Universal Generic Category Tweaks

[SageAcrin]

Inspired by this thread, some thoughts along the lines of the following;

A: Escort categories, and various world-accessable Generic categories in general, should encourage some alternate builds and concepts. Optimally, multiple of them should be fairly desirable, for each class, though that's a tall order.

B: Escort categories should not be OP for the source classes that have them. Always something to keep in mind.

With this in mind, here are some thoughts for tweaking those categories, and various escort rewards.

World categories:

Staff/Mindstar Combat: Perfect, clear sidegrade builds or small enhancements with Generic investment required.

Solution: None needed.

Harmony: Sorta... bad at this. Elemental Harmony is a good, but highly generalized talent. Highly generalized talents are nice, but with almost no niche, this has been relegated to weird extreme niche builds involving Wildfire Archmages and Bathe in Light Sun Paladins.

Thoughts: Let's see. Healing is always a liked thing, and Healing Nexus is nearly a healing talent as it stands, as is One With Nature. The issue is, for most applicable skillsets, this category competes with Fungus, which is way better healing. This needs more gimmicky uses, a more interesting core draw to draw the kind of people that would go AM, and just some outright more stopping power. The latter two skills are the best way to attack this, IMO.

Solutions:

A: Grant Healing Nexus a five turn low power mindpower-based regeneration effect on both yourself and everyone hit by the Nexus, at TL5. Suddenly, the standard Bathe in Light gimmick is universal and grants the category a lot of very odd healing power in large crowds. Explain it away as healing fungal spores infesting everything.

A2: Same thing, but instead of mindpower, base it off the caster's maximum Life. Interesting way to diverge it from Fungus-you don't need Mindpower. Perhaps the regen could be a flatrate 2% of the caster's maximum life in regen to himself and everyone else, for 5 turns. Potentially quite entertaining.

A3: Have Healing Nexus grant a chance to siphon off any beneficial effects applied during its duration and give them to you. Say, (5 base, 25 TL5, 35 cap)% chance if someone uses any beneficial effect during its duration.

I am sure this is rife with abuse, but it's also rife with hilarious and highly tactical abuse, and I recieved the criticism that the original suggestion makes Healing Nexus feel less clever to use properly(as it essentially uses its self properly), which was a valid criticism. So here's another option that feels very much in character.

B: Have One With Nature, in addition to its current effect, generate a five barrier for (3+TL*3)% of your MHP. This should never be a huge barrier unless you're a Berserker, but it's pretty notable as the only fully instant AM-compatible barrier in the game. It does take decent investment to leverage, though.

B2: If this is seen as too athematic for AM, an interesting alternative is to have it grant temporary all damage armor. Say, (10 base, 30 TL5, 50 cap) for (3 base, 7 TL5, 10 cap) turns? Wouldn't help it much on higher difficulties, though, so I like this option somewhat less.

Foreseen niche: Better arcane build competition for melee types-you no longer have to lose out on Arcane to get high investment healing/support, your healing options are merely quirkier/weaker. And it doesn't really change the nature of the game for the Gift classes that get it anyways.

Hexes: Again, sort of bad at sidegradeing builds. Or...getting much interest at all.

Thoughts: What it should be doing is encouraging players to put heavy Generic investment in it for debilitation of crowds-granting you ways to slow down large areas of enemies easily.

Instead, it encourages extremely light investment. Burning Hex is definitely on the right track, and Pacification Hex is good in that there should be some low investment spells with a lot of kick, but the last two have real niche issues, and Empathic Hex is in the running for worst spell in the game for the player. (While still being really useful for enemies, more is the pity...)

Solutions:

A: Pacification Hex and Burning Hex, while good, could use more kick. Radius boost from (2 at all TL) to (2+TL/2, cap at 5). This is some of the largest area debilitation in the game, which really helps define their niche, and requires investment.

B: Remove Empathic Hex-Martyrdom is a better example of this niche concept anyways. Replace with Lethargic Hex, a Hex that inflicts (10 base, L5 25, cap at 35)% Slow over (2+TL/2, cap at 5) radius. With a 20 turn duration like the other Hexes, this is pretty amazing as a long term debilitating effect for a large crowd, and probably less dangerous to not notice than Empathic Hex was for the player(though not much!).

C: Give Domination Hex a "blast radius" low power confusion around the target of the same duration as the Domination Hex and the same 2+TL/2 cap at 5 radius as the other Hexes. Suggested power is (5% base, 20% L5, cap at 30%). This gives the spell interesting uses if the target is Instakill immune(as that confuse effect can still hit the target), and makes for a good area debilitation spell.

