ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Right now breathes are cool and all....but they're mostly just a spam thing. Pop Fire, pop cold, pop sand...etc,. It'd be cool if using a breath would result in some short term buff you could use in a tactical way...

So I've got a range of ideas, I'll mention them in order of intrigue to me, but could mean nothing. All these ideas relate to a breath crit'ing, so it should be inherently balanced as Wyrmics aren't typically going for crits.

1) Reduce appropriate elemental resists/Buff appropriate elemental damage

Breath crits, either all the enemies affected suffer reduction to the appropriate elemental resist, or you get a medium-term buff that boosts the appropriate damage. My generic buff for all of these ideas is "Draconic Attunement". I think 5% for every level in a breath should be appropriate without being game-breaking.

2) Medium-term buffs

Depending on what breath you use, the crit results in a short-term buff to some thematic stats. Ideas include...

Flame: Phys power/Mindpower/Phys crit
Sand: Armor increase/Blind enemies on being hit/Damage reduction
Cold: Freeze enemies on (melee) being hit/Slow aura
Lightning: Movespeed/Daze on (melee) hit/Chance to send out tornado

These buffs could be stackable or non stackable, depending on how balance works out here...again, not many Wyrmics will have great mental crit.

3) Crit-focused tree

Nothing solid yet, but I think Wyrmics could use another tree. I don't know how much I want to focus on a crit focused tree, so it could include other "Advanced Draconic" talents. I haven't thought out an entire tree though. Something that would make above ideas available, make them more potent, etc, also have some connection with physical crits.

Having just ran a crit-oriented Wyrmic here at http://te4.org/characters/10195/tome/1d ... 99aa2d6fdd (That cleared! With quite a nice margin!), I don't feel like buffing their impact with crits is a very good idea, at least not in the extreme way suggested and with no point investment. I was able to get 35% by twinking(though, not exclusively) for it, and the impact on their damage and overall viability was really startling with that build. A 800 damage range 9 cone is very nice when you get it.

Having said that, it's a lot of work and I would not mind seeing a mindcrit-boosting skill show up-they feel much less viable without mindcrit, from what I played(without crit focus in general, for that matter), and the accuracy issues I had to play around were out and out irritating at all stages, since I wasn't boosting Dex. They have multiple stat dependancy, and the payoff for it is disconcertingly questionable at points.

I've definitely tossed around the idea of an Advanced Draconic Skills-one of the issues Wyrmic has is an almost startling lack of unlocks, only Combat Techniques is notable and many world skillsets don't fit them well at all(Antimagic and Curses both do...and neither requires a category point.). They don't gain a lot from category points on categories, either. Optimally, making offensive skills that would fit Blink Dragons/Spire Dragons makes a lot of sense, and of course you could always make something like Chromatic Fury as a capstone, that would boost Mindcrit and grant small bonuses on breath crits. This would work well.

(Hopefully MHWs wouldn't get a lot of that skill, though! That could hurt quite a lot. Maybe just name it Ureslak's Fury and just give it to him.)

Another thing you could do is give them a damage-skill oriented Acid Dragon tree, and make some acid dragons. It's an odd gap-there's definitely an acidic breath, there's few real acid threats in the game, and a nice pure damage cannon tree, instead of just Tornado/Devouring Flame/breaths, would be a greatly welcome thing, enhancing the options of the Wyrmic.

I think an acid dragon tree would be a great option to add some more variety into the class. Maybe the breath isn't a cone, but a longer straight line (jets of acid instead of clouds). Or maybe it's a ranged burst (shoot an acid-cloud-ball, or just a huge wad of acid). Other talents in the tree could include acid blood (like Reaver gets, but maybe weaker and with HP regen boost when hit that can stack up to X), dissolve (acid DOT with reduce armor and acid resist, maybe all resists?), and maybe something that will slow down enemies. Or maybe mix acid with poison, so you get acid breath and blood, and poison bite (melee attack) and poison weapon (add slowing poison to melee attacks, sustain).

I think a crit-focused tree may be out of place, but adding crit effects to breath attacks (maybe at lvl 5?) would be nice.