I've gotten to level 43ish on my Storm Knight and have only died once[And that death doesn't really count, as explained below]. For me, even on Normal, that's pretty impressive, especially considering that I did Dark Crypt.
General Thoughts:
-My damage is pretty high, but not unreasonably so[Especially considering that I took Eldritch Might/Windblade]. Storm Burst/Storm Blast/Lightning Ride all look pretty indistinguishable since they cover similar areas of effect and have similar animations. I think that maybe the radius of Burst talents should scale a bit less with levels, but that's a minor thing. -My mobility, on the other hand, is completely ridiculous. Storm Knight takes hit and run to a whole new level. I took on the vault full of overpowered dragons at the level I arrived there and won, with only one death[And I DID have the Blood of Life by that point]. Said death could easily have been avoided if I'd gotten Track instead of Heightened Senses and used Wanderer's Rest or a Psychoportation Torque. Storm Knight can Wind Stride in, drop a Zephyr Dance, melee until their shields break and then run away using Storm Charge or Lightning Ride. Against enemies without copious regeneration on a largeish level, this basically guarantees victory. Especially since Storm Knights have a good DoT in Hurricane/Storm Blast. -The general Mage Knight resource situation reminds me somewhat of a Shadowblade's: You deal lots and lots of damage until your stamina runs out and then you're dead meat. It gets alleviated a lot once you have the leisure to max Willpower, but ending fights quickly is still essential. I quite like that kind of resource game, although the role of Eldritch Surge could stand to be clarified a bit. -Mage Knights have a LOT of talent point sinks, to the point where I still haven't put any points in Mobility or unlocked any talent trees besides Storm. One disadvantage of Mage Knight talents not being one point wonders[Although Wind Stride comes pretty close] is that the vanilla talent trees Mage Knights have become less attractive in comparaison because of how well the talents in their unique talent trees scale. I'm not really against this, but I feel that including so many different valnilla categories in the class doesn't actually change how it plays at all. -Eldritch Body does weird things to the Dex and Str requirements on Prodigies and warrior talent categories. Sometimes they'd require Mag and sometimes they'd require Dex/Str. I suspect[But have not proved] that in a game session where you've learned at least one point of Eldritch Body, all talent Dex/Str requirements flip into Mag ones. Otherwise, they revert back into what they were. -Mage Knights feel quite strong. However, I have yet to face the final bosses. The final fight will be more of a damage marathon then a damage race and I suspect the cramped confines and long duration of it will make it very difficult for a Storm Knight. I'll have to see if I can force myself to slog through the Prides+High Peak to test this out.
I got bored of playing my Storm Knight after going through Gorbat Pride[Hardly unusual] and started up a Cornac Earth Knight.
Earth Knight Thoughts:
-Geez their resource costs are super high, especially since they're encouraged to wear heavy armour. -Gemstone Shield is overpowered. You can get a shield stronger then a thousand hit points by level ten that lasts ten turns using Crystal Shield. Sapphire Shield is even worse and gives Gemstone Shield near 100% uptime, assuming that the shield lasts most of its duration. I understand that Earth Knights are supposed to be robust, but giving them nearly Aegis-tier shields isn't the best way to go about it. FAKEEDIT: Looking at the Gemstone Shield changes above, that doesn't really change the core problem: Its numbers are just too high. If the gem shields have different cooldowns, then it actively makes things worse, since you don't even have a two-turn window of vulnerability in between Gemstone Shields. -Alter Terrain is a terrible, terrible ability. First off, it's incredibly overpowered. It's a better Stone Wall, which is an incredibly overpowered talent. It lasts longer, is more flexible, has a lower cooldown and affects a larger area. Second of all, it's incredibly boring. It doesn't give Earth Knight any new capabilities, but rather triples down on the ones it already has. Earth Knight already has digging[Pulverizing Augur/Earth Bolt] and wall creation[Stone Wall/Earth Blast] in spades, so a talent that can do both isn't really interesting. It should be removed in favour of a completely new ability. My vote goes for something that creates non-blocking terrain of some kind[Stone spikes, mud, boulder field]. -Verdant Blood falls into the same category as Gemstone Shield and for more or less the same reasons. -Tectonic Patience is a rather questionable, if thematic, ability. The first thing that came to mind was using it to get 100% uptime on Alter Terrain by using it while entombed in rock. However, the stipulation that there be an enemy in sight neuters that[Unless you can entomb a harmless enemy in with you or blind yourself intentionally]. Note however that you can totally do that with Ice Wall, since that lets you see enemies on the other side of it. Since Mage Knight talents are availible on Adventurers, you could make the cheesiest build possible and kill enemies using only Ice Wall + Tectonic Patience + maybe Raze for quicker damage. I'm not really sure how you could eliminate that kind of scummy behaviour while keeping the talent relevant to people playing fair while keeping the talent as is. My suggestion would be to make it stronger, but less spammable, probably while removing any interaction with cooldowns.
I actually[Briefly] started up an Adventurer to test how Eldritch Knight talents interacted with it.
Adventurer Findings:
-Somehow, I started with 5/5 in Psychic Combat[The capstone talent for one of the Mind Knight Trees] and Impassive Mountain, despite never unlocking those talent categories. Mousing over those talents in the skill screen brought up a lua error. -Eldritch Combat decided which element to use based on which damage categories I had unlocked. Curious, I unlocked the straight-damage categories for all the Mage Knights and bopped some trolls. I got the passive damage for ALL of them combined, which was quite impressive at level 1.
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