High Guard - A Mage Subclass

[nsrr]

v1.2.4
---
[Battle Channeling]
Movement speed penalty removed, all other penalties aside from fatigue removed.
Each talent now has a fatigue penalty of 10%.

[Magical Assault]
Weapon damage scaling increased. Damage scaling on Empowered Arms increased.

[Mage Adept]
Damage scaling somewhat reduced.

[Medic]
Phase range scaling slightly increased.

[Sorcerous Might]
Sorcerous Block has been reworked. It is now passive and will trigger a block automatically when you take a hit over 12% max life, also preemptively reducing the damage based on your block value. Requires and consumes 2 stacks of Sorcerous Might to trigger and has a cooldown which decreases with investment.

[General]
Fixed many typos and clarified many descriptions. Added particle effects for some timed effects.


The only issue I could not quite get to the bottom of was the accuracy bonus from the shield hit triggered by Arcane Guardian. The shield hit itself is improved by accuracy bonus, but procs from the hit do not seem to be. I compared logs from High Guard and logs from Sun Paladin and could not really sort out what was going. Procs from shield hits triggered by Shield of Light do appear to be increased by the staff/shield accuracy bonus. If you have a short staff in the mainhand then the shield hit itself is also affected. Interestingly, your Weapon of Wrath fire damage proc is boosted by the accuracy bonus even with a normal 1-handed weapon, as long as the shield hit from Shield of Light connects. If the shield hit misses, the Wrath proc is not boosted. In short, I have no idea what's going with accuracy bonuses, apparently, and it's going to take a lot of poking around, or a little help from someone wiser than me, before I make any headway in that regard. I'll keep poking at it, but I didn't want to delay the update because I have no idea if or when I'll get anywhere with it.

[Chronosplit]

This is weird; I tried to unlearn Aetherfeast when first starting my character, and I couldn't unlearn it because of Staff Mastery?

I got a message about Staff Mastery and not having enough MAG to unlearn it.

[Arcvasti]

That's a vanilla bug that has nothing much to do with High Guard. If you have a point in a talent that you no longer have the requirements for, you become unable to unlearn any talents. High Guard starts with a point in Staff Mastery, which they don't have the MAG for at level one, meaning that they become unable to unlearn any talents until their MAG hits 20. Of course, the whole thing is moot if you have autoallocate points turned off.

[nsrr]

This is weird; I tried to unlearn Aetherfeast when first starting my character, and I couldn't unlearn it because of Staff Mastery?

I got a message about Staff Mastery and not having enough MAG to unlearn it.

As Arcvasti said. I forgot this this happened when I designed the class. I noticed it shortly after release and I've been meaning to change the point to Channel Staff, but I keep forgetting. I don't think not having the point in staff mastery for a few levels is going to hurt too much, and I'd prefer to leave as much up to the player as possible, even if they are using auto-assign points. Personally, I've been taking the point out and putting it elsewhere on most of my High Guard runs.

I made some headway on the accuracy bonus thing. Not in understanding why it's not being applied, that's still beyond me. Interestingly, if you bump and you don't crit then one Empowered Arms proc is boosted by accuracy and the other is not, if you crit with your shield then both procs are boosted but the bonus proc for the crit is not, and if you crit with your staff then only the staff proc is boosted and neither the shield proc or the crit proc... which doesn't enlighten me in any way ;P.

On the other hand, I figured out how to hack the accuracy bonus directly into the callback so that if (for whatever reason) it's not already set before the damage is projected then it will be calculated and applied on the fly. Which brings me to...

v1.2.5
---
[General]
Now starts with a point in Channel Staff rather than Staff Mastery.

[Empowered Arms]
Proc will now always benefit from your accuracy bonus.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

So I played a High Guard last night... and god, I so love ridiculously overpowered addon bullshittery, but good lord. High Guard might just be a little too broken even for MY tastes.

First of all, the early game really, really sucks, and the mid- to late-game is really, really easy. Like, as in, I walked - not fought, STROLLED - my way through the Orc Prides. I cleared Ardhungol and the Temple of Creation without firing a single attack talent. I feared no zone. I feared no vault. Anything that had the effin' audacity to exist in my immediate area was smote down with great prejudice - sometimes without even breaking autoexplore.

So here's a talent breakdown, of what I liked and what I didn't and what I think could use a nerf.

Note: I had Verdant class pack active by accident while playing this, so my character had access to Blink Drake Aspect from the Temporal Wyrm Heart. I unlocked that instead of Mage Adept as I genuinely didn't feel like I needed, or wanted, anything out of MA. The cat point and 6-8 points that went into that tree, therefore, can be put elsewhere for a pure High Guard. That being said though, I was already so strong by the time that I got the cat point necessary to unlock Blink Drake, that it was almost entirely nonessential. It gave me a little bit of extra flat DR, some global speed, and another warp strike. Big whoop.

