HousePet wrote:Sword and Board fits well with the big tough dragon theme.
However a mindstar and shield or dual mindstar would be more of a dragony shaman than a dragony fighter.
I think there is scope for both options, but mindstars are caster weapons. Talents that make them as powerful as a conventional weapon, make conventional weapons redundant.
There is currently no nature based elemental type caster, and I think Wyrmic fits perfectly in the lore for that.
Thing is though, can the 'Shamanistic Caster' theme get sold? Obviously my approach is leaning towards 'Shamanistic Melee' with regards to all weapons.
A big thing to note here is if Wyrmics essentially get distinct styles that are too different, a what point might we face a Bulwark/Berserker Scenario?
The core aspect of this class is the dragon aspects.
Your weapon choice and whether you prefer melee or ranged is secondary.
Bulwark/Berserker on the other hand, weapon choice is primary, as is the beatdown versus attrition style.
I'd be happy to make two classes, but they would end up sharing most of the categories anyway.
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.
I proposed the Shield+2H class feature in the hope that it can enhance the "big tough" theme that Wyrmics have. But now as I think about it, it fits well with the big tough warrior theme, but it has nothing to do with the big tough dragon theme.
Not only that, allowing Shield and 2H at the same time shift players' focus from the draconic thing to the warrior thing. I foresee that if we give player that choice, most players would invest quite a bit on the Shield tree, the 2H tree, a "Draconic Strength" tree which grants buff, and the breaths. The result will be a Shield+2H warrior with breaths for AOE, which is not that draconic at all.
If we are going to revert back to the Shield/2H, we are faced with two choices (1)Keep the original Shield/2H trees and improve the draconic melee talents (2) rework the Shield/2H trees to make them more Wyrmics like. If we keep the original trees(1), I see that most players would still use the Shield/2H trees most often for their melee, because they are effective and well-developed. If we are going to rework the melee trees and make them comparable to the original trees (2), then why don't we adopt the Unarmed(or Talons) / Shamanistic Melee approaches? It would make Wyrmics' melee more unique, and brings a dragonness that Shield/2H can't hope to bring, as they don't have anything to do with being dragon anyway.
And I would like to digress a little bit. The breaths, they are far too spammy against mobs, while they are weak against bosses. The fixed cone shape is also a little bit boring. How about this:
Making it a sustain, and you have to wait
1 turn to spike the sustain to use the ordinary cone breath
2 turns to spike the sustain to make it a beam, power(including the chance of sticking a debuff) increased
3 turns to spike the sustain to make it a ball which explodes for a small AOE, power further increased
Make breaths the class's bread and butter attack. No/low cooldowns, mediocre damage, short range (2 range beam), first talent in their respective trees.
Then add a talent called Inhale, which does nothing on its own, but which adds a timed effect (consumed on next breath) that greatly increases the damage, resistance penetration and range of the next breath. No cooldown, can be used up to 3 times to make the next breath extra devastating.
Other talent ideas:
Draconic Hide - reduces movement speed, reduces all incoming damage by a percentage based on your armor.
Studded Hide - embed gems into armor.
Flight - a low-cooldown, low-range TK Leap-like talent that dazes nearby foes when you land. Designed to replace regular movement since you will be very slow with Draconic Hide.
Actually, scratch the second part of that. Here's a better idea for a new tree:
Flight - Sustain. Cancels the negative movement speed from Draconic Hide. Decreases all damage you do (you're flying too high to be effective). Greatly increases vision range, and even grants telepathy at higher levels. Maybe even reveals terrain. The idea is that it's a scouting talent - you autoexplore with it on, and then use Crash to Earth once you've spotted a group of opponents and worked out your best location for the next few turns. 8ish cooldown.
Draconic Hide - as above. Passive. MASSIVE movement speed debuff, like 80%. The idea is that you pick out the right spot for you to be, and then pretty much have to stay there for a while.
Crash to Earth - very long range precise jump talent that ignores walls and maybe Intimidates opponents near your landing point, but it deactivates Flight.
Much of my analysis so far in regards to the Wyrmic Class has been in regards to it’s overall capabilities as a whole. However, the talents of the Wyrmic Class themselves also deserve some attention.
When looking at the talents, this is basically how I will look at them:
-What talents are failing due to it being subpar or weak.
-What talents are failing due to other factors besides the talent.
-What talents are working but could use improvement.
