Ideas for new Warrior Skills (based on Melee Still Sucks)

So, after reading the Melee Still Sucks thread in detail, I decided to pair up my Rogue skillset with a few suggestions for Warrior Skills that could take up a little bit of the slack. Here's what I came up with:

Bushido
1: The First Cut Is The Deepest -- When attacking a foe that has full health, your attacks deal an additional 2+(1/2 Warrior Level) Piercing damage.

2: Body Like Mountain -- +1 Armor Absorption. When attacked, you have a Warrior Level% chance to proc Minor Regeneration on yourself.

3: Make Me One With Everything-- +5 Dodge Chance, +1 Caddishness

4: Mind like Meatloaf -- Action. Convert 50% of your Mana Points into that many Hit Points. This does not count as an action; you may still take another action this turn.

5: Change Must Come From Within -- +5 Magic Resist. Action: gain Minor Regeneration. Recharge: 36 turns.

6: I Will Bend Like A Reed In The Wind -- You gain a +75 Dodge Chance against enemy Counterattacks. +1 Stubbornness.

XTreme Training
1: Extreme! -- +5 HP, +1 Health Regeneration Rate, +1 Burliness.

2: Hardcore! -- +2 Health Regeneration Rate. Action: Sneer At Danger -- You regain 1 HP/turn for a number of turns equal to your Warrior Level. Recharge: 30 turns.

3: Badass! -- +1 Subbornness, +2 Health Regeneration Rate. When attacked, you have an 80% chance to become immune to any exotic damage type (i.e. any type except crushing, slashing, piercing, or blasting) dealt by that attack. The immunity lasts 3 rounds; you can have any number of such immunities simultaneously.

Qigong
**Special: all costs of QiGong are paid in MaxMana, meaning it permanently lowers your total Mana supply.**

1: Qi Strike -- -7 MaxMana. +2 Righteous Damage to all Melee attacks.

2: Open Meridians -- -14MaxMana. Halve your base Health Regeneration Rate (i.e. HRR becomes 3 on Elvish, 4 on Dwarven, and 7 on Rogue.) Other modifiers to HRR apply to the new base rate. Gain 1 point each of Ethereal, Asphyxiative, Transmutational, Putrifying, and Toxic Resistance.

3: Infuse Qi -- Action. Cost: -5 MaxMana. Select a weapon or armor to gain a persistent random enchantment. (a la positive Anvil of Krong result). You no longer gain +Sagacity or +Mana from gear you equip.

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Comments: Always round down.

Mind Like Meatloaf works on current Mana, so there's rapidly diminishing returns if used several times in succession.

Make Me One with Everything and Change Must Come From Within are there to help warrior survivability against ranged attacks and magic. Reed In The Wind is specifically to reduce the chance of named-mob CounterCritical/Critical instagibbing in the lowest levels.

I think everything else is self-explanatory.

 

Bushido: Savvy is of minimal use to Warriors; its main effect is on Sneakiness and Haywire, neither of which is of any real use to a Warrior. +1 Sneakiness is not gonna help much if any against a Djinn Fizz brigade. Same with Reed In The Wind - Sagacity affects max mana and magic power in the primary, neither of which will matter to a character who can't make use of mana and is wearing enough steel to build a Panzer from. Mind Like Meatloaf should be a 1-to-1 - at the moment, your "average" warrior has mana in the low 20s, maybe pushing to 40ish when nearing their personal level cap. 10 HP heal on floor 10 is NOT of use.

Xtreme Training: The theory is good...but the overall effect may be not enough. As-listed, taking all three levels brings health regen rate down to a mage's STARTING mana regen rate if they don't take Ley Walker - IE, 8. That's still not enough to truly make a difference in the heat of battle, though Hardcore could definitely help. And while resistances may be key to survivability, 1 point is not gonna cut it against 20+ per hit critters.

I see the combo potentials, especially between Qigong and Xtreme, and they would make a difference - but combo'd, almost might be TOO powerful, ensuring a persistent +2 HP per turn. Have to think on it, though.

