Ranking Weapon Shaping Abilities

[Genernumlover]

This is Weapon Shaping in order of usefulness, with credit to Slawbug's post on creation analysis for inspiring me to use the color palette for emphasis.

 

Thanks to everyone who advised me on how to build my Guardian, on who I tested this gameplay.

 

Essential: Guarded Lunge and Lifedrain.

 

Both of the above are critical to a Guardian's gameplay and they remain useful through the entire game. Guarded Lunge shields you, lets your creations hit bosses, and makes your characters do more damage to the target. Lifedrain pairs nicely with Regeneration to keep your character alive. Guarded Lunge and Lifedrain are the bread and butter of a Guardian's gameplay. Combine them with War Infusion, Blessing Magic, and a couple of creations, and you are good to go.

 

Good: War Infusion, Chain Lightning, Searing Spray, and Essence Lash.

 

These can be useful in a variety of situations. War Infusion is an early game substitute for Blessing Magic, and it remains useful for keeping blessings on your character in the middle of fight. Chain Lightning lets characters damage swarms of enemies while Searing Spray gives the damage over time that the Guardian kit used to lack. Essence Lash is more situational, but it is a good ability that can slow the enemy and harass them with shock damage.

 

Mediocre: Guardian Push.

 

In theory, this is a good ability. The ability to knock back, slow and stun an enemy is good. However, a Guardian is mainly using this to try and keep an enemy away from part of his squad. To do that, the Guardian has to knock them in a different direction. That usually requires precise repositioning for a ranged attack, or running down the target for a melee strike. In most situations, it is more effective to body block the enemy or let creations blast the target down.

 

This ability can be useful in narrow areas or for ranged characters to keep an enemy back to wear them down with baton attacks.

 

Underwhelming: Guardian's Roar.

 

This ability isn't as good as it seems. Scattering enemies is a useful power, but they tend to scatter in all directions. There is also a high risk of panicked enemies running straight into the Guardian's creations or making the situation worse overall. If they do not do that, you may still have to hunt them down if they charge out of the room. And, since many of the endgame bosses have a high enough mental resistance to shrug off mental effects, this technique is only useful to erratically scatter groups of weaker enemies.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 27 by Genernumlover

[Randomizer]

Guardian Push is a good early game attack to stun and slow opponents especially thands which have the health to last for several rounds. It becomes less useful in mid game as more creations can resist its best effects.

 

ChainLightning is really effective even on single targets because the energy damage takes place without needing to hit your target.  

[Mechalibur]

Essence Lash is the strongest skill by my estimation (at least at level 2+). Higher damage than guarded lunge, access to shock which is pretty rare, and wrack is generally decent on bosses since most don't resist curses. Definitely my go-to in the toughest encounters. 

[earanhart]

On my Torment no-cannister run, Essence Lash was used nearly every other turn. The slow against bosses adds nearly as much to your survival as Guarded Lunge does. Never noticed the shock damage go off, but that slow was reliable.

 

Open with Guarded, then EL followed by LD. WI when able, but keep GL and EL up. If a crowd of melee, use SS to start whittling down the crowd. Also used SS to counter a few bosses healings. Never did do much with CL, but GP had its uses. GR resulted in killing me more often than not, but it was useful for a couple bosses summoned Creations, or just to flee a zone after killing their boss. 

Edited April 27 by earanhart

[Aoslare]

I agree about Essence Lash.  (And Chain Lightning I don't think holds up as well as the others, mainly because you'd usually rather just Essence Lash.)

 

Guardian's Roar is situational, and it's worse than what you can do with Mental Magic or Magic Creations.  But if you're running a Fire or (especially) Battle shaping guardian who avoids magic, it's your crowd control option.  I might call it underwhelming compared to other abilities in the game, but I'm not sure I would in this context, as it fills a completely different niche from the other weapon shaping skills.  The important thing isn't that it makes them run away, it's that it stops them from attacking you while they're terrified.

[Mechalibur]

I think it comes across as underwhelming because it's the highest level weapon shaping skill. Even if it fills a specific niche, it can be disappointing if you were hoping for something more powerful for the most expensive skill.

