Spellsword (formerly Addon reworking Arcane Blade Class)

[OmniNegro]

Here is my most recent. Maxing a talent is better than spreading them out. I basically just use the Earth stance only now.
http://te4.org/characters/26046/tome/4a ... 88ffabd279

One question: What is the "Stone" damage type? Is this just physical that bypasses armor like magic?

[gfder]

I haven't played to far in yet, but there's a couple of things I wanted to discuss.

It'd be nice if you could switch stances by targeting yourself with the respective talents, without them costing any resources or putting the talent on cooldown(I think the Monk addon does this).

Have you ever thought about making the elemental strikes(Air Strike, Fire Strike, etc) proc the same way they proc from Spellsword Combat? For example, have Air Strike deliver the silence effect via chain lightning instead of a ball. This should make them more interesting and unique. You might have to tweak some numbers though, a seven radius cone purifying fire might be a bit much.

I also noticed that the talent Spellsword Combat states, in it's description, that the main hand weapon is what's supposed to trigger the proc, this is a problem because I've noticed the off hand weapon triggering the proc as well. I'm not sure if that's a bug in the code or if it's just a description error. The off hand weapon triggering the proc isn't really a problem, as long as you lower the chance of the proc when dual wielding(like how Arcane Blade is currently doing it). It might just be confirmation bias on my part, but that doesn't currently seem to be the case.

I haven't played that far in yet so I can't really give any meaningful suggestions about balance. The one thing I noticed is that Aura of Fire seems like it might be a bit overpowered. I understand that it has a health cost, but being able to remove a negative effect each turn is really powerful. It could be fair to give the effect a cooldown, so it can only trigger every 2-3 turns. Another idea I had, would be to change the talent, so that when you deactivate it, it cleanses you of all your debuffs and then explodes outwards in a certain radius, dealing damage based off the number of debuffs you have on you, and of course have it do the burning thing to enemys while active. Keep in mind that this suggestion is coming from someone who's only played through the early game so far, so I might be underestimating the severity of the health cost. I'll see if I change my opinion later, though I'm currently playing on nightmare roguelike, so I'm not sure how much further I'll make it.


Edit: Also, can the tool tip up in the corner for Earthen Shield be changed to show how much life the shield has left? That might be how it's currently supposed to work, considering at the top of the tool tip it says 171/171, the number on the left never decreases though so it might just be a bug.

[OmniNegro]

I notice Earthen Shield never changes the value too. It would be nice to have it work, but I can live with it either way.

I think a 5/5 Earthen Shield should also absorb part of elemental damages. But this should probably increase the cost to keep it up. (I could also be wrong about it not doing that.)

Different activatable talents in the class use different weapons. Earth uses mainhand and shield. Air and Water use both weapons. Fire uses only mainhand. If Fire ever procs off of a secondary weapon, how would you even know? Did you try this without a mainhand weapon? (And does a secondary weapon even count as secondary if it is the only one you have equipped?)

[Hirumakai]

One question: What is the "Stone" damage type? Is this just physical that bypasses armor like magic?

Stone is just a more in character way of saying physical damage. I have in the past been told by DG that saying things like "Ball of Physical" doesn't quite sound right. Note that spell damage (the AoE type burst effects for example) bypass armor. Actual weapon hits, even if its fire or lightning damage, do not bypass armor. The bonus rider damage (say from a Flaming ego weapon or the lightning damage from Air stance) bypasses armor.

It'd be nice if you could switch stances by targeting yourself with the respective talents, without them costing any resources or putting the talent on cooldown(I think the Monk addon does this).

You can utilize the strikes without a target. Just aim at an empty adjacent square, and you'll use the strike and switch stances. If you're out of combat, the resource cost and cooldown doesn't matter. If you're in combat, then you don't get to change stances at a whim. The 8 turn cooldown is intentional. I want people thinking about how they want to switch through stances ahead of time, rather than letting them always be in one particular stance.

Have you ever thought about making the elemental strikes(Air Strike, Fire Strike, etc) proc the same way they proc from Spellsword Combat? For example, have Air Strike deliver the silence effect via chain lightning instead of a ball. This should make them more interesting and unique. You might have to tweak some numbers though, a seven radius cone purifying fire might be a bit much.

I have considered it and it could be done without too much coding. However, I have the following considerations against doing so.

First, the Spellsword Combat procs are there purely for damage. The elemental strikes are there for debuffs. The ball effect allows them (at 4/5 and 5/5 talent points) to hit everyone adjacent to the Spellsword, applying their control effects. This is good since the Spellsword is supposed to be in melee range. For example, changing Water strike to a line effect would probably be a nerf, since freezing enemies in a line down a corridor is not quite as useful as freezing every enemy adjacent to you.

Second, Spellsword combat only procs when hitting a target, which means your in melee. If you could use the elemental strikes with the same AoE effects on demand, you've suddenly turned them into on demand range attacks. Which the class was designed not to have as base. You can get ranged attacks through the spell trees, but that requires a significant investment in terms of a category point.

I also noticed that the talent Spellsword Combat states, in it's description, that the main hand weapon is what's supposed to trigger the proc, this is a problem because I've noticed the off hand weapon triggering the proc as well. I'm not sure if that's a bug in the code or if it's just a description error. The off hand weapon triggering the proc isn't really a problem, as long as you lower the chance of the proc when dual wielding(like how Arcane Blade is currently doing it). It might just be confirmation bias on my part, but that doesn't currently seem to be the case.

