sanka wrote:svendre: I am sorry but I really do not get your argument. Faith is bad because it would make you too strong, i.e. it lets you use more of the strong invocations than needed to win the game? Or what?
Surely, I also like passives and tabbing more because (especially the mid-late) game is way too long/boring/many keypresses, and I am too lazy to track my piety, etc.,
but it does not make faith less strong, and I expect in an advice thread to make an explicit distinction between what is strong and what is convenient.
Ok I'll try to restate what I meant. Lets put the game's abilities into categories:
* Melee/Ranged - you can use them over and over, they don't run out (well some ammo constraints) - If you're able to use these and not have many problems, then you have quite high chances of survival because you have two more stronger layers to draw from.
* Spells - They are unlimited in the sense that you only need to eat/rest to get mana back, but in a fight they are more limited than melee/ranged because you can't always restore mana mid-combat. Spells aren't guaranteed to be more powerful than melee/ranged, but generally speaking they have a wider range of abilities and can be used to more devastating effect than melee/ranged. I pull from spells when melee isn't enough, or I anticipate melee won't be enough. I often have enough mana, but sometimes it can get strained in places like vault5.
* Invocations - Possibly the most powerful of responses for bad situations (also to mitigate anticipated difficult situations). Most use piety, which you cannot rest to restore. So, in this sense it is a more limited resource. Because it is a more limited resource, and because it is a strong response, I intentionally do not spend it just because it recharged. I spend it when the situation calls for a response in a third-level layer of options. I don't get myself into terrible situations that often, so mostly melee/spells handle most encounters. If I do get into what is a bad situation for me, it's unlikely that I would have depleted my piety, and have the battery fully charged (or nearly fully charged) to be able to unleash a very strong counter. There are some invocations which use a smaller amount of piety, and I think it's a better argument that faith can let you keep those abilities on almost all the time, but I've found I really don't need or even want most of those kinds of abilities on most of the time and also I don't usually find myself low on piety without a faith amulet if I am just tapping those abilities from time to time. Maybe if you were speed running and trying to not ever let piety go to waste, faith would have some application - I don't really know, my main concern in games is survival.
* Consumables - I'm just mentioning them to put the piety into perspective. How do you use your consumables? I save them for when I'm about to tackle something hard or it's an oh-sht moment. I don't quaff potions periodically, arbitrarily to just "improve my odds". If am amulet existed which resulted in you finding more potions, I would say that it's a pretty good amulet, but the difference being that you aren't capped to the number of potions you can hold whereas piety can reach a maximum from where it cannot charge any further.
Faith is an increased flow in a layer (piety) that I don't draw from constantly, arbitrarily just to increase my chances of survival. I increase my chances of survival from keeping it well charged for times of emergency. An amulet which affects something that is used by me more often will give me greater returns, and keep me from having many dire situations in the first place.