ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

That's the stats of the number of winners since b17 on the vault.

While I do like the fact that zerkers and cursed have an easier time (we need easy classes obviously) I am still hearing "horror" stories of multi thousands damage per turns, which is obviously very wrong

So, ideas how to fix those without making them less fun?

Increase armour values of enemies at high levels? And phys damage resistance. The only problem is hurting rogues.

Hum protecting rogues is easy, we give them APR, it fits anyway.

Ok I did a little test, I copied one of the winner cursed on the vault, built it the same, took the same objects.
Then I teleported to the high peak.
Then I mindlessly walked into things, not even check what happened and my life barely got down.
Then I teleported to the endbosses and .. mindlessly bumped into them and won, not even using one infusion/rune.

Yes, something is fishy

Next test: doing the same with a berserker from the vault

(PS: did not check shoob characters I know those are not a measurement of the game ;> )

Both of these classes have excellent self healing and I imagine that's more the problem then damage.

I love the Bloodthirst tree and it was built to give Berserkers more survivability which it does, I just think it probably does this a little to well (especially now that +healing effects regen).

I've heard similar things from cursed though I haven't really played one enough to know first hand but it's been mentioned on IRC a number of times that at higher levels they're practically unkillable. Or things like, oh my cursed loves brittle oozes because it's more life to drain etc.

Without looking at the talent trees I'd put a cap on how many creatures some of the cursed abilities can effect. If your draining hit points from every creature in you gloom well that's to much and it encourages things like not shutting down the portals in the end fight since it's free life regen. Maybe Gloom should only effect TL targets like Body of Fire, Corona, and Thunderstorm. But like I said, I didn't really look at the trees so I might be talking out my...

Also we should nerf jumpgate ala the thread yura posted awhile back

(edit) With damage going down the self-healing abilities got an indirect buff too. Which is something to keep in mind. I don't remember what beta that happened in but in theory Berserkers and Cursed should be having an even easier time since that beta.

Cursed life leech should perhaps be limited to only certain creature types - no oozes, undead, demons, etc. And enemy should have a chance to resist the life leech, so at higher levels it won't be as effective.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea that there are easy-mode classes out there. I'll admit, I've been a fairly heavy player of Cursed characters for the past while. I've unlocked a fair number of things with them, and run through a decent chunk of the game. I've pretty much gotten to the point now where I'm no longer interested in playing them. I'll move on to something else. I don't see that there's a problem with that.

If you *do* think that there's a problem with that, it's worth looking at *all* of the things that make the cursed mighty.

Defensively:
- You get the lifedrain from gloom
- You get the regen from killed things, running off of unnatural body
- Gloom weakness reduces the damage that enemies do to you.
- Standard gloom means that there's a good chance that the enemies near you have some unpleasant affliction or other
- You have a passive that does some very nice things for your stun/confusion resists - enough so that that and the Anorithil escort boon will handle the problem all by themselves. This frees up equipment slots.
- That same Unnatural Body generally means that you've got some decent base resists going - particularly once things really get rolling. They on't mean all that much by themselves, but they're great for bumping up the resists you have from your gear.
- You do just fine in even the heaviest of armors - casting costs don't mean nearly as much to your hate numbers as kill speed and time.
- You're three-stat. You can easily max strength, willpower, and con over the course of your career and not feel like you're suffering for it in other areas - especially since your ability to stack heavy armor means that you can largely ignore defense.
- You get to stack on the same infusions as everyone else.

Offensively:
- You have a nice, solid set of damage skills in general. There's nothing all that special (at least as far as I can see), but it's certainly not shabby, and there are a number of things that make you better at taking out crowds. Cursed are *built* for crawling into the middle of a mass of enemies and laying waste. As long as that's the primary way of really challenging people, the Cursed (as currently designed) are going to come out looking really good, unless you nerf them into uselessness.

