ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Many prodigies are bad and will never be used in serious builds. Here are some ideas to fix them.

Str

ICCTW: Increase Strength gain from 40 to like 60.

Massive Blow: Make it ignore knockback resist and physical save (if it doesn't already), and make the target take double damage from your next attack for a turn (similar to counterstrike), so you can Rush or something for a big follow up.
Superpower: Increase Willpower damage mod to 50 or 60%.

You Shall Be My Weapon: Increase weapon damage to 450% + 90%/size cat.

Dex

Automated Reflex System: Reduce cooldown to 3.

Giant Leap: Reduce cooldown to 5, have it remove immobilizing effects and stuns.

Roll With It: Increase physical resist gain to 50%, raise physical resist cap by 15%.

Through The Crowd: Give yourself and all party members +10% global speed per ally in LoS, reduced by one per tile away (10% at range 1, 5% at range 6, 1% at range 10). Maybe cap it at 35% or so and remove the save bonus.

Windtouched Speed: Also reduce all cooldowns by 15%.

Con

Armour of Shadows: Give you range 10 infravision, and gain 25% evasion when on an unlit tile.

Bloodspring: Reduce the triggering damage by 50%.

Corrupted Shell: Also give armor, same amount as defense/saves increase

Draconic Body: Make sure the heal protects you from death. Maybe reduce cooldown to 15.

Eternal Guard: Unsalvageable because of the nature of Block.

Never Stop Running: Reduce cooldown to 3. Maybe remove it.

Mag

Aether Permeation: Change to increase all non-arcane resistances by 40 or 50% of your arcane resistance.

Arcane Amplification Drone: Give it your % damage bonuses. Also make it not damage the user.

Blighted Summoning: Instead of giving Magic stat to all the summons, give them spellpower equal to the higher of your mind or spellpower. Also make the talent levels always 5.

Mystical Cunning: Have Traps and Poisons scale with Magic + Cunning instead of just Cunning (so having 50 Mag 50 Cun would make them as strong as having 100 Cun). Also allow a third poison to be used (so Vulnerability Poison will actually be used).

Revisionist History: If you die when under the effect, you are instead returned back in time.

Spectral Shield: Unsalvageable because of the nature of Block.

Temporal Form: Bring back the paradox and effective Willpower thing, reduce it to 150.

Wil

Garkul's Revenge: Increase bonus damage to humanoids to 30%.

Lucky Day: You also have a 10% chance to evade incoming damage.

Mental Tyranny: Mind damage also applies a random gloom effect, limit once per target per turn.

Meteoric Crash: Increase stun duration to 5.

Range Amplification Device: Remove fatigue penalty, it'll be bad anyway.

Spell Feedback: The incoming spell fails instead of damaging you (but still costs resources and goes on cooldown). Spells that fail when under the debuff also consume resources and go on cooldown. It'll probably never be good though because it's overkill by definition (Anti-magic character taking a mage-killer prodigy) and if it's somehow buffed to be good on players, enemies will be ridiculous with it. In fact, this suggestion will probably make it too good on enemies, making Gorbat basically impossible for some casters.

Unbreakable Will: Reduce cooldown to 1, or just remove the cooldown. It'll still be worse than Spine of the World.

Cun

Elemental Surge: Reduce cooldown to 5, and make each element have a separate cooldown.

Endless Woes: Double all the damages, and increase slow and confuse power to 50%.

Fast as Lightning: You also move twice as fast, always. So your base movement speed is 200% and if you have a 500% Movement Infusion on your movement speed is now 1200%.

Secrets of Telos: Increase the % damages on Telos Spire of Power to 50% and make the parts more common, because thanks to the artifact pool being diluted by new ones, you pretty much need to use the Vault to get this. A way to do this is to just make the Top Half and Crystal fixed drops like the Bottom Half is (could put them in Vor Armory and Briagh's Lair respectively, would fit decently lore wise since Vor Armory has weapons and Briagh's Lair has gems), or give them 100% chance of appearing in Angolwen's staff shop for 1000g each by the third shop reset if you haven't already found them.

