Project: Community Skills Guide

I realize it might not be THAT relevant, but perhaps mod skills should mention their creator in the description, and maybe whether orbit they"re still being supported?

 

When you're right, Essence, you're right. I'll add that info, along with a link to the relevant forum threads where the mods can be found (since I don't think Swift Striker ever made it into the Workshop), when I get home tonight.

 

As far as synergy goes, SwiftStriker is an odd one because nothing really synergizes in obvious ways -- but a lot of things synergize with "being in the enemy's face", including basically any on-hit or when-hit procs, Melee Power, and so forth. Unfortunately SwiftStriker was pretty severely depreciated when Clockwork Knight went core, because warrior teleports.

 

Well, for the most part. For rogues who want more movement (because utility overkill, and the fact that it's a warrior skill tree and thus gives a few more health points via primary stats), it is a great thing.

 

I considered that, but in my somewhat limited experience playing pure-ish Rogues, I almost always want to get away, rather than get up to, an enemy.

 

Some rogues want to switch distances both sides. Take Ninjutsu and Throwing as your base skills and you will want to move in and out of melee distance (and you'll most likely have Burglary too, so you'll be able to use Swift Striker to get into melee and then Move in Mysterious Ways to get out of it).

Then again, that way of playing might be something weird that not many people other than me are using. Whatever.

 

Pop

Spoiler

PARAZZI!

 

Mod Skill
J-Factor's Chronomancy

Type: Rogue
Role: Turbocharger
Chronomancy provides a fancy toolbox of effects, none of which will win you the game, but all of which make life easier...in a complicated way.
Theme: Time Is On Your Side

Strategy:
Learn to wait, and then take advantage of your newly-acquired skill. Chronomancy's skills are almost all in some way related to waiting, whether it's dropping an effect on an enemy and waiting for it to go off, or accelerating yourself so that you can wait dozens of turns with a single click of the mouse. Toward the end, you can save yourself quite a bit of time by teleporting around with the Grandfather Clock Paradox and refreshing your cooldowns with the Lease of Time.

Pros:
Chronomany makes the game less about finding ways to make time go by and more about giving you good things to do with your wait time. It offers a goodly range of damage, healing, and there's simply nothing in the game like Grandfather Clock Paradox.
Cons:
If you're looking for a killer, this isn't it. Chronomancy is a mostly defensive skillset, and won't match your playstyle well if you're a blitzkrieger. Also, arguably, a couple of the levels are essentially empty (The Darkest Timeline is basically a visually cool and epically large Froda's Jump Discontinuity appearing at the same skill level that a mathemagic player is getting Xeuclid's Translation.)
Synergies:
Chronomancy loves Wright's Irrefutable Argument, and almost any big-time nuking character will love Bolt Time -- it gives you and enemies near you +100 Dodge, which keeps you safe while allow you to (obviously) fireball them to death. In general, though, the big strengths of Chronomancy synergize with 'being a character'.

Takeaway:
Chronomancy has a little something for everyone, and in so doing, manages to be not quite the perfect tool for anyone -- but it's effects have a huge cool (J-)factor, and anyone delving into the realm of modding deserves to try it at least once.

 

Mod Skill
Null's Wind Magic

Type: Wizard
Role: Engine
Wind Magic gives you a couple of nukes, some excellent teleports, and a level-zero knockback-and-damage AoE that all come together to make this a pleasantly-powerful skill that won't quite leave you feeling as OP as Promethean's fires, but can still easily be used as your major offense-with-a-bit-of-utility skill.
Theme: She's Gone from Suck...to Blow!

Strategy:
Move around the dungeon often, and splatter your enemies with nukes both small and large while you do it. Wind Magic is a great multipurpose skill that manages to feel well balanced while giving you abilities that synergize with themselves quite well.

Pros:
One of the biggest problems that exploder wizards (yes, worked in a Bastard! reference) have is getting stuck in melee -- and Wind Magic gives you both exploder-type magic and the teleports you need to stay out of the way. It even throws in a mute spell so that the mages you just teleported away from can't nuke you in return.
Cons:
Wind Magic, while it gives you nukes aplenty, doesn't give you BIG nukes quickly -- you have to wait until the capstone to see a huge AoE. The spells also require a bit of cleverness to get great use out of; it's not like Promethean where you just point and spam.
Synergies:
As any nuking skill, Wind Magic loves mana, so any of the major mana-gaining skills will be happytown for Wind Magic. The capstone also gives pretty significant penalties to Voltaic and Blasting resistance, so if you have weapons or spells that deal those damage types, you can actually deal pretty massive extra damage to enemies affected by it. (Viking Wizardry, anyone?)

