Deathknight v1.8 - Hybrid Necrotic Melee

[Einander]

Pretty early in playing, but one thing I want fixed ASAP: Soulforge as formulated really shouldn't be a Sustain. When Soulforge activates instantly, deactivates instantly, and has 1 cooldown, you just activate it, cast, and then turn it off 99% of the time. The constant toggling gets pretty annoying. Either increase the cooldown such that "will I want to Soulforge again soon?" is an actual question, or make it a buff that's consumed the moment you Soulforge something so that it's more user-friendly. I'd do the latter, because otherwise players are just going to get lazy and err on the side of a high Spirit Feed.

Additionally, Call of The Grave doesn't need the "attack through the Ghouls" part at all--summoning three units right on top of an enemy for a small mana cost is powerful enough for a starting ability, especially since you can make better ones, even before you get into the other abilities you can grant the summons. The "three cold attacks at range" is enough to make a decent ability, and combining it with the ghouls is just hilariously gratuitous.

From a theorycrafting perspective, the class seems able to do literally everything, which is worrying even before you consider the tanky thing. It has a stun-heal (and can make you stun-immune), it has shields, it has direct and vampiric healing, it has a passive and active death threshold AND a cheat death sustain, it has enough +regen to avoid MP woes, it has summons (that also taunt and give powerful damage mitigation), it has AOE and range, and while it can't actively stun all its melee has a 25% chance to do it. The only toolbox tool it's missing is an escape, but the ability to create a sight-blocking wall is pretty close, and it's a magic class and therefore can just carry a Teleport rune.

It sounds like you're already planning to cut down on the numbers of all of its tank-related things, which is good, but more than that, you need to cut some of the utility. No class (outside of Adventurer) should be able to do everything all at once, and this class is a bit too close. I do appreciate all of the unique trees, don't get me wrong, but you should kill a few of your darlings here.

[astralInferno]

Closest thing to something unusual is that the clones, naturally enough, have their own shackle pool, occasionally leading to >3 wraiths on the field (though whichever ones the clones generate inherit their significantly reduced damage, which is well and good),

If you decide this needs to be nuked, Forgery of Haze has code to remove Create Minions from the clone's talent list, so you could use that for precedent if you needed it.

[Razakai]

Ironically, Soulforge's current mechanism was supposed to be more user-friendly - originally I thought a sustain would save people having to click it each time. But you're right in that most of the time you'd rather just forge one talent rather than constantly spam it. So that'll change to an indefinite buff auto-removed on using Soulforge.

CotG has lost it's way a little. The primary part of the talent is supposed to be the ranged attack, as a way to poke down stuff at range. The ghouls were little more than arrow catchers and a small bit of incidental damage - but have creeped up over time to be a powerful summon in their own right. They'll likely go back to their original 'negligible damage but blocks attacks' and have the Soulforged versions deal a small amount of damage, rather than the current murder machines. Even if getting a trio of elite ghouls spawning with purple ego weapons is hilarious.

By design, it's a pretty versatile class. I was definitely looking at similarly 'toolbox' classes like Paradox Mage, Temporal Warden and Archmage when designing (which, incidentally, are among the most powerful classes). It's very class-point hungry as well, so actually getting all of the stuff can be tricky without spreading very thin... but they will be losing some utility (and a small amount of damage) as part of the upcoming nerf, aside from the healing/defensive stuff.

Some upcoming changes include Corpse Explosion becoming a straight damage+debuff effect without the dispel/heal, Pale Rider losing the stun clear (and getting a different SF effect), Duskwake getting a small cooldown increase, Soul Rend's stun being lowered, some of their offensive talents (especially the AoE/ranged ones) getting reduced in power, and probably removing some of the random incidental damage procs they get and adding some more save checks. They won't be substantially weaker, but they'll be less of a magical grimdark Batman.

[trenggiling]

Soul Rend's stun being lowered.

Instead of that, I suggest you replace the stun with a sleep effect, as I think that would solve most of the balance issues.
If it was a sleep effect, then you would have plenty of time to step around your target to kill the shard, but if you attack them they can wake up to defend themselves, and insomnia would make sure that you can't keep locking someone down indefinitely.

Plus, it just fits so well thematically.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/5390

