Mobility, Survival, Field-Control, and Acrobatics

[Hirumakai]

So I've slapped together a basic rework similar to what I noted earlier. You download it at:

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/mobility-experiment

It was put together hastily, and there are more than likely bugs. It also is likely not to play nice with other addons. This is intended as an experiment so people can play around with the ideas noted in this thread.

The basic changes are:

Classes have had Acrobatics and Field Control removed (although the talents themselves are still floating around).

Mobility is now:
1) Disengage + Hack'N'Back. If you are in melee with the target you choose, you attack first, then jump away to destination square you choose, with inaccuracy of 1 (like targeted phase door). It must be a jump away (not closer or over the target enemy). It "jumps" over other enemies however like tumble. If you do not melee attack, the action is instant.

2) Tumble. Modified to have the improvements from Superb Agility built in, so its stamina cost and cooldown improve with points.

3) Slow Motion. Sustain dropped to 50 stamina

4) Evasion

Survival is now:
1) Heightened Senses + Piercing Sight - trap disarm

2) Track. No stamina cost

3) Gadget Mastery = Charm Mastery + disarm trap

4) Danger Sense: If you would drop below 10% (at 1/5)/31% (at 5/5) max health from an attack, you decrease the damage by 25% (at 1/5)/60% (at 5/5) for that attack and all further attacks for 1 turn. Passive. 10 turn cooldown. No stamina costs. Basically trained reactions modified heavily.


New Agility training talent in combat training for light armor.
Provides Move speed, defense, fatigue reduction, stamina per move, swaps Dex for Str requirements on non-massive armor if dex is higher.

[HousePet]

So I'm worried that have both Track and Danger Sense in the one category makes the category a must have for basically everyone.

I like Gadget Mastery. but feel that slot 3 is a bit late for the ability to detect and disarm traps. I think it would be better in slot 2 and retain the ability to detect traps in slot 1.

A light armour mastery in combat training is excellent.

I find the Slow Motion talent a bit weird for a non magical effect. Maybe Evasion should just allow the dodging of projectiles?

I'd like it if Field Control was just made good instead of removed. Having the ability to move allies and enemies around is good fun with Phase Door. Mostly the problem with the Technique versions of moving npcs around is that they are very limited in what they can be used for.

[Davion Fuxa]

You know, thinking about it; I wonder if it is necessarily a bad thing to have 'powerful must have' talents in Survival. Every class has Survival; some of which have it locked but if necessarily it can just be unlocked for everyone.

It turns it into a generic point tax - which would make it no different then Combat Training as an example.

[grayswandir]

I agree that the survival tree is probably too strong for a tree that a lot of different classes can get. It would feel mandatory.

I mentioned this on irc but I'll post it here as well: An alternative rogue-style defensive talent could be energy gain. Something like, "When you drop below 10%-40% of your max life, immediately gain a full turn. Cooldown X." Not really one-shot protection, more like two-shot protection, I guess.

[Hirumakai]

Just to clarify, my personal view on talents is that a talent is either worth taking because of itself (or because of synergies with other talents) or it is not. Having weak talents that do not stand on their own just results in people paying talent taxes, trying to get to the good talents, rather than making style choices in how they want to play their character. Fore example, weak mobility talents just means people seek other itemization options like Runes of Teleportation or the like, rather than spending alot of generic points on the weak options.

In an ideal world, each talent would be equally desirable as all others to at least one valid play style, irrespective of tier and tree. Otherwise, there's a metagame reason to play respec games or hoard points artificially for certain levels, which strikes me as bad game design. Optimal talent points becomes 1/1/1/5 in every tree. Such balance is impossible achieve in practice, but I feel that should be the goal designers and testers should strive for.

So I generally don't see a problem with 2 desirable talents in a single tree. Or rather, I see the problem of why are there 2 undesirable talents in the tree. Lets fix those and make it 4 desirable talents! Then fix all those other talents which aren't desirable. So if we do move danger sense out of survival, I would want something just as useful in a different way as the tier 4.

With that said, HousePet and others have raised some valid points and questions, which I think should be asked in a more general way.

1) I would love to hear what ability themes should be in a universally available tree (although with a category point for half the classes)? Not the individual talent descriptions, but thematically or idea wise, what problems is the Survival tree allowed to solve? Are these important problems? If not, why does the Survival tree exist?

Current themes are item interaction (charm mastery) and detection (both sight range, trap detection, invisibility detection, stealth detection). And for some reason Evasion (pure melee defense).

