Stoneshard Development Update - Combat Mastery
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Ink Stains Games, the team behind Stoneshard, is currently working on the “Trollslayer” early access update for their challenging turn-based RPG. Among other things, the update will add a new Combat Mastery skill tree to the game. And if you’d like to know what this particular utility skill tree will have to offer, you should check out this Steam announcement. Have a look:
Hello everyone!
In this devlog we’d like to present you a new skill tree which will be added with the “Trollslayer” update - Combat Mastery.
Combat Mastery is an utility skill tree, designed to be particularly useful to warriors and other characters relying on weapons. Overall it contains 14 abilities: 7 actives and 7 passives.
Active abilities:Passive abilities:
- Seize the Initiative – start combat by delivering a strike which will “steal” some of the stats from your target and grant them to you as a buff. Each following strike will increase the amount of debuff stacks on your target and the amount of buff stacks on you
- Defensive Tactics – a buff with unlimited duration. The effect depends on the number of enemies around your character. The higher the number, the stronger this dynamically calculated effect. Additionally, as long as Defensive Tactics is active, blocking and dodging will restore your Energy.
- Offensive Tactics follows a similar logic, though it provides offensive stats instead. Additionally, critical strikes and counterattacks decrease the remaining cooldowns for weapon skills while it’s active. Keep in mind that you only can have a single tactic active at a time, so you will have to choose the most appropriate one for any given situation.
- War Cry deals a small amount of psionic damage, Weakening all enemies in a large AoE. In turn, you receive Battle Rage effect for several turns - the more enemies there are, the longer it lasts.
- Finisher – perhaps some of you may remember this skill from one of the oldest devlogs about the currently retired class system. This skill allows you to deliver a strike which immediately refreshes all active cooldowns as long as it kills its target.
- Thirst for Battle is meant to improve survivability for warriors, especially when they are near death, injured, and are pretty much ready to give up on life. The power of the effect increases when low on health, so it has the potential to break the tide of battle with a significant bonus to damage and life drain.
- Against the Odds – the legendary skill of Verren from the old Prologue returns. Now this skill is a crowning jewel of Combat Mastery. Its duration was decreased to 2 turns, however if you manage to kill an enemy within this time frame, you’ll recover a significant amount of HP and energy. Against the Odds is best used in combination with Thirst for Battle and Finisher for maximum impact.
That’s all for now. In the next devlog we’ll tell you more about Athletics skill tree and, perhaps, will show you something extra!
- Setup – grants you bonus accuracy and damage after you skip a turn, which makes waiting more tactically advantageous.
- Armor Crusher makes the task of disposing of armored targets easier. As long as their armor condition is more than half, your attacks have a bonus to armor piercing and armor damage. On top of this, when the target’s armor durability reaches zero, this passive increases the amount of damage the target takes for a few turns.
- Intimidation – grants War Cry a chance to daze or confuse all affected enemies for a few turns.
- Right on Target – grants bonus stats to all weapon skills. Additionally, it grants a significant bonus to your weapon damage, increasing accuracy and crit chance, while decreasing skills cost and fumble chance as long as your second hand is empty.
- Opportune Moment – grants your physical attacks a chance to decrease all active cooldowns for your skills by 1 turn.
- Stance Training adds an additional effect to your Defensive and Offensive Tactics. As long as your Defensive Tactics is active, all your stance-based skills will lose 1 stack on triggering instead of 2. When using Offensive Tactics, all your stance-based skills will activate with 6 stacks, which means that you’ll most likely lose them quickly.
- Final Push – ensures that Against the Odds is a much more reliable tool for escaping death by increasing damage and accuracy for your attacks while you are under its effects.
Until next time!
