I'm (slowly) working on some ideas for changes, but I'll get a bug patch up as soon as I can to fix that error. Likely to be a while before I have a real update ready.
[Magical Assault]
Damaging spells now target a narrow cone of radius 4 and will instead project in a radius of 1 around yourself if you target your own tile.
[Arcane Projection]
Magical Malady: Reworked. Melee attacks against targets afflicted with the effect will extend the duration of detrimental effects on the target by 1 turn. For each effect extended, all beneficial effects will lose 1 duration, up to Y or 50% of the duration (rounded up), whichever is greater.
[Eldritch Empowerment]
Eldritch Echoes ticks can now crit, and any time a tick deals more than 5% of the target's current life they will have a chance to be randomly Silenced, Disarmed or Pinned if they fail to save against your Spellpower.
[Magical Defense]
Purely passive; no longer requires Defensive Posture to be active.
[Greater Staff Focus]
Chance increased.
[Cure]
Now clears effects instantly and at the start of each turn, for Y turns.
[Phase Shield]
Effect now also grants a chance to shrug off detrimental effects while Blocking.
[Phase Shifted]
Effect now also grants Y% affinity to all damage.
[Ensorcelled Shield]
Slightly increased scaling on range bonus. Reducing damage with Mystic Ward now has a 25% chance to trigger Sorcerous Might, at most once per turn.
[Quickening]
Reworked. Now increases attack speed by Y% for a duration and causes all melee attacks to reduce the cooldown of a random spell by 1/3(rounded up, minimum 1) up to Z times per turn. Can affect the same spell multiple times and does not affect fixed cooldowns.
[Magic Beam]
Reduced cooldown to 2.
[Magic Pull]
Reduced cooldown to 4.
[Magic Blast]
Changed radius to 2 and range to 2 [from 5 and 0].
[Shield Casting]
Dispersion effect no longer affects temporary effects, but affects all types of sustains instead of magical only.
[Battle Channeling]
Sustains no longer have a mana cost. Movement penalty has been reintroduced, but reduced to 25% and, as a convenience, the slow does not affect you on the world map.
[Deep Sight]
Telepathy range fixed to 10 (because trying to reduce below that amount would basically require superloading the entire FoV function and I don't want to get into that, at least at this point).
[Bolt Fury]
Channel Staff casts no longer cost mana and cannot fail, however all damage dealt from the casts (and any damage that triggers from it) will be reduced by 50%.
v1.4.2
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[Deep Sight]
Range scales again (about 5-12).
[Boltfury]
All-damage reduction on the Boltfury casts was not working properly.
Now reduces the base damage of each cast (calculated after the weapon damage scaling and damage range but before checking or applying crit).
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More evidence I should always just take another day or so to test whenever I think I'm ready to upload a big patch. I'd still prefer the Boltfury casts to have all proc damage from the casts reduced as well, but applying the numbed attribute before the cast and removing it afterward did not work as I had expected. Or at all. Unfortunately I didn't catch it in my testing as it was one of the last changes I made in the big update. Found it while playing the live version. I also realized I had just been making a dumb mistake when calculating range for the telepathy on Deepsight (which I had just gotten frustrated with and decided to leave at default range, 10). So, I corrected that and reintroduced the scaling.
V1.5.0
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[Aethetfeast]
Removed and replaced with:
Blinkguard
Direct damage over 8% max life has a W% chance to cause you to teleport to an empty tile within range 1, avoiding the damage and instantly teleporting back to your original location. This can occur at most Z times per turn or once per empty tile in range (whichever is less) and requires and consumes 8 mana (increased by fatigue) each time. Note: Despite the fact that this spell has an initial range of 1, it's range will still be increased by range amplification effects (Sorcerous Might or Range Amplification Device prodigy). Mild hackery was involved, but it only affects this particular talent.
[Boltfury]
Now triggers on non-instant spell cast and after a successful teleport, rather than once per turn. Base damage dealt by the Channel Staff casts is now reduced by 75%. Sustaining this talent now reduces the base range of Channel Staff by 4. (The range of Channel Staff will now be equal to the range of this sustain while active).
Fixed a bug which made all of your talents ignore resource cost forever after the first time Blotfury triggered
[Mystic Ward]
Free block is now triggered after a teleport, instead of non-instant spell cast. Mana generation from Blocking/deflecting increased.
