Combat Skills Analysis

[Avila]

Weapon Requiring
Fire Magic
Lacks any reuse time 1 attacks.
Ranged passably power efficient damage, higher rank spells are less efficient.
Excellent AoE both short and long range with fairly short reuse times, once again higher ranks start to get longer reuse times.
Good power regen tool in Flesh to Flames.
Major problem being that higher rank fireballs have very long reuse times thus you can't touch interesting abilities without either using them as main attacks or spending a lot of time standing around with no attack to use (or just sticking with 3 types of warmbolt to fill attacks).

Staff (Pairs with fire magic or Battle chemistry)
Decent basic attacks, no clever tricks offensively but enough variation to be moderately interesting to use offensively. Has a reasonably power efficient basic attack.
Excellent defensive abilities to be used paired with something else.
Conceivably can be used as the filler attacks for fire magic or battle chemistry but the range discrepancy and awkwardness of having your main and filler attacks on different bars reduce the encouragement.

Sword
Currently the only attack type with any major interaction with the rage system (having 2 rage reducers on reasonably short cooldowns).
Currently the most nuanced and interesting of the purely offensive abilities even completely ignoring combos since all of the attacks serve slightly different roles.
Currently precision pierce doesn't serve much purpose as all effects that add damage to it add armour damage making it essentially just a second less effective finishing blow, if it used the same mechanics as mind rend it would be an interesting choice to incorporate.
Wind strike bonus damage can be used on other skill types (panic charge is excellent for this)

Deer/Pig/Cow
Clearly intended to be worse than average.
The high power cost of their basic attacks makes agroing more than one enemy often suicide even with comparatively decent gear.
Defensive abilities cost power and since you'll run out of power long before you run out of health in any circumstances in which you're not chugging power potions like they're going out of fashion they serve little purpose other than looking pretty on your bars.
The damage reduced by armour mechanic makes these skills completely incapable of killing bosses and tough enemies (or oddly enough, snails)

Werewolf
Similar to other animals but slightly less punishing.
Bite is a very slow way of getting through a tough enemy's armour needing backing with some other offensive ability type to not just die first.
Pouncing rend is somewhat like cobra strike of unarmed but with a much longer reuse time losing the lockdown effect.
Haven't had an opportunity to test pack attack in its intended role, may allow large groups of werewolves to deal with bosses, though by a similar number unarmed users could have completely neutered them.

Weapon Boosted
Battle Chemistry
Contains mostly low damage AoEs with long reuse times and some minor healing. From equipping the flask. Notably even a full combination of these isn't enough to kill even fairly weak enemies like goblins without having equipped a damage boosting item.
All flask abilities take a strangely long time to activate which is painful for a short range AoE.
Mutagens contain excellent buffs, however as 1 minute timers they can easily be maintained without ever having Battle Chemistry active during a fight (Second heart is fairly anaemic compared to other power regen mechanics).
The golem can provide enormous amount of power regen or large amount of healing, however seems to have problems about actually activating abilities when playing the animation (perhaps trying to use them from out of range or use them on inappropriate targets), bomb toss seems particularly bad for not activating properly (this may be the Owner is in Combat criteria).

Unarmed
Used as a secondary attack contains only a moderately damaging weak CC (kick), although sacrificing a shield also provides a low damage low power filler attack.
Used on its own totally unarmed it has a decent stun and the ability to almost completely stunlock any target without armour.
Unfortunately the two knockback abilities interact poorly with being a primarily melee range attacker, particularly if they're found in the midpoint of combos (which don't allow non-unarmed skills to be used as filler whilst there's a gap)
At least a couple of combos are decntly within the school of get bonuses for doing whatever I was going to do anyway (Barrage, punch, punch + the punchmaster pillar)

Weapon Agnostic
Mentalism
Spammable basic attack ignores armour but is painfully power inefficient and not particularly high damage.
Ranged attack is a good supplement to virtually any of the non-ranged weapon types.
Panic Charge is an excellent AoE but often not quite enough to kill targets and with a reasonably long reuse time.
Psi-waves are very powerful stacking up to 3 times per person and being group affecting. Even if you never use its other abilities mentalism is therefore a +9 damage boost to all attacks or a +18/tick power boost with minimal upkeep for you and anyone travelling with you.
A passable healing ability without a strange delay.

Psychology
Psychoanalyse requires either getting lucky (a weakness that is either your other attack type or a non-combat skill you have reagents for) or actively switching skills mid-combat to make use of. However if it's a useable weakness with an available high damage skill it can trivialise tough fights. Since monster vulnerabilities stay the same until they die this can allow preparation after a death to a tough monster (unfortunately carrying gear to boost this new skill is unlikely).
Strike a Nerve, painfully power inefficient, kind of low damage, still a ranged attack if you don't have another one. Though an overly long re-use time to actually kill things at range.
Cause Terror, a short CC you probably only want to use from melee lest the target bring back friends.
TMAYM, a longer but melee range cc, painful to use with current targetting based on the amount of time it takes to kick in which is generally at least one or two more enemy attacks (then being difficult to tell if you're retargeted to the right new enemy)
Pep-talk, a heal with a painfully long delay before it kicks in with current targeting this is impractical to use on others and slow to use on yourself compared to healing consumables.


Thoughts
Currently my only major complaint is fire magic needing to use 6 flavours of boring fireball in order to have a reasonable attacking ability but I thought it might be useful to show my overall understanding of the skills.
Also that battle chemistry bombs are notably weak.

I'm unsure how intended buff switching or mid combat skill switching is as both seem kind of interface awkward but highly effective.

 

[Citan]

Thanks, this is incredibly helpful! If anyone else wants to chime in with their impressions that'd be great also. (I've had a couple people send info via the feedback tool, which is also great.) A few quick thoughts in reply:

I definitely don't want people switching their main combat skills mid-combat. I'm actually working on removing that: the little drop-down boxes will disappear for 60 seconds after you use any ability. This will fix most of it without hampering you from switching between fights if you want to. (I don't mind people switching occasionally, e.g. to fight a boss with different powers maybe... but not changing in mid-fight.) Battle Chemistry's injections are the biggest problem there, due to their durations. Will figure something out for that.

Fire magic: I may add some more short-duration spells in there, but it's true I intended you to intermix with another combat ability and/or use some lower-level spells. I think the more pressing issue is mixing the two skills; I don't personally have trouble with it, but I'm getting the impression it's not working out for most players. Unfortunately I don't know of a more intuitive way to do things, since I don't want you to have more than 6 of any ability at once. (That's why I can't just do free-form ability bars, or you could line up 12 fireballs, for instance.) Ideas on how to present this better would be appreciated, because I really can't figure it out.

Animal forms: I don't actually mind if they're eventually very competitive with other combat skills (but still hampered by the extra annoyances that come with animal curses). But I definitely aimed low to start, because the last thing I want to hear is "you should become a pig, they have the best DPS"... that would just be very unfortunate.

Werewolf: I probably need to redo the armor mechanic; it's theoretically set up to work well with a sword/axe person hitting the monster first to chop off most of their armor, then werewolves should have the best finishing speed. But that's just theoretical, and obviously not fun while soloing.

Werewolves get a little more-than-average power from equipment (such as some pretty good AoE combos), so that may be where part of their power is hiding. Also the Howl mechanic isn't working correctly, but needs multiple werewolves playing together, which hasn't happened ever yet, so I haven't gotten around to focusing on that

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

[Caelicola]

I mostly agree with Avila's comments, except that I can't comment on battle chemistry because I haven't tried it yet. I'll just stick to a few extra points and any points of disagreement.

Fire Magic: I think the major source of people's problems with fire magic is that the game starts you off with 2 more or less perfectly stable and self-sufficient skills, and they have low power costs to boot. By the time you get to fire magic you've already unlocked several skills with interesting interactions that you already understand, and it can easily seem like the "right" way to play is to use basically only/mostly 1 skill's set of abilities (and always updating with the strongest version unlocked), which makes fire magic seem painful because you probably won't have the necessary power to make it work. When I first started playing during pre-alpha 3 I could not for the life of me find any fire dust (even though I knew from before likely places it would be), which means if I wanted to try to be a fire mage, I only got the very basic boring skills. Also, when I did find fire dust, I had already reached a much higher level of fire magic and wanted to use the very little dust I had on higher spells. I didn't get the flesh-to-fuel spell until I had 25 or 30 fire magic skill because I had skipped the research level for that spell. I only went back and did it because I found equipment that referred to stuff I didn't know about. Compared to the very automatic skill progression and relatively non-painful process of discovering calligraphy and meditation, fire magic can be terribly difficult to get into and probably turns off those who don't really want to play a mage. Especially when you consider the rage-doubling problem in the context of power management and low health and armor. Again in terms of meaningful player choices that doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it's sort of discouraging/weird that someone who decides not to use fire magic at all and just gathers fire dust could outperform someone attempting to play using the skill. Also, equipment that boosts fire magic or just fire damage is self-defeating right now because it makes flesh to fuel hurt too much.

I kinda like that you have to mix and match different levels and kinds of spells for fire magic. It provides a lot more to try out. But it is a bit different from the expectations other skills set for you.

