ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Edit: The addon has been renamed to Spellsword can now be found at:

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/spellsword

Below you will find the historical first post:

It was suggested to me I should move my Arcane Blade rework from the Ideas section to the Addon forums, and put an up to date copy of the work so far in the first post.

First to note, I've made excessive use of overload instead of superload or hooks, so it is more likely than not to be incompatible with most addons.

Currently its in a testing phase. Numbers are in no way final - mostly I wanted to get everything working mechanically first and then begin the hard process of figuring out what numbers things need, or if they need a complete redesign.

Here's a summary of changes:

Birth trees:
talents_types = {
["spell/air"]={false, -0.3},
["spell/earth"]={false, -0.3},
["spell/fire"]={false,-0.3},
["spell/water"]={false,-0.3},
["spell/conveyance"]={false, 0.1},
["technique/combat-training"]={true, 0.2},
["cunning/survival"]={false, -0.1},
["technique/arcane-air"]={true, 0},
["technique/arcane-earth"]={true, 0},
["technique/arcane-fire"]={true, 0},
["technique/arcane-water"]={true, 0},
["technique/magical-combat"]={true, 0},
["spell/aegis"]={false,0.1},
},
talents = {
[ActorTalents.T_FIRE_STRIKE] = 1,
[ActorTalents.T_WATER_STRIKE] = 1,
[ActorTalents.T_ARCANE_COMBAT] = 1,
[ActorTalents.T_WEAPON_COMBAT] = 1,
},

Tree summaries:
Magical-combat tree, Magic requirement
Tier 1: Arcane Combat: Stamina sustain: % chance based on Dexterity to trigger damage proc, costing mana.
Tier 2: Arcane Stances: Passive: +100/200/300/400/500% effectiveness of Arcane Stances.
Tier 3: Arcane Prowess: Passive: Convert 10/15/20/25/30% of Strength and Dexterity to spell power.
Tier 4: Arcane Destruction: Mana Sustain: Convert weapon damage to element based on stance. 2/4/6/8/10% element damage increase. 10/20/30/40/50% element damage penetration.

Arcane-Air tree, Str requirement
Stance is +1 Accuracy per 10 spellpower/+1 Lightning damage on melee hit per 10 spellpower

Tier 1: Air Strike: 12 Stamina Activate,8 turn cooldown, Switches to Air Stance: Melee attack with both weapons, % bonus damage, Silence for 3/4/5/6/7/8 turns. At 4 points Silence effect is a ball of radius 0/0/0/1/2 with 20/25% chance to affect. Silence determined by Phys Power.

Tier 2: Tornado Strike: 15 Stamina Activate, 12 turn cooldown: Buffs Accuracy, APR, and Crit % for 2 turns. Make two full attacks (i.e. 2 attacks with main hand, 2 attacks with off hand if present).

Tier 3: Wind Storm: 50 Mana Sustain, 30 turn cooldown: 1/2/2/3/3 AoE 5/10/15/20/25% slow every turn, spell power vs spell save.

Tier 4: Whirlwind Teleport: 30 Mana Activate, 18 turn cooldown: Targeted teleport within LOS at range 4/5/6/7/8, followed by a full attack (both main and offhand) against all now adjacent enemies (if any).

Arcane-Earth tree, Str requirement
Stance is +1 Armor per 10 spellpower/+0.2 resist all per 10 spellpower

Tier 1: Earth Strike: Stamina Activate, 8 turn cooldown, Switches to Earth Stance: Melee attack with mainland and shield bash (if present). % bonus damage, Pinning for 3/4/5/6/7/8 turns. At 4 points Pinning effect is a ball of radius 0/0/0/1/2 with 20/25% chance to affect. Pinning determined by Phys Power.

Tier 2: Sandblast:12 Stamina Activate, 10 turn cooldown: Make a main hand and shield bash (if present) against melee target, dealing bonus % damage. Seperately a blinding effect of cone radius 3 is activated in the direction of the target, blinding for 1/2/3/4/5 turns. Blinding is determined by Phys power.

