How do powers interact with weapon attributes?

[Tide Hunter]

Not sure how that's gonna hold when better shields come out, though. Unless there is some way to upgrade gear or replace one armor's stats with another's (which could be awesome), it's possible that most "themed" gear will simply become obsolete at some point. Even the Kunoichi chest piece, obtained at a fairly high level (probably midway through level 5), is already pretty weak compared to the Royal Leathers. Oh, the tragedy of vertical progression... ah well, we'll see.

While TiTS is largely designed with "new gear = better gear" in mind, CoC2's designed with pretty much the opposite philosophy. Gear bought in Hawkethorne is intended to be just as viable as later gear, even at the very end of the game. In practice, this largely means the Hawkethorne gear is generalized, whereas found gear has specializations. For example, if you compare the Leather Coat sold by Leorah to the Kunoichi bodysuit, the Leather Coat has slightly higher armor, slightly lower evasion, ward, and sexiness, and lacks the resistance bonuses of the bodysuit, but it has a +25 bonus to focus (The stat which decreases the lust/mental damage taken), whereas the bodysuit (and royal leathers) have no focus bonus, meaning that they're much weaker against attacks that target resolve (because they provide literally no resolve resistance) but in exchange have better sexiness and resistances.

Additionally, while comparing the Kunoichi Bodysuit to the Royal Leathers, the Bodysuit has slightly higher evasion, but the bigger draw is that it has specific bonuses to magic and physical resistances, with physical resistance making you less likely to be hit by knockdowns/disarms and "body" type attacks, while magical resistance just makes you less likely to be hit by single target magic attacks. The Royal Leathers provide a significant damage reduction to physical and magical attacks compared to the Kunoichi Bodysuit, but you're less likely to be hit at all with the bodysuit.

Of course, things being sidegrades don't always work out perfectly. While everything is intended to be sidegrades, the Quarterstaff is a straight downgrade to the Blade Staff from beating Tollus in the prologue, the Spiraled Staff from Berwyn's recruitment quest, and even the Girthy Rod from beating the Tainted Witch (though the Girthy Rod does need 20 corruption to use, and gives 5 corruption when first equipped). And those three staves specialize in different areas, with the Blade Staff being better for making basic attacks due to its armor penetration and higher base damage, the Spiraled Staff having the highest spellpower and spellpenetration of the trio, and the Girthy Rod providing a sexiness/temptation bonus and access to an at-will that deals tease damage based off of your spellpower, which means they're suited for a spellblade, a pure spellcaster, and an anti-resolve spellcaster respectively.

The Spiraled Staff is still the best two-hander for a pure caster, though dual-wielding catalysts in each hand can result in a higher total spellpow and spellpen. The Girthy Rod is outclassed in sexiness/temptation by using the Fox Jewel as an offhand catalyst, but that lacks an accuracy buff and has 10 less spellpow (though in practice you can also equip a mainhand catalyst to make it just plain better). The Blade Staff, meanwhile, gets outclassed in basic attack damage by the War Scythe and the Sprialed blade, but those two are quite a bit worse in terms of spellpower and spellpenetration, so they serve as actually sidegrades depending on what your preferred flavor of spellblade is.

 

[Soulskulptor]

That's totally correct, once I get Sure Shot I'll be dropping Crowd Control since it's basically just a weaker Cleave that takes 1 round longer to recharge. I figure then it'll be something like Sure Shot to proc Bless, Cleave (with Bless on) for massive damage and probably proc Bless again, Sure Shot again (yet another Bless proc) and then Blessed whatever else (Deadly Shadow?) so I can either Sure Shot or Cleave again. Sounds pretty good to me.

But that's a good point... that Chrysanthemum is currently a late-game item so I'm not going to have it and Crowd Control at the same time. Technically, if I'm expecting a large number of enemies, I could switch Sure Shot out to temporarily get Crowd Control back, but that's probably not going to happen all that often.

And yeah, you can never, ever have all three at once. Only two slots for regular moves.

Haven't even figured out my At-Will... it's possible I'll never use it anyway, so I might just dump Mirror Stance in there just so I can copy powers when I see an enemy I still need something from.

