Revised Berserker and Skirmisher Feedback Thread

[edge2054]

Steady shot and dd have differences sure but they both scale primarily in one way, with increasing damage. Steady Shot starts out on the lower end but the weapon damage multiplier is nearly the same on the high end, a bit higher then dd when you don't factor in bleed and much lower when you do.

But they both scale only with weapon damage really and both primarily serve one purpose, killing stuff faster. Sure SS is a better boss killer but DD is much better at clearing out large groups of mobs.

My point stands. Weapon damage multipliers are a way many talents scale and yes that's not as interesting as gaining bonus abilities every other level. Yes many players won't invest heavily in these talents until late game when the higher damage is really needed and the multipliers really add up. But if DD has bad scaling then so do most weapon damage talents, in which case we're talking about a fundamental game design issue, or at least a perceived one, rather than an issue with DD itself.

[Davion Fuxa]

Since Update 1.2.2 came out, I decided to go back and take a look at Fearless Cleave, and some of the other new abilities.

Fearless Cleave seems like a noticeable improvement to the Two Handed Weapon tree in general, which compared to Two Weapon Fighting or Shield and Board playstyles was severely lacking. Even with just a talent point or two it is a very effect skill for chasing down fleeing enemies, starting combat, or getting in multiple hits on opponents. It's use is helpful for melee in giving them more options (specifically unique options over other playstyles) while not being too overpowered due to the high stamina cost in multiple uses. Overall, Fearless Cleave is a good skill - if still somewhat buggy.

I'm a little perplexed about Technique/Berserker's Strength - apparently if you someone get disarmed you lose access to the abilities in this category - notably as well you don't get access to them if you use anything other then a Two Handed weapon. This should probably be a category that works irrespective of whether you are holding a weapon (or a specific weapon) since only one talent in the tree (Shattering Blow) has anything to do with weapons in general.

I saw my first use with Shattering Blow in knocking off a damage shield made by a Guardian in Ruined Dungeon. Primarily I think this will be the real worth in this talent - besides the utility in perhaps making it easier to damage highly armored foes or help breakthrough an enemies defense to Confusion, Stun, or other effects a Berserker may entail. I see that the cooldown for it also lowers as you increase its Talent Level - this and it's increasing debuff power make it a well made talent.

Relentless Fury is a nice addition for Berserkers. They suck a lot of wind regarding Stamina due to heavy costs from Unstoppable, Blinding Speed, Death Dance, etc. Add Fearless Cleave to the mix from the new update and Berserkers almost immediately start hurting for mana 3 turns into a fight (probably throughout any part of the game). I can only assume this will be completely overpowered for usefulness around the time Unstoppable is obtainable due to being able to make more actions under the invulnerable effect - not including the fact that those actions might be more then scarce talent use and lots of bump attacks.

I'll probably look into Berserker Rage and Execution the next time I play the Berserker, but I'll leave that to next time

[Fortescue]

You mentioned Fearless Cleave is still buggy in 1.2.2? How so?

[Davion Fuxa]

You mentioned Fearless Cleave is still buggy in 1.2.2? How so?

Suslik noted that with Path of the Sun, Fearless Cleave can be used in a rather Game-Breaking manner. I also made a minor note regarding wasted Stamina because of how it is set up like Death Dance instead of a talent like Spinning Backhand.

[Jurriaan]

I read somewhere a the Fortress Training Dummy could be used to quickly get 50000 dual weapon damage and thus gain the Windblade prodigy. Cool Idea, but it feels a bit like cheating really.
Windblade hits in the 4k-5k range - life is sweet. Orc ambuses consist of rushing to the orc in the middle, wait 2 or 3 turns to see if everybody is ready to join the party and then windblade the lot

[Davion Fuxa]

I jumped back on the Skirmisher to say how the update meshed out with Buckler Mastery and Bash and Smash. Here's some thoughts then after progressing through the first 5 levels of Dreadfall.

When we last left off, I had Bash and Smash up to 3/5 Talent points. Since it's now a one turn effect, this is a very useful talent for doing big damage and sending an enemy reeling. I assume once I drop a couple more Talent Points into I will see some awesome power coming from it.