  

4 hours ago, earanhart said:

Never noticed the shock damage go off, but that slow was reliable.

 

It only does shock at level 2 or higher. It's a damage debuff that does energy damage - seems to be the same % as burning or acid.

Edited April 27 by Mechalibur

[mikeprichard]

The significant guaranteed extra damage from Chain Lightning even against single enemies coupled with its earlier availability and low-ish essence cost make it extremely strong, IMO. I've got both CL and Essence Lash at 3 points at endgame, and EL doesn't do much more damage than CL (it does Wrack and Shock, but also costs 7 vs. 3 and doesn't hit other enemies). So they're both fairly on par, with variation depending on the situation/needs, in my experience - though if we're only talking about bosses/single strong enemies, EL may indeed have an edge. Also agree with Guardian's Roar seeming underwhelming as the "final" skill, but its effect is unique within the Weapon Shaping tree (ignoring magic/creation options).

Edited April 27 by mikeprichard

[Mechalibur]

Chain Lightning is also kind of fun in conjunction with a spray baton. It's a decent guardian option for completely clearing out those spinecone formations.

[Genernumlover]

A Guardian with splash damage creations can annihilate whole squads of weaker enemies with a well placed Chain Lightning, while Essence Lash is good for bosses. I put Guarded Lunge and Lifedrain in the top spots not because of their sheer power, but because of how much they get used and how reliable they are. Odds are, a Guardian is going to be using one or the other for every boss battle in the game.

 

 

18 hours ago, Randomizer said:

Guardian Push is a good early game attack to stun and slow opponents especially thands which have the health to last for several rounds. It becomes less useful in mid game as more creations can resist its best effects.

 

True, you really don't use Guardian Pash past the early game. It gets left behind as your character levels up.

 

8 hours ago, Mechalibur said:

I think it comes across as underwhelming because it's the highest level weapon shaping skill. Even if it fills a specific niche, it can be disappointing if you were hoping for something more powerful for the most expensive skill.

 

Exactly, it is expensive and it is supposed to be quite powerful. However, for its position in the game, it is arguably the least useful of the mass crowd control spells due to its drawbacks.

 

Overall, I think most Weapon Shaping skills are good, but Guardian's Roar, in particular, needs some work to make it more useful.

 

 

 

[Displayed Name]

Roar and push are much better with ranged. Actually, the whole skill tree and game is better played with ranged because running forward to stab is the worst thing a PC can do. With QA and haste nerfs and accuracy rework compared to OG, vampiric lance, melee hate abilities, there is little gameplay reason to melee in the new games. Even less so with Infestation, 2 chain lightning on the first turn trumps 1. 

[earanhart]

Agreed. I think melee is actually in a pretty good place though. Very few enemies are effectively "melee death" (auras, boils, etc.), which is good on both sides. No single strategy should work for everything.

 

What I would personally love to see in G3 remake would be designating a couple of the better WS skills get limited to melee only. Can't exactly "lunge" with a baton or javelin, after all. Maybe just lunge and lifedrain need that shift, to give melee that edge to bring it back into competition with ranged by mid-game once ammo is no longer an issue. Maybe it'd need something else as well, I'm not sure there. 

The other change I'd love to see is Roar get shifted at higher levels to create a stun variant, "frozen with terror" style without opposing stunresistance. That'd make it useful for both approaches, and feel appropriate to the flavor of the ability. 

 

As for Push being mostly an early game ability, hard disagree. On a melee focused character, it worked reliably on end game bosses for me on Torment. Was my use of extra swing probably a third of the time. Almost never my first swing, I'll grant, because I didn't want to lose the chance to get a second swing in, but for my Haste/Quick Action attack? Very nice for chipping away at bosses number of actions.

[Mechalibur]

2 minutes ago, earanhart said:

Very nice for chipping away at bosses number of actions.

 

That hasn't really been my experience. Most bosses seem to prefer ranged to melee, so knocking them back just made *me* have to waste AP getting back to them. And the bosses that are melee often have leap attacks they can use even if they are at a range.

