Especially given that his one self-stress-heal means doing no damage in a turn in a game where it's best to end fights in two or three, it'd be great if we could get a little more damage potential from his human form. Maybe up the bleed damage and direct damage for Bat Swarm (the customization I've added, along with adding extra stress heal to the Bat Form move?)

My initial impressions are that his human form isn't worthwhile to use. Flock of Bats and Obey are not powerful enough to need a stress penalty. Shadowplay, on the other hand, has too big a penalty.

Outside of boss fights, Flock of bats has less utility than a normal mark. Most enemies won't survive longer than 3 rounds with a mark on them and the requirement of an active bleed effect means that, unlike the other marks in the game, this one can actually fail to hit. When going into a boss fight (and paired with a Houndmaster), the stress is neglible since you're only going to use it once and Houndmaster will make sure it stays on.

Obey! is just a reverse Uppercut. It has less stun chance (more valuable than move chance) and damage in exchange for more accuracy and range. It doesn't have any special qualtiies that would require a stress penalty to balance it.

Shadowplay is his only good human skill, but I hesitate to even use it. He could take anywhere between 0 to 30+ stress depending on how the AI wants to attack. I'd accept a higher stress penalty if it meant it was on only once on use.

If I may make a quick suggestion, why not remove the stress penalties from Flock of Bats and Obey and just increase Shadowplay's penalty to 20 stress on use? It would match Soulfeast's bonus and give players a way to quickly buff the skill.

As for his Strigoi form, his Lurking Flight is pretty mediocore. Characters like Bounty Hunter and Houndmaster instantly benefit from his Flock of Bats, but he has to spend a turn so he can get benefits? Graverobber's Shadow Fade gives more damage unconditionally. The stress healing is pretty neglible when you consider that you can't spam this move.

If I may make another quick suggestion, a class like him, that stresses himself and gains benefits from it, could use a unique, less detrimental affliction. Especially since he has weak stress healing options.

Also, his camping skill "Children of the Night" needs a change. I don't know what change, but its current "benefits" are offset by the penalties of low light (one of them being +30% Stress)

The speed buff from the tranformation buff is reasonable but the dodge buff is too weak to be relevant and he cant stack dodge so buffing it wont work, how about replacing the small dodge buff with Lurking Flight's buff so he can instantly benefit from his mark ( at his current state he need too much set up in order to deal DMG when other heroes only needs a mark ) and since the Strigoi doesnt stress himself he can recharge that buff by using Lurking Flight after the buff is gone and then spamming soulfeast again, and in order to prevent Lurking Flight from being abused it should be usable from the 1 position only.

So it will go like this : Flock of Bats -> Transform -> Soulfeast until he moves to the 1 position -> Lurking Flight -> Soulfeast and repeat .

The HP heal from Soulfeast is too weak to be relevant, it should be buffed a little bit.

Lurking Flight is fine.

Echolocation is a good skill.

Shadowplay is really strong but its balaced by the amount of stress its cause.

Obey should be a strong stun, at it current state its not worth the stress when other heroes can do the same.

Flock of Bats is fine if you combine it with Midnight Orb.

Conclusion: Staying as the human form is too punishing, if the strigoi have a better stress healing options it could be solved as his biggest problem is controling his own stress at the human form, i suggest making Soulfeast heal a little bif of stress.

Edit: you may have noticed that my post have been changed, well thats because i am getting better at using him and i admit i judged him too fast but despite being good i still believe some of his skills need to be buffed.

Flock of Bats is a decent marking ability, but the main problem with it is the fact it works ONLY when enemy has a low enough bleed resist and the mark duration is basically the same as with any other class. I'd suggest giving this ability both weak bleed and blight for a long duration (about 4 rounds, maybe starting with 2 but increasing with ability level).
Obey is kind of weak to be honest. Just buffing the stun chance and giving a bigger stress penalty would make sense in my opinion.
Shadowplay is alright.
As it has already been said before, transformation should offer a buff for more damage against marked targets.
Soulfeast should heal stress instead of HP, just to help deal with stress penalty of human form skills.
Lurking flight should also mark an enemy for about 2 rounds.
Echolocation should offer a strong buff to damage against marked enemies but also increase received stress damage.
That's just how I'd like to see this class, because currently it feels a bit underpowered to me, but the concept is obviously amazing.

Thanls for your feedback so far !
We adressed some of the points check the Patchnotes.
We will wait for more detailed Feedback before we make mechanical changes. The mod is only a day old and we wait for people to have played it on all levels and got some expirience with it.
We would like to see you return here once you played a little bit more especially in later dungeons.

