No, but I certainly should. It'll be the first thing I do tomorrow after work for sure. That, and begin creating fruits. I look forward to input on this revision!
On a sidenote, I would like to point out that an 8 level tree is not a "support" tree by any stretch of the imagination. Even on GR, you can only afford to have one of those, and even then, you need at least one exp booster (burglary/archeology) to compensate for having it around. You "can" make it "support-ish" by introducing milestone abilities, but as of 1.1, there really isn't anywhere I'd like to stop once i start popping levels into this. (The new difficulty level omni is working on could change that though). That being said, a common misconception about warriors is that they have poor . The reason for this is that since they tend to not have spells, they tend to not care for mana regen either. However, since warriors will pick up trees like master of arms, they can actually get away with not having a lot of heavy armor. For example, if you are running Master of arms/Bushido, only a boilerplate is enough to make most late game basic damage irrelevant. As such, this tree isn't anywhere as warrior unfriendly as you seem to want to make it.
For simplicity, here is Meteor Shower from Meteorology in FAXPAX. Code: <spell name="Meteor Shower 4" type="template" templateID="99" > <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/boulder_drop/boulder_drop" frames="9" firstframe="0" framerate="80" sfx="earth" /> <effect type="damage" burn="1" crushing="2" crushingF="0.2" blasting="1" blastingF="0.1" conflagratory="1" conflagratoryF="0.1" aethereal="1" aetherealF="0.1" affectscaster="0" /> </spell> <spell name="Meteor Shower 3" type="template" templateID="11" > <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/boulder_drop/boulder_drop" frames="9" firstframe="0" framerate="80" sfx="earth" /> <effect type="damage" burn="1" crushing="2" crushingF="0.2" blasting="1" blastingF="0.1" conflagratory="1" conflagratoryF="0.1" aethereal="1" aetherealF="0.1" affectscaster="0" /> </spell> <spell name="Meteor Shower 2" type="template" templateID="10" > <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/boulder_drop/boulder_drop" frames="9" firstframe="0" framerate="80" sfx="earth" /> <effect type="damage" burn="1" crushing="2" crushingF="0.2" blasting="1" blastingF="0.1" conflagratory="1" conflagratoryF="0.1" aethereal="1" aetherealF="0.1" affectscaster="0" /> </spell> <spell name="Meteor Shower 1" type="target" > <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/boulder_drop/boulder_drop" frames="9" firstframe="0" framerate="80" sfx="earth" /> <effect type="damage" burn="1" crushing="2" crushingF="0.2" blasting="1" blastingF="0.1" conflagratory="1" conflagratoryF="0.1" aethereal="1" aetherealF="0.1" affectscaster="0" /> </spell> <spell name="Meteor Shower" icon="sprites/skills/meteor_shower_32.png" type="targetfloor" > <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/boulder_drop/boulder_drop" frames="9" firstframe="0" framerate="80" sfx="earth" /> <requirements mp="50" savvyBonus="0.4" mincost="20" /> <effect type="trigger" spell="Meteor Shower 1" /> <effect type="trigger" spell="Meteor Shower 2" /> <effect type="trigger" spell="Meteor Shower 3" /> <effect type="trigger" spell="Meteor Shower 4" /> <description text="Today's forecast: cloudy with a chance of hailstones." /> </spell> So it should be easy enough to combine several taxa to one spell.
Very true, as a support oriented tree for melee characters, 8 points would be a serious investment. This is the reason I put the utility in the early positions. If one chooses to go further down the tree, then I would like to reward the player with some interesting skills. An xp booster is an interesting idea... My intention is not to make this skill set dislike warriors. Quite the opposite. I hope my posts didn't make it seem like such. I can see warriors getting nice use out of the Druid set, but I wanted it to be equally viable to melee-mage in this set, hence the attempts to gear it slightly more towards casters.
Keep in mind that multiple sources of triggers by percentage aren't additive, they're multiplicative. That is, your first level ability has a 11% trigger, and your third has a 4% trigger of the same proc. You don't have one 15% chance to trigger, you have an 11% and a 4% chance, for ~14.5%. It's close to what I can assume is your target 15% proc rate, but you might be better served making it 10% at 1st and 15% at 2nd, for a ~23.5% total proc rate (and a chance of triggering it twice, though that doesn't matter if you don't have the buff stackable).
