2H Assault Improvements

[Fortescue]

Hello, I wrote the new 2H Assault category and I'm glad to see everyone seems to love it. It has some problems though!

Biggest problem: You can't spam enough!!! Fearless Cleave is good, but once you're in the thick of fighting with monsters that don't try to run away you really shouldn't be spamming it. You SHOULD be spamming Death Dance! What is the point of this huge stamina bar if I can't empty it when surrounded by enemies? Also, Executioner needs changed because it makes healing from Bloodbath a little too reliable for Berserkers.

Death Dance
You spin me round round, like a record baby round round round round for 80%-130% (was 220%) base damage. Shreds (5 x skill) Armor on hit. Cooldown 10. Cooldown lowers by 2 for every enemy you hit with Death Dance. Stamina cost (x) (I don't remember the base, can be tweaked if needed).

Damage nerf needed on this with or without the cooldown reduction aspect, but I think this really needs to have a lower CD if you're using it properly (in the middle of a big group of monsters). Bleed removed, replaced with something more useful for non-Berserkers They get their own new method of causing Bleed...

Execution
Double your critical hit chance (not guaranteed). Do an extra x% dmg for every 1% missing enemy hp. Cooldown 10. Cooldown is instantly reset if you deal a killing blow with Execution, and half the Stamina cost is refunded as you savor the death of your foe. Stamina cost (x) (I don't remember the base, can be tweaked if needed).

Again, there needs to be a reward for using Execution properly, as well as giving encouragement to put more than 1 point in the skill. In this example pumping Execution massively improves the odds it will be instantly reset and available to use again when you use it vs. wounded enemies.

Net Benefit
So what do we gain from these further changes? Better combat options!!! Right now I'm about level 25 and every time there is a big group fight I pop my Death Dance and kill a few guys, pop my Execution / Stunning blow to kill some more, then wait for cooldowns while mashing direction keys to finish the job. This isn't fun or interesting. I'm sitting around with lots of Stamina locked away behind cooldowns I can't use. Especially when you have Executioner guaranteeing you never lose your Bloodbath stacks, keeping your Stamina regen at +5 for the duration of the fight.

With these changes you would be able to decide to burn all your Stamina while using your abilities appropriately for the situation, and have more interesting decisions to make during combat than which guy to bump attack while waiting for your CDs to end. 2H Assault would then be an even more dynamic category which rewards good decision making and resource management with better control over the flow of combat and your own ability cooldowns. As well, it is easy to justify maxing out skills that you can use more than once per combat, so competition for your class points increases.

Other Concerns
There are other Berserker skills that are a little wonky in how they scale at the moment and I'm keeping an eye on them. Bloody Butcher for example does not scale well past 2 points, nor does Berserker Rage itself. You want to max Rage for the Stun and Pin resist of course, but the returns just don't feel meaty past 3 points. Maybe they don't need to, idk, but I'm watching. Shield Defense and Archery Training are going to be removed from Berserker entirely soon since they don't serve any purpose (you don't have a 1H offense tree to use with a shield...), and even DarkGod acted surprised when I mentioned they still have the Archery training category, so I assume he doesn't think they need to keep it. I'm almost 100% sure nobody here used either one

As far as Superiority and Warcries I need to experiment with those and figure out what needs done with them. I did not touch them in the Berserker rework on purpose. I still think Bloodthirst as a tree needs to be available by default because it would be very silly to play a Berserker without it, but there is the interesting dynamic of level pre-reqs and "should Unstoppable be available before level 10?". I kind of feel like 22 is a good level to get Unstoppable at, so I'm not sure what to do about this situation. Perhaps there needs to be a split for Bloodthirst into a "basic" version that has Bloodbath and the advanced category that includes Unstoppable. It would be easy to merge some of Combat Techniques / Superiority / Warcries into this new split. Really I just don't want new Berserkers locked out of Mortal Terror and Bloodbath behind category points, because those are so key to playing the class. Unstoppable is as well, sure, but it is powerful enough to justify the category cost, and I would like to actually try to make a category to compete with it based on Constitution, giving players more build choices.

[Orangeflame]

Yay! More Death Dance!

Superiority still feels poor, though.
Juggernaut is still more expensive than it is worth, but has a place in tough fights for its anti-crit.
Onslaught is epic at TL1 with Fearless Cleave, but pointless to invest in further.
Battle Cry is alright vs spellcasters, but should be better with the improved Death Dance.
Shattering Impacts, specifically, is the main drag, as it just doesn't have a place. It is useless against single targets, and doesn't proc multiple times with AoE attacks, making it less effective against groups. I suppose it works with Giant Leap, You Shall Be My Weapon, and Massive Blow, but those are prodigies.

[Suslik]

love ideas about execution and death dance.

