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

[Erenion]

So, to post an exploit that's possible with this class:
As an adventurer, you can gain infinite talent points at level 4.
Just learn both of the Cursed/Darkness and Psionic/Dark Psyche categories, get to level 4, and put a point into Scream. Then unlearn Dark Vision, unlearn Scream, and repeat as often as you want.

[rexorcorum]

Heya, running a funky Heartstalker and got a juicy error to report:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /mod/class/Actor.lua:4681: attempt to index field 'set_complete' (a nil value)
  At [C]:-1 __newindex
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:4681 onTakeoff
  At /mod/addons/orcs/superload/mod/class/Actor.lua:89 onTakeoff
  At /engine/interface/ActorInventory.lua:295 removeObject
  At /data-heartstalker_class/talents/psionic/dark-psyche.lua:239 check
  At /engine/interface/ActorLife.lua:91 die
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:3137 die
  At /mod/addons/ashes-urhrok/superload/mod/class/Actor.lua:25 die
  At /mod/addons/orcs/superload/mod/class/Actor.lua:117 die
  At /mod/class/interface/PartyDeath.lua:39 die
  At /data-heartstalker_class/talents/psionic/dark-psyche.lua:315 updateShadow
  At /data-heartstalker_class/talents/psionic/dark-psyche.lua:322 
  At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:1154 callTalent
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:6069 fireTalentCheck
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:8023 updateInCombatStatus
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:8008 checkStillInCombat
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:628 actBase
  At /mod/class/Player.lua:363 actBase
  At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:119 tickLevel
  At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:64 tick
  At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:51 tick
  At /mod/class/Game.lua:1534 

Apparently, my shadow has problems with the Star and Moon set daggers (longer log here), but no idea why it's calling out Embers as well . Here is the character: https://te4.org/characters/1899/tome/60 ... 4f4af01fb0.

In other news, the class and execution are superb (haven't got any doubts about that, but now confirming from personal experience) !

Cheers!

[visage]

Memory damage now ignores flat damage reduction (might be a bit broken but we'll see how this tastes for now)

I don't know if it's intentional, but as of v1.1.0, Energy Decomposition is reducing damage from Memory.

[Mr Frog]

Memory damage now ignores flat damage reduction (might be a bit broken but we'll see how this tastes for now)

I don't know if it's intentional, but as of v1.1.0, Energy Decomposition is reducing damage from Memory.

Ah, thats more or less expected behaviour -- Decomposition is different internally and functionally from the flat DR provided by Striking Stance et cetera. I might be able to change it but afaik Decomp can't entirely nullify damage unlike true flat DR so it's not as much of a problem. Thank you for being conscientious in any case

[visage]

Thank you for being conscientious in any case

Sure thing. I'll just be glad I don't have to worry about Absorption reducing Memory damage. ...though that makes me wonder how Stone Fortress interacts with it.

...and that Fade Away bug you fixed in 1.1.1 is pretty funny -- I ran into it, debugged it, and was about to post the issue when I thought to check what the 1.1.1 changelog was. :p

[Mr Frog]

Surprise update now that I'm finished with my demonologist rework! A few rebalances and finally a fix for Lapse not working on one-shots. I have a nerf for NPC heartstalkers all cooked up and ready to go but I'm going to hold back a bit until I've played a bit more with them enabled.

Changes for v1.1.2:
Dissolve Ego's damage has been reduced by 20% (it was never meant to be a damage source yet was often used as one)
Dissolve Ego's mindsave check is now performed at a +10 power bonus
Dissolve Ego's stat debuff now scales linearly with your eff. Mindpower
Mania and Euphoria no longer get additional diminishing returns on their stat scaling, making them scale more smoothly and improving their functionality at high levels
Lapse now properly protects against one-shot kills

[visage]

I have a nerf for NPC heartstalkers all cooked up and ready to go but I'm going to hold back a bit until I've played a bit more with them enabled.

Out of curiosity, what's the form of the NPC nerf? When I was doing Madness runs with Perception-using stealth adventurers, NPC heartstalkers were nearly impossible to kill.

Dissolve Ego's stat debuff now scales linearly with your eff. Mindpower

Is it now weaker at lower levels, stronger at higher levels, or both? 'cause Dissolve Ego seemed pretty brutal on those Madness runs.

[Mr Frog]

oooh, Madness :X I have no concept of how to balance for that rip

The nerf I was going with would be to have heartstalker randos under level 20(ish, havent decided on a cutoff yet) be given a scaling penalty to Unseen's stealth value, reducing it to about 20% at level 1 and grading slowly up to 100% at level 20 (by which point you'd better have some kind if solution to invisible enemies anyway).

Dissolve Ego's debuff will likely be stronger at higher levels now (stronger in general really; I was kind of reckless with the new numbers in retrospect). Hope you didn't need those mental stats :X Further feedback on how the new scaling tastes on higher diffs would be much appreciated!

[visage]

The nerf I was going with would be to have heartstalker randos under level 20(ish, havent decided on a cutoff yet) be given a scaling penalty to Unseen's stealth value, reducing it to about 20% at level 1 and grading slowly up to 100% at level 20 (by which point you'd better have some kind if solution to invisible enemies anyway).

See-stealthed being useless against heartstalkers strikes me as unfortunate, but I suppose that the theory that there's a point by which the player needs to have some form of blindfighting available could be reasonable. Are there any weapon-classes that are dependent on gear for blindfighting? If so, that could be a problem.

