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Deck Mode DOMINATION (Your guide to building a deck for PvP)

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Lum the Mad, Jul 22, 2014.

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  1. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Darkstarr, 30 seconds into the first Dev+ PvP test: Uh, guys? We haven't posted any instructions on how to build a deck yet.​
    Lum: NO! HAVEN'T! KILLED! ENOUGH! PLAYERS! YET!​

    So, one of the first things you will notice when drawing your sword is that combat is DIFFERENT. Specifically, the hotbar you normally have for combat skills is gone, its replacement is probably a lot smaller, and you have icons there you didn't want.

    Fear not. We'll fix this.

    Your first step is to select your skills, using the K key. This part is identical to what you're used to. Note, however, there is a new skill tree called Focus. This is important! Focus has new skills which control how your hotbar works. You are probably going to want some skill points in Focus, even if you want to ignore the deck system entirely. This is because the ability to lock skills into decks (Eidetic Memory) is in the Focus tree.

    [​IMG]

    You can use a hot bar with all locked skills (we call this "Dallas Mode" after a certain old-school developer) without any Focus skills, but they will use 50% more focus.

    There are some more changes in skills - they are actual skill trees now, so you have to purchase skills that are lower in a tree to purchase the higher level ones, and, most importantly for this, the benefit for the number of points you invest in a skill is listed on the skill tooltip. And in many cases, for the great majority of active skills, that benefit is simply that you can use more cards with that skill in your deck. (Innate skills that don't activate have other benefits.)

    The next step, then, is to actually build a deck. To do this, first hit the L key, to get a list of your active skills, and then the Y key to bring up the all-new deck builder interface. Click on "New Deck" first, and you should see this:

    [​IMG]

    First thing, you'll want to control the size of your deck. "Hand Size" shows you how many skills you'll have available in your hotbar (4 in this case). Note from the tooltip there is a focus skill you can invest in to improve this. In most cases, if you can't change something to the way you like, a tooltip will explain why. "Draw Speed" tells you how quickly your skills will be shuffled in. You want this to be fast. "Discard Speed" tells you how quickly your skills will be shuffled out if you don't use them. You probably want this to be slow. But maybe not. We'll go into the maybe-not in a moment. And finally, Linked Equipment is used to gate which skills can be used for your current buildout. You can't equip Blade skills if you have a mace equipped, for example.

    Now, drag from the skill list (the L window) the skills you want to use. You want this to be somewhat focused - you don't have an upper limit on how many skills to mix into your deck, but you probably want your favorite skills to come up more often. For example, you may want to have 5 copies of fireball, 5 copies of a heal spell, and 5 copies of a bludgeon skill that has a stun/knockback effect. Note that that is only 15 cards (or "runes" in our system) so you will be dealt "slugs" to bring your deck size up to a minimum of 20. Slugs are things that take up space in your hotbar and nothing else. You don't want slugs, so you will want at least 20 cards.

    Note that you can also have slugs mixed into your deck because of your equipment. Heavy armor makes you more sluggish... so have some slugs! You will see, in the tooltip for every piece of equipment, two new values - "fizzle chance" (if you wear heavy armor you probably won't be good at casting spells - melee skills are immune to fizzle) and number of slugs added. If you deck yourself out in full plate, you may get a lot of slugs. In that case, you want your shuffle out speed to be quicker to lose the slugs. See how this works?

    OK, you have a full deck. (You can rename it by clicking on the name, so you'll know what it is. You can and should have multiple decks.) Now, make sure it's equipped by bringing the deck builder back up, and click "Equip". You should see how many slugs it has (this is just due to deck size, not equipment) and that it's Equipped.

    [​IMG]

    Now, when you draw your sword, you will see your skills added into your hotbar. Note that you can see in the slug tooltip why you have that slug. I'm wearing plate, so I have a lot of slugs.

    Some final notes before you go off to kill people:

    - Why are you going to all this trouble? Hint: note that you no longer have skill cooldowns...
    - Hate this system entirely? Lock in your skills, and be old-school with your hotbar.
    - Sheathe your weapon to regain health and focus. Running around with your sword out will cause you to regen much slower.
    - Try lots of builds! Some are probably horribly broken and will let you kill people easier!
    - To target yourself to cast a heal spell, hit F1. Note that summons like Fire Elemental also require that you have yourself targeted.
    - The first skill in Focus is Higher Consciousness, which lets you have more than 4 hotbar slots. You probably want to pick up a few points here! Note that the benefit isn't automatic, you also have to select the option in deckbuilder. The skill just gives you the option in deckbuilder to use.
    - Jumping will break crowd control (root/stun). It will also eat alive your focus. Do you want to sit out that root or not?

    Have fun, and get lots of killshots standing over my corpse!

    UPDATE: Here is a link to a video Chris put together with even more info!
     
  2. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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  3. Lord Lonn

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    Nice Lum thanks
     
  4. monxter

    monxter Avatar

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    *staredown*
     
  5. Mata

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    Thank you!
     
  6. Drocis the Devious

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    Thank you for listening, or doing the right thing, or just being smart developers. That's something I've been asking for in every game for at least 15 years. A reason to put your damn sword in your shealth!

    :)
     
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  7. Floors

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    Yeah, getting killed by Lum a few times helped me figure it out.
     
  8. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Just part of the service we offer!
     
  9. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I hope you've choosen a bridge to test out the secure trading code. :)
     
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  10. Magyar

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    Haha I like this deck mode. Battles feel less generic.
     
  11. Mitch [MGT]

    Mitch [MGT] Avatar

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    Wow...simply wow! LUM you rock!
     
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  12. AndiZ275

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    Tried the deck combat in the dragon cave a bit and liked it so far (won't do PvP, sorry). It will surely become much more interesting with more skills to choose from.

    Small Bug Report: A Kobold refused to die (had zero health and became unattackable, but still hit me)
     
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  13. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Please post bug reports like that (and others, there will be MANY) in the bug forums so we can properly catch them!
     
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  14. Joviex

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    Nice.

    How are you going to expand that "dont like the deck system" to allow more "buttons" like a standard MMO?

    Currently I know it is 4, but I assume that over time, like in LOTRO or WOW, I could have as many buttons locked on screen as I had skills?

    Cheers.
     
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  15. Bow Vale

    Bow Vale Avatar

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    Loving the deck combat and the first skills. A winner in my book. Really this is going to be so much fun. I love tinkering
     
  16. Joviex

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    And now that I think about it, how is that in terms of balanced playstyle for PVP.

    If all mine are on screen, versus someone else having to hopefully draw one in some random pick?
     
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  17. Drocis the Devious

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    That's a good question that we should continue to ask as we test combat. Right now, having not played it myself, all I know is that there's a 50% tax on focus to lock something. Does that balance with the randomness of not locking? We'll see.
     
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  18. Floors

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    When you are in non combat mode, using the heal spell puts you in the combat deck mode.
     
  19. smack

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    Which is further balanced by the inability to use combos...
     
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  20. Drocis the Devious

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    Sorry, smack. I'm not following you.
     
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