Gauntlets of Ex. Specialization and offhand?...
Royce1987
Member Posts: 89
Just got the gauntlets....now I'm deciding if I should dual wield FoA and DoE getting 4.5 attacks/round or if I should hand the gauntlets off and use Kundane to max at 5 Apr but lose DoE tankyness? Any experience or tips would be appreciated!
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And as always - it doesn't really matter because you will complete the game one way or the other and it's not a WOW raid where you will be kicked out of the guild if your DPS is 0.76 lower than what is theoretically possible after 37 grind runs for this instance to optimize your purple gear.
Nevertheless I'd go DoE
Using abilities, potions, buff spells, etc. is a DPS LOSS. Therefore it should be minimized, when in combat. There's usually time to do those before combat, so you can squeeze as much damage in as little time as possible during the battle. If you're playing with NPCs, there's plenty of pure fighters around, who don't even have anything worthwhile to use, most of the time. From their HLAs, the only one that's kinda worthwhile and with a short duration is Critical Strike, usually just to guarantee the maximum amount of hits. Hardiness lasts long enough to use just before the battle (and only refresh when necessary). Resist Magic and Imp. Whirlwind are largely obsolete with proper gearing, with the exceptions of larger parties for Resist Magic (where you can't stack magic resist on most party members and it's still situational), and, obviously, two hander users for Whirlwind. There's also stuff like Kai that justifies losing some attacks in one round to get that benefit (though the benefit is 10 seconds so extends past just that one round, during which it was used). Berserker's and Barbarian's Rage abilities last long enough to use them pre-combat.
When it comes to Fighter/Mage multis and duals, your melee damage >>>>>>>> magic damage. Therefore using spells is "doing it wrong", because buffs last long enough to be cast before combat, and damage spells deal way less damage in non-AoE situations. You should usually only have to refresh Stoneskin or PFMW during combat and maybe cast an occasional Breach, when your pure caster(s) can't take care of everything. It doesn't really matter, because, even without Improved Haste in the equation, APR offhands give you 1 more attack with your main hand weapon, which is going to be way better than a single hit with a normal +3 weapon you are probably not even very specialized in. With Improved Haste it amounts to 2 hits with your uber main hand weapons vs. 2 hits with a normal +3. I think it's clear enough which one is better. Besides, all of those off-hands are equally useless when it comes to hitting enemies that require +4 enchants.
On topic - depends, but if you want to really maximize the damage of your party, the usual formula is this:
- Belm and Kundane go to Fighters (or Fighter/Mages, Kensai->Mages, etc.), so they can reach 5 APR.
- Scarlet Ninja-to goes to your Fighter/Thief, Kensai->Theif, etc. when they get Use All Items and reach 4,5 or 5 APR (depending on Grandmastery).
- Defender of Easthaven + Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, in that type of party, go to Fighter/Cleric, Berserker->Cleric, etc. who can reach 4 or 4,5 APR (again, depending on Grandmastery). Clerics can't use sharp weapons (all of APR weapons are sharp).
That's more or less the ideal spread of APR items for the purposes of maximizing your party's damage.
That being said, it's usually not necessary to min-max like that, unless you have really moded your game extensively to increase its difficulty by a lot. You should normally play with whatever makes you have fun, even if it means dual wielding two main hand weapons or something like that.
An interesting idea along those lines is having Crom Faeyr in your offhand + Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, so that you can reach 4,5 APR with 25 strength. There's a lot of cool combinations that might not be super optimized, but are simply cool and therefore might make it more fun, depending on your tastes. Having a character that isn't min-maxed to the fullest, but has a certain flavour, uses unpopular weapons, etc. really add to the replayablity of this game. Another take is simply pimpimg out your CHARNAME to the max, instead of spreading gear around the whole party, to make him super powerful, which is something that I'm personally guilty of :P.
So DPS loss only comes into consideration when an opponent is vulnerable to said melee - which is often not the case!
D&D has a lot of Either/Or conditions, that totally nullify DPS type jargon.
If the opponent has immunity conditions up that totally negate any and all DPS, then DPS is not an option; instead, one needs to concentrate on getting rid of the immunities first (or using spells and/or abilities of the Either/Or sort to outright kill said creature - again, not a DPS strategy).
Of course, if said opponent is also using Either/Or type spells and/or abilities, then one needs protections against such, otherwise DPS doesn't matter, either.
If one is really playing on the highest difficulty level, with SCS type modifications, then DPS models tend to do very poorly without the proper type of backup, debuffing, buffs, etc.
It really gets me steamed when I see someone pounding the table with DPS comparisons for D&D. I have had these WoW pounders espouse their DPS jargon on the NWN forums as well. We shut them up quick enough with the Either/Or, Immunity, etc explanations.
Then comes the inevitable "that's because D&D is not balanced!" whine.
To which comes the "D&D is a party-based system" explanation, of course.
And so on.
If you notice what @Gotural said, "In my opinion..." and then went on to say "if you are auto-attacking non stop to benefit from it...then you are doing it wrong" is basically correct here, all things D&D (and BG) considered.
