Spellsword (formerly Addon reworking Arcane Blade Class)

[Dracos]

I'll admit on its face, the improvements for Sword and Board style look really like solid adds. It seemed obvious when first trying it that two-handed or dual-wield would be the way to go, and that's far less clear now, with sword and board having a lot more class perks.

[grayswandir]

Boop.

[Hirumakai]

Thanks for the new icons.

I like them a lot, and I have pushed Spellswordv125d with the only change being these new icons swapped in for the old ones.

[Thexare]

I ended a run in the Vor Armory running a water-dedicated Spellsword, primarily sword-and-board in the early game since I got a shield with really good resistances. Later grabbed a tier 5 trident that I used.

Some things I noticed:

Mana was a problem. The main problem, really. Not in a bad way, more like a fair weakness to work around than a crippling flaw for the class. I didn't have Martial Magic (I think?) because I was trying to put points into my other generics, and because its short duration didn't strike me as being particularly useful.

Damage was a problem. Spellsword Combat and Tidal Rush were by far my best sources of damage. However, that's because I was in a Water build - I had excellent control from freezes and several sources of healing.

Ranged enemies were a complete non-factor most of the time. Tidal Rush let me close in, and Freeze would lock one down if I couldn't reach. Likewise, the Ambush after Dreadfell was a hilarious nonissue thanks to the huge AoE freeze on Water Strike.

I'm not sure if your intent was that people would specialize in an element or branch out, or having both viable, but mono-element or two-element builds seem most workable just on account of skill points and the way Spellsword Combat is based on total skill levels in a tree IIRC.

Overall it was very fun, and I'll probably play around with some other builds later.

Edit: Should be noted, I have yet to actually win the game, but I came close. I got further with a Doombringer, but hey, doesn't everyone

[Hirumakai]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm assuming the character you are refering to is:
http://te4.org/characters/128166/tome/d ... 924538ebba

Mana was a problem. The main problem, really. Not in a bad way, more like a fair weakness to work around than a crippling flaw for the class. I didn't have Martial Magic (I think?) because I was trying to put points into my other generics, and because its short duration didn't strike me as being particularly useful.

Martial Magic generally doesn't solve long term mana problems, so probably wouldn't have helped you much. Its there as an emergency backup (say when hit by mana burn) or short term surge if you need just 1 or 2 more turns. Note that mana focus is can be more effective in a dual-wielding setup, as both the mainhand and offhand hits generate mana, although an extra two mana a turn may not have helped much.

I tend to run an all element build, and have some points in all the trees, which means I have some more stamina using options to work with. Although in that case I need to watch how many sustains I'm running.

Damage was a problem. Spellsword Combat and Tidal Rush were by far my best sources of damage. However, that's because I was in a Water build - I had excellent control from freezes and several sources of healing.

The water build sounds like it worked as designed. Its not very offensive, but provides alot of survivability.

However, the low damage output could easily have caused your mana problems to be worse, as you're taking longer in combat, and relying more on procs of Spellsword combat. I think your weapons mastery talent looks a bit low for this stage of the game. I think I tend to 5/5 in my 20s. That'd be another chunk of 20% damage on your weapon damage plus the physical power.

I tend to find the class to actually be a high damage class (although Doombringer does tend to be an even more offensive minded class). Although I tend to play a more spread out build. For example, here's a level 50 I played through:

http://te4.org/characters/894/tome/d386 ... 2fa1f390b9

I tend to make liberal use of all 4 strikes, which generally means half the time I'm doing a bonus ~50% weapon damage, plus the bonus 150-ish elemental damage, plus the spellsword proc damage for another 200-250. Although the majority of the damage does come from the weapon.

Ranged enemies were a complete non-factor most of the time. Tidal Rush let me close in, and Freeze would lock one down if I couldn't reach. Likewise, the Ambush after Dreadfell was a hilarious nonissue thanks to the huge AoE freeze on Water Strike.

I'm not sure if your intent was that people would specialize in an element or branch out, or having both viable, but mono-element or two-element builds seem most workable just on account of skill points and the way Spellsword Combat is based on total skill levels in a tree IIRC.

I was hoping to make both options viable. As noted, I tend to prefer to have alot of different options, and include talents from all the trees. However, I hoped to make to make one or two element tree choices viable as well, if people wanted to play more of a melee/ranged spell caster hybrid.

Overall it was very fun, and I'll probably play around with some other builds later.

Edit: Should be noted, I have yet to actually win the game, but I came close. I got further with a Doombringer, but hey, doesn't everyone

Glad to hear to it.

As a general update, I'm trying my hand at a custom starter zone for the Spellsword class + initial quest. We'll see how it goes.

[Thexare]

Truthfully, I kinda ran into a chicken-or-egg situation. My weapon damage was subpar, so it felt like boosting weapon mastery wouldn't have helped, but maybe it was bad because of the lacking mastery.

My focus on grabbing more Healing Light probably didn't help. Lessons learned for next time.

[Thexare]

Bad news, 1.3.0 broked it. Error on attempting to generate the starting level for my Paradox Mage; been cycling through addons to track down such errors, think it affects Verdant too but I had that disabled this time.

