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lolerster -> RE: QuadForce: A second look. (3/25/2021 12:55:21)
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I have a different position on QuadForce compared to the majority of people do here. I will try to present and support my argument through this massive wall of text, for those who care to read it. Please note that I am speaking from the perspective of someone with access to most of the items in the game (barring some rares) - both premium and non-premium. I am therefore looking at QuadForce in the context of using it in more optimized builds. As such, what I say below may not hold true for everyone.
I believe that, with the tools currently available to players in-game even when not accounting for the upcoming nerfs to items like Purple Rain and Essence Orb, QuadForce is not overpowered relative to other extremely powerful items like Windter Crown, Prime Chaos Orb, Dragonlord Shields, Book of Burns, Bag of Mixed Nut, etc...
Before you take out those pitchforks and torches, there are a few clarifications that I would like to make. First, I would like to emphasize that I believe it is not overpowered in the current state of the game. With an item like this, it is very possible that future items/mechanics will interact with this item to produce an overpowered result. Second, while I believe it is not overpowered (again, relative to other extremely powerful items), I also believed it is still a very strong item competitive for BiS for some builds. The light resistance and omni-damage boost alone are sufficient to make it a highly coveted misc. and the active effects are just icing on the cake.
A final note before we get to the meat of all this - when I evaluate a character build in the context of QuadForce, I am making an assumption that you have access to the top 8 of of your inventory slots and but not storage. The reason I make this assumption in general is that if you always have access to storage/plan to constantly swap for content, you can always customize your character to perfectly optimize any quest/boss/challenge you are currently doing. You would be, by definition, always overpowered and every challenge in the game would be, by definition, easy. There is no need to discuss any kind of character build. Even the "impossible" bosses can easily be defeated with 100% success.
With that out of the way, my primary reasons for believing it is not overpowered in the current state of the game are as follows:
It is not possible to simultaneously use so many different stats effectively. Even though you are receiving an increase to your stat total, you are never truly using all of those stats while still paying the cost of those stats.
To the best of my knowledge, the power that QuadForce provides to the player does not overshadow the many other powerful effects that the player is able to receive currently, even when accounting for the future upcoming nerfs to items like Purple Rain/Essence Orb and discounting any bugs currently in the game.
With the previous 2 points in mind, the primary benefit of QuadForce is the versatility it provides. In order to take advantage of this versatility, you must customize your inventory and stats to benefit form it. I believe the versatility it brings does not justify the combination of the SP cost and the compromise to your inventory and stats.
Now, let's examine some possible use cases for QuadForce's and some interactions that the community believes makes the item overpowered to see if the above 3 points are true. Please keep in mind while reading that while under QuadForce's effect, you are not able to swap to other miscs without losing QuadForce's benefits along with a loss in SP and most of what I talk about refers to the active effects, as there is no doubt that the passive effects are very powerful (but absolutely not unprecedented).
1. Mage Receiving 250 STR: This is by far, the most useless application of this item. Let's see what you are getting for the price of 234 SP/turn. From a spell/skill usage perspective, it offers no benefits. You do not do more damage (in fact, you do less in some cases when using old standard miscs. like Blood Contract) and you are not spending less resources. If you plan to use it with regular attacks, you must replace your entire inventory with melee/range weapons and, if you are a 0 CHA build, run Therndas/Dunamis/possibly Buffalot in additional to Poelala/Arcane Amp. You are indeed doing more damage on your regular attacks. In exchange, you can never use your regular attacks again without QuadForce, possibly giving up some spellboosting weapons, spending 236 sp/turn to do what warriors/rangers do for free. You are paying the SP for 250 points of stats, but you are effectively not using your INT at all, so it's the same as having 0 INT here. Also, keep in mind that the only reason to not nuke in the current meta is to improve your resource efficiency. I don't care if you are running 16th Anniversary Cupcake, EO, PR, FT, Infinita Staff, Cometoid, DL set and Soul Gauntlet all in the same build. There is 0 efficiency to be found here. I will note that Werepyre forms can be used here to mitigate many of the downsides, but I will discuss in a later point.
