Runic Mastery tree (analogue to Fungus)

[Doctornull]

They already have an evasion-like bonus. If the attacker can't see an invisible defender, it only has 1/3 the normal chance to hit.

Isn't that only for physical attacks?

Spell-beams always hit, don't they?

[HousePet]

I don't believe that information is documented anywhere on the invisibility talents.
It really should be.

[Suslik]

I'm afraid adding multiple options of removing detrimental effects to runes will shift balance towards undead too much. They are quite powerful even without such option, but if casting an instant offensive rune would remove 3 effects, well.. Wild infusion is made for removing effects and it removes only 1 effect and restricted to 2 types. Why would offensive rune remove 3 effects?

[darkgod]

I'm not chiming in yet but I'm reading with interrest

[Tankra]

I agree that it seems bizarre for offensive runes to remove more negative conditions than a Wild Infusion, and it seems very, very powerful. Removing any type of condition is something that pretty much only Providence (Celestial - Light) can do, and we all know how powerful of a talent Providence is.

I have a better idea for buffing offensive runes with the second talent (Runic Empowerment) in the tree. Upon buying the talent at lvl 1, you would get a new skill called "Runic Mastery" which functions roughly analogously to "Staff Mastery." It basically lets you transform a percentage of the damage type of your offensive rune into the damage type of your choice. This percentage would be 33% at talent level 1, 66% at talent level 3, and 100% at talent level 5. So, for example, a Paradox Mage with the talent at lvl 5 would be able to transform 100% of the acid damage of his Acid Wave into temporal damage if he so chooses, thus giving the rune a significant offensive buff, rather than an offensive one.

I think this would be cool and it would probably make offensive runes much more popular choices, possibly even build-enabling in certain cases. The percentages can be adjusted of course, depending on whether or not transforming 100% of the damage is too OP.

[Atarlost]

I think the weakness argument for this tree is oversold. Yes, antimagic has a downside, but it has two trees, one of which doesn't require an unlock, and the Zigur purchasable mastery tree is far more versatile than the Angolwyn purchasable mastery tree. Only an already mana using class or solipsist can even use the staff tree without losing an inscription slot, but mindstar mastery is good on every non-magic class that can consider a dual weapon build, as a second weapon on a slinger, and at higher levels probably even on a bulwark.

If the Angolwyn tree is going to be a competitor to antimagic rather than a boost to the classes that can't take antimagic anyways it kind of needs to account for all the advantages antimagic has.

The simplest thing to do is give Aegis. The first three abilities are passives or sustains so the lack of regen doesn't matter and anyone can benefit from it.

The other thing to look at is a defensive tree philosophically similar to antimagic. Angolwyn is opposed to the corruptors and necromancers. A sustain heavy mana school with a bit of regen and an anti-corruptor/anti-necromancer emphasis would emphasize the Angolwyn trying to set right the evils of other mages.

[Kaja Rainbow]

The simplest thing to do is give Aegis. The first three abilities are passives or sustains so the lack of regen doesn't matter and anyone can benefit from it.

There've already been quite sufficient arguments made against giving Aegis as an Angolwen reward, and those would have to be addressed when proposing that.. The primary one is that Aegis requires spellpower.

My own thought for an Angolwen tree, based off discussions in both this thread and other threads, was a talent that would boost runes, a talent that would grant a teleport or some other movement/escape skill, a talent that would grant mirror images or an Angolwen mage summon (though I'm not sure that'd fit--yeeks and treants seem like they'd get treated as more expendable than Angolwen would treat its mages), and a fourth talent that I dunno about yet.

An interesting option for this tree might be a talent that grants bonus mana regen plus, if you don't have it already, a certain minimum spellpower. The mana regen's a straight bonus to what you might have already, but the spellpower bonus would be treated similarly to heightened senses in that it doesn't stack with other spellpower sources and whichever's highest of it and the spellpower stat on your sheet gets used. It should probably scale with level or something like that. It could get called something like Magic Attunement. This would help with things like spellpower based talents from escorts, items, possibly the reward tree's talents, and whatever else might use that spellpower.

