This seems to be the forum for talking about "character builds", so I'm making this thread for discussion of class design and character builds for the classes in the Nullpack addon. This will also be where I talk about the game design and kinds of play intended to be enabled by the various Nullpack classes.
Bug reports & comments about the addon itself go here: Nullpack thread
Feel free to contribute your own builds
Classes covered here:
- Ascetic, a staff-based melee mage.
- Creep, a Hate-based stealthy stalker.
- Ember of Gerlyk, a Human-only fire brawler.
- Heavy, a Chronomancer someaht like a Time Warden but all melee.
- Striker, a dark and stormy mage who uses stealth.
- Vector, a Vim-based archer focused on disease and debuffs rather than personal mobility.
Nullpack Addon - builds & design notes
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Doctornull
- Sher'Tul Godslayer
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- Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:46 pm
- Location: Ambush!
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Doctornull
- Sher'Tul Godslayer
- Posts: 2402
- Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:46 pm
- Location: Ambush!
Re: Nullpack Addon - builds & design notes
Most recent class first: the Ember of Gerlyk. Two things inspired this class, and they were first the Human creation myth snippet in the lore, and second the fact that combo point mechanics were lackluster and that made me sad.
So, the focus for the Ember had to include making Combo Points relevant and awesome. Combo Points are pretty easy to generate if you're using the Pugilism tree, and Pugilism is very popular among Brawler winners, so that informed my base assumption: Combo Points would be easy come, easy go. That decision dictated what sort of abilities would consume Combo Points: they would be effects you use early & often in battle.
That was the thinking behind the new tree. In the interest of making the new tree usefully self-contained (for Adventurers and Bosses), I went with the pattern:
- rank 1: give the resource
- rank 2-4: use the resource
Rank 1: Searing Strike. Cooldown is much longer than Dual Strike, but it can Stun. At level 4, a Cornac could have 3 Stun abilities (Dirty Fighting, Searing Strike, and Flameshock), so a stun-lock build is viable on this class.
Rank 2: Firewalk Stride. Superficially similar to Lighting Leap, but follows a different use pattern, since you can't open with it. Since it requires a Combo Point to use, it's only useful for mid-battle positioning or escape.
Rank 3: Phoenix Punch Prana. Yes, silly kung fu attack names are awesome. This is intended to be about half as powerful as Arcane Reconstruction, and somewhat harder to trigger since you need a Combo Point at a target, but the lower CD allows it to be used more frequently.
Rank 4: Cleansing Cascade Kata: This is intended to work along side and complement Cleansing Flames. It's balanced around the idea that when you need the curative effect, you won't be hitting very hard (because you're probably Stunned or Dazed). So it's a great offensive effect or a great curative effect, but unlikely to be both at the same time. It's also intended to be a difficult decision to use in play: it's great at the beginning of a tough boss fight (to disable his sustains), but it's also a great cure so you may be rewarded by saving it.
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Whenever I design a class, I try to put at least one good low-level locked talent tree in, because Cornacs need love too... but for this class, Cornacs are half the races who qualify, so I put a larger number of great-at-char-gen trees in locked.
Cunning / Tactical: great on a vanilla Brawler, great on an Ember for all the same reasons. One neat trick is that you can obviate the initial damage penalty to Exploit Weakness by leading with your Fire-damage strikes in the Embers tree, then move on to Pugilism talents to exploit the target's lowered Physical resistance.
Cunning / Dirty Fighting: The idea here is to exploit the magical stun-locks you get in Fire and Embers, plus the one in Dirty Fighting itself.
Technique / Combat Techniques: Rush is nice if you don't want to Flame your enemies to death. Accuracy has its uses. Blinding Speed is very nice stacked with Harmony / Elemental Harmony and a screen-wide burning ocean of Wildfire. Basically, if you unlock this tree, the emphasis I'm picturing is speed and even more mobility than usual.
Technique / Unarmed Discipline: Unlike a regular Brawler, the Ember has good ranged attacks in the Fire tree, so pushing an enemy away can actually be a useful tactic for him.
As an aside, this reasoning is also why the chosen Generic trees (Mobility & Field Control) which are usually very un-exciting on a melee character are actually pretty decent on the Ember. Since he can throw a number of ranged nukes, getting OUT of melee range is a valid tactical choice, unlike on a vanilla Brawler.
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Anyway, that was my thinking on the Ember of Gerlyk class. More thoughts later, as time permits.
So, the focus for the Ember had to include making Combo Points relevant and awesome. Combo Points are pretty easy to generate if you're using the Pugilism tree, and Pugilism is very popular among Brawler winners, so that informed my base assumption: Combo Points would be easy come, easy go. That decision dictated what sort of abilities would consume Combo Points: they would be effects you use early & often in battle.
That was the thinking behind the new tree. In the interest of making the new tree usefully self-contained (for Adventurers and Bosses), I went with the pattern:
- rank 1: give the resource
- rank 2-4: use the resource
Rank 1: Searing Strike. Cooldown is much longer than Dual Strike, but it can Stun. At level 4, a Cornac could have 3 Stun abilities (Dirty Fighting, Searing Strike, and Flameshock), so a stun-lock build is viable on this class.
