[1.4.4] Eternal Darkness - A Full Necromancer Rework v2.21

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/3928

v1.21
-Darkstaff now works correctly
-Fixed a bug with invalid addon hash

Praxis -

1) That's intended, seeing as you'll probably have higher spell crit than anything else but some minions use melee crit, I decided it'd be best to scale it all off that. Perhaps I'll make it clear in the tooltip.
2/3) Like Housepet said, all summons get those. You'd probably need to dig around in the code to see what summons inherit, as far as I know it's just what you've noticed so far though. Some specific summons inherit other stuff though.

DAllan -

Technically that's intended as the detonate spell checks for LoS, but I think it'll probably be a good idea to remove that check. I'll put that in next version. Cold Flames is still going to get a buff, but the code is a challenge and I've not had much time.

speczero -

Not a bug as Spellcraft only checks yourself for friendly fire, but I think it'd be a good idea to have Spellcraft protect minions from the damage so that will be a feature too.

[Sutekh]

Hey just wanted to say thanks for making this. Necromancy/dark magic has also been my favorite for a long time, and the vanilla necromancer felt rather lack luster.

I did encounter a bug, but unfortunately didn't get a cap of it. I encountered it when I set the blood shield on autocast when enemies are adjacent, and the bug happened when multiple enemies triggered it at the same time. I tried noping out of the game, but the bug was reoccurring after that when multiple enemies were adjacent (even after turning off autocast). I removed the point in the shield and didn't encounter any other lua errors.

Again, thanks for the mod, I have been having a lot of fun with it.

[Praxis]

I see good to know about minions.

Some other comments/thoughts:

Now I feel like Shadow tunnel is still kinda must to max. Mainly because it starts out at 2 range, which is unusable so you get it to rank 3 for okay range 6, and then you might as well spend 2 points for a nice long range, lower CD and insane burst.

Surge of Undeath:

I feel like this needs to be looked at since it's the main active buff for your minions. Phys power, spell power, accuracy get marginally better by increasing it, and when you take scaling into effect, at higher levels this results with +1 or +2 of actual increase per talent level increase. 1 point is mainly worth it for healing - definitely not worth increasing at the moment. I would at least suggest to increase it's duration per level, since it stays 6 turns long at all talent levels right now.

Getting some LUA errors in old forest. Once when I summoned minions, then upon moving. Same error. One thing I noticed a bit later(not sure if related) is that my eternal bone giant disappeared from minion tab(but still followed me in game) and I could summon another 2nd one.

[Razakai]

Sutekh -
If you go to your log.txt file, you'll be able to find the LUA error. Either way I'll try and replicate it.

Praxis -
Yeah, Shadow Tunnel being weak at low levels is intended. It's effectively the old function pre-3, then returns to full power at TL6. I'm not too bothered about it being a great investment for pet necros, although I may end up removing the darkness damage effect. Is it still incredibly strong at 6?
I think I'm going to change Surge to a different buff entirely. I'm thinking damage/global speed/regen/crit, and at TL5 prevents your minions from going below 1 hp while active. Gives it a much better buff, and a unique effect if you heavily invest. I'll just give minions some base accuracy bonuses.
The giant 'bug' is probably due to it dying. When an Eternal dies, it gets removed from your minion list but then self-resurrects, which is rather odd but quite a nice bonus. As for the bug itself, can't think what that'd be off the top of my head. Did you activate/deactivate any sustains, have them dispelled, or unlearn any talents at the time?

Also, an open question to players, especially minion necros - do you feel Nightfall is in need of any tweaking? It's been left totally untouched, but I'm wondering how it stacks up to the new and improved Grave/Vampirism trees. Invoke Darkness is obviously excellent, but I'm wondering if the cooldown, effect and damage of the other 3 might need a fix. Especially once the new Blood is Power and Cold Flames go in, which will boost their respective trees.

[Orangeflame]

A buff to Nightfall?