The main danger I can think of for this is hybrid classes cheaping out on their spellpower stat in order to get other ones. But they tend to have talents that require the Magic stat (or Cunning or Willpower if they're one of the classes with a talent to convert those into spellpower).

That'd also help resolve the issue of Channel Staff requiring mana (though I still think that perhaps everyone should start with mana regen).

[SageAcrin]

Hum, I have been too negative on this concept. Lemme see if I can come up with something I like, and see if anyone will tear it apart for me.

Firstly, I'd suggest not L10, Cunning for the stat(Runes are magical, but can be used by non-magic...Cunning seems the best stat. Willpower would be more useful but less thematic.). Not-L10 helps because L10 talents have higher reqs than non-L10-this would cap out at mid-30s Cunning, which shouldn't be too annoying to swap to or have naturally.

The current Rune ideas are all powerful and non-specific, but worry too much about theme-the net result is a set of abilities that, by accident, are more mage-y than physical.

Runic Recall: Interesting but sorta scattered. Charms have nothing to do intrinsically with runes(or magic); Only Wands do. Wand boosting would be neat though.

Thoughts on skill alteration;

Rename tree to Arcane Mastery, so that it's not specifically Runes. That broadens the horizon, even if it's going to end up mostly Runes.

Arcane Synergy: Passive. Boost all Arcane equipment's melee_project and on_hit damage by (TL*20)%, and any on_hit rates by (TL)%. Raise Wand damage% by (TL*10)%, and reduce their Cooldowns by (10*TL)%. And drop the cooldown for all Runes by 1. At TL5, you will reduce the cooldown for all Runes by an additional 1.

Same basic idea as the original but less good of a L1 skill for the undead and more interesting for physical fighters(the only ones likely to use Wands or care about most of the talent's bonuses).

Runic Empowerment: Passive. Grants the following bonuses to Runes:

Any: Grants (TL*0.05) Mana regeneration. (This is per rune, mind you.)
Shielding: (TL*20)% chance of removing a random status.
Vision: Gain passive ESP for the types of enemy the Rune grants active ESP for, out to your normal ESP range. Additionally, any enemies in the radius of Vision get a (TL*5)% reduction to all their resistances, as you gain extremely detailed knowledge of their weakpoints thanks to your unique point of view. (Double this bonus for the ESP type? Would be neat.)
Manasurge: Allows you to apply (100+TL*10)% of the initial surge value to Paradox, Positive and Negative values as well, and boosts Mana's initial surge to the same amount. Additionally, you gain a (TL*3)% bonus to Spell and Physical Critical rates, and a (TL*5%) bonus to Crit Modifier, while Manasurging(Hey, it works for Born into Magic).
Phase Door, Teleport, Controlled Phase Door: (TL*10)% chance of not putting them on cooldown, allowing them to be used instantly again. Also increases the range of teleports/phase doors/CPDs by (TL), the minimum teleport radius for Teleports by (TL) and lowers the fuzz radius on CPDs by 1 at TL5.
Elemental Runes: Grant a (TL*3)% bonus to resistance of the element relevant to the rune while you have it equipped. In addition, each elemental Rune gets a unique advantage at TL5:
Heat Ray, Frozen Spear: Cure an extra status.
Lightning: Extra turn of damage nullification.
Acid Wave: 100% attempt to Disarm and Blind all targets caught in it for 3 turns(uses Spellpower for the check).

Less cluttered, though no less huge(The original idea has no smooth scaling, but instead a lot of level hardcodes) and hopefully more interesting. Also less good at hard countering status, which was making the talent too appealing...but good enough at countering status to interest people. As mentioned, I'm not sure this is a good idea; Any way you slice it, it's going to buff undead. The trick is balancing it out so that every undead doesn't take it.

Runic Surge: Active, Instant, long(30?) CD. Some cheap Mana cost, presumably.

Grants you a (TL*3) Damage/Damage Penetration bonus for the damage element of every Elemental attack rune you have inscripted, a (TL*2) flat damage armor for every Shielding Rune you have inscripted, a temporary (TL) Spellsurge effect for every Manasurge rune, and a (TL*6) Defense/Accuracy bonus for every Vision Rune you have inscripted. In addition, you gain a (15, 25) Spellpower(Very high base/low scaling) melee_project(damage when you hit things with weapons) of (The relevant element for elemental runes, Arcane for Shielding/Manasurge/Phase Door/CPD/Teleport) for every Rune you have inscribed, and a (5, 10) Random Blind project for Vision Runes. This effect lasts for (TL/2+3) turns.

