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Casters vs Weapon based builds


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I've played this game online for a while, mostly with SWs. Some people say it is the weakest character, and perhaps they are right. The thing is, casters have really powerful spells, and actually, they have 3 optional skills to increase thier damage, whereas melee and ranged builds have only 2. I know these builds have thier pros and cons. You can recharge faster a weapon based CA with regen per hit mod, but you have to freak around looking for a good weapon and keeping your attack value high in order to inflict damage. Personally, I find magic builds have many more advantages, and they're far mightier than weapon based ones.

 

What do you think about this? Is there anything that could be done (modding) so that weapon based builds could compete against casters?

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Well...casters can be a bit squishy early, but by late game just about any character can be pretty much indestructible.

 

How about bosskilling? Not many true casters are effective at that...I can think of a shard HE...and maybe an int pumping acute mind wielding dryad? Whereas, a melee toon only has to equip some %LL and away you go.

 

Having said that, taking SW's as an example, its not like they are weak, I'm playing one at the moment (my first real SW) and he was in gold by level 30 running through the cursed forest with hardly a scratch (most of the time). Admittedly, its not plat or niob, but the signs are good for now...and what about a blowpipe dryad...noone can get near her for high, fast damage. Dual wielding seraphim/Inquisitor/SW...all put out some nice damage too.

 

Hmm...I don't think that I've formed a particularly coherent argument here, probably because this isnt something I've thought about before...but some of it is relevant.

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And I never ever heard an opinion that SW is weak. But I've heard a lot of people claiming him to be a real tank who can kill all the enemies and don't get a scratch. And his attributes are much higher and growing much faster compared to all the others (he simply has more poins total at level 1).

 

I think it depends on player's own style only. I know that I've always been better with rangers and mages, but now I'm playing a melee build and wonder how it would turn out to be. But usually my playmates just tell me that I can suggest a good build for every style, yet can play only ranged ones. So by looking at me, some can suggest that mages are cooler, but that's not because they are, but because I'm good at playing them. If you're good with SWs - your melee builds would turn out better than the caster ones.

 

And by the way, which builds can be called melee and which casters? There are not so many pure caster builds, and only pure casting character is HE. Most builds are hybrids - because if the character can do something, why not use it.

 

As for bosshunting - both pyro HE with Incendiary Shower and ice HE with Glacial Thorns can do the trick, but all the melee characters can do it too.

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I've played this game online for a while, mostly with SWs. Some people say it is the weakest character, and perhaps they are right. The thing is, casters have really powerful spells, and actually, they have 3 optional skills to increase thier damage, whereas melee and ranged builds have only 2. I know these builds have thier pros and cons. You can recharge faster a weapon based CA with regen per hit mod, but you have to freak around looking for a good weapon and keeping your attack value high in order to inflict damage. Personally, I find magic builds have many more advantages, and they're far mightier than weapon based ones.

 

What do you think about this? Is there anything that could be done (modding) so that weapon based builds could compete against casters?

 

I dunno if there really is a need to do much in the way of modding to make them "more equal". My current Temple Guardian build is primarily melee in nature. I use dedicated blow maybe 99% of the time with the occasional need for the archimedes beam and just to get things rolling, I sometimes use fiery ember or icy evanesence if I need to take out a larger mob (more than say, 3 baddies). I can pretty much 1-shot most standard mobs and 2 - 3 shot champs in Gold at the south end of the swamp region at level 118.

 

I also use a leech suit - my armor has a bunch of +LL runes and such socketed in. I also have a nice Officer's Saber I got in Silver - I think it was somewhere in the human region. 4 sockets can't be beat on that thing. I also have a bargaining suit for shopping that's cobbled together from various bits with +x bargaining or +x All skills or +x General skills.

 

For every day attire, I have him decked out in 3 parts of the Technical modules set and 5 parts of the T-Energy modules - which currently gives him +6 All Skills on both partial sets. I also get a +7 on the Source Warden Focus.

 

For visiting boss monsters, I have a full set of the Combat modules that has 1.5% LL built in, plus a Kal'Durs that gives me 3.4% LL. In addition to that, I also have a bunch of +x LL Niobium runes socketed for maximum carnage. I also throw on the Battle Aura buff for good measure and I have yet to meet a boss critter that didn't drop dead in short order - yet.

 

I also have a couple of RpH items socketed to help make Dedicated Blow mostly spammable. My last visit to the Guardians at the end of the Silver campaign was relatively uneventful. I went in. I kicked their backsides. I flipped the switch.

 

The point is - it might be only slightly less powerful than some of the caster based vids I've seen but by no means are they helpless either. As others have said - it's all in the build and how you manage it.