2. Warrior Receiving 250 INT: This does have some uses. The reason you would want to have the INT in this case is to be able to use the Mage's utility spells or Mage's nukes, both cases will require the usage of Poelala/Arcane Amp in addition to Dunamis/Buffalot. The main utility spells that are worthy of note are pretty much just Mana Shields (I will use Book of Burns here as an example). From an efficiency perspective, this is much, much, much weaker than what mages are able to achieve. Mana Shields are realistically only good in long fights, and mages can achieve the same result without the additional SP cost every turn/restriction on items you can use to sustain that SP cost. In addition, you will also lose HP based on your remaining MP once you unequip QuadForce. However, this is still useful in certain fights, as it is possible to easily get absurdly powerful Mana Shields especially with the way that Dragonlord Shields are stacking with mana shields right now (10k+ in 1-2 turns of setup with under 0.1 MP to HP conversion rate). The other possible use of this extra INT is for the nukes. If you are planning to use mage nukes on your QuadForce warrior because you read on the armour skill ranking list that mage nukes hit harder, you can throw those blueprints into the trash bin right now. Aside from Elemental Wizard Robes + Burst spells, mage and warrior nukes are still neck to neck, at least until old standard armours are nerfed and the usage of imbues allows you to cover every element except for Wind (which I assume should be taken up by Dragonlord if you are using QuadForce). And if you plan to run Elemental Wizard Robes + Burst spells, my suggestion is to open your character page, look at your armour, spell and weapon slots, ask yourself which spells/armour/weapons you would like to replace for Elemental Wizard/4 x Burst Spells/2x Poelala/Arcane Amp/Cutlasses and then discard the idea after coming to the realization that such a build is terrible, whether you are a mage or a QuadForce warrior. The real reason you want to run mage nukes on a QuadForce warrior is the interaction between between mana regeneration effects (Mind Gauntlet, Pixel Ether, etc...) and increase in total mana pool from increased INT (this can be done with mana shield too, but I'm not sure how you may be depleting mana from just the mana shield when your base mana pool at 250 INT can sustain some 10s of thousands of damage with mana shields). Ideally, this is to be paired up with Bloodmage. This actually IS very good, as it allows you to constantly nuke without running out of mana, which is certainly worth the 236 sp/turn, especially with all the SP regen we have in the game. This is potentially very strong for activities like warring quickly, but doesn't have too many applications outside of it (it had some possible broken interactions with Invincible Star until it was changed to 1 use every 3 turns). Just keep in mind that once you unequip QuadForce to regenerate mana, you will be paying for all of that mana spent in HP. I believe after 4 casts of a blood mage spell and paying the HP cost for your mana, you actually won't have enough HP to lose at 0 END without regaining some HP (through for example, Bell Shell, in exchange for some damage) - somebody needs to confirm this for me as I'm too lazy to untrain my stats to test this. If you are able to sustain yours SP without using Miscs. or get a full restore using something like Dragonlord, you can skip the HP cost altogether. However, I do not consider this interaction to be strong enough to be broken (more about Dragonlord below).
3. Improving Status Rolls: This is on paper quite strong, especially in conjunction with Purple Rain and Essence Orb. In reality, it is far weaker. The majority of useful status effects are applied via quickcast (Love Potion, SFP, Mesmerize, Snarl, PCO, etc...) and the majority of those are on misc. items. Those are incompatible with QuadForce to improve status rolls. Only a handful of the remaining statuses require a stat that you normally wouldn't have 250 points in. The only relevant effect I can think of from the top of my head are Mesmerize and the Backlash package. The boost to mesmerize is quite strong with Purple Rain and Backlash. It's not worth 234 SP just for Mesmerize potency without PR, but you are still getting the 250 Charisma which can be very useful (I will have a separate section for Charisma/Backlash).
