Mobility, Survival, Field-Control, and Acrobatics

[edge2054]

Well survival to a lesser degree.

Currently we have three generic talent trees that functionally serve the same purpose. Two of these trees have a filler talent as the capstone (Superb Agility and Strider).

I'd like to merge these four trees and have one really solid Mobility tree.

So here's the idea.

Mobility
Disengage - Cut the stamina cost in half so it's more usable.
Trained Reactions - Early game one shot protection is very nice on high difficulties.
Tumble or Vault - I don't really have a preference as to which.
Evasion - Give it a stamina cost again. This is a stamina tree.

Survival
Heightened Senses - Infravision, trap detection, see invis and stealth.
Track - How many people would unlock survival if it had track?
Charm Mastery (needs renamed) - What it does currently + trap disarm. This is the "I'm good at messing with mechanical stuff" talent.
Slow Motion - But passive. Sense this is a cunning tree.

Finally Mobile Defense. I'm not sure armor hardiness belongs here and I'm not sure if giving +% defense is a great idea. But I am in favor of having a Light Armor Mastery talent in Combat Training. I think the -fatigue from light of foot could go here. I think a use dexterity instead of strength for equipping light armor could also go here.

Anyway that's my thoughts.

[supermini]

I really like this.

Alternatives for survival:

Track, Charm Mastery, Piercing Sight, Evasion.

I'm not sure what to do with h. senses. It's an ability that's barely useful beyond 1 point in the early game. It only stacks with itself. Trap mastery can be rolled into piercing sight, if it's ever decided to do something with traps in the future. The sight bonus, useful as it is in the early game, should probably go.

Alternative field control:

Disengage, Light of Foot, Strider, Slow Motion.

It's not as tight as edge's idea, but it's an option if we don't want to mess with acrobatics. I don't think anyone is going to miss the old mobility tree.

Options for mobile defense:

I'd include equip with dex in all versions because it makes sense.

1) Keep the rest as is, see how it goes.
2) Give fixed +defense and deflects a part of the incoming blow based on defense and accuracy (fixed damage reduction). Stacks with dual weapon defense. Once per turn?
3) Give fixed +defense and every time you get hit for more than X% of your life by a melee/archery attack you gain Y% movement speed. Scales with accuracy and defense. It's mobile defense, yaknow.

The accuracy scaling is to make sure that it's melee that benefits.

[Davion Fuxa]

I'm all for merging category trees that contain talents that are less then useful. However I wonder about other intrinsic details of note that are really nice but not included.

Anyhow...

The Reworked Survival is a definite improvement. All the talents look useful and worth investing in for ones Survival - har har. I'd maybe rename Charm Mastery to Gadget Mastery perhaps as a suggestion for a name. Gadget Mastery could also perhaps combine Light of Foots properties with it to same the effects of that talent for someone who wants them in game.

The Reworked Mobility I'm not so sure about. I can't say the category looks interesting at all to me or that I have a really good idea of how to improve it. Main problem is the pool of talents to pick from - a lot of them are really weak. Some ideas though:

Hit'n'Run - Keep the effects of Hack'n'Back instead of Disengage for the tier 1 category talent, and instead make a sort of Hack'n'Back talent combined with a Reverse Vault effect that let's you hit the enemy and 'bounce' away from the enemy in a 180 degree arc originating from the enemy and letting you jump X*Talent Level Tiles away from it. Following turns will allow you to move in the same direction you choose to move at Y% increased speed. Maybe at Talent Level 5 the talent could produce a Daze, Stun, Pin, or some other effect as well.

The problem with Disengage, Heave, Vault, and Hack'n'Back is that they all have definitive problems that make them too situational or not worth using. In effect though, all of them are for distancing yourself from your opponent. Mainly I would suggest making an extremely powerful talent to replace all this that gives as much utility and control possible without being overpowered.

Trained Reactions - I never really used it but that doesn't mean this probably isn't a good placement for it. Main thing would be to make sure that the other talents can carry the category if this is included.

Tumble - Tumble is an interesting talent that let's you jump up to 4 tiles away instantly and get a critical chance modifier. Excessively powerful for use on the Skirmisher and Rogue, useful for other classes as well. I fully support keeping this talent.

Evasion - Perfect capstone talent for the category.

[supermini]

Disengage is actually quite useful. It probably costs a bit more stamina than it should and it's available on items, so it doesn't get picked that often. Hack and Back is actually worse than Disengage since it requires you to hit the target. That's the one I wouldn't keep.

[donkatsu]

Also item disengage is instant, which is huge. Even melee classes can use Disengage as a situational escape if it's instant, and we all know how good escapes are.

[supermini]

Also item disengage is instant, which is huge. Even melee classes can use Disengage as a situational escape if it's instant, and we all know how good escapes are.

That was nerfed in 1.3.

[edge2054]

Disengage could be made instant and with the stamina cost cut down to 10 I think it would be a decent escape even if it did cost a turn. But I'm not opposed to the idea.

Keep in mind that part of why I'm bringing all of this up is because eventually I'd like archers to be more forgiving. I think giving them that modified Mobility tree would be a good start

[grayswandir]

Hum, if not instant I think it should be based on movement speed.

[Effigy]

This sounds good overall. I would keep Evasion with Survival and put Slow Motion in Mobility though. Dodging projectiles doesn't fit thematically with Survival, but it makes sense with Mobility. Putting Track in Survival would be amazing. Combining Heightened Senses and Piercing Sight would go a long way toward making it useful. The flow of the tree would be a lot better with the proposed changes.

