Transmuter

[Darvin]

The poor transmuter has been left in his current state for a while, but the perpetual questing initiative has reminded me that he really does need attention... because he really doesn't make much sense for anyone except elves, and is horrifically bad for dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and goblins.

The big problem is that most races don't go crazy on conversion. At a certain point for gnomes and halflings, making more healing or mana potions matters little and your goal becomes to leverage the potions you already have better. Same goes for dwarves and HP and goblins and XP, you want to have a good range of abilities to utilize your superior durability and additional level-ups. The advantages of the Transmuter simply aren't worth having disadvantages for these races, since their real focus is getting other benefits in place to better utilize their conversion bonuses. The class would probably be weak for these races even without any penalties whatsoever.

Humans and Orcs, on the other hand, can get away with playing transmuter since focusing on attack damage with total abandon is a viable approach in DD. Unfortunately, there's already a class that does this much better and without having to put in additional effort; it's called the rogue. As a result, human and orc transmuters are pure novelties and basically just rogues with higher HP, but lower MP and no dodge and no first strike and a requirement to explore most of the map before their class feature actually kicks in.

The only race that makes actual sense for Transmuters currently is the elf, which can accumulate massive quantities of mana that other classes simply could never dream of. This can be combo'd off of schadenfreude potions, regular mana for its class feature. It's still a lot of work to get this operational, and he has a hard time with XP-catapults, but it does work and achieve something other classes can't (something that cannot be said of other varieties of transmuter). Given this entire class focuses around racial variability, but only functions in any meaningful way for one race, leads me to conclude that this iteration of transmuter is broken.

I hate to say "try again" on a class that's been through as many iterations as the Transmuter has, but this one just isn't working.

[Fran]

I think you're right, but maybe it would be best if we tossed some ideas around how a new transmuter could work to help the devs?

I'd like to play something along those lines:

EARTH LORE: Grants 5% extra Conversion value per level.
EARTH MASTERY: Conversion of an item with at least 20 CP gives you First Strike and Might
EARTH FOCUS: Immune to corrosion

The point would be having to decide wether to use the power boost early in exchange for lost conversion value later or saving ressources for a big boost at the end but an weaker early game. That would be interesting for every race:
Goblins can spike their strength when they level up even more or get more exp this way.
Humans / Orcs / Elfs can decide between sacrificing lasting power against spiking damage.
Gnomes and Halflings can time their conversions to a convenient time to get the most out of it.
Weakening the class isn't the right way as darwin mentioned already, but giving him corrosion immunity makes him somewhat unique as this is exclusive to him and gets him more ressources early on.

[Bloggorus]

[The Avatar]

I agree, I have a halfling Transmuter in Berserker Camp and I'm not even going to waste my time. It is worthless to be anything but an Orc or Elf (I say Orc because I beat DI with one).

[Darvin]

Why would you play Orc Transmuter when you can play an Orc Rogue?

Supposing 900 CP versus 1800 CP, a level 7 Orc Rogue will have 57 base attack, and the Orc Transmuter will have 79 base attack. In order for the Transmuter to have more attack power, you'd need to accumulate +100% attack bonus on top of boosters, and if you gain more levels then the Orc Rogue is further advantaged. And then you have to account for dodge and first strike.

Orc and Human transmuters work don't get me wrong, but they're just inferior Rogues that get fewer class features and have to work hard to make their class features actually function.

[Mister Bile]

It doesn't help that even when they work, Transmuters just seem more boring... it's more like doubling down on your race's ability at the cost of picking a real class... while losing initial stats to boot.

[The Avatar]

I used a Transmuter because it was the only class I hadn't beaten DI with...

Anyways, there really is no good reason to use a transmuter beyond having to for a quest or to beat a dungeon with all classes. Also, I don't know about other people, but I don't enjoy the transmuter. As a concept, he is probably the most boring thing in DD.

[Fran]

[The Avatar]

How about this:

EARTH LORE: Instead of losing all levels of stoneskin when attacks, it just halves the resistances.
EARTH MASTERY: Stoneskin give you an extra 20% of both resistances per level.
EARTH FOCUS: Start with ENDISWALL. Immune to Curse.

Now it is all focused around stoneskin and resists. It would need to be a little stronger than this, and I'm open to suggestions on buffs, but it is cool premise to me.

[Fran]