That would be a bug if it is procing off the offhand. Originally when the talent was designed, Arcane Blades did not half their proc rate when dual wielding. I was trying to avoid that, and my solution was instead of halving the proc rate, was to tie it to the mainhand weapon. It also makes it less bursty (i.e. a double proc). This a good thing for players, as bursty NPCs are harder to deal with.

Anyways, I'll take a look into it and see if I can fix it.

I haven't played that far in yet so I can't really give any meaningful suggestions about balance. The one thing I noticed is that Aura of Fire seems like it might be a bit overpowered. I understand that it has a health cost, but being able to remove a negative effect each turn is really powerful. It could be fair to give the effect a cooldown, so it can only trigger every 2-3 turns. Another idea I had, would be to change the talent, so that when you deactivate it, it cleanses you of all your debuffs and then explodes outwards in a certain radius, dealing damage based off the number of debuffs you have on you, and of course have it do the burning thing to enemys while active. Keep in mind that this suggestion is coming from someone who's only played through the early game so far, so I might be underestimating the severity of the health cost. I'll see if I change my opinion later, though I'm currently playing on nightmare roguelike, so I'm not sure how much further I'll make it.

Its true that Aura of fire is something to keep an eye on. Its very strong early on, when you are generally only getting hit by a single effect every once in a while. But reducing it to once every 2 or 3 turns won't change that. It just moves up when its limitations become apparent a little - in the middle to late game. Effects can come fast enough it certainly can't keep up, it doesn't prioritize, and taking 3% to 7% of your life each turn adds up fairly quick. Lastly, it has a bad tendency to cut out just when you need it most: when your life is low.

The thing to do is compare it similar skils: Providence (cooldown 30, duration at 5/5 is 8-9 turns, removes 1 effect per turn, heals you, gives you resources) and Unflinching resolve (at 5/5 removes 1 stun/blind/confusion/pin/slow per turn, 80% chance at 100 con, passive). I'm not sure if its overpowered when compared to those skills or not. But I'm hesitant to change it at the moment, while I'm still changing other parts of the class. I'll definitely come back to it when the class settles down a bit more.

Edit: Also, can the tool tip up in the corner for Earthen Shield be changed to show how much life the shield has left? That might be how it's currently supposed to work, considering at the top of the tool tip it says 171/171, the number on the left never decreases though so it might just be a bug.

The number should decrease. I know it can be knocked out by damage, so its certainly keeping track internally. I'll add to my list of things to fix for the next release.

Earthen shield is a damage kind of shield, so it absorbs all attacks. But its lets 50% of the damage through. Just seems like there is a bug in reporting its status.


Speaking of the next release, I have the "Martial Magic" talent working, which is a no cost, instant activation talent which allows you to use stamina as mana and mana as stamina for 3/4/5/6/7 turns, 24 cooldown. It automatically triggers if you mana or stamina drops to less than 1, assuming its ready and not cooling down. This is now the tier 4 talent in Arcane Veteran.

I'm still working on the advanced generic tree, current working title "Martial Mastery". Its a dex required tree. It has the reworked Master Deflection talent (25 turn cooldown, no cost, instant activation, 2/4/6/8/10 turn duration, use accuracy in place of ranged defense, roll accuracy vs spellpower to deflect reflectable spells).

It will also have "Parry", similar to the block talent from shields, but using your mainhand weapon instead. It will have Combat Grip, a passive which provides disarm resistance, and a chance to proc a disarm on cross-tier accuracy rolls. The last talent will be a sustain called "Weapon forms", which allows the user to take up one combat stance out of 4. Similar to how the venoms or elemental stances work. Each will provide a bonus and a penalty, with the bonus increasing with talents points. The idea being something similar to the old tome speed and tactics (Running/Cautious/Berserk/Cowardly).

[Hirumakai]

Spellsword version 24 is now out.

This is combination bug fix and feature increase (which probably means more bugs).

1) Attempted to fix the sustain icon title for Earth Shield to update. I failed. Its apparently a larger bug with the module. See forum bug thread:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=36057

So in the mean time, the first line of the Info description has been changed to a current/max value counter. This is hopefully only temporary until the larger bug is addressed.

2) After looking at my code for using just the mainhand, and the much streamlined Arcane Combat code utilizing built in functions to determine dual wield status, I simply swapped over to Arcane Combat style. I.e. Chance of procing a Spellsword combat attack is halved when wielding 2 weapons. This simplified the code a bit and makes it a bit easier to understand and probably maintain.

3)Some minor updates to a few descriptions, specifically the elemental strikes.

4) The Master Blade talent has been renamed Master Deflection and moved into the new advanced generic dex based tree. It is now a long cooldown, instant cast, no cost, 2/4/6/8/10 turn duration buff which swaps accuracy for ranged defense (if higher) and rolls accuracy vs spellpower to deflect reflectable spells. Not sure if its too much of a nerf when combined with its new prerequisites. Let me know how you feel about this one (if you get that far).

5) New talent at tier 4 of the arcane veteran tree. It is a instant cast, no cost, long cooldown 3/4/5/6/7 duration buff which allows you to use mana as stamina and stamina as mana. It mana or stamina drops to less than 1, it will also automatically trigger (if not cooling down). Thus it will keep mana sustains up if hit by a manaburn effect to 0 mana.

