Your gripes with CoC II

[zagzig]

Feel like a system that means pretty much all debuffs wear off before you can take advantage of them could use some re-thinking.

On the other hand, being able to Shell Cracker a boss and then have your full party take swings on them for two full rounds would be so powerful something would need to be reversed in the other direction. And that would probably be enemies getting buffs like Blessing, which for them could now last for three full attacks. And by that time the cooldown would have gone, so they could put up Blessing again. And then if they need to nerf that and power up other things and is it really worth it at this point?

I would say the system at present encourages you to collaborate with your party. If you can't set up a Grease for yourself, you can still set up Grease for Pyro Brienne or Agni. If you can't debuff + Twist The Knife yourself, have a teammate debuff for you. It's a party-based game, use the party.

 

[Akuma11]

Enemy powers recharging per action instead of round is entirely by design to compensate for the fact that enemies who get multiple actions per turn tend to be outnumbered three to one. This applies to enemies recovering from debuffs as well.

Well I can only speak for myself playing on regular difficulty but it really overcompensates and whisper is a ridiculous spike in difficulty for his dungeon.

 

[WolframL]

If you're having trouble with Whisper, you're either failing to notice that he has a crippling weakness that you can take advantage of, you're playing a build that's too dependent on Powers with the Weapon and/or Spell tags that you don't have any options when you're hit with his debuffs (note that a Remedy will clear those up), or some combination of both.

 

[A1teros]

Wait he has a blatant weakness? Only thing I noticed was you can cheese him by looking at the turn order and seeing who goes twice, I guess that counts but it's not on the same level as something like using fire to daze Lucina, its more metagaming. I guess carrying remedies around makes sense, although now I'm wondering why those cure you dropping your weapon, good to know though.

 

[CitrusWolf]

Wait he has a blatant weakness? Only thing I noticed was you can cheese him by looking at the turn order and seeing who goes twice. I guess carrying remedies around makes sense, although now I'm wondering why those cure you dropping your weapon.

that's the weakness

 

[WolframL]

Spying on the turn order is an effective trick but not what I meant. Whisper is insanely weak to Tease attacks

 

[CitrusWolf]

Spying on the turn order is an effective trick but not what I meant. Whisper is insanely weak to Tease attacks

my bad, I wouldn't know, I always choose violence

 

[Ireyon]

my bad, I wouldn't know, I always choose violence

Violence is not always the answer.

Sometimes it is the question. In that case the answer is yes.

 

[Akuma11]

If you're having trouble with Whisper, you're either failing to notice that he has a crippling weakness that you can take advantage of, you're playing a build that's too dependent on Powers with the Weapon and/or Spell tags that you don't have any options when you're hit with his debuffs (note that a Remedy will clear those up), or some combination of both.

Well when 95% of the game is generally fine with that loadout (including the abyssal depths) it still doesn't go against my point being an absurd spike in difficulty and a bit of overcompensation.

 

[Shrike675]

To be fair whisper copies another strategy that you've definitely seen at least once; kura uses the same strat, albeit she's much easier since she doesn't disarm you at every opportunity.

 

[A1teros]

It's true you could find that out by just using sense, but Whisper's damage is pretty high, if he focus fires you you might just die turn one before you can even make use of that sense info. Although post combat rework, I think we have a bit more hp so that might not be the case anymore.

 

[CitrusWolf]

I mean, if you are fully doing "my name is Iñigo Montoya, you made my soul something multiple beings want, prepare to die." you will not ever even use sense

 

[WolframL]

Well when 95% of the game is generally fine with that loadout (including the abyssal depths) it still doesn't go against my point being an absurd spike in difficulty and a bit of overcompensation.

Yes, and you ran into the edge case where your preferred setup apparently doesn't work as well as it normally does. It happens, just the same as characters who play Tease-centric builds have to deal with when they run into the limited number of encounters that can completely no-sell their attacks. It happens, deal with it.

 

[zagzig]

RIP my charmers every time they run into Tollus and Leold

 

[Hanzo]

It'd be nice if Evasion was listed on the right column of the stats screen, alongside the other attack evasion stats. It's also infortunate that, for example, Physical Resist and Crushing Resist share the word "Resist", but one is an evasion stat while the other is a damage mitigation stat.

 

[Akuma11]

Yes, and you ran into the edge case where your preferred setup apparently doesn't work as well as it normally does. It happens, just the same as characters who play Tease-centric builds have to deal with when they run into the limited number of encounters that can completely no-sell their attacks. It happens, deal with it.

hey if you think being locked out of 2/3 general playstyles and giving them out of place high difficulty in a mandatory fight midway into a dungeon is a great idea then I don't know what to tell you. agree to disagree I suppose.

