Doombringer, First Thoughts

[Red]

A really cool class with good fluff and good crunch. It's definitely my favorite melee class so far. I've been playing it as a melee fighter with a ton of vim sustains, and I am just loving the stacks of debuffs any enemy that lasts more than a few hits gets. Plus I've already got a useful offence/escape teleport and the total debuff remover, all without having died once yet.

Trying it as a Cornac, just because I didn't know what to expect. Almost wish I had gone with Yeek, just to stack both the demon sustain global speed and the Yeek speed, but then I think I'd've missed out on the new starter area. Plus I'd be dead four times over, because Yeeks, bless their dear hearts, are as durable as wet tissue paper.

So what does everyone else think?

[Darkmere]

Rolled a dwarf because dwarf. I couldn't stand corruptors or reavers, but I really like Doombringer. I made Doombeard work like a fire-heavy 2H arcane blade with explosions everywhere, fearscape, and demon form. He's chewing through the east right now, past the first pride (fighter). I gotta say, they're really good in Fearscape, and the tactical nature of all their escapes and safety abilities are mechanically interesting.

The Demonologist stuff looks even better though. I'M making myself finish this run first, though.

[donkatsu]

Haven't played it yet, but looking through the talents and the code, the Oppression tree looks gamebreakingly powerful. Here's the combo I'm thinking of:

Destroyer > Abduction (1 + 1 + 3 hits = 5 stacks of Overwhelming Fear) > Share the Pain proc or just a bump attack (6 stacks) > Hope Wanes > Game Over

Eternal Suffering has a 48% chance to extend the duration of Hope Wanes by 3. This means that on average, Hope Wanes duration is going up instead of down, which in turn means that the enemy is doing nothing whatsoever, forever. To make matters even worse for your victim, you can just keep stacking Mass Hysteria, resulting in over 100% damage reduction that can't be saved against, AND that has an AoE of 9, which means basically everything in sight would be doing 0% damage to you.

I'm going to try this out and see if it actually works in practice.

(edit: nevermind start is impossible gg)

[Razakai]

I think Hope Wanes+Eternal Suffering isn't an intended interaction. At least I hope not.

[DaltonRaccoon]

The DoomBringer is definitely getting nerfed. It's way too good.

[PureQuestion]

I think Hope Wanes+Eternal Suffering isn't an intended interaction. At least I hope not.

It isn't.

The DoomBringer is definitely getting nerfed. It's way too good.

It is.

[Red]

Remind me not to update my game until I beat the game, then.

[Myrkabah]

I'm just going to leave this here.

[Myrkabah]

Thoughts in more detail: As the posters above say, it's way too good. I'd go so far as to say overpowered.

One of the big problems is that the class is too mobile. Rush, Detonating Charge, and Fearscape Shift on top of the ability to pull with Abduction has made mobility problems completely non-existent compared to, say, a Bulwark, or a Cursed.

A second problem is that both Vim and Stamina are too easy to recover. Surge of Power and Destroyer make Quick Recovery completely obsolete, and Draining Assault plus natural kill-regen effectively made it so that I the only time I ever was even low on Vim was when I got hit with a resource burn by any nearby mage-hunters. Even stressing your Vim with the Demonic Strength tree doesn't create any serious resource management problems.

Demonic Strength, in general, is way too good. Crit chance? Check. Debuff? Check. A significant heal PLUS a stamina boost AND it's instant? Check. Flat damage increase that scales with crit-multiplier? Check. Flat damage reduction on par with Antimagic Shield but for all damage? Check.

All this together creates a class that is highly armored, highly mobile, highly damaging, and ridiculously tanky. Cakewalking through orc prides is awesome, but the power level is definitely incongruous when I can't get the Demonologist out of the starting zone.

My suggestions:

Remove the Combat Techniques tree entirely - having an easy Rush available isn't really necessary.
Rework the Wrath tree to be available at level 1 and progress as Detonating Charge -> Voracious Blade -> Obliterating Smash -> Destroyer.
Reduce the values of Demonic Strength talents significantly (ie, by about 30-50%). Increase the Vim cost of Abyssal Shield. Surge of Power should cost a turn.
Reduce Stamina regeneration from Destroyer.

That said, man, what a fun class - awesome flavor, too. Reminds me a little of the "Phoenix Knight" from a mod. It's been a really fun playthrough and I'm glad I caught this one pre-nerf. =D

[donkatsu]

Well, yes, overpowered compared to Cursed or Bulwark. Resources are a mere formality for a lot of classes already. The flat damage reduction will never reach triple digits like Antimagic Shield does, Antimagic Shield is not that good to begin with, and Abyssal Shield is capped at 50% of the damage where Antimagic Shield is not. 15% crit chance on par with other crit passives and the debuff is only a minor side effect. The heal is on double or triple the cooldown of other heals. An AoE that can hit a bunch of unnamed trolls for 2k? Spellcasters have been doing that for years.

I mean, yes, Doombringers are not gimped like the aforementioned classes but they're hardly outside the upper bounds of power set by other classes, disregarding their Oppression tree which is actually broken right now (despite being dismissed as useless by some). If Doombringers are overpowered then there just aren't words left to describe Archmages or Marauders. If they're fun to play, then I really don't think it's something to worry about.

[Myrkabah]

^That's a fair rebuttal. Subjectively speaking, it seems like I'm having a much easier time with Doombringer than I have with either Archmages or Marauders, and I'm basically trying to analyze why that seems to be the case for me. The healing, damage reduction, status-effect dump, and high AOE damage seems to be a big part of that equation.

I'm definitely not trying to be a nerfmonger or anything, it's just that it's a "first thoughts" thread, nerfs are already on the table, and my first thoughts upon getting my build together were 'wow, this class seems pretty OP compared to others I've played and had a lot of trouble with', so I expounded on those thoughts.

YM, of course, MV.

[HousePet]

I'm quite happy to nerf Archmages and Marauders.

[Red]

So, out of everyone who's been posting here, how many have been playing these guys on Normal and how many have been playing on Nightmare or Madness? Because nerfs shouldn't be tailored to Normal when 75% of the classes in the game can't even complete Madness.

[Frumple]

... did DG change his position on tailoring the game's difficulty to normal and having the extra difficulties being there just for fun at some point? I was kinda' under the impression that madness, in particular, isn't really meant to be beat at all (and the fact that 25% or whatev' of the classes can probably meaning those classes need a mechanical check of some sort). With the other non-normal difficulties being similar but lesser. There to be more challenging, not necessarily to be beatable.

Which is pretty okay. The only meaningful way to balance for all the difficulties would be to have difficulty-specific instances of each class, really. Something that can win on madness is not going to be tuned for normal, heh. And considering normal, is, well, normal. It should probably be the one things are getting tuned around. Madness isn't a balance concern, it's a test to see which classes are broken, and how

[Red]

I'm just going by what a lot of the forum stuff is on. However, dificulty specifc class instances sounds intersting...