The kineticist is not about damage, but about being dynamic

[Ravingdork]

The more and more I playtest, the more I'm coming to realize that the kineticist is not a martial smasher, nor is it a caster-like blaster.

It's a dynamic support class. Between battlefield control with walls and difficult terrain, a plethora of mobility options for both you AND your allies, several options to debuff and wear down your enemies, and a number of other non-combat utility powers, they have a diverse array of options to empower the whole party in different ways. Like bards, they're something of a force multiplier, but since they don't grant direct numerical bonuses like the bard, it's harder to recognize and quantify.

This may also be why all kineticist parties seem to fair decently.

Something to chew on while you playtest.

[siegfriedliner]

I disagree if you want dynamic ,casters with 30+ plus different spells which each do different things does that. The kinetsist has far fewer less diverse tricks. The kinetesist main gimmick seems to be the duracell bunny I can do this all day hp allowing.

[YuriP]

Ravingdork wrote:

The more and more I playtest, the more I'm coming to realize that the kineticist is not a martial smasher, nor is it a caster-like blaster.

It's a dynamic support class. Between battlefield control with walls and difficult terrain, a plethora of mobility options for both you AND your allies, several options to debuff and wear down your enemies, and a number of other non-combat utility powers, they have a diverse array of options to empower the whole party in different ways. Like bards, they're something of a force multiplier, but since they don't grant direct numerical bonuses like the bard, it's harder to recognize and quantify.

This may also be why all kineticist parties seem to fair decently.

Something to chew on while you playtest.

I don't disagree. But is that really what we expect and want from the class?

Because let's face it, the kineticist's utility functions are pretty cool, but it's not exactly what you'd expect from her main function. Furthermore, the class only really starts to operate as a utility support from level 8 onwards. Until then, the class is a negation.

For me the class has stood out so much in the utility support part more for not standing out in the rest than for anything else.

[Sanityfaerie]

YuriP wrote:

I don't disagree. But is that really what we expect and want from the class?

I think the use of "we" here is deceptive. "Blaster vs utility" was one of the two major debates in the Kineticist community, pre-playtest.

I'm guessing those preferences haven't changed.

[Dubious Scholar]

Yeah. Their ability to debuff or limit enemies is pretty minimal without Aura Shaping, and then they're doing a single debuff. I shouldn't have to be a weaker martial until 8 because I can eventually give the party a useful buff or make a circle of difficult terrain around me.

Bards are bringing constant buff/debuff from level 1 as well as being spontaneous casters with a separate bag of tricks to pull from when the situation demands (plus the ability to bring a bag of scrolls for rarer issues)

As is, most impulses are less damage per action than cantrips, and that's a problem. The debuff riders on most of them are a joke, requiring critical failures or just pushing enemies around a bit.

[WWHsmackdown]

The action economy limitations of the playtest chassis is not something I'd describe as dynamic on a turn to turn basis

[Guntermench]

YuriP wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

The more and more I playtest, the more I'm coming to realize that the kineticist is not a martial smasher, nor is it a caster-like blaster.

It's a dynamic support class. Between battlefield control with walls and difficult terrain, a plethora of mobility options for both you AND your allies, several options to debuff and wear down your enemies, and a number of other non-combat utility powers, they have a diverse array of options to empower the whole party in different ways. Like bards, they're something of a force multiplier, but since they don't grant direct numerical bonuses like the bard, it's harder to recognize and quantify.

This may also be why all kineticist parties seem to fair decently.

Something to chew on while you playtest.

I don't disagree. But is that really what we expect and want from the class?

Because let's face it, the kineticist's utility functions are pretty cool, but it's not exactly what you'd expect from her main function. Furthermore, the class only really starts to operate as a utility support from level 8 onwards. Until then, the class is a negation.

For me the class has stood out so much in the utility support part more for not standing out in the rest than for anything else.

It's clearly what Paizo wants from it.

[YuriP]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

YuriP wrote:

I don't disagree. But is that really what we expect and want from the class?

I think the use of "we" here is deceptive. "Blaster vs utility" was one of the two major debates in the Kineticist community, pre-playtest.

I'm guessing those preferences haven't changed.

And why not the 2?

I don't see a problem with the kineticist being able to be both an excellent blaster and a good utility support. In practice even if Paizo empowers the kineticist like Blaster you can still retain his utilitarian capabilities as well. It's not like he has enough actions to operate in both modes at the same time.

So players can decide if they want to make a build focused on DD or on being more support or even divide their attention on the 2 and adapt according to the situation

[Unicore]

Feats before level 8 that are about dynamic play, not damage:
Air
Air cushion, Fair Winds, Whisper on the Wind, Flinging Updraft, Soothing Breeze, Clear as Air.
Earth
Geologic Attunement, Stepping Stones, Stone Shield, Dust Storm, Restoring Mud, Igneogenesis.
Fire
Burning Jet, Eternal Torch, Warming Nimbus, Desert Shimmer, Crawling Fire, Wandering Smoke.
Water
Deflecting Wave, Water Dance, Return to the Sea, Vail of Mists, Standing Surf.

It seems the design of the playtest class is very, very intentional in giving an abundance of feats for utility, battlefield control, and support, with damage getting about 30% of the class' feat budget.

