ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

lukep wrote:Just starting one, here's a few things I've noticed: (OK, it started as a few, and kind of ballooned)

- You didn't link to the addon, it is here: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/vanguard-class
===Thanks for that, didn't even cross my mind. Adding it to my original post.

- On the birth screen, it only lists the stats that it gets bonuses in, normally all are listed (as +0 for the others)
===Fixed in next update.

- You do not start with a stamina bar, I'm not sure why not.
===Fixed in next update.

- Why is this a Defiler class? It doesn't use Vim.
===I went more by description than resources (What I had in mind almost perfectly matched the defiler description), but this is one thing I'm 100% flexible on. Should it perhaps be another warrior class?

- I like the altered requirements for talents, it forces you into spreading out your points more.
===Thanks, I was going for this and hoping I didn't spread things out too much.

- They start with Shield and Two Handed weapons trees, but no two-hander or shield.
===Fixed in next update.

- For Carpe Commodum, how do the chances stack? If it says 17% chance of two attacks and 7% chance of three, is it 83% one attack, 10% two, 7% three, or what?
===Let's say it says 17% double,75% triple: .17 * .07 = .0119 (1.19%) to land 3 attacks. Basically, after landing the double, you have a 7% chance to then land the triple. Seems low, but they add up fast enough.

- Unless something has changed (or you took care of it), if you use a Tricks of the Trade sustain while confused, you can fail deactivating the previous one, and have two of them up at the same time.
===Upon looking into this, the code in Actor.lua prevents this if the talent is sustained. I will keep an eye on this in my games, and if anyone has it happen contrary to this, please let me know.

- I like the colour scheme that you use for the talent descriptions.
===Thanks. This was more of a personal conceit, but if enough people hate it I will remove it. Makes it easy to see at a glance what changes what.

- It took me a bit to realize that the listed values in the talents that scale with life lost are always showing the current values.
===Yeah, it's a bit hard to communicate concisely. Perhaps I could add something to explain this better.

- Natural Born Killer seems odd to me, as it would encourage swapping to it right before killing bosses (etc) allowing you to gain the full benefits while getting most of the benefits of another one as well.
===While testing, I originally had it so that you couldn't switch while in combat. I removed that because enemies can cancel sustains. Perhaps I can go back to that method, but I'd rather not replace the +exp stance unless necessary.

- It doesn't have much of a place for generic points, or category points. Another generic tree or two from an existing class could work well.
===Category points will REALLY improve the talent lines if you specialize, but I can see the need for another generic skill line.

- Breaking point looks weak.
===One it gets up a bit in points, it can be quite valuable. At the top end, it will negate ~40% of all damage from hits that do ~25% of your CURRENT life. I will keep an eye on this though.

- How does the scaling work when you are below 0 HP? Heroism Infusions could be extremely powerful for them, depending.
===Talents will continue scaling with these infusions, and do indeed make them pretty powerful. In my personal testing, nothing has gotten out of reasonable bounds by this method (and most talents are capped at logical points, such as 100% for armor hardiness, etc). If players report this is too powerful, I am open to changing it.

- I only started with 1 stat point, instead of 3?
===Auto requirements for using a shield reduce this (Bulwark also has this effect).

All right, now to try actually playing one. (dualwielding, focusing on crits, Critical Massacre, and Insult to Injury)

EDIT: after starting:
- Combat Training nerfs?!?
===This is compensated by the passive talents. This class is meant to be powerful at low healths, not all the time. By the time you hit a reasonable amount of health missing, you not only regain these stats, but surpass them.

- wow, all of the talents have long cooldowns.
===The cooldowns are heavily decreased by their respective stats. At first they seem high, but they will lower considerably as you level up. I will keep an eye on these as well.

- Permanent stat increases from using skills is farmable, but could work well...
- Critical Massacre is totally farmable, I got a Stone Troll (and myself) into a Font of Life, took off my mainhand weapon, and held down the move key. We both regen life faster than we kill each other, and I'm getting occasional crits. I figure in about 10 hours, I should do enough damage in a crit to kill the troll, then I can rampage over everything.
===I considered this, and thought about making it take longer, but I decided that if players want to do this, it's a conscious decision on their part and one step below using the console. I could tweak this a bit, but if it takes even 2 hours, that demonstrates a thought process and dedication beyond my willpower to counteract. If you have a suggestion, please let me know.

