Alchemist Style Wyrmic Test Addon (Complete)

[Suslik]

Ok my feedback on the latest version:
- icons help. a lot. no matter if they correspond to skill or not, you can just tell one ability from another. please use any icons in all builds including debug.
- skill descriptions are a tremendous help as well
- lua error on sand drake aspect + drake bite
- having 2 sustains in every tree feels wrong.
- different aspects do basically the same things
- even with only 2 trees skill augmentations feel like you do 5 lightning damage, 2% slow, 3% chance to daze, restore 2 equilibrium on hit and so on. minor bonuses are no fun and making them larger will just break balance. I suggest making the trees seriously different. like going 1 tree reduces breath cooldown and allows you to spam it, going other tree allows you to charge it, third one uses stamina instead of equi for it, etc. bonuses like "sand drake aspect adds 50 physical damage/lightning drake aspect adds 50 lightning damage" should be omitted altogether due to being unfun.
- class needs some locked trees so that you cannot get all benefits at once.
- in my opinion, ideally choosing different aspects is a choise of your playstyle. like going wildfire archmage you basically want to nuke everything including yourslelf, going disruption shield you want to spend as much mana as possibl, etc. currently the only major difference between aspects is their damage element which's lame.
- since it's extremely hard to find <number of aspects>x<number of basic talents> interesting non-game-breaking effects, I suggest either focusing different sustains only on one of the trees(melee/ranged) or buffing only some basic talents(not all). like one aspects turns you into a melee-focused drake, other makes you a caster and so on. going everything in my opinion should not be rewarded at all(it is now).
- the class feels very offensive. it's only defenses are fungus and debuffs. i suggest adding another basic tree like "draconic defense" with some sustained/active/passive defensive stuff that's augmented by aspects as well.
- breath is currently only one of the talents and it's by no way unique. i really think it should be augmented the most by the sustains so that you can either make it spammable or make it more debuff-based or make it more damaging or large-area'd. by picking multiple aspects you can pick, let's say, 2 of these buffs.

[Suslik]

Spamming breaths is only a vital part of being a Wyrmic because that is all you can do with the existing Wyrmic class.
Being a Wyrmic is about being like a Dragon. And other than multi hued wyrms, spamming breaths is not what they do.

But it is what some players find fun about the class like it's fun to shootshootshoot with archer's single talent and ridiculous attack speed. Apparently making it the only viable direction is not an option, but I really think there should be some aspect(aspect combination) that allows you to feel as current breath wyrmics do.

And spammable is not necessarily "2-turns-cd". It may mean "you can override cooldown by using stamina/melee talents", "instead of 1 talent you have 2/3/4 depending on amount of sustained aspects" and any other way of making it not yet another aoe attack with a fixed cooldown and damage that increases with somthing.

I'm sorry if my vision of the class does not coincide with yours, I'm just expressing my impressions and ideas - you can dump/ignore them altogether.

[HousePet]

It was a deliberately extreme addon to test the concept with a sledgehammer.

I'm putting together a simpler design.

[HousePet]

First draft of simpler refined design.

Initial thoughts:
Might need an extra category for some defensive stuff, would have to be generic though.
Synergy in Sand, Acid and Wild needed. Probably need better synergy in Fire, Cold and Storm.
Too many actives?

Wyrmic Melee
Wyrmic Claw: active. 100-200% weapon damage strike with extra damage from aspect talent investment.
Sand-Physical
Fire-Fire
Storm-Lightning
Cold-Cold
Acid-Acid
Wild-Nature
Wyrmic Bite: active. 100% weapon damage strike that pins the target. If the target dies while affected they are swallowed, restoring life/resources. Gains debuffs from aspect talent investment.
Sand-Breaks shields
Fire-Disarmour
Storm-Shock
Cold-Slow
Acid-Reduce damage
Wild-Talent Failure
Skydive: active. Blindside and 100-300% weapon damage attack. Also inflicts disables based on your aspect talent investment in a 0-2 radius.
Sand-Pin
Fire-Blind
Storm-Daze
Cold-Freeze
Acid-Disarm
Wild-Silence
Elemental Slam: active. 100-200% weapon damage strike that stuns. Releases a radius 1-3 damage burst with damage based on aspect talent investment.
Sand-Quake
Fire-Inferno
Storm-Static Field
Cold-Frozen Ground
Acid-Corrode Armour
Wild-Manaburn+Dispel