Not liking those options is one thing, but denying they exist is a little strange.

Many people are disappointed in the choice to treat damage as a secondary thought in the playtest, but Paizo doesn't really need to playtest its damage math. The developers know what numbers they want various classes to accomplish and how they will accomplish those numbers. It makes a lot of sense that they are primarily interested in testing out what happens to the game when they basically give out a ton of free, all day spell effects.

[Ravingdork]

I agree with Unicore. There are plenty of options even at low levels.

To say otherwise strikes me as disingenuous.

Fair winds alone has a dramatic impact on how a party might tackle an encounter. It simultaneously buffs the party, debuffs the enemy, denies enemy actions, and allows allies to more easily gain desirable tactical positioning. I'd dare say it's better than Inspire Courage in many instances.

Other low level kineticist abilities aren't quite that good, but many are close.

[siegfriedliner]

Ravingdork wrote:

I agree with Unicore. There are plenty of options even at low levels.

To say otherwise strikes me as disingenuous.

Fair winds alone has a dramatic impact on how a party might tackle an encounter. It simultaneously buffs the party, debuffs the enemy, denies enemy actions, and allows allies to more easily gain desirable tactical positioning. I'd dare say it's better than Inspire Courage in many instances.

Other low level kineticist abilities aren't quite that good, but many are close.

I think your overating flinging shove before level 10, I am not saying it isn't good (it totally is and could easily be a life saver) but trading 2 actions for roughly 1 action of movement for an ally or repositioning an enemy on a failed save is much more situational than giving all allies a +1 bonus to hit, damage and saves vs fear for 1 action.

[Unicore]

Fair winds is the aura that boosts allies speed and acts as difficult terrain for enemies only.

[Dubious Scholar]

Ravingdork wrote:

I agree with Unicore. There are plenty of options even at low levels.

To say otherwise strikes me as disingenuous.

Fair winds alone has a dramatic impact on how a party might tackle an encounter. It simultaneously buffs the party, debuffs the enemy, denies enemy actions, and allows allies to more easily gain desirable tactical positioning. I'd dare say it's better than Inspire Courage in many instances.

Other low level kineticist abilities aren't quite that good, but many are close.

It's also very limited in range until Aura Shaping - a 10' emanation around you isn't a ton, especially if you're playing at range. You also have issues with turn order, since allies have to start their turn within it to benefit.

Having used it... I'm not sure it's going to be something I'd do a lot at low levels. 10' of difficult terrain isn't enough to consistently tax enemy actions either.

Flinging Shove is cool, but situational until the upgrade. It's a one-off effect, you can't use fall damage to put enemies prone, etc.

You're arguing that the utility of kineticist is so high that it justifies having inferior damage to every martial except champion, and it's nowhere close.

[Unicore]

I do think damage numbers will get boosted a little bit. I don’t think they will completely flip the scrip to give Kineticists more attack feats than utility feats though.

[Dubious Scholar]

No, I think the bulk of impulse feats should absolutely be utility/buffs. There's just not much variety you can do with explosions.

The bulk of spells aren't blasts either for much the same reason.

But there's definitely a level of damage we should be getting from the blasts.

[Unicore]

I agree the damage numbers will go up, but they will go up in relationship to blasts and overflow abilities being best at targeting multiple enemies more than singular targets. I think we might get one, maybe two more options like fusion blast for targeting aa single enemy, and I kind of think that metal or wood might have persistent damage options that will work well against a single target, but I doubt we will lose feats like barrage blast, chain blast or maelstrom blast as the way that you can end up doing a lot of damage on your blasts.

Stoke Element is a clunky damage booster that requires too much thought and has too much nuance to be the default option, but the numbers there are probably the total boost that Kinteticist abilities will see, or need.

I think the primary decision the developers are weighing in the playtest, as far as the damage numbers go, is whether to provide the class a means of gaining accuracy boosts or damage boosts. I don't think it will be a both/and more status effects.

I am worried that a lot of the utility powers are going to have to get scaled down a little, because in play they have tended to make casters look pretty laughable, which is too bad, because Kineticists have been doing really cool things in combat encounters, chase encounters, and even surprisingly in social encounters (especially the ability to turn combat encounters into social encounters with elementals, or just take command of elementals. We got an archetype like this for mindless undead in the back of the first bloodlords book and it is really cool to see. I hope that trend continues, but that is an aside).

The utility of Kineticist is incredibly limited when the GM is working with really small maps though and I really wish the APs would stop giving 20x20 grids for outdoor encounters, and just reference battle maps, like they do for monster stats. Because if either side start at the sides, the distance gets closed in a round or two tops and then no one can move backwards without being a pain in everyone's rear. So GMs put the monsters more in the middle and then everyone is on top of each other in one action. These kinds of maps do not play well with a class that is going to have a lot of movement and battlefield control options. This is especially a problem as 3rd parties upload the material for Virtual tabletops and just use the maps provided in the book.

[aobst128]

The utility is good. I think that aspect of the class will stick around. It's alright if it's not the best at doing damage. Just needs to find a balance.

