ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

As I've been doing a lot lately, I'm working on a new class and want to start an updated forum discussion regarding them.

It seems as though the wyrmic's dragon abilities offer a lot of great utility but not much offense, is there a move that stands out from the crowd?

I'm really liking lightning speed, great for escaping and charging in on that pesky ranged.
Icy Skin is of course pretty amazing, (bugged I think...as you can reset your equilibrium after turning it on to remove the 30 sustained

It looks as though I may just be pumping wisdom to the point that I can reach each ability for the effect and then focusing on combat. What do you think about this?

Icy Skin is Godly early game. Sand Breath is Godly late game.

Make sure to put at least four points into nature's balance. Even with all four breath weapons that cooldown reset is invaluable (use all four then use nature's balance).

I only put one point into meditation until late game. Once you hit level 12 Nature's Balance will let you use meditation way more often then you would get to otherwise.

Swallow is worth a single point and since you'll want Sand Breath anyhow you should end up with a point in it. Don't discount it just because it's not terribly useful early on, the effect scales with creature level not talent level. So once you're fighting level 30+ creatures it'll really start to shine.

Nature's touch is nice for escorts and Ice Claw is fun if you want to see some big hits (I've seen it crit for 1k+ with Ringil).

I held out and went Shield with my Wyrmic, if I play another one I'll give a two-handed weapon build a try now that berserker gives stun resist.

Other then that, play the warrior elf. Their buff goes great with being a wyrmic and will give you some added defense and damage.

That's about all the advice I have. You can find my wyrmics character dump over here...

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=23271

And yes he's a dwarf... in hindsight he would have been much tougher as the warrior elf.

Getting more meditation helps you with your equilibrium issue. Getting antimagic makes your equilibrium issues go away. It also makes swallow pretty meaningless

I believe that the odd behavior of equilibrium-based sustains is intentional.

shield or two-hander is a nontrivial choice. Shield gives you an additional stun (on a fast cooldown, with decent damage), which is always good, and it buffs your already impressive armor defenses (given that you have icy skin). Early game shield wyrmics can render themselves essentially immune to melee and archery damage. Two-hander gives you berserker, and the stun resist (and immobilize resist) that goes with it, but it also hoses your armor back down to close-to-normal levels. As a wyrmic, I'd actually much rather have shield wall than berserker.

Earth Eyes is now actually meaningful, which is nice, but the loss of the slime tree hurts. Nature's touch is nice for escorts, and not a bad thing for supplementing your infusions.

Sirrocco wrote: As a wyrmic, I'd actually much rather have shield wall than berserker.

Me too. If it was an option I'd take it.

From a game design philosophy though I don't think they should have shield wall. It's pretty much a staple fighter talent, if you give it to other classes fighter's don't feel unique anymore.

Sure. I don't think they should have it either. It would be overkill on the armor side, if nothing else.

On the other hand, the wyrmic as written is a defensive melee class (they have the strength to wear heavy armor, they have icy skin, and they have enough powers that aren't weapon-dependent that they don't get as much from wielding a two-hander). I *do* think they should have some sort of useful stun-resist talent that doesn't require them to give up 10 defense and 10 armor. I would prefer that it be one that could apply while they use a shield, but that's not vital (with their dex, or lack thereof, the wyrmics really care more about the "armor" half than they do about the "defense" half). Possibly something like...

Burning Heart: Replaces one of the less well-loved fire dragon skills. Sustain for about 30 equilibrium. Adds (will-based) fire damage to melee attacks and provides 12% stun resist per talent point.

I wouldn't be the person to talk to about *which* fire skill to replace, as I've never been particularly drawn to any of them. Then change their two-handed weapon tree over from the one it currently is to one with a decent melee stun in it, and possibly make it require a category point. This way, if you use a shield or use a two-hander, you have options to spend a category point and pick up a melee stun (along with some other potentially useful powers, all of which run off of stamina rather than equilibrium). There's no need to if you don't want to, though - you have everything you really need in the base wyrmic trees. It even opens up the possibility of running a florentine wyrmic. You probably wouldn't want to go straight dual dagger, because that takes dex that you won't want to spend, but just packing along the best dagger that you can wield to bring a second helping of the Burning Heart fire damage starts being pretty appealing. It's not as thorough as most stun resist skills - the wyrmic still has to scramble a bit if he wants 100%, but it's enough that someone as tanky as a wyrmic won't see being stunned as instadeath, and it gets to be pretty solidly reliable pretty quickly if you manage to get a bit more resist out of item or hymn.