-What talents are working but have thematic issues.
-What talents are working fine as is.
-What talents are probably beyond saving and should be removed.
I’ll note that for this analysis, I’m only going to concentrate on the Elemental Drake Aspect categories and Higher Draconic Abilities category. This is due to the fact that Two Handed Assault, Shield Offense, Combat Techniques, and Combat Veteran need to take into account how they work with other classes.
Some of these talents may be removed, some of them might be kept; but on the assumption that they might all potentially be kept I'll try to suggest where I can my recommendation for improving the talents.
Sand Drake Aspect
Swallow – Thematic Problems, Talent Doesn’t Scale Well
Swallow is an important talent for Wyrmics as it allows the character to gain Equilibrium when the talent successfully kills an enemy. Players are known to also enjoy using the talent to kill off an annoying enemy who popped a Heroism Infusion or some other ability at their disposal – the Swallow will still instantly kill the opponent. The problem with Swallow however is thematics and scaling.
Thematically it doesn't make a lot of sense only the Sand Drake Aspect category has this talent. This is partly why I suggested moving it to the Mindstar Category I suggested in my last post, because that way an Ice Wyrm or Fire Wyrm could also potentially be using the talent.
In terms of scaling you don’t get a whole lot of increased damage from the talent and the minor heal effect actually counteracts your ability to pop a Regeneration Infusion due to associated talents in the Fungus category; you also can’t benefit it through other associated talents like Chromatic Fury due to its Nature damage aspect. Knocking an enemy below the initial threshold as well or outright killing the enemy also isn't that hard of a feat to pull off either with just 1/5 talent investment in Swallow which; though that isn't necessarily in and of itself a bad thing for leaving the talent effective with just 1 Talent Point.
My first recommendation is that the talent should be removed from the Sand Drake Aspect Category and put in a new category – one that could be given to all Dragon type enemies to use against the player (and Wyrmic enemies perhaps of sufficient stature like Gorbat or the Corrupted Sandworm; outside of Rares and Uniques) that can potentially make Dragons more fearsome as enemeis. The second recommendation is that scaling and effectiveness for the talent should be looked at – making Chromatic Fury work with it or making the amount of Equilibrium gained increased with talent level are some ideas; I'd also remove Healing from it as well.
One idea I’ll throw in as a possible solution for fixing Swallow is making it depend on talent level in respect to what Enemy Ranks you can swallow along with Health Thresholds. Example as follows:
-1/5 Talent Investment let’s you Swallow Critter and Normal Rank 10% Health Threshold or lower
-2/5 Talent Investment the Critter and Normal swallow at 15% Health Threshold or lower
-3/5 Talent Invesment includes Rare or Elite Rank for you to Swallow
-4/5 Talent Investment makes you have a Guaranteed Swallow at 5% Health Threshold or lower
Essentially, my idea here is that if an enemy pops a Heroism Infusion, Unstoppable, has Blurred Mortality, or some other sort of talent along those lines; you can't swallow them unless you directly kill them outright
-5/5 Talent Investment gives you the ability to Swallow Unique, Boss, or Elite Boss Rank, at the 5% Guaranteed Health Threshold or lower
I'd also throw in that Swallows Power could be based off the Constitution Stat, and that when resisting the Swallow attempt that it has to be beaten through Physical Save. I'd personally make all enemies perhaps capable of resisting, though maybe lower ranked enemies have a lower chance to resist due to their rank.
Quake - Talent doesn’t offer enough Utility
Quake is an interesting ability in that it can offer you an escape through terrain rearrangement or cover. In spite of this though there really isn’t a whole lot else that the talent offers so it comes off a bit weak. This leads to players potentially dropping a talent point in it and moving in; perhaps using it or perhaps ignoring it.
My recommendation is make Quake do more – adding another effect like Disarm, Slow, Pinning (obtainable at higher levels to take into account scaling) might be a good approach to enhancing this talent to be more useful. Leaving Knockback on it seems fine as this is a defensive talent in nature more then an offensive one.
Burrow – Exploit, Poor Scaling per Talent Level
Burrow is an interesting Talent that offers the player the ability to dig through terrain without a pickaxe. Unfortunately, if a player uses Burrow and then uses Lightning Speed, they can zip through massive amounts of Walls which largely renders investing in this talent highly inadvisable – the Talent Scaling of course just increasing duration.
