Request: Race Guide

[Nivrax]

Thalore for anything that can get 5 infusion slots, Cornac otherwise.

The fact they are called master race have reason, those who don't agree seem to undervalue their racials. They got best 'starter' activated racial (Dwarf Stone Warden not counting, it's class ability which makes it good), giving both damage prevention and damage boost. Their save racial is on level with every else except Dwarf (which is their forte). The 10% all res is massive boost mid and endgame against anything, especially since physical and arcane res are so hard to find, and people seems to forget part where they are resistant to diseases and got even more Blight res. They make Corruptor/Reaver enemies bearable, especially for eliminating weakness disease which not only deals heavy damage, but on melee chars ends up pinning your character due to nullifying your Str to lift gear. And the trees... well, it's best summon skill in game, hooves down. Instant, 8 turn, TWO, extremely tanky, taunting/stunning pets can be gamebreaking, get them out and you can safely run away when enemies try to kill them. If any enemy can actually swipe those trees, chances are, any other race wouldn't help against something so powerful.

Cornacs, because on classes which do need to unlock more than 2 trees (or one if going AM), it still allows for extra infus slot. I just can't seem to go without 2 wilds, movement, heroism and regen infus. At least not on melee chars. One more escape option to reset fight is too good than any other racial imo.

After that, Dwarves are next in line, like noted the extra saves can help, activated is decent early game helper (don't scale enough though) and teleport through wall is handy in most places.

Halflings, I tried to make use, but just couldn't find a class that could fully benefit from them. Active isn't that good till you get some decent crit multipier, and your natural crit rate at end game might diminish usefulness of whole skill. Their racial evade with luck prodigy allows for pretty much immunity to melee enemies, but light armored toons often have means to boost their defense through roof in first place, and heavy armored ones shouldn't need that. Still would want to see how it actually end up playing, but can't make any Rogue or Brawler to 30 on Nightmare to see. I guess even on base 55% it's not bad, but I generally hate anything RNG-based in game with one life and no saves. If you are ranged class that get hit in melee, you're doing it wrong. Their stun trinket seems nice, but if you aren't stun immune, again, you're doing it wrong. Never found pinning to be much problem for ranged with teleport options, and can't see dropping phys wild anytime soon if you can't get blind and disarm immune as melee.

I despite the 'Shalore berserker omg' train. My Thalore Berserker roguelike used Unstoppable ONCE whole game, and that wasn't really needed in first place (I actually freaked more when I couldn't heal during it). They are meat tanks with sick health regen, there is very little what actually can hurt you to make you use that skill in first place. Even less if that thing is solo boss without anything to kill to regen health. I'd rather have more resists for huge effective health gain, which boost value of health pool and regen even more. And trees if things really go south. On last fight I ping-ponged between the pair, they couldn't hurt me past regen unless I got stuck with tons of debuffs.
Other Shalore shortcomings were noted.

I dislike Highers. A racial that is made purely for one build of one class is bad design in my book.

Skeleton would be much better if shield scaled off Con. I know they were suicide trips for higher difficulties since Resilient bones don't help much there and lack of status removals hurts, maybe now they are worthwhile. On normal they are more than fine, though lack of healing except racials do hurt when you need to make longer fight, and have to rely on rng ports for break.

Ghouls, I never tried, speed penalty seems too big to be worth it. But I seen some decent (20+ level) insane berserker playing, early stun immunity helps a lot I guess.

Yeeks, yeah, powerful racials. And 7hp on level up. Unless Soli or melee, lack of high effective health means you will get gibbed somewhere. At least magic chars can get Cauterize. Anything else is recipe for disaster.

[Parcae2]

Crim: It was a joke. Only Dwarves can be Stone Wardens, so indicating a race preference would be pointless.
Tyler: You're probably right about Thaloren Solipsists. It's been a while since I played one outside the ID.
Nivrax: You are, at the very least, transposing personal preferences into universal rules. Once again, the value of a racial ability cannot be judged in isolation, but only in comparison to the next best generic talent you could have invested in. 2% resist all, plus blight and disease resistance, is not clearly better than ignoring 20ish damage from the vast majority of sources (Antimagic Shield, precise numbers obviously vary a lot with mindpower and talent level). This is especially the case if you take into account the fact that late-game opponents tend to have a lot of resist piercing. All orcs have 25% pierce all, for example, which means that 70% resistances turn into 52.5% Vor has 50% resistance piercing. Elandar has close to 100%, I believe, to his favorite elements.