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I've played this game online for a while, mostly with SWs. Some people say it is the weakest character, and perhaps they are right. The thing is, casters have really powerful spells, and actually, they have 3 optional skills to increase thier damage, whereas melee and ranged builds have only 2. I know these builds have thier pros and cons. You can recharge faster a weapon based CA with regen per hit mod, but you have to freak around looking for a good weapon and keeping your attack value high in order to inflict damage. Personally, I find magic builds have many more advantages, and they're far mightier than weapon based ones.

 

What do you think about this? Is there anything that could be done (modding) so that weapon based builds could compete against casters?

 

I dunno if there really is a need to do much in the way of modding to make them "more equal". My current Temple Guardian build is primarily melee in nature. I use dedicated blow maybe 99% of the time with the occasional need for the archimedes beam and just to get things rolling, I sometimes use fiery ember or icy evanesence if I need to take out a larger mob (more than say, 3 baddies). I can pretty much 1-shot most standard mobs and 2 - 3 shot champs in Gold at the south end of the swamp region at level 118.

 

Well, I know you only play singleplayer, but almost anyone online (as munera does/has) would be playing in niobium at that level, the rest would be in plat so to be in gold one-shotting is more to be expected. Your view on the matter might be a little different if you were in the swamps in plat or niob, then again, it may not, I dont know how strong your TG is and so couldnt comment.

 

But, I do agree with you that I don't think there needs to be anything done to make them more equal. The only thing that I think melee toons really lack is the the ability to just wipe a large group of monsters at once. They are much slower (in general, a ranged dryad would be close, so would a staff exploit dryad/Inquisitor which is essentially Area of Effect melee) to level than a good Area of Effect caster (so just about every caster). Strength wise, I think its pretty even.

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In my opinion, it all boils down to kill speed and xp gain.

 

Weapon based builds are usually tough, but have few skills to allow for mass killing and quick leveling. On the other hand, caster builds do better as quick killers if you can keep them alive long enough - which, fortunately, is not as hard as it seems :) All you need to do is exploit their positive sides - damage mitigation, reflect, block, the works.

 

On the positive side, close combat builds make great boss killers. This is usually a path that leads to quite a bunch of set, unique and legendary items, which some of the caster builds cannot procure as easily. The negative side of boss hunting is that from level 165 on, even with tons of XP per kill, it takes very long time to gain a level, while questing and mass killing seems to do the job easier.

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Well, I know you only play singleplayer, but almost anyone online (as munera does/has) would be playing in niobium at that level, the rest would be in plat so to be in gold one-shotting is more to be expected. Your view on the matter might be a little different if you were in the swamps in plat or niob, then again, it may not, I dont know how strong your TG is and so couldnt comment.

 

But, I do agree with you that I don't think there needs to be anything done to make them more equal. The only thing that I think melee toons really lack is the the ability to just wipe a large group of monsters at once. They are much slower (in general, a ranged dryad would be close, so would a staff exploit dryad/Inquisitor which is essentially Area of Effect melee) to level than a good Area of Effect caster (so just about every caster). Strength wise, I think its pretty even.

 

Wow.. Level 118 and in Niobium..? Yeah.. I don't know how well my TG would hold up in those circumstances. Given I'm 2 entire difficulty levels below that, I'd probably be in need of fresh undies.

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Bargaining, tactic lore, armour lore, toughness, astute supremacy focus, concentration, astute supremacy focus, alchemy, combat dicipline, nefarious netherworld focus --- first looks stupid....

 

Melee elves, kungfu dryads, lifeleech-polearm dragonmage, .... most of my characters started when someone told me that a certain character idea can't be played.

 

Probably the most advanced character in our family is the Schockwellenreiter (name is from the book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider) played by my daughters. An inquisitor who bundles big groups of enemies with Clustering_Maelstrom and uses Ruthless_Mutilation to finish. Astute Supremacy got no lore in the build so casting speed had to be in equipment. Weapon Combat Arts use casting speed too - so one reason for a weapon skill vanished. After understanding how attack chances are calculated no weapon skill was taken in this build, giving room for toughness and adding a high damage mitigation approach.

Add some deathblow, the enemies are damaged from CM already, use a long range lifeleech polearm and extend the range by riding your spider, you can kill dozen of enemies with a single melee blow, without abusing a bug.

It is surely no character for starters. Your equipment slots are small puzzle pieces which, when put together, give the whole picture --- and the 10 skills in first line make a sense: leveling mainly outdoors so a lot of souls. When played indoors alchemy trophies cover the time till souls are available. You need bargaining to buy the puzzle pieces, combat discipline boosts damage in all 3 aspects, concentration allows 3 buffs later this and toughness is your way to reach high damage mitigation, alchemy gives also mentor potions lasting for minutes, ...

