Buffing bad prodigies

[HousePet]

One had his eye put out.

[grobblewobble]

My other feedback is that you are buffing every single prodigy (unless I misread one somewhere), and general power increases without proportional balance is not something I like. If you propose changes that attempt to keep power balance, I'd be more interested. This mainly applies to prodigies with heavy use. Prodigies with very little use or well-agreed flaws could suffer from changes that provide a general buff.

I think this is a good point. I smell power creep.. buffing weak prodigies yes, but please let it go hand in hand with some nerfing then.

From playing normal difficulty, I'd suggest looking at Windblade. This is so good for melee characters that any melee character should take it first, at level 30. Large area of effect, huge damage. It transforms your character in a way no other prodigy does.

It should only work if you are actually dual wielding. True dual wielding, not the ogre cheese thing. No more of this overpowered 2-hander windblade nonsense, please.
Even then, it might still be too strong. But at least it will no longer be the no-brainer choice for every single melee character out there.

Flexible Combat is also a good nerf candidate. Maybe lower it from 60% to 50% chance?

[Parcae2]

Well, the thing about power creep is that you can still only pick 2 prodigies. The point of this thread is to ensure that they aren't always the same prodigies.

That said, some prodigies should probably be nerfed, but that's a topic for a different thread.

[bpat]

I agree with Parcae. This isn't making prodigies overpowered but rather making them not useless. Also Windblade doesn't need any nerfs at all except making it not work without dual wielding because that seems like an oversight more than anything, it's seriously not that great.

[Strongpoint]

I would love to see Tricks of the Trade buffed. While some may want to get rid of it completely I really love the concept of making your character more roguish in exchange for the few randarts and prodigy point

Problem is that first part

Gain 0.2 Category Mastery to the Cunning/Stealth Category (or unlock it, if locked),

Is only somewhat useful for rogues and acts as a category point for shadow blades

and either gain +0.1 to the Cunning/Scoundrel category or learn and unlock the category at 0.9 if you lack it.

Second part is an inferior worldly knowledge. Misdirection and Nimble movements aren't bad talents but There are enough ways to spend generic points. No point to spend a prodigy to open one more

Additionally, all of your damage penalties from invisibility are permanently halved.

This looks nice in theory but.... I don't think it is enough
______________

How about changing tricks of the trade to actually giving you tricks from Shadowblade\Rogue\Maradeur\skirmisher arsenal by giving actual class talents to any willing class? We have one prodigy that gives talent levels (Legacy of Naloren) and it works great.

Examples of what can be given:
Give +2 levels of Vile poisons. Effects: 1) rogues\archers have a way to get it real high (maybe 6th and 7th poisons?), other classes get numbing poison that is rather good
Give +1 level of lethality.: Effect: More crit chance\crit multipler can't hurt anyone, giving access to dex\cun + 2 daggers builds for everyone who wants it (AB comes to mind)
Give +3 levels of Illumination: Effect: High spellpower characters get a no-damage blinding debuff for their use. Shadowblades get a buff to their area of effect spell. Some Archmages may think about lighting the world up in a new way
Give +2 Levels of Riot Born: Effect: Everyone likes some confusion and stuff resistance

And so on. Rogue classes have enough interesting actives, sustain, passives

Make it jacks of all trades prodigy of many small buffs. No other prodigy is like that.

[Sheila]

Ah I remember when I was a noob that hadn't even reached level 30 yet and seeing the huge prodigy page made me overwhelmed with all the things I could think of taking.
But if we blacked out all bad prodigies we'd only be left with 10-12 options instead.

Consider the following:

-Armor of Shadows is worse than a freaking thorny skin totem. Garbage.
-Giant Leap is worse than CTP, Movement infusions or even rush nowadays since it's targeted.
-Unbreakable Will is worse than Wintertide Phial or Clear Mind torques. Pitiful.
-Meteoric Crash 3 stun for a prodigy is laughable because you can reach 3 turn stun and much more with generic talents on a much lower cooldown, and breaking terrain is more likely to get you in trouble than help you in most cases. It's not even an active which means you can't even be tactical about its use so it might end up happening when you don't want it to.
-Roll with it is simply a worse Phase Door(rune)/Movement/Step up/Trained Reactions/Heightened Reflexes/etc, there's potential for both good and fun here but could use some help, idk about that physical resistance (is it even phys or weapon damage reduction similar to armor? These tooltips have been wrong for the longest time, even if recently fixed. I think an armor buff on the prod is better than phys res in this case as it affects more things.)
-Never Stop Running is a movement infusion with higher cooldown and a cost. While it opens some posibilities for undead it doesn't make it good, I agree with drastically lowering cd. stamina/stam regen is hard to find in meaningful quantities anyways.

