ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Well, or Tempest.

Adding a (5*talentlevel)% reduction to Stun resistance for the purposes of Lightning Daze effects(and only those), to one of those skills, would make Air/Storm a more rounded tree.

With the change to Tempest, Hurricane and Daze seems to be the theme of the trees, and since their damage is relatively low outside of this, it makes stun resistance rather saddening. Neither effect is anywhere near as powerful as Stun, so tons of enemies resist them that wouldn't otherwise, relative to their power level.

Another option would be to just recode Daze as a separate resist, but that's more work.

Urkis would need to be nerfed if that was implemented, is the first thing that came to mind.

Second thing: I think the problem is more of an overabundance of 100% stun immunity in the later game, which is annoying for more builds than tempests. I suspect it stems from the times when stun was still total paralyzation. It might be worthwhile to have a search/replace go over the relevant files and replace 100% immunity with something like 70%, and then put back 100% where it really makes sense, like on elementals.

But in general the game could stand to be a little less binary with immunities: 100% all the time is boring, since you're forced to use something else. 50%-80% is interesting, since you can decide whether to bull through with your gimped main trick or your fall back strategy.

Splitting stun and daze immunities would be a step in the wrong direction, IMHO - there's already plenty of status effects to keep track of, and more would not be a good thing. Especially when flavour-wise they're basically identical.

Urkis would need to be nerfed if that was implemented, is the first thing that came to mind.

To be honest, he's probably needed to be nerfed since Tempest got buffed. Getting hit with Hurricane has become less a nasty possibility and more an eventuality, these days, from him.

I can see where you're coming from on Stun resist getting toned down a bit, though-kinda neutral on that, Stun's a really good status when you hit an enemy with it, even now.

I'm not entirely sure it needs to be an either or thing, however, you could reasonably do both this idea and that.

Fair enough, for the Daze split idea.

Well one thing I could get behind would be to go with your original proposal (liking that more the more I think about it), and balance it by reducing hurricane damage by about 20% maybe. It would keep it's awesomeness as crowdkiller, but be less of an Impending Doom like "you die" for players.

Undecided on whether it'd be better with Hurricane or Tempest; leaning toward the former since that's kind of what it's for. OTOH it would fit with what the other elemental capstone talents do, so there is a case for Tempest as well.

jotwebe wrote:Well one thing I could get behind would be to go with your original proposal (liking that more the more I think about it), and balance it by reducing hurricane damage by about 20% maybe. It would keep it's awesomeness as crowdkiller, but be less of an Impending Doom like "you die" for players.

Undecided on whether it'd be better with Hurricane or Tempest; leaning toward the former since that's kind of what it's for. OTOH it would fit with what the other elemental capstone talents do, so there is a case for Tempest as well.

I'd be okay with that change. Though, if you're nerfing Hurricane, it looks better to add the buff to Hurricane as well.

I recently ran a lightning-only archmage up through Charred Scar or so. Late game I was frequently getting self-dazed by thunderstorm whenever anything got close to me, often proccing hurricane (though I resisted most of the damage). That was pretty annoying for an otherwise good build, so that might be something to think about if you want those talents to reduce stun resistance.

EDIT: I realize there's Spellcraft, but I opted not to use it as I didn't see how I'd be getting hit by my own spells. And damage wasn't the annoying part--it was the daze, and I'm not sure spellcraft would block that.

The tying of Hurricane procs to daze seems like the greater issue. I'd rather the check be applied on lightning damage, or for stun immunity to be ignored for the purposes of applying Hurricane. Trading damage for crowd control seems reasonable without adding a confusing immunity check. Of course, there'd need to be some rebalancing.

kazak wrote:I recently ran a lightning-only archmage up through Charred Scar or so. Late game I was frequently getting self-dazed by thunderstorm whenever anything got close to me, often proccing hurricane (though I resisted most of the damage). That was pretty annoying for an otherwise good build, so that might be something to think about if you want those talents to reduce stun resistance.

In fairness, in theory, this is what Spellcraft is for.

Not hitting yourself, that is.

Hum it is not meant to self stun .. I'll check.

Second thing: I think the problem is more of an overabundance of 100% stun immunity in the later game, which is annoying for more builds than tempests. I suspect it stems from the times when stun was still total paralyzation. It might be worthwhile to have a search/replace go over the relevant files and replace 100% immunity with something like 70%, and then put back 100% where it really makes sense, like on elementals.

What overabundance ? I tried very hard to not give stun (or anything) immunities to many things. Can you draw me a list ? I might have missed some.
(Creatures that gain it from talents is an other story though, a shield wall orc should be near immune, it's the point of shield block; and you can dispel it)

If stun resistant monsters are problem for Lightning ArcM, which do seem reliant on Dazes, perhaps one of their talents could make Lightning damage hit for maximum it's allowed damage when enemy would resist daze?

darkgod wrote:What overabundance ? I tried very hard to not give stun (or anything) immunities to many things. Can you draw me a list ? I might have missed some.

Oh man, mostly I was parroting people saying: "Oh, in the East, stun becomes much less useful". Hopefully I wasn't talking complete nonsense.
24 hits - confusion_immune showed up 14 times, so it is resisted more rarely. Whew. "Overabundance" may have been overstating the case though.