Buckler Mastery was up to 5/5 Talent Points - which is good for Bash and Smash. Sadly, it appears that it is still not deflecting projectiles.... I had a Skeleton Archer in Dreadfall shoot me repeatedly and it didn't seem like I was getting any of the attacks deflected. I may be going back to the Berserker soon JUST so that I can come back to test this talent more in the future.

Sling Sniper is now up to 3/5, which means I can use my other Called Shots Category Talents more, lovely. I'm making much more use of the bunch of them now - which really eats into Stamina but I do have Stamina talents I've yet to test out so.... The increased critical chance and damage is niced too on Called Shots as well.

For Generics I've left Indomitable at 1/5 and dropped another point in Superb Agility to get that to 2/5. Getting Tumble's cooldown is really nice, and Vault is also good on the side.

After my Dreadfall visit I went to scrounge up a few percentage points of experience and complete some alchemist potions - Elixir of Foundations, and Elixir of the Fox. I'm tempted to aid Agrimley with Elixir of Explosive Force for the Wild Growth Infusion; might do it, though I could just go to Stire for an Elixir of Precision which would be very helpful I think.

Anyhow, end result of all the potions and the last level up was 1 more Class Point and 3 more Generics to throw around. I think I'll throw the extra class point into Bash and Smash and aim to have that talent maxed out with the next level up. I'll probably look into testing out Swift Shot with follow up points. For Generics I dumped 1 point into Vault, and 2 into Light of Foot.

[grayswandir]

Passive talents need to be reset some way between updates - either put in/take out a point, or change the category mastery, or something. Otherwise it sees no reason to recalculate the (faulty) bonuses it gives.

[Davion Fuxa]

I picked up my Berserker again for a bit since I'll wait for another update before going back to Skirmisher.

I also got to see my very first use of Berserker Rage against the Wierdling Beast. Unlike with the difficulty my Halfling Skirmisher Faced, I was able to relentlessly lay waste of him due to pretty well perma stunning/confusing him and breaking any damage shield he dare put up. Shattering Blow was also used when I found several Luminous Horrors outside of the Wierdling Beast.

I know I stated I would look into Execution, but I decide instead I would invest in maxing out Rush at 5/5 and unlocking and starting on the Bloodthirst category. I'll maybe look at it but I'll probably keep my focus towards Unstoppable for now.

[Fortescue]

Buckler Mastery was fixed, unfortunately you must be able to remove or add a point to the talent or ToME won't update your character

[Davion Fuxa]

Buckler Mastery was fixed, unfortunately you must be able to remove or add a point to the talent or ToME won't update your character

Ahh, which would be impossible for me to do.

[Hogulus]

I saw the new update and I've been playing through the game with Skirmisher, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm more or less a complete noob at the game (playing explore with countless deaths, up to the Orc Prides, and the only other class I've ever really played was Alchemist a couple of patches ago, also explore, and the furthest I got on him was Dreadfell), so I might be wrong on some of my impressions, but here's what I've noted:

[*] Vault and Tumble are really fun variants on a teleport. The fact that you need to go over a monster for Vault makes it a bit tricky to use, but fun to plan around, encouraging kiting mobs in circles and turning every long dead-end hallway into a chokepoint you can abuse without fear of getting backed against a wall. It's also great for when you're still exploring a level, ensuring that one stray mob ending up on your kiting-path is an opportunity rather than a roadblock. I've died several times on the round I used it to escape trouble; not sure but it might be letting mobs get a hit in before the "teleport" takes effect?

[*] Stamina issues early on made me think Bombardment wasn't worth getting, until I had enough spare class points to buy several ranks in it, and then holyshit it's almost as good as Kill Shot, at any range, with no cooldown, and has all those extra hits for poison application and such. (Does the Block/Counterattack buff apply to each projectile in Bombardment, or just the first one?) Speaking of stamina issues, I often found myself leaving that third talent in the Acrobatics tree turned off, until I got more stamina regen / a Second Wind chestpiece.

