6d ago

What is the equivalent of doing a stealth archer build in other games?

By 'stealth archer equivalent' I mean the stereotypical easy/newbie or basic bitch way to play the game. It may be easy to pivot to and get stuck in a rut of playing that way.

I thought about this while playing Balatro. I kept trying to do creative combinations like Stone Joker and Marble Joker to see how far I could go with stone cards and pairs but pretty much always end up doing 8 Ball flushes.

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In Age of Empires 2: Franks/Huns/Mongols feudal cavalry push. If you're getting into build orders.
The real basic way to play: boom without walls and resign at the first sign of enemy military.
- I legitimately started playing the huns just to not need to build houses.

Conjuring magic. Just summon a bow and sneak around with that. You're technically a wizard.
- Bibbidi... bobbidi... bow!

Hacking skill in Deus Ex lol
- But
  It's cyberpunk
  
  Does someone not main netrunning? :D

In Kingdom Come Deliverance it's probably the heavy knight. No matter how many times I start over I just end up as a human tank every time. In the first game a shield was often necessary but in part 2 you become essentially unkillable with just a longsword.
- Weird. For me it’s one handed sword light armor dodge machine. Perfect dodge and deceptive stance are too overpowered with a basilard or valentine’s sword.
  
  I don't think I've had to dodge once in the last 20+ hours of playing lol. The only times I've gotten close to dying is when I forgot to close my visor and someone bonks me on the head.

I did stealth dagger with maxed out illusion once, fun at first but nothing could actually see me to attack me so it got boring quick. Invisibility FTW! also, going through the dark brotherhood line using only illusion magic is hilarious (making the target attack guards so they functionally kill themselves)
- yeah, it's not as effective or cheesy as stealth archer early. like, your can't hide on a cliff and slowly plink someone down from just outside their perception, but it's way stronger overall. once you get the levels and skills to be able to sneak up and get the 30x dagger crit there's nothing thatcan challenge you. it's always funny sneaking up on a dragon on its word wall to get the one shot from behind.
  
  I think it was Oblivion rather than Skyrim, but I remember one character I had whose stealth was so high guards would lose track of me if I entered a slightly shaded area. Archery would only improve things because then I wouldn't have to walk up to them to kill them.
  Petty sure that character could just shoot whatever I wanted and just sit there, not even that far away, and anyone who noticed the shot would give up looking pretty quickly. Don't think it was any different for walking up to them and stabbing.
  There might have been some stealth fortification involved.
  
  I was using a spell from a common magic expansion mod, that will cast any 3 buff spells upon entering combat; i set Invisibility to one of them, so i could stab something (breaking invisibility), it'd die, id be noticed (triggering combat) and immediately be invisible again.

I had my heavy armor silent mage.
Silent fireball sniper.

Havel monster in Dark Souls series?
I've tried him in DS2 and it didn't look too well for me, but I prefer glass cannon weapon buffers.
- I was just going to say pure strength builds in souls games but you're right. poise zweihander bs really only works in DS1, the change to the poise system for DS3 and Elden Ring prevent it from being the silly unstoppable powerhouse it was. like it's so bad in DS1 that the first thing I grab on a dex build after getting to andre is the wolf ring and then the grass shield.

As someone who right now plays Skyrim as a stealth archer with restoration, I feel exposed :D

heavy lancer in mount & blade
- Huh. I always wind up as light-to-medium cavalry in M&B. Two handed sword, bow, either two quivers or a lance depending on the situation, and something like a heavy hunter for a good balance of speed and durability.

Probably Fighter with Champion subclass in Baldur's Gate 3 (or Barbarian). In a game where you have limited resources, a ton of builds and subclass mixing, hundreds of spells to use in various situations to the point where each turn in combat becomes a puzzle to be solved, there's just something about going full fighter, equipping a big sword and running at the enemy, hitting them for more damage than most other classes with very little thought involved.
It's awesome.
- My current strat for my druid is putting haste on Lae'zel and running around a corner to not get my concentration broken. She then slashes everything to bits and pieces while the rest of the party gets participation awards
  
  I played with Karlach/Tav as Barbarian/Paladin, both weilding two handers, and getting hastes from my other two. The damage is just stupid, especially since haste just straight up doubles your attacks

In Balatro it's any build with high card and pairs as base with an scalable mult Joker (green joker, ride the bus, stars)+ a multiplicative Joker and its done, you dont even need to worry about bosses that disable cards since your scoring comes from jokers not cards. Doing completionist++, all my runs on decks that do not facilitate certain archetypes (like checkered deck) end up as green joker/ride the 🚌/stars + cavendish/hologram/constellation + 1-3 jokers without gold sticker that literally do not matter.
In elden ring it's definitely the bloodhound sword build lol
In shin megami tensei/persona is physical and always end up with an overpowered yoshitsune.

This is one of the reasons why I like roguelikes, although I guess a re-spec feature in an RPG also allows this: You can just try all kinds of different builds.
I might play the stealth archer in one run. Then in the next run, I'll play a tall-ass archer who gets seen from far away but also sees as far. And then I might get fed up with playing an archer, so I'll play an ant whacking monsters with a zweihänder and a shield in the other hand pair.

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