[1.6.7] Animist v1.0.0 - Casual Stance Tuesday

[RootOfAllThings]

https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/animist

Adds Animists, the only class in the Spiritualist metaclass, as a birth option. Animists are a hot mess of a class that attempts to circumvent approximately 25% of the ToME gameplay loop, which is finding better weapons to bash your foes with. Animists bind the elemental spirits of fire, water, earth, and wind to their service, in the form of weapons that grow as you grind up the loot you find and feed it to them. However, the spirits demand Ether, a limited resource that is only refreshed by resting or summoning a different elemental, so Animists must cleverly manage their Ether usage, cooldowns, and their currently sustained stance.

This adds the following Animist talent trees:
Spirits/Gnome: Invoke Gnome the Mace and Shield to protect yourself.
Spirits/Sylph: Invoke Sylph the Greatsword to streak across the battlefield.
Spirits/Undine: Invoke Undine the Bow and Arrow to pin your foes to the ground and crush them with conjured hailstones.
Spirits/Salamander: Invoke Salamander the Staff to burn all within reach to ash.
Spirits/Lux and Umbra: Invoke the Lux and Umbra the Daggers, to blind prying eyes and escape their sight.
Spirits/Advanced Animism: Your control of the elements grows ever stronger, unleashing new powers across all five spirits.
Spirits/Pure Ether: Passive talents that strengthen you whenever you invoke an elemental.
Spirits/Animist's Arts: Forge your elemental spirits into ever more deadly weapons.

Many thanks to the folks from the Discord and elsewhere who are being my guinea pigs and reporting stack traces and broken cheese. Animist is pretty much done, so I'm going to call this version 1.0. See the changelog/bump below for what's changed in the most recent version.

Post comments, critiques, five-talent-categories memes, etc.

[Frumple]

Ack. Flametongue explosion hitting the player is kinda' harsh, yo'. Block that when you got the salamander charge thing going, maybe? Could see it cutting the self-harm by like a third per charge level if you wanted to get fancy. Any case, the blows-self-up part makes the sparks pretty awkward to use... most of the time I've been really able to fully proc (i.e. main flametongue + explosion) them at all is in melee range. At range, crap just... moves. So most of the time you're either hitting them directly and not proccing the spark, or hitting the spark and wasting like half the damage due to not hitting the target.

... alternative thought would be to let the spark linger on anything that touches it, either on top of staying on the ground or instead of, so that sort of wastage is less of an issue.

[Mr Frog]

TBH Salamander seems pretty powerful, and I think the self damage is a good incentive to not just stand in front of things and blast them at point blank while healing off all the damage.

[RootOfAllThings]

v0.0.6 Bugfixes and Changes

1. Salamander/Flametongue and Salamander/Dancing Flame are now selffire safe. This seemed to be a major complaint, and selffire is dumb anyways. Salamander/Flametongue's spark scaling has been slightly reduced, from 40-80% of main damage to 30-60% of the main damage.
2. Learning Undine/Stance of Biting Cold will teach you Shoot if you don't already know it. This is primarily an Adventurer bugfix.
3. Equipping Gnome's Stone Wall as part of Gnome/Stance of Crushing Earth no longer requires Armor Training rank 2. This is primarily an Adventurer change. This is clumsily implemented by setting allow_wear_shield when you learn the stance, so you can technically wear all shields after learning it. Because of this, Animists no longer start with Armor Training rank 2. They're intended to eventually wear massive armor because Ether is fatigue-free, but they shouldn't get a free generic point.
4. You should no longer be able to attach tinkers or demon seeds to any of the spirit weapons. This is primarily an Adventurer bugfix, but applies to all Tinker Animists.
5. Summons should play nicer with spirit weapons. This includes Arrow Threading for Adventurers. Note that all Animist talents are currently flagged for no NPC use, so some clones will still stand around gormlessly.
6. Some nerfs to Animist's Arts/Egosmithing, regarding the ability to nearly guarantee double greater-ego weapons with sufficient investment.
7. Bugfix for all stances, regarding their ability to properly account for cooldown reduction (Windtouched Speed and others) when put "on half their normal cooldown."
8. Sylph/Wind Step's Winded debuff is now properly in the Other category, to prevent cheese by removing it with infusions.
9. Major changes to Sylph/Sylph's Cutter. Bonus extra hits are no longer granted for talents that attack more than once in a game tick (e.g. Earthbeat, Dissolve, Dual Strike, etc.). A creature can only be hit by Sylph's Cutter a number of times equal to Sylph's Cutter's stacks. This is only a change for single target talents; Wind Step, Cyclone, and Cloudsplitter will still apply the full suite of bonus attacks to each enemy hit.
10. Sylph's Cutter now works with archery attacks! Because of the layering of projectiles and their usual speed, this is probably nigh impossible to see, but it does work. The usual arrow caveats still apply, things can dodge all your arrows at once. Because of damage conversion shenanigans, these shots will typically be half cold, half lightning. If you have three stacks of Undine's Chill, the duplicate attacks will also be beam attacks.
11. Major changes to Undine's Chill. Was moved out of the usual Ranged/Melee Additional Damage machinery and onto Sylph's Cutter's machinery. This means no multiplying of benefits for attacks that hit multiple times. As with Sylph's Cutter, this only changes the interaction with single targets.
12. Undine's Chill beam attacks are now 100% Cold damage.

