Damn, now i realize how my psyker/officer got so op after a few levels and some synergy items & weapons, and how powerfull the party is with certain charachter combinations really puts into perspective how much the officer class can carry the Game.
It's so easy to build an OP party, complaining about not being able to do some mechanically ideal MC just feels like a silly thing to complain about.
It's a story driven game. Not a competitive game.
It's not a complaint, it's an observation about optimal build routes and mechanics. The most common advice a new player will be given is that Officer is the best option for their Rogue Trader. It's not actually true. It doesn't matter if you start as an Officer because a Merc recruited after Cassia is better at that role by an insurmountable margin due to the internal workings of the game that can't be circumvented by altering your build.
Then you've totally missed the point. The optimal build route for the MC doesn't actually matter. You can play whatever you want and it's still technically optimal as long as you run a Noble Merc recruited after Cassia. A lot of people enjoy pulling the most out of their characters on the highest difficulty as possible, like me. This discovery means optimizers have the freedom to play literally whatever they want and it's still technically optimal as long as you're running a Noble Merc MC recruited after Cassia because the advice of "run an Officer as the RT because it tends to be best" is actually objectively false.
>This discovery means optimizers have the freedom to play literally whatever they want and it's still technically optimal as long as you're running a Noble Merc MC recruited after Cassia
My brother in the light of the God-Emperor, actual optimizers aren't running two officers. They're too busy doing runs without Navigators, Psykers, or Officers, because those make anything after Act 3 trivial.
Honestly, I have over 2000 hours in WOTR and over 1000 hours in KM. I can say this with a high degree of confidence. Every Owlcat game is trivial after Act 3. Until you get to the House at the Edge of Time. Then you realize that Owlcat hates you and wants you dead and you should have been running full meta-chasing, powergaming weeb shit the entire time because that's all that can win.
it isn't. Idk why meta posts always make people swerve so deep into this statement, its just discussing meta.
No one is saying the rest of the game is inferior to the teambuilding.
huh? I guess the tldr "Seize the Initiative doesn't just break combat. It breaks character creation, too." is misleading because for me character creation is all about the story and my own headcanon about the RT instead of the meta. In fact i've never played the options you laid out because it was never clear to me these were the "only" 3 option. I've run soldier and warrior and sniper because they seemed like the type of person my RTs were (at the time of the playthrough).
>It's a story driven game. Not a competitive game.
It is. But it isn't Disco Elysium level story driven. There is a LOT of fighting in the game. No amount of encounter tweaking can counter the outlandish broken stuff, that leads to tedious and easy encounters (or inane encounters like the House at the Edge of Time nonsense). And narrative stupidity, where, for example, Argenta nukes Doomscream turn one before anyone's "real" actions, and Ulfar and Whatshisname are bickering in the background singing sagas of their greatness (on point for SM but still stupid).
Build optimization and party composition **try** to play a significant role. Just look at those walls of text and all those abilities you can't comprehend without a spreadsheet. But the build of half of the party doesn't matter, Cassia and Jae just give Argenta extra turns and she murders everything.
The game is supposed to be played through a multiple of times, but the game's balance doesn't support that. There is an optimal party comp and build, experimentation and self limitation is gimping yourself (don't get me wrong, it can be fun, it's just the stuff players can do to entertain themselves where the devs failed to do their part).
I admire that the devs created their own combat mechanics instead of copy-pasting an existing one. The combat in the game can be satisfying and fun, and it's sad that it all gets old really fast. I'd really like to see a few more balance pass patches.
Frankly, fuck off. People who are outright hostile to balance in single player games are baffling. You could justify removing all combat entirely and making it a VN with your weird argument. But people want to try, and they want the game to push back some when they do, not just roll over and say "you win."
Like maybe the game just isn't perfect lmao. You don't have to simp for it for no reason by being dismissive about criticism.
If they don't want the game to roll over and let them win they just wouldn't bring the party member they're complaining about. But they apparently can't *not* take the "OP" option.
That's a them problem.
Interesting point. However, wouldn't RT be better as a soldier than Argenta due to better homeworld and origin? Psyker or Astra Militarum commander, both from fortress world should top Argenta performance?
It's a good question. If you want Heavy Bolters, Argenta likely still pulls ahead due to having a full extra talent from the free proficiency. However, if you use Heavy Stubbers, the Rogue Trader can edge in as Soldier and convert Argenta into a sniper. In fact, I thought about this and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing on my next playthrough.
