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Author Topic: Torchlight 2  (Read 951 times)

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sei

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Torchlight 2
« on: September 23, 2012, 11:29:13 PM »

Digging it. This game brings Fate (the Game) to mind a bit more than Torchlight 1 did.

The pet being able to shop for pots is pretty cool.

The console's a good way to get around the stupid default respec system, until TorchED comes out and provides a simpler option.

Berserker didn't feel that hot for a while, but it seems to have picked up around level 40. Need to be comfortable with auto attack and spamming the healing wolf ability, I guess, for quite a while.

Battle Standard's mana regen is probably bugged. It gives 24 mana/4sec, to start. Standing in range for a while makes it give 900mana/4sec. This is probably due to the pulses that refresh the 4s buff stacking mana/sec, instead of just refreshing it. It's pretty funny to see in action. I expect it'll get fixed soon.
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François

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Re: Torchlight 2
« Reply #1 on: September 24, 2012, 01:19:37 AM »

I'm playing a mostly melee engineer right now. She's got a low-cost, low-cooldown single target pull skill that has a high chance of stunning the target (if you've got five charges stored up, it's 100%, and it doesn't use up charges), and a passive skill that adds three times her strength's worth of damage to her basic attacks when she hits a stunned enemy. GET OVER HERE! POW! GET OVER HERE! POW! GET OVER HERE! POW!

I say "mostly melee" because cannons are effing fun, and the skill that lets me swing heavy weapons faster also increases cannon fire rate. That's a sweet design decision right there, Runic.

Speaking of design decisions, I love how the slow weapons that are usually noob traps in these types of games have unique properties here. Most weapons have AoE basic attacks whose size and shape depend on the weapon type, and then you have stuff like sledgehammers having interrupt chance and cannons having stun chance and so on and so forth.

Also, gems don't upgrade in tiers anymore so they've started being actually useful for their intended purpose instead of getting stockpiled forever. (You can still combine gems but they upgrade to a rare version within the same tier, which may be more useful but isn't numerically stronger.) I've always been OCD about that sort of stuff and it's like someone took a huge weight off my shoulders.

I think the only thing that kinda disappointed me is that the visual customization is gimpy, every gender/class combo is the same from the neck down. It's a step up from T1 of course, but I guess I wanted my engineer chick to be a bit burlier. I mean, the game says "engineer" but it's really "TF2 heavy with optional robot buddies".

Oh! And clearly this game continues the tradition of normal difficulty being wimp mode for babies. I've started at the second to last difficulty and so far only one area has given me any significant trouble, though I do have the feeling that I've been staying just a bit ahead of the curve. Besides if I let myself get surrounded without a plan I do typically get instagibbed so it's not like I'm allowed to let my guard down either. And elemental resists are super important because spellcasters do not mess around.
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sei

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Re: Torchlight 2
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2012, 10:05:40 AM »

Veteran feeels okay to me. If I dick around, I die.

Elite, on the other hand, borders on Inferno-level silliness has too many "surprise" deaths as melee. Being unable to wade into the fray and constantly having to kite trash as melee isn't something I find fun.
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François

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Re: Torchlight 2
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2012, 05:30:46 PM »

After clearing the base game with a bunch of characters by now, I'm rather surprised to report that a melee Embermage was my most successful one. Their skills are balanced for a class that is not expected to go into melee a lot, so if you specialize into it it gets really impressive. Magma Hammer in particular is this strangely amazing jack-of-all-trades skill that any other class would die to get their hands on. AoE? Check. DoT? Check. High stun chance? Check. Shield breaking? Check. Attack speed debuff? Check. The burn has its own icon but it still counts as setting enemies on fire, so Fire Brand damage procs on it, which is pretty incredible. It's like the Engineer extra lightning damage on stunned enemies, except it's based on level rather than strength. Fire Brand is maxed because I Magma Hammer everything all the time, but the base damage on Ice and Shock is good enough since those typically only activate when the Elemental Affinity random debuff aura kicks in. Kicker is, if an enemy's too dangerous to stay close to, you can Hammer them once, Phase away, and chunk them with a crossbow or something, because ranged weapons proc Brand damage too. None of my Outlanders with ranged weapon specialty get close to that kind of single-target DPS, even taking crits and Blade Pact into account.

Using staves and Staff Mastery would probably make the whole setup even nuttier, but I found having a shield on is pretty damn important in terms of not getting blown up by everything, so I usually go with hammer and board. (Slow weapons are good because Brands don't seem to proc more than once a second, so if you've got say one attack every 0.8 seconds you actually lose a ton of DPS.) Immolation Aura's a rad defensive skill but even 15% across-the-board damage reduction will only take you so far in Veteran and upwards.
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