Wyrmic Ranged
Wyrmic Spit: active. Willpower based nature damage projectile. Gains extra damage from aspect talent investment. Becomes radius 1 at high level.
Sand-Physical
Fire-Fire
Storm-Lightning
Cold-Cold
Acid-Acid
Wild-Manaburn
Wing Buffet: active. Short range cone attack that knocks enemies away. Inflicts disables based on your aspect talent investment.
Sand-Blind
Fire-Stun
Storm-Confuse
Cold-Frozen Feet
Acid-Corrode Weapon
Wild-Numbing Poison
Wyrmic Roar: active. Confuses all enemies within radius 2-6 of you. Inflicts debuffs based on your aspect talent investment.
Sand-Slow
Fire-Ignite
Storm-Static Field
Cold-Lowers stun/freeze resist
Acid-Disable sustains
Wild-Dispel
Wyrmic Breath: active. Long range cone attack with knockback. Gains high damage and debuffs from aspect talent investment.
Sand-Physical+Blind
Fire-Fire+Burn
Storm-Lightning+Daze
Cold-Cold+Freeze
Acid-Acid+Disarm
Wild-Manaburn+Insidious Poison.

Sand
Burrow: active. Allows you to burrow through walls for a short time. At higher levels you can swap place with enemies on bump attack.
Rock Scales: sustain. Increases physical save and block amount.
Earth Bite: active. Makes the ground reach up and grab enemies in a small radius around target. Physical damage and pin. High levels also fills the tiles with temporary sand walls.
Devourer: passive. Every kill restores life, equilibrium and stamina.

Fire
Trail of Destruction: active. Trailing flames. At high levels this becomes radius 1.
Ember Scales: sustain. Increases mind save, light radius and allows you to block fire damage.
Dancing Flames: active. Spreads burning/ground flames.
Enkindler: passive. When standing in flames or burning, you get increased global speed and do increased fire damage.

Storm
Lightning Speed: active. Greatly increased movement speed for a short time.
Spark Scales: sustain. Increases defence, does lightning damage to ranged attackers and allows you to block lightning damage.
Tornado: (buffed a little)
Thunder Beast: passive. Increases accuracy and critical chance. Grants a small chance for a lightning daze chain on critical.

Cold
Ice Wall: active. Creates a wall of ice at target location. Any creatures in the way are frozen too.
Icy Scales: Increases armour, does cold damage to melee attackers and allows you to block cold damage.
Shatter Ice: active. Ends all nearby freeze/frozen feet/icewall effects, doing cold damage in a radius 0-2? burst around them.
Ice Sculptor: passive. Grants iceblock pierce and turns freeze effects on you into damage shields.

Acid
Slime Field: active: Creates a zone where you move faster and enemies move slower.
Corrosive Mist: sustain. Grants evasion, blinds melee attackers and allows you to block acid damage.
Acid Rain: active. Dissolves weapons and shields from enemies.
???: passive.

Wild
Root Lash: Basically Bone Grab but with a nature damage weapon smack.
Nature's Defender: sustain. Increases spell save and arcane resistance, and allows you to block nature and arcane damage.
Curify: active. Ends all debuffs on self and restores life/equilibrium for each.
???: passive. Damage shield penetration?

[SageAcrin]

Question;

How do you plan on using central talents like those, but still have MHDs/MHWs properly represent all elements?

If they simply would have every aspect, their attacks become incredibly powerful multiple-status/debuff nightmares.

If they instead have a ton of non-aspect effects, and a bunch of elemental talents, they still become more dangerous overall, as they would end up with the same raw killing power and much higher utility disabling.

If you limit them to just, say, Wyrmic Breath and a few token talents to represent the elements, they end up far weaker then they are currently, probably weaker than the normal drakes/wyrms.