RIP Destala's Scale + Sylph's Cutter + Undine's Chill, v0.0.1 - v0.0.6.


v0.0.6 Known Bugs

1. Most archery talents (like Shoot) display an incorrect targeting UI when you have three stacks of Undine's Chill. Targeting code is shenanigans, archery code is a mess, let's see if I care enough to figure it out.

v0.0.7 Watchlist and Probable Balance Chances

1. The scaling of the entire Pure Ether category is due for a tweaking. In general, slightly stronger early and much weaker late. Ether Flux in endgame testing builds is regularly giving ~250% global speed, on top of ~4k healing from Ether Knit and ~4k blasts from Ether Overflow. Pure Ether is supposed to reward you for spreading your talents out and changing stances often, but not quite to this degree.
2. Ether economy. Max ether (and Ether Reservoir) will probably decrease relative to Ether costs, Ether Knit's Ether recovery will probably increase, especially early. If sitting in one stance all the time and just using that stance's talents + the charge talents is too viable, I think the class is sort of failing its central tenet. And if it isn't doing this now, then its only going to get worse when Inherited Combat and Advanced Animism add more buttons to push that are stance-agnostic. Choking the Ether economy and forcing players to rely on Ether Knit is my first hunch, but let me know what people feel.
3. Synergetic cheese and burden of knowledge. I like the synergies I tried to bake in, like Cutter+Chill, especially cross-stance ones. At the same time, there can be unintuitive mechanics that make an already complicated class too complicated (like Salamander having high base power at tier 1, making it a decent melee weapon, especially when your Magic is high relative to your Strength). Let me know how people think about the complexity of this thing. Sometimes the broken stuff has to die (RIP Cutter+Chill).

[RootOfAllThings]

If you weren't in the addons channel to hear me continually griping about development, I bet you thought this class was dead in all its terrible, unbalanced, not-delivering-on-class-fantasy glory. You were only partially wrong! Welcome to the first major update, because I changed like 50% of the class.

Animist v0.1.0 Animist, Advanced! Changelog

1. Various number tweaks and scaling tweaks.
2. Lots of particle effect work, but still more to come.
3. All the charge talents have been heavily reworked, to stop the fairly unfun "prebuff dance" that they previously encouraged. They're still charge talents, but now are regular-speed Actives that you should be considering carefully how quickly you deplete their charges. All of them are now locked to their respective stances.
4. Gnome's Redoubt is now an enhanced version of Block, corresponding to Block being removed from Gnome's Stone Wall. The counterstrikes from this block are especially deadly, and applying and detonating them will build stacks of Gnome's Blessing, making it easier and easier to apply multiple instances.
5. Jade Thorns has been remade into a passive, although it still adds retaliation and scales your overall retaliation damage. Your counterstrikes also apply Geomancer's Curse, reducing enemies resistance to Fire and Cold damage. Hit em with a counterstrike and then switch to a ranged stance to finish them off!
6. Sylph's Cutter retains the offensive nature from before, but now is a "three-step" active talent. Each use allows you to step forward one tile before striking an enemy, but consecutive uses grow the AOE and damage. Moving before striking grants you stacks of Sylph's Blessing, boosting your critical chance and movement speed. Weave movement or Wind Steps between strikes to maximize the buff.
7. Cloudsplitter has been cut, its movement speed buff rolled into Cyclone, and replaced with Ionization. Your critical hits with Sylph curse your foes with Aeromancer's Curse, reducing their resistance to Fire and Cold damage. Critical hits against already cursed foes will restore part of a turn's worth of energy.
8. Undine's Chill has been reworked into an active talent that refills your quiver and fires a barrage of shots at nearby enemies. These can wet, pin, and freeze enemies. Apply these effects grants you Undine's Blessing, which replaces random arrow attacks with piercing beams that apply the same effects.
9. Jokalhaups has been cut and replaced with White Death, which gives you a damage bonus to hitting enemies from far away. Your status effects from Undine also apply Cryomancer's Curse, reducing their resistance to Acid and Lightning. Pin down your foes from afar, then rush in with Sylph, or pepper them with shots and await them in Gnome!
10. Flametongue has been promoted to Salamander's Lash. The spark mechanic has been overhauled, and sparks are now carried by enemies instead of sitting on the ground. Detonating sparks grants you Salamander's Blessing, purging negative effects from you over time.
11. Since everything got shifted down by the removal of Salamander's Warmth, they have a new capstone: Consume Warmth. This gives you a stacking health regeneration buff for each enemy and each spark nearby, and curses those enemies with Pyromancer's Curse, reducing their resistance to Acid and Lightning damage. Detecting a trend?

