Duelist (Offhand Dagger Generic Category)

[Davion Fuxa]

Generally your Numbers should somewhat match common sense so you can somewhat get across what you wanted your skills to be. Is Deadly Riposte suppose to be a quick Cooldown skill that you might be able to get in before the debuff you gave your opponent runs out or is it suppose to be a very big attack on an opponent that you have weakened? Maybe it has a really high Stamina cost attached to it - kind of like Unstoppable (Unstoppable's one and only really weakness).

Also of note - Disable is listed as a debuff in the wiki. It reduces Movement Speed and Physical Power. If you actually didn't mean for it to do that then you should probably decide what Disable should do (I still don't think I've seen Disable in game).

In regards to Leave's Tide, I sort of give that a pass since it's in the Anti-Magic Tree and there needs to be some major advantage to make up for the disadvantage to shunning the Arcane. Being in tune with nature would toughen you up and it could be argued that it isn't the Leaves protecting you, it's nature. Unstoppable can be argued that it is the defacto 'Berserker Rage' where you go into reckless abandon and your body keeps fighting beyond what it should be capable of - under a time limit. At the very least there can be an argued connection to reality with most skills in ToME - perhaps exaggerated in a way but no more then that.

LoS scaling might have a place in a few talents that could come to ToME but I think the major problem I see is that it has too much scope attached to it with too little disadvantage associated with it. If all Fearless Bravado did was boost up Parrying then it would probably be somewhat fine as is actually. But if you want it to do more then some disadvantages should get added to it to balance it out.

[Fortescue]

There is nothing wrong with 500% dmg from your mainhand only with a pre-requisite condition to activate when skills like Flurry and Assault exist.

I know where Disable is listed, the name of the debuff I use in addition to Disarm is not actually important, it just needs to be an effect that works no matter if the enemy actually holds a weapon or not. Concerning bpat's observation about Defense though, I think doubling your current Parry and Dodge evasion value for the round AND your defense would be a better situation than the current one for ensuring people can actually use Disarming Feint outside of Normal difficulty.

If you have a problem with Parry and Dodge blocking damage, then I guess you'd have a problem with Misdirection as well since it can trigger from any enemy attack afaik and force them to miss completely. I don't really care how the skill is named and worded in the end, what matters is making Light Armour melee classes more competitive with classes that have power defenses.

[Davion Fuxa]

The thing about Misdirection is that the enemy is aiming in a different place then where you actually are. I do have a problem with the the skill being so powerful, but it works within acceptable parameters - If I tell you to look behind you and you do for example. But actually it might be better to forget what makes realistic sense because I think up to this point we've been ignoring how Block works.

So Block in game only Blocks physical damage and whatever your Shield Resists 'At It's Base'. This would be very similar to your Parry Skill. BUT, Block can be empowered by other Talents and Prodigies. One such effect is from the Prodigy Spectral Shield which upgrades a players block to sponge attacks of any type. Long story short, maybe what's needed is simply to rework Spectral Shield into say 'Spectral Defense' and have it's effect be 'Block or Parry' all damage types. Eternal Guard could be upgraded to do something too for parry - maybe allow you to Parry more then one foe in a turn?

You might have known where Disable is listed but bpat certainly didn't. Though the question sort of remains as to what you think Disable should scale too: If the effects of Disable are made very minor, and you just want the effect so that Deadly Riposte can have targets, then I actually take back what I had originally said about Disarming Feint being too powerful with two effects - it be like how certain attacks throw in minor stuff like Off Balance, Spellshocked, etc, though I assume Disable would last as long as Disarm in this specific case.

I imagine that Disable would be something like a Mage killer attack where on fleeing Mages you'd cut their fleeing speed by a lot with Disable, and it would also be useful against Melee enemies too by dropping their physical power to boot, or fleeing from Melee enemies by cutting their chasing speed and then running. That sort of gameplay coupled with Disarm would be a bit over the top - though something trivially noticeable would be less of an issue.

One thing that I think your still missing with your Feint and Riposte idea - you'd potentially be using those skills twice as often as Flurry unless some massive disadvantage was added in, and you'd still be able to use Flurry along with those skills. You aren't replacing Flurry - your adding skills to use along with it and the skills need to work along the other loaded skills available.

[Fortescue]

Yeah what Disable actually does is marginally important to this category. I don't care if someone wants to spend 5 Generic points to have another attack that is as powerful as Flurry, that is their choice, and afaik Generics don't typically offer a lot of attacks, so that would make it stand out a bit. Flurry itself is likely about to lose some power when / if Battle Tactics gets removed from Marauder and Arcane Blade.

