The 1.00 Tweaks Topic

[SageAcrin]

1.00 of ToME4 is right around the corner(for some given definition of right around the corner involving one unit of DarkGod time)!

The upcoming version(s) are going to be more about tweaking and bugfixes than standard updates, as I understand it.

While bugs should probably mostly stay in their own topics(to make them easier for DarkGod to keep track of), any tweaks to gameplay or odd, semi-buggy behavior should be tracked down and beaten into compliance, and it would be easier to keep changes on that level in one topic. (As opposed to major changes like classes, new areas, etc., which should have their own threads.)

Some random things I've thought of;

- Rares(The items).

Currently, Rares are in a state of near-uselessness in my opinion, after their tweaks downward-in my runs since, the only rares I've found myself using for more than a short period are tools, and even they usually are discarded by midgame. It's kinda a shame-they're cool.

Possible solution: Well, you could buff their traits but then they'd buff artifacts(which use the same traits). A better idea would be to have a simple ego appearance rate based on tier, I'd say. Tier 1s are unable to get an ego, Tier 2/3 can generate one green ego, and Tier 4 can generate one/two, and Tier 5 always generates two or a single higher tier. This makes them consistently interesting items, while not making them just randarts.

- Skill balance. (Prodigies in particular, right now.)

I'd like to expand on this later, but there definitely are some tweaks to this I've thought of. It seems like a bit much to put into an opening post, though. Thankfully, it won't be as big as some of my earlier efforts. But if anyone else has some ideas here, that would certainly be good.

Some minor thoughts I've had;

-Shalore/Thalore EXP penalties. Are they really necessary? 35% is a lot and in Shalore's case it's compounded by an HP penalty. Are those races really good enough to deserve it?

-Chronomancers are pretty much useless if you're not AM, as escorts go. Spin Fate is +5 to all saves if you've had them repeatedly checked-not completely useless, but much worse than many, many skills-and Precognition requires actively triggering Anomalies. Which is pretty rough. I'd much rather see them get Precognition/Moment of Prescience instead of Spin Fate(which is best off as a heavy invest skill) and see them get Spacetime Tuning free with either. (This is easy enough-the code's in a few other skills).

-Adventurers. Mostly good right now, but it feels like you ought to get Refit Golem with something(Either Golem tree-starting skill if you want to make it simple, Runic Golem if you want it more balanced). I believe you get a Golem generated by just using Refit, so I think that works fine from there.

Similarly, they're missing any way to get Spacetime Tuning(would be fixed with the Chronomancers fix) and Beyond the Flesh/TK Grasp. The latter could be assigned to any mindgrasp using skill, but another way to do it would be to place them onto Greater Telekinetic Grasp.

Also, it feels like unlocked skills should be sorted to the top of your skills, mostly to make Adventurers far easier to deal with, but it's also just plain tidier. You don't have to scroll through skills you'll never have that way.

-You know, maybe the Room of Death should have a special warning. Maybe a nice sign near it?

-The Merchant store in Last Hope sells randart versions of nearly everything...but, not bullets or arrows. It's kinda a shame. I'd like to see him add those options.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure I'll come up with more. But this isn't meant to just be my topic-anyone else with tweaks, suggest them!

[richardhawk]

Reserving a post to expand as things come to mind.

Backstab (Cunning / Dirty Fighting) is a fairly worthless skill in its current form. Proposed fix to make it usable: Make it a +damage% against positionally impaired targets (stun, daze, pin, confusion, blind).

"Stunned by the gloom" still puts instant talents on cooldown. I think it should work like normal stun does to be consistent.

The cooldown increase hack for Arcane Blades should be removed. It's on three spells, it's wildly inconsistent with the otherwise elegant skill system, and they're in no danger of eclipsing Archmages especially now that the latter have advanced trees for every element.

Shadow Feed still has no reason to level it beyond level 1. Arcane Feed had a nice buff, so I'd propose a symmetric one to Shadow Feed: have it buff your attack and spell speed. Something like TalentLevel * 1.5% would be balanced, I'd think.

Ring of Growth should increase size category, as a fun bonus you'd expect from the name.