Mentalism: I just want to reiterate that mentalism is glorious. It can really help fill in gaps and change weaknesses for different builds and posseses marvelous versatility. Mindreave (basic attack) is actually really good, but it's counterintuitive like fire magic. It shines best at mindreave 1 or 2, not at the higher levels. If you power up with adrenaline you start getting armor ignoring damage for an acceptable power cost that can be a magic bullet against high-armor foes. for a fire mage who just cannot deal with snail armor and damage it's fantastic. The idea/mechanic to intentionally use lower-level versions of some skills I think can have a lot of potential and can be especially fun because of the initial counterintuitiveness and the simplicity of it. I think these sorts of possibilities can be added into the game to help with skill combination diversity.

Werewolf: Equipment is really exciting and fun because it unlocks combos and provides a wide range of types of effects. Nice to pair with psychology so far because you have easy access to multiple types of damage and you might need to turn an enemy away for a sec while you eat a corpse. The corpse-eating component provides a very compelling incentive to find ways to finish foes quickly so you can stack the buffs and is refreshing. What part of howling doesn't work? I got it going all by myself by howling a lot in a row. Even noticed that once you get the buff going it extends according to the Fibonacci sequence multiplied by 10 (nice choice by the way. interesting compromise between linear and exponential growth). I think it's okay to leave weaknesses in tackling armor because they encourage grouping to take advantage of pack attack and trying to find skill combos or other ways to make up for it. It may need some adjusting but I think it's worth considering.

Psychology: Fast Talk is fantastic. 10 power 10 sec reuse. perfect for getting that pesky bear, snail, or brain bug (or boss) away while you recover or get yourself out of a bind. Unfortunately the random weakness appearing mechanic greatly diminishes psychoanalyze's importance and the high power cost of the other abilities nearly obviates this entire skill. The enchantments you've been introducing are helping with this problem a lot, as are the new kinds of weaknesses you've been adding, but I feel like the extremely high power cost makes this skill fairly ignorable/undesirable in terms of what can be gained from other skills. equipment that boosts psychology damage rather than particular skills makes pep talk hurt you while it helps you.

Skill switching: I switched skills midcombat quite a bit for a while, partially because certain skill combinations are made difficult by certain types of weapons and I needed to switch in skills that would let me buy time while I tried to click a different weapon on or use a recovery item. I noticed this patch has added several new items and hybrid weapons to try to bridge this problem, but I think some equipment or weapon switching interface should be added to the hotbars, especially if you're going to make switching more difficult. I thought the bar1=1skill's abilites bar2=skill2's abilities thing was conveyed well, so well in fact that I didn't realize you could put items in any of the hotbars for quite a while. Even though that somewhat helps allow more unusual skill combinations, you have to give up a lot to make it work.

The problem is especially noticeable with fire magic early on: what will you pair it with? Once you realize that it takes a ton of power and that psychoanalyze is also a power hog, you don't have many options. Sword requires a weapon change. Unarmed, which with its low power cost seems like a good option, also requires weapon/shield changes, which is difficult to do during combat unless you are using distractor skills like staff or psychology to buy you damage immunity or removal of aggro while you make the preparations to switch. As a fire mage who can only do 6 damage over time to health and otherwise has no choice but to fill a snail's rage bar and cause armor regeneration, you want to be able to throw some sword skills in too.



Boredom and skill obsolescence: sometimes the wide skill gap between acquiring the next version of a skill and even a mild enchantment for other skills makes the skill useless. For instance, if you get some enchantments that increase staff damage a little and one that increases smash a little, double tap and lunge can easily be made useless from a power efficiency standpoint or even in absolute damage. sometimes smash will do more damage to armor than lunge (or claw than any other werewolf ability) because it upgrades at an earlier skill level, and then when lunge does upgrade it does only equivalent or mildly more damage for much more power. It turns skills into annoying auto attacks.

More combos, multiskill enchantments/items, more abilities/ability versions: I think the problems with people not trying new skills or skill combinations or with some being much more obviously powerful or fun can be mitigated by adding combos to some skills that don't have them, improving weapon switching or versatility, adding inter-skill combos, and/or making more versions of certain abilities the way fire magic does it. Part of what makes mentalism and fire magic fun is that there are more abilities than spaces on the hotbar and you have to/get to make choices about it. I think other skills could benefit from having more abilities than fit on the hotbars. If you could choose to have weaker but cheaper psychology skills or if you could unlock a special combo with the regular psychology skills there'd be more reason to use the skill and more support for people to play the flavor of character they want. Maybe you have to accidentally discover the combos, find them in loot, do some sort of crafting. Maybe being good in certain skills gives you the ability to add mild damage mitigation effects or extra damage types to equipment so that if you have to use certain skills to defeat certain monsters you can still feel like you aren't being forced to abandon the kind of character you want to play. The different skills shouldn't all be cookie cutters with different animations, but I feel like there's a way to allow/encourage more exploration of the skills.

Maybe more options for attacks that can go in the special bars, like the fireball attack you can unlock for the special bar. Then there's a reason to keep/use a sword with fire damage bonuses that doesn't let you use fire magic as one of your skills at the same time. you can play sword/psychology with piercing damage variants of final blow so you can have a wide range of damage types to take advantage of psychoanalyze and lower power-cost sword abilities that reserve power for the expensive psychoanalyze abilities so you can manage the crowd of monsters or use their secondary enchantment effects.
Hopefully I didn't give the impression that there were lots of negatives. I've been enjoying the game a lot. I just think that you've got a lot of awesome potential for even more awesome stuff.

 

[Caelicola]

Oh, we also really really need the ability to save multiple versions of a skill's hotbar. It's really annoying to have to reconfigure skills all the time. If I use the frost spells in fire magic for a certain area but then switch and need/want fire spells, I have to redo everything instead of just pulling up a different configuration.

 

[Avila]

Just made up a little spreadsheet for experimenting with Fire Magic and how sensible it is to use higher level attacks mixed with filler.
Having 3 copies of Warmbolt (of varying types) appears to be reasonably competitive damage wise to using any of the high rank fireballs with filler in term of DPS, longer lasting power wise and better scaling with additional fire damage (remembering that anyone can get 10 additional fire damage from lore before they even start equipping gear). Additionally it leaves spell slots free for AoE or other interesting spells unlike getting similar damage with the high level fireballs which occupies all 6 spell slots.

I encourage people to poke around the sheet though since I haven't worked out how to lock only the non-input fields please try not to break it
Google Spreadsheet
Select skills using by putting a 1 in the relevant row, character stats are next to the outputs at the right. Feel free to try to come up with a more effective build than the ones I've selected (selecting multiple filler skills won't work properly, try to ensure that the total number of filler attacks required is a feasible number)

 

[Kaldane]

Here are some of my thoughts on combat skills as they are right now. I am only going to do the ones that I have to level 50, because most others I have not played very extensively. Most of what has already been said I generally agree with.

Sword: In my opinion the strongest fighting skill in the game right now. The only abilities that I really use are Basic Attack, Wind Strike, and Finishing Blow the rest are kind of useless. The rage meter really needs to be more fluid, because it seems very clunky where it goes from 0 to 50 to 100 which makes it hard to use the rage reducing abilities. Many Cuts just doesn't do enough damage to armor for me to use very much, armor damage per second should scale per level of it.

Staff: Very good defensive skill for taking lots of damage, but doesn't have very much offensive capabilities. Probably the best for tanking bosses and good to supplement with fire magic. By the way I love the change that you made to Blocking Stance Eric.

Fire Magic: It is the best ranged damage skill right now. Higher level abilities have ridiculous power costs which really should be lowered, using lower level spells over the higher level ones that are so hard to get just seems wrong. The timer for them doesn't bug me as much as the power cost does.​

​

Unarmed: Good low power cost skill set that although may not do as much damage as sword does, it comes with some nice crowd control abilities like the stuns and knockbacks. It needs some more damage and for mentalism to stop being so good.​

​

Werewolf: The best animal skill by leaps and bounds. Pouncing Rake should stun regardless of if they have armor, as I find that most enemies have more armor than health and stunning them becomes useless when they are about to die anyway. I do not really have the armor problem that others are talking about as I usually just spam claw and bite until they die. I have tried pack with my friend and it isn't really that effective for the power cost and cooldown time.​

​

Deer: Probably one of the weakest combat skills in the game outside of cow (I really don't like cow) . The deer minions that you get from getting it to level 12 is probably the only reason to use it. The crushing damage reduction for armor just makes it so tedious to play coupled with the fact that every single ability costs 1/5 of your power and has a long cooldown. Cuteness Overload 2 for example costs 13 power to do 10 psychic damage and has a 90 second cooldown. Doe Eyes is good but needs to last a bit longer, say 12-15 seconds. The initial change to lower the power cost of the basic attacks was nice and needs to be taken further on the other abilities and please, please, please remove the damage reduction for armor.​

​

Psychology: It is a decent secondary skill, but most of the abilities cost way too much power. Cause Terror is also very useless compared to TMAYM. Psychoanalyze is pretty good as others have stated, but encourages too much skill swapping. There is just no reason to use this skill when there is mentalism.​

​

Other Thoughts: People may hate me for saying this, but lets face it Mentalism is really overpowered and needs to be nerfed a bit. Requiring that you hold a certain item in hand or limiting the stack of a buff to one would be some good changes. Its just the regeneration buffs are very powerful, last for one minute and you can have multiple stacks of them. Mentalism is to a point where most regular players will have it as their secondary skill, I am not sure if this is an ok thing or should be change.​

​

This may be intended or just lack of enough content although I would like to point it out anyway, most players use a primary offensive skill and a secondary support/utility skill. Instead of playing with different roles it seems to just everyone doing the same thing with just some small changes in what skills that they use. I am not exactly sure what you would do to fix this, to me it feels like a general problem with group combat and makes fights somewhat dull, or I may just be dumb. Doesn't really matter to me though I just hope that some people do agree with some of the things that I have said.​

​

 

[Finkum]

Fire Magic
I'd second pretty much everyone's thoughts on Fire Magic. The higher rank abilities cost too much and don't have an improved damageower ratio the same way that higher level sword/staff/etc abilities do; the recharge time becomes increasingly tedious, and using "down-ranking" to get around this isn't particularly fun.

