So it's been a few days and I've really been going over builds to see what works and what doesn't. I feel like I'm missing something though cause I still have a hard time getting very far in the void. Still, despite my hardships in the void I feel like I find myself falling into a dominant strategy and it's hard to pull myself out of it. Even more, playing unconventional builds feels not fun. Sometimes getting past the first screen can be a bit of an rng fest even for a solid build but if your build comes online late or is experimental it is like trying to win the lottery.
First the solid builds I've found: Lochra Warrior of Hadad (or Humbaba but ironically Hadad plays better), Kull Mubarizun of Humbaba (like warrior you'd think Hadad, but Humbaba benefits it more), Naqui Zealot of Mehtar (already posted about this one as a solid prayer/summon build), Stran Amir of Ashem/Eresh (a good starter build to get glory flowing as mentioned earlier, Eresh can be fun but you can end up with a domina effect that wipes out all your summons with little effect).
I've gotten to the void with all four of these builds, ironically the melee ones are actually the easier ones to reach the void with and the Mubarizum is the only one I've gotten remotely close to reaching the end of the void with. I have yet to find a will build that doesn't rely at least somewhat on summoning to stay alive. Each of the attribute builds have a weakness to them:
Strength can survive hits but unless you invest heavily in vitality you will die a death of a thousand cuts you also have to be somewhat careful of your encumbrance because you can't afford for it to be too high because you need speed to hope to make it . Speed is key for any melee build and you want to have over 20 at least for melee though over 30 is better. This also limits you on inflexibility but less than you would actually think. Tends to die from the fact that your best defense is armor and armor is mostly worthless late game because most enemies do non physical damage and you won't have enough armor to handle that. Unlike most other builds though, strength builds don't really need to every change out their items and can get by with what they start with if you go warrior.
Dexterity is a massive powerhouse, it starts off somewhat weak and hurts for damage in the early game. It depends heavily on items and rng to get off the ground: dodge starts out weak and is a very rng defense to begin with but is the best defense in the game because it can completely negate an attack and works equally well against everything but AOEs. You need items though to deal appreciable damage and your items are limited, because the best your strength is going to be is 5 if you took humbaba so you need to make sure they're light and have effects you care about. They're major weakness is that AOEs ignore dodge and kill you instantly if you get caught in them in the void and early in the void and aschra your dodges are not very reliable to protect you. They obviously rely on speed the most and you want a speed in the mid 60s by the time you reach the void.
Will builds very but getting them off the ground can either be a nightmare if you get swarmed early game or easy if you're playing the oozomancer. Their main defense is just having as many bodies on the field at the same time between them and their enemies and hoping it's enough, they also suffer if they have the wrong damage type for the job. You need to diversify and have as many different damage types as possible, you cannot focus in just one because not all damage types are built equal and you actually have trash damage for the whole game. Where as a melee character can run up against something that has a 90% damage reduction to their damage and still make it through due to the shear number of attacks they're pumping out, you can't. You put out one attack a round not including your summons and your summons might not be doing the right damage. Ironically Will builds care the least about incumbrance and inflexibility because you're probably going to have a speed of 1 anyway, so you can wear whatever armor you want but not whatever weapon you want because you need to hit and your accuracy is probably trash as well.
Separating these comments out based on what they're about. Next thing I want to mention is defenses, because not all defenses are built equally. We'll start from best to worst:
At the top of the bunch is speed, speed is the best defense. It's also the best offence. Speed won't actually protect you if you do get caught in an attack but it can keep you from getting caught in an attack altogether. If you know the enemy you can dance in and out of its AOEs and you just dance around them in general. You'll have more attacks and better mobility and mobility is king.
Second is dodge, unreliable at the beginning but the best in the end game where it really hurts to die after sinking so much time into a game. It's incredibly reliant on dex to increase. As of now don't bother with powers and abilities that increase dodge dice, so far as I can tell they don't do anything; or at the very least if you check your stats afterwards they don't show them doing anything. This is a consistent problem with a lot of the skills and powers but I'll talk about that later.
