ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

When starting to play Nightmare, i studied the builds and notes of the insane and nightmare winners. Most useful information were provided by the builds and notes of stition the first rightful insane-winner so far. By now i won on nightmare with a sb (without using the trick discussed below), so i have quite a bit of experience.

Reskill mechanic at the moment: reallocating class/genericskill take no gametime.
As you can keep 4 classkills fluid, this means that you can max. every skill, that you have 1 classskill in without a loss of time.

I describe an example to show the consequences using the skillset of a shadowblade, who has skilled blinding speed, shadowstep, deadlystrikes, dual strike and flurry with on class points and 4 fluid classkills and is attacking some boss:
Max blinding speed and use it>Reallocate the 4 points from blinding speed to shadowstep and attack>reallocate to deadly strikes and use it>reallocate to dualstrike>reallocate to flurry> kill. (Actually iam not sure if this really works with buffs like blinding speed, i only used it with attackskills.)

>Using this possibility, really spoils the skill-system, as you can max all your skills by investing 1 class skillpoint. As you only need to use this tactic in close fights, its not as boring and time consuming as you might think at first glance.
The latest insane winner was obviously using this tactic:
http://te4.org/characters/8874/tome/b2a ... 4debc9c4c4
as its the only way to explain the strange skillspread: >apart from a few key skills, he skilled nearly every skill at 1 to have all possibilities and some key generics like evasion on 2. (you only have 3 fluid generics)
I dont consider this cheating. I share stitions attitude that you have to use every possibility the game provides if you want to beat the game on nightmare! And on a sidenote i share his opinion too that game became a lot easier with the invention of the partly overpowered prodigies.

>>>>>Solution:
Nevertheless in my opinion some change is needed here. Just make reallocating class-skillpoints take 1 or a few game turns. If it would cost 1 game turn, you could reallocate in an emercency situation if you are willing to spend a game turn, so you cant base a whole build on this tactic.

Thx for the great game,
Tagedieb

This past discussion may interest you: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=35067

Ah...didnt recognized, the matter was still discussed. Anyways iam voting for a change here.
Otherwise feel free to delete/or move to the other thread.

It's a very confusing change, mechanistically. Perhaps an easier change is to disallow reallocation at higher difficulties.

I was just trying it out and gosh it's really powerful, this is a LOT of free skill points. Essentially you have 5/5 in all activatable skills and you get to max out all your sustains/passives once you have 1 point in all the activatables you need. This is easily 50+ free skill points.

Tagedieb wrote:...so you cant base a whole build on this tactic.

Maybe the harder difficulties should be redesigned to make this kind of "scumming" unecessary, because there isn't really any real strategy to this. It doesn't take any skill at all, and in fact it dumbs down build design since now you only need to care about which passives/sustains you max out first. Which means to say that if higher difficulties necessitate the use of this mechanic, then the importance of builds actually matter LESS in higher difficulties, not more. Completely counterintuitive.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but putting points into an ability causes it to appear on your toolbar ON COOLDOWN. This prevents you from abusing this, unless you plan it well in advance, and even then can only offer at MOST 1 extra ability per fight... Is that really an issue?

Crim I believe it's only when you don't have the skill yet. If it's an old skill that you improved, I'd get pretty peeved if I upped it, and can't use it immediately.

As you can keep 4 classkills fluid, this means that you can max. every skill, that you have 1 classskill in without a loss of time.

Oooooohhh...... DERP. My mistake. Still seems like too much gimmick for me to want to tolerate though. I'd go mad constantly juggling skills around like that...

Like someone else mentioned in the previous thread, it isn't really that tedious. You can leave the 4 points floating in your main DPS skill while you're fighting trash mobs, e.g. steady shot and flurry. You only need to swap things around when you facing a boss.