Yeah to be honest I'm still kinda unclear on how to balance less number-oriented options properly. Things like damage, defense, and healing, you can fiddle with the numbers until you get it right, but things like escapes, battlefield control, and senses tend to be more binary in practice. That said, I wonder if perhaps a way to go for some of those sorts of things might be something not dissimilar to Souls, Hate, or Feedback, a resource pool that needs to be built up actively by engaging enemies rather than being rested off. So you might have a panic button, but you can't just go in, fight while your defenses are up, panic button out, repeat until victory. At the very least you'd have to hunt down some other enemies to beat before going back in, or stay fighting long enough for the charge to build up, or whatever. I'll put some thought into that (and suggestions as always are welcome!)Arcvasti wrote:-My mobility, on the other hand, is completely ridiculous. Storm Knight takes hit and run to a whole new level. I took on the vault full of overpowered dragons at the level I arrived there and won, with only one death[And I DID have the Blood of Life by that point]. Said death could easily have been avoided if I'd gotten Track instead of Heightened Senses and used Wanderer's Rest or a Psychoportation Torque. Storm Knight can Wind Stride in, drop a Zephyr Dance, melee until their shields break and then run away using Storm Charge or Lightning Ride. Against enemies without copious regeneration on a largeish level, this basically guarantees victory. Especially since Storm Knights have a good DoT in Hurricane/Storm Blast.
I'll see what I can do to clear that up.Arcvasti wrote:-The general Mage Knight resource situation reminds me somewhat of a Shadowblade's: You deal lots and lots of damage until your stamina runs out and then you're dead meat. It gets alleviated a lot once you have the leisure to max Willpower, but ending fights quickly is still essential. I quite like that kind of resource game, although the role of Eldritch Surge could stand to be clarified a bit.
Yeah, it's intentional that the unique trees alone should have enough value to take more-or-less all of your points and be worthwhile. That said, I don't think it would be inherently suboptimal to invest some in the other trees as well, so the option is there to allow a bit more build diversity.Arcvasti wrote:-Mage Knights have a LOT of talent point sinks, to the point where I still haven't put any points in Mobility or unlocked any talent trees besides Storm. One disadvantage of Mage Knight talents not being one point wonders[Although Wind Stride comes pretty close] is that the vanilla talent trees Mage Knights have become less attractive in comparaison because of how well the talents in their unique talent trees scale. I'm not really against this, but I feel that including so many different valnilla categories in the class doesn't actually change how it plays at all.
Weird. I'll check it out.Arcvasti wrote:-Eldritch Body does weird things to the Dex and Str requirements on Prodigies and warrior talent categories. Sometimes they'd require Mag and sometimes they'd require Dex/Str. I suspect[But have not proved] that in a game session where you've learned at least one point of Eldritch Body, all talent Dex/Str requirements flip into Mag ones. Otherwise, they revert back into what they were.
Yeah I noticed the shielding was going WAY too high WAY too early myself. The update should at least help with this, but more tuning will almost certainly still be required.Arcvasti wrote:-Gemstone Shield is overpowered. You can get a shield stronger then a thousand hit points by level ten that lasts ten turns using Crystal Shield. Sapphire Shield is even worse and gives Gemstone Shield near 100% uptime, assuming that the shield lasts most of its duration. I understand that Earth Knights are supposed to be robust, but giving them nearly Aegis-tier shields isn't the best way to go about it. FAKEEDIT: Looking at the Gemstone Shield changes above, that doesn't really change the core problem: Its numbers are just too high. If the gem shields have different cooldowns, then it actively makes things worse, since you don't even have a two-turn window of vulnerability in between Gemstone Shields.
This also ties into the above about utility powers, but yeah even discounting that you're right that it's a tool they already have. I'll fiddle with it some.Arcvasti wrote:-Alter Terrain is a terrible, terrible ability. First off, it's incredibly overpowered. It's a better Stone Wall, which is an incredibly overpowered talent. It lasts longer, is more flexible, has a lower cooldown and affects a larger area. Second of all, it's incredibly boring. It doesn't give Earth Knight any new capabilities, but rather triples down on the ones it already has. Earth Knight already has digging[Pulverizing Augur/Earth Bolt] and wall creation[Stone Wall/Earth Blast] in spades, so a talent that can do both isn't really interesting. It should be removed in favour of a completely new ability. My vote goes for something that creates non-blocking terrain of some kind[Stone spikes, mud, boulder field].
I'm not going to even pretend to try to balance anything for Adventurers. I know my limits. More playtesting is likely required, but I will say that it's spammability is something of its defining characteristic - it's meant to make passing a turn into a valid tactical option. So any rebalancing for it would probably go towards lessening the effects.Arcvasti wrote:-Tectonic Patience is a rather questionable, if thematic, ability. The first thing that came to mind was using it to get 100% uptime on Alter Terrain by using it while entombed in rock. However, the stipulation that there be an enemy in sight neuters that[Unless you can entomb a harmless enemy in with you or blind yourself intentionally]. Note however that you can totally do that with Ice Wall, since that lets you see enemies on the other side of it. Since Mage Knight talents are availible on Adventurers, you could make the cheesiest build possible and kill enemies using only Ice Wall + Tectonic Patience + maybe Raze for quicker damage. I'm not really sure how you could eliminate that kind of scummy behaviour while keeping the talent relevant to people playing fair while keeping the talent as is. My suggestion would be to make it stronger, but less spammable, probably while removing any interaction with cooldowns.
Yeah my understanding is that to calculate the format of talent descriptions for the next talent level, the talent gets a level added to it and then it gets removed immediately, but an error in the description breaks it before it gets removed, resulting in additional talent levels. I'll check for formatting errors in those talents.Arcvasti wrote:-Somehow, I started with 5/5 in Psychic Combat[The capstone talent for one of the Mind Knight Trees] and Impassive Mountain, despite never unlocking those talent categories. Mousing over those talents in the skill screen brought up a lua error.
That's actually intended! I decided to let them apply individually because it would only happen on already inherently-unbalanced characters (multiclass challenge addon, adventurers, randbosses) anyway and it'd be kinda an easter egg. Or just result in a randboss doing stupid damage, but whatever!Arcvasti wrote:-Eldritch Combat decided which element to use based on which damage categories I had unlocked. Curious, I unlocked the straight-damage categories for all the Mage Knights and bopped some trolls. I got the passive damage for ALL of them combined, which was quite impressive at level 1.
Thanks for the feedback!