Certainly feels at way. It seems dex focused character (rogue and ranger)MUST be a utility bot, because they can't succeed in anything else.

I would think a rogue with backstab (which require the entire party to build around it, aka let rouge sneak pre battle, no friendly fire, draw attention away from rogue etc)would be the instant death of everything, then I realized even with all that setup, the backstab is hardly better than a single hit from a 2handed warrior. Sure you could go invisible and sneak on the enemy, or but the warrior can do the same with 1 point in air magic, or you know, just ram the damn target. The difference is the rogue is only good for the said backstab, then he is useless for the rest of the battle, serving only as a squishy melee CC bot. You also have to babysit the rogue constantly so he doesn't drop like a fly.

On the other hand, the 2h warrior can do the same "backstab" damage constantly, its not a one trick pony, and on top of that can serve as a tank, and require no setup. For CC, the mage lightning stun feel so much easier than a rouge melee CC, plus mages have real utility with elemental combo and summons, they also actually do (consistent) damage and you know...not being in melee range.

Ranger suffer the same problem, (very) subpar damage compare to warrior, safer due to range, but also squishy so when he does get hit so its not that much better. Special arrows are good but can't find a shaft anywhere. Basically it feels like playing a class with a weapon that constant "breaks" and require luck to "repair" the said weapon, and if you are not lucky, well ... to bad.

So my point is, dex based class is not flush out. You got the setups, good, but the said setup does not yield the results compare to the effort. You are only as good as other class with the setup, and anything less you become a burden. You also have NOTHING else to fall back on should the setup fail, either by your fault or RNG.

To me each meta type class need "the thing" to make them worthwhile, but currently dex class don't have it. For example a rogue should be allowed a "dual wield" spec, and it should the highest damage of all classes, but in exchange, you have zero range (even worse than 2hander warrior), melee, and super squishy (no shield/bad armor). Range stance should be changed to give a "hyper" damage buff but in exchange roots you in place for x turns. So you are trading your safety and mobility for damage. Options like this will make the class more well rounded and less of a one trick pony.

With just 3 points spent in crafting (1 point if you get the Pragmatic trait), and a few +crafting items which are fairly common throughout the course of the game, you can easily craft all the arrows you need. There are multiple places where recipes are listed. Any Ranger build can spare 1-3 points in order to have (by end game) any special arrow you want. Or put it on another character or a henchman. Early game you can make (at least) stunning and poison arrows very easily, and probably more that I'm forgetting. So yeah, Rangers have probably the MOST utility and access to damage types in the game, limited only by how many arrows you buy/find/craft. I've definitely relied on my Ranger as a crutch in a few hard fights on Hard.

The rogue, you're right it does require some setup, but NO WAY does a warrior match the DPS of backstab daggers. You can backstab 2-3 times for each swing a 2h warrior makes. With a few mobility skills, for example take the ranger one and the rogue one, or have a mage feather drop you, you can instantly, turn 1 teleport to the back of the enemy ranks, then cloak or use invisibility. Turn 2 pick a mage or archer or other dangerous enemy and destroy them. The warrior can't do that (or I guess it could if you took rogue and ranger and invisibility skills and traits but then ... it's not really a warrior is it?).

I'm sure others can speak with even more knowledge as I'm pretty early in the game so far but I've definitely gotten great use out of my Dex based characters.

One of the biggest strengths of the ranger is the variety of arrows he can use. That makes him pretty much a class which is useful in almost every combat (you couldn't say the same for water or fire mages e.g.). He also has some pretty decent spells like richochet, barrage and charm which makes him very powerful if properly played.

As LordCrash said, the Ranger is the King on the battlefield, you can do anything anywhere, almost any time.
Ranger's skill can't miss, Ricochet and Barrage can be devastating with the good weapon.

I find the skill Arrow Spray seriously lacking, but I knew it from the Beta and it was then the most overpowered skill I had ever seen.


As for Scoundrel, I agree that their skills are a little lacking, but the base Damage of a backstabbing rogue is astounding, especially with the Bully skill, just after a Trip.
To enhance the survivability, you can always give your Scoundrel a shield, you lose a bit of mobility & one chance to apply your eventual debuff with your weapon, and you gain blocking chance + stats.
There is no loss of DPS as you will do roughly the same damage in a single strike (hence the loss of chance to apply your weapon debuff, 1 strike instead of 2).

Mine is a Lone Wolf with a shield and Leech, and, to be honest, it's overpowered. I take less damages than a pure Warrior and deal 3 to 4 times the damage, with a huge mobility.

Define fairly common, are you literally look through every npc pocket and clicking every object? If so that's very poor game play. I expect to be able to use 1 special arrow per enemy, and I can not find anywhere close to that many arrows.

Using other character to buff your rogue is not your rogues strength, you can do the same for the 2h warrior. Also invi and the ranger escape move are not tied to dex and only require 1 point (2 if you use both, hardly an investment). Yes, its not the same as a rogue, because the warrior is strength based, and use 2h weapons, which does not need backstab to do damage.

Lastly, lone wolf doesn't count, that's two characters. Anything lone wolf is OP, because you are representing the strength of half your party.

I'm not sure I understand why you'd expect to be able to use 1 special arrow per enemy. That seems entirely out of whack. It would first of all not make them very "special" and in my eyes it seems equivalent of expecting to find a scroll/potion/othervaluableconsumable per enemy. Special arrows are there to create an advantage when needed, not to spam as if though your entire quiver is composed of them.

Wait until you get charm with a ranger...

The beauty of a Dex character over a Str character is the ability to dip into Scoundrel and Ranger without losing much.

You can pepper foes with arrows and then swap to daggers when (if) they get to melee.

Going Scoundrel/Ranger also provides you with TWO charms... and Charms are easily the best form of CC.

We're only level 7 but so far the dex rogue does 5x the dps of any other class.

Turn 1 = haste and pass

Turn 2 = Wait. Then take two turns in a row. Tactical retreat behind a mob and Backstab 11 times for 60 damage x 2 = 1320 damage. This could actually be even more if you take glass cannon as well.

We can't find any mobs yet that don't die to a rogue on his turn alone, not even the boss mobs on hard difficulty. So yeah, dex based rogue is awesome. I have no idea about archer, but I would imagine that it cannot do this much damage. Attacking twice for 2 AP is pretty broken.

You are forgetting about the guerilla talent which give a x2 damage when sneaking (sneaking cost 1AP when it's level 5).
So you can multiply your calculation by 2

Also there is a trait i think that increase backstab damage by 20%.

I don't know about you guys' math and damage math but what grind me a bit is cooldown of rogue skills compared to other "classes".

I'm gonna use my 2 lone wolves as an example.

1)rogue
14 dex
Scoundrel level 5
Expert Marskman level 3

2) wizard
20 int
5 level in water, earth and fire magic

Cloak and Dagger- 6AP to use, 10 turn cooldown vs Tactical Retreat- 4AP, 9 turn cooldown
Charming Touch- 3m range, 6AP, 16(!) turn cooldown vs Rapture- 15m(!), 5AP, 6(!) turn cooldown.
Fast Track- selftarget only, 4AP, 18(!)turn cooldown vs Wildfire (any target) 6AP, 1 (!) turn cooldown.
Eye Gouge- 2.4m range, 4AP, 10 turn cooldown vs Blind- 15m range, 4AP, 1(!) turn cooldown.
Trip- single target, 3m range, 4AP, 10 turn cooldown vs Boulder Bash- AoE, 6AP, 15m range, 1 turn cooldown (!) and way higher damage.

Do you see the problem? Scoundrel skills don't scale that well, be it with level or DEX. Why even use Charming Touch over Rapture when the latter is superior apart from the fact that it does no damage and they use different saving throws?
My wizard has 1 turn cooldown on Immolation, a 13 level skill, while my rogue still has 10, 10 and 12 cooldowns on her starting skills.

Charm with no cool down would be broken. Also archers have charming arrows to do charm back to back if that's your thing.. charm has no limitations other than enemies that can't be charmed

Immolation is situational. It heals fire based enemies and can't burn enemies immune to burning. In fact, it powers up enemies that benefit from burning. You can't really use it in melee range without hurting yourself (e.g. Even though you are a Mage, melee enemies get into melee range to hurt you,)

That's just 2 examples of how asymmetric a comparison between the two skills are

Oh nice!

I didn't take guerrilla yet because its not worth it, but maybe so, when sneak is 5. Thanks!

Unfortunately, rogue skills were added late in the beta and probably need to be balanced more.

Finding anything in this game that has low AP cost is going to be overpowered. For wizards its late game with huge INT. For rogue its all game with normal attacks. The devs may change it or the community may mod it.

I don't understand your complain about rogue damage at all to be honest.
I've finished the game with my main character being a rogue lonewolf, and my other one being a knight.

My rogue dealt way more damage than my knight until level 16 or so. Rogues attacks are 2 AP and he has the highest movement. I could walk across the battlefield killing pretty much any monsters in 2 backstab (4ap) and then walk to another target and kill him too in only 1 turn.

My only problem with rogues end game is that daggers damage doesn't scale up nearly as much as every other 1 hand weapon.

I have absolutely no idea what you guys are all on about. Rogue being as powerful as a Warrior, Rangers being even remotely useful? Are you guys nuts?

I just remade a new game, and leveled a Lone Wolf Warrior + Ranger and a Debuff/Buff focused magician to level 10. I've had a similarly well equipped Rogue before.

Now with a Rogue that has 5 stealth and Guerrilla, I can hit about 350 damage on backstabs from stealth self buffed and 500ish with Oath of Desecration. Then resneak, do it again, as many times as I want. Costs me 1 AP to sneak and 2 AP to attack every time. And this, it's pretty darn good.

With a 2h Warrior though, vs similar targets. I can hit 250-500ish on single targets without Oath of Desecration and 400-800 with Oath. Without stance or Berserker. This costs me 4 AP per hit. But I can also charge in dealing 200-400 damage to every foe in my Path, I can also unleash two AOE's for 400-800 damage in a single round every round for 3 rounds in a row when hasted.

