(1.3) My Ogre Feedback

[elboyo]

As great as it is to be able to use one hand to hold a nice, big two-handed weapon, the 20% miss chance is almost impossible to work around.

As a result, Ogres using a weapon-based class cannot really benefit from this ability at all. It would be like covering yourself in anti-magic equipment and playing a spellcaster.

Roguelikes are, by the nature of the genre, unforgiving. Having a chance to completely fail at an action is all but guaranteed to get you killed.

This being said, I really enjoy the other racial talents and the many play options that they offer. The penalty for using an over-sized weapon needs to be changed to something more manageable to offset, like a speed, a damage, or a defense penalty.

[edge2054]

It was changed to -20% all power. Should be updated in b7.

[elboyo]

Awesome. I had not updated to b7 yet.

Now it's time to make my Wyrmic feedback post.

[Radon26]

problem with 20% miss chance?

ogre reaver says hi. dual staffing without having to search for short staves.

also, i assume that you can still use 2h talents, even if you put something in the other hand.
being able to use both 2h assault, AND shield offence? and if you are a sun paladin both guardian and crusader?

this ability is a game breaker, and you complain about 20% miss chance!?

[elboyo]

The problem with miss chance is that it suffers from entropy in the worst way possible. If this passive rolls a miss, ALL of the resultant attacks miss. If you use an attack that produces 4 hits of weapon damage while dual-wielding, all 8 swings will miss.

While it generally produced a strong boost to a character, the longer you play a character, the more likely it is that this miss chance will kill you.

Many weapon skills that apply debuffs have long cooldowns and require a successful strike. If you have a 1/5 chance to miss for each action, you also have a 1/25 chance to miss two times consecutively, or 1/125 chance to miss three times consecutively. So, if you're fighting a particularly strong rare, unique, or boss and you miss your primary stun, brainlock, slow, cripple, etc. it will get you killed.

This may not be a huge problem for adventure mode, but it was unusable for classes which rely on weapon hits to apply debuffs and deal damage if you played on permadeath mode.

Reavers don't rely on their weapons to weaken enemies because they use spells to handle that task. Adding a 20% chance to your sun paladin would probably lower your total damage output because almost all of your damage is dealt through procs and your shield anyways. You go ahead and give it a go, but the risk of dying to a bad streak of RNG (more so than the game sometimes provides anyways) was far too much for me to warrant the cost of 5 generic points for.

[supermini]

this ability is a game breaker, and you complain about 20% miss chance!?

I don't know how much you tested the old version before calling it game breaking, but 20% miss chance was making it completely unusable. On average every 25 attacks you will miss twice in a row. On average every 125 attacks you will miss 3 times in a row. If the average mob takes 3 hits to take down that's 3 misses in a row every 40 mobs. If an average fight has 4 mobs, that's 3 misses in a row once every 10 fights. Even if you halve that it doesn't look too good. Once you miss, you don't only miss, you lose the ability and the procs. Landing some of those abilities (like stuns) is crucial to survival in melee.

If you don't trust me, get into a melee fight against something tough, pass three turns, and see how it goes.

The powers reduction (that we have now) might be making it too good for certain melee, but miss chance was making it useless, and that's worse.

ogre reaver says hi. dual staffing without having to search for short staves.

Investing 5 generics for a situational and temporary benefit is a bad investment. If short staves weren't a universal thing, this would be a much bigger deal for casters.

also, i assume that you can still use 2h talents, even if you put something in the other hand.
being able to use both 2h assault, AND shield offence? and if you are a sun paladin both guardian and crusader?

You do not, in fact, have unlimited points. You give yourself an option to use both at the same time, but those points come from somewhere else. You only come out ahead if the combination is that much stronger over what you were using previously. Classes that have both shield offense and the 2h tree unlocked might be getting the most out of it. Guardian and crusader is a bad example, they both require category points to unlock.

In my opinion, the biggest benefit comes from 2h classes being able to dual-wield. Put 2h in main hand, put dagger with good on hit effects in the off hand. Increased number of hits increases your melee procs, your flexible combat procs, etc. It's worth losing some phys power over that.

[edge2054]

I played around with an Ogre Sun Paladin in cheat mode and it was indeed too many points.

I'm still going to do it for 1.3 but I'll start off in the shield-offense tree and migrate into Crusader. Guardian I'll probably skip.

But Assault plus Two Handed Weapon sounds fun As does counter strike + Crusader talents.

I think it will be a fun build but I don't think it's going to wreck the game.

[elboyo]

I got to play around a bit with an Ogre Doombringer during lunch.

With an offhand dagger, this passive is nuts for scaling the incinerating blows procs. My screen is completely coated with explosions when I use obliterating smash.

It has also allowed me to make fearsome use of "on crit" effects from the offhand because of the guaranteed crit on kill talent.

[donkatsu]

You do not, in fact, have unlimited points. You give yourself an option to use both at the same time, but those points come from somewhere else. You only come out ahead if the combination is that much stronger over what you were using previously. Classes that have both shield offense and the 2h tree unlocked might be getting the most out of it. Guardian and crusader is a bad example, they both require category points to unlock.