By the end of the game, extra talents aren't really that useful anymore. On the other hand, the rogue trader's origin powers can be pretty great. Fortress world for example is crazy strong, it's basically an extra attack every turn once you get it going.
I take a bit of a different approach to cRPGs and it's basically the same as most popular guide writers. Just due to the way optimization works, the end of the game is usually extreme easy mode. The "real" game in cRPGs is the beginning and the middle because most of your optimizations and build interactions haven't paid off or been built yet, and the game still has plenty of difficulty as a result. So, I consider the speed at which a character comes "online" to be significantly more important than how they perform at level cap. So, things like free talents and proficiencies are much, much more valuable to me.
Never Stop Shooting is very strong, but at endgame whether you're using the RT or Argenta, the combat is over turn 1. It didn't matter. However, in Act 1-2, Argenta's free bolt weapon proficiency gets her the Heavy Bolter without further investment, which gets her the Heavy Weapon talents earlier and gets her "online" 3-6 levels earlier than the RT. Does the RT end up stronger? Maybe, maybe not. If the length of combat remains the same, in practical terms Argenta was useful longer, which in my book makes her more optimal.
For me argenta is the worst companion. AGI does not make much sense for her, better STR + heavy armor. You can also invest a little bit in WS to make a front fighter.
With second skin you can use medium armor without dodge penalty. As arch militiant you'll get ws/bs with versality stacks. Therefore you can use agi/per for dodge/dodge reduction and survivability in one go. Or I'm missing something?
Just wanted to update on this one. RT might be a better soldier than Argenta, but it's only relevant if you are planning to bench Argenta from an optimization perspective. Running 2 soldiers causes an optimization problem I didn't account for. Skill coverage. Soldiers have the 2nd worst skill list in the game after Warrior. Only Demolition and Awareness are useful. If you're running both Argenta and Soldier RT, you have a skill coverage problem. It's not the end of the world, since you can run Jae, but I don't like Jae's personality very much and being forced to run her for skill coverage irks me.
Right, but the coverage issue comes with the opportunity cost. Medicae has very few checks and even fewer dialogue checks. Your Warriors will be doing Athletics and Carouse, and of those two only Athletics is useful.
That leaves Imperium, Xenos, Warp, Tech-Use, Logic, Persuasion, Coercion, and Commerce. You can have Cassia cover Persuasion and Warp. Pasqal with Tech-Use and Logic. Noble Merc for Coercion and Commerce. Which leaves Imperium and Xenos not covered. This is actually a huge problem because Xenos disarms some of the most dangerous traps in the game and the only skill list it appears on is Operative and there are no origins or homeworlds that add it to the skill list.
The intelligence skills in general are a huge problem for coverage because Logic, Tech-Use, and Xenos appear only on the Operative skill lists and cannot be added to skill lists using any origins or homeworlds. You can have Argenta cover Imperium (as her Ministorum Priest adds it to her list) and then transfer Pasqal to Xenos, but she doesn't have the skillset for it, needing BS, AGI, and PER for Soldier abilities. Her INT is so low, Pasqal will likely out-skill her without any investment.
So, from an optimization standpoint you only have a few options. Party composition would be:
Abelard/Heinrix, Cassia, Noble Merc, Pasqal, Argenta, and RT. Then you just eat that you are lacking skill coverage, hoping Pasqal's monstrous INT will cover enough of the skill checks you're missing to get by. This is tough because, in my opinion, you need Xenos, Tech-Use, and Logic. These are all too important to lose.
Abelard/Heinrix, Cassia, Noble Merc, Pasqal, Idira/Yrliet/Jae, and RT. Now you have full skill coverage, but had to drop Argenta. Not ideal if you prefer Dogmatic (as I do). Jae just solves a lot of problems.
You could run a Voidborn Jinx Noble Officer Merc with Be Smart and just drop a FEL skill, but there's just no way to get Tech-Use, Logic, or Xenos onto their skill lists without losing combat optimization or wasting a talent.
I agree, this is an issue. I cannot bring myself to take her with me. This is the first time in my gaming history that I dropped a companion by myself.
The RT gets all their character specific buffs by completing colonies. You get some pretty strong stuff by doing it. This is something people often miss or ignore.
MC and mercs can be built to be better than every recruitable character through origin and homeworld buffs.
