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I've played beside a Wood kin who had their Drifting Pollen only impose Sickened once or twice at most across five or six sessions before they gave up on it. Well over a dozen foe saves of doing nothing. Some options are obviously bad like Living Bonfire, and others really seem like they should work out in play, but only result in aggravation, all the more so because it's the one aura they've got.
Wow, that's *crazy* to me because what I have seen is Drifting Pollen singlehandedly shut down multiple encounters. This was in a medium-high level game (Lvl 11 - 14) and included PL+3 encounters. I don't think I ever saw an opponent make 4 saves in a row -- if they lasted that long and were in range they would be sickened & dazzled. (If not earlier.)
As for the hunger for feats, I understand, but for me, it was one of the design limitations given to the class in exchange for its chassis and unlimited resources and specialization.
The idea behind the kineticist's own design is that he would have more limited versatility than the casters, even for lore reasons, but that he would be the "master" of his elements. And even that has a way out. It may not be at the level that many would like, but there is, which is the reflow, Rapid Reattunement and in the end-game the Omnikinesis.Identifying that this pain point is naturally caused by the choice of design does nothing to diminish the pain point as it exists.
Having problems with their chosen design simply means that there are problems with their chosen design, lol.Even the other surrounding system quirks like Kins being less friendly to their archetype choice, further increases the pain point of limited (good) impulse choices.
But I believe that the designer who created the class knew and purposely left these limitations. He knew that the boosts would be limited to the number of class feats available, and he knew that the extra boosts in expand the portal would still limit the number. But for him this was a fair disadvantage compared to all the potential, power and freedom that the class has.
The idea is not to make a perfect class, which allows players to put everything they dreamed of into it. The idea is that it has limitations like all the others, and these limitations will be painful for many players who don't like being limited, but none of the classes were designed to be perfect. They all have weaknesses, otherwise we would all end up legendary in everything! But it's not like that because if it were, it would probably be boring!
Wow, that's *crazy* to me because what I have seen is Drifting Pollen singlehandedly shut down multiple encounters. This was in a medium-high level game (Lvl 11 - 14) and included PL+3 encounters. I don't think I ever saw an opponent make 4 saves in a row -- if they lasted that long and were in range they would be sickened & dazzled. (If not earlier.)
Drifting Pollen 100% "should" be a great impulse, and on paper I thought it looked great. But it can also be incredibly aggravating when it does literally nothing when the foes keep making saves.
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In the same AP (Str o Thousands) I've had 7 alch-induced Fort saves in a row be all saved in the same combat. These were human foes that mirrored the party size.
It might be a problem exacerbated by the (tbh, kinda shoddy) AP itself, but Fort saves with "fail or nothing" effects struggle bad in pf2, imo. IDK what the Will/Ref/Fort split would look like if you removed the often-immune undead like ghosts that skew the numbers via their low Fort, while having immunity to most Fort-related effects.
To make matters worse for Drifting Pollen, it's actual fail effect is Sick 1 + Dazzled, which only has the *chance* to make a difference, and is a simple passive debuff that lacks "fun".
My Alchemist can pop a Bottled Night for 1A, and put a Hidden miss chance onto all foes (if they lack Darkvision) for 1 min, no save.
When your debuff aura is that far behind what the Alch can do at L3 (to be clear, it is one of the best alch items), you know something is not adding up for the Kin.
Iirc the break-point for when a +1, when it can move both the reg and crit thresholds, is 6.5 rolls with that +1, and that'll make odds of changing the outcome a 50/50. Fewer boosted rolls than 6 = less than 50%, and the more rolls over 6, the greater over 50% chance of +1 making the difference.
While it's possible to get reach that "coinflip chance the -1 made a hit a miss," etc, those odds.... are still not super-duper amazing. Especially if you only get that fail to happen on turn 3. Six ish invocations of a -1 via Sick per round seems about right, but it can vary greatly.
For the opportunity cost, it was not worth it, and I don't blame him for retraining it away.
While it is a distraction to get into defending a specific impulse, I'll do so anyway for Steam Knight. (If an impulse like Steam Knight is "garbage" then Kin is seriously screwed for choice)
Steam Knight is a stance that adds (non MAP) damage to movement, and does *not* occupy the aura slot. It scales in damage just behind any +1d6 per 2 R spell that's scaled for sustain-repeat AoE damage, it triggers the Aura Junction's weakness, and you can freely trigger a puff of steam for damage and forced movement chance once per turn; doing this dmg without being forced to use the primary niche feature of "damage as you move."
It's like a damage sustain spell that has it's own 0A sustain built in. Rouse Skeletons eat your heart out.Oh, and it has yet another ribbon of passive speed bonus plus speed-to-Leap conversion. As it's a Stance, it plays directly into the main Kin mechanic of what to do when you (re)open your gate.
It is one of the most useful composites while still be perfectly flavorful and not trapped by its niche.
While often overshadowed by Thermal Nimbus being a super simple damage Stance, that does not take away from Steam Knight genuinely being one of the better Stances, and one of the few good composites.
By nature of all the utility, Steam Knight *should* deal less damage than T Nimbus, and it being that close while having so many other benefits is IMO what makes it one of the best designed abilities in the Kin class.
(SK scales at .7 p level, unevenly, with basic reflex save | TN is flat .5 per level)
Let me correct myself here then.
I don't think the Steam Knight is a bad impulse. I just don't think it's worth investing in these 2 elements (fire and water) specifically because of it!
Because in terms of average damage it is very close to the Thermal Nimbus, having a higher initial average damage, but quickly matching it with a minimal advantage.
Thermal Nimbus vs Steam Knight average damage per level (assuming enemies have a 50% chance to pass a basic reflex save, which means 75% average damage, with 50% representing failures + 25% representing half the damage of successes (critical successes and critical failures cancel each other out in probability):
LvL 6: Thermal Nimbus 3 damage / Steam Knight 5.25 damage.
LvL 8: Thermal Nimbus 4 damage / Steam Knight 5.25 damage.
LvL 10: Thermal Nimbus 5 damage / Steam Knight 5.25 damage.
LvL 11: Thermal Nimbus 5 damage / Steam Knight 7.875 damage.
LvL 12: Thermal Nimbus 6 damage / Steam Knight 7.875 damage.
LvL 14: Thermal Nimbus 7 damage/Steam Knight 7,875 damage.
LvL 16: Thermal Nimbus 8 damage/Steam Knight 10.5 damage.
LvL 18: Thermal Nimbus 9 damage/Steam Knight 10.5 damage.
LvL 20: Thermal Nimbus 10 damage/Steam Knight 10.5 damage.
The other additional benefits, which are the speed bonus and the greater Leap that deals 2d6, are not enough for me to invest in these elements just to get this feat. But yes, it is a feat worth it, especially in place of Thermal Nimbus if you are already a Fire and Water kineticist.
It is different from Desert Wind, which is worth considering getting Air or Earth (if you are an Earth or Air kineticist respectively) because of it. Because the extra damage is very welcome for kineticists who chose to play with one of these elements.
So when you said people pick up Steam Knight for lack of anything better, I found it strange because I can't imagine someone who doesn't already plan on using fire and water picking up water just because of it.
Wow, that's *crazy* to me because what I have seen is Drifting Pollen singlehandedly shut down multiple encounters. This was in a medium-high level game (Lvl 11 - 14) and included PL+3 encounters. I don't think I ever saw an opponent make 4 saves in a row -- if they lasted that long and were in range they would be sickened & dazzled. (If not earlier.)Drifting Pollen 100% "should" be a great impulse, and on paper I thought it looked great. But it can also be incredibly aggravating when it does literally nothing when the foes keep making saves.
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In the same AP (Str o Thousands) I've had 7 alch-induced Fort saves in a row be all saved in the same combat. These were human foes that mirrored the party size.
