I LOVE the idea of redirecting damage to a grappled opponent. It's thematic, it makes use of something that isn't used very much (size category), and it removes the class's biggest weakness (damage protection).
I understand what you're going for, Shibari, but bear in mind that the problem with buffing melee is that the AI gets those buffs as well ... which makes it harder to melee. I don't think that there's any real solution to this except to give melee classes damage-mitigation buffs that only function up close. Give the AI too many instant-use damage talents and it might start chaining them. I do agree that mobility talents are fun and thematic (and TW shows how that can work) but I would be wary of making too many of the mobility talents also do damage. Maybe an instant-use talent that consumes X combo points per square instantly traversed?
Also, Grappling (and everything else Brawlers do) should probably make use of combo points.
This started out as a post about how I really like Shibari's talent names and vote that they should all be adopted into the game as-is. Darkgod, I will pay you to include a talent in the game named Mind over Retarded Burst Damage.
Idea for Brawlers
Moderator: Moderator
Re: Idea for Brawlers
My main complaint about Grappling is that it's such a passive skill: you're not doing anything interesting, you hold your enemy and sit there. There are two ways to remedy this:
a) allow the Brawler to pull/push his victim around
b) completely replace Grappling with Throws skill, which would do something similar by design
Imagine a Brawler jumping out of cover, grabbing a mage, pulling him behind a corner (step by step, none of this Bone Grab/Shadowblade magic), and beating the crap out of him! Once an enemy is grappled, you can still move - the enemy moves with you! If you move onto the square of the enemy, you push him and mantain the grapple. If you move away from the enemy, you pull him he now occupies the square you just left. All subject to Physical Save and Knockback resistance. If the move is resisted, neither party moves. The only downside is that now you'd have to cancel Grapple manually, by right-clicking on the icon.
This would indirectly help with damage mitigation, as you could push the grappled enemy into some shots, or at least position yourself to use him as your living shield (both suffer). Switch Position would be allowed to use without breaking the grapple (is this how it currently works?)
I actually have a similar idea for Total Thuggery: critical chance bonus = 0%, but you push your target 1 square and enter that square. However, if you back the target against a wall (which knockback would greatly help with), you get around +50% critical chance! The idea is that Marauders are good at bullying enemies, especially at close quarters. It would work based on Fears resistance / Mental save.
a) allow the Brawler to pull/push his victim around
b) completely replace Grappling with Throws skill, which would do something similar by design
Imagine a Brawler jumping out of cover, grabbing a mage, pulling him behind a corner (step by step, none of this Bone Grab/Shadowblade magic), and beating the crap out of him! Once an enemy is grappled, you can still move - the enemy moves with you! If you move onto the square of the enemy, you push him and mantain the grapple. If you move away from the enemy, you pull him he now occupies the square you just left. All subject to Physical Save and Knockback resistance. If the move is resisted, neither party moves. The only downside is that now you'd have to cancel Grapple manually, by right-clicking on the icon.
This would indirectly help with damage mitigation, as you could push the grappled enemy into some shots, or at least position yourself to use him as your living shield (both suffer). Switch Position would be allowed to use without breaking the grapple (is this how it currently works?)
I actually have a similar idea for Total Thuggery: critical chance bonus = 0%, but you push your target 1 square and enter that square. However, if you back the target against a wall (which knockback would greatly help with), you get around +50% critical chance! The idea is that Marauders are good at bullying enemies, especially at close quarters. It would work based on Fears resistance / Mental save.
Re: Idea for Brawlers
I agree that could be a concern, but Heave/Hack'n'back can't be chained, and Knockout at least requires combo points to be instant. Knockout is also supposed to be low damage. I'm not convinced these are problematic on NPCs, at worse annoying if the AI does dumb things with Heave. I can live with that if I get to actually use these abilities effectively. As is, while they might be the optimal move once on a blue moon, I wouldn't even blink if I lost them.
I like the mitigation when in melee range concept a lot too, but I don't want to do just that. The first skill in my Unarmed Discipline revamp proposal is exactly along those lines, though.
Definitely going with Soaring Leap for the 4th base finisher. You're right, there isn't a good reason to put damage on this. Purely moving x spaces is boring but functional and a huge gap fill for the class. Still feels a bit boring to me but lets go with that for now. I'll edit that into the main post.