Tier 3: Earthen Barrier: 50 Mana Sustain, 30 turn cooldown: Provides a shield hp pool based on spellpower which absorbs 50% of incoming damage. The shield regenerates 2/4/6/8/10% of its hp based on spell power each turn. If shield drops to 0 hit points, it deactivates.

Tier 4: Rolling Earth:40 Mana Activate, 20 turn cooldown: Cone AoE damage of radius 2/3/4/5/6, pull towards caster and stuns for 4/5/6/7/8 turns. Effects based on Spell power.

Arcane-Water tree, Str requirement
Stance is +1% Healing Mod per 10 spellpower/+0.1 regen per 10 spellpower

Tier 1: Water Strike:12 Stamina Activate, 8 turn cooldown, Switches to Water Stance: Melee attack with the all weapon(s), with bonus % damage. Freezes the target for 2 turns. At 4 points freeze effect is a ball of radius 0/0/0/1/2 with 20/25% chance to apply. Freeze application determined by Phys Power.

Tier 2: Healing Water: Mana Activate, 16 turn cooldown: Heal self based on spellpower.

Tier 3: Tidal Rush: 25 Stamina Activate, 20 turn cooldown: Rush to target. Produce a knocback wave effect of radius 1 with low damage at each space in between. If non-target NPC is in the way, switch places with it. Attack at the final target with all weapons with bonus % damage. Knockback wave based on spell power.

Tier 4: Drain Water of Life: Mana Activate, 16 turn cooldown: Strike at target with all weapons with bonus % damage. Heal back 20/40/60/80/100% of damage dealt.

Arcane-Fire tree, Str requirement
Stance is +1 Phys power per 10 spellpower/ +0.25 Phys crit per 10 spellpower

Tier 1: Fire Strike: 12 Stamina Activate, 8 turn cooldown, Switches to Fire Stance: Attack with Main-hand weapon, dealing bonus % damage. Applies the PURIFY_FIRE effect which removes 1 beneficial effect or sustain per turn. Purifying fire lasts 1/2/2/3/3 turns, with physical power vs spell save. At 3 points purifying fire is a ball of radius 0/0/0/1/2 with 20/25% chance to apply.

Tier 2: Inferno Cleave: 25 Stamina Activate, 12 turn cooldown: Attack with Main-hand weapon against up to 3 adjacent enemies. It lights up their squares. It deals bonus fire damage based on the weapon's STR mod and spellpower. At level 3 it Blinds for 2 turns.

Tier 3: Aura of Fire: 30 Mana Sustain, 30 turn cooldown: Each turn, deal low fire damage to all enemies in a radius of 1. Each turn, if user is afflicted by detrimental effects, remove one, and deal 7/6/5/4/3% of max life directly to character as damage (no shields/resistances apply). If no detrimental effects are present, no cost in life to sustain. Turns off if current life drops below 20% of max life.

Tier 4: Mark of Fire: 30 Mana activate, 20 turn cooldown: In a radius 1/2/3/4/5 marked on the ground for 1/2/3/4/5 turns, all enemies take an additional 50% damage in the form of fire damage whenever they take damage.

The last tree would be a generic point tree.
Arcane-Veteran tree, Magic requirement

Tier 1: Veteran Blade: Some kind of stamina recovery mechanism.

Tier 2: Arcane Armor: Mana Sustain: -3/-6/-9/-12/-15% fatigue and +50/100/150/200/250% bonus armor of the main body piece of armor. (I.e. 100% bonus of the 16 armor of Voratun plate would be an extra 16 armor). (Currently set to +3 per talent point - will be fixed).

Tier 3: Arcane Feed: Some kind of mana recovery mechanism.

The following is under consideration:
Tier 4: Master Blade: Stamina and Mana Sustain: +15/30/45/60/75 disarm resistance. Also, when attacked by a ranged projectile (arrow/bolt), roll Accuracy vs attacker's Accuracy. If successful, negate the attack. At level 3 affects reflectable spells (roll Accuracy - 20/Accuracy - 10/Accuracy vs Spell power). At level 5, stops reflectable spells harmlessly.

Edit: updated to include fire tree and partially working arcane-veteran tree.