Furthermore, as most abilities are just variations on the vanilla fireball, most attacks feel very same-same (and some of the more interesting ones, like the summoned patch of fire/flesh to flame either don't work or don't scale with your fire magic bonus). I remember reading that the purpose of the long-range/sparkly/puttering etc system was to make it so that you were incentivised to use a particular type of ability depending on gear, but given how hard it is to get a moderately comprehensive set of gear that boosts fire magic in any capacity, this seems unnecessarily punishing.

Secondly, unlike Sword (which I agree is the best-designed and most interesting combat skill currently implemented), Fire Magic doesn't really interact with your opponent's resource pools (health/armour/rage) in any interesting fashion. It would be neat if e.g. using special fire attack X when an opponent was at high rage made it more effective, or if the DoT abilities were beefed up such that the fact that they ignore armour made them a viable alternative when facing heavily armoured mobs like Snails.

Finally, the abilities are too difficult to discover (compared to other combat skills), as sulphur or saltpetre are as rare as hens'... hmm, rare as pigs' snouts (still haven't got me one of those!) This is compounded by the fact that you are increasingly likely to "waste" a reagent, the more abilities you discover at a given level. I think I wasted 9 - 10 fire dust to learn the last level 5 skill (and it was, irritatingly, again just a variation of vanilla fireball).

Sword
I'd say sword skill is in the best place right now, although the skills you learn from mob drops are underwhelming copies of skills you discover naturally. Each of the primary skills has a clear purpose and several interact with your opponent's resource pools, making prolonged combats more interesting than "press 1 - 2 - 3, repeat until dead." On a related note, I dislike the calligraphy combo system as it encourages you to use these abilities in a fixed order regardless of the situation; say a combo is slash-parry-slash, I feel bad if I don't use the combo, but equally it irritates me using parry if my opponent's rage bar is empty. As such I tend to use calligraphy skills that are passive (plus HP, plus sword damage on all attacks etc - as a complete aside, once you have a decent list of calligraphy recipes scrolling through them to try and find the one with the effect you want gets a bit tedious, so splitting these up into categories or listing the effects under the recipe name would make life easier).

I think Sword would be improved by having a few more abilities (so you actually had to choose what went on your bar), and also by a few tweaks to the current abilities to make the interactions even more interesting e.g. Finishing Blow could do extra damage to low health/low armour enemies (I guess this could equally well be a bonus from gear), or Wind Strike could apply a percentage bonus rather than a flat one to encourage you to use heavy hitting attacks as a follow-up.

Staff
I feel staff sort of gets a free pass because it shares a weapon-type with Fire Magic: if you've committed to using Fire Magic then why not also use Staff to pick up some nice defensive skills. If it had to stand on its own it would feel a bit underwhelming. I think part of that is that there are only a handful of abilities currently implemented for Staff - if there were enough that you could pick 6 offensive abilities or 6 defensive ones, or a mix to your own tastes, then it would probably feel better (also, like Fire Magic, minimal interaction with enemy resource pools). The current defensive skills for Staff are great, although again some interaction with your opponents resource pools would make them feel more dynamic and less maintenance-ey.

Animal Skills
Haven't tried these, so no comment

Psychology
I only use these skills if I need CC, and given the comparatively short duration of the CCs (and difficulty selecting targets reliably) even then it's hard to justify using. The nuke abilities are highly power inefficient and the recharge times are high, so this skill is currently always going to be secondary (and thus compete with more attractive options like Mentalism/Battle Chemistry). When/if CC abilities are added to other combat skills I don't think psychology will have anything to recommend it. Psychoanalyse is a nice idea, but if an opponent has a weakness you can't currently exploit (and this will be especially true when you implement a cool-down on combat skill swaps), it feels wasted - I'd be inclined to roll in the vulnerability effect I see on some gear such that all psychology attacks do more damage to a psychoanalysed target. Alternately, a no-damage version of the skill could become a special skill like Optimised Fireball, so you could use it even when other combat skills are active.

Battle Chemistry
The golem is wonderful, except for the fact that it always seems to fall through the floor in the dungeons where I actually need him out As noted by others there is a strangely long activation time on all the AoEs and mutation buffs. The few AoEs I've tried have all been very weak compared to Fire Magic alternatives. For balance purposes, I'd say it would be better to have the golem automatically despawn if Battle Chemistry is not one of your two active combat skills as otherwise you get incredible power or health regen "for free".

Mentalism
The wide array of useful buffs does make this skill highly valuable, as does the no-weapon requirement. I haven't gotten very high ranks in this skill as yet but even at level 20ish the utility dwarfs that of psychology/battle chemistry. Maybe spread some of the buffs out to other skills (especially the armor-boosting one, which doesn't really make sense thematically - I'm using my psychic powers to somehow make your armour repair itself?) I may have further thoughts on this skill once I have access to the full range of abilities.

 

[zirephoenix]

Here's my own experience:

Cow:
- Became a cow right out of the newbie dungeon, and stuck with it until level 31. Moo of Determination is an excellent way to get around, as is getting the Chew Cud magic bonus from some items that also give you a sprint boost. The self-milking gives you the option of exploring a lot of the cooking recipes quickly (12 milk per hour instead of 4). It's a little painful with base abilities, and the chat moo can get annoying, but I think I could have maxed out the cow if I had more preparation. I wouldn't mind becoming one again if I can revert back...

The cow comes with the advantage of getting access to Harry, which you can sell anything for up to 75g. It's not entirely a bad thing, since the money will help you get access to Mentalist and the extra Unarmed attacks.

Not being able to interact with most NPCs is annoying though. A lot of the quests and activities are cut off immediately, and there is a sense of helplessness because you need someone else to help you revert to normal form.

Unarmed:
- Picked this due to the CC abilities to stun lock one enemy. Useful for early Goblin dungeon runs with someone else helping. Maxed out, with the new unarmed skills, meditation for better combos, and equipment, this is a beast. With body slam doing base damage of 75 (cost of 10 power), being boosted by Hip Throw bonuses, PLUS combine with the combo that doubles your damage... you will be doing 200 damage with 10 power... I haven't needed to use any other combos yet with this beast. I just go with the punch master Punch+Punch+Punch, Punch+Punch+HipThrow combo and the Barrage+Punch+Punch and I dish out damage like crazy.
I also have found swords that give +19 Punching damage vs Goblins. Unarmed seemed to be the anti-goblin fighting skill. I'm using 4 power to do 40-60 damage per attack to goblins... highly effective attack skill.

Kick based combos are really awkward. A non-moving kick would make the combos work really well. It is also not obvious that your combos "stay" with you even though the icons disappear. I think those icons should stay up permanently but smaller, so I know what attack to use to continue my combo.

Annoying when my Combo buffs end. I can't bring anything to re-buff my combos, unlike the sword combos where I only need the inks. Maybe add an option to meditate the last set of combos?

Staff:
- I have been seeing some interesting equipment for Staff (% to heal full on attack, to recover power on attack at 50, 70, 90 points, etc.), but there are not enough damage tricks to make it a main attack skill. No combos, no CC, and relatively weak attacks. Lunge is a really weak skill given its cost, but I still have to stack my gear to boost staff to see if it is viable as a main offensive skill. Definitely a defensive skill since you can be physical damage immune half the time. The damage immunity skill alone makes the staff skill worth getting.

Sword:
- Have not gotten into it, but seems to be anti-spider. Lots of +spider damage, and there're various enchantments that cause your attack to do bonus damage, bonus AoE damage, reduce rage.

Archery:
- Entertaining, but generally useless since you can't stop enemies from getting near you that early. Very annoying to level, since you either go with weak attacks, or you deal with the bow swapping delays after your first shot and kill with something else. There are some nice Archery enchantments, but they all seem to be high level (20+), unlike Sword, Fire, Unarmed, Lycanthropy, and Staff, which all get a no-level req item that boosts all attack, on top of various +dmg on specific attack at various levels.

