[beta 12b] Cursed: Feedback / balance

[Dervis]

I've been playing a bit with the Cursed class, and this is my opinion on it:
(Sorry in advance for the wall of text)

It's a bit too weak in the early game:
It lacks any sort of reliable control skills in the early game. Whereas a fighter or rogue will stun the mob to kill it safely, a Cursed has to trade each blow it delivers and the life regen is nowhere near sufficient to make up for it.
The main resource of the class 'hate' is extremely hard to come by in the early game. In the early game your 'hate' generation comes from mostly kills, as the other common sources of hate are crits and big hits which are very unlikely early on.
In conclusion, in the early game, a cursed is just a fighter who can't use stuns, is resource-starved and has a minimal life regen bonus.

It has a all-or-nothing resource:
The 'hate' mechanic has no methods taking benefit of a larger 'hate' pool... The difference between 0.1 and 12 hate is just the amount of bonus effect on your skills. Another issue is that even when you do have 'hate', you can't spend it, it's just there and it boosts your skills (aka boring). On the mid game, torment alone is almost sufficient to keep your hate up... you'll be running with 'hate' over the cap most of the time.

It lacks sinergy between its skills:
The skills don't play together to do playful littles combos.
The only skills that actually sinergize together are cleave which benefit from the multi-attack skills when fighting 2 or more mobs (generally not a good idea in roguelikes) and Preternal Senses and Stalk (with the issue of Stalk not dishing enough pain or effects to be worth the trouble)
Oh, and dominate... dominate is a good well-rounded skill in my book.
All the other skills work for themselves and nothing else.

Rampage:
This leaves the topic of rampage. Rampage seems to be the super, i'm better at everything on a large cooldown with an almost inexistent cost. This could be ok if it didn't suffer from the same problems as the rest of the class... the buff is so dramatic that it feels you're mostly helpless when rampage is down (all or nothing)... and it doesn't sinergize with anything: you're stronger and faster, but you don't do nothing differently, you're just stronger and faster for the sake of it...
Rampage is just there, you're a wimp without it and a hero with it... no preparation, no cost... anything... just click and go.

Skill by skill:
Unnatural Body - Decent skill and well balanced, although i would probably prefer something along the lines of (If injured will regenerate x health (linked to strength and rank) at the cost of 0,1 hate every 10/8/6/4/2 turns).
Relentless - Good skill and well balanced. Only problem I see with it is that the class has too many passives early on, would be perfect if swapped location with seethe imo.
Seethe - Helpful and balanced imo. Swap it with relentless to help on the early game. A lower cooldown please.
Enrage - Not my favourite skill but decent enough i guess. It should get the amount of hp linked to strength and rank. Actually if you made it also increase your current and maximum hate by 1/2/3/4/5 it would be pretty awesome.

Slash - I realize every melee class needs a single hit nuke but this one isn't good enough. In my opinion it would shine if it would go something like. 'Wild slash adding 40/70/100/130/160% damage, cost 0,1/0,2/0,3/0,4/0,5 hate.' With a steep damage progression it could really be a valuable skill for anyone willing to invest the ranks and pay the increased cost.
Frenzy - Decent and fun skill although it could use the same treatment as Slash: '4 fast attacks for 40/50/60/70/80% damage each, cost 0,1/0,2/0,3/0,4/0,5.
Reckless Charge - Too weak to compete with Blindside as it is but would probably benefit with the same treatment as the others.
Cleave - Nice and balanced.

I would redo the next tree quite a lot. First of all the hardest criticism:
Blindside - Overpowered in current form. Too low cost and cooldown for a teleport+large instant hit on any mob in 10 square distance requiring no setup.
Stalk - I don't like it one bit. So you're this overbearing presence of hate capable of making people cower just by proximity and suddenly you have a sneaky skill? Even so it requires too much setup for too small a benefit.

