Witherer: v2.0.0

[Bormoth]

I think this mage is pretty week. Especially on recovery front, as interesting concept is the resource menagement is just close to nonexistant.
Decayed Harvest skill is something like vimsense in reverse, except it requir to kill, and as result costs more to trigger.

Think about this even weakest resource recovery for demonologist, gives debuff which restores on kill by times debuf stacks, which with proper weapon shield and acid claws can give 9 stacks or 31 vim, and his vim resource is not only or main resource.
Here it is just pathetic +2 per debuff which not pays for debuffs(well sometimes there are crosstiers, but they easiest to remove, Virulent desease costs 8 and returns 6 with lvl 5 harvest,poison cloud costs, 5 but returns 6 if you managge to kill with it).
Vimsense also triggers more then once per turn resulting in huge gains from dots and making well built reavers virtually immune to dots and infact healing from them. Drain gives like 40 wim every 5 turns.
My sugguestion Make restoration of 50%-75% times of normal you get per debuff(Incentive to increase willpower)

Blood feed is really bad and only recovery method, find debuff applicator, self debuff restore pathetic amounts of vim rinse and repeat. Management becomes just boring. sugguestion make it foe targetable would work better.

Harbringer looks really strange, from one point it promotes selfdebuffing and risky skills usage but class lacks such skills.

No vim pool increasers, Seriously vim is most expensive pool for sustains, and this class is needs large pool the most because return on vim is not instantenous unlike reaver or corruptor, and this class uses only vim.

This class doesn't benefit much from corruption blight. And I don't think most of skills can crit only bone and swarm I think. But it benefits a lot from bursts of casting speed, because you want shoot as much debuffs at boss fights in short time, slows don't help a lot because as far as I know debuffs use global turn counter(hence sometimes you see 2 turns in yours debuffs when it should last only 1 turn at 100% speed, usualy due to previous phase shifts by speed increases)
Sugguestion maybe add some generic tree with weak casting speed burst-increase for cost of vim for 5-10 turns depending on values(15% 10 turns 20%-25% 3-5 turns). Personaly using eden guile and have blast buying lots of time to stack debuffs on bosses with mere 20% global speed increase.

12%damage to vim is little, or at least early where you get hit like for 40-120 damage which is bearly 4-14 vim, most often then not you don't get hit, one pathetic bone spear. And healing after kill is arguable you don't get alot early, later maybe, standard combo (virulent desease, epidemic, bone spear,swarm, virulent desease, cyst burst, catalepsy, might grant 60 hp per creature which not that bad), but usually I find myself in need healing with strong rare or boss like enemies, and in those fights it gives nothing.

Curses and hexes sound good for this class, but too expensive. I used them on my reaver only because I had huge vim pool due to dark pact sustain giving like 60 or 80 vim, this class just doesn't have this much resource to spare for abilities that don't have return on vim(2 is not alot compared to 20 cost). Although curse of defnslessness an deseases help alot to overcome saves. Dunno what to do with those, maybe replace with some other interesting trees, maybe corrupted blood locked, and with sugguested tree earlier, maybe leave as is, and if there would be vim pool increases some builds might use it.

Ideas for generic or class tree.
1st skill:
0% casting speed costs no vim
vim resource increase pool. Maybe temporary vim, like plagued pool on map spawns, which consumed and reduce casting cost of next spell depending on size of pool you are standing. Pool percantage of vim(20%-80% of skill cost) is drained from pool until it dries out. Idea is to be for it like map generated vim resource pool lasting for few turns on either:
a) some event or every turn
b) Instant cast activation duration up to 10-15 turns, that makes you bleed spreading corruption. Generates 1 range pool at caster's legs and adds to capacity percentage of damage you bleed eachglobal turn(my favorite)
Blood gash:
100% casting speed
costs vim
You can not contain your vim in yourself, and it spreads to other tiles. Additionaly it sets debuf on enemies in pool which empowers your corruption talents debuffs that are already on turgets standing inside pool(both a damage and effect), and causes them to suffer dot of damage type depending on school of talent making debuff. Debuff lasts only while enemies are in pool. Additionally portion of all damage done due to this debuff goes to power this pool. The range depends on blood pool capacity, and proportion of range blood pool capacity on raw talent level(could be annoyingly large if not raw)
Contaminate spell
Costs vim
100% casting speed.
you consume your pool fully gaining additional spellpower for next action (or spell if it is preferable).
Corruption bath:
Passive:
While you stand inside pool you gain up to 20% casting speed.

