Tales of Maj'Eyal 1.5 Beta!

[Frumple]

Huh. Just to check that I didn't miss it in a changelog or somethin', are we supposed to be reentering levels where we last left them? Pretty sure it wasn't happening in 1.4.9, but now if I recall off a level, or later on, when/if I come back, I show up where I left instead of at the entrance stairs. Certainly makes leaving a zone and returning much faster, but it's also kinda' weird (and occasionally confusing, 'cause muscle memory has me tap autoexplore to go to the down stairs when I'm traversing an empty level, heh). Regardless, even if I didn't miss something and it is a bug of some sort, it might be nice to have the behavior as an option you can toggle.

Also, it looks like the fortress's auto-sort feature when you drop junk on the ground in that one room isn't functioning?

[Strongpoint]

I think new dirty fighting should allow the player to see his unarmed damage like brawlers\characters with flexible combat do

[ster]

. Possessor ends up wanting Willpower and Cunning for sure, and adding a 1H or 2H weapon in makes them want strength as well, otherwise your skill damage will fall horrendously behind since it is based off of weapon damage.

cun is only 0.4 mindpower per point and barely factors into non-psiblade mindstar damage, you can totally do wil for requirements > str > cun

i do agree that the class probably needs more trees (on the generic side especially) but currently most of their talents are really good so it's not a big loss (all of the 1h+mindstar and 2H trees, and you can have a set for either. ogres get the 2-mindstar tree too but it's not that great honestly)

[The Tapir]

Marauder has Hack n' Back as a beginning talent despite the talent not appearing in the talent sheet at all.

[Razakai]

Good spot. Skirmisher is also still learning the old Vault rather than Disengage as they should be on birth.

[Mordy]

Archer attacks with Shoot Down (well I didn't test without) go past friendly creatures without harming them without reason. The targeting tooltip does imply the arrow will stop though but it doesn't.

I was "testing" that with a Dwarf Archer and it was Norgan who was on the way.

[Razakai]

Might be related to their self-shooting protection talent - I'll check what it's doing.

[themuffinthief]

Rogues venomous/strike (poisons) has a bug with unlearning the talent. You get venomous throw for free by leveling venomous strike, but any points you take out of venomous strike unlearns venomous throw (even going from 2 to 1).

Edit: was going to see what happened if i unlearned/relearned throwing knives but its already locked in.

[Pisastrish]

Not sure if this is intended or not, but when using possessor's weapon trees, if you have the required equipment in your main set but are currently using your off set you can't switch with the talents.

Edit:Picked up device mastery from a thief escort, and now I can't unlearn any talents, it says "you cannot unlearn this talent because of talent: -device mastery(not enough stat: CUN)

[darthsawyer]

I've been doing all testing on insane, here are my thoughts:

Dwarf buff is absolutely fantastic, you can play a dwarf with pretty much any class now without gimping yourself.
Rogue and Archer reworks are great, but stealth still doesn't do much in insane. Even with max cunning I constantly am spotted.

Earth/Stone archmage tree buff are great, I can finally play a Dwarf Geomancer in insane! Stoneskin still is very expensive for what it provides on higher difficulties, I think either the mana cost should be lowered or the armor increased. A less boring solution would be to give it a %chance to reduce the cooldown of a random Stone/Earth spell by x turns when hit while sustained. Maybe increased knockback immunity or something else that would make it worth getting 5 points in.

I've been playing a lot of Dwarf, and I've noticed that Norgan stands around doing nothing quite often since he doesn't share your vision and only has 2 light range. I suggest giving him increased light range or infravision that isn't shared with the player.

Archer's Shoot Down states that it prevent your arrows from hitting yourself; what it neglects to mention is that it prevents all arrow firing skills from harming any friendly unit. (I tried to kill Norgan since he was just getting in the way but was unable to, same with the uniques in Iron Council ).

The line in Possessor's Mindstar trees is kind of confusing, I think it means you can't use the skill while Psiblades is sustained, but I am unsure. I request a more clear description in those skills. Something like "This skill cannot be use while Psiblades is sustained" would be adequate.

Now that we have Possessors stealing abilities, would you take a look at Morrigor? Currently it steal abilities at level 3, there aren't that many abilities that are worth the turn to cast at only 3.0. I'm thinking it should start stealing abilities at 1.0, and gradually increase the more souls you steal. Maybe something like 1000 stolen souls for it to steal talents at level 5? That would be an increase of 0.1 every 25 kills.

