Stamina Sustains and later Actives

[Canderel]

Hi All,

I want to discuss stamina sustains vs. other sustains. It would seem stamina sustains are meant to be one at a time, max 2 at a time if you're using the cheap ones, maybe 3 at a time at lvl 50.

Shadow Combat - 20
Shadow Feed - 40
Exploit Weakness - 30
Berserker - 40
Blood Frenzy - 100 (!) and drains 4 per turn
Aim - 20
Rapid Shot - 20
True Grit - 70 (!)
Precise Strikes - 30
Precision - 50 (!)
Momentum - 50 , and drains 6 stamina per turn
Slow Motion - 80 (!)
Expert Strikes - 50
Arcane Combat - 20
Arcane Feed - 40
Superiority - 80 (!), and drains 15 (!!!) per round
Shattering Impact - 40, and drains 15 (!!) per round
Total Thuggery - 40, and drains 12 - Skill level per round
Breath Control - "only" 15, but costs you global speed
Shield Wall - 30
Last Stand - 90 (!)

Right considering that most stamina based classes doesn't gain any benefit from Willpower other than Max Stamina and some saves, the average lvl 50 stamina user (Zerkers, Fighters, Brawlers, Rogues, Shadowblades, Marauders, Archers more...?) will have +- 400 stamina these can be very much for non-lvl 50 characters to have.

Most stamina actives are also fairly stamina heavy, leaving stamina users often depleted of stamina, much more so than mana or other resource users. (IMO) Some people may call this balance, or trade-off, but for me, it detracts the enjoyability. I hate having rushed in, used my shield, then whirlwind, then flurry, then... oh, my stamina is up. :-/

Rather give me something to do, than to strand me with no stamina. (Ie. Longer cooldowns is better than high costs/low stamina pool) There is no strategy in using teleport (or stairscumming) and resting for stamina.

Archers have a good system with 1 cheap low stamina/low cooldown option, which can be used ad nauseum. But most of the melee classes doesn't have a "steady shot" equivalent. Which I think is a shortcoming. Mages and the like have several cheap options available to "keep them going", bread and butter if you like, which the stamina melee guys mostly lack.

Rush is an enormous stamina cost especially with a fair fatigue level, it can be over 40 stamina, 10% of a lvl 50 char, much more on a lvl 10 or 20 char. Anyway, IMO stamina needs to regen quicker, and/or sustains cheaper and/or actives cheaper. But lets discuss.

[edge2054]

Breath Control isn't losing it's speed penalty But you're right, the speed penalty is to offset the low stamina cost. The point of the talent is to give stamina regen at the cost of more controlled actions. Like a Zen approach to combat if you will.

Generally speaking though I agree. The sustain cost on many stamina based talents is pretty hefty. To make it worse many of these talents also cost a turn to activate or deactivate. If they could be turned on and off more easily I don't think the stamina cost would feel so crippling but considering you need to spend a turn and 90 stamina to activate Last Stand for instance (and the bonus really isn't that great) it really makes some of the stamina based sustains pretty underpowered.

[bricks]

I feel like the current system encourages you to amass large amounts of stamina and then run away to regenerate during long fights. I'd rather it have a smaller total stamina pool, high costs, and rapid regeneration (so going a few turns without fighting would let you use a skill, opposed to waiting 30 turns).

[Canderel]

Lower pool would force sustains down...

[Grey]

Stamina is the most difficult of all the resources to manage, since there's no way to get a decent amount of it back for the majority of r/c combos. The Combat Veteran tree offers some great stamina regen (+2.5 per turn and +10 per kill) but it tends to be locked for most of the classes that have it and category points are just that bit too valuable to spend purely on stamina regen (since the other talents in the tree are good, but more of a luxury). Pressing R between all fights is tiresome, and protracted battles can be a big pain.

There is a serious problem of talents with crazy stamina costs, especially considering for much of the game you'll have less than 200 stamina. If you did a poll of which talents were completely avoided and never used I imagine these high cost stamina sustains would rank right up there. Instant activate would help some of them, but for others they need a drastic reduction in cost to be remotely attractive. No stamina talent should cost more than 50 unless it offers some very godlike bonuses. The huge stamina drains some of them throw on you are also almost impossible to play with. If the intention is for them to be short-term effects then make them activates with a duration.

Personally I see no reason why we shouldn't have every sustain in the game as insta-cast. Same for any activateables that have a duration effect (though many of those have become instant now).

