ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

After attempting a run through the campaign as a grappling-based brawler, I'm curious as to how everyone else goes about building one for the campaign (if anyone bothers trying it at all). I ran into three major problems with it once I got to tier 2:

• 1) Many enemies, including bosses, are either too large a category to grapple (and I never manage to find monstrous items)
  2) Many enemies, including bosses are immune to one of the more potentially awesome grapples (strangle) either because they're already immune to grapples or because they don't breathe
  3) Not even close to enough class points; I really feel like the unarmed training tree should be moved to generic talents, as that's a big point sink there and after maxing disengage I really felt like I was just throwing away generic talents because they're not much else useful for brawlers

I realize that playing a pure grappler is obviously going to be inferior to a combo striker, though with the class point deficit for brawlers, I'm not sure a hybrid grappler/striker is even plausible. Has anyone had reasonable success with a pure grappler? Obviously, at least one of the weaknesses could be more or less remedied with a little RNG luck by pulling a monstrous item early on, but I'm still not sure how to tackle the other two.

Another problem with grappling is that it costs a cat point to even get into. I have always thought that it should just start unlocked.
I do agree it needs some sort of buff. Also Brawler do need more generic point options, even if it is just moving unarmed training to generic.

Now that you mention it, it's pretty odd that Unarmed Training isn't already Generic.

It's literally an entire tree of four passive abilities. It screams Generic, really.

Passive does not mean generic.

Generic means, generally useful for everyone. In other words, generic.

I'll look at moving unarmed mastery into another tree when I get around to rewriting brawlers (which may not be until after release) so the rest of the tree can be made generic. But if you guys run a search on Brawlers and look at some of the older posts one complaint of early brawlers was that they had too many generic trees

As to grappling being locked, this was made so as not to overwhelm people with options. Brawlers already have the combo point system which is fairly complicated compared to say how Berserkers or other warrior classes work. Grappling is also fairly complicated. On top of this the class runs off multiple stats.

But I'll look at grappling too when I do the brawler rewrite as well as the stat issues.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to devote to coding right now. My wife just started school this semester and took more classes then she really should have, so her free time and thus my free time is at a minimum. And the holidays are coming up. So it will be awhile before I can get into any serious projects.

Ok, this is based on two recent experiences:
svn (pre b43): http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=35014

b42: http://te4.org/characters/2460/tome/e19 ... e3cf0bc80b

The first had no grappling, and this is why I think I wanted it for the skellie build, as grappling would have helped lots in the final fight I believe.

The second character, which I played carelessly just for fun, definitely demonstrated the value of grappling added to the other brawler talents. Urkis, Wierdling Beast, and most bosses were very easy. I died just to being careless elsewhere. I think one could take down Urkis at lvl 15 or even lower with a brawler who grapples, as certain magic users are helpless against stranglehold.

I'm now running a third brawler who grapples, based on my observations. This will be my approach:

* high def (and talents that raise it) to counter everything else not being grappled
* grappling talents at 5/1/1/1 or 5/1/1/3 if you want an extra range for last talent, or 5/1/5/1 if you want BIG stranglehold. Not sure of this yet.
* the best thing is, once you have someone in a grapple, you can use all your puglilism and finishing talents (though I havent tested the multihit hit talent in pugilism). the stance also changes to striking stance and so you get the grappling stance bonus for grapples and then the striking stance bonus for striking. What you CAN"t do, is strike anyone else other than the one grappled. That is why....
* you max out CUN and counter strikes. This is essential, to kill others not being grappled.

These combos basically mean you have no problems with melee chars, archers (use rush), dragons etc.

The big problem is with multiple spell casters in an area. Which is why this is essential:
* max Heightened Reflexes, as then as soon as someone casts at you, you can just walk to them and whack them. As they keep casting, you only have to take a few hits, as you avoid projectiles mostly.

Then, there is the question of points:
I didn't think much of them, until I maxxed Uppercut, which is a great stunning attack. But with things that jump around like solipsists, the points run out. So investing a few points in Combo String makes a huge difference.

If you get Relentless strikes to 4/5, Double STrike takes only 2 on cooldown, which makes a big difference. BUt it's up to you.

In terms of equipment, one artifact is priceless, as it adds 0.2 to grappling. But so do gloves of the Iron Grip, which are very hard to find.

The CTRL compare option reveals that leather gloves attack at 60% and metal at 80%. This can make a big difference.

Imagine you have grappled and/or stunned a npc for 8 turns. 60% gives about 13 hits in this time, 80% about 10 hits. that's a 30% damage increase on average. which combined with 4/5 Relentless plus a stranglehold, becomes massive hit per turn.