Probably a better way to buff dark damage would be to improve Shades.
Maybe move Duskshroud to the first spot, remove Black Tentacles, and put Abyssal Shroud (or a clone) into the 4th slot?
Maybe give Duskshroud a little bit of res all pen (5-15%) when active?

...but as it is, Nightfall is no slouch.

[Razakai]

Good to hear, Nightfall can remain. Maybe it'll need tuning up one day, but ED Necromancer is getting pretty overpowered as is.

Shades is pretty bad at the moment, yeah. Here's what each advanced tree is supposed to do. I'd be interested to see if people agree with my vision for each tree and how effective I feel it is.

Reaping - Massive AoE damage for blaster necromancers focusing on cold/dark, with some minor utility in the form of soul generation for all necromancers. A particular focus for minionless due to River of Souls. I think this tree works well at the moment, I see many minion necromancers pick it just to 1/5/1/5 it for the utility, and blaster necromancers tend to invest heavily. Reaper's Mark might need a little something though.
Advanced Minion Mastery - The obvious choice for minion necromancers, with some useful utility in the form of the bone golem shield which anyone can get with a minimal investment. Everyone seems to like this tree, and I think every spell in there is useful and worthy of heavy investment. Shadow Tunnel might need another nerf though.
Corpse - Lots of utility and debuffs, and good for people focusing on vampirism. Corpsewall is still buggy, and I think the tooltip should be clearer as I'm not sure people realise just how strong the attacks are. Debuff cleanse, a heavy debuff spreading DoT and a big resistance debuff are all strong, though I don't see quite as many people taking it. I can't see any problems with the tree itself, anyone got any ideas?

And then...

Shades - We have a minion tree and 2 damaging trees. So the goal for this is a 'summoning' tree but with a different focus. Lots of short duration summons to block, disable and control, Shades implies trickery and illusions. Forgery of Haze is excellent and won't need a change, although I do need to disable friendly fire on it. However Duskshroud is still a placeholder, Black Tentacles is half-complete, and Curse of the Meek lost some luster now you can get souls via Reaping. So to go with the control+summon theme:

Black Tentacles - These will get some AI and general tweaks. They'll automatically use Shadow Grab on spawn, which inflicts pin+silence+DoT, and I'll have it ignore saves (so silence/pin resistance will work, but phys/spell save won't). The tentacles actually hit very hard and have a short cooldown, so I might make it a little more explicit in terms of what they do. A 12 cd AoE nuke that inflicts heavy damage, pin/silence and distracts is pretty great in my opinion. Also, they'll get an EotD effect that summons a single Black Horror instead which does some crazy stuff.
Curse of the Meek - To go with the taunt effect, killing a bunny will inflict backlash against the target, doing... something. Probably darkness damage+daze, but maybe some other unpleasant debuff. The idea here being mobs have to wade through bunnies, each time taking serious damage and negative effects.
Forgery of Haze - No friendly fire, otherwise great.
Duskshroud - Movespeed+wall walking+stealth. But the big thing will be that each turn a shadow copy will be summoned next to you. The copies are weak and short duration, but they'll spam a darkness attack that taunts and has a chance to blind/confuse. So Duskshroud will cause absolute chaos for anything trying to hit you, which fits the whole summoning illusions and distractions theme.

Is this a tree you'd take?

[Kanos]

Well, you managed to do the impossible with this mod: You made me enjoy playing a minion necromancer enough to actually play it to completion.

http://te4.org/characters/7814/tome/a71 ... 4532b7c642

I died several times due to stuff unrelated to the class(underestimating new brawler rares and a particularly insane level 45 sun paladin runed bone giant guarding Celia when I went in there at 20), but once I got to the east I was largely unstoppable.

