Genuine Veteran - A Combat Veteran rework

[Tryble]

First real addon here, a rework to the Combat Veteran tree. Steam, ToME

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Quick Recovery: Quick Recovery and Fast Metabolism merged.  Lifegain scales with CON.
Martial Trance: If more than one enemy is visible, take reduced damage, improving as you see more enemies.
Spell Shield:  Spell save unchanged. 4-15% Arcane/Fire/Cold/Lightning resist added.  When you save against a magical effect, daze the caster for 1-3 turns.
Unending Frenzy: Once a turn when you hit an enemy in melee you gain a 2 turn 0.5%-2.5% combat speed bonus which stacks up to 10 times.  Kills while frenzying restore life/stamina, lifegain scales with CON and is once/turn.

The goal was to substantially pump up the tree so that it'd be more attractive to invest in while maintaining the original design theme.
The normal tree contains only passive bonuses, is given to only warrior classes, and is themed around sustaining your ability to remain in the fight. So with that in mind, the changes are mostly defensive passives.

Some notes:
Quick Recovery: With no investment in CON at all, the lifegain is slightly worse than the original Fast Metabolism. It catches up before 20 CON and ends up at +21.5HP at 60 CON.
Martial Trance isn't a bonus to resists, but rather a outright percentage reduction to all damage, maxing out at about 23% if swarmed. Even so, I don't imagine experienced players would be interested in this talent much.
Spell Shield is odd. I like dazing enemies on save, but magical effects honestly aren't terribly common; even with this effect the talent's much worse than that one Radiance talent that noone uses, thus a small res bonus to the usual arcane elements.
Unending Frenzy's the most significant departure from the original tree; I tried that making the talent with 'frenzy' in its name benefit from the tree's theme of long-term sustained melee battle. The stam gain from the original talent is still here but halved, since I feel the speed bonus is pretty strong on its own. I believe that classes which relied on the original combat vet should still be fine on stamina with this & quick recovery.
To compare the speed bonus to something well known, you earn more turns than 5/5 Blinding Speed at >18 turns, if you attack continuously and land those hits. These actions are in a much larger window than blinding speed, too - less useful as a burst damage assistance option. Frenzy isn't very useful outside of fights that last <10 turns (you've only earned about 90% of one turn by then), unless you manage to reengage new targets to keep the frenzy going. Overall I quite like how it plays out - It's strong if you can continue fighting and will help you overpower durable foes, but pretty negligible for short-to-medium battles whether they're easy or dangerous.

Edit: Did a complete playthrough of the main campaign and thus far everything seems good, no issues. Let me know what you think.

[HousePet]

Martial Trance and Spell Shield seem a bit weird to me.

Martial Trance: Not overly useful. You don't tend to need damage spike reduction when you are being swarmed, since swarming enemies aren't usually that dangerous. As an alternative thought that might fit a bit better with the theme is a fatigue reduction based on the number of enemies. This would make clearing swarms easier, but then again that is the purpose of Unending Frenzy.

Spell Shield: Micro resistance buffs. Why bother?
More of a concern to me is the reactive mass daze. That seems like it would either be useless or totally OP. I also don't see how it fits with the theme of the category.

[Frumple]

With trance, why not just have it ramp up over time? Either a percent chance stacking thing or just per turn. It fits the sustain concept better than a horde counter thing, imo.

I could actually see something kinda' neat when its activation condition is just being targeted by something hostile, sort of a danger sense vibe. That would slot into the combat vet theme pretty well, t'boot. Maybe have a lower cap if you're not actively in LoS or combat to stave off cheese a bit.

[Tryble]

Martial Trance: Not overly useful. You don't tend to need damage spike reduction when you are being swarmed, since swarming enemies aren't usually that dangerous. As an alternative thought that might fit a bit better with the theme is a fatigue reduction based on the number of enemies. This would make clearing swarms easier, but then again that is the purpose of Unending Frenzy.

Summoners are pretty famous for how dangerous their summons are, most notably hound and ritch. Necros will virtually always surround you with a crowd if you rush them in melee. Annihilators get a lot of complaints purely from the flame turret.
Sometimes, you go down the stairs into a new area and there's several rares in sight among the regular guys (looking at you heart of the gloom), and you don't have a lot of choice but to engage them all. Teleporting enemies that managed to slip away from you (or just enemies that are smart enough to flee in general) either might alert a whole other room or pop in when you're busy with a randboss. Target passing's less crazy in 1.6.6 but it's not gone.

What I'm trying to say is, sure, swarms of regular nonelite enemies aren't all that dangerous. The optimal scenario even at 5/5 is to limit how much you have to face at once, but that's not always feasible or even in your control. This talent will help when you can't help but deal with several threats at once. Personally, I find that being approached by several rares is maybe more dangerous than solo randbosses.

I felt that this effect would give the player more ability/incentive to stay engaged (and maintain his frenzy) rather than immediately flee in this kind of scenario which is the typical and safe choice. This is how I intended it to support 'stay engaged and sustain the fight' kind of theme.

More of a concern to me is the reactive mass daze. That seems like it would either be useless or totally OP. I also don't see how it fits with the theme of the category.