Psychology:
- Main support skill until I found out about Mentalist... Generally not that useful as a support skill. Healing has weird delay, Terror is single target, the stun ends when I attack, high power cost, low range on most abilities, vulnerabilities are really, really hard to use (lots of skill/gear swapping...) Terror isn't useful for losing aggro, Fast Talker range is much too low for party assist. The enchantment bonuses are all over the place though, from bonus damage to Fast Talk/Stun, to self heal (hp/armor), power recovery, slows, Psychic vulnerability, bonus experience, etc. Just not sure what to make of it... I guess if i can somehow stack the bonuses on one skill (Pep Talk), then I can probably play support or something...?

Mentalist:
- I notice I only use it for the Armor regen now. I used the power regen before, but I can just eat better foods and make sure I don't run too much. Decent Heal. Some nice support attacks. Not sure how to evaluate whether it is OP, since I use it for regenerating Armor/Power. Running too much seems to be my main power draining culprit. Once I pay attention to my running, and make sure I eat something half decent (Chicken drum sticks + bland chicken, or Goblin Bread/Cheese/Noob Porridge), the power issues go away.

 

[zirephoenix]

Hmm, there are now some very fun stuff with Deer and Wolf... particularly the AoE effects and Bite/Deer Kick. Even the Mindreave AoE is really powerful if/when it triggers.

 

[Citan]

Just to update here, I'm not ignoring this, and really appreciate the feedback! I'm still getting some basic underlying issues fixed before I tackle individual skills, though. For instance I need to make sure the Power advancement curve is where it should be before fiddling with the Power cost of different abilities. A bunch of that got done recently, but there's a ton more to do.

I'm also tackling some ancillary skills first, because they can affect how other skills are perceived. For instance I'm changing how First Aid works a lot in the next update, as it was simultaneously overpowered and annoying. Now it'll just be annoying. But less so.

 

[Avila]

Now I've played some more and hit level 50 with all of the combat skills whilst experimenting a bit more with gear I think I might have a bit more to say about the skills and affixes.

I'll have a go at sorting out and rating affixes a bit (and try to remember which slots I've seen them on). I'll try to group the affixes for each thing into, overpowered (so good it defines the combat skill more than the base abilities), useful (things I'm looking for on gear if I get a chance to pick), modest (good enough to be a tipping point between two bits of gear but not what I'm actually looking for), minor (constantly useful to some degree, but that degree is really small compared to affixes I'd call useful), good situational (there are times I'd want it but they're not that common and possibly even not that great in those situations), poor situational (doesn't work most of the time and even when it does it really isn't useful) and worthless (even if it's on an item I'm using for a combat skill I'm using I'll probably never notice).

Universal Affixes
Useful
+1-5% extra chance of magical loot (chest, neck): I wish this one didn't exist as I feel compelled to wear it.
Good Situational
+1-5 typed mitigation (various): have an item with the right mitigation for enemies that use a nasty dot or swarm you and you can really take the sting out of them, the rest of the time it does nothing or near nothing (I'm looking at you fungal and seafood mitigation)
Minor
+1-5 in combat health regeneration (can't remember): theoretically is doing something to keep me alive but in small quantities I've never spotted the difference it makes (then again lots of the time it's being dwarfed by werewolf healing)
+1-5 in combat armour regeneration (off hand, neck): annoyingly turns off when on 0 armour effects all the time but is working more of the time than health regeneration
+5-10 healing from player abilities (off hand, chest): It's better than nothing but with 30second + cooldowns on all of the healing abilities even the top end of the range ends up being a really trivial amount of extra healing (if it combos with heals you for x whenever you use x abilities it may be a brokenly good combo however)


Sword
Sword is pretty much the baseline to which I'm going to compare things with gear it hits decently hard, has tools for managing enemy rage and requires you to use a selection of abilities in order to be effective with it in response to your current combat situation. It has almost no tools for keeping yourself alive in response to ranged attackers, large groups or creatures that aren't reliant on their rage attacks however. However I avoid using combos with it as they lock me out of using the situationally appropriate ability when I can just take a +6 damage boost from calligraphy instead. Sword I would say largely has the best balanced set of affixes though I've had problems finding more than mid level gear for it. Unfortunately it's pretty much only trousers and chest have ever given me debate over which one to wear and those choices probably didn't have much in it in the end. I think in retrospect sword may suffer a bit from its good affixes being weaker than most other skills and available in fewer slots leaving it generally feeling a bit weak compared to other skills with similarly selected gear.
Overpowered
Haven't noticed any that fit in this category
Useful
+1-5 All sword attacks (helm,sword): pretty much the baseline of what I consider a useful ability
+1-5 Sword Slash (boots, chest): Increased damage on your basic attack without making it eclipse any other abilities
+10-40 damage on next attack after Wind Strike (trousers): Would merely be a modest boost if it weren't possible to use it either on a non-rage generating attack or an aoe attack from another skill as situations demand

Modest
+10-40 damage on Finishing blow (trousers)
+1-5 Armour Restored on Sword Slash (chest): A fairly useful effect but it's such a small amount of healing that it isn't likely to ever actually save you (enough edge cases that it's situational though)
+2-10 All sword damage when unarmoured (chest, trousers): Against things I want the killing speed against they have problems stripping my armour against tough things I'm trying my best to avoid this situation, it's still not a bad affix though
5-20% chance of double damage sword slash(gloves): more damage on a core ability, but less reliably.
10-50 extra rage reduction on parry (chest): Greatly reduces the amount you have to use parry and riposte potentially allowing you to swap out riposte for precision pierce or simply allowing you to keep higher rage monster in check.
+2-10 extra health damage on Finishing Blow and Wind Strike (sword, trousers): nice as extra damage but I don't think I've ever even killed the giant snails with sword skills without getting their armour 99% gone even trying to use armour piercing sword damage.

Minor
+2-10 extra armour damage from many cuts: gives many cuts a more defined role but is still a fairly small damage boost over the course of a fight
1-5 Reduced rage on sword slash (chest?): Sword has lots of skills for rage management and this bonus is really small
5-20% chance of stun on many cuts on an unarmoured target (boots): Requires you to use an ability at a time you otherwise likely wouldn't, I'm not sure I've ever noticed it proc however so I don't know have long the stun is (or even if it works)
10% chance of restoring 10-120 power on finishing blow: sounds like a major effect but finishing blow is the first skill to cut from use as you run low on power so is impossible to even faintly rely upon or plan around and is unlikely to ever save you, still free power is free power

Situationally Useful
5-20% chance of 5 yard AoE sword slash (gloves): not stunning but every little helps when you're surrounded with a poor aoe skill
+10-50 Windstrike damage vs spiders (neck)
+10-50 many cuts damage vs goblins (neck)
+5-20% chance of triggering fungal vulnerability on many cuts: If you're willing to use deadly spore bombs this is quite a lot of extra damage, if not it does nothing
Situationally Poor
5-20% chance of 5 yard AoE parry: a much more situational ability with a moderate cooldown, this will very rarely help you particularly as using parry whilst mobbed is probably one of the lowest priorities.
Worthless
5-20% chance of knockback on many cuts against unarmoured targets (boots): actually detrimental, you're using a melee skill, it's a low enough proc chance you can't use it for crowd control and you can't even use it on an add rather than the target you've been fighting
+5-20% chance of any other vulnerability on many cuts: You're using a sword so almost certainly can't exploit it more effectively than just hitting them with your sword again.

Staff
Staff suffers a lot from being fairly offensively anaemic and therefore generally only being a skill pair to fire magic for defensive purposes from which any of its issues are more than eclipsed by the current design oddities present in fire magic. Blocking stance pretty much props the entire skill up and is very situational particularly as it doesn't do anything about melee delivered stuns or poisons for example. Since a lot of the affixes in this have two variables I've had some difficulty remembering the numbers
Overpowered
Power restored on Smash: I'm putting this in this category not because it currently is effective (even when the ability is probabalistically hugely power positive there's a chance of a drought at low power that leaves you stuck and it takes too long to actually start regenerating power so you can actually use other skills) but because if this affix were changed to work similarly to the power on mindreave affix it would actually give staff a decent niche for power restoring for fire magic (or conceivably archery or battle chem)
Useful
+2-10 smash damage: The main attack you'll be using, making it less anaemic is useful
+2-10 smash armour damage
+% chance of heal on smash: This one I'd much rather had a lower healing number and was 100% chance as relying on a defensive proc is no fun.
Modest
Reduced rage on double hit: sadly tends to be harder to use with fire magic as a pair since they will have a rage attack to dump as soon as they get in melee range and probably have longer melee range than you.
Minor
+doublehit or lunge damage: the added damages are on the same scale as smash making these affixes just push their abilities back into the barely worth using category
power on other abilities: the net power change of these is very small due to the longer cooldowns of the abilities
Situationally Useful
Situationally Poor
Increased Mentalism damage for 8 seconds after using blocking stance: a very small boost for how specific it is
Worthless
Increased Unarmed damage for 8 seconds after using blocking stance: why does this exist.


