[b42] WeAreAll, Doomed winner (4 deaths)

[supermini]

Well, there's a winner that wasn't really supposed to be. I started this character with the idea to test Doomed and see if they seem like something that would be interesting to play a whole game with. As you see, yeah, it was...For the most part.

Doomed is a hybrid with a good mix of short range blasting and summoning. It has two very powerful talents - relentless and deflection. The first gives you 75% resistance against stun, confusion, knockback and fear at max level. Deflection shaves off some damage from each blow you receive. That, and the shadows, make doomed very difficult to kill for the whole game. When coupled with antimagic shield (which I used), very few enemies could directly threaten me, as long as I didn't get surrounded. Blasting talents are ok, they do decent damage later on in the game, but the short range makes them quite different in play than your classical corruptor or archmage.

If anything, I think deflection is a bit too powerful. By the end I had it around 250 power, and I don't think that's near the high end of where you can get it, and with no significant armor I was taking less damage in melee than my fully armored berserker did. While I could keep antimagic shield up, I didn't take any significant damage from spells either.

Getting gear was always a problem, as I haven't found a lot of artifacts that work well for doomed. Aletta's diadem worked really well, and I used the psychic lobotomy ability from it the whole game. The rest of the stuff was mostly farportals and Last Hope merchant.

Now lets talk about deaths. First one was quite...nooby. I died in Derth when 3 elementals came around the corner and instead of moving I...didn't. I would have ended it then and there but as I said, I didn't expect this char to get this far. Second and third was trying to take on Athamaton. This build was not well suited to fighting him, and I made tactical errors in that fight twice. I got him to around 40% both times and I could have beaten him but...I screwed up and got instakilled by eye lasers+acid wave for 1500 damage. I gave up on that. Fourth death was overconfidence in Rak'Shor pride. I was kinda not paying attention at this point and left meditation on, and stood in the middle of a group of 3 armored skeleton warriors while 5 necros were shooting me with spells. Silly.

I pretty much cleared the prides without any problems (apart from my own idiocy, as mentioned already) and yawned my way through the second half of the game, including High Peak. I don't consider this a true winner, since it's not roguelike difficulty, but it might serve as an idea on how to build your doomed.

If I would change anything in the build, it's to put points from call of the wild tree to either gestures or some of the higher feeding talents (the one that reduces damage maybe). Call of the wild was really an overkill at that point, and the equilibrium reduction from fungus is good enough. I also hate meditation because I forget to turn it off. What's worth noting is that I never needed more than 1 point in the initial feed talent. It makes hate management a little bit harder, but the amount of points you save is really good. Also, I think that a point in the shadows category is really good, as it gives you an extra shadow. They aren't as good later on as they are early, but even as a distraction for the enemies they work well enough. I would have put one point into force of will too instead of call of the wild.

If I would change anything about the class, it's to make deflection a bit worse. Anyone who pays a little bit more attention than I did and doesn't mess around could win this game on roguelike with doomed without problems. I could tank the room of death wyrms with it and AM shield without a lot of problems.

Here's a link to the char, and if anyone has any questions about the build or wants any advice, I'd be happy to help.

http://te4.org/characters/13640/tome/88 ... 239063c186

[SageAcrin]

Deflection doesn't really properly convey this, but it charges over time at a slow rate(like 5 per turn?), and then takes damage it blocks for you out of that pool. The listed value is just the cap.

So it will help quite a bit with a sudden, nasty hit...but in a prolonged battle it is utterly useless. Neat, but not as good as it looks(though, not bad.).

[Suslik]

> WeAreAll Doomed
Our quest is vain..

[supermini]

Deflection doesn't really properly convey this, but it charges over time at a slow rate(like 5 per turn?), and then takes damage it blocks for you out of that pool. The listed value is just the cap.

So it will help quite a bit with a sudden, nasty hit...but in a prolonged battle it is utterly useless. Neat, but not as good as it looks(though, not bad.).

Huh. Well then I'm really confused as to how I was able to take so little damage from basically everything. I'm testing it in the ID now and yeah, I'm taking almost no damage at all, even in prolonged fights. Could it be that something is not working as intended?

Edit: A level 100 quasit rushes me for 14 damage. I keep doing nothing to pass the time and it kills itself on my retribution damage. Something is not right here.

