If you could revamp a core skill, which skill(s) would you choose and what would you change?

I run dire gourmand, essential skills complete and interior dredmorating.

 

If you are still having issues finding the right recipe despite running ID, then I suggest adding RR to the mix. Latest version will spawn 2 big library themed rooms per floor quite regularly. Even since they put megacrafts into the game, the amount of bookshelves spawned in vanilla hasn't quite been enough

Vampirism is currently broken imo. Doesn't do enough for what it takes. Seriously the entire damned tree would make more sense if you had some kind of 'progressive' vampire sickness. I.e. it's only at max level that you stop being able to eat/regen hp altogether. I still stand by what I said regarding Vampirism being so core that it shouldn't be limited to one tree. Said tree being terribad atm doesn't change anything to that fact. Also, vampirism is clearly an entire different WAY of playing the game, so 5 abilities don't cut it imo. Needs to go all the way, like werediggle (which incidentally, is also nothing to write home about).

Edit: didn't realise that was actually intended for me, sorry, would have responded earlier.

 

To get the thread back on track...

Archery

• Front-load the ammo recovery
  • Why:
    • You can't use bolts effectively without high recovery.
    • You only get high recovery by maxing the skill.
    • You don't want to max the skill because you're not using bolts.
  • Current: 25% recovery with a mostly linear increase to 55% by the end of the skill.
  • New: 50% recovery with a single level bump to 75% later in the line.
  • This makes Archery more like Dual Wielding.
• Firing Stances
  • What: Activatable buffs that change what your bolts do. Can only have one stance at a time.
  • Examples:
    • Knockback Stance
    • Piercing Shot Stance
    • Arcing Shot Stance
    • AOE Stance
    • Sniper Stance
      • Massive boost, breaks when you move (like Celestial Circle). Maybe this could be a separate ability.
• Every level should make you better at Crossbows specifically
  • No more silly / levels

 

^^ I'll totally work this (and probably a lot of other stuff from this thread) into the new ECSR once the next 'patch' hits.

 

First, Wot I think

Personally, I've always found it disgraceful that a Rogue-Like would not have some kind of Archer-centric playstyle. Crossbow mastery right now is more of a "quality of life" improvement for people for want to round off their use of crossbows rather than something that enables a different playstyle. That being said, I also think that "infinite/near infinite" bolts is not the way to make an archer playstyle either. Ammunition is life or death for the ranged combatant. Giving them even MORE ammo recovery is essentially telling to everyone - you know what? Just pick Crossbow mastery regardless of what you are getting, you'll benefit from it no matter what. Assuming you were somehow able to rework Crossbow mastery in such a way that they essentially fit into the playstyle of all 3 archetypes (Rogue/Mage/Warrior), then you essentially end up in the same situation as with infinite bolts - Everyone is going to get it regardless.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that a Crossbow mastery tree should also improve your ability to obtain bolts. One of the ways to do this is to tweak Crossbow mastery such that it increases the amount of bolts you get per craft, without actually giving you levels in Tinkering. However, I am afraid that this would suffer from the same problem that ammo recovery does - for the buff to feel satisfying, the amount of extra bolts will be at levels where it essentially gives anyone with a few points in tinkering infinite bolts as early as the 2-3 floors.

Personally, I would prefer to have an active ability that can be used every now and then, while bolts remain this precious resource that has to be managed carefully. However, I would like said ability to not create a bolt, but instead let you fire a free shot. The difference being that you can stockpile one, and not the other. To keep it balanced, it should preferably be stat-dependent damage, rather than fixed damage/replicate w/e "bolt you happen to have equipped" damage.
Generally Speaking, crossbow trees are about guarantees. If you are going to make archery into your "lifestyle" choice, then you need something you can rely on. Archers are one of these "razor's edge" playstyle. As you need something you can rely on no matter what as your first ability.
A 25% proc at low levels leaves too much to luck, and a 50% proc would be too good, imo. You can achieve the right net result through an active ability with a fairly low CD that scales fairly well with the rogue archetype stats. That way, it would essentially scale with you as you level up. This is important, because bolt/crossbow dependence for damage mean that there is a luck factor involved to being able to deal ranged damage. Having a free bolt that scales with stats takes away some of that randomness.
While I do think that "stances" are part of the answer, having a tree with a stance for every play-styles will essentially create a tree that suits the crossbow needs of everyone, which again we do not want.