Archery
Archery has been greatly improved by lowering the swap time, however it's still in an awkward place of being completely reliant on its support skill (others are nicely buffed by using their support skill but if you can't be bothered they still work just fine) and eating your inventory, going through a stack of arrows in about an hour only using archery enough to keep it levelling. Still very odd and awkward that you put your bow away to use handless skills like Mentalism, psychology or first aid. Would probably be avila's default combat skill if it weren't for the inventory issue (mentalism is just so good it feels like cheating).
Overpowered
Haven't noticed any that fit in this category
Useful
+1-5 All archery damage (helm): Useful in all flavours
+2-10 Basic Shot Damage (boots, chest)
+2-10 Heavy Shot and Heavy Multishot Damage (boots, chest): Better than the Basic shot one, so long as you didn't mind getting the rep to buy the skill
Modest
+2-10 Aimed Shot Damage (boots, chest): Aimed shot has a significantly longer cooldown so an identical damage boost is much less useful
Mentalism Style Nature DoTs on Aimed shot: vastly less useful due to not being buffed by adrenaline wave
Minor
Situationally Useful
+2-10 Multishot Damage (gloves, neck): Haven't worked out if this also affects heavy multishot (I'm presuming not) but if it manages to push you over a threshold to kill enemies in fewer shots it's cutting 20 seconds off your getting shot, not that great though as the cooldown for multishot is so long
Situationally Poor
5-20% chance to stun all targets on multishot (neck,gloves): I'd prefer this affix if it hit every target separately so it fairly reliably stunned a portion of the group, since the 3 second stun doesn't give you much chance to capitalise in archery anyway
Worthless

Werewolf
Overpowered
Reduced Rage from claw (helm, trousers): comes in large enough numbers that it pushes claw to being slightly rage negative if used in two slots, this makes werewolf better at rage management than sword with much lower effort
Bite affects everything in a 5 yard radius and deals +3-15 damage: A powerful and reliable AoE with a short cooldown that also spreads the ending effects of combos!
+ 1-10 beast metabolism healing: Adds that much healing to every tick of healing from eating even low level monsters, can make you regen faster than the omegaspider does.
Useful
+1-5 All werewolf Damage (Helm, neck)
+2-10 claw damage
+2-10 bite damage
+2-10 bite armour damage
Savaging blow Combos (claw, claw, claw, bite +damage): different ranks of the combo stack
1-10 Heal on claw: would be more impressive if it weren't for the whole beast metabolism thing
Modest
Minor
+1-10 Heal on Bite: tends to be much less used than claw and you can't drop back to just spamming it if low on health.
+2-10 Pouncing Rake damage: You don't use it for damage, but hey free damage is free damage
Situationally Useful
+Pack attack damage: Maybe if you're ganging up with other werewolves this is useful, I never touch the skill so I don't have a clue
Situationally Poor
Fireteeth (complex combo that ends in bite for a fire DoT): can be used to set lots of enemies on fire with the bite aoe, or alternatively you could have just used bite 2 more times in the length you spent performing the combo and just killed them already.
Worthless
Very nearly all of the other combos, they require doing ineffective things to achieve things you already have better ways of doing particularly with how small most of the boosts seem to be
+2-10 Pouncing rake armour damage: It's not even a large damage boost to encourage you to use pouncing rake wrong...

Mentalism
Currently Mentalism is pretty much defined by its affixes, without them it's pretty much just a support skill of effect waves and a token ranged attack with them it's death incarnate to a worrying degree. Mentalism also has virtually no junky affixes so bad items are much less common. When assessing affixes other than the overpowered ones I'm going to look at it as though the overpowered ones didn't exist since there's absolutely no reason not to just stack them and watch everything die in a fountain of twelves.
Notably there are no affixes affecting either the Wave skills or panic charge which seems odd.
Overpowered
50-100% chance of 15 damage over 15 seconds from system shock (ring, gloves?, legs, helm, weapon): Ticks once per second and every tick is buffed by the targets psychic vulnerability, fountains of the number 3.....
50-100% chance of 15 damage over 15 seconds from mind rend (boots, chest, weapon): Same as system shock but shorter range, on the other hand you can pair it with...
4-16 power restored from using mind rend (weapon, chest, neck, ring): Your primary attack now restores power rather than costing it, if stacked in multiple slots can be major
Useful
+-5-20 Reconstruct healing for 15 seconds after using Mindreave: If you're using mindreave as your main attack rather than system shock this is a shocking amount of extra healing as it stacks
+1-5 System shock damage (trousers,weapon)
+1-5 Mindreave Damage (boots)
5-15% chance of +50 damage on system shock
+1-5 All mentalism damage (helm): last time I looked was also causing the wave abilities to deal damage when applied, strangely doesn't seem to work as through damage for mindreave
Other Lower % chance system shock DoTs with higher damage
Modest
1-6% chance of Stun on Mindreave (boots,helm): Useful if Mindreave is your main attack, even then it's not a terribly high proc chance with a 6% item in both slots it exists for
Minor
+5-20 Reconstruction healing: Doesn't need you to be using mindreave but is 1/15th of the extra healing, better to deal with dying of dots after a fight though. On further experience this is a truely paltry amount of extra healing
Situationally Useful
5-20% chance of 5 yard AoE Mindreave : Since you already have panic charge it's not as skill defining as many other Chance of AoE things are
Situationally Poor
+4 piercing resistance for 15 seconds after using mindreave (helm): Tested it to see if it stacks, it doesn't mainly piercing damage is archers who are a problem to use mindreave against, only seen it show up as an affix once
Worthless

Psychology
Overpowered
+1-10 psychic damage taken by target of psychoanalyse for the next minute (gloves, chest): I now use this to maintain the effects of murder with the mentalism dots against high regen targets.
Useful
Minor
Situationally Useful
Situationally Poor
Remove single Fire DoT with a dps cap on pep talk: Debated just calling this worthless, when dots are being dangerous it's because there are multiple stacks and pep talk is a 30 second cooldown.
Remove single Fire DoT with a dps cap on pep talk:
Worthless


Battle Chemistry
Wierdly this may be the only skill that now synergises with Archery now the swap time has been reduced since it consists almost entirely of long cooldown abilities that need your main hand to use. Haven't really tried to use it as a main offensive skill, simply as that just doesn't work even with a full set of +bomb damage gear you couldn't sanely kill bosses with it. Interesting as a support skill if it weren't for the fact that it uses your main hand and thus should be trying to be your primary combat skill. Also seems to near completely lack affixes.
Overpowered
Haven't noticed any that fit in this category
Useful
+1-5 All Battlechemistry Damage
+2-10 All Bomb damage (boots, chest, legs)
Minor
Situationally Useful
Situationally Poor
Worthless

Fire Magic
I haven't collected a good enough set of fire magic gear to put in a new comment here yet, however I suspect that a set of +burn damage and high % chance dot on fireball gear will be very good (similar to mentalism DOT damage) and that it's probably better to replace flesh to fuel with a couple of slots of +power on defensive burst which won't just kill you.

After some further testing making a burn damage set is just as effective as I'd hoped, it kind of obsoletes higher ranks of fireballs and all +damage gear that isn't going to do direct health damage however so I'm still not sure what to think.
Overpowered
+1-10 Burn Damage(boots, gloves): +10 damage instantly * the number of the next affix you have
+10-100% chance of 15 damage over 15 seconds on fireball: a combo that makes you the death bringer
Useful
+1-5 all fire magic damage (helm)
chance to slow on frostball: I'd like a high proc % version of this for kiting but haven't found it paired with any other affix I like
Modest

Minor

Situationally Useful

Situationally Poor

Worthless


Some other loot thoughts after doing this look over:
Not many things have good ring effects
Necklaces often spawn with 4 different skills on, and all different to the base type of the necklace

 

[Citan]

Whoa, treasure buff analysis! Nice, I really appreciate that! If you have questions about individual enchantments that I can answer, let me know.

I still need to flesh out a bunch of combat skills with more powers. Some I've intentionally held off on -- mainly Mentalism's waves, because those powers are already over their power "budget", and I didn't want to make things even worse. Other skills, I just haven't gotten to it yet, like archery and battle chemistry.

 

[zirephoenix]

Just a comment on some of the enchantments. My in-game character is Phiona btw...

Mentalism:

No 50-100% triggers exist anymore. It has been replaced by 15-20% trigger of 30 damage over 15 seconds. I haven't seen anything spawn with 100% trigger over 200 items from Placeholder Boss.
+Mentalism skill damage has been corrected and the waves no longer hurt you.
Stun chance are only up to 7%. It's useful, but not reliable. Nice to have along with other broken stuff though. But if you have one at a 20%... I'll be interested

Psychology:

Useful:
- Refreshing Pep Talk on Psychoanalysis/Tell Me About Your Mother makes Pep Talk a really nice support skill. You can stack a whole pile of buffs to make everything just heal you extra, regen your power, regen their power, etc. Combo with Mentalism Power Wave and you got some nice support abilities.

Situational:
- The Poison DoT removal can remove the poison from the speed potions. Other than that... far too situational. It probably needs to remove UP TO x dmg/sec across multiple DoTs instead of one DoT up to x dmg/sec.

Fire Magic:

Useful: Regain Power on Ring of Fire: This is borderline broken, but because of the low range, it's useful. I found armor that restores 30 power, and .... something else that restores 15, so I made the Defensive Burst a better Flesh to Fuel. I'm still trying to get more Fire Gear to make fire magic my main attack.

