Arcanum Class Pack v2.3

[HousePet]

That seems like a good idea.

Eventually I'll get around to replacing Force Punch with a shield of some sort...

[sajberhippien]

That seems like a good idea.

Eventually I'll get around to replacing Force Punch with a shield of some sort...

I think Force Punch is in one of the better skills for the enchanter; while I'm not a good enough player to say much about long-term power or higher difficulties, I still find myself using it regularly during the early game. The Force tree is also very elegant in design and flavor.

I think if you wanted to add a shield or make changes to skills, it might be a better idea to target Lesser Runes. At least for me, it's the number one floater-skill, because they're all very low-powered but at low levels being able to make full cycles of ranged spells has a lot of value in itself; as soon as you start getting better things to do with your turns, they become useless.

Changing Lesser Runes to be less focused on blasts might make it a skill one would consider a bit more long-term, without empowering it short-term. A low-powered shield might not be out of the question, as well as a lesser Vision rune.

Side note: While this might be worked as intended, but I find the class to be very much and obviously a staff class, with no real use for other weapons. It's description says Mag and Con as primary stats, but it has no talents at all tied to constitution, and the sceptres (which are the Mag/Con weapons) don't work with any of the staff talents.

I hope I don't come across as intrusive; I'm not trying to tell you how to run your mod, I'm very much a happy camper for playing with it

[HousePet]

Force Punch is decent for the Enchanter, but its crap for everyone else and the Force category could use a small boost in power.

Lesser Runes needs to be focused on blasting. Its the only blasting they have for a while.
Lesser Runes could possibly do with a late game benefit... Possibly it could increase the damage done by regular runes? Or I could fix up the way it interacts with Inscription Mastery so they can do decent late game damage (why do I have it increasing damage by 6% per point invested?!?!).

Basically the martial weapon builds of the class don't quite work right still. Not sure if its too hard to start with (in which case the extra Shield talent will help), or if the late game power is lacking.

I'm suggesting Con as an important stat as its not a very tough class, but it also doesn't have good ranged power, so you might need the extra life to survive.

[sajberhippien]

Thanks for the response, always interesting to read why things are designed the way they are

[sajberhippien]

I was thinking, with Disenchantment, it says:
"From raw talent level 4, you can strip all affixes from an item. (Doesn't work)"

Wouldn't it be possible to get it to at least somewhat work, through simply replacing the affixed item with a white variant of the same item type? It wouldn't be a perfect solution as you'd lose any other modifications and traits (e.g. the damage levels might vary), but it seems like it would be nice to have. And this question doesn't have anything to do with me just picking up a crystal focus, nope, none whatsoever! ;P

Granted it could very well be that you've already considered that solution and don't want it or it's not possible to get it to work, but thought I'd mention it at least.

Oh, and on another minor note in how you mentioned Force Push is too weak for others, might it be an option to add a damage bonus when enemies are pushed "into" an object, ie when the push check is successful but there's a wall behind?

EDIT: Oh, and one last thing. Wards are a bit of a hassle to use, since every time you activate them you have to go through the menu and choose type. I think it's your mod that's removing the time limit on them, and that helps a lot, but would it also be possible to split them into essentially two skills; one for choosing they type of ward to create, and one for actually creating them? That way you could have a "default" ward that you set to autocast on rest. Especially useful when you only have access to a single type of ward, or when the ward is on your golem.

[HousePet]

I can't remember why that use ended up as being described if it doesn't work. (Probably the usual situation where I design something for up to a month in advance then discover that its really hard to do in practice...) I can probably get it to work in the way you suggested. I expect I was trying to work out how the new egos code worked and gave up on it.

While the suggested change to Force Punch would help with the damage, I'll probably just add that to Rebound instead and remove Force Punch. I don't like the way they are both basically the same effect with a different shape. Most users of the Force category are there for the utility not raw damage.

As for Ward, that sounded fiddly to do, but actually I think I can do that easily.
I'm still wondering if I should attempt to change Ward so that it activates Wards of all damage types at once.

[sajberhippien]

Thanks, cool!

I'm still wondering if I should attempt to change Ward so that it activates Wards of all damage types at once.

Personally, I prefer the targeted nature of wards; it makes them feel more distinct from other damage mitigation methods. It adds interesting choice. While you might not always activate a different kind and rely on a "default" one, that default will shift based on what you're doing (though some wards are a lot more universally useful than others, e.g. Physical vs Blight).

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Thanks, cool!

I'm still wondering if I should attempt to change Ward so that it activates Wards of all damage types at once.