I might be missing something, but I don't see a good way to balance them with those parameters. Those aren't incredibly common-enemy-friendly talent traits.

[HousePet]

I'd setting a value in the on learn triggers of the talents to record talent points spent.
If the multihued enemies need a buff to elemental effects on the non elemental talents, it could be done by just giving them some innate values.

Could limit the debuffs to only 1 or 2 per talent use. Either via making them percentage chance based, or just a random roll to determine which are applied.
Some of the debuffs could also be swapped for self buffs/cures.
Maybe I just assigned too many debuffs.

To be honest, I don't see the point of maintaining perfect parity between npc drake talents and wyrmic class talents. They have different design requirements.

[anonymous000]

I like the way you expand grayswandir's idea.

1. Actives: I don't think there are too many actives. Having many actives is one of the defining aspect of wyrmics.

2. Synergy: I think there should be more synergy between talents. To do that we need to think about "what a (insert an element here) wyrmic should play like" first rather than "what talents would suit a (insert an element here) wyrmic". I see that there are quite a lot of synergy for Ice (seems more about freeze manipulation and defense, Shatter Ice and Ice Sculpter are cool), this maybe also true for Fire (manipulating the fire on the ground / the burning status), and Wild Drake has a very clear theme of bring an antimagic drake, but other aspects need more work.

For example, if I decide Lightning Wyrmic should be something that never stops moving, it would imply the Lightning tree would be more about mobility, and I would design the talents as such:

Lightning Speed: Passive. When you kill, you transform into a lightning beam, move to the target location and cause lightning damage to everything in the path
Spark Scales: Sustain. Every time you take hit your global speed increases, the bonus decreases every turn. Also allows you to block lightning damage.
Thunder: You transform into a thunder, works like Dimensional Step+Static Field
Thunder Beast: passive. Every time you move across a tile or scoring a critical hit, your crit chance increases, the bonus decreases every turn. Grants a small chance for a lightning daze chain on critical.

[anonymous000]

Overall comment:

Wyrmic Melee: 1.While it lacks pure damage, it is compensated by a variety of status effects, I think it is a good direction for wyrmics. 2.For Bite, in my experience inflicting pin status at melee range is not that useful for a melee class because by the time you reach the archers/casters you can inflict more damaging status like stun. 3.Given now we don’t have a shield offense/two-hand offense tree, the shield + two-hander niche maybe good for the class to boost its melee damage a little bit

Wyrmic Ranged: Do the talents scale with mindpower (as opposed to the melee one whose effectiveness clearly scale with physical power)? If yes then probably it is not a good idea as Wing Buffet, Roar and Breath are quite the signature talents of wyrmics, and I want my wyrmic to be capable of both melee and the aforementioned talents as well. I would suggest having this tree scales with strength or physical power, while specialization is done by focusing on the elemental trees, rather than choosing from going melee/ranged.

Resources Management: Given the short cooldown and that all talents cost equilibrium now, more talents that could help you manage equilibrium is necessary.

Defensive stuff: Wyrmic is tanky enough thanks to the Fungus tree, I don’t think an extra category is needed unless you want to replace Fungus with it

The T2 talents: They are fun, but fire/lightning/cold/acid are fairly common elements in the shields, to increase their effectiveness I would suggest adding one more element that they can block by activating them

[HousePet]

Ranged talents would scale with Willpower.

[anonymous000]

Some more idea on Sand and Fire; for Acid and Wild, I don't have much idea yet

Sand
About: Manipulating Terrains as they see fit, and therefore the terrain manipulation talents have to be easy to control and quite spammable. Some suggestions made for Quake (Sand Elemental Slam), Burrow, Earth Bite and Devourer

