Bastion - Bulwark Rework v1.6

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/bastion

Bulwark isn't a particularly good class. Their damage is low, they have very few unique tricks, and for a class defined by being the 'tank', they're incredibly fragile compared to some newer classes. Worse, they're incredibly plain and boring. I don't think a 'straightforward' warrior needs to be dull.

This is my attempt to fix that. A new version of Bulwark under the Warrior subclass has been added, which I feel fits the concept of a heavily armored warrior better.

Important notes:

- The mod adds a new class called Bastion, rather than a rework of an existing class like Assassin.
- This is intended to be used with Assassin for the changes to Survival and Dirty Fighting, but is optional.

Changelog

v1.6

- Riposte has been added back to Shield Offense. Counterstrikes will still apply to incompletely blocked damage even without Riposte.
- Shockwave has been moved to Retaliation T2.
- Shield Toss has been moved to Retaliation T1, replacing Sword and Board.
- Revenge has been simplified. No longer stacks, has a longer cooldown, only usable against counterstriked targets.
- Flow of Battle no longer grants life regeneration, and the stamina generation has been reduced.
- Steel Fortress has been reworked. Now grants an enhanced block at the cost of reducing physical damage dealt for the duration. No longer provides a stacking effect.
- Shield Expertise now grants the Sword and Board free melee attack. No longer increases block value.
- Shield Wall grants increased block value instead of damage adaptation.
- Indomitable now provides the old Shield Wall damage adaptation, and no other effects.
- Slightly reduced the effect of Honor.
- Shining Armor instead inflicts its debuffs on blocking an attack, rather than on using block.
- Slightly reduced the duration of Provoke.
- Warcries now last 8 turns, and have slightly reduced power. Stamina cost slightly increased.
- Reduced the healing and stamina of Second Wind.
- Warcries triggered by Warsong have their duration reduced to 4 turns and stamina cost doubled. While not sustained, Warsong provides a chance to reduce the duration of Winded.
- Removed the healing bonus of Vitality.
- Reduced the duration of Adrenaline Surge to 6 turns.
- Iron Guard: Mace now provides die_at rather than damage reduction.

v1.5
- Rebalanced a few more abilities.
- Crushing Impact displays the correct damage amount on the effect tooltip.
- Battle Call no longer causes errors when used with Provoke.

v1.4
- Rebalanced the numbers on many abilities to bring them more in line with the base game.
- Fixed and clarified a number of tooltips.
- Removed redundant log messages from Iron Guard.
- Vitality's healing has been reduced, but at TL3 it also grants healmod.
- Greater Weapon Focus is now a passive ability with a reduced effect, named Weapon Focus.
- The Arms tree has been disabled on NPCs.
- Swapped the place of Shield Expertise (now known as Shield Mastery) and Shield Wall.
- Last Stand is now an active ability with a duration. The effects have been greatly improved.
- Warsong now disables active warcries, but proc chance has been greatly increased.
- Shield Charge no longer grants a damage increase.
- Offensive Block has been replaced with Crushing Impact. This causes movement while under Shield Charge to trigger a free shield slam on your next melee hit.
- Revenge now stacks up to 4 times, but deals reduced damage.
- Reduced the duration of Flow of Battle to 4 turns. The free block now has a longer cooldown, decreasing with investment.
- Shining Armor no longer grants passive effects.
- Honorless no longer stacks.
- Juggernaut grants physical power rather than % damage.
- Fixed an error when using Arms with weapon types other than sword/axe/mace.
- Honor no longer causes errors when damaged by traps.
- Fixed Precise Strikes draining stamina.
- Duel no longer prevents gaining beneficial effects.

v1.3
- Unstoppable Force correctly triggers a cooldown when used against a target that is not knocked back.
- Removed the old Eternal Guard and Spectral Shield prodigies.

v1.2
- The Engaged debuff from Attacks of Opportunity is correctly removed when the source dies or moves away.

v1.1
- Fixed Shield Expertise granting additional melee attacks.

