Replace shadow veil and ambuscade

[phalaris]

Ambuscade and shadow veil should be removed from the ambush tree and replaced with alternate talents. Ambuscade is broken. ambuscade is not broken in a fun way. Hiding and sending your shadow out to kill is boring as there is no risk of death. The fixes in repository do not prevent this from happening. Instead of limiting the use of it, replace it with another talent.

Shadow veil should also be replaced. Unless the build is specifically for using shadow veil most often the talent will end up killing the character eventually. And if it doesn't kill the you it takes the fun out of fights as there are no decisions left to the player.

Replacements. Ambuscade could be replaced with a lure type talent. Instead of trap detonation give an added ability to switch places with the lure within a certain range. I don't have any idea for shadow veil replacements and there are likely other ways to replace Ambuscade. I would like to hear what other players think about these talents, and discuss replacements or refinements.

[SageAcrin]

I'm not entirely against a replacement here, but the suggestion is way too low impact.

Shadowblade has very good category point uses(Temporal, Stealth) and the talent replacements need to be quite strong as well.

Here's a thought for Ambuscade; Rather than have it be a summon talent, have it be a positive status.

While under this status, you are heavily stealthed, take a 50% damage/healing penalty, and divide all incoming damage by (Raw TL, minimum reduction of damage to 20%). Lasts the same duration as Shadow Veil, +1 turn. (5, 9 in the current duration handling in trunk.) Instant talent.

Now, have Shadow Veil break if you are reduced below(20+TL*2)% life.

Now, this becomes many things.

First off, it's an amazing escape/defensive skill, but it doesn't place you out of harms way entirely. It also requires full investment to be a good defense(Ambuscade as it currently works is still very good at L1).

Secondly, it still has synergy with Shadow Veil. You need it to do real damage under Ambuscade. Meanwhile, the breaking at low life change to Shadow Veil makes it possible-but still dangerous-to use without Ambuscade.

Thirdly, it still functions like Ambuscade does in many cases, but instead of removing all threat, it instead lowers it. If you are using it as a last minute escape, even reducing damage and stealthing will still potentially lead to death, and it does nothing to heal status currently on you. Shadow Veil does, yes, but it's a separate talent.

So, what do you think?

[Doctornull]

ability to switch places with the lure within a certain range.

I know it's not exactly what you said, but your post gave me the vision of a Shadow Blade sending his shadow out to scout, then emerging from his shadow-scout and stabbing some poor boss in the face.

Maybe the way to put some risk back in Ambruscade would be something like that?

- Shadow Scout: can't attack or trigger traps (but can find traps). Huge bonus to invis & stealth.
- Some way to suddenly emerge from the scout and get one nasty attack.
- Since you teleported, you get the Phase Door defensive perks, plus whatever other teleport triggered buffs you can find.

So basically you'd keep the low-danger good scouting aspect, but in order to deal damage you have to put your real body in harm's way.

[phalaris]

I like shadow veil breaking at low life. Just by using heroism infusion the talent would be usable.

The incoming damage reduction you are proposing would not be a resist? At raw TL 5 that would be 80% reduction of damage just before application? This would be useful by itself for offense as well, using shielding.

A concern though is that this would make a character nearly invulnarable with both talents.
Maybe reducing the duration of shadowveil to (3,6) would improve the situation. But I still see using both talents then teleporting away with rest and repeat as a safe way to kill almost any enemy.

I guess the idea of losing control for most of a battle goes against the way a like to play. But if the intent of the talents is to clear rooms then your idea fixes the shortcomings of Shadowveil.

[SageAcrin]

Smash then teleport is a valid way to play for many builds, and, say, an Arcane Blade can do it with its basic skillset.

It's impressive, yes-80% damage reduction that isn't a resist is great. But consider that Shadow Veil would also convert the hits into regular damage hits as well, instead of the higher mults hits. (Conceivably, Shadow Veil could lose its resistance bonuses and just keep the status resist bonus.) Flurry is three regular hits and doesn't take control away from you-for a two talent combo that takes control away, you need considerably better payoff.

And halving the damage really does make it just decent on its own, not broken. It's easy to underestimate how rough halving damage output flat-rate is, but that's a pretty large penalty.

[phalaris]

I think with a change to shadow veil making end before death, as you pointed out, these changes would definitly improve on the current situation. It seems you have thought about this a bit. i don't have any other suggestions at this time. i just would like to see some change to the current situation.

[Hachem_Muche]

I agree that Ambuscade is bit overpowered and I like SageAcrin's idea, but using it would always be safe.

As an alternative that would keep the flavor and tactical implications of leaving your body vulnerable someplace, consider this:

Implement damage sharing between your main character and the shadow (start at 50 self-50 shadow and change to more damage to the shadow with talent levels) but with a chance, when the shadow is hit, to cancel the talent and teleport the main character to where the shadow was. Basically an involuntary teleport to keep the talent from being risk free even if you are careful about where you leave your body.

The effect of this would be that you still need to be very careful about where and how you use the talent (as now), but that you'd also have to evaluate the risks turn to turn and pay attention to your main character's life. Often, you'd also have to do some recovery (like healing) after using the talent. This would be particularly interesting if you failed to kill a boss since NPCs automatically target the summoner if they kill a summon (in the development version).

[SageAcrin]

I like that idea, except for the part where using Shadow Veil with it is no longer necessarily safe-you'd be broken out of Ambuscade, but not Shadow Veil, at pure random.

Considering Shadow Veil is by far the less used of the two parts, though, that's a pretty big problem.

[HousePet]

Could have Ambuscade make your shadow attack random nearby targets every turn.
So something like the telekinetically wielded weapon, but with more range. So like Unseen Force, but using your normal attack?

[EatThisShoe]

Since Shadow Veil is basically an uncontrollable chain of Shadow Steps, why not just make it a controllable chain of Shadow Steps? Like the Steamroller prodigy, each time you kill the target of your Shadow Step your Shadow Step cooldown refreshes, and each time you Shadow Step you refresh a cumulative damage reduction buff. So Shadow Veil becomes a passive, or sustain that augments Shadow Step.

The upside is that it is controllable, both the target and when you stop, which is pretty huge.

The downsides are:
Costs a ton of stamina (or is it mana?) which might actually make something like Higher, or Hidden Resources appealing.
Takes a few Shadow steps to ramp up the resist bonus.
Requires that you kill something, making it weak against bosses.

[Hachem_Muche]

I like that idea, except for the part where using Shadow Veil with it is no longer necessarily safe-you'd be broken out of Ambuscade, but not Shadow Veil, at pure random.

This shouldn't be a problem, since it's impossible (at least outside of a single game time-out period) to have both the main character and Ambuscade shadow veiled at the same time.

Considering Shadow Veil is by far the less used of the two parts, though, that's a pretty big problem.

Besides the obvious downside of losing control of your character (a big no-no in roguelikes in general), the biggest problem with Shadow Veil is that it's not very good against bosses, especially if there's other NPC's to be randomly attacked (instead of the boss).

How about incorporating HousePet's idea? Let the shadows have one or more bonus melee attacks against enemies (no more than one per target) within a short range after each jump, and adjust the damage bonus to compensate. This would make the talent more effective at clearing out weak enemies early, so that later turns could focus the remaining damage on tougher targets like bosses.

To make sure that it normally lasts at least a few turns, don't allow Ambuscade's recoil effect (teleport) to trigger unless below 50% health while shadow veil is running.