Combat stats modifiers

[oldBeaver]

Hi all!

I haven't played ToME really much (currently only one of my chars traveled to the east), but I've mentioned that especially in mid and late game "diminishing-returns" combat stats system interacts badly with buff and debuff effects. Talents such as Battle Cry that reduce enemy defense or Daunting Presence that reduce powers - can be significant debuff in early game (while corresponding stats aren't usually reach tier 3), but appear to be a nuisance when most dangerous enemies (and thus primary targets of your debuff talents) have tier 4-5 attribute values, effective penalties are so minor that you often even can't benefit from cross-tier effect increase/decrease - so losing talent points, combat turns and resources on those talents is inefficient. Nearly all the same about buffs - even if 50 mana for sustain isn't much of a deal, bonus from Arcane Power seems to be really low in endgame (speaking of AP, IMO it should scale with Mag/Wil stat to remain useful).

This renders such talents to rapidly lose their effectiveness as the game progresses (and character build becomes more important) - in comparison to damage-dealers, major status effects (stun, confiuse, daze, etc.) and "linear" modifiers such as damage%, speed, resists/penetration. So it likely needs some rebalancing to make corresponding talents more popular and reliable in builds.

I have no ideas how to fix this without heavily affecting entire game balance (attribute modifiers from items/stats in particular), but probably some work with diminishing-returns curve or with talents efficiency will help.

[SageAcrin]

Arcane Power is excellent at endgame if fully built-it's over 20 Spellpower, which only some very high end Robes compete with. The relative boost compared to capping it at early levels is reduced, but that is in fact the point of diminishing returns-so that powers don't spiral out of control. The relative impact is still pretty good, and nothing says that a skill needs an even return throughout the entire game. (It should avoid being overly good or bad at any point, unless there's a very good reason, but that doesn't mean a good skill can't degrade to average over the game.)

Most statistical bonuses scale with some statistic, too, or grant core stats that the class really likes. I'm actually struggling to think of a stat boost I think is completely not worth it, as far as skills go.

Stat reduction do seem like there's some that need to be rebalanced, but that's mostly on a per-case basis. Battle Cry is indeed a bad skill, IMO(I believe it hasn't really change since I made a writeup of worst skills in the game, which it was in.), as is Daunting Presence(Though... in fact, Presence doesn't need that big of a boost, honestly, since it is purely Sustained, and cheap at that-it just needs to matter more. Double it and make the radius a bit bigger and it makes a pretty good defensive barrier equivalent.).

But some stat downs are meant as relatively small impacts due to being attached to otherwise good skills for other reasons-in other words, the design is aware of this issue. Some skills are just old, is all. A case by case tweaking would be good.

[oldBeaver]

Ok, I can agree about power-up talents - as long as almost every of them are passive or sustain with relatively low cost (and, yes, +100 accuracy from Perfect Strikes is decent anyway, so diminishing returns don't ruin this talent at high-level zones) - however I still not sure 18 Spellpower bonus (as in b42, probaby SVN build changes something?) worth 50 mana and 5 talent points (or 4, manathrust is nearly essential), but probably playing more with archmagi will change my mind.

Still, I think there is something wrong with skills that designed to reduce enemy stats. When I consider to put a talent point into such (Sunder Arms, or Turn Back the Clock for example) I realize that reducing enemy power from 20 to 1 is fun, but trying to waste my turn to reduce it from, say, 75 to 70 - isn't really that fun! If that's designed to weaken enemies having tier 1-2 stats - why someone really bother to weaken already weak enemies in late game?
The same is about enemies trying to make you suffer - it can be significant threat early, but later these attempts just make you smile.

Even if you try to rebalance them by increasing their values to compensate diminishing returns - they'll appear to be totally overpowered in early game, still plaguing players' expectations about them as they realize that nearly all strong enemies virtually have 67-80% resistance to this effect (as reducing actual value by 2/3 to 4/5 depending on tier). I'd prefer to see those talents with less values, but not affected by diminishing returns system - so if my Sunder Arms reduce enemy accuracy by only 10, but not scaled with tier - it will be more likely to invest.

[phantomglider]

A lot of the skills that give a temporary debuff to their targets are attached to a big chunk of damage. Turn Back The Clock, for example, I don't care that much about the -20 to all stats, I care more about the two 300 damage projectiles.

[SageAcrin]

Even if you try to rebalance them by increasing their values to compensate diminishing returns - they'll appear to be totally overpowered in early game, still plaguing players' expectations about them as they realize that nearly all strong enemies virtually have 67-80% resistance to this effect (as reducing actual value by 2/3 to 4/5 depending on tier). I'd prefer to see those talents with less values, but not affected by diminishing returns system - so if my Sunder Arms reduce enemy accuracy by only 10, but not scaled with tier - it will be more likely to invest.

Statistical scaling is easy. Just have skills like Sunder Arms scale more with stats. The baseline at earlygame would remain the same then.

This way, as the game goes on, their impact increases to compensate for that resistance, as you put it, much like any attack scales upwards to do more damage to get past the "resistance" that is enemies having better elemental resistances and more HP. Yes, they'll still do less raw impact than earlygame, because of the statistical curve involved. But they can definitely do enough.

I do think it's pretty questionable if some attacks do enough, right now, though. Sunder Arms is another iffy skill, though at least it has damage attached.

[donkatsu]

I do rather like percent modifiers of stats, like Cripple or Mobile Defense. More talents could stand to use that kind of scaling instead.