The solution I propose is therefore

Split Archery into 3 different trees of 5 abilities, and basing each on the general play-style of each archetype. And if someone wants to play as a "pure" archer, they can just pick all 3, then pick and choose from the remaining 4 skill slot what they want as stopgaps

(note - I've got flavor text for most of these skills, but it would take one million posts to squeeze everything in, so i've kept everything to the minimum.)

 

Warrior Archetype

Generally Speaking, the biggest weakness of warriors is their inability to do damage at range. Something that crossbows compensate substantially. Therefore, I feel that a tree that allows warriors to improve their ranged damage without compromising on their melee efficiency would be too good. So I propose

Crossbow-kata


Why bring a crossbow to a sword-fight when you can bring both?

This tree will give you a big debuff to your attack (accuracy/dodge stats) if you equip a shield, or two weapons at the same time. On the other hand, it will improve your ranged damage potential AND your physical damage potential SUBSTANTIALLY, so that evens it out. As to how we could achieve that with the current game code - that would probably involve playing around with the code for the "two handed penalty" debuff. That will also give books and orbs (i.e. non shield off-hand items) a bit of extra value in w/e build you use. Generally speaking, this tree gives warriors an offensive/defensive stance and 'free' bolt shots that apply guaranteed "stun-like" effects, but little damage (since they will tend to have low ). This is still an interesting tree for Rogues, because their high gives them a lot of damage potential from the free shots. Mages can "sort of" pick this up if they are going down the melee route, but given their huge mana pools, they have more efficient ways of getting what this tree gives.

Abilities
Level 0
Point Blank Shot - A cooldown ability with a guaranteed stun of 1 turn. Deals 5 flat piercing and extra damage based on low scaling. The general idea being that a guaranteed stun every few turns is great to begin with.
Procs - "Feel good factor" on cast. Short buff that increases your chance to hit and melee damage for a few turns. Ergo, what you need to beat the crap out of the enemy you just stunned. It will be commensurate with passive damage buffs what you would usually get for a level 1 ability (say 2 and 1 ). Overall, combined the general idea is to have a level 1 ability that is MUCH better than the average level 1 ability to compensate for the fact that you can't dual wield, or equip a shield.

Level 1
Improbable aiming skills - Your first stance for this tree. This stance essentially guarantees one among big list of strong negative debuff on everything you hit with a crossbow, and has 50% chance of applying a mild negative on yourself. However, archers, melee or otherwise, want guarantees, and random debuffs are against that very spirit. My proposal to get the cake and eat it here is to have the stance generate a one-off attack buff every time you use the crossbow. Your next crossbow hit will be empowered by w/e effect that reads, and that next hit will also proc you a fresh buff. The general idea being that you can't choose what buff you will get, but you can choose who you will use it on. Without further ado, here's the list. I've included flavor text here because I can't resist the urge to get this out. Debuffs can stack with each other.

