ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Magical Defense still talks about "non-blockable damage (check your Block talent)", which is based on old shield mechanics. As of 1.6, all shields block everything but Mind, now they just get a bonus of 50% block value to elements they offer resistance to.

Good catch, I forgot about Block mechanics changing. This class might be a bit buggy at the moment in regards to Block behavior. Should be a quick little fix; I'll update it as soon as I have time, probably this evening.

Thanks for the report

v1.5.9
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[General]
Adjusted talent mastery levels to be in line with 1.6 conventions (either 1.3 or 1.0).
Reduced Survival to 1.0.

[Magical Defense]
Damage type interaction removed, now provides bonus block and projectile deflection only.
The old effect was really just a way to have Block be fairly reliable mitigation without Spectral Shield, which is no longer needed.

[Phase Stride]
Mana cost per teleport increased to 15 (plus fatigue).

[Greater Channel Staff]
The shield hit is now limited to once per target per base turn, rather than once per target per player turn.
In effect this limits the number of times you can trigger the effect with Phase Stride + Boltfury to once per base turn per target, and doesn't have much effect otherwise.

Just tried this one out and played it all the way through with one spike death near the start.

Overall, fun and pretty powerful class. Starts out a bit different than it actually plays after all the pieces fall together. Kinda like an Anorithil that kicks into gear earlier, but without their stronger early game.

Things I especially liked:

- The fact that you create a rush-in ability that actually works as such because it gives enough buffs and triggers enough stuff to actually not be completely suicidal. It is very important that the class has a second teleport that works to get you back out, though. If not for that, this would still be problematic. As it is, this creates a really nice power fantasy (magical charge) that actually works and is even core to the class. It also makes clearing out the scattered mobs on a map pleaseantly quick, since you basically just teleport each one to death.

- How the different ways to trigger small bonus attacks and damage effects (bolts, shieldattacks, bonus damage) work together to create a hurricane of damage procs. The room clearing potential is crazy with this guy. Getting slightly longer ranges if the fight went on made it less tedious when combatting in bigger areas, but it is interesting to see how the class plays different in the big rooms with lots of enemies (some vaults, armory, stuff like that).

- This also folds nicely into the decision making process when chosing item actives. I found Umbraphage relatively early and used the max range spray from that one to do something on rounds where enemies were still scattered after my initial telejump in, like the pride greeting rooms. Normally, I would not have needed active damaging items with a class as this, but the range difference made it an interesting pick. On the other hand, with the tedium of comparing items, I always kinda like classes that allow you to skip reading half of the drops. I basically only had to read the armor pieces (and not even the light ones), jewelry, staves and shields, which shrunk down the list considerably.

- I really like that 99% of your damage will be typed to your staff color, which you can switch in one turn. This means you can tune to whatever your gear deals you, towards the dungeon you are in and can swap around with a small penalty when immune enemies appear. For example, I played with frost while I had the Frost Treads on, but mostly used light because its good against most undead and few guys resist it. In both cases, I had to swap to something else every now and then for frost drakes and light demons, respectively. If this happened all the time, I would despise it as tedious micromanagement, but interspersed like that it was a nice change every now and then without requiring too much upkeep.

- I also like that all your aoe shenanigans work without killing the occasional ally. I absolutely hate when this happens, it makes everything so needlessly frustrating. Thanks for thinking of that!


Stuff that kinda works but could use a touchup:

- I really really dislike the notion of mana-using classes that are not called Archmage not having innate mana regeneration. It is just tedious and screwy. I get that this class theoretically has a decently working mana income via the mana-on-block or simply ends fights quickly enough to not make it an issue, but I would really love to see that manastream rune be gone from the game for good. I had to carry it around until after Dreadfell because I could not only not trust my block-regen to kick in often and heavily enough to pay for my now decently expensive shit (since fatigue with heavy armor and extra 45% from talents adds up), but also because it simply takes ages to crawl back up when resting between fights, and there are a bunch of areas where you can not really rest (water levels, the chase through the chasm). I only got rid of the rune once I had two items with mana streaming because of that. This is less of a criticism specific to this class, but I would really like to see all mana users have a baseline mana regen of at least 0.5, and while at it willpowers measly 5 mana per point are also too low to make it a choice for non-mindcasters outside of triggering talent or prodigy conditions.

- The early game experience is a bit wonky. The low range and mana pool coupled with the fact that 100% of your talents cost mana and that if you get either silenced or disarmed, you are basically bump attacking with your fists for a while can make for a few frustrating situations in the more open areas (Halfling Village, big rooms, etc). Also, at that point your weapon based attacks still suck, leaving you with basically 1-2 spells to deal 80% of your damage. Perhaps swapping some talents around in their trees to make sure the fixed-damage ones are up front and the weapon-based ones come later would help?