I originally meant to just daze the caster, but for the life of me I can't find out how to acquire the caster from callbackOnEffectSave. Also, callbackOnEffectSave doesn't trigger when you reduce an effect's duration to zero, only when you shrug it off via the second save check. So weirdly enough, low spell save or incredibly high spell save means that you don't see the effect because you either don't save at all, or you 'resist' the effect rather than save from it. With those things in mind I preferred the mass version better, since you won't see the mass daze terribly often...it's kind of like a critical save, I guess. I personally feel that it's on the lesser side of useful given how infrequent it is (most casters don't even throw all that many magical effects to be honest) but seeing it go off gives you a few turns of breathing/recovery/escape.

The minor resistance bonus I lifted from a suggestion in the old thread on the subject of the combat vet tree. I guess it could be dropped, doesn't really match the rest of the talent well. Or maybe a more sizable bonus but ditching the reactive daze concept completely would be better. I just really liked the retaliatory save idea and thought it would be cool i'm sorry

[HousePet]

I haven't looked over your numbers in the addon, but summoner type Rares will wreck you with just one or two summons. Is that going to trigger enough of a bonus from Martial Trance?

A reactive daze is a cool idea, but I'm not sure it fits thematically here.
Perhaps applying the Counterstrike effect when you are hit with a Spell would fit better? (You can already apply Counterstrike when you are hit with a Spell, but it does require the use of the awkward block system and matching the right element, etc.)

[nsrr]

(You can already apply Counterstrike when you are hit with a Spell, but it does require the use of the awkward block system and matching the right element, etc.)

Block has blocked all damage types since 1.6, it's easy to counterstrike any caster now, if you have a shield. Might be interesting on non-shield classes, though. Casters are most dangerous at range, though, and counterstrike doesn't do much for a melee class vs. a ranged mob.

how to acquire the caster from callbackOnEffectSave"

This callback is structured a bit oddly because it uses the same table of parameters that's passed to a hook, so its only parameter (besides self and t) is "hd", which is itself a list of parameters. In this case, the effect parameters are going to be in "hd.p" and the source, if any, should be "hd.p.src". Make sure to check that the source exists before trying to do anything to it (start with "if hd.p.src then..."). Be careful because sources can also be traps or terrain or area effects, so before you apply daze to it you should check for something like "if hd.p.src.on_set_temporary_effect then..." (or one of many other parameters that only an actor will have, but this one is relevant here, so it's the logical one to check).

The rest of the changes look good to me. Merging the first two is nice QoL, Trance fits the 'stay in battle' theme (and aside from summoners, there's a large chunk of the game called "Prides" where you are going to fight packs of mobs with a rare+ or more). The resists on Spell Shield are pretty negligible. If you change the daze to only hit the caster, maybe up these to something like 4-12% or even 5-15%?

[HousePet]

Block has blocked all damage types since 1.6, it's easy to counterstrike any caster now, if you have a shield. Might be interesting on non-shield classes, though. Casters are most dangerous at range, though, and counterstrike doesn't do much for a melee class vs. a ranged mob.

Oh I missed that change. I've been too busy testing a revised Staff Combat category.
I still think it makes no sense that you can't apply Counterstrike at range against a Spell, with just a normal shield. But if we had some sort of special talent that did it, it would make sense.
As for the usefulness issue. There is still Rush and Movement Infusions; and I still want a good explanation as to why I can't throw an axe or shield at someone. XD

[Frumple]

Because no one's bothered to code a generic throw ability

... well, that I can recall. Some add-on or another might have. There were some intriguing kludgework for throwing knives as some point, and I'm pretty sure I've seen some shield throwing talents at some point or another.

Though with the shield thing, what makes you think even the plain items in T4 are what we'd consider normal? We're talking about crap that can sit in molten lava for an indefinite period without degradation or pierce through defenses that can shrug off meteor hits, even if they're not a yowling cat of angular momentum kit equivalent. Even the white junk is probably freakishly overengineered by whatever crack gnomes pump out all our transmog trash in the background.

[Tryble]

This talent will help when you can't help but deal with several threats at once.

I just noticed this screenshot in my folder from last run, this is the kind of thing I mean

This callback is structured a bit oddly because it uses the same table of parameters that's passed to a hook, so its only parameter (besides self and t) is "hd", which is itself a list of parameters. In this case, the effect parameters are going to be in "hd.p" and the source, if any, should be "hd.p.src".

I'd tried this but had trouble accessing anything meaningful, although I think that may have just been me not being familiar with lua syntax. I'll take another look when I get a chance.

[Tryble]

The rest of the changes look good to me. Merging the first two is nice QoL, Trance fits the 'stay in battle' theme (and aside from summoners, there's a large chunk of the game called "Prides" where you are going to fight packs of mobs with a rare+ or more). The resists on Spell Shield are pretty negligible. If you change the daze to only hit the caster, maybe up these to something like 4-12% or even 5-15%?

Thanks for the feedback. I followed your advice and did exactly this once I got the reaction daze to hit only the caster.

there's a large chunk of the game called "Prides" where you are going to fight packs of mobs with a rare+ or more)

Yeah, prides are seriously brutal sometimes.

On an unrelated note, I took care to consider how these changes might effect enemies. It seems that enemies getting some quick recovery (which might give them 30ish regen at high CON/levels) is the only really notable effect. I rarely saw enemies with talents in veteran levels anyway.

[YeeYee]

Is this addon still being worked on? The warrior's determination talent seems bugged.