20% Chance of proc'ing
"I can shoot a batty in the eye" - Shooting anything in the eye is an unlikely feat. That makes it easy for you. After all this is Mission Improbable.
Attack deals an extra 5 piercing damage and applies the "eyes bolted shut" (-5 debuff). Can stack twice, for obvious reasons.
OR
(If above does not proc) 25% Chance of proc'ing
"Say goodbye to your heart tonight" - What are you waiting for?
Attack procs "uh oh, I want some more", a 5 turn debuff that has a 20% chance of procing a 1 turn stun per turn.
OR
(If above does not proc) 33% Chance of proc'ing
"Avast me hearties, yer knew it had to be" - Krong take you, anything but this...
Attack deals an extra 5 piercing damage and procs "took a bolt to the knee". Stops movement and -10 dodge for 1 turn.
OR
(If above does not proc) 50% Chance of proc'ing
"Needlessly complicated shot" - You are really going to show them your moves before you fire the next one
Attack deals an extra 5 piercing damage and procs "Did that just happen?" which causes blindness for 2 turns. In practice, this will cause them to run around helplessly for 2 turns, because they can't quite figure out what just happened.
OR
(If above does not proc) 100% Chance of proc'ing
"Why is everything black and white?" - I wonder what this does...
Attack procs "You took his offensive limbs" which gives -3 and gives a 100% chance of proc'ing a second debuff on hit - "both of them" which gives another -3 .

Negative debuffs
The tree has 50% chance of proc'ing either 1 of the following 1 turn -ve debuffs w/e you attack with a crossbow
"Digglots are proud creatures..." - Your tendency ramble in combat has left you open for a counter attack
-5
OR
"This bolt rearming time is exhilarating" - Sometimes, you find yourself still rearming when you should be attacking
-5

 

Level 2
"Just as I planned. No, really." - Second active ability of this tree. Deals no outright damage and applies "Yay, he missed!!!", a 2 turn debuff that causes blindness. At the end of 2 turns, it applies moderate damage, and applies "wait, what?" a 5 turn -5sagacity debuff.

Level 3
"Dodge the bullet" - the second stance of this tree. Mutually exclusive of the first one. Gives a huge buff to dodge/bloc/counter(say 25). However, each successive dodge/block/counter procs "not a diggle" an 20 turn (-5) negative debuff to these stats that can stack up to 10 times. Applies the "Dodge this" debuff to all adjacent enemies, a 5 turn stackable -2 piercing debuff.
Before you scream OP, remember that this Tree prevents you from dual wielding, or equipping shields, which does not leave you a lot of options to mitigate damage, or get silly counter rates. In other words, this should let you win small fights without allowing you to cheese monster zoos outright.

Level 4
"The art of making a big bloody mess" - The capstone skill. It's a fairly high cooldown active that deals piercing damage in 3 row cone shaped aoe in front of you. Low base-damage (relative to other capstone actives), but with a moderate scaling component. First target should take the full damage, second row half that for every target, and final row 1/4 of the original damage. First target suffers the "lots of shrapnel" debuff (-3 to burliness/nimbleness/sagacity), second row (-2 of those stats) and 3rd row (-1). Given how the damage scaling works, warriors can use it for the debuff while still getting some bang for buck damage wise, while rogues can use it as an outright nuke if they are willing to risk melee w/o a shield.



Rogue Archetype

Generally speaking, rogues want damage from their crossbow trees. As simple as that. Another important thematical things about Rogues is that they are only ever fight on their terms. That means that a rogue tree should boast a lot of "guaranteed" damage and procs. Admitedly, they'd want it for free, but that would make the tree silly OP, so they can't have that. Since is THE crossbow tree, it should still give "some" value to non-rogues, while is giving rogues maximum value. Altogether

The Crossbowslinger

Others pull the trigger and pray. You pull the trigger and others pray.

level 0
"Would you kindly go away?" - Moderately low cooldown ability with limited cast range (say 2-3 in any direction) that knocks the target back 1-3 squares (ideally, the closer you are, the further away this should push you) and decent scaling
Procs - "Remember the digglemo" a 5 turn +5,-5 . This is your "panic button" staple move. Generally speaking, after firing off this ability, you have a fight or flight decision to make. The accuracy bonus is here to improve the fight proposition, while the -ve armor is here to up the risk/reward ratio AND make you think twice before using this as a generic nuke. The exotic damage penalty is for a rare damage type, and is here mostly for flavor.

