Analyzing the Wyrmic Class
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 2:41 pm
Greetings!
With a lot of ideas and updates being thrown around, it appears Wyrmics have been overlooked quite a bit in improvement. There has been a lot of discussion finally going on regarding the class but it doesn’t seem like enough analysis is really being done on where exactly Wyrmics are specifically failing. I hope to rectify that with this thread.
I took sometime to try a new Wyrmic character for the recent update to get a feel on how the class has been effected by most of the recent changes. Not a whole lot has really changed with them, though a couple of things are worth noting.
For this thread I’ll start by giving a brief summary on Wyrmics in general for those who aren't as familiar with the class. I'll also throw in what I think are the main strengths and weaknesses to note for the class.
Eventually I may add some suggestions to general improvement of Wyrmics themselves; perhaps in this thread or in others regarding Wyrmics. When adding subsequent Analysis posts to this thread, I'll be coloring then Dark Blue.
Playstyle and Class Structure
To describe the Wyrmic, they are a Melee class with support abilities tailored after the many Dragon type enemies found in game - which of course also includes their breath attacks. The nature of many of their talents are ranged with an area of effect, which can allow the Wyrmic to engage numerous foes at range before closing in or even keeping there distance. Some of their talents also present some interesting tactical abilities that can be used offensively and/or defensively as the situation requires. The rest enhance the Wyrmics abilities, mostly for melee range attacks or just in relation to the Wyrmic character own abilities.
Looking at the class categories of Wyrmics, one will find that many are based on each of the five distinct types of dragons you encounter game: sand, fire, cold, storm, and venom. Each of these categories which I'll dub the 'Element Drake Aspect' categories feature the talents that the various Drakes and Wyrms can use including the respective breath attack of the respective Drake. They also possess a locked class category called 'Higher Draconic Abilities' which contains some advanced abilities for the Wyrmic Class to make use of; notable for including a talent with resistance penetration and another with some status immunities in stun, blindness, and knockdown.
In addition to the various Dragon related categories above, Wyrmics also have access to both the 'Shield Offense' and 'Two Handed Assault' categories. They have the option should they wish to pursue it of making use of Mindstars for weapons as well since they tend to invest heavily in Willpower and Cunning influences several talents both due to improving Mindpower and Mind Critical Hit Chance. Along with the above weapon considerations, Wyrmics also have 'Combat Techniques' as a locked category as well as 'Combat Veteran' which is available for immediate use to the Wyrmic class.
In regards to Generics, Wyrmics like many other Melee centered classes has access to 'Combat Training' and should they wish to unlock it can make use of 'Survival'. These can help give some basic combat ability to help Wyrmics in surviving. They also receive 'Harmony' immediately on character creation as well - though that is locked and generally all players will gain access to it once they consume the Heart of the Sandworm Queen.
However, where their Generics truly shine is in regards to the categories Call of the Wild and Fungus. 'Call of the Wild' is a useful category which can allows the Wyrmic that can have some neat utility and healing for them to use. They also have a very powerful regeneration category in the form of 'Fungus' which can make a Wyrmic extremely durable and can even help lower their equilibrium. It is noted that Fungus is a category that other classes can take advantage of, but it is limited to classes that are able to pursue an Anti-Magic path, and going Anti-Magic means cutting yourself off from the Arcane; this makes Wyrmics the only class that can have access to the Fungus category while retaining the usefulness of Arcane abilities and items.
In regards to stats: Wyrmics 'usually' primarily focus on Strength as that increases the damage both for many core dragon related abilities and their physical attacks, as well ask for gaining access to the Talents in the Two Handed Assault and Shield Offense categories should they choose those weapons over using Mindstars, or for Combat Training, Combat Techniques, or Combat Veteran talents.
Willpower is a secondary focus for Wyrmics since the rest of their talents besides Survival only become available through investments in the Willpower stat; notably Willpower also helps with Mindpower which plays a wide roll in many of your dragon related talents, Call of the Wild talents, or Fungus talents. It also helps the Wyrmic through bolstering their Mental and Spell Saves, as well as giving them an abundance of stamina for use in a fight.
As a note, it is possible to make a Wyrmic build that centres more around Willpower more then Strength for a ‘caster-like’ Wyrmic with the current setup. This is usually the case for Mindstar wielding Wyrmics for example since Mindstars run off of Willpower and Cunning; both stats of course tying in to the use of many talents.
