Evie: The Battle Scythe

• Desroks wrote on 2011-05-06 09:54
  Ummmm.... 10 ap for trans. Not 15 o.o;
• TA wrote on 2011-05-06 10:03
  Really..? o.o... Hah... how about that... >_>...
  
  :fail:
  
  Sorry. All fixed now. Thanks!
• Desroks wrote on 2011-05-06 12:01

  Quote from TA;436254:

  If you don't, you may end up being forced to do much more of the main quest because Nyle will go into hiding until a you've done The Yeti, an Ancient Race and completed that part of the main quest. It takes 15 AP every time you use it and assuming you deal enough damage, you should get 100XP per use. Each "level" of it requires 2000XP.!

  
  
  It says it takes 15 AP, yet the calculations are for 10. Still a bit of fixing to do there :)
• TA wrote on 2011-05-06 12:36
  Ughh... dunno how that happened.
• xJac wrote on 2011-05-06 16:53

  Quote from TA;432516:

  I don't intend to ever test critical hit for myself. That, would require ruining my own character and it's not something I want to do.
  
  If it's really so needed by boat 6, then you'd think by that high of level that people would be able to make their own decisions and decide for themselves if they want it or not. My guide is just a guideline, after all. It's not a rock solid proclamation by Morrighan that must be followed.
  
  Besides, even if it did turn out beneficial 50+ then my advice given in another thread still stands since at a prior level ranking Critical Hit would be a waste when there's still other more important skills like Insane Reaper to rank. It's not like people are gonna have much else to rank at that point anyways, so they may as well make their own decision in that regard. But as it stands to reason, it would seem my advice as it is tends to be valid for a good 5/7th (71.43%) of the game's entire gameplay thus far. So, if people want to do it later on, that's fine. And because of that, my advice is just fine as it stands.

  
  
  It's really bothering me, as your reasoning is simply based on other's opinion (actually, just one single person), and you kept saying critical hit is bad even when you never try it out.
  
  I wasn't commenting on your priority list, I was commenting on your "DO NOT RANK Critical Hit" and the reasoning behind it.
  
  A person who saw your comment, and have critical hit rank, might decide to restart his/her character, just because the way you make it seems like critical hit is extremely bad. A person who prefers to solo, and solo only, will most likely spam LLR or LR all day long, will miss out the bonus damage from critical hit if they are following your guide. They don't need to be high level, lower level can be affected by it as well, since you put in the word, boat 2-3 onward, that's a huge range of levels.
  
  And to be honest, thinking that the whole "critical hit is bad" started merely from one player's opinion, without no one else saying the same thing, it's quite unreasonable to rule critical hit as "BAD" and "DO NOT RANK", isn't it?
  
  Look at Afkalmighty, he had critical hit ranked, his character is not ruined, is it? He did complain about occasions of knocking the enemy off and missing the magical part, but you can still finish off the monster with bloody thread/death label, don't you?
  
  You like to give pros/cons about a skill, but what's really troubling me is that, the cons you told is not correct. Mobs do get more dangerous on later boats, but critical hit will not hinder your gameplay, as it will knock them onto the ground, PREVENTING them to attack (if you played boat 6, you will know the preventing is very important, as trash mob is really fking dangerous, and the worst part is they don't sit there for you to kill them). Critical hit actually helps when mobs get more dangerous, not the other way around. Not to mention I rarely see critical hit sending mobs flying away, even at r9. Remember, Afkalmighty said it's CAN be a hindrance, he never said it's sure will or it's bad to rank critical hit.
  
  I was against critical hit at first, but after someone questioning me how I can comment on critical hit if I never experienced it, I decided to try it out.
  To my astonishment, I do not felt hindered at all, after ranking it to r9; in fact, it actually helps when I am soloing hidden, as well as trash mobs in later boats.
  
  
  You guide is really well-written, it's a shame you put Critical Hit as "Bad" just because one player said it can be a hinderance.
• TA wrote on 2011-05-06 17:37
  Well, it can bother you as much as you want. Really, that's nice.
  
  Thing is, I've replied to this same exact thing more times than I can count and to be quite honest, I'm just not going to anymore.
  
