Come Bitch About Skills! [Skills Rebalance Brainstorming]

ROGUE SCIENTIST [FIX/BUFF]
Barometric Pulse Devices' "Vent Steam" mistakenly had 'usetimer="2", time="1"' rather than the opposite which is ovbiously what Ruigi intended.
Thaumomechanical Rebreather's mana upkeep moved to 1/7 turns.
Aetheric Death Ray's scaling to Wandcraft upped to 7.
Aetheric Death Ray now correctly triggers On Fire rather than using the depreciated burn="1".

PRACTICAL GEOLOGY [very minor BUFF]
Basalt Skin's Timer and Brittle both increased to 16.



As to Clockwork Reflexes, I see your point, but I'm not willing to uproot whole cloth a cool, powerful ability because it seems out of place with the rest of the tree.

When I do this whole ESCR thing, I look for five things:

• Dead levels, like Slim Customer, Steal Soul, or Third Sigh
• Literally broken mechanics, like Hunter's Strike or Diggle Plague
• Figuratively broken mechanics, like Unholy Warcry or Extraplanar Concentration
• Whole skills that people either aren't using at all (or aren't using beyond a specific point), like Artful Dodger or Magic Training (or Demonology or Blood Magic)
• Whole skills that people generally agree are OP like Egyptian Magic or Dual Wield

If something isn't dead, broken, broken, unused, or blatantly OP, I'm not inclined to mess with it.

 

I use blood magic all the time, and am still experimenting with Demonology. I love artful dodger for lots of builds and with a ranged it is amazing (except when there is a zoo).

 

What does that mean?

 

usetimer is boolean; it's either 0 or 1. the fact that it was a 2 and only lasted 1 turn was clearly backwards -- it's supposed to be usetimer="1" so that the timer works, and time="2" so that it lasts 2 turns. I've verified this with Ruigi.

 

Blood Magic and Demonology are the example 'trees no one takes past a certain point'. No one takes Blood Magic past Vital Siphon (and most people don't take Vital Siphon), and no one takes Demonology past Celestial Circle.

Artful Dodger is the same way -- those people who take it (and they are few) stop at Knightly Leap because Transdimensional is a deathtrap in it's current state and not even +8 dodge is enough to make a stats-only level worth the pain of taking Transdimensional.

 

Magic training is legitimately good for the savvy (I got Astro capstone down to 7 mana cost) and silence. Re: Blood magic; I agree, sadly.

 

I love, love, love transdimensional dodge as a throw/arch/range nuker. You just have to turn it off if you find a zoo.

 

Wow...I started this thread six freaking months ago, and finally the result gets it's own thread. Sheesh! I'm glad people who play roguelikes are inherently patient.

 

Tonight I'll try add that Fungal Arts effect to your ecsr, we'll see if it can be THE petfriendly skill.

 

That's a fairly fast turnaround.

 

Slim Customer is pretty much a waste in a skill point in Assassination. The fact that Slim Customer and Venomous Infusion get in the way of Sneaky Shiv severely nerfed Sneaky Shiv, making Assassination mostly not worthwhile as a skill to focus on.

Edit: Perhaps some Android Rogue Mod mechanics implemented in Assassination to make it more fruitful?

 

After capping Assassination, I can see why they nerfed it. With only Dual Magical Golden Daggers(5 Total Damage + Midas Proc), I was pwning floor 3 monsters. I was also able to melee some Boss monsters without too much hassle. Floor 4 is probably going to be more painful, and I might have to rely more on my Evasive Maneuvers™ from Android Rogue, as well as thrown. It's just that Slim Customer seems boring and should give either more Critical Chance or more Nimbleness, or maybe have an activated ability or proc.

 

Speaking about Essence's changes: It gives you more nimbleness on some kills (as a buff) and this buff gives you also a proc.
Did you gave the xml a look before posting? Many changes were made after the first version of this convertion months ago, you know.

