Alex wrote:
DD is not as good as GDD. Yes, DD does more damage against a single enemy, but GDD is better in the long run, especially when you get to Acts 4 and 5, with multiple enemies in 98% of the battles.
You're better off spending those 15 points somewhere else.
You're better off not spending 15 points in any one skill at all.
Esepcially if playing insane, the golden skill-chosing rule is, "How useful is this against Terask II?" DD is hands-down more useful against Terask II than GDD is -- doing a possible 200 points of damage in the amount of time that GDD could do 64.
After all, how often are you in a really dangerous multiple-enemy fight?
Exactly once, when you fight the faeries. And the faeries aren't just dangerous, they're SO dangerous that the standard strategy is to pick them off one at a time so you're free of at least one of them quickly -- and occasionally to mez one or more of them. Both of these strategies work better with DD than with GDD. Even with a really dangerous GROUP it's better to pick them off one at a time, because it doesn't matter how many HP you've peeled off your enemy -- they keep hitting you full-strength until they're dead.
(OK, you might be unlucky enough to encounter a group of 4 Body Parts of Nox that all Oblivate. That's a pretty dangerous group, too... and once again, you'll want to target each once individually for quick kills, not kill them off slowly as a group, with each of them getting their 100 point hits until the end.)
Also, consider. As you fight groups of enemies, they tend to die. GDD is marginally better than DD when you still have 4 enemies to fight: it does 256 max points of damage in the same amount of time that DD would do 200. But sooner or later, one of those enemies is going to die, and then suddenly you'll be doing max 192 with GDD, vs. a max 200 with DD. No more GDD advantage. Then another enemy dies... and well, you get the idea.
(Note that I'm not sure how much, if any, difference in GDD recharge times the number of enemies Mipsy targets with GDD makes. Both Velm's Group Heal and Talinia's Multiple Targets recharge more slowly the more characters they target. If GDD works the same way the disadvantage re DD with less than 4 opponenets may not be as great as I've suggested above.)
Don't get me wrong, GDD is a handy skill to have and if I decide to go back and play Evil again I think I'll choose it as a secondary skill over Group Haste. But I don't think it's better than DD.
Palemoonsdream wrote:
Erf. Yes, that's true, but on the other hand, you loose 4 whole turns when everyone uses his own speed potion.
True, but I bet having the increased level of speed still gets you more turns overall using potions.