ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I just finished up a run right here with one of these guys(A very, very good run), and I'd like to share some thoughts/ask for some feedback on ideas I've had for them.

-Two shield block.

Two shield blocking kinda needs a nerf. I hate leading off with a nerf, but this is the most standout element of these guys and it is really, really ridiculous.

At first glance, it doesn't look so bad. Stone Wardens don't get Riposte, and Block levels combine to still cap at 5. Combined elements off both shields is really good, but there's nothing really broken about it-Spectral does a similar function.

The problem is combining the Block values. It's way too good. It really, really needs to just take the highest. (Or halve both values...but that's more boring. I think it's more interesting as take highest.)

I was chopping off 540~ damage with my chosen shields-and could hit 700 if I had ever seen a need to. Even Atamathon can't really put a major dent in that kind of a barrier(the damage I took was Arcane, Light and a rare Physical crit that got through the barrier).

Just using the highest gives you a really good Block; It lets you hit L5 Block faster than most characters, and gives you much better element controls than most classes(since the elements would still combine), and you still could get 300-350 by using a heavy Block oriented shield along with a more elementally oriented one. It'd still be really good.

It's just way too good, right now. I could have easily made it better than I did. It does take until L30 to really get going, but it made Block the second turn consuming skill that I've set to autocast-and walked over any bosses that didn't get around my element blocks.

-Stone Alchemy.

Does this need to be locked? These guys have some interesting locked Class categories and a lot of good Class abilities to invest in, even without unlocks. They also run really low on Generic options, even if you unlock this. I guess it's a way to keep Celestial/Light from becoming a fixture, but there seem to be some players that are skipping unlocking any Class category for that instead, which is really boring. (And not entirely unfair, given the unlock categories are a little weak. I'll get to that.)

-Earthen Vines.

I admit; I didn't use this much, so I would really like feedback from someone who did. I 5/1/1/1'd the tree and never remembered it was there.

My general opinion on this is iffy, though. Yes, it's your mobility...but it's reliant on a status check succeeding, which runs by both Pin and a stat check that requires the first skill to be heavily leveled to be remotely reliable. And it's...not really required mobility-I barely used it, as mentioned.

What I'd kinda like to see is the entire tree get more support oriented. Eldritch Vines is pretty weak-you don't need much resource restoration outside of the Eldritch Stone barrier, unless you're going more heavily mage, and the latter two skills don't scale very well, but have excellent L1s.

I'd kinda like to see the Stone Vines get added damage/effects based on each, as such. Eldritch Vines could add Arcane damage and a small (3%?) chance to do 2-3 turn Silence every turn, Rockwalk could add Nature damage and poisoning, and Rockswallow could cause you to heal a small fraction of your Stone Vines damage.

With the effect being closer to 100~ damage a turn and some support status/healing, it feels more like an overall tanking tree, instead of something that pins enemies outside of your melee range and forces you to constantly use Rockwalk/Swallow to reach them.

I'd really like someone who has tried harder to make something of the tree than I to comment on this, though.

-Advanced categories.

Stone is sorta iffy, but that's somewhat self-fixing-with Earth's buffs in SVN, a more magic oriented Stone Warden, going heavily into Earth/Stone, is a lot more possible. Basically, it's already fixed for Stone, just not in 1.0, I think.

The other two still have issues, though.

-Eldritch Stone(the category)

Stone Spikes is an...okay status attack, running off...moderately okay spellpower that won't reliably status anything, and non-100% status chances.

For leveling up a (high investment) tree, you don't actually get a lot of payoff. Relative to nearly any other high investment tree in the game, Spikes just...isn't impressive. At L3 across the board, you get 400~ DoT damage(both halves of which can be resisted via Cut/Poison resistance), and 350 direct damage. None of which appears to be able to critical hit, that I was able to see in the code. Disarm and Silence are excellent statuses, but with 6 turns and only a 50-50 chance to even try them, it's less of a lockdown and more of a nice bonus.

Basically, when you compare it to Eldritch Slam, it looks pretty bad. Which is really weird for something that takes a Category point and 10+ Class points to get going.

There's a lot of ways you could improve it, though. It really ought to spellcrit, regardless, though given a Stone Warden's low critical hit rate, that's not a solution alone.

Having each skill grant an L5 bonus would be an interesting way to make the category more distinctive, though. Stone Spikes could lower enemy Movement speeds(Disable's a good status) for six turns with a similar rate as the other status, at L5. Poisoned Spikes could grant a chance for Crippling Poison at L5. Eldritch Spikes could temporarily lower enemy resistances at L5, while Impaling Spikes could simply grant a range bonus to the entire skill as you level them(+1 per two talent levels).