Assassination's Garrote is terrifying on enemies as a mage, making 5 points in Arcane Eye mandatory on insane+, but I think that's fine. Terrorize is extremely powerful and may need a nerf. I opened a vault with roughly 70 enemies in it and the majority were stunned or confused making it a cakewalk with Whirlwind + Blade Flurry. For those that want to optimize Whirlwind, always move diagonally with it.

I like the fatigue reduction of Light Armor Training, it allows casters to wear a full set of Light Armor without having to worry about that massive fatigue penalties.

I disarmed every trap I encountered but I never learned any traps, not sure exactly how that mechanic works.

Higher Archers with the Sniper tree are hilarious, the bonus vision range and attack range work perfectly together. Born into Magic and Highborn's Boon are kinda useless on an archer but I think it's viable.

Lichform level 7 is awesome, shame you have to get a mastery amulet and spend a cat point to get it. Adding a chance for a mastery amulet to drop from Celia for that tree would be nice.

I see a lot of addons around that remove the limit to how many times you can improve a category or increase how much mastery a category point adds, maybe category points could be looked at. The lichform tree is probably the only tree I'd ever spend a cat point to improve, a meager 0.2 mastery really isn't competitive with unlocking an entire tree.
Some suggestions I've seen:

• Improving a category only costs half a cat point
  Increase category improvement from 0.2 to 0.4
  Remove the limit of only 1 improvement

Implementing one of those changes would create a little more build diversity.

Something I love playing that doesn't see a lot of support is Dual Mindstar Rogues. Thankfully you can use all dual wield skills with mindstars in the rework, but I'd love to see a hidden category for rogue dedicated to mindstars. The unlock conditions could be to kill Urkis and the Grand Corrupter with an antimagic rogue wielding mindstars.

Anyway, those are my thoughts so far on the current state of the beta. Thanks for all your hard work and letting us beta test! I'm post again later as I continue to test.

[ster]

Assassination's Garrote is terrifying on enemies

easy fix: remove enemy stealth

e: currently it's less bad than before (now you track because everyone has this automatically, avoid being one shot by the rogue/sb/temporal stalker/orc assassin rare+ somehow, wait out shadowstrike + shadow dance bonuses, then kill while they're on CD, rather than the old stealth where unseen actions made it impossible to do anything. it doesn't solve oneshots and coup de grace might even make oneshots a bigger problem but it's better than nothing)

[Frumple]

I see a lot of addons around that remove the limit to how many times you can improve a category or increase how much mastery a category point adds, maybe category points could be looked at. The lichform tree is probably the only tree I'd ever spend a cat point to improve, a meager 0.2 mastery really isn't competitive with unlocking an entire tree.

Huh. Is getting bosses on possessors not worth the cat point to you, or are you relying on mastery amulets for it?

... speaking of that, though, if you're doing dwarf runs, maybe do me a favor and see if you can possess the mouth? Want to see if (and how) it works, but if someone else can expend the effort...

[Micbran]

Alright, finally managed to hop onto 1.5 for some testing on insane. Decided to go with marksman first, seeing as how there seems to be very little feedback on it.

First glance:
Sniper looks... underwhelming, also typo in concealment "increasing our weapon's attack range." Meanwhile, agility is more focused on mobility and kiting which is probably where a majority of your problems are going to come from: melee enemies. Sniper forces you to stay still and yes, does give you some DR and ways to kind of deal with melee's up in your face but... Agility just seems better which naturally makes slings a better choice. That being said I haven't actually tried it and will give my feedback on how agility really feels (looks a lot like skirmisher talents too).
Munitions seems like an interesting replacement for poisons, so I'll have to give that a try.

Pros:
Marking mechanic is neat and although rng based, first blood helps deal with that so it doesn't feel bad at all. Allows special interactions with certain talents that are only usable with marking, so it isn't just a "press steady shot, press shoot" fest.
Reflexes seems quite strong, namely intuitive shots. I hope it has a cap somewhere because it seems to scale entirely off TL (which makes me worried about rare+, kinda like reverse sawbutcher).
Definitely far more interesting and fun than old Archer.