Edited April 29 by Mechalibur

[Randomizer]

Jeff has lots of places with obstacles to block leap attacks. Of course, most obstacles prevent your creations from doing leap attacks. Still that tuft of grass in a field or swamp makes a nice shield.

 

Missile weapons have one major problem in both the original game and the remake, there is a limited amount of ammunition. That's why I added almost all the locations and ammunition types to help locate and resupply. You can use it all up if you don't use melee for fights where you can. Also melee will usually deal out more damage to one shot things like drays in the Taker Lands.

 

Also some fights need to be in melee or close to melee to avoid monster Recovery that gives a huge regeneration. This was to prevent range attacks to a mostly melee target or airshock to stay out of range of fixed location monsters like Infernal Teriel.

[earanhart]

48 minutes ago, Mechalibur said:

 

That hasn't really been my experience. Most bosses seem to prefer ranged to melee, so knocking them back just made *me* have to waste AP getting back to them. And the bosses that are melee often have leap attacks they can use even if they are at a range.

I can only think of two bosses who I couldn't corner against walls easily (and both of those were infernals), negating the push. It was simply a matter of approaching them from the correct angle during your first turn of the encounter.

[Mechalibur]

Okay, they're in the corner... but what does that accomplish? Enemies are able to use their spells/ranged attacks just fine while engaged in melee.

[earanhart]

Enemies don't have a very good success rate of using their spells/ranged attacks when they're wracked, slowed, and stunned. Push has a really good stun rate on it. And your concern was that you would waste AP walking back up to them. That's no longer a concern when theirs backs are literally against a wall. Or a shrubbery.

[Aoslare]

 

4 hours ago, earanhart said:

Push has a really good stun rate on it.

No, it doesn't.  Push has exactly the same stun rate as Airshock or any other attack.

 

Abilities do not have different rates of landing status effects.  If the attack hits, and the status isn't resisted (which is just a resistance % check), it lands.  (This is why Delirium applies Daze twice -- this effectively gives you 2 chances to land it, because this is the only way the engine actually has to make an ability more likely to land a status.)  (Well, I guess there are also abilities which have a chance of not even attempting to land the status, as happens with e.g. the Cockatrice AoE statuses, but I don't think this applies to any of the PC's stunning abilities.)

 

And late game bosses... heck, even most early game bosses basically all have very high Stun resist.  They also take multiple turns per round so applying 1 turn of Stun is only a fraction as effective as it sounds like.

[Randomizer]

I got stun status once on the Drakon Master with its !00% stun resistance. It still got all its scripted attacks.  

 

Guardian Push is nice early game because it has two different useful curse statuses, so usually at least one takes even on a boss. The chances of it working decrease rapidly in the middle game as more are resistant to it.

[Mechalibur]

Yeah I've also stunned a pylon before. Not sure what causes those weird exceptions to 100% resist but it seems pretty rare, at least.

[Displayed Name]

23 hours ago, Randomizer said:

Missile weapons have one major problem in both the original game and the remake, there is a limited amount of ammunition. That's why I added almost all the locations and ammunition types to help locate and resupply. You can use it all up if you don't use melee for fights where you can. Also melee will usually deal out more damage to one shot things like drays in the Taker Lands.

 

Also some fights need to be in melee or close to melee to avoid monster Recovery that gives a huge regeneration. This was to prevent range attacks to a mostly melee target or airshock to stay out of range of fixed location monsters like Infernal Teriel.

I mean there is vampiric lance. Less damage, yes. But more opportunities to act. 2 potential chain lightning and weaker hits trumps a strong one. With nerf to QA and addition of WS abilities, melee accomplish a lot less than missiles in remakes than OG. QA giving double strike, Strength scaling and scarcity of ammo are the deciding factors in the OG, none exists in the remakes.

It is not like retreating 1 step isn't an option nor there is a need to always stay far away. Missiles are not really penalized up close bar less damage. Unlike systems that take account of the benefits of attack range, the remakes do not offer decisive benefits for PC to focus on melee weapons. DoT accounts for a lot of damage in actual hard fights, the melee slot can be a stat stick rather than a real weapon, and that AoE batons actually exist.

"My melee guardian rolled over Torment."

