Ye Olde Ashes of Uhr'rok Balance Threade

[Parcae2]

Kind of surprised we don't have one of these already, but there you go.

1. Doomelf: Seems OK to me, haven't really experimented though. Crit reduction and (with the appropriate item) targeted teleport make them a bit on the strong side, at least on paper.
2. New starting level: Unskippable level full of spellcasters, for two melee classes. Going to be tough on higher difficulties.
3. New classes: Both strike me as having the same problem - really strong on lower difficulties, really weak on higher ones. Their defensive abilities, in particular, are better suited to mowing through weak enemies than to prolonged battles against strong ones. For example, Demonologists' damage absorption makes them invulnerable - if they've just killed a bunch of enemies. Their auto-Curse of Impotence won't stick against the toughest enemies, even after that one save reduction talent (because 85 save reduction might seem like a lot, but it's actually pretty trivial against an enemy with 150 saves, especially given the way saves scale). Result: no chance against the end bosses on higher difficulties, but ridiculously strong on lower ones. Doombringers are similar: they have absurdly strong damage right now, but essentially no defenses worth the name.

[HousePet]

2 shouldn't be an issue, and if it is there a modification to the difficulty mechanics that should be in the next update or two.

[ZyZ]

1) Like half of all new skills doesn't scale at all (except talent level of course). You max something at level 5, 10, 25 etc and nothing will change for the rest of the game.

2) Some trees like for example brutality are AI friendly. When you max it you get ~50% counter attack and some good skills with high % dmg modifiers with some drawbacks (reckless strikes). Now assume enemy randboss has this tree. 100% counter 10+ times per turn, 600+ % reckless strike with no real drawbacks (mobs doesnt care about hp) etc.

[stinkstink]

Had a Forge Giant show up on the last floor of the Anteroom of Agony, no statue touching involved unless one spawned it out of sight. OOD demon spawns are kinda nasty for a required zone.

[donkatsu]

Eternal Suffering extends Hope Wanes. That is all.

[Parcae2]

...I had assumed it was Type: Other.

Yeah, that ... kinda needs to be fixed.

[supermini]

Is it me or does almost the whole of corruption/black magic tree seem useless?

Disregarding the first talent (which is about vim regeneration) we have:

-Spellpower buff AFTER you kill an enemy for x turns. That's just feeble. A sustain that gives spellpower all the time and costs class points (arcane power) doesn't always get picked, let alone this.

-Aoe daze after you kill an enemy. What's the point? Daze doesn't do all that much. 1 point maybe.

-Invisibility after killing an enemy.

I'm just baffled how this could be made an ultimate ability in a generic tree. What's the purpose of the invisibility? If it's supposed to be an escape mechanism, situational escapes are bad when there's an abundance of non-situational escapes in the game. Is it supposed to help kill things? Invisibility tends not to do that unless you have the prodigy and then you're limited to creatures that don't have high see invisible, which makes this a doubly situational ability (have something to kill first to trigger the invis that you would use to kill the second thing that's actually vulnerable to invis).

The whole 'get an effect after killing something' theme, while thematically interesting, seems completely incompatible with how ToME combat works. For one, no one struggles with killing dross, and 'kill dross slightly faster' isn't good for a generic tree. Generic points are PRECIOUS, especially for melee classes (since you have to count in weapons, accuracy and armor, something ranged classes usually don't need or get from class points in case of archer/skirmisher). On top of that, these effects seem thematically disconnected - daze, spellpower and invisibility, it's like the design was aiming for 'misc stuff that doesn't show up on other classes' rather than something that's actually useful.

[Theyleon]

The invisibility is on demand, rather then on kill (you get charges on kill which you can then trigger to go invisible), so it's less situational. The other two skills do seem pretty garbage though.

I do agree the whole focus on 'on-kill' skill triggers on the new classes is at odds with the game in general. On-kill skills tend to be bad in most RPGs, unless the game has been designed around them (adding constant adds in boss fights for example, to give you something to constantly trigger them off) as they fall down horribly against single tough opponents. Demonologist has zero ways to regen vim early game without killing enemies is probably the worst side effect of it. (apparently you get +vim on hit seeds later to mitigate this?)

[PureQuestion]

Eternal Suffering extends Hope Wanes. That is all.

Which is a bug, and will be removed.

2) Some trees like for example brutality are AI friendly. When you max it you get ~50% counter attack and some good skills with high % dmg modifiers with some drawbacks (reckless strikes). Now assume enemy randboss has this tree. 100% counter 10+ times per turn, 600+ % reckless strike with no real drawbacks (mobs doesnt care about hp) etc.

Share the Pain is being nerfed.

Randbosses are blocked from having reckless strike (this is in the live release. You will never encounter a randboss or rare with reckless strike.)

[Doctornull]

Randbosses are blocked from having reckless strike (this is in the live release. You will never encounter a randboss or rare with reckless strike.)

Seems like there's a trend of new classes having core talents which are too strong for NPCs.

I get why NPCs should be blocked from timeline splitting, but I feel like other rules asymmetry should have some kind of justification.

Or maybe NPCs should just get blocked from all the good stuff the older classes get, like Vitality or Soul Rot?

[Red]

It's a fundamental issue. You have to win (or at least survive) EVERY LAST FIGHT. Enemies only have to beat you once (or a half dozen times, for adventure mode. Which still isn't much, compared to the sheer amount of fights in the game) for them to win. So abilities that, for instance, are incredibly random favor enemies over you. Lightning is, at least to me, a bit subpar compared to fire or ice because the damage is so random. But for enemies, all it takes is a single enemy to get a few lucky rolls in a row and suddenly three lightning strikes in a row all hit for 500 each.

In this case, the enemies would have powerful abilities with powerful drawbacks. However, because it doesn't matter whether or not the enemy survives, only that you die, it's much less of a drawback.

However, it might work to change how Reckless Strike works for NPCs. Since the penalty doesn't matter as much to them, maybe just drop the damage or something.

[Furey]

Have to agree with supermini regarding the black magic demonologist tree. I put a single point in the first skill and no more. Ever. It is a very fun class, much more playable than I anticipated, but that black magic tree might as well be deleted.

Love the work you guys have done!

[PureQuestion]

Pretty much what Red said. Reckless strike is a really, really good single target skill with a major drawback. The problem is, most bosses have a lot more HP than the player, so the drawback isn't symmetrical, and also enemies have a lot more HP than players (in general) and HP is the only defense against reckless strike.

Basically I blocked it because various aspects of the game make it impossible to balance around being on both enemies and the player. Reckless strike is fairly balanced on the player from a multitude of downsides (high cost, backlash damage, etc) which often don't apply to enemies.

[spastic]

The Vim from Black Magic can be useful, especially when you're sustaining Osmosis Shield and the Meteoric Strike ability (-7 Vim per turn). The invisibility can give you a few turns, but my problem so far has been burst from corruptors. Otherwise the class feels pretty powerful, and once I get Eternal Guard I'm sure it will be even better.