Some of the notable changes:

- Block has a 5 turn cooldown regardless of tier, and blocks all damage types by default.
- Spectral Shield and Eternal Guard have both been replaced (credit to SageAcrin for the Adamant skill).
- Riposte is now baseline. Shield Offense now has Shockwave, a powerful conal slam that slows.
- Precise Strikes now grants resistance/armor penetration.
- The Retaliation tree has been added. This greatly improves counterstrikes and grants unique shield attacks, such as Shield Toss, a ranged bouncing shield attack which leaves targets vulnerable to counterstrikes.
- The Soldier tree has been added, which focuses on improving the block skill. An example is Steel Fortress, causing your melee attacks to grant increased block value that can be consumed for empowered blocks.
- Shield Defense has been reworked and heavily improved. Shield Wall grants increasing damage reduction based on missing life.
- The advanced tree Knighthood has been added. This tree focuses on defensive and disabling effects, such as the ability to mark a target for a Duel preventing any other enemies from attacking you while in effect.
- Superiority has been reworked to a control and retaliation tree. Provoke targets to force them to resort to basic melee attacks, and gain free strikes against ranged enemies with Attacks of Opportunity.
- Warcries has been reworked to a buffing/debuffing tree. Shouts can heal you, improve your offensive stats and weaken enemies.
- Conditioning has had some talents improved.
- The locked Arms generic tree has been added, which grants unique bonuses based on your weapon type.

[nsrr]

When you have Iron Guard and are wielding an ax, each time you receive healing from the talent it displays two messages in the log. One says you "received x healing from Iron Guard" in normal text. The other says "Your bloodlust heals you for X" in a dark red font.

No other issues so far, but I'll let you know if I find anything. Class is great. Much more fun to play than vanilla bulwark. Keep up the excellent work!

[Frumple]

Sooo... tooling around a little. Nice synergy with the whitehooves, heh. Probably going to be amusing when I get around to trying it with a (mega) turtle. Haven't gotten far in or messed around with much yet, but, uh. It seems like you buffed vitality's heal? I would... probably argue that wasn't needed. At all. Conditioning's first two talents have long been two of the better non-arcane escort talent rewards, and vitality in particular can be very troublesome on classed enemies... particularly on something like an enemy bulwark (or bastion, in this case), it can make something that just flat out can't be hurt fast enough to do more damage than the heal returns before the CD comes back off. Changes to the second two conditioning talents are golden (I might actually put points in them now ), but the vitality one was probably too much.

At the very least, maybe put its improvement in the other part of the effect instead of the heal. Perhaps at tlvl 3+ it could just flat out remove a detrimental effect on activation? Tlvl 5 could grant that movement infusion effect that prevents slows and whatnot? That would actually be kinda' thematic, I think... it already overlaps with resolve on the wounds, and having it alternate with a temporary effect that overlaps with slows might be neat. Something besides just bumping the already substantial heal, anyway.

[stinkstink]

Vitality used to provide heal mod when it fired, which I liked a lot.

[rekenner]

Vitality on early rare+ does seem a bit too strong in the early game on insane, I did run into a few things that I basically stalemated on until I got a couple lucky crits, but I wasn't really in danger in doing so, but that might have been just luck. I'm not sure how to fix it, because it feels just right on players.

Steel fortress stacks not falling off seems a bit weird, they probably should fall off with a fairly long timer.

Sword and Board's desc. has a redundant word: "...you gain make an additional..."

Stuff I mentioned to you elsewhere:
The duration of Flow of Battle should be 1 turn shorter so you can't stack it out of combat with just blocking

Precise Strikes mentions that it scales the crit chance with dex when it no longer has crit chance

[Frumple]