Tricks of the Trade: Unsalvageable because Stealth is bad, invisibility is bad, and losing access to the randart merchant is bad.

Tricky Defenses: Also reduce the equilibrium gain when hit by 2/3, and add a 30% chance to ignore any incoming magical debuff when Antimagic Shield is up.

Worldly Knowledge: Change to gain all of those categories locked at 1.0 mastery, and gain a category point and five generic points that you can spend however you want.

Lots of people swear by the shield prodigies and ICCtW is generally considered a good choice to pair with superpower on the many mindpower classes that have nothing better to do with their third stat. I've seen a fair bit of love for Giant Leap since it's a perfectly targeted teleport with damage. Spell Feedback is a very nasty prodigy that appears on both non-unique and plot critical enemies in the base game. It really doesn't need to be buffed. Maybe make it not require antimagic, though? I don't think Champions of Ur Rohk have antimagic, do they?

Shield prodigies are bad because Block is a fundamentally flawed mechanic. They're passable on Normal/Nightmare but that doesn't mean they're good. There isn't much point trying to fix them unless Block is changed though.

Superpower and ICCTW are just bad compared to other prodigies. They can't compare to Arcane Might and PES at all. Sure, you can use them on Cursed/Wyrmic, but that's not even better than something like Arcane Might + Flexible Combat for damage.

Giant Leap is just bad, I don't see how it can be justified when it has a 20 turn cooldown. It's like an AoE Rush which is really weak for a prodigy, and serious runs shouldn't even consider it.

Spell Feedback is hard to balance because it's really good on enemies but useless on players. I gave it a try but I suppose there isn't much need to change it. I like the idea of making it not require antimagic, but that may not work thematically.

Opinions thread.

0player wrote:Opinions thread.

Not sure how this is a meaningful comment, since it's not like I can (or should) provide hard evidence that some prodigies are useless. The only prodigies I listed here that I've ever seen defended by high level players are Superpower, ICCTW, Secrets of Telos, and Worldly Knowledge just for Light on Archmage/Corruptor/Reaver if you were unlucky with escorts, and my recommended changes for those are relatively mild compared to the ones for truly worthless prodigies like Fast as Lightning.

Edit: Actually Mental Tyranny is good too, but only on Doomed for Madness procs. Also Temporal Form is okay but not on Paradox Mage and Temporal Warden somehow.

yeah man I like the ideas here, some prodigies are really bad and need some reworks. I feel like they should all be powerful in some great way given that they're the most exclusive abilities in the game but some are just borderline worthless outside of some very specific circumstances. I end up using nearly the same prodigies every game depending on the type of character, and I think that kinda sucks given how many choices there are.

Also can I suggest taking a look at some of the prodigy unlock requirements? Nearly anything with damage requirements or spell casting can be farmed immediately, prodigies like cauterize and windblade might as well not have any requirements at all.

oh also remember when mental tyranny was 100% conversion to mind damage? that was hilarious, a little too broken though I suppose

Nothing wrong with wanting prodigies to be awesome.

If you'd like us to leave the realm of opinion, we could investigate this statistically. I used the wonderful ToME Metricsprogram to find out the number of times any prodigy has been taken in any 1.4.0+ character (all addons, any difficulty):



I'll comment on the talent ideas later - for now I want to play around with ToME Metrics!

EDIT: After much playing around, I found the complete list of v1.4 characters

Umm...am I reading this wrong or did 0 people actually take the Range Amplification Device? How is that possible, it's a new prodigy! Surely somebody has tried it by now! These numbers seem so low in general, I though more people played ToME than this.

Actually, yes, Amphous, I agree with you. I was going to edit my post to mention that, too. Maybe it's bugged, or I just don't know how to use ToME Metrics properly.

Though, maybe just not very many people are pulling through to level 30 with a validated character. I didn't pull any characters below that level, so I don't yet know.

This could be a useful balance tool, so let me play around with it a bit before a write-off. Any advice out there?

