Duelist (Offhand Dagger Generic Category)

[ZyZ]

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.

So basically what you are saying is that we just skip tome mechanics because no one is willing to touch it and replace it with dumbed down version where simple % checks will determine if you live or die. Lets take a look at your skills

Disarming Feint - solid skill. Not particualry AI firendly but from time to time mobs might surprise you and use infusion instead of attacking you Player have to actually check mob active skills to have 100% chance of avoiding negative effect. I like it.

Deadly Riposte - Why would you add critical hit to skill with such a low cooldown ? It breaks default mechanics and ofc your guaranteed critical hit could be shrug off because some other skill guarantee that all critical hits do in fact normal damage. Why would i invest in dex, heavy armor training, gear when only skill can effectively counter other skills ? I know we already have assault and imho it is a poor skill. Sure it is great when you attack mob for x dmg but it is kinda bad when despite all your efforts you get critically hit just because some skill says so

Parry and Dodge - simple % check replaces everything else. No way to counter it. If you make stamina cost low it will be op. If you make it high people wont use it. Most likely at some point someone else will add different talent that affect stamina in such way that your talent will become op anyway

Fearless Bravado - improves your odds during simple % check.



3 of 4 talents require special, alternative mechanics that doesnt interact well with gear, stats, other skills that boost or reduce 'old' stats like accuracy, defence.

[bpat]

I remember one of the passive talents in Shibari's Brawler rework gave critical reduction based on defense. This was a pretty great way of expanding existing mechanics to be viable on higher difficulties, since defense is better and critical reduction is worse on Normal than on Insane. Changing Parry and Dodge to do something with existing mechanics like rolling ranged defense against enemy spellpower to dodge a spell would be cool, but just a chance to nullify damage like Leaves' Tide is problematic and I agree with ZyZ that we should try to move away from mechanics like that.

Edit: I just remembered one of the most annoying examples of ignoring mechanics and giving a chance to ignore damage: Intuitive Shots. There is no counter to it and it makes melee a joke. Attacking a tanky enemy with Intuitive Shots in melee is futile since most of your attacks won't land and you'll just take damage instead. On my Insane Marauder run, dealing with Grushnak was tricky since he had really high defense from Shield Wall. Because of this, I had to invest in Perfect Strike in order to be able to consistently land hits on him. Later in High Peak, I encountered an Archer stair guardian with Intuitive Shots that I simply couldn't kill with because there was no way to counter it.

[Fortescue]

I'm not convinced this category will ever make it into the game, at least not in the current form, so I'm Disengaging from the conversation Have fun w/ new Berserker and Skirmisher, and I think Rogue might be getting Acrobatics as well in 1.2.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hkk ... sp=sharing

[HousePet]

Leaves Tide is being weakened.

Fortescue: Armour doesn't reduce physical damage, it reduces weapon damage.

And I still think Dexterity should give more defence.

[Nagyhal]

There's still a noticeable lack of such talent categories in the addon inventory. In the near future perhaps we might see a duelist addon surface?

Side note, I once myself designed a similar tree for "duelists" and I was quite pleased that I managed to give all the abilities a name in French. The skills were: En Garde!, Touché!, Coup de Grace and probably Something Riposte. The Coup de Grace was like a Death Blow that required you to stack status effects on your opponent to get the kill.

[HousePet]

I've been eyeing the Duellist niche for a while.
But not to worry, I do a search of the forums for presuggested ideas before I put a class together.

[Fortescue]

Yeah I'm wrapped up in Berserker and Skirmisher for a while to come. Hopefully things will progress faster now that I'm out of the military and done graduating college. I have time to write code now!

[Salo]

I like that you want to imrpove these classes, but you are clearly misinformed about rogues and shadowblades. Thing is, they're perfectly viable classes already and honestly plenty strong if played right even on nightmare difficulty. So they don't need buffs nor insanely strong new talents.

