ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I have won 4 times before, but this is my first 0 death winner (Still adventure mode). Character dump here. For some reason, it is not marked as a winner when searching the vault, in fact I don't think any yeek since beta 21 is.

The focus of this build was to make as tough of a character as possible. This falls into several general categories:

Knockback and crowd control: This was my main source of fighting off enemies while I would Feed off of them throughout the early to mid game. Willful Strikes is very good for this, especially combined with Displace and Pity for instant positioning and making them wander around randomly after the hit, gaining more time. Madness also helps, but it is too random to be depended upon.

Stealth: Pity is probably one of the best talents in the game. If you can get it to a high level, enemies come towards you until they are in line of sight (but outside of its radius), then they clump up and make very good targets for Blast, Creeping Dark, Feed, and Hateful Whisper. It also makes enemy casters and archers much less dangerous, as they spend >90% of their time shooting around randomly.

Resistances: Feed Strengths is a very powerful skill to have when fighting elementally aligned enemies such as Storm drakes, Luminous Horrors, or Liches. This combined with Thick Skin and Unnatural Body leads to each hit point going much farther in a fight. By the end game, I had found Ureslak's Femur, which gave me +15% resist all in one of its forms, and level 2 imbue item for +4%, leading to a total of 50% resist all at high Hate (not counting bonuses from Feed Strengths).

Health/Healing: Yeeks are slightly weaker here, but the extra durability from Deflection shines here. It regenerates quite quickly (~6/turn by the end), and is basically a secondary health pool that can get to about 200 strength by the end game. I also used many +HP and +CON items along with a shield rune and a regeneration infusion. When combined with my resistances, it means that it would take an unforeseen (no shield up) burst of about 3000 damage to kill me. I never had a very good healing mod, but I mostly used Unnatural body and Devour Life to recover during fights, and very rarely needed to use my regen infusion to recover, so it didn't affect me much.

Status Effects: High level Suppression is very good at dealing with (almost) every status effect. I had it at talent level 7.5 for most of the late game, which gave me a 90% reduction on the duration of all detrimental effects other than "magical" ones. This meant practical immunity to stun, pin, poison, disease, curse, hex, bane, and infusion saturation. I also had Telepathy through the Prides, negating the effects of Blindness, invisibility, and stealth. I also had a very good Wild infusion and Providence.

Mobility: A movement Infusion, Displace, randart boots of Phasing, and a staff of conveyance was enough to give me options to run away, though Displace paired with Pity was usually enough to get me out of sight, and I rarely needed to run.

Armour: I had over 100 armour (50% hardiness) through the mid to late game, helped heavily by Primal Skin. This let me ignore weak enemies that could swarm me, and focus on more powerful foes.

For toughness, I don't think that this character could be beat. Damage was simply reduced too much, for an example, a theoretical orc fighter normally deals 200 damage. After armour it is 100, after reduced damage from feed power it is 90, and after resistances it is 45, half of which is absorbed by deflection.

And now for some of the fights, mostly they were extremely easy, and I can just sit back and cast Agony and Devour Life, but there were a few difficulties along the way.

Atamathon: Atamathon was a tough opponent, and forced me to learn a new strategy for dealing with late game bosses. I only had 50% stun immunity at this point, so the occasional Rush + Daze + other attack had me worried, as it would take just over half of my HP. When this would happen, I would pop my shield, knock him back far enough that he couldn't see through Pity, then regen. This is the fight where I gave up Shadows for good. Before this, my shadow worked good as a distraction, but now, with Pity, it would draw the enemy towards my area. After I figured that out, the fight was extremely simple to win. Devour Life (With Feed for Hate and Feed Strengths to get 70% resist all) and Agony both worked where Atamathon couldn't se through my Pity, and Willful Strike worked whenever he got too close. I could always heal quickly enough between times that he saw me to never be in danger again.

Limmir: I managed to fight off the waves of enemies, helped by my helm of Greater Telepathy for the boss. I focused mostly on enemies that still targeted Limmir, mostly ignoring those that targeted me (my durability helped here). Unfortunately, I hit Limmir with a activation after the quest was complete, making him hostile. Also, I never found a plain amulet better than steel. I did find the Goedalath Stone and a plain Voratun Ring, but decided my rings were just as good, if not better for my build.

Vor: The toughest fight in the late game. His huge AoE spells often hit despite not targeting me, and Blastwave prevented me from closing on him enough to cast Feed and Agony. Burning Wake forced me to retreat back beyond its area as well. The turning point in this fight was when I thought to dispel his buffs. With Burning Wake gone, I could stay closer without burning, and my movement infusion got me close enough despite the knockback of Blastwave.

