Here is a full list of changes, as well as some explanation for them:
- Dual weapons/ Precision
Instant cast
It's hardly ever worth spending a turn to activate Precision
Shield offense/ Shield Pummel
Removed the part about the damage multiplier increasing with Strength, as this is false, and correctly tells you that both shield strikes are affected by Shield Expertise.
Shield offense/ Assault
Correctly tells you that leveling the talent increases the damage of the two weapon strikes.
Shield defense/ Last Stand
Also grants 6 + talent * Con * 0.02 life regen while sustained.
Rarely worth spending a turn to use, but the name suggests it should be a talent that requires a real commitment, so instead of making it instant cast just make it worth spending a turn.
Archery prowess/ Pinning Shot
Reduce duration to (3, 3, 4, 4, 5) turns.
Pinning is an absurdly good status effect. In the hands of a player who knows about ToME's asymetrical LOS system, it's equivalent to a full paralyze.
Combat veteran/ Fast Metabolism
+(0.8 + Con*0.014)*talent health regeneration per turn
All heal/regeneration effects need to scale with something besides talent level, otherwise they end up being too strong early game and too weak late game.
Combat veteran/ Spell Shield
+(8, 16, 24, 32, 40) spell save
Equivalent racial talents give +5 to two saves, while the Dwarf racial gives +7 to three saves, so +6 to just one save is rather pathetic by comparison.
Finishing moves/ Haymaker
+(10-15)% damage per combo point you have
Haymaker is mostly for the damage, but the damage doesn't scale very well with talent level because the combo point bonus doesn't scale.
Shadow magic/ Shadow Cunning
Spellpower bonus increased to match Arcane Dexterity.
First, spellpower doesn't actually help Shadowblades that much. Second, even in this form that's still only 6.5 spellpower per class point if you have 100 Cunning; realistically it gives much less. As a comparison, you can get 6.5 accuracy or physical power per generic point with a much lower requirement.
Ambush/ Shadow Ambush
Dazes for 1 turn, checking stun immunity.
Currently all it does is drag the spellcaster, which simply walks away from you before you can do anything. Not much of an "ambush".
Fire/ Fireflash
Reduced radius scaling to cap at 4
Max Fireflash hits the entire screen, and also snipes things around corners too much. Without Spellshaping this is accompanied by the drawback of hitting yourself, but with Spellshaping it's just a "kill everything on the screen instantly" spell. So this is more of a nerf to Spellshaping than to Fireflash itself.
Fire/ Flame
Does not become a beam at level 5
Does way too much damage to also be a beam spell, but this way it's a nice single-target specialist.
Earth/ Stone Skin
Increased armor bonus from (10, 20) to (15, 35).
As a comparison, Carbon Spikes is (20, 50).
Water/ Corrosive Vapor
Increase damage from (4, 50) to (8, 60)
It does less damage than Flame, with nearly triple the cooldown, double the mana cost, and spread out over 8 turns instead of 3. Also it does acid damage, which doesn't benefit from Uttercold and a cryomancer probably isn't going to be stacking +acid damage.
Air/ Feather Wind
Increase defense against projectiles from (4, 30) to (6, 50)
It's limited to archers and even with this it's not going to be enough defense to dodge anything worthwhile by itself.
Meta/ Quicken Spells
Reduces cooldown of all spells by (9, 12, 15, 18, 21)%, sustain cost reduced by 10
With boots of spellbinding, it keeps the maximum below 34%, which is what you need to turn your 3-cooldown spells into 2-cooldown spells.
Phantasm/ Illuminate
Fix blind duration to 4 turns.
For a spell that costs basically nothing and covers a radius of 12, 10 turns of blind is way too much.
Phantasm/ Blur Sight
Increase defense bonus from (4, 30) to (5, 40)
Phantasm/ Phantasmal Shield
Lower sustain cost to 30
A trivial benefit should at least have a trivial cost. It probably deserves a more interesting buff later on down the road, but simply buffing its damage could make it too punishing for melee types.
