ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The previous discussion of elemental trees is running into the problems with the Arcane Blade so it's time to open the next discussion. The previous discussion isn't really over, but I'd intended to do a new thread for this from the start.

The mage classes are Archmage (AM), Shadowblade (SB), Arcane Blade (AB), Necromancer (Necro), and some mage trees are available from escort quests (Escort). Lowercase indicates a class currently gets the tree locked. Alchemists don't count because they share no trees with other mana users.

The non-elemental trees shared by multiple classes:
Phantasm (AM and SB) This is expected to become a major defense tree to go with nerfs to and possibly locking of disruption shield.
Temporal (am and sb) I don't like this tree. Thematically I think it steps on the toes of the chronomancers and the first talent is broken, but the AM doesn't have an excess of locked trees when none of the higher elemental trees are available.
Conveyance (AM, SB, AB, and Necro) I suspect the probability travel nerfs were overdone and I've noticed that phase door at 5.00 goes random with alarming frequency when the target square is in LoS, but I'm content to leave this tree as it is.
Divination (AM, sb, Necro, and escort) I think the sustain price on premonition is way too high and keen senses is weak, but generally this is a good tree that I'd be content to leave unchanged.
Aegis (AM and AB) The heal mod stacking is too strong and it takes a while to get any shielding out of this category. I'm thinking replace Arcane Shield with an actual damage shield and swapping it with Shielding.

The class specific spell trees (excluding necromancers since I really don't want to tackle a pet class):
Meta (am) There has been some discussion of essentially splitting this into a locked and unlocked tree recently in thread 2.
Magical Combat (AB) I think the anti-shield bias in this tree is misplaced since the introduction of the staff accuracy bonus, but it's the core of the class.
Enhancement (AB) This tree is basically going to have to be redone or removed. I intend to give the AB access to all five elements so having only fire and electricity enhancers has to change. Inner Power is later than all the other MAD class enablers and the sustain costs get really bad for this class since unlike AM and Necro it can't afford will.
Shadow Magic (SB) Shadow Combat is just bad. The rest of the tree is probably okay.
Ambush (sb) I'm not sure Ambuscade is any good anymore and I certainly wouldn't touch Shadow Veil with a ten foot pole. I suspect this is too weak to be a locked category.

The Necromancer I don't intend to mess with unless someone else provides a convincing rewrite to bundle with this project. Ice appears to have little importance to it and any changes to Conveyance and Divination will be minor unless someone has a really good argument they need more.

The Archmage I don't currently plan to change apart from changes to the categories that make it up, though I'm open to suggestions. In an ideal world something that doesn't step on the chronomancers' toes would replace Temporal, but I don't have any ideas at the moment. I'd also like to change the name to something like Elementalist. The idea of a level 1 Archmage offends my sense of modesty.

The Shadowblade I see a couple minor problems with. First, with stealth locked a non-cornac SB doesn't play at all like a shadow magic using rogue subtype should. Second, there are only two ranged spells. Shadow Ambush is in a locked tree and Illuminate is omnidirectional and omnidirectional attacks and escort quests do not mix well. I'm strongly tempted to replace Shadow Combat with a relatively long coodldown dark bolt (I'm thinking 10, same as stealth). Again, I'd like to be able to replace Temporal, but I don't have a substitute.

The Arcane Blade is the class that I find to most betray its promise. As mentioned in the previous threads in this series I intend to give it access to all five elements. I'm not certain if that includes the advanced trees or not. I'd also like to unlock Shield Offense, Two Handed Maiming, and Dual Techniques. Wyrmics and Paladins don't have to wait 10 levels to get their attack talents and I don't think ABs should either. I'd consider locking Combat Techniques instead since with magic they have less urgent need of rush.

Additionally, I'd like to add a gish that doesn't use Arcane Combat and can fit into an arcane archer role, but details on that should wait for the shared trees to get nailed down.

Here's a link to my phantasm rework. I'm not sure I like certain aspects of it anymore, but it has some stuff I think'd be good in a defensive focused version:

T2 - Blur Image: Gives defense, bonus stealth, and projectile evasion.

Since projectile evasion doesn't stack, we could make this quite high and make it the focus of the talent, with the other parts being bonuses for shadowblades.

T3 - Dancing Lights: Every turn, summon a short-lived light in radius 4. Nearby enemies will be taunted by it, changing their target and making them deal less damage to other things while the light is alive.

The version I wrote is way too strong, but some sort of decoy summoning talent would be a great fit, I think.

Giving Aegis an actual damage shield will have a lot of overlap with Light. Not saying that's bad or wrong but something to be mindful of.

