Race Balance: Skeleton

[Davion Fuxa]

If that was the case, Berserkers would likely have never been improved to what they are now. Berserkers were by no means weak when they got looked at, and were fully playable. However, they got improved to what they are now despite being fully playable..

Statistics are fine to noting when something should be improved - and from the Statistics, the Halflings and Dwarves should definitely be looked at. But that doesn't mean that the other races can't be looked at too.

[HousePet]

So you are saying that people mistakenly thought Berserker was bad?

Berserker was boring. So it was changed.

I am pointing out that the stats say that Skeleton is not weak, which is contrary to the opinions in this thread.
I am not saying that races or classes shouldn't be looked into for improvements.
I am saying that buffing a race that has the highest win ratio is not an improvement.

[Davion Fuxa]

Berserkers were an easily winnable solid class in their previous state, and the most popular class in the previous incarnation - and I know this because I checked the statistics when Fortescue was around advocating to change Beserkers. The class may not have been as strong as Marauders, but it will still fun to play and people had no problem starting a Berserker again and again.

However, Beserkers still got improved regardless, despite being the most popular and played class in the game.

I don't know if anyone in this thread is necessarily calling Skeletons weak either - I've already said for example that I don't think Skeletons strengths are a real issue, and partly I said that because they aren't weak. I'm pretty sure, in bpats defense, that he is probably advocating for improvement because the lack of infusions give too much uncertainty to winning with Undead - which by all accounts is a fair point to make. Having played the Undead races I know full well that a big part of their game is playing around using Escort Talents, Runes, or Items to make up for the inability to use Infusions.

Regardless, I'm not looking to change Skeletons because they are weak, I'm looking to change them because of how they play.

[bpat]

The "stats" don't mean much when they're mostly on Normal mode. I could right now roll something like a Skeleton Arcane Blade that doesn't take Magical Combat and beat Normal. Winning on Normal can be done with all kinds of bad builds so the stats are not useful here. Also something being easy is not the same as it being good. Skeleton has a very low skill cap because it has no racials that require any sort of strategy. Also out of all the races, Skeleton's strength on Normal compared to its strength on higher difficulties has the largest gap since all its talents scale extremely poorly (Re-Assemble doesn't scale at all, Bone Armor can't crit and falls off, reducing the duraction of a 12 turn stun isn't helpful). This easiness makes the race breeze through Normal but fall short at higher difficulties. If you ask pretty much anyone who's beaten Insane and probably 100% of people who've beaten Madness, they'll say that Skeleton is a bad race and for good reason.

Also Davion Fuxa's point about them being a late unlock is huge. Most people die 50+ times before even unlocking Skeletons. Cornac is definitely not the worst race, but it's the most popular for new players so its winrate sucks a lot. Instead of your stats saying Skeleton is OP, they really say that players who pick Skeleton are better at the game on average than players who pick Cornac.

Lastly, I believe that balancing the game around Normal mode isn't a good idea because on Normal the balance literally doesn't matter at all since you can one or two-shot anything with any class. The game should be balanced for the highest difficulty that can reasonably be beaten without using exploits or cheeses, which is Insane, since it is much more effected by balance changes than Normal or Nightmare.

Edit: Just read Davion Fuxa's post. I'm calling Skeletons weak because they are. They're a weak race that has a few very poorly scaling clutches that work well on Normal mode where no one will even break your Bone Armor.

[Davion Fuxa]

Or maybe bpat does call Skeletons weak - on higher difficulties.

I guess another concern to point out then with Skeletons - Racial Abilities that don't scale as well on harder difficulties. I think though that this will be a major issue that won't be easily resolved though since any changes to the Skeletons Racial Abilities are going to have to take into account Skeletons and Bone Giants the player fights in game.I suppose to mention some ideas though, maybe some Revised Racial Talents might be in order which take into account that players will be fighting Skeletons, as well as possibly playing one:

For Bone Armor, some ideas I have include:

Make the Bone Armor fragment after the Damage Shield is shattered. When it fragments, give the players a new buff, Bone Fragments - The new buff Bone Fragments could be one that increases Armor and Armor Hardiness suggested. Though to offer an alternative idea, maybe it could sort of take a line from the Skirmishers class and deflect attacks, fully negating their damage. As a note, the duration of the Damage Shield may be worth shortening in consequence to how difficult enemy Skeletons and Bone Giants might become.

Another line of an idea is that Bone Armor might offer some retaliation damage - perhaps like the Rune of Reflection. Perhaps though, Bone Armor could simply just reduce all incoming damage on the user, while sending 100% of the damage back at enemies. Following this line of thought, the cooldown for Bone Armor would have to be really short, since players wouldn't want to attack a Skeleton or Bone Giant that is reflecting everything back at them.

Edit:

I didn't really explain the retaliation idea italicized above very well. Essentially, instead of protecting you, the Bone Armor doesn't protect any incoming damage on you with a damage shield, but instead any damage you take becomes reduced - while enemies take full damage back for attacking you. IE, if an enemy hits you for 100, Bone Armor would reduce the damage by X, and the enemy would be hit for 100, or Y if we want to make the damage inflicted back scale with the talent perhaps.

For Re-Assemble, some ideas include:

This skill is just a straight up self-healing ability, but perhaps we could base some of its use off killed enemies. Maybe when enemies are killed, the healing power of Re-Assemble can be improved as you take the Bones of your Enemies. This would benefit from not being usable by enemies but just the player.

