Oozemaster Adjustments

[Hachem_Muche]

Most experienced ToME players agree that the Oozemaster class is a bit overpowered. While mobility can be a challenge, it has strong offense and great defense, and becomes virtually unstoppable by the mid-game. If you see an oozemaster randboss in the High peak, it's generally best to just avoid it at all costs.

This is due to some scaling issues and a few bugs, which I am working on and I would like feedback from experienced players. Here are the changes I'm testing now:
New version uploaded. Summary here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?p=169448#p169448

Agree/Disagree with these changes? What other issues need to be addressed?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

If you truly can stack EQ reduction with mucus, that probably should stop, though I have no objection to stacking it on bosses. The damage from it on it's own is already not spectacular, and stacking it a few times to lead a boss/enemy into it is a viable way of increasing damage. I would suggest fixing the former, but leaving the latter. (It's already useless on so many undead anyway.)

How would indiscernable anatomy impact crit damage reduction beyond talent level 5? Crits from extremely high level enemies on higher difficulties/infinite dungeon can be significantly more dangerous then those faced while you're still capped at 5.

[Hachem_Muche]

To keep things fair, you want indiscernible anatomy to scale at about the same speed as opposing crit power talents, like Lethality, so that talent for talent they mostly cancel each other out.

[TheSlayer]

Slime Spit doesn't need an early-game reduction; that will just make starting this class tedious.

There IS a problem, though:
Mid-game enemies with this ability can pretty much rapid-fire your HP down with ranged 400-800dmg acid and nature attacks even on Normal. This is obviously unacceptable. Combined with the ridiculous survivability of these enemies, one instance of a simple Rare, in my case as early as Reknor, can end a flawless run with no possibility of victory (and very little of survival). 3 lives later I realized it couldn't be done. Thankfully you're addressing their survivability at least. But even their supporting slimes can rapid-fire ranged attacks in the 300's when they are only level 29 or so themselves.

It needs the opposite: Tone down the upper-level scaling to reasonable levels, requiring the user to gain +acid (nature?) damage gear in order to increase potency for late-game, like any other ability. And leave the early damage alone so it won't create useless frustration and "barrier to entry" for the class. Acid gear is underutilized anyway (almost never really useful).

If I'm confusing this ability with another one which is being used by enemy oozemancers and their slimes (acid spit or whatever) then take it into consideration for some of my comments instead, and please address that problem. We shouldn't need a high-level Charged torque just to survive entering LoS of rare oozemancers.

[Doctornull]

IMHO the Oozemancer should be re-worked to be either a melee or a ranged class. Right now it excels in both roles, which is a part of why it's so overpowered. If it had a weakness, either range or melee, then that would be a balancing factor.


I dislike Slime Spit because it removes tactical options: even if I see one coming, I can't do tricky things like force an enemy to swap places with me, or leap in front of my escort. The bounce will hit me (and/or my escort) anyway. In addition to toning down the high-end damage, I'd suggest removing the bounce entirely, or toning down the bounce damage such that escorts can be expected to survive 2-3 hits of bounce damage even if the main attack damage would kill them.

For Mucus, in addition to not stacking multiple Mucus effects on a tile, I'd suggest changing the poison's on_merge to only apply the max damage per turn and to only extend to max duration +2 rather than summing total damage. This means you'll still be dealing significant damage over time, but you won't be stacking 100+ damage per turn on Normal.


Get rid of Natural Acid / Corrosive Nature, and throw in a couple of Physical and/or Mind damage effects to compensate. If you decide to make the Oozemancer more melee-based, then you could easily compress the Oozing / Corrosive trees into a single high-level tree.

Alternately, instead of Natural Acid / Corrosive Nature affecting the target, have them affect the CASTER, granting a timed effect which gives resist penetration for the opposite type. Only one can be active at once, and both have a long-ish cooldown which encouraged alternation. Basically a more focused Born Into Magic type of thing.

[Hachem_Muche]

The Slayer, slime spit can do around 100 damage for a level 1 oozemaster. That is higher than any other ranged attack that I can think of, and makes the start trivial.