Edit 2: Master Blade now correctly blocks reflectable spells and bolt spells at level 3 and higher, assuming your roll accuracy (-10/-5/-0) vs Spell power of the caster. Still needs a serious balancing pass, and I probably want to change the resource recovery mechanisms, and Arcane Armor only provides a flat armor bonus, but otherwise, the class mostly functions as intended. Still leaving the Aegis tree in for the moment, although people may want to try characters with and without it.

Edit 3: Just found an error where I was passing weapon instead of weapon.combat to all the attackTargetWith functions - resulting in much poorer performance. Now fixed.

Edit 4: The Tornado Strike Precision bug came due to fixing it not on my usual computer and forgetting to update my local copy - the effect removal ids were wrong again. I have refixed it.

Edit 5: Modified Arcane Armor to be % based on the body armor slot's armor.

Edit 6: Modified Arcane armor to 30/60/90/120/150 % instead of 50/100/150/200/250%. Modified Arcane Stamina to provide 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 stamina regen per turn per active sustain.

Edit 7: Reduced number of starting talents to 3 class, 1 generic. Provided a longsword and dagger in inventory on start. Modified some info functions to hopefully be more clear.

Edit 8: Upped Arcane Combat trigger chance by 5%, increased its scaling damage to 25,300 from 25,250. Modified Elemental Strikes to deal damage in a ball at 4 and 5 points, roughly half the damage of an Arcane Combat trigger, but based on Physical power. The ball effects are 100% chance to occur, but only a duration of 1 or 2 turns, depending on the effect. Lastly, modified Earthen Shield's code, but not effects - mostly to make it cleaner code-wise I hope.

Edit 9: Fixed a bug I introduced in Earthen Shield when I added particle effects, preventing it from deactivating properly (you effectively couldn't turn it off, and it wouldn't shut off even after its hit point pool hit 0).

Edit 10: After some discussions with Darkgod, the following changes were made:
All buff durations unified to be 1/2/2/3/3. This prevents perma-silence. AoEs at 4/5 points lose debuffs - just damage now.
Moved arcane-elemental trees to spells from techniques.
Base spell/elemental trees changed to 1.1 modifier from 0.7. Arcane-elemental trees no longer improve elemental tree mastery by 0.03 per point.
Arcane-elemental trees renamed: Air -> Windcutter, Fire -> Blazebrand, Water -> Lifetide, Earth -> Stoneshield
Names are not necessarily permanent, I'm open to other suggestions. Suggestions for stance names also welcomed.

Edit 11: Fixed a bug introduced to Earth Shield when I did the rewrite to make it more modular. It would not shut off when reduced to 0 hit points, although you could turn it off manually. Now properly turns off and goes on cooldown when damage pool drops to 0.

Edit 12: Fixed a bug with Drain waters of life where it wasn't using the correct combat stats.

Edit 13: Added some particle effects to skills (high point strike effects, wind storm, aura of fire). Improved (hopefully) some of the info boxes. Increased damage modifier on Drain Water of Life from "1.0 to 1.5" to "1.2 to 2.1".

Edit 14: Replaced Water Stance's increased regen with a small heal on melee hit. (Spellpower / 20) * (1 + Arcane Stance Level). Should be around 12.5 life per hit in the level 20s (assuming 5/5 in the talent).

Edit 14b: Created an SVN revision 4886 compatible version of the New Arcane Blade, and added it as a file here.

Edit 14c: Fixed a bug with Inferno Cleave in the SVN 4886 version, due to new util functions for determining left and right.

Edit 16: Updated for version b38! Available on the addons page!
Also includes balance tweaks.
Tidal Rush pins the final target for 1/1/2/2/3 turns.
Mark of fire applies a 50% move speed penalty to enemies affected by it.
Elemental strikes AoE is now 0/1/1/2/2 balls, and apply the debuffs on that ball for 1/2/2/3/3 turns.

Get it at:
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/spellsword

I've filled out the fire tree, and have a semi-working veteran tree. See the first post in this thread for the updated file.

The last talent (master blade) is slightly bugged, in that it does use mainhand weapon accuracy for ranged defense, but there's a bug in the on_project function in mod/class/Actor.lua that is preventing it from triggering properly, although its not throwing out lua errors at the moment.

