Offense Skill Tree Discussion

[Sky]

Debilitate Skill costs 4ap independent of weapon type. Looks a bit strange when you can use it twice with a 2h while you can attack only once. If we add to this the always 1 hex range again independent of weapon, perhps there is sense in making this skill purely passive with a chance to trigger on attack. This way it will be absolutely independent of weapon properties and easier balanced by ajusting the trigger %.

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[madmansam]

I guess I’ll jump in with my take on the offense tree as my play style has just solidified.

I like my party to have a line of sturdy tanks that use shieldwalls and high melee defense to tie up enemies, while they break enemy shields. They’re supported by a couple of crossbow using archers, whose job is to try to get a kill on weak enemies to get killing frenzy up ASAP, then their job is to shoot the most heavily armoured enemies to strip away their armour. A couple dudes with bill hooks also support the front line, trying to finish what the crossbowmen have started or stripping armour from enemies for the front line soldiers to get an opportunistic kill. Also a couple of guys with great swords to help thin out herds with area of effect attacks.

Tier 1
Sundering Strikes – A good perk for the heavy hitters. It doesn’t add much extra damage to one handed weapons, but it starts to add up for billhooks, greatswords, etc especially when combined with other damage increases. I think when I first started I vastly overvalued this perk and got it on all the brothers. I still will take it on almost every one because there’s not much competition at tier 1 for perks and it’s always helpful.

Crusher – I started out disliking this perk, but I’ve come to appreciate it much more for my front line troops, especially once I got fighting axes all around. Shieldwalls, especially undead shieldwalls that don’t suffer from fatigue, are a massive pain in the ass and Crusher helps break the stalemate quickly while staying safe. You can strip a shield and then shieldwall yourself, and let a fellow brother attack. I don’t like breaking shields with the two hand axes as anything that needs an axe that big to break can and will hit you back very hard.

Crusher benefits hatchets by letting you break a young orc’s feral shield (6 hp) in two blows instead of three, or a wooden shield (8 hp) in three blows instead of four, a heater shield (12 hp) in 4 blows instead of 6. That’s terrible, don’t bother with hatchets. A hand axe with Crusher can break a feral shield in a single blow, great for dealing with young orcs, still takes two for wooden shields, but does help with heaters which only take 2 instead of 3. A fighting axe without Crusher can break a Feral shield in one blow, a wooden in two, a heater in two, a kite shield in 3, an orc warrior’s metal shield (25 hp) in six(!) blows. With Crusher a fighting axe can break feral and wooden shields in one hit, heater and kite shields in two, and metal shields in 3 hits.

It’s easy to get three brothers with fighting axes and Crusher together to strip an orc warrior of his shield in one turn, while staying in shieldwall, and let your billhooks or archers deal with him, or kill them next turn. It also lets you break most bandits and skeletons shields in one hit, saving a lot of time and precious fatigue.

Bloody Harvest – a must have for anyone planning on picking up a great sword or great axe.

Executioner – Not great. I tend to pick it on the front line guys, as they use one handed weapons with relatively little damage and it helps them finish off wounded enemies.

Push the Advantage – I started out really liking this perk and using winged maces on everyone, but then I noticed I was running out of fatigue incredibly often going for stuns. Using a winged mace, you have anywhere between 40-70% to hit in the first place, and then another 75% chance to get a stun, and then you have to have a follow up attack ready from someone with Push the Advantage before the enemy’s next turn to benefit from it. It’s a lot of fatigue to risk, and enemies can be immune to stuns, but the reward is huge. I can’t see myself picking this ever again.

Fast adaptation – This isn’t even a choice, it’s mandatory.

Tier 2
Beserk – A must have perk. This is so useful for being able to reposition after getting a kill, especially with two handed weapons where you can only take a single step if you want to attack in a turn. You get a kill and can shift to where you’re needed for next turn. It’s also great for extra attacks, especially for two handed users. I haven’t been taking this on archers but now I’m sorely tempted.

