Wyrmic Tweaks(With addon!)

[donkatsu]

Large groups always consist of low hp enemies that will die to a couple of breaths anyway, so the 25% chance to stun or 20% global slow makes little difference in mass combat, although it is welcome against bosses and uniques. I did notice the cooldown reduction with Wyrmic Guile, but I think the main limiting factor is equilibrium cost. Wyrmics only recover at most like 3 equilibrium per turn with Fungus, so if you're constantly blowing 12 eq per turn you'll run out pretty fast (this is against tough single targets; multiple enemies will all be wiped out before cost or cooldown ever become an issue, and also you can use Swallow for eq recovery). They have Meditation, but Meditation cuts your damage, so spending a lot of equilibrium in order to do more damage is counterproductive.

Evening out eq costs would indeed make breaths more relevant, but early game eq is already pretty limited. When you only have 30 Will, you can only use a 10 eq attack 3 times before you start suffering failures, which is pretty harsh compared to every other resource. Summoners and Oozemancers also have single digit eq costs early on, and they even have easy equilibrium regen (Jelly and Mucus) anyway, so raising tier 1/2 costs for Wyrmics, who had the most resource problems to begin with, doesn't seem like a solution. What if

-Swallow restored equilibrium based on damage dealt in addition to the kill bonus, so that Wyrmic equilibrium recovery scaled like Summoners, and to a lesser extent Oozemancers.
-Quake, Wing Buffet, Acidic Spray, and Corrosive Mist all did about 15-30% less damage at 5/5, but kept their low eq cost and cooldown, so they're still reliable early game, and serve as cd fillers/passive bonuses/niche utility lategame. Devouring Flame, and Tornado can stay as they are because they're tier 3s, and Static Field was niche to begin with.
-Breaths keep their current high cost and do maybe 10-20% more damage, so that as you become better able to manage your equilibrium, they'll serve as powerful equilibrium sinks compared to cheaper but weaker tier 1/2s.

[Torokasi]

Donkatsu's fixes seem basically reasonable, except for Acidic Spray which I have basically been using solely to try and disarm stuff lategame. It was already relatively earlygame-focused; dropping damage on it further... IDK. maybe? My playthrough hasn't been very mindpower-centric so that may be my issue here.

Equi, sort of in contrast to Donkatsu, has been a minimal problem for me all game. I've been doing a random skill run (roll three skills at random each level, pick one to put the point in)... and failed to get any points in Ancestral Life until L30. This -has not mattered at all-. The first five levels are always sort of rough for Wyrmic, but that's basically the first dungeon and change - past that point I've gone up to about 300 Equi and kept slugging rather comfortably thanks to good healing reserves and Swallow giving me small chunks of Equi back. (In fairness, I've had very little Breath invest due to poor luck. 5/5 Fire Breath and only 1 or 2 points in two others.)


I think (I may be wrong) that part of the conflict is coming from some people considering the Breaths to be the "main draw" of old Wyrmic. To preserve this, in tandem with Donkatsu's changes minus the Breath changes, one change that came to mind as I played... move the breaths to the second slot (so, for example, Swallow -> Sand Breath -> Burrow -> Quake).

This does a few things: it allows people to play Breath-focused Wyrmics a lot more easily (without the potential issue of them being seen as "forced" builds in the first slot), allows us to push the now more effective skills to later slots, and emphasizes the Breaths as a tool for crowd clearing.


Swallow -> Sand Breath -> Burrow -> Quake
Lightning Speed -> Lightning Breath -> Tornado -> Static Field
Ice Claw -> Ice Breath -> Ice Wall -> Icy Skin (maybe buff this skill a bit further to compensate for its new position)
Bellowing Roar -> Fire Breath -> Wing Buffet -> Devouring Flame
Acidic Spray -> Acid Breath -> Corrosive Mist -> Dissolve


Overall though I'm just going to emphasize that I'm really enjoying this class with this addon in place - it's definitely helped shore up a lot of skills I basically considered to be absolute dead weight and has made a rando-skill run pretty possible (which in turn means that there aren't really any "traps" where I know I should be avoiding X or Y skill. Breaths have seen some use for me - they're just not centric, which I'm more than fine with.)

[SageAcrin]

Quake and Wing Buffet had values tuned rather highly as a just in case thing, and Corrosive Mist got a small buff at the last second that I was sorta waffling on-nerfing those a bit is fine with me.

Acidic Spray I have gotten mixed enough feedback so that leaving it seems good, unless I decide to move breaths to T1 and change the buffs to them. (I am waffling on this... I'd rather leave breaths optional so that it's easier to make divergent builds.)

The Equi issues of Wyrmic seem to vary vastly from player opinion to player opinion, and I like it not being insanely easy to regain Equi as such-Swallow being a much more effective combat option was my answer to that, rather than a more linear buff.

For breaths, I already pumped the damage on one of them(Lightning) quietly and no one noticed-which is good, as the time you're most likely to notice that is if you're killed by it. Fire and Venomous can easily and safely be buffed. That leaves Cold, Corrosive and Sand-I'm a little leery about upping Sand Breath damage, but that set... could work out with some buffs, I think.

[donkatsu]

Actually yeah, in retrospect I could have just lived with having non-zero failure rates. I basically played Paradox Mage with the idea that even a 1% failure rate could lead to a sudden and painful death, but that doesn't apply so much to Wilders. And mucus eq regen was nerfed, so that actually leaves Summoners as more of an outlier from the other two than Wyrmics. Jelly really is silly high eq regen though.