Edit: oh, maybe Equanimity... it's a crit build, after all. Not sure it's worth losing a turn for, though.

this sounds like an interesting build. sounds more promising than the Dirty Trick + Shadow Strike i've been relying on

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

While TiTS is largely designed with "new gear = better gear" in mind, CoC2's designed with pretty much the opposite philosophy. Gear bought in Hawkethorne is intended to be just as viable as later gear, even at the very end of the game. In practice, this largely means the Hawkethorne gear is generalized, whereas found gear has specializations.

I love horizontal progression so I'm 100% behind this. And admittedly, while it's often easy to pick one piece of gear over another based on your build, it's true that most pieces of gear are overall about as strong as each other.

But yeah, there's going to be a few exceptions. Bows, for example... the Ranger Bow is almost strictly better than the Hunting Bow, and the Taeleeran Longbow makes them both look like trash.

And if gear is not meant to become strictly better, it might start being a serious concern if enemies scale faster than our stats do. Enemies in the Undermountain hit super hard, the Kunoichi chest piece already feels like it's nowhere near strong enough. If enemy attack power keeps rising this fast I just don't think whatever Armor and Evasion we get for leveling and putting 3 points into the relevant stat (that's be 3 Armor and 3 Evasion per level in the best case scenario, not exactly massive gains) is going to allow players to keep up with enemy damage potential. I'm assuming level 7 will be implemented fairly soon, though, since we're getting at the limit of what we can do at level 6.

Curious to see where it all goes.

 

[Kingu2]

Crowd Control since it's basically just a weaker Cleave that takes 1 round longer to recharge.

Crowd control is better than cleave and they have the exact same cooldown.

Haven't even figured out my At-Will...

for this should go sneak attack and use it to follow deadly shadow or try any of the other ranged attack options that might be more effective.

 

[Prent]

Enemies in the Undermountain hit super hard, the Kunoichi chest piece already feels like it's nowhere near strong enough.

Equally good, and equally good in all situations are different things.

there is a place for the kunoichi outfit, against enemies with decent accuracy in short fights. It’s not gonna be nearly as good in a place with very accurate enemies and long fights.

Undermountain is much better with higher Armor armors

 

[The Observer]

Different items have different stat budgets of different tiers, depending on their origin.

Items in the same tier will generally have the same budget pool.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Crowd control is better than cleave and they have the exact same cooldown.

Ah right, Cleave is on a Recharge 3... I'm still mentally stuck on it having a Recharge 2, the wiki keeps messing with my head on that too.

However, Crowd Control against a group of four enemies would get +50 against a single target and -25 against all three others, a net loss already. And because Attack Power is a percentage modifier and negative percentages are stronger than positive ones (for example -25% is equivalent to +33.3%), it's a whole lot worse that it looks, even with just three enemies it'd be a loss. I'd much rather be able to wreck large groups (very common in the game) than get a small bonus to my damage against single targets when fighting low number of enemies. No, I'm pretty sure Cleave is far superior.

for this should go sneak attack and use it to follow deadly shadow or try any of the other ranged attack options that might be more effective.

Deadly Shadow as an Encounter ability, I absolutely get, it's real good and I was always going to go for it.

Why Sneak Attack, though? It's a lost turn when you use it. If you have Bless on (which is what the build is about), you waste it. Because you deal no damage, you zero chance of proccing it again that turn. And deal no damage. And the 2nd use in a row wouldn't do much: the +100 Attack Power wouldn't affect the Kunai's Bleed so it'd be mostly wasted (having the +100 Attack Power from Bless would get you the same damage on the main hand, plus it works on the Kunai's Bleed too) and +30 Accuracy is nowhere near as good as the +200 from the quick-recharging Sure Shot. Unless there's something I don't understand, trying to put Sneak Attack in the rotation would be crippling.

But this all just gets me more pumped to try it. I'll make some time later today.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Undermountain is much better with higher Armor armors

It really is. I just feel silly telling my kunoichi "All right, now put on this massive suit of plate armor".

But you know what they say... "Necessity is the mother of giving up your silly themes and getting practical".

 

[Prent]

It really is. I just feel silly telling my kunoichi "All right, now put on this massive suit of plate armor".

But you know what they say... "Necessity is the mother of giving up your silly themes and getting practical".