[PossibleCabbage]

So the utility of the kineticist is an important part of it's identity. This got a little out of hand in 1e as creative players with all-day abilities that were narrow or powerful could really mess up a narrative. Like any "prepare to defend against a besieging force, you have one week" scenario with a sufficiently high level geokineticist with a couple of specific wild talents becomes laughable as by day 4 the city will have very thick and very high walls and the maze of trenches leading towards the city is essentially impassible (and you can put this all back when you're done so go wild.)

So I like "it's cool how you can use your element to do things other than hurt people" as part of the class identity (though Adapt Element needs to scale a lot better).

I think part of the problem is that the class feats suggest "you are a person who is good at throwing boulders around to knock people over" when you really aren't very good at that. You're great at making steps, your blast is competitive with weapon damage, and you can block a door. But I think the poor scaling and action tax of overflow is one malus too many to make this abilities appealing, which is I think what people don't care for.

[Ravingdork]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

You're arguing that the utility of kineticist is so high that it justifies having inferior damage to every martial except champion, and it's nowhere close.

I'm doing nothing of the sort.

I'm merely suggesting an alternative way of viewing the kineticist's role in the party than that which has been commonly presented by many posters. Nothing more; nothing less. Everyone remains free to come to their own conclusions.

[cheezeofjustice]

It's in a very similar chassis to Inventor, but with no damage booster as of yet. It's damage is roughly comparable in some builds according to another thread's mathing it out. They likely didn't include an Overdrive as the kineticist gets some wilder utility stuff and they were trying to get a feel for where the sweet spot is in trading damage for utility.

I am fully expecting a single target damage bump so it fits in the ballpark of where the thaum and inventor are at. Which is okay damage, but not a specialist in that and good utility options.

Some people throw out "The AoEs are terrible because mages do it better!" The kit isn't designed to be what you'd pick to be a full on mage. It's waht you pick to be a class that hits things with a weapon-like thing and have some mix of utility and AoE. You don't pick a Thaum or Inventor to play the role of a wizard.

[Gaulin]

Something a lot of players in 1e didn't realize unless they were strong min maxers is that kineticist was behind the damage curve in 1e too. They seemed overpowered to groups that didn't always pick up the strongest combat feats/etc but kineticists had a really low skill ceiling since a lot of their mechanics were a unique beast that didn't work well with other feats and such. So being being behind the damage curve but being strong in more unique areas like aoe, a few all day 'spells', needing a lot less items, and other niche things are the things that should be translated to this editions version.

[Unicore]

cheezeofjustice wrote:

It's in a very similar chassis to Inventor, but with no damage booster as of yet. It's damage is roughly comparable in some builds according to another thread's mathing it out. They likely didn't include an Overdrive as the kineticist gets some wilder utility stuff and they were trying to get a feel for where the sweet spot is in trading damage for utility.

I am fully expecting a single target damage bump so it fits in the ballpark of where the thaum and inventor are at. Which is okay damage, but not a specialist in that and good utility options.

Some people throw out "The AoEs are terrible because mages do it better!" The kit isn't designed to be what you'd pick to be a full on mage. It's waht you pick to be a class that hits things with a weapon-like thing and have some mix of utility and AoE. You don't pick a Thaum or Inventor to play the role of a wizard.

I am curious what you invision boosting Kineticist single target damage will look like, because if it is a bonus to blast attacks, then that is going to be a multi-target boost too. Which I think is fine, but is why I am encouraging people to temper expectations.

Earth getting propulsive makes their damage output for ranged attacks pretty high when it can be combined with using STR to attack. Agile on Fire and Air are pretty big boosts too since the playtest class is about making lots of little attacks, not one supercharged big one. Our one example of the supercharged big single target attack is the Fusion Blast, which I have not got to play around with at all.

At level 20, using 2 full rounds to set it up, it seems like you could fusion blast air, and then Earth and get 1d12electricity+4d4slashing+property runes+4d12bludgeoning for your fusion blast...at 120ft. How much up does that need to go?

[aobst128]

Unicore wrote:

cheezeofjustice wrote:

It's in a very similar chassis to Inventor, but with no damage booster as of yet. It's damage is roughly comparable in some builds according to another thread's mathing it out. They likely didn't include an Overdrive as the kineticist gets some wilder utility stuff and they were trying to get a feel for where the sweet spot is in trading damage for utility.

I am fully expecting a single target damage bump so it fits in the ballpark of where the thaum and inventor are at. Which is okay damage, but not a specialist in that and good utility options.

Some people throw out "The AoEs are terrible because mages do it better!" The kit isn't designed to be what you'd pick to be a full on mage. It's waht you pick to be a class that hits things with a weapon-like thing and have some mix of utility and AoE. You don't pick a Thaum or Inventor to play the role of a wizard.

I am curious what you invision boosting Kineticist single target damage will look like, because if it is a bonus to blast attacks, then that is going to be a multi-target boost too. Which I think is fine, but is why I am encouraging people to temper expectations.

Earth getting propulsive makes their damage output for ranged attacks pretty high when it can be combined with using STR to attack. Agile on Fire and Air are pretty big boosts too since the playtest class is about making lots of little attacks, not one supercharged big one. Our one example of the supercharged big single target attack is the Fusion Blast, which I have not got to play around with at all.