And there's nothing to stop me from investing in sneak on the Warrior either to make it deal double damage from sneak. Allowing me to sneak in to the middle of the group and oneshot a target at the start of combat just as well as any rogue ever could.

So again, I just don't get where this is coming from. 2H warriors especially are just brutally overpowered really. I'd easily go as far as to say that they're better at being sneaky characters then what Rogues are. A rogue can sneak in and kill maybe 1 target per turn and isn't really worth buffing up.

A warrior on the other hand can sneak in, delay turn, get Oath of Desecration + Wildfire from Wizard (because on a warrior it's worth it), kill a target straight from stealth with a Guerilla attack, Battering Ram in to 5 more, kill them all with Dust Devil, go to next turn and get new AP, rush over to another 5 targets and slaughter half of them with a single Whirlwind then resneak.

The thing about rogues is that if they are sneaking properly, they will *never* get hit. They simply won't be targeted, since enemies don't notice the bush behind them and won't turn around at all unless an attack misses. Of course, things get slightly more complicated when facing big groups of enemies, but that's what Smokescreen is for.

I do agree that the huge cooldowns on their Scoundrel skills that don't lower is a bit unfair though.

The trait is 20% increase of chance to hit, not damages.

There's a characteristic that makes sneaking as fast than walk/run without sneaking, I didn't tried it but wonder if it has any effects in combats.

Ok, fair enough. How is this different from a 2h Warrior w/ Sneak? Except for the fact that he deals double damage w/ sneak even without Guerilla and also has the ability to sneak in to the middle of a group and wipe out the entire group in 2 AOE hits?

The only advantage said Rogue has is more movement speed, which doesn't really matter because the Warrior can do his strikes from the side while the Rogue needs it to get behind.

Backstab should be separate from critical.

One of the perks of high perception is high critical chance(according to the manual). A backstabbing rogue feels like he/she is being robbed of something.

Just saying..

Good point ^^ That would help rogues a lot in the right direction.

I would argue that a warrior who is sneaking is not much different from a Rogue, but you're right; 2H will deal more damage than Daggers when taking skills into account. This stems from the fact that Daggers are 1H weapons (and are Dex based) compared to the Str-based 2H weapons of the Warrior.

Backstabs do get an increased chance to hit though compared to attacking from the side, which will lead to the enemy turning around less often.

That, and attacking with Daggers uses less AP, which means that they can be more versatile with their attacks; it's much easier for a Rogue to hit-move-sneak than it is for a Warrior thanks to the AP cost difference. This in turn makes it easier for the Rogue to be in a good position in Sneak mode at end of turn so that the enemies don't attack.

Edit:
Actually, does Guerilla even work with Skills? From what I have seen it doesn't, since the characters exit sneak mode just prior to casting the skill (it says Sneak Failed), but my eyes could just be playing tricks on me.

At the end of the day, the only thing I see Rogues as being better then warriors at is at support. My favorite team currently is a support wiz (Oath+Wildfire+Fortify+Resistance Buffs+Rain and so on) + Lone Wolf Warrior and a rogue could be a very good third spot for it's ability to take out important targets quickly without requiring much support in order to do so. But that's really it. And even then, do you really want to waste points on perception on your rogue?.. =\ (Big prob IMO)

Edit:
Because my third char has to have some perception.

And

Rogue is only marginally better, even at support. And even then it's a liability for not having staying power in a fight. Biggest advantage is in fact not competing for gear.

Hopefully when Larian guys are more or less done with bugfixes they'll get at balancing stuff out.

"I can use two 6 turn cooldown abilities every round three rounds in a row."

Yeah.

Okay.

For any fight that isn't wiped with the initial warrior AoE (You only get one whirlwind ever, so you don't get to use the good AoE on more than one character) the mage AoE is far better due to more utility, more skills, and lower cooldowns.

I think it's how you build your characters that determine how effective it is. When I made my warrior a support character and let my friends rogue supply the spike damage, she was able to take out 1 target per turn. But hey, I'm all for making Rogues even more deadly

Yeh, typo. Whirlwind + Dust Devil.

Meanth 3 rounds of megabuffed warrior in general w/ AOE's wiping most initially.

And you can get multiple Whirlwinds. One spawns in a cellar in Cyceal West (100%) but Aureius also sells it.

With my level 16 Dex char I took out 4 mobs in a torture chamber on my own (I got hit once the whole time).

My gf had control of her fire mage and madora, while I'd parked Jahun outside and crept in... after some rock paper scissors winning I suddenly found myself in combat with an Imp, a fellow Orc torturer and a guard (the 4th member of this soiree was another orc guard who didn't show up for 2 further turns).

Thanks to a double charm (1 ranger 1 rogue) in my first turn I used the orc torturer ss a meatshield and started shooting my own charmed imp!

I finished the imp off in one round with arrowstorm! (16 arrows, point blank, in his face) then helped on the orc guard, in less than 3 rounds I'd taken down 3 guys and was suddenly... TRIPPED by the other orc coming around the corner.

He walked up to me, tried to smack me and... EVADE! MISS! SOMEKINDOFHITthatmademestandup.
So I arrowstormed! him in his face for 90% of the health, and shot him with another arrow for good measure to finish him off.

The strength of a rogue is not in how much damage they put out, but in the charming, the 4 point CC for all occasions (immune to trip? blind! immune to blind? stun! immune to everything? invisible and let madora worry about it!). But with backstab damage only getting better later on (it feels weak early game but does get stronger past level 10) they've done a good job with Dex chars being the best at board control. (especially if you have 12 action points each initial round for a double special arrow shot of cloud > stunning combo).

But yes, for raw damage, dex chars are weaker - so it's good they get more board control to compensate.

Again though, if you had a 2H Glass Cannon Warrior with 5 points in sneak wouldn't it be able to do just the same as your rogue just quicker, better and with less risk?

Yyyyyy, actually in terms of raw damage, rogue is most powerful class in the game. Backstabbing ftw



You can use backstabbing only with daggers. And daggers are dex-based, one-handed weapons.

Who gives a shit about backstabs when a normal hit from a 2h sword deals more damage? ^^

And yes, I know it costs more AP to use to but it also deals more then 50% additional damage on just an average hit. Then you have to factor in Guerilla which means it's (2+1)x 2 AP vs 4+1 AP. And then you need to account for positioning, Rogue has to be behind the target which means more AP spent repositioning.

And as I said earlier in this thread, even if Rogues are better at straight up sneak attacks alone warriors have the added utility of being able to take a few punches and unload huge AOE attacks.

I see what OP is saying, but I don't feel Rangers are hideously underpowered. Although what you get isn't that amazing, what you get comes at a very low ability point cost, which is why Ranger synergizes so nicely with the "utility character" concept of crafting, etc. If anything, giving Rangers the ability to actually allocate all of their ability points without hybridizing into something else (where "pure" Rangers are actually utility hybrids) might lead to such a pure Ranger being too strong, unless the current abilities were toned down. Furthermore, I actually appreciate the huge synergy between Crafting and Rangers, since they're very dependent on Crafting to have a perpetual supply of special arrows.

I'm far more likely to agree as far as Rogues are concerned. Unlike Rangers, where you can go utility and adjust for defensive weaknesses by playing "back row" and avoiding damage... Rogues need to be in the front lines to be effective, which means going utility or hybrid means cutting into defense and ending up with a squishy, often-dead Rogue. I mean, if you do the actual numbers, I would agree that maxing Sneaking with Guerilla ends up increasing your damage per AP, but so do ability points in One-Handed, and unlike One-Handed you pretty much have to max Sneaking in order to get the combo to work... so okay, Rogues can get up to 10 One-Handed points, but it's not worth it for them to do so until after they've already maxed out One-Handed in the first place. That's a huge commitment to melee damage without a lot of survivability to back it up.

What all of the above means is: Rogue ends up only being a good idea as a hybrid mixed in with Fighter (Str/Dex). Shield and dagger, Man-At-Arms skills, etc. Well, and I use a few of the lower-level Rogue skills (Fast Track, Walk in Shadow) on my daggerless Crafting Ranger. The idea of a pure Rogue, or of the Spellblade Dex/Int dagger hybrid, just doesn't work well currently; Cleric (Fighter/Caster hybrid) is miles ahead.

I think what the Rogue really needs is something to do with its off hand. Perhaps some form of dual-wielding; perhaps some form of Dexterity-based shield. Perhaps both; options are good. Or perhaps neither, and some other solution I haven't thought of yet. Whatever works. The point being, pure Rogue isn't a wise course of action at present.

I think maybe reducing some rogue AP costs to near nothingness could be a good solution. Having the ability to just demolish a single target would be a very good step in the right direction.

I'm not saying they don't kind of have said ability right now but they don't stand out enough compared to other builds.

I don't think rogues have problems with AP, most of the time they have nothing to do but to spend them on backstabbing because all of their skills are on cooldown.

I've been thinking about my original suggestion here, and it actually wouldn't work, then there would be less incentive to go Str/Dex hybrid for shields.

I think maybe the problem is simply that Rogues do not have enough skills. You can count the number of Rogue skills which are not melee-range-only with one hand. (Rangers have a similar issue, with their skills being mainly circumstantial status except for three damaging skills, but I consider this okay, due to access to special arrows.)

The main problem with scoundrel is that most of the skills are not worth using for damage. This leaves you in a position where standard basic attacks in the backstab position are pretty much always the best option. Even most of the utility options are outdone by low level magic spells you could pick up for a few skill points. Even if their raw damage is high, having basic attacks be your best option is just not fun play, at least to me.

At least marksman offers a few decent attacks and a couple decent utility skills that are very much worth having on your bar and using. Then the variety in arrows gives another addition to the combat for them. While they may not have the same raw damage as 10 backstabs in a row, it is more entertaining and fun to play.

Man at Arms really only has a few good damage skills and a few good utility skills as well. The main reason it gets a lot of attention is 2-hand damage output. If it was not so high compared to everything else then people would complain just the same. The only thing people talk about with man-at-arms is the uber damage they do. It doesnt offer anything else.

Personally I think scoundrel needs a complete review of the skills, with at least a few of them made into something better than backstab spam.

