ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I just had a game that I started with the sole intention of examining the doomed's darkness tree under normal game conditions. I got 4/3/3/3 in the tree before dying at dreadfell.

Creeping Darkness: The most noticeable thing is how random it is. Could it be made to always spawn darkness at the epicenter so you can get some consistent use out of it?

Dark Torrent: It's fine in itself, so how about a change that empowers the other talents? Make darkness spawn on the full length of the beam and increase the blind chance if you fire it through already existing darkness.

Dark Tendrils: At the very least, it should always darken the target's tile. To address the slowness, what if it moved instantly when crossing already darkened tiles?

I usually haven't had much success going into darkness early either. I think it would help the class if the talent's order got reshuffled, with maybe Dark Torrent going first, followed by Dark Tendrils (could stand to be made a bit cheaper, on par with Reproach or Willful Strike). Third I'd put Dark Vision, and lastly Creeping Darkness.

I like your Dark Torrent idea, although as you said, it's fine as it is. And I think one of the Doomed (and Afflicted in general) themes is that you don't get many guarantees but have to play the odds. In that spirit I think it with increased talent level the chance for each tile to spawn a darkness tile should increase, maybe from about 30% to about 75%?

Dark Tendrils: I think it's too expensive currently, and I don't think increasing the pinning duration with talent levels is all that attractive either. I think it could get a hate cost of 6-8 instead of 10, and decrease the cooldown for maybe 1 per talent level, while the increasing the speed so it's about what you get now at TL 2 and somewhere above 600% at TL 6.5 (max with standard mastery, reaches the end of it's range in under one turn). I think I'd prefer that to instantly moving through darkness, although that does make for an interesting twist as well. Maybe both?

Dark Vision: I think the vision range could stand to be boosted, especially at lower talent ranges. I think Doomed could use a stealth detection method, and it would be interesting if it applied to tiles in their darkness.

Creeping Darkness: Having one guaranteed tile at the epicenter seems fair, and I think there could be some bonus tiles if a lot of space is affected - currently it's most effectiveness in enclosed spaces, which I don't think is all that interesting. So I think 1 tile per 4-6 walkable tiles in the AoE would help with that.

But making dark torrent the first talent would empower people who don't even invest in darkness. And playing the odds is never good in a roguelike, I see afflicted as classes about overcoming inherit weaknesses in unique ways.

I view darkness tree as doomed's way of dealing with longer range enemies. Though in this sense, the pinning on creeping darkness isn't useful at all. How about instead, it always works to draw a path of darkness from you to the target, eventually enveloping them? It could create a fixed number of darkness tiles, but have no limit on how many already existing ones it could move around. You'd have a status that makes darkness "alive" and extends its duration.

RedBucket wrote:But making dark torrent the first talent would empower people who don't even invest in darkness.

But is that a problem? I think the other talents are good enough on their own, mid-late game, that you'd want to take them for reasons other than to get to Dark Torrent. As it is however you've got two talents that mostly shine late at the bottom of the tree. And if someone just wants to take Dark Torrent, why not let them without paying a point tax?

RedBucket wrote: And playing the odds is never good in a roguelike, I see afflicted as classes about overcoming inherit weaknesses in unique ways.

The interesting thing about classes (versus adventurers) is that they force you to do non-optimal stuff. That means, in the Doomed's case, having few nukes, but a lot of DoTs, few guaranteed on-demand debuffs, but a ton of them with low-mid odds that you can stack and stack. And maybe I've put my point badly: Doomed play the odds like they run the casino; and in the long term, the house wins.

RedBucket wrote:I view darkness tree as doomed's way of dealing with longer range enemies. Though in this sense, the pinning on creeping darkness isn't useful at all. How about instead, it always works to draw a path of darkness from you to the target, eventually enveloping them? It could create a fixed number of darkness tiles, but have no limit on how many already existing ones it could move around. You'd have a status that makes darkness "alive" and extends its duration.