Hope You fix the bug soon. The skill is what I'm mostly looking for in this class.
These pesky archers are giving me a headache.

This class allows for so many ways to spend your points...
Do I unlock Aegis or will I rely on arcane earth?
Do I unlock as many skills as I can to be as diverse as I can or do I concentrate on a few arcane trees, keeping my char a bit more mana-efficient so that I can unlock a related spell tree?
And a very puzzling part: where do I spend my bloody stat points? I can use everything! Alright, I doubt many people will spend in Cun. And with the defensive skills available you can afford to leave your hit points a bit lower. Which just leaves Str for unlocking skills/more damage, Dex for accuracy, Magic for spellpower and Willpower for resources. Skip going for Aegis so I can put points in accuracy and use a bit less Dex?

Currently I'm trying for a Arcane-Water/Spell-Water/Aegis build, with Arcane-Air for damage and mobility. Hope I can get enough mana to keep the sustains going while still putting out some damage.

note: healing and healing water are very similair. While I'm used to that with mages (beam of arcane, fire or lightning damage?) Perhaps you can add a bit more difference there. Such as a small elemental resistance buff for a short duration after use in trade for some of it's healing power. Or 2*Talentlevel stamina.

MisiuPysiu wrote:Hope You fix the bug soon. The skill is what I'm mostly looking for in this class.
These pesky archers are giving me a headache.

Actually, the part that swaps accuracy for ranged defense *does* work. So it should help with archers somewhat. Remember though, its not a 100% defense, you're just substituting one stat for another. You need to have a significant accuracy investment.

NEHZ wrote:This class allows for so many ways to spend your points...
Do I unlock Aegis or will I rely on arcane earth?

I may be removing Aegis from the class in the near future. I left it in since I was in a discussion with Grey on whether the class still needed or not. I'm personally of the opinion the current defensive options are more than enough and that the Aegis tree is no longer needed by the Arcane Blade class.

NEHZ wrote: Do I unlock as many skills as I can to be as diverse as I can or do I concentrate on a few arcane trees, keeping my char a bit more mana-efficient so that I can unlock a related spell tree?

Also, don't forget that Arcane Combat's damage effects are dependent on the number of talent points in the corresponding elemental tree. You'll notice a tree with 20 points in it doing more damage than a tree with only 4 when in the corresponding stance.

I'm glad my attempt at trade-offs is working. Clear cut decisions are boring.

NEHZ wrote: And a very puzzling part: where do I spend my bloody stat points? I can use everything! Alright, I doubt many people will spend in Cun. And with the defensive skills available you can afford to leave your hit points a bit lower. Which just leaves Str for unlocking skills/more damage, Dex for accuracy, Magic for spellpower and Willpower for resources. Skip going for Aegis so I can put points in accuracy and use a bit less Dex?

Dex also directly affects Arcane Combat's trigger chance, which can be a good chunk of your damage per turn. But Arcane blades have always had that problem. Only now they don't have Inner Power to give +11 to all stats.

NEHZ wrote: Currently I'm trying for a Arcane-Water/Spell-Water/Aegis build, with Arcane-Air for damage and mobility. Hope I can get enough mana to keep the sustains going while still putting out some damage.

note: healing and healing water are very similair. While I'm used to that with mages (beam of arcane, fire or lightning damage?) Perhaps you can add a bit more difference there. Such as a small elemental resistance buff for a short duration after use in trade for some of it's healing power. Or 2*Talentlevel stamina.

Out of curiosity, are you going dual wielding, 2-handed, or sword and board? Water and Air both should make full attacks with their skills, so if you have an offhand weapon, you'll attack with both. Unlike the Earth and Fire trees. Plus Air Stance provides lightning damage per hit.

Healing water was a direct copy of healing. You're suggestion isn't bad. I could split it something like FIREBURN and make it heal 50% initially, then 25% for 2 more turns. Of course, if Aegis does get removed, its not as big a deal.

Thanks for the feedback.

