Come Bitch About Skills! [Skills Rebalance Brainstorming]

Silly idea pandering to the geological part of Leylines--what if, a spellmine that, when enemies step on it, their MP is drained and given to you? And if you step on it, it explodes.
It's themed, but it might not fix anything; still, it's up there.

 

I don't know that enemies actually have MP.

 

They don't, but MP Drain works anyway. Though it's mostly a flavor thing. :V

 

Food for thought and a few short references.

Nikolai on Leylines (first 3 posts on the page after the Egyptian Magic discussion allready had quite a few pages), check both his posts on the page, I agree with this. The wtf mode comparison is really spot on from my expiriences with well supported mages.

Also Bergstrom on the current meta from the armor rebalance thread:

Allthough he did say that the only stat he cares about in the late game as a wizard is max mana, so we may be undevaluing Magic Training (but since that can come from sagacity, I still like your Magic Training ideas).

And as for:

You really don't play wizards enough

Yes, TT can replenish mana as you go, I still waltz up to dreadmor by: put TT on me - open door - cast Tenebrous Rift/Sandstorms/My Chemical Explosion/Misamatic Putrefaction several squares in front of me - hit spacebar a lot - collect loot - move to next door. It's not about not having the ability to move and regen mana, it's about not walking into your own AoE. And no, I don't use teleports, AoE is pretty much good enough on its own if you know the AoE radius. With Leylines you can use it to kill single targets, pretty much.

This is why I suggested that the debuff summon nasty crap on you unless you drink up - whatever AoE you are using is going to clear any threats, this way you'd still get to fight something or be required to move. Or you'd have to drink up (check for certain level of drunkenness to remove debuff before it hits?) and thus get use out of booze. Technicaly, being hit with the nasty blink debuff which can land you in your AoE would be a real dick move, and the booze thing would be more of a failsafe so you don't summon tough badguys on youself in the early game.

Also, Blood Magic has the same problem as Ley Lines - people pick it up for the first level and fix almost any mana issues they might have, especially if paired wih Ley or Magic Training. Rewarding instant mana for a kill in a game where you both can't get instant mana easily and you can kill multiple monstes with on click really does obsolete booze ^^

 

Well, sort of. The point is that Thaumaturgic Tap can be used every so often to reliably regenerate a rather considerable amount of mana. Any outright nerf would either not matter or make it too weak, but adding something that stops it from being too reliable without decreasing its effect visibly will make it somewhat less "abusable".

And it's just one extra trigger, which does not make it that much complicated.

Sure, why not. Haywire makes sense too.

Then dumb it down and put it into the game like that. My version would take 7 or 8 sub-spells total so I don't think it's that complicated. I mean, really, it might sound complicated but effects like that aren't anything big, and making the mine restore a set amount of health instead of a constantly growing one will make it more "casual" if that is what you want there.

Alternatively, you can propose something else.

 

But Certamen Circle doesn't gives you 1 mp/turn. It gives you 8 mp regain. That's useless if you've got up Extra Planar Concentration, since that gives 13 mana regain. If you want to toss on some other drawbacks, like reduced block, that would be fine, but the mana regain should really just be an independent DoT of +1 mana per turn.

 

I think maybe it was ment to offset potential penalties for armor you'd be putting on, for a fight in a certain spot.

 

Then Extra Planar Concentration should be swapping its 13 mana regain for an extra 1 mana per turn and maybe a slightly larger reduction to block/dodge/counter than it currently gives. Anything to stop them from being less potent when used together.

 

...but that's exactly the point -- to keep them from effectively stacking.

 

Well, I guess if that's what you want, then carry on then.

 

The point here is that if Extraplanar Concentration is already making a mockery of the Mana Regen stat and mana management in general, you don't want to add to that. Right?

 

I'd prefer a version where both were balanced when taken into account together.but in a way that they worked well together, instead of one being made partially redundant by the other. I've never found Extraplanar Concentration to be all that good actually. It only averages .57 mana a turn (less if you're starting with some mana regain) compared to Leyline's .8 mana a turn, and comes with all those downsides.

Also, I think The Red Exchange could stand to have a better exchange rate. Possibly even 1 to 1. I can't see myself ever wanting to give up 17 health just to get back 7 mana, and if I wanted to heal, the other options actually scale with my stats, and I'm pretty sure they're universally better than 17 mana per 7 health.

Which reminds me, I notice you didn't include stat gains in your plan, Are they the same as they are right now?

 

I didn't brainstorm stats, just ideas for skills. I'll add the stats in once I know what I want the skills to be.

And the more i think about it, the more I'm leaning away from The Red Exchange and more toward the wide-area turn-corpses-into-mana ability. I'll provide more detail on that in a bit.

 

If assassination is no longer using magic power for its capstone, should daggers be similarly changed?

 

Well, if you don't want it to be the way I proposed (then again, taking advice from me when you want to keep code user-friendly is tantamount to suicide), then changing corpses into mana is a good capstone.

 

Capstone for what...? Magic Training?
When we have Blood Magic?

 

For Blood Magic. That is the one we were talking about in the first place (the one about changing corpses to mana is what he plans to make its capstone in place of his previous idea, the "Red Exchange").

 

Sorry, my bad, thank you. Things have been found.

 

Everyone loves exploding corpse.
We need more spells that explode corpses.
Btw, why corpus burst deal damage to the corpse?

Code:

<spell name="Corpus Burst" type="targetcorpse" icon="skills/spells/corpus_burst32.png" wand="0">
  <description text="This spell makes corpses explode! Who doesn't like exploding corpses? ... Pretty much everyone, as it happens." />
  <requirements mp="12" savvyBonus="0.23" mincost="4" />
  <effect type="damage" blasting="20" blastingF="0.29" toxic="8" toxicF="0.16" putrefying="4" putrefyingF="0.15" />
  <effect type="trigger" spell="Corpse Blast" />
  <effect type="trigger" spell="Poison Cloud 1" />
  <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/corpus_burst/corpus_burst" frames="7" framerate="100" sfx="darkmagic" centerEffect="1"/>
  <ai hint="corpse"/>
  </spell>
<spell name="Corpse Blast" type="template" templateID="20" anchored="0">
    <effect type="damage" blasting="10" blastingF="0.22" toxic="3" toxicF="0.18" putrefying="1" putrefyingF="0.10" affectscaster="1" />
    <anim sprite="sprites/sfx/corpse_hit_mini/corpse_hit_mini" frames="4" framerate="100" sfx="blast" />
  </spell>

Is this balances, since the damage is dealed to no one? Or is it targeted also to the center tile under the corpse?

 

It deals damage to the tile on which the corpse lies. So anything that stands on the corpse ought to be hit with that.

Haven't had time to check now (yay for having to go to the store because I ran out of tea that is not in tea bags), but it depends on what tier is it supposed to be for in the end.