Race Balance: Skeleton

[bpat]

I disagree that changing Skeletons would be an unnecessary buff to them, since they already have some very obnoxious talents that are useless for players but strong against players (especially Re-assemble). Anyway it seems like everyone's complaining about power creep these days so if it buffs enemies then I don't even think that's a bad thing, the game's gotten way easier over time. Davion Fuxa's ideas won't even effect enemies much so there's nothing to worry about there.

Simply increasing scaling will not fix Skeletons on higher difficulties because Skeletons have severe fundamental issues that go beyond their racials having low numbers. The reason people will win with Skeleton on Normal is because nothing will survive the 10 turn duration of Bone Armour, nothing will break Bone Armour's ~700 damage shield, and Resilient Bones actually helps deal with 4 turn stuns (as opposed to 12 turn stuns). Bone Armour has a dumb cooldown, Resilient Bones doesn't help at all with important statuses that last more than four or so turns, and Re-Assemble is horrible in all aspects. What's worse is the racials are all so boring, all they do is (attempt to) fill in the holes from not having Infusions. Heroism > Bone Armour, Movement or Wild > Resilient Bones, Regeneration > Re-Assemble. Even if Skeleton wasn't awful, it'd still deserve changes for the same reason Temporal Warden did. Some people are saying that Heroism is worse than Bone Armour, but I disagree because it doesn't take a turn and it gives around +20 to your three highest stats, which is very strong especially on physical damage dealers. Also good Heroism cooldowns are around 20-22 while Bone Armour's cooldown is 30 which means you can use Heroism 50% more often. Admittedly Heroism wouldn't good on Skeleton because part of the reason it's good is because it gives an overheal buffer for Regeneration Infusions and other healing effects that would heal more than your max life, but Skeleton's Re-Assemble is bad and they don't have Regeneration Infusions.

Honestly I don't think Davion Fuxa's suggestions are even close to enough. Half the cooldown Re-Assemble and Bone Armour as well and then maybe Skeleton will be good. Could reduce Bone Armour's duration to 6 or so to compensate.

[Frumple]

I disagree that changing Skeletons would be an unnecessary buff to them, since they already have some very obnoxious talents that are useless for players but strong against players (especially Re-assemble). Anyway it seems like everyone's complaining about power creep these days so if it buffs enemies then I don't even think that's a bad thing, the game's gotten way easier over time.

I don't think you're going to address the concerns of people worried about power creep much by saying creep harder

... mind, I'm pretty okay with creep harder* (I used to play portralis fairly often, hehe), but I can totally understand that a lot of people don't want that to keep happening, especially considering how much it already has.

Also, since you seemed to have missed it, much of the discussion that's been going on isn't that changing skeletons would necessarily be an unneeded (and undesired so far as most of the game's playbase would be concerned) buff to them, just that doing things like making their racials stronger would be something that's an issue. On normal, which is definitely the difficulty of primary concern simply by dint of changes to it effecting the largest number of players, they're already pretty well tuned strength wise, and perhaps on the upper end of things. You increase their strength relative to their current situation and, again, on normal, suddenly you've got something that's head and shoulders better than every other race in the game rather than just being fairly competitive with the best ones. Which... y'know, some of us sorta' care about, and kinda' don't want to see.

Basically, my concern with those first page suggestions and the tweaks suggested afterwards would be that you'd either have to go at the numbers on bone shield and reassembly with a hacksaw to make up for buffing them (which would probably take them right back to being mostly useless on insane) and adding a new and rather powerful talent to the mix, or you'd be shanking the already low challenge of normal difficulty runs in the gut and leaving it to bleed out in a ditch.

Though... to this:

Some people are saying that Heroism is worse than Bone Armour, but I disagree because it doesn't take a turn and it gives around +20 to your three highest stats,

You're actually not particularly likely to find a heroism infusion on normal that hits +20 -- it's roughly in the same area of likelihood as those 800 point ones mentioned above, and they're only sometimes paired with a similarly high die_at value, as well. You also absolutely will not find one that does that until you're in the 40+ level range, whereas bone armor can pump out a 6-800+ shield much, much earlier in the game (it soft peaks around level 28/whenever you max out dex if you're pumping dex, ferex). You seem to not be noticing that, at the very least in my case, I've been saying heroism is worse than bone armor for most of the game, on normal in particular, where it's quite possible to just never see a heroism that gives equivalent die_at to the armor's shields and/or stats worth noticing. Which is, y'know, a pretty accurate statement, as just about anyone that actually spends much time playing normal would likely be able to tell you. Late game ones can match or surpass bone armor, sure, if perhaps not consistently, but most of the game they're just worse, instant activation or not, just like heal doesn't exactly get as much use as regen.