Think of it this way, you're telling your kunoichi to go undercover and as part of that she has to wear the armor. Ninja's do shit like that all the time.

 

[Prent]

Deadly Shadow as an Encounter ability, I absolutely get, it's real good and I was always going to go for it.

Why Sneak Attack, though? It's a lost turn when you use it. If you have Bless on (which is what the build is about), you waste it. Because you deal no damage, you zero chance of proccing it again that turn. And deal no damage. And the 2nd use in a row wouldn't do much: the +100 Attack Power wouldn't affect the Kunai's Bleed so it'd be mostly wasted (having the +100 Attack Power from Bless would get you the same damage on the main hand, plus it works on the Kunai's Bleed too) and +30 Accuracy is nowhere near as good as the +200 from the quick-recharging Sure Shot. Unless there's something I don't understand, trying to put Sneak Attack in the rotation would be crippling.

But this all just gets me more pumped to try it. I'll make some time later today.

Deadly Shadow also gives you 3 turns of obscurment, so it combos well with sneak attack. Problem is though you're using two slots for an encounter combo and the pieces don't fit well with any other part of the build.

 

[Burnerbro]

Haven't even figured out my At-Will... it's possible I'll never use it anyway, so I might just dump Mirror Stance in there just so I can copy powers when I see an enemy I still need something from.

Depending on how good is your dodge and how many melee enemies you are facing, Duelist Stance can be a decent At-Will option for a dual-wielding build, because you get to riposte with both weapons. And speaking of dual-wielding in general, it's worth pointing out that you do get -10 Accuracy from doing it, which on d100 attack rolls in this game is roughly equivalent to -2/-2 you get on trained characters doing it in D&D. The damage of your off-hand weapon is also reduced, as are all the stats you get from it. So I personally found it underwhelming, though the bleed strategy does seem to work around most of those drawbacks.

Different items have different stat budgets of different tiers, depending on their origin.

Will Roman LARP gear be allowed to outclass the Nippon LARP gear (that currently sits in the top 3 for most categories) since it you will be getting the former in Act 2 proper?

 

[Kingu2]

Ah right, Cleave is on a Recharge 3... I'm still mentally stuck on it having a Recharge 2, the wiki keeps messing with my head on that too.

However, Crowd Control against a group of four enemies would get +50 against a single target and -25 against all three others, a net loss already. And because Attack Power is a percentage modifier and negative percentages are stronger than positive ones (for example -25% is equivalent to +33.3%), it's a whole lot worse that it looks, even with just three enemies it'd be a loss. I'd much rather be able to wreck large groups (very common in the game) than get a small bonus to my damage against single targets when fighting low number of enemies. No, I'm pretty sure Cleave is far superior.

first off that's not how the math works, 25% is 25% whether it's positive or negative. if an attack does base 40 damage minus 25 attack power would be 30 damage while plus 25 would be 50 damage. it's plus or minus 10 either way no equivalencies.

Second you make the mistake of looking purely at the numbers and not the caveats. When up against a horde of enemies it's prudent to take out the more dangerous or annoying enemies to reduce incoming damage for your party while doing decent damage to the rest of the enemies. You won't do that reliably with just a normal attack. Also remember that your offhand weapon isn't affected by weapon powers so don't suffer the reduced damage.

honestly I've been dual wielding in this game since eviscerate became available to learn. I've tried all the light weapons and I really don't think the kunai is very good. It seems good on paper but in practice you are doing less damage applying bleed and waiting multiple turns for them to die on there own provided they don't heal themselves. I think people here really focus on the on paper damage values and undersell the effectiveness of quickly nuetralizing an enemy before they can do anything. It may just be a difference in playstyle but for me I like fights to be fast and exciting I hate fights that are a slog, if it's not over by turn 3 it's gone on too long.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Deadly Shadow also gives you 3 turns of obscurment, so it combos well with sneak attack. Problem is though you're using two slots for an encounter combo and the pieces don't fit well with any other part of the build.

Oh, I see, Sneak Attack would be there to consume the Obscurement... but yes, it's a one-time thing and with Sure Shot I probably always have something good to do on my turn anyway.

