Great picture! If I’ve said anything worth quoting, feel free to steal it. I’m not too worried about attribution on a gaming forum. Question: do inventory slots and action points cap? If so, at what numbers? (I have a 7AP, 8 slot inventory character and wondering how much higher it will go.)
Some additional thoughts on the mechanics that produce the OP classes. I’d say that there are four mechanics that are most important in this game. In order of importance I’d rank them as: 1. Ability to get on target 2. Class with access to a good 2AP weapon to benefit from weapon master. Since it doesn’t scale, 2AP weapons benefit most, effectively doubling in DPS. 3. AP refill skill 4. Stat gain mechanics Ogre is obviously king of this game. It starts with his ability to get on target. This is partly his charge, and partly that Siegebreaker is a 2 reach weapon which allows the Ogre to just stand in place and smash everything nearby. Siegebreaker is just insanely OP for a 2AP weapon. Base damage is off the charts. Adding reach usually is offset by some other weapon nerf, but not in this case. The only downside is that it doesn’t ignore resist, but crush resist seems so rare that the downside is negligible. Adding AP refill to the Ogre’s kit allows him to sustain. Ogre doesn’t have a great stat conversion machanic, but is an ideal class for focus, boosting both str and hit. Wardancer is the next most OP class. Leap is a more versatile move skill than charge, but wardancer’s best weapons don’t have reach, forcing him to waste AP on movement after immediate targets are dead. (Edit: I do think he has a class specific spear available that I don’t have and can’t comment on.). Unlike the Ogre, WD doesn’t have an AP refill aside from limited use options like the amulet. WD does have a good 2AP endgame weapon in spirit sword which ignores resist, but has less than half the base damage of Siegebreaker and no reach. The ability of WD to produce a speed to strength build is strong and increases his DPS significantly above base damage, but isn’t offset by running out of AP faster than Ogre. At this point we’re looking at ranged classes. Right now I’d rate glade guard and dark elf on the same tier, and high elf a little below. Glade guard doesn’t have a great 2AP endgame weapon. I wanted to like the twilight bow, but it appears to me that the damage doubling effect only occurs on the second shot of each turn. Lacking the doubling effect, DPS seems inferior to Asrai longbow, a base 3AP AE. I rate Adrai higher as it has insane range, allowing more time on target than twilight bow. Talon of Dawn (4AP base) is a good supplementary single target weapon similarly with crazy range, but ignoring resist for bosses or pierce resist situations. (Although now we’re wasting another inventory slot). Glade guard also has a good speed to strength option, increasing dps further. Dark Elf makes this list for staff of decimation, a base 2AP staff with long range and a really high crit value. The only downside is that it’s pierce only. DPS can potentially be increased further with the int to strength robes if you’re comfortable with the HP drain. Focus charm is another good choice, particularly if spamming the staff. She has a couple other ranged skills that aren’t terrible and can supplement the staff when facing damage resist, but for me the staff is what I want to spam at endgame. High elf has a potential option here in soul quench, but lacking the crit value of dark elf’s staff of decimation. This is slightly offset by it being crush, which I consider a better damage type for the base game than pierce. I was under the impression that she had int to str robes available, but now as I’m looking through my inventory I don’t see them. Possible I’m wrong. It’s possible I still haven’t seen some of the endgame options. Anyone see any glaring holes?
@Leptomeninges : Both AP and Inv.Slots cap at 8. Re Riposte: For the Heavies, I gave my Bretknight 2 Ripostes. For fun, I tried moving him into groups of monsters and see what happens: Pretty good results so far, he strikes back at least 50% of the time. I *think* it checks on every enemy swing, and not only per full attack. Have to see how it turns out against hard-hitting stuff like Minotaurs or Trolls; especially because I don't use Shields this time, leaving my guys a lot more open to damage. Feedback on your excellent analysis later tonight, need to bring our kid to bed first Only this for now: Yeah, you didn't see quite some stuff yet...
That actually makes me happy as it means there's more content out there that I still haven't seen. Was worrying that I was getting near the end of what was available.
