Oozemaster Adjustments

[SageAcrin]

General thoughts;

A: First post changes seem pretty legitimate to me and I agree with them.

B: I have absolutely no idea exactly what discussed changes suggested after the OP you have or have not implemented and feel very weird about how this entire thread's constructed-it feels like you're almost sliding in changes without discussing them.

Since some changes like this already happened with the Infinite tweaks(Shattering Impacts no longer harming the target without any compensation, Stealth generally being nerfed in multiple ways, a few other things I'm not recalling off the top of my head that required heavy code diving/discussions with Pure to find out about.), I'm rather unhappy with this feeling.

Could you please put the full changelist somewhere before suggesting it as a game implementation?

Edit: Never mind, found it on page 4. Linking that in the OP would be helpful, though, and it's still rather vague in terminology/doesn't include a change later on the same page... I think, not actually sure.

Lemme just grab the figures real fast to make this easier to look at.

Reference values:

Mucus regen reduced from (2, 10) to (2, 8 ). Fairly low impact change at cap, seems fine.

Ancestral Life regen changed from (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 cap and levels past this do nothing for the regen) to (0.5*TL) which is actually a nerf below L8 if I read this right. Probably a good thing, though L1 Ancestral Life is notably worse than it used to be for players that want to just use it to have any Equi regen at all; Perhaps learning the talent should give a 0.5 Equi resting regen?

A: Don't agree with the current Corrosive/Acidic respen dynamic. Right now, all you're doing is a very boring "double the required points/make the respen halved most of the time" as compared to their current function, and removing the parity with similar talents(like Wildfire, etc) on the capstones. Which is nice and thematic and optimally should be retained.

I'd say leave the capstones at their old 50%-at-cap penetration, and instead have the tempbuffs give +damage% instead of +respen%.

B: Eyal's Will is a cool tree, but I have strong reservations about how useful the capstone is. Either Oozemancer really needs the resource regen(I doubt this, looking at the changes right now) enough to centralize the talent, or they don't(and players won't use it much).

Suggested thoughts include changing it into a sustained storm effect and losing the equi regen/lowering the damages to resources and (probably simplest) making it a distant radius instead of a radius around the caster(giving it good synergy with Acid Splash).

C: Don't really like dropping the Bouncing Slime projectile speed. It misses enough as it is. I'm okay with the rest of that, but that's always a frustrating(and vaguely random) way to have your crowd control decide to fail to work.

D: Indiscernable Anatomy confused me for quite a while until I grabbed up the main code history; It actually lost that Confusion immunity before, and it was apparently re-added in the Infinite scaling changes? But the talent also lost some general impact in those scaling changes as well(knocked down to about 2/3rds its old power).

Tentatively suggesting that the changes(removing Confusion/lowering crit resist) be kept, but that the remaining status resist powers be upped to something like (0.2, 0.7) to compensate.

E: Why does Oozebeam deal Manaburn damage, but Acidbeam do nothing special? This is puzzling and athematic; I'm not really understanding the logic here. They could quite reasonably both deal some Manaburn damage, or neither.

For that matter, Acidbeam's probably athematic on base and probably should be a statusing form of Acid, as Oozebeam is Slime instead of just Nature...

F: Poisonous Spores has to pass both a resistance and a status check, on top of being commonly resisted elemental damage, and doesn't really need to be nerfed at all. (Compare it statistically to skills such as Gravity Well, Earthquake and Poison Storm-none of which are considered must-use talents and the last is almost never used.)

It's annoying for the player to get hit by, but even at its worst it's far less dangerous than Stun, and encourages the player to pay attention to more than two statuses without dropping them dead instantly if they fail to.

If you want to nerf it, remove Spydric Poison from the options. That has a more dangerous effect on the player than enemies, and it's too unreliable for the player to care, right now.

Also, apologies for initial grumpiness. Just got a little annoyed when I was trying to figure out where the changelist was, as I initially was all for what I saw, then realized it was quadruple the size of what I was seeing as I looked through the large thread.

[Hachem_Muche]

I've updated the first post to show the current change list.

