Come Bitch About Skills! [Skills Rebalance Brainstorming]

Honestly what makes the differnt skills interesting to me is their uniqueness. Like Mr. Strange, I really feel that Tourist could use a little help, but it's such a unique, fun skill tree I feel that just slapping some primary stat bonuses on it doesn't really do the skill justice. Plus, being the coding luddite that I am, I'm not entirely sure how many of its functions are hard coded. The floor-based teleport really seems like it would be, for example. Same problems present themselves if we look at the debacle that is Werediggle Curse.

I'm not sure there should be a power level for each individual skill. Just look at what a skill wants to do, and ask the question, "Does this skill fulfill its purpose effectively? What can help it out if it doesn't?"

Of course, some skills are too effective, but I've noticed that OP skills seem to get nerfed on a more regular basis than underpowered skills getting tweaked upwards. Personally, I've never played with ESR, mainly because of forgetfulness and savegame issues, but also because I pretty much like what most of the existing skills do already.

 

Yeah, I have to admit, people have mentioned Werediggle Curse to me in Conversation (Hi, V!), and the hardcoding surrounding the polymorph mechanics really is the problem there. Literally, for a skill to rob you of your other 6 skills, it should be 7x more powerful than every other skill in the game and entirely polymorph dependent -- and even then, your out-of-polymorph form essentially ends up 1 skill set short of balanced. So maybe it should be 8x stronger than a normal skill...

But when you add in the fact that procs (and procs alone!) work, the balancing act gets a lot more complicated, because it's totally possible to get most of the benefits of a very few skills. Ugh.

Tourist, relatively to all that, is easy to balance -- but I have to admit I don't really see it as necessary. Then again, I haven't actually played with it yet, so I'm speaking from ignorance in that respect. If anyone has any specific suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. If I have a couple of other changes to make, I'll add a little tiny something extra to that distance-manipulation skill in Paranormal Investigator, too.

 

Just do this, Essence:

Take skill trees which don't have any synergy with Werediggle Curse now, and change their capstones so that every one of them gives you another ability that is only useful when polymorphed, whether it's a modified capstone ability or a modified version of a lower-tier one (Promethean Magic could allow you to use an altered Dragon's Breath, for example, and Burglary could give you a teleport, preferably one with a decreased range). It will not render the form "more powerful" directly, but it will make it more versatile and thus better, which in my opinion is the correct way to go (contrary to a direct buff).

 

That's...that's a lot of work.

 

Is it possible to scale any of the werediggle stuff on character level? So when you max the tree, you can put a point in Promethean or whatnot for a minor bonus (like +1 Archdiggle Smash damage or something), whereas a point in Assassination would get you the same bonus but also a proc?

 

But I dare you to tell me it's not a good solution if you ignore the amount of work required.
Besides, you seem to like brainstorming stuff so you could create another thread for that and ask people to provide you with the relevant code if they can when they submit ideas for what various skill trees are supposed to lend to Werediggle Curse, pretty much acting like the overseer for the whole thing (that would likely cut the amount of work you'd be required to do by about half).

 

No, we've been trying to get the GLGods to add scaling to buffs since the dawn of time, but it's probably not going to happen.

 

I think I can do something for werediggle, when I will have more free time (the next week, after an important exam of mine (and I need time for an avatar, too)).
Until that, I have to study and, in the gaps, I want to test more of the werediggle/polimorph synergies. I don't think every skill tree must synergise with it, nor I want it to become 8x more powerful just to balance the lost skills. You chose the werediggle path, you have to go down it without too much free candy.
Oh, since I was almost forgotting: Essence, I think there are troubles (for my enemies, as I've ascended to godhood). I've just double spored myself, instead of my little blobby fungal friend.
And I cannot post screens, since there is some kind of weird error with Microsoft Runtime upon opening the game, after the mod loader. Weird.