Head Hunter – I hate this perk so much. You either want to be hitting the head every time or hitting the body every time, you don’t want to alternate. Nothing is worse than breaking someone’s body armour, taking them down to a few hp, and then the final attack hits their head armour and doesn’t penetrate. If it was just a flat increase on the chance to get a headshot, I might take it, especially for archers, but right now I avoid Head Hunter.

Full Force – A nice perk for great sword users who should be in the heaviest armour, or for billhook dudes because why not. I tend to take this because there’s not much else going on for them at tier 2.

Debilitate – A solid perk that I’m sad I ignored for so long. I want to have this on a couple of front line guys to make taking down heavily armoured enemies easier.

Bullseye – Amazing for archers. An absolute must have for the dedicated archer.

Close Combat Archer – This perk is amazing, especially if you take Killing Frenzy, Sundering Strikes and use a crossbow. If the range was 3 tiles it’d be over powered as all hell but 2 tiles is still risky against orcs. If you can get a kill with the crossbowman, and then get within 2 tiles of an orc warrior or warboss, they can kiss their armour goodbye.

Tier 3
Killing Frenzy – Amazing perk, I love having it on my support guys for sustained heavy damage.

Perfect Focus – I haven’t used this yet but there have been plenty of times when I wished I’ve had it. I can see this being very useful for 2 handers, archers and crossbowmen.

Wooooooow that took a long time.

[Sky]

A few more thoughs.

A flail with bloody harvest and fast adaptation is incredebly functional. Especially when you wield it without a shield. Tho you still need to survive being surrounded to use its full potential.

Perfect focus is extremely useful for any melee with a ton of stamina, you can single handedly annihilate anyone in your reach.

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[madmansam]

It turns out Perfect Focus is garbage for crossbowmen. The +40 fatigue when you use Perfect Focus just doesn’t allow for much shooting and reloading.

edit:

As an aside, I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where I’ve thought using the flail’s AOE attack would be a good idea. I like to focus on enemies, so the idea of randomly hitting one of three is just weird.

[Sky]

It is not one of three, it is UP to three targets ;)

Try the perfect focus with an archer instead, should work since you do not need to reload the bow. Also incredibly good if enemy closes in to your archer, you switch to melee weapon and annihilate the enemy in one turn.

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[madmansam]

Whaaaaaaaaaat? The tool tip for the flail’s AOE attack specifically says it will hit one of the three targets, and the strike stops at the first one it hits!

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[GOD]

I thought the same thing as madmansam. Can you confirm that it can hit more than one, Sky? Up to three would make a for big difference in how I use it.

[Sky]

Will do when back to “play time” but I do belive it did hit more opponents when last played.

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[Sky]

My mistake sorry. Either I was very unlucky or it hits only one target. The bonus of +15% tohit of harvest still applies to the lash and seems to stack with adaptation do need more teting on that.

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[madmansam]

Dang, I was really excited for the flail’s special attack to be useful. That they ignore shields is still very nice though. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen fast adaptation apply to the greatsword’s AOE attack. I suspect it only counts for the first hit.

It does make me wonder if you use an AOE attack and it misses the first target, does that trigger for Fast Adaptation?

[Holy.Death]

Special attack is useful. It increases your chances of hitting one of three targets (or less, if need be).

[Sky]

Here are the two skills. Unfortunately it does not write the tohit chances.
For lower atack units flail is the equalizer. In both ignoring shield def and increased tohit is helpful.

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[ManaSeed]

[Game version 0.4.0.44]
I’ll skip points that were mentioned here.

Push the Advantage ==> This perk increases chance to hit head. As we have a choice to might hit either head or body, I’ve been thinking a good way to make good use of headshot. You know, like…… Boom! Head~shot! The best idea I can think is using Winged Mace to stun an enemy, then use Scramasax’s skill Puncture + Killer on the run background(+10% chance to hit head) to bypass armor and headshot him. This should work best against enemy with high armor.

But even against Orc Warrior (enemy with high armor), you can kill him with less fatigue cost with other weapons and other tier 1 offense perk. (the result is based on mere mathematics, without actual field testing)

Therefore, this perk is not meant for offense capability. It only means for extra firepower if you decided to use stun.