4. Interaction with Purple Rain/Essence Orb: There are some very strong interactions with these items. However, this is not a problem with QuadForce and more of a problem with 2 items that should never have existed (in my opinion). Let's not pretend QuadForce's interaction with these items is anywhere near as broken as some of the other interactions they allow. The usual nuke setups aside, these are items that allow for complete damage immunity, permanent celerity, permanent control, damage in the 10s of thousands in a single turn and much more. If you believe QuadForce's interaction is broken with these items, then the items to look at are these items, not really QuadForce.
5. Boosting Charisma on 0 Charisma Builds: This is likely the best stat that you can take advantage of with QuadForce. Unlike STR and INT cannot be used simultaneously and effectively, Charisma can indeed be used alongside both STR and INT, for an expected increase in power of ~50% melee. There is no stat wastage so to speak when using QuadForce to boost Charisma. We have also been getting a lot of powerful contract-type of pets/guests, which are excellent with Charisma, providing more than just the +50% melee. This gives 0 Charisma builds the option of running beastmaster pets. The problem is that even this advantage is not as strong as it initially seems, for the same reason that FO builds are perfectly comfortable with running 0 charisma - why wouldn't they just run booster pets/guests like they normally do (both the omni boosters and the elemental-specific ones), another set of items that, in my opinion, should never have been created in their current state. Aside from Lepre-chan/Manifestation, all of the them scale with INT/CHA (75/25 for elemental and and 50/50 for omni). While CHA technically improves their boost, it is important to keep in mind that these things have their boosts capped at x1.1 of their expected boost. What this means is that when using Arcane Amp+ Celtic Wheel/Buffalot + CIT, the elemental boosters will actually not gain ANY benefit from CHA and the omni boosters can gain at most +4% melee worth of damage. And while omni boosters suffer from a *0.6 modifier due to their compression, the elemental versions suffer no such disadvantage. Even when not boosting your INT through other items and these pets/guests are benefiting from CHA, the value of your own CHA stat is substantially diminished, as their damage is far less dependent on CHA than traditional pets/guests and their accuracy is not dependent at all on CHA. To add to it, booster pets/guests are simply more optimal when nuking and for offensive builds, as unlike traditional pets/guests, they have multiplicative scaling with armour lean/elecomp/lore imbue/etc. They are simply better numerically. If your goal is to boost damage with a misc, there are miscs. specifically designed for that and are far better when used with boosters. With all of this considered, with maybe a few outlier cases like FGM and Pig Drake, why would someone go through the trouble of paying for a Charisma boost to run pets/guests that are worse than what you were using before? Also remember that in order to fully take advantage of Charisma, you need to dedicate quite a few spell slots to summon guests (otherwise it will only give you +20% melee worth of damage instead of +50% melee).
6. Interaction with Resource Loopers: There is a lot of talk here about being able to infinitely sustain QuadForce with items like Infinita Staff, Dragonlord, etc. Yes, this is absolutely possible. However, one of the ideas I have been trying to get across in the previous 5 points is that centralizing your build around QuadForce will do you more harm than good. Currently, you are much better off using it as a general damage booster/light resist misc. and then use one of the actives if it happens to be useful than trying to force a build around it by compromising your inventory set-up. The resource loop is available to you with or without QuadForce, so there is no reason to force yourself to use it with QuadForce is there? Trying to use them to sustain QuadForce is a waste of their potential. They can be used to achieve much greater results. Remember, these items also have a damage penalty in exchange for their regen effects. Using them to sustain QuadForce is reducing your damage to sustain an effect that gives very minor benefits.