[bpat]

There is nothing wrong with 500% dmg from your mainhand only with a pre-requisite condition to activate when skills like Flurry and Assault exist.

I know where Disable is listed, the name of the debuff I use in addition to Disarm is not actually important, it just needs to be an effect that works no matter if the enemy actually holds a weapon or not. Concerning bpat's observation about Defense though, I think doubling your current Parry and Dodge evasion value for the round AND your defense would be a better situation than the current one for ensuring people can actually use Disarming Feint outside of Normal difficulty.

If you have a problem with Parry and Dodge blocking damage, then I guess you'd have a problem with Misdirection as well since it can trigger from any enemy attack afaik and force them to miss completely. I don't really care how the skill is named and worded in the end, what matters is making Light Armour melee classes more competitive with classes that have power defenses.

Good idea for Disarming Feint change, this should make it more viable outside of Normal. My main concern with Deadly Riposte is that it's a very powerful offensive attack in a generic category. As far as I can tell, generic categories tend to be more utility defense oriented, so I was thinking maybe Deadly Riposte could do something more utility or defense oriented instead of being a brutal attack talent. At the moment, the only good offensive generic talent is Skullcracker, so Deadly Riposte being pure damage is a bit out of place. I agree with Davion Fuxa on this, making a talent comparable to Flurry with a 5 turn cooldown in a generic category is pretty weird. Generic offensive talents should not be there to compete with class offense talents. Skullcracker does a good job of this since it's your only source of confusion.

You're right that Rogues and Shadowblades could use more defense, I agree that it is a good idea to think of other defensive abilities in relation to stuff Unstoppable/Bone Shield/Damage Smearing/Aegis. With its current numbers Parry and Dodge is pretty strong but I'm sure it can be adjusted as needed. I'm not too thrilled about the stamina cost since Rogues and Shadowblades already have serious stamina issues so maybe Parry and Dodge or something could help with stamina management. I'm also a bit concerned about the global speed boost since it feels like it might be a bit too good but the idea of damage nullification is cool.

Fearless Bravado giving up to 100% critical multiplying is way too strong when combined with Shadowstrike. Without any critical multiplier from items, a Shalore Rogue or Shadowblade will regularly be attacking for over 375% normal damage. If you use Deadly Riposte with this, that's 500% mainhand damage multiplied by 3.75 for a total of 1875% weapon damage, an instant kill to most enemies and probably even bosses on Normal. This should probably either be reduced significantly or changed to another type of buff. The boost to Parry and Dodge is also too high, since at max it will bring Parry and Dodge to 55% which is as much as Leaves' Tide but it lasts indefinitely, unless you were saying it would boost the existing value by 2-10% per stack (like 2-10% of Parry and Dodge's 5-25%), in which case it's fine.

[Fortescue]

Fearless Bravado would cause your Dodge and Parry to scale from 35% vs. 1 enemy to 65% vs. 4 enemies or more, if both of these talents were at 5/5. Fearless Bravado won't give you dodge chance by itself. I can modify its secondary effect away from crit damage I suppose, maybe a Resist All buff would be more in line with the defensive nature of this category. The 65% is certainly not indefinite, it gets weaker as you fight fewer enemies, which is how it is intended to scale. You are actually at your most vulnerable vs. a single very strong melee opponent w/ multihit attacks, which is what Heavy Armours are actually the best at defeating.

[bpat]

Fearless Bravado would cause your Dodge and Parry to scale from 35% vs. 1 enemy to 65% vs. 4 enemies or more, if both of these talents were at 5/5. Fearless Bravado won't give you dodge chance by itself. I can modify its secondary effect away from crit damage I suppose, maybe a Resist All buff would be more in line with the defensive nature of this category. The 65% is certainly not indefinite, it gets weaker as you fight fewer enemies, which is how it is intended to scale. You are actually at your most vulnerable vs. a single very strong melee opponent w/ multihit attacks, which is what Heavy Armours are actually the best at defeating.

65% is still really good compared to Leaves' Tide since you can keep it up as long as you have stamina. I don't think Fearless Bravado should be more than doubling Parry and Dodge so maybe for four enemies increasing it by 10-25% would be better than 8-40%. I don't really like resist all because enemies get really high resistance penetration late game (all orcs have some all resistance penetration) but something like armor/armor hardiness or status resistance could be fitting, or maybe some other form of damage reduction that isn't just resist all (maybe like Paradox Mage's Energy Decomposition).

[Fortescue]

Well Leaves Tide is also only 5 Class points. This is 10 Generics we're talking about. As far as the secondary effect goes, I agree status effect resist is probably the best way to go.