All sugguestions are sugguestions and not requsts. And I know I can mistake somewhere. Also all values are subjective and subject to change for balance purposes although perspective of meeting rare or rand boss with those op skills...

P.S. Blood feed very abusive spam rune shielding, infusion regeneration to slowly restore pool,same I did with doomed using , hate restore mindstar on myself to restore hate.
P.P.S Also Found probable bug. Converted damage from blood feed not ignores bone shield and restores vim for free, maybe make your own damage type that restores by amount damage dealt ignoring resistances?

[HousePet]

This resource is hard to balance. What difficulty are you playing on?

Blood Feed was not designed to be used outside of boss fights.

Harbinger doesn't require you to self debuff and you do have options such as inscription saturations, Toxic Cure and a variety of cloud/pool effects.

I'll look into increasing the Vim Pool. Maybe as an innate class effect?

Most talents do crit. Not sure why you would think otherwise.

Decayed Harvest is not supposed to be source of healing against bosses. That is what inscriptions are for.

Curses and Hexes are too expensive, but I'm not sure what to do with them as they can be quite powerful. At least you get more Vim returned than Corruptor does from them.

I could make Decayed Harvest and Blood Feed scale with Spellpower.

[Bormoth]

This resource is hard to balance. What difficulty are you playing on?

Blood Feed was not designed to be used outside of boss fights.

I'm playing on normal, the problem, is you don't quite have a lot of in way of sustain. Only thing can ohko are bone and swarm talents, and they are weak. All other but poison cloud don't pay for themselves. Ok decay sorta can. No significant vim restoration, or blood casting would make real problem against antimages, so I dunno how to deal with ork antimages.
For reference vimbolt,drain, killing spell for corruptor combo works awesomely, so good that it is possible to sac some pool to kill bunch of enemies with cyst burst, catalepsy combo, and be sure your pool would be easily restored later on trash mobs.
Sounds pretty useless then, because something like drain lvl 1 gives 20-40 vim every five turns. Blood feed one with saturations just 10 and long cooldown. And works out of combat quite well.

Harbinger doesn't require you to self debuff and you do have options such as inscription saturations, Toxic Cure and a variety of cloud/pool effects.

Yes and still there is no good way, most clouds even first poison skill for 5 vim ignore you or it looked like it.

I'll look into increasing the Vim Pool. Maybe as an innate class effect? Dunno skill tree I sugguested may work, more vim gain per level too.

It is just corruptor has no problems with vim management due to most creatures die in one hit(Bone skill and swarm skill tree only way to ohko enemies for small restoration), have good restoration vimsense(all dots and everyone hitting you)+ blood casting to keep casting.

Most talents do crit. Not sure why you would think otherwise.

Player shouldn't require to look forthis information. Dots not known for critting, so maybe write those skills can crit. Although I'm quite surprised that vanilla game not always conveys what can crit in clear way too.

Decayed Harvest is not supposed to be source of healing against bosses. That is what inscriptions are for.

And in swarm situations it is almost useless, even though nice,

Curses and Hexes are too expensive, but I'm not sure what to do with them as they can be quite powerful. At least you get more Vim returned than Corruptor does from them.

Bigger vim pool or increasing it in some way could solve problem, they are mostly crisis management/boss killers, so having them on bosses is good, it is just after casting few of them you zero out your vim pool, especieally at normal tier 2 dungeons. Corruptor can afford them due to multiple ways to restore vim. Pretty much 3 out 4 skills in tree where drain is have

I could make Decayed Harvest and Blood Feed scale with Spellpower.

Willpower I think would be better, it would both make class based default killing vim restoration just augmented, andI already sayed how it is weaer then demonologist which multiplies 1+ stacks of his debuff, which is even easier to stack and it lasts for longer so you can be sure you get returns. But it is still too weak, 25 turns waits to restore how much vim-- 30 or 40 and it is situational on blood feed, looks really week.
Or make it restore per debuf on enemy and shorter cooldown without self damage, this wouldn't help against trash mobs much, but at least on boss fights you see some returns not positive, but enough to cotinue fight, if cooldown short enough,
or make it work like drain deal damage equal to to number of debuffs then part of this damage added to vim, with small basic addition for at least minimum manaclash protection.

