40 réponses à ce sujet

[lessthanjake9]

So I have been tinkering with a build for a somewhat willpower based warrior. The goal would not be to dump most points into willpower; strength would still be the highest stat, but a fairly sizable amount of points would be put in willpower.
 
The goals for this concept would be threefold:
 
1.       Be able to use abilities virtually constantly in combat. Thus, the character would garner high DPS from ability usage rather than pure strength.
2.       Be able to keep up a lot of sustainables as well.
3.       Have the ability to be a good crowd controller
 
For this concept, it is clear to me that two handed weapons is the best option. This tree has 5 activated abilities that cool down in 20 seconds or less. Furthermore, you get knockdowns from pommel strike and two handed sweep as well as frequent stuns from mighty blow and critical strike. This provides the basis for the crowd control abilities.
 
As for specializations, Champion and Templar seem to be the best options. With Champion, you get a boost in willpower. Furthermore, you also get a good low cost, low cooldown crowd control ability in Warcry and a great sustainable in Rally. Templar is a natural choice as well. You get access to some exclusive willpower boosting equipment. Most importantly, though, you get Holy Smite. On normal warriors, Holy Smite is a decent AOE damage ability that costs a lot of stamina and does very unreliable crowd control. However, on a warrior with lots of willpower, the stamina cost is not prohibitive. Importantly, though, the stun and knock down effects of Holy Smite are based on a resistance check based on the warrior’s willpower. This means that a warrior with good willpower will find himself stunning and knocking down lots of enemies for quite some time when he uses Holy Smite.
 
This is how I see this build working out:
 
 
DAMAGE
-          Sunder Arms, Sunder Armor, and Mighty Blow will be the bread and butter of this build. They are very high damage abilities with very short cooldowns. One can virtually cycle through them constantly. Critical Strike will be used for shattering, but also if the other three abilities are cooling down. If surrounded, Two Handed Sweep is great, and if not surrounded, one can easily taunt or run into a crowd and use it for great damage and knock downs. Again, there is a low cooldown, so this can be used multiple times in a typical fight. Lastly, Pommel Strike is quite useful to stop grabs, mages’ spells, and abilities like arrow of slaying. It also has a very low cooldown and can easily contribute to locking down a dangerous foe. Virtually constant use of these abilities will lead to very high DPS despite non-maxed out strength.
 
SUSTAINABLES
-          This character will have the option of some great sustainables. He will have Precise Striking, Indomitable, Rally, and Powerful Swings. He might have the stamina to keep all 4 activated, which is virtually impossible for another warrior. A few things should be noted, as well. Precise Striking is extremely strong, but it does raise attack speed. However, this increase in attack speed does not affect the speed of abilities. Thus, there is a low downside to Precise Striking with this build. It will just make Sunder Arms, Sunder Armor, and Two Weapon Sweep crit a lot more, and make up for the lower attack rating of this build. Likewise, Powerful Swings lowers attack. However, I believe this attack penalty does not apply to abilities, so all it does is lower defense (and defense will be quite low anyways so it hardly matters) while increasing damage a lot. Thus the sustainables have synergy with this build and having many of them on at once will be a distinct option.
 
CROWD CONTROL
 
-          This character will have A LOT of crowd control options. Pommel Strike knocks down and opponent and stops grabs. Two Handed Sweep knocks down multiple opponents. Mighty Blow and Critical Strike will stun the target frequently. The sunders as well as the occasional normal attack will frequently stun on crits. Warcry will knock down nearby enemies. Holy Smite will provide great crowd control as well. Between all these, this warrior will have a very nice ability to act as a crowd controller.
 
OTHER ABILITIES
 
-          Death Blow works now. This is extremely important, as it provides the true means by which one will cycle through abilities almost constantly. Sure, faster attacking allies will sometimes steal your kills, but for the most part, death blow means that, on average, you get almost 20% of the damage you do back in stamina. This is huge. For instance, if you throw out a Sunder Arms that does 120 damage and then a Mighty Blow that does 100 and you kill the enemy, you have used up 67 base stamina (slightly more realistically due to fatigue obviously). However, lets say this enemy had 200 health. You get 20% of his health back in stamina. Thus you get 40 stamina back. You have therefore not used that much stamina at all to get that kill!
-          This build will have a lower base attack rating than a normal strength based warrior build. However, Precise Striking and Rally should make up for this. Regardless, though, more stamina means that one can possibly afford to use a Perfect Striking occasionally to make every shot a hit.
-          This build will have low dexterity and constitution, and you might not want to use high protecting armor due to the fatigue cost.  Thus, this character will be easily killed. Disengage will be useful, as will a good tank and a healer in the party.
 