(to be continued)

[Grey]

Good call on this topic, I just hope it doesn't get derailed by petty discussion. Word of advice for everyone - DarkGod usually knows what he's doing, so no need to object to ludicrous suggestions by some unless you have a better idea in its stead.

And my tweak request: Give Arcane Blades the Two Handed Maiming tree initially locked.

[SageAcrin]

I'd like to see them get a sword/shield and dual-wield tree if they get a twohander tree(both locked). I'd suggest Sword/Shield Defense(for interesting tank pseudo-mage builds) and dual weapon offense(for, well, stabbing things), and that the rating be low(1.0 or 0.9).

I'm not against it; I just like them not having a primary weapon by default.

[SageAcrin]

Okie-dokie, here's my thoughts on the current skill balance. I'll divide this and Prodigy ideas into two posts.

As a note, I've only ran a few characters through with prodigies on, and the builds I did run had fairly obvious builds. If people have experience or differing opinions on that section, people suggesting so would be good.

Skill thoughts-

Disclaimer: These are mostly my opinions. The game's been changing enough so that it's hard to get hard statistics for some of these-though if anyone wants to, I would really appreciate it! Discussion is good, of course.

And this is a lot shorter than last time, I think. I don't think there's many bad skills anymore.

-Backstab and Cripple.

Backstab is a case of win more-if you can already stun someone fairly consistently with your stun, it's usually going to lose. In order to be a balanced skill, it needs some sceondary effect. Worse, it's kinda appealing from a certain standpoint-it creates big numbers, and looks thematic and powerful when you're early and most things don't resist Stuns.

As such, it probably needs a lesser effect against the not-Stunned.

Having it grant a smaller crit impact normally would be good, but Lethality already does that. Maybe some physical resistance penetration or APR? That fits pretty well. Some minor disabling effect chance could fit as well, or even just a damage bonus.

Cripple still suffers, even with a big cost reduction since the last time I mentioned it, from just not having a great impact. The %based impacts are based on modified Accuracy and Physical Power, which then get remodified-so, if the target has 80 modified physical power, and you drop it by 30%, they drop 24 unmodified physical power(which is, after modification, closer to six points).

And even if they did, it would still be fairly dull as an impact. An idea I can mostly credit to tiger_eye is giving it, instead of a powers drop, a physical/magical/mind attack speed penalty status. This is certainly a lot more interesting. Regardless, it feels like it should have a higher damage mult(maybe 0.9->1.8?) to encourage leveling it more.

-Trap Handling.

Probably should be rolled into one of the old skills in the tree(Piercing Sight or Heightened Senses) and replaced, or modified into a new skill and replaced.

With traps being so rare now, detecting and removing them is of less value. Given the theme of the Cunning/Survival tree being things that keep you alive, and given its universal nature, maybe a mobility skill would work, but there's a ton of those out there.

An interesting idea could be having it grant a short term stealth skill with a long term cooldown. Hide/Vanish, or something like that, for a name. Rather than being a long term sustain, it would be a stealth status. Still breaks with damage, but would make an interesting pseudo-escape, pseudo-mobility skill, and would help make the category's near-universal nature more interesting.

-Shadow Simulacrum and Temporal Clone could still use the ability to clone bosses. Since Inner Demons works fairly well this way(though Inner Demons its self may be a little too strong still, but I would say that's a matter of making unlimited clones), I see even less of a problem with this change. A reduction in duration against bosses would be fair.

-Grappling skills and Unarmed Discipline could use work. Grappling damage is relatively far below striking stance attacks(as of b43, where I'm going through a Brawler right now) and only has a real use right now for the Silence effect, in my opinion, while Unarmed Discipline is one of the least used and most shaky skillsets in the game and probably should have its raw statistics damage formulae replaced with either a modified version of Skullcracker(using boot costs instead of headgear) or just weapon multiplier damage.

Currently running a Brawler, I considered the Grappling skillset only for its effects on the final fight(and ultimately ruled it out in favor of another Generic skillset-Brawlers are kinda low on those), and never considered Unarmed Discipline once. They're kinda iffy, to me.

I think Edge was thinking about overhauling Brawler somewhat, though, so maybe this is more of a later versions thing.

