Flesh-mancy seems to be a bit weak...

@Bleh
The thing is, if you already have math, why use vortex over golden ratio/recursive curse? So taking/leveling viking is kinna redundant if you already have math.

 

well it was great for midgame and even endgame because it stacks, unlike recursive. I usually max alchemy first (actually any crafting skill first) because i wana be able to make orbs/staffs by 2nd floor. Math is pretty much an endgame tree i think. Teleport is nice but its just there to makes your life easier. Golden ratio damage is really weak and mana cost is very high. Basically math tree doesnt pay off until zen while the root spell and vortex is useful right off the bat. Also, I thought zen will stay with you until you run out of mana, but aparantly it has a hidden timer. So without zen, I was sitting at 50 soemthing magic power all game (not a single orb of nothing lol). With 3x zen recursive was 6 mp but without it it was 11. Compared to vortex's 3 mp without zen. So being the lazy guy that i am i ended up just using vortex until floor 10 where monsters hp went way up.

also, I take back what i said about fire rune. It didnt work on floor 10 haha (but until then, it could take out all zoo's and its only a 2nd skill on the tree). Is fireball AOE effect much stronger?

Also, I duno what happend to dredmor just now. I spot him, go invisible and drink all buff pots, i notice he stepped on some fire trap... next thing i know His sitting at like 2% health.

 

@ Bleh..: Even that logic breaks down under scrutiny, because if you aren't in melee taking hits, why do you need a HP or Burliness buff? Meatshield as-is has zero utility.

 

I'd argue that astrology is fairly useless beyond one point too. The only other decent spell can be gained from a beverage and never needs to be recast. Golemancy is also worthless. The pets aren't really better because you can't spam a 50 mana pet and the stats aren't anything spectacular later. Dig, while a rogue-like staple, is useless in this game. I'll agree that psionics, promethean, mathemagics, and necroeconomics are all great skill lines. They also have one thing in common. You can take each as your only spell line.

Psionics has utility + a great single target nuke in pyrokenisis + a 3 turn stun. All the psionics spells are very cheap too with spell power. Psionics supports a high magic power dual wield staff user. Necroecinomcs lends itself to a melee build that keeps magic power lower with gear. Mathemagics offers great damage and mobility + a solid buff for a pure caster. Promethean magic likewise is a fantastic skill line that offers great AE damage and a solid pet. Each of those 4 skill lines can be taken as your sole magic skill line.

I'd say the other 4 need to be reworked. For golemancy I'd say raise the damage scaling on the thuamites to 3 + .35*spellpower and lower the mana cost of the higher teir pet to 35. For fleshcrafting fleshbore needs to scale a little better or change damage types. But a low scaling piercing damage dot is just going to be mitigated by armor. The heal needs to be much better too.

Astrology needs better stats on the celestial aegis and stars aligned needs to have a base cost of 30.

I haven't played with viking magic yet so i can't comment.

 

Looking over viking magic, it doesn't seem that bad...

With 40+ spell power the spells are fairly spamable. The first spell seems decent early game. Artic Vortex deals great damage, better than curse of the golden ratio, and is much cheaper. Thor's bolt scales fairly well too, and does AE damage. The cost isn't too bad either. Not sure what crushing root does. I'm assuming it immobilizes an enemy. I'd much rather take psionics than viking magic, but still.

 

@jhffmn
I think Viking is fine. It's just that everyone picks math so they has less incentive to pick viking. I just hope hands can still be stacked.

Astrology is for Radiance Aura yes, and maybe Solar Inscription. Aegis need to not break, and Solar Inscription needs stun chance of 50%. I mean come on, it's a single target trap, it need better than 33%.

Flesh is worst because even the first skill sucks. You only need the HP in tough times and unfortunately that's also when it breaks. If you can "manage" that silly thing you are probably not in any danger to begin with.

As for Golem, I think you are understating the utility value of both the mustache and the wall. Of course I don't see a reason to dump in anymore skill points per say, but still. And while thuamites sucks if you got other forms of DOT/AoE. If you got nothing else it still gets the job done after walling in. That said I would welcome a buff of the last 3 skills.

 

Every skill has to have at least a 'potential' reason for some unknown build for putting points into it to the very end. I have to agree that Fleshmancy just doesn't seem like it does. It's nice to have a pet, but I don't really see a reason to go beyond the mustache golem (I'll take others word for it that wall is useful). Maybe the later pets need to be given special abilities or attacks. Heck, I'd invest in it if the last ability gave you a zombie pack-mule.

 

the problem with every summon is that they dont scale at all. You have summons doing 3 damage or soemthing and they never get stronger right? The only reason to put down a summon is if you are swarmed and u want to abuse monster AI by putting down a summon adjacent to them. I think this is a problem as well. Why does monsters completely ignore you if you have a pet?