[Orangeflame]

IIRC, leaves tide is the third skill in mindstars (a generic category).
So to 5/5 it is 7 generics

[jotwebe]

Generally I have issues with putting an extra reward at 5/5 - that actually makes build choices less interesting. The beauty of diminishing returns is that 3/5 is nice, but if you use it a lot you could go 4, or even 5 for your bread-and-butter talents.

On the other hand, if you require a category point to boost the mastery AND 5/5, that is a good place to put extra effects.

[Fortescue]

Generally I have issues with putting an extra reward at 5/5 - that actually makes build choices less interesting. The beauty of diminishing returns is that 3/5 is nice, but if you use it a lot you could go 4, or even 5 for your bread-and-butter talents.

On the other hand, if you require a category point to boost the mastery AND 5/5, that is a good place to put extra effects.

The problem with only needing 3 points to get 90% of the effectiveness out of a talent is that then you don't have to make any hard choices in your build. It is easy to get all the talents you would ever conceivably need to 3/5.

[jotwebe]

But 4 points for 90% would actually be a pretty good balance point, IMHO.

Currently I think yes, the scaling tends to reward generalization slightly too much. Still, I think the interesting place to put your specialization rewards is at 5/5 + cat point, not just 5/5.

[ZyZ]

Instead of removing 'power defense' you just make bad situation worse by introducing new skills that allows you to ignore basically every other mechanics we have.

Ignore all dmg / evade / leave's tide etc should be REMOVED or heavily nerfed. We have 20+ classes and only a few have a chance to win on higher difficulty levels just because they happen to have one totally broken defensive skill ! Cursed should be comparable to berserkers, mindslayers should not be strictly worse than oozemancer etc. It is quite easy to compare math and try to balance things but when one class can for example ignore critical hits there is not much you can do. You can make all classes ignore crits and de facto remove that mechanics from game or fix that one damn skill that caused you problems in first place

We have resistances, immunities, defence, ranged defence, armor, armor hardiness, wards etc. Lets use what we have. 'Nothing can kill me' skills are not an answer.

[Fortescue]

afaik nobody is willing to touch Defence on the dev side. It is just too binary to do anything meaningful with it, so it will remain only viable in Normal difficulty. Armour only reduces physical damage, which is really the least worrisome type in the game. You pretty much got Evasion and Leaves Tide type % defenses as the only reliable-but-not-perfect-like-Unstoppable option that will scale past Normal mode into the higher modes. That is why only a few classes are viable in the higher modes by my understanding. Ranged magic damage is the most deadly type to deal with, especially in the higher difficulties.

[bpat]

Instead of removing 'power defense' you just make bad situation worse by introducing new skills that allows you to ignore basically every other mechanics we have.

Ignore all dmg / evade / leave's tide etc should be REMOVED or heavily nerfed. We have 20+ classes and only a few have a chance to win on higher difficulty levels just because they happen to have one totally broken defensive skill ! Cursed should be comparable to berserkers, mindslayers should not be strictly worse than oozemancer etc. It is quite easy to compare math and try to balance things but when one class can for example ignore critical hits there is not much you can do. You can make all classes ignore crits and de facto remove that mechanics from game or fix that one damn skill that caused you problems in first place

We have resistances, immunities, defence, ranged defence, armor, armor hardiness, wards etc. Lets use what we have. 'Nothing can kill me' skills are not an answer.

I completely agree. The fact that there are only four classes (Archmage, Arcane Blade, Solipsist, and Oozemancer) that can actually tank damage (not nullify like with Bone Shield or Unstoppable but actually tank) on Insane is a problem. Out of these four classes, two heavily use Leaves' Tide which is luck-based damage nullification. However, there are serious issues with with having players rely on existing mechanics. Unfortunately, resistances just aren't good enough late game on higher difficulties since late-game enemies (mostly Orcs) get large amounts of resistance penetration. Even with 70% cold resistance, most characters relying just on health for defense will still be instantly killed by a critical Freeze late game on Insane (for example, if Elandar gets lucky with crits he can deal around 6000 raw damage in a turn with 30% resistance penetration normally, 110% resistance penetration if using sustains like Uttercold. With 70% resist all, you aren't even able to block half of incoming damage against foes with 30% resistance penetration). Hopefully we'll see changes to these game mechanics or massive nerfs to enemy resistance penetration so health will become a meaningful stat and tanking damage will be a possibility on higher difficulties. Failing that, the Insane changes will hopefully make it more reasonable, but the mechanics themselves should really be looked at.

Side note: Freeze scales really ridiculously with high talent levels, even more so than talents like Mind Sear. It'd be nice if someone would take a look at its scaling.