Early Game Combat Feedback

Wicked Feedback
1

Overall, I like the experience of combat. The look and feel of fighting is impactful and I’ve found the Rune powers both useful and fun. I only have a few minor gripes that I would categorize as specifically combat related.

First, early game stamina is way too low. I can only get two to three hits in before I have to wait for it to recharge. The biggest problem this presents is a general inability to capitalize on staggered enemies after a successful parry. They require skill to pull off and should be rewarded, but I end up doing less damage parrying an enemy than I do just dodging and attacking after they finish their swings. Parrying also opens me up to retaliation, since after a parry and two attacks, I don’t have enough stamina to roll away when the enemy gets back up. While stamina potions mitigate this somewhat, they’re not frequent enough in the early game to use outside group fights.

Second, my character will often perform a regular attack even if I’m lined up directly behind an enemy in stealth and the backstab icon has appeared over my target. This seems to be an issue of my character being slightly out of position, but it’s unintuitive to have the backstab icon show up at all if my next attack isn’t actually going to be a backstab.

Third, Whispers should heal your character to full health when you interact with them. There have been a few times when I’ve run out of food after a tough fight, but there’s no nearby firepit for me to make more, or I don’t have enough ingredients. At certain points, it’s been more convenient for me to channel a Whisper and immediately kill myself to respawn right there with full health, rather than attempt to progress with low health only to die and respawn anyway.

1 Like
2

I’m not sure I agree with the stamina comments- it seems to me that this has been thoughtfully implemented.

Yes, stamina runs out quickly in the early game. It also recovers VERY quickly. It does require you to dance with the enemy, you can’t just throttle them when you have an opening. IMO this makes for a fun and kinetic combat balance.

If you parry without full stamina, yes, you won’t be able to fully punish. Even with full stamina, you’d be wiser to get in a couple hits and roll out before they recover.

What I would say re: Parry - the follow-up attack to a parry could maybe do some bonus damage, perhaps with a quick backstab-esque animation, for a quick parry / attack / retreat. (The backstab animations are very cool)

Parrying isn’t terribly difficult for the most part, however, so there is a balance issue if the bonus is too high.

3

I found the Parry timing to be terrible personally, but those mechanics have never been my thing. Though through cosmic karma the first weapon I enchanted of course had both benefits be triggered off a successful parry :rofl:

4

Not sure they’d add bonus damage since parrying fills your focus gauge way faster than normal attacks do. It’s basically an instant fill and allows you to spam rune attacks.

6

That’s a good point- I did not realize that