Personally, I prefer the targeted nature of wards; it makes them feel more distinct from other damage mitigation methods. It adds interesting choice. While you might not always activate a different kind and rely on a "default" one, that default will shift based on what you're doing (though some wards are a lot more universally useful than others, e.g. Physical vs Blight).

I also agree with this. Wards are, and should be, directly targeted. An untargeted ward is equivalent to an infinite-strength shield that lasts for one attack, and while there might be a niche for that, it doesn't at all fit the theme of a ward. If you make wards untargeted, they just become shitty lightning runes. If you keep wards targeted (and even give them separate cooldowns, maybe?), they become powerful tactical tools that, IF USED PROPERLY, can save your life hundreds of times on end but if used improperly will lead to your rapid and painful death - which is, in my opinion, exactly what a master wizard's spells should be. Magic is a fickle beast, and complicated, and if properly handled will bring you great power. But notice that you don't see many stupid wizards. A Bulwark, for example, can get away with being a bit dumb and just hitting stuff. A wizard has no such luxury, and his talents are, and should be, tailored toward his innate knowledge of magic. They are quite fragile, physically, but through proper use of magic can become terrifying, untouchable warlords. I think having targeted wards plays into this "proper use of magic".

I also think wards should be instant cast, but that's an argument for another day.

[sajberhippien]

I also think wards should be instant cast, but that's an argument for another day.

I've also had that thought, but honestly I prefer they take a round to set up. If instant-cast, they simply become "another layer of awesome" so to speak, and their targeted nature loses importance (since it costs you nothing to switch type). Most other instant-speed effects have a noticable opportunity cost; activating charms puts other charms on cooldown, instant-speed abilities usually have a noticable resource cost, et cetera. The instant-speed stuff that doesn't have a big opportunity cost to use, tends to have a big opportunity cost to get; the number of infusions you can have is very limited, and you only get one race. And when it comes to infusions, you see that the instant speed ones are generally considered the ones you want to have. My impression from guides etc is that the most popular infusions are movement and heroism, followed by shield, wild and regeneration, followed by stuff like teleport, biting gale and heat ray for the undead. Of the more popular ones, only regeneration takes a turn.

Wards don't have that big opportunity cost; it has no resource cost, doesn't trigger other thing's cooldown, doesn't even trigger any saturation, and doesn't cost more to have than that any of your equipment pieces have it (which is far less restrictive than your inscriptions, and can be easily swapped whenever needed). If wards where instant-speed in activation, you'd never *not* want to use them when available.

[HousePet]

Okay, I'll leave them as single damage type. Which is easiest anyway as the code isn't written in a nice way to have multiple elements blocked.

[sajberhippien]

Suggestion re: wards and enchanter early game (despite the wording i mean this as suggestion/idea, not a command, lol!)
- Make Staff Magic (and maybe Staff Combat?) work with sceptres (and add them natively to Arcanum without need for Midnight)
- Have enchanter start with a sceptre and a wardstone w/ a physical ward in inventory.
- Swap places of the lvl 4 ward-improvement sustain and the lvl 1 talent in that category (mana alchemy? Im on my phone so cant check)

This would:
- Make enchanter less tied to staves and hint at that gameplay
- Reinforce the description of enchanters main stats being Mag and Con (as sceptres are mag/con weapons)
- Give the option of some early melee survivability at the expense of blasting (as the ward improvement sustain has a notable mana cost)
- Add to the flavor of enchanters as hedge magicians, as wards have a distinct flavor more tied to charms and magic items than the "high arcana" of shields.

Alternatively replace sceptre with ritual knife (which are already native to Arcanum), though this points them toward mag+dex rather than mag+con. I realize starting weapons have minimal impact on long-term optimal builds, but it still pushes the feel of the class in a certain direction.

Thoughts?

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Thoughts?

I like and approve of almost all of this. The ward boost sustain seems to be Staff Warding though, which is T2 in Staff Combat and that seems proper. I wouldn't move that.

I do approve of pushing Enchanter more towards Sceptres and Wardstones, as I've been wanting to use those for ages but I've had a hard time finding anyone that they work well on (to the point that I've only ever used a sceptre on a Radiant and I've never, actually ever, used a wardstone). They seem like the perfect class to take advantage of the niches of that equipment set. I'd maybe even go so far as to change Staff Combat and Staff Magic into Sceptre-specific trees INSTEAD of staves, rather than making Sceptres just count as staves. Martial Enchantments starts unlocked and, from level one, points to the idea that Enchanter should be a magical weapon-based class rather than just another wizard with a staff, but shittier this time. I think you should push them more toward that weapon choice. They have all their martial enhancement trees but two whole unlocked generic trees that only apply to staves. These trees send conflicting signals to the player.