Yeah, the pinning is (or would be) useful in the early game, where you mostly face melee enemies, but of course you don't get it in the early game. And when you do get it, I also see it as a way to create "highways" (though I've found it too expensive and slow to really work). So yeah, guaranteed 1 tile of darkness per TL (so at 5/5 you get 6 tiles, giving you a guaranteed road to the maximum range).

I don't think the pinning is useful even early game. Willful Strike is good enough for getting melee enemies away from you. And you've reminded me that dark tendrils is also very short range. I think it should be range 10, the slow speed and amount of darkness it produces being a soft limit on its range, with darkness created from the other talents as a way to circumvent both of those. Creeping darkness might also not even need to be change if dark tendrils starts acting like a "focus darkness" talent.

Also, removing the pin from creeping darkness would make heart of the gloom a lot less annoying.

I'm certainly not going to argue very hard there. I do think pinning is situationally quite useful, but yes it's not a huge draw. The low range is one of those Doomed things though - I think Agony at 7 is their longest ranged attack? Would be hesitant to change that.

It would only technically be range 10, it couldn't actually reach that far without setting up your darkness first. Maybe the range doesn't need to be that long, but it definitely needs to be longer range than it is now. I think part of the reason why agony is range 7 is because it's slow, so perhaps the theme of doomed is being slow rather than short ranged, those just happen to cross over a lot.

Part of the problem is that Dark Tendrils is so much more of a pain in the hands of the enemy than it ever is help in your hands. "Pin someone in place in a few turns" can be quite helpful if you're a group of weaker types pounding on one stronger foe, but that's not generally the way the Doomed work - and the fact that the only way to get away from it is to keep running until it gives up is also kind of annoying. (In particular, having it turn off on death of caster would help this. On an almost entirely unrelated note, it seems like the Ink Squid grab attack should also be a grapple effect). In the hands of the enemy it's annoying, and in the hands of the player, it's a near-worthless ability that you only really want to take to get the attached passive. I tend to think that the skill could do to be reworked entirely.

possible suggestions include...
- Passive chance to blind and/or pin anything in your Darkness each turn (or perhaps anything you deal darkness damage to)
- Area effect. Everything in that area and under your darkness gets pulled to the center of the area. Possibly spreads some additional darkness of its own. May or may not damage/pin.
- spontaneously generates occasional nonmoving temporary tentacle pets in your area of darkness. These would last 2-3 rounds, and make melee grapple attacks against adjacent enemies.

I just realized that doomed don't have any cone abilities. How about, create some darkness in front of you, then pull all enemies in a cone towards you and inflict the "dark tendrils" status. This status pins, increases damage from creeping dark, and causes creeping dark to steadily move towards those afflicted with it.

Nah, no cones. I'd like to have Creeping Dark work a bit like spiderman's webs - it'd have to be lower cooldown (with higher talent levels) and faster. Possibly a bit higher range, but I think 8 should be the absolute max. Reliable darkness spawning in its path. Then you could run along your darkness highways, like a poor man's Path of the Sun.

Path of the sun doesn't give you 25% more damage to things standing in it.

I also remembered another small change I thought of a while ago: On cursed, a strong enemy entering your gloom gives you a boost to hate. Doomed could have the same thing with their darkness.

They could even just hate when enemies in general enter their Darkness. When they see them, of course.

I would be fine with Creeping Dark becoming a poor man's Path of the Sun. Even thoughit'd balance out as around middle-class, or even upper-middle.

That makes me think of mucus. Dark, angry mucus.

And that kind of gives me an idea. Dark tendrils could be replaced with a sustain or passive that causes things passing through your darkness to get hit with a debuff that does damage over time (maybe slow too?) and makes the space they're standing on always considered like it's darkness. At some talent level, anything even adjacent to a dark square(including other monsters with the debuff) would (have a chance to?) get hit with this debuff.

Edit: And the level of dark vision could increase the amount of hate gained per turn per darkened enemy in sight.