Unarmed Fighting and Quickstrike Dagger
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:33 pm
I have a few points to make about Unarmed Fighting and the Quickstrike Dagger.
First, in my opinion, Unarmed Fighting is a very cool idea that should be a viable option, but currently is not due to poor implementation.
Losses:
1) Additional Effects - No access to additional effects such as "Restores 0-2 HP on kill".
2) Criticals - These are impossible without a (critical multiplier) weapon equipped.
3) Shield - You can't equip a shield, so you lose up to 3 DR (1 from shield, plus up to 2 more from proficiency skill).
4) Dual Wield - You lose this option (technically a drawback, though truthfully DW is worthless. That's another topic.)
5) AP Reduction - You can't use the Quickstrike Dagger. This is a huge, huge drawback. (I hate this mandatory dagger.)
6) Your initial Oegyth Crystal investment, plus gold.
7) Whatever you would have spent those other two Skill Points on (24% Accuracy, for example).
8) Whatever stats your weapon might have given in terms of damage, blocking, and accuracy (20% Accuracy, for example).
Gains:
1) 6 Damage (minus what your weapon would have given)
2) 60% Accuracy (minus what your weapon would have given and minus 24% from what your skill points would have given)
3) 15% Block Rate (minus what your shield would have given and minus what your weapon would have given)
4) No need to hunt for a weapon, but this is offset by the need to unlock this specialty via questing.
So first off, Unarmed Fighting has to at least beat having a weapon that can not only occasionally deal double damage, but also restores your HP, and (if we're talking a dagger) also comes with some DR (from an off-hand shield). Barring my next point, Unarmed Fighting already fails to impress.
More important than that, however, is how useless this skill is compared to the best weapon in the game (Quickstrike Dagger).
I think the Quickstrike Dagger completely ruins the idea of Unarmed Fighting, and my reasoning is that even at level 42, I'm doing 50 or more damage per hit. So going from 6 hits to 4 hits per round costs me over 100 damage even when you account for the meager 6 point bonus to damage Unarmed Fighting (level 3) gives. If we assumed I'd need to take two upgrades in Unarmed Fighting, giving up two upgrades in Weapon Accuracy, I'd net 16% more accuracy from Unarmed Fighting plus the free 20% from the first option via Oegyth Crystals, or 36% total accuracy. That's somewhat compelling, but my dagger comes with 20% accuracy (minus 3% for my shield), so I make up 17% of the difference, leaving us only 19% increased accuracy by going Unarmed (level 3), at this point. Worse, this is at 42. Every time I raise my damage per hit (ie: level up), Quickstrike goes up in value while Unarmed's accuracy becomes less and less relevant every ~4 levels (as I gain Weapon Accuracy bonuses and approach my target value of 350%).
Bottom line:
Unarmed Fighting vs Quickstrike Dagger (at level 42): +19% Accuracy, +7% Blocking, -100 Damage, -3DR
(I'm not even accounting for accuracy via Dagger Skill, which I also have at level 1.)
This is a fool's option for hard targets, and for easily farmed ones I'll mainhand an HP recovery weapon.
My recommendation is that you change Quickstrike Dagger to have an AP cost of 4 and simply give it a 50% chance of forcing you to have the first attack when you begin a fight. Then modify weaponless combat to have a base AP cost of 6, modify Unarmed Combat Skill to reduce AP cost while Unarmed to -1 for each level you invest (max of 3AP from skill), and totally drop the blocking bonus from Unarmed Combat Skill. (15% more blocking from Unarmed Combat Skill is ludicrously better than the best shield in the game, and it makes absolutely zero sense. You're blocking an axe with your flesh-and-blood arms while the guy with a man-sized, steel-clad tower shield can't stop the same axe?)
With my proposal forces a person to make meaningful, interesting decisions. (This will be even more interesting as you continue to add better shields to the game.) It will make Unarmed Fighting uniquely attractive, but force a person to weigh the benefits, likely leading to them carrying weapon/shield for select situations. It will stop QSD from being the be-all, end-all weapon, but won't make it an unintersting item to own.
Incidentally, Quickstrike Dagger (at present) ruins other aspects of the game, not just Unarmed Fighting:
What is the point of Cleave, for example, when I can simply use QSD and multiattack everything around me to death while having 12% more accuracy from not using Cleave? There is no point to it, although if you make enough monsters with enough HP then the irony is that Cleave benefits QSD more than any other weapon, so you're pushed even harder into using QSD than someone who didn't take Cleave.
Another example: Let's say you (the developers) try to make a super cool weapon with AP 5 and base damage +50!!
At AP 4/12AP (-1 from neck), that's an average of 3*(50+50)= 300 damage per round (ignoring Accuracy for the moment).
With QSD and my high base damage, I deal 6*(50+0)= 300 damage per round already!
And since every level my damage would increase by 3 for the first weapon, 6 for the second, your super-cool weapon would be trash in almost no time when compared to my store-bought dagger. Worse, since you haven't even come close to properly balancing weapons, there is nothing like this available, and the result is that QSD is a no-brainer weapon that makes everything else you have thus far implemented look like a joke (barring the niche use of HP recovery during trash farming). Unarmed Combat doesn't restore my HP either, of course...
To sum: Unarmed Combat has too many drawbacks to recommend it. And, due to the ability to raise base damage, weapons in this game are totally imbalanced. The only stat that matters on any given weapon is AP cost (since Critical Hits are no longer reliable), and the item with the lowest AP cost is Quickstrike Dagger. I feel that honor should go to Unarmed Combat with 3 (max) levels of specialization, which at least has some significant drawbacks and investment costs, rather than to a Dagger which basically has none.
