ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

A lot of time has passed since reworking the stun effect, but there is still one talent that inflicts an old-fashioned stun — Archmage's Flameshock. When stun was simply paralyzing opponent, it was a great crowd control talent, but now it is way overpowered. I suppose that giving this talent the new stun effect would render it nearly useless, so it needs to be replaced or somehow tuned. Here are some suggestions and thoughts:

1. Knockback may be a good crowd control method, though I'm not sure if it will work in this case.
2. Daze is definitely an option: Archmage dazes a bunch of threatening opponents and gets quite a bit of time to retreat or do whatever he wants. However, Daze mostly belongs to lightning attacks (if we're talking only about magic) and it will make a talent pretty harmless in hands of AI.
3. Slowing is an interesting variant. If slowing is severe enough, this talent may immobilize targets quite good. Foes (mages and archers in particular) will still be able to act, though. While this is a good option, in my opinion it'll not be easy to balance it.
4. Replacing the talent may be the best choice, if a new one is good enough. At the moment, though, I can't suggest anything better than a simple Fire Wall talent, which will push back those who move into it and may block or slow missiles.

I think that this is the fourth topic about this ...

I rather like it as is ;) The more powerful opponents tend to dodge it completely (I think high defence can let you avoid it) but it's great for dealing with crowds of weak creatures.

Grey wrote:I rather like it as is The more powerful opponents tend to dodge it completely (I think high defence can let you avoid it) but it's great for dealing with crowds of weak creatures.

I like it too and wouldn't mind seeing a bit more paralysis in the game (maybe from some fear effects or special monster types). The old stun mechanic in small quantities (especially at higher level) isn't so bad (you still can temporarily fight the stun which I don't think you can do with the new stun). When every other creature and player had it at early levels it was way way to much.

Grey wrote:I rather like it as is The more powerful opponents tend to dodge it completely (I think high defence can let you avoid it) but it's great for dealing with crowds of weak creatures.

To clarify this, whether flameshock works or not is entirely dependent on the enemy's stun resistance. If they manage the resist, then flameshock does absolutely nothing. No damage, no stun, nada. You just wasted mana.

All the talent really needs for fixin' to to decouple the damage and stun components. Then it'd still be semi-useful dealing with crowds, even when they're stun immune or heavily resistant.

Maybe add in a phys-save to reduce the effect to current!stun instead of old!stun, if you wish to reduce the danger of the stun component.

It ain't much damage, so that's really not a problem.