[1.1.5] Haunted class

[psy_wombats]

Introducing the Haunted, new afflicted class! Available here: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/haunted... Sorry it's not up on Steam, seems uploading has been shaky lately but I'll get it up when I can. It'll have to be dropped in addons folder manually.

A clamor of murmurs, mutterings, and whispers incessantly pound into the mind of the Haunted.
Whether the voice they serve be some fallen friend, a malicious spirit, or their own inner monster, all Haunted seek to avenge themselves on the world.
Haunted use their strength and supernatural cunning in place of a weapon, applying their fists and brutal throws to beat down all in their path.
And remember... Never look a Haunted in the eye!
Their most important stats are: Strength and Cunning

New talents:

Cursed/Deathblows:
Furious Assault: 2x - 5x speeeed punch
Mortal Blow: one-hit KO with huge crit
Brutalize: hit 'n' heal
Splatter: splash overkill damage!

Cursed/Mania:
Psychic Link: your source of hate (you get it for choking people)
Sustained by the Voices: your source of stamina (you get it for spending hate)
Unnatural Vigor: removes grapple and armor restrictions
Spurred by the Voices: bloodbath, but for speed

Technique/Throws:
Reversal Throw: knocks back in any direction
Body Throw: AOE damage at landing zone
Suplex: move as you crush the victim
You Shall Be My Shield!: exactly what it sounds like

Cursed/Mindgazer (generic):
Stare: basic confuse and disable
Surreal Step: your only mobility option, but it's an instant teleport
Reverberations: punish archers and filthy spellcasters
Entrancing Gaze: fires off a Stare at anyone and everything


Hope it's as fun to play as it was to develop! It's my first addon, let me know if any bugs or balancing issues show up. Thanks to Dr. Null for wiki resources and good source to look at.

[The Revanchist]

Sounds really cool, and really fun. I can't wait to give a real review.

[Doctornull]

I like the changes! I've been playing around and this class feels good.

One issue (maybe just the documentation) in Furious Assault, it seems like the 'max' attacks is not always calculated correctly:

Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 7.14.43 AM.png (60.69 KiB) Viewed 2847 times

[Isotope-X]

So this is basically The Undertaker.

That sounds like a very very good thing indeed.

[Elroniel]

Some thoughts after playing the class a bit:

Talent Trees: -Love- the new trees you've added. The abilities are varied and just about every one seems to be useful in a variety of situations; this makes choices hard, which is always good. I do feel like the Mania tree might belong on the generic side, as most of it's abilities are passive/sustain and the class seems to have a lot of free generics anyhow.

Mobility: The only thing I find an issue with is mobility; I often don't feel mobile enough to close the gap without taking too much flak in the process, and I don't feel tanky enough to not care about it. While the Mindgazer powers do alleviate that somewhat, I feel like there should be at least one move for a go-to gap closer. On that note, I might just not be abusing Surreal Step like I should. Maybe if you moved the Mania tree to generics, you could add another tree that fits to give it some movement related abilities (Custom or Regular).

Grappling: My absolute favorite thing about this class is making grappling seem like an attractive choice. While a few of the new talents you added helped, I think the overall flavor of the class adds to the desire to crush people in your bare hands! The only criticism I have would be the actual regular Grappling tree as it is; the first three talents seem to be right in line and mesh well, but the last one, the movement based one/stunning move, seems to need some tweaking (I never used the brawler Grappling tree, but I presume it's the same tree ported to this class). The cooldown is quite long for a stun or short range movement ability and keeps it from being useful often, let alone the fact that it's range is so poor.

All in all, I think this is one of the best addon classes I've played and I really look forward to seeing where you take it, along with maybe another class in the future!

