Monsters’ Den Chronicles v1.11

I always thought that a lot of Strength was the best way to get the most out of the Inquisitor and his Litany of Pain. With enough +Stun% and Judgement active you’ve got an AOE stun which deals damage. Stopping enemy actions via stunlock is kind of like healing right?

Strange thing – an enemy warrior used Shield Cover. I kicked them into the back row. Shield cover continued to function, and I couldn’t attack at all (melee only run) until the buff ended. Since I can’t use Shield Cover if in the back row, perhaps this should automatically end?

Thought I’d give a few, subjective, observations of the classes now I’ve had a few days to get into it. Skills are divided into Gold, Silver and Bronze Quality. If people think I’m using the class wrong, or missing the value of a skill, feel free to say.

- Warrior

Gold:
Adrenaline: Stun immunity is awesome, damage bonus is awesome. Adrenaline is awesome.

Hold the Line: Unlike Guard, this gives the damage reduction to where it’s actually needed, and heals to boot. Great stuff.

Push Harder: 40 Power can mean the world when given to the right target, and 20% of
maximum health is pretty easily healed overall. Also goes well with the Inquisitor, letting him use Retribution more effectively. Giving bonuses on top of that making sure the target you just super charged isn’t going to get hit by a cheap stun is delicious gravy.

Cleave: Any AOE is arguably a gold standard ability, considering its action economy. Cleave is probably the least valuable AOE considering that it’s the only one where the users positioning is a factor, but it’s still good in a pinch.

Silver:
Power Attack: Vanilla attack ability, it’s still a great skill, but not much for problem solving.

Guard: It may just be me, but my back line tends to take dramatically less damage than my front line anyway. This will be even less cool when the game stops letting you have it as your default style *in* the back row.

Resolve: In the absence of a cleric, this is a decent ability for an endurance focused warrior, but not in the same league as other healing abilities.

Bronze:
Kick: Almost silver, but there are so many enemies that are just as bad in the back row that this is rarely viable.

Overall: The biggest problem for warriors is their Multiple Attribute Dependency. If they focus on Strength to get the most of their attack skills, they have trouble surviving heavy hits on higher difficulties. If they focus on Intelligence for getting the best out of Hold the Line, they have no damage output. If they focus on Endurance then they’ll just sit there and eat the hits without offering much to the combat outside of being a damage sponge.

Personally I like this, since it means Warriors have a lot of diversity, but it’s worth noting that they suffer the most from spreading out their abilities.

- Champion

Gold:
Sweeping Strikes: +Quickness? Awesome. +Accuracy? Awesome. But the real kicker is ignoring enemy evasion, making the Champion surprisingly effective at taking out some of the most annoying targets.

Shield Wall: The quintessential tanking skill, combined with the correct support (thorns, nature’s balm, Push Harder, and/or Hold the Line) this can be devastatingly effective.

Silver:
Bloodlust: Long-lasting power regenation and a skill power cost reduction if he manages to kill something is decent, but that does leave a full turn where the Champion isn’t holding the line, shield-walling, pushing harder or cleaving. Situationally pretty useful though, especially since Sweeping Strikes can guarantee a kill shot quite easily.

Charge: 140% damage is great, but an actual ability to fight at range is what makes this skill good. Unfortunately it’s highly conditional otherwise I’d consider it a gold skill.

Overall: The Champion is the less MAD of the two sub-classes and has the most versatility in his skills. It’s a toss-up between Strength and Endurance as to where his abilities need to go, since only Hold The Line depends on intellect.

- Captain

Silver:
Shrug It Off: A targettable, slightly more powerful Resolve. Hold the Line is the same price, an AOE, and gives 20% damage reduction.
Change Formation: Rarely comes up. It’s not a bad skill and can sometimes save the day, it’s just too infrequently useful to be great.

Bronze:
Keep Up: If your Warrior is so weak that half a turn of another character is more valuable than a full one of his, I’m not sure what’s going on, but situationally giving an ability to your Assassin for a CDG might be good.