Consider the effectiveness of Thaloren talents relative to the 1/1/1/0 schemes proposed early for Antimagic Shield and Fungus. One extra point in the fourth-tier Fungus talent gives you an additional full heal. One extra point in the third-tier Fungus talent allows you to absorb 30 extra damage/turn without raising Equilibrium. Three more points in Antimagic Shield lets you shrug off perhaps 60ish damage/turn. Four or five in Mana Clash lets you shut down some of the nastiest enemies in the game completely, if you have decent Mindpower. With the same proviso, maxing out Aura of Silence lets you shut down entire rooms of enemies. Points in Resolve (which can crit) let you hit 70& damage resistance to the enemy's most used element. Points in Fungus are too obviously useful to need mentioning. And that's without mentioning any great generic abilities your class might have. Thaloren have some great talents, yes - but are they really better than the best of those? Is 5 physical and mental save (much less, obviously, after diminishing returns) better than a full heal that takes no time to use?

Now, obviously, all of this analysis depends on marginal costs. In other words, the more generic points you have to spare, the better Thalore looks; at that point, you're no longer comparing 5 mental and physical save to a full heal, but, say, five points in an extremely useful summon to maxing out Mana Clash on a class that has mediocre Mindpower. The point that I do wish to reaffirm, however, is that racial talents are not free. The question is never "Does Skeleton have great talents?" but, say, "Are more points in Skeleton talents better than more points in the Aegis tree?"

[Nivrax]

And you are looking too far into 'value per point' to see bigger picture. You would go Halfling on like half of classes. Why? Because they have stun resist and can evade melee attacks 50% of time? Yeah, they are nice perks. But are worthless, or at least heavily diminished, on most of proposed classes. Stun breaking talent that you get at 24 won't help you early game, and at late game you want 100% stun resist. Evade on getting hit in melee is good for roguelike classes, questionable on heavy armor ones (as those should be able to stand toe-to-toe with most melee enemies anyway by design) and pointless on ranged chars.

Have you ever looked at Cursed and Doomed when pointing Halflings as their best race? Have you thought at all about their skill-box? Cursed already wears massive armor, have Rampage that smoothens damage intake, have -luck penalties working against evade chance, and are laughable easy to get stun immune. Doomed are even better, their skills being ranged, having knockbacks, have damage shield, a full zoo that absorb hits, and share stun immunity trait. I've done Doomed nightmare rl run, and even counting my deaths of previous characters, none of their talents would ever I find use for, as I never been stunned after level 12, never had problems with pinning, and never was in melee with anything threatening. Yet Thalore perks, the 10% res all with bonuses and tanky trees, were useful whole time, decreasing damage intake and giving 'o shit' button when faced against powerful enemy (especially archer, one shotting jerks) or when surrounded.

Halfling for Alchemist? If you get in melee, it's your damn gameplay fault, and you can get stun immune easy with gem imbue. Again, I have 'nearly' cleared NMare rl as alchemist, dying to final pair from cockiness (no portals closed, multihues spawned) and I don't remember ever place where midgets racials would make difference, while there was at least few moments where I lived only because I had Trees that could distract enemies. Prime example was trying to close Demon invasion portal from inside. 2 rares with some sick level range (90-100) that I only lived through with help of magical darkness from random Uruv. I could use trees to make rares not chase me, and in shadows when I was reloading my cooldowns, I was brought multiple times into low 100s of hp due to their aoes they kept using, saved by extra resists I had.

I have no idea why would you ever went that race as summoner. You aren't even in danger of stuns most of the time, you aren't in melee ever unless 'called to' (and can swap with pet to keep distance), literally nothing from racials would help. Cornacs have this pro of being able to use 5 infus if going AM (and you should as Summoner), Thalores got good synergy with their first racial giving all pets bonus 20% damage during Franctic summoning as well all others standard green-ears perks, Dwarfs can at least got teleport. Even Yeek would be better, which is something given how easily they got gibbed.

Going back, you can not analyze talent 'per point'. Yeah, Fungus full heal is worth more than any racial in game. So what? Nothing stops me from taking it, and still having enough. I don't care to choose between i-win button and 2% res, because I don't plan on skipping either of them. Don't compare racial to A grade talent, compare them to Z grade that you would get only when finishing char, and then think if you couldn't really live without it. Generics have same value up until when you actually used all of them, and then it's case wheter those 4 points you 'saved' by not going Thaloren would actually made difference. Consider my Cursed:
http://te4.org/characters/26842/tome/76 ... 88c03058f7
This class is one of 'generic starved'. I went Cornac since I needed that extra Category to make Psiblade build. But if I went for normal 2h build, I wouldn't have problems finding 8 points for Thaloren racials without gimping myself at all. 4 of those would go from Psiblades (one I had from escort), one from Sudden Growth (2/5? dunno why I went that), one from Grim Resolve, and two from Resolve. More points could come from Accuracy, as most enemies have very low defense anyway and you can juggle them back when needed, but I was too lazy.

