[1.4.0] Stoic class revamp

[stinkstink]

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Stoics are warriors who dedicate their lives to mastering countless secret techniques.
Their wide variety of abilities allows them to fight their way out of any situation.
However, in order to fight at full effectiveness, they must first focus and steel themselves against the battle to come.
Exceptionally skilled Stoics are said to infuse their attacks with elemental powers to create radical new fighting styles.

Stoics are a warrior subclass inspired by the Samurai class from Hengband.

Class trees - Knowing any Focus-using talent grants the ability Concentrate, which recovers Focus and increases Accuracy and Physical Power until your next action, and allows you to use Dexterity in place of Strength for the purpose of ordinary weapon requirements and learning Weapons Mastery.

Technique/Stoic Focus WIL 1.3 Techniques that scale with Concentrate
-Antler Toss: Knock an enemy into the air, reducing the damage they deal and take for the duration. Has a chance to ignore Defense and evasion based on Concentrate, and the maximum enemy size scales as well.
-Hyperawareness: Sustain that prevents the Concentrate buff from wearing off and grants saves and detection radius for each stack of Concentration active, but increases the Focus cost of talents by 50%.
-Moon Dazzling: Confuses/Stuns/Blinds enemies in range. Radius improves with Concentrate.
-Bisect: Single-target damage that scales with Concentrate and has a chance to instantly kill the target. Slaying the victim causes nearby enemies to flee.

Technique/Flowing Path WIL 1.3 Close-in and mobility
-Strikethrough: Slice through a target, arriving on their opposite side. Takes less than a turn to perform.
-Ogre Lunge: Rushes the target and strikes foes behind it based on the damage done.
-Draconic Flash: Moves to the target location and attacks enemies along the path, potentially knocking them further back to be struck again.
-Hundred Slaughter: Every time you kill a foe you automatically charge the lowest-health foe in range and strike them. Can trigger itself recursively with a damage penalty each time. Has a chance to automatically trigger at the start of each global turn based on Concentrate.

Technique/Dynamic Combat STR 1.3 Ranged and raw projection attacks. Their element changes when a stance is active.
-Demon Fang: Attacks a distant target with projected damage based on weapon power. Range, speed, and maximum number of targets increase with Concentrate.
-Ripper Blast: Deals projected damage in a cone.
-Mountain Cross: Sweep attack with knockback and a resistance debuff.
-Grave Burst: Projectile attack that explodes when it reaches its destination, knocking back whatever it hits.

Technique/Fading Flourish STR 1.3 Bleeding-themed talents
-Blade Grasp: Blocks attacks and allows counterstrikes. Incomplete blocks take the remainder of damage as bleeding over 5 turns. Amount blocked scales with Concentrate, and the elements blocked are affected by stance and gloves/gauntlets. Can automatically trigger against fatal attacks with investment, at the cost of increased cooldown.
-Crimson Pain: Deals high weapon damage but takes a portion of the amount dealt as bleeding over 5 turns.
-Bloody Maelstrom: Sustain that causes you to bleed when you attack but increases attack power based on how much you are bleeding. Also increases Poison and Disease resistance, and grants the ability to survive at negative life. A percentage of any damage that would put you below 0 life is converted to an incurable bleed over 3 turns.
-Dying Lotus: Performs a large number of attacks against random adjacent targets for half damage. A percentage of retaliation damage taken while performing this talent is converted to bleeding damage over 5 turns.

Technique/Cascading Strikes DEX 1.3 Multi-hit attacks/single-target DPT
-Eelbite: Strikes an enemy twice, causing them to bleed and reducing their accuracy
-Triple Supremacy: Attacks twice, attempting to push the target back. If successful, a followup attack is performed for greater damage. Has a chance to ignore knockback resistance and physical save based on Concentrate.
-Swallowtail Blade: Sustain that allows you to perform two mainhand strikes for reduced damage with each melee attack at the cost of a speed penalty. Also increases the damage of your offhand attacks and grants Knockback and Pinning resistance.
-Crashing Torrent: Attacks a target and causes a wound that increases in magnitude with each melee strike. If the wound kills the target, your Focus is refreshed.

