Remove AB cooldown penalties

[SageAcrin]

I've seen a lot of complaints about Arcane Blade still, out there.

Now, I'm not entirely sure why, personally. I found them to have a pretty bad mid-game but I got through with them fine. They didn't strike me as bad.

However, I don't just trust my own opinion when I think of stuff.

It has led me to try to think of a good, fun buff for them, and it occurred to me that they have a unique, rather out of place penalty-namely, a hardcoded class negative to the cooldowns on Flame, Lightning and Earthen Missiles. It's odd-nothing else in the game has a skill behave differently from class to class(as opposed to due to category multiplier differences, or synergy with another skill), let alone to the degree of doubling in cooldown.

Certainly, this encourages them to use their basic physical rather than spam those spells-I can get that. But an Arcane Blade is going to be, at best, an extreme sidegrade away from a physical one-if you look at this character you'll notice there's barely enough spots to put Class into for a pure magic Arcane Blade as it stands. And the cooldown impact mostly matters early-later on, an Arcane Blade that is built remotely balanced in nature is going to be relying on their basic physical for the high raw damage.

And early/mid is when they're having the rough times. And an earlygame Arcane Blade is, for the most part, going to still be worse than an Archmage at spraying spells everywhere. They only get two beam type spells, and at lower levels than an Archmage.

There was, I think, a time when the CD penalty made sense, but that was before Archmage's spell category selection was nearly twice as large as Arcane Blade's.

I think it'd be okay as a change, but I'm curious about other people's opinions on this.

[donkatsu]

I agree, not even from a balance perspective, just from the perspective that it is a super weird (and unnecessary) exception to the way everything else works.

[Grey]

There is a functional purpose to it - if you're facing a mix of enemies you can cast flame on one before meleeing the fire resistant ones, ensuring you're not wasting flame procs on red dragons.

But I doubt it will help the class. People don't like it because it involves a lot of hard decisions on where to invest points. There's no easy obvious advancement path like many other classes, and deciding where to put your stat pointscan be especially hard. Personally I think it's one of the attractions of the class! They have a lot more interesting advancement choices than most other classes.

[5k17]

There is a functional purpose to it - if you're facing a mix of enemies you can cast flame on one before meleeing the fire resistant ones, ensuring you're not wasting flame procs on red dragons.

That's a problem that should probably be solved by making Arcane Combat behave more intelligently, not by giving Arcane Blades higher cooldowns.

[Frumple]

More intelligently how, though? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head would be to make arcane combat itself an instant, CD-less talent, so you can specifically and easily toggle it on and off when you want to. Sometimes I actually want to be proccing flame on that red drake, because there's a host of things sitting behind it that are delightfully toastable. I guess if it ran a check of some sort on everything that could be hit by the beam and there's something in the path of flaming death that's combustible...?

[SageAcrin]

It's already Instant and 5CD(and dirt cheap).

0CD wouldn't actually meaningfully change much besides letting you do that. I don't see a problem with that idea.

[bricks]

Perhaps less confusing: provide one sustained talent for each possible spell cast. You could even set a talent on cooldown while its corresponding sustain is active, if you want to maintain the tactical feel.

[donkatsu]

There is a functional purpose to it - if you're facing a mix of enemies you can cast flame on one before meleeing the fire resistant ones, ensuring you're not wasting flame procs on red dragons.

Arcane Combat picks a spell first, then checks to see if it's on cooldown, so doing that won't help you get lightning/missile procs. At best, it will save you mana on flame procs that would do nothing, at the cost of a turn... and mana.

[skein]

The problem with the arcane blade is more basic then that. They can play as just an archmage type and are far stronger that way then trying to be physical. Whenever I play one I prefer skeleton and just double up on mana runes. Then just spam fireblasts(5/5/5/0 fire). Late game I go for the speed bump in lighting 5/1/5, but that is very late game.

The main design problem I have with them is they have this huge stamina bar they never use for anything. If I was putting the class together as an adventurer it would use vastly different trees and that is a problem. Nothing really works together quite right. They should be strength/magic instead of the silly cunning magic they are right now.

