[1.7.0] Metaclass - Mage Knight

[Hunter]

Stupid question, but are you sure you have enough Psi to cast it?

Reasonably certain. It seems to trigger on and off according to how close I am to certain NPCs and whether they're friendly or not (I've checked, it's not AM even AM affects the talent.) I'd give something more specific, but I can't seem to tell what the proximity limit is (I assume there's a solid answer, I've just failed to keep solid notes, my bad) It happens infrequently enough that it doesn't ruin anything for me, but it can be annoying to go to click it and it's faded out.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

I've been playing a Mind Knight for a little while this time, and I've got another small bug report for you.

- The talent description of Astral Projection says that at TL4 you map around yourself as well as the projection. I know this used to happen since I remember it from previous versions, but it doesn't anymore. Either the talent or the description should be changed to reflect.

- Astral projection also seems to be using raw talent level rather than effective; at rTL4 I had effective level 5.2 but the creature possession at TL5 doesn't happen. If it's supposed to calculate with raw TL, it'd be nice if you mentioned that in the description.

- Astral Jaunt teleports through walls with perfect accuracy pre-TL4. I noticed this at effective 2.6, rTL2.

- If you activate Astral Blitz and then cancel it, rather than canceling the skill use, it activates it and teleports you back to the same square you started at when you cast it. It should cancel properly when canceled because the player can always select their current square to Blitz without moving.

- Any Eldritch Combat procs triggered by Mental Reach display on the turn after they are cast rather than the turn they happen.

[Phoenix1]

I've enjoyed playing with this class for a while now, though it's probably a touch overpowered, especially the generic Combat Casting allowing the combination of various skills and traits one would normally have to spend a significant number of class/generic/category points on. But it's still fun and the overpowered aspects aren't game-breaking, especially when you play with dual-class and higher difficulty modes a lot, like I do, and are regularly facing some extremely dangerous Uniques and Bosses with these talents.

I haven't had a chance to play the latest updates, but are the descriptions of everything listed in the OP completely updated? If so, you've removed what was probably the single most over-powered skill in the class, the Mind Knight's ability to permanently move bits of terrain (Hey, trap that idiot your escorting until you clear the level! A dangerous summoner annoying you while you're fighting off other monsters? Lock the guy in a corridor until you can deal with him at your leisure. And so on.) If it's still there, then, well, it's quite overpowered.

I do have a question. What triggers certain skills to go unavailable (as in, inaccessible, not on cooldown)? The descriptions don't seem to tell me, or at least I'm not getting it. For instance, Astral Jaunt will be unavailable at times, which is frustrating if I want to do a controlled teleport.

Yeah the OP should be pretty much up-to-date, and terrain moving is gone. It was cool but I realized there really wasn't any good way to balance it, especially given that mind knights have some good wall-passing teleport options. You could trivially create a perfectly space spot to be able to reliably teleport to and escape/recover from anything (or in the most extreme case Astral Jaunt in, rest, Astral Duel out to hit, Astral Jaunt back in immediately, or something).

I think at one point I had Astral Jaunt and Astral Blitz go unavailable if you were in a no-teleport square, so that might be it. I think in the current version it only checks that for Eldritch Combat triggers though.

I've been playing a Mind Knight for a little while this time, and I've got another small bug report for you.

- The talent description of Astral Projection says that at TL4 you map around yourself as well as the projection. I know this used to happen since I remember it from previous versions, but it doesn't anymore. Either the talent or the description should be changed to reflect.

- Astral projection also seems to be using raw talent level rather than effective; at rTL4 I had effective level 5.2 but the creature possession at TL5 doesn't happen. If it's supposed to calculate with raw TL, it'd be nice if you mentioned that in the description.

- Astral Jaunt teleports through walls with perfect accuracy pre-TL4. I noticed this at effective 2.6, rTL2.

- If you activate Astral Blitz and then cancel it, rather than canceling the skill use, it activates it and teleports you back to the same square you started at when you cast it. It should cancel properly when canceled because the player can always select their current square to Blitz without moving.

- Any Eldritch Combat procs triggered by Mental Reach display on the turn after they are cast rather than the turn they happen.

First and third I'll check out, second yeah it's based on raw level will edit description, fourth I've seen just forgot to fix it, fifth is a bit tricky. Right now I have it triggering on act base so I can have multiple anime calls in the same emote (since Masterstroke and the auto-block from shields also have calls which can happen in the same turn and multiple emotes coming up at once overlap). But that does result in a delay for things like Mental Reach. I'll see if I can figure out an alternative though.