[SageAcrin]

If I read the code right-which is a bit of an if, Benli's code is a different style from the rest of the code in the game, often, and I am by no means good at this, and it's a complex skill-it apparently charges 1/35th of the maximum value listed in Deflection every turn.

So yeah he'd kill himself on retribution before that, probably. You were probably charging 8 or so every turn and he was only dropping it by 14.

The thing is, the pooled points actually (sort of) soak twice the listed damage, since it's just halving damage. So, if, say, you have a 300 point pool for Deflection, you need to take 600 damage and halve it down to 300 before that 300 pool is gone. Same with with all half-damage shields in the game-this makes them quite good(with the downside that they're not full damage blockers, of course).

I'm not ruling out that a bug could have happened. Bugs happen. But I definitely had the skill's points visibly bottom out on me, when I cleared one in...b38, I think that was? Right after their buffs. You might just be underrating how long the skill will hold out for if you've fully capped it and put a lot of work into it-the problem is more that it won't come back fast at all, once it does.

Edit: Also, I have no idea how it interacts with AM Shield. It's possible AM Shield is taking out its damage first, then Deflection is, which would make it harder to run out the pool.

Thinking on it, I would credit your ridiculous durability more to AM than Cursed-unique skills-AM Shield is taking a 70+ bite out of damage, and Resolve is giving you +30% to elemental resists, so you're basically not having to worry about resists on your equips, either. Not a perfect magical wall but extremely good. But, Doomed isn't the only class that can reasonably invest in that, and AM has its downsides...

[kazak]

Also the final skill in the Gestures tree gives a percentage reduction to melee damage, so that's probably coming into play as well.

[supermini]

You are right Acrin, it doesn't seem to be just deflection. It seems to be a combination of resolve, antimagic shield, gesture (including counterattacks), deflection and life leech from Bloodcaller.

Someone needs to look at this, since the combo is too powerful. Normally, I only take damage from spikes such as crits. With fungus, I can also keep a regen on almost constantly (if I invested more points I could keep it on the whole time). It gets quite crazy.

[SageAcrin]

When a defensive combo takes about half a dozen elements from skills and equips(and you're not crediting some other things, like the 40% physical resist you've scraped up), including Antimagic, and still can't down Atomathon, there's probably nothing to look at.

That becomes less "overpowered" and more good character construction. Doomed's a great class, near the top of things, due to having a lot of good skills with few really standout ones. Directed nerfs to its various skills would kinda ruin the way it plays, though-it doesn't have any key skills that give it a baseline amount of power, and mostly runs off the interaction of above average skills.

[supermini]

I'm not saying that it can't take down Athamaton, I'm saying I couldn't. I got him to 40% both times but I screwed up. But fair enough - if this is the way it's supposed to work, then Doomed in this setup have to be the tankiest class I've ever tried. 50 levels higher mobs (tested in the ID), either can't hurt me in melee or do so for miserable amounts of damage.

[SageAcrin]

Well, it's intentional to be possible to clear on Roguelike-it is, in fact, a design goal.

You don't do that by staring blankly. As you said, you died to screwups twice with a very good build on a strong class. Therefore, a good player wouldn't screw up, would have a good build and, in this case, a good class, and clear most of the time if they played quite well. In theory. There's always possible bad situations that can't be read, nothing is perfect.

You also did some quite safe play that you're not crediting, like grinding up quite a lot in the Farportal(Explorer is by no means a required pickup for a clear, unless you're playing a weaker class), which is a risk-reward thing on Roguelike(More grinding on Roguelike is more safety but more time if you die) but generally optimal on Adventurer if you want to spend that extra time, and I think you skipped the Dark Crypt random event dungeon(Always the objectively safe idea).

I would guess, if you're doing that, you've probably got more good play you're not crediting either. Good players should be able to get decent shots at Roguelike clears.

This is game design. It's not always supposed to blow you up. At least, not with ToME. Now, some Roguelikes..

[Parcae2]

Resolve and AM Shield can both crit. Doomed have a big +crit multiplier. I'd say that that's a big part of why he found his character so durable.

[SageAcrin]

...AM Shield can crit?

...Not seeing a crit check in the code, though. (Mana Clash and Resolve is what I see.) Maybe it was changed in b43 somewhere?

Resolve can, though, though for the most part relying on critical resists for your defenses is silly. Also, it was blocking 30% already, on base. It's hard to have a resist that won't slam the cap from there. Still, it's a neat perk.