On the subject of Charges (Endurance, Power, and Frenzy)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

But the point of this is the main ways to gain charges won't be from things like gaining them on crit, but from active skills you use to gain charges, like frenzy of blood rage.

I suppose I revealed my Witch bias by saying charges when I was really talking about power charges! But I inferred from Rory's second passage that the new charges would be even more annoying to get. In any case, as long as their generation is 100% predictable by the player I won't complain too much.

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gilligan wrote:

Not really.

With how charge generation works an ability that has a set CD and an ability that needs charges both require waiting a certain amount of time before being usable. It is clearly not a case of one requiring time while the other requires actions, because both require time.

As I see it the main difference is that one of them contains a random element while the other is a constant. The player is always in control of when to trigger cooldowns, and consequently, of when the ability will be available (note how this also requires actions). Charge generation, in contrast, is always at least partly tied to variables outside of the player's control (at least as it currently works). The player can not decide when to crit or when a minion should die, for example, leaving the implicit cooldown to be determined by the RNG.

To me this just looks like another case of where they think they're giving the player more control, while in reality it's the opposite.

There is a somewhat huge fundamental difference between cooldown based on actions and cooldowns based on time, however: normal "cooldowns" you can wait out of combat, not being in the fight, and have it ready again. Charges would actually PUNISH you for resting. It's an incentive to be in the fray, making it honestly superior to cooldowns in the sense that cooldowns reward stopping frequently so you could use your most powerful ability every encounter whereas charges in this case would punish you for that by making said charges disappear before you could utilize them.

I could argue the same thing for mana, since I believe mana rewards sitting back and waiting to unload a huge compliment of damage more than it rewards just using cheaper abilities to maintain a longer time before you OOM (due to the fact that if you kill at a similar rate by spamming AoE and waiting for a mana bar vs. spamming cheaper spells for a longer period of time, the first option is generally safer since you spend more time out of combat and waiting), but in general that is not a topic for this thread.

I have absolutely no love whatsoever for either cooldowns or mana, so you'll get no objection from me there. In fact, I think mana as such is probably one of the worst mechanics in the world of gaming. The entire reason for my little tirade was that I thought (wrongly) that charges would be too much like cooldowns, based on the following:

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Rory wrote:

In 0.9.2, they were something you could depend on always having after a short build-up time. There may be a place in the game for a mechanic like this, nothing is set in stone, but Charges are not the ones that will fill that role.

I agree .. the Witch is flat... especially in cruel difficulty. She needs faster mana regeneration or more items with it added(more rings) She is one dimensional... she needs more gems/spells... I am lvl 34 and I really can only use fireball... she is getting boring! She needs a wider spell array that she can buff up instead of just one.. I mean right now I only have one skill I concentrated on and its the fireball... I think its only at 300 damage at lvl 34.. I know we can use points for other skills but then that lowers the fireball to 230 or so and she is even flatter/weaker. Fire immune/resistant enemies right now are as hard a a boss fight because of the lack of power. I was in a party with 2 others (another witch (cold) and a mualer) we had such a hard time knocking down the shield on a rare enemy. I ran out of mana so I could not help. When I got mana back it came down finally. It is good that was a hard fight... Im not looking for a easy fight but a far fight. Also ..how about getting your own loot so no loot whores take everything that drops. The witch is a range fighter... we get left out most of the time in parties.

I think, then, during those long pathways to certain "key skills" there should be "____ charge" passives, because it sounds like these charges are something most classes will want to capitalize on.

It gives something that could be slightly more meaningful than +skills and it'll spruce things up a little for charges again.

Just a thought!

Oh okay-It just seemed everywhere I looked that was THE thing to do in order to be an effective character, I've only been building one so it's hard for me to really comment too much.

I haven't played a witch or templar in 0.9.3, so I haven't had a chance to test out power charges yet. As for the frenzy and endurance charges though, I like how the passives for them are laid on the tree as apposed to 0.9.2. Before you almost had to have all 8 possible charges to be effective but now it seems like having just a few charges to gain for certain situations is ideal since they aren't all in the same group and aren't as overpowered as they were with the "on critical hit" passives.

With my lvl 37 HC marauder, I can cast enduring cry to bring the mobs in and use warlords mark and sweep to keep my charges up while in battle.

With my (now deceased) lvl 46 ranger, I used blood rage with rain of arrows to gain charges. It worked best against large packs of weaker mobs but once I was under full charges it made taking out just about any magic or rare mob a cinch.

My only gripe with the charges right now is the duration. I understand that they are meant to encourage players to get in the fray and keep the action going, but at low levels it's really tough to kill fast enough so blood rage and warlords mark wear off before getting another kill to reset the timer. The increased skill duration gem works well with warlords mark so that's not really an issue, but with blood rage it's suicide (I lost my 29 duelist to that lol). My problem isn't with the duration of the skills used to acquire the charges, but the duration on the charges themselves.

Any idea what type of skills are planned to gain power charges? There's currently 2 skills to gain frenzy charges (blood rage & frenzy) and 2 skills to gain endurance charges (enduring cry & warlords mark), are there going to be 2 for power charges also?

Maybe a mana or energy shield burn?

Crappy feat of charges mechanic is that they are forcing a player to rush when there's no enemies around - after he killed last mob.
Mobs tend to be spawned in groups, they are not roaming around so after he kills a group of mobs he has to rush to find another pack and do/take some damage/crits/kills to get some charges and keep charge counter in max value.

While in fight if a player has adequate build to trigger charges om good rate (kill mobs faster then in 10 sec while blood raged etc) keeping them alive is not a problem in most situations. Player's gameplay does not differ from gameplay of a player who doesn't use charges at all.

The problem here is that after a player kills a pack of mobs he is interested in loot.
Since in PoE players are after many type of things he's not just picking up certain type or color rather he needs to check them carefully. What class what type what rarity what quality what socket arrangement. It takes some time to do this.
Meanwhile charges are gone.
I guess that it wasn't an intention behind that mechanic..

So all in all I don't feel that charges force or rather 'provokes' a player to stay in fight, because if your char is not in danger you will be in attack mode anyway and if he is in danger you will retreat because letting charges go is better then respawn in town after all.


Comparing that to D3 I guess that they developed system without such flaw.
Player starts a fight with a group of mobs, he has 0 or low amount of secondary resource (fury and so on) he attacks mobs and gains it while killing some of them then he unleashes some kind of powerful attack that demands that resource be used and finish them off.
Mobs are killed, resource is on low so there's no point in rushing to find next group and keep it 'alive', player has some time to check loot, decide what to do next.

Imho instead of making more skills that allow to charge yourself you should add large portion of skills that use charges and provide some bonus effects comparing to 'standard' skills.
Not just lone discharge.
Can't see any other way honestly.