Inspiration: Maybe it’s me, but I always have someone who’s better suited to being in the centre of my ‘T’ formation than the Captain, like a cleric. If it lasted longer, it might be silver, but 15% for a single turn that only applies when the warrior isn’t doing anything more important (like holding the line) is questionably worthwhile, even if I do get to apply it to all three party members.

Overall: Honestly I’d say the best place for the champion was with a spear in the back row. Then you can focus on intellect and strength without worrying about his staying power. Once you don’t have to worry about him keeling over in a few hits, you can work on his gear to get him into something lighter and faster and maybe get something worthwhile out of his decent basic skills, he certainly doesn’t cut it very well as a front-liner.

- Cleric

Gold:
Radiance: +10 Evasion AND a free HoT on everyone next to him? This is why people play with clerics.

Judgement: 20% stun is nice, as is +25% Skill Power cost and penalties to recovering, and avoiding, stun. But unless you were trying to set up a CDG against a stun resistant target, I don’t see you dropping the Radiance, just because more health is always good.

Heal: Just because it’s basic doesn’t mean it’s not great. Poison and Wounds are common and unpleasant.

Resurrect: It’s a resurrection spell. It has to be Gold. Getting a free anoint out of the deal is just gravy.

Holy Light: AOE 30% blind is almost dropping enemies’ damage by 30%. Too bad it doesn’t still damage undead.

Silver:
Smite: It always hits, which is awesome for cherry tapping an almost dead enemy, but it’s unlikely to deal much damage, especially since it lost the double damage feature from MD 1.

Anoint: If you’re wasting time anointing, it means you’re either setting up someone else’s AOE or your cleric doesn’t have enough to do.

Purify: Decent, but situationally so.

Overall: Clerics have a great base chassis and aren’t even that bad for damage anymore with great hammers, though their weapon choice is limitted and does hurt them in the long run.

- Inquisitor

Silver:
Zeal: This doesn’t really compare with the basic cleric styles unfortunately, unless you wanted to go for a light armoured combat cleric going for maximum damage in the shortest time I suppose.

Gold:
Fervor: Power Attack on ‘roids, with a two-handed hammer this does more single target damage than most other skills in the game.

Litany of Pain: Others surely disagree, but this combined with Judgement is a single attack with at least 20% chance of stunning, with a penalty to their recovery from said stun, and it attaches a 25% power cost increase onto all their skills. This is on top of a small amount of damage and any weapon-procs.

Silver:
Retribution: This is an amazing skill, but situational. If used right, it’s a Cleric-based Electrocute, potentially with debuffs attached, and it’s combined with the Inquisitor’s max health, so it will scale naturally. On the downside, it doesn’t actually heal the Inquisitor of the damage portion, so it depends on leaving him quite vulnerable to get the most out of it.

Overall: Inquisitors are awesome, but shouldn’t be depended on as an AOE class. Focusing on strength will get the best out of their attack skills, and just shove them out in front to mace some face.

- Confessor

Gold:
Benediction: Immunity to everything, plus the ability to turn “healing flash” into Purify? Clerics get the best stuff.

Gold:
Healing Flash: There seems to be a quirk here, where the target is losing 1/2 their action, rather than a quarter, but this is still an amazingly useful skill, for obvious reasons.

Heal All: Another awesome, awesome skill.

Silver:
Intercession: Instant healing is a great emergency heal, but slightly more situational than their other healing goodies.

Overall: No brainer, go for the intellect and maximise their healing bonus. AOE healing and half-turn healing are just that good. Bring someone who can actually hurt their enemies though.

- Mage

Gold:
Spell Mastery: A base 100% Accuracy and a 20% chance of a free skill is all you need.

Fireball: A great AOE, combined with guaranteed hit on the primary target.

Electrocute: Never misses plus great single target damage. Excellent skill.

Magic Missile: Armour piercing, half-time cherry tap skill. It’s slightly more mana intensive than electrocute, but it deals *significantly* more damage in the same time window thanks to the debuff effect, and gives twice the number of chances for on-damage effects to proc. The worst downside is that it’s not an automatic hit. Electrocute’s a better bet if you can kill an enemy with it before they move though.