Mobility:
- Arguably the best enemy-sensing skill in the game, an amazingly effective range 6 targeted teleport/alpha strike, and a instant move 4 with bonus damage to everyone you meet. The sense and mobility requirements of the Cursed are handled pretty solidly.

On top of that, you can pick up either Pity (to keep from being targeted by enemies that are too far *away* from your gloom) or the Big Red Rage Button (to make you an absolute badass on demand).

Now, you can't necessarily have quite *everything*, but you can quite easily stack a whole lot of defensive abilities, a decent offense and a respectable degree of mobility without ever having to make any really hard decisions. Gloom also gives them tremendous action economy. They have actionless lifedrain-driven heal, actionless (if not entirely controlled) debuffing, and even an actionless (if not terribly controlled) ranged attack.

As I said I dont have a problem with some classes being easier, hell I want that.

But Being able to kill the boss of the game without ever using an infusion or even any talents and jump bumping into things is *wrong*.
Being in the swarm of npcs is fine, being in the swarm of npcs and not even carrying is *wrong*.
It looks to me that cursed are quite neat the whole game and then start turning into unstoppable gods of destruction toward the end

It depends. It's quite possible to powerlevel them so that they're effectively unstoppable gods of destruction by level 30 or so. On the other hand, I grind more than many would be wiling to put up with, and have a habit of completely maxing the gloom tree (plus category point for the 1.20 mod).

If you want to force them to care about the fact that they're in a swarm of NPCs - you'll need to nerf Gloom. When half of the swarm is dazed/stunned/confused, half of the remainder is weakened, and the entire thing is being lifedrained, the ability of the swarm to be a threat is somewhat limited.

First and simplest nerf - reduce gloom radius. Make it radius 2 rather than radius 3. That'll cut down on the lifedraining, and make it that much more likely that enemies will make it to the player without debuffs.

Alternate nerfs:
- Make gloom radius hate-dependent. Hate 10 gives you the radius you have now. Hate 0 gives you either radius 1 or no gloom at all. This way, you can still be the churning engine of destruction, as long as you can keep you hate high. Making it radius 0 at hate 0 would *really* bring home the "Must hunt! Must kill! Must kill or I will die!" feel of the Cursed.

Suggested nerfs:
- Cut down on the hate bonuses for killing elite and highly-leveled enemies. Elite enemies are supposed to be harder overall, not easier. Make Gloom hate-dependent and choke back a bit on the hate-faucet, and you'll see Cursed power levels a lot closer to the power levels that everyone else has. It's also the case that at that point pretty much every nifty thing the Cursed have would be hate-dependent, which means that you should be able to just tweak the Hate dial if and when you feel the need to nerf them again.

I'd approach it from the other side, truthfully; look at the classes for which no one has been able to win, or for which people don't seem to like playing, and make them better.

I'm making a serious run at a game win with a berserker right now (Brak IV if you're interested). In a nutshell, critters simply melt for them - I typically one hit everything but a boss, and they take 2. Partially this is,,,um...well, the artifact making item gave me a 300-600 power weapon (crystalline crystalline crystalline crystalline crystalline weapon 'o whumping). But he was very strong even earlier. Add in rush and some rush items and you have a recipe for serious mayhem. I only bothered with phase door/teleport when I ran across one in the east.

Rather than global nerfing I'd favor crafting some critters which are particular challenges for such classes - thus making a designed obstacle that they will have to overcome to progress. e.g. one of the 4 basic quest paths has a boss designed to be especially difficult for one of the "favored" classes, e.g. resistant to physical damage for a zerker, or magical damage for an archmage.

Another piece of advice: stop adding classes, even though it is tempting, and focus on making the existing ones as fun as possible. I'd suggest a global summary of what the classes are designed to accomplish - perhaps them people could comment on how well the existing design fits them. For instance, you might want to make some abilities simple one level toggles (on/off) rather than making all of them 5 points - perhaps make such things cost 2 instead of 1. That sort of thing could help newer players navigate through them.