[Davion Fuxa]

I partially agree with the direction you think the Two Handed skills should be reworked, but I highly disagree that the Two Handed talents should be capable of spamming their talents - players have the option with Two Weapon Fighting which let's a player frontload their talents for a high damage output, and it's one of the distinctions of the hit and run playstyles found in Meta-Class Rogues. Some thoughts then:

For Death Dance I like the idea of it having less base damage, but retaining more or less the same talent level scaling - this helps to balance it as both a good talent to invest a single point in or continuing to invest a lot more. I also think it could stand a small cooldown since that could mean producing more Bleed effects for Bloody Butcher or potentially greater ability to take down groups of enemies. I don't think however that the cooldown should be lowered any further then 6 turns, and really I can't see any reason why we can't just set it a 6 turn cooldown from it's 10 turn cooldown now either.

I don't think Execution should necessarily be a skill that needs to be used more often either since it has good utility attached to it in the form of it's 'potential' instant kill effect, but having an effect when you kill an enemy sounds like a good direction to improve the talent. One idea as a bonus effect for successfully killing an enemy might be that your character gets a refund on the stamina when the killing blow was a result of Execution adjusted by the Talent level of Execution (so something like you could get more stamina as a result of using Execution when you successfully kill an enemy).

[Orangeflame]

Perhaps Execution, on a kill, would have it's cooldown set to 1, refund a portion of its stamina cost (30-70)%, and restore (10-50)% of a turn?
It certainly does seem to need something that makes it a better choice than a bump attack for finishing a weak opponent.

[Suslik]

Perhaps Execution, on a kill, would have it's cooldown set to 1, refund a portion of its stamina cost (30-70)%, and restore (10-50)% of a turn?
It certainly does seem to need something that makes it a better choice than a bump attack for finishing a weak opponent.

And again I wholeheartedly(hope it's a word) agree. When foe is already left with 3% hp you don't need to use execution at all because a simple bump attack will finish them off anyway.

[grayswandir]

That's a nice idea. Maybe something based on how much extra damage you dealt? Like if they're at 1 life, you get refunded 70% of a turn, but if you just barely manage to kill them with the blow you don't get back anything.

[Davion Fuxa]

That's a nice idea. Maybe something based on how much extra damage you dealt? Like if they're at 1 life, you get refunded 70% of a turn, but if you just barely manage to kill them with the blow you don't get back anything.

You mean like 1% of their life and say you knock them down to -70% of their original hp, so you get 70% value back, or if they are at 40% of their life and you knock them down to -5% you only get %5 value back? This could be an interesting mechanism which could help encourage additional investment in the talent for the purpose of what you get back.

Using the first value up there from 1% total life left on the opponent, some scenarios:

-Using my idea as a stamina increase, you get 70% of your total stamina bar charged up (maybe have this value cap at something to prevent absurd amounts of stamina being refunded) from using the talent and then have Execution go on cooldown for 10 turns.
-Using the idea of refunding the talent's use, you would get around 70% of the stamina cost and Turn Use for using Execution and only take 0.3 Turns to complete the action and speed around 10 Stamina to perform the action. I don't think it should have it's cooldown reset in such a case like this since you're essentially getting a powerful effect in extra damage from attacking a wounded enemy already here - now followed by a partial refund on everything you did in using the talent because you successfully killed said enemy. Refunding the cooldown a bit might be an idea to keep the whole refund theme going however, so you would essentially refund 7 turns and set Executions cooldown to 3

[Fortescue]

I like the idea of a succesful Execution giving you Stamina and Health back, or giving you a speed boost for x turns.

This is great and I should have thought of this myself

[Fortescue]

Updated designs!

Death Dance
You spin me round round, like a record baby round round round round for 80%-130% (was 220%) base damage. Shreds (5 x skill) Armor on hit. Cooldown 10. Cooldown lowers by 2 for every enemy you hit with Death Dance. Stamina cost (x) (I don't remember the base, can be tweaked if needed).

Damage nerf needed on this with or without the cooldown reduction aspect, but I think this really needs to have a lower CD if you're using it properly (in the middle of a big group of monsters). Bleed removed, replaced with something more useful for non-Berserkers They get their own new method of causing Bleed...

Execution
Double your critical hit chance (not guaranteed). Do an extra x% dmg for every 1% missing enemy hp. Cooldown 10. Cooldown is instantly reset if you deal a killing blow with Execution, and half the Stamina cost is refunded as you savor the death of your foe. Stamina cost (x) (I don't remember the base, can be tweaked if needed).

[Orangeflame]

No bonus for killing a weak opponent with execution?
That's nothing that a bump attack won't do better, except have a better chance against enemies that are only somewhat injured.