Personally, I'm very much not against making skeleton racials more interesting (cause I definitely agree their racials are kinda' boring, even if there's perhaps a place in the game for a race with fairly straightforward talents), I'm just against it if the proposed changes are going to make the race even stronger (when, again, they're already one of the strongest races in the game) on the only difficulty I and most of the playerbase really cares about. Thing is, I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about that -- just about anything that's going to buff them on insane is going to buff them on normal, too, and they're already top swole level on normal.

*As should be obvious from the suggestion of just making instant inscriptions uninterruptible across the board, ha!

E: Actually, one thought would be giving one/some of their talents an effect that triggers on a particular amount of damage -- not relative to their health, ala ghouls, but just raw amount. Tune it so the triggering number is higher than you'd see in the part of normal you'd first have access to the talent, but regular in insane, and you might have something that's helpful in both difficulties without making things too crazy on the lower one. The trick would be to make it so talent investment increases the trigger amount, meaning immediate high investment (at least for this proposed secondary effect -- it would almost certainly have a primary effect that scales more normally, to make the player squirm ) would be suboptimal on normal but desired on insane.

A (fairly bad, honestly, since it'd still make things silly on normal, heh) example would be adding a passive effect to bone armor so that, when hit with a 200-400-etc. plus damage attack, straight no-sells a portion of that damage equal to the shielding amount, with probably a turn cooldown roughly equal with the shield itself (so sure, 30 turn cd for both passive and active effect, tracked separately). On normal, you'd have something where you basically either tune your point investment to the passive or the shield (and most likely the latter, since it would still be more useful in a general sense than a single attack negation) or not get much from the talent (ending up with either an effective spike blocker and ineffective shield, or effective shield and ineffective damage spike blocker), whereas on insane you'd be reaping both benefits as things go along without much concern as to pacing investment. Not going to attempt to sugar coat things, the numbers and design with the above are basically terrible (I just woke up a bit ago, heh, and aren't really that good at this sort of thing to begin with), but it's the sort of design I could see possibly working out for both ends of the curve while still keeping skeletons fairly similar in concept.

[64legos]

I had something to add about buffing/changing Reassemble, but posted it in the wrong thread. Here it is:

Reassemble is described as "rearranging your bones," so maybe it could scale with how much damage damage you taken in the last few turns (similar to Mindslayer's psionic shields)?

That could make it more useful on higher difficulties, where sudden big hits are more common, but not as powerful on lower difficulties, where damage is more spread out.

[Frumple]

Mm... the only thing I'd suggest to do to that is also give it a flat heal component, or at least put a minimum the heal can't go beneath. That way you'd guarantee it's at least as useful as it currently is under all situations, not just when you're under or expecting fire.

Though if you wanted to be hilariously annoying, you could also have it give you infinite die_at for the duration and remove the extra life component. Then it could be an incredibly annoying Unstoppable potentially available to many, many enemies! It'd even award higher skill play by making skeletons an insane pain the hindquarters for anyone that doesn't pay attention to buff stripping or instakill talents :V

Note: Yes, the second paragraph is a joke. It is just a joke, do not take it seriously, and if it looks like a good idea to you, you may need to reevaluate your life. E: Though you might be able to do some really interesting stuff with overhealing (which is a mechanic few if any classes take advantage of) if you had a talent like that. Still a terrible, terrible idea, but still.

[Davion Fuxa]

But.. But...

Breaking the Game is Always a good idea!

[Parcae2]

Two suggestions:

1. Instead of getting rid of the current skeleton talents, transfer them to Dwarf. They fit in with the general theme of dwarven toughness, they could be made to scale with gold, and they would be noob-friendly talents given to the race noobs are probably most likely to pick. The "scaling with gold" thing would make them a bit better on higher difficulties as well.

2. A possible talent for the revamped Skeleton:

Memories of Life
At levels 1, 3 and 5, gain a single point in a tier 4 racial talent of your choice. You may not pick the same talent more than once.

The obvious choice - Timeless - scales a lot with talent points invested, so this shouldn't be too imbalanced, while still being a nice little buff.

[Davion Fuxa]

Memories of Life certainly sounds interesting. However, I wonder if the talent should do more so that every talent investment gives you something.

Going into a bit more detail though regarding the tier 4 racial talents, should that be coordinated with the time and place of the game? IE:

Since the player can play Skeletons at a time when Kruk Yeti's and Whitehoof have yet to enter the picture, should those specific talents be unavailable? For those who don't have the Ashes of Urh'Rok DLC, should Doomelf's Pitless not be available?