I can add some comments to some of the skills that are not covered:

Unarmed:
I've used this extensively for early/mid game.

Broken:
- Body Slam Double Damage Combo: Body Slam 3 deals 75 base damage, with multiple enchantments that add 15-45 Hip Throw damage, which you can end up with 150+ base. Use that with the Hip Throw double damage combo and you'll be doing over 300 damage for 10 power. Extremely powerful. Body Slam itself is useful without the double damage combo. I will switch to Unarmed just to use my Body Slam and Headbutt because they're a good source of damage.


Useful:
- Heal x HP per punch/kick: Really useful as an unarmed... 10 HP punch and 40 HP kicks are nice.
- +x punch damage vs Goblins (item enchantment):
This shows up on both a main hand and a necklace. You can easily do 20-50 damage with a 1-3 energy attack (vs goblins). This stacks on top of any of the punch finishing combos so it is a very strong enchantment.
- x% shield on attack (punch, barrage, hip throw): It triggers more often than you think. Unfortunately when I was using this it was broken and the force field ended up on the ENEMY instead, so it was really annoying to need to do an extra 100 damage to them. Obviously the shield that stops 100% damage is much better than the one that stops 10%
- x% Physical Damage taken done in next punch: Again, you'll be taking tons of physical damage all the time, and you'll be punching all the time, so more damage is always good.
- Punch Punch Barrage combo: It's just great to do extra damage.

Situational:
- x% Other Damage taken done in next punch: I saw... dark, magical, whatever random damage. Since I can't tell what kind of damage I'm taking, I have no idea how to utilize it... In theory it is situational, but the way damage types are determined I would say it is almost useless.
- Non Physical Damage shields: Also hard to setup.

Worthless:
Any combo involving a kick in the middle: These combos just makes no sense. I don't want to run across the room doing a combo.


Deer:

Broken (in theory?):
- Kick Kick Kick unarmed combo (stuns) with kick AoE enchantment: I just haven't gotten around to putting all my kick gear together, but I can see kick doing upwards of 40+ damage. The Kick AoE effect is on all the time (5m? I forgot), and the KKK combo stuns, so we're talking about 40 damage AoE, stuns every 3 seconds... yeah, I can see this to be very broken.
- Heal x HP per kick: This is even sillier with a Deer/Cow... every basic attack now heals me 40 HP? Broken. We're talking about crowd control, AoE, AND Healing in one basic skill. All it needs is "Gain x power per kick" and it's completely broken like nothing else... Then again, you ARE a deer/cow...

 

[Avila]

I'm pretty sure I crafted a 100% mind reave dot shirt shortly after you said about the affix having vanished, and also definitely had an 80% sword drop after we had that conversation so I'm not sure they're gone. Adrenaline wave adding to every tick of a once per second dot is really really ridiculous in general.

Might have overestimated the chance of stun on mind reave though which is why I'm putting in the vague numbers so people can see if when I call something brokenly good I've guessed about how powerful a low level affix becomes at high level wrongly.

The definite 20% thing I had was Mind reave aoe gloves which I meant to get round to giving you but haven;'t seen you since I crafted them

 

[Citan]

No treasure effects have been retired, at least not intentionally. However the advancement is kind of wonky for Mentalism, for some effects you'll have more luck finding a 100% item killing lower-level monsters. That's because the progression goes like this (from low to high):

System Shock attacks have a 20% chance to cause 15 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 40% chance to cause 15 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 60% chance to cause 15 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have an 80% chance to cause 15 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 100% chance to cause 15 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 20% chance to cause 30 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 40% chance to cause 30 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 60% chance to cause 30 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have an 80% chance to cause 30 additional damage over 15 seconds.
System Shock attacks have a 100% chance to cause 30 additional damage over 15 seconds.


A 100% chance to do 15 is vastly better than a 20% chance to do 30, but it has a lower level requirement. There's a few other effects in Mentalism that work this way as well. Will fix them up when I next work on treasure!

 

[Finkum]

While we're on the subject of percentage chance affixes, how do multiple affixes of the same type combine (do they even combine)? That is, if I have two slots with a 20% chance to do X, do they function independently i.e. every time the conditions are met there is one roll for the first slot's chance to do X, and a second roll for the second slot, or do they combine additively so I have a 40% chance to do X, or does it work some other way entirely?

 

[Citan]

They each have a separate die roll, so two 20% effects means you have two 20% chances. It's thus possible to get two stacking copies of the effect at once, if you're lucky enough ... which sometimes is useful (e.g. DoTs) and sometimes is useless, depending on the effect.

 

[Finkum]

Spider Skill

Overall thoughts
Thematically, Spider is fairly strong, but mechanically, fairly bland. The big draws to being a Spider rather than a different animal form (for me, the pets, run speed buff, and limited ability to appear humanoid) need to be polished up but show decent promise. Pet damage may be overtuned, and pet micromanagement is currently required.

Individual ability analysis
1) Spider Bite - standard spammable attack, although fairly expensive compared to e.g. Sword Slash (9 power vs 5 power at level 50).
2) Inject Venom - nice DoT attack although it's odd that the initial 30 poison effect damages armour (if your target is still armoured). Intuitively just putting poison onto armour won't really damage it, although it would allow the target to splash poison back onto you! I'd change the initial damage to either bypass armour, or be a different school (like Slashing, to represent your fangs penetrating the armour/flesh to perform the injection).
3) Gripjaw - nice stun, although of limited use. I typically used this mainly for the extra damage over Spider Bite, rather than the stun, with the rare exception being mobs I couldn't quite kill before their rage attack went off (and even then, it's not necessary to stun them as most rage attacks are pretty anaemic; the only mobs where I would definitely want to use it (Tor-Uraks) cannot be finished off within the duration of the stun).
4) Spit Acid - The initial damage works on armour/health but the DoT only damages armour - conceptually I find it weird that acid wouldn't damage unarmoured flesh.
5) Grappling Web - Now that this attack is a taunt, it's quite useful, although it's tricky to tell in melee precisely which mobs you do or do not have threat on. Additionally, it's often tricky to target the appropriate mob, but those are tangential issues. When used on a mob already in melee range it would be nice if the mob wasn't catapulted behind you i.e. it invariably just draws the mob to your current location.
6) Scuttling Gait - Awesome, awesome run-speed buff. One of my favourite benefits of being a spider. Now that sprinting in combat is more expensive it might be nice to also throw in a reduced power use effect (so it remains as useful an escape tool as it currently is).
7) Insidious Illusion - This is a neat perk to help counteract the drawbacks of an animal form, although I think the reagent (a Moonstone) is currently too difficult to reliably procure. Given that it already has an hour cool-down I'd prefer a more farmable reagent that's about as available as say fire dust. The effect itself is a bit buggy; it's an illusion but you can do things like milk cows that you otherwise couldn't, and if you try and use other Spider abilities you are told you are in the wrong form (which conceptually isn't true unless the illusion is actually intended to be a polymorph effect).
8) Terrifying Bite - This skill seems useless to me. You typically don't want to CC a mob that you've already removed armour from, and even if you did want to, you don't want the CC'd mob to go running off who knows where. Couple that with the lacklustre damage and mediocre CC duration and it is thoroughly meh. I'd either revamp this into a more traditional CC (although then it would compete with Web Trap) or remove/redesign it and introduce a skill that addresses an area spider is currently lacking (rage reduction/AoE etc).
9) Incubate - the second incredible benefit of being a spider, up to two baby spider powerhouses. With no increased DPS from gear (as there are currently no spider affixes) you can expect an individual baby spider to pull between 66 - 100% of your damage, especially when you are fighting a mob with a knockback or stun. They are however highly fragile (the rank one spiders have a mere 14 hp and 1 armour), and given their high damage output and propensity in multi-mob pulls to attack whatever mob you aren't targeting, they will die with irritating regularity (and there is currently a bug where their corpses take some minutes to despawn because they are lootable and autopsy-able, leading to longish periods where you are limited to one or no spider pets). I'll talk a bit more about them in my criticisms section below.
10) Web Trap - This ability's usefulness would be greatly improved by a) a longer CC duration and b) the ability to place it at a specific nearby location with a reticule, rather than having it drop under you. It's awkward to use in it's current state as you have to drop it, aggro the mobs you intend to fight, kite/Grapple one of them through the trap and then back up so that the trapped mob is out of melee range (and the trap is of course useless if the snared mob is a ranged attacker). Bonus points if your pet baby spiders then attack the mob you painstakingly trapped, removing the CC.