[Zeyphor]

I think skeleton is just fine as a racial, 11 str and dex can be pretty good for classes that use em imo, but I guess there is room to tack something else on there; not sure what would make sense though(I think runic cleansing wouldn't)

I think bone armor should be a passive that recharges up to 20 charges, and at 20 charges it'd be at the normal bone armor value; bone armor would only recharge when you skip a turn. It can also be activated(not instant) to go up to 20 charges instantly; its cooldown is a number of turns equal to the number of charges you gained. Bone armor will now also stack with damage shields, such as shield runes.

I think resilient bones should give you crit reduction(but not 44%!) or crit shrug instead of debuff duration reduction. Alternatively the talent can give you a chance to ignore debuffs against you(44% at level 5.5), rolled after status immunities and separately from them.

As for reassemble, it should at least scale with dexterity on top of its normal hp scaling since it makes sense, and also remove 0/0/1/1/2 detrimental physical status effects from you on use.

Skeletons also gain 50% disease immunity and 100% wound immunity(even without generics) since, well, they don't have any flesh to wound and not all diseases affect bones. It should be noted that wound immunity isn't the same as bleed immunity.
EDIT: I take back the wound immunity part; bones(yes the actual bone part) can get bruised so skeletons shouldn't get wound immunity

Also keep in mind that you don't want the undead races to get both infusions AND up to 5 runes at the same time, so don't buff skeletons and ghouls too much.

[ghostbuster]

I also think he skelettons racials are OK. They already make great mages, archer, marauders, etc.

Skelettons could deserve a small buff, but, please, not too much. They are already very tough opponents in the higher difficulties. They have an extra life, cannnot be disabled for a long time, are immune to several effects, have a powerful shield, etc.

What is really required is to have reassemble scale somehow with the player. It already scales (slightly) with max life, but it is unsufficient to be really useful at the higher levels. Also bone armor cooldown is too long. It could slightly be reduced with class points (say 30->22 at level 5).

[Davion Fuxa]

I think skeleton is just fine as a racial.

2-10 given Strength and Dexterity don't seem like that great a racial to me - unless you are referring to the included suggested change I suggested.

Skeletons also gain 50% disease immunity and 100% wound immunity(even without generics) since, well, they don't have any flesh to wound and not all diseases affect bones. It should be noted that wound immunity isn't the same as bleed immunity.

Definitely a worthy consideration to given Skeletons more immunities. The question is how many immunities given to them is too much - Skeletons aren't Ghouls for example, they don't have the 20% Speed Malice. But giving a bit of Disease immunity and wound immunity though seem like awesome prospects however.

Also keep in mind that you don't want the undead races to get both infusions AND up to 5 runes at the same time, so don't buff skeletons and ghouls too much.

I assume you are referring to making it so that the racials don't replace the loss of infusions, as opposed to giving Skeletons infusions by this. For the most part I agree with this idea, but enough has to be done to close the Skeletons weakness at the same time regarding removing debuffs that need to be removed immediately.

The idea of making Re-Assemble remove some effects though is an interesting idea to help fill that gap though. Replacing Resilient Bones (making it completely different deserves just making a replacement talent) with a talent that gives shrug off sounds cool in theory - but all that means is that you'll have less life-threatening debuffs on you more or the time. That's really little better then reducing the duration of them (unless we are reducing the duration with the first talent and have this on top of it).

[Atarlost]

They only need one immunity: silence. The reason the lack of infusions is so crippling is that the rune that clears mental effects is shut down by silence.

They don't breathe. They don't have a larynx. Why should silence effect them that overrides the crippling weakness it represents to them that every single non-undead race can get around?

[Davion Fuxa]

Silence is definitely crippling, but is it all that common? I know Anti-Magic Zigur characters, a couple Horrors, Naga Psyrens, and perhaps some other enemies have it but it doesn't seem to show up enough to me to a great concern - just something to watch out for when entering instances where such enemies might come into play.

Regardless, this is partly why I suggested it as a possible full investment bonus for the Runic Cleansing Idea had - which would allow the Offensive Runes to be fully functional. But I mostly put it there because it is a fairly minor addition to what would likely be a powerful talent already.

[Davion Fuxa]

I figured I should bump my own thread since grobble bumped bpat's - and this thread sort of relates to balancing Ghouls in some respects.

[Frumple]

It's probably worth noting that Embers solved a lot of potential problems skeletons (and ghouls, really) had, since they're perfectly capable of using medical injectors, removing what amounted to the one notable weakness (difficulty cleansing silences) they had on the inscription front. Questionable whether it's worth balancing anything around, being a DLC and all, but it's a thing.

[Parcae2]

Skeletons are pretty good on Normal, since Bone Shield soaks up a decent amount of damage and works well as a "save me" button for people who don't know what they're doing yet. Unfortunately, they're an unlock, and a fairly advanced one at that. I would suggest that they be a starter race, with Shalore locked because of its difficult start.

As for making them better on higher difficulties, here's a suggestion:

Engraved Bones

Enhances your use of runes, reducing the cooldown by 10% per level and opening up an additional slot at 1, 3 and 5.

That's a lot of slots, but they're really, really weak right now on anything that isn't Normal, given how poorly their abilities scale.

[HousePet]

How do medi injectors even work on a skeleton?

[Davion Fuxa]

Engraved Bones

Enhances your use of runes, reducing the cooldown by 10% per level and opening up an additional slot at 1, 3 and 5.

That's a lot of slots, but they're really, really weak right now on anything that isn't Normal, given how poorly their abilities scale.

One thing to note is how such a talent like this may interact with enemy skeletons; in general, all enemies that have racial talents are pretty good at using them. While perhaps we don't need to have it so that the Armored Skeleton or Master Archer that approaches you has 3 or 4 runes on hand, how would their rapid use of runes interact with the player?

Outside of this though, this is yet another good idea on how to help skeletons make up for the detrimental effects. Edit - Moreso in Vanilla, but still importantly enough with the Embers DLC.