Hrrrm, I'm seeing a lot of 'Chain Blast is good/amazing' going around, but I really don't think it is. I haven't done a rigorous analysis yet, but a quick look does not leave me impressed. On the one hand multiple MAPless attacks is great, but on the other hand any miss ending the chain is rough.
Its only going to be used vs multiple lower level enemies, so that helps, but even if the hit chance is all the way up to 75%, that means you only get to the 3rd attack 56% of the time.
It's as good as it is because you can't hit the same target twice.
It would be, at best, a flavor of double strike and that's it otherwise.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Note that chain blast is not overflow, while all the element specific AoE attacks are.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
All you need to make it better than a standard 2 blasts is to hit the first one. 2 actions for 2 targets without map is already good. Sucks when the chain breaks at the first attack though.Hrrrm, I'm seeing a lot of 'Chain Blast is good/amazing' going around, but I really don't think it is. I haven't done a rigorous analysis yet, but a quick look does not leave me impressed. On the one hand multiple MAPless attacks is great, but on the other hand any miss ending the chain is rough.
Its only going to be used vs multiple lower level enemies, so that helps, but even if the hit chance is all the way up to 75%, that means you only get to the 3rd attack 56% of the time.
That is what hero points are for!
That is what hero points are for!All you need to make it better than a standard 2 blasts is to hit the first one. 2 actions for 2 targets without map is already good. Sucks when the chain breaks at the first attack though.Hrrrm, I'm seeing a lot of 'Chain Blast is good/amazing' going around, but I really don't think it is. I haven't done a rigorous analysis yet, but a quick look does not leave me impressed. On the one hand multiple MAPless attacks is great, but on the other hand any miss ending the chain is rough.
Its only going to be used vs multiple lower level enemies, so that helps, but even if the hit chance is all the way up to 75%, that means you only get to the 3rd attack 56% of the time.
Yeah, for sure. Plus it is just two actions. No overflow no other resource loss. Sometimes it will happen you miss. Sometimes you will hit 3 or even more targets (the more targets there are, the more likely they will have even lower AC.)
Any Solo monster who had this ability is going to be a terror
That is what hero points are for!All you need to make it better than a standard 2 blasts is to hit the first one. 2 actions for 2 targets without map is already good. Sucks when the chain breaks at the first attack though.Hrrrm, I'm seeing a lot of 'Chain Blast is good/amazing' going around, but I really don't think it is. I haven't done a rigorous analysis yet, but a quick look does not leave me impressed. On the one hand multiple MAPless attacks is great, but on the other hand any miss ending the chain is rough.
Its only going to be used vs multiple lower level enemies, so that helps, but even if the hit chance is all the way up to 75%, that means you only get to the 3rd attack 56% of the time.
Yeah, for sure. Plus it is just two actions. No overflow no other resource loss. Sometimes it will happen you miss. Sometimes you will hit 3 or even more targets (the more targets there are, the more likely they will have even lower AC.)
Any Solo monster who had this ability is going to be a terror
It's a good tool for managing action economy. Psuedo-AoE for when you aren't in position for the rest so you can just throw this out there and then get in position to Overflow next turn.
Which is a pattern that gets a nice buff from Flowing Kinetics. Between the two impulses you can get a full stride split in half or two steps or step and half stride.
Honestly Flowing Kinetics is really really good.
My problem with Chain Blasts is because it's boring. It's very efficient to use against an opponent party full of weaklings where you always will focus in the weakest to increase you chance that's it's stay trespassing to next opponent until failure. Ex.:
An Kineticist facing a 5 opponents severe enemy party composed from:
So as ever as possible this Kineticist will do:
Case 1:
Case 2:
So there's no reason to this Kineticist to do nothing different from this until all minions die and then it will start to focusing the Boss with mediocre elemental blasts. It's just boring...and bit OP once this is basically a better Double/Triple Shot with less feat cost and better hit rate and that is useles against a single target.
I prefer way more very good damage AoE Overflow Impulse (or can be done with focus points if the designers still think that AoE Overflow Impulse have to be weaker than Focus Spells) where I can choose the best Impulse with most interesting effect to deal with the situation.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The other thing about chain blast is that it's much more common for two enemies to be within 20' of each other (the minimum range increment for an elemental blast) while it's less likely to get two enemies along a 30' line (the best AoE impulse available to a level 10 geokineticist.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The other thing about chain blast is that it's much more common for two enemies to be within 20' of each other (the minimum range increment for an elemental blast) while it's less likely to get two enemies along a 30' line (the best AoE impulse available to a level 10 geokineticist.)Technically, any 2 creatures that are 20 feet away from each other are also within a 30 foot line. You would just need to be lined up as well.
Technically true, but if I'm using a 2 action overflow impulse I would rather use my third action to re-gather (so I can do whatever I want next turn) than have to move so I'm down an action next turn.
Flowing Kinetics comes 10 levels too late.
Making Flowing Kinetics a default part at lvl 1 of the class would actually be interesting, instead of making Gather element have a gunslinger reload, it would move the action efficiency to the impulses, would be a mechanically different way to achieve the same result.
I feel like if my Aerokineticist had flowing Kinetics as a class feature at level 1, I would never, ever choose to use an overflow ability. It would only make the extra action of gathering feel like an even bigger burden.