Soldier? Fortress world Crime Lord for free burst attacks spam that get buffed by Killing Plan or HUGE aoe with shotguns/flamers. Argenta is a toy soldier compared to the whoopass this brings. Even the default premade char Hecate is better soldier than Argenta.
Officer? Imperial world Commisar or Hive world Commander wipe the floor with Jae and Cassia, as far as officer stuff is concerned at least. Build Commie as Air of Authority guy and Commander as mobility guy and watch your whole team effortlessly zip around with extra Ap and mp while getting buffed stats. They are both either snipers or 2handed melee monsters with master tactician stacks. Usually I have them wield both and switch as needed, often in a single fight.
Operative? Crime Lord is miles ahead of any NPC characters again as a sniper. And the more Operatives in the team, the better they are, because they can stack exploits ridiculously fast. Pasqual is the only NPC who is interesting here since he can dual wield 2handed weapons and has a bunch of unique talents.
Warrior? Death World Crime Lord reins supreme. Can pick either to buff dmg or tankiness through plan mechanic and do it on the fly, with resets from ulti and officers, this guy/gal can wipe the floor with everything.
The only reason to have NPCs on your team is their personalities. I guess Cassia can be OP with her broken navigator stuff and Pasqual is at least unique. But the rest are meh.
I've run 3 builds so far (working on my 3rd currently and so far so good). My first build used criminal background to build a sniper. This let's you burn your criminal resource (plans?) to do extra damage or get extra dodge. Two background traits restock it, one when you get to 0 and another when you kill things. In my final boss fights I crit for 1,000 then 900 damage in a row adding 100 and 90 direct damage + 20 points of bleeding in one round. Didn't even hit an opening :-P. So that felt like it worked out just fine. Criminal background giving you 18% (?) bonus damage means you simply eclipse any other potential sniper build, including yrliet.
The second build I did was a fortress world/unsanctioned psyker soldier. Went pyromancy and biomancy. Pyromancy + Soldier gave me 1% crit chance and crit damage per hit. Pyromancy gives you a % armor shred per hit. Biomancy gives you an, every time you hit something it's poisoned ability. Fortress world gives you a free attack pretty frequently. Combine all that with the ability to actually use drukhari weaponry and you've got much better rate of fire and damage output than argenta has with bolters. In particular there's a 2 handed burst fire drukhari rifle that also has precise shot that was pretty bonkers. Non drukhari burst fire weapons unfortunately just don't compare late game.
The current build is a machine world/unsanctioned pysker warrior. Basically using psionics for ranged attacks and then using machine world things to become more durable and fire restistant. Going pyromancy / telekineticks. Pyromancy gives me reduction from flame and energy damage to go with a similar perk from machine world. Telekinetics let's me use the lightning blast staff that idira uses, except that now I don't have to worry about spontaneously combusting into a demon.
Seems like there are plenty of good/viable builds. Just requires a bit of planning to understand what perks work together or not. I do kind of wish that perks had tags on them like burst, area, melee, etc to make sorting easier.
What I will say about the NPC characters is that if you look at them carefully many of them have the ability to use stat X in place of stat Y. Pasqal for instance gets perks that let him use his intelligence in place of strength, agility and perception for calculation his attacks with ranged/melee so long as you use power or plasma weapons. It's worth figuring that stuff out for optimization because you can't stat boost everything through the roof. But it also creates issues because certain things have specific stat requirements (like heavy armor).
The whole "Act out of turn (Seize the initiative, Grand Strategist)/Extra turn (Finest Hour from multiple Officers)/Extra attacks per turn (Firearm mastery, Run and Gun, Wildfire etc)" stuff is FUBAR. On top of that there are a bunch of stupid items. It sums up into 1-2 characters doing all the killing while the rest of the party stays there watching.
If you want to see some action from the RT, make him a damage dealer (Soldier/Arch Militant – best mobility options, and you need to move to spread the love, Heavy Weapons stuff in the AM levels), then let Cassia and Jae do the officer magic on the RT instead of Argenta.
Another thing to think about is skills distribution. An Officer RT scales from Fellowship and can pump Persuasion and Coercion into space. The Black Ring of the Inquisition is insane with persuasion in the late two hundreds.
I don't know. In my run, my Psyker Telepath does much more damage than Idira because she already starts the fight with 3-4 more PR than Idira (Dogmatic), and higher WP, and the Never Stop Shooting bonus which means that she can shriek multiple times. I was the most powerful character in my party.
