“Offensive is the best defense” is the most common reason to list something as a Red Flag (in Page 2). If you are interested in the reason, Page 1 is for that.
Core of Strategy
All units in your team better be damage dealers for several reasons:
- For both player or AI, Damage numbers easily surpass Armor and Healing numbers
- There aren’t enough spells or talents for a player to be a Tank or a Healer
- There’s no Aggro system, plus AI acts fairly rationally: They will ignore your beefy Tank who doesn’t actually pose any threat, aim for Damage Dealers because those are the real threat & are easier to kill; or if they have teleport / AOE attacks, they might just attack the whole team
- Given the opportunity, AI will find an loophole when player tries [Provoke], hence Tanking is very inconsistent
Then the most important reason of all:
- There are Crowd Control (CC) effects (like Knockdown, Stunned and Frozen) that entirely incapacitate the target once the target loses all Armor. There are a lot of such spells / options, mostly are AOE (thus it’s possible to incapacitate a whole group), and are available for both players and AI
The implication being that a god damned crab can stun-lock you to death once you lose all your Armor. When your whole team gets CCed, your Tank can live longer, yes, but since it’s incapacitated, it won’t be able to do anything aside from watching the whole team get wiped.
And even if only part of the team is CCed, it’s still a giant disadvantage since you either have to fight with fewer units, or spend Action Points (AP) that could have been used on offense to save teammates through CC-removing buffs, while your enemies keep their aggression AND you have a hard time CC them due to having fewer APs for offense, so things likely will enter a downfall from that point on.
Hence offense is the best defense: beat them hard, destroy their Armor, CC, then you won’t die as your enemies stay unconscious.
You don’t need to max Damage. The reason why some players get stuck wasn’t because they didn’t have max Damage, but because they didn’t even have mediocre Damage after making a ton of minor bad decisions that accumulate to form a disaster.
What’s more, players who get stuck often enters a spiral of death:
- I need defense to survive, so I allocate some points in defensive abilities
- Team wiped, so I get more defense by sacrificing my offense
- Team wiped horribly, so I get more defense by sacrificing more offense
Then step 3 repeats infinitely as they believed they were on the right path.
It’s not to say that you should abandon all sorts of Armor buffs / Healings. Armor buffs are more than Tanking as many of them remove debuffs / CC; if you need Heals outside battle, use Bedrolls; In early-game where you easily lose HP, eating Dinner to heal is way better than expecting a 4-turn CD single target Healing spell can save the team; Having a Damage Dealer who knows Healing spells is much better than having a Healer who has nothing but a Healing spell.
Now we know offense is the best defense, we have a list of Red Flags.
⚑Red Flags
Red Flags are mistakes that typically make the game harder for new players. Some may argue that “Everything is possible” or “There’s a workaround (at the cost of huge effort)”, but if that’s a reason to remove entries from the list, no suggestion can exist, because people have done crazy challenge runs before.
You don't need to be perfect. If you are struggling, though, I would recommend you to fix them one by one until you feel better.
⚑ The team is neither pure nor balanced in Damage Type
⚑ Having a hybrid build of Damage Dealer + Summoner
⚑ Splitting a build's Attribute between STR, FIN or INT
⚑ Investing Constitution despite the build needs STR, FIN or INT
⚑ Investing Wits excessively on more than one unit
⚑ Splitting too much between several Skill trees
⚑ Picking Talents that doesn’t improve offense
⚑ Not having CC options / latest Spells
⚑ Not knowing hybrid spells exist
⚑ Using under-level weapons despite the build relies on weapon Damage
⚑ Having a Shield when the build relies on weapon Damage
⚑ Challenging high LV enemies without a real plan
⚑ Voluntarily walk into an obvious danger
⚑ Refuse to buff prior to a fight
⚑ Refuse to position prior to a fight
⚑ Walking to enemies instead of letting enemies walk to you
⚑ Prioritizing the wrong target
There isn’t any explanation above since I know that pointing out the Red Flags could be more than enough for some players, so to save their time, a brief checklist was made. If you need an explanation, here we go! (To quickly jump to the section you are interested: on PC, you can open the Outline to the left of this page; on mobile, go to option > Outline)
⚑ Using Wiki builds
Literally every build, effective or not, has a theme. But Wiki builds are advertised as “Theme builds”, because they lack effectiveness.