But the real advantage of strangle is the silence. It doesn't work on undead (Dreadfell ) nor things that don't breathe, which is much more than I realised (stone giants, etc).

So these are my thoughts on the brawler, which is now my favorite class!

oops, forgot to mention AWESOME grappling combo - get a sun infusion , power 80+, so little can resists, and then grapple and pop sun - you have an utterly helpless critter for 5-6 turns !!!!

Major bosses can be killed this way without even working up a sweat.

And more more thing, two artifacts increase your max size, so you can grapple anything (so don't choose halfling or yeek, unless you want to wear both), and of course monstrous belts as well.

Mm... one thing to remember about gloves vs. gauntlets is that gaunts have a notably higher base damage, which is why they're slower. Mind that, especially later in the game, this in no way makes gauntlets competitive with a set of gloves that, outside the base damage, are roughly equal, it does give gauntlets the occasional advantage in the comparison. Gauntlets are particularly useful with high relentless strikes, striking stance, and maxed, ah. Double strike? Something like that. The two-hit thing. With it and relentless maxed, the CD is... well, one, iirc. You can just keep using it, if you're in striking stance. May have been a cat point needed in there, i'unno. Or it may have been changed, or I could be misremembering! Any/all of the above.

But yeah, you're probably going to want to be using gloves, all else being equal. More chances to proc crap, more on-hit damage applied, etc., so forth.

one more thing to be aware of: if your gloves have an aoe effect, like lightning, poison (svn only?), sand (svn), etc, and counter stirkes is on, and you have a friendly npc nearby (e.g. assasin's quest), even not facing the friendly, if an enemy is on his side, a counter can trigger the on hit talent and uh-oh, you've hit your friendly.

so positioning is important.

Good advice Jenx, it's neat to see someone have some successful playtime with grappling. I enjoy brawlers in general a lot, too; a halfling evasion+counterstrike build can be a lot of fun.

But yeah, I think the biggest thing with grappling is that you REALLY have to get your hands on some size boosting gear, which seem to be pretty rare in tier 1-2 zones. I've taken a bunch of characters over level 20, and 2 all the way east, but in total I think I've only ever gotten my hands on two monstrous items (and never any artifacts with it). Perhaps a slight boost to the monstrous ego droprates could go a long way. I also agree that having to spend a category point to unlock grappling hurts.



Whenever grappling does get revisited, one suggestion I have would be to introduce something similar to the combo system for grappling, even a special grappling finishers tree. In fact, what would work even better is to change it so that starting out you'd have the grappling tree unlocked, but both the current combo finishers tree and the suggested grappling finishers tree would have to be unlocked with a category point. This would be a better approach to it, I think, and it would also increase the value of grappling (as one of the major flaws in it is that not only do you not have as many points to invest in striking/finishers, you also don't generate combo points with your grappling moves). Some suggestions for moves that would go well in a grappling finishers tree (and ideally, they wouldn't have point costs but rather they all break the grapple immediately, and their effectiveness increases with the remaining duration of the grapple).

-Shoulder Toss: Throws the grappled opponent behind you shoulders, dealing damage and throwing them 1-5 squares away (based on talent level); other enemies hit by thrown opponent will receive physical damage
-Body Slam: Slams the opponent into the ground, dealing moderately high physical damage and dazing the target
-Wall Slam: Only usable next to a wall, this move slams the grappled opponent's head into the wall, dealing sizeable damage and stunning them
-Takedown: Yanks the opponent's legs out from under them, toppling them to the ground for damage and pinning them for 1-3 turns

Generic means, generally useful for everyone. In other words, generic.

I'unno, three out of four of those skills are useful for anyone and one, Unarmed Mastery, is still useful for physical fighters that don't have a specific weapon focus, and anyone who has Flexible Combat(in SVN).

I'm not actually sold on it being not generally useful. If it actually became a genuinely universal Generic, I'd probably push for barehand/shield working with sword/shield skills to give it more of a spread of interest, but overall it doesn't seem that bad for that. It kinda reminds me of Mindblades there-not everyone is going to want that weapon choice, but it doesn't actually make it bad, or make it seem thematically out of place in Generic.

Edit: Actually, the last skill is more of a problem for that, thinking on it. Non-Brawlers don't get combo points. So that getting moved wouldn't be bad. I forgot what the last passive was.

Then again, I wouldn't mind seeing that effect rolled into a full category impact or something(Like the Force of Will crit boosts/Wyrmic elemental stuff). It's kinda a dull skill, even if it is effective.

There's at least two other melee classes (AB, TW) I'd be happy to give unarmed runs a shot with. They'd love unarmed mastery being generic. It'd be pretty interesting on archers, too, and possibly a few other classes.