New Content

1. Two new trees are implemented! Both are advanced trees that start locked.
2. Spirits/Lux and Umbra unlocks a fifth stance, using the twin spirits of light and dark, Lux and Umbra. These take the form of twin daggers, and fill out some utility and damage talents that you may find lacking in the other stances. While in the Stance of Shifting Moons, your talents alternate between Light and Darkness damage. Alternating properly grants you Twins' Blessing, increasing your defense and evasion.
3. Twins' Trick gives you a sharp burst of light or darkness damage, and grants you temporary invisibility for repositioning or escaping from a fight.
4. Lunarang tosses a boomerang blade that pierces foes before returning back to you for a second strike. You can catch it to refund part of its cost and cooldown.
5. Silent Night vaults you over enemies with a flurry of strikes that can silence or disarm, depending on the current damage type.
6. Luna Dial allows you to temporarily stop time. Attacks made in stopped time are delayed until the end of the effect, before the stored damage detonates in spectacular fashion.
7. Spirits/Advanced Animism provides a set of general-use buffs to all your stances.
8. Dominus rewards you for investing in stances with free stats. Its like being a Wyrmic but with less trees.
9. Spiritual Awakening allows you to access all of your talents without switching stances, and temporarily regenerates your Ether.
10. Eidolon sacrifices your current stance to summon a powerful temporary ally who wields the weapons appropriate to your last stance. This mighty spirit consumes all your Ether, and uses it to fuel its continued existence
11. Grand Animism gives you the resistance penetration and increased damage that one might expect of a mono-element class, but requires you to switch stances often to maximize its effect.

Known Issues/Upcoming Changes

1. Numbers are probably still awful. Expect changes.
2. Jade Thorns gives you retaliation and retaliation amplification even when outside of the Stance of Crushing Earth. This is unintended.
3. Talent icon colors are coming. Expect cool things for Lux and Umbra (and previewed in Sylph's Cutter).
4. Paperdoll sprites for some living weapons are underway. There's like eight gorillion of them that need to be made, for each one.
5. I have plans for a few fixedarts that should brighten up the day of any Animist who finds them, or anybody else who's aligned with the correct element.

[RootOfAllThings]

Bumping my own thread with more changes. Many thanks to Erenion from the discord for finding these bugs.

Changelog

1. Stance changes are no longer instant, but no longer put other stances on cooldown, so you can swap more frequently.
2. Jade Thorns now properly only applies in Stance of Crushing Earth (or Spiritual Awakening).
3. Jade Thorns' retaliation amp no longer causes strange errors when damage is dealt by things that aren't actors.
4. Sylph's Cutter buffed, now stuns on the last hit.
5. Wind Step no longer throws an error if used while disarmed.
6. Cyclone is now properly friendly fire safe.
7. White Death's damage amplification no longer causes strange errors when damage is dealt by things that aren't actors.
8. Salamander generally nerfed. It was scaling too hard with talent level and had too high damage in general.
9. Salamander's Lash charge cost increased from 2/10 to 3/12. Now 7 range, from 8. Spark crit behavior slightly changed, now no longer has crit mod breakpoints.
10. Sear has more of its damage weighted towards the burn now.
11. Dancing Flame now spreads more sparks with increasing talent level, and this number can crit. Now seeks with 7 range, from 8.
12. Scaling on Consume Warmth adjusted. Additional stacks after the first grant reduced regen. Probably still too large.
13. Twins Blessing no longer grants defense, so as to not be too mean to melee enemies.
14. Silent Night debuff duration reduced. No longer throws an error if used while disarmed.
15. Luna Dial no longer builds stacks of Twins Trick on melee hit. Instead gives stacks at the end of the duration. Now properly cancels when leaving the area of effect. Ionize no longer breaks Luna Dial.
16. Luna Dial and Time Stop no longer interact strangely. You can't use one while under the effects of the other.
17. Eidolon now properly equips weapons, like properly having a quiver when summoning with Undine.
18. Pure Ether has been shuffled around, moving Ether Flux to the final tier and replacing Ether Overflow with Ether Barrier, a rough clone of Deflection. This should hopefully give another defensive button to push rather than MOAR DAMAGE of Ether Overflow.
19. Elemental Arsenal no longer throws an error if you somehow don't have any stances learned (e.g. on Adventurers).
20. Salamander Tier 5 no longer breaks the game for referencing a nonexistent talent.
21. Charge talents should properly work with Drem Frenzy.
22. Various other typos, bugfixes, and adjustments.