It might be a problem exacerbated by the (tbh, kinda shoddy) AP itself, but Fort saves with "fail or nothing" effects struggle bad in pf2, imo. IDK what the Will/Ref/Fort split would look like if you removed the often-immune undead like ghosts that skew the numbers via their low Fort, while having immunity to most Fort-related effects.
To make matters worse for Drifting Pollen, it's actual fail effect is Sick 1 + Dazzled, which only has the *chance* to make a difference, and is a simple passive debuff that lacks "fun".
My Alchemist can pop a Bottled Night for 1A, and put a Hidden miss chance onto all foes (if they lack Darkvision) for 1 min, no save.
When your debuff aura is that far behind what the Alch can do at L3 (to be clear, it is one of the best alch items), you know something is not adding up for the Kin.
Iirc the break-point for when a +1, when it can move both the reg and crit thresholds, is 6.5 rolls with that +1, and that'll make odds of changing the outcome a 50/50. Fewer boosted rolls than 6 = less than 50%, and the more rolls over 6, the greater over 50% chance of +1 making the difference.
While it's possible to get reach that "coinflip chance the -1 made a hit a miss," etc, those odds.... are still...
I'm sorry, I agree with the unbalanced pH, I can't consider Drifting Pollen weak at all! But it's not just good on paper, as a GM who has to deal with this, I can attest!
I say this with great authority, because one of my players at my RPG table uses it in almost every encounter! And Drifting Pollen has frustrated me so much with the status penalty, the flat check DC 5, and with me spending actions to try to remove the effect (which is usually only worth it when you leave the aura, and even then, the kineticist can always turn it back on).
I understand the frustration that it doesn't do anything if it succeeds, but this thing is basically passive, it's there doing the same test until it hits, every round!
And to see the difference in perception and experience that people have (which makes me argue that many things that one person considers meh, another may consider fantastic) it is precisely Bottled Night that you mentioned.
An item that for you may be fantastic, for me is very circumstantial given the huge amount of creatures with darkvision in this system. In some adventures it can become completely useless, such as in adventures focused on the undead or in the underground where 100% of everything sees in the dark or does not even use vision!
For me, drift is far superior in terms of opportunities for use, even though it is not automatic.
But then I ask, what class isn't like that?Most of them. Most build defining options generally work at least to an acceptable level. Even 'bad' options tend to either have good alternatives or themselves represent more niche content.
Most classes aren't nearly as limited in option scope either, because the kineticist relies on their feats to define core gameplay more than most other classes.
Both of these mean that bad options or restrictive choice can be way more problematic for the kineticist.
Like the closest analog here is spells, but there are 120 level 2 arcane spells compared to two fourth level air kineticist feats. Clearly the impact of having an ill fitting or problematic option is on an entirely different scale here.
The wizard also doesn't lose access to spells if they decide to take an archetype instead.
To just kind of vaguely handwave the whole thing away as "well everyone has a bad feat or two" is just completely missing the whole point.
it will never end because there will always be a lot of things that someone doesn't like.Man this is such a nihilistic take. Why even bother because you can probably find someone somewhere who won't like something? That's ridiculous.Pretty sure that's why they were arguing against that point of view in their post. I mean, it was pretty clear to me that the thesis of that paragraph is,
That's why I can't take this 100% seriously and I usually try to understand what difficulty the person is having and suggest an alternative.I'm confused why you'd assume that someone actively wanting to help others be satisfied with alternative options is "a nihilistic take."
(Apologies to YuriP if I'm putting words in your mouth, but that's what I got from the post we're both quoting here.)
No problem, I just wouldn't be so "ad hominem".
Because I understand Squiggit's point when he/she/it criticizes me by saying that my view is nihilistic in defending that the same problem they claim exists in the kineticist's feats is common to several other classes and that this is normal and acceptable.
After all, I didn't explain my point well there. But it's simply because I don't expect a designer to be able to make all the feats perfect! It's humanly impossible! Besides, in my opinion, criticism is often relative and restricted to the view of the person criticizing, that is, what seems bad isn't always really bad for (almost) everyone. We see this a lot on these forums.
And my other point was that for me, it's the opposite, the kineticist is precisely one of the classes that has one of the best, if not the best, set of feats I've ever seen in a class in this game. And many of the limitations that people complain about, both in many of the feats and in his abilities, are fair considering the balance between the classes in the game.
In fact, I have problems with any and all criticism of a class without comparing it to the rest of the classes in the game, because if someone focuses on the limitations of a class in itself, the discussion will inevitably go in the direction of trying to make the class perfect, very possibly making it superior to the rest. That's why I've been comparing the kineticist to the other classes, both spellcasters and martial, since for me the kineticist as it is today has quite fair advantages and disadvantages compared to them.
That's why I haven't been able to agree with almost any of the criticisms so far. I can't see the kineticist being subpar when I make a global comparison of it to the other classes, it always ends up having strengths and weaknesses. But people don't always recognize that.
That also doesn't mean that I disagree with everything, as I've said before, I think a good number of the composite impulses are weak for its category. But even in this case, you need to be careful, because as I pointed out in Steam Knight above. There is a difference between taking 2 elements to get a composite, and already having 2 elements and taking the opportunity to get a composite. If composite already serves this second option well, then for me, it is already a good feat.
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I'm not sure how to see the kineticist. When I played one, Solar Detonation was great though more useful against undead.
Fiery Body all the time was great.
Burrowing like an earth elemental even through stone was fun.
Getting immunity to multiple forms of damage was fun. My fire/earth kineticist was straight up immune to fire, cold, earth, and poison. That was pretty powerful.
I feel like their blasts could be stronger, though weapon infusion did help them a bit I almost never used them.
The kineticist single target attacks are very bad as you level.
If you have AOE, then you do ok. If you're doing a single target boss, you are pretty terrible.
They could probably use a single target attack better than their blasts.
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The kineticist single target attacks are very bad as you level.If you have AOE, then you do ok. If you're doing a single target boss, you are pretty terrible.
They could probably use a single target attack better than their blasts.
It's been a long time since I played my kineticist but I don't remember it being that bad.
As fire/earth you can afford to be in melee so as a lvl 10 Kineticist:
- Your attacks deal 3d8 + 4 (str) + 5 (thermal nimbus weakness)
- You can chain with floating flame for 5d8+5
- The boss will automatically take 10 extra damage every round.
Of course, if it's fire immune or fire resistant you're hosed (even if you can actually use extract element) but on a regular boss the damage is not too shabby, especially considering you have ok accuracy on your blast, you have 1/2 damage on a failure on floating flame and you have automatic damage to boot. It's probably nowhere near what a barbarian or fighter could output, but it's nothing to be ashamed of.
The one thing that still really bugs me is chain infusion. It baffles me. I can't think of a single reasonable application for it.
Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the class is put together
Chain Infusion is a feat inherited from the playtest that doesn't fit well in the final version.
I agree that it's a feat that could be removed and replaced with another more useful feat.
Theoretically, it would be useful in a situation where for some reason the player doesn't add any AoE damage to the build. The problem is that no one can see this scenario where up until level 10 the player hasn't taken any impulse AoE damage feat instead.
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The kineticist single target attacks are very bad as you level.If you have AOE, then you do ok. If you're doing a single target boss, you are pretty terrible.
They could probably use a single target attack better than their blasts.
It's been a long time since I played my kineticist but I don't remember it being that bad.
As fire/earth you can afford to be in melee so as a lvl 10 Kineticist:
- Your attacks deal 3d8 + 4 (str) + 5 (thermal nimbus weakness)
- You can chain with floating flame for 5d8+5
- The boss will automatically take 10 extra damage every round.Of course, if it's fire immune or fire resistant you're hosed (even if you can actually use extract element) but on a regular boss the damage is not too shabby, especially considering you have ok accuracy on your blast, you have 1/2 damage on a failure on floating flame and you have automatic damage to boot. It's probably nowhere near what a barbarian or fighter could output, but it's nothing to be ashamed of.