 
Essentially the plan would be this: I would frequently start out battles with Holy Smite to stun, and keep mobs locked down afterwards with Two Handed Sweep and Warcry. Whoever I was targeting would be further locked down by Mighty Blow/Critical Strike’s stuns as well as Pommel Strike. Damage would come heavy from Sunder Arms, Sunder Armor, Mighty Blow, and Critical Strike. Death Blow, high stamina, and low cooldowns would keep these abilities cycling almost indefinetly. All the sustainables would make up for the loss in damage and attack from not maxing out strength.   
 
Anyways, I guess I am wondering what people think of this idea. If it is a decent idea, how much willpower should one put in? I was thinking I would aim for about 60 strength and about 40 willpower without equipment. I would probably use either Knight Commander Armor or one of Wade’s Superior Dragon armors. Chasind Great Maul would be the ideal weapon.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 18 janvier 2010 - 10:46 .

[Timortis]

-          This character will have the option of some great sustainables. He will have Precise Striking, Indomitable, Rally, and Powerful Swings. He might have the stamina to keep all 4 activated, which is virtually impossible for another warrior. 

A 2H Warrior with base will can already have all those activated and more and cycle through specials if you gear him right.

[DAOgasm]

In a big fight with orange/red bosses, you'll run out of stamina before you kill everything and then your warrior becomes useless because he can't hit anything (low dex) and is very easily hit himself. Also, by wearing such heavy armour and constantly using high damage attacks you'll steal aggro off your tank very quickly.



If you have a mage in your party, it is far more efficient to use her as crowd control rather than spec'ing your warrior to be both DPS and crowd control.

[Timortis]

DAOgasm wrote...

 because he can't hit anything (low dex) 

can't hit anything (low dex)

(low dex)

the mind boggles...

[soteria]

What Timortis is getting at is that strength also raises your attack rating. You don't need dexterity for that.

[DAOgasm]

Hmmm...well Sten wasn't hitting anything for me, so I stopped dumping his points into Strength and put some into Dex and his blade started connecting with more than his hands.

[MprezdNZ]

Use Wades Dragon scale armour, but ask for the medium version. Not only do you ensure you aren't getting as much aggro v dragon bane, but you also end up with a - fatigue penalty I think.



And yeah Sten seems to be better with dex for some reason. not sure if it is a bug or not, but I found he seems to do better once I put some dex into him

[lessthanjake9]

Timortis wrote...

-          This character will have the option of some great sustainables. He will have Precise Striking, Indomitable, Rally, and Powerful Swings. He might have the stamina to keep all 4 activated, which is virtually impossible for another warrior. 

A 2H Warrior with base will can already have all those activated and more and cycle through specials if you gear him right.

I find that that is not true. A 2H Warrior can go through some low cost abilities at the beginning of a battle, but it runs out pretty soon.

Let me give you an example:

Let's take a level 20 Warrior. This Warrior got his +4 willpower from the Fade and +2 for Champion, but never put any more points into willpower. He has the Chasind Great Maul for +75 stamina, and is wearing full Wade Superior Dragonbone armor for +25 stamina and +2 stamina regen in combat. This character will have 325 stamina. Precise Striking is 40 stamina. Indomitable is 60. Powerful Swings is 30. Rally is 50. That's 180 right there. You only have 145 left. Use Sunder Arms, Sunder Armor, Mighty Blow, and Critical Strike once, and you've used 149 base stamina. With fatigue figured in from armor/sustainables, that’s really a use of about 200 stamina. You will likely have gained back about 30 stamina naturally and from equipment during this period, but you still don’t even have enough for the first cycle of talent usage. If you’re lucky, youll get a killing blow (or if youre really lucky, two) somewhere in there that will get you 40 or so stamina back too. This will allow you to finish your first talent cycle. However, even if you do that, you will be completely unable to go through those talents again right away beyond a possible extra Sunder Arms. The rest of the battle, you will be able to use an ability every time you kill an enemy or every once in a while from regen, but not at all constantly. This is not even mentioning the use of an expensive ability like Holy Smite or Perfect Striking. A strength based 2H warrior really just cant fit those in.
 