Some comments:
-River of Souls should probably be a capstone end-of-tree skill. It's ludicrously, insanely powerful, possibly too powerful, and with the buffs to soul gain in this mod it's not really hard to feed even as a minion necromancer.
-I would recommend making level 6 Assemble always give you a runed bone giant, or alternatively make it so casting Assemble with Essence of the Dead always gives you a runed bone giant. It's pretty easy to simply game the RNG by self-destructing and resummoning giants until you get a pair of runed ones(and it's worth it, since runed giants are roughly a billion times stronger than eternals), but it's boring and dumb.
-I'd like to see a minion move speed increase rolled into a talent like Dark Empathy or something. When you get a big pile of minions, even with the giant necrotic aura they tend to get confused and fall behind and die during autoexplore, which is a little annoying and gets exponentially worse if you acquire any speed boosts yourself. It's not a critical issue because the increased soul gain means losing minions isn't nearly as punishing as vanilla, so it's more of a quality of life thing.
-I had a whole bunch of crash problems in the Prides and in High Peak, but I don't know if it's due to 1.2.1, your mod, the Draconian mod, or some interaction between them all. I'd provide lua logs but they were hard crashes and not lua errors.

I enjoyed the mod so much that my next character is actually probably going to be a blaster necro. Great work.

[Razakai]

Thanks Kanos.

- What exactly makes RoS so powerful? Just the sheer damage output? I suppose I could always cut the damage or cap it at 3 projectiles if that's the case.
- I'll put in something to guarantee Runed Bone Giants, as exploding/resummoning is pretty dull. Maybe have the progression be 1=Regular, 2=Heavy, 3=Eternal, 4=20% chance, 5=Runed or something.
- Passive speed bonuses seem fair enough, I'll just stick a TL*5% speed bonus somewhere, Dark Empathy sounds good.
- Probably my addon, as 1.2.1 changed alot. If you get another crash, look in your log text file and see what the LUA error there is, as that'll be saved even if it crashes.

[Kanos]

Thanks Kanos.

- What exactly makes RoS so powerful? Just the sheer damage output? I suppose I could always cut the damage or cap it at 3 projectiles if that's the case.
- I'll put in something to guarantee Runed Bone Giants, as exploding/resummoning is pretty dull. Maybe have the progression be 1=Regular, 2=Heavy, 3=Eternal, 4=20% chance, 5=Runed or something.
- Passive speed bonuses seem fair enough, I'll just stick a TL*5% speed bonus somewhere, Dark Empathy sounds good.
- Probably my addon, as 1.2.1 changed alot. If you get another crash, look in your log text file and see what the LUA error there is, as that'll be saved even if it crashes.

RoS sort of spirals out of control later on as you do the natural necro thing and start picking up lots of dark and cold damage. My RoS was shooting 4 bolts per turn for around 300 damage a shot that hit in an AoE and I could do other stuff while it was going. Coupled with Animus Hoarder and Death Vortex it was trivially easy to autoexplore around any area with at least a modest enemy density and stay at max souls 100% of the time while still chaingunning thousands of damage for basically free since I'd gain souls faster than I'd use them(and be healing to full constantly from Vampiric Gift).

A few suggestions on how to tweak it a bit:
1. Lower the damage significantly, by 30-40%, but leave it otherwise the same. It will still be a significant damage dealer that is characterized by allowing you to do other things while it's working.
2. Increase the cooldown, lock out the Necromancer's other abilities and remove his ability to move while channeling but leave the damage output intact. This makes it a huge beastly room clearer but makes you think a little bit more about when you want to use it. Solipsist's Mind Storm is a good model here.
3. Remove the splash damage but increase the number of bolts fired and/or make them into beams. One of the main reasons it's so crazy is the bolts overlapping each other and stacking up huge amounts of damage on small groups of enemies.
Any one of these would be good, in my opinion.

Your other proposed changes sound solid to me.

[DAllan7m]

I think i encountered the same bug that Sutekh mentioned. I got surrounded and use Crimson Barrier:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:175: /data/damage_types.lua:2728: attempt to index local 'target' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 
	At [C]:-1 error
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:175 useTalent
	At /mod/ai//tactical.lua:395 runAI
	At /mod/ai//tactical.lua:421 doAI
	At /mod/class/NPC.lua:61 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1182

I don't repeat it but i don't think it's necessary.