My recommendation in relation to Burrow is that it should have an additional catch added to it – make it so that the amount of Walls you can Burrow through is dependent on Talent Level. This has the added advantage of negating Lightning Speed from being exploited while also giving tactical ability to the amount of Talent Levels invested – if for example you had(1*Talent Level Walls+X), then at Talent level 3 you could dig through 3 + X Walls before the effect expires.
I’ll note that an alternative recommendation for Burrow is to make it so that each wall you Dig through drains Equilibrium – this has the advantage of still allowing you to zip through walls with Lightning Speed but with the drawback that you’ll be chewing up a lot of Equilibrium. Personally I think my first suggestion would work better however.
As more of a note then a recommendation, I’ll note that with just tunnel digging Burrow might be a bit weak to fully invest in past the Talent level that lets you burrow through your desired amount of walls. It might be smart to add another effect to Burrow to make sure players have some incentive to keep investing in the talent at all talent levels.
Sand Breath – Issues Relating to All Breath Attacks.
Sand Breath is the one talent in this category that I think is actually fine; outside of the issues all Breaths have in relation to Mental Critical Rate, being less useful 1 on 1, fairly low damage, etc. Since all Breaths seem to have these weaknesses though, it might be better to just create an augmentation talent that helps boosts the usefulness of Breaths, rather then improving all the individual Breath Attacks themselves.
Before discussing the existing individual talents, it is better to address the core issue of Wyrmics first. We need a direction for this class
Their melee (What is the style they are going to adopt?)
Their spells (Are we going to have a class that is powerful at both melee/ranged attack while having no interaction between the melee/spells at all? Should the melee comes first and spells mainly serve a supporting role?)
The specialization (As shown from astreoth's vote, quite a number of people voted that there should be specialization, how should this be done?)
The breaths (how should it be improved?)
Another thing: Actually the Regeneration triggered by Swallow-Heal-Fungus can be canceled, so it won't be a problem
It honestly probably isn't a problem that it isn't useful against single targets, but more of a problem that Wyrmics lack a whole slew of options for dealing with foes one on one. If we want to give Wyrmics some better single target capabilities and just focus on improving breaths overall in terms of being a cone AoE then that's an approach that can be taken for revision.
@anonymous000
Establishing a direction based on their talents can be done by simply seeing where the talents are overall ineffective at what they are suppose to do.
An examples this was shown with Housepet's post - Breath Attacks remaining weak against a single foe while Wyrmics gain more single target capabilities instead. It's likely Breath Attacks aren't going to disappear regardless of what direction the Wyrmic takes so this could be a direction for taking Wyrmics in.
We can understand what directions might be worth taking if we look at the talents.
Bellowing Roar is probably what I consider to be the best class talent available to the Wyrmic class. This powerful ability is strong enough in the early game to wipe out hoards of enemies just by simply tapping its hotkey while the talent remains useful later in the game for its ability to hit everything with its Confusion effect.
The power that Bellowing Roar displays is probably actually its greatest weakness. Simply put, it is too strong as a First Tier talent; players shouldn’t gain access to Bellowing Roar so quick. Another issue is that Bellowing Roar comes off as being another talent that shouldn’t just belong to one specific Elemental Aspect, but rather it should be available to all of them.
Following the similar recommendation I made for Swallow, I think this talent should be put in a new category that would be available to all Dragon type enemies. Specifically in relation to when this talent might be available for requirement, it certainly shouldn’t be available as early as level 1. Outside of that, the talent is strong enough that it could be left alone and still be an effective.
Wing Buffet – Thematic Problems, Poor Choice of Debuff Effect
Wing Buffet is probably one of the weaker Wyrmic Class talents, and one that certainly isn’t worth investing in past 1/5 talent points. Wyrmics are a Melee class, and as a general rule they don’t benefit from Knockback effects. Along with its effect, it also feels like another talent that should belong to all Dragon type enemies instead of just one type.
I would recommend that Wing Buffet should lose the Knockback effect and pick up another debuff to put on enemies; I would suggest Pin as that would be useful in letting Wyrmics close in on an enemy, or get a few more shots in with ranged attacks. It should also much like Swallow and Bellowing Roar get moved to a new category for use with all Dragon type enemies.
Devouring Flame – Potentially Beyond Saving
Devouring Flame is an Area of Effect that does Damage each turn to enemies inside of the area it was cast on. In some ways that might be considered useful if you can hold an enemy inside of the targeted area. Much like many other Wyrmic talents it scales off a stat, though unlike many others it can also critical on enemies as well.
