new semi-silly class idea

[Sirrocco]

Basically, this is a riff off the old symbiont and the slime mold schtick. Works on Equilibrium. Class unlocked by drinking a total of 1000 potions of slime mold juice. Primary stats are willpower and dexterity

- Would have the slime mold juice tree by default. Slime mold juice is not useless, though - for them it restores a small amount of equilibrium and HP
- Would have the default "meditation and stuff" equilibrium tree
- Would have about the same level of access to slinger's trees as the wyrmic has to fighter/berserker trees

- Would have a summons tree, composed entirely of nonmoving summons.
- Shrieking Mold, which has no attacks and limited HP, but is pretty cheap, and has a large area taunt. Basically, all foes in the area stops paying attention to you and starts heading towards it until something manages to wipe the thing out. Useful for giving yourself a bit of a breather/escape, for keeping escorts alive, and for convincing enemies to nuke each other with area effects by mistake.
- Spawning Mold, which has no attacks, but a decent amount of HP, and may duplicate itself when hit as per the monster duplication ability. Mostly there as a way to get in the way and delay the enemy.
- Searing Mold, which has a fire damage attack and decent combat stats
- Stunning Mold, which has solid defenses and a chance to temporarily stun anyone who hits it.

- Would have an unlockable advanced summons tree, with summon-boosting powers
- Exploding Mold - a sustain: when one of your summons is destroyed, it does area-effect damage to everyone within 2-3 squares
- Spore Cloud - a sustain: the squares adjacent to your summons get a spore cloud aura that has a chance to debuff any enemies that enter it
- Duplicate Mold - allows you to designate a mold ally. some number of identical molds are generated nearby the ally, as the breeding monster's Spawn ability. This will be overall more equilibrium-efficient and time-efficient than summoning them individually, but it doesn't give you the same control over their location
- Grow Mold - a sustain: gives your summoned allies a solid health regen, and an increased duration

- Would have a Sling Spores tree
- Sling Spores - a sustain: While this is sustained, you can fire your sling without ammo, and the ammo that you equip doesn't apply (or perhaps you cannot equip ammo without unsustaining the power). The effectiveness of spore ammo tracks on talent level and Willpower. Your slung spores deal some poison damage and have a chance to cause ongoign poison damage.
- Confusing Spores - a passive: gives your slung spores a small chance to confuse their targets for a few turns
- Blinding Spores - a passive: gives your slung spores a small chance to blind their targets for a few turns
- Exploding Spores - an active ability, AOE, with range dependent on dex. Deals damage to everything in the area, and confuses based on the Confusing Spores percentage

- Would have a Slime Tentacles tree
- Sliming Blast: small area effect, with knockback and slow
- Pinning Tentacles: single-target ranged pinning attack - damage/effectiveness based on willpower, range/hit based on dex
- Slime Body: sustain: gives ranged defense (the arrows just pass right through!), physical save, and some acid/poison/stun resist at the cost of some fire vuln
- Swap with Mold: allows you to trade locations with a visible summoned mold, range dependent on dex. More talents reduce cooldown and possibly equilibrium cost

Basic idea of the class is that you're an archer/slinger by default, who can summon nonmoving allies to harass and slow your enemies while you shoot them. He doesn't do as much raw damage per turn as an archer or slinger, but he has more control - both through the debuffs that attach to most of his attacks and the tricks he can play with his summons - and a more versatile set of panic buttons.

Anyone find this interesting enough to keep working on?

[darkgod]

Ahahah

Maybe a tree based on "slime enhanced" archery ?

[Sirrocco]

Well, okay. If you want one.

Slime Archery tree:
- Slime Bolts: A sustain: While this is sustained, you can fire your bow without ammo. Functions more or less as Sling Spores, but deals acid damage and has chance to blind rather than poison
- Choking Slime: A passive: adds a chance to silence
- Invading Slime: A passive: adds chance to daze briefly
- Multislime: active: normal slime bolts fired as a beam, with talent level determining how many enemies they can pass through before stopping and damage bonus. Chances for various effects reduced

I'd have swapped some stuff around and added a suffocation effect, except that my understanding is that suffocation does currently not apply to enemies.

[madmonk]

Well, okay. If you want one.

