Author Topic: Sledgehammer build  (Read 34564 times)

MirddinEmris

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #15 on: May 24, 2016, 06:18:55 pm »
Armor Sloping is a good choice. You don't need 95% armor penalty to get good criticals, at this point mobility is more important.

Whole idea behind this build is to crit as hard as possible. At 270 melee skill your hammer will get 290% dmg bonus and tungsten steel hammer will have 425% multi and 47% crit chance with survival instincts. So 28-50 x 290% =81-145 x 425 =344-616. And thats just from 55 quality tungsten steel and without other feats that give 155%. With higher quality steel i guess dmg will go up to above 1k, which means with 3 hits with adrenaline dmg will be around 2-4k per turn. Thats really good.

There are no mobs in the game with that much health, so what's the point? If you can't move to their position then the damage will be not 2-4k, but 0 ^_^

Also, you can have more than one armor. Have something like Super Steel armor with only serrated blade upgrade when you need mobility and heavier armor when you need this crit damage and better defense.

And you can have 3 hits/turn without adrenaline if you have belt + tabi + tichrome hammer.

Eldakar

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #16 on: May 24, 2016, 06:27:24 pm »
The tactic for this build is obvious, lure them back behind corner or stay in doorway.

A sniper with high quality clothes and sharpshooter will have 550% bonus with Snipe and 290% from gun skill, with reaper rifle from wiki thats 932 dmg. But i guess high quality frame and gun nut would make it even bigger.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 06:48:53 pm by Eldakar »

MirddinEmris

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #17 on: May 24, 2016, 08:27:33 pm »
The tactic for this build is obvious, lure them back behind corner or stay in doorway.

A sniper with high quality clothes and sharpshooter will have 550% bonus with Snipe and 290% from gun skill, with reaper rifle from wiki thats 932 dmg. But i guess high quality frame and gun nut would make it even bigger.

You won't be able to pull this tactics off every time, you know) Well, it's your character anyway.

And yes, it's a "bit" more than 932 dmg. Felt like total overkill.

Wildan

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #18 on: May 24, 2016, 10:47:50 pm »
There are no mobs in the game with that much health, so what's the point? If you can't move to their position then the damage will be not 2-4k, but 0 ^_^

Health is usually not the issue, mechanical damage resistance is. There are critters and heavily armored guys near mechanical damage immunity. Unlike somthing like a xbow user, a sledgehammer build is actually very good in overcoming it because it ignores damage threshold, damage is done in large spikes, bonus electrical damage is really good and Expose Weakness turns everybody into a paper bag. I'd still say you can never have too much damage. :)

Mobilty can indeed become a problem. There are many open areas with little to no opportunities to kite behind a corner or a doorway. Stealth pays off big in Underrail, even for a 50% armor penalty guy. Anything above 60% is not worth it for melee IMO. Heavyweight critical bonus is of little use if you need most, if not all of your AP to reach the target. One exception that comes into mind is the arena boss.

For medium/high armor penalty builds it's actually better to use striders instead of tabbis (beware of sneak penalty). Movement speed increase scales with spring quality, eventually reaching 30+ % in speed increase. That's alot better than 10% tabbis have. Sledgehammer also doesn't really need to rely on tabbis -1 AP bonus. The only thing that becomes unusable is hitting 3 times/turn with a tichrome hammer because of 17 AP per hit. Still not a big deal as you can use the supperior tungsten two times + Pummel and for the turns where you don't have Pummel you use a tichrome serrated knife as your secondary weapon. With as little as 6 DEX (you need it for Cheap Shots anyway) you hit with it for exactly 10 AP - perfect alignment with a 20 AP tungsten hit and same AP like consumables. However I have a few problems with a knife in this build: Weak synergy with STR and they don't apply for neither Bone Braker and Heavyweight. A leather combat glove is naturally much stronger here and in the case of the two unique leather gloves if offers great debuffs.

The problem with the gloves on the other hand is, at 7 DEX without tabbis they hit for 11 AP so doesn't fit with a 20 AP tungsten hit. Luckily food offers flexibility here. The solution is to keep both, good striders and tabbis on the character and mix accordingly with either eel sandwitch or rathound barbeque.
When you need mobility: Eel sandwich -> 8 DEX + striders -> 10 AP hit for gloves.
When you need damage: Rathound barbeque -> 16 STR + tabbis -> still 10 AP for gloves.

At this point in buildcrafting it might be a good investment to sacrifice Pummel for Wrestling. When you fight vs. dangerous 1-2 enemies you can't kill quickly it's usually better to put strong bufffs/debuffs first - Taste for Blood, Vile Weaponry, Bone Breaker, contaminated (the Claw) and Wrestling which is good vs both melee and ranged. Cth debuff is flat - it can't be compensated with high skill and I don't think that anything is immune to the tackle debuff. All other Feats are still more important so I'd take this as the very last one. If you'd prefer Pummel instead of Wrestling take it at level 2 and Opportunist at level 22. As a heavy trap user I'm personally sticking to early Opportunist.



It's too bad that Juggernaut doesn't count total armor penalty but only the suit. Otherwise this build would be best played with an infused rathound leather armor with 50% armor penalty (would be possible with metal helmet). Top quality can reach up to 15% critical chance which would in this case double the chance! Good critical damage is only as good as the critical chance it requires.

It can be done by going low on armor penalty and dumping Juggernaut along with Heavyweight, favoring DEX instead of CON for even better critical chance but then it doesn't make sense to focus on sledgehammer anymore as there is much less hitpoints without metal armor + sturdy vest. It would suit better a metal glove/power fist build.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2016, 10:58:21 pm by Wildan »

LightningMonk

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #19 on: May 25, 2016, 04:21:55 am »
For the record, Tabi boots were updated to have their Movement Speed dependent on cloth quality. High quality infused leather sets can reach into the 30% as well.

reinhark

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #20 on: May 27, 2016, 02:28:59 am »
For the record, Tabi boots were updated to have their Movement Speed dependent on cloth quality. High quality infused leather sets can reach into the 30% as well.

Movement speed doesn't have anything to do with combat. It is safe to say you can ignore that....
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LightningMonk

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #21 on: May 27, 2016, 11:13:06 am »
Hey, for those who prefer to walk a little faster ( and haven't gotten around to cheat engine yet) every little bit helps.


Eldakar

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #22 on: May 27, 2016, 11:51:52 am »
I play Wildan build now, and i agree that you cant have enough dmg. So far i did 220 with tungsten. Also i wont craft metal armor until i get Juggernaut. With sniper i did 300-500 on lvl 6 so it is not that brutal, but its only lvl 9.

MirddinEmris

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #23 on: May 27, 2016, 01:39:00 pm »
Every resource spent on rising damage higher than it's needed to kill toughest creature is a wasted resource.

Eldakar

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #24 on: May 27, 2016, 01:52:14 pm »
Well i read somewhere that hardest enemy in game has 700 hp. But you have to count resistances too.

Wildan

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #25 on: May 28, 2016, 04:22:22 am »
Gave the build another go and it seems the option with 2 x tungsten + 1 x fist can't go vs 3 tichrome sledgehammer hits. Buffs/debuffs are great indeed but they can't make up for the loss of damage because of 2 vs 3 hammer hits/turn.

This sledgehammer was crafted with a 119 quality tichrome bar, 104 electroshock generator and 134 plasma core. It's still not top quality but it already greatly outdamages a 2 x tungsten + fists combination.


So the classic strategy remains the best - keep both, tungsten and tichrome hammers in active slots and use Pummel when you can. Another advantage of tichrome is you can throw a grenade and still hit twice with the hammer.

Eldakar

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #26 on: May 28, 2016, 05:13:47 am »
I use taser + 3x tungsten hits with adrenaline.

Btw, striders even with low quality does 40 penality to stealth, making them very poor choice.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2016, 06:21:56 am by Eldakar »

Wildan

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #27 on: May 28, 2016, 04:55:22 pm »
Later on it's not that much of a problem as you can actually afford to max stealth and the penalty can be reduced with soft padding, not to negate the string but it helps. But yeah 3 x tichrome hits demand tabbis so best to stick with that anyway.

Eldakar

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #28 on: June 01, 2016, 01:33:37 pm »
It could be possible to get blitz and get 90 ap which would mean 5 attacks with tiChrome and one with pummel.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2016, 01:39:02 pm by Eldakar »

Wildan

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Re: Sledgehammer build
« Reply #29 on: June 01, 2016, 04:36:57 pm »
Yes but it requires 10 AGI which means dumping either DEX, CON or significally weakening STR and thus damage/precision. Neither a good option IMO, at least not for a crit based sledgehammer build. 1 x 20 AP every 10 rounds is just not good enough here, unlike for snipers/xbow guys that can additionally utilize stealth for Snipe and generally profit from 0 armor penalty. Dodge/evasion at 10 AGI  and 50 - 60 armor penalty is lower than with 3 AGI at 0 armor penalty, that's too much of a waste.

It could be ok for a glass canon though but I can't tell. I never played melee glass cannons except for PSI monks which heavily relied on CC with psi, Combo and Fatal Throw. Those are nerfed now so not even that is reliable anymore.
Maybe you could do 10+++++/7/9+/3/3/3/5 and swap between infused syphoner and rathound leather whenever you need critical chance vs extra dodge/evasion. Juggernaut gets replaced by Nimble for 0 armor penalty so Heavyweight is out. This way you're trading critical damage for critical chance.
Major problem is you can't cause bleeding with leather armor so probably a better option would be to go for 6 INT, take both Nimble and Armor Sloping for quite low armor penalty and still get hp bonus from the sturdy vest + bleeding from one serrated blade.

How ever you turn it around I still think that a heavy CON based sledgehammer build makes more sense and that weapon seems to be built around it.
Next time I do a sledgehammer run I think I'll try the psi mix again for max possible critical chance (still with metal armor). With adrenaline it's 3 tungsten hits + pummel on a stunned, strongly debuffed target thanks to Electrokinesis + Electrokinetic Imprint. Pretty much the PSI build I posted a while ago but with PSI feats earlier and Taste for Blood later as it doesn't offer AP reduction anymore.
One nice advantage is how easy you can get around that dangerous adrenaline fatigue debuff. When you get it you can cast Force Field and often force enemies to wait their turns out or walk around (and waste time) until fatigue wears off. Force Field is also very beneficial vs ranged enemies when you have problems closing in because of medicore movement points caused by high armor penalty or when you can bottleneck a larger group to go through a one tile wide corridor you created and set on fire with a molotov, and pick them from the corner one by one. Underrail is not always about everybody standing in the open and you killing them before they kill you. "All we need is just a little patience... patience... mwmmmhmhyeahhh."  :P

[edit] I'll have to ditch Bone Breaker in future. It's usefulness is just too limited for sledgehammers. Most things that (actually have ribs) end up dead in one hit anyway because of the crit damage. It used to be pretty good for a DEX based monk that could hit for 4 AP with metal gloves - before the DEX and TfB nerf.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2016, 06:47:08 am by Wildan »