ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

V1.5.4 and V1.5.5
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[Energy Osmosis]
Bug fixes.

A while ago, I tried a Skeleton White Monk and gave up.

But now I've tried it on a living race and liked it much better.

Praise

• Hitting someone with Secret Fist and getting to say "You are already dead"
• The positioning play of Blink Counter
• Transcend
• Having different ways to deal with Physical, Mental, and Magical statuses, and none of them feeling useless or pigeonholed.
• Encouraging people to move around with Tactical Positioning
• Extra attacks that don't feel character-defining in Measured Blows and Pummel
• Getting heavy gloves but only heavy gloves from your mastery talent - inspired, better than Brawler.

Concerns

• Why is their Mastery talent so strange? It gives less damage than other Masteries, but you can level it up immediately for TONS of Physical Power.
• Do they really need 3 sources of bonus physical power?
• Putting a 5th point into Holy Sign does not improve either the effect or the cooldown. It just gives you more Mending.
• If I can end fights by Air Rend + walking briskly away, it's safest to do so. It's also really boring.
• Aura Blast has much shorter range than the rest of its tree. It feels bad even though its fine.

Trivialities

• Every talent has an empty line between its main description and 'each point in this category' except for Measured Blows in Martial Arts

Bug
Blink Counter + enemy with Prophecy of Treason = Stack Overflow Error as I try to attack myself and miss, dodge myself, try to counterattack myself, miss...

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it

The mastery was originally copied from Brawler, iirc, but I think Brawler mastery may have been changed at some point since then and I never updated mine. As you likely know, all the actual calculations for power and damage and such from mastery talents are handled under combat and just check the level of the indicated mastery talent. So, afaik, the numbers should be right but the description is probably off. As for the requirements, it's not totally unprecedented. Strength of Purpose works the same, iirc, and Staff Mastery represents a weapon mastery that is just totally different from any other. Basically the way I feel about it is that it's not going to change your maximum power level and having higher level/stat requirements just makes the hardest part of the game (the beginning) even harder. It still costs talent points that could be used elsewhere for new talents and more utility I'll look into it and make sure everything is correct and fix the description, but I think I'll keep the requirements the way they are.

They... probably don't need that many sources of extra physical power. I'll look into that. It's been a while since I've played a White Monk or even really looked at the code. Rending could probably have a different bonus. I might shift the physical damage on-hit from Guided Hand to the Rending bonus. It would still boost your damage a bit but without the direct boost to physical power, and it would de-clutter Guided Hand a bit.

Air Render being the safe way out, especially in the early game where you don't have as many other buttons to press to begin with, is definitely something that could be worked on. Perhaps it should just have drastically reduced ranged, or maybe require one more stack of Enervate before pinning. It would still be strong against melee with no gap closer or increased speed, but that's generally a pretty low percentage of enemies. I'm not sure what exactly I want to do with it yet, but it's definitely something that needs a little attention.

I'll fix that description for Measured Blows while I'm going over everything else.

Thanks for that bug report, I probably never would have caught that on my own. I should have had a check in there to make sure the attacker was not yourself... or that the attacker is actually adjacent, not less than two tiles away

V1.6.0
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[General]
All scaling updated to match the infinite scaling rules properly, as best as I understand them.
Number tweaks on damage and stamina costs.
Nearly all active talents now have sounds and/or visual effects.

[Rending]
Mastery bonus is now 3 physical damage on-hit per talent point.

[Air Render]
Reverted to 2-turn cooldown, instead of none.
Reduced range scaling.
Reduced damage condiderably.
Added scaling bonus crit chance for this attack only.
Air Render will always attempt to Enervate if it hits, but other melee hits now only have a 50% chance to Enervate.

[Guided Hand]
Corrected description.
Removed physical damage on-hit.

[Tactical Positioning]
Cooldown reduction is now properly limited to once per base turn.
Stamina recovery is now limited to twice per base turn.

[Lifefont]
Healing is now limited to three times per base turn.

[Swift Strike]
No longer allows you to move through terrain
Reduced cooldown.

[Blink Counter]
Added a check to prevent an infinite loop if you attack yourself while under the effect.

v1.6.1
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[General]
All active or sustained talents now have visual and/or audio feedback. Slightly adjusted some older particle effects; notably, Aura of Protection is now a bit less noisy.

[Pummel]
Reconfigured the tracking for who has been hit by Pummel on a 'turn'. Specifically, this now limits the effect to triggering once per target per your turn. Effectively, this increases the number of Pummel procs you can achieve per target at higher speed differences.

nvm

Still giving this a try. I think I started a new monk character because I felt my other one was too powerful, until you updated high guard. In any case I am liking white monk. Level 35 nightmare. Scaling fairly well, went AM just for fun. And stacking damage mitigation. Just two quick questions.

