Essential DoD Core Skill Rebalance v.0.1.2

Version 0.1 uploaded, changelog updated! Bring on the commentary!

 

yay~!

-dances the dance of his people-

 

Also, Null just showed me that amount="2" on the XML for blackjack's sleep effect means that it only happens half the time anyway. Just so you're aware.

 

So it has a 20% chance of happening, and then 50% chance of happening after the first 20%? This sounds really... uh... I'll stop myself here.

 

I don't unerdstand either

 

20% proc, 50% activation, then it rolls against their resist? :\

 

Then, you have to subtract the chance that if you did any damage to it from another proc that it would wake up.

 

So:

1) you have to hit with your attack
2) you have a 20% chance to inflict Blackjack.
3) If Blackjack hits, you'll do some extra Crushing damage, and you have a 50% chance to inflict Sleep.
4) Sleep then rolls against their resist (except that I added 'resistable=0', we'll see if that does anything in a Sleep effect.)
5) Any damage that comes after Blackjack will wake the creature up.
6) Any nearby attacking creatures will make noise which has a good chance of waking the creature up.

So in short, your basic chance of inflicting sleep with a melee attack is [your chance to hit] *.1 * [100 - their Magic resist], and even if you do, there's still a very good chance that a second proc or a nearby enemy will wake them up. Even with a 95% chance to hit and a mere 10% resist chance, that's still just over eight and a half percent on any given attack to get them to fall asleep in the first place.

Perhaps switching to Paralyze is a better option after all.

 

I wonder if the order in which you select your skills affects the order in which your procs go off. Taking the Ass skills last would make blackjack nearly always work then.

 

It's more likely ids in either the skillDB or spellDB.

 

Or even the order they're listed in skillDB/spellDB.

 

That was my conclusion as well, or stun, since the spell description itself says "stun". I don't think there should be a 50% chance after the 20% chance. 1 roll for 1 effect, not 2 rolls for 1 effect. Take away the melee power scaling and give it 20% chance of Paralyze with 1 roll and unresistable statis infliction, please. Let the other 2 Assassination procs have the melee power scaling so they feel like unique snowflakes (somewhat).

 

Why not just switch out sleep stun (which is barely even useful in melee combat), to a debuff/ poison attack? Something like "Target has - 5 (stats), + takes extra 5 DoT" would seem more useful to me.. since I don't find the sleep effect useful assuming they don't wake up in one turn.

 

There is no "stun" status effect. http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Spell_Effects

Also, making the stun unresistable is way OP. having your enemies lose 20% (more actually since you can consistently arrange to strike first) of their turns from DL1 through DL15 is too powerful for a single skill point investment.

 

A stun is barely useful in melee? A DOT is better?

Has the world gone mad?

 

The main point was the reduced stats.. like maybe -5 enemy (possibly scaling for higher dungeon levels) / , since I have seen a few people complain about enemies always critical hitting/ countering at end game with melee characters on the forums. The DoT is a flavor thing, since it is a poison themed attack, poison damage is a bit expected ^^

Edit: That actually brings up an interesting idea.. what if some effects scaled based on the dungeon level? Things like Shield Bash, and the from Vampirism?

 

Actually I wish I could scale things on character level.

 

I'm pretty sure that an enemy failing to attack whatsoever this round is better than a reduced chance of him critting this round. YMMV.

 

your-milage-may-vary? I don't hear that term too often.


hmm... minor complaint, but I get the feeling the stat modifications to smithing levels 3 and 4 are backwards. "you are a practical and practices metalurgist" giving conflaguratory resistance, while "you like it hot" gives trap affinity... seems kinda weird at the individual levels, even if once maxed out it makes sense.

I do understand why though, spreading out the bonuses over the course of the skill tree makes more sense for balance purposes. it still kinda feels weird though `~`

other than that, I think the changes to the crafting skills is great :>

 

Essence, if you've got a moment, I'd be curious to hear about the thought process behind the +2 Melee Power at the first level of these abilities. While I agree that over all the Melee skills could use a boost, I'm a little surprised to see it front loaded. Unless you're saying that you replaced the previous bonuses with +2 melee power, which is not how it reads at first blush.

Wouldn't that make dual-wield just that much more potent? Dual wield with maces and axes (so +4 Melee Power, two starting weapons, and all the normal bonuses) would then result in one-shot kills on pretty much everything in the first floor right out of the gate, wouldn't it?

In my experience, melee builds aren't weak on floor 1, they're weak on floors 7-15. I'd rather see them add +1 (more) damage or melee power at levels 3, 4 and 5, instead of at level 1.

Just my 2 cents.