ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Any build that requires one particular artifact to be viable is not really viable, unless you're using the character vault.

Sort of off-topic but:
Ice is actually halfway decent anyhow, at least compared to Storm. What would really help is if they could somehow cold-affinity-heal themselves through shields, as they have Fungus-level healing but only when their shields are down, which is a bad condition. Or if their affinity healing produced a shield via Arcane Shield. Another weird thing about Ice compared to Wildfire is that Wildfire's utility (Burning Wake/Cleansing Flame) is properly locked behind a category point, whereas Ice's utility is ALL in the unlocked Water tree, so non-Ice mages can freely splash it into their builds without committing to Ice. Imagine if Burning Wake and Cleansing Flame were swapped with Fireflash and Inferno. That's like the situation Ice is in.

Aye, all true. I happen to think Ice is a very, very strong build but your points are spot on.

An inability to heal through one's damage shield is the primary weakness of the cold build and largely why the build doesn't survive in the harder difficulties.

I'm not suggesting that the item alone would make a build viable but the argument opposed doesn't make any sense. If you eliminated the amazing fire gear, would a Wildfire mage be able to tackle Insane? That's dubious.

My position is that there is a shortage of good gear for certain builds that are close to being viable. Now, many people have pointed out that the limited number of drops in this game creates a risk of watering down the item-pool and hurting everyone. I respect that.

Thus, I'm trying to create ideas for items that are viable across multiple builds that could use some help. The ice-armor that I suggested is not really one of those items unless you also get the frost amulet that gives the Shivgoroth talent. It could just be an item worth carrying for some builds as that would have added utility.

With that in mind, any thoughts on my other suggestions? My goal is to make good suggestions but I'm not getting a ton of help.

I think so, actually, yeah. "Fire gear" mostly just means fire damage and resistance penetration. Lacking those would lower your damage output somewhat, but would not affect the main draw of Wildfire versus other elements (effect dispel which ignores saves), nor would it affect the advantage of Archmages in general (gigantic shields). I think of damage as the cherry on top of the flaming cupcake, the cupcake which is also effectively immune to damage. But I do see your point. It was a much bigger problem back when there were like six different fire artifacts and one or none of everything else, but the distribution now can probably be improved.

I think the biggest issue you hit upon was the lack of belts. There's like three belts in the entire game as far as I'm concerned, because everyone likes to design cool weapons but no one wants to design the thing that holds your pants up.

Well, I'm trying but I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough about the mechanics of the game to be good at it, but I'm trying.

The only classes that I know really well are the mage, corruptor, cursed, summoner, and archmage classes. Except for the cursed and summoner, I can beat the game on normal fairly easily with all of those classes.

I would really like some feedback on my ideas so that I can fine-tune them and make better ideas…

More belts would be nice…

Spellcrafter's Cloak, which gives you a chance for no-selffire spells and +spell crit. It is, naturally, a cloak.

So, I'm not sure if inscription egos should go here, but I have a few ideas for them. As I hear it, there are so many white inscriptions (which are near useless, from what I can tell) in the stores simply because those are supposed to have blue and purple egos, but there aren't any. In fact, there are no egos at all except single stats to scale off of. So, with that in mind, I propose:
[*]Quick - shorter cooldown time of inscription, not sure if this should be raw number or %, or maybe different for different runes/infusions, probably blue
[*]Hastened - shorter cooldown & saturation time of inscription, likewise to above for amount, probably purple
[*]Powerful - increase power, not sure what level
[*]Lasting - duration effects last 1-3 turns longer, if no duration effects, effects on user repeat next turn, i.e. a heat beam rune would banish one physical status effect this turn, and then another one next turn

[*]2-stat scaling, probably purple: Of the...
Titan - Str & Con
Fencer - Str & Dex
Magewarrior - Str & Mag
Knight - Str & Wil
Stalker - Str & Cun
Hunter - Dex & Mag
Thief - Dex & Cun
Bloodmage - Con & Mag
Magelord - Mag & Wil
Sorcerer - Mag & Cun
Mentalist - Wil & Cun

I'd also suggest, if there are any prefix egos made, that we switch things around so that stat-scaling egos go in front and the other egos go at the end (i.e. it would be a Knight's Healing Infusion of Haste). The reason for this is simply order in shops. They seem to be ordered alphabetically, and I remember when stat egos were in front it organized things first by stat, and then by type of inscription. Well, egos like Quick or Powerful, to my mind, will be the last piece to be considered when buying inscriptions. By that I mean that, if I'm a berserker looking for some healing, I'll look first and foremost at healing infusions, then for ones with Str or maybe Con as their stats, or maybe I'll look for a regeneration infusion, again with Str or Con for stats. An infusion being quick or powerful will only matter if it first meets those infusion type and stat criteria. I'd go for a healing infusion that scaled with Str and was quick over one that scaled with str and wasn't, but I wouldn't go for one that scaled with mag and was quick over one that scaled with str and wasn't, or a quick poison infusion that scaled with str over any kind of healing infusion.