Character sheet: https://te4.org/characters/131233/tome/ ... f9ff9f7675

At the time of writing this I have reached level 50 and am clearing out the last of the Prides, Eruan, and then High Peak as I needed to go to bed last night before finishing. That being said, though, I got plenty far enough to see the strengths and weaknesses of this class, and I fully expect this charsheet to feature a winner shortly when I get back to my home computer tonight.

So far I've died three times on this character, because I'm a casual. Once when going into the Room of Death because I was cocky, once when attempting to leave the Room of Death - because I was cocky - and once more when I TK leapt myself into the center of a massive cloud of luminous and searing horrors in a Pride vault because - big surprise - I got cocky.

CLASS POINTS

Spell / Battlemage - 5/1/1/1 Core | 5/4/3/5 Luxury

Arcane Guardian - Is shield mastery. Max it. This is one of the four part recipe that makes High Guard crazy broken.
Mystic Ward - Is a bootleg Antimagic Shield that restores small amounts of mana. I didn't find this to be THAT useful, however, the passive component - triggering Block when firing any non-instant spell - is absolutely necessary. Put one point in it and move on. 4 points is a good breakpoint for 15% of your block value and 2 mana, the fifth point doesn't add much.
Magical Defense - Another one point wonder until you pick up Defensive Posture. You can get both of these at the same level, in fact, and MD boosts DP pretty noticeably. But once again, the passive is what you're after for Magical Defense. One point and move on until you have spare points to throw around. 3/5 max for 10 turns and 61 block value, the last two points don't add all that much (+4 more turns and 16 block value), but YMMV.
Greater Staff Focus - THIS IS WHAT MAKES THIS CLASS ROCK. Greater Staff Focus is one part of the four part recipe that makes High Guard crazy broken. Put one point ASAP. One point of GSF carried me from Old Forest all the way through to the East and back again. More points equals more damage, with an addition of 7/6/5/4% damage per point - meaning that extra points can go here but you don't need to make it a priority as long as you have the first.

Spell / Battle Channeling - 3/2/1/0 core | 5/5/3/5 luxury

Aetherfeast - Gives you loads of mana. Pump it up early so you can have sustains and still be able to cast things. The higher this gets, the better Manasurge runes are as well, and you'll want to keep one of those around all game. 3/5 Aetherfeast is usually plenty enough to make a manasurge fill you to full in 1-2 turns.
Deepsight - long range telepathy:all, get one or two points ASAP. Putting more points into this can sidestep the need for Combat Accuracy, but since staves and shields both have a procs/acc bonus and you're dealing hella procs, I highly recommend maxing both of them. The telepathy is really just gravy on top of the ACC and APR and becomes kind of pointless after 12 range on the second point, but it makes life a lot easier. An added bonus, however, is that it makes you effectively immune to being blinded.
Boltfury - THIS IS WHAT MAKES THIS CLASS ROCK. Boltfury is one part of the four part recipe that makes High Guard crazy broken. Put one point ASAP. Early in the game, you aren't going to have the mana that you need to sustain this all the time, but after the T2s I turned this on and never turned it off again. Boltfury is where 98% of all damage that you deal is going to come from. This is how I killed people without even breaking autoexplore. Seriously, Boltfury is effin' bonkers. DO NOT overlook this talent.
Phasestride - This could be really good. I think I used it once ever. I'd have probably used it a lot more if I didn't get a lucky Wanderer's Rest relatively early on with the TK leap. The speed increases with your spellpower, and I don't know what the breakpoint is, but in at least one occasion while surging spellpower I saw the travel speed go down to 0% of a turn at TL5/5. When not surging it was hovering near 9-10% of a turn. I invested in this in order to have a good emergency escape tool and hardly ever needed it, but if you've got a full mana bar and an empty health bar, it can be a lifesaver.

Spell / Phasing - 1/0/0/0 core | X/5/X/X luxury

This category contains Phase Strike and three addon buffs to Phase Strike. I had it filled in as 3/1/1/0 for almost the whole game. Phase Strike range doesn't increase with TL so all you get is slightly higher damage, and there's almost zero reason to actually invest in it as almost all of your damage will come from Boltfury + GSF + shield hits. Phase Strike is a good initiator to warp you into the middle of a bunch of people to prime Boltfury for the slaughter. Nothing else matters except Phase Charged for penetration and crit chance. Phase Locked and Phase Shifted do you no good when everything near you is dead after the first turn, but could see SOME use, maybe, against some extra ridiculous randboss.

