Weapon Skill is a comparative value with the enemy that is attacking. In a battle between 2 units attacking eachother, the unit with the greater WS has a chance to block the attack. That chance is equal to the difference of the 2 values, but cannot exceed a 50% chance. I know some people like to know all the nitty gritty, but there is no way we could tell players every equation without having a math novel about - and most players are probably content knowing that the more weapon skill they have, the better chance they have to block melee attacks. Also, armor works against any attack period (including magic attacks) - however you'll note that many magic attacks come with 100 AP. Defense however, reduces damage taken by a % against non-magic attacks. Only specific units have magic based defensive capabilities (priest, paladin, healer, etc), with some being flat out immune, and some having a damage reduction. As far as the order of things, it is as you would expect in real life... first you'd try to dodge, if that fails you'd test against weapon skill to ward off an attack, if that fails the attack would test against armor, if that fails the attack will be reduced by any defense, etc. But yeah, that's how Elf plays out... he's a high risk high reward character. His HP are so low that if you get unlucky and get hit by a a single sniper shot or troll swipe you could be dead. That being said, a LOT of balance tweaks will be in the next two updates for units, enemies, skills and equipment - includes a lot of nerfs and a lot of buffs, as well as some changing behaviors of enemy units to make things a bit more interesting I'm not going to announce them because I don't want to do this whole theorycrafting argument thing before players have even had a chance to try things That and there are so many of them now I can't remember them. Re: Counter Spell and Magic Defense, its the same as defense only the opposite as it works only against magic attacks, ie it gives a ~10% damage reduction. It is a bit underwhelming tbh, which is why its been buffed for the next update (after this one thats in the queue). Re: Knights stuff... parry is just as it says, an extra chance to block melee attacks, meaning its a separate chance, different from weapon skill, dodge, etc. Into the Fray is if you have a shield equipped and are running, you will automatically block attacks. I guess I could see how someone could misread that. And no, Revenge does not block damage.
I can say that, pre-patch, Fortify 4+ just means your walls can never die if you have a repairman or a few points in Tinker, and as that's the only way to lose a level dwarves simply could not lose from very early on. It does sound like very high level elves have a lot of impressive passives to stack, and as the next patch has been explained so far heroes who specialize in murdering enemies with passives and/or instant use abilities should survive the first patch essentially unscathed while characters who buffed allies/walls with duration abilities will be heavily weakened. However, there's apparently a lot unexplained, so who knows. I do hope we get free respecs for every character with each patch. If you built around certain choices and what those choices mean gets changed, it would be nice to be able to alter those choices without grinding extensively.
Thanks for reply! Is weapon skill a hidden attribute for monsters then? It doesn't seem to be in the beastiary. Or do monsters have default WS of 0? Also, does that mean weapon skill blocks "magical" melee attacks too then (ie ghost)? I do think that quite a few people would like to know how every attribute helps them. Common sense would dictate more HP > less HP, more dodge > less dodge, but that isn't so cut and dry when it comes to comparing across attributes. It is more of a trade off thing as I'm sure every gamer has encountered, and it's what truly makes character customization a beautiful thing. Some value raw HP, and some value armor. One last clarification: the order is dodge -> weapon skill -> defense, that's to say there are 4 attributes when it comes to blocking damage. So does that mean parry which gives 25 chance to block = +25 armor? And battlefield awareness is basically +45 armor when the attacker is melee and from behind? Basically, everything is essentially +flat armor rather than a separate calculation? And yeah, now that you mention it, it really only takes 1-2 hits to down an elf, so there's that. I also assume the game isn't revolved around lvl 99 balance, because elves do have a tough time when it comes to earlier levels where they neither dodge a lot of attacks, nor hit all that hard. Any plans of fixing the lobbing arrows over walls in single player abuse? I don't imagine barrage one-shotting the fel crystal being a part of the plan. Wave 29 shouldn't take 3 seconds... EDIT: I finally got a multiplayer match. I will say my shit gets rekt since time slow doesn't work on enemy heroes, nor am I really dodging/blocking anything at all. Again, I probably just have a biased view. I'm sure every class rekts AI at lvl 99 Anyone have human/dwarf leveling tips?
