[Skill] Elemental Warrior (beta - 1.0.9RevB version)

Elemental Warrior Skill Tree​

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This is a warrior skill that puts the power of the elements at your disposal. I was going to wait until 1.0.10 to release it, after adapting it, but I have no patience so I thought in the meantime you guys could give it a try, since I doubt it is balanced. This is my first mod ever, so it's kind of special to me. I hope you like it, and all the balance suggestions will be appreciated. Also, some flavour texts could be improved, I'll review them when adapting the mod to 10.0.10. Enjoy!

Description of the skills:​

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Earth!​

Your body is hard as a rock. Hours in the gym are paying off.​

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Fire!​

A burning desire for battle surrounds you.​

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Wind!​

Your body is able to move with incredible speed and increased reflexes.​

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Water!​

You're an expert in all the forms of Dihydrogen Monoxide and it's applications. Be water, my friend.​

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Heart!​

You put all your efforts in what you do, improving even more your elemental powers. You also feel more... alive.​

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Gaia's Chosen​

With all your powers combined, you're the Elemental Warrior!​

Special thanks to my friend Aku for the custom images that are not taken directly from the game

UPDATE: I've balanced the mod following recomendations made in this thread, so here you have version 0.2.

Version 0.2 Changelog:

Earth!

• removed
• Clobbering Time! removed
• Clobbering Time! increased to 2
• Clobbering Time! stacksize increased to 3

Wind!

• removed
• Riding The Wind range limited to cardinal directions
• Riding The Wind downtime reduced to 25 steps

Water!

• Frost Armor activation chance reduced to 20%
• Frost Armor brittle reduced to 3
• Small Snowstorm activation when Frost Armor is active reduced to 40%

Heart!

• All damages removed

Gaia's Chosen

• All damage except removed
• All resistances except removed
• Gaia's Wrath activation chance reduced to 40% (as it was intended)

 

You're my hero.

 

Balance feedback just from browsing the XML:

• General
  • Most official skill levels give you either:
    • Lots of stats
    • Few stats + a proc or ability
  • The entire skill line gives you +16 damage
• Heart!
  • 5 is OP

Will edit this post with more feedback later.

 

Looks interesting. Would you tell us what the skills actually do?

 

This has been begging to be done for a long time. Good man. Will review upon the having of time -- possibly over the weekend.

 

By the powers vested in me I hereby declare this to be my second skill to receive a Formal Balance Review.

I'll get to it as soon as I finish the first FBR.

 

From examining the XML:

OK, first level gives +1 damage straight up (blasting), and .66 damage from 2 points of Burliness then has a 40% chance to activate a buff that adds 2.3 more damage with a duration of 7 and a stacksize of 2. That's effectively an average of +1 additional damage on round 2 (total of +2.66 damage) and +2 additional damage (total of +4.66 damage) on rounds 3-X.

That's a LOT of damage from a 1st level skill. Then you add the extra armor absorbtion from the buff on top of it, and you're looking at a skill that needs a nerf.

I would suggest ditching the base Burliness bonus, keeping the Blasting and Blasting Resist, and toning the buff down to +2 Burliness and +1 Absorb. You can compensate by doubling the stack size if you'd like; taking longer to ratchet up to full effectiveness is an adequate drawback.


Level 2: Not sure what Magic Resist has to do with burning, but whatever. This level actually looks OK to me. Some people might be concerned that 2 sight radius is a lot; I don't know that I'm that worried about it. The secondary buffs from the Flame On look good, and I like the idea of a tiny nuke that goes off when you start burning.


Level 3: +5 counter and perfectly targetable teleport in the same level? Probably too much. I'd keep the Nimbleness, ditch the counter, and lower the downtime on the teleport just a little. Either that or figure out how to limit the teleport somehow else and merely lower the counter bonus to 2.


Level 4: Frost Armor is always going to be on. Always. Just so you know. It might as well just be a series of hardcoded secondarybuffs. It would take a 3% chance for 5 hits (brittle 5) to go by without a new iteration of Frost Armor activating. That's just silly. Either reduce the Brittle, reduce the activation chance, or make it an activated ability with a downtime.


Level 5: +4 damage and +4 resist from one level? No. No, no no. No. Personally, I disagree with J-F about the health regen being OP -- it's the damage that's on full-time with no penalty or requirement that gets me. I'd be OK with this level if it kept the resists and stat bonuses and lost the damage.


Level 6: Same thing all over again. Just +2 Aethereal damage and resist along with the Gaia's Wrath buff would be a very solid capstone level; the other 4 points of damage and resist are pure overkill. Also: best use of a 5th Element reference ever.


All of this is my opinion, and I'm sticking do it. Unless someone convinces me otherwise.

 

Where is that unlike button?

 

Wow, I didn't expect so much feedback just in one night (I posted this at 1:00 am more or less, didn't remember that when I sleep, some people around here wake up XD). I'll try to answer to you all:

I Love you too :3

The idea I had in mind for this mod is to give direct damage and resistance, each representing one element. Problem is, at first glance giving only the damage and resistance seemed not enough, so I thought I could give some additional stats, and either an activated ability (Flame On and Riding the Wind) or a procced temporary buff (Clobbering Time! and Wrath of Gaia, for example). Thing is, I focused so much in the theme of the mod, and didn't pay enough attention to balancing it. I'm taking note of all your suggestions, of course, but I would like to balance it around the elemental damages and resistances, since it was the original idea.

Well, since it is a "Heart" based skill, I'd prefer leaving this and nerf it in some other way.