Then they need to make physical attack skills have reduced cooldowns with increased physical attributes, the same as spells get with intelligence.

if it throws the damage out of whack, they could probably amp up spell damage in some regard, because honestly spell damage is pretty low. its just all utility.

right now the best set up is to have your spellcasters act as buff-bots and controllers and have the physical guys basic attack for the win.

it could be so much more.

It seems to me that you're not understanding the point of skills for weapon classes. Damage isn't the point, nor should it be. Man-At-Arms has some great skills for utility, such as Battering Ram, Crushing Fist, even Cure Wounds, which make even pure warriors more than simply dishing out damage to the face. However, when these classes are dishing out damage, it should be with normal attacks primarily, and much less often with skills.

Razor's Edge and Trip those are good skills. However, Cloak and Dagger is a little unwieldy, with a AP cost of 6 and not even available until level 10, which means Rogues are sorely lacking in mobility talents, especially early on.

Here's what I'd do...
Trip is now a Marksman (starting) skill and does not require any particular weapon to be usable.
Tactical Retreat is now a Scoundrel (starting) skill, renamed "Jump" (perhaps with an adjective, such as "Precise Jump").
Cloak and Dagger is now a Marksman skill, renamed "Tactical Retreat."
Rapture is now a Scoundrel skill, renamed "Conspire."

This would give rogues access to a cheap (4AP) teleport skill, available very early in the game, without having to spend a point in Marksman. It would also give Scoundrels four (not three) starting skills to choose from. And a Marksman with sufficient Charming Arrows doesn't need Rapture anyway.

I agree that scoundrel skills are kind of pathetic, but I love my backstab rogue.

I have played through the game two times now. First time with two lone wolf mages, one for fire and lightning and the other for earth, water and witchcraft. The second playthrough was with two lone wolf melee guys, one focusing only on man at arms and the other on scoundrel with two points in marksman to get some utility skills. I played on hard difficulty.

If anything, the scoundrel is the most powerful both in terms of damage and versatility. The backstab damage you do is ridiculous, especially if combined with Bully. You can boost damage even further with oath of desecration and rage for very little investment in cross-skills, but this is not needed in the least.

In terms of versatility, for dexterity based skills, you get two escape skills, two charm skills and three skills to disable (blind, stun and knockdown). On top of this you get invisibility which can both save you in combat, prepare you for combat and steal whatever you want anywhere.

The problem though, with melee is the leech talent. For both my melee guys, there was not one time that they were close to dying. Most of the hits that you get are less than what leech heals you. If you get hit by elemental damage you will soon heal that up again when you later in the turn get attacked by physical damage.

thats why every man-at-arms player loves to post about their huge flurry hits with all the buffs stacked on them. its obviously because people do not like using damage skills instead of basic attacks.

lets just go full derp-mode, why dont we?

/sarcasm off

people like having abilities to use instead of just spamming a basic all the time. it makes combat interesting and interactive. yeah, its technically fine with just basics and the game works.

it could be more though, and that was my whole point.

Some kind of "ultimate" is fine as a one-of in terms of damaging skills, but in all seriousness, Flurry should be a level 19 ability.

Daggers Drawn should be level 19 as well... but actually deserve it, by being a more impressive skill.

It's easy to underestimate the dagger rogue in this game but after 2 playthroughs I'm quite happy with them except for the issue with backstab positioning.

When it comes to damage output I only had a problem due to the lack of decent level-scaled daggers I found in my playthroughs. Then you get a good one and boom - crazy assassin. Just have to invest in crafting/blacksmithing.

If I was to change anything however, I would make the backstab negate armor.

One possible option that could be added for Dex characters to level the playing field with other builds, yet still keep playstyles diverse: dagger-based consumables.
Same idea as the specialty arrows used by bow users (ie. ranged Dex characters), but for dagger users (ie. melee Dex characters). In reality, these could be all manner of tricks and traps.

Couple of caveats needed for them to function properly:

- They need to be based on using them for a weapon attack and have no cooldown (otherwise, may as well add more Scoundrel skills).
- The damage effects from them should scale with either weapon damage or Dex level, depending on the effect.
- They need to produce effects that are unique and powerful enough to be worth using, but be limited by supply/cost and scope of effect to make them situational.

Couple of ideas/examples:

Scorpion Wire - causes a marked target to be dragged back to you after moving X meters away.
Balm of Agony - extends the duration of damage over time effects on the target by X turns.
Searing Tincture - removes damage over time effects on the target, dealing damage based on their remaining durations.
Numbing Salve - causes the target's next attack to make them take damage and lose 2 AP.
Tongue-Tying Toxin - causes the target's next spell to make them take damage and lose 2 AP.
Time Bomb - causes an explosion at the target's location at the end of their next turn.

I'm planning on doing 2 lone wolf glass cannon rogue and ranger in my next run, hopefully by then Larian will bump dex based skills or I'll be in trouble.

rogues should do the same or a little more damage than a 2 handed if you are doing it right.
rogue's another advantage is she can move around on her first turn with speed buff + invisible giving you the chance to take out their squishy mages at the back.
arms' charges can be blocked by line of sight. though it does have a chance to knock down enemies.

dex fighters also should have higher dodge rate and hit rate than 2 hands.
their sneaking ability should be main focused.
talents should be like bully (+50%) + creeper + backstab (crit) + guerrilla (2x). if you add it up that is massive damage every time you attack with sneak.

dagger attack is 2 ap, sneak at high level should be 1 ap. that is 3 ap every time you attack. sneak then backstab.

always end your turn with sneak so they won't attack you! i would also recommend scoundral + marksman level 1. you need that tactical retreat for positioning (NOT FOR RETREATING) if you are having to run away you doing something wrong.

as soon as battle start, go speed buff then invis then move allllll the way down to their caster's back. then wait your turn....

wait your next turn too, wait (you are invisible so don't get AoE but Ai mage wouldn't aoe on himself he will aoe your other characters on the opposite side) until you max out your action point. then after that that is where you finish the battle, kill that squishy mage then his buddies and everyone else in one turn from the back. the enemies will be sandwiched and the ai will completely break unable to react.

glass cannon is a good trait to have though not really necessary. cus as soon as you break your invis, you expect to obliterate everyone. if it is a boss fight, finish your turn with sneak. the boss will ignore you.

as for attribute points it is DEX of course! then you can spend 2-3 speed, and 1-2 con.

if you are a melee fighter you need good gears...craft them. or save and reload until you get the orange dagger drop from reward boxes. as a rogue you really need a good dagger and the game doesn't usually give you one cus the game makers know rogues are broken....that is why rogues can't dual wield to begin with!

Rogues have a couple advantages to 2-handed fighters.

They have much better cc moves. 2 stuns, a knockdown, a charm, and a blind. The charm, in particular, is amazing.
They have a built-in haste, and a built-in invisibility.
Their weapon uses fewer AP, meaning you can almost ALWAYS afford to attack. You never end a turn with a bunch of AP you can't spend.
They have a naturally very high movement speed.

Disadvantages:
Their survivability isn't as good, and they deal less damage overall.

A Bully+Guerrilla man-at-arms vs a Bully+Guerrilla+Backstabber scoundrel, the man-at-arms will almost certain do more damage, and requires 1 fewer talent.

high DEX gives higher defense rating, they are hard to be hit; rouges don't mean to be tank anyway, good movement and invisiblility make them easily move in and out of the sticky situation.

Archers mean to stand back, high defense is more enough for their survival.

as less overall damage, rogue can do fighter level of damage with backstab; archers need more powerful bows!!! if there's unbalance, it's that we rarely see bows doing as much damage as melee weapons.

If they're going to attack anyone they need to get in melee range. Once they're in melee range they rely on dodge, armor, block, and raw hp.
Warriors have better access to armor, block, and hp. The only thing rogues have is a bit more dodge.

Backstabbing doesn't do as much damage as a 2-handed weapon. And rogues are gimped because they're limited to only piercing weapons - there's a lot of enemies that are resistant to piercing (most notably, skeletons).

i disagree....
unlike 2hands, rogues can move further. arms may deal damage but they can easily blinded and debuffed and definitely frozen and stunned and knocked down...
2 hands usually require strength so your armors going to be the heavy ones. really easy for the mages behind to kite you....without a rogue/mages you will never be able to take out those guys at the back.....cus their melee will stop you and your charge is probably out of range...they will also run away after you charge....then their melee will opp strike you if you chase them....

rogue on the other hand is sitting on her a$$ invisible behind the boss' back... safe from all damage until she has maxed out her ap....then outburst of damage 7-8 sneak + 7-8 backstab on one single target like a boss or multiple targets...it should take 0-1 ap to move from one target to another. she can quickly reposition herself with marksman's tactical retreat, then use scoundrel skill again to escape.

the problem is during her invis time you need someone else to take all the damage!

you DON'T need crowd control...you should just kill the target (2 sneak + 2 backstab should kill any non boss squishies enemies like archers and mages in game costing you about 5 action points), instead of stunning it costing 4 action points and a chance to fail!

if you are 2hand sneaker, i figure you wearing heavy armor will limit your sneaking movements...and will usually be detected because you need to stay behind enemies for success, and 2 hand arms don't have invis so it will be so difficult to sneak with multiple opponents facing multiple direction.

also don't forget to TIME and buff the rogue! right before you decide to break her invis, give her that bonus damage from witchcraft which only last 2-3 turns. then don't forget to sneak right back after each backstab and end your turn with sneak so that the enemy will not stun/charm/knock you down....wasting the buff away...

blind, debuff, frozen, stunned, knocked down...
Rogues are vulnerable to all of these as well.

Warriors do move slower, but they have Bullrush, Phoenix dive, and with a single point in Marksman they can get Tactical Retreat as well. Not hard to catch up to any enemy, especially when they have a 15m range knockdown, in addition to bullrush (which also has 15m range + aoe knockdown).

Killing a single enemy, even a boss, isn't that hard. Handling all the extras is what's challenging. Once a rogue comes out of stealth, they have very low survivability. They need to spend AP cc'ing enemies or else they're going to die.

