Forgery of haze control

[Suslik]

Forgery of haze is a very decent ability it theory. Theoretically it could be of tremendous use but in practice it's just cheesy and controlled by dumb AI. And switching control to it is not a solution because PC is left vulnerable for the time. How about giving control to the forgery any time it gets to act and granting control back to PC when it's their turn? So you decide both your PC's and your forgery's action. It will allow way more tactical options than semi-random ability rotation that AI uses. Of course forgery itself should be weakened if it could be controlled directly(reduced level/damage/inbablity to teleport).

What do you think?

[stinkstink]

The only way I can see that not being completely overpowered is if the clone shares your health/resources. Otherwise you get pre-nerf Ambuscade but even more abusable.

[Suslik]

We can go same way as for dnd2 edition of similacrum - the copy is 60% of your level and 60% of your HP. I just find it wrong that seemingly so powerful ability as creating your copy is so useless in practice because you control either yourself or it. Why not make the copy far weaker but grant control of both?

[SageAcrin]

Personally, I consider it one of the absolute best abilities in the game.

I don't remember it constantly shelling me with Chill of the Tomb or anything, I just remember it basically doubling my magic damage output...

The only time I had a real problem with it was when my Nightmare Archmage was swinging Morrigor around for a while, but that was mostly that it'd block everything off with Stone Wall...

[Suslik]

That's not a good thing actually. I'd prefer the forgery to be more utility-based, deal less damage but be controlled directly instead of mindlessly spamming everything by AI.

[Pigslayer]

Forgery of Haze is very useful. My forgery cleared the Room of Death and defeated Atamathon on nightmare by itself. Of course, it died repeatedly. Poor clone.

[Parcae2]

There is a decent case to be made that Forgery of Haze is the best ability in the game.

If you've ever doubted its value ... just stay back and Phase Door it around corners.

[Suslik]

Come on, it's by no means good. If you can create the forgery and then cheese room of death by teleporting, casting 1 spell and dying 100 times staying at a safe place by your character that's by no means a good design. What I propose is make the forgery less powerful but give more control to it to allow strategies alternative to cheesing and casting spells randomly.

[SageAcrin]

I never used it for degenerate strategies.

It was still really good...

Also, has been pointed out, they're a little dumb and unstable to be used for degenerate play, and you have undeads for out of LoS kills in many cases anyways.

(On the record, the Room of Death is very vulnerable to pets in general. I've cleared half of it out with the Thalore treants.)

[Pigslayer]

It took 4-5 attempts for my forgery to kill nightmare!Atamathon with cauterize, shields, and wards. And it took about a dozen attempts to clear the Room of Death. Cheesy, but fun.

I also use it as my opening spell for tough fights. It's effectiveness depends on your build. Summoner and cold necromancers don't get as much out of it as darkness builds, but it's still good. It's far from being mediocre and useless.

[Suslik]

Yeah I admit it's not underpowered - I used wrong wording indeed. It's just cheesy. Edited initial post.

[SageAcrin]

Maybe you could just make it impossible to teleport, like Ambuscade.

[Suslik]

@SageAcrin
Fair enough, updated zero post.