[1.7.0] Heartstalker Class v1.2.0: "My Heart Will Go On"

[Mr Frog]

DL link: https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/heartstalker_class

Adds Heartstalker, a psionic class themed around the subconscious, as a birth option. Heartstalkers are a stealth-oriented class that start with twin daggers. Confounding foes's perceptions with their strange psychic power, they weaken their victims from afar, unseen and untouchable, before drawing in close for the kill when they feel the time is right. Take care, however, for though your mind is a potent shield against hostile intent, the physical flesh it guards is exceedingly frail.

Heartstalker talent trees include:

Perception: Turn aside prying eyes to hide your presence!
Unconscious Mind: Draw power from the unconscious to erode and destroy the conscious!
Thoughtless Action: Lay cold steel to your foes faster than conscious thought could ever allow!
Biorhythm: Feel and regulate the pulses within yourself and your enemies to create and capitalise on opportunities!
Emotion: Play with and feed upon your victim's emotions to dull their senses while empowering yourself!
Depths (locked): Call upon strange powers from the root of the mind to overwhelm foes!
Memory (locked): Omit, modify, and dupilicate memories; if it is remembered so, then so it was!
Dark Psyche (locked): Dredge up the mind's hidden weakness and Hate to torment your foes with shadowy doppelgangers!

All that we know of ourselves and others is merely a facade; the truth of the mind and the world sleeps where it cannot see.

[Erenion]

First feedback (I will update this as I go along)
- You feel insanely fragile at lower levels.
- Imaginary Strikes hits your own shadow, draining your hate
- same with Projection
- and Dissolve Ego (you don't even gain the psi from this one since your shadow is debuff immune)

- As per the comment on Inner Shadow, I'm reporting that you can see Inner Shadow

- Slap a thunderclap coating tinker on each of your weapons. Trust me, just do it. Combined with Projection, Imaginary Strikes, Reflex Spike and your shadow it's hilarious. I'm looking forward to unlocking Ravish.
- Scream says it grants Dark Vision at tl50, but grants it at tl1 (good idea though, because the in-darkness damage amplification would be a bit insane otherwise.)
- The poisonous water in the Dominion Port (EoR) triggers Abyssal Form, making autoexplore on that map into a scream fest.
- Steamsaws don't get the stat conversion. Intended?

- Phantom Footsteps has no per-turn limit. That, combined with the fact it can crit, and therefore trigger psi/hate on mindcrit gear, means that a movement infusion deals a ton of damage, confuses all nearby enemies and refills both your psi and your hate to max (with good enough gear)
- Abyssal Form and River's Fury do not get along with each other, creating clones that don't vanish when combat ends.
- EDIT: this is the case with any weapon as long as your offhand is empty.

- Imaginary Strikes hits friendlies, lumberjacks in the Ben quest in particular.
- Speaking of Ben, don't put him off for too long or he will get a gazillion stealth detection as he gets to a level where he gets the cursed detection talent.

[Razakai]

Phantom Footsteps damage enemies on the world map - only a cosmetic effect, but odd.

e:

In terms of balance, Heartseeker rares aren't as bad as they seem, they're annoying but they don't have a ton of burst damage so after you locate them you can usually kill them. Might be a bit annoying if you have no non-weapon attacks though as they'd be very evasive.
The class itself feels like it's in a reasonably good place, probably on the lower end of power levels if anything as you are very fragile. I didn't feel too defenseless as you can be very hard to pin down with all your teleports and the high stealth value though, but that might change at higher levels when detection might outscale stealth.
It's probably the best made addon class I've played so far though, so fantastic work.

[Cathbald]

This is amazing. A class that has actual resource management ? I'm sold already.

Bugs and thoughts :
- doppelganger need to a) STFU right now on summon b) reduce the volume of the scream on summon (yes i took it at level 1 with cornac)
- scream hurts myself for 20% of the damage it does to enemies
- scream put darkness on wall/trees, and through them (but doesn't damage through them)
- imaginary strikes hit doppelganger and i assume other friendlies
- urge is a buff, so when an enemy put it on me i just remove it
- imaginary strikes should be instant
- again, resource management so top tier class by default. i wish there was a way to regain psi at no cost though(no need to be guaranteed regen), i've been below the psi needed for regen talent too many times.

[Mr Frog]

First feedback (I will update this as I go along)
- You feel insanely fragile at lower levels.

Mostly intentional, although I might bump up the starting HP a bit since it is extremely low

- As per the comment on Inner Shadow, I'm reporting that you can see Inner Shadow

AAAAAAAAAAA NOT AGAIN

- Slap a thunderclap coating tinker on each of your weapons. Trust me, just do it. Combined with Projection, Imaginary Strikes, Reflex Spike and your shadow it's hilarious. I'm looking forward to unlocking Ravish.
[...]
- Steamsaws don't get the stat conversion. Intended?