Technique/Whirling Cyclone DEX 1.3 Evasion-themed talents
-Rising Spiral: Creates a duststorm that increases your Defense and reduces the duration of new detrimental effects for each turn you remain within it.
-Whirlwind Deflection: Evades ranged attacks and deflects projectiles towards the attacker's allies. Number of attacks evaded/deflected increases with Concentrate.
-Draw Stance: Sustain that increases Armor penetration and Defense, and counterattacks adjacent foes that attempt to attack you, but prevents you from performing offhand attacks. Also increases Stun and Disarm resistance.
-Accelerating Gale: Increases global speed each time an attack is evaded.

Advanced Trees (locked) - All advanced trees have a stance activated by using any talent in the tree. Additional stance effects are gained by learning talents within the tree. Stance activation and damage conversion can be disabled with a configuration talent.

Technique/Umbral Arts WIL 1.3 Shadow themed talents. All talent in this tree are spells and require Negative to use
-Lifethread Blade: Attacks the target and restores Life and Negative. Negative recovery increases and has a chance to ignore Defense and evasion based on Concentrate.
-Shellbust Stab: Attacks adjacent enemies and removes shield effects, then performs a followup stab that reduces armor and prevents blocking for the duration.
-Ghost Step: Teleports to the target location, swapping places if the space is occupied. After taking an action, you return to your original location.
-Death's Door: Reduces life to 0 and grants the ability to survive in negative life based on the amount sacrificed. Extends positive effects and reduces negative ones when you kill enemies with it active. When the effect ends you deal Darkness damage to surrounding creatures and are granted your next turn immediately.
Stance effects: Converts melee attacks to Darkness damage, grants invisibility and resitance based on Defense, creates damaging bursts of shadow when you strike foes in melee, and increases your Darkness damage and resistance penetration.

Technique/Celestial Arts WIL 1.3 Lightning and stun/lockdown themed talents
-Skyfury Blade: Attacks and reduces the target's stun and knockback resistance. Does not take a turn.
-Heaven Thunder Mantra: Creates a blast of dazing lighting in a random spot in a cone for the duration. Number of blasts increases with Concentrate.
-Tempest Tiger: Attacks a target, stunning it and dealing damage/stun to surrounding enemies based on the amount done.
-Lightning Eagle: Creates a slow-moving lightning charge that dazes and knocks back whatever it hits.
Stance effects: Converts melee attacks to Lightning damage, reduces damage over a percentage of your max life based on Defense and reduces cooldowns, counterattacks foes that deal more than a percentage of your life in damage, and increases your Lightning damage and resistance penetration.

Technique/Infernal Arts WIL 1.3 Fire-themed defensive tree
-Burning Soul: Removes pinning effects and increases movement speed. Each step taken sets surrounding enemies on fire.
-Backdraft: Pulls targets in a cone toward you, igniting them.
-Shimmering Blade: Strikes a target and deals fire damage to the surroundings based on the intensity of their burns.
-Consuming Blaze: Attacks a target and removes a beneficial effect or sustain if they're on fire. Cooldown decreases with investment. Has a chance to ignore Defense and evasion based on Concentrate.
Stance effects: Converts melee attacks to Fireburn damage, reduces damage burning deal based on Defense, reduces the combat powers of burning foes, and increases your Fire damage and resistance penetration.

Technique/Boreal Arts WIL 1.3 Cold-themed offensive tree
-Frozen Field: Attacks adjacent targets and creates an ice field that increases your movement speed and slows enemies.
-Glacial Split: Attacks creatures in a beam, destroying walls and creating an ice field.
-Icedrill: Rushes to the target location, attacking adjacent creatures and knocking anything out of the way. If the target space is on ice, you will continue past it until you reach the end of the ice.
-Hoarfrost Blade: Performs random attacks against any enemies in sight standing on ice. Maximum number of attacks increases with Concentrate.
Stance effects: Converts melee attacks to Cold damage, increases melee speed based on Defense, increases melee attack power against slower enemies based on your speed difference, and increases your Cold damage and resistance penetration.

Generic trees
Technique/Momentum WIL 1.3
-Reposition: Attacks a target, dazing them and advancing or retreating based on distance.
-Serene Form: Increases Defense and movement speed, and reduces enemies' chance to perform critical melee/archery attacks while wearing light armor.
-Graceful Recovery: Grants a chance to reduce the duration of detrimental effects with every step. Is triggered by most Stoic-exclusive mobility talents.
-Driving Force: Gives a stacking bonus to all damage and resistance when you move multiple step in the same direction.