That's fire. That still isn't anywhere near the single target damage of martials or casters.
Kineticist is hard for me to value.
I do acknowledge they are a weak single target damage dealer.
They can do decent AOE damage.
I don't know how to value all their utility powers. They get some real powerful immunities.
And that [i]Assume Earth's Mantle[/b] stacks with Apex Items. That's pretty crazy. if you for some reason wanted to build a strength based Earth kineticist. You could obtain the highest strength bonus in the game as well as large size with heavy armor. A big old stone giant like hammer.
How do you value that?
I can see the kineticist requiring a higher level of system mastery to shine because pulling together these disparate elements into a powerful character can take some thought.
I had to test things and see how various elements worked together. Their individual blasts are pretty weak, made only slightly better by weapon infusion. But their overall powers as you level make for some interesting play if you find good combinations.
Their resource use is unlimited. They can do what they do all day like martial strikes, but with a lot of utility powers as well.
My earth kineticist could walk into practically anywhere once he obtained burrowing through stone. He picked up Nourishing Gate at level 14. This made it so he could attack, burrow, and be untargetable in battle. How do value something like that you can do all day? I don't know.
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For me, the big thing about kineticist is that a well-built kineticist doesn't do anything *best* but does many things well and is pretty hard to lock out of being useful in an encounter. It's a very adaptable class in play.
All due respect, have you actually played a Fire kineticist? Cause every feat you've mentioned Is situational and has low damage. Sure you can hit stuff very far (three strides/Two from a fast creature) away but not for a good amount of damage.
I really don't think that scorching Column can zone anything with it's low damage, solar detonation has the incapacitation trait for some unknown reason, Kindle inner flame Is useful if you're, once again, in melee and can proc the weakness from your aura.
These things are all better than you're giving them credit for when they're resourceless options.
Solar Det is way better than you're giving it credit for if the encounter building guidelines are actually being followed; a lot of encounters should have extra minions that are PL or lower, and dazzling them is quite effective. Kindle is mainly there as a party buff, imo, and gives excellent utility (do not underestimate free step) and a fairly rare status bonus to reflex. I don't really like scorching column, but it's your only AoE option with 60ft range for a while; that alone gives it some value.
I think part of the issue here is that, as Agonarchy says, you're trying to specialize a class that is intentionally generalist. The nature of Kineticist is that it has a suite of feat options (like weapon infusion, which is practically mandatory imo) that ensure it always has a decent option to contribute. If you start specializing with something like this Oracle archetype build, you start losing your fallback options, get stuck forcing one alright trick, and you're screwed if it doesn't work—the exact opposite of how the class is designed to function.
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I think part of the issue here is that, as Agonarchy says, you're trying to specialize a class that is intentionally generalist. The nature of Kineticist is that it has a suite of feat options (like weapon infusion, which is practically mandatory imo) that ensure it always has a decent option to contribute. If you start specializing with something like this Oracle archetype build, you start losing your fallback options, get stuck forcing one alright trick, and you're screwed if it doesn't work—the exact opposite of how the class is designed to function.
I disagree. The kineticist, in my opinion, Is an inherently specialist class which Is forced to generalize since most of its feats are bad.
Practically speaking; a kineticist doesn't have many choices, they have, give or take, 14 spells they can choose as they level up; that's an insanely low Number! For a generalist! What i think goes on Is that, since you have a handful of good feats, you're incentivized to build around them and then, when you're done, look around to find other good feats to pick up without any cohesiveness (i Hope It's a real Word).
I'll give a dumb example: my kineticist Is mainly Fire/earth, with Oracle dedication, the only other thing i could get would be the aura junction+thermal Nimbus at level 5, but that'd leave me with useless feats (bar Spikeskin) until level 12! And therefore i took wood as a new element so i could take wood's Good feats.
I DID became a kind of generalist, but not organically. Sorry if i explained myself poorly
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Man this is such a nihilistic take. Why even bother because you can probably find someone somewhere who won't like something? That's ridiculous.
Is that not the literal opposite of YuriP's take, though? Their point is to not make the perfect the enemy of the good, which we all have a tendency to do in these spaces (including here), not to stop giving feedback at all. It's not a very complicated take either, and there was plenty enough context to not assume the worst of them here.
I also do think a lot of it is being illustrated on this very thread: there's a lot of talk about crap feats, but no benchmark for what qualifies as a good feat. The Kineticist, as you yourself point out, has some of the most build-defining feats out there, and if those highly impactful feats are still deemed poor on a class that performs decently to well, then past a certain point I do think that comes down to subjective appreciation more than flawed design. More than examples of bad feats, I'd be interested in knowing what OP considers good Kineticist feats, and what they'd want done to make unsatisfactory feats more like those, because from what I've seen it seem a big part of the issue is coming from undervaluing impulse damage.
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I think part of the issue here is that, as Agonarchy says, you're trying to specialize a class that is intentionally generalist. The nature of Kineticist is that it has a suite of feat options (like weapon infusion, which is practically mandatory imo) that ensure it always has a decent option to contribute. If you start specializing with something like this Oracle archetype build, you start losing your fallback options, get stuck forcing one alright trick, and you're screwed if it doesn't work—the exact opposite of how the class is designed to function.
I disagree. The kineticist, in my opinion, Is an inherently specialist class which Is forced to generalize since most of its feats are bad.
Practically speaking; a kineticist doesn't have many choices, they have, give or take, 14 spells they can choose as they level up; that's an insanely low Number! For a generalist! What i think goes on Is that, since you have a handful of good feats, you're incentivized to build around them and then, when you're done, look around to find other good feats to pick up without any cohesiveness (i Hope It's a real Word).
It's not exactly like that. This limitation of generalization occurs more when you want to make a build focused on a few elements. But not when you combine several different elements.
In practice, the kineticist has more or less half the repertoire that a bard would have. The kineticist can have up to 15 impulses, 1 for each class feat + 2 initial ones and +1 for each gate's threshold, while the bard's repertoire is 1 for each spell slot, being 3 x 9 = 27 + 1 or 2 of 10th rank. The main difference is that the occult tradition currently has 561 spells to choose from, including uncommons and rares (this number decreases to 383 if you restrict yourself to commons only), while the kineticist only has 110 impulses (more than I imagined), but don't be fooled, just as you complain that the kineticist has too many impulses that you consider "crap" the same will happen when you choose your spells, with a large part of this number being greatly reduced.
However, the kineticist has an ability that few spellcasters have, which is the ability to change spells during the game without spending a week retraining. Which is the fact that at level 11 he gains reflow and at 17 double reflow, but mainly he has access to the feat Rapid Reattunement which allows him to exchange 1 or 2 impulses in 10 minutes, which is especially useful for exploration situations, this is a capability that only the wizard with Spell Substitution has, but with an extra advantage, you are not limited to the list of a grimoire, you do this with any of the existing impulses of the elements that you have. Not to mention the fact that he also has Omnikinesis which gives him this versatility in combat, but I will not focus on it because it is a level 20 feat.
What I want to point out here is that the kineticist has the ability to be much more generalist than many people imagine.
I also disagree with the point that the kineticist is forced to be a generalist because most feats are bad. First, because I don't think most feats are bad. Quite the opposite, compared to spells, for example, which have a lot of weird and situational stuff, many of the impulse feats are good and generally much less situational. And what leads the kineticist to be a generalist is much more the Junctions than the absence of feats. Because you will very rarely get Expand the portal from a single element, because you will almost always have some type of Junction that you won't like, and then you get another element, even if it's just to get elemental resistance.
I'll give a dumb example: my kineticist Is mainly Fire/earth, with Oracle dedication, the only other thing i could get would be the aura junction+thermal Nimbus at level 5, but that'd leave me with useless feats (bar Spikeskin) until level 12! And therefore i took wood as a new element so i could take wood's Good feats.