Should be interesting; It grants a big buff temporarily to physical classes, particularly when you first get it, and has enough interesting angles to not be totally useless for mages. I can't see any undead Rogue or Archer not picking the category up at this point, but that's okay, again...like I said, I'm working within that limitation. Not sure if it's a good idea still, but the important thing is to not smash the game with it.

Mana Infusion: Sustain, 200 Mana, consumes (10-TL) Mana a turn. Supercharge yourself with mana directly pumped into your body and every attack you make.

This has the following effects:

A: Boosts Movement Speed by (TL*20)%.
B: Boosts your alldamage%, allresistance penetration% and allresistance by TL*2%.
C: Increases your Healing Modifier by (TL*5)% and your Life Regeneration by (TL).
D: Causes you to constantly generate(unless purposefully cancelled) a (Spellpower 15, 25) barrier around you, every turn(one turn duration). Free damage mitigation!

Last talent is less more rune bonuses and more something that any Willpower oriented class-the people least likely to go non-AM-can really get behind. It chugs tons of Mana, to the point where only one Mana class(Alchemist) can possibly consider it, and the bonuses are fairly benign for most mages. However, a physical fighter can basically use this for large free bonuses. A few mages can too(Paradox Mage comes to mind), but they incidentally seem to be the weaker mages with more options anyways.

And of course, this is at least useful to any non-mage. Were you not caring about that Mana regen that you were getting off Runic Empowerment? You might care now.

So yeah, here's my alternative to it. I'm not sure if it's any good either, but this is what I think of when I think of a specific, rune oriented category. And I feel like it appeals more to physical fighters than anyone, without looking out of place about it.

[b0rsuk]

How about just improving Arcane artifacts and stuff ? 2-handed warriors already have incentives like the Blighted Maul. In early-mid game, "The Truth" is a very good weapon, too. Umbraphage is universally liked and usable by any character class. And stop adding these powerful arcane-disrupting artifacts, AM already get rewards for forsaking arcane items (the trees, mostly). Slimy weapons and ammo are powerful enough to rival some artifacts. Wasn't AM supposed to be a sacrifice ?

Improving staves wouldn't hurt at all. Secrets of Telos is a prodigy related to Angolwen, but it's really hard to get all the 3 pieces and staves are not good for most classes.

What bothers me is that even arcane escort rewards tend to be bad if you're not a spellcaster. I'm playing an archer with a Phase Door rune, I don't want to commit myself to Arcane or AM to have a broad range of item choices, including throat-seeking bows. Yet I have to take sucky rewards from escorts. No, I don't care about Chant of Fortitude or +2 Magic on my Str/Dex character. Why do I have to save all paladins if I merely have a (potentially temporary) rune ? Let my character be a hypocrite and a traitor. If I have infusions only, I can choose between betrayal and saving.

[Doctornull]

I'm afraid adding multiple options of removing detrimental effects to runes will shift balance towards undead too much. They are quite powerful even without such option, but if casting an instant offensive rune would remove 3 effects, well.. Wild infusion is made for removing effects and it removes only 1 effect and restricted to 2 types. Why would offensive rune remove 3 effects?

It's a question of power between a broadly applicable item vs. a narrowly applicable item.

Wild Infusions are useful in 3 situations:
- You want to remove one kind of condition.
- You want to remove a different kind of condition.
- You want to take -10% to -40% less damage for the next few turns.

Runes are only useful in 2 situations:
- You want to remove one kind of condition.
- You want to hit someone with one kind of damage (but not very much damage, and without all the usual riders you apply to melee / ranged / spell / mind attacks).

When the Wild Infusion fails to remove the correct condition, you get a consolation prize (less damage). When you don't have a condition to remove, the Wild Infusion gives you the same generally good consolation prize. They're very broadly useful -- taking damage happens often, so reducing damage taken is almost always useful.

