alchemist infusions

[parcel]

The tree's layout really doesn't make much sense. There is no reason why one should have to plow through acid to get to ice, and this talent point penalty makes balancing the infusions less interesting, and makes it harder for the player to invest points in the tree creatively. The tree could probably use some tweaking beyond this one fix, but it would be a great start to have all the skills unlocked by default, or all of the later three unlocked once the player has a point in fire.

[SageAcrin]

Better idea(As having Alchemist infusions break the usual talent tree rules is a little weird); Have the first skill unlock infusions and boost their damage(Fireburn passive L1, Frost L2, Acid L3, Lightning L4, new L5 and 6? Suggest Darkness/Light.).

The second boosts their damage conversion of other elements to those infusion elements.

The third boost status proc rates/status power/status duration/what have you.

And the fourth give bombs that you're in the radius of a defensive bonus(Resist to that element, small +speed/+armor/+regen/+stats/+healmod/+status resists) for a short period based on level.

It's much more interesting than the extremely binary design it has, and it makes for some much odder level builds. It's a nerf to it on the level it's being built now, probably, but it makes it a much better heavy invest tree. Which is nice, as Alchemist doesn't have a lot of trees.

And it's not a big power boost/drop no matter what.

[noboruwatanabe]

I kind of see where you're coming from - it's annoying to spend class points you don't use, and the order is rather arbitrary. Maybe the different bomb levels could have proc chances or something? It could definitely stand to be a little more interesting - switching infusions could be made into a tactical choice rather than "just see which resists this enemy has".

On the other hand, you'll likely be 5ing two of the infusions anyway (to switch out for resists), so it's only (at most) a two point sink, on a class without a lot of class trees. Also, a lot of classes have talents at the end of trees that need "wasted" points. Just look at (for example) all the wyrmics that 1/1/1/5 the sand tree just for the breath, but never touch swallow, quake, or burrow.

[parcel]

I kind of see where you're coming from - it's annoying to spend class points you don't use, and the order is rather arbitrary. Maybe the different bomb levels could have proc chances or something? It could definitely stand to be a little more interesting - switching infusions could be made into a tactical choice rather than "just see which resists this enemy has".

On the other hand, you'll likely be 5ing two of the infusions anyway (to switch out for resists), so it's only (at most) a two point sink, on a class without a lot of class trees. Also, a lot of classes have talents at the end of trees that need "wasted" points. Just look at (for example) all the wyrmics that 1/1/1/5 the sand tree just for the breath, but never touch swallow, quake, or burrow.

I know that there are plenty of trees with similar problems. In some cases the pattern is not actually a problem; you pick up a few one-pointers which are moderately useful while going through the tree, and the one route with obligatory inefficiencies is not the only way to progress through the tree when building a playable character. I'm just saying that here it is a problem, more so than the anorithil's progression of hymns.

Yes, making lower-tier skills give a passive enhancement to hier-tier skills is one way to get around the tree-building problem, but in this case it does nothing for the arbitrary ordering. More than arbitrary, I might add, in the sense that it violates a fairly rational assumption that all the elemental infusion techniques don't depend on each other except through a base skill set common to all of them.

Violating the usual tree rules is not common, but we already have very routine experience with the combat training tree, which violates the usual rules in many ways. I see no reason why we should not violate the rules a little bit in cases where it would bring multiple strong benefits. We're probably sticking to the rule a little bit more often than is actually good for class design. It's important to communicate about game mechanics with the player efficiently, and the less complicated they are, the less you need to communicate and the less the player needs to remember. It's valuable to be able to rapidly develop new trees if we have some sensible defaults available, so that we don't have to think about all parameters at once in creating a new tree. While both of these reasons help justify conformity to a tree-hierarchy norm, it's not like they can't be overcome quite easily under the right circumstances.

Maybe I'd set it up so that all the infusion sustains are available with a point in fire infusion, saying that fire is the essential gateway to alchemical magic, so manipulations of this element tend to come out with less fuss and the fire-enabled conversion to other elemental aspects is never complete. I'd also have your talent levels in each of these infusions give a passive bonus to shockwave bomb. This makes things look more logical, including the way in which non-fire infusions are sustains while fire infusion is passive, and it also gives some love to a generally forlorn tier 4 skill in another tree.

[grooog]

I've always thought the rigid adherence to "four skills, up to 5 points each, and you must go left to right" was strange and unnecessary.

Stealth, for instance, would be a lot more usable at low levels (when rogues have the most difficulty) if it was just 2 points. One point, only requires a little Dex, gives you decent stealth that works against most Normal or lower creatures of your level. Second point requires you to be higher level with a lot more dex and is as good as the current 5 points. Right now it's only useful when you have a bunch of points to spare for pumping it at the expense of your active skills.

Infusions would definitely make a lot more sense as an a-la-carte option than one where you can't specialize in being frosty until you've dumped a point into fire and acid.

[Doctornull]

Heh, this is actually something I'm addressing in an upcoming addon.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=39347