Wasteland Wasteland 2 - Character Builds

[Shadenuat]

I wish I could fit brute force in there for RP reasons... oh well

You'll be surprised how unimportant STR is for melee character. You can leave it at 4-6 for larping & good HP and pump INT instead. Brawler benefits most from maxed weapon skill because it gives double damage and the quicker you get there the better brawler will be.

 

[Bradylama]

The 10% to hit bonus from maxed out leadership is absolutely worth it

It's really just 1% per point?

That's still part of my group plan, but it doesn't seem like much on paper.

Yeah, if you check the Leadership Bonus flag for your squad members it only goes up to 10%. 10% can be the difference between getting 90-100% on burst headshots in the late game, though.

 

[Jasede]

Numbers do not lie; if you want to min-max you need 9 STR for the optimal melee build. The correct and highest damage / AP melee build statline is
2 1 4 9 A 1 1

Putting points into AW every tenth level.

STR is one of the best ways to increase brawling damage, along with ranger level / CI. The brawling stat, while it should be maxed, doesn't really matter since you're going to max it first anyway, 1 INT or 10 INT.


Just put that one point from Strength into Speed for the 1 Extra CI, then level only Awareness as every point in CI is (slightly) more damage than that last point in Strength.

You won't need the extra HP anyway.

 

[Shadenuat]

Numbers do not lie

Yes they do.
STR10 with Dragon Claws at level ~40: 56-60 dmg
STR1: 53-57

Average damage per hit will do ~200 damage on Seasoned difficulty with any STR value.

 

[Bradylama]

Yes, +10% critical damage doesn't make much of a difference. The 100% crit chance from the skill is all that matters. So for a Brawler character, AP and CI are everything. Strength is ultimately only good for AP and carry weight.

Edit: How could I forget HP bloat? High strength is still important if you want a lot of hitpoints.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Numbers do not lie; if you want to min-max you need 9 STR for the optimal melee build. The correct and highest damage / AP melee build statline is
2 1 4 9 A 1 1

Putting points into AW every tenth level.

STR is one of the best ways to increase brawling damage, along with ranger level / CI. The brawling stat, while it should be maxed, doesn't really matter since you're going to max it first anyway, 1 INT or 10 INT.


Just put that one point from Strength into Speed for the 1 Extra CI, then level only Awareness as every point in CI is (slightly) more damage than that last point in Strength.

You won't need the extra HP anyway.

cut 1 strength 2 speed, go up to 4 int
the extra skill point lets you take field medic as a secondary skill which offers more in combat than the slight stat optimization you get from those strength and speed points

 

[Shadenuat]

How could I forget HP bloat? High strength is still important if you want a lot of hitpoints.

Which it also doesn't provide that well. On my first playthrough I had quite high STR brawler and I can't say she was so much tougher than anyone else. Extra 100 hp is ok but then on below SJ 300 hp is ok, and on SJ even 500 is not enough.

You gotta start with 6+ STR at beginning to make some difference, since HPs do not take into concideration levels passed with low STR.

10 Speed and high CI add more survivability to melee since you can kite/run between cover.

 

[Athelas]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the stat that gives you exponentially more turns is the best stat in a game that revolves around taking turns.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the stat that gives you exponentially more turns is the best stat in a game that revolves around taking turns.

Combat Initiative is retardedly strong and there's really no need to go above 8 AP for AR users. Thus the "best" combat build is probably 2,1,8,2,10,4,1. Do this on all 4 rangers and you'd have 20 initiative after your first 2 attribute points, giving you basically 2x as many turns as your opponents.

Actually, there is - 12 AP 13 CI build (9-1-1-2-10-4-1 start, then 1 point to max out COO + 2 points into awareness) is pretty much equal to the 7 AP 20 CI (you have 8 here, but that's not really different from 7). CI 20 goes 1.53% more often, so in the time CI 13 does 2 attacks, it does 3. But! AP 8 does just 1 assault rifle burst or headshot whereas AP 12 does 1 in the first turn and 2 in the second turn. So it's 2 turns with 1.5 bursts or 3 turns with 1 burst - which is better and why?

It's less about whether AP or CI is better and more about your personal preferences & your weapon demands. I call them the "sweet spots" - the ideal amounts of AP to use with each gun (most have various sweet spots, btw). I have a short guide here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=280383300
Where I list them all.

 

[Athelas]

Well, obviously the stat that lets you do MOAR stuff during your turn is the only one that can rival the stat that gives you more turns. You're only proving my point. Both stats essentially have the same outcome: being able to do more stuff than your enemy.

I still think combat initiative is much better though. And boosting AP requires meta-knowledge of how much AP your actions will consume.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well, there are multiple stats that boost both of these parameters.

 

[Athelas]

Yes, but they each have a stat that gives a much bigger increase to them.

