Ranperre's March 2021 Skill Power Index

[Ranperre]

Ranperre's March 2021 Skill Power Index

07/31/2023 note: Druid way up, esp for solo play. Warden down, but not necessarily out. Fire down. Hammer up, whatever adjustments have been made over the past year have been really kind to hammer. Bad animations have been fixed for my skills.

Weather Witching will always be of questionable usefulness as long as it relies on channeling.

10/13/2022 note: There have been a small handful of meaningful skill updates over the past year. While I do not feel qualified to complete revamp these, a few special notes:

- Shield is probably lower tier I or tier II now. Definitely no longer the best skill in the game.
- Hammer and some other skills have been ravaged by animation updates. While they occasionally/eventually get fixed (priest was in a really bad place until the most recent update), this is an extra variable that is not accounted for. What I mean by this is that abilities vary from nearly instant to a 2 second cast point (time between pressing the button and ability activation) and it only affects some skills.
- I do know that most people use "S" to be at the top. Not worth redesigning the post for though.
- Fairy magic would be tier I to tier II. A pain in the ass to roll, but fae conduit is the best offensive buff in the game (probably better than psych's inspire confidence). Unarmed Tier II-III.

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I figured it was a good time to write/discuss something like this since the game has been static for four months.

The focus of this rating/review is to give individual skills an objective power ranking when it comes to Wintertide and GK. When facing the most difficult content in this game, certain skills shine and others are laughably bad. I have put a special emphasis on damage here, but you'll notice two of my top seven skills are there for reasons other than damage. Further, within each tier other than S, the skills have been ranked top to bottom, so shield is the best skill in the game as of my list.


Tier I - Best skills in the game

Shield: OP right now as a tanking skill. Too much taunt potential and it almost single handedly mitigates magic damage. Damage-wise, it's good for farming builds, but fails spectacularly against tougher content. The big advantage this skill has over the #2 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2) tanking skill (cow) is that bulwark never needs to be recast and elemental ward has a 30s recast, so it can ride out being stunned pretty well. This compares to cow, which has two activatable mitigation abilities with a 10s recast and if you get stunned for 5-6 seconds, it's very easy to lose a good portion of your mitigation quickly.

Giant bat: Confusing double, by itself, competes with anything in tiers III + S except sword. Deathscream is neat and the aoe dot damage from sonic burst is just below fire/bc combined. There's a reason you see a lot of older players on bat, the high difficulty to obtain skill scrolls has left this extremely powerful skill relatively unknown. If you can't get confusing double, which is only available during Halloween, don't level bat.

Fire Magic: Exceedingly high base damage on skills. Fire breath is probably the best nice attack in the game. If all you do is mod fire breath and super fireball, you'll be doing more damage than most. In many fire builds, fire magic will receive a minority of the mods and do a majority of the damage. The downsides are: 1. Power demand for fire breath is high and 2. Fire gives mobs a lot of rage. The first is easily fixed with good food and the second is the tank's problem, not yours.

Hammer: Best physical damage in the game. However, reliance on direct damage and very high power costs have devalued this skill compared to before the HP increase lengthened combat. Still one of the best, but it's worth noting you're expected to use the best meal, snacks, and flower to help with power issues. Additionally, I'm starting to doubt whether Hammer will actually work at 100 given Citan has stopped giving us more power per level.

Animal Handling: This skill allows you to change your damage type to meet the situation (very important in newer content). It requires lots of diligence to level pets and know when to use those pets, but it pays off.

Battle Chemistry: Skin remains the best support buff in the game. Healing mist is the best aoe heal in the game. However, after you have one in a party, the value of a second bc is greatly diminished as its damage potential is below average.

Archery: Two nice attack bonuses is a big deal and can lead to some pretty big hits. The worst thing about this skill is that it's mainly single target.


Tier II - Very, very good skills

Priest: This skill has three things going for it. First, a convenient nice attack bonus on the core attack. This creates a natural core-nice ability combo (just like archery). Second, flat damage mods are the holy grail in PG. Priest giving +200 damage to all fire attacks allows for some really cool combos (fire/priest, priest/fox). Third, as Citan continues to rely on stuns more and more, outright stun immunity provided by unfetter becomes increasingly valuable. The reason this skill isn't in the first tier is because it's strictly single target and isn't really the best in anything by itself. It's included in several "best" skill combinations though (fire/priest, priest/pig).

Warden: It's probably the best skill to combine with most animals for damage. At release, this was tier I, but the nerfs to stun trap have lowered it.

Spirit Fox: Flat direct fire/dark damage mods lead to some powerful single target, single damage type skill combinations. It's limited and the direction Wintertide is going leads me to believe that specializing in one damage type might not be the best in the future. Nonetheless, at least right now, it's very, very good, albeit limited.

Pig: Grunt of abeyance is amazing, it gives a 400 damage shield in an aoe. While I truly appreciate how strong grunt is, I believe skin still does more. AOE fear can be a butt saver. It's a healer with something special (vs druid/psych).