Technique/Awareness WIL 1.3
-Watchful Eye: Grants defense and saves based on a percentage of the target's combat powers. Wears off if you lose sight of the target.
-Sharp Focus: Slows your watched target's global and outgoing projectile speed, and reduces their chance to perform critical attacks.
-Greater Insight: Causes melee attacks against your watched target to apply a stacking chance of talent failure. When the target fumbles, the chance is reset and they become vulnerable to an automatic critical hit.
-Cold Stare: Intimidates an enemy, immobilizing them and putting talents in cooldown.

Technique/Blindsight WIL 1.3
-Blindsight: Blinds you, but grants the ability to detect creatures through walls while blind, as well as increasing your Defense.
-Perfect Hearing: Improves stealth and invisibility detection and grants a chance to evade projectile attacks while blind.
-Telling Touch: Reduces damage from critical attacks and grants a large amount of Luck while blind.
-Unshackling Sight: Temporarily increases Accuracy, critical chance, and critical damage modifier when Blindsight is disabled.

Technique/Combat Training 1.3
Wild Gift/Mindstar Mastery 1.1 (locked)
Cunning/Survival 1.0 (locked)

--------------------------------------
TODO:
- Balancing
- Particle effects (STILL!)

--------------------------------------
Compatibility Info:

Overloads:
-mod\ai\tactical.lua
Superload overrides:
-engine\Projectile.lua:act()

[stinkstink]

Aaand a case-sensitivity issue in one of the last minute additions was causing the twohander/dual weapons trees to puke lua errors.

[ironroby]

First, thanks for the new class, a "samurai" concept that is luckily not actually called a samurai in what is supposed to be medieval west fantasy, is very interesting plus the new talent icons look gorgeous, which is almost never the case in a new class addon beta, usually they are full of ugly default question marks.

But now for the criticism and recommendations:

1) The most glaring issue, my first level stoic will naturally loose 2.08 stamina per round just for existing, like a more severe version of the old Afflicted system, before the maker of that system fixed it himself with an addon. If its unintentional, please fix it. If it's intentional, then please fix it!

2) I checked and in the birth lua, there's no natural mana regen for this class either. A class that uses or can naturally choose to use a talent tree with a resource, should be able to regenerate that resource too. Even Arcane and Shadowblades get a sustain that will allow them to do so. Yes, now manarunes will regenerate mana passively during rest, but that just means your not-even-a-mage-hybrid warrior will have to give up an inscription slot for that. Effectively making a tree cost two category points.

3) The way to regenerate equilibrium for the other choice of an advanced class tree is very, very inadequate. What's basically a samurai can only retain some harmony with nature by poisoning other? Really? This class needs some meditation type skill, especially if it's supposed to be a western samurai. It would make antimagic a viable character build choice too, which would help to differentiate it more from other warriors.

4) With both Mobility and Tactics, it's clear that light armor is supposed to be a legitimate choice for this warrior class, but it would demand two category points and a serious investment in Cunning for Tactics, an attribute which you have no other need (except for Survival, which is a general choice for everybody and thus doesn't count, especially since it's locked too) while you also need to raise willpower to unlock many of your talents. So you would need dexterity, strength, willpower and cunning, not mentioning constitution.

But even if you did make those huge investments, the low talent masteries would ensure that you would never get high enough of a defense than a Shadowblade, Marauder or a Brawler and since unlike armor, defense is all or nothing, why would anyone pick the light armor path over heavy with this class?

My advice if you want to keep light armor as an actually legitimate choice for this class: Make a custom version of Tactics tree, just make everything there Dexterity based. Unlock Mobility for free. Make your custom Tactics 1.30 and Mobility at least 1.20.

Because right now, both trees are just there to make it look like you have a choice where to put your category points.

5) It looks like this class is meant to specialize in either two-handed or dual weapon combat, so why doesn't it have Two-handed Weapons and Dual Weapons, you know, the other two trees of those styles? If a samurai is a worse specialist in his chosen style, than other warriors, then he's not much of a samurai or a specialist. Don't be afraid to unlock both, it might look like four unlocked trees, but every realistic build is going to choose to put points in just two or suffer for it.

