SwiftStriker Skill Line - Released!

Maybe it's not a bad thing that Bolt Proof is being used to clear traps. (though I agree the numbers are a bit too high, I think 30's a bit too low) Swift Striker - the mod that gives you a taste of rogueish mobility and rogueish trap skills, but the warrior's way! Bolt proof being "fixed" to only work for approaching Octy types would indeed make it redundant with Jump.

 

A legitimate point.

 

That's not at all the impression I had of it. As I see it, it's really damn good. Once you have it, you literally can never be boxed or sandwiched in. It nullifies the trouble of being a vegan on animal-dense floors. It lets you past any customblocker (such as iron bars) that's sealing off a particular part of a room. The RNG can't lock off a portion of the dungeon as inaccessible because of a poorly-placed vending machine or grill. It even lets you push a particular monster past the weaker monsters, behind a terrain piece they then have to take several turns maneuvering around, or even out of the room.

So what it's doing there (regardless of the whether or not that it's not exactly what you were hoping it would be used for) it's doing better than any other level 1 solution to the same problems.

The only part of your first level that is at all underpowered is the stat boosts - though honestly that +1 melee power is huge, so you're not underpowered by much. I'd say add either +1 or +1 to your existing +1 and +1 and you're golden. Alternately, ditch the caddishness and make the total bonus +1 +3.

That would be overkill. As people are pointing out, shoulder bash is not as good as level 2 in maces, level 2 in unarmed, or level 2 in psionics, but since it's only level 1 of your skill, it shouldn't be. Adding damage to it would make it better than level 2 in maces, since shoulder bash is 100% to knockback with zero cool down and maces gives just 20% to knockback and then triggers in invisible 7-turn cooldown.

 

Yeah, I agree, come to think of it. I'll just leave it as a non-attack then, thanks for the input!

As for stat bonuses, I guess a +1 to block couldn't hurt

 

Tried a couple floors with the new quickstep, including beating the snot out of a monster zoo despite having crappy weapons and armor for the floor I was on. I've got more feedback for you:

Quickstep:

• The new quickstep is hard to figure out what it's doing at first. After the 5th or 6th use I figured out it's paralyzing all nearby monsters for 1 turn to get you a free move. That's totally cool, very exciting once you know what's going on, but not obvious at first glance especially if you first use it against a lone monster. No biggie, but since the description is so scant and somewhat sarcastic it's just not immediately obvious.
• The new quickstep also has some minor "ripple effects" and combo-moves, such as activating it when a monster is standing in a acid pool or cloud of gas to make them take an extra turn's worth of damage. Makes it mildly more potent than perhaps was intended, but it's not a big deal. It's definitely fun.
• I wonder if the cooldown isn't a little too short, like it should be 1 turn longer. Will need to test it on deeper floors to be certain, but it's still making escapes pretty easy except from the shootiest of enemy casters.

Flying Tackle and Jump:

• Noticed that with both of these, if I stand adjacent to a monster, and jump on another monster behind them the attack hits both monsters. This happens even if the target is not perfectly straight behind them, and seems to work across any number of empty spaces. Most uses of Flying Tackle killed two monsters in one action as long as I set it up (and quickstep makes such set-up moves easy to pull off). Probably less devastating on deeper floors, but on level 3 it was always a dual-kill.
• The combo of these two attack powers allowed me to dive into a zoo and nuke it. I was close to leveling up, so I decided to risk it. I looked deep for a monster worthy of the Jump attack. I stomped on him, then fired a BMD the next round, then used Jump to target the monster closest to the door I'd opened to reveal the zoo. If I'd had a squid bolt, it would have taken out most of the zoo, but even with the BMD it was enough to trigger the bug where you gain multiple levels from one attack. Think I also could have pulled off the nuclear deepstrike without relying on leveling up (for the healing) if I'd picked out a target that was adjacent monsters I didn't fear getting hit by for 1 turn. Or if I wasn't playing on No Time To Grind and thus had poorer armor than usual for that level.
• If you do manage to create a situation where you can flying tackle on to a monster but not knock it out of your space (such as by jumping onto one that's standing in front of a very thick wall), the AI gets confused. I jumped on a djinn and then hit space bar 10 times before he moved off me. The whole time he was in my space, he never tried to attack me. I expect this bug exists with main game teleports as well, but since most characters only have 1 teleport I rarely end up using them for such offensive measures.
• In case all that didn't make it clear, I'm still pretty concerned about one tree having two or more targetable teleports. May be confirmation bias, but it seemed kinda too good to me.

Boltproof:

• Boltproof is a lot less usefull for approaching enemy casters than I thought it would be. I was still taking damage despite the high resist, and it did nothing for the pack of casters left in the wake of my BMD. I took a bit less damage than I would without it, but the teleports did more for avoiding their shots. Flying Tackle feels stronger than boltproof.
• Traps also still did damage, just for the record.
• Need to test if casting a spell turns off boltproof. If not, then it's super good for wizards to use.

General observations:

• You commented in one of the power descriptions that you wouldn't want to use this in a wizard/rogue build, but I really question that assumption. In fact, it's hard for me to picture a Rogue build that wouldn't love this. Rogues and Wizards get in trouble when the enemy moves in close, but quickstep allows for a free ranged spell every 4 turns. I've played plenty of rogue builds that would be capable of surviving one turn for the sake of a mid-zoo squid bolt. I imagine similar things can be done with infernal torus for promethean wizards. Didn't Fax say his favorite way to melee was to take zero warrior skills?
• The mod sure is fun. While I feel it's still a bit above the curve, keeping the fun may be more important than getting it completely balanced.
• Best advice I can give is to just remove flying tackle so it's 6-skills deep and you need a second tree to pull off the zoo trick. That'll have the side benefit of making boltproof feel strong enough for the level it's at, rather than redundant and underpowered.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

So wait, you were able to use jump and flying tackle to target empty spaces? I could've sworn you have to target a monster for it to work...