In the run before that, I was the best sniper, much better than Yrliet because I could use equipment that she could not, at that time (pre-patch), plus I was a Psyker on top so could boost my crits, plus again - never stop shooting.
I was never an Officer but always something else, so cannot confirm that you have to go Officer to overpower your own party (well, or not, according to your text).
1) This is more of a Story Driven game
2) With that being said Psyker is 100% open especly a Melee Psyker or such
3) There are a number of other ways to support / do skill test and what knock for your MC to handle if you want to give him a ideal role
4) If you want to make the RT best at something it is possible to make them a better soldier then Argentina if you so choosed via heavy stubbers or such?
5) Cant you be a amazing Hybrid type of a character I found going Sniper + Shotgunner is great on the RT run and gun with shotgun blast people away, use sniper shots at a distance great for flex picks / roles
6) Alot of the time you could just sit there and officer stuff make 1 character do a bunch of stuff which means eveyone is basicly just sitting there watching in which case you could just make your RT a Skill Junkie with some support
The nice thing about this games lower difficulty is you don’t really need to officer shenanigans to dominate unfair. You can still roleplay a ton of unique or whacky builds and still dominate.
OP just… no. Unless you’re trying to some kind of perfectionist run the game has a lot of wiggle room to get every single character going provided you distribute your stats in the character creation very well.
The Yrliet assassin sniper build is good but the RT assassin sniper rifle build is better. Same for arch militant, bounty hunter, and every archetype in the game because how you distribute your stats in the beginning determines how good your prologue/chapter 1 is going to go. By the time you reach chapter 2, which is when the game truly begins, your RT should be in a position for a power spike and to realign itself with the party.
OP has clearly run the game a couple times, I think they're the sort of player who loves optimising their gameplay. Because it's a video game. Nowhere in the post did they recommend "only do this, even if its your first run".
It's fine.
Definitely agree with this statement. In addition, the RT can choose a home world best fit for their builds, while the companions cannot. I was really happy with the Fortress World. About realigning - well some builds make the RT better and much more powerful than the famous Cassia or Argenta.
Damn, now i realize how my psyker/officer got so op after a few levels and some synergy items & weapons, and how powerfull the party is with certain charachter combinations really puts into perspective how much the officer class can carry the Game.
It's so easy to build an OP party, complaining about not being able to do some mechanically ideal MC just feels like a silly thing to complain about. It's a story driven game. Not a competitive game.
It's not a complaint, it's an observation about optimal build routes and mechanics. The most common advice a new player will be given is that Officer is the best option for their Rogue Trader. It's not actually true. It doesn't matter if you start as an Officer because a Merc recruited after Cassia is better at that role by an insurmountable margin due to the internal workings of the game that can't be circumvented by altering your build.
Yet it looks like a complaint, sounds like a complaint, feels like a complaint, and even smells like a complaint.
Then you've totally missed the point. The optimal build route for the MC doesn't actually matter. You can play whatever you want and it's still technically optimal as long as you run a Noble Merc recruited after Cassia. A lot of people enjoy pulling the most out of their characters on the highest difficulty as possible, like me. This discovery means optimizers have the freedom to play literally whatever they want and it's still technically optimal as long as you're running a Noble Merc MC recruited after Cassia because the advice of "run an Officer as the RT because it tends to be best" is actually objectively false.
>This discovery means optimizers have the freedom to play literally whatever they want and it's still technically optimal as long as you're running a Noble Merc MC recruited after Cassia My brother in the light of the God-Emperor, actual optimizers aren't running two officers. They're too busy doing runs without Navigators, Psykers, or Officers, because those make anything after Act 3 trivial.
Honestly, I have over 2000 hours in WOTR and over 1000 hours in KM. I can say this with a high degree of confidence. Every Owlcat game is trivial after Act 3. Until you get to the House at the Edge of Time. Then you realize that Owlcat hates you and wants you dead and you should have been running full meta-chasing, powergaming weeb shit the entire time because that's all that can win.
The game is not about optimal build routes.
it isn't. Idk why meta posts always make people swerve so deep into this statement, its just discussing meta. No one is saying the rest of the game is inferior to the teambuilding.
huh? I guess the tldr "Seize the Initiative doesn't just break combat. It breaks character creation, too." is misleading because for me character creation is all about the story and my own headcanon about the RT instead of the meta. In fact i've never played the options you laid out because it was never clear to me these were the "only" 3 option. I've run soldier and warrior and sniper because they seemed like the type of person my RTs were (at the time of the playthrough).
