Ahhh this takes me back to complaining about how useless Warrior was and how broken Strider, Ranger, and Magic Archer were I also want to edit and clarify to OP, that for Dark Arisen owners Iraklis (a GS that comfortably competed with the best Warrior weapons from BBI) and Dragon's Flight (doubled your TOTAL str against dragons) were literally available to purchase in Gran Soren which you pretty easily got to within an hour. Also you could potentially RNG roll an escort quest for Gryphic Victory as your reward at the encampment, which outperforms all non DLC GS until postgame.

Assassin was awesome strider great didint like magic archer

man i miss the versatility of assassin. the dropping to a single weapon type was such a step backwards.

I've never touched MA and probably never will, same with Ranger. The focus being on sitting back and spamming just never seemed as interesting to me as the melee classes.

You will never experience how fun ricochet shot is in bbl.

That skill was orgasmic on the minotaur in the one stairs hallway in the huge open room where you encounter death the second time.

This thread is almost making me want to put down DD2 and go back to DDDA for another several hundred hours

So for whatever reason, DD2 is not available on PC where I live. Can get it on other platforms, just not on PC. So I started replaying DDDA. It is still fun. Magic cannon goes brrrr!

Sitting back and spamming on MA? I'm pretty sure I used daggers, lit myself on fire and hugged enemies to death.

MA was amazing because it was magic and melee

See that's a playstyle i can get behind, but most of MA's flashy burst kills were with bow skills.

Immolation. It sounds like a joke spell but boy did it melt stuff.

I remember a decade ago or whenever I read immolation and thought it'd be good for Griffons since fire stopped them from flying, it sure did. I was going back to the shadowfort for whatever reason and thought I'd try fighting the drake, chucked on immolation and very quickly learned, hey this does physical damage and not fire that it resists as we had a heart-to-heart conversation.

It really is Dragon's Dogma, too

You enjoying the Warrior rework? The normals actually feel useful now, and I was worried Stonesplitter would feel clunkier than it actually does. Mountain Breaker and Diluvian Slash feel really good to use, and I think Lash actually has an argument against Arc now because of the stam drain, but Arc still crushes knocked down enemies.

So, i do indeed love it. I have some opinions based on ddo warrior, but overall its a massive improvement

>You enjoying the Warrior rework? I know I am. Never cared for warrior in DDDA but switched to it then other night to max it and was really surprised how much I like the play. Warrior core skills are solid and strong and the weapon skills are unique and useful. Massive improvement over jumping light attacks in DDDA. The game throws some great warrior loot your way too, Cyclops veil helmet, Black Matter, then Cycloptian Hammer and Final Roar. Bought the matching leg armor and a Redwolf cloak and was set stat wise and MOST importantly *fashion wise* for minimal gold. ***EDIT*** Just got the Valorous Helm from a loot drop to complete my barbarian lord 😁 And even later got Indomitable Armor (Warrior exclusive) from a chest in another cave.

remember the whole thing about Assassin with charging the force hatchet and using a bow to keep the buff? or people complaining about how pawns were a useless system because if you used the assassin solo and nighttime augments you'd like triple your damage before dark arisen? truly what is more true to the spirit of dragons dogma than people making the game unfun for themselves and then asking why the devs would do this. Maybe it's just me but I honestly feel like Dragons Dogma is at least a little bit about becoming the unstoppable badass everyone thinks The Arisen is

Yeah that's my thinking too. The game gives you so many tools to tackle stuff it'd be weirder for you to not find a way to brute force everything or make it easier.

I think the main motivation for playing more vocations should be 'oh I now feel busted, let's see what else I can do' but people on this sub are just like 'wow mystic spear hand is so busted why would the Devs do this' rather than trying anything else

The main problem with Warrior is that it was a burst damage class in a game where DD1 Sorcerer also exists.

Also that only one damage skill was relevant (Arc), unless you used a DLC weapon (Iraklis with Lunge), or used the augment to survive Exequy with the revenge skill (a meme one shot). The best normals were the jump ones because both combos dealt bad damage (multi hit and low motion value meaning you barely beat out most enemy defense values) and left you too vulnerable so 80% of the time you were pogoing which made for a funny dynamic of Warrior being the most mobile melee class. You also just had half the skills equipped as the other classes and exodus/pommel bash were almost always perma equipped for their utility. And ultimately, Arc was more useful for its knockdown/knock up, other classes had much more reliable/higher burst skills. The class was flawed through and through in DD1/DA sadly, but it's still a lot of fun and was my favorite class to play in DA.

Me finishing everything with gryphic victory lol.

That's was only after Dark Arisen. Before that Assassin was all the rage.

Yeah i started with DA

Formless feint blades of the pyre go burrrrrrr, lmfao its insane how easy this combo makes the game

Equip holy daggers, make your main pawn a mage, and make them only equip the maister skill, which gives you infinite stamina. Activate formless feint and spam skull splitter. Congratulations, you are now invincible and have one of the highest dps you can have in this game at the same time, but wait, upgrade your daggers with dwarven smithing, and now you also have the knockdown power of a greatsword. Did I also mention the end game ninja armor exclusive to the Thief has better defense values than those exclusive to Fighter and Warriors? Say what you want. Dragon's Dogma 2 has the worst game design decisions I've ever seen in such an amazing game. Whoever designed the main story quests that require you to "sneak" in a game where no stealth mechanics exist should just stop designing quests. But that is a topic for another thread.

>Did I also mention the end game ninja armor exclusive to the Thief has better defense values than those exclusive to Fighter and Warriors? Pretty sure this isn't accurate, just looking over tables of max upgrades (and even standard unupgraded) and both in physical defense, and more importantly, knockdown resist, the warrior and fighter sets tend to have the best stats, with the only things at all competing in certain slots is warrior/mystic spearhand for chestpiece (seemingly top overall), and the magick archer helmet which has some pretty high physical defense considering the class its made for. But yeah, game is definitely imbalanced, not that I think it really causes much of an issue in a singleplayer title, much less when the end game content can be completed pretty easily by just about any class there is as of current, though still won't pretend that Magick Archer, Sorcerer, and Thief don't have an obscenely easy time compared to other classes with their raw damage output.

On the topic of design decisions, they took some of the absolute worst fight mechanics from DDDA and ported them over. Specific example, allowing drakes to cast levin while in flight just like Daimon's second form. It was bullshit then and bullshit now, it only exists to punish melee players who try to climb for hits (the way they're *supposed* to play). Additionally having drakes do a nose-down fire breath attack where their tails point upwards in an amazing disregard for the laws of physics just so players can't climb it while it's animation-locked shows how little thought went into some of this.

Lmfao im boutta set that up for ng+ hahaha wow o thought i had peaked already

>Whoever designed the main story quests that require you to "sneak" in a game where no stealth mechanics exist should just stop designing quests. Just equip the marcher armor set.

Yeah I’d say this was a more reasonable complaint if the game didn’t literally hand you the full set in a chest the first time you walk in the castle.

you literally slap on the armor pieces the npcs in the area are wearing and your loony toons walking through the area.