Fast Adaptation ==> You should only give up this perk over other tier 1 offense perks, if you have to choose its alternatives for your specific build. With 95% as upper limit of chance to hit, you might think it is stupid to take this perk if your average chance to hit is around 90%. However, enemy’s shieldwall will greatly reduce your chance to hit. For offense’s sake, take it.

Head Hunter ==> okay I lied about not mentioning what has been mentioned because this perk is amazing. Now listen very closely or you miss out on the gist of this perk.

The closer you’re getting to penetrate the boss’s tummy, the higher the chance he will block your finishing blow with his helmet. In turn, this gives him better chance to penetrate your tummy. According to this logic, we must move Head Hunter to permanent debuff category.

But it’s useful for enemies without helmet! Too bad the disadvantage greatly outweighed the advantage.

Debilitate ==> uses 3AP and builds 30 fatigue, deactivates when your attack misses, ONLY for 50% dmg reduction for 1 round. Fantastic way to bully players who’ve accidentally picked this perk and overwritten the saved game.

The unfortunate player is stuck with the perk until……….. we have mini boss. Yes miniboss, not enemy leaders. Because enemy leaders just use normal weapons like mobs. Or any other good reason to reduce an enemy unit’s dmg by 50% for a single round, by sacrificing a chance & fatigue to attack/kill him.

Bullseye ==> it doesn’t look like tier 2 perk to me because its effect is a little weak. But it’s one of the two tier-2 offense perks a ranged brother will actually choose.

Close Combat Archer ==> This perk is kinda awesome. I think it is actually on par with Long Range Pawn perk (the further you’re away from enemy, the higher your melee damage). Nothing complicated, really. Let’s take a look at it.

At distance 2, your ranged damage is increased by 50%. Awesome!

At distance 1, you can’t use ranged weapon at all (except firing 2 loaded crossbows with Quick Hands). Exciting!

So if you can actually make pretty good use of this perk, you’re probably not making the most of melee and range brothers.

Killing Frenzy ==> I used to think nobody will choose this perk because of Perfect Focus, until I saw this thread. Provided your brothers always increase max fatigue upon level up, you should still choose Perfect Focus for better offense even if you’re wearing heraldic mail. Unless…… you’re actually wearing both heraldic mail and full helm. Then you will have insufficient max fatigue for Perfect Focus. But enemy should have about ¼ chance to hit your head, so why should you wear helmet with 300 durability if your armor is 320 durability? You should wear helmet around 90 durability. Just remember to keep an eye for enemy’s 2h axe and you will not need a heavy helmet.

>> It turns out Perfect Focus is garbage for crossbowmen.
You’re probably not using Perfect Focus the right way.

>> The +40 fatigue when you use Perfect Focus just doesn’t allow for much shooting and reloading.
Your ranged brother can fire crossbow at least 3 times, even if he’s wearing heraldic mail for no good reason (can fire at least 4 times with woven tunic). The 40 fatigue cost is not the real problem. The real problem is crossbow doesn’t punch hard enough so it has harder time to restore its fatigue with Battle Flow. The fatigue cost can be remedied with Rally the Troops. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that crossbow deliver softer punch than melee weapons.

Incidentally, this synergy between Perfect Focus and high dmg melee weapon is also a reason why melee weapon outshined range weapons.

But since high melee damage can’t replace ranged damage due to their range difference, Perfect Focus is justifiable for crossbowmen if a player thinks range damage is justifiable.

Also, I’ll skip other points regarding Perfect Focus because everyone is pretty familiar with this perk.

[Invictus73]

I am really tired from typing one handed, so I will keep this short:

As I said in my introductory thread for game improvement suggestions, I find the Offense tree severely lacking and underpowered. In particular, most of tier 1 choices are either too underpowered or too situational: Other than the infelicitously named Fast Adaption and Sundering Strikes, there isn’t much that is universally good. This tree needs a lot of work.

[Author]

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