Depending on how good is your dodge and how many melee enemies you are facing, Duelist Stance can be a decent At-Will option for a dual-wielding build, because you get to riposte with both weapons. And speaking of dual-wielding in general, it's worth pointing out that you do get -10 Accuracy from doing it, which on d100 attack rolls in this game is roughly equivalent to -2/-2 you get on trained characters doing it in D&D. The damage of your off-hand weapon is also reduced, as are all the stats you get from it. So I personally found it underwhelming, though the bleed strategy does seem to work around most of those drawbacks.

Will Roman LARP gear allowed to outclass weeb LARP gear (that currently sits in the top 3 for most categories) since it is in Act 2 proper?

I have a love/hate relationship with Duelist's Stance. Love the concept, but whenever I try it, it never works. Enemies cast spells, use ranged attacks, or use melee but attack other characters (often summons, which do generate lots of threat) so often that the odds of the counter triggering are very very low to start with. And those rare times they do try to attack me, they often hit me even though I have tons of Evasion, and the attack needs to miss to trigger the riposte... in the end it just never triggers. Too bad because it's genuinely a cool idea.

The -10 Accuracy on the offhand weapon hurts, fortunately with this build it's the main hand weapon that needs to crit. The Kunai critting would be nice but really it just needs to hit, and -10 Accuracy shouldn't be bad enough for it to straight-up miss all that often (at least not with max Agility). But yes, the beauty of the Kunai is that having its base damaged reduced from 10 to 8 is such an insignificant drawback. Its damage is from Bleed and that won't be affected at all! With this configuration, a lot of the drawbacks are mitigated.

Act 2... that's a mystery to me and, if it's got "good" Belharan equipment (no offense to Ogrish), I'm curious to see what it will be like. You don't often see games at the Bronze level of technology, but considering there was a big step backwards in technological advancement just a few hundred years before, it's entirely possible the Belharans had steel and you'd imagine that it's still being produced in a few places.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

first off that's not how the math works, 25% is 25% whether it's positive or negative. if an attack does base 40 damage minus 25 attack power would be 30 damage while plus 25 would be 50 damage. it's plus or minus 10 either way no equivalencies.

Well... yes and no.

In math, a negative percentage is usually stronger than the same number in a positive. If you lose half of your money (-50%), you'll need to double it (+100%) to get back to where you were, and if you double your money (+100%), it only takes a loss of half (-50%) to go back to where you were. If you reduce your speed by 50%, it'll take 100% longer to get to your destination, and if you increase your speed by 100%, it will only decrease the amount of time you need to get to your destination by 50%. Negatives are stronger than positives.

-10% is equivalent to +11.11%
-20% is equivalent to +25%
-25% is equivalent to +33.33%
-50% is equivalent to +100%
etc

Admittedly, the way the game works with percentages is unusual (but convenient) thanks to being additive. Someone with 50 Attack Power (150%) attacking with a 40 damage weapon would do 60 damage, and applying a +50 Attack Power bonus would increase that damage from 60 to 80. A 25 Attack Power penalty would reduce it from 60 to 50. So yes, at three targets, you'd just break even.

Second you make the mistake of looking purely at the numbers and not the caveats. When up against a horde of enemies it's prudent to take out the more dangerous or annoying enemies to reduce incoming damage for your party while doing decent damage to the rest of the enemies. You won't do that reliably with just a normal attack. Also remember that your offhand weapon isn't affected by weapon powers so don't suffer the reduced damage.

That's a great point, there is much to be said for fire-focusing enemies. I have many times raged against streamers who insisted on hitting all enemies until they were near-dead but moved on to other targets before finishing the job.

But AoE abilities are weak attacks specifically because they're AoE, so they're inefficient against few targets. And this strategy being based on the Chrysanthemum proc, you need to either have a massive Accuracy bonus or to have many standing enemy targets to increase your odds of proccing Bless. Reducing your damage on all other targets to kill (possibly overkill) a single target means your AoEs are now less efficient and your odds of keeping Bless on are lower. It goes counter to the AoE/proc strategy. It's counterintuitive but with the AoE strat I'd actually be using Sure Shot on the highest-Health enemy to keep my odds of proccing Bless high and make sure that everything dies on a relatively early turn.