[Greater Staff Focus]
Now projects a shield attack instead of a staff attack, up to once per target per turn. Damage scales.
[Phase Shield]
The Phase Shielded effect now increases all resistance caps by a scaling %, instead of granting bonus block value.
[Magic Burst]
Aether Affliction now reduces Spell Save and Defense only, rather than Defense and all saves. Scaling slightly increased.
[Sorcerous Slam]
No longer applies Stun. Now applies a new effect: 'Occult Obstruction'. If the attack hits, the status is applied with no check. Melee attacks that land against targets afflicted with the status will make a spellpower check (vs spell save). If the check passes, a (scaling) number of the target's talents will be put on cooldown for 3 turns. This can occur at most once per turn (checks that fail do not count) per target.
[Ensorcelled Shield]
Sorcerous Might now increases Spellpower and Spell Range only (no longer increases Physical Power).
Loaded up one of my Highguards to try out the new version and get a "attempt to index local 't' (a nil value)" in ActorTalents.lua when I press 'p' to open the talents window. This Highguard has, or had, Aetherfeast. Closing the error window does not open the talents window.
opening the character window and switching over to talents shows Deepsight, but not Aetherfeast.
If I roll back to Highguard v 1.4.2, the error goes away.
A second Highguard, one without any points in Aetherfeast, opens the talents window without error on v1.5.0.
Is this from "solely" due to Aetherfeast being changed into Blinkguard or is it from outside the addon due to the nature of the change?
In other words, is my character no longer able to spend points on talents anymore?
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:434: attempt to index local 't' (a nil value)
At [C]:-1__index
At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:434 numberKnownTalent
At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:673 canLearnTalent
At /mod/dialogs/LevelupDialog.lua:536 status
At /mod/dialogs/element/TalentTrees.lua:266 drawItem
At /mod/dialogs/element/TalentTrees.lua:321 redrawAllItems
At /mod/dialogs/element/TalentTrees.lua:82 generate
At /engine/ui/Base.lua:107 init
At /mod/dialogs/elements/TalentTrees.lua:65 init
At /engine/class.lua:147 new
At /mod/dialogs/LevelupDialog.lua:687 recreate_trees
At /mod/dialogs/LevelupDiaglog.lua:728 createDisplay
At /mod/dialogs/LevelupDialog.lua:96 init
At /engine/class.lua:147 new
At /mod/class/Player.lua:1472 playerLevelup
At /mod/class/Game.lua:2197
At /engine/KeyBind.lua:236
Apologies for the delayed response. Looks like your post was held up due to the new forum poster approval period.
A second apology for breaking your character. I should have realized that removing Aetherfeast would make any characters in progress bug out when updating to the new version. I think I can work around this by re-introducing the talent and just marking it as 'hidden'. You won't be able to put points into or out of it, and you might not be able to take back any recently assigned points until you put at least one point into Blinkguard, but it should allow you to continue the run, at least. Fortunately, I actually have a bit of free time right now, so let's see if I can whip up fix real quick.
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Edit: Patch uploaded. I loaded up a 1.4.x High Guard of my own to make sure the fix worked, so you should be good to go. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.
v.1.5.1
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High Guard 1.4.x - 1.5.x compatibility
Yeah, didn't realize it would take quite that long for my post to show up, and then no one else posted about the issue either.
Thank you, your new version allowed me to open the talents without error. Aetherfest remained available for my hotbar but no longer showed in talents window.
Alas, my character died. I select to restart the character (whichever that option was) and Aetherfest appeared on the hotbar on the restarted character! Not an issue for me, I created an all new High Guard, but I thought I'd share that tidbit.
I'm not the best at the character (I have yet to beat the campaign on any character; the farthest along one is with an addon class) but I've like High Guard. Many thanks for the ability to play it.
So I decided to try out the newest version of High Guard. I'm currently playing a Halfling on Insane Roguelike and I've made it to Dreadfell and am about level 26.
Bugs/Typoes:
-Phase Shield has chacne instead of chance
-Leveling up while on the worldmap will apply the Battle Channelling speed penalty
-Phase Shield should say that it increases your resistance caps by X%. I know that this is kind of ambiguous, but it's better to be consistent with other sources of resistance caps.
