I myself am not a modder, but think this would be fun to play as if made. I havent seen any skill sets centered on blasting damage either yet, so I figured I would toss this out there. Could be something like this. Note: High damage scaling rate due to relatively low tinkering possible compared to other stats. lvl 0 Demoman +1, adds passive +1 to ranged and melee lvl 1 TNT Hugger Gives skill that lets you summon 2 black powder, 75 turn cooldown to prevent abuse Passive +1, +1 and +1 lvl 2 Love the Bomb Passive +2, +2 +1 lvl 3 Da Bomb 5% chance when hit to create a explosion around you that does +5, scales to by 1.50 Passive +1 lvl 4 Bombing Run Gives skill that hits 4 tiles ahead of you, starting 1 tile ahead of you for +10, scales to by 2.50. Cooldown of 50 turns lvl 5 Explosion Proof Passive +3, +1 lvl 6 Bomberman Passive +2 to ranged and melee, +1, +1, +2 lvl 7 WMD Skill that creates large explosion centered around caster dealing +35, scales to by 3.00, 120 turn cooldown Passive +3 to ranged and melee, +3, +5 Long cooldowns should hopefully prevent this from becoming to OP, Tinkering will work well with this as well. If anyone wants to make something based off this, please do so. I would if I knew the code better.
Blasting is affected by . So, without looking at the actual numbers, not sure this is especially effective. It would totally break Clockwork Knight though.
is actually pretty broken if you start including ways of inflicting large amounts of it. One or two enemies per floor (assuming vanilla) tend to have very high (gen. of the construct Taxa), but most tend to have low-ish . More importantly, to the best of my knowledge, nothing resists specifically, while are fairly common. The proposition on a RANGED blasting tree gets dicier once you factor in that Chicken AI monsters are balanced out with low to compensate for the fact that's its harder to inflict the basic damage types on them (since the main "consistent" way of inflicting those damage types is gen. assumed to be melee). Just to make things messier, if you simply resort to tweaking down the numbers to balance the tree, you will end with a tree that's, well, balanced from a gaming point of view, but not very satisfying (i.e. when you play around with a BLASTING tree, you want to be able to BLAST stuff up, yes?). Finally, on CK and Tinkering - I generally agree on CK, and add that you have to remember that tinkering already does A LOT for the player, esp. from a phys damage PoV via. bolts/crossbows. Giving players extra mileage from an already good tree might be too much, imo. That's the general stuff - on the abilties specifically, my intution on Love the Bomb and Bomb Proof are that 1. In and off themselves, they don't do enough, even from a "balancing out the tree by putting not so great abilities between good ones" PoV 2. They give the tree entirely TOO MUCH . I don't mean by this that's it's "unbalanced" but rather, that it's "redundant". Few enemies in vanilla inflict and the traps that do inflict that damage type typically do little to warrior archetypes that will typically have low and high . 3. For a tree that requires other trees (CK, Tink) to come into its own, it has, as a result of the passive levels, too many levels to justify the combined investment (5 levels on Tink and 7 on this = 12 - that's a lot just for a two big nukes with long-very long CDs) My two cents - Remove blasting resistance alltogether, combine what's left of Bomberman/love the bomb/da bomb into one late passive.