 

Of course not. Some of them (Berserker Rage, anyone?) give most of their bonuses as passive procs, meaning they already work with Werediggle Curse. Some other (Swords/Maces/etc.) have a good reason not to give you any special attacks when you are transformed, too.

 

For my point of view, it makes more sense obtaining a super move from some weapon skill (which, as for the wiki says, gives you passive nondamage bonuses in diggle form) as a capstone, than making a modified spell from a wizard tree.
Basically, if you morph, you become a fearsome Digging Being, so your mind should be more focused into picking on the weak, than thinking of strange words, weird rituals and intricated moves for catching the awesome magic power. So, for me, it's a no for spells in the strict sense, and a yes to something more from warrior/rogue skills (like artful dodge or master of arms).
Again, if we think of the procs, very little work is involved, since there must be a way to proper play it (I'm not saying it's not fun as it is, I just would like to personalize a little from the curse, and not playing more or less always the same double wielding rage induced hungry diggle).

 

Vitellozzo, can you tell me how you managed to spore yourself? It's a type="adjacent" spell, which I thought meant the target could only be something next to you (i.e. not you.)

 

It simply targeted me, instead of my adiacent slime friend. The second time I've tried this, the blobby was far away, and I right clicked for a second. No target appeared (like they do when it shows the template), and then the buff went on me, again.
Like every only-for-you buffs.

 

Oh, because I forgot to put self="0" in the buff description.

Code:

<spell name="Symbiotic Toadstool" downtime="96" type="adjacent" icon="skills/rogue/fungus3_32.png">
<buff usetimer="0" allowstacking="1" stacksize="2" self="0" icon="skills/rogue/fungus3_64.png" smallicon="skills/rogue/fungus3_32.png">
<primarybuff id="0" amount="12"/>
<primarybuff id="2" amount="12"/>
<primarybuff id="3" amount="12"/>
</buff>
 </spell>

is what it should look like. I'll see if I can playtest that later today.

 

I'm running a Diablo character right now (or better, if I didn't have this strange crash upon startup): Baristacrat, Fungal Arts, Fairy Princess, Big Game Hunt, Sweet Tooth, Chaos Disciple and Paladinner.
So I should be able to both test fungal arts and big game hunt, two skills I'm pretty confident with.
Do you have ever encountered strange Runtime errors, with your rebalances?

 

Not with the rebalances. I had runtime errors once when I had Bushido creating a Knock cone that occasionally tried to knock objects outside of the dungeon map...that was weird.

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?

 

Letting Steam looking over files made it work again, I just had to put your balanced files instead of the regular DBs.
Time to farming drop.

 

Well you can spend about half your time in Diggle form, so I think putting an effect on transformation would be pretty sweet.

Instead of Kazeto's suggestion - we could try the inverse! Grant a buff when you transform to diggle form for each skill tree you've reached at least level 3 in. To make it simple, each warrior tree could give +5 +10 , each rogue tree could give +10 +10, and each wizard tree could give +10 +10.

It's still significant work, since we'd have to check for the presence of each other skill - but at least it's a finite amount of work.

 

That's actually impossible in more than one way.

You could scale scalable effects to warrior wizard and rogue levels though.

 

Impossible is a strong, strong word. Especially since you follow it up with a suggestion of how to implement it!

 

I don't really like the idea of other skills being a sort of filling, just to build up the werediggle. Archeology is far different from Fungal Arts and from Artful Dodge, and the idea of those three giving the exact same effect (a mere buff to stats) to the werediggle is something I'd prefer to see not.
Maybe we could just buff a little those stats werediggle gives at higher levels, and adjust something else. Like Diggle Plague being a spell 0, and not what it should be (a proc on being hit and on hit). Maybe we could increment the stats from Going Commando, give It Comes out of Where?! also some stats, powering the Arch-Diggle Smash (even with the fix, it still doesn't hurt like it should, being the only attack available to the Diggle form), and even giving more stats and another skill to Dr. Diggle and Mr. Hyde, or maybe just more resistances (it's the capstone, after all).