Known Issues

1. Numbers are still awful, probably.
2. Luna Dial is still broken by Ancestral Life. Time Stop is broken in the same way.
3. This is what I did instead of coloring talent icons all day.

----------------------------------------------

Preventing another bump with an edit. Now with talent icons!

Changelog

1. Talent icons are now in color! Everything is so pretty!
2. New terribly edited sprites for the living weapons.
3. New terribly edited paperdoll sprites for the living weapons. Just about everything up to glass golems should display them properly.
4. Shuffled some of the tier 5 perks for the living weapons. Gnome is probably buffed, and Salamander now works properly. Minor nerf to Undine (from ICE_SLOW to COLD).
5. Bugfixes for Luna Dial and Drem Frenzy. I copied the hook wrong last time.
6. Undine's Shards don't properly work with Sharpened Spirit. Will fix this soon.

[RootOfAllThings]

Gonna call this one v1.0.0 so people stop thinking this is beta trash and actually play it and give me feedback. Until then, here's a changelog for the most recent update. Tried to focus on smoothing some of the gameplay sorespots while still preserving the stance switching patterns. Budding Animists should feel like they have more buttons available to them at any point in time, and an easier time switching stances, but a tightened Ether economy will mean they have to be very careful about it.

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[General] 
	Base stance cooldown reduced from 30 to 20.

	All stance talents list what special stats the weapons gain as you level them up, so you can more appropriately choose which stances to prioritize.

	Blessing (Salamander, Sylph, Undine, Gnome, Twins) no longer scale with arbitrary stats, instead solely with investment in their trees. This isn't effected by the off-stance penalty, and you're able to generate stacks of blessings without being in the proper stance.

	All Animists now have built-in the effect of Spiritual Awakening. Capstone talents (both active and passive) still require you to be in stance to gain their effects or use them, and using off-stance active talents suffer from reduced effective talent level.

	Many talents now check explicitly in their pre-use for disarm. In general, if it has a weapon damage component, you can't use it while disarmed. Wind Step is a notable exception, in that you'll move but not attack if you're disarmed.

[Spiritual Awakening]
	Spiritual Awakening is now passive and reduces the effective talent level penalty for using off-stance talents. This penalty reduces the effect of raw points put into a talent, and caps at effective talent level 2 with 5 points in the talent and 0 in Spiritual Awakening, vs. effective talent level 4 with 5 points in the talent and 5 in Spiritual Awakening. When not in the correct stance, tooltips will display the penalized level at the end of their text, and their numbers will reflect that penalized level.

[Elemental Arsenal] 
	You can now feed current-tier items to your spirits, but they only provide limited numbers of points. This should make picking up T1 weapons feel less useless and confusing for new Animists.

[Egosmithing]
	Egosmithing no longer triggers on enemies that wouldn't give XP (including summoned enemies). Description clarified that this isn't strictly vision, but radius 10 line-of-sight. Hidden/invisible enemies will still trigger egosmithing (as they always have).

[Gnome]
	Adjustments to Ground Disruption's scaling so that it doesn't double-dip with diminishing returns.

	Adjustments to Gnome's equipment stats so that it always has melee retaliation. It previously gained it at tier 3, but that comes far later than most people get Earthbeat.

[Salamander]
	Nerfs to early-game Salamander's Lash, Sear, and Dancing Flame. In general, you'll need more spellpower to match the previous values, so this should be relatively late-game-weighted.

[Sylph]
	Buffs to Sylph's Cutter so that they now also have a low-CD stunning tool. Sylph's Cutter now always attempts to stun the primary target and daze all secondary targets.

	Adjustments to Sylph's equipment stats. In particular, Sylph has new T5 effects that grant more utility rather than just straight damage. T5 now grants levitation (per Feather Wind) and causes your weapon crits to grant you Sylphic Speed, making your next movement action instant. This implementation is incredibly janky, so please don't take Never Stop Running on Animist (who takes it even normally?)

	Wind Step's AI crutch is now available to players. Targeting a non-empty space will attempt to find the first empty space behind them and dash to that, if one exists within range. Range also buffed.

[Undine]
	Undine's Chill nerfed. Base damage modifier reduced, from 100%-150% to 80%-130%. Chance to apply effects reduced from 70% to 50%. The penalty for repeated shots (unchanged) is now clarified in the description.

	Undine's Blessing scaling reduced. Ice beam disco shotgun was a little too strong, especially with how it could circumvent the multi-shot penalty of Undine's Chill.

	Grand Hailfall buffed. More damage and longer stun.

[Lux and Umbra]
	Adjusted the damage proc for T3 and above spirits. Was dealing a little too much damage at high values. As a compensation buff, now scales off of Magic instead of Cunning.

[Pure Ether]
	Pure Ether talents no longer scale with investment in the four elemental trees, but have increased base values.

	Ether Reservoir grants less max ether pool, but now can be activated to immediately refresh the cooldown of %d Animist talents, prioritizing the ones of your current stance. This has a long cooldown.

