I always get the urge to dump points into Presence to make my companions stronger but is it really necessary? are the companions decently powerful without buffing presence?
How Important is Leadership?
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It's a percentage boost to their Attack/Spellpower stats so it makes them better and it's what determines the stats of the Champion's summons so there's never a time when when investing some stat points there is a bad idea and if you're using summons yourself it's a really good stat to pump up.
I guess it is a question of "Is it a stat you should invest at the detriment of your build?" Say you decide to make a Magic Knight so you would need Strength, Agility, Toughness and WIllpower... should you skim out on some of those stat boosts just to add Presence even when you do not use tease or summons? would the additional damage from your party make up the loss your own character would have from the weaker stats?
Leadership is a straight percentage boost for companions so if you have a stat of 20, your companions are doing 20% more damage with their attacks (and healing 20% more) than they would be unadjusted. Based on the combat math guide, if you spend a point on Presence that would otherwise have gone to Strength you're trading a 3% boost to your damage for a 2% boost to both your companions' damage. Whether that works out to more or less damage depends on too many factors to say absolutely, but it's likely going to be a pretty equal tradeoff in most circumstances.
Really, it probably comes down to what play style you're comfortable with or how you're building a character if you're doing it based on roleplaying hooks. I tend to boost Presence heavily for my Charmer for obvious reasons and also have my Warrior dumping points into it constantly because I've imagined them as the type who grew up with romantic dreams of wanting to lead companions into battle. The first one is balanced in gameplay terms, the second is not (she's a glass cannon for both damage types) but I still have a lot of fun with her. Meanwhile I pretty much ignore it for my Thief and White Mage builds and occasionally drop a point in for my Black Mage because it boosts the Flame Spirit or Phyria, whichever she's using at the time.
Really, it probably comes down to what play style you're comfortable with or how you're building a character if you're doing it based on roleplaying hooks. I tend to boost Presence heavily for my Charmer for obvious reasons and also have my Warrior dumping points into it constantly because I've imagined them as the type who grew up with romantic dreams of wanting to lead companions into battle. The first one is balanced in gameplay terms, the second is not (she's a glass cannon for both damage types) but I still have a lot of fun with her. Meanwhile I pretty much ignore it for my Thief and White Mage builds and occasionally drop a point in for my Black Mage because it boosts the Flame Spirit or Phyria, whichever she's using at the time.
if you dont have the stat economy for it, you can always slap on the helm of heros, that +10 leadership bonus is extremely solid. iirc you get 2 points of leadership for every point of presence, so its as good as leveling the stat.
(not to say you cant do both as well, but you should just build a support character if you want to go that hard on it.)
(not to say you cant do both as well, but you should just build a support character if you want to go that hard on it.)
already have a support Charmer, I got very used to making support and charm characters so I am trying to move away from it.
in that case I say either hedge your bets with the helm of heros or ignore them all together. there's enough companion abilities that dont scale off leadership for you to get by at the tip of the spear
Alt outfit Etheryn's bless, for example. doesnt scale, but makes you pack a H E C C of a wallop
Alt outfit Etheryn's bless, for example. doesnt scale, but makes you pack a H E C C of a wallop
It can be. Obviously if you run teases and summons, it's a core stat. If not: each time you trade your damage stat (Willpower or Strength) for Presence, you get a slight net gain in damage output so long as you're bringing damage-focused companion. It's a good combo with, say, Brint, Kiyoko, and Bronze!Arona: you point, they smash. If you prefer to kick it with the utility companions like Berry or Princess!Etheryn, it's probably less good. Not that they don't benefit from Leadership still, it's just that any power they use that isn't directly modified by Attack Power or Spellpower is a net loss for you.
Very interesting, since every time I tried to make tease/tank orientated build in CoC2 it never worked, atleast not as fast as depleting health for most of the time works better than depleting resolve, like way fast (save for the hornet dungeon and Elthara and thats it so it makes essentially charmer class and Quint practically useless in my opinion).
I always considered a companion healer is a must. PC as a healer somehow just doesn't worked as well as Cait/Etheryn in case of the enemy mobs/boss decided to focus on you and land one or two crits and burst you down to death. Spirit veil from Cait is pretty useful in that regard.
It comes down to Threat management, make sure that other party members are generating more of it than you are and you're less likely to get ganged up on.
Dealing health/resolve damage? Threat ramping up. Healing? Same. Both are the essential strategy to defeat encounter of the games, with few exception like Wraith encounter in Winter City. On top of that is the enemy AI attack targeting aren't fully controlled by the threat mechanic itself. (Obviously I didn't looked through the code to confirm that claim so feel free to correct it) Not that one-shotting one of my companion isn't troublesome enough.
I would say that critical damage poses way too much of an influence in a fashion not so different to TF2 Random Crits for an already relatively fast-paced combat (which makes tank-orientated/debuff ability effectively useless with exception of Kitsunetsuki which is just better Banishment, Unbreakable which is nuff said, haven't tested disarm).
It is supposed to be a pay-off for min-maxing Accuracy and Cunning of course and I would be lying to say that I didn't enjoyed it as much as frustrated me sometimes with key dungeon boss encounter. (I usually did floof haus dungeon on lvl 4 with amulet and winter city on 5 for early exp/electrum farming in glacial rift)
Not that I am saying it is necessarily an improvement to tone it down/removing it, expectation and reality sometimes doesn't match up but you never know. One way or another.
For example is that TiTS has proportionally higher health pool with lower damage output throughout the games to justify the crits compare to CoC2.
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Guessing as to how the game handles percent modifiers (70% treated as damage*1.7 rather than damage*(1.01^70)), it's important to note that each percentage increase is less effective than the one before it. Using a simplified model for convenience (companions get 3 of [offensive stat] per level, leading to a 9% increase, champion gets 1 leadership per level if not focusing, or 3 if they are, leading to either a 2%/6% increase depending) companions get:
Level 1: 15%/11% (specialized for leadership vs. not) or a 3.6% effective increase
Level 5: 75%/55% or a 12.9% effective increase
Level 10: 150%/110% or a 19% effective increase
All that assuming I did the math right; it's been a while, so could easily have made a mistake somewhere. Overall, it's not a huge increase. It's entirely possible that depending on party composition/pc build that investing in a different stat might get you more damage overall.
TL;DR: If you want to focus on leadership for role play/play style reasons, go ahead. If you don't, that's fine too. Guessing things are pretty close either way if you're playing to your build's strengths.
Level 1: 15%/11% (specialized for leadership vs. not) or a 3.6% effective increase
Level 5: 75%/55% or a 12.9% effective increase
Level 10: 150%/110% or a 19% effective increase
All that assuming I did the math right; it's been a while, so could easily have made a mistake somewhere. Overall, it's not a huge increase. It's entirely possible that depending on party composition/pc build that investing in a different stat might get you more damage overall.
TL;DR: If you want to focus on leadership for role play/play style reasons, go ahead. If you don't, that's fine too. Guessing things are pretty close either way if you're playing to your build's strengths.