If the choice of difficulty is low enough, or the player is willing to suffer, then surely such builds can work. We can be generous and say “everything works”, given the players are willing to cheese or pour a ton of resources just to win the most mediocre fight.
Though, in that case, the player is better off making their own builds, because apparently everything works for the said player, why not make a fantasy build that they have been dreaming of?
⚑ Having a Tank
⚑ Having a Healer
As explained earlier, offense is the best defense.
⚑ The team is neither pure nor balanced in Damage Type
Since you want to break Armor, apply CC then finish it, the easiest option is to have a team of pure Physical or pure Magic, so that you only have to destroy one type of Armor as opposed to two types of Armor.
If half of your team is Physical while the other half is Magic (a “balanced” team, so called “2-2 split”, “mixed team”), the advantage is being able to target enemies based on their weaker Armor, at the cost of having to plan more since the priority is to take down the next conscious enemy who poses a threat, you either have to come up with something like adjusting Initiative through buffs pre-fight in order to strike the weakness of the first enemy, or just suck it up.
But if your team is neither pure nor balanced, for instance 3 Physical + 1 Magic, then the lonely unit may have difficulty breaking Armor or finishing it. 3 Magic + 1 Physical would be less miserable since Physical builds are good at single target Damage, but in general, both 3-1 split teams are not recommended.
⚑ Having a hybrid build of Damage Dealer + Summoner
Splitting Skill points and AP is just not a good idea. It’s one of the major reasons why people say “Summoning falls off”: It doesn’t, considering that it starts one-shot things from Act 2 bosses to the whole final fight. You just need to dedicate yourself to Summoning.
⚑ Splitting a build's Attribute between STR, FIN or INT
If it's for meeting the requirements of a gear that offers good bonuses, fine. Otherwise, as explained earlier, offense is the best defense, splitting your power into two offensive Attributes isn’t a good idea.
⚑ Investing Constitution despite the build needs STR, FIN or INT
As explained earlier, offense is the best defense.
There are ways to use Constitution to do Damage, but one is tricky and the other uses a glitch, and I bet your build isn’t one of them, so no Constitution.
What about minimum investment for a Shield? If the major source of Damage isn’t from melee weapons, then a Shield is fine, otherwise it’s better to Two-Handed a big weapon or Dual-Wielding weapons. Even a Mage who uses ranged spells as the main source of damage can benefit from +INT bonus from offhand weapons (if you have such weapons).
⚑ Investing Wits excessively on more than one unit
For crits, 1% improvement in crit chance is too insignificant; for Initiative, only the quickest unit needs high Initiative, because aside from the quickest unit getting to go first, the turn order alternates between two teams. Take the following example, where (X) represent the Initiative of a unit:
Enemy1 (17) > Teammate1 (16) > Enemy2 (13) > Teammate2 (14)
> Enemy3 (12) > Teammate3 (11) > Enemy4 (11) > Teammate4 (10)
> Enemy5 (10) > Enemy6 (9)
Notice that Enemy2 gets its turn before Teammate2 does despite having the Initiative being 1 point lower, due the the alternating turn design.
Two teams will have this alternating order until one team runs out of units. At the start of every round, the game uses these rules to order turns. Aside from some special events (with scripted orders), Summoning during a fight or ambush, turn order always works like this.
But frankly, even for the purpose of getting the first turn, heavily investing in Wits is still not recommended as [Peace of Mind] & +Initiative gears are more than enough in early game. On top of that, some simple strategies negates the loss of not having the first turn, such as starting the fight from a distance (force enemies to walk to you, ruining their first turn), use [Worm Tremor] with Torturer (heavily limiting enemies freedom & options) through ambush (hence not requiring getting the first turn for getting the upper hand).
Later in the game, getting extra Wits or Initiative from gears or Potions will help you easily out-initiative enemies, so overall Wits aren’t recommended.
⚑ Splitting too much between several Skill trees
Similar to splitting your Attribute, splitting too much between Skill trees isn’t a good idea. You absolutely should be skillful, but that’s not the same as being half-ass in everything.
Mages are fine with splitting between two Magic Skill trees, since by design Mages need more than one type in case the enemies are resistant to a certain type.
How much is too much split? One way to tell is to ask yourself “Do I get this Skill tree because I need it for practical use?”
