Battle Magic: The strongest skill in the game?

[alhoon]

4 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

Clearly Drayks are the apex of all creations, not drakons. Ghaldring should be retconned into a Drayk for GF3.

For their cost. They are better for their cost. Drakons have +50% hp and better stats which give them better percentage bonuses on their attacks. They do less AoE damage than Drayks but they are much tougher. 

 

8 hours ago, ex post slarto said:

You also don't get 7 rounds of Overload, so Overload will not normally kill your drayks (or fyoras, or rots)

I get 6 to 8 rounds of overload! 

 

8 hours ago, ex post slarto said:

So if you kill things swiftly enough, one Group Heal covers everything. 

Sure, but then after the fight you are left with Drayks that are at 20% health at most. 

Edited May 19 by alhoon

[Archaeolagent]

"less AoE damage" is not a footnote.  It's the headline.

[l33tmaan]

37 minutes ago, alhoon said:

For their cost. They are better for their cost. Drakons have +50% hp and better stats which give them better percentage bonuses on their attacks. They do less AoE damage than Drayks but they are much tougher. 

Why do the drayks simply not outpopulate the drakons, then? 

[alhoon]

6 minutes ago, l33tmaan said:

Why do the drayks simply not outpopulate the drakons, then? 

Because Drayks cannot Shape and they have demanded, in GF4, for Drakons to stop shaping Drayks. The Drakons occasionally do shape Drayks, but they often apologize. 

Edited May 19 by alhoon

[l33tmaan]

I'm sure this comes up in a later game and I've forgotten, but drakons can still breed, right? Oh, god. What's stopping them from shaping themselves to naturally breed more drakons? At that point, they would need to worry more about social cohesion & resource allocation than any external threat.

Maybe drakons cost too much essence and they can't modify themselves further. 

[alhoon]

7 minutes ago, l33tmaan said:

I'm sure this comes up in a later game and I've forgotten, but drakons can still breed, right? Oh, god. What's stopping them from shaping themselves to naturally breed more drakons? At that point, they would need to worry more about social cohesion & resource allocation than any external threat.

Maybe drakons cost too much essence and they can't modify themselves further. 

 

The Takers modify themselves a lot. They have a geneforge for that. Drakons are aware of the resource allocation and they even have / develop ways to "purge" the weaker of them. 

[l33tmaan]

Yeah, but modifying yourself to spit out lighting-fire breath that stuns people is a bit different from modifying yourself for the long-term preservation and expansion of drakon-kind. 

Wait a minute. No it's not. Nevermind.

[Hyperion703]

1 hour ago, l33tmaan said:

but drakons can still breed, right?

I don't know the canon answer to this. However, I would assume they wouldn't 'forge fertility into their creations simply for the fact that they want to control the variables for reproduction to create ideal products/subjects. They wouldn't want horny drakons going out and getting all freaky deaky at will in some sleazy drakon motel, for example. This would not produce "ideal products/subjects" necessarily.  For evidence, just see... Oh, all of human society since forever, including your inlaws. Case closed on "ideal subjects."

 

Also, sweaty drakon sex is presumably the grossest act imaginable and would likely be avoided even by the most depraved, villainous Taker. Ew.

 

Edited May 19 by Hyperion703

[Genernumlover]

On 5/18/2024 at 1:37 AM, Hyperion703 said:

You might be referring to me. Was the post "Agent Woes"? If so, did you go on to read the entire thread? I did a lot of personal growth in that thread. Today, I'm a reformed man. No longer do I believe in the woes of (higher level) agents. 

 

It's true: solo agents relatively struggle early on, until Essence Shield is available. Once an agent gets ES, the game becomes many degrees easier and there is little that will really threaten. I wouldn't say the easiness is comparable to a shaper, however. At least, not yet. IMO, agents don't get comparable to shapers in terms of raw power until levels 17-19. By then, you will only need three spells: Essence Shield Mass Energize, and either Airshock or Essence Purge. You won't need anything else. 

 

And you will wreck face. From a considerable distance, too. No, agents need neither boost nor buff to thrive.

 

The poster I was referring to was talking about how Agents were too powerful once they were built correctly, and it sounds like you were saying Agents were weak in the early game and powerful later on. What I'm wondering is if the power spike is due to Battle Magic needing very little investment to become powerful compared to things like Weapon Shaping or Shaping. I was playing this morning and my Shaper, who specialized in creations, was able to do a lot of damage to enemy mobs in Inner Gazak-Uss with three levels of Battle Magic. 

 

[Randomizer]

Agent's using only magic do less damage in the early zones compared to using physical weapons like swords and javelins. They don't even need to upgrade their weapon skills for that area.

 

Guardians do more damage early on in the game, but until they get chain lightning, they don't have a multi target attack.

 

Shapers can use their creations to hit several targets just by having more than one creation or using their creation area attacks.

[Archaeolagent]

Shaping has a much, much higher DPS than battle magic, melee weapons, or missile weapons do, if you invest in it.  The gap is not small.  This is true for the entire game.

