Yapfeston: about Active Skills

By Sui · · 56 views · 2 upvotes · 5 replies

You know what time it is? It's complaining & yapping time!
But seriously, I wanted to share my feedback about current (active) skills - and why most of them aren't fun to use.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ WHOLE THING,

SKIP TO THE BOTTOM FOR TL;DR VERSION !!!!!

LONG VERSION

1. Inaccurate Descriptions.

Certain skills do not provide accurate description.
Specifically:

Additionally, certain skills have the exact values on multiple levels:
Battle Cryyyyyyyyy.png
If they really provide more, for ex. +0.25 value per subsequent upgrades, then it should be mentioned, as currently it seems like we are wasting SP if we don't reach the next "round-number" level.

2. Skill Grouping by Types.

"Recoil Skills"

Two of the main Skills are Power Strike & Soul Shot. Both consumes HP per use.

However, it's really punishing if player's HP doesn't quite catch up with DMG dealt.
I give an example from my perspective:

I have ~40k HP... In a Boss Battle, after stacking DMG buffs, Streak-buff and hitting a high roll, I can possibly deal 300-500k dmg.
Maxed out PS results in 10% recoil of damage it hits. You see the problem?
The skill acts a little "too fair". This issue does not happen Souls Shot which would take only 4k HP at max in this scenario.

"RNG Skills"

Two other choices are Charge & Gambit. Both have only a "chance" to trigger.
This chance can be improved by constantly spending a lot of energy in each Battle, but it can't be done in Boss Battles.

Odds of rolling, assuming each number (1-10) has exactly 10% chance to happen + we include Snake Eye in math.

Both skills can be acquired at the same time. But doing so creates a lot of down-time of not dealing any damage at all.
If we add to it a Battle Cry, it's literally stacking RNG on a top of RNG with even more RNG - as BC lasts only 2 turns, while Gambit requires 2-3 turns (meaning you have only a CHANCE to utilize BC).
And that's assuming you won't need to heal / defend / your skill is not disabled ("stolen" by mob).
In that scenario, we are speaking of at least 8 (5+1+3) turns before we make the very first hit.

3. Skill Paths.

- Gambit vs Soul Shot.

Gambit starts weak, but raises decently.
With 2.6x multiplier on lv. 1, it stands on only 52% of it's maximum potential (being 5.0x). And 76% at lv. 10.

Soul Shot starts strong, but raises slowly.
With 2.0x multiplier on lv. 1, it stands on 66.6% of it's maximum potential (being 3.0x). And 83.3% at lv. 10.

When both maxed, their average performance is relatively close.

While it seems Gambit to be the obvious winner here, with relatively often potential of final dmg being higher (especially when being buffed), in practice however... Battle Cry will often vanish before it can be even utilized, often leading to lose of its advantage hits-streak.
Soul Shot also has DEF pierce perk, which helps with contributing a bit more dmg, but... I will talk about it a bit later.
Lets just say it's not really that significant addition.

- Charge vs Power Strike

- Charge can be used with any Active attack except of PS.
It's good in theory, but in practice it requires 5 turns on average + it's intended to be used with strong attack, preferably buffed with Battle Cry - which as we know, it can be quite problematic to benefit from.

For Gambit it's surely better than BC, as unlike the BC its stacks vanishes only after successful hit. But pairing 2 RNG-based skills is just painful.
It creates a lot of down-time of not dealing a single damage instance, especially when pairing with BC and/or Gambit.
We can speak of at least 7 turn (5+1+2) before the first hit, assuming we we won't have to Heal / Defend / Lose skill (one of them being "stolen" by a mob).
It surely adds more value to the Soul Shot too, making the HP sacrifice more reasonable... but it fall flat when directly compared to Quick Attack (on the top of potentially saved points).

The skill also states two contradictory things:

Charge probably has the most unclear data provided among all skills...

I will give you example on my character:

I have around 40k HP. With accumulating hundreds of Streak DMG buff + Battle Cry buff + a high roll... I can hit for as much as 300-500k dmg in one instance.
And now add a 10% recoil to it... Do you see the problem?
In comparison: Soul Shot will always take 4k HP. Still punishing, but not as much as PS.