The class is very interesting and it is really well done !
I just have one thing to say.
The textures fits quite well the universe of DD but they are too "smooth" maybe they need to be more unperfect or darker, juste few details that would make the character fit perfectly

The new changes really help, but I'd love there to be more incentive to use Lurking Flight (my guess being by upping the damage v. marked to more like 80-120% scaling (given that it means a transformation action, using a turn to deal no damage, and either another class marking a target or it being round 3 and your Flock of Bats target being alive, I'd love for post-Flight Soulfeast to really deadly to be worth the setup), and also think it'd be interesting to have Obey! deal a debuff to Acc-Dodge (I modded the new version to have a 5-10 scaling debuff at the same chance as the stun, as well as 2 extra points of stress). I think it's a nice bonus effect, not particularly major (being that an acc debuff doesn't matter much if you're stunned) but feeling rewarding when it means a attack dodged, and models that any psychic manipulation that makes you rush forward and be potentially enthralled for a moment (the stun) would also throw you off your game physically, making more mistakes because of interrupted concentration.

(all these things that sound like complaints aside, well, I've got five Spawns of Darkness and an endorsement for a reason, lol.)

I spent some more time playing with him after the changes. Unfortunately, the more time I spent with him, the more issues I saw with him. Note that this won't be a list of all issues I have with him, just the most prominent or obvious ones I've encountered. Also, note: When I say "base" for any stat, I mean the stat when the character is fully upgraded (and not taking trinkets or quirks into accounts)

1) He needs better SPD. He is slower than a Bounty Hunter/Houndmaster and the Arbalest matches him in SPD. For a "... a bulky supporter in his human form, marking and stunning, to setup for his allies", if he can't outspeed his own allies, he can't do any setups for them. He also needs better SPD if you want him to be a stunner. Stuns are very effective during the first round of combat and the easiest (and most important, imo) enemies to stun all have high SPD.

Suggestion: Increase his base SPD to 8 or 9. Remove the SPD buff from his Strigoi form if necessary.

2) I'm not sure if this is for thematic reasons, but his trap resist seems excessively low. He has 20% Trap Resist base. In the game, the lowest Trap Resist belongs to the Flagellant at 60% base. If you want him to be a bad at disarming, you should just set it to 60% or 70%. It accomplishes the same goal, but won't be as out-of-place.

3) His Stress mechanics are not worth dealing with. At 80 Stress (Which is 1 "Stressful Incantation" away from an affliction, and enemies prioritize characters with high stress) his Soulfeast has a total of 22% CRT. This is only above average for high-powered attacks. For comparison, Hellion has 17% CRT for "Wicked Hack" and "Iron Swan"; Crusader, 18% for "Holy Lance"; Abomination, 15% for "Rage"; Shieldbreaker, 20% for "Pierce". I'm not going to consider post-100 bonuses because allowing your character to get close to Heart Attack threshold is a bad idea.

Suggestion: Increase Soulfeast CRT mod so that it is only slighly below average in comparison to those moves (~15%?), but cap out the bonus at 100 stress. If he get bonuses for being "damaged", then those bonuses should be to surpass your average skill in effectiveness, not to be equal to them.

4) Soulfeast is, frankly, terrible for a "beast form" skill. At full power (100% HP), Soulfeast does 12-18 DMG, which is just about the damage Crusader does with "Holy Lance" (10-19). Abomination's "Rage" deals 14-25 (accounting for the Transform buff) without any requirements. Taking Armor Piercing into account, it's...good. But that is in an ideal scenario. At 50% HP, it does 8-12 which is mediocore at best. Below 50%, it is borderline useless since it has low ACC, low DMG and low healing. I get that you want the move to have two purposes (DMG + Healing), but the way it is right now, it's not very good at doing either.

Suggestion: Give this skill a flat +50% DMG Mod and lower the healing to 1 HP. Below 50% HP, debuff its DMG and buff the healing. The reason I suggest giving it a flat +50% DMG Mod is because this way it can stack multiplicatively with trinkets and buffs, rather than additively

5) Voivode should not have to use "Lurking Flight" to get bonuses against Bleeding/Marking. None of the characters that can benefit from marks do this (Bounty Hunter, Houndmaster, Arbalest, etc.) and neither does the Graverobber, who benefits against Blighted. The fact he has to do this just puts him at a disadvantage against them.

6) The Vestal-restriction is completely unnecessary. I don't see any insane interactions those two may have. Is it because she can heal him? Crusader and Occultist can too. Is it thematic, because she is religious? So are Crusaders, Lepers and Flagellants. You already have soft-restrictions with religious characters in the form of his camping skills.