I DID became a kind of generalist, but not organically. Sorry if i explained myself poorly
Sorry, but this is entirely your opinion, treating many good earth and fire feats as bad, something I don't agree with at all.
Here we go, I'll make a list to illustrate:
Level 1 fire feats:
Level 4 fire feats:
Level 6 Fire Feats:
Level 8 Fire Feats:
Level 1 Earth Feats:
Level 4 earth feats:
Level 6 Earth Feats:
Level 8 Earth Feats:
Feats other than impulse level 1:
Versatile Blasts: More types of damage in blasts, especially when you have multiple elements, is always very welcome.
Weapon Infusion: Simply gives the best traits I know for melee blasts, and a huge range for ranged ones, in addition to allowing blasts with the strength bonus up to 20ft! Fantastic!
Feats other than impulse level 2:
Voice of the Elements: This one is very circumstantial if you're not on an elemental plane, I'll consider it "crap".
Non-impulse feats level 4:
Non-impulse feats level 6:
Non-impulse feats at level 8:
Non-impulse feats at level 10:
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Then, after all this, someone comes here saying: "the only other thing I could get would be the aura junction+thermal Nimbus at level 5, but that'd leave me with useless feats (bar Spikeskin) until level 12!"
Sorry, mate. But no!
I can make a very cool, strong and useful single element kineticist with each element with the current feats without take any "crap".
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I guess if you want to specifically Strike three or more people? Then you've at least got action compression. I don't know if you need line-of-sight to where your blast goes, I'd assume so, or else I'd say you could hit someone and then shoot your blast around a corner. I'm probably thinking that because that's how the PF1E kineticist's Chain ability went.The one thing that still really bugs me is chain infusion. It baffles me. I can't think of a single reasonable application for it.
Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the class is put together
The issue is you have to land a -5 and -10 blast to get any value out of the actions you spend. Most of the time you break even and sometimes you loose an action if you miss the first blast.
If the hit requirement was removed or the multiple attack penalty was adjusted it would be a lot more interesting
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I guess if you want to specifically Strike three or more people? Then you've at least got action compression. I don't know if you need line-of-sight to where your blast goes, I'd assume so, or else I'd say you could hit someone and then shoot your blast around a corner. I'm probably thinking that because that's how the PF1E kineticist's Chain ability went.The one thing that still really bugs me is chain infusion. It baffles me. I can't think of a single reasonable application for it.
Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the class is put together
The issue is you have to land a -5 and -10 blast to get any value out of the actions you spend. Most of the time you break even and sometimes you loose an action if you miss the first blast.
If the hit requirement was removed or the multiple attack penalty was adjusted it would be a lot more interesting
Personally I think the best way to fix it is to make it a free action, so someone with it just automatically chains when they cast EB. If the devs are worried about over use, give it the Flourish trait. Though I don't think it really needs it, because MAP is the real limitation that's going to prevent 4,5,6+ hits a turn.
That would be cool too
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I feel kineticist power level is mostly in line with most of the game considering the at will nature of the class. The stronger damage options (~1d10 per level impulses) are around the power level of a spell 2 levels lower than a characters current rank. Ish. More of those options across the board would be welcome.
I also think that since so much of the caster discourse seems to take into account being able to target multiple defenses of an opponent, some impulses should get variety in targeting different defenses as well. Not that every element should be able to target ref/fort/will and AC, but having strong options for at least two of them is fair, I think.
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If I had to criticize the Kineticist, it's that the class can be surprisingly complicated to build, because there are a lot of synergies that aren't immediately obvious in the class's core features, and are instead found in their impulses and other benefits. The most basic example of this is the Fire Kin, who doesn't really jump out as a major damage-dealer until you read their impulse junction effect, but then also apply their aura junction on top, and then see how that interacts with Thermal Nimbus, and so on. Other examples, like Ravel of Thorns' interaction with water or Drifting Pollen's synergy with an impulse like Tremor, make for a lot of subtle interactions that can be really rewarding to discover, but also in my opinion go beyond the usual bounds of what counts as acceptable self-synergy within a class. Properly-built, a Kineticist can be incredibly powerful and can flow beautifully, especially if you build around a theme and a couple of elements. When you don't pick up on those synergies, though, it can feel like the class is missing something -- and in a way, they are, because you're not extracting all of that added power gained from combining all of those different effects.
I'll also say that the class does push you to generalize a bit, or at least makes it difficult to commit to a hyper-specialized build. A pure Fire Kineticist, for instance, will struggle heavily in fights against most devils, because devils are typically immune to fire, and Extract Elements, the action you'll use to brute-force a target's saves and immunity, doesn't affect most of them either. You could take Versatile Blasts to give yourself an extra damage type to work with, and as a pure fire Kin you really should, but that's an implicit expectation, rather than an explicit one, and it doesn't fix the issue completely. It's an inevitable result of having a specialized class that deals energy damage in a system where energy damage frequently hits resistance and immunity, and the class does have some tools to deal with that, but you're far better-served still by branching out a bit more.
I will, however, push back on the notion that the Kineticist has crap feats. There are, for sure, some duds, but the Kineticist in my opinion successfully squares the circle of having a martial class's resourcelessness while also having far superior versatility to your typical martial class. They're inevitably going to be less versatile than a full caster, and they're inevitably going to deal less damage with their impulses than a caster blasting with top-rank slots, and thank goodness for that too because otherwise there'd be little reason to play a caster. If the adventuring day's short enough to not tax a caster's spell slots, then the caster will certainly feel more powerful, but in those situations the spellcaster will generally feel more powerful than any non-caster, as that's the inherent quirk of classes balanced heavily around daily resources. In my limited experience I've found the Kineticist really fun to play, and while they didn't necessarily play the way I initially expected them too (they definitely seem to work much better up close than from a distance), my impulses felt fun to use and I felt completely different from the other Kineticists I was playing with.
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I really love all the niche complexities that are possible. Like the desert winds + two element infusion with the fire aura junction to add a truck-ton of bonus damage to your blasts
Or the safe elements + thermal nimbus + consume power to consume your own fire damage to boost your metal impulses.
Or another one I found earlier in the highest level wood summon you can have with fearsome familiar: the Twins of Rowan which have a very powerful aura effect that benefits creatures with the elemental and wood traits which you can gain with elemental apotheosis one level later after gaining access to the twins.
Love this stuff.
Level 6 Fire Feats:
Crawling Fire: Excellent impulse to explore more safely because it shares your senses.
This is the worst impulse and one of the worst feats in the game. It can be targeted, has your same defenses, and you take all damage it takes if it gets hit. The only benefit it has is to be fire immune. Otherwise it's a way to burn actions to clone yourself to no actual benefit.
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It's not that bad. It's fast and you can use it to diversify your impulse positioning. It's a lot better once you can sustain it for free though. Then it's like having a quickened stride.
I think you can have it teleport with walk through the conflagration too and/or teleport to each other since you're both sources of fire.
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If you couldn't be harmed through it it would be horribly broken. Imagine being able to use most of your powers while being impossible to target.
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If I had to criticize the Kineticist, it's that the class can be surprisingly complicated to build, because there are a lot of synergies that aren't immediately obvious in the class's core features, and are instead found in their impulses and other benefits. The most basic example of this is the Fire Kin, who doesn't really jump out as a major damage-dealer until you read their impulse junction effect, but then also apply their aura junction on top, and then see how that interacts with Thermal Nimbus, and so on. Other examples, like Ravel of Thorns' interaction with water or Drifting Pollen's synergy with an impulse like Tremor, make for a lot of subtle interactions that can be really rewarding to discover, but also in my opinion go beyond the usual bounds of what counts as acceptable self-synergy within a class. Properly-built, a Kineticist can be incredibly powerful and can flow beautifully, especially if you build around a theme and a couple of elements. When you don't pick up on those synergies, though, it can feel like the class is missing something -- and in a way, they are, because you're not extracting all of that added power gained from combining all of those different effects.
