As of right now Werediggle Curse is a pretty underpowered Skill tree. During diggle form you lose all passive bonuses from all other trees and lose the ability to use the other skill tree's active skills. Only procs on melee and long lasting buffs help you in diggle form. In return you gain 63310 4 4 6 1 1 1 2 1 1 222 5 4 5 and you gain some decent active skills. That is pretty much a terrible trade. I would like the tree to have a even larger amount of passive to trade make up for giving up 6 other trees worth of passive and active skills. A werediggle should want to spend 2/3 of their game as a diggle. Also playing as a diggle is slightly dull but you most just one on one hit enemies all game long. I would like to see more passive bonuses and some more active skills. Now that there are tons more diggles I want to be able to do some of that stuff. Here is a quick rough draft of how I like to see the skill tree. Level 0: add 2 10 1 Level 1: add 1 5 5% chance of making a mushroom when killing an enemy (deep fungle diggle) Level 2: add 1 2 10 Active Skill Random Teleport cooldown 10 turns (mage diggle) Level 3: add 25 10 5 Level 4: add 10 5 (Gotta protect your young) 2% Chance to get food or booze on hit (thirsty and hungry diggle) Level 5: Nothing added Level 6: Add 5 2 10 Level 7: Add 3 3 Rocket Punch and Aetheric Death Ray to Active Skills (Rockteer Diggle and Rogue Scientist Diggle)
I almost think it'd be awesome to get Diggle Form as a toggle as opposed to a short duration buff. That way, you can actually use your skill all the time.
I really feel that Werediggle Curse (henceforth just WC) could be improved in three different ways: 1) Make the Skill Line itself better. The problem with that is sooner or later the skill line gets OP, and every build needs it or suffers. I think that HP and primary stat gains could be doubled and all the exotic resistances and damages increased by one, but anything more than that might be too much. Oh, and I think Werediggles of London giving a chance of the Midas effect on attacks would be funny. Respectable banker by day, respectable diggle by night! But really, with invisibility, digging and free eggs on top of potent passive bonuses a large chunk of the time, the skill itself is already very powerful. So we could... 2) Make the Skill Line synergise better. I like this the most. DoD is all about synergy, and Werediggle actively works against synergy. Give skills more persistent buffs. Polearms and Daggers both come with stances, why not add similar abilities to the other weapon skills and Shield Bearer? Also, allow primary stat and HP/MP bonuses to roll over into polymorphed forms. If I'm a strong, fast, tough, smart human I should be a strong, fast, tough, smart diggle (or batty, or whatever). Also, I really feel that Werediggle form could mute the player without feeling totally underpowered, but loosing all activated abilities really hurts. I'm negotiable on that last part, though. 3) Scrap the Polymorph mechanic entirely and just make it a buff that gets better as you add levels to the skill line. Pretty much what it says above. I hate this idea, because its boring.
Here's the major change that would be pretty easy: 1 - Allow passive buffs to persist while in Diggle form. This would let all your awesome weapon bonuses, resistances from Alchemy, perception - keep applying while you are a diggle. You still lose your ability to use active skills - that penalty is large enough. Voila! Were Diggles are cool.
I like this. Synergy is very important in DoD and this would help with that. This way you could build around trees that give passive buffs and still gain power.
The problem with that idea is, then Werediggle Curse just becomes a buff that mutes you. It would need a lot of rebalancing to work...
It doesn't prevent spell casting - it prevents all active skills. So no weapon AoE, etc. And this change _is_ the rebalancing!
1. The loss of non-mage activated abilities is compensated for in the form of were-diggle activated abilities. Sure, they're not symmetrical (the skill offers no AoE, for example) but they are diverse and powerful. 2. It's my concern that your proposed rebalancing would, in turn, require a nerf of what you actually get from werediggle. Let's look at the bonuses from the tree again: 63310 4 4 6 1 1 1 2 1 1 222 5 4 5, 2/3rds of the time. You can't get that from anywhere else. Not even Killer Vegan is quite that amazing (admittedly, it's faster to get all the Vegan bonuses, but...). Toxic resistance: the most common damage type. Fire resistance: the most damaging damage type. Raw Melee Power for better throwing. Piercing damage for better crossbows. Health Regen. AA. The only skill line that comes close to offering the passive stats and active abilities of this skill line is Viking Magic, and the stat bonuses are not nearly as huge. The active abilities are about equal in usefulness (except for Thor's Bolt.) Sure, it's "only" 66% of the time, but that's more than enough to clear pretty much anything but monster zoos, and no one skill should solve a zoo on its own anyways. Give a Werediggle all their other passive skill bonuses and you'll have to nerf the rest of the tree to bring its power level back into line. I'm not sure that's good for it. Part of the fun of the tree is its staggering variety of abilities, most all in useful quantities (except for the primary stat bonuses, but hey, not everyone can be vegan.) If it gets nerfed we're going to have one or two points in a bunch of stuff, which just looks sloppy, or a something that looks like a weapon skill tree that only works part of the time. I don't really like either one.
The problem I see is that it limits you completely in what you do. Even more than Vegan or Vampirism you have to build with this as a pivot, since it cancels anything out when you use it, and isn't very flexible in use since it's not a toggle. Making it a toggle would be pretty awesome, though it should have some drawbacks, a short-timed debuff to melee power and life each time you change form for example. Also allowing most passives to carry over would be great, though for immersion some would have to be left out, weapon skills especially. No idea if that can be coded though...
I'd be thrilled if people actually played Werediggles so much that Gaslamp had to seriously consider weakening them. But since the problem right now is that the skill line is weak - exactly because the "no bonuses or active skills from 6 skill lines" penalty is too steep to swallow - I think that's where we need to be looking to make an improvement. Allowing passive stat bonuses to persist when you switch to Diggle Form seems like a trivial thing to try out.
From the standpoint of pure game design theory, I think you're right. Testing the two extremes gives the best data, and that's the way I'd playtest adjusting Werediggle Curse. However, from the holistic standpoint, this is a game already in circulation. The vast majority of the audience isn't going to see any of the the thought that goes into changes made. If an underpowered skill suddenly becomes incredibly powerful, then that buff gets taken away from the players after they're used to it, it can create... bad feelings. Surprisingly, a slow progression of fixes that nudges its way towards balance in small steps seems to create less, at least from what I've observed. Ultimately, its up to Gaslamp to decide how they want to balance Werediggle. I've noticed that they seem to stand quite firmly on the restrictions they put on their skills (witness Vampirism) so its entirely possible they'll just keep tagging activated abilities onto the tree and make other polymorph relevant tweaks to the system. What I do know is that they're very good at listening to feedback and giving a satisfactory return on it, so I think I'll just wait to see what they do with the proffered ideas from here out...
Don't you retain bonuses from gear and weapons? If so, then you should retain bonuses from weapon skills as well. I think we should give the skill tree some drawback other than lack of passive abilities. I'm afraid I don't have many ideas of how to solve this problem, though.
Actually, that drawback is part of how all polymorph effects function. So something else to keep in mind is that any changes to that aspect of polymorphing will affect digglenog, vampirism, demonology and any mod skills or future items that incorporate polymorph effects...
I don't see why we couldn't change things so some polymorphs work differently than others. For instances, werediggles can wear armor, whereas a bat couldn't.
There's the old work vs. return problem, too. Currently polymorph is a singe tag that's hardcoded. Is it worth splitting out multiple tags to embody all the different things you could polymorph into? I don't really know. If its just a matter of changing a few lines of code, I'd say go for it. Is it a 20+ workhour investment? I'd say concentrate on Odin...
