Discussing Corrupter Talents

[Davion Fuxa]

So, I've been playing Corrupter recently. There are some sweet talents that they can use - and some less sweet ones. I figured I'd drop some thoughts about improving some of the weaker ones. Additionally, I know that there has been some sparse discussion beginning in regards to the Corruption/Blight talents Corrosive Worm and Poison Storm getting re-aligned in bpat's Corrupter Guide; not sure if anymore discussion is going to occur but I won't mind if it gets carried over here.

Anyhow, Corrupters!

Unique to the Corrupter are two Talent Categories - Corruption/Blight, and Corruption/Blood. Primarily these are noteworthy for having some pimped out Talents - at least prior to version 1.5 (may be less pimped out with the next version). These talents are some of the key ones for defining the Corrupter in relation to Reavers. For the most part there is only one talent I don't really like in the mix and I think it could use improvement after playing with it a little.

Outside of the Unique Categories for Corrupters, the rest of their talents are shared with the other Defiler classes. With Reavers they share a heavy amount of their talents. They also share Corrupter/Shadowflame with Doombringers and Demonologists; and Corruption/Hexes with Doombringers. Notably Reavers also have Corruption/Hexes, and Corrupter/Curses for that matter, but both of those categories are locked and are Generic Categories. On the flipside, Reaver's do have Corruption/Bone, which is a Class Category that isn't locked for Reavers but is locked for Corrupters.

I'm slightly wary on suggesting changes for a lot of talents shared between classes, but I think there are a few notable standout ones that could use improvement.

Anyhow, some thoughts on some specific talents I think could use improvement -

Blood Boil is that one talent from those categories unique to the Corrupter that I don't think much of after using it. It's talent that at first glance reminds me of Bellowing Roar from Wyrmics since it inflicts damage, slaps a detrimental effect on enemies, and has a wide radius of effect. Unlike Bellowing Roar though, Blood Boil is a rather weak talent that doesn't really measure up to the rest the talents in its class, and comes off as a dump talent. As mentioned by bpat it has a long cooldown; but notably as well it does low damage and the slow it gives is laughable worthless. I also costs 30 Vim which is quite high - and unless you critical with the talent you may not kill with it.

As a recommendation I would suggest Blood Boil should either do more of what it already does, or do more outside of what it does. If improving the talent to be close to what it is now, I would suggest possibly making the talent do more damage - maybe making it auto-crit or taking way its ability to critical and just upping the damage by 2 or 3 times. Alternatively, the Slow that is applied could be more noticeable - maybe cutting the targets Global Speed by a higher percentage or just lasting for a far longer time.

As an idea for Blood Boil doing more though, maybe the talent could apply an effect to the caster based on the enemies hit by the talent. For example, maybe when you hit enemies you could gain their lost speed for your use. IE. If you were to hit maybe 7 enemies, you could 'steal' 20% of each of their speed, giving you 140% of a turn or 140% + 100% Global Speed for 4 turns - probably capped at some number to prevent and absurd boost from hitting throngs of enemies with it.

Bloodcasting is a talent that comes off as a bit of a one point wonder. Essentially it lets you get a few turns off where you can use health instead of Vim if you don't have the Vim to cast stuff. Notably this is important for Corrupters, as while Reavers do have access to the talent, they can simply melee stuff if they have no Vim.

Bloodcasting could probably stand to do something else to make it worth investing in more. Corrupters already get damage increases, spell critical chance, enemy resistance reduction and a lot more with their other talents. As an idea though in addition to everything else a Corrupter can do, maybe Bloodcasting could effect your Corrupter Cooldowns, making them come off Cooldown faster. One obvious thing to note though is that Drain is also one of your Corrupter Talents, and being able to use Drain would solve the problems of using your hit points. As a way around that, perhaps the use of Drain while Bloodcasting would restore lost hit points while Bloodcasting is active.

Absorb Life, unlike Bloodcasting, comes off as a completely useless filler talent - and that is for both the Corrupter and the Reaver. It has a Sustain cost of 0.5 Vim, which while low, prevents you from leaving it on since you can't regenerate Vim. Since it takes a turn to turn the sustain on as well, you won't want to use it in combat (that's a turn you could use to be doing something else!). While it could be helpful for getting your Vim back when you kill things - you have both Bloodcasting (even at talent level 1) and Drain helping you out.

Much like the other talents, Absorb Life could probably benefit from doing more in addition to what it does already - and also benefit from the Sustain being instant use. I'm not really sure what would be best for it to additional do, but maybe it cause a fear effect on other enemies with the effect occurs?

Leech is the Corrupters only Passive Class talent, and its effect only works when Vimsense is in play. Unfortunately it also doesn't really provide a whole lot since it just gives you some Health and Vim when you get hit in combat. To be blunt, if Leech was active ALL the time - not just when Vimsense is in play, it would still be useless; and additionally, if Leech just gave you the Vim and Hitpoints, at the rates listed for when you get hit, for every turn Vimsense is active, it still might not be worth it.