The bouncing slime is a cool effect that is not unprecedented (at bit like chain lightning, actually), but maybe it needs to be reworked to not hit the same target more than once.
Another possibility is reducing the damage (by a %) from each subsequent bounce.

Corrosive Nature/Natural Acid could probably be reworked to provide a complementary buff to the caster rather than a debuff on the target. This would make them a bit easier to use while not stacking with the other resist pen talents.

As far as designing in a weakness (to either melee or ranged) I'm not sure how to do that without redesigning the whole class.

[Doctornull]

The Slayer, slime spit can do around 100 damage for a level 1 oozemaster. That is higher than any other ranged attack that I can think of, and makes the start trivial.

That's true, nerfing the low and high end might be the right thing to do.

The bouncing slime is a cool effect that is not unprecedented (at bit like chain lightning, actually), but maybe it needs to be reworked to not hit the same target more than once.
Another possibility is reducing the damage (by a %) from each subsequent bounce.

Chain Lighting is a great example: it's lower damage than Lightning, and it's a higher tier talent.

How about we make Slime Spit deal full damage on the first hit, and 1/3 full damage to all secondary hits. The nature slow would apply to everyone, of course. That's still really strong IMHO.

Corrosive Nature/Natural Acid could probably be reworked to provide a complementary buff to the caster rather than a debuff on the target. This would make them a bit easier to use while not stacking with the other resist pen talents.

Yeah. They could scale like the Archmage respen talents.

As far as designing in a weakness (to either melee or ranged) I'm not sure how to do that without redesigning the whole class.

Off the top of my head, to make the class more melee-oriented:
- Reduce range of all Oozemancer talents to 5-7 (maybe 7 is best since Solipsist talents seem to cap at 7)
- Change some talents into Cone effects, like Acid Splash and Poisonous Spores
- Increase the cooldown of Corrosive / Oozing blades beams, or just get rid of them and make Sustains which turn your Psiblades into Nature Slow or Acid damage.
- ULTIMATE NERFBAT: only trigger Natural Acid / Corrosive Nature on melee attacks, like the ones provided by the sustains in the previous bullet point.

All of the above would probably be too much, but some of it could be done pretty easily, especially the top two points.

Cheers!

[HousePet]

Slime Spit does need its early game damage reduced. Just look at how nasty it is when you are spat at by those little plants.
I think it could do with late game damage being reduced a bit too. It does more damage than Chain Lightning, has a nice slow effect and is cheaper.
Early game it would still be a good nuker, late game it would be reasonable damage + the slow effect.
For late game nuking you still have Oozebeam and Acidbeam.

I'd like to see Unstoppable Nature and Acidic Soil removed/changed. They are exactly like Archmage respen talents.
I had got to 80% nature resistance penetration by level 36 with Unstoppable Nature and items. Corrosive Nature and Natural Acid are a much better way of doing the resistance penetration for this class.

Also, I'd like to see more Manaburn damage used in the class.
Could involve a third high level category and a talent shuffle.
Can help draw it up if needed.

[Doctornull]

Also, I'd like to see more Manaburn damage used in the class.

Manaburn is a really neat idea. That would be a great effect to add to one's Psiblades.

Together with my proposal to add Physical & Mind, it gives the New Oozemancer a nice, distinct damage palette:
- Nature
- Acid
- Arcane (Manaburn)
- Physical
- Mind

Proposed physical damage:
- Grasping Moss
- Thorn Grab
- Living Mucus (have them hurl thorns instead of shooting beams)

Proposed mind damage:
- Mind Parasite
- Hallucinogenic Moss
- Call of the Ooze (make the attack Mind instead of Acid)

[overgoat]

Some ideas:

I think if you added a turn or two to the cooldown of Slime Spit that would reduce their power considerably. If that was done the damage may be able to be left alone or maybe lowered a some in the early game. Right now on Normal they can make it through the whole early game with pretty much that skill alone

The damage sharing with Bloated Oozes is something that really pushes their survivability over the top. Maybe if you capped the amount that could be shared per hit?

