Quick overview of 1.06 Beta

Spells

Thaumite got horribly nerfed. Cost raised significantly and min cost also raised to 8. I seriously don't get the logic behind this but whatever, it was pretty bad to begin with and now it just looks unusable.... So in the trashbin it goes.

Narcosomatic Induction got nerfed. Both cost and minimum cost raise by 1, damage reduced by 1. Shove was always better anyway.

Zenzizenzizenzic's magic power buff nerfed down to 3. About time this gets nerfed.

Corpus Burst and Miasmatic Putrefaction got damage boost and cost reduction, kitting tissue also appears to be fixed. Zomby cost reduced. Even so I still doubt it's viability.

Vamp's drink blood scales with magic power, very insignificantly (0.15*mpower), but reduced by 1. So another nerf for almost everyone who put vamp on a melee with 0 magic power.

Necro got buffed, again? Necropain now reduced to 1+0.1..... But last longer. Doesn't matter for those who block them all, right? Deathly Hex now has minor life leech (0.3*mpower) based on magic power. Mark no longer stacks, stat slightly changed, but has 4 turn upkeep, so that's a buff. Eldritch Inhabitation got nerfed but who uses that anyway? Rift cost 1 more mana, which makes no difference IMO....

Hand of Belimawr now has an upkeep every 8 turns.

Syzygy now has an upkeep of 4 turns, Celestial Aegis now can take 5 hits with 1 less defense and some more magic resist. So astrology is still not worth leveling.

Skills
Axe got a few points of critical (8 total)..... Don't see myself using this still.

Hammer Champion now has a 7.5% of stun for 2 turns.

Overall
Golem got nerfed hard, math got minor nerf, and Necro got yet another buff.

Still looking at items to see how melee is affected.

Craft
Whole bunch of Smith Recipes that are, actually good. Also 2 new axes on the smith line.

 

I'd only use Thuamite Swarm if I randomly rolled my character and had nothing else, so whatever.

Vamp got nerfed? Hrm. That doesn't really help melee does it, which was already struggling. I can't agree with this at all. If anything, vamp was fine and melee needed to see some more passive health regen in master of arms/shield bearer or whatever. Vamp wasn't overpowered.

Narcosomatic Induction got nerfed? It was never viable beyond level 1. I suppose it was better than most level 1 spells though. Psionics had an easy go of the first few levels.

Fleshmacy buffs? Neato.

Necro.... buffs?

I like that hammer and axe got something at least.

Finally, hand of belamir. No one who can stand in melee has the mana/spellpower to use this every five hits and +5 damage is fairly trivial outside of an unarmed/ranged user. No one who has the spell power or mana to use this would because it's a terrible use of mana. The one use this spell would have is on an archer. I wager that this spell is never used by anyone ever. Nice nerf.

Math nerf was well placed, agreed.

Bleh. Why was last patch pretty good on the balance scale and this one so terrible? I like that fleshmancy/axes/hammers are getting love as those skills are all terrible right now. But I don't understand some of the other changes.

 

I don't know why necro need another buff either. Now your innate 3 resist can last you til 29 magic power.....

As for hand and thuamite nerf that makes no sense whatsoever...

The vamp change...... Well it help dual staves psionic and necro hybrids.....

New items look good though. And smith gotten pretty solid buff. With bronze ring I can live without ring of iron thorn.

 

Diffs of the game files for those that want to look for themselves:

monDB: http://diffchecker.com/RVj0wcK
skillDB: http://diffchecker.com/Q5bO19U
craftDB: http://diffchecker.com/67Ary99
spellDB: http://diffchecker.com/03VPOl8
itemDB: http://diffchecker.com/wQY0aED

 

too bad there is no way to craft flasks. Otherwise it would be quite fun to use alchemy to turn a diggle egg to brimstone then into a molotov cocktail.

Never mind, just saw there is now a way to make flasks.

1 plastic ingot will net you enough for 16 molotov cocktails. 1 diggle egg for 8. Why is flask making/sulfur grinding/molotov cocktail in alch and not tinkering? The rest of the thrown flasks are all in tinkering.

Alchemy is already good.

 

Not anymore. All Alchemy now.

 

So to use throwing to it's full extent now you need Alch for thrown flasks, Tink for bombs and Smithing for various thrown weapons.
Great :/

 

Hmm, that's kinda neat I suppose. It will be very easy to make some of those flask bombs now.

Edit, I quite like the mace proc being on the final skill. So now maces proc both knockback and stun. Yes, staves/psionic will be superior. But I think I'll give a mace/shield/assasination/smithing/alchemy/master of arms/berserker build a go. And axes got a fun new smithing weapon.

 

I hate to say this, but a melee who got surrounded without an reliable escape mechanism (at later level) is pretty much dead already.

Because of this I just can't see Sparkly working. If you got more than 1 monsters hitting you, would you use your sparkly? Or would you use your knightly leap/MIMW/invis/handy wand/pet lure so you don't die next turn? Just like every single melee triggering skill, regardless of their area of effect you will only use it when 1 monster is hitting you at a time. An all around AOE will only hit 3 monsters at best.

