Tap soul underpowered and inefficient

Tap soul barely gives any focus points in comparison(and in general) to the big chunk of health that takes away.

 

Seriously, by the time the global cooldown expires, I regenerate as much focus as I created with Soul Tap by stabbing myself.

And not entirely sure that higher intelligence is making me "critting" for higher focus, or larger damage on myself!

I guess it just needs some rebalance, being a new skill and all.

 

bug entered

 

The last time I used it, it gave me 7 blue focus (in line with the values), and damaged me for 39 hp.

I can be more precise at home, where I have logs eagerly waiting to be grepped to death.

 

Healing Grace is crazy powerful when it comes to health per focus

Also I think that healing to focus, focus to health conversions should not result in the gain of both. But then I am not really happy about in combat regeneration of focus and out of combat regeneration of health, it makes combat to last forever without clear result.

 

Code:

~/.config/Portalarium/Shroud of the Avatar/ChatLogs$ grep Tap SotAChatLog_Katrina\ Bekers_2015-06-26.txt
[6/26/2015 2:10:23 AM] Crease (To Guild): Wondering why I repeatedly get owned by simple enemies. Realized Tap Soul drains MY life not the enemy's. >.<
[6/26/2015 2:14:53 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 6 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:24:40 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 5 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:24:48 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 7 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:26:18 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 5 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:26:30 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 8 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:43:09 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 7 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:43:24 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 8 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:43:30 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 6 points of focus by Tap Soul.
[6/26/2015 2:43:39 AM] Katrina Bekers adds 7 points of focus by Tap Soul.

I guess the focus gain is not entirely inline with expectations. I have maxed Death Mastery, but instead of 5-18, it's 5-8.

The damage, well, glad it'll be fixed: I wondered what part of it was subject to crits and I have my answer. Unfortunately it's not recorded in log (*nudge nudge hint hint*).

 

I use it a lot, it is too powerful. I am healer (or half healer) and I do not mind it so powerful when used by healer but unfortunately almost everyone (in top PvP) is using it. I think that simple fix would be to add casting time. But nothing as brutal as the Resurrection casting time, that one is too long.

 

I'm curious as to what the logs would say filtering to only players with a PvP tag.

 

I wonder if it would be possible to filter out skills which were used 5 seconds (after/before) getting hit by/hitting another player. Or NPCs, or more specifically Slime, I wonder if people use magic significantly more against slimes. Is it possible to see what players use as weapons (and other equipment) in PvP or when they fight specific creatures? How popular is Fire magic against Fire elementals?

 

If you don't use regs for pvp then you likely don't use healing grace, if you do use regs you probably love healing grace ^.^

 

I am mostly worried that having this skill will mean everyone has to have it.

I find it hard to picture a situation where a tier 1 skill doesn't become viewed as something everyone has when balancing focus management.

I don't want to pass over this skill and find out I run out of focus too fast because I'm now meant to be tapping a 3-stack every 20 seconds as standard.

 

Tap Soul and Gust will be the de-facto combo at gustball.

 

Thinking about it, I think my main problem with Focus is that it isn't a managed resource at all.

I suppose I'd prefer it if it regenerated quickly but things were more expensive, so that Focus could be used to regulate the pace of combat rather than being a resource you burn through at a certain speed.

The problem with it being a resource you burn through is that we either get the ability to manage it properly or it becomes a pseudo-resource that you never actually run out of later on (this is what happened with WoW's mana quite a few times). The downside is most ways to manage a resource means you have to play in a very specific way, for example, Tap Soul could become a standard, requiring people to use it to maintain expected levels of Focus.

The advantage to a system where Focus would be used at a higher rate and recharge quicker is that you can have inefficient moments in combat and efficient ones, but the inefficient moments are punished by a small burnt out period rather than effectively being out of combat. This would allow for a situation where, say, a mage wants to quickly burst something dangerous in a group fight. He can throw out inefficient spells with high costs and take the target fast, but rather than being completely out of focus for the rest of the fight, he is out for a matter of seconds, able to slowly start throwing in new spells as his focus regenerates.

A character could see a player in trouble and go overtime on healing for a bit before running out of focus, and it would be ok to do so.

At the same time, focus could regenerate at a rate that dictates normal combat flow, the rate at which combos of abilities can be thrown out without downtime. I imagine summoning or resurrecting for example would be near-full drains on your focus while regular abilities would take chunks of focus relative to their utility or power.

That would be my preferred resource.

 

I appreciate the level of detail here and the spirit of what you're trying to do - balance Soul Tap.

But for me this is really a great example of how the combat system is not very tactical and is instead an exercise in strategic math to get the best DPS. No where in the above scenarios would anyone be worried about what the other player was doing (in PVP). The reason is because to my knowledge there's very little another player can do to stop someone from applying this formula and getting the results they desire.

Yes you can have more HP than the other guy, or regen more HP and Focus than the other guy. You can use Celestial Blessing to reduce the impact of death magic. You can use your own skills and spells to out DPS your opponent. But that's ALL more strategic math. There's no way to block or counter.

And that's the problem with this combat system. Until players can do something that either STOPs strategic math from being relevant or COUNTERs strategic math to your opponents advantage, tactical combat will not be present in SOTA.

I know that's not what this thread is about, but I thought this was an important example to call out. All that strategic math is not fun...for me anyway. Because it creates "best" ways to do things based on how the combat system is designed and it doesn't in anyway require player skill in the moment of combat. Only someone's level, skill points, and deck design really matter - and sure that requires knowledge of how the game works but that is not what I'm looking for in competitive play. I want to out think my foes on the battle field, not just in character creation and skill placement.

 

I hardly even use Tap Soul - there is just no cause to in the average encounter so it feels more like a skill point tax on the death magic tree. Something I have to take before I can purchase the more useful skills (hi death touch!)

 

I haven't tried it out yet, but that's what I would expect to hear based on the design.

Now if Soul Tap were to do more than just add to your focus, then sure great.

I think the problem with Death Touch and Soul Tap is actually a problem with the way healing works.

See when you use Death Magic you're taking someone elses HP in exchange for more HP (Death Touch) or FOCUS (Soul Tap) to your character. But when you heal someone else or you heal yourself, you're only using up some focus. It's not a system that makes any sense. Life and Water magic use focus but not HP. Death Magic uses both.

My conclusion is that Healing is way too cheap and easy to use....and there's virtually no down side to it. Where as Death Touch and other draining death magic spells are always going to be overpowered when you can combine them with healing. The intent of Soul Tap is basically to give players a way to spam Death Touch and Soul Tap and Healing spells over and over again until their opponent drops dead because they can't keep up with the rate of DPS/Healing.

But what if Healing and Death magic worked differently? What if they COST the caster more and had diminishing returns?

See, the way I think it should work is like this....Death Magic drains HP from another player or mob, but everytime you use it your MAX FOCUS is diminished! This means that it's going to be very powerful and help you take live from someone else while giving a portion of that life force to your avatar, but over time you start to lose steam and now you can't cast as much because you're running out of maximum focus. In short fights this won't matter but over time it will matter A LOT.

Healing on the other hand should work in the reverse! Whenever you heal yourself or someone else, your MAX HEALTH should be reduced. So sure you heal yourself a bunch of times but eventually your MAX HEALTH will be very small and your ability to fight in long battles will be diminished.

This opens the door up to other spells like SOUL TAP that would be able to return your MAX FOCUS closer to what it was before. So Death and Life magic become much more challenging to manage but they stay very powerful. I wish we would move to this type of system over what we're doing currently.