Rank 2: Firewalk Stride. Superficially similar to Lighting Leap, but follows a different use pattern, since you can't open with it. Since it requires a Combo Point to use, it's only useful for mid-battle positioning or escape.
Rank 3: Phoenix Punch Prana. Yes, silly kung fu attack names are awesome. This is intended to be about half as powerful as Arcane Reconstruction, and somewhat harder to trigger since you need a Combo Point at a target, but the lower CD allows it to be used more frequently.
Rank 4: Cleansing Cascade Kata: This is intended to work along side and complement Cleansing Flames. It's balanced around the idea that when you need the curative effect, you won't be hitting very hard (because you're probably Stunned or Dazed). So it's a great offensive effect or a great curative effect, but unlikely to be both at the same time. It's also intended to be a difficult decision to use in play: it's great at the beginning of a tough boss fight (to disable his sustains), but it's also a great cure so you may be rewarded by saving it.
---
Whenever I design a class, I try to put at least one good low-level locked talent tree in, because Cornacs need love too... but for this class, Cornacs are half the races who qualify, so I put a larger number of great-at-char-gen trees in locked.
Cunning / Tactical: great on a vanilla Brawler, great on an Ember for all the same reasons. One neat trick is that you can obviate the initial damage penalty to Exploit Weakness by leading with your Fire-damage strikes in the Embers tree, then move on to Pugilism talents to exploit the target's lowered Physical resistance.
Cunning / Dirty Fighting: The idea here is to exploit the magical stun-locks you get in Fire and Embers, plus the one in Dirty Fighting itself.
Technique / Combat Techniques: Rush is nice if you don't want to Flame your enemies to death. Accuracy has its uses. Blinding Speed is very nice stacked with Harmony / Elemental Harmony and a screen-wide burning ocean of Wildfire. Basically, if you unlock this tree, the emphasis I'm picturing is speed and even more mobility than usual.
Technique / Unarmed Discipline: Unlike a regular Brawler, the Ember has good ranged attacks in the Fire tree, so pushing an enemy away can actually be a useful tactic for him.
As an aside, this reasoning is also why the chosen Generic trees (Mobility & Field Control) which are usually very un-exciting on a melee character are actually pretty decent on the Ember. Since he can throw a number of ranged nukes, getting OUT of melee range is a valid tactical choice, unlike on a vanilla Brawler.
---
Anyway, that was my thinking on the Ember of Gerlyk class. More thoughts later, as time permits.
Last edited by Doctornull on Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Doctornull
- Sher'Tul Godslayer
- Posts: 2402
- Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2013 10:46 pm
- Location: Ambush!
Re: Nullpack Addon - builds & design notes
The Creep got tweaked in Nullpack v15, so I thought I'd talk a bit about the reasoning behind those changes, and the class in general.
The Creep got a pretty significant resource management tune-up. My original intent was to have the Sloth talent be a thing which was used frequently to pull enemies into isolated areas, and to generally control where a fight happens, but in the opposite way from how a Doomed could do it. That's still how it works, but instead of making Sloth "cheap", the cost is now negative, which makes Sloth dual-purpose: it's now also an emergency way to regenerate Hate from cover of Stealth, but in that role it's risky, because your target is pulled closer to you. If you want to get a bit of Hate and get into melee, then it's exactly what you need.
Why this change? The Creep is intended to get Hate at around the same rate as a Cursed (i.e. slower than a Doomed), so I based the Creep's Hate generation around Gloom, but it turns out Gloom alone is insufficient. Someone pointed out that a Cursed often also uses Endless Hunt / Stalk to get Hate early, and that was something I'd neglected. The Hate generated by Stalk is pretty significant, even at one point, and it gets more significant in longer fights (against a Rare or Boss). In the middle of melee, Sloth isn't as action-efficient as Stalk, but the Creep's main getaway (Voidwalk*) isn't Hate-based, so he can run away fairly reliably if his Hate gets depleted.
The other major change was adding secondary resource recovery to two of the Creep's talents. Wrath now regenerates Stamina (and Psi and Mana, if you have any), while the advanced Horror tree grants Devour Memory which will restore Stamina, Equilibrium and Paradox (if those are relevant to you). The idea behind these two talents is to grant an effect similar to Feedback's Conversion talent, but under the opposite conditions: a Solipsist replenishes resources by accumulating damage, while a Creep replenishes resources by spazzing out or stabbing someone in the memories.
Thinking about spazzing out brings us to Wrath. Wrath is intended to be an interesting early-to-mid fight tool. It's a poor man's physical Wild, and a poor man's Heroism infusion, and the physical crit boost means you're best off using it when you're already in melee. You probably can't open with it (unless you're Poisoned or Stunned first thing), but you might be able to end the fight with its aid.
Note that Wrath's lingering effect, the Frenzy condition, was already in the game. The inspiration for the Creep was a Hate-based sneak who was slowly taking on the aspects of various Horrors throughout the game, and that effect was lifted directly from a certain popular Horror.