Re @Leptomeninges' excellent endgame analysis: First, you are very much spot on. And did a fantastic write-up. If you have no objections, I'll add a link to your post to the Guide thread - full credits given of course. Now, let the ramblings commence ... wait, that came out wrong. I mean please find my own invaluable input below. Yeah, that's it Gladeguard I'll start with the Gladeguard 'cause that'll be the shortest and easiest part. As Lepto points out, a lot of stuff throughout the whole game is pierce-resistant, limiting the GG's usability. Which is why I never used her past early game. Sidenote: Highelf Mage suffers from the same issues. Twilight Bow has the problem of being Piercing. That aside, note that with Weaponmaster (-1AP/attack) and 8AP you can easily get 10+ attacks in. I wonder if the double-damage stacks... The res-ignoring Talon of Dawn isn't too bad early on, but severely hampered by having only on strike per attack. This gets even worse once enemies' start deflecting like it's going out of style, see: Skaven. Also, I vaguely remember that there is an AoE Bow available, but no details if it's any good. From what Pitta commented somewhere in this thread, you can even turn her into a viable melee attacker. Darkelf Sorceress You are doing it wrong(TM) For endgame/OP, Darkelf isn't measured by raw damage output, but by the gamebreaking Chillwind - and Chillblade to a lesser degree. Loaded up with several Chillwinds and the Blade for backup, you can freeze 3x3 monster groups left and right, rendering them completely helpless. And so far nothing is immune to it. This puts her straight into Tier-1 together with the Ogre and Wardancer. With that kit, you can group her with pretty much anything and come out on top. Highelf Mage As mentioned above, the Mage also suffers from being focused on Piercing damage. Apotheosis' healing makes her a valuable support hero, though. Note that Soulquench does crit, and quite frequently too. 4 Mages with Soulquench and kit supporting it make for some formidable longrange firepower, which offsets their squishiness. And there is an Int-not-Str Robe for her. For fun, there's even a resistance-ignorning melee Blade. Plus, they have a bunch of great damage-reducing equipment available. But I prefer to use my slots for more damage output and keep them as glasscannons Oh, and there's the Book of Hoeth for *unlimited* AP refresh... You can even viably kit them out for pure melee: with Staves they murder even Minotaurs without breaking a sweat. Their downside is that you need a lot of specific - and rare & expensive - equipment to make them shine, especially if you want to go all melee. Ogre and Wardancer For the two damage monsters, I'll just point you to my guide (see sig) to save me a metric f*ckton of writing My "Macross Melee Massacre" party choice is 2 Ogres & 2 Wardancers for a good reason... For the Ogre I'd like to add that he doesn't need a stat-conversion mechanic, he's smashing everything to bits easily enough already. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you get 9 Int increases at levelup in a row In a similar vein, he doesn't need res-ignore as he can get all 3 damage types and has enough free slots to pack that many weapons. As extra bonus, he even has a HP-regenerating armour. Wardancer doesn't need an AP refresh mechanic, he can waltz through whole rooms almost as well as the Ogre. On top of the Amulet, you can use the Acorn of Ages for AP refresh when needed. Even better, it's almost certain you can gear him up for an infinite loop, see here: https://toucharcade.com/community/threads/warhammer-quest-2-by-perchang.312894/page-39#post-4085407 Oh, and yes: he has a class-specific Spear, which is an excellent weapon to boot. And... *drumroll* ...he even has a res-ignore weapon available, albeit super-rare in my experience. Think that pretty much covers it for now. If you want to me to expand or clarify anything, just holler.
As a sidenote, I'll start restructuring and expanding my guide thread. But given my current superbusy schedule, it'll take me weeks at least. With that out of the way, I'd like to introduce you to Heavy Weapons Platoon's Second Squad, the Doublesquishers. Ranged and Melee, as you can see: And an awesome color effect, courtesy of the Witch Hunter. Note the reddish glow on the Bretknight's helmet decoration. Not to mention that Mr.Hunter looks 200% more badass when he's radiating righteous fury.
Earlier in the game I used chillwind, but at this point I feel like it slows me down. In fairness I'm still on mission 9 of the first campaign (I'm mostly just farming sidequests) and haven't engaged any of the other acts beyond the first mission or two to see if the difficulty ramped up. (So far my impression of the other acts is that the difficulty is the same. Is that correct?) The problem I have with Chillwind, is that usually I can clear rooms within a turn or two, and having a big patch on the floor which freezes my own characters becomes more hindrance than help. Perhaps with late missions the crowd control is more important? Or maybe in a slower killing group? Right now I'd rather nuke and kill now than freeze and kill later. I hadn't thought about carrying multiple copies to get around the cooldown. In a slow killing group I can see that being a big deal. I do think dark elf is high tier for her single target ranged dps and regardless of her crowd control, reinforcing the general idea that she's quite good regardless of the specific build used. Gladeguard's Twilight Bow double damage doesn't stack. As far as I can tell, it actually only appears once each turn, on your second attack with the bow. At that point it doesn't even stay doubled, but goes back to its base attack and doesn't double again that turn regardless of how much you spam it. (This was a huge bummer for me to see.) Asrai is the AE bow, and it's quite good in my opinion. It's also pierce which is unfortunate, but the range is so big you can usually find a low resist group of monsters to use it on advantageously. Combining Asrai with the ignore resist Talon of Dawn makes for a pretty decent endgame package. (Assuming I've actually seen endgame difficulty.) Maybe I need to experiment more with the high elf. My impression was that soulquench damage was quite a bit lower than the staff of destruction, but perhaps I haven't yet done enough of a comparison to judge. The staff is specifically flagged as high crit rate which soul quench is not, so I'm a little skeptical it's equivalent save for the possibility of crush being a more favorable damage type. And when the staff crits, the numbers are *big*. I don't know what kind of crit modifiers this game uses, but I'm suspicious that the staff's bonus damage is larger than a normal crit. I do have the book of hoeth, but the five turn cooldown isn't great. I don't think I've seen the wardancer's acorn yet. And the only endgame res-ignore weapon I've seen so far for the wardancer was the spirit sword I discussed. I think I'd rather not have details on any other weapon though, and let it be a surprise if I stumble onto it.