Note that there are times, when one needs melee output ala DPS (which is really a whacko term if you ask me, D&D is really not a second-based system
But these situations are conditional, and mostly from a limited nature, time-wise. One often only has a small "window" of opportunity to deal damage before the next serie(s) of protections/immunities/whatever go into effect.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled $hitstorm.
But then, what's the best course of action? To kill your opponents. In order to do that, one needs damage. As I said, squeezing as much damage in as little time as possible. The best and most reliable way to do that is 10 APR. Very often it's better to simply brute force your way through a lot of fights then doing unnecessary finesse-type things. Instead of casting Greater Malison and a crowd control spell on a guy, just go and kill him. Sometimes it's better to just slash through that Stoneskin with 3x10 APR dudes.
And that was the point. Having your frontliners perform their job to the best of their ability (which is 10 APR) is hardly doing it wrong. There are going to be plenty of turns of pure auto attacks, even if you'd try not to make them so. And then, doing ~40-50 damage more (which is probably a lowered approximation of 2 additional attacks, going from 8 to 10 APR) is going to be better. I was mentioning NPCs. Take Sarevok or Korgan for example - one of the best pure fighters in the game. What are they going to do if not auto attack? You cast Korgan's rage and perhaps Hardiness before combat and unleash him upon your foes. That is it.
Even in situations where you have to refresh a buff, or cast Breach. That's just one round out of plenty, which are going to be spent on attacking. Utilizing those 10 attacks to the fullest.
You also mentioned SCS and mods increasing difficulty. Those are precisely the reason why DPS discussions and optimizing takes place, because it is way more important to maximize your damage when under those circumstances. Like I said, no one needs to overthink their damage output just to beat the regular Baldur's Gate. For modded games though, it becomes more and more necessary to know what to do. And the maximum DPS approach works very well.
Maybe you'd like to take a look at a powergaming discussion, here:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/17960/powergaming-party-bg2-tob-npc-and-multiplayer/p1
It starts out as a discussion about NPCs, but quickly enough you'll reach pages and pages of details, when it comes to damage in SCS-type situations.
I hesitated whether I should include this comment, but I'm not sure what you meant by $hitstorms and such. We're just discussing things, take it easy
So, the ($) Hit storm...it sort of is a conglomerate of what is to come, and of course DPS damage ala a "storm of hits"...
Pretty good!
DPS is something that should be left to WoW.
You say that Well, of course that is how the scripting works for everything, really. A said amount of damage is applied that is equal to or more than X, and then the death script runs.
Exceptions are normally the "1 hp" scripts.
And this is interesting, because there are much better ways to kill than do damage.
The best "cheese" is Timestop+Shapechange : Mindflayer and just kill via Int.
Kills everything, even bypassing the "1 hp" script and sometimes breaking the game.
Looking for DPS in there...nope.
Disintegrate. Nope.
Death spell....nope.
Etc.
What I am basically trying to communicate here is the Either/Or that is present in D&D, that DPS doesn't take into account, that is all.
Sort of like Spike Traps being laid where something spawns. Dead. No DPS here, not really.
So my "argument" is that sometimes, DPS is not important when it comes to D&D. And if one is soley concentrating on that, then one will have problems (re: "doing it wrong").
That's why I'm not really sure what brought the whole "DPS=WoW" thing and the irrelevant cheesy scenarios (+Spike Trap is still damage ;p), as those are topics way beyond the simple message I tried to convey in my first post and are not a counter-argument to what I was said. I feel like we've been discussing two different things here. Perhaps my initial post was badly written and gave the impression DPS is all I care about. If so, that was not my intention and simply bad communication.
You may be right, though. DPS doesn't belong in D&D. DPR (damage per round) is a much better term
Do you know how a round work ? If you go beyond 5 attacks per round, which means you are under the effect of Improved Haste, you will start attacking every time until your number of attacks is depleted, then your character will wait until the end of the turn and start again. In a round, there is 10 'actions', 10 instants. It corresponds to the casting time of spells for example.
Improved Alacrity and Time Stop for example, have really long cast time (9 IIRC) and that's why when you finish casting one, you can almost start casting a new spell, because the round (10 actions) is almost over for you and that's why the combo Time Stop + Improved Alacrity is good, because you chain the actions with no downtime. If Time Stop casting time was really short, 2 for example, the best combo would be Improved Alacrity and then Time Stop because otherwise you would lose some precious time after Time Stop being unable to cast because you have finish your spell too early.
Why do i speak about spells casting time ? Because attacks function the same way. If you have 7 APR, you will attack at a rate of 1/action until 7 attacks were made, then you will be unable to attack for 3 actions, then you will attack again.
It is funny that you speak about DPS, and Kai. Because Kai casting time being 2, if you have 10 APR, you will actually lose 2 attacks the round you have used it which of course is quite a DPS loss if you have high base damage, Kai is better suited for burst damage than DPS. And on a Kensai => Mage, doing 9 attacks and 1 Skull trap (with Robe of Vecna) every round grants better DPS than doing 10 attacks, period.