I am going to start a NTTG build now. I keep resisting the urge to dive deeper so I can see how this plays out in later levels. I just hate leaving a level unexplored. Likewise I will switch to an unmodified Going Rogue skill instead of my little Elvish Reality mod. Otherwise my feedback will not always be so useful about how difficult it is and how useful the skills are. I love the scaling to and . It is a simple idea, but nothing else really does it as far as I know. This makes adding to those much more useful than it would be without the scaling. And that makes some items invaluable for a Druid whereas they would be inferior for most builds. We could make an animal charm potion/food that would be called "Diggle Treats" and would have the flavor text "Made from things best unthought of, Diggles love you for these slimy treats.". And we could also make "Fertilizer" that charms vegetables. "Smells almost as bad as an undead Diggle. Plants love Druids for this crap.".
Ok, i've had the opportunity to do some serious test running Here's my build Going Rogue, Permadeath, Normal Mode (i.e., not NTTG). Mod packs include RR, Fax Pax, Compleat, and Essential Core rebalance Dual Wield Sword Master of Arms Bushido Druid (being tested) Burglary Blood Knight (being tested) While I usually get other things instead of bloodknight and druid (i'm test running both atm), the general idea behind this build is to grab the 3rd tier of Bushido and Master of Arms early, then max swords ASAP. After that, the world is my oyster, because the odds of me taking any lasting damage from any fight are small (Walk it off + Mr Mountain), while the counter/accuracy stats from maxing Dual Wielded Swords early help me really reap the dividends of being able to shrug off most melee damage. The important thing is that i've tried this skill order in a vacuum, and it works well in and of itself. However, one thing I noted while playing druid was that the proc rate on Guardian Seed, relative to how much hp it heals, essentially allows me to skip the 3rd tier of bushido or master of arms before maxing swords. My point here is that, for most intents and purposes, Guardian, with the current proc rate, almost does at level 0 what other trees only do once you put two levels into them. While I am not averse to have the tree give me a net 15-20% of getting a guardian seed proc on getting hit, I do think that, given the stats that level 0 already give hp wise (even after the removal of mana), 10% is too much of proc rate. On the other hand, with the mana regen now removed, I also feel that the cleanse is too costly for what it does, so you could even out the tree by putting a 5% to proc at level 0, a +5-10% (depending on how high you want the final figure to be) to proc at level 2, and a final +5% at level 3. (Btw, if you are going to go down that route, remember to factor in what Fax said - if you are ADDING % proc, you need to make it higher than simple sum of the two values to make the net % chance of a proc equal the % you are aiming for) That being said, from a casting POV the current mana regen rate from the tree feels about right as a mana sink tree for warriors - assuming you get one level early for the shield and only start putting points into this from dungeon level 5-6 onwards, you can actually have just enough mana to keep your level 1 brittle shield on at all times, and still have enough mana left over to cast your other spells 2-3 times every fight or so (assuming you drink every odd bottle you find, which is kind of the whole point of keeping a mana sink around). Given the future addition of mid-tier food drops, I am a bit leery of that addition because, as it is throwing in any other serious hp/regen mechanic gives you strong hp/regen synergy with Guardian Seed. A mid-tier food drop would probably be overkill. That being said, as we already established, a low tier food drop doesn't do enough.
Fantastic info. I knew I'd be around 15% somewhere, but I was unsure of the exact amount. Guardian Seed's proc needs some tuning. I'm glad you like it. This is exactly what I was aiming for, and I hope it's being pulled off to some degree. Please, as you get farther down, let me know if the scaling keeps up I was noticing similar things with Guardian Seed in the low levels. I found myself sitting on larger amounts of food than usual, which lead me to believe that this may start out at too high a proc. I think you've hit the problem here, and have a great solution to it: spread out the procs from weak to strong down the tree. I'm likely going to implement this, thank you. You may be right here, especially after some changes to increase procs the farther down the tree you get. I'm likely still going to throw in some interesting buff fruits, because the idea is great, but could steer clear from more regen buffs, and put the healing from food to somewhere around a basic apple or pear. Perhaps even make each fruit wipe out any buffs from other buff fruits, so they don't get out of hand. Thank you, Daynab, I will certainly do so . For now, though I feel this skill set still needs a good amount of work.
