Did you ever level non-passive abilities?

#1

Maybe it’s just me, but I felt that in general it was almost never worth leveling up the attacks themselves:

Beserkers - Bleed and Speed affect all attacks.
Rangers - Bleed nearly doubles damage of all attacks, sharp shooter adds crits to all attacks, range gives them more opportunity to deal damage.
Healers - Inspire is amazing, and bulk up is required for extreme sometimes.
Ice Mages - The only one worth leveling their attacks, since it also changes their freeze efficacy. (Also, none of their passives apply across the board.)
Knights - Armor break is key, and sword training beefs all their attacks instead of just one.
Dragons - Strength, anyone?

I haven’t run the numbers, so maybe it’s not as unbalanced as it seems. But to a player who is just guessing at leveling strategy, I wonder if maybe attack leveling should be buffed or passives nerfed to encourage a balanced leveling strategy.

#2

This is something we should spread-sheet for sure, but real quick:

Leveling up berserker and ranger attacks increases not only the damage, but the NUMBER of attacks, which makes a big difference. The number doesn’t go up at every point level, so this might have dissuaded you from doing that.

#3

— Begin quote from "larsiusprime"

Leveling up berserker and ranger attacks increases not only the damage, but the NUMBER of attacks, which makes a big difference. The number doesn’t go up at every point level, so this might have dissuaded you from doing that.

— End quote

Do you mean the the ability gets to be used more often if you level it up? If I knew that, that’d make a difference - for example, upgrading Beserker’s slash from to 31.5 to 48.3 damage seems really pointless, but it also increases the attacks per second?

It doesn’t seem like that at all, from the dialogs - it says the cooldown remains the same no matter how I level each technique.

#4

Hey! Nevermind, I’m wrong - this was old behavior. Like, flurry would start out at 3 attacks, and then as you upgrade it go up to 5 attacks, etc, but from the looks of it Anthony changed that some time ago so the attack number never changes.

#5

I’m the opposite…found most of the passives useless :confused:

You gotta keep in mind how much extra damage you are actually getting with each upgrade…it’s usually a good amount

#6

I’ve kind of leveled… Everything. By everything I mean all abilities up to nine for all my characters, guess that’s what happens when you play over fifty hours, and when there’s not a limit to how many skill points you can get, even after you’ve hit max level.

#7

— Begin quote from "IanIanIan"

I’m the opposite…found most of the passives useless :confused:

You gotta keep in mind how much extra damage you are actually getting with each upgrade…it’s usually a good amount

— End quote

It’s slightly more, on the one skill, than most passives give to all skills. Unless you’re levelling up skill 1 and plopping down level 1 units, passives are almost always better.

#8

— Begin quote from "mardracula"

I’ve kind of leveled… Everything. By everything I mean all abilities up to nine for all my characters, guess that’s what happens when you play over fifty hours, and when there’s not a limit to how many skill points you can get, even after you’ve hit max level.

— End quote

Or a triple xp button.

I find it really hard to believe you’ve maxed out every skill on everyone. You would have to play the final map like…100 times.

#9

there is an endless mode, where you can get like loads of exp and money.

also, some passives are very good, others not so much. for example the speed upgrade, armor break, poisons, etc are a must, but others like defense, life, regen etc are worthless.

also, what’s the point of having a level cap of 40 if you’re still able to level up and get skill points after you max out? might as well raise the level cap, especially considering theres going to be more endgame content.

#10

Getting extra skill points beyond the level cap is a bug. We threw the level cap in as kind of a last minute thing so that we could create various tiers of endless modes, and make one of the rewards raising the level cap by 5 or 10 levels, and it eventually goes all the way up to 99. We figured if everyone just grinds up to level 99 while waiting for the extra content, it wasn’t going to be much fun when we finally release it .

#11

— Begin quote from "IanIanIan"

— Begin quote from "mardracula"

I’ve kind of leveled… Everything. By everything I mean all abilities up to nine for all my characters, guess that’s what happens when you play over fifty hours, and when there’s not a limit to how many skill points you can get, even after you’ve hit max level.

— End quote

Or a triple xp button.

I find it really hard to believe you’ve maxed out every skill on everyone. You would have to play the final map like…100 times.

— End quote

I never found the XP multiplication button till way after and 50 hours of my play time, is enough to complete the endless mode enough times to get max skill points.

Eventually when there is a substantial update I’m just going to make a new save entirely.

I never played the final map 100 times, but probably the endless mode map. I just place down my units, then go back to do whatever else I was doing on the computer, and going back to the game every now and then.

#12

The endless mode only rewards good xp if you beat your previous score…so… :confused:

#13

— Begin quote from "IanIanIan"

The endless mode only rewards good xp if you beat your previous score…so… :confused:

— End quote

I always get enough to level my guys up either once, or twice. I never get less XP for not beating more older score.

#14

I leveled the FF passive on my units:

I level them up according to order (first, second) up to 9 skill points.

Berserker= +speed +crit (furry), then bleed+
Archer= +crit, +range, +bleed
Healer= +inspire (atk damage +)
Ice Mage= passive for slowdown and freeze for iceball? (the the two squares below)
Knight= The Armor break, attack+, and +stun
Dragon= Atk+ on every dragon and +poison on one dragon

Everything else I found it useless.

#15

Short answer: Yes. I mostly do the ones that also give some other boost (armor-breakers, etc.), or if I have too many points to spend.

#16

My builds in no-recruiting mode (no spare characters specialized for support roles) are generally, listed in the order in which I try to max skills:
Berzerker: Madness, Flurry, Rage, Swiftness
Ranger: Sharpshooter, Rapid shot, Range focus, Black out the sun.
Healer: Aid, Blinding, Inspire, Bulk up.
Ice mage: Sleet, Blizzard, Ice splash, Ice shard (although I put a few points in Ice spear first)
Knight: Armor break (only to level 4), Swing, Sword training, Smash, Hard knock…
Dragon: Bite, Strength, Devour, Halitosis.

So, the smaller the party, the bigger emphasis on direct damage output

When playing with multiple characters in each class, it of course makes sense to go for specializations that are built more around traits. I can imagine that from 6 berzerkers, I’d go for 3 bleeders - Swiftness and Rage first. But the next two skills would again be Flurry and Madness, so no big deal.
With rangers, having a long-range bleeder set to target Strong makes sense. And I could also imagine a short-range, max poison and max damage skills build, again set to target strong and placed early.
Healers are probably the only class where I’d never bother with putting points into the two AoE attacks.
Ice mages are awesome damage dealers, but having one with maxed slow/freeze traits can be quite useful.
Knights - the armor-stripper with high damage skills is the obvious choice, but I could imagine a Stun specialist at start of killzone and Smash specialist at the end of it, especially with their NG+ swords to boost the appropriate skill. And since they wouldn’t really need to strip armor much, damage levelups would certainly happen.
Dragons are perhaps the most interesting, capable of fulfilling several roles - softener near spawn with maxxed Bite and poison, cleaner with maxxed Devour, AoE specialist with maxxed Roar and Fire Ball, all of them make sense and they’d all have some attack skills maxxed.