Foreseen niche: Well, Corruptors and Reavers get a bit better and more versatile, but I don't think 5 points for a 25% slow or 20% Confusion will break any records for usage, no matter how big the blast is or how long they last. The big thing is that this gives defensive mages-the types that often least need Celestial/Light-a very good mage option in universal generic, and gives Celestial/Light an offensive alternative for the more mixed mages. I don't forsee Arcane Blades or Archmages taking it over Celestial/Light, but I think it'll lead to some interesting builds.

Vile Life: Only in trunk, looks good so far though, very much in the vein of a category designed for undead and such that can't use Harmony, good stuff.

Escorts:

Conditioning: Buffed in trunk, Vitality is now a pretty good talent. Unflinching Resolve was always a good status healing option, and honestly is better than running up a pure magic tree for undead in my opinion. Still could use a bit more of a niche, and Daunting Presence is pretty awful. Adrenaline Surge is pretty narrow for its niche... there's a way to buff it that's hilarious, though, to widen the niche...

A: Give Daunting Presence's intimidation a (5 base, 15 TL5, 30 cap)% to cause those effected by it to fail complex actions. It's already a four turn status, you have to be hit to trigger it, and it has to pass a fear check and a save check... I think this is safe.

B: Have Adrenaline Surge work on Hate as well as Stamina. Totally thematic and awesome, and very psychologically appealing.

Foreseen niche: Probably same as it is now, undead melee fighters. Probably more of them than before, though, as it grants much more notable advantages.

Divination: Not... bad... but there's no reason to take the category, because you get handed three of the four options and only Arcane Eye scales all that well. Hmm. Premonition is, as it stands, one of the best reasons not to go AM, so I don't want to change its high base power. Arcane Eye is a big deal on higher difficulties. Let's work on the other two.

Solutions:

A: Remove Vision as a talent option from Sage escorts. No need for it-Arcane Eye and Premonition is enough.

B: Have Vision grant one turn of All ESP for the caster at TL3. At TL5, have it be distance targettable, and show all enemies in the area for two turns(probably easiest done with a status).

C: Have Keen Senses impact all critical rates, not just magical. This makes sense in general.

D: Increase Premonition cost to 200, but have it additionally grant a (10 base, 20 at TL5, 25 cap) flat rate physical evasion rate while sustained.

Foreseen Niche: Arcane non-Mana users, humorously enough. AM gets the slugfest, but Arcanes get excellent scouting options. Premonition's higher cost should balance out the higher utility for its core audience-I think it's better for Archmages now, but they never use it much anyways, that I've seen. Vision is a great way to know what's going on in the area for a very short time after leveling, whereas Arcane Eye is a great way to know what's going on in a small area for a long time after leveling, which is great parity.

Wildgift/Call: Pretty good for its narrow niche. Perhaps a little widening would help? Should be easy.

Solutions:

A: Have Meditation grant an amount of Psi regeneration equal to its Equilibrium regeneration, both while activated and at rest. Greatly thematic and gives Psi classes an interesting reason to buy the category.

B: Allow Nature's Balance to work on Stamina and Psi talents as well. It isn't much of a mental stretch(How does it work to begin with? I don't know!).

Foreseen Niche: Good all-rounder category for AM that want something that's not straight up healing. More resources and more scouting, as well as CD resetting. Not optimal per se, it's still a little weak, but this is pretty good for some very fast changes.

Stone Alchemy: Very good, gets taken a fair deal as a generalized category without being dominating at it. The only problem is how bad the rewards are outside of the category. They could use something a little more useful for general characters for their talent grants.

Solutions:

A: Remove the gem requirement from Gem Portal, change it to Earthen Passage or something. Doesn't really need to be there, Stone Touch doesn't need gems and it doesn't use any special gem properties.

B: Add Gem Portal/Earthen Passage/whatever to Alchemist escorts.

Foreseen Niche: Hey, it's a limited teleport. On escorts! That AM can't take! They have Dream Walk, they'll live.

Survival:

Technically an escort category, but no one can take it because it's so universal, IIRC. Not actually in a bad spot, but sorta low impact. I'm uncertain of what to do about this though, and IIRC Shibari was remarking on buffing Heightened Senses, so I'll just let this one slide on by for now.

Chants:

Recently buffed in trunk. Looks like it's very, very good now as a fighter/mage support category, at a glance. Should be fine for now.

Mobility:

Well, the good news is that it enables a sidegrade build. The bad news is that only a few characters-mostly Stealth users and Brawlers-care at all, and now Brawlers come with Mobility even. However, buffing Mobile Defense more seems... off, as it is very legitimately good on Defense builds.