-If you Phase Strike an enemy with no empty spots next to it, you get unpredictable behaviour
-Phase Strike's daze doesn't do much since it activates Boltfury and breaks it immediately
-Phasestride should really deactivate on run/rest
-Sorcerous Might has sorcersous instead of sorcerous
Feedback:
-I've mentioned this before, but the movement speed penalty for Battle Channelling is awful. The penalty basically only matters on the first turn you autoexplore into an enemy's line of sight. Otherwise High Guard has enough mobility to cope and can just turn the sustains off if things get truly desperate. I think that the movespeed penalty should only come into effect while enemies are in sight and maybe for a few turns afterwards, sort of like Berserker Rage. That would preserve the tactical considerations while not incentivizing tedious manual exploration. Then you could crank the penalty up to 50% again, although that'd have the problem of making Tarrasca even better for this class.
-Magic Burst is probably ok even if it does check spell save since it lets you really pump your staff accuracy bonus, which is a big part of your damage
-Sorcerous Slam is pretty bad now. It does worse damage then a bump attack and the debuff is meh. Checks spell save repeatedly, has low duration and needs the enemy to be stunned to matter much.
-Arcane Projection is at least a solid AOE attack, but I've never really seen the debuff do anything. The description is also pretty confusing, so it doesn't help that I'm not even sure what it's supposed to do.
-Eldritch Empowerment is probably not worth it until lategame. The proc damage is ok at best and Eldritch Echoes is beyond awful. It applies good effects if you can get it to deal good damage, but you also actually CAN'T get it to deal good damage. Oh, and the sustain cost is pretty high too.
-The respen on Phase Strike talent is absurdly low. It's still a good talent because the crit chance is decently high, but the respen is basically just not a factour.
-Sorcerous Might stacks up much quicker now, so the last talent isn't actively detrimental anymore, despite being the worst talent in the tree by a fair margin.
-The new Quickening is a strange talent. The combat speed boost would be obscenely good on any other class, but High Guard uses spell speed for most of their stuff. Definitely better balanced then the old one though.
-Overall, High Guard has pretty high damage. I'd probably get more if I prioritized shield damage over debuffs or if I'd found Staff of Destruction or something. The vast majority of this comes from the insane scaling of their shield proc. You take strong weapon scaling and then put it through staff accuracy bonus to supercharge it even further. Their base magic damage skills and especially their measly staff hits are a comparatively meager portion of their damage output.
-Their defense is decent, verging on good. I haven't found any OOP gear worth using and I've still only been in serious danger a few times. Conversion Field is really strong, but they don't have that much going for them before they get that. Occasional free shield blocks and minor Phase Strike buffs are it.
-Their mana management game is fairly good, I think. Their costs are high due to fatigue and they'd much rather max strength and magic before starting on willpower, so their pool is pretty small too. I definitely would have had a hard time casting stuff without a manasurge rune. Might change once I start getting good +mana gear and max willpower though.
-They have a lot of talents with truly awful scaling. Phase Strike is the biggest culprit since the daze is mostly useless and the range stays constant with talent levels. Their other weapon strikes aren't too great either and the whole battlemage tree doesn't benefit much from more points either. Neither does Battle Channelling, for that matter.
So I've gotten to level 28 and none of my abilities have any mana costs anymore. I'm not sure what happened, I was just playing normally and had no other addons active. I suspect that the Boltfury bug you claimed to have fixed in fact still exists. Digging through the code, I was baffled to find that you don't just use the built-in ignore_ressources parameter for forceUseTalent.
Potential Leads:
-I was using Vision a lot for scouting
-I was fighting a lot of dreads which had burning hex/disperse magic
-I'd just gotten Daneth's Neckguard and was using it a fair amount
Arcvasti wrote: Digging through the code, I was baffled to find that you don't just use the built-in ignore_ressources parameter for forceUseTalent.
I blame it on late night coding sessions. I have no idea why I was doing it that way.
I appreciate all of the other feedback as well. I had a reply typed up last night but my internet cut out before I could post. I'll get back to it when I get home tonight.
I can get behind the move speed penalty on battle channeling only applying when enemies are in sight (or I might test out that new 'in combat' flag thing), so that will take care of world map slow. In-sight might work fine, I just don't know off the top of my head if that considers ESP or not.