Specific criticisms
1) The ability "rotation" is fairly dull; initiate with Grappling Web/Spit Acid and then spam Spider Bite, interspersed with Inject Venom and Gripjaw whenever they are off cool-down (modulo power availability). If the simplicity of the base rotation is intentional, then optional gear affixes could be used for players who like a bit more interaction. Things like
- Gripjaw becomes more potent the more DoT (potentially, specifically poison/acid DoTs) you have on the target;
- Each DoT tick (yours or your pets') has a chance to buff your next Web Trap, causing it to become poison-soaked and deal an additional X damage over Y seconds;
- Your Terrifying Bite now behaves differently: usable at any time, the target trembles in fear and will no longer attack. Each second X rage is drained from the target. When the target's rage reaches zero, or the target is attacked, the terrify effect ends;
would all spice it up a bit.
2) Minimal interaction with enemy resource pools - no rage reducer and only two abilities whose efficacy depend on armour status (and one of those is Terrifying Bite). It may be intentional that there is no rage reducer (so you are more inclined to pick a secondary skill that includes one), but if not Terrifying Bite could be changed as suggested above or replaced with something like 'Numbing Sting: You inject a numbing poison into your target which reduces the target's rage by up to X. This attack is more effective on unarmoured or low armour creatures.'
3) Absence of the "too many cool abilities, not enough slots to place them all" conundrum. Currently I can fit all the (useful) abilities onto my bar at once.
4) Pet AI and micromanagement. Generally, whenever I was fighting difficult mobs I would need to micromanage my pets by putting them on Follow until I'd managed to hit each target I was in combat with at least 3 or 4 times before toggling through to Guard Me or Assist. Then once the fight was over I'd have to be sure to toggle back to 'Follow' right away.

I'm not sure what the technical description of the Assist stance is, but I conceive it as "Only attack whatever mob I currently have targeted and am in combat with" which is sure as hell _not_ how it works. Assist-stance spiders will attack mobs that are close by (but not necessarily so close as to have aggroed me) and in any group fight situation seem invariably to focus on whatever foe I am not targeting and also have poor threat on; as they put out similar DPS to myself it's difficult to re-establish threat once they have aggro, unless Grappling Web is available. It's also irritating to have to toggle both spiders independently all the time; I'd like to see 4 buttons representing the 4 stances be placed at the top of the pet window such that you can change the stance of all pets by clicking on the appropriate button.

I'd also be inclined to increase the baby spider's HP and armour slightly, and reduce their DPS to compensate. Passive AoE reduction a la WoW may be a step to far but would be helpful to counter bomb effects like the Tor-Urak rage attack (which will kill even rank 3 baby spiders unless you are lightning quick with a heal).

 

[Luka Melehan]

Just starting out on spider, but the things I see is that I want to not use incubation because the silly thing dies before it is actually useful. This may be because my solo play style is slow and careful. So most of the time, I don't get the mob on me before the baby dies.

I like Insidious Illusion. It lasted long enough to get my first aid and amor patching. Cow needs something comparable.

There have been a couple updates since I last played my spider, but at that time, Grappling Web did not create enough threat keep a deer from running off. I use deer as kind of a benchmark when I start a new combat skill. Deer run away and also deer hide is needed for leveling leather working. (So far I have only seen that Deer and Cow forms are the only animal forms that can walk up to a mob deer.)

I don't understand the details of creating and testing skills. But when I am leveling up a combat skill, I look for a stun, a low power basic attack, a heal, some form of buff and a pull. The one I seldom use is the knock back. I LOOOVE the cow's Moo of Determination and Moo of Calm. And as I said, the spider's Insidious Illusion. Generally, I get the pull from Mentalism.

 

[Sinistralis]

I submitted a bit of feedback on this already, but I will post my thoughts here as well. I will split it up into 2 sections. Fire Magic and Other. Note that everything down here is simply my opinion. Feel free to dispute/discuss as needed. Note that I am discussing this with the mindset of the game in it's current state. I understand this is Alpha. He wants feedback, I'm giving feedback.


Fire Magic:
I have a whole slew of issues with this.

1) Balancing +Damage

You are experienced with MMOs, so I assume you are aware of this. (This goes for ALL skills, by the way) Damage needs to be a % basis, not a flat +. You can make the gear have a flat value, but you need to have a hidden layer between the gear and the skill that modifies that flat value based on cooldown, energy cost, and skill level. This topic is non-negotiable. You don't do this, the entire skill system will be heavily flawed and exploitable.

2) Messy

I get what you are trying to do with the fire spells, but this execution is sloppy and boring. I mentioned this in my feedback, but I will put it here too. The research mechanic is fine, but it needs changed up a little bit. There should be 2 classifications of spells you can research. "Core" and "Attribute".

The idea being you research "Core" spells, such as Fireball, Ring of Flames, etc. Then, you apply the "Attribute" to them. Then, let's say Sputering is an attribute. You combine Fireball with Sputering, which reduces its range but also reduces it's energy cost or cooldown. (The benefits from Attributes would need to have a different interaction with the above +Damage balancing). Eventually allow the player to be able to mix attributes. (You could make a type of experimentation process out of this idea)

You could keep researching to get attributes, and have Core spells (Aside from the basic fireball) be rare drops or quests or something. This system would add a lot of life to Fire Magic (and to any other magic tree you create)

Honestly, using this system would lend itself better to a "Magic" tree in general. Then, using certain elements would level up it's respective skill. (Fire magic, Ice magic, whatever) Magic would simply be how well you craft your spells. (Higher magic skill would allow you to get a little extra benefit for a little less detriment)

To sum up, an example.

I start the game and learn "Magic". This gives me access to 1 Core spell (This could eventually expand to more, depending on what types of magic you plan to add). This spell would be fireball.

Upon reaching 5, I would be able to research a few attributes. Make the research more than clicking a button. Give players a choice when they research. Do something like

I want to improve...

Damage
Cooldown
Energy Cost

I want to sacrifice...

Damage
Cooldown
Energy Cost

Then, when you reach 10 it would look like this:

I want to improve...

Damage
Cooldown
Energy Cost
Range
Burn

I want to sacrifice...

Damage
Cooldown
Energy Cost
Range



Then, say at Magic 30, you gain the ability to combine attributes (Which also would mean combining penalties). An example would be a High Damage, AE Fireball that has a Ludicrously High Energy Cost. Or, a huge cooldown.

Or perhaps one that has very little range and a higher mana cost, but is AE and has high burn damage over time.

This system is very expanable and customizable. Then players would have a ridiculous amount of choice that THEY create, rather than have all these similar spells forced on them at once, most of which as arbitrary. This system will allow you to keep your itemization intact, while giving a lot more depth to magic.




Other:

Alright, so the issues I have with Sword/Staff/Mentalism, etc is that there isn't enough. You limit us to 6 skill slots per skill. This is not a bad idea, no it is actually a fantastic idea. But, again the execution is off. What is the point of having only 6 skill slots when most skills only give me 6-7 skill choices? It's completely pointless and arbitrary.

First, let's talk skill selection. You need to do away with "Insert Skill Name" "Level". Not the idea, but the current implementation of it. Skills need to be teaching me more new stuff. Level 1-10 of most skills are a ton of fun. Then it's boring as hell because I'm just getting minor improvements over and over. I don't get anything new to do. I'm the same as a master of the skill except he does some more damage than me. You need to separate fun and optimization.

Leveling up a skill needs to be fun. Leveling up skills should only be teaching me new techniques. For a 6 skill system to be enjoyable, I should have to pick from a selection of at least 9 if not 12-18. As for ranking up a particular skill, this should be incorporated into mob drops. This not only makes leveling up skills fresh all the time, but it adds more suspense to every single mob kill. Not only can they drop gear, but they can drop the next rank of that skill you use a lot, or perhaps a skill book you can sell to another player. This opens up a TON of economy options and just adds more fun to loot in general. These skill books should have restrictions on them, such as System Shock 2 requires 12 mentalism to learn. This lets them get double the fun from doing what they would be normally doing anyway, exploring and adventuring. This also allows you to very easily expand the power of skills later on. No need to raise skill caps if you don't want to, just make the harder content drop the next rank of a skill. When you want to add NEW skills, that's when you can change the max skill rank. You could also expand this to have different versions of skills drop. Perhaps one has more cooldown and more damage. (This sound familiar? Look above ^)


Next, let's talk skill function. A lot of skills don't lend themselves very well to strategy at all. In all the skills I have tried, I just find myself mashing buttons until something dies or I run low on power (in which case I just mash 1 instead). This is a huge problem, and most of it stems from the above issue. Lets take staff for example. You have 3 Direct Damage skills, and 2 defensive skills, and a knockback (probably the only weapon where a knockback is wanted). That's it. This is incredibly dull. When I have a staff, I think of a fighter who does stuff like trip his opponent, have wide arcing aoe swings, more control like stuns or perhaps attacks where you imbue the staff with some type of magic. There needs to be more skill selection, and this selection needs to have a vision. It honestly feels like most skills were just slapped on with no thought. Make the player have to sit down and really consider all his options FOR A SINGLE SKILL LINE. Then, when it comes time to choose the second skill line, his mind explodes with the possibilities. This is how a proper system needs to be done.

Which leads me into my final point, and perhaps the main issue with the current skill system as it is.

THERE IS NO REASON TO MIX COMBAT SKILLS
The reason for this is that, as you made a post about on your blog, there is a "action resource pool" of sorts. The moment you introduce support trees (Battle Chemistry, Mentalism), you instantly throw balance out of whack without proper skill choice. Not to mention you hinder skill usage by implement, it makes this even worse.