Spell / Magical Assault - 3/1/1/1 core | 5/4/4/X luxury

Magic Burst - Is your best attack for the first twelve levels, and strips an impressive amount of defense and saves on top of it. This will remain relevant, if you ever come across something that survives the initial salvo from Boltfury.
Sorcerous Slam - aoe melee stun that hits with your shield. Excellent stuff. Investment does not increase range or stun length, only damage. 4 points for 200% damage breakpoint.
Arcane Projection - aoe disarm and silence that hits with your staff - which means that because of Arcane Guardian, it ALSO hits with your shield. On everyone. This is your best damage talent outside of Boltfury damage chains. Use it and abuse it. 4 points for 200% damage breakpoint.
Empowered Arms - adds some raw proc damage and buffs Magic Burst to weaken armor as well. 1 point and move on. I never put any more points in this, but add more to taste, since more and bigger procs are excellent for this class.

Spell / Sorcerous Might - 1/3/1/3 core | 1/X/X/3 luxury

Ensorcelled Shield - 1 point to gain access to Sorcerous Might.
Quickening - another excellent spell that I rarely ever used. 3 points to reset 5 spells and get almost 30% CDR - for 18 WHOLE TURNS. Pop this after your first damage rotation.
Conversion Field - Could be good at high investment. I never used it even once.
Sorcerous Block - More free blocks! 3/5 makes it use your whole block value, and 4/5 gives you one extra charge of Sorcerous Might, which you probably don't even need.

GENERIC POINTS

Technique / Combat Training - X/5/0/5/0/0
You want Thick Skin, Heavy Armor Training, and Accuracy. Nothing else matters here.

Spell / Staff Combat
MAX EVERYTHING. I'm not even kidding. Staff Mastery and Channel Staff, together, are the last ingredient towards making High Guard crazy broken. Defensive Posture synergizes with Magical Defense to give you excellent defense, armor, and block value. Blunt Thrust is a savage melee hit+stun that procs TWO shield hits from Arcane Guardian.

Spell / Medic
Mend - Max it. Full heal + a full heal's worth of regen afterward, for a cost of 30 mana.
Field Conditioned - Max it. 58% Silence and Disarm immunity, as well as 58 raw mind save. You're here for the silence + disarm immunity, the mind save is gravy.
Cure - is trash. 1-2 points to taste and move on.
Phase - Max it. Combines the use of a controlled phase door + full teleport rune. You need 5/5 for the range, it's pretty bad.

After a certain point you're going to outright run out of places to put generic points, so investment in a good racial tree or escort category is almost necessary. I played a Cornac and ended up taking Tinkers literally just so that I had a place to put more points. Conditioning and Survival are unnecessary as you can get the important talents - Vitality and Device Mastery - from escorts, and you don't need Track when you have Deepsight. They're both a waste of a cat point.

PRODIGIES
ICCTW - for all fatigue reduction and a sizable boost to shield damage. I took this first, although I probably shouldn't have. I just about never ran out of mana again after taking it though, and it makes all your Channeling sustains literally free.
Arcane Might - duh
PES - duh, you crit all the time and STR is a main stat
Flexible Combat - really really good. I didn't take this, but I should have. AM + Flex would probably be my go-to pair of prodigies for this class.
Temporal Form / Cauterize / Etc - good prods for any class

BALANCING RECOMMENDATIONS:

The core power of this class comes from a combination of Greater Staff Focus, Arcane Guardian, Boltfury, and Staff Mastery/Channel Staff. Anything that dares approach within range four gets hit with a Channel Staff, which procs a melee staff hit, which procs a shield hit, which procs a Flexible Combat hit if you take Flex. I didn't even take Flex and I was one-shotting everything. I autoexplored around a corner and killed Rak'shor before I ever even noticed he was in the room. Most things don't even break autoexplore unless you see them from farther away than Boltfury range.

So, I believe that Greater Staff Focus, first of all, should ramp up to range 4 as the TL increases in order to actually encourage people to bring it higher than 1 point.
Boltfury is way, WAY too powerful right now with only a 10% fatigue cost as a drawback. Fatigue is completely a non-issue when you have Aetherfeast and a manasurge rune, even with all four Channeling talents active and heavy armor equipped. After a certain point you don't even need the rune anymore to permanently sustain Boltfury. Boltfury should either constantly drain mana per turn or double (or even triple) the cost of Channels cast by it. I think the mana drain per turn is more likely to actually nerf it properly, as even a 3x cost Channel will be almost covered entirely by a high rank Aetherfeast. Popping off fiteen of them at a time, however, is what you're usually going to be doing, and THAT will take a solid chunk of mana.