Why? One is a single talent/equip slot/infusion slot and the other is a prodigy, I think it's hilarious that there's any arguments in favor of things like unbreakable will or giant leap.

ICCTW feels fine but I'm afraid of interactions with PES, although I'm sure most people making the most out of PES don't want ICCTW as well. How big of a difference is 20 STR anyways? Isn't there some other thing to add on top that isn't that? Give a fun scaling talent like boulder toss perhaps, so everyone can be an annoying stone-throwing giant

Massive Blow I honestly never used because I rarely want to knock things away from myself as a melee, and when I do it's better to reposition myself than doing this.

YSBMW is lousy because size is one of the rarest stats in the game for those that don't start with it. I think a small side-idea to this would be making one of the alchemists give an elixir that gives +1 size category if not already "big".

Mystical Cunning allowing a third poison is actually a really interesting idea. I enjoy poisons but you can't bank on them hard enough or get enough out of them for it to be worth it, specially with the lackluster new options you get from the prodigy.

Lucky Day probably won't be worth taking even with the buff, but it's on the right track. My personal idea for lucky day is something wacky and fun like a chance to apply any on-hit effect on the game.

Mental Tyranny's changes are interesting although it'd still be niche, but currently being a worse Temporal Form I'm all for it.

Tricky Defenses sucks since it affects an overall underpowered and disliked ability, I think the changes proposed are interesting.

Eternal Guard and Spectral Shield should be a single prodigy with maybe a tweak or two, because I don't think Eternal Guard is good enough to warrant a prod.
Garkul's Revenge is useful against... unimportant optional things or weak ignorable things, such as atamathon or alchemist golems. Buff for sure.

Elemental Surge and Endless woes could use less restrictions, they're fun but the cooldown makes the meager advantages they provide a lot less fun and effective.

Corrupted Shell could stand to give some armor, since defense and saves are currently like not giving anything, specially at level 30+.

Worldly Knowledge is good as it lets you unlock things like light, but I agree we could at least get some points to spend. Most people don't have points to spend on yet another tree from prods.
Tricks of the trade would be okay if the Thieves had some sort of sidequest or additional benefits that only they give. Scoundrel is an honestly okay tree that could use some buffs, this would feedback to Rogue as well as Tricks becoming a little more appealing.

Windtouched Speed... is this where ghoul's global speed went? Could use something else, not sure about cooldowns as they feel like an overbuff, but I don't dislike the idea.

Through the crowd doesn't do anything useful, maybe make it redirect some damage to allies?

Blighted summoning could use some tweaks, it's niche and bad in most niche cases.
I think in general it's overly conservative, and could do with some stronger talent levels or bonuses in some situations(need to look at this on a case-by-case basis though.)

Range Amp Device sucks because it's so niche there's nothing other than maybe doomed that can apply it, and then again they don't need it nor want 60% fatigue.

Bloodspring sucks because it's not worth the risk of unlocking it on anything other than normal, and needing your health to drop low for it to do anything without protection means you can die anyways, so cauterize does this and better. (Also you need CON!! for this to be effective... so I don't see why there's any arguments against buffing it.)

Fast As Lightning is interesting but I think it could use some extra bonuses. 800% is kinda high to begin with so maybe lower this to 700%?

I don't see a problem being able to use Windblade with something other than dual wield, it makes more sense to Windblade with a 2h weapon than two daggers to me, it also works with 1h+shield and unarmed which is lolsy at best.

Secret of Telos sucks because having to use the vault to be able to achieve a prodigy is bad design (probably just dated design honestly) this also locks out f2p players which is probably unintended. I think the prodigy itself could provide a piece of the staff so it's more realistically doable on any given run.

The real problem with flex is that it doesn't work half as well as it should, even as good as it is. Stunt checked some code and everything using "AttackTargetWith" doesn't proc flex even when the prod description implies that it should work on melee attacks. It doesn't work with shields and doesn't work with generic 2h skills, it doesn't work with some skills it SHOULD work with, such as the Reaver Scourge tree among others. It needs a lot of fixing and tweaking instead of nerfs, then we can talk nerfs.

