ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I posted this a while ago in the Berserker rework thread but I feel it could use a thread of its own.

The Warcries and Superiority categories are currently seriously underpowered. Most of the talents in these categories are so bad that they aren't worth the turn it takes to use them. I have some ideas for fixing their shortcomings while still fitting thematically and keeping the existing interesting stuff.

Warcries
Shattering Shout
Since this is a "shattering" shout, it should shatter incoming projectiles like arrows like Shoot Down does. This would make it a decent defensive and offensive option. Its cooldown and stamina cost can increase if necessary.

Second Wind
This talent fits its purpose of regaining stamina but its a bit weak since it takes a turn to use. In the spirit of a second wind, it should give a temporary attack speed buff (30%, 3-5 turns) as well.

Battle Shout
It looks like this talent is best used at the start of fights to give temporary stat boosts. Unfortunately, its high stamina cost proves problematic and its max health and stamina increases just aren't enough. To encourage you to use it at the start of a fight, it should also give a temporary movement speed (30-50%) and physical save (15-35) buff for a short time (3-5 turns), allowing you to charge into combat and endure melee threats after using this talent.

Battle Cry
Despite being the capstone talent, Battle Cry is by far the worst talent in the entire Warcries category and it definitely needs significant buffs. Since this talent is supposed to "shatter the will of your foes," it should make enemies completely unable to dodge your attacks (including dodge chance talents like Evasion) and shrug off your critical strikes. If this isn't enough, it could also reduce their physical and/or mental save (10-30 each), since they don't have the will to stop your attacks. If it ends up being too good, the duration can be lowered to about 5 turns.

Superiority
Juggernaut
I like the concept of making physical attacks weaker through "concentrating on the battle," but this talent is unfortunately a bit weak. Adding a chance to shrug off physical critical strikes (25-50%) and increased armor (10-20) would fit both thematically and practically. The duration can be lowered if needed since 20 turns is pretty long, perhaps 5 turn duration and 15 turn cooldown would be better.

Onslaught
I'm actually not sure if this takes a turn to use but it definitely shouldn't. Anyway, I'm not really sure how it works since its description is confusing but as a Berserker or Bulwark, you want your enemies to be near you, not knocked away, so knocking them back without any other effects isn't very helpful. Instead, this talent should add a physical attack when moving, dealing a fraction of weapon damage (40-70%), while knocking them back as well. This would make it stop being an awkward defensive talent but decent for offense as well.

Battle Call
I actually like this talent, it's pretty cool at the moment and it can turn the tides against annoying casters. However, it sucks to call enemies into melee range only to have them attack you first. To fix this, enemies brought next to you by this talent could become dazed or disarmed for one turn, long enough for you to get the first real strike (compared to their weak dazed or disarmed attack). This talent could also taunt enemies, making ranged enemies not immediately run or teleport away.

Shattering Impact
The concept here is good but 15 stamina per strike is unreasonable, it should be more like 8-10. It should also increase armor penetration (10-20) and physical resistance penetration (15-30%) since it's a "shattering" attack and thus able to break through some of your enemies' defenses.

I like many of your ideas.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Second Wind seems like a recovery mechanic, so allow it to cure 1-3 Physical or Mental conditions. Also make it instant-use so it can't be Stunned away.

Battle Cry is a bad talent with a bad name (since Battle Call and Battle Shout exist). Replace it entirely.

Onslaught and Shattering Impact are cool ideas with bad mechanics. Make them both into instant-use timed effects which force you to pre-pay for their quite good effects. Reduce the cost per turn, since you may not get full value from them. Making them timed effects makes the Berserker Stamina recovery mechanic more relevant, since you can recover expended Stamina but not sustain-cost Stamina.

I think Second Wind would be neat with a short term Free Action effect.

Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of Second Wind removing debuffs since it fits better with the stamina recovery than an attack speed boost. I also like the idea of it giving the Free Action buff since it's a very underused buff that fits nicely with the rest of the talent. I think Battle Cry would be good if it made enemies unable to dodge completely, since it would allow you to hit enemies with Evasion and such. I would rather see Battle Shout removed since a temporary boost to maximum health and stamina don't really help at all. I would rather have Onslaught and Shattering Impact remain sustains so you aren't dependent on a timer (and so Shalore isn't even more clearly the best race for Berserker). I do agree that they should be instant, since they both take up a decent chunk of your stamina pool. The cost to sustain should probably be reduced so the primary cost is from the talents being active too long rather than from the sustain cost reducing your maximum stamina. It's important to note that Bulwarks are much worse at recovering stamina than Berserkers are and they should be able to make use of these talents too, so they can't cost too much stamina to maintain.

