Regen Times - Regarding Game Mechanics

[Barsby 0]

So I started playing Sacred 2 a few weeks back, been hovering around the forums picking up whatever game tips I can glean. It's all good, but I've been fighting the search engine all morning and so I'm just throwing some questions out to the older players.

 

Are there any good game mechanics resources around? I'm trying to find how things work under the hood, so to speak.

 

Casting Speed

Are there any "break points" to hit if it is based on animation frames like in Diablo2? Is there anywhere that shows you the base cast time on spells? Are all casts based on the same speed, meaning your minimum regen time to aim for is going to be the same for all spells and will only vary according to your cast speed?

I noticed with my high elf that when her fireball regen got down to like 0.4s, she couldn't cast anywhere near that quick. From my "fire a few off and count in my head" (spectacularly accurate, I know) method, it seemed that with my current bonus to cast speed, she was taking around 0.8 seconds to cast it. So, I read a couple runes to bring my listed regen time up to 0.7s. Looks to me she's firing them out just as fast, but now with more oomph. Maybe I am totally off the mark here with spells, but I'm guessing I should be trying to keep my regen as close to my cast speed as possible (once I find out what my cast speed is )?

 

Regen times - the big one.

Is there a diminishing return on -regen modifiers?

Is there anything that increases regen times, other than eating runes?

Is there any way to see what the "base" regen time is for a skill, other than stripping off naked with a level 1 skill-less character and scribbling down the regen time after reading 1 rune?

How exactly are they calculated? It's certainly not intuitive.

 

I'll stick with using the elf example. ALL my gear has negative regen on it. I have armor lore (but assume the -penalty on armor regen is useless when all your armor shows negative regen anyway). I've split my sockets between damage and -regen. I have incandescent skin and g.invigoration running. If all those percentages are additive, I have well over -100% regen, yet I still have 0.4seconds regen on level 1 fireball.

Logically, whatever regen time I may have had, reduced by 100% = 0. Obviously that's not it!

 

Then you have to factor in stamina. My stamina tooltip says it improves regen times. Lists average combat art regen time at 728%? umm, 728% of what?

If that 728% is 728 better than "normal" (whatever that may be!) why does socketing a half dozen -6.1% blacksmith arts for a total of about -40% make a noticeable difference in regen times?

 

I'm finding that after I focus my gear sockets and skills on getting my regen times down and only reading a single rune in the combat arts I want to use, my combat art damage is terrible. Often, my standard attack damage is comparable. That's fine for something like Pelting Strikes or Scything Sweep that has a lot of attacks and/or hits a bunch of guys but against a boss? Why bother using Soul Hammer for 500 damage every 4 seconds when I can standard attack for 400 every 1 second-ish? That tiny damage boost seems hardly worthwhile losing the swing while switching mouse button. Am I doing something wrong?

 

Sets - why do they suck so bad? (rhetorical question mostly). It seems that anytime I use a set that appears designed for the skills I've chosen to use, they push the regen times so high they are actually a significant downgrade. So much so that I've taken to using off-sets mostly, or grabbing the 3 piece bonus from a couple of different sets, trying to pick up +all skills, +evade or -enemy evade, or -regen penalty.

eg: My dryad has found a lot of set gear, and does a mix'n'match keeping 3pc daerwain's for the big -enemy avoid bonus, random other stuff. She has a Ravaged Impact with a regen time of about 0.9 seconds and wears just a single item with -0.3sec regen/hit. She's a machine gun, things die pretty much as fast as I can right click them.

Then I put on the (just completed) full Detheya's set. Ravaged Impact damage goes up by about 100 (from 740ish to over 800). Regen time goes over 2 seconds and every socket is -regen. I'd need to put -0.3s/hit items in every jewelery slot, or go back to standard shots.

Am I just too low a level to take advantage of the plus 3 and 4 to the various skills on the set, and at higher levels it'll be easier to absorb?