In other news I think I figured out the Shriek of Challenge issue (I had it checking if the target distance was less than the talent range rather than less than or equal to). Haven't uploaded a patch yet, I'm fiddling with some of the Storm Knight stuff as well (Whirlwind Dervish in particular) and haven't quite gotten it where I want it.



EDIT: Update posted. Fixes the Shriek of Challenge, Astral Jaunt, and Astral Blitz issues, and also removes the counter-attack from Lightning Dodge (in retrospect it was unnecessary and just kinda weird, making a counter when receiving damage on a talent that mainly helps avoid damage) and adjusts Whirlwind Dervish (it now attacks every adjacent enemy when you move, but with a penalty based on movement speed that is steeper than before, throwing others into chaos on a kill, so ideally it should be better to attack a single target normally, but Whirlwind Dervish will be more effective against groups). Astral Projection was working correctly and as described for me, so not sure if that was from an old version or what, but it should be correct in the current one anyway.

[Hunter]

I think at one point I had Astral Jaunt and Astral Blitz go unavailable if you were in a no-teleport square, so that might be it. I think in the current version it only checks that for Eldritch Combat triggers though.

That...might actually be it. The more I think on it, the more I'm inclined to believe it generally happened in vaults. I'm just so used to controlled movement abilities -- Perfect Step, Rush, Dreamwalk, etc -- working just fine in vaults that I might have overlooked that extremely obvious explanation. I'll try to play some this evening to see if I have any difficulties anymore with the latest update. Thanks.

[Phoenix1]

...Just to note, uploaded a patch fixing an issue where Glory Rising wasn't actually resetting its damage bonus after every EC trigger. So if anyone's been playing a Phoenix Knight who seems to be causing progressively ever-more-ludicrous damage even with basic hits, that's why.

[Hunter]

I've tested it again and the problem with the Astral Jaunt fading out seems to be gone, but there's a real oddity with it suddenly -- as in, it just started happening despite me changing very little (I tend to hold onto my points at each new level as long as I can survive until I can learn a talent completely in one burst, an odd idiosyncrasy of mine) -- stops letting me move more than three tiles within vaults and other limited areas. It'll simply fail if I try for anything four tiles or further even though I can do quite a few more outside of these areas. I buy it as a feature (vaults should be more difficult, after all) but the description doesn't give me any indication of why this is happening. I tested extensively, so I can confirm it has nothing to do with the spot I start at or end at. I can teleport to any spot and from any spot, just so long as I keep it at 3 tiles. And it just started recently. Previously, with the same character and same version of the add-on, I didn't have any problems going the whole distance.

Still enjoy playing the mage-knights. Still a bit overpowered but, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, that's probably why they're fun. It's not extraordinarily overpowered, just a tiny bit, and that tends to go very much away past the early levels. Monsters tend to get deadlier and deadlier pretty quickly, after all, especially with my playstyle (just encountered Rantha the Worm on level 9 of the ID. Level...9.)

Also, perhaps a bit of insight into the Sea Knight, if you don't mind. I've only tried it once and I had trouble figuring out how to synergize the talents to actually survive very long against anything that I couldn't just hack down. I died pretty quickly, around level 8 or 9. Thoughts on what you were thinking when you devised its talent set so I can try with that in mind?

[PseudoLoneWolf]

When I played Sea Knights, I found that it was generally best to just hammer them with your spells directly rather than even trying to proc EC until pretty far into the game - like, I was entering dreadfell before I was really comfortable actually hitting people with my weapon. Sea Knights don't really tend to have too many resource problems, Drinks and Flow keep you topped up and protected, and as long as you keep consistently hitting with spells and erosion procs you'll be okay. Probably my least favorite class of the group though. They focus on gradually building up and stacking monster DOTs and surviving long enough to get them stacked.

[Phoenix1]

I've tested it again and the problem with the Astral Jaunt fading out seems to be gone, but there's a real oddity with it suddenly -- as in, it just started happening despite me changing very little (I tend to hold onto my points at each new level as long as I can survive until I can learn a talent completely in one burst, an odd idiosyncrasy of mine) -- stops letting me move more than three tiles within vaults and other limited areas. It'll simply fail if I try for anything four tiles or further even though I can do quite a few more outside of these areas. I buy it as a feature (vaults should be more difficult, after all) but the description doesn't give me any indication of why this is happening. I tested extensively, so I can confirm it has nothing to do with the spot I start at or end at. I can teleport to any spot and from any spot, just so long as I keep it at 3 tiles. And it just started recently. Previously, with the same character and same version of the add-on, I didn't have any problems going the whole distance.