Some classes are generic heavy, but rarely so heavy you wouldn't be able to find 4 extra point over 'super efficient halfling'. With diminishing returns, many talents aren't worth investing heavily, Antimagic is prime example where you don't actually need more than 1-2 in Resolve (you will hit cap anyway with your base resists), 4 in Silence might be already overkill with radius, 1-2 in Shield because it stops dots already enough, and more will only make it break faster, and Clash being heavily optional to go at all (decent tool for lesser enemies, but any harder boss will take too long to shut down for it to be useful, most of time anyway).

And finally, if you'd go for point-for-point value, nothing would ever beat Cornac. Not only you don't lose anything, you get Category point for free. But it just doesn't work that way.

[SageAcrin]

I think you both are very polarized for how you see point values. Which is good, that means the system's pretty balanced.

The actual reality, to me, varies vastly on the class.

Doomed, for example, has two moderately good heavy invest categories, a third category sink in Curses, and the option of heavy armor. This can easily rack up 50 Generic(generally what you can expect around 50, assuming you dredge up every single Generic point bonus); Any Generic you put into Racial bonuses is effectively coming out of another spot that could be giving you, at the very least, statistical bonuses.

At the same time, though, some of those bonuses are on the more minor end. They're fairly balanced for Generic, as such-do you want stronger long term bonuses with Thalore, or do you want lower investment and to get your important skills like Relentless, heavy armor, Thick Skin, etc. going faster? In either case, your preference probably won't change things much.

And then you look at its category points, and realize you can very easily afford Antimagic and Fungus while still having five infusions. Suddenly, this stops looking balanced. You are looking at a plethora of high impact skills, and even Thalore's resistance bonus simply doesn't look as good.

On the high invest skills end, we have Berserker. Berserker gets maaaaybe generously 20 points into Combat Training-though this can reasonably go to 12(5/3/3/5/0). And then you get Unflinching Resolve going, and maybe Vitality, so you generously 5/1/5/1 that tree(though Unflinching Resolve is modified talent, so 4 is better for a Berserker). So maybe 30 points. That's it. AM will consume another 15 generously, but you still have enough to fill out any tree, and you can easily sacrifice lower impact skills like Vitality for higher impact ones like racial skills.

There's stuff inbetween, too.

Archmage is a good example. What build do you want? Thick Skin certainly, Teleport or Phase Door certainly...but using both is surprisingly good for overall survivability, as you can constantly escape from any situation short of mana loss or silence, as well as having close range combat mobility. How much do you value Displacement Shield? Good question, I find it quite good, but opinions vary. How about Probability Travel? Opinions vary. Is Premonition any good? Perhaps so; Premonition may, depending on how you play, be as valuable as any other resistance bonus skill, on an Archmage. Keen Senses and Thick Skin are both really good for an Archmage, as is a lot of Aegis, but how much you invest in Aegis skills varies a lot.

Basically, it's heavily playstyle variant, and honestly I think it's pretty well balanced right now.

Thalore is admittedly probably the best overall race right now, but it's in the small tweaks range, in my opinion-if time shows a genuine heavy bend towards Thalore, doing things like tweaking their EXP reqs upwards(which is already done in trunk, incidentally-they're back up to 35%) or slightly lowering their save or resist skills(1.2 or 1.6% All resist bonuses can be used) would probably fix things pretty fast. And it can really cost you to ignore other races entirely when making decisions. Thalore's good, but not that good.

[Castler]

There's some very good information here. Would any of those who posted object to my incorporating some of this into the ToME wiki?

[phantomglider]

I'd be fine with it.

[SageAcrin]

I would be fine as well.