 

Thanks for the comments, Sniktch! You're definitely right about the stats. I switched Savvy --> Caddishness and Sagacity --> Stubbornness. Also changed the Caddishness in Extreme! to Burliness to make it slightly more attractive.

As to the Resistances from Badass!, they should stack, so if you get hit 8 times by a creature dealing Transmutative damage, you'll have +8 Transmutative resistance. This is mostly there to help Warriors survive crowds on those floors that focus on 1-2 types of unusual damage.

I'm interested in how you get +2 HP/turn. Assuming GR (base 13 HRR), halved to 7, +6 from Xtreme Training gives you +1/turn. Where does the other +1/turn come from? If it's Sneer At Danger, that's probably because I figured 25 was about the upper limit of character levels by DL10. Then again, I've never seen DL3 personally, so I'm just going by what I've read on the forums. If the recharge time needs to be longer because CL25 is something very reachable, that can totally be changed.

 

Yeah, I tried to make XTreme valuable for the other abilities, with health regen as a "bonus" on top of the 1 HP/turn and the dynamic boosts to Resistances, but it might still be a little weak.

And yes, Qigong is definately out there, but I wanted to create something that would allow a Warrior to "use mana" without actually using mana.

 

Mind the double post. I just edited Bushido to provide Minor Regeneration two ways rather than merely uselessly improve the Health Regen rate. Let me know if it looks overpowered now.

 

Is anything in QiGong stack-able or have duration? I am guessing they are permanent one time only skill.

 

Given that they permanently reduce your max mana, presumably their effects would also be permanent. As for stacking, *shrug*.

 

What Derakon said. The abilities are permanent effects, and they stack with anything else you happen to have.

Note also that a pure Warrior will end up with 0 Mana at level 2 if he chose QiGong for his level 2 skill, and would then be able to use Qi Infusion 4 times every 5 levels unless he gained+Sagacity or +MP gear.

 

The max number of Warrior levels is 30 without duplicative or counter-working skills - weapon skills are all 6, Shield Bearer, Master Of Arms, and Smithing are all 5, Deadshot, Berzerker, and Throwing are all 3. And you start with up to 7 of them - remember, that little "level 1" on your character sheet lies, and what matters is the number of hashes in the "class" bars. So Sneer At Danger becomes perma at "gained" level 18 for a "pure" warrior, especially as Xtreme Training would be an easy replace for Deadshot or Throwing in such a build. Not exactly trivial, but not anywhere near out of the range of doability. I can also see a potential game-exploding bug with Qigong - equip stuff that gives +Sagacity or Mana, use Infuse Qi till you have 0 Max mana. Take off manabuff stuff. Either you'll have NEGATIVE Max Mana, which might make the game blow up, or it'll default to 0 - heypresto, rinse and repeat for infinite buffs to gear. This would actually be quite easy to do, as even a Naturey Orb gives that much +Mana.

And my issue with Badass! still stands - given the number of characters who've gone from live to dead in a single Djinn Fizz brigade barrage, it'd have to be a BIG pop to Resist to be of any use. Single mobs melee'ing with elemental damage aren't the issue - groups firing ranged barrages are. A good example: Octos. They appear on level 3ish, and their bolt does 8 Aetherial. Going with 5 of them blazing away(like you can and often do see in a zoo or Inconsequentia-spawned brigade): 8+7+6+5+4= 30 damage in a single turn. On floor 3, that's STILL half or more of your health. Best overall suggestion: Make it similar to the effect idea in Nerve Staple. First hit does full Ow...and makes you nearly immune to that damage type for a bit - max 5 turns, but "for 1 turn only" might be viable. 10-15 Resist might be good numbers, and short-term immunity is not overpowering - you still have to chase them down and beat them silly before they fire again. Stacking? I can see both ways - while in the main you tend to see "themes" to floors and the mobs within, you DO often see mixed-in singletons of another type; allowing stacking makes you take less and less damage as the enemy fire keeps incoming, eventually becoming all but invincible to exotic damages till the buff wears off. But overwriting could be self-defeating; hit by Promethean, then by Toxic, then by Promethean, then by Acidic(very possible on several levels), and end up getting no reductions at all. Personal preference would be 1 turn duration, allow stacking - you bend, but do not break.