Takeaway:
Wind Magic is a great way to get around and make your enemies stop getting around, but it may take a little longer to figure out how to use than your typical vanilla spell tree. Once mastered, however, it's a great set of tools and middling-to-pretty lethal at the same time, and with almost zero drawbacks, either.

 

Mod Skill
lccorp2's Radiant Wizard

Type: Wizard
Role: Engine
Radiant Wizard is a straight-up nuking skill like Promethean Magic, but with slightly less versatility (no mines, no pets), some extraordinary drawbacks (debuffs that literally make you explode if you get hit in melee), and incredibly powerful offense.
Theme: My God...I'm full of stars!

Strategy:
Stay out of the way of everything and destroy it utterly using spells that (of course) require you to be close to work. Work your way into Energy Dragon From and then basically eat the dungeon.

Pros:
Radiant Wizard has the single best (balanced) single-target nuke at 0th level in the game (including other mods). As you progress, your magic powers become obscene, and the stat boosts make sure that it's not just your Radiant powers that benefit.
Cons:
There's not a lot of utility in RW, and there are severe -- like literally game-endingly crippling -- debuffs that you get if you get hit in combat. Pair that with the fact that the skill itself robs you of Block, Dodge, and Counter as you level up and the fact that some of the better spells have ridiculously short ranges, and you end up constantly toeing the line of utterdeath.
Synergies:
Wind Magic and Mathemagic can give Radiant Wizards the mobility they need to be able to keep doing what they're doing without getting in danger. Any skill that provides pets, and doubly so for Golemancy because walls, help by keeping your enemies focused on non-you. And of course you'll want mana for all that spellcasting, so skills like Ley Walker, Blood Magic, and other mana-boosters are always useful. Finally, some of the more significant defensive stances from the weapon skills (Sensible Swiss Defensive Stance, the Montoya Defense) can overcome the defensive penalties that Radiant Wizard hits you with and leave you at least nominally likely to survive a melee hit.

Takeaway:Radiant Wizard is for people who love to live on the edge -- I do believe llcorp2 once described as "less of a glass cannon and more of a tissue-paper rocket launcher." If you're in the mood to live dangerously, give Radiant Wizard a shot -- just don't play Permadeath the first time you do.

 

Mod Skill
Megaron's Sweet Tooth (Part of the Sweet, Sweet Swag Mod)
Type: Wizard (Gish)
Role: Fuel Tank/Payload
Sweet Tooth is a skill that's clearly designed to give you HP and mana in large quantities, and does so in a mostly-balanced fashion (in part relying on melee combat for the 'best' one of them)...but it also gives you a couple of truly excellent offensive abilities that you can build toward.
Theme: Who can take a rainbow and wrap it in a sigh?

Strategy:
In the early game (DL1), pick and choose your battles based on your other skills and let your sweet Gummi Diggle factory build up a stockpile of combat-enhancing foodstuffs. After you've gotten A Cottage Made of Chocolate, cleverly manipulate dungeon terrain to create chokepoints that literally choke (OK, putrefy) opponents to death. Once you get the Candy Golem, you can basically combine the Cottage and the Golem to keep 85% of your enemies distracted or out of your hair while pop Gummi Diggles that give you elemental attack bonuses and beat the crap out of the bad guys one at a time while they're busy with your golem.

Pros:
Sweet Tooth makes it hard to die unless you're really seriously overwhelmed. Between dungeon blockers that also kill things, a pet that gives you food when it dies, and Harvest Sweets (every melee hit you dish out gives you 1 buffstack which you can consume later for either HP or MP), there's probably not a skill out there, mod or otherwise, that gives you as many "stayin' alive" options as Sweet Tooth.
Cons:
Sweet Tooth requires a fairly specific playstyle (gish) to take full advantage of. If you're a nuker wizard, the melee-enhancing nature of Gummi Diggles and the smack-requiring of Harvest Sweets won't matter (you do also gain stacks from casting, but not nearly as many as if you melee). If you're a warrior who happened to drop into Sweet Tooth, the MP cost on A Cottage Made of Chocolate will keep it from being anything other than fallback trick. Also, in general, Sugarblast is weak -- but then, that weak level helps to offset the awesomeness that is Candy Golem, so that might not be a con after all.
Synergies:
The most obvious is Ley Walker/Blood Magic to keep the mana flowing when you're just plugged a zoo hole with two Cottages and a Golem. Sweet Tooth could also see a lot of benefit from Degree in Dungeoneering, since it relies a lot on eating and DoD buffs eating even more. Harvest Sweets works on counterattacks, too, so there's some interesting synergy with Swords/Dual Wield and with Piracy there. And of course it's a gish skill, so it has a natural tendency to work with Warlockery, Viking Wizardry, and their ilk.