As for Fleshsmithing

Meatshield, bonus HP does nothing because the time you taking damage is the time it breaks. The only thing is does is psyc people out and make them think they have more HP than they really do.

Fleshbore is the biggest problem. Very low damage, very high cost. To get it to 4 mana requires 60 magic power, and that's just not happening for the vast majority of the game...... 1+0.21mpower 5 turn DOT is just bad for such a high cost skill. Unlike other skill tree that doesn't matter if 1 or 2 skill sucks. 2 other skills following it needs a corpse. If this can't kill, then this tree is practically unusable.

Knitting Tissue is a heal. I haven't try if "amountF" even works but it shouldn't be too bad if it does. If it doesn't work it's due to amountF not working.

Corpse burst is, well you need a corpse. Which means you need to kill 1 monster (and not at melee range), which fleshsmithing does not provide. This can only be remedy by making fleshbore viable. Don't got me wrong, it does desperately needed the damage and a lower cost, but the conditional is what makes it the most unusable.

Zombification, well come on it's a zombie for a level 5 skill. Works alright as a lure except again, needs a corpse, and again, fleshsmithing still can't kill a monster at this point.

Miasmatic Putrefaction, actually the spell itself wasn't that problematic. It's weak sure, but not terrible. The problem is since the previous 5 skills are so bad noone is going to use fleshsmith just for this.

 

If Necronomiconomics is the standard for a magic line that suits both melee and caster, Viking Wizardry is woeful in comparison.

The main problems are the buffs:

• 'N number of hits' buffs
  • Can't recast during a Monster Zoo without a taking a hit or using a stun/shove
  • Massive upkeep cost
    • Even if you had enough magic power to push Hand of Belimawr down to 4 mana per cast you'd still be using almost 1 mana per turn!
• Pure damage buffs
  • Worthless unless the damage pushes you from an N hit kill to an (N - 1) hit kill
  • Even more worthless if they don't scale with magic power
    • Hand of Belimawr does 4 conflagratory + 40% chance of another 1 damage and setting your opponent on fire. Putting a DOT on something that you're trying to kill immediately is not particularly helpful.

In comparison Necronomiconomics has amazing buffs:

• Mark of Chthon
  • 1 mana every 4 turns. Able to easily keep this up for an entire zoo and potentially an entire dungeon level with the amount of booze you find.
  • +2 resistance to mundane damage
  • 42% chance of disabling your opponent
• Pact of Fleeting Life
  • 11 mana, lasts 32 turns
  • Healing and damage that scales massively with your magic power (f = 0.65)

If you want Viking Wizardry to flourish here's some ideas:

• Change the buff 'duration' so you can reliably keep it up
  • Reset the hit count when you get a kill, make it like Pact or Mark, ???
• Way more magic power scaling
• More and better procs
  • Knockback
  • AOE
  • 'Starts a fire underneath them' (was really helpful as a weapon proc, would be great for Hand of Balimawr)
• Increase melee stats other than damage
• • Counter, block, dodge, etc.

Basically I'd just like Viking Wizardry to be the 'offensive' alternative to the more defensively oriented Necro melee.

EDIT:

For Sparkly I'd just make it prevent enemies from hitting you back in the same turn. I've noticed the knockback spells do this (e.g. if I shove an enemy right next to me they can't attack me even if they didn't move).

 

The whole mark sleep thing doesn't even work. I never gotten a single sleep process on attack when I use necro.

Viking is awesome though. Arctic wind, second best DOT in the game at low cost, stackable. Wait you mean a single tree need more than 1 skill to be useful? But like half the magic trees nowadays are 1 trick ponies or completely useless....

Can't find a use for
Fleshsmithing
Promethean (anyone still use this since 1.05? If yes, move it to 1 trick pony)

1 Trick Pony
Viking - Arctic Wind
Astrology - Radiance Aura

A few good with a few bad
Necro (mark/pact/rift)
Psionic (anyone level this past 4?)
Golem (actually every skill had a purpose, until the thaumite change)

God Mode
Mathemagic (best single target damage, best buff, unlimited teleport, gold, early game escape, and 1 useless debuff)

 

Yeah I was mostly talking about melee. I haven't played a pure caster in ages.

If you're using it with Pact I'm guessing its on-hit effect is immediately waking them up again. Maybe the devs should have a look at making the sleep effect only trigger at the end of your turn so the process order doesn't mess stuff up.

 

The biggest, most obvious problem with mages is "I can be anywhere and everywhere I want at any time for virtually no cost". We keep seeing damage nerf and cost raise for skills that aren't even that good to begin with, making mages completely dreadful to play without math. But since math = God Mode mages remains OP no matter how many other damage spell gets nerfed. As long as 1 skill still does the damage, math can do the rest.

It's like Viking, the whole tree sucks, but it got arctic wind. So mages pick it for arctic wind and math does the rest.

The minimum cost of Xeuclid's Translation needs to be at least 10. And even then I will probably still be using math.....

