|
Okay, so I know that kineticists treat their blasts as a weapon for things like Weapon Focus and Point Blank Shot. But I just got to thinking, what about Rapid Shot and Snap Shot? Could a kineticist take Rapid Shot to allow 2 blasts to be fired as a full round action? And would the Snap Shot combat feat allow a kineticist to threaten with their kinetic blast? If so, I think I know what my next couple feats will be on Kahel.
|
|
Says they count as a weapon for feats "such as Weapon Focus", not just specifically weapon focus. In fact, pulled directly from page 11 of Occult Adventures:
Kinetic blasts count as a type of weapon
for the purpose of feats such as Weapon Focus. The kineticist
is never considered to be wielding or gripping the kinetic
blast (regardless of effects from form infusions; see Infusion
on page 12), and she can’t use Vital Strike feats with kinetic
blasts.
This is what allows point blank shot (and I presume point blank mastery) to work with kinetic blast. Thus my question. It's a rule interaction I hadn't considered before. In large part due to not paying much attention to rapid shot, and being unaware of the snap shot feat. I usually play melee types such as a monk or sorcerers.
I'm fairly certain that kineticists don't normally get multiple attacks without the Rapid Blast infusion. But hadn't considered rapid shot before, so hadn't looked into it. Thus not being sure if rapid shot would do anything for a kineticist beyond granting access to snap shot. Or if snap shot works with kinetic blasts. I would assume it does since kinetic blasts count as a ranged weapon for the purpose of feats. But again, unsure.
The primary argument against stuff like rapid shot and snap shot is that the elemental annihilator has abilities that specifically grant you the ability to use those feats with its special blasts.
Which means it HAS to grant you that ability in order to make use of those feats. The system has to give you that ability, since you do not have it by default.
And balance wise, you can see... they only allow rapid shot because your blast was reduced to 1d8+con+archetype damage bonus, rather than #d6+#+con+elemental overflow.
FURTHERMORE- elemental annhilator has to specifically grant you the ability to make normal AoOs, even if you are talking about the melee blast. Which again- implies that you don't have the ability to make AoO blasts outside of the whip. So snap shot is out of the question too.
This all falls on the idea- these are spell like abilities that cost a standard action at the least. So you can't do the extra attack stuff, since it would need extra casting.
|
|
Hence my asking. When unsure, I prefer to go to those more knowledgeable. Since I've never used those feats before, I'd wanted to confirm or deny my initial impression. It's not like the wording in the rules is all that clear regarding exactly what feats kinetic blast does work with. Just gives a general "counts as a weapon for feats, but isn't considered wielded". The 'not considered wielded' was the main reason I didn't think snap shot would work, but wasn't positive.
Then again, there are often rules which have vague wording due to the same verbiage being used for multiple meanings. Maybe future printings should include a list of what feats do work with Kinetic Blast?
For example, the devs say that Deadly Aim works with a kinetic blast. But Vital Strike is specifically called out as not working with a kinetic blast. Presumably this is for the same reason they always deal full damage to swarms. Namely because they involve a considerable amount of elemental matter, so the precision needed for vital strike isn't possible. Yet the precision needed for deadly aim is possible? Makes me wonder how you precisely target weak points with a torrent of water or a good sized boulder. :)
Ruling out Vital Strike has to do with the action required, not precision.
|
There are lots of feats to choose from. I will start my first kineticist soon and these are what ive found so far, In no particular order: pointblank, precise shot, toughness, weapon focus, improved critical, elemental focus, greater elemental focus, deadly aim, extra wild talent, expanded meta kinesis, delay blast.
More options than i thought, but still not a ton.
|
|
I can think of uses for delay blast. Any situation similar to, enemies are coming or are behind that door (possibly 480' away). Use impale and you can shoot right through the door with a full gather power of nastiness. If enemies show up earlier than 5 rounds, you can unleash it as just a standard action - not to shabby.
Deadly aim seems weaker than improved critical, the damage bonus is not great on one shot a round and comes with a hefty penalty.
Not sure if either fits into a feat slot all that well.
I will probably go pointblank, precise shot, improved initiative, weapon focus, expanded metakinesis, extra wild talent...
There are lots of feats to choose from. I will start my first kineticist soon and these are what ive found so far, In no particular order: pointblank, precise shot, toughness, weapon focus, improved critical, elemental focus, greater elemental focus, deadly aim, extra wild talent, expanded meta kinesis, delay blast.
More options than i thought, but still not a ton.
Toughness is an "if I have nothing else to get" feat. I would skip imp crit, 20x2 just isn't worth improving on. Ability focus > elemental focus + greater elemental focus. Deadly aim is not worth the accuracy decrease, its good for archers because they get the dmg increase on each arrow but kineticist only get the +dmg once.
|
|
Toughness is an "if I have nothing else to get" feat. I would skip imp crit, 20x2 just isn't worth improving on. Ability focus > elemental focus + greater elemental focus. Deadly aim is not worth the accuracy decrease, its good for archers because they get the dmg increase on each arrow but kineticist only get the +dmg once.There are lots of feats to choose from. I will start my first kineticist soon and these are what ive found so far, In no particular order: pointblank, precise shot, toughness, weapon focus, improved critical, elemental focus, greater elemental focus, deadly aim, extra wild talent, expanded meta kinesis, delay blast.
More options than i thought, but still not a ton.
If i can get away with ability focus(kinetic blast) it does seem golden. I had passed it over thinking that wouldnt work.