(I should say, that's what I was doing. A smarter player would lure enemies in from the side instead of just teleporting into the middle of crowds to mass-nuke everyone like I was doing. I got cocky, and understandably so. When playing safely, you won't have mana problems.)

Phase Strike can benefit from some range scaling. I often found myself unable to teleport into a crowd to nuke everyone because Boltfury was exploding people before they got close enough to warp to. This isn't inherently a bad thing, and in fact I think it prevented me from making some stupid attacks, but giving the player the ability to make a phase strike gambit into a fight would be nice. Even just one more point of range at max TL would give it the reach necessary to solve that positioning problem.

Sorcerous Slam and Arcane Projection could both benefit from effects duration scaling. There's no real reason to increase either of them above 1/5 right now.

The common issue seems to be that since so much of the damage of the class comes from on-hit procs and Channel Staff, there isn't actually that much impetus to increase your wepdamage hits. In addition, EVERY DAMAGING TALENT changes its damage type with the damage type of your staff, so if you come across something that hard sells your chosen damage type, it takes one turn to switch to something else and brutalize it.

tl;dr re-nerf Battle Channeling and extra nerf Boltfury, while maybe slightly buffing Phasing and/or Magical Assault

[Arcvasti]

The main culprit for how high High Guard's damage currently is isn't Boltfury at all. It's that the shield attack that Arcane Guardian grants benefits from the proc damage bonus. This is probably my fault, for reporting the proc damage inconsistencies in Empowered Arms. This is exacerbated by High Guard having several ways to increase the accuracy/defense gap between them and their enemies.

That said, I'm definitely in favour of nerfing Battle Channeling. The central problem with Battle Channeling is that it's a category that gives powerful effects in exchange for resource strain, but it also gives you a way to almost completely ignore that resource strain in Aetherfeast. There's also the fact that Deepsight gives a telepathy all in a HUGE radius as well as a very useful accuracy/APR boost, which is just too strong for a single talent. My suggestion is to remove Aetherfeast, make Deepsight the first talent in the category and split off the telepathy that Deepsight gives you into the second talent.

I also found a missing comma in the Phase talent description. It should be "On the field of combat, positioning is key".

[nsrr]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm taking all of this into consideration and I have a few changes in mind, but it will be at least a couple days before I have time to work on it. I'm definitely interested in any more feedback anyone may have in the meantime.

Regarding the Arcane Guardian shield hit: you may have misunderstood something in my ramble about the accuracy proc bonus. The shield hit itself has always benefited from the staff accuracy bonus, which makes sense because it triggers off from a staff attack. I hadn't realised before that this was the case, but I did not change anything about that behavior. What I did do, however, was preemptively boost the damage scaling for the shield hit before I started looking into fixing the proc bonus on Empowered Arms when triggered by the shield hit. I should have reverted the scaling, but I forgot. This is likely the cause of any noticeable change in the damage of the shield hit. And to be clear, the fix I applied is actually handled directly in the callback that triggers the damage from Empowered Arms, not the callback that triggers the shield hit, and it only takes effect if the proc triggers when your acc bonus has not been set (or has been set to nil at a point before it should have been, which I suspect is what's happening). As Empowered Arms requires both shield and staff to proc, it should never proc in a situation where it should not benefit from the proc accuracy bonus.

[nsrr]

v1.3.0
---

[Aetherfeast]
Significantly reduced mana regen scaling.

[Arcane Gaurdian]
Reduced shield strike damage scaling.

[Greater Staff Focus]
Reworked.
Now grants a scaling chance for a 100% damage staff strike rather than a guaranteed hit at a scaling damage amount.
This should encourage more investment in this talent itself and also significantly reduce the damage output of Boltfury. Max chance is ~30%.

[Magical Assault]
Reduced costs, weapon damage scaling adjusted, effect durations now scale.

[Phase Strike]
Now also grants a chance (applied with spellpower) to daze enemies in a scaling radius around your destination for a scaling duration.

[Phase Locked]
Cosmetic rename: Phase Shield
Reworked. Now grants Block value based on defense for a duration.

[Phase Shifted]
Reworked. Now grants a chance to shrug off critical damage for a duration.

[Mage Adept]
Costs, cooldowns and damage scaling reduced on active talents.

[Shield Casting]
Chance for shield hits increased.
Shield hits now also have a chance (equal to strike chance but checked separately) to remove one beneficial magical effect or sustain from the target.