TLDR PART

4. Skills as a Standalone.

Battle Cry:

Charge:

Gambit:

Power Strike:

Soul Shot:

Healing Light, Arcane Barrier, Guard, Wind Step:

Poison Blade:

So my point being is... Current available skills and skill combinations we can do, are simply not really fun to play.
While I do understand it's intended to not make them spammable; and thus almost every of them holds some downside, I think it could be done a little differently.

For instance: The combat supposed to be more about strategy... TBH, I don't see much strategy in paying extra energy each battle, just to pretty much bypass RNG factor of randomly failed action (thanks to low-rolls) & the Skill Steal mechanic. It just punishes those who went with a wrong build.

Replies

Sui ·

Also, I think Charge skiill should give instantly 2 stacks when hitting a really high roll (maybe eve 3 when hitting 10+10? But this could be too much), especially if the Roll +8 requirement isn't going away.

Septimus ·

Another thing to consider is how the Battle and personal logs display these skills and how they interact. Also Battle logs and personal logs don't always show the same details like streak bonus and if there is a critical strike (i.e. 2d10 > 17)

For example here is a single attack and I will provide the Battle log and the Personal log.

Battle Log
⚔️ Dealt 121,407 damage to the boss!
Damage: 121,407 (dice: 9+5=14, ×1.8) — 📯 Battle Cry ×2.8 (1 left) 🎰 Gambit hits (dice 14 ≥ 12) — ×4.5 damage! — 🩸 Lifesteal +1,032 HP

Personal Log
Attack gambit — 121,407 dmg
dice 9+5=14 ×1.8 · streak ×2.22 · 🩸 lifesteal +1,032 HP · 📯 Battle Cry ×2.8 (1 left) 🎰 Gambit hits (dice 14 ≥ 12) — ×4.5 damage!

Both entries would lead the player to think that their damage should be as follows

4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × 2.8 × 4.5 = 239,110

The reality is as follows
4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × (1 + 1.8 + 3.5) = 4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × 6.3 = 119,555 (I'm stuck with display values that are likely rounded causing the 1.5% error)

This means that when you stack Battle Cry and think you are getting 2.8x (180% gain) more damage you are really only getting about a 40% boost in damage.
Consequently that gambit that you thought was going to give 4.5x (350% gain) really only gives you about 125% gain.

This isn't actually a problem or something that needs rebalancing. It is however something that needs better clarity in the logs so players don't think they are "losing" damage.
algebraically you are still getting the damage that you should it is just the 2.8x and 4.5x that makes it feel like you are getting less.

4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × (1 + 3.5) = 18,977 x 4.5 = 85,396.5 85,396.5 - 18,977 = 66,419.5
4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × (1 + 1.8) = 18,977 x 2.8 = 53,135.6 53,135.6 - 18,977 = 34,158.6
4,749 × 1.8 × 2.22 × (1 ) = 18,977

18,977 + 66,419.5 + 34158.6 = 119,915.1 (again with rounding errors propagating)

The point stands clear though, Battle Cry gives you the same boost if you use it alone or stacked as well as gambit.
It still feels like you aren't getting the expected values though because of the 2.8x and 4.5x labels.

TokenLord ·

Hey Sui — genuinely appreciated, writeups like this save us hours. I went through every single claim against the actual combat code. Here's the honest scorecard.

You were right — fixed (ships with the next update)