Ancestral Life regen changed from (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 cap and levels past this do nothing for the regen) to (0.5*TL) which is actually a nerf below L8 if I read this right. Probably a good thing, though L1 Ancestral Life is notably worse than it used to be for players that want to just use it to have any Equi regen at all; Perhaps learning the talent should give a 0.5 Equi resting regen?

You're right, this is a small nerf to eq. regen at low talent levels. Perhaps it should be adjusted up a bit, but probably doesn't need a passive effect, since it's pretty effective already.

A: Don't agree with the current Corrosive/Acidic respen dynamic. Right now, all you're doing is a very boring "double the required points/make the respen halved most of the time" as compared to their current function, and removing the parity with similar talents(like Wildfire, etc) on the capstones. Which is nice and thematic and optimally should be retained.

I'd say leave the capstones at their old 50%-at-cap penetration, and instead have the tempbuffs give +damage% instead of +respen%.

I see where you're coming from on this. Since Acidic Soil and Unstoppable nature have an extra benefit besides the respen built in, their damage bonuses could be moved to Natural Acid/Corrosive nature (adjusting their bonuses to reflect their down time) while putting the respen back up to around where comparable talents have it. I'm not sure if this is enough to make the lower tier talents attractive, however.

B: Eyal's Will is a cool tree, but I have strong reservations about how useful the capstone is. Either Oozemancer really needs the resource regen(I doubt this, looking at the changes right now) enough to centralize the talent, or they don't(and players won't use it much).

Suggested thoughts include changing it into a sustained storm effect and losing the equi regen/lowering the damages to resources and (probably simplest) making it a distant radius instead of a radius around the caster(giving it good synergy with Acid Splash).

As an anti-caster tree, the idea I had in mind was that it would be approximately equilibrium neutral when fighting arcane enemies (as opposed to having more offensive effectiveness, which is probably dangerous, balance-wise). Moving it to a distanced based AOE would require a damage nerf at minimum. As is, when combined with Acidfire, Poisonous Spores, and the beam talents, clearing out vaults full of enemies is very easy and low risk (with a couple of Bloated Oozes out at least). I think that allowing it to stack with Acid splash at greater range would result in too much aoe clearing power while reducing the risk to an already very resilient class. I'm not sure how npc mages will handle this -- they will probably just stand in it until all their mana is gone.
It would also be a little weird thematically, if you restored eq from something you left behind you, I think.

C: Don't really like dropping the Bouncing Slime projectile speed. It misses enough as it is. I'm okay with the rest of that, but that's always a frustrating(and vaguely random) way to have your crowd control decide to fail to work.

I haven't noticed this being a problem. The idea behind this was to give players a chance to dodge their own slime (or otherwise react) to an unlucky bounce. It's a much bigger nerf to npcs than to players, who can adjust to it, and it still works really well on tightly clustered enemies.

D: Indiscernable Anatomy confused me for quite a while until I grabbed up the main code history; It actually lost that Confusion immunity before, and it was apparently re-added in the Infinite scaling changes? But the talent also lost some general impact in those scaling changes as well(knocked down to about 2/3rds its old power).

Tentatively suggesting that the changes(removing Confusion/lowering crit resist) be kept, but that the remaining status resist powers be upped to something like (0.2, 0.7) to compensate.

This sounds reasonable.

E: Why does Oozebeam deal Manaburn damage, but Acidbeam do nothing special? This is puzzling and athematic; I'm not really understanding the logic here. They could quite reasonably both deal some Manaburn damage, or neither.

For that matter, Acidbeam's probably athematic on base and probably should be a statusing form of Acid, as Oozebeam is Slime instead of just Nature...

The idea with the manaburn (before Eyal's fury was added) was to enhance the anti-magic nature of the class. With the new tree I don't think that's an issue any more, so Oozebeam could probably go back to being just slime damage, while Acidbeam could become Acid disarm damage perhaps.

F: Poisonous Spores has to pass both a resistance and a status check, on top of being commonly resisted elemental damage, and doesn't really need to be nerfed at all. (Compare it statistically to skills such as Gravity Well, Earthquake and Poison Storm-none of which are considered must-use talents and the last is almost never used.)

