The 1.00 Tweaks Topic

[Mewtarthio]

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		resolvers.generic(function(self)
			self:grantQuest("lichform")
			if game.state.birth.campaign_name ~= "maj-eyal" then self:setQuestStatus("lichform", engine.Quest.DONE) end

I think this is the relevant code?

Speaking of that code, could it check for a GameState variable that gets set to "true" in the Maj'Eyal campaign (eg "game.state.lich_quest") instead of looking at the name of the campaign?

[HousePet]

Refill Hate bar on death. Reviving back into battle with whatever just killed you, when you have very little Hate is useless.


Warning Wall of Text Incoming!!!

These are my thoughts about a variety of talents which I don't feel are quite up to scratch. This is heavily opinionated so sensitive people may which to not read this. I'm not saying these talents are wrong (mostly), I just feel they could do with a little more seasoning.


Talent tweak suggestions:

Celestial:
Sun Paladin seems to have a hard time keeping positive energy high enough to maintain Weapon of Light or Shield of Light, and have time to attack as well. Possibly make Weapon of Light slightly weaker/cheaper andor add in something similar to the svn Twilight tweak?

Glyph of Explosions appears to do that same amount of damage as Glyph of Repulsion. Not sure if radius 1 is really enough usefulness/differentiation.
(I still think that 'binding light into a glyph' should cost positive energy, not generate it )

Hymn of Moonlight is a dull version of Circle of Shifting Shadows. Perhaps add a blinding effect to the projectiles?

Sunburst is a boring version of Sun Flare. Add a Burning dot effect to affected targets.

Chronomancy:
Willpower affect on fail chance appears to be very slim, even negligable?

Spin Fate, Taking this from an escort quest gives you a Paradox bar, even though it isn't used. It also still functions if you complete Antimagic.

Corruptions:
Vim regaining, this may seem a bit picky, but Drain is essential. Vim Leech and high Willpower are almost good enough as a replacement. The only other possibly sensible options are Bloodcasting and Absorb Life, which both require you to have Drain first. As both sources of emergency Vim are in Sanguisuge, I suggest some rearrangement to split Drain and Bloodcasting apart. Swap Bloodcasting and Bloodgrasp maybe?

Absorb Life: I don't think I've ever used this one, gaining 5 extra vim per kill and then loosing it after 5 turns seems like more or a chore to manage than a bonus. Maybe if it added some life leech, like the Vampirism talent.

Cunning:

Trap Handling is less useful now, perhaps a passive bunos for those using Traps too?

Traps: How about a Manaclash trap you could learn from Zigur?

Cursed:

Dark Gifts 5 effect doesn't really fit the class theme. If I didn't want the bad luck, I would be trying to suppress the curse. Maybe move the Defiling Touch 5 curse improvement to Dark Gifts 5 and make Defiling Touch 5 give a passive chance to apply Cursed Wound on attack/to attackers.

Also, could two handed weapons have two curses or count as two curses, as currently using a two handed weapon gives you one less curse.

Unnatural Body: Unsure if this is worth investing points in. Could have it slow Hate drain a little (or copy the svn twilight gravitate effect).

Darkness: Creeping Darkness and Darkvision seem a little bit weak to me, though the new darkness prodigy makes some nice synergies. Not sure about Dark Tendrils, never survived long enough to really use it. Possibly combine Dark Vision into the other two talents and add a new one. Suggested new talent, Shadow Cloak: Temporary buff, adds evasion chance and after images. Another option is to buff the talents slightly. eg. Have Creeping Darkness spread from the targetted point and add infravision to Dark Vision...

Devour Life is a bit weak, would enemies having resistance to physical be reducing the life devoured? Could change it to steal more life, but over a few turns instead of all at once.

Primal Magic and Dark Figure: They look interesting and I wouldn't mind having them as part of Doomed. Not sure why they were removed, way before my time.

Slam doesn't do enough damage.

Gifts:

Devouring Flame sounds a bit like a dragon version of naplam, so could it add a burning effect to anyone caught in the initial burst?

Sudden Growth is great if you need more healing after using a regen infusion, but it seems a bit limited in function. Since you must be in danger of dying to want to use it, maybe it could do with a small protection/escape effect? Some synergies with other infusions?

Thorn Grab: If this is going to be available from Alchemist escort betrayals, it could do with being useable without Psiblades active. Maybe even not require a mindstar?