[Ensorcelled Shield]
Stacks of Sorcerous Might now also increase the range of all of your spells by a fraction of a tile [0.2-0.5].
Potential range increase is 0-3 tiles depending on talent level, mastery and number of stacks.
3 is a hard limit and only achieved at 6 stacks, tl5 and 1.5 mastery. 2 tiles should be relatively easier to achieve, without the need for a cat point or deep investment in Ensorcelled Shield and Sorcerous Block.

[Medic]
Reorganized.
Phase has moved to the tier 2 talent and Field Conditioned and Cure have been shifted up to tier 3 and 4, respectively.

[Mend]
Reduced cost and cooldown, slightly reduced scaling.

[Cure]
Reduced cost, cooldown no longer scales and is significantly reduced, slightly improved scaling on number of effects removed.
Now instant cast.

... I think that was everything. Enjoy!

[Recaiden]

Why did you call it High Guard? There are 2 things called High Guard in the game already and they're nothing like this class.

Why does the Magical Assault tree check Spell Save for Physical and Mental debuffs? Seems rude to enemies.
'Shocked' is also the name of one of the debuffs that cuts your Stun resist in half. Might want to rename what Magic Burst does for extra clarity.
Perhaps Cure could check whether you have any wounds/poisons and be unusable if you don't, like Waters of Life does?

Phase Strike is fun. Phase Strike on Autocast is more fun.

[nsrr]

I didn't realise there were High Guards in the game already until after I named the class... I guess I was inspired a bit my astralInferno's High Blade class, as far as the name. Battlemage was my first choice, but that was taken as a class already and I'm just not that creative. I guess Mage Guard would have been just as good, but, yeah. It is what it is

I actually need to double check the save thing. The statuses are all applied with Spellpower, but I don't specify the save used in the setEffect call... There's a fair chance it's actually checking phys save for the stun, now that I think about it. Confounded is a magical effect that happens to wrap up both a mental and a physical effect, but I suppose I could change it to just apply Silence and Disarm seperatley and check the usual saves. That's something that I just kind of let slide and have meant to get back to and keep neglecting. Thanks for mentioning it, I'll have to get that sorted out. I can probably come up with something else for Magic Shock. It's very similar in name to Spellshock, too.

Cure could check for statuses in the pre use condition, yeah. Not a bad idea at all.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Cathbald]

the save is always the same type as the status applied

[nsrr]

the save is always the same type as the status applied

Thanks, that saves me some time poking around. I'll update Sorcerous Slam to reflect the correct save. I think I'm going to make a new effect for Confounded rather than disarm and silence. Something on par as far as disabling goes, but more magical in nature, instead of just bundling a physical and mental effect together.

[nsrr]

v1.3.1
---
[General]
Status effects have their own images rather than using the image of the talent that applies them.

High Guards' damaging spells can now crit (sorry, I totally overlooked this originally ). This actually changed in 1.3.0, but I forgot to include it in the change log.

Conditioning and Survival are now unlocked at birth at 1.0 mastery each.

[Greater Staff Focus]
Increased chance scaling.

[Magic Burst]
Status effect duration fixed to 3 turns again, but see 'Magical Malady' below.
The status effect applied remains the same but has been re-named 'Aether Affliction'.

[Sorcerous Slam]
Status effect duration fixed to 3 turns again, but see 'Magical Malady' below.
No longer checks any save when applying the stun. Still checks accuracy (the effect is only applied if the attack hits) and stun resistance, as before.

[Arcane Projection]
Status effect duration fixed to 3 turns again, but see 'Magical Malady' below.
The status effect applied has changed:
'Magical Malady' causes any talent use by the afflicted target to extend the duration of any negative effects from you by one turn, if they fail to save against your Spellpower. The application of the status only checks accuracy (the effect only applies if the attack hits), but Spellpower is checked each time the target uses a talent to determine if durations will be increased.

[Empowered Arms]
New particle effect.
Cosmetic rename: Eldrtich Empowerment
The additional effect applied by Magic Burst has changed:
'Eldritch Echoes' will deal a portion of the original damage of Magic Burst each turn for 3 turns. The damage can stack if the effect is re-applied with the same damage type; a new damage type will overwrite the effect.

[Cure]
Cannot be activated unless you are afflicted with at least one Curable effect.

[smithfield]

Just jumping in here.

I've been playing this class and its extremely entertaining.

Feels almost like a Jedi the way you bounce around.

The whole staff+shield+magic thing, really scratches an itch I didn't know I had (til now).

[nsrr]

Just jumping in here.

I've been playing this class and its extremely entertaining.

Feels almost like a Jedi the way you bounce around.

The whole staff+shield+magic thing, really scratches an itch I didn't know I had (til now).

Somehow missed this post earlier. Glad to hear you've enjoyed it