On hard difficulty, you definitely do need to use crowd control. Not to mention that Bully turns knockdown into a huge damage boost.

rogues are vulnerable to those but the enemies will not attack a rogue if she is sneaking behind his back or be invisible!

you move from one target to another and moving should cost like 0-1 action point.....1 ap is not that much especially you should have like 20 ap before breaking your invis and kill each enemy in like 5 ap.....

Remember, warriors can sneak too!

they can...but heavy armor slow down their move speed! losing the map control! as soon as the battle start, your rogue should dart all the way to the back of the enemy lines...yea...the guy at the back who has been doing all kinds of nasty stuff to your melee.... your rogue should be behind him (so close that she can even smell his sweat) until she has enough ap. then that is where she kills the guy and all his buddies in shady hoods IN ONE SINGLE TURN....they won't even know what killed all of them...no one ever lived to tell the tales of what killed them....everything happened in a flash (1 turn = 1 second)


ONE MAJOR WEAKNESS
rogue will face her bigger fear when she has to fight the spiders in the desert level...it will slow her down so hard she will be a burden.....that is just one stage that i had troubled with....but it is okay, you can still sneak and invis fine so the spiders will leave your rogue alone! so play the level with only 3 characters and it is easy enough you don't need a 4th....

A warrior could do the same thing.

Turn 1, bullrush and then sneak.
Wait for 20 AP
Whirlwind + Dust Devil = any enemy within 3-4m is dead. Move and attack anyone left standing.

like i said line of sight can be blocking your warrior....and they can still run away and their melee will surround you. they may also be out of range!

phoenixdive, ram doesn't give you invis so your sneak can still fail if the mage has a buddy next to him!!! and sometimes the boss can actually turn around! and spot you if you don't have invis on! this is where the rogue position herself using marksman retreat or scoundrel retreat without getting opp strike!

plus it sounded like a one way trip.... if you sneak they can move away from you to fight the other party members then you will have to chase them with that heavy armor....

for a rogue, they can move away and you can catch up to them spending only 1 ap....


i like rogues because i control the battle field! i can be anywhere at anytime! and kill all enemies in one turn without them being able to react or counterattack!

I am very confused about the rogue discussion here. Maybe I am doing something different on my Rogue.

I have around 8m worth of movement per AP. First round goes like this: Cast Oath of Desecration on Rogue, using Rogue. Cast Rage on Rogue, using Rogue. Cast Precision from Man at Arms on Rogue. This leaves around 11 AP. Next, we move behind the most dangerous enemy, I always win initiative, so nothing attacks me while I do so. Once behind enemy, Sneak. This leaves us with ~6-8AP depending on Fight layout.

Backstab most dangerous dude. He generally dies immediately from ~1200+ damage on the backstab, leaving ~4-6AP. We then move to next target. This typically costs 0-1 AP. Leaving 3-5. If we have 4 or 5, its another sneak and another round of monstrous damage. If not, damage is ~800 instead of 1200, and the numbers fluctuate, of course.

The Ranger is also amazing. (I run Rogue/Ranger/Jahan(All spells)/Maddie(sword and board))

Ranger with Quickdraw and sneak does around ~500 per arrow and fires 4-5 times a round, without haste. Add haste for 5-6 attacks.

Two-Handers are nice, but you dont get nearly as many attacks, and from what I can tell, nothing beats backstab including maxed out spells. Nothing. I haven't seen anything that wasn't invulnerable stand up to a full round of backstabs, and I am on the last leg of the game currently.

As far as spiders, they never hit me with their weakness or slow(the rogue, that is) so make sure you keep your gear as up to date as you can, and invest in sidestep and dex as much as you can to stay sturdy. My rogue is rarely affected by any status effects, but she's also got self-medicate just in case she ever is hit.

Far as I am concerned, the Rogue is top of the line damage, and extremely durable, in that almost nothing ever hits her. I've invested in sidestep and dex, but I dont have points in willpower, or body control, so its all making the opponent miss. I dont get the hate.

i think you doing it wrong. someone else cast stuff on your rogue, rogues don't cast stuff on self except speed or invis....even then you still need someone to cast speed buff (pyro's) on rogue.

second, don't use sneak multiple times if your sneak is consuming more than 0-1 ap...get high enough sneak first!

third, if you going arms then i say instead of precision, get power. and have a geo (not the rogue) cast that accuracy buff on you.

and lastly dagger quality. really need to work on that save/load until you get that orange dagger! then craft the $hitout of it with tenebrium/elements and souls and whatever recipe you can find..

other than that, i think they decided to take away rogue's dual wield thanks to that damage burst.....now it is like 2 handed dagger!! ooooh.....fancy

this kind of balance discussion is funny, there's no pvp in this game, and it isn't supposed to be played solo either. what do you guys want? duel warrior and rouge to see who wins? every class has its role/function in team battle. rouge is extremely good team class.

maybe a solo-do it all-overpower build discussion is a better title for this (or any of such "balance" thread) thread?

we aren't talking about pvp. we just saying rogues aren't underpowered like the op was saying....i don't know about rangers, never used one...but rogues do suck in early stages...but in later stages....oh my god.....the game was soooo easy...you can kill the final boss in 2-3 turns, as soon after his chance to hit increases....


silly that a rogue with one dagger can kill a dragon that is threatening the universe in 3 seconds....


also witchcraft is another one that is insane powerful...their summons can absorb soooooooooooo much damage and deals sooooooooo much damage. you can summon him right next to the enemy before the battle start to conserve cooldown and ap. the ai loves to attack that skeleton 2 handed guy with poison because he is next to it and he will oppstrike if the ai leaves him dealing a lot of damage!!

Well, if I wanted someone else to cast stuff on my rogue, since my rogue always goes first, I'd need to abandon round 1's attacks, or attack with greatly reduced effectiveness, which isn't optimal.




I use sneak before every backstab. Sneak costs 1 AP and adds 50% stacking damage buff, resulting in over 1000 damage a backstab, depending on how many other buffs are running. The only time I recommend not sneaking is when you have 2 AP left, in which case, backstab is better than passing.



My dagger owns. Still, I agree, having a great dagger is important. I assume having a great two-hander really helps the Fighter, too.



I have a 2 hander on Madora, it doesn't come within 1000's of equal damage. Its a good one, also, but it costs 4 AP to 3 for backstab+sneak, doesn't get a guaranteed critical...I'd be interested in seeing numbers for a fully optimized 2 handed fighter's damage, but I am extremely confident its markedly less than my backstabs. (Maybe not on groups where whirlwind + dust devil can happen, but on single targets)

A 2-handed warrior can definitely out-damage a rogue with the right setup.
I've hit for 2000 damage on a single hit, with Oath of Desecration + Bully. Now add Guerrilla bonus to that, and you get something like 3000 damage on a single attack.
So rogue: 1000 damage for 3 ap
But warrior: 3000 damage for 5 ap

2-handed warrior can, on turn one, cast oath on himself, bullrush into a group of enemies, knock them down, and then whirlwind to kill them all instantly. He can then stealth, if he wants to, and spend the rest of the fight killing off the stragglers.

i didn't say 2 handers do more damage...i have always said rogues do more damage...group whilwind cost too much ap for any good use actually.

Thats 1000 a hit for the rogue, but it hits twice, so 2000. Also, I've hit for well over that number, 1224x2 is the most I remember, but I haven't been paying that close attention to it.

My warrior is all con rather than speed, so I don't have nearly the actions to bullrush + 3 other things, but I can imagine a glass cannon 2 hander build with sneak. Maybe my next playthrough I'll do Rogue/Knight/Jahan/Madora and make Maddie tank, and have the other 2 as melee monsters and see how they both do.

Doing math on this, by the by, shows 2000 for 3 ap at 666 and 3000 for 5 ap at 600 damage per AP.

yea but you have to remember that rogue backstab crit is 100%. your 2 hand crit is 1 out of 5-10 or something....

the battering ram has range of 15 m only...cost 6 ap...your whirlwind cost 6 ap... you can charge a group of enemy IN YOUR LINE OF SIGHT WITHIN 15 M and YOU STILL NEED 12 ap on turn 1!!

meaning NO SMOKE, NO BOULDERS, NO WALLS, NO ELEVATION must be in-between or your combo fails.

don't know about the bullrush you are talking about...is it like a talent, a special skill or something? cus arms don't have a spell book called bullrush....or you mean battering ram? cus like i say i m not really a 2 hand person....

The warrior could also use phoenix dive, or tactical retreat. Or simply walk to the enemy.
Bullrush is convenient because it works 9 times out of 10, especially if you bother positioning before starting the fight, and because it deal quite a bit of damage by itself.

I like bullrush, and I like my Warrior, it just doesnt do nearly the level of consistent damage.

I guess my point is, I don't understand why people dont think rogues are awesome.

With my setup I do incredibly reliable, incredibly high damage every fight. I normally wipe out the 2 most dangerous enemies on turn 1 with my rogue, before the warrior even gets initiative.

Doesn't mean I think Warriors are bad, I just don't think Rogues fail at their primary purpose. I think they excel at it.

yup i definitely don't think 2 hands are underpowered at all....they have their use actually.

unlike rogues, 2hands can actually 'tank' and still do massive amount of damage!

madora maybe 2hand but she can tank just fine. though she can be a bit slow.

i seriously doubt you would need a shield to tank in this game.

but i heard that my friend who had a shield tank said you can almost always block every physical attacks at you...and resist a lot of elemental damage so hardcore with the shield.

but i think chest armor is enough to absorb the damage. and 2hands for major major damage.

also don't forget arms got some real powerful support spells like nullify and inspire. and then knockdowns for major crowd control...and whilwind for aoe damage....but for a single target i think rogue would win the race.



if your rogue start first, i usually just save ap for next turn. let them come to you.

I don't think rogues are bad, I just think they have less potential damage and survivability than warriors. Flurry and Whirlwind give warriors incredibly high burst damage. Picture of Health and Weather the Storm give them very high passive survivability.

Rogues make up for it with much better cc (charm!) and more reliable constant damage.