Currently I'm dual wielding, but that was mainly because the best weapon I found so far was a one-hander. (havn't played a lot with the char yet) I'll probably switch back to a 2-hander if a find a good one, since they scale better while I'm still increasing str to unlock skills and I don't want to put my general points in knive mastery. However, with the way the skills currently play out, I don't have to stick to a single choice between the two. While I'm putting points in Aegis, I don't feel the need to go for armor training and shields. (I plan to put 15 points in Aegis)

I think it's doable to make an arcane blade without Aegis. At least, it'll be easier than playing cursed . The real question is whether there is a need to remove the tree. If you feel like Aegis promotes a playing style that really doesn't fit with AB, remove it. Aegis is a tree that, because of the way it syncs, invites players to put a lot of points into it if they choose to unlock it. Which makes it a large part of the character, making it feel more important than the spell trees.

Dex also directly affects Arcane Combat's trigger chance, which can be a good chunk of your damage per turn. But Arcane blades have always had that problem. Only now they don't have Inner Power to give +11 to all stats.

Playing 2 archmages into the infinite dungeon made me spoiled. They only use magic/will . Alas Blit the stormmage, with Aegis you might take down double elder wyrms 35 levels higher than you, that unique ant's kinetic shield was too much for you. (>1300 physical damage in one hit. Healing won't help against that)

I finally got the Arcane-vetaran/Master Blade talent working as desired. It reflects reflectable spells, both of a beam and bolt nature. It has been updated in the 1st post.

I'm not happy with the resource recovery talents yet, but they should at least allow the other talents to be tested properly. In addition, Arcane Armor is providing a flat armor bonus for the moment.

It also needs a serious number crunching balancing pass. Sustains may or may not be too costly, and I haven't even done per turn damage calculations yet.

However, it should be a mostly functioning class people can play around with, although this addon isn't likely to play nice with other addons.

Got this class running till lev. 18. The Blade Master Skill is neat, i like it very much. Sadly I had to kill the char because of a bug. Tornado strike permanently increases the APR and Crit chance. The time, i realized that, i had 56 APR and 40% Crit.

MisiuPysiu wrote:Got this class running till lev. 18. The Blade Master Skill is neat, i like it very much. Sadly I had to kill the char because of a bug. Tornado strike permanently increases the APR and Crit chance. The time, i realized that, i had 56 APR and 40% Crit.

Sorry about that. I had fixed Tornado strike, then unfixed it by not using a version control system, and now its fixed it again. I swear.

Perhaps I should start marking them with version numbers or invest in a version control system.

I also tried running an Arcane blade up last night, up to 15. I'm posting some thoughts from that play through, to see if other people agree, disagree, or have completely different thoughts.

Things I noticed while trying a balanced Arcane build (some points in all 4 arcane-elemental trees) with No Aegis:

1) I like how it plays. The strikes are providing quite a bit of tool kit, and I find myself using them for their effects far more than for their damage. Enemy regen? Fire Strike. Enemy Caster? Air Strike. Enemy Range striker? Earth Strike. Generally big bad enemy, Water Strike.

2) I find myself stance dancing to Air probably the most, since the accuracy at low levels can help, although the bonuses are also still small, like +7 or +8. Although I also find myself switching to fire when fighting trolls, to leverage the fire damage.

3) Water strike is feeling like a 1 point wonder. It freezes for 2 turns on the signal target hit, which is mostly what I'm after with it. The extra 50% damage for 5/5 doesn't really motivate me, and I'm finding the AoE effects only having a 25% chance doesn't seem that reliable. Perhaps at the higher levels in more crowded maps, but we shall see. It may need to be modified.

4) Earth Shield may or may not need to be toned down. I've been running it at 5/5 and it generally stay up most of the time, and only when I'm in serious situations does it drop - Derth event, Bosses, and a few massed rooms. Outside of those types of situations its up all the time. On the other hand, I can't just stand in the middle of enemies because I am taking damage.

At level 15, with 5/5, it has about 240 hit points and recharges 24 per turn, but I only heal 0.25-1.0 per turn, so I could quite easily die while the shield is at full hit points. So in low intensity situations its 50% mitigation. In high intensity situations its more like a traditional 240 or 300 hp shield with a 30 turn cooldown. I certainly have gotten to low hit points on several occasions.