-Solipsist's Discharge tree-specifically, Mind Storm, but a lot of the tree revolves around it. I believe I suggested this somewhere else, but since it's on the level of a tweak-Making Mind Storm work with Dream Forge/Smith skills, basic physicals and movement would create a really funny sidegrade build for Solipsist that ties together the weaker physical and Discharge setups into a neat character build.

The simple way to do this would be to create a flag similar to how there's skills that don't break stealth, then attach that to the appropriate skills.

-Fears tree on Cursed/Doomed. Generally kinda iffy-the best uses I've heard involve winning the ambush-which you don't have to win. I think Benli was already planning on a full overhaul of this that would be better for post 1.00, though.

[SageAcrin]

-Prodigy thoughts:

-Physical attack talents(You Shall Be My Weapon!, Massive Blow, Windblade, Giant Leap):

These are cool skills! Except they are available to people with 20 levels of stamina skills.

The classes that get these usually get a 200%+ multiplier attack skill. Berserker has relatively few skills that fall under this range, but most characters generally get a active talent about as strong as one of these, except for Giant Leap(which is a fairly unique and powerful mobility skill).

Firstly, I don't really see a need for the Stamina skills req. If an Alchemist wants to use Massive Blow and Giant Leap and be the mighty stickbasher, why should they be stopped? It's funnier, and Cursed(which is iffy for Prodigies right now) and Mindslayer(which has iffy physical reliant builds right now) would be very grateful. I can see requiring a Stamina bar for simplicity's sake in coding, but.

For the first three, I'd just up their multipliers. 450%-500%/200%(+200% on hitting a wall)/200%. These are incredible, yes, but Flurry can net 300%, Assault nets around 400% total with multiple automatic criticals, and Windblade would then be comparable to a leveled up Death Dance with a bigger radius. This feels perfect to me. Weapon! should be better than the other skills, simply due to it requiring more strenuous requirements to use.

The only class that lacks a physical skill right now on this level is Arcane Blade...and many abilities are amazing on Arcane Blade, including Irresistable Sun, Flexible Combat and Arcane Might. (Something I approve of. Arcane Blades getting a good lategame once you manage their earlier game issues feels right.) I don't think it's a worry.

-Roll With It:

I haven't tried this, but I have had the most positive opinion of it so far, that I've seen-it's sorta okay at its role of keeping you away from enemies as a mage, but not really controllable enough to keep you in control of a situation.

The hard fix would be to have it roll you two-three squares in a direction of your choice on getting hit. This would be extremely difficult coding and not worth it.

The easy version is to, every time it makes you roll that one square, give you +300% movement speed for the next turn after. This way, every time you tumble, you can sort of "tumble" free or towards the person that just hit you, rapidly, allowing you to have constant control and making the spirit of the skill-that you roll away from the people hitting you-extremely well realized. And it puts it on the same level as other prodigy skills, feels like.

-Swift Hands:

Great concept but weak relatively. Negating the swap cooldown entirely would be reasonable-it was pretty powerful before, but that was before the changes to charms. Even better would be to have it lower the cooldowns on all charms some(25-33%?), as that way it encourages all sorts of swapping.

-Through The Crowd:

Another great concept that isn't as powerful as some other skills. Moving fast through your own guys simply isn't that strong-usually you're pretty safe when you're behind your own dragon or skeleton, doing it really fast isn't that important.

The best idea I can come up with is adding a swap component to your own physicals, so that you can also swap positions with enemies on attack(making this a sustain then might be a good idea. Also, on attack, not hit...on hit wouldn't work, as Necromancer lacks accuracy). This would give Necromancers and Summoners-two classes that really do not like to be sandwiched inbetween enemies-an easy way to get out of a situation.

An idea I got from Torokasi would be to change the name of the skill to Pack Mentality. Then have the skill give physical/magical/spellpower bonuses for each party member within radius 2/3, both to the summons and your character. Sort of like a friendlies version of the Halfling skill Militant Mind. Maybe +5 to each power both ways?

-Spell Feedback:

A cool skill that adds Mind damage retribution...but generally equates to less damage than the other physical boosting skills. This is okay for, say, Doomed or Mindslayer, if they're Antimagic, but that's a small niche.

Rather than adding more damage, maybe adding a short lived status that gives AM failure rate to the target's arcane skills would be interesting? Maybe a 30% chance of Arcane skills failing, for three turns-as long as the CD. This makes it a very interesting offensive/defensive combination.

