Flatrate several Antimagic skills

[Dwindlehop]

Going offtopic briefly: Bulwark, archer, and rogue may need some buffing independent of AM since they don't require unlocks but have less than a full page's worth of winners since b42.

[SageAcrin]

Doomed has a psychological impact on people, for the Antimagic choice-one that even hit me, I didn't go AM with a Doomed myself.

They have relatively low escapes and the loss of teleports is the real issue, not the arcane artifacts(there are very few relevant artifacts for them that are not relevant to Solipsist. Not none, but few.). This makes it look relatively unappealing.

However, examining the figures more closely shows a balance rift. Notably, the only low death characters took AM(The only Roguelike character I saw didn't. On the other hand, there are two Doomed that have cleared on Nightmare, and one of them has apparently and mysteriously not used half of their stat, class and generic points, on Nightmare, rendering the file somewhat questionable to me... The other one was Antimagic.). I have had discussions with good enough players, touting the extreme difficulty in killing a Doomed that goes in AM, that I trust their opinions on this, and the statistics seem to reasonably back this up on examination to me.

The change mentioned doesn't notably impact the skills for Summoner or Wyrmic. These classes don't necessarily want to rack up high AM Shield-AM Shield's Equilibrium impact hits them directly in a used resource, and Wyrmic themselves don't normally get much above the 60~ at L5 suggested here. Summoner will lose a little power, but it's not really notable.

As to if it's desireable to have it be more useful than normal for Summoner and Wyrmic...well, it was designed for them, and the ups and downs to Antimagic is well designed for them. Yes, they, on average, want Antimagic, but characters that go without it have a real feeling of having upsides compared to the more common Antimagic build. It's a matter of thematics, with them.

This is not true at all of Solipsist, and for Doomed, the advantages apparently outweigh the apparent downsides strongly enough to create an imbalance despite the raw figures.

And your figures back up, exceptionally strongly, that the potential upside of this change for the mentioned never-use-it-ever classes makes this change worth it alone. Berserker rarely uses AM relatively, despite being one of the best pure physical fighters for it, and all of the others almost never do. Making more builds of physical fighters-which tend to be some of the most linear classes, especially in the case of Archer, Bulwark and Brawler-viable is nothing but positive, I'd say.

If anything, that'd be the real gain, looking at those statistics. It makes me think flatrating it is a better idea, to be honest.

[Parcae2]

Not that this is something usually taken into account in balancing the game, but antimagic shield currently sucks majorly in the ID because it scales so poorly at high levels and the damage-to-equilibrium ratio never improves. Flatrating it would fix at least one of those problems. As for the second, maybe have damage-to-equilibrium scale with something or other?

[Dwindlehop]

I have had discussions with good enough players, touting the extreme difficulty in killing a Doomed that goes in AM, that I trust their opinions on this, and the statistics seem to reasonably back this up on examination to me.

Not certain what you're getting at there. Here's the same data, including all versions of the game (to get enough winners) but limited to permadeath=roguelike.
#AntimagicWinners/#Winners CLASS
4/13 solipsist
4/25 summoner
2/14 cursed
2/25 berserker
1/5 mindslayer
1/6 wyrmic
1/23 bulwark
0/10 archer
0/9 doomed
0/9 rogue
0/4 brawler

What I conclude is good enough players like to run away. That said, AM is clearly better on solipsist than other classes for roguelike permadeath.

I won with an AM Cornac Doomed on Adventure. It was incredibly tanky. Really hard to kill. I agree with your observations 100%. That observation was the reason I made it, because I wanted to play a character that did not run away. But it could not unload a lot of damage really fast, so it always ate a lot of hits facing uniques (fights vs. unnamed elites/standards went much easier due to Gesture debuffs & Hateful Whisper flooding). My Deflection "broke" (really, dropped to zero) once in the final fight. By comparison, I never dropped shields with my Arcane Blade winner in the final fight, because his damage output was so much higher. I think there are very good reasons why the roguelike Doomed winners opted out of AM.