Also, every other talent in the category is basically nearly or definitely the worst of its type in the game. So, that's a problem.

Solutions:

A: I'm legitimately not sure what to do with Hack'n'back. I suggested a large power boost and large self-knockback boost the last time I suggested a round of buffs, but I admit that's a little overly simple. (1.4, 2.2 and 3, 7 would be good for those.) If anyone has a more interesting idea, I'd like to hear it.

B: Combine Strider and Light of Foot(into Strider), then raise the movement speed bonus from 2% per level, to 8% per level(cap at 50%). It's now one talent that does a lot of things! It's fatigue lowering, movement speed boosting, and generally fun, and is a good core reason to take the tree besides Mobile Defense. Now that movement speed boosts don't stack multiplacatively, there's not a lot of danger here.

B2: Oh, and change the escort reward from Light of Foot to Strider, obviously.

C: New talent, "Split Second". Instant, moderate Stamina cost, grants two turns of (20 base, 50 at 100 Dex/TL5, 75 cap) Global Speed and (200 base, 400 at 100 Dex/TL5, 600 cap) Movement speed. 15 CD. Can be used as an extra hit, or a way to close a small gap without losing damage, or as an escape, all in one-but really needs investment to be much of anything, particularly in Dexterity.

Foreseen Niche: Rogues, still, and Brawlers, still, but now it's a general escape and mobility option for everyone, with a lot of real value in general even if you aren't going for Mobile Defense. Might be a bit strong, but it can always be nerfed later if it's dominating, and I doubt it will.

Light:

Is why I made this ... in a good way. Doesn't need any changes, has a very solid niche that might be a little too good, but I'm not too worried about that.

Field Control:

Well, Slow Motion is solid, and Track is the go-to scouting skill for many. Otherwise this is very lack-lustre at its job-namely, controlling the battlefield and giving you escapes and mobility options. And Slow Motion could probably stand to be a bit better, given that it is a sustain and requires purchasing the category for... even people that get the category for free don't buy up to that a lot.

Solutions:

A: Increase Disengage's self-knockback by 2, and its range to 10. Have the (currently 12) CD lower by 1 per TL, minimum of 6. At TL5, allow people a second Disengage target at the end of the first one(that they can cancel out of if they wish). Suddenly, you can go around corners with it! If there's an enemy around the corner, anyways.

B: Have Heave attempt to Stun enemies, if the Knockback succeeds, for (2+TL/2) turns. Universally grabbable Stun!... that requires two save checks and two different status checks to work, but hey. It's a lot better this way, and it's neat because Stunning lowers the heck out of movement speed, so they'll take forever to get back up to you.

C: Have Slow Motion raise Defense by (10, 25 at TL5/100 Dex, 40 cap). Decent Defense boosts never go out of style, and at 80 Stamina this is a reasonable help to its general usefulness.

Foreseen Niche: More generalized version of Mobility that is worse, but doesn't take Light Armor and has some differing ups and downs. I think it'll be good.

Chronomancy:

Edge is talking about retooling this category already, so no need to bother with suggestions here right now.

Dreaming:

Actually, on reflection, looks pretty good, much like the Mindpower equivalent of Hexes but more flexible. Dream Prison's sorta a weird talent that could use more kick, but that's a general thing-perhaps it could have a random chance, every sustained turn, to apply some sort of sleep status, like Nightmare? Then that status would suspend effects until you release Prison, making it a mass status spell as well as an area control.

Loremasters:

Well, Mind Sear is an excellent option for mind characters. The other two options, not so much. What about some new stuff along the same lines as Mind Sear? Good, class-based niche talents?

Solutions:

A: Add Sun Flare to Loremasters. A good magical Blind in a small radius seems perfect.

B: Remove Spit Poison. No one really runs it.

C: Change Disarm to Cripple, a nice, generally useful physical talent.

D: Add in Call Shadows. This is the perfect way to handle a universal pet skill-a single, very weak, very hard to control universal pet off a resource that can be hard to maintain on an off class, as well as a token Cursed universal talent. It's really cool, without being very strong.

Foreseen Niche: Everything! Everyone will like seeing a Loremaster. It won't change your run, but it'll make you happy.

Phew, that's a lot of suggestions. So, any thoughts?

Took a liberty of hilighting stuff for easier reading. ~Faeryan

[HousePet]

Seems good.

For One with Nature, how about some Equilibrium restoration. Its not worth much, but if we want Harmony useful, it needs some sort of Equilibrium regeneration.

