Ego equipment/Brawler glove tweaks(with Addon)

[SageAcrin]

I'm really happy with how this turned out for a few days work.

Essentially, the idea is twofold, here.

First, coding some suggestions I made a while ago, in passing. I figure this is easy enough for me to make, so I did. But this was just in passing.

Secondly, and more majorly, was an attempt to do for egos what I've done with talents and artifacts before.

This is a fairly major undertaking, but as it turns out, I had a couple of good non-bored days and happened to get through it.

There were a few goals here, besides more general rebalancing poorer egos and making some ego classes(Robes and Staffs, I'm looking at you balefully) better.

Firstly, boosting life regen. Since, in SVN, life regeneration was boosted by a substantial amount, I figured this would be a good chance to tweak it upwards on equipment.

Secondly, increasing the impact of save gear. This is more aimed towards earlygame; Earlygame save oriented artifacts can easily have two or three times as much save impact as earlygame save ego items, which produces a nasty split, and enemies tend to get into the 20 range on power nearly instantly/40 range quite fast, meaning that you need faster save gains to really compete with resistances.

On a related note; Status resistance equips, while less common than save equips, were generally just better, often having more useful secondary effects(which is to say, they had secondary effects.).

Thirdly, boosting high end purple equips to compete with artifacts. Now, do note that I didn't say "be better than artifacts"; On examination, that doesn't seem to have happened, and wasn't my target. But they should have niche uses fairly often; A character's equipment should, optimally, not be a mass of artifacts.

Well, unless they've gotten lucky with randarts.

Incidentally, randarts look a lot better with this, but I didn't get any exceptionally awesome ones. Well, robes and staffs are way better in general, but the randarts weren't beating the heck out of the fixedart staves without great luck, which is how it should be.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking. "I want to see the changelist!" No, you don't. You want to play with the egos. You don't want to see the changelist.

...

Well, don't say I didn't warn you. Yes, it is 25k despite being tersely written. Yes, you have to know what was there on the ego to really understand it. No, I don't think I could have done better.

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/equipm ... tweaks-103

So yeah, give it a spin, see if there's any weirdness!

[Hachem_Muche]

Nice work!

Just looking over these, a few things popped out:

Healing (charm talent) could use a lower cooldown. As is, the ability is almost never used.
Boots of strife are melee oriented and would probably benefit more from physical pen than mind-pen.
Restful gloves might get some fatigue reduction instead of the extra life regen.
The lite radius penalty on Burglar's and Corpselight lites seems a bit too harsh.
Watch Leader's blindness resistance looks too good. One item shouldn't be able to give 100% status resistance unless it's an artifact.
Ancient robes paradox failure adjustment might be too good. Consider raising the resistance cap for temporal by ~ 3%. This would be useful for damage smearing etc against enemies without temporal resistance, so don't want this to stack too high with randarts.
Staves -- there's definitely room for a damage boosting (+weapon damage for melee and for alchemist channel staff) ego in here.

[SageAcrin]

Agreed on Healing, I'll grab that(Will wait a bit and see if there's more specific feedback/bugs before releasing a 1.01, but I'll grab this one).
Boots of Strife...I think Mindpower might work best here, rather than either. Or maybe both phys and mindpen? They have such a mess of characteristics that I think that might work, if I dropped the value a bit. Would be awfully good for a Doomed, but they're generally physical boots otherwise...
Restful...yeah, that seems like a good idea.
Burglar's could be dropped. I like Corpselight, though; Feels like there ought to be one ego lamp somewhere that enables invisbility.
I don't really have a problem with dropping Watchleader's blind resistance some. It was a weird hodge-podge ego; I was mostly afraid it might be not good enough when I dropped that on it.
Ancient Robe...I don't think it's really all that uncontrollable(talked with you in chat on why), and I'm pretty sure TAR-DIS raises Temporal Resistance Cap. Maybe just dropping it to 15, 15 would be better, so it's a lower impact.
Yeah, I'll look into making a damage boost ego stave somewhere. There's one already, I believe, but a greater ego that does it would be good.

