Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

[Lacrymas]

You keep ice shard at rank 1 for the majority of the game, the important part is its upgrade.

 

[Sarathiour]

Thunderball is a crowd control skill, you don't use for the damage, but for the 5 seconds stuns.
Ice shard is for lategame build, though I don't know if it's better or worse than lightning bolt with cd reduction.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's literally not only for a lategame build. You have no other reliable dps skill when playing a non-pet-focused Druid for example. It isn't too mana hungry if you keep it at rank 1. It only ever starts to fall off in damage on the second difficulty, so you start pumping some points into it then.

 

[Sarathiour]

There is probably ain't going to be much difference between auto-attack and rank 1 icicle during a normal playthrough, hence why I don't really consider it. Is there someone around autistic enough to pull out the dps spreadsheet ?
TQ is good, but a replay isn't anywhere close to my current backlog.

 

[Lacrymas]

There is probably ain't going to be much difference between auto-attack and rank 1 icicle during a normal playthrough, hence why I don't really consider it. Is there someone around autistic enough to pull out the dps spreadsheet ?

You upgrade it with Torrent so you get a bunch of shards at once. I know because one of my most recent chars is a Druid with ice shards as the main damage dealing skill. You become a chain gun with good enough gear.

 

[Heinrich]

Isn't the problem with an ice shards build that it's only good in the lategame with those axes (of persephone or something) and dual wielding and nobody can ever be arsed to farm them?

 

[Lacrymas]

No, I leveled to 40 without issues and have no issues continuing past 40, but I did take my time to farm the Oracle set. It's surprisingly easy to farm because there aren't a lot of blue items in its level range.

 

[Lacrymas]

I've been playing my baby Pyromancer and it's quite clunky. You need +mastery/skills and +casting speed items for it to not be clunky. Flame Surge with maxed out Barrage isn't enough to reduce its cooldown to 0, so there's always this weird and awful micro delay between using it. I have the best possible gear for the level (25) and there are no +Earth mastery items at all at this level, especially compared to +Rogue ones f.e. It feels like the tree is actively pushing you towards a melee fire build because there are 0 good synergies with other spell trees unless you want to go rainbow caster or some shit. The new Neidan mastery seems to be the best one (I don't have the Eternal Embers anyway) because it has this super op defensive sustain, Aura of Tranquility, which reduces *all* damage taken. The other such sustains only reduce the damage of a single element, so there seems to be an aspect of power creep in the new expansions' masteries.

Also, I don't understand how this item works - Shard of the Elements. How do you trigger the 20% elemental damage boost? Can you trigger it on spells or is it only on weapon attacks?

 

[Sarathiour]

I'll give you the benefit of doubt for ice shard, but not flame surge is even remotely viable before late epic, unless anniversary massively overhauled it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Еverything is viable as long as you have the twink gear to support it. I'm almost done with my playthrough on normal and I've mostly been using Flame Surge. The problem isn't Flame Surge, it's survivability.

 

[Sarathiour]

Sure, if you got the gear, you could even clean it effortlessly with a bow despite not having any kind of synergy with your build. What I'm trying to say is that it's going to be pretty ineffective.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are definitely better and worse builds. My best character atm is actually that ice shard Druid. It has both damage and survivability options. My favourite character is a vitality-based caster Diviner, but it's very hit and miss. It destroys bosses like nobody's business but has immense trouble with ranged mobs and any mobs that can limit my movement.

 

[Saark]

Same devs as the people who made the AE and DLCs, since the original TQ devs left to make Grim Dawn a while ago. Still cautiously optimistic. Little gameplay stuff yet, only a handful of screenshots on the steam page.

 

[Lacrymas]

There's a separate thread about the sequel.

 

[Caim]

since the original TQ devs left to make Grim Dawn a while ago

No, Iron Lore outright collapsed just after the release of Dawn of War: Soulstorm, which kind of explains the quality of Soulstorm.

 

[Saark]

There's a separate thread about the sequel.

Couldn't find it originally cause I'm old and in the way, but it's here.

 

[Jinn]

Been playing this again for the first time since I played it on release due to the announcement of the sequel, and it remains for me one of the only games of this genre that can hold my attention. It's got some nice difficulty spikes, exploration tends to be more fun than most Diablo 2 clones (largely due to the hand-crafted world, I think), and the dual-class system is really smart.

I do hope the sequel deviates a fair amount, still. More interesting questing, more impactful combat, and more open in general. Less clicky-clicky combat overdose would be good too. Guess we'll see, but I doubt they're going to be allowed to deviate too drastically though.

EDIT: Interested to know which part of this post you find surprising, mediocrepoet.

 

[Eisen]

is this game worse or better than Grim Dawn?

 

[Heinrich]

I'd say with the recent GD update the pendulum has swung towards that one being slightly better again.
Edit: Really it's a point of preference: TQ looks better and is more coherently designed while GD gives you a lot options and most of the time comes ahead in terms of quality of life.

 

[Zlaja]

is this game worse or better than Grim Dawn?

TQ has better art style, while GD has more depth. I would say that they're both worth playing, and that it's better to start with TQ.

 

[Lacrymas]

The devotion tree kinda ruined GD's character building because a lot of the power of a build comes from the passives in the devotion tree and they fill the screen with overdone SFX. I much prefer the much cleaner TQ. However, I play GD more because it has more challenging content and more varied content in general.

 

[Late Bloomer]

This is sounding rather fun again. The DLC worth getting when on sale? The reviews are a mixed bag.

 

[Lacrymas]

The DLC worth getting when on sale?

It really depends. If you want more TQ content and don't overly care about the quality of said content, get them on sale. They aren't straight up bad, just mid, and they add 2 more masteries and 1 more row to all masteries. The abilities you get from them are very hit and miss, however. Some of them enable builds that were bad in the original (vitality caster in terms of the Spirit mastery), but others are literally useless.

 

[Cael]

The HP bloat is what killed it for me. When Hades mobs have more HP than the next tier difficulty Act 1 mobs, it was bad enough. When they added a whole bunch of even more power creep and HP bloat expansions after? No thanks.

 

[Peachcurl]

The DLC worth getting when on sale?

It really depends. If you want more TQ content and don't overly care about the quality of said content, get them on sale. They aren't straight up bad, just mid, and they add 2 more masteries and 1 more row to all masteries. The abilities you get from them are very hit and miss, however. Some of them enable builds that were bad in the original (vitality caster in terms of the Spirit mastery), but others are literally useless.

The quality of area design really went downhill in the later DLCs. The masteries are fine I guess. (stuff being useless was already a thing for the initial masteries)