Silver:
Freeze: A decent skill with a decent multiplier, but it pales before Electrocute and Missiles most of the time.

Bronze:
Power Siphon: It has situational uses, but it’s usually better to use the mana for actually hurting people. Two mages working together could potentially make this silver through Power Denial though.

Channelling: You attack faster, but have no Power to attack with. Arguably valuable as a default skill to get to your first turn faster, but power is too important to cripple yourself with not having any.

Summon Shadow: Summon a helper who does less damage: Okay, neat. Who has 1 HP: Uhhh…. Who deals damage to the caster when he dies? Too many characters have retaliation for this to not suck. Maybe if it had 25% the mage’s HP or so it might be worth using. Rarely.

Overall:
It’s hard to go wrong with such a good basic chassis, mages are definitely the best damage dealers.

- Sorceror

Gold:
Incinerate: Their most damaging skill, and the same cost as Magic Missiles, this is gold standard, despite the range limitation.

Cold Front: Reducing action is always great, even though targetting the AOE gets a little dodgy sometimes.

Lightning Storm: The measure by which all other AOEs are based.

Silver:
Empowered: 20% damage when you need it is great, but a 10 power cost to standard attack is less great. Empowered is a sometimes food.

Overall: Sorcerors are probably the best pure damage dealing class, especially in AOE. Slap on Intelligence.

- Conjurer

Gold:
Time Warp: If you’re in a combat team with other characters slightly faster than the conjurer, this is simply amazing. Your whole team can attack, then the Conjurer Time Warps, then attacks himself (or just recovers his power all back with Siphon), then your entire team gets to attack *again* before your enemies get a turn.

Summon War Golem: This is why Mage beats Warrior. Mages can *summon* warriors. Disposable meatshields with decent attacks, these things rock.

Disintegrate: One of two instant kills, this one is arguably the weaker of the two (given how easy it is to set up a CDG) but more than makes up for it by being cheap, never missing, and stopping revival. It doesn’t even need intellect, but I don’t know why you’d skimp on Intellect anyway.

Silver:
Arcane Armour: Damage Protection is neat, and arcane resistance spoils a lot of annoying enemies’ favourite tricks, but most of the time the conjurer probably shouldn’t be getting hit.

Overall: Yet again, just add intellect and watch these arcane beasts win the day with their basic skills, then make sure it stays won with their advanced skills.

- Rogue

Gold:
Sneak Attack: For the Assassin, this is great, giving him a versatile ranged capability without the missile damage type. For the Thief, he should probably be using a bow anyway.

Silver:
Elusive: The evasion bonus is great, but one wonders why, at least thematically, Sneak Assault, Hide and Shadow Jump aren’t getting bonuses along with Sneak Attack. Unfortunately the enemies you really want to avoid getting by are often bosses, for whom an extra 20% off their 130% chance to hit is rather uninspiring.

Poisoncraft: Mediocre, but free, so long as the rogue is working at melee or using a bow. With sneak attack, it’s basically a 15 Energy increase to deal a comparatively small amount of damage. At level 10, maxing Intellect rather than Dexterity made a difference of 6 damage over the full duration, so not exactly worth building around.

Pierce Defenses: This is a decent, but situational move, it’s not cheap, so it’s usually cheaper to just use regular attacks.

Hide: The rogue skips a turn and avoids non-AOE damage. Alright for emergencies to save needing a revive, but for regular combat, unless it’s an Assassin prepping for an Assault, you’re not saving much power compared to attacking twice, and by hiding, unless your attack is 100% accuracy, you’ll mathematically do more damage by just attacking twice. Plus you concentrate damage from four down to three characters, which is rarely worth it.

Bronze:
Flash Powder: Even at half-time cost, this is rarely worth using. 40 power for one round of lowered accuracy just isn’t worth it. Compare this with the Cleric’s AOE Holy Light, which lasts longer, has additional bonuses, and effects *everybody*.

Sap: Half damage for 40 power cost? It’s melee only, so anything that can be hit with it will still have the ability to keep on hitting.