So to sum up. No good reliable resource restorations no mana clash protection, pretty slow gameplay.

P.S. My tree sugguestion is gives to class what it lacks, small casting speed boost, to play either nuke with bone swarm catalepsy, or with others, soil and hide. And gives pretty strong vim pool stretcher, but contains you in area. Though I admit it is not vim like behaviour -- feels too fluid instead of conservative.
Has mana clash protection, well at least while in pool you still can master something on leftovers, and after recieving damage. and way to feed pool even more, and hell you can make either your last sspell strong enough to ohko trash mob, later down the game with bone or finish with strong debuff, once pool expires or before retreat, and axelerate death from debuffs, After all catalepsy and cyst burst exists for reason in desease tree, and it synergises with epidemic extremely well.

P.P.S. And whole sanguinesurge pretty much deals with restoration in one way or another. Look at it for references.
Drain and Blood sacrifice to restore Blood sacrifice tons times stronger then Blood feed, Blood casting is another way bypass vim all together.And Absorb life what makes cashes in on masses just crazy, btw look t blood sacrifice how to make Blood feed work only with enemies nearby. Although summons tentacles and spiders, and agroes them.
It is while you play corruptor or reaver, not like you can't chease at all you don't need to do it.

[HousePet]

Enemies do tend to land debuffs on you, so Blood Feed should do at least 20 vim in a boss fight, likely more.

A rare/boss is a good way of getting debuffs for Harbinger.

The tree you suggested is interesting, but that will stretch your points out.

The only corruptor DoT talent that doesn't crit is Curse of Death (and Fearscape I guess). Yes the vanilla game is inconsistent, but assume anything with damage can crit until proven otherwise (and possibly report it as a bug, as there is no reason they shouldn't)

Decayed Harvest is not supposed to be as good as Drain, Arcane Reconstruction or a Regen infusion.

I'm trying to keep the Vim management as passive as possible as the class is supposed to feel slow. Making it work from level 1 is tricky though.
The Vim regain from damage is a form of mana clash protection.
I'll up the gain a bit more on various Vim restoration effects and add a bonus for using Blood Feed in combat.

[Bormoth]

Enemies do tend to land debuffs on you, so Blood Feed should do at least 20 vim in a boss fight, likely more.

So blood feed sometimes as good as Blood casting without any spellpower. And no it doesn't happen, most annoying and common debuffs early, stun, confusion, sometimes slow. All of those may counter your blood feed.(stun shuts down all non instaspeed talents first place, confusion wastes turns, slow is the same), so it leaves blind which is just 10. And poison from some enemies.
even with half life cost, still more usefull at topping vim pool 30 + self:combatTalentSpellDamage(t, 5, 150) if I read correctly level 1 with 40 spellpower woud give 93 pretty much tops pool without dark pact, and usefull sustains. Yes costly, but acts as something useful in combat.

A rare/boss is a good way of getting debuffs for Harbinger.

And good way to die from debuffs. And very situational with hard ways to exploit, though always could cary mindstar in off slot with insidious poison, aro iron sword with bleed insidious poison I guess. But feels a bit gamey.

The tree you suggested is interesting, but that will stretch your points out.

Generic no not really, I could sacrifice some hexes or maybe even some curses for this tree. And generics are pretty empty in your class. For class can always boost category to one of trees, and send freed on basics of sustains, from this tree..

The only corruptor DoT talent that doesn't crit is Curse of Death (and Fearscape I guess). Yes the vanilla game is inconsistent, but assume anything with damage can crit until proven otherwise (and possibly report it as a bug, as there is no reason they shouldn't)

Assuming bad thing really, try to be more user friendly, not everyone looks into source, and there is already huge amound of underwater stones. Searing light doesn't crit on dot, inferno, insidious poison I think, maybe other. Circles have good description saying that they crit.

