Character Tiers

[eliotn]

Races:

Tier 1 (gives a significant power boost, probably broken) - Skeleton, Shalore, Dwarf
Tier 2 (Solid choices, not overly powerful) - Yeek, Thalore
Tier 3 (pretty weak, mostly situational) - Ghoul, Halfling, Cornac, Higher

Discuss

[donkatsu]

It can depend on the class though. Cornacs can reach tier 2 for classes that benefit greatly from an extra cat point, while Skeletons can fall to tier 2 for classes that have no native way of dealing with stun/confusion. Yeeks can fall to tier 3 if you make a low-hp class (Mindslayer, Necromancer, Paradox Mage) but maybe even brush elbows with the likes of Dwarves when you talk about high-hp melee classes (Bulwark, Berserker, Wyrmic). Similarly, Ghouls reach tier 2 as spellcasters.

Otherwise I'd say this is pretty spot-on.

[belmarduk]

The problem with ghouls is that when stun immunity was buffed to be easier to obtain, Ghoul's speed penalty wasn't reduced to compensate. So the best feature of the race became less valuable, while their massive hamstring penalty just became that much more damning. I think they are already paying enough for their benefits with a massive experience penalty and the inability to use infusions. Their heal racial is nice, but it also hamstrings them in Dreadfell and the Halfling Complex as well as a handful of places in the East. I got a Ghoul Marauder pretty far recently but in the end what destroyed the character was my speed penalty, plain and simple. It's just insurmountable.

I feel like Cornacs should get a default Tier 2 because they're so middle of the road. They have no penalties to go with having no real advantages, which is itself an advantage - the very very early game is very slightly harder for some characters but the midgame is easy for Cornacs because they can easily level up and fit into character archetypes. The early extra cat point means access to more trees or in most cases an early extra infusion or rune. I find Cornac characters have the easiest time getting all five slots open by Dreadfell, which in turn can trivialize parts of Dreadfell. I don't doubt that Cornac characters are worse off in the post-east, both from my own experiences and the simple math that all characters are going to hit 50 by high peak, but let's face it - 90% of characters never even make it to the east. Having an easy early and midgame more than makes up for a rougher finish.

Power is Money is still too good, but I don't think nerfing it is the way to fix the problem. In the current format, I feel like Tome is too hard. A lot of classes and races are seemingly unwinnable, even in Adventure. Confusion, stun, and daze are all way too powerful, both in the hands of players and enemies. Characters that lack the ability to reliably CC and/or the ability to defend against CC fall behind early and have trouble even getting past Daikara. Dwarves' racial trivializes most CC by simply brute forcing high enough saves that CC never lasts long enough to matter. Diminishing CC so it doesn't spell game over when a CC lasts it full duration would be a nice start. Alternatively, making sure every class at least has one basic anti-CC passive and one CC active of some kind would work too.

[tiger_eye]

A lot of classes and races are seemingly unwinnable

This sounds like a challenge to me What do you have in mind?

[PureQuestion]

A lot of classes and races are seemingly unwinnable

This sounds like a challenge to me What do you have in mind?

Yeek Archmages are absurdly flimsy, of course...

[donkatsu]

3000 hp worth of shields is absurdly flimsy?

My votes for hardmode race/class combos for b38:
Any non-Dwarf, non-Shalore Doomed
Ghoul Cursed
Yeek Paradox Mage

[PureQuestion]

I pulled Archmage out of my ass because I recall them as a low life rating class You're still screwed the moment your shields are all on cooldown and you're in the middle of a fight, though (Unless you manage to teleport away, I guess.). Doomed(Holy shit yeah), Mindslayers(I think) Necromancers (Though they have meat shields), and really, anything with a negative life rating.

[Toxic_Chicken]

In the current format, I feel like Tome is too hard. A lot of classes and races are seemingly unwinnable, even in Adventure.

Every race and class has won the game. And most of them have at least one roguelike win.

[jenx]

No doomed winner for many betas. B39 should help that though

[edge2054]

Halflings should be getting a buff next beta.

Highers could use some help as well in my opinion.

Any thoughts on how or what to improve?

*edit* after some discussion in IRC with SageAcrin here's some ideas we came up with.

Overseer of Nations - As is but also increases the range of any existing lite radius, infravision, or heightened senses by tl/2 (round up).

Born into Magic - Improve Spell Save to +5 per talent level. Also give + arcane damage (also 5 per talent level). (Obviously biased towards mages but could be fun for crystal focus wielding classes too).

Highborn's Bloom - Reduce cooldown base to 50. Now restores a percentage of *current* resources when used (the percentage is to be determined, I'll have to find a good number that won't trivialize Hate decay).

Thoughts?

[phantomglider]

Well, let's look at the Higher talents.

Gift of the Highborn is a 10-turn regen that scales with Willpower. It's not a great regen, but it's good enough to get by on the Willpower-boosting classes. It would be nice if this could be switched to scale off of level or something so it would be useful for more classes, or be allowed to stack with other regens so it doesn't block your more powerful regen infusions for its whole 10-turn duration, but I don't think it really needs a change.

Overseer of Nations is nice on lit levels, but you only need one or maybe two points in it, and it is useless in darkened dungeons unless you get an unreasonable amount of +light range items. Perhaps it should be able to give a few points of not-quite-infravision that can stack with normal infravision or apply from the boundaries of your light range - so if you have light radius 5 and 5/5 Overseer you can see enemies out to a range of 8 or so.

Born into Magic is completely pointless. The spell save bonus is pitiful, and the arcane resist is nice to have but extremely niche. I don't know what to do with this. Boost the magic save bonus by a lot for sure. Maybe replace it wholsesale.

Highborn's Bloom is okay, I guess. I'm not sure how much it can restore when you max it and your con. Still, while having more resources is nice, it's not exactly stellar, and the extremely long cooldown isn't helpful either. If we wanted to make this better, we could let it reduce remaining cooldowns on all currently-recharging talents.

[lukep]

Overseer of Nations...is useless in darkened dungeons unless you get an unreasonable amount of +light range items.

Having a light radius of 11 means that you can see 11 as well. The only use for it in dark areas is seeing self-illuminated enemies (and, I suppose their light radius).