Notably you also have a lot of range with this talent. Devouring Flame can be used to hit enemies that are outside of your initial 10 Light Radius and the extended Area of Effect can also run around corners. This can lead to the talent being somewhat useful in 'hit and run' tactics.
The main problem with the talent though is that the talent only does damage, and Wyrmic talents have a problem in that as the game progresses and the talent won’t keep pace with other talents you could invest in. The talent could be useful if the damage output could be increased further into the game; potentially achievable when improving Breath attacks.
I don’t have any recommendations for improving the talent itself; though maybe it could be nice to make it so that you can’t damage yourself with the talent. As a note I consider this talent to be one worth outright replacing with a new talent.
Fire Breath – Issues Relating to All Breath Attacks, No Debuff
Unlike all the other Breath attacks, Fire comes off as being much weaker due to lacking a debuff effect. Fire Breath does do more overall damage for enemies that Burning can be inflicted on but there isn’t a big difference.
This might be a talent that might need improvement, but it might not if Breath Attack damage can be brought up to make Fire Breaths extra damage meaningful versus the other Breath attacks available.
Last edited by Davion Fuxa on Thu Jun 26, 2014 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
When looked individually based on their mechanics, the breaths are fine. They simply offer good AOE, with some ignorable debuff added. However, due to thematic reason, the breaths should not be not only about spamming against weak mobs, but they are a core class feature that one should find it useful in almost all circumstances(which includes fighting against elites and bosses), like you would always find Golems / Corrupted Strength / Mucus useful. When the breaths are considered from this viewpoint, they have a lot more to be desired.
In the Wyrmic I think poor scaling per talent level is often a feature, at least as it now exists.
Breaths must be 5/5 for range. You probably need several of them for cooldown. They soak up so many points that if key utility skills like swallow and burrow needed more than one point the class would run into severe problems. And that's just on mindstar builds that aren't dropping class points into stamina using melee trees.
Thematically I think burrow would be best as a sustain. It's patterned after the passive burrowing of sandworms and sand drakes.
Digitochracy
n. 1. technocracy. 2. government by the numbers. 3. rule by people with the longest fingers.
Ice Claw is my personal favorite talent in the Wyrmic class, and its one of the few Single Target abilities they have access too. Ice Claw is a Cold Based attack that has a potentially to Freeze enemies at Talent Level 4/5. Along with Weapon talents, this adds another option for dealing Melee based damage on a Melee based character.
For the most part, the main problems with Ice Claw is the element it is is - Cold. Cold is one of the worst elements in game, as too much of the Bestiary resists Cold; and Freeze as well will be resisted the further one gets into the game. It might potentially be a good candidate for a minor damage buff, perhaps dealing a Slow effect, or some other mechanism to spruce it up a bit. Otherwise though, I can't really complain too much about the talent, it's of course my favorite talent.
Icy Skin - Nothing Really Wrong With It
Icy Skin is considered one of the best talents available to Wyrmics. For a sustained costs of 30 Equilibrium, you can buff your characters Armor based off your Willpower Stat; and it has the benefit of adding some Cold Retaliation damage to boot. This is also one of the few talents I don't have any direct recommendations for. It could be a candidate for possible change depending on the direction Wyrmics are developed in, but it's a great talent as is.
Ice Wall - Could Scale Better
Ice Wall is a great defensive ability Wyrmics can make use of. Drop a couple or more talent points in there and you can immediately wall off either the top or bottom group of Orcs in an Orc Pride one player has said (I can verify this). Other uses include covering your flank, giving you breathing room, and providing you cover.
That all said, I do think that the Scaling is somewhat poor. The Ice Wall starts at 3 Cells, and jumps to 5 with 1 and 2 Talent Points respectively. That's enough Talent Points to allow a player to get a lot of utility without having to invest anymore points further. Otherwise, great talent.
Ice Breath - Issues Relating to All Breath Attacks, Damage is Too Weak, Debuff Doesn't Proc Enough
Ice Breath, sadly one of the Weakest Breaths in the Wyrmics arsenal. Ice Breath has the same problems all other Breaths have, but on top of that it also has a couple of other specific problems. One is that it is the Cold Based Breath - and Cold gets resisted alot; but the Breath doesn't deal that much more damage then most other Breath Attacks. The other problem is that it produces a Freeze Debuff at only 25% chance; which happens to be resisted a lot and doesn't generally proc very well as a result.
