Talent "career" paths

[slayernz]

I was looking at all of the wonderful juicy talent goodness that we can look forward to and noticed the following:
Wizard
1) Meteoric Blast doesn't have any damage beyond MB2 (not that we will ever get to play with it in this update)
2) Burning blades doesn't seem to be balanced enough - it causes increased fire damage, but by the time you get it to anything even slightly meaningful, you would have consumed 4 or 5 talent points. Instead, throwing those talent points at Firebolt or Immolation would be far more worth the spend. Maybe if burning blades had an area effect?

Outlander
3) Berserk Rage - this seems to suck badly as a talent when you boost the levels. Yes, you have slightly increased chances for critical hits, but by the time you are getting even moderate chances, you're effectively running around naked, and since it's a level 12 talent, +2 damage and 3% crit is almost laughable because you will already have gear that provides some increased chances for crits, and +2 damage at level 12 is more like a tickle than anything of value.
4) Burst of Speed - I like this spell on paper, but it shouldn't require AP, and should last a little longer than 2 turns ... or as you increase the talent, it should increase the number of turns it works for.

Cleric
5) Sacrifice - it's now so nerfed the other way, that I don't know if it would be worth investing in any more. 20 spirit at Talent level 1 is a lot of spirit and you don't even get to 75% efficiency until Sacrifice 7. For me, it makes sense to make it closer to 1:1 earlier than level 7.

Thief
6) Silent Stalker - the benefit remains the same (3x Crit), but the SP cost and the penalties increase as you increase level. OH ... unless you are meaning those penalties (-x accuracies, -y dodge) are for the target you hit?

[John Robinson]

slayernz

Thanks learned some things from you I have not tried, like the burning blades, had no idea about Meteoric Blast limits, should have looked.

Outlander
3) Berserk Rage; I can think of one way to tweak it. Historical Berserkers on the battle field inspired terror. I visualize them as very large, maniacal screaming buck naked covered in blood and war paint savages. To face an enemy who doesn't care about dying only killing could bring opponents with some sense of self preservation to turn and run. So how about letting him stay naked, but his opponents get a much reduced accuracy due to wetting themselves? In other words if their opponents land a hit it does more damage, but make it harder to hit a character that goes into one of these rages. Might also be fun to add +1 move AP because they are not weighed down by armor.
4) Burst of Speed - I agree. A Deathkin has 9 AP to spend. Every attack costs 1 AP. So he is not limited to the "+1 AP Move Only". I don't see how Burst of speed can be cost effective, so have not put points in it.

Cleric
5) Sacrifice there has been so much talk about this one, I have not bothered with it. It seems tweaking it back a little to what it was, but raising the character level needed to get it might be better?

Thief
6) Silent Stalker - Have you tried this one? Is it for blades only? I was also wondering if the 8 turn penalties stack or reset. In other words if you cast it 2 times in a row, does the penalty get reset to 8, or 16?

[slayernz]

re silent stalker, now that I think about it, if you HIT an opponent with the talent cast, then your opponent gets 8 turns from that strike. If you hit him again, then the 8 turns resets. It's the same for if you cast a spell on yourself - you can't stack multiple Black night's on yourself and have 100 turns worth of dodge/stealth bonus.

[fallen]

Quick response:

1) Meteoric Blast is going to be replaced with a curse soon.
2) Are you casting Burning Blades on your friends? Any character can get it. We are working on getting it to switch to AoE at higher levels.
3) Berserk Rage - will look at it. Critical increases the damage from 1.5x to 3x, so that is a huge hit if you get one. You won't find any other way in the game to get large critical %, so -- that I still think its a very possible character choice. Will look again and see if it needs more balance. You might need to look at using it in conjunction with high Stone Skin. Keep in mind that by level 12, you should be sporting some significantly heavier armor if you are shopping. It's a buff, so it stacks with Crushing Blow, etc.
4) Burst of Speed - will look at it again, any tweaks the AP cost / Duration will increase the SP cost.
5) Sacrifice - the resulting SP is intentionally kept low to allow you some precision on how much you transfer.
6) Silent Stalker - the description is evidently very confusing. Will work on fixing this, ... from Stealth mode (first round of combat, if you win the Stealth roll), you can actually go from 2.25x to 9x damage with a Critical hit. And yes, those are penalties leveraged to the target you hit for 8 rounds, assuming you hit. Need to make that more clear. Penalties apply even if you are not in the Stealth round ... it's a Cursing Attack ... will work on changing the description to be more understandable. Second round Premium characters (Dueler, Rogue) have more of these.

