ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Using Alchemist's Acid Infusion with Channel Staff drastically reduces damage, unless the staff is commanded to do acid damage itself. It seems to be doing only the x% damage it converts, without remaining original damage. Haven't had a chance to test the other infusions or higher levels yet.

Yeah, that's how the infusions work on any fire damage. It converts at a loss. If your staff's doing anything but fire, the conversion won't occur.

The reason this doesn't happen with your bombs is that the infusions flat out change the damage your bombs are doing. It doesn't convert from fire to the infusion element, it just replaces it.

But my staff is fire. It's a net loss on damage done. As per the tool tip, it should be taking that fire damage, reducing it by 15%, and adding 15% acid. As it is now, it's doing ONLY the 15% acid damage, with zero fire damage.

The idea behind infusions was (at least from everything I've come to assume) was to give diversity to Alchemist damage output. The way it is now, I'm doing pure fire damage, or pure acid damage. It just doesn't seem like it's working the way intended.

It would be nice to change it that way, but it's been a flat conversion to X% other damage since inception. 15% acid is just 15% acid. It only really gives good gains on anything except bombs with some investment.

Toss up a thread over in ideas, though. It's working as designed, but certainly I'd like the partial conversion more

I guess I'm not explaining it well.

Before, Infusions (Acid, Lightning, Ice) modified bomb damage and other fire damage, changing it by x% (less fire, added other damage). Now, it changes bomb damage completely (100% acid, lightning, or ice), and keeps the fire damage modifiers. This is NOT the problem (never was).

The problem is, after this change, Channel Staff is broken. Before, if my staff did fire damage, it did x% less damage, and added x% addition damage of another type. It's now doing ONLY x% damage. If I was doing 50 fire damage on Channel Staff, and then sustained 15% Acid Infusion, it now does ONLY 7-8 acid damage. No fire damage at all. If I Command Staff change to anything other than fire, it does 50 whatever damage.

I am NOT arguing that the skill should change, or some random idea. The skill was working fine before. It is not anymore.

Edit: Maths.

I don't think it ever worked that way, at least not in the past 20 betas.

Hmm. I could've sworn it had the same % change modifier on bomb damage too. Thought it was a recent change. Guess not.

Channel Staff and Alchemist Infusions with fire staves still seem very broken though.

Then, if you're gonna use infusions, don't have your staff set to fire damage. This used to be more of a problem but Channel Staff makes it a million times less problematic.

lukep wrote:I don't think it ever worked that way, at least not in the past 20 betas.

Yeah, I just double-checked via Arena mode back when, near as I can tell, the change was first implemented (b28, if I'm parsing the SVN history correctly) and it operates exactly as it does now. Replaces the bomb damage type (so there's no conversion and damage loss), converts everything else to the stated percentage. The big issue, such as it is, isn't channel staff but the Heat tree, for which the infusion damage conversion was originally designed.

Like said, maybe throw up an idea thread for the change, or move this one if you can. It'd be a nice change, really, albeit perhaps a little excessive

I posted an inquiry about the same thing. Yes, I guess that it is intended behavior, but the description is not clear that it is a damage reduction to 15% - or a damage reduction to 85% less fire damage.

As it is, I generally find it not worth it to use the other infusions besides the explosive fire one unless I encounter something with a lot of fire resistance, and then I use a turn to turn on and use only one other infusion, and use another turn using channel staff to switch to a different damage type.