The rule you have to follow is that if you add a tree it should still be a perfectly rational choice to ignore that tree. I mean: the game is supposed to be balanced around the lack of generic/class points you have, so being able to invest into a new tree (a buff obviously) should be balanced by the fact that this means you'll have less points to invest in the trees that are already present. So when you design a tree, the talents should be balanced around the talents that class already has, so that they're about as strong (if they're stronger, you should lock the tree). As a consequence, when you balance this tree you propose here, make it about as strong as cunning/scoundrel, survival and racial trees, make it so it's not clearly better to invest in your tree as opposed to the ones currently available. The talents you propose here and their numbers fail this criteria horribly.

[Suslik]

@Salo
>The rule you have to follow is that if you add a tree it should still be a perfectly rational choice to ignore that tree.
Wrong. What choise does an archmage have to ignore Aegis? Why would a rogue ignore his only defensive tree?

> Thing is, they're perfectly viable classes already and honestly plenty strong if played right even on nightmare difficulty.
Would you kindly make a vid of how you in a "perfectly viable way" clear some random oozemancer/solipsist rares on nm please? Or survive dark crypt later?

@Fortescue
There's a very hard contradiction: everyone expects rogues thematicaly to dodge melee attacks, counter them in all ways and so forth. No one expects them to dodge freaking fireballs. Problem is, fireballs is what kills them because they don't have like any way of protection against them due to thematic problems. But your current vision on the tree is apparently way too OP, rogues may need some defense but not in a such rediculous "let's get best defenses of all classes and combine them" way.

[Fortescue]

Yeah Suslik it is tough to come up with good solutions. I am experimenting with increasing Saving Throws as a % of your Hardiness on Berserker to help deal with Magic / Mental Spam. Also gives +15% resistance to Fire and Ice as "resistance to extreme temperatures".

[Salo]

@Salo
>The rule you have to follow is that if you add a tree it should still be a perfectly rational choice to ignore that tree.
Wrong. What choise does an archmage have to ignore Aegis? Why would a rogue ignore his only defensive tree?

You misunderstood, I didn't say every tree currently in the game should be able to be ignored. That'd be stupid since many trees are fundamental to a class by design. I was merely saying that if you take a class that is well developped and well rounded and add a tree, it should not become an absolutely fundamental tree that is so good it is necessary to be filled. That'd be an obvious sign of power creep and invalidate the original design of the class.

> Thing is, they're perfectly viable classes already and honestly plenty strong if played right even on nightmare difficulty.
Would you kindly make a vid of how you in a "perfectly viable way" clear some random oozemancer/solipsist rares on nm please? Or survive dark crypt later?

I had a lvl 50 rogue in nightmare difficutly die in the final fight (I still think due to some bug) some versions ago.
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=39690

Earlier today I started a Rogue on insane difficulty: http://te4.org/characters/21602/tome/62 ... f797a33cac . Currently lvl 13 with no deaths and doing quite well (it's coincidence I have my sling equipped) . I already encourented plenty of rare oozemancers/solipsists due to the increased rare spawn rate on insane difficulty and obviously had no problem with them.

[Fortescue]

Rogue got a huge survival buff from getting access to Acrobatics in 1.2.

[Davion Fuxa]

Rogue got a huge survival buff from getting access to Acrobatics in 1.2.

That assumes they invest heavily in Acrobatics. Unlike Skirmishers, Rogue's do have other Generic Categories to occupy their time with when investing Generic Points. Rogue's weren't exactly swimming in Generic Points from a lack of where to put them before they got that category.

[HousePet]

I think you can get away without Aegis (on normal difficulty anyway).
Divination will allow you to avoid being surprised and Conveyance gives nice mobility which you can use on enemies.

I do think that Fortescue would make much better categories with more game experience first though.

[Suslik]

@Salo

I was merely saying that if you take a class that is well developped and well rounded and add a tree, it should not become an absolutely fundamental tree that is so good it is necessary to be filled. That'd be an obvious sign of power creep and invalidate the original design of the class.

From my point of view, they are NOT well-developed yet. Especially for early levels which you apparently got from drowning townsfolk/grinding like a madman for a wand. I just cannot imagine how you can possibly beat a rare oozemancer lvl 16 being lvl1 rogue in trollmire 1. Even though it may be tough, but most classes can do it.

*upd: of course they are traps but kiting with them is just boring