New Addon: Dance of the Edge

[Mister_Vimes]

Introduces the Blade Dancer, a dual-wielding Warrior subclass whose style revolves around shifting between different forms ("dances") in order to prevail in any combat situation. Each dance is quite powerful, becoming more so with more Talent Point investment, but only a limited number of dances can be active at once.

The Blade Dancer's key trait is flexibility. There are myriad ways to build this character, all of them with great potential for entertaining gameplay.

Class Features:
Eight New Talent Trees - Five core dances: Dance of the Moons, Storm, Torrent, Mountain, and Leaf. Each dance improves aspects of your character, as well as granting access to powerful techniques while active. Spread your talent points across multiple dances, or focus on just one or two. Other Talent trees allow you to improve your dances or even mesh them together into deadly combinations.

Unique starting Area - Human, Elf, Halfling, and Dwarf Blade Dancers will start in a new, unique starting area, with a couple of novel critters and a new boss at the end.

Class-Specific Quest - Upon finishing their starting area, Human, Elf, Halfling, and Dwarf Blade Dancers will gain access to a class-specific sidequest that runs parallel to the main game. Completing this quest grants access to a nice peice of equipment.

Auto-Scumming - Many of the dances raise your core stats while active. To keep the player from constantly ducking in and out of menus, stat requirements for gear and talent-learning will automatically adjust to accomodate those dances that are learned, but currently inactive.

Other Addon Features:
New Bosses - Not every Blade Dancer is a hero. A handful of renegades roam Maj'Eyal, looking to ruin someone's day...

New Boss Artifacts - ...at least those renegade Blade Dancers carry some decent gear with them.

Comments appreciated!

[visage]

Looks interesting! I have not played much yet, but some initial reactions:

1) It seems a bit awkward that the only source of stamina regeneration is in a locked category. (...or did I miss it somewhere other than Tempo?)

2) If you want a viable playstyle to be swapping between a broad array of dances, I think you'll need to significantly increase the benefits of that approach -- more powerful or longer-lasting benefits for swapping, perhaps getting to stack up the benefits of the dances you've swapped out of. (...or perhaps stamina regeneration. )

3) As I try to gauge which stats to invest in, I feel that it'd be helpful to have more information about what assorted effects scale with or are applied with -- a few specify mindpower; do the rest also use mindpower, or physical power, or are they only scaling with invested points, etc?

[Mister_Vimes]

Thanks for the feedback!

1) Stamina will also regen if Dance of the Leaf is activated, so that helps a good bit.

2) The Flow talent tree exists for the exact reason you list here. =) There are frequently situational advantages to switching (particularly once Dance of Eyal starts coming into play), but Flow makes that playstyle valid basically all the time.

3) I've tried to be specific about what scales with what, but I'll go back and revisit those descriptions. Yes, it's frustrating to learn a new class when you don't know how your character is going to grow over time.

[Erenion]

This class looks fun!
Some feedback from first testing:
- Erosion does not stack. The stat debuffs are not automatically updated when on_merge triggers, you need to remove and re-add them.
- The spellpower reduction from Leaf Wind causes a bunch of errors.
- It feels like you are a weapon class that has very few talents that actually use your weapons. (Only Spire and Eyal's Might do so, from among all Dancer-unique talents.)
- Dance of Moon, Storm and Leaf do not say they require two weapons, but they do.
- If you gain talent level 5 in Deadly Dance at the same time that you choose your mastered dance (in the same level window, without closing it in between), you do not gain the mastery.
- Using Spark Line causes an error.
- Dance of the Storm's level 5 effect deals very low damage later in the game.
- On the hostile dancers, their Master of the Dance talents have the naming scheme of your Chosen Dance, if you have one.
- Dance of the Edge grants a ridiculous amount of life regeneration when combined with Dance of the Leaf. If Fungus is then added to the mix, Sudden Growth can heal you for ~17000 life.
- Dance of the Leaf sprouts do negligible damage. At 96 mind power, they cap out at around 150 damage/turn.
- Shifting Dance with Dance of the Leaf basically has no secondary effect. 9 life regeneration transferred does nothing.
- Pain Enhancement System leads to ridiculous stats (over 400 Cunning, for example.)

[Mister_Vimes]

Thanks for the feedback Erenion!

This class looks fun!
Some feedback from first testing:
- Erosion does not stack. The stat debuffs are not automatically updated when on_merge triggers, you need to remove and re-add them.

Um. Whoops? Resolved, and thank you.

- The spellpower reduction from Leaf Wind causes a bunch of errors.

Hmm. I can't get any errors to show with that one. Do you happen to have more details?

- It feels like you are a weapon class that has very few talents that actually use your weapons. (Only Spire and Eyal's Might do so, from among all Dancer-unique talents.)

So, here's my thinking in a nutshell: A large number of your talents are built around improving your procs on melee hits, depending on active dances. (The fact that they have no penalty for dual-wielding is deliberate.) I didn't feel a need to reinvent the wheel for basic dual-wielding combat, hence the inclusion of the Dual Techniques. I was going for a high degree of flexibility without having to drastically adjust your gameplay style when switching dances.

If I failed at that... well, it's not the first time.

- Dance of Moon, Storm and Leaf do not say they require two weapons, but they do.

They shouldn't... I'll look at it again. The idea is to not require two weapons for several techs - not to make a greatmaul Dancer, but so that you still have some options when disarmed.

- If you gain talent level 5 in Deadly Dance at the same time that you choose your mastered dance (in the same level window, without closing it in between), you do not gain the mastery.

I literally never tried that. Thanks, I'll rectify.

- Using Spark Line causes an error.

Resolved now. Interesting fact: It only threw the errors in dev mode.

- Dance of the Storm's level 5 effect deals very low damage later in the game.

Intentional, but maybe I overdid it.

- On the hostile dancers, their Master of the Dance talents have the naming scheme of your Chosen Dance, if you have one.

Yes. Yes, they do. Fixing this is beyond my skill... If I allow all entities to rename the talents, they'll rename the player's as well. In the end, I decided to leave it.

If anyone has suggestions I'd be thrilled to hear them.

- Dance of the Edge grants a ridiculous amount of life regeneration when combined with Dance of the Leaf. If Fungus is then added to the mix, Sudden Growth can heal you for ~17000 life.

The goal was to help Leaf not suck at high levels. I... may have gone too far.

- Dance of the Leaf sprouts do negligible damage. At 96 mind power, they cap out at around 150 damage/turn.

The idea was to let them cap out not-terribly high, since the effect can last for so long, in addition (when fully developed) to:
-burning arcane resources
-spreading to other foes
-reducing spellpower
-increasing your Mindpower
-increasing your physical power
-increasing your spell save

Basically, as the game progresses, damage-dealing gradually becomes a co-function of Sprouts as opposed to its primary function. In theory, anyway.

- Shifting Dance with Dance of the Leaf basically has no secondary effect. 9 life regeneration transferred does nothing.

You're right. I need to do something else not-terribly drastic.

- Pain Enhancement System leads to ridiculous stats (over 400 Cunning, for example.)

Eeeeesh. So I haven't gotten around to purchasing EoR yet, so I had to look PES up. Sheesh. I can see how that could combine with Dance of the Torrent in a gloriously terrible synergy.

Is it allowed for me to ask for the short_name for the PES timed effect? If I can get that I'll just have the Dances factor its presence in.

Thanks again for testing the addon, and for all of your comments! v.1.0.3 has been uploaded with some immediate fixes, and I'll look at the others as I can.