ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been experimenting a bit with a Halfling Brawler lately, and here's some feedback.

First of all, the class is much more fun to play than I antecipated. It's surprisingly durable in the early game and once you get Relentless Strikes going strong it gets pretty much crazy. So an internet cookie to whoever designed this.

I got through the early game with a few close calls, but nothing major to report. The class has the ability to perma-stun pretty much everything so if it's stunnable you have no problems with it... I think Old Bill and The Shade didn't even get one attack on me for example.

Talent choice is pretty difficult with so many options across the board so I can't really comment on them all. From the ones I played with I can say that Rushing Strike 5/5 is completely overpowered and needs to be toned down a bit (atm it's a Rush attack with a 7 turn stun attached, minimal cooldown and usable at zero range).
Relentless Strikes 5/5 is pretty much a necessity with the massive stamina consumption. All the passive counterattack talents felt a bit lackluster but that's probably because I didn't invest much in defense and mobs in Insane seem to have pretty high to hit.
I think Strangling Hold wasn't silencing mobs and it sometimes didn't apply properly even though the mob was already grappled, I didn't playtest this enough but there's something there.
My damage output was a bit low compared to other classes but that's probably due to having focused on maxing out Con and the defensive talents first. However I may say that Haymaker feels pretty weak and needs some love.
On another note, there's should be some description stating that the grappling talents will work only on targets up to 1 size category higher than you... getting this on the halfling was pretty much useless until I got a monstrous belt of something.

I died in Dreadfell 1 mostly because of a lack of a teleportation Rune... I'll probably have to skip getting the Tactical tree on the next toon before I get the last category point. By the way the new Dreadmasters are frigging ridiculous in insane now. They're really tough to kill and have the ability to summon instant shades with no cooldown... it's simply nuts.

P. S. - Heart of the Gloom is really difficult for starter level, specially the boss. (this might be true for insane only, but I doubt it)

P. S. 2 - Game played from start to my death in Dreadfell with barely any issues, so it seems stable betas are back . Anyway the confusion effect still lowers my fps like crazy.

Thanks for the feedback. I plan to do a bit of an overhaul on the pugilism and finishing moves trees when I get home from vacation (another week or so till I get back).

I'd like to see both of those trees worth investing in beyond relenetless and rushing. I may have Uppercut stun duration scale with talent level and combo points and remove the stun component from Rushing Strike completely. The multiple combo point talents I may tone down and give the extra combo point or points at higher talent levels. Haymaker needs some help too, maybe some stamina recovery when you kill someone with it (which would mean Relentless may lose the stamina regen).

I'm pretty sure Strangle is not bugged. Though I'll update the description a bit (without going into to much detail there's a lot of creatures that are immune to strangling). I'll update clinch description as well to include something about size categories (these talents are already pretty verbose so I hope it's not to much information over load).

I've also been contemplating rolling some of the generic talents into the pugilism/finishing move stuff and making them class talents. None of this is set in stone, just thinking out loud. I won't have time to really work on any of it till weekend after next. So if anyone has their own ideas on how to improve the class between now and then I'd love to hear more feedback