Kakost
Well-known member
- Joined
- 06/12/2022
- Messages
- 417
So, just to clarify, the purpose of this thread is not just to share likes/dislikes in builds, but rather to try to give some insights into how to play each style and improve their games.
I hope my own examples can show what I mean:
Mages
My first love, I'll never forget you.
Elementalist+Staff: that remains my most dearest and beloved style, and also the one I find the easiest to play from beggining to end of the game; I can play Elementalist/Staff Mage on IM with a hand tied behind my back. And the reasons are fairly simple, at the very early game, the spells are devastating to groups of enemies, usually easily dispathcing every single one with a single area spell.
Mid to late game it gets a bit trickier, and you'll relly more on your high damage Staff, but the spells are still a great source of damage.
To master this style, all you need to do is to ALWAYS bravely "run for cover". Instead of attacking enemies head on, ALWAYS place your character safety as your number 1 priority. When an enemy charges, dont try shooting speels or hitting with the staff, instead make sure to position Griss in front of all.
After you are safely behind Griss, preferably at 180 degrees between her and the critters, since your attacks will aggro them towards you but if you're perfectly 180 degrees they wont be able to move past her, once you're in the perfect position, THEN you start attacking.
And, if you end up on panick mode, just spam spells while running.
Summoner: not much to my liking. Granted, I only used the Iron Golem, not the Iron + Fire Golem combination (or Iron+Fire+Ice), but still this is a style that didnt suit me at all. Early game I find supbar, the little Imp is nice but is rather squish.
In fact... Now that Im thinking about it, I know what my problem is with this build.
Two problems in fact: Mana and Cooldown.
Explaining: the summons really take some big mana. And yes, they are strong, but too exposed. Which means, they die all the time, which means you have to re-summon them all the time (or summon another type), which means they do eat a lot of mana.
Surprisingly, a lot more than the Elementalist! Yes, this seems paradoxical, since the Elementalist is seem as the "Bzzzz!" Mage, but the truth is that, with the Elementalist, you'll only ever use your spells when you NEED to, while with the Summoner you ALWAYS need to have your bodyguard at your side, which means the Summoner drains A LOT more.
And besides that, the CDs for the summons are veeeeeeery long - so you'll either have to have 2 or 3 different summons and/or scrolls or you have to be a good runner.
In essence, since I learned all too well how to perfectly position my Elementalist so bravely behind Griss, the Summoner is basically a worse type of Mage for my personal style.
Wand vs Staff: another old discussion, with the consensus that Wand is more defensive while Staff is more offensive. While this is true, the math actually says that Staff only surpasses Wand in damage from Int 5+.
Still, I prefer Staff even at early game, since my entire playstyle is predicted upon positioning, and the Wands' pushback effect actually messes that up pretty badly. I tried IM with Wand only to find out my game utterly ruined because of that.
And what's more, since - once again - Elementalist is all about positioning, the slow effect of the Staff is a lifesaver on several occasions upon which you didnt managed to get that 100% perfect position at the heat of battle, and it also gives you the needed help in case you need to bravely run away.
Wand or Staff are NOT builds by themselves, they are actually complements of the Elementalist and Summoner. So, the options are Elementalist/Wand, Elementalist/Staff, Summoner/Wand or Summoner/Staff, thus my favorite is the Elementalist+Staff
Arcane/Death Knight
Death Knight is not particularly good, being too restricted upon death damage. Arcane Knights are very good, albeit somewhat hard to play on some instances. STR and END as primary stats, with Combustion being the bread and butter of their thing, and Disintegration as the secondary skill to use against bosses. Pretty solid build overall and pretty easy and straightforward to use. They have much much less mana than a "traditional" mage, and Combustion drains a lot of juice, so you wont use it that often.
A quick note: I also found that both Combustion and Disintegrate are also amazing additions for the Elementalist. Plus, because the Elementalist has a lot more mana than the Mage Knights, those spells are a lot more spammable, and the Elementalist also is safer, playing from behind.
The Knights offset this with a vastly larger HP pool
Rogues
Love 'em
Meele Rogue: I love the concept of it, but I cant for the sake of my life properly play it. And the reason being is that, to play a good Meele Rogue, you gotta be good at Assassinate, and I absolutely SUCK at that.