This is my proposal for the Unarmed Discipline replacement. I strongly feel there isn't a good reason to keep the existing tree, so if that stays it would make more sense to add this as a separate one. Though I did steal Roundhouse Kick because I agree with supermini, Parcae, and others that we could use more things that care about terrain. A minor sub-theme of this tree is that its aimed at advanced players, utilizing mechanics that aren't so great if you're bumping through the game. This should be fine as its an unlocked tree.
Unarmed Discipline / Advanced Unarmed Combat / Dragon Brawler Z / I really have no idea what to name anything
Mind Over Retarded Burst Damage (Passive): Each time you deal a critical strike you gain Awesome Shield for 10 seconds, reducing the next attack over 70% of your max HP by 10%..60%. This triggers off crits to keep you from having it up when not actively attacking easily and to reduce its early game power. By endgame you'll be activating it every attack turn, but it won't generally be expended as 70% is a very steep requirement. As with the old version, the goal is to have some buffer against the worst damage spikes while not gaining much overall damage mitigation. This also fits nicely with encouraging attack instead of defense--you don't get your shield if you use a turn activating a regen.
Tempo (Finisher, CD10-20): You punch guy for 50%..150% weapon damage. For each combo point spent, your Technique or Race talent with the longest remaining cooldown has its cooldown reduced by 1..3. Welcome back Blinding Speed, Rush, Timeless, Wrath of the Woods, etc. I like this the more I think about it, but I adjusted it to a flat CD reduction so it isn't so generous with racials. The damage component can be made trivial, its mostly there to make sure shield procs.
Essence Smash (Combo generator, CD10): Strips 1..3 physical and magical buffs from the target. Low to moderate damage. For each buff removed you gain 1 combo point. This is designed to be "notably better" than Spellhunt Remnants on single targets with high buff counts but not outdamage Double Jab on anything with only a few buffs.
Roundhouse Kick (Finisher, CD something): You do a kicky spinny thing to all enemies within 2 radius. Effected enemies are knocked back 1..5 spaces based on combo points. If they collide with a wall or another unit they take additional damage and are stunned. Damage should be low to moderate, not great even if they collide. I strongly feel this needs to be radius 2-3 to be an effective mechanic, or we run into the Whirlwind problem of it only being useful when you're positioned in a stupid way.
The numbers given are just to help illustrate the design of the skill and are very rough. I'd be happy to fill in the numbers, theme, description, or whatever on any of them if it would be helpful.
A note on finishers. If all of my proposals were added there would be 6 total finishers not counting anything potentially added to Grappling, and several are *extremely* powerful. The reason for this is I want combo points to be a scarce resource that multiple powerful effects are competing to use. This might warrant combo point generation changes, but I'd want to toy with the changed class before having any useful input on that.
I like the mitigation when in melee range concept a lot too, but I don't want to do just that. The first skill in my Unarmed Discipline revamp proposal is exactly along those lines, though.
Definitely going with Soaring Leap for the 4th base finisher. You're right, there isn't a good reason to put damage on this. Purely moving x spaces is boring but functional and a huge gap fill for the class. Still feels a bit boring to me but lets go with that for now. I'll edit that into the main post.
This is my proposal for the Unarmed Discipline replacement. I strongly feel there isn't a good reason to keep the existing tree, so if that stays it would make more sense to add this as a separate one. Though I did steal Roundhouse Kick because I agree with supermini, Parcae, and others that we could use more things that care about terrain. A minor sub-theme of this tree is that its aimed at advanced players, utilizing mechanics that aren't so great if you're bumping through the game. This should be fine as its an unlocked tree.
Unarmed Discipline / Advanced Unarmed Combat / Dragon Brawler Z / I really have no idea what to name anything
Mind Over Retarded Burst Damage (Passive): Each time you deal a critical strike you gain Awesome Shield for 10 seconds, reducing the next attack over 70% of your max HP by 10%..60%. This triggers off crits to keep you from having it up when not actively attacking easily and to reduce its early game power. By endgame you'll be activating it every attack turn, but it won't generally be expended as 70% is a very steep requirement. As with the old version, the goal is to have some buffer against the worst damage spikes while not gaining much overall damage mitigation. This also fits nicely with encouraging attack instead of defense--you don't get your shield if you use a turn activating a regen.
Tempo (Finisher, CD10-20): You punch guy for 50%..150% weapon damage. For each combo point spent, your Technique or Race talent with the longest remaining cooldown has its cooldown reduced by 1..3. Welcome back Blinding Speed, Rush, Timeless, Wrath of the Woods, etc. I like this the more I think about it, but I adjusted it to a flat CD reduction so it isn't so generous with racials. The damage component can be made trivial, its mostly there to make sure shield procs.
