Chronosplit wrote:Using this for a while, though I like Dark Priest a lot I have two main complaints.
1. Righteous Instrument's Mana buff is quite high to the point of almost being broken in the beginning for a first talent, I've not had any worries about the resource in any game played with it.
2. This is sort of a side-effect to the neat idea behind abilities that run off of healmod or stealth power along with having Shadowblade talents. There don't seem to be enough Spellpower scaling talents that don't require an unlock to counterbalance the availability of all the good Spellpower raising talents at your disposal. Arcane, Aegis, and Aether are mostly it, unless you want to spend a second cat point on Nightfall (and without minions this option isn't the best in the world). Shadow Cunning alone should necessitate access to a more viable Spellpower-centered build, because you're most likely going to be raising the relevant stat for it a lot.
Glad you enjoy it, and I appreciate the feedback.
1. You're right, the mana granted by Righteous Instrument is excessive. My intention was to allow the Dark Priest to have a large mana pool, without needing to invest in Willpower. They have several sustains that are available to them, and the cost of some (Premonition, in particular) would necessitate spending points in Willpower if you wanted to be able to use it as soon as it is unlocked. As the Dark Priest is a caster/melee hybrid, Strength, Dex, and even Con are all much more useful to the player than Willpower, so I wanted them to be able to spend points a little more freely.
That being said, I do believe I went a bit overboard, especially in combination with the regeneration that they have available to them.
Interesting side effect of this is that Disruption Shield, which is normally extremely powerful, is practically useless to the Dark Priest, because their mana almost never drops low enough to use it.
As it is now, the bonus Mana scales based on the Dark Priest's Cunning stat. Currently it uses a talent scale, which are front weighted, so one solution may be to make it scale directly to Cunning, at the same rate as the normal mana increase scales to Willpower. Another possible solution, aside from a straight-up nerf, would be to add a materiel level coefficient based on your equipped staff. This would curb the early game impact while still allowing the player to build to quite a large mana pool later in the game.
2. You're right on this one, too. Compared to other Spellpower classes, the Dark Priest does not have a lot of options on how to use that power. I particularly feel that a the class should have a darkness based damage dealing tree of its own, rather than Nightfall. I was stalling on a way to make a unique tree, rather than just copying old standards and changing the damage type, and couldn't come up with anything that I was satisfied with. Nightfall was a huge compromise, and it probably never should have been locked.
I haven't really been active lately, as you may have noticed from the delayed reply. I have some plans for a rework on Dark Priest, but I don't know when/if I will get a chance to work on it. I want to remove Stealth and give them their own tree which works toward the same goal, but uses Invisibility instead. As planned it would play off of the lit/unlit quality of terrain, with the Dark Priest being able to (both passively and actively) un-light tiles to generate 'Shadow' charges. They would then gain certain benefits, such as increased crit chance/modifier and an Invisibility sustain, which would increase in power as you increase your Shadow charges. The Dark Adept tree would be reworked to be based on Shadow charges rather than Stealth Power, and would apply benefits when the Dark Priest is Invisible and standing on an unlit tile. Talents which currently require a Health sacrifice (Repent and Ritual Sacrifice) would be reworked to consume Shadow charges instead. I hadn't planned it, but a tree that consumes Shadow charges to cast powerful darkness damage spells would fit in quite well and create a balance between storing Shadow charges for defense and expending them for damage.
This is all very tentative, however, and as I said, I'm not sure when I will be able to work on it.
Tweaking Righteous Instrument and at least unlocking Nightfall would be a pretty quick update, though.
Let me know your thoughts on Righteous Instrument and I'll see if I can hammer out a quick patch this weekend.