Decayed Harvest is not supposed to be as good as Drain, Arcane Reconstruction or a Regen infusion.

For now it is only marginally better then absorb life. With cons requiring enemies to live long enough, to pay for aoe, though at least it is passive, and only way to restore consistently. So difference you may play as corruptor and not have absorb life,
witherer has no choice.

I'm trying to keep the Vim management as passive as possible as the class is supposed to feel slow. Making it work from level 1 is tricky though.

Later it would become really dounting. Same with corruptor,but you start vim bolting or other talents one-shotting enemies, then shift to drain kill, and late in the game cheap(usually vimbolt), drain, kill. Here you start with ineffective vim talents, and later they become more ineffective requiring multiple casts. Would never beleave, any of skills in your tree killing a regular 1k hp mob.

The Vim regain from damage is a form of mana clash protection.

Nope, manaclash drains 40-70 vim for 80-140 damage, maybe on highier difficulties more, but on normal, it returns 8-14 Vim on Decayed harvest return. Enough for tier 1 spell only.

I'll up the gain a bit more on various Vim restoration effects and add a bonus for using Blood Feed in combat.

This would be good maybe. Look one for sustain, one manaclash protection,one refill (even if it is risky, or merged with other skill), and one aoe feeder for anti zoo. Now you have anti zoo, and pretty bad refill out of combat, because in combat it is not worth a turn.

P.S. Just noticed Blood sacrifice commented, still was pretty good skill. But bloodcasting put instead of it still allows you to continue casting and sustain a little bit more in hard battles, and repayed well with vimsense late in the game.

[HousePet]

I'll make Blood Feed instant.

Harbinger is a passive boost for retaliation when you get debuffed. I'm really not understanding why you want to go out of your way to get the effect at all times. Its like saying that Vitality needs to have a talent for getting yourself under half health.

I don't expect Witherers to benefit much from the free casting if your talent kills an enemy. That is what Decayed Harvest is for. To supply extra Vim from kills. I've just got nothing to base the numbers on, so I'm basically guessing and tweaking until it works.

Edit: I've also added an extra multiplier to Blood Feed based on the highest rank of nearby enemies. So when there are no enemies around the effect is halved. When there is a boss the effect is quadrupled.

[Bormoth]

Because talents are there to be used, and vitality there because it is used and productive when it is required(additional spellpower and spell crit is required when you cast spells, and not cleanse statuses with effects, maybe you can argue that runic plus infusion saturation is enough but I dunno). It ot only shortens poisons, deseases, and bleading which are fairly common, but also help counteract this. Conditioning is harmonic, because, vitality heals you when you want to be healed, and keeps healing you, and reduces some dot damage you take in total, corona is useful because it activates on casts or when you want to cast, and really coproductive. You take carrier because it helps spread deseases for reaver, or at least desease reaver. You take Bloodlust, because you plan to hit with reaver. And in general, you take skills because they would be used in correct time. Taking this skill and not set up to have at least few stacks of it before battle or during battle it is just like take dual weapon mastery, or mindstar mastery and use shields or two handers.

On celestial it is good(you get crits on heals, and providence if I'm right, although dunno if it is worth it, but at least it fits theme I want to stay alive -- healing or shield crit helps me stay alive), but on your class, well maybe if you are planning to get celestial light, then sure, you can have spellpower and crits on those, and it would worth, but in general, you don't want to have even trashy debuffs, because they could be in a way of purging scary ones. Not saying that saves and status resistances go big way counteracting those effects and effectiveness of this skill. Add this to inability to rely on this talent when I need, well I can get more useful talents instead, like hexes or curses, or maybe even accuracy and staff combat, with vim problems it could be essential. And it would be quite productive for entropy judging by it's skills(in fact this is not bad design, as opens concept of melee or close range mage). Or any other skill tree from escort, hell even survival would be good, with charm cooldown reduction, or perception, trap detection(well personaly want to go, hand master for free reequip, plus weapon switch, would be really good to swap staffs for two damage types, so no charm mastery)

[HousePet]

I'll probably add something else to it later.