Cow: Deadly Emission is the single best taunt and aoe dot ability in the game. While Cow has a very high damage mitigation potential, it can be difficult to keep that mitigation up (see shield above). Further, it's hard to judge without seeing the improvements to unarmed. I might be overvaluing this due to a personal connection because outside of self healing/tanking and deadly emission, the skill is below average.

Ice Magic: This skill has always been known for good CC as Tundra Spikes is currently the only aoe root in the game. The most recent changes to ice magic mean that its damage isn't terrible anymore either. That said, any tanking skill that depends on you making yourself immobile and unable to cast spells is inherently flawed (cryogenic freeze) and ice armor isn't enough on its own.


Tier III - Bad skills, but not terrible; good enough in good hands

Sword: Worst epic attack in the game? Altogether, this skill is mediocre and the reason many old time players use it is based on old glory (it was heavily nerfed before I started playing). At 70 cap, the priest/sword build would have made sword Tier II. However, fire damage is weaker these days and it's only one good skill combination.

Staff: People often underestimate its damage potential and the ability to force vulnerability creates some cool ability combos. It probably came out of the tanking changes with less going for it than cow and shield, but it's the best skill to pair with shield.

Mentalism: As a support skill, it's pretty cool with aoe power refresh. Its popularity in terms of damage comes from the fact that it beats out druid for nature/electric damage and therefore goes well with fairy gear to "abuse" that 54% white stat increase to nature/electric. Some people might argue this should increase its rating, I disagree. In many situations where people choose ment, there's usually a better option, at least for damage {looks at Warden, Archery}.

Druid: It's a healing skill without the ability to give stun immunity, so it's bad to start. Rotskin is kinda cool and it does have a nice attack bonus. I have less experience with this one than most of the others, but people I respect have made passable druid builds in the past.


Tier S+ - Shitty, with a redeeming quality

Necromancy: Fox/necro (darkness damage, no pets) is neat. As is, it's impossible to keep your skeletons up and the zombie is overrated because it requires your fights to be too long. Friend's note: "zombie is on par with AH after 5 mins, but you can't really get the pet across floors in WT".

Deer: Doe eyes is kinda cool and deer overall does a fair bit of damage. An off tank isn't really a thing in PG atm though. I think the deer spawns aren't that good either, even after the changes?


Tier S - Shitty

Bard: Anthem of Avoidance and Moment of Resolve are cool. Everything else about this skill is less than underwhelming.

Knife Fighting: This skill is just really bad. A friend went knife/fire and the cold dagger back when calefaction had the massive -ice resistance debuff and it wasn't worth it. Knife wasn't good enough to be saved by an OP mod, what hope does it have elsewhere?

Psychology: It's a healing skill without stun immunity or any other other redeeming quality. Psych/ment is kind of neat. This skill FEELS super old.

Werewolf: Lol lycan. I'll admit this is one of the classes I know the least about. They used to be super OP, were "fixed" when we moved to additive vs multiplicative stacking of mods and I don't believe they've recovered yet. I very well may be wrong about this one, but I don't think I've seen more than one respected player take werewolf to GK/WT in the past six months and actually play on werewolf.

Rabbit: Wonderfully fun skill to play with the single best nice attack bonus in the game. That said, it really sucks. None of the damage abilities do much and its two redeeming/unique features are a self heal and play dead (feign death). Yay...

Spider: While this skill can do very well on bosses, fights still don't last long enough to make single target dots worthwhile and infinite legs maxes out at 1800 average on a single target. This really isn't that much.


Not rated:

Unarmed: It's not fair to rate this skill while it's awaiting changes. It's the only tanking option for animals and is the last tanking skill to be changed. Not even close to shield atm.

Fairy Magic: Because of the whole rolling fiasco with regards to fairy magic/mentalism, I can't judge this skill. All I can say is that fae conduit might be the best damage-related support ability in the game.




Who wrote this and why? Continued

I used to setup PUGs and have seen a bunch of different skill combinations, but tend to be pretty insular these days. I have seen everyone in the S tier do "enough" damage to not be a worthless piece of shit, but you'll eventually hit a damage wall that is lower than other skills.

Within the past two years, I have made a level 70 or 80 set for every skill other than Pig, Lycan, Fairy, and Fox. An unfortunate reality of this game is that there isn't a huge need for them to balance skills because there's no PVP. So, as noted above, I want to help someone that's looking to level up a second or third combination. I hope to prevent a few of you from thinking: "Oh, Bard looks neat" or "I want to hold two knives" then try and build something around these lost causes. Some people realize this too late, complain about lack of balance, then quit.

Disclaimer: I entirely understand that some people just want to screw around and that's fine, have fun. Further, I don't mean to attack any single individual, so please don't take this personally.

