Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

Ah, I can't even make an online character atm, just get "timed out" over and over. Offline works fine, of course.

Pyros said:

Made an offline char since I had no plans on playing online anyway, got to lvl 11 so far, been pretty decent although there's a couple of annoying things(mass clicking to sell shit quickly seems to not always work for example).

Balance seems kinda fucked though, I'm going pet build as expected, first pets I got are basically trash, they seem to do ok-ish damage but they die in one hit from bosses and stuff so they're not super useful for that. On the flipside I just got a golem and assuming the tooltip is correct, it has 4500hp while I have 700 and 300ES, with a build that dumped everything in toughness and is only health/es or pure es gear. So it has 4times my "tanky" hp. Also it can aoe taunt shit with a 1sec cooldown(I have to order it and not sure how long the taunt lasts but... yeah). Do pretty poor damage obviously, about the same as staff autoattack but still that's like way too tanky I feel like. Might not scale well later on we'll see but it should trivialize bosses(not that they've been really hard so far).

I'm also not sure I get the skill system. You can put points in the outter circles, then you can rotate them and the points stay active even if it's not linked? Then why even bother with the system, seems weird. Or maybe I didn't see clearly if it was active or not. I beelined for the pet shit for now.

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I believe the rings have to be connected for the skills to be active - but I have not been in the released game yet so take that with a grain of salt.

Pyros said:

Made an offline char since I had no plans on playing online anyway, got to lvl 11 so far, been pretty decent although there's a couple of annoying things(mass clicking to sell shit quickly seems to not always work for example).

Balance seems kinda fucked though, I'm going pet build as expected, first pets I got are basically trash, they seem to do ok-ish damage but they die in one hit from bosses and stuff so they're not super useful for that. On the flipside I just got a golem and assuming the tooltip is correct, it has 4500hp while I have 700 and 300ES, with a build that dumped everything in toughness and is only health/es or pure es gear. So it has 4times my "tanky" hp. Also it can aoe taunt shit with a 1sec cooldown(I have to order it and not sure how long the taunt lasts but... yeah). Do pretty poor damage obviously, about the same as staff autoattack but still that's like way too tanky I feel like. Might not scale well later on we'll see but it should trivialize bosses(not that they've been really hard so far).

I'm also not sure I get the skill system. You can put points in the outter circles, then you can rotate them and the points stay active even if it's not linked? Then why even bother with the system, seems weird. Or maybe I didn't see clearly if it was active or not. I beelined for the pet shit for now.

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no, the chain has to be active. unlinked passives are not in effect.

im in finally.

btw, green stairs are side areas.

it's honestly pretty decent. it's not perfect by any means. the skills and abilities are closer to PoE than D3, in that the skill tree is a spiderweb/constellation and you find abilities as item drops.

i absolutely think it's worth the money, BUT i fully admit i backed it like 5 years ago for $10

Its alright, better than I thought it would be, but the issues with getting online are pretty shitty.

I'm still totally in the dark on how Ailments work, and the dmg they do. I've seen several streamers just stack Wisdom, but their dmg (as mages) doesn't seem any better than what I'm seeing with my own scuffed character. I've put most of my points into Ferocity and Agility for Crit Chance and Cast Speed. Not sure if Cast Speed is needed at all now though, I had thought maybe it allowed my Staff to do its default attacks faster, but it doesn't seem too. I think I've tried out every possible Spell skill there is in the game now, before hitting lvl20 (lvl22 now), unless there are some rarely dropped skills you can get later on.

Annihilation, Anomaly and Lightning Strike seem to be the clear winners for dmg, while Bulwark is a nice instant heal. The Summons are alright too, but I only use the Tank now though it is annoying in that the pet can actually block me from hitting mobs (maybe a bug). The skill Parasite is cool. Its a lifedrain, that will turn the mob into your zombie once its "dead", and you can have up to 3 of those following you around, would need to see if the Summon tree passives buff them. So, if I wanted to make use of my Rage, I imagine I'd have to use a 1-handed wpn + Catalyst, right?

The Edric fight is janky as hell, maybe it was the servers or my connection to them, but it took me several tries to finally beat him. Probably should have changed up my skills a bit for that fight, maybe using the tank summon (doubt it would last long, but it probably would have helped). Hopefully they get the online issues fixed so its not such a hassle.

Extremely detailed review (and long) but I'm more interested now than I was prior to watching it.

Still, probably going to hold off for a while longer, to see just how quickly they polish up the rough stuff.

Zindan said:

Its alright, better than I thought it would be, but the issues with getting online are pretty shitty.

I'm still totally in the dark on how Ailments work, and the dmg they do. I've seen several streamers just stack Wisdom, but their dmg (as mages) doesn't seem any better than what I'm seeing with my own scuffed character. I've put most of my points into Ferocity and Agility for Crit Chance and Cast Speed. Not sure if Cast Speed is needed at all now though, I had thought maybe it allowed my Staff to do its default attacks faster, but it doesn't seem too. I think I've tried out every possible Spell skill there is in the game now, before hitting lvl20 (lvl22 now), unless there are some rarely dropped skills you can get later on.