Assassinate is wonderful, their absolutely best skill (on top of Backstab of course), however you need to learn the fine art of stop pressing the auto attack buttom in order to press the Backstab skill and then press the auto attack again, only for Assassinate to trigger and insta refresh your Backstab, upon which you have to quicly change your finger from the auto attack back into the Backstab, then back into auto attack, and on and on you go, until nothing that isnt you or your companion moves, and all of that while you're moving and trying to better position yourself, not to mention also triggering Evade in the middle of all of that, with the risk that in the middle of all of that, you may accidentally move out of range and waste your Backstab hitting the air, on which case Assassinate do not trigger.
All of that logistic goes way beyond human capabilities, and I will continue to refuse that any non AI mind is capable of playing this build. And I wont believe anyone telling me otherwise, and if anyone sends me a video proof, I'll have my undeniable proof that Im talking with Chat GPT-4.
Archer: this is a build that I love, not only because it says "Rogue" above it (so I can be happy about playing such a fun class), but also because it has a playstyle that ressembles the Elementalist - meaning, position, position, position, and attack from afar. If you've mastered the art of using dummies - I mean, noble companions - as human shields, the Rogue Archer will be super easy and fun to play.
Obviously, Rapid Fire, Precision Shots, Massive Criticals, Poison - you all know the drill.
Warrior
Almost universally considered as the easiest class to begin, I also consider them the most fun kind of warriors I ever played on any RPGs.
1H-Shield vs 2h - I loved my first time with 1H/Shield, very solid build, and now I just started 2H and I gotta say... I love it too.
In either case, Charge is your most basic skill, which you can use to both engage and disengage enemies. Warriors have tons of "crowd control" skills which makes their life oh, so easy.
1H-Shield, particularly with Infantry training is so so durable, and 2H is so good at dispatching big groups. Cleave of course is essential on either one, but put a Whirlwind on your 2H and you'll see him shine.
The only thing I found hard to do with Warriors is to suck with them.
Clerics
My least prefered class, not because they are bad or because they are hard to play - quite the opposite actually, Clerics are possibly the strongest and easiest class to play of all.
I just find them... Boring. They just dont have that undefinable "mojo". They only hit 1 foe at a time, their spells arent particularly bananas and they dont have cool kung fu stuff like the warriors that keep moving back and forth like Master Yoda against Palpatine or cool stuff such as the Rogues traps... They are just good at keeping their health healthy, and do a few stuffs that deal more damage to a single foe.
In essence, they are boring for my tastes, albeit easy and powerful.
I hope my own examples can show what I mean:
Mages
My first love, I'll never forget you.
Elementalist+Staff: that remains my most dearest and beloved style, and also the one I find the easiest to play from beggining to end of the game; I can play Elementalist/Staff Mage on IM with a hand tied behind my back. And the reasons are fairly simple, at the very early game, the spells are devastating to groups of enemies, usually easily dispathcing every single one with a single area spell.
Mid to late game it gets a bit trickier, and you'll relly more on your high damage Staff, but the spells are still a great source of damage.
To master this style, all you need to do is to ALWAYS bravely "run for cover". Instead of attacking enemies head on, ALWAYS place your character safety as your number 1 priority. When an enemy charges, dont try shooting speels or hitting with the staff, instead make sure to position Griss in front of all.
After you are safely behind Griss, preferably at 180 degrees between her and the critters, since your attacks will aggro them towards you but if you're perfectly 180 degrees they wont be able to move past her, once you're in the perfect position, THEN you start attacking.
And, if you end up on panick mode, just spam spells while running.
Summoner: not much to my liking. Granted, I only used the Iron Golem, not the Iron + Fire Golem combination (or Iron+Fire+Ice), but still this is a style that didnt suit me at all. Early game I find supbar, the little Imp is nice but is rather squish.
In fact... Now that Im thinking about it, I know what my problem is with this build.
Two problems in fact: Mana and Cooldown.
Explaining: the summons really take some big mana. And yes, they are strong, but too exposed. Which means, they die all the time, which means you have to re-summon them all the time (or summon another type), which means they do eat a lot of mana.
Surprisingly, a lot more than the Elementalist! Yes, this seems paradoxical, since the Elementalist is seem as the "Bzzzz!" Mage, but the truth is that, with the Elementalist, you'll only ever use your spells when you NEED to, while with the Summoner you ALWAYS need to have your bodyguard at your side, which means the Summoner drains A LOT more.
And besides that, the CDs for the summons are veeeeeeery long - so you'll either have to have 2 or 3 different summons and/or scrolls or you have to be a good runner.
In essence, since I learned all too well how to perfectly position my Elementalist so bravely behind Griss, the Summoner is basically a worse type of Mage for my personal style.
