Cursed and Auto-Explore

[Rectifier]

I like benli's idea so long as its instant cast and has an instant usage time.

[bricks]

Another idea - small Hate gains when first spotting an enemy (or seeing them for the first time after a long time, which could be tracked through a debuff), proportional to the enemy's rank/level (similar to the hate-on-kill mechanic).

[benli]

Rectifier, yes it would be instantaneous. The idea is that there would be no penalty for switching Seethe off before combat.

For the various suggestions on hate loss (or gain) when enemies are present, I don't think that creates much of an incentive to rush into combat. It fails to create that sense of withdrawal. Same is true of hate loss while waiting to heal and remove cooldowns. Thats arguably worse because it rewards micromanaging your healing and talent use. Also, the whole balance of the class rests on the idea that you lose as much or more hate out of battle as in battle. Cursed has some very cheap talents, but they still feel like the cost something because hate has to be conserved and can't just be rested back into existence.

Aquillion, your points about having to be very careful with activating/deactivating Seethe are a real problem. I've tried to create a balance that doesn't require frequent use of it (maybe once per level or less) and makes it as conspicuous a decision as possible. I really hate unnecessary keypresses and actions in the game. You can see that in a lot of cursed talents that perform actions but require no targeting or no key presses at all. For all those reasons, I'm hesitant to change Seethe to the proposed sustained talent.

Anyway, the approach you are suggesting could work (with a small tweak). I'm skeptical that it is better than the activation, but I may try it out to see how it feels. The methodology would be to have any combat event (probably damage taken, damage received, killing, etc.) set a baseline value for your hate that is a fixed fraction of your current hate (for example, 50%). Your hate would then slowly drop to that baseline and then stop falling. So if you end a battle with 10 hate, your baseline would be set 5 (50%) by the last combat event. Your hate would slowly drop to that and stop falling. If you entered combat again and ended with 6 hate, your new baseline would be 3 (50%). Entering combat while your hate was still above the baseline would just set the baseline to something else during combat and start the drop all over again. The speed of hate loss would be kept around where it is now; slow enough not to feel like you have to kill monsters all at once to minimize the drop. This could either be built into the hate resource or be part of the Seethe talent.

[edge2054]

What if Seethe was turned into an active talent of some kind that granted Hate? You could use it as an opener to get your Hate back up at the start of the fight or often during long battles to keep your Hate going.

I know it's a lot like the corruptor talent but I think the design premise fits Hate as well.

As an example of how this could fit thematically.

Seethe - Inflicts the target with self hatred which you use to fuel your hate. Grants X Hate upon use and reduces the targets Defense and Saving Throws by X for X turns. (note this defense reduction would help out a lot with Cursed accuracy problems as it's one of the few stats they're not capable of debuffing) Killing the target while the Seethe debuff is active grants you additional Hate and restores X Hit Points.

Additionally Torment could use some help.

Torment - Torment the weak, every other turn feeding off the weakest minded creature with in your gloom (lowest mental save). You inflict X darkness damage to the target and gain Hate based on the difference between the targets mental save and your mind power (you can figure out the specifics). If this attack is eligible for a cross-tier effect the target will be inflicted with the Seethe debuff instead of Brain-lock if you know the talent. Targets under the effect of Seethe take X extra damage from this effect.

So basically it would give Cursed a way to pop off a quick Hate regen at the start of a fight that fits the class fairly well. If the Cursed knows Torment and Seethe he'll want to decide if he wants to Seethe the target with the weakest mental defense first for the bonus damage on torment or if he'll try to get two separate targets seethed for extra hate gain (but it might be hard since Seethe also reduces saves).

[Sirrocco]

I don't know. I admit, I like it like it is (though I don't use autoexplore). To me, the cursed is all about hunger - you're either fasting on your foes, or you're feeling the fact that you're not. The fact that taking the time to go back to town without killing anything makes you famished feels like part of the point. I also notice that this seems to be a change specifically for the people who like using autoexplore. Perhaps we could instead have a talent/effect specifically for autoexplore? Something with a theme of the Cursed dropping onto a hate-driven fugue state - it would cost a small amount of hate, and then autoexplore, with no recovery of HP or cooldowns and no hate cost (or something like that). Higher levels might reduce the hate cost, re-enable HP regen and/or return cooldown recovery Possibly even have it gain hate at the end if the autoexplore is broken by sighting an enemy.