It's already basically a potpourri status skill-may as well go all the way with it.

-Deeprock

Deeprock suffers from one easy to miss, but fairly notable, downside.

It boosts physical damage and physical resistance penetration, but, despite being a physical fighter, Stone Warden doesn't hit in Physical; Many lategame artifact shields hit 100% for a non-physical element, and all of their weapon multiplier talents hit for Arcane or Nature.

So, the physical buffing skill doesn't actually buff their physicals! It buffs spell heavy builds, sure, but they already get Crystalline Focus, since you can't really have a spell heavy Stone Warden without Stone.

My thought for this category is to have the first skill(Deeprock Form) additionally grant Physical Power on leveling, merge Volcanic and Boulder Rock into one skill(Most people don't seem to be leveling Boulder Rock), and have a tier 2 or 3 skill (Living Rock?) that passively boosts Nature and Arcane damage and damage resistance penetration.

Since this class has no easy way to boost either, and there's not a lot of equipment that boosts either, this would be an excellent addition, and would make Deeprock Form quite good, I think.

-Random bugs/comments

A few things I noticed;

A: Resetting Elemental Split with Nature's Balance got me a nice stack overflow at one point, when both pairs were out at the same time. If I had to guess, this had to do with two of the Stone Halves having their special Power Core barrier up and in each other's radius, at the same time. This should probably be prevented or modified in some way.

B: The Rain of Spikes skill(gained on your Crystalline Half by leveling Power Core) seemed anemic when I looked at the code. When I look at the in-game description, it's listed as doing single digit damage over six turns at endgame(At Level 1, admittedly), though, which is way worse than what I thought I saw in the code. Not sure if the description is messed up, or the skill.

(Also, I think Power Core in general reports that it boosts the two talents it grants by modified talent rounded to nearest, but actually boosts them by raw talent or modified talent rounded down. Not certain on this, I just recall L2 not giving L3 to the Power Core talents, though it says it does.)

C: If you use Eldritch Stone(the talent, the barrier) and then Elemental Split, your splits will have the barrier, which can promptly blow you up. I also had the messenger from Last Hope, in Reknor, aggro me because he showed up the wrong time in the fight. Maybe this shouldn't hurt allies.

D: Stone Warden's Life Modifier is missing from their description when you go to make one. (It's +2. This isn't surprising anyone. But, still.)

-Overall, an extremely fun class with a few minor problems. I enjoyed the heck out of it, even if it was kinda easy due to autoblocking eight elements for 540 towards the end.

*nods along to most of that*

The crash with using two sets of pets is very frequent, and actually bug reported them summoning together at all because of that and other pets of such power generally not letting you multiply them (im... fairly sure forgery can't metaflow? time to see!)

The vines grab/leap do scale to a very nice nuke or heal if you can afford them.

I don't recall ever finding rain of spikes that noticable, though the shield was remarkable. The pets inheriting auras like stone is a very powerful combo i valued making purposeful use of, i never thought of it as an issue

I tried on a few wardens and could never make deeprock a useful endgame tree because of exactly what you said, and how much harder it can be to get physical resist than the other resists in general.

Endgame block values with the two prodigies seem to be near universally seen as ridiculous, though i still don't see any nightmare wardens. Suspect this says more about nightmare for melee, though. I also played an entire game through the peak with virtually nothing but the pets on autocast, so they're... pretty disgusting - only stopped by nightmare horror mass spawns. (and that's how i did the west on every warden, trivially)

While having both shield value and 2 block prodigies together does produce rather comically overpowered effect, nerfing it down to one would make them pretty much worthless, or at least downright uninteresting. As you pointed out, lack of Riposte means you need to block whole attack, and you get only 1 turn 1 attack counterstrike debuff ever on enemy. Don't block whole attack and you just wasted turn while taking damage. The same double block prodigy could work on Arcane Blade and Sun Paladin, yet I only manage to see one winner with it (spoiler: he still died with it). It's cool that you managed to find a near 400 block one. My best one had 300, and 'usual' value without ego seem to be 200. 200 is just laughtable amount late game, especially on higher difficulty, so any Stone Warden that didn't have luck to merchant randarts would just not work. Having more elements covered at once is just not enough, many enemies like to have side procs of various random elements depending on gear, normal block-counterstrike class don't care and just eat that single-double digit number, for SW it kills their damage output.