At level 20, using 2 full rounds to set it up, it seems like you could fusion blast air, and then Earth and get 1d12electricity+4d4slashing+property runes+4d12bludgeoning for your fusion blast...at 120ft. How much up does that need to go?

That example in particular doesn't really need to be better. We just need some more single target effects before 10th level. Doesn't need to be spectacular or anything but an option for bosses and cleanup would be preferable to not having them at all for half your levels. Although, if we do get a damage booster like overdrive on blasts, it won't be that big of a deal.

[kripdenn]

I think there should be room for a variety of impulse and blast feats to build whatever kind of kineticist you want. Single target or multitarget Blasts or impulses without rider conditions that do more damage, blasts or impulses that inflict debuffs, terrain control, healing, etc.

[YuriP]

Gaulin wrote:

Something a lot of players in 1e didn't realize unless they were strong min maxers is that kineticist was behind the damage curve in 1e too. They seemed overpowered to groups that didn't always pick up the strongest combat feats/etc but kineticists had a really low skill ceiling since a lot of their mechanics were a unique beast that didn't work well with other feats and such. So being being behind the damage curve but being strong in more unique areas like aoe, a few all day 'spells', needing a lot less items, and other niche things are the things that should be translated to this editions version.

PF1 is different. The main reason the kineticist is below average there is more linked to a super progression of spellcasters than to the kineticist itself.

And there, too, he has a lesser weight on his back. There the role he seeks to play is much more that of having a blaster martial class than actually being the strongest. That is, an alternative to the spellcaster, arcane mainly.
Here in PF2 I think we actually have 2 different points of view. On the designers side, they see the kineticist as a possible "hybrid" class capable of acting as an elemental caster that is less "versatile" than casters, but more versatile and utilitarian than traditional martial artists. While on the side of many players (most here on the forum I believe, but I can't say for sure because we don't have numbers) they are already looking for a way out of the lack of pure offensive blasters in the system, since for many players the spellcasters don't comply this role so well.

[Dubious Scholar]

Unicore wrote:

cheezeofjustice wrote:

It's in a very similar chassis to Inventor, but with no damage booster as of yet. It's damage is roughly comparable in some builds according to another thread's mathing it out. They likely didn't include an Overdrive as the kineticist gets some wilder utility stuff and they were trying to get a feel for where the sweet spot is in trading damage for utility.

I am fully expecting a single target damage bump so it fits in the ballpark of where the thaum and inventor are at. Which is okay damage, but not a specialist in that and good utility options.

Some people throw out "The AoEs are terrible because mages do it better!" The kit isn't designed to be what you'd pick to be a full on mage. It's waht you pick to be a class that hits things with a weapon-like thing and have some mix of utility and AoE. You don't pick a Thaum or Inventor to play the role of a wizard.

I am curious what you invision boosting Kineticist single target damage will look like, because if it is a bonus to blast attacks, then that is going to be a multi-target boost too. Which I think is fine, but is why I am encouraging people to temper expectations.

Earth getting propulsive makes their damage output for ranged attacks pretty high when it can be combined with using STR to attack. Agile on Fire and Air are pretty big boosts too since the playtest class is about making lots of little attacks, not one supercharged big one. Our one example of the supercharged big single target attack is the Fusion Blast, which I have not got to play around with at all.

At level 20, using 2 full rounds to set it up, it seems like you could fusion blast air, and then Earth and get 1d12electricity+4d4slashing+property runes+4d12bludgeoning for your fusion blast...at 120ft. How much up does that need to go?

The playtest class appears to me to be about mixing overflow impulses and single strikes. Nothing in it encourages multiple strikes on a single target at all (the way Flurry of Blows or Hunted Shot do).

Agile isn't worth it if you're going down to d4 for it. At level 1, giving up agile for d6 would make a ranged hit land for 40% more damage on average. That's constant until 7 when you can get property runes, and then it goes down to... 23%. It stops at 19.5% at level 20. (4d4+3d6 versus 7d6 - having no flat damage at all is part of the issue here)

[Squiggit]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

At level 1, giving up agile for d6 would make a ranged hit land for 40% more damage on average.

Assuming you only ever make one attack in any given round (40% is also kind of a deceptive value because it sounds really big but we're still talking about 1 single point of damage).

[Temperans]

I swear agile is getting too much credit for what it does when 90% of the class is literally "spend 3 actions to do 1 thing".

Gaulin mentioned how PF1 Kineticist were not the most damage heavy class, but that is ignoring way too much. PF1 was balanced in such a way that the way to deal the most damage was to combine a number of different abilities to exploit the system, this made it so martials and some casters were doing monstruous stuff. Outside of those rules exploits, Kineticist was very much at the same power of a regular martial using the best vital strike (~10d6).

While I understand the whole "the playtest kineticist is a utility class and so it's okay if it doesn't deal good damage", I think the whole thing is a failure of differing expectations. People who liked Kineticist like that their utility abilities were at-will with very few restrictions and didn't take a lot of actions, while still being able to deal a lot of damage with their element and being to use their elements defensively. But PF2 doesn't really deliver on that, the damage is too low to really feel impact full, the defensive feats feel meh, while all the utility stuff takes your entire turn of more to even consider: While also being highly restricted.