 

[Shadenuat]

But those that don't give you something cool in return, like movement speed or skill points, or ability to recruit NPC built of crap that don't even follow your orders unless you invest in special skill and have that stat high across whole party--

wait,
disregard the last part

 

[ehrgeix]

I wrote a miniseries of articles explaining how to build effective characters. Hopefully something people like?: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com//viewtopic.php?f=40&t=9765

 

[Ninjerk]

I wrote a miniseries of articles explaining how to build effective characters. Hopefully something people like?: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com//viewtopic.php?f=40&t=9765

Someone found it earlier.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I went with a balanced team of 7 to make sure I had plenty of skills and saw plenty of the NPC text barks. I didn't go with maxing CI and all that but so far it has worked out pretty well (just regular ole seasoned difficulty).

4 Rangers:

1. Leader
C L A S S I C
2 1 7 2 2 8 6
Skills: Leadership, Perception, Demolitions, ARs (disarming traps is common and skill use xp gets boosted by CHA)
Combat Stats: 7 AP, 13 CI (can't burst headshot but still decent for a leader-build)
Level up attributes in Awareness for more CI

2. Face
C L A S S I C
2 1 4 2 S 8 1
Skills: Ass Trio, ARS (this is the talking guy to open up convo options, no need to switch between characters in dialog - ease of use)
Combat Stats: 9AP, 14 CI (can burst headshot later)
Level up attributes in Awareness for more CI

3. Muscle
C L A S S I C
2 1 4 S 9 1 1
Skills: Brawling, Weaponsmithing (I wish I could fit brute force in there for RP reasons... oh well)
Combat Stats: 9 AP, 13CI
Level up attributes are 1 in Speed and the rest in Awareness

4. Mixed Shocktrooper
C L A S S I C
2 1 4 6 S 4 1
Skills: Energy Weapons, Bladed Weapons, Outdoorsman (I probably didn't need to go with a guy that can use two weapons but it seemed like a fun idea)
Combat Stats: 9 AP, 14 CI
Level up attributes are 2 in Coordination (to get to 10 AP so I can burst headshot with GRB) and 1 in Awareness

NPCs:
As soon as I create the game, I run north and get Ralphy and Scotchmo. Then I ditch Angela and grab Rose. This ensures my endgame npcs get all the skill shrines and xp I find.

Ralphy: SMGs, Toaster Repair and Mechanical Repair, first 3 attribute points: +1 int/co/sp
Rose: Comp Sci, Surgeon, Medic, Handguns and Sniper, first 3 attribute points: 2 in speed, 1 in co
Scotchmo: Locksmith and Safe cracking, first 3 attribute points: int, speed

Re: NPCs - with Scotchmo, why would you gp int/speed instead of boosting his terrible combat initiative? I agree that, generally speaking, speed>>>awareness, but with only 3 points to allocate, I would have thought that salvaging his CI would be first priority. He can put out some decent damage with his shotguns+luck (some folks have argued elsewhere that he'd be stronger as a knife user, but that seems to miss the point as it's the large damage-per-shot and crit multiplier that makes shotguns a viable crit-build option), if only he could actually get a fucking turn.

Even with 3 points all into CI, he'll still only go to 11. But it's the difference between 'always going last' v 'never getting a fucking shot off' (even 10 would make a big difference).

 

[Bradylama]

You can give Scotchmo the engagement rings to boost his CI as well. All you need is to pump Speed enough to get an extra action point to cancel out the AP penalty, plus it comes with added combat speed and a little initiative.

 

[Shadenuat]

NPCs - with Scotchmo, why would you gp int/speed instead of boosting his terrible combat initiative?.

Advancement from 3 INT to 4 gives +1SP, and from his 5 SPD to 6 SPD gives +1 CI.

And with shotguns, sometimes going last ain't that bad

 

[Jasede]

That's not all CI is good for, though.

I don't remember the exact table but it was something like "A character with 25 CI gets 33 turns in the same time that a 10 CI character gets 10." - or something drastic like that.

 

[Shadenuat]

WE GOT IT ALREADY JASEDE

INITIATIVE IS GOOD

Doesn't matter for Scotchmo since he has all pts dumped into Luck and would never become a combat hobo machine you always dreamt of.

 

[Cyberarmy]

NPCs - with Scotchmo, why would you gp int/speed instead of boosting his terrible combat initiative?.

Advancement from 3 INT to 4 gives +1SP, and from his 5 SPD to 6 SPD gives +1 CI.

And with shotguns, sometimes going last ain't that bad

I hope you had Jackhammer there.

 

[Volourn]

Heh. I wish enemies would do that for me. They'll literally move ro opposites of me just when I wanted to throw a grenade or other explosive.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Scotchmo went crazy for me and ran into the middle of the machine gun dudes on the Prison farm. He was dead before I could clear them and get through to him. RIP brave hobo, you lived a scumbag but died the Ranger you always wanted to be

 

[Maculo]

You can get off a lot of headshots once you max your weapons skill and have Leadership bonuses.

The Character build I'm using for my current squad makes a great run through on Normal if you're a completionist. It's also viable on Hard, but the low Combat Initiative will hurt you.

Your build looks really fun, I am definitely going to try it out tonight.

 

[Yoshiyyahu]

Just finished a playthrough with a half-arsed squad I made, anybody got an OP squad list I can grab quickly to see how much better it would've been if I didn't have shit attributes?