-Fast As Lightning:

Another really cool concept...that mostly just turns your Movement infusions into CPD+ infusions.

This isn't bad, but they're already basically pretty good-it's not a huge jump.

Of course, there's an easy fix-have this add a status that adds +10% movement speed to your character for every turn that you move(and only move, no other actions), capping at +100%.

That way, even when you're just trucking around normally, as long as you get a good amount of time to run, you're still really, really fast. Plus, you still get better Movement infusions!

Also, a lot of Movement infusions don't hit 800%. So this would mean you could still use the effect, even with lesser Movement infusions. Or be a Rampaging, Surging Cursed and just run through walls, which is also pretty cool considering that you need a running start for it.

-Secrets of Telos:

Sadly, I have to say that the artifact is actually a little weaker than I thought-It's not like it's bad, but it's a little weak relative to requiring three specific artifacts to get. If it was just the Prodigy, it'd be worth it, as it is, it needs a bit more kick.

-Never Stop Running:

Yet another skill that feels like it shouldn't have the Stamina requirement-it's a lot better on a mage, who can get 500 Stamina in passing from Will building and use it as an effective, controllable escape.

20's still kinda high for the effect, too. 10 feels reasonable. It should be a good skill, and I don't think escapes are ever going to feel overpowered from prodigies.

-Fungal Blood:

Probably should be instant. 150~ heals(which, mind, is a figure that requires 100 Con) per infusion(which, at best, you have five of, which you probably won't want to use rapidly in the space of six turns) are kinda low-adding a controllable instant heal instead of one that takes a turn would be a perfect change to this, I feel.

-Blighted Summoning:

Great for the most part, but Alchemists will never, ever use it.

The neatest suggestion I saw was that, in addition to unlocking Drain, have it unlock a Class category with some free investment in it.

For my money, the coolest category for this would be Reaving Combat: Just have him get three free points in Reaving Combat and unlock that category, in addition to getting Drain. Dualwielding Golem! It's a neat sidegrade, and while some of the skills in that tree are a little odd for a golem (The GOLEM BLEEDS ACID BLOOD ON YOU), they aren't odd enough to arouse comment to me.

(Maybe their oil turns to acid. Cleans out the gears as it lubricates.)

-Garkul's Revenge:

Absolutely nothing wrong with the skill, but it is awesomely universal in nature, but has a pretty restrictive unlock.

Maybe it should be "Have the helmet and amulet *or* have all the lores for Garkul", as opposed to requiring both? That way, it makes a great fallback for people caught in decision paralysis. Can't make up your mind? Garkul's Revenge is always there.

And I think that's it! Aether Permeation's already been nerfed, and the other skill I have some questions about the power of, Flexible Combat, I'd like to see people comment on before I say anything. I feel like it's a great skill but I don't *think* it's overly powerful. I could be wrong, though-as I've said before, I'm not great at determining when something needs a nerf, myself.

-Endless Woes:

Not necessarily bad, per se...the impacts are good, in theory.

The issue is, they're attached to weird elements that don't really benefit that much from status. The best Acid sources are Wyrmic(which has many other elements, and probably would want the other element-related skill more) or Alchemist(probably same), and the best Blight sources are Corruptor and Reaver(Which do some of the best damage in the game, and waiting for DoTs often is somewhat counter to their playstyle late. It's not so bad for Reaver though).

Dark for blind works pretty well for Necromancer/Shadowblade...but both can apply Blind other ways, still. IMO, the rates on the statuses should probably go up to 25-30% range to help out their somewhat non-class-synergistic effects.

For a secondary thing, a few elements that could use a bonus aren't represented in either. Might I suggest a three turn Slow (20% slow effect), 30% chance, for Temporal damage over 150? And a five turn (20% confusion power) Confusion effect, with 20% rate, from Mind damage over 150? This'd be a cool idea for those elements.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, and artifacts. This'll be fairly short, as it only applies to a few new artifacts.

-Tree of Life:

Perfectly fine for gameplay, but the graphical effect is so loud that it distracts me constantly and makes me not want to use it when I have another option. Maybe this should be a bit smaller. (Is this just me?)

