ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

To long Argoniel has lived in the shadow of Elandar. He gets worse inscriptions. He has too many mediocre talents.

I say he should get the same inscription load out as Elandar but swap invisibility for heroism.

I also think he should lose some active talents so the AI will be more likely to use the really dangerous stuff. Bone Spear, Cyst Burst, Curse of Defenselessness, Emphatic Hex, Catalypsy. I think all of these could go.

I also think he should gain some passives in exchange. There's been some nice new defiler trees added to the game and I think he could stand to at least get Elemental Discord because Elemental Discord is freaking amazing! Really I say he should just get the whole vile life tree. Because it's evil and he's one of the big bads. He should be evil and scary.

His prodigies are also terrible.

Irresistible Sun? Eye of the Tiger? Lucky Day? We have a plethora of corruption based prodigies and he gets a mixture of rogue and sun paladin? Worm that Walks is ashamed to share a class with this guy and that he calls himself a 'boss'.

I suggest giving him Spine of the World and Endless Woes. No they're not the corruption based prodigies, well endless woes kinda is, unfortunately many of those aren't that interesting. The blood one is cool but scales poorly on a guy with this many hit points. Endless Woes should work really well with his skill set though (dark surprise for instance, maybe give him acid strike too).

And sorry if any of that came off snarky. Was mostly having fun with words so I hope I wasn't to insensitive I just love Reavers and would love if the Reaver boss was scarier

On my most recent win, I was talking to a friend, and I proclaimed my win immediately after Elandar fell...the sad truth is that when you take him down, Argoniel is pretty much a piece of cake.

This gets my +1!

How'd he shine if you take Irresistible Sun off, pal?
We don't have many corruption prodigies, though. And... it looks to me like Elandar doesn't have any prodigies at all?

Is the purpose of the buff to make the final fight harder? In a game where a run can take a very long time, I'm not sure it needs to be. It's an interesting and epic fight and I always felt like it did its job rather well - it was complex enough to be interesting but not so hard that someone who reached it the first time would often fall at the last hurdle.

Whatever you decide on I'd suggest testing thoroughly first. Arbitrary buffs can be scary - yes, vile life tree might thematically fit, but give Argoniel Healing Inversion, for instance, and I can see significant potential to end up with a dead Aeryn. From my experience, the dynamics of the fight usually play out so that Aeryn and Argoniel will reach a sort of a stalemate where they won't be able to kill each other, leaving you to close the portals while distracting Elandar. Fights where Aeryn gets destroyed early tend to be much more difficult. It's fine if you want to change that dynamic, but bear in mind that a lot of players don't even know they can close portals the first time they reach the final fight. I'm not opposed to changes, as long as we're being careful.

Now that I'm done with naysaying, lets talk ideas.

Regarding inscriptions, she has 2 shield runes fixed and the rest are random. Excluding invisibility and fixing one of them to be heroism would be fine imo.

Spine of the world, I'm not sure what purpose it would serve. She is already naturally immune to blind and immune to stun through pearl of life and death. It would make it harder to land a pin on her I suppose, but that's about it. My experience with the final bosses may be somewhat clouded by fighting them on high difficulties where they already have disgusting amounts of saves (over 100).

Swapping out lucky day for endless woes makes sense, but it would require some testing to see how nasty it ends up in practice.

Regarding abilities, if you take out a whole bunch of active spells that she can cast, you're not left with very much that can proc Corrupted Strength.

Curse of Defenselessness and Emphatic Hex can probably go.

I'm not sure why she doesn't have Acid Strike, it's a good candidate for addition.

Catalepsy is a quite strong ability on someone you landed a disease on, it's a damage burst and a stun. She has 2 disease abilities, and if you give her Endless Woes, one of those abilities also has a chance of landing a disease, so it fits. I'm not sure how often she uses cyst burst, but if you're keeping virulent, epidemic, and catalepsy, it probably should stay.

Bone grab fits the Reaver theme, but if you were looking to swap it out, dark portal would be one candidate. Not sure if that would affect Elandar though, that's something that could be tested.

Bone spear is a weak spell that can be swapped for soul rot. Soul rot has a much higher crit and burst potential, and it would work much better with endless woes. This is a significant damage upgrade.

I was rarely on the receiving end of Elemental Discord, especially with the crazy talent levels that bosses get. This and healing inversion is what I'm most wary about. Vile transplant might actually be harmful to her considering the amount of hp she can have. Giving her Blood Splash is fine.

edge2054 wrote:To long Argoniel has lived in the shadow of Elandar.

Argoniel can already be (almost) impossible to kill on higher dificulties on some melee classes due to having 200+ armour + 100 % resists. Maybe scale it down a bit while adding new attack talents?

supermini wrote:Whatever you decide on I'd suggest testing thoroughly first.

Yes please.

Just tested on normal with a character I had just beaten the game with using Supermini's suggestions.

First thing, Elemental Discord can be removed with Dispersion. I think most people who play on higher difficulties will have some means of removing sustains for Elander anyway. Second thing, it wasn't that bad. My character was wearing crown of elements so my first swing I ended up iceblocked and dazed. Relentless Pursuit cleared the block without issue. Barring that the block was small enough that I could clear it with a single hit (even while dazed).

My character doesn't have great gear. It is a TW so probably on the strong side but I didn't go back to the west at all, no merchant artifacts, only did the prides and the volcano in the east.

I was able to solo her without any help from Aeryn. Speaking of, on normal, Aeryn can solo both the buffed and unbuffed version consistently. Same on Nightmare. Same on Insane.