Just a thought here - what if Staff Combat was changed to a more general "Magical Combat" tree, with a T1 skill that has a MAG requirement and is equivalent to Strength of Purpose, being a MAG-statted mastery skill that makes weapons scale with MAG rather than STR/DEX/CUN? The rest of the talents could even stay more or less the same, other than being able to be used with any weapon vs. being restricted to staves.

In a related note - does Staff Warding (or the other staff skills in Staff Magic) actually require a staff? In the descriptions it doesn't look like it specifies that. I think there are two ways to approach this, and both of them have their pros and cons.

- Make it require staves, and have a hard distinction between a defensive, ward-based Staff Enchanter and an offensive, martial enchantment based Fighter Enchanter. Pros: This gives some obvious and distinctive character variety within your class, sort of like how one can have a Sleepy Solipsist or a Blaster Solipsist. Cons: This effectively locks out some of the unique defensive skills native to this class for any character using a sceptre and wardstone, like I just talked about suggesting doing.
- Make it NOT require staves, so that a given Enchanter can have access to a wardstone and the Ward skills. Pros: Getting ward skills when using wardstones makes sense, and you aren't intentionally gimping a certain build. Cons: You really lose most of the impetus to use staves, if that's something you wanted, for some reason.

In fact, I might even stuff Staff Channel into Staff Combat and rework Magical Combat into a whole different Warded Combat tree, that requires an equipped Wardstone. (Remember that one can equip a one-handed staff with a wardstone, meaning that even a staff build Enchanter can get value out of this tree, given proper gear selection). Talents could include such things as an active block with a wardstone (up to you whether it can proc Counterstrike or not, but I recommend it - you could even take advantage of this skill to give Wardstones an innate shielding value [like a real shield] based on tier/talent level calculations), Staff Warding pretty much as it already exists but reflavored to not pertain to staves, Ward Blast that will let you explode an active ward off of you in order to deal damage + a status effect based on what ward was consumed, and Arcane Harmony can stay totally untouched.

[astralInferno]

I have a scepter based class in the works, but then I haven't coded in. Some time... still, some of the code is hidden and unused in the current celestial oddities release, wolf, if you wanted to take a look.
(I got nothing for wardstones tho)

[HousePet]

My current general thoughts are to merge my three Staff categories into one category that is actually comparable to Mindstar Mastery.
As this will no longer contain Staff Warding or Arcane Harmony, I will look at making an Arcane Defence category from left over pieces. This might also contain a talent for adding mag mod onto weapon damage. It looks like Enchanter used to have a talent for that, but it got removed in the rewrite.

I find that melee Enchanter doesn't have much in the way of active attacks, and going with Staff Combat gives you a few extra options making it far more interesting.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Melee Enchanters have plenty of options. They appear to inherently lend themselves to a "buff up and smack shit" playstyle, where all of your enchantments (and your Shield Guardian, and your Fire Shield, and your Fire/Shock Hands, and your Vitalise) give you passive bonuses to your bump attacks and melee combat, and they have several options for melee survivability. As for active melee attacks, you have such things as

- Everything in the whole Staff Combat tree! (although we've spoken about this already)

- Bladestorm

- Arcane Smite

- Enchanted Assault

- Crumble

- Scatter

Not to mention everything in the Advanced Martial Enchantments tree. Enchanter strikes me as a class begging to fill a niche that Arcane Blade just quite misses. Arcane Blade is mostly a fighter that can channel magic, whereas Enchanter is a wizard that can use martial strength. The crucial difference here is that Arcane Blade plays like a fighter that just triggers spells, but an Enchanter should play like a wizard that can melee. They have interesting utility spells, some good long distance damage due to being a hedgewizard, and can still survive a brawl when the fight gets tough. Flying Weapon even leverages your melee buffs in order to do a ranged melee attack, I mean, how can you even pretend this guy isn't a sword wizard?

I'd make a couple changes to better facilitate this, though. For one, I understand the reasoning behind CON being a suggested stat, but I think that MAG/STR fits them much better (and also allows them to actually equip the things they've enchanted). For two, I think that instead of increasing accuracy, Enchant Weapon should add +Spellpower. This allows our sword wizard to effectively trade his staff for a real weapon without unduly nerfing his own spell damage. This way, we retain one of the main reason wizards use staves (for the Spellpower boost) while trading the other reason, Command Staff, for the ability to stab someone.

I'll respect your design decisions as you've been doing this far longer than I have, I just feel very strongly that trying to tie Enchanters to staves is a terrible idea. They have all these talents that very strongly point towards Muscle Wizard but you seem like you want them to stay squarely in the realm of boring Regular Wizard.