[tylor]

It's not Thaloren too strong, it's other races too weak. Even thalore usually don't get more than 8 points invested. Race skills should be as much strong as BETTER half of generic skills of classes, because otherwise they will just not be used. Skeleton, Ghoul, Yeek, Higher are all too weak. Dwarf is ok, Halfling, Cornac and Shalore very good for several particular classes each, so ok too.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Ghoul? Weak? You sir, have evidently never played a ghoul reaver. You HAVE to invest in retch, since it's only reliable heal for a ghoul. Beyond that, Ghoul get ghoulish leap for a pseudo-rush, and melee classes with rush can therefore, double-rush targets. Reaver can take BRUTAL advantage of gnaw, by using the carrier passive to spread the disease onto entire ROOMS, with bonus damage to boot. Plus, the disease from ghoul rot, can be used to trigger the special disease effects in the later tree for diseases, IIRC. Catalepsy anyone?

Beyond that, who shrugs off an extra 10 points of str and con? (And on reaver which uses few generics, you can actually afford to max ALL your racials! (Though leap doesn't necessarily need a max.)

Ghoul + reaver = Fantastic Synergy. For that matter, Ghoul Necro has good synergy with retch since it will heal there summons.

As for skeleton having weak racials, again, you ALWAYS invest in them. You HAVE to have that heal, without it you can't keep your health up. You WANT that shield on anything, since you can't tank damage as well as things that can constantly regen health.

[tylor]

Yes, Ghoul Reaver, Yeek Solipsist, Higher Aether Archmage, Skeleton Archer - each bad race has one (sub)class that they are actually good with. That's what make them different with good races, that are good with many classes.

[ajfluffy]

Skelly brawler for the win!

[phantomglider]

Skeletons are pretty good for any class that can afford to put a lot of generics into the class tree. Tons of classes do really well as Skeletons, especially with the recent attack rune change.

[EatThisShoe]

I've been thinking about Cornacs a lot recently. Mostly they are chosen when a class specifically needs to unlock certain trees, but I've been wondering if there are many trees worth increasing mastery. The only one I can think of is Shadows for doomed that gives a 4th shadow. Are there any other trees where increasing mastery, rather than unlocking might make a difference?

[SageAcrin]

Worth is sorta hard to place-if you're heavily using a tree or have relatively little to unlock with a category point, it can be worth it to catpoint.

But the main times I can think of for really solid impact, besides Shadows...

-Stealth. Stealth operates on a lot of values that generally work pretty well at 1.3, and all of them improve with raw level. 1.5 Stealth is scarily good at what it does.

-Temporal. Doesn't come up much because it takes two category points, on classes that have a lot of use for them, but this is a pretty decent chunk of Global Speed with a capped Essence of Speed(I believe it's 15%~ more and puts you close to being able to constantly double act.).

-Celestial/Guardian. Impacts all of the skills, all of which are good, in notable ways. Not necessary but worthwhile.

-Rampage. Similar to Celestial/Guardian in that it's a generally considered crucial category, unlike Guardian it mostly consists of one skill. It does boost its impact in every way, though, notably so.

-Magical Combat. Similar to the above two, though it's entirely passives, gives you more passive benefit.

-Skeleton. This is oddly popular for Skeleton players, since they have less need for a category point than many and both Bone Armor and Reassemble are crucial to their survival. Also, it gets Resilient Bones over 50%, which means that it usually knocks off an extra turn from any even-number status duration, which adds up.

There's probably a few more high impact options, and some that are debatable(Like Absorption on Mindslayer, for example.).

But really, there's a bunch of times where it's an okay idea to put a category point in stuff. I had a Doomed that put a category point into Punishments, because they weren't AM, for example, and I didn't really feel like I needed Generic points on that build. Punishments doesn't have great payoff, but it's noticeable if you use it a lot.

Category pointing a category is usually not a situation you want to be put into-it's better to unlock stuff and get a good, strong support or offensive skill-but it's not too bad.

The big thing to worry about is when a category is heavily raw talent or not-raw talent is usually only passives or a few things like range or cooldown changes(not always those), and you can often tell if something's raw talent by looking closely at the phrasing of the description-often, if it just has fixed percent values(Such as, say, Chromatic Fury), instead of adjusting its description with levels, it's probably raw talent. (Or you can peer at the code, or get someone who has to tell you, I guess.)

Raw talent skills only check the base skill level, not the modified value after category points. So they don't care much about your category point.

[Mewtarthio]

You can right click after upgrading a category to withdraw the category point just like unlearning talents (though, obviously, you can't change your mind after closing the levelup screen). Use that to determine if the cat point actually makes a difference.

If you're not averse to a little source diving, you can also look for talents whose important effects vary with getTalentLevel instead of combatTalent[X]Damage. The latter function is actually proportional to the square root of talent level.