  In case you haven't figured it out by now, this entire guide is based on someone's opinion. Namely mine.
  
  Sure, the Critical Hit information was initially influenced by someone's post. But, I've seen the negative effects myself. I don't need to rank my Critical Hit to 9 to experience the effects of it.
  
  If you want to rank it, then more power to you. But I'm not going to recommend it in my guide.
  
  And that, would be the end of the discussion.
  
  Thus far I have done all of Boat 5. Up to this point, ranking Critical Hit would still have negative undesirable effects. None of the trash mobs thus far are hard, they're all pretty much a joke. Missing an Invisible Loom would be a real pain in the ass.
  
  I'll tell you what: Once I do Boat 6 I'll reassess my opinion on Critical Hit. If it turns out that trash mobs on Boat 6 and beyond are so insanely difficult and come in such waves that you would want to sacrifice an Invisible Loom for a knockback, then I'll revise my guide to reflect that Critical Hit can be beneficial Boat 6 and onwards and one might consider ranking it once they get up to that point.
  
  However as it stands, this has not happened yet. If it does, the guide will be revised. If it doesn't, then it won't. This guide is based off of my own opinion. Until my opinion is changed, it will remain. I'm not going to take someone else's opinion that conflicts with my own and put it in my guide. Nobody will know what to listen to and then it won't really be much of a guide then, now will it? "Rank Critical Hit" "Don't rank Critical Hit." What. No, there needs to be a definitive answer in a guide. Not a bunch of random conflicting controversial opinions. If people want to do more research on the matter, then that's on them. I'm sure they can find a couple dozen related extremely heated discussions on the topic, and they can form their own opinion at that point. But following my guide, they won't have been hurt for it, regardless of which side they decide to side with. You can always rank a skill. You can't unrank it.
  
  Now, I'm sorry that it's taken so long to get to this point and my guide is a bit behind on the current game. But, I've been unable to play for the past 3 months due to intermittent technical computer issues. I can't do anything about that. But, trust that it will be brought up to standards in short order.
  
  I play a god awful amount of time every day, but I'm not a robot. But fear not, it'll happen soon.
• xJac wrote on 2011-05-06 18:14
  It will help IF it happens, but the real thing is, it barely happens.
  
  I don't know where you get the idea of ranking critical hit will send mob flying off more often, it DOES NOT.
  
  You said it yourself, you have seen it happen on your character, how often is it? I can assure you it happen just as much as higher rank critical, because you can have a critical on upswing, and doesn't send the trash mob flying away. Very very few occasions would I see monster got sent away alive; most of the time monster got sent away because they're dead, not because of critical.
  
  The one thing, and one thing that really changed my mind about critical, is not whether or not critical hit will send mob disabled. It's the fact that having critical hit at r9, I am still unable to re-create a situation where I would send a mob flying, without killing it, only random time, like one upswing out of 30+ runs, would I get that thing to happen.
  
  
  First, you need to get it to happen, which is really rarely.
  Second, even when it happens, you don't lose so much from missing the magical smash, since you still have bloody thread, and disabling the mob for a period.
  Third, if you don't have it, you're lowering your damage output, knock down chances on boss and also elite mob, which exist in hero mode (I assume you're 50 or higher already).
• TA wrote on 2011-05-06 19:18
  I think I'll probably add Reverse Gravity tomorrow.
• Arendel wrote on 2011-05-06 21:52
  I know you said you'll wait until you can experience it for yourself before reconsidering your opinion, but this is just some food for thought for the crit debate in the meantime: a crit does not guarantee a knockback, and a knockback is not necessarily the result of a crit. Even if the difference in knockback rate was significant, I really don't see it as a huge detriment. As Jac has said, it's actually beneficial to knock trash mobs down in boat 6 (and presumably onward) because Goblin Spearmen and Goblin Artillerymen are not only ridiculously accurate but also are incredibly annoying when they land a hit since their attacks knock you back, interrupting combos and actually acting as a direct threat to your life. The argument that doing the same in turn to them is not as severe as this:
  

  But the benefit is very minimal from boats 2-3 onward as the normal mobs start to pose quite a danger themselves and missing an entire combo is really bad.