-Colaryem:

Firstly, this needs to really show its attack speed penalty in the menu, or at least make it very clear that it will go down when you equip it. I've talked to...three? people who had a reaction of "Wait, it's not just 200% speed? I thought it was garbage.".

Secondly, 200% is really high for it. I would suggest 150% base, -1 per strength point, capping at 80%(with the same Size modifier)-this way, it reliably hits 80% on high power twohander wielders.

Even better, have it just hit 80% off strength, then have size lower it by 5% and be capable of lowering it after the cap. That way, you could get it down to 70% or so with size boosters.

-Wind's Whisper:

You know, I forget this cloak exists. That's probably a bad sign. Regardless, compared to Serpentine and Stone Wrap it's very much weak. Maybe a movement speed bonus?

Or, even more fun, a deflect projectiles rate? That's a variable modifier, but only two skills use it(Misdirection and the Mindslayer's Deflect Projectiles or whatever it's named.). I'm pretty sure it can be put directly onto a cloak. A cloak that has a 25% chance of deflecting projectiles into radius 3 would be a neat option.

[phantomglider]

-Shalore/Thalore EXP penalties. Are they really necessary? 35% is a lot and in Shalore's case it's compounded by an HP penalty. Are those races really good enough to deserve it?

Shalore definitely are; +10% crit rate is very nice, especially if you have something that runs off of crits, and Timeless can do dirty, dirty things with the right class.

Thalore, in my opinion, aren't. They feel to me like they're halfway between Dwarves and Yeeks, and generally I'd rather want one of those two. Their first skill is nice but all the others just feel unexciting, and +1hp/level doesn't do enough to push it over the top. I could see them going down to about 20% or even 15%.

[SageAcrin]

Well, for my personal thoughts on the elves comments, though this is more to get a dialogue going than anything...

For Shalore, this is me hating not having HP, I kinda dislike 'em due to that and it is a personal bias towards me being a defensive player.

But in general, I wonder if they're not entirely niche. They have powerful abilities, it's true, but Halflings also have a pretty good ability set(Stuncure, a good defense skill, and a great critical buff) and not as much of an EXP penalty.

Are Halflings as powerful as Shalore on this? Probably not, but they also have a lot more HP and less of an EXP penalty. But at the same time, Shalore mostly reward Dex builders(Grace) and people with positive status(Timeless). The other two bonuses aren't especially better than the Halfling bonuses, IMO.

So they have powerful abilities...for the classes with positive status effects that lengthening really matters for and/or Dex building. Nice, certainly, if nothing else you can extend Regeneration effects(though...regens are better when you have more HP...). But somewhat niche for the powerful effects.

Basically, the more I think about it, the more having less than Cornac HP feels not right. I see the EXP penalty-that feels fitting-but a lot of their abilities reward middling or poor HP classes, which they don't mesh well with right now. Seems like they ought to just have 10 HP, and leave sub-10 modifiers the realm of the Yeek, who are much more suited for them. (And, of course, any possible new races.)

For Thalore, on the other hand, yeah, I just don't see that they're stronger or more incredible in any direction than Dwarves(Halflings have somewhat of a different skill build that makes them harder to directly compare). They have better stat bonuses, different skills that mostly average out to the same spot(IMO. I know some people think Power is Money is straight up better, but I appreciate being able to get a great save skill going by, like, L12), but that are better for different builds, and a little less HP...and a little more EXP penalty for some reason. It's odd.

[5k17]

I feel the (very) early game can be rather harsh on unconventional builds; giving every character the Combat Training tree right from the start (all the 50 gold requirement does is make the first dungeon unnecessarily difficult for them) and letting them choose their type of starting weapon(s) would alleviate the problem.

[Grey]

I'd be all for Combat Training being a tree everyone starts with locked, and then having Shoot something everyone knows by default (or simply removing the requirement to know it for wielding ranged weapons). Then the somewhat unintuitive shop trainer could be removed entirely.

[SageAcrin]

Combat Training being locked/trainer removed would mean -15% allresistance on practically every lategame build that doesn't start with it unlocked, or a required Category point investment to get access to it, and a retool of equipment(off the top of my head, there's about one artifact headgear that isn't a heavy helmet.).