Give them the berserker tree instead of the silly cunning technique they have now. The spellpower boost is minimal because of diminishing returns anyway. Then give them staff combat and let them be the primary staff users.

It is certainly possible to run them through but there is no advantage from doing so. If you like the physical whack them style you can do it just as well with an alchemist.

[SageAcrin]

They have two unlockable trees with large Stamina drains in them. Both effects are pretty good.

Their physical damage far exceeds their magical damage lategame, as someone that didn't try to play them as some full armor Archmage.

Properly playing one, IMO, really means leaning on the magical side early and segueing into the physical end late. Arcane Combat physicals are incredibly damaging later on, especially if you invest in Stone(Crystalline Focus works on your basic physicals), but they don't do incredible physical damage until they get their full setup from all their support skills(Crystalline Focus, Arcane Destruction, Arcane Combat and a lot of Cunning) going.

Magical Combat is one of the best trees in the game, with a 15% critical boost to two kinds of damage skill and a spellpower booster on top of a great physical power booster. I definitely do not support that getting pulled for any two-hander trees, especially since Arcane Combat's in that tree, the thing that makes Arcane Blade both most distinctive and gives them the main fusion of their playing styles.

(And Arcane Combat is the thing that makes them not the "whack them" style that an Alchemist has...)

Also, as someone that ran a dedicated Staff Adventurer using a lot of Arcane Blade skills? It's a terrible physical fighter until lategame. Staffs don't make good damage relative to anything but "filling the turns until your other resources refill" until you hit the East, and we already have a class that does that with them(and several others that make good use of the tree).

You'd be making them more boringly linear, not less, and you wouldn't be improving them, not short term and not long term. It's a bad plan.

I suppose if Arcane Blades must have a specific physical weapon tree, I'd support them getting the Two-Handed Maiming/Sword and Shield Offense/Dual Weapon Defense trees locked at 1.0 or 0.9. But I don't see why they need any specific physical trees still-they hit harder than a Berserker in general, they just have less flexibility on their physical end...which is made up with the magical end. They're a fighter/mage, not a fighter or a mage.

Basically, I don't see a problem with Arcane Blade that some tweaking won't cure, still. If people are having a hard time getting one off the ground, maybe having more normal spellcasting will help, and it would fix a weird inconsistency with the rest of the game. Adventurers are, for some strange reason, better at casting Flame, Lightning and Earthen Missiles than AB, and that's just odd.

[Grey]

They used to have the Two-Handed maiming tree and it worked rather well for them - too well actually, which I think is why it was removed. Having it back but locked at 1.0 would certainly be good and would allow more options for class builds.

[Avianpilot]

I'd certainly like them to lose their cooldown penalties. Unless my observations are incorrect, PC Arcane Blades are the only ones that have the penalty -- NPC ones do not.

[SageAcrin]

Two-Handed Maiming got removed because it caused them to have an extreme bend towards one style of play.

At least, assuming DarkGod agreed with my suggestions, in which I suggested the swap for the Dirty Fighting tree.

I feel if there's a problem there, it should be amended by making Dirty Fighting stronger and not by instantly forcing them into a tree already heavily utilized by another class. No one relies on Dirty Fighting much, otherwise, nor do they use it's non-weapon-specific utility(Most other classes that get the skill have very clean two-weapon bends), and it's an interesting tree. If the problem is that it's not good enough, the tree should be buffed, not changed to another tree.

[NEHZ]

I'd be more interested in Dirty Fighting if the first skill scaled with cunning instead of dexterity. With so many places to put stat points, I'm not putting any in Dex. Considering how saving against stuns work, not having the maximum stun chance on your skill will mean it's worthless when against enemies who you want it to work against the most. And the second skill needs that first skill.
Unlike for example shield bash, which can be usefull even against enemies immune to stun, failing your stun with this skill also means you deal less damage.

[Frumple]

Ehn... if it helps any, dirty fighting's stun chance seems to scale off accuracy, not dexterity, at least if I was reading the code right. Like a lot of the "scales with Magic" ones (that actually scale with spellpower), the talent's description lies. Dexterity boosts th'chance, yeah, because it boosts accuracy, but your dex stat is not actually what's being checked against.