ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

There seems to be a consensus among the game's best players that melee characters are underpowered in ToME. This comes from a number of factors:

1. They are far more exposed to damage than casters and tend to lack AoE, yet often have weaker defenses. Bulwark is a particularly obvious culprit in this regard - they're supposed to be the tankiest class in the game, fluff-wise, yet they can take far less damage than Archmages.

SOLUTION: Mage defenses should be weakened (especially Aegis and Bone Shield), while melee classes should gain more defensive abilities. Also, the hit point gap between mage and melee classes should be increased. The difference between Corrupter and Bulwark is +2 per level - only 100 HP at level 50!

2. They can be completely shut down by a particularly nasty opponent in a way that most other combat types can't. In particular, Evasion, invisibility/stealth, and high defense can make it genuinely impossible to damage a randboss before it kills you.

SOLUTION: Evasion should be removed, I think, while blind fighting should become a relatively common ego. I don't know what to do about defense.

There seems to be that consensus.

That doesn't mean it's particularly backed up by statistics.

This has been discussed and had statistics brought up that show there's no actual gap in clear rates on Normal, relative to the amount a class is played, relative to it being melee or ranged.

Yes, they're worse on Nightmare, but so are many mages. I'm not sure a full on rebalance of classes for higher difficulties is at all desireable.

And finally, Life Mod has a scaling factor so that it's actually closer to 100~ life by L50 per point of life mod. (This is, admittedly, not well known, but something an experienced player can easily see by playing.) And melee classes have the best damage output, hands down, by endgame(Arcane Blade's at the top of theoretical, many lesser melee classes can burst 3000+ easily), an advantage you leave out.

Basically your suppositions are all questionable here, and while there's a bit of a leaning for melee classes to be some of the worst classes(Marauder, Brawler), that's simply because of poorer, and rather intrinsic, design on those classes, sadly. Marauders and Brawlers hinge on burst damage and fairly low defenses, which is already a melee issue-their concept just doesn't work that well.

Don't get me wrong here; Blind-Fighting probably ought to have been on an ego. (I should have put that on Vision amulets! Bah.) I like Evasion, but it probably ought to be rebalanced somehow; Straight out removing it screws with the entire gimmick of one race and a replacement for it is difficult. And Defense...wait, how often do you get fully walled by Defense, keep Accuracy swaps. I haven't had that happen since before Rares, when the randbosses rolling up ** Defense was way too common.

What I'm trying to say is, you do have some points, but there's no real actual basis for a massive, sweeping change here. More small tweaks, particularly to some of the weaker melee classes; While the top end of melee clears and competes fine, in general, the low end really does need some buffs.

I concur with sageacrin; I would like to re-iterate that melee classes are designed, and do in practise, way more damage than casters (baring corruptors but that's their gimmick).
Thing is melee classes can deal huge damage to one/a few targets, while casters can deal less but to many.
The hitpoint difference is indeed higher than you think too.

As for the weak melee classes, they need a buff, because they are weak, not because they are melee

I think Bulwark's problem is poor damage, not lack of extra defenses ! Try to imagine a class as a rectangle.

Side 'a' is durability, which includes HP, elemental resistances, status effect removal, shields.
Side 'b' is damage output, disabling attacks etc.

If you focus your efforts on damage, you may neglect survivability. The character is a bit unbalanced - rectangle would have long 'b' and short 'a', resulting in relatively small area. You have to play carefully, one wrong move can cost you life of swamp you with status effects. Sometmes it's just an unusually high damage roll or critical.

If you focus on durability, like bulwarks, you also get a rectangle with low area (low overall effectiveness). Bulwarks deal the lowest base damage of all classes. Shield talents do have the shortest cooldowns of all weapon talents (2-handed, dual wield) but you can't escape the base damage of 0.8 * strength (yes, the formula is a little more complicated than that). It's like time actually passes faster for bulwarks ! Because it takes so much time to kill something, you get hit by more attacks and tricky talents, it is more rare to kill an enemy before he uses Fearscape on you, etc. Duration-based effects like charms, Greater Weapon Focus are worth less, because you're able to do less in a single turn. One turn of dual wield attacks is around 1.8 damage (compared to bulwark's 0.8), so tricks like Evasion benefit bulwarks less.