Maybe raising the equilibrium cost for Oozemancer skills across the board would bring them more into balance. As it stands now they have so many abilities that reduce equilibrium, especially if they have the fungal tree, that they almost never have to even look at their equilibrium. If they had to be a bit more mindful of using their more powerful abilities constantly I think that would help.

[The Revanchist]

Not sure how helpful it'd be, but perhaps they could take a flat x equilibrium per Bloated Ooze? They could have multiple on screen at a time and keep their survivability, but it'd impair their ability to use those highest-cost abilities.

[Doctornull]

Maybe raising the equilibrium cost for Oozemancer skills across the board would bring them more into balance.

Investing in Mucus means you never have to worry about Equilibrium.

Removing that perk from Mucus would do more to balance the class than raising the active talent costs.

[Hachem_Muche]

Reducing the damage sharing is an interesting idea, but I think that reducing the regeneration of the bloated oozes should address the main issue of so much damage against oozemancers being effectively wasted.

I don't think increasing the cooldown and equilibrium cost of Sliime spit (or other low level abilities) is a good idea, since it's a primary weapon of starting oozemancers. Reducing the damage should be enough. To help control its scaling at higher level, I'm putting in a mechanic that makes each bounce weaker, while letting the bounce efficiency get better at higher talent levels.

Not sure how helpful it'd be, but perhaps they could take a flat x equilibrium per Bloated Ooze? They could have multiple on screen at a time and keep their survivability, but it'd impair their ability to use those highest-cost abilities.

Since spawning Bloated Oozes is mostly uncontrolled by the player, I don't think adding an equilibrium cost to their creation is a good idea. Particuarly at low level, players could quickly find that they can't use any of their abilities right when they get into trouble.

Maybe raising the equilibrium cost for Oozemancer skills across the board would bring them more into balance.

Investing in Mucus means you never have to worry about Equilibrium.

Removing that perk from Mucus would do more to balance the class than raising the active talent costs.

I agree. It's more important to address excessive equilibrium regeneration, since that directly affects the effectiveness of anti-magic at higher levels.

Regarding manaburn damage:
Thinking about this I think that converting Oozebeam from all slime (nature, slow) damage to 90% slime and 10% manaburn should work. This would allow the oozemancer to drain mana from multiple targets at once, though not devastatingly so, and would complement mana clash nicely at higher levels. Basically if you manaclash the most dangerous caster, you can then use oozebeam to keep its arcane resources depleted while working on other targets.

[Tharsonius]

i think the equilibrium management issues are maybe the same for all wilders, basically its hard to balance most of the time its too easy to maintain save levels of equilibrium, mainly because of the 3rd talent in fungus tree(and too low talent costs for talents like bellowing roar, the area poison from oozemancer). with antimagic shield it can get out of control when hit by DOT AOE effects(especially stacked) which is basically the only situation u would ever get trouble with an equilibrium based class.

i only played oozemancer until lvl 20, got through the game with an antimagic wyrmic and never played summoner but thats my impression.

indescerinable anatomy just gives too many effects all at once, i think there should be some effects removed, or split into 2 talents so ud have to invest more points.
just imagine to get to 50% critical damage reduction u would need ~150!! dexterity on any other class, oozemancers get it for free together with the very valueable blindness and confusion resistance etc (+more damage reduction and even high mastery antimagic shield, which some races dont get any of)

the only mobs who get higher critical multiplier from skills are corrupter and rogue types with lethality?, and during my play in infinite dungeon where i met lots of stairboss type enemys, i have very rarely seen any mobs with more than 180% multiplier (enemys are lvl 160 at my current run, and have skill lvls up to 30) so the reduction from this talent almost always negates all crits to normal hits.

so yea i like the changes but cant say much how to change the offensive ones

[Hachem_Muche]

You make a good point about the immunities.
Why exactly is an ooze hard to confuse? Maybe that should be removed.

The crit reduction doesn't reduce the chance to be crit (the way Dexterity and armor do), but reduces the power of crits that hit you. 50% at talent level 5.0 exactly matches the base crit power (1.5x) that everyone gets for free.