Unlike the other Breaths, Ice Breath really should be made stronger. It's damage should be much more then it is, and if it sticks with the Freeze Debuff (or really any debuff for that matter) it should have a higher chance to Proc. I would recommend it have at least a 50% chance to Freeze, or perhaps be a good candidate to produce a Slow Effect with the Freezing Breath.
Lightning Speed - Potentially could use more inclination past 3 points
Lightning Speed, the Wyrmics free Movement Infusion with Lightning and Physical Damage resistance in place of the Status immunities. For a long time this was a 3 Point talent and your golden with it talent; though with the recent and massive nerf to Movement Infusions.... I'm not sure that's 'entirely' true anymore.
While I personally don't think you need to invest more then 3 Talent Points still, it might be debatable if Lightning Speed should have any real adjustments to it. In honesty it seems to actually be a potential talent that has nothing really wrong with it now since talent levels 4 and 5 are potentially worth taking if you want to make sure your character 'gets out of dodge'. It's another great talent.
Static Field - Either Scrap it, or Make it Awesome
This talent gets harped on quite a bit, and for good reason. Static Field is a fixed percentage reduction of the enemies total health; which percentage will get reduced further depending on the rank of the enemy. It might have some vague uses against an Elite boss like Elandar, Argoniel, Orc Pride bosses or other High hitpoint endgame enemies but I'm not sure it really has much real use of that.
In many ways this talent reminds me of the old Static Field talent from Diablo II. There, that talent was really only useful against chopping off a Prime Evil's health in huge chunks from full health. The Static Field talent here is much the same, though it isn't anywhere near as effective; and neither the skill in Diablo II or the talent here were really useful anywhere else.
I like the concept for the talent being a potential 'Elite Boss Opener' talent, but it's display of use - specifically in capping its damage down against such enemies really hurts it beyond measure. So I'll be very blunt in my recommendation here - Make it put on some REAL hurt against the likes of Elandar or Argoniel (there is no quarter given here, make these this the #1 talent for damage even in Normal difficulty by a mile); else, remove it in favor of something else.
As a suggestion for an improvement if it is kept - maybe as an idea you could have it reduced by Lightning and All Resistance. For Elandar and Argoniel, they have really strong All Resistance so that can help manage how much damage gets outputted on them. This will also potential expand it's use to be useful on any boss before them as well since the percentage will be higher for enemies without lightning resistance.
I'd be on the side of just removing the talent outright though.
Tornado - Talent Doesn't Scale Well
Tornado is probably one my favorite concept talents for how fun it is - you shoot a little ball, it hits stuff in its path on the way to the target, it hits target and everything around it for damage and stun. It isn't really useful outside of a talent point though for a sure-fire Stun.
This talent should scale better - specifically either the Projectile Speed should be higher and/or the Stun Duration should scale with the talent level. Knockback should also be made random, towards your character, away from your character, and perhaps the Explosion Radius should also get increased too.
As a note, the damage can damage you if you are near the explosion radius. It might be nice if the player's character takes no damage when he uses Tornado.
Lightning Breath - Issues Relating to All Breath Attacks, Damage is Too Weak, Debuff is Too Weak
Next to Ice Breath, this is the other really weak Breath attack Wyrmics have access too. Lightning Breath should comparably be one of the better Breaths since Lightning Resistance isn't as common as Fire or Cold, but because of the fact that the damage can hit very low or very high it is possible to get a 'dud' in terms of damage. Much like Ice Breath, the damage needs to be increased a lot on Lightning Breath - at least enough to make that RNG based damage worth a little bit of potential for gambling on.
And then there is Daze - Keep that part of the talent as is.
I don't think Lightning Breath should lose it's Daze effect on hit. It's a weak effect - but that's reason to shift focus to Daze. Daze needs to be improved, Fortescue touched on improving Pinning but I'll bring it up here that I think those are good effects to place on Daze - the ability to disable the ability or current abilities relating to Blocking, Evasion, Maybe Stealth and Invisibility, etc. There has also been discussions about Giving Daze a Power. Whatever comes to pass - Daze needs a bit more 'umph' given to it, and if it is done then it will be worth leaving Lightning Breath with Daze on hit.
Last edited by Davion Fuxa on Thu Jun 26, 2014 3:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.