ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

okay this tree is for a two week poll to see how much people want wyrmic changed and the general direction direction they want it to go.

note this is not about how to do these things specifically the different options will make a different overall class once stitched together these are just the major non overlapping parts.

in depth description of options

first three are for how to change the melee part of the class.[1][2][3]

second pair are for how to change the draconic part of the class.[4][5]

third pair are for how to change the more passive/sustained parts of the class[6][7]

final pair are for either gearing the class toward draconic specialization or being all the dragon types[8][9]

this gives a total of twentyfour possible remakes of the class with possibility's like

[1][4][6][9] more fixing the current class than anything else
but change that first option to number 2 and the class will be better at melee at the cost of points available for draconic investment.
if we further change 9 to 8 our class now specializes in a single powerful draconic aspect with necessary utility's put into the general dragonmanness/melee tree.
if we further change 6 to 7 the draconic aspects are now almost entirely melee boosting passives/sustains with powerful effects like a constant corrosive aura, constant electric movespeed and evasion, and so on.
but change 9 back to 8 and now we can get like three or so of weaker versions of those effects and all the breath weapons.

okay thanks to nehal and this: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=41552&p=181755#p181755
I've got some good data on how wyrmic presently works don't have the generic half of the class but I don't think that parts broke so whatever.

Wyrmic case study
winners 40, characters 419 at level 25 - 50.

the two most popular races for wyrmic are thalore and dwarf with dwarf about 20 behind combined these two take up 306 characters in the study.
with 257 antimagic characters it is obviously a popular choice for the class.
the average stat build for wyrmic is strength, constitution, willpower, and the rest into cunning.
87 characters unlocked combat techniques for rush most appear to have only put one point in it curiously 22 appear to have capped blinding speed preferred builds for this tree appear to be 1/0/0/0 and 1/1/1/5.
154 characters use combat veteran the preferred build for this tree appears to be 1/5/5/0.
194 characters use shield offense however it appears almost no builds go past 1/1/1/1.
before the tree changed 97 characters used two handed weapons and with a preferred build of 1/5/0/0 it is apparent this was more for berserker than anything else there is not enough data yet to tell what the effects of the trees changes are yet.
with only 291 characters investing in the class's weapon skills 128 characters either avoided both trees or went mindstars
with no first aspect talent going below 300 characters it appears getting the first talents of a lot of aspects is pretty popular
with 277 characters icy scales appears to be a popular talent however the preferred build for its tree appears to be 1/1/1/5 with only 114 getting ice breath
at 392 bellowing roar is a must have talent however apparently only 115 got the full tree with a preferred build of 5/1/1/5
sand drake aspect has the most popular breath with 269 characters and a preferred build of 1/1/1/5
lightning breath is the least popular breath with only 56 users yet a preferred build of 1/1/1/5 when acquired
venom drake has the second most popular breath at 204 users and a preferred build of 1/5/1/5
375 character have unlocked Higher draconic abilities with a preferred build of 1/1/5/5

overall this gives us the following archetypal wyrmic
str, will, con, half cun built shield wielding anti-magic thalore with Higher draconic abilities, sand breath, corrosive breath, bellowing roar, icy scales, and lightning speed.

and lets us put the classes trees into tiers

1 must have
Higher draconic abilities, sand aspect, venom aspect shield offense

2 eh could do worse
fire drake, ice drake, two handed weapons, rush, combat techniques

3 hipster
lightning drake

Melee:[2]Add a melee boosting tree and [3]New melee tree, I chose [2] though:
Shield Offense and Two-hand Assault kind of complement each other. The former gives strong single target attack talents and Counterstrike while the latter gives better multiple-target offense options and stronger bump attack, the two combined can be fun. But I would also like a mindstar offense tree to give mindstar user some extra offense option

Draconic Part:[4]Keep the sand/fire/etc theme
Seems to me it is better thematically. Also, development-wise, grouping specific uses of draconic powers into different trees means forcing you to develop 4 talents for one aspect, while keeping the original theme would allow more flexibility. And actually grouping specific uses of draconic powers can be achieved through keeping the original theme, for example, we can have Fire for offense, Ice for defense, Acid for debuff, etc

Passive/Sustains: [6]Keep the current setup of the class with some tweaking
There should be more sustains and passives, but the I think the class design of Wyrmics is about versatility. The spells and the utilities are also important parts about Wyrmics (especially the latter), only that they need to be made better. The melee talents can be removed though (except for Swallow)

Specialization: [9]Gear it for being all the dragons
But it doesn't mean I oppose specialization. I think we should have the 5 basic drake trees for some common talents and specialization is done through unlocking the locked trees, like what HousePet mentioned in another post.

