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R26 Combat Feedback

Discussion in 'Release 26 Feedback Forum' started by devourerofmemes, Feb 21, 2016.

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  1. devourerofmemes

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    Current in game name if anyone wants to chat/play in game: Zeno Citium

    First I’d like to say I’m really excited about how this game is shaping up, I picked up SotA around R16 and have been coming back to pick up hats and test iterations of the game, but mainly to test skills and decks because that’s what I enjoy most. The steady progress your team has been making each release is staggering and being able to get a feel for the process from the postmortem hangouts is a blast for me. I have 210 hours logged so far via my steam account, most of that coming in this release. I know there are many people that have invested a lot more time than me into this game. I’m giving my feedback out of respect for the dev team and the game you’re building. I’ve been working primarily in Unity for the last couple years, so I do understand certain things I’m pointing out here are often balance and polish issues that are already known, being worked on, or will be looked at in later stages of game development. There are so many great design choices I would love to make a list of, even little things like being slowed when walking into NPCs really make me smile. However pointing out everything I love doesn't really help game iterations (although a steam review would be a great place for them), this is my subjective feedback on areas I'd look at adjusting. I just hope some of it can be of use or spark constructive dialogue. I’ve organized my notes from R26 in a list to make replies easier.

    1. An on hover tooltip in the character stats window for str, dex, and int explaining what values they increase. @Chris I watched the combat hangout video, which was great btw thank you for doing that, but I think this would be nice for new players.
    2. An instant cast option for ground targeted skills (blink, etc) removing the extra mouse click. Not only does this allow for a quicker cast, but it would carry the benefit of not losing your tab target from the ground mouse click.
    3. An auto attack/attack always on when weapon unsheathed option.
    4. I'd love to be able to heal random people outside of party when I see them about to die, it's always been one of my favorite aspects of healing in MMORPGs.
    5. I tried making a DoT build with Rend, Flame Fist, Fire Arrow, Ignite Weapon, Immolation, Fiery Decay and Smoldering Shiv before the stacking changes that Kvow pointed out in the comments below. It wasn't viable at the time, but I'll need a few days to level fire passives and retest it with the stacking changes. (So far the dot damage feels low even with stacking, again I'd really love to see some DoTs with no upfront damage, but much higher tick damage. Some of the cast times also hurt this like Poison and Ignite Weapon. Why would I want to take 1 sec cast time and a global CD to give my wep an extra 6 tick damage when I could have pressed an instant cast stone fist or weapon skill that hits for 100 twice in that time, yes it's there for 20 secs so its a total of an extra 120 damage if I can stay on target and keep hitting it with autos to maintain up time, but in general DoTs should have slightly higher DPS than direct damage to make up for the fact targets die and you don't see the full duration often, to be fair this could be a moot point if the scaling at 100 does offer slightly higher DPS than direct damage. However, it's rough to level so maybe if the scaling math is decent bump the base starting ticks to make the process of leveling it less painful) Current DoTs that stack damage intensity (Flame Fist, Fire Arrow, Smoldering Shiv and Fireball) Dots that don't, but refresh duration (Rend, Immolate, Ring of Fire, Fiery Decay, Ignite Weapon and Poison Weapon). Just looking at the list I feel like Rend and Fiery Decay should also stack damage intensity as well. Poisons reagent cost of 200g per use seems rather high.
    6. Add a disease based DoT skill to the death tree.
    7. Skeleton fighter/mage and lich seems weak considering the decay rate even after leveling passives. Add an on death effect like small health/focus gain or some other death themed sacrificial buff. This would make the fact that unlike other summons them being doomed to slowly die actually becomes a positive reinforcement to the player.
    8. Summons need more skills specific to them like the water elemental heal that interacts with the player, not only does it add to the theme it would make them all stand out in different situations. ie lich siphons health to player, earth ele adds defensive buff or taunts enemies off the player, etc.
    9. A movement speed increase to summons/pets, watching my lich move like a slug when trying to get within range to use an axe hurts my heart.
    10. I think death shield would be more interesting themed as a death aura with life steal off damage, even one that could siphon life to party members would be an interesting death support option.
    11. (Edit: blink now has a 5sec CD in R27, I still think night step needs love) Night Step should not break stealth allowing for backstabs or saps after it.
    12. Sap should not break stealth, balance diminishing returns accordingly.
    13. Shadow Form and Silent Movement are redundant I understand they stack % and one can be slightly better depending on stealth amount vs duration or current fizzle %, but I think separating them from each other even more would go a long way.
    14. Dash and Sprint have the same issues as above, again they stack which is great for around town and due to CD and duration differences I can lock sprint and keep dash unlocked to make maximum use, but again I think these could be separated more.
    15. Sneak Attack needs to hit much harder or scale better, currently it’s better for me to just use a standard weapon tree skill which hits harder and doesn’t require me to be in stealth or behind the target.
    16. Water skill slow effects fall off PvE enemies too fast, makes a lot of the water skills and passives feel underwhelming outside of PvP.
    17. Make the water tree the king of HoTs and the life tree the king of direct healing skills to help make the water tree more desirable.
    18. Soothing rain’s particle effect is a bit disruptive in a party setting maybe drop the sprite opacity a bit. Also slightly increase the HoT values.
    19. (Edit: Buff dismiss issue fixed in R27 )
    20. The interrupt from life taps self-damage drives me insane, it makes using it in rotations rather annoying when you interrupt a 30sec CD locked skill because you activated it too quickly after a life tap. I understand you could argue it’s player error for not waiting 1 sec after life tap to use the next skill in your rotation, but I think it would be a nice quality of life change to remove the interrupt from self-damage on it. I would also argue increasing both values by a large amount and increasing the CD would play better.
    21. I love the spell weaving system, but I think the skills themselves should be a bit more rewarding, insofar as increasing their effects would help make the effort to use them a lot more satisfying. I honestly bought SotA immediately after reading about them, please give them a bit more love the system is sexy.
    22. (Edit: Parry changes for R27 might help balance this.) Dual wielding even with the offhand attack skill being wonderfully designed and not causing a global CD doesn’t make up for the lower attack values you get on weapon skills and your autos compared to running a 2h weapon.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2016
  2. majoria70