[frankosity]

Okay, I completely ballsed my latest 1.5 run so I didn't get a chance to see the class in action past Daikara, but I've got a trip report based on the most recent changes-

- Mindgazer: I feel like Reverberations is a little anemic without Captivating Gaze; the Hate loss is totally not worth 2-3 turns of confusion, so the only reason I'd ever want to buy the talent is for use in conjunction with Captivating Gaze, and even then I wouldn't care to get it higher than 3/5. It might be worth just rolling them into a single level 12 talent, with the Captivating Gaze bonuses applying at higher talent levels, or just scaling from a low % chance at 1/5 and scaling up to ~65% at 5/5, increasing Hate decay to compensate, say starting ~100% and dropping to ~25-30%. To replace the level 8 could either be another active attack talent - maybe some kind of personal AoE? - or a passive talent boosting Stare or the Attunement debuff.

Possible bug report: the ranged effect on 3/5 Reverberations didn't appear to be working for me.

- The class seems to have some difficulties with causing damage. Unarmed attacks aren't very good even with 5/5 Mastery -partly due to the fairly anemic stat scaling, as Haunted don't use Dex - so the only way Haunted can inflict decent damage is with Deathblows, and even then the first two talents only hit hard at high Hate. I still think Deathblows are well-implemented, though, since even at 0 hate their minimum effect is still 'hit a guy really hard/ a couple of times' and the third and fourth talents are good for consistent damage at any amount of Hate. Part of the problem is simply that Grappling isn't a fantastic tree, even with all the cross-talent synergy that the Haunted gets. Maim's debuff and damage is mediocre - a flat damage penalty, really? - Crushing Hold is handy for the Silence but still really only a 1/5 since the DoT is pretty anemic, and Takedown's cooldown is atrocious for what you get.

The best solution to this problem may be simply to throw out Grappling altogether and put in a Haunted-specific grappling tree, something like Cursed/Rip and Tear. It could go something like:

1- Death Grip: basic clinch effect, has the DoT from Crushing Hold baked in which upgrades to Silence at talent level 5.
4- Gouge: Strength/Hate-based damage with Bleed effect, added Stun effect for clinched targets.
8- Hobble: % weapon damage with Pin effect, Clinched targets are Crippled instead.
12- Dismemberment: increases base crit multiplier, increases crit chance against Clinched targets. (This would make Spurred By The Voices a lot more attractive, as well!)

I might also suggest that Unarmed Training is dropped altogether, with the Mastery bonuses added to Unnatural Vigour. This would require another reshuffling of the Mania tree, though! Maybe Unnatural Vigor at level 1 and Psychic Feed at level 4?

- Psychic Leech seems a bit miserly in terms of Hate generation. The fact that Haunted are technical melee characters without the Cursed murdertrain abilities or Doomed AoE capability gives them a bit of an issue with fast kills outside of Deathblows which impacts their ability to maintain a good Hate flow, especially if you're using Reverberations/Captivating Gaze. Stamina isn't as much of an issue thanks to Sustained By the Voices, so I think the talent may be more worthwhile if the gain balance was tipped in favour of Hate, with a little Stamina on the side - rather than 1.4-3.00 of both, maybe a base of 2-4 Hate and 0.5-2.5 Stamina, with a little scaling from Cunning? This also counteracts a Haunted class issue, which is that without Willpower as a core stat they get basically no gains from Unnatural Body and really need their healing modifier topped out as much as possible. I did have a question about the mechanics of this one, actually - is it gained for making a melee attack, or is it based on inflicting melee damage? E.g, does Ferocious Assault at 100 Hate trigger the Leech 5 times?

EDIT: Oh yeah, there was one other thing, but this may just be my playstyle instead of an issue with the class, but Haunted durability seems to bottom out very quickly in tier 2, due to a lack of any real damage mitigation abilities. I find I get consistently murdered by groups of Rogue-type enemies due to their spike damage and poisons, and the Daikara and certain rares are an absolute nightmare. I'm going to play around with it a bit more though, just to see if I need to adapt my approach. I think it could be interesting to add an Intimidation-esque effect to Attuned enemies, either baked-in in lieu of the daze or as a rider added by a passive talent.

[Doctornull]

Some of the new magic item egos ("Accursed") don't make much sense. Like, I got a melee weapon which grants -2 cooldown for Reproach, which is a Doomed talent and Doomed don't ever use melee weapons other than Mindstars.

Usually the Darkness/Mind damage user is going to be focused on Mindstars or (in the case of Darkness) maybe a Staff.