Takeaway:
Sweet Tooth rides the line between balanced and OP -- I think that given just the right playstyle, it might cross the line and become a bit too strong, but it would take sincere dedication to really break it. Most players, however, would really enjoy the flavor as well as the thinking that you have to do to get the most out of Sweet Tooth. It's definitely a skill that requires strategy as well as tactics, and I had mad fun playing it. I think you will, too.

Spoiler: Extra Comments

Extra Comments:
I played through with:
Sweet Tooth
Swords
Staves
Dual Wield
Warlockery
Communism
Ley Walker

I ran straight up Sweet Tooth all the way to the Golem, then Thaumaturgic Tap, Overhau, and Offensive Maneuvering in that order. At the moment, said character (Kandi Redd) has just (barely) beaten the DL3 zoo. Lesson to remember: watch your Sweet Harvest stacks! I let them build up so high on a few occasions that I wasted like 30-50 stacks because I just didn't have that many HP or mana to restore.

There were several occasions when it took everything at my disposal -- stupid tricks like using Guerrilla Attack to buy myself enough time to eat a few Gummy Diggles and then PRAY that the procs went off (and my attacks hit despite my -16 EDR) so that the nearest foes would get killed AND I would end up with just enough stacks of Harvest Sweets to get my MP up enough to cast a Cottage and block up a chokepoint so that the Diggles I just ate would restore my HP enough that I could wade back into melee and build up some more stacks so that... Yeah. It's a powerful skill, but only if you're willing to think. I love it.

 

(Minor sidenote: I mistakenly listed Chronomancy as a Wizard skill above. It's not -- it's a Rogue skill. Fix'd and my bad. )

 

Mod Skill
Kino5's Elemental Warrior
Type: Warrior
Role: Turbocharger
Elemental Warrior is a fairly straightforward set of combat bonuses based on elemental damage types: Earth (Crushing), Fire (Conflagratory), Air (Asphyxiative), Water (Hyperborean), and Epic (Aethereal). There are 2 levels that give active skills, one of which activates...a combat buff! All told, you can run around with 6 points of exotic damage attached to every melee and throwing attack you make plus a small and ever-changing pile of secondary stats -- definitely enough to take your melee character from beatstick to epic beatstick.

Theme: By Your Powers Combined...

Strategy:
Hit things hard, kill them. You get buffs for getting hit, buffs for attacking, buffs you can activate, buffs that are on all the time, and buffs for killing things. Most of these buffs add some extra offenses, a couple of them add a little defense, too. One of the buffs gives you an AoE proc that acts a lot like General Winter, but came long before Communism existed.

Pros:
Elemental Warrior, because it provides a variety of exotic damage types, makes sure that pretty much anything you hit will take 3-6 extra points of damage per attack before you have any of your buffs up. As the buffs start to stack, the bennies do, too.
Cons:
This is the first of the mods I've reviewed that I think is actually just slightly underpowered. It's still great, but it's kind of like the current batch of core weapon skills: useful and strong, but in a way you don't really notice the same way you notice things like the Sensible Swiss Defensive Stance. Also, there's one minor bug: Wind can teleport you onto an occupied square, which can be only visually annoying, or if you're the type who likes to teleport onto doors to see if the other side has a zoo or not, can actually break the game. Oh, and the Water proc that sets up a Small Snowstorm can actually hurt you pretty bad if you're a gish and don't have proper Hyperborean Resistance going on.
Synergies:
Throwing is a big one, letting you use all of those sweet damage bonuses at range -- and Fire even gives you +2 Sight Radius while active, which is sweet. Any skill that gives a high Counter will similarly give you more chances to use your damage bonuses. Communism will give you the Ushekna and other Hyperborean Resistance so you can walk through your own Snowstorms without a lot of problem.

Takeaway:
Elemental Warrior is one of the few really good, well-balanced, and entertaining Warrior mods out there. The one bug isn't a game-killer if you don't take it there, and the flavor is spot-on. Anytime you look at a build and ask yourself "Now how can I squeeze in a few extra points of damage?", this should be your go-to mod skill.

Spoiler: Extra Comments

Extra Comments:
I played through with:
Elemental Warrior
Throwing
Smithing
Maces
Communism
Piracy
Burglary


I basically just went straight up Elemental Warrior first, one level of Throwing to get Monster Toss then took Maces up to Mjolnir Stance. By that time, i was easily three-hit-killing DL4 monsters with softballs and loving it. I basically had a flawless run with this and probably could have kept going all the way if I hadn't gotten distracted by the Red Dead Dread Challenge Thread.

