Thanks for the in-depth feedback, it's pretty tough to come by.Einander wrote:Some thoughts after playing with the class a bunch:
- The class has a really weak start, and a lot of that is Insight. The talents are very powerful, but they have high costs relative to your starting meter. Block really, really helps, but it can only do so much (especially against anything that doesn't do physical damage). If there was an early way to keep more meter with some downside (replace Antler Toss with a talent that halves meter loss, but caps Concentrate charges at 1 stack?), then relatively difficult starts like Yeek or Undead would be a lot more viable (and you'd get ganked by particularly powerful Uniques less often).
- That said, once you do get going and get some Will, Concentrate is really, really cool. The fact that Blindsight can see through walls (unlike Heightened Senses) combined with your high mobility means that it's easy to start fights on your terms, letting you stack Concentrate a few times for things like Block or Deflection (or Demon Fang, if you're boring). All three of the level 8 Class sustains are amazing, too.
- Accelerating Gale should not be an active ability. The speed boost isn't all that high, and while it can stack up greatly over a longer fight, the diminishing returns on each turn and the limited application of the boost (if the enemy isn't melee or an archer, you need to spend another turn to use Whirlwind Deflection after using Accelerating Gale) mean that it's hard to justify spending the Class Points or the Focus, even if it's a zero-turn ability.
- Umbral Arts working off of Negative Energy is a little strange; between aggressive Zigurites, Silence, Mana Clash, and the loss of Anti-Magic and Fungus, taking it has a much higher opportunity cost than the other locked categories. (Anti-Magic does have its own opportunity cost--no shield runes, loss of Alchemist's Gloves!--but it's lesser.) All of the abilities are very powerful, but Lifethread Blade kind of contradicts itself--it's a healing ability that you need to use regularly to keep your Negative energy at a good level, but it has a relatively high cooldown. That's a problem when all of the abilities are relatively high-cost in Negative Energy... Especially since, unlike Insight, you can't charge it up just before jumping into a big fight. You can get a sort-of-similar effect with Hyperawareness (Concentrate before the fight to get to three stacks, hit something with Lifethread to max Negative, go nuts), but this means entering big fights with less Insight and that's questionable. As a result, the tree is just generally not worth it compared to the others.
- Infernal Arts also seems a bit weaker than the other two trees. Boreal Arts gives you four different AOEs (around you, in a line, everything adjacent to a line, enemies all around you) and increases your speed, damage and mobility. Celestial Arts gives you a zero-turn attack that decreases Stun resistance, two AOE daze attacks, and one AOE stun attack, plus passive damage reduction and even more countering. Infernal Arts does give you +move speed, does have a similar nuke to the Plague tree's (burn a group with Backdraft, use Shimmering Blade for big AOE), can remove enemy sustains, and it does reduce enemy damage, but it doesn't increase your options as much as the other trees do. Maybe if it got a shield that's powered off of enemy burns or something? That fits in with the enemy-strength-reduction theme, and it's something the class doesn't really have otherwise.
(That said, most of my testing was with Umbral Arts, so that paragraph is mostly theorycrafting.)
- Mindstar Mastery should not be locked, and it should be at 1.30 power. The problem with Mindstars is, you don't start with them, and by the time you acquire two good ones, you're probably already at level 8 and Draw Stance doesn't play nice with dual-wielding. As is, it's really, really hard to justify using Mindstars over Draw Stance, especially since you need Strength and Dexterity for four of your trees (they're all really good trees) and you have no allies for Leaves Tide or Nature's Equilibrium. There's no reason to cut off a weird niche build like that.
All in all, I really like this class! It's neat and different, and I enjoy the Batman-style play it encourages. (Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet!) I look forward to any continued development you give it.
-I feel like Stoics actually have a slightly easier start than a lot of other melee classes, thanks to Demon Fang letting them sidestep how tilted melee mechanics are against the player early on (although I've gotten through pure-Dex arena runs without it.)
-Agreed that Accelerating Gale could use improvement. In the future it might grant a speed increase per turn it's active, or become a sustain.
-Umbral Arts is designed to be slightly better than the other advanced trees in exchange for its downsides. I didn't feel like the Negative aspect hamstringed me too much unless I was using Swallowtail/Hundred Slaughter/Cascading talents to turn the stance's Darkness bursts into a damage hose (fully intentional), but most of my testing was in Arena mode which may have skewed results somewhat. There are a few ways I could make Negative easier to come by if it's really too harsh as it is.
-Infernal Arts is the only tree whose defensive bonuses persist while in another stance, which combined with Consuming Blaze's low cooldown make it amenable to rapid stance-switching. That (and having an effect stripper that isn't limited by type, ignores saves and can potentially ignore evasion is really, really powerful) means at worst it's suitable as a level 36/bile unlock.
-I feel like you're underestimating how good Leaves Tide and Nature's Equilibrium are if you're saying Draw Stance completely trumps them. Even with that, they aren't entirely exclusive - Draw Stance is instant-use with a short cooldown so you can deactivate it, fire the mindstar talents, then have it back up a few turns later. Mindstars suck as melee weapons until around the time you have enough money to unlock the tree for cash in Campaign mode, so starting with it locked doesn't feel like too much of a limitation.
