Wyrmic scaling issues

[Suslik]

So there are 2 types of wyrmic talents:
1) Those that scale with willpower(really? not even mindpower?). Most talents.
2) Those that scale with strength(the only class that scales with strength instead of physical power?). Main aoe attacking talents, namely breaths.

And 2 weapon options:
1) Mindstars
2) Conventional weapons

Problem is you can pick any weapon, speck into it and half of your talents get unviable - none of these choises synergize with each other. Mindstars don't synergize with breaths, weapons don't synergize with everything else. Also scaling with willpower instead of mindpower prevents benefitting from anything that grants mindpower which's lame.

What if we change scaling on all talents to max(willpower, physical power) instead what they currently have? What do you guys think?

[donkatsu]

I've always stayed away from wyrmics but I thought the idea behind the scaling was to have two branching builds? Like bow/sling Archers. And if you really wanted, you could mainstat Str/Wil/Con for a hybrid and just deal with the accuracy problems.

[Suslik]

you'll also need cunning for mindpower and mindstars and that's 4 main stats which's really painful.

[HousePet]

Does making things scale with physical power over strength actually help a conventional weapon user?
Breathes aren't weapon attacks, so there is no reason that weapon mastery would improve them, which leaves the only major source of physical power as strength.

Changing it to physical power would then include the diminishing returns scaling, making it easier to compare with other talents though.

Personally, I've always liked the strength and willpower scaling as it themed nicely with the brutality of nature that dragons seem to represent.

Overall, I'm not keen on making it scale with the max of strength/physical power and willpower/mindpower as that is just reducing the complexity of build choices. However, I do expect all options to be comparable in power.

[supermini]

The problem isn't so much with scaling, it's that about half of their class talents are bad at best, useless at worst.

Acid, Frost, Lightning breath have only 25% chance to inflict status conditions which is awful (especially if this also allows a save which I assume it does). Venomous breath is not very useful by because enemy healing is not really a thing in ToME.

Static field is the worst talent in the game, probably.

The whole fire drake aspect tree apart from roar is useless.

Quake is bad, swallow and ice claw are 1-pointers.

I don't consider stats to be a big issue because con is not really that useful for them. The extra 200 hp they get from 50 stat points isn't a good return on investment. I'd get dex if I'm using weapons, cun if I'm using mindstars.

They do need an overhaul...But the scaling is what makes them unique in a mechanical sense. I'd keep that.

[Matanui3]

It is rather strange that a willpower-based tree ends with a strength-based breath attack, in all cases.

If the possibility of truly divergent paths were to be followed, I could see there being a tree of breath weapons only (which would be level-gated but not talent-gated, like some of the new Mindslayer trees) scaling with strength OR willpower, while the rest of the trees would get new capstones.
Except that there are five breaths...

[The Revanchist]

I thought there were six?

Fire, Ice, Sand, Lightning, Acid and MULTIHUED! Or Corrosive, I can't remember the exact term.

[HousePet]

The sixth one is poison.

[Razakai]

It might be a controversial design, but I'd like to see more talents grouped by type rather than theme. So rather than Fire and Cold and Storm, you'd have a 'Breath' tree with the conal AoE attacks, a 'Melee' tree with things like Dissolve and Ice Claw and so on. Not sure how the design of that would look though.
Alternatively, have each tree appeal more to a certain build. So let's say Storm would scale with Mindpower and make Static Field/Tornado/Lightning Breath the basis of a good nuking build.
Not sure to be honest, but I don't like the current mishmash of scaling, and would like some changes.

[brown recluse]

Honestly, It may be best to just have some will trees and some strength trees, and let higher be a hybrid tree. Fire, lightning, and acid should be willpower trees, but fire would need to be reworked since half of it isn't fire based. Bellowing roar and wing buffet could be moved into a tree focused on the physical attributes of dragons to round out the strength trees along with earth and ice.

[HousePet]

With the scaling based on raw stat, rather than derived stats, I don't think having some talents scaling with different stats is a problem.
You can max out three stats, and getting items that buff more than one stat is easier to get than items with more than one power on them.

Also, I'd like to complain that this thread is making me think about consolidating my Wyrmic changes:
eg. Merging Sand and Fire drake talents into Desert Drake Aspect and Desert Wyrm Aspect.
Ditto with Wind and Storm into Storm.
Water and Ice into (not sure yet).
Poison and Acid into Swamp.
Plus some other extra goodies!

[Noel]

Water and Ice into (not sure yet).

Tundra? Arctic? Glacier?

[Suslik]

If you ask me: "Suslik what do you really think should be changed about wyrmics?", I'd give you an answer:

See, wyrmics have breaths. They look cool, they are thematic, and definitely class-defining. They also have basic weapon proficiencies which are just ok. But also they have a shitton of crappy utility skills, about 50% of all that no one is ever going to use in lategame due to them being simply inferior to breaths. So my suggestion would be to make breaths T1 skills and make all other tree skills augment those skills semi-passively. By semi-passive I mean that "swallow" grants some bonus to sand breath AND can be cast on its own so you actually will want to invest into it.

Also instead of 1/1'ing all skills in every tree just to reach breaths that will encourage you to invest more points into every tree to make breaths more powerful. Scaling stat issue is really irrelevant to this rework even though I still think that being as unique as it is now, it's still better to change scaling to phys/mindpower instead of str/will.

What do you guys think?

[HousePet]

Changing from only using breathes to only using breathes, but get them at level 1 doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.

[Razakai]

I like the idea of consolidating trees. So 'desert drake' could be Physical/Fire damage with a focus on strong melee attacks, blinds, burns and so on. Storm+Cold could be a Willpower focused tree with Lightning/Cold ranged attacks, freezes and dazes and so on.