[SageAcrin]

I'd actually rather see Elemental Harmony regen a bit of Equi whenever it triggers.

That'd be a reasonable way to grant some unusual equi regeneration, and it helps the talent out in a subtle way.

[supermini]

Elemental Harmony is worse for wilders than other classes. 30 equilibrium cost sustain is huge for any of the wilders and just inconsequential for everyone who doesn't use equilibrium as part of talent costs. The cost penalizes the classes which it's supposed to work with the best, which is why it's relegated to exploiting fire damage for speed buffs on non-wilders. If you're not doing that, I'm almost certain it's not worth opening the tree.

You can add equi regen but that won't change the underlying problem. It will still be bad for wilders because none of them really have the equi buffer to run it with their other sustains, and non wilders will only use it for speed buff triggers anyway and won't care about the regen.

[SageAcrin]

Chopping the sustain cost down to 10 seems fair to me, to be honest. That's more in line with other sustains for Equi cost.

Edit: Added some neat Loremaster ideas. Check 'em out!

[notacorporal]

This is definitely a worthwhile exercise, and I agree with your general approach.

In my experience, the main reason a generic tree is passed over is because the stat-requirements don’t match up. I think the main thing is to ensure the talent is still useful with low stats, rather than remove the scaling altogether.

You make a few comments about dependence/synergy with niche resources. Yes, definitely this is the sort of thing that needs sorting out. [Sidenote: One answer to this is to cull resources, but provide class specific mechanism to refresh these. That would be a whole different thread though.]

Many of your proposed solutions add bonus features to the talents. I would want to avoid this wherever possible. The game has a steep enough learning curve already.

Harmony
The first two talents are strong enough motivation for non-Wilders to take this. I don’t think the extra features are that worthwhile to be honest.

Hexes
I don’t know why this is a Generic talent in the first place. I guess this is because corruptors had too few generic talent trees open, so something had to be put here.

Conditioning
I agree that Daunting Presence looks weak. Maybe reduce PP and the rest by a %, rather than a set amount. This way it stays useful throughout the whole game. The Adrenalin Surge buff looks good to me.

Call of the Wild
Yes, this looks good to me.

Divination
Personally I find Arcane Eye to be a terrible crutch, which tends to slow the game down, I would welcome if this came with a downside of some sort.
Vision as it is now is not a talent I would put points into. The splitting of terrain info, from monster info always struck me as oddly artificial. I don’t like your proposed buffs though. The whole set of scouting talents could do with a serious rethink.
The Keen Senses buff looks like a no-brainer.
Premonition is odd in that it is more use to classes that don’t rely on mana. I am split over whether upping evasion is good or not. It seems you are aiming for a very different kind of talent.

Stone Alchemy
People are here mostly for the imbue gem talent.
If the other talents don’t use gems this alters how they work for alchemists. You could give alchemists a specific ability to use their gems as an alternative a mana source, but this is a big rethink for the whole class.

Mobility
I have this on my rogue at the moment. Mobile Defence is worth the price, but everything else is meh, The main problem with this as I see it, is that it scales badly. At mastery level 0.8 the Strider talent gives you +1% movement speed. That’s it! No reduced cooldown on anything!
I’d fix the scaling first, before changing anything else. That said, the way Hack ‘n’ Back works does seem underwhelming. e.g. if you are an archer, jumping back 2 squares, barely gives you time to switch weapons. A possible daze effect would seem like the bare minimum here. Maybe make it instant use.

Other Trees
You listed quite a few trees before you flaked out. You have beaten me.

[NB: I found the OP difficult to read, and had to port it to my word processor, to reformat.]

[HousePet]

Divination:
How about merging Vision into Arcane Eye.
Dropping Premonition down to slot 3.
Add Contingent Teleport to slot 4.
Contingent Teleport would function like Second Life, but would teleport you instead of healing you.
If that is too many sustains, Contingent Teleport could be a sustain that add the effect to Premonition.

[SageAcrin]

Hmm, not a bad idea.

You could make Premonition the L8, then make the Teleport skill an L12 passive that adds the ability to null a fatal attack and teleport you, then set Premonition on a long cooldown.

Levels could up the range of the teleport, allow you some level of control(It still probably would never be bigger than a phase door), and lower the cooldown trigger on Premonition. Very interesting idea.

[bpat]

All the Hexes except Emphatic (which is worthless) are very powerful. Domination Hex definitely doesn't need a buff since it is very good at dealing with rares and elites. Since the other three Hexes are good, it is hard to justify buffing Emphatic Hex by much or replacing it with something that isn't terrible since Hexes is one of the best uses of a category point for mages compared to any escort category (better than Light in my opinion).