  For one thing, you would not miss the entire combo because the crit would only activate when you smash. I don't know how you play, but when I play scythe, I actually allow my normal attacks to hit trash enemies because they can get stunned anyway, so I'd still be adding physical damage into the mix (scythe Evie has some of the highest normal attack percentiles, so while most of her damage comes from smashes and finishers, her physical attacks aren't so weak that they don't add up over repeated combos). Let's say that at this point, my upswing on Invisible Loom did knock the enemy away. There are two possibilities in this scenario. One is that I would not be able to perform an extraction at all, so neither of the most damaging portions of my combo are added to my DPS. However, the enemy would still be knocked down, preventing it from hitting me for the time being and allowing me to either safely redirect my attention to other enemies closing in on me, or simply take the extra 2 seconds to restart my attack chain. The second possibility is that I would, in fact, be able to extract from grazing the upswing and pull off a Bloody Thread. While this would certainly not be as damaging as landing both Invisible Loom and Bloody Thread, the result would be more or less the same as in the first case: the enemy would be disabled for a time and the finisher would still stun and pull all threaded enemies together, giving me enough of an opening to continue my assault. For the argument that "not killing enemies and having them fly away = you'll end up being slowed down or possibly killed yourself" to work, you would have to assume that the player is not being aggressive and that other enemies are not being a threat at the same time.
  
  Also, boat 6 mixes Ogre Warriors into normal spawns, and they don't flinch. With this and boss fights in mind, there is still potential benefit to ranking Critical Hit if you consider that every little bit of damage helps in the long run.
  
  I do agree that it's not a huge priority compared to other things you can learn, but I don't think it's fair to say that it's "really bad" when the negative effects might only hinder you by a few seconds (if at all) and your only source for this is just a single person whose opinion is unjustifiably treated as the final word simply because of an appeal to authority (no offense to either you or him).
• TA wrote on 2011-05-06 23:57
  Like I said, I'm done talking about Critical Hit. And my "source" for this, is it happening to me in-game. The one who made us initially aware of the game mechanic is irrelevant. It's my opinion at this point.
  
  Oh and by the way, I don't know in what world something that [noparse]"hinder[s] you by a few seconds"[/noparse] isn't "really bad." But in my little world, it is. Why have a large chance to be hindered when you could just, oh I don't know... not rank it?
  
  If you rank it, you:
  1) Could miss out on most of your damage.
  2) Could miss out on all of your damage.
  3) Possibly do an insignificant abysmally low amount of physical damage with crit.
  4) Maybe knock something down.* See 1 & 2. This will use a large amount of stamina and yield no damage whatsoever and you can not choose the optimal time for it to go off, or not, as it were.
  5) Invest a massive amount of AP.
  
  You're trading damage for a chance to knockdown. Bottom line is, if you prefer crowd control, you might be a fan of it. If you prefer raw dps, or reliability, you probably won't be a fan of it.
  
  If you don't rank it, you:
  1) Don't have any significant chance to miss any of your attacks.
  2) Will have a slightly lower chance of knocking things down, but always deal damage from the skills you intended to use.
  3) Will have better control over your character and know what your character is going to do when you use its skills, not playing a lottery that could screw you over just as well as help you.
  
  It's more of a matter of personal player preference.
  
  edit: You know what? Fine.
  
  [SIZE="4"]Update![/SIZE]
  5/06/2011
  Added information to Critical Hit.
  Added an Extended Description to Critical Hit.
• xJac wrote on 2011-05-07 15:24
  Thank you! Awesome guide.
• Shirayuki wrote on 2011-05-07 20:57
  Haven't read this guide in a while, but it's looking pretty good now.
  
  Might wanna remove Stamina Recovery from the skills section though, since it isn't quite in the game anymore xD
• TA wrote on 2011-05-07 21:21
  Ah, right... good call.
• TA wrote on 2011-05-09 04:34
  [SIZE="4"]Update![/SIZE]
  5/08/2011
  Added SP: Reverse Gravity.
• Superlol wrote on 2011-05-09 06:08
  Thank you for this guide! Iv'e been using this guide since i started to play scythe evie (Just after it came out), so i just wanted to thank you for this really helpfull guide ^^...