******************

Note I am not saying that all the feats are bad, there are clearly some really good feats. But that doesn't diminish issues.

[Kekkres]

Yeah, its not that i dont think "utility kineticist" is an invalid concept in of itself, its more that if kineticist doesnt turn out to be viable as "single target elemental blastyman" than i dont see anything else ever filling that roll

[Sanityfaerie]

Kekkres wrote:

Yeah, its not that i dont think "utility kineticist" is an invalid concept in of itself, its more that if kineticist doesnt turn out to be viable as "single target elemental blastyman" than i dont see anything else ever filling that roll

I'd personally like it if there were some way to choose to build either a "utility kineticist" or a "single target elemental blastyman", but that trying to do both would take real sacrifices, and maybe still not get you all the way there. Not sure how to actually make that work, though.

[Dubious Scholar]

Squiggit wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

At level 1, giving up agile for d6 would make a ranged hit land for 40% more damage on average.

Assuming you only ever make one attack in any given round (40% is also kind of a deceptive value because it sounds really big but we're still talking about 1 single point of damage).

Hey, it's two points of damage at level 4!

But yes, that's strictly speaking 40% more damage per hit. Agile does increase the chance of a hit, but I think it's clear that it does not increase the odds of a hit enough that you have higher expected damage on your second strike with Agile than by having d6 instead of d4, at least at low levels. (Basically, you'd have to be only hitting on a 19-20 or something I think - not impossible on bosses, but it's a narrow range before it gets to "only hitting on 20 either way"). It does help at higher levels, but then it still has to overcome the higher expected damage of the first strike as well... I'm comfortable stating that at minimum, it won't matter until at least level 11, without trying to work out the math.

I do have to admit I forgot about weapon specialization in my math last night (it was late...), which lowers the gap at level 20 to more like 15%. But ultimately, the value of a die increase is inversely proportional to die size, so d4>d6 is the most extreme case. A class like Rogue with their potentially significant bonus damage per hit (already averaging 7 at level 5) cares much more about agile and sacrificing die size for it makes more sense. Kineticist is the extreme case because they're so lacking in damage outside of weapon dice among martial classes, so the die size matters more.

[Gaulin]

Temperans wrote:

Gaulin mentioned how PF1 Kineticist were not the most damage heavy class, but that is ignoring way too much. PF1 was balanced in such a way that the way to deal the most damage was to combine a number of different abilities to exploit the system, this made it so martials and some casters were doing monstruous stuff. Outside of those rules exploits, Kineticist was very much at the same power of a regular martial using the best vital strike (~10d6).

I won't get too into it too much, but as someone who was very disheartened by 1e kineticist when I did some digging, I suggest you look into the subject a little. Unless standard feats like point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot, many shot, deadly aim, weapon focus, etc. are considered an exploit, something like a very standard level 7 ranger out damages a level 7 kineticist by a good margin.

[Unicore]

Kekkres wrote:

Yeah, its not that i dont think "utility kineticist" is an invalid concept in of itself, its more that if kineticist doesnt turn out to be viable as "single target elemental blastyman" than i dont see anything else ever filling that roll

I honestly think this is where much of the backlash against this Kineticist is coming from. But if evocation wizard, elemental sorcerer, elementalist druid and Oscillating Wave Psychic don't fill that role for you, then it seemed pretty inevitable that the Kineticist was going to disappoint, no?

There is clearly a high level internal game design principle at play in PF2 that steers ranged magical blasting away from the top tiers of damage dealing in PF2. If the psychic with amped cantrips isn't there for you, or a full caster blasting away with sudden blast or shocking grasp with true strike and spectral hand for 120ft range, then it seems like you might be looking for a mechanical intervention that the developers feel like will break the stories that PF2 is designed to tell.

I think the overall damage output of Kineticist will go up and three blast attacks is not damage to scoff at in low level play, and then turns into improved blasting impulses at higher levels. I just don't see how adding any additional single target blasting impulse feat isn't going to break the class unless access to feat switching goes out the window, because the feats are so self-contained that there is no limiting factor. All Kineticists could just have that one feat and still do all the AoE, Utility, etc just fine.

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Kekkres wrote:

Yeah, its not that i dont think "utility kineticist" is an invalid concept in of itself, its more that if kineticist doesnt turn out to be viable as "single target elemental blastyman" than i dont see anything else ever filling that roll

I'd personally like it if there were some way to choose to build either a "utility kineticist" or a "single target elemental blastyman", but that trying to do both would take real sacrifices, and maybe still not get you all the way there. Not sure how to actually make that work, though.

Simple.

You are already limited by how many feats you can take. The more feats you take for dealing better damage the fewer utility you can take, and vice versa.

Remove the gate mechanic, its more of a gimmick: Obviously remove the requirements of "dedicated, dual, and universal gates". Instead, give players 5 feats through the levels and a feat like Bard Multifacious Muse and Druid Order Explorer to get an extra element every time they pick that feat. Now players are able to pick exactly how many elements they want, there is no mess with the whole "universal gets all elements", and the more versatile that a player goes by picking more elements, the less feats they have available to control them; Thus selling the fantasy the gates were trying to do much better.

[Sanityfaerie]

Temperans wrote:

Simple.