My opinion:
- not all draconic trees should require willpower to unlock talents.
- not all breaths should scale with strength.

Basically, I'd like to see some of the draconic trees scale of strength/weapon damage only (and require strength to unlock) while some other draconic talents scale of mindpower only.

For example, Sand Drake currently scales solely on Strength yet needs Willpower to advance in the tree, so just change it to need Strength to advance and it'd be fine for me. Venom Drake has 2 abilities that scale on mindpower, one based on weapon damage and one strength scaling breath attack. Change the weapon damage one entirely and make the breath attack scale with mindpower instead and it'd be fine for me as well. You could do that for every tree so you can chose wether you want to focus on strength or focus on mindpower and you have pretty much 2 styles of build.

I think the least changes would be necessary if Sand Drake, Cold Drake are Strength based and Venom Drake, Lightning Drake are Willpower/mindpower based and Fire Drake and Higher Draconic scale with both or whatever is higher.

Of course, the talents themselves can be improved in various ways as well.

More dragon types are good idea. Specialization offering greater rewards is ALSO a godo idea, on TOP of more choices overall.

Also, for other, give it some more high level locked trees. Whether they be melee or nature, doesn't matter. It could use some more locked ones.

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my only major complain is about having too many active abilities that you're never going to use in lategame. suggest making most of them passive/sustained and concentrate on breaths + melee.

That Polls a bit of a mess, even with the Opening Description.

Anyhow, I think Wyrmics should be kept as is mostly (maybe with a few talents like Static Field for example getting the axe) but that we should seem some new categories that feature passives and sustains to boost their other talents. Right now Wyrmics are essentially a class made up of a multitude of powerful talents - that are only moderately effective because unlike say a class like Berserker, they don't have any talents outside of Wyrmic Guile and or Chromatic Fury boosting their effectivness; Wyrmic Guile and Chromatic Fury of course not really doing a good job either.

yeah I know the polls a bit of a mess just seemed like everyone had there own idea for the class and wanted to get something that could account for as many of them as possible while still staying under the forum limit of ten options.

and made sure to highlight the one that is mostly just patching the existing class in the example.

anyway got an official thread for discussing this now and if we need to go more in depth of how to do this at the end could open a second poll on the firsts results.

also Davion Fuxa the reason the class doesn't have that many boosters available is because wyrmics are expected to have multiple aspects/elements this reduces the need for resistance penetration as your more expected to use either melee or a different aspect when you meet an immune or highly resistant foe, this also means you have too many different elements to really build up one gearwise without neglecting another, and with that many elements it could be considered op to give you an all element piercing thing as strong as an archmages.

I think the class needs to mostly retain its current structure to match the actual dragons, but the content of that structure could do with some changes.

Certainly the two most important utility talents can't very well be moved (burrow and lightning speed) so some wide investment needs to be planned for.

What really needs to happen is what all the other multi-stat classes have: a stat conversion talent of some sort. The half-arcanists turn cunning into spellpower, the brawler turns cunning and dex into con and strength. The temporal warden turns will into strength and magic. The mindslayer turns will and cunning into strength and dex, or at least it used to.

Just adding a tree of passives and sustains that contains that sort of thing could fix their antisynnergy problem.

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okay how exactly is the class a multi-stat class it seems to be a pretty straightforward str, con, will class unless your going the mindstar route and even then superpower can more than compensate for everything but crits which is pretty good for an off build.
and with the way everyone seems upset about the strength scaling in breaths they could get set to con , will, or mindpower scaling making strength a completely optional stat for the class.