Final Battle: Easy, probably one of the easiest times I've got there. I started with closing the portals. The first two were simple, and Undeath had a enemy spawned on it, that I then knocked away and deactivated. The Dragon portal was a bit tougher, as it spawned groups of enemies every few turns for a while. I cleared out a bunch of them with Creeping Dark (both for its damage and for the +50% bonus it gives) and Blast, then closed the portal. By this time, the bosses had killed my ally. I targeted Argoniel, and didn't have any problems whittling down his health. I was practically immune to curses and diseases, had >70% resist all from Feed Strengths on him, Elandar was shooting wildly around me, not doing any damage, and Argoniel could not close on me due to Willful Strike. Elandar was easy as well, no problems there at all.

All in all, I think this may have been the most powerful character I have ever made, and probably would still be without exploiting the Dark Figure tree's power at high masteries.

Any suggestions on changes to make Doomed more balanced? It sounds like Pity could be overpowered and that Feed Strengths should probably be toned down. The Force of Will talents may also be a little overpowered compared to some of the other attacks.

I think Pity should be changed from (50 - 5 * talent)% chance to be detected to (60 - 3 * talent)% or so, if that change is made then I think the radius could be unchanged. Another method would be to scale it increasingly with radius. One interesting side effect that I touched on, enemies that do not have a line of sight to you know exactly where you are, so they will approach to 10, but if they ever wander off to a distance of 11 (or around a corner) they will invariably go towards you. I am not sure if this crowd forming potential for Pity would be affected.

Force of Will is fine for damage now, but I think their knockback is a bit high to be balanced. I would chance it from (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) to (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4) for talent levels 1 to 7.5. This would mean that melee enemies actually would have a chance to approach until talent level 6.

Feed Strengths could be changed to not affect resist all, and only work on single damage type resistances. This would keep it useful against elemental enemies without rendering bosses (Atamathon, final bosses) trivial due to stealing 40% resist all.

Feed Resistances should probably have a cap of 20% or so. Draining the target's resistances is mostly pointless anyway, except for resist all and such. Also, is Feed resistance percentage based, or is it a flat reduction? I don't think resistances should go below zero, and it would be more in line with the resistance penetration effects.

bricks wrote:Feed Resistances should probably have a cap of 20% or so. Draining the target's resistances is mostly pointless anyway, except for resist all and such. Also, is Feed resistance percentage based, or is it a flat reduction? I don't think resistances should go below zero, and it would be more in line with the resistance penetration effects.

Feed Strengths steals a portion of the target's resistances. For example, at 40% strength, it will steal 8 out of 20 of a resistance.

re: reducing the knockback on force of will - isn't it the whole idea of that tree that the doomed, while not possessing any strong direct damage skills, can keep a limited number of opponents at bay? Mind it, it still does not work against high lvl rush, movement infustion/lightning speed opponents, heavy crowds (especially coupled with summonings/multiplication), etc - meaning even with the strong knockback the caster is FAR from being invulnerable. If you both reduce pity and knockback, the class will go from "sucky at the beginning and potentially slightly overpowered at the high end" to "welcome to the shadowstalker/arcane blade bunch of little-to-no-fun-barrel".

marchewka wrote:re: reducing the knockback on force of will - isn't it the whole idea of that tree that the doomed, while not possessing any strong direct damage skills, can keep a limited number of opponents at bay?

My agony deals about 600 damage over 5 turns, Reproach hits for about 400, Dark Tendrils averages about 800 (with a 5 turn pin). Creeping Dark + Blast is good at clearing groups. I don't think that Doomed particularly lack for damage by the late game, especially with the +50% bonus from high level Dark Vision.

marchewka wrote:Mind it, it still does not work against high lvl rush, movement infustion/lightning speed opponents, heavy crowds (especially coupled with summonings/multiplication), etc - meaning even with the strong knockback the caster is FAR from being invulnerable.

Pity limits the utility of an enemy's Rush and, to a lesser extent, movement infusions because they cannot target you from far away. This greatly increases the utility of a knockback, as the enemy does not simply run back, but instead wanders around as if it was blind while outside of your Pity radius. If you have a high enough level in Pity, this can even give an large area (from range 5 to 10, for example) that crowds gather in, making easy targets for Creeping Dark, Hateful Whisper, and Blast. When an enemy steps into the radius where it can see you clearly, you can either hit it with Willful Strike, or simply retreat one step, making it lose sight again.

marchewka wrote:If you both reduce pity and knockback, the class will go from "sucky at the beginning and potentially slightly overpowered at the high end" to "welcome to the shadowstalker/arcane blade bunch of little-to-no-fun-barrel".

Pity absolutely needs a nerf. I was able to simply stand by as Elandar shot spells all around me, never attempting to move closer, and almost never hitting me. I probably could have taped down the "5" key, and survived indefinitely against him with only my life regen of 4 or so. It destroys ranged/caster enemies, as they shoot all around and do not try to close the distance.