Saying that it's okay for things to be shit is a bad argument and bad design, specially when things are bad because they're outdated or based around a very old version of the game. They'll just be huge noob traps that are boring to play/use and ineffective in the long run.
Saying that "x is worse than y" is a bad argument is the actual bad argument, because it's like being able to pick between a $5 bill and a $10 one.
Saying "but normal/nightmare!!" is not a great argument either as it's okay for things to have a low skill floor and high skill ceiling, this is good design and fun for everyone.
Also if something is almost never unlocked in most runs then it should probably be revised (like Roll With It, 50 feels a bit excessive, probably half this or so)
I also don't understand arguments involving power creep since nobody ever complains about Shalore/Ogre being op and better than everything else or new classes being braindead easy and powerful. Having more good prodigies doesn't necessarily tip the scales, there's just less false choices to make. Also I agree with the point made of only being able to choose 2 anyways.

Sorry for the messy/long post
Overall I agree with bpat on most of his ideas, maybe some things can be revised but that's the lesser evil of the whole matter. I think most things are right on track and that it'd greatly improve the ToME experience to revisit the bad prodigies.

[HousePet]

Saying its okay for things to be shit isn't a bad argument. It isn't even an argument...
Saying that "x is worse than y" is a bad argument, because it also isn't an argument or useful in any way. You need to explain what your criteria for comparison is, and then explain why you ignored all other possible criteria. Most prodigies cannot be fully compared to something else via a single dimension.

[bpat]

I think there may be some confusion of "better" vs "strictly better". While arguably no prodigy is "strictly better" than another, that doesn't mean I can't say with certainty that one is better than another. There have been many times where someone will say in what way something is better than another thing, only to have someone else say "but what about this niche case that barely ever occurs" or "but you're comparing two things that don't have the exact same purpose".

Let's use Dahktun's Gauntlets in an example. It's a great offensive item thanks to its very high crit mult bonus. Now let's say there's another item called Comparison Gauntlets that gives half as much crit chance and crit mult but also gives 10 physical save. Now obviously Dahktun's Gauntlets are the superior item on every chararcter who cares about physical and spell crit chance, but there is that 1/1000 situation where you really wanted that 10 physical save from Comparison Gauntlets. This is of course a poor argument and it's basically the same argument that is being used to defend Unbreakable Will vs Draconic Will, since Draconic Will is way better except in very rare edge cases.

Let's say there's a glove that gives you Rush at talent level 5 and nothing else, and the active is on a 10 turn cooldown. Now let's say there's a lite that gives you Rush at talent level 5 and 2 lite radius, and the active is on a 20 turn cooldown. Now one could make the argument that the glove is the better item since it has a lower cooldown. However this is a poor argument since the lite slot is far less valuable than the glove slot, so spending the glove spot on this item has a much higher opportunity cost than spending the lite slot on the item. This bad argument basically the same argument as is being used to defend Giant Leap when Rush and Movement Infusions exist, as five class talent points or one category point (Inscription slot) are less valuable than one prodigy point.

Sheila's post is spot on. We have explained very clearly why some prodigies are not worth considering and these explanations are more than accurate. We've humored Unbreakable Will, Giant Leap, and other bad prodigies far more than we should need to and at this point there's no reason to further try to justify these. Maybe borderline cases like Bloodspring can be debated but there are at least 15-20 completely irredeemable prodigies that need no further discussion on why they're bad, and more on how to repair them.

[HousePet]

I'm not defending Giant Leap or other dubious prodigies against change. I'm just making sure that the justification for changing things is done properly.

Nice of you to explain clearly why those prodigies are bad, on the bottom of page 2, after you had posted about 6 times in this thread, and were asked for justification. You've been very patient with the rest of us.

[Atarlost]

Ah I remember when I was a noob that hadn't even reached level 30 yet and seeing the huge prodigy page made me overwhelmed with all the things I could think of taking.
But if we blacked out all bad prodigies we'd only be left with 10-12 options instead.

Consider the following:

-Armor of Shadows is worse than a freaking thorny skin totem. Garbage.

You only get one tool slot. You get two prodigies. Armor of Shadows also doesn't need a turn to activate.

-Giant Leap is worse than CTP, Movement infusions or even rush nowadays since it's targeted.

Movement infusions and rush can be blocked by creatures. Giant Leap can't. Giant Leap also does multi-target weapon damage.

-Unbreakable Will is worse than Wintertide Phial or Clear Mind torques. Pitiful.

Unbreakable Will doesn't use a turn. It also doesn't consume your one tool slot or prevent you from using something with a useful light radius.