I thought it would be fun for you to check it and discover what they do, their names, and the flavor text. Since it is already released, I'll make the full explanation when the final version is released

I am proud of such honor

Well, as I said, direct damage and resistances are the main theme of the skills, so I'd rather nerf any other feature. What you suggest seems fantastic, since when I review it once finished, I thought almost every skill should be nerfed in some way. Maybe I'll use this scheme for every one of them: leaving the base damage, and nerfing some of the extra buffs, either removing or nerfing them, by leaving them just in the passive buff and not as base stat buffs.

When I made this skill, I was thinking of a fire aura that deflected magic and the like, but since magic reflection didn't work, I used the only thing I saw that could fit in some way.

I think I'll leave this skill as it is, only removing magic resistance, maybe.

Actually, I tried to limit the teleport by applying the template type to the spell, but it ended up teleporting randomly multiple times (around twenty before stopping, no joking). My thoughts were to wait until 1.0.10 to see if it could be done then. In the meantime, I raised the downtime a bit from the original value. Now, since we are talking about removing the additional buffs I added, I think I'll change this skill just as you say. Oh, just to keep it in mind, the intention of this teleport was to provide the warrior a way of escape, but it was intended to be a limited teleport (in range) with a severe downtime to compensate that it has no mana cost. I want to give the opportunity to avoid a nasty situation, but not to rely everytime on it.

I think I'll take the first option and reduce both brittle and activation chance, since I wanted to avoid as much as I could activated abilities, and I already have two of them. The idea was to make an almost passive-based skill tree.

With these two levels, I was trying to finish the path to become the elemental master, by adding more damage and resists of each type. But yes, you're right. I think I'll remove the damage for these two levels, keep the resistances and the rest of the stats, and see if that way it works right. I'll keep the ethereal damage, since it represents the fifth element

Also, I realized once posted that the percentage for the Gaia's Wrath buff is not as intended. I put it in 100% because it was what caused the bug I mentioned in another thread, but the idea was to give it a lesser percentage. Maybe a 40% or 45% would be ok?

Thanks, I hope that Captain Planet and Fantastic Four references were also noted


Well, after all this feedback, I'll start to work on the balancing issues as soon as possible. I'll post the new version as soon as it is finished. Thanks everyone for your help, and I'm glad you liked this mod

 

The reason the teleport w/template happened the way it does is that when you call a template, it targets every single square in that template with the chosen spell. So what it was doing was teleporting once to every square in the template. You can fix that by having a template that only has one square (so you could, for example, only teleport exactly 4 squares in any direction), or by using one of the existing alternate types (rook, knight, etc.)

You might also try balancing it like they did Invisible Geometries -- let it be an LOS thing, but debuff you somehow on the other end.

 

Now I understand. I'll tinker with the existing templates, to see if I can limit the range of the teleport. If I can do it, maybe by reducing the range, I could let stay the counter buff but reduce its value. What do you think of it?

Also, I don't understand what LOS means. could you enlighten me, please?

 

My Clockwork Knights Mods and Tactics mod both have modified teleport spells. You are free to check them out if you are looking to see how they work.

 

I didn't remember about it, even though I've been playing Clockwork Nights a lot! Thanks, I'll check them

 

LOS = line of sight. Meaning 'anywhere you can see, you can teleport.'

 

Thanks. I think I'll try to limit the teleport, using Ruigi's mods as a guide, since that's what was intented.

 

Apologies for the double post.

Version 0.2 of Elemental Warrior is ready, see the first post of this threads for details.
This version of the mod is temporary until version 1.0.10 of Dredmor is out, and I adapt it. Also, I still have to add some animations, since I have to figure out how they work (I've been able to add some, but they're just copy-paste of already-made ones).

I hope you'll enjoy, and thanks for the help!

 

Played this for a couple of DLs today (will keep playing, too, just that's as far as I got thus far).

So far, I have this to say: I like it. The only things I might do is swap Air and Water, but that's because teleportation is just that strong, and add some sort of fun but not too strong proc to Gaea's Wrath. The stats are nice, but not quite enough to be a capstone skill. Maybe something like a 'composting strike' that recycles enemy corpses into HP as you kill them? Dunno.

Overall, this is one of the decenter warrior mods around here, in flavor, in style, and mechanically. Thanks.


P.S.: Note: this skill is strong with ranged attacks. Not in a bad way, but all of the damage bonuses add to ranged attacks. This + Practical Geomancy + Ninjitsu would be evil as hell.

 

Essence, you can't change the order of the skills. There's a reason they are in that order. *Thinks of a certain environmentally minded animated show*

 

Oh. Right. Can't go against cannon like that. My bad.

 

What Loren said
Also, do you think teleportation is still strong for that level, now that I've modified its reach? Anyway, it's may not be the last time that I modify it, since I've seen that templates will be codeable in 1.0.10 (or so I've understood from the changelog). My question regarding this is: if as you told me, when you cast a template spell, every square is targeted... can I configure in some way the teleport so you can select, for example, three squares in each direction (not only cardinal directions, but diagonals too) or something like that? I mean, I used template 32 this time, but what I'm trying to do is to give a limited teleport in any direction, not only cardinal directions. Maybe using more than one template? could it be possible? I'll keep thinking, and try something when 1.0.10 come out and I adapt Elemental Warrior to it.

Uhhmm I'll think of that. With "proc to Gaea's Wrath", you mean some triggered ability attached to the buff, so it only triggers when it is active? I don't quite understand the "proc" term.

Wow. That means a lot, thanks dude

On one hand, I didn't know how to restrict damage to only melee (I don't know if it can be done, really, from looking the XML files). On the other hand, we're talking about the savior of the world, he should be strong in ranged combat too

One last time thing, flavor-related: You said Gaea, but I wrote Gaia. Is it a translation thing? I wrote how I name her in spanish, but now I doubt I put it correctly. I'll do some research and correct it if necessary, in the final release.

Thanks for everything man, you've helped a lot