Burrow is fairly limited in situation. Could add the Onslaught effect, so you 'Burrow' through enemies too.

Lightning Speed is pretty awesome, but I'd like to suggest it apply a 100% lightning damage conversion to any physical attack done while it is on/ending.

Static Field: Have the radius scale with level, up to 3 at 7ish. Using the Lightning Daze damage type would make it more interesting and allow for use of damage enhancing items. The physical save and reduction against high ranked enemies stops it being gamebreaking and I see no reason for gwelgoroth to not be immune to it.

Wild Summon: Have an effect for Treants?

Psi:

Reach: I have no idea what talents this affects, could it be listed on the talent?

Spells:

Inferno seems redundent due to Burning Wake. Could replace it with a more defensive talent?

Smokebomb is quite expensive and causes a lag spike when it clears. (could use a more obvious visual too)

Molten Skin might not affect the master, but it would be nice if it didn't incinerate other friendly creatures too.

Infusions: Would be more interesting if they left the unconverted fire damage to still apply.

Undead Minions: Please take away Mana Thrust from the skeleton mages. XD Or have Dark Empathy reduce the damage your minions do to you by accident.

Channel Staff: Add the damage modifiers from the weilded staff to the projectile. Also add them to the activations from stave egos.

Gem Golem: List damage types in gem selection screen.

Sacrifice: Could be merged into Undead Explosion. Would make killing your own bone giants more appealing and free up a slot for a new talent.

Aegis: Increase the duration of affected shields by 1 turn.

Thunderstorm: I think there is a bug where the storm continues even after the caster dies.

Disruption Shield: Achievement for killing yourself with this talent.

Vision: Have it reveal traps too.

Dig: Can I dig through enemies too? Pwease.

Techniques:

Armour Training: I hate this talent. Why have shields that require 12 str, when you need 21 str to take the talent to let you equip them. I'd be much happier if you didn't need a talent to say whether you can equip something, just have the stat requirement on the item. Armour Training could then be split into two talents, Heavy Armour Training, which reduces the fatigue penalty from armour and increases hardiness (effect scales with armour thickness, eg x0 for cloth, x0.5 for light, x1 for heavy, x1.5 for massive), and Light Armour Training, which improves crit chance reduction and armour value (x0.5 for cloth and massive, x1.5 for light, x1 for heavy).

Magical Combat: Using cunning might be drowning Arcane Blade in too many stats.

More talents using the combo point system.

[bricks]

FYI Absorb Life got a huge boost in svn.

In general I think sustain deactivation behavior needs to be reanalyzed, both when caused by resource drain and dispel. Resource drain takes off the current value, not the max, so it seems odd that it disables sustains (and it's an obscure enough consequence that it tends to leave me confused more often than not). It also makes Celestials super annoying to play. Dispel targets both status effects and sustains, yet a lot of sustains are just toggleable passive talents (either because the effect isn't always desired or it's too powerful to not have a downside/cost). If dispelling sustains is kept, then the cooldowns on sustained talents really need to be dialed down - Strength of Purpose has an 18 turn cooldown versus Corrupted Negation's 10 turns and Disperse Magic's 7 turns.

Also, better text for Disperse Magic:

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Removes up to %d negative magical effects from yourself.
At level 3 it can be targeted to remove positive magical effects from foes or negative effects from friends.

[lukep]

[quote="HousePet"Hymn of Moonlight is a dull version of Circle of Shifting Shadows. Perhaps add a blinding effect to the projectiles? [/quote]In what way? They seem completely different to me, one is a sustain that fires darkness beams every turn, draining negative energy, the other is an AoE DoT effect that also increases your defense.

Willpower affect on [chronomancy] fail chance appears to be very slim, even negligable?

It was doubled a few betas back, IIRC, but it still may be low.

Cursed:

Dark Tendrils was quite powerful the last time I used it, a DoT that homes in and pins can be quite useful and damaging. Primal magic was removed because it was magic, not mindpower, and Dark Figure was removed after it proved very unbalanced with high investment.

[supermini]

Corruptions:
Vim regaining, this may seem a bit picky, but Drain is essential. Vim Leech and high Willpower are almost good enough as a replacement. The only other possibly sensible options are Bloodcasting and Absorb Life, which both require you to have Drain first. As both sources of emergency Vim are in Sanguisuge, I suggest some rearrangement to split Drain and Bloodcasting apart. Swap Bloodcasting and Bloodgrasp maybe?

