Here's a quick guide to the usage of wicked fidelity, for those of you who might not have gleaned all of its quirks and advantages (understandable, given its charge-based nature and prevention).
Each enhanced relic (katar, lance, falx) has its own base lifetime when created (which increases with mastery in wicked fidelity). Thus, if weapon duration is a concern, it is in your best interest to transform your base weapon near the end of its lifetime. For example, if your Lorhu's claymore lasts 12 minutes, you can get maximum usage out of it by holding on and converting it in the 10th or 11th minute; then you'll have a spite-forged falx (which is directly superior to a claymore) for the next 7 minutes (or whatever your personal duration may be).
Enhanced relics derive their stats directly from the base weapon you are transmuting. The better your ataghan/gate-staff/claymore is, the better your enhanced relic will be. The relic's stats are improved from the base stats as well (and the special hidden effect is then added), so a relic will always be superior to its base weapon. (The amount of improvement gained from transformation can also be separately increased with intellect and mastery in wicked fidelity.)
The katar of sublime cruelty's special ability (critical strikes) is dexterity-based. Your dexterity must exceed your victim's agility for the effect to occur at all; if it does, then the critical strikes grow much, much stronger with increasing dexterity.
The compelled shadow lance's special ability is straightforward - resistance and invulnerability bypass. It's one of the only ways in Nodeka to counter invulnerabilities and resistances.
The spite-forged falx's special ability is based directly on current health. If your victim has more health than you, the falx will enhance its damage proportionally to the difference (up to a certain limit). The effect can be quite potent, making the falx great for fighting larger mobs or in any PvP battle where you are taking a lot of damage or fighting larger players. The falx does receive a slight penalty when striking victims with less life than you, but the penalty's cap is extremely low.
I like how you are making Warlocks less +willpower oriented, however whats the deal with sentinel dominence buff and warlocks?
ReplyDeleteAre warlocks going to lose it soon? It seems to me that since crushing blows is based off of Strength and Ataelos get 2 +str abilities it is a bit biased towards them more than say paladins. Also that is a lot of +hit for them, did they lose that much with the changes to the weapons?
Warlocks aren't losing sentinel dominance; it was designed with both classes in mind. The weapon changes were also designed with crushing blows in mind (in fact, sentinel dominance was coded before the weapon changes).
ReplyDeleteIt's an intentional design that crushing blows is based on strength, which paladins are decent at and which ataelos excel at.
Claymore, on its own, took a noticable hit to plain damage (its previous scaling was, quite simply, on the ridiculous side). Part of the benefit of having it brought back in line is that warlocks can and will gain new abilities (such as crushing blow) without making them the be-all, end-all class.
There's a marked reduction in +hit out of claymore (I believe, I didn't record my observations so this is based on memory); however, claymores also now have substantial +str which probably fuels the crushing blows.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the sentinel dominance +hit probably won't matter nearly as much to warlocks. What's the difference between +350 and +380 hit?
Also where +Dam would affect everything, from wrinkle, right down to psychic shock, crushing blows presumably only affects melee damage.
ReplyDeleteRE: gate staff, keiiken
ReplyDeleteAre ninjas/monks going to get more +dex out of their spellups than warlocks? I understand that +dex comes with certain preventions that may be selected to the exclusion of other prevents, but overall, the basic +dex on monk/ninja seems to be too low. I feel like these two classes, in particular, should be able to pull more dexterity out of buffs.