The focus-firing strategy alternative is you'd be using a bunch of strong single-target abilities like Sure Shot, all with high Accuracy to keep the Bless up, and get kills whenever you can get them to reduce enemy offensive power. You'd get massive damage loss due to overkills, but it'd work.

Both are valid. In one you're slowly eroding the enemy's ability to deal damage down to nothing by taking them out one by one over the course of 6 or 7 rounds, in the other you're keeping all enemies alive (maximizing their damage while they're alive) but seeking to end it all in 4 rounds.

Crowd Control is... sort of in the middle? It's not bad, it just seems like you're losing tons of damage on most enemies just to try to get one down halfway through the battle, when getting one down isn't going help much and just going to let all the other ones live a round longer. It feels like you couldn't pick a strat and are half-assing both.

honestly I've been dual wielding in this game since eviscerate became available to learn. I've tried all the light weapons and I really don't think the kunai is very good. It seems good on paper but in practice you are doing less damage applying bleed and waiting multiple turns for them to die on there own provided they don't heal themselves. I think people here really focus on the on paper damage values and undersell the effectiveness of quickly nuetralizing an enemy before they can do anything. It may just be a difference in playstyle but for me I like fights to be fast and exciting I hate fights that are a slog, if it's not over by turn 3 it's gone on too long.

Holy shit, Eviscerate is learnable now? I'll have to look into that. It'd be terrible with the Kunai but I'm sure a bunch of builds would do very well with such an ability.

Yeah, the Kunai is weird and a little weaker against generic little enemies, but I think it's worth it just because of how effective it'd be against big tough ones that have multiple actions per turn and can "eat" both Bleed charges before it's your turn again. That way you can keep attacking at full intensity while ignoring enemy Armor.

But maybe I'll look into alternative configurations depending on the content. Switching the Chrysanthemum Petal to the offhand and equipping a Divine Blossom in the main hand, for example, could mow down legions of Imps in a most hilarious fashion.

I really gotta get started on testing all this.

 

[Kingu2]

Well... yes and no.

In math, a negative percentage is usually stronger than the same number in a positive. If you lose half of your money (-50%), you'll need to double it (+100%) to get back to where you were, and if you double your money (+100%), it only takes a loss of half (-50%) to go back to where you were. If you reduce your speed by 50%, it'll take 100% longer to get to your destination, and if you increase your speed by 100%, it will only decrease the amount of time you need to get to your destination by 50%. Negatives are stronger than positives.

-10% is equivalent to +11.11%
-20% is equivalent to +25%
-25% is equivalent to +33.33%
-50% is equivalent to +100%
etc

Admittedly, the way the game works with percentages is unusual (but convenient) thanks to being additive. Someone with 50 Attack Power (150%) attacking with a 40 damage weapon would do 60 damage, and applying a +50 Attack Power bonus would increase that damage from 60 to 80. A 25 Attack Power penalty would reduce it from 60 to 50. So yes, at three targets, you'd just break even.

I'm not disagreeing with you here but you're using the wrong math rules.

See this is where you're confusing things, the damage values are not points of progression they're flat values,
40 = 100%
50 = 125%
30 = 75%
If you have a full gas tank(100%) and you use half of it (-50%) you aren't going to put 100% of the amount of gas you need to fill you put the exact same amount that you lost 50%. likewise if your base damage is 40 (100%) and you use an attack that takes off 25% for 30(75%) your base damage is still 40 so you add 25% back to get the same value.

That's a great point, there is much to be said for fire-focusing enemies. I have many times raged against streamers who insisted on hitting all enemies until they were near-dead but moved on to other targets before finishing the job.

But AoE abilities are weak attacks specifically because they're AoE, so they're inefficient against few targets. And this strategy being based on the Chrysanthemum proc, you need to either have a massive Accuracy bonus or to have many standing enemy targets to increase your odds of proccing Bless. Reducing your damage on all other targets to kill (possibly overkill) a single target means your AoEs are now less efficient and your odds of keeping Bless on are lower. It goes counter to the AoE/proc strategy. It's counterintuitive but with the AoE strat I'd actually be using Sure Shot on the highest-Health enemy to keep my odds of proccing Bless high and make sure that everything dies on a relatively early turn.

