ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Lets put the facts up before I get started:

Icy Skin is an ability for the Wyrmic class. It is available at level 4 and at 5/5 talent level it does +26 armor and 32.50 cold damage and +5% cold resist. It does not scale with any stat. Here is a level 9 wyrmic I just made.Here is a level 9 wyrmic I just made. I'm only wearing iron equipment and I have 47 armor and do 48.5 damage on hit with the help of a paradox sword and icy shield (both are common items). Something has to deal 48 damage just to hurt me or have armor piercing attacks even then almost monster at this point of the game dies in one hit. If it doesn't die then it has a chance to be frozen and has a good chuck of life missing. Combine that with a good shield rune, life gain, movement infusion/lightning speed, and knockback (Wyrmic have 5 knockback abilities) and low level wyrmic are pretty much invincible.

After a while this skill just becomes alright. I really think Icy Skin should scale with wisdom like the rest of the tree. I'm thinking:
+armour=(talent level*.2)*(Will/2) Limit of 40
+cold damage on hit=(talent level*.2)*(Will/1.5) Limit of 50

I'm not too sure if +40 armor is too powerful but it seemed like a good place holder. However this would make my level 19 have +15 armor and +20 cold damage on hit which is much more reason but still very good.

shwqa wrote:Something has to deal 48 damage just to hurt me or have armor piercing attacks even then almost monster at this point of the game dies in one hit.

Hmm, note that your Dr. Worm has an armor hardiness of 66%, meaning that it will block at most that percentage of the hit. So your armour has its maximal effect when you get hit with 144 points of damage, of which 92 would get through. Also armour does not protect against magical damage, so you're still vulnerable against that.

Sure, high armour is pretty nice, but it does by no means make you invulnerable.

I agree with the spirit of the conversation though. Icy skin is almost overpowered at the beginning and mid game stages, becoming less and less useful as you progress toward level 50.

It would be interesting to see the skill scale so that it's useful at all levels, maybe a little less powerful at the beginning, more powerful at high levels.

jotwebe wrote:Hmm, note that your Dr. Worm has an armor hardiness of 66%, meaning that it will block at most that percentage of the hit. So your armour has its maximal effect when you get hit with 144 points of damage, of which 92 would get through.

I'm fairly sure that it is actually most effective against 72 points of damage, of which 24 gets through. I agree that talents (in general) should scale to avoid being OP in the early game, though I don't have much experience with Wyrmics.

I think the issue is the inherent design of the ability.

For one, it has to be a sustain, because if a defensive ability fails then it just feels terrible for the player.
Also, it has to have some kind interaction or its just a boring +armor ability, and the flavor that makes it an "ice" skill of course; so the natural extension of that is ice retribution damage.
Finally, it has to have ridiculous scaling for players to deem it "worth using" because of how passive it plays in the game, as well as how so many other Wyrmic abilities are more interactive in their use, can offer more utility, etc. etc.

Basically, Icy Skin is "overpowered" early and mid-game because its an aura type skill that scales very well against physical damage and those early to mid-game monsters don't offer that many sources of magical damage (which is the obvious counter to the ability); since it offers no magical damage mitigation it appears useless late game due to so many sources of magical damage that didn't appear earlier in the game. The actually usefulness of the skill has not changed, merely the usefulness compared to the diverse enemies and skills later in the game.

**Seems that DarkGod changed Icy Skin so that it will scale with Willpower in future versions anyway.