6) New advanced generic dex based tree has 3 new talents.
6a)Parry, which is just block for your mainhand weapon. If elemental destruction is up, you can block pretty much any type of damage (think lightsaber effect), otherwise it can block physical and whatever else the weapon is associated with (damage on hit, resistances, etc). Roughly 20% as effective as a shield per talent point. Fixed 8 turn cooldown.

6b) Combat Grip provides passive disarm resistance, and a passive chance to disarm (2% per point, halved when dual-wielding) for 2 turns. At 5/5, it should keep your target disarmed for about 20% of the time. Not sure if the numbers are quite right for this one (higher chance? lower chance, longer duration?)

6c) Weapon Stances, provides 3 linked sustains. Only 1 of them can be on at a time. These shuffle around stats basically. Dragon stance provides +phys power and +crit, at the cost of accuracy/defense. Bear stance provides +saves/+defense at the cost of crit chance/physical attack speed. Falcon stance provides accuracy and physical attack speed at the cost of saves and physical power.

This last talent is the one I'm most shakey on. It may need to be replaced, or numbers severely tweaked. Let me know. Although the concept of being in "Fire" "Dragon" stance and switching to "Earth" "Bear" stance does sound kinda cool. Let me know.


At this point, I think the class is mostly feature complete. There may be one or two talents that need to be completely scrapped, but for the most part, I think I'm happy.

Now comes the balancing stage I think, where I need to take a harder look at numbers and strength of the effects. And also just play the class a fair bit and see how it feels.

Things I'm looking at that are possibly too strong:
Earthen Shield
Aura of Fire

I'd also love to hear about what talents you feel you don't generally take, or generally don't feel like pushing to 5/5.

[gfder]

I just beat the game with the previous version of your class. Overall, I'd say the class starts off pretty average, but by mid game starts to get pretty strong, and by late game it got fairly overpowered(to be fair, it was only a bit more overpowered compared to my Arcane Blade winner). I beat Amathon at lvl 39 and fought the final bosses at lvl 45(had a really easy time).

I can't link you to the character's webpage because the new version of the addon caused my character to be invalidated. So I uploaded the character dump, in case you're interested.

I'd say Earth and Fire Stance are better than Water and Air. For the Earth Stance, I'd recommend toning down the armor increase and potentially changing the resist all to just resist physical. The armor increase gets quite high and even trumps Stone Skin. I think Fire Stance also just needs to be toned down a bit. Neither of these stances really started that strong, but by end game with high spell power and Elemental Stance maxed the numbers got quite high, so perhaps there's a slightly weaker scaling you could use. Overall, I'd say Water Stance was the worst, there wasn't really ever a time in the game where I actually wanted to be in Water Stance. The bonuses are pretty small and aren't really that useful, and the proc from Spellsword Combat is the lamest of them all. A 10 length beam is a lot less useful then a 7 radius cone, and will very rarely hit more monsters. Water Stance could use some kind of buff. I did put a cat point in Magical Combat, so that might even be swaying my opinion a bit.

Infernal Cleave probably needs some kind of change. It overlaps with Sandblast, except Sandblast is just flat out better than Infernal Cleave. Sandblast has a higher turn length blind and hits in a larger radius. Perhaps just increase Infernal Cleaves damage? Or maybe even make it so it hits all enemies around you.

Tornado Strike could probably have it's buff duration increased. While the bonuses are quite large, none are really that useful for the class. Accuracy is less useful on a class that pumps dexterity, APR is less useful on a class that has magic damage. I think it'd be fair to give the buff a 5 turn duration(at max lvl), potentially even add blind fighting or critical damage% increase.

Mark of Fire I feel, gives a bit to much of a damage increase. Even without it the class has quite high damage potential, with Spellsword Combat and Elemental Destruction. Mix the three together and I was bump attacking for about 3k-4k(with pretty high critical rate to be fair).

Both Aura of Fire and Earthen Shield do seem a bit overpowered. Having an overpowered talent or two isn't really a bad thing, but this class feels like it has too many. I tried to keep both these sustains up pretty much constantly throughout the whole game, and thanks to Aura of Fire, I felt like Wild Infusions were a waste and very rarely used mine. You could nerf their effectiveness, or make them more awkward to use so that you don't want them up constantly. For Aura of Fire, you could make it so it only affects physical effects(or magical); have it have a constant health drain whether it removes an effect of not and with it not being instant cast; or you could make it so the talent also drains your mana and stamina, at like double the rate of the health drain, this would make it so in long drawn out fights the talent would probably do more harm than good. Earthen Shield doesn't really seem that overpowered, but I think a small nerf might be good(the class already has several other healing/defensive talents). You could just nerf the regen rate a bit, down to 1-2%.

You did a good job on the class. All the skills seem to have their place(except Infernal Cleave), and I really like the the stance aspect of the class, and the elemental strike(Air Strike/etc) skills. I probably should mention, I play this game too much and I'm at the point where normal difficulty feels way to easy. So don't take what I say too seriously, I personally think half the classes in the game need a nerf. (I played the character on Roguelike normal difficulty, and died once due to me not paying attention.)

Oh, and I might have a potential bug. I noticed the descriptions for various talents(Air Strike/Infernal Cleave/a bunch of others) don't seem to be affected by increase damage% mods. For example, my character has 84% increase to fire damage and a 24% increase to cold damage, but both Water Strike and Fire Strike(both at talent lvl 4) are listed in their descriptions as doing the same damage and of course, I'm not talking about the weapon% increase mod. I havn't actually tested to see if they deal the same damage however.