[Celerity]

I basically agree with all of this, but that shouldn't be a surprise. Only nitpicking but I wouldn't say shield is the best skill in the game, it's the best tanking skill in the game but is meh solo, sucks for damage and you only ever want 1 in a group like bc. I would say staff is a bit better than you give it credit for and to be honest I'm kinda tired of unarmed not even being half as good a tanking skill as staff when we were supposed to get a rework to it like 7 months ago now? If you need ideas for what needs reworking citan, it literally just needs some flat physical mitigation so it's actually feasible to tank the wt trolls and gk worghests and some of the random damage type mitigation like the psychic or nature changed to global so that unarmed provides literally any benefit whatsoever versus the cold and fire damage in wt. It's damage and taunt are already fine and at least the darkness and poison mitigations have some niche uses but these could be changed too.

I feel like giant bat is in the same situation wolf was in before the change in the damage formula, it basically has just one op ability that's seriously op but if it gets nerfed then it very easily turns to crap just like wolf did. Maybe something different can happen this time.

I think if you could actually make a build with all the mods you want, then fairy magic would probably be one of the best in the game, I'd probably place it top. I'm biased against fire magic though because I think it's a boring skill. Fire magic would probably be the current best in the game if the engine area and aberrations + dalvos in wt weren't a thing. I honestly feel like priest being such a good pair for fire magic was probably a mistake. Changed fire magic from finally being balanced after years of being op in the pre-alpha straight back to being op and makes you feel stupid for basically ever pairing it with anything else. At least before the calefaction mod nerf you could choose whether you wanted it to be op with ice magic or with priest, now priest is the only option. It's not like priest has nothing going for it without that anyway, it has the highest hitting epic attack in the game and makes it into all the best support builds too.

Knife fighting has probably always been the worst skill in the game, has special trigger conditions which make it nearly useless solo, yet even when you meet them, the skills still feel underwhelming. Honestly can't comment on rabbit since the rework but pre-rework it was also just massively underwhelming.

[Melkhiresa]

Whether I agree with the way you rated things or not this really does bring up the power imbalance often felt between skills in this game. A lot of it has to do with how damage is calculated in this game, low base damage and so many skills have lackluster mods that feel like they were balanced for lv60 content.

Half my time spent is theory crafting new and interesting builds that often get ruined just due to the fact it's impossible to even get an ability beyond 2k damage for many skills whilst others can reach 5 or 10k or even 15-19k depending on crits or pet on a single ability. While yes I know some skills have a harder time getting or leveling or even upkeep and nor should every skill do the same but that's just too big of a swing. It's also half the reason I do my overviews of skills that I have in the past due to it being easier for Citan to see possible problems when it is broken down such. He might not like my proposed ideas but at least it starts a discussion and the community as a whole can chime in.


As to your list there is a few things I wanted to add.

1.Rabbit: I've been over the pro's and issues of rabbit before in depth so I don't want to go overboard but a lot of it's mods have either been broken or suffer from good in theory but badly implemented. With the recent Bun Fu Blast fix and love it's taken a huge step in the right direction and while It needs a ton of help there isn't a skill in this game I like more than it. It's biggest downfall is pairing so well with ice and ice being apparently the most hated element in this game and resistant or immune by everything. Seriously giant fire birbs aren't immune to fire but everything and their mom is to ice? This further hurts Ice's tanking ability but that's a whole nother issue.

Shameless plug: The thump ice vuln mods are broken and don't stack. Please fix and or move them to strike, thanks!

2. Ice magic: While it's true Ice armor isn't enough in and of itself that is mostly due to It only offering physical, ice and modded trauma reduction. Where as current 'end game' is all about fire and darkness mitigation. There is very little trauma damage out there after the rage attack change of Hippogriffs and unless you use ice as only a support to your main skill anything that does ice damage is usually immune thus making you tanking it a joke in it's possibility. I have to disagree with Cryogenic Freeze though. On things that aren't ice immune Ice does good aoe threat and can literally just be immune or almost to most things at whim. Add in the armor/hp that can be restored and it's a virtual reset. The MAJOR downside is it can't be used when stunned of which ice gets no resistance to like shield and the flaw of using either shardblast or ice veins opens you up to be stunned before you can recast ice armor and be destroyed. At the very least ice veins should just require and not pop ice armor or let Cyrogenic be used when stunned so you have a cover for that gap and something that makes ice stand out.

Beyond the immunity junk ice needs better options for increased threat. It has two 20% mods and then utterly horrible slight increased ones attached to tundra. Couple this with weird mods like

- Blizzard deals +16% damage, generates -765 Rage and taunts -830

and you end up with a confused skill.

3. Animal Handling: The major problem I have with this skill beyond terrible pet A.I is the fact It all comes down to giant Clever trick nukes. 15k+ crits are not uncommon in a fully modded beefed out pet. Using a pet with a heal or buff clever and you suffer massively. Yes it should be less due to utility but that's just insane. The skill itself is also rather dull to use regardless of the power above but maybe that's just me.