[*] Major weaknesses / things that gave me trouble: freeze effects early on, recovering stamina in the mid-game. Right now (again, orc prides) I mostly run into trouble if a mob frequently applies blindness (extra tricky because it makes Vault near-unusable and Hurricane Shot completely unusable), or stuns / confuses alongside enough other effects that it's difficult to remove the stun/confuse. We're also quite weak to short spikes of overwhelming damage; since so much of our defenses are "you either got hit for full damage or you got hit for zero damage" all-or-nothing deals, combined with very good health regen to make it statistically balance out, I've had a lot of times when I'm breezing through an area, and oh dear that elite just hit me for 2/3rds of my health with a magic AOE and it'll murder me before I can get out of its burning-ground radius; this can almost certainly be chalked up to personal skill / lack thereof. Summoners/necros and ranged-physical attackers tend to give me problems as well, but the latter might be due to my Buckler Mastery being bugged; getting disarmed is also pretty nasty, but a: that usually happens "by itself" as far as debuffs go, so it's easy to remove it, and b: I assume every class but Brawler has issues with Disarm so it's probably not noteworthy.

[*] Hurricane Shot in [an ooze-based place that might be a spoiler]: Not even once. Bombardment is also a good way to turn 1-2 clear oozes into a level-filling problem.

[*] It seems like most or all of the decent artifact slings/pouches are arcane-imbued, which would've been good to know before I went anti-magic. (No idea if this is true about weapons in general or not)

[*] How does the scaling on Kill Shot work, exactly? Is it ((multiplier determined by talent level * weapon damage) * multiplier based on range) or ((multiplier determined by talent level * weapon damage) + (multiplier based on range * weapon damage))?

[*] No idea how I should spend my last category point. Another infusion slot would really help with all the stuns and blinds I'm getting, but Fungus provides some nice on-demand healing that I'm lacking, and Traps seems like a solid (but possibly redundant) source of damage / utility.

[*] I really hated that wyrmic orc boss. Kept blinding me, freezing me, and being immune to almost all my debuffs, given that they're all physical

Skirmishers are a ton of fun! I really like how mobile they are, the combination of "long-term" and "short-term" resource management (stamina / ammo), how the combination of kiting-based ammo/stamina regen and melee durability encourages you to kite without making you terrified of melee, how you can snipe priority targets with Called Shots while wearing down their meatshields with Bombardment / Quick Shot / Hurricane Shot, and the fact that the class concept makes total sense but hasn't been done in any fantasy-based game I've played before. The only ToME class I have to compare it to is Alchemist, though, so I might be completely off-base on some of those observations. In any case, keep up the good work, I'm excited to see how the class shapes up

[Hogulus]

I saw the new update and I've been playing through the game with Skirmisher, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm more or less a complete noob at the game (playing explore with countless deaths, up to the Orc Prides, and the only other class I've ever really played was Alchemist a couple of patches ago, also explore, and the furthest I got on him was Dreadfell), so I might be wrong on some of my impressions, but here's what I've noted:

• Vault and Tumble are really fun variants on a teleport. The fact that you need to go over a monster for Vault makes it a bit tricky to use, but fun to plan around, encouraging kiting mobs in circles and turning every long dead-end hallway into a chokepoint you can abuse without fear of getting backed against a wall. It's also great for when you're still exploring a level, ensuring that one stray mob ending up on your kiting-path is an opportunity rather than a roadblock. I've died several times on the round I used it to escape trouble; not sure but it might be letting mobs get a hit in before the "teleport" takes effect?
• Stamina issues early on made me think Bombardment wasn't worth getting, until I had enough spare class points to buy several ranks in it, and then holyshit it's almost as good as Kill Shot, at any range, with no cooldown, and has all those extra hits for poison application and such. (Does the Block/Counterattack buff apply to each projectile in Bombardment, or just the first one?) Speaking of stamina issues, I often found myself leaving that third talent in the Acrobatics tree turned off, until I got more stamina regen / a Second Wind chestpiece.
• Major weaknesses / things that gave me trouble: freeze effects early on, recovering stamina in the mid-game. Right now (again, orc prides) I mostly run into trouble if a mob frequently applies blindness (extra tricky because it makes Vault near-unusable and Hurricane Shot completely unusable), or stuns / confuses alongside enough other effects that it's difficult to remove the stun/confuse. We're also quite weak to short spikes of overwhelming damage; since so much of our defenses are "you either got hit for full damage or you got hit for zero damage" all-or-nothing deals, combined with very good health regen to make it statistically balance out, I've had a lot of times when I'm breezing through an area, and oh dear that elite just hit me for 2/3rds of my health with a magic AOE and it'll murder me before I can get out of its burning-ground radius; this can almost certainly be chalked up to personal skill / lack thereof. Summoners/necros and ranged-physical attackers tend to give me problems as well, but the latter might be due to my Buckler Mastery being bugged; getting disarmed is also pretty nasty, but a: that usually happens "by itself" as far as debuffs go, so it's easy to remove it, and b: I assume every class but Brawler has issues with Disarm so it's probably not noteworthy.
• Hurricane Shot in [an ooze-based place that might be a spoiler]: Not even once. Bombardment is also a good way to turn 1-2 clear oozes into a level-filling problem.
• It seems like most or all of the decent artifact slings/pouches are arcane-imbued, which would've been good to know before I went anti-magic. (No idea if this is true about weapons in general or not)
• How does the scaling on Kill Shot work, exactly? Is it ((multiplier determined by talent level * weapon damage) * multiplier based on range) or ((multiplier determined by talent level * weapon damage) + (multiplier based on range * weapon damage))?
• No idea how I should spend my last category point. Another infusion slot would really help with all the stuns and blinds I'm getting, but Fungus provides some nice on-demand healing that I'm lacking, and Traps seems like a solid (but possibly redundant) source of damage / utility.
• I really hated that wyrmic orc boss. Kept blinding me, freezing me, and being immune to almost all my debuffs, given that they're all physical

