So, first, if the answer is "put it all in kindle spinner", that's fine. I'm okay with that. Once we get kindle spinner trained up far enough, I'm especially okay with that. Between Kindle Spinners and her wings, Halla turns into a heck of a kiting build.
The problem with that build is that fire resistance exists. And is most likely to be used by our most dangerous foes. It's otherwise got a decent amount to recommend it, which is why I brought it up, but putting all our shapeshifting where it won't be useful vs. people customized against us and our family seems like a bad call.
Like, mathematically, this may even be optimal, but only until we run into fire resistance, and then we're suddenly fighting entirely sans advantages.
Second... the tactical difference between chops and kindle spinners really isn't that big. Like, most of the time, from what I can see, we can just pick. I mean, I've seen you do the "Well, sure. I guess we can mix them up" thing. Again, it's not just "guess wrong". It's "guess wrong, and it's a big deal". Then, saving that Odr is going to mean successfully identifying that hey, we don't need to spend the juice this time. That's going to mean actually identifying that it's a "easy or middling fight" rather than just jumping to spending odr straight off because the enemy is unknown.
Right, but that's me learning the system (like, a legitimate weakness of mine is getting monofocused on something and missing other options) and us feeling out opponents. Generally speaking, one attack type winds up significantly more effective than the other, and if not mixing them up is also good as it makes them harder to defend against, but all that is a lot harder to do effectively if one attack type is much better than the other.
If we're fighting an opponent we could beat without shapeshifting, that won't matter...but if we're fighting something tough? Then it starts to matter.
...and, of course, you have to first guess wrong and then have a solid reason to change your mind. If there's no tactical difference between chops and kindle spinners, then the +2 is better (whichever side it's on) and if there is a difference, but you can't usefully discern it, then the +2 still wins.
We can generally discern it, and will be even more able to going forward. The Frenzy bonus to Tactics is no joke.
As far as the 5-7 per attack? Well, sure - that's what we've been doing lately, with stacking huge numbers of dice and honing repeatedly, but it doesn't have to be.
Actually, no. With one level of bonus damage we do 5 damage for 3 Orthstirr (1 Power Chop, 1 Hone, 1 Lightning)...additional Hone beyond the first does nothing to damage (we just needed the dice). 6-7 is, again, just Honed Skewer-Flick or Leaping Cleave with the Lightning added.
Basically, IMO, 1 Orthstirr for +1 damage is basically always worth it and we have three sources of that we can use.
The real kick of shapeshifting+frenzy is how utterly brutal it can make your "just 1 die" and "1 die and 1 orthstirr" attacks - both in having static bonuses that buff every single one of them and in increasing the speed at which you can pump them out. Like, seriously, advantages like shapeshifting+frenzy are a major change to the combat math, of the sort that calls for a re-evaluation of overall strategy... and for that strategy, the big impact of the damage bonus is on which attacks they can simply afford to absorb. Do we have enough punch to make them pay attention to each attack?
I honestly don't think spending 1 orthstirr for 3-4 damage is ever gonna be better than spending 3 orthstirr on 5-6 damage. We aren't that hard up for Orthstirr. It's maybe worth going down to 2 Orthstirr for only 4-5 damage to avoid it counting as a Trick, but that's a a sightly separate matter.
Well, let's talk about medium threats. We've already seen what a "medium threat" is going to look like for us pretty soon. We killed one and left him buried under a hillside. That guy had two points of damage absorb (plus additional armor-related shenanigans.) I suspect that sort of thing is going to be getting more common.
And the Ironbrother was enough for 5 Orthstirr a year in perpetuity even with Sten there to back us up. He was not a 'medium threat'. He was a serious high end threat, as high as we could possibly take on and survive.
But let's say you're right and -2 damage becomes more common...at that point, unenhanced, Kindle Spinner is not viable (1 damage per hit is just...not good), and the above combo for 3 orthstirr is only barely so at 2 damage...so if we pick Kindle Spinner as our +2 and the guy has fire resistance, or we pick melee and he can avoid getting into melee with us, we're screwed unless we start spending Odr like water. If we've split our focus, the Kindle Spinners still do 2 damage after the damage reduction and the base melee attacks do 3, so we're at least somewhat viable either way
It's definitely more necessary for our ranged attacks, generally speaking (when we hit Hamr 8 or Hamr Infusion 6, my suggested default will be +1 speed, +1 melee, +2 ranged), but again I'm very reluctant to put too many of our eggs in that basket given that it is our
toughest fights where people will come equipped with fire resistance.
Any time the task is "pour on the raw damage" (either because they've got some sort of damage reduction or because they're a troll or something with an enormous health pool and regeneration or because they have absurdly good armor or whatever) then concentrating damage is going to be highly useful. Any time that's not the big important thing... well, at that point, by nature, where we put our damage bonus is less important, because "pouring on the damage" isn't the big important thing.
With the ability to pour on 5 per hit relatively cheaply (or 4 per hit at range, or up to 7 per hit expensively), I don't think 'pouring on damage' is gonna be the problem. Like, we want and need both good single target melee damage and good ranged and area attacks, and having both requires splitting focus. Which is fine because those damage numbers wind up pretty solid.