Another bug. Was on first level of Rhalolen camp and encountered strange trap that looks like ice-element aether beam. Got hit - got log:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:32: attempt to call method 'isTalentActive' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 isTalentActive
	At /hooks/eternaldarkness/load.lua:32 
	At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 triggerHook
	At /data/damage_types.lua:422 defaultProjector
	At /data/damage_types.lua:675 projector
	At /data/damage_types.lua:1141 projector
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:198 project
	At /data/general/traps/complex.lua:123 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1182 

And final one that i tested for some time. I posted a little ago that i experienced slowdown while played Cold Necro. Well i think i found the problem: talent "Black Ice". I ran a few test games: first - standard cold necro. Slowdown starts being noticeable on level 10 near the end of 4th dungeon, when i open inventory. Second test - not cold necro (by the way, vampirism is cool ). No problems found. Third and final test - i took "Chill of the Tomb" but dont took "Black Ice" till level 10 and end of 4th dungeon. Until i got "Black Ice" - no problems, after it - two dungeons later and i got slowdown. Not that big, but still.

Oh, and i looked on your code Necro no longer get Spell / I??, Well it's not like he is still need it. Spell / Acid? Interesting Spell / Spirit? Very interesting, but looks like it's just an idea that far from finishing
Well thats all for now. I think i continue breaking your addon later in new version

[Razakai]

I think the Crimson Barrier bug will be fixed when the main game updates, I saw in git that the damage type it uses had a bug so that's probably why.
Strange looking bug, if I had to guess it'd be because it's a trap trying to call IsTalentActive due to dealing cold damage and therefore checking Black Ice. I think I know how to fix that one, just need some sort of check to make sure it's actually an actor calling it.
And that's good to know. I can't figure what it would be, but there must be something causing a leak or something stacking up. I'll have to ask DG about this, but thank you for the detailed testing, I'd never have found that myself.
Yep, Ice got removed as it's kinda redundant, especially once I put the new Grave in. Plus you'd be able to double stack resist pierce thanks to new Frostdusk. Acid actually exists, it's just not being used - originally it was there instead of Vampirism, but I thought bleeding damage and lifedrain fit Necromancer better. And Spirit was a very early idea where you'd be able to summon a really strong pet at the cost of constant soul drain, but it didn't really work out. I do have a couple of ideas for new trees, but first I want to get my current ones working.
I've got a week off work in a few days, so I'll be working heavily on the addon there. Expect reworked Grave/Shades trees, plenty of tweaks and balancing, hopefully some bug fixes, and having Star Fury replaced with Finger of Death and Shadecall.

[DAllan7m]

Well, i'm all excited. And looking forward to the new version. I hope that at least with it I can get the achievement "Cryomancer" ... and try other Necromancer builds XDD

[Dinlek]

I've been using corpse, and I consistently receive lua errors when combining bone curse and devouring plague. It doesn't occur every time, but if I attempt this combo in a vault, I'll get an error almost every time. If this is an unknown bug, and you need the lua, I'll see if I can recreate it, but as is, I've tabled my necromancer for now, largely due to some regrets regarding skill distribution. It may be an issue on my end, though, as I believe I made this character before the 1.2.1 hotfix, so that may be the underlying cause.

Also, if you could incorporate a speed buff to pets (or at least to the advanced ones), it would be a huge quality of life change. It hurts to summon up an awesome batch of vamps/wights/liches, just to have them die before you get much use out of them because you forget to avoid auto-explore. In a similar vein, spells from these minions are also capable of harming you, which is particularly annoying when your minion throws in a flameshock that ends up leaving you chain CC'd. That maybe an intended feature intended to add difficulty, though.

I finally made an account on this forum in order to comment. In spite of these nitpicks, I really love the feel of the necromancer class now. Switching aura mastery to generics and removing the need to invest into lichform is huge for such a class-point starved class; the other changes are just (delicious, delicious) gravy. Addons are what brought me back to TOME, and this might be one of my favorites.

