Arcane Blade rebalancing: 2H weapon edition

[Zeyphor]

To put it relatively softly, a ToME player who really thinks about Arcane Blades knows that 2H Arcane Blade builds just aren't viable unless they're using a staff, and even then short staff+offhand or shield is better than a regular staff.
Arcane Blades start the game with a two-handed sword, and the Arcane Blade class description ingame says that they wield two-handed weapons of destruction.

I think that two handed weapons, especially non-staves, should be made viable for Arcane Blades, and heres my proposed way to do it; feel free to give input, and feel free to make it harsh too as long as its not something unconstructive like "thats stupid", at least point out which part is stupid.

-make the explosion power for Arcane Destruction increase with your critical multiplier in addition to your Spellpower, with a 0% damage increase from the base critical multiplier of 150% or let it be able to critically hit; this suggestion is because the ability is amazing early game but it is very underwhelming in the late-game and the Infinite Dungeon unless you're using a staff, which I go over below
-double the explosion power for Arcane Destruction when using two-handed weapons
--same as above, except 2/3 or 3/4 the Arcane Destruction explosion power if it is too powerful, which, when you compare to the damage output of Berserkers who do 13k+ damage in 1 hit with Windblade to 1 guy, it kinda isn't

-for Spell/Enhancement, half the damage for Fiery and Shock Hands when dual wielding or double the damage for two-handed weapons, half the daze chance on Shock Hands when using two weapons and do the same thing described for the damage for Fiery/Shock hands to the Stamina/Mana gain from the talents

-Arcane Blades get Technique/Two-handed weapons(locked?)

-nerf the staff accuracy bonus to at least half, but preferably 1/4 of what it currently is; at the moment, with 50+ accuracy you'll make spells do at least double damage to most enemies until the lategame, where it is still extremely powerful in comparison to accuracy bonuses from other weapons; in particular, Arcane Combat procs and Arcane Destruction's explosion are increased by the staff accuracy bonus for Arcane Blades, and so are Talent on hit(spell)<spell name><x% chance> kinds of stuff that are triggered by Lightning, Earthen Missles, or Flames that come from Arcane Combat; even though Arcane Blades can only use one short staff and an offhander at best, the staff accuracy bonus is still very overcentralizing for them
--think of the accuracy bonuses this way; so you hit a guy with 0 defense while you have 50 accuracy, which is realistically not very hard to have lategame without dexterity investment; with a staff, you would do 200% more damage with procs of Arcane Combat, talent on hit (spell) stuff triggered by Arcane Combat procs, and with damage from Arcane Destruction; with maces you would do 5% more damage with each hit with the mace, with axes you would have 10% more (physical?)crit chance with the axe, and with swords, you would have 20% more (physical?)critical multiplier with the sword, with daggers, you get 25% armor penetration with the dagger, and with shields you get the same result as staves, but shield attacks only come from Assault, Overpower, and Shield Pummel for Arcane Blades; doesn't this make the staff accuracy bonus sound overpowered? also mindstars should get some sort of accuracy bonus too

-Greater Weapon Focus is a very delicate topic here which I'd really rather not talk about, but its hard to talk about Arcane Blades without mentioning it; even if the above proposals are implemented in vanilla ToME, serious players are going to almost never specialize in two-handed weapons unless they really hate being stunned pinned or missing just because of Greater Weapon Focus; several things can be done about it for Arcane Blades:
--Arcane Blades only get .9 or less to Technique/Battle tactics by default, still locked
--double greater weapon focus proc chance for two-handed weapons
--remove Technique/Battle tactics from Arcane Blades entirely, if it is that overcentralizing
below this text are Greater Weapon Focus changes that would influence other classes as well as Arcane Blades, and would be more controversial changes
---multiply Greater Weapon Focus proc chance by 2/3 or 3/4 or something, then double Greater Weapon Focus proc chance for two-handed weapons
---reduce the damage done by Greater Weapon Focus hits, or limit the amount of time that Greater Weapon Focus can proc per 100% turn
---Greater Weapon Focus scales less with Dexterity
---make Greater Weapon Focus only give you an extra melee attack instead of a free extra melee talent use if a melee talent hit triggered it, like Flurry Assault or Whirlwind; I just heard it does that but I haven't noticed this myself, please point out if it doesn't work like this
I'd rather not have proposals in the first place about Greater Weapon Focus; if further discussion is warranted, I'd recommend that a different thread is made about it and includes the concept of rings of focus, which give you Greater Weapon Focus on use. Also I wouldn't be making that thread

I'm not standing very much on those Greater Weapon Focus modification proposals, largely because it would also influence other classes that use Greater Weapon Focus, and again, I'd really rather not have it changed for other classes.

EDIT: now I know how powerful staves are, having abused them; I talked about the staff accuracy bonus and compared it to other accuracy bonuses and made changes to other stuff that I said

[SageAcrin]

Considering I cleared a 2H AB before they had the current weapon trees, I kinda am annoyed at the "not viable" part.