 

Magic can certainly be effective for damage, and it has some other great advantages.  But Battle Magic does not in any way outpower shaping.

[Hyperion703]

1 hour ago, ex post slarto said:

Shaping has a much, much higher DPS than battle magic, melee weapons, or missile weapons do, if you invest in it.  The gap is not small.  This is true for the entire game.

Agreed. I'm nearing the conclusion of my third run. I have now played each of the three classes and tried "classic" builds focusing on skills and items more specifically geared towards the class.

 

What I've found is that Shapers are strongest by a mile, mostly due to being able to maximize lots of firepower from multiple sources. Really varied and strong firepower. Personally, I believe getting access to the highest levels of spells and creations so early in the game is a mistake. There exists a moderate paywall, but it is very manageable for purchasing level one spells of the highest order even around level 9 or 10 if you save up (or just get a certain cloak). I've found that I don't know much about tiers 2 & 3 creations or mid-level spells like Essence Lances as a result, because I've not really ever needed to get them. I just jumped directly from level 1 to level 4 spells/creations each game. On normal difficulty, that's when your hardships end and the rest of the game is downhill.

 

This game is still totally rad. I don't think I have played a game completely through three times in a month that I can remember. That's very telling on its quality.

[alhoon]

2 hours ago, ex post slarto said:

Shaping has a much, much higher DPS than battle magic, melee weapons, or missile weapons do, if you invest in it.  The gap is not small.  This is true for the entire game.

 

Magic can certainly be effective for damage, and it has some other great advantages.  But Battle Magic does not in any way outpower shaping.

 

Honestly, I think that Shaping for a Guardian that invests heavily on it (i.e. a guardian that gets like 4-5 in melee and 13-14 in Shaping and enough essence mastery to have 5+ drayks) would be better than melee or missile weapons. 

[Hyperion703]

1 hour ago, alhoon said:

 

Honestly, I think that Shaping for a Guardian that invests heavily on it (i.e. a guardian that gets like 4-5 in melee and 13-14 in Shaping and enough essence mastery to have 5+ drayks) would be better than melee or missile weapons. 

I think the consensus is that the more high-powered creations you have, the stronger your character will be, regardless of class. My question is, why choose a guardian (or agent) at all if you're going to focus on Shaping Skills as opposed to Combat Skills (or Magic Skills for agents)? Just be a shaper and take advantage of those super cheap Shaping Skills if you're going to focus on creations. 

 

 

Edited May 20 by Hyperion703

[alhoon]

54 minutes ago, Hyperion703 said:

I think the consensus is that the more high-powered creations you have, the stronger your character will be, regardless of class. My question is, why choose a guardian (or agent) at all if you're going to focus on Shaping Skills as opposed to Combat Skills (or Magic Skills for agents)? Just be a shaper and take advantage of those super cheap Shaping Skills if you're going to focus on creations. 

 

Because I know a lot of people that like to play warriors and not spellcasters. Shaper is Shaping and magic. Guardian is Fighting and Shaping. You will not be as powerful as a Shaper would be but for many people, hitting enemies with their sharpened metal sticks is fun. 

[Hyperion703]

1 minute ago, alhoon said:

 

Because I know a lot of people that like to play warriors and not spellcasters. Shaper is Shaping and magic. Guardian is Fighting and Shaping. You will not be as powerful as a Shaper would be but for many people, hitting enemies with their sharpened metal sticks is fun. 

I understand that few people want to play a "pure" shaper/agent/guardian. I was not encouraging that necessarily; I apologize if that was how it read. Like you stated, there is usually a degree of primary/secondary specialization. Hybrids. Mostly this, but a little of that. 

 

All I'm saying is, it benefits to have your primary focus consistent with your chosen class. You gave an example of a guardian with a shaping focus, which is perplexing to me because it just seems needlessly inefficient. If a player wants to specialize in shaping, that's fine, but do yourself a solid and do so as a shaper, not a guardian. I just can't think of a reason to do otherwise. 

 

See what I mean?

[alhoon]

My answer is that if you want to go to fire shaping 12-13, essence mastery 10, and melee/missile 4-5 to beat things close and personal and/or use weapon Shaping, the Guardian and not the Shaper is the class to do it. 

[ultra112]

On 5/19/2024 at 2:49 PM, Hyperion703 said:

I don't know the canon answer to this. However, I would assume they wouldn't 'forge fertility into their creations simply for the fact that they want to control the variables for reproduction to create ideal products/subjects. They wouldn't want horny drakons going out and getting all freaky deaky at will in some sleazy drakon motel, for example. This would not produce "ideal products/subjects" necessarily.  For evidence, just see... Oh, all of human society since forever, including your inlaws. Case closed on "ideal subjects."

 

Also, sweaty drakon sex is presumably the grossest act imaginable and would likely be avoided even by the most depraved, villainous Taker. Ew.

 

Ok this had to be one of the most hilarious things I have ever read.