Ironworks Gaming Forum - View Single Post

07-15-2003, 03:53 AM

My experience with criticals is fairly similar. They dont show up noticeably until you hit around an 80+ in critical strike, assuming you are equipped with weapons that dont have instant kill.

My wife and I have each played a couple dozen parties of various compositions and have observed that a rogue weilding dual stilletos (10% instant kill) getting 12 attacks aper ound will deal as many instants as, if not more than, a hybrid-instant killer (eg samurai, ninja, ranger) without any instant kill on their weapon.

Of course, put the staff of doom on a samurai or the cane of corpus on your ninja and your results skyrocket, but only well past the half-way point in the game, plot-wise (ie lvl 15+) due to the need for a high critical strike needed to be generally effective.

My point being, if you want criticals, the game provides enough good items (that arent random loads) that can be used by pure, fast-levelling classes (ie. fighter, rogue, bard). So, IMO, critical kill performance is a poor reason to run one of those hybrids

(However, I should add I love the concept of the samurais and often play them for role-playing satisfaction, where the critical strike adds to the samurai "branding".)

Regarding the wakizashi: As far as off-hand weapons go, the samurai gets the worst of the lot. There is only one upgrade, available in a fixed treasure location. However, given how many skills (s)he has to develop, the nicest thing i can say about the wakizashis is that at least they use sword skill (ie you dont have to teach your samurai yet another skill for dagger or staff/wand off-hand weapons).

Re: spell casting, my experience has been that hybrids will never be effective above level 4/5 spells, unless you are doing serious training and/or running past the natural plot end-point. This makes sense: hybrids only get level 7 spells at level 22, and with their slow levelling, rarely get much past that except in a small-party. With that in mind, the strategies for hybrids' spell-casting falls out fairly naturally: low-level, supplementary casting.

For the samurai, this means basic mage buffs (missile shield, enchant blade, and later x-ray) and some decent attacks (area: fireball, iceball, cone: shrill sound, whipping rocks), and even the nice web spell. But their magic will never deliver an overwhelming victory against decent competition. Instead, it just rounds them out.

Which, really, summarises what I'm trying to say about hybrids: they're well-rounded by end-game, good at many things, rather than specialists who are great at rather few things.

This isnt a bad thing. To me, the challenge is building a party from the disparate abilities of the different classes, and testing the bounds of what each class is capable of.

just my two (or ten) cents
sultan

[ 07-15-2003, 03:54 AM: Message edited by: sultan ]

07-15-2003, 03:53 AM	#2
sultan Guest Posts: n/a	My experience with criticals is fairly similar. They dont show up noticeably until you hit around an 80+ in critical strike, assuming you are equipped with weapons that dont have instant kill. My wife and I have each played a couple dozen parties of various compositions and have observed that a rogue weilding dual stilletos (10% instant kill) getting 12 attacks aper ound will deal as many instants as, if not more than, a hybrid-instant killer (eg samurai, ninja, ranger) without any instant kill on their weapon. Of course, put the staff of doom on a samurai or the cane of corpus on your ninja and your results skyrocket, but only well past the half-way point in the game, plot-wise (ie lvl 15+) due to the need for a high critical strike needed to be generally effective. My point being, if you want criticals, the game provides enough good items (that arent random loads) that can be used by pure, fast-levelling classes (ie. fighter, rogue, bard). So, IMO, critical kill performance is a poor reason to run one of those hybrids (However, I should add I love the concept of the samurais and often play them for role-playing satisfaction, where the critical strike adds to the samurai "branding".) Regarding the wakizashi: As far as off-hand weapons go, the samurai gets the worst of the lot. There is only one upgrade, available in a fixed treasure location. However, given how many skills (s)he has to develop, the nicest thing i can say about the wakizashis is that at least they use sword skill (ie you dont have to teach your samurai yet another skill for dagger or staff/wand off-hand weapons). Re: spell casting, my experience has been that hybrids will never be effective above level 4/5 spells, unless you are doing serious training and/or running past the natural plot end-point. This makes sense: hybrids only get level 7 spells at level 22, and with their slow levelling, rarely get much past that except in a small-party. With that in mind, the strategies for hybrids' spell-casting falls out fairly naturally: low-level, supplementary casting. For the samurai, this means basic mage buffs (missile shield, enchant blade, and later x-ray) and some decent attacks (area: fireball, iceball, cone: shrill sound, whipping rocks), and even the nice web spell. But their magic will never deliver an overwhelming victory against decent competition. Instead, it just rounds them out. Which, really, summarises what I'm trying to say about hybrids: they're well-rounded by end-game, good at many things, rather than specialists who are great at rather few things. This isnt a bad thing. To me, the challenge is building a party from the disparate abilities of the different classes, and testing the bounds of what each class is capable of. just my two (or ten) cents sultan [ 07-15-2003, 03:54 AM: Message edited by: sultan ]