ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Inspired by "Buffing bad prodigies" and I think it is too complex to discuss in a generic topic

Blighted summoning is one of the coolest prodigies by idea but sadly it is prone to make your summons less useful. Does anyone want to see how their war hound spends a turn on curse of defencelessness? Or ghouls using the blood lock? I think we need some rework of who gets what and maybe consider some additional benefits. Some proposals below. (I hope more experienced players may suggest better rebalancing)

War Hound: Curse of Defenselessness > I suggest to replace it with Ruin sustain. Not a huge buff, but it doesn't make it worse like current situation.
Jelly: Vimsense > replace it with Acid Blood passive (why all talents given by the prodigy should be active?) This thing is summoned to get damaged so let it give some damage back and acid fits jelly
Minotaur: Life Tap > Nice enough for me
Stone Golem: Bone Spear > replace it with Elemental Discord sustain from vile life tree.
Alchemy Golems: Corrupted Strength (level 3) and unlocks the Reaving Combat tree at mastery level 1.0 >
Ritch Flamespitter: Drain > I dislike drain here. It is not better than Ritch's original talent. Blood fury and\or Dark ritual would be interesting for high cunning summon, but sadly they don't work with mind powers...
Hydra: Blood Spray > Fits
Rimebark: Poison Storm > Fits
Fire Drake: Darkfire > It is inferior to original Fire Drake talents but I see no good replacement... any ideas? Maybe Overkill sustain? Does it hurt allies?
Turtle: Curse of Impotence > Good enough
Spider: Corrosive Worm > Dunno...
Skeletons: Bone Grab or Bone Spear > Bone grab for melee skeletons is rather good, bone spear is OK for mages. Skeleton archers need neither of them...
Bone Giants: Bone Shield > Good. Fits.
Ghouls: Blood Lock > Blood Splash passive. Not a huge buff, but at least it will not distract it from melee attacks for casting a nearly useless debuff.
Ghoul Rot ghoul: Rend > Don't care. Melee ghouls will not spend a prodigy on whatever buff will be, other ghouls will not get them
Vampires / Liches: Darkfire > fine
Ghosts / Wights: Blood Boil > fine
Shadows: Empathic Hex > Don't play doomed so no suggestions here
Thought-Forms: Flame of Urh'Rok >+ to global speed is nice but I would consider adding way more than one talent to make the prodigy interesting for solipsists. Something like Flame of Urh'Rok+Ruin+Bone shield + Blood splash and I may consider blight summoning for solipsist
Treants: Corrosive Worm > Custom talent that gives 100% blight damage affinity and gives +XX% to blight damage to nearby allies
Yeek Wayists: Dark Portal > Custom Drain variant that gives Vim to summoner or nearby allies or all nearby creatures. It requires damaging enemy, so no free vim out of combat. (Same as above. )
Bloated Oozes: Bone Shield, at level (0.04 * Character Level) > Nice
Mucus Oozes: Virulent Disease > Nice


Not sure about my Treant and Yeek proposals but I would love to see blighted summoning to be interesting for any defiler who got racial summons...

I think making more custom talents/effects for this might be better, as a lot of existing Corruptor talents don't match very well.

what would be great, is for the summons to use and refill the summoner's vim, rather than they own.
and by summoner's, i don't mean specific class.

that way summons would always have vim to use their spells, and summoning them would not be producing any extra.
downside of course is they would probably down it pretty fast.

i think vimsense acts as a taunt strongpoint, which may be why jelly gets it; it also makes it very good for jelly, as it makes sure that it gets hit

the description says that it "makes all enemies in range aware of you", it didn't say anything about making the user a priority...
maybe add the t3 talents as well, so that it extends its lifespan, even if hard limit is not affected.

The big problem is if the summons inherit your Magic stat rather than spellpower stat, they will have very low spellpower (300 Magic gives 100 effective spellpower iirc). This means you'll rarely beat spell saves late game and also do very little damage.

Good ideas for talent replacements. For Fire Drake I would suggest Infernal Breath but that's from an addon class so I don't think it'll work. Maybe give it Fearscape lol, it'd be cool for it to remove an enemy from combat for a while and it's also be really funny. Since Doomed has no summons other than Shadows, they could get Pacification, Burning, and Emphatic Hex rather than just Emphatic (which is the worst one by far).

BTW, Why we buff only summons? how about giving something to the player for blighted summoning?

I am thinking about simple Magic\spellpower scaled +% blight damage, maybe in a form of vim consuming sustain.

1) Summoner's summons get some damage buff here. Summoners often have +% fire\physical\nature damage items equipped but +blight% is rare on items that are somehow good for summoner.
2) It becomes an interesting prodigy for defilers even if their summons will get no interesting talents (are item based summons count toward unlocking the prodigy? If so, it becomes an option for all defilers).
3) Blight damage alchemist is an interesting weird build option (hey, maybe a new blight infusion locked tree can be added to the class??)
4) It allows high magic melee ghouls who will own everyone with their racials (No. I am joking here )