As for the Guardian Seed triggers, I'm thinking of using this as an excuse for another thought I had earlier: swapping Heart of the Wood and Pillar of Wild Growth in position. Then, I could set Guardian Seed at, say, 6%, Cleanse at 10%, and Pillar of Wild Growth at 11%. Thoughts? When the Buff fruits are added, Heart of the Wood should really come after Pillar anyway, and I'd hate to add another trigger chance to Heart of the Mountain. Plus, it fits the theme of Pillar.
I just played around with the older edition on GR with the build: Archaeology Ley Walker Alchemy Druid (the old build) Wind Magic Practical Geology Inquisitor I had my lucky game ever so far. That is me on level 3, with 1mp regen per turn and some serious end game equipment. I have to agree with removing some mana regen (I know you did it already I saying it was a good idea). I don't really like Heart of the Wood at all even the new edition. I kinda wish it was just gone or combined with pillar of wild growth. Even with 20 (!!!) mana regen my Nature's Wrath is only doing 26 damage. It is very nice for floor 6, but its not going to be all that useful in end game. Same with gift of the mountain but its a random proc so that is fine. I did not find wither all that useful, The extra damage wasn't really worth it to me. I have only used cleanse once by mistake and its almost killed me. I had -999 mana for about 10 turns so I could not recover my mana and cast gust (knockback) on a unqiue. I took it off my skill selection and never looked back. Earth Rune is nice I would have preferred more block or +1, +1 over more max hp.
Good info, thank you. If Heart of the Wood is consistently found to be unimpressive, I could tune it down, drop wither, and put this in its place with perhaps an XP bonus on slaying vegetables. Wither was doing ok for me when I was dealing the multiple damage types it debuffs. Perhaps I could simply find a way to make it more appealing to use. I'm still testing Druid characters myself. That's the old Nature's Wrath, right? I've scaled it up a bit more since then, but even after that buff, it may still fall a bit short. Another buff to scaling may be in order. Keep the info coming
New revision up, 1.2 Putting this up before I go to bed, gave it a quick run-through to make sure nothing was broken (at least not noticeably). Revision 1.2 Changes -Guardian Seed now procs at 6% base -Earth Rune (Tier 1) no longer gives 6, but now adds an additional 2 and 1 on top of its previous bonuses. -Wither (Tier 2) has been scrapped for a new spell, Venomous Rain. It still does the same debuff (except for -1 instead of -3 ), but now it affects a 3x3 area for 6 turns, dealing 1 (0.15 Scale), 1 (0.3 Scale from ). -Cleanse (Tier 3) cooldown removed, heal removed, and no longer drains mana completely. Instead, it costs 25 mana (the cost cannot be lowered), only removes 3 debuffs down from 8, and now grants a passive chance to proc Guardian Seed at 9% when struck. -Pillar of Wild Growth (Previously Tier 6) has swapped positions with Heart of the Wood, putting it at Tier 5. In addition, it now grants a passive chance to proc Guardian Seed at 11% when struck. -Heart of the Wood (Previously Tier 5) has swapped positions with Pillar of Wild Growth, putting it at Tier 6. Venom of Predators has been removed, and Scavenge has been reintroduced. Coming along with Scavenge we have 4 new items to be gained from it: Blessed Tofu, Enchanted Toadstool, Plant Pheromones, and Atomic Apple. (Thanks to OmniNegro for this idea) - Nature's Wrath (Tier 7) has received some buffs in the form of damage scaling. Wrath Frost and Wrath Lightning have returned to 1 and 1 respectively for base-line damage, but Wrath Frost and Wrath Lightning now scale at 1.8, and Wrath Boulders and Wrath Fire now scale at 1.4 , up from 1.2 Scale and 1.0 Scale. Unfortunately the new items don't have original art. I'll see what I can do for that, I'm no artist. Think I covered everything. I've addressed some issues I have noticed and that others have pointed out, hopefully I am one step closer to something balanced.