4. Battle Chemistry: Spot on with the support albeit it's other mutations beyond skin could do to be much better then they are. That and allowing more than one mutation of different types on a person at a time from different BC's would help with the devaluing of multiple in a party. As to the damage it's almost beyond terrible. Only two of your bombs damage HP and even when modded out fully it's a pretty low number. The bomb mods don't effect freezing mist which has a super low base damage and super long cooldown of 45 seconds and for some reason triggers root immunity when used.

P.S the pet needs a rework but this isn't exactly news

5. Deer: All being an 'off' tank has given deer is a shorter window on it's flat reduction abilities than other tanks. There is generally very little reason to super peel one monster off of someone who has high aggro in the current state of the game especially when it comes with the penalty above. The damage isn't that great for any of these tradeoffs either. One would think an off tank would suffer worse tanking for increased damage or something. This applies to both cow and this but your only tanking option is unarmed as a pairing skill so build diversity is a bit low.

6. Bard: Sometimes I almost feel this skill should have been separated in to two. The classic healing bard and something more akin to a battle bard variant. Without insane mod bloat you will always have a class that is less than stellar at either . Currently it's saving grace are all the long cooldown short but powerful buffs it brings plus rez. I secretly hope one day I can effectively play horn only without just relying on the 45% damage increase buff as the reason I do.

7. Psychology: A skill pretty much used for traveling speed or ridiculous epic attack damage. It misses out on all the love other healing skills get and instead gets utterly crappy damage outside of going all in on it's trauma epic and hoping it crits.



Honestly I could probably write entire books for most of these skills but wanted to keep it shorter this time. I know they have their hands full with 10 million other things but base damage and mods really need a general overlook for the vast majority of skills. At the very least give some of the less powerful skills synergy somewhere to make them at least a viable option to pair with other things effectively.

P.S As much as I love animal forms please no more for a long time. Improve the ones we have and add more skills to pair with for them and everyone.

[Mikhaila]

Great article, thanks for the work in writing it. Gives a very nice summary.

A key part of the article, for people reading it, is this is based off of GK and WT runs. And I'll attest to the large amount of time spent testing skills there. (It's a bit scary seeing your Cowtank run off and grab half the floor in WT.) These are the hardest hitting mobs to date, with a variety of different attacks, so very good to test against.

[Mikhaila]

Great article, thanks for the work in writing it. Gives a very nice summary.

A key part of the article, for people reading it, is this is based off of GK and WT runs. And I'll attest to the large amount of time spent testing skills there. (It's a bit scary seeing your Cowtank run off and grab half the floor in WT.) These are the hardest hitting mobs to date, with a variety of different attacks, so very good to test against.

And I agree, no more animals for now, fix the ones we have.

[Varnoc]

Necromancy:
Just wanted to add that Necromancy can do some wacky stuff in groups. Obviously it's pretty garbage with just one user (and the pets are super easy to lose), but Provoke Undead, Heal Undead, and Rebuild Undead hit ALL nearby undead summons, making it easier to keep them alive and do more damage the more Necromancers you have in the group. That said it's pretty dang niche.

[Ranperre]

I feel like giant bat is in the same situation wolf was in before the change in the damage formula, it basically has just one op ability that's seriously op but if it gets nerfed then it very easily turns to crap just like wolf did. Maybe something different can happen this time.

Deathscream and sonic burst (if you pull a bunch) are unexpectedly decent. If confusing double received a slight nerf, I don't think I'd drop it as long as we keep pulling as many as we are (aoe dots remain strong).



I have to disagree with Cryogenic Freeze though.

6. Bard: Sometimes I almost feel this skill should have been separated in to two. The classic healing bard and something more akin to a battle bard variant.

When it comes to cryo, if you want to just use it as a heal, that's fine, but you can't use it for mitigation because you're not going to be able to hold hate after you've been in your cocoon for a few seconds. I was also underwhelmed by Ice's taunt in general.

I would like to see the "+50 to basic and core during song of bravery" mod become a flat +100 damage bonus, so +200 with two mods. It would obviously create an imbalance within the skill, but at least it'd be useful (look at BC mutations).



Just wanted to add that Necromancy can do some wacky stuff in groups. Obviously it's pretty garbage with just one user (and the pets are super easy to lose), but Provoke Undead, Heal Undead, and Rebuild Undead hit ALL nearby undead summons, making it easier to keep them alive and do more damage the more Necromancers you have in the group. That said it's pretty dang niche.

In the distant past (before Steam release) Necro was OP and got nerfed. Maybe someone can chime in on how it was back then.

[Daguin]

I don't test damage / survivability extensively enough to weigh in on any of this really. I still consider myself one of the lower dmg endgame players because mods are always an afterthought for me. However, your designation of fire magic should come with a BIG disclaimer that the skill is basically useless in many areas. For instance, trying to contribute anything worthwhile to pheonix runs, WT hot hall, DC, fire puck, etc. is a nightmare. You are effectively limited to three skills (only one of which "Scintillating Frost" does any reasonable damage). As a double fire build (FM/BC) this becomes an increasingly annoying problem. I have plenty of other abilities leveled up, but carrying around multiple armor/weapon sets takes a big toll on storage which kind of cascades into more problems than it is worth in terms of space / time available for grinding, crafting, or storage sim. Not bashing the mechanics of these skills at all, but you take a big risk investing exclusively in elemental dmg types.