Quake: Rearranging terrain randomly is quite cool, but the problem is that sometimes the skill may work against you and by then you would have wasted 1 turn. I suggest making the talent an instant cast and so that you will have 1 more turn to react by using burrow/earth bite, but this could be difficult to implement as Quake would be used simultaneously with the Elemental Slam of other elements
Burrow: Suggest making it an instant cast to give players one more turn to react to the consequences of Quake. Also suggest changing the additional bonus of swapping place with enemies on bump attack to something like reduce armor/pierce resistance as the use of swap is often too situational and it doesn’t give players enough motive to invest into this talent.
Earth Bite: Suggest buffing the skill’s usability and limit its damage to make it more useful for terrain manipulation: Give filling tiles with temporary sand walls since level1. At level 4, you can cast one more time in the same turn.
Devourer: The stamina regeneration is useless now given we don’t have a talent that uses stamina. The equilibrium regeneration is critical now for wyrmic and I suggest putting it in a separate category that every wyrmic could easily have access to. I would suggest changing it to the passive below

Crusher: Passive. Applies additional physical damage to your melee attack if you, your target and a solid object form a 3-tile straight line. Passive version of Massive Blow without the knockback nor dig. It means that Quake/Earth Bite can help you boost your melee attack by forming the correct terrain.

Fire
About: Manipulating ground flame/burning, the fire on the ground triggered from talents stacks. It means that a Fire Wyrmic cannot deliver a huge damage at a short time, but very deadly at extended fights. Trail of Destruction maybe a little bit difficult to get it to damage enemies so I suggest removing it

Dancing Flames: active. Inflict fire burn damage in a radius of x. If the enemies are burning already, remove burning status and consume the burn to deal 100%-125% of its remaining damage instantly, and leave flames on the ground in radius ~2
Ember Scales:
Melt: Active, projectile cannot pass through the ground flame in radius x of you for n turns, so that you don’t have to leave the ground flame to deal with other archers/casters first when you are fighting elites
Enkindler: ground flame in radius x of you will never be burnt out nor hurt you or your allies. The damage of the flame also increases by x% every turn

[HousePet]

Redesigned based on feedback.
Now with more cohesion and less debuffs.
NB: Not listed here is that all the Wyrmic Attack talents do extra damage for each point invested in the different aspect categories.
Neither are talent costs. Please imagine that the Melee talents cost both stamina and equilibrium with the stamina cost being higher. Same with the Ranged talents but the equilibrium cost is higher. Aspect talents are pure equilibrium.


Wyrmic Melee
Wyrmic Claw: active. 100-200% weapon damage strike.

Wyrmic Bite: active. 100% weapon damage strike that pins the target. If the target dies while affected they are swallowed, restoring life/resources.
Inflicts Silence with Curify.
Breaks Shields with Burrow.

Skydive: active. Blindside and 100-300% weapon damage attack.
Inflicts Burning with Enkindler.
Inflicts Daze with Tornado.
Inflicts Freeze with Icewall.

Elemental Slam: active. 100-200% weapon damage strike that stuns. Releases a radius 1-3 damage burst with damage based on aspect talent investment.
Does Quake with Rock Scales.
Wild gives manaburn not nature damage.
Inflicts Corrode Armour with ???
Inflicts Dispel with Nature's Defender.

Wyrmic Ranged
Wyrmic Spit: active. Willpower based nature damage projectile. Becomes radius 1 at high level.
Wild gives manaburn not nature damage.
Does Ground Flames with Dancing Flames.
Inflicts Frozen Feet with Icy Scales.
Inflicts Acid Burn with Acid Rain.

Wing Buffet: active. Short range cone attack that knocks enemies away and stuns them.
Cures Mental with Thunder Beast.
Lowers Cooldowns with Shatter Ice.

Wyrmic Roar: active. Confuses all enemies within radius 2-6 of you.
Cures Physical with Crusher.
Restores Stamina with Trail of Destruction.
Inflicts Static Field with Spark Scales.
Cures Magical with Slime Field.
Restores Equilibrium with Rootlash.

Wyrmic Breath: active. Long range cone attack with knockback. Gains high damage from aspect talent investment.
Wild gives manaburn not nature damage.
Inflicts Blind with Earth Bite.
Inflicts Burning with Ember Scales.
Inflicts Daze with Lightning Speed.
Inflicts Freeze with Ice Sculptor.
Inflicts Corrode Weapon with Corrosive Mist.
Inflicts Insidious Poison with Nature's Crusader.