Staff of destruction definitely has a higher crit rate than soul quench. But I can’t tell if the multiplier is any different. It may not be. But the base damage and crit rates are so different, that the staff drastically outperforms soulquench. Against the Minotaurs on this level with equally small resist bars to pierce and crush (and no special damage buffs on the heroes), soulquench ticks normally between 2 and 6 and crits at 12. It took me several turns of soulquench spam to produce a crit. And unfortunately for determining a multiplier, both crits that I ultimately managed to produce were exactly 12. (The soulquench shot caught the numbers a little funny. The 2 is a normal tick and the 12 above it is a crit.) Staff of destruction crits regularly against these minotaurs, and seemingly at higher rates than the advertised 50%. (I wonder if there is a base crit rate that 50% is added to). It ticks normally at 12-18 and crits between 56 and 78. (It’s hard to catch the text crawl though. I only caught the 68 crit below.) Testing the range boxes side by side, staff’s is three squares larger than soul quench (range of 12 compared with 9) which I personally think is also a big deal.
Thanks a lot for the comparison between Destruction Staff and Soulquench! Can you post the Destruction Staff's stats? I just checked my notes and never seem to have gotten it. Personally, I really like Soulquench because it's Crushing damage, and pretty good against both chaff and tougher monsters. And 3 strikes per attack isn't too shabby either. Crit damage multiplier is x4 if I remember right. Too bad that the Twilight Bow doesn't stack, sounds rather underwhelming. Dawn Talon's huge downside is that it's only a single strike per attack, no fun to use against high-deflect enemies. The Acorn of Ages can be used by the Wardancer and Gladeguard, does the same as the Amulet of Swiftness. Also yes, the res-ignore Sword for the Wardancer is the Spirit Sword. Missed that line in your post, sorry. No other res-ignore weapon for him as far as I know. You're right about the Darkelf's Freezing slowing you down, and about her damage potential. I always treated Freezing as a convenience for lazy playing Makes for relaxed kills when you can just repeatedly freeze the 3 Minotaurs or 5 Stonetrolls in front of you and take them out at your leisure. And if you only need a single target frozen, that's what the Chillblade is for. Difficulty does ramp up a bit, especially against the Skaven in Act 2. Act 3 I found slightly more difficult than Act 1, but not overly so. Mostly because you face more high-HP monsters and enemies are more mixed in their resistances - just bringing Crushing along to take care of everything slowed things down considerably.
Off the back of all this informative chatter I have redownloaded the game and I am half way through Act 1 and thoroughly enjoying it again. Thank you
Heavy Weapons Platoon - Impressions so far That was a great decision to start a playthrough with that theme. Having lots of fun, it's challenging, and I have to get creative The general rules I use are: One of each class. Highelf Mage are the exceptions with two of them, as they are the only classes with 2 heroes with highest statcount. Still have to get the second Greatsword, though. Always bring the 4 lowest level heroes into a dungeon. This alone makes for really varied parties, and is much more interesting than e.g. the "instakill button" with a bunch of Ogres or Knuckleduster Captains. Heavy Weapons only: The higher AP cost and less attacks, the better. I allowed a handful of exceptions, like the Witchhunters Duelling Pistols: While they only use 2AP, I can only fire them once per turn. Most of my folks use 4 & 5 AP weapons. Also, I'm making a few exceptions for signature/unique weapons like the Helsturm Mace. No Shields: Naturally, this doesn't allow for the use of Shields. 0AP Skills are allowed. Most of those have several turns cooldowns, e.g. the Warpriest's Prayer to Sigmar that does ranged damage. Here's an example of the more creative stuff I had to come up with: On Middenland Stage 5 Monsterhunt, I gave my lvl4 damage Mage Monsterhunter and a second Speedring to better deal with the Minotaurs. And made my second lvl4 Mage into a support char, because I didn't have a Heavy Weapon for her. My lvl4 Witchhunter got a Speedring as well, replacing his Potion. Shouldn't be a risk because so far I needed far less healing than expected. Hand of Glory unfortunately has a bad bug, so I swapped it out for Scroll of Protection. And Gem of Sunfire can only target user, too bad. But still an easy win, went much better than expected. Note here that before this playthrough, I never used Monsterhunter because I was doing damage out the wazoo anyways Nor did I ever use a dedicated Support hero for regular dungeons. I only kitted out a Warpriest for buffing a few times, when I went killfeeding to levelup lower level heroes. What I enjoy the most is that I really have to think about how to best use those very mixed parties. For example in one dungeon I had a lot of Piercing damage which was rather useless against the monsters in there. Luckily, my Gladeguard also carried the Talon of Dawn which ignores resistances and sets stuff on fire. Tactical flaming Also, positioning suddenly matters a lot more, example: "So, if I move the Witchhunter into that corner, they cannot reach him and he has a free line of fire next round. But, I cannot move the Bloodknight here to attack because it's not a guaranteed kill and he'd be exposed. So I have an enemy that is in attack range and thus dangerous. But if I shoot him with the Talon that should just be enough damage... crap, missed. Okay, now the Knight goes here to soak up the attacks and hopefully Riposte his opponent to death. End Turn, and yay Riposte worked. So, now we do this..."
