ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Yes, yet another topic about investing cat point into known categories...

With new, 1.0.5 scaling investing cat point became even more useless than it was. Yes, some trees noticeably benefit from that boost, but that's mostly class skills... For generic skill it's not good and became noticeable worse with new scaling.

I suggest to give 0.4 mastery for generic skills and keep giving 0.2 mastery for for class skills, logic behind this is that class skills usually more powerful and it's logical that they are harder to master...

Discuss!

PS. BTW, are there any way to change masteries in cheat mode? I'd love to test the numbers and bring them here

Strongpoint wrote:PS. BTW, are there any way to change masteries in cheat mode? I'd love to test the numbers and bring them here

Category Mastery is documented on the cheat mode wiki page:
http://te4.org/wiki/Debugging

That page will also help you get every category you want, and level your talent level up to wherever you want for testing.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=38409

I still like this idea.

If the impact is lower than before, it could be boosted to 0.3 on two categories-that would be quite interesting as a buff.

So, I am bored, so numbers for several generic trees, Little messy and mistakes are possible


So. Started testing because I am bored and starting with Fungus

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.0 mastery
1) +5 turns
2) 6 turns 54% of the heal
3) 82% of a turn -3 equilibrium
4) 1000% regen heal

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.3 mastery
1) +5 turns
2) 6 turns , 57% of the heal
3) 87% of a turn -4 equilibrium
4) 1150% regen heal

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.4 mastery
1) +5 turns
2) 6 turns , 57% of the heal
3) 88% of a turn -4 equilibrium
4) 1200% regen heal

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.5 mastery
1) +6 turns
2) 6 turns 58% of the heal
3) 89% of a turn -4 equilibrium
4) 1200% regen heal

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.7 mastery
1) +6 turns
2) 6 turns 59% of the heal
3) 92% of a turn -4 equilibrium
4) 1200% regen heal

Fungus:
A) Empty hand\ 5 points\ 80 will, 80 cun 1.8 mastery
1) +6 turns
2) 6 turns 60% of the heal
3) 93% of a turn -4 equilibrium
4) 1200% regen heal

Khm. What can I say, a nice way to waste a cat point even if it gave +0.4

Aegis, naked, magic 100, 1.1 mastery, maxed

1) Heal 433
2) +49% to shield
3) 56% of the heal
4) 76% boost to shield


Aegis, naked, magic 100, 1.3 mastery, maxed

1) Heal 466
2) +51% to shield
3) 58% of the heal
4) 79% boost to shield

Aegis, naked, magic 100, 1.5 mastery, maxed

1) Heal 495
2) +53% to shield
3) 59% of the heal
4) 82% boost to shield


Aegis, naked, magic 100, 1.7 mastery, maxed
1) 524
2) 55%
3) 60%
4) 85%

Again, huge waste of a cat point, both for archmages and arcane blades. Another interesting thing that item with like +15

spellpower is way better than item with +0.6 to Aegis Mastery


Light, naked, magic 100, 0.8 mastery, Maxed

1) 246 heal
2) 17.08 heal and shield \+17% heal\ 6 turns
3) 285 barrier
4) 6 turns \ 26 life


Light, naked, magic 100, 1 mastery, Maxed
1) 273 heal
2) 18.95 heal and shield \+19% heal\ 7 turns
3) 316 barrier
4) 7 turns \ 26 life

Light, naked, magic 100, 1.2 mastery, Maxed
1) 297 heal
2) 20.65 heal and shield \+21% heal\ 7 turns
3) 344 barrier
4) 7 turns \ 28 life

Light, naked, magic 100, 1.3 mastery, Maxed
1) 309 heal
2) 21.44 heal and shield \+21% heal\ 8 turns
3) 357 barrier
4) 8 turns \ 29 life

Light, naked, magic 100, 1.5 mastery, Maxed
1) 331 heal
2) 22.95 heal and shield \+23% heal\ 8 turns
3) 382 barrier
4) 8 turns \ 31 life

Light, naked, magic 100, 1.7 mastery, Maxed
1) 351 heal
2) 24.36 heal and shield \+24% heal\9 turns
3) 406 barrier
4) 9 turns \ 33 life

Later more, That's rather fun to do testing like that. I need to think about more specialized generic trees to find one really worthy catpointing...

Strongpoint wrote:Later more, That's rather fun to do testing like that. I need to think about more specialized generic trees to find one really worthy catpointing...

Interesting!

- Cursed trees (Feed & Cursed Form)

- Cursed Gear? ("dark gifts")

- Combat Training (armor & weapon mastery)

- Racial trees? (Yeek speed? Thalore resists? Dwarf saves?)

With the way the scaling works now, I think it would be worth making sure that a category point spent does something specific for each category.
eg. the way you get an extra shadow from the cursed shadows category.
It might even be better to code these as extra bonusses for spending the category point, rather than just for increase talent level.
eg. Spending a category point in wild-gift/fire drake gives 5% fire penetration as well as the increased mastery.

