Let's talk combat

[renke_]

but it discourages any kind of tanky setup.

so what? you're biased to your playing style, I try to push the game my way :P

[jack1974]

Well obviously realism isn't the main point here
For now I think I'll go with renke_ suggestion. As I said I can change the skill completely anytime if it doesn't work and is better to be replaced by something else.

[yayswords]

so what? you're biased to your playing style, I try to push the game my way

Eh, my favorite kind of setup isn't a tanky one. I don't even consider an IP setup tankier than others, and definitely not very fun. I do it because I can get around downtime for free and thus get the most xp and gold out of a playthrough.

It is an aspect of any game that some players will do anything that grants them an advantage. If then the game isn't designed to require that advantage, it becomes too easy when you have it. On the highest difficulty level you have to either balance around players having nearly every advantage or you have to remove most of those you don't balance around. And I for one would love for this one to be removed because it's not fun to use, but I'm a sucka for powa.

When you see me lobbying for the viability of fast, heavy-hitting setups based on the logic that offense is the best defense, then you can suspect bias

[yayswords]

The 0.8.3 change to IP doesn't stop me from being inexhaustible with it, jussayin' what it does accomplish though is make my hunter have to use it more often. But now I can enjoy it without caring about my max mana too. To get 45 mana restored from the old version I'd need 90 max and I never got that much on Vaelis. He is happy!

[yayswords]

Perfect Balance is really cool once you can brainwash yourself to stop thinking about IP. It's a shame my druid can't regen mana somehow (refusing to take IP this playthrough) 'cause the combination of PB and Eagle's Grace is so sweet. Druid runs fast OOM keeping that up plus keeping Vaelis alive though. My hunter also has Double Attack (it costs 15 so mixes well with PB) and can mash it hard.

Good job making it not drain 15 if the difference between HP and SP is less than 15 BTW. I half expected the spell to kill me when I had like 13 health and 9 mana although for "perfect" balance it should have drained 2 health, not 4.

BTW a hunter/druid party is extra painful to play until you get Vaelis since none of them is a tank. I was wondering if you could make mobs, before you get Vaelis, use the top or bottom position, so my hunter could distance himself a lot and be tanky enough through being a thief.

[jack1974]

The 0.8.3 change to IP doesn't stop me from being inexhaustible with it, jussayin' what it does accomplish though is make my hunter have to use it more often. But now I can enjoy it without caring about my max mana too. To get 45 mana restored from the old version I'd need 90 max and I never got that much on Vaelis. He is happy!

Haha OK, but I think later with bigger parties it could have more weight if your Thief is busy using it instead of fighting. Otherwise as said I'll just replace it with something else

BTW a hunter/druid party is extra painful to play until you get Vaelis since none of them is a tank. I was wondering if you could make mobs, before you get Vaelis, use the top or bottom position, so my hunter could distance himself a lot and be tanky enough through being a thief.

Is too hard IF YOU GRIND clearing the traps before you get Vaelis, or is too hard in the main plot? because as long as the base plot encounters are doable, I don't want to tweak this, since you can always hunt those enemies later (and the impact on XP or gold isn't that much).

[yayswords]

Well the goblins were not fun with this setup. I was not grinding traps at all. I broke every sweat I had just killing the wandering snow tiger.

And no you can't hunt them later. Everything respawns the first night and again the second day. Anything you don't kill before then is lost xp/gold. But indeed it's not much.

Giant Snow Spider was longer, not sure it was hard. Mormont I had to reload until the mage was stupid and didn't use a spell. Ratmen not yet defeated. You realize that all four of them (cleric excluded) can attack my back row? 3x poison, plus a spell by the mage. Oh and, guess who goes first

BTW yeah sure it would maybe be a lot to rely on the hunter to keep everyone's mana up during the fight without anyone taking some points in will as a buffer, BUT the hunter is still perfectly able to top everyone's mana off once there's only one mob left and almost no healing is required while you tank it.

[Troyen]

Just a thought (because nightmare seems to be the main topic here): Should it be really desirable to enable a win on this difficulty every time? Some comments here (and please understand that I don't judge, but comment ) are more like nightmare is not a _real_ nightmare but just one level more to routinely master. Personally I don't see it as disadvantage that nightmare requires luck to win.

Nightmare has rocketed between "too easy" and "too hard" in almost every build. It shouldn't be a breeze, but it also shouldn't maul you on the second fight of the game if you picked the "wrong" class. Some of the tuning may be difficult because battles are over so fast - if it took 5-10 rounds to kill a character instead of 1-2 (and regen spells were tuned accordingly), there would be much more room for careful resource management. Some of the tuning is also difficult because at certain stages of the act, you're potentially missing a class role and have to adjust fights accordingly. It will probably be easier to make consistently tough battles later on when you gain more party flexibility.

At any rate, I'm a little worried that so much time is being spent on Nightmare and the rest of the difficulties and the game are being neglected. (Also, how many people have actually played on Hard? Notice a significant difference from Normal or Nightmare?)

[yayswords]

If anyone posts here about the easier difficulties I'm not gonna chase them out of the thread. I'm not exactly being paid to test this game though so I test and comment on what interests me

If there is any normal mode lurker afraid to post, don't be. It's the combat thread, not the nightmare club thread

I do agree though, the game would benefit from longer fights. I should really like to see a base regen of like 10 too so you can actually use your abilities often. Only problem is you may as well forget all about downtime like that, and for lack of an answer to that I won't pursue the idea more than I did just now.

[jack1974]

Longer fight will probably come as your party is bigger, remember right now is just half the size it can be (3 out of 6 members).
OK, so I guess the Nightmare is too hard now Will make it easier then, this time there shouldn't be problems to tune it anymore, since is not like before when the level scaling was broken. I tested using yaysword saves but was a different party, must make sure it is beatable with druid/hunter too.
Meanwhile Anima fixed the broken traits, so that should work on next update