I have seen posts that say PQ3 is too easy to play. Though a new player here, I have not found the game too easy, nor too difficult, I must add.
As such it would be very helpful for players like me if the pros, lol, among you can give helpful shortcuts and the correct ways to play PQ3. It is not that I want to level up fast, the main thing is not to make any stupid, foolish moves and to find ways that will make playing the game more fun. Thank you in advance.
There are a couple hints:
- Board control spells are the only ones that matter. Anything that is damage without a secondary effect may as well not even exist.
- Don’t level anything below rare. This may seem weak at first, but it saves a lot of resources in the long run.
- Use only 2 or 1 colors. Mana is accumulated into all mana pools of the same color at once. All classes have a mastery in 2 colors with one that they are better at leading to more mana from these colors as well as more damage when taking them from the board.
- Don’t ever kill enemies with spells. Best way to kill is to drop them into kill range and then kill them with the board. This leads to going into the next fight with full mana and more special bar.
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Thank you, Tacet. Could you explain the last point a little more ? Drop them into kill range … ? Kill with the board … ? You mean with skulls ?
Tacet’s last point is an important one to his strategy and one that deserves a more thorough breakdown.
Killing an enemy using a spell is great because it’s reliable, but it has a major issue with it; when you proceed to the next enemy, you don’t have any mana for the spell and are forced to make a Gem match. At this point, once you make the Gem match, the enemy has a chance to respond, and at the level of play Tacet is at, he literally can never allow the opponent to deal damage at all.
Tacet’s strategy requires more forethought but works out better in the long run. Say you have three spells up. If you cast them all you kill the opponent, but then you have no spells active to go into the next opponent.
Instead, what you want to do is deal damage to the opponent using spells until they are ALMOST dead. Then, when you perform your gem matches, you will regain mana for your spells while kill your opponent, essentially granting you an extra turn.
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A cautionary warning,
Tacet’s strategies are valid for right now, but will likely not work at all once the pending re-balance occurs. That could be today, tomorrow, next week, or next month.
Board control strategies are very likely not going to work well (if at all) once the re-balance arrives.
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If they balance the game like they did Gems of War, it will be meta for 6+ years.
I was wondering why my Rowanne team only worked for one week in PVP.
PQ3 can’t be balanced the same as GoW. Your video was crystal clear on why board control in PQ3 can’t be allowed on the scale that it does in GoW.
In GoW, both the player and AI take turns actively manipulating the game board. Board control is important to minimize what the AI can do with the board (or preferably not allow the AI to ever take a turn).
In PQ3, the AI never actively manipulates the game board, unless the AI has an active ability ready to be fired and that ability manipulates the game board in some way. The player can deny mana to the AI via color conversion, but the AI’s active skill charges a fixed amount every turn regardless. Some opponents are all-but-guaranteed to get their actives off, especially if they are the first encounter in a skirmish or dungeon run (some story chains take advantage of this, such as the ghoul encounters in Chapter 8). Consequentially, the only real board control option that is present is stunlocking, which is your argument. From that perspective, it is a correct argument to present.
PAD, which the PQ3 board matching system broadly resembles, pretty much disallowed stunlocking years ago for similar reasons. If the AI never gets a turn, it doesn’t matter in the slightest how well scripted an encounter is, because everything in the entire game becomes trivialized through stunlocks. And that’s before consideration of all the out-of-combat systems in PQ3 that are currently made irrelevant because, as your video shows, the current end-game boss can be trivialized through stunlocks with newbie equipment.
While it is on-brand for Salty not to discuss such things openly,
I would be utterly shocked to the highest degree if the game launches with stunlocking being a viable tactic. Addressing this has to be Priority 1, if not 0, for them right now.
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Stun locking is the weakest overpowered mechanic in the PQ3 game.
They would have to remove almost every existing mechanic to balance the game.
Barrier, gem spawning, special bar, anything that manipulates the board in any way, chip killing, anything that regains mana, and similar are all more overpowered.
There are multiple different non-stun infinites in this game that don’t even require touching the board or minimally touch the board between how equipment works and chip killing works. If stun was 100% removed from this game, it would change almost nothing without overhauling most rest of the mechanics. Only reason stun spam is so rampant right now is because Assassin, Paladin, and Shaman all get access to a good low level stun ability and most people don’t have access to the more powerful options that are both quicker and stronger than stun locking.
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Enemy mana use many factors to charge up.
afaik the following factor counts:
They recharge a fixed number every turn, as you mentioned.
Every match you made charge their mana, no matter how many gems are matched. That means, a bigger cascade will charge up their spell very quickly. That’s how I exploit enemy non-damaging spells. To avoid this, make bigger match instead of many smaller matches if possible. Only aim for heroic effort when you wanna trigger enemy spell intentionally, or you’re absolutely safe.
Every gem you destroyed that match their color give them a little extra mana.
Sometimes enemy has unique passive that helps charge their spell. Unlike above factors, if enemy passive give them mana at the beginning of their action and filled the spell, he will attack instead of casting, because he will decide attack before the passive fire.
I believe it’s easy for the devs if they just want to hinder the players’ progression or stop the players in abusing certain mechanics.
They can just use barrier, dispel or reflect xx% physical/magic damage mechanics.
I believe you notice it too already that all enemies in game in current state are just vanilla - they don’t have any active or reactive ability. Just waiting for enough mana to cast their spells. Some of them have passive abilities of mitigating damage or adding mana generation, etc. But none of them have active abilities which can affect the players (such as dispel, reflect damage, barrier, etc.) - so they can just add those to make the game more difficult.
But I believe the devs cannot just do that without balancing the other bad game designs (very limited gear space, limited chest space (debatable), difficulty ramp, evolve system, etc.). Many players who do not know how to abuse those mechanics are actually frustrated with the game progression. The grind chore is quite ridiculous - and the reward are not rewarding enough.
Yes, it’s an F2P game but I think in its current state, it’s too much.
The devs should balance everything so that the players are not frustrated with the game while still making sure that the game is still challenging at the end game.
In my opinion the keyword is fun.
The moment a game is no longer fun to play, it will be hard to retain players.
The devs should be really careful in balancing these things.
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Thank you everyone for all the expert comments. But more shortcuts, please… Lol
Ah sorry. For shortcuts, you can see Tacet’s first reply. I think he sums everything nicely there. 