This game really needs more ultimate powers for the player character

Jul 2, 2022
5
6
We literally only have one damage focused ultimate and its a physical attack that hits one target. Lets be honest, most of the ults we have access to are incredibly underwhelming. Unbreakable isn't very useful since it offers zero protection to your companions. The white mage ult is literally a worse version of Cait's ult since it's not automatic. Banishment is practically useless unless your just buying time to stack buffs and debuffs. Kitsunetsuki is alright for boss fights if your a thief or have Ryn in your party but you have to use the fox jewel so you can't use any two handed weapons with it. The only good choices at this point are Inspiration and Assassinate. Please tell me we will get better ults or some revisions to the current ones at some point so my black mage can stop assassinating people with a stick.
 

Greyfox643

Well-Known Member
May 20, 2016
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I, too, would like more Ultimate Abilities.

I've prepared a list that is complete and utter bullshit since the only balance experience I have is running ttrpg games as a dm fair and balanced, and make a bit of flavorable sense in their function. Just kidding, they all suck, but I do hope they inspire the creators to possibly expand out Ultimate options that we have available, or add additional functionality to what we currently have.

White Mage:
Deny Death: Powerful healers can staunch wounds capable of laying low even the mightiest of minotaur warriors. The Greatest healers wouldn't have let him get hurt in the first place
Grants yourself and all allies a 100 resolve shield, and grants a bonus 20 to Ward and Armor for 4 turns. Should yourself or your ally get reduced to 0 health during the duration, you are instead healed to full health, consuming the buff in the process.

As stated, the Whitemage ultimate is a worse version of Caits due to the mechanics of the game. Cait is triggered automatically because you are a valid target when you go down, and you can't revive yourself if you are dead... So what if you never died in the first place? The idea is a simple one: Auto-Revive spells from the Final Fantasy series of games.

Warrior:
For Frodo Valiant Charge: You Boldly advance into the enemy's ranks, striking hard at each of their number in order to Rally your allies, strike Terror into your enemies, and punish those who would harm your loved ones. None of these strikes will miss, and every felled enemy fuels your conviction
Gains +50 attack power for every enemy in combat, and makes two Weapon attacks against all enemies. After the attacks are done, the warrior gains "Inspiring", +100 initiative, and heals themself and their party for 20 resolve for each attack landed, and enemy felled.

This isn't a berserker wading into a sea of blades with reckless abandon, this is a master swordsman advancing to cut down as many things between him and his true goal: the end of the fight.

Rogue:
Exploit Weakness: You toss forth a small incendiary device packed with Leananstones, spices, (and a few extra surprises) which detonates in a loud, bright flash spreading corrosive powder all over all enemies, making them significantly vulnerable to you and your party's followup attacks.
Would apply "sundered" and "staggered" for X turns, and a new debuff called "Vulnerable" for half of the staggered turns. Any attack suffered while "Vulnerable" is a guaranteed critical hit and causes the target to bleed if they suffer any damage while under this effect.

If Assassinate is a Rogue trying to remove a single hard target while everyone is distracted, this is a Rogue trying to clean house as quickly and efficiently as possible. While weaker initially, with planning, and coordination between party members, this should bring down groups of hard targets with little issue. I feel this is worth an ultimate slot as it sets up a full turn of MASSIVE damage from allies, guest party members, and other ultimate abilities.

Charmer:
Incite Orgy: It is said that the Malachite's "Dance of the Seven Veils" is amongst the most erotically charged displays, able to stir the passions of even the most cold hearted of mortals in the world. It can't a candle to what you can do with the Carnal Arts.
Causes all active participants of the current combat to immediately engage in passionate fornication. This deals all participants 100 resolve damage (your party heals that amount), and leaves your party feeling invigorated, giving all allies a temporary +1 to all stats. You leave all enemies "Weakened", "Bruised and Beaten", and completely "Drained". All effects last until the end of combat. Can not effect targets immune to Lust combat.

My headcannon is that Champion Charmers are both inspired by, and in competition with, Gods of Passion and Lust. And I personally found mid-COMBAT quickies a hilarious concept, and not too much of a stretch given how salacious the 'Tease' attacks can be.