The goal for micromanagement in this game is to perform a "special action" like casting a spell / drinking a potion / using a special ability every round, and then maxing DPS, for real. If you are autoattacking braindead mode 10 times per round, nice for you good sir, but that's playing the game the wrong way, period. For example, casting Magic missile then Time Stop is terribly bad, casting Magic missile, attacking 9 times then casting Time Stop is better.
I prefer 100 times performing 9 attacks per round and casting a Stoneskin or a PfMW or a Breach, etc ... Each round than attacking 10 times doing nothing useful.
And that's why 10 APR for caster multiclass / dualclass is bad, because if you don't find something useful to cast every round then you are lazy, there is ALWAYS something useful to cast EVERY ROUND, even a 1 or 2 cast time spell like Mirror image, Blur, Stoneskin etc etc etc. You will have to rebuff mid fight in SCS, a lot. You will have to dispell the crap out of foes protections, you will need to perform specials actions, every round. You won't need 10 APR, exept maybe on a pure Fighter who can't do anything else but these characters are bad.
To sum it up :
1 Spell > 1 Attack
Therefore : 9 Attacks + 1 Spell > 10 Attacks.
Conclusion : 8 APR is enough for casting characters, because most usefull spells in battle have a casting time of 1 or 2, if you attack 10 time per round on a Kensai => Mage, you should consider playing a pure Kensai instead and buffing him with another character because you're wasting your specials actions potential.
I apologize for my english, good evening !
PS : I totally forgot about kiting, which tends to make 10 APR even more useless, everytime you run after your foe, you're losing the potential of 10 APRs, everytime you move to avoid being traped, to avoid melee, spells etc, you're losing the potential of 10 APRs, positioning is better than some DPS.
Basically, your argument is that there's always something useful (with short cast time) to cast every single round, which is simply not true. Once you buff pre-combat, the only thing you're going to cast for a while with your Kensai -> Mages is PFMW every 4 rounds + maybe a dispel every once in a while (and that's probably not with your main FoA-wielding guy, even if you don't have an Inquisitor for that). There's only one Robe of Vecna and one Amulet of Power. I also said that melee damage is the most reliable, because it doesn't require a setup of Greater Malison + however many Lower Resistances to work.
As for Kai, it works for 10 seconds, not 1 round, so you typically gain more than you lose, especially in scenarios like Time Stop. Of course, mileage will vary depending on weapon. It's good on your Celestial Fury-wielding guy in SoA, for example. It's a pretty overrated ability in general, but I was going through everything one may consider worth using in the context of warrior abilities. Obviously it's great on a Kensai-> Thief for backstabs, unless you mod your game so that most worthwhile targets are immune to backstab anyway.
In pretty much any powergaming discussion 10 APR is the sacred, undisputable truth for a reason.
And, to add another thing, it's not like there are better alternatives. Immunity providing weapons can be replaced by spells and even if not, are very situational. Defender of Easthaven is better on a Cleric, who can't use +APR weapons anyway and doesn't have protections of PFMW/Stoneskin magnitude. I mentioned you could go for Crom Faeyr in off hand, but it's kind of a waste, if you're going for a good spread of items, instead of stacking everything on one guy. Dak'kon Zerth Blade is pretty meh. And then what?
In a powergaming party you're probably going to have an Inquisitor for Carsomyr and maybe an Archer to dominate early- and mid-game or an empty slot or yet another Kensai->Mage who will then be geared towards a more utility role, providing those dispels every round.
In general, 10 APR is great for damage. Fighter duals and multis might not always get the full benefit, but they still will a lot of the time. Pure Fighters, even more so. Whether pure Fighters are great characters or not doesn't matter when discussing this subject, and the OP didn't state he was playing a dual- or multi-class specifically. Plus, while playing with NPCs, you're going to end up with some of them. All in all, a valid point.
The saddest part of all, though, is this: even if there was only 1 round in your whole Baldur's Gate saga playthough, in which you attacked all 10 times with your Kensai->Mage, a +APR offhand would STILL be better than any other offhand weapon for that class.
Edit to your edit: Well, when you're not attacking it doesn't matter if you're not attacking with 8 or 10 attacks. When you connect to your targets, chances are pretty low that you'd be able to hit him precisely 8 times in that round and not 10, so it doesn't really matter. I guess the chances are slightly higher for enough time being left to squeeze in 8 attacks instead of 10 but that's really insignificant and a rare scenario. I liked your other arguments better :P.
If i'm playing a Kensai 13 => Mage for example, with 4 base APR dual wielding, i probably won't give him an APR weapon because i won't use the bonus APR efficiently because i will cast something each rounds, i will give him an offhand weapon with greater passives like Crom to make my 8 APR really count and cast the rest of the time without any loss. And i think 8 APR with 25 STR are better than 10 APR without 25 STR.