 

Lastly, still on sets... (sorry), there are the 3 big sets for each character, that have different versions each 15 levels. Then you have the smaller sets that I've found level 20 and level 35 pieces of. I've not yet found any higher level versions of the pieces from these smaller sets. From the screenshots of those sets on the wiki, the pieces all look to be level 20/35/50 and I assume there are no higher level versions. Maybe it is just me, but do they not seem very hard to find and pretty weak to boot?

[Barsby 0]

Actually, I just picked up Plate of the Tomb for my SW. That's a nice piece!

[Rllulium 0]

Heh, not just a little information you are asking for here. I'll do my best.

 

Are there any good game mechanics resources around? I'm trying to find how things work under the hood, so to speak.

Sacredwiki is your best bet here.

 

Casting Speed

Are there any "break points" to hit if it is based on animation frames like in Diablo2? Is there anywhere that shows you the base cast time on spells? Are all casts based on the same speed, meaning your minimum regen time to aim for is going to be the same for all spells and will only vary according to your cast speed?

I noticed with my high elf that when her fireball regen got down to like 0.4s, she couldn't cast anywhere near that quick. From my "fire a few off and count in my head" (spectacularly accurate, I know) method, it seemed that with my current bonus to cast speed, she was taking around 0.8 seconds to cast it. So, I read a couple runes to bring my listed regen time up to 0.7s. Looks to me she's firing them out just as fast, but now with more oomph. Maybe I am totally off the mark here with spells, but I'm guessing I should be trying to keep my regen as close to my cast speed as possible (once I find out what my cast speed is )?

Keeping your regens at or slightly below the casttime of a Combat Art is generally a good idea, yes. Sadly there is nowhere where you can see exactly how long the casttime is, but you seem to have a good way of keeping track of it anyway. As for you first question; no there are no breakpoints, they excisted in D2 because that game utilized sprites, in Sacred 2, the animation just runs faster. I should probably note here that casting speed is capped at 150%.

 

Regen times - the big one.

Is there a diminishing return on -regen modifiers?

Is there anything that increases regen times, other than eating runes?

Is there any way to see what the "base" regen time is for a skill, other than stripping off naked with a level 1 skill-less character and scribbling down the regen time after reading 1 rune?

How exactly are they calculated? It's certainly not intuitive.

 

I'll stick with using the elf example. ALL my gear has negative regen on it. I have armor lore (but assume the -penalty on armor regen is useless when all your armor shows negative regen anyway). I've split my sockets between damage and -regen. I have incandescent skin and g.invigoration running. If all those percentages are additive, I have well over -100% regen, yet I still have 0.4seconds regen on level 1 fireball.

Logically, whatever regen time I may have had, reduced by 100% = 0. Obviously that's not it!

 

Then you have to factor in stamina. My stamina tooltip says it improves regen times. Lists average combat art regen time at 728%? umm, 728% of what?

If that 728% is 728 better than "normal" (whatever that may be!) why does socketing a half dozen -6.1% blacksmith arts for a total of about -40% make a noticeable difference in regen times?

Killer question right there. Let's see if I can get this in the right order...

 

The regeneration of a combat art is not actually based on a timer, it is based around a "regeneration speed", IE, a speed at which your Combat Art regenerates. The faster this regeneration speed is, the faster your Combat Art will regenerate. Thus you can, as you said, have -100% regen time because it will not reduce the regen times directly, it will increase your regenaration speed by 100%. The number displayed when you mouseover your stamina will display your average combat art regeration speed. So that's 728% of the original regen speed you had when you created your character.

That said, I can move on the the other questions in order....

 

There is a diminishing return on -regen from gear. It reduces the effect of any -regen on your gear when you get more of it. So if you for example have -20% and

socket another -6.1% you are not going to get -26.1%, it will be less.

 

Diminishing returns does not exist on -regenmodifiers in general, but there is a reduced effect due to the fact that you are accumulating Regenaration speed and not reduced regen time (even thou most tooltips says otherwise).

 

Regen times can be increased by: Eating a rune, activating a buff, mounting, equiping armor with +%regen and equiping armor with bonuses to combat arts (similar to eating runes).

