Here's what I remember, I thought I'd list it here for fun, and as a way to remember which Skills to revisit once the patch hits. Maybe get some thoughts/experiences from some of our lucky Beta Tester types. Here goes: Archery - Should be much, much better with the recovery rate of bolts de-bugged (every bolt can be recovered, not just the one that killed the monster) and supposedly made more generous (read: higher % recovery rate). I think Nic or David even posted somewhere that crossbow-reliant builds are much more viable now and don't depend on praying to the RNG gods for more Bolt vending machines to spend all your Zorkmids on. Melee - Between the Health-per-level fix and the various melee Skill trees' Burliness trickling down to stats like Moar Health and Attack Power, and the changes to the Heavy Armors to make them protect you from more things (*cough Piercing *cough*). There are also a ton of stat fixes to the Shield, Dual-wield, and Smithing skill trees (among others), so things are looking up on this front, as well. Maybe you'll finally be able to make that Tank build with Sword and Board and go toe-to-toe with more monsters and not have to rely on high-end Bolts and stuff like Ninja Vanish and Knightly Leap as much... one can hope, anyway. Vampirism - The patch notes say it was nerfed and then buffed again and ended up being the same in 1.0.4 as it is now. Haywiring and corpse stack abuse have been fixed. The question now becomes - does it still scale off Magic Power? Because if they fixed THAT, and you aren't so limited in your armor and gear choices, playing Vampires should be a lot more interesting. Also, I can't wait to hear Announcer Guy doing his "I vant to sahk your blahd" accent when you're low on Health. Crafting - Changes made to promote NOT waiting until Skill Level 5 to start smelting or grinding or ale-ing, more recipes added, material requirements for existing recipes tweaked. It SOUNDS like Crafting will be more useful early on (when it's generally most powerful) and will hopefully be more worth the massive Inventory investment for the various reagants and materials you have to haul around all the time. Also, being able to craft Chalk from Black Pearls should be a huge boon for RNG-impaired Smiths. Casters - Should no longer be able to roflstomp through everything - as one person posted, "you fight with that blue bar in the corner, not the actual dungeon". With the obvious nerfs to Obvious Fireball, and monsters (on the lower Floors especially) being giving more and varied resistances, I think the Melee/Caster gap will shrink. I think that the patch notes quote of "added some more resistances throughout levels to require you to use at least two spells to beat the game," is pretty telling as to where the game is currently in terms of overall caster potency. Will the various nerfs and resistances change caster gameplay from "stack Magic Power and Regen and spam your best spell until you win" to something a little more varied? Feel free to add any categories/general builds that I forgot, or to comment on what you think will happen vs. what I blathered on about.
As someone who likes crafting and melee, I'm very happy for the changes you've mentioned. Other things to consider: Dual Wield should be fixed, putting it where it should be. I've been hesitant about using Archeology, since it felt too much like cheating -- whenever I hear someone say that any ability is a 'must have', it makes me feel a lot less like wanting to use it, because it makes me feel cheap. For this reason, I am glad that they are being 'fixed'. I'm not exactly sure what's happening with Ley Lines -- I'm hoping it becomes a decent alternative to blood magic as a means of managing mana. I'm really hoping that Mathemagics/Promethean/Blood Magic is no longer the holy trinity of builds. I'm not saying it shouldn't be viable, only that it would be nice if we see a greater diversity of mage builds being used.
Is there a problem with the Unarmed tree? If there is, I'm not aware of it. I actually think that it's decent as-is. It may not have the best damage, but the two knockback attacks, plus awesome counter bonuses in it makes it worthwhile in my book.
Unarmed was buffed. The 1st and 3rd skill levels had their crushing damage bonuses replaced with piercing damage. The 5th skill level was given an additional 2 crushing damage.
Well, unarmed is buffed, not so much the skill itself, but everything around it. There's the 2 extra damage. But the bigger changes for them are armors and vampirism. If you thought the old dual shield unarmed was a tank, wait til you see this one. Of course, you will still need to deal with spells, and monsters throws a lot more of those now.
Sounds good, but I'm slightly skeptical about "tanky" character builds still (weapon and shield). Were there big enough changes to make it an alternative to dual wielding?
“Unarmed was buffed. The 1st and 3rd skill levels had their crushing damage bonuses replaced with piercing damage. The 5th skill level was given an additional 2 crushing damage. ” Good. This should be the tweak plan, phase one. Not enough though. My previous Mod thoughts were to replace the crushing damage with the aethereal one. Piercing is ok, in the same way. The total damage output should be still weak after dungeon lv 6, let alone the fact that the final boss had been buffed with a ton of resistance. The kicking shoes idea or the piercingF idea will likely follow, if needed, for the phase two tweaking plan. Anyway ,wait and see what will happen in patch 1.04 first.
