Official Rogue Rework - Testers Required!

[Razakai]

I recently approached DarkGod with a proposal for a rework to the Rogue class, as well as some smaller changes to Shadowblade and Marauder. He liked the idea, and so it's likely to go in for the next major patch.

The code is now complete, and just awaiting a few art/lore assets from Rex and Hogulus. What's required is some testers, as while I've tried to bugfix and balance it myself there's quite a lot going on so I'd like some feedback from people, as well as assistance in catching any bugs that have slipped through.

I've put my entire ToME folder up on my Google Drive, so you should be able to download it, unzip and play via running the t-engine.exe (now a much smaller 200mb zip).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7nJo ... 18zQlJ4c0k

Link to the original proposal document with notes and details, might be slightly outdated as some bits were removed/altered on DG's request:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BcZ ... sp=sharing

Known issues:
- Bladestorm and Beam traps don't currently have any art
- Trap tooltip doesn't specify that traps can critically strike, and no longer cause friendly fire

[grobblewobble]

Question: will the dirty fighting tree also be changed for other classes with access to it, like berserker and bulwark?

[bpat]

I see you're a Slark picker . Overall I like the changes but I have a few suggestions. Dirty Fighting's damage should be halved or more, it's way too good as is for the amount of damage and utility it has. Also I don't think it should last long enough to have 100% uptime, so either the duration should be reduced or cooldown should be increased. Marked for Death, if instant (you should mention if each talent is instant or not for clarity), should be changed to not be instant or it will be used to open every fight. I really don't like how you will get one trap from Rantha and one from Varsha and I personally will spawn the zone and leave at the start of the game to ensure I get the one I want. I also disagree with giving one to Harkor'zun, though it's not a huge deal because that one is pretty bad. I'm concerned that Bloodboil Poison is probably too good and that it requires Dark Crypt, because that will inevitably lead to lots of frustration. Also I'd give Rogue the Field Control category unlocked because having to get an escort for Track is annoying, it's mostly a quality of life chance that I would like to see for all pure physical classes. Other than that I think these changes are excellent.

[Razakai]

Yes, the plan is for Dirty Fighting to be changed across the board unless DG decides otherwise. If so this new-DF would probably get a rename and be given only to Rogue/Shadowblade/Marauder.

Note that DF is now an unarmed hit - so significantly less damaging. 190% might still be too high a scalar though, effectively it should be less damage than a DW autoattack, but can proc glove debuffs etc which ties into the debuff focus of the tree. Also for the flavour of effectively kicking them where it hurts. At 5/5 I think it's 8 dur, 10 CD but would have to double check. No 100% uptime.

Talents do have a Instant marker next to them on the doc, but I think very few of these are. Shadow Dance, Rogue's Brew and poisons, that's about it I think. MfD is definitely not instant, as otherwise using it would just be busywork. It'll still prob be used to open any fight that won't die in 2 turns, but that's intended.

The mutually exclusive traps was actually DG's idea! I'm hoping it won't make an enormous difference - they both deal identical damage/aoe, and have similar but hopefully equal power as a ranged control option. If someone came up with a good enough alternate location this could be changed though.

I've removed those poisons from the doc - those were just random ideas I was considering, and won't be going in for this change. Maybe in the future as I like the idea of new poisons, but probably not for now.

I'll ask DG about Field Control. What I really wanted to do was put in the Survival/Mobility changes from the Assassin mod (moving Track to Survival, merging Acrobatics/Field Control/Mobility's best talents into a single tree) but that's out of scope for now. Might write up a proposal to DG and see if he considers it though.

[grobblewobble]

Yes, the plan is for Dirty Fighting to be changed across the board unless DG decides otherwise. If so this new-DF would probably get a rename and be given only to Rogue/Shadowblade/Marauder.

Great. I hope it is changed across the board as you say, for consistency.

I really love your proposal for the Dirty Fighting skill itself. There are already many stun + weapon damage abilities, and making this an unarmed attack that lowers resistances to disabling effects instead is a great idea. It turns it into a unique ability that's very stylish and really fits the spirit of "dirty fighting".

To be honest I'm not as enthusiastic about the proposed change to Backstabbing. If a monster has 1 disabling effect on it, 10% extra damage is not as interesting as increased criticals. If a monster already has several disabling effects on it, you no longer need extra damage, you already won.

Instead, I would propose to keep Backstabbing exactly as it is now. Thanks to the change to dirty fighting it will become more useful, because it will now be much easier to get your stuns to stick.

It should also be pointed out that backstabbing as it is remains useful once your critical rate is really high, because then it will apply additional stun effects to the monster, as a passive. Pretty good, especially if you just lowered the stun resistance with Dirty Fighting!

[Frumple]

I... don't suppose a no music testing version could be provided? Probably going to give it a go anyway, but .7 gigs is... irritating, I guess (one day, one day, I'll actually get around to making a stripped down version of T4 -- bloody core/non-prettifying files are only like 14 megs or something crazy like that)? Pretty sure you occasionally get different responses from the two versions, too...

