ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

imo doomed could use some rescaling and maybe cursed could use some buffs.

Lets look at talent trees that doomed's :

(overpowered trees: all will based or passive)

Feed tree: range of 7, an enemy loses 70% resistance and -18% damage, you gain these percentages, two low cd skills that grant you that, also you get free resources for spells.

Force of will tree: near immunity to melee enemies (70% of all in game monsters) including bosses. deflection is a great skill that gives you a shield and lots of regen.

Punishments tree: agony is a great sniping skill, reproach is a great early game skill and still does lots of damage in 1v1s late game. whisper not worth leveling.

Dark figure tree: Drop two category points here and you are immune to blinds and stuns, constant global speed boost of 50%. ranged enemies 5 cells away will kill each other (?) bosses will just stand there. radiant fear is an early game skill for cursed.



**Pity and agony will let you snipe any boss without fear of damage. You can kill Atamathon naked.

**IMO pity was designed for a melee player character, it's broken on a character that can snipe from 7 cells away.


(Decent trees)

Primal skin: displace and primal skin are good skills. arcane bolts and vaporize are pretty weak . the rune of the rift is a good replacement for vaporize and uses the same stat.

Darkness tree: creeping darkness is a good aoe, and has a 40% damage boost from dark vision, but uses magic instead of will. Never used either of the other two skills.





(why would you even level this trees)

cursed form tree: seethe and rage pretty much useless. the 50% heal penalty cuts your survivability early game, relentless is a pretty good skill though.

fateful aura trees: put points here to gimp your equipment early game, pray to the RNG god mid to late game.

Also useless if you want to wear artifacts.

(I level this tree everytime i play cursed and usually die, cursed = cursed for a reason right?)

cursed shadow trees: well, you can kill stuff a lot faster leveling other trees. these guys die way fast and don't do enough damage.



Doomed's only weakness is weak aoe skills, but you still get so much damage and survivability for pumping one stat.

Cursed have tons of weaknesses, almost all of their talent trees are overshadowed by similar trees from either berserker or doomed. Gloom doesn't trigger on high leveled enemies or bosses, and you are forced to level the fateful aura tree to use your skills.



You know something's wrong when you're struggling to get past Daikara or wave 8 in the arena as cursed and as for doomed, arena just turns into a speedrun.

Opinions based on building this character along with several others, including one other Doomed winner.

timmay wrote:Feed tree: range of 7, an enemy loses 70% resistance and -18% damage, you gain these percentages, two low cd skills that grant you that, also you get free resources for spells.

I found 100 healing every 6 turns to be a much more powerful use of the tree, especially since the resistance stealing is percent, not percentage points. (eg, you steal 7%/10% resist fire). It is still essential for a resist penetration replacement.

timmay wrote:Force of will tree: near immunity to melee enemies (70% of all in game monsters) including bosses. deflection is a great skill that gives you a shield and lots of regen.

Mostly agree, but many enemies can get another enemy behind them, transferring the knockback, or have high mobility, allowing them to close again. Does not work on fighters (with Shield Wall) or Dragons.

timmay wrote:Punishments tree: agony is a great sniping skill, reproach is a great early game skill and still does lots of damage in 1v1s late game. whisper not worth leveling.

3 turn cooldown with a 5 turn duration means that Agony can only be used to full effect against multiple enemies, you sacrifice half of the damage potential in a 1v1 fight. Hateful Whisper is very good against masses of enemies, and worth leveling up to 2 for the doubled spread range.

timmay wrote:Dark figure tree: Drop two category points here and you are immune to blinds and stuns, constant global speed boost of 50%. ranged enemies 5 cells away will kill each other (?) bosses will just stand there. radiant fear is an early game skill for cursed.

Suppression is extremely useful, but some Stun immunity is still required, even at 100% suppression. Notably, Burning Shock, Frozen, and Confusion are not affected by Suppression. Pity does not actively make enemies kill each other, they simply act as if they were blind, the same as against an invisible character. This rarely results in significant amounts of damage. Radiant Fear strikes me as a very powerful Doomed skill, as Cursed need at least one enemy in melee range to fight. Having high global speed is not nearly as beneficial to Doomed as to other classes, due to running out of useful skills from long cooldowns. At 103/128% speed (without/with Invigorate) I was almost running out of appropriate talents to use in the final battle, even with every skill, the rod of Spydric Poison, and Gwai's Burninator.

timmay wrote:**Pity and agony will let you snipe any boss without fear of damage. You can kill Atamathon naked.

No, absolutely not. On average every 20-30 turns, he would hit me for 300-500 damage (at 70% resist all, 100 armour) through Pity. This would instakill most naked characters, as it would deal 2000+ damage in a turn at 0 armour, 0 resistances. Pity is not 100% invisibility, it is (50 + 5 * talent level)% invisibility.

timmay wrote:cursed form tree: seethe and rage pretty much useless. the 50% heal penalty cuts your survivability early game, relentless is a pretty good skill though.

The +15% resist all from Unnatural Body, along with its healing from kills more than makes up for the -50% healmod by the late game. You can remove the point in it in the early game.

timmay wrote:fateful aura trees: put points here to gimp your equipment early game, pray to the RNG god mid to late game.

Again, you can remove the investment in the early game. With a 5/5/1/0 investment, I was using mostly greater cursed purples, replacing many randarts and truearts with them. A good purple item with a good greater curse is much more common and much better than a decent randart. This is also the only place to get boosts to Dark Figure mastery (and thus break the game's balance) and Hate regen, countering the negative aspects of the resource.

I still agree in general with you, certain builds of Doomed characters can be unbalanced, But I think that upcoming (?) nerfs to Pity and possibly the Force of Will tree cover it effectively without going overboard.

I guess nerfs are okay to balance doomed, but is the cursed class getting a rework too?

I just tried fighting with Atamathon, guess you're right he's can basically kill you just by reflecting damage, but I did a good chunk just by outranging him with agony/movement rune/running away to heal.

Pretty sure that you can still kill most other bosses naked though.

Also, has anyone ever done a naked run on ToME before and lived to tell the tale? Doomed is probably your best shot.

Cursed has been reworked (checked into svn) and should show up in the next release. I haven't heard any feedback on it so I can't be sure how well it will come across. It has a lot more buffs and debuffs as well as a few new mechanics to keep things interesting. Rampage and Dark Figure weren't touched and may still have balance issues.

I'm looking at a redesign of fateful aura now. It may become more optional, more interesting, more focused. We'll see. I just need to do some play testing with it.

Doomed should get a rebalance soon. I'd like to say that it will be restricted to some simple changes, but I think it will have to go through a more full rebalance. I don't think talents will fundamentally change, but there is some pressure from above and about to make Doomed mindpower-based which means eliminating all of its dependencies on Magic. That will affect just about every talent Doomed has in one way or another. I don't think that means major changes, just some damage/bonus changes. It also creates some questions about what to do with a one-stat class.

I'm not sure when the next release is, but hopefully Pity and Willful Strike will get a updated by then.

timmay wrote: Also, has anyone ever done a naked run on ToME before and lived to tell the tale? Doomed is probably your best shot.

I did a naked Archmage up to Dreadfell before getting frozen and killed. It was also a speedrun - heading straight for the boss each dungeon, and not bothering to explore the levels. Was quite fun!