[rexorcorum]

Just wanted to point out that I find the Water stance really nice for (at least) starting undeads, providing them with much needed healing. On the other hand I am still running the T1 / early T2 dungeons, so my experience is correlated by that and might be irrelevant for later stages.

Cheers and keep up the awesome work on the mod.

[OmniNegro]

Playing as undead, the heal from Water is still vital in the late game unless you spent points on the undead racial heals like retch for Ghouls.

You may find other ways, but it is nice to have it from the start. It is the first second tier talent I spend a point on in every case.

[Hirumakai]

First, thanks for playtesting the class and providing a detailed breakdown.

I just beat the game with the previous version of your class. Overall, I'd say the class starts off pretty average, but by mid game starts to get pretty strong, and by late game it got fairly overpowered(to be fair, it was only a bit more overpowered compared to my Arcane Blade winner). I beat Amathon at lvl 39 and fought the final bosses at lvl 45(had a really easy time).

Interesting. Originally when I was designing the class, it was to bring the Arcane Blade up to a level on par with other classes (i.e. Bulwarks, Berserkers, Archmages, etc). Do you have a feel how it compares to those?

I can't link you to the character's webpage because the new version of the addon caused my character to be invalidated. So I uploaded the character dump, in case you're interested.

Thanks. Its very useful.

I'd say Earth and Fire Stance are better than Water and Air. For the Earth Stance, I'd recommend toning down the armor increase and potentially changing the resist all to just resist physical. The armor increase gets quite high and even trumps Stone Skin.

Originally, I had envisioned Earth Stance to be roughly half as effective in terms of armor as Shield Wall, and roughly half as effective as Thick Skin. Adding in Arcane Armor to Earth stance should be on par with the armor of Shield Wall. At 5/5 and 100 Dex, Bulwark shield wall provides about 55 armor. Earth stance at 100 Str/Dex/Mag + 5/5 Arcane Prowress would be around 70 spellpower, which with 5/5 Elemental Combat should provide about 32 armor, and 5/5 Arcane Armor with a Voraton Massive Armor should provide ~24 armor, for about 56 total. Stone skin is an armor spell originally designed for a ranged spellcaster. The spellsword is a melee spellcaster, so in general is going to need more melee mitigation than a ranged one.

If you are getting significantly better scaling than what a Bulwark gets in armor, then I probably should look at the numbers again.

I think Fire Stance also just needs to be toned down a bit. Neither of these stances really started that strong, but by end game with high spell power and Elemental Stance maxed the numbers got quite high, so perhaps there's a slightly weaker scaling you could use.

I was expecting fire stance to provide about 40-50 physical power, compared to Arcane Destruction's 65-75, or a weapon mastery which (at 1.1 multiplier) is giving 55 physical power. The stance should be giving around 15-17% critical chance, compared to weapon mastery's straight up 52% weapon damage. How do you feel fire stance compares to Weapons mastery? Does Weapons mastery need to be toned down as well? It seemed reasonable to me at the time since the class doesn't actually have any synergy with criticals except for just more damage, and with a base 50% critical multiplier, a 20% critical chance is only going to be about a 10% (or less) damage increase. Even at with a 100% critical multiplier, thats still only 20% more damage (relative to a 0% critical base). Where as the weapons mastery is giving over 50% more damage.

Lets compare to an already existing class talent, precise strikes. A 1.3 multiplier Precise strikes, with 100 Dex can provide 43 accuracy and 30% crit with a 10% physical speed penalty. Assuming 20% crit cancels the 10% physical speed penalty, its providing 43 accuracy and 10% crit, and I can't generally convince myself that talent is worth it, without some critical synergy. These numbers are roughly comparable to the Fire stance's numbers (although accuracy instead of physical power). Do you find yourself maxing precise strikes on most melee characters? If so, then maybe my value scale is off and I should drop the critical value.

In that case I can try dropping the criticals downs from a combatTalentSpellDamage(t,2,20) scaling to something like 2,15 or 2,12.

Overall, I'd say Water Stance was the worst, there wasn't really ever a time in the game where I actually wanted to be in Water Stance. The bonuses are pretty small and aren't really that useful, and the proc from Spellsword Combat is the lamest of them all. A 10 length beam is a lot less useful then a 7 radius cone, and will very rarely hit more monsters. Water Stance could use some kind of buff.

With your 80 spellpower and assuming 5/5 elemental stance and 1.0 multiplier, you should get roughly 18% heal mod and 37 life per hit. Combined that is about 44 life per hit. With a dual wielding setup, that roughly 88 life per bump attack. After 5 turns, thats the equivalent of a 440 hit point regen infusion. Except you can keep it up all the time. Over the course of 16 turns (cooldown on Arcane Reconstruction or Healing Waters) it can potentially heal 1408. Even if you're only attacking every other turn, thats still 704. The skill is potentially one of the highest heal over time skills in the game, with the disadvantages of not really being burst healing and you need to be making melee attacks. Although, cooperative enemies and a well placed Whirlwind Teleport could in theory net you 704 life. That is not even including the potential increases from prodigies. On top of that it also increases your other healing by 18%.

The proc is intentionally the weakest because the stance is both inherently defensive and its other benefits are what I consider among the strongest of the stances. Ideally, you're using it in a blocked corridor type situation, minimizing incoming damage to one enemy and maximizing heals over time.

