EOWF - Career Ranking
7 February 2016 at 7:29am
After a delay of a couple of years, here is my Career Ranking for Eye of Winter's Fury.
Warrior: Keeping speed and brawn up is fine with the warrior career. Strong range of talismans and necklaces.
1. Storm Carl – Two excellent combat abilities, one good for multiple opponents and one good for strong single opponents, make this the strongest of the warrior careers.
2. Were – The only career that can get you an effective speed of 16 when combined with bleed, but shapeshifting is a wasted attack roll.
3. Glaciator - +2 armour and lightning are decent for a “tanking” hero, but normally better to finish fights quickly.
4. Einherjar – The extra abilities are pretty weak. Rallying Cry is unlikely to be worth doing, apart from in a team battle. The other combines heavy blow and haste, which are not the strongest of abilities. And you have to have a horn in your left hand.
Deathmoves for Warriors: Upperhand is reasonable, but you might have won the round anyway. Recuperation can come in useful in long fights.
Rogue: Rogue is hardest path to get and then initially, but reaver is very strong in latter half of Act1.
1. Trapper – Best laid plans is great, with variants for single opponents (10 damage) or inflicting less damage on multiple opponents. Only downside is the time delay. Vital artery can be Ok, although not sure how often it would be used.
2. Soul Thief – The soul thief abilities are decent, but not game changers. Mind Flay could work well in latter stages of fighting multiple opponents, but is quite situation specific. Heart Steal helps deal damage quickly, but is dice dependent so you can’t predict.
3. Bard – I have a soft-spot for this career, but the abilities are only OK. Small speed boost in two rounds and a scarlet strikes equivalent for one opponent. And you have to have two glass swords for the latter, although these at least have decent stats.
4. Reaver – This ranking is based on the situation at the end of the book. The reaver’s abilities are suspect against opponents with 10 or more speed and so have been ranked accordingly, but against slow opponents early on, this is a good starting career, especially if combined with critical strike.
Deathmoves for Rogues: Scarlet Strikes is very effective, especially when done with fully tooled up powerful weapons. Other than the ubiquitous shadow thorns (which isn’t as good as scarlet strikes by Act 2) it would be nice to have other death moves to access but to do so you have to compromise the underlying stats of other items.
Mage: It is nice that Mages can be as fast as the other paths in EOWF. It is harder than the other paths to get the best ring in the game as you won’t be wanting Ice Hooks, but you can use a speed boost. Their career abilities are the weakest, but they have the best death move.
1. Revenant – This career has the big advantage of not requiring a specific object, but the abilities aren’t that great. I didn’t use creeping cold, guess it would be worth doing if you could then follow up with an overload/critical strike combo. Malefic Runes a small bonus.
2. Shaman – Power totem and totem blast work great against multiple opponents, although no use against strong single opponents. Having a totem in your hand is not too restrictive as some good underlying stats.
3. Valkryn – Crystal armour is not worth bothering with, but Frost hound is a very good death move and silver frost on the required item is a good ability.
4. Chemist – Even more random than Druid, it’s never great to have abilities that might benefit your opponent! I might give this a go at some point to see if I can make it work. I can’t see Dry Ice ever being used, Chaoctic Catalyst could work if you have a charm ability.
Deathmoves for Mages: Recovery is the best death move, allowing you to use a strong ability like Trickster again. Other than Shadow Thorns, other death moves rely on items.
Overall, I think the three paths are more balanced in EOWF than the other two books.