  • Battle Cry: it really gives 2 boosted attacks, not 3 turns — the old "3 turns" label counted the turn you cast it. Rather than silently changing the mechanic, we relabeled everything to what it actually does: "your next 2 attacks".
  • Your screenshot (identical values on L10–13): real, and there were actually TWO problems hiding in it. The value grows +0.025 per level but the display rounded to one decimal, so four levels in a row looked identical. Worse — the advertised "3.3×" max was unreachable: the engine caps the applied boost at ×3.0, so leveling Battle Cry raises the minimum roll outcome, not the max. Displays now show two decimals and never advertise above the cap. Same rounding fix for Charge L18–20 (real values 1.25 / 1.28 / 1.30 — the levels do pay out, the display was hiding it).
  • Charge "works only with Normal Attacks": wrong text, right catch — it releases on ANY attack (Power Strike, Soul Shot and Gambit included). Fixed.
  • Your "3 × 1.3 = 3.9 vs 4.9" question: the stacks are additive on top of your base hit — 1 + 3×1.3 = 4.9×, so no contradiction there. BUT you sniffed out something real: there WAS an undisclosed combined cap with Battle Cry (×5.5 total), which means a full 3-stack release leaves Battle Cry very little headroom. That's now stated right in the skill description.
  • Gambit and the "12": found it — the in-battle tooltip was rounding the threshold while the skill tree ceils it, so at some levels the battle screen showed "≥12" when a 12 could not actually hit. Now identical everywhere. Also, since the last update the threshold improves in even bands — 14 at L1–6, 13 at L7–13, 12 at L14–20 — the old curve where nine straight levels bought no threshold improvement is gone.
  • Charge's roll-9 requirement "nowhere mentioned": fair until very recently — that disclosure went live about an hour before your post (skill tree + description). The in-battle tooltip gets it in the next update too.

Where I'll politely push back

  • Power Strike recoil is NOT a % of the damage you deal. It's a % of your max HP — 25% at level 1, scaling down to 10% at max. Your 300–500k hit would cost you ~4k HP at max level, exactly the same as Soul Shot. The real difference between the two: PS recoil CAN kill you, while Soul Shot can never drop you below 1 HP. To be fair, nothing in the game said which base that % used — that's on us, and every description now says "of your max HP".
  • Soul Shot vs bosses: half right. Guild bosses have no DEF stat, so the DEF-pierce % genuinely does nothing there — fair hit, and the description now says so. But it's not a dead perk in boss fights: when the boss raises its Guard and everyone else's damage gets halved, Soul Shot punches through at full damage.

On the rest

The RNG-stacked-on-RNG downtime, defensive skill scaling, Skill Steal frustration, Poison Blade's right to exist, and your follow-up idea of Charge granting extra stacks on a high roll — that's balance territory, and I'm not brushing it off. We're deliberately shipping correctness first and looking at balance separately; it's on the list, and posts like this one are exactly what feeds it.

Thanks for the info and opinion

Sui ·

Great response with a lot of infos, really appreciated!
Looking forward for further updates and suggestions from others.

TokenLord ·

Septimus — this is some of the best forensic work anyone has done on the combat engine, and it flushed out a real problem. I checked your numbers against the actual damage code. Verdict: every log inconsistency you flagged is real and now fixed — but the additive theory is wrong, and it's entirely our fault you landed on it.

The missing factor: the boss was Guarding. When the boss raises its Guard, every attack except Soul Shot deals half damage for that window — and the log never said so. That silent ×0.5 is what your reconstruction was missing.

The engine really is multiplicative, exactly like the labels imply:

4,749 × 1.8 (dice) × 2.22 (streak) × 2.8 (Battle Cry) × 4.5 (Gambit) = 239,110 239,110 × 0.5 (silent Guard) = 119,555

…which is the exact number your additive model predicted. For your specific values it's a genuine numeric coincidence: (1 + 1.8) × 4.5 × 0.5 and 1 + 1.8 + 3.5 both come out to 6.3 — which is why the additive math seemed to check out perfectly. Your ~1.5% residual is just the rounded display values (the ×2.8 and ×2.22 you had to work from are rounded).

So the good news is better than you thought: Battle Cry stacked with Gambit gives you the full multiplied amount. On a clean, non-Guard window that same hit would have been ~239k.

Fixed (ships with the next update):

  • Attacks into a Guarding boss now say "🛡️ Hit the boss's Guard — damage halved" in both logs. No more invisible ×0.5 — this one gaslit you and probably plenty of others.
  • The Battle Log now shows the streak multiplier. The Personal Log always did — you were right, the same hit told two different stories.
  • The Personal Log now shows the Critical Combo (dice ≥ 18 — your "2d10 > 17" was exactly right). It only ever appeared in the room feed before.

After this, the bits printed on the line multiply out to the number shown — the algebraic clarity you asked for, no rebalancing needed, exactly as you said. Genuinely appreciated. 🧮