On the other hand my build would start with an extra 125 or so stamina from willpower. That means he would have about 450 stamina with the same equipment. After all the sustainables, he will have 270 left. The first cycle of abilities will cost about 200. He will, however, have 70 left, have maybe gotten about 40 from a kill, and have regened maybe 30. This leaves him with 140 stamina which is where the other warrior starts a battle at! So essentially, my warrior would effectively have a free cycle through talents that another warrior would not have. Alternatively, he can use Holy Smite somewhere in there and still be able to keep spamming abilities. The flexibility is MUCH greater than another warrior who is trying to keep many sustainables on. In that case, the warrior is out of stamina about 10-15 seconds into a fight.

[lessthanjake9]

DAOgasm wrote...

In a big fight with orange/red bosses, you'll run out of stamina before you kill everything and then your warrior becomes useless because he can't hit anything (low dex) and is very easily hit himself. Also, by wearing such heavy armour and constantly using high damage attacks you'll steal aggro off your tank very quickly.

If you have a mage in your party, it is far more efficient to use her as crowd control rather than spec'ing your warrior to be both DPS and crowd control.

I do not agree with this. If you put about 25 extra points into willpower, you will be missing out on 12.5 attack. However, in exchange, you will be MUCH better able to sustain +attack sustainables like Precise Striking and Rally. Another warrior either won't be able to keep those on, or will be out of stamina virtually right away from activated talents. Either way, my warrior isn't really worse off. In a really tough battle, my warrior also has the stamina to use Perfect Striking while spamming some abilities. Though it only lasts 15 seconds, Perfect Striking ends the problem you speak of there long enough to do some serious damage. Another warrior simply would not have the stamina to use Perfect Striking. They might not need to use such a thing to hit pretty well, but my warrior will essentially get a free Perfect Striking and then some in stamina, so where's the problem in these tough boss battles? You just pop a Perfect Striking and spam some abilities on a boss. They will all land because of Perfect Striking, and your armor penetration is huge so overall damage during those 15 seconds will be through the roof.

And yeah, aggro will be an issue. As I said, Disengage will be ones friend, as will all the crowd control options at your disposal.  Defense wont be THAT bad with this build though, I suppose. Base defense will be quite low. However, Rally will increase it by 10, Warcry effectively increases it by another 10, and Sunder Arms makes your target have -10 attack. You will get hit a lot, but you will have some level of defense. Otherwise, reliance on disengage/two handed sweep/warcry/holy smite/pommel strike/stuns for crowd control will be key to mitigating damage. As a sidenote, though, as a Templar, this guy will be quite able to up his spell resistance to make his defense GREAT against mages. Dwarf + Knight Commander Armor + Spellward = 80% spell resistance without any runes. And both of those items provide +5 willpower anyways, so they synergize with the build.

[Timortis]

lessthanjake9 wrote...


I find that that is not true. A 2H Warrior can go through some low cost abilities at the beginning of a battle, but it runs out pretty soon.

Let me give you an example:

Nice theory, let me give you a concrete example:

This is my solo 2H Warrior in the Archdemon fight, the longest fight in the game, probably. As you can see a bunch of abilities are on cooldown, meaning they've just been used, in fact, I cycled through them non-stop, also look at the sustainables I have on. Blood Frenzy is more expensive than Rally, by the way. Looks like I didn't run out of Stamina 10 seconds into the fight, doesn't it?

[Jack-Nader]

Shrug, I played a lot of two hand style a couple weeks ago. I never put a single point into willpower. The build was stamina starved until level 12 and then deathblow sucked back so much stamina that I basically never ran out. I did not even have the chasind maul or wardens keep armor at that stage. A lot of the sustainable abilities I found fairly pointless and I never wear massive armor as it's hideous in appearance. (lower fatigue cost)



Precise striking - I found this useful till level 5. My strength was around 40 at this stage so I disabled it to rake back stamina and attack speed. Also I noticed the high critical hit chance becomes a pain in the ass as the character spends more time on death animations than it does in actual killing.