The focus-firing strategy alternative is you'd be using a bunch of strong single-target abilities like Sure Shot, all with high Accuracy to keep the Bless up, and get kills whenever you can get them to reduce enemy offensive power. You'd get massive damage loss due to overkills, but it'd work.

Both are valid. In one you're slowly eroding the enemy's ability to deal damage down to nothing by taking them out one by one over the course of 6 or 7 rounds, in the other you're keeping all enemies alive (maximizing their damage while they're alive) but seeking to end it all in 4 rounds.

Crowd Control is... sort of in the middle? It's not bad, it just seems like you're losing tons of damage on most enemies just to try to get one down halfway through the battle, when getting one down isn't going help much and just going to let all the other ones live a round longer. It feels like you couldn't pick a strat and are half-assing both.

obviously this is more of a matter of opinion on which you like better but I still feel you are ignoring factors like the differences in the enemy's hp and armor and the number of opponents on the field and of course the fact that cleave is useless against a single enemy where crowd control is not. Honestly the drop in AOE damage is negligible especially compared to doing more damage or outright killing the leader or tankier enemy.

Holy shit, Eviscerate is learnable now? I'll have to look into that. It'd be terrible with the Kunai but I'm sure a bunch of builds would do very well with such an ability.

Yeah, the Kunai is weird and a little weaker against generic little enemies, but I think it's worth it just because of how effective it'd be against big tough ones that have multiple actions per turn and can "eat" both Bleed charges before it's your turn again. That way you can keep attacking at full intensity while ignoring enemy Armor.

But maybe I'll look into alternative configurations depending on the content. Switching the Chrysanthemum Petal to the offhand and equipping a Divine Blossom in the main hand, for example, could mow down legions of Imps in a most hilarious fashion.

I really gotta get started on testing all this.

It's been learnable for a while now. Don't get your hopes up though, ever since the nerf to crits (which the attack heavily relies on) it's just not anywhere near as good as it used to be. I've stopped using it altogether.

 

[Tide Hunter]

Reducing your damage on all other targets to kill (possibly overkill) a single target means your AoEs are now less efficient and your odds of keeping Bless on are lower.

In the moment, does this matter? On that turn you're still hitting everyone and likely getting at least one crit, and it seems kinda likely that you'll just beat them before you get to the next aoe unless you're pairing cleave and crowd control. But you aren't, you're pairing an aoe with Sure Shot. And though Deadly Shadow does hit all foes, you should already probably have some foe down by that point since you would (presumably) be on round 4 for the DS, or 5 for activating a stance of some sort on the first round (like charge weapon, for example, it may be spell based but it's also a damage buff which helps this attack-focused build. Though you may want Blue Flame Blade instead, as they provide the same buff but with a different damage type, but where CW does aoe on activation, Blue Flame Blade causes enemies to catch on fire when hit by a crit. As this is a crit-heavy build, plus you don't have a lot of spellpower which is what the aoe damage scales off of, it may be better due to that. Though at the same time the damage buff itself also scales off of spellpower, so you may want spellpower boosting accessories and armor.).

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Yeah, I really don't think I'm going to go into weapon buffs with this one. Indeed, no Spellpower, and any turn during which I'm not proccing Bless is essentially a wasted turn.

Undermountain has also been quite a shock regarding fire. I've always loved Pyromage Brienne... but she's been absolutely terrible in Undermountain, she's not dealing decent damage and she's way too fragile. I quickly changed her back to her default set. Right now I feel like, if I'm going to use any elemental attacks, I should stick with "good" damage types, like Holy and Storm.

In any case, while the whole "Kunai doesn't benefit from powers' Attack Power bonuses" was relevant to the thread, I think I've caused it to drift a little and I don't want to hijack the whole thing. I'll make a thread about this build if I feel like it's important, but until then I'm gonna leave this one alone so people can discuss how powers and weapons interact without my insanity getting involved.

 

[GEESE]

I've been trying to get into the crys petal as a replacement to my bessy mauler on my thief, trying out various offhand weapons with it. Was going strong until the crit nerf, now I'm not so sure about it. anyone better at numbers able to give me a comparison?

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

I've been trying to get into the crys petal as a replacement to my bessy mauler on my thief, trying out various offhand weapons with it. Was going strong until the crit nerf, now I'm not so sure about it. anyone better at numbers able to give me a comparison?