[Melkhiresa]

When it comes to cryo, if you want to just use it as a heal, that's fine, but you can't use it for mitigation because you're not going to be able to hold hate after you've been in your cocoon for a few seconds. I was also underwhelmed by Ice's taunt in general.

I think that is the point of it though. I mostly use it for upcoming burst that I can foresee or a pause when massive spike damage happens. It provides extreme mitigation for a few seconds....If it were any better then It would trivialize content that it mitigated way too much. I think a lot of people are spoiled with tanking combos who's health literally never moves due to the over tuned nature of them combined. Think Shield/Staff ect. While sure it's great some combos can just pull the whole floor at once that invalidates anything but those combos and just makes the bar that much higher for Citan to make harder content. Before you know it rage attacks will one shot anyone that isn't those combos. I'm not trying to get any specific skill nerfed just pointing out future issues with power creep. Bosses already need to be much harder than they are and probably double the already increased HP as is.

Another problem that effects quite a few skills is Pets being insta gibbed by aoe's in so many places. There is a reason most games reduce pet damage taken by them by something like 75%. It's bad enough they are utterly slow and don't port to you effectively. Combine that with a ton of the pet's having conditional summoning requirements or 90 second cooldowns and you are just going to have a bad time. While I'm on the topic of Pet's I know why It was done but them not being able to attack feared mobs is quite an annoying issue. Can we please get a universal pet attack/pet passive hotkey that effects all pets and overrides this? Not only would it offer much needed control with combo's that have a ton of pets but also allow better target switching than currently available.

Necromancy:

While there are 'some' strong builds one can squeeze out of this or outright cheese with % damage stacking by and large the toolkit and mods of this skill are in great need of revision. There are a million different directions Citan could take the skill and any one of them would probably be better than the current iteration. It's biggest selling point in my eyes is the multitude of increased damage type vulnerabilities it offers.

With this whole push towards you should bring multiple damage types to an encounter a BIG problem arises. Some skills are designed a million times better for this than others. Sure you can combo some wonky stuff that don't go together well but offers a secondary type but that just pigeon holes things and weakens the point of playing said skill in the first place. Some of these skills that suffer from mono type damage can alleviate the issue slightly with mods that increase the mobs damage taken by said type but it's not always an easy or viable option for some.

[Varnoc]

In the distant past (before Steam release) Necro was OP and got nerfed. Maybe someone can chime in on how it was back then.

I actually was a necro player pre-Steam, which is partly why I still play it now. Pets were worse then than now mostly because you needed to resummon each time you moved areas (thank goodness this was changed). Zombies weren't really worth using at the time (but got much better later if memory serves).

The few things that, in my opinion, made it super strong were Heart's Power, max rage reduction on Swordsmen, and AoE lifesteal.


Heart's Power at the time increased your max hp by 200 for a short time (still does this I'm pretty sure), but there was no CD and it RESTORED 200 hp. This effectively meant that you could straight up not be killed as long as you had hearts in your inventory. Guess what? Myconian Heartshrooms count as hearts. (I wanna make a claim and say I'm the first person to figure this out, but I'm probably not lol). Super easy to farm and grab a stack of 99.
As for the swordsmen, when you had the priveledge of having them active you could double stack a mod that no longer rolls at all, reducing Swordsman max rage by something like 90%, letting them chain stun between the two of them. They had a LOT of armor at the time too, so they stuck around pretty solidly if you went to the trouble of creating a graveyard to make them when you changed areas.
AoE lifesteal is pretty self explanatory, and is still fairly strong relative to the other two (mostly because it was more or less kept). Good for taking yourself from 5% to 100% in a jiffy when you had more than 3 guys close to you. Good times

[Tutenshtein]

Guys a noob request - can you also post best skill combo's in such a manner? At least approximately with no comment's, just a short list. Thanks. Or not even rank them, just what pair best with what, that sort of thing.

[Celerity]

Tutenshtein, since we've come this far already.

Tanking:

Staff/Shield
Cow/Unarmed

Heal focused support:

Pig/Priest

Damage focused support:

Fire Magic/Battle Chemistry
Ice Magic/Battle Chemistry*

Damage:

Fire Magic/Priest
Fire Magic/Animal Handling
Archery/Animal Handling
Hammer/Animal Handling
Hammer/Archery
Giant Bat/Warden
Spirit Fox/Priest
Spirit Fox/Necromancy
Fire Magic/Ice Magic*
Fire Magic/Fairy Magic**
Hammer/Fairy Magic**

Worth noting is that fire magic gets bonus damage on almost every mob in Wintertide other than the engine area and aberrations which is why it's so strong right now. I would personally recommend switching to a different build for the engine area at least, but then since you have a different build for that you may as well also use it for aberrations too.