My rogue survivability is fine. She dies about the same amount as Madora, which is to say "Not often." She also has over 100% on most resists, and a huge defense score, and sidestep. She's also generally sneaking at the end of her turn, which causes her to not get attacked hardly ever, an extremely underrated defense.

An argument could be made that a 2 handed fighter can also sneak, and its a good one. I don't know what to say other than "I'd like to try that out and see if its as awesome as my rogue is" =)

I guess the long and short of it is, I'm playing a Ranger/Rogue game and I've completely chewed up the fights. I think I've only lost 2, and I've only lost characters a couple of times beyond those 2 losses. I did Braccus at level 8, I did the first spider fight (Level 14 Spiders) at level 10, and I won all those fights with the Ranger and the Rogue as the primary damage sources. If that makes Dex characters underpowered, I'd hate to see the overpowered damage sources. (Don't say Mages, My Jahan is pretty well geared and optimized, and is relegated to support due to the sheer volume of damage the rogue and ranger do.)

Finding a good dagger is tough, though, maybe if you are playing a game where you didn't find one, it'd seem much worse.

I actually really want to try a sneaking 2-handed warrior. I'd do it on my current playthrough, but I'm doing sort of a challenge run and don't want to end up with anything too cheesy.

i have tried it, it works but you would need another armor to absorb the damage for you in your party.

and also remember that your map control is severely reduced. battering ram has 8 cooldown, phoenix dive has 10cd. cost 6 ap each. and your whirlwind is 6. so it is one way trip only after that you will be kite a lot.

also do remember that you can't invis. meaning if multiple enemies facing multiple directions and when they move they can make your sneak fail and be exposed and your 2 hand madora is completely isolated by herself in the middle of all the enemies....

for a battering ram which cost 6 ap that travels 15m i think rogues can travel a lot further with speed for 6ap but again, battering ram has a chance to knockdown and deals damage. so it is not an underpowered skill!

The biggest downside is the movement speed, but you could use cup of oil on all armor pieces so you are wearing heavy + move speed, or, I guess you could just say eff it and wear medium. In fact, I have tenebrium 7 on my rogue, I could just slap a two-hander on her, buy whirlwind and dust devil and battering ram and try it myself with a tenebrium 2 hander.

I could still move around the map at 8m+ per AP, the dagger adds to my movement, but I think its only 0.70m.

Interesting idea.

now that is more like it...wear lighter armor...but require dex to wear them...you are slowly turning into a 2 handed rogue that doesn't use dagger.....but str based weapons....

so all it boils down to is rogue attacks twice for 2 ap. 2hand attack once for 4 ap. whatever is on the attack value of a dagger vs attack value of a 2 hand right? 4x dmg of xx lvl dagger vs 1x dmg of xx lvl 2hand.

even then....remember that rogue got 100%crit chance. and invisibility. movement speed. (i wouldn't recommend their crowd control as they cost a lot of precious ap)

disadvantage: no aoe and will be squashed if she gets caught in AoE.

2hand got more armor and resistance and lots of 'AoE' damage, buffs and debuffs! (nullify is sooooooo good) and they can carry more items! self heal is really really nice! battering ram and phoenix dive try to make up for its speed loss. high con from heavy armors gives you a good starting ap. after that it is one way trip only.

disadvantage: slow...sneak with slow movement and without invisibility is less efficient. also your LoS line of sight can be blocked....unable to use battering ram. some enemies are too far for you to use battering ram. smoke/walls/objects blocks LoS, burning/poison fields damage you cus you can't walk around it.


also i would like to point out that you shouldn't use rage on your rogue...cus it lowers your dex though it does boost your damage you can spend points elsewhere. arms skills only benefit from high str.


mages are also good tanks...though they wear robes, they don't tank, but their summons will. they also deal a lot of pure magic damage while their summon also deal crap load pure physical damage and the summons will start out with high starting ap especially that skeleton 2hand dude with high con.
their summon will not complain after the battle ends if they get caught in your AoE. madora will. i actually caused her to leave the party one time cus she was standing on my fire too many times after each battle ends....she got angry and say something like oh i don't want to travel with you anymore and left. so i had to reload.........

Heh, I have nullify resistances on my Rogue, my Ranger and Madora.

still under the op's topic of rangers being weak.
so tell me about your ranger bow/crossbow
cus i never thought they could do much damage so i never used them...instead i just had another mage with 2hand skeletal armor summon! can your ranger outdps a mage?

Rangers cannot out damage anyone, in my experience.

A well made ranger will wreak havoc and in most situations where the opponent has huge defence rating/armor he still has enough tricks up his sleeve to be competitive.

That being said, every "class" when build properly can do pretty insane stuff.

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=539712#Post539712 to go more indepth of archer.

Don't have to much time sadly otherwise would love to elaborate.

Ciao ciao!

Rashar.

But it doesn't matter what rangers can do. Nullify + Lower resistance are just simply too good. And if you use STR simply to get those 2 may as well use a 2h weapon.


Idk what your smoking mane. You start with ram in sneak/invisible mode or nullify or mass slow which doesn't initiate combat. Now if you cast oath, rage on yourself too, that ram can kill almost everything except bosses using 0 ap on turn one. (and you have like 15 starting AP and 24 ap per round with 5+ movement speed and 45% crit chance, virtually unkillable and immune to all CCs, and have 30 initiative and.. and ....)

Think about that for a second. Think. Then tell me is there any reason to play anything else if you want to humiliate the AI as much as possible?

Edit: oh and there are two of those toons, meaning the monster I described isn't even optimized. I haven't use all the books and rubies. And I got those stat books at lvl 8.
Keep in mind too that since they are 2 LW. I had to invest in leadership for both of them (both have 4-5) and took Pet Pal and one of them had to have some loremaster while the other had 5 BS and 5 crafting. Never rerolled.

Original topic a few pages back seems to be about: dex based class underpowered?

The one who's offtopic is you, not that I mind, but according to the topic it is important what rangers can do. Now I do agree with you on the virtual immortality of melee classes but that was not the issue atm .

With kind regards,

Rashar.

well i still think marksman should have damage bonus talent point based on marksman skill points or something...

A lot of posts here assume that str classes have more survivability. IMO this is simply false, at least if you compare with 2h, which seems to be the main argument. It's true that str armor has higher ratings, however it does not make a huge difference, at least early on. At the same time, dex improves your defence rating which helps against the same attacks that are affected by armor. Weather the Storm seems to be nerfed in the latest patch, but even before the nerf it was mostly only good up to the point where you can start to abuse crafting. Afterwards its superficial. Picture of health is also superficial unless you're playing a non LW glass cannon. Dex classes also have access to one of the best survivability/cc tools in the game - charm. With charming touch and rapture you can create your own small army which will absorb most of the damage for you and this is available quite early and doesn't require good gear. In terms of direct shielding skills, both dex and str classes have zero.

As for damage per ap should be easy enough to do with lvl 20 common gear as a reference (since bonuses are percentage based it will scale accorgingly. I'm listing only physical damage):
lvl 20 Tenebrium scythe: 154-307 -> 230.5 avg / 4 ap -> 57.625 damage per ap
lvl 20 Tenebrium dagger: 74-124 -> 99 avg / 2 ap -> 49.5 damage per ap
lvl 20 Tenebrium bow: 95-164 -> 129.5 avg / 3 ap (quickdraw) -> 43.166 damage per ap
lvl 20 Tenebrium axe(1h): 101-202 -> 151.5 average / 3 ap -> 50.5 damage per ap

As you can see 2h indeed has the most damage (and ranged the least), however the difference is not that huge and with backstab daggers will easily outperform 2h. 1h str axe that I added here just for reference is also not that much weaker than 2h, so 1h is very viable. I think a big part of the damage discrepancy comes form the fact that most rogue builds do not have rage, which gives 50% extra damage. But rage is very easy to get with any char, as you easily can get 10 STR without spending a single attribute point. Rangers get the short end of the stick here, since rage only works with melee weapon equipped. You might get away with equipment swaps, but that costs AP. Guerilla is much easier to abuse on a ranged char though and rangers tend to have high crit chances due to high perception. You would also want soulsap and nullify to improve your damage if that's your goal, but you can get that on the other chars. A rogue would be able to actually get nullify or soulsap himself since he doesn't need perception and thus has more stat points to spend elsewhere.

Personally I finished the game with a ranger + battlemage party and it went like this:

-Early on the mage pretty much carried all the fights solo due to horrible piercing damage vs undead.
-Then I figured out charm abilitties (touch first, then rapture), making my ranger better at cc than my mage.
-In the midgame ranger damage started to actually get desent-ish, when I lined up Guerilla + Glass Cannon + Bully + Quickdraw combo and an ok bow.
-In the endgame my mage was pretty much maxed out both for melee and magic damage (usually able to kill everything with earthquake + meteor storm), however in terms of single target damage the two were actually pretty close. Guerilla is much easier to use on an archer and my ranger also had ~50% crit chance, the only major drawback was not having rage. Silver arrows are also a great way of improving weapon damage since in the lategame on most mobs at least half of it is absorbed by armor. Rangers do lack good aoe though.

What you are talking about m8?
That is not a scythe. Sounds more like a spear


Of course, you can use some crafting and blacksmithing to improve it. Can add some tenebrium too! Too bad the elemental damage is not perfect

You wanna see what a scythe looks like too?

Edit: you should also remember that everyone and his mom at endgame have high piercing resistance and low/non slashing resistance. 2h is just silly

This is a legendary item with damage boosts. Legendary dagger or bow can have proportional damage boosts as well, so I'd say the percentage difference between the two will stay if you find equally good items. I've found 1h weapons with more damage than the item on the screenshot, so its a matter of how lucky you get . I've intentionally used common gear to get a fair baseline.

Piercing resistance indeed seems to be more common than other physical resistances, but its at least nowhere near as common in the endgame as it is in act 1. I have loremaster to attest to that .

No it's not boosted. It's just stock spear. And that damage is really low lol.

