[Autumn]

The effects on special strikes can be either pretty good or pretty meh, that's not what I'm discussing today though, these things are really not great, it feels like they were originally thought up and then had their stops pulled severely as to try and not make them too overbearing, and their itemization support is also very weak and doesn't even support that very well.

The proc chances is what I'm going to be talking about mostly, why is it a proc chance to begin with if they're going to have cooldowns associated to them, there's a bad luck protection system set in place and that's great, but if I have to run up and throw a regular basic attack at something, I'm putting all my eggs into that special strike's basket, I'd simply like a more reliable way to proc it.

The chances of special strikes occuring from base needs to go way up, these need to sort of be a relatively reliable chance of actually happening, there are such cool special strikes that I'd gladly use "Basic Attack" for if I could get them to work properly, but as it stands, they really are not appealing and I turn my head away towards more reliable options instead.

I don't know if I'm being constructive at all with my complaints, to be quite honest I was looking at Gae Baed's special strike and thought to myself "Wow I'd actually love to use that", but testing netted me a proc after like 3-6 rounds, the thing has a 3 round cooldown too so I don't understand why I shouldn't just be able to use it far more reliably.

[MothEnthusiast]

I've always thought the cooldowns were a little unnecessary, when stacked with a proc chance. Of the two, I'd personally rather see the cooldowns gone. The low chance is cooldown enough, with the gambling types able to still gamble away at getting the effects, and the bad-luck-protection system aiding those who aren't a fan of gambling.

That said, either way it goes, 99% of special strikes do need some sort of helping hand.

[Slydria]

Special Strikes are a cool concept but suffer on three fundamental pain points:

- They generally don't trigger very often, even with the added layer of bad luck protection. (Most Special Strikes start at 10% and are only increased by 5% per whiff.)
- They have a relatively long cooldown on top of that, which you also cannot build up your proc chance during that Cooldown.
- There's a lot of Special Strikes that don't hold up against even standard On Hit: Bonus Damage weapons.


I'll talk a little about why I think they've been held back so much. Back in the day, there was a pretty popular weapon known as the Tarnada. You could consider it the grandfather of this idea as how it worked was: On Critical Hit, there was a UL% (24 at max UL) of casting Vydel.

It was far stronger than any Special Strike, more reliable than most Special Strikes (despite no bad luck protection) and had no Cooldown between triggers. But it was also undoubtedly a problem, which is why it now works very differently. So of course I understand not wanting to reintroduce old issues.

However I think there's a large gap in the power difference between current Special Strikes and Vydel, so I think it would not be harmful to the game to make them more reliable (and perhaps more powerful for certain ones).



Increasing the trigger/bonus rates and lowering the cooldown seems like a pretty straightforward solution, if nothing else... But here's what I'd like to suggest, we forego the RNG aspect altogether.

I'd like Special Strikes to be turned into separate attacks, much like Weapon Maneuvers or like the skills Crazy Coyote gives. You'd simply have a Skill under your Basic Attack for the Special Strike and elect when to use it, then it goes on Cooldown as per normal.

While this goes against how they function in their inspiration game: Golden Sun, I think this also lends better to the tactical style gameplay SL2 has and works better for weapons that you don't typically want to basic attack with (such as the Tome weapons).

Some Special Strikes (and the Special Strike items) would need a bit of reworking to properly cater to this idea but I think it'd be worth the extra effort.

[Snake]

I completely agree with Slydria.

[Lolzytripd]

Special Strikes are a cool concept but suffer on three fundamental pain points:

- They generally don't trigger very often, even with the added layer of bad luck protection. (Most Special Strikes start at 10% and are only increased by 5% per whiff.)
- They have a relatively long cooldown on top of that, which you also cannot build up your proc chance during that Cooldown.
- There's a lot of Special Strikes that don't hold up against even standard On Hit: Bonus Damage weapons.


I'll talk a little about why I think they've been held back so much. Back in the day, there was a pretty popular weapon known as the Tarnada. You could consider it the grandfather of this idea as how it worked was: On Critical Hit, there was a UL% (24 at max UL) of casting Vydel.

It was far stronger than any Special Strike, more reliable than most Special Strikes (despite no bad luck protection) and had no Cooldown between triggers. But it was also undoubtedly a problem, which is why it now works very differently. So of course I understand not wanting to reintroduce old issues.

However I think there's a large gap in the power difference between current Special Strikes and Vydel, so I think it would not be harmful to the game to make them more reliable (and perhaps more powerful for certain ones).



Increasing the trigger/bonus rates and lowering the cooldown seems like a pretty straightforward solution, if nothing else... But here's what I'd like to suggest, we forego the RNG aspect altogether.

I'd like Special Strikes to be turned into separate attacks, much like Weapon Maneuvers or like the skills Crazy Coyote gives. You'd simply have a Skill under your Basic Attack for the Special Strike and elect when to use it, then it goes on Cooldown as per normal.

While this goes against how they function in their inspiration game: Golden Sun, I think this also lends better to the tactical style gameplay SL2 has and works better for weapons that you don't typically want to basic attack with (such as the Tome weapons).

Some Special Strikes (and the Special Strike items) would need a bit of reworking to properly cater to this idea but I think it'd be worth the extra effort.

On a crit build I'd basically never want a special strike to go off, they rob me of a chance to crit, their damage is generally lower than a regular basic attack, the Aoe/projectiles are laughably unreliably for their intended purpose on a melee range on hit special chance.

[caliaca]

Honestly the only special strikes worth a damn are like Maou and it's...40 extra fire damage sometimes. Yayyy..

Stuff like deadly Roundabout is actively detrimental due to not getting stuff like claret etc.

These could definitely use another look, And Sly is pretty dead on here.

[Lolzytripd]

I've deleted and remade a character in early korvara, as unlocking the rapier's strike genuinely nerfed the weapon.

[Poruku]

What if we gave it something similar to vydel? Doing attacks with the weapon builds up charges (more on crit) and using a normal basic attack action when at max charges performs the special strike guaranteed. Make it also powerful/flashy enough to be a "oohhhh!" moment and you have a really cool system. In my opinion a purely %chance based system for this is pretty meh, and I think the cooldown is also unnecessary.

Alternatively, keep the cooldown, make the chance 100%.

[Snake]

Being able to like, use those special strikes as separate skills that you need to build up with basic attacks and twice as fast on critical strikes could also be neat.