6) If you follow my recommendations or not, the class is going to need some more locked options like all the other warriors get, like Combat Veteran (otherwise, samurai/stoic can't be a veteran like other warriors?) and Battle Tactics would fit perfectly. Superiority too, samurai did use grand and intimidating tactics like that and Warcries, the other option, is probably too unbalanced thanks to Second Wind.

7) You might consider that a historic "samurai" would also have Archery Training (best as locked) and hey if a Bulwark has it... Maybe somebody would have a crazy build in mind, plus more options are always good.


Sorry for there being so much criticism and recommendations (it is just in beta yet, to be fair), but I like the idea of this class very much and wanted to make my own contribution to its development.

[lukep]

I'm taking a look at the code, searching for potential bugs, here's what I've found:

- Many talents appear to be usable with no weapon, but not while disarmed?
- Also not sure if the check to learn mana pool is necessary. (also, Equilibrium)
- Vampire's Fang reduces mana, not matching the description.
- Crimson Pain's tactical info: is math.bound a thing? (util.bound is normal, IIRC)
- can you cancel Ghost Step's timed effect early, like you can for normal beneficial ones?
- I'm not sure that blocking +damage% from double stacking for Ripper Blast/Crouching Tiger is necessary, it is allowed on some other talents (but I like it better how you have it).
- I'm not sure if the three numbers in checkHit actually do anything...
- If you attempt a Heavenly Flash, and miss the attack, the talent use is canceled (allowing you to try again).

- You might want to make a single, central function for "amount of damage done to an enemy"

Looks like a very interesting and unique class.

[stinkstink]

1) The most glaring issue, my first level stoic will naturally loose 2.08 stamina per round just for existing, like a more severe version of the old Afflicted system, before the maker of that system fixed it himself with an addon. If its unintentional, please fix it. If it's intentional, then please fix it!

I based it off how samurai work in Hengband, but may end up tweaking it later. In Heng, samurai have a very small cap on their resource pool, but can temporarily boost it to four times that with repeated use of Concentrate. I figured it'd be a lot easier to do things the way I did than to replicate that exactly. Basically, consider the point your stamina stops decaying your 'max,' and the rest as a bonus you're not meant to have all the time.

2) I checked and in the birth lua, there's no natural mana regen for this class either. A class that uses or can naturally choose to use a talent tree with a resource, should be able to regenerate that resource too. Even Arcane and Shadowblades get a sustain that will allow them to do so. Yes, now manarunes will regenerate mana passively during rest, but that just means your not-even-a-mage-hybrid warrior will have to give up an inscription slot for that. Effectively making a tree cost two category points.

The first skill in both the mana and equilibrium trees are meant to recover the resource used by the trees. Having to leverage spending turns to recover your resources is part of how the class is intended. The reason Arcane Arts uses mana is to help sway people away from going Antimagic on a class that builds Willpower, and I made Natural Arts wild gifts for symmetry.

3) The way to regenerate equilibrium for the other choice of an advanced class tree is very, very inadequate. What's basically a samurai can only retain some harmony with nature by poisoning other? Really? This class needs some meditation type skill, especially if it's supposed to be a western samurai. It would make antimagic a viable character build choice too, which would help to differentiate it more from other warriors.

Honestly, the equilibrium recovery on Serpent's Tongue was an afterthought after I realized I forgot to include a move to recover it. Although I may change the move down the line, I'll probably stick with it being a resource recovery attack. I found it worked well when using Nature's Equilibrium on a psiblade Marauder. It's a poison attack because I consolidated all of Hengband's 'do more damage unless the target resists the element' skills into one tree, then gave them unique effects to make them interesting.

4) With both Mobility and Tactics, it's clear that light armor is supposed to be a legitimate choice for this warrior class, but it would demand two category points and a serious investment in Cunning for Tactics, an attribute which you have no other need (except for Survival, which is a general choice for everybody and thus doesn't count, especially since it's locked too) while you also need to raise willpower to unlock many of your talents. So you would need dexterity, strength, willpower and cunning, not mentioning constitution.

TBH, I mainly included Cunning/Tactics for people that might want to run a Draw Stance/Counter Attack gimmick build. I'll consider unlocking them in the future.