Anecodotally, I see more recent roguelikes winners are more likely to be AM. I think is because of prodigies giving more options to different kinds of roguelike builds.

edit: added mindslayer

[Dwindlehop]

I agree it is thematic and desirable for AM to be more effective on some classes than others, and that Wilders should get the most benefit. Right now it seems that Psionics get the most benefit, then Wilders, then Afflicted, with the other eligible classes taking AM much less often. This is because Psionic, Wilder, and Afflicted are the Mindpower-driven classes and currently the Antimagic tree runs solely off Mindpower and Fungus runs half on Mindpower.

Solipsists get the biggest benefit from AM because they have Psychometry and can run offense and defense off Mindpower. Cursed, Doomed, and Mindslayers can boost Willpower higher with talents. Doomed and Mindslayer also can run some defense off Mindpower. Arguably Gloom's Mindpower-based debuffs are a lot like defense, for Cursed. Afflicted and Psionic don't have to worry about Equilibrium effects of Antimagic if they also pump the right Fungus (and conversely the Equilibrium benefits of Fungus aren't useful to Afflicted & Psionic unless they pump Antimagic).

So Antimagic should:
1. Remain good on Wilders
2. Be improved for Warriors and Rogues
3. Be nerfed somewhat for Solipsist and probably Mindslayer
4. Be nerfed somewhat for Doomed and probably Cursed

I think that's roughly the priority. I'm still not 100% convinced of #4, personally, but I support changes to AM for Solipsist (and incidently others if the change is to the scaling effect of Antimagic Shield) and Warriors/Rogues. Honestly, I feel like AM is about where it ought to be for Summoners and Wyrmics and any change should take that into account.

[Mewtarthio]

The trouble with Solipsists is that they're powerful enough to not care so much about losing arcane items. With most antimagic classes, when you get in trouble, the best escape you've got is a movement infusion. Solipsists can instead lock everyone down with Sleep, duck into a weaker opponent's Dreamscape and rest up a bit, summon the Inner Demons of a stronger opponent to create a diversion, Dream Walk to whichever tile has the best escape route, and then use the movement infusion. Antimagic will always be a good option for Solipsists because they're not giving up as much as everyone else.

That being said, I do still support flatrating Resolve and AM Shield. That's mostly because I want to see Antimagic made more viable for warriors.

[niceal]

Should AM be an equivalently good option for every class with the ability to take it?

Why should he ?

Anti magic is a choice for char who have troubles fighting spellcasters and are ready to make sacrifices to fill this hole.
The game is made the way that those class who get the more troubles with mages are the one that reap the most benefits from am, leveling anti magic would either up classes that don't need it or break classes who rely exclusively on it to close on spell casters (ie slolip or doomed who dont have closing abilities, are tissues, have low life pools and no long range spells).
I understand that it would be lolilol to have a berserk or a bulwark who can down their pants and show their asses at spellcaster due to their of their innate mage killing abilities added to a flat leveled anti-magic but would it be wise ?

Why should an ability be equal for all classes ? Every class has its specificity on the other hand their is the adventurer class for those who wants to have all the advantages of all classes together.

[Mewtarthio]

Except antimagic isn't good for people who have issues with spellcasters. Take Bulwarks, for instance. Magic almost always ignores their armor and pierces their Block unless they have a specific prodigy (and even with that prodigy, spellcasters generally deal enough damage per blow to get through it). Furthermore, Bulwarks need to build up their Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, so Willpower is a tertiary stat at best. AM is a bad choice for Bulwarks, because they don't have the mindpower to make it useful. An Antimagic Bulwark will still get its day totally ruined by a spellcaster. Conversely, look at the Solipsist, which as I've mentioned above is a class that really benefits from AM. Even a non-Antimagic Solipsist can deal with mages just fine. They've got a wide variety of ranged attacks that deal plenty of damage and and good disables. Thanks to the Solipsism tree, they have excellent saves and a high effective health even if they totally neglect Constitution in favor of Willpower. They can summon meatshields. They can build LOS-blocking walls. Heck, pretty much any conceivable Solipsist build has options to deal with mages even without going Antimagic.