Well that's weird. It's not intended behavior, I'll check it out.

Also, perhaps a bit of insight into the Sea Knight, if you don't mind. I've only tried it once and I had trouble figuring out how to synergize the talents to actually survive very long against anything that I couldn't just hack down. I died pretty quickly, around level 8 or 9. Thoughts on what you were thinking when you devised its talent set so I can try with that in mind?

Sea knights are mainly meant to excel at attrition. Their immediate damage is far behind other mage knights, but they have a lot of resistance to alpha strikes and a pretty constant stream of recovery, so they're hard to bring down quickly and their damage scales up with repeated hits through DoT stacking, so eventually they'll be able to wear down even the most heavily-defended enemy, as long as they can keep up the pressure. Or that's the intent at least. Drink Deep and Go With the Flow are probably their most important talents. A lot of their stuff revolves around drinks and flow. Those talents also improve the damage delay of Eldritch Body (and delaying damage is a very good thing when you have as much recovery as they do), so if you were having defense issues and those talents weren't very high, I'd say leveling them faster might be worth trying. (If they were already high then it's possible I just need to give them a bit more defensive oomph).

[Phoenix1]

Been doing some testing and tweaking over the past few months, and I posted the update. It's an assortment of adjustments spread out over the classes. I've updated the OP with new details, but the main changes I can remember are:

-There's now only one artifact each, just the weapons. They all "have to be used in two hands" but function as whatever fighting type is appropriate. Like, Ego Pierce is a single weapon, Grindstone and Adamant function as a weapon and shield, etc. Except there does seem to be a glitch where (probably due in part to their ability to dual-wield one-handed weapons) they can equip the ones that aren't actual two-handers in the off-slot when wielding a single weapon, for some reason. Not intended behavior, but something I'll deal with later.
-Phoenix Knights' Glory Rising stole Storm Knights' crit mult from Storm Skirmisher (Storm Knights still get the crit chance, so they have more reliable spike damage, while Phoenix Knights dish out massive damage but less reliably).
-Biokinesis now provides the healing function on gaining psi too, giving them a bit more durability. It also now provides a Mindpower boost for a modest offensive buff and more reliable status effects.
-Psychic Combat no longer causes speed penalties, but inflicts a larger, non-stacking penalty to defenses against the opposite psychic type. So telekinetic attacks leave them open to telepathic attacks and vice-versa. It also now does an area stun when you take significant damage, which can refresh your resources a little bit (and thus give you a touch of extra healing from biokinesis) if it hits already stunned enemies.
-Astral Jaunt pass terrain teleports are delayed if below max life and disallow multi-targeting, so it's not quite the perfect escape it used to be but still a solid one if you don't wait until the last moment.
-Astral Duel renamed to Astral Ambush, removes the Time Prison effect (which I found to be annoying in play) but gives you a portion of a bonus turn if you hit, doubled if you kill (generally a hit should get you most of a turn while a kill will give you more than a turn). Costs and cooldown are also a good bit lower.
-Lightning Dodge now gives the miss chance stuff based on you moving, rather than constantly. It also now gives various chances to redirect enemy attacks, for a bit more of a "the best defense is a good offense" vibe.
-Whirlwind Dervish no longer does any swapping positions (it was weird fighting a single enemy and just going back and forth), but gives you free moves on kill and a damage bonus when you have free moves starting at L3. And the attack can trigger Eldritch Combat again.
-The whole "throw enemies into chaos" thing is gone from Whirlwind Dervish and Zephyr Dance. Again, wound up more annoying than anything.
-Earth Burst now does a BiL style heal+shield rather than boosting heal mod and shield mod. The shield stuff only works while enemies are in sight though.
-Tectonic patience no longer persists beneficial effects, and only reduces cooldowns for a few talents (scaling from L3) rather than all talents at L5. It no longer penalizes healing.
-Entomb Freezes (fluff is encasing them in crystal) when triggered by Eldritch Combat.
-Eroding Water damage is heavily revised. It has normal damage numbers, but deals half damage to targets of equal or higher rank. However, the other half is compared to their max life and converted to a proportionate Resist All penalty. So they can still wear down enemies over time but do a bit more initial damage, and the wear down doesn't scale nearly as fast.
-As With the Tides now boosts your max Drinks/Flow and sets them there, rather than setting them to an arbitrary amount separate from your normal totals.
-I...think I left Mana Knights pretty much untouched, unless I've forgotten something.

[Melac]

Slight issue, not sure if you'd intend to fix this, because of how it'll rarely come up, but:

Earth Knights are missing the Earthen Body ability when I play. I'm fairly sure it's because the name is shared with an ability from the Draconic race addon.

