Cursed - Hate Management

[lukep]

I was playing a Dwarf Cursed, and kept on running into hate management problems, so I looked into my options, here's all that I found:
1. Resource Leech equipment. (1 resource leech = 0.05 Hate) Slightly rare, and have large drawbacks.
2. Seethe. (1.5-5.2 Hate) Only every 400 turns.
3. 0.03 hate gained on hit cursed weapons. Only available randomly after level 8 (with the talent), not very fast at regenerating.
4. Deliberately dropping HP below 25% to get "your rage grows even as your life fades". (0.4 Hate) Very risky, especially since the damage must be at least 5% of your max HP.
5. Deliberately getting hit by attacks that do over 15% of your max HP. (0.2 + 0.2 per 5% extra) Very risky.
6. Killing enemies. ([0.8 + 0.2 per each level after the second that they are higher than you] * [2 for elite, 4 for boss])
Hitting enemies for over 1/3 of your max health used to work, but doesn't anymore.

Looking at this, it seems like it would take a very specific build to win a long fight against bosses without having cannon fodder to feed your Hate, or taking ridiculous risks.

Resource Leech Build
Focus on gaining as much resource leech equipment as possible, let's say 40% chance of 10 resource leech by the endgame (theoretical max without randarts is about 100% chance of 20 leech). This gives you a 40% chance to gain 0.5 hate every time you deal damage, for an average of 0.2 hate per hit. Would synergise well with Life Leech, Cleave, and possibly elemental weapons (EDIT: works). HP drain and Healing Mod loss could be overcome with rings of Life.

Can anyone think of anything better, or another way to fight bosses one on one? This is too restrictive of a build in many ways.

[Dervis]

This would probably work but cursed are extremely affected by the -healing% mod on leeching items. You could use double shielding runes to offset this, but you'd be forced to un-equip and heal up once in a while.

I usually run around with 10-14 hate at mid-game, and if I play conservatively this lasts for a long time, although I had some issues with an unique Snow-giant with multiple healing talents.

[Hedrachi]

Hm. You know what, I hate things that outheal what I can damage. Ran into an eternal bone giant as a level 14 TW in the halfling complex. Maybe grant some hate regen when enemies use direct heals (or when you see them use a heal-over-time, but only get one hate regen from this)?

[Dervis]

You could incorporate it into Seethe, since it's a talent I think noone drops points into. Since it would be hard to code checking for target heals, I'd do something like this... it wouldn't do anything against raw healing but it would work against shields.

Passive: Gain 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 hate whenever you deal 0 physical damage to your target.

Or, in alternative:

Passive: Gain 0.02/0.04/0.06/0.08/0.1 hate for every adjacent opponent over 50% hp each turn.

[lukep]

The two main ideas I had to change Hate management are to give Hate leech on the Gloom talent, or change Seethe to be similar to Meditation (cast outside of combat to recover) with a shorter cooldown, and giving you a debuff (dazed?).

-healing% is only on gloves (and shields?) making it less of an issue.

[kazak 2]

A few days ago I almost started a similar post for Doomed characters, as resource management was really getting annoying in the mid-game when enemies were getting to the point where they died too quickly for feed to deliver, yet too slowly for the hate-from-kills to offset talent cost. Cursed at least can still use gloom and do bump damage at 0 hate, but Doomed are even more worthless if they can't keep hate up.

That said, I do like the idea of giving Seethe a boost as Dervis suggested. Giving some kind of passive gain that would still require being amidst/attacking foes keeps to the class theme, benefits both classes, and boosts a talent that no one seems to put more than a point or two in (looking through the vault).

[lukep]

I never found Hate management with a Doomed to be a problem, even in the final battle. All that is required is for you to run away once in a while while Feeding, and you regenerate Hate quite quickly.

[benli]

So just to be clear: the problem is how to keep hate above 0 when fighting long boss battles? I definitely think that's a problem for Cursed and Seethe is a good place to look to solve it. What about some way to convert damage (taken or given) to hate for a short period. For example:

Sustained: Every time you are hit you get 0.5 hate. You also take 25% more damage (-25% resist all) -OR- % healing drops to 0.

Activated: Generate 0.5 hate per hit for 10 turns. 30 turn cooldown.

[bricks]

Been giving this some more thought, and I think working it through the Gloom mechanic is the best way to handle this. You still have to place yourself in danger to get hate (and the more dangerous, the more Hate). Making it scale with the rank of the enemy would also be great. Cursed really just does not have a viable resource flow.

Improving Seethe (reduced cooldown?) would also be a good move. Right now it's a band-aid.

[edge2054]

I like the sustain idea Benli, especially with the no healing while active effect.

[lukep]

OK, I'm playing a Cursed right now, and with a couple of tweaks the Resource Leech based class is working amazing (beat all starting dungeons, SWL, Maze, Old Forest, and have the Fortress). I'm using two resource leech items (Waraxe and Gauntlets) counteracted by armour of Eyal and an Aegis hat. I'm dual wielding a dagger, and have a ring of Blasting to double my chances. Even with just 13% chance of 2 leech, it is working very well, as I get 10 chances to leech in a normal attack against one enemy. (axe attack, two axe melee projections, two ring melee projections, dagger attack, dagger melee project, two ring projections again, and life leech) This means that I gain an average of 0.13 Hate per turn in battle, not counting the 70% chance of Cleave, or life leech on the other enemies. Another huge benefit is that many skills are now Hate-profitable as well. Frenzy costs 0.2 Hate, and hits 36 times (4 attacks * 9 damages each) for an average return of 0.47 Hate, or a profit of 0.27. Reckless Charge and Assail can leech from many hits as well. I can usually keep my Hate above 8/15, except for long trips, but recovering from 0 is easy. Character profile here.