You are already limited by how many feats you can take. The more feats you take for dealing better damage the fewer utility you can take, and vice versa.

Remove the gate mechanic, its more of a gimmick: Obviously remove the requirements of "dedicated, dual, and universal gates". Instead, give players 5 feats through the levels and a feat like Bard Multifacious Muse and Druid Order Explorer to get an extra element every time they pick that feat. Now players are able to pick exactly how many elements they want, there is no mess with the whole "universal gets all elements", and the more versatile that a player goes by picking more elements, the less feats they have available to control them; Thus selling the fantasy the gates were trying to do much better.

That's... no. That doesn't work.

The issue there is that they want to give enough feats that we're not locked into cookie-cutter builds in order to thrive. If you try to make people choose between "utility" and "blasty power" via limits on available feats, you are pretty much inescapably locking yourself into a paradigm where feats are strictly limited, and cookie-cutter builds are going to be significantly more powerful.

It's the same thing with the gates. The bit where you trade elemental flexibility for some other benefit is the whole point. If you didn't have that in some fashion, then it would be exceedingly difficult to design a feat set such that going single-element was anything other than an objectively bad choice.

[Unicore]

How many single target blasting feats do you need though if they are self contained like the current impulses? If there is one good one, then literally every character chooses that one and then spends the rest of their feats on Utility powers.

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Simple.

You are already limited by how many feats you can take. The more feats you take for dealing better damage the fewer utility you can take, and vice versa.

Remove the gate mechanic, its more of a gimmick: Obviously remove the requirements of "dedicated, dual, and universal gates". Instead, give players 5 feats through the levels and a feat like Bard Multifacious Muse and Druid Order Explorer to get an extra element every time they pick that feat. Now players are able to pick exactly how many elements they want, there is no mess with the whole "universal gets all elements", and the more versatile that a player goes by picking more elements, the less feats they have available to control them; Thus selling the fantasy the gates were trying to do much better.

That's... no. That doesn't work.

The issue there is that they want to give enough feats that we're not locked into cookie-cutter builds in order to thrive. If you try to make people choose between "utility" and "blasty power" via limits on available feats, you are pretty much inescapably locking yourself into a paradigm where feats are strictly limited, and cookie-cutter builds are going to be significantly more powerful.

It's the same thing with the gates. The bit where you trade elemental flexibility for some other benefit is the whole point. If you didn't have that in some fashion, then it would be exceedingly difficult to design a feat set such that going single-element was anything other than an objectively bad choice.

I am saying that you already are forced to choose with the way the Playtest is done. The entire variation of what players can do is defined by what feats they peaked. One chose to get more of the utility feats? They now do overall less damage than someone who picked the better damage feats. Its specially true when people are already saying how you are required to use Sentinel, Earth, Flexible Blast if you want to deal the most damage is that not already super cookie cutter?

Believe me I would love to have a separate pool of abilities that modify blasts from just regular feats. But lets be honest, is that really going to happen? Given their track record it seems unlikely that they will make such a large change to the way thing work. Remember I am one of the people asking for more flexibility over all.

As for removing elemental flexibility, I am a bit confused. If you are talking about removing dual and universal gates as a hard choice, the only thing I suggested there is to stop making it a hard choice. That doesn't make it bad for single-element kineticist as they would be getting more feats to pick impulses or whatever. What it does do however is stop universal having 6+ different elements with otherwise full feat choice, a balance nightmare.

If you are talking about elemental flexibility class feature. The only class that has something similar is the Fighter who has the same thing but for any fighter class feat. How exactly is this class not having that making Kineticist more cookie cutter than literally all other classes?

[Temperans]

Unicore wrote:

How many single target blasting feats do you need though if they are self contained like the current impulses? If there is one good one, then literally every character chooses that one and then spends the rest of their feats on Utility powers.

Preferably applying different conditions/effects. The matter of the current version incentivizing picking the best one I agree is a problem. But it is a fundamental problem with the entire system not just kineticist and impulses.

Heck, Spellcasters are built around that entire logic where the only offensive spells that actually matter (outside of niche situations) are you two highest level and Electric Arc.

[Guntermench]

Temperans wrote:

I swear agile is getting too much credit for what it does when 90% of the class is literally "spend 3 actions to do 1 thing".

Agile is also completely useless once you get Chain Blast, unless you're attacking a single target.

[Verzen]

Temperans wrote:

Unicore wrote:

How many single target blasting feats do you need though if they are self contained like the current impulses? If there is one good one, then literally every character chooses that one and then spends the rest of their feats on Utility powers.

Preferably applying different conditions/effects. The matter of the current version incentivizing picking the best one I agree is a problem. But it is a fundamental problem with the entire system not just kineticist and impulses.

Heck, Spellcasters are built around that entire logic where the only offensive spells that actually matter (outside of niche situations) are you two highest level and Electric Arc.

Uh.. at level 20, pretty much every spell slot above level 10 is stronger than what a kineticist can throw out.

11d6 does piddly damage compared to 20d6, 18d6, 16d6, 14d6, 12d6. That's 15 rounds of spells that deal more damage than what kineticist can "do all day."

If your "all day" effect is so low that a wizard can effectively do it all day, but better, there's a problem. Rarely does anyone last 15 rounds of combat per day before sleeping.