I would say that 'maybe' getting half of offhand block value would be more fine, although it's still big maybe. Problem with flat numbers is that they are fine on normal, but any higher difficulty any not-percentage values gets left in the dust. Also the shield seems more powerful than it is witch multiple damage types coming at once, like Ata 600x3 types beam giving 1800 'absorb', but his Leap for only Arcane Damage would still make a fair dent if not just one shot you w/o those stacking block values.

Stone Warden is a physical class. While their nukes deal arcane and nature damage, they all have horrible cooldowns. Sure, easy targets just fall flat, but on actual bosses, you would have to bump them, or shuffle around 10 turns. Artifact shields might not be physical, but they also plainly SUCK compared to randarts (which I seen pretty much all physical), so it kinda nulls. That aside, Deeprock Form getting buff wouldn't be bad, though I never really tested it, short term stance forms it's not something I enjoy.

I personally didn't used Vines, I can't see them ever being used in any place where rare caster could be around corner, getting 2 turns before you could act, and then you are fully relying on RNG to get vine appear, standing in one spot because moving means taking double damage. Of course you can disable them, but what is the point of tree in that case? Seen quite few people advocating them, but still it takes ONE moment to loose your char, way too risky for me.

Pets are powerful, or at least the crystalline one is. Earth one liked to die to anything more challenging, even more than Thalore trees (maybe I should retest a bit later). For a 10 point investment and 24 turns CD, I do hope I will get something good. Or at least better what Summoner with third of a cd with 5 point investment pet can do. I'll have to try one in NM later to see if they dip from difficulty.

Spikes are iffy, you need full 20 point investment to get a 12 turn spell, one trick pony. I'd need to test them myself, but they must hit like a nuclear bomb for such price.

I would like Eldritch Fury changed/buffed though. It's a 12 turn cd single target melee attack with highest mana and EQ cost, yet it DAZES. You could remove that from it and nobody would miss it. Make it a Disarm and/or Silence, or make strikes dispell magic, or make it do whatever else, just not effect that will be instantly broken by reflect damage, if it lands at all in first place of course.

You don't want to weaken the class at lower levels. It'd make more sense to me to have a soft cap with diminishing returns above some threshold. This could deal with the "no endgame damage" issue without making the earlier game painful. And you'd weaken the class quite a bit otherwise - you're trading a high damage weapon for a low damage shield at the start.

As a disclaimer: I'm not actually against making some form of scaling for Block, or a lesser impact than what I suggested. However, I don't really feel it necessary, either, for the reasons I'll comment on.

You don't want to weaken the class at lower levels. It'd make more sense to me to have a soft cap with diminishing returns above some threshold. This could deal with the "no endgame damage" issue without making the earlier game painful. And you'd weaken the class quite a bit otherwise - you're trading a high damage weapon for a low damage shield at the start.

You're trading for two low damage shields, one with no early offhand damage multiplier, at the start.

There's a playstyle that describes two low damage weapons, one with no offhand damage multiplier, in the earlygame. It's called dualwielding, and this is the first I've heard it described as weak enough to require compensation, early on. Sure, this is an oversimplification, Rogues and such target Dual Weapon Offense early for a reason...but then again, Rogues and Shadowblades don't get Block or +defense/+armor either.

Later, the lack of an offhand damage mult makes Stone Warden's damage its own thing, but once you get past Steel shields sucking, shields largely are comparable to onehanded weapons-they actually have the best bump attack of any tank, I found. The CDs become less of an issue when you actually can output 500+ damage on a normal swing. Emphasis on less...but you also get a ton of stuff like your Halves to up your damage output during the cooldown, and the burst damage skills, between high multipliers and your higher than most tanks base damage, are extremely good.

The implication that Sword/Shield is inherently a weak playstyle because it only has one blocking Shield worth of block value-when Sword/Shield characters cleared before Block was implemented, and do pretty well now that they have one shield block-is confusing me. I just won a Bulwark, and single shield block seemed really good, even without the extra elements and such.

Of course Stone Warden is a different class. If their overly powerful Block is compensating for some playstyle issues-something I sorta agree on, given my comments on Vines and the upgraded categories-then Block shouldn't be overly powerful and those playstyle issues fixed to compensate.

Sure, Block would be less powerful early, but Stone Warden's already really good at physical defense anyways-the only thing you can reliably wall in the early game. Two shields provides above average armor and defense, and Stone Skin exists for even more early game Armor-though, many people are skipping it, probably because Block is so effective against physical damage at all points in the game.

So yeah, that's why I don't think it'd be a problem, personally. But I'm not really wrapped up in it-if people disagree, it's fine. There seems to be a consensus that 500+ blocks are overly powerful, at any rate. And I do have to agree that they probably should have some way to get counterstrikes on partial blocks, if it was nerfed.

