ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Besides self-pinning being a harsh penalty, it seems to me the talent doesn't even really work. It increase your max hp. Short of regenerating faster then you're taking damage (in which case why do you need last stand?) you've basically gain nothing in return for not being able to move.

A couple of ideas:

1. Make it work more like blurred morality.

or

2. Give a percentage chance at a free block. This at least leaves you with some ranged defense.

Maybe have it work like a heroism infusion?

Heroism Infusions work like Blurred Mortality so he's basically already suggested that

I support the notion of making it more like a heroism infusion. In its current form, last stand is borderline useless.

If it was changed from a sustain to an activateable talent, with point increases reducing the cooldown and buffing the amount of negative HP it'll let you fall to before death (possibly also scaling with CON, but that might be a little out of place in an otherwise DEX-based tree) the skill would become an actual option rather than something best left at 0/5.

Sorry to resurrect a thread over a year old, but I don't see the point of starting a different one. I think Last Stand REALLY sucks in its current form, and it's a shame for me to say that because I really like the flavor of it and it is one of my favorite abilities, but it just has so many draw backs.

The self-pin is a major draw back, but it can still be worked around (like items with Rush being usable for movement); I think it's the other draw backs (in combination with the self-pin) that really make this ability worthless. Let's go over the major draw backs:

- Self-pin, of course
- It takes a turn to activate, which means that in many situations you aren't even gaining a whole lot of health when you use it
- It takes a turn to deactivate, meaning that you can't turn it off to quickly chase down a new opponent or run the hell away without giving your enemies a turn to act.
- You lose exactly the amount of health that you gain when you take it off, meaning that you not only have to be above 0 health to take it off, you also have to have above the amount of health that it gives you to survive. Yes, you can kill yourself by taking it off (there's no detection/warning for whether it will kill you or not). In combination with losing so much health from taking it off and taking a turn to deactivate, it makes the in-combat utility of turning on and off Last Stand mostly worthless.
- 30 second cooldown means that if you turn it off and a new baddie suddenly shows up, you could be in trouble.

And, finally, Last Stand even at its very best is somewhat underwhelming. The defense is nice, but it's far from making you invulnerable, especially since it does absolutely nothing against casters, or even archers. The health gain is only ~40% of your maximum health. If you kept the health when you removed the ability, then it would be MUCH better, but even then, I don't think it would be very strong (usable perhaps, but not strong). If a minimalist approach were to be taken to make Last Stand better, then at the VERY LEAST, you should keep your health when you take it off, and it shouldn't cost a turn to take it off.