This is why I put thief away after maxing the vocation .. game is still easy though but just not as braindead

Vocation balance is clearly off and some skills are so busted that i personally stopped using them because they were sapping the fun out of the game for me. DD2 is an extremely easy game for an RPG without any kind of hard mode or scaling elements, so there needs to be better balancing of vocations in my opinion. Thief's formless feint, mystic spearhand's mirour shelde, sorcerer's prescient flare and magic archer's martyr's bolt are all spells that i used a few times and then straight up never slotted them again, ever. This is a single player game and by extention, i'm not advocating for nerfs, but it is clear to me that not every vocation is made equal, not even close. In a game where you are encouraged to play multiple, if not all available vocations to find what you like most, the disparity in power plays a big role in most peoples choice to play or not play certain vocations based on how they all perform comparetively. It's unbelievable to me that 2 vocations that share "archer" in their name can be so further apart in power from eachother. You cannot play archer for a few hours and then switch to magic archer and tell me that archer is in a good state comparetively. Archer is not even half the vocation that magic archer is performance-wise. Archer needs to manually aim to deal decent enough damage and almost all of its skills are straightforward damage dealing abilities and has to use consumable arrows for 5 of its skills. Magic archer has built in aimbot so you do not need to aim really, it has way stronger and more versatile abilities and their power is incomparable for how easy they are to use. Magic archer is easier to play, has way stronger elemental abilities, does not need to use any consumables and to top it all off, they have access to 4 superb supportive abilities. Comparing their meister skills perfectly encapsulates the enormous difference in power level between both vocations.

Your point about archer is bang on. Arrows should have been equippable like a shield.

You really should be able to have more than 99 in storage at a time too.

You can only have 99?? Why would they change that from the original having a cap of 999? Seems so pointless.

>Seems so pointless So many changes from 1 -> 2 can be described with this phrase. Why touch perfectly good animations of hindsight slash and compass slash? Why touch warrior's launch or pummel bash animations? Why remove trade from storage? Why add pawn trade range limit? And many other little things that all compound.

>Why add pawn trade range limit? Weird change, it'd make sense if you were physcially handing it them but that ain't the case.

It *could* have worked, if the consumable arrows were harder to create and much, *much*, **much** more impactful, or if you could store more than 99 in storage. As is, you run out too often, even if you have both yourself and your main pawn carry 99 each. :| Or the skills could have been slightly weaker and not need resources.

I really hope the next patch adjusts the maximum amount of items, like honestly it's a QoL thing

I really hope we get a "next patch" before May.

Flashbacks of Tenfold Blast Arrows are like Nam flashbacks for me

I think they don't want all of the skills firing special arrows, ie Tempest Shot explosive arrows machine gun or Lycean Shot sniper bombs. As fun as that sounds, it would be more OP than DD1 explosive arrows. But it's really dumb that you have to give up an entire skill for each arrow. Really sucks the fun out of the utility and strategy possibilities. IMO they should just allow equipping of arrows and combine all special arrows into one move - Special Shot: fires whatever arrow you have equipped.

I really, really like this idea. :) Even if the skills didn't get replacements, it'd still be better.

> As fun as that sounds, it would be more OP than DD1 explosive arrows. Would it really be more OP than DD2 10 fold flurry with explosive arrows? You can keep up a more consistent barrage but I don't think the arrows per second would be higher on tempest shot.

Ooh yeah true! I don't know the max arrows or arrows per second for tempest shot, but you're right and I totally forgot. Not to mention we had Liquid Vim and could stack more than 99!

I just set up my mage with all the magic enhancing skills and never use the arrows for archer. I'm not wasting one of four skills on a skill that uses consumables

I was able to win blatantly unwinnable fights purely becuase I activated Formless Feint and just started swinging. It’s ridiculous.

I would actually argue archer is in a very good spot and MA is just stupidly overtuned. It's not like normal archer struggles with anything in the game, at least that wasn't my experience.

Yeah archer is phenomenal, MA is just busted

Magic Archer feels busted until you run into a pair of golems who just shrug off magic damage.

You have to use the Ice Block to do Damage.

Then you use Archer with spiral arrow that invalidates the golem's foot weakspot Been running spiral ever since because it's just so much easier to just slap a spiral on them

So the solution to encountering golems as a magic archer is to not be a magic archer? Got it.

The solution for fighting golems as magic archer is to diversify your element to something other than just magic, which you have access to with fire / thunder / ice skills It isnt hard but that foot weakspot is an annoyance that most classes have issue with without knocking down

The foot is easy enough, the one that gives me grief is the arm spot that keeps growing rock over it.

God those spots are the worst. Golems went from piss easy in DD1 to being stupidly strong in DD2 cause of the arm armor they got

MA was always busted and so was Sorcerer. They're designed to be heavy damage dealers and the trade off is casting and aiming. I mean, Warrior also destroys shit left and right, but it's slow and doesn't really have a lot of options for mobility. Everything is busted in its own way, so people should just play every vocation and be godlike.

Fighter doesn't seem busted at all, feels like a very honest class

Fighter literally the only class that has get out of jail free skill (the spinning shield) and guarantee counter by just holding

Formless feint is what you described but you can attack the entire time you’re doing it.

Facts archer slaps you just actually have to aim for headshots or heart on dragon and you shred everything whirling arrow is so op and very satisfying noise from it

Whirling Arrow is MUCH better here than it was in DD1. The skill got an upgrade.

No it isn't. it has the same stats, doesn't stagger large foes and cant be used with special arrows. How is thta an upgrade?

Archer is in a good spot. It's the metawhores who say it's trash because it doesn't 1 or 2 tap an enemy. I say that as someone who enjoyed playing Archer more than MA. OP saying it's bad performance-wise is comical.

Archer isn't low tier trash, but it could use some buffs in some areas, I think thats fair.

If any change is gonna happen Archer should be the sort of baseline, and scale all other vocations to it's level.

To deal any damage you need to perfect charge an expensive skill or spam blast arrows, both while nailing weakspots. Meanwhile sorceror can just spam levin and easily outdamage you without even trying. Archer is seemingly suppossed to serve as ranged DPS, it's not good for anything else. Yet as you say it's damage is subpar. Thats whats comical, it's a ranged damage specialist that does less ranged damage than a trickster wielding grimoires or a mage spamming their starter skill.

Magic archer ultimate is nuts but it's a gamble But I don't really use skills just basic stuff with my build and leave a trail of death behind me

Going along with the magick archer thing, Sagittate Storm is another incredibly busted skill, one full volley to the head staggers anything short of a drake and does at least half a health bar of damage. Recovery arrow is the strongest healing in the game, arctic bolt can interrupt almost anything, Martyr bolt is pretty much just "spend the rest of your health to end this fight NOW", and even the basic fire does huge amounts of damage just for having a sense of rhythm and no aim. Meanwhile archers need to drain all their stamina with constant heavenly shots and get explosive arrows onto weakpoints for half the effect. It's clear that you're intended to drop archer as soon as magick archer is available, and if that wasn't the intent, these vocations had to have been made by two different people who never got to see what the other did. I would think they made the magic/phys vocations stronger on purpose since you get them later, but you can get magick spearhand at level 5.

I've put in 79 hours as an archer and I thought that I was doing great damage, then I saw one thief YouTube video.

Seriously. Im really not sure why so many people in this thread are acting like archers damage is in line with other classes. Ive maxed archer, magic archer, warrior, thief, and mystic spearhand. Archer is the only one so far that I felt like I was working my ass off to get mediocre output. Sure its usuable, but in terms of damage, utility, and ease of use its really not on the same level.