[HousePet]

Patched.
Witherers get +2 Vim per level but now get -2 Life per level. (will only apply to new characters)
Vim regain from Decayed Harvest increased.
Reactive Vim regain on damage moved from Decayed Harvest to Blood Feed.
Blood Feed activation now scales with the highest rank of nearby enemies. Ranging from x0.5 for no enemies to x4 for standard bosses.
Decayed Harvest, Blood Feed and Harbinger of Suffering now scale with Willpower.

[Bormoth]

Patched.
Witherers get +2 Vim per level but now get -2 Life per level. (will only apply to new characters)

Sounds fair enough, maybe too much how much Willful tormentor gives -- 75, though corruptor has more dynamic pool I guess. But it would add one more shortcoming to overcome aside low mobility. Oh well low health would suit him and something, is more easier to build around.

Vim regain from Decayed Harvest increased.

Thanks would test it. Need to make sure it is not too high, too.

Reactive Vim regain on damage moved from Decayed Harvest to Blood Feed.

Wouldn't it make decayed harvest worse, pretty much almost only reason to max out? Althoughdepends on scaling I guess

Blood Feed activation now scales with the highest rank of nearby enemies. Ranging from x0.5 for no enemies to x4 for standard bosses.

Good idea, maybe if no enemies just restore to 10%-20% and put skill on long cooldown, or nothing if vim is highier. This would lower abuse, and would keep from completely screwing yourself with no vim situation.

Decayed Harvest, Blood Feed and Harbinger of Suffering now scale with Willpower.

Dunno about Harbringer of suffering still sounds counter productive. Though have some ideas.

Maybe add vim regen effect depending on number of debuffs on activation(could be in same way for health cost) of Blood Feed at levels 3+ for several turns(depends on level). Positive effect for Harbringer activates on all levels, but regen recieved only only from 3+.
And Harbringer of suffering during active Blood Feed every time you put non crosstier debuff, you put it on yourself(ignoring safes and resistances)
weakened by 80%-20% (Really out of cieling numbers). Scaling removed in this case ofc, and maybe lowered a bit numbers.
(Aoe bleed is scary, but most scary is spellshock. Can deal with stacking dots as price, but copy spellshock without saves is scary, and almost always guaranteed)

This just idea comes, from facts that most of your debuffs dangerous (with lowered health), but not deadly like stun, confusion or blindness. So you can consistently trigger harbringer in a flow of game, and at same time have something to restore with blood feed, even if you have no debuffs. And sounds thematics, one who brings slow death literally, and feeds from it. Also would make healing on kill from debuffs a bit more usefull to counteract painfull feeding.

Still manaclash could be scary.

[netphenix]

Hey Housepet ! Finally found this thread. As I said on the page for the add-on, I LOVE this class ! Definitely my favorite add-on in over a year of playing ToME.

Of course, I still have feedback to provide. So :

I tried the latest iteration of the class today, and I think that moving the damage-to-vim converter to Blood Feed was a mistake - Both Nolgros and the Weirding Beast sprung up on me when I was low on vim and under level 8 and they both wiped the forest floor with my poor character while I struggled to think of a way to kill them aside from stick-poking them to death with my staff... I understand why you moved it, but it makes those under-level-8 bosses and rares a pain. :-/

If you're concerned about power balance or the relative utility of Blood Feed, maybe you could split the vim recovery effect between Decayed Harvest and Blood Feed, so that you'd get half the amount for each and need to level up both to get a decent amount ? Or maybe add a 0,5-vim regain each time you take a physical hit - those never go out of style, are prevalent in the start, and aren't something we can just dish ourselves to boost vim levels. It should be enough to fire a Poison Cloud once in a while instead of just waiting for a painful, gruesome, low-leveled death. :-p

On the subject of Poisons, I want to mention here that, despite its description mentioning only foes as valid targets, Vapour Form poisons ME - and has for three builds of the class now... That's right, a point-blank, no-escape, DEFENSIVE spell stacks its poison effect on my poor, low-hp Witherer in a way no infusion is gonna be able to counteract. Needless to say, I refuse to believe that's WAI. You can see what it looks like here :



I'm sure you'll understand that there's no way I'm gonna use a spell that's trades a CHANCE to stop external damage for the CERTAINTY of killing me slowly itself.

