Some thoughts on the 5th STR perk

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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Blood-mad Berserker
Whenever your hitpoints fall below 25%, you deal 50% more melee damage.

I’ve been thinking about this perk, and came to the conclusion that its not in a good spot since implemented.

Conan exiles is a game with very high damage values, the combat is fast paced even with complete tank builds. Think about it: Can you reliably stay at 25% hp? What does usually happen when players get that low? death.

But lets keep the viability of it aside for a moment and consider the steps needed to get this perk. It requires you to invest 50 STR in order to unlock it, the highest tier of perks one can get. The higher the perks, more expensive it gets, so in order to reach 50 in a stats, you will have to invest most of your points in it, even with +9 (or the newly added +15) gear.

We get into Strength and you have a damage boost when nearly dying. We have two negative factors here, usage and reliability. You won’t be at low hp at most times, and i dare to say that its not even viable to play this way. There are too many things on this game able to kill you from that health, at random moments. Even further, the simple “near death” HUD effects make this a unpleasant experience to have at all times, even if you want to play at low HP. The second issue is reliability, meaning realistically, how many times will this damage buff save you from death, when going below 25% hp? It surely goes up the more skilled you get, but in a game where most things take 1/4 of your hp and more without effort, its hard to control that.

So for me, would be fair to say that the last Strength perk is a very niche one, but still gets very little use. “ultimate perks” should be playstyle changing ones, but also reliable. Currently it really gives you some room to play on a different way (read as red tearstone rings, a favorite among Dark souls speedrunners) but the entirety of the game doesn’t help you much to achieve that.

The suggestion

Make it so you get 5~50% extra damage based on your missing health. it starts at 100% HP(+5% dmg), and goes up to 25% health. That way, you will get some benefit of it at all times, getting proportionally stronger the lower you get. Half health doesn’t make your 50 points useless (or almost useless, since you still get extra damage from points invested in STR), but rather a valuable boost that rewards a more dangerous playstyle, without being so hard to achieve that most players simply ignore, run and heal.

That way we incentivize players to take more risks without being so dangerously low that they’ll most likely die, while also providing a somewhat useful bonus at most times, so players can get more value from their heavy investment.

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I fully agree that the perk seems lacklustre even if it worked like you think it does, and have in fact never bothered with it - but:

AFAIK the damage buff isn’t even permanent, even if you stay below 25% health indefinitely. Which is, as you say, an extremely questionable requirement to begin with.

I can’t comment on whether your specific suggestion is viable (read: balanced), particularly for PvP, but I do think you’re onto something.

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My humble opinon is none of the perks above 30 is really worth it. Only Vitality adds more survivalibility whatever the player does; but also lets the player (even a pver) use less amount of heal/buff items.

But for empowering heavy hits pvpers allways get the 4th perk of Strength. Accuracy is said to be malfunctioning over 39 points.

Most of those fourth and fifth perks are usually achieved by using item buffs.

Long story short, Strength 5 allready requires Vitality 5 and most probably wearing heavier set or at least medium set and shield combo (less functional then heavier armor and Pike/Two handers-Bows…with the system we have at hand…my humble opinion)

A good example for a functional attribute system, counting in the heavy connection issues at hand would be (random example):

Survival skill: As long as your health bar drops under %50 percent, you get extra damage reduction from all sources (physical, bleed, poison etc). This scales as your health bar drops. When your health bar is over %50 you consume less stamina.

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I didn’t even know that, thats also a very important point. It adds another layer of drawbacks to this perk.

PVP wise it would probably change a fair amount of things, given that player usually settle around 30-40 Str and dump their remaining points somewhere else. In order to get this new damage buff, some stats would have to be spared, and given the cost increase on higher perks, it would be quite an investment to make.

Thank you very much for your feedback :slight_smile:

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Don’t take my absolute word for it, like I said I have never actually bothered to get the 5th STR perk, because it doesn’t seem worth it.

While I appreciate the “RP” aspect of a “blood-mad berserker” going all-out in their furious rage, in practice I really really don’t want to run around at 25% health: any fight where this matters is likely to have me dead as a consequence.

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I’ve given this a lot of through in the past, and I’d like to see the change done like this:

Blood-mad Berserker: For every 1% of health your missing your melee damage increases. Maxing at 50% damage at 25% health.

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I believe 1 hit from a spear from a horse guy Is needed to finish you off if you are below 25%.

Or a Sabretooth Jump attack.

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Only take str to 40. Found out you kill more mobs than bonk them. Too much power is only good if you are a politician.

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I think you guys are just a little bit off the mark here. This perk and things like it generally arn’t about running around all the time with a sliver of health left. They’re not supposed to be a permanent or pseudo-permanent buff.

They’re more for those “oh s***” moments. They give you a little boost for those times when you’ve gotten yourself into trouble so that you have better odds of getting out of it.

How useful that is and whether something like that is worthy of being in the top tier of a character’s available skills, that’s another matter.

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Several other third perks and using suitable equipment is much better than going for the last perk at any attribute for sure.

Sadly most other attributes dont even have any usefull 3rd perk either.

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That was addressed in the post. The “oh sh*t” consists of 25% hp in order to trigger it, and 25% health is not affordable in conan exiles. Most of the time it’s much better to back off and heal, rather than trying an all in that can end in a single hit from enemies.

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Yeah fair enough, it’s just that in practice the vast majority of the time when I’m reduced to 25% health, I’m reduced to 0% very shortly thereafter (it’s not uncommon to go from 100% to 0% due to lag if the server is busy even, though that’s a different - if related - problem)

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This perk is useless as long as we have weapons like Yog’s Touch, Black Ice Broadsword or horses and pets, which deal increased damage, in the game.

They all can deal more than 25% damage.

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“But that’s okay, because a greater sabretooth with 68 strength is ultra rare” :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Ignore this, please :wink:

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What if survival also added a passive defense boost against animals? I dig that!

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source1

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