Oozemaster Adjustments

[Doctornull]

Other nerf ideas:

- Indiscernible Anatomy works great vs. SPELL crits, but does less vs. other types of crits.

- Indiscernible Anatomy less effective vs. Stuns & Poison (which are typically from non-magical foes); still very good vs. Diseases.

[HousePet]

Some ideas for a new high level category.

Bane Arcane.
Decompose: Target creature takes small acid damage and looses armour(or maybe resistance?) and accuracy. If it is undead, it takes large acid damage instead.
Deny Arcane: Temporary buff/debuff, increases you arcane resistance and spell save. Nearby enemy creatures are afflicted with a temporary Arcane Disruption.
Greenfire: Creates a field of green flames that do acid and manaburn damage, and dispel one magical effect per turn.
Eyal's Wrath: Manaclash all enemies in sight. Lowers you equilibrium for each creature killed.

[The Revanchist]

That sounds like a cool high-level tree.

It also makes those infernal undead less of a problem, right off the bat.

[Hachem_Muche]

Now then another locked category: Manaburn themed! Maybe with some anti undead stuff?

Well, DG has said that the class doesn't need any more talents. So lets work with the ones we have. I don't think the class needs more anti-magic capability than already proposed here. Facing an oozemaster rare or boss with a primary magic casting class, like alchemist or archmage looks pretty scary to me at this point due to Manaclash, Aoe silence and now a steady resource drain from Oozebeam.

The Equ regen on Mitosis works well, it could even be slightly higher. I've maxed out Ancestral Life and the two together don't allow me to run Antimagic Shield, which is a good thing.

That's about what I was going for.
I'm running a level 42 Oozemaster with Anti-magic shield in the I.D. right now with heavy Mucus investment. This works pretty well: in a big fight, even with all the mucus-based eq. regen going, I still often lose Anti-magic shield, but the build is effective.

Still, I'm wondering if more passive regeneration and less mucus-based regeneration would be best. How much passive eq. regen do you think would work (for both a starting character and an end-game character)? Starting oozemasters should require some downtime between fights, like most other classes, of course.

Also, I still think the damage penetration talents in slot 4 of Corrosive Blades and Oozeing Blades doesn't fit and is unneeded. Corrosive Nature, Natural Acid and the copious Oozing artifacts are enough.

I disagree. I think the resist penetration is very important for the class, since it's damage is naturally divided into 2 or more elements. Still, the penetration from Unstoppable Nature and Acidic soil are only half as much as other similar talents, but, instead, carry significant secondary benefits, which is a nice twist.

The 2nd tier talents, Natural Acid and Corrosive Nature, seem pretty underwhelming at this point, though. Even with the resistance buff in the latest update, I'm having a hard time justifying putting more than the first point in them so I can get to the later tier talents. While I like the mechanic of the automatic self buff, since it rewards planning out your moves, in practice, the uncontrolled cooldown makes these talents too unreliable to be attractive.
Perhaps the buff duration should scale with talent level and provide another benefit like a damage bonus for the complementary element. Other suggestions?

How is damage output overall with the latest changes?

Also, I'm making an adjustment to ooze roots so that it doesn't go on cooldown and use your turn if you select an illegal target tile. Oozemancer mobility is already weak enough as is.

[darkgod]

Never said they dont need more talents, I said they dont need more defensive talents.

[Hachem_Muche]

Never said they dont need more talents, I said they dont need more defensive talents.

Well that opens things up then!

Some ideas for a new high level category.

Bane Arcane.
Decompose: Target creature takes small acid damage and looses armour(or maybe resistance?) and accuracy. If it is undead, it takes large acid damage instead.
Deny Arcane: Temporary buff/debuff, increases you arcane resistance and spell save. Nearby enemy creatures are afflicted with a temporary Arcane Disruption.
Greenfire: Creates a field of green flames that do acid and manaburn damage, and dispel one magical effect per turn.
Eyal's Wrath: Manaclash all enemies in sight. Lowers you equilibrium for each creature killed.

I think these are a little too focused on anti-magic. You don't want these talents to make a randboss into an automatic death machine for undead/arcane players.

Decompose looks a little boring, and I'm not sure how the debuffs would help most oozemancers.
Deny Arcane looks like a good idea. How about a passive spell save and arcane resistance buff, with a chance (<50%) to inflict a manaworm-like debuff (continuously burns mana) on targets with a manapool that hit you with a spell?
Greenfire looks good, but how about changing the manaburn damage to a chance to silence and/or disarm each turn it affects a target in it. Also, would probably need new distinctive graphics to differentiate it from Mucus, which it might be stacked with.
Eya's Wrath just looks too powerful.

Seems like the new tree might have some Nature affinity somewhere.

For Natural Acid and Corrosive Nature, I'm looking at making the duration of the resistance penetration buff scale up with talent level (they can't be continuous). To make them more interesting, perhaps Natural Acid could afflict the target that triggers the talent (1 target every cooldown, basically) with a random poison effect, much like the Poison Spores Talent, with similar damage. For Corrosive Nature, how about a (pretty typical) corrode debuff reducing accuracy, armor and defense that does damage over time?