1) It feels like air render is not getting its increased crit rate. Not really seeing any crits, maybe less than my current crit rate, but definitely not the 75%+ rate it should be. Maybe I am just super super unlucky with rng.

2) I really like the passive bonus of all lines, I do not know if that was your idea but it definitely makes it so you generally never feel like you are wasting points. That said, any chance you would take a look at warded mind in fending? Seems like the mind save bonus is not doing very much for me. Might be because some things are spells and are checking spell save? Even when things are MP to MS I see things with 20 to 30 less power than me stick mental effects. Possible confirmation bias and I am ignoring all the effects that do not stick. But it seems like it is not doing much most of the time (nightmare scaling I guess could do a little).

I was thinking of maybe reworking it to do something like (further) reduce the length of mental afflictions. Or perhaps giving a chance that increases each turn that after you are hit by one you will shrug it off. Just seems like a monk should be able to order his/her mind easily. So mental afflictions should be something that lore wise a monk should be able to quickly and efficiently deal with after years of meditation etc.

Anyways, still having fun! Keep making addons and I will keep playing them and giving feedback!

Thanks again for the feedback!

Good catch on Air Render. You were getting a crit bonus, but only a small fraction of what was listed. I misplaced a decimal, so to speak.

Warded Mind could use a bit of an improvement. Reducing duration is good idea, especially with some of the more dangerous mental effects lasting quite a long time (I'm looking at you, Hexes). Now it will reduce the duration of the triggering effect by 50%, and negate it completely if the remaining duration is less than 6 turns, as well as increasing your save for a number of turns afterward.

I made a few other tweaks while I was going over things, as well.

v1.6.2
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[General]
Removed Combat Veteran.

[Air Render]
Now has the proper critical bonus.
Enervate now lasts 3 turns, up from 2.

[Earth Render]
No longer causes knockback.

[Warded Mind]
Now decreases the duration of the triggering effect by 50% and negates it completely if the remaining duration is 5 turns or less, as well as increasing mental save for a number of turns afterward.

[Swift Strike]
Fixed a mistake that was causing this talent to use energy for both the action and the movement, effectively making it take 2 'turns'.

[Blink Counter]
Reduced bonus defense values.

[Reflex]
Chance to trigger Blink Counter now procs on damage over 12% max life, up from 8%, and requires that you wear light armor.

[Energy Osmosis]
Attack and movement speed bonuses reduced.
Once again limited to 5 enemies at most.

[Transcend]
Duration now scales with talent level, from 2.5-5 turns (rounded down).

Somehow I accidentally deleted a letter in a variable in Transcend. Fortunately, I went back to a White Monk run right after I uploaded the new version and found it almost immediately. Quick fix.

Also, I should probably mention that the change I made to Warded Mind won't affect current runs, because callbacks are only registered when talents are learned.

v1.6.3
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[Transcend]
Bug fix.

Edit:
Another bug, another reminder I should stop when it gets late and just wait til the next day to give everything another pass before uploading.

v1.6.4
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[Pummel]
Bug fix.

Noticing that I am still getting hit (without any apparent check and while warded mind is off cool down) with direct mental effects. Trying to find a pattern, but not sure yet. Definitely one that is reliably getting through without triggering is agony. Which is mental all the way (not a spell triggering a mental effect. It definitely works sometimes, like those hexes (which are spells) but not for certain things. I will let you know once I have more info. I definitely like the skill though.

I think I see what's going on. The new method used for Warded Mind is called when you attempt to save against an effect... But not all effects check save every time. Some talents apply effects with no save check. Agony is one of them.

I'll have to look things over and decide if Warded Mind should affect things that are not checking saves. With Agony I would lean toward no, because it's basically a mind damage DoT and mental save already has a chance to reduce mind damage. However, it also has a chance to brainlock you, which is a pretty serious effect itself.

Thanks for the report! I'll take a look at things after work and see what's what, likely try an implementation that doesn't rely on save being checked.

Just won a game with a halfling white monk, so I have a loooot of feedback. I'm also thinking of writing a guide, so I'm leaving some of the balance stuff there and concentrating on super broken talents, bugs and typoes. Also I already talked about W I T H E R I N G S T R I K E and the various enervate bugs in the discord so I'm not going to mention them again here.