Also, I don't know if it's still the case (not at that level yet) but the previous build caused a LUA error each time I used Poisoner's curse, as shown here:



It let the power work, but made it instant and bypassed the cooldown so I could spam it repeatedly at the cost of a LUA window each time. Sure, it made undead lairs a breeze, but I get the feeling that's not the way it's supposed to go... But as I said, I didn't check the latest build to that extent yet.

And finally, I stand by my statement on the add-on page that a starting radius of 2 for a cone is too low. It means that a one-to-three points investment is MANDATORY to make those spells tactically useful instead of just "ohcrapgetoutofmyface!" melee wannabes. I sincerely can't think of a single vanilla cone attack power with a starting range of less than 3, unless it's an extended melee attack from a melee-prone class. You want them to be medium-range cones, fine, don't extend the range every level - but give it at least a decent, usable start, pretty please ?

That's all I have so far. Overall, this is an awesome, flavorful, fun class. Don't let my nitpicking fool you - I'm loving every toxic bit of it.

[Bormoth]

netphenix
Agreed, though reagains are pretty strong now. Btw I noticed you haven't taken level in degenerate. 1st entropy spell pretty good early boss killer at lvl one, cheap, and strong enough. Huh, why acid jet, wouldn't virulent desease better for boss killing, although maybe you took it against crystal, but by that point you already may have epidemic.

housepet
Blood feed is pretty strong now got restored on boss 40 vim on restoration for lvl 1, and 20-30 on rares
Harvest skill is pretty good now too, it sustains almost everything but bone on returns, and almost deseases early (I you kill in 2 turns spellshock recovers vim too, othervice just 2 vim loss.) There are some problems in old forest(With ant boss, a lot of immune creaturs, but it doesn't goes out of control, though maybe some poison builds, nah all lvl 10 treas have deseases synergy.

[HousePet]

Bad news: Vapour Form is working as intended. Might I suggest not standing still and deactivating it when you don't need it?

I'll have a look at the particle problem. I haven't seen that one before.

[netphenix]

Bormoth - I took acid to try it out, and because there are plenty of things in the early dungeons (Ice elementals in Nolgros', undeads in the ruins, crystals in the cave) that resist or are immune to both poison, disease, and the new bleed from bone spear. It's also way cheaper vim-wise than the first bone spell. As for the entropy first spell, it might pack a punch, but with zero vim, the problem remains : I won't be able to use it. Unless we end up with a 0-vim spell like Drain, there's no option except melee pokes (or lucky loot) to damage foes if we drop to 0 vim before level 8. It's... Annoying.

Housepet - sure, I can cancel it when I'm safe. But as long as I'm not, it's helping the foes kill me and maybe helping me escape them ? That's... forgive me the word, but that's asinine. Those kind of protective spells we need against rares and bosses, which are the foes both most likely to get in melee with us and to take the longest to kill. In other word, when we need such a defensive spell, we'll need it to stay the distance in protecting us - like shields. So by the time we don't need it anymore, it's likely to have run its course and killed us, assuming the foes haven't. As for the not standing still suggestion, I can only assume you mean it before level 4 and the spreading effect - which drastically lowers its use in any non-corridor setting, or against more than one foe at a time, or any time we're cornered (which, considering our lack of mobility options, can and does happen... And that's when we'd want Vapour to help us survive instead of killing us all the quicker.)

Sure, once I get to level 22 and unlock Biohazard, it should stop being a deathtrap (I'll need to test that, because it could go wrong..) but that means 14 levels of a spell I can't use without risking my life, and a forced tree choice at level 10 to boot ? No way. I could deal with it poisoning me once like the next spell (the cure one, forget the name at the moment) but the staking, auto-renewed poison effect means the longer it runs the quicker I die - again, the antithesis of a defensive spell. It also means that if, in the low levels, I use my phys wild to cleanse myself (once...) then I'm a sitting duck for the slew of stuns/dazes/bleeds that are the main debuffs in the early game, on top of getting re-poisoned the next turn.

That's way too many ways a spell that's meant to keep us alive can insure we end up very dead, especially when the spell description says nothing of its dangers. If it's, as you say, working as intended, then the intent must have been to make sure we stay away from that little gem.

[HousePet]

Oh fine, I'll look into making it a little less self destructive or maybe more defensive.