- The class could do with one more category in both columns. By level 30, I had real difficulty finding something worthwhile to level with generics, and by level 40, I only did touchups on the class talents, either. I also played Cornac (which I often do and always do with unknown classes), which basically could not use the extra category. I slammed it on battlemage to upgrade the mastery level, but with the usually bad scaling everything in this game has, it did not make much of a difference. Anyways, my main problem spot is the generics. Out of the 6 combat training skills, you only need thick skin and heavy armor training and perhaps one point in accuracy can not hurt. Survival is only good for the active item stuff and perhaps a single point in the finisher when you finally get enough cunning from gear to click it. The first ability, which is usually a decent one point wonder, gets superceded by your telepathy similar to the accuracy above. I propse getting rid or at least closing the category for this class and instead giving them a more fighter oriented one. Conditioning perhaps? Overall a bit stronger, but would fill in a few gaps. Or conditioning as a closed category in addition? Something like that.

- Phasestride seems a bit costly. I opted to not use it. I get that because you teleport, it is meant to re-trigger your avalanche of mini-crits again. The problem is that by the time you have that set up, your character also needs the mana and does not have a problem triggering it whenever they want, since simply shooting any of my attacks or even healing myself does the same thing. If it either increased fatigue or cost a smaller bit of mana, it might be interesting, but as it is, it does not make much sense.

- Having teleports as your main movement abilities (and talents that want you to take blink runes instead of movement infusions) leads to one small problem, but that is again more of a general game related one than specific to your class. Since you can not teleport across vault doors, it leads to very silly situations where you can not use your only movement abilities and your usual fight opener in these locations unless you move 1-2 spaces by hand. Similarly, the chasm chase is too close since the only movement ability you can use there will be Phase Strike. While it is doable like that, it feels too frantic. Again, not really something to be solved on the class level, but still. Hey Darkgod, why again can't we use at least blink-type teleports in that map? They are not stronger than movement infusions or similar spells that are not classified as spells. Only the big teleport is a problem, and let's be honest, not really.

- This leads me to a small luxury problem the class has. Once you get most of the active talents (thankfully, you have lots of passives!), the abovementioned triggered stuff is mostly in place, and since all the spells have very low cooldowns and most mobs die when you teleport in, half of the active abilities rarely get used - especially since by design, they all got the low range typical for the class. I suggest picking out a few of them to have bigger cooldowns, but also potentially stronger effects. Magic burst is a bit too good, while many of the others deal too low damage in comparison (see the above comment about fixed vs weapon based talents). Magic Pull is simply not useful at all, and Magic Beam should increment its range with levelups so it is your dedicated "fishing" spell, not just the one that happens to have one more range than the others. If I had to make a quick pass, I would up the cooldown of all three sprays (oh, btw, making them narrower was a nice touch) to 8 or even 10 and make sure the two later ones are more worthwhile to cast (most stuff dies before the effects can be relevant), give the beam more range and then try to slightly improve base damages on everything that is not already strong while checking for ways to remove some of the power from the triggered damage effects.

Overall a small power-down is imho warranted. I killed the bosses in about 10 turns without moving outside of phase-jumping once on each of them. Aeryn was still alive. I took almost no damage. The only tactically relevant thing I did was opening with that cleansing rune on Elandar.

Hey, glad you enjoyed the class and thanks for the detailed feedback

I'm a bit puzzled by the comments regarding base mana regeneration. All Mage subclasses should have base 0.5 mana regeneration, including High Guard. I rolled one just to double-check (it's been a while since I've played one), but the base regen was there as expected. If your character didn't get it for some reason, my first guess would be a conflict with another addon.

The low number of categories is intentional. While I do enjoy classes that have a lot options in-class (as you will see when my next class is finished), I also enjoy having some classes with the flexibility to spend category points on optional trees unlocked during the campaign (such as escort trees, vile life, hexes) or maxing out on inscriptions (or over-maxing with Ogre). I feel that having too many in-class locked options can add pressure to stick to those trees and pass on what could potentially be some interesting choices. There are some classes where Cornac is great, but this is not one of them. There are a lot of strong racial trees to choose from, and High Guard gives you enough free points to really invest in them if you wish. All that said, I won't totally rule out the possibility of another new tree at some point, but I'll be honest and say that it's not likely to happen any time soon.

