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My experience as a Seraphim, things I wish I'd known


deusmurr

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strength giving low damage is common myth
damage bonus of it not seems much, but it actually added to base weapon damage before other damage bonuses(at least in original Sacred 2 with Ice&Blood addon)
if your weapon base is 600 and strenght give you another 500, that is 80% bonus to your damage
I tested that with characters I created in character  editor

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8 hours ago, deusmurr said:

I can't edit my post,

Thats because of rules to fight back bots and which usually is amended after four or five posts I think...but you can now, I've changed you to a Member status which allows you to edit...can you check? If not, I can check your status again.

Thanks for this amazing, great read on your try out with the Seraphim, my absolute top class of the game when I first started playing... Your detail is incredible.

Welcome to DarkMatters!

:)

 

gogo

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2 hours ago, killshoot said:

strength giving low damage is common myth
damage bonus of it not seems much, but it actually added to base weapon damage before other damage bonuses(at least in original Sacred 2 with Ice&Blood addon)
if your weapon base is 600 and strenght give you another 500, that is 80% bonus to your damage
I tested that with characters I created in character  editor

Thanks for your helpful first post, a perfect fit for one of the friendliest communities on the planet...happy you have made your way over to us Killshoot, welcome to DarkMatters!

:)

 

gogo

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Says I can edit my post now, but the second post's already done, so meh...  And maybe strength does have a decent bonus, I don't know.  I never actually tested it, I just checked the character sheet before and after moving all my strength to vitality and the difference in damage stated was close to the +bonus strength said it was giving.  I assumed that since my damage numbers appearing on monsters were pretty close to the ones listed on the sheet that the sheet was probably correct and strength wasn't doing much, but character sheets are so notoriously bad that it's actually a meme to abbreviate the problem as LCS (Lying Character Sheet), so...  Maybe I'll make another seraphim later and try it, and amend the post if I'm definitely wrong.

I assume if I try it with a level 1 pigsticker and minimum strength and then try it again with the same pigsticker and 2,000 strength, I'll be able to see if the sheet lies.  Then I could try it again with a full set of % damage gear and again with %damage and strength.  I should see a few hundred damage jump in between the latter tests if it doesn't scale, at least a thousand (or two) if it does. 

I don't actually have a character to test with at the moment and it's almost bedtime, shophopping a bit for the elf's buffset until I'm too fuzzy to keep going.  On that note, I have yet to actually read a Glacial Thorns rune or use any other damage spell, being able to spam it at animation speed is great.

 

Edit: May also have to try it with a full set of ready-to-smash-things gear if I get around to being that involved in it, I don't have my original seraphim around anymore to play with.  Armor can be wonky with its calculation and more data points is better.

Edited by deusmurr
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Oh that's right, I have 1.5 challenge mods installed right now, so the basic level of enemies even in Bronze is 11, so I'll start at 10 just to be able to kill things.  I actually tried to start Niobium on the Elf at 80 like my old Seraphim, and that stupid jerk student at the start 2-shot me and I had to wait until level 100 and even had to Cascade ON THE FIRST ENEMY just to survive, it was terrible and awesome.  Anyway...

 

43 strength (stated +12 damage) with no skills and a 40-50 damage saber (all physical, only an open wounds mod I can't use because I have no skills to unlock it, fast weapon with 2 sockets that definitely gets bonus from strength if not as much as a 2h), the Character Sheet says I should be doing 57-72 damage.  Actual damage dealt, tested over 20-25 enemies (at 3-4 swings per kill) was 42-75.  All of the damage in the 70's was against inquisitors, maybe they're just pansies or have less armor, whichever you prefer.  Didn't think to look at whether the 75's were crits or not either, was paying too much attention to not dying, had to use a few potions in there.

Will deck myself out in a full set of garbage with as many sockets as possible and no useful bonuses, sprint to the Ancaria Airlines quest to get access to the Isle of Many Roads blacksmith, retest with more strength and the same gear.

