ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Fearscape is one of those abilities which can be deadly if used against you, but doesn't seem so effective when you use it.

For the player character it seems to have been relegated to "I need some time away from the scary guy, so I'll cast it on trash for a breather" status. Where it should be a talent the player character will want to use on the big scary monster, an "I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me!" "Meet your doom!" kind of talent.

I propose that including an "After slaying a Rare/Unique/Boss in the Fearscape your Vim is replenished." clause would improve the attractiveness of casting the spell on the intimidating, rather than casting it on the trash to let some cooldowns refresh. - perhaps chuck in a heal based on the tier of the slain foe as icing.

That could help but the 90 vim sustain cost is still prohibitive, especially if using Flame of Urh'Rok. A lower sustain cost would be a good improvement as well, and maybe increase the vim drain per turn to compensate so it's not game over if an early randboss Fearscapes you.

Edit: Apparently the cost was changed in 1.4. It's still bad and this change won't make it good but it will make it have at least situational use.

That got changed on 1.4 i think, it's 5 cost, 5 drain+1 per turn since then

You're right. Can't believe I never noticed that. I guess it shows how little I value the talent that I never hovered over it since 1.4.

bpat wrote:It's still bad and this change won't make it good but it will make it have at least situational use.

Situational is all I'm going for.
I feel that Fearscape is one of those talents which is largely stronger when used by NPCs than when used by the character. I fear making it good would just make it too good when used against you.

As it stands it has some situational use as a very very (very) poor man's panic-button stone wall. I'd rather it had situational use more like a zig-zag tunnel - fight scary dudes 1v1 without having other scary dudes in LoS and without the tedium of digging out the map.

I don't intend for this idea to make it "get this talent asap" good. But it might make it a talent people would actually consider and enjoy using on the occasional randboss.

What about if being in the fearscape gave the caster vim regen? NPCs dont care about resources, but players do, so this would be technically symmetrical without buffing the npcs, I think?

That would be really scary on enemies since often the only way you can beat an early randboss with Fearscape is to wait it out. If it never expires then often you just lose if a strong enemy gets Fearscape.

Hm, this is kind of news to me. I'm using fearscape on bosses and uniques to good effect, and I'm currently using it in madness difficulty so that's saying quite a bit.

The regen has been really important, as has been the ability to take out individual enemies instead of fighting the whole crowd at once. Vim seems to restore nicely from draining assault and can in principle keep the fearscape up indefinitely.

I've also used it to great effect in the final boss fight (at lower difficulties). It performs brilliantly there.