As for being "slightly" overpowered at the high end, I disagree there too; this specific build was extremely overpowered. I had a good shielding rune and regen infusion, and I think that I used them maybe one or two dozen times in the East. A fight that got me below 95% HP was rare, and one that dropped me to 85% HP was truly exceptional. I never needed to use several of my escape options over the course of the entire game. I had to make a tactical retreat exactly once, against two orc stair bosses in a Pride that would hit me with a strong Healing Nexus that cannot be dispelled. I would have liked to test it in the Infinite Dungeon, but Yeeks can't survive the ending, so no luck there.

One thing that could help would be reducing the cooldown of Willful Strikes from 4 to 3 to coincide with its reduced power. This would also help avoid running out of low level talents (and, at high speeds in long fights, all talents), as this was an issue throughout the game, helped only by Gwai's Burninator and the Rod of Spydric Poison.

Doomed may be 'crowd control', but they have way too much of it right now. They need to be a bit faster in actually killing stuff (particularly early game), but more importantly, they need to be way less annoying to kill stuff with. They shouldn't have to use darkness, spam knockback, abuse Pity, etc. whenever they want to kill something tough.

Well, what i would like to avoid is the attitude of "one guy beat it all, let's downgrade the fun for everyone", which surprisingly often appears in non-competitive games (and i guess is an attempt to make them competitive ones). I'm happy to see this is not the case here. I see a valid argument about Pity - so let's downgrade it slightly, to the point of it being no more game-breaking than other class-defining upper-tier talens. My experience with balancing multiplayer games was that the worst possible thing the balancing staff can do is the "something's wrong there, let's fiddle in many places at once. and there. and over there too. and one kick in the liver for good measure" approach.

Nevertheless, my personal experience of Doomed, while of course much smaller, is that its a class thats good on paper in high level ranges, but totally sucks in low levels. And it seems im doing something wrong, as im unable to beat Z with a yeek one (granted, not many attempts were made due to time shortage). So yea, i'm a newb

Cheers!

I haven't found Doomed to be particularly weak at low levels; in fact I find them rather easier than Cursed in the early game. Just ignore Magic (at first), boost Willpower, and emphasize your damage talents (Reproach and Willful Strike).

My only winning character so far was a Doomed, and as far as Pity went, I only put 3 points in, which was just enough to compensate for her lack of range. I wanted enough of it so that things couldn't start hurting me before I could reach them with at least some of my talents. Casters and archers that can destroy me from Range 10, when I can't even touch them until Range 7 (and that's with Agony and Devour Life. The nicer stuff is range 4-6), were the bane of my existence, so Pity was just what the doctor ordered. It was me having to spend extra generic points to help compensate for range limits.

I learned to handle ranged attackers with Agony + Madness. Hateful Whisper if there was a lot of them. Also, Displace? Free get-into-range card.

It seems to me like Pity should work like stealth in most games. Once you hit someone it should be broken, at least for a few turns. I haven't played with it but it sounds like right now it's just an invisibility spell with a min range on it (which is still a passive invisibility and sounds pretty powerful). Perhaps a timed effect should be put on targets every time you damage them if you know Pity, something along the lines of how Phase Door was balanced with Continuum Destabilization.

As an example...

Heartless - You've recently been struck by someone so pitiful you didn't realize they where a threat and are on guard against creatures that may otherwise seem harmless.

Set the duration to something around 4 (or even 10 turns - Raw talent level) turns so it can still be used for hit and run tactics but is a lot harder to cheese.

That sounds like an interesting solution - do not reduce its pity, but instead include the Heartless flag.
This coupled with the lowering of KnockBack range on low talent levels and reducing its cooldown seem like good candidates for a change.

Those sound like good changes to me. Pity could be changed to work like stealth or as an effect that turns on and off (my preference for simplicity). I'm compiling a list of doomed changes to work on when I have time:

1. Fix pity to temporarily disable when hit
2. Feed Strengths should not affect "all" resists. It may need a (high) cap.
3. Reduce knockback on Force of Will attacks (possibly change cooldown)
3. Change vaporize to not be overpowered for NPCs. Its turned off now but could be changed to do spread damage over area or at a spot for multiple turns.
4. Make the weapon slot useful.
6. Possibly improve magic-based effects to make them more attractive.
5. Think about adding mindpower/spellpower scaling. (one reason I favor spellpower scaling over mindpower is to make magic more useful, but others seem to like mindpower for Doomed).

I may look to make them more vulnerable. I think hate costs may need to be affected by fatigue. The latest Cursed changes emphasize defense over armor so it makes that option more attractive. Hate loss is pretty mild right now as well so that may be an option.