sad that Ur drakons and drakons are not better than Drayk. 

[ultra112]

Well I'm kinda different with the Ur-drakon, as it's AOE and main skill saved my butt a lot of times

[Archaeolagent]

*faceplant*

 

I give up.

[alhoon]

29 minutes ago, Lorn said:

I find it so sad that Ur drakons and drakons are not better than Drayk. 

Define "better" Ur-Drakons are much more expensive than Drayks. But if you have the essence, they are better. But good luck finding all that essence.

Edited May 17 by alhoon

[Archaeolagent]

Even if you have the essence, they are only better against single targets.  Drayks are generally quite a bit better when facing multiple enemies.

[Lorn]

the aoe from drayks is insane and with good positioning you can get a lot of damage done.

[Genernumlover]

16 hours ago, ex post slarto said:

Yeah, this does not really seem like a scenario that speaks in favor of Battle Alphas, since other creation types can deal with it better.  If anything this is a scenario where needing to leap rather than breathe is a disadvantage, since often turrets or spinecores (especially spinecores) are spread out over a wide area, and leaping means you will be attacked that round by other spinecores further away, where your ranged attackers would not be in their range yet.

 

True, the targets can be behind things or have obstructions in the way.

 

Since Bull Rush is a quick action, a group of Battle Alphas can stun and swiftly destroy all of the buds in one turn while tanking enemy fire. After that, the spinecore itself is easy. Ranged or AoE could be better, but I found this tactic to be a lot of fun to use, especially since I hadn't used Battle Alphas very much before this playthrough.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 18 by Genernumlover

[Genernumlover]

I've got a couple of suggestions for diversifying and equalizing the creations:

 

Fire Shaping:

 

For Roamers, make the Fiery Pounce ability a Quick Action. That would allow Roamers to dive into a group and cast their weak AoE in one turn, making the abilities much more valuable.

 

Cryoras have a problem in that they are sturdy but their damage output is poor. Increase their AoE damage by a moderate amount and their single target damage by a tiny amount, if that. The idea is to make them a more AoE focused alternative to the Roamer, which will have better single target damage and dive capabilities.

 

For Cryodrayks Vogel should increase their maximum damage and increase their health. These should be a tank counterpart to Drayks. On lower difficulties, Drayks will still be the best, but on higher difficulties, Cryodrayks will become more viable.

 

Battle Creations:

 

For Battle Alphas, increase their cleave probability by 10%. I played most of a game using these guys, and their cleave is underwhelming. It rarely triggers and it does little damage.

 

In the case of Battle Betas, increase their cleave chance and replace Riposte with More Criticals for a damage boost or Hardiness for a defensive boost. More Criticals would fit the lore better, as Battle Creations are primarily supposed to rely on their health to tank damage. However, Battle Betas need a distinction from Battle Alphas besides level difference. Turning Battle Betas back to blue instead of being that pink color would be a nice bonus as well.

 

Rotghroths need their main attack reverted to a Quick Action. However, with the new Haste mechanics, that runs the risk of them just being an attack spam creation instead of an interactive one. Perhaps replacing their Haste with Exploding Boils or Improved Duration would work?

 

 

Magic Shaping:

 

Searing Artilas need a health boost, as my level 14 Artila has more health than my level 15 Searing Artila.

 

The new Vlish are mainly built to be support creations, as they have some crowd control abilities mixed with a powerful blessing. A small boost to their health and damage could make them more useful overall, but I don't think they can be drastically changed without risking taking away their purpose in the new games.

 

Edited June 9 by Genernumlover