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:271: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:248: /mod/addons/Spellsword/superload/mod/class/Actor.lua:312: attempt to call method 'paradoxAnomalyChance' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 
	At [C]:-1 error
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:271 useTalent
	At /mod/resolvers.lua:598 check
	At /engine/Zone.lua:716 addEntity
	At /engine/Zone.lua:994 newLevel
	At /engine/Zone.lua:896 getLevel
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:928 changeLevelReal
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:807 changeLevel
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:261 at_end
	At /mod/dialogs/Birther.lua:306 fct
	At /mod/dialogs/Birther.lua:188 fct
	At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:116 fct
	At /engine/ui/Button.lua:62 fct
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 receiveMouse
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:94 delegate
	At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:602 mouseEvent
	At /engine/ui/Dialog.lua:343 fct
	At /engine/Mouse.lua:56 

[Hirumakai]

Bad news, 1.3.0 broked it. Error on attempting to generate the starting level for my Paradox Mage; been cycling through addons to track down such errors, think it affects Verdant too but I had that disabled this time.

Thanks for the info.

I'll see if I can get the addon converted over to 1.3.0 in the near future. I'll try to do so this weekend, but I haven't actually been paying all that much attention to the 1.3 update so I'm not sure how much time it will require to make it compatible.

[Hirumakai]

I've pushed a 1.3.0 compatible version of the Spellsword addon. Feel free to grab it from the addons page or steam.

If people still run into problems, please let me know, along with the error information from the log.

Thanks.

[Hirumakai]

I've updated Spellsword to 1.3.3, mostly to match the 1.3.3 Tome release.

However, I did make one balance change:

Changed the Elemental Stance passive into a hybrid passive/sustain. It still has all its passive effects, but can also be sustained to prevent your current elemental stance from changing when using a different elemental strike. You can now keep fire stance up all the time (or any other stance).

I also fixed an issue where changing/equipping items would turn off elemental stances. Bear in mind, Tome doesn't refresh sustains on equipment change, so if your stats significantly change, you'll probably want to turn sustains off and back on to update them to new values.

[Chronosplit]

I was wondering, why isn't Techniques/Dual Weapons a locked tree? The passive talents would be useful to anyone doing mainly the relevant talents. Would that just make a lot of the talents in there a little OP?

[Hirumakai]

Thanks for the interest in the addon. To answer your question, there are a couple reasons.

First, Techniques/Dual Weapons isn't included for the same reasons Techniques/Shield Defense and Techniques/Two Handed weapons are not included. Those are the core trees to the Rogue, Bulwark and Berserker classes. Very few other classes get those trees. The Arcane Blade, which the Spellsword grew out of did not have those trees, for example.

Second, the Spellsword class was designed to be more flexible in its weapon selection. While certain elemental trees favor one type of weapon setup over another, all of them will work at a reasonable level with any weapon configuration. Those trees lock you into a particular weapon set to get maximum benefit, which was something I was trying to avoid with the class.

Third, the Spellsword was designed to plenty of bonus damage in melee from spells in addition to hitting stuff. Late game, a typical hit might be an elemental strike, plus a damage proc from Spellsword combat, plus whatever weapon(s) you are swinging. It doesn't need more an offhand weapon buff or a shield expertise bonus.

I'll note the other set of weapon trees, Techniques/Dual Techniques, Techniques/Shield Offense, and Technique/Two Handed Assault are already somewhat blended into the elemental trees. For example tornado strike is a variation on flurry, sandblast is a variation on shield slam, inferno cleave is like death dance and sweep or fearless cleave.

Lastly, the class has 5 unlocked class trees and 5 locked class trees. Adding another 3 would be too much, especially when compared against existing classes.

[Chronosplit]

Ah, I understand! The class works as well-rounded as it already is, with every tree being essential in some way for any build, and putting in anything else would just have one loadout prioritize over the others. When you put it that way, adding in more locked class trees in general would mean having to find the class points to invest into them too. Thank you for your explanation, that cleared a lot up for me.

[Thexare]

There's a compatibility issue between Spellsword and Trench Strider, and since I like both I'm hoping it's fixable. I reported it in the other thread too, but here.

It's triggered by the Trench Strider ability Wash Away, which among other things passively converts some of your weapon damage into cold and dark. There were no Spellswords in the area, just the Spellblaze Crystal and some generic enemies.

Code: Select all

[LOG]   You collect a new ingredient: #LIGHT_GREEN##UID:19:0#red crystal shard (1)#WHITE#.
stack traceback:
   [C]: in function 'error'
   /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:254: in function </engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:238>
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:277: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:254: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:150: /hooks/Spellsword/load.lua:19: attempt to index local 'target' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
   /hooks/Spellsword/load.lua:19: in function </hooks/Spellsword/load.lua:17>
   [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1: in function 'triggerHook'
   /data/damage_types.lua:119: in function 'defaultProjector'
   /data/damage_types.lua:667: in function 'projector'
   /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:573: in function 'base_attackTargetWith'
   ...dons/Spellsword/superload/mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:50: in function 'attackTargetWith'
   /mod/class/interface/Combat.lua:209: in function 'attackTarget'
   /data/talents/misc/misc.lua:75: in function </data/talents/misc/misc.lua:54>
   [C]: in function 'xpcall'
   /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:147: in function </engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:140>
   At [C]:-1
   At [C]:-1 error
   At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:277 bumpInto
   At /mod/class/Actor.lua:3399 attack
   At /engine/interface/ActorLife.lua:42 check
   At [string "return function(self, x, y, what, ...) local ..."]:1 checkAllEntities
   At /engine/Actor.lua:209 move
   At /mod/class/Actor.lua:1289 move
   At /mod/class/Player.lua:300 moveDir
   At /mod/class/Game.lua:1750
   At /engine/KeyBind.lua:230 

[astralInferno]

I'm wondering if the damage Ocean Step does might lack any definition for 'target'? Can't really see what conflict there'd be, otherwise.