Sand
Burrow: active. Allows you to burrow through walls for a short time. At higher levels your hits will reduce armour/physical resistance. Adds Shield Break to Bite.
Rock Scales: sustain. Increases physical save and block amount. Allows you to detect creatures through walls. Adds Quake to Slam.
Earth Bite: active. Makes the ground reach up and grab enemies in a small radius around target. Physical damage and fills the tiles with temporary sand walls. Adds Blind to Breath,
Crusher: passive. Applies additional physical damage to your melee attacks if your target has a wall behind them. Adds Cure Physical to Roar.

Fire
Trail of Destruction: active. Trailing flames. At high levels this becomes radius 1. Adds Restore Stamina to Roar.
Ember Scales: sustain. Increases mind save, light radius and allows you to block fire damage. Adds burning to Breath.
Dancing Flames: active. Spreads/accelerates burning/ground flames. Adds ground flames to Spit.
Enkindler: passive. When standing in flames or burning, you get increased global speed and fire damage. Adds burning to Skydive.

Storm
Lightning Speed: active. Greatly increased movement speed for a short time. Any attack made while this is in effect gets and extra mini chain lightning. Adds Daze to Breath.
Spark Scales: sustain. Increases defence, does lightning damage to ranged attackers and allows you to block lightning damage. Adds Static Field to Roar.
Tornado: (buffed a little) Adds Daze to Skydive.
Thunder Beast: passive. Grants a chance for a free Lightning Speed on criticals. Adds Cure Mental to Buffet.

Cold
Ice Wall: active. Creates a wall of ice at target location. Any creatures in the way are frozen too. Radiates cold damage at high levels. Adds Freeze to Skydive.
Icy Scales: sustain. Increases armour, does cold damage to melee attackers and allows you to block cold damage. Adds Frozen Feet to Spit.
Shatter Ice: active. Ends all nearby freeze/frozen feet/icewall effects, doing cold damage in a radius 0-2? burst around them. Adds Lowers Cooldowns to Buffet.
Ice Sculptor: passive. Grants iceblock pierce and turns freeze effects on you into damage shields. Adds Freeze to Breath.

Acid
Slime Field: active: Creates a zone where you move faster and enemies move slower. Adds Cure Magical to Roar.
Corrosive Mist: sustain. Grants evasion, blinds melee attackers and allows you to block acid damage. Adds Corrode Weapon to Breath.
Acid Rain: active. Dissolves weapons and shields from enemies. Adds Acid Burn to Spit.
???: passive. Acid attacks do extra damage versus debuffed enemies. Adds Corrode Armour to Slam.

Wild
Root Lash: Basically Bone Grab but with a nature damage weapon smack. Adds Restore Equilibrium to Roar.
Nature's Defender: sustain. Increases spell save and arcane resistance, and allows you to block nature and arcane damage. Adds Dispel to Slam.
Curify: active. Ends all debuffs on self and restores life for each one removed. Adds Silence to Bite.
Nature's Crusader: passive. Damage shield penetration and adds dispel to Root Lash and Manaclash. Adds Insidious Poison to Breath.

[anonymous000]

The Wyrmic Melee & Ranged seems weird. I can't really understand how it works. For example, Skydive "Inflicts Daze with Tornado.", does that means points put into Tornado cause Skydive to inflict daze? As a player I feel such mechanism a little bit messy and difficult to understand. However, The elemental trees seem quite fine, I think you can start coding them for experiment. And please do start a new thread if you are going to do this, the redesign direction has changed so much that the title is misleading.

As for the general wyrmic offense, I feel we could de-link the elemental trees and the wyrmic tree, and to make the talents in the wyrmic trees more interesting by themselves, rather than having their interesting-ness based on investing in the wyrmic trees.

