Act 3 combat thread

[jack1974]

It might be interesting, though he doesn't only do that. He also cast mass insanity and then begin hammering down the party with attacks
No worries I understand the burnout. You must have been replayed act 1 for 50 times !!

[fabulaparva]

Yes is true that those two skills are similar (Critical Hit & Double Attack), I should probably make them more different... as for the stagger skills, I think maybe they should do more base damage,even if they do also DoT and condition (so for example Frozen also reduces speed).

edit: I had an idea, what if Critical Hit required Stagger too? this way Double Attack would make more sense (otherwise everyone would just use Critical Hit indeed).

It's been already a few days since you posted this. I've been trying to make my mind about it. Yes, I'm currently doing some ridiculous dmg with the Critical Hit. If I'd give less weight to the fact that those killer hits require quite a lot of prep work, I'd instantly say, heck it's overpowered. However, the prepwork is often considerable. Rally with Vaelis. HiS. Take Aim. For a more powerful hit, risk the HUnter getting paralyzed by moving her/him to the front row. And often I'm also lowering the defense of the Boss /enemy with Madness/Shatter/Slumber/Sacred. In addition to this "trouble," some Bosses can eff that prep up by doing Cleanse (I'm looking at you, Deceit) or Mass Dispel. Still, even with less prepare, HiS+Critical hit do deplete those enemy HPs... If the prep goes fine, I often go way-way past 200dmg with it and over 300 ain't exactly rare, either. Record's above 400.
So why not require stagger? Well, because with A LOT of the enemies, at the point when you get them to stagger, you won't be needing that kinda of damage any longer. And I think we have enough "finish them off" skills already. There are so many buggers that only stagger at the end of their rope... As discussed earlier, raising the SP cost is an option but will make that skill largely unusable during act 1 and early act 2. Then again, Vaelis' powerful Dirty Tricks is also too SP-expensive in the beginning... Another option to make Double Attack more lucrative: I guess you could add just a bit more delay to the Critical hit and remove some from Double Attack? No easy answers to this. And maybe...just...leave it as is? After all, Hunter is supposed to be able to do devastating attacks against a single enemy...


Anyway, is it on purpose that Vaelis' Study Opponent turns are the targeted enemy's turns and Vaelis' turns do not affect the counter at all? I've had some fun fights where Vaelis' uses that on a slower/slowed enemy and he gets multiple swings at them with 50% additional dmg without the counter going down.

[jack1974]

Yes I think for now will leave as it is, since as you said requires preparation and now some enemies can dispel
Regarding Study Opponent, yes the counter is based on the enemy movements, so if the enemy is slow you can get several hits (of course of normal hits, if you use the throwing axes for example they have longer delays). I thought about changing it, but I want to have some skills that works differently and reward player for having higher speed!

[fabulaparva]

Is it on purpose that the Invincible-defense bonus stays on the frontrow characters even after the Ranger's been knocked out?

[jack1974]

Well I could have it disappear, but it would be a rather unique case (the other buffs stays even if the caster is dead). I mean it makes sense, but I am worried to reduce its effectiveness

[fabulaparva]

Alrighty, just checking. I'm fine with it staying.

[Franka]

Haha, my super wimpy party has very little chance to beat the Spirit Bear if it puts up Blood Lust as its first action. From there it can use Freezing Breath which does ~100 damage to every party member and heals it for 200+ health and seems to be a very speedy action. It likes to spam the breath attack after that. That's pretty brutal, even on Easy.

Of course, if it snafus and doesn't use Blood Lust, even my wimp party can trash it in a few rounds. I'd say it's the hardest fight on Easy though, and could be close to impossible for somebody with a less than optimal build. It seems rather unreasonable that Blood Lust + Freezing Breath combos like that.

No other fights in Act IV were difficult on Easy, now that Madness works as intended.

For some reason, I'm seeing Dire Badgers defend a lot. Last Dire Badger standing? Defend!

[jack1974]

The spirit bear is supposed to be the toughest fight of the whole game, and since it's optional I think I'll leave as it is, maybe I can make a weaker version of the freezing breath for the easy/normal mode though
Will check those crazy badgers!

[Troyen]

Hey fabula,

With this party, are you able to beat Deceit on Nightmare?

Spoiler:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/407 ... 1-LT1.save

I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if my skill choices have left me unable to do the boss.

Spoiler:

I can get him to about 800 health, but then he heals to full and immediately mass dispels my party (Cleanse must have a delay of 1-2?).
I can put my mages in the front row so they don't get paralyzed, but they also can't seem to do enough damage or debuff enough to make a difference.
Draining his SP doesn't seem to matter because he regenerates 15 a turn and can cast a whole bunch of stuff at low SP.
I can put all kinds of debuffs on him that all tick for ~15hp each, but he likes to cleanse and heal and breaking my team out of paralyze takes a lot of actions.
The best I've managed is having Riley Slumber and Confuse Deceit, Shea (Druid) throw down Ice Spike and Inferno for Frozen/Burning, Vaelis Twin Axe for Bleed, and Jariel's song for Scared, but that doesn't let me do more than 50 damage a turn (slightly more with Mighty Blow or Althea's Staggering Blow, but they have a long enough delay that he'll just Cleanse and heal up again). I think I got him to 750 HP once?
Paralyze potions don't appear to work despite not saying they can't be used on the boss, and Deceit's Paralyze resistance is not listed as 100%.
There is no Paralyze resistance gear in town, except through gambling Joe, and I gave up after a dozen tries only yielded a +9 ring. I'm not sure encouraging abusing reloading saves on Joe is a good idea anyway.
I have not tried using Rowinda, but Madness and her SP drain are both not supposed to work on bosses, and I built her as an AoE caster. Plus her ring and six turns of Paralyze seem like a bad mix.

I'll try some more tomorrow, but it'd be nice to hear if someone else thinks its possible.

[fabulaparva]

I'll give this one a go. But I got to do some potion shopping first. :D