Specifically, Burglary gives you: * Unlimited lockpicks. Even if this is all you take from it, it's pretty decent (though unlike most I'd characterize a 1-point burglar as a somewhat weak pick). Mostly this just saves you the annoyance of having to kick down every door you see when you aren't carrying lockpicks, or want to save those picks for chests. * Ninja Vanish, which gives 10 turns of invisibility, no sight radius debuff, and has a cooldown of only 20 turns. This is almost an ideal escape. * Move in Mysterious Ways, which is an ideal escape, since it lets you teleport to any unoccupied space in sight. And has a cooldown of only 20 turns. Between Ninja Vanish and Move in Mysterious Ways you basically cannot be pinned down ever. * Lockup is the black sheep of the family, as it's merely good instead of awesome. Nominally supposed to cost a lockpick, but it doesn't, but even if it did, who cares? Don't want to melee an enemy? Lock them to the floor and ploink away at them with your ranged weapons while they glare at you impotently. Every single one of these abilities is useful, making the skill line as a whole a no-brainer for basically any build. No-brainers are bad. Burglary needs a nerf. Compare Burglary to Artful Dodger, which needs 1 skillpoint to get its escape ability instead of 2, but that ability is much more limited. Or to Mathemagic, which requires four skillpoints to get to a good escape, and the other abilities it gives you are only really useful if you're pushing magic power. My suggestion would be to move Move in Mysterious Ways to the Artful Dodger line. Burglary doesn't need it; Ninja Vanish is entirely good enough. This would also make Five-Finger Discount a bit more accessible and therefore tempting, though I admit I've never dared try to use it.
I can't ever justify putting points into burglary because fungal arts is still better. So if burglary is overpowered then fungal arts is op++. There is no cooldown on inky hoglantern and by midgame you'll have a stack of 30+ even with just one point in the skill. I'd say both those escape abilities have cooldowns at least. The one in mathemagics and fungal arts are both spamable making them far stronger. Another thing to consider is that there is nothing else in the tree. If you invest 4 points into mathemagics you are a mage and are 1 point from recursive curse. That defines your entire character. Burglary is a support line that offers nothing offensive. If you are a mage, you still need a spell line in addition to burglary. If you are melee, you need more than escape skills. I think a pure support line needs to be very strong.
I also don't think that Burglary is OP. It's certainly an excellent utility skill to invest in but there are others that are arguably better: Alchemy, Tinkering, Fungal Arts to name 3. All three of those others have utility, but 2 actually help you kill stuff from a safe distance and Fungal Arts simply gives you an endless supply of get out of trouble free crap. Burglar certainly has a place in (almost) any build, but the other 3 are arguably more powerful.
Burglary is somewhat too good in conjunction with the Horadric Lutefisk Cube. Instead of generating lockpicks, you should not require lockpicks and not consume lockpicks when opening locked doors.
I maxed fungal last game after my core build to grab every lutefisk shrine. I didn't get anything good though =p. There seem to be enough drops on the average level that the shrines account for but a very small fraction. Even if the skill automatically gave you an item from the shrine it wouldn't be game breaking in the slightest. Between chests/uberchests/quests/random drops/zoos the average dungeon level probably has 15 magic item drops? Lets say burglary lets you get 2 more drops from shrine per level. So what?
Yeah, lutefisk shrines have had such terrible payouts in the past that I've just stopped bothering with them entirely. The game has a much quicker pace if you aren't hoovering up every crappy item in sight to generate more terrible gelatinized seafood. Haldurson: Take it as a given that you need some form of escape. Invisibility is one, teleportation is another. I'll grant that shrooms give the former in large quantities, but personally I found the shroom skill to be tedious beyond belief, not to mention excessively random. Alchemy gives you plentiful healing, but you need coal to make invisibility potions, and zinc to make (random-teleeport) spatial instability potions, neither of which are in large supply. Tinkering's very good, I agree, though again, it doesn't give you escapes; it just renders traps largely moot and gives you a massive supply of ammo. Sure, burglary doesn't help you kill things, but it covers basically every secondary utility you might want except for trap disarming. Given that you aren't going to get everything you want from one utility skill, burglary comes the closest to giving you everything you need.