You're right that boltfury and phasestrike daze don't play well together. I could make boltfury casts not break daze fairly easily, or I could consider a different debuff.
Phasestride deactivating on run/rest is a good idea.
I'll check out Phasestike with regards to no empty adjacent tiles. I mostly copied the code from Blink Blade, iirc, which I thought had a 'fizzle' condition if there were no empty tiles adjacent to the target. Thinking about it, that's not really ideal, though, because I'm pretty sure that still wastes a turn. I'll look into that; I'm sure I can check for empty tiles first and abort with a log message if there aren't any.
I agree the debuff on Magic Burst is strong, but I feel like checking spell save would just make the very early game unnecessarily more tedious and not change much later on. There's a lot that depends on beating spell save, so having a way to reliably reduce spell save is key. It can still be shut down in a number of other ways: the debuff can get cleansed, the spell can be locked by silence or brainlock or stun, or you could just be out of mana if things have gotten really out of hand. Save check might not hurt too bad, but it doesn't feel necessary. I'd be more likely to reduce the defense debuff or remove it entirely or try to address excessive proc damage in another way.
I disagree on Sorcerous Slam. The damage scale could stand to be higher on this since it doesn't proc the shield attack like arcane projection, true, but I think the debuff is good. I may consider changing it so that it can affect talents that are already on cooldown, too, though. It also needs a better filter on what exactly it can effect. For instance, I saw it shut down Command Staff on an enemy earlier, and that's just a waste. It might need some tweaking, but I like the theme of having debuffs which trigger strong effects when hit in melee to play off the warrior-mage nature of the class. The duration is low, but you can extend it indefinitely in threory with the magical malady debuff from arcane projection.
I'll try to work on the description for the debuff on arcane projection. Basically it causes your melee attacks to increase the duration of deuffs on the target and reduce the duration of temporary buffs, but it's a little more complicated in that the duration of the buff reduction is based on the number of debuffs extended. It... could probably stand to be simplified a bit.
Eldritch Echoes can also be extended indefinitely with magical malady, and so can be stacked. With Quickening running, whacking enemies to extend debuffs will also reduce cooldowns, potentially allowing the debuff to be applied more often, as well. The base damage could probably stand to be increased, though.
I had considered not giving High Guard any res pen at all since it only takes one turn to change your damage type to whatever is optimal based on your enemies' resistances. But sadly enemies with enormous amounts of res-all are a thing, so I added some in. Honestly had no idea where to aim for numbers though, so I can consider tweaking them.
I wanted to play more with the mage-warrior theme and have more interactions with attacking, which was the inspiration for the Quickening rework. The old version was far too strong, and this is something of an experiment. The speed increase should be enough to at least incentives tossing out a bump between casts while the buff is up, if not going all out on attacking, to maximize cooldown reduction and get the most out of occult obstruction and magical malady.
Damage is high, I agree. I might look into the shield-strike scaling as it does feel a little off balance compared to the rest of their offense. As you said, though, defenses are good but not great and resources can become a problem if fights last too long, so I think high damage is reasonable.
I didn't do much with range scaling because I wanted to play with the range-amplification from stacking sorcerous might. I'll take a look at scaling all around, but I do think it's worth noting that having a few talents that are good at 1 or 2 points is fine in my opinion. There's also a lot of spellpower scaling, which can make talent investment seem weaker when your spellpower is lower since the scaling depends on both.
Thanks for the feedback again. It might be a while before I have much time to work on this, unfortunately, but I'll definitely take this all into consideration when I do.
Pretty sure it doesn't consider ESP. At least, it doesn't consider Track.
There's a special thing for applying daze on the end of the trick that the new daze on-hit uses. That should probably work more cleanly.
Ah, Magic Burst doesn't check spell save? I thought it did for some reason. It's probably fine as it is in that case.
25% respen at max would be fine. Crit chance would need to go down to compensate though.
The thing is, I never actually noticed debuffs getting extended or buffs getting removed. Like, not at all. I might just have been missing something though.
By the time you have Eldritch Echoes stacked up, the enemy is already dead. The damage is piddling compared to how much you deal just by bumping. That definitely doesn't change if you have to bump a bunch of times to get Eldritch Echoes doing anything at all. I guess it has limited utility on the turn before you kill an enemy, making sure they don't take you with them.
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