[HousePet]

My Mitosis was only doing 0.4 per turn with 5 points. 0.5 would be fine. I didn't put any points in Meditation.
Mucus doing 4 points from you standing on it seems quite high.

Maybe merge Unstoppable Nature and Acidic Soil into Corrosive Nature and Natural Acid? They all feel a bit weak at the moment and the tactical element is more fun than flat damage penetration. Not sure changing from a debuff to buff for the penetration was a good idea. How about do the debuff with no cooldown?

Damage is 400 to 600 from Corrosive Seeds at level 36. Its strong, but not over the top. Especially since it requires getting the enemy to step on them. (incidently, the talent doesn't work if you target a grid containing a trap, even though it is radius 2)

Isn't this class supposed to be focussed on antimagic? They only have two antimagic class talents at the moment. And I totally do want Oozy randbosses to be feared for their antimagic abilities, rather than their over the top nature/acid damage.
These talents only took half an hour to draw up, so they could use refinement.
Decompose would be more useful as a resist all debuff. Then each locked category would have a way of dealing with resistances.
Deny Arcane: Trying to do something different to just manaburn everywhere. Passive effects would be fine. Not sure how many targets you are going to be hitting with spells though.
Greenfire: The fire on the ground particles can be recoloured to green to give it a different look. Corrosive Acid damage would be fine too. Would still like the magic dispel effect. Then you can use it to remove enemy magic buffs or magic debuffs from yourself.
Eyal's Wrath: Just turn the damage down a bit.

[Hachem_Muche]

I think this class is supposed to very good against magic users but not invincible! Also, I think most of the talents should have a use besides nuking magic users.

If it wasn't clear, my suggestion for "Deny Arcane" was that if you get hit with a spell, it costs the caster of the spell extra mana through a debuff.

Are Unstoppable Nature and Acidic Soil too weak now? The first potentially gives you some nice bonus damage from your mucus oozes (not sure how much to expect from that, though), while the second potentially adds huge effective life regeneration (it's what currently makes Oozemancers so hard to kill). I think folding Natural Acid and Corrosive Nature into them would make them too strong.

Making Greenfire a retch like ability that can remove magic buffs/debuffs depending on friendliness (without the added manaburn) should work, I think.

As for Eyal's Wrath, I don't like the idea of another sudden manadrain. High level manaclash is already strong enough to take down a whole mana/vim pool in a couple of hits. Instead maybe make it a kind of nature storm that does nature damage and drains mana (while replenishing eq for the caster) in an area around the user? The idea being that a mage that gets caught in it will have time to realize that they really need to get away from it.

[HousePet]

We need resource drain resistance...

The t2 and t4 resistance penetration talents are stepping on each others toes.
Could move all the resist penetration to the t2 talent and put some snazzy stuff like nature affinity on Unstoppable nature.
Maybe add Acid Splash stuff to Bloated Oozes with Acidic Soil?
Keep the damage bonus on the t4 though.

Nature/Manaburn storm for Eyal's Wrath would be pretty cool. The main idea for Eyal's Wrath was just a mass manaburn hit.

[Hachem_Muche]

New version uploaded.
Summary of adjustments:
Reduced the base eq. regen from Mucus a bit and increased the passive eq. regen for Mitosis w/Reabsorb

Increased the duration of the Natural Acid/ Corrosive Nature resist pen buffs with talent levels (always less than the cooldown.) Note that these, plus Unstoppable Nature/Acidic Soil put Oozemancers on the same level as other "caster" classes regarding resist pen, but require a higher investment, since they are affecting 2 elements.

Reduced the sustain eq. cost for Unstoppable Nature/Acidic Soil from 20 to 15. Since these require Psiblades (18 eq.) to be active, the total eq cost was just a bit too high.

Updated the tactical AI tables for several oozemancer talents.

Added a new talent tree, "Eyal's Fury" with a heavy offensive/anti-caster emphasis, designed to be approximately equlibrium neutral (at least against casters).

The summary of the all of the changes is now (ranges are estimated for a TL 1 starting char to TL5 endgame char):
Slime Spit:
Slightly reduced damage across all talent levels. The number of bounces you can get scales more like chain lightning (diminishing returns, but 5-6 at max talent level). Bouncing slime loses damage with each bounce (~-50% at level 1 to -35% at level 5)
Reduced the Slime spit projectile speed from 8x to 6x speed.

Mitosis:
Bloated Oozes get some inherent regeneration based on 5% of their maximum life.
Fixed a bug so that the maximum health limit is actually used.

Reabsorb:
Adds a passive eq. regen bonus ~(0.3 - 1.0 ) to Mitosis

Mucus:
Mucus stacked in the same square does not form new mucus pools. Instead, the existing mucus pool is enhanced by +1 eq regen and +70% poison damage (at max talent level), while increasing it's duration by +1 turn.
Slightly reduced base eq. regen.

Indiscernable Anatomy:
The crit power reduction is decreased to about 50% at max talent level. No longer gives confusion resistance.