Phasestride is a bit awkward, I admit. Originally, all of the battle channels reduced your movement speed instead of increasing fatigue, and Phasestride was the capstone to alleviate that penalty, albeit with a fairly high cost. Later when things were changed to fatigue I considered replacing the talent, but it still does serve as a way to crank out some quick crits, great for stacking spellsurge, and as an emergency escape if you get pinned and Phase is on cooldown. If and when I take another pass at the class and do some touch-ups, it is one thing that's fairly likely to change.

I disagree that the effects of the later talents in Magical Assault are not powerful enough to be worthwhile. On lower difficulties it's likely that the fairly high damage you can kick out may reduce the number of situations where they can really shine, but even then they should be quite strong against the enemies that really matter. Putting talents on cooldown severely limits the threat of an enemy, and extending debuffs allows you to put more and more talents on cooldown, and stacking up more debuffs subsequently starts quickly stripping any timed buffs they have. This works particularly well with Quickened, which both increases your attack speed and lets you cooldown your attack spells faster.

You may be correct that damage over all is a bit high, but the large variability of difficulty throughout the campaign and especially across various game difficulties makes it nearly impossible to ensure a smooth and consistent power level. Definitely something I'll keep in mind if and when I get back to the class, in any case.

Thanks again for giving the class a go, and especially for all of the feedback

Brief bug report: the debuff inflicted by Sorcerous Retribution causes errors, probably due to entities taking damage from a non-actor source.
This occurred in Vor Armory for me, probably due to an enemy standing on the lava floor.

Also, casting Phasestrike onto a target you can't teleport to (say, in a no-teleport zone like the Warmaster Gnarg room in Vor Armory) will not take time, cost mana or put the talent on cooldown, but will trigger Boltfury nonetheless, meaning you can stack up a monstrous amount of Channel Staff projectiles that all get unleashed at once.

@Mana regeneration

I started with exactly 0.5 mana regen - which is what the rune gives me. I swapped it out for something else after aquiring two gear pieces with manastreaming and coped from there, but the rest phases took ages like that.

Afaik this has always been the case with anything not called Archmage. They do not have base mana regen, and you can even see lots of older guides mentioning that fact for, say, the Spellblade.


@Categories

It wasn't a problem, more of an observation. In kinda agree with you that too many classes have too many trees, but this one stood out as the crass opposite, so I thought I should mention it.


@Magical Assault Talents

You misunderstood me. I am absolutely on the same page about the side effects being powerful. The problem is the damage output of the class is so high that you almost do not need these for anything, and since the cooldown of everything, especially the default spray, is so low, they get underutilized. That's why I suggested upping some of the cooldowns and reducing the top end power niveau of the class a bit - to have the player actually have to use these sometimes. As it stands, a typical teleport assault followed by a spray cleared 99% of all enemies within reach by itself, even rares. As I said, the end bosses died with about one rotation. Yeah, I get it, some people play on Insane, but its not as if Elandar and Argoniel had low HP or no defensive mechanisms. If I do not need to use anything but the dispel rune (once, in turn 1, mind you) to brute force them, I will also not need to do anything spectacular to kill a random rare I stuble over in a higher difficulty. There will always be that one guy that has the perfect anti-build to you, but I would like these abilities to be used a bit more often.


Anyways, great concept that works and is fun to play.

Oh, yeah, the rune is confusing. It gives you 0.5 regen when resting, but only when resting. The 0.5 you see on your mana bar is base regen from being a mage subclass. It will go up to 1.0 when you rest if you have a manasurge rune. If you roll a new High Guard and overwrite the manasurge right away, you will see you still have the 0
5 regen on your bar.

The 0.5 regen is defined at the metaclass level, so all classes in the category inherit it. Not all classes that have mana are mages, though. In the base game, only archmage, alchemist and necro get the base regen. Arcane Blade, Shadowblade, and Stone Warden also use mana, but they are in different metaclass categories and do not get the regen. I'm not familiar enough with Spellblade to know for sure, but it it's a warrior, for instance, then no, it wouldn't get base regen.

You're right, I definitely misunderstood you regarding Magical Assault. I see what you meant now, and I'll keep it in mind. Aside from a general culling in damage power, raising some cooldowns is probably a good idea.

Thanks again for taking the time to play and give feedback

Hmm, I'll have to look into those. First one should be quick to fix. The other needs some failsafe to make sure you actually teleport, hopefully that's not too tricky.