 

[arch99]

hey if you think being locked out of 2/3 general playstyles and giving them out of place high difficulty in a mandatory fight midway into a dungeon is a great idea then I don't know what to tell you. agree to disagree I suppose.

I play an entirely physical loadout and have never lost to Whisper. It's a hard fight, but with a competent build most characters should be able to beat him. It's not that every build that doesn't do tease damage loses to him, its that a very small subset of pure physical builds loses to him most of the time. Very different problem.

 

[flying_moustache]

I have also been frustrated with the combat system, but I have found my peace.

I play a lust/tease focused "non-lethal build" for my own headcanon and have been frustrated many times with bossfights in the past. Whenever I would speak up about it, the answer seemed to be a polite "git gud".

Some weeks ago, I finally played the Khorminos quests and got curbstomped in that smuggler fight against

Spoiler

multiple waves of imps and that female demon.

After multiple attempts, I just took the loss and let Kas save my champion's ass.
(Since I was romancing Kas I got a nice scene with her, that also kinda took the edge off my frustration, admittedly.)

Maybe it wasn't supposed to be winnable, I thought to myself.

In the second part of the quest I won easily aginst

Spoiler

the demon pair.

"Hey, maybe this isn't so ba-"

Spoiler

Hard cut to the faceless blade appearing behind my party.

The fight starts with my champion at half health, Calise and two corpses on the floor, which were previously my party members.

That faceless boss overpowered half my team before I could even see the combat screen. I won that fight purely because Calise is broken beyond belief. While my champion just healed herself, Calise did the actual healing, all the damage to the faceless, tied my shoelaces, picked up my dead party members and carried everyone out of that quest. How was that balanced?

I don't know what it is.

Am I still incompetent in RPG combat systems after years of video gaming? Should I do all the quests I am still missing out on to get powerful unique equipment and min max optimal stats? Should I follow guides on each individual bossfight? Should I read what the META builds are and only stick to those?

I know what I did, though.

I slammed the difficulty to "Story" and I don't regret a thing. Haven't enjoyed the game as much since the early days after the first public releases.

It's a good idea to remind oneself every now and then, that you play the game for your personal enjoyment. You don't get a grade on it. If you don't enjoy a part of it, you can try to leave it aside. Like the combat.

It's like a buffet. You don't need to eat everything.

 

[A1teros]

I play an entirely physical loadout and have never lost to Whisper. It's a hard fight, but with a competent build most characters should be able to beat him. It's not that every build that doesn't do tease damage loses to him, its that a very small subset of pure physical builds loses to him most of the time. Very different problem.

That's true, it's not like he's impossible to beat even with a squishier build. I run agility willpower strength and back when I used to insist on having companions on auto, I just reset until I could kill one of the enemies. Once one of them is dead the remainders aren't so scary, the danger is getting focus fired or disarmed+silenced, and remedies can fix the latter as I've learned (I still don't know how a remedy cures you dropping your weapon, but RPG logic is just like that sometimes, I understand). I imagine someone who actually built toughness could more easily survive the first few turns, and if you have companion control it's probably no big deal even without turn peeking. Sometimes you take an L once in a while and reset, it's the nature of games.

 

[arch99]

That's true, it's not like he's impossible to beat even with a squishier build. I run agility willpower strength and back when I used to insist on having companions on auto, I just reset until I could kill one of the enemies. Once one of them is dead the remainders aren't so scary, the danger is getting focus fired or disarmed+silenced, and remedies can fix the latter as I've learned (I still don't know how a remedy cures you dropping your weapon, but RPG logic is just like that sometimes, I understand). I imagine someone who actually built toughness could more easily survive the first few turns, and if you have companion control it's probably no big deal even without turn peeking. Sometimes you take an L once in a while and reset, it's the nature of games.

I have a low-toughness max-leadership build with a fairly even mix of all the defensive stats, focused on keeping my companions max buffed and drawing maximum aggro via use of vanguard and shielded stance, so I can approach every fight with the exact same pattern of moves, and Whisper goes down just as easy as almost any other - the only tough ones are if I get unlucky about initiative order and get like triple crit before cait can heal me, so I go down before healing up. I play with companions on auto, standard difficulty. Here's the full build.