JSands wrote: - They start with Shield and Two Handed weapons trees, but no two-hander or shield.
===Honestly, this is because I couldn't figure out how to add an item to their inventory but not equip it, otherwise they would have all of them to start with. If someone knows the line to use (resolvers.inventory)? please let me know.

        copy = {
                resolvers.inventory{ id=true,
                        {type="weapon", subtype="dagger", name="iron dagger", autoreq=true, ego_chance=-1000},
                        {type="weapon", subtype="shield", name="iron shield", autoreq=true, ego_chance=-1000},
                        {type="weapon", subtype="greatsword", name="iron greatsword", autoreq=true, ego_chance=-1000},
                },
        },

lukep wrote:

JSands wrote: Add this to the birth file:
===It's in the 1.0.01 update, thanks.

For the nerfs to combat training, I think that they are appropriate, but need to be communicated better. For example, make one of the talents that you start with not unlearnable, and have it say "...and also decreases the power of combat training talents by 50%" or something like that.
===I guess my reasoning on this was that most players wouldn't think about what these skills did on other classes, and instead read them and consider their benefits as a vanguard. I can see where I erred on that line of thinking though. The only issue I have is when not automatically using assigned talents (i.e. you get the points but not the talents). Wouldn't this result in some weirdness? (e.g. you level up Armour Training and later take Fortitude 1, suddenly decreasing the effectiveness of Armour Training?)

Code-dove a bit, and I see a few issues:
- The nerfs to combat accuracy, as well as Carpe Commodum and Insult to Injury only apply to player vanguards, not rare/uniques (can rares and uniques be vanguards?)
===I wasn't aware that NPC's could adopt add-on classes. Every check that includes a Vanguard bonus has a (isPlayer) check along with it, so at worst they should just not inherit the ability. Please advise on this if you have further details.

- For the Insult to Injury check, most other sustains do something like: "...self:knowTalent(self.T_EXPLOIT_WEAKNESS) and self:isTalentActive(self.T_EXPLOIT_WEAKNESS) then..." instead of just the second check. I'm guessing there's an obscure reason for that.
==I see what you mean by that, and theoretically I can see the reason for it. While it doesn't seem necessary (i.e. isActive will not return true whether or not they know the talent if it's not active), I can see the wisdom in applying the additional check. Thanks.
Fixed in 1.0.2

- Carpe Commodum and Insult to Injury being in AttackTarget instead of AttackTargetWith was unexpected.
===If I recall, this is primarily due to the noenergy factor. Please let me know if I assumed incorrectly.

- The Critical Massacre check should be able to get moved to a hook (Combat:attackTargetWith), but I couldn't find the crit chance in the passed values, so maybe not.
==Yeah, I had trouble tracking crit outside of this, so this is where it ended up. I am open to suggestions.

- I was expecting double/triple strikes to act more like Greater Weapon Focus, instead of just adding another attack at 100% damage. Not sure what could be done about that though.
===It's probably just the late hour, but I'm missing your meaning here. Please humor me and give me a bit more detail on what you mean.

- you do not need to include the "getHMOD" (etc) lines in your talents, you can call the calcHMOD function directly.
===Thanks. If it wasn't obvious, I am not a programmer, and I learned Lua while I made this mod.
Fixed in 1.0.2

- Critical Massacre could tell you how far you are from your next increase?
===Easy fix. Fixed in 1.0.2

- Unstoppable force does not check pinning immunity
===Intentional, but perhaps not a wise choice? i welcome other opinions on this.

- I was worried that you could get endless attacks from Relentless Assault by using a weapon of the Leech, but I see you can't.
===Yeah, I originally had that problem. Caught that after a few test runs.