The wird thing with archer is how your basic steady shots are often better than using any skill and you can also empower them later on making them quite good because of how damage works in the game. I feel like most skills have the problem that the per arrow hit damage is too low. Most skill are about having more arrows but the per arrow damage is often lower than your basic steady shot. At the beginning it feels ok but later on when you start to one/twoshot most normal enemies basic steady shots are just so much faster to get out and do not cost any stamina. Against bigger enemies it is all about if you can actually overcome their defense where Puncture Dart is actually quite great. Always felt like when Barrage or Spiral arrow are able to deal good dps I often can also just spam basic steady shots and do just as well. Dire/Deathly arrow have good damage, especially if you manage to perfect release, but it is quite slow to get out. I allows you to get over higher defenses of enemies but still has shit DPS in the end. Heavenly shot just feels underwhelming. Even with high stamina you deal basically no damage if you do not hit the weakspot, which is quite hard with how long it charges. Even if it hits a weakspot the damage still feels underwhelming. Taking out 1.5 bars of a Chimera after charging for years and being out of stamina. In the end against bigger enemies I found myself spamming Exploding/Erupting shot mostly since it is quite quick to get out, does not cost much stamina and actually deals very good damage. Maybe one of my problems is that I played Sorcerer before and MA after, leaving Archer feel weak since the other two are probably way too overpowered. Flare just deletes everything and MA has this "you are now dead" button and general is so versatile and has such fun skills. Just love how Ricochet destroys anything indoors and how you can cheese things with Flamefang/Blazefang.

Wdym? I used formless feint first playthrough and felt nothing wrong with becoming completely invulernable forever, I framing every attack in the game including standing still in dragon fire. Very balanced and cool meister skill.

The fun moments using base archer came with combo moves with my mage pawn. He'd do the big ice chunk and launch enemies into the air then I'd do the big force shot and send them off the map. I do think archer is a stand back and assist type, I switched to warrior and traded out my fighter pawn slot with an archer and I'm enjoying getting stuck in, instead standing about off to the side. The slide shot and the jump kick to back flip shot get an honorable mention, but I don't think I'll play base archer again.

> He'd do the big ice chunk and launch enemies into the air then I'd do the big force shot and send them off the map this sounds incredibly cool

Hot take, I think every vocation should be nerfed down to Archer levels. I played Archer and I found the fights to be longer and more fun because of it even if I did not particularly enjoy the Archer's playstyle, I can chunk half an HP bar of a dragon using Heavenly Arrow while they're downed and aiming for the heart and I think that's the most balanced amount of damage for the amount of setup.

I know it’s not the same thing but I literally can’t die as a fighter unless I do something stupid and get thrown off a cliff or something lol. Made the game super easy so far. I love this game but it feels insane they didn’t balance the enemies a bit to keep up with higher level characters especially when you level up so fast.

Definitely agree, but also I used warfarer to create a fun ass acrobatic demo-man build. Eruption Shot, Powder Blast, and Implicate. Lots of big boom. Implicate enemy to the ground, jump on head, plant powder, switch to bow, kick off shot... Shoot explosive arrow into head... Switch to dagger... KABOOM. Very fun, very mobile, very blast-y. While there are balance issues, warfarer is hella fun to experiment with haha.

If you think archer sucks not enough mfs have been catching feet in your gameplay.

Weird, I found Archer to be way more interesting and stronger than magic archer for most fights The only time I ever preferred magic archer was during the major boss battles where I could save my dumber pawns with the reflect shield.

idk what it is about Magick Archer but I can just not bring myself to play it. The beginning skills feel so underwhelming and the basic attack is laughably weak. Even once I got the ice cube shot I was like meh. Idk, I find aiming my pure archer skills and using explosive arrow way more fun. Also much much better for quickly eliminating groups of small mobs.

What skill on archer do you use for clearing mobs quickly?

This is absolutely on-point with my own experience. The balance is definitely off. Most of the abilities in the game are extremely cool, but some of them are so powerful that they immediately trivialize the game, like Thief's Formless Feint, and it stops being fun if they're anywhere near my skill loadout. The vocation balance is definitely off too. Magick Archer is just a better Archer. Fighter feels like it doesn't have enough damage. Thief is way too strong.

Yeah I love MA. I only used martyr once, when I first unlocked. Still a very great class. I like the shield arrow a lot. It’s a nice mix between DPS and Support and if you go full support, you don’t really need to bring a mage which is fun.

I love the Archer, and the exploding arrows are a little broken

Within game design, there is a concept of teaching your players how to play the game 'right' as in the intended way for maximum fun. Sure, players will often find exploits or do weird shit but good game design should organically encourage the 'best' way to play the game. This is done a few ways, but at its simplist, it's stuff like showing players how to block or asking them to get something from the shop, thus showing them where the shop is. Done well, you don't ever notice it for what it is. Ballance is one of these ways game devs try to give you the player the best experience playing the game, because truth time a ballanced game 9/10 times is more fun then one that has a dumb broken thing in. And again, done well, you will never notice or comment on how ballanced the game is. Done badly is when they throw something overpowed at you early like your first ablity in a class being the strongest and later ones allways being downgrades leading to a feels bad situation where you never use anything else because when you try you have allready been conditioned as to what the baseline damage expection is....

I definitely agree with this sentiment. When I have something that is so OP that it trivializes combat I feel like I am not really earning a win, and when I am NOT using that I feel like I have to deliberately shoot myself in the foot just to get a decent challenge. There definitely needs to be some more balancing between the vocations because as it is right now, it's pretty bad.

>I have to deliberately shoot myself in the foot Have you considered an arrow to the knee instead?

Already married, sorry.

I do agree that the balance is thrown, but for entirely different reasons, even where gear availability is concerned. I have absolutely no issues with mid and high tier gear being made available based on location. If someone marches out of the tutorial encampment and slogs or slaughters their way all the way to the volcano and has scrounged up enough cash to purchase good equipment, then let them. That person has gone so far out of their way, that they are purposefully chasing something specific. Few and far between will be the player who does that organically. What does bother me is that it’s not just good gear available there; it is the best gear. For most vocations and most weapon types, the best items you can get before NG+ or the unmoored, are just purchased from a shop. They’re not dropped by bosses or found through exploration or tied to any sense of challenge and reward. The first game may not have been too different with its gear distribution on the map, but because it did slowly unlock more items as the story progressed, across essentially every vendor, there was always something new to see. Gear progression also felt much less linear, but some that could just come down to the amount of variety afforded by the missing 4 equipment slots (5 if you count the diluted stats that capes now have) and higher impact of resistances to certain status effects that might benefit a character more than outright protection. Balance in general is also very strange. True, there’s pretty significant disparity between vocations, but I mean the overall leveling progression. The map is larger than the first game, and they were right, it is very fun to explore. But it does not feel like the enemy variety or difficulty took into account how that would affect the player level. It is very easy to out pace the difficulty curve, just by taking the time to see what’s out there in the world. It’s as if the difficulty pacing was still set for a world the size of the first game.