Likely, this is a talent that needs to be reworked heavily. Having a passive for when Vimsense is active is okay, but it needs to do something heavily useful since it is a limited window for it to be used. As an idea for a replacement, maybe Leech eat into the resources of your enemies, causing them to replenish your Vim - and if your Vim is full, replenish your health.

Bone Nova is that one talent in the Corruption/Bone category that is neither useful for Reaver's or Corrupters, and just comes off as being filler. The radius for Bone Nova is too limited to really be useful for the Corrupter, and even if it wasn't it has a long cooldown like Blood Boil. It does cause Bleeding, but since you don't get a redeemed Vim cost for enemies killed after your initial strike that is less then useful.

Honestly, I don't think the concept for Bone Nova is bad, and I think it could be improved fairly easily in a variety of ways. One way to improve it would be to swap Bleeding for another effect, or to tap one on top of it. Maiming or Deep Wounds jump to mind as a couple of good candidates. Another idea could be to give Bone Nova a Knockback effect - which while not usually useful on melee centred characters, isn't as bad on melee/casters like the Reaver; and of course is just outright useful on the Corrupter.

[bpat]

Yay nerfs are not happening That aside, Blood Boil could use a higher slow amount to be useful, maybe 40%. Bone Nova needs way more damage or maybe a knockback. Leech isn't useless on Reaver and even if the numbers are low it's a fine filler on Reaver since you need 1/5 in it to get Dark Portal. Bloodcasting fulfills a small but important niche and that's fine, it doesn't need any changes. Absorb Life needs to be replaced with something completely different. Life Tap could work nicely with something like 4 duration, 10 cooldown, and 2.5x the power.

[ster]

name one class that doesn't have a single useless filler talent to increase the amount of points needed to invest in their trees to get to the good ones

[Davion Fuxa]

Whether classes have filler talents (or one point wonders) is irrelevant. If those talents can be improved then there is little reason not too suggest so. More to the point, if Corrupters are getting some mild rework happening then it makes sense to talk about them - especially when update 1.5 is out and more time can be given refurbishing them.

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, there was a point blood boil was a pretty good AoE nuke, and one of the better mass debuffs in the game. Not strictly amazing on its own, but decent enough and it made a good enough rotation filler/initiator (well, second or third spell, but still) you usually didn't mind the vim cost, even before most of the corrupter's resource issues got mostly fixed. There's been quite a bit of power creep since then, though, and corrupters have ended up with another class tree or two to choose from, iirc.

Probably recommend either upping the slow or increasing its duration, as things go... probably leaning towards the latter. Maybe drop the cost a little while you're at it. Elven blood mages don't need it to be any easier to help explode you than it already is, and both a damage increase or a slow intensity boost would make the crypts even more miserable than they already are, heh.

Could consider making it a DoT, too/instead, and possibly increasing the CD a little. Make it more explicitly a rotation filler, something you tick off while your other stuff is on cd and keeps doing its thing for a while. Something like that you could actually stand to up the damage/effect a bit, since it wouldn't contribute as readily to walking into a room and getting 1-turned by massed caster fire. Maybe even make it its own specific debuff, instead of damage + slow... that'd make a lower intensity effect more reasonable, since it could then stack with other slows (which isn't really a thing for corrupter specific stuff, but there's other ways it could be taken advantage of).

As for nova, immediate thought would be to mostly leave it be (maybe tune the non-bleed damage down a little), but make it an abnormally fast spreading wave (ala tidal wave, but maybe two instead of one square per turn since, y'know, nova) instead of a single burst. Let the bleed stack and the damage cheerfully tick each turn and you've got something that's a fair bit sexier, particularly for reavers. Probably prettier, too, heh. Really wanted to tune it up, just make sure each tick (per critter or not, probably not) can individually crit. At that point you could even thrash the damage a fair bit and it'd still be a bit attractive just 'cause of the synergy with vim on crit.

Though yeah, absorb life has been garbage pretty much since day one... amusingly enough, it used to largely be a lot worse, since it was significantly harder to keep your vim reserves up. Made the window to use the thing with a degree of effectiveness smaller. Idle thought for a change would be to riff on the feed talents a bit. Make your attacks steal max HP and/or healmod or somethin' while it's active. Maybe scale the regen effect based on how much extra you've managed to stack up... and/or inversely scale the vim drain, so it's 0 when you don't have stacks but gets higher as you pile more stuff on. That might be neat, give us another scaling sustain cost talent, one that you could still just kinda' leave on between fights.

[dadito]

Make blood boil a dot that goes up in damage and slowing every turn, like you're slowly raising the temperature of their body, give it a lot more average damage than currently and give it higher average slow too