To get the biggest area from your rectangle, try to improve your weakness rather than focusing on your strength. Of course, there are many, many exceptions from this point of view, some classes get numerous advantages and no weaknesses to balance it. But bulwark's weakness is low damage, not low defenses!

One of my present characters is a Strength/Cunning Bulwark. Dexterity isn't all that important when your weapon is 100% strength, and between 2 stun sources (Shield Back, Dirty Fighting) and maxed Backstab you're able to stunlock opponents consistently. Assault is particularly funny, it's 2-3 criticals. Well, I figured out I don't need a second Wild infusion - magical effects are mostly not that bad, Confusion/Silence barely affects me and I have Unflinching Resolve. So I use an Acid Wave rune! You get extra damage and crowd control.

One overlooked tool at Bulwarks' disposal is... Repulsion. 1/5 Repulsion is a one point wonder. In cramped spaces and in crowds, it may as well read: "all adjacent enemies are dazed for 6 turns". Daze is a powerful effect, and 6 turns is a LOT (2 Assaults). They can't move and their damage is cut in half. This gives you enough time to kill 2 or so before they recover.

I don't think you can draw a clear correlation between ranged/melee being easy/hard. Classes like cursed, berserkers, wyrmics, get cleared consistently. In the ranged department, there is a huge disparity between archmages, oozemancers, solipsists on one end and paradox mages and doomed on the other... The strength of a specific class is what counts, I don't think melee or ranged makes that much of a difference on normal. Play a melee oozemancer/solipsist and see for yourself.

As a side note, starting a marauder on nightmare is a lottery that can take hours before you can get one out of the first dungeon.

1. Nearly all monsters have ranged attacks, or various debuffs that work from a distance. Even Insidious Poison can be nasty if you NEED healing. Almost all special attacks added presumably so that "ranged characters don't have it too easy" also hit melee, just harder. Two exceptions: Silence, Rush.

2. How about a thought experiment ? Let's take one of the most dangerous melee encounters in the game: Grushnak Pride barracks (between actual levels). One big room, nowhere to hide, two levers to open the door and a rare guarding the exit. Now replace all the monsters inside with spellcasters. Rare spellcasters, elite spellcasters. Would it become easier, or harder ?

On Normal? The spellcasters are harder.

On Nightmare? The physical fighters, assuming we're not replacing them all with the very highest end casters for Nightmare.

Because they have obtained what many Techniques oriented physical fighter player should have by that point-low CD Rush.

The player can use a bunch of different things-Giant Leap, Steamroller, Step Up, Movement Infusions, etc.-to intelligently replace this option. The AI can't, not reliably. That's why it would improve on Nightmare.

Trust me, those rooms are not fun on Nightmare and I will take anything in Rak'shor over them, there.

(Also, since when has enemy competence ever reflected on the player's competence? One of the most competent classes for the enemy to obtain is Archer, as of this version.)

What about armor? Heavier armor has 2 or 3 times the fatigue of light armor for 2 extra armor points.

cttw, you can't compare like that, heavy armor offers much more than 2 armour, +% hardness, -enemy crit chance, better egos, better fixedarts... Fatigue is the only reason why all characters don't use armor late game

Armour Training the skill offers great benefits. There's no unversal Dodging or Light Armour talent, and after playing marauders, shadowblades, rogues and temporal wardens it sems no single Defense talent comes close to Armour Training. Classes which make Defense look good need 2 talents maxed - Dual Weapon Training + Mobility, DWT + Misdirection, DWT + Blur (shadowblade)...

Aside from the 'of the dragon' ego available to massive armour only, which is awesome, there seems to be a much bigger selection of light armour artifacts, though:
Robe of the Force, Wrap of Stone, The Untouchable, Rogue's Plight, Spydre, Death's Embrace, Breath of Eyal, Nature's Companion... and many more spellcaster-oriented robes. Heavy has what - Armour of the King, Chromatic Scales and that's all, I guess.

b0rsuk wrote:1. Nearly all monsters have ranged attacks, or various debuffs that work from a distance. Even Insidious Poison can be nasty if you NEED healing. Almost all special attacks added presumably so that "ranged characters don't have it too easy" also hit melee, just harder. Two exceptions: Silence, Rush.