Unfortunately, both Aegis and Light appear to have been designed as loads of useful defence categories, so avoiding overlap is tricky.

Swap out Arcane Reconstruction for an active damage shield, and Arcane Shielding for some other sustain. Light retains its identity as the healing tree with some shielding splashed in, while Aegis is the definitive shielding tree.

Light: 3 active heals, 1 active shield
Aegis: 1 active shield, 2 sustained shield enhancers, 1 active shield enhancer

I'd say that's sufficiently different. If you wanted to differentiate between the Archmage's active shield and Barrier, then the better way to do that would be to change Barrier rather than giving the Archmage something complicated. Players unlock Archmages first and damage shields are their signature schtick, so I feel that their shield should be more basic than the Celestial shield.

For the Arcane blade it would be nice to replace the current stock magic trees (fire, earth, and air) with a single separate tree that reads something like this:

Flame
Stone Skin
Lightning
Ice Shards
Manathrust

This gives the character all the low end short recharge skills in a single tree, set together and ready to be used in conjunction with arcane combat as soon as you unlock them. It also gives you a slight boost to armor from stone skin, and the addition of ice shards from the necromancer sets the class apart from being completely ripped from the arch mage template. It also removes the option to learn those higher end magic skills from each tree which, I think, is more in keeping with a natural magic user who has no training. These spells are the easy beginner abilities that a novice could stumble upon easily.

It also opens up two entire slots for new talent trees that could enhance the class and make it stand out more. You could give them some sort of special tree based on manipulating the runes common in Eyal. Another option would be to add in some of the lower end alchemist skills from the alchemist class. Such a tree might read like this:

(create alchemist gem, given here just as with the alchemist outside of a tree)
Throw Bomb
Fire Infusion
Ice infusion
Lightning Infusion

Again we are looking at just the simplest and easiest beginnings of the alchemists arts and the bombs will remain dangerous to the arcane blade if he isn't careful. Yet it also fits easily into the idea of an untrained physical class that uses items and weapons to channel raw magical energy. The infusions especially would have great synergy with existing arcane blade abilities like fiery hands, shock hands, and arcane combat. Infused bombs also neatly replace the higher end damage spells from the trees I removed earlier.

Winddbourne wrote:For the Arcane blade it would be nice to replace the current stock magic trees (fire, earth, and air) with a single separate tree that reads something like this:

Flame
Stone Skin
Lightning
Ice Shards
Manathrust

This gives the character all the low end short recharge skills in a single tree, set together and ready to be used in conjunction with arcane combat as soon as you unlock them. It also gives you a slight boost to armor from stone skin, and the addition of ice shards from the necromancer sets the class apart from being completely ripped from the arch mage template. It also removes the option to learn those higher end magic skills from each tree which, I think, is more in keeping with a natural magic user who has no training. These spells are the easy beginner abilities that a novice could stumble upon easily.

It also opens up two entire slots for new talent trees that could enhance the class and make it stand out more. You could give them some sort of special tree based on manipulating the runes common in Eyal. Another option would be to add in some of the lower end alchemist skills from the alchemist class. Such a tree might read like this:

(create alchemist gem, given here just as with the alchemist outside of a tree)
Throw Bomb
Fire Infusion
Ice infusion
Lightning Infusion

Again we are looking at just the simplest and easiest beginnings of the alchemists arts and the bombs will remain dangerous to the arcane blade if he isn't careful. Yet it also fits easily into the idea of an untrained physical class that uses items and weapons to channel raw magical energy. The infusions especially would have great synergy with existing arcane blade abilities like fiery hands, shock hands, and arcane combat. Infused bombs also neatly replace the higher end damage spells from the trees I removed earlier.

That just exacerbates what I like least about he arcane blade. They use magic in a very boring fashion. There's also no "freeing up space for more trees." The interface can support a class having all the trees available and there is no fixed standard number of trees. A class has as many trees as it needs to support all the builds it's intended to support. When we talk about replacing trees it's because there's an effective minimum number of trees that doesn't count trees that are supposed to be alternatives.

I'm not sure what you want to get from this class.

It looks to be a very basic beginners intro to magic profession. You have it unlocked from the start under the category of a straightforward warrior and it lets you step up towards the more advanced Archmage class by trying out a few of it's more basic and straightforward schools, learning to watch and manage Mana, and otherwise just wearing armor and bashing things like any other warrior class. . .