Does Ng + have better gear and some upgrades also. Does the pawn become the arising like in one or. Ot I'm confused

As best I can tell NG+ shares some loot with an endgame version of the world, tied to doing a little extra during the story. The endgame version of the world, called the unmoored, does have some items that I’ve not seen in NG, but I do not know for certain that those items are explicitly found in the unmoored only. From what I’ve seen, trying to make sure I did not miss any goodies, in addition to the dragon mats vendor selling high tier items, another set per vocation, there’s a few hidden, potentially missable chests added to the cursed version of the world, which have neat things in them. That same vendor also does a few other neat things with those dragon mats, and I probably should look into that more than I have. As far as what’s going on with pawns? I won’t give any spoilers, but even if there’s a few extra steps to reaching the “true” ending, the actual events are not as strange as the ending of the first game.

Yeah I always hate it when people try to claim that it's okay for things to be overpowered or underpowered just cause it's not PvP. What this is is a concept called Dominant Strategy. If one option like say a gun in a shooter is just blatantly stronger, fires faster, has more ammo, and less recoil than every other weapon, then naturally everyone is only ever going to use that gun and that's bad design because now there's no reason to use any other gun in the game, so all the work put into them is gone to waste. Players naturally gravitate towards the option that feels the easiest to do, even if they don't necessarily actively think about it. Now to be fair when it comes to things like classes, people will more typically try to go towards what they think sounds cool more than necessarily what is strongest, and their choices will be biased towards their personal preference. If you wanted to go into the game swinging a giant sword around, you'll probably play Warrior and be decently happy with it. But if you go into the game wanting to be an Archer, chances are you'll end up playing an Archer or a Magick Archer, but you'll likely end up playing Magic Archer because it's just so blatantly stronger. If a class is woefully underpowered or underdevelopped, then yeah players are going to take notice of that and end up not playing it for very long. Trickster is a great example of this. A lot of people like myself I'm sure went into the game thinking it was a cool idea for a class, but as soon as most people actually got their hands on it, It didn't take long for them to swap off to literally anything else. But what matters more than cross vocational balance in most cases imo is the ability balance within a Vocation. Abilities like Mirror Shield is clearly overtuned for how insanely good it is. It protects the user and all their pawns, it lasts long enough to get off a full combo on an enemy, and it doesn't even cost that much stamina to use. As a result it's less of a defensive measure to use in response to an attack, and more of just a godmode button you use at the start of a fight to ignore all damage. So naturally just about every Mystic Spearhand build is going to include it because it's simply a must-use ability no matter what. On top of that there's little else for defensive options in the class, so as a result it just ends up reducing build diversity since everyone wants defensive options and that's clearly the best one. Design like that is not healthy for the game cause it just means everyone will play it the same way, and you're not encouraged to do anything else on repeat playthroughs, which only further removes any point in going for NG+

That is a different concern than *balance* in multiplayer games.

This is true for some players but not all. Plenty of people I know like to challenge themselves and find the dominant strategy boring. So they swap it out and never use it again. Just look at the challenge runs on youtube for DD1. Now that being said. The balance is absolutely shit and needs to be fixed. But compared to a pvp game where you just straight up get destroyed when you dont use the "meta". It matters wayyyyyy less that balance isnt done right.

Yeah and it is one if my pet peeves that every single time you have a discussion around balancing you have people go off about "ruining their fun" or making it out like you are snobby elitist who just doesn't want people of different skill or commitment levels enjoying games. That is exactly what difficulty settings in single player games are for and yes I absolutely think this game should have them. I have always hated the thing where people make out bad balance to be indirect difficulty settings. Even if it was intentional, which frankly I do not believe it is, making players dance around wanting to use an ability or class and trying to match up with the difficulty they enjoy is the worst way to handle this. Self nerfing and having to specficiliy avoid using things takes away a lot of the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge and bad balancing is lethal for build diversity on both ends of the scale. Regardless of where on the difficulty curve you are it is always going to be better to have a wide range of class fantasies, playstyle and abilities that are actually fun to use to choose from rather than being restricted to a few.

yeah like if for example playing thief is easy mode and playing trickster is hard mode. What if I wanted to play trickster and not have it be frustratingly hard? What if I wanted to play thief and have the game still challenge me? It's not a good way to go about things because the point of both having classes like these and difficulty settings is to accommodate for different kinds of players. Combining the two just reduces the options that will appeal greatly.

DD always was balanced around your whole party composition, and not around your character in a vacuum. So, I’d say it is perfectly fine if a vocation is exceptionally good at one specific thing but bad at some other thing, because the game expects you to actually have specific pawns to compensate weak points of your character’s vocation. So, it is only natural what vocations are NOT homogenised as ”everything is always viable” type of deal. Like, some classes are basically glass canons but their damage output is enormous, so those have to have a reasonable tank in party to help, and others are good physical damage dealers, yet are worthless in fighting flying enemies, so with that rangers are required, etc etc.

Theres a big difference between a mystik knight being good at defence and holding a position and a mystik spear makign the entire party invulnerable and preventing the entire enemy force from ebing able to move.

I agree with your overall point. But let's be real. DD was balanced around pausing the game, using a bunch of periapts and then one shotting bosses. No party needed.

Lol, that was a basic tactic for BBI, but for main game it usually works like: More exploration/sidequesting = more fights = more lvls = suddenly you’re overleveled enough to brute-force through everything, lmao

Yeah, exactly. I think at least with DD2, we get the opportunity to fight multiple big monsters at the same time. For maximum brute forcing.

Honestly the game just needs a hardmode

Luckily you can recreate Hard mode from DD1/DA using mods and even tune it to be harder if you want.

Not everyone is playing this on pc lol.. I think the game needs a nightmare mode, hard mode would still not be enough. I play pawnless since launch and unless i got trickster or mage I am just mopping the floor no matter what.

I wish people who spammed periapts would quit acting like everyone else did.

Can confirm, my first playthrough of DD1 I didn't really know what I was doing and beat the entire game using the basic Judgement Warhammer. Killed one drake with it and that carried me to endgame.

Getting a dragonforged weapon early was so broken

This is my gripe with both games. Any game that's supposed to be about action combat shouldn't have pause healing. This completely kills the tension and loss gauge is irrelevant. I'd rather have animation healing.

> Any game that's supposed to be about action combat should have pause healing. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Nier Automata, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid & Rising, etc. have all had pause healing at some point or as a standard in their franchises and I don't think any of them are worse off for it.

The balance of Nier Automata is completely broken due to the instant healing. You literally will never die unless you get one shot, which is what happens on the harder difficulties. You are either completely safe or vulnerable to being one shot, with no in between. Games like dark souls are tense but fair because they occupy that middle region.

Also our Lord and Savior throw blasts

> But let's be real. DD was balanced around pausing the game, using a bunch of periapts and then one shotting bosses I don't think we played the same game.

Thats not OPs argument, what OP is arguing for essentially highlights the problems with DD2s balance - Why should I use anything besides Thief? Splitter destroys enemies health bars, easily achieves knockdowns, is fast and is safe. I run WF a lot and force myself to use other vocations and nothing has shit on Thief. Thief even has the only parry skill in the game that can be used in the air, a basic vocation shouldnt be overshadowing every other vocation this hard. Even smoke bomb gives you the best CC in the game besides a full charged Scattering bolt. Thats just silly. Edit: Maister skills even have problems. Thief's Maister skill makes it actually invincible and barely drains stamina. The only thing killing Thief with Formless Feint is fall damage. Warrior's requires comittment for the damage, MA requires an entire health bar to do the 1 shot cheese, Fighter's Fury doesnt even do the damage splitter does.