Third (and a distant third at that) is armor. Armor is easy to get, and easy to get a lot of. It's consistent early game and will carry you almost all the way to the void depending on what you're playing. It's weakness comes when you're dealing with anything nonphysical and the fact that while you can raise it pretty quickly with powers, you are usually sacrificing precious damage or precious speed to do so because you could be buying that instead. Actual equip able armor itself can be a crap shoot because it can give you a massive armor bonus but usually at the expense of speed which is a better defense over all.
Fourth is HP, though it's probably tied in usefulness for Armor. It'll keep you alive though for a lot of builds it can be the difference between dying in one hit or dying in two. You only need to worry about this if you're a strength character. Other characters just need to worry about healing DoT damage that they receive for the most part or the odd AOE they get caught in in the early game.
Fifth is resistances, you'd think they'd be higher but if you play a skeleton you know otherwise. These can help a lot with Armor and HP but you should not rely on the as they only go up to 75 and it'll be nearly impossible to cover all your bases. Physical, Poison, Blood, Fire, and Lightning are the ones you'll most want to cover though as they're the easiest ones to get caught with and have the DoTs you need to watch out for.
At the bottom at a very, very, very distant sixth is block and defense. They're tied because they're the same defense and because of this they're both broken. The only character that can pull this off is a mubarizun pugilist and that isn't a very good build to begin with. The weakness of this is that it relies on two stats to work: Dex and Str. You need to have a high dex for your defense because without defense you won't block, then you need a good strength for block so that you can actually block. Mixed builds don't currently work very well and a high dex will give you a good dodge and a good speed anyway. On top of this, on paper block is better than armor but in play it's basically the same. The difference is that when you block you don't receive chip damage and you don't get the DoT that can go with it. On the other hand it doesn't work on AoEs so that's a wash anyway. Skills and powers that increase block work but because of how inconsistent this defense is and how hard it is to build for it, it's not worth it.
The final thing I want to bring up is the trees because not all trees are built equally either. Some of them are very powerful and very reliable and others really need some help. We'll go from left to right with them starting with Martial.
Martial is a very solid power to pull from, it's basically required if you're running a melee build or really anything but a pure will build. Unfortunately due to the nature of the game, Vitality and Focus are really the only two things that are worth taking from it; though those two abilities alone justify taking the power. Focus makes you faster and you attack more often on top of that though the attacks themselves don't deal much damage, both things you want if you're going into melee; you also supposedly get more hit dice though if that is true it doesn't show up on your character sheet. Vitality is the best end of combat heal in the game and the best armor ability in the game. The others are situational and not as good as you think. Pugilist feels like it needs just more power and possibly a decrease in the cost, its weakness comes from the fact that weapon effects can be powerful beyond the damage they can do. Guard relies on you getting hit and the damage you deal in response though a good damage type just isn't high enough to justify keying off of armor and block, especially with a character that probably doesn't have much health or strength to begin with. Alacrity is good but it relies on an rng based defense for a character that would probably be better off just attacking more rather than rolling the dice on dodge, I don't think the dodge bonus actually works though because the numbers don't increase and even when I take it a lot I don't see a difference.
Fire, it has the most powers out of any of the trees and so many of them are summoning powers. Ironically fire is probably one of the worst powers you can take if you are a summoner in my experience as a lot of what it does has friendly fire problems and even with high fire resistance you'll be frying your own minions pretty quick.
-Pyromancy is a trap, only will characters will want it but it will kill your minions.
-Burning heart is a rather disappointing heal though I suppose it could work for a dex build if there wasn't already a better element for a dex build. The real strength of this power comes when you get immolation.
-Inflame is a great way for a will character to increase their accuracy, something will characters desperately need. The ifrits are nice but suffer from the same problem summoning with fire does
-Immolation can be good on a strength build though it only really shines when you have burning heart and can apply a lot of scorch really fast. Combine the two and you can see some truly terrifying damage numbers come out.