7. QuadForce-Specific Builds: Up to this point, I have mostly talked about common meta builds or slight variations of such builds. But what of stat/off-meta builds centred around QuadForce that is able to benefit a lot more from QuadForce? Let me start off by saying that these builds are less popular simply because they are weaker. I don't think giving these builds a boost is a bad thing at all. On the contrary, items that improve the power and hopefully popularity of such builds are needed in the game. As much as I like seeing Zerking Blood Mage Blade of Elemental Empowerment #420, we need more items like Dreadfiend, Dreamweaver's Inisght and Foam Finger to promote some of those less popular builds. But popularity aside, I need to present an actual argument for why these builds are not imbalanced. I think they key idea with using QuadForce in these builds is to compensate their weakness using QuadForce by imitating a more meta build, but at a reduced effectiveness (fewer available slots, misc. locked, SP cost). An example is a backlash build running 250 END/250 LUK/250 CHA. They gain full benefit of these stats for their backlash builds package, but as the backlash package is fairly compact, they can round out the rest of their build using the standard warrior/mage items and use QuadForce to boost their DEX/INT/STR to play as a mage/warrior. This sounds REALLY strong as you seem to be getting full benefit of 1250 points of stats. But again remember, you are just playing a gimped version of a meta build in those situations. And what is a quality of these meta builds that I said in point 5? They don't care about Charisma. And remember what I said in point 4 about massive mana shields/unlimited celerity/unlimited control/damage immunity in the game? Most of them don't really care about health total either (i.e. the philosophy of any HP number is the same as long as it is not 0). Another idea that have been floating around is using QuadForce to boost a Werepyre's DEX to play like a mage. But again, you are just playing a Mage with extra restrictions (werepyre actually have to run both Buffalot AND Arcane Amp to gain the same benefit that Warrior/Mages do with 1 spell), the trade-off for making your regular attacks quite a bit better. Also remember that when you are playing as a mage, your strength becomes a wasted 250 points of stats. Can you really call that broken? I wouldn't at least. You can even run Werepyre on a build with 0 STR/0 DEX/250 INT/250 CHA/250 LUK, boosting strength in Werepyre when you need to use normal/beast form attack and boosting DEX outside of those armours, but you still run into many of the same problems as I discussed above. Finally, I would like to make the remark that creating a build centred around QuadForce is going to substantially reduce your effectiveness outside of QuadForce. This is not something a lot of people seems to be thinking about, but it is actually VERY substantial. Take resistance miscs for example. They literally half your opponent's damage. Mathematically, that basically makes you twice as strong. Some of the recent bosses that I see people on forums/Reddit are having trouble with, especially the longer endurance battles, can literally be as easy as clicking SFP until you are out of SP, equipping the armour/shield with the most appropriate resistance, putting on your pet/guest of choice, equipping that random resistance misc. you are running (e.g. Zfinity Gauntlets, Cyclop Eye), move your mouse over the attack button and click the left mouse button until the target is dead. Forcing you to pick between using a misc. outside of TriForce but reduce the effectiveness of your build or using QuadForce for an SP cost while substantially reducing your effectiveness of the enemy in front of you can be very disadvantageous against many of the modern bosses. You can make your "secondary build" an FD build by receiving CHA, but remember that the point of FD build is resource/damage taken to damage dealt ratio efficiency, and that SP cost is not doing you favours in that department. You can use Jelly to sustain the cost, but at that point, you are paying SP to improve your pet which you are using to sustain the SP cost on the effect that was used to boost the pet in the first place. Does that make any sense to you?
In conclusion, QuadForce is not currently overpowered. I would compare it to an item like Windter Crown, maybe a bit stronger - a very strong item but nowhere near game-breaking in comparison with existing mechanics. While it seemingly provides massive benefits, next to a pure warrior/mage's peak and lack of restrictions, most of those benefits are too superficial or insignificant for the compromises that you need to make to truly take advantage of these benefits. However, QuadForce COULD one day become overpowered with future items due to the nature of its active effects. In the long term, it may become a restriction for newer and more creative item/mechanic design. If we were to nerf QuadForce, it should be for the sake of its possible impact on the game balance combined with future content, rather than its impact on the current game balance.
Thank you for coming to my TED talks.
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