ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Everyone's beloved withering thing's shadows hit 200 damage per blink. Each. They also cannot be dispatched quickly due to fade and that becomes even worse if you have like +10% global speed because you'll get 2 turns of them being 100% invulnerable to any damage and raping you. After blindside they are going to hit you with spells for 150 damage each and you have all res reduced.

The point is, call shadows scales terribly not for player's tide on rares - at talent level 7-15 shadows are insanely powerful to deal with. Logical way to deal with them would be to kill shadows 1 by 1 waiting for withering thing to run out of hate as player doomed does, but he never does due to hate regen.

Every other t1 boss(including alt gloom boss) are just a joke compared to withering thing. Some people even do withering thing right before going to dreadfell which shows how rediculously OP its scaling is. I have no idea how people deal with it on insane.

Upd:
actually same goes to summoners(summons are extremely strong) but at least they spam the summons 1 by 1 giving you time to react. Shadows are spawned in advance so it's really painful.

I was just saying this in IRC.

I'd like for Shadows to always have a summon cooldown. Currently if you have no shadows the cooldown (usually 10) is skipped. For the player this isn't so imbalanced because it still costs hate to summon. Rares with tons of hate regen though really ignore the hate cost.

So can we just remove that cooldown bypass? In other words can Shadows always have a cooldown of 10 before you can summon a new one?

I agree that the withering thing is ridiculous on higher difficulties and I personally always skip him.

The problem is that the shadows themselves also get the nightmare/insane bonuses in addition to the bonuses they have because the doomed itself has higher talent levels in shadow warrior/shadow mage. Fixing this for all summons would probably solve the problem in a neat fashion and also help against stuff like the ridiculous damage of flamespitters etc.

edge2054 wrote:I was just saying this in IRC.

I'd like for Shadows to always have a summon cooldown. Currently if you have no shadows the cooldown (usually 10) is skipped. For the player this isn't so imbalanced because it still costs hate to summon. Rares with tons of hate regen though really ignore the hate cost.

So can we just remove that cooldown bypass? In other words can Shadows always have a cooldown of 10 before you can summon a new one?

Just add hate_regen to the cooldown directly?

Correcting double dipping would balance many things nicely.

At least you know when doomed NPCs are around because of the shadows. On my current insane run, cauterize has procced three times, two of which were because of kneecapping skirmishers from out of nowhere one-shotting my char. Also almost lost the character in the early game before cauterize was available because of the same talent/NPC combination. Was left with 3 HP.

So nerf bat, swing away!

Why does he need cheaty hate regen in the first place when feed exists?

Because he can't kill mobs to refill his hate the proper way. It would be like if the player only had feed to refill hate

Please don't change the withered thing on higher difficulties, I enjoy him being difficult, people will just need to learn they can't fight him immediately. He's very difficult early, but you don't need to charge everything right away, that's part of higher difficulties.

Yes! Instead of changing the Withering Thing, I propose the following buffs to the other tier 1 bosses to bring them up to snuff:

Prox: True Grit and Vitality
The Shade: Uttercold and a biting gale rune.
Rhaloren Inquisitor: Worm Rot, blight affinity, and spawns worms a la worm that walks.
Spellblaze Crystal: Aegis tree
Norgos: Bearscape, the talent. Teleports you and Norgos to a small room with 4 rare bears, each of which has a new talent called "Rare Bear Stare", which does damage of a random element in a beam. Each turn everything in the room takes "bearfire" damage, which heals bears and hurts everything else.

I just skip the last level on nightmare/insane and return later, unless I get the 'dream' version. The dreaming one is much easier.

I don't think the biggest problem is The Withering Thing being comparatively too strong, but rather that what is merely a distraction on Normal/the PC becomes the most threatening aspect of any Doomed NPC, way above what most rares can do. I see nothing wrong with The Withering Thing or any other boss getting buffed further on higher difficulties, but a single talent shouldn't on its own be so much more dangerous than anything else just because its scaling is either bugged or poorly calibrated (the same goes for Kneecapper).

It would be nice if Shadows were more ... constrained in efficacy.

As a Doomed, I see them start out as speed-bumps, then go to floor-clearers with sufficient investment.

Maybe give them more synergy with Doomed active abilities, rather than being able to kill everything themselves while I just run away?

donkatsu wrote:Yes! Instead of changing the Withering Thing, I propose the following buffs to the other tier 1 bosses to bring them up to snuff:

Prox: True Grit and Vitality
The Shade: Uttercold and a biting gale rune.
Rhaloren Inquisitor: Worm Rot, blight affinity, and spawns worms a la worm that walks.
Spellblaze Crystal: Aegis tree
Norgos: Bearscape, the talent. Teleports you and Norgos to a small room with 4 rare bears, each of which has a new talent called "Rare Bear Stare", which does damage of a random element in a beam. Each turn everything in the room takes "bearfire" damage, which heals bears and hurts everything else.

Norgos the Frozen: buff his damage values a bit, give him a biting gale rune and at least one more water/ice ability
Norgos the Guardian: just make him hit harder with bumps, give him more physical save and let him summon bears to help him
The Shade: nah just give him some +spellpower
Spellblaze Crystal: give it a shield rune too
The Possessed: give him GWF, lvl 1 on normal
The Dreaming One: give him ravage, distortion wave, maelstrom, a bit more mindpower, forge bellows(high level), Dreamforge, a bit more HP, and higher level Forge Shield; always at least 5
Shax the Slimy: I'm not sure what to do about this guy; I haven't fought him very many times and I don't recall what he does
The Mouth: give it some +spellpower and make the slimy crawlers a bit more dangerous somehow
Bortoq the Reaver: give it some +spellpower and physical power, maybe a shield rune too
yeek bosses used to be fine, set em to pre-nerf values, as well as the electric eels in Murgol's lair or w/e its called
I have no idea about half-finished bone giant
withering thing is fine
are there any other t1 bosses?

I find that on insane roguelike randbosses and unique enemies are almost always MUCH more difficult than all of the T1 bosses that I've fought except the withering thing; but thats probably because I got lucky with the random class rolls; I certainly wouldn't like to see an oozemancer/solipsist withering thing, thats worse than a summoner variant because I can't just nuke it down so easily then to avoid getting raped by his shadows; not to mention the solipsist usually has a thoughtform to help it out

Actually I don't mind buffing other bosses, especially norgos. But non of those proposed buffs are even close to being 200-400 random dmg/turn that withering thing's shadows do.