Playing a bit more... up to level thirty now. Embers campaign. Things are... going. I'm definitely enjoying things, but on the other hand I've got this far with the only deaths being to vault-related laziness (both deaths were entirely preventable, but I was just facerolling for the lols and not even remotely playing optimally), while using... well, outside of the shouts (which I'll talk about in a second) I've literally used no class-specific actives, just block (occasionally -- mostly I've just been facerolling with the passive stuff). It's definitely suboptimal and I could probably be doing a lot more damage and whatnot if I were actually using, say, shield offense talents, but... I haven't needed them. Since I got iron guard up (on top of a number of other things) and a mace, pretty much nothing has been able to damage me. Am a little stronger than should be due to chaotic races and subsequent Beyond the Flesh, but... most of what's keeping me alive doesn't really benefit too amazingly from the stats I'm getting from that, and I've got randboss rondo running, too, so... yeah. Not really sure what to recommend on that front, though. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be doing nearly as well on nightmare or up, but on normal, well. Instead of becoming an unkillable tank of slow grinding doom at level 30 (as per normal bulwark runs after they get the block CD prodigy and a voratun shield), I became one around level 10. And hell, I'm enjoying it, but I also really like fairly passive melee classes, heh. Fairly sure most T4 players would be complaining at this point

Anyway, more general feedbacky stuff out of the way (though all that above is very tentative and first-impression/low thought responses, so take with gallons of salt and hopefully other opinions, etc., etc.), sincere quality of life suggestion: Make warsong shouts 100% proc (keep the CD reduction percentile), and change the scaling to increase the winded CD reduction. Maybe bump the stamnia cost or add a drain to it, I'unno. Or, perhaps best, make it so it only triggers off of plain melee attacks, so it won't double up with your actives. Right now if I want to be really efficient with my shouts (and, frankly, with the shouts maxed out there's basically no way a normal attack is the better use of a combat turn) and get the most out of warsong itself, I have to constantly be actually using the talents, which... it's a lot of button presses when I just want to be hitting things. It's actually kinda' frustrating, especially given how random the reduction itself is. Instead of being able to relax and let warsong do sexy things for me (which seems to kinda' be the point of the talent itself), I have to constantly be paying attention to whether or not winded has been sung off and it's time to shout again.

Part of me wonders if you couldn't just make the winded reduction aspect flat out passive, and have the shout part be the sustained aspect (with a consummate increase in cost, and probably a stamina drain added, either constant or per shout). That way you can decide between more control or less micromanagement/more damage (since the shout procs with the attack), without having to have the sustain up to optimize winded duration. Most likely even make it so sustaining warsong outright disables ability to use the shouts as actives, if you're going that route, so you're very explicitly trading control for ease of use/extra oomph. I'd actually like that a lot, thinking on it, m'self...

[rekenner]

http://i.imgur.com/chb9XTx.jpg

Ran into a LUA error, fighting a randunique Bastion/Marauder slime.

Adrenaline Surge doesn't list its duration in the talent description.

Also, I'm entirely unsure of what you mean by the second portion of Shield Wall, you might want to reword that. If want to explain it a bit more longform I could suggest how to reword it, or something?

[Razakai]

I'll remove that Iron Guard healing message, as it's pretty redundant.

Vitality might be a bit overtuned now. The change was to replace the % life healing with better con scaling, both to make con slightly more useful and to remove the ridiculous healing on bosses with Vitality. 2% on a player might be 50 life tops, but on some bosses it can be 500+ a turn. Think I overdid it though, so I'll retune it. I quite like the idea of giving it a secondary effect like healing mod or instantly cleansing wounds, might make it less of a 1 point wonder.

Steel Fortress is a bit of an odd one, yes. The intent is that it's almost a passive (and large) +block mod talent, but you have the choice of sacrificing the consistent effect for a burst of defense. Bit like psi shields.

The balance in general is still pretty off! It's release Deathknight all over again, expect a bunch of numbers to be hit. Hopefully then you'll actually have to activate abilities rather than just bumping stuff to death behind an impenetrable wall of sustains and passives.

I like some of the Warsong ideas. The intent for it was yes, you'd use it as a way to use shouts in a more passive manner, but the current implementation means you have to watch durations and cooldowns like a hawk. Definitely not right. I expect what I'll do is have it disable active shouts while sustained, but greatly increase the chance/guarantee the chance etc. So sustaining it will mean you can save 3 buttons, while having a higher uptime of shouts+secondary effects.