Rush is the biggest offender for single-use stamina drain in my opinion. And the worst sin about it is that it's intended to be the opening move of many battles. An opener that cripples my future damage delivery? Thanks, ToME :( I'd love to see it with a more restricted cooldown (so it doesn't scale down so low), 50% damage, and a stamina cost of around 25. Otherwise the stamina cost of activates isn't that bad. Flurry has a quite appropriate cost in my opinion, whilst others like Dirty Fighting and Stunning Blow are pretty cheap. If you have Unending Frenzy maxed they're practically free. Whilst ToME4 does have a lot more involved combat than many roguelikes I still feel like base attack is still the default, and it's best to rely on it instead of going all out on the talents.

[Canderel]

Grey, my biggest gripe here is that you need to invest in the combat veteran tree (probably 12 class points +1 cat for many). Almost all stamina users need/like it, or something like the brawler equivalents. And it's a pretty boring tree as you correctly pointed out. (The last skill is quite nice).

I played with the marauder one (light of foot I think), but it's stamina gain is only really good once you combine it with step up (need a cat point) or a movement infusion, which is a bit situational.

+1 on making all sustains instant usage.

[TheRani]

If you think Slow Motion is bad now, you should have seen it Before DarkGod reduced its cost! It was like 120 or something!

[Grey]

I've heard it can have a very powerful effect. However I'd personally prefer talents to have decent effects for medium costs than overpowered effects for crazy costs.

[TheRani]

Slow Motion is indeed fun to use, and if you max it, it allows you to dodge arrows as well as some spells. Plenty of spells still hit you though, and it doesn't work on the boulder throwing thing that giants like to do.

[Silvermoon]

Sustains should be a % of your maximum stamina. It would make it far easier to balance them, as the sustain cost of an early ability is nearly non-existent by the time you're higher in levels.

Also, despite sustains being a pain for stamina users, I think equilibrium sustains are even more annoying. I'd like to see equilibrium sustains increase the rate at which your failure rate increases, but still maintain a 0% minimum.

[edge2054]

Making stamina sustains a percentage of maximum stamina would require a significant rewrite. Sustain cost isn't stored in the activation (though it could be) meaning that the only way the game knows (as of now) what the sustain cost is is by rechecking the talents sustain cost.

In other words. If you have a sustain cost of 20% of your stamina and you have 100 stamina the talent will cost you 20 stamina to activate. If your stamina goes up or down in the mean time you'll get more or less back when you deactivate it based on your current stamina value.

Now it wouldn't be especially hard to change this. The sustain cost could be stored in the sustain itself and refunded when it's turned off easily enough but easy doesn't mean it wouldn't be tedious and time consuming to change. Certainly more tedious then just changing the numbers on a few talents who's stamina cost is to high.

[bricks]

That idea for Equilibrium has some merit, Silvermoon. It might be better to give Equilibrium the same mechanics as Paradox - skill costs increase with higher Equilibrium, and Willpower scales the failure rate down. (I'm assuming that it doesn't already do this. Equilibrium is a pain to manage and dissuades me from playing Summoner/Wyrmic, so I may not know the mechanics very well.)

[Reat]

I'm new, so maybe I'm missing something, but why isn't there any stamina regeneration infusions? Seems like it would really help out melee classes, especially since they have so many stamina-draining buffs.

And I think a skill should either cost stamina up front OR per turn, but not both. When I rolled my first character (a fighter), I looked at all them skills that cost stamina, then looked at the ways I could recover stamina, and thought, well there's a bunch of useless skills. As I found out, Archers have the perfect balance between low and high stamina skills, as well as ways to recover it. Imagine if Aim had a stamina drain to it, it'd be terrible! I think any class that has skills that use stamina should have access to the tree that has the stamina regeneration talent, unlocked.

[Dervis]

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but I like the system as it is. There are a lot of stamina, stamina regen and -fatigue items that you're probably overlooking and would make your life easier. And probably some mild investment in willpower or not using plate would be a choice for you if you really need a lot of stamina.

On the other hand I must agree that there are a lot of temporary buffs and sustains on the stamina classes that would be much better as instant.

I'm new, so maybe I'm missing something, but why isn't there any stamina regeneration infusions?

Actually one of the things I can't really understand is why there is a Manaregen rune, and no infusions/runes for any other resource (actually there's a rune for paradox :S). Anyway the game could use at least a Stamina regen infusion and an Equilibrium regen infusion, possibly one for Psi as well.

[Frumple]

Actually one of the things I can't really understand is why there is a Manaregen rune, and no infusions/runes for any other resource (actually there's a rune for paradox :S).

Mostly because Arcane and Shadow Blades exist. They're mana users with no native mana regen and need something to tide them over until they get access to their regen talents. E: This is a feature no other class has -- everyone else (except cursed) starts off either with native regen or a 1st level starting talent that regens their resource. The only exception, cursed, have their regen and degen of resource as a very integral class mechanic.

And no, just giving them regen isn't an option, heh. Totally against their fluff and an interesting mechanic regardless.