+1 to syveril
ReplyDeleteRegarding ninja/monks, perhaps. I've been planning already to increase the main single +stat bonus of monk martial styles, which would let monks achieve greater dex in mantis stance. (For those who don't play ninja, they do have a strong temporary +dex option in hakanai shouten, at the cost of whispering wind similarly to how monks must decide on a stance or stacking.) I'll look at the two classes and if I decide that they need a slight dex boost, maybe I'll look at an alternate method.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think comparison to warlocks with gate-staff is a 100% fair approach. Gate-staff represents a trade-off in weapon power (accuracy is its specialty, but it sacrifices +dam which is possibly even a bigger loss than whispering wind). Str/spe has always been a warlock specialty, and the new ataghan/claymore enhances that while gate-staff is their only dex source.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing while monks are on the burner: learn curve and stance scaling. I'm not sure how much of an affect lc is supposed to have on stances, but it seems a bit too low. I checked the affects list of a very large monk the other day, can't remember the name, but they were well above 100k rank, who had switched over to ru wulniothe for the lc boost, but was only pulling 20 more stats out of hao'tien than I was with only 270 base int/wis and half the learn curve he must have had. Maybe it's supposed to scale this way, just curious as it seemed a little out off.
ReplyDelete*nod* I agree that gate-staff isn't entirely fair. It's not up all the time, but it's used ahead of ataghan most of the time. I think it's the weapon dice (does that function as +dam). Anyway, it's really not the same idea, since the decision to wear a gate staff isn't constrained by an overlapping prevention, but is constrained by the presence of 2-4 other weapons, which may or may not be superior depending on the caster's stats.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to bring it up, cause the dexterity feels a little light. Thank you very much for addressing the issue.
New question: I'm not sure if the +dam from gather essence is influenced by dexterity. The helpfile says damage, but I'm guessing that refers to the actual damage dealt by the skill. I'm not sure... what is your experience, fellow keiiken users (or Whim, if you feel you can give out this info)?
Re: gate-staff... under the old system, maybe. But the old one never gave +dex. The new warlock weapon setup (ataghan always, gate/claymore with occasional overlaps possible through wicked fidelity) is completely different from the old weapon setup (bend two claymores, gatestaff for any downtime). Thus, saying it's "used ahead of the ataghan most of the time" was true (perhaps even an understatement) in the old system, but not in the new.
ReplyDeleteBihzad - nod, the scaling might improve slightly. Again, the current stat boosts are a tad low, as I prefer usually to start at a lower power level if I'm unsure how things will turn out. Right now, "only 20 more stats" is really more like "a 25%-33% increase" given the low values. =) I'll check it out when I look at styles.
ReplyDeleteKeiiken - i realise dex has nothing, or seems, to do with the +dmg affect of keiiken but rather with the damage of the "kungfu". Is that what was intended? and about whispering wind and hakanai shouten. whispering and hakanai offers to different traits - whispering with the quickness defense and hakanai with a dex stat boost(which works on quickness). We're now given a choice of offense or defense. but imho the quickness boost from whispering is much needed from a low defense class. its hard to say we can do without it and hakanai on the other hand offers perfect stun which really with soon practiced stun do we really still need the perfect stun from hakanai? And the dex is base on how much quick which whispering could help give a short boost to it; to me both skills seem to work hand in hand. I reckon it'll be a great benefit to ninjas to have both on different prevents.
ReplyDeleteyou and everybody whose classes have different skills on same prevents...i'd like warp reality to be different from my battle lock too...and storm complexity to be different from my three points of complexity...and my discord of speed to....nevermind...you get the picture
ReplyDelete-Argh
I tend to lean towards Argh's side of the argument here. Arguing that two skills on the same prevent should be separated is a Nodeka tradition as old as dirt. There are times when it is appropriate, but each time it happens it usually ends up being a straight boost in power and a straight reduction in strategy. Overdo it, and everyone ends up with their powerful abilities on separate prevents and battles move even more towards the "just hit every button" school of non-tactics.
ReplyDeleteI posed this as Name/URL.
ReplyDeleteTyped in the comment box, selected Name/URL, entered my name, then clicked on post comment and answered the captcha thingy, and then post comment again and....
Here it is. Try this Fenulia
Whim,
ReplyDeleteAny chance at an updated post? Are you still working on the Scar? Looking at any particular class at the moment?
Thanks!