I'll also say that the class does push you to generalize a bit, or at least makes it difficult to commit to a hyper-specialized build. A pure Fire Kineticist, for instance, will struggle heavily in fights against most devils, because devils are typically immune to fire, and Extract Elements, the action you'll use to brute-force a target's saves and immunity, doesn't affect most of them either. You could take Versatile Blasts to give yourself an extra damage type to work with, and as a pure fire Kin you really should, but that's an implicit expectation, rather than an explicit one, and it doesn't fix the issue completely. It's an inevitable result of having a specialized class that deals energy damage in a system where energy damage frequently hits resistance and immunity, and the class does have some tools to deal...
I really love all the niche complexities that are possible. Like the desert winds + two element infusion with the fire aura junction to add a truck-ton of bonus damage to your blasts
Or the safe elements + thermal nimbus + consume power to consume your own fire damage to boost your metal impulses.
Or another one I found earlier in the highest level wood summon you can have with fearsome familiar: the Twins of Rowan which have a very powerful aura effect that benefits creatures with the elemental and wood traits which you can gain with elemental apotheosis one level later after gaining access to the twins.
Love this stuff.
The kineticist was clearly designed for several impulses to have synergy. Searching, finding and testing which ones work well together and whether they will be useful for how you intend to play is part of the fun of building a kineticist. I have no doubt about that. But that doesn't force him to be a generalist; on the contrary, it helps him to specialize in a context.
For example, a damage kineticist. The standard damage build for a kineticist is fire weakness + aura shaping + thermal nimbus + ignite the sum + flying flame + fire elemental blast as 3rd action and quickened action. But until you reach this point in this specialized build, the player has to prepare and use others to compensate. For example, before level 10, the kineticist has a very small aura (10 ft), so to receive the benefit of it, it needs to fight at very close range, so having an armor impulse, be it earth, metal or wood, ends up having a very interesting synergy for this type of kineticist, in addition to Weapon Infusion to be able to launch blasts with the thrown trait and thus add the Str bonus to them. Since it's like that, instead of starting with the fire kineticist, I simply prefer to start with an earth/metal/wood kineticist and only take fire as an element at level 5, since it works better at higher levels.
And that's how the kineticist works. It's not designed for you to pick it up, level it up and think "I've reached level 2, let me see what feat I can get now." No, it's a much more complex class where you have to plan its entire progression and how the different feats and junctions will interact with each other. Doing so doesn't make it a generalist, it's just specializing, in the case of the example above, in trying to cause the highest possible DPR with it, and not necessarily focusing on a single element. Other elements can help you with this better than getting stuck in fire, for example.
But the kineticist also has excellent generalist builds, so you can heal, provide support, use utility impulses, and even play stealthily. For example, instead of focusing on a DPR, a player may want to use the kineticist as the party's specialist. An air kineticist can have infinite flight and invisibility, and together with the air Skill Junction (Stealth) it becomes really hard to detect. Then, to complete the skill monkey build, it can also take earth/water (Athletics), fire (Intimidation), metal (Crafting) and wood (Survival). With the status bonus received, even trained skills will be almost as good as master skills, and legendary skills with Skill Junction are brutal, especially if you equip items to give them bonuses as well. With all this versatility of elements, you can take different impulses to solve different situations and use reflux to switch when necessary, becoming a true jack of all trades that can solve any problem, whether with magic, skills, or a combination of both! Being stupidly generalist!
This is the worst impulse and one of the worst feats in the game. It can be targeted, has your same defenses, and you take all damage it takes if it gets hit. The only benefit it has is to be fire immune. Otherwise it's a way to burn actions to clone yourself to no actual benefit.Level 6 Fire Feats:
Crawling Fire: Excellent impulse to explore more safely because it shares your senses.
It's because you underestimate a little. But only for parties that like to explore ahead, this impulse is one of the few safe options even if you risk taking a few attacks before "dispelling" it.
There are only 3 creatures with Share Senses in the game. The familiar, the eidolon and the Crawling Fire. Other than that, only the Scouting Eye spell (there's Clairvoyance too, but if you don't know the place you want to observe it's unlikely the GM will allow you to observe the next room) allows for safe exploration. But since this is a spell slot spell, it has daily use limits, at least until you have enough money to buy it with scrolls.
So of the 3 options:
Both the Eidolon and the Crawling Fire can take some damage to their masters, but it will not be much and can be easily healed before advancing.
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It is funny that the impulse that's good for scouting is "fire that moves around" since nothing says subtlety like "fire."
There's comedy value in crawling fire at least.
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It's also got utility as a body blocker at later levels as well as just having another body to flank with.
I do wish it had some more stats other than being immune to fire though. Like dealing a bit of damage to adjacent enemy strikers. Weirdly enough, I think you can have it use furnace form to give it that which seems very redundant for a thing already made entirely out of flames lol.
I wonder how broken it would be if the Crawling Fire also had your kinetic aura.
Let's take a Fire kineticist as an example: you'd think that you could Simply blast stuff with fireballs, but that's completely wrong! Not only your build requires you to be melee until level 10 (aka, basically your whole campaign most of the time) but It also requires to use a "death by a thousand cuts" strategy, where most of your damage comes from proccing weaknesses and from the Fire Oracle dedication everyone gets.
Oracle? Why?
I played a Fire/Water Kin and was often our top DPS. And we had Barbarians in and out of the party often. They would top me for DPS for a bit, but only because I'd be spending half my actions healing the up from some rank of dying...
And I almost never got into melee.
My problem with kineticist after playing 3 of them is not about combat power, but out of combat. With the main stat as Con, I found I didn't have enough skills and was at best number 2 on any skill I did take.
That meant that as soon as any battle ended, unless people kindly avoided taking certain skills, I was more or less benched.
I could roleplay this or that all I wanted, sure - but if it mattered someone else would need to be the one doing it so we'd have better odds of not failing.
Combat wise, there are plenty of easy paths to making a strong ranged DPS that can just keep going all day long. And I can do it while also being a healer or mitigation.
And it's really not a complex class at all. You pick your impulses, and then you spam them. And you don't need to think about managing when to use the "good ones" because they have unlimited uses.
Most turns could be an impulse and movement or raise shield, or an overflow impulse, open gate, and blast.
The gameplay makes a red box basic DnD fighter look complicated.
And it's pretty easy to pick impulses. You can quickly go into any element and spot a whole set from 1-10 that will a specific playstyle. Once you hit level 11 it's open season and you can start changing yourself around for the needs of the day, but the list to pick from is tiny compared to slot-based casters so it's not all that hard to deal with.
Oracle? Why?
I played a Fire/Water Kin and was often our top DPS. And we had Barbarians in and out of the party often. They would top me for DPS for a bit, but only because I'd be spending half my actions healing the up from some rank of dying...
And I almost never got into melee.
My problem with kineticist after playing 3 of them is not about combat power, but out of combat. With the main stat as Con, I found I didn't have enough skills and was at best number 2 on any skill I did take.
That meant that as soon as any battle ended, unless people kindly avoided taking certain skills, I was more or less benched.
I could roleplay this or that all I wanted, sure - but if it mattered someone else would need to be the one doing it so we'd have better odds of not failing.
Combat wise, there are plenty of easy paths to making a strong ranged DPS that can just keep going all day long. And I can do it while also being a healer or mitigation.
And it's really not a complex class at all. You pick your impulses, and then you spam them. And you don't need to think about managing when to use the "good ones" because they have unlimited uses.
Most turns could be an impulse and movement or raise shield, or an overflow impulse, open gate, and blast.
The gameplay makes a red box basic DnD fighter look complicated.
And it's pretty easy to pick impulses. You can quickly go into any element and spot a whole set from 1-10 that will a specific playstyle. Once you hit level 11 it's open season and you can start changing yourself around for the needs of the day,...