The issue with lockpicks and the lutefisk cube is something I hadn't considered. That said, I don't think that even this is much of a concern. First of all, the number of lutefisk necessary to get an artifact was increased from 100 to 500 (although it may be decreased in the next update). Second, the chances of getting something useful from a lutefisk shrine is fairly small. The way it is now, I tend to get a reward from the shrine about every 2nd or third level, on average, due to the increased requirements. And I only very rarely get something useful, either because it's not good for my current build, or it's inferior to anything I'm using (usually both). All that being true, I would not be adverse to, in conjunction to reducing the number of lutefisk required to get a reward, modifying burglary to either give you a single non-consumable lock pick kit/skeleton key, or at least, vastly reducing the number of lock picks you get from it.
I argue that fungal does infact give you everything you need from one support skill line, if you are willing to use it. You get escape, healing, pet to make the early game easy, and mana. By DL 3 you'll have 30 of every shroom so random means little. My last game I rerolled all the useless ones into nightcaps and finished with 40ish bungcaps/hoglanterns/fairywodgers and 150 or so nightcaps. Yes it's tedious, but I don't think any other line comes close. It's like combining burglary's escapes with unlimited mana potions and vampirism/healing in addition to the early game ease of having a pet at level 2. The free shrooms you start with also make the first level easy. What other skill line can even compare? It makes the first character level easy and after that you get a second point pet. And later on in DL 10, for 2 points after the free point, you never have to worry about food or drink and have a free spamable escape.
Well, that's the big if, isn't it? I so very rarely am willing to take fungal for the reason that others often mention. In order to really take advantage of it, you have to spend a lot of turns doing nothing but creating, planting, and harvesting spores. Imho, you'd almost have to pay me with real money to do that. For me, it's not my idea of fun. If you enjoy doing that, congratulations. I've heard that there are plenty of assembly line jobs in China just made for people with that kind of imperviousness to tedium. /edit Ok, that's a bit unfair, but still. I don't do Fungal because I just don't enjoy the farming aspects of it.
It's not really that tedious. With a second skill point you create 2 spores. After clearing a room, drop 2 spores, and walk back and forth then collect 2 shrooms. It takes 2 seconds. Do that every room and you are set. I personally find inventory management and lutfisking in this game to be far more tedious. It's not any harder than picking up all the loot in a room.
I have a hard time playing any build not including burglary. Two assets you didn't mention were Stealth and Traps. Personally, I think Stealth has a bigger impact throughout the game than Ninja Vanish.
Burglary is my new "must have" skill, replacing Archaeology. The amount of XP you get from Doors and Chests alone is enough for 1-2 extra Levels' worth when you first start off. Also, not bashing up loot when your character is mostly naked is generally important. Not to mention the awesomeness of Ninja Vanish and Move in a Mysterious Way (it's alright, it's alright, alright) if you can afford to pop a few points into it. I still don't know about overpowered - the whole line is only worth +2 trap affinity, Lock Up is only good until everything starts resisting it (around Floor 5), and let's be honest, it has 0 value in actual combat. Awesome for XP and Positioning, yes, but it does have some weaknesses, too.
Lockup becomes less reliable with time, sure, but it does still work often enough to be useful even once you're in the deeps. Dealing with named monsters is a lot more feasible when they can't move.
They're more likely to resist, but given that fights with them are more drawn-out, you have more opportunities to try it (Lockup has a quick cooldown, too). I'd say 2/3rds of named monsters get locked down before I kill them. It's not a huge deal given that once you have Lockup, you're also a skillpoint away from Ninja Vanish. Lockup isn't a game changer. It is useful though. Actually what I use it on most in the endgame is monsters with corruption attacks. They aren't named and don't resist often.