Having said that, I do see where you're coming from. The other two trees are probably better for them; When I suggested a shield tree, I actually suggested the defensive one and not the offensive one, IIRC, and was assuming that the difficulty of getting a dualwielder off the ground would somewhat mitigate their popularity. Neither happened.

So, here's my thoughts on the matter.

A: Ditch Battle Tactics entirely. Seriously sick of the massive centralizing focus this tree is providing to most players, due to the shiny numbers it provides; They're getting played like a Marauder constantly, which is Marauder's job. Arcane Blade, at least to me, should be a fusion of caster and fighter, not "Fighter that builds Magic for more basic physical damage".

The fact that the TC's assessment had a massive series of nerfs to it and takes up half the thoughts is definitely indicative of how extreme this is. AB damage is fine without it. It was a decent tree when it was the only advantage Dexterity building brought to AB, but now with the dual-wield tree, ABs have an entirely viable Dexterity build that is, in passing, utterly dominating the other builds. It's a shame, but it really should go.

B: Depends on how you want to handle AB.

If AB's really a twohander class and the other weapon options are just that, options; Give them the other twohander tree, locked, and unlock Crippling. This is a nice way to help ABs off the ground, and generally works pretty well as an answer to their twohander woes; It's easier to run a "standard" twohander AB, and you can focus more on the magic end, but the other builds may have more payoff. Simple and not too bad.

If AB's meant to be more of a general weapons class, now, putting the boost on the AB talents makes more sense. Making Arcane Combat have 20% more chance to proc on a twohander, and boosting the radius/damage on Arcane Destruction when wielding a twohander, would be good to me. (The critmult idea is a perfectly good way to up the damage, of course.)

Not sure if the Hands talents really need a buff specific to a twohander, though; Most on-hit bonuses have that problem, and changing that should be a more generalized fix, if it's desirable.

The short answer; Honestly, I think they just need to have Battle Tactics removed, Crippling unlocked, and the other twohander tree added locked.

[Zeyphor]

SageAcrin what category do you mean by crippling?
If you mean Technique/Dirty Fighting, which has Cripple in it, they already have it, though I doubt you meant this.
Do you mean a Cunning/something tree or what?

edit: kthx stinkstink

[stinkstink]

Two-handed maiming (the one with Stunning Blow) is the crippling tree SageAcrin was talking about. It's referred to as 2hweapon-cripple in the code.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, I tend to forget that the actual name and internal name on that are different. It's rarely true of category names.

[comrade raoul]

One thing to keep in mind is that thanks to their accuracy bonus, staves are *crazy* good on ABs right now. If not done carefully, buffing 2H weapons for them (which I agree ought to be done) would amount to buffing staves, which really doesn't need to happen. (If I were writing an arcane blade rebalancing patch myself, I wouldn't make Magical Combat usable with staves at all to balance this.)

I completely agree with SageAcrin's point about leaving Battle Tactics to bulwarks and marauders. The arcane blade doesn't need it and it's too much of an incentive to play the class as a straight fighter. I cleared two shield ABs--for whom GWF *was* the only advantage Dexterity brought to the class--and it was still probably too good. (If anything, I think shield builds are even more powerful than dual weapon ones.)

I think the real problem is that (a) the arcane blade synergizes extremely well with multi-hit attacks, which both shields and dual weapons offer and two-handed weapons do not and (b) the talents in Two-Handed Maiming are just not very good for arcane blades; apart from Stunning Blow, they would not do much to justify using two-handed weapons even if the tree were available unlocked. (Even the other tree is iffy. Death Dance is okay; Berserker would be useful, but probably tread too much on other classes' toes--one of the key weaknesses of arcane blades is that they lack any kind of status immunity.) For these reasons I'm not sure just making the two-handed trees more accessible would do much to help.

I like the OP's ideas about Arcane Destruction, but I have no idea how to figure out the math for it. One more fantastical option would be to indeed make Two-Handed Weapon available unlocked, and then add a separate, locked tree just for arcane blades using two-handers, designed to counterbalance the multi-hitting options for other builds.

[stinkstink]

Hell, if you want an arcane blade-friendlier 2hweapon tree, you could probably just revamp two-handed maiming. Would anyone shed any tears if Sunder Arms and Blood Frenzy were replaced/subsumed?

[SageAcrin]

I'm not entirely sure Arcane Combat needed the bonus with staff accuracy that it got. Staff Arcane Blade was reasonably viable before that.

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure that using a different kind of twohander than most is a problem, especially given that two-handed standard weapons and staves have a different curve throughout the game; A twohander AB optimally will start with normal twohanders and end with staves pretty much no matter what anyways, as getting decent Staff Combat levels until L20 isn't really viable, and early staves have terrible Damage stats.

So I'd worry more about overall power of twohanders, than that element of it.