It has no need to manage shields or choose specialist talent trees, and it has tons of locked trees taken from the technique area so you can move away from all that magic stuff later on if you want to. Indeed skills like "Magical Combat" promote this by allowing you to forget about your spells and have them simply be an added bonus to your melee attacks, a built in "chance of lightning on melee hit" ability similar to what a warrior could already have experienced with some of the arcane weaponry included with the game.

Which leads me to the idea of freeing up interesting skill trees. By putting together a lot of the easiest to use beginning skills from the different "magic" classes we open up the class to more starting options without drowning them in a ton of unlocked skill trees or advanced abilities. There is a fine line between making things more diverse, and overwhelming a player who just wants to dip into the idea of a magical class.

If I were going to try to make things more "interesting" I'd probably add in a couple new trees focusing on on using the "Light/Darkness" and "Vim" resources so that a player who just wants to dabble in magic could experience the full spectrum of what is available simply by playing around with different options here. I didn't suggest that though because I was/am worried that opening up too many bars too early in a players TOME career would be intimidating rather than inviting for some people.

However it might be very viable to place such skill trees in the "locked" category and move the Combat Veteran talent tree up into the unlocked area. The trick being to make things more interesting without making the class to intimidating or complex, and without overshadowing the more specialized magical classes. After all this isn't supposed to be part of the Mage meta class, it's a warrior with some untrained mystical abilities they get to throw around. lol

AB is not an introductory class. The easiest classes to start with are actually all locked. It is less bad than the other unlocked classes since it has active tanking rather than no tanking at all like most unlocked classes, but passive or sustained tanking is more beginner friendly.

Class unlocking isn't mostly about hiding complexity. It's about skinner boxing to keep people playing the game in spite of the frustration of limited lives and no reloading. Complexity hiding would be better served by putting the archmage up front and hiding the AB with his more complex resource management.

I know my brain is wired differently from normal people but the way I see it is something like this:

You start with the berserker with the advice to use strength and con, which sets you up to quickly be introduced to thick skin, recovery, and fast metabolism. If you are playing as a Higher, a Dwarf, or an Thaloren you also get fairly defensive racial skills either focused on armor, resistances, or early extra healing. Your going to be doing massive damage and learning to rest between each battle and use your heals. You are likely to steamroll for a bit, get cocky, and die to some elite, high level enemy in a concealed area, or boss.

The bulwark comes next, and it has huge passive defense along with all the skills I just mentioned. You need to learn to block which isn't described very well, but if you focus on defense again you are going to steamroll most things killing slowly, and perhaps you'll run into the early elite who is built the same way and you'll have to run because every time you wittle him down to 50% he recovers back to full health. This should teach you to balance damage and defense, and you'll have to run. Otherwise you're likely to die quickly as the battles get tougher.

The archer introduces you to kiting and using dexterity/defense as your primary way of avoiding damage. It's being a mage without the hassle you have to time things to reload your arrows, but you're pretty much a one trick pony.

The rogue goes along the same line, showing you massive damage from crits, damage mitigation using stealth, and of course more dexterity based defensive skills. It's further down the list, and more complex to play but . . . it also has a race that seems specifically built for it: The Halfling.

The alchemist is . . . pretty boring. I've been dipping into each class playing with the game mechanics and trying things out . . . but he has decent early tanking from the Golem and is likely to teach you how to kite if you don't already know from trying the Archer. Again he is recommended to be a high constitution character so he's likely to have a lot of health in case he gets caught in his own blast radius or has to survive a period without his Golem. He never should be in melee range but oddly enough the staff tree has a defensive skill that seems like is should belong with the psi blades. I'd like to change this class to make it more diverse, but it definitely seems like a beginner magic class having you juggle gems (arrows) and Mana (similar to stamina) but different from the archer due to his blast radius and due to having to change dynamically between his various infusions while managing his golem . . . just a bit more complex.

In this line up the Arcane Blade and the shadow blade seem to be positioned in order between all of the earlier classes and the alchemist in terms of the learning curve with the AB being simpler to use than the Shadowblade. It would have more tanking if it were given combat veteran rather than having to unlock it, but in some ways you can kite with the class like the archer, you can hit hard with it like the berserker, you can wear decent (but not good) armor, and you can invest in thick skin and stone skin for further defenses. Using the races you've already hopefully tried out you can further enhance those defenses as a Dwarf, Thalore, or Higher.

Does that make sense?

Winddbourne wrote:Does that make sense?

Nope. The Alchemist and Summoner are the commonly recommended newbie classes and the latter is locked. Mages are simpler than archers because both use a resource bar but mages don't have to worry about a quiver and because mages start out with attack range equal to standard maximum sight distance. Melee is the advanced combat style because they have difficulty handling ranged threats and tend to get drawn into untenable positions through excessive aggression.

