For my first skill tree mod, I wanted to give Warriors some of the utility and damage output Wizards get, while still keeping their sheer hand-to-hand power and bulk. The theme here is breath and such things--air is an element, and wizards are usually associated with managing the elements; and breath and lung capacity are often associated with vim. So why not? And so I set out to scribble down my ideas for the spells, and I came up with six. Here's the skills I was thinking of: Level 1 (base) +1 Breath Blast: Magic Missile of low that scales through very quickly. Five or so cooldown. Level 2 +1 Hold your Breath: Two-turn buff that empowers and is instantly dispelled if a breath-based spell is cast. Level 3 +1 Blowback: Deals scaling through and knocks back enemies in a straight line in one of the cardinal directions. Ten or so cooldown. Level 4 +1 Sweet Scent: Deals VERY low damage and Pacifies enemies in a 3x3 grid of where you choose to cast it, high cooldown. Level 5 +2 +10 Possibly another My thought process here is to give a one level wait before the best spell, while still giving out something pertaining to the spell tree. Level 6 +1 Stop Breathing My Air: DoT damage with a set duration and life drain, scaling with , humongous cooldown. Any glaring issues with balance right now? Any spell substituting? Reorder changes? Etc etc etc?
If you are going to build anything that's based on exotic damage, I strongly recommend you read the exotic damage and you thread. All of it (it's a hassle, but it is a must). Outright, i can tell you that given the monster resistance distribution per floor atm, damage is silly OP, especially if it scales with . Getting it early means essentially gives you a way to power through almost every level like a maelstrom of destruction, depending on base stats and scaling. On the flip side, if you want to have based damage for a capstone, remember that an awful lot of uglies (including the entire undead variety) are very resistant to it. A DoT based approach means that the ability will do little to no damage to an awful lot of enemies, which, imo, is anti-climatic for a capstone ability that you have to "wait" one level for. The way it is now, this is would be more of a "dump skill" for warriors. Pick it up, get 2 levels for the blasting damage, then forget about the entire tree.
Your response there suggests that the "Exotic Damage and You" thread is actually incomplete and/or misleading. As unlikely as it seems, counts as a basic damage type. So it's resisted by armor, and not nearly as potent as it might seem. Hmm... I guess I should go alter my posts to reflect that, maybe even add a floor-by-floor breakdown of . That you are absolutely correct about. Small amounts of over time is a bit underwhelming for a level 5+ skill, because lots of monsters will be immune.
For the blasting damage, I can see three fixes: EDIT: I forgot Blasting is resisted by armor, so these points might be null now. 1) Keep the base damage and scaling low--very low damage on a rarely resisted damage type seems like a last resort against monsters you can barely hit. This probably won't happen too often, but still. 2) Change it to , thus nerfing it massively. This would probably need high scaling or resistance bypass--both of which would be entirely silly. 3) Make it scale through , and keep the base damage low but the scaling medium, in such a way that it deals just below what would be the average damage (discounting ridiculously lucky runs), thus once again, making it a "oh shit I can't hit this thing" kind of spell. In any case, I want to keep Sweet Scent as , because its main point is utility. I'm ok with it doing no damage against most enemies. As for Stop Breathing My Air, I'm thinking I'll lower the , but make it only damage; then, apply a damage-neutral DoT so that, when using it on non-breathing monsters, you'll deal less damage, but absorb the same amount of health anyway--which is, again, the main point. EDIT 2: Checking the wiki and Vampirism spells, and I'm not sure I can make a type-neutral drain. These changes sound good?
My assumption was that everyone did, but now that you mention it, I guess I should have clarified. Anyone who hasn't looked at the code (or read the fine print) has no real way of knowing that, and the purpose of the thread was to clarify these things. I apologize if I misled anyone on that regard. As you said, since blasting damage counts as "basic", it isn't as good as it sounds on paper. Nonetheless, the simple fact that nothing resists it specifically Atm really makes it stand out among basic damage types. The effectiveness of skills that give players access to high is greatly offset by the recurrence of enemies that resist these attack types. , however is not resisted OVER AND ABOVE . This is not an issue in vanilla, mostly because there are only a few ways to obtain high damage (limited mostly to traps and explosives, i think), and no way (unless I'm mistaken) to obtain damage that scales with anything. However, if you are considering giving the player damage outside of the current convention, then might as well be treated as a rare "exotic damage" for most intents and purposes. E.g. I was toying with a few days ago, just to test a theory of just how good it would be in practice. Flat quickly scaled off, but the moment I started playing around with scaling, the results spiraled out of control very fast. My post was more a warning against the first ability having a "scales through very quickly", rather than imply it was exotic damage per se. Re: Technically, it all depends on how well you balance your scaling. The problem is, with , it is hard to find the sweet spot. Too high, and you destroy everything, too low it does nothing. Re: Before you settle on a number, check the resistance composition of a floor. Then you can decide how high of would be appropriate. For how many levels do you want it to power through resistances? Assuming it can power through resistances at X level, does the damage it does to non-resistant units make sense otherwise? What happens when we go down one floor? Are you still happy with the net result? P/S: In case you are wondering why I was dabbling with to begin with, there may or may not be an Archery mod in the works. With emphasis on may or MAY NOT be.
Just to point it out, is resisted by many things, but is not effected by . So long as the damage is higher than the resists by an appreciable amount, is an effective means of damaging everything in the game.
Oh joy, more confusion that can be caused by my assumption people understand damage types as well as I do. Clarifying the confusing bit out. Thanks for the heads up.
So this is where I said that... I thought it was the Exotic Damages thread. Lol. As I said there, I just wanted to spit out the clarification for others reading who may not know. I am certain you already knew that.