If I am going to design the general wyrmic combat, I will design something like this:
They are strong at delivering AoE attacks, but so-so at single target attacks. When they fight, they literally sweep their enemies with claws, rather than delivering small attacks to a single tiny creature. They are going to have only AoE for general combat. Although lacking in nukes, wyrmic is supported by a bunch of supporting talents in the elemental trees and the wyrmic prowess tree

Wyrmic Combat
Claw: 1-2range cone, 3 turns cooldown
Skydive: Blindside+Elemental Slam, deal physical damage. 6 turns cooldown
Bellowing Roar:
Breath: which breath you can use depends on your investment in the elemental trees (works like graywandsir’s addon), different breaths works differently. 6 turns cooldown

Wyrmic Prowess
Wing Buffet: Sustain, consume equilibrium per turn. Damage and knockback enemies in range x (doesn’t sound good to me, but I feel it is very difficult to make Wing Buffet more useful as Wing Buffet is supposed to knock enemies back, but knockback is seldom useful unless you are a caster/archer)
Quake: Sustain, consume equilibrium per turn. Remove the knockback and character displace. Randomly rearrange terrains in range x and 20%-40% chance to daze enemies per turn. (I do strongly recommend turning Quake into a sustain. 1. It would make Quake much more controllable as you can Quake until the desired terrain is formed 2. It is visually cool 3. All dragons should be able to cause earthquakes)
Nature’s Incarnate: Passive, Your Meditation Talent Negative Damage Modifier is reduced by X% (borrowed from Davion Fuxa’s idea, making Meditation more useful)
Outrage: Remove the cooldown of the Wyrmic Combat talents for n turns but increase their equilibrium consumption

Some nitpicking for the elemental trees:
Fire: I feel it is very difficult to get enemies hit by Trail of Destruction; as for Enkindler, it has the same problem with Elemental Harmony: It prompts cheap tactic, you can cheese the talent by 1/1/1/5 in the Fire tree

Storm: The talents themselves are fine, but to me they lack epicness. The central talents are Lightning Speed and Thunder Beast, but how they work does not make you seem like a thunder incarnate, they seem to fit an Arcane Blade more. (Notice that my comment is not based on logic here, the mechanics of the talents are fine)

Acid: I guess you will be debuffing enemies quite often, the effect of the T4 passive could scale with the number of debuffs that your target is having

Wild: I feel sending a tiny root is a little bit inappropriate for a huge Wild Wyrm. How about a “Antimagic Forest” which forms a unique terrain which disturbs magic/lowers all creature’s magical power in range? As for Curify, it will probably be overpowered, suggest limiting it to curing magical status only.

[HousePet]

The whole point on this design style is to have core talents that change based on element investment.
The talent descriptions would update themselves to make it clear what they currently do.

Trail of Destruction is really easy to hit enemies with. You step backwards. Its the same as Oozemancer Mucus.
The Enkindler boost would be easier to use than the Elemental Harmony one, you wouldn't need to cheese it.

Not sure why you think Rootlash is a tiny root. It is capable of dragging massive creatures to you and doing lots of damage.

[anonymous000]

The whole point on this design style is to have core talents that change based on element investment.
The talent descriptions would update themselves to make it clear what they currently do.

Trail of Destruction is really easy to hit enemies with. You step backwards. Its the same as Oozemancer Mucus.
The Enkindler boost would be easier to use than the Elemental Harmony one, you wouldn't need to cheese it.

Not sure why you think Rootlash is a tiny root. It is capable of dragging massive creatures to you and doing lots of damage.

Trail of Destruction: Wyrmic should be the one to press forward, stepping back does not sound wyrmic-like to me.

Rootlash: I did not express my opinion properly. As the only offense talent in the tree, while Rootlash provides good functionality, it is much less fancy when compared to the offensive talents in other trees. If I am going to specialize in the Fire Drake tree, I would be able to fill an area with flames; But if I am going to specialize in the Wild Drake tree, the only tree-specific offense talent I get is a Bone Grab equivalent

[HousePet]

Just get Trail of Destruction to 5 or use Dancing Flames. Then you don't need to step back.
Or use a movement infusion/lightning speed and run a ring around the enemy.
You just need to think about it.

The element aspect categories are more about theme, flavour and utility than raw offensive power. Which is why Acid and Wild only have one damaging talent each. These talents are for functionality, there are two categories loaded with damaging talents.

Replacing Curify with some sort of antimagic zone might work.