Enemy health increases just like damage. Right now at +2 the enemy with the lowest health is the goblin at 120 at the highest is the siege troll at 29000, just to sort of put things in perpective. Also, the range of some enemies go up- skeleton archer at a massive 3150. That now can shoot you at your outpost from their own, which I found out the hard way.... By dying.
Not on elf, fast attacking ranged staff is incredibly good at proccing multiple effects, not as much as melee weapons but still really good
Think I found a bug- Knight's Valour skill not working in new game +... Enemies hit for the same damage when my hero fell under 25% HP. Or maybe this is intentional.
The best thing would probably be to roll them a good economy rune, (+starting CP, +% unit discount, +cp, or preferably some combination thereof), and then just let units handle most of the combat. If you're a dwarf, focusing big on Catapults can let you grind early siege waves. If you're an elf, max Captains, get Wind Spirit, and let them do their thing. Humans would also probably want to go with a heavily Captain-based strategy. Provided you have a higher-level "main" hero to generate crystals and upgrade all of your units, you should be able to win plenty of waves with little-to-no hero input. And then once your hero reaches a decent level they can start contributing more and more.
What procs are you using with your staff elf? I have to say, a ranged-staff Druid is my #1 build (both in terms of my favorite to play and the one I've sunk the most hours into), and I've always found them really underwhelming at triggering procs, especially compared to a green dagger proc build. Wide Angle Attacks doesn't work with ranged staves, and I don't think Stun does, either. (I've tested it a ton, so if it works, it's such a short stun that I just don't notice, which is essentially the same.) Poison is worthless, and while Forceful Blows works fine, I rarely find it worthwhile; anything small enough to trigger Forceful blows is small enough to quickly kill outright, so Forceful Blows really just throws off my aim and slows me down. It makes hunting ranged skeletons a total nightmare. Vampirism works just fine, but the whole point of ranged attacks is avoiding damage in the first place; moreover, the Druid has some of the best defensive skills in the game in Treeman Retinue, which gives a wall of 12 unbreakable dryads between him and attackers, and Root, which gives him 5 hp/s in regen. I've never felt the need to further top off my HP with some vampirism. In terms of skills, Strangle Vines can be useful on trolls and mummies, but I find it annoying since you have to watch so carefully for it to trigger; its animation looks identical to Wild Growth and it takes a long time before it starts noticeably slowing. Spirit of the Bear is a very small DPS boost, (+6 average damage per attack if you max it, which is wildly disappointing for a tier-5 skill), and suffers the same drawback as Forceful Blows- the enemies weak enough to get tossed by it are too weak to bother tossing with it. Elemental Power is another terrible tier-5 skill; the Lightning triggers around you instead of around the enemy, the fire adds +15 damage a whopping 7.5% of the time (an average of just over 1 damage per swing), the poison is poison and therefore pointless, (though 10 poison per second at least makes it the most powerful poison in the game, I believe, which is like being the tallest second-grader). The Ice rune is useful, but we're talking a 7.5% chance to stun an enemy for 9 seconds, provided they're not immune to stuns or so weak that you could just kill them outright in another swing, anyway. Rending Blow can be useful with a low-damage, fast attack staff, but it kind of turns every enemy into those annoying berserkers that take 1 damage per hit and just die randomly. Besides, I can get my Druid dealing 150 damage per attack, in which case anything with under 500 HP dies in 2-3 swings already, anyway, (and NG+ is only going to make it more obsolete with time). Disarm can also be useful, but it also suffers from the fact that most of the things you want to hit with it are immune to it and most of the stuff that's vulnerable is already dead, anyway. It's worth getting eventually if you spec deep into Grandmaster, but it's a very late-game skill, IMO. Poison Tip is poison and therefore useless. Brambles is admittedly really good, but that requires going 40 points deep into the Ranger tree, which results in a lot of wasted points and is really only viable late-game again. Otherwise, the Elf's three best proc skills are Warlock Blast, which is centered on the elf and not the target and therefore pointless with ranged staves, and Wild Growth / Nature's Touch, which are both amazing... but which proc on kill and not on hit, which means DPS is more important than attack speed. My two favorite builds are a Staff-Elf build and a proc build, and I've tried to make them both work together, but I've never found it worthwhile. They just don't synergize like you'd hope they would. You're far better off, in my opinion, stacking a ton of +damage runes and just going for broke. My staff elf is hitting for 180 a hit with his +35% aspd staff, and he fires as fast as a repeater Dwarf, without the need for a cooldown. The huge DPS totals trigger Wild Growth and Natures Touch like mad, (again- amazing skills that don't get talked about enough), making him a monster at crowd control. And while he doesn't focus on the slowing / hindering / disarming procs, there's nothing those do that a Circle of Protection couldn't do better, anyway. (Which again isn't to say that ranged staffs. They don't. Or to say that procs suck. They don't. A Magi-blood / Gods Rays paladin with a mace can wreak havoc. A dual-dagger Warlock Blast Grandmaster can melt stuff. Even a rune dwarf can put out a lot of damage at once with a fast melee weapon. It's just hard to find a decent proc build that works with a ranged staff, because the best procs in the game are either centered on the character or triggered on kills, not hits.)
Elves Just a quick question. Which do you guys prefer: Grandmaster or Ranger? And also what weapons do you equip the grandmaster with? Two scythes? Thanks
Druid! That's my favorite, and I'd argue it's probably the most new-player-friendly class. Of the two, I'd go Grandmaster, but mostly because I hate aiming. Dual-scythes is great once you get deep enough in the Ranger tree to get your critical boost, because Scythes are one of the top crit weapons. Axes are solid for the same reason. Green daggers are fantastic with Warlock Blast once you get deep enough in the tree. That's all mid-to-late game, though. Early game, anything works, but swords are probably going to be the most plentiful. Clubs/Maces are an underrated option- the knock back isn't terrible, and if you push forward on the virtual stick you'll take a step forward between swings to keep pace. They're great for crowd control. Also, spears are fantastic. They have a longer range than other melee weapons, which is really nice. Really, use anything, just remember to ignore AP. The nice thing about elves is you can get all you need from skills, leaving you to prioritize damage / speed / crit. Also, you don't have to dual-wield. 2-handers with big damage can be swung two-handed quite successfully, and anything can be paired with a +dmg shield for a huge (and much-needed) HP boost. I tend to run a shield with anything that's not bow/gun or a pure proc build.
In the most recent update, some of the goblins look different- sort of glazed over and a weird shade of green. Saw this in arena and just checked and its in the bestiary too. Think it is throughout the rest or the game too.
Worth pointing out that scythes have a lower "base attack speed" than daggers and one-hand swords in general. Daggers attack at 125% the speed of 2 hand scythes, but scythes have more range.
Scythes are slower, but they'll still deal more damage per second because of how crazy criticals are on an elf. The Crit% is more important than the speed. If you want more of a crit/speed blend, 1-handed axes are probably the way to go. Daggers are pretty much the only option worth considering if you want to abuse Warlock Blast, though. Which is a very powerful build- better at clearing crowds, almost as good against big targets. The fact that the damage is magic would be a huge selling point if Cleave didn't already give ever Elf a 5-point solution to physical immunes, too.
Did you know this game just got huge endgame content of 5 game plus modes and a new higher tier of equips?
