ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I have been playing a lot of corrupters lately and currently I don't have a huge amount of options on how to spend them. I currently have 2-4 options. I can
a) spend it on hexs. This is a okay tree and is a source of much needed crowd control
b) spend it on curses. other than curse of Defenselessness all of these are okay debuffs. They however are only useful during tough fights because they are all single target debuffs that increase how much damage you do. However corrupters are already really good dealing massive damage to single targets so the use is limited to tough bosses.
c) spend it on racials. Depends on the race but generally this doesn't help out your character that much.
d) I can always pick up the cursed item tree which can provide some interesting combos but its not available in the infinite dungeon

So I figured it would be nice to give them another generic tree so I present my idea for a unnamed talent tree ( I am not particularly creative with names) in no particular order

Blood Lock. When used on one enemy they can not go above current health for X turns. so if they had 15 health and blood lock was used they could not heal themselves above 15 for X turns (players will hate this)
Transfusion. activate to transfer X negative effects to the target. at higher levels it will have a % chance to steal positive effects from the enemy
Overkill. When you kill an enemy X% of the extra damage will be converted to an aoe around the former target
Blood rage (yes it is corny) When you take Y% of your health as damage you gain X vim and a Z increase in spell power *edit* or something that reduced the cool down of corruptions under t-level. I just remembered that cooldowns are a problem with corrupters

So I am complaining and am volunteering to make this tree if people think it is a good idea. some better names would be nice but I might be able to come up with some good ones. If people have other ideas I am personally open to anything at this point

You can also pick up Combat Training at the sword shop in Last Hope; Vim costs aren't affected by Fatigue, so they can wear heavy armor without issues. Also, Corruptors don't have a lot of locked trees so they can make pretty good use of escort rewards. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to Corruptors getting another generic tree.

EDIT: It should be noted that Reavers are also pretty light on ways to spend generics; it would probably be worth the trouble to make it appropriate for both of them.

Speaking of Reavers, here's a link to a thread from a while back proposing locked trees to shore up their weaknesses. A weakness that I think both classes share is the inability to overcome blight resistance. Every other non-physical, single element class has this: all flavors of Archmage with their tier 4 sustains, Necromancers with Frostdusk, Paradox Mages with Cease to Exist (plus heavy temporal resistance is only found on one level of one dungeon), and Anorithils with Totality.

The disease immunity issue is also one that's unique to Corrupters. No other class relies on a status effect just to deal damage, unless they invest heavily into Backstab and even then that's only 1 talent compared to all of the talents that Corrupters have that depend on landing a disease. Imagine if Necromancer minions just didn't do any damage except to blinded or confused enemies. That's sort of the situation Corrupters are in.

Also, I would suggest Blood Vengeance or just Vengeance instead of Blood Rage, seeing as how we already have a Blood Fury.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the Curses should be improved, or maybe made AoE to make them more attractive.

donkatsu wrote:The disease immunity issue is also one that's unique to Corrupters. No other class relies on a status effect just to deal damage, unless they invest heavily into Backstab and even then that's only 1 talent compared to all of the talents that Corrupters have that depend on landing a disease. Imagine if Necromancer minions just didn't do any damage except to blinded or confused enemies. That's sort of the situation Corrupters are in.

What do you mean? I've never had a real problem dealing damage as a corrupter--that's kind of their schtick. Between the blood tree, soul rot, and drain they have good burst damage that can be pushed way higher with +crit and +crit multiplier sustains (and late game they crit on almost every shot). They have two talents that lower blight resistance on the occasions you actually find a foe with blight resist. Plus, they can remove sustains from enemies. And they're capable of dishing out fire, dark, poison, and physical damage as well. I've always found them crazy good, regardless of whether diseases take.

As for generics, the only talent I use much is pacification hex--nothing really lives long enough to make the other ones worthwhile, and their (non-refundable) vim costs are too high. Other than that, their high magic stat gives them a lot of benefit from escorts (divination or light trees), so I never really minded not having more options. I don't play infinite dungeon, though. If they did get another tree or two, I don't know that they really need more offensive capability.

The Hexes and Curses trees are incredibly dull, though I guess that's expected with generic trees. Fundamentally it seems difficult to design generic trees for the more esoteric metaclasses. I can't speak much for Corruptors, never got too far with one, but here is what I'd like to see for Reavers:

• Blight resistance penetration. Could be part of an additional melee tree.
• Some way to circumvent disease immunity, even if that just means a few more ranged options. I understand that it's an intentional "weakness" of the class, but it really just means that there will be entire zones where diseases don't do a thing. The diseases are magical, anyway, so I don't see why something like an elemental couldn't be afflicted.
• A few defensive or escape options. A more accessible way to blind foes would work.

And, the wishlist:

• A summon tree, of some sorts, for both classes. Could be generic. Focus would be raising the blood of fallen foes as "bloodlings" or "blood golems" that would quickly collapse, but would retain the talents of the original creature.
• Improved/extended "Bone" tree. Bone Grab is nice, the rest are either unexciting or just not very useful. Bone Shield is not a good defensive option, it's more of a last-ditch thing.
• A "Flesh" or mutations tree, based on self-modifications that carry some sort of intrinsic trade-off. Could be activated or sustained skills. This would be a good way to add more defensive options.
• A (locked) mental disease tree ("Psychoses"?) for countering magic/willpower/cunning. Only problem here is that it starts to encroach on Afflicted territory.

Edit: D'oh, just looked at SVN. Epidemic ignores disease immunity and reduces it, and Burning Hex got buffed (it now has a cooldown-increasing component). Cool stuff.

My good sir, I do believe you're talking about Corruptors with an o, rather than the Corrupter meta-class with an e. Besides that, I'm not saying they don't do good damage. I chose the necromancer analogy precisely because a hypothetical necromancer whose minions could only damage blinded or confused enemies, would actually be quite good until they came across something with blind and confusion immunity. Sure, they have the tools to deal with it, but a whole slew of their delicious signature flavor goes away. This applies somewhat more to Reavers, who don't have some of the nicer trees that Corruptors (with an o) have, so losing the entire Plague tree is more crippling.

On another note, everybody mentions Pacification Hex as the exception to the "all hexes and curses are sort of lackluster" complaint, but I'd also like to advocate Domination Hex as being useful. Against a crowd, using Domination Hex on one target will often have the majority of the crowd attack my hexed victim, sometimes killing it for me while also giving me time to recover, retreat, or pick off a different enemy with single target spells. Plus you can use it on a summoning enemy before they summon (try an orc necromancer!) for entertaining and quite effective results. If Hexes get buffed I'd like Domination Hex to be left alone.