Arcvasti wrote:
Been playing a Shalore Storm Knight to test this out. I'm quite liking them overall, although that doesn't mean there isn't room from improvement.
Thanks for the feedback!
Arcvasti wrote:
-Mage Knights seem pretty strong overall, although I'm only playing on Normal. Good ranged magic abilities to streamline the early game which then provide good proc damage for their above-average melee. They seem slightly lacking in survivability in general, but this can change a lot from one branch to the next.
I'll keep an eye on this. Trying to tone down some of the sheer defensive numbers was one of the goals for this last update, but it's not impossible I went too far in the other direction. Storm knights (and mind knight) though have the weakest defenses of the bunch by design, and will have to compensate a lot more with mobility.
Arcvasti wrote:
-That said, they're certainly under pretty heavy resource constraints. All their unique spells are quite costly and their many sustains add up into a vastly reduced max resource pool. This is especially bad for Storm Knights, who also want Tempest, Feather Wind, Hurricane and Thunderstorm[In decreasing order of relevance].
Back when I was originally working on them, resource limits were supposed to be one of their major weaknesses, and another goal of this last update was to get back to that. And likewise, it's entirely possible I went too far with it, so I shall keep an eye on that as well.
Arcvasti wrote:
-Talking about their sustains, Mage Knights are basically immune to sustain deactivating, despite being so reliant on them. In some ways, they're actually LESS vulnerable to sustain deactivation then a class with no sustains at all, because enemies will still use moves like Corrupted Negation or Entropy on them. All of their sustains both have cooldowns of ZERO while being instant to activate. There's a good reason there are basically no talents like this in the main game. I'd suggest either giving most of them a cooldown[Eldritch Combat could probably get away with being a straight-up toggle] or making them no longer instant to activate[Again, Eldritch Combat could probably stay instant].
This is intentional. The powers are designed as sustains mainly so they can be toggled. The point about enemies potentially wasting turns on sustain breakers is a good one, though. It's not something that concerns me enough to make the sustains more costly to reactivate, but if I can find some way around that I'll implement it (the AI functionality is rather beyond me at the moment, though I do have some intention to look into it a bit more when 1.6 comes out, since an AI overhaul appears to be one of its main features).
Arcvasti wrote:
-The Storm Invocations tree[And probably the corresponding magic damage trees for the other Mage Kngihts] don't take +lightning damage% items into account when displaying the damage. This makes them look weaker then they are compared to the basic Archmage-style spells, which DO include those damage boosts. EDIT: Apparently this only applies to the first two talents[Beam and Wave]. The last two display damage numbers properly.
Errors on my part. Will fix!
Arcvasti wrote:
-Storm Bolt, meanwhile, just seems to behave weirdly in general. It has a projectile speed, despite being a beam and I swear I once saw a snake dodge out of the way of it just like it would a projectile. I've seen it chain through walls, but not deal damage to the creature on the other side of the wall. I've also seen it hit twice, which the description says it shouldn't.
This is probably my "copy-paste and fiddle" approach to lua rearing its ugly head. I'll look into it.
Arcvasti wrote:
-I find it pretty weird that Wind Stride can be triggered by Eldritch Combat, especially since the talent doesn't explicitly tell you it can be, like most other Mage Knight talents do.
Probably forgot to specify it in the description. But since the Free Movement effect it provides doesn't break on non-movement like many movement speed boosts, it is something you can trigger and use as you need it.
Arcvasti wrote:
-Wind Stride and Whirlwind Dervish have an interesting synergy, although not one that seems useful for much. It mostly seems good for getting a bunch of procs off while dealing very little physical weapon damage.
Yeah I'm not
100% certain Whirlwind Dervish doesn't have some sort of broken combo possible, but I'll fix it if it becomes apparent.
Arcvasti wrote:
-Zephyr Dance says that it deals 1% weapon damage, which seems uselessly small. It deals much more damage then that[80-120% weapon damage, by my estimate]
-Rapid Strike says it gives you a defensive effect with magnitude 145 for 109 turns at level 1. In reality, it gave me a 73 magnitude shield for a mere three turns.
Both mistakes in my formatting the descriptions. Will fix.
Arcvasti wrote:
-Rapid Strike's various effects strike me as somewhat strange. A damage shield, for instance, is straight-up worse then gaining additional health or a negative life threshold because it doesn't get as many damage reducing effects applied to it[IIRC, damage to damage shields applies before it gets reduced by elemental resistances].
Huh, interesting. That was outside of my system knowledge. I do have a sort of vague intent that the different effects of the different Weapons Master talents may vary some in power (in particular I tried to give the single weapon option a bit of an edge over the others in general, since it has nothing going for it in the base mechanics), but not one that I've really put much effort into. At some point I'll probably do some competitive balancing with those, in particular try to make them synergistic with the fighting style and maybe make it so each fighting style is kinda strongest for one of the talents and weakest for another or something.
Arcvasti wrote:
-Eldritch Body's new secondary effect seems needlessly convoluted. If the intention is to protect you from one-hit kills, couldn't you just give it a resilience effect like Ghoul/Sacrifice/Suncloak?
The intention is more to protect against one-
turn kills. Be it a single overpowering instance of damage, an overwhelming Flurry or Assault, stepping around a corner only to find out there's three mages in the next room, etc. It's much closer to Cauterize in purpose, although strictly and substantially inferior.
Arcvasti wrote:
-EDIT: Whirlind Dervish affects enemy patrols on the world map. It does no damage, but I'm still fairly sure this isn't intended.
Nope, will fix.
Arcvasti wrote:
-DOUBLEEDIT: Lightning Ride's damage at talent level 5 is really high. Like, it's Storm Knight's most damaging talent. And it can be activated without teleporting yourself through Eldritch Combat. The weird thing is not that it does good damage[Although it does very good damage], but that it turns from being a nigh-useless Eldritch Combat proc to being the absolute best Eldritch Combat proc with talent levels.
Yeah it's kinda their equivalent to Phoenix Burn, since storm knights are supposed to have the second-best offense. That said, the damage coming online late is probably a little weird. Maybe I'll shift it to damage->blind->stun rather than blind->stun->damage. ...Come to think of it daze may be saner than stun for this one too.
Thanks again for the feedback, I'll keep it in mind when next updating!