I've had issues getting heart of the wood to proc - Thing is, you don't get a lot of veggies outside of level 6. Level 2/3/15 has none of them, and they otherwise barely form a 1/5th of every monster you'll encounter on other floors. A 20% chance of getting an average buff from something that you don't encounter all that often isn't all that great. Scaling down the proc rate (say 10%), but letting it activate for anything would yield more consistent results, esp. given there's a -ve resistance to fire involved with one of the buffs (that's actually a bigger penalty than you'd imagine, but it helps balance the tree). On wither - essentially, it's great when you build for it specifically. Which, btw, is what you are going to do if you pick this up as your one wizard tree. However, unless you do that (i.e. specifically look for those damage types), a warrior/rogue won't be reaping a lot of dividends from this until they get to the later levels (Capstone/Gift of the mountain). However, I think we can safely overlook that issue. Pick up 3 early sources of ice/fire/lighting damage (not hard to manage, esp. with mods), and you're set. On the other hand, it falls flat on its face when combining it with other straight up wizard trees. While the elemental debuffs are OK, you need a spell that does all 3 damage types to take advantage of it, and to the best of my knowledge, no such spell exists. Swapping flat hp for +1 would specifically make floor 2 easier. If you look at the damage stats composition of floor 2 monster, you'll see that +2 and +1 has a huge impact on how many monsters can actually hurt you. If you actually spent all of your first four levels of GR on this tree for the second +1, you'll essentially take little to no damage on floor 2. Given that, with the right build (like the one i'm using, for example), druid already guarantees you'll mop the floor with levels 1 and 2, I'm worried about what something that lets you specifically counter floor 2 as well does to game balance, and for what essentially is a one level investment at that. Finally, I've gone pretty deep with this and yeah, the capstone stops being relevant at around level 10, even with maxed stats. Making everything scale with BOTH could fix that, i think. Your call. Edit: missed the new version post. Bit sad to see wither go, tbh, but i'll test the new ability and tell you what i think. E2: Ok testing new version - here's what i think so far - Compared to core rebalance suit up, the adjusted version of Earth rune lacks some kick. Personally, I don't feel that +1 +2 adequately compensates the loss of 6. That being said, I also think that 6 hp was too big of hp chunk for mages, so I agree it has to go in favor of something else. E3: The new spell overcomes the issues the wither had (i.e. not mage friendly). It's an ok nuke, esp. if you can combine it with golemancy to lock things down. Great for clobbering mobs of Octos and other chicken AI monsters that like to clump up in monster zoos. E4: Even with the new version, I still feel that barkskin should proc independently of the spawn fruit (10% chance onplayerhit sounds about right). The general idea being that the -2 prevents it from being overwhelming. The fruits, from what i've seen so far, are pretty badass, and currently a major reason to get heart of the wood by dungeon level 6. Doing a fresh run atm. Will let you know when i get there.
I too am sad to see Wither go. But it was lackluster at the current moment. There may come a time where resistances are more scattered and some reasonable use of can be justified, but that is not today. Venomous Rain seems perfect at this point. At least the and almost guarantee everything will take some damage from it. And looking at the xml for the items, they are even more impressive than I could have hoped. Well done! It looks like Atomic Apples are uberitems. I will have to try another run and see how they are.
Moar FEEDBACK!!! Fury of the mountain looks badass, but the damage simply doesn't match the badassry. I like the idea of this being a rare proc that mows everything down to shreds, so I wouldn't advocate increasing the proc, but the damage scaling isn't really doing it atm. Adding // scaling to what already exists would really put it where it needs to be, imo. Maybe drop the proc rate to 5% to balance off the added damage too. Given the overall % proc on Guardian seed this tree is already giving, the guaranteed proc on pillar cast seems excessive on top of what this level already does. As it is now, it gives a tactical advantage, damages and roots enemies, increases the passive chance of Guardian seed procing AND gives a minor heal (via guardian seed proc). Yep, definitely too much. On a sidenote, I seem to be getting fruit when I kill veggies, and I don't have heart of the wood yet. Low tier ones, but fruits still. Is this just the fact that I changed changed the mod file without starting a new game messing with me, or did you forget to remove a string code from your tier 4 ability haven't gotten barkskin to proc yet, so that could be it. Edit: Sorted, the culprit was one of the new drinks added by my other mods.