Slime Archery tree:
- Slime Bolts: A sustain: While this is sustained, you can fire your bow without ammo. Functions more or less as Sling Spores, but deals acid damage and has chance to blind rather than poison
- Choking Slime: A passive: adds a chance to silence
- Invading Slime: A passive: adds chance to daze briefly
- Multislime: active: normal slime bolts fired as a beam, with talent level determining how many enemies they can pass through before stopping and damage bonus. Chances for various effects reduced

I'd have swapped some stuff around and added a suffocation effect, except that my understanding is that suffocation does currently not apply to enemies.

You might prefer this:

Slime Bolt (as above) but at 3rd level induces silence, at 5th level stun
Slime Ball (Area of effect spell)
Slime Wall (like tidal wave but with slime damage and knockback)
Deluge (as Inferno but with Slime)

[Sirrocco]

Hmmm.

You may be right about making it more about actives and less about passives (in order to better distinguish it from the spore slinging tree) but I can't say it feels like all that much of a "slime archery" tree when only the first skill cares if you're wielding a bow. Also, it's worth noting that this is an Equilibrium class. They're not designed to throw around huge numbers of spells in each combat as primary mode of damage-dealing. So....

- Slime Bolts (sustained): the "fire without arrows" schtick, with arrow damage increasing by willpower. (...and thus final damage being a function of willpower, and dex/strength). Talent points invested add acid damage on top (as the ego).
- Multislime (active): the whole "slime bolts as beam" schtick. You must be wielding a bow and have Slime Bolts sustained to use this power.
- Invading Slime (passive): each slime bolt gets a small chance to blind/silence/daze for a turn or two - perhaps about 3% each per talent point. thus, at 5 talent points, you've got a 15% chance each, and a fairly decent chance that each shot is going to do *something* (or at least make resist checks against something).
- Slime to the Vitals (active): Requires wielding a bow with Slime Bolts sustained. The attack autocrits if it hits, and the Invading Slime percentages are jacked up. Additional talent points increase damage and increase Invading Slime damage further. Should be moderately expensive - if you're fully specced into it, you might be able to keep a boss constantly debuffed while you shoot them down, except that after a while your Equilibrium fail rates will catch up with you.

The slime arrows tree as compared to the spore slinging tree - the slime arrows do more damage on the whole, but the spore bullets are better on the debuffs. (I don't know how to balance these things myself, but this is the intent). The slime arrows also don't get debuffs as early - they get more damage and their beam attack instead. For a fully developed tree, the multislime is about as useful as the exploding spores, with the multislime being better in corridors and the exploding spores being better in open areas. Slime to the Vitals makes an excellent boss killer, but has strictly limited amounts of juice - meaning that you either have to play "shoot and scoot" (and scoot at a time when the majority of your escape powers are hampered by heavy equilibrium penalties) or soften them up somehow before you try to burn them down. On the flip side, the slinger just gets more debuff passives, which means that he doesn't kill as fast, but he's better at playing keepaway, and has more equilibrium to play with entertaining mold summoning games and escape powers.

[darkgod]

Just one thing, next beta has basic infinite ammo. The only ammo one finds are ego ones.

[Sirrocco]

Ah - that does change things a little. Modify sling spores and slime bolts to be sustains that augment basic ammo, then (one with poison, the other with acid). They lose their niche as "infinite ammo source" but they're still pretty core to their respective trees, they'll give better damage output than basic arrows, and they mean that the symbiont doesn't have to worry about loading up on ego ammo (which doesn't work with his talents). It does make it possible to run a symbiont without these talents, though, which adds a bit of flexibility, if you want to focus heavily on the summoning side, and are willing to juggle ego ammo.

By the end of the game, a fully specced slime archer/spore slinger should be at least as effective on standard shots as anyone using ego ammo. The place where the standard archers/slingers beat them is the ability to spam and then quickly recover hard-hitting attack powers, and the amount of dependable hard lockdown those powers have. Symbiont attack powers also ought to have fairly high recharge time (with the possible exception of Slime To The Vitals, which should either have high recharge and reasonable equilibrium cost or near-instant recharge and relatively high equilibrium cost. Sure, you can fire it back-to-back... about three times.)

I admit, I have something of a fondness for shiny powers that have built-in incentives for people to do really dumb things that will get them killed. An expensive, effective, spammable attack power on an equilibrium character who depends on his equilibrium powers to get him out of tight spots fits the bill pretty much exactly.

I suppose that if we're getting rid of basic ammo, then the damage tier is bow-dependent or sling-dependent? It would be a little odd to equip ego ammo that reduced your overall damage.