E: Though, uh. Immediately noticeable is that throwing knives trigger melee retaliation as well as they do melee procs. That... does not make much sense. I mean, I get what's going on coding wise and it's certainly a lot easier, but...

Also, haven't gotten to the point of trying it yet, but that artifice tree... it took me probably 20-30 minutes to notice it wasn't actually bugged and there was a difference between the first three talents. One word of difference in the case of the second and third. Which... yeah. Unrelated to that, I'm not going to lie, but the way the tree is structured is... incredibly unappealing. What amounts to the same talent three times over really makes me want to just not put points in the tree, y'know? Especially in the face of the poison and trap trees which are roughly the same design but significantly less, ah. Samey?

E: Another minor one, not sure how feasible it'd be to fix, but... the stealth tier 3 talent doesn't work on the overworld. It's generally not that big of a deal, but that extra regen could be the difference between you living through that second advn party that cornered you and, well. Not. Plus anything that cuts down on resting time is nice, heh.

[Jarinex]

Oh wow, i'm glad you are getting your mod into the actual game. I loved the changes you made.

A quick question, I saw that the Mobility tree, Combat Training Tree and Survival tree for the game won't be added. Is there still a way we can access them, maybe through your Bastion mod. I prefer to have those over vanilla, and would hate to lose them.

[Razakai]

Part of the Backstab change was DG's concern that you could quite easily stunlock even tough bosses forever thanks to the DF debuff. I think it should be a good talent still - it's quite easy to apply Stun/Blind at the very least. I'm going to probably change the Feint debuff to Disarm, as it feels a bit odd to have a Duelist tree without disarming effects. Means you can easily apply the 3 debuff cap for a very hefty damage boost.

I'll see about cutting down the size of the download - this was just me dumping my git merge request into drive, so there's prob bits I can trim.

It is a little odd that Throwing Knives trigger stuff like that, although it is consistent with other 'ranged melee' like projection, Wave of Power. The code to not have it trigger would be quite a pain, buuuut I do have some free time now I'm finished with DS3 so I might have a look. No promises though.

Artifice is a bit of an odd setup. Probably best to think of each individual tool as their own talent, and the tree lets you learn 3 of them in any order. Each tool should certainly be worthy of being a talent in a locked tree, especially with the Master Artificer effect added. I will try to make how it works a bit clearer though.

I thought Soothing Darkness would work on the overworld provided Stealth was already sustained. I'll see if I can figure out why it isn't working and fix if possible.

I'm still hoping to get the Survival and Mobility changes in at some point if I can win DG over. Armor Training is getting it's own change from Shibari at some point to buff light armor. If not, I'll release a small Survival/Mobility tweaks addon replacing Assassin.

[Frumple]

I'll see about cutting down the size of the download - this was just me dumping my git merge request into drive, so there's prob bits I can trim.

It'd definitely be nice, though don't worry about it too much. I've been fairly resigned to T4's massive bloat for a long time

It is a little odd that Throwing Knives trigger stuff like that, although it is consistent with other 'ranged melee' like projection, Wave of Power. The code to not have it trigger would be quite a pain, buuuut I do have some free time now I'm finished with DS3 so I might have a look. No promises though.

Yeah, it's consistent, but I'm relatively sure it works like that for other similar talents mostly because (no offense intended ) DG was being lazy about it, heh. Incidentally, coding that behavior up would mean that other classes that use the effect (psyshot would easily be the one most effected, ha) could start using it, too, which would cheerfully fix up a nice little oversight.

Artifice is a bit of an odd setup. Probably best to think of each individual tool as their own talent, and the tree lets you learn 3 of them in any order. Each tool should certainly be worthy of being a talent in a locked tree, especially with the Master Artificer effect added.

Yeah, I'd probably agree they're powerful enough, overall, and it's definitely more or less how you're suggesting, it's just, well. Like said, it doesn't appeal, y'know? You see three more or less identical talents, even if they're giving good dosh, and just go, "Eeehhh..." S'not sexy. Improvement t'me would be going the wyrmic/doomed route, where there's four fully unique talents and the extra tool access is a passive effect. Probably scaling the talents themselves back in the process to keep things in line, but still.

In other news, I definitely miss unseen actions, heh. Can see you're more or less going the bastion block route with it (which is fine, which is fine, I just have a personal inclination towards more passive talents, yeah), but I still miss it.

E: Also... artifacts? It looks a lot like there's room for some that, among whatever else they do, effects throwing knives (or artifice tools... or traps/poisons, I guess, but I suppose those two are covered by the extra ones you can learn). Or an effect added on to an existing one... I could totally see the Bladed Rift doubling the amount of throwing knives tossed around, with the ones it generates being pure (and possibly reduced) temporal damage, as an example.