Broken Talents:
-Lifefont's healmod bonus is just absurd. Two points gives a 93% healmod bonus, which is enough to bring basically any char to the cap instantly. Doubling the heal from moving seems a bit redundant with the healmod bonus. The movespeed bonus is fine though. Also it should also give the healing while resting or pressing 5, so it isn't optimal to pace around instead of napping.
-Revive is really really strong and also has really weird scaling. Going from 2/5 to 3/5 does absolutely nothing and so does going from 4/5 to 5/5. Chakra's heal is so negligible that even going from 1/5 to 2/5 doesn't do that much. The strength might be fine if it's supposed to be a cornerstone of the class, but it should be noted that it's really really strong. It's like the lovechild of cauterize and second life. Maybe it should have some kind of stamina cost on revival or something?
-Aura of Protection is actually a fairly balanced defense now, especially since it doesn't play nicely with heavy armour. However...
-Focused Guard is really really over the top. It protects you from the next 13 damage instances in the next 6 turns at 5/5[And white monk has anemic enough generics that 5/5ing it makes sense]. Bone Shield is one of the top defensive abilities in the game and it only blocks 6 damage instances at 5/5. It also regenerates much faster, but that matters even less on white monk since their damage is better. Most of the time, when I activated Focused Guard, the effect wore off before it was fully discharged. Which is to say, most of the time activating Focused Guard prevented all damage for the duration. This is partly due to white monk having flat damage reduction to soak up the very small hits that would normally break stuff like this and partly just due to the huge number of damage instances it wards against. And then, on top of all that, it doesn't even leave you that vulnerable after it runs out since Aura of Protection has such a short cooldown and because it restores so much stamina. I'd suggest halving the number of damage instances it blocks and increasing Aura of Protection's cooldown to 20 or something as a start.
-Swift Strike's has a really tiny cooldown for how much ground it lets you cover. Since it goes over enemies, you're very rarely in a situation you can't escape with this ability.
-Holy Sign is basically a reskinned disperse magic except that at lower levels it has higher cd and removes more effects. Does white monk really need this?

Bugs:
-The effect description for pummel says that the strikes deal 0% damage.
-Blink counter's effect description says that it stuns instead of dazing.
-Focused Guard doesn't show in the log when it reduces damage, which is annoying.
-Energy Osmosis should say precisely what the maximum buff is, instead of requiring you to do math

Typos:
-Not really a typo, but the last two rending talents should make it clear that the extra blow gets X% more multiplier per enervate stack, instead of it making an extra blow with X% multiplier per enervate stack.
-Earth Render has "increasses" when it should be "increases"
-Earth Render has "a jagged terrain" when it should be "jagged terrain"
-Far Fist has "destablized" instead of "destabilized"
-Withering strike has "demamge" instead of "damage"
-Reflex has "deffensive" instead of "defensive"
-Swift Strike has "has chance" instead of "has a chance". It also doesn't say what power the daze is applied by.
-Nimble Defender has "flexibe" instead of "flexible"
-Warded Mind has "warry" instead of "wary"
-Deplete Spirit has "Enfeeblee" instead of "Enfeeble"
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Just a heads up, looks like you did a bug fix. It seems like warded mind is not working at all now. Did not see any changes but does not seem to be affecting anything or getting triggered at all. I will test further.

I did publish an update last night. I changed the callback on Warded Mind (again) so that it doesn't rely on the effect checking your save. This may have broken the talent for a run that was already in progress, and I'm sorry about that. I should have waited to upload... especially now that Arc's given me a nice long list of typos and a few more things to consider tweaking.

On that topic:
Withering Strike I've nerfed already.

Lifefont can probably stand a nerf on the heal mod. I don't see any reason to add the healing on rest. If you want to pace back and forth for turn efficiency when you could save a whole lot of real time by just hitting rest, that's up to you.

Revive is meant to be pretty strong and investing more in Lifefont and Chakra is meant to make it stronger. Of course, ideally you never want it to trigger, and stopping a death is obviously the main feature, so it's own poor scaling plus relying on other talents strength makes it largely a one point wonder. And still a strong one, so it could probably use a little more opportunity cost, like a stamina cost or something, as suggested.

Fewer charges and longer Aura down time for Focused Guard is probably a good idea.

I really like Swift Strike for engaging, a little AoE, and repositioning, but yeah it's too good as an escape. Maybe I'll stick a movespeed mallus or even a shory pin after use on it.

Holy Sign is literally reskinned Disperse Magic with tiny tweaks to remove hard break points. They don't /need/ it, but it means you don't ever /need/ to swap to dispersion gloves, either, and I like that. Plus it's ripped from FFT. I actually have no problem moving away from the FF roots, but I don't have any idea for what else to stick in here at the moment, anyway.

And thanks for all the bug and typo reports!

v1.6.6
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[General]
Numerous typos and descriptions have been fixed or improved. Thanks Arc!
Added some more example particles to the birth file (as shown on character creation).
Removed Combat Techniques.

[Swift Strike]
Range scaling reduced [3-6]
Cooldown increased [6]
Now applies a pin for 2 turns after use. The pin can be cured but not resisted.

[Lifefont]
Heal mod bonus reduced.

[Revive]
Now reduces your stamina when triggered, down to a percentage that scales with talent level [7.5%-15%], if it is not already lower.

[Aura of Protection]
Cooldown increased [18]

[Focused Guard]
Reduced number of charges [4-8].

[Withering Strike]
Reworked. Now deals base damage plus bonus damage based on percent life the target has, rather than damage based on life value.