ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Was excited to see the new rares and such since I last played v38, but ended up being terribly disappointed.

Stuns and similar disabling effects are now so prevalent and deadly even in the early game that builds that do not run straight into stun/confuse immunity or pure evasion are basically at the mercy of the first bad RNG rare that comes along. I've run into several rares now that have stuns that last far longer than the mob's cool-down for applying them, making them virtually impossible for a melee character to handle except by blind luck (and a lot of stairway trips).

Such specific threat mechanics render many of the class builds pretty pointless, as they do not feature stun immunity, and early gear does not allow for it. It used to be that such long duration stuns were not encountered until quite high level.

Also, my earlier impression was that wild infusions that cured effects could not be locked by those same effects, but I've seen that happen many times now, so either it changed since 38, or I was mistaken - but this just further forces the stun/confuse immunity build issue.

Hoping this gets addressed soon, because the 10-20 game is simply a crap shoot right now unless you gear for nothing but immunity, which is not especially amusing.

There are already a lot of topics discussing this, Vastin. A number of changes have already been committed for the next version which should considerably reduce the danger in early-level elites. I have to agree that the emphasis on gaining immunities is frustrating and not particularly fun, but I think it's a fairly settled design paradigm.

Yeah rares are toned down early and anyway just run with a wild physical infusion (most races start with one) and it should be more than enough

darkgod wrote:Yeah rares are toned down early and anyway just run with a wild physical infusion (most races start with one) and it should be more than enough

Sadly, 3 times out of 4, the stunning effect will also put your wild infusion on cooldown..

Really, stun at the moment is kinda like the infamous "Five-Point-Palm Exploding-Heart-Technique" from the Kill Bill movies. If physical wild (and possible providence) are put on CD, you will die after X turns. Which means that, with a melee character, you have to search every nook and cranny for stun resistance equipment as early as possible. Which leads to boring gaming experience.

laru wrote:Sadly, 3 times out of 4, the stunning effect will also put your wild infusion on cooldown.

Stun puts four talents on cooldown. By level four, I usually have at least nine or ten talents (including inscriptions), giving a better than 50-50 chance that my wild infusion will stay off of cooldown.

laru wrote:Really, stun at the moment is kinda like the infamous "Five-Point-Palm Exploding-Heart-Technique" from the Kill Bill movies. If physical wild (and possible providence) are put on CD, you will die after X turns. Which means that, with a melee character, you have to search every nook and cranny for stun resistance equipment as early as possible. Which leads to boring gaming experience.

There are several ways to deal with being stunned, even at low (<= 12) levels. Wild infusions, Movement infusions, phase door/teleport runes, boots of disengagement/phasing, and class specific talents are the best solutions, but you can also simply retreat (helped by crowd control, if possible) or try to trap the elite behind mundane enemies as you recover. It is very important to realize that you are in trouble long before you run out of options to deal with the situation.

Also, immunities are not essential to a successful character. I am currently playing a lvl 41 Cornac Sun Paladin that made it to the east and back without ever having more than 25% stun or confusion immunities or having an unavoidable death.

Latest change for b41:

Stun will not put instant talents on cooldown, such as wild infusions

lukep: you are of course right, a good player can already deal with stun without high res/immunity. The problem is newbies like me who mostly play pure melee chars. Still, I think that damage & speed reduction and possible elimination of all curing options is way too strong for only one status effect. Luckily, with the recent change in SVN, this seems to be taken care of - now at least you can count on your infusion.

lukep wrote:Also, immunities are not essential to a successful character. I am currently playing a lvl 41 Cornac Sun Paladin that made it to the east and back without ever having more than 25% stun or confusion immunities or having an unavoidable death.

Do you consider this a consistently reliable strategy? Not a rhetorical question, by the way. Personally I find that stun and confusion are the two things most likely to kill me, or at least force me to retreat, and I prioritize those two immunities above all other stats for all builds, except perhaps for large amounts of +life or healmod. If this is not the no-brainer I believe it to be, then some insight would be nice.

Even wild infusions are not going to stop a naga myrmidon from dazing you with Rush, while a nearby rare hits you too for a combined total of all of your health before you can react.

I find that focusing heavily on any one thing (eg. confusion and stun immunity) is usually a very bad decision from a character optimization perspective. With my previously mentioned character, I could have had about 50% stun immunity easily by the time I fought the Master (IIRC, I had between 0% and 10%).

By choosing other equipment, I gained damage, healmod, health, resistances, armour, and activations. This allowed me to deal with enemies more quickly, as well as making me more durable and giving me more options. When I was stunned, I would cure it (or not), then retreat to recover. If I was in danger of becoming stunlocked, I would use my movement infusion to grant me immunity for a few turns (5 out of a cooldown of 13 IIRC).

donkatsu wrote:Do you consider [low immunity builds] a consistently reliable strategy?