Essence Smash (Combo generator, CD10): Strips 1..3 physical and magical buffs from the target. Low to moderate damage. For each buff removed you gain 1 combo point. This is designed to be "notably better" than Spellhunt Remnants on single targets with high buff counts but not outdamage Double Jab on anything with only a few buffs.
Roundhouse Kick (Finisher, CD something): You do a kicky spinny thing to all enemies within 2 radius. Effected enemies are knocked back 1..5 spaces based on combo points. If they collide with a wall or another unit they take additional damage and are stunned. Damage should be low to moderate, not great even if they collide. I strongly feel this needs to be radius 2-3 to be an effective mechanic, or we run into the Whirlwind problem of it only being useful when you're positioned in a stupid way.
The numbers given are just to help illustrate the design of the skill and are very rough. I'd be happy to fill in the numbers, theme, description, or whatever on any of them if it would be helpful.
A note on finishers. If all of my proposals were added there would be 6 total finishers not counting anything potentially added to Grappling, and several are *extremely* powerful. The reason for this is I want combo points to be a scarce resource that multiple powerful effects are competing to use. This might warrant combo point generation changes, but I'd want to toy with the changed class before having any useful input on that.
Re: Idea for Brawlers
Edited initial post with the various ideas that have been proposed, for easier perusal.
Re: Idea for Brawlers
For Mind over Retarded Burst Damage, instead of forcing players to sink 5 points into something that barely ever gets used, how about reducing hits over 30% of life by some multiplier of your Defense? You would consume 1 combo point per (X times Defense) absorbed.
Also, some of these new ideas really need to be generic trees. Brawlers are all class points as it currently stands.
Also, some of these new ideas really need to be generic trees. Brawlers are all class points as it currently stands.
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Strongpoint
- Wyrmic
- Posts: 212
- Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:33 pm
Re: Idea for Brawlers
Speaking about generic\class points....
I'd love to see Unarmed training :
a) being a generic tree
b)Granted by some new escort or grant locked unarmed training for winning on that bloodarena that unlocks brawlers
c) granting unarmed attack speed increase brwalers get
That way any class could go unarmed style, brawlers are unique enough with pugulism and other stuff + other classes will have worse unarmed training mastery
Of cause in that case combo string should be replaced with something else as this is brawler only talent (and quite crappy for a brawler)
I'd love to see Unarmed training :
a) being a generic tree
b)Granted by some new escort or grant locked unarmed training for winning on that bloodarena that unlocks brawlers
c) granting unarmed attack speed increase brwalers get
That way any class could go unarmed style, brawlers are unique enough with pugulism and other stuff + other classes will have worse unarmed training mastery
Of cause in that case combo string should be replaced with something else as this is brawler only talent (and quite crappy for a brawler)
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Mewtarthio
- Uruivellas
- Posts: 717
- Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:03 pm
Re: Idea for Brawlers
Seems a bit odd for a totally non-magical class to punch, say, somebody's regeneration away. It might be more flavor-consistent to refluff it as disrupting their form/concentration and make it specifically strip sustains.Shibari wrote:Essence Smash (Combo generator, CD10): Strips 1..3 physical and magical buffs from the target. Low to moderate damage. For each buff removed you gain 1 combo point. This is designed to be "notably better" than Spellhunt Remnants on single targets with high buff counts but not outdamage Double Jab on anything with only a few buffs.
Re: Idea for Brawlers
Random idea: what if combo points did not simply disappear at the end of the duration but downgraded(as in, from 5-point to 4-point rather than nothing)? Considering they will already last 2 turns more in 1.0.5, would that be too strong a buff?
ToME online profile: http://te4.org/users/zonk
Addons (most likely obsolete): Wights, Trolls, Starting prodigy, Alternate save/resistance system
Addons (most likely obsolete): Wights, Trolls, Starting prodigy, Alternate save/resistance system
Re: Idea for Brawlers
Bump since SVN is being updated again. I don't have a lot to add to my proposals off the top of my head, beyond noting that I tried to keep the changes that weren't to Unarmed Discipline simple and easy to code. I strongly feel the Mobile Defense change in particular should go in along with the instant casts on Hack'n'back and Heave since both of those would apply to Marauder as well, one of the few bad classes I can actually convince other people is bad!