-Shamshar feels bad. It's a worse version of skera in a number of ways. You're basically stuck playing a dex build with this and even then it's going to be a sword and shield murabizun which isn't the best option there. I honestly think this would function better if it gave you bonuses if your encumbrance was higher on account of the fact that the best blunt and slash weapons are all usually heavy enough to put you close to the limit on this tried running a fire lightning mubarizun and it was a nightmare to get running and was worthless against the beetles that show up early in the game and once again the bonus hit dice didn't show up in the character sheet. To expensive and weaker than a similar option.
-Flame cultists are really cool for that deal fire in a line nonsense they have when any summoning happens but once again you'll kill all of your summons doing that. Can make for a decently fun summoner early game but gets hard stopped by anything with a lick of fire resistance. The damage they pump out and the damage the fire lines do is paltry for the price though, there are better summoning options.
Lightning is a star player in the powers, it's the go to if you are playing a dex character and that's it but what it does it does well. Sadly it really only does one thing well which is Skera.
-Electrokinesis is a trap, any character that's going to want to use it is a will character and will have summons for defense. This will kill your summons pretty fast actually.
-Electromancy is a summoning ability and the ability to pray enemies to death, could be a fun way to run a zealot but you run into the problem if you run out of prayers and everything isn't dead because your summons probably will be.
-Power Charge suffers from being a low damage increase, there are better ways to pump your damage. Might function well on a dex speed character that can really pump up their charge level but Skera exists and it's really powerful.
-Skera the premier ability of the lightning Tree. An incredible pick, expensive but worth it. The damage increase is sizable the speed increase is always nice. If you're playing a dex build there is really no reason not to take this. You should in fact be trying to get this by the green tower if you can.
(will post the rest at a later date, I have stuff to say about all the elements but life is coming up)
Thank you for these comments -- it really helps reading them. You've nailed a lot of the nagging balance problems I've been dealing with and that other players have brought up, especially those who read the mechanics and try to break the game in the Void, which is where some cracks begin to show, lol. I think a final version will officially have the game balanced around beating the Obelisk, or that was the plan, with the Void as a bonus. But as long as the Void exists, it becomes the standard challenge, which means the game has to be balanced around those very late builds, which definitely changes things. It narrows the potential builds for sure. I'll definitely add a preliminary victory screen for beating the Obelisk, and keep thinking about this.
DEX will continue to be a problem as long as the Speed bonus works the way it does, with so much being accumulated. I think this can only be solved with a rework of the bonus, a rework of Speed entirely, or just adding more powers that give Speed based on other attributes, particularly WIL. If Speed was something you could only raise by investing in certain powers (with a variety) it might be a better situation. I don't really like having to balance powerful enemies around players who potentially have 60 speed
The "pure WIL damage" archetype needs some love -- it's suffering from the fact that it was by far the strongest in very early builds, so I've been subconsciously regulating it more than, for example, DEX
In terms of mechanics in general, I'm extremely dissatisfied with how difficult it is to see stuff like a bonus to Hit "dice" -- it's been in the back of my mind that I might remake these systems to be simpler and more intuitive. This applies to defense / block as well. For example, if dice "sides" were fixed, bonuses would be easier to see. The current system gives more character to equipment by fluctuating sides with different stat scalings but in practice it's not really satisfyingly visible to the player
Anyway I very much appreciate your comments and will eagerly read them. Also be warned, yesterday's update messes with some of this stuff
Well looks like my review of each of the elements is going to be on hold for awhile considering how things have changed. On the changes having played this for about 6 hours so far today, I can say they are somewhat exciting. I finally was able to bring a non summoner will build to the void thanks to changes and the dex build has become...different. I think this will add more diversity of builds from what I've seen.
