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 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.