Rally + Motivate. Found this to be absolutely pointless. I did not need the extra 10 attack as I had no problem hitting things. 10 defense was also a waste. Additional damage from weapons is a far better defense than the actual defense rating.



Warcry. Never used it, never needed too.



Berserk. 8 damage is quite nice and for 20 stamina it's worth it I did not bother with it untill post level 12.



Indomitable. I only found this useful fighting ogres and dragons.



Powerful swings: -5 attack score means this ability won't be used until late game. The defense penalty is irrelevant. The small damage increase is ok but it's not enough of a carrot personally. Here is what is truly funny about this ability. The upkeep is 30 & 5% fatigue. This means your going to need 6 willpower points plus 1 additional willpower every 100 stamina expended to make up for the lost stamina. @ 200 stamina we are looking at 8 willpower points which could have been translated into 8 strength points. 8 strength points is +4 attack and +4 damage. What this means is that the ability is crap unless your absolutely rolling in stamina. It is better left disabled until you are at a high level.



To sum all this up, no I really don't see a point to pumping willpower at all.

[lessthanjake9]

Timortis wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...


I find that that is not true. A 2H Warrior can go through some low cost abilities at the beginning of a battle, but it runs out pretty soon.

Let me give you an example:

Nice theory, let me give you a concrete example:

This is my solo 2H Warrior in the Archdemon fight, the longest fight in the game, probably. As you can see a bunch of abilities are on cooldown, meaning they've just been used, in fact, I cycled through them non-stop, also look at the sustainables I have on. Blood Frenzy is more expensive than Rally, by the way. Looks like I didn't run out of Stamina 10 seconds into the fight, doesn't it?

Thats great and all but the fact is that sustainables are taking up about half your stamina. The sustainables you have on take 210 stamina. This means that based on that picture, your character has about 420 stamina. So you just responded to me saying that 325 stamina is not enough while 450 stamina is enough, by saying that 420 stamina is enough. You havent proven me wrong, except to show that with the perfect setup of gear at the end of the game, one can boost stamina A LOT.  However, I remember reading the thread where you talked about this character:

http://social.biowar.../index/432510/1

You posted a picture of the character, and he has 280 stamina. I guess the Great Maul would get you up to 355, but I am still rather confused because that picture above is clearly NOT a character with 355 stamina. What gear were you using in that fight? It seems like it is probably different gear than you showed in that thread. With that said, I suspect that you needed to use stamina increasing items in that final battle in lieu of gear that helps you in other ways. My character wouldnt necessarily have to do that. In any case, The point of my idea is to get one up to about 400-500 stamina, so you really just prove my point that that level of stamina can last even during a long battle. And my build will have that level of stamina for a lot of the game.

On the other hand, that is the VERY last fight in the game for you. It is not surprising that by level 22, your character can cycle through all the talents while keeping sustainables on if you put gear on him designed to facilitate that. However, he would likely not have been able to do that at earlier stages in the game without all the perfect equipment. In fact, your pics from earlier on in the game rarely show more than one or two talents on cooldown indicating you werent cycling them at the ends of battles. Putting willpower in, then, allows this sort of thing to be done for a lot more of the game than the very end. This is more fun, and maximizes effectiveness midgame, which IMO is just as important as maximizing effectiveness at endgame.

At level 22 with uber stamina boosting gear available, would some of this extra willpower eventually become unnecessary? Possibly, but if that became the case, one could simply have the freedom to not focus completely on stamina boosting for gear. Maybe my warrior could afford stronger, but more fatigue-heavy armor. Your warrior seems to have Superior Dragonscale Armor on. Mine could easily use Superior Dragonbone Plate for almost 8 more armor. That's quite useful, especially when both our builds have low defense. So there are positives to my build even in the end.

However, the point of the build is to have fun all the way through while not being gimped. I would agree that an endgame Level 22 Strength based 2H Warrior is probably better than an endgame Level 22 2H warrior with willpower points splashed in. However,  it seems silly to play just for endgame power. You spend WAY longer playing the game prior to getting uber stamina equipment than you do after getting it. I can see my build being just as powerful or more powerful during that period, when my character will be able to cycle through abilities way more than yours. IMO ability use is more fun than sitting back and drinking coffee while your warrior auto-attacks, so this sort of playing style just seems like it might provide more fun throughout the entire game, while still being reasonably powerful (even if not completely min/maxed).