[Davion Fuxa]

You get a bonus from the cooldown getting reset in his revised Execution, which alone is already extremely powerful in conjunction with getting extra damage on a injured foe AND a Critical Hit Chance boost. Personally I don't think it should fully reset the skill AND refund stamina - maybe cut the cooldown by 8 at the most along with refunding stamina. If you really want it to fully refund the use of the skill, then make it refund no stamina, there needs to be a steep cost associated with this potentially overpowered talent.

Still don't like the idea of Death Dance having a Weapon Damage modifier that starts it below 100%. Getting cooldown decreased by opponents should have a cap as well to prevent it from being spammed turn after turn - I think a cooldown of 4 should be the figure to aim for myself. The player has Fearless Cleave if they want to continue doing a few weak AoE's for adjacent enemies while Death Dance is on cooldown, so keeping a cooldown on Death Dance is a good development strategy to consider making a player have to think on when they are in the thick of enemies. Additionally, whether it's an Arcane Blade, Berserker, or Wyrmic we are referring too, they all have other Talents in their class trees that Death Dance shouldn't fully take precedence over using.

I mentioned in the other thread an idea for working Death Dance and personally I think that is probably the best way to work this talent. Have the damage scale at some value over 100% to entice players to use it with a 1/5 Talent Investment, reduce the cooldown with subsequent Talent Investment instead of enemies you hit to encourage players to keep investing in the skill all the way up to 5/5 if they so desire. If the talent just 'needs' to have some sort of fluff added to it like Bleed or a Sunder Armor effect your now suggesting then adjust the Weapon Damage increase per Talent level to compensate - else it could go from 100% to 170% similar to Sweep and treat the reduced cooldown as being the real player consideration towards making this skill more then the 'One Point Wonder'.

A note about the Sunder Armor ability being attached to it as fluff though, it seems like a fairly weak ability since Berserkers have Shattering Blow reducing target armor and Arcane Blades and Wyrmics have Spells and Wilder Talents. Compared to Bleed this actually seems like a minor downgrade as at least Bleed had the advantage of at least adding some more damage.

I did have an idea back in my mind for another fluff idea to attach to Death Dance if it really needs it - make it ignore Stealth, Invisibility, Evasion, Deflection, whatever, etc of an enemy and only roll against their Defense value when attempting to hit them. This could make Death Dance a really interesting way of dealing with hidden foes or just those that are hard to hit.

Edit: As a note to Execution, one idea you might pursue is making Talent Level be a key factor in how much of the cooldown is reduced. Like make it have a Cooldown of 10, but if you score a kill the Cooldown gets reduced by 2*Talent Level (so you could reduce it all the way to a full reset). Additionally maybe make the amount of Stamina getting refunded also matter on the Talent Level as well perhaps.

[Fortescue]

No bonus for killing a weak opponent with execution?
That's nothing that a bump attack won't do better, except have a better chance against enemies that are only somewhat injured.

If you could kill an enemy with one bump attack then you should do that. The point of Execution is to kill an enemy you couldn't have killed with one bump attack

[Fortescue]

Davion Fuxa, I like some of the things you talked about, but I have to balance this against making a baseline 2H tree overly complicated. Berserker specifically is meant to be an easy to pick up and play class that requires minimal knowledge of ToME mechanics. When I finish Berserkergeddon (phase 2 of the revision to Berserker) it won't even resemble the class it is right now, with skills being moved and entire categories being given The Axe~~~~~ BWAHAHAHAHA PUNS THAT ONLY I GET.

In the midst of all that, 2H Assault needs to remain relatively simple to use and straightforward with how it rewards players for using it correctly.

There is an advanced (Berserker only, and locked) 2H Superiority category in the works though, which is AWESOME

[Nori]

Been playing a 2h Sun Paladin so thought I'd chime in.

I am level 41 and have the 2h tree at 1,1,3,1
I see little reason to add more. I may have points to spare that I will put into execution, but I'm not sure as the skill honestly hasn't been that useful for me.

So here is why I skilled it how I did.
One point in the first skill as additional points do very little (minor damage and extra stun, stun being less useful as you go on).
Maybe a bump in damage per talent level or some other effect at higher levels would make it more worthwhile.

Second skill is quite useful, but I see no reason to ever add more than one point in it. Maybe at talent level 5 it could allow moving two tiles instead of one? Not sure.

Death dance is a great skill, my only gripe with it is the long cooldown. Reducing it to 6ish would be nice. Please don't reduce the damage, I feel like it is just about right were it is at.

Last skill. Execution.. I like the skill but for some reason it is hard to use right or very situational. Being 2h also means it misses a lot. Could it get a bonus to accuracy based on life missing? Or maybe if it misses cooldown is reset? I also think a status effect if it doesn't kill the target would be nifty. Like a one turn intimidation debuff or something.