 

I'm going to agree that many/most of the spells need buffs. However, psionic is good to take to 5 even 6. While there are better single target spells of course, h0wever pyrokenisis is cheap and effective. Later on it will do 40+ damage for 4 mana and ignite foes.

Also, promethean magic is a two trick pony. The pet is pretty good early and tactical pyre is a solid spell because it lasts forever, cost little, and deals a good 40 damage later on to anything that steps on it. I like tactical pyre is a fun spell and perfect where it is.

 

I suspect the solution for magic is not to tweak the damage/costs of the spells, but rather to make them harder to use -- weirder area of effects, bizarre range restrictions, etc. For example, you could change the tunneling ray into a spell that makes a wall tile explode, dealing damage to adjacent monsters. Of course tunneling ray shows up way too late for such a change to ordinarily be relevant, but you get the idea. The goal being that the mage has to select from many spells that all deal good damage but don't all suit the current tactical situation.

It's not so much bad that certain spells are spammable; it's bad that they're mindlessly spammable. Select Recursive Curse / Arctic Wind, click on monster, done. Select Psychokinetic Shove, position cursor on entrance to zoo, keep clicking until it's dead. Etc.

Necro is better off here because instead of each spell having a tactical niche, the spells are generally useful but have backlash. Of course the current backlash system could use some work (ISTR reading a suggestion that they take out a percentage of your HP/MP instead of dealing resistable necro damage, for example), but the concept is sound. Other good spells in this sense include:

* Dragonbreath, rune of exploding
* Crystal Healing
* Basically the entire golem tree

Of course, nobody uses Dragonbreath because a) there are better (read: easier to use) choices, and b) its damage is pretty poor. But if you make it so no one spell is applicable to any situation, then Dragonbreath becomes the spell of choice when you have 2+ monsters lined up in front of you.

 

I want to see some spells not only with mana cost, but a cooldown.

Say you give Xeuclid's Translation a 5 turn cooldown, it will still be awesome, but not omfg brokenly op.

Other "early level" skill, should just start at low mana cost. Many of the level 1 spell are just fairly unusable because they cost like 7 mana when they still deal damage and become obsolete by the time their cost drops.

 

Here is what I would do to viking magic. Keep in mind, viking magic is perfectly viable for casters. But there is no reason to use this line as a melee. The efficiency of the buffs/debuffs is terrible. 11 mana for 10 damage over 5 hits + it has an upkeep on magic steel? And now 13 mana for 25 damage over 5 hits on hand of belamir on top of an upkeep for that? And I, as a melee, am going to invest 5 skill points in tree for that? Melee hit for 70+ damage in this game and have no mana and can take berserker or assasination which do far far more.

Power of Magic Steel: Cost to 5 mana, min cost to 5 mana. Remove the charges and make the buff have an upkeep every 8 turns. As it stands you are paying 11 mana for 10 damage it is beyond terrible, this change would allow melee to actually use it. The only reason to use this spell now is as an archer. You get the damage but shots don't cost charges. Even then it's not great, but archery doesn't require magic power killing armor so you can still cast as a dedicated archer and make use of the rest of the tree.

Skantha's Roots: This spell is fine. No changes. It offers some utility and can be useful as a ranged finisher.

Artic Vortex: This spell is the best spell in tree. It's fine. It serves no purpose for a melee, but makes the tree good for pure casters.

Unholy Warcry: Here is the spell that could really be used to make viking wizardry a melee support line. Right now it debuffs enemy damage by 2 and their armor by 2-4 depending on what weapon you are using. There are several options to making this playable.

1) Drastically lower the cost. I'm thinking a flat 3 mana. Plate wearing melee can't spam this spell. Leave the debuff as is. It's not great, but add in the damage buffs in the line and you are doing an additional 8-10 a hit and gaining 2 effective armor.

2) Leave cost at 11. Add a buff component or some sort of self healing. Given that the melee buffs are draining your mana at 11 and in plate you'll rarely be using this. So make it big. Like +6 block +8 counter +2 armor +4 health regen for 20 turns.

Hand of Belimawr: Same change as magic steal. Cost to a flat 5. Ulimited charges with a 1 per 8 upkeep.

Thor's Bolt: Not particularly useful for casters due to it not being a very effective AE spell and the line having a much more efficient single target spell. I'd make this spell do full damage in an AE 3 instead of reduced damage to outside targets.

 

Ya, viking is kinda funny in that it has a great skill for mages and a great skill for an archery/thrown -"rogue" type character and crap for melee. Best would be to make the buffs permanent upkeep buffs, and possibly change the upkeep to a percent of your mana instead of flat number. I don't think they plan to do any massive revamp though. I think the main reason mages are so much more powerful than melelee has nothing to do with teleport or math specifically. It's that damage over time abilities are so extremely powerful in this game. The damage really isn't that much better for the direct damage spells, and having to burn up a turn every cast makes them infinitely inferior.

It's like do you wanna cast spell over and over every turn when you can do nearly the same damage in one cast? Once mages are forced to spend more turns casting it will leave them less ability to use thing like teleport and whatnot. It all goes back to damage over time abilities.