Suggested additional or replacement themes are one-shot or two-shot protection. I.e. if all that detection fails, I still have something to fall back on in the case of a surprise. HousePet suggested in the IRC chat perhaps some kind of limited debuff protection/curing instead as the tier 4. I also find Grayswandir's suggestion of a free turn on dropping below some level, but fear how that effect would play out on an enemy boss. I fear extra actions on a random boss a lot more than a boss taking less damage for a turn.

2) How strong should talents be in a universally available tree. How do we make it feel not mandatory but at the same time actually useful? How do we get Survival to actually have some classes actually say, "Yes, I'd like to 5 or 10 points in this tree", rather than just 2 points I happened to get off escorts for a little bit of early game ease. Are people happy with seeing the tree just be 0/0/0/0 or 1/1/1/0 all the time?

If nobody in the game would ever spend a category point on it, why do we provide it to some classes locked? The illusion of choice? Maybe a better question is "Why is survival universally available?" Should it be?

I also disagree that the proposed one-shot talent, or Grayswandir's two-shot protection talent, would make the tree must have. I can't see Mex's Wildfire guide suggesting dropping a category point to grab this new tier 4 talent and track. Do you see a Sun Paladin grabbing it? If you have a choice between spending a category point on a Heroism infusion/Shielding Rune slot and using items for tracking or spending the category point plus 8 more generic points, what would you do? Right now we have itemization options to deal with these problems, which tends to make me think its not must have.


Now for some of the specific suggestions proposed:

I think the move of track to tier 3, because it will require 28 cunning, will be pushing it to mid-game on non-cunning based characters. So cunning characters will get it at level 8, but non-cunning based characters will most likely not be getting it until 15-20 because of the need for cunning equipment bonuses (+18 is a fair bit). This may not be a bad thing, but it certainly means on harder difficulties, early game will be lacking it where it arguably might be most useful. On normal it probably doesn't make a difference.

Similarly, from a gameplay perspective, disarming just doesn't matter much, especially if you have trap detection and can just walk around them in many cases. I've got a sample of 1,500 characters downloaded from the vault from 1.2.5. 520 took Heightened senses, with a median of 1, and a mode of 1. Almost no one bothers getting trap disarm as it stands. So moving it down to tier 2 is not going to make the tree any stronger.

HousePet has also suggested effectively merging Evasion and Slow Motion. I personally like the effect of Slow Motion, as it actually has some different play associated with it beyond "Is it on? Yes/No?" and "If Yes, Compare number 1 to number 2". And I think it makes perfect sense as trying to represent your characters extremely fast reflexes. Its just the game doesn't have a good way of representing you stepping out of the way of a projectile but not also speeding you up relative to the enemies as well. If other people like the concept of merging them, let me know.

In regards to field control, the only talent which was removed was Heave. All the others are still available, just in different trees.

Grayswandir's suggetion of getting 100% energy when health drops below X%, with a Y cooldown is interesting. I'm just afraid of rand bosses getting a guaranteed 2-3 turns in a row at certain life thresholds. I tend to be very wary about speed/turn modification, most because of how they can stack and interact. I'm much more willing to have bosses have some more effective HP for a turn than deal out double damage for a turn. However, I could try coding it up and see how it plays as an experiment. In the hands of a player, I think its still on a similar level of power, if a bit more risky. It combos nicely with a Heroism infusion or a Necromancer.

I'd have to brainstorm for a bit to come up with a whole field control tree designed to move things around. As noted, the only thing dropped from Field control was heave, which everyone admits was bad.

Anyways, those are my questions and thoughts. I'll try working on another iteration of the addon next weekend, with the Gadget->track swap and trying Grayswandir's talent. Unless the discussion leans another way.

[grayswandir]

I don't mind having "bad" talents, as long as they're useful in some conceivable build. Not every talent is going to be useful for every character, but as long as the tree itself is mostly useful, I think that's fine. Also, having lots of extra actives is good, because of stun and other things which put random talents on cooldown.

The main thing I'm worried about with the one shot protection is it becoming standard. Movement, evasion, and similar talents aren't always useful to all classes, but generally one-shot protection fits into any build. So if most classes can get survival, I see most classes ending up going for it. I just don't want it to be that 90% of characters have it at 4/5.

Not to say that it couldn't work, I'm just wary of it. If you made it heavily dependent on actually having a high cunning score, or otherwise restricted it so that it's only middling strength (still nice to have, but not worth a category point by itself) unless you actually focus on it, I'd feel better about it.



