Mastery idea; Ritual

[yerkyerk]

I once made a few threads about fake TQ masteries on tq.net, Ritual was one of them. I thought it'd be fun to share my ideas on this mastery, so I revised it and now posted it here. I tried to come up with skills that offer new ways of dealing with enemies (when compared to the TQ masteries) and are thematically fitting in a hybrid Ritual mastery. I have no illusions that this will make it into GD, but I thought it'd be fun to discuss this mastery and perhaps some ideas can be used for Grim Dawn. Note that I adjusted a bunch of skills to fit, or simply straight-out copied them from others (I've given reference when I did).
It doesn’t have 20 skills, but some skills can be split up (at least 3 for three different curses) and passives can be added for certain skills. It also allows some room for new ideas.

Ritual
Ritual is a hybrid mastery, a practitioner of this mastery is referred to as a Cultist. Some would call the Cultist a lunatic, in truth he’s driven by an inexplicable zeal. He sacrifices blood and sanity in his religious fervors; his own followers nor himself excluded.

Sacrifice (active)
The Cultists’ basic attack (replaces the standard attack). Increases attack speed and max attack speed while pounding away at enemies (works as TQ’s onslaught). Also, when killing an enemy with this attack while in the vicinity of an Altar, the sacrifice will be accepted, restoring an x% amount of the monsters life onto the Cultist.

Altar (summon)
The Cultist sets up an altar, which allows him to regenerate his mana if he remains close to it. In addition, any monster that is killed near the Altar with the sacrifice skill, will return an x% amount of life to the killer. If the altar is destroyed, the Cultist will lose all his current mana.

Mystification (passive)
An upgrade for the Altar skill; this makes the creatures in the vicinity of the Altar question their allegiances, causing them to attack everything in their path. They also loose x% total resistance and gain x% total speed.

Zealot (passive)
The cultist gets more attack- and runspeed if his health gets lower.

Berserker (activated)
The cultist goes in a rage and transforms his defensive abilities into offensive abilities. Preferably changing his body into a giant hulk-like for the duration of the skill.

Blood Mana (activated)
This mode allows the cultist to use health instead of energy(/rage) to perform spells. Will be auto-deactivated when health gets below a certain threshold.

Summon Minions (summon)
Summons weak, raving gremlin-like minions who scream a lot and throw themselves at their enemies. Will pick up (specific) white items in their path and equip them. (Anyone been playing Overlord?).

Suicide Minions (active)
The Cultist arms one of his pets with a bomb, which will obliterate the pet after a few seconds and cause a huge radius of explosive damage.

Ritual (active)
The cultist goes in a trance and lifts up and damages all enemies in a circle. The damage dealt will be decided by str, dex or int - whichever is highest. The circle contains hieroglyphs and runes, which will light up. The cultist is lifted in the sky, just as his enemies. (The skill is similar too and inspired by Fable's Divine Wrath and Unholy spells, with a difference in the animation that the cultist also floats, for added awesomeness). Unlike in Fable (which had preset duration and damage iirc), the skill will only stop once the player releases the skill-button, or when all energy/mana is depleted. Enemies that step in after the activation of the circle will not be affected. Also, it’s an energy hog..

Living Sacrifice (active)
Enslaves an enemy, which will than serve as the Cultists’ pet. It works like “Enslave Spirit” in TQ, but with the added perk that the enslaved enemy will slowly die, channeling his health to the Cultists’, forming the enslaved spirit into a walking health fountain. (got this idea from kir4)

Curses (active)
The Cultist curses his enemies, which will weaken them, lower their resistances, allow the cursed creature to donate its lifeforce (%health stolen per hit). Radius and effectiveness increase on leveling. Only one curse can be active at any time on a monster (Diablo 2 necromancer curses).

Soul Burn (active)
Depletes mana/rage from enemies in a wide area around the Cultist and also depletes the mana/rage from the Cultist in a 1:1 basis. Monsters whose mana/rage is depleted will show a blue flame combustion and take damage from the amount of mana/rage burned.
This can instantly deplete all the Cultists mana and does not work with the Blood Mana skill.

[Coridan]

I think this is a great mastery idea! I can already picture builds in my mind and how one would play them. I'm curious to see what Crate will think.

I have a question about how Living Sacrifice would work. Would the Cultist have the ability to turn the automatic life leech off? What if he wanted to keep the pet around for a while longer, or his life bar is full. Maybe make the life leech an active skill?

[yerkyerk]

No, the Living Sacrifice would have the same restrictions as "Enslave Spirit" in TQ (although instead of only being usable on monsters of your character level +5, I'd let it scale up on investment). The enemy would be released after some time (which increases if points are spent in the skill), so you'd want to have it as damaged as possible.

[TheRani]

Even this mastery made it into the game, I would never use it. I have trouble envisioning a person who sacrifices victims on an altar as a hero. I'd have more fun questing to destroy such people, rather than playing one.

[yerkyerk]

It's a bit of a dark, twisted fellow, isn't it? But that was the intention. The remainder of humanity is living in a dark, grim world, where survival has meaning and righteousness is rare. This allows for such people to rise; and even be hailed as heroes, as long as they're fighting on the side of humanity.

As I said though, I have no illusions that this will make it into the game though. Unless I'd mod it in myself, but that'd be too much work. At least I enjoy writing it :)

[karmacappa]

Some people do enjoy playing less than sterling characters. Also, there are a lot of characters in fiction and non-fiction who use less than perfectly proper methods, but aren't actually bad people.

It's best to have a range of characters, some lighter, some darker, to give people options. For instance, when I played the original Knights of the Old Republic, I much preferred HK-47 to Bastila. Sometimes doing the right thing just requires a droid that refers to people as "disgusting meatbags".

"Recitation: Yes, as I said, I am an assassin droid. It is my primary function to burn holes through meatbags that you wish removed from the galaxy… Master. Oh, how I hate that term."
―HK-47

[eisprinzessin]

The remainder of humanity is living in a dark, grim world, where survival has meaning and righteousness is rare. This allows for such people to riseIf (false ;)) religion has its place on Cairn, then the Cultist fits in. Desperate commoners seeking his protection if not even power over less ambitious folk. Certainly an evil mastery, but is it sensible to play down evil (e.g. popular vampires)? On the other hand GD will be criticised for allowing to play evil.

[Malpheas]

Kinda interesting, yerk. Did you ever play M:TG?

[yerkyerk]

Nah, never played Magic the Gathering. Heh, I never used to have friends that liked that kind of stuff, so didn't bother trying it out. Not really as popular nor available here either.
If (false ) religion has its place on Cairn, then the Cultist fits in. Desperate commoners seeking his protection if not even power over less ambitious folk. Certainly an evil mastery, but is it sensible to play down evil (e.g. popular vampires)? On the other hand GD will be criticised for allowing to play evil.
In desperate times people look up for answers. Alternatively, they create their own idols to look up to.
At least he's fighting for the right cause, even though his ways might be a bit.. unorthodox. But necromancers, undead warriors, dark priests etc.. are commonplace in this genre (e.g. Sacred 2, Diablo 2).

[eisprinzessin]

Yes, I was a bit extreme and made your Cultist an antagonist. An ambivalent class is much appreciated.

[dunno]

I quite like trap setting skills. I think being able to inscribe glyphs on the ground that would do things like stun or set aflame enemies that get too close to them would be in flavour for this mastery.

[yerkyerk]

True, that'd fit rather nicely. Although I never found myself using mechanisms that took time moving backward..
Just want to push on :)