v1.0
- The Squire tree has been implemented. This locked tree allows you to summon a powerful undead squire to serve as your guardian, using unique sword and shield techniques. A full ability list can be found in the discussion thread.
- Soulforge has been reworked. It now provides a single use buff rather than a sustain, reducing the time needed to toggle it on and off.
- The Soul cost of many Soulforge talents have been adjusted. The Soulforge tree itself has had it's values changed to reflect this.
- Fixed a bug where Necrotic Strike was instead increasing global speed.
- Soulforge: Soul Reaper now lasts 8 turns.
- Dark Tide deals increased cold damage, but no longer deals darkness weapon damage. This has been moved to the Soulforge effect.
- Grim Harvest has been reworked. Darkness damage now reduces cooldowns, and cold damage reduces the duration of negative effects.
- Call of the Grave deals increased damage, but only summons 2 ghouls. The ghouls are now slightly weaker and no longer use ego weapons.
- Meat Shield has been reworked. Instead of having ghouls intercept attacks, this now raises a ghoul to split damage with you on triggering.
- Corpse Explosion has been reworked. On death, ghouls now inflict a stacking darkness damage over time effect that reduces powers.
- Corpsewall has had it's duration increased, and now deals less damage and is slightly less durable. It also gains immunity to negative effects and slightly increased length.
- Essence Drain's values have been adjusted slightly.
- Pale Rider no longer removes stuns, pins or dazes.
- Soulforge: Pale Rider now prevents any attack from dealing more than 50% of your maximum life.
- Hungering Blade grants slightly less damage and lifesteal but has increased duration.
- Undying no longer reduces the duration of negative effects.
- Enervate's damage reduction has been lowered.
- Shackled Soul's chance to trigger is now based off Enervate stacks.
- Vampiric Embrace has been reworked. It now causes the attacks of you and your allies to heal based on the number of Enervate stacks on the target.
- Soul Rend now stuns for 3 turns at all talent levels.
- Devour Soul no longer heals. Instead it removes beneficial physical and magical effects when used against rended targets.
- Black Mirror costs less mana, and the spawning code now allows copies to be created up to 10 tiles away. This should be more useful against crowded groups.
- Rime's block value has been reduced, but the cold resistance debuff increased.
- Icebound Fortitude now caps at 50%. The retaliation deals reduced damage and has a range limit.
- Enshroud now correctly calculates the damage for Living Shadows.
- Soulforge: Duskwake now allows you to attack adjacent targets and spread living shadows further rather than increasing the range.
- Reaper's Shroud shields for less.

-------

To-do:

- Squires may get the option to use ranged or magic as well as 1h/shield.
- The 4th and final tree, Tyrant, is still to be added. This is an offensive spell tree that revolves around linking souls to redistribute damage and disable enemies.
- Particle effects.
- Egos and artifacts for Deathknight.

[trenggiling]

Naturally these new "flash ghouls" need their own models to distinguish them from the others

[joebobjoe]

Death's Shadow seems to be non-functional. Have died twice at full souls with it active.

[Micbran]

Works fine on NPC's.

[Razakai]

Odd. Works fine during testing. Can you link me your character?

[joebobjoe]

Apparently the version of lost city of vulcus I was running invalidated my saves, meaning I don't have a sheet to link. On mac with Ashes, Faeries, Returned, Arcanum, Stoic, and Trench Strider also installed. Did some quick retests and it's still failing for me. Attached are screenshots of the log, an error that popped up while just trying to get killed (probably unrelated), and talents. Was at 10 souls for the testing.

[Razakai]

Thanks for the ghoul icons Trenggling, those are now added.

http://te4.org/node/5430

v1.1
- Fixed a bug where Shadow of Death sometimes did not trigger if the player had die_at.
- Added new icons for Undeath Ghouls.
- Duskwake no longer causes LUA errors when in a no_teleport flagged area.
- Dark Transformation correctly fails when used if your Squire is dead.
- Fixed a tooltip issue with Dusk Shield preventing the Squire talents from displaying.

[Thexare]

Can't get to character creation in a new game. Disabling Eternal Darkness or Deathknight fixes it.

(problem due in part to my tendency to excessively mod games, I'm sure, but eh.)

Code: Select all

Loading entities file from file	/data/general/stores/basic.lua
Loading entities file from file	/data-grayswandir-weaponry/stores.lua
Loading entities file from file	/data-midnight/stores.lua
Loading entities file from file	/data-verdant/stores.lua
Loading entities file from file	/data-arcanum/stores.lua
===	physical	STONE_VINE
===	magical	FIERY_TORMENT
===	magical	ACIDIC_BATH
===	magical	BLACKICE
===	magical	BLACKICE_DET
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:84: talent already exists with id T_HUNGERING_COLD
	At [C]:-1 
	At [C]:-1 assert
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:84 newTalent
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:37 newTalent
	At /data-deathknight/talents/spells/frost.lua:100 f
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:42 loadDefinition
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:39 load
	At /data-deathknight/talents/spells/spells.lua:170 f
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:42 loadDefinition
	At /hooks/deathknight/load.lua:16 
	At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 
	At /mod/load.lua:271 
	At [C]:-1 require
	At /engine/Module.lua:160 load
	At /engine/Module.lua:955 instanciate
	At /engine/utils.lua:2197 showMainMenu
	At /engine/init.lua:162 
	At [C]:-1 dofile
	At /loader/init.lua:204 

[echo42]

Yeah, deathknight doesn't play well with either Necromancy+ or Eternal Darkness. Don't mind turning them off, but it would be nice if it did.

[Razakai]

Yes, the problem is on Eternal Darkness's end. I'll likely release a compatibility update for that this week just to get it working with Deathknight, just a matter of changing a few names around. Not sure if it's doable for Necromancy+ though.

[HousePet]

Unless either me or Razakai has done something really naughty, Deathknight should work fine if you disable the vanilla necromancer tweaks via the option in Necromancy+.