Drain is not a source of emergency vim, but a primary source of vim for Corrupters, along with small amount vim gain from kills. Drain is less important for Reavers since they get a lot of use out of vimsense/drain, but they can still use it in melee quite effectively. Bloodgrasp is a talent in the Blood tree which reavers don't normally get. Bloodcasting is good for when you run out of vim and you have to face a boss. Start with drain, pop a shield, turn on bloodcasting, fire a few spells, then bloodgrasp to get yourself back to full hp.

Absorb life was buffed in the svn.

I wouldn't touch willpower on either class with a 10-foot pole.

Vim regain is fine, don't mess with it.

Trap Handling is less useful now, perhaps a passive bunos for those using Traps too?

Trap handling was folded into heightened senses in the svn.

Also, could two handed weapons have two curses or count as two curses, as currently using a two handed weapon gives you one less curse.

How about they give you two levels of one curse?

Darkness: Creeping Darkness and Darkvision seem a little bit weak to me, though the new darkness prodigy makes some nice synergies. Not sure about Dark Tendrils, never survived long enough to really use it. Possibly combine Dark Vision into the other two talents and add a new one. Suggested new talent, Shadow Cloak: Temporary buff, adds evasion chance and after images. Another option is to buff the talents slightly. eg. Have Creeping Darkness spread from the targetted point and add infravision to Dark Vision...

Creeping darkness is fine. That whole talent tree takes some investing to use, but it's not bad in practice. Doomed are supposed to be average at a lot of things, and creeping darkness is average crowd control.

Inferno seems redundent due to Burning Wake. Could replace it with a more defensive talent?

Inferno is not redundant, and fire mages shouldn't get defensive talents in the fire tree. Burning wake is in Wildfire tree which may or may not be available/unlocked. Inferno does decent damage, costs a lot of mana (which is good when you want to get rid of mana for disruption shield), and has a large area of effect. Leave it alone.

Undead Minions: Please take away Mana Thrust from the skeleton mages. XD Or have Dark Empathy reduce the damage your minions do to you by accident.

I like the second idea.

Aegis: Increase the duration of affected shields by 1 turn.

Maybe if it was at level 5 of aegis, but archmages can already keep a silly shield rotation.

Disruption Shield: Achievement for killing yourself with this talent.

You might as well put in an achievement for logging in the game.

[greycat]

Armour Training: I hate this talent. Why have shields that require 12 str, when you need 21 str to take the talent to let you equip them. I'd be much happier if you didn't need a talent to say whether you can equip something, just have the stat requirement on the item.

For shields, I don't mind it so much, because on any character where I'm using a shield, I'm also pumping Strength. Non-Strength-using characters either have a 2H weapon, or an offhand dagger, or an offhand mindstar.

But the place where this really annoys me is getting that first point so you can wear metal hats, boots and gloves. And it's not the generic point that I mind; it's the stupid 18 Strength requirement to SPEND the generic point. For most characters what this means is that you lug around a sack full of metal armor that you can't wear for ages and ages, until you get lucky enough to find some rings, amulets and leather armor that can boost your Strength to 18, so you can learn the talent, so you can equip the metal armor. Surely that can't be the intent.

Armour Training could then be split into two talents, Heavy Armour Training, which reduces the fatigue penalty from armour and increases hardiness (effect scales with armour thickness, eg x0 for cloth, x0.5 for light, x1 for heavy, x1.5 for massive), and Light Armour Training, which improves crit chance reduction and armour value (x0.5 for cloth and massive, x1.5 for light, x1 for heavy).

I'm not in favor of anything that makes armor even more complicated than it already is.

If dispelling sustains is kept, then the cooldowns on sustained talents really need to be dialed down - Strength of Purpose has an 18 turn cooldown versus Corrupted Negation's 10 turns and Disperse Magic's 7 turns.

Shield Wall has a cooldown of 30. You want to talk about pain....

[bricks]

Yeah, 30 turns seems like a lot. Any cooldown over 10 turns feels excessive, honestly. It just encourages putting 1 point in as many talents as possible.

Another tweak: Make it clear what mindstar set egos work as sets, and indicate that an artifact is a part of a set (without outright stating which artifacts it forms a set with). No reason to hide this stuff in the code.

Also: When the player has lost control (sleep/daze), allow them to step through the turns instead of going Warp 9.