 

With 2,046 strength, stated +634 damage, slightly bigger saber (for more sockets, will matter on the scaling test) at 42-52 damage, Character Sheet states expected damage at 615-762.  I don't know how my minimum damage ends up lower than my base minimum and +damage or how the top end is higher, maybe the +damage is just a guide and there's a spread in there somewhere.  Does the character sheet's damage expectation include possible crits, perhaps guess about armor?  Not testing that thoroughly, this isn't the days of Elitist Jerks and tens of thousands of data points anymore, I had enough of that back in the day.  Over about half a level worth of kills, I saw hits as low as 520 (on earth elementals, higher armor meant consistently lower damage) and as high as 897 without crits (or any that I saw, anyway, had so many hits in the 850 range they couldn't have all been crits with no real way to crit on this character).  Vast majority of hits were between 720 and 840 or so, still way over the listed expected damage.  Moving on...

 

Ancaria Airlines... using the character editor to *remove* all that strength... decking out the character with sockets and whetting everything (including my pants, just for giggles)... couldn't find armguards, boots, legguards, or gloves with 2 sockets, maybe they don't spawn at low levels, maybe they don't spawn at all except on unique gear, I never really noticed.  Either way, 1 silver socket each on those four items, 2 silver sockets each on everything else.  Ooops, realized my bracers got switched from the crappiest ones to something with 16% damage somehow, that'll account for a *little* of the discrepancy, but not nearly all of it... so I had 16% damage for some of the testing.  I also forgot that whetting is only 6% someodd damage per socket on bronze, so most of the % is going to come from tactics lore...  Come to think of it, Battle Stance's damage bonus is a scaling percentage too, I'll have to add that in there with high enough levels to make it matter.

 

Second set of tests, still in bronze for the sake of simplicity and not having to undo and redo my mods, same 42-52 damage weapon, this time testing at level 200, fully 6% whetted gear for 146% damage bonus, 250 Tactics Lore (413% damage), 250 Exalted Focus (for Battle Stance level), 200 BS runes read, Aggression mod taken (5% damage + 1% per BS level, plus the base 12%), total Battle Stance level 136 (should be 153% damage), 459 strength (the minimum at level 200) with a stated damage bonus of +146.  That should be 42-52 damage, plus 712%, +146 to be tested (and after, with 2K extra points in strength).

Expected damage from Character Sheet is 586-725.  Actual damage (with crits taken out now that Tactics Lore is giving me 20% interference in that area) was between 4193 and 4827 over 50 good slaps or so, I cleared from the monastery start to the pirate cave, as usual.  Saw some crits at around 5500, they don't do a whole lot more damage on this build type because you already hit so hard you overcome armor.  Adding a boatload of strength, please wait...

 

2,486 strength total for +771 stated damage, weapon listed at 1,144-1,416.  With over 700% damage, I would expect my actual hits to be at least double what they were, if strength scales with damage.  I kept seeing damage anywhere from 17,500 to just short of 22,000, so however strength scales and the numbers actually work, the end result is it works very well.  Perhaps I didn't notice so much because I made my swap from Strength to Vitality fairly early on and it wasn't such a huge difference (and I *still* 2-3-shot just about everything without any), but I was definitely wrong.  Just for comparison though, that many points put in vitality instead gives you about 46K more HP and something like 1,500 more regen per second, so if you're going for "unkillable"...

 

Also, I fixed 5) and 6) in the OP, to be less wrong and point to the posts as to why.  Hopefully I didn't misinform too many people before it got fixed

Edited by deusmurr
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IMO you need to ditch Moony's mod, that thing is made for a super old version of CM Patch, so it's probably overwriting some scripts with outdated versions.

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A question comes to mind, and it's actually relevant to My Experience as a Seraphim, or rather my second experience (the all-willpower, no-mitigation, no-leech, ward-and-light-sabers 'tard I'm playing with, may the Forces be with you).

Warding Energy's basic absorption is 50%, yet mine is stated at 70%.  It doesn't seem to come from Revered Tech Focus or any of my skills or stats that I know of, it's not coming from gear (I know the stat can come up on items), the only thing I can think of (it being *exactly* 20%, or 10+10%) is that maybe it's a hidden bonus from I just tested and it isn't from any of the Art Mods, it doesn't matter whether the skill is level 40 or 101.2, I... I don't know.  Even equipping an extra 22.5% +absorption doesn't change the stated 70% total under the almighty lying Sigma, so it can't be from gear (even though I can clearly see the difference in how much damage I take, so the stat works even if it isn't stated properly).  Where is that extra 20% coming from, and can I do it more?  Ideally my absorption would be around 90% or so, and if I can do it without wasting slots that'd be wonderful.  My current health and shield is at 15k/138k, so taking a much smaller amount of damage would help a lot when fighting stuff that can slap me in the mouth for 20k (I'd be surviving a dozen hits instead of four).