In contrast, there are fewer times when an attack rune will be useful: you'll need to have a condition of the one specific type, and even then, it might remove the wrong condition. In order for a single-type condition remover to be as useful as a dual-type condition remover, the single-type must provide more effect within its limited scope. Removing 3 of the same type is actually less powerful than people seem to think, since you'll usually only have one nasty condition which you need gone right now (Dazed, Stunned, Blinded), rather than getting three conditions at once... but when you DO get three conditions at once, you'll feel really good about spending those 5 talent points.

How about just improving Arcane artifacts and stuff ?

That's a really interesting idea. Not sure if it belongs in this thread, but I do like it.

What bothers me is that even arcane escort rewards tend to be bad if you're not a spellcaster. I'm playing an archer with a Phase Door rune, I don't want to commit myself to Arcane or AM to have a broad range of item choices, including throat-seeking bows. Yet I have to take sucky rewards from escorts. No, I don't care about Chant of Fortitude or +2 Magic on my Str/Dex character. Why do I have to save all paladins if I merely have a (potentially temporary) rune ? Let my character be a hypocrite and a traitor. If I have infusions only, I can choose between betrayal and saving.

Improved escort rewards would be cool, yeah. The current ones do work great for casters, but not so much for muggles.

Maybe Arcane escorts could have an option to do stuff like, I dunno, improve your Runes? Or give you a better quality Rune of the kind you're already wearing?

[b0rsuk]

Just a quick note - when attempting to design new runes, remember that monsters are going to use them as well. Here are 2 ideas that sound nice at first but could have terrible consequences:

- Flash rune: Instant use. The next activated ability takes no time to use. (So instant Disengage, Stunning Blow, Barrier...)
- Aura rune: for 4 turns, you deal considerable damage to monsters that hit you.

I think it was Ukruk whom I've seen with 3 Heroism infusions. Imagine a rare using a combo of instant attacks on you with Flash runes, or a melee character who runs into a rare which has just two. Aura runes are probably easier to balance and could work, especially if they're not instant. Just like Vision runes have a random monster set, Aura runes would deal a random element (possibly restricted to more "arcane" ones like Blight, Arcane, Light, Temporal, Darkness) and have a small 10% chance to inflict a status effect on attackers (disease, blind, teleport 4 squares away, slow...).
------------

That being said, I think I have an idea for a new ability!

"Extract Runes(and Infusions)"
Passive
Whenever you kill a monster equipped with runes(or infusions), there's an increased chance that some of them will fall out.

So, with this reward, be it a single skll or a part of a talent tree, you'd find more runes and infusions. I think it should affect both runes and infusions, because it's Zigur and Antimagic who are restrictive and resemble a religious order. Arcane users are merely hiding from persecution, they have - as far as I can make see - no desire to make everything arcane.
I wouldn't be surprised if monsters were spawned with more powerful runes than players can find. I didn't really pay attention. If that's the case, then the talent could just spawn a rune of the same type, but otherwise generated from scratch based on character's (or zone's) level.

[Doctornull]

That being said, I think I have an idea for a new ability!

"Extract Runes(and Infusions)"
Passive
Whenever you kill a monster equipped with runes(or infusions), there's an increased chance that some of them will fall out.

So, with this reward, be it a single skll or a part of a talent tree, you'd find more runes and infusions. I think it should affect both runes and infusions, because it's Zigur and Antimagic who are restrictive and resemble a religious order. Arcane users are merely hiding from persecution, they have - as far as I can make see - no desire to make everything arcane.
I wouldn't be surprised if monsters were spawned with more powerful runes than players can find. I didn't really pay attention. If that's the case, then the talent could just spawn a rune of the same type, but otherwise generated from scratch based on character's (or zone's) level.

That's cool. It sounds a tiny bit Necromantic (in that it's extracting power from a recent kill), so maybe it could find a home in HousePet's Necromancy+ addon?

But it brings up an issue: at some point, I'm saturated. I've got great inscriptions in all my slots, and with this talent I'd keep finding stuff which just wasn't as good as what I've already got -- or maybe I'll find one which is 2% better, but it already takes some time to sort through the dross to find that out. Sure, inventory management is part of the game, but maybe there's a way to make use of inferior Runes & Infusions... something like...