 

The base regen time for a skill is not displayed anywhere ingame. A number of them appear on the Wiki, but I doubt that there is much use to them. I personally never felt the need to see them when I am not level 1.

 

About Armor Lore: It changes the +/-%regen displayed on gear as you spend more points in the skill, so you may not have all negative regen from gear without it. In any case, it can push your regeneration time from gear from positive to negative values.

 

I'm finding that after I focus my gear sockets and skills on getting my regen times down and only reading a single rune in the combat arts I want to use, my combat art damage is terrible. Often, my standard attack damage is comparable. That's fine for something like Pelting Strikes or Scything Sweep that has a lot of attacks and/or hits a bunch of guys but against a boss? Why bother using Soul Hammer for 500 damage every 4 seconds when I can standard attack for 400 every 1 second-ish? That tiny damage boost seems hardly worthwhile losing the swing while switching mouse button. Am I doing something wrong?

Having you standard attack damage being comparable to Combat Arts that uses your weapon is normal, because their damage are based of your normal swings damage, with a slight boost. The reason to use them is simple; you can strike a boss with a Soul Hammer for 500 and then hit him with normal attacks while it regenerates. You don't have to lose a swing by switching buttons, just hold them both down at the same time. Ultimately, you can have Soul hammers regen time so low that you can spam that and only that and then the choice will be between a normal attack every second or a Combat Art every second for slightly more damage.

 

Sets - why do they suck so bad? (rhetorical question mostly). It seems that anytime I use a set that appears designed for the skills I've chosen to use, they push the regen times so high they are actually a significant downgrade. So much so that I've taken to using off-sets mostly, or grabbing the 3 piece bonus from a couple of different sets, trying to pick up +all skills, +evade or -enemy evade, or -regen penalty.

eg: My dryad has found a lot of set gear, and does a mix'n'match keeping 3pc daerwain's for the big -enemy avoid bonus, random other stuff. She has a Ravaged Impact with a regen time of about 0.9 seconds and wears just a single item with -0.3sec regen/hit. She's a machine gun, things die pretty much as fast as I can right click them.

Then I put on the (just completed) full Detheya's set. Ravaged Impact damage goes up by about 100 (from 740ish to over 800). Regen time goes over 2 seconds and every socket is -regen. I'd need to put -0.3s/hit items in every jewelery slot, or go back to standard shots.

Am I just too low a level to take advantage of the plus 3 and 4 to the various skills on the set, and at higher levels it'll be easier to absorb?

You are right on this one. As you level up and raise your skills, you will be able to use gear with + Combat Arts easier. About the Dryad I should mention that Ravaged Impact, being based of your weapon damage, does not scale very well with bonuses from gear or runes. Had it been a purely spellbased Combat Art, the damage increase may have been worth the increased regeneration time.

 

Lastly, still on sets... (sorry), there are the 3 big sets for each character, that have different versions each 15 levels. Then you have the smaller sets that I've found level 20 and level 35 pieces of. I've not yet found any higher level versions of the pieces from these smaller sets. From the screenshots of those sets on the wiki, the pieces all look to be level 20/35/50 and I assume there are no higher level versions. Maybe it is just me, but do they not seem very hard to find and pretty weak to boot?

All sets are availible across all levels and difficulties to my knowledge. As for how easy they are to find, there isn't any real information on droprates on particular items.

[Barsby 0]

Outstanding response, thank-you for that.

 

I had no idea Armor Lore worked that way, nor did I ever try using both mouse buttons together.

 

Should be more than enough for me to work with

[gogoblender 3,070]

Rllulium, gotta hand it to you. As a shiny new member here, you've taken an inordinate amount of time to carefully explain the regen dynamics..things a lot of us probably just "do" every day but never really put down in writing like the way you just did. I'm going to echo Barsby's words and again say what an outstanding response that was, and yes...I'm already getting used to having your great content and posts up here on the forum.

 

Thank you for presence, and the fantastic read/review.

 

 

gogo