Oozebeam:
Damage split into 90% slime (nature, slow) and 10% manaburn damage.

Natural Acid:
Gives a bonus to Nature resistance (~20% at max TL) and provides a self buff to Nature resistance penetration (~28% at max TL). Cooldown for the buff reduced to ~ 10 turns at max TL, while duration increased to about ~4 turns at max TL.

Unstoppable Nature:
The damage penetration caps at 50% (25% at TL 5), reduced the eq. cost from 20 to 15.

Corrosive Nature:
Gives a bonus to Acid resistance (~20% at max TL) and provides a self buff to Acid resistance penetration (~28% at max TL). Cooldown for the buff reduced to ~ 10 turns at max TL, while duration increased to about ~4 turns at max TL.

Acidic Soil:
Bonus regeneration for Bloated Oozes changed from a % of max life to a bonus based on Mindpower (~100-150 hp/turn at max talent level).
The damage penetration caps at 50% (25% at TL 5), reduced the eq. cost from 20 to 15.

NEW TALENT TREE (locked, level 10+) "Eyal's Fury":

Reclaim: Freely targeted nuke that does ~(35 -157) Acid + Nature damage, 25% bonus vs. undead

Nature's Defiance: Passive providing ~(9 - 54) Spell saves, ~(5 - 30) % Arcane Resist, ~(6 - 23) % Nature Affinity. When hit by a spell, get a buff restoring ~(0.8 - 5.5) eq. per turn for ~(3 - 8 ) turns

Acidfire: Persistent AOE That does ~(7 - 46) Acid blind damage in a radius 4 for ~(6 -- 11) turns. Has a ~(11 - 29) % chance each turn to remove a beneficial magical effect. Does not affect friends.

Eyal's Wrath: Point blank AOE, radius ~(3 - 5), duration ~(3 - 8 ) turns, moves with the user doing ~( 15 - 81) Nature damage to all enemies it hits, while draining ~( 4- 23) Mana (and 0.5x Vim + 0.25x Positive/Negative) with each hit ande restoring eq. to the user equal to 10% of the amount drained. Does not affect friends.

All of the new talents are anti-caster/undead and look pretty strong. Please review let me know if you think any of these are too strong or suggest other changes.

[HousePet]

Trying a Slime/Mucus/Eyal's Fury Oozey.
Haven't got far yet.
Slime Spit looks to be in a great spot now.
It can wipe a few critters in one shot, but not instant kill anything harder.

Damage on Reclaim seems too high. It nukes targets that aren't even undead.
Suggest lowering the damage by about a quarter and changing the bonus versus undead to +50%.
Extending this bonus to versus golems would be an interesting idea.

Nature's Defiance is interesting, but gives too much spellsave.

Acidfire seems weak, but I haven't got 5 points in it yet.

Also, I was careless and ran out of lives! Its not stopping me from continued testing with the character however.

[Hachem_Muche]

So..you died. On an oozemancer!?!

I haven't noticed a problem with reclaim's damage (at self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 20, 350), 5 cd) should compare with flame (self:combatTalentSpellDamage(t, 25, 290), 3 cd wth beam and DOT), and manathrust (self:combatTalentSpellDamage(t, 20, 230), 3 cd possible beam). Correcting for just the cooldown, equivalent damage should be around self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 20, 380). Note also that it's single target (though free targetted to be ooze friendly).

Also, I checked, and the talent can only trigger special crit affects once.

What's reasonable for the spellsave on Nature's Defiance? self:combatTalentMindDamage(t, 5, 70) is equivalent to Chant of Fortitude, which applies to both physical and spell saves. This is one of several benefits for the talent, and is passive, but only applies to one save type.

What part of Acidfire seems weak? The damage or the spell-removal ability?

[HousePet]

If you want to compare a talent's damage with its cooldown for balancing it, you should remember that it still only takes 1 turn to use, and you can use other talents while you are waiting. Simply averaging the damage by the cooldown is not a good indicator of damage per turn.
The Shade for example has no problem killing people with Freeze, which has a high cooldown.

I think reduce the spell save on Nature's Defiance by a third. The arcane resistance and nature affinity are quite powerful. They more than make up for not having bonus resist to physical save.

Acidfire seemed weak in all aspects. Its crap damage, crap blinding and crap dispel.
It didn't make luminous horrors a bit easier, but its not reliable for me yet.

[Hachem_Muche]

Having finally got to level 5/5 and playing in the Dark Crypt, I agree with your assessment of Acidfire. I've boosted the damage by ~15%, and increased the chance to dispel by about the same amount.

I've also reduced the save bonus for Nature's Defiance a bit.

I'm still not convinced that Reclaim is doing too much damage, but have reduced it by ~ 10%.

Let's see how these changes play out.

[Hachem_Muche]

Minor update:
Nerfed the ooze regeneration bonus from Acidic Soil and buffed the built in regeneration of Mitosis.
Buffed the duration of Eyal's Wrath slightly.
Fixed a bug with Mucus and Bloated ooze factions.
Adjusted eq. regen from Ancestral Life to scale higher.