Inscription Augmentation - Consume a Rune or Infusion to slightly improve the hidden quality variable of one currently inscribed inscription of the same type. Maybe not a stand alone talent, maybe the tier 5 power of your Extract Inscription talent?

---

In the same vein, maybe the way to improve attack runes is to have them only take up 1/3 of an inscription slot. Something like...

Runic Calligraphy - Take three Runes and compress them into a single inscription slot. These three Runes share a linked cooldown, so using any of them will render the other two unavailable during cooldown.

If that were an (expensive) option, I'd try it.

[Kaja Rainbow]

Necromantic? Seriously? It's no different than a power that gives you a chance of extra loot on a kill, except that loot's runes and inscriptions.

[Atarlost]

Angolwyn is sending you, a probably-not-mage, to hunt down a renegade mage. That mans Angolwyn uses auxiliaries.

After putting down Urkis you should become an auxiliary and receive appropriate training for hunting down rogue mages. The reward tree should be the counterpart not of fungus but of antimagic.

What would help someone kill rogue mages that doesn't work like antimagic? Saves, mobility, and condition removal. Saves are kind of dull and covered by the Combat Veteran tree for many nonmagical classes, though.

Absorb Magic
instant active spell costs 10 fatigue
cooldown 30-ish?
range self
You have learned to use hostile magic for your own benefit, removing TL harmful magical effects generating mana equal to their combined remaining durations

Runic Power
active spell costs 50 mana
cooldown 20
range self
You force power into your inscribed runes reducing their cooldowns and your runic saturation by TL.

Blink
active spell costs 20 mana and 20 fatigue
cooldown 20-RTL?
range self
You flicker through space faster than you could run. Targeted teleport (radius 0) 1+TL times in range 2. At TL 5 your range per jump increases to 3. Each jump consumes an additional turn unless canceled.

Counterspell
active spell costs 50 mana
cooldown 10-raw
Duration raw turns or until spell is countered.
All spells cast against you have a TLx10% chance to be countered. Countered spells take no effect but have double the resource cost if positive or have positive resource cost if normally negative. This effect ends the first time a spell is successfully countered.

These are just pasta thrown at the wall to see if it'll stick. Absorb is condition removal and mana regen because the tree needs mana regen to avoid eating a rune slot on manasurge. Runic Power is filler. I think the cooldown is long enough that it can't be used to auto-chain shielding runes except on undead and anorthil. Blink is meant to be somewhere in between phase door and a movement infusion. Counterspell is meant to be more interesting than just spell save (and to scale better).

[Doctornull]

Angolwyn is sending you, a probably-not-mage, to hunt down a renegade mage. That mans Angolwyn uses auxiliaries.

After putting down Urkis you should become an auxiliary and receive appropriate training for hunting down rogue mages. The reward tree should be the counterpart not of fungus but of antimagic.

What would help someone kill rogue mages that doesn't work like antimagic? Saves, mobility, and condition removal. Saves are kind of dull and covered by the Combat Veteran tree for many nonmagical classes, though.

I'm not sold on the specific effects you listed, but I love this idea, and I think it's probably a better base than my Runic stuff.

Expanding on it, what does Angolwen dislike?
- Corruptors
- Necromancers
- Oozemancers


So effects might include:
- Resist Acid, Nature, Darkness & Blight damage
- Disease & Poison inversion (convert disease & poison damage into Arcane retributive damage)


Maybe a capstone effect which screws over Nature and Blight users equally?

Arcana Ascendant:
high Mana cost, long cooldown, big area cone
Damage any Necrotic Minions and Oozy summons; reduce time remaining on Summoner summons. If the caster is undead, maybe damage the caster a bit too?
Partially drain and damage all Vim users, including the caster, which matters if you decided to side with the Grand Corruptor and use Hexes.
Impose an Equilibrium penalty on all Wild-Gift users, including the caster, which matters if you invested in Harmony or if you're an oddball Wyrmic.


(Like you, I'm just throwing this out there.)

Cheers!