Once again, without disregarding your experience, that's not what the math says. Without being in melee until level 10 (aka, without using your aura junction) your damage Is in no way comparable to that of a striker, and it's dwarfed by that of a proper barbarian.
You could do a quick calculation and find that, ironically, without Its many aids (aura junction and incendiary aura) a Fire kineticist loses most of Its damage in a theoratical full damage build (aka: blazing wave+thermal nimbus+aura junction and incendiary aura) 45ish% of the kineticist damage doesn't come from impulses! But from triggering weaknesses and the persistent damage from fiery aura.Also, on your second point, It's braindead Easy to play but hard to build (aka, literally what the game tries to esplicitally avoid) since you have to find the best impulses and disregard the rest.
You can easily build a completely unfunctional kineticist, you can't do that with almost any other class
My big criticisms about the Kineticist are as follow...
1) Blasts don't start with one Physical damage (B, P or S) and one energy type.
2) The Versatile Blasts feat has some... unique types.
3) There isn't an advanced feat to add one more type.
So far, here's how I would see the damage chart for each element.
* AIR: Slashing or Electricity -> Cold -> Sonic
* EARTH: Piercing or Acid -> Poison -> Sonic
* FIRE: Fire or Piercing -> Cold -> Electricity
* METAL: Slashing or Poison -> Electricity -> Fire
* WATER: Bludgeoning or Cold -> Acid -> Fire
* WOOD: Bludgeoning or Vitality -> Poison -> Acid
4) Areas of effect are locked to specific elements. There isn't a feat or core mechanic that allows a Kineticist to either pick a new area of effect for their blasts (cone, line, burst, etc) OR to swap damage types if they have 2 elements or more. For instance, if you have both Air and Fire, you could deal fire damage with Aerial Boomerang or electricity damage with Flying Flame, to show your versatility.
5) There's no way to treat your Blasts, Impulses and whatnot as either Strikes or Spells, which lock the Kineticist out of a LOT of options.
I will, however, push back on the notion that the Kineticist has crap feats. There are, for sure, some duds, but...Honestly felt like I had to join the discussion just to rebut that. Which is kinda ironic given what I'm about to start with but...
I agree with you like, 90% on the Kineticist having mostly good feats and solid versatility in options. But I'd say that the "few duds" feel like they well and truly crap up certain areas of the class. Really just kinda like, "few overall, but densely located" is the best way to describe it.
The worst feat options are in certain places where you have a lack of options; certain elements' early choices and most especially the Composite options. I can forgive the latter, as someone earlier mentioned that the idea with Kin is to design your whole build early (and I agree with that) so I can at least understand the bigger picture of "your options are crap at this early level, but you'll be glad to have them at a later level/situation" despite the pain caused.
However, the Composite options are a real sore sight in my opinion. A couple of them are some of the best options in the whole Impulse list, but the rest are at the complete opposite end. The lack of *options* in that regard means if your chosen elemental combo has crap, that's all you get. Sure, it's not like you *have* to take that feat or anything, but if you wanted to embody the idea of those elements combining, your sole mechanical option blows. That said, hopefully in a couple years' time that will be less an issue if they release more options in future books, but overall it really hurts in the down-under zone since there's less updates in that vein compared to additional spell options.
And here I return to a point I've made before. Yes, the kineticist has some bad or ugly feats. But this isn't exclusive to kineticists. All classes have this to some degree.
I'm sure many of you here have already played another class that reached some level of it, looked at the list of available feats and thought "wow, there's nothing good at this level, I'll have to settle for some meh feat, or pick an archetype".
However, before classifying a feat as bad, you need to understand that not everyone will agree and see the same potential or lack thereof in a feat, whether mechanically or thematically.
For example, for the wizard it's a "horrible" class (I'm exaggerating here to make it eye-catching, as some people do, but read it as subpar). For me, from several features to several feats, it's a class that I find subpar and full of meh feats and I think many here share the same opinion. But many other people will say that the class is good, that they love it thematically and mechanically, and that they have fun with it. They may agree with some things, but they have a completely different view of others.
And for me, the kineticist is the complete opposite in terms of chassis and available feats. He is much more solid and interesting. So when someone comes here to the forum complaining that he is full of "crap" feats, what immediately comes to my mind is 'is this guy serious? If he thinks that about the kineticist, then for him the other classes must be crap! There is no way that he is getting stuck in levels without having "good" options like what happens with many other classes, he must be doing something wrong, either he is underestimating the potential of some feats or he simply wants the class to be perfect, something that does not exist and is not realistic the way these classes are made'.
I don't disagree when someone points out a specific feat like Chain Infusion, or like you did when you pointed out that composites in general are meh, especially for combining elements (and even so, it may just be our opinion and vision, there may be many others who think there are many more good options than we believe). But generalizing the feats of the entire class, or even an entire element (and look, I have my issues with metal, but nothing to the point of saying it's bad) is bad, so I can already agree.
And even then, someone mentioned an idea that isn't currently supported that I'd love to see, where it's at least easier to houserule (if not official) some of the combinations being modifiable for other elemental combos. My Metal/Earth Kin is salivating at Jagged Berms and wondering why only Wood/Earth gets it (other than balance reasons, cuz I *do* get it being fairer on release to have one per combo rather than a variable number depending on combo) ;w;
You can basically homebrew whatever you want in PF2e, and as long as you don't push the numbers too high, you won't break the game. The feats specifically are designed to work with all sorts of builds and work without any issues due to archetypes.
That said, one feat that I think has a good chance of being improved in some errata that could increase the flexibility of composites is Elemental Overlap because it came with the class playtest prerequisite when you picked elements at level 1, but in the final version since it's fundamentally changed that prerequisite no longer makes sense, and it's possible that it'll be removed in a mistake or the feat will be changed in some other way, probably giving it more flexibility. But I doubt that would include accessing the composite of an element you don't have.
My problem with kineticist after playing 3 of them is not about combat power, but out of combat. With the main stat as Con, I found I didn't have enough skills and was at best number 2 on any skill I did take.
That meant that as soon as any battle ended, unless people kindly avoided taking certain skills, I was more or less benched.
I could roleplay this or that all I wanted, sure - but if it mattered someone else would need to be the one doing it so we'd have better odds of not failing.
Have you considered getting a skill junction? They solve this issue well by adding a very high status bonus to the skill.
However, I admit that the problem is accepting the trade-off of not getting another junction or element in order to get a skill junction. This is a difficult decision that ends up making people put these skill improvements aside. That said, the kineticist is essentially weak in RK skills. But I don't think this is unfair because there are many classes that are the complete opposite in this regard.
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I wonder how broken it would be if the Crawling Fire also had your kinetic aura.
As someone who has mticlasses their kineticist into mirror implement thaumaturge, I can tell you having a clone with a second aura is not as powerful as one might expect.
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Once again, without disregarding your experience, that's not what the math says. Without being in melee until level 10 (aka, without using your aura junction) your damage Is in no way comparable to that of a striker, and it's dwarfed by that of a proper barbarian.
You could do a quick calculation and find that, ironically, without Its many aids (aura junction and incendiary aura) a Fire kineticist loses most of Its damage in a theoratical full damage build (aka: blazing wave+thermal nimbus+aura junction and incendiary aura) 45ish% of the kineticist damage doesn't come from impulses! But from triggering weaknesses and the persistent damage from fiery aura.
I had noticed this before, but I forgot to comment. But are you comparing his DPR with melee or ranged martial?
Because come on, let's ignore the aura for a moment.
From here on I'll stop with the comparison because the aura already increases in size and the strategy changes.