*Ice magic is amazing but half the "relevant" mobs in Wintertide are immune to cold. What I mean by relevant is on the path of one of the dailies, so not including cargo deck and aberrations are easy either way. It makes a great switch away from a fire magic build for the engine area + aberrations though.
**Fairy magic is also amazing but not reasonable to make builds for currently.

[cr00cy]

I'm supprised you rate Lycans so low. Granted, I havent played seriously in a long time, but my wolf doesnt feel that weak. The few times i join dungeon party, and actually bother to look at autopsy in mobs, I'm usually near the top of damage dealt, even on regular elites that get anihilated almost instantly, and I play heavy dot-focused build.

That beign siad, I never tried out new Fae Real dungeon, so i don't know how I'd fare in current end-game. I'm not gonan argue with you ont his placement, but since you said that yor ratign is based on teh fact you dont see many/any wolf palyers in end game, as wolf main, I think I migth offer a bit of insight as to why.

The thign about wolf is that it was never, to my knowledge, very popular. It migth be hours I play at, but I don't think I ever saw more than 5 or 6 wolf players at the same time, even when it was objectivly Op. First there was this time that Wolfs very literaly immortal, as long as you were willing to spend some time howling in group, becuse you would regenerate 100% of your HP every healing ticks (I think ist 5 sec? I don't think I ever saw any official information about it). Then there was combo-chain build that let you chain combo effect, dealing shitton damage and healing for like half your hp every rotation. Then there was this time when BM regen scaled with monster lv so hard that after eating worm in Ilmari Desert, you regenerated liek 80 hp every second (that was in tiem when max lv was 60, most people had like 500 max hp,a dn monster had WAY less damage than now). Then, most recent, was Skulk, that offers such obscene damage buff, that it wasn't even funny(literally. After initial amazment passed, it was really boring, at leats for me, just pressing 2 buttons to end fight.)

And, I say t again, I NEVER saw too many Wolf palyers. Even when durnign Skulk time, when I think most people agreed that Wolf is top tier dps, not many people played him. Even durnig full moon, when I joined dungeon party, I rarely saw other wolves.

I think most players just don't want to deal with whole full moon and forced transformation sheningans, and simply play 'normla classes', or other animals, since then they can just cure curse and not deal with any trouble.

[Tutenshtein]

Awesome! Thanks alot! Also what do you think would be "best" combo for solo playing? I mean to take on as much content as possible solo? I had a thought about Hammer/shield, what do you think? Or some other would be better? Im looking to have adequate protection and adequate dmg too.

[Mirromorka]

I musr replay to this , i strongly do not agree with most of this , im not trying to put u down , but the devs have thought the classes through and they did great job , so many high damage builds ur ranking shit , and thats the point to master a class u need to spend long time with it , theres an old article about my hammer necro because it was to op necro is stil insanly strong by itself , my psych ment can solo elites and u rank psyc shit , my wolf animal handling can solo fae elites so many great classes to be used in the corect way and are verry powerful in the correct usage ,

[Celerity]

Problem with shield is that most of its physical damage mitigation comes from bulwark mode which you wouldn't want to use solo because it cuts your damage by 50%. Every mob you can skin deals physical damage which is important since farming skins is a great money making method. A large amount of enemies outside of skinnable ones also deal physical damage.

For soloing every skill has "enough" damage, so it's more about aoe, movement speed and survivalability. Therefore I think fire magic/battle chemistry is the best in the game for soloing. Both skills offer movement speed, both offer aoe, bc has decent enough damage, fire magic high damage and extra skin from bc gives you great survivalability vs physical damage and dots which are honestly the most dangerous thing in the game. Bc also has heals in case you need them and the golem to restore your power and heal you too. The skills synergise with fire magic boosting the damage of your bc dots too. If you're lazy though you can go for warden/x where x can basically be anything but probably optimally unarmed or battle chemistry (bc just for extra skin). That's because of privacy field which just reflects damage on enemies and kills pretty much everything around you with you only having to recast privacy field every 30 seconds and do nothing else except keep your hp up.

That's what the "best" options are but really it's just a game so I would say play what you enjoy. You're not really ever going to struggle solo whatever skills you pick.

[Mikhaila]

Awesome! Thanks alot! Also what do you think would be "best" combo for solo playing? I mean to take on as much content as possible solo? I had a thought about Hammer/shield, what do you think? Or some other would be better? Im looking to have adequate protection and adequate dmg too.

I think that the answer here is that most people should be able to solo all the soloable content in the game, with almost all the class combos. The best combos make solo fights against normal mobs pretty easy, if you are well geared. Which is my next point:

For solo players, your character isn't just those two skills. Are you eating crap food, or did you level your gourmand? Did you level your endurance skills and use first aid etc as part of your options, or do you only think of FA when about to die? Potions? Meditation? Caligraphy?...a lot of ways to add protection when you know where you are going. What alcohol or drugs are you taking along? They have downsides but can buff up your character similar to potions. Buckle Artistry? Sigils? Shield Wax? So many little things. What is your gear like? Yellow mastercrafted with 7 mods? or just that collection of found items? Lots of things make up how tough your character is beyond those two combat skills.