Considering Draconic hasn't been updated since 2015, I though it'd be more useful to point out the name clash here than there.

So if anyone else playing Earth knight finds the first ability of one of the trees missing: That's probably why. Turn off the "Draconians" addon, and it should work fine.

[Cathbald]

Always define short names for your talents people :p

[Phoenix1]

Well I updated these guys again. The OP has the more detailed overview, but the big changes are as follows:

First off, Mage Knights now have their own resource, Essence. Mainly because there's a bunch of stuff to modify mana and stamina recovery, or give you a bunch instantly, or whatever; things like a Manasurge rune or Second Wind gear could really change how they worked. Now they don't. Essence is your basic "starts high, runs low, if you run out you can't cast" thing, but it also weakens your talents as you get lower, and while it burns out pretty fast, you can recover some by passing a turn (with recovery reduced as you get lower!) So they rarely have to really worry about running entirely dry, but they do have to kinda pace themselves.

In addition, Mage Knights are now 100% custom. They use only their own talent trees - they even have their own analogues for Combat Training to better suit their "use any weapon" theme. Also means talents that kinda expand too much on theirs, like Storm Knights having access to Featherwind or Earth Knights to Stone Wall, are no longer issues.

This of course comes with some new trees. Combat Casting was extensively revised, and a new Flexible Combat Training generic tree basically is their version of Combat Training. In addition, there are four new high-level locked trees - two class (on top of Weapon Supremacy) and two generic. Wizard Knight provides low-cost beam talents to blast away at range like archmages, as well as various boosts to manual casting. Dancing Weapon gives you a "telekinetic" weapon slot that attacks autonomously at range any turn that you don't try to trigger Eldritch Combat or recover Essence, and provides some talents for actively using it in specialized maneuvers. Tactical Strikes makes the class much less bumpy, giving you a selection of 0-cooldown attack talents with minor addons, with later talents improving them in certain situations. Wild Magic lets your active spellcasting trigger Eldritch Combat or damaging Wildstorms, and generally turns randomness to your advantage.

The offensive talents now each have "advanced energy" effects that can trigger when you manually use them while Eldritch Combat is sustained. These are generally useful effects, but not the sort of things you want happening randomly and that you may want to turn off. For example, Phoenix Knights create map effects that burn or heal those within (non-selectively), while Earth Knights can destroy walls or create random walls. The main offensive talents also generally got streamlined, with most effects being based on the damage done and generally made more thematic (Storm Knights create storm tiles that cause various debuffs to enemies, Earth Knights create various map effects that hamper foes and help allies, Sea Knights provide support effects to allies, etc).

Most talents that used to be free instant sustains are now just passives.

While many talents have been changed or even replaced wholesale, Mind Knights and Sea Knights each got pretty extensive revisions on their passive trees. Mind Knights are now Stealth-based, in keeping with their poor personal defense but high utility, with some passive detection effects baked in as they develop their talents. Sea Knights Drinks and Flow have been converted to a single new resource (just called Flow), that is reduced to protect you until it reaches 0, and then heals you as it recovers until it reaches max.

And of course plenty of rebalancing and bug fixing and such which hopefully won't be entirely counteracted by new bugs and balance issues!

[Erenion]

I'm currently testing a staff-using, casting Mana Knight, and I've got a few things to report:
- What is the purpose of Wildcast? I've never seen it trigger a talent, the only thing it does is apply my Eldritch Combat damage (plus any on-hit damage) to a random enemy.
- Wildcast has no requirements to learn.
- Please remove Eldritch Guard from enemies. You can deal with most Mage Knight rares, but a honey tree with near-permanent 45% resist all and effective 80 life regeneration is just frustrating to deal with - especially if it also rolled Oozemancer and is blocking your only way forward. Sure, it does nothing on most enemies. But on those it works, it's extremely frustrating at lower levels.
- Wizard Knight is fun so far, but it takes a while to get rolling due to its level 10 requirement.
- Foundations of Conveyance is broken. Attempting to teleport an empty space (not to an empty space, but attempting to target a creatureless space with the first targeting) yields an error. Attempting to teleport yourself only lets you target adjacent spaces, returning an error otherwise, but then teleports you randomly. The active with Eldritch Combat deactivated works correctly.
- The Advanced Energy properties are great, at least for Mana Knight. Scintillating Caves just turns into a cakewalk due to Mana Bolt eating projectiles.
- Wildstorm damage not scaling feels weird. It makes sense from a design perspective, since scaling all of number of blasts, radius of blasts and damage of blasts would cause the talent to scale extremely well with levels, but it feels weird from a player perspective.
EDIT: Nevermind the damage of Wildstorm not scaling. I misunderstood its purpose and it is amazing on Mana Knight. Each explosion shutting down talents/purging sustains/purging effects/manaburning might actually be too strong.
- Archamge Knights beam arching sometimes hits less targets than intended.
- Mummy Wrappings are unaffected by Flexible Armor Training.
- Yeek Storm Knights spawn without armor equipped, since they can't wear the starting leather armor. Unsure if this is exclusive to Mage Knight or to Yeek in general.
UPDATE: Not just exclusive to yeek. Doomelf Mind Knight is a special kind of torture.