In this first update you won't be able to shoot over walls until at least one wall is down. Other imbals like Barrage vs buildings are fixed in the 2nd update (we had to rush this 1st update out to make sure we fixed the crashing first and foremost). Most of the balance changes will actually be in the 2nd update. We actually hope to submit that one shortly after the 1st is approved, and will hopefully also include in-game video recording as well (via Kamcord). Should be really neat to be able to record/watch battles to check out interesting strategies, how to beat certain levels, etc. Will be really easy to discuss multiplayer strategies as well (and help fix up imbalances) with video evidence - as it is right now since the game was just released its difficult to discern the difference between between imbalance and skill. And yeah... people were just complaining about Elf being OPed in versus a few pages back >_< And like we were just talking about, thats the catch 22 with elf... yeah he's got a ton of extra saves, but they're random, so if you get some unlucky rolls he'll be dead in a heart-beat. Re: order of things, no, there can be unlimited separate "saves" from damage. The parry isn't added to any current stat, its a separate save (where you'd expect it to be, after trying to dodge). Same with Battlefield Awareness, etc. Anything that is added to an existing stat says so (Nimble, for ex - or whichever elf skill increases Dodge).
Yeah, I definitely haven't really considered things from a support perspective. Elves have very little skills that buff summoned units. Rangers can buff archers, but that's pretty much it. The druid class is downright just bad, gimmicky at best.
To level a human: - level 3 juggernaut - level 10 Knightly Training - level 5 swordmaster - level 10 mana And get the highest damage sword you'll find. Then you just activate juggernaut and go for the wall in wave 29. You're invulnerable the entire time and you'll win a siege in about 50 seconds every time. Farming crystals is just as easy. Once you reach those levels in the skills I mentioned above you just keep surrendering in the main wave and just keep re-conquering a territory once it gets taken. Don't even bother defending an outpost. The more I play this game the more I'm disappointed in the beta testers The patch will fix this though, so it's up to you if you want to misuse this game design flaw and boost your crystals and hero levels or not. I finally got into a multiplayer match as well. It was laggy, but fun as hell. The guy spammed footmen at the start and went alone for my wall while I was just distracting his units, generating command points and researching Warrior Path. After he tore the wall down I just spawned about 36 Elf Warriors who killed him in a about a second. It's funny because he thought he's gonna win and even boasted about it.
Have you used a high level Druid or are you just theorycrafting? Considering Druid has Bark Armor, Circle of Protection, Nature Shield, Wind Spirit and Medicinal Herbs... which actually are all really solid buffing abilities. Re: the 2 main support classes, paladin and druid, paladin will actually be a balanced class in this next update (with no more shield chaining). Everything else stays the same, and does a great job at doing what he is supposed to be doing. The only ability that is getting nerfed (due to the mana change) for Druid is Bark Armor, which currently when maxed out is nearly as powerful as shield chaining (moreso in some instances bc it affects the Druid himself as well). Regardless, in the 2nd update there are more balance changes coming such as Dryads and Treeman using 0 pop cap, but having a hard limit (giving them a more defined "filler" role), sprit magic increasing, staff prowess giving a bigger buff, etc.
It's in practice, albeit I probably haven't spent as much time on it as I would've liked. I'm using iCloud saves to "experiment" with builds atm, 99 crystals is quite a lot :/ I have a couple value points in the regen, because you regen at full speed during "matrix time" (I think that's what I'll call it now), so 5 hp/s is essentially 25 hp/s in monster time. Pretty good for a low hp character. I'm definitely spending more time on this game than I care to admit. I have my master's defense in 2 weeks, I really need to finish my thesis and prepare for my presentation. Quite frankly machine learning and artificial neural networks isn't as interesting as min-maxing a build I would like to see the tier 5 skills rebalanced though. Some of them are pretty bad, considering you need 35 points in a tree just to unlock it. Rending blow for example, 10% chance to kill an enemy under 25% HP whose maximum HP is under 300. Some skills are also a bit counter-intuitive for a character to get. Also, people have been mentioning that certain skills don't work with bows. What about skills that don't work with melee weapons? Usually bow exclusive skills have the word "bow" in it, but there are exceptions such as Poison Tip, whose tooltip reads "15% chance to poison hit enemies". No mention of bows, but does not work with swords.