 

I haven't noticed and procs or buffs from slim customer(Essential Core Skills Rebalance 1, now found in vanilla), I'll look at the XMLs to make sure. If it's in Electric Bungalow then it would probably be a good buff to the skill.

 

Yes, it's from Electric Bungalow
skilldb

Code:

<ability name="Slim Customer" icon="skills/rogue/skill_stealth3_64.png" skill="27" level="1">
  <description text="They ought to be keeping an eye on you -- you're a nimble, stealthy sneak. Sometimes, when you assassinate someone, you get really quiet until someone catches you." />
  <secondarybuff id="12" amount="3"/> <!-- sneak -->
  <secondarybuff id="4" amount="1"/> <!-- crit -->
  <primarybuff id="2" amount="1" /> <!-- NIM -->
  <targetKillBuff percentage="12" name="Slim Customer"/>
  </ability>

spelldb

Code:

<spell name="Slim Customer" type="self">
    <buff usetimer="0" brittle="1" attacks="2" icon="skills/rogue/skill_stealth3_64.png" smallicon="skills/rogue/skill_stealth3_32.png">
        <secondarybuff id="12" amount="20"/>
        <targetHitEffectBuff percentage="100" name="Sneaky Shiv"/>
        <description text="OK, he's dead! Time to get the hell out of here before they see you!"/>
        </buff>
    </spell>

Code:

<spell name="Sneaky Shiv" type="adjacent" icon="skills/rogue/skill_assassination1_32.png" >
    <effect type="damage" piercing="1" piercingF="0.33" secondaryScale="12" bleed="1" />
    <effect type="paralyze" turns="5" percent="50" />
    <description text="Go for the cheap shot, right between the ribs."/>
    <anim

It gives you passive +3 +1 +1, 12% on-kill chance to buff yourself other +20 (1 1) with a 100% on-hit chance to bleed, paralyze and hit for scaling + damage.
More than this...

 

Ok, I never used the ESCRII yet and haven't red the whole thread but could it be a solution to give the Sneaky Assassin's Crossbow Recipe to crossbow rogues ? Solution or not, is it possible to give the recipe to the player upon reaching tinkering lvl2 if the player is mainly a rogue ? Solution or not I would really like to try that since I'm usually building toward my railgun by the time I find the recipe (if I find it at all, that is).

 

I like the recipe idea: more combinations with crafts and crossbows.
The second idea I fear is impossible, the game cannot read the player level.

 

Actually this is a solution to the wrong problem. This would fix the problem of "never being able to use the Sneaky Assassin's Crossbow because I don't get the recipe at the right time" not the "I need 4 different skills to survive floor 1 and 2 with a crossbow".

[Edit] Plus ESCRII totally solves the lvl1 problem with a wooping +3 to piercing (forgot it was that much a change). And I just realized that not only does it solve that but also the "crude * crossbow sucks almost as much as simple crossbow" problem.[/Edit]

If there's something I learned from Essence [edit]and Kazeto[/edit] is that there is (almost) nothing you can't do with buffs. I guess I could do something like granting the recipe on the basis that I have a certain buff. So the question should actually be : Can I do that without adding a buff to every rogue skill ?

 

No. The problem in this case lies in the fact that there is no spell-based effect to give a specific recipe (only random ones), and there are no skill-based ways to check for requirements (those are spell-based). With the fact that skills can trigger spells but spells can not trigger skills, it means as soon as you become capable of checking for the requirements you want, you stop being capable of actually doing what you wanted to do if the requirements were met.

Thus, you either just add the recipe automatically, trigger adding a random recipe (and likely be frustrated that you got something else entirely instead of this particular recipe), or change nothing and persist.

Now, checking whether your class levels are at given values, even relative to other class levels and not merely their absolute values, isn't all that hard by itself. Barely elegant (or even not elegant at all) and a mess with some "crazy" mixed in if you are checking for more than one threshold at the time, and likely to be very incompatible with any summons the player might have had, but it is possible.