The change to focus actually encourages you to have at least 2 points in every stat and it makes the humbaba mubarizun build deal insane damage when you stack it. Ironically it's probably not all that good for str two hander builds. Dual wielding is dead thanks to this, it used to rule dex builds but this also means that you are not as item bound with finding a claw, and a rinoir and makes spears actually usable weapons. It also made the whip, usually a frustratingly useless nothing weapon into one that's worth using. On the other hand a dex mubarizun really only wants to stand and fight when they need to heal in combat with blood rage, otherwise they should be constantly on the move. You can't just tab and forget with the build now, it's a very active and engaging playstyle. The changes actually incentivize you to just focus martial though, as the massive damage bonus from skera is no longer a thing, though I do enjoy that skera and shamshar are no longer weight locked I do think they are less useful overall.
I think you'll enjoy knowing that life/blood is now a very solid build thanks to the introduction of vinakenisis and the changes to piercing vines now doing blood damage instead of piercing. I think it fits thematically just as well as life/death. A Naqui Ascetic of Mehtar is an incredibly solid build that has an answer for most things, they can summon for the early game to get off the ground. They have solid area damage, and with Piercing vine they have very good damage with bleed but can fall back on the ever reliable blunt damage. With access to Mehtar they can reliably heal themselves as well. I'm glad to finally see something mesh with blood because along with the psychic and astral power pools, I think that blood needs a lot of love as they are all fairly weak. Related a similar build exists for life/ice with obedient ice and cryomancy, though this one is far more passive and focuses mostly on just catching enemies in your damaging area.
A suggestion that I thought of that might incentivize mixed stat builds. It was something when I saw how focus works with it's passing attacks. Consider giving different weapons and powers a primary and a secondary damage stat. Perhaps for axes for example, str has 2x damage multiplier and dex has a normal 1x multiplier. This way you get more from investing in str but the few points you do put in dex actually make a very big difference as well. A character that has a 12 and a 1 in dex would hypothetically get 24 damage out of the axe but if they invested 2 points into dex they would end up with 72 because the dex acts as a multiplier. Something to consider is all.
*Edit: Recently got time to test out the infinite scorch build, it's not really overpowered at all. Scorch only goes off on game turn which for some builds can be a rather long time, on top of that any enemy that can have upwards of 10 instances of scorch applied to them has more to worry about than the scorch in the first place. Any attack that could apply enough instances of scorch to be worrying would be an attack that either kills any monster in one hit, or kills it in two hits. Keep in mind, that to apply ten instances of scorch with pyromancy you would have to do 1000 damage, and the scorches themselves would only do 300 damage in total. Could be powerful with immolation but again if you're doing 1000 damage in fire, the next hit doing 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 isn't all that important, you can only make an enemy so dead and there are easier ways to do 2k or more damage by the time you reach the void. Best way to do so would be through hadad's blessing so far as I can tell.
Also the changes to focus really hurt str based melee builds specifically (though once again it's great for dex based ones). Rampage would help but rampage is too MAD or multi attribute dependent and costs too much to be useful. When you're nearing the void, anything that is going to trigger rampage has to have gone through your armor which means it's dealing over 200 damage more than likely. At best if you do an even spread between str and will (which would be suboptimal in almost every other aspect) you would have to sink 5 skill levels into rampage to not lose health on it on average and around 200 damage is pretty average for what you run into near the obelisk. This would in an average run leave you with enough points to buy one focus to increase the speed damage of rampage, which would admittedly do over 1000 damage in retaliation but the real question is for how long and the major difficulty would be simply getting to the point where it actually became powerful enough to matter. I've tried running any build that could make it work and I usually die before I get past the green tower. Playing the most efficient character possible you will see positive returns at around level 10 or so, when getting hit returns 33 hp. The build is unfortunately a hot mess up to that point and just reaching that point requires a good amount of luck, the kind of luck I didn't find in 10 runs with the appropriate class. I would honestly suggest either knocking points off the cost or lowering the divisor. Even if the build was to reach late game its HP would be low because instead of getting to a certain strength bench mark you'd have to evenly spread between str and will to make this work, which requires insane rng when it comes to items, enemies, and level lay out. A more balanced build would take 4 rampage, 5 vitality, and 1 focus but that would be a bandaid and the vitality would struggle to keep up with the eventual attrition from rampage just not keeping up even with a perfect balance.