[HousePet]

Keep willpower as the talent requirement stat.
Scale Resolve and Antimagic Shield strength with spellsave. Since they are defensive.
Leave Aura or Silence and Manaclash as scaling with mindpower. Since they are offensive.

[King Gainer]

Scaling with spell save won't solve the problem, it will just shift the problem to other classes.
For example scaling with spell save would make AM even worse for Rogues.

[SageAcrin]

As an added note, the statistical system wasn't really built with the idea of Spell Save as an antimagic thing, either.

So one of the best statistical sources of Spell Save is...uhm...Magic, IIRC.

So it might not be the best idea from a thematic viewpoint, perhaps.

Edit: As an interesting note, another option to sidegrade it could be having Antimagic Shield utilize your Armor stat for blocking magic. Say, 30%+10% of your Armor per talent level. Same mechanics otherwise, just would be based on your Armor stat instead of Mindpower.

This would make Mindpower pumping actually marginally worse than pumping defensive skills, wearing shields, etc., would nerf it most for Solipsist-which is clearly the head and shoulders, by far, best user of it right now, and which hates racking up Fatigue-and would be reasonably thematic.

It's an interesting alternative to flat-rateing it. Not sure if it's better or not, mind you. A flat rate change is a lot easier to read the impact of, whereas this might cause different problems.

[HousePet]

Well if you know lots about magic, you can crush magic easily.

Every option has disadvantages. Finding a good middle ground will be hard.

[Dwindlehop]

It's interesting. There's a Bulwark winner with an armor of 144, and most Wyrmics & Bulwarks crest 100. Summoners have 35-45, though certainly they could pump it up if they was a benefit to doing so. So your proposal turns AM Shield into a 100 pt damage shield for a purpose-built shield class, but only 50 pts for Summoners. That doesn't sound right. A formula with more diminishing returns would be better.

I do favor AM Shield scaling off something defensive so your really high damage build doesn't get great AM Shield. Since you want to talk Fungus in this thread, too, I will say that Ancestral Life should be capped at 100% of a turn.

[bricks]

I don't think defensive skills generally work that way - Aegis, for example. Not that there isn't grounds for change. However, the impression I get from Antimagic is that you are directly countering spells with your mind power. Thematically, a bonus to spell save as a fraction of your mental power sounds like an appropriate skill.

It brings up an interesting point - mental and physical save are pretty clear in their real-world analogues. What, exactly, is spell save? I imagine it has something to do with your ability to manipulate incoming magic, reducing, avoiding, or canceling its effects.

[wobbly]

Except antimagic isn't good for people who have issues with spellcasters. Take Bulwarks, for instance. Magic almost always ignores their armor and pierces their Block unless they have a specific prodigy (and even with that prodigy, spellcasters generally deal enough damage per blow to get through it). Furthermore, Bulwarks need to build up their Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, so Willpower is a tertiary stat at best. AM is a bad choice for Bulwarks, because they don't have the mindpower to make it useful. An Antimagic Bulwark will still get its day totally ruined by a spellcaster. Conversely, look at the Solipsist, which as I've mentioned above is a class that really benefits from AM. Even a non-Antimagic Solipsist can deal with mages just fine. They've got a wide variety of ranged attacks that deal plenty of damage and and good disables. Thanks to the Solipsism tree, they have excellent saves and a high effective health even if they totally neglect Constitution in favor of Willpower. They can summon meatshields. They can build LOS-blocking walls. Heck, pretty much any conceivable Solipsist build has options to deal with mages even without going Antimagic.

Have you tried an AM-Bulwark, pumping willpower instead of dex? I'm running an AM Yeek bulwark at the moment & being able to silence casters in a radius & having massive stamina for true-grit is well worth it. Even without pumping dex you can easily get greater weapon focus up around 33% on just item dex bonuses. It's well & truely enough when your not getting constantly blasted by mages.