[HousePet]

Excellent, now I don't have to do it.
re lite reduction on lamps: I'm not worried by this as every 4 infravision works as 1 lite range, but without the invis penalty.

A small suggestion: Rename the Hardened belt ego. Hardened is a belt tier.

[Gatewalker]

I actually like burglars. I got a randart lamp that stacked 2 burglars egos for -17 light and +10 infra(along with +9 cunning and some other stuff). It's fun, and I've been using it since I got it(got it in...sandworm, I think, I'm east now, still going strong with that infra~).

Some feedback about the changes to artifact gloves for brawlers:

Flamewrought: now extremely legit. Carried me from trollmire through half of daikara, had to keep a swap around for fire drakes and such, of course. But still very good earlygame gloves.

Stone Gauntlets of Harkor'Zun: Uh...these are actually bad. The Volcano on hit seems cool! Until you see the damage it does is like...19-20 per hit. And if the closest enemy is on the other side of you? The volcano WILL hit you with rocks firing at said enemy. I ran them for one floor of a dungeon and dropped 'em. Not good for a brawler at all, imo.

I'll edit this with more feedback as I get more gloves.

Nevermind, just permadied and after trying Vor Armory with brawler, I think I'm done with the class for awhile. So, uh, that's all the feedback I have. <_<;

[Strongpoint]

Few suggestion for staffs, mostly to make some egos matter for few guys that bash enemies with them.

Of might : + to physical crit
Of illumination : +X points of light damage + Blind on physical crit or flat chance to blind on attack.
Blighted : Same as above but blight damage and decease
Earthen : + X points physical damage plus pinning chance

[SageAcrin]

Good ideas; There's a couple of damage types(corrupted blood, blinding light) that would work well for some of that.

Edit: 1.01 done! Intro post is updated with the new changelist and the new addon link.

Added changes:

Gauntlets of Harkor'zun: Changed from T_VOLCANO to T_CORROSIVE_MIST(L1/10%).
"of healing" amulets: Charm CD dropped from 80 to 35.
"hardened" belt: Renamed "reinforced".
"of disengagement" boots: Charm CD dropped from 25 to 15.
"of strife" boots: Changed mindpenetration to physical penetration, added a 4, 2 Con bonus.
"burglar's" lite: Infra radius changed from 7,3 to 5,4.
"of corpselight" lite: Light penalty removed, infravision changed to 3, 3, added Retch at L1, 2 as a charm(30 CD).
"watchleader's" lite: Dropped blind from 50, 50 to 30, 20. Added a 20, 10 confusion resistance.
"ancient" robe: Dropped paradox fail mitigation to 15, 15. Grants 10, 5 temporal resistance penetration.
"cruel" stave: Added 10, 5 Physical critical chance.
"blighted" stave: Added a 15, 5 Corrupted Blood damage project.
"ethereal" stave: Added a 8, 4 random confusion damage project.
"of illumination" stave: Added a 15, 5 Light Blind damage project.
"infernal": 20, 15 shadowflame damage project added.
"magelord's" stave: Uncommented. Changed to a 30, 50 greater ego, rarity changed to 30. Spellpower reduced from 20, 5 to 5, 5. Added an 8, 6 physical crit bonus. Added a 10, 5 weapon damage bonus, and a bonus to elemental damage based on it(similar to "potent" ego). Also gains a 30, 15 Arcane damage project.
"short" stave: Entirely new! Lesser ego, 1, 50 level range, 15 rarity, makes the staff wieldable with the mainhand(like Telos Top). No secondary effects.
"magewarrior's short" stave(short: "magewarrior"): Entirely new! Greater ego, 40, 50 range, 35 rarity, makes the staff wieldable with the mainhand(like Telos Top). Grants an 8, 4 weapon damage bonus, a 5, 5 physical/spell crit bonus, a 5, 5 accuracy/physpow/magpow bonus, a 10, 10 critical modifier bonus, and a 10, 10 random silence project.