EDIT: This question still stands if anyone sees it, where is that 20% absorption coming from?  Was it part of the Community Patch or something?  It's basically irrelevant now because my character has gotten so OP I'm going to throw in some self-imposed challenges to the run.  At level 120 I have 16K health and 680K shield and it's... just... stupid.  I can facetank dozens of magic-casting enemies and a boss (hitting me for 15K) for quite a while without even flinching.

Edited by deusmurr
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Looking at above, I did some playing around, and turning off Battle Stance's CCReflect didn't seem to make any difference, and I realized why when I saw that enemies only had a 2% chance to hit me.  The kittymount's defense bonus, Battle Stance's (enormous, was over 1,000%) defense bonus plus evasion bonus, other gear's evasion, +Skills boosting Combat Reflexes, etc... no wonder nothing was hitting me at all.  Just another example of how one can "accidentally get unkillable".  Even wearing a Tabula Rasa Megalcarwen's set ("blank slate", nothing in the sockets at all) and getting off the kitty and such, most things' chance to hit me was around 24%.  I suppose that means CCRef is mostly just an extra layer of protection (a very potent one with some builds), though an unnecessary one.  Going back to filling Bronze sockets with crit and -regentime, and filling the rest with off-class runes for Leech on Hit, because it's one of the weakest setups I can think of that might be amusing for a while.

Edit: After fixing a few things to go rune hunting (and looking for a couple Khandar's Slicers, just to go with the Leech on Hit theme) and with this intentionally crappy setup and the Balance.txt tweaks, bosses are SCARY (now that they can actually hit me).  With as long as the health bar takes to update and as slow as potions work and such, getting repeatedly hit for a third to half my health (anywhere from 18 to 25K kept popping up, usually alongside a big red "you about to die, son" flashiness) kept me wondering if I was going to win once that second boss joined in.  This is what I wanted, challenge!  Also, spitting spiders are rather nasty in huge packs.

I decided that if I'm going to do something for giggles, I might as well overdo it and +10 Life Leech on Hit per socket wasn't enough.  I hopped on the elfy with mad +Skills and did some shopping, found tons of nice stuff (%Damage and Flat Physical ring, Deathblow and %Crit rings, Leech and Dual Wield, Deathblow and 60% ice damage, Damage and +9 All Skills, etc).  I shopped for a couple hours and only ended up socketing the Deathblow and Leech things, because I wanted to keep things civil.  I ended up with 85% crit (which is a minor bonus, several DB rings had crit on them), 87% Deathblow (which is massive), and 3,300 life stolen per hit (to be determined, don't think it'll heal me through an angry boss very well).  That set sword thingy may be better than Khandar's Slicer for this, I'd have to find one at high level to know for sure... Holy Wrath, that's the name.  Yet another item I've found tons of and thrown out that I eventually want to play with.  EDIT: Nope, can't leech through a boss wailing on me for 25K a hit (half my health).  Halving enemy damage (to still about triple what Niobium usually is), I can barely beat these about half the time... Life Leech on Hit just isn't enough damage or healing for when the dookie hits the industrial fan.  Would probably work well if I didn't have enemy damage multiplied so high though.

Do a lot of bosses have the Enraged buff?  Now that my damage output and defense are low enough to actually see it, I swear these Bloodclaws are doing more and more damage the lower their health gets, to the point that even after halving their damage (so the fights start with them hitting for 5k or so) they still end up nearly, or actually, twoshotting me at the end.  Half of these fights I'm not winning because Divine Protection is as unresponsive as the rest of the controls can be.  The bosses are hilariously easy to beat on two conditions, one of them well-known:

1) I swap out a ring and amulet for the Tooth and Nail set bonus of Leech %, the item level doesn't matter.  Now I'm stealing 60K life per swat and I'm basically unkillable, particularly dual wielding dexterity weapons (which gives the fastest swing speed).  Big Bad Bosses just fall over like a regular champion.

