Is RT underwhelming?

The problem with RT is that there's no other way to scale the damage the way crit does. At a very fundamental level, damage and attack speed are your two main ways of scaling damage. RT is stuck with those two ways of scaling, and the best way to min-max your damage is to scale those two stats equally so they multiply each other maximally.

But when you add crit, now you've got a third multiplier all the sudden. At base values crit doesn't do much - roughly the same as an increase damage or speed stat would do. But when you've already got the damage and speed, suddenly crit becomes several times better point-for-point on investment.

With RT, sure you get those points to be invested somewhere else, but losing that third damage scaling stat hurts a lot.

I think what RT builds should be doing honestly, is using curses and status effects more than relying on pure damage output from the character. Crit may act as a third multiplier, but you can get another third (and fourth) damage multiplier from shock and vulnerability - two things I'd love my crit dagger shadow to have, but can't spare the points for.

Idunno why people are focusing on crit vs RT.

Even without Crit most of the time you don't need RT and you can save a ton of points if you don't have to path there.

Vast majority of melee characters will have dex + accuracy nodes, and if they aren't highly investing in crit. It is extremely easy to get a +flat accuracy roll on their gear.

RT would at best by grabbing by certain marauders builds that just happen to path by it, or maybe templars that path all the way down there but in need of accuracy.

RT was good 3 years ago because pure strength builds where extremely popular + much weaker gear and accuracy on tree made it useful.

Duelist = Extremely high chance of having a good amount of dex + accuracy due to position in tree. Ascends massively increase aoe/damage/tankiness, so you don't need to really path all the way weirdly to the marauder RT side.

Marauder = Best candidate for RT, but popular builds don't require accuracy at all (lol totems), explosive arrow, righteous fire,ect Jugg can give you 1k+ accuracy. Since you would usually path to duelist side anyway and would want gems like faster attacks, you would grab nodes with accuracy/damage and have like 150+ dex anyway.

Templar = Theoretically a good candidate for RT. Inquisitor is about crits, Hierophant and Guardian do not really care about accuracy.

If you do not happen to path by RT, you have to spend upon average 4 or more points to get there. There are easily accessible nodes that give you accuracy right at start of the marauder tree and baked into many weapon nodes.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

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As a duelist you don't go right side of the Tree. Like never. You go to Marauder's area for all this juicy life nodes (and a bit of weapon damage ones) you are forced to take. If you go Melee - you grab RT. Otherwise you will get even less survavability and damage, because you will need extra nodes for to being able to hit and it will make your gearing process even harder.

Everyone grabs RT. Though, you are free to show me good non-crit melee builds that don't utilize RT, except builds who specifically aim for crit (Flicker-Assassins, weird crit Starforge duelists idk, whatever).

Problem is if you go Melee, on top of Life and Melee being dogshit, you are pigeon-holed into RT as well. RT is just something you have to bear with.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

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RagnarokChu wrote:

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As a duelist you don't go right side of the Tree. Like never. You go to Marauder's area for all this juicy life nodes (and a bit of weapon damage ones) you are forced to take. If you go Melee - you grab RT. Otherwise you will get even less survavability and damage, because you will need extra nodes for to being able to hit and it will make your gearing process even harder.

Everyone grabs RT. Though, you are free to show me good non-crit melee builds that don't utilize RT, except builds who specifically aim for crit (Flicker-Assassins, weird crit Starforge duelists idk, whatever).

Problem is if you go Melee, on top of Life and Melee being dogshit, you are pigeon-holed into RT as well. RT is just something you have to bear with.

You have an extremely conflicting post since you agree RT is garbage and restate what I stated in my post that if you happen to path by RT you would take it since it's a single point.

"Good non-crit" melee builds" is a funny thing since they don't exists LOL. Only builds that are viable that also grab RT would be earthquake builds since they happen to path right by it, I was talking about RT is overall usage period. Any build that doesn't get RT will have a bit of crit or focus on elemental damage, so obviously there are only melee non-crit RT builds because that's the only option you have. Nobody makes a pure vanilla physical damage build, that would be bad in all counts. RT + pure vanilla physical damage build just happens to be less bad. Vanilla ice crash, lighting strike, cleave, flicker ect would all be more garbage playing with/without RT as oppose to other variants.

Vast majority of attacks work off better crit/elemental hybrids or otherwise (poison/bleed/whatever) or on the opposite side of the tree that has a ton of dex/accuracy anyway. Marauder outside of earthquake is now just the RF/totem/whatever class, and the most popular ascend has +1000 accuracy as a node anyway.

Also crit starforge duelist exists because you can afford to play a starforge duelist, you can afford to have some accuracy and then have massively more damage then the non-crit duelist. Only other options be poison or some other jank.

Just because I'm playing some garbage groundslam marauder that has to get RT since I decide to use 0 other mechanics in the game doesn't mean RT is good. That's like saying life is good because everyone grabs all of the life nodes in the entire tree.

Maybe give it a minor boost by making it convert accuracy bonuses into damage bonuses. Then accuracy you pick up from melee nodes don't feel like a complete waste.

So in other words, make RT read:

"

Your Attacks can't be Evaded
Never deal Critical Strikes
Increases and Reductions to Accuracy also apply to Attack Damage
(Increases and Reductions are expressed in percentages.)

That's certainly an interesting idea. I wonder how it'd actually play out.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So in other words, make RT read:

"

Your Attacks can't be Evaded
Never deal Critical Strikes
Increases and Reductions to Accuracy also apply to Attack Damage
(Increases and Reductions are expressed in percentages.)

That's certainly an interesting idea. I wonder how it'd actually play out.

Accuracy increases are pretty big, that would probably scale too much imho ( there are some accuracy nodes near RT, but most of them are in the dext, would that be enough to leave something like this at 100% efficiency ? I dont think so. ).

But that's definitely interesting yeah.

.

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Fruz wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

So in other words, make RT read:

"

Your Attacks can't be Evaded
Never deal Critical Strikes
Increases and Reductions to Accuracy also apply to Attack Damage
(Increases and Reductions are expressed in percentages.)

That's certainly an interesting idea. I wonder how it'd actually play out.

Accuracy increases are pretty big, that would probably scale too much imho ( there are some accuracy nodes near RT, but most of them are in the dext, would that be enough to leave something like this at 100% efficiency ? I dont think so. ).

But that's definitely interesting yeah.

You could always scale it, such as "Increases and Reductions to Accuracy also apply to Attack Damage at NN%", and balance that exact percentage.

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Mythabril wrote:

Maybe give it a minor boost by making it convert accuracy bonuses into damage bonuses. Then accuracy you pick up from melee nodes don't feel like a complete waste.

That's a neat idea!