Gear better than Perks?

[Rahelron]

Gear better than Perks?

I've just started my second playthrough and this time I want to try a powerplay build, but, when I started thinking about what perks/abilities choose I noticed that none of them are really game changing.

During my last playthrough the big steps in my character advancement, those that allowed me to tackle more difficult monsters and so on, always came from gear. Every time I upgraded my griffin armor set I noticed a big improvement in my combat performance, while I did not feel the same when I leveled up.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong? In my last playthrough I reached level 34 and I did a Sign/Sword build, without any perk in Alchemy. Any clue?

 

[Orpheal]

The skilsl in this game are heavily unbalanced, thats the reason why you feel alot more powerful with upgraded equipment, than with actually level up.

Leveling up in itself is also way too weak.
Per Level up you gain only mealy like +20 more HP or os, 1 single skill point that isn't really making a huge impact on your character progression compared to an armor upgrade, that buffs your character progression alot more in the defense or offense part in regard of what you upgraded, especially when putting also maxed out upgrades into the equipment slots that alos do affect alot more your combat efficiency, than a single skill point will ever do.

SKill Progression woudl have alot more impact, if we would receive per Level UP instead of 1 single point 3 Points and say on every 5 Levels 5 Points.
Then we would progress faster.
Places of power could then be redesiged not to give 1 single laughable skill point, but actually reward Geralt with new Powers that he can't learn by hisself.

The skill system of TW3 needs in my opinion a complete overhaul, especialyl all the passive effects shouldn't be skills for that you need to waste skill points for to lesarn them, passive effects should be changed into Talents of Geralt, that Geralt should learn automatically over time while you level up or that you should learn as rewards from havign a Master/teacher, who helps you to improve your Basic Skills to make them more effective, like for example having the Sorceresses as masters for improvign the passive effects of your Sign Skills, that Triss could hlep you becomign alot better with IGNI, Yen you help you out to become alot better with AARD, Keira could help you to become alot better with Quen, philippa could help you to become better with AXII and Fringilla could help you with becoming better with YRDEN

Do the same stuff with Swordmanship Skills from masterful sword fighters, like other famous Witchers (Vesemir, Berengar, Eskel, ect and for Alchemy you have alreasdy lots of alchemists, like Gremist, just add more to the game that could work as teachers for Geralt, like Tomira and that section would be also solved)

It's really sad to see, that such great character progression potential has been completely overlooked/wasted to give the game more immersion and instead has been givien this boring oldscool skill point system, where you need to use for absolutely everythign skill points just to learn something new, when you could also simply be teached new skills and do somethign for others, so that they are willing to share their wisdom with you to help you out with their knowledge to become better.

 

[WolvenGear]

I've just started my second playthrough and this time I want to try a powerplay build, but, when I started thinking about what perks/abilities choose I noticed that none of them are really game changing.

During my last playthrough the big steps in my character advancement, those that allowed me to tackle more difficult monsters and so on, always came from gear. Every time I upgraded my griffin armor set I noticed a big improvement in my combat performance, while I did not feel the same when I leveled up.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong? In my last playthrough I reached level 34 and I did a Sign/Sword build, without any perk in Alchemy. Any clue?

Pretty much the same thing I did the first play-through.
Now I have a different setup and I gotta say when you add all those perks they're way better cause you can have insane combos.
Here's my setup and NG+ on death march was a walk in the park.

This is what I have:
Everything maxed out of course

Spoiler

Poisoned blades
Aquired toleranse
Protective coating

Metabolic control
Igni intensity
Pyromaniac

Delution
Exploding shield
Quen intensity

Tissue transmutation
Synergy
Fast metabolism

Ended up with these bonuses:
Vitality + 900
Vitality + 900
Sign intensity + 45
Sign intensity + 60

I added 5% sign intensity to my swords (6 slots)
I also added 10% Igni sign intensity to my gear (7 slots).
So Igni is just a monster right now. Dont really need swords at all.

My max toxicity level is 274 so I can just go crazy with 5-10 perks at the same time and totally destory just about anything with my eyes closed.

 

[Rahelron]

At the end of my first playthrough I was level 34 ad I had Sign Intensity +180%, all due to gear (runes, griffin armor and swords) and mutagens.

I had nothing but basic perks in my signs tree, but my signs were so powerful that the game was almost too easy. When I cast igni I was able to set on fire entire crowds of enemies, which rendered pratically obsolite the usage of Aard or any other crowd control technique. When I used my Yrden sign against bosses (and particularly big enemies like elementals and cyclops) it slowed them down so much that I was able to hit them 8 times before needing to dodge.

All this was achieved through gear alone. I had many perks in the swords tree, I was trying to create some combos using adrenaline, but in the end, after putting more than 30 points in that tree, I never felt adrenaline was useful to me.

 

[zetsumeisama]

Yup. Gear is so much better than Perks, especially against the last two bosses.