 

OK, I modified:
Mind Like Meatloaf still only uses 50% of your Mana, but is now a non-action, making it healing that doesn't interrupt your sword-swinging.
Change Must Come From Within has a reduced recharge time of 36 turns rather than 50, giving it an average of 1 HP/turn over 36 turns.
Sneer at Danger now recharges at 30 turns, so a maxxed-out Fighter-archetype character can have it on full-time.
Badass! now provides short-term (3 turn) immunity to exotic damage types 80% of the time.
Infuse Qi now simply prevents you from gaining Sagacity or Mana from gear you put on.

 

One thing that you are overlooking is that there are no actual classes in the game -- how much mana a pure warrior has is irrelevant if you consider that a hybrid mage can have 3 times that at least. 80% chance of a 3 turn immunity to exotic damage is probably op as well, even ignoring the stat bonus.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of building up meleers, but remember that you don't want to do that by creating skills that are must-have.

 

I don't consider these 'must-have' skills; they're strictly there for people who want to go hardcore and kill Dredmor with a pure Warrior. QiGong is pretty decent for a Warrior/Rogue who doesn't have any other use for his mana, but has to compete with the likes of Fungal Lore and Burglary for a skillslot; I'm not sure it would win that competition. XTreme Training might have value as a skill tree for a non-Warrior, but I doubt it -- would you take Sneer at Danger (basically useless if you only have 2-3 Warrior levels) just to get that damage immunity from Badass!? Similarly, Bushido relies on Warrior Levels and uses up craploads of Mana quite quickly for an effect that casters (and even careful Rogues) don't really need.

In short, I've already had those thoughts and I'm not really concerned about it. It seems to me like just about the worst abuse you can get is taking levels in Alchemy with QiGong and turning your Sagacity-fueled mana boosts into a few extra enchantments alongside getting tons of Health Potions and whatnot -- and even that doesn't seem nearly as abusive as Xeuclid's Obvious Nerve Ratio, so I'm really not that worried about it.

Hell, even in combination with some of my new Rogue skill tree suggestions, I just don't see any cross-class exploits here. Can you give me anything specific to worry about?

 

After some thought, I CAN give you a specific to worry about RE Badass!, and a reason to limit the bufftimer to 1 turn - Necro. If the bufftimer lasts multiple turns, then a Necro can toss spells like there's no tomorrow - because the first ping of Necropain will thereafter make them immune to necro damage for multiple turns, perhaps indefinitely if the necropain keeps resetting the timer. Or even worse, traipsing through a Rift untouched. If the bufftimer is only 1 turn, then the pattern goes like this: Blasted by Thermoblobby for 20 Fire damage. Poisoned by Pumpkinn for 2 Toxic. Blasted by 5 more Thermoblobbies for ~5 each. Then comes your turn, and you lose the 15 Toxic and Promethean resists, so you BETTER get up in their faces and take them out, because the first shot STILL hurts you.

 

Does the game consider the damage from Necropain an "attack"? If so, you're right, that'll need changing. I'd really like to avoid that though, because I want it to be something at least partially effective vs. Dredmor, who rarely uses the same elemental magical attack twice in a row.

 

I think it does - it takes hits off of self-buffs that ablate like Meathsield or Suit Up, and Radiant Aura if you go over 6 magic power.

 

Anything that deals damage to the player counts as a "hit" for purposes of ablative buffs. But I think only melee strikes count as "hits" for the second-tier Berserker skill, so you may still be in business.

 

Possibly, though the skill looks primarily like it's meant for surviving brigade barrages and the like, not melee elemental damage.

 

I dunno, I feel as if these skills like the humor of the game. The bonuses range from sounding good to sounding broken, though I do like the idea of bonuses that would rely on your archetype level, which would help push people to specialize for certain builds.

I like the dodge buffs and the fact that some of this is focused on sacrificing magic power to use. But Qigong would be a pain in the ass to code, as you'd have to do something to prevent people from using mana points they don't have (I.E., those gained from potions, buffs, and equipment) to trade in for bonuses.