Mesmer class addon

[weimer]

******* Changes from v2 to v3:

Fixed the tricky bug that was causing some to think Staff underpowered and
some to think Staff overpowered. The default engine code for
stacking bleeds and burns adds the total damage together but
keeps the original source. So if the first attack to hit a foe
came from an illusion (at 2% damage), subsequent stacking from
you (should be 100% damage) would appear to come from the illusion
and thus only deal 2% damage. Conversely, if the first attack to
hit a foe came from you (at 100% damage), subsequent stacks from
illusions would end up dealing full damage!

This explains the experience where some would report easily killing
a boss with a room of staff illusions (first hit from you or a
warlock) and some would report the staff as largely worthless
(first hit from illusions).

Now instead of stacking, if a victim already has a Mesmer DOT of
type X and gets hit with another Mesmer DOT of type X, the first
one discharges all at once (from its source) and the second one is
then applied over time as normal (from its source).

Winds of Chaos typo: arcane DOT was lasting 7 turns instead of 4

Greatsword and Staff attacks now may apply weapon "on melee hit" effects.
There was a strong sense that there was no reason to get a better
greatsword (and only a little reason to get a better staff). Now in
addition to looking for defensive weapons, weapons that grant
talents, weapons that grant ability score boosts, and weapons that
grant speed or mobility, you can also look for weapons that grant
"on melee hit" powers.

Illusionary Wave: reworked to avoid strange "pinning" reference from old
Chronomancer code. Now sends out three separate waves, each of
which knocks back (and applies "on hit" damage). As a result,
foes will either get knocked far away for moderate damage, or
foes that cannot be knocked away (near walls, etc.) will take
higher damage.

Mantra Meditation is now a passive. You can view the cooldown timer by
inspecting it in your 'talent list' menu.

Major Todo:
(1) Find better handling for Mesmer Worn Equipment.
Minor Todo:
Chaos Storm graphic may not match radius.
The usual ToME engine bugs for summons (cf. Marson) apply here.

[weimer]

> Getting an odd glitch where whenever I load my current character (Mortal being run under v2) he gets stunned and blinded for 4 turns.

That does not sound like fun! Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it, and when I follow that link I get a blank page. Perhaps someone out there has a suggestion?

In the interim, I implemented a number of suggestions and bugfixes from this thread, and I also believe I figured out what was causing the "staff is too strong / staff is too weak" perceptions.

The big issue on the horizon is now handling non-weapon equipment. What do people think of any of these options?

(1) Some sort of X% chance of failure, X% reduction in damage, or X% reduction in speed (etc.) given Y% fatigue. [ Concern: this still makes equipment feel "frustrating", because humans are bad at accepting minor penalties and will never wear the equipment unless there is an overwhelming advantage. ]

(2) Mesmers can equip items that do not require Armor Training 1. [ Concern: this makes Mesmers too strong: they are supposed to be squishy. ]

(3) Mesmers can convert fatiguing items into illusionary items that provide no armor/defense/fatigue.

(4) Mesmers can destroy items to learn their egos, blank items, and apply egos to blank items (likely costing gems).

(5) Other?

[joebobjoe]

I'm thinking (3) Mesmers can convert fatiguing items into illusionary items that provide no armor/defense/fatigue but as a passive so that they don't render anything they wear unfit for item vault (fatigue causes reduction in armor as you turn parts of it ephemeral to compensate?) also fixed character link. Apparently the tome engine copy to clipboard function spams a whole lot of random characters in on mac. And don't worry since it started occuring I made sure I was out of combat before saving. As is he is currently having fun exploring an underwater area full of casters who can see a lot further than he can. Luckily imps only hit for minor damage before I get the shield up. Looking at the sheet it appears he is always being saved as stunned and blinded for some reason.

[Sradac]

you should add this to the Steam workshop. It will get a lot more exposure.

Also your link in the first post is a broken link, goes to http// instead of http://

[weimer]

> (3) Mesmers can convert fatiguing items into illusionary items that provide no armor/defense/fatigue but as a passive so that they don't render anything they wear unfit for item vault

Ah! I don't use the cross-character item vault. Can someone out there give me a brief summary of what the requirements are for items to go in? For example, the implication above is that mindslayer-reshaped weapon would be forbidden.

> you should add this to the Steam workshop. It will get a lot more exposure.