[Strongpoint]

"short" stave: Entirely new! Lesser ego, 1, 50 level range, 15 rarity, makes the staff wieldable with the mainhand(like Telos Top). No secondary effects.

I suspect that reavers double wielding those will be quite overpowered. If that true I suggest to reduce +% to damage for them making them opposite to potent. That's easily explained by their smaller size

But I like the short staffs idea very much. Many, many new builds are opened by that

[SageAcrin]

"short" stave: Entirely new! Lesser ego, 1, 50 level range, 15 rarity, makes the staff wieldable with the mainhand(like Telos Top). No secondary effects.

I suspect that reavers double wielding those will be quite overpowered. If that true I suggest to reduce +% to damage for them making them opposite to potent. That's easily explained by their smaller size

But I like the short staffs idea very much. Many, many new builds are opened by that

I hadn't really thought of the Reaver angle, but on some heavy reflection, I think letting that go to testing would be better than nerfing the staves for one build. There's a few reasons for this.

A: Earlygame Staves are very bad physical weapons. This hasn't really changed that; It's an element of their damage rating. Short staves can't even be potent. You also need to run up 750 cash to be able to use them effectively for physicals at all, for Reaver(or a Category Point).

B: Earlygame staves have fairly poor % bonuses(10-20%). Combine this with the fact that you don't get specific prefix bonuses and you're having to rely on a fairly uncommon ego for all your offense(and you have to get two of it), and you're definitely not getting optimal damage boosts.

C: When these things stop being true...Telos Top and Life Drinker exist, and always have existed(Granting 25% range bonuses and better stats than any Short staff will ever have, due to only having one ego.). In fact, this used to be far more consistent of a combo for Reaver, since there were less artifacts at top tier. Both of them outclass basically any non-randart short staff, and even a magewarrior's short will mostly be a sidegrade to one of those, not a direct upgrade.

Basically, on reflection, I see a midgame impact here, but not enough so that I'm worried; Reaver's not an insanely powerful class. Of course, the staves can always be nerfed later, if I'm wrong.

Edit: If it does come up, the simplest answer is probably to give them a negative set bonus ("The staves are too bulky for you to dualwield properly!") when equipped together; They're bigger than onehanded weapons in general would be, would be the logic.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Reaver? Not insanely powerful? Really?

The class that can hit both final bosses AND your ally for that fight, for enough damage to one-hit them all at once, in a single turn, isn't insanely powerful?

....Really?

[SageAcrin]

Diseases are great boss killers. (Single turn is a bald-faced lie; That takes multiple disease stacking and then a Cyst Burst. But, still great boss killers.)

Considering that you can do that just by twohanding the best staff you find, though-and that Corruptors can do the same thing better-I don't see what it has to do with this conversation.

Besides, ABs can do 15000 there, actually in one turn and not with setup, and people still don't win them that much. The amount of damage you do at the last battle doesn't have all that much impact on a class' worth.

Regardless, please try to keep the off topic comments to a minimum.

[pheonix89]

Suggest a tweak to the warden's ego. ATM, despite obviously being intended for TW's, it's partially redundant for them, because the free weapon swap ability they have from chargen thanks to celerity. So, have it give (a very small) TW only boost. Possibly a bit more resist pen for them only?

[jotwebe]

Better have it reduce the cd on one or more of the other skills in that category - useless for anyone that doesn't have it, nice for Wardens. It'd also be in line with some of the other bow egos boosting of Archer talents.

[Strongpoint]

Suggest a tweak to the warden's ego. ATM, despite obviously being intended for TW's, it's partially redundant for them, because the free weapon swap ability they have from chargen thanks to celerity. So, have it give (a very small) TW only boost. Possibly a bit more resist pen for them only?

+ 0.2 mastery to that tree with celerity (forgot the name) is a much more logical choice or +0.2 to any other TW only tree.

[jotwebe]

+ 0.2 mastery to that tree with celerity (forgot the name) is a much more logical choice or +0.2 to any other TW only tree.

Speed Control. And that tree has Speed - that'd be a bit much for anything but an artifact.