Shield Wall probably does need clarifying further, I've seen quite a bit of confusion which is bad as it's a very strong effect. Effectively it's the old True Grit talent - all damage you take is reduced by a percentage equal to a percentage of your missing life. For example, at 5/5 it's about 40%. So if you were missing 50% of your maximum life, all incoming damage after resistances etc are calculated would be reduced by 20% (0.4 * 0.5 = 0.2). At 10% life, you'd get 36% damage reduction (0.9*0.4 = 0.36). It's not a complicated calculation but it is a bit tricky to word right.
For a start I'll display the current damage reduction % in the tooltip, so hopefully that'll make it more clear.

[rekenner]

Did you add a stamina drain to one of the Bastion skills in 1.3? I notice when I'm attacking I'm losing stamina. Did sword and board get one, invisibly?

Edit: Did some training dummy testing and realized it was Precise Strikes. Might want to mention that in the desc, too, then.

[rekenner]

http://imgur.com/bS55Acq

Ran into this while I was in Dreadfell and being hit by a ground effect trap. Could it be trying to give an honor stack to a trap?

[Frumple]

Sooo... yeah. Wrecked the ember's campaign. Pastebin link, since I apparently managed to bugger the vault save at some point. Possibly before I started playing, due to addons and whatnot, ha. That dump was at 50, shortly after winning, but, uh. I didn't actually free the orcs until later. Or wreck the sunwall. Actually, I went straight from the observatory to ureslak's, and rolled my way through the quarry and to the final boss from there. Before I go any further, let me definitely preface all of this with the statement that I did very much enjoy playing through the (embers) campaign, loved the playstyle, definitely had fun, and will most definitely play again. It played like a much flashier (if no less facerolly once the full defensive measures kick in) bulwark, even if the gameplay was roughly identical, which was quite satisfying to me.

Anyway, yeah, numbers. Numbers numbers numbers. Damage wise I actually didn't feel like it was too excessive -- much of the passive offensive capabilities can probably stand to be scaled back a little, but damage wise things felt okay even with the caveat noted last post. It wasn't until the very very late (embers) game that I ever broke 1k in a single bump, and even with every ridiculous thing stacked up there (Pain augmentation, carry the world, BtF'd gem, crit multipliers and counterstrike out the wazoo, all the so ons and so forths) I only ever spiked to about 4k in a single round, which is... well, it's workable, but it's not really what I'd call over the top. Was also a bit higher than would be normal just 'cause I was running chaotic races and got a smattering of extra talents that way. Thaaat said, if I was actually using the actives things might have gotten out of hand, I'unno. Like I mentioned, I wasn't really doing anything besides bumping people. Occasionally used iron grip, sometimes used rocket boots or block (+shield charge) to catch people, eventually used gallant charge very rarely, but generally it was just hitting people with a mace (and a shield, and the shield procs, and the shouts, and, uh... yeah. Stuff.) and the bucketload of non-active damage effects I was toting around.

But... yeah. Defense. Not really sure what needs to be done, there. Things definitely need to be scaled back, but I'd worry doing too much at once would be, well. Too far. One thing I definitely noticed was that my healing was kinda' insane, even before considering all the damage mitigation I was rocking -- the pain augment would bump my HP by 250-300 or so, and probably better than half the time my current HP would be right up there the next attack. Second wind (this was pretty large -- iirc, it capped out near the end at something around 125 HP heal per turn, and I wasn't stacking healmod or anything, and it pretty much never went away in combat), that heal over time on block (another 20 or so HP), vitality (it was a 60 something heal at 50 and tlvl 1, iirc, and when it proc'd so did subcutaneous :V)... it boiled down to very regularly breaking 150-200 hp/turn healing/regeneration, which, uh. Is somewhat beyond merely substantial, heh. What to shift, I'unno. Vitality was noted. Second wind could probably max out on healing 30-40 points less than it current seems to (i.e. 80, which should be noted as a flat 200/turn if someone maxes healmod, and again, once you've got warsong it functionally never goes away.)