The player having essentially infinite perma-stealth once they get their stats up also strikes me as a problem, but that's pretty core to the class's design. All of the enemy tools for seeing through stealth are stuck with standard scaling factors, whereas the heartstalker's stealth grows linearly with stats. (Frankly, how the game overall deals with stealth and see-stealthed is highly vulnerable to stacking multiple sources of either; it really should be converted to a Power system.)

Dissolve Ego's debuff will likely be stronger at higher levels now (stronger in general really; I was kind of reckless with the new numbers in retrospect). Hope you didn't need those mental stats :X Further feedback on how the new scaling tastes on higher diffs would be much appreciated!

I pulled up an old run and ran a lvl-32 adventurer into the Conclave vaults. Ran into a heartstalker enemy who put -72 to all my mental stats (except when it crit and put them at something like -112). The ability for Dissolve Ego to chain-cast and keep your stats at 1 means that if you need any of those stats you really have no mechanism to deal with an NPC heartstalker. Dissolve Ego having a 4-turn cooldown means that any tool you have for clearing mental debuffs won't be able to keep up.

Have you considered giving Dissolve Ego's debuff the same growth mechanic as you use in Depths?

[Mr Frog]

Yeah, the class is kind of balanced around being perma-invis'd so long as you manage your Psi properly, for better or for worse. The fact that NPCs don't need to worry about Psi management is definitely something I didn't really consider, though, so I might make the NPC power nerf a bit more hardcore to compensate.
Part of the issue is that I didn't really know how ToME generally handles stealth/stealthpen powers when I designed the class (haHAA), and now that I do I... honestly think that the fundamental way ToME handles it is kind of flawed, and I'm not sure if I even want to switch over because I'm not sure if it'd actually make anything better besides terrorising players.

As for Dissolve Ego, I think I'm just going to give a numbers nerf to it for now, as looking at it I think its current numbers are definitely overkill (should have playtested it myself before pushing, it's not y'all's jobs to beta test for me :Y). Might give it more sharply diminishing returns with talent level so that NPCs with like 300000 levels in it won't get ridiculous debuff power from it :T (...Might do that for Unseen too, come to think of it...)

[visage]

Ran into a heartstalker enemy who put -72 to all my mental stats (except when it crit and put them at something like -112).

I just went and looked at the Dissolve Ego effect's code and... wow, I hadn't realized that you have its stat penalty as a stacking effect. So it's not that the enemy was critting my char to get up into 3-digit stat reductions, it was landing the effect multiple times.

[Mr Frog]

Ran into a heartstalker enemy who put -72 to all my mental stats (except when it crit and put them at something like -112).

I just went and looked at the Dissolve Ego effect's code and... wow, I hadn't realized that you have its stat penalty as a stacking effect. So it's not that the enemy was critting my char to get up into 3-digit stat reductions, it was landing the effect multiple times.

Yeah. I did hard cap it at 2x the base power (mostly to prevent silly things with Drem or other sources of cooldown reduction).

I'm gonna push a huge nerf to the debuff out right tout suite. Might revert the change entirely since it obviously wasn't based in sound judgment but I want to keep things moving forward as much as possible :T

[Mr Frog]

Okay, let's see how this one tastes. Still waffling between this and just reverting it to its old scaling but I'm going to hold out hope that I can find a perfect solution.

Changes for v1.1.3:
Dissolve Ego's stat debuff's scaling curve has been changed, power overall reduced by 20% (Mindpower * .25-.5, exp .5 -> Mindpower * .2-.4, exp .25). Overall this will make the debuff a bit less powerful in general and in particular greatly reduce its strength at extreme TL's unavailable to the player.

[Blackvision]

Enjoying the class very much, just thought I'd raise Dissolve Ego again (sorry!).

I think a lot of the over-use of it comes just from the rapid cool-down: anything with 4 or less is basically going to be spammed. Bump it to 6 or 8 and I think it would stop being so potent while still usable as a way to top-up psi.

[Mr Frog]

Smallish release, primarily to officially confirm compatibility with 1.7.0. Some changes to scaling on various talents were made, and Heartstalker randbosses now have nerfed stealth up until level 25 (a longstanding request). Enjoy!


Changes for v1.2.0 "My Heart Will Go On"
Updated Genetic Memory to use the new dispel interface
Dissolve Ego's scaling has been changed yet again to reduce its power at extreme TLs and Mindpower while improving its utility at lower levels
Changed the scaling on Euphoria and Mania so they scale better later on
Changed the scaling on Unseen, Fade Away, and Eyes Shut to make them more consistent with each other and add diminishing returns on extreme stat values (they still scale based on one part Willpower, two parts Cunning). Eyes Shut in particular should scale much more smoothly.
Unseen, Fade Away, and Eyes Shut provide less concealment to random bosses below level 25 (ranging from 50% stealth/invis power when at level 10 or lower up to 100% by the time they're at level 25)
Subliminal Step and Polygraph now lock onto targets properly
Tweaks to some VFX to fix little things that had been bugging me (Dark Psyche's in particular are much nicer now!)
Prevented AIs from using Consume Psyche and Dissociate prematurely
Moved temp effects into a data file as superloading them was never necessary -- as such the superload folder has been removed entirely as that was the only file in it