One mechanic I had thought of for improving Warcries was that an effect could randomly trigger when you are using other activated attacks. Since it doesn't seem likely that some Warrior is going to stop smacking just to shout at someone, they would shout while smacking.

Battle Cry would be a good choice, since Battle Shout is more of a start of tough battle buff. Unless you wanted to make two random proccing talents, one offensive and one defensive?

HousePet wrote:One mechanic I had thought of for improving Warcries was that an effect could randomly trigger when you are using other activated attacks. Since it doesn't seem likely that some Warrior is going to stop smacking just to shout at someone, they would shout while smacking.

That's a really interesting idea. We could remove Battle Shout, move Battle Cry to the third slot, and add as the capstone talent of this category:

Frenzied Warcries
Upon striking an enemy, you have a 15-40% chance (doubled for critical hits) to randomly use Shattering Shout, Second Wind, or Battle Cry. This spends the stamina required for the talent and puts the talent on cooldown for 3(?) turns. This cannot trigger cooling down talents.

I thought about adding status cleansing into the Berserker rework, but got shot down. I think putting it in a locked advanced category is a good idea, though.

bpat wrote:

HousePet wrote:One mechanic I had thought of for improving Warcries was that an effect could randomly trigger when you are using other activated attacks. Since it doesn't seem likely that some Warrior is going to stop smacking just to shout at someone, they would shout while smacking.

That's a really interesting idea. We could remove Battle Shout, move Battle Cry to the third slot, and add as the capstone talent of this category:

Frenzied Warcries
Upon striking an enemy, you have a 15-40% chance (doubled for critical hits) to randomly use Shattering Shout, Second Wind, or Battle Cry. This spends the stamina required for the talent and puts the talent on cooldown for 3(?) turns. This cannot trigger cooling down talents.

I dig that. I did something similar in Nulltweaks to the 4th talent in Two-Handed Maiming: when you crit, you have a 10-40% chance to use one of the previous 3 attack talents on the same target. You pay full Stamina each time.

Since the Berserker is fairly crit-based already, I feel like making the trigger depend on crits is reasonable.

Warcry could also apply the Intimidated effect from the 2nd Conditioning talent for reduced phys/spell/mind power. And maybe inflict some of the Cursed/Doomed Fear tree fears - Despair to reduce resist all, Distressed to reduce saves, and Terrified to suffer from a talent failure chance. (The other fears don't really make sense here)

Doesn't the temporary health/stamina boost also include a heal? I remember it doing that on heroism gloves with a brawler.

jotwebe wrote:Warcry could also apply the Intimidated effect from the 2nd Conditioning talent for reduced phys/spell/mind power. And maybe inflict some of the Cursed/Doomed Fear tree fears - Despair to reduce resist all, Distressed to reduce saves, and Terrified to suffer from a talent failure chance. (The other fears don't really make sense here)

I dig the Intimidated status.

Not so sure about Fears stuff.

Why not?

jotwebe wrote:Why not?

Mostly because I'm not sure how valid it is to apply a Mental save to a Physical Power based attack.

Might be entirely valid, it's just something about which I'd be careful.

Doctornull wrote:

jotwebe wrote:Why not?

Mostly because I'm not sure how valid it is to apply a Mental save to a Physical Power based attack.

Might be entirely valid, it's just something about which I'd be careful.

What makes you say that? I don't see why the power behind an ability, whether it be mental, physical, or magical, has to be connected to the save a target makes. This is a good example. A warcry is physical in nature, fueled by the warrior's stamina, yet the fear it inspires in the warrior's foes is clearly mental, as fear tends to be. What's the problem?

malboro_urchin wrote:I don't see why the power behind an ability, whether it be mental, physical, or magical, has to be connected to the save a target makes.

Physical power is usually much, much higher than any other kind of power can be, and the Mental cross-tier effect (Brainlock) is much, much worse than the Physical cross-tier (Off-Balance).

I wonder if one way to get the best of both worlds for Frenzied Warcries with intimidation and fear, might be to simply make it so that it simply checks both Physical Save and Mental Save. Perhaps have it so that you need to overcome the foes Physical Save through Physical power, and then you need Mindpower to combat the foes Mental Save to ensure the effect sticks - or it could be a combination of Physical Power and Mindpower versus Physical Save and Mental Save.