Skill overall talk. The good, the bads.

So... I have been playing a while, feeling Excel sheet of information from leveling up the skills, testing left and right, and I start to see how the current skills goes.

I have tried quite a few build (thx to x4 xp, it was easy to go back to testing with skills averaging the 50). So far, the melee was the most efficient, even If I always was a lover of casters. I know pure build are not really applicable here, but I believe some improvement can be made.


Melee combat (Best currently?):

So why melee? well it finally all came to the Free attacks. Of course, I went with 2h since this is more dmg for your buck, but free attack can really deliver the most Dmg in a fight (or at least, this is what I found). Combat skills, for the most part, are dmg based on the Innate dmg bonus and the weapon used. This mean, it is based on the same damage that the free attack does. Using skills in between free attack, gives a nice dmg tic, but it is no more than a merely "another hit", with a few exception (Ex: Thrust dmg increase, Double slash, ect.) which have a small increase over the free attack. while you use these skills once, you will have time to hit multiple times with free attacks. Then, you have other skills, who does as much dmg has the free attack, and do a small debuf, nearly unseen by the human eye, which, if the skill is not has high level has the combat innate, will have more chance to miss then an actual free attack.

This leave us with a few working/usefull combat skill, but still a small part of the overall DPS.


Ranged combat:

Kinda like Melee, the free hit makes up the average DPS of your build, but there are more usefull skills then the Melee counterpart, and you can easily insert a few Magic skills in there (thanks to the range). But It felt a bit behind the Melee, which is totally fine since, well, you are ranged (safe distance) and dont have to run after these nasty Archer.


Magic Combat:

The odd brother. Lacking a real free attack, I had to use a bow (melee causing too much Interruption on the higher spells), but wont talk about this since it isnt part of the "pure mage". Skills overall are actually good, like, really. This is mostly done thanks to the Attunments. The improvement from attunement are on par with the skill level up. Add on top the other innates that increase the effectiveness of the skills, and you are on track! but sadly, there is no consistant DPS, as you lack free attack (unless you use a bow), Some skills feel odd (see my other post on the subject here) or are totally useless, leaving you with only a few choices.


The mix:

This leave us with mixing the different tree. And I stood there, looking at them. I mixed a lot. Two possibility showed up: Ranged, or melee.

Ranged: Bow with spells. Stuff like Aimed shot, Disabling shot, and Air spells, or no Bow skills, only innate and spells. It was ok, good on 1v1, if you like running around (otherwise, you shoot arrows at 1m of their face and cast/interupt). For AoE, The change of target if there is an enemy on the way with Free bow attack is a bit of a pain, and the lack of distant AoE is even worse, but its totally doable.

Melee: Any weapon, and there is only a few melee skill that really do a difference. but god the Free attack are efficient. But somehow, the Fist skills... do a lot better than the actual combat skill at melee. Their dmg scale way better with the levels then the combat skills.


So here is my overall though;

DPS is life, as you can sustain yourself with heal during/after most combat.
1- Free attack is a must, as it Out-DPS all skills.
2- Melee Magic skills are heaven (Good dmg, no interupt, small AoE)
3- Magic skills. thanks to the Attunement, the damage scales pretty good
3- Ranged; equal to Magic skill, has the bow do decent damage, and the skills are decent (except maybe Blinding shot and Piercing shot, who are awkward)
5- Melee skills at the very last. Because they add nearly as much damage as a free attack between two hit.


The fix?
Hard to say, but I would go with a better scaling on the Combat skill. Have extra damage has they level up. Magic skills already do it, dont see why the combat skill doesnt. But then, magic skills will loose of its effectiveness, either improve them (except for the Melee magic skill) a bit, or make an actual free attack (and please, no focus consumption!) that would scale with the tree attunement? possibly a Skill toggle in the tree (at the end of the innates?) that let you enable the cast of small bolt/projectiles, with different bonus depending on the tree?



What are your opinion on this? Anything you would think is worth changing?

 

After getting a few magic tree skills to 70+, I'm really starting to see them superior to the melee skills, as you've observed as well.
I think it comes down to hits vs. misses. I see a tremendous number of misses on my melee skills, but magic skills with a casting time always hit. Those without casting times seem to hit much more often than bludgeon or blades melee skills.
Without misses in the combat log, I can't really be sure, but that's my impression so far. If I didn't use magic skills, I would be dead constantly. They're the only thing I have that actually kills yellow targets with consistency.

As far as effectiveness in combat, once you pick a magic school and get two skills above 50, and attunement above 50, you're pretty much set up to 4 skull zones, in R27. At least, that's been my experience.
My "mage" build I tested was: Auto attack with a bow, ranged skill at @75, all bow innates only @40, fire arrow @50, fire fist @50, and fire attunement at 50. Single target blue's or same-as-my-HP were all dead before they reached me, or within a few seconds after fire fist landed. It was a bit silly, honestly, how effective that is for "outdoor" zones and single targets. If/when Portalarium adds pacify/bluff/mez pulling, I don't think there's going to be a need to look any further for an effective resource gathering build. Of course there's the issue of carrying around a thousand arrows as a consequence, but it seems like a good trade off.

I've also given up on using combo's for the time being, as they're so ineffective compared to a 50+ skill & 50+ magic attunement. Combo's don't improve as the component skills improve, so.. they appear to be a low level gimmick only, in their current form, which is a real shame, as if they were working properly and scaled properly, some of them would be really good. I can't imagine how incredibly effective any build will be with 130+ attunement and 120+ in a magic skill. I think we're talking one-hit-kill-blues territory.