[Eidolon]
	Eidolon now locks out the entire stance's worth of talents for ~40 turns. If your Gnome is busy being independent and going off to murder-college, then it shouldn't also simultaneously be in your hands. Summoning an Eidolon should be a commitment to not having certain talents available, although its still possible to summon a powerful Eidolon of a spirit you've barely invested in.

[Grand Animism]
	Now properly has a cooldown: 30, like Archmage's elemental sustains (Wildfire, Uttercold, etc.)

Feedback is still incredibly important, so please play my class and tell me what you think is fun and what you think is unfun. I've tossed around some ideas for another class tree that has stance agnostic talents but don't want to take the time to implement and balance another tree if people think it has enough tools and enough buttons to push. Enjoy.

[Mopox]

Very interesting addon. Thank you!

Have a bug:

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[Actor:move]    3388    Lirus   move from   8   32  to  8   33
[ATTACK] attacking with (mainhand)  Lux's Lance
[ATTACK] to     brown mold  dam/apr/atk/mult :: 64.957725909938 7   45  1   vs. armor/def   1   6
[ATTACK] after melee attack bonus hooks & callbacks::   64.957725909938 7   45  1   vs. armor/def   1   6
checkHit    45  vs  6   => chance to hit    100
[ATTACK] HIT:: damrange 1.3 ==> dam/apr::   77  7   vs. armor/hardiness 1   0.3
[ATTACK] after armor    77
[PHYS CRIT %] axe accuracy bonus    45  6   =   9.75
[PHYS CRIT %]   27.15
[ATTACK] after crit 77
[ATTACK] after mult 77
[ATTACK]    DamageType conversion%  50  LIGHT   38.5
[ATTACK]     after DamageType conversion dam:   38.5
##Use Talent Lua Error##    T_ATTACK    Actor:  3388    Lirus
FROM    /mod/addons/cults/superload/engine/dialogs/ShowErrorStack.lua   loading previous!


ERROR:
Game version: tome-1.6.7
Addons: pointplanner-1.5.0[X!], pf_fixes-1.6.0[X], possessors-1.6.6[O], ashes-urhrok-1.6.7[O], animist-1.6.0[X], select-first-escort-1.6.7[X], neka_qol05-1.0.0[X!], orcs-1.6.7[O], items-vault-1.6.0[O], cults-1.6.7[O]

Game version (character creation): tome-1.6.7
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:329: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:302: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:164: /data-animist/timed_effects.lua:838: attempt to call method 'getName' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
    /data-animist/timed_effects.lua:838: in function 'callEffect'
    /mod/class/Actor.lua:6061: in function 'fireTalentCheck'
    /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:1122: in function 'attackTargetHitProcs'
    /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:649: in function 'attackTargetWith'
    /mod/addons/cults/superload/mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:30: in function 'attackTargetWith'
    /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:184: in function 'attackTarget'
    /data/talents/misc/misc.lua:81: in function </data/talents/misc/misc.lua:54>
    [C]: in function 'xpcall'
    /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:162: in function </engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:151>
  At [C]:-1 
  At [C]:-1 error
  At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:329 useTalent
  At /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:37 attack
  At /engine/interface/ActorLife.lua:42 check
  At [string "return function(self, x, y, what, ...) local ..."]:1 checkAllEntities
  At /engine/Actor.lua:243 move
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:1395 move
  At /mod/class/Player.lua:314 moveDir
  At /mod/class/Game.lua:2092 
  At /engine/KeyBind.lua:231

[Seventeer]

Changing weapon is a good idea,and I think Staff＞Shield＞Great sword＞Bow and arrow.
A bug report.When I stand inside the Decaying Grounds,I use Salamander's Lash in range. Then the game program crashes without showing the bug message.
Is there something wrong because of the skill cooldowns increase?

[RootOfAllThings]

Very interesting addon. Thank you!

From the log, this is a bug with Twins' Trick, although I'm not sure why it's complaining in that particular spot. For the code-minded, the error is about

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game.logSeen(target, "%s resists!", target:getName():capitalize())

You've managed to find an actor that doesn't have a getName function. Which... shouldn't exist? Will tinker with this.

Changing weapon is a good idea,and I think Staff＞Shield＞Great sword＞Bow and arrow.
A bug report.When I stand inside the Decaying Grounds,I use Salamander's Lash in range. Then the game program crashes without showing the bug message.
Is there something wrong because of the skill cooldowns increase?

Interesting that you would put Undine so low. From testing up until this point, Salamander and Undine have both been very powerful, so I've been gradually nerfing them and buffing the others. But I think some disagreement about which is the best is a good sign.

