ogre optimization

[Sirrocco]

I've been tooling around with an ogre a little bit, and thought they might be worth a bit of theorycrafting. Given that, I figured I'd do that theory crafting on the boards, where other people could get in on it and (hopefully) help.

- At baseline, they have bonuses to strength, magic, and cunning, penalties to will and dex, a significant exp penalty, and the second best life rating in the game (after ghouls). Also, I believe they start out as big. I believe that antimagic is not available to them, though I could be incorrect. Even if it's possible, though, there's no way to make it worthwhile - their tier 1 racial skill is a spell. Thus, no fungus shenanigans, unless you're playing a wyrmic.

Skill tree:
- Ogric Wrath: one-point-wonder, just like all of the racial tier-1 temp booster powers. Stun and pin resist +20%, damage +10%, and when you miss or hit a damage shield, you get a temporary crit boost.
- Grisly Constitution: boost to spell save. Boost to the effectiveness of any inscription that's stat-dependent. At 5, you can wield a two-handed weapon in your main hand, but you suffer a penalty of -20% to spellpower, mindpower, and phsypower if you do (though each level of size above big knocks 5% off of that). Also, monowielding a two-hander cuts down the damage procs from your offhand by 50%.
- Scar-Scripted Flesh: once per turn, when you crit, reduce the cooldown of one inscription and the durationg of all saturation effects by one.
- Writ Large: Long cooldown. Instantly cool down all inscriptions. Makes your inscriptions cool down twice as fast for a while. At level 5, gives you another inscription slot to play with.

So, there's basically two parts to this thing. First, ogres are heavy enough into inscriptions that if you're going ogre and you *aren't* running an inscription strategy, you're doing it wrong. In particular, it looks like they really want to load up with instant inscriptions of various sorts, so that they can fire them all off, capstone, fire them all off again, and then let the speedy cooldown effect kick in for a while, as they work on other things. The inscription thing is aided by being someone who crits frequently. Writ large is a spell, so if there's anyone out there that can cool those down, that would also be a thing.

The second part is trying to work the "I get to wield a two-hander" side of things. It's certainly doable, but it's a bit trickier than it might look.

- This applies to bow, staff, and axe/sword/hammer. Bow's not worth it - there's nothing you could offhand that would be of significant help. Staff is interesting - the question is if you can find a full-sized staff that's enough better than your second-best shortstaff to be worth the -20% (or itemization for size), the reduction in offhand procs, and the skill point investment to get you there. For axe/sword/hammer, it looks like it's probably best for the weapon-and-shield users - the shields arent' all that likely to have damage procs to be debuffed, and the upgrade from 1h to 2h will apply to a larger percentage of your overall damage-dealing.

Agh. Running out of brain. Anyway, it's a start of poking into things. It's a great opportunity to really push the "large size" optimization thing, though, given that they start out larger than normal and also get direct, tangible passive benefits from it. Anyone know anything about that side of the equation?

[grobblewobble]

The best (and most unique) thing about Ogres is that they can wield a two-handed weapon and still use specialized skills that are only allowed when you use a shield or dual wield.

As I posted elsewhere, this makes them fantastic sun paladins, for example. Counterstrike and assault are good; counterstrike and assault with a two-hander are even better. A bulwark could do the same.

Likewise, Flurry with a two-hander sounds awesome as well.

However, I'm not entirely sure what the damage reduction of "procs" from your off-hand weapon means, exactly. Does that include normal attacks with your off-hand weapon, or is only the damage of triggered effects reduced?

[Sirrocco]

procs are triggered effects. I'm not sure whether it means the "do extra damage on hit", the "trigger this damaging skill on hit" or both, but it's not doing anything to base damage.

incidentally, I've been running an ogre dual-staff reaver who refuses to raise strength or any mastery other than staff. (makes the early game tougher, but saves points for the middlegame and late game). being able to fill that main hand with a full-sized staff has definitely helped smooth the process along.

As far as size optimization, there's a two-handed sword that cares what size you are, and You Will Be My Weapon likes the fact that you're consistently big. Anything else interesting people notice?

[twas Brillig]

If I recall correctly from staff accuracy bonus discussions, procs are pretty nebulous. Any effect triggered on hit counts, except for projectiles, including +x damage. I wonder whether the proc damage boost from staffs would be enough to offset the penalty?

[Atarlost]

Technique/Grappling and Wild-Gift/Sand-Drake/Swallow also care about size.

Wyrmics also get both Tech/2H Assault and Tech/Shield Offense unlocked.

An extra infusion slot is particularly nice for mana users, who tend to have one slot eaten by a manasurge rune.

My instincts say that two handed weapons are going to be mostly a gimmick if you sacrifice 20% everythingpower and 50% off hand procs. A non-vault using staff and shield build becomes possible to reliably get items for, but that power loss is probably killing any gains from using a two handed weapon with a shield unless you're doing something like combining talent trees that otherwise don't work together.

[grobblewobble]

unless you're doing something like combining talent trees that otherwise don't work together.

This is the key.

And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Sun Paladin is the one class that really gains amazing benefits from being an Ogre.

Sun paladins have two very good skill trees for shield builds: Shield Offense and Retribution.
They also have two very good skill trees for two-handers: Two-handed offense and Crusader.