Cripple: Another half damage attack with a tiny duration quickness debuff? Why does this even exist?

Overall: I’m not overly sure what role the rogue is supposed to have. They have no means of healing, no means of cheaply boosting their accuracy through styles, no means of boosting their damage through styles, and their debuff attacks are all low damage, low duration and not even that debilitating. They’re almost entirely dependent on their secondary class skills to define how they play.

- Thief

Gold:
Opportunist: A great style, this effectively makes the Rogue’s attack cost less when he can get a kill shot. Since all three of the thief’s skills are half-skills, activating opportunist and using one of them is basically getting the skill for free.

Shadow Jump: This skill is almost the only reason to bring a thief along. Cheap, expendable, attention grabbing tanks which don’t stop you from getting a flawless when they get killed? Awesome.

Silver:
Even the Odds: Conditional, but cheap and potentially very useful if the boss happens to have the high ground.

Thief’s Luck: Again, conditional, but one of the only ways to boost accuracy and nicely long lasting.

Overall: Since the Thief’s damage is actually pretty low, and he’s got nothing to deal with multiple targets, heal, or much else, he’s not that good as much beyond sending in the shadowclones.

Since Intelligence is virtually useless for the Thief, maxing dexterity and using a bow is advised to maximise Opportunist’s value and save energy, since he’ll probably end up on the back row eventually.

- Assassin

Gold:
Sneak Assault: Most of the dangerous/annoying but low HP enemies in the game seem to chill out at the back row. Being able to AOE these targets at 100% weapons damage is awesome, and one of the only times when hiding *might* be worth it.

Coup de Grace: This ability on its own is Silver or Bronze, depending on your team’s set up. With a Ranger in your team however, this is unarguably one of the best skills in the game – reliable, single target termination.

Silver:
Lethality: Whilst powerful, this becomes substantially less valuable when you bear in mind that, unlike every other Style in the game, this has no effect whatsoever 84% of the time. Nice in theory, but unless the target is already suffering from Poisoncraft, then it’s not worth it otherwise. As more +crit% gear becomes available however, this does become gold eventually.

Bronze:
Insidious Poison: This would be silver, but since poison resistance is actually rather common, and the damage it deals is delayed by a full turn, this loses a lot of its value.

Overall: Though still hampered by the Rogue core chassis, the Assassin pulls it off as a damage dealer purely on the back of Sneak Assault and Coup de Grace. Again, intelligence still isn’t worth it in favour of dexterity, but there’s a real choice for Assassins between Bows for ranged instant kills or Daggers to get that lovely back row AOE.

- Ranger

Gold:
Healing Lore: A huge bonus to healing skills that makes them give clerics a run for their money, coupled with sizeable health regen, for free? Give a ranger this and they’re safer in the front row than a rogue is.

Marksman: Whenever the Ranger isn’t tanking they can get a huge accuracy bonus and 10% more damage. Awesome, though the quickness penalty is unpleasant.

Pierce: Not the greatest of AOE skills, 90% to two targets is still nothing to be sneezed at, and comes up quite frequently against a number of formations.

Nature’s Balm: Great healing, cures poison, makes the target immune to poison for the duration, and is the cheapest targetted heal with Healing Lore active. The only thing it lacks is an up front heal to keep the target going, and the fact that Healing Skills bonuses don’t seem to improve it.

Pin: Guaranteed stun, with damage. Somewhere, an inquisitor is crying tears of bitter envy.
Envenomed Arrow: Ranged attack with a longer duration poison than the Rogue’s poison and since the Ranger benefits from intellect on heals, more likely to get boosted to boot. The poison also benefits from intellect faster than Rogue’s poison, so it does more damage.

Herbal Remedy: A decent single target heal that cures wounds. Since Healing Lore can be applied instantly, and isn’t intellect dependent, even Dex-focused rangers can heal quite a bit with this in an emergency.

Silver:
Swiftness: It’s less conditional than Keep Up, and only a half action for a six second boost. It’s unlikely that the Ranger doesn’t have something better to do though.