[Ranperre]

I'm supprised you rate Lycans so low. Granted, I havent played seriously in a long time, but my wolf doesnt feel that weak. The few times i join dungeon party, and actually bother to look at autopsy in mobs, I'm usually near the top of damage dealt, even on regular elites that get anihilated almost instantly, and I play heavy dot-focused build.

The lack of a good aoe in addition to unarmed (natural other skill b/c of trauma) being weak in general hurts lycan. Maybe I've missed something, this was one of the skills I bowed to community opinion more than personal experience.



Awesome! Thanks alot! Also what do you think would be "best" combo for solo playing? I mean to take on as much content as possible solo? I had a thought about Hammer/shield, what do you think? Or some other would be better? Im looking to have adequate protection and adequate dmg too.

I'd recommend fire/staff to be different from Celerity (I have fire/bc), but this is something I haven't explored too much since they ruined fire/ice and elite mob hp doubled.



my psych ment can solo elites and u rank psyc shit , my wolf animal handling can solo fae elites so many great classes to be used in the corect way and are verry powerful in the correct usage ,


The focus of this rating/review is to give individual skills an objective power ranking when it comes to Wintertide and GK.

I wanted to limit it to the content I have the most experience with. Psych/ment is, indeed, bad, at least for damage. You have super high cooldowns and if you don't crit (or can't) you're effectively worthless because the non-crit damage on this stuff is really, really bad. The only thing you have going for you is doing damage to Dalvos or buffing other people in your group that might be useful. Many, many people can solo fae elites. It's an accomplishment, but not something that delineates the best builds for dungeons.

Necro is fundamentally flawed because you need to resummon your zombie every time you change floors. My group takes an hour to get through wintertide and makes five jumps, meaning six separate instances when you can keep the zombie out, 10 minutes a piece. You're looking at having a maxed out zombie out only half of the time, maybe less.

[Mikhaila]

If you're lazy though you can go for warden/x where x can basically be anything but probably optimally unarmed or battle chemistry (bc just for extra skin). That's because of privacy field which just reflects damage on enemies and kills pretty much everything around you with you only having to recast privacy field every 30 seconds and do nothing else except keep your hp up..

I'd love to mix BC with Warden, but no hands :)

Warden is a great farming option, agreed. The amount of damage it can put out with privacy field and the fire kills most any large mob of critters in a couple of seconds
. Warden/Unarmed is a good option, useable in any animal form.

[cr00cy]

The lack of a good aoe in addition to unarmed (natural other skill b/c of trauma) being weak in general hurts lycan. Maybe I've missed something, this was one of the skills I bowed to community opinion more than personal experience.


Why is Unarmed weak? Like I said, havent played seriously in a long time, but I don't remember Unamred being weak.

Whiel I agree that Lycna on its own may lack Aoe, but I don't think one should look at any skill in vaccum. Afterall, we are supposed to use 2 combat skills, so I think more fair comparision would be how well skill synergies with other skills.

For example, my favorit build, wolf/unamred has quite a few options for AOe. Bite and Barrage are given, but you can aslo use combso for aoe kick or cobra/mamba stike, or mod for aoe hip throw/body slam (gloves are not very mod-heavy in this build). Again, I dont know, I was never group payer, I mostly play solo, but I never felt useless in groups with my wolf.

[Celerity]

I'd love to mix BC with Warden, but no hands :)

Warden/bc is my main skin farming and low level farming build, it's why I said bc just for extra skin since you can use the mutations and the golem without hands.

[Melkhiresa]

I musr replay to this , i strongly do not agree with most of this , im not trying to put u down , but the devs have thought the classes through and they did great job , so many high damage builds ur ranking shit , and thats the point to master a class u need to spend long time with it , theres an old article about my hammer necro because it was to op necro is stil insanly strong by itself , my psych ment can solo elites and u rank psyc shit , my wolf animal handling can solo fae elites so many great classes to be used in the corect way and are verry powerful in the correct usage ,

I don't think anyone is trying to say they didn't think the classes through or succeeded in a lot of ways but there is no denying some skills are extremely antiquated comparatively to those people often rank in the overall top. I don't mean this as an attack but blanket statements of I can do x don't exactly provide relevance. What elite can you solo? every type of them? How long does it take? ect. Even regardless of that as pointed out even if said builds do solo things it does not equate to doing amazingly well in WT or other high end content which was partially the basis of this whole thing.


Since Unarmed keeps being brought up in general one can derive a lot from this game by just using wiki and comparing base damage between skills and mods that accompany the abilities. What you will notice with Unarmed is it comes with zero pure utility abilities and all some form of attack that is pure damage, damage + debuff or knockback. This already starts it off on a bad footing compared to most damage and tank like skills. Now when you take a look at it's abilities one by one some of them are just utterly bad and suffer from either horrible mods or a lack of mods as is. Some of this is alleviated in animal builds that get access to % increased trauma or added damage to kicks/crushing which make for the biggest attacks unarmed has going for it. Considering this the numbers still aren't impressive by other skill standards. It's worth noting unarmed does have a wider access to increased damage type taken debuffs and part of what makes this skill attractive even with it's downsides.

