Nullpack 2019-02-21: Gravitic Infantry

[Doctornull]

IMHO the Fossil is bad as in both too strong and too dull, and by the time it starts to come together it's just an Arcane Blade with more attacks.

Edit: The Ember of Gerlyk appears a bit dull in terms of generics, the unique category seems fun, though.
Edit again: So, if those two are out, which one should I play next?

Ember needs a new category or two. What's there is good, but there's not enough there yet.

Flenser and Creep are both pretty coherent, try one of those perhaps?

Storm Warden would also be a good choice.

Striker has a pretty playstyle, too. There's some variety of builds there.

Heavy is solid. The high-level category is applicable to Temporal Wardens, too, so evaluate it in that light.

[anathema]

this might be a noob question, but how exactly do i get nullpack installed and up to date on a non-steam client?
http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/nullpack has a bunch of files with the same file name, that doesnt seem to install the addon by placing them in the addon folder.
I did find a file "tome-nullpack_33.teaa" which does install the classes, but i found this file by googling "tome storm warden", after which the 8th result was http://te4.org/node/3420 and i have no idea if that is the updated version. In game it states that its version 1.1.6. I have found no other way to get this file.

edit: erm, i think i figured it out, apologies apparently theres a difference between clicking the file name on the right hand side of the addon page, and clicking the version name on the left hand side

[stinkstink]

Just add tome to the front of whatever filename you download if it doesn't have it already. The fact that it doesn't have it already is some unresolved website quirk.

[Doctornull]

edit: erm, i think i figured it out, apologies apparently theres a difference between clicking the file name on the right hand side of the addon page, and clicking the version name on the left hand side

Yeah, apparently there are some quirks on the website. Sorry, I think they're beyond my ability to influence.

The latest Nullpack (link from the left-hand side list) is: http://te4.org/node/4574

The filename ought to be: tome-nullpack_67.teaa

Hope things work out!

[tilkau]

I don't see how you can lack in kill speed with ~200% global speed + the insane amount of stats this character gets. It's like a brawler on speed. Literally.

What are you talking about here? I looked into it and the closest I can see to '~200% global speed' is

* train Body Over Mind to 5/5, unlock Combat Techniques and train blinding speed to 5/5
* In battle, fire off Body Over Mind and Blinding Speed. Your speed is now 183% (assuming no equipment boosts).
* in 5 turns, speed drops to 135%.
* 8-11 turns after that, speed drops to 100%. All stamina is probably used up by now, since Blinding Speed has a heavy stamina cost itself.
* depending on how many combo points you had when activating Body Over Mind, you may be able to reactivate BOM here, otherwise in a few turns (if you have the psi)
* in 35-odd turns you might be able to reactivate Blinding Speed, if you had the stamina (need pretty good stamina regen for that).

[marshmallowpeep]

I just died with a level 40ish blood mage, which is the furthest I've gotten in roguelike. I was playing a Cornac staff and dagger build and focusing pretty heavily on survival. I took flexible combat for my prodigy. It was an avoidable death, I just wasn't thinking.

Here is the character in the vault if you're interested. http://te4.org/characters/119867/tome/a ... 9d1c52f765

Bear in mind, I've only made to the east a handful of times so it's hard for me to gauge the power level all that accurately at that level.

The healing from Blood Spite might be a tad excessive. To be fair, I was focusing on it, but casting vile strike was regularly healing me in the neighborhood of 600, and my bumps were healing me around 200 most of the time. Varies with luck, enemy disease resists, and how long it's been alive to have diseases stacked, obviously.

I stopped bothering to cast Balefire Bolt somewhere around 20. Not worth it except as a last resort ranged heal. My bumps were doing more damage and healing me for more.

Never found a use for Woe Pyre. Generally speaking, I felt like I had plenty of AoE, and not enough single target, and if I did need more AoE I'd be more inclined to go for Voidburn or even Corrupted Negation.

Blood Spurt was disappointing for a similar reason; Near as I can tell, it requires a second target to proc, so the situations where it was actually proccing were not the situations in which I needed the extra damage. Cut immunity is also frustratingly common.

Plague Gate is kind of hard to use. I was expecting it to be my big single target killer, but between the amount of set up required and the fairly long cooldown, it really didn't have a huge impact.

Having so many drain skills was tactically interesting, especially with the one scaling with diseased on the enemy. Deciding when to back off and when I can just power through. Getting close to death often meant "attack more" rather than "run away."