Annihilation, Anomaly and Lightning Strike seem to be the clear winners for dmg, while Bulwark is a nice instant heal. The Summons are alright too, but I only use the Tank now though it is annoying in that the pet can actually block me from hitting mobs (maybe a bug). The skill Parasite is cool. Its a lifedrain, that will turn the mob into your zombie once its "dead", and you can have up to 3 of those following you around, would need to see if the Summon tree passives buff them. So, if I wanted to make use of my Rage, I imagine I'd have to use a 1-handed wpn + Catalyst, right?

The Edric fight is janky as hell, maybe it was the servers or my connection to them, but it took me several tries to finally beat him. Probably should have changed up my skills a bit for that fight, maybe using the tank summon (doubt it would last long, but it probably would have helped). Hopefully they get the online issues fixed so its not such a hassle.

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yeah lets see.
In beta Annihilation was real good. ice spears had a few builds. theres alot more mods now though. and skills in general.
spears is a projectile, so can scale with alot of the Ranger/rogue passives, that annihilatin can't.

Do note the +10% etc damage runes in a skill apply only to the base skill, not added damage from gear. keep that in mind. Same with fast attack vs slow attack things. like that tear of Eth ice skill, which has a 4s cast time or whatever. +10 sacred damage will still only be +10 sacred damage to it, while it would be +10 sacred damage every .3s tick of Annihilation.

Ailments. in beta. I have not retested it to see if it was changed.
Any given skill can only apply 1 ailment per hit by default. So, if you have a skill that does fire damage, and Aether damage, only fire burn, or Status can apply per hit, not both. There is a passive that allows +1 application per hit.
Then, there are stacks. 10 stacks per ailment by default. Passives can increase this to 205 iirc. Stacks increase the magnitude of the ailment. damage and CC.
Damage of ailments in beta was flat. it did not scale with anything(might have scaled with level iirc). you can see the value in your Character sheet.
your sheet will list a value, like for example my offline char atm. "burn 6-60" damage. that is not variable range. That is 1 stack=6 damage, 10 stacks=60 damage.



Wisdom only effects the CHANCE of applying ailments, not how much damage or how powerful the cc is.

Hard to say if agil or ferocity is better as a secondary stat. Even with staff, you spend a solid amount of time attacking to regen willpower on hit. So attack speed is always useful. And since willpower is the limiting factor, casting faster is rarely the most useful thing.

yeah, don't remember if there were any staff rage skills. But, generally 1h+catalyst yes to be able to cast spells, and use rage. Note catalysts do not regen Willpower on hit like staves. Also, catalyst SPEED up willpower to rage swapping, while staves slow it down. So if you could say cast 6 fireballs with a stave, before running out of willpower, with a catalyst, you might get off 4, before the willpower is shifted over to rage.

getting my ass kicked by Elric as a mage. he wasn't nearly this bad in beta. they moved a few mods around, not sure if they were helping. net code, and some of the games... "quirks" are not helping either. It might be the removing of regen and resistance from attributes. doesnt look like they were added to gear in compensation.

cast a spell. nah, game would rather autoattack some fucking ghost instead,, so its auto-attacking instead of casting the spell you hit. dodge roll. nah. lets auto-attack some fucking ghost instead. dodge roll. ok. but, you dont move and get hit by his attack anyway. or you do move, and dont get hit.. but still take game as if you did anyway.

Edit: respeced and got him down much easier. totally shredded him really. did a few things. respeced to get life leech spells first. second, swapped a spell. I was using, winters graps for aoe 100% freeze, which hes immune too.. Anomly, which is awesome, but hes immune to the pull as well. and annihilation for damage. aether leap for extra dodge.
I started with solar fall, its interesting. more dps then annihilation, innately aoe, but slow. it was largely useless here, as I can't CC him, to let me cast it.
tried swapping it out for the golem. he ignored it totally. it did distract some of the ghosts.. the real winner was Bulwark of dawn. i put that in, and ran back threw some levels to get it to level 11. extre life regen, and aoe sacred damage over time. Anomaly and bulwark of dawn totally shredded him. It crushed his armor, to stun him. bulwark would full heal me instantly the second I stood in it. I was able to just face tank him the whole fight basically. (I did get some new gear while leveling up bulwark, may have been a small help too. 12-20% phys resist change.)

Just an FYI, take everything you have in your Storage out before you enter Chapter 2, and once in Chapter 2 never use it. Everything in the storage gets wiped when you enter Chapter 2, and each time you zone into town while in Chapter 2.

Game is pretty buggy. Might have screwed my Story progression by entering a side dungeon before talking to a quest npc, trying to restart the game to see if that will re trigger the npc respond, but of course Online is screwed again.

trying to play with pals, online mode still not working. apparently it's been fucky all day.

add me teck.2333