Yes, focusing melee on PC is viable. Torment is lenient enough as is. It is just worse than other options.

[Aoslare]

Damage dice were also different in OG.  OG1 and OG2 had much larger melee damage dice.  From OG3 on they were brought down from mostly d8 to d4 and d5.

 

26 minutes ago, Displayed Name said:

"My melee guardian rolled over Torment."

Yes, focusing melee on PC is viable. Torment is lenient enough as is. It is just worse than other options.

 

This, this, this.  Except replace "melee guardian" with all the other things people say this about.

[l33tmaan]

Counterpoint: There isn't a Purifying Blade equivalent for ranged weapons. That thing is crazy strong and Lifedrain was healing me for 80-170 HP per turn if I could get two attacks off.

[Aoslare]

The Purifying Blade is really strong, and it is available extremely early.  However, its strength lies entirely in its bonus quantity of damage dice being high (it reaches up to +27). You also get a base of 2 dice plus 1 die per XP level.  The attack uses d5s.

 

Reaper Batons get a base of +14 damage dice.  Same base dice.  And the attack uses d6s.

 

So if we compare possible damage (before other bonuses):

Very early - level 7, 1 canister: Blade = 18 x 3 + 2 = 56

Very early - level 7, 1 canister: Baton = 23 x 3.5 + 8= 88

Rushing canisters - level 11, 10 canisters: Blade = 40 x 3 + 2 = 122

Rushing canisters - level 11, 10 canisters: Baton = 27 x 3.5 + 8 = 102

Higher level - level 20, 10 canisters: Blade = 49 x 3 + 2 = 149

Higher level - level 20, 10 canisters: Baton = 36 x 3.5 + 8 = 134

 

The Purifying Blade does more damage for most of the game, but by endgame this probably isn't enough to justify a lost early attack due to having to close to melee.  If Reapers were plentiful, melee might look bad.

 

This does, however, point to Randomizer's observation about the missile issue being not having enough ammo.  Every other missile weapon uses d4s (or worse), at which point you're doing roughly 2/3 the damage of the Purifying Blade.

 

However -- there are certainly enough reaper batons and thorns to use as much as needed on all the bosses and minibosses.  You'll often be happier with the AoE from spray anyway.  So as long as the Vampiric Lance is enough for generic mobs, there's no real missile issue... possibly an annoyance, but against generic mobs with shorter fights, losing an attack due to needing to close to melee is also kinda worse.

[Genernumlover]

The Purifying Blade is extremely powerful once you've leveled it up. As it starts, Bunk's Blade or the Guardian Claymore have better perks, but slowly get outclassed in one hit damage. As you indicated, it amounts to perks versus damage.

 

 

Two thoughts on Weapon Shaping:

 

Guardian Push would function better if it were a push or pull technique that let your character move the target three spaces in any direction. It'd be a form of crowd control and a gap closer that would let the Guardian have more control over early game battles.

 

A potential fix for Guardian's Roar could be one that weakens and strengthens it at the same time: make it an aimed cone attack that terrifies enemies in the cone and puts a long lasting secondary effect on enemies in a circle around the Guardian. The cone would somewhat mimic how sound works in real life. If I'm yelling in one direction and you can still hear me from another it wouldn't be as loud. Plus, the directed nature of the attack would give the Guardian more control over who goes running in circles. Meanwhile, the secondary effect would increase the survivability of the Guardian and his creations in the event the terrified enemy minions charge into the Guardian or his squad.

 

For the secondary effect I'm thinking of something more basic as opposed to a Wrack or Wrackwave. A slow or curse effect alone would suffice, but the secondary effect shouldn't be Wrack using slightly different mechanics.

 

 

[Aoslare]

I'm still confused by the "enemy minions charging into the Guardian or his squad" issue.  As Mechalibur noted above, most enemies don't hugely care where they are because they'll just used a ranged attack regardless.  And enemies that use melee attacks are guaranteed to charge into your squad if they aren't afflicted with a mental effect.  And, no enemy is attacking you at all while it's terrified.  So worst case scenario, you have 1 turn where the enemy charges you instead of attacking.  I don't understand how this hurts your survivability.