But I simply can't see the kineticist falling behind here. OK, the fighter has +2 to hit and often critical, but the kineticist also still deals half the damage if the target passes the save. Other classes, such as the rogue, can add precision damage, but they need the target to be off guard, which means they need to spend extra actions hiding, or an ally to trip or grab the target, which are options that not only require teamwork and checks. The starlit span magus is the one who can get out of this curve and even have a higher DPR, but it requires all of his actions on the turn, an archetype to take damage focus spells or use his spellslots, but all of these options mean he spends resources and he is extremely focused on just doing that.
Now, if you compare him to a melee martial, without needing to go into melee as well, it is obvious that the kineticist will fall behind. Because it is a completely wrong and unfair comparison.
My big criticisms about the Kineticist are as follow...
1) Blasts don't start with one Physical damage (B, P or S) and one energy type.
2) The Versatile Blasts feat has some... unique types.
3) There isn't an advanced feat to add one more type.
So far, here's how I would see the damage chart for each element.
* AIR: Slashing or Electricity -> Cold -> Sonic
* EARTH: Piercing or Acid -> Poison -> Sonic
* FIRE: Fire or Piercing -> Cold -> Electricity
* METAL: Slashing or Poison -> Electricity -> Fire
* WATER: Bludgeoning or Cold -> Acid -> Fire
* WOOD: Bludgeoning or Vitality -> Poison -> Acid
I would even agree for a thematic reason. But honestly, nowadays I consider Elemental Blast as a "subweapon" to help complement the damage or eventually exploit a weakness. And you get a lot of this damage versatility with Versatile Blasts.
So I understand and partially agree with the criticism, but nowadays, EB is not on my list of concerns and difficulties for the kineticist.
4) Areas of effect are locked to specific elements. There isn't a feat or core mechanic that allows a Kineticist to either pick a new area of effect for their blasts (cone, line, burst, etc) OR to swap damage types if they have 2 elements or more. For instance, if you have both Air and Fire, you could deal fire damage with Aerial Boomerang or electricity damage with Flying Flame, to show your versatility.
You're not being too picky here, are you? Because let's be honest, even spellcasters don't have that much flexibility. To get another AoE with a spellcaster you also have to settle for the damage, which isn't always as good compared to another AoE, the type of damage, which isn't always what you need or want, and the other additional effects of the spell that may or may not be interesting for you and the situation.
5) There's no way to treat your Blasts, Impulses and whatnot as either Strikes or Spells, which lock the Kineticist out of a LOT of options.
I agree, but it was very clear, both in the mechanics and in the blog posts/interviews, that the designer did not want this type of interaction in the kineticist. He wanted the kineticist to be self-sufficient in combat matters, with the archetypes being options for skills or other abilities outside of combat. And even though it is another class to take the kineticist archetype, it was also very clear that the boosts are only worth it for utilitarian uses.
I personally don't like this approach very much, but I understand that he was afraid of what happens today with the exemplar archetype.
A fighter with a composite shortbow
Bow Fighter deals ridiculous damage, especially at low level. Being competitive against ridiculous doesn't put you at "fine".
If you want a nice short range damage dealer (like the Kineticist as it is nowhere close to the range of a bow), look at a double Trident Barbarian with Dual-Weapon Warrior/Thrower. You'll be closer to what a competitive short range build does.
I would even agree for a thematic reason. But honestly, nowadays I consider Elemental Blast as a "subweapon" to help complement the damage or eventually exploit a weakness. And you get a lot of this damage versatility with Versatile Blasts.
So I understand and partially agree with the criticism, but nowadays, EB is not on my list of concerns and difficulties for the kineticist.
P1E Kineticist had some balance between physical and energy types, and not dealing physical damage with Fire is a problem. That forces one to pick Weapon Infusion.
You're not being too picky here, are you? Because let's be honest, even spellcasters don't have that much flexibility. To get another AoE with a spellcaster you also have to settle for the damage, which isn't always as good compared to another AoE, the type of damage, which isn't always what you need or want, and the other additional effects of the spell that may or may not be interesting for you and the situation.
A pyrokineticist can generate an arrow (Flying Flame), a vortex (Scorching Column), a cone (Blazing Wave) and a burst (Solar Detonation)... and they cannot make a 60-foot line, like, y'know, a flamethrower.
THAT's the logic I wish Paizo would address.
I agree, but it was very clear, both in the mechanics and in the blog posts/interviews, that the designer did not want this type of interaction in the kineticist. He wanted the kineticist to be self-sufficient in combat matters, with the archetypes being options for skills or other abilities outside of combat. And even though it is another class to take the kineticist archetype, it was also very clear that the boosts are only worth it for utilitarian uses.
I personally don't like this approach very much, but I understand that he was afraid of what happens today with the exemplar archetype.
Mythic feats and abilities often require a Strike or a Spell, which the Kineticist CANNOT provide. Dude, most archetypes cannot mesh with the Kineticist due to this as well.
You could do a quick calculation and find that, ironically, without Its many aids (aura junction and incendiary aura) a Fire kineticist loses most of Its damage in a theoratical full damage build (aka: blazing wave+thermal nimbus+aura junction and incendiary aura) 45ish% of the kineticist damage doesn't come from impulses! But from triggering weaknesses and the persistent damage from fiery aura.
I had noticed this before, but I forgot to comment. But are you comparing his DPR with melee or ranged martial?
Because come on, let's ignore the aura for a moment.
Problem Is: you're comparing the most meme build in the game (bow fighter, which Is known to be the most ridicolously low damage thing ever in this game) to kineticist. Which Is an unfair comparison! Using a ranger would also be unfair as a ranger has 10 times kineticist's range. A Fair comparison would be a double trident thrower giant barbarian. And obviusly said barbarian also DWARFS the damage of our no junction kineticist, but our kineticist can do some of that damage in a cone so he's slightly redeemed
Huh? Shortbow is 60', longbow is 100'. Many blasts do 60' to start with and weapon infusion - a 'must' for any kineticist planning to make heavy use of EB - extends the range of all EBs out to 100'.
Also, every element except Wood gets, by L6, at least one damaging impulse that has a range of at least 60'.
Shortbow range increment is 60 and Longbow 100. Even if I agree you won't get to the tenth range increment, it still is more than 60 max.
And Weapon Infusion doesn't solve the situation as EB is the least damaging of your Impulses by a large margin.Beyond 60ft. the Kineticist loses much of its firepower. And beyond 30ft. it meets issues (a lot of the 60ft+ Impulses having the Overflow Trait). I don't consider the Kineticist to be a long range attacker like a Bow Fighter can be. Now, I agree it's... rather useless in most cases as fights happen at short range in general.
[Big wall o text about how to properly build a Kineticist]
No, it's a much more complex class where you have to plan its entire progression and how the different feats and junctions will interact with each other.
There it is, took a while to re-find it for the quote, did a ctrl f lol.
Look, I don't think I've seen a single post in this thread saying that Kin is a "bad class."
But! You've got to be able to handle the concept of "cons" to exist, it can't all be "pros."
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A class that gains serious power benefit from synergizing 4 or more feats together is also a class that performs that much worse when you don't have that synergy going.
It creates a bigger spread between a "well built" kin and a "'badly' built" Kin.
This is not normal, and is waaay more typical to martials than casters, who can launch max R spells w/ 0 metamagics and be at peak contribution. Even on the martial side, the passive synergy bonuses tend revolve around Strike, so it's easy to conceptualize/build + execute.
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To be clear / frank, I know all too well from other games how being "trapped" by synergies is a real thing that feels super restrictive. One I've learned how crazy effective +(multiplicative crit chance) +(crit damage) +(additive crit chance) is in literally every weapon build, it sucks.
It's the "golden handcuffs" problem. When forgoing a synergy like that, you are *supposed* to have the alternatives be competitive, even in their own apples:oranges manner with effects like freezing/whatever. They often very much are not competitive.
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Pf2 was never designed to handle that kind of min-maxed opportunity design, because filling each of those slots is itself a big build investment.
Most PCs do not even have the full base suite of stance + flourish + Reaction (+ aura + sustain + polymorph).