Overall:
The core chassis of the Ranger is amazing. Either go with dexterity or intellect and you’ll see some seriously awesome results. The only downside is the fact that they’re exclusively Missile users, which can give some grief against skeletal warriors and the like.

- Marksman

Gold:
Hail of Arrows: This is arguably one of the strike all weakest AOEs, but it’s still a Strike All AOE. With Eagle Eye and Marksman active it’s quite a nasty damager, but really only worthwhile against five or six targets.

Eagle Eye: A sizeable damage boost which works great with either of the Marksman’s AOEs. It would be silver except it’s free, fast, and even boosts power recovery.

Silver:
Hunter’s Focus: 100% resist mental is neat, as is the power saving/recovery, but really you’re better off sticking with one of the core styles, they’re just so good.

Point Blank: Automatically hits, deals decent damage, reduces the target’s current action and has a boosted crit rate? Rogues *wish* that this was how Flash Powder worked. For the ranger though, it’s still a missile based attack without the benefit of being a missile. Not bad, but not amazing, at least for a ranger.

Overall: The Marksman is surprisingly well suited to being in the front line with everybody else. It’s not as valuable for him to have a good Int score as it is for the Warden, so you might as well load up the Dexterity for his bow damage and use his healing for emergencies.

Warden:

Gold:
Force of Nature: Removes buffs, Gives Armour Piercing, big bonus to all resistances, and 25% magical protection? Rangers seriously get the best stuff.

Second Wind: The only other Revive in the game, and it’s seriously giving the Clerics a run for their money. With maxed intellect, this can turn a dead party member into a nearly fully healed party member by the time an enemy actually gets a turn to attack them. Give me a living ally to a dead anointed one any day.

Silver:
Thorns: This is a situational, but neat, skill. Combined with Shield Wall (and followed by Nature’s Balm) you’ve basically given your Champion an offensive role just by standing there. Without the guarantee that the Champion gives you, this skill is rarely so valuable or reliable, but at least it’s cheap, and it lasts a long time.

Bronze:
Snare: If this skill stunned the attacker and stopped the attack from actually connecting in the first place, it would be golden, but as it is, an awkward targetting method and a short duration mean this is another Champion-supporting skill but without the duration. Has some potential for CDG teams, but really, why wouldn’t you just use Pin?

Overall: The Warden is an incredible healing/damage hybrid, and unlike the Cleric it doesn’t get that much worse off for specialising in healing, thanks to the power of Envenomed Arrow. Go for Intellect, avoid undead, and team up with an Assassin for even more fun. A two-man Warden/Assassin team is an awesome combination.

This may be a personal thing, but I do dislike the idea that stats *lose* value as you gain in level. If I invest completely in Dexterity, and reach 100% accuracy, then putting points into Strength or Intellect for even one level means now I only have 99% accuracy.

I appreciate the concept of an “arms race”, but this loss of accuracy is based on the character’s own level, not his enemies, so he’s actually getting less competent as he advances unless he devotes everything (including ever-scaling equipment) to a single stat.

This doesn’t make for a healthy game system or a rewarding one for those who like to see their characters getting better.

Perhaps a better way for future entries would be to externalise the arm’s race, have enemies become more resistant to stun, have them gain evasion, have strength lower stun resistance slightly as well as cause stun. Have higher level attacks reduce damage reduction by more and more, so eventually the player *needs* over 100% D.P to fight against monsters their level, have them reduce resistances.

Internally, make stats increase a set amount of health/power after battle, rather than a percentage, the only thing that would arguably need a cap is Free Skill.

In short, make enemies better, without making the player worse. If the player then walks in with their level 99 Inquisitor to power level their level 1 buddy, let the player enjoy their feeling of immortality as level 50 enemies barely even scratch their armour and miss them half the time.

Basis:

Naked level 17 after a slate.
50 Quickness.
5 Power Regen.
95 Accuracy.
1% Critical hit rate.
150% critical hit damage.
60 Stun Recovery.

After 17 levels of Dex:
3 Evasion
98 Accuracy

Nothing else is different, so the effect of a full seventeen levels is a 3% evade/accuracy boost? Damage and health scale, everything else can, and should, too.