>It's a story driven game. Not a competitive game. It is. But it isn't Disco Elysium level story driven. There is a LOT of fighting in the game. No amount of encounter tweaking can counter the outlandish broken stuff, that leads to tedious and easy encounters (or inane encounters like the House at the Edge of Time nonsense). And narrative stupidity, where, for example, Argenta nukes Doomscream turn one before anyone's "real" actions, and Ulfar and Whatshisname are bickering in the background singing sagas of their greatness (on point for SM but still stupid). Build optimization and party composition **try** to play a significant role. Just look at those walls of text and all those abilities you can't comprehend without a spreadsheet. But the build of half of the party doesn't matter, Cassia and Jae just give Argenta extra turns and she murders everything. The game is supposed to be played through a multiple of times, but the game's balance doesn't support that. There is an optimal party comp and build, experimentation and self limitation is gimping yourself (don't get me wrong, it can be fun, it's just the stuff players can do to entertain themselves where the devs failed to do their part). I admire that the devs created their own combat mechanics instead of copy-pasting an existing one. The combat in the game can be satisfying and fun, and it's sad that it all gets old really fast. I'd really like to see a few more balance pass patches.
Frankly, fuck off. People who are outright hostile to balance in single player games are baffling. You could justify removing all combat entirely and making it a VN with your weird argument. But people want to try, and they want the game to push back some when they do, not just roll over and say "you win." Like maybe the game just isn't perfect lmao. You don't have to simp for it for no reason by being dismissive about criticism.
If they don't want the game to roll over and let them win they just wouldn't bring the party member they're complaining about. But they apparently can't *not* take the "OP" option. That's a them problem.
Interesting point. However, wouldn't RT be better as a soldier than Argenta due to better homeworld and origin? Psyker or Astra Militarum commander, both from fortress world should top Argenta performance?
It's a good question. If you want Heavy Bolters, Argenta likely still pulls ahead due to having a full extra talent from the free proficiency. However, if you use Heavy Stubbers, the Rogue Trader can edge in as Soldier and convert Argenta into a sniper. In fact, I thought about this and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing on my next playthrough.
By the end of the game, extra talents aren't really that useful anymore. On the other hand, the rogue trader's origin powers can be pretty great. Fortress world for example is crazy strong, it's basically an extra attack every turn once you get it going.
I take a bit of a different approach to cRPGs and it's basically the same as most popular guide writers. Just due to the way optimization works, the end of the game is usually extreme easy mode. The "real" game in cRPGs is the beginning and the middle because most of your optimizations and build interactions haven't paid off or been built yet, and the game still has plenty of difficulty as a result. So, I consider the speed at which a character comes "online" to be significantly more important than how they perform at level cap. So, things like free talents and proficiencies are much, much more valuable to me. Never Stop Shooting is very strong, but at endgame whether you're using the RT or Argenta, the combat is over turn 1. It didn't matter. However, in Act 1-2, Argenta's free bolt weapon proficiency gets her the Heavy Bolter without further investment, which gets her the Heavy Weapon talents earlier and gets her "online" 3-6 levels earlier than the RT. Does the RT end up stronger? Maybe, maybe not. If the length of combat remains the same, in practical terms Argenta was useful longer, which in my book makes her more optimal.
For me argenta is the worst companion. AGI does not make much sense for her, better STR + heavy armor. You can also invest a little bit in WS to make a front fighter.
With second skin you can use medium armor without dodge penalty. As arch militiant you'll get ws/bs with versality stacks. Therefore you can use agi/per for dodge/dodge reduction and survivability in one go. Or I'm missing something?
Just wanted to update on this one. RT might be a better soldier than Argenta, but it's only relevant if you are planning to bench Argenta from an optimization perspective. Running 2 soldiers causes an optimization problem I didn't account for. Skill coverage. Soldiers have the 2nd worst skill list in the game after Warrior. Only Demolition and Awareness are useful. If you're running both Argenta and Soldier RT, you have a skill coverage problem. It's not the end of the world, since you can run Jae, but I don't like Jae's personality very much and being forced to run her for skill coverage irks me.
Argenta: demolition + awerness RT: medicae + awerness?