Although it seems to have missed single-hued drakes, which I think should have 0.6/0.8/0.9 depending on size, especially if they'd get the buffs proposed in the "Weak Enemy Tweaks" post from a while ago.

Going through the list (if I don't mention them it means I think 100% is good):

• Lich: Ok, supposed to be super nasty, but I think that gets conveyed better if it's extremely hard to stun them instead of flat out impossible. Suggestion: 0.8
• Undead rat: A bit strange since other undead don't all get it, and neither do living rats.
• Troll: Specifically a patchwork troll. Since it's a necromantic construct similar to a bone giant, it makes sense, but something like 80% would also be good (see my argument on Lich)
• Major Demons: Same here: 100% fits for the Dolleg, since it's a weird planty thing, and the Daelach, since it's some kind of elementaly shadow/fire thing, then I'd go 80% for Uruivellas and 90% for the Champion and the Forge Giant. Or maybe 100% for them, too.

Well, that seems to be it. A lot less than I would have thought for some reason. I guess I tend to generalize when I encounter something with a 100% immunity and assume it's the whole type that's immune when in fact it's just a subtype or even more specific.

Out of the non-bosses, add Telugoroths(entirely effect immune, special flag) and Orc Mothers(and the Greatmother) to that.

I can't figure the logic on the latter. If they're concious enough to fight at all, it seems like stunning them would make that less effective. It's just a weird exception.

Bosses do shrug off a lot of Stun. Off the top of my head, Grushnak has 150% chance to block it and one final resists it 50%, while the other resists it 50% in the code but will always null it due to possessing the Pearl of Life and Death. Orc Greatmother fully nulls it, as mentioned. It's not useless, but it stops being usable to just disable every boss for its CD duration reliably. I find that reasonable enough, though I can see not...it's more common than, say, Confusion resistance(then again, good Confusion isn't common, and may be intended to be a larger advantage. So I can see that.)...

The bigger issue is more subtle, but mostly applies to Hurricane for mattering-a lot of those enemies tend to be a major threat in some area.

Elementals show up all over the place(most memorably in Derth/Tempest Peak/Heart of the Spellblaze) and are always decently large threats, Demons show up all over the place and are always decently large threats, Shades fill one entire dungeon, Ghosts are all over Dreadfell, Temporal Horrors and time elementals entirely fill another dungeon, Dragons are REALLY all over the place(Don't let the 1.0 fool you, all dragons have at least 0.5 resistance and the Wyrms have 0.8.), and then bosses start resisting it more late.

It's not so bad for Stun-Stun only has a few AoE skills in the game, so you can pick and choose your targets, and it's an excellent disabler. I wouldn't have a problem with a bit less Stun resistance, though, mostly because every Orc in the game also has a status cure.

But...Hurricane is the main crux of Air/Storm play, right now, and that's a lot of things to be walling it mostly/fully, feels like.

For Storm, Hurricane isn't as much of an advantage as it is a handicap because lightning spells are weak without it. With Hurricane, lightning's damage is about as good as fire's damage, except without the cleansing, dispelling, knockback, and protection from your own spells. Without Hurricane (against stun-immune enemies), lightning's damage is worse than fire's, and still has absolutely zero utility because daze won't work. So in its best-case scenario, Storm is worse than Wildfire. In its worst-case scenario, Storm is much, much worse than Wildfire.

Another issue is actually just the artifact pool. Off the top of my head, fire has: Firewalker, that meteor crown, Fiery Choker, and Molten Skin. Lightning has Storm Bringer's Gauntlets, and that's it.

Finally, all serious threats are stun-immune. If it wasn't stun-immune, you could just stun it and it would no longer be a serious threat, regardless of your equipment or your build choices or how insanely powerful they are, because losing 70% damage, 50% movement speed, four talents, and all talent cooldown will turn even Atamathon into a kitten. The only guys I can think of who can get around being totally impotent while stunned are guys with Stone Touch or Spell Feedback. With stun no longer locking down instant-cast talents or reducing healing, it's not so dangerous to the player anymore but it is still crippling to NPCs. So while only 20% of enemies may have stun-immunity, 99% of the enemies that you want to gear your build towards are stun-immune or at least majorly stun resistant.

There are a lot of possible solutions. Lower the variance and increase the mean damage of lightning spells so that Storm can be good at something (pure damage). Give Storm some kind of utility that doesn't check stun immunity. Lower stun immunity on dangerous NPCs (wyrms, Massok, Telos, Kra'tor, and Argoniel come to mind). Lower the damage penalty of being stunned, maybe to 50% to match up with daze. Allow Storm to bypass some stun immunity for the purpose of Hurricane. More lightning artifacts.

Actually one thing I would really like to see is the duration on all stun talents lowered to, say, a third to a half of their cooldown. Right now, with a lot of classes, things are either stunned all of the time or none of the time. There would be more ebb and flow, and less one-sided fights, if stun didn't last for something crazy like 8 turns.

How about decoupling Hurricane from Dazing completely?

I realise it doesn't fit with the universal cliché of lightning being unreliable, but an all-or-nothing one trick pony, always has balance issues.