Outside of Strength and Willpower, Cunning is an important tertiary focus for Wyrmics, as you need it for improving critical rate both through your normal physical attacks as well as your breath attacks and the Devouring Flames talent. Cunning also improves Mindpower which helps improve the effectiveness of many Wyrmic talents and Call of the Wild and Fungus talents. It’s also useful for opening up Survival since Wyrmics don’t have very good detection abilities against concealed enemies. Notably for those who pursue using Mindstars, Cunning will help add a little damage to them as well.
Wyrmics can also make good use of the Dexterity and the Constitution stats as well. Dexterity can be helpful in improving defense and accuracy. Constitution stands out as being very useful for players who choose races with less hitpoints received per level, just want more legroom for pursuing a build that focuses on regenerating lost health, or perhaps want to nab the Draconic Body prodigy when they reach level 30.
The only stat a Wyrmic can't really make good use of is Magic; outside of Escort Categories or Prodigies.
Strengths of Wyrmics
Overall, Wyrmics have do have a lot of strengths for a class. For the most part there strengths come from available generic categories, their ability to handle groups of enemies as Melee character, and how the talents in their class categories are set up for acquirement by the player for his character.
Because Wyrmics start with Fungus and don’t have to go Anti-Magic to pick up the category, they don't suffer the loss of not being able to use Arcane items if they don’t go Anti-Magic. Along with some investment in the Call of the Wild category, Wyrmics tend to get pretty good value over their Generic Point expenditures. If they wish, they can pursue going Anti-Magic which can help them with managing their equilibrium resource as well as augmenting their abilities to take on spellcasters.
Wyrmics have fairly free reign with Generic points for use since they don’t necessarily have a lot of talent considerations outside of Fungus or Call of the Wild; unless they are planning on using Mindstars or pursuing an Anti-Magic build. Wyrmics of course invest heavily in Combat Training and potentially may also want to unlock Survival, but excess points can be thrown Racial talents or Escort Rewards category talents.
Due to having all the various Elemental Drake Aspect categories, a Wyrmic shouldn't be low on options for handling a fight. Through a variety of debuffs it can place on enemies, attacking with a multitude of different elements, several area of effect attacks in several formats, some good single target abilities for one on one battles, and many useful utility options to empower the Wyrmic character in many ways; Wyrmics are very adaptive regardless of what the situation throws at them.
Each individual Elemental Drake Aspect categories also has their talents organized in a very good and easy to understand progression. All the Elemental Drake Aspect categories start with a very strong first tier talent that will likely have a lot of use for the player. The capstone talent for all the Elemental Drake Aspects is the breath attack, each in their own element with whatever little fluff that comes attached. Some of the second and third tier talents are also set up to be very useful ‘One Point Wonders’ which is not a bad thing if the player wishes to make use of multiple different breath attacks on their Wyrmic but still get some value from the talent points invested along the way. Many of the Mindpower or Willpower based talents can also be useful even if not fully concentrating Willpower or Cunning in one way or another.
In addition to the Elemental Drake Aspect categories, they also have immediate access to Two Handed Assault or Shield Offense to begin training talents relating to weapons if the player can decide what type of weapon style he will pursue on his character; notably giving them two separate resource bars to make good use as the situation requires. If the player plans to use Mindstars, a character need only pick up the Mindstar Mastery category from the Zigur Mindstar Shop or betray an Alchemist Escort. Having immediate access to advanced weapon talents means the Wyrmic player can maximize specific weapon usage at their leisure when they decide too, and can do a lot to add more tactically ability for handling enemies as well.
Regardless of the weapon plan the character will utilize as well, they can generally expect the value from the Elemental Drake Aspect talents to remain the same since most don’t run off the power of their weapon, but rather the Strength, Willpower, or Mindpower stats of the character. Due to talents not running off weapon damage and because many talents are AoE or provide powerful detrimental effects on enemies, talents themselves can also be quite useful even in spite of possible debuffs that may be placed on you. Most talents will deal full damage even if you are disarmed, cannot see your opponent, or are fighting a very evasive enemy such as those who used a Lightning Rune. Even if your character is suffering a weapon reduction such as from being stunned, talents with various status effects that can be place can be used to debuff enemies.
Weaknesses of Wyrmics
However, while the Wyrmic has a decent amount of strengths, there are many weaknesses to make a note of as well that greatly diminish the worth of the class on a whole….