Yes. I haven't prioritized stun (or confusion) immunity for the majority of my characters before the final dungeon, and 9 of them have beat the game (one more got to character lvl 58 in the ID, and one more got to the prides and was abandoned) since b21. That being said, it requires foresight and tactical options in order to stay safe/alive.

Depending on class I feel like heavy stun/confusion immunity is pretty much mandatory for Undead. It definitely helps to get Wintertide.

Stun/confusion resistance is really hard to get, especially in the early game, considering that most of the ego/rare items only provide 5-10% each. For stun resistance, you always can forge two rings with +30% each if you're paranoid, and some armor pieces can grant up to 20%. For confusion resistance, I don't see how you can stockpile 100%... so clearly you need items that can cure it.

Mathematically speaking, getting hit by a single stun or confuse is often the equivalent of taking ((duration+1) x num.enemies.present) attacks if it puts your defense mechanisms on cool-down, and it effectively negate your own offense entirely even if your attacks are not on cool-down (due to the 70% damage reduction).

Given that the most powerful melee offense skills only do about 250% damage, this makes even a modest stun or confuse several times deadlier than even the most devastating DPS attack.

As further confirmation of the OP-ness of CC, in frustration I started a berzerker and immediately invested in stun resistance and resistance gear, and managed to become stun immune by about lvl 10, confuse and blind immune by lvl 20 and put all my points into my own stun and confuse shout abilities - and very little else.

This entire run has been a cakewalk as a result thus far - night and day from my prior Bulwark or Wyvren shield builds, which were pathetically bad by comparison, constantly struggling to survive in their teens and 20's. Despite the fact that I'm playing a melee character with virtually no armor or defense, I have been able to deal with anything thrown at me with great ease - including running the Elven Ruins at lvl 22 vs lvl 34-38 mobs. Even the rares and dungeon bosses therein posed little challenge.

A berzerker's basic attacks do more damage than a shield or dagger fighter's special skills, and the immunities guarantee that you have full access to all your maneuverability and survival skills, while the stun and confuse shout cycle fast enough that enemies rarely if ever get to use their own abilities, and do minimal damage even when they do.

It turns out that stun and confuse can in fact be the end-all-be-all of pre-emptive defense, far exceeding the value of armor or elemental resistances, and very few mobs up through the 30's are significantly resistant to either.

Glad to hear that instant abilities will soon be immune to the stun lock effect. That will make other builds a little more viable - at least giving them a chance to escape and recover, though the cycle time on many stuns is so fast that wild infusions and free action abilities will still be a fairly poor way to try to deal with them.

lukep wrote:

donkatsu wrote:Do you consider [low immunity builds] a consistently reliable strategy?

Yes. I haven't prioritized stun (or confusion) immunity for the majority of my characters before the final dungeon, and 9 of them have beat the game (one more got to character lvl 58 in the ID, and one more got to the prides and was abandoned) since b21. That being said, it requires foresight and tactical options in order to stay safe/alive.

I too found that stuns were dangerous, but a manageable threat to many builds up through at least to the prides area - up until the introduction of rares.

With their introduction to the game, the threat of CC is now an issue almost immediately, and you may encounter the threat of full on stun-lock builds as early as level 15 or so, so many builds that used to be viable through most of the game previously are now much less effective than they used to be.

PowerWyrm wrote:Stun/confusion resistance is really hard to get, especially in the early game, considering that most of the ego/rare items only provide 5-10% each. For stun resistance, you always can forge two rings with +30% each if you're paranoid, and some armor pieces can grant up to 20%. For confusion resistance, I don't see how you can stockpile 100%... so clearly you need items that can cure it.

Confusion resistance: Helm of dwarven emperors, lantern of clarity, and +30% on cloak (I forget the name of the ego) should get you to 90% if I'm not mistaken. Of course the helm is far from a guaranteed drop, but I've had 100% confusion resist before Dreadfell.

lukep wrote:If I was in danger of becoming stunlocked, I would use my movement infusion to grant me immunity for a few turns (5 out of a cooldown of 13 IIRC).

So you had a skill that gives you 100% stun resistance. It is pretty much irrelevant if that resistance/immunity comes from a skill or from equipment. You still have/use it.

I would like to refer to this topic about diminishing returns, since this is a topic about 'stunlocking'. Getting stunned repeatedly would be prohibited or mitigated by a system of diminishing returns on crowd control effects.
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=28705