Frost Invoker - A Mage Subclass

[nsrr]

Adds the Frost Invoker, a mage subclass. Get it here or on the Steam Workshop.

The Frost Invoker is a Cold-focused caster and unarmed fighter. Their primary stats are Magic and Dexterity.
Frost Invokers know Combat Training and Survival(locked) and have 11 new spell trees, 3 generic and 8 class (of which 3 start locked).

Generic:

Frozen Core: Unarmed training with 40/80 Mag/Dex dam mods, and utility.
Rime Guard: Defense, with a damage shield and one-shot protection.
Ice Floes: Mobility and utility focused on an icy ground effect.

Class:

Hail: Offensive spells which can reduce the cd of Artic talents.
Arctic: Unarmed attacks with AoE, a pin, a multi-hit, and a gap closer.
Winter: Utility and defense, with a decoy and a scout.
Frost: Defense and utility focused on building and consuming a stacking effect.
Chill: Debuffs which proc on cold damage, with active conditional sustain stripping.

Locked:

Blizzard: Defense and debuffs focused on a single AoE spell.
Icicles: Adds a cold-damage psuedo-weapon that procs on unarmed attacks. (high level)
Cryomania: Maical and physical synergy, and cold resist / ice-block penetration sustain. (high level)

Talent icons from https://game-icons.net
Class icon from https://opengameart.org/content/painter ... ons-part-2
Icicles moddable tile attachment from Verdant Pack by HousePet (re-colored); attachment art by Rexocorum.

Question, comments, and (especially) bug reports are most welcome, as always. Enjoy!

[nsrr]

Well that was a quick one... turns out I forgot to revert a change I had been testing to the dam mod replacement on Frozen Fist (which did not work at all). Thanks for the catch, Sarah!

v1.0.0
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[Frozen Fist]
Fixed dam mod replacement.

[nsrr]

v1.0.1
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[General]
Fixed several typos. Thanks Nagyhal!

[Ice Floes]
Fixed movement speed handling.

[Frost Fairy]
Reduced rank to 2.

[LordKarasuman]

Does this class's talents show up on enemies?

[nsrr]

Does this class's talents show up on enemies?

Yes.

[nsrr]

v1.0.2
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[Ice Sculpture]
The sculpture now cannot be moved, as intended.

[Ice Hook]
Implemented a check for weird corner situations where you an project to the enemy but the enemy cannot project to you (i.e. it would get stuck on a corner part way through the pull). In these cases you will now pull yourself to the target instead.

[nsrr]

v1.0.3
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[Frost Shards]
Unarmed attacks now deal additional Cold damage based on the number of stacks of Frost Shards you have.

[Chills]
Unarmed attacks will have their damage increased by a percentage times the number of Chills stacks on the target.

[Hailstone]
Improved damage.

[Cone of Cold]
Improved damage.

[Hail Storm]
Improved damage.

[HousePet]

Icicles moddable tile attachment from Verdant Pack by HousePet (re-colored);

The what?

[nsrr]

The Icicles moddable tile attachment is a re-colored version of the art by Rexocorrum that Verdant uses for Psiclaws.

[nsrr]

I did that thing again where I forgot to put in a sanity check to make sure the source of damage is something that can actually be affected by debuffs. The change is inside of a callback, so unfortunately the bug will persist for characters that are not able to unlearn and relearn the talent.

v1.0.4
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[Frozen Aegis]
Fixed an error which could occur when taking damage from a source other than an actor.

[HousePet]

The Icicles moddable tile attachment is a re-colored version of the art by Rexocorrum that Verdant uses for Psiclaws.

Okay. I like those. I want some.

[nsrr]

Fairly chunky update. In general, many scaling ranges and radii have been changed to fixed values and the class has had a couple of talents reworked to increase mobility. Overall the goal of this update is free up some points on both the class and generic side and improve the class's utility and mobility. Full change log below.

v1.1.0
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[Rime guard]
Cryochamber and Icy Edge have switched places in the tree.

Icy Edge can now remove cold-subtype effects as well as fire-subtype.

[Ice Floes]
Empowered Ice has been changed from an passive to an active with the same passive benefits and the dislayed name has been changed to Frozen Path to fit the action.
When activated, you can move to a location within range 6, creating an ice floe lasting 8 turns along your path. You must have a clear path to the location.
Additionally, targets will only have a chance slip on your ice while moving if they are within 3 tiles of yourself, but slipping now Stuns rather than Dazes.

Icy Blast is now instant cast, has a cooldown of 6, and a fixed radius of 4. Passive mana regen whil standing on an Ice Floe has moved to Icy Blast from Empowered Ice (Frozen Path).

[Arctic]
Ice Hook range fixed at 8.

Arctic Cyclone knockback and ice floe AoE fixed at 2.
The attack will now make an additional unarmed hit for 1/3 the original damage as Cold if the target is afflicted with Frozen Feet and then remove the effect.

[Hail]
Artic Front and Hail Storm have swtiched places in the tree.

Hailstone range fixed at 8. Hailstone now Cripples, reducing attack, spell and mind speed by a scaling percent, rather than Dazing.

Cone of Cold radius fixed at 5.