It's annoying for the player to get hit by, but even at its worst it's far less dangerous than Stun, and encourages the player to pay attention to more than two statuses without dropping them dead instantly if they fail to.

If you want to nerf it, remove Spydric Poison from the options. That has a more dangerous effect on the player than enemies, and it's too unreliable for the player to care, right now.

I kind of like where this is right now. Unless the targets are poison immune, it's usually the first AOE talent I use, both because it's damage is strong (and needs a few turns to work), and because of it's low eq. cost. The status effects are mostly icing, usually. Before the nerf it could be used to clear whole rooms by just spitting and then running away.

Also, apologies for initial grumpiness. Just got a little annoyed when I was trying to figure out where the changelist was, as I initially was all for what I saw, then realized it was quadruple the size of what I was seeing as I looked through the large thread.

No worries. Glad to have your input again.

[Hachem_Muche]

Update: Incorporated most of SageAcrin's suggestions.

Returned the respen bonuses for Unstoppable Nature/Acidic Soil to their previous levels, but removed their damage bonuses.

Oozebeam changed back to 100% slime damage since Eyal's fury provides plenty of anti-magic punch.
Acidbeam does acid disarm damage.

Changed Corrosive Nature/Natural Acid to use a stacking self buff for damage (no respen).

Corrosive Seeds always places the first seed at the center of the target zone.

Increased the inherent life regen of bloated oozes to 10% of their max life, but reduced the bonus regeneration of acidic soil to ~50 hp/turn at max TL.

Ancestral Life eq. regen got a slight buff at low talent levels.

I'm a little concerned about the durability of Bloated Oozes being too high (hence the nerfs to their resistance and regeneration). They can still tank normal npc's indefinitely in most cases and hold up well against elites and even some bosses. This would not be of any real concern except for the damage sharing mechanic.

Current change summary:

Code: Select all

The summary of the all of the changes is now (ranges are estimated for a TL 1 starting char to TL5 endgame char):
Slime Spit:
Slightly reduced damage across all talent levels. The number of bounces you can get scales more like chain lightning (diminishing returns, but 5-6 at max talent level). Bouncing slime loses damage with each bounce (~-50% at level 1 to -35% at level 5)
Reduced the Slime spit projectile speed from 8x to 6x speed.

Mitosis:
Bloated Oozes get some inherent regeneration based on 10% of their maximum life and some modest melee bonuses.
Scaled damage resistance with talent level, Bloated Oozes inherit the summoner's resistance caps.
Fixed a bug so that the maximum health limit is actually used.

Reabsorb:
Adds a passive eq. regen bonus ~(0.3 - 1.0 ) to Mitosis

Mucus:
Mucus stacked in the same square does not form new mucus pools. Instead, the existing mucus pool is enhanced by +1 eq regen and +70% poison damage (at max talent level), while increasing it's duration by +1 turn.
Slightly reduced base eq. regen.

Indiscernable Anatomy:
The crit power reduction is decreased to about 50% at max talent level. No longer gives confusion resistance.  Disease, poison, wounds and blindness resistances increased (~75% at max TL).

Oozebeam:
No changes.

Natural Acid:
No longer gives an intermittent resistance penality to targets hit.
Gives a bonus to Nature resistance (~20% at max TL) and provides a stacking self buff to Nature damage (~6% stacking to ~18% at max TL). 

Unstoppable Nature:
Removed Nature damage bonus, reduced the eq. cost from 20 to 15.

Acidbeam:
Now does Acid Disarm damage.

Corrosive Nature:
No longer gives an intermittent resistance penality to targets hit.
Gives a bonus to Acid resistance (~20% at max TL) and provides a stacking self buff to Acid damage(~6% stacking to ~18% at max TL).

Corrosive Seeds:
The first seed always appears in the center of the targeting zone.

Acidic Soil:
Bonus regeneration for Bloated Oozes changed from a % of max life to a bonus based on Mindpower (~50 hp/turn at max talent level).
Removed bonus to Acid damage, reduced the eq. cost from 20 to 15.

Ancestral Life equilibrium regen can scale higher, small buff at low talent levels.

