V Rising

I haven't done Frostmaw on brutal yet.

I think on normal I one or two shot him, don't remember him particularly. I did use pets on normal though, I basically used the same 2 spells for most of the game, the bolt that summons skeletons on hit(with a jewel that summons 2 skeletons at the same time which I found off the same boss I got the spell) and Blood Rage, and then used a variety of melee weapons. Pets are definitely OP other than the couple fights where they're a liability. I'd usually always get skeletons up and then capitalize on openings with blood rage, and used a recovery setup with brute blood and lifesteal gear. Optimally though using a block skill would have made a lot of things safer, I often had to kite like a bitch at low hp cause I couldn't commit to meleeing with my dodge on cooldown and stuff, while with a block you can alternate them and keep melee uptime a lot more.

Not using a gamepad no, it didn't look like the type of game for gamepad use to me, I'm awful at aiming with a gamepad in general(get better over the years as I'm forced to in some games but still awful), while it's a very obvious fit for keyboard+mouse since it often plays like Diablo and other top down games.

So far I can't tell what Brutal does on a lot of these fights. I'm in act 3 now and I'd say a good 70% of the bosses don't feel like they have any new patterns, just more damage/health from the basic mods? Maybe they do and I just didn't notice because I only killed them once on normal and sometimes I one shot them so I didn't get to see mechs much but yeah. A few seem to have new things entirely, and some I think have slight changes(like more projectiles per volley kind of thing) but a lot just seem to be exactly the same which is weird. I was expecting a lot more new moves kinda like Terraria does difficulties, bit disappointing. I'm killing most bosses in 3-5 tries atm with a few taking like a dozen but it's been pretty smooth going(including Terrormaw mentionned earlier, killed him on 3rd pull).

I'm about to begin the cursed forest bosses atm so still early in act3. Got a nice 100% rogue slave since I'm not doing a melee smoothbrain build so don't need brute anymore. I am kinda tempted to try to find a 100% scholar to do a caster build at some point too, I feel there's some decent potential there, just wish they had an actual caster weapon, it's weird how they designed every weapon to basically be for physical damage dealer and not a single one with magic damage on it. Pistol is probably the closest to one since the skills are situational so it's basically just autoattack power. Slasher too fits that to some extent.

Yeah bow is what I'm using atm as it's just good all around with no real weaknesses, E does good single target damage, Q does good aoe and is a quick click for single target also and the primary can be cancelled early so it doesn't force you to commit too much, while also allowing to draw longer for max range kiting.

I've been mostly playing ranged during this brutal run, Crossbows on some bosses/early game but the primary forces you to commit for a long time and you end up having to space out of it too often imo, the skills otherwise are great and the ramp up power is strong if you can keep that 21% atk speed buff going.

Pistols I tried on a couple of bosses but not a fan, mostly because the range isn't as long as xbow/bow so you have to be more mindful of the spacing which I find annoying. Reaper has the same issues since E has limited range, but it is a melee weap so makes sense.

I'll say overall weapon balance is pretty solid, I think every weapon has some interesting choices, at least for pve. The ones I dislike the most are whip(primary is kinda slow, E feels pretty bad to use in general, Q is good but if I'm gonna do medium range I want a more snappy primary like pistol) and Spear, which I find clunky since it's basically melee range but no swing aoe and the actives feel like shit on bosses cause they're immune to the CCs. Everything else I've used at some point in my normal run and liked it, although axes were my favorite as an allrounder weap since it has gap closing+burst and ranged aoe+CC so it does everything pretty well.

For spells in my brutal run I've been mostly using Aftershock for damage and Ward of the Damned for blocking, and if I don't need to block Death Knight for more damage/summon. I really like aftershock cause it ignores issues like trash mobs blocking the way or bosses countering, since it's a ground effect. Makes it very reliable to get damage out of it. As for ward of the damned that shit's pretty broken, blocks in general are super strong but this one spawns skeletons per block and can be reused to do a little bit of dmg+condemn(15% increased dmg) so it does a bunch of things in one single skill.

Alright finished the game on Brutal, the last 4 bosses were pretty interesting, Adam took me a long time(maybe like 5hours or so) but felt like a really nice fight overall, Solarus was kinda annoying until I got the strat right, Talzur was a big joke I think it took me like 3 or 4 pulls to kill him, but Dracula, damn was that fight dumb. Not as hard as Adam at all, in fact pretty easy once you're used to the mechs in comparison, but the brutal only phase is absolutely fucking stupid.

After wiping a bit to it and not seeing any way I was gonna do it I checked internet to see kills and it seems most people just change their skills mid fight during phase transitions to deal with it, and indeed that made the phase a joke, which is really fucking stupid. It's so gimmicky and skews heavily towards certain things, just really shitty design imo. Making a DPS check while also forcing you to slot specific spells in to deal with the bullshit mechanic is just horrible design that favors attack builds a ton. I had been playing caster since around lvl 70 or so and the fight was a big middle finger to that. Pretty dumb way to end like that.

ronne said:

Which is doubly hilarious given how trash attack/melee setups are for the first ~55 levels of the game or so. Trying to hit anything with a sword is just a recipe for frustration until you have access to the right spells/jewels/gear to get enough leech to just not always be dying to random militia or whatever.

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Well you don't necessarily need to melee, I meant attack builds like with the speed/crit armor sets, pistols and whips are great for that for example, I played rogue blood bow early on and it worked fine for example I just switched to a caster setup cause I wanted to see how it worked. But yeah on that last phase melee also works well and if you have attack based armor with phys crit/speed it's a lot better than if you try to do it with a caster build, because you can slot 2 counters and not worry about the bullet waves part while holding LMB and melting the boss. Which is also likely true for every boss, once you unlock pistol/whip running double counter and phys dmg probably is the easiest way to play since you have perfect defense with iframes and high damage output with medium range.

Anyway still fine game, but doesn't get the need to try to play it again like I did with Terraria and different builds because the builds aren't properly "split" in this.