Making Nature's Fury use both scales is possible. I'm aiming to make the damage a bit upredictable if you don't try for both and , but this may be a change I have to make. Let me know if it's still falling flat on it's face with the new scaling in 1.2, I won't have a chance to test this until later tonight myself. The health bonus on Earth Rune was lackluster on warriors and too good for mages. Yes, it had to go, and in an attempt to avoid adding too many resistances to the tree, I'm taking it slow on rebuffing this skill. I'll brainstorm ways to change this up. Wither was under-performing, and Venomous Rain I felt took care of the issues with Wither while still holding on to the core idea of it. Procing Barkskin independent of Veggies is a good idea, but that would leave us with spawning a super fruit in 1/4 vegetables. It may require some balancing of the trigger rate on Scavenge. Also, if Heart of the Wood starts procing ANOTHER heal from anything hitting you, I will likely have to drop some passives gained for taking it. I'm surprised people are sad to see Wither go, especially since Venomous Rain actually applies the Wither debuff. I wanted to use originally for Wither, but didn't want it to get out of control. The new version uses just a little bit. Going to watch this one. Gift of the Mountain is, without a doubt, going to need to scale harder. I'm using Nature's Fury testing as a guide to where I should go with this one. I want to buff it, and will likely take a percent or too off the proc chance when I do. As for Pillar, I suspected the guaranteed proc would be excessive with the new Guardian Seed proc chance, but didn't want to remove it yet. I'll do some more testing tonight and if our suspicions are correct, it will be dropped from the next revision. As always, thank you gentlemen.
I dunno if it's just the RNG messing with me, but I can't seem to make heart of the wood proc for me anywhere as much as it should. On scavenge dropping items, you should just drop it to 15%, and give Barkskin 10% on playerhit proc. About the stats needing to be scaled down, I do not think it would be necessary. Now that you've moved it to pre-capstone level, it should reflect the power you'd expect from a level that most trees don't even have. On wither - it's not so much wither itself i was sad to see go, but moving away from the concept of a single target debuff (which tends to be quite rare in DoD) to a more generic DoT nuke. Overall though, I think that if you want this to be friendly to all three archetypes, you do need to have at least two proper nukes, and pillar and rain meet that requirement.
Like AulR said, we liked Wither as it was. But it was all but useless in the first version. That is simply the horrible resistant creatures being everywhere. The new Wither Venomous Rain lasts a while and does very good damage if you can bottle up some enemies in the AoE since almost nothing resists both and . The debuff is really nice as a bonus. But I usually just either keep mobs far away and distracted with a summon or up close and cut to ribbons. The debuff is only useful up close when I need to be certain they will die in as few hits as possible. (Although the duration is long. I could use it for different purposes than this.) Pillar of Wild Growth is perfect to keep a zoo bottled up, and then just to stack Venomous Rain on top to make short work of things. I am not so certain it even needs damage by itself. But it is nothing I find unbalancing or overpowered. I think the RNG is messing with me. I never managed to get one of the new fruit yet. I will have to report back when I get a chance to test them. Nature's Wrath is awesome in concept. I am uncertain of the damage it does. That may still need some tweaking. I am just not so sure what to say. Gift of the Mountain is a problematic area though. It is defensive, yet uses that every other monster is heavily resistant to. It then sets them on fire. That should be good, except by the time they get set aflame they are already on top of you. Have you considered a confusion debuff that repeats for several turns to potentially make it more defensive?
Next revision will see buffs to Gift of the Mountain proc. In the revision 1.3, I'm playing with 9% chance for Barkskin to proc and a 3% chance to Scavenge from ANY kill. This version won't be released until I get a feel for if this is balanced.I also need to get a better idea of where Nature's Wrath is damage-wise in revision 1.2. When I find a nice fit on the scale, Gift of the Mountain will use a similar, tuned down version, and the chance to paralyze will increase greatly. I'm reluctant to add more defense to Earth Rune, so I'm trying to think of other ways to improve it. Also brainstorming more buff fruits, ideas welcome.