[Genernumlover]

Basically you can have enemies, melee or ranged, get their attacks or splash damage lined up for them by the terrify effect ending. They can make a panicked run to positions that are more advantageous for hitting your damaged creations or for blocking your Guardian from reaching a critical target. 

 

 

Edited May 1 by Genernumlover

[Aoslare]

I get how that can be annoying.  But you're still canceling at least one of their attacks, which buys your team an extra round to kill other things, reposition, and/or use other support abilities.  Does the random chance (not that high) that random movement might take the enemy to a more advantageous position really outweigh that?

 

Or to put it another way: when an enemy creation uses an AoE terror ability on your party and your creations get terrified, isn't that kind of a big deal?  I mean, that's potentially reload territory.

[Genernumlover]

Yes, it does.  An untargetable terrify is too random to be of much use in harder fights. It is outclassed by the alternatives because of that. I regard enemy terrify as an annoyance, but stun is generally more deadly.

 

The chances of the enemy benefiting from terrify are higher than they appear. For some reason, random effects that have a low chance of benefitting the enemy usually do end up benefitting them quite a bit.

 

Basically, Guardian's Roar is underwhelming as it currently is. That's also why I am suggesting changes that could make the ability more useful in the future. Vogel is going to be modifying and experimenting with different skills as the remake series progresses. Because of that, bringing to light that this ability is supposed to be powerful but is actually less useful than it seems is a useful debate to have. It lets players discuss their experiences with it and offer suggestions on how to change it for the better.

 

[Aoslare]

1 hour ago, Genernumlover said:

An untargetable terrify... It is outclassed by the alternatives because of that.

For shapers and agents with access to stuff like Airshock - most of the time, absolutely!

 

For guardians who are avoiding investment in magic, and aren't using magic shaping, what exactly is their alternative?  (And given the weapon skill required to use it, this is mainly gonna be a guardian thing anyway.)

 

And for any PC, the fact that it's a radius ability and therefore won't hit friendly targets does give it potential utility in crowded locations.

[Randomizer]

Jeff mentioned in beta testing that he upgraded its duration to make it the most powerful version of terror in the game. 

 

I still don't like using it and too many boss creations in the Taker Lands have high mental resistances when you would want to use it. Otherwise they don't have the health to withstand other attacks.

[Genernumlover]

56 minutes ago, Aoslare said:

For shapers and agents with access to stuff like Airshock - most of the time, absolutely!

 

For guardians who are avoiding investment in magic, and aren't using magic shaping, what exactly is their alternative?  (And given the weapon skill required to use it, this is mainly gonna be a guardian thing anyway.)

 

And for any PC, the fact that it's a radius ability and therefore won't hit friendly targets does give it potential utility in crowded locations.

 

That's the point: Guardian's Roar is supposed to be the Guardian's crowd control skill, and it is underwhelming. The reason Guardian players are looking for an alternative is because the ability that is supposed to fill the crowd control spot isn't cutting it.

 

Neither of the options for Guardians are very good. You either cast Guardian's Roar and hope for the best or put some points in Mental Magic for Daze and hope that you get lucky. Like I said, the options are not that great.

 

In a lot of fights, Guardians end up relying more on AoE creations for crowd control, and that draws enemy fire to them and gets them killed. Guardians basically end up trying to outfight the enemy in a manner that doesn't require crowd control.

 

6 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

Jeff mentioned in beta testing that he upgraded its duration to make it the most powerful version of terror in the game. 

 

I still don't like using it and too many boss creations in the Taker Lands have high mental resistances when you would want to use it. Otherwise they don't have the health to withstand other attacks.

I find this to be the best solution so far, just having my Guardian tank fire and trying to kill the enemy before they can destroy my Guardian's team.

[Aoslare]

Not every PC needs to have an excellent version of every skill you could want.  If not having access to magic means being worse at crowd control, great!  Not having access to a skill set should actually be meaningful.  Otherwise you erode the differences between classes, which I know isn't your goal.

[Genernumlover]

And I'm not saying they should. I'm saying that this is the last Weapon Shaping skill and the only real crowd control skill in the list. For holding both of those positions, it isn't strong enough.