I'm not 100% sure what the crit nerf did but it was certainly quite big. Crits are still pretty good, though, and with the Petal it doesn't really matter if the crit doesn't do that much more damage, you're wanting crits for the Blessed effect.

Offensively speaking I've had very decent results with the Petal and a Kunai off-hand. Kept Blessed up pretty much permanently on most fights. It's very different from the Bessy Mauler, though.

 

[GEESE]

Offensively speaking I've had very decent results with the Petal and a Kunai off-hand. Kept Blessed up pretty much permanently on most fights. It's very different from the Bessy Mauler, though.

I've had decent success with similar. had been using flame dagger as my offhand (which I should switch out since that fire is worthless in the undermountain)
I suppose the strat is to warm up with a sure shot for the blessing, then bowl them over with a cleave or eviscerate, depending on the target, and pray that noone gets disarmed in the meantime
which is a major issue when damn near every encounter in the mountain has at least two people capable of chaining the ability. any idea how to get around that?

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

My characters using physical weapons have usually had high Physical Resistance, so I haven't had too much issue with being Disarmed, at least not in Undermountain.

If it's a real problem, Equilibrium makes you immune to it entirely, but it's one turn you're not doing anything else and not triggering Blessed.

 

[GEESE]

also, how the heck does fan of blades work, mechanically? is it just an aoe based off your attack power stat or what?

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

also, how the heck does fan of blades work, mechanically? is it just an aoe based off your attack power stat or what?

I didn't do a lot of testing on that one, but it appears to be, quite literally, a "Cleave" attack using dual-wielded Daggers. At the very least it functions the exact same way and does pretty much the same amounts of damage.

 

[Burnerbro]

I didn't do a lot of testing on that one, but it appears to be, quite literally, a "Cleave" attack using dual-wielded Daggers. At the very least it functions the exact same way and does pretty much the same amounts of damage.

And since Cleave already gives you attacks with both equipped weapons atm and all of those are Throwing - and so they count as melee as well - spending resources on Fan of Blades is a waste.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

And since Cleave already gives you attacks with both equipped weapons atm and all of those are Throwing - and so they count as melee as well - spending resources on Fan of Blades is a waste.

Yeah, it's the same Recharge but with Cleave (or Crowd Control) you get to choose your weapons. Daggers aren't actually that bad, but they're not exactly the best either.

The only potential advantage I can see is... this ability should still be usable when you're Disarmed.

 

[Burnerbro]

The only potential advantage I can see is... this ability should still be usable when you're Disarmed.

Right, 'cause it doesn't have the Weapon tag. Not sure if that is a bit of an oversight, since it uses your equipped daggers to calculate damage.

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Right, 'cause it doesn't have the Weapon tag. Not sure if that is a bit of an oversight, since it uses your equipped daggers to calculate damage.

That's the catch: it doesn't use any of your equipped weapons, it uses the daggers inside the brace that came with the Kunoichi set. That's why you can still use the skill when you're disarmed.

 

[Burnerbro]

That's the catch: it doesn't use any of your equipped weapons, it uses the daggers inside the brace that came with the Kunoichi set. That's why you can still use the skill when you're disarmed.

Interesting. Is the hit chance, crit, armor penetration and damage calculated as you making two regular attack as if you had two daggers equipped?

 

[VerySexyGrammar]

Interesting. Is the hit chance, crit, armor penetration and damage calculated as you making two regular attack as if you had two daggers equipped?

I'm not sure how I could verify that with 100% certainty, but that's what it seems like.

When I tried the power and saw the description of its use in the combat window, I went and bought two Daggers, equipped them and used Cleave. Using both a few times each, the numbers were always so very similar that I now assume that the power functions with the exact stats that Daggers have. That's what testing hints at, and it would just make perfect sense.

 

[GEESE]

When I tried the power and saw the description of its use in the combat window, I went and bought two Daggers, equipped them and used Cleave. Using both a few times each, the numbers were always so very similar that I now assume that the power functions with the exact stats that Daggers have. That's what testing hints at, and it would just make perfect sense.

try comparing the fan of knives to itself using different weapons. like the difference between using captain's greatsword and two kunais.

the lack of information on the skill is kind of frustrating.