Edit: weapon aside. Dex tree has virtually no AOE, and that makes fights very tedious. And because Dex skills sucks at late game(you don't charm or rupture, you kill shit, which ironically uses less AP, plus you won't die), there is no point of investing into DEX which makes you hit chance suffer. Of coz, you can hard CC your target but that cost AP and you can only do it once per turn.

STR on the other hand makes skill like Ram, WW and flurry more powerful. So there are pretty good incentives to invest in them (seriously, if you don't have 20+ STR, I haven't seen how stupidly OP they are). WW at high STR simply kill everything saved SOME bosses. And this makes the only saving grace of DEX toons, which is single target DPS, moot. Even if we are only talking about high HP bosses, rouges cannot keep up because of Flurry, at high STR that thing is insultingly OP. 2h can take guerrilla too. Pus, you can get like 16 PERC without even putting a single point in it, and this put your crit ~50%. So now your rouge backstab advantage is shaved too.

The main problem here is that the 2h warriors simply scale too well with equipment and stats.

The spear you show actually has the biggest damage boosting prefix (inhuman/merciless/monstrous/sadistic), so it is definetely boosted. I agree though that you can have much higher damage with other boosts and better base weapon.

Charm is indeed less useful in the lategame because there are no enemies worth charming, but at that point the game is so easy its kinda poitless to compare if it takes one or one and a half turns to kill everything. It's quite useful throughout the longer part of the game. Charm deals damage btw, since enemies attack each other but its of course not cost effective in terms of pure dps.

In terms of dex, its up to you whether you level it for accuracy or not, but you have the same number of ability points as everyone, so if you put them elsewhere you get some other benefits. Or you can leave hard CC to the mage, who is being able to knock down everyone in a mile radius with a single spell and get the 100% accuracy.

Regarding STR, WW caps out at 19 STR, where it deals 180% weapon damage. Being a "spell" and thus not being able to benefit from stuff like guerilla and bully (but nevertheless having its damage reduced by armor, unlike most spells) and costing 6 AP, it hardly an ap efficient single target attack. It's a good aoe, although not nearly as good as top mage spells. Flurry is a better single target attack, but again, if you count in being unable to use guerilla and bully with it, it's actually not that much better than regular attacks. Let's say that Ram is not an impressive ability damage wise.

You are correct that dex classes don't have any good aoe (I've mentioned this earlier as well), but in terms of single target it's quite possible to build a rogue that will outdamage 2h. Then again, spells are better aoe than both in my experience.

So overall yeah, str classes are probably a bit more useful, having much better aoe and let's say comparable single target damage, but I wouldn't say there's a huge gap between the two and at certain points of the game dex chars are actually better, so both types of chars are playable and it depends on what you enjoy more.

That spear has the highest possible physical damage at lvl 20, for spears of coz. The best dagger you could find at that lvl has around 150. If you take into account Blacksmithing which boosts damage based on % of raw damage. The two isn't even comparable. You say that you can find 1 hand weapons that can outdo that spear in terms of damage. Sure, but only crafted one at lvl 22 and boosted with Blacksmithing (or not). But crafted items suck in general. Do you see that +3 CON and +3 SPEED? I've got +3 CON 3 SPEED and 3 STR. There isn't even a comparison.

Itemization heavily favors STR based toons. DEX toons need DEX and STR and INT to be self sufficient. INT need INT STR (for nullify) but that's all they can get from STR. STR need STR and INT. The only difference here is that INT has a severe case of diminishing returns at higher values of INT. That Str can easily get 18 INT, at which point he can loop Wildfire, Oath and cast boulder bash with 1 round cooldown. There is no reason to have higher INT than that for damage and CC.

Earth quake knocks you down too so unless you can be sure that it will kill everything after cast, there is no reason to use it.

WW damage isn't capped at 19 STR idk what you are talking about? INT spells damage is capped. Yes. That is why they suck. INT and damage don't go hand in hand. What top mage spell is better than WW again?

Flurry isn't much better than regular damage? lol what? Are you cereal?

STR skills are not spells, they are attacks and can crit (Except for crusing fist and useless stuffs like crippling attack).

You're right that blacksmithing and other boosts are percentage based. That's why the damage ratio on equally boosted items is the same as on base items I've listed. So if a dagger deals 85% damage of the 2h per ap it will still deal 85% damage with any equal boosts. I don't see where this favors str weapons. Daggers could have the same stat boosts as well so I don't see your point at all. Per ap 2h isn't that much more damaging as I've showed previously.

INT actually scales better than STR since it reduces ability cooldowns. Boulder bash isn't the hottest spell around. All damage dealing abilities are capped at 150% efficiency, WW included. They need their requirement + 10 in the relevant attribute. WW requires 9 STR -> capped at 19. Now that it also scales with weapon damage it will scale as you find better items. But you won't benefit from STR higher than that. Flurry is capped at 21 STR. I'd say you want 26 INT to be fully efficient with most spells. 34 if you want to do really stupid stuff like earhtquake each round, but that's hard to get and requires a lot of luck with codices of pestilential thought, so generally not worth it. Its not that you can't get both 21 STR and 26 INT on a single char though.

Earth quake doesn't knock your party down if they're immune, which is easy to get on a plate of you can take a perk if you're unlucky with that. It doesn't knock the caster down at all.

Meteor storm easily outdamages WW. At level 22 with 23 INT or higher it deals ~650 base average damage per meteor. Each target in the area (larger that WW) is hit I would say 3 times in average, 2 at the very least. Now if you stack up oath + rage you get 1300 per meteor. Assuming 0 base fire resist, if you stack up burning (applied by the storm itself after the 1st meteor, or you can mix in another fire spell) and nullify you get 70% damage bost -> 2210 per meteor. Now if you really want smth dead you can also cast soulsap, although that's only 1 target but that's 2860 damage per meteor. I also don't count burning damage here. If you don't count soulsap its generrally 4-6k damage in the area, which is more damage than most bosses have hp (deathlord if I remember correctly has smth like 5k). If you have a hugeass boss like void dragon you can cast soulsap + also all 8 meteors will hit due to size. That's over 20k damage. Nothing has that much hp. If you combine earth and fire spells you also get a lot of extra fire and poison damage from ooze explosions, but since I don't know the exact rules for them, it's hard to account for. I would say Earthquake is also better than WW, it might have lower damage but its area is huge + it's a nice setup for other skills.


Flurry indeed isn't MUCH better than properly setup regular attacks, because it doesn't benefit from guerilla or bully (but it does crit and can miss/be blocked and is migitated by armor). So it has some properties of auto attack and some properties of spell, like other STR skills.

1) Flurry and ww does benefit from bully.
2) You shouldn't pigeonhole your items just for 1 skill. That is just bad. And you can't never get it down to 1 cd. 34 is nowhere near enough.
3) Boulder bash is for the 1 turn cd knockdown. Use it just like touch skills. I have more control over it.
4) My ww does average 1k mixed damage of slashing, elemental, and rot. Realisticly speaking, my chance of 0% slashing resistance >>>>>> then yours of fire resistance. You know this. And you also know that not all meteors will hit.
5) If you can soulsap it I can too!

Let see: my auto damage is 1k average. oath + rage+ melee power stance + bully = 2.75 k damage. Nullify makes it ~4.7k. If you want to be extra fancy, let's add soulsap. That makes it ~6k damage. Oh wait it can crit (you can have absurdly high PERC easily)! That's 12k damage. Oh yea! We can add guerilla too! thats

24k damage per NORMAL HIT

How about flurry! 1k * 4= 4k. Bully = 6k. If all crit = 12k. Nullify+ soulsap = 26.4k

A bit better. But you are right. That normal attack brings much more pleasure than flurry!

I'mma need a screenshot of this.

Why does any character need to be self sufficient? Wouldn't making 4 characters be good at what they do and compliment each other make more sense? Not that my Dex characters don't dabble in witchcraft and stuff but they generally stay away from things that require tons of Int to work.

Is there any reason to put Str or Int on a Dex character other than to allow Str or Int abilities/spells to be effective?

Alrite. you got me.
509- 1288 so more like ~900 damage. Coz I only have 8 tenebrium :p

Couldn't find 1 ring with 2 CON 2 SPEED 2 PERC 1.26 speed AND 1 tenebrium let alone 2:( I figured I valued those con and speed more than 1 tenebrium.

But for the sake of argument, let's use the best case scenario. My 1k auto is quite reasonable

Edit: you want INT on your melee to make a God walking among mere mortals, including the void dragon. :p

Yeah, it probably does, never tested that throughoutly

But I don't pigeonhole anything, kd immunity is overall very useful. If you have ranged chars you can simply stay at range with everything but the earthquake guy. Or you can use helping hand awterwards . At 34 int you get (34-4)/2 = 15 turn cd reduction. Earthquake base cd is 16 turns. Do your math.

But it has neither the aoe nor the damage of the earthquake.

My calculations were for average amount of meteors. All metors will hit only really big targets like dragon which I also mentioned. Things with fire res are usually weak to cold. Meteor storm deals more than 1k damage provided 2 meteors hit which is always the case, at least for the central area (3 more likely) + has much bigger aoe. WW is also affected by armor, while spells are not (more on that below).


Yep

You calculations are a bit off. First of all, your auto avg damage is 800 according to your numbers below, which is pretty close to max you can get I would say. It also requires extensive savescumming to get that kind of damage legitimately. So 2.2k with all buffs. For some reason your nullify multiplies by 1.7 rather than 1.5 . So 3300 with nullify or 4400 with soulsap. Let's say we count average (not max) damage and have 50% x2 crit -> 6600. With guerilla that's 13k. Now comes the thing. All damage from warrior skills and attacks is reduced by armor. Anything having enough hp to matter has about 100 armor so it takes roughly half damage. So really your damage about 6.5k on average which is more down to earth and consistent with empirical data. That's a normal attack, but it requires a lot of setup in terms of buffs and debuffs and at that point you can probably kill stuff with a branch. Note that you can do exactly the same damage with 15 str (or dex), and it doesn't have to be 2h, since as I've shown you other weapon types are not far in terms of damage per ap (per hit 2h is significally higher, so If you like big numbers then it's best). I won't go over your flurry calculations but the same stuff applies. And we both seem to agree that regular attacks aren't much worse with proper setup.