So, let's look at the Horror tree. Some of the talents are fairly obvious in their inspiration, like Shadow Scuttle, which was inspired by the Umbral Horror's modus operandi; or Voidwrack, which combines two of the Void Horror's tricks into one talent. These two effects were combined because the result is more tactically interesting: you can use it on an easy-to-kill critter to create some temporary allies, or you can throw it at a tougher Elite or Boss for the damage-over-time rider, but you can't just act like a Summoner and spam Void Shards at a solo boss.
There's no direct ancestor for the Devour Memory talent, but it's intended to feel like the kind of thing a Temporal Stalker would do if it could.
The capstone Horror talent ought to be self-explanatory: it's modeled on the Archmage advanced tree capstones, but without any sustain cost. Instead, the price for sustaining the talent is losing up to 50% of your Fear and Confusion immunity, which you presumably had at 75% thanks to the Cursed Form tree, and losing a chunk of your Mental save, which ought to be quite high thanks to the Willpower & Cunning focus of the class. It's my hope that this is a balanced cost for a powerful capstone ability.
As always, I welcome feedback. Cheers!
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*) Voidwalk is a bit of an odd tree for a Creep. It's not Hate-based. In fact it's got no resource at all. That's because the tree was originally designed for an upcoming class, a Wyrmic focused on one of the so-called "wild dragons": the Blinkwyrmic. That class is a mixed Mana and Wilder, very limited in which spells and effects it can get, but attempting to cover all the cool stuff a Blinkwyrm can throw at you.
The Creep got a pretty significant resource management tune-up. My original intent was to have the Sloth talent be a thing which was used frequently to pull enemies into isolated areas, and to generally control where a fight happens, but in the opposite way from how a Doomed could do it. That's still how it works, but instead of making Sloth "cheap", the cost is now negative, which makes Sloth dual-purpose: it's now also an emergency way to regenerate Hate from cover of Stealth, but in that role it's risky, because your target is pulled closer to you. If you want to get a bit of Hate and get into melee, then it's exactly what you need.
Why this change? The Creep is intended to get Hate at around the same rate as a Cursed (i.e. slower than a Doomed), so I based the Creep's Hate generation around Gloom, but it turns out Gloom alone is insufficient. Someone pointed out that a Cursed often also uses Endless Hunt / Stalk to get Hate early, and that was something I'd neglected. The Hate generated by Stalk is pretty significant, even at one point, and it gets more significant in longer fights (against a Rare or Boss). In the middle of melee, Sloth isn't as action-efficient as Stalk, but the Creep's main getaway (Voidwalk*) isn't Hate-based, so he can run away fairly reliably if his Hate gets depleted.
The other major change was adding secondary resource recovery to two of the Creep's talents. Wrath now regenerates Stamina (and Psi and Mana, if you have any), while the advanced Horror tree grants Devour Memory which will restore Stamina, Equilibrium and Paradox (if those are relevant to you). The idea behind these two talents is to grant an effect similar to Feedback's Conversion talent, but under the opposite conditions: a Solipsist replenishes resources by accumulating damage, while a Creep replenishes resources by spazzing out or stabbing someone in the memories.
Thinking about spazzing out brings us to Wrath. Wrath is intended to be an interesting early-to-mid fight tool. It's a poor man's physical Wild, and a poor man's Heroism infusion, and the physical crit boost means you're best off using it when you're already in melee. You probably can't open with it (unless you're Poisoned or Stunned first thing), but you might be able to end the fight with its aid.
Note that Wrath's lingering effect, the Frenzy condition, was already in the game. The inspiration for the Creep was a Hate-based sneak who was slowly taking on the aspects of various Horrors throughout the game, and that effect was lifted directly from a certain popular Horror.
So, let's look at the Horror tree. Some of the talents are fairly obvious in their inspiration, like Shadow Scuttle, which was inspired by the Umbral Horror's modus operandi; or Voidwrack, which combines two of the Void Horror's tricks into one talent. These two effects were combined because the result is more tactically interesting: you can use it on an easy-to-kill critter to create some temporary allies, or you can throw it at a tougher Elite or Boss for the damage-over-time rider, but you can't just act like a Summoner and spam Void Shards at a solo boss.
There's no direct ancestor for the Devour Memory talent, but it's intended to feel like the kind of thing a Temporal Stalker would do if it could.
The capstone Horror talent ought to be self-explanatory: it's modeled on the Archmage advanced tree capstones, but without any sustain cost. Instead, the price for sustaining the talent is losing up to 50% of your Fear and Confusion immunity, which you presumably had at 75% thanks to the Cursed Form tree, and losing a chunk of your Mental save, which ought to be quite high thanks to the Willpower & Cunning focus of the class. It's my hope that this is a balanced cost for a powerful capstone ability.
As always, I welcome feedback. Cheers!
---
*) Voidwalk is a bit of an odd tree for a Creep. It's not Hate-based. In fact it's got no resource at all. That's because the tree was originally designed for an upcoming class, a Wyrmic focused on one of the so-called "wild dragons": the Blinkwyrmic. That class is a mixed Mana and Wilder, very limited in which spells and effects it can get, but attempting to cover all the cool stuff a Blinkwyrm can throw at you.