And yes, this is a bug due to how Decaying Grounds causes its cooldown increasing effect colliding with how charge talents interpret cooldowns slightly differently than normal talents. I'll have to do some tinkering to make them play nicely together. Thanks for the report.
EDIT: In big brain addon developer news, when I wrote the charge talent framework like a year and a half ago, I specifically included compatibility with Cults effects, including Decaying Ground. Except I had a typo in my compatibility. Easy fix, at least.

[Mopox]

From the log, this is a bug with Twins' Trick, although I'm not sure why it's complaining in that particular spot. For the code-minded, the error is about

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game.logSeen(target, "%s resists!", target:getName():capitalize())

You've managed to find an actor that doesn't have a getName function. Which... shouldn't exist? Will tinker with this.

Yes. This is Twins' Trick. When actor is allready dead?

[visage]

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game.logSeen(target, "%s resists!", target:getName():capitalize())

You've managed to find an actor that doesn't have a getName function. Which... shouldn't exist? Will tinker with this.

I encountered this issue today with a class addon I've been working on. I think the culprit was a turret.

Resolving the issue seems to be as simple as checking for a getName method before calling it.

[Einander]

I think this class has some central design problems, and I'm not sure what can be done about it without substantially reworking the concept. I've played a character building Very Non-Optimally to get a grasp of how it works, and the results seem bad.

(I'm about to get very critical, so I feel like I should say that the concept is very cool and I like the ideas behind Animist a lot! It's one of the most interesting classes I've seen. It's just also kind of a mess.)

The first thing that stands out to me is that the class is pretty weak in terms of defensive options, in a game where defensive options are your lifeline. I've never seen a game as willing as TOME to just drop you down to 20% HP as an enemy's first move.

So what do you have? You have the passive Ether Barrier, you have Gnome's Redoubt, you have Salamander's Blessing, you have Winter Mist, and you have the stance-switch heal. Wind Step and Sear are sort of in the same category, but four squares generally isn't going to help you if you need to bug out, especially since Wind Step can't go through one or two-square walls. Of these, Salamander's Blessing is more passive than active (beyond highly encouraging you to constantly spam Salamander abilities, since you have no other included status healing), and so is Ether Barrier (you can rest between fights to heal it up, but there's no way to suddenly boost it mid-fight beyond stance-switching). There's Winter Mist, but the central problem is that most enemies don't remain at range long, so it's more something you can use sometimes than something to centrally rely on. (There's a reason most defensive effects like that are passively on, like the Chant.) Luna Dial COULD have been a defensive option, except there's a restriction specifically so that it isn't. So there's Redoubt and stance-switching.

(Also notable: the Gnome shield doesn't have Block itself and I'd suspect Eternal Guard doesn't work with Redoubt, so that's one additional defensive option out. You're also in a magical class, so no Antimagic, Feedback, or Call of the Wild.)

But the stance-switch heal is pretty good, right? Except that relying on it for survival ends up at odds with the class concept. Switching is supposedly to be central and important, but the fact it's also serving as your central safety net means that you want to conserve its usage and only switch if you really have to. Except that Ether doesn't replenish on its own, you have to switch stances for that. So it feels like the calculus is "if I can blitz it, I blitz it; if I can't, then I should probably sit in Gnome and rely on counterstrikes, because otherwise I have no healing." Except that this means you have no status healing, because you're not earning stacks of Salamander's Blessing, and statuses are generally where things go from bad to worse. I think Animists are just generally doomed if they run into Nightmare Horrors without a big stack of Salamander's Blessing already up. A good teleport rune feels compulsory.

And for a class seemingly based on finding synergies, lot of the class just feels weirdly lacking with regards to parts that feel like they SHOULD interlock.
- If you're in Gnome, Gnome has no big damage skill to take advantage of Counterstrike.
- Sylph's Cutter and Cyclone both want the enemy at range 2, but Sylph has no knockback and no automatic movement (like hitting and then retreating)
-- Wind Step could fill the above niche, except that its cost increases every time you use it without a cooloff period.
--- Even when you DO use Wind Step to set up for Slyph's Cutter or Cyclone, the relatively high speed variability of the class (what level is Sylph? is Cyclone up? is Ether Flux in effect?) means that you can't really be sure whether you'll be at exactly the two-range you need.
-- Sear could too, except it moves them to range 4, which Sylph can't do anything with (except using Wind Step to close back into melee, and why?)
-- You could use Luna Dial, but it requires you to start in N&U.
- Undine's Chill prefers spreading out its shots when multiple enemies are in range, which makes it bad at setting up for Grand Hailfall, which requires at least two shots to hit a target for them to be pinned for the big hit
-- Grand Hailfall's wait period means that it's most reliable when enemies are engaging you at melee, except White Death is giving you a damage bonus at range.
--- Sear is your only knockback, but it's four tiles away and White Death requires six; so too with Wind Step, only with movement instead (and if you just use it twice you're getting a cost penalty for doing so, plus you're potentially eating two ranged attacks)
- Salamander's Lash is your best single-target damage outside of Hailstorm, especially when they have sparks, which also gives you Salamander's Blessing. The only ways to set up sparks for Salamander's Lash's additional damage are... Salamander's Lash, and Dancing Flame, which consumes its own sparks.
-- Consume Warmth also consumes sparks, for an effect no stronger than just having another enemy to take warmth from.
- There's no way to restore Ether except by switching Stances, so no matter what you have a hard. Ether Reservoir decreases cooldowns of abilities... Starting with the talents of the stance you're already in, which lets you stay longer in the stance. Except that you still can't, because Ether.
- Spiritual Awakening says that it swaps your weapon when using a stance's talent if you're not in it at the time. Salamander says that at max level, you sometimes follow up spells with Salamander's Lash. All of the Animist talents are spells. If this means you no longer get the Salamander spell follow-up, then Spiritual Awakening is seemingly a nerf to both damage and utility at endgame, because you're not getting the free damage and free Salamander's Blessing stacks while using other talents in Salamander. (Undine talents are a bit of an exception, in that Hailfall procs can probably make up for it, but...)
- Having Ether costs on Sustains makes me very reluctant to take them when Ether Knit's effect is based off a percent of max Ether. It's decreasing your fuel tank AND your fuel recovery.