 

But this is not a character for newbies and advanced players should have the general character idea by reading the above text already.

 

WARNING: this is an ICE AND BLOOD character. Deathblow, casting speed, life leech may behave different on consoles.

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With the consoles, the casters definitely rise head and shoulders above the weapon-combat builds. As Munera said, with casters having Ancient Magic, the "aspect" Lore and full-value damage increase from Combat Discipline...

and inflated +Skills values...

and deathblow working on "spells"...

well lets just say the weapon-users got the short end of the stick.

 

But, lest we forget... weapon-combat is very much easier for newer players to pick up and run. Need to increase damage? Get a new weapon! No need to mess around balancing regen times, etc... well... until the higher difficulties at the least (when this process gets very much easier).

 

Casters, in the traditional RPG sense (weak to start, extremely powerful in later levels) is pretty well represented in Sacred 2... until you start realizing that it is easier to survive (and to kill stuff) in the earlier difficulties than the later ones... does push the overall power-level of the mage above the fighter/ranger.

 

With that said, however, there is one caveat for the consoles: You have to beat the Guardians (well, ALL the questline bosses...) to advance the difficulty. Unfortunately, most caster-builds can do this without hybridizing or warping their build too much.

 

Which brings me to my final point: The hybrids are way too powerful. I don't have any good suggestions/ideas for balancing that fact... maybe disable RpH for non-weapon Combat Arts? Add cooldowns to spells? It's hard to nerf a hybrid without affecting either side too much...

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Is it really possible to balance the things like RpH and cooldowns for consoles? And on PC many spells were weakened in patches, the All Skills items give two times less amount of points and so on.

 

And is it really bad that you can play as pure caster without hybridizing? Actually, that's one of the reasons why I love Sacred - you can play as a mage! Not a spell-using warrior, not an elemental-damage ranger, but a true mage who fights with spells. For me, it's a real advantage of this game, and if the casters would be forced to use some weapons to survive, I'd be really sad.

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And is it really bad that you can play as pure caster without hybridizing? Actually, that's one of the reasons why I love Sacred - you can play as a mage! Not a spell-using warrior, not an elemental-damage ranger, but a true mage who fights with spells. For me, it's a real advantage of this game, and if the casters would be forced to use some weapons to survive, I'd be really sad.

 

I think this game is such that any type of build can be overpowered or at least strong and survivable. Hybrid, melee, caster, even a HE can become a competent melee toon with magic coup and the right skills.

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I make my builds quite plain.

Seraphim and Shadow warrior, DW and focus of at least one aspect, and use most combat arts, some more than others.

Dryad ranged. I took armour to decrease regen times.

High elf and dragon mage. staff wielding, but focus for all 3 aspects and lore for the ones that I really want to power up.

Temple gaurdian, Hafted weapons. and focus for lost fusion and source warden and lore for lost fusion.

Hybrid builds I suppose?

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I can't deny that LL% is quite useful, but it doesn't appear on all weapons, so some builds won't get that much benefit from it. However, HE and DM have the ultimate crowd control CA which can be focused on a single target and being extremely powerful. It's also true that melee and ranged builds can recharge their CA more easily, but casters can considerable reduce the regen time while keeping their insane damage. Personally I find there's something that's not fair there, and we also have to consider that melee toons need a good weapon all the time, good attack value and that Combat Discipline isn't that effective for these builds.

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Munera,

 

I wasn't so happy with shadow warriors until I started using skeletal fortifications using rph to raise the CA level. I do the FR with dual wield is pretty insane, almost Area of Effect. Only problem is no %LL with dual wield as Kal Durs too rare.

 

Inquisitors can be awesome melee with ruthless mutilation. Particularly on a spider you can get so many guys in contact with you and then hit them all. With rph you can have a high CA level and still repeatedly hit guys over and over.

 

Dryad has darting assault.

 

Temple Guardians have spikes.

 

seraphim Pelting is about like Frenzied. A good tank like a SW.

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Ohhh right! So then the answer to my question has nothing to do with modding. If a melee or ranged build wants to compete against a caster, it has to become a caster itself. Mmmm that makes sense to me. I'll try to hybridize my SW a bit. Thx claudius! :)

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Munera,

 

I wasn't so happy with shadow warriors until I started using skeletal fortifications using rph to raise the CA level. I do the FR with dual wield is pretty insane, almost Area of Effect. Only problem is no %LL with dual wield as Kal Durs too rare.

 

 

Kal'Durs doesn't have to be rare... In fact, you can shortly download a chest full of them at various levels right from DarkMatters' new download section!