I'm wondering if your need for the stance was low because you already had sufficient damage mitigation and health restoration. At which point, any defensive stance is going to feel weaker than to any offensive stance. How much life per hit and healing mod do you feel would make the stance worth while?

I did put a cat point in Magical Combat, so that might even be swaying my opinion a bit.

I originally did all my numbers assuming a 1.0 multiplier. On the other hand, I originally designed the talents against other talents which had their innate class multipliers (i.e. 1.3) as well.

One thing I could do is rescale all the talents to use a 1.3 multiplier. That makes the effect of an extra category point about 5% less. 1.2/1.0 = 120% vs 1.5/1.3 = 115%. It also makes NPCs less scary. That is probably worth while.

Infernal Cleave probably needs some kind of change. It overlaps with Sandblast, except Sandblast is just flat out better than Infernal Cleave. Sandblast has a higher turn length blind and hits in a larger radius. Perhaps just increase Infernal Cleaves damage? Or maybe even make it so it hits all enemies around you.

Sandblast doesn't hit 3 targets with your weapon. Inferno Cleave does alot more damage to multiple targets, but blinds far fewer. But you're right, they do overlap in their special effects. One thing I had been considering is a heal reduction effect. Maybe something that scales from -10% to -50% (at 100 spellpower) and lasts 1-3 turns (or however long the fire burning extra damage lasts - merge it into one damage type).

Tornado Strike could probably have it's buff duration increased. While the bonuses are quite large, none are really that useful for the class. Accuracy is less useful on a class that pumps dexterity, APR is less useful on a class that has magic damage. I think it'd be fair to give the buff a 5 turn duration(at max lvl), potentially even add blind fighting or critical damage% increase.

I like the idea of adding blind-fighting. I'm hesitant about increasing the duration though. The concept behind the skill was that it took plain old melee damage and made it very much like magic damage. The accuracy boost makes it almost always hit (like magic), the high APR makes armor do nothing (like magic), and the critical % - well, that was just there to provide some benefit against low defense, low armor casters. Most of the spell damage you are referring to happens when you melee attack anyways, so its just straight up more damage. At 5/5 its already 3 turns, and that feels like more than enough to me. Besides, its a mini-flurry. Compared to most of the other attacks, it really is one of the most damaging attacks the Spellsword has late game, even with a single point in it.

So I'll play around with adding blind-fighting (which again makes it more like spell damage), but I'm going to hold off buffing the duration for the moment.

Mark of Fire I feel, gives a bit to much of a damage increase. Even without it the class has quite high damage potential, with Spellsword Combat and Elemental Destruction. Mix the three together and I was bump attacking for about 3k-4k(with pretty high critical rate to be fair).

Mark of fire was originally designed to be a pseudo-speed boost. Instead of boosting your speed by 50%, and taking 50% more actions in 5 turns, its makes you do 50% more damage, and slows enemy movement speeds by half. How do you feel it compares to Blinding Speed (5 turns of roughly 50% speed) or Essence of Speed (perma-speed 58.5%). Insufficient resource cost? Too short of a cooldown? Blinding speed costs 25 stamina, mark of fire costs 25 mana. On the other hand, Mark of Fire only has a cooldown of 20 turns, compared to Blinding Speed's 55. On the third hand, Essence of Speed is permanent with a sustain cost of 250. I could try doubling the mana cost to 50.

Both Aura of Fire and Earthen Shield do seem a bit overpowered. Having an overpowered talent or two isn't really a bad thing, but this class feels like it has too many. I tried to keep both these sustains up pretty much constantly throughout the whole game, and thanks to Aura of Fire, I felt like Wild Infusions were a waste and very rarely used mine. You could nerf their effectiveness, or make them more awkward to use so that you don't want them up constantly.

If you don't want them up constantly, why would you take them over talents you do want to use constantly? The class is intended to be a sustain heavy class. Nerfing them I can do.

Earthen Shield I've been toying with the idea of making it not recharge up during a turn its taken damage. I.e. if the shield took damage this turn, it doesn't heal up its 2-10%. This means its generally topped off before a fight, but during a fight it acts mostly like a traditional shield effect, unless you specifically take a few turns breather escaping. Or potentially popping a shielding rune. I'll try implementing this and see if it helps.

For Aura of Fire, you could make it so it only affects physical effects(or magical); have it have a constant health drain whether it removes an effect of not and with it not being instant cast; or you could make it so the talent also drains your mana and stamina, at like double the rate of the health drain, this would make it so in long drawn out fights the talent would probably do more harm than good. Earthen Shield doesn't really seem that overpowered, but I think a small nerf might be good(the class already has several other healing/defensive talents). You could just nerf the regen rate a bit, down to 1-2%.

Aura of fire was originally based off the concept of the Archmage's cleansing flames. I'll try adding a % chance to trigger like cleansing flames and unflinching resolve have. Perhaps 10% per talent point. Alternatively I could have it only trigger every other or third turn (same net effect).

You did a good job on the class. All the skills seem to have their place(except Infernal Cleave), and I really like the the stance aspect of the class, and the elemental strike(Air Strike/etc) skills. I probably should mention, I play this game too much and I'm at the point where normal difficulty feels way to easy. So don't take what I say too seriously, I personally think half the classes in the game need a nerf. (I played the character on Roguelike normal difficulty, and died once due to me not paying attention.)

Thanks very much. I appreciated the feedback, and I'll see if I can get a new version pushed out by next weekend, with some of the above mentioned changes.

