Action economy and gates

[Unicore]

I have now GM’d for a couple of Kineticists, played as a kineticist, and played next to a kineticist.

All of the Kineticists I have experience with spent no more time than any other character preparing to do powerful things to do. But I have also only played with dedicated Kineticists and 2 dual Kineticists. It seems like a hidden “penalty” of the universal gate is that it takes you more actions to ready the activities that you want to do, while dedicated Kineticist always knows exactly what element will be needed and wastes less time switching between them.

Yes the cycling blast helps in that you get to make a blast as a part of the switch, the dedicated Kineticist can more easily get off the 2 and 3 action overflow activities and still be pretty mobile.

[Dubious Scholar]

Dedicated gate doesn't have to think about what to gather, but is still paying the full price every overflow.

Cycling Blast is, imo, the best action economy helper, since it lets you Overflow>Gather+Strike every turn. Gather Amalgamation is also good for universal at 10. Dedicated gate has no action economy feats at all.

I'd also argue that overflow is a lesser cost for dual/universal gates in some situations. If you're going to switch element anyways, overflow is free, basically.

[Unicore]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Dedicated gate doesn't have to think about what to gather, but is still paying the full price every overflow.

Cycling Blast is, imo, the best action economy helper, since it lets you Overflow>Gather+Strike every turn. Gather Amalgamation is also good for universal at 10. Dedicated gate has no action economy feats at all.

I'd also argue that overflow is a lesser cost for dual/universal gates in some situations. If you're going to switch element anyways, overflow is free, basically.

The dedicated Kineticists I saw used overflow abilities pretty regularly, probably once every two or three turns. They also did a fair bit of barrage blasting as the playtest I ran was only level 6. They also moved all over the battlefield, and talked down an elemental. The players felt great about the class. It was the player of the Ranger with an Animal Companion who felt like their action economy was the roughest to manage.

[Thaago]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Dedicated gate doesn't have to think about what to gather, but is still paying the full price every overflow.

Cycling Blast is, imo, the best action economy helper, since it lets you Overflow>Gather+Strike every turn. Gather Amalgamation is also good for universal at 10. Dedicated gate has no action economy feats at all.

I'd also argue that overflow is a lesser cost for dual/universal gates in some situations. If you're going to switch element anyways, overflow is free, basically.

Cycling Blast doesn't work this way. Its an Impulse so you MUST have an element already gathered to use it - it doesn't work after an Overflow.

Its still a fantastic action saver for combining the abilities/blasts of multiple gates, but it doesn't help with overflow action economy.

[Gaulin]

Yup. I initially read it incorrectly as well.

[Unicore]

Also, when I played an 11th level Air Kineticist, I never felt like my action economy was suffering but that could have been because I didn't take storm spiral because the range was too low to fit the build I had made.

I am just saying that it might be worth paying attention, when players complain about the classes action economy to notice what choices they are making on abilities and gates. If there is already a "common knowledge" that "dedicated gate Kineticists are terrible" and "Universal gate Kineticists are the one true build," and yet those exact same players are feeling like the class struggles to have enough actions to use all the 3 action overflow abilities they chose, then it is possible that they are missing some of the intended drawbacks and nuances of the class.

All playtest data is valid. SO it could be that the text around gates needs to explain the importance of not overloading on high action cost overflow abilities and having a wider spread of options. I just think theory crafters should be careful jumping to conclusions about builds because I have seen and experienced loads of fun being had with dedicated gate Kineticist, including my own mid level experience at level 11. Trying to get too complicated with a class can lead to a bad time even with a fighter or a rogue.

[Dubious Scholar]

2-action overflows I think are less an issue of action economy in terms of fitting things into your turns, and more so that a lot of them don't offer enough to be worth the actions spent.

3-action overflows are harder to fit in and can't be as regularly used, so that's where the traditional idea of action economy problems pop up I think. (Storm Spiral may need more range in addition to more damage because of that 3-action cost).

[Thaago]

Gaulin wrote:

Yup. I initially read it incorrectly as well.

So did I! I think the ability is fine, but could use a clarification line (in theory the trait is enough but its so easy to miss).

[aobst128]

Makes sense for dedicated to have better action economy than dual or universalists. They pay for their versatility with more actions spent.

[Thaago]

Unicore wrote:

Also, when I played an 11th level Air Kineticist, I never felt like my action economy was suffering but that could have been because I didn't take storm spiral because the range was too low to fit the build I had made.

I am just saying that it might be worth paying attention, when players complain about the classes action economy to notice what choices they are making on abilities and gates. If there is already a "common knowledge" that "dedicated gate Kineticists are terrible" and "Universal gate Kineticists are the one true build," and yet those exact same players are feeling like the class struggles to have enough actions to use all the 3 action overflow abilities they chose, then it is possible that they are missing some of the intended drawbacks and nuances of the class.

All playtest data is valid. SO it could be that the text around gates needs to explain the importance of not overloading on high action cost overflow abilities and having a wider spread of options. I just think theory crafters should be careful jumping to conclusions about builds because I have seen and experienced loads of fun being had with dedicated gate Kineticist, including my own mid level experience at level 11. Trying to get too complicated with a class can lead to a bad time even with a fighter or a rogue.

So far in playtesting (I haven't been able to do too much, just a few sessions with a Str Air dedicated gate) the action economy has been mostly ok... except for the turn after I use boomerang. Overflow is a huge cost on the class! I also have really wanted to be able to do flinging updraft and then have a better ranged attack for third action, but I can't because I'm dedicated air (and often I can't do a ranged attack at all because I'm using elemental weapon to have some damage).

I've read posts saying gather amalgamation is amazing because it lets you throw multiple overflows from 1 gather... but to get benefit from it the character needs to have chosen multiple overflow abilities, which is a huge downside because it means that they didn't take the non-overflow feats.

[Dubious Scholar]

Amalgamation is also only available to universal gate.

Air blast's low damage is an issue, weapon is basically manadatory, which throws out your versatility somewhat, and even then you can only get to 1d6 for a 1h finesse attack. And for ranged, as printed your only options are thrown weapons (which consume the element) or reload weapons (hope your GM rules you get to pull them out loaded).

[Verzen]

Dual gate's action economy is weird with gather power. It would flow better if it was "Hybrid Gate"

[Unicore]

The d4 damage die was never that big of a deal for me. I was attacking from so far away the enemy couldn't get to me and I crit enough for the shock rune to be a lot of fun.