I unfortunately have not played EoR, at all, nor have I looked at the code, so I can definitively answer these with "I don't know what that means" and "no and I'm not sure if I know enough to fix it presently"

- Phantom Footsteps has no per-turn limit. That, combined with the fact it can crit, and therefore trigger psi/hate on mindcrit gear, means that a movement infusion deals a ton of damage, confuses all nearby enemies and refills both your psi and your hate to max (with good enough gear)

Oof. Probably gonna rip off Bristlebarb (ilu Cath <3) and put a sanity check on how many times it can proc per turn, for starters.

Phantom Footsteps damage enemies on the world map - only a cosmetic effect, but odd.

I noticed that too and want to fix it but I don't actually know how to check if you're on the world map. It does confuse the mobs which I kind of like but I don't know if that actually does anything.

In terms of balance, Heartseeker rares aren't as bad as they seem, they're annoying but they don't have a ton of burst damage so after you locate them you can usually kill them. Might be a bit annoying if you have no non-weapon attacks though as they'd be very evasive.

That was one of my primary worries about having it on NPCs. Still might have Unseen give lower stealth if it's not the player using it but it's good to know it's not going down as badly as I expected

The class itself feels like it's in a reasonably good place, probably on the lower end of power levels if anything as you are very fragile. I didn't feel too defenseless as you can be very hard to pin down with all your teleports and the high stealth value though, but that might change at higher levels when detection might outscale stealth.

I was pretty generous with the stealth scaling (>100% linear scaling in ToME) but yeah, this still might be a Thing. You're definitely gonna want at least 60 max stealth by the time you're at the Far East (on normal mode, idk about bigboi difficulties) and probably much more by High Peak.

It's probably the best made addon class I've played so far though, so fantastic work.

[GIRLISH SQUEALING INTENSIFIES]

This is amazing. A class that has actual resource management ? I'm sold already.

Good to know my obsessive tuning of the psi costs and Dissolve Ego's regen didn't go to waste

- doppelganger need to a) STFU right now on summon b) reduce the volume of the scream on summon (yes i took it at level 1 with cornac)

LOL, I kind of expected it to get annoying but wanted to torture people. I'll definitely put a cooldown on the scream so it's not caterwauling constantly if you're entering and exiting combat a lot (as a stealth class explicitly designed around hit-and-run... lol)

- scream put darkness on wall/trees, and through them (but doesn't damage through them)

I think this might end up staying since it lets you get a (small, but probably not negligible) damage boost on CERTAIN ANNOYING ENEMIES THAT SIT INSIDE WALLS LIKE LITTLE B--

- urge is a buff, so when an enemy put it on me i just remove it

Whoops. I tried setting it as neutral but I guess that still lets you get rid of it. I'll work out something.

- imaginary strikes should be instant

I thought about this actually, but an extra attack per turn on a dualwielding class that can already stack a lot of on-hit procs can get pretty crazy even if the base damage of the attack is very low.

i wish there was a way to regain psi at no cost though(no need to be guaranteed regen), i've been below the psi needed for regen talent too many times.

I was toying with the idea of making Dissolve Ego a free cast but I'm not 100% commited to it either way yet.

- Imaginary Strikes hits your own shadow, draining your hate
- same with Projection
- and Dissolve Ego (you don't even gain the psi from this one since your shadow is debuff immune)

- Imaginary Strikes hits friendlies, lumberjacks in the Ben quest in particular.

- scream hurts myself for 20% of the damage it does to enemies

- imaginary strikes hit doppelganger and i assume other friendlies

Friendly fire between yourself and your shadow is 100% intentional and will most likely stay (it actually does reduced damage in all cases anyways ) but I'll probably set Imaginary Strikes to not do friendly fire, since it only procs one attack per turn and it's pretty unfair to have that one attack be randomly wasted on your clone through no real fault of your own.

[Erenion]

Important Note (until fixed)
DO NOT unequip a weapon while the Abyssal Form shadow is summoned. It will cause the weapon to permanently disappear.
The same goes for (quick)swapping weapons.

[Mr Frog]

First round of fixes! Big thanks to Erenion for taking it upon himself to break Abyssal Clone in half in hilarious fashion I think the disappearing weapons bug is now fixed but I'm going to leave the warning up for a bit until I'm confident that the shadow clone no longer has a taste for metals.

Changes for v1.0.1:
Abyssal Form now properly creates separate copies of your weapons instead of duplicate references to the same weapon
Abyssal Form no longer attempts to equip the shadow a nonexistent weapon if one of your weapon slots is empty (whoops!)
Subliminal Step's damage mod change is now compatible with whips, tridents, and steamsaws
Phantom Footsteps can now proc no more than 4 times per game turn (might reduce it to 3 but let's see how this tastes)
Phantom Footsteps now passes mindCrit() only once per turn; the crit multiplier (if any) then applies for the remainder of the game turn it procs on

E: Aaaand another quick fix to get some stuff I intended to but forgot. This is why we write things down, kids!