Oh, and I might have a potential bug. I noticed the descriptions for various talents(Air Strike/Infernal Cleave/a bunch of others) don't seem to be affected by increase damage% mods. For example, my character has 84% increase to fire damage and a 24% increase to cold damage, but both Water Strike and Fire Strike(both at talent lvl 4) are listed in their descriptions as doing the same damage and of course, I'm not talking about the weapon% increase mod. I havn't actually tested to see if they deal the same damage however.

I didn't think damage % mods were included in talent descriptions? Are they somehow now? Does that happen for archmage talents, for example? I'll need to find out how to do that if so.

[PureQuestion]

If you go look at another talent, you'll see, for example, from the basic flame spell:

info = function(self, t)
local damage = t.getDamage(self, t)
return ([[Conjures up a bolt of fire, setting the target ablaze and doing %0.2f fire damage over 3 turns.
At level 5, it will create a beam of flames.
The damage will increase with your Spellpower.]]):
format(damDesc(self, DamageType.FIRE, damage))
end,

That function (damDesc) will cause it to incorporate the relevant damage % boosts.

[gfder]

Interesting. Originally when I was designing the class, it was to bring the Arcane Blade up to a level on par with other classes (i.e. Bulwarks, Berserkers, Archmages, etc). Do you have a feel how it compares to those?

Honestly, I get bored of those specific classes you listed way to quickly to actually play them through to the end game. What I can tell you, compared to other classes I've played, the offensive and defensive potential of this class are quite high, and other aspects such as crowd control or utility are pretty average.

The only other character I had that could come close to this characters offensive damage was my Marauder, though that character had many other limitations, such as cool down of his talents, running out of stamina quickly and just having a weak bump attack(600-900 damage). With this class, I was dealing about 3-4k with his bump attacks and occasionally I'd see my attacks go upwards towards 5k. I one shot a couple of the High Peak stair guardians.

The only character I've had that exceeded this classes defensive potential was my Arcane Blade. It was entirely because of Aegis for my Arcane Blade and honestly I think that talent is bugged when it comes to dealing with spell criticals(A 250 point heal spell would crit and give me a 1000 point damage shield)

Originally, I had envisioned Earth Stance to be roughly half as effective in terms of armor as Shield Wall, and roughly half as effective as Thick Skin. Adding in Arcane Armor to Earth stance should be on par with the armor of Shield Wall. At 5/5 and 100 Dex, Bulwark shield wall provides about 55 armor. Earth stance at 100 Str/Dex/Mag + 5/5 Arcane Prowress would be around 70 spellpower, which with 5/5 Elemental Combat should provide about 32 armor, and 5/5 Arcane Armor with a Voraton Massive Armor should provide ~24 armor, for about 56 total. Stone skin is an armor spell originally designed for a ranged spellcaster. The spellsword is a melee spellcaster, so in general is going to need more melee mitigation than a ranged one.

If you are getting significantly better scaling than what a Bulwark gets in armor, then I probably should look at the numbers again.

I do have better stats than what you listed, but that's just because of the cat point and the fact that I did get pretty lucky with gear, looking at my character I have 44 armor and 10% resist all. The only thing I can say is, why should this character get as much armor as a Bulwark? He has two heals and a damage shield that a Bulwark does not have. None of your talents are probably overpowered by them self, it's just, when you mix them all together the become quite powerful as a whole. On my character, just Earthen Barrier, a Damage Shield and a healing infusion was all I needed most of the game, as well as being in Earth Stance at appropriate times. I only used Healing Waters during the early game and I only used that drain skill 2-3 times throughout the game. I also never even bothered lvling up Windstorm.

I was expecting fire stance to provide about 40-50 physical power, compared to Arcane Destruction's 65-75, or a weapon mastery which (at 1.1 multiplier) is giving 55 physical power. The stance should be giving around 15-17% critical chance, compared to weapon mastery's straight up 52% weapon damage. How do you feel fire stance compares to Weapons mastery? Does Weapons mastery need to be toned down as well? It seemed reasonable to me at the time since the class doesn't actually have any synergy with criticals except for just more damage, and with a base 50% critical multiplier, a 20% critical chance is only going to be about a 10% (or less) damage increase. Even at with a 100% critical multiplier, thats still only 20% more damage (relative to a 0% critical base). Where as the weapons mastery is giving over 50% more damage.

Lets compare to an already existing class talent, precise strikes. A 1.3 multiplier Precise strikes, with 100 Dex can provide 43 accuracy and 30% crit with a 10% physical speed penalty. Assuming 20% crit cancels the 10% physical speed penalty, its providing 43 accuracy and 10% crit, and I can't generally convince myself that talent is worth it, without some critical synergy. These numbers are roughly comparable to the Fire stance's numbers (although accuracy instead of physical power). Do you find yourself maxing precise strikes on most melee characters? If so, then maybe my value scale is off and I should drop the critical value.

In that case I can try dropping the criticals downs from a combatTalentSpellDamage(t,2,20) scaling to something like 2,15 or 2,12.

The main thing I feel might be overpowered about Fire Stance is the critical rate, it just makes it that much easier to transform this class into a crit focused character(like how my guy worked). This is probably unfair of me to try and label some of this classes talents as being overpowered, I just think this is another case of when you mix everything together it stacks up to be quite powerful. Mark of Fire, Spellsword Combat, Elemental Destruction and you mix that all with the high Physical and Spell Power this class can get. I did actually try to maximize the offensive potential of my character which is probably why he dealt so much damage.