Take a Mage who uses Spark, for instance, it will surely get at least one point in Warfare, because 1) It’s required for the learning [Sparking Swing]; 2) I can practically have 0 CD Fireball as Warfare AOE creates lots of hits, hence lots of Sparks; 3) Executioner talent requires 1 in Warfare. That one point of investment is not too much.
Buf if you get Pyro LV 3 for the use of [Laser Ray] (INT scaling) on a STR-Warfare Two-Handed for Damage? Yep, that’s too much of a split.
⚑ Prioritizing one of the following: Necro / Huntsman / Scoundrel / Two-Handed / Ranged / Polymorph / One-Handed / Dual-Wielding / Leadership / Perseverance / Retribution
Check this, a tooltip you can find in-game regarding a starting Necro Spell:
^ This is the common trait of most Necro spells: Physical Damage. Then you have the following two Skills’ tooltip being displayed in-game:
Which one of the two do you think would increase Necro Spells’ Damage?
Don’t overthink.
As for Huntsman / Scoundrel / Two-Handed / Ranged, the 5% bonuses are not the same as the 5% bonus from Damage Type Skills that unconditionally buff Damage without being diluted by Attribute bonuses. To be clear, you can put points for learning Spells & be a Necromancer, Ranger, Rogue or Two-Handed Warrior. Just don’t focus on Huntsman / Scoundrel / Two-Handed / Ranged until you max Damage Type Skills.
For the same reason, Polymorph is only good for learning spells, the 5% from extra Attribute isn’t worth it.
As for One-Handed / Dual-Wielding, the non-offensive side bonus isn’t worth it.
Then Leadership / Perseverance / Retribution are not recommended for the good old reason: offense is the best defense.
⚑ Picking Talents that doesn’t improve offense
As explained earlier, offense is the best defense. There are plenty of them.
Be aware that Opportunist (attack when enemies try to get away from you) doesn’t really improve your offense: If your strategy includes “letting enemies stay conscious & just hope that not only they lack good mobility moves that won't trigger Opportunist, but also decide to move away instead of causing more harm”, you should reconsider your decision.
⚑ Not having CC options / latest Spells
CC keeps you safe, and the latest Spells help you achieve it.
⚑ Not having Mobility spells
Wasting APs just to walk to an enemy means fewer APs to attack. There are spells that allow you to jump, charge forward, fly or teleport, with different effects and tactical benefits, so don’t walk unless you absolutely have to. Even Mages can benefit from such spells as standing at high ground gives Damage bonus to enemies below.
⚑ Not knowing hybrid spells exist
Some hybrid spells are really useful / powerful. You probably don’t want the organic experience that is manually crafting every one of them just to see what you could get or if they are useful, so just find a wiki that has lists of spells to save your time.
⚑ Using under-level weapons despite the build relies on weapon Damage
On-level weapons are better than under-level ones (if both ate at the same tier).
⚑ Having a Shield when the build relies on weapon Damage
As explained earlier, offense is the best defense.
⚑ Challenging high LV enemies without a real plan
Most spells’ tooltips mention that Damage scales with Level. You should take that seriously. This will become less of a problem once the build starts to take shape. There are many quests that do not involve flights, discovering some new areas may also give EXP, so don't seek trouble unless you have a strategy in mind.
⚑ Voluntarily walk into an obvious danger
⚑ Refuse to buff prior to a fight
⚑ Refuse to position prior to a fight
Send a scout if the area ahead seems suspiciously quiet. If there indeed are enemies or an ambush, they are trapped with you. The scout who engages the enemies alone can delay the turn to put its turn order to the last if enemies are far away, alternatively turn invisible before ending the turn, delay turn in round 2, then teammates can join the fight through ambush preferably from high ground - a perfect counter-ambush ambush.
Enemies can take advantage in positioning, high ground, buffs, invisibility, ambush, reinforcement or number, before or during a fight. You can totally do the same.
⚑ Walking to enemies instead of letting enemies walk to you
If you haven’t got any Mobility spell, or maybe you just want to reserve them for later use, instead of walking to your enemies at the cost of APs & helping enemies save APs for approaching you, you should Delay the turn, letting enemies waste their APs to walk to you.
⚑ Prioritizing the wrong target
In general, your target is the next conscious enemy on the order bar who is a threat to you, because that’s an imminent threat. Unless you have a reason not to, otherwise the next conscious enemy is the priority. You could CC it, finish it, [Teleportation] or any means you have available.