ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Issues:
- the Blood tree is nearly pure Blight damage, scales incredibly well, and encourages mono-elemental focus on Blight.
- Corruptors have no real reason to think about any element other than Blight.
- Poison Storm is out of place in the Blight tree, which is otherwise composed of utilities.
- Blood Fury is out of place in the Blood tree, which is otherwise composed of attacks.

Proposal:
- Swap the damage types on Blood spells to spread across the "vile" damage type spectrum (Acid, Blight, Darkness and Fire).
- Swap places for Poison Storm and Blood Fury, and make Poison Storm's main damage type one of the "vile" types (Acid, Blight, Darkness or Fire).

Specifics:
- Blood Spray: make its primary damage Acid which infects with diseases (as it does now).
- Blood Grasp: there seems to be an association between Darkness and vampirism, so make the primary damage type Darkness here.
- Boil Blood: make it Fire damage so the spell name makes sense.
- Poison Storm: make the primary damage type Blight, since that will provide good synergy with Epidemic, which the previous changes would otherwise impact heavily. The poison itself will remain a largely irrelevant rider effect.

Now the crowd control chain would become:
- Blood Spray to infect some jerks
- (VD if not enough jerks are infected)
- Epidemic on an infected jerk
- Poison Storm to get Epidemic to spread for several turns

Thoughts?

Surely you would open with Epidemic for the so that Blood Spray could spread it...

Anyway, this would make Blood contain 4 direct damage spells. Shuffle it a little with Sanguisuge?
Maybe make the spells do half blight, half other damage?

HousePet wrote:Surely you would open with Epidemic for the so that Blood Spray could spread it...

Why do you think Acid would spread Epidemic?

HousePet wrote:Anyway, this would make Blood contain 4 direct damage spells. Shuffle it a little with Sanguisuge?

What do you think is wrong with putting the direct damage spells in one tree, and the meta-magic stuff all in its own tree?

Spell / Fire is four direct damage spells, and it's rather popular.

HousePet wrote:Maybe make the spells do half blight, half other damage?

Split damage spells can be good, but they can also be bad, like when they prevent nice things like Elemental Woes from triggering.

Can you put down some kind of reasoning? Lay out the pros and cons?

Oops, missed that bit about Blood Spray being changed to Acid.

I wouldn't call Inferno a direct damage spell, but basically this is about category mastery bonuses. Since each character would be going for a range of both direct damage and meta-magic stuff, then you are split between two categories instead of one.
Spell/Fire has an advantage in this regard as it is pure fire damage, so +fire damage buffs all of them at once.
This changed Blood category has 4 different damage types, so it won't have a linking bonus that way.
I don't think I'm explaining this very well...
The revised Blood category has little synergy, if the damage talents were grouped with some synergising meta talents, everyone wins.

So half/half means that you can get a synergy with +blight damage, this is a pro.
Endless Woes is less likely to trigger. Con.
Blight damage can trigger Epidemic spread. Pro.
I can't think of any strong arguments either way.

So, you mention Blight triggering Epidemic, and yeah that's a big concern of mine.

Here's how I see it right now: you want to spread some diseases, then hit someone with Epidemic, then hit that guy with more Blight damage, and then hit the area with Blight damage to spread everything more.

So you're either using old Blood Spray early (to hopefully set up diseases), or you're using it late (to spread Epidemic through a crowd). You get two turns of crowd-applied Blight via old Blood Boil and old Blood Spray.

Under my proposal, you get MORE turns of crowed-applied Blight, since new Poison Storm will apply Blight damage to the area each turn for multiple turns. There's no loss of functionality -- it just becomes automated.


In terms of splitting damage types, I think part of what made me want to go with diverse damage types was thinking back to some of the major problems I've seen people have with Corruptors and Reavers, which is Blight resistance or Blight affinity (e.g. on a rare or unique Worm that Walks). Being able to Slow him and hurt him with fire is potentially really nice. Being able to heal yourself and NOT heal him with Blood Grasp is potentially really nice.


In terms of gear support, there are already items which grant +% damage to Blight + Fire, and Blight + Acid. We can expand those egos & artifacts: more things which buff multiple damage types means more things that are useful to more characters. It's minor but yeah, it can easily be done, and that actually benefits the DLC classes quite a bit as well.

Yeah a Blight damage Poison Storm would be good fun for spreading Epidemic, though possibly more expensive.
Less talent options for spreading Epidemic could be a bad thing if you are hit with 'put talents on cooldown' effect.

Bleh its all swings and roundabouts not doing much. Spellblaze the class from Fearscape and remake.