I also just don't like Sharpened Spirit, since it feels like your choices are between "spend a bunch of Generic points to remedy the Giant Mess that is your weapon stat distribution" or "further undermine your durability by having no points to spare on extra HP or saves." Either way, its existence feels more like a penalty than a boon. I also don't like Egosmithing, mostly because the "only adds Egos near enemies" facet of it is just kind of annoying. Something like "you'll only get a new Ego near a new enemy" would be much less bothersome.

I don't have very concrete recommendations beyond the above, because this doesn't feel like this is a "make small tweaks" situation. Random seat-of-my-pants proposals, take with a grain of salt:
- Ground Disruption should probably be replaced with something defensive. (Bring up a wall to block movement+visibility?)
- Sylph should probably have more range on Cutter and Cyclone.
- Winter Mist should probably be replaced with some other form of CC to better suit Grand Hailfall and White Death, and so that Undine's Chill isn't the only way to get Blessing stacks.
- Dancing Flame should probably be replaced with some form of spark set-up, maybe combined with some shield or healing or status healing.
- I'd probably just unlock Nox and Umbra right away. (Gives you more options, rather than mandating you use every single starting spirit.)
- I'd get rid of Grand Animism and Spiritual Armor, or at least the Ether sustain cost.
- Maybe put some activation ability on Ether Barrier so you can bring it back up quickly if needed.
- Maybe reverse Sharpened Spirit? Make it a Sustain that decreases the Magic scaling on your weapons in exchange for other benefits. (Though that'd be messy to program. If you have a bunch of Dex, maybe you want to turn it off on Undine and N&U, but not the others; if you can't do that, you probably wouldn't want it.)

I hope the giant criticism post isn't too discouraging, and I hope to see a V2 at some point the future.

[RootOfAllThings]

I think this class has some central design problems, and I'm not sure what can be done about it without substantially reworking the concept. I've played a character building Very Non-Optimally to get a grasp of how it works, and the results seem bad.

(I'm about to get very critical, so I feel like I should say that the concept is very cool and I like the ideas behind Animist a lot! It's one of the most interesting classes I've seen. It's just also kind of a mess.)

I had a big long point by point discussion/response to a lot of this, and then I forgot to save it and timed out of the forum login, losing it.

Anyways, I think a lot of your criticism is very valid, and I'm not at all discouraged by it. I really do appreciate the time you took to playtest and write all that out, and expect a lot of it to make that feedback to make it into later versions. My vision for the class doesn't always come through in the play of someone who isn't in my head, so apologies if some of my rebuttals seem like I'm dismissing your critique. Some brief points from what I remember of my response post:

• Animist's original design was "All the tools in the toolbox, but never all at the same time." The goal was for all the stances to bring something special to the table that isn't just your choice of sprite and damage type, so they have things like different utility skills and different ranges (a recurring sore point in your post was that ranges didn't quite line up the way one might expect). A lot of that differentiation is muddied now because there's almost no requirement to be in any particular stance, just max Spiritual Awakening. The big concern in everything about Animist has always been "What's the point in a class all about switching weapons if you never have to switch weapons?" hence all the ways to force the player into switching stances, and some of the design problems are holdovers from when the stance switching was even more strictly regimented.
• As a follow up to that, the central idea of the class is difficult to realize. The stances have to have all the tools to function in their role and theme, but also can't really step on each others toes. For example, Salamander could get a shield because ToME mages love damage shields, but does that encroach on Gnome's role as "the defensive stance"? I had tossed around some ideas about another generalist tree that gives more stance-agnostic options, but couldn't settle on four talents that all four core stances might want. For example, Gnome and Sylph really want a Rush clone, but Salamander and Undine don't.
• Defensive option design is super tricky in ToME. You hit the nail on the head about its Path of Exile-tier burstiness, which necessitates huge amounts of effective HP. But in comparison to other classes, I don't think Animist is particularly low on defensive options. They're able to freely wear massive armor because Ether doesn't increase with Fatigue, and they have several heals built into their kit, plus Ether Barrier as free effective HP. They can almost always block because Gnome's Redoubt doesn't care as much about talent level. I compare here to things like Berserker or Cursed, which have similar life ratings and similar access to defensive talents (Juggernaut, Unstoppable, Gloom, Rampage), and far less access to ranged attacks than Animist. Most classes have to rely on Wilds to deal with status effects, and most classes have to rely on Movement or Teleportation infusions to get out of sticky situations.