[Fhtagn]

What are you talking about here? I looked into it and the closest I can see to '~200% global speed' is

* train Body Over Mind to 5/5, unlock Combat Techniques and train blinding speed to 5/5
* In battle, fire off Body Over Mind and Blinding Speed. Your speed is now 183%
* in 5 turns, speed drops to 135%.
* 8-11 turns after that, speed drops to 100%. All stamina is probably used up by now, since Blinding Speed has a heavy stamina cost itself.

First of, 183 is not all that far off from 200, is it? I also had a Ring of the Warmaster, which, by raising the category mastery, added another 6 or so percent.
And then, yes, the speed drops after 5 turns. However, the fight is over after 5 turns. Literally over. The longest fight I have had lasted 7 turns, and that was High Peak.
Blinding Speed has no heavy stamina cost. 25 is not much in terms of stamina. You might be confusing it with momentum?
You also won't be out of stamina at any point, because Body Over Mind recharges Stamina by an obscene amount each turn, and your skills have comparatively high cooldowns.
And even if you were, it would not matter, because, again, after those 8 turns, everything is dead.

Edit: I suppose when you played Body Over Mind did not recharge stamina yet, but even then, any fight should be over before your stamina runs out.
And even if not, you are hardly helpless without stamina when your Doublestrikes hit for an average above 1800.
Edit 2: This is on normal, on higher difficulties, things are obviously different and might have looked much more grim before the changes to Mind Over Matter.

[tilkau]

What are you talking about here? I looked into it and the closest I can see to '~200% global speed' is

* train Body Over Mind to 5/5, unlock Combat Techniques and train blinding speed to 5/5
* In battle, fire off Body Over Mind and Blinding Speed. Your speed is now 183%
* in 5 turns, speed drops to 135%.
* 8-11 turns after that, speed drops to 100%. All stamina is probably used up by now, since Blinding Speed has a heavy stamina cost itself.

First of, 183 is not all that far off from 200, is it? I also had a Ring of the Warmaster, which, by raising the category mastery, added another 6 or so percent.
And then, yes, the speed drops after 5 turns. However, the fight is over after 5 turns. Literally over. The longest fight I have had lasted 7 turns, and that was High Peak.

I probably am not fighting as efficiently as I could, then. Thanks.

Blinding Speed has no heavy stamina cost. 25 is not much in terms of stamina. You might be confusing it with momentum?

.. Ok. (for some reason I thought it cost 45. Which could actually be a mixup with BoM, which costs 45 psi.)

You also won't be out of stamina at any point, because Body Over Mind recharges Stamina by an obscene amount each turn, and your skills have comparatively high cooldowns.

Ah, excellent point about BOM. I don't use it enough.

And even if you were, it would not matter, because, again, after those 8 turns, everything is dead.

Edit: I suppose when you played Body Over Mind did not recharge stamina yet, but even then, any fight should be over before your stamina runs out.
And even if not, you are hardly helpless without stamina when your Doublestrikes hit for an average above 1800.

Heh, that's definitely endgame damage levels. I haven't gotten that far in the game yet. (furthest I got was 'just about to return from the East'). Getting 200-300 currently (L24)..

I read your Transcendent Fist guide BTW; it was pretty helpful for planning skilling (and also, just that pointer at Flexible Combat. That seems almost ludicrously useful.)

[Doctornull]

The healing from Blood Spite might be a tad excessive. To be fair, I was focusing on it, but casting vile strike was regularly healing me in the neighborhood of 600, and my bumps were healing me around 200 most of the time. Varies with luck, enemy disease resists, and how long it's been alive to have diseases stacked, obviously.

That's interesting. The heal power on your character sheet is ~18 per strike +13 or so per disease, so up in the neighborhood of 70 if your target has all 4 diseases. I guess it's your 250% healing factor that's turning it into something ridiculously awesome.

At full investment, against a fully diseased target, and fully capped healing factor, that's in a reasonable order of magnitude. You paid a lot for that. Maybe it could be cut in half, but melee is a dangerous place at level 40, and you can easily get hit for so much damage that even healing 600 in a turn is not enough to save you.

I stopped bothering to cast Balefire Bolt somewhere around 20. Not worth it except as a last resort ranged heal. My bumps were doing more damage and healing me for more.

Hmm. Gotta tie some kind of benefit to that, then.

Never found a use for Woe Pyre. Generally speaking, I felt like I had plenty of AoE, and not enough single target, and if I did need more AoE I'd be more inclined to go for Voidburn or even Corrupted Negation.

I hear you.

Blood Spurt was disappointing for a similar reason; Near as I can tell, it requires a second target to proc, so the situations where it was actually proccing were not the situations in which I needed the extra damage. Cut immunity is also frustratingly common.