Why would I ever use anything besides Mentalism or Battle Alchemy with Fire Magic? I want to get the most out of each action, so I would pair it with Mentalism (for more regen or damage) or Battle Alchemy (same reasons). This increases the value of that action. THERE IS NO REASON TO CHOOSE MORE ACTIONS WHEN I GET BETTER RETURNS FROM POWERING UP A SINGLE SET OF ACTIONS. I can apply this logic to any skillset. Even the animal forms fall under this problem.

How do you counter this? By having skill sets specalize in particular functions. Conditional Skills.

Let me give you an example.

Crush: Slam a grounded opponent with your staff, dealing heavy damage. CD: 5

Sweep: Swings your staff in an arc infront of you, knocking down opponents in front of you. CD: 15

Now you initially look at this and see a huge problem. Crush can't be fully optimized, and this skill HURTS. I want to focus on crushing things into oblivion. Sure, mentalism will let me crushed hurt slightly more, or BC gives me a mana healing golem... but what if I could choose Earth Magic that had several knockdowns with quake type spells?

Trying to fix the problem by preventing focus on a single skillset is the wrong approach. You need to incorporate compliments into skillsets. This will box you into predefined sets, but if the combinations are vast enough, THIS IS NOT A FLAW.

Most min/max issues that games suffer from fade with complexity. Add too many choices, and there is too much to min/max. Obvious offenders will show up, but because they are outliers they will be easy to identify and balance.


I love this game so far, and I understand it is in alpha. The skill system is phenominal, but it is simply far too shallow right now and that is what I feel is really holding this game back from something great.

 

[Avila]

Creating a Doc to collaborate on identifying all the affixes so we know what they are and can comment on them.

Feel free to add affixes you've seen preferably on green items as that nails the skill requirement as for that affix.

Link

 

[Avila]

Now got some fairly big parts of the table filled in, greyed out ones come from extrapolation from a pattern without me nescesarily remembering seeing that particular affix.

 

[Luka Melehan]

NICE JOB on the spreadsheet!

does the strength of the buff dependant on the level of leather?

 

[Citan]

Very cool I can cheat though and dump you the design spreadsheet if you like... although seeing them this way, through the lens of how you're experiencing them, is pretty interesting. For one thing I should probably make sure more abilities have prefixes or suffixes, since about half don't... anyway, up to you if you think it's more useful that way or with an influx of raw data spreadsheet.

 

[Sinistralis]

Seeing that spreadsheet would be awesome.

The main issue I am seeing with affixes right now is that there isn't much reason to want to use anything other than +damage, preferably on low cost power skills.

Which makes sense, considering there isn't much reason to build defense and power is a huge issue in the game.

There is one stat that breaks this mold, healing on kick. But this is such an obscene stat when animals spam kicks, so yea.

 

[Finkum]

Does the strength of the buff dependant on the level of leather?

Essentially yes, although there is a spread within one tier of leather e.g. you can get level 35 or level 40 affixes on Nice leather gear. This is especially true for hybrid items that boost 2+ skills.

 

[Finkum]

The main issue I am seeing with affixes right now is that there isn't much reason to want to use anything other than +damage, preferably on low cost power skills.

IMO this isn't quite as big an issue as you think, as rare+ quality items will have 3 - 5 affixes, and there's normally one and at best two desirable +damage style affixes available for that slot. So as you get better gear you will get an array of defensive/utility affixes by default, even if you mercilessly prioritise offensive affixes - and in my case I grew to enjoy some of the defensive and quality-of-life benefits, even though at first glance I thought they were a bit ho hum.

 

[Sinistralis]

I just have issue that the +damage is THAT big of a deal. I don't mind it being like, one of the top 5, but it is in first place by a gargantuan margin right now.

 

[Avila]

Very cool I can cheat though and dump you the design spreadsheet if you like... although seeing them this way, through the lens of how you're experiencing them, is pretty interesting. For one thing I should probably make sure more abilities have prefixes or suffixes, since about half don't... anyway, up to you if you think it's more useful that way or with an influx of raw data spreadsheet.

I suspect there isn't much more for you to learn about how I understand the affix system from me finishing filling in that spreadsheet and it will be very interesting to compare how I've understood the affix system to how it's actually implemented. I think I've seen pretty much all of the affixes so I don't think there's anything exciting for me to discover still (quite a few of them I've only seen before I started categorising and not kept so can't remember the exact numbers), though +inventory slots on chest and + poison damage have both surprised me lately. It would save me 30 seconds or so per item I encounter checking it against the spreadsheet so an affix dump would be greatly appreciated.

I suspect a few of the affixes don't have listed names only because they're either primarily found on necklaces and rings which never list suffixes or I don't remember having found them without another prefix or suffix that overwrote them.

 

[Finkum]

I just have issue that the +damage is THAT big of a deal. I don't mind it being like, one of the top 5, but it is in first place by a gargantuan margin right now.

To clarify, are you referring specifically to affixes that are of form "Your X Skill abilities all do Y more damage" or are using +damage as a shorthand for any affix that boosts your DPS in some way? Because if it's the former, there are a couple of skills (Mentalism/Fire Magic) where currently the most desirable affixes boost specific abilities or proc a DoT. If it's the latter, then your top 5 comment confuses me

 

[Citan]

This is probably a lot more technical info than is useful, but in the interest of saving time I'm just going to throw the actual spreadsheet I use to generate the data from! Each row is a level of a single power. Hopefully it'll be largely self-explanatory to people who've played a while, but feel free to ask questions.

 

[Sinistralis]

Some questions:

What is the purpose of profiles?
Why do you need 2 different effect/effect desc columns?
How do you determine max point value for a single piece of gear?

 

[Citan]

Each lootable item specifies which profile it uses. Staves have the "Staff" profile, etc. This is mainly used to keep inappropriate powers off of those items (no sword enchantments are in the "Staff" profile, for instance). But I also use it to put only select powers on items found in the tutorial dungeon -- those skeletons drop items that use the Newb profile.

The two effect columns are separated because they could potentially both be used at once. There's actually four (or maybe five?) different systems going on at once. From left to right:
- The "StatBoost" columns indicate an internal stat that should be buffed while the item is being worn.
- The "Effects" column lists any specially-coded effects that should be activated when you equip the item. (Effects are bits of code attached to a player, and they can do anything, and theoretically all I'd need is the Effects column to do everything. But then I'd have to write custom script for each one, which would suck. So the rest of the columns are shortcuts.)
- The "Custom Effect" section is one of the aforementioned shortcuts; it actually makes a custom Effect on the spot for me. It's usually of the form "If player uses an ability with keyword X, do Y", where Y could be add more damage, become an AoE, or, for more elaborate things, apply a custom-scripted Effect. Those custom-scripted effects could be applied to the victim of the attack, or to the attacker. In turn those custom-scripted effects could call yet other effects, setting off very elaborate chain reactions. But usually they just do something like damage-over-time or a particle explosion.
- The "Pet Effects" section is another kind of custom-effect generator, this one specifically for pet buffs. The resulting effects watch for pet summonings, and then apply stat tweaks to the resulting pets.

And for point value: each item can specify the number of points it has for an uncommon, rare, epic, or legendary version of itself. I could theoretically make them all have different values all over the place, but practically speaking it's pretty restricted, and based on tiers. The "Quality Armor" set (which you can buy Common versions of from Kalaba in the castle courtyard) are the epitome of mid-range equipment; the Quality Shirt has 35 points (uncommon), 35-45 points (rare), 57-62 points (epic), and 57-67 points (legendary).

Note that the item determines the points, but it *doesn't* determine the "level" referred to in that chart. That level comes from the monster that was killed. So a newb-dungeon skeleton has his loot level set to 7 or 8, whereas a skeleton in the graveyard outside (who drops the same base items) has his level set to 10 or 12, and will result in slightly better uncommon+ loot.

 

[Sinistralis]

The "Newb" profile was what prompted that question haha.

So Effects are when you need a script for a complex effect, and then you have the following columns for more arbitrary effects (such as +damage)?

I notice you are lacking a H Damage M. Any reason why? (I feel like this would be a useful field for something like backstabbing, where you would focus on dealing H damage once A is depleted)

I think I can read this entire spreadsheet now, for the most part. It seemed convoluted at first, but now I understand that the convolution allowed you to streamline stuff more.




So, an item drops.

It looks at the item's base point value, and then does a roll to assign it a rarity which results in a net point pool. I assume the mob type/level/whatever affects this somewhat as well.

When the mob dies, it grabs random profiles based on rarity.

Then, using the resultant rarity, point pool, and loot level you are able to populate an item with affixes. (I am guessing you do this by assigning one, subtracting from the pool, and repeating)

I am guessing it uses the most expensive suffix/prefix to determine the name of the item.

I'm going to assume as well that somehow, certain rarities must have a minimum number of effects on them, which means that you have to leave enough spare points to accommodate additional stats on an item.





I feel like the higher-end mods, like 7+ damage or 30+ heal on kick should weigh more than the previous ones. This way, a player would have to make a choice between specializing in something, or having a multi-purpose goal. (The inverse would accomplish this too, having the 1-6 weigh less than 7-10, or 60% vs 40%)

Again though, if you plan to make Rage attacks more impactful this may not be nessicary.