E2: Ho, first error!

Code: Select all

Lua Error: /data/talents/techniques/throwing-knives.lua:89: attempt to call field 'getDuration' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 getDuration
	At /data/talents/techniques/throwing-knives.lua:89 damtype
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:419 projectDoAct
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:508 projectDoStop
	At /engine/Projectile.lua:230 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:129 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:64 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:51 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1277 
 ----------------  Stack Dump ----------------
--------------- Stack Dump Finished ---------------

Popped up when I hit a (poisoned, of course) bear with venomous throw.

[Mordy]

Did you remove Unseen Actions entirely ? Does it mean you cannot buff before a fight while in stealth ?

[Frumple]

*waggles hand* There's talents (well, at least the one tier 4 stealth talent... sorta') that more or less let you do that, if not nearly as freely, I think? Mostly yeah, though, near as I can tell.

[jenx]

I'd try this if it was a smaller, zipped file.

[Jarinex]

I think unseen actions and hide in plain sight talents are melded into one talent. It's now guaranteed, rather than chance based, to work.

Personally, I'd rather have that (even if it's slightly strong). I also love the soothing shadows talent, as its great for when I'm desperate for an escape at really low health.

[Razakai]

I have a few ideas for artifacts I'll ask DG about, in particular a few to do with throwing knives. Possibly a knife ego too that will buff throwing knives.

I think I recognize that error - I fixed it for Venomous Strike and must have forgot to do the same for throw, will do that tonight.

UA is removed - Shadow Dance is the effective replacement for it and HiP, offering 100% restealth chance and a short duration of unbreakable stealth. Stuff like Shadowstrike's crit bonus also persists out of stealth for a short duration. Note that there's less prebuffing for Rogues (no more Wilful Strikes etc) and the ones that remain (Blade Flurry, Marked for Death) do not break stealth. If there are talent buffs that break stealth I'll change those - will do that for Blinding Speed and Perfect Strike as I forgot about them.

And yes, time to figure out how to cut down file size. Might put a zip up that you can just unzip into your existing Tome directory that will overwrite the changed files. Trying to balance size with ease of installation.

[Frumple]

I think unseen actions and hide in plain sight talents are melded into one talent. It's now guaranteed, rather than chance based, to work.

Personally, I'd rather have that (even if it's slightly strong). I also love the soothing shadows talent, as its great for when I'm desperate for an escape at really low health.

Eehh... not really. You're thinking of the fourth tier stealth talent Shadow Dance, I believe, which, while it does stealth you and give you some (up to three) turns of guaranteed stealth, it's... not what I'd call stronger than the two talents mentioned, not by even the most remote of long shots.* It's unseen actions with limited duration and on a (very, very significant) cooldown, and coupled with hide in plain sight (i.e. you can't use one without using the other). Which means you're getting significantly less uptime on your unseen actions equivalent, and you have to insta-stealth to do it as opposed to it just happening when you're in stealth.

From what I'm seeing so far, stealth definitely seems to have (much) less in-combat uptime, as compared to the older version, it just has a couple more ways to go into stealth mid fight (which doesn't mean nearly as much without unseen actions being passive, heh). Functionally, this means that the defense benefits of stealth are pretty significantly reduced, though the offensive ones seem mostly unchanged.

... going with that thought, perhaps consider letting the stealth defensive aspects (harder to target, harder to hit, etc.) persist a bit, perhaps at a somewhat reduced rate, after breaking stealth as well? I'unno if it's going that way with other folks, but I'm very much feeling the reduce stealth uptime's effect on survivability, compared to the older rogue (I'm actually dying a lot easier than I normally do with early/mid game rogues, and other than that I'm not quite sure why...**).

*Save maybe on insane/madness? If you're actually regularly failing the remain in stealth check, I can see shadow dance being perhaps a better talent, but that... doesn't happen on the difficulty we should be testing on

**Well, besides killing myself with fan of knives somewhat repeatedly. Freaking white wolves. You'd think I'd remember to stop hitting them with the fan after the third or forth time it killed or near killed me, but nope.

E: Alsooo... it may be outside the scope of what's intended with this, but will there be/is there interaction with tinker stuff? I could see maybe hand stuff*** that increases the range or travel speed of knives, ferex, or having certain amounts of investment in one (or both!) trees unlocking new traps and/or poisons.

... and while I'm thinking about it, do you want this tested in embers, too, or just the vanilla campaign? Arena? It might be interesting for arena mode to provide some sort of access to normally discovered mid-game poisons/traps/etc., as part of the rework...

***(though it's arguable there's already more of those than there need to be... still, something that's actually desirable that's not iron grip or the toxic canister launcher would be nice )

E2:... it just now dawned on me that with unseen actions gone, one of the only reasons a non-halfling would ever take Lucky Day is also now gone. Alas, poor luck. No one but midgets will build you now :V