[SageAcrin]

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/wyrmic ... -mk-ii-102

Here you go, tweaks to various talents based on Donkatsu/Torokasi's feedback, and a small tweak to Prismatic Slash to make it use the new FIRE_STUN and ICE_SLOW types, since it's meant to mimic the various breaths.

[RedBucket]

For equi recovery, I had this idea: Sustain. Each melee hit deals an additional X nature damage and lowers your equilibrium by X. Additionally, whenever you use a drake aspect ability, your melee attacks are enhanced with an additional X damage of that ability's element for X turns, up to X additional elements at once. The effects will scale with your mind power.

Replaces prismatic slash. One of the other higher draconic abilities could make you create explosions of your current elements on-crit with melee while that is sustained. This makes the weapon techniques more synergistic with the dragon abilities, makes mind power consistently more important, and increases the viability of mindstars because you can divert points from weapon techniques to cover more trees and keep the element buffs going.

[NemesisZeru]

Got this bug when trying to equip Colyarem as a Draconic Wyrmic with the tweaks addon:



After this, the sword vanished, but I found it at the bottom of the stash. Equipping it caused my Colyarem to vanish. Might be related to an antimagic thing(I thought Colyarem was nature, heh.), or the fact it mentions Gray's weaponspack, but figured I'd put it here just to be safe.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, considering this addon doesn't touch actor.lua, it's probably not this one.

Still, worth knowing, people can always keep an eye out.

[NemesisZeru]

Yeah, considering this addon doesn't touch actor.lua, it's probably not this one.

Still, worth knowing, people can always keep an eye out.

Yeah. Upon looking at the error again and the like, I figured it was probably the weaponspack if anything, just wanted to make note of it just in case(That, and I had the post written out when I noticed).

[phalaris]

Have played with this addon a bit recently. I like the new quake and ice claw. They are very nice with on hit status effects. Burrow doesn't work on trees or natural walls, while this fits thematically with the talent it makes using quake in tree or other non-rock dungeons really annoying to the point where I stopped using it. If we can imagine burrowing through rock I don't see why it would work by ripping through, or tearing down trees. And this would even out play style to work in most areas not just the ones with rock walls.

[SageAcrin]

Burrow's thing is a thematic concept that I'm reluctant to change because I understand the theme concept behind it, and because Quake can never really get you into a situation you can't get out of with more Quake.

That's something that I'd petition DarkGod to change in general, rather than something to get in with an addon like this, as such?

[phalaris]

I agree about the theme(its in the name of the talent). The way play ends up often when burrow is unavailable is rest-quake, rest-quake, repeat and sometimes you end up in the corner of map. Then I start digging my way back. It interrupts the flow of play. If this addon is not the place thats fine. This has been one of the major detractors for quake since the start though.

[notmiki]

http://te4.org/characters/13597/tome/b0 ... 6669418174

Ok, I played through Sage's addon with this character. It's sitting in High Peak, but I haven't faced the final boss because I want to be able to mess around a bit more. Sigh Yeek Dying Plot. I set out to do an exclusively mindpower-based wyrmic (plus AM), not investing in strength or breaths. To see if that kind of build could work. Conclusion: it absolutely can, is relatively well-balanced, and was pretty fun.

My initial offense was Acidic Field, Static Field (both pre- and post-fix), Tornado, and Devouring Flame. In the midgame I picked up mindstar mastery, leveled up Psiblades, and added the weapon damage skills: Wing Buffet, Quake, Swallow, Icy Claw, and Chromatic Slash. For prodigies I picked up Meteoric Crash and Superpower. The latter is why I invested in Str at all.

If the point of this rebalance was to give Wyrmic multiple viable builds by giving them a lot of buttons to press to choose from, mission accomplished. Wyrmic needs lots of big buttons to push because of the failure chance of equilibrium, and I for one prefer it that way. It gives the class a unique go big or go home style, and ToME is at its best when it has a collection of classes that play fundamentally differently from one another. I personally prefer a wyrmic that makes use of multiple elements, but with the balance changes in this addon it seems to me to be entirely possible to focus on one and use the others solely for utility.

Thoughts on skill balance:

Static Charge - even after nerfing the unintentional(lly hilarious) extra hits, it's slightly too powerful.

Acid Spray - could use more damage late in the game, if you ask me. I know it's supposed to be something of a crutch for the earlygame, but it could really stand to scale better with mindpower.

Tornado - is fine.

Devouring Flame - is a joy to use, and both the damage and healing seem to me to be exactly where they should be.

Swallow - is there any way this could be made to have a 0% failure rate? That would be nice.

Quake - is a lot of fun. Note that it can shift around non-diggable terrain in Last Hope Cemetary and Tannen's Tower. I am quite certain this predates the addon, but anyway.

Icy Claw - sure doesn't seem to inflict freeze much at low levels. Other than that it's fine.

Wing Buffet - seems fine to me, but I wonder if it might be better for this to do fire-elemental damage. Wyrmic only has 2 skills that do fire element damage other than Chromatic Slash, and it seems to me it could use a third.

It may be worth considering having certain Wyrmic skills increase in equi cost based on talent level. Things that can be either for utility or for damage like Wing Buffet, Earthquake, Bellowing Roar.

[Suslik]

I think (I may be wrong) that part of the conflict is coming from some people considering the Breaths to be the "main draw" of old Wyrmic. To preserve this, in tandem with Donkatsu's changes minus the Breath changes, one change that came to mind as I played... move the breaths to the second slot (so, for example, Swallow -> Sand Breath -> Burrow -> Quake).

this. 100% support the experiment, will test this as soon as i get to my machine.

[Suslik]

bump. really what are the cons of moving breaths to t2 skills? that will really make str-based build less unsynergetic.