-Meteoric Crash 3 stun for a prodigy is laughable because you can reach 3 turn stun and much more with generic talents on a much lower cooldown, and breaking terrain is more likely to get you in trouble than help you in most cases. It's not even an active which means you can't even be tactical about its use so it might end up happening when you don't want it to.

Maybe, but Meteoric Crash doesn't use a turn.

-Roll with it is simply a worse Phase Door(rune)/Movement/Step up/Trained Reactions/Heightened Reflexes/etc, there's potential for both good and fun here but could use some help, idk about that physical resistance (is it even phys or weapon damage reduction similar to armor? These tooltips have been wrong for the longest time, even if recently fixed. I think an armor buff on the prod is better than phys res in this case as it affects more things.)

You're comparing RWI to things that are almost completely unlike each other. It's not exactly like any of them either.

[grobblewobble]

I'm with Atarlost on giant leap. A little buff would be reasonable, but it´s much more than just a Rush or Controlled Teleport. The AoE damage is worth something, and being able to jump out of a bunch of summons is worth something too.

Secrets of Telos is nearly impossible to assemble even with a vault, because the crystal is a west-only tier 5 artifact. Luckily this will partly be fixed soon, I hope, see http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=46199

[Sheila]

You only get one tool slot. You get two prodigies. Armor of Shadows also doesn't need a turn to activate.

A tool slot is less valuable than a prodigy at any given point, even if you only have one.
You can also switch torques and use them within 3 turns with some foresight which is pretty powerful and adaptable. You can't unlearn a prodigy and pick up another one based on the situation.
Not taking a turn is a fair advantage, but it's not worth a prodigy point.

Movement infusions and rush can be blocked by creatures. Giant Leap can't. Giant Leap also does multi-target weapon damage.

It's just a matter of positioning and niche cases being used as justification. If it's multi-target weapon damage you want why not use windblade instead?
If you want the niche cases where you can make use of the combination of both then it's just CPD + death dance/whirlwind/roar/flash of the blade/etc and so on. An inscription and a single talent is still worth a lot less than a prodigy point!
You could even take windblade and CPD for the combo and then there's absolutely no reason to have Giant Leap.
Butterfly kick does pretty much the same thing by itself, albeit a little worse, but still a single talent and not a prodigy, so we're paying a prod for a polished butterfly kick.

Unbreakable Will doesn't use a turn. It also doesn't consume your one tool slot or prevent you from using something with a useful light radius.

It also has a cooldown while the wintertide can cure something like 6 mental effects and be used 3 times in a row with charm mastery. Again, tool slot is a lot less valuable than a prodigy.
When is light radius useful other than niche cases like SWL? In literally every other area you seldom need more than good infravision which wintertide does by itself for the most part. Not to mention it's not uncommon to find light radius on other items.
If you value Unbreakable Will enough to spend a prodigy on it, then you should always be willing to sacrifice a lite or tool slot for something similar.
Sure, it takes a turn to use these tools, but you can choose when to use them and this is strictly better than a passive that might shrug off an effect and then let all the others through before going on cooldown! As it is I'd rather use either of those two tools since I'm sure I'll be using them when I need them rather than a prodigy that sometimes helps

Maybe, but Meteoric Crash doesn't use a turn.

Neither does dirty fighting if it fails to accomplish its purpose, or gloom, or anything given a little more speed. A 2 turn buff won't make the talent broken, but it'll make it more worthwhile. I think making it an activable will make it a lot more tactical and less niche. Simple QoL buffs go a long way.

You're comparing RWI to things that are almost completely unlike each other. It's not exactly like any of them either.

I'm comparing RWI to things that can be used to reposition defensively, and RWI is worse than all of these. It not being the exact same effect doesn't mean it's not strictly worse.

As it is, these arguments feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Cherry-picking what a PRODIGY can MAYBE do better than a talent or a tool slot just means that the prodigy needs to be improved drastically.

[bpat]

Atarlost literally all your points are addressed in my previous post. Something that uses a more valuable slot isn't viable just because it's better than something that uses a less valuable slot. Sheila just explained how prodigies need to be way better to stuff like trinkets and Inscriptions to even be considered. If there was a way to get Flexible Combat at the cost of my lite and tool slots and one Inscription slot, I'd take it on almost every melee character because it's that good. I'd make similar trades for Spine of the World, PES, Cauterize, and a few others that I consider good. You are holding prodigies to very low standards when in fact they're supposed to be very good, and need to be very good to even be considered.

