The Matter build is adding plenty of new demons to give good homes to all the new Matter abilities. But, some older demons want to get in on the new flavors of fun too:
2 responses to “A Few New Tricks”
That looks pretty damn powerful. Pretty low chance to apply though, which is understandable. But sadly AI usually tends to blow all SP away with this kind of stuff. When Slow was only 50% chance to apply speed down, I used to remove it from demons most of the time because instead of doing damage and applying various debuffs they would usually waste all their SP on one single ability and slow down 2 enemies at best. This becomes even more annoying with heroes and you end up in a situation where you really don’t want to delete pretty strong ability but kinda have to because AI keeps using it exclusively without much success.
10% on any physical hit and I assume 20% with blind specific melee attack is way more reliable in a sense.
Now about blindness itself: can blinded enemies/player blind fire into darkness? If can, with which attacks? Can blinded summoner use far summon? Can they bullcharge/pounce into the darkness?
Update is looking pretty exciting already.
The SP costs were actually reduced since that screenshot: Blind now uses Charm-tier success rates but Infection-tier SP costs. So Flash for example is 15 SP now, not 25.
The AI evaluation for Blind is based largely on how many non-melee range attacks the target has: it can be very valuable on a pure-ranged character, but is less interesting on a melee (though still not without merit, -50% to hit/dodge is always nice.)
Granted, the AI being a bit spammy with debuffs in general is probably its own issue, but it does at least try to think about it.
Firing blind: You can, but you are only allowed to actually “target” the 8 squares around you, which will limit the effectiveness of this somewhat (basically, you’ll only be able to fire in those 8 directions on straight lines), and of course, there’s still the -50% to hit to consider.
It’s worth noting some things aren’t really affected much by blindness at all: in particular, attacks that radiate out from the caster and don’t check to-hit (Light, Dark, and Mind have lots of these.)
Far Summon: Nope. You can’t target the spaces you can’t see, so Far Summon is effectively nullified by being Blind. (You can Unsummon with no problem though, since that doesn’t actually target spaces.)
Bull Charge/Pounce: Same answer: since you can’t see, you can’t target, so no go.
One note: The AI handles being blinded semi-intelligently. It may not be able to see, but it still remembers what was where and will act accordingly, and with surprising effectiveness so long as things don’t change. Also: group AI still shares information (much like how you as a blinded summoner will still get red/blue indicators for enemies/allies), which also helps a little.
That looks pretty damn powerful. Pretty low chance to apply though, which is understandable. But sadly AI usually tends to blow all SP away with this kind of stuff. When Slow was only 50% chance to apply speed down, I used to remove it from demons most of the time because instead of doing damage and applying various debuffs they would usually waste all their SP on one single ability and slow down 2 enemies at best. This becomes even more annoying with heroes and you end up in a situation where you really don’t want to delete pretty strong ability but kinda have to because AI keeps using it exclusively without much success.
10% on any physical hit and I assume 20% with blind specific melee attack is way more reliable in a sense.
Now about blindness itself: can blinded enemies/player blind fire into darkness? If can, with which attacks? Can blinded summoner use far summon? Can they bullcharge/pounce into the darkness?
Update is looking pretty exciting already.
The SP costs were actually reduced since that screenshot: Blind now uses Charm-tier success rates but Infection-tier SP costs. So Flash for example is 15 SP now, not 25.
The AI evaluation for Blind is based largely on how many non-melee range attacks the target has: it can be very valuable on a pure-ranged character, but is less interesting on a melee (though still not without merit, -50% to hit/dodge is always nice.)
Granted, the AI being a bit spammy with debuffs in general is probably its own issue, but it does at least try to think about it.
Firing blind: You can, but you are only allowed to actually “target” the 8 squares around you, which will limit the effectiveness of this somewhat (basically, you’ll only be able to fire in those 8 directions on straight lines), and of course, there’s still the -50% to hit to consider.
It’s worth noting some things aren’t really affected much by blindness at all: in particular, attacks that radiate out from the caster and don’t check to-hit (Light, Dark, and Mind have lots of these.)
Far Summon: Nope. You can’t target the spaces you can’t see, so Far Summon is effectively nullified by being Blind. (You can Unsummon with no problem though, since that doesn’t actually target spaces.)
Bull Charge/Pounce: Same answer: since you can’t see, you can’t target, so no go.
One note: The AI handles being blinded semi-intelligently. It may not be able to see, but it still remembers what was where and will act accordingly, and with surprising effectiveness so long as things don’t change. Also: group AI still shares information (much like how you as a blinded summoner will still get red/blue indicators for enemies/allies), which also helps a little.