- you don't need to use timed effects to give bonuses to attacks within a talent, you can add and remove them manually.
===Another result of learning as I go, and something I'm not 100% certain on how to streamline. If you could provide an example using my code, I'd really appreciate it. (I'm assuming it's close to talents/tricks.lua/stalwart constitution)

- Why do the Tricks sustains have a cooldown of 20, but give themselves a cooldown of 30 when they are deactivated?
===Copy/Paste mistake. Should be 30. Fixed in 1.0.2.

- This is just personal preference, but I like to put as many of the calculations as possible in the talent itself, and then call it from Combat.lua, the description, and anywhere else it is needed. It is much easier to modify and maintain. (also, it allows things like how you modified the combat training skills, but that's beside the point)
==By the time I completed v1 of this mod, I realized this (see previous mention about my lack of skills). The next major version 1.1.0 will hopefully have a bit more streamlined code, including this.

- In general, very good job on coding this class, it should remain compatible with almost anything, and shouldn't affect much (if anything) outside of itself.

JSands wrote:===I wasn't aware that NPC's could adopt add-on classes. Every check that includes a Vanguard bonus has a (isPlayer) check along with it, so at worst they should just not inherit the ability. Please advise on this if you have further details.

         not_on_random_boss = true,

JSands wrote:- I was expecting double/triple strikes to act more like Greater Weapon Focus, instead of just adding another attack at 100% damage. Not sure what could be done about that though.
===It's probably just the late hour, but I'm missing your meaning here. Please humor me and give me a bit more detail on what you mean.

JSands wrote:- you don't need to use timed effects to give bonuses to attacks within a talent, you can add and remove them manually.
===Another result of learning as I go, and something I'm not 100% certain on how to streamline. If you could provide an example using my code, I'd really appreciate it. (I'm assuming it's close to talents/tricks.lua/stalwart constitution)

            self:setEffect(self.EFF_UNSTOPPABLE_FORCE_HIT, 1, {varDamage=mod_Damage})
			self:attackTarget(target, nil, 1, true)
            self:removeEffect(self.EFF_UNSTOPPABLE_FORCE_HIT)

	self.combat_atk = self.combat_atk + 1000 -- 100 doesn't ensure a hit.
	combat_physcrit = combat_physcrit + 1000 -- same for crits

	self:attackTarget(target, nil, 1 + modDamage, true) -- making the bonus damage be here is more consistent with other attacks, stacks more strongly with +damage% modifiers, and does not affect damage-on-hit effects on your weapons

	self.combat_atk = self.combat_atk - 1000 -- resetting values...
	combat_physcrit = combat_physcrit - 1000

JSands wrote:- Unstoppable force does not check pinning immunity
===Intentional, but perhaps not a wise choice? i welcome other opinions on this.

JSands wrote:- Carpe Commodum and Insult to Injury being in AttackTarget instead of AttackTargetWith was unexpected.
===If I recall, this is primarily due to the noenergy factor. Please let me know if I assumed incorrectly.

Emaster wrote:Really fun class, but a bit overpowered on my opinion.

Some bug reports:

1) Calling / indomitable will: Critical Massacre is missing the requirement of hit and run. So you can obtain the second talent without the first one.
===Simple error on my part, thanks. Fixed in 1.0.3.

2) Same problem for Calling / tricks of the trade. None of them requires the previous talent learned. Also, increasing Constitution doesn't increase the effect as described.
===These are not intended to require previous talents, similar to the technique line that includes armour training. Constitution does affect them, but the values are quite small, so it may take a few levels/good amount of Con to see an effect. With 90% of the talents, the relevant stat can increase the power of the talent by 10% per 25 stat, so at 100 con, the talent will be 40% stronger.

3) If you go to poisoned deep water with Pyrrhic Maneuvers you'll get a lua error. Also water jet gives a lua error.
===99% sure this is fixed in 1.0.3. I haven't been able to reproduce it, but let me know if you still encounter it.