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This thread stimulated me to build a dual wield frenzied rampage build.. Is that any good?

 

DW frenzied SW is very fun to play. Kal'Durs may be hard to come by, but this build is capable of killing anything, bosses would be slower without them, but for everything else its all good :)

 

Munera,

 

I wasn't so happy with shadow warriors until I started using skeletal fortifications using rph to raise the CA level. I do the FR with dual wield is pretty insane, almost Area of Effect. Only problem is no %LL with dual wield as Kal Durs too rare.

 

 

Kal'Durs doesn't have to be rare... In fact, you can shortly download a chest full of them at various levels right from DarkMatters' new download section!

 

Kal'Durs should be rare, it has to be one of the best/strongest/most overpowered items in the game. If it was more common it would simply be to imbalanced.

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This thread stimulated me to build a dual wield frenzied rampage build.. Is that any good?

 

DW frenzied SW is very fun to play. Kal'Durs may be hard to come by, but this build is capable of killing anything, bosses would be slower without them, but for everything else its all good :)

 

Munera,

 

I wasn't so happy with shadow warriors until I started using skeletal fortifications using rph to raise the CA level. I do the FR with dual wield is pretty insane, almost Area of Effect. Only problem is no %LL with dual wield as Kal Durs too rare.

 

 

Kal'Durs doesn't have to be rare... In fact, you can shortly download a chest full of them at various levels right from DarkMatters' new download section!

 

Kal'Durs should be rare, it has to be one of the best/strongest/most overpowered items in the game. If it was more common it would simply be to imbalanced.

 

Well.. You don't HAVE to download it, nor any of the other things I'm putting up. I'm just passing on the goodies I've come across.

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This thread stimulated me to build a dual wield frenzied rampage build.. Is that any good?

 

DW frenzied SW is very fun to play. Kal'Durs may be hard to come by, but this build is capable of killing anything, bosses would be slower without them, but for everything else its all good :)

 

Munera,

 

I wasn't so happy with shadow warriors until I started using skeletal fortifications using rph to raise the CA level. I do the FR with dual wield is pretty insane, almost Area of Effect. Only problem is no %LL with dual wield as Kal Durs too rare.

 

 

Kal'Durs doesn't have to be rare... In fact, you can shortly download a chest full of them at various levels right from DarkMatters' new download section!

 

Kal'Durs should be rare, it has to be one of the best/strongest/most overpowered items in the game. If it was more common it would simply be to imbalanced.

 

Well.. You don't HAVE to download it, nor any of the other things I'm putting up. I'm just passing on the goodies I've come across.

 

And I wont, mainly seeing as I play on closed servers, but wouldnt anyway.

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  • 2 months later...

I may not have the experience or the knowledge of other players when it comes to higher level characters but I don't feel that the Shadow Warrior is a weaker character by any means when it comes to dealing out damage.

I play on the ps3 so I don't have the luxury of being able to rely on LL% when it comes to boss killing so I had came up with my own way of dealing with them quickly. I prefered to use 2 handed swords with the SW, ideally using ones that have LL% on them for the healing aspect of it. My strategy was pretty simple, pump points into both sword and tactics right from the start and keep them maxed. Once I'd hit level 75 and mastery boss killing was fast effective and easy because of a straight forward strategy, run up to them and hit them with SS 5-6 times, the stored damage makes each attack deal out and store even more damage then the one before it so your damage after 5-6 hits is easily double what it was on the first hit. Then hit with FR and watch as the bosses health drops like a stone from the damage boost.

I guess I should add that this was all relying on having a high chance for dbl hits, with SS having between 35-40% chance from sword mastery w/bonuses and FR having around 75-80% from its own mods and sword mastery dbl hit bonus and this was with a SW in high 70's on plat.

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Killing Spree increases your damage? Perhaps it's the damage of enraged players bonus. I agree with you, SW is a good bosskiller and he doesnt need any LL% to take them down. However there are some multi hit / Area of Effect spells that can be focused on a single target an deal an insane amount of damage, and I'm sure that no weapon based build will beat that. Anyway, I've always enjoyed killing bosses hit by hit :D

Edited by Munera
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Killing Spree increases your damage? Perhaps it's the damage of enraged players bonus. I agree with you, SW is a good bosskiller and he doesnt need any LL% to take them down. However there are some multi hit / Area of Effect spells that can be focused on a single target an deal an insane amount of damage, and I'm sure that no weapon based build will beat that. Anyway, I've always enjoyed killing bosses hit by hit :D

 

In any game I've ever played, when a caster/magician/necromantic/summoner fully gets his game on, the melee guys can pull out a lawn chair and watch.

But I love melee guys. I can't help it. :paladin:

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