And I just saw WHQ2 has #1 spot on paid RPGs and #10 on paid Strategy games in the Dutch Appstore. Yes, we are a tiny country with maybe less people than there's cattle in Texas but still, that was a nice surprise. Well deserved, Perchang!
Blade Dancers Loecs blessing (tattoo with speed to str) doesn’t work. I build a speedbuild with Acrolo and he still hits for low damage and it is not shown in his stats that star is set to speed. He is a cool, fun and very strong class however. Oger is obviously OP. I don’t play him much anymore because he makes things to easy and the game is already not really challenging (ambushes brought me back to play the game). He has insane HP, mobility, ap regen, crushing damage that ignores shields and has a range of 2 and selfheal. It is just to good. I also regard the Glade Guard as very strong. I play him high speed as well and with 1 ap shots and 8 ap and many deathblows he clears some rooms with missing pierce resist on his own. He also takes down a chaos warrior in melee with a short sword with ease. I am trying out the ignore res sword. But his damage is quite low with it and he never cries. Not sure about it.
Just a quick note that I won Middenland with the Heavy Weapons Platoon. Longer post coming up soon. Everyone is level 6 or 7, and except for some close calls overall it was easier than expected. Way more planning and creative thinking needed than with an optimised party, but that was a pleasant change of pace. And very Gold-intensive. Definitely not the thing for stress- and grind-free playing. Onwards to Reikland and see how I fare against Skaven. UPDATE: Skaven have to wait a bit, quite a few sidequests with good rewards I want to complete in Middenland first.
Sorry, got diverted a bit. Edit: I would just add that I really see the pierce resist problem as being a mid-game problem. By the time you reach endgame I see pierce and slash as being roughly equivalent with crush better than both. Admittedly my progress still isn’t complete having spent most of my time completing and farming side quests in the first act, and having started a new game with classes I don’t favor in an expansion act. Edit2: bummer about the tattoo not working. I hadn’t stopped to consider that it might be bugged, but with hindsight it makes sense considering the numbers I was seeing.
I finally got my favorite (read: best stat total ) Ogre to join the Heavy Weapons Squad. So, here's what my alternative Ogre kit looks like for now. I have 3 Relentless stocked for him, just need more slots to actually use them.
@Lepto I took the tattoo off for a whole run an added it again for another run. It now works!!! Paired with the no res sword he‘s a beast now. So many deathblows and decent damage. Only problem is the low crit compared to a short sword. Moondancer has better range and crit but it is pierce... so I exchanged it for focus. To not miss a hit anymore. Staff of Dec is far superior. I only keep crush for immun ones in the bar.
What do you guys see as a sweetspot for dex (hit chance)? I try to get up to 5 dex. So my chars rarely miss their target anymore. I never lvl speed. Because 1 inventory sloot equals 3 speed with ring of speed.
I never paid much attention to Dex. Even the starting 3 or 4 most Heroes have is enough to hit frequently enough that the misses are nothing to worry about. Even with my Heavy-Weapons Squad - where each miss seriously lowers your damage output due to their low number of attacks - I didn't have any problems. Now, Speed on the other hand you can never have enough Don't forget that you actually need to find those Speedrings and whatnot first. And 7+ Speed means Deathblow triggers very often, and with really high repeat rate too. With 7+ I have regularly seen 5+ Deathblows; and with 10 Speed 10-15 in a row - enough to clear a room of anything you can shoot at with a ranged weapon. Plus, if you want to super-optimise, e.g. having 7 Speed instead of 6 gives you a better boost with a Speedring - 10 Speed instead of 9. From my experience, 5 Speed is where Deathblows start occuring often enough that you can take them into your tactics - instead of treating them as a nice bonus only.