[Erenion]

During my testing of the staff-casting Mana Knight, I've discovered something that I think merits its own post.

Wildsurge is broken due to Eldritch Combat.
It works exactly as intended - whenever you use a spell, your power multiplier increases, if it's already at 200%, you get a Wildstorm trigger instead.
The problem is, you have a 0 cooldown, instant cast spell - Eldritch Combat.
This means that, as soon as you hit level 22, you can kill any enemy within range 10 of you without them taking a single turn by just mashing the button Eldritch Combat is bound to.
It will take a few button presses before you notice any effect, since the power multiplier needs to increase - it also does not increase visually until a turn passes.

UPDATE: You can do the same thing with Wildcast, making the exploit possible with only this talent tree.

[Phoenix1]

Thanks!

- What is the purpose of Wildcast? I've never seen it trigger a talent, the only thing it does is apply my Eldritch Combat damage (plus any on-hit damage) to a random enemy.

Hrm, had a check in the wrong place. I'd swear that had been working though. Anyway, fixed.

- Wildcast has no requirements to learn.

Fixed.

- Please remove Eldritch Guard from enemies. You can deal with most Mage Knight rares, but a honey tree with near-permanent 45% resist all and effective 80 life regeneration is just frustrating to deal with - especially if it also rolled Oozemancer and is blocking your only way forward. Sure, it does nothing on most enemies. But on those it works, it's extremely frustrating at lower levels.

Fair enough, enemies get inflated resources anyway.

- Foundations of Conveyance is broken. Attempting to teleport an empty space (not to an empty space, but attempting to target a creatureless space with the first targeting) yields an error. Attempting to teleport yourself only lets you target adjacent spaces, returning an error otherwise, but then teleports you randomly. The active with Eldritch Combat deactivated works correctly.

Another one I could have sworn I had successfully tested. Fixed.

- Wildstorm damage not scaling feels weird. It makes sense from a design perspective, since scaling all of number of blasts, radius of blasts and damage of blasts would cause the talent to scale extremely well with levels, but it feels weird from a player perspective.
EDIT: Nevermind the damage of Wildstorm not scaling. I misunderstood its purpose and it is amazing on Mana Knight. Each explosion shutting down talents/purging sustains/purging effects/manaburning might actually be too strong.

I'll keep it in mind.

- Archamge Knights beam arching sometimes hits less targets than intended.

I think that has to do with how it bounces. A solution doesn't come immediately to mind but if I can figure one out I'll implement it.

- Mummy Wrappings are unaffected by Flexible Armor Training.

Well will you look at that, they count as their own armor subtype. Added them to cloth.

- Yeek Storm Knights spawn without armor equipped, since they can't wear the starting leather armor. Unsure if this is exclusive to Mage Knight or to Yeek in general.
UPDATE: Not just exclusive to yeek. Doomelf Mind Knight is a special kind of torture.

Oh yeah I had turned the autoreq to false for starting gear for some reason. Changed it back.

During my testing of the staff-casting Mana Knight, I've discovered something that I think merits its own post.

Wildsurge is broken due to Eldritch Combat.
It works exactly as intended - whenever you use a spell, your power multiplier increases, if it's already at 200%, you get a Wildstorm trigger instead.
The problem is, you have a 0 cooldown, instant cast spell - Eldritch Combat.
This means that, as soon as you hit level 22, you can kill any enemy within range 10 of you without them taking a single turn by just mashing the button Eldritch Combat is bound to.
It will take a few button presses before you notice any effect, since the power multiplier needs to increase - it also does not increase visually until a turn passes.

UPDATE: You can do the same thing with Wildcast, making the exploit possible with only this talent tree.

Hah, that was brilliant. Added a check to preclude no_energy. Also nerfed Wildsurge a bit in general; it scales rather too fast when maxed out and able to spam talents with Wizardry, and being able to go all the way to 100% means Wildcast would trigger practically every time.