That's reasonable, but it's not clear that high exposure is my goal. More directly, however, I'd probably need to get someone to draw all new icons (or re-use/re-color existing ToME ones), or at least look into what Steam's rules are about that, since the GW2 art assets from their wiki aren't GPL.

> also fixed character link.

OK. The link works now, and I can see that the character is blinded and whatnot. However, I can't reproduce it locally (I made a test char, ran for a bit, saved, loaded, didn't see the issue). Perhaps you can PM me a copy of your saved game?

[joebobjoe]

> (3) Mesmers can convert fatiguing items into illusionary items that provide no armor/defense/fatigue but as a passive so that they don't render anything they wear unfit for item vault

Ah! I don't use the cross-character item vault. Can someone out there give me a brief summary of what the requirements are for items to go in? For example, the implication above is that mindslayer-reshaped weapon would be forbidden.

> you should add this to the Steam workshop. It will get a lot more exposure.

That's reasonable, but it's not clear that high exposure is my goal. More directly, however, I'd probably need to get someone to draw all new icons (or re-use/re-color existing ToME ones), or at least look into what Steam's rules are about that, since the GW2 art assets from their wiki aren't GPL.

> also fixed character link.

OK. The link works now, and I can see that the character is blinded and whatnot. However, I can't reproduce it locally (I made a test char, ran for a bit, saved, loaded, didn't see the issue). Perhaps you can PM me a copy of your saved game?

Vault rules are fairly simple: Generally has to be from same version of TOME and cannot have had any abilities that permanently modify equips used on it (to prevent say you getting an alchemist with a ton of high tier gems, crafty hands, and 5 imbue to make all your applicable equipment past the fortress from having been fully blinged out at no cost to the newly blinged character). So if you make it a passive which just applies armor then defense reduction equal to fatigue you're fine but if say you make it suddenly have new and interesting effects coded onto it it may well cause problems. As for the save file where do I go to find it?

[Sradac]

Not sure if compatibility is on your list of things to be concerned with or not, but this Addon is not compatible with HousePets Arcanum addon.

There's a talent called Time Warp in both. I only mention it because Arcanum has some really cool artifacts, the extra classes dont matter since the player can only be one class at a time.

[joebobjoe]

Not sure if compatibility is on your list of things to be concerned with or not, but this Addon is not compatible with HousePets Arcanum addon.

There's a talent called Time Warp in both. I only mention it because Arcanum has some really cool artifacts, the extra classes dont matter since the player can only be one class at a time.

What kind of incompatibility are we talking. All of my various test characters so far have had both installed and I'm having no trouble. Admittedly none of my characters have reached that particular skill yet as it's level 26.
EDIT: Did a quick test with dev moded yeek mesmer. No grand cascading failiures from activating the ability and it only does what is described.

[Sradac]

Huh, really? Thats really odd because the game wont even load up for me. It gets to 100% on the loading screen, then just sits there flickering and I have to kill the process:

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:82: talent already exists with id T_TIME_WARP
	At [C]:-1 
	At [C]:-1 assert
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:82 newTalent
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:37 newTalent
	At /data-arcanum/talents/spells/distort.lua:20 f
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:42 loadDefinition
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:39 load
	At /data-arcanum/talents/spells/spells.lua:159 f
	At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:42 loadDefinition
	At /hooks/arcanum/load.lua:11 
	At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 
	At /mod/load.lua:312 
	At [C]:-1 require
	At /engine/Module.lua:158 load
	At /engine/Module.lua:815 instanciate
	At /engine/utils.lua:2177 showMainMenu
	At /engine/init.lua:156 
	At [C]:-1 dofile
	At /loader/init.lua:196 

Unless this is a problem with the new Arcanum, but it only seems to happen when I have both Mesmer and Arcanum. Maybe House can chime in.

[Sradac]

I have a question on the fatigue mechanic though. I think its a really awesome concept, and forces the "squishiness". I always find it silly in games where an all powerful wizard can run around in full plate with only minor penalties to their magic prowess.

For the talents that can't be used "if you are fatigued by encumbering equipment", does this mean I cannot wear ANY gear with fatigue, or my fatigue just has to be <= 0 ? If I had a fatigue of 10, and I had equipment that reduces fatigue by 15 for example, would I be good to go?