With just a quick glance from the Playstyle and Class Summary, one can see a weakness in regards to categories. Wyrmic Players don't have much in ways of locked categories to open with category points and where they can is only moderately useful. Harmony is available immediately but a Wyrmic player can easily just wait for that to unlock when they get through Sandworm tunnels, and that essentially means Wyrmics just have Higher Draconic Abilities, Combat Technique, and Survival for locked categories.
As a note, Wyrmics are one of the few classes where it is a viable consideration to consider investing a category point into an open category, specifically Fungus. Arguable Wyrmics also have high consideration for Non-Magic related Escort Reward categories as well for use in trying to bolster their defenses. However, they still come off lacking in regards to what to do with category points.
Taking a closer look at Wyrmics talents, one will notice that several talents rely on Mental Critical Rate for landing critical and several also run on the Mindpower stat. Mental Critical Rate and Mindpower are very hard to build up for characters and Wyrmics lack any talents that increase Mindpower or Mental Critical Rate outside of the indirect boost from Wyrmic Guile; unless they specifically pursue a Mindstar focused build. For those using more conventional weapons though, the end result is that eventually most of the talents are simply regulated just for use in debuffing enemies.
In regards to direct or indirect talents that augment the other talents available to Wyrmics, they do have Chromatic Fury which can help increase the damage of the Elemental Drake Aspect category talents by simply increasing damage penetration on enemies for them; along with a passive increase to the amount of physical, fire, cold, lightning, and acid damage they inflict with such attacks. Outside of this though, Wyrmics don’t have any other talents dedicated to increasing damage on enemies; due to changes for Two Handed Weapons they even lost access to Berserker.
Many of the Wyrmic talents also really don’t scale well. All the Breath attacks area pretty well a 5/5 or skip talent, talents like Corrosive Mist, Devouring Flames, or Static Fields are also 5/5 talents – or just 1/5 if you plan on skipping them. In terms of damage scaling, one will find that while many of the attacks are useful immediately as you are building up Strength or Willpower stats; however they will abruptly stop scaling once you max those stats and the damage will drop off.
The impact of these weaknesses leads to Wyrmics having a whole lot of impressive talents that are usefully immediately – that are only moderately effective later on (or completely ineffective). As the game progress the Wyrmic noticeably feels like it gets weaker and weaker.
With a lot of ideas and updates being thrown around, it appears Wyrmics have been overlooked quite a bit in improvement. There has been a lot of discussion finally going on regarding the class but it doesn’t seem like enough analysis is really being done on where exactly Wyrmics are specifically failing. I hope to rectify that with this thread.
I took sometime to try a new Wyrmic character for the recent update to get a feel on how the class has been effected by most of the recent changes. Not a whole lot has really changed with them, though a couple of things are worth noting.
For this thread I’ll start by giving a brief summary on Wyrmics in general for those who aren't as familiar with the class. I'll also throw in what I think are the main strengths and weaknesses to note for the class.
Eventually I may add some suggestions to general improvement of Wyrmics themselves; perhaps in this thread or in others regarding Wyrmics. When adding subsequent Analysis posts to this thread, I'll be coloring then Dark Blue.
Playstyle and Class Structure
To describe the Wyrmic, they are a Melee class with support abilities tailored after the many Dragon type enemies found in game - which of course also includes their breath attacks. The nature of many of their talents are ranged with an area of effect, which can allow the Wyrmic to engage numerous foes at range before closing in or even keeping there distance. Some of their talents also present some interesting tactical abilities that can be used offensively and/or defensively as the situation requires. The rest enhance the Wyrmics abilities, mostly for melee range attacks or just in relation to the Wyrmic character own abilities.
Looking at the class categories of Wyrmics, one will find that many are based on each of the five distinct types of dragons you encounter game: sand, fire, cold, storm, and venom. Each of these categories which I'll dub the 'Element Drake Aspect' categories feature the talents that the various Drakes and Wyrms can use including the respective breath attack of the respective Drake. They also possess a locked class category called 'Higher Draconic Abilities' which contains some advanced abilities for the Wyrmic Class to make use of; notable for including a talent with resistance penetration and another with some status immunities in stun, blindness, and knockdown.
In addition to the various Dragon related categories above, Wyrmics also have access to both the 'Shield Offense' and 'Two Handed Assault' categories. They have the option should they wish to pursue it of making use of Mindstars for weapons as well since they tend to invest heavily in Willpower and Cunning influences several talents both due to improving Mindpower and Mind Critical Hit Chance. Along with the above weapon considerations, Wyrmics also have 'Combat Techniques' as a locked category as well as 'Combat Veteran' which is available for immediate use to the Wyrmic class.