Heyo Seignar, thanks for your detailed feedback. I will give you some dev context you might have overlooked .

1)Heres is a list of the lvl 5 Speeds of Stunners

PD 9
Abom 9
Occ 8
Hound 7
Bounty 7
Vestal 6
Hellion 6
Voivode 5
MMA 5

Regariding the versatiliity the voivode brings, Guard stun and Mark with no opportunity cost to equip them all at the same time, a low speed is justifiable.
Another very important thing is shadowplay. Giving him 9 Speed (leve of speedy characters like jester pd etc) would mean he outspeeds any teammate and can permaprotect his team without windows of risk , he should not be better than the hound in that regard.
Also a slow speed means, that his guard and riposte last comparably longer. Also the transition of a low speed noble human and a fast nocturnal predator should be reflected in this stat.

We will adress his base speed a bit by 2 points to enable him Marking before Arb and BH without compromising the design to much.

2) Yes he is a noble and refuses to do such mundane tasks.
We will reduce th Trap resist by 20 so that it stays at 0 at all levels and wont stand out within his own level progression.

3)Ok there are very valid parts parts in that argumentation but some blended out detail.
In general:
3.1)
The possibility of virtues exist, making a virtued high stress Voivode exell.
His camp Skills and Trinket enable a "virtue voivode" build very well.

3.2)
The game wont stop as you please and leave you at you 80 Stress sweetspot, so not considering post 100 Stress bonuses is the wrong way to tackle it. Also note the very high crit modifier on lurking flight.
A 80 Stress Voivode at level 5 has a Crit chance of 22% and 53% With Flight Buffs 62 with CRT effect Buffs
A 140 Stress Voivode has already 34% and 64% with buffs 72 with CRT%effect buffs

He will crit in the high stress levels almost any time consecutivly, reducing his stress with the
Crits.

We might adress the base crit of this skill, but keep its identity as high risk high reward ability.


I will quickly compare the mentioned abilities to the Voivode Traits.

Crusader
High base Dmg very low Speed
Holy Lance is usable from an uncomfortable position, no Traits to shuffle self
No aditional traits or Effect (exept Bonus DMG vs Unholy)
Class cannot Buff base Dmg


Voivode
Low base Dmg very high Speed (in batform)
Feast is usable from almost any position and has traits to shuffle self
Can scale up in damage, can Crit Scale
Tremedous Buff potential from Lurking Flight
Heals Self (Therefore an aitional Stressheal Source)


The Raw damage might be (sometimes) inferior to lance.
The overall usability of the skill make sthis skill better/ on par with crusader in this regards
//-------------------------------------------
Abom
High base Dmg very high base Speed
No aditional traits or Effect
Class cannot Buff Dmg
No Armor Piercing

Voivode
Low base Dmg Very high Speed
Can scale up in damage, can further crit scale
Tremedous Buff potential from Soulfeast
Heals Self
Armor Piercing

Voivode Outspeeds an Abomination once he transforms. Abom has more raw Damage,
Voivode has more SPD and peak potential.
I would agree that rage is the better ability to "go for" we might adress this
by incresing either heal or base damage.

//-------------------------------------------
Hellion
Very High base Dmg low base Speed
No additional traits or Effect
Iron Swan is very conditional
Buff Potential from Adrenaline Surge
Debuff Potential From Bleed Out etc ...
No Armor Piercing

Voivode
Low base Dmg very high Speed
Can scale up in damage, can further crit scale
Tremedous Buff potential from Lurking Flight
Heals Self
Armor Piercing
Overall better hit pattern

Hellion is a designated Damage Dealer and need to invest in 2 abilities to cover 3 Targets.
Again the raw base damage of the hellion is superior, but the overall utitlity and maximum potential of the Voivode is higher.
//---------------------------------------
We will either adress the Healing or the Base Damage in that regard (or both) since Healing directly translates into Damage. We had a test version with higher base damage but that ended up very op together with trinkets and buffs


5) "Voivode should not have to use "Lurking Flight" to get bonuses against Bleeding/Marking. None of the characters that can benefit from marks do this (Bounty Hunter, Houndmaster, Arbalest, etc.) and neither does the Graverobber, who benefits against Blighted. The fact he has to do this just puts him at a disadvantage against them."

You are evaluating the lurking flight and the feast separate from one another comparing them to base skills wich are familiar to you. The thing with Voivodes second form is that the set needs to be under stoodas a whole instead of 3 abilities. It is different but not inherently disadvantageous only, because its different.