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 18 janvier 2010 - 07:14 .

[Ingahootz]

Why would you want to pump Willpower to increase stamina to cycle through all of your abilities? Call me crazy but the stat you want is stamina regen. Get enough of that, and you'll NEVER be out of stamina.



There's plenty of stamina regen items in the game that you can use as well. At least this way you can focus all of your points into damage dealing stats.

[lessthanjake9]

Ingahootz wrote...

Why would you want to pump Willpower to increase stamina to cycle through all of your abilities? Call me crazy but the stat you want is stamina regen. Get enough of that, and you'll NEVER be out of stamina.

There's plenty of stamina regen items in the game that you can use as well. At least this way you can focus all of your points into damage dealing stats.

Stamina regen is great, but you only get that with equipment. And if you use equipment for that, you are using it in lieu of other equipment that would boost you up in other ways. Secondly, stamina regen items only come into play late in the game. One should play for power throughout the entire game, not just at the end with all the best equipment. Lastly, stamina regen isnt a total fix. You want to be able to burst out with a ton of activated abilities at the beginning of a battle. If you focus ONLY on stamina regen, your stamina pool itself won't be large enough to use a ton of activated abilities right away before there has been time for much regen.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 18 janvier 2010 - 07:20 .

[Timortis]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Thats great and all but the fact is that sustainables are taking up
about half your stamina. The sustainables you have on take 210 stamina.
This means that based on that picture, your character has about 420
stamina. So you just responded to me saying that 325 stamina is not
enough while 450 stamina is enough, by saying that 420 stamina is
enough. You havent proven me wrong, except to show that with the
perfect setup of gear at the end of the game, one can boost stamina
A LOT.

I have no ida what you're talking about. The picture I posted in my thread of the character sheet is from the post-coronation, which you get taken to right after the final battle. Your weapon is unequipped automatically, otherwise your gear remains the same, unless you change it. Why do you think I would change the gear on the character? Yes, this means that with CGM equipped, I must have had 355 Stamina in the final fight.

I never said X stamina is enough. I said "you don't need to put points in willpower, if you gear your character right". As for your argument about end-game vs mid-game. I soloed the game with this character, obviously it was strong enough in mid-game and not gimp until the final battle.

[Ingahootz]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Ingahootz wrote...

Why would you want to pump Willpower to increase stamina to cycle through all of your abilities? Call me crazy but the stat you want is stamina regen. Get enough of that, and you'll NEVER be out of stamina.

There's plenty of stamina regen items in the game that you can use as well. At least this way you can focus all of your points into damage dealing stats.

Stamina regen is great, but you only get that with equipment. And if you use equipment for that, you are using it in lieu of other equipment that would boost you up in other ways. Secondly, stamina regen items only come into play late in the game. One should play for power throughout the entire game, not just at the end with all the best equipment. Lastly, stamina regen isnt a total fix. You want to be able to burst out with a ton of activated abilities at the beginning of a battle. If you focus ONLY on stamina regen, your stamina pool itself won't be large enough to use a ton of activated abilities right away before there has been time for much regen.

Sure stam regen items don't come until later. But being able to stamina dump doesn't come around until you get those items either. You seem to be forgetting that you need to level up to gain access to multiple abilities to dump stamina on, you don't come with all of those skills immediately.

Also, stamina regen doesn't come as late as you say it does. It's about mid game, which is around the time when you'd have enough sustains and abilities to consider stamina dumping.

You say that you're "giving up" good gear to wear stam regen stuff. A lot of good gear has stam regen on it. Keep in mind that you're giving up stats to boost will power, which is probably an even WORSE trade off than using stam regen gear.

Modifié par Ingahootz, 18 janvier 2010 - 07:34 .

[beancounter501]

I originally had the same idea as you for a two hand warrior, but then I realized that stamina from willpower just does not scale quickly enough. Going from 20 willpower to 40 willpower only gives you 100 stamina.