For my talent - what if we set a special AI flag that forced it to use a defensive talent or flee for their next action? Basically so you could still get hit by, say, disengage, or something that stuns, but they won't be using flurry on you.

[Hirumakai]

I think it'd be reasonable to make the damage reduction scale off cunning, still never passing 75%. I could also increase the cooldown from 10 to 15 or maybe 20 turns. The current implementation I had, with 5/5 and 1.0 multiplier gave something like 60% damage reduction. That is best case 250% effective hit points (counting just your base life, not shields) against a single gigantic attack if you were at full health. Worst case if you just above the threshold of 30%, it would make that 30% seem like 75% of your max life. Both would be for a single turn.

I could aim for 100 cunning and 5/5 to provide something like 70% damage reduction (best case 333% effective life points), with 60 Cunning providing 55% (best case 222% ELP), and 10 Cunning providing 25% reduction (best case 133% ELP). Capped at 75%?

I'm not sure the extra turn talent you are proposing isn't just as powerful when combined with things like a Heroism infusion, but at least its different from a raw damage reduction. If its possible to code such AI flags (I'm not familiar with them), I would feel better about it. I also think it would still be generically useful to all classes, but I think I prefer it to my implementation. How would you see such a talent scaling off cunning? Simply increasing the life threshold? At some point (maybe 50%? maybe less?) that becomes counter productive. Reduced cooldown?

[HousePet]

I think Survival is granted to everyone because of the crying about traps back when they were more prevalent.
With traps now much rarer, I'd be fine with most classes losing it (never used it anyway), and learning it being a reward from the rogue escort.

Oh and even though I've listed loads of concerns with how good I think Survival would be, just changing one of them would be enough to make it fine. eg. Either don't give it to everyone or don't have a one shot protection or something else.

The problem with every class going for it is that it reduces choice. Its interesting how outliers of either too crap or too good both mess up choice balance in the same way.

Its not the good talents from Field Control that I'm sad about moving, its that I'd enjoy having a good Field Control category.

[HousePet]

Some ideas for a Field Control style category.

Heave:
active, costs stamina.
Shove an adjacent creature 1-3 tiles in any direction. (possibly including behind you?)
This puts them off balance for 1-3 turns.
Scales with strength.

Feinting Stance:
sustain.
Adopt a deceptive defensive stance, increasing your defense.
Also, when you bump a creature, you trick them into swapping place with you instead of attacking.
This puts them off guard for 1-3 turns.
Scales with dexterity.

Evacuate:
active, costs stamina.
Grab an adjacent creature and run with them up to 3-5 tiles away.
Scales with strength?

Battledance:
sustain.
Each time you step, you make a free attack at a random adjacent enemy.
These attacks cannot happen at a rate higher than you current global and attack speed would allow. (eg. movement infusion would not make you attack faster)
Swapping place via Feinting Stance would trigger this.
Each attack costs stamina and the damage scales with dexterity.

[jaumito]

Battledance:
sustain.
Each time you step, you make a free attack at a random adjacent enemy.

Not too hot on this. Attacks being voluntary actions, having them land at random, or being sustains, both seem somewhat counterintuitive, and here we'd get both at the same time? (Plus, retaliation damage on enemies would make this highly hazardous at times.)

[Mordy]

It could maybe be implemented as a buff that lasts one turn/action and makes your bump attacks use no energy. Once.

Itemisation for that would be a little weird though since as long as you have room, it means you can attack at movement speed and not weapon speed. It'd probably make Rampage a lot stronger :p

[astralInferno]

...gonna be honest, I disagree. I read that Battledance and practically /squeed/ at how cool it was.

[Atarlost]

Battledance isn't without precedent. The mindslayer has had random attacks from TK wielded melee weapons for as long as it's existed.

I do worry how it would interact with movement infusions, step up, and lightning speed as written, though. Either it will break them and be useless or it won't and will turn them into ridiculously powerful attack buttons.

[HousePet]

I did say it wouldn't be able to hit faster than your attack speed would normally allow.

[jaumito]

Battledance isn't without precedent. The mindslayer has had random attacks from TK wielded melee weapons for as long as it's existed.

True, but I've always assumed that TK-wielded weapons had a will of their own, sort of. That's how it feels, anyway.

Plus Mindslayers are a class, and we're talking generic trees available to many here. I'm not sure making Mindslayers less unique by introducing similar generic talents like the planned Battledance would be an improvement. At the very least, I'd make Battledance a stamina-hungry timed effect.