Come Bitch About Skills! [Skills Rebalance Brainstorming]

Hi, everyone! It's nearly time for Essence's Next Big Project: the Core, Expansion1, and Expansion2 Skills Rebalances!

I'm inviting anyone and everyone to weigh in on what skills they think need to be addressed. I don't give a rat's ass about flavor text, I'm talking purely for mechanical sake need to be looked at. I'm probably going to disagree with most of what people say, but I want to get a broad picture of what people are thinking.

Re: Weapon Skills. Already got my own Secret Project for these, don't worry, I got them handled. Everything else is fair game. Feel free to link to or cut-and-paste from discussions elsewhere on the boards to save time.


So: Let the Bitchening Begin!

 

Dual Wielding should decrease accuracy when you choose it, and subsequent levels should raise it back a little so that it would be slightly more difficult to hit monsters with fully-levelled Dual Wielding than it is without it.

It would both serve as a balancing factor (suddenly it's not a magical cure-it-all for melee characters who use weapons) and make sense, because hitting something with two weapons wielded at the same time is more difficult than hitting with just one weapon. Well, unless you are really ambidextrous and have a quick mind, but something like that has to be trained too.

 

I have the beginnings of a vampirism redo here. It attempts to address a few issues: vampirism's scaling on a non-relevant stat, introduction of mobility for melee vampires, and relevant undead bonuses.

It Belongs In A Museum comes too early.

Hand of Belimawr comes too late.

 

I think weapon skills need to stop costing mana because it disrupts a number of things and creates illogical anti-synergy.

 

Shield Bearer. I always liked the idea behind the skill, and some of the actives are very good. My problem with it is that even without taking it or Master of Arms or using a shield, I always get silly high block if I am wearing any sort of "heavy" armor. It makes Shield Bearer a very uninteresting and excessive skill, since it's passive bonuses are basically lots of block and 2 of it's abilities give even more block. This is especially true if you are actually trying to play a "tank" style adventurer (wield a shield, wearing heavy armor, maybe using Master of Arms, etc).

I would think that the passives would be much better off if they were basic damage resistances (like slashing/crushing/piercing). It even makes more sense, since blocking is an active ability (you have to actually block, most enemies are probably not aiming for your shield) and so I feel that the active skills are a better place to have extra block, while basic damage resistances would just indicate that something accidentally glanced off your shield. It would also give it a good spot in a "tanky" character build.

 

Null, no one has the slightest clue what you're talking about and this isn't the place. If you want to keep arguing, feel free to start a separate conversation in private.

 

If shield bearer gets buffed too much, I think dual shield builds may get overpowered. It's a very fine line to walk.

Killer Vegan is way overpowered. It has ridiculous bonuses on each level, and every animal now ignores you as you pelt softballs at its face. If possible, we should make it so that you can't kill animals at all, instead of you can only kill animals with ranged weaponry. This way it forces vegans to take the half of the tree meant to balance it- you gain experience ridiculously slow, especially on the first floor.

 

ProtoMan, Shield Bearer currently has no bearing (pun intended) on whether or not you're actually carrying zero, one, or two shields. So there's no potential for overpoweredness there.

The Vegan thing, I'm not so sure about...is the tree really so strong that it needs that loophole closed?

 

Some skills only have 5 levels worth in them and i think all skills should have at least 6 levels worth due to archlevel balancing.
Getting skills with only 5 levels yields way less attributes than getting stuff with higher levels. Making skills with more levels more powerfull (despite having "more" bonuses")

Perception Capstone skill is useless. I had 17 vision and the damage was almost not noticable in deeper floors. For a Capstone its not "enough". Additionally the 3rd sight spell is completly useless because you have enough trap sight to uncover invisible enemies by that time. I propose that the 3rd sight gets changed into some kind of 1 enemy focused debuff (-block, -counter, -dodge, -magic resistance and perhaps some -resistances)

 

Really? I wasn't aware. I figured the bonuses were hard-coded in like with the weapon skills.

By the end of the tree, you have:
+9
+9
+24
+5
+5
+1
An ability that removes all debuffs.
An ability that charms animals (Not that great, but you still get it in addition to your ridiculous stat bonuses for that level. Plus you can use it for the loophole.)
And several pretty decent procs.
And the tree is only 5 levels long.
For melee characters, it's a little too much.

 

OK, I'm sold. I'll add in a targetKillbuff that triggers the debuffs. It will still let you pelt an animal with softballs up until the point of death, but if you kill it, no matter how you kill it, it'll give you the debuff.

 

The biggest offender to look at, of course, is Perception. Eye Lasers needs a buff of some sort, and Third Sight needs to do something, because currently, it does nothing thanks to the passive bonuses you get from the rest of the tree. The most common idea I've seen is make it debuff dodge and whatnot, to spot weak points in an enemy--my own ideas, however, are 1) Your third eye allows you to spot all manner of weaknesses in your enemies. Even psychological ones. [Basically, the AoE is persistant, and your character hits enemies' weak spots by insulting them, causing some Existential damage each turn.] 2) You can see into infinity. This is useful when you need to move quick. [A manner of workaround that makes you move twice per turn.]

Also, I might get bricked for this, but I feel like on Piracy, Mists of the Corsair needs a slight buff, and a sixth skill needs to be added. I have no clue what the sixth skill should be, but MotC can be easily upped by widening the range of the skill.

 

Until a Diggle wanks into some trap and dies and you get the buff out of nowhere.

Make it only affect the player if they're nearby when the creature dies, within maybe 10 tiles.

 

I agree with this. I love some of the 5 level skills, but I refuse to take more than 1 or 2 of them for any build just because of how much it can hurt you at later levels. If everything had a min of six skills, I think it would go a long way to making more builds fun and viable.

As for the shield thing, I don't think it needs anything too crazy, I just think that when you have from your armor, from your shield, from active abilities, from passive abilities, and then MORE from the actual passive stats you gain from 2 different defensive trees (Man at Arms and Shield Bearer)...well...that's a little excessive. I was just thinking maybe something along the lines of reducing the first bonus (8) to like 2 and 1 each of . And then for the next three levels, which feature 2, 1, and 1 respectivly, give each tree 1 point of either , , or . And then for the final ability, instead of another 8, repeat the bonus reduction and addition of the first ability.

You'd end up with a total of 4, 5, 3, 3, 1, and 1, instead of 20, 2, 1, and 1. This would make the Shield bearer tree mesh better with other defensive trees (like Man at Arms) so that someone could make a very defensive oriented character without having 125 block by floor 8. LOL

 

Also, summoned/charmed monsters attack anything, you can't get them to not attack stuff..might cause a lot of problems

 

I have never maxed out all of my skills, so I don't think we need every skill tree to 6 skills. For me at least, it would just feel like more material I'll never touch. Most of the 5 skill trees are balanced very well for their length and if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I agree with making some changes to the shield tree though. As it stands it's one of the most useless trees in the game.

 

This is my suggestion for making broadside better:

 

Well, not necessarily useless - that skill tree is good for people centred on offensive abilities, since they can use every last point of block given by it. Though I do agree that the bonuses are overspecialised for people who have a defensive build, since they are going to have a lot of block even without it.

 

Pirates:
learn the grog recipe at skill level 1.
learn swashbuckling gloves recipe at skill level 2.

 

Pirate Training Breeches at level 3?

I'd love to add a couple of recipes here and there where it makes good sense. If anyone has suggestions in this regard, please post more.