In regards to Generics, Wyrmics like many other Melee centered classes has access to 'Combat Training' and should they wish to unlock it can make use of 'Survival'. These can help give some basic combat ability to help Wyrmics in surviving. They also receive 'Harmony' immediately on character creation as well - though that is locked and generally all players will gain access to it once they consume the Heart of the Sandworm Queen.
However, where their Generics truly shine is in regards to the categories Call of the Wild and Fungus. 'Call of the Wild' is a useful category which can allows the Wyrmic that can have some neat utility and healing for them to use. They also have a very powerful regeneration category in the form of 'Fungus' which can make a Wyrmic extremely durable and can even help lower their equilibrium. It is noted that Fungus is a category that other classes can take advantage of, but it is limited to classes that are able to pursue an Anti-Magic path, and going Anti-Magic means cutting yourself off from the Arcane; this makes Wyrmics the only class that can have access to the Fungus category while retaining the usefulness of Arcane abilities and items.
In regards to stats: Wyrmics 'usually' primarily focus on Strength as that increases the damage both for many core dragon related abilities and their physical attacks, as well ask for gaining access to the Talents in the Two Handed Assault and Shield Offense categories should they choose those weapons over using Mindstars, or for Combat Training, Combat Techniques, or Combat Veteran talents.
Willpower is a secondary focus for Wyrmics since the rest of their talents besides Survival only become available through investments in the Willpower stat; notably Willpower also helps with Mindpower which plays a wide roll in many of your dragon related talents, Call of the Wild talents, or Fungus talents. It also helps the Wyrmic through bolstering their Mental and Spell Saves, as well as giving them an abundance of stamina for use in a fight.
As a note, it is possible to make a Wyrmic build that centres more around Willpower more then Strength for a ‘caster-like’ Wyrmic with the current setup. This is usually the case for Mindstar wielding Wyrmics for example since Mindstars run off of Willpower and Cunning; both stats of course tying in to the use of many talents.
Outside of Strength and Willpower, Cunning is an important tertiary focus for Wyrmics, as you need it for improving critical rate both through your normal physical attacks as well as your breath attacks and the Devouring Flames talent. Cunning also improves Mindpower which helps improve the effectiveness of many Wyrmic talents and Call of the Wild and Fungus talents. It’s also useful for opening up Survival since Wyrmics don’t have very good detection abilities against concealed enemies. Notably for those who pursue using Mindstars, Cunning will help add a little damage to them as well.
Wyrmics can also make good use of the Dexterity and the Constitution stats as well. Dexterity can be helpful in improving defense and accuracy. Constitution stands out as being very useful for players who choose races with less hitpoints received per level, just want more legroom for pursuing a build that focuses on regenerating lost health, or perhaps want to nab the Draconic Body prodigy when they reach level 30.
The only stat a Wyrmic can't really make good use of is Magic; outside of Escort Categories or Prodigies.
Strengths of Wyrmics
Overall, Wyrmics have do have a lot of strengths for a class. For the most part there strengths come from available generic categories, their ability to handle groups of enemies as Melee character, and how the talents in their class categories are set up for acquirement by the player for his character.
Because Wyrmics start with Fungus and don’t have to go Anti-Magic to pick up the category, they don't suffer the loss of not being able to use Arcane items if they don’t go Anti-Magic. Along with some investment in the Call of the Wild category, Wyrmics tend to get pretty good value over their Generic Point expenditures. If they wish, they can pursue going Anti-Magic which can help them with managing their equilibrium resource as well as augmenting their abilities to take on spellcasters.
Wyrmics have fairly free reign with Generic points for use since they don’t necessarily have a lot of talent considerations outside of Fungus or Call of the Wild; unless they are planning on using Mindstars or pursuing an Anti-Magic build. Wyrmics of course invest heavily in Combat Training and potentially may also want to unlock Survival, but excess points can be thrown Racial talents or Escort Rewards category talents.
Due to having all the various Elemental Drake Aspect categories, a Wyrmic shouldn't be low on options for handling a fight. Through a variety of debuffs it can place on enemies, attacking with a multitude of different elements, several area of effect attacks in several formats, some good single target abilities for one on one battles, and many useful utility options to empower the Wyrmic character in many ways; Wyrmics are very adaptive regardless of what the situation throws at them.