level 1
"Aiming is generally a good thing" - Your first stance. Also the stance that makes this tree an interesting proposition for non-archers. Adds a low fixed damage to bolts (3 piercing , and extra based on very weak sneakiness scaling), +5 accuracy and crit and +1.This is offset by a weak but stackable onplayerhit debuff - "Aiming is GENERALLY a good thing". Lasts 20 turns, stacks up to 5 times, gives -3 and -1 every time you are hit. This is still not a very big deal for rogues later on, since they should be un-hittable to begin with. Warriors typically don't care too much about getting hit, even at the fully stacked -5 and mages will typically have ways to avoid damage all-together, so this remains a relevant tree for them.

level 2
"He's linin' 'em up" - Second active. Average CD, very long range, but can only hit in straight lines. Pierces primary target, and deals damage to two targets behind primary target. First target takes full damage, second 3/4, third half. Ok base damage, and good scaling. Applies "pierced" debuff to all targets hit, which gives them -3 piercing resistance. No real downsides, but that factors in everything you've had to pick to get here. The lack of downside falls in line with this tree giving "some" value to non-rogues. With this, you can actually pick the tree up, pop 2 levels early for your general crossbow needs, and forget about it.

level 3
"I am a ca... uh, sniper" - Second stance. Mutually exclusive of the first one. While the debuffs on the first stance were painfully inconvenient, this is what makes this tree for Rogues what Radiant wizard is to mages. Activating this stance gives you the "You are so dead meat" buff (+3 , +1). This stacks once per turn, for up to five stacks, after which it procs the non-stacking "Dungeon Warfare Power". This adds a 1 turn fear effect to all your attacks (50% of procing, but resistible), adds extra sneakiness (weak scaling) dependent damage to every attack, and makes enemies aware of you in a HUGE aoe every time you fire. It also gives you the "bad karma" debuff (-2, -5 ). You get one stack for each turn you spend in sniper, it stacks up to 10 times and it lasts 20 turns. Moving causes you to lose all positive buffs, but not the negative debuffs. Stance activation has a long CD to avoid debuff remover abuse.

level 4
"The answer to everything" - Capstone active. Relatively low CD as far level 5 capstone actives are concerned. Low piercing damage relative to capstone actives, but scales well with . Has a 4 square casting range, and a circular Aoe with a 3 square radius (that means it's 5 square across, if you don't dig maths). It can also hurt you. Deals full damage at the center, 3/4 damage on the inner ring, and 1/2 damage on the outer ring. On cast, applies a 2 turn debuff cloud over the aoe of the cast. Everything in it suffers the "in the shade" debuff (-3) for the duration of the cloud. The damage is applied at the end of the cloud, and applies the "Pinned down. Litterally." debuff (Stops movement and -10 dodge for 1 turn) to all targets hit.

 

Mage Archetype

Generally speaking, mages who dabble with crossbows should do it because of one thing, and one thing alone - Mana management. Generally speaking, mages should be able to get more damage/debuffs/utility out of their other trees, but the reason why they pick crossbows is for those times when they are unable (low mana) to cast spells, or when using a spell would be inefficient (mopping up near dead uglies after a shower of nukes, or fighting magic resistant uglies). A mage crossbow tree should seek to work within this dynamic, rather than change it. That being said, as a mage archetype tree, abilities should have a mana drain component and a lower CD to compensate (relative to other crossbow trees) as well as spell-casting scaling. Which alltogether, makes it a de-facto unappealing tree for warrior. A mage variant of a "rogue" ability that is ALSO warrior friendly is the very definition of broken, but because it is a "rogue" ability to begin with, rogues should still be able to benefit from this.