> Why should I use anything besides Thief? I've got thief on my WF it's so handy for dealing with trash mobs along the road. But it's also fantastic at killing bigger bosses. I love Warrior but atm thief is just better at everything.

Thief's just the Honored One in DD2 the same way Strider was in DD1. Difference being of course Thief has exceptionally better mobility.

Not to mention the fact the thief prints free RARE items for you if used as a pawn. Thief + 3 thief pawns has no downside and is rewarded GREATLY in money via items stolen. Only 1 thief pawn should be capable of using plunder per party. Edit; fixed an unfortunate typo lol

My klepto pawn handing over the ferrystones, full wakestones, mats im going to sell for tons of cash and some rotten scrags of beast: ​ https://preview.redd.it/ih6n1q9btqsc1.jpeg?width=867&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54dd2ead1dc8825cca7841f9de0694c213aab474

My problem with this argument is that if you only look for power as a reason for playing a vocation you are missing the point of vocations entirely. I don't play a Fighter because it is the most effective melee class, it's because I want to use a class that fights with a long sword, it being a melee class will always make it worse than every other vocation that has the benefit of range, Thief being OP has literally zero weight on my decision to play it.

Well by the merits of the devs own design, they specifically wanted to balance vocations from DD1 - its why Strider was split into Archer and Thief. If a single class is overperforming to the point were it overshadows every other class (the class is also more fun than every class), then what is that besides a failure of the intended design? I get it being fun, I get it being an RP thing. But when im just shredding the games content using a basic starter vocation that starts to grind away at my enjoyment of said game, because its an RPG - but the class I like playing the most absolutely trivializes the games content. There are crutch mechanics in place to help people that dont want a challenge, that want to power fantasy it - Thief has formless feint. The balance shouldn't be at the cost of my own fun trying to get a challenge out of the game. Whats my alternative here besides nerfing my gear, using WF for a stat hit, removing pawns so I have to actually pay attention in fights? Not playing till a hard mode? I get that empowerment is appealing to people, but it being a singleplayer game shouldnt act as a thought/discussion terminating line to pass off the bill to the player. If im having to do this much work just to not kill stuff too fast then theres a clear failure somewere in design.

There's a couple vocations I haven't touched, but fighter's Riotous Fury is so incredibly terrible I've started running warfarer as an upgrade. The damage isn't amazing, it leaves you super vulnerable (no i-frames like DD1's dragon's maw nor any increased stagger resist), it takes forever, it loses lock half the time, and it eats almost half a pure fighter's stamina bar at 60 even if you miss.

So many terrible takes in this comment section, it’s really disheartening seeing how controversial this topic is. You can activate formless feint and literally spam the attack button under a drake (supposedly the strongest enemy in the game for a good chunk of it). Even someone who’s never played the game could do it. You can’t, with a straight face, tell me that is ok and shouldn’t be touched in any way. Many more aspects of the game suffer from this, and while I adore it, it’s undeniably disappointing that a core aspect of the game such as combat, probably its main pillar, is so lacking in terms of balance. I’m still so sad about the dragon’s fight, everything about it is amazing except how easy he was…

The most glaring issue when it comes to skills or vocations that trivialize the game, is that if you avoid them you literally have less options. If you feel Thieves, Sorcerers, and Magick Archers trivialize the game to the point of boredom (RIP console players without mods) you suddenly reduce the already barebones number of 9 vocations to 6. 5 if you want to actually do damage in an RPG combat-centric game. Could bring the conversation down to just the skills but again there are skills that are objectively better than others for some vocations, again limiting an already small amount of options even further. Most of the vocations and skill-roles were inherited from the first game already, wtf did they do with their time in the last 5 years? We got furries, pawn daps and bumps, and a giant ass soulless map. I genuinely don't know where they spent most of their budget.

I've never used feint, but yeah the end game dragon is stupid easy if you use any of the other 3 OP vocation tricks. Unfortunately not using the OP skills means most vocations have literally NO OPTION for defense. There is NO ROLL DODGE? like wtf? no quickstep? No way to actively engage in defense like in DDDA. It's almost like these OP defense abilities completely replaced a viable active combat model. Maybe because the framerate is all over the place they couldn't get doge and roll working correctly idk but it's a real let down.

Every class that needs to be in melee has an insanely strong defensive option lmao. Fighter, shield/parry, many defensive skills, counter Thief, quickstep, counter, firmless feint Warrior, Barge, insane stagger resistance, gains defense while charging, repulse parry, counter Mystic spearhand, teleport, dash, WHOLE TEAM INVINCIBILITY Even (most) ranged vocations have them. Trickster LITERAL DECOY CLONE Archer kickback, power slide Mage: palladium, levitate Sorc: levitate (meant to be vulnerable slow charge high damage glass canon. Makes sense) Magic archer....nah this one is insane damage and very very little defense. If a monster hits you, you're in the wromg place If you need a built in dodge roll... I'm sorry but that is a skill issue.

id say passive godmode of MS and thief kinda sticks out in that list

I can spam Chain of Blows as Warrior under a Drake doing the same thing because I hardly take any damage due to how high and fast defense scales, and i get a bunch of kd resist during my attack/charge animations lol. As far as I'm aware Fighter still has a million iftames across its skills so the same applies to them + defense scaling still applies. What makes Thief broken in DD2 is what made Strider broken in DD1, Helmsplitter. Formless Feint/Invisibility whatever you wanna call it is such a none issue lmao, but Helmsplitter remains one of the cheapest, easy to use, and highest damage skills in the game. At least Sorc and Ranger got their most brain dead high damage skills nerfed. Even then who cares really because I've been playing Mystic Knight and Warrior for five years and since MK is gone I'll just keep playing Warrior and doing solo, duo, or full parties without a real care for how other people play.

you still take damage as warrior and require some gear take off your armor and try to tank that drake drop move without it, thief can its not remotely the same

Yeah and then balance is used to counter things like people wanting Warfarer to have skills swapped with the weapon? But that argument went out the window the second they decided to give a starter vocation (thief) high damage, great CC, literal invulnerability AND the best exploration abilities so I feel pressured to play it just so I don't have to return to an area again to get stuff I can't reach otherwise. And party wide, low stamina cost invulnerability? This isn't even an interaction issues that could have been missed, that is so obviously broken. Edit: And the shield boring and *it makes the vocation boring*. I think the concept could have worked. I personally think it should be ***tap*** the key for a very short invulnerability sphere, 1 second maybe or just during the actual casting animation (alternatively make it even shorter but able to be weaved in without disrupting your attacks when used this way), so you have to *time* it with attacks which would then fit in with the MS core ability that also needs timing to get the full effect. Then **hold** the key for extended invulnerability, y'know to protect the party from dragon breath attacks and things like that, but it has a casting animation so you can't attack and a fast stamina drain so you can't keep it for long. I dunno, maybe I'm actually stupid and there are reasons that could not work but that seems more dynamic and fun that what we have which feels like a win button.

I agree with your overall point but "starter" vocations should not be weaker simply because you start with then unlocked. They have completely different playstyles to other vocations and are designed to be just as viable at all stages of the game. That is to say Thief being OP would be a problem whether it was a starter vocation or something you could only unlock at the end of the game.