Thanks for the report

Seeing as I've now finished that run, I think it's time for feedback.
Character: https://te4.org/characters/199593/tome/ ... 2b8f6c0771

First, let me quickly say that this is probably the strongest lategame class I've played. You take some time to get rolling, but once you have good gear and maybe your second prodigy, you become nigh unstoppable. This might occur earlier on other difficulties, for me it was around/after Vor Armory.
The character took down the Sorcerers without any problems, Atamathon and the Hypostasis were fairly easy as well, Linaniil was a bit more of a problem but still very doable.

With that out of the way, let's get into the meat of the feedback.

Talents
Overall, this class really hits the concept of "short-medium ranged staff fighter".
I did not use the Mage Adept tree, so I won't give any feedback on that one.

Spell/Battlemage
This is your core defensive tree, but also provides a decent chunk of your damage.
Mystic Ward can easily reach 100+ flat DR in the lategame, making you very tanky against damage over time effects.
The automatic block on teleport is nice as well, it just feels that it does not occur often enough since 1.6 increased the cooldown on Block.
Greater Channel Staff is the part of the tree that provides a decent chunk of your damage later on, even with one point. (More on this later on.)

Spell/Phasing
Your engage and a bit of mobility. Phase Strike is a good offensive teleport that also activates your Block thanks to Mystic Ward.
I didn't feel the need for the additional buffs, but the intimidation aoe on Phase Strike felt fairly useful - especially since the area scaled with spellpower and thus went up to radius 7 for me.

Spell/Magical Assault
This tree provides a selection of area of effect attacks. What feels weird about it is that the first talent does flat damage, and then all others do weapon damage.
Staff Burst is your best damage tool in the earlygame, but once you hit the critical mass of Boltfury, it falls off.
The same goes for the other talents - I ended up using them for the debuffs and for a slight bit of extra area damage, not because they dealt decent damage, though that may be different with more investment.

Spell/Sorcerous Might
This tree provides a special buff gained from blocking damage, which can then be used in a variety of ways.
The talent range extension feels good, although it feels weird to always have to look at what your current range on everything is. This also drastically increases the aoe on Boltfury.
I liked Conversion Field, even though it is a bit unreliable.
I did not use Quickening very much, but I probably should have.

Spell/Medic
This is your generic utility tree.
Mend is a nice heal, coupled with a regeneration.
Phase is a secondary teleport, mostly used for escaping. I did not use it often, but when I needed it, I really needed it. The lack of use here is partially due to the class killing most things before they can damage you, and partially due to the fact that I had a better teleport in my racial skills.

Spell/Battle Channeling
And here we are, at last. This tree is what gives the class its absurd strength, in my opinion.
Deepsight is nice, but maybe a bit strong. It lets you ignore blindness due to Channel Staff always hitting and completely negates stealthed/invisible enemies. And it also makes you ignore a good chunk of armor and gives more proc damage through increased accuracy on top of that.
Blinkguard is another big part of your defense, giving you a chance to negate damage outright based on the amount of damage - the larger, the higher the chance.
This talent also retaliates via Boltfury / gear (more on gear below.) That led to the hilarious moment of Atamathon rushing at me, triggering Blinkguard three times, dealing no damage to me and just dying.
Boltfury... oh, what a monster of a skill. This is your main damage skill, and it does everything.
The big part about this skill is that you can trigger it a hilarious amount of times per turn. Every Blinkguard trigger, every spell-on-spell-hit proc from gear, spells on weapon hit - they can all trigger it.
Coupled with some range increases, you Phase Strike into a room, half the room dies outright, and then you just use Channel Staff a few times until everything else is dead. Doomelf also adds on top of that, giving you two teleports in a singe turn.
I didn't use Phasestride. I tried it, but disliked how it played.


Prodigies
This is a part where the class really shines. You have a lot of good choices here, and they are all nearly equally valid in my opinion. Here's what I think are the best contenders:
Flexible Combat: You already hit every enemy in a large area once or twice a turn with Boltfury + Greater Channel Staff. Add some good on-hit effects on your gloves and enjoy. Maybe even a spell on-hit for even more Boltfury?
Eternal Guard: This is slightly weaker than the others because you're bound by the cooldown on Block, but it would give you a good tankiness boost if you need it.
Armor of Shadows: If you set your staff to darkness damage, this should be a good payoff.
Arcane Might: Always a good choice for a weapon class that uses MAG. Since you also use staves and spellpower, even more so for you. I took this at 42 and was very happy with it. This one should nearly always be one of your two picks, imo.
Range Amplification Device: This actually does some really fun stuff with this class. Mostly, it makes you less reliant on Sorcerous Might for range, so if you don't take that tree, this might be even better. But even when coupled with that tree, it leads to some very useful things, such as range 10 on Boltfury, Channel Staff and the doomelf teleport. Also, it makes Phase Strike range 10 for the purpose of engaging, where you are not going to have any Sorcerous Might stacks. I took this at 25 and had it on the entire game. Fatigue is just a number anyways.
Secrets of Telos: I actually got the entire set on my run, but at that point I'd already taken Arcane Might. The staff is neat, and this class can make very good use of it.


