[1.1.5] Metaclass - Mage Knight (Version 8)

[MisiuPysiu]

The cutoff at 50% is a great idea. the ratio 2:1 (3:1 potentially) is surely better then 1:1. At lev 26 I have 300 stamina (with all the sustains in use, pumping only magic an willpower). In this case it would mean a 300 damage shield. Seems fine to me.
I hope to see the changes implemented (with the heal trigger fix ofc )

cheers:)

[Phoenix1]

Updates complete. Eldritch Aura should now do its job properly, Light of Healing triggers correctly, and I think it should be packaged correctly so the .teaa will work.

[Sradac]

hmm...

Been playing this class a bit and I got to say, it feels really broke. Really broke as in SUPER over-powered. I mean they get celestial / light AND wildfire on top of all their already awesome talents?

I went with a single, 1 handed weapon mostly for style points because, lets face it, its about time a class actually had a focus on a single 1 handed weapon.

I was amazed at how quickly I decimated trollmire with no effort, 49% chance on melee hit to double-cast solar bolt is just nuts.

Something, somewhere, needs to be scaled back.

and getting massive fire and blind resist early on is a bit unbalancing as well.

[Sradac]

and uh, just got phoenix heart. It seems kind of insane as well.

[Phoenix1]

I found the start fairly strong so far as well, although I want to get somewhat further before I start toning things down. Probably going to take the class through the Ambush and see how it does, so I have a feel for how it scales and a better view of what the problems are.

I will note, though, that Eldritch Combat triggers spells at half power (unless with a two handed weapon), so it shouldn't be any stronger than an Arcane Blade would have.

[MisiuPysiu]

Been playing this class a bit and I got to say, it feels really broke

I guess this class gets a pretty strong start but later on it gets more well rounded. The Celestial/Light tree is one I normally take from the escort (if available) so there is no big value added here. You still have to invest a cat. point to unlock it. Wildfire is an overkill. You don't need it at all. First of all, half of the talents there work with spells you don't have access to, the rest is easily replaced by the talents available to the Knight. The res. penetration is also unnecessary, as you get a similar talent in class specific trees.
I agree, the class is powerful but later on, without much of mobility options (one in a locked tree, the other after hefty investing Your precious generic points) you have troubles surviving.

[Avianpilot]

I won't weigh in on balance, but I will say that so far I'm surviving as a Phoenix Knight with the All Rare Monsters addon also installed.

As for Wildfire, I like Burning Wake (it can trigger off of the Solar spells despite the description) and Blastwave. I'd say there is some utility to be gained from a Phoenix Knight having access to that tree. Again, not saying anything about balance, but a Phoenix Knight can benefit from unlocking that tree.

[Phoenix1]

Yeah, probably should make it clear somewhere, but the Phoenix Fire spells do trigger Burning Wake.

My general theory is that the Phoenix Knight talents are (and should be) good enough that it's worth investing heavily in them, and since they tend to lack for mobility (and Phoenix Heart makes more regen quite valuable), also have good incentive to get inscription slots and put a category point into Combat Techniques for Rush.

A Phoenix Knight with an emphasis on blasting, though, can take Wildfire, which combines very nicely with Phoenix Blood and Phoenix Soul (your Burning Wake heals you a little, Cleansing Flames remove effects without damage, and if you max both Wildfire and Phoenix Soul you basically ignore fire resistance). Of course, that all may be too good, despite the investment required, not sure (my test character is going with the native trees).

Meanwhile, a more defensive character might favor Celestial/Light, adding yet another heal, shield, and effect remover/regen to its list of options; weaker ones (well, Providence aside), but without a resource impact, also a strong benefit for a class that is intended to have burnout be one of its big concerns.

Maybe it'd be worth it to simply copy the two trees wholesale, tweak the names, and convert costs to stamina (and Celestial/Light costs to, you know, costs).

[MisiuPysiu]

As for Wildfire, I like Burning Wake (it can trigger off of the Solar spells despite the description)

O, thats nice I have to check it out during my next go with the class.

[James LaBrie]

So, an (surely unintended) major flaw with your usage of stamina only....

....this class can go Anti-Magic. Yeah. Since there's no magical resource barring you from entering Zigur, you can go complete, and as far as my testing has gone....none of the skills are interrupted either. Obviously Wildfire and Light would be if you took them, but this seems like a rather big issue.

My suggestion would just be to simply....flag these as spells? Maybe they are already, I haven't dug into the code to check.

[jilladilla]

So, an (surely unintended) major flaw with your usage of stamina only....

....this class can go Anti-Magic. Yeah. Since there's no magical resource barring you from entering Zigur, you can go complete, and as far as my testing has gone....none of the skills are interrupted either. Obviously Wildfire and Light would be if you took them, but this seems like a rather big issue.

My suggestion would just be to simply....flag these as spells? Maybe they are already, I haven't dug into the code to check.

I've noticed most of the abilities of this class are flagged as spells (its in the description of the abilities)

[Phoenix1]

Slight update posted. Mostly numerical tweaks. In my first run, I was noticing that actually activating the spells, rather than waiting for Arcane Combat to trigger, was not really feeling worth the stamina cost. I lowered most of the costs, and did a modest boost to the damage of the higher-tier Phoenix Fire spells, but made a couple important changes to balance them.