Kineticist is one of the least tanky classes in the game because of burn.
Hardly.
You can carefully decide how you spend burn. The usual goal is to arrange things so you can shoot your blast without using burn through various class features. Going nova is only something you do when you 'HAVE' to.
So what do you use your burn on? Things to make you tank-y of course. Earth users are the archetypal users of this strategy- what you lose in health, you gain back in DR. And that DR will repeatedly save your life from various enemies time and again throughout the day.
Water has somehting a bit similar with AC, and Aether practically doesn't feel burn at all (since you get 0.5 temp hp per 1 hp- it kinda halves the burn in a lot of cases)
side note: does elemental focus even apply to kineticists? They don't use spells, they use spell like abilities. That could be enough of a difference to break the feat combo. At least if I am remembering the 'no, SLAs aren't spell casting unless the option calls for a specific spell that the SLA copies' faq right.
as you get higher in level you want some burn in your pool to give you the bonus to hit and damage.
Yes. And you should burn it on things that make you tanky. Such as twice the amount of DR than invulnerable barbarians enjoy. And aether only feels minimal damage from burn since it gets half of the health back (albeit in an inferior form).
And the bonuses from overflow actually help to reduce the bleedout from burn. Since you get a +2 to con at 3 burn, you get extra health. That extra health basically counteracts the burn gained by going from 2 burn to 3 burn. So if you have 2 burn, there is little to no reason not to grab 3 burn (except for wanting to save it to use as part of a painless nova on a blast).
Generally, I would try to get enough bonuses to hp so I feel like I still have the hp of a 14 con character after grabbing my burn. So let the burn you spend go towards making yourself tanky.
Even fire users should probably look for a second level by level 15 (with earth being an obvious choice since it lets you do lava blasts that stay in theme, and you can grab DR with expanded defense).
Burn helps to mitigate your tankiness, but it never fully removes it unless you allow it to.
Is there anything like the "powerful sneak" ability for kineticists? It sounds a lot more passing than deadly aim or the like.
Powerful Sneak (and its successor) has been mathematically proven to be a downgrade. The ability actually makes you worse at doing damage!
As for tanking, the only class I've seen do it better is a chained summoner with the synthesist archetype.
I've played enough kineticists to know that, unless you're a wasteful idiot, you can max out most of your class abilities with burn, and STILL have more left over effective hit points than the beefiest member of the party.
(One trick is to take Toughness and retrain your hit points; those really takes the sting out of burn.)
|
Powerful Sneak (and its successor) has been mathematically proven to be a downgrade. The ability actually makes you worse at doing damage!
The UnRogue version of the talents fixed that... at least for d6 sneak attack dice. If you have one of the options that lets you roll d8 for each sneak attack die then even the 'corrected' version is a downgrade.
Powerful Sneak (and its successor) has been mathematically proven to be a downgrade. The ability actually makes you worse at doing damage!The UnRogue version of the talents fixed that... at least for d6 sneak attack dice. If you have one of the options that lets you roll d8 for each sneak attack die then even the 'corrected' version is a downgrade.
Fixed? How? Last I saw they were identical.
|
|
Fixed? How? Last I saw they were identical.Powerful Sneak (and its successor) has been mathematically proven to be a downgrade. The ability actually makes you worse at doing damage!The UnRogue version of the talents fixed that... at least for d6 sneak attack dice. If you have one of the options that lets you roll d8 for each sneak attack die then even the 'corrected' version is a downgrade.
?
No, they've been different since Unchained came out;
Original: Powerful Sneak** (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent takes a full attack action, she can elect to take a –2 penalty on all attack rolls until the start of her next turn. If an attack during this time is a sneak attack, she treats all 1s on the sneak attack damage dice as 2s.
Unchained: Powerful Sneak* (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent takes a full-attack action, she can take a –2 penalty on all attack rolls until the start of her next turn. If she does, she can reroll any sneak attack damage dice that result in 1s. She can reroll multiple dice, but she can't reroll any individual die more than once per attack.
So, the original changed 1s to 2s. Average result 3.67 * 0.9 = 3.3
The revised changes 1s to re-rolls. Average result 3.92 * 0.9 = 3.525
Without the talent d6s average 3.5, so the old version nerfed damage while the new one increases it slightly.
So, the original changed 1s to 2s. Average result 3.67 * 0.9 = 3.3
The revised changes 1s to re-rolls. Average result 3.92 * 0.9 = 3.525Without the talent d6s average 3.5, so the old version nerfed damage while the new one increases it slightly.
...that is 0.025 more than the average. As in, with 10d6, you are getting 0.25 more damage on each hit. Lets say you manage to get.... 6 hits. That is a grand total of 1.5 more damage than usual.
So while it isn't an explicit detriment like before.... it seems worthless. So it is still a loss, since you have to spend a talent on this.
I might be misinterpreting thing though. I mean... the 'x0.9' seems like an oversimplification of the dice. You could have such high bonuses for various reasons (buffs on you, debuffs on enemy) that you can practically ignore the penalty to attack penalty. In which case you would get .42 on every dice. That would be 4.2 damage, which would be 25.2 extra damage across a full attack.
Sidenote: I suddenly feel like it is fun to call a kineticist a tank. Because their basic style is "load up your canon and shoot one huge shot". So in function, an earth kineticist basically IS a tank- sturdy enough to ignore hits, shooting off large shells...