Now for the redesign:
Dominate - One good skill. Would probably improve if 25%/35%/45%/55%/65%, cost 0,1/0,2/0,3/0,4/0,5 hate.
Preternal Senses - Perfect.
Night hunt (Sustained) - Creates 3/5/7/9/11 radius magical darkness around you. Disables your light source. Adds 10%/20%/30%/40%/50% evasion. Costs 0,1 hate to maintain each turn.
Blindside - Same as before except it can only be used if the target is standing in an unlit square. Higher damage with 0,1/0,2/0,3/0,4/0,5 cost.

Gloom - The confused status is being applied correctly but not actually doing anything. Rest is fine.
Weakness - I actually would just increase the duration a bit to make it quite reliable in opposition to gloom. In this tree i would probably just swap this with the first one to help out in the early game. (Probably make it a bit more powerful too in the first rank too)
Torment - Good and balanced.
Life leech - Good and balanced.

I beat too much on rampage before so I don't want to be too specific on it since it requires a overhaul imo. Just a couple of pointers:
- If it's going to be a core class mechanic, it should be using class points rather than generic and probably not require a category point.
- Rather than having x talents just buffing the attack power, some resistances would be helpful too.
- It should have a hefty maintenance cost rather than just a long cooldown. Make it a steep hate per turn maintenance, no time limit but cancellation at 0 hate, and make it go off automatically whenever you hit 10+ hate and it would really shine.

Radiant Fear - It really works but it has no real benefit for investing more than 1 point. I would increase the radius and prevent foes from using any skills while running. Progressing hate cost too.
Suppression - I would think this would be much more useful if it reduced magical effects instead. Balanced otherwise.
Cruel Vigor - Good and balanced.
Pity - Good and balanced.

[benli]

Thanks for the feedback. There was another thread that talked about a lot of this stuff, but you've added a lot of other comments. I've only just now played around with some of the changes that DG has made (rampage as starting class talent) and like the feel of that.

I think the major changes that are necessary are to rampage. I think a good simple fix is setting the cooldown to around 50-80, but adding a lot more per turn hate cost and shuting it down if hate goes to 0. That makes it easy to use but costly unless you are rampaging on something (mob or boss) that might give you a bit of hate back. There are probably a few other skills that could be tweeked as you have pointed out. I've been a bit limited on time (a work deadline plus I've been trying to get some stuff done on the Doomed class).

I'm a little confused about complaints in the early game. I have little problem with hate or survival. Maybe its my technique, I'm not sure.

[Dervis]

Regarding early game... it's doable but much more difficult than any other class i tried. Even in normal, I have to drink quite a few healing potions in the Trollshaws and even consider leaving Mr. Bill for a later time. I haven't tried it in Nightmare but I expect real terror.

I've been playing a bit with the .lua files and doing the changes I thought were needed myself and I'm liking the class much better now.
I don't want to mess too much with them so not to rape someone else's brainchild , however I do think these are steps in the right direction:
- Relative hate decay rather than absolute.
- Slaughter skills have static damage and increasing hate cost, so now they're reliable at both low and high hate and you actually feel that hate is going somewhere at higher talent points.
- Swapped Seethe and Relentless position in the cursed_form tree and lowered Seethe cooldown.

I'll share the .lua files if you want to check out the changes. Just need to check out with the forum since it won't let me attach them.

[greycat]

Even in normal, I have to drink quite a few healing potions in the Trollshaws and even consider leaving Mr. Bill for a later time.

Well, an increased reliance on lesser healing potions is far from unplayable. All my early characters use them, but I've found that the actual factor that determines how many isn't their class, but rather which out-of-depth monsters they run across.

As for Bill, I generally don't bother, with any characters at all. The only classes that actually want his reward would be Alchemists (for the golem), and maybe Berserkers or Arcane Blades. I rarely play Alchemists, and never play the other two. A Cursed has absolutely no use for a 2h club, so why bother? If you're just going to sell it for, what, 2 gold pieces or something, you could get that gold much more quickly in Carn Dum or something.

Normally I do Trollshaws until I'm level 4 or so, then Old Forest (possibly skipping Old Man Willow, but usually I'm level 12 or so by the time I get to him, so I just do him for completeness' sake). Then I do Amon Sul, and either keep or barter the reward. This usually has me at level 13 or so, and then I decide where to go next based on class and what I need.