[Sanityfaerie]

Temperans wrote:

I am saying that you already are forced to choose with the way the Playtest is done. The entire variation of what players can do is defined by what feats they peaked. One chose to get more of the utility feats? They now do overall less damage than someone who picked the better damage feats. Its specially true when people are already saying how you are required to use Sentinel, Earth, Flexible Blast if you want to deal the most damage is that not already super cookie cutter?

Believe me I would love to have a separate pool of abilities that modify blasts from just regular feats. But lets be honest, is that really going to happen? Given their track record it seems unlikely that they will make such a large change to the way thing work. Remember I am one of the people asking for more flexibility over all.

As for removing elemental flexibility, I am a bit confused. If you are talking about removing dual and universal gates as a hard choice, the only thing I suggested there is to stop making it a hard choice. That doesn't make it bad for single-element kineticist as they would be getting more feats to pick impulses or whatever. What it does do however is stop universal having 6+ different elements with otherwise full feat choice, a balance nightmare.

If you are talking about elemental flexibility class feature. The only class that has something similar is the Fighter who has the same thing but for any fighter class feat. How exactly is this class not having that making Kineticist more cookie cutter than literally all other classes?

I'm going to try again, but if I cannot explain it to you this time, I'm going to have to give up, because I don't have but so much of this in me.

My "gee wouldn't it be nice" idea was that there be some way to let hte people who wanted to go heavy into elemental blasting do so and have their elemental blasters, at the cost of much of the utility effects. Similarly, let the people who want to go heavy into utility get *lots* of utility, at the cost of losing a lot of their ability to focus-fire single-target damage. You can't really do that with just feat selection, though. There has to be something in the way preventing people from cherry-picking both sides, or it's not actually a tradeoff.

And yes, I'm saying that the hard choice between gate types is a good thing. I think they may not have balanced it quite right this time through, but that's what they have playtests for. If they don't make it a hard choice, then you're effectively declaring that everyone is a universal kineticist, except that some folks are limiting themselves to fewer elements for purely RP reasons. I don't want that. I want single-typed kineticists to be an actual thing, with real rules support, that someone might choose for good and valid reasons, rather than having it be a self-imposed limitation.

Sometimes, especially when you're working game balance as tightly as Paizo does, externally imposed limitations make options available that would not otherwise be available. That is true for both of these things.

[Kekkres]

Unicore wrote:

Kekkres wrote:

Yeah, its not that i dont think "utility kineticist" is an invalid concept in of itself, its more that if kineticist doesnt turn out to be viable as "single target elemental blastyman" than i dont see anything else ever filling that roll

I honestly think this is where much of the backlash against this Kineticist is coming from. But if evocation wizard, elemental sorcerer, elementalist druid and Oscillating Wave Psychic don't fill that role for you, then it seemed pretty inevitable that the Kineticist was going to disappoint, no?

evocation wizard, elemental sorcerer druid of any kind (elementalist is largely a downgrade) are all kind of.... bad at single target damage, since that is something that casters are supposed to be bad at so they dont eat martials pie, OW psychic is better in that regard but it is both the completely wrong asthetic for someone who wants to play a pure black mage, and is very limited in what elemental options it has acess to. you can already "emulate" a what I want with a flurry ranger, a shortbow and your choice of elemental rune, this has the same mechanical impact of what i want so saying that "it is an invalid design principle" doesnt make any sense, lightning ranger just has the completely wrong asthetic and feel

[Squiggit]

I can sort of see where some of the frustration is coming from. For a long time the mantra was "spellcasters have too many options to be able to focus on this, wait for a dedicated class like the kineticist" and now the kineticist is here and they're being told "why did you ever expect the kineticist to be good at this go play a wizard"

[aobst128]

I think an important thing to consider if the kineticist is to be treated like a caster considering it's utility and AOE is that casters still have single target options, and therefore the kineticist has room for those as well. They don't need to be very good at them but there should be options available outside of basic blasts.

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I am saying that you already are forced to choose with the way the Playtest is done. The entire variation of what players can do is defined by what feats they peaked. One chose to get more of the utility feats? They now do overall less damage than someone who picked the better damage feats. Its specially true when people are already saying how you are required to use Sentinel, Earth, Flexible Blast if you want to deal the most damage is that not already super cookie cutter?

Believe me I would love to have a separate pool of abilities that modify blasts from just regular feats. But lets be honest, is that really going to happen? Given their track record it seems unlikely that they will make such a large change to the way thing work. Remember I am one of the people asking for more flexibility over all.

As for removing elemental flexibility, I am a bit confused. If you are talking about removing dual and universal gates as a hard choice, the only thing I suggested there is to stop making it a hard choice. That doesn't make it bad for single-element kineticist as they would be getting more feats to pick impulses or whatever. What it does do however is stop universal having 6+ different elements with otherwise full feat choice, a balance nightmare.

If you are talking about elemental flexibility class feature. The only class that has something similar is the Fighter who has the same thing but for any fighter class feat. How exactly is this class not having that making Kineticist more cookie cutter than literally all other classes?

I'm going to try again, but if I cannot explain it to you this time, I'm going to have to give up, because I don't have but so much of this in me.