[Varil]

The problem I see with that is that, currently, EVERYTHING breaks autoexplore. Spotted an enemy? Break auto-explore. Took a fireball from offscreen? Break auto-explore. Stubbed your town on a particularly shiny rock? Break auto-explore. Came down with a case of the sniffles? Break auto-explore. Got a song stuck in your head?

...okay, maybe not, but you get the idea. For a normal character, it's a hassle but not really a punishment to trip on a rock and fall out of auto-explore. But if you had to pay a resource cost every time to re-enable it, it'd rapidly become expensive. I don't play Cursed, but the Seethe idea sounds good to me. Pay a flat cost for those long, empty stretches in order to maintain the rest of your mojo for when the action starts again. Good for auto-explore, shopping, and those long trips between dungeons.

[benli]

I'm currently running with the hate-loss-falls-to-a-baseline approach to Hate. Every time you deal or recieve damage or kill something, your hate baseline is set to 50% of your current hate value. Hate then drops to that value (at the current rate) and stops falling. In practice, that keeps hate in the 2-5 range when heavily using auto-explore. When you need to keep your hate higher (such as for an upcoming boss), you may have to stop using auto-explore or farm a little hate before going in. It works pretty well for auto-exploring most dungeons and for trips to town and only has a small impact on the feel of the hate withdrawal feature. Its about the best compromise I've found for a passive change.

I've also put in the version of Seethe that lets you sustain it to stop hate loss (with various penalties). For most things its unnecessary, but could be a big boon by letting you bring some extra hate to a tough fight. Its definitely an optional tree though (that costs precious generic points).

I still find tough parts of the game use hate faster than you can produce it so I'm also looking for some different paths to earn hate. I think I'll have Slash produce hate if you kill with it.. I am pretty sure I will get rid of Life Leech (despite objections). It feels exploitable in a way I don't like. I may find a way to add hate through a replacement gloom talent as edge suggested. I'll also look for small ways to boost survivability, especially against ranged attackers. Maybe something like "Sanctuary: when you are attacked from outside of your gloom damage is reduced and you gain hate". Its really hard to find ways that provide hate before a battle that don't end up being exploitable. The last thing I want is for people to feel like they should hate to dance around to farm some extra hate. Maybe gloom could leech some of the hate that you would get from killing a victim (and store how much was leeched). Bosses and elites give extra hate so you would get more that way. I've also considered having gloom temporarily charge you with bonus hate when things enter your gloom.

[Aquillion]

Removing Life Leech makes intuitive sense to me (it certainly is exploitable, and every Cursed I ever played has always left fungus enemies and the like alive to exploit it with.) But it'll need a serious replacement option for regaining Hate.

Charging you with bonus hate when things enter your Gloom sounds good, but unless it only works once per enemy, it's probably exploitable again. If it only works once per enemy, it'd be fine. Alternatively, give them a jolt of hate when they're attacked by a new enemy for the first time.

The "once per enemy" thing seems pretty important, though. Otherwise, you're back to encouraging users to leave weak enemies alive to farm hate off of.

Would it be possible to track the total amount of Hate you've gotten from a specific enemy, and cap it? Higher caps for higher-rated enemies, maybe no caps for elites or bosses (since it seems really unlikely that someone would leave a boss alive just to farm hate off it.)

[Dante3214]

What if Cursed had an ability to take a large amount of their current hate and store it, dropping their hate to 0, and then be able to use a single stored "charge" of hate that when used would give them a % of previously stored hate. It wouldn't be free of course, though maybe doing some unresistable damage or stunning for a few turns with a long cooldown.

I didn't think this out well, and I don't know if it fits benli's theme for Cursed (which is quite interesting), but I thought i'd post it anyway.