Cons:
I hate the combat veteran tree and wish you had reworked it along with these class reworks.
What's the point of a bow? Slings seem so much better.
Marks should have some sort of interaction in the level 10 sling and bow trees. (IMO)
Light armor training is... odd. It scales heavily with the first 3 points up to 30 defense and then the next level goes from 30 --> 33. Additionaly, it gives armor hardiness which... kinda doesn't make sense since if I wanted to benefit from armor hardiness, I would have just gone into heavy armor and stacked armor. Perhaps light armor could give a small flat armor boost or turn 20/25% of scaled defense stat into armor? Something small like that.

I'll be updating this post more as I go on.

Edit 1: Okay, I notice light armor training A LOT on rare+'s, enemies with two TL into it end up with around 45 defense or so. which is... quite a bit. Maybe round out the amount of flat defense it gives to be more consistent across all TL with a hard cap somewhere.

Edit 2: seems to be a bug with the way disengage is targeted. The first square shows up as red and the second as blue and it allows me to do this kind of disengage move.
http://imgur.com/a/uhevA

Edit 3: projectiles destroyed on top of people via. shoot down seem to damage them. Edit 4: but only in some cases?

Edit 5: you seem to be able to target enemies outside of your shooter's max range with sentinel.

[Frumple]

Do have to remember re: marking and rng that there is flare, and even just a point in that is quite nice. Particularly when you note bullseye makes it effectively have no cooldown if you're hitting more than one thing with it, and can ping most of the marks before they time all. Usually by the time you've popped the marks, flare's back up. Stamina would potentially be a concern, but it appears whatever changes had been done to curtail stamina regen (particularly in relation to the bullseye/mark/flare feed) were undone, ehehe.

Sniper wise, weeellll... it has aim. Aim's pretty nice, heh, particularly when pretty much your everything scales off either physpower or accuracy. Bow wise you just have to leverage that (meaning it's a lot more likely you can actually get stuff to stick) and your debuffs (pin, knockback, both a slow and global slow) to keep junk at range. Rest of the talents I can't speak much on, though. Concealment and shadow shot both look kinda' like they got nerfed a fair bit in regards to playing keepaway (no position obfuscation, resist check), and I still haven't actually gotten around to using snipe, ha. You don't actually have to stand still for snipe, though, near as I can tell double checking the code, other than the whole needing to use two talents to fire thing. Wait for a bullseye proc, then kick on trueshot and get your snipe on, heh.

Mostly comes down to if you want more damage and more reliable attacks, or mobility, a bit of defense, and more attacks. If you're having trouble keeping things at range, then agility's probably better. If you're not (and sniper makes it more likely you won't), then, well... taking the talents that need you close enough to get easily jumped on to fully use is maybe the worse idea, heh.

E: All that said, just noticed a bug with concealment. Item activated talents (like, say, surefire's steady shot ) don't seem to break it. Now excuse me while I take this and my 5/5'd charm mastery and go cause some problems :V

E2: Actually, track doesn't, either. It's convenient, heh. Also, the item activation is... something screwy is going on. It does properly break concealment when I have auto-accept target on, but doesn't when I don't. No clue what's going on there, heh.

[darthsawyer]

Huh. Is getting bosses on possessors not worth the cat point to you, or are you relying on mastery amulets for it?

... speaking of that, though, if you're doing dwarf runs, maybe do me a favor and see if you can possess the mouth? Want to see if (and how) it works, but if someone else can expend the effort...

I didn't see that you needed a cat for bosses. Trying the mouth right now.

Bug: Mind Whip from Possessor's Psionic Menace cat cleaves to friendly targets even when there is a valid adjacent enemy. The cleave should prefer to strike enemy units over friendly (RIP Norgan).

Bug: Mind Whip cleaves though walls. More specifically, you can target a corner than an enemy is standing adjacent to and it will cleave off the wall and hit him.

Holy shit Dwarf Possessor is a rough start on insane, the orc archers murder you.


When you possess the only body you have stored and click the cannibalize button from the popup menu you get an error:

You can indeed possess the mouth, and be retardedly tanky with it. I maxed Psionic Duplication and put a cat point to improve it's category and got 4 uses of The Mouth. It has great skills too, ez win for sure. You can't walk normally but movement abilities seem to work, I can move through walls with Dwarf's Stone Walking

Here is an album with a picture of the cannibalize bug and the mouth possession:
http://imgur.com/a/LTAXZ

Ignore the absurd psi pool I have, I had to cheat by increasing my health and psi to make it there without dying