Kin has all of these, *and then* adds even more "slots" via impulse junction, gate junction, aura junction, & critical blast effects. (+ skill junction + elemental res)
It's not just impulse feats we're talking about here. Every crap junction is a "weak branch" on the tree of choices that hurts every single build that *could have* comboed well with it. Every impulse with a "missing synergy" is another withering of a branch that hurts not just that impulse, but everything that would benefit from that missing feature.
If you understand how big a loss it is for a Kin PC to not be using Fire's aura junction weakness for their total DPS, you *do* have the insight needed to grok all these resultant consequences. (as the only damage A Junct, every single possible build without it is going to struggle to deal as much damage. Every possible Kin is affected by Fire having that A Junct, because every Kin chooses to take or not not take it.)
I need to be clear in that the "average" player is waaay less system savvy than we would all think here on forums. I'm talking like "I never read any of the Fire stuff, because I don't want to play a character who uses fire."
And Kineticist as it is, really punishes those types of players.
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Kineticist is an abnormal class in pf2 where playing it "right" means you have conformed to certain build strategies and synergies that no other class has to think about.
Knowing your full build ahead of time is crimson red flag to the reality of this detail, and I want to state outright that it is kinda antithetical to the ethos of ttrpgs in a lot of ways. The crazy long timescales of an adventure, and the twists and turns they take, means that you can/should/kinda *want* weird things to happen and change those far out plans.
(This part of pf2 design is Paizo's opinion too, not just mine. This ethos is why APs have the party gain access to Archetypes via story events, and why it's just outright a cool thing to have. (when this becomes a checklist and the archeytpes are crap, that kinda spoils the very base concept, so stop publishing crap AP archetypes Paizo, I'm begging ya!))
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It's not *bad* for Kin to be like this. I'm personally the type of person who has taken deep dives into these types of mechanics and uncovered a few unknown things in other games, and gotten rare feedback to know I got at least one of them patched out.
I love this Kin style of design, but it is notoriously difficult to create for devs. In online games, it typically takes multiple patch cycles to get right, because the number of combinations & synergies becomes impractical to test via the normal "brute force" adjacent methods.
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And yes, these differences in design can be seen as cons for a lot of players.
Knowing that they are a natural result of Kin's design does not "erase" them from the "Con" side of the line.
I've seen how a lot of players gravitate toward OP single impulses like Timber Sentinel in part because it gets around this "expected synergy" issue.
In general, the weirder & more unique an ability's effect, the less synergy is possible. (Which is also why the most absurdly boring options like Thermal Nimbus can be such "anchor branches" on the build tree.)
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Overall, because Kin's problems, and its very real cons, can generally be frustrations that happen outside the table play, it's still a great class.
I will absolutely still push quite hard for Paizo to actually buff/fix the ~20% ish existing impulses/junctions that are crap, because this is not like a spellcaster where you can just publish more options to "fix" things.
Kin has a complex chassis, some gaps like an element not having a good stance/aura impulse feat/reaction can be fixed via addition, but those junctions are baked in.
(Errata edits like Skill Junction applying to impulses that invoke the same Skill, and a way to copy/re-element the junctions of other elements would go a long way to making many more branches healthy & "viable". Fire having a damage bonus to every pop of Kin damage is honestly not okay, and is too over-centralizing in a game with HP as the combat ender 99% of the time.)
I already worry that, unlike spells, impulses being Kin only means that "fix by addition" is going to be very slow, if it comes at all. And I worry more that the composites may never really get another full pass / attempt.
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The main developments I see in the players around Kin, is sadly that I think Kin is going to be used a lot for archetype dipping to steal a missing gap, like getting a good Reaction, non-DC impulse, etc.
It's a natural danger of making a "synergy class" like Kin, though that poaching more speaks to how many classes are disadvantaged by their own lack of option-completeness.
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Kineticists being able to change feats easily counteracts a lot of their planning requirements. Pre-planning is just kind a default design challenge with feat systems and the rest of the classes face similar challenges, even wizards, so it's not a special situation
I wouldn't mind seeing a cheaper way for them to get a second skill boost, even if it stops at +2, if simply to stop them from spamming their one great skill at PFS.
Kineticists being able to change feats easily counteracts a lot of their planning requirements. Pre-planning is just kind a default design challenge with feat systems and the rest of the classes face similar challenges, even wizards, so it's not a special situation
I wouldn't mind seeing a cheaper way for them to get a second skill boost, even if it stops at +2, if simply to stop them from spamming their one great skill at PFS.
The problem Is that the kineticist Is heavily incentivized into talking "unproper feats trees" aka feats that synergize with each other directly. Basically no other class does that, feats trees are at worst 2/3 feats, a kineticist feat combo can be 5/6 feats/Gates long, and without ANY of the Rings the chain collapses.
Also, the kineticist Power comes directly from feats, It's feats are what gives him vertical growth while in every other cases the feats give orizontal growth. A barbarian without feats Is at 60% Power. A kineticist without feats Is at 10% Power.
Without pre planning you'd Need months of in game time to fix a bad build
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Kineticists being able to change feats easily counteracts a lot of their planning requirements. Pre-planning is just kind a default design challenge with feat systems and the rest of the classes face similar challenges, even wizards, so it's not a special situation
I wouldn't mind seeing a cheaper way for them to get a second skill boost, even if it stops at +2, if simply to stop them from spamming their one great skill at PFS.
The problem Is that the kineticist Is heavily incentivized into talking "unproper feats trees" aka feats that synergize with each other directly. Basically no other class does that, feats trees are at worst 2/3 feats, a kineticist feat combo can be 5/6 feats/Gates long, and without ANY of the Rings the chain collapses.
Also, the kineticist Power comes directly from feats, It's feats are what gives him vertical growth while in every other cases the feats give orizontal growth. A barbarian without feats Is at 60% Power. A kineticist without feats Is at 10% Power.
Without pre planning you'd Need months of in game time to fix a bad build
I think you and I don't build characters in the same way. I've put the same kind of planning into a rogue, a ranger, and a swashbuckler. Spellcasters have a whole additional layer in spells.
A fighter with a composite shortbowBow Fighter deals ridiculous damage, especially at low level. Being competitive against ridiculous doesn't put you at "fine".
If you want a nice short range damage dealer (like the Kineticist as it is nowhere close to the range of a bow), look at a double Trident Barbarian with Dual-Weapon Warrior/Thrower. You'll be closer to what a competitive short range build does.
If you want to compare with Kineticist using this short range so use a Thrown Elemental Blast with Weapon Infusion that's restricted to 20ft.
But if you want to compare with a impulse that goes up to 60ft (or you ranged 100ft Weapon Infusion) you have no other choice than compare with bows or with a Gunslinger (but reload and Fatal add complication the comparisons).
Also I don't think that Bow fighter is that meme. Bows have mortal trait what gives the a pretty good damage in a critical something that pretty easier to happen when you play as a fighter. Also if the intention is to put archetypes in the comparison so just add Eldritch Archer to it and you will have both high critical rate + extra damage from a spell cantrip starting from level 6. It's possible to also add psychic archetype starting from level 9 with a human to add some AMPs to the damage. But as I said I don't want to add too much complication as I didn't added Blazing Wave nor any other more complex method int kineticist math.
My point is to just to said that compare a kineticist, a class that have a large flexibility in damage type, AoE, utility and support impulses, that can switch from melee and ranged fight without use any action to swap a weapon or a workaround like add duplication rings to share runes, with a melee martial damage probably with a two-handed weapon is far from fair.
Mythic feats and abilities often require a Strike or a Spell, which the Kineticist CANNOT provide. Dude, most archetypes cannot mesh with the Kineticist due to this as well.
This is a Mythic error that also would probably will happen to runesmith too. I dislike the currently Mythic rules they are full of strange interactions and bad decision IMO.