What I think is really getting to people that are frustrated with the blasty-ness of the Kineticist is that the gonzo damage boosters that they get to their blast attacks only trigger when there are 3 or more enemies to attack in a combat. That is the situation where their damage with blasts gets much better than even fighters.I think you're forgetting a very important principle of d20 games, or heck, any game with HP and that doesn't have a death spiral mechanic: HP only does something when it goes to 0. Doing 20 damage to 3 targets is absolutely not the same value as doing 60 damage to 1 target. Yes, there's an edge case or two where splitting damage can be good, but simply summing up the damage you're doing to multiple targets in a 1-1 ratio and saying "haha, you're outdamaging a Fighter" is just... wrong. While you're tickling 4 different people, the Fighter already took an enemy out of the fight, which means less actions taken and less damage done by the other side.
I'm not saying AoE is worthless, but for multitargeting to be good, you need to do a lot better than "I do 130% of the damage I would normally do, but it's split between 3 targets".
Calling it an edge cases doesn't feel accurate to me.
1. Top tier blast spells outdamage even the hardest hitting martials on single strikes, even against a single target. Barbarians likely get one one attack in the first round of combat because they need to rage and move. Melee Rangers only get one attack any time they need to change targets (or two strikes with the DPR of one if they are flurry.) If you can deal more opening damage to a creature than your melee buddies and still hurt the next enemy in line, you've had a great round.
2. The more enemies you hit, the greater the odds of getting some failures or critical failures. And those enemies that critically failed now became the easiest targets for the team to remove by focus firing. Conversely, the single target strikes has higher odds of just whiffing. Focusing 0 damage worth of fire isn't contributing.
3. With PF2 dice variance being what it is, you can't actually predict how many hits you'll need to take out a creature. In PF1, you sorta could because your great sword fighter hit for 2d6+30. That 30 static damage combined with hit on a two accuracy meant you could reliably deal damage with every attack. Now your striking great sword could deal anywhere from 6 damage to 60 damage. It is possible you get a crit that makes half the attacks that came before it irrelevant. Maybe one more character focus firing would kill it a round earlier... But maybe not. It is just a quirk of how the numbers add up and dice roll.
And the higher damage each strike deals, the more likely you are for it to be the kill shot. But the less HP an enemy has when you start, the quicker the enemy succumbs. The AoE can lower that HP threshold for every piece on the board, meaning you increased the odds of an early kill on all of them.
None of that is an edge case. That's just the way the probabilities crumble. It helps if you don't think of AoE as an every turn strategy, but an opener or blast of opportunity. Once the martials see who you've hurt the most, and/or gotten mixed up in the fray, you can start single targeting as well.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
1. Top tier blast spells outdamage even the hardest hitting martials on single strikes, even against a single target.
Yes, and this is great part of what makes AoE spells good for when you need that niche of AoE damage. They don't actually do significantly less damage than single target spells. You're not splitting the damage you would do between multiple targets, more like multiplying it. Chain Blasts and Blast Barrage, however, which were the context of what I was discussing with Unicore, are a different story. You are actually doing less damage to each individual target.
Blast Barrage, which I honestly think is quite terrible, is essentially giving you a -8 or -10 attack in return for forcing you to make both it and the -4/-5 attack against secondary targets.
Chain Blasts is, in a way, multiplying the damage, but it's not as simple as an AoE spell. You're still doing significantly less damage to each target than two Strikes, and also giving yourself the risk of losing the chain, unlike a spell that simply targets all of them before resolving. This one I think is pretty good, but it's still risky, has drawbacks, and I think saying it alone makes Kineticist super duper good at AoE Striking is... mislead at best.
|
Pretty much any DM should tell you if an enemy looks unscathed, hurt, hurt badly, or near death. Bringing an enemy within kill range, finishing off a weakened enemy, and killing off minions are not corner...Yes, in corner cases made just so this looks good, where you somehow know the enemy's HP, it will look good. In general play, according to many people's experiences, it's not common or good.You're forgetting that an AOE can take out multiple targets while setting up other targets to be killable by another party member. If there are many small enemies or if a larger enemy was left with just a little bit of health or if you did enough damage to the boss to let the fighter kill it next, then that does a lot to help the fight.What I think is really getting to people that are frustrated with the blasty-ness of the Kineticist is that the gonzo damage boosters that they get to their blast attacks only trigger when there are 3 or more enemies to attack in a combat. That is the situation where their damage with blasts gets much better than even fighters.I think you're forgetting a very important principle of d20 games, or heck, any game with HP and that doesn't have a death spiral mechanic: HP only does something when it goes to 0. Doing 20 damage to 3 targets is absolutely not the same value as doing 60 damage to 1 target. Yes, there's an edge case or two where splitting damage can be good, but simply summing up the damage you're doing to multiple targets in a 1-1 ratio and saying "haha, you're outdamaging a Fighter" is just... wrong. While you're tickling 4 different people, the Fighter already took an enemy out of the fight, which means less actions taken and less damage done by the other side.
I'm not saying AoE is worthless, but for multitargeting to be good, you need to do a lot better than "I do 130% of the damage I would normally do, but it's split between 3 targets".
They should, but I haven't seen anything in the rules to actually say they have to. So, it will vary table to table and isn't a base assumption we can make.