Universal:
Life Break: Your Training with Zo has given you insight into the energies that dwell within yourself... and your enemies. You can strike keenly at the core of someone's essence, significantly disrupting their energy and potentially ending their life immediately
You make a single unarmed melee attack at +500 attack power, ignoring armor, and striking their Ward. Survivors are weakened and fatigued for 3 turns. Should your bring an enemy below 20% of their maximum health with this attack, they are instantly slain. (Bosses are immune to the instant death component)
 

HK-47

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2017
184
231
We literally only have one damage focused ultimate and it’s a physical attack that hits one target. Let’s be honest, most of the ults we have access to are incredibly underwhelming. Unbreakable isn't very useful since it offers zero protection to your companions. The white mage ult is literally a worse version of Cait's ult since it's not automatic. Banishment is practically useless unless you’re just buying time to stack buffs and debuffs. Kitsunetsuki is alright for boss fights if you’re a thief or have Ryn in your party but you have to use the fox jewel so you can't use any two handed weapons with it. The only good choices at this point are Inspiration and Assassinate. Please tell me we will get better ults or some revisions to the current ones at some point so my black mage can stop assassinating people with a stick.

I wholeheartedly agree. Most of the Ults available to the PC feel rather underwhelming so far, though Assassinate and Inspiration aren’t bad.

I‘d particularly like Banishment to get replaced with an AoE attack similar to Solar Cannon from Agni’s kit.
 

Resawar

Well-Known Member
Sep 21, 2018
149
195
Banishment is practically useless unless your just buying time to stack buffs and debuffs.
I‘d particularly like Banishment to get replaced
Banishment is a great power, I wrote about it a bit here. Also you can use Kitsunetsuki without the jewel now "Kitsunetsuki no longer requires the Fox Jewel to use, instead wielding the Fox Jewel increases its duration to 4 rounds."

Anyway to go along with the thread: Ideally the game does need a few holes filled in to fit the needs of some players Ultimate slot usage for the day. Even if more then a few cool Ultimate ideas are already filled in by things like flames with in and what not. I have here a few ideas mostly not covered by existing powers that the PC has.

First: We should get Berwyn's old Ultimate Spirit Binder as an option, it would fill in a niche for a summoner Ultimate and give new life to a now forgotten power now that they are no longer a companion. Plus I swear we got their golem as a summon so why not their Ultimate?

Second: A magic Ultimate can be more then what Solar Cannon is and more then just a magic Assassinate clone. Ideally it should fill something we are missing in Ultimate's, we have all sort of Ultimate's available to us and our companions but we don't have one type, a massive DoT. It would it be realistically single target but function somewhat like toxic does from Pokémon where it does stacking damage every turn but balanced as to not last forever and deal ludicrous amounts of scaling damage, it should ideally fall in line with doing roughly as much damage you can do with Assassinate depending on if it deals normal damage that is effected by ward and such or if it does raw damage like bleed it should do a bit less as to not out preform. It would be a lot of magic damage which fits people who are left wanting for instant massive magic damage but it comes with the nuance of happening over time and countering enemies who heal like some bosses.

Third: Now this one I'm more iffy on and not fully sure about but we could have an "Ultimate" summon we can conjure forth like a dragon spirt or something, with it being more powerful and not needing leadership to be good so more players can use it who are not playing a summoner. It's not the best idea but it's an interesting thought of what could be.
 
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SomeNobody

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Dec 18, 2020
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Universal:
Life Break: Your Training with Zo has given you insight into the energies that dwell within yourself... and your enemies. You can strike keenly at the core of someone's essence, significantly disrupting their energy and potentially ending their life immediately
You make a single unarmed melee attack at +500 attack power, ignoring armor, and striking their Ward. Survivors are weakened and fatigued for 3 turns. Should your bring an enemy below 20% of their maximum health with this attack, they are instantly slain. (Bosses are immune to the instant death component)
Silly Mode should result in the Attack Dialogue that is displayed when used in battle just being replaced by an obvious FotNS homage moment, with the technique name being called out by the narration after it hits.

Actually maybe this is the attack from FotNS that is most appropriate for CoC, since it kills the enemy but makes them jizz themselves before they die...
 
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Greyfox643

Well-Known Member
May 20, 2016
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Jesus christ. I completely forgot about that last one.

I can 100% see this as an ultimate technique used by a Demonic Monk in COC2.

As for an ultimate summon... i 9001% wish I could just set Ashe on the ground, take a step back, and let her take her old form again for a few moments.
 