Changes for v1.0.2:
Scream now displays its values correctly in the description (oops)
Changed Urge to an "other" type detrimental effect so it can no longer be turned off at will nor cleansed (Genetic Memory still removes it as a special case)
Abyssal Form will now only scream upon appearing once every 100 turns for the sake of your sanity and eardrum integrity

[Erenion]

More Abyssal Form testing/breaking:
- Ranged weapons don't work (I was expecting this)
- Blighted Summoning. Oh boy.
It works (the shade counts for the requirement) and grants your shade the talents and blight conversion.
However, it also negates the dark damage conversion your shade had previously.

[Recaiden]

Subliminal Step can't auto-accept its target even though the jump away isn't aimed.

Polygraph says 'Talent leve'

Emotion feels like 'how to run out of psi and die for no reason', although I expect it will be useful at high levels.
None of the advanced trees felt worth unlocking.

Excellent class, 9/10

[Erenion]

More test notes (from adventurers):
- Do not use steamsaws + Abyssal Form. Not only does your clone have no weapon mastery for them and does no damage because of that, they also lack a steam pool, making them unable to even properly attack with them.

[Mr Frog]

More test notes (from adventurers):
- Do not use steamsaws + Abyssal Form. Not only does your clone have no weapon mastery for them and does no damage because of that, they also lack a steam pool, making them unable to even properly attack with them.

I'm not sure if this is even within my skill to fix sadly, since I'd have to account for the player potentially not having EoR installed when inheriting their steamsaw mastery which is definitely possible, but I don't know how to do it. I'll look into it though (•‿•) I'll also try to get bows/slings working with them too.

[HousePet]

Code: Select all

if game:isAddonActive("orcs") then ...

[Mr Frog]

Code: Select all

if game:isAddonActive("orcs") then ...

Thanks Looks like we're getting chainsaw-toting shadows

[Erenion]

So, another day, another try. Got to level 40 in EoR, died to a multihued drake randboss.
The biggest two problems for me were cursed randbosses - they get 80+ stealth detection from a class talent - and rare+ dragons. It turns out that breaths don't need to be very precisely aimed, and 5 breaths that deal 600+ damage each will drop you very quickly.
Defensively, Lapse helps a lot once you hit level 10. However, I often found myself afraid to activate it, which I definitely should have done in hindsight. It might have actually led to me surviving that mess.
Windblade was an amazing prodigy as first choice.
The other big problem for me was Brawler rares, due do playing with the memory damage conversion. It really loses a lot of effectiveness when enemies get to double-dip flat damage reduction.

[Mr Frog]

Awright bois and grils, we up to v1.1.0 today! Quite a few changes here, mostly to the Perception tree, but there are also a few changes towards flat damage reduction not completely ruining your life and a bit of expanded Abyssal Clone functionality (Note that even though the shadow can now wield ranged weapons, their AI is still set to melee, so they won't do so very intelligently -- I'll try to get that working soonish) (E: Also, they're still not compatible with steamsaws/guns yet but it's on my radar)

Changes for v1.1.0 "A Bit of Shut-Eye"
Heartstopper now has unique VFX
Clarified that Fade Away allows you to move immediately upon triggering
Fade Away now only grants you Out Of Phase for 2 turns if applicable
Fade Away now tries harder to move the player away if the space behind them is obstructed
Fade Away no longer tries to teleport you away from nonexistent damage sources
Fade Away no longer procs off of dead creatures' DoTs
Fade Away's invisibility power scaling rate has been doubled (it was very low before and would be of little help lategame)
Polygraph now sums up all damage dealt in a tick and applies it as one instance on tick end
Memory damage now properly handles target resistance
Memory damage now ignores flat damage reduction (might be a bit broken but we'll see how this tastes for now)
Eyes Shut's block rate has been increased (40-75 -> 50-80) and no longer uses cTL (instead hard capping at 95%)
Eyes Shut's minimum damage penalty has been decreased (60 -> 50) and the limit has been reduced from 20 to 0
Eyes Shut's invisibility now scales off of a 2:1 ratio of Cunning and Willpower, similarly to Unseen and Fade Away
Eyes Shut's minimum Psi restoration has been increased (15 -> 20)
Abyssal Form now duplicates your quiver slot as well as your Shoot, Master Marksman, and Sling Supremacy talent levels (<3 Erenion)

E: Quick fix because Fade Away was still softlocking the game (thanks to Recaiden for catching this)

Changes for v1.1.1:
Fade Away now accounts for damage that DOES have a source but DOES NOT have a valid position (gah!!!)
Range and duration values in descriptions should now properly match up with what they are in-game