Interesting to note, after realizing the Tornado strike bug, and restarting at 15 by using cheat commands, the second time I did the Derth event I got completely clobbered although only with starting equipment. Didn't help there were 10 just inside the enterance way, but still. Earth Shield will not save you from everything by itself.

5) Fight with the sandworm queen certainly felt close and I was forced to back out a level, go back down to the fresh queen and also do a teleport escape.

6) I certainly feel the cooldowns choices I've made, as its awhile for most of the attacks. I can do a Whirlwind Teleport, Inferno cleave, Tidal Rush combo, but then I'm waiting 20 turns to be able to do it again.

7) Arcane Combat needs a don't drop below 1 mana clause, as I've had all my sustains drop after a particularly spectacular Whirldwind Teleport + Arcane Combat on 5 enemies when I only had 70-ish mana total.

I've found myself actually choosing to turn sustains on and off based on situation and upcoming mana needs.

9) Aura of fire works really well at low levels against few status inflicting enemies. I have on a few occasions been hit by 4 effects in a single turn and find myself slowly recovering. And certainly at 1/5 points, I feel the loss of the hitpoints.

Great to hear, there is progress in developing the class.
Hope, a new updated version will be coming soon. I'm looking forward to the revoked Arcane Armor Skill (the one with the % increase of armor).

One question - which kind of spells can be reflected back to the caster? Is it all beams and bolts? any other? maybe blast spells?

MisiuPysiu wrote:Great to hear, there is progress in developing the class.
Hope, a new updated version will be coming soon. I'm looking forward to the revoked Arcane Armor Skill (the one with the % increase of armor).

One question - which kind of spells can be reflected back to the caster? Is it all beams and bolts? any other? maybe blast spells?

First, to clarify, spells are deflected away harmlessly. While the code base can support reflection back towards the enemy, during discussion in the ideas thread, I was convinced that would be too excessive. Think of an Archmage player running into a Arcane Blade NPC and suddenly getting his critical manathrust back in his face. What is coded now is closer to evasion against spells, with chance to hit determined by accuracy and spellpower.

From the previous thread in the ideas section of the forum, here is a list of all talents with the is_spell and reflectable flags set to true:

Martyrdom (bolt)
Moonlight Ray (beam)
Searing Light (hit)
Turn Back the Clock (bolt)
Dust to Dust (beam)
Quantum Spike (hit)
Temporal Wake (beam)
Rethread (beam)
Time Skip (hit)
Drain (bolt)
Sticky Smoke (bolt)
Dark Torrent (beam)
Flamespit (bolt)
Rune of the Rift (hit)
Water Bolt (hit)
Water Jet (hit)
Void Blast (bolt)
Lightning (beam)
Chain Lightning (bolt)
Manathrust (bolt < 3) (beam >= 3)
Dig (bolt)
Stone Wall (bolt)
Flame (bolt < 5) (beam >= 5)
Invoke Darkness (bolt < 3) (beam >= 3)
Channel Staff (bolt)
Earthen Missiles (bolt)
Shock (bolt)
Congeal Time (beam)
Time Prison (hit)
Freeze (hit)

Bolded lines are ones which are bolt effects in addition to being reflectable. A few effects you might expect are not actually on that list due to lacking reflectable=true, things like Strike and the NPC Elemental Bolt powers. So perhaps a pass should be done to consider if other abilities should have the reflectable flag.

The only real way to know is watch in game and see if deflects or go code diving looking for the appropriate flags in the talent definitions.

Hirumakai wrote: What is coded now is closer to evasion against spells, with chance to hit determined by accuracy and spellpower.

How does the spellpower affect the chance of reflecting the spell?

On a different note - I noticed, the disarm resist scales very poorly with the blade master skill. Its 0%/0%/1% for the 3 first talent levels. Is it indended? If so, its better to invest into plain Accuracy talent after getting BM talent to level 3, course you get 6 accuracy back and BM only increases reflecting chance by 5acc/talent level.

MisiuPysiu wrote: How does the spellpower affect the chance of reflecting the spell?

On a different note - I noticed, the disarm resist scales very poorly with the blade master skill. Its 0%/0%/1% for the 3 first talent levels. Is it indended? If so, its better to invest into plain Accuracy talent after getting BM talent to level 3, course you get 6 accuracy back and BM only increases reflecting chance by 5acc/talent level.