As for quickstep not being obvious, I'm going to update the description in the next official release, which will be when I get icons

 

Traps do still do damage. is like for magic, it halves damage and cancels secondary effects like knockback or corruption. But if you have enough resistances, halving damage is essentially negating it since the game halves first, then subtracts resistances, I mostly noticed Boltproof making me invincible while messing with DL 3s bolt throwers, and I'd found a cybertronic amulet. But I suspect it would have a similar effect on brimstone mines if you had the right resistances, ditto any kind of fire damage trap.

Other people's comments on Shoulder Slam are probably correct, in retrospect. I think I'm being highly influenced by using it with Unarmed.

Given the changes coming in 1.10, target locked may need some rethinking.

Hadn't noticed Tackle or Jump hitting two targets, but I usually used them to finish that last monster in a zoo, not as a first strike move, so it's very possible I've just blinked and missed it while crying "Hiya!" in those rare occasions where it kicks in.

 

Update -

I found an interesting bug. If you use Jump or Flying Tackle on a creature in water (like eels) it will trigger the attack, but you won't teleport. Then, your crit boosting buffs hang around for another turn or two, instead of immediately wearing off. Will test this with flying enemies over water when I get a chance. Don't know if this can be fixed in the mod or if its a flaw in the game engine. I suspect the latter, but if anyone can think of a fix, let me know.

Also, confirmed that standing next to an enemy and Jumping/Tackling something in the same general direction behind attacks both the adjacent enemy and the distant one. I think is because the abilities use actual melee attack actions, rather than spells, so they automatically attack the adjacent square as well as the distant one. If that makes any sense.

 

Hey RB, what if I added tunnelvision to jump and flying tackle, would that ease your concerns?

 

Player still get the full benefits of the spell even if player is annoyed by a vision debuff afterwards.

Penalizing (foo) to balance (bar) only works in a restricted environment where all other factors are equal. Once the player finds a way to get more out of (bar) or minimize the downsides of (foo), you're right back to OP land and, once again, needing to actually balance (bar) without relying on (foo) to do it for you.

That said, I think your mod's in a very good state atm, well above the average. Let 1.0.10 come out, get some experience with the new combat calculations for awhile, then worry about fiddling and fixing at that point.

 

^^ This.

 

Due to the imminence of 1.0.10 I thought I'd finish up the run now, rather than repeat the first 12 floors. The sum total is, I died more while using this mod than while playing the 'control' character (3 deaths with mod vs. 2 without) but I definitely enjoyed playing with the mod more than without.

The tiebreaking death occurred because I used Jump against a Muscle Diggle and he countered two of the three "attacks" I made. I presume this is because these attacks are pretty much identical to the Ragnar's Meteor AoE (along with all the other weapon specials) which can also be countered. Further, I noticed that for a window of time (from DL 8 until I got the War God's buff on DL 11) I used Tackle and Jump more as melee attacks, so my added weapon swing was included, than as ranged attacks. This is mostly because the damage of the ranged attack scales poorly against lower level monsters until I got a diggle god buff to dramatically raise my . Once I upgraded to the Fertility god buff, my Jump damage was dealing ~150 damage if all the attacks went through with no crits.

Rather than using the weapon special formula, I'd change Flying Tackle and Jump to spells that scale rapidly to once the next patch is out, which should resolve the annoying counter attack thing and remove the weapon swing when executing the moves as well.

Quickstep functions as advertised against Dredmor, so you can use it to take your distance from him (or get closer) if you wish.

When fighting Dredmor and other creatures on the lower floors, the ones with absurd magic resistance, I noticed that you can frequently fail to get any knockback at all. Even with three knockback attempts they'll resist them all, which can leave you standing on top of your enemy. While they can't hit you, you can still trigger Jump and Tackle on them. I could have killed Dredmor just by doing this and waiting for the cooldowns on those two skills to resolve (instead I quickstepped off and finished him manno-manno.) Once you're standing on top of a victim, the knockback from the abilities does nothing, apparently because the game isn't sure which way to shove them. I'd try making the knockback irresistible, to prevent easy kills, particularly against named monsters. Note that this bug doesn't do anything about other monsters, making it a bad trick to pull when you're surrounded.

On the whole, though, I think this stuff qualifies more as bugs than true balance issues (other than maybe the first point).

I have therefore declared this Mod to be about as balanced as it can be.

 

Thank you! That was extremely helpful!

 

Oh my... How long has it been? No matter. Since Mac users have FINALLY been invited to the party, I'm working on updating swiftstriker to the new system. Here are my plans:

1: Flying Tackle and Jump will, rather than being melee attacks, deal direct piercing damage that will scale with burliness and nimbleness.

2: Target Locked will be an across-the-board debuff for all defensive procs, like counter and block.

3: SwiftStriker will give nimbleness rather than caddishness each level

 

Alright, I've included a version for 1.0.10 RC7, lemme know what you think!

 

I am about to try it with RC9 and see how it goes. Thank you for making it!

 

I'm using the RC7 version, and quickstep appears to be broken. I can only teleport one square in any direction, and there doesn't seem to be any stunning field.

 

There's not supposed to be a visual stunning field, actually. Do the monsters move when you move?

 

All the monsters make a move when I do, as far as I've noticed. I'll have to test it more the next time I play.

 

(It's only supposed to be one square, TJM. It's just supposed to keep anything else from taking a turn while you take your one step.)