Arcane bolt dispenser

A combination Elven sorcery and Dwarven Craftsmanship. Elves, Dwarves, and dungeons denizen don't like it.

level 0
"Enchantment!" - You actually learned this trick from the son of a wandering dwarf merchant. Unsurprisingly, neither the dwarfs or elves believe you. Your enemies tend to be too busy dying to care. (included flavor text here because i couldn't resist). Active ability. Free to cast with a low CD relative to other crossbow level 1 abilities, It deals low damage to begin with (say 3-5), but scales well with and has a weak scaling as well. Mages like this because it gives them a free low level nuke every now and then up until the point where they can free cast low level nukes, and Rogues like this because it gives them a late game source of a rare exotic damage type.

level 1
"Elven sorcery" - Rather than a stance, this is a mana draining buff, to make it more magey. It also acts as a mana sink for Rogues. Has an average mana cost to sustain relative to buffs of this level. Gives +5 but drains mana whenever you take damage (should start at around 3, then scale up based on from there). Because elves just wanna have fun, and getting hurt is not fun. Duh. The reason why I have these stats is to make mages think twice before going for The crossbowslinger. Since they don't have as much sneakiness as rogues, this level essentially gives them all the benefits of level 2 crossbowslinger with a debuff on getting hit that's about as bad for mages.

level 2
"Generic homing/exploding projectile" - "Something you made by combining an elven "homing arrow" enchantment with a dwarven explosive bolt. Unfortunately for your enemies, it makes up for a lack of originality by being about as painful as it sounds" (again, couldn't resist). Nuke with a below average CD for tier 3 nukes, and deals average . Moderate base damage, and average scaling on . Also scales on at half that rate. Mana cost starts high (say, 25), and goes down slowly based on spell power. It should end up costing (~15 mana for the late game mage, and ~20 mana for the late game rogue). Non-projectile nuke with a 2 radius square circle aoe (3 across) and a long casting range. Full damage to center square, half damage to surrounding targets. Mages like this because it gives them a consistent source of a damage type that few/nothing resists, while rogues like it because it gives an attack that can bypass obstacles, as well as another mana sink.

level 3
"Dwarven Craftsmanship" - The other mana buff in this tree. Unlike other crossbow trees, these ones aren't mutually exclusive, but unlike Elven Sorcery, this one has a big mana drain. Not too much of a big deal for mages, but enough to make rogues think twice before keeping both active. Grants you another five sagacity and +1 and causes your attacks to cause a -2 resistance debuff on hit for these elements that stacks up to 5 times, and lasts for a while. I deliberately chose fire and ice because they are common elemental strengths/weaknesses. The addition of toxic doesn't make it as strong as it sounds, because it is useless against an awful lot of monsters, even with a -10 debuff applied. Mages like this because it gives even MOAR sagacity, and lets them soften down monsters for DoT dependent spells and/or outright nukes. Rogues like this because they can dance around long enough to actually kill something with the debuffs (presumably, so can mages, but dancing around is something you tend to associate with rogues)

level 4
"The power of LOVE" - The capstone nuke. Fairly low cooldown for a capstone ability. Single target projectile nuke with a short casting range (3-4 squares). High mana cost (what you'd expect from a level 5 capstone nuke), scales down to more reasonable levels with spellpower. Low base damage by capstone standards, and extra piercing damage based high scaling. Procs a 5 turn charm effect on hit, with a dependent proc rate. The idea is to give mages a late game source of physical damage (which they lack, esp. for the purposes of killing minor stuff like, say, Tougher lord dredmor), while giving rogues a reliable source of late game fodder.

Sweet mother of krong, that took FOREVER - Note to self, don't conceptualise 3 skill trees at once. EVER.

 

This is no revamp. This is a rewrite. Or a mod. Half of the things you want cannot to my knowledge even be done at current.

But do not take that as an insult, I like the ideas AllurlewtsRbelongtome. Make a mod of this and I will use it.

 

There was only the first post at first - then i started asking myself well, if they ask me "how would do you propose we do that?", which is a very legitimate question to ask, I would need to have some answers. The rest kind of just happened. I personally don't have to patience to code all of this, but I have a few friends that I might be able to badger into doing it for me. I'll keep you guys posted if that happens.