Change the base racial talent to scale with CL/TL

[Zonk]

Do people actually bother to put points in the base talent just for the cooldown?
I don't think so, because even with lots of points it's still pretty long and likely not something you're going to be able to use more than once unless it's a very long battle.

Also, if you are playing a class that doesn't develop the proper stat, you can feel a bit bad on your racial power not improving much over time.
Perhaps this is an intentional way to push some races towards some classes/builds - it does have a point - but what if we changed that too? I think it deserves consideration.



So here's my suggestion: base racial talents don't have their effects scale with a stat, but with character and talent level. This *replaces* the cooldown reduction.

If you want a random formula, could use (character level+15)*(1+TL/5) where it currently uses one of the player stats.

Could also/instead do something with duration, but I'm not sure it's necessary.

[edge2054]

Stuff scaling with character level has generally been avoided in the module.

I would like to see these talents scale more with talent level though, even if their base effect had to be nerfed some to accommodate the scaling. Just reducing the cooldown generally isn't enough to warrant a talent point.

[bricks]

I'm not a big fan of the Higher, Shalore, Thalore, or Halfling trees right now. They each have one or two talents I really like, but generic points are sometimes so scarce that I can hardly imagine why I'd bother investing heavily in a racial tree. Better scaling of the racial skills would be fantastic. They don't need to be as good as Skeleton/Ghoul, but currently those races just don't feel distinct to me. (I'm not a very high-concept player, seeing as I haven't beaten the game yet, so some of the bonuses like +crit chance haven't really piqued my interest.)

[Silvermoon]

The Higher racial tier 1 (a regeneration ability) scales VERY well ... if you're keeping Willpower maxed. And even then, once Willpower is capped, unless you can bring your heal-mod up regularly, it's effectiveness for your level continues to drop. Given that this regen CANNOT be stacked with a regeneration infusion, investing more than one point in the skill is so wasteful as to be laughable. I took several extra points in it to see how it fared, and it hasn't really helped in the slightest.

The fact that such an ability (which, might I remind, costs a talent point) is only useful to Willpower classes makes it feel like your race is actually a sub-class, as opposed to being a part of who you are.

>>Stuff scaling with character level has generally been avoided in the module.

And this is why so many skills that are useful early on are absolutely useless in the late-game. I have pretty much EVERY summon augmentation ability I can get, and my 5/5 War Hound is only useful as target practice - it dies in a hit (most of the time before it can act) and the difference in equilibrium cost between it and any other summon available to me is so negligible as to be a literal waste of skill points and summoning time. New skills should be used alongside old skills, not replace them. I would take 4/5 of my War Hound points back in a heartbeat if I could (except that I'm also running out of places to put Class points ... )

[edge2054]

>>Stuff scaling with character level has generally been avoided in the module.

And this is why so many skills that are useful early on are absolutely useless in the late-game. I have pretty much EVERY summon augmentation ability I can get, and my 5/5 War Hound is only useful as target practice - it dies in a hit (most of the time before it can act) and the difference in equilibrium cost between it and any other summon available to me is so negligible as to be a literal waste of skill points and summoning time. New skills should be used alongside old skills, not replace them. I would take 4/5 of my War Hound points back in a heartbeat if I could (except that I'm also running out of places to put Class points ... )

A lot of the summoner stuff doesn't use the same scaling formulas the rest of the game does. If anything I'd say this is a symptom that these talents need to be brought in line with the stuff that works rather then being "absolutely useless in the late-game" because they don't scale with character level.

[Talonj]

Ironically, summons actually do scale with character level, in the form of summon level = char level, which mostly just affects hit points...

OT:
I personally think that this would be a plus, and would make many racial talents much more worth putting points into. I would presume to guess that one of the reason Dwarves are so damn popular is because their primary talent scales off of Con, which is pretty much a requirement for all classes. (Power is Money is the other obvious reason, and I heard that was going to be nerfed somewhere. Is it?)

As it is, unless you're happening to play a class whose primary stat happens to scale your racial talents, the talents are not worth putting points into. Perhaps get rid of talent levels entirely, make them max out at 1/1, and have them scale solely with clvl. Since racials aren't actually talents, they're innate abilities that can't really be trained (proof of this already is the fact that none of the starting talents actually scale with tlvl at all), this would make more sense. To me, at least.

[Aquillion]

The Higher racial tier 1 (a regeneration ability) scales VERY well ... if you're keeping Willpower maxed. And even then, once Willpower is capped, unless you can bring your heal-mod up regularly, it's effectiveness for your level continues to drop. Given that this regen CANNOT be stacked with a regeneration infusion, investing more than one point in the skill is so wasteful as to be laughable. I took several extra points in it to see how it fared, and it hasn't really helped in the slightest.

It does have the advantage of being Instant, which can be very nice in some situations -- it's fun for a Temporal Warden to drop that and Damage Smearing in the same turn. Not total invulnerability, but it takes an awful lot to punch through that, and with Temporal Warden mobility you can easily retreat if your Damage Smearing damage starts to significantly exceed your regen.

That said, I think part of the problem with it is that, yeah, you can only have one regen effect up at once, so it tends to compete with regen runes rather than augmenting them. You can just use it to replace a regen rune, but its high cooldown (even when maxed) makes that less appealing than it might otherwise be.

[Zonk]

Stuff scaling with character level has generally been avoided in the module.

True - but most 'stuff' is class based.
This is racial, so making it scale off CL instead of a specific stat would make it more useful to different classes. Races would still be better off with some classes for different reasons.

[Dervis]

Do people actually bother to put points in the base talent just for the cooldown?

Actually there are some tier 1 racials that are quite useful IF you're using the right stat, although I partially agree with you since cooldown reduction 45 -> 30 or something doesn't really create much of an impact because it only gets used once per fight. Only dragged out fights get pushed over the 20 turns duration.
If you want these talent points to matter these talents would have to be on the 25-12 cd range.

On the other subject... maybe we could have racials improve with dual stat rather than single stat to allow for a bit more flexibility.