With your 80 spellpower and assuming 5/5 elemental stance and 1.0 multiplier, you should get roughly 18% heal mod and 37 life per hit. Combined that is about 44 life per hit. With a dual wielding setup, that roughly 88 life per bump attack. After 5 turns, thats the equivalent of a 440 hit point regen infusion. Except you can keep it up all the time. Over the course of 16 turns (cooldown on Arcane Reconstruction or Healing Waters) it can potentially heal 1408. Even if you're only attacking every other turn, thats still 704. The skill is potentially one of the highest heal over time skills in the game, with the disadvantages of not really being burst healing and you need to be making melee attacks. Although, cooperative enemies and a well placed Whirlwind Teleport could in theory net you 704 life. That is not even including the potential increases from prodigies. On top of that it also increases your other healing by 18%.

The proc is intentionally the weakest because the stance is both inherently defensive and its other benefits are what I consider among the strongest of the stances. Ideally, you're using it in a blocked corridor type situation, minimizing incoming damage to one enemy and maximizing heals over time.

I'm wondering if your need for the stance was low because you already had sufficient damage mitigation and health restoration. At which point, any defensive stance is going to feel weaker than to any offensive stance. How much life per hit and healing mod do you feel would make the stance worth while?

Yeah, I realized after posting that I was probably too hard on Water Stance, and that as you said it was simply just that I didn't really need the the healing from it. The only thing I can say here is that you seem to have your numbers mixed up, looking at my character, he's getting a 44% heal mod and 21 life per hit. Are your numbers the way it's supposed to be?

I originally did all my numbers assuming a 1.0 multiplier. On the other hand, I originally designed the talents against other talents which had their innate class multipliers (i.e. 1.3) as well.

One thing I could do is rescale all the talents to use a 1.3 multiplier. That makes the effect of an extra category point about 5% less. 1.2/1.0 = 120% vs 1.5/1.3 = 115%. It also makes NPCs less scary. That is probably worth while.

That probably is a smart idea. Magical Combat's a great candidate for a cat point. Better proc chance off of Spellsword combat, increased spell power(which improves all your other abilitys) and it can give you better offensive and defensive abilitys thanks to the Elemental Stances.

Sandblast doesn't hit 3 targets with your weapon. Inferno Cleave does alot more damage to multiple targets, but blinds far fewer. But you're right, they do overlap in their special effects. One thing I had been considering is a heal reduction effect. Maybe something that scales from -10% to -50% (at 100 spellpower) and lasts 1-3 turns (or however long the fire burning extra damage lasts - merge it into one damage type).

Yeah my bad, I didn't take note to the fact that'll it'll hit multiple enemies with the weapon. Though if you are gonna make those changes, I'd recommend increasing the heal reduction to up something like a maximum of 66%-85%. Heal reduction is already a very situational attribute so I think it's fair to make it pretty overpowered when it actually does have a use. I'd also recommend making it last something like 10 turns if you do though. The problem with it lasting for 3 turns is that means it's only gonna really be able to stop regeneration effects, unless you happen to get lucky and manage to time it right to stop an instant heal.

I like the idea of adding blind-fighting. I'm hesitant about increasing the duration though. The concept behind the skill was that it took plain old melee damage and made it very much like magic damage. The accuracy boost makes it almost always hit (like magic), the high APR makes armor do nothing (like magic), and the critical % - well, that was just there to provide some benefit against low defense, low armor casters. Most of the spell damage you are referring to happens when you melee attack anyways, so its just straight up more damage. At 5/5 its already 3 turns, and that feels like more than enough to me. Besides, its a mini-flurry. Compared to most of the other attacks, it really is one of the most damaging attacks the Spellsword has late game, even with a single point in it.

So I'll play around with adding blind-fighting (which again makes it more like spell damage), but I'm going to hold off buffing the duration for the moment.

Yeah, that does sound pretty fair. Honestly I never even used the ability so maybe I shouldn't of even commented on it.

Mark of fire was originally designed to be a pseudo-speed boost. Instead of boosting your speed by 50%, and taking 50% more actions in 5 turns, its makes you do 50% more damage, and slows enemy movement speeds by half. How do you feel it compares to Blinding Speed (5 turns of roughly 50% speed) or Essence of Speed (perma-speed 58.5%). Insufficient resource cost? Too short of a cooldown? Blinding speed costs 25 stamina, mark of fire costs 25 mana. On the other hand, Mark of Fire only has a cooldown of 20 turns, compared to Blinding Speed's 55. On the third hand, Essence of Speed is permanent with a sustain cost of 250. I could try doubling the mana cost to 50.

As I already stated in this post, it's probably unfair of me to try to single out certain skills as being overpowered. This talent by itself isn't really overpowered, it's just with everything else factored in the damage potential becomes huge. Which is probably the reason this class became overpowered the further I got into the game, because I had more class points to stack all the abilitys on top of each other.

If you don't want them up constantly, why would you take them over talents you do want to use constantly? The class is intended to be a sustain heavy class. Nerfing them I can do.

Earthen Shield I've been toying with the idea of making it not recharge up during a turn its taken damage. I.e. if the shield took damage this turn, it doesn't heal up its 2-10%. This means its generally topped off before a fight, but during a fight it acts mostly like a traditional shield effect, unless you specifically take a few turns breather escaping. Or potentially popping a shielding rune. I'll try implementing this and see if it helps.