NEW TALENT TREE (locked, level 10+) "Eyal's Fury":

Reclaim: Freely targeted nuke that does ~(32 -142) Acid + Nature damage, 25% bonus vs. undead and constructs

Nature's Defiance: Passive providing ~(6 - 37) Spell saves, ~(5 - 30) % Arcane Resist, ~(6 - 23) % Nature Affinity. When hit by a spell, get a buff restoring ~(0.8 - 5.5) eq. per turn for ~(3 - 8 ) turns

Acidfire: Persistent AOE That does ~(9 - 53) Acid blind damage in a radius 4 for ~(7 -- 12) turns. Has a ~(25 - 45) % chance each turn to remove a beneficial magical effect. Does not affect friends.

Eyal's Wrath: Point blank AOE, radius ~(3 - 5), duration ~(4 - 8 ) turns, moves with the user doing ~( 15 - 81) Nature damage to all enemies it hits, while draining ~( 4- 23) Mana (and 0.5x Vim + 0.25x Positive/Negative) with each hit and restoring eq. to the user equal to 10% of the amount drained. Does not affect friends.

[SageAcrin]

As is, when combined with Acidfire, Poisonous Spores, and the beam talents, clearing out vaults full of enemies is very easy and low risk (with a couple of Bloated Oozes out at least). I think that allowing it to stack with Acid splash at greater range would result in too much aoe clearing power while reducing the risk to an already very resilient class.

On the other hand, you have to consider if most players are going to find yet another source of moderate power DoT is going to be worth it, particularly as it has a shorter range than all of these options.

I don't think hinging on the resource restoration/reduction angle, to the point of making it worse than the other DoTs the class has, is a good idea for an unlockable tree capstone. There's usually incentive for an unlock, that's all.

I haven't noticed this being a problem. The idea behind this was to give players a chance to dodge their own slime (or otherwise react) to an unlucky bounce. It's a much bigger nerf to npcs than to players, who can adjust to it, and it still works really well on tightly clustered enemies.

Mmm, put that way I guess I'm neutral on it. I'd have to see how it plays out, but it's not a big deal.

I kind of like where this is right now. Unless the targets are poison immune, it's usually the first AOE talent I use, both because it's damage is strong (and needs a few turns to work), and because of it's low eq. cost. The status effects are mostly icing, usually. Before the nerf it could be used to clear whole rooms by just spitting and then running away.

I don't think that's really a good counterargument, given my argument is "It's vastly weaker with what you've done than many similar DoTs, and they don't see much use to start with.".

Saying "It's good enough" doesn't really fix that it's out of place bad with your changes, and was basically standard for such DoTs before. "good enough" is somewhat subjective, but usage figures suggest that, no, a half powered version probably won't be used.

I suspect you've got a similar problem to what I do with DoTs, though, between this and the Eyal discussion. For the average player, DoTs are seen as a massive downside as compared to frontloaded damage. I've never really felt that the same way, though, and generally see most DoTs as better than most players.

Having said that, I've learned to ignore that and just go with the figures of use; There's no point in arguing "This should be considered good" when it isn't and when they have a good argument(Namely, that battles tend to take place really fast and that much DoT damage is wasted if you don't instantly run) against.

If a DoT's being well used right now, I'd generally only nerf it if there's some outstanding reason, and given that Poisonous Spores has the multiple downsides mentioned and isn't really out of place (based on its range, damage, and AoE) among good (RE: Actually used) DoTs, I don't see a good reason to bother.

For an example of a DoT with similar downsides(element that's reasonably resisted, status check, unreliable effect), look at Hurricane, which is basically far better and still gets chronic complaints of not being good enough.

Also, for an estimate of use/frame of reference; This would place Poisonous Spores as worse in every way, shape or form than Venomous Breath, except for the chance to inflict a better poison(But Venomous Breath instead reliably shuts down healing, which isn't entirely a downside), and the fact that it's not distant radius(but given that Breath reaches range... was it 8 or 9?, this is not really a large difference.). Look up the usage statistics on that; It rarely sees play last I checked.

The suggestion earlier in the thread, of changing it into a cone, is probably a better one for the problems suggested(namely hit and run statusing), but even then Acid Splash does the job of hit and run much, much better, and hit and run combat seems to be a class focus/intended upside to me, so...