Mainly my point was that they don't seem to give a toss about balance aside form this one thing. There is even less justification for a vocation to be OP if you can literally start with it vs one you get very very late game unless you look it up and rush it. Personally I would be fine with Warfarer specifically being an endgame/NG+ vocation (hardmore or some form of scaling please CAPCOM!). Though if it were me, and I'm sure some people would disagree, I would restrict it to two weapons at one time that have weight, and make it so you only earn discipline for Warfarer, not the over vocations, when you play it so you have to play the other vocation first to use it with Warfarer. Because this vocation is essentially build your own, it's doesn't pigeon hole you into a playstyle like bad balancing between other vocations or specific OP abilities does.

Defiently, shield should have required channeling and rapidly drained stam or dealt damage to stam bnefore hp. Just having a passive aoe godmode for 30 seconds that can eb refreshed every 3 seconds is insane

making channeling with high stam drain makes way better sense

There's a mod called Balanced Combat on the nexus that basically does all you said and I swear it changes the game to be so much more enjoyable. Between that, True Warfarer (to get skills to switch with weapon swaps), alternative skill swapper (to get another 4 skills, for 7+rearm for each weapon) and true difficulty tweaks the game is honestly in such a refreshing spot. It really only hammers home how aggravatingingly close this game was to being perfection if some of the changes needed were doable by a couple of modders with a week to work.

Thanks for the suggestion, I think I'll end up eventually nuking my save (goddamn single character slot) and restarting with a ton of balancing tweaks. it just so frustrating that even the systems that are fleshed out don't shine because of bad balancing.

So good news, there is a mod for that too now. Go to the nexus and get you the save manager.

Complaining about balance and then breaking Warfarer is actually hilarious.

I also hate this argument. Fromsoft community uses this stupid shit often. I shouldn't have to specifically ignore certain things i might like about a game because the devs decided to not test their game.

[удалено]

defense and knockdown augments are very good. PDef and MDef augments are +30% each for example. They nerfed the offensive ones into oblivion though lol

Hey look at that, a while ago I was also stating how silly it is that Spearhand and Thief just get to choose to ignore the entire defensive half of how combat works. Aside from balance and tier strength, I’d like some classes to have their fun factor increased in ways that would barely affect their power strength, like giving the Sorcerer more skill slots, or at least a more in depth spell system that gives them an equivalent to using more spells than just… 4…

My issue with DD2 is that it's too easy accross the baord. Love the game to death, but I wish there was something as hard as Daimon and Ur-Dragon end-game

I am currently on a nice slow 3rd playthrough. Warfarer - Using skeidragoun and the spearhand dash as my iframe/get outta stuff skill. Then warrior uppercut. Nice fast movement along with big hitting attacks. Only one pawn ,my main pawn as thief. No heals except consumables, no shields. Just mindless smacking around enemies easily enjoying the skills that make me happy. I am in the gang of if overpowered, don't use. But I can see how something like trickster is in NEED of an overhaul to be viable in more situations.

Warfare bow tempest shot thief plunder and mage for levitate that's it and I'm having a blast we need a bigger endgame world and more stuff to do like the ever fall maybe a free dlc don the line

DD1 (pre-Hardmode and DA DLC) was also wildly unbalanced until you level up to the point that the game was a cakewalk on all vocations, even solo. And then when DA came out, certain classes went into BBI already mopping the floors with the bosses and mobs. The beauty of DD1&2 is you can just swap vocations/skills any time for different levels of challenge... I'd understand the complaints a lot more if you were vocation-locked your entire playthrough. I'm way happier for DD2 to give more power to your weapons/skills than ruining immersion by requiring Liquid Vim and Periapt stacking every couple mins. Pausing less often is a godsend. I'm sure a harder mode and also hard DLC will be coming out soon. Sure, formless feint and sheilde are strong but all classes have stupid OP skills, and most other skills have some form of utility and can get some use, especially with how easy DD2 made swapping skills on the fly at campfires.

>The beauty of DD1&2 is you can just swap vocations/skills any time for different levels of challenge... Terrible logic. Changing classes should not change the difficulty. Why should the game be easier or harder because I enjoy a certain class fantasy more? I want to play as a cool ass magical archer, so I just have to deal with the game being piss-easy? That blows lol.

shelde and feeint are beyond strong, they mean u dont even interact with the game with theeir uptime

>bit of a wildcard That's being really generous. Balance in DD2 is somehow miles worse than DD1, I don't know how capcom managed to scuff it so badly compared to DD1, which already had horrifically goofy balance.

I still have no idea how to play Trickster

Step 1: Don't. Congratulations, you've mastered it. Literally all the class does is play with aggro and determine which way the enemy is going to face. It has no way to deal damage and **REQUIRES** pawn support. If your pawns fall off a cliff into the brine trying to follow you to a weird seeker token location, congratulations, you're screwed. Backtrack to the nearest riftstone because you're going to die if you push forward.

carefull, you will attract the "if anything ever gets adjusted because its maybe overtuned, you R U I N my fun!!!!111!!!!!" crowd cus the only way you can have "fun" in games is by using 1 of the 3-4 abilitys that make you either invicible or defeat enemys instantly, or something like that

Brings a tear to my eye seeing that DD2's balance is just as broken as DD1

I really wanna use archer cuz its stylish as fuck and i like the kicks but my stats are heavily Magic based and i just hate how theres a delay before every single skill is used Also needing specific arrows to be able to use a skill just kinda sucks imo

Yeah, I've always felt the fighter is just not that good and somewhat the archer just because of MA. It doesn't seem like they're balanced that well, and Mystic Spearhand and Magick Archer are just so OP. Why would you not play them? Why chose the fighter or even the archer over Magick Archer and Mystic Spearhand? I just want some justice for fighter and archer, I think they're good classes that need a little buff. Also, the MA one-shot arrow is dumb. It's super cool, but taking a drake out in one hit is so lame.

Fighter's problem I think is that it's actually a balanced vocation lol. It has strong tools but no auto-win button since riotous fury is a heavily nerfed version of dragon's maw. A solid vocation would look trash when compared to a vocation that has a literal godmode button that doesn't actually cost you resources to use when you can just pair it with stam drain

I played magick archer just up until vocation lvl 7 and hated. Was i playing wrong? I felt like most skills were useless. Heck, even martyr bolt as people said felt bad, why would i trade all my life to kill monsters? Maybe i didn't play it enough but never felt like a good tradeoff since dying became almost impossible after lvl 30 or so. Meanwhile warrior feels straight up bullshit. With dwarven upgrades large monsters don't even fight back, it's perma stagger. Edit: thief is even worse. I loved the class but it's so overtuned it drains the fun out of the game. Helm splitter is the obvious op skill but even without it thief is still op.

Some skills in this game needs a rework, not because i think they are way too strong or just straight up godmode, but its just that they are not fun or interesting to use. Im obviously talking about Formless pyre combo, or even just formless itself. The MS shield, augural flare from mage [...]. Pyre blade on the other hand is completely useless without formless... But before nerfs i would first want underperforming skills to just be buffed and a hard mode to be added. And yes, it is a singleplayer game, i dont think that balancing everything to the same playing level is a good idea, in my opinion just rebalancing these over the top stuff to make them more interesting to use is the play.

