1.6 charms

(ITEMS)

Added a new "unique_ego" flag that indicates that an ego should only be applied to the same item once. This is just used on a few charm buff procs at the moment, but I want it for some future stuff like weapon procs that don't stack nicely.

(CHARMS - Totems, Torques, Wands)

This system is a mess currently. Most of the actives are boring damage effects that tend to be overpowered early and useless later paired with an "addon" effect that often gives a uselessly small resource gain on activation or a set of bonus talents. The bonus talents are given as actual talents not part of the charm active which leads to a lot of weird clutter and gained resource bars. As best I can tell, these talents were just taken from random places, not designed for this actual system.

The addon talents and resource gains have been completely removed. The new design focuses on the single active power of the charm talent by condensing all of the power there . Each of the new addon powers gives a small but generally always useful on_charm effect that scales via standard resolvers. +x% damage penetration until the end of your next turn, reduce x talent cooldowns, heal for x, etc. Thus, each charm is a composite of 1 powerful active effect and some set of moderately powerful addon effects.

One exception to this is the Ward addon, which is kept for Wands (removed from the others as Ward is Arcane). This is because Ward is on several other item types and they all interact with the same Ward talent, the stacking talent level of which is also relevant.

The charm powers themselves are also considerably revamped. Originally I was going to go for a heavily utility-based model emphasizing how easy it is to swap charms in and out based on need. It quickly became apparent that there aren't enough misc utility effects here for this to be the core of the model. Instead, the new charm pool is mostly "offensive utility"--things that do relevant damage at all phases of the game but usually have a utility or defensive purpose as well. I've tried to avoid overlapping with the Inscription system ether in power or role as much as possible. Cleanse in particular is almost absent in this slot aside from minor debuffs.

The powers for the charm types are spell, mind, and mind. This leaves physical power in an awkward situation. I handled this the same way the old system did: Physical power gets screwed here, but this is offset by the fact that a lot of the relevant stats on charms are mostly based off the charm_power, not the thematic power. Stat-specific scaling has mostly been changed to the relevant power, and apply powers all use the most thematic.

(Totem Powers)

Healing: Now heals all allies in AoE10 as well. Not a lot of item support for protecting your summons, this seemed as good a plce to put it as any.

Stinging: Spiritual successor to Insidious Poison. This deals high single target damage in DoT form and reduces healing by 50%. This is also a hit, not a bolt, so it also serves as long range backline damage.

Thorny Skin: No notable changes.

Summon Tentacle: Replaces the old one which just used Grgglck's talent. The old tentacle has always been useful early game because it starts with crazy stats and is good for blocking paths and such. The new one expands on this theme by having a basic attack at range 3 that pins, essentially making this a low damage "space control" charm.

(Torque Powers)

Psionic Shield: Merged, now blocks all elements, numbers adjusted to compensate. This is actually quite useful on live even though few people use it because its so micromanagey. Since this slot already has Wards around for the micromanagement inclined I'm more comfortable having this be generally useful and reliable.

Gale Force: AoE damage+knockback in a cone. Scaled knockback range gets pretty huge.

Clear Mind: No notable changes. This is important for Undead in particular.

Mindblast: Deals mind damage to a single target and silences.

(Wand)

Lightning Storm: Deals lightning damage in radius ~5 and dazes for 1 turn each tick. The idea here is a low damage backline AoE disable.

Conjuration: Now picks its damage type on generation instead of on cast. This allows you to keep high damage conjuration wands around for specific damage type needs.

Clairvoyance: Same for now. This is quite useful until you have a reliable source of Track or whatever. It doesn't play well with the new charm proc system since its not useful in combat, but alas. Perhaps this should just get the trap destruction added in a shorter radius too. Or Blind. Or something.

Shielding: Shields yourself and allies in radius 10. Basically just a different flavor of healing.

(Charm procs)

Powerful: Increase all damage by x for 2 turns.

Focusing: Reduce x talent cooldowns by 2.

Extending: Increase the duration of x beneficial effects by y.

Soothing: Heal for x (mindcrit).

Cleansing: Cleanse x bleed, disease, or poison debuffs.

Innervating: Reduce fatigue by x% for 2 turns.

Penetrating: Gain x% damage penetration for 2 turns.