Hello, all, When designing skills for a mod, I find one of the trickiest balancing points is cooldown timers. Too short and a skill becomes abusable, too long and a skill becomes useless. I'm hoping that this thread can be an open discussion regarding how cooldown timers should be used so that we can both have a bar to judge our mods when balancing them and give new modders a point of reference. Previously, I just tried to find a similar skill and assign a cooldown timer based on the relation (Is my skill stronger or weaker? Are they the same level? If the other skill has a mana cost, can I translate that into a cooldown?). As I examine cooldown skills more and more, I've been thinking of them in four categories: Cooldown Timer Length 1 to 10: Go-to skills. Things like Knightly Leap can be a focal point for your tactics, as you can probably use them twice in a multi-monster skirmish. 11 to 20: Contingency skills or helping hands. In dangerous non-zoo rooms, you get one use and it hopefully turns the tide. In a zoo, you'll get multiple uses, but they need to be for when you really need them. 21 to 50: Emergency skills. If you use it while wandering the dungeon, don't count on having it at the start of a zoo or dangerous non-zoo room. 50+: Either a non-combat skill (Level 5 Vegan) or panic button skills. Personally, I think of these like healing potions: I often delay using them as long as possible in case the situation gets worse, then after I'm dead I regret not using them sooner. What are your thoughts? What goes through your mind when assigning a cooldown timer?
I think of them in D&D 4.0 abilities. You got your "at-will" abilities (cooldown 1-7), your "per combat" skills (cooldown 8-40), and your "per hour" skills (40-80), and your "per day" skills (80+). When I'm designing a cooldown skill, I think of how often per each combat I think the skill should be usable. If the answer is "several", I assign it "at-will" status. If the answer is "one", it gets a "per combat" cooldown. If the answer is "not every combat, but regularly", get gets a "per hour" designation. If the answer is "once or twice per floor", it goes up to "per day". Within each category, it varies based upon power level and flavor text. Thus, Qi Blast is on the high end of "at will", because it should be used on basically every wandering monster you see, but Kiaido is in the middle of "at will" because it should be used on basically every monster you see. Spirit Bomb is at the high end of "per day", because it's intended to be a very powerful skill for a Warrior to have handy -- powerful enough that you want to save it for the nastiest horde you expect to meet in the near future.
I can say that you are right, but it still depends on the skill itself, too. We can begin with assigning our skills to one of the few timer length categories, but the most difficult thing is fine-tuning them, since sometimes changing the cooldown by 3 or 4 points can change the skill from abusable to obsolete, or vice versa.
The one released skill with cooldowns that I have is geology. Stone Fist has its cooldown at 6 because I wanted it to be able to be cast very frequently, but not on every monster you meet, just the few that might be a problem. Seismic Uppercut has a cooldown of 12. Originally I had this significantly higher, as it was more for that one mage monster in the back than general combat. But with that, it became rather useless, but more importantly the tree felt weak because it gave a bunch of long cooldown skills. The skill itself isn't that powerful, it's essentially a ranged melee attack. So then I moved it down to 12 because you can use it maybe once unless the combat is very long. Then you can always use it to pick off a straggler in the back, or stun a dangerous enemy. Petrification is 90 because it's an oh shit button and boss slayer. It has the utility of self-petrification as well as the large damage and long paralyze on an enemy. And Earthquake is a massive aoe melee attack, it deserves it's cooldown (which I forget but I believe is 128) because simply said its only real purpose is for zoos and multiple hordes. It may be up more often, but then it can work as an additional escape because of the large damage and aoe stun. The point is is that making the cooldowns they weren't picked based on the strength. They were picked based on their intended purposes and their cooldowns made appropriate to those, a bit shorter though.
Here's my two cents, in game skills like Venomous Infusion is damn near useless with a cooldown of 80, lasting 3 attacks. Granting 3 toxic damage for 3 hits with such a long cooldown makes the skill nearly unusable. It's a pre-combat skill, one where you set up yourself before opening doors, encoutering a mob, or summoning a named monster, and you can't really do that when the cooldown is more like 4-5 times a floor, unless you intentionally wait for the cooldown, which is silly. Though the passive debuff is nice, the fact that you'll only hit between 1 to 3 targets at most, it's unreliable and you may accidentally use it on a roaming monster instead. Cooldown should be significantly reduced to encourage use, and either up the amount of hits and keep the skill low leveled, or buff the damage and allow the debuff to stack
I would have to say that any skill with a cooldown over 50 should not be a damage-dealing skill, unless it is the equivalent of a Squid Bolt, doubly so if it's a player-centered radial AoE, triply so if it's self-damaging or debuffing. Yes, Essence, that does mean I have issues with Spirit Bomb . My reasons are simple - a high cooldown means you're going to use it at most twice a floor as noted. A player-centered radial AoE means that unless you're playing VERY risky, you're going to catch at most a small handful of critters - as many have noted, being surrounded in Dredmor is tantamount to having no name and a mohawk while Kenshiro is in town yet being surrounded is the only way to make the best use of such a skill. So you either have to pick up a pair of teleport skills - one to get in, one to get out - or willingly let yourself get surrounded so you conserve your ONE teleport skill. And self-damage is always risky, doubly so when surrounded. For all that complication and risk, the player should get a "WHOA!" moment when they fire it off. Now, Final Stand is the exact opposite - I don't mind the long cooldown, because its intent is to chokepoint up, tank up, and watch the mass of critters dash themselves to pieces on your bulwark. it doesn't require extreme positioning, it doesn't lose utility when only one critter can reach you, and it doesn't increase the risk factor - indeed, it's the precise opposite in every way of Spirit Bomb. Any buff skill should have a cooldown AT MOST twice its duration, whether that duration is ablatives or an actual countdown. Exceptions are self-heals - up to 4x is acceptable for them, making the heal something you're not afraid to use lest it be gone when you need it, but not so frequent you can just spam. Ranged attacks shouldn't have a cooldown below 6-7, nor above 10-12, unless they fall into a category above - not enough to spam, but not so much you forget you have it. And anything that creates objects should either make a small amount and have a VERY low cooldown - or make a TON at once and have a 1-per multiple floors cooldown. Lucky Pick I always mod to give 600 picks - and have an 8999 cooldown, mathematically identical to using the "standard" Lucky Pick 200 times including 199 "dead" turns to account for the 199 turns that would be used using it. Minimize tedium without taking the cost away. Just my .02.
Agreed. I've actually modded my own own Lucky Pick to give 10x, but increase cooldown by 10x just to reduce tedium. As for other skills, I've been modding skills from Piracy and Venomous Infusion amongst other cooldown spells to make them worth using.