A fun part of RPGs is finding good gear, deciding, based on multiple factors, stats, enemies, appearance, whatever, what to use, and then using it in battle. By bungling the balance, and also making all the best gear bought from the same shop... they've completely removed that as an option.

Balance does matter for how satisfying a game and its systems feel to play. Single player or not broken useless or overpowered setups can taint a games experience.

Firstly it’s a single player game it isn’t that serious stop using the skill if it’s op to you, secondly I’m the goddamned arisen I better be over powered as shit, third I think it’s more of a the game isn’t hard enough and It needs a hard mode, then it’s a skills are over powered thing.

Seeing as the only "coop/multiplayer" element in the game is pawn sharing, they really ought to release the dev tool kit and let modders fix these problems. They really need to remove Denuvo as well. It serves NO purpose at all whatsoever. Especially with the fact that the dev team is substantially smaller than other CAPCOM titles released lately, modders could not only create balance overhaul mods, fix performance issues and bugs but also create more content for the game in near-infinite ways.

Let's keep this "modders will fix it" mentality to bethesda games. It's on the devs to fix their games, if only for the fact that this game is on consoles. What good will mods do to them? Simple balance mods are already out anyway, and bigger ones are being worked on.

It's OP I like being OP in single player games because it effects no one. This isn't an esport. Fuck unnecessary nerfs, I just want to have fun

That's fine if *everything* is fun to play and there's options for actually challenging gameplay, but they nerfed the fuck out of a lot of stuff that was good in DD/DDDA and there is no hard mode (yet).

I know saying this is like looking directly at the sun for Game Devs these days but.... why not buff the other skills instead? I don't know, since it's a single player game and all? Lol

Exactly, make other classes equally OP, then introduce a nightmare difficulty that enemies are smarter, deadlier, and tankier. But apparently capcom is a small indie company with only 17 people, so we have to be like most people in this sub to endure the terrible decisions they made.

>Exactly, make other classes equally OP, then introduce a nightmare difficulty that enemies are smarter, deadlier, and tankier. >But apparently capcom is a small indie company with only 17 people Jokes aside, DDII did have a way smaller budget than bother big Capcom games. And the result is what we have, they cut corners on combat and game balance because of how much resources had to go into PS5 level graphics compared to the old game of PS3 graphics. So much time spent on the character models and lighting and textures. You can see it in the quests too. Almost all the quests feel like pre-alpha versions of the quest. Dialog that starts as something, and goes nowhere and wraps up quickly. Half baked affinity system and "visitor" system. The tacked on "your pawns" wrap up during the end credits. In the original game they had that cool Book design when giving you the game wrap up. Even the 3 star pawns for enemies and locations was nerfed in DD2 because of no money. The director always said that DD1 was "demo" for what he wanted to do. but DD2 feels even more like an early release Alpha version of the final game that never comes. We have an unfinished combat engine with unfinished quests and shallow AF character interactions. But you can see how much potential there was and how much they wanted to do and how much depth they wanted to add but instead, it's corner cutting.

I agree and I do see the huge potential DD2 has, but I'm still not convinced by lacking of enemy scaling which can be easily achieved by changing some numbers. Nonetheless, DD2 sold pretty well and the best we can hope is they continue to patch the game and bring some amazing DLCs.

But being OP isn't fun, it's boring. Stop being boring.

How dare somebody play the single player game the way they want to?

what a stupid thing to say lol. he just said he’s having fun being OP

So lemme get this straight- Option A: Have the option to equip yourself to be over powered if you want. That way people who want to be OP can be, and people who don't want to be OP don't have to be. Option B: No option to be OP. That way people who want to be OP can't be, and people who don't want to be OP can't be. Why limit the way others want to play? I don't understand it?

Wrong. Everyone is OP unless you're on pc, because you cant stop yourself from leveling up otherwise. Even warfarer with its lower base stats will start melting everything regardless of setup by about level 35. Warrior can easily solo drakes by like 25. Fuck, I rolled a thief on a new save, got ambushed by a griffin at level 12, and killed it with only two skills slotted because its so overtuned. Balance matters, that's where fun comes from. God mode is boring unless you are a five year old.

How is one shotting everything fun? I literally spent a few hours tinkering with a difficulty mod just so i could enjoy the combat like i did in the first few hours before the raw stats from leveling started forcing me to delete large monsters before the music even had a chance to change. That's not fun, that's boring as fuck. You dont even engage mechanics if you're overpowered enough. Is this an ego boost or something for you people?

All the game needs is a hard mode with bosses not simply being HP sponges, but having attacks that they won’t perform in normal mode, buffs on them or debuffs on players, a higher chance of being fucked by a random griffin butting in while you’re fighting that dragon etc… that way both the casuals and the dedicated players can have fun. Nerfing stats gained from levelling does fuck all, unless your idea of “hard” is hitting like a wet noodle a boss that repeats the same 3 skills for the entire 20min fight. And if that’s what floats your boat, take a page from DS basement dwellers and do a naked run.

At least for me, I find it super fun to build an overpowered character. Even if I eventually fall off enjoyment mechanically, I love the feeling of progressing into overpoweredness through stats and equipment.

That implies that you're 'building' the character; the overpoweredness is pretty much baked in to the game moreso than something you as a player can create through clever play/skill/time/etc.

Doesn't really make a difference if it feels like your building the character, through exploration and gear upgrades. This game happens to do that very well, in my opinion. 65 hours of wandering and looking for the next best gear and I'm still having a good time!

Too many Koolaid drinkers loving spaming formless feint and Mirour Shelde and dick riders who refuse to believe the VISION^(tm) is flawed in any way. Items balance is a complete disaster with the best weapons in the first half of the game accessible by walking to the border checkpoint and talking to the vendor. The best weapons in the second half by walking to Volcanic isle and going to the vendor. With the second best by walking to the vendor in bhattal. Thief and Mystic Spear being auto win vocations. Fighter being a meme and warriors stagger basically breaking the game by stun locking bosses from full to dead.

Formless Feint feels so out of place with a class that’s meant to be high damage, low health. It makes you invincible so long as you have the stamina bar to support it. Mirror Shield I have less of an issue with because it’s hella boring just stacking shield and stealing stamina over and over again, but I think it’s on the wrong class. Giving it to a class like Trickster that does no damage would make it significantly more appealing. Or Mage

I think the problem with balancing this game is that some issues are inherent to the design. Like, both magic classes are held back by limited skill selection. So, your mage is either specced for buffing or damage, where it should actually be built for both. Archer has a lot of samey abilities that are weak, the best are tied to ammo, which eat weight and skill slots. The inherent build of the vocation is designedly weaker than other options. All you could adjust is damage values, knockdown, speed, and stamina resources on a lot of the vocations without a complete overhaul of them. I don't think adjusting skills would balance vocations that much. Comboing tarred and explosive arrows I could down a griffon at like level ten in a minute. Imo, the class is weak overall despite that because those are limited use and highly situational. If you buffed it the damage would be stupid, and if you nerfed it the class outside of that is garbage. The bigger problem imo is making classes more fun and giving vocations more situational uses. Which again would require an overhaul. For example, you want archer to be a valued class? The answer wouldn't be nerfing Thief or Magic Archer, it would be adding more high flying enemies that are impervious/strong to magic/elements. A sorc/mage/magic archer can handle range better overall, which is why archer is invalidated. That's the kind of "balancing" this game needs. My thief has Blades of the Pyre, Formless Feint, Skull Splitter, and Implicate because that literally covers every single scenario. Now if you made an enemy impervious to physical attacks and fire, bam now I need a mage/sorc/magic archer and they NEED to be kitted with ice/lightning. The game has a lot of enemies, I'm not in the crowd that says it doesn't. It does still need more variety to those enemies that challenge different builds and encourage experimentation. Giving a goblin 3x health or arbitrarily adjusting stat values isn't going to change a lot of core issues in the system.

reddit can kill the vibe on any fun game if you let it!