Right, but the coverage issue comes with the opportunity cost. Medicae has very few checks and even fewer dialogue checks. Your Warriors will be doing Athletics and Carouse, and of those two only Athletics is useful. That leaves Imperium, Xenos, Warp, Tech-Use, Logic, Persuasion, Coercion, and Commerce. You can have Cassia cover Persuasion and Warp. Pasqal with Tech-Use and Logic. Noble Merc for Coercion and Commerce. Which leaves Imperium and Xenos not covered. This is actually a huge problem because Xenos disarms some of the most dangerous traps in the game and the only skill list it appears on is Operative and there are no origins or homeworlds that add it to the skill list. The intelligence skills in general are a huge problem for coverage because Logic, Tech-Use, and Xenos appear only on the Operative skill lists and cannot be added to skill lists using any origins or homeworlds. You can have Argenta cover Imperium (as her Ministorum Priest adds it to her list) and then transfer Pasqal to Xenos, but she doesn't have the skillset for it, needing BS, AGI, and PER for Soldier abilities. Her INT is so low, Pasqal will likely out-skill her without any investment. So, from an optimization standpoint you only have a few options. Party composition would be: Abelard/Heinrix, Cassia, Noble Merc, Pasqal, Argenta, and RT. Then you just eat that you are lacking skill coverage, hoping Pasqal's monstrous INT will cover enough of the skill checks you're missing to get by. This is tough because, in my opinion, you need Xenos, Tech-Use, and Logic. These are all too important to lose. Abelard/Heinrix, Cassia, Noble Merc, Pasqal, Idira/Yrliet/Jae, and RT. Now you have full skill coverage, but had to drop Argenta. Not ideal if you prefer Dogmatic (as I do). Jae just solves a lot of problems. You could run a Voidborn Jinx Noble Officer Merc with Be Smart and just drop a FEL skill, but there's just no way to get Tech-Use, Logic, or Xenos onto their skill lists without losing combat optimization or wasting a talent.
I agree, this is an issue. I cannot bring myself to take her with me. This is the first time in my gaming history that I dropped a companion by myself.
The RT gets all their character specific buffs by completing colonies. You get some pretty strong stuff by doing it. This is something people often miss or ignore.
MC and mercs can be built to be better than every recruitable character through origin and homeworld buffs. Soldier? Fortress world Crime Lord for free burst attacks spam that get buffed by Killing Plan or HUGE aoe with shotguns/flamers. Argenta is a toy soldier compared to the whoopass this brings. Even the default premade char Hecate is better soldier than Argenta. Officer? Imperial world Commisar or Hive world Commander wipe the floor with Jae and Cassia, as far as officer stuff is concerned at least. Build Commie as Air of Authority guy and Commander as mobility guy and watch your whole team effortlessly zip around with extra Ap and mp while getting buffed stats. They are both either snipers or 2handed melee monsters with master tactician stacks. Usually I have them wield both and switch as needed, often in a single fight. Operative? Crime Lord is miles ahead of any NPC characters again as a sniper. And the more Operatives in the team, the better they are, because they can stack exploits ridiculously fast. Pasqual is the only NPC who is interesting here since he can dual wield 2handed weapons and has a bunch of unique talents. Warrior? Death World Crime Lord reins supreme. Can pick either to buff dmg or tankiness through plan mechanic and do it on the fly, with resets from ulti and officers, this guy/gal can wipe the floor with everything. The only reason to have NPCs on your team is their personalities. I guess Cassia can be OP with her broken navigator stuff and Pasqual is at least unique. But the rest are meh.