2) For some reason, the boss takes a liking to my buddy Pennsakk, and tries to kill him, and only him.  He's immune to damage and fights, keeping the thing's attention while I stab its back into oblivion.  Someone may want to keep him around for doing just that in some games, so I mention that it happens.  Maybe someone could cheese a boss to death with it if they had to.

 

Speaking of cheesing, getting pretty bored.  I threw on a full set of 12.5% Leech and threw a Gruma's Talisman or two into select sockets (and actually grabbed Toughness just because it's like 31% at high levels).  Just to be a pain in my rear, I *finally* found a Kira's Wall after I'm never using a shield again... bleh.  I've just been blowing through everything as fast as I can, don't really even care about quests anymore (though I have 409 complete at this point, so I made it most of the way).  I need a new job like Giles the librarian, just luridly staring at the Seraphim all day.  He's right though, Seraphim do have great tittles (they're particularly fond of large tittles over their "I"s) and most of them do have great firm asse- I mean they have a FIRM reputation as great war ASSETS, that's it.  Dragon and Carnach weren't anything special as far as I saw.

 

There were skeleton mages in the swamp using some sort of Life Leech Spell (and it had no initial tracer, only the return trace of Life Leech, so I assume it bypasses evasion or sidestepping it and simply "you take this much damage, too bad, deal with it").  I don't know whether the damage dealt was a little over 8K or around 16-17%, but it wasn't very dangerous after switching from an all-shield build.  If it's a flat 8K damage, those would be terrifying as a no-life build... if it's percentage, then it's just as inconsequential unless you're allowing yourself to be chased by 10 of them at once.  Oh, I also have spell damage turned up to 27,850%, maybe that's some of it, will have to test.  No, with the vanilla damage setting and being mounted the damage actually went UP (health percent gained on mounting), so it's definitely percentage-based.  I kept reading "oh but wait until you get to the swamp, theeeee swaaaaaammmppp", but there wasn't really anything here except a bunch of dead dudes too slow to catch me and a bunch of dumb critters that don't (drop tables, *can't*) drop anything but potions.  The Miasma was more of a waiting game than anything else... with all the Arts in my big combo specced for Area of Effect stuns and damage, I just aoesploded everywhere whenever the Miasma thingies spawned adds, and then stood in the lightning downing a potion once in a while waiting for more stuff to whack, repeat until dead (which takes FOREVER, good thing I carry three stacks of potions for no particular reason).  I tried and I certainly have the footspeed to just run circles around them, but was too lazy to do so... why go through all that effort when the other option is just... like... not, yeah, let's not do that.

Edited by deusmurr
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  • 1 month later...

Interesting series. I've been curious about some of this and had the feeling that stacking certain things was just OP, and turns out I was right. Since I use Lightsabers mainly, I stack Willpower using assigned stat points vs the other stats, and in my gear I put as much +Vit/Stam/Life Leech/Enemy Evade/Mitigation and Shielding as I can. I took Warding Energy and Concentration and run my two Warding buffs (BeeEffGee is garbage in Sacred 2 compared to Sacred 1, as is Cleansing Brilliance), along with Dashing Alacrity. Manually attacking everything, bosses drop in a very few hits, I think the Golem took the most hits, everything else dies in one or two (especially Goblins, they are one-hitters). I use the Revelations of the Seraphim set because two pieces (instead of just the wings in the Ein set) have mitigation + the full set gives Leech Life % (and it looks damned good, the most important part).

My alternate weapon set is the Remnants of Drizzt set, (I have the full set of that too) and it's hilarious how fast you swing those at max attack speed. In fact the reason I have that set is that nice spider quest in Ulli's Potato Field, killing the champ spiders dropped both Icingdeath and Twinkle.

I'm only level 98 in Gold currently, and am sitting on 20,783 hp (+Vit/HP jewelry in gold slots, giving me around 730 Vitality total from gear + 8k bonus HP), and 83.6k energy in my shield. How survivable am I? I let my character sit in front of Shelob while I took ten minutes to flip laundry and my shield wasn't even gone, let alone my health.

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