Suggestions:

a) Lock some trees (One of each weapon style) and/or maybe Calling / Naked Villany. Or also Supreme excellence and/or Indomitable Will. Investing a category points on these sounds a good pay-off for the permanent enhances.
===I locked the secondary weapon talent skills in 1.0.3. I am considering adding another already-existing talent line to unlock, but I do not want to make my custom lines require a point to unlock at this time. I will keep this in mind though.

b) Limit Critical Massacre: 1 critical hit per turn should be more than enough. Right now wielding two daggers and using unstoppable force gives you 2 critical hits, increasing quickly the permanent bonus against the other weapon styles. Also, shield users get an increased critical hit rate with Assault. Maybe the critical hit from unstoppable force could be removed to make the it more fair.
===Considering this and will most likely address it in the next update. I did not personally find it to be too quick of a growth rate, but I can see a few instances where it might be a bit much. I removed the critical-hit from Unstoppable.

Thanks for the mod!

Judecca wrote:This class seems very cool conceptually, I've noticed one biiiig problem up to Dreadfell though.

Relentless Assault is horrifically, gamebreakingly overpowered. To put that into perspective, I actually just literally instantly killed the Greater Mummy Lord from full hp with it, as well as every other boss since obtaining it. Admittedly this character got a bit lucky (randart voratun mainhand from sandworms, randart stralite dagger offhand from maze, though neither are super amazing in particular) but that's incredibly excessive since I only have it at 2/5. I dunno if its numbers need to be tweaked waaaaay down or what, but it definitely feels like it needs some kinda nerfing.

Great job on the whole though, I really do like the class!

edit: just instagibbed Borfast with it, too.

kemott11 wrote:With my lvl 13 Vanguard I almost one hit the treant in old forest4 with Relentless Assault (I had some t2 green sword of massacre - 30 dmg and shield). Somehow I got frozen on my 5th attack and he had 21 hp left. Surprisingly, I still had 1/3 stamina to use. IMO Relentless Assault should be usable only when under 20% hp and should be still nerfed a bit. You can use it as an opener vs any boss, and if it isn't dead yet, you will have no stamina for some other actives Vanguard has. So, you can make it usable when on low hp, which fits the theme, and maybe give it some limit of attacks or not-scaling 20% stamina cost each attack.
===I'm reworking some thing right now, and this is one of the big ones. I have never had such damage with this skill, but I will continue testing and should be done with a big patch in a day or two. The idea behind this skill was a big frontload of damage at the cost of losing all your stamina (no rest for the wicked popped right after works really well).

Also, you could think of removing Combat Training entirely because at 0.5 effectivness it seems like a waste of points, and with 8 Vanguard's generics you can't really go AM or invest much in racials. You could also let Vanguard use massive armors without requirement (like alchemist's golem) and make the V's generic trees like Tricks of Trade tree, so you can put points in any of them without (for ex. to max armour and weapon dmg ones on low lvls), to compensate the fact V won't be able to have Combat Training talents.
===I could take them out, but you only need 40 generic points to max vanguard passives, and after that you will have a decent amount of unused points. I figured this line was a good use of those points, and I nerfed it a bit to make the vanguard passives the focus. Think of Combat training more as a small boost after you've filled up the important stuff, whereas otherwise you'd just have points collecting dust. Even if you have awesome racials, it really harms nothing by leaving them in for those who do not. As for removing previous talent requirements, I will think on this idea.

BTW, I like Emaster's idea about Critical Massacre. Only 1 crit counted per turn makes it balanced, so it's not like dual wielders will stack it significanlty faster.
===I will probably go with this idea as well.

Edit: One more thing: I'm not sure if you are goig to add something with Vim to this class, but it's more of a Warrior right now. If you are going to make V a warrior subclass, then you should get remove the started shield rune, or just place in inventory, because right now you can't betray escorts to Zigurs, which could be beneficial (it's more likely you will have more mindpower than spellpower).
===Absorb runes are actually a big part of what I had in mind with this class, as being able to hold out at a really low hp% without healing was the driving impetus behind making this class. That said, if the class divisors are based more on resource usage than description, I will be willing to move the Vanguard to warrior.

Keep up the good work!

MisiuPysiu wrote:Hey,

another bug:

The Resist All also is not added to the character.

Cheers.