Other Gear
There are a few fixedarts that are just best-in-slot here, in my opinion. Chief among them is Aetherwalk, for the damage on teleport.
The other big gearing choice is shields (and this is where the other fixedarts come in.)
When it comes to shields, you'll have to prioritize between defense, more Boltfury triggers, utility procs and damage procs.
The big contenders here are Temporal Rift, Summertide, Lunar Shield, (optionally) Shieldsmaiden and Blackfire Aegis.
Temporal Rift is the best for defense, giving the highest block value of any shield in the game and 20 flat damage reduction on top of that. With this shield, you'll outright ignore 150+ damage from every source. It also comes with a 25%% chance to cast Turn Back the Clock on weapon hit, making it the best contender for Boltfury procs.
Summertide has good resistances, a decent block value and a good damage proc on hit (30 + WIL/2 light damage, increased by accuracy bonus), as well as having a chance to blind on hit.
Lunar Shield comes with the 10%% chance to use Moonlight Ray on spell hit. This is a good substitute for Temporal Rift if you haven't found that one, but it is worse that Temporal Rift imo.
Shieldsmaiden has the lowest block value of any shields on the list, but is here for its on-hit proc (15%% chance for Ice Shards) and its damage type. Every hit from this shield has a chance to freeze, making it a good choice for locking down large groups of tough enemies. The problem here is that you deal so much damage this proves unnecessary.
Blackfire Aegis has decent, but not great, block value and two very relevant procs. First, a burst of darkness/fire damage equal to your Magic on every hit. Second, the damage type on the shield is stunning fire. This one comes with a 25%% chance to stun on every hit, on paper. In practice, this happens very rarely, and that is because the stun is applied with your Mindpower. This feels completely out of place on a shield that deals bonus damage based on your Magic and has no mind related bonuses at all.

Finally, this is the class that makes the best use of the Awakened Staff of Absorption, if you are built for any of the "mage" staff damage types.
That staff boasts a 130%% base MAG modifier, as well as good damage increases, penetration and spellpower. On top of that, there's the active, which allows you to just decimate Atatmathon/the Hypostasis.

Conclusion
Overall, this is a very fun class that takes some time to get rolling, but when it does, it is nigh unstoppable.
I ran into a few mana problems in the early- and midgame, but those went away when I got a staff with mana on spell crit. I ended up replacing my manasurge once I found that staff, only bringing it back when I swapped that staff for a different one before High Peak.
The class runs into the same thing White Monk does: you have one skill that just deletes an entire room after you dash/teleport in. Except here, the skill is a sustain.

Thanks for all of the feedback!

Sounds like I definitely need to add 'more turn limits on procs' to my list of potential future tweaks. Boltfury is meant to be more of a fun way to clear out trash and a bit of added procs vs single targets rather than your core damage mechanic. Battle Channels overall need some reworking, too. I like the functionality on most of them, but the fatigue increase is definitely not off setting the power in any meaningful way (which, to be fair, more than a couple have told me already). Overall, Deepsight and Boltfury need the power tuned down and Phasestride just needs a total rework or replacement. Blinkguard could use an increased cost, perhaps, or more of a limit on how often it can occur.

You've given me a lot to consider, and between yourself and Stormfox, I've gotten great feedback regarding what could use adjustments. That said, I'm working on wrapping production on a new class and then have the play testing phase to go through, so a High Guard rework is still going to be put off for a while. I will take a look into those bug fixes, though.

Thanks for giving the class a try, and I really appreciate the feedback

v1.5.10
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[Phase]
Now properly fizzles if you try to teleport into a no-teleport area.

[Boltfury]
Now properly checks that you have teleported for the teleport trigger, i.e. it will no longer proc on fizzled teleports.

[Mystic Ward]
Now properly checks that you have teleported, i.e. it will no longer proc on fizzled teleports.

[Blinkguard]
Now only triggers on-teleport effects once per trigger.
Implemented a hack to allow this to trigger teleport effects even in no-teleport areas, as the talent is intended to ignore this restriction.

[Sorcerous Retribution]
Added a check to prevent an error when actors afflicted with Mark of Retribution take damage from a source that is not an actor.

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Thanks to Erenion for the bug reports (and especially for mentioning Gnarg's room, that was the perfect place for testing ) !