Either that, or we need stores to order runes by type the same way stores order weapons and armor by type, and then alphabetically by ego, but I'd still suggest that stat-egos go first.

"lacerating " Prefix
Melee Weapons
Grant a bonus equal around 133%~ of massacre's damage boost, but cause all damage to bleed targets over 5 turns instead of being dealt instantly.
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"armor plated " Prefix
Shields
Grants a 30-50%~ boost to shield strength, increases the cooldown of Block by 1.
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"repulsive " Prefix
Armor
Slows enemy speed when hit in melee, activate to instantly apply slow to all enemies in a short radius.
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"weighted " Prefix
Helmet
Passively grants a headcrack damage modifier twice that of a normal piece of headgear.
Grant a chance on melee attack for a free Headcrack attack.
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" of the shadow" Suffix
Boots
Grants extra movement speed on every move, that gets expended whenever you strike an enemy for an increased critical strike chance.

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<mex> have you heard the good word about archmage?
<mex> I'm here to tell you about your lord and savior shalore archmage
<mex> have you repented your bulwark sins yet?
<mex> cornac shall inherit the Eyal

I think the cooldown on Primal Infusion should be reduced to 12 seconds. No one really uses this right now due to the cooldown, and some people prefer mental/physical wild anyway because magical effects are not usually as serious. If the cooldown were competitive with standard wild infusions, I would actually be glad to find this thing.

Honestly, I'm still not sure I'd use the Primal Infusion unless it took care of one of EACH physical, mental, and magical effects. I usually don't even take physical/mental infusions, because I'd rather have something specific.

Figure, if you've got physical, mental, and magical status effects on you, and you want one specific one gone, the Primal Infusion only gives you a 1/3 chance of even getting the right category as it is.

I've used it as a second wild, but frankly a phys/mental would have been a wiser choice. There are no magical lockdown effects. There's a magical lockdown sustain and there are a few spells that cause physical lockdown effects, but no magical lockdown effects. That means the Primal Infusion really has no added value over a phys/mental.

Just making magical effects as bad as physical and mental (probably by making versions of pin, daze, and freeze that count as magical and making flameshock a magical effect) would wreck the difficulty of the game because of the two infusion per type limit and the limited slots, but I suppose that's a discussion for another thread.

I'm not sure the Primal can be made as good as normal wild infusions while sharing the only one status removal limit with them unless status type balance is adjusted.

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Digitochracy
n. 1. technocracy. 2. government by the numbers. 3. rule by people with the longest fingers.

I like Planetus's idea of making Primal remove 1 each of physical, mental, and magical effects. Then the cooldown can stay at 18 seconds for balance reasons. The 10% damage affinity is nice, but it's not strong enough on its own.

The damage affinity is pretty irrelevant I think. It's not enough mitigation to be worth putting a wild on cooldown. It makes a triple wild configuration possible, which might be nice with low saves, but that leaves only two slots left.

Inscriptions would get a lot more interesting if there weren't a limit on how many slots you could open. There are enough first tier inscriptions that no one even looks at second tier stuff, but a number of classes only have one high priority unlock category. If you could get 6 or 7 slots the fact that Primal permits a triple wild setup or Deflection a triple shield setup would become interesting because doing so wouldn't mean not having slots for other high priority inscriptions. Even better from a "make inscription choices interesting" standpoint might be raising both the starting and maximum slot numbers. It would be more power creep, though.

Triple wild with Primal would probably be worth it even as it now stands for builds with poor saves if it weren't for the five inscription limit.

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Digitochracy
n. 1. technocracy. 2. government by the numbers. 3. rule by people with the longest fingers.

Primal Infusion shouldn't be compared with Wild Infusions. Its not a Wild Infusion.
Damage affinity all is not an insignificant effect, neither is instantly curing one debuff.

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My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

It's an inscription. Of course it has to be compared to other inscriptions. It's transparently based on wilds, clearly attempts to perform the same function, and directly competes for inscription slots with them.

Curing debuffs is great. Curing debuffs is so important that things with temporary all resist greater than maxed thick skin get selected and used exclusively based on their ability to remove debuffs. Even as much worse untargeted condition removal is compared to targeted it's still so much more important than a mere 20% affinity that it doesn't matter. People get the same quality damage mitigation from late game wilds with high stats and disregard it as not worth putting a condition remover on cooldown.

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Digitochracy
n. 1. technocracy. 2. government by the numbers. 3. rule by people with the longest fingers.

Another possibility would be for the Primal Infusion to grant a temporary boost to the savetype (physical, mental or magical) related to the condition it just cured. E.g., if you use it to cure a pin, it could give you, say, +40 to physical saves for 5 turns. A poor man's Spine of the World/Unbreakable Will, if you wish.