Being able to use all four of those skill trees at the same time is incredibly good. It lets you pull off things like Death Dance on monsters marked with Counterstrike, or Assault with your Legacy of the Naloren. All of it boosted further by Ogric Wrath and Righteous Strength.. That's awesome damage, even with the 20% power penalty. (The proc penalty doesn't matter much, as far as I can tell, but I am not entirely sure what damage counts as "procs" of your shield.)
You get an endless array of special attack buttons, too. Enough to chain them practically forever; bump attacks will almost never be your best option.

Now you might think that you will run short on class points and/or inscription slots. But it isn't really so bad. Because the +1 infusion helps you out there. You can use that extra infusion slot for a second movement infusion and forego the Combat Techniques tree.

Alternatively, you can also get Combat Techniques for Rush and invest fewer class points in the Celestial Combat tree to be able to afford it. In that case the +1 infusion from race will still allow you 5 inscriptions.

[ekeron]

So, this would make the locked two-handed/shield skill category for bulwark/berserker actually useful.

[Atarlost]

The proc reduction is at least going to hit Weapon of Wrath and, when using talents that start with a shield strike, Shield of Light's extra attack. It may hit Weapon of Light as well.

I think you're underestimating how good Combat Techniques is. As a shield paladin your bump attacks are strong, making Blinding Speed strong. If you're running a crit based build to exploit the Sun's Vengeance positive generation engine using a sword for the accuracy bonus makes Precise Strike and Perfect Strike strong as well. That's a high opportunity cost and you aren't going to pull 20 points from Celestial Combat and have anything left. And you should be running a crit build for scar scripted flesh.

The 20% spell power cut is also eating into your defenses and you can't paper over that with a prodigy.

I'm pretty sure we're looking at a niche build that doesn't actually beat a good Shalore of Halfling or possibly Cornac shield build (at difficulty settings where you aren't drowning in randarts stone alchemy is quite strong).

Your opportunity costs are probably lower on Wyrmic. They have both shield offense and two handed assault unlocked, no procs, and breaths that use neither physical power nor mindpower. Wyrmics also have a fairly important talent that actually cares about size. It's too bad Bulwarks still have the obsolete two handed weapons tree instead of two handed assault as a locked tree or they'd be another good option, but you can get death dance and the old berserk that doesn't drain HP. Maybe now that ogres make unlocking it not silly we'll see that fixed.

I think the inscription benefits are going to be what the race really benefits from and oversized wielding is mostly going to be something done temporarily by non-vault users with perverse luck in weapon drops.

[grobblewobble]

Having access to both crusader and Retribution alone is strong, and I feel you're refusing to see the potential strengths, without even having ever tried it.

You can go 1/1/1/1 in Celestial (second life is worth it), basically giving up weapon wrath and weapon of light.

Gaining access to both Crusader (one of the best offensive melee trees in the game) AND Retribution (one of the best defensive melee trees in the game) is worth that. And shield offense. And two-handed butt-kicking.

You talk about "strong bump attacks" and somehow fail to understand the power of a character that never bumps, but instead continues chaining special attacks with big damage multipliers, every turn. Assault is an average attack round for me. FoTB, Death Dance, Windblade, the list goes on.

With a weapon that's better than a one-hander to begin with.

While receiving the awesome Strength of Purpose boost on everything on top of having Counterstrike for even more damage. On top of Ogric Strength. And yeah, you can still have blinding speed with that. And have high crit rate, too.

It all stacks up.

I didn't even mention how I am now having over 2000 hitpoints with a level 40 character, or how the power reduction can be reduced with size increasing items.

If you can't see how much potential there is in Ogre sun paladins, please go ahead and never try them, while I continue beating the game into a bloody pulp. :p

[Sirrocco]

Also, pertinently, it's not 20%. It's 20% -5% per size category. Run into a belt with a one point size boost? down to 15% - and those are all over the place.

Silliness: an ogre bulwark could stack berserker and shield wall, for 100% stun resistance.

Worth noting that the staff version is not only much more readily available, but will also generally be a better weapon - not only do you have more chances to get something really good, but it's not consuming a prefix worth of potential on "short"

[Bokkelul]

Technique/Grappling and Wild-Gift/Sand-Drake/Swallow also care about size.

Wyrmics also get both Tech/2H Assault and Tech/Shield Offense unlocked.

An extra infusion slot is particularly nice for mana users, who tend to have one slot eaten by a manasurge rune.

My instincts say that two handed weapons are going to be mostly a gimmick if you sacrifice 20% everythingpower and 50% off hand procs. A non-vault using staff and shield build becomes possible to reliably get items for, but that power loss is probably killing any gains from using a two handed weapon with a shield unless you're doing something like combining talent trees that otherwise don't work together.

I found a +2 size belt on my ogre wyrmic, now it's a 10% power reduction, but I get to use a 2h + shield.
the assault skill in shield offense gives two guaranteed crits from my main-hand and it has I think like a 6 turn cooldown.
so far I've been rinsing everything including some overpowered wyrms

[GlassGo]

They say that Ogres can complete Anti-magic quest.

[Sirrocco]

Sure - but their first skill is a spell... which means that you can't have it before you go antimagic, and you can't get it afterwards... which means that you can't actually get the other skills that make ogre worth having. As far as antimagic is concerned, they're basically a bigger, beefier shaloren. There's no point.

[Dracos]

I beat the game with an anti-magic Ogre Wyrmic. I think only one death?

It wasn't a problem having it before going antimagic. It doesn't give a magic bar.

[grobblewobble]

Wyrmics already start with fungus, without needing anti-magic.

So for a wyrmic, I don't see why you'd give up Ogric Strength (in addition to locking yourself out of runes and arcane items), even if it is possible?