As one of the Cursed winner (using a Ghoul), I have to say that the main problem is the life draining part of the gloom. Since it drains a percentage of any surrounding enemies, it gets better the stronger the enemies are. As late-game enemies come in larger groups, and get a lot of health, this dramatically increase the cursed survivability to the point that the only source of danger is small number of dispersed casters in LOS (ie: orc ambushes).

My nerfing suggestion would be either of:
- Removing the percentage scaling of the life-draining effect. That way you don't gain more from the supposedly overpowered late-game enemies.
- Replace the life-draining effect by a pure damage one (blight damage would fit), but keep the scaling. You are already going to get healing through unnatural body anyway. This would have to be balanced to not make the other damaging gloom effect pointless, though.

The rest is more or less fine as it is.

Cursed was designed before infusions when everyone used resting to heal. With hate, resting was a bad idea so Cursed was given a lot of free healing. Now it makes no sense. I think slashing the healing in Unnatural Body and changing life leeching would be good. Personally I never really liked life leech and wouldn't mind seeing it replaced with something a little gloomier. There is already an attack aura. Maybe an aura that reduces the healing of nearby enemies?

I also like the idea of scaling gloom with Hate. Each talent has a maximum chance of affecting a target that could scale with Hate. Its hard to keep hate above 7 (it drops exponentially at higher levels) so that would reduce gloom's power overall unless you are in a killing frenzy.

Interesting point about the effects of infusions vs potions. Alternate thought: keep the lifedrain aura as an attack talent, but remove the healing part. If you crank up the damage-dealing portion of the lifedrain aura, but remove the actual healing portion, you should be able to put together a skill that is potentially worth taking without breaking the game through excessive healing.

Alternate alternate thought: declare that Cursed, due to their inherently warped nature, are unable to use infusions properly.

Alternate alternate alternate thought: slap a significant healing malus on the lifedrain portion of the gloom skill - say, -20% per point invested. That way, you get to pick either the lifedrain or your heal/regen infusions, but not both. Obviously, heal bonuses and penalties would not affect the healing from lifedrain and unnatural body. (and if they do currently, then making them not might be a help all by itself)

limit on the effectiveness of the above: shielding runes

Yet another thought: There's a max cap on the heal per turn coming from Unnatural body. put a similar max cap (based on skill level and willpower) to the heal per turn coming from the lifedrain aura. It lets the thing function fine for the lower level characters, but puts a cap on it before it becomes entirely unreasonable, and gives the higher-level monster damage-dealing an opportunity to catch up.

I strongly oppose to uniform nerfing of the gloom. Gloom is *the* defining part of the Cursed, and it would be better to remove Cursed class completely then to have half-good semi-crowd controller. Gloom works great, players love it, leave it in place. Instead hit the Cursed in the area where it weaker - one-to-one boss fight.

Suggestions:
1. Make "drink surrounding life" talent for bosses and top monsters - drink all the life completely from lower level monsters around.
2. Make insidious poison infusion prevent any resource leeching including life, for duration
3. Add protective aura for bosses, which protect nearby underling from low-damage hostile effects (kind of like projecting some armor on them). No damage - no leach.
4. Stop situations with endless streams of monsters (to prevent endless fight with boss using method 1.) They are annoying anyway.

It seems that changing moderately large chunks of the game (changing major boss battles, adding new infusions, adding new skills to all bosses...) in order to harm Cursed by warping the world around them just to avoid directly nerfing them is... inefficient.

As a Cursed player, i admit, I do love gloom. My first 20 class point and first category point go into gloom, and willpower is the stat I max first. I've been known to name my cursed characters "Gloomy". However, I would not love it less if the area scaled down (just like the rest of my powers) when I was short on Hate. Indeed, it might help me cherish it more when I had it. I might love it a bit less if it did not feed me life at all, but I wouldn't say that that would ruin the class for me.