qoala wrote:Well apportation is more of a utility spell, so can understandably still be useful lategame. Infusion might still be too good if it ends up a no-brainer to cast once you have a bit of mp. Later on, was infusion still using all your mp in big fights? Or did you still have enough left that escape spells were possible.
Well, combining the cap of the spirit shield and infusion effect, I was systematically running out of mp during long fight. Anyway, in combats I took few damage I had mp left, so I can assume infusion doesn't drain all you mana when you have a larger pool
qoala wrote:Are normal ants not 'trivial' (SoS cap = 2) threats by mid-lair? Granted, there's packs of other things (all the Ys come to mind) in lair that provide the threat level to get high bonuses, but those are generally quite capable of killing you. I admittedly didn't get a non-wizmode skald to late D in my tests, but looking at a nonskald character I have there, I am noticing that there are probably too many things of 'easy' and 'tough' threat level which the character is easily strong enough to kill without problem. Were ogre/yaktaur packs effectively free +4-6 slaying?
Ant are trivial by Lair, but they still increase you song's bonus - heck, I believe they increase it in D after lair! And generally speaking, yes there are too many easy foes which gives bonus, without posing any real treats. Definitely the ogres are in this category (by D:20 they aren't a real threat for 95% of character, even if hasted by ogre magi); on the other hand I wouldn't consider yaktaurs pack free slaying, as they can be nasty opponents for longer time, and the captain can seldom deal insane damage even with very high defenses.
I think that all enemies in "grey" (trivial? I don't remember the exact description) shouldn't ever give the bonus.
nago wrote:I think it really depends on having enough max mp to be able to use it effectively. I had a couple good FeSk, that effectively got at least +50% health even after other buffs including haste, since they have so much mp and so little hp. On those it was fine that my mp was being used for both bonus health and bonus damage, since if anything did enough damage to hit my health, it was time to start running.
Never tried FeSk, but for other races (I tried HE and LO) song of shielding isn't very good, as for a lv.5 spell gives little benefits, costing too much mp and being quite hard to cast while wearing medium/heavy armour - as a melee caster doesn't train much spellcasting (so has little mp pool) had develop early on martial skills (so it has decent/good hp pool too thanks to fighting).
qoala wrote:Thanks nago and Bim for the feedback! I've never tried it, but perhaps you could use macros to simplify the buff routines (at least in terms of keystrokes)?
I don't like long macro, as an enemy can always appear and kill you meanwhile. Furthermore, I tend to cast buff after I've spotted an enemy, so that makes a long macro pretty much impossible to use. Someone needs to implement permabuff, it's the only solution
qoala wrote:And after looking at Bim's post, it looks like we have more agreement on infusion being strong, while spectral weapon and song of shielding are weak. I'm pretty sure that the buffs I mentioned for spectral weapon will be the fix it needs (it's just a matter of finding the right numbers), but am less sure how to bring the others into line. I think song of shielding might be rather conditional on what your mp/hp look like. Infusion is supposed to work on top of a brand (unlike the brand spells of old skald), so as it is I'm not sure how else to cap it. It's maximum power is already only 50, and it's damage... Wait. If I'm reading this right, it's damage is only 2+pow/25 (using div_rand_round). Depending on power, it varies from 2 to 4 damage. Is that still all that impressive late game? Admittedly, it's practically free damage by that point (no action after the casting, and presumably the mp cost becomes negligible).
Yes, infusion perhaps isn't *so* strong in late game, but why reject free damage without downsides?
For song of shielding maybe you could increase the damage blocked by mp, in relation of hp/mp, so for example 1mp absorbs 2 points of damage (the number are just an example).
Otherwise, considering I find spirit shield a quite dull effect, gives a different effect to make the spell more interesting - for example attacking enemies could suffer random malus (slowness, confusion, weaken, blink away, mirrored damage...)
edit: A think I forgot to comment: is there any reason Sk can't start with a long blade? It's quite awkward to start with short sword just to switch to the first long blades, especially if considering Sk to put to good use all the scarce early exp, as they need to train both weapons and magical skills.