In order to use abilities non-stop the single biggest factor to worry about is fatigue. A high fatigue score will chew through your stamina in no time. Four sustains will give you a 20% fatigue before any armor. Add some heavy or massive armor your fatigue level could easily be over 50%. So if your warrior has 400 stamina, your effective stamina will only be 200. Even less if you are using 100+ stamina points to run sustains. Rally is even worse because it reduces your stamina regen, just like Berserk does.



Instead run with the lightest armor you feel safe in and run with as few sustains as possible. Chainmail is a great armor earlier on. Late game Wades Superior Dragonskin (the medium one) will give you a negative 22% fatigue! The heavy armor one is nice too, but stay away from massive armor.



The second most important thing is Final Blow and Stamina Regen gear. Get Final Blow on level 12. It is really nice and will help you out much more then 100 stamina points.



On my current 2 Hand warrior I have been using abilities non stop every battle from level 1! Chainmail and no sustains. I start every battle off with pommel strike, sunder arms, mighty blow/sweep. Then I turn on indomitable. Remember sustains don't cost anything, they only reduce your max stamina.

[WillieStyle]

There is no oppurtunity cost to getting stam regen gear because all the best gear in the game has stam regen on it.



If you're a 2H warrior for instance, the best armor for you is either Warden Commanders or Wades' Superior Dragonskin/Dragonbone armor. If you have the Warden's Keep DLC, you can get Warden Commander's Armor right after Loathering so I don't know what you mean by "late game".



Even if you don't have the DLC, you can get Wade's as soon as you finish the Sacred Ashes quest meaning right about mid-game.



WIllpower sucks. I really wish innumerate people wouldn't keep telling folks otherwise.

By the time you get enough abilities to cycle, you'll have enough stam from base stam + stam gear + stam regen to cycle through all your abilities.



Trading a point of strength which nets you ~0.5 attack, 1 damage and physical resist on every attack for a 1 point of willpower which nets you 5 stam (enough for 1/5th of a sunder armor) is a REALLY bad idea.

[WillieStyle]

lessthanjake9 wrote...
Lastly, stamina regen isnt a total fix. You want to be able to burst out with a ton of activated abilities at the beginning of a battle. If you focus ONLY on stamina regen, your stamina pool itself won't be large enough to use a ton of activated abilities right away before there has been time for much regen.

Critical Strike: 41 Stamina
Mighty Blow: 41 Stamina
Sunder Arms: 26 Stamina
Sunder Armor: 41 Stamina
Two Handed Sweep: 41 Stamina
Total: 190 Stamina.

You don't need to put  a single point into willpower to get that much stamina by mid game.
Hell Chasin Greatmaul (which you can get as soon as you complete 2 treaties quests) give 75 stamina all by itself.

Willpower sucks.  Do not stack it.

[Joseph Silver]

Willpower, along with Constitution, is a dump stat. By pumping the stats which actually make your powers better, you will need to use fewer of them and thus not need as large a stamina/mana pool. The HP and stamina/mana you get from leveling up is more than enough.

The stat system seriously needs some rebalancing.

[Ingahootz]

You know, this thread got me thinking. Willpower is a completely useless stat, even for mages. Yeah it gives them a huge mana pool, but who cares? I stack mana regen on all my mages and pump every point possible into magic. Heals are much larger, their spells are more damaging, and CCs get resisted a lot less. I think my PC mage had around 120 points into magic (not including bonuses from gear).



I think the same rule applies with stamina. With mages you can just stack regen and you never go OOM (didn't use a single lyrium pot through my play through). You can do the same thing with warriors. Stack stamina regen for unlimited skill usage.

[lessthanjake9]

Timortis wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Thats great and all but the fact is that sustainables are taking up
about half your stamina. The sustainables you have on take 210 stamina.
This means that based on that picture, your character has about 420
stamina. So you just responded to me saying that 325 stamina is not
enough while 450 stamina is enough, by saying that 420 stamina is
enough. You havent proven me wrong, except to show that with the
perfect setup of gear at the end of the game, one can boost stamina
A LOT.

I have no ida what you're talking about. The picture I posted in my thread of the character sheet is from the post-coronation, which you get taken to right after the final battle. Your weapon is unequipped automatically, otherwise your gear remains the same, unless you change it. Why do you think I would change the gear on the character? Yes, this means that with CGM equipped, I must have had 355 Stamina in the final fight.