When I said you could make them so you don't want them up constantly, I meant you could make them along the lines of Momentum, True Grit or Thunderstorm. Which makes them semi situational and foolish use of them could actually cause you more harm than good.

I think just nerfing the regen rate should help a lot though. That talent was frequently lasting 10+ turns for me which was giving it an extra 300-500 shields.

Aura of fire was originally based off the concept of the Archmage's cleansing flames. I'll try adding a % chance to trigger like cleansing flames and unflinching resolve have. Perhaps 10% per talent point. Alternatively I could have it only trigger every other or third turn (same net effect).

I think this is a highly welcomed nerfed that'll help put this class inline. I know you were comparing it to providence and unflinching resolve, it's just that, with providence being on a 9/30 cooldown, you have to be careful as to when you use it or else it's wasted, you might use it too early or too late and it might even be forcefully put on cooldown by the stun or something. Unflinching Resolve has obvious holes in it, it's not really useful at all stages of the game and it requires you to pump a stat that's largely useless after 60 points(other's would disagree I suppose). With the way the talent is now there never really was any tatical consideration for me involving debuffs, I just kept it up 100% of the time and I would just wait 1-3 turns for the talent to remove the debuffs from me. Personally I like the idea of giving it a % chance to trigger as opposed to it triggering every 2-3 turns, that way the player can't know when the particular debuff will be removed.

I think it should also be taken into consideration that my character did get pretty lucky with drops. I also took advantage of a few other powerful abilitys, the Thalore racial abilitys are quite strong now as well as the two prodigys I took(Crafty Hands and Irresistible Sun).

[daftigod]

Hirumakai, i'd like to include the Spellsword in the next Class Pack if you're willing! I've already incorporated an older spellsword version (unreleased class pack), and it worked flawlessly, but I just wanted to get a.) your permission and b.) any final changes before committing it.

I've also enhanced your talent icons (or made them worse)

spellsword.png (67.66 KiB) Viewed 6498 times

You would get full credit for your work, of course!

Nice work!

[Hirumakai]

Hi Daftigod,

I have absolutely no objection. The class is open source as far as I'm concerned. Anyone and all are free to use it in part or whole.

And I think I like your icons better. All I do is use gimp to mix and match already existing templates to produce mine.

If you find issues with compatibility, let me know and I may be able to get the code it into a better state for that sort of compilation of classes.

[Hirumakai]

The only thing I can say is, why should this character get as much armor as a Bulwark? He has two heals and a damage shield that a Bulwark does not have. None of your talents are probably overpowered by them self, it's just, when you mix them all together the become quite powerful as a whole. On my character, just Earthen Barrier, a Damage Shield and a healing infusion was all I needed most of the game, as well as being in Earth Stance at appropriate times. I only used Healing Waters during the early game and I only used that drain skill 2-3 times throughout the game. I also never even bothered lvling up Windstorm.

The class was originally envisioned as an AoE melee spellcaster. In order to benefit from melee range AoEs, the character will sometimes need to be in melee combat with multiple enemies as once. The bulwark uses a double layered defense against melee, armor plus defense. Up until the last version, the Spellsword had zero defense boosting talents. And that one talent which does, Weapon Stance->Bear Stance, I'm still trying to figure out if I want to keep.

So I was looking at it this way: The other healing effects are supposed to make up for the lack of defense. Arguably, they are weaker than the defense against melee (missing preventing effects in addition to the damage) but obviously much more useful against enemy spell casters.

Yeah, I realized after posting that I was probably too hard on Water Stance, and that as you said it was simply just that I didn't really need the the healing from it. The only thing I can say here is that you seem to have your numbers mixed up, looking at my character, he's getting a 44% heal mod and 21 life per hit. Are your numbers the way it's supposed to be?

Doh, mistake in reading my own code and not looking at that section in months. I read them backwards, so ~18 life per hit and 37% heal mod, approximately. Although that still doesn't seem to line up right, as I'd expect more like 24-25 per hit (18*1.4). I'll do some testing on that and double check my calculations.

That also sounds somewhat more reasonable as 25 times 2 weapons is 50 life per turn, times 16 turns (say), is 800 life. Which is roughly comparable to a 500 healing infusion times the 1.4 heal mod every 16 turns or so. And clearly the 40% heal mod helps with each heal/regen infusion added.

I should also perhaps point out my philosophy of designing talents. I want talents to be equally attractive. Ideally, I want it to be a really hard choice to decide on what goes to 5/5 from a min-maxing point of view. Alternatively, I want your play style to determine what talents you pick, not the innate strength of the talents themselves relative to each other. Since I don't nerf existing talents associated with other classes (I leave that DG and others), that tends to mean they are comparable to talents you want to take to 5/5 already. Things like Rush, Blinding Speed, Weapon Mastery, Armor Training, etc. This may mean the total package when added together comes out on the strong side.

I'm aiming for a class that is fun to play, you have to think about to play, and has multiple ways to be played (re-playability and choice). I still have some work to do to get there, but I appreciate your feedback and help in getting it closer to that goal.

[MisiuPysiu]

Hey,

Where can i download the newest version of this addon (v26)? On the TOME main page there is only the version 24 to download and the newest version (with added talent icons) is integrated into the classpack. Sadly its a bit buggy there (stances dont swich, insead they remain active, all of them).

Cheers.