I really don't see why you would think this class is supposed to be a multi-stat class like those listed I'll admit mindstars are good for the class but their obviously an off/gimmick build thing for this class like they are for really any psionic or afflicted class.

seems the idea for a general I'm a dragonman tree that supports general wyrmicness is pretty popular though.

Not sure how much I can add. But in my limited time with Wyrmic I have to say that they don't feel very dragon like.
They feel like a melee class with some talents that sound draconic but don't really seem very dragon like.

I guess the first question should be what is a Wyrmic supposed to be? Is it a melee class with some dragon powers? Or something else?

In anycase I would love to see them more draconic.

Well dragons are mostly bumpers with breath weapons and the occasional extra ability.

I see Wyrmics as a tough heavy fighter with access to some raw elemental fury.

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Maybe dragons need work then.
When I think of dragons I think of the most powerful and intelligent beast out there. Their mere presence strikes fear into those around them.
Their elemental attacks are devastating and on top of that they have thick hides, sharp claws and teeth and move fast.

Guess I've always been dissapointed with how dragons are in this game. With the exception of certain overpowered multi-hued wyrms they are all largely forgettable easy xp.

yeah thematically wyrmics take after dragons but mechanically dragons take after wyrmics. fix wyrmics and dragons will be more impressive

that may not stop them from being way too common though unless the buffed dragons thrones of skulls start to threaten dark gods.

Looking at the poll results suggests I've been on the right track with my previous suggestions. Or possibly the same people who made suggestions in the previous thread have voted in this poll...

So I'm currently thinking along the lines of:

Two basic dragony fighter categories.
Drake Body: Mostly passive and mostly melee based, but with some use for caster style. eg. Drake Strength, Drake Scales, Cloud Seer, Transformation...
Drake Combat: Pure melee actives. Casters need not apply. eg. Ice Claw, Swallow, Claw Dance, Flyby Slash, Dissolve, Bellowing Roar, Prismatic Slash...

Then we have the categories based on each drake type.
Sand, Fire, Cold, Storm, Corrosive.
The game does feature a water dragon. So we could theoretically have Water category.
While there is a Venom Breath, we don't have a dragon type that uses it, unless you count multihued drakes. So that is another possible drake type.
These categories would be more focussed on the dragon theme, than melee combat.
So they would start with a natural elemental attack such as Devouring Flames, Quake, Tornado...
Second would be a defensive talent such as Icy Scales.
Third would be some sort of utility like Burrow or Ice Wall.
Forth would be the super breath nuke, aka X Breath. (of doom)

Finally, we need some high level locked categories.
These could be based on rare dragon types such as Multihued, Whatever drake the Ziguranth get their antimagic elixir from, Blink, Blood (I made that one up but DarkGod said we have to wait until we can go to the demon world first , still it fits nicely with the Corrupted Heart...)
Or maybe some other theme.
These categories could follow the previous drake category layout.

To reward specialisation in a single drake category we could adjust the passive resistance on each talent to also give a passive damage buff.
A multihued category might work for rewarding multi types.

Now some hypothetical test case numbers.
For a pure melee Wyrmic:
16 points into Drake Body. (Cloud Seer didn't look useful for a melee character)
20 points into Drake Combat.
12 points into Sand Drake. (Maxing the defensive and the breath. Quake being too castery and they don't want the utility of Burrow)
12 points into Antimagic Drake. (Stupid mages hurt! Now I hurt them! Same focus on defensive and breath as before)
Or maybe into the Technique talents? (Do we need the Technique categories?)

Pure caster Wyrmic:
11 points into Drake Body. (Drake Scales and Cloud Seer maxed)
About 10 points each into Fire, Cold, Storm and Corrosive. (Focussing on the slot 1 talent with some other points into defensive and utility)
15 points into Multihued. (Breaths are overrated)

Yeah, I can't remember how many class talent points you get.

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

I took my own stab at wyrmics here: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/grayswandir-weird-wyrmic
Feel free to steal anything from it that you like.

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Currently working on Elementals. It's a big project, so any help would be appreciated.