For Divination, Arcane Eye needs to give the invisibility sight at effective level 4 rather than 5 so people can fully benefit from taking the category. I agree with the other changes except the Premonition mana cost and Vision requiring high investment since people will already want 5/5 Keen Senses and either Arcane Eye or Premonition (if maxing neither there's no reason to even take this category).

Nature's Balance change would be very, very overpowered since it would reset talents like Unstoppable, Blinding Speed, and Maelstrom. It's good enough as it is, Earth's Eyes is the talent that really needs a buff.

[SageAcrin]

I'm okay with not buffing Empathic Hex and just doing the Lethargy Hex/radius changes, as that's the bigger deal. Domination is okay as it is.

I'm surprised you think that Nature's Balance would be overpowered, though. Metaflow can be used to reset talents as strong or stronger, and Snap already exists and can reset many of those talents.

Admittedly, I guess you could reset Snap with it, which is sorta funny, but it's pretty hard to leverage and Snap can't reset Nature's Balance, since it's a nature skill.

Perhaps it could be retooled to drop the cooldown on all Nature/Stamina/Psi skills by (3+TL/2) instead? Works better on moderate range CD talents that way.

[bpat]

I'm okay with not buffing Empathic Hex and just doing the Lethargy Hex/radius changes, as that's the bigger deal. Domination is okay as it is.

I'm surprised you think that Nature's Balance would be overpowered, though. Metaflow can be used to reset talents as strong or stronger, and Snap already exists and can reset many of those talents.

Admittedly, I guess you could reset Snap with it, which is sorta funny, but it's pretty hard to leverage and Snap can't reset Nature's Balance, since it's a nature skill.

Perhaps it could be retooled to drop the cooldown on all Nature/Stamina/Psi skills by (3+TL/2) instead? Works better on moderate range CD talents that way.

My concern with Lethargy Hex is Hexes will go from a category with four amazing talents and one useless talent to a category with four amazing talents. Hexes is probably the best category that is available to all classes as it is (including Survival, Light, and Stone Alchemy), even though it's only really good on mages. The addition of Lethargic Hex might warrant nerfs to other Hexes, which I'd rather not have happen. Aside from that, I really do like the concept of the talent, so if it could be added without the rest of Hexes being nerfed I'd support that.

Metaflow is very strong but most spells tend to have lower cooldowns (especially with Quicken Spells in the same category) than the talents I'm concerned about like Unstoppable and Blinding Speed. The psionic talents are less of a concern but most notably double Maelstrom will be very powerful. I think reducing the cooldowns by a certain number of turns isn't a bad idea but I think Nature's Balance is fine as it is. The problem talents are Meditation and Earth's Eyes; if they are fixed then the category as a whole will be fine.

For the proposed changes for Loremaster, I agree with most but not all of these. I agree with Sun Flare since blind is underused since Sun Infusions suck. I agree that Spit Poison needs to go because it's dumb and no one uses it. Cripple is good but I like that Disarm is available since very few classes have access to any sort of disarming talent so I wouldn't make this change, instead I'd actually buff the duration of Disarm by about two turns. I do not agree with Call Shadows because you really don't ever run out of hate when using Call Shadows on an Adventurer without hate generation talents so hate generation won't be an issue at all. Call Shadows is simply too good for an escort talent since it's essentially free. Instead, if you want a summoning talent, I recommend Jelly since it's the worst summoning talent in ToME aside from the equilibrium generation but it's good for facetanking. Still, any summon would probably be overpowered. If you want Loremasters to give a non-summoning equilibrium talent I'd recommend Lightning Speed. If you want to add an Afflicted talent (which would be hard to justify thematically, but would still be really cool) I'd suggest Blindside, Dark Tendrils, or Instill Fear. I justify this by Blindside being available on boots, Dark Tendrils being bad but still nice to have for some situations, and Instill Fear being underwhelming but pretty cool. So overall, Loremasters would give Mind Sear, Sun Flare, Disarm, Lightning Speed or Jelly, and maybe Blindside, Dark Tendrils, or Instill Fear.

[Gatewalker]

How about turtle as a summon? Level 1 turtle shouldn't be that impressive, but I'd still grab it with some chars to try and plug a corridor with.

[bpat]

How about turtle as a summon? Level 1 turtle shouldn't be that impressive, but I'd still grab it with some chars to try and plug a corridor with.

Turtle is too good because of the taunt. Jelly is probably too good and Jelly is much worse than Turtle. Summons, by their nature, are very powerful and getting one from an escort would be incredible.