I never said X stamina is enough. I said "you don't need to put points in willpower, if you gear your character right". As for your argument about end-game vs mid-game. I soloed the game with this character, obviously it was strong enough in mid-game and not gimp until the final battle.

Well, I dont know. In that picture you put up, your sustainables clearly take up roughly half of your stamina. The outline of where the top of the bar is after sustainables was half way up the full stamina bar. This is clear from eyeballing it, and also because the top of the outline is not at an angle, which would indicate it is at the middle. Your sustainables take up 210 stamina. If you only had 355 total stamina, the outline of that bar would leave you with only 40%, which IMO would clearly look like less than what is shown in that picture. I might be wrong, but that was what I was saying.

And yes, you probably dont NEED to put points in willpower to have a character who can do the last fight of the game in the manner I am talking about. But what good is that? Talent usage for a 2H warrior is VERY effective. IMO saying that points in willpower are wasted because a different character has enough stamina for the final battle is silly because that is a very small portion of the game. Willpower is NOT useless if it helps you use the very powerful 2H talents a lot before the late game.

And yes of course you could solo with your character. Your build is NOT gimped. I never said it was, and I assume you're a good player if you soloed on nightmare at all. But I bet you could solo on nightmare with my concept as well. The point is that my build could be effective too. And it MIGHT end up stronger at midgame when he can use abilities a lot more. Saying that your build soloed through the game doesnt mean it isnt possibly less effective in the midgame. It just means its still an effective build all the way through. It being effective doesnt mean something cant be better at midgame.

[lessthanjake9]

Ingahootz wrote...

lessthanjake9 wrote...

Ingahootz wrote...

Why would you want to pump Willpower to increase stamina to cycle through all of your abilities? Call me crazy but the stat you want is stamina regen. Get enough of that, and you'll NEVER be out of stamina.

There's plenty of stamina regen items in the game that you can use as well. At least this way you can focus all of your points into damage dealing stats.

Stamina regen is great, but you only get that with equipment. And if you use equipment for that, you are using it in lieu of other equipment that would boost you up in other ways. Secondly, stamina regen items only come into play late in the game. One should play for power throughout the entire game, not just at the end with all the best equipment. Lastly, stamina regen isnt a total fix. You want to be able to burst out with a ton of activated abilities at the beginning of a battle. If you focus ONLY on stamina regen, your stamina pool itself won't be large enough to use a ton of activated abilities right away before there has been time for much regen.

Sure stam regen items don't come until later. But being able to stamina dump doesn't come around until you get those items either. You seem to be forgetting that you need to level up to gain access to multiple abilities to dump stamina on, you don't come with all of those skills immediately.

Also, stamina regen doesn't come as late as you say it does. It's about mid game, which is around the time when you'd have enough sustains and abilities to consider stamina dumping.

You say that you're "giving up" good gear to wear stam regen stuff. A lot of good gear has stam regen on it. Keep in mind that you're giving up stats to boost will power, which is probably an even WORSE trade off than using stam regen gear.

You get your abilities pretty early in the game especially if that is the point of the build. One could get all six 2H abilities by level 9 if they went for it. Realistically, it would likely happen at level 15 or so but you WILL spend most of the game with a lot of abilities. For instance, by level 10, one would likely have something like Pommel Strike, Mighty Blow, Sunder Arms, Sunder Armor, Critical Strike, and Warcry while having Precise Striking and Indomitable as sustainables. This is the vast majority of your abilities already by level 10, and the majority of the game is still after that point. Prior to level 10, you will have less abilities, but you will also pump up strength early more in order to get in good armor, so you wont just be overkilling with too much stamina early on anyways.

You can get stamina regen items around the mdidle of the game, but to accumulate enough of them with good bonuses for it to make a huge difference would only happen much later.

I realize that a lot of good gear has stamina regen, but a lot of good gear doesnt. The point is that when someone says that a strength based warrior doesnt need willpower because he can just use stamina increasing items, they are ignoring the fact that a warrior with willpower could equip a different item instead and get the bonus from that item while still having a lot of stamina. Obviously, willpower is taken instead of strength, so that is where the downside is, as you said. However, I was just wanting to point out that downsides go both ways. You cant say that a willpower warrior does less damage and a strength warrior can just use stamina equipment anyways without pointing out that a willpower warrior is free to boost himself in other ways with different items. The tradeoffs go both ways.