Hail Storm range fixed at 8.

[Winter]
Ice Sculpture can now be cast on any adjacent tile, or any ice floe within range 6.

Frost Fairy is no longer invisible, but now cannot be seen by other actors in any way.

Howling Wind has been reworked entirely. Those knowing the old version of Howling Wind will unlearn the old version and be refunded any points invested into it when learning the new version.
Howling Wind retains the projectile slow as a passive effect. The talent is now an active which can move you to any tile within range 5, moving over any actors in the way.

Induce Hibernation now has a range of 4.

[Chill]
Chills will now extend all remaining cooldowns of the target by 2 when it causes them to shiver, rather than Dazing them.

Frostburn damage has had the Daze interaction removed.

[scul]

As usual, thanks for the addon. I have enjoyed it. Though I have died before getting to high peak with 2 characters in a row which is unusual for me. I have not tried all my "goto" race combinations but I am noticing some things. I feel like it is really close to being great. It just feels like it is missing something.

Without getting vague or esoteric I will try to provide specific feedback.

I really like the ice flow mechanic. Seems like generation of ice flow is pretty close to perfect, though I think some of the mana costs are a bit high, I did not unlock the cold penetration sustain but the struggle for mana regen was a real one. I did not unlock it but I saw the talent that allows some healthy mana regen if you are clearing a frozen effect.

That would tie into my next point. It seems like when I am playing it is hard for the class to decide if it is attacking or defending. For example, Cold fusion and Icy cleanse are really cool concepts, but them taking a turn seems really harsh. It seems as if they are meant to give you damage resistance by triggering a shield or adding to a shield. And I think that interaction is great. But in the middle of combat that is two turns where you are freely attacked which negates the effect of the shield. And Icy cleanse especially given the very high mana cost (at least at levels below 25ish unless you have great gear or heavy investment in willpower). It seems like those should either be instant or at the very most cost only as much time as how long it takes to walk on ice floes (scaling with the generic talent obviously).

Also damage reduction/resistance. Given that realistically (unless one is just going to kite everything with the hail talents which would be tedious and not sustainable for some things) you need to be up close and personal I am taking lots of damage just from retaliation. Brawlers get flat reduction. which while boring does handle a lot of that low level retal from non bosses. I think the previous suggestion with making the frost skill take very little/no time would help with that while not just making a brawler that uses cold. I could also think of an interaction with ice floes. Ie something like you can get a scaling resistance to all damage/flat reduction (probably on ice floe talent) any time you step on a friendly ice floe. I just noticed that I would finish fights with "white" monsters and I would most of the time be below half health while having decent equipment, ie minor phys resistance and added health. Picked up vitality from an escort and even with only fighting one or two low tier things at a time it was still being triggered on a regular basis.

I think the icicles are cool. One thing I noticed was when I would add to the first or third talent in the tree it did not change the damage numbers at all. Only the second talent increased the displayed damage. I did not get a chance to test the damage in the fortress so I am not sure if that is a just a visual bug or an actual one. The third talent would visually increase the crit rate but not the damage, and based on just testing after level ups it seemed like the damage was not going up, but hard to tell since I only put a few points in before I died.

Overall it seems like it needs a bit more damage so it can exploit the cryochamber effect and then teleport/ice floe retreat out after (honestly I think the damage is pretty good, excepting icicles which I am thinking is a bug) or a bit more defense so it is not just getting oneshotted into cryochamber in the beginning of many rare or above fights. I feel like I have a mage's health and decent damage but not most of the tricks mage's have to mitigate damage. 3 turns + half your base mana (with sustains on of course) before level 20 to setup damage mitigation is a long time when fighting a boss (Frozen Aegis -> Cold fusion -> Icy cleanse).

I really do like it, I just think some tweaks to make it a bit more focused will push it over the top.

Always look forward to your addons!

[nsrr]

Thanks for playing scul, as always!

I appreciate the detailed feedback I found a pretty substantial bug I somehow missed that I'm working on fixing and I'm testing a couple of changes to improve defense a bit more overall. I had almost made Cold Fusion and Icy Cleanse instant to begin with, but I felt like the interaction with Frost Prism prevented these from being totally wasted turns... But that's only situationally useful and adds an extra turn to the set up, and I think you're right that they still need to have their defenses shored up a bit. I like triggering Frost Prism with defensive talents, but I think the benefit of making them instant outweighs that... and I've had an idea to add a different interaction for them anyway
Mana cost and cooldown reductions are also on the table, as well as a little something else to improve Frost a bit.

Regarding Icicles, I will double check them, but I'm fairly certain they are working as intended. The first and third talent should not affect the stats displayed in the first talent, as these are just the base stats and the first and third talents increase modifiers that are called later. The first talent increases the multiplier used for the Icicles unarmed hit proc and the third talent is weapon mastery, which is applied in the combat engine when attacking. All that said, they do start off fairly weak, but they grow in power to roughly the strength of a t5 Mindstar, but the biggest draw is the added procs with increased procs damage.

Thanks again for giving my classes a try and commenting on them, always look forward to your feedback

[Recaiden]

Ice Sculpture has to be cast adjacent but has a a range of 6 and snaps to enemies when targeting.