Lowering the range so that it's not usable outside of LoS(Just to 7/8) is probably a fine idea too, as that's the one real edge it has on Acid Splash that I can see.

Corrosive Seeds always places the first seed at the center of the target zone.

I really like this idea, by the way.

[Hachem_Muche]

The resource drain from Eyal's Wrath is mostly a bonus that makes equilibrium management easier, which in turn translates to more and better sustained offense. In other words, against arcane users, the drain translates into more damage, usually.

On the end game character I'm running now (level 50, 80 Mindpower, +88% nature damage, +27% acid damage) Eyal's Wrath is ticking for 207 damage in a radius 5 for 9 turns. This character intentionally has no mucus talents, but uses Poison Spores (1143 damage/10 turns, radius 3), Acidfire (96 dam/turn, 11 turns, rad 4), and, depending on positions, either Slime Spit (555 Nature first hit damage) or the beams (431 Acid or 638 Slime damage), and occasionally a moss talent for aoe. Vaults full of npcs in the High Peak just melt in a handful of turns. The damage, while not instant, is strong enough to keep most non-bosses/rares from even getting into melee range. My concern is that the aoe is too strong, not too weak, since I can usually just open a vault door and clear everything without moving or taking any defensive action.

[Related: how do those stats compare (mostly based on gear) to typical end game oozemaster stats?]

I set the damage on Poison Spores (at (30, 500)) to be slightly lower than Heat (at (25, 620)), which is also a removable DOT, but does not target an area and does only damage. If it's still not good enough, an easy adjustment would be to compress the same damage into a shorter time frame, like 6-8 turns.

[HousePet]

The equil regen on Eyal's Wrath might help Antimagic Shield stay up against mages.

[SageAcrin]

I set the damage on Poison Spores (at (30, 500)) to be slightly lower than Heat (at (25, 620)), which is also a removable DOT, but does not target an area and does only damage.

Heat does its damage over six turns and has no save or status resistance check.

And, while Heat is generally used a fair deal, this is largely due to Alchemists having a downtime issue(Powerful few turns, then waiting on CDs)+being a newbie class with a newbie oriented, early-game-damage talent.

I wouldn't actually mind seeing Poisonous Spores keep its high end damage and lowering its early/mid damage, incidentally, as I don't see that Oozemancer needs a crutch like that. It's more that it becomes fairly bad at endgame with the new formula.

1500~ damage off a small area, iffy status, ten turn DoT that has to pass save/status checks is a total joke at endgame, and makes the ability strictly early. For other, more status/AoE oriented DoTs, this doesn't bother me, and Heat's current role as a crutch/filler talent is fine, but Poisonous Spores is absolute garbage at endgame with this, IMO, and I don't think there's a worse DoT in the game right now, at end-game.

I'm just not sure how to make a formula that would change that, keeping its reasonably solid lategame damage while nerfing the earlygame; If you've got thoughts, that'd be interesting.

My best thought off the top of my head is to have it get lowered damage, but boosted critical modifier, but that makes random enemy crits really absurdly annoying early on, then. Then again, if the values are set right, that's nothing the player doesn't deal with anyways; Optimally the crit modifier wouldn't make it more powerful than it currently is, just make it so that you have to be critting to see its current power, so it's weaker early on.

[Hachem_Muche]

Here's another version.

This fixes a previously existing bug where a killing blow with nature or acid damage would not trigger Acidic Nature/Natural Acid.
Fixed a bug where Mitosis did not respect the limit on Bloated Oozes
Call of the Ooze is disabled if you have the maximum bloated oozes out. Bonus weapon damage reduced from (0.6, 2.2), which was very high, to (0.7, 1.8 ).
Buffed the radius of Eyal's Wrath from 3-5 to 4-6, and updated the particle effect to more accurately reflect the area affected.

I'll hold off on any more changes until DG weighs in.

[SageAcrin]

I still like the idea of Poisonous Spores granting a (10, 60) mindpower-based crit modifier boost to its self.

Feels like a good compromise solution to me.

Mostly throwing that out there so DarkGod can see it, though.