Yes Arb BH etc can directly benefit from Mark. But their Skils wich do so do nothing exept that and They cannot mark on Demand Soulfeast has so many traits that a flat Mark Bonus would be strictly insulting regarding balance. A normal mark class would consume 2 rounds to get mark synergy (marking + atacking) and 3 rounds to get the full benefit (marking atacking twice) most enemys wont even see the second attack, since they die earlier.

Voivode needs the same amount of rounds
Imagine: Lurking Flight --> Echo + Atack -> Echo + Attack
And this can be spread across multiple targets, by bringing the aditional benefits of
Stressheal, increased Speed, Healing and a very tremendous Buff Amount over 2 rounds (instead of robbers one round boost on shadow fade)

Also a last thing.
His crit buff is +4%Crt vs Bleeding +4% Crt vs Marked
When you crit something with flock of bats, you can transform the next turn and instantly benefit from that Bonus, its a small Bonus, but the bonus extends itselfs if you manage to crit.

6) Its a thematic design descision.

Hey there,

We toook some of the feedback into account and released a patch.
Please note when your suggestion didnt got handled it doesnt ean they arent valid or coonsidered.
We want to wait until we gathered more feedback before we make mechanical changes.
Any feedback so far was very helpful

I really like the art direction and theming of this class however he seems rather weak.

It's purely thematic, but I find it odd that a character based around darkness, evil and the stress that comes with tampering with it is most efficiently played by building them to become virtuous. If you play them in a way that makes them good enough to be on your team, you'll inevitably have to deal with the resolve check that comes with hanging around that dangerous and very targeted level, so gearing them up to increase their virtue chance - and thus able to be at high stress levels without penalty - seems practically required.

I can see the immense amount of effort put into this mod though, and I think it definitely shows in the results!

Hello, I want to start out that this mod looks fantastic and I love the art direction. But sadly, voivode himself seems a bit underpowered? The only skill in his human form that is really interesting, is his guard, but I think you should reduce the stress gained during counters from +7 to +4. His Obey skill is allright, but his flock of bats skill could use a bit more base dmg, atleast +2 or 3, since its hard to even use as a finisher. I think that the stress penalty for Obey and Bats are a little bit overkill, since the skills dont do enough, so I myself would either lower the stress gained a bit or buff them like I mentioned earlier. And now the transformation - this is the better part. I am kinda liking this one, the only thing I would change are that the initial transormation doesnt do any stress whatsoever, but does 5 rounds of horror instead of the current 4, or do it the other way around, have no horror but a little bit more of the initial stress. And his attack could once again do a bit more dmg, maybe like +2-4. Otherwise I am really liking this class and I will be looking into the future for any changes!

Heyo thank you for sharing your Feedback,
im am going to adress Flock of Bats a bit to give you further context on the power level of this skill.

1) So first of all, see its as a mark that can bleed not a bleed base attack that can mark.
Lets compare it to the base game Marks for that reason

We have

Arbalest - No DMG, High Acc, Dodge Debuff
Bounty Hunter - No DMG, High Acc, Prot Debuff
Bounty Hunter - Low DMG, Medium Acc, Low Crit, Pull 2
Houndmaster - No DMG, High Acc, Prot Debuff
Occultist - Low DMG, High Acc, High CRT , Dodge Debuff

All these have a default duration of 3

Voivode - Low Dmg, High Acc, High Crit, reliable Bleed , Ignore Guard

So fiirst of all by direct superficial comparison the skills shines amongst the mark skills.
The mark could be resisted, this is adressed by +10% base bleed value making it also a very reliable bleed compared to standart bleed atacks.
When a bleed Crits (wich is high likely with flock) the bleed duration is extended wich will also extend the mark duration further.
On top there comes voivodes own crit Buff "+15% DMG vs marked 6% CRT vs bleeding"
Buffing subsequent uses after a crit .
Scoring a crit also negates the stress taken by the skill to the greatest amount, due too self stressheal.
Also bringing the mark has no opportunity cost, that means it doesnt cost a skill slot like on common classes, since all skills are equipped at all time.

The skills ovrall versatility makes it in summary stronger than the base games mark skills, therefore that little bit of extra stress is totally justified.

2) The shadowplay Stress was already adressed in an earlier patch it is now 5 Stress per hit on the highest level. It is ddefinitivly no "go to" skill. It should be used carefully ince its power is very high.

3)
Soulfeast Power level was also adressed yesterday, it is now a bit more forgiving when you are at really low health. It has the potential do deal 150% base dmg at full health paired with DMG and crit modifiers from Lurking Fligh, so the skills base line is at a medium level.
Also the overall versatility of dealing Damage while also healing, has to come with some kind of downside.

Thanks for the overall feedback we are furtherly imroving the class and look for new feedback