The same roll that determines whether your hit or not with a melee weapon, i.e. Accuracy vs Defense, is the same type of roll used to determine spell reflection, except in this case its Accuracy vs Spell power. If accuracy wins, the spell is deflected harmlessly, otherwise it hits as normal.

Currently, for each 1 point difference between Accuracy and Spell power is a 5% chance improvement in that side's favor.
Although there's an effort to get a new chance to hit scale implemented where +/- 20 is 100% and 0% respectively instead of +/- 10. That is being championed and done by other people however.

Disarm resistance was an info display bug. I forgot to multiply the resistance by 100. If you look at your character sheet under the defense tab, it should indicate the proper resistance.

Ok, all clear now
So it does make sense to invest in the blade master talent after level 3
If the new version (with the corrected Tornado Strike) is available for download, ill give this class another go.
Lets see how this class plays in far east...

Modifications in the 6th iteration:

1) Arcane blades start with 1 point in each of the Elemental strikes, 1 in Arcane Combat, 1 in Arcane Combat, and 1 in Weapon Combat, for a total of 5 Class and 1 Generic.

I'm open to suggestions on what the starting talent points distribution should be, as 6 starting points is a bit on the high end. Berserkers start with 2 class and 3 generic, Bulwarks start with 2 Class and 4 generic, Archers start with 4 class, 1 Generic (plus Shoot), and Brawlers start with 2 class and 2 generic. Currently, Arcane Combat has a mana sustain cost of 0 in addition to its stamina sustain cost of 20 to force a mana bar to spawn for the character class.

2) Arcane Combat current settings:
Chain Lightning effect max targets set to 2/3/4/5/6.
Fire Cone effect set to 3/4/5/6/7 radius
Earth Ball effect set to 1/1/2/2/3 radius
Water Beam effect set to 6/7/8/9/10 range
Damage is set to t.modifiedCombatTalentSpellDamage(self,t,eff_talent_level, 25, 250), where its exactly like CombatTalentSpellDamage, but the effective talent level is set to all the talents in the approriate tree skill levels / 4. I.e. with Fire Strike at 5/5, Inferno Cleave at 5/5, Aura of Fire at 5/5, and Mark of Fire at 5/5, the effective talent level is 5 for the damage calculation.
Mana cost is set to 10, modified by fatigue as per spells.
The talent has is_spell set as well as reflectable=true.
Chance to trigger same as the old Arcane Combat, except that it only triggers on main hand hits.

This seems to provide a respectable damage range. Its hard to max without heavily specializing into one tree, and then you need to stay in that stance for a majority of the time. Assuming a balanced build, you might have 10-12 points in each elemental tree, for an effective skill level of 2.5 to 3 for damage purposes.

For comparison, Flame has a mana cost of 12, and a damage range of combatTalentSpellDamage(t,25,290). Flame does roughly 16% more damage for 20% more mana, but will generally also have a higher skill level. My old arcane blades always had a 5/5 flame, which would do roughly 37% more damage than a 2.5/5 flame.

So overall, the skill likely does between 16% to 50% less damage per swing, when compared to a flame spell, with a 20% lower mana cost.

3) Dropping Arcane Armor from 50%/100%/150%/200%/250% down to 30%/60%/90%/120%/150%. Earth stance plus Cuirass of the Thronesman with 5/5 Arcane Armor and 10/10 points in Armor training was pushing past 150 armor. For a typical massive voratun armor with 16 armor, the skill will provide -15% fatigue and 24 armor, which seems more reasonable to me than 40.

4) Modified Arcane Stamina to provide 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 stamina regen per turn per active sustain. Early game will be a bit weaker than quick recovery, while late game it potentially can be about a factor of 2 stronger - although that requires a generalist type build with points scattered in many trees.

5) Tweaked some of the sustain costs and cooldowns. Whirlwind Teleport, Tidal Rush, and Rolling Earth all have 18 turn cooldowns now. Master Blade sustain cost dropped to 30 stamina and 30 mana. Arcane Stamina sustain dropped to 20 mana.