Afflicted Overhaul v0.5

[HousePet]

The planned afflicted roguish class is a lot more than just a rogue with some afflicted abilities, so its not going to overlap too much with Cursed having some roguish abilities. I really just have too many talents (as usual), and it really will have to be its own class.

The Cursed weapon skills should work with any load out, except the shield ones, cos that will require some extra coding to make them work without a shield. (I guess you could use off hand weapon or fist?)

I don't expect Cursed to rely entirely on Fears for their build, so I'm not too worried about fear immunity being an issue for them, as it shouldn't be crippling. For a Corruptor, disease can be their main source of damage, and their way of dealing with it is quite restrained. What I've got planned for Doomed is a synergy between Darkness and Fears. (and Fears and Darkness...)
That said, there is no reason why something can't be squeezed in somewhere to help Cursed out against fear immunity.

[bpat]

I don't like these changes, it takes Cursed from being a bump attack and mobility focused melee class to some weird Berserker type thing. Some of the new stuff has potential but as it is I think none of it really works nicely. Rampage should not have been changed at all except replacing or buffing Slam and buffing Tenacity; the new Rampage is really bad and boring compared to the old one. I also don't think there is any reason to give Cursed that many attack talents, since its primary damage should be from bumping and not from spamming talents like other melee classes do.

Slaughter
Sunder Foe is fine, it's pretty much the same as Shattering Blow.
Crippling Sweep should not have 100% uptime, it's way too good.
Cursed Berserker is good, way better than Cursed Duelist and Cursed Defender.

Endless Hunt
Deceptive Strike is just bad, you won't actually dodge the enemies you really want to dodge so it's basically spend a turn, get hit for free.
Assail is pretty bad compared to Crippling Sweep, the range is not good enough to make up for the weak damage.
Cursed Duelist is bad because you won't be dodging anything.

Strife
Shield Trust has the same issue as the old Overpower talent that Bulwarks had, you don't actually want to knock enemies back as a melee class.
Bash and Stab is really strong.
Cursed Defender isn't finished yet but so far it looks weak.

Chaos
I don't agree with Blindside being in a locked category.
Blinding Strike is great, maybe the cooldown is too low and the damage is too high though.
Battlefield Chaos's confuse power is crazy high, is this intended?
Chaotic Dance is weak.

Loss
Cause Loss is not flashy but decent enough. Should probably remove a second effect at higher levels.
Vigor Drain is decent but unreliable since it only works against foes with stamina.
Misery Eater is good because lifesteal is good.

Apathy
Torpid Aura is insanely good, probably too good.
Forced Rest should make you immortal with a Regeneration Infusion and Fungus or Timeless. Fifth talent point does nothing.
I strongly dislike the design of Sleep of the Dead and I don't think it should exist in any form. It's too unreliable to be good and even against endgame bosses I think it is too weak to be considered even on Insane.

Pain
Inflict Pain should be ridiculously good with Arcane Might because physical power is very easy to stack with that prodigy. I guess that's made balanced by the fact that you'd have to take Arcane Might on Cursed for that though. If you are consistently beating saves then it will be very strong because it has 100% uptime.
Feel My Pain might be too good and enemies can never be allowed to have this talent.
Inflict Agony just isn't that good, it only does damage but not even that much.
Amplify Pain is just weak.

Rampage
Fall to Rage is annoying to trigger since ideally you shouldn't be taking that much damage at all.
Vengeful Slam is strong because it's an AoE stun.
Burning Rage and Storm Heart are very weak and a complete waste of points.

[jenx]

I rarely play any afflicted classes, but all this discussion make me want to try both the new doomed and housepet's caisson

[HousePet]

I do think that the new Rampage is too weak and boring. Definitely needs a bit more murder-mode than it currently has. However, I don't think it worked well as its own category as it was basically required and the best part of the class shouldn't have been in a locked category. I'll try to give this a lot of thought.

I'm actually quite surprised at someone saying there are too many activated talents and the class should be more bump attacks. But sure, we can do that.

Thanks for the talent strength breakdown. Most of those numbers were just picked at random.

[bpat]

One solution is just unlock Rampage from the start, buff Tenacity, and replace Slam with a weaker version of your Vengeful Slam. Do you know if there's an easy way to generate randarts from the debug console? I want to try sending one at level 42 to the Prides on Insane and see how he holds up.

[HousePet]

Nah, I have no idea how to force randart generation.

[jenx]

i though in god mode you could generate randarts?

[HousePet]

Only ones that are pre generated. And those tend to be crap. (Are they generated at level 1 or something?)

[HousePet]

Currently thinking about:
Adding fire damage on weapon hits during Rampage to Fall to Rage.
Adding armour and hardiness bonus during Misery to Fall to Despair.
Replacing Burning Rage with Tenacious Rage, which would give a die at/negative life and a flat damage reduction when in Rampage.

Won't have much time to code anything until next week though.

[bpat]

I really think Rampage should be left alone for the most part, I think it is by far the best part of Cursed's kit right now. No reason to fix something that isn't broken. I like the idea of making a choice between it and Misery, but the category itself should remain the same in purpose which is big bonuses to offense and mobility that don't play well with using many talents and thus encourage bump attacking. I still strongly disagree with removing the active part of it, I like that it can be manually activated for a cost or passively activated for free under certain conditions. Adding negative life to Tenacity is a good idea.

Damage on hit needs to be well into the hundreds to be relevant late game, otherwise it will probably be a waste of points like Weapon Folding and Shadow Combat are. Weapon classes don't need non-weapon damage because ti won't scale as well.

[HousePet]

Heh, its getting pretty close to being as it was before.
I'm also considering change the Fall To X talent to be instantly activatable when low on life, instead of automatically triggered.
Or an unlockable talent (probably in Cursed Form) that can be used to activate Rampage or Misery when you want.
I don't want it to be easy to control for thematic reasons, but that has to be balanced against functionality.

I don't think Rampage should play badly with active talents, as that makes it annoyingly antagonistic with quite a few other talents.
Sure its Cursed, but let's not get too annoying.

[bpat]

Heh, its getting pretty close to being as it was before.

.
I consider this a good thing

I never really found it annoying that Rampage doesn't work well with spamming talents, it seems like a fair trade off. It's like a Movement Infusion but with bump attacks too. Thematically it makes sense since it promotes simple action.

Making it only work at low life pretty much kills it since if you are low enough you're basically dead already, I'd probably find a way to damage myself to trigger it before combat. A better way to do it may be to have it cost a percentage of your current life (maybe 30%?). Either way adding a condition like this means it should be buffed a little overall. Rampage should be good and accessible since it's what differentiates this class from stuff like Berserker or Marauder.

[HousePet]

Maybe if it was restricted to only penalise non direct damage actions? So things like Blindside and Frenzy would be fine, but Beckon, Vigor Drain and infusions would reduce the duration. Reverse the situation for Misery.

[bpat]

I like that idea, it's a good way to keep Rampage offense oriented without making your attack talents useless. Misery in its current state is pretty weak and this won't help though because you can't just not attack your enemies. The exception is if it's meant to be very short term where you tank and heal a ton of damage and apply a bunch of gloom effects then cancel it and shred your disabled foes. If done well Misery could be pretty awesome, but it will be hard to make it comparable to Rampage. It's worth noting that due to the offensive and simple nature of Rampage it is very likely that most players will pick it over Misery regardless of which is "better" because it's inherently easier and faster to use, so Misery would need to be interesting and powerful to draw players to it.

[HousePet]

Perhaps more passive, damage over time like effects could work with the Misery theme.