[1.0.4] Roguelike Winner - Thalore Doomed

[DragonMasterHawk]

http://te4.org/characters/1796/tome/8e4 ... 00083940ee

Still no Atamathon, but I did beat the Room of Death for the first time.

I'd like to reiterate what I said in my previous win--the Far East is really, really boring. The dungeons are huge, the enemies are numerous, and the fights are uninteresting. The game needs less "Boss randomly found on the final floor" and more "Boss floors". And, as it turns out, most of the boss floor-style encounters are in the West: The Mouth, Ben, Bill, Brotoq, Assassin Lord, Melinda Demon, Wierdling Beast, Kyless, Tannen, and the list continues, even bosses like the Grand Corrupter have a boss floor vibe to them.

In the East: Fyrk, the final bosses, and Slasul, I think? There's nothing that really breaks you out of just "killing lots of guys" in the East. And that's what you do, just kill lots and lots of guys, over and over again, ad nauseam.

In other news, Unnatural Body is still bad, and, as it turns out, Creeping Darkness is garbage. I started pumping points into it late game to see if it has some viability--it doesn't. Also, Dark Vision doesn't seem to work? I couldn't see through my darkness to any great extent, so...

The Force of Will tree is amazing. While shadows were the mid-game winners, Blast and Unseen Force carried me through late.

Cat Points when into Shadows, Force of Will, Fungus, and Fungus again. Kept Bloomsoul equipped the entire game for Fungus.

Prodigies were Mental Tyranny (of course), and Spine of the World. I didn't really know what to get for the my second, but Spine seemed to work well enough.

The only reason I was Thalore was to force Sludgenest.

[jotwebe]

Creeping Darkness...

• works better in enclosed spaces, where there's less "choice" for the darkness to appear, so it's more concentrated
• works better if you cast it in advance of needing it, so the darkness has more time to fill up
• works best with Dark Vision, 300+ move speed bonus means you can keep the range where you like it
• increases all your damage by 20-30% if you have say 5/5/x in the tree
• does mind damage with Tyranny of the Mind
• if it causes mind damage, that's one more opportunity for Madness to confuse your victims

Sure it's not the best skill ever, but if you think it's garbage then you've been using it wrong.

[DragonMasterHawk]

Creeping Darkness...

• works better in enclosed spaces, where there's less "choice" for the darkness to appear, so it's more concentrated
• works better if you cast it in advance of needing it, so the darkness has more time to fill up
• works best with Dark Vision, 300+ move speed bonus means you can keep the range where you like it
• increases all your damage by 20-30% if you have say 5/5/x in the tree
• does mind damage with Tyranny of the Mind
• if it causes mind damage, that's one more opportunity for Madness to confuse your victims

Sure it's not the best skill ever, but if you think it's garbage then you've been using it wrong.

I used it consistently from about...level 35 onward? For most of the Far East, and all of the prides. I tried to use it regularly, in many different situations. All it ended up doing was preventing me from understanding the state of any given battle, and this was with Dark Vision maxed. As I said before, I couldn't see through my Creeping Darkness, so either I misunderstood what Dark Vision is supposed to do, or it is not working properly.

The bonus movespeed wasn't particularly useful due to a few reasons: the lack of control over where the darkness appeared, the relative infrequency with which I would want to actually *be* in my own darkness (as opposed to putting it over my enemies with me outside), and the fact that I had both Wanderer's Rest and Dream Walk, which were much more useful in escape attempts.

The Madness procs and increased % damage are certainly nice, but not, in my mind, enough to make the tree worthwhile.

So it's entirely possible I was just "using it wrong", despite all my attempts. It's also possible it grows in effectiveness in different difficulties where enemies don't die as fast are are more important to separate and disable, like Nightmare or Insane.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's not a good tree.

[jotwebe]

In wide open spaces like the Prides I agree it tends to be a bit patchy. And I agree it's not really great and it's perfectly feasible to ignore it if you want, but "garbage" is putting it too strongly in my opinion.

The tree might be better if it started with Dark Tendrils and Dark Torrent (with slightly reduced hate costs and cooldowns maybe) and had Dark Vision and Creeping Darkness as 3rd and 4th skills so people would be less tempted to go into them too early. Dark Vision ought to have it's range boosted a bit so that at TL 6.5 you'd have full vision range. And have Creeping Dark's darkness generation boosted by a third maybe, so it's a bit thicker.

[DragonMasterHawk]

To be honest, I question what value the randomness provides. While the full area might be problematic in strength, the "directed" darkness of Dark Tendrils, which various modifiers gives by additional talents in the tree, could be worthwhile, tactical, and fun. In that sense, Dark Torrent is sort of out of place, given that it's just sort of a damage beam without any real connection to the rest of the tree.

I also don't think Dark Vision should even be a thing. Your own creeping darkness should not affect your vision, period.

Basically the idea of defining a zone where your enemies are weaker and you are stronger is cool, but I don't think the tree really encapsulates that idea well enough.

[jotwebe]

Good point about the... point of Dark Vision in general. That would free up a skill. Maybe something similar to Madness that adds a chance to blind or pin with darkness damage? Would provide a slight counter-incentive to Tyranny of the Mind. Dark Torrent might fit in better as a cone.

The randomness is a bit of a theme I'd say. Everything's somewhat unreliable and takes a bit of time to come into its own.

[HousePet]

I'd like Creeping Darkness much more if it at least spawned on the targetted tile every time.

[SageAcrin]

Ditching Dark Vision and replacing it with a more interesting skill, and making Creeping Darkness AoE bigger, would help it a lot to me.

If Creeping Darkness was, say, three areas of (RawTL, cap at 5) radius areas of darkness (albiet, not with full coverage within those areas), within (RawTL+2, cap at 7) overall area for those three radius...well, at cap, it suddenly is a huge area defensive skill with fairly okay area control. It makes up for the relative instability of it, and synergizes a lot better with the movement speed idea.

[Doctornull]

I'd like Creeping Darkness much more if it at least spawned on the targetted tile every time.

This is a great idea.

Then the additional random spawns are genuinely "bonus" to the one spawn you control explicitly.

What I did in my addon darkness-themed skill was ensure that darkness always spawned under you and your target, plus some bonus random spawns which are more likely as you skill up the Creeping Darkness talent.