Also the shield seems more powerful than it is witch multiple damage types coming at once, like Ata 600x3 types beam giving 1800 'absorb', but his Leap for only Arcane Damage would still make a fair dent if not just one shot you w/o those stacking block values.

Actually it's not fully Arcane, or wasn't for me. Either that, or I was taking off 1200 damage before the Leap hit with...25% or so Arcane resistance and 100~ armor. He didn't come near one-shotting me, regardless, despite lacking Arcane block there. There was about ten other elemental figures popping up that I blocked, though. Go fig, maybe it has to do with what weapon he gets or something.

Fair enough - those are reasonable points. The mobility and stealth of Rogues et al strike me as very different - they'd be much weaker without their damage multiplying abilities.

My biggest reservation is different:
You've identified an issue in the late game and you're proposing changes that impact the class across the entire game.
I think it's useful to distinguish between the two to avoid making the class too fragile in the early going.
The class does not seem overpowered at low levels - thus the caution on substantive changes without compensating balance.

The class does not seem overpowered at low levels - thus the caution on substantive changes without compensating balance.

Well, Elemental Split is a really good early game skill...but, I admit, summons are a playstyle thing in part, and locking people into requiring pet heavy play(when it's not a major class element like Necromancer or Summoner) isn't good, either.

Also, Block is a skill that naturally becomes relatively stronger as the game goes on(40 damage physical only block isn't that much more impressive than 20 damage physical only block, and Eternal Guard majorly boosts it.). I found sub-L10 Block worse than the Bulwark version, due to the lack of partial block counterattacks and the still small block value, so adding that effect to some skill would also be some compensation for that. Having it show up as an L5 effect for Stoneshield would work.

But yeah, I agree. That's part of why I'd like to see Stone Vines buffed, and the L10 skills be better-some compensation for the nerf, that is optimally less backended than Block currently is.

I recently got a Stone Warden to level 49 on Nightmare Roguelike. Thoughts:

1. Block doesn't get really good until really late (when you have either some good shields that cover a lot of damage groups, or both Eternal Guard and Spectral Shield). By that point, a lot of classes have overpowered combos - Corrupters are already regularly hitting for 5k, for example. Personally, I'd like to see the second shield not adding to block by default, and instead getting a skill that adds 10% of its block value per talent level to the total block value.
2. Block can be dispelled. I ultimately died to a demon whose Burning Wake removed both my block and my Dwarven Resilience every turn.
3. I agree that Stone Vines is a bit weird. I'd like to see the later, mobility skills have cooldowns that reduce with talent level, so that it's worth investing more than one point in them. Additionally or alternatively, they could cease to require a pinned target at level 5, as long as Stone Vines are active.
4. Deeprock Form is already really powerful. Sadly, it also gets dispelled by Burning Wake. I'd like to see SWs get at least one ability that isn't removed by that spell!

I don't think anything is safe from being dispelled by Burning Wake.

Other effects, Mental effects, and (I believe) sustains.

There really should be something in the game that can dispel Mental.

Granted, I only played on Normal, but I had a very successful run on my Stone Warden. I used both Earthen Vines and Eldritch Stone heavily. I didn't use Dwarven Nature at all (as I has just finished playing around with a summoner and I wasn't super interested in relying on pets again). It was by far my favorite/most fun character to date.

As for Spikes, I went 1/5/5/5. I didn't get it till later in the game, but once I started putting points into it, I went as far as I was going for it ASAP. I found that although it wasn't quite as game-changing as I thought it would be, it was still very very useful, especially in the Prides. It was nice to be able to send the spikes to mash up whichever side of the Pride I couldn't move to quickly (likely via Rockwalk). I was running a decent Magic stat and found that the statuses got placed on the normal mobs more often than not, and that's why I got it; to deal with large groups of casters. It was also a very helpful tool for clearing out tight spaces that are jam-packed with guys. I was using it on bosses, but mostly just because it was more damage and my bigger, meaner abilities were on cooldown. I mainly got it to help with packs of casters, which all my melee characters have suffered from. And in that regard, it totally did it's job.