[slayernz]

Silent Stalker sounds like an awesome talent ... looking forward to being able to test it in the future

[hollowpoints]

Nov 22, 2013 18:39:44 GMT -5 fallen said:

6) Silent Stalker -  "you can actually go from 2.25x to 9x damage with a Critical hit."    

Does this mean that IF you win the stealth roll, AND you hit on the first shot, you are guaranteed a crit at 2.25 - 9x damage?

[Karjus]

Crits are so juicy.. got a party built around crit round now and having the Outlander score 160 damage on Nightmare on a Giant Rat is a far cry from what was happening in my last build. Can't wait for Berserk...

[fallen]

hollowpoints - IF you win the Stealth Roll, AND you HIT (it does not have to be the first shot, any attack that round), AND you roll a critical hit, you will get 2.25 - 9x damage. The Talent does not increase or provide Crit %, so you have to find that elsewhere. However, the curse it gives to anyone who is hit is not reliant on critical %.

[hosh]

Nov 20, 2013 18:42:22 GMT -5 John Robinson said:

Historical Berserkers on the battle field inspired terror. I visualize them as very large, maniacal screaming buck naked covered in blood and war paint savages. To face an enemy who doesn't care about dying only killing could bring opponents with some sense of self preservation to turn and run.

I want to point something out here that has nothing to do with game balance and mechanics.

That above is the typical image of a "berserker" but the underlying practice is not really about that. To compare, there's a Tibetan practice called Tumo, and something you can find in present day popular yoga called the fire breath, as well as preserved through various Asian martial arts. It's less about going around raging like a maniac and more about being able to burn through your aversions and inhibitions. Tumo is relatively popular in Tibet, as one of the side-effects is heating up the body. This allowed adepts to go into the mountain caves to practice as ascetics. From what I've heard, some adepts make a vow at the initiation, to never wear heavy clothing. In other words, it's less an effect of the fire breath and more to force you to use the breathing method when you get cold, instead of relying on clothing. If you have clothing to fall back on, then your mind creates these subtle escape routes.

The shadow side of using fire breath are:

(1) You have zero sense of limitations. You will say and do things that people are normally inhibited by social niceties. Most people just can't handle being on the receiving end of someone with no inhibitions. They usually perceive such a person as a raging, out-of-control monster even if that person is the calmest and most sane person in the area. (This lack of inhibition and limitations is usually more dangerous to the practitioner, as they overdo things the point of damaging oneself, but that is a different discussion).
(2) If you don't have clarity of mind, it will stray into aggression and violence.

While that last bit, (2) appears like a good thing for someone who wants to use this in combat, it isn't. For a Tumo practitioner, or for any fire-type practices, if you've succumbed to aggression and anger like that, you're not actually expressing fire efficiently. It's turned in on itself to destroy oneself and others rather than burning through aversions. For another, this was discussed in Musashi's Book of Five Rings as a flaw exploitable by the observant.

The blood and war paint are just costuming, taking advantage of the adversary's fear.

My personal experience of Tumo does not include sitting in an icewater bath and heating it up to room temperature, the way I heard one of my teachers have done :-D However, it is nice to be able to warm up the body a bit when I get cold. But I can tell you, the "lack of self-preservation" is merely a side effect of lacking any inhibition. And you're more likely to run towards something that should scare the shit out of you :-D It can be fun, but it is certainly not the raging, ... uh, "berserk" experience, not unless you've succumbed to martial arts madness. Likewise, the "inspire terror in battle field" is a misconception. *Everyone* is scared shitless on the battlefield. It's just that the berserker doesn't give a shit if he is scared, and may look forward to having some fun.

Calmness is much more valuable. Which makes those odd descriptions in the game about the Outlander having meditative practices more appropriate, at least for me.