Yeah, it's supposed to be a "crowd control" perk rather than just more straight-up bonus damage. If it's not good enough to be a capstone, maybe I can work the effect into something else and replace that talent.

Plague Gate is kind of hard to use. I was expecting it to be my big single target killer, but between the amount of set up required and the fairly long cooldown, it really didn't have a huge impact.

Hmm. Another capstone that needs re-work.

I think I'll just separate the talent into two different effects: remote strike-burning-or-diseased teleport-explosion (without requiring death), and remote strike-for-massive-damage (bonus per poison or disease).

Having so many drain skills was tactically interesting, especially with the one scaling with diseased on the enemy. Deciding when to back off and when I can just power through. Getting close to death often meant "attack more" rather than "run away."

Awesome, that's exactly the kind of play I wanted out of this class.

Thank you very much for the thoughtful feedback!

[Doctornull]

You also won't be out of stamina at any point, because Body Over Mind recharges Stamina by an obscene amount each turn, and your skills have comparatively high cooldowns.
And even if you were, it would not matter, because, again, after those 8 turns, everything is dead.

Edit: I suppose when you played Body Over Mind did not recharge stamina yet, but even then, any fight should be over before your stamina runs out.
And even if not, you are hardly helpless without stamina when your Doublestrikes hit for an average above 1800.
Edit 2: This is on normal, on higher difficulties, things are obviously different and might have looked much more grim before the changes to Mind Over Matter.

So I have Body over Mind as giving back up to 12 stamina per turn, for up to 10 turns (at 5.0 mastery, so higher at 6.5 if you cap out), plus 1 turn per combo point, so 11-15 turns.

Is that really a ludicrous amount?

Also: thanks for the analysis.

[marshmallowpeep]

That's interesting. The heal power on your character sheet is ~18 per strike +13 or so per disease, so up in the neighborhood of 70 if your target has all 4 diseases. I guess it's your 250% healing factor that's turning it into something ridiculously awesome.

At full investment, against a fully diseased target, and fully capped healing factor, that's in a reasonable order of magnitude. You paid a lot for that. Maybe it could be cut in half, but melee is a dangerous place at level 40, and you can easily get hit for so much damage that even healing 600 in a turn is not enough to save you.

I wouldn't go so far as to cut it in half. It already seems like dual wield is the only way to go what with all the procs, and lowering the amount of healing would make it even more imperative to get all you can out of them. If anything, some kind of arcane blade-ish lowered effectiveness while dual wielding thing on Blood Spite would be enough.

It might not need any changing. I did invest a lot in it, and my damage was feeling a little low in the orc prides. But it was way more healing than I ever managed to get out of Fungus, which everyone says is OP healing, so I figured I'd mention it.


I also had a proc item (probably from Arcanum?) that gave a debuff called "illness" that seemed to count as a disease, so enemies had up to 5.

[Doctornull]

I wouldn't go so far as to cut it in half. It already seems like dual wield is the only way to go what with all the procs, and lowering the amount of healing would make it even more imperative to get all you can out of them. If anything, some kind of arcane blade-ish lowered effectiveness while dual wielding thing on Blood Spite would be enough.

It might not need any changing. I did invest a lot in it, and my damage was feeling a little low in the orc prides. But it was way more healing than I ever managed to get out of Fungus, which everyone says is OP healing, so I figured I'd mention it.


I also had a proc item (probably from Arcanum?) that gave a debuff called "illness" that seemed to count as a disease, so enemies had up to 5.

"Illness" is a new weapon-ego disease. It's in the core game.

But I guess dual-wielding a staff ruins everything, just like it does for Reavers. :-/

Maybe I'll just get rid of the one-handed staff egos. Or only apply the effect to the staff in your main hand.

Thanks!

[grayswandir]

Or only apply the effect to the staff in your main hand.

My vote.

[Fhtagn]

I read your Transcendent Fist guide BTW; it was pretty helpful for planning skilling (and also, just that pointer at Flexible Combat. That seems almost ludicrously useful.)

I'm glad it the guide's good for something. Yeah, Flexible combat is very strong on a brawler. Fun, too.
In general, I think both Brawlers and Transcendent Fists are good candidates for a first win. They are relatively straightforward and quite strong on normal and nightmare.

[Doctornull]

Hmm. I can't figure out how to check if the weapon in the callback is your mainhand weapon, but I can at least check to see if it's a Staff and skip the Vim regen + healing + nasty debuffs if it's not a staff.

That means dual-wielding is still useful for pure damage (since you get your bonus on-hit damage), but doesn't double dip your Blood Spear perks.