First and foremost, why the hell have hard caps on stats in a game such as this? Unless it's a bug, this is just awful balance design especially since the caps are so low! As mentioned a million times before, Attack is capped at 30 points above a weapons base value (and again, freaking Sinner Skull weapon gives up to 40 points which means 10 is absolutely worthless no matter WHAT you put on). And just found that Speed is capped at 20 points above Base Value . I had about 50 potential points in a build I was attempting to run for FUN when I realized that I wasn't getting even close to that max value even though all perks were procced and and maxed out.....

Second, for the love of God whomever worked on the stats page and descriptions.....don't, just don't. The fact that nothing is transparent or explained ESPECIALLY with specific Stats--like [censored] is the actual Crit percentage--is horrible. And the fact you have hard caps and diminishing returns yet make it difficult for people to realize this with such a pitiful design for a character page is insanely frustrating....

I honestly hope to God the DLC comes with a whole slew of fixes and changes not only to bugs but much of this stat system that's in place. Just purely awful to be developing gear with perks offering high stat potential yet you can't even utilize most of it due to hard caps.....talk about misleading advertising....

@bjgobbledix

i agree the its the worse in any game i have seen and to top that off the AI in this game is the most stupid ever as well.

all in with the idiot skill tree there is no build diversity or any options really as anyone has the same skill tree which totally defeats the purpose of a skill tree in the 1st place.

the gear system is totally bland and boring too. I hate that everything is part of a set and with such lame perks to boot.

@gloomseeker

sure odyssey is harder then valhalla, but i completed it from start to finish on nightmare and it same point the game was far to easy imo on nightmare.
There were plenty of ppl who complained about that myself included, so that they then make their next game even easier is just super annoying and weird.

@asgardian02 yeah the skill tree is incredibly frustrating too. I've thought a bunch about this one and literally if they were to go a more traditional route where we were limited to only unlocking say 2/3s of the tree to create build paths, it still wouldn't work. There would be a major rework needed still for the amount of stats are given by each perk along with scaling between gear and the tree to make gear actually feel impactful. Cuz I think its at about 230 or something where I was able to unlock all or almost all the melee damage nodes (and some resistance) which just puts us in the same situation. Idk, it's just bad.

@bjgobbledix

a cap of say 100 points or something would do the trick, you dont every skill from 1 path, most would go for some mix

@gloomseeker

i dont like game where i grind for lvls and mastery points and what not only to not use all that stuff cos its too easy.

thats a ill balanced game in my book.

but yeah seeing how there is a setting in the menu to set assassination to one shot enemies i believe the goal off this game is to never challenge you as a player anyway.

So I'm gonna see if Stun is also capped but imo that stat doesn't really matter in this game as it doesn't directly effect damage output and we have high Time to Kills to begin with.

But the best Armor set to probably use in this game (if anyone is interested) is Niflheim set from the Helix store--which I don't recommend buying anyways because the game is too easy-- for pretty much all melee weapons (and potentially ranged but I don't use bows that often so don't know for sure). You get 30 Crit and 45 Crit Damage after 3 kills for 20 seconds. But these caps are making the game super linear for build design. Due to Adrenaline Fiend counting towards the limit, all you have to do is make sure you have 1 perk that gives Attack and 1 perk that gives Speed and you've capped those stats out as long as you have at least 2 or 3 bars of Adrenaline filled. And since many weapons include these stats, it ruins a lot of armor set potentials including Mentor set. Now of course you can simply use Mentor set and then have a bunch of utility perks or Crit perks but the reality is, Crit Chance perks are super weak outside of the Niflheim set and Viper Bow because they give only 10 points which is something like 2.5%. Might as well put more damage there in the form of Crit Damage or something. But it's in all honesty, very easy to build into this cap BECAUSE it's super linear in design.

I have found that Frostruin and Carolinian (spelling?) Greatsword are probably the best melee build in the game. Flails used in non-dual wield form is probably one of the highest DPS potentials in the game even against Dual Spears. You just have to get use to using a Heavy strike as your first and or second strikes then following up with Light attacks. Flails have one of the stronger Light Finishers in the game and also decent Heavy Strikes--side note, Greatswords have the best Heavy Finisher thats quite brutal but weak Normal Heavy attacks. But Flails have a slow first strike (cuz it winds up) for a Light Attack with average damage prior to the Finisher (its slightly higher than Spears). But of course, Flails have a unique trait of once you wind them up, they have a very fast attack speed.

Frostruin is excellent at keeping Adrenaline filled after using Fire Strike (should be applying this to weapon you're using anyways) and typically 1 other Ability along with the Carol Greatsword which adds to Crit Damage. I have found that Greatswords in the offhand are the best because of the special attack is capable of knocking down and staggering any type of enemy including shields which opens them up for easy hits. This becomes extremely versatile combo. To top it off, as many may know Flails have the special Light combo where if you hold the Light attack key prior to using the finisher (it's like about the 4th swing), you endlessly attack. This attack I do think is bugged currently but it will apply the Finisher damage for every single strike at rapid speeds (dual wielding flails would actually be the highest potential DPS because of this but I'm ignoring it for now).

Oh and it should be noted that Flails in the main hand do not swing the offhand weapon for any attack except the Heavy Finisher. So if you're wanting to use something for versatility like Thors Hammer, its mostly wasted.

In the end, it's all trivial unless the game is made more difficult haha. But figured I would put this out there as what I have found to be the ultimate DPS potential build. The only other weapon I would put above this is Thors Hammer because it's 3 strikes are stronger than flails and has ridiculous Stun with good Speed. This leads to dealing fast Deathblow attacks that have significantly enhanced damage when enemies are stunned.