EDIT: Ah, shit, I know now. brb

Well, I suppose you could just pull the lowest prodigy from each stat (except for maybe strength) and see if we could find a way to buff it.

Through the Crowd: Saves and free movement while surrounded... By allies. Maybe make it so that using the talent would let you swap with an enemy as well and gain like... 3 free moves or so?

Roll with it: Gain phys resist, get hit, get knocked back, get a free move. I don't know if it's weak since I've never used it. Maybe it's just underwhelming?

Armour of Shadows (might just be because it's such a niche prodigy, like Hidden Resources): does it give armor hardiness as well? It should, if it doesn't already.

Mystical Cunning (super niche, really only rogues): Only fits a few classes and none of those classes build spellpower and I'm pretty sure the trap/poison scale off spellpower.

Garkul's Revenge: Okay... So you can kill a golem boss really fast now. Don't really see how that helps you kill the two mages more easily.

Tricky Defenses: Just... Underwhelming. Affects one ability.

heres some of my thoughts about the prodigies, before embers that is
i think these need buffs

corrupted shell(give +4 hp per con on top of base 250 AND armor equal to bonus saves)
armor of shadows(add darkness damage thorns equal to con and damage avoidance equal to con/10 both when on an unlit tile)
tricky defenses(needs the effects doubled and equilbrium gain from AM shield halved)
secrets of telos(needs another permanent benefit, not sure what)
roll with it(not sure what to do here), bpat's suggestion works if toned down though I guess
aether permeation(needs to stop overwriting otherwise higher resistances)
meteoric crash(needs cooldown lowered to 8 or 10)
garkul's revenge(needs a chance on melee hit to summon his spirit as per the garkul's items set bonus, stacks with it)
lucky day(permanently gain 30% evasion and projectile deflection), but bpat's suggestion works there too
unbreakable will(needs to act like ward, except for mental debuffs only, and stack the ward up to two, refreshing one every 7 turns)
endless woes(mind confusion needs to scale with cunning)
blighted summoning(needs to add your magic stat to shadows and twice if not thrice your magic stat to summoner's summons)

Micbran wrote:Roll with it: Gain phys resist, get hit, get knocked back, get a free move. I don't know if it's weak since I've never used it. Maybe it's just underwhelming?

This one might be horrible and useless or it might be the greatest thing ever and it wouldn't matter. I've never naturally qualified for this and the only enemies I can think of against which it might be possible to farm knockbacks are also the most dangerous normal enemies in Maj'Eyal on a per level basis if you aren't knockback immune.

Obviously some people do farm them since the metric isn't zero, but this may justify its low single digit usage entirely on the basis that it's not being qualified for.

You missed Secrets of Telos, which apparently nobody has taken in 1.4. Probably because you need to find three specific artifacts that are really rare and either do so before level 42 or be saving your last prodigy in the probably vain hope that you'll find them all.

Several other prodigies are probably also suffering more from impractical prerequisites than from being weak, though none to the extreme degree Telos is.

I've never seen the secret of Talos gem part myself. The other two parts are rather easy to get though. The offhand has 100% drop on the Talos shade and the main hand 25% chance. IIRC, the gem is a very high level Maj'Eyal only artefact too making it kinda have none to very very few drop opportunities. Wiki says T5 item with level 35-45 range.

I think the gem is practically impossible to find in a Normal game which are the most common games and also the best place to try some random prodigy that just gives you an item you might not even like.

My number one problem of mystical cunning is that it is way to niche with its know class talent requirement.

How about adding one more benefit that is tied to survival generic talent tree somehow?

It will fit "good for rogues" theme but just any other class will be able to take it and benefit from its third effect.

Some effect tied to charm mastery talent may be interesting (Giving spellpower based +% effect to wand effects? Instant ability to reset cooldown(s) of charms with its cooldown being tied to effective level of charm mastery?)

For getting Roll With It, I think Disengage (the first talent in the Field Control tree) actually counts as being knocked back.

At least, that's how I remember getting it on a Skirmisher before.