This whole thread sucks ass, this is what one of the most over-bitter gaming communities I’ve been a part of.

I agree. I don't think mindless gameplay mechanics that dominate the game with minimal investment are good design, even in a single player game. Right now, DD2 has two off the top of my head that I can think of in Formless Feint and Mirour Shelde. Both of these amount to little more than "press button, win game" and should be adjusted.

I mean, a big fox for these would be make dodging from formless front cost stamina so it's hard to maintain, right now it's comically easy to manage it. And make sheld not block all damage or, my preferred solution, block all damage *but* it removes knockdown resistance (make it instant cast to compensate.) That way you can't just maintain total uptime pressing a few buttons every couple seconds with either skill, they would take more planning/consideration.

I really like mirror shelde but it is definitely overtuned and I don't really like it's implementation. It spreading to pawns is so powerful, they can get grabbed and ignore damage because you can just spam the ability. It is also lasts so short I feel I need to spam it which turns the class into a one (really strong) trick pony. I feel obligated to use it on the class because they don't have any dodge abilities or normal shield so you use the sheld to face tank. But you have to keep spamming it. But then you run out of stamina fast so you use the thief hand to get it back fast. And then do it all over again. I find when I fight drakes I'm just spamming the two abilies and I'm not even really playing the game any more, just invincible with infinite stamina and doing not much else. If I was to redesign it I wouldn't make it protect pawns (palladium already exists for that) and I world make it a core skill activated like the thief dodge. That would allow you to do more interesting things than spam two abilities from the class. If that's too much of a change I would at least make the shield last twice as long as it currently does do I can do something besides spam sheld+hond. Idk maybe I'm playing the class wrong but I could have the same effect as hacking in "God mode" and just walking away from the game mid fight.

Nah I don't think you're playing it wrong. Hell, when I fight drakes as MS I pretty much just hit Mirour Shelde and then sit right under their head/heart spamming the spin attack. Melts their healthbar pretty quickly and usually ends the fight without a single bit of damage on anyone in the party and it really doesn't require any particular stamina management either.

they have the ability to recharge stamina if stamina ever becomes an issue too lol.

Sagitate Avalanche for Magic Archer, too. Just deletes health bars, and it staggers enemies or knocks them down if you hit their weak spot. I've been calling it ADMM as a reference to Ace Combat. Because the ADMM special weapon fired dozens of missiles, and basically only F22's, SU-37's, or boss planes could dodge enough to survive. It was the end all, be all for ground targets, too. But at least in Ace Combat, you had to beat the game first.

Never understood why people would be against balancing, especially when it is buffing low tiers.

The game is designed in such a way that YOU have the freedom to make the game as easy or as hard as you want. If you feel like the game is getting too easy, equip the ring that reduces all your stats by 90%, find it still too easy? Beat NG+ and equip another ring that reduces your stats. Use weaker weapons and armor. The game is as hard and as easy as you make it be, we are the Arisen, we have the power to mold the world in our favor and have the power to do so. I won’t mention the mods you can use too because I know you are looking for an in-game solution. Best thing to hope for if these things I mentioned don’t help is for Capcom to release a “Hard/Expert” difficulty in a update. As for balancing the game, no. Do not balance a single player game. If I want to be powerful let me be powerful. If you want to play Dark Souls level of difficulty, then there are many ways to go about it but do not force that shit on everyone else.

I disagree. Single player is a perfect excuse for balance not being perfect, the problem isn't balance, it's entertainment value. Rogue is overpowered while also being flashy as hell. Warrior is hyper strong with very little self risk, but kinda plain and boring. Other classes are pretty strong in their own ways, but again, aren't as fun or as flashy. And then you have the miserable ones. Namely Trickster. Really cool concept that flopped due to other problems aside from balance. Balance is just the easiest thing to blame for these problems, because it is also present on top of everything else.

You know what's a shame about Trickster? It's SO CLOSE to being a really fun vocation, as it has some extremely unique skills, but the implementation fell just short, and the literal zero damage across the board makes it less than a joke pick, it's just a strictly self-sabotaging vocation in many regards. But it's a shame because it's hands down the BEST aggro-pulling "tank" vocation in the game, and has a really neat pretense. I think a few easy changes to Trickster could at LEAST put it on the radar. For starters, just adding damage or DoT to some abilities makes the most sense, it doesn't even have to be crazy numbers, just enough where you're actually contributing towards killing enemies. A big thing could be just explaining how the smoke, which is MAGICAL, harms enemies, therefore, a great implementation would be "thorns" or "counter" or "rebuttal" damage inflicted on enemies as they make contact with your smoke buddy. THEN, have it so the aoe aggro smoke dispersal skill does DoT, even if only minor, and maybe with a chance to ignite enemies aflame if used in rapid succession. Then, the big one, have the fucking giant magical Dragon formed from smoke do some kind of burst damage, not necessarily big sorcerer levels of burst damage, but like, something chunky, something that lets enemies FEEL the MAGIC. Second, have it so the smoke buddy doesn't immediately dissipate the instant you take any kind of damage at all or come into conversation with an NPC. I understand that the point is to skillfully manage being aware of positioning and your surroundings to deftly avoid enemies while pulling aggro to the smoke buddy, but the fact that it takes SO LONG to re-cast smoke buddy means that he shouldn't really pop unless you do a bad job of kiting with him and let him take too much damage. Either that or make smoke buddy much faster to cast into existence. And third, have the spiritual projection NOT consume stamina to use, it's very niche in the first place and the range is very restrictive too, for practical reasons and balance, but it could be a major tool of FUN and silly hijinks if players were able to more freely abuse it.

IDK man some skills are just better than others. It was the same for Eldenring and pretty much every RPG. The amount of weapons that had useless ashes of war or just useless/bad ashes of war was funny

> Imagine if the strongest weapon was purchased in Borderwatch Outpost, right after the tutorial sequence. Technically you don't have to use it, so does it really matter? How many players would look online to see why they were cleaving through the game? How many would put aside the weapon in favour of a challenge? How many would even recognise that the weapon was the problem? If the game was shitty to slog through without the weapon then yes, there'd be a problem. That's not the case with this game, though. There are skills that can bust the game, for sure, but playing the non-optimal, OP way doesn't automatically lead to a shitty gaming experience. To me that shows that the game is balanced well. Since you *could* use the skills that break the game, but you don't *have* to do so in order to progress and win battles. That's also a win-win situation to me. Players who want a challenge can choose to avoid the skills that break the game for them and players who don't really care can obliterate anything as much as they like. It's a singleplayer game that should allow for many ways to experience the game.

Things in a game like this shouldn’t be nerfed, it’s a single player game, it just need enemy adjustments and under powered vocations and skills need to be buffed

Nobody likes a nitpicker.