Flicker Strike

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Westonard wrote:

Is this intended or am I just misjudging where I am entirely, which is possible given my actual real life problems with depth perception and perceiving distance. Or is this some sort of bug?

You might want to try reading this thread. There's also a thread on it in the .96 bugs section.

Having spent 21 hours over 2 days taking a new character from 1 to 40 using this skill almