I'm lucky to actually enjoy min-maxing because I can Just Power level with Death and instantly get through the "playing with a class you don't like" issue. 1-10 Fighter 10-200 Assassin leveled Warrior baby.
When I first played this game on Xbox 360, I didn't even know about the whole stat gain thing. I enjoyed the game, flaws and all. I have plenty of very memorable moments that I can clearly remember. And I loved being able to change my vocation/class whenever I wanted. I like all the vocations for one reason or another and when I played DD on console, I switched to whatever one I felt like without a second thought. Now having recently gotten DD for PC, I decided to read up on a few things about the game that might have changed. Even then, I still didn't know about stat gains until after I beat the game twice already(BBI included). While I did give some thought to what min/maxers were saying, I was positive that I was doing just fine without it. Even farming the Ur Dragon back in the day was relatively easy after I got the best gear I could get(before DA). Then I saw how easy it is to level in BBI with throwblasts and blast arrows and I'm like "So you don't even need stats, lol" Then for shits and giggles I decided to try that level to 200 super quick thing by going 1-10 Strider, 10-100 ranger then 101-200 strider for maximum stamina and ease of access to the use of blast arrows. I had so much stamina that every other stat is damn near an afterthought, regardless of my vocation. As long as I'm clever enough and bring a balanced party of pawns with the skills I need, all bosses fall at my feet. Even then, though, I still don't see a major difference. Even if I didn't have that much stamina, I'd just eat some food when my stamina was low and the problem is solved. I always brought plenty of food and herbs with me to all my fights and also gave some to all the pawns since I was rich as fuck anyway, may as well buy lunch for my peeps. But I always end up starting the game over because I just love playing through it at my own pace. I love trekking across the landscape, I love being able to fight any random boss out there and believe it or not, I actually enjoy the chatter of the pawns. When I play through DD, I don't want to have to worry about things like stat gains. Though I will say, it is nice to have the option to min/max for those who enjoy it. It just means this game has the ability to appeal to a wider range of players. For all its flaws, DD has a lot of charm that I believe a lot of people are missing out on. That was a really long comment, lol. But I almost never get to talk to anyone about this game.
No worries. It's am awesome game that many are passionate about. Talk all you want about Dogma. I love the game. And yep, just simply playing as the vocation that you enjoy playing as is the best way to play. I hate seeing players dread through playing as a vocation that they do not enjoy playing, just because some old forums said that it is required
@Armendicus There will be a sequel, it just takes time. Iirc Capcom made a deal with Netflix to make a Dragons Dogma animated show, which will be great. Serves as advertisement and create hype for eventual DD2 :)
@Charles Hastings I think so too, Capcom has made a deal with Netflix (I think) to make a show, when that happens there will be a lot of hype and Capcom will create DD2 :)
I really appreciate you taking advantage of the newly redeveloped hype for this game. Your videos answer a lot of the combat related questions I had back when Dark Arisen was release on PS4 and Xbox One.
Thank you so much for this. For years, people would say that you pretty much needed to hit max level as Assassin or Sorcerer before you could so much as *think* about playing a class you wanted to play. Like you were going to be screwed up if you just tried to play the game normally, because "well your number is just not big enough! need more higher number!" Between this and your enchanted weapons video, you've debunked so much bad thought that swirled around this game for years.
Thanks man. I know this brilliant game is a flawed one, but I always thought it it was a bit contradictory to play as something you don't want to play to make your desired role optimal. Not counting augments of course.
Yeah, I feel like each vocation gets the stats that they need to succeed. The only bad thing thing is Mage/Sorcerer gets low physical defense, and the armor that they can wear does not improve much in physical defense. And then vise versa for Fighter/Warrior
@@Nihil0.0 its kind of funny, this means that mages need to tank the magick attacks But truth be told, the only real tank in the end is mystic knight, it gives good stats overall, sadly, for some reason, melee vocations doenst get anything from high magickal attack
Perfect block mythbusters as a video idea? Regarding what attacks/effects can and can't be blocked, as well as the importance of the particular shield in use and the influence/lack thereof of blocking/perfect blocking on getting tremored by things like falling enemies/near misses?
Thank you for this video. I've been trying to get into dragon's dogma, and while I waited to purchase it I somehow got mixed up in the min/maxing threads and convinced myself I needed to min/max, which I usually don't have a problem with in games. But for some reason the limitations just killed my enjoyment. Now, with the knowledge that I do not need to do this, I shall begin and instead of fret over stats, simply enjoy the damn game. Thank you
That's exactly why I do videos on this. The notion of having to get stats to play as something holds us back from simply playing and enjoying. Thanks for the comment Nats
@@Nihil0.0 you are doing an awesome job. i have seen your videos countless times, and i do not get tired. i love your characters appearence and features. the fight scenes and the way you clean the areas is awesome! professional stuff. thank you
I guess people who like to min max are focussed more on the "destination" than the "journey". A big part of the fun in this game(and most games) for me is the feeling of progression, slowly building myself up more and more, making the best out of whatever level I am and getting a feel for the playstyle of the class. Any time I've ever tried to min max and plan out a build in something, I often end up frustrated and dismayed that I can't just play the way I enjoy throughout the game. I've only ever managed to max level one character in this game(technically legit, though I farmed the hell out of the ur dragon), and while they probably aren't as powerful as a lot of other players, I feel a strong connection to them because I genuinely enjoyed putting myself into their shoes, trying different things out and having some fun adventures with them. I didn't force myself to do anything I didn't want to do just for the sake of more efficiency, I just played the game and got to know things. I won't say that that's the way everyone should play, because I'm sure some people genuinely get tons of joy out of planning out a build and executing things in the most efficient way possible, but that being said, it's cool that that's not really necessary here. Play the way you want I guess. Good video.
All true. I have gone through this game many many times, with different builds and different stats, and ultimately they all end up the same, when you use the weapons. he stats were of no major increase, other than a whole lot of one vocation or path
@TANG WEI SHUN - exactly. I wanted to experiment Mystic Knight the other day but I noticed i had literally no skills appart from some basic Fighter Sword skills and noticed I'd only actually play as Mystic Knight after hours of game and vocation leveling... Then I went back to my ranger. ^_^'
I just max all vocations going down the list. I switch while I lvl up giving me a well rounded character in my opinion. I just enjoy playing the game so I don't worry about that kind of stuff. I believe this is the first time I've commented on one of your videos, but all of them are really great. Keep it up, man.
This is the approach I’m taking too. When a vocation gets maxed I switch. That way I get to try out each to find my preferences, while gaining access to as many augments as I can. Plus, I figure my stats ought to be balanced enough that switching between vocations won’t be an issue. I might min/max a character on a new game after I finally get really good.
@Jesus Shuttlesworth A trainer would be kinda cool. Like training skills in Elder Scrolls. I don't dread it though. I love DD and i just restarted on my main account to get the lvl achievements that didn't register. I gotta say though... I don't really enjoy playing Mage or Sorcerer. Not because they themselves aren't fun, but I find it too hard to rely on my pawns to get aggro and give me space to cast. I've personally found the best way to play Sorcerer is by having another Pawn Sorcerer with you to share casting times and therefore leaving you less open.
Another tip for the trejectory of six fold/nine fold. Mid distance and jumping backwards. Makes the projectiles collide into the target instead of seeking around it first
Thank you very much for this video. So frustrating looking at all the min/max stuff, knowing I can’t play the class I want to play until after reaching 200 levels. I’m going to just play the class I want to.
I still roll my eyes whenever I see someone suggest a min/max build to a beginner. This just gives me a valid reason to facedesk instead, should I will it. When I replay DD on Switch, I'm not gonna bother with stats. I made the mistake of not playing much Mystic Knight in the story because of stats. Even poor strength can be good with the right augments and enhanced weapons. I still play a bit of Assassin just because it's fun, and yeah the extra strength does help a bit since I tend to use physical-only sword skills as mystic knight so I'll always have a chance to perfect block or charge Demonswrath. But when I get bored, I switch. The game's about having fun.
Sometimes i find myself looking through forums, and the typical discussion of stats is there, and then I just need to exit the page. And it's good to read from you PJ. How are you doing?
I have been ok. Work has been busy. I am in the process of getting a fiance visa for Gabi to arrive here in Texas from Brazil. That process is a long one.
@@Nihil0.0 A lot of paperwork for no reason, I'd imagine. As things stand I'm still unable to get a job. But that will hopefully change at some stage or another.
I love the thought of min maxing but I really hate trying to actually do it myself lol. But seriously man your vids are the best DD videos out there and its selfish of me but I hope you never stop making videos on this game
Love your vids man! I’ve sunk like 300+ hours into dragons dogma across multiple platforms and i’m still learning stuff from your vids! I was telling people and friends since 2015 that Min Maxing wasn’t necessary and you helped show that off. Love your stuff!
I admit to using min/max on some of my earlier playthroughs. After purifying master rings and finding or earning dragons blood and saviors rings you really can play however you want. I used to dread having to switch to Warrior or fighter being careful not to fight a foe that would level me too far up for fear I'd lose magic or magic defense somewhere down the line. Now I pretty much stick with whatever vocation I want my pawn to learn then spend the rest of my time as a sorcerer or MA. Nice video. Glad you shared light on this subject
I also dreaded playing these vocations for their stats, or even just to get their augments, because the whole time I knew it was just the stats, and not the vocation that I wanted. This was back when i didn't like anything that didn't have Daggers, so Warrior, Sorcerer. But now all of the vocations are quite fine for me....... except Mage..... screw Mage hehehe
@@Nihil0.0 lol still not a fan of mage I see. I almost always use Mage for the off with its head quest as well as Griffenbane. You can keep Mercedes and her men alive with ease using mage. And because I love going to the bluemoon tower to kill the Griffen, mage is perfect to keep the soldiers and your team alive while damaging the Griffen enough to make it retreat but not kill it. That said, I don't like leveling as mage. The stats for it suck. 😂😂😂
Yep, good ol' Mage. That fire is a huge plus in Gransys. I am a big fan of commestion, especially when it lands just in time. Great feeling. It's pretty much the support role that turns me off. Healer, medic and support is not my favored class. But, I am sure you recall how I felt about Sorcerer and MK at one time, and well, at least MK is now a favorite of mine. mmmmmmm still not Sorcerer though. I can defitely see the appeal of orchestrating and guiding a party to destroy, while you conduct.
@@Nihil0.0 If you play mage, get a strider or ranger pawn and it gets better. The problem is you're playing support for retard AI and if you're just blasting with the mage.. why not just play sorcerer?
the reason why people say stacking damage vocation stats is better is because you surpass damage breakpoints earlier, I think. However this is not accounting for difference in base damage of skills between classes either. this video proves that in endgame the difference is minimal. I mean, each to their own, but I am always going to play my chosen vocation from the very start except for sniping certain augments i may want.
welp.. time to throw this complicated build out the window and just focus on mystic knight... though maybe a few levels as ranger for the stams wouldn't go amiss.
Yep. With stats per level, the only thing we should ever pay attention to is health and stamina. Gear provides us with attack, but gear rarely provides health or stamina.
If you levelled pure fighter 1-100 and 100-200 as mystic knight you'd have a difference of about 500 magic compared to someone going mage > sorcerer. But you know what you would have? 950 more stamina, about 2400 more hp, and hundreds of more strength/def. The 500 magic might equal one more cast of a spell... you have the stamina for it so who cares? Also you're FAR less likely to die with THAT MUCH HP, it doesn't matter you're a little lower in magic def, magic is easier to dodge in general than something that does physical funny enough. the 500 magic just.. didn't matter that much. Oh no, you cast an extra spell now and again! That you had the stamina to cast! But you also will never come close to being one shot!
Kind of defeats the purpose of vocations if they did that. Stat growth is tailored to vocations and how they are meant to be played. If you just selected at will, then vocations are pointless. It basically becomes an Elder Scrolls game with better combat at that point.
@@kolbywilliams6288 not really... Vocations is for how you want to play the game. Limiting stat growth to this system actually hurts gameplay choice as if you want to play a certain vacation in a certain way you actively have to play a different class just because of how stat growth works. Like if you wanted to be a glass-cannon magick archer you don't even try to play as a magick archer until later in the game. And no, you can't tell me that the main gimmick of a magick archer is a shit-load of magick defence.
PenguinBacon Vocation is based on how you want to play, you agree with that much. This is good. Do you want to play as a glass cannon? There’s a vocation for that. Do you want to be a tank? There’s a vocation for that. When you pick a vocation, you are picking a role to play, not just a set of skills and weapons. If you take away vocation based stat growth, then switching vocation is more like switching weapons. Since most skills are tied to weapon type, there’s a lot of overlap between vocations. So my point is why would you have vocations at all? Just allow people to pick whatever weapons and skills they want all the time? Answer: Vocations are far more than just weapons and skills. I never said anything about choice, and not every rpg is about giving you as many choices possible. This isn’t an ES game. You play a vocation that fulfills one or more roles. You aren’t supposed to be able to do whatever you want with any vocation and expect it to be just as good as any other build, or be exactly what you want all the time. The game is balanced because each vocation has strengths and weaknesses on and off the stat sheet. Your job as the PC is to figure out how to play with those strengths and weaknesses, not to try and make a vocation something it never was meant to be in the first place. The extra damage from min/maxing a MA is not even worth it, which is what Nihil is proving with his test. Stats do not matter in this game. Your gear and tactics do, which is what the developers were going for. They didn’t want you one shotting everything in BBL as a MA. MA doesn’t just get more defense, he gets more stamina, which is more important for getting off his special attacks that he can spam relatively quickly and from long range compared to other magic classes. More attacks = more damage. You are getting more damage, just not the way you would like. They already have a ton of dps too, so more magic damage doesn’t really do anything to help them. On the other hand, defense and stamina help their survivability a lot. The game already has a glass cannon magic build anyway. Just play as a sorc., they were designed to be a glass cannon in the first place. Just get the three basic elements and one shot almost anything. If you understand all of this, yet you still disagree, then there isn’t an argument here, you just value character creation over game play mechanics. That’s fine, its your prerogative, and it isn’t a bad thing. It’s just how you like to play games. It doesn’t mean that the lack of choice in stat growth is what makes this game an imperfect game. That mechanic is 100% intended by the devs.
@@kolbywilliams6288 You misunderstand me. I said a glass-cannon MAGICK ARCHER. Not just a glass cannon anything. I'm not saying this stat growth system isn't balanced. Like you said "You are getting more damage, just not the way you like" but that's exactly it! This system is restrictive to player choice. I'm gonna reference another user's comment here: "monkey brain says big number good". That's literally why min-maxers exist. To get the biggest number they possibly can on specific stats. And besides they can just restrict/balance the damage number scaling without the current stat-growth system. Other games have done it, so why can't this one?
I've just finished the game myself and I've mostly played Assassin and a bit of Fighter (after starting out as Strider). As I do with all games, I don't look up stuff on my first playthrough because I want to simply have fun, but now that I am done with it, I can see myself replaying the game and trying to do better on my next playthrough. Thanks for the videos! They are really useful. :)
I love this, you are literally what i want to be in that game. I used to have Dragons Dogma on Xbox 1 and beat the game 11 times (i believe killing the purple cursed grigori activates new game) and I was just as strong as you but since I changed consoles I have now just started going back on the grind, keep up the good work bro. PS: HOLY FUCK THOSE WEAPONS ARE OP
Nice video. I min maxed 3 pawns on different accounts to level 20 using 2 Ring of Perseverance and have kept them like that. It took absolutely ages to farm the DP killing low level Oxen in Gran Soren. However - I created a pure Mage (using all mage specialist spells) that also double up a a Sorcerer: Mage: Staff= Legion's Might Sorcerer: ArchiStaff = Rusted ArchiStaff High Ingle High Miasma High Grapnel High Necromancy Holy Affinity Comestion High Anodyne Fulmination High Halidom Holy Affinity High SpellScreen High VoidSpell Attunement Inflection (not sure I should of chose this, but oh well:)) Sinew Acuity Articulacy Ferocity She has Focused bolt and Stability boots which are a must as the health and stamina is low. As a mage, the pawn is excellent. The far reaching and quick casting High Ingle, leaves her out of harms way to provide back up from a distance. I prefer High Ingle to High Levin as it rarely misses (I find High Levin unreliable sometimes) and can be summoned from a further distance too. As a debilitation sorcerer - because of the low health I had to chose quick spells such as comestion and miasma which are superb for the staff but I avoided High Frazil which operates in a strange way where it freezes the enemy and then unfreezes them when they are hit repeatedly with the spell. Also - having a low health pawn so close to an enemy is not wise. Necromancy and Fulmination aren't the quickest to cast but I thought they may work well with the staff, but I'm not sure that fulmination actually inflicts debilitations. (edit: Fulmination does! Silly me:D) High VoidSpell, saves a ring slot form petrification (I take these pawns to Bitterblack Isle most of the time) and inflection may or may not of been worth the cost due to the low health. I haven't tested this sorcerer set up much in the normal game much in the normal game, but I did test a similar set up which had Petrification Spell instead of Necromancy instead, which worked well on some creatures, but seemed pretty much useless against larger enemies - especially in Bitterblack! I have been thinking about using Grit with the Caged Fury, but the lack of health leaves me unsure.
Another great video. I know you've shown this before in one of your other videos as well, and really with MA it doesn't matter what you level up as, Magic Rebalancer will put you over the top.
Abit late but thanks for this, it's given me the will to make another character, never enjoyed min/max playthrough but figured it was the only solid option to melt bosses
Good, my intention was for those who are fearful that an unintended vocation was required to do damage. That is never the case. The Weapons are what do it
I'm relatively new to playing this game I've heard about it but still new when I started it the magic archer bacame my favorite vocation thanks a lot for this video helps a ton
this is the kind of video that i needed. I didn't think about min/maxing in this game until like a week ago and it's been really bugging me. I'm not the kind of player who ever min/maxes because i find it time consuming and unfun for me, unless i'm playing a really competitive game with friends but seeing as this one isn't that it's never been an issue since you can literally play any vocation once you reach it and be fine til the end of the game but my brain doesn't like doing things like that lmao
Honestly, my favorite way of making any character in this game is to just level ranger to 40 or so then play whatever class I want. Not even that bad imo, just bc I like playing ranger so much and the stam just lets me play the game more rather than waiting for a green bar to regenerate. Stam > a lil bit of extra damage
For me as a Mystic Knight I also go for ranger rank 8 at the start, min maxing isn't just about pure damage if your performance is suboptimal. Now that I started a new char in hardmode it's even more important to be able to straight up engage after buffing.
Glad to have this video. I thought min maxing was much stronger than it actually is, but here it shows that the difference isn't all that significant if you just have a general decent scale towards your damage stat. I'm sure a lvl 1-200 Fighter would do worse than any of these, but not unplayable. I'm currently trying to get a high balance of physical and magic damage character to make the most out of Mystic Knight whether meleeing or spell casting.
If you want, and only if you want, play ranger for those sweet mixed stats (also max stamina) I really enjoy ranger as well. But it gets excellent stats for Mystic knight, 4 atk, 3 magic atk, and the best stamina. Or just play Mystic knight!
Gotta say, it always impresses me how easily you curbstomp the tougher enemies in BBI. I do wonder how min-maxing felt like in the original game though, I mean it looks to me that the biggest reason why min-maxing has such little return is because the BBI equipment is so strong and you can rarify equipment.
Min maxing is pretty well known now as absolete, but for new players, they will often read these older forums and then get the notion that it is required. Even pre dlc min maxing was not needed, as the Grigori weapons were the BBI weapons of the base game.
@@Nihil0.0 Wait, weren't the Grigori weapons worse than the high end post-game weapons during the base game? They're better now, but that's only because they got buffed. Pre-DA for instance, Dragon's Pain was slightly more powerful than the Grigori Dragon's Vein.
New-ish player on this game. You opened my eyes. Now i'm just going to change my vocation as I see fit to have fun without ever bothering about stat growth anymore.
I know this video was made a long time ago, but I've been thinking about this whole min/max thing for a while now and came up with a question and a hypothetical scenario I start the game as strider for balanced stats and stat growth up to lvl 10, doing the same for my main pawn, working to get two rings of perserverance along the way from BBI exploits and the HM reset. Then after I unlock access to all vocations, I immediately begin grinding to max rank all of them for both myself and my pawn, each of us wearing a ring of perserverance to boost discipline gain. After all vocations have been ranked to max and all their best augments obtained, I then spend the rest of the game with my arisen and pawn as my prefered vocations, my arisen a mystic knight with a jack-of-all-trades setup and my pawn a support mage who's sole purpose is to use high grapnel on the big targets like dragons and cyclopses while being equipped with the legion's might so that I won't have to worry about reviving them. Here's my question; If equipped with the optimal augments for each playstyle, and all armor & weapons raised to dragonforged at the very least, would I still be able to handle late game content without having to worry about doing a min/max stat setup?
As long as you play with the right skills and augments that suit your playstyle, late game is doable even without min/maxing. I already beat BBI with fighter, warrior, mystic knight, magick archer, and assasin with the same "play whatever vocation i feel like playing atm" build. And if you find your damage lacking, nothing the conqueror and demon's periapts can't fix :)
Having spent a good chunk of the last 2 days getting frustrated at reading conflicting views on vocation builds, this video is fucking awesome. Thank you for taking what must have been a lot of time to make it
Thanks for this. I leveled approx 180 lvls as MA on my main, 190 lvls on my alt. Most fun I ever had. By end game had full Oblivion set with BiS for my build. I destroy everything. I see so many players quit b/c lvl’ng as a sorc was no fun for them.
Yep, very true. I hate playing as Sorcerer. So why would I play 190 levels as something that I hate? I just play Magic archer, or if I want to play Warrior, I play Warrior, and level Warrior. The weapons are what matter. This "stat" question is one of the most asked questions that I get.
@@Nihil0.0 As a moderator for the PS4 Pawn Hub community, it's easily one of the most asked questions of me as well. The problem is so many new players end up on certain forums looking for the quick fix. The 'quick' fix is playing what you like. That'll get you much farther than grinding thru 190 levels playing as something that doesn't suit your playstyle.
Geert Matthys Boring as hell. Who wants to spend their time farming the offline Urdy? I’d rather have a root canal. MA is OP without having to min-max.
I remember making a pawn 10lvl of fighter, 40lvl strider and 150 lvl warrior. Then switched him to a tanky mage with 4khp, he never died or his HP dropping below 50% on 3 playthroughs on hard mode. I did min/max one time for a glass cannon MK build and it wasn't fun at all.
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there is a difference, like, with the MA build it took 3 shots of 6fold arrows to kill a eliminator, with the sorcerer one it took 2 and with the ranger one 4. It's just a little thing but it kinda makes min/max worth it to me haha, however, I spent hundreds of hours playing this game following just my instinct before doing builds. Also, I'm glad that the vocation I enjoy playing the most is the one I need to play to get the max stats I want.
Does it really matter if it takes 3 or 6 shots? The plain fact of the matter is that pawns can take up the slack. As an MA I use my max strength Strider pawn and my alt max strength Ranger pawn plus a Mage buffing holy the entire way. I run-n-gun through the entire lower part of BBI in very short order. I suppose it only matters if you're going solo, which I don't. I prefer a full party that destroys everything in its path.
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@@Gemmalady yeah, it does. But it depends on your playstyle, and this game allows so many different ones. To me it makes a big difference.
@@Gemmalady if he used the magic rebalancer skill which can stack up to for times. Which doubles all magic, then the magic archer could drop everything like flies if min maxed.
@@alfonsodelprado7940I'm 4 years late but this is true. Minmax matters when periapts or rebalancer is added in the damage formula since its percentage based.
My favorite way to play dragons dogma, is to play as the classes I like, but when I see I could use a boost on a certain stat, I ferrystone back to gransys right before leveling up, change the vocation, level up by killing a goblin or something, and then go back to the one I like. Its easier than it sounds.
Nice, that this video exists, I wish I would have found it earlier. I spent yesterday on how to tamper with my save file to figure out how a minmaxed assassin compares in a daimon fight with an assassin minmaxed as a sorcerer (both with Goldforged strongest sword). It did take longer but it was still entirely possible with in a reasonable time. So even Awakened Daimon's bullshit defense isn't an excuse. It's mostly the weapon (and the periapts). :D
At the 2:50 mark that mount to dismount just to make him fall is such a small niche thing but not many people do it and that was executed just so fucking nicely so I got to say kudos to you my friend. I'd like to go on an adventure with your pawn.
I appreciate the point that you tried to make with this video, but feel as if doing it from level 200 with endgame weapons undermines the reason people complain about MA growths in the first place, as I'll outline below. Before I continue, though, allow me to get my own biases in the open: I actually played the vanilla Dragon's Dogma, and only moved onto Dark Arisen in the endgame. I do know balance changes happened. For example, Assassin's augment for a stat boost when going it alone used to be MUCH higher in the vanilla game and Dark Arisen nerfed it to the point that there's very few scenarios where it's not better to just bring pawns. Warrior was another such class that was nerfed; it's light jumping slash used to be a lot better (and, due to it's slow attacks and charge up attacks, the only safe option in MANY moments in gameplay) and the damage on that was reduced dramatically. I point this out because it's possible that low/mid level Dark Arisen's Magic Archer is different to vanilla Dragon's Dogma, which is worth pointing out because of what I will outline below. However, until very recently I only had experience with Vanilla early/midgame and Dark Arisen for Postgame and Later. You don't get that endgame BBI Gold Dragonforged gear (Which, let's be reasonable, is the primary reason the MA was able to compare with the sorcerer at all in this demonstration, as showcased by the Sorcerer's innate magic being close to 2x that of the Magic Archer) for a rather long time, unless you basically speedrun BBI (Which, as you showed in your video about getting to level 200 in 5 hours, isn't unreasonable, but isn't how most people will play the game, instead vising BBI much later on, spending considerable time outside it.) Indeed, since most Magic Archer bows are actually on the weaker side and new, better bows are rare, you actually go through lengthy swaths of the game where you're relying more on your raw stats than your gear stats as a magic archer. Speaking as someone who did a playthrough this way? There were points in time where I legitimately could not see my enemy's health bar move at all from my bow's skills. THAT'S how weak Magic Archer was during those points. Yet, doing an experiment, I started another save where I levelled as a Sorcerer and the difference was night and day: after switching to Magic Archer, even at low vocation ranks with inferior skills, I was easily doing 20-100x damage (literally, not metaphorically) because enemies that formerly didn't even have a visible pixel shaved off their health were being shredded in 2-3 hits. I feel like this is why people say to level as sorcerer when playing Magic Archer; not because it CAN'T be good later, but because it is pain and suffering to stomach those level ranges where you have both underpowered bows and underpowered stats. Honestly, I'd argue that outside of very specific missions where Magic Archer is a lot of fun, it's not even worth touching until much later specifically due to the combination of growths + bow availability. Furthermore: Lately I've seen a lot of people say Stamina is the most important stat, but I personally disagree! The thing to note with stamina is that - again, unless it was changed in Dark Arisen due to the balance changes - it refills at the same rate regardless of your maximum. You can see it in this video when Sorcerer's Stamina bar seems to fill faster than Ranger's. They're both actually getting the same amount back, and what that means is that higher maximum stamina primarily matters for that initial burst. Once the stamina recharge downtime happens, be it 500 stamina or 5000 stamina, every single character with the same skills and playstyle has identical amounts of uptime and downtime from that point forward, unless they use items or tactically drain their stamina beside a pawn to energize them. In other words, I feel it's FAR more important to have the means to make your stamina COUNT rather than just having a ton of stamina for more percieved uptime. I'd honestly argue the only time it's important is for climbing large monsters or Gamble, and even then, only if that stamina bar is enough for the outright kill. Anyways, just the musings of someone who recently got back into the game and IS playing earlygame Dark Arisen for the first time (Completed a run as 10 Fighter/ Mystic Knight from there) and who discovered your videos because of it. I've forgotten more about this game than many have learned to begin with, so I appreciate your videos a lot; they're jogging my memory nicely and teaching me things I can't remember if I ever knew. Cheers! Reason for edits: TH-cam kept mashing my paragraphs into walls of text, had to way overdo it with the line breaks.
I love this video simply for the sure simplicity of "mAx YoUr DaMaGe StAt," being debunked. My honest opinion on the matter is to level as whatever you want to level as. If you want extra damage then don't make your game experience dull by leveling pure assassin or sorcerer if you aren't going to play as them. If anything you should take just a few levels in them in the beginning to help boost your damage if you're making an early BBI trip. Sorcerer is a case where I would just level in it if you're playing as a Mystic Knight simply to get vocation points for faster spell casting times and damage. That's it.
Most of it is a holdover from before Dark arisen when min maxing was more important and the gear was less powerful compared to the base stats you got. With the high gear levels you got from Dark arisen and how it rebalanced things min maxing was no longer important. The other big change was the augment nerf and cap which made base stats much less important.
@Hollow Shell Some math was capped, in DA the stat boost augments cap at 1.8x/+80% And a lot of the stat% augments were nerfed anyways. The same amount of augments.
I don't do min-max but rather powerplay my character, so that with the right progression he is versatile and effective in end-game with pretty much every vocation, although I mostly played Mystic Knight. Over 4000 Health, 3900 stamina, over 500 attack and over 600 magic attack, both defenses in low-mid 300s. And I planned the progression both for me and my pawn in a way to actually have fun all the way from 1 to 200 lvl.
eh, health and stamina you can regain using cheap consumables. it doesn't work for a no-pause play style but you can't increase magic. the multiplier talents/consumables are much more effective with higher magic. You need to hit the breakpoint for certain enemies and below that you are ineffective.
Plus, he's using those Magic+Physical-based skills to a video comparing Max Magic. The difference was totally noticeable when he's using the pure magic skills like "Six/Nine Fold Bolt" or normal atk (magic bow). Anyways, you can always carry a bunch of demon periapts to break the gap so, whatever. Just enjoy the game :D
They should just let us allocation stats during level up (and have chance to reallocate stats each time do you NG+), or make stats entirely dependent on the vocation being switched to instead of locked in during level up. As much as you don't need to min-max, it is true you can absolutely gimp your character if you do things like level mage from L1-100 and then decide you want to play as a fighter/warrior later on. Does it happen often? Probably not, but some people like to stick to one vocation for a long time, and maybe only choose another one in NG+ and stick to that one for the whole NG+ too, so it's entirely possible to screw up your stats by playing the wrong vocation for too many levels.
Honestly it really only mattered in the base game. Dark arisen changed things so that min maxing is not really nearly as important as it was in the base game. Dark arisen nerfed augments and other things that made it so that your base stats matter much less.
My thing is that I love getting the unique weapons for killing the red dragon. So I want to do 9 times through the game, once with each different vocation. But I balance it by keeping my pawn the same. A sorcerer. My reason for not doing a mage pawn is that after the 1st completion you have enough money to just never run out of healing items. And besides myself and my pawn I don’t worry if the others die. I replace them every few levels anyway.
Watched this to make myself feel better about my magic archer. That is to say, I went 10- whatever lvl I finished BBI with. Only thing that gave me trouble was Daimon until I got better gear.
Nihil demonstrated in another video that min/max made a difference; Ranger skill “Great Gamble”. As it turns out, the total STAMINA determines damage. Since all stamina is consumed, it’s not something you can use consumables to power up more. But keep in mind, the number of situations where you’ll need to one-shot a super high health enemy are limited. That being said Ranger seems like a great vocation to throw in your mix, because stamina is not something you can get from weapons and armor.
Assasin gets 27 stamina and ranger gets 30. I'm not for min-maxing, but if you do, assasin beats ranger for pure melee. Only if you want to min max, tho. It's not very fun imo... I regret playing the game that way.
First time through, I saw the mystic knight and leveled all the way to 200 basically minus farming fighter and warrior for their augments. Now, I had a blast, but only magic defense led to really drawn out, painful beatdowns from daemon ex machina as a teen.
I wanted to min-max but part way through I decided to play a different vocation for augments. At this point I started caring less and less about Min-maxing and wanted to just play the game. I was having fun mind you, but I was impatient and wanted the specific augments for my build. I leveled up with a vocation that I didn’t need stats with and said fuck it, an all around build now. So ima just get my warrior up, focus on mage then sorcerer and then I’ll see from there. Edit: I love your videos they’re so informative.
I can't help but feel a little embarrassed when I spent about 30 minutes trying to kill my first eliminator with a mystic knight. Just goes to show you how much a bit of knowledge helps.
I was level 50 something when I encountered my first eliminator, needless to say, it wasn't an enjoyable encounter. After several minutes and several dozens of throwblasts I finally killed it.
Min/maxing is not about being able to succeed, its to create the best version of something. You don't need to do it because of how miniscule base stats are when compared to what you get from weapons and augments. Some folks do like making builds and attempting to make something as powerful as possible. Like lets say you just want to have the highest physical attack possible. Well thats 10 lvs in fighter 190 in Assassin with the most powerful equipment, and the two physical attack augments giving you a 30% boost. That's min/maxing. Mostly thinking of equipment as your character's progress in strength in this game make more sense but if you wanna min/max do it.
Hey great video I always used to min maxing on a smaller scale by only doing to level 100 by farming those skeletons next to the final boss that come back infinitely, I go there at level 15 and min max till one hundred, then beat the game and head to bitter Black Isle. but after restarting and min maxing trying to find which vocation I liked the most I just put the game down and haven’t touched for a while. Might try to get into it again
Those Skeletons are a good way to level and rank. And yeah, pre lv100 is more understandable for stats opposed to post lv100. My preferred stat growth is Ranger. That sweet stamina gain
I try to mix like some fighter some sorcerer and some ranger to get the sweet balance but generally the I play mostly ranger/sorcerer to get to magick archer I just throw fighter in to mix it up
So you min maxed str just to have whooping 190 str more compared to base warrior vocation growth. That's like 5 % damage boost in exchange for like half of survivability from HP and defense.
I suppose he did. Out of matter existing in gas, liquid, and solid, liquid is the most pliable. I would say same as leveling strider if you were to go the min/max route.
If you run the numbers in the stat planner, basically everyone gains the same number of points per lvl, which is 11 attributes per level (IIRC magic archer + mage gains 12 and sorcerer gains 13 per lvl) However, if we also take into account HP + Stamina, Fighters have the highest number gain per lvl through 1-100, gaining almost twice that of a sorcerer, who has the smallest HP + Stamina buildup. As starting class, Fighters gain the same amount of attributes as the other two starting classes, of course distributed differently, though the biggest difference is the +40 HP gain over mages, or +20 HP gain over striders. Warriors share similar properties, though they have slightly lesser HP + Stamina gain vs the fighter, however warriors gain more HP than a fighter. I'd say those are your best options through 1-100 if you feel the need to min/max and just want the biggest pools, with 101-200 just acting as a stepping stone deciding which HP and Stamina gain you want between 5-15, 10-10 or 15-5, and what you want to make up for your attributes
I think ricochet arrows Are one of the best skills you can have for archer if you upgrade that move you shoot three with constantly hit everything in the room over and over stunning them and even keeping them in the air which you can do forever without something getting the chance to have an attack from being stunned so much
The Sorc leveled MA is absolutely doing more damage. Significantly more. But the lack of stamina is crushing. You would need to absolutely pound consumables to keep your stamina high enough to take advantage of the ~15% more damage the Sorc leveled MA is doing. Not worth it, for 99% of players. Nice video. I'm not sure whether this really dispels the concept of min-maxing stats, but it definitely offers a broader perspective on what that extra damage costs in stamina management.
this video is great and helps me think better of DD after some false dissapointment, as many players new to the game, i made the decision of starting figther, then switching to mystic knight, and feeling like by lvl 50 you are doing no damage and that maybe if i built it as a sorc the mystic knight would be fast killing, i was wrong, then i learn that as going mystic knight from like 15 to 70, then switching to sorc just a bit, i ended up with a pretty balanced build by 80 something, and i rarely played a class because it was conveniant, just for the fun, that made the game overall better, after getting some bbi lvl2 gear, then mk becomes powerful either you go for all cannon or only riposte, the more i play the game the more i feel like the meta is bullshit and if werent for that sense of meta and committing to stat growth much more people would have enjoyed the game and see it for its actual potential.
I had a deliberately reverse-min/max build once: Lvl 1-10 Fighter, Lvl 11-200 Assassin. THen I played as a sorcerer. Good times. I didn't notice any significant changes to my gameplay. My damage was still fairly decent though I'm using the Lvl3 BBI weapons.
On my first playthrough, i pick most physical vocation (strider, assassin, warrior,fighter and ranger), mostly i level up my assassin until level 170. Then i try to play magick archer and magick knight, gosh i never knew i had very poor of magic damage in the game. Especially on bbi. Its too late to rebalance phy/mag. So i start the new game with level up, planning for 10 level strider, 85 level assassin and 105 level sorcerer. To get max and balance attack damage (600 physical, 600 magic). Minimum the other stats, phy and mag def, hp. So that i can play any of vocation after level up min max stats.
The only class that actually is it's own stat growth "meta" is Ranger. Ranger gets the perfect balanced Stats for... Well... Being a ranger. •Best stamina gains for the vocation that spends the most stamina. • good primary stat of strength without sacrificing others excessively (like assassin does). •decent magic for enemies imune to physical, making the ranger versatile and capable of fighting anything. •medium-low health since he's primarily a ranged vocation, incentivising good distancing and positioning. •low defenses since he's a rogue ranged class (makes sense), but still not absolute garbage, like Sorcerer's physical defense or, again, both of assassin's defences. You could argue he's got the best stat growth in the game. Ranger's stats are all I personaly would've ever wanted for Fighter, Strider, Assassin and MK. The one thing that people don't get... ...is that it's not enough to matter. It doesn't matter. Watch Wh1sper123's nonsense series. You'll be enlightened.
Ranger is my favorite stat growth overall, due to the stamina. But I truly love each vocation leveled as that vocation the most. I always figure we can get our attack from weapons, and our defense from armor, but we are limited with where we get our stamina and health from
@@Nihil0.0 that's true. We got many Str, Mag & Def augments but I think only one of stamina. Also like, in the video, both builds had 3k magic comming from the weapon and augments. The 190 levels of sorcerer meant less than 1/3 of all that. Tells a lot.
@@Folsomdsf2 true. But no destroying Daimon with Maw. Stamina's meh. Unless you use a Vim. I play fighter with Dragon's Maw, Steel Will (yeah, I know), and Hindsight Sweep. Like, no one uses these skills but they're so perfect. The fact you can actually cancel the sword Slash from Hindsight, taking in considetation that what uses stamina is the sword Slash only. You basically have a dodge. Not only that but It does good damage and is extremely satisfying. Even more so with the Ring that upgrades it further making it have 2 strikes. Maw and it's stupid good DPS and Stun, along with Hindsight, are all I need. Steel Will is mega poise, basically. And very good extra defense. I did Full Assassin lol. 10-200. Fighter 1-10.
@@lucasrv2630 Dragon's maw is super broken if you use a vim. Because it can't be interrupted and has invincs, you can just kill anything. Only downside is it's damage isn't that great.
Good. Don't worry about the stats Luis. Just play the vocation that is best suited for you. All the numbers will line out once you get the weapons and the augments
Big difference was with your play style between each build. You played each build almost exactly the same yet when looking at dagger use, you may have an magic difference of 600 more for sorcerer build, but strength between them was ma build had 1498 str, sorcerer 1308 str, and ranger had 1940 str, naturally the outcome would be this way. If you use the sorcerer build as mainly bow, and use stamina items for all three you would probably see a more accurate representation of the three types. Imo sorc build is best for someone who plays on hard mode and wants to keep their distance using bow skills it's clearly better than the other three for that play style. Some enemies have high elemental resistance so it's not perfect, that's how this game works.
@@svenrunner5269Also since he spends so much time floating directly above you, it's actually reasonable to unload full hunter bolts into him during every part of his fight even though he only counts as a single target
I am a few months late, but thanks for this video. I stopped my last playthrough because I was trying for min/max magic build for Magick Archer, but I just could not stand playing that much Sorcerer. (Also, I since I just discovered your channel, I did not know there was a way to get max level in a few hours.) Magick Archer is my favorite vocation because of all the neat tricks it can do, but I like playing as all the vocations because it keeps the gameplay fresh. Good to know the min/max does not affect the end result all that much. Ultimately, it would be nicer if you could choose which stats to level or if all stats levelled equally with all vocations. Heck I would actually prefer a much smaller level cap so you do not run into the issue where vanilla game monsters become pushovers, although that is really only an issue if you do NG+.
Yeah, the stats really don't matter. The gear is the majority, and Augments are second, and then lastly is when our innate stats matter. I have taken a pure Magic build through as a Warrior, and a full strength build through as Sorcerer and my gear and augments still made me OP.
The only thing that I do differently is I try and get my attack to at least 500. I like using the daggers, but the last 80 levels I play as magik archer. There is a mod that you can use that cuts the amount of xp needed to level by 75%. Of course, I only have used this on my 5th playthrough of the game. If you are new to the game, I recommend playing it as is at first. But min/max doesn't matter much. You will notice a difference, but at lvl 200, you are going to wreck everything. Just depends on how fast you wanna do it.
I am not a fan of the Blackwing bow, visually. I like the Magian Crutch the most. Terminal Gyre is pretty nice too. Dragon's Breath is nice, but it doesn't go well with any Daggers, I think that is my trouble with teh Blackwing. Gosh, i sound like fruit loop talking about fashion dogma, and what goes with what. Durf, nevermind. i like Blackwing bow too
@TANG WEI SHUN - very true I personally love the monomi set and the grave set and mixing both the shadow and grave makes it look even better because the claws look like they would get in the way when using daggers...
to further prove the point, my magick archer has even less attack with 425 physical attack, and 426 magick attack, and I still shred everything in the game with no problems. Magick Archer is the secred "Very Easy" mode of play.
It looks like you do more damage when you min-max but run out of stamina quick. I think i'll stick to playing my class straight. Seems like each class gets what stats they need anyhow through Levelling.
What you have to take from this is, you want more burst damage but overall worse against prolonged fights OR you want less burst damage but you can fight for longer without wait for mana...Is not better is not worse, depends on what you want really
My excuse for min max is: I'm to lazy to make 9 build's, so I make 1 all rounded 100 assassin 100 sorcerer, it's not the greatest in warrior or ranger due the stamina and health but still pretty solid
Im just doing a 1-10 Strider. 11-50 Sorc. 51-100 Ranger. Then playing my Magic Archer. The stats are mostly well rounded in theory. Probs will just do the Blast Arrows/Bezel Crown vs Death for those last fifty or so. Ranger isnt an enjoyable class for me like Strider and Magic Archer.
So basically it's one of those situations where it doesn't matter all that much as long as you use the classes like you got some sense. And the right gear you'll be fine?
I was trying to min max but as I finished by stat builder I just ended up putting a 10 levels into everything besides magic classes, failing inherently
I have to consciously stop myself from trying to minmax because I never have fun when I try but monkey brain says big number good
I'm lucky to actually enjoy min-maxing because I can Just Power level with Death and instantly get through the "playing with a class you don't like" issue. 1-10 Fighter 10-200 Assassin leveled Warrior baby.
once you get to level 200 it don't matters, my base magick is only 350 ++ and im still kicking ass with that Holy affinity shotgun haha
When you want to level up a vocation but instead gain an undesired level up.
How do you min and max. Like where do you go to apply stats? Or do you just pick one job and keep leveling that automatically
@@xxbistuxx the stats you gain are determined by the class your character is when they level up
When I first played this game on Xbox 360, I didn't even know about the whole stat gain thing. I enjoyed the game, flaws and all. I have plenty of very memorable moments that I can clearly remember. And I loved being able to change my vocation/class whenever I wanted. I like all the vocations for one reason or another and when I played DD on console, I switched to whatever one I felt like without a second thought.
Now having recently gotten DD for PC, I decided to read up on a few things about the game that might have changed. Even then, I still didn't know about stat gains until after I beat the game twice already(BBI included). While I did give some thought to what min/maxers were saying, I was positive that I was doing just fine without it. Even farming the Ur Dragon back in the day was relatively easy after I got the best gear I could get(before DA). Then I saw how easy it is to level in BBI with throwblasts and blast arrows and I'm like "So you don't even need stats, lol"
Then for shits and giggles I decided to try that level to 200 super quick thing by going 1-10 Strider, 10-100 ranger then 101-200 strider for maximum stamina and ease of access to the use of blast arrows. I had so much stamina that every other stat is damn near an afterthought, regardless of my vocation. As long as I'm clever enough and bring a balanced party of pawns with the skills I need, all bosses fall at my feet. Even then, though, I still don't see a major difference. Even if I didn't have that much stamina, I'd just eat some food when my stamina was low and the problem is solved. I always brought plenty of food and herbs with me to all my fights and also gave some to all the pawns since I was rich as fuck anyway, may as well buy lunch for my peeps.
But I always end up starting the game over because I just love playing through it at my own pace. I love trekking across the landscape, I love being able to fight any random boss out there and believe it or not, I actually enjoy the chatter of the pawns. When I play through DD, I don't want to have to worry about things like stat gains. Though I will say, it is nice to have the option to min/max for those who enjoy it. It just means this game has the ability to appeal to a wider range of players. For all its flaws, DD has a lot of charm that I believe a lot of people are missing out on.
That was a really long comment, lol. But I almost never get to talk to anyone about this game.
No worries. It's am awesome game that many are passionate about. Talk all you want about Dogma. I love the game. And yep, just simply playing as the vocation that you enjoy playing as is the best way to play. I hate seeing players dread through playing as a vocation that they do not enjoy playing, just because some old forums said that it is required
you sir , have a motivational speech that make me want to run it again after 10 years goddamnit
So you are going to be enjoying the new one when it comes
5:28 this game has a move where you light yourself on fire and jump on people !!! Damn ! Capcom why yall sleepin ?! Make a sequel !
@Charles Hastings that man was the director of dragons dogma :I
@Armendicus There will be a sequel, it just takes time. Iirc Capcom made a deal with Netflix to make a Dragons Dogma animated show, which will be great. Serves as advertisement and create hype for eventual DD2 :)
@Charles Hastings I think so too, Capcom has made a deal with Netflix (I think) to make a show, when that happens there will be a lot of hype and Capcom will create DD2 :)
Jeah but if they let the game finish, usual dev time 3 years. Maybe 2 right now.
the mystic knight have some of the most amazing skills too
I really appreciate you taking advantage of the newly redeveloped hype for this game.
Your videos answer a lot of the combat related questions I had back when Dark Arisen was release on PS4 and Xbox One.
back at it again with the re-redeveloped hype
Thank you so much for this. For years, people would say that you pretty much needed to hit max level as Assassin or Sorcerer before you could so much as *think* about playing a class you wanted to play. Like you were going to be screwed up if you just tried to play the game normally, because "well your number is just not big enough! need more higher number!" Between this and your enchanted weapons video, you've debunked so much bad thought that swirled around this game for years.
I do like debunking. Most of my "Info" playlist has those kind of vids
Thanks man. I know this brilliant game is a flawed one, but I always thought it it was a bit contradictory to play as something you don't want to play to make your desired role optimal. Not counting augments of course.
Yeah, I feel like each vocation gets the stats that they need to succeed. The only bad thing thing is Mage/Sorcerer gets low physical defense, and the armor that they can wear does not improve much in physical defense. And then vise versa for Fighter/Warrior
@@Nihil0.0 its kind of funny, this means that mages need to tank the magick attacks
But truth be told, the only real tank in the end is mystic knight, it gives good stats overall, sadly, for some reason, melee vocations doenst get anything from high magickal attack
Perfect block mythbusters as a video idea? Regarding what attacks/effects can and can't be blocked, as well as the importance of the particular shield in use and the influence/lack thereof of blocking/perfect blocking on getting tremored by things like falling enemies/near misses?
Thank you for this video. I've been trying to get into dragon's dogma, and while I waited to purchase it I somehow got mixed up in the min/maxing threads and convinced myself I needed to min/max, which I usually don't have a problem with in games. But for some reason the limitations just killed my enjoyment. Now, with the knowledge that I do not need to do this, I shall begin and instead of fret over stats, simply enjoy the damn game. Thank you
That's exactly why I do videos on this. The notion of having to get stats to play as something holds us back from simply playing and enjoying. Thanks for the comment Nats
bro you play this game so well, that seeing you playing it is like watching an one army men action movie. big up
Thanks Luis, I do try to make it entertaining
@@Nihil0.0 you are doing an awesome job. i have seen your videos countless times, and i do not get tired. i love your characters appearence and features. the fight scenes and the way you clean the areas is awesome! professional stuff. thank you
Bruno De Oliveira Lol yeah, the point of the vid is that Min Max is BS
Oh no its one army men, quick hide the dragons!
I guess people who like to min max are focussed more on the "destination" than the "journey". A big part of the fun in this game(and most games) for me is the feeling of progression, slowly building myself up more and more, making the best out of whatever level I am and getting a feel for the playstyle of the class. Any time I've ever tried to min max and plan out a build in something, I often end up frustrated and dismayed that I can't just play the way I enjoy throughout the game. I've only ever managed to max level one character in this game(technically legit, though I farmed the hell out of the ur dragon), and while they probably aren't as powerful as a lot of other players, I feel a strong connection to them because I genuinely enjoyed putting myself into their shoes, trying different things out and having some fun adventures with them. I didn't force myself to do anything I didn't want to do just for the sake of more efficiency, I just played the game and got to know things. I won't say that that's the way everyone should play, because I'm sure some people genuinely get tons of joy out of planning out a build and executing things in the most efficient way possible, but that being said, it's cool that that's not really necessary here. Play the way you want I guess. Good video.
All true. I have gone through this game many many times, with different builds and different stats, and ultimately they all end up the same, when you use the weapons. he stats were of no major increase, other than a whole lot of one vocation or path
Perfect. Just perfect.
@TANG WEI SHUN - exactly. I wanted to experiment Mystic Knight the other day but I noticed i had literally no skills appart from some basic Fighter Sword skills and noticed I'd only actually play as Mystic Knight after hours of game and vocation leveling... Then I went back to my ranger. ^_^'
Gay
I made a maxed out sorcerer. It's about journey and destination. Although, I was killing the Griffon at Bluemoon Tower in 1 hit at level 20
I just max all vocations going down the list. I switch while I lvl up giving me a well rounded character in my opinion. I just enjoy playing the game so I don't worry about that kind of stuff. I believe this is the first time I've commented on one of your videos, but all of them are really great. Keep it up, man.
Thanks Zion. That path of everything is a good choice. that will provide good numbers and be fun as well.
This is the approach I’m taking too. When a vocation gets maxed I switch. That way I get to try out each to find my preferences, while gaining access to as many augments as I can. Plus, I figure my stats ought to be balanced enough that switching between vocations won’t be an issue. I might min/max a character on a new game after I finally get really good.
This is the best way to play for me, i can always change my class, when i start to get bored of the current one.
@Jesus Shuttlesworth A trainer would be kinda cool. Like training skills in Elder Scrolls. I don't dread it though. I love DD and i just restarted on my main account to get the lvl achievements that didn't register. I gotta say though... I don't really enjoy playing Mage or Sorcerer. Not because they themselves aren't fun, but I find it too hard to rely on my pawns to get aggro and give me space to cast. I've personally found the best way to play Sorcerer is by having another Pawn Sorcerer with you to share casting times and therefore leaving you less open.
Lol litterally doing the path of everything just play as a vocation till its maxed out at 9 then switch :)
Another tip for the trejectory of six fold/nine fold. Mid distance and jumping backwards. Makes the projectiles collide into the target instead of seeking around it first
Thank you very much for this video. So frustrating looking at all the min/max stuff, knowing I can’t play the class I want to play until after reaching 200 levels. I’m going to just play the class I want to.
I still roll my eyes whenever I see someone suggest a min/max build to a beginner.
This just gives me a valid reason to facedesk instead, should I will it.
When I replay DD on Switch, I'm not gonna bother with stats. I made the mistake of not playing much Mystic Knight in the story because of stats. Even poor strength can be good with the right augments and enhanced weapons.
I still play a bit of Assassin just because it's fun, and yeah the extra strength does help a bit since I tend to use physical-only sword skills as mystic knight so I'll always have a chance to perfect block or charge Demonswrath. But when I get bored, I switch. The game's about having fun.
Sometimes i find myself looking through forums, and the typical discussion of stats is there, and then I just need to exit the page. And it's good to read from you PJ. How are you doing?
@@Nihil0.0 I'm doing alright, thanks for asking. Things are a bit slow due to family-related reasons but we're getting by. And how've you been?
I have been ok. Work has been busy. I am in the process of getting a fiance visa for Gabi to arrive here in Texas from Brazil. That process is a long one.
@@Nihil0.0 A lot of paperwork for no reason, I'd imagine.
As things stand I'm still unable to get a job. But that will hopefully change at some stage or another.
I love the thought of min maxing but I really hate trying to actually do it myself lol. But seriously man your vids are the best DD videos out there and its selfish of me but I hope you never stop making videos on this game
Thanks Vicious. I intend on continuing, I can't stop.
Love your vids man! I’ve sunk like 300+ hours into dragons dogma across multiple platforms and i’m still learning stuff from your vids!
I was telling people and friends since 2015 that Min Maxing wasn’t necessary and you helped show that off.
Love your stuff!
I admit to using min/max on some of my earlier playthroughs. After purifying master rings and finding or earning dragons blood and saviors rings you really can play however you want. I used to dread having to switch to Warrior or fighter being careful not to fight a foe that would level me too far up for fear I'd lose magic or magic defense somewhere down the line. Now I pretty much stick with whatever vocation I want my pawn to learn then spend the rest of my time as a sorcerer or MA. Nice video. Glad you shared light on this subject
I also dreaded playing these vocations for their stats, or even just to get their augments, because the whole time I knew it was just the stats, and not the vocation that I wanted. This was back when i didn't like anything that didn't have Daggers, so Warrior, Sorcerer. But now all of the vocations are quite fine for me....... except Mage..... screw Mage hehehe
@@Nihil0.0 lol still not a fan of mage I see. I almost always use Mage for the off with its head quest as well as Griffenbane. You can keep Mercedes and her men alive with ease using mage. And because I love going to the bluemoon tower to kill the Griffen, mage is perfect to keep the soldiers and your team alive while damaging the Griffen enough to make it retreat but not kill it. That said, I don't like leveling as mage. The stats for it suck. 😂😂😂
Yep, good ol' Mage. That fire is a huge plus in Gransys. I am a big fan of commestion, especially when it lands just in time. Great feeling. It's pretty much the support role that turns me off. Healer, medic and support is not my favored class. But, I am sure you recall how I felt about Sorcerer and MK at one time, and well, at least MK is now a favorite of mine. mmmmmmm still not Sorcerer though. I can defitely see the appeal of orchestrating and guiding a party to destroy, while you conduct.
@@Nihil0.0 If you play mage, get a strider or ranger pawn and it gets better. The problem is you're playing support for retard AI and if you're just blasting with the mage.. why not just play sorcerer?
the reason why people say stacking damage vocation stats is better is because you surpass damage breakpoints earlier, I think. However this is not accounting for difference in base damage of skills between classes either. this video proves that in endgame the difference is minimal. I mean, each to their own, but I am always going to play my chosen vocation from the very start except for sniping certain augments i may want.
welp.. time to throw this complicated build out the window and just focus on mystic knight... though maybe a few levels as ranger for the stams wouldn't go amiss.
Yep. With stats per level, the only thing we should ever pay attention to is health and stamina. Gear provides us with attack, but gear rarely provides health or stamina.
If you levelled pure fighter 1-100 and 100-200 as mystic knight you'd have a difference of about 500 magic compared to someone going mage > sorcerer. But you know what you would have? 950 more stamina, about 2400 more hp, and hundreds of more strength/def. The 500 magic might equal one more cast of a spell... you have the stamina for it so who cares? Also you're FAR less likely to die with THAT MUCH HP, it doesn't matter you're a little lower in magic def, magic is easier to dodge in general than something that does physical funny enough.
the 500 magic just.. didn't matter that much. Oh no, you cast an extra spell now and again! That you had the stamina to cast! But you also will never come close to being one shot!
This game would be close to perfection if it let the players choose individually which attributes to level up
agree!
Kind of defeats the purpose of vocations if they did that. Stat growth is tailored to vocations and how they are meant to be played. If you just selected at will, then vocations are pointless. It basically becomes an Elder Scrolls game with better combat at that point.
@@kolbywilliams6288 not really... Vocations is for how you want to play the game. Limiting stat growth to this system actually hurts gameplay choice as if you want to play a certain vacation in a certain way you actively have to play a different class just because of how stat growth works. Like if you wanted to be a glass-cannon magick archer you don't even try to play as a magick archer until later in the game. And no, you can't tell me that the main gimmick of a magick archer is a shit-load of magick defence.
PenguinBacon
Vocation is based on how you want to play, you agree with that much. This is good. Do you want to play as a glass cannon? There’s a vocation for that. Do you want to be a tank? There’s a vocation for that. When you pick a vocation, you are picking a role to play, not just a set of skills and weapons. If you take away vocation based stat growth, then switching vocation is more like switching weapons. Since most skills are tied to weapon type, there’s a lot of overlap between vocations. So my point is why would you have vocations at all? Just allow people to pick whatever weapons and skills they want all the time? Answer: Vocations are far more than just weapons and skills.
I never said anything about choice, and not every rpg is about giving you as many choices possible. This isn’t an ES game. You play a vocation that fulfills one or more roles. You aren’t supposed to be able to do whatever you want with any vocation and expect it to be just as good as any other build, or be exactly what you want all the time. The game is balanced because each vocation has strengths and weaknesses on and off the stat sheet. Your job as the PC is to figure out how to play with those strengths and weaknesses, not to try and make a vocation something it never was meant to be in the first place.
The extra damage from min/maxing a MA is not even worth it, which is what Nihil is proving with his test. Stats do not matter in this game. Your gear and tactics do, which is what the developers were going for. They didn’t want you one shotting everything in BBL as a MA. MA doesn’t just get more defense, he gets more stamina, which is more important for getting off his special attacks that he can spam relatively quickly and from long range compared to other magic classes. More attacks = more damage. You are getting more damage, just not the way you would like. They already have a ton of dps too, so more magic damage doesn’t really do anything to help them. On the other hand, defense and stamina help their survivability a lot. The game already has a glass cannon magic build anyway. Just play as a sorc., they were designed to be a glass cannon in the first place. Just get the three basic elements and one shot almost anything.
If you understand all of this, yet you still disagree, then there isn’t an argument here, you just value character creation over game play mechanics. That’s fine, its your prerogative, and it isn’t a bad thing. It’s just how you like to play games. It doesn’t mean that the lack of choice in stat growth is what makes this game an imperfect game. That mechanic is 100% intended by the devs.
@@kolbywilliams6288 You misunderstand me. I said a glass-cannon MAGICK ARCHER. Not just a glass cannon anything. I'm not saying this stat growth system isn't balanced. Like you said "You are getting more damage, just not the way you like" but that's exactly it! This system is restrictive to player choice. I'm gonna reference another user's comment here: "monkey brain says big number good". That's literally why min-maxers exist. To get the biggest number they possibly can on specific stats. And besides they can just restrict/balance the damage number scaling without the current stat-growth system. Other games have done it, so why can't this one?
The only thing I min-max is my fashion!
btw thanks for continuing to make DD videos :)
I too am a victim of Fashion Dogma
I've just finished the game myself and I've mostly played Assassin and a bit of Fighter (after starting out as Strider). As I do with all games, I don't look up stuff on my first playthrough because I want to simply have fun, but now that I am done with it, I can see myself replaying the game and trying to do better on my next playthrough. Thanks for the videos! They are really useful. :)
If only I could half as good as this then I'd feel like an Arisen rather than an idiot!
I love this, you are literally what i want to be in that game. I used to have Dragons Dogma on Xbox 1 and beat the game 11 times (i believe killing the purple cursed grigori activates new game) and I was just as strong as you but since I changed consoles I have now just started going back on the grind, keep up the good work bro.
PS: HOLY FUCK THOSE WEAPONS ARE OP
Nice video.
I min maxed 3 pawns on different accounts to level 20 using 2 Ring of Perseverance and have kept them like that. It took absolutely ages to farm the DP killing low level Oxen in Gran Soren. However - I created a pure Mage (using all mage specialist spells) that also double up a a Sorcerer:
Mage: Staff= Legion's Might Sorcerer: ArchiStaff = Rusted ArchiStaff
High Ingle High Miasma
High Grapnel High Necromancy
Holy Affinity Comestion
High Anodyne Fulmination
High Halidom Holy Affinity
High SpellScreen High VoidSpell
Attunement
Inflection (not sure I should of chose this, but oh well:))
Sinew
Acuity
Articulacy
Ferocity
She has Focused bolt and Stability boots which are a must as the health and stamina is low. As a mage, the pawn is excellent. The far reaching and quick casting High Ingle, leaves her out of harms way to provide back up from a distance. I prefer High Ingle to High Levin as it rarely misses (I find High Levin unreliable sometimes) and can be summoned from a further distance too.
As a debilitation sorcerer - because of the low health I had to chose quick spells such as comestion and miasma which are superb for the staff but I avoided High Frazil which operates in a strange way where it freezes the enemy and then unfreezes them when they are hit repeatedly with the spell. Also - having a low health pawn so close to an enemy is not wise.
Necromancy and Fulmination aren't the quickest to cast but I thought they may work well with the staff, but I'm not sure that fulmination actually inflicts debilitations. (edit: Fulmination does! Silly me:D)
High VoidSpell, saves a ring slot form petrification (I take these pawns to Bitterblack Isle most of the time) and inflection may or may not of been worth the cost due to the low health. I haven't tested this sorcerer set up much in the normal game much in the normal game, but I did test a similar set up which had Petrification Spell instead of Necromancy instead, which worked well on some creatures, but seemed pretty much useless against larger enemies - especially in Bitterblack!
I have been thinking about using Grit with the Caged Fury, but the lack of health leaves me unsure.
Another great video. I know you've shown this before in one of your other videos as well, and really with MA it doesn't matter what you level up as, Magic Rebalancer will put you over the top.
I’m very late to the party, but finding this video was a breath of fresh air.
Abit late but thanks for this, it's given me the will to make another character, never enjoyed min/max playthrough but figured it was the only solid option to melt bosses
Good, my intention was for those who are fearful that an unintended vocation was required to do damage. That is never the case. The Weapons are what do it
I'm relatively new to playing this game I've heard about it but still new when I started it the magic archer bacame my favorite vocation thanks a lot for this video helps a ton
this is the kind of video that i needed. I didn't think about min/maxing in this game until like a week ago and it's been really bugging me. I'm not the kind of player who ever min/maxes because i find it time consuming and unfun for me, unless i'm playing a really competitive game with friends but seeing as this one isn't that it's never been an issue since you can literally play any vocation once you reach it and be fine til the end of the game but my brain doesn't like doing things like that lmao
Honestly, my favorite way of making any character in this game is to just level ranger to 40 or so then play whatever class I want. Not even that bad imo, just bc I like playing ranger so much and the stam just lets me play the game more rather than waiting for a green bar to regenerate.
Stam > a lil bit of extra damage
I agree. Stamina is my primary focus. Ranger does get the best stats imo
For me as a Mystic Knight I also go for ranger rank 8 at the start, min maxing isn't just about pure damage if your performance is suboptimal.
Now that I started a new char in hardmode it's even more important to be able to straight up engage after buffing.
yea i agree. stam helps every class. and even no class when running around 😂
Thanks for this I have been stressing and spending way to much time over this. When it comes down to it you just have Fun.
Glad to have this video. I thought min maxing was much stronger than it actually is, but here it shows that the difference isn't all that significant if you just have a general decent scale towards your damage stat. I'm sure a lvl 1-200 Fighter would do worse than any of these, but not unplayable. I'm currently trying to get a high balance of physical and magic damage character to make the most out of Mystic Knight whether meleeing or spell casting.
If you want, and only if you want, play ranger for those sweet mixed stats (also max stamina)
I really enjoy ranger as well.
But it gets excellent stats for Mystic knight, 4 atk, 3 magic atk, and the best stamina.
Or just play Mystic knight!
Gotta say, it always impresses me how easily you curbstomp the tougher enemies in BBI. I do wonder how min-maxing felt like in the original game though, I mean it looks to me that the biggest reason why min-maxing has such little return is because the BBI equipment is so strong and you can rarify equipment.
Min maxing is pretty well known now as absolete, but for new players, they will often read these older forums and then get the notion that it is required. Even pre dlc min maxing was not needed, as the Grigori weapons were the BBI weapons of the base game.
@@Nihil0.0 Wait, weren't the Grigori weapons worse than the high end post-game weapons during the base game? They're better now, but that's only because they got buffed. Pre-DA for instance, Dragon's Pain was slightly more powerful than the Grigori Dragon's Vein.
New-ish player on this game.
You opened my eyes.
Now i'm just going to change my vocation as I see fit to have fun without ever bothering about stat growth anymore.
Nero Elred
Nice. ^^
Same here I guess, it seems like the difference is minuscule.
I know this video was made a long time ago, but I've been thinking about this whole min/max thing for a while now and came up with a question and a hypothetical scenario
I start the game as strider for balanced stats and stat growth up to lvl 10, doing the same for my main pawn, working to get two rings of perserverance along the way from BBI exploits and the HM reset. Then after I unlock access to all vocations, I immediately begin grinding to max rank all of them for both myself and my pawn, each of us wearing a ring of perserverance to boost discipline gain.
After all vocations have been ranked to max and all their best augments obtained, I then spend the rest of the game with my arisen and pawn as my prefered vocations, my arisen a mystic knight with a jack-of-all-trades setup and my pawn a support mage who's sole purpose is to use high grapnel on the big targets like dragons and cyclopses while being equipped with the legion's might so that I won't have to worry about reviving them.
Here's my question;
If equipped with the optimal augments for each playstyle, and all armor & weapons raised to dragonforged at the very least, would I still be able to handle late game content without having to worry about doing a min/max stat setup?
As long as you play with the right skills and augments that suit your playstyle, late game is doable even without min/maxing. I already beat BBI with fighter, warrior, mystic knight, magick archer, and assasin with the same "play whatever vocation i feel like playing atm" build. And if you find your damage lacking, nothing the conqueror and demon's periapts can't fix :)
Having spent a good chunk of the last 2 days getting frustrated at reading conflicting views on vocation builds, this video is fucking awesome. Thank you for taking what must have been a lot of time to make it
Good. Thanks Sessions
Thanks for this. I leveled approx 180 lvls as MA on my main, 190 lvls on my alt. Most fun I ever had. By end game had full Oblivion set with BiS for my build. I destroy everything. I see so many players quit b/c lvl’ng as a sorc was no fun for them.
Yep, very true. I hate playing as Sorcerer. So why would I play 190 levels as something that I hate? I just play Magic archer, or if I want to play Warrior, I play Warrior, and level Warrior. The weapons are what matter. This "stat" question is one of the most asked questions that I get.
@@Nihil0.0 As a moderator for the PS4 Pawn Hub community, it's easily one of the most asked questions of me as well. The problem is so many new players end up on certain forums looking for the quick fix. The 'quick' fix is playing what you like. That'll get you much farther than grinding thru 190 levels playing as something that doesn't suit your playstyle.
Gemmalady lol you are the moderator? Well playing warrior for the health is worth it
sorceror farms the ur dragon with his autolock staff, fournival sells xp boosters and periapts. leveling to 200 with sorc isnt an eternal chore
Geert Matthys Boring as hell. Who wants to spend their time farming the offline Urdy? I’d rather have a root canal. MA is OP without having to min-max.
3:57
Elder Ogre: wait, did I die?
...
Elder Ogre: oh crap that’s my queue!
*death*
With the stat leveling and character customization. I use dogma as a character creator for my rps. And level it according to that story i gave them.
I remember making a pawn 10lvl of fighter, 40lvl strider and 150 lvl warrior. Then switched him to a tanky mage with 4khp, he never died or his HP dropping below 50% on 3 playthroughs on hard mode. I did min/max one time for a glass cannon MK build and it wasn't fun at all.
there is a difference, like, with the MA build it took 3 shots of 6fold arrows to kill a eliminator, with the sorcerer one it took 2 and with the ranger one 4.
It's just a little thing but it kinda makes min/max worth it to me haha, however, I spent hundreds of hours playing this game following just my instinct before doing builds. Also, I'm glad that the vocation I enjoy playing the most is the one I need to play to get the max stats I want.
Does it really matter if it takes 3 or 6 shots? The plain fact of the matter is that pawns can take up the slack. As an MA I use my max strength Strider pawn and my alt max strength Ranger pawn plus a Mage buffing holy the entire way. I run-n-gun through the entire lower part of BBI in very short order. I suppose it only matters if you're going solo, which I don't. I prefer a full party that destroys everything in its path.
@@Gemmalady yeah, it does. But it depends on your playstyle, and this game allows so many different ones. To me it makes a big difference.
@@Gemmalady if he used the magic rebalancer skill which can stack up to for times. Which doubles all magic, then the magic archer could drop everything like flies if min maxed.
@@alfonsodelprado7940I'm 4 years late but this is true. Minmax matters when periapts or rebalancer is added in the damage formula since its percentage based.
My favorite way to play dragons dogma, is to play as the classes I like, but when I see I could use a boost on a certain stat, I ferrystone back to gransys right before leveling up, change the vocation, level up by killing a goblin or something, and then go back to the one I like. Its easier than it sounds.
Nice, that this video exists, I wish I would have found it earlier. I spent yesterday on how to tamper with my save file to figure out how a minmaxed assassin compares in a daimon fight with an assassin minmaxed as a sorcerer (both with Goldforged strongest sword). It did take longer but it was still entirely possible with in a reasonable time.
So even Awakened Daimon's bullshit defense isn't an excuse. It's mostly the weapon (and the periapts). :D
I love your videos they are very helpful. I like your pawn growth videos a lot.
Thanks Leo. I appreciate it
At the 2:50 mark that mount to dismount just to make him fall is such a small niche thing but not many people do it and that was executed just so fucking nicely so I got to say kudos to you my friend.
I'd like to go on an adventure with your pawn.
I appreciate the point that you tried to make with this video, but feel as if doing it from level 200 with endgame weapons undermines the reason people complain about MA growths in the first place, as I'll outline below.
Before I continue, though, allow me to get my own biases in the open: I actually played the vanilla Dragon's Dogma, and only moved onto Dark Arisen in the endgame. I do know balance changes happened. For example, Assassin's augment for a stat boost when going it alone used to be MUCH higher in the vanilla game and Dark Arisen nerfed it to the point that there's very few scenarios where it's not better to just bring pawns. Warrior was another such class that was nerfed; it's light jumping slash used to be a lot better (and, due to it's slow attacks and charge up attacks, the only safe option in MANY moments in gameplay) and the damage on that was reduced dramatically. I point this out because it's possible that low/mid level Dark Arisen's Magic Archer is different to vanilla Dragon's Dogma, which is worth pointing out because of what I will outline below. However, until very recently I only had experience with Vanilla early/midgame and Dark Arisen for Postgame and Later.
You don't get that endgame BBI Gold Dragonforged gear (Which, let's be reasonable, is the primary reason the MA was able to compare with the sorcerer at all in this demonstration, as showcased by the Sorcerer's innate magic being close to 2x that of the Magic Archer) for a rather long time, unless you basically speedrun BBI (Which, as you showed in your video about getting to level 200 in 5 hours, isn't unreasonable, but isn't how most people will play the game, instead vising BBI much later on, spending considerable time outside it.) Indeed, since most Magic Archer bows are actually on the weaker side and new, better bows are rare, you actually go through lengthy swaths of the game where you're relying more on your raw stats than your gear stats as a magic archer.
Speaking as someone who did a playthrough this way? There were points in time where I legitimately could not see my enemy's health bar move at all from my bow's skills. THAT'S how weak Magic Archer was during those points. Yet, doing an experiment, I started another save where I levelled as a Sorcerer and the difference was night and day: after switching to Magic Archer, even at low vocation ranks with inferior skills, I was easily doing 20-100x damage (literally, not metaphorically) because enemies that formerly didn't even have a visible pixel shaved off their health were being shredded in 2-3 hits.
I feel like this is why people say to level as sorcerer when playing Magic Archer; not because it CAN'T be good later, but because it is pain and suffering to stomach those level ranges where you have both underpowered bows and underpowered stats. Honestly, I'd argue that outside of very specific missions where Magic Archer is a lot of fun, it's not even worth touching until much later specifically due to the combination of growths + bow availability.
Furthermore: Lately I've seen a lot of people say Stamina is the most important stat, but I personally disagree! The thing to note with stamina is that - again, unless it was changed in Dark Arisen due to the balance changes - it refills at the same rate regardless of your maximum. You can see it in this video when Sorcerer's Stamina bar seems to fill faster than Ranger's. They're both actually getting the same amount back, and what that means is that higher maximum stamina primarily matters for that initial burst. Once the stamina recharge downtime happens, be it 500 stamina or 5000 stamina, every single character with the same skills and playstyle has identical amounts of uptime and downtime from that point forward, unless they use items or tactically drain their stamina beside a pawn to energize them. In other words, I feel it's FAR more important to have the means to make your stamina COUNT rather than just having a ton of stamina for more percieved uptime. I'd honestly argue the only time it's important is for climbing large monsters or Gamble, and even then, only if that stamina bar is enough for the outright kill.
Anyways, just the musings of someone who recently got back into the game and IS playing earlygame Dark Arisen for the first time (Completed a run as 10 Fighter/ Mystic Knight from there) and who discovered your videos because of it. I've forgotten more about this game than many have learned to begin with, so I appreciate your videos a lot; they're jogging my memory nicely and teaching me things I can't remember if I ever knew. Cheers!
Reason for edits: TH-cam kept mashing my paragraphs into walls of text, had to way overdo it with the line breaks.
I love this video simply for the sure simplicity of "mAx YoUr DaMaGe StAt," being debunked. My honest opinion on the matter is to level as whatever you want to level as. If you want extra damage then don't make your game experience dull by leveling pure assassin or sorcerer if you aren't going to play as them. If anything you should take just a few levels in them in the beginning to help boost your damage if you're making an early BBI trip. Sorcerer is a case where I would just level in it if you're playing as a Mystic Knight simply to get vocation points for faster spell casting times and damage. That's it.
Most of it is a holdover from before Dark arisen when min maxing was more important and the gear was less powerful compared to the base stats you got. With the high gear levels you got from Dark arisen and how it rebalanced things min maxing was no longer important. The other big change was the augment nerf and cap which made base stats much less important.
@Hollow Shell
Some math was capped, in DA the stat boost augments cap at 1.8x/+80%
And a lot of the stat% augments were nerfed anyways.
The same amount of augments.
Your intros get more stunning every time 😍😍
Best. Opening. Ever. Props for Napoleon Dynamite reference.
I don't do min-max but rather powerplay my character, so that with the right progression he is versatile and effective in end-game with pretty much every vocation, although I mostly played Mystic Knight. Over 4000 Health, 3900 stamina, over 500 attack and over 600 magic attack, both defenses in low-mid 300s. And I planned the progression both for me and my pawn in a way to actually have fun all the way from 1 to 200 lvl.
eh, health and stamina you can regain using cheap consumables. it doesn't work for a no-pause play style but you can't increase magic. the multiplier talents/consumables are much more effective with higher magic. You need to hit the breakpoint for certain enemies and below that you are ineffective.
Plus, he's using those Magic+Physical-based skills to a video comparing Max Magic.
The difference was totally noticeable when he's using the pure magic skills like "Six/Nine Fold Bolt" or normal atk (magic bow).
Anyways, you can always carry a bunch of demon periapts to break the gap so, whatever.
Just enjoy the game :D
They should just let us allocation stats during level up (and have chance to reallocate stats each time do you NG+), or make stats entirely dependent on the vocation being switched to instead of locked in during level up.
As much as you don't need to min-max, it is true you can absolutely gimp your character if you do things like level mage from L1-100 and then decide you want to play as a fighter/warrior later on. Does it happen often? Probably not, but some people like to stick to one vocation for a long time, and maybe only choose another one in NG+ and stick to that one for the whole NG+ too, so it's entirely possible to screw up your stats by playing the wrong vocation for too many levels.
I've never heard of min maxing when I used to play on PS3 but after hearing about it when I got it for PS4 I honestly just go for more stamina.
Yep, Stamina for me as well
Honestly it really only mattered in the base game. Dark arisen changed things so that min maxing is not really nearly as important as it was in the base game. Dark arisen nerfed augments and other things that made it so that your base stats matter much less.
This dude make this shit look easy. I tip my hat
My thing is that I love getting the unique weapons for killing the red dragon. So I want to do 9 times through the game, once with each different vocation. But I balance it by keeping my pawn the same. A sorcerer. My reason for not doing a mage pawn is that after the 1st completion you have enough money to just never run out of healing items. And besides myself and my pawn I don’t worry if the others die. I replace them every few levels anyway.
Watched this to make myself feel better about my magic archer. That is to say, I went 10- whatever lvl I finished BBI with. Only thing that gave me trouble was Daimon until I got better gear.
Nihil demonstrated in another video that min/max made a difference; Ranger skill “Great Gamble”. As it turns out, the total STAMINA determines damage. Since all stamina is consumed, it’s not something you can use consumables to power up more. But keep in mind, the number of situations where you’ll need to one-shot a super high health enemy are limited.
That being said Ranger seems like a great vocation to throw in your mix, because stamina is not something you can get from weapons and armor.
I mean, you can put on 2 +500 stamina rings though
Assasin gets 27 stamina and ranger gets 30.
I'm not for min-maxing, but if you do, assasin beats ranger for pure melee.
Only if you want to min max, tho. It's not very fun imo... I regret playing the game that way.
First time through, I saw the mystic knight and leveled all the way to 200 basically minus farming fighter and warrior for their augments.
Now, I had a blast, but only magic defense led to really drawn out, painful beatdowns from daemon ex machina as a teen.
I wanted to min-max but part way through I decided to play a different vocation for augments. At this point I started caring less and less about Min-maxing and wanted to just play the game. I was having fun mind you, but I was impatient and wanted the specific augments for my build. I leveled up with a vocation that I didn’t need stats with and said fuck it, an all around build now. So ima just get my warrior up, focus on mage then sorcerer and then I’ll see from there.
Edit: I love your videos they’re so informative.
I can't help but feel a little embarrassed when I spent about 30 minutes trying to kill my first eliminator with a mystic knight.
Just goes to show you how much a bit of knowledge helps.
I was level 50 something when I encountered my first eliminator, needless to say, it wasn't an enjoyable encounter. After several minutes and several dozens of throwblasts I finally killed it.
Min/maxing is not about being able to succeed, its to create the best version of something. You don't need to do it because of how miniscule base stats are when compared to what you get from weapons and augments. Some folks do like making builds and attempting to make something as powerful as possible. Like lets say you just want to have the highest physical attack possible. Well thats 10 lvs in fighter 190 in Assassin with the most powerful equipment, and the two physical attack augments giving you a 30% boost. That's min/maxing. Mostly thinking of equipment as your character's progress in strength in this game make more sense but if you wanna min/max do it.
blantant truth about min-max is it makes a noticable difference, but by the time it does it no longer matters.
Hey great video I always used to min maxing on a smaller scale by only doing to level 100 by farming those skeletons next to the final boss that come back infinitely, I go there at level 15 and min max till one hundred, then beat the game and head to bitter Black Isle. but after restarting and min maxing trying to find which vocation I liked the most I just put the game down and haven’t touched for a while. Might try to get into it again
Those Skeletons are a good way to level and rank. And yeah, pre lv100 is more understandable for stats opposed to post lv100. My preferred stat growth is Ranger. That sweet stamina gain
I try to mix like some fighter some sorcerer and some ranger to get the sweet balance but generally the I play mostly ranger/sorcerer to get to magick archer I just throw fighter in to mix it up
Luckily my pawn is always a sorcerer so I go 1-100 strider, then 101-200 sorcerer for levels lol.
I did a min-maxed strength run to have the highest hitting arc of deliverance and it was pretty fun
So you min maxed str just to have whooping 190 str more compared to base warrior vocation growth. That's like 5 % damage boost in exchange for like half of survivability from HP and defense.
So technically it's not the size that matters, it's the motion of the ocean.
Correct. And Bruce Lee said it best; "be like water my fried"
Or at least that's what I thought he was talking about.
I suppose he did. Out of matter existing in gas, liquid, and solid, liquid is the most pliable. I would say same as leveling strider if you were to go the min/max route.
Oh btw thanks for the videos! Way uped my game, and found kick ass music!
Good. I am happy to hear. Deciding and timing the music choices are often my favorite part.
I don't believe in min maxing , I always play as assassin. Lol..
playing assassin is min-maxing lmao. going 190 levels in assassin is max physical damage
@@VorpalTiger not if he is starting as a strider or mage
@@Br0kenMask I started as a Strider. Still stupid strong.
Playing as an assassin just because you like playing him isn't min-maxing, however, it does come with the benefits of min-maxing.
@@imhulki463 win win :D
If you run the numbers in the stat planner, basically everyone gains the same number of points per lvl, which is 11 attributes per level (IIRC magic archer + mage gains 12 and sorcerer gains 13 per lvl)
However, if we also take into account HP + Stamina, Fighters have the highest number gain per lvl through 1-100, gaining almost twice that of a sorcerer, who has the smallest HP + Stamina buildup.
As starting class, Fighters gain the same amount of attributes as the other two starting classes, of course distributed differently, though the biggest difference is the +40 HP gain over mages, or +20 HP gain over striders.
Warriors share similar properties, though they have slightly lesser HP + Stamina gain vs the fighter, however warriors gain more HP than a fighter.
I'd say those are your best options through 1-100 if you feel the need to min/max and just want the biggest pools, with 101-200 just acting as a stepping stone deciding which HP and Stamina gain you want between 5-15, 10-10 or 15-5, and what you want to make up for your attributes
Whaaaat I had no idea you could just grab onto an ogre to knock it down
You need to be a certain weight, your character weight needs to be above 59kg.
th-cam.com/video/Oe_JRCF4kSg/w-d-xo.html
Moral of the story/lesson: Magic Archer op
It's more important to worry about what your health and stamina will be than actual stats.
I think ricochet arrows Are one of the best skills you can have for archer if you upgrade that move you shoot three with constantly hit everything in the room over and over stunning them and even keeping them in the air which you can do forever without something getting the chance to have an attack from being stunned so much
The Sorc leveled MA is absolutely doing more damage. Significantly more. But the lack of stamina is crushing. You would need to absolutely pound consumables to keep your stamina high enough to take advantage of the ~15% more damage the Sorc leveled MA is doing. Not worth it, for 99% of players. Nice video. I'm not sure whether this really dispels the concept of min-maxing stats, but it definitely offers a broader perspective on what that extra damage costs in stamina management.
I just roll Strider into Mystic Knight so I can do whatever whenever and still be decent at it. Minmaxed for versatility rather then one huge number.
this video is great and helps me think better of DD after some false dissapointment, as many players new to the game, i made the decision of starting figther, then switching to mystic knight, and feeling like by lvl 50 you are doing no damage and that maybe if i built it as a sorc the mystic knight would be fast killing, i was wrong, then i learn that as going mystic knight from like 15 to 70, then switching to sorc just a bit, i ended up with a pretty balanced build by 80 something, and i rarely played a class because it was conveniant, just for the fun, that made the game overall better, after getting some bbi lvl2 gear, then mk becomes powerful either you go for all cannon or only riposte, the more i play the game the more i feel like the meta is bullshit and if werent for that sense of meta and committing to stat growth much more people would have enjoyed the game and see it for its actual potential.
Glad u put that min max to rest so the game is much more enjoyable being able to switch around .
I had a deliberately reverse-min/max build once: Lvl 1-10 Fighter, Lvl 11-200 Assassin. THen I played as a sorcerer. Good times. I didn't notice any significant changes to my gameplay. My damage was still fairly decent though I'm using the Lvl3 BBI weapons.
Yep, very true. I have done this as well, and it is always fine if you have the weapons and the augments
@@Nihil0.0 just for fun, i didnt put sorcerer related augments. Still pretty okay- even in BBI.
Is it weird I use these longer vids as asmr?
On my first playthrough, i pick most physical vocation (strider, assassin, warrior,fighter and ranger), mostly i level up my assassin until level 170. Then i try to play magick archer and magick knight, gosh i never knew i had very poor of magic damage in the game. Especially on bbi. Its too late to rebalance phy/mag. So i start the new game with level up, planning for 10 level strider, 85 level assassin and 105 level sorcerer. To get max and balance attack damage (600 physical, 600 magic). Minimum the other stats, phy and mag def, hp.
So that i can play any of vocation after level up min max stats.
The only class that actually is it's own stat growth "meta" is Ranger. Ranger gets the perfect balanced Stats for... Well... Being a ranger.
•Best stamina gains for the vocation that spends the most stamina.
• good primary stat of strength without sacrificing others excessively (like assassin does).
•decent magic for enemies imune to physical, making the ranger versatile and capable of fighting anything.
•medium-low health since he's primarily a ranged vocation, incentivising good distancing and positioning.
•low defenses since he's a rogue ranged class (makes sense), but still not absolute garbage, like Sorcerer's physical defense or, again, both of assassin's defences.
You could argue he's got the best stat growth in the game. Ranger's stats are all I personaly would've ever wanted for Fighter, Strider, Assassin and MK.
The one thing that people don't get...
...is that it's not enough to matter. It doesn't matter.
Watch Wh1sper123's nonsense series. You'll be enlightened.
Ranger is my favorite stat growth overall, due to the stamina. But I truly love each vocation leveled as that vocation the most. I always figure we can get our attack from weapons, and our defense from armor, but we are limited with where we get our stamina and health from
@@Nihil0.0 that's true. We got many Str, Mag & Def augments but I think only one of stamina.
Also like, in the video, both builds had 3k magic comming from the weapon and augments. The 190 levels of sorcerer meant less than 1/3 of all that.
Tells a lot.
Fighter is pretty funny levelled full fighter. You get enough str to be OP and your defense is in the 'wtf' levels.
@@Folsomdsf2 true. But no destroying Daimon with Maw. Stamina's meh. Unless you use a Vim.
I play fighter with Dragon's Maw, Steel Will (yeah, I know), and Hindsight Sweep. Like, no one uses these skills but they're so perfect. The fact you can actually cancel the sword Slash from Hindsight, taking in considetation that what uses stamina is the sword Slash only. You basically have a dodge. Not only that but It does good damage and is extremely satisfying. Even more so with the Ring that upgrades it further making it have 2 strikes.
Maw and it's stupid good DPS and Stun, along with Hindsight, are all I need. Steel Will is mega poise, basically. And very good extra defense.
I did Full Assassin lol. 10-200. Fighter 1-10.
@@lucasrv2630 Dragon's maw is super broken if you use a vim. Because it can't be interrupted and has invincs, you can just kill anything. Only downside is it's damage isn't that great.
I still min max for stamina, but the classes I play as(strider,ranger) are my favorite.
This video is exactly what i needed! Thank you =D
Good. Don't worry about the stats Luis. Just play the vocation that is best suited for you. All the numbers will line out once you get the weapons and the augments
Definitely needed this video, thank you!
love your videos
Big difference was with your play style between each build. You played each build almost exactly the same yet when looking at dagger use, you may have an magic difference of 600 more for sorcerer build, but strength between them was ma build had 1498 str, sorcerer 1308 str, and ranger had 1940 str, naturally the outcome would be this way. If you use the sorcerer build as mainly bow, and use stamina items for all three you would probably see a more accurate representation of the three types. Imo sorc build is best for someone who plays on hard mode and wants to keep their distance using bow skills it's clearly better than the other three for that play style. Some enemies have high elemental resistance so it's not perfect, that's how this game works.
Now if only Daemon didn't have insane elemental resistances.
His awakened form is weak to Holy!
@@svenrunner5269Also since he spends so much time floating directly above you, it's actually reasonable to unload full hunter bolts into him during every part of his fight even though he only counts as a single target
I am a few months late, but thanks for this video. I stopped my last playthrough because I was trying for min/max magic build for Magick Archer, but I just could not stand playing that much Sorcerer. (Also, I since I just discovered your channel, I did not know there was a way to get max level in a few hours.) Magick Archer is my favorite vocation because of all the neat tricks it can do, but I like playing as all the vocations because it keeps the gameplay fresh. Good to know the min/max does not affect the end result all that much.
Ultimately, it would be nicer if you could choose which stats to level or if all stats levelled equally with all vocations. Heck I would actually prefer a much smaller level cap so you do not run into the issue where vanilla game monsters become pushovers, although that is really only an issue if you do NG+.
Yeah, the stats really don't matter. The gear is the majority, and Augments are second, and then lastly is when our innate stats matter. I have taken a pure Magic build through as a Warrior, and a full strength build through as Sorcerer and my gear and augments still made me OP.
The only thing I make sure I do in every play through is level Ranger at least15-30 levels for stamina
The only thing that I do differently is I try and get my attack to at least 500. I like using the daggers, but the last 80 levels I play as magik archer. There is a mod that you can use that cuts the amount of xp needed to level by 75%. Of course, I only have used this on my 5th playthrough of the game. If you are new to the game, I recommend playing it as is at first. But min/max doesn't matter much. You will notice a difference, but at lvl 200, you are going to wreck everything. Just depends on how fast you wanna do it.
Great video blacking is the coolest magic bow in the game I love its design as well as dragons wit and I hope there will be dragons dogma 2
I am not a fan of the Blackwing bow, visually. I like the Magian Crutch the most. Terminal Gyre is pretty nice too. Dragon's Breath is nice, but it doesn't go well with any Daggers, I think that is my trouble with teh Blackwing. Gosh, i sound like fruit loop talking about fashion dogma, and what goes with what. Durf, nevermind. i like Blackwing bow too
@TANG WEI SHUN - very true I personally love the monomi set and the grave set and mixing both the shadow and grave makes it look even better because the claws look like they would get in the way when using daggers...
to further prove the point, my magick archer has even less attack with 425 physical attack, and 426 magick attack, and I still shred everything in the game with no problems. Magick Archer is the secred "Very Easy" mode of play.
It looks like you do more damage when you min-max but run out of stamina quick.
I think i'll stick to playing my class straight. Seems like each class gets what stats they need anyhow through Levelling.
What you have to take from this is, you want more burst damage but overall worse against prolonged fights OR you want less burst damage but you can fight for longer without wait for mana...Is not better is not worse, depends on what you want really
Love all your videos thank you 😊 one question tho what is that armour set and where do you loot it from? Love it
this video taught me that nihil prefers men over women
Yaha. How dare you assume my preferred gender Link.
Yeeaah how dare you 👀😂
My excuse for min max is: I'm to lazy to make 9 build's, so I make 1 all rounded 100 assassin 100 sorcerer, it's not the greatest in warrior or ranger due the stamina and health but still pretty solid
Im just doing a 1-10 Strider. 11-50 Sorc. 51-100 Ranger. Then playing my Magic Archer. The stats are mostly well rounded in theory. Probs will just do the Blast Arrows/Bezel Crown vs Death for those last fifty or so. Ranger isnt an enjoyable class for me like Strider and Magic Archer.
So basically it's one of those situations where it doesn't matter all that much as long as you use the classes like you got some sense. And the right gear you'll be fine?
I was trying to min max but as I finished by stat builder I just ended up putting a 10 levels into everything besides magic classes, failing inherently