ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Ok.

It is b28 and the Blood Arena might have been harder before, but when I finally found the place it was a bit disappointing.
One of the easiest special encounters in the game so far.
A few bears and rogues and done....
But I needed a bear paw as ingredient and I can not enter the ring with my main char.
Or can I?

After the fight, I can fight again for 150$
Any profit in figting a second time?

The ring he gave me, how useful is it for a fighter?
30% life leech sounds very good, but only a 15% chance makes me wonder if the transmograph is the best place for that ring.

Blood Master finally.
Does he deserv to live?
Any drawback in killing him? (Unless he kills me instead of course. )

Tom wrote:Ok.

It is b28 and the Blood Arena might have been harder before, but when I finally found the place it was a bit disappointing.
One of the easiest special encounters in the game so far.
A few bears and rogues and done....
But I needed a bear paw as ingredient and I can not enter the ring with my main char.
Or can I?


The ring he gave me, how useful is it for a fighter?
30% life leech sounds very good, but only a 15% chance makes me wonder if the transmograph is the best place for that ring.

You shoulda seen the quest back in the first beta that it had: Only the regen infusion (no healing infusion), slightly different talents, think slave didn't get ego'ed gear either, but the stuff you fought did. Was next to impossible, especially since you tended to run out of stamina a lot quicker. But, having said that, I agree with Tom, it is a bit of a cakewalk now.

The ring has a chance to heal you for 30% of ALL damage you do. Combine that with a quick voratun waraxe (or a crystalline voratun weapon, heheh) and a healing mod item, and it could be your best one-shot heal. It is a bit unreliable, though.

It definitely was really hard before, seems fairly easy now. A lot of unlocks are actually easier, however, so I'm not sure if that should be changed that much.

It'd sure be nice if the ring worked with ranged weapons.

I am finding it hard, never played it before, my first char since b20. It just gives me an unarmed guy with no items (that I can see) and what I assume are brawling talents. I get through the first few but running out of stamina for the talents and cooldown on the regen/heal infusions.

I have never tried to play a brawler before which could be part of the problem. Any tips?

Kind of academic now, I died yesterday... But am sure I'll try again at some stage

Spinning Backhand: Use only if up against 2-3 foes in a straight line or an L-shape of some sort (rotates of L, flips of L). If the foes are in an L-shape, go for the one in the middle. If three in a line, middle. Otherwise doesn't matter.
Body Shot: Use whenever possible. If it dazes one foe of more than one, stop fighting the dazed foe and fight another. Also good for "pausing" combat long enough for your Infusion: Healing or Infusion: Regeneration to come off cooldown.
Uppercut: Reserve for elites if they spawn, otherwise reserve for things with lots of hp if they spawn. If neither, don't use.
Clinch/Maim: Grappling talents. I've never had to use them, and grappling something drains stamina rapidly. IMO, don't use.

In general, you gotta pay more attention to enemy hp here than elsewhere. If the enemy's hp is below what you've seen your slave do, don't use an ability. If you've got 4-5 combo points and are facing a bear with 384 hp and a cutpurse with 148, use body shot on the bear and then try to get rid of the cutpurse before the bear's daze wears off.

I think the balance is OK, but definitely on the easy side. If you are unlucky with spawns, or an archer jumps you, you can fail, and you will definitely fail if you don't spend a few minutes studying your abilities and figuring out how they interact. The first time I failed because I had no idea how to use my skills; the second time was because I was watching the wrong health bar (bad habits from playing a summoner) and used my recovery skills late.

Grappling is very costly, stamina-wise, but it has the advantage of considerably disabling your opponent (I forget precisely how this works; it seems kind of like a physical check for confusion + pinning, but maybe it's just a slowing effect). I used grapple only for target I knew had a good chance of poisoning me, since there isn't an easy way to handle that. The stamina cost is pretty steep, though; it might not be the best strategy.

The most important part of this match, along with pretty much any other arena fight, is using the pillars to your advantage. Enemies will spawn slightly faster than you can dispatch them, so you need the advantage of a few turns and an obstacle for the archers to negotiate.

In the original ring, you'd just get randomly screwed over most of the time, with no real ability to recover. It was like Russian roulette. With how it is now, I think enough things can still go wrong that it ends up being sufficiently challenging, although I could certainly see how it could be too easy if you're quite lucky. I tend to get hit by insidious poison and have other such bad luck though, so maybe my perspective is off.