Also, a random design suggestion: I'm not sure if it's even possible or even preferable, but collapsing animus (a powerful, but kinda boring) tree with another, perhaps one of your own, would be a very fun - but potentially overpowered - change. You seem to be designing a necromancer that is starved for category points, rather than class points, which I think makes for a much more fun experience. Really hard to balance though; just an idea from left field.

Can't wait to see what the next update brings.

[Razakai]

I'd appreciate the LUA. Brittle Bones and Devouring Swarm are two of the more complex spells, and I believe the way that negative effects are handled changed in 1.2 so I was expecting something to happen with that.

The speed buff will be in the next patch, 5% per point in Surge of Undeath. As for the friendly fire, that definitely shouldn't be happening. As far as I knew, I'd disabled friendly fire for all minions so I'll check on the wights to make sure they're not behaving oddly.

Yes, when designing Necromancer the reference point I used was Archmage - lots of categories that you'd never be able to fully invest in, so each Necromancer would be able to choose a few paths. So you'd see Minion Necros with ANM and maybe Reaping for DV, cold/dark blasters with Grave, Nightfall and Reaping, debuffers with Vampirism/Corpse and so on. Still needs some balancing to make all categories viable, as I'm noticing that ANM/Reaping get picked way, way more than others.

Stuff like new categories and merging might come one day. I'm not sure what I'd do with Animus if anything, it's solid but not particularly exciting. Anything you'd like to see from it?

Also, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the abilities you liked. I've heard little feedback about Corpse in particular, which is unfortunate as I'd like to make it a more popular category.

[Dinlek]

I think - I'm not completely sure - that it only applied the debuff, and not the damage. I had 700 max health when I saw it happen, so I wasn't too terribly sure if it actually hurt me. Definitely applied the flameshock debuff though, as it was attempting to hit a grave in an otherwise empty hallway.

Honestly, for me, the only thing that turns me off of corpse is a) the lack of consistent aoe b) affliction graft can't be used while blinded (or frozen, or silenced, or confused for all intents and purposes) and c) the other threes are just a bit more showy.

I think tweaking devouring swarm might be useful. I rarely found myself in a situation where I was able to effectively exploit it. When I'm facing strong enough targets that I want to debuff them, they either resisted devouring swarm, my relevant debuffs, or the targets I wanted to debuff resisted the effects as well. I think tuning this spell - while very strong in the correct niche - might give the tree better synergy in the class as a whole.

Maybe if you altered devouring swarm:
1) by changing it to a cone attack, perhaps one that did damage and (perhaps summoning 'uncontrollable' flies to provide blockers/flare) that had some effect on debuffs, or
2) perhaps dropping its cooldown to 4 and toning down its strength (maybe randomly copies one debuff, perhaps also a damage tweak). This would give a necromancer that doesn't chose reaping or grave a method of doing some on demand AoE against dark resistant enemies.

Alternatively, tweaking affliction graft to ignore the inflictions its supposed to remove would make the tree amazing enough as is.

I found that - on a minion necro - Corpse used up too many points for me to be able to viably commit to grave (at lvl 30), which leaves me regretting it at this point. If I'm not blinded, I can usually work around most debuffs. To be fair, I died for Lich late and neglected moonlight ray, so there was some user error as well.

If I can get bone curse to bound with devouring swarm, the tree would be amazing as is. However, whether due to resists or luas, I haven't been able to get that to happen get, which leaves it the only 'caster' necro tree that doesn't give an AoE (forgery essentially provides shade's aoe), which is a big problem against dark resistant swarms.

Also, I haven't been able to recreate the lua situation, but I also haven't been able to clone a bone curse yet, so it seems like something is awry. Just confirmed that devouring swarm still jumps correctly, but doesn't copy bone curse if the target dies as the swarm jumps, which...really hurts the synergy. If that was fixed, it'd be one of the strongest aoe trees I've used.

Edit: Also, if you're adding temporary speed via surge of undeath, I think most would prefer a smaller, passive buff (perhaps added on to dark empathy). That way, auto-exploring wouldn't require babysitting your minions with a skill that one really cannot afford to auto-cast (mana/cooldown/fight importance).