[lessthanjake9]

beancounter501 wrote...

I originally had the same idea as you for a two hand warrior, but then I realized that stamina from willpower just does not scale quickly enough. Going from 20 willpower to 40 willpower only gives you 100 stamina.

In order to use abilities non-stop the single biggest factor to worry about is fatigue. A high fatigue score will chew through your stamina in no time. Four sustains will give you a 20% fatigue before any armor. Add some heavy or massive armor your fatigue level could easily be over 50%. So if your warrior has 400 stamina, your effective stamina will only be 200. Even less if you are using 100+ stamina points to run sustains. Rally is even worse because it reduces your stamina regen, just like Berserk does.

Instead run with the lightest armor you feel safe in and run with as few sustains as possible. Chainmail is a great armor earlier on. Late game Wades Superior Dragonskin (the medium one) will give you a negative 22% fatigue! The heavy armor one is nice too, but stay away from massive armor.

The second most important thing is Final Blow and Stamina Regen gear. Get Final Blow on level 12. It is really nice and will help you out much more then 100 stamina points.

On my current 2 Hand warrior I have been using abilities non stop every battle from level 1! Chainmail and no sustains. I start every battle off with pommel strike, sunder arms, mighty blow/sweep. Then I turn on indomitable. Remember sustains don't cost anything, they only reduce your max stamina.

That is certainly a legitimate way to go with a 2H warrior. It is all about tradeoffs though. You are using relatively light armor. A character who put a lot of points in willpower could wear much heavier armor and be able to spam abilities just as much as you. The difference, then, would be that the character with willpower would have better armor, while your character would have higher strength (and thus do more damage).

That's just a tradeoff. Personally, I prefer my way in this case because a 2H warrior is already pretty low on defense. You dont put points in dex typically, so defense is low and no one puts much of any extra points in constitution, so hp is not that higher either. As such, it is pretty important to get a good armor score, or it will be tough to stay alive unless aggro is managed perfectly. But in your case, crazy offense is your defense, and im sure it works too.

[lessthanjake9]

WillieStyle wrote...

There is no oppurtunity cost to getting stam regen gear because all the best gear in the game has stam regen on it.

If you're a 2H warrior for instance, the best armor for you is either Warden Commanders or Wades' Superior Dragonskin/Dragonbone armor. If you have the Warden's Keep DLC, you can get Warden Commander's Armor right after Loathering so I don't know what you mean by "late game".

Even if you don't have the DLC, you can get Wade's as soon as you finish the Sacred Ashes quest meaning right about mid-game.

WIllpower sucks. I really wish innumerate people wouldn't keep telling folks otherwise.
By the time you get enough abilities to cycle, you'll have enough stam from base stam + stam gear + stam regen to cycle through all your abilities.

Trading a point of strength which nets you ~0.5 attack, 1 damage and physical resist on every attack for a 1 point of willpower which nets you 5 stam (enough for 1/5th of a sunder armor) is a REALLY bad idea.

First off, I would wager that most people dont have Warden's Keep. I might be wrong, but based on my understanding, I think most people have Shale but not Warden's Keep. I don't have Warden's Keep.

Anyways, some good items have stamina regen, but when I think about it, I am coming to believe that you guys are exaggerating the amount of stamina regen possible. A set of Dragonscale armor gives +2 stamina regen. There are no helmets with stamina regen except Longrunner's Cap which provides 0.5 regen, sacrifices 2 armor to other helms, and is nowhere near the best helmet overall. There are no amulets with stamina regen. The only ring with stamina regen is a special pre-order item that most people dont have. You will eventually get 0.25 and then 0.5 stamina regen from Ageless and Chasind Great Maul. You can get +2 stamina regen from the belt Andruil's Blessing. As such, the top stamina regen for most people will be 4.5. That is very high, but getting those will cost a total of 249 sovereigns. Maybe I dont know what I'm doing, but I cant just waltz in and get those items very quickly, especially since one must also buy expensive talent tomes and other items as well. You really dont just totally roll around in money in this game. Again, it will be late in the game when you can get that 4.5 stamina regen, unless you REALLY hoard money to get those things, which will end up gimping you and your party beforehand (which is no good).