First, all the passives are now sustains that cost 20 stamina a piece, which should eat into the pool significantly at higher levels.

Second, all active Mage Knight spells now give you a condition called "Burnout" to represent the strain of the Mage Knight casting style (using their own physical reserves to power their spells). Burnout lasts for two turns, but new applications stack the duration. If you have Burnout, all active Mage Knight spells add a surcharge of 10 stamina, and this surcharge increases (by 2% of your maximum Stamina) for each spell cast while burned out. Spells triggered with Arcane Combat do not pay the surcharge, and while they do trigger Burnout, they reset it to the base level (10 stamina surcharge, duration 2) rather than stacking it.

So, while a Phoenix Knight can max Solar Bolt, equip a staff, and spam a beam attack every round like an archmage, doing so in rapid succession will quickly exhaust its reserves. Likewise, unloading a Solar Blast or Solar Chain, or popping a Light of Healing or Phoenix Regeneration has a fairly reasonable cost as a one-off, but novaing your full complement of area attacks will probably leave you close to empty.

I also changed Solar Bolt's Burn effect to 10% of the damage for Raw Talent Level turns (rather than 1/3 of the damage for Talent Level / 2 turns). I expect that will help tone the class down a bit at the start (or at least the build I had used, maxing Solar Bolt, equipping a staff, and basically tearing through the starter zones like an archmage). Class will probably still start fairly strong, but that's not really a big problem by my mind.

I'm fairly confident that the intended weaknesses of the class - mobility and resources - are working, because it's the first class I've played that got to Melinda and failed to stop the sacrifice. Just wound up in a catch-22 where I couldn't keep them in melee long enough to kill them quickly, but if I switched to my staff and zapped away, I'd run out of stamina before they ran out of hit points. Although, taking out the second one with thirteen turns to go and on the complete opposite side of the room from the other two probably didn't help much.

[Avianpilot]

Interesting changes. I haven't played with this version of the Phoenix Knight yet, but I'm glad that you're looking into balancing it. I really would like to see this class included into the game (at least the Class Pack) without people thinking it's an overpowered munchkin class.

Gut feeling (as I said, I haven't played this iteration of the class yet): I don't think that you need to make all of the previous passives into sustains, but that's just me.

Also, I'm thinking that giving the class Wildfire as an unlockable tree is a good idea, but Celestial/Light is a bit of overkill.

[Phoenix1]

So far all of them being sustains seems to be working well. It checks stamina growth some, but not so much that it doesn't still increase at a fair rate, if you pace adding in the sustains.

Celestial/Light may indeed be a bit much. I'm not quite sure yet, but I do know that I feel like getting Barrier on this character was a milestone in overall defensive power. Did the same thing I did with my skeleton sun paladin; set it to autocast, equipped Summertide, gives me a decent shield active almost constantly, which is a really solid general purpose defense. Being able to snag Providence with my generics also let me delay getting Fires of Cleansing until I had all my main spells up to snuff.

On the flip side, I do want there to be some variation in build options, and I expect a Wildfire build would be pretty strong (although I realize, not quite as strong as I had originally thought, since you'd probably be piercing your own fire immunity, but it would still be possible to turn Burning Wake into a minor healing battery that also constantly removes effects). It would be a very thematic build, but a powerful one nonetheless.

On the general balance side, I'm strongly considering putting Eldritch Combat back to full stamina costs, and making Eldritch Surge work on any attack, rather than tie it to to Eldritch Combat. As things stand, I've been finding that, while direct casting needs to be rationed some, prolonged Eldritch Combat seems to be leaving me near-maxed more often than not. This way will make it so you don't use up stamina as quickly, but it still goes down steadily while using Eldritch Combat, but you can turn it off and spend a few turns hacking away with just Spellsurge up to replenish.

Might also go back to Eldritch Combat simply reducing cooldowns, rather than eliminating them, and remove the progressively lowering cooldowns of the defense/support spells. Maybe even set them to base cooldown 40. Then perhaps add something so that when Eldritch Combat is off, Eldritch Surge hits also speed cooldowns by some degree. Or maybe let that apply to Eldritch Weapon, but when doing so, that drains stamina some. So basically, depending on what combination of the three you're using, you can be unloading your blasting spells, recovering stamina, or cooling down your talents, as you fight.

[MisiuPysiu]

Before the last balancing changes I had a PhKnight winner. I tried the Wildfire tree and it was a blast. The normal phoenix fire attacs hit for about 240 in the endgame and the burn effect from burning wake added another 4 * 110 = 440. I maximized spellpower later on with telos broken staff and spellblade and the robe of archmage, to profit from the increased damage and went dual wield for the increased number of phoenix fire shots. Every shot, even at half damage did whole burning wake damage. In the endgame mobs had 3-5 buring wake dots on them. Full rooms of monsters were dieing in matter of seconds.
I did not unlock the Light tree, found it unnecessary.
So, yes, the class needs some toning down. But the overall mechanism of the class is very nice:)