I think it's actually a great example, as Guardian and Crusader are the two best class trees that Sun Paladins have by a significant margin. What else were you going to put your class points into, Combat Veteran? Category points are also free, because you have to spend at least two category points by the end of the game, and your other options were... Radiance? Survival? Here's the class point build that I theorycrafted:

Technique/ Shield Offense: 1/1/1/1
Celestial/ Guardian: 4/5/5/4
Celestial/ Combat: 5/1/1/5
Celestial/ Crusader: 5/1/5/4
Celestial/ Sun: 1/2/1/4

This leaves you with 10 class points that you can distribute to Two-handed Assault, Shield Offense, and/or Sun Ray/ Sun's Vengeance.

Ogres are still garbage Sun Paladins though, because they're not Shalore, but that goes for every race besides Shalore.

[elboyo]

Ogres are way too good as Doombringers. Doubling your chance to proc incinerating blows is so powerful. I burnt through both of the Master's lives in 5 turns total (on Nightmare). At level 30, I added Flexible Combat and I killed the boss of Reknor in two swings (Obliterating Smash and Reckless Strike). This was done with a tier 3 blue staff and a Spellblaze Shard.

[edge2054]

Well the other option that would make sense is -speed.

*edit*
Also, some classes just aren't built around multiple attacks like this. The first thought I had when I saw ogres, was oh, cool, now dual-wield and shield classes can have a wider variety of weapons to choose from. The idea that you could mainhand a bow and offhand a dagger or use two-handed trees while off-handing a dagger really didn't even occur to me. I think using two weapons requires a particular mindset. It's not easy for anyone that's tried it larping or sparring or whatever. There's a certain amount of ambidexterity required and I don't see how being bigger should really translate into talents built around one mindset (single weapon) should translate into dual-wielding just because you're big. If that worked then why don't two-handed weapon talents currently work with longsword + dagger?

The thought of every Ogre TW running around with Bow + Shantiz is another thing that strikes me as not only silly but just not balanced. Even without the two-handed weapon thing Grisly Constitution is a great talent. I don't know that it should really be giving +20 dex to archers on top of it.

[supermini]

Ogres using 2h on a class that uses 1h + something is fine. Turning 2h classes into dual wielders seems very iffy.

What about 2h trees requiring you to use the 2h in two hands?

[supermini]

I think it's actually a great example, as Guardian and Crusader are the two best class trees that Sun Paladins have by a significant margin. What else were you going to put your class points into, Combat Veteran? Category points are also free, because you have to spend at least two category points by the end of the game, and your other options were... Radiance? Survival? Here's the class point build that I theorycrafted:

Technique/ Shield Offense: 1/1/1/1
Celestial/ Guardian: 4/5/5/4
Celestial/ Combat: 5/1/1/5
Celestial/ Crusader: 5/1/5/4
Celestial/ Sun: 1/2/1/4

This leaves you with 10 class points that you can distribute to Two-handed Assault, Shield Offense, and/or Sun Ray/ Sun's Vengeance.

Yeah, you are right.

Ogres are still garbage Sun Paladins though, because they're not Shalore, but that goes for every race besides Shalore.

Until timeless gets nerfed anyway.

[Mankeli]

I think it's actually a great example, as Guardian and Crusader are the two best class trees that Sun Paladins have by a significant margin. What else were you going to put your class points into, Combat Veteran? Category points are also free, because you have to spend at least two category points by the end of the game, and your other options were... Radiance? Survival?

Combat techniques is probably better than radiance and combat veteran combined. My pally got 67 global speed from Blinding Speed with RoTWM and LoTN. This doesn't necessarily change your final conclusion but it does mean that points spent are not without opportunity cost.

[Effigy]

Well the other option that would make sense is -speed.

*edit*
Also, some classes just aren't built around multiple attacks like this. The first thought I had when I saw ogres, was oh, cool, now dual-wield and shield classes can have a wider variety of weapons to choose from. The idea that you could mainhand a bow and offhand a dagger or use two-handed trees while off-handing a dagger really didn't even occur to me. I think using two weapons requires a particular mindset. It's not easy for anyone that's tried it larping or sparring or whatever. There's a certain amount of ambidexterity required and I don't see how being bigger should really translate into talents built around one mindset (single weapon) should translate into dual-wielding just because you're big. If that worked then why don't two-handed weapon talents currently work with longsword + dagger?

The thought of every Ogre TW running around with Bow + Shantiz is another thing that strikes me as not only silly but just not balanced. Even without the two-handed weapon thing Grisly Constitution is a great talent. I don't know that it should really be giving +20 dex to archers on top of it.

As much as I hate to say it, you're probably right. The powergamer in me wants this to work, but for balance sake it's probably better if two-handed-specific talents are disabled while dual-wielding. Otherwise I could see Ogre becoming the de facto race choice for some classes. We already have that issue with Shalore.