5) It looks like this class is meant to specialize in either two-handed or dual weapon combat, so why doesn't it have Two-handed Weapons and Dual Weapons, you know, the other two trees of those styles? If a samurai is a worse specialist in his chosen style, than other warriors, then he's not much of a samurai or a specialist. Don't be afraid to unlock both, it might look like four unlocked trees, but every realistic build is going to choose to put points in just two or suffer for it.

I felt the base trees had too many sustains/passives to fit in thematically with the rest of the class trees, which is why I consolidated them at the last minute. I originally had Dual Weapon Attacks and Two-Handed Crippling unlocked with DWTraining and 2HOffense locked, but I really didn't like them having access to Warshout. That's why Concentrate still mentions disabling certain sustains.

6) If you follow my recommendations or not, the class is going to need some more locked options like all the other warriors get, like Combat Veteran (otherwise, samurai/stoic can't be a veteran like other warriors?) and Battle Tactics would fit perfectly. Superiority too, samurai did use grand and intimidating tactics like that and Warcries, the other option, is probably too unbalanced thanks to Second Wind.

I didn't include Combat Veteran because I was trying to make the class very light on passives and sustains. Superiority didn't even cross my mind, I forgot that tree existed entirely aside from one bit of code. Battle Tactics I left out intentionally because I thought Greater Weapon Focus might get silly combined with Swashbuckling, but may change my mind on it. And for Warcries, I already inserted a bit of code to prevent Second Wind from recovering too much stamina due to the existance of gloves that proc it.

I'm taking a look at the code, searching for potential bugs, here's what I've found:

- Many talents appear to be usable with no weapon, but not while disarmed?

Mostly in the interest of barehanded gimmicks, but I still wanted getting disarmed to be a big weakness for the class.

- can you cancel Ghost Step's timed effect early, like you can for normal beneficial ones?

This was something I was meaning to check with balance testing. I couldn't test it in cheat mode because you can remove any temporary effect early. If setting it to the Other category doesn't prevent it, I'll probably change it to a detrimental effect.

- I'm not sure that blocking +damage% from double stacking for Ripper Blast/Crouching Tiger is necessary, it is allowed on some other talents (but I like it better how you have it).

I added those after I accidentally got the Overpowered achievement while testing in Semi-Godmode as mentioned in the comments, but I may remove that later.

- I'm not sure if the three numbers in checkHit actually do anything...

Could you be more specific?

- If you attempt a Heavenly Flash, and miss the attack, the talent use is canceled (allowing you to try again).

I'll look at this. Thank you both for your comments.

[darkgod]

Very interesting, my eye is on you!

[ajfluffy]

Instead of stamina you could use positive or negative energy which works similarly. Probably negative since positive you could boost with escort skills.

I like the concept tho!

[lukep]

- I'm not sure if the three numbers in checkHit actually do anything...

Could you be more specific?[/quote]
Just double checked _M:CheckHit, and I was (mostly) wrong. For:

Code: Select all

self:checkHit(self:combatAttack(), target:combatSpellResist(), 0, 95, 15)

0 is correctly checked as the minimum chance, and 95 is correctly checked as the max, but the third number (15) is never used. Oops, misinterpretation on my part.

[stinkstink]

Updated:

-Natural Arts techniques now convert the melee attack to the corresponding damage type if it would deal more damage, probably.
-Fixed Vampire's Fang not restoring mana
-Unlocked Technique/Mobility, added Mindstar Mastery locked at 1.1
-Added Technique/Archery-Slings locked at 1.0 mastery, because *bong noises*
-Moon Dazzling weighs status immunity more
-Reduced accuracy bonus from Concentrate, added physical power as well to better benefit two-handed weapon users
-Fixed Crouching Tiger doing too much AOE damage
-Fixed cancelling Ghost Step early
-Increased Vacuum Strike's base range by 1
-Serpent's Tongue and Burning Soul proc their effects if the melee strike kills the target
-Stoics gain Weapon Mastery instead of Combat Accuracy at birth
-Draw Stance increases defense instead of accuracy, to better work with the Cunning/Tactical tree
-Swashbuckling now provides a scaling bonus to accuracy
-Bloody Maelstrom now provides a scaling bonus to critical damage modifier

[stinkstink]