 

Because otherwise the pets would be even more useless? As it stands they have good tactical utility by summoning them when you're in melee range.

It doesn't make tactical sense on the part of the monsters, but this is something I'm personally willing to let slide in the name of fun.

 

My ideas for improving Fleshsmithing:

• Fix it so you can't die from Meatshield fading
  • Eg: Health buffs should scale. If you have 10/60 hp left and your 10 hp shield drops you should be left with 1/6 * 50 = 8 hp.
• Keep Fleshbore weak but make it heal you for some of the damage it inflicts
• Change Knit Flesh to be a high upkeep buff (similar to Mark of Cthlon) that drastically increases your health regen
• Make Miasmatic Putrefaction's cloud have a chance to put enemies to sleep
• Make Corpus Burst deal more damage, maybe be able to set off other corpses nearby? Chain-reactions?

My ideas for improving Golemancy:

• Replace The Mortal Machine with some kind of spell slinging summon whose magic power matches your own
• Add some rooms that are completely walled off to make Digging Ray more useful
  • This is the late-game equivalent of the tiles surrounded by water. Other ways to get into a walled off room would be Perception (if it finally lets us see through walls) + Teleport.

 

I disagree that Meatshield shouldn't kill you if it drops off- that's an acceptable peril, and part of what makes skills like Fleshsmithing and Necronomiconomics fun and exciting (in theory). The skill would be fine if it scaled with HP, and wasn't limited by a 5 hit count. For example: x=2*(HP/5) is the approximate formula to describe the skill at lvl 1; you have about 25 HP, give or take, and Meatshield gives you 10 HP. If you have 80 HP, Meatshield would add 32 hp. The Burliness and Health Regen buffs would also scale similarly.

Another, perhaps more realistic method would be to keep the 5-hit stack, but refresh it whenever Eyebrows kills a monster (more flesh for his shield, right?). It would encourage players to be extremely strategy-oriented when they are fighting.

 

I like this idea.

 

Meatshield is better off not using if it kills you. 10 hp is not even worth the 1 turn mid battle past floor 3, and casting it pre battle is just silly since it will break way before the 10 hp can help you.

If I got the space to both juggle that 5 hit meatshield AND escape alive, I wouldn't need that meatshield to begin with. It's a bad skill that kills you with a false sense of security.

Refresh on kill tempts players to get killed even more. The time you need that extra HP is when you need to escape, not when you need to keep swinging. It will keep people around longer than they should psychologically. So while it's theoretically a buff my guess is it will result in even more death. Though I can't say I hate this idea.

 

I started a staff wielding Viking mage after reading this thread. That improved Meatshield buff would be excellent on that character, as it's mostly melee based, just using damage spells to take out mobs when I get overwhelmed.

 

I don't think the Mortal Machine needs to be improved. It was tanking hits from Lord Dredmor, on my last GRPD playthrough, and would survive 3-4 hits. It was also single-handedly killing monsters on a one-on-one basis all the way up to Floor 8. It works really well as a meatshield (better than the actual "Meatshield", hah!), and I don't think Golemancy needs to be improved in any way. Aside from Lord Dredmor, you can solo the whole game with just Golemancy alone.

 

I cast my vote for JFactor's changes. Those seem interesting and reasonable and fixed most of the issues with the whole sodding tree.

EDIT:

This. I died when my Prince fungus buff wore off because I took one step too many through a Pumpkin Death Cloud and the "buff" wore off. Note to self: start selling/'fisking those damn things.

 

It would have to be a buff you cast before combat- casting it in combat would be foolish, especially if you have more than one enemy on you- the stacks would immediately be reduced to 3 or less. The way I see it, it wouldn't be a matter of the buff falling off because you get hit too many times -trying- to escape, it would be about carefully choosing your actions:

"I have 13 health and 1 stack left on my Meatshield. I'm cornered in by two bats, but one of them is hurt pretty bad, I might be able to finish it off with another kick, thus refreshing my Meatshield. Or I could recast Meatshield. Or I could use [insert ability/item here] to escape long enough to let me recast and/or heal out of melee. Let's live on the edge! FOOT!!!"

I'm fine with getting killed by doing something admittedly risky, I'm not fine with getting killed by an Octo borking my Meatshield with his pew-pew from 3 squares away right after I Knight Leap out of melee to heal up and recast the wretched 'buff', if you can call it that.

 

@competentfake

The more realistic example is, you got 2 charge, you got a monster that you can kill in 1 hit. You swing, it got countered, you get hit twice and lose the shield, you die.

That's how pretty much every melee die. It's always those counter/crit, or the spell tossed in from the side. And that is precisely when meatshield breaks on you.

 

Good point! A couple of unlucky counters and that's all she wrote. Perhaps it's best do away with the stacks altogether and just have the mana upkeep.