Yeah I have no issues with crystals. Playing the wave 29 over and over generates crystals from your other lands. Even still, I've dropped about $50 in this game because why not. I have a lot of respect for a four person team cranking out something of this quality when I'm struggling with mere numbers. I will admit to abusing iCloud saves to test builds though, not knowing how a skill scales makes it pretty difficult to decide on a skill's value.
Ease off us beta testers... We caught a lot of things that were fixed for release, including a lot of bugs and crashes. Some of these things may have prevented us from catching the issues and exploits you are seeing in release. I am sure most of us (as well as the developers) focused on catching game Breaking issues, not finding shortcuts to level heroes and gather crystals.
Sounds like some great changes coming down the pipeline! I really like the dryad/treeman change. I think Druids just don't bring enough to the table. They make the army more survivable but I can't think of a scenario where that's important. Usually you need more damage to keep up with the increasing waves of enemies, and more than enough command points to replenish lost troops. We'll see though. I guess Druid dual-classed could be a viable survival build. The extra survivability mixed with dps from the other trees could be pretty great. By itself it's utterly worthless though, at least for the first 30 maps. You need more damage not more survivability for first 30. Edit: trying to build enough infrastructure to prevent exploiting in a game this size is virtually impossible. Especially with iCloud saving. It's a trade off... They either severely limit functionality for everyone or they accept some people will cheat and the small percentage of multiplayer vs types will have to cheat as well to be competitive. This game is single-player first and foremost though, so I'm glad they're focused on that.
Its true, the beta testers were great, and we weren't really focusing on super high level hero imbalances Tbh the beta was more for bugs, general impressions, and campaign balance. With 180 skills in this game and a TON of different combinations, we knew going into release balance would be an ongoing thing - it always is in complex games like this. Thats not really true... you need survivability in order to get command points and give you time to actually dish out damage. Early game dryads are a great distraction while you save up command points.
At the moment I can only complete 1 out of about 3 or 4 missions as it crashes every time. I really hope this is fixed in the upcoming update cos it is fun to play.
Best thing about the summoned dryads is they are free, which opens up more powerful summons significantly earlier. It could also mean early 4-banners.
1.What is the difference between the races? 2.What is the Arm stat? 3.What is the best weapon type? 4.Is melee or ranged better? 5.Should i save my crystals for anything that is only available late game? 6.Does the blacksmith quality go up with levels?
I have one point for that exact reason: cannon fodder. In fact, I'll go so as far to say it's the best 1 point skill in the game (however I do have it at level 5...) 1. Look at the skill trees. 2. % chance to block 3. The equipment is entirely RNG. The best type of weapon is the type of your best weapon. However, I will say that at least for melee weapons, the game tends to favor swords over other stuff. 4. Raw dps - melee However, support classes might favor ranged weapons if your hero can't handle going toe-to-toe and taking hits. Bow rangers with the barrage skill do insane amounts of damage. 5. I wouldn't save crystals. You collect crystals much faster the further you progress into the game. 6. First thing I did when I bought the game was drop $20 into crystals and the legendary armor I've gotten from that is still the best one I've got (51% mobility, 109 hp, 20% vampirism), so I'd say no.
Anyone has a good Druid build ? I wanna try him out but keep dying since his damage is so pitiful early game, the dryads although free are too weak. Should I go for shield build with melee weapon or double staff build ? Thanks Also why does it takes so long for the update to get approved ? Does Apple only allow update on Monday ?
Dryad isn't very good early game, nor is he very good lategame at the moment. At best he's a secondary class to either ranger or gm.
1.What is the best bow you have gotten? 2.Why nearly every time i attack in melee the enemy blocks it even if they are stunned? 3.What is the AP stat? 4.Is a magic or physical bow better considering there are enemies that are completely immune to magic damage but nearly every enemy has some armor