[joebobjoe]

Yup. Just downloaded fresh Arcanum to verify (was a version behind initially). Funcioning perfectly fine. Test character to confirm stability which also doubles as a list of plugins I'm using. Also running this on Mac in case Operating system oddities are the problem. A quick probe on the other affected skill in Arcanum shows it fully functional.
Sradc it's 0 or less. If you find a nice pickaxe of endurance or somesuch you can freely run around in such forbidden articles as basic shoes. If you get lucky on a roll you may well get wearable full plate.

[marshmallowpeep]

I think you're dramatically overestimating the impact of leather armor by itself on survivability. Armor (the stat) doesn't have too great an impact without some source of increased hardiness, and the values are pretty low anyway. Leather doesn't provide much in the way of defense all by itself either. One defense per tier. Five at the most. That's nothing. All of the classes currently in the game that survive primarily via leather armor have talents that provide some combination of increased hardiness, huge defense bonuses, or the brawler's stance with the flat damage reduction. They also have dexterity as a primary stat. Truth be told, my deaths with this class have all been to mages or my own stupidity anyway. Enemy archers can't shoot through illusions and enemy melees get kited.

That being said, I like option 1 the best of your proposals. I like the fact that, in the current implementation, you can get around the fatigue limit with some luck and some effort. It's nice that I find myself actually looking for what I always considered kind of a junk stat (fatigue reduction). I don't like options 2 or 3 because they're hard limits. 4 would be cool too, assuming everything else stays as it is, but you still wouldn't be able to wear shoes without fatigue reduction.

Maybe you could just add scaling fatigue reduction to one of the traits?

Other stuff:
I keep finding myself wanting to go pure staff or pure greatsword, because I hate having to manually (in other words, spend a turn pressing Q) swap weapons and I can't find any rotations where that's not happening every once in a while. I would like it if Mesmeric Dodge had a cooldown of 3, but only gave the turn of invulnerability and the clone every other use, so I can at least reposition when I swap. Or maybe add some other 5 cool down talent with a swap built in somewhere? Or perhaps a no cooldown step-plus-swap skill? That last one would also help Mesmer in vaults, where they have trouble because of disabled teleports.

I get attacked by Zigur patrols, but I can actually enter Zigur, and even get offered the anti-magic quest. I'm pretty sure this is because Zigur being hidden is determined by which resource pools you have available. I don't think it matters much, but but it's an oddity.

The only way I can imagine the mantra cooldown reduction on Illusionary Frenzy being relevant is if you only took one mantra. Otherwise, optimal play requires you to use them more frequently than you could possible reduce the cooldown to. I don't know that this is necessarily a big deal, as mantras are still very powerful, and Illusionary Frenzy is probably worth it just for the crit to your summons, but it seems worth pointing out.

[joebobjoe]

I'm finding illusionary frenzy amazingly useful actually. Generally first round of combat I blow through each of my mantras (all at 1 use for now) then phase retreat, decoy, and phantasmal warlock. that gets the recovery time down to 7 and i can push it down to 3 next turn with mesmeric dodge (or 1 if i finally get around to getting decoy to level 3).

[marshmallowpeep]

>I'm finding illusionary frenzy amazingly useful actually. Generally first round of combat I blow through each of my mantras (all at 1 use for now) then phase retreat, decoy, and phantasmal warlock. that gets the recovery time down to 7 and i can push it down to 3 next turn with mesmeric dodge (or 1 if i finally get around to getting decoy to level 3).

Interesting. The way it's been going for me, I feel compelled to use the confuse mantra every 4 turns, to keep the enemies confused for as many consecutive turns as possible. Definite confusion for another four turns at the beginning seems superior to me to maybe confuse for 8 later in the fight. The freedom of movement one is kind of similar, if you leave it off for a few turns to try to make frenzy useful, you risk making the whole thing moot. The healing and cleansing mantras both kind of require you to use them when you need to use them. The only one I find I can just blow through like that is Mantra of Pain. I guess the idea of just having one charge (or simply having used all charges) of each didn't really occur to me, or ever happen to me. In that situation it's much easier to avoid using them for long enough for it to matter, since you can't just reuse the duration ones as soon as the duration is up, but it still seems like a sudden need to heal is pretty likely to mess it up. Of course, you do have other source of healing, but a talent you're not using because it'll reset your cooldowns is a talent you may as well not have.

[Thrantar]

Possible bug with the increased buff duration signet. Only applies to the first time ever you use any given buff.