Let's say Berserker has access to a talent called "Big Jump" that is essentially the same as Giant Leap. However, it requires 20 class points to get. Now will Berserkers take Big Jump, or will they make do with Rush? Of course, they would skip Big Jump and use Rush and Movement Infusions to cover their mobility. This is the problem with Giant Leap, that the opportunity cost of taking a useful prodigy is very high.

You are saying incorrect things like a tool slot or lite slot is worth more than a prodigy point because you only get one tool slot, when in fact there exist other prodigies that give so much more value than a tool slot does. Here are two setups for comparison.

Scenario 1: Prodigy point -> Unbreakable Will; Lite slot -> good item like the armor and resistance penetration ego

Scenario 2: Prodigy point -> Flexible Combat / Cauterize / Spine of the World; Lite Slot -> Wintertide Phial

Obviously scenario two is way better. because you sacrifice a lite slot and sometimes a turn for a massive increase in damage and utility if Flexible Combat, or defense if Cauterize or Spine of the World. Any class you would even consider stuff Unbreakable Will on has far better choices always. Hint: At least two of Flexible Combat, PES, Arcane Might, Cauterize, Draconic Will, or Spine of the World will be better than any of the prodigies you are defending on every class in this game.

Returning to the subject of Giant Leap, I am the first person to win Insane with Marauder, back when it scaled way more harshly (regular elites could oneshot you), and I left Rush at 1/5 for the entire game and made do with two Movement Infusions and Step Up. I didn't even engage with Rush because I don't consider it very good. I can think of at least 10 prodigies I'd rather have than Giant Leap on a Marauder, maybe more.

[Atarlost]

Returning to the subject of Giant Leap, I am the first person to win Insane with Marauder, back when it scaled way more harshly (regular elites could oneshot you), and I left Rush at 1/5 for the entire game and made do with two Movement Infusions and Step Up. I didn't even engage with Rush because I don't consider it very good. I can think of at least 10 prodigies I'd rather have than Giant Leap on a Marauder, maybe more.

That's the problem. Insane was never meant to be balanced. You're only balancing for the elite players who never make mistakes. Most people never play like that, or try it and hate it and never go back and new players never start there.

Giant Leap is not Rush. It's perfect targeted teleport that isn't blocked by antimagic or anti-teleport with a rider that allows it to clear chaff on normal. If you never encounter an orcish necromancer around a blind corner without obsessively using track first or autoexplore into a summoner or in any way play the game like a sword and sorcery RPG instead of a survival horror game it's not useful. If you play the game as it is obviously intended to be played based on there being an autoexplore command implemented it's a potential life saver. Sure you could get a rune for part of the effect, but I'd pay a prodigy for an extra inscription slot on many classes and have had games where I never saw a single targeted phase door and some builds can't use runes even if they do find one. It has the effects of a high end targeted phase door and whirlwind attack/death dance and is available to classes that can get neither. If that's not enough maybe the problem is that stuff like cauterize and flexible combat are too strong. It should be near the head of the pack for fun to use prodigies since it has actual utility beyond just doing damage.

[bpat]

I've said already that balance hardly matters on Normal and Nightmare so there's no point balancing for it. Just because Giant Leap is better than Rush if you have to pick one or the other, doesn't mean it is ever worth considering because it's a prodigy vs a class talent. Also I would play pretty much the same way on Normal/Nightmare and on those difficulties Giant Leap is garbage too. In fact it's probably worse on Normal than on Insane because you won't need a teleport as often thanks to having better odds with saves. Other people like Shibari can probably explain this better than I can but aside from things like Stealth and Block that are next to useless on Insane and percent damage stuff like Echoes of the Past, pretty much everything is equally good on all difficulties below Madness but there is less just room for error on higher ones. Balancing for Insane is the same as balancing for Normal aside from a few mechanics that aren't relevant to this thread, but you can't get away with using terrible stuff like Giant Leap as easily. I really dislike when people call Insane an elitist difficulty without giving it a fair shot, because the fundamentals are the pretty much same just it's much less forgiving. Like if you make a bad play by Rushing in blindly on Normal maybe you get stunned for 5 turns and take 250 damage, when on Insane you get stunned for 12 turns along with a couple other debuff and you take 600 damage. Either way Rushing in was a bad call but you can get away with bad calls far more often on Normal. Unless you actually play Insane enough to understand it (which I'm sure you have not, judging by your defense of bad prodigies), you don't have the experience or knowledge to make a claim that it's a bad metric for balance.