You're trying to be funny right?

The alchemist not only has a "quiver" full of gems but he has to manufacture the "arrows" himself by either breaking down found gems, or using a special skill that turns items into gems. If he runs out of one type of gem he has to go into his inventory and manually switch out to a different type choosing what sort of gem to use and actually slotting it into place himself . . . if he didn't get distracted and REALLY run out of all ammo.

To make it worse each type of gem adds a different effect to his "arrows" and each infusion talent also effects things. Plus early on your gems can damage your Golem, and you have to be very careful about that. Even worse if you don't aim far enough away your gems can actually KILL you due to their grenade like blast radius.

To make it even more complicated his starting melee weapon is the staff, and it's elemental damage is also going to be effected by the bonus to elemental damage coming from his active infusion. Which means that unless you are advanced enough to put "channel staff" to default you are always trying to decide if you are going to channel staff, throw a gem, run and let the golem handle things, or enter melee range and use your weird staff "defensive skill" as a melee character supporting your Golem . . . and your choice of infusion is going the change depending on that choice. Especially if your staff has any sort of on hit melee elemental damage that is different from it's primary/ranged damage type.

In contrast the archer is a simpletons class:

1) He can run low (or out) of ammo but resting and healing both replenish it automatically with no thought on your part.
2) He does have to worry about range but that means either he's out of range and does no damage, or is fighting at point blank range because he hasn't got down kiting yet. It isn't a death sentence if he makes a mistake here.
3) He has to match up the right combination of arrows and bow to "make" his weapon but once that is done he can forget about it.
4) He has one weapon made up of two parts, not a ranged grenade weapon/quiver, a ranged staff channel attack, and a melee staff attack to worry about. His choice . . . shoot, shoot, or shoot some more. Add talent for shooting as desired.

The archer is there to teach you what you need to know when you play the ALCHEMIST not the other way around! Melee classes die because they are too simple and then you run into mages or elites, or a level 30 demon at level ten, and you've been steamrolling for so long that you aren't paying attention or using strategy and you die. Mages die because you don't know game mechanics.

That said I'll admit the summoner is fairly simple to play provided:

1) You don't spread your talents too thin and are content to simply max out war hound and Ritch early on. Going for the turtle right away, rushing to the immobile jelly, or simply attempting to try everything out at once are all ways you can screw up the class very quickly indeed.
2) You don't try to melee with it at all using your mindstars
3) Repeating point two on steroids you don't try to use psi blades to melee while running Master summoner, and start having all your talents fizzle out due to high Equilibrium.
4) expanding on part of three you don't try to use anti magic shield and make the previously mentioned equilibrium problem chronic.

It's probably the first class you unlock since it can be unlocked running the trollmire but when you do hopefully you are either reading the wiki guide or have a decent amount of experience to help you get out of the mistakes you are likely to make trying out the new summoning mechanic, the new equilibrium mechanic, and mindstars/psi blades.

On a different note . . . Staffs and Psi blades seem to be very advanced weapon types. The only class I've found that has any synergy with staffs is the Doombringer since he can use them to cause explosions but since his fire damage doesn't apply to anything but melee strikes his staff damage is almost useless when he first unlocks the skill tree. I've also been playing around with the idea of a critical based staff Shadowblade, but with the same problem the passive shadow damage is only for melee hits so doesn't apply to the staff. For a psi-blade character that actually works I'm thinking about using the Cursed Class with cursed aura and trying to stack curse of shrouds with corpses. But again it takes some time to unlock psi blades and even more time to make them really viable for the build. Definitely not things I'd suggest to a true novice.

I said mages are simpler than archers and alchemists more newbie friendly. Those are completely different things. What's important isn't simplicity but how easy it is for a class to reach the point where the new player can unlock stuff that will keep him playing playing the game.

A good alchemist build can be described adequately in one sentence and has a lot of latitude. "Max out the the first three talents of the Explosive Admixtures tree and then whatever looks fun or useful." Alchemists have someone else to do melee and scout and die for them, reducing the danger they're in. The gem types don't matter. The energy type doesn't matter much. Alchemists gems come in large quantities and they can stack more than they'll need in any dozen fights together and not have to worry about them. Once Throw Bomb is maxed alchemists can attack anything in sight with it.

Archers have no durability boost and no one to protect them and aren't great at killing things quickly. Archers have limited combat endurance because unlike the alchemist they can't stack quivers together to get something sufficient to eliminate ammo concerns. Archers can't attack targets at sight distance until they get a dragonbone bow and anyone getting that far doesn't particularly need a newbie class.