As for Earthen Vines, I found them to be totally amazing. I LOVED them. I went 5/1/5/1. I maxed the heal because I had 4 extra points in my build for either Rockwalk or Rockswallow and I felt the heal was more important than the damage. And although I ended up using Rockswallow WAY more than Rockwalk, I felt very happy with that decision. The big thing, for me, was that I took this tree early (went 5/1/1/1 before Dreadfell, for sure, possibly before level 15, I can't remember for sure). This allowed the early game to be pretty trivial for me. Often, I would just let things die via the vines. I would stand around, waiting for the vines to kill things. I could take on HUGE swarms of monsters because 90% of them never even got to me. And having the ability to zap to the early game mages was super useful. Better, Rockswallow would almost always 1-shot the early game enemy casters. It was 1-shotting many of the skeletal mages in Dreadfell. And any caster that didn't insta-die to Rockswallow was a single bump away from death. I never really felt the need to take Eldritch Vines past 1 point, simply because Stoneshield gave me MORE than enough resource regen. It felt like unnecessary double dipping.

By the end of the game, I was using that and the Gloves of the Desert Scorpion + a movement infusion and felt like I had more or less complete control over the battlefield. Enemies were ALWAYS where I wanted them to be. Rockswallow was especially nice because it allowed me to cherry pick a dangerous caster mob out of a group of melee units and destroy him solo before his buddies could get to me. Bunch of whelplings protecting that giant wyrm that is AOEing your face off? COME HERE! And then all that was left was the mopping up.

I recently started a second Stone Warden to try out the two class-specific trees I didn't play with the first time around (Dwarven Nature and Deeprock). And while I've only just recently beaten Dreadfell last night, I am not liking those two lines very much at all. The pets are VERY strong, often taking down very hard encounters without my help at all (while I hide around a corner). But often their AI is super derpy and they just die quickly. This leaves me summoning them over and over and over (via running away and resting till their cooldown is back up) to get pasted certain areas. And vaults with heavy infestations of melee enemies (like the giant vaults in Diakara and some mini-vaults in Dreadfell) have been a REAL pain in the butt, because they just can't handle the pressure of a ton of things beating on their faces all at once. My previous build would have been standing in the choke-point, letting the vines soften everything up before they get to me and mostly just having to just finish off whatever made it to me with a bump attack or two. Yeah, the pets made the first two tiers of dungeons a breeze, for the most part, but I just don't see them really being super awesome later on. And as for Deeprock, I haven't even unlocked it, but I already realized a lot of the bonuses just aren't going to be as practically good as they sound on paper (due to a lot of my attacks doing non-physical damage as well as physical resistance being rarer). And besides, I already have great defensive cooldowns, do I really need more?

Overall, I think that Earthen Vines is really the standout of the class. It gives great mobility/battlefield control, the ability to basically ignore just about all non-caster, non-boss mobs, and a really nice heal to boot. One thing to note: in my first game, I took stone vines to 5/5 and pumped my will pretty high very early. I never really had many issues, with most mobs being trapped most of the time. In the new game, I was sitting on 1/5 till 20, and I found that not only was the decreased range really hurting me, but it felt like my vines were falling off/not attaching themselves an awful lot more than in my previous game. Maybe it was just the added range giving the Stone Vines in my first game more chances to latch on, I don't know (read: I don't know how to look in the code), but it feels like more points in Stone Vines made my vines more likely to "stick" to the target faster/longer.

Overall, I'd love to see a small buff to the Eldritch Stone line (I love the idea of a second % based status if you go 5/5 in a talent). And I think Deeprock really needs so reevaluation. And as they stand in 1.0, the two mage trees (Stone and Earth) felt pretty useless (with the exception of Earth Skin, which I went 5/5 in...can't ever have too much armor as a Stone Warden, IMO). But the class is solid and fun, and I think that's what's really important.

Now that really is a completely different build than mine. I had a total of, I think, 32 points invested in Deeprock and Stone. I didn't regret them, either. The availability of completely different approaches is a very good sign for the class.

Mind you, your success does make me wonder how far an antimagic SW could get ...

Could Stone Wardens even get anti-magic? I know they start with categories unlocked that give them spells and use mana...doesn't that exclude them from ever using the anti-magics? Along those lines, I did use the line of skills that made your shield deal arcane damage (and is all spells) quite extensively as well...1/5/5/5 I think, or something like that...

I also didn't think Deeprock or Stone would be bad, I just knew they wouldn't be fitting into my build if I wanted lots in Eldritch Stone and Earthen Vines, which I wanted a lot in.

They can't get antimagic.

haven't played SW past level 25 or so, but two comments:

1 - doing an escort in Old Forest (4), I ran into the boss, got frozen, and the escort went hostile - meaning Earthen Vines automatically targeted it, ultimately killing it. annoying.

2 - pets should get something from Blighted Summoning (they don't already, do they?). possibly 2 abilities each to make it an attractive option. Bone Shield and Bone Grab for stone and Corrupted Negation and Curse of Vulnerability for crystal, maybe.