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    Thank for this wonderful write up. I really appreciated and enjoyed reading your feedback. :)
     
  3. devourerofmemes

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    Thank you for taking the time to read it majoria <3
     
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  4. Waxillium

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    You can use this on non-pvp targets.
     
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  5. devourerofmemes

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    Was that changed recently or did I just fail test that one haha? I'm removing it from the post thanks for pointing it out kvow.
     
  6. Waxillium

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    I think its a recent fix? I forget what I just leveled mine on. Either skeleton archers, a gust ball or watchers ;)
     
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  7. Waxillium

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    Try immolation, fireball and ring of fire. I have 90-99 in each plus 90-99 in the innates. Quite fun.

    Except against the phoenix. Then it sucks!
     
  8. devourerofmemes

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    It's been a few releases since I went crazy leveling DoTs, so I'll test out your suggestions and I'd like to test poison as well since it was recently added and I haven't had a chance. I just tend to really like trying to keep a ton of dots up at the same time in games. I've always enjoyed DoT focused classes.
     
  9. Waxillium

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    Immolation and Ring of Fire are dots that dont stack.

    Fireball is a dot and it stacks. I believe 7 is the most I've had rolling at once on a creature. With the immo and ring of fire a total of nine dots.

    Needless to say I built a crit epic cloth set and I dual wield crit wands.
     
  10. devourerofmemes

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    Ok, I think I envisioned fireball as more of a nuke and didn't test it out enough or the stacking effect might not have been in place for it at the time. Stacking intensity obviously fixes dps issues, plus dots can be hard to balance because they can snowball. Maybe just adding stacking to some of the other dots, adding some dots to other trees like death and making the spellweaving ones a bit more intense would put what I was trying to do in a pretty good spot.
     
  11. Waxillium

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    Fireballs do a nice aoe crit with 2+ glyphs stacked. I went the ring, fireball and immo route as they all aoe.

    I agree that your single target route could use some increased dot damage. It does come with the benefit of being tab targetable. Right now aoe hits everything for the same damage that single target fire spells hit for. Seems a bit off. Fire arrow stacks on itself. I forget if the fist does.
     
  12. devourerofmemes

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    Thanks for all the dialogue Kvow, I'm pretty stoked to test which single target DoT skills stack now, if poison stacks I might be able to make something decent that isn't aoe. I'm also very aware my single target DoT obsession is not something I think devs should cater too, but since it looks pretty possible in the system with a couple tweaks and I figure there may be some necromancer players who would love to see a disease DoT as well, I threw it in my feedback.
     
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  13. Waxillium

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  14. Waxillium

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    Should be possible. The undead already plague us!
     
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  15. devourerofmemes

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    I got in game and tested what stacks and the changes could make this single target DoT deck already much better than when I last attempted it in a release before stacking was implemented. I'll add the list of what stacks and doesn't to my post to help reflect R26 more accurately. Posion costs 200g a use which seems a little high for a 6 sec DoT, it also doesn't stack, seems to work much like ignite wep, although it looked like it was applying the dot more often you see a lot more ticks from it.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2016
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