[edge2054]

I could see slow motion going in either tree. Evasion makes more sense to me in mobility. I mean, it's basically dodge.

One thought on Evasion is to make it passive and have it proc after using disengage and tumble. The numbers would need to be adjusted of course but it could really shore up some of the action costs in the tree.

Also I like the idea of basing tumble and disengage off movement speed

[Effigy]

Making Evasion a passive effect for other skills seems fine, kind of like that skill in the Chrono teleport tree. How would this affect Evasion charms though?

[Hirumakai]

I've been playing with Grayswandir's Swap Evasion/Track addon, and I think its been a great improvement to the Survival tree. I would love to see some of these changes make it to the main game.

I agree with Edge's suggestion for merging Heightened Senses and Piercing Sight. It makes Heightened Senses useful throughout the game instead of a 1 point wonder early on. Similarly putting disarm in with Charms makes sense as a Gadget mastery. And I really do believe track is should be in the tree.

However, I'm going to suggest that neither Slow Motion or Evasion seem to feel right in the top of the Survival tree. Slow Motion is more a ranged character thing, while evasion is more a melee character talent. So I'm going to propose putting a modified Trained Reactions in survival as the capstone instead of either of them. The name would be changed to something like "Danger Sense", be turned into a passive, 10 turn cooldown, with the fluff being your quick wits and cunning have improved to such a degree you now have a sixth sense warning of danger, and can use it to take the best action to mitigate it. When you take damage and your life drops below 10/15/20/25/30% (hard cap of 33%) of your max life, that damage and all damage for 1 turn is reduced by 25/35/45/55/65% (hard cap of 70%). No requirement for an adjacent space. This would allow nearly every class access to some one shot protection.

As for mobility, I would put Evasion as the cap stone (probably with a max duration of 20 instead of 30, just to make random elites less annoying), and Slow motion as the third tier. Those two talents feel like they're in a mostly good place (Slow motion could maybe do with a stamina cost reduction? Not sure). I would not make Evasion a passive on Disengage or Tumble, simply because activating your melee defense talent on getting out of melee range seems a bit silly, and not very synergistic.

However, the mobility talents by themselves are pretty bad, especially when compared to spell options. I can't really agree that tumble is excessively powerful when its so much worse than Dimension Step or Phase door.

Compare these 4 mobility talents:
1) 1 turn to use, 12 turn cooldown, 20 resource cost, 7 range, can't move through enemies, requires an enemy in sight and has restricted destination, can't be used under a common debuff
2) instant use, 20 turn cooldown, 20 resource cost, 4 range, can move through enemies
3) instant use, 10 turn cooldown, 10 resource cost, 10 range, can move through enemies, can swap position with a target, can't be used under an uncommon debuff
4) 1 turn to use, 8 turn cooldown, 10 resource cost, 10 plus range, can move through enemies, can move through walls with 65% chance, can be used to move enemies, can't be used under an uncommon debuff

While these different movement talents should not have all the same numbers, they should do different things so that sometimes you would actually want to use one over the other. Towards that end, I would suggest disengage do something in addition to movement. Perhaps remove all pins/slows/daze on use. Or perhaps restore stamina rather than cost it, with explanation you're buying yourself some breathing room.

Similarly, I'd probably change tumble into something unique. Make it instant use, 5->no turn cooldown, 10 stamina cost, range 2, can move through enemies, and debuffs you with an "other" debuff which increases further uses of the talent by 10 stamina per use (i.e. 10, 20 (30 total), 30, (60 total), 40 (100 total), etc). The debuff would last 5 turns. Now we have a talent which is pinpoint accurate, instant use, and can go out of initial LOS and around corners at 5/5. Its balanced by a large resource cost to go very far. It also synergizes with Disengage allowing you to manuever to get the right direction, then jump.

So mobility would look like:
1) Disengage, instant use, 10 turn cooldown, 10/15/20/25/30 stamina return, 3-7 range jump back
2) Tumble, instant use, 4/3/2/1/no cooldown, 10 stamina cost, range 2, move through enemies, debuffs user to increase cost by 10, stacking, debuff lasts 5 turns
3) Slow Motion
4) Evasion

Survival would look like:
1) Heightened Senses (Piercing Sight + Current Heightened Senses - Disarm)
2) Track
3) Gadget Mastery (Charm + Disarm)
4) Danger Sense (Trained Reactions like, passive, 10 turn cooldown, triggered on taking damage and would go below 10/15/20/25/30% (capped 33%) max life, reducing the hit and further damage for 1 turn by 25/35/45/55/65% (capped 70%).

I may try coding up an addon that does something like the above tomorrow.

[HousePet]

Trap disarming skill in slot 3 seems a bit late.

[Hirumakai]

Trap disarming skill in slot 3 seems a bit late.

My experiences lead me to disagree with that statement. Can you elaborate on it?

I personally can't think of many game changing traps in the first 8 levels. Do you feel its necessary because of early game vaults? Do you generally find yourself putting 3 points into Heightened senses before level 8? Or is it the cunning requirement that is the issue?

I admittedly don't play all classes, but unless I'm playing a stealth rogue, I almost never actively put points in heightened senses. Most rogue escorts I find these day go to piercing sight, which I find more useful in the late game (some see invis is a huge difference from no see invis). Which is why I like the proposed combination of piercing sight and heightened senses. Its useful both for early game and late game detection.

[HousePet]

Mostly for thematic reasons.
Disarming a trap is easier than tracking every creature nearby.
Track is also quite powerful, so slot 2 seems too early as well.