This is a great concept, and the first two skills are perfect. Summon black powder? YES! Finally a build where I can make all those lovely, lovely bomb types... However, I rather agree that more than +3 is pretty useless, and skills you suggested for levels 3 and up are a bit meh. I love the concept though, so allow me to suggest my own variation! DEMOLITIONS lvl 0 Demoman , +1 to ranged and melee lvl 1 Residue Scraper Gives skill that lets you summon 2 black powder, 75 turn cooldown. Passive , and lvl 2 Safety Spotter Passive +5 , +2 , +2 lvl 3 High Explosives Passive . Gives "High Explosive" skill which deals 5 + (0 + 1.5*) to all 8 adjacent spaces. 35 turn cooldown. lvl 4 Shrapnel Specialist Passive +2 , +2 , +2 ranged and melee lvl 5 Chemical Breakdown Passive . Gives skill that allows you to turn an artifact into black powder, rust, and aluminum. Scales to level of the artifact, so each star gives +2 black powder, +1 rust, +1 aluminum. lvl 6 Grenade! Gives skill which targets a 3x3 AoE attack, not affected by sight lines. Deals 5 + (0 + 1.5*) . 21 turn cooldown. (pretty short cooldown! But the damage isn't great.) lvl 7 Da Bomb Skill that places a trap mine which goes off when stepped on, or after 10 turns. Places pyres on itself and 4 adjacet squares for 8per turn, and triggers a series of explosions of increasing radii. First explosion: 15 + (0 + 2*). Second explosion: 10 + (0 + 1*). Third explosion: 5. 100 turn cooldown. I think that keeps the feeling of the original, but makes each level a bit more specifically useful to different builds.
Suggestion: Bombs are risky, no? I think it's a nice mechanic to have a chance of them blowing up in your face or nuking the enemy - very much a gambling style skill.
^Getting blown up by your own bombs is very much in Keeping with the spirit of DoD. Personally, I feel that bombs are inherently less safe than other weapons in DoD because of their AOE. That's why I'm a bit leery of the abilities in the OP because they essentially give the would-be bomber 2 safe nukes. However, I can get behind the notion because whoever picks this is probably looking to play a bomb-centric play style, and having "safe" point blank bomb options via the abilities ensures that. Making the bombs themselves "unsafe" for the user is part of the reason why i suggested removing ALL the , because the way the game is now, the only thing that a lot of protects you from are your own bombs. Personally, I disagree with this spin for a number of reasons - the main ones being 1. You get free gunpowder, so there's no need for "spammy but weak" bomb in the tree. 2. "Useful to different builds" and "eight level tree" are, in my experience, two mutually exclusive things. Think this through: if it "scales" on , then you need a fair bit of investment in Tinkering AND This to get any millage out of your actives. By the time you get to level 12-15 (which is when you can expect to cap both if you rush), the rate at which you gain levels will have slowed down to a trickle. Your "play-style" will therefore be confined to whatever these abilities give you... unless you meant something that was compatible with a "trap/bomb/bolt" playstyle? In that case, Tinkering gives that on its already, and adding on 8 levels to tinkering just for some "extra" in "trap/bomb" doesn't seem to make sense Imo. The reason why I wanted the passives collapsed into one was not just because i felt the was redundant, but also because I felt the tree had too many levels. 3. While I generally LIKE the idea of a super-mine, because it is essentially something you "set down" you could achieve the same net effect by giving a "WMD mine" 8 req recipe at the capstone. More feedback on the base tree itself. Just to spell out my proposal Level 0 lvl 0 Demoman +1 to ranged and melee (This is better than it sounds, no required) Lvl 1 TNT hugger - as is, - resistance. Essentially this level will compete with Tinkering for your first level point. It should therefore offer a "fair" compromise between the two, with TNT hugger giving "guaranteed" bombs. You could add a recipe for an "above average" bomb at this level to make the trade off even more appealing Level 2 Bombing Run as is, except with "maybe" slightly lower scaling to provide for it being easier to get. The idea being that you delay your progression down the Tinkering tree in exchange for a FREE nuke that does a fair bit of damage every X cd, and stays relevant when you do put that point Level 3 Passive +2 to ranged and melee, +1, +1 and a 5% chance when hit to create a explosion around you that does +5, scales to by 1.50 (may or may include a recipe for a higher tier bomb - already pretty good as is imo) Level 4 - WMD As is, except maybe with an extra high tier recipe to boot.
The more I think about it, the more I realize scaling with tinkering wouldnt work to well, maybe or would work better for scaling.
