So, after almost 400 days, I can definitely say the rock/paper/scissor system is a huge trap. Explanation:
If you repair the lv 2 store and inquire about the weapons sold there, Karryn make a remark: Why is there short swords and normal swords there when the guards can only use halberds ?
Now if you pay attention to enemies attack in the log (I bet most of you didn't bother), the hardest hitting mofos are listed below:
- Prisoners with short sword (instead of knife and barehand): Slash type prisoners
- Thugs with chains (Instead of knuckle,knife or basebal batt): Slash type thugs
- Goblins with short axe (Instead of knife and club) : Slash type Goblins
- Rogues with Short sword (instead of knife): Slash type rogues
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You notice the pattern ? The hardest hitting mofos are all slash type inmates. Screw rock/paper/scissor, go full Agi build and thrust your halberd up their cheating asses.
I will point out that your situation is unusual and unlikely to occur much when the final game is out.
That said... while I haven't really noticed the same pattern myself, and Rogues in particular are meant to switch damage types between Slash and Pierce from what I've seen... it IS true that right now, Agility and Thrust Skills seems to be the optimal build for any kind of offensive combat build, and possibly defensive ones too. In the "mid-game" you beef up accuracy and damage with a couple of accessories, and in the late game, you thoroughly abuse Ki and Mind's Eye to compensate for lower Strength and Dexterity values, while also boosting Karryn's evasion even more than it already goes with a high Agi build.
You'll probably still get some Dex anyway, because Slash attacks are still the best way to deal with full Blunt prisoners, and Arm Slash provides one of the more decent debuffs.
However... Let's get into WHY I'm saying that Agility and Thrust attacks are basically THE go to strategy for high-end combat:
1. Agility is the only one of the Offensive Type attributes that also has Defensive properties... to be exact, Dodge. Higher Agility means higher dodge chance, which, once stats start piling up, can mean a LOT of avoided damage. As if that wasn't good enough on its own, it also indirectly makes Karryn harder to strip, because dodged attacks don't directly damage her uniform, and graze attacks do less damage to it. All in all, nothing but perks for a combat build.
2. Agility boosts action speed. There is NO other way to make Karryn act faster in combat, and being able to act faster, or even first, is a huge advantage, since it lets you pick attacks without enemies being able to change their weapon types before you hit them. While unlikely in Prison mode, high enough Agi also lets you take two turns at times for every one turn of many prisoners, which makes combat even easier.
3. Rogues. After subjugating Level 2, Rogues get the ability to instantly use their Trip and Disarm skill, making it much harder to use Defensive stance against them efficiently. Hell, it's downright impossible if there's more than one in a group. The only way to deal with them now is to take at least one of them out before they start screwing you over with their gimmicks. Especially since, as far as I can tell only the middle Edict, which is the most risky one to take due to boosted Riot chance on all levels, actually removes this... and even with that one I'm not actually sure. So you guessed it, high Agi to murder them before they can act...
4. Overblow Protection. As you go deeper into the Prison and start unlocking new enemy types, and as Rare and Wanted enemies become more and more common, this will become a problem that you will have to deal with more and more often. Bosses naturally have it, as well as Orc type enemies, and likely more enemy types in the future. What does this mean? It means you can NOT kill these enemies in one hit no matter what. That makes strength builds useless, since that's their entire gimmick, and it weakens Dex builds significantly.
What about Thrust?
Well, when it comes Thrust, let me introduce you to Karryn's new religion for combat. It's a Religion about the most powerful skill in the game, a skill called Skewer, a skill which, with specialization and all the upgrades, guaranteed hits 4 times, with excellent chances of hitting a fifth time on top of that, a skill which, if only one enemy is left standing due to overblow protection, might just kill them in one shot as it does exactly what it says it will, hits them before they react, hits them while they're reacting, and then keeps hitting them while they're wondering what the hell is going.
I'm not joking at all, Skewer is, as of the latest update, the most broken skill in the game if you do everything it takes to lift it to its max potential. It even has multi-target properties, and you have literally NO disadvantage from spreading the love around. Each hit is tracked individually, so each hit is its own chunk of damage against Overblow protection.
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In conclusion and as a TL;DR for the lazy asses that can't read, I dunno if Rem intended it this way, but it looks like Agi with Mind support is the way to go for combat builds, and without significant buffs to the other two branches, it's unlikely that this will change.
