I have a feeling it may not work on champs anyway. They seem to exclusively target players, probably by design.

Yeah it's like it considers the new version a totally different skill than the old. Fixed it easily enough though.

Finally got around to finishing act 2. Things are looking better in the new version.

The poison (and therefore weakness) on Ember Bolt is very nice as I usually find myself spamming it on things that get uncomfortably close, softening the impact. Iceshock looks like a good change. A nice slowing effect is always useful, and it progresses smoothly now instead of a huge 80% all at once. So far Ember Barrage is still my go-to boss killer, even if it only shoots straight roughly one-third of the time.

Ember Lance can actually deal damage now, though I primarily use it to sweep up trash mobs, as it's still weaker than most skills. It's also more similar than ever to Ember Barrage now, and I think they should be more distinctive. I threw out the idea earlier of making it and possibly Ember Shock into weapon DPS skills. Assuming Ember Shock lost its long cooldown, this would open up a new melee playstyle for the class, as well as giving Alchemist players some reason to invest in weapon passives which would otherwise be pointless for them.

I see I can now summon an Imp without corpses. This is good! However I'm now stuck with exactly one imp until some corpses are found. Can I not just cast the spell repeatedly to get up to the usual limit? Seems fair since I'm spending extra mana that way. Corpses continue to be absent in many locations, especially Ezrohir areas.

Did you tinker with the minion aggro at all? They seemed to be doing a much better job of holding the enemies' attention. I even saw a few mobs turn away from me to fight my minions instead, which has never happened before. Champions continue to completely ignore them, though I guess one could argue that they should go after the player more.

If you're still looking for ways to improve skills by ranks, some of the ones with longer cooldowns could maybe reduce those slightly with each rank.

To Be Continued

Glad to hear there's hope for minions.

Yes scarcity of corpses would pose a problem. Or maybe we could make it kill-based or something. Will look into this more.

I'm not a fan of the Outlander method of summoning via kills. Why have minions if I'm already killing everything? I think if it just spawned one imp in the event of zero corpses it'd be enough to make it functional. That way it's more costly to replace them in a "high stakes" battle.

Quote from: Geist

...Ember Bolt could use a little fine tuning. The damage at Tier 0 is strictly inferior to auto-attacking with the first wand you pick up. It becomes serviceable once you're firing at least three bolts, but it should really gain an additional chance to poison, with poison chance and poison duration increasing by rank.

Good suggestions those for added tier bonuses. Will see what can be done about its lower-level damage numbers.

I think the current tier bonuses are sufficient. I meant increasing chance and duration for each individual rank. Again, compare to Prismatic Bolt which does this for each element. Ember Bolt only needs to do so for poison.

Really? I actually thought it was tending towards being OP. But then again I have sooo little actual playtime with the Alch. I will look into this.

Perhaps it was at one point and someone nerfed it a little too hard? I unlocked it just before fighting the manticore and couldn't even scratch it with this skill. I've never seen any other skill drain the mana globe to no effect. Only the enemies with the least armor took any damage. It crits for double digit damage on the target dummy in town.

I'll track those down, but for now could you be a little more specific pls?

Ember Bolt, Ember Lightning, Nether Imp, Summon Alchemical Golem, and Ember Shock so far. Apparently Nether Crystals as well since it doesn't appear to actually do any damage at all. Even its tooltip says "deals ___". Could be more, but I haven't unlocked the rest yet.

I think Ember Shock could be a little more interesting as an actual melee option. Since you appear to be slapping them with that big ol' glove, why not make it weapon DPS based and drop the cooldown? Maybe lower the initial stun chance and allow it to grow with ranks? Ember Lance could potentially use DPS as well, if only to help differentiate itself from Ember Barrage. Then you'd only have to balance the DPS percentage vs the firing rate.

Speaking of firing rate, does Ember Barrage have any upper limit at all? Testing it on the target dummy it got progressively faster until my mana was completely gone. The sound effects get kind of broken at some point and it begins affecting the game's frame rate if you drink potions to keep it going. It's a good thing it doesn't build charge.

Well, back to saving Zeryphesh!

Edit: I just now managed to have two golems out at once, but haven't been able to reproduce the issue again. Will keep trying.

Hey all, I've just tackled the Artificer, so roughly halfway through the alch playthrough. Here are my observations so far.

First let me say that I love the lack of summon timers. I've always felt like a proper summoner should spend more time supporting the minions with other skills rather than managing cooldowns constantly, so it's already better than vanilla in that regard. Unfortunately there is one major issue it shares with vanilla, and I'm not sure if this can be modded or not, but minions are largely ignored by enemies. They can't really tank for you, and end up running in circles chasing the enemy as the enemy runs in circles chasing you, which is all rather silly. If at all possible, please address this.

Onto actual skills, lets start with Nether Imp. They're reasonably effective in combat, and the raising from corpses effect is pretty cool, however there's one big problem. There are many situations where they are impossible to use at all. You may be surprised how many types of enemies leave no corpse to begin with, not to mention how often corpses explode when you hit them hard enough. Also, the game seems to deliberately explode corpses in major boss battles and phase beast challenges wherein waves of mobs are spawned, to prevent them from piling up. From past experience, this will also affect endgame content like Tarroch's Tomb. Add to this the fact that minions disappear on map changes, as well as the game removing existing corpses if you reenter an area, and you see that the Imps are underutilized. My recommendation is to allow summoning a minimum of one imp per cast, even with no corpses present, and amend the description to say you can lure more out of the nether realm by offering fresh corpses (also explaining why the static corpses encountered in the world don't work). And as a minor side note, the nether imp footstep sound effects wear on my nerves after a while. I'd really prefer them to be muffled if not silenced altogether.

Next summon, the Alchemical Golem. I think this has a lot of potential, especially if the general problem with enemy AI can be addressed. However, the golem desperately needs a move speed buff, as it spends the majority of the time trying to catch up to the rest of the group, often arriving just as the battle ends. It could also use some knockback resistance if it's going to tank properly.

Thorned Minions is a nice idea, but the aforementioned issue with enemies ignoring minions makes it wholly irrelevant.

On the more active side of things, Ember Bolt could use a little fine tuning. The damage at Tier 0 is strictly inferior to auto-attacking with the first wand you pick up. It becomes serviceable once you're firing at least three bolts, but it should really gain an additional chance to poison, with poison chance and poison duration increasing by rank. Compare to its closest kin, Prismatic Bolt, which I suspect it was cloned from anyway.

Ember Lightning damage also feels a little low, and the sound effect volume is much too loud.

I love the concept of Ember Barrage. It's like a magical minigun, and actually quite potent once it "spins up". I'm not so much a fan of the aim-assist on it though. Much of the time it arcs around what I'm trying to shoot, completely missing even stationary targets at short to medium range.

Ember Lance is much easier to aim, but the damage is almost nonexistent. It really struggles to break shields or penetrate enemy armor even on normal difficulty.

There are some irregularities in the alchemist skill tree in general: Nether Crystals and Ember Sentry requiring level 28, and Alchemical Powder Bombs and Ember Phase requiring level 35. These all deviate from the standard progression of Tier 1 to Tier 7 skills. There's also the fact that several alchemist skills do not improve with ranks except via tier bonuses. This has an interesting impact on character progression, which may encourage players to try out a greater variety of skills since Rank 1 is just as good as Rank 4 with less mana cost. It's also somewhat convenient for my purposes of playtesting the class for the time being, but assuming this was unintentional, it should maybe be addressed at some point.

I'll be back with more input, most likely after I track down my doppelganger.