I have since edited my personal copy of this buff to:

• Add 1 point of Piercing Resist to It's Clobbering Time
• Change the Fire nuke to deal .8*Melee Power Conflag and Blasting (each) and operate on template 12.
• Change Wind so that it triggers Unresistable Knock on anything in the square you land on before you land on it.
• That's all! It's good!

 

I've been too busy last couple of weeks to find a 'good enough' mod skill to get into, so this is kind of a 'I already know this one' just to show everyone that I'm still doing this:

Mod Skill
Essence's Bushido
Type: Warrior
Role: Fuel Tank / Payload
Bushido is a mad defensive skill that hands out odd (non-Warrior) stats, two very strong healing abilities, and other such keep-you-alive stuff -- then you reach the payload levels. Jaws of Death and Final Stand are those abilities you need in certain dire circumstances and won't use much outside of them, but when you need them, you love them.
Theme: Fear is the mind-killer...so set yourself up to be unafraid.
Strategy:
Bushido is the yin to the blitzkrieg strategy's yang -- in other words, it makes blitzing much more survivable and thus effective. Adding Bushido to an already-careful build is probably overkill, so take it and run.

Pros:
Living a long time.

Cons:
Bushido has almost zero by way of offense -- the level 1 skill can deal some damage, and Final Stand boost your damage output a little, but there's a long five levels of pure defense in the middle that can be hard to wade into if you don't already have a solid offensive plan from your other skills.
Synergies:
Bushido synergizes well with any 'glass cannon' build, and any self-damaging skills will like Jaws of Death. Final Stand and Celestial Circle combine to give 125% Block and Magic Resist, which is awesome all by itself.

Takeaway:
Bushido is definitely a "sixth" skill -- not quite a one-off, but you don't ever really build around it; you build and then you balance your build with it. But if what you want is for your build to live a long, healthy life, Bushido may be your answer.

 

Bushido is a nice "supplemental" skill for ranged characters in general, I'll say. It provides an increase in short-ranged ability which is centred more on defence but still non-zero on offence, and Final Stand is a good thing to have if you don't need to move to attack (as it usually happens with ranged characters).

Anyway, I ought to be sleeping now...

 

SPECIAL NOTE: This summary is for the version of Spellsword that Fax and I just finished revising for the new revision of FaxPax that will be up soon. It's current, right-now form still pretty much fits this description, but there may be a few things that are different.


Mod Skill
FaxCelestis' Spellsword (part of FAXPAX)
Type: Wizard (Gish)
Role: Engine
Spellsword is the gish version of Promethean Magic: Simple and effective attack spells, resist and damage buffs, and of course the anime-style 8-turn-chargeup ubernuke of DOOOoooooo.....m! It revolves around 'foci' -- Conflagratory, Hyberborean, Voltaic, and Aethereal -- and its various attacks deal different damage and add different special effects based on which primary focus and which (and how many) of the secondary foci you have active.

Theme: Chaaaaaaaarrge! OK, now Attaaaaaaaaack!

Strategy:
Put magic in your sword, hit people with it. At later levels, throw magic at them directly (though generally it's way more efficient to put magic in your sword and hit people with it.) You get straight-up damage buffs, too, so you can put magic in your darts and throw them at people, albeit without the proc that your melee attacks get. Dicking around enough to get multiple advanced foci takes turns that are generally better spent attacking, but if you have an off turn in the middle of a zoo or whatever, it can add a bit more damage to your subsequent attacks.

Pros:
Everything scales off of Haywire, which makes this a great gish skill for armored mages. The Arcane Strikes are pretty strong -- you can count on THKing most of floors 1-3 if you focus on Savvy (or other sources of Haywire.)
Cons:
If you want to do anything other than kill monsters in various exciting ways, this is not your skill.
Synergies:
The hugest one here is Blood Magic, which can allow you to use Arcane Strike in place of your attack button -- but even with it, you'll still need another source of mana regen or other mana gain (or, you know, actually level up Blood Magic) if you intend to keep Advanced Foci in play 100% of the time (which you should). Anything that gives away Haywire (he-LLO, Wild Magic!) makes all of Spellsword's attacks stronger. But really the 'synergies' you need with this skill are the 'synergies' like Burglary, Fungal Arts, Mathemagic, and so on -- the ones that let you do all of the important non-killing-things parts of the game. Oh, and tankiness should probably be added on somewhere, too -- this is a Wizard skill after all.

Takeaway:
Spellsword is lethality in a box for a well-designed gish. It needs Total Character Support(TM), but when what you want is to kill things effectively, this is your skill.