My "gee wouldn't it be nice" idea was that there be some way to let hte people who wanted to go heavy into elemental blasting do so and have their elemental blasters, at the cost of much of the utility effects. Similarly, let the people who want to go heavy into utility get *lots* of utility, at the...

I understand what you are saying but I disagree with it. I think the idea of mix and matching is "cherry-picking both sides" to not make sense from a narrative and balance perspective. Mix and matching is effectively letting a player decide how deep they want to do anything. So what if they get 1 ability that might be good at single target and 6 that are good support and vice versa? It won't break the game to let Kineticist fulfill their fantasy of manipulating the elements.

Similarly, you see removing gates as making them all universal, but I see it as the opposite. Removing the gates makes it so the only incentive for going with more elements is variety but going for single element lets Kineticist hyper focus on their element and gives them more space for multiclassing. If you are concerned about single-element not having enough incentive, which they already don't with how gates are done, you can simply add more incentives. For example: Adding feats that require a set number of elements, this would be no different from current gate feats but without the hard lock of gates.

I agree that sometimes adding limitations is good but going overboard with limitations is just as bad. The best classes have always been the one with a very concise set of abilities with few limitations. The idea of adding even more restrictions to try and justify power that is already missing is the opposite of that.

[dmerceless]

Squiggit wrote:

I can sort of see where some of the frustration is coming from. For a long time the mantra was "spellcasters have too many options to be able to focus on this, wait for a dedicated class like the kineticist" and now the kineticist is here and they're being told "why did you ever expect the kineticist to be good at this go play a wizard"

This. So much this.

[Unicore]

I mean, I thought for sure the Kineticist was going to be a single target striker before this playtest. I pretty much envisioned something very similar to the Legendary Games version, without having ever seen that version before imagining it. I suspected that the damage was going to be disappointing to people looking for more out of it than the psychic, but I thought it might be about close to the psychic, just with very different flavor.

But that was kind of a foolish assumption to make in retrospect. Why release Psychic 2.0 right after the psychic, especially after including the oscillating wave psychic?

The playtest kineticist is way more interesting and dynamic than I anticipated and I find that to be a very good thing. The first edition kineticist felt like a flat, one trick pony to me that wasn't even really that good at its trick. Spell casters were just better at everything a Kineticist wanted to do in PF1. Outside of Computer games, I never played a PF1 game where the party pushed deep enough into the adventuring day for a caster higher than level 7 to ever really risk running out of spell slots. In my experience, by level 12, the biggest, scariest dungeons in any AP were cleared from start to finish by the time the casters ran out of spells to cast.

In PF2, casters run out of spells, especially if they try to focus on doing damage to solo enemies, where they end up casting 2 or even 3 spells a round doing reactions, truestrike, jumping, magic missile third actions, etc. In the playtesting of the class I have seen, Kintecist damage has been ok. Their damage has been impressive against multiple targets, but just a little under average for other martials against solo bosses.

In return, the Kineticists have been redefining the battlefield and changing the nature of encounters. This has had a much larger impact on encounters than damage dealing. This is better than I expected the class to be. There are a couple of loose screws to tighten up, including boosting combat efficacy against solo targets by a hair somewhere in the class (accuracy, damage, debuffs on a successful save for overflow abilities), but I really hope they don't take the class all the way back to the drawing board.

Maybe there will be a universal archetype in the Elements book that can slide over a large number of classes and create the blasty blaster, maybe even using the Kineticist's blasts as a basis for the archetype. Something like eldritch archer, but with blasts.

You pop it on a fighter or a ranger or a magus and it lets them get away from weapons and use handwraps for magical blast weapon. That doesn't really even need to take up any space on the Kineticist class.

[Kekkres]

i wish my experiance mirrored yours unicore, from everything i have seen in my playtests, i have found kineticitst to just be doing everything badly, (two level 6 kineticists, one dual air fire dex man, the other dedicated earth str man) they do an awful lot of stuff badly, save for the one impulse they get off at the start of a fight before enemies can all run and get tangled into your front line. I know that the utility impulses do get very good later on, and i do like that part of the class, and my dual air fire guy would have benifited from picking up fair winds, but my players felt like they got to do "cool kineticst thing" once per fight and after that they where just sub par at everything

[Ravingdork]

Kekkres wrote:

i wish my experiance mirrored yours unicore, from everything i have seen in my playtests, i have found kineticitst to just be doing everything badly, (two level 6 kineticists, one dual air fire dex man, the other dedicated earth str man) they do an awful lot of stuff badly, save for the one impulse they get off at the start of a fight before enemies can all run and get tangled into your front line. I know that the utility impulses do get very good later on, and i do like that part of the class, and my dual air fire guy would have benifited from picking up fair winds, but my players felt like they got to do "cool kineticst thing" once per fight and after that they where just sub par at everything

They were clearly doing it wrong.

jk ;P

[WWHsmackdown]

Squiggit wrote:

I can sort of see where some of the frustration is coming from. For a long time the mantra was "spellcasters have too many options to be able to focus on this, wait for a dedicated class like the kineticist" and now the kineticist is here and they're being told "why did you ever expect the kineticist to be good at this go play a wizard"

Couldn't describe it any better