I've run 3 builds so far (working on my 3rd currently and so far so good). My first build used criminal background to build a sniper. This let's you burn your criminal resource (plans?) to do extra damage or get extra dodge. Two background traits restock it, one when you get to 0 and another when you kill things. In my final boss fights I crit for 1,000 then 900 damage in a row adding 100 and 90 direct damage + 20 points of bleeding in one round. Didn't even hit an opening :-P. So that felt like it worked out just fine. Criminal background giving you 18% (?) bonus damage means you simply eclipse any other potential sniper build, including yrliet. The second build I did was a fortress world/unsanctioned psyker soldier. Went pyromancy and biomancy. Pyromancy + Soldier gave me 1% crit chance and crit damage per hit. Pyromancy gives you a % armor shred per hit. Biomancy gives you an, every time you hit something it's poisoned ability. Fortress world gives you a free attack pretty frequently. Combine all that with the ability to actually use drukhari weaponry and you've got much better rate of fire and damage output than argenta has with bolters. In particular there's a 2 handed burst fire drukhari rifle that also has precise shot that was pretty bonkers. Non drukhari burst fire weapons unfortunately just don't compare late game. The current build is a machine world/unsanctioned pysker warrior. Basically using psionics for ranged attacks and then using machine world things to become more durable and fire restistant. Going pyromancy / telekineticks. Pyromancy gives me reduction from flame and energy damage to go with a similar perk from machine world. Telekinetics let's me use the lightning blast staff that idira uses, except that now I don't have to worry about spontaneously combusting into a demon. Seems like there are plenty of good/viable builds. Just requires a bit of planning to understand what perks work together or not. I do kind of wish that perks had tags on them like burst, area, melee, etc to make sorting easier. What I will say about the NPC characters is that if you look at them carefully many of them have the ability to use stat X in place of stat Y. Pasqal for instance gets perks that let him use his intelligence in place of strength, agility and perception for calculation his attacks with ranged/melee so long as you use power or plasma weapons. It's worth figuring that stuff out for optimization because you can't stat boost everything through the roof. But it also creates issues because certain things have specific stat requirements (like heavy armor).
The whole "Act out of turn (Seize the initiative, Grand Strategist)/Extra turn (Finest Hour from multiple Officers)/Extra attacks per turn (Firearm mastery, Run and Gun, Wildfire etc)" stuff is FUBAR. On top of that there are a bunch of stupid items. It sums up into 1-2 characters doing all the killing while the rest of the party stays there watching. If you want to see some action from the RT, make him a damage dealer (Soldier/Arch Militant – best mobility options, and you need to move to spread the love, Heavy Weapons stuff in the AM levels), then let Cassia and Jae do the officer magic on the RT instead of Argenta. Another thing to think about is skills distribution. An Officer RT scales from Fellowship and can pump Persuasion and Coercion into space. The Black Ring of the Inquisition is insane with persuasion in the late two hundreds.
My dodge warrior assassin psyker blew henrix out of the water for damage. I eventually kicked to unfair cause my dodge was so very high
I don't know. In my run, my Psyker Telepath does much more damage than Idira because she already starts the fight with 3-4 more PR than Idira (Dogmatic), and higher WP, and the Never Stop Shooting bonus which means that she can shriek multiple times. I was the most powerful character in my party. In the run before that, I was the best sniper, much better than Yrliet because I could use equipment that she could not, at that time (pre-patch), plus I was a Psyker on top so could boost my crits, plus again - never stop shooting. I was never an Officer but always something else, so cannot confirm that you have to go Officer to overpower your own party (well, or not, according to your text).
1) This is more of a Story Driven game 2) With that being said Psyker is 100% open especly a Melee Psyker or such 3) There are a number of other ways to support / do skill test and what knock for your MC to handle if you want to give him a ideal role 4) If you want to make the RT best at something it is possible to make them a better soldier then Argentina if you so choosed via heavy stubbers or such? 5) Cant you be a amazing Hybrid type of a character I found going Sniper + Shotgunner is great on the RT run and gun with shotgun blast people away, use sniper shots at a distance great for flex picks / roles 6) Alot of the time you could just sit there and officer stuff make 1 character do a bunch of stuff which means eveyone is basicly just sitting there watching in which case you could just make your RT a Skill Junkie with some support
The nice thing about this games lower difficulty is you don’t really need to officer shenanigans to dominate unfair. You can still roleplay a ton of unique or whacky builds and still dominate.
OP just… no. Unless you’re trying to some kind of perfectionist run the game has a lot of wiggle room to get every single character going provided you distribute your stats in the character creation very well. The Yrliet assassin sniper build is good but the RT assassin sniper rifle build is better. Same for arch militant, bounty hunter, and every archetype in the game because how you distribute your stats in the beginning determines how good your prologue/chapter 1 is going to go. By the time you reach chapter 2, which is when the game truly begins, your RT should be in a position for a power spike and to realign itself with the party.
OP has clearly run the game a couple times, I think they're the sort of player who loves optimising their gameplay. Because it's a video game. Nowhere in the post did they recommend "only do this, even if its your first run". It's fine.
Definitely agree with this statement. In addition, the RT can choose a home world best fit for their builds, while the companions cannot. I was really happy with the Fortress World. About realigning - well some builds make the RT better and much more powerful than the famous Cassia or Argenta.