Some clarifications about how the design was intended, which is ultimately less important than how someone will figure out how to play it:
• Spiritual Awakening is always active, even if you don't have it ranked. It just reduces the talent level penalty for being in the wrong stance.
• Gnome used to have Block, when Redoubt was designed differently. When Redoubt became a pseudo-block, they lost it so as to not have Block and Block+. Block prodigies will interact with Redoubt like they would with Block. This should be listed somewhere, but the tooltips are already crazy long.
• Sharpened Spirit operates on a per-stat basis, so it should only ever serve as a net increase in your weapon damage (unless your stats radically change between equipping weapons). Animist was intended to be built multiple ways: Strength focused with Gnome and Sylph, Dexterity focused with Undine and Lux, Magic focused with Salamander and Lux. But since everything's rider effects tend to scale with Spellpower, Magic is the implied core stat, and Sharpened Spirit is meant to ease the gap of being a weapon class that may max key weapon stats second or third.
• Animist in general was meant as a class that would be comfortable bumping/shooting. They have typically above-curve weapons, especially once Egosmithing kicks in. Undine's intended pattern, for example, is to use Chill, shoot three or four times, and then Chill again, with Hailfalls whenever you pin a major target.
• On that note, the beams cast from Undine's Blessing can themselves generate stacks of Undine's Blessing. This is intended. Tuning them has been tricky because of a certain playtester's attraction to "EX Cirno Laser Disco". Grand Hailfall will also generate stacks when it stuns enemies.
• Egosmithing is what one addon developer has called a "honey tree talent." The "enemies in view" exists solely to prevent people from farming for a good Ego in a low-risk situation (e.g. in front of a honey tree).
• Salamander's T5 talent_on_spell is a weird bit of machinery, due to how it's considered by the game. Functionally, it means only Salamander talents will be followed up with Lash, with the edge case of Hailfall meteors landing while you hold Salamander, and not whenever Dancing Flame hits a target while you're not holding Salamander. It also checks per target hit (up to one cast per turn), so Sear and Dancing Flame can be very efficient triggers for it.
• On the flipside, you'll get Gnome's counterattack proc only when standing in Gnome stance. The T5 effects of Lux, Undine, and Sylph will all trigger when hotswapped to them, though.
• Gnome's "counterstrike payoff" is intended to be Earthbeat, which is tuned similar to Shield Slam.
• Ground Disruption is meant as a defensive talent, it takes a huge chunk out of opponent powers.

Some thoughts related to things you've brought up:
• Probably the biggest sore point is how tightly your offensive tempo (ether restoration) is tied to your defensive tempo (life restoration), and you don't always want both at the same time. It's a little bit of a shame because every mechanic I disconnect from the stance switching seems to drive another knife in the class concept. Considering ideas on how to disconnect the two.
• Ether costs need another tuning pass. This will probably include shifting Spiritual Armor and Grand Animism to full passives.
• Ether Reservoir's active needs reworking. In hindsight, the problem with it is really obvious and silly. When Spiritual Awakening was an active, it granted ether regeneration for several turns, so it'll probably pick up that effect so you can actually stay in the stance.
• Sylph could probably do with another tile of range on both Cutter and Cyclone. The "donut" of Cyclone then becomes "not adjacent" which will probably be easier to land.
• Sear should probably spark un-sparked targets.
• Dancing Flame may move to the capstone spot and become passive in some form to fit the pattern. In its place will probably be a defensive spark generator (e.g. "purge all negative status effects, take fire damage and generate sparks based on the amount.")
• Grand Hailfall will probably get an area increase to make it easier to use.
• Speeds will probably get normalized. ToME has all these speed classes that never get used and I wanted to use them, but I can see how speed unpredictability can lead to unpleasant gameplay hitches.

Thanks again for everything you've written. Real quality feedback.

[Mr Frog]

On that note, the beams cast from Undine's Blessing can themselves generate stacks of Undine's Blessing. This is intended. Tuning them has been tricky because of a certain playtester's attraction to "EX Cirno Laser Disco".

[muffled Beloved Tomboyish Daughter blasting in the distance]