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HK-47

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2017
184
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@Resawar Your point on Banishment and a possible alternative is fair. My thoughts on the matter ultimately boiled down to fact that it just doesn’t fit my black mage thematically, and that’d I’d like to see more options available to the PC classes that you can pick from, rather than the single Ult power per class we have now, some of which are pretty meh.

In my black mage’s case, I’d love to have an AoE fire spell, kind of like the Flamestrike or Fire Storm spells from D&D, that also hit the enemies with the Burning and Terrified debuffs. Something along those lines.

Edit: Another neat one could be modeled on the Storm of Vengeance spell for a PC focused on Storm dmg powers, that could deal AoE Acid, Crushing, & Storm dmg over several turns & would hit the enemies with the Blinded & Staggered debuffs.
 
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lostboi

Member
Oct 18, 2022
8
1
I'm no game dev, but ults are pretty tied to character progression. We got the first set at level 5, so logically the next ones will come at level 10. At least the class based ones, I could see more item/soulbind combo tied ults if they felt like it.
 

Baggrin

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2019
190
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We got the first set at level 5, so logically the next ones will come at level 10.

I probably should have saved the developer quotes and links to them...
As far as I remember, one of the developers (it seems that it was Savin) said that the Ultimates are the crown of the player's strength, even reaching level 10 will not give access to some new Ultimates of a higher tier.
Keep in mind, I don't remember the exact words, so I could distort the meaning a bit, but the bottom line is that new higher-level Ultimates are not worth waiting for, because this will never happen.
 

lostboi

Member
Oct 18, 2022
8
1
Sorry I should've clarified, I meant more ults as in more variety, not necessarily more powerful ones
 

WolframL

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Feb 12, 2020
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As far as I remember, one of the developers (it seems that it was Savin) said that the Ultimates are the crown of the player's strength, even reaching level 10 will not give access to some new Ultimates of a higher tier.
You're remembering more or less correctly, at least if this is the line you're thinking of (there could be others):

No Ultimates.png

And Tobs basically explained why Black Mage does not have a Big Kaboom for its Ultimate here. TLDR: the only new Ultimate that anybody should be expecting at this point is whatever might come with the Astrida TF since that's the last remaining soulbind that we're getting.
 

HK-47

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2017
184
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I see. Whelp, I guess I will just continue to save edit in the Ult options that I actually like on my Champs.
 

Baggrin

Well-Known Member
May 16, 2019
190
80
You're remembering more or less correctly, at least if this is the line you're thinking of

Thanks for the prooflink (which I personally can't provide all the time). In the case I'm referring to, though, the question was something like "Will we get higher level Ultimates in the future?" to which the answer was "Not going to happen" and a brief explanation of why.

And Tobs basically explained why Black Mage does not have a Big Kaboom for its Ultimate here.

His argument is understandable, but it's still sad.
After all, Banishment is not the kind of Ultimate that you casually use in a bossfight, usually casting this Ultimate means trouble has happened... though of course, for a white mage, my objections are more valid than for a black mage.


Oh, I completely forgot!
We should get Berwyn's old Ultimate Spirit Binder as an option, it would fill in a niche for a summoner Ultimate and give new life to a now forgotten power now that they are no longer a companion. Plus I swear we got their golem as a summon so why not their Ultimate?

Well, as I've said many times before, I'm not a big fan of summons... my earliest objections were more about the frailty of summons than their uncontrollability, however.
...but that would be really nice (and potentially VERY useful).


Update. Oh, I also remembered another drawback of Banishment: It doesn't block enemy abilities like Arousing Aura, even when the enemy is banished it still continues to affect the party.
 

HK-47

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2017
184
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His argument is understandable, but it's still sad.
After all, Banishment is not the kind of Ultimate that you casually use in a bossfight, usually casting this Ultimate means trouble has happened... though of course, for a white mage, my objections are more valid than for a black mage.

It‘s also worth mentioning that on lower difficulties Banishment is just not useful, full stop. I’ll freely admit it’s a good Break-Glass-In-Case-Of-Emergencies tool on Dark, but if you’re playing on Story or Easy, chances are you will literally never have to actually use it your entire play through, unless you really feel like one-shotting a construct or ethereal enemy, or picking a fight with Kas at the Winter Palace.