About this, I think there are quite a few projectiles that are INSTANT and really should not be. Not just boulders(which I've mentioned so many times DarkGod has grown bored I think )but for example the Naga poison spit - unless it travels faster than an arrow, it really should be dodgeable by moving in some cases. Perhaps I should make a separate bug/idea thread for this projectile thing though?

b0rsuk wrote: Robe of the Force, Wrap of Stone, The Untouchable, Rogue's Plight, Spydre, Death's Embrace, Breath of Eyal, Nature's Companion... and many more spellcaster-oriented robes. Heavy has what - Armour of the King, Chromatic Scales and that's all, I guess.

If we're talking end game stuff, light has Death's Embrace, Black Robe, Molten Skin, Breath of Eyal, Robe of Spydre. Heavy has Armor of the King, Chromatic Scales, Plate of the Blackened Mind, Scale Mail of Kroltar. I wouldn't say there's a huge disparity in the artifact department.

Zonk wrote: About this, I think there are quite a few projectiles that are INSTANT and really should not be. Not just boulders(which I've mentioned so many times DarkGod has grown bored I think )but for example the Naga poison spit - unless it travels faster than an arrow, it really should be dodgeable by moving in some cases. Perhaps I should make a separate bug/idea thread for this projectile thing though?

Again, melee characters seek to remain close to their enemies. Making projectiles not instant wouldn't help much, many projectiles are fast enough that they can't be dodged up close. Dodging mostly helps ranged classes. Slow Motion is good, but uses lots of stamina and wastes 2 generic poins getting there (Track is certainly not a waste, but I find using detection all the time boring, I have to wait and regen stamina).

Supermini: I'm not that familiar with endgame light armours, but in early game there's certainly a shower of good and great t2-3 artifacts. Even t1 has some very nice stuff, but Eeelskin Armor is somewhat rare. I don't remember any game in which I used an ego light armor for long, not to mention buying one. Armor of the deep, I guess.

b0rsuk wrote: Again, melee characters seek to remain close to their enemies. Making projectiles not instant wouldn't help much, many projectiles are fast enough that they can't be dodged up close. Dodging mostly helps ranged classes. Slow Motion is good, but uses lots of stamina and wastes 2 generic poins getting there (Track is certainly not a waste, but I find using detection all the time boring, I have to wait and regen stamina).

You make good points, but every tiny bit helps so if there were less instant projectiles that would help the 'approaching enemies' part, yes? Especially if you have no Rush or it is in cooldown. And Slow Motion does nothing vs instant projectiles.
Also there's the issue of magical projectiles ignoring your ranged defense right?

By the way, what I think could be interesting - but we're getting sidetracked, I think - would be non instant beams.
Of course they would still be pretty fast in most cases. And in some cases they should be instant of course - Celestial beam attacks can be LITERALLY as fast as light!

Zonk wrote:

b0rsuk wrote: Again, melee characters seek to remain close to their enemies. Making projectiles not instant wouldn't help much, many projectiles are fast enough that they can't be dodged up close. Dodging mostly helps ranged classes. Slow Motion is good, but uses lots of stamina and wastes 2 generic poins getting there (Track is certainly not a waste, but I find using detection all the time boring, I have to wait and regen stamina).

You make good points, but every tiny bit helps

The thread is, at least partially, about decreasing the gap in difficulty between melee and ranged. Slowing projectiles could increase it instead.

Another point - melee is inherently more susceptible to status effects. Melee attacks stun, wound, daze, sunder, pin, set up, bleeding, constriction, various poison strikes. Ranged has to care about confusion, blindness and occasional silence. It's easier to stack immunities for just 2 effects. There are even helmets and amulets granting 100% blind resistance, try finding one with 100% stun resistance. All the other effects are solved in the same way, usually Phase Door or Teleport.