Overall as I've mentioned I have a maxed out guy with both magic and physical dmg. Maxed out means 26 Int, 18 Str, 9 tenebrium, level 5 fire and earth magic, top gear, bully, guerilla, glass cannon and whatnot. Realistically on strong opponents endgame I've seen WW do like 2.5k damage (higher with crit), flurry about 8k dmg. Magic performs better in terms of aoe from my observations, but worse on single targets, mainly because game has a disturbing lack of 300 armor 90% block opponents. Looking for difficulty mods to fix this glaring issue. When I had to kill my char for Cassandra quest I had to use death punch because nothing else dealt any damage . In hindsight I could've unequipped some items. Magic also starts out much stronger so overall mage transitioning into battlemage seems like a better career path.

Also, for all intents and purposes, anything over 10k damage is infinite damage since there are no enemies to use higher damage on. If you fancy seeing high numbers, I've seen lava core show 60k or so, but that number is irrelevant since it just kills stuff (the numbers probably are target's health * x).

Also, since telekinesis has no cap on lifted weight, your max damage is only capped by how much shit you can gather and put in a chest. Carry limit is also irrelevant since you can teleport instead of moving .

One a more serious note, I still don't see what makes 2h str chars special. Most good damage buffs and debuffs come from str and int skills but most of them can be provided by allies and/or don't require a lot of investment. So dex chars can do just as much damage with weapons. As already mentioned, the only problem is lack of good aoe for dex.

P.S. doing a staff two handed fighter with no spells playthrough right now to see if that provides any challenge

Knock down is pretty bad because you must have that armor with knockdown immunity body building +2 con/speed/int. Good resist and fashionable. The less degree of freedom there is, the harder it gets. Yea, you may be right. For some reason, at 18 INT my EQ has 16 turns CD.

You don't use boulder bash for damage... And EQ damage is bad.

Meteor is bad because you don't just fight that dragon. If you want to super cheese it, just use lava core. Or just rain and freeze the surface before it lands for some fun.

509 + 1288= 1787 and /2 =~ 900. Like I said, I only have 8 tenebrium

I have 2 LW toons with 24 STR 18 INT 14 CON 14 PERC 14 SPEED each (ok the other LW doesn't need that much PERC for trap). Both have 5 armor 7 tenebrium 5 sneak 5 leadership can choose to have 5 in any magic school. Each has 2 in almost all magic schools. 7-8 willpower and body building. One has 5 BS and 5 crafting all the time. Of coz I must have 5 loremaster somehow.

A maxed out toon can have 26 INT 26 STR all the time and 10 tenebrium, nevermind the rest of the stats. 1k damage is easy to reach if I want to sacrifice some CON and SPEED and movespeed.

Of coz that calculation is based on a dummy target. Because a for a real boss, your meteor deal nowhere near 1/4 the damage you mentioned.
90% block doesn't mean much if the target is cc'ed. I also find it disturbing with the lack of 200$ elemental resistance enemies. Maybe a mod can fix that too :o

About the other weapon. IDK mane, my scythe has like 480 or something slashing, 150 elemental and 150 rot. Idk what weapon you have in mind that doesn't fall that far in terms of damage. Enlighten me.

Crushing doesn't make your toon bleed much yea. But idk any of my toon I flurry the other quite easily, through bleed too.

Edit: lol maybe not both 26 STR and 26 INT. Difference should be -5 due to weapons, but keep in mind you can have +2 INT rings

Oh, and if you want to talk about auto attack only, you must use sneak. So add that +1 AP and multiply the damage per ap by 2. See if other weapons still "doesn't fall far off"

Like I said, don't need the armor, just a bonus if you find one. Good resist on armor is not needed if you have rubies. rubies are enough to get you to 100%, everything else is a bonus.

EQ damage is not bad, raw damage is about 1/2 of the maxed ww but if you count in the radius and the fact that the dmg is elemental (so not affected by armor) is actually pretty good.

I was able to consistently oneshot the bosses (including void dragon, who has the most hp) with meteor from the point I got it, provided I do full buff/debuff, so not sure how much better it can get. Can do that on turn 1 without any prep as well if one char does debuff and the other buffs up and attacks. On turn 2 when glass cannon kicks in a single char has enough ap for the combo. It also easily kills all regular mobs in the vicinity, having almost twice the radius of WW. I wouln't define this as bad. Like I said, I have access to both, in most of the situations meteor is better.

In terms of physical res: 200 armor means 1/3 physical dmg, combine that with 75% block and you take only 8% of physical dmg. Now I'm pretty sure 100% block is also possible, but that's beyond the point. Like I said, mobs just don't have these stats. The dragon has 200 armor though if I remember correctly. Death punch works very well vs high armor because while being physical, it ignores armor. 200% elem resistance enemies are plentiful, just not all elements at once (although there are few exceptions).

Don't have time for the weapon pics now, will post later .

it really comes down to your gear's quality really...so...instead of telling us that arms can do 50k damage or whatever, why don't we just use a level 5 weapon (crafted white) and do the calculation without any buffs to standardize the whole thing.

because if you are a rogue and what happen if you have a dagger that does 1k damage? you hit twice, and thats 2k and it is crit guarantee with backstab, that is 4k. and then only costing 2 ap meaning if you attacking twice for 4 ap that is 8k damage.....not to mention rogue usually can move faster, and start with more ap and gain more ap thanks to spd stats which is common for dex based gears....every turn a glass cannon rogue with speed buff slapped on top of it will just be madness ap pool....moving around the field, much more efficient than battering ram.

and also remember that it is just raw damage, and each battle will always have something that will throw off your character like smoke, burning ground, poison field, static clouds and knocked down, frozen arrows (don't you just hate those archers?) and charm (assuming you probably won't be going willpower/bodybuilding.)

cus you aren't going to be swinging that 2 handed weapon every turn without moving or being kite or stunned...even if you use that batteringram, it has cooldown and you face overkills and enemies will not be likely to be aligned perfectly to your favor....

the biggest frustration really comes from the slow movement and since you are melee, enemies will flank you and your defense bonus will go down and archers/mages will kite you if you ever do battering ram, you are stuck after killing 1-2 of them. battering ram has 15 m range which is pretty short.

this game is weird, the starting part of the game is where the difficulty peak is....then it gets easier and easier and easier, where the final boss was the easiest battle....you are not the only person. i bet everyone felt the same way...near the end of the game, you characters just do insane amount of damage. each boss will be dispatched in 1-2 turns. it is because of the nature of this game, where they didn't really limit which ability each class can have and cannot have. so by the end of the game, your characters just have everything you can have and destroy everything.....

Str 5 12
Dex 15 20
Int 11 13
Con 9 11
speed 8 11
per 6 8

single handed 3 6
Tenebrium 1 2
Two handed 0 1

Armor Specialist 0 1
body building 2 4
shield specialist 3 4
willpower 1 3

expert marksman 1
Scoundrel 5
witchcraft 5

Charisma 1
Leadership 2 4
lucky charm 1 3

loremaster 3 6
lucky charm 1 3

lockpicking 1 2
pickpocketing 1 3
sneaking 1 7

All skilled up
back stabber
bigger and better
headstrong
lightstepper
pet pal
swift footed

The first column is base stats, the second number following it is stats after Traits and gear is figured in. While playing I did not really take traits into account when doing my dialogue, I just played "the good guy" and that gave me sufficiently pleasing buffs and stats.


This rogue has:

Level 21

Damage 191-284
Armor rating 117
Blocking 77%
Critical Chance 18%
Offense Rating 169
Defense Rating 159

HP 2304
AP (max 19) (start 11) (turn 9)

Resistances:
fire 190%
water 125%
earth 145%
air 195%
tenebrium 20%
poison 85%

sight 28.20
hearing 13.00
movement 5.90
initiative 20

The only skills I have on skill bar a all are
Tactical retreat
Daggers Drawn
Death Punch
Walk in Shadows
oath of desecration
Invulnerability
Death Knight Bane
Resurrect
Summon Armored Undead Decapitator

Those are the only skills I used at late game and no other skills.

Effects from gear and Traits:
Immunity to slipping
Allows you to cast Iceshard(never used on this character)
Inflict poison on contact
Immune to curse
Immune to fear
Immune to Charm



My favorite combo is:

Turn one: Stealth and go behind the toughest enemy in battle, end turn
Turn two: Go behind that enemy again because by now it has moved, end turn
Turn three: Move to behind the enemy again because he has moved, Oath of desecration, daggers drawn(backstab bonus), end turn
Turn four: Move behind enemy again, Death Punch, attack(backstab bonus)until I run out of AP, this killed everything in the game except for the final two bosses.

To top that off, I also used this character to do everything, he was my "main character" the other one was just there for a free ride and to give me extra stats from traits from dialogues.

In the end, this guy was very lethal and was impossible to hurt with anything but status effects. Not even lava could hurt me, in fact it healed me. I was always nuking my rogue along with the enemies, didn't bother using heal skills because Friend and foe alike were always healing him with their attacks.

In the end, he was the absolutely most useful character I had, he did tons of damage and was a defensive monster at the same time, in that he would soak up damage but never actually get hit.

There is no way that I built the best rogue possible. In the right hands(not mine I am sure) this very same build could be optimized to be even better than it is, so as overpowered as it was for me, if someone who was better than I was was in control of it, it could have been better.

There is no such thing as underpowered in this game, everything is overpowered, all of your characters are overpowered no matter what, it comes down to just building the right character for you.

I mean, even as far as stats goes, you are not limited to just what you get when you level up, once you unlock the secret keeper in your homestead, every time you level up she has two new books available for you, then add to that the fact there is no level cap, I could have conceivably pushed my characters up to level 23(there were things I did not do, i did do most of everything though), during the last boss fight, after I killed the first boss, all my characters hit level 22.

You can't never find a dagger that make you do 1k average damage. The best lvl 20 legendary dagger has 150 raw piercing. I've posted my warrior screen somewhere. Have 5 movement speed unbuffed (having more than 5 movement speed is pointless I have tested that). As you level up, all of your stated weakness of STR based toons are gone.

