Hey raics! Been lurking for a while now, but finally bit the bullet and registered an account here. Currently on ch 4(N) of my very first ever (!) playthrough ever of TO:LUCT with your mod and have quite been enjoying it. I have no direct frame of reference to compare with the original as I've never played it, but from everything I've read and understood, all of the changes are entirely much welcome. Thanks also for the detailed damage calculator spreadsheet and manual -- those have been invaluable for trying to wrap my mind around the system in order to make some more informed decisions as a new player.
Also looking forward to those changes! The more hybrid classes (spellblade/valk + TK) have definitely been challenging to gear and build, but in a good way. I appreciate that I can set up a spellblade as a slightly worse fighter-type unit that also has access to some supporting magic (and maybe a lobber), but can also set them up as a slightly worse mage that can still stand in the front lines without melting to enemy attacks. I was a bit conflicted on the terror knight myself...giving it a staff and gearing up for INT/MND made the status effects much more reliable, but that seemed to basically turn it into a really mediocre warlock (though sturdier, I guess!). But on the flipside, giving it a 2-hander and gearing for physical attack made its damage comparable to the other frontline classes but now the debuffs had really piddling accuracy (~20%?). That said I could also just be a bit underleveled, or perhaps could look into a way to apply spellstrike. The "just having something to do when they can't reach the enemy" role of dark magic here makes sense, given that TK already has fearful impact as well as Lament of the Dead (which I haven't unlocked yet!) to really mess up the enemy's stats, but it would be nice if the dark magic could still do something a bit more reliably, at least get off some poison (not sure if poison cloud uses the same formula for determining whether the poison debuff is applied?). I admittedly haven't used the shadowbreak skill yet, but I do like that idea as well.
My main conundrum at the moment is the Familiar class, which currently I only have access to through the Faerie race, as I won't get around to Pumpkin units for quite some time. From what I understand this class had some issues in the original game as well, but I'm wondering what some intended role/usages of the class are? It has access to divine magic and heals, plus boon of swiftness so it can definitely just serve as a cleric that has the added advantage of being able to float around as well as use spiritsurge. The lack of major heal is even a bit of a non-issue since purify does essentially the same thing (better). However the Familiar also comes with some exclusive skills which in theory seem pretty nice -- pumpkin strike and pumpkin pie, along with the 4 "kiss"-type skills, among others. Pumpkin pie, for example, seems like it would be great to turn the tide of a battle, but I'm not really understanding how a familiar can go about getting the 100TP required to even use the ability in the first place, given that magic attacks wouldn't accumulate any TP. I'm also not entirely sure what stats the damage of pumpkin strike would be based on (only read a few things about it). I've tried giving my Familiar an instrument in an attempt at getting it to whack things to build up TP, but it was way too squishy to survive. Things were a little better with a dagger + shield, trying to gear more for AVD, but even though survivability was better it still was doing really mediocre damage. So for now my Familiar has been relegated back to healbot duty.
My preliminary guesses as to what is going on with these skills:
- Perhaps the Pumpkin variant of Familiars are simply better at getting into the fray and building up TP?
- Maybe I just need to wait until I unlock Tactician II, and just have the passive TP accumulation do it?
- Maybe the idea is to have TP accumulation from a different source, like somebody casting electrify on the Familiar?
- I could try giving it a 1H bow and having it (weakly) peck at things....??
- Or perhaps you just haven't gotten around to tinkering with this class? Haha...
Anyhow, some clarification on the unit's intended role and usage would be elucidating, I think. Another possibility that came across my mind is that for Faerie units, the idea is to learn the "Kiss" spells from Familiar and then transfer them over to the Rogue class (one of the few instances outside of lord/princess that I've seen skills that need to be learned elsewhere to be used in that class). That still doesn't explain the pumpkin skills, though.
Speaking of heals, I know it's been mentioned that MND does have an effect on the amount healed but that it is relatively minor. That formula isn't really represented in your calculator AFAIK so I'm not sure what the inner workings of it are (is there some sort of cap on the amount of healing? etc..), but it did seem from my experience that INT/MND really didn't affect heal amounts in any significant way, so I've currently just optimized my cleric(s) for RT instead. Not sure if I'm on the right track there, just wanted to get a check of my understanding.