On the tank side of the spectrum you have to invest a TON of mods to benefit which makes it hard to also effectively build up any sort of damage given the previous. Sure your other pairing skill might bring it but then due to the nature of unarmed you are stuck with a bunch of weaker hitting attacks since you lack any ability diversity option. When you compare it to other tankier skills they have a much lower threshold in investment to power ratio and most of them provide a flat mitigation which unarmed is sorely lacking even if the % based things it has are very strong combined with other tank skills.

I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from going unarmed and at times in certain builds it can do well but there is a lot that could be improved in the skill and we just have to wait and see what the revamp brings.

[Proximus]

I've been doing Ice Magic and Priest well into the 60's as A Rabbit instead of using the Rabbit Skills. I can confirm that this build is both strong and has a great survivability. The only reason I'm using Rabbit is because I like roleplaying as one and also because of the fact that as an animal I can use Animal First Aid bombs which can be put on side bar and can also be used with regular First Aid. Plus, The rez for First Aid is nice with the rez from Priest as well as the Priest heals.

Also, I have Spider/Druid augmented really well to do high amounts of poison damage and thus in level 60 content, I rarely die and do a great deal of damage. Spider/Priest is also fun to play with the Animal First Aid Bomb concept and regular First Aid.

Keep in mind, the First Aid and Animal First Aid Bombs are instant healing as well as the main Priest ability I use.

[INXS]

To me this "ranking " seems based on group play mainly.

[Mikhaila]

Warden/bc is my main skin farming and low level farming build, it's why I said bc just for extra skin since you can use the mutations and the golem without hands.

Interesting. Not something I knew about

[Mikhaila]

To me this "ranking " seems based on group play mainly.

If you read through the first post, you can see that he's mainly talking about groups in WT and GK. The further you get from that, the fuzzier the analysis will get. The elites in those dungeons take more tanking, more dps, sometimes longer fights, and challenge you more with different damage and resistance types.

[Ranperre]

Why is Unarmed weak? Like I said, havent played seriously in a long time, but I don't remember Unamred being weak.

Whiel I agree that Lycna on its own may lack Aoe, but I don't think one should look at any skill in vaccum. Afterall, we are supposed to use 2 combat skills, so I think more fair comparision would be how well skill synergies with other skills.

For example, my favorit build, wolf/unamred has quite a few options for AOe. Bite and Barrage are given, but you can aslo use combso for aoe kick or cobra/mamba stike, or mod for aoe hip throw/body slam (gloves are not very mod-heavy in this build). Again, I dont know, I was never group payer, I mostly play solo, but I never felt useless in groups with my wolf.

There are inherent problems with evaluating skills individually, but I felt like this was easier than listing out 30 different skill combinations and comparing them. Damage-wise, how about this. Hammer, by itself, can go way of the hammer (+45% crushing) + seismic (2800-3k) + pound to slag (6k), both being aoe. It's going to be very difficult catching up to that on any unarmed build, where barrage/kicks are going for 3-4k at best after being boosted up, right? So in three buttons, hammer alone does what it would take 6-7 buttons (at best) for an unarmed build to do. Along the same vein, an unboosted fire breath does 2700 direct (vs 1700 barrage) plus a little over 900 from a dot. In other words, fire's nice attack does twice the damage of barrage. Mamba strike USED to be cool (massive mods), now it is not.

[Proximus]

great posts!!

[Mbaums]

INXS is correct there is a group bias in the ranking and that is intentional, as group-content is such a major part of PG.
I don't think the people posting being able to solo elites can efficiently solo them compared to a group, especially with the new HP numbers and thick armor. Being able to hold your own vs a troll until you get ~3 Monteros rages off or a lucky crit can't compare to a group that might manage 3-adds. It's just night and day.

What's not being shown is some of the skills are meant to be not intended for new players, like Battle Chem with it's required 50-alchemy unlock. So, it's balanced to be strong. Citan has that info, and hopefully this feedback helps put the skill's reality in line with the intention where needed (which is top secret infoz that we don't see).

[Mikhaila]

Read the first post about how he is ranking things. It's not based on how easy it is to solo. It's based on the group content in GK and WT. Most combos can solo to 80. I did it the first time with Unarmed and Psychology, not a really high damage skill set and by far one of the least powerful I've ever used. His power rankings are based on some assumptions, and soloing isn't really part of it.

Spider/Warden is a decent combo. Warden pairs well with any animal skillset, it's extremely good. I've run it with Fox, Unarmed, Mentalism, Psychology, Druid, and Deer. Works well with all of them. I like it best with Fox and Ment. Privacy Field over 2k makes soloing very easy.