Skirmishers are a ton of fun! I really like how mobile they are, the combination of "long-term" and "short-term" resource management (stamina / ammo), how the combination of kiting-based ammo/stamina regen and melee durability encourages you to kite without making you terrified of melee, how you can snipe priority targets with Called Shots while wearing down their meatshields with Bombardment / Quick Shot / Hurricane Shot, and the fact that the class concept makes total sense but hasn't been done in any fantasy-based game I've played before. The only ToME class I have to compare it to is Alchemist, though, so I might be completely off-base on some of those observations. In any case, keep up the good work, I'm excited to see how the class shapes up

[Gamer-man]

Maybe it's kinda off-topic but first : get patchnotes straight please! Those you have are not specific enough. For example I still have no idea what have you changed in each class. Not everybody is expert so will remember every talent and every tree. Why don't have detailed patchnotes like :

- xxx skill is now 30 CD (was 25)
- replaced xxx with yyy
- moved xx skill to yy talent tree

That would make judging changes much more easy. I know it takes some time to do it butt compared to effort you put in this game overall it's not so much.


Sorry for my English I try my best

+1 I asked for this before as well, most people aren't interested in it however

[Fortescue]

Maybe it's kinda off-topic but first : get patchnotes straight please! Those you have are not specific enough. For example I still have no idea what have you changed in each class. Not everybody is expert so will remember every talent and every tree. Why don't have detailed patchnotes like :

- xxx skill is now 30 CD (was 25)
- replaced xxx with yyy
- moved xx skill to yy talent tree

That would make judging changes much more easy. I know it takes some time to do it butt compared to effort you put in this game overall it's not so much.


Sorry for my English I try my best

+1 I asked for this before as well, most people aren't interested in it however

I've pointed this out already, but ToME is being modified by around 5 different people at the same time (and not always the same 5 people, for example Edge just came back after a break, and DGrey has been very busy running Rogulike Radio and some other projects lately) every patch. Without any formal organization aside from DarkGod is the final say on everything. I'm sure even he doesn't look at EVERY line of code submitted, he is much too busy to do that. So, we have no official way of coordinating who is changing what and communicating that to you. Sorry, but that is the cost of open source community driven development I've TRIED to make forum posts detailing my own proposed changes, but even those aren't 100% accurate because sometimes DarkGod or Shibari will take my idea, but change it slightly (or a lot, I didn't design Kill Shot).

[Salo]

Maybe it's kinda off-topic but first : get patchnotes straight please! Those you have are not specific enough. For example I still have no idea what have you changed in each class. Not everybody is expert so will remember every talent and every tree. Why don't have detailed patchnotes like :

- xxx skill is now 30 CD (was 25)
- replaced xxx with yyy
- moved xx skill to yy talent tree

That would make judging changes much more easy. I know it takes some time to do it butt compared to effort you put in this game overall it's not so much.


Sorry for my English I try my best

+1 I asked for this before as well, most people aren't interested in it however

There are (accurate but not necessarily official) patch notes: http://tometips.github.io/#changes/talents