Updated:
- Stoics now gain normal stamina from Willpower, but none from levels
- Stamina no longer drains on the world map
- Concentrate now requires 4 turns to reach its maximum resist/accuracy/phys power bonus
- Concentrate activates automatically while resting
- Concentration effect is removed when moving/acting
- Draw Stance counters/Counter Attack no longe trigger while concentrating
- Swashbuckling provides offhand damage bonus instead of accuracy
- Moon Dazzling uses Physical Power instead of Accuracy
- Increased Moon Dazzling confuse strength
- Fixed Heavenly Flash not firing if it misses
- Fixed Heavenly Flash being able to land outside its target range
- Fixed Triple Supremacy hitting the player if the target dies in the first two swings, maybe
- The Arcane Arts and Natural Arts trees are properly defined as min. level 10
- Natural Arts and Arcane Arts talents use the higher of phys power/accuracy for effects
- Serpent's Tongue and Vampire's Fang restore resources on tick end so they can refund their own costs
- Reduced mana cost of Ghost Step
- Crouching Tiger and Snowpetal Storm now display their AOE effects while targetting
- Crimson Pain has been replaced with Sky Demon Mantra
- Fixed Light of Foot causing annoying stamina vacillation
- The Two-Handed Weapons tree has been replaced with Tidal Arts, a STR-based tree specializing in single-target damage
- The Dual Weapons tree was removed in favor of Cyclone Arts, which focuses on evasion effects
- Provisionally, the Combat Techniques tree starts locked (talents in the Cyclone Arts tree should hopefully fill the Rush/Perfect Strikes roles)


There were a few things I wanted to do but couldn't figure out. If anyone knows a good way to do the following, I'd appreciate it:
a) Project a one-tile wide cone (in effect, a beam that uses radius for maximum distance instead of range. Even at very low cone_angles they'd still be three tiles wide.)
b) Trigger talents or break effects when an actor waits without acting (I had no success doing this with the Actor:move hook and have no clue where in the code to begin looking)

[stinkstink]

Updated:
-Fixed lua errors from iceblocks being attacked
-Fixed damage of attack riders
-Fix slings causing lua errors
-Tweaked Bloody Maelstrom scaling and changed around some stuff under the hood
-Bisect takes die_at into consideration when calculating percent of max health done
-Crashing Torrent no longer triggers its bark if the melee swing kills the target
-Fixed missing % in Haze Snap description
-Moved Guided Strike to an unfinished talent tree. Rising Spiral has taken its place in Cyclone Arts
-Evade Sight has been replaced with Accelerating Gale
-Cyclone Arts apart from Rising Spiral can't be used while pinned and have their effects canceled if pinned
-Hack & Back, Disengage, and Heave have reduced stamina costs for Stoics
-Added base defense to robes and stoic-themed robe egos to make them more appealing as a light armor alternative
-Added talent modifiers to certain artifact robes
-Added two artifact swords
-Added particle effects for Moon Dazzling, Crouching Tiger, and Snowpetal Storm
-Slightly altered a few talent icons

[stinkstink]

Updated:
-Haze Snap's minimum duration has been increased
-Haze Snap has a chance of not ending after the first time the effect is triggered
-Snakewind should work more reliably now
-Fixed Rising Spiral's melee component
-Rising Spiral no longer warns you when using it on yourself
-Stoics are now born with a starter point in Rising Spiral instead of Strikethrough to hopefully emphasize its importance for T1 survivability
-Clarified Eelbite's description
-Draw Stance now provides disarm resistance instead of confusion
-Added tiles for the new artifact weapons
-Crashing Torrent's echo now ignores resistance and refreshes the user's stamina to 25% if below when the effect kills a target
-Added the Inner Arts tree. This is the last traditional talent tree, although there is more to come...

[Ryoshi]

Um, I've been playing with this class recently, and I came across these errors. It doesn't seem to be a conflict, but I can't tell for sure.
Here's the character I got the errors with, hopefully this can help more?
http://te4.org/characters/90790/tome/56 ... f8a37d483f

[FlarePusher]

Another error

[stinkstink]

Oof, I thought turn_procs was safe to use without paranoia checks because actors initialized it on birth. Hopefully adding one fixes it.

Updated:
-Added a paranoia check to the DamageProjector hook to stuff a lua error (hopefully)
-The player will learn the Inner Arts tree upon using Concentrate if the character was started before it was fully implemented (probably)
-Natural Arts melee strikes always convert to their respective damage types if the user has the Elemental Surge prodigy