And I am sure that rouge is OP but can be much more improved. I may have gone off topic a bit boasting about my toons.

The main point here is that there is no distinctive features of INT and DEX based toons that cannot be replicated by a STR one given enough gears. That is just bad design.

There must be something distinctive, some perks for DEX and INT that no matter what gears the STR toons have, cannot overcome. And there must be an AI strong enough for those perks to really matter. Right now everyone can be invincible, and all is boiled down to damage.

If I want to start over as a DEX or INT toon and maximize their potential, I would be doing the same shit as my old STR ones at end game. That's bad.

Posting weapons (1h and 2h) for comparison as promised. Pretty sure this is as op as it can get. Let's do the math.

(172 + 51 * 3 + 434 + 130*3) / 2 = (325 + 824) / 2 = 574.5 (2h average)

(133 + 39 * 3 + 265 + 79 * 3) / 2 = (250 + 502) = 376 (1h average)

Per ap:
574.5 / 4 = 143.625
376 / 3 = 125.333

Ratio: 125.333 / 143.625 = 0.872
1h deals 87% damage of 2h, but you can also get a shield with nice stats as a bonus.

Per ap with sneak
(574.5 * 2) / 5 = 229.8
(376 * 2) / 4 = 188

Ratio: 188 / 229.8 = 0.818.
1h deals 81% of 2h with guerilla.

The same goes for other weapons, the ratios I gave earlier for common weapons are valid for superenchanted gear as well.

I agree that combat system is broken at high levels, but you can cheese it with dex, str weapons or spells equally well. So this is not the problem of str being OP or dex UP, but a problem of the system itself.

Can you enlighten me on how to make a legendary weapon with 2 elemental types and tenebrium?

That is not the max you can get for 2h sorry.

Your % is good and all but remember this is a turn based game. You either finish your enemies or you don't. That 20% if translated to absolute number is a lot.

Example: WW. You either kill everything with 1 WW or you don't. What if you have used both WW and DV and there are still 6 AIs left with 200 hp each? If you use 1h weapon and after all the modifiers, you certainly lag far behind 2h in this regard.

There is not such thing as DPS in effective game play. No one grinds bosses end game. You either kill the boss or it is alive, whether with 1 or 100 hp doesn't matter one bit. You can be objective with numbers all you want but in the end, no one will agree with you that 1h "does not lag far behind 2h" when they actually play the toons.

Let put it this way:
Both the 2h and 1h have 20 AP per turn, and both have to fight a same boss. The 2h kills the boss in 1 turn. He has used 20 AP for this boss.
The 1h takes 2 turns to kill the boss. He has effectively used 40 AP for this boss.

God forbids if the boss heals himself or cast some defensive stuffs or cc the 1h, you will be looking at even more AP for the 1h. Worse, the boss has healing mechanics like that of leech or zombie, the 1h may not even be able to kill the boss.

One turn or two maybe three, god forbid... -runs around screaming- Whatever shall we do if the fight lasts even just one turn more! Oh my god NOOOOOO! Just the thought of that makes me squirm.

/Mockery

This is the max you can get with 2h level 20 scythe. The only way you can get more is either have higher item level or have a crafted item, which will have lower other stats. But then same applies to 1h as well. I haven't seen a single boss I can't kill in 1 turn with meteor or 1h. So now we're in purely hypothetical territory. What if the boss has wings and can fly? You won't be able to hit it with melee! What is its a hugeass robot shooting lasers from its eyes? That's really scary.

Now if we're theorycrafting 1h > 2h statwise because while dealing only slightly less damage, you are able to use a shield, which can increase your survivability at least by 100%, more likely by 400% or smth.

If you don't care how long the fight lasts, the best build in the game is pretty obvious.

1 handed + shield
rank 5 shield
rank 5 bodybuilding
rank 5 willpower
rank 5 man-at-arms
leech
weather the storm
picture of health
comeback kid

You won't even come close to losing. No matter what the fight is, you're only several dozen turns away from victory.

No that is the not the max you can get damage wise for lvl 20 legendary scythe. And there is no way you can get that scythe in game. I am not talking about the damage. I am talking about the 2 elemental types AND tenebrium. The only item with such kind of state is the unique dagger Snakebite. Plus, if you acquire that the conventional way, it should be quite obvious that the damage in none of those slots are maxed. Unless you use something that tells you that those were max. I call BS on te scythe.

Slightly less damage? Go read my post again, not only bosses and AOE and stuffs . 20% being slightly less then 2 h is ike a C is a slightly less an A. lulz

I find that rogues (or any backstabber) is incredibly powerful. Give it some haste, make it go to town. Too close to die -> walk with the shadows.

Some people say rangers are good too (btw havent read this thread yet) but cant say I would agree that much. Maybe they spam the custom arrows all the time? Not sure, I use them but only when I feel pressured to do so. I always worry that I will need those arrows in the future (which ends up with me stockpiling some of them :P ).

I indeed made both items with the editor specifically for this showcase :), so maybe you can't find one with 2 elemental types conventionally. But that makes me sure that damage on all the slots IS maxed, because I've put the best possible damage modifiers on both and then added blacksmithing and enchants on top. Anyway, the point of this is that damage ratio stays the same no matter how much buffs you put on top of it.

80% is more like B than C.

I've read your post again and it still didn't make any sense, you're describing some purely theoretical stuff which doesn't happen in the game atm. Again, if speaking from purely theoretical perspective, if enemies in the game actually did serious damage 1h >>> 2h. Survivability bonus of 1h is much larger than damage bonus of 2h. If two builds were to fight, 1h would beat the crap out of 2h. AOE is indeed better on 2h, then again spell AOE is even better.

Now, if only the absolute possible max damage is what interests you, I can easily show that rogue with backstabs will outdamage 50% crit 2h. So going by that logic 2h is now useless?

Btw, everyone and their mother has slashing and crushing resistance in Dark forest after the last patch, so yay for damage type equality.

Anyway, I'm kinda done arguing, since it becomes less and less constructive and I have better things to do. People who read the thread will decide for themselves who made a better point.

You seem to love theorycrafting even with flawed theories. Case in point. That scythe is not the max you can get. The ax may not even possible, and it has no crit m8. Take that into account too if you want to talk about the long run DPS race. You see, I actually play the game and find those items. I know what is reasonable possible. The second you post that, I smelled BS.

93 is an A. 73 is a C. Lava core is 100. Besides, if the class is that easy that everyone can make 100, that dude with 80 will surely get a C or less.

You are still hanging on "all 8 meteors will hit all the targets I want and there really are 8 meteors because the game says so." The damage to kill everything with WW is important because you can use it only once per battle. Also shield defense is useless if you are KD, stunted, blind etc... My hard enemies = those that can land CC all the time. The fight then, as always, comes down to who has the most initiative and can move first and has the most speed. Next you want to obliterate as much enemies as possible. With that in mind, that "only 20+% less" is laughable.
"Only one or two or three more turns" lulz

This build no longer functions in the latest patch.
Leech does next to nothing anymore (flat 15 hp on your turn only in combat, does not scale with level/hp), and no longer combos with comeback kid.

Weather the Storm no longer has any effect past level 10 or so, since your gear will cap out your resists at 80.

Why's that? Why can't you instead choose equipment that gives you other stats besides resists?

It is likely that armor, sarong, shield, amulet/rings will get you to 80% even when you are not trying.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

Generally speaking, unless you are trying a naked challenge, you will max out your resists before you leave Cyseal if you choose to use rare/magical/legendary gear. Unless you have terrible luck with the RNG.

Edit: This is without rubies/essences, and without talents like Weather the Storm and Zombie, and does not count Tenebrium resist.

Only if you choose resist gear instead of +Attribute gear...

Besides, I'm not even close to 80% resist and I'm at level 14.

Then there are several possiblities:
a) You have ignored most of the chests and merchants in the greater Cyseal/Luculla area
b) You are extremely unlucky with the RNG
c) The people I play with, including myself, are extremely lucky with the RNG

I would not presume a) to be the case until you state otherwise, and since my sample size for c) is reasonable (n>30), I suspect b) to be the case.

To remedy this, either play the game a lot more... or start savescumming.

I just finished a game with both Rogue and Ranger in my team, they are far from underpowered. They dealt great damage throughout the game.

1) Rogue

He may have weak attack, but backstab always doubles your damage. Even if sometimes its not that much, it is still very good in most situations. Just try to keep him a little safer. Also he can spam his attacks a lot, so in many occasions he dealt over 50% of HP in one enemy than my 2H tank. Having full sneak means 4x damage per attack with only 3 points. Give him a 10AP worth of speed and make circles killing the squishes. Also, his bomb ability is usefull as hell. Spawn that thing and teleport it with jahan. Laugh your ass out

2) Ranger, a little weak at first but she have have dealt the most damage out of everyone overall. Her 2 damaging abilities are great to use(not ricochet). I never used her special arrows because i was satisfied with her damage.

3) My "secrets"

Lots of Stun, Knock down etc etc, bully in Madora, Rogue and Ranger helped their overall damage a lot. Also charm on both rogue and ranger is very helpfull. Take 2 enemies 90% of time and laugh.

Jahan, having freeze as well is always helpfull. The less enemies you take care of at one time, the easier it gets.

Really, even on hard i found my ranger and rogue to be very powerfull and usefull, in both Direct and Indirect ways.

Interesting.
BTW: What's wrong with Ricochet? I've heard it knocked before but it looks OK "on paper" Is there something not obvious?

Nothing "wrong" with ricochet, it is one of the 11 expert marksman skills you eventually want.

However single target "auto" attacks are in most situations better because they cost only 3AP (with quickdraw) and they add elemental damage from your weapon. So compared to ricochet it's total damage the auto attacks will usually do more damage in total and in general it's better to focus the damage on 1 enemy at a time. (while either ignoring or cc-ing the others.)

The possible advantage ricochet has is that it does not require a to hit roll, so it can not miss. Another relatively small (dis)advantage is that it is based on weapon damage, so it gets better when you use crossbows.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

Thanks, that was a very concise explanation.