Wand vs Staff: another old discussion, with the consensus that Wand is more defensive while Staff is more offensive. While this is true, the math actually says that Staff only surpasses Wand in damage from Int 5+.
Still, I prefer Staff even at early game, since my entire playstyle is predicted upon positioning, and the Wands' pushback effect actually messes that up pretty badly. I tried IM with Wand only to find out my game utterly ruined because of that.
And what's more, since - once again - Elementalist is all about positioning, the slow effect of the Staff is a lifesaver on several occasions upon which you didnt managed to get that 100% perfect position at the heat of battle, and it also gives you the needed help in case you need to bravely run away.
Wand or Staff are NOT builds by themselves, they are actually complements of the Elementalist and Summoner. So, the options are Elementalist/Wand, Elementalist/Staff, Summoner/Wand or Summoner/Staff, thus my favorite is the Elementalist+Staff
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Arcane/Death Knight
Death Knight is not particularly good, being too restricted upon death damage. Arcane Knights are very good, albeit somewhat hard to play on some instances. STR and END as primary stats, with Combustion being the bread and butter of their thing, and Disintegration as the secondary skill to use against bosses. Pretty solid build overall and pretty easy and straightforward to use. They have much much less mana than a "traditional" mage, and Combustion drains a lot of juice, so you wont use it that often.
A quick note: I also found that both Combustion and Disintegrate are also amazing additions for the Elementalist. Plus, because the Elementalist has a lot more mana than the Mage Knights, those spells are a lot more spammable, and the Elementalist also is safer, playing from behind.
The Knights offset this with a vastly larger HP pool
Post automatically merged:    
Rogues
Love 'em
Meele Rogue: I love the concept of it, but I cant for the sake of my life properly play it. And the reason being is that, to play a good Meele Rogue, you gotta be good at Assassinate, and I absolutely SUCK at that.
Assassinate is wonderful, their absolutely best skill (on top of Backstab of course), however you need to learn the fine art of stop pressing the auto attack buttom in order to press the Backstab skill and then press the auto attack again, only for Assassinate to trigger and insta refresh your Backstab, upon which you have to quicly change your finger from the auto attack back into the Backstab, then back into auto attack, and on and on you go, until nothing that isnt you or your companion moves, and all of that while you're moving and trying to better position yourself, not to mention also triggering Evade in the middle of all of that, with the risk that in the middle of all of that, you may accidentally move out of range and waste your Backstab hitting the air, on which case Assassinate do not trigger.
All of that logistic goes way beyond human capabilities, and I will continue to refuse that any non AI mind is capable of playing this build. And I wont believe anyone telling me otherwise, and if anyone sends me a video proof, I'll have my undeniable proof that Im talking with Chat GPT-4.
Archer: this is a build that I love, not only because it says "Rogue" above it (so I can be happy about playing such a fun class), but also because it has a playstyle that ressembles the Elementalist - meaning, position, position, position, and attack from afar. If you've mastered the art of using dummies - I mean, noble companions - as human shields, the Rogue Archer will be super easy and fun to play.
Obviously, Rapid Fire, Precision Shots, Massive Criticals, Poison - you all know the drill.
Post automatically merged:    
Warrior
Almost universally considered as the easiest class to begin, I also consider them the most fun kind of warriors I ever played on any RPGs.
1H-Shield vs 2h - I loved my first time with 1H/Shield, very solid build, and now I just started 2H and I gotta say... I love it too.
In either case, Charge is your most basic skill, which you can use to both engage and disengage enemies. Warriors have tons of "crowd control" skills which makes their life oh, so easy.
1H-Shield, particularly with Infantry training is so so durable, and 2H is so good at dispatching big groups. Cleave of course is essential on either one, but put a Whirlwind on your 2H and you'll see him shine.
The only thing I found hard to do with Warriors is to suck with them.
Post automatically merged:    
Clerics
My least prefered class, not because they are bad or because they are hard to play - quite the opposite actually, Clerics are possibly the strongest and easiest class to play of all.
I just find them... Boring. They just dont have that undefinable "mojo". They only hit 1 foe at a time, their spells arent particularly bananas and they dont have cool kung fu stuff like the warriors that keep moving back and forth like Master Yoda against Palpatine or cool stuff such as the Rogues traps... They are just good at keeping their health healthy, and do a few stuffs that deal more damage to a single foe.
In essence, they are boring for my tastes, albeit easy and powerful.
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