It works great - with the amount of leadership I have, Cait and Ryn become extremely powerful, and meanwhile I'm just there to absorb hits and cast blessing. This build was okay before the change to remove resolve, but it really shines after that, because all damage gets normalized into hp, meaning that you don't have to invest super super hard into focus because resolve is hard to recover, and can instead just heal your damage from tease the same way you heal your damage from being smacked. It's great. I don't think I've ever failed with Whisper, not even close. The only hard fights are ones that have massive self-healing or that have a time limit, like the slime in that quest for watercatslimegirl, because the dps isn't amazing, but even then, between a 20 presence/80 leadership flame dancer and an 80 leadership boosted ryn, you do pretty fucking good damage.

 

[A1teros]

Yeah more defensive builds can totally handle this. I had a hard time because up to that point I played a squishy hyper offense character focused on nuking stuff out of existence in 1-2 turns, which was losing efficacy in Glacial Rift and then basically wasn't viable for Undermountain. It was especially hurt by disarm/silence because I was without a doubt the main source of damage. If I were to try and approach this again with companions on auto, but with the same squishy stats and build, I'd probably bring a summon encounter and great heal, then let the summon pull some damage away from me.

 

[arch99]

Yeah more defensive builds can totally handle this. I had a hard time because up to that point I played a squishy hyper offense character focused on nuking stuff out of existence in 1-2 turns, which was losing efficacy in Glacial Rift and then basically wasn't viable for Undermountain. It was especially hurt by disarm/silence because I was without a doubt the main source of damage. If I were to try and approach this again with companions on auto, but with the same squishy stats and build, I'd probably bring a summon encounter and great heal, then let the summon pull some damage away from me.

That makes sense - I've tried to do a rogue playthrough and found it amazing in midgame but absolutely garbage lategame. Everything has too many resistances, it becomes way too inconsistent to rely on your own physical damage, which is unfortunate.

 

[Ireyon]

the only tough ones are if I get unlucky about initiative order and get like triple crit before cait can heal me, so I go down before healing up. I play with companions on auto, standard difficulty. Here's the full build.

How would that even be possible with your build? Wearing a shield makes it impossible to be critically hit.

 

[arch99]

How would that even be possible with your build? Wearing a shield makes it impossible to make critically hit.

I guess highrolled?, idk, I honestly don't pay attention to combat dialogue, that's a good point lmao. Didn't think about that

 

[r4d6]

I am not sure if it was mentioned before, but a way to get unique items back after selling them.

Mostly because I sold Hethia's Whitewood Bow because I didn't know there was content locked behind returning it. Or that returning it was a possibility at the time.

Heck, I don't think any of the other unique items have stuff related to not selling them. Yeah they're unique and you aren't getting them back if you sell them, but there isn't any other drawback related to selling such unique items.
So if you play through the game with, say, a melee build, and get the unique whitewood bow, you aren't gonna think that there is any actual content locked behind that bow, since none of the others had, and the really important stuff tend to have the Unsellable and maybe Undroppable keywords.

So if you sell the bow, which doesn't look any different from all the other unique items, you don't see any drawback until hours or days of gameplay later, where you get the possibility of returning the bow, and the game literally tells you 'If you sold it, too bad for you, get fucked.' which is annoying.

 

[Shrike675]

I...you literally get warned you're about to sell a unique item. Did you just ignore that too?

 

[r4d6]

I...you literally get warned you're about to sell a unique item. Did you just ignore that too?

I mean, I get the whole 'sell a unique item and you can't get it back' thing.

It's just that I can't remember any other unique item that is needed after you get that isn't also unsellable.
Literally every other unique item do not lock you out of content if you sell them, and you can't sell or drop the unique items that would lock you out of content if you got rid of them.

 

[Shrike675]

That's not entirely true, you can also return elthara's scythe, though all you get is a thank you and some corruption reduction. Also, returning the bow only really makes hethia not mad at you, that's about it.

 

[Grainy]

I never liked the overuse of repeating one word or phrase twice consecutively for emphasis, and it seems like a character quirk the champion has while speaking. Not sure if others even notice it.

 

[arch99]

r4d6 has a point here, I know Sav and co have explicitly said that they don't want players hoarding all unique items (I am anyway, but), and they want us to just sell the not useful ones - that feels contradictory to some of them having further tie-ins to story, even if it's just little things, for not selling them. I think it makes a lot of sense to have a secondary tag applied to unique items that are still sellable but unlock any story things, like "story-linked" - that, or just give the bow and the scythe the unsellable undroppable tags. It just feels bad to lock yourself out of content, and if the game's explicitly attached to the idea that the player shouldn't be hoarding items, getting punished for doing that incentivizes the exact opposite behavior.