First, in my opinion, Unarmed Fighting is a very cool idea that should be a viable option, but currently is not due to poor implementation.
Losses:
1) Additional Effects - No access to additional effects such as "Restores 0-2 HP on kill".
2) Criticals - These are impossible without a (critical multiplier) weapon equipped.
3) Shield - You can't equip a shield, so you lose up to 3 DR (1 from shield, plus up to 2 more from proficiency skill).
4) Dual Wield - You lose this option (technically a drawback, though truthfully DW is worthless. That's another topic.)
5) AP Reduction - You can't use the Quickstrike Dagger. This is a huge, huge drawback. (I hate this mandatory dagger.)
6) Your initial Oegyth Crystal investment, plus gold.
7) Whatever you would have spent those other two Skill Points on (24% Accuracy, for example).
8) Whatever stats your weapon might have given in terms of damage, blocking, and accuracy (20% Accuracy, for example).
Gains:
1) 6 Damage (minus what your weapon would have given)
2) 60% Accuracy (minus what your weapon would have given and minus 24% from what your skill points would have given)
3) 15% Block Rate (minus what your shield would have given and minus what your weapon would have given)
4) No need to hunt for a weapon, but this is offset by the need to unlock this specialty via questing.
So first off, Unarmed Fighting has to at least beat having a weapon that can not only occasionally deal double damage, but also restores your HP, and (if we're talking a dagger) also comes with some DR (from an off-hand shield). Barring my next point, Unarmed Fighting already fails to impress.
More important than that, however, is how useless this skill is compared to the best weapon in the game (Quickstrike Dagger).
I think the Quickstrike Dagger completely ruins the idea of Unarmed Fighting, and my reasoning is that even at level 42, I'm doing 50 or more damage per hit. So going from 6 hits to 4 hits per round costs me over 100 damage even when you account for the meager 6 point bonus to damage Unarmed Fighting (level 3) gives. If we assumed I'd need to take two upgrades in Unarmed Fighting, giving up two upgrades in Weapon Accuracy, I'd net 16% more accuracy from Unarmed Fighting plus the free 20% from the first option via Oegyth Crystals, or 36% total accuracy. That's somewhat compelling, but my dagger comes with 20% accuracy (minus 3% for my shield), so I make up 17% of the difference, leaving us only 19% increased accuracy by going Unarmed (level 3), at this point. Worse, this is at 42. Every time I raise my damage per hit (ie: level up), Quickstrike goes up in value while Unarmed's accuracy becomes less and less relevant every ~4 levels (as I gain Weapon Accuracy bonuses and approach my target value of 350%).
Bottom line:
Unarmed Fighting vs Quickstrike Dagger (at level 42): +19% Accuracy, +7% Blocking, -100 Damage, -3DR
(I'm not even accounting for accuracy via Dagger Skill, which I also have at level 1.)
This is a fool's option for hard targets, and for easily farmed ones I'll mainhand an HP recovery weapon.
My recommendation is that you change Quickstrike Dagger to have an AP cost of 4 and simply give it a 50% chance of forcing you to have the first attack when you begin a fight. Then modify weaponless combat to have a base AP cost of 6, modify Unarmed Combat Skill to reduce AP cost while Unarmed to -1 for each level you invest (max of 3AP from skill), and totally drop the blocking bonus from Unarmed Combat Skill. (15% more blocking from Unarmed Combat Skill is ludicrously better than the best shield in the game, and it makes absolutely zero sense. You're blocking an axe with your flesh-and-blood arms while the guy with a man-sized, steel-clad tower shield can't stop the same axe?)
With my proposal forces a person to make meaningful, interesting decisions. (This will be even more interesting as you continue to add better shields to the game.) It will make Unarmed Fighting uniquely attractive, but force a person to weigh the benefits, likely leading to them carrying weapon/shield for select situations. It will stop QSD from being the be-all, end-all weapon, but won't make it an unintersting item to own.
Incidentally, Quickstrike Dagger (at present) ruins other aspects of the game, not just Unarmed Fighting:
What is the point of Cleave, for example, when I can simply use QSD and multiattack everything around me to death while having 12% more accuracy from not using Cleave? There is no point to it, although if you make enough monsters with enough HP then the irony is that Cleave benefits QSD more than any other weapon, so you're pushed even harder into using QSD than someone who didn't take Cleave.
Another example: Let's say you (the developers) try to make a super cool weapon with AP 5 and base damage +50!!
At AP 4/12AP (-1 from neck), that's an average of 3*(50+50)= 300 damage per round (ignoring Accuracy for the moment).
With QSD and my high base damage, I deal 6*(50+0)= 300 damage per round already!
And since every level my damage would increase by 3 for the first weapon, 6 for the second, your super-cool weapon would be trash in almost no time when compared to my store-bought dagger. Worse, since you haven't even come close to properly balancing weapons, there is nothing like this available, and the result is that QSD is a no-brainer weapon that makes everything else you have thus far implemented look like a joke (barring the niche use of HP recovery during trash farming). Unarmed Combat doesn't restore my HP either, of course...
To sum: Unarmed Combat has too many drawbacks to recommend it. And, due to the ability to raise base damage, weapons in this game are totally imbalanced. The only stat that matters on any given weapon is AP cost (since Critical Hits are no longer reliable), and the item with the lowest AP cost is Quickstrike Dagger. I feel that honor should go to Unarmed Combat with 3 (max) levels of specialization, which at least has some significant drawbacks and investment costs, rather than to a Dagger which basically has none.