HousePet wrote:With the way the scaling works now, I think it would be worth making sure that a category point spent does something specific for each category.

I think that's a great idea.
And here are some thoughts to add:
1.a fifth skill in some trees that requires a category point spent in these tree to learn;
2.special effects of the skills after their effective levels reach 7.0 or 7.5;
3.if you spend a category point in racial talent trees, you can choose one of 3 to 7 special abilitys to get. These abilities are like a weaker and racial specific version of the prodigy.

Something I've been intentionally doing with Stoics has been fine-tuning the scaling on their talents so most that gain radius/range/duration will get an extra point there at 6.5 and another at 7.5 to make category bumps useful.

IvenGray wrote: 2.special effects of the skills after their effective levels reach 7.0 or 7.5;

Just wanted to object to this one in particular. On Nightmare+, all of your enemies before long will have all of their skills at over 8.0, and so they'd essentially be getting all the special effects as if they'd put a cat point into all of their skills. So if those special effects were any good, this would cause a noticeable jump in difficulty. Your other ideas are fine, though.

IvenGray wrote:

HousePet wrote:With the way the scaling works now, I think it would be worth making sure that a category point spent does something specific for each category.

I think that's a great idea.
And here are some thoughts to add:
1.a fifth skill in some trees that requires a category point spent in these tree to learn;
2.special effects of the skills after their effective levels reach 7.0 or 7.5;
3.if you spend a category point in racial talent trees, you can choose one of 3 to 7 special abilitys to get. These abilities are like a weaker and racial specific version of the prodigy.

1. Darkgod needs to make and balance something like new 80-100 talents... It's not impossible but it's hard. I'll prefer new class or two made instead
2. Same as above, even if you boost only one skill in the tree that's a lot. For every talent that's imsane
3. If you go that route, then it's way easier to make a racial specific prodigy unlocked by the high enough mastery (BTW are there racial trees mastery+ items? I don't remember to ever get one) or adding racial specific abilities unlockable with a cat point

With the way the scaling works now, I think it would be worth making sure that a category point spent does something specific for each category.

Dunno, Like it but it's rather a lot of specific effects. Easier than new talents\talent effects but still a lot to balance.
One possible way to circumvent this is to give default effect for a category (spells one bonus, cunning another, celestial is third) and then slowly add specific ones

A few of things to keep in mind here:
The new scaling changes allow mastery to affect a number of talents that didn't previously benefit from mastery. So don't rush to conclusions about what needs changing until there has been more experience with the last set of changes.

The benefit of mastery on a given talent tree, while modest in most cases, must be evaluated in the context of how important that talent tree is to a given character. A small benefit to a talent you use a lot or that is critical to your character build can be much more valuable than learning a new talent tree with talents that you almost never use.

Diminishing returns on talent mastery have been around for a while, and the scaling changes (in and of themselves) don't change things much at medium to high talent levels (effective talent level 4-8, typically). (For reference, the scaling changes were designed, in most cases, to keep talent effects approximately the same at effective talent level 5.0 for a character with 100's in appropriate stats.)

stinkstink wrote:Something I've been intentionally doing with Stoics has been fine-tuning the scaling on their talents so most that gain radius/range/duration will get an extra point there at 6.5 and another at 7.5 to make category bumps useful.

I did something similar when putting in the scaling changes. While trying to make sure that there is a benefit to each talent point increase, I also tried to make sure that effective talent level 6.5 crossed a break point in most instances where applicable.

As for a specific benefit from spending a category point on a talent tree, it would probably be safer to provide some kind of passive peripheral benefit. Something like 0.1 mana/turn/0.1 extra mastery spent for arcane trees, or +1 sight range/0.1 extra mastery spent for the divination tree, for example.

I think notable effect is limited to trees that offer cool passives, cool sustains, timed effects (especially if duration scales with mastery) and that's all. And usually tree needs more than one to be a good candidate to make mastery buff worth considering

For example, yeek racial has one good and one great passive... So, catpointing gives +5% confusion\silence immunity +2.3% global speed and I suspect a bit more powerful summons. Not bad, but Thank you, I prefer infusion slot, fungus, harmony, escort tree or other options offered by a class almost always. And that's one of better generic trees to buff


Fact is that 90% of mastery+ items are useless junk* and catpointing talent trees is a huge newb trap. And I see no ways to solve that

*Of cause if it doesn't offer other benefits

Diminishing returns on talent mastery have been around for a while, and the scaling changes (in and of themselves) don't change things much at medium to high talent levels (effective talent level 4-8, typically) (For reference, the scaling changes were designed, in most cases, to keep talent effects approximately the same at effective talent level 5.0 for a character with 100's in appropriate stats.)

Well, they are noticeably more diminishing now. At least for few trees that I catpointed from time to time

Agreed with the idea that catpointing a tree should give some sort of unique benefit on top of the minor increases. This stops monsters with 7+ in skills getting overly powerful too. Although this doesn't solve the problem of most +mastery items being pretty useless.