Block itself, hrrrg. On one hand, after you got the appropriate talents it might as well have only had a CD if you wanted it to. On the other hand, maintaining that and actually remembering to use the bloody talent instead of just roll around with the passive procs was a complete pain the ass that I close to never did. Hella micromanagement, especially when you're used to having eternal guard and just setting block to auto-use always The amount of passive procs you got also really disincentivized active use of the talent; by and large you'd get a lot of blocks (and everything that happened when you did) just doing normal stuff. Felt a lot like all this fairly amazing stuff was latched onto the talent but actively using it was... basically a chore, and an unnecessary one. I loved everything keyed to it, but most of the game I was just thinking how much I missed eternal guard.

Would almost recommend iron grip's mace effect gets... changed. Nerfed, something. It topped out at 39 omni-reduction for me (mastery amulet, it was normally 35, but the following statements apply to either), which was another way of saying after it hit 5/5 and I got a mace I stopped taking damage over time or environmental damage (lava, burning ground, whatever) entirely. Wretchlings were a hilarious joke, whose punchline was everyone else's misery, for once. Much as I hate to suggest it, because I love the silly amount of tank that sort of thing provides and the slayer change broke my poor melee slayer loving heart, but maybe just shift it so it's like slayer shields and takes damage off the top instead of the bottom, if it's not already (pretty sure it's not already)? Or half and half it or somethin', I'unno.

Suggestions... beyond what I mentioned re: warcires, I would say for funsies it might not hurt to maybe slip a few shield-related tinkers into the addon. Currently, just about the only shield-compatible one (galvanic retributor) is a boring as the blazes lightning damage when hit effect, which is just... bleh.

... anyway, that's all I can think to say at this immediate moment. Be happy to try to answer any specific questions, and definitely definitely definitely see about getting second/third/etc. opinions on everything, heh. I'm generally kinda' terrible at identifying balance issues and how to correct them when it comes to the raw numbers aspect.

[rekenner]

Duel seems to be disabling Flow of Battle and Offensive Block, to the extent that if I block while in Duel, Flow of Battle drops off immediately if it was already up. I also cannot gain Revenge stacks. Seems like a bug, but should be mentioned in the tooltip if not.

Edit: It also won't let me gain ANY status effects, positive or negative. Including block, at ALL, haha. Seems you got a bit overzealous on what status effects you're filtering out. =P

Edit 2: In fiddling with it some more, it DOES let me get gallant charge, and I noticed Gallant Charge doesn't have a sub effect, it just says "Physical: ", which might be related? and also probably fixed.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/6093

v1.4
- Rebalanced the numbers on many abilities to bring them more in line with the base game.
- Fixed and clarified a number of tooltips.
- Removed redundant log messages from Iron Guard.
- Vitality's healing has been reduced, but at TL3 it also grants healmod.
- Greater Weapon Focus is now a passive ability with a reduced effect, named Weapon Focus.
- The Arms tree has been disabled on NPCs.
- Swapped the place of Shield Expertise (now known as Shield Mastery) and Shield Wall.
- Last Stand is now an active ability with a duration. The effects have been greatly improved.
- Warsong now disables active warcries, but proc chance has been greatly increased.
- Shield Charge no longer grants a damage increase.
- Offensive Block has been replaced with Crushing Impact. This causes movement while under Shield Charge to trigger a free shield slam on your next melee hit.
- Revenge now stacks up to 4 times, but deals reduced damage.
- Reduced the duration of Flow of Battle to 4 turns. The free block now has a longer cooldown, decreasing with investment.
- Shining Armor no longer grants passive effects.
- Honorless no longer stacks.
- Juggernaut grants physical power rather than % damage.
- Fixed an error when using Arms with weapon types other than sword/axe/mace.
- Honor no longer causes errors when damaged by traps.
- Fixed Precise Strikes draining stamina.
- Duel no longer prevents gaining beneficial effects.

[64legos]

Found a bug:

[Razakai]

Odd. Was that from you attacking? Can see it's caused by Sword and Board's shield attack, but can't see what would cause it.