It's not an impossible retool, just pointing out that it'd be a lot of work to do right. Seems easier just to put it on everyone unlocked.

Also, I suddenly remember that the randart merchant needs to have ammo options. That's something that bothers me, since you can get basically anything else.

[phantomglider]

Basically, the more I think about it, the more having less than Cornac HP feels not right. I see the EXP penalty-that feels fitting-but a lot of their abilities reward middling or poor HP classes, which they don't mesh well with right now. Seems like they ought to just have 10 HP, and leave sub-10 modifiers the realm of the Yeek, who are much more suited for them. (And, of course, any possible new races.)

I don't really agree with our opinion on what classes they're good at.

Poor HP (i. e. modifier -1 or less):
Alchemist, Archmage, Necromancer, Paradox Mage, Mindslayer, Solipsist.

Shalore is not attractive for any of these. None of them want to boost Dex, almost all of their good buffs are sustains (PM with Haste and Fade from Time, perhaps?), and they don't have any special bonus from crits, which makes the talent essentially just +5% all damage (though admittedly some prodigies do care about crits.)

"Tough Mages" (pure caster, +0 HP mod):
Anorithil, Corruptor, Summoner, Doomed

Anos, Corruptors, and Doomed are all quite enamoured of the crit bonus. There's not a lot in the way of extension - Providence and Totality for Anos, Vimsense and Sacrifice for Corruptors - but it's still a nice little bonus. Summoners get nothing.

"Light Fighters" (+0hp combatant)
Archer, Rogue, Shadowblade, Temporal Warden

Invigorate is insane with Timeless. The other three all have Evasion and Blinding Speed to extend (which doesn't stack with the Shalore speedboost) and maybe Willful Combat. Rogue and SB get some +crit multiplier, but Rogues can use Shadowstrike which bypasses crit chance and SBs can pick it up.

Heavy Fighters (+2hp or more)
Bulwark, Berserker, Arcane Blade, Brawler, Wyrmic, Cursed, Sun Paladin, Marauder

Here we get to the real meat of it. Sun Paladins and Wyrmics don't get much except maybe a Blinding Speed extension. Brawlers are in the same boat, but they get a better speed boost and Evasion. Cursed get to extend Rampage and like +speed, but don't get much. Bulwarks, Marauders, and Arcane Blades can extend Greater Weapon Focus; Marauders get crit multiplier bonus and ABs have Arcane Destruction. Berserkers, of course, love crit rate and get to extend Unstoppable.

Shalore are usually better on the high-HP classes, even putting aside the fact that their HP penalty hurts less on them. They don't like the poor-HP classes, and they get best use out of their abilities on a number of high-HP ones.

[HousePet]

Re Rares: In my last game (which I almost one) I got soo many artifacts, the rares didn't have a chance of being useful.
Artifact drop rate could be reduced slightly.
Randarts don't appear to follow progression as far as material type goes. Getting a voraton plate randart in the sandworm lair is cool, but should really happen.
Rare/Randart staves tend to have too many melee combat enhacements, instead of something more useful.
A small idea for adjusting that slightly, would be to add the extra damages onto channel staff and any invocable attacks on staves.

Completely aside; Is there anything in game which would suggest the backup bosses exist? They seem to be a secret available only to anyone who has looked in the wiki.

[supermini]

-Fix talent scaling at high levels. It would help with ID a lot (I know ID is not a priority but still), but also with higher difficulties.

-More information in-game about certain things: other tier 1 zones (currently it is implied that players should visit all of them, but unless you ask on the channel or read the forums you wouldn't know, as the quest points you to t2 zones right after your initial ones), backup guardians (just the wiki), where you should go with the staff (it is said in the message after you kill the Master, but that's easily missed, it should be in the quest).

-More ways to deal with magical darkness. Right now only Summertide vial helps, which is silly. The first time I ever reached the final fight, I spent most of it fighting in almost complete darkness because of those darkness demons (I still won but it made fight more annoying than epic). One suggestion would be to let level 5 (or maybe even 6) magical light spells pierce the darkness.

-Less artifacts (in agreement with HousePet above). They should be limited to bosses only (and maybe vaults), not something you can just find off a random dude or on the floor on the dungeon. Make them special, that would make finding the right one for you so much more meaningful.