[supermini]

Yeah, 30 turns seems like a lot. Any cooldown over 10 turns feels excessive, honestly. It just encourages putting 1 point in as many talents as possible.

I disagree. When relying on a lot of sustains, having them dispelled is a genuine threat. Long cooldowns are what makes it a genuine threat. It adds an element of strategy - do you want to run away, or stay and fight without your sustains?

Also, do you think 10 turns is enough of a cooldown for Fearscape or Dreamscape? How about Stone Wall?

Also: When the player has lost control (sleep/daze), allow them to step through the turns instead of going Warp 9.

Sleep and daze are already changed in the svn. They no longer cause you to lose complete control over your character.

[bricks]

Honestly, yes. All of them are fairly gimmicky and trivialize portions of the game, and they can only be balanced (and not very well, at that) by long cooldowns. But they're fun and aren't hurting anyone through their inclusion. "Rush" is still the worst offender, especially with the absurd cooldown reduction some bosses get.

Of course having a lot of sustains that can be dispelled makes dispel a genuine threat. I'm not sure what your point is. As I've noted in other places, there is practically no way to counter dispel, yet it can be more devastating than stun, freeze, or daze.

Good to hear that sleep and daze were changed.

[SageAcrin]

With sustains, the thought process probably ought to involve how well the class works with the sustain dispelled and what's dispelling it commonly.

Generally speaking, Shield Wall passes the first with flying colors(A Bulwark that never got Shield Wall probably would not be worth playing, but on a temporary level you're still a Sun Paladin without the spells and with more damage. Still perfectly capable of living for the most part.) and the skill is still powerful enough to justify a higher CD. So there's nothing wrong with it on that level.

Of course, the things that are most likely to dispell your sustains are Dreads, which Bulwarks match up iffily to in general, and with the sudden lack of defense, things become more dangerous for them. So, that would be the justification to lowering the CD, if any, to me.

Honestly, I find cooldowns on sustains, for the most part, reasonably well balanced. Shield Wall's probably a bit long on it though.

[greycat]

Losing Shield Wall isn't quite as deadly now as it was a few betas ago. It used to be your primary source of Stun resistance. When you lost Shield Wall, if you didn't have that late-game ring that gave +100% stun resistance, you were in grave danger of insta-death.

Now, with stun resistance being partially moved into saving throw, um, I don't know any more. It's all weird and I haven't figured out how not to die yet.

[bricks]

Another tweak: Remove "Travel speed" from activated talents unless it's actually relevant, and only note usage speed if it's something other than a single turn.

[Sradac]

Tweak idea to Spellcraft:

So last night I got the insane idea for an Adventurer to take a bunch of Chronomancy Trees, and Spell / Meta.

My hopes was that Spellcraft would protect me from all anomalies and backfires. Well that completely did not work lolololol....

But I did find out something else, Spellcraft wont protect you from ALL spells. Example is Gravity Spike, it will not protect me from its area effect under a normal casting circumstance. However, it DOES protect from gravity well and Stop.

Someone (dont remember who) checked and saw that Spellcraft looks for some friendlyFire function to work, and Gravity Spike did not have that.


So my proposal would be to instead of going through every magic talent and making sure it has that correct friendlyfire function, to instead just make Spellcraft look for the isSpell flag instead to make it easier to manage in the future.

I havent tested for other things, but I wouldnt be surprised if other "spells" werent affected by spellcraft such as chill of the tomb, starfall, etc.

Ideas?

[lukep]

nerf for Curse of Death:

Instead of having it completely block regeneration, have regen reduce the damage/duration of the effect instead of healing HP. That way getting hit with one when your wild infusion is down isn't a guaranteed slow death sentence if you only have regen infusions.

[SageAcrin]

Impending Doom needs a nerf here far more than Curse of Death.

It's usually possible to survive Curse of Death, due to the 300-700 damage total range, and Darkness is reasonably resistable. Impending Doom can break 1k in Arcane damage though.

Regardless, yeah, I like that solution, having regeneration/healing lower both DoTs by the amount you heal would make it mostly as useful for the player-you'd be stopping huge amounts of enemy healing, which is pretty nice still-without being a horrible death sentence for a player in the wrong situation.

It also means they're no longer the unmitigated best anti-healing measures in the game, and gives Blood Lock more of a reason to exist for the Defilers.