Each individual Elemental Drake Aspect categories also has their talents organized in a very good and easy to understand progression. All the Elemental Drake Aspect categories start with a very strong first tier talent that will likely have a lot of use for the player. The capstone talent for all the Elemental Drake Aspects is the breath attack, each in their own element with whatever little fluff that comes attached. Some of the second and third tier talents are also set up to be very useful ‘One Point Wonders’ which is not a bad thing if the player wishes to make use of multiple different breath attacks on their Wyrmic but still get some value from the talent points invested along the way. Many of the Mindpower or Willpower based talents can also be useful even if not fully concentrating Willpower or Cunning in one way or another.
In addition to the Elemental Drake Aspect categories, they also have immediate access to Two Handed Assault or Shield Offense to begin training talents relating to weapons if the player can decide what type of weapon style he will pursue on his character; notably giving them two separate resource bars to make good use as the situation requires. If the player plans to use Mindstars, a character need only pick up the Mindstar Mastery category from the Zigur Mindstar Shop or betray an Alchemist Escort. Having immediate access to advanced weapon talents means the Wyrmic player can maximize specific weapon usage at their leisure when they decide too, and can do a lot to add more tactically ability for handling enemies as well.
Regardless of the weapon plan the character will utilize as well, they can generally expect the value from the Elemental Drake Aspect talents to remain the same since most don’t run off the power of their weapon, but rather the Strength, Willpower, or Mindpower stats of the character. Due to talents not running off weapon damage and because many talents are AoE or provide powerful detrimental effects on enemies, talents themselves can also be quite useful even in spite of possible debuffs that may be placed on you. Most talents will deal full damage even if you are disarmed, cannot see your opponent, or are fighting a very evasive enemy such as those who used a Lightning Rune. Even if your character is suffering a weapon reduction such as from being stunned, talents with various status effects that can be place can be used to debuff enemies.
Weaknesses of Wyrmics
However, while the Wyrmic has a decent amount of strengths, there are many weaknesses to make a note of as well that greatly diminish the worth of the class on a whole….
With just a quick glance from the Playstyle and Class Summary, one can see a weakness in regards to categories. Wyrmic Players don't have much in ways of locked categories to open with category points and where they can is only moderately useful. Harmony is available immediately but a Wyrmic player can easily just wait for that to unlock when they get through Sandworm tunnels, and that essentially means Wyrmics just have Higher Draconic Abilities, Combat Technique, and Survival for locked categories.
As a note, Wyrmics are one of the few classes where it is a viable consideration to consider investing a category point into an open category, specifically Fungus. Arguable Wyrmics also have high consideration for Non-Magic related Escort Reward categories as well for use in trying to bolster their defenses. However, they still come off lacking in regards to what to do with category points.
Taking a closer look at Wyrmics talents, one will notice that several talents rely on Mental Critical Rate for landing critical and several also run on the Mindpower stat. Mental Critical Rate and Mindpower are very hard to build up for characters and Wyrmics lack any talents that increase Mindpower or Mental Critical Rate outside of the indirect boost from Wyrmic Guile; unless they specifically pursue a Mindstar focused build. For those using more conventional weapons though, the end result is that eventually most of the talents are simply regulated just for use in debuffing enemies.
In regards to direct or indirect talents that augment the other talents available to Wyrmics, they do have Chromatic Fury which can help increase the damage of the Elemental Drake Aspect category talents by simply increasing damage penetration on enemies for them; along with a passive increase to the amount of physical, fire, cold, lightning, and acid damage they inflict with such attacks. Outside of this though, Wyrmics don’t have any other talents dedicated to increasing damage on enemies; due to changes for Two Handed Weapons they even lost access to Berserker.
Many of the Wyrmic talents also really don’t scale well. All the Breath attacks area pretty well a 5/5 or skip talent, talents like Corrosive Mist, Devouring Flames, or Static Fields are also 5/5 talents – or just 1/5 if you plan on skipping them. In terms of damage scaling, one will find that while many of the attacks are useful immediately as you are building up Strength or Willpower stats; however they will abruptly stop scaling once you max those stats and the damage will drop off.
The impact of these weaknesses leads to Wyrmics having a whole lot of impressive talents that are usefully immediately – that are only moderately effective later on (or completely ineffective). As the game progress the Wyrmic noticeably feels like it gets weaker and weaker.