As for TObs’ bit, I wouldn’t exactly call any of of the Champ’s class Ults “interesting or unique”, at least IMO. Not saying some of them aren’t useful (particularly Inspiration and Assassinate) but for the most part I’m running with NPC kit Ults on my Champs, as they seem to have the Ults I actually find useful, and that fit those Champs thematically. I suppose at the end of day I’m just not sure I understand the reasoning behind not making any other Ults available to the Champ beyond what we’ve got now, plus the upcoming Gothmander power.
 
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SomeNobody

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Dec 18, 2020
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There's no solid logical reason, things like Tobs "interesting or unique" are entirely a weak justification.
Nothing is preventing an entire cavalcade of new Ultimate options being added to the game much like any other new technique or piece of equipment that gives players more options when creating their builds.
 

HK-47

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2017
184
231
There's no solid logical reason, things like Tobs "interesting or unique" are entirely a weak justification.
Nothing is preventing an entire cavalcade of new Ultimate options being added to the game much like any other new technique or piece of equipment that gives players more options when creating their builds.
Yeah, that line was a head scratcher, particularly given how the class Ults ended up being the exact opposite. Revive is probably the worst culprit, as that is just a Resurrection clone, a staple spell of any Healer/Cleric type class since AD&D came out in 1977.

Now, I’m not saying they need to throw a whole mess of Ults at us, but at the very least there should be a few options to pick from per class, since each class covers a number of different character archetypes.
 

firemoth

Member
Jan 11, 2023
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I essentially exclusively use banishment for the huge damage it does to constructs. Honestly, considering the way that the Ways Between have been described to us in-lore -that it is extremely dangerous to navigate without the proper equipment and training, that it is possible to be lost forever, etc- one would think that the huge damage it does would apply to any living thing that can be affected by such processes.

Using banishment should be akin to using a vortex grenade in 40k; your character is quite literally leveraging all their mystic might to tear the fabric between dimensions asunder and throw their opponent bodily into the fucking Warp. This should have some serious physical consequences on just about anything that you do this to.

Hell, if you want to keep the thematic that it instakills constructs and elementals unique, you could at least apply a DOT effect on anything that cannot survive in the environment of the Ways without a waystone, which should be most things and bosses based on what we've been told about the place. And if a DOT would be too OP, at least put the enemy in a form of stasis; don't let passive healing or other abilities proc while they're in the penalty box. Maybe even just a debuff when they come back to represent the fact that you temporarily threw them into another fucking dimension against their will.

Tl;Dr my ultimate as a black mage should feel like I'm dropping a magical tactical warhead, not like I'm putting a hard target on time out for a few turns to heal the party. Alissa should not come back from what is essentially outer space with more health than when she went in. Especially if I can only use the thing one time before I need to sleep again.
 

SomeNobody

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Dec 18, 2020
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This goes beyond just Ultimates specifically but would be interesting, if you didn't sell your soul away that when it began to reach its full 'potential' that Kas is hoping for it would end up resulting in new powers for the PC. Being an alternative to the benefits you get from those Faustian pacts.

There's near endless possibility in what that could entail of course, and how many powers the player would gain access to.
Like if the game wanted another chance to be anime then most obviously would be an At-Will stance power that boosts you in various ways while active as you draw upon the unleashed potential within your soul. Actually maybe the most wild way that could manifest is if it gave you only one buff and that was taking an extra action per round.

Likewise for an Ultimate Attack a logical concept would be where your Champion dramatically smacks the enemy which unleashes the full weight of your soul's power through the blow, mechanically being a mighty attack dealing the 'Raw' damage type and scaling off whatever your highest stat is since it represents the very essence of your being.
On top of damage would debuff the target (something like Terrified or Staggered status at the very least) but at the same time the exhausting effort involved, what with unleashing the very roar of your soul so climactically, would also leave the player weakened.

These are just some off the cuff thoughts, I'm sure others putting deeper thought into it could come up with more unusual designs going down that path.
 
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firemoth

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Likewise for an Ultimate Attack a logical concept would be where your Champion dramatically smacks the enemy which unleashes the full weight of your soul's power through the blow, mechanically being a mighty attack dealing the 'Raw' damage type and scaling off whatever your highest stat is since it represents the very essence of your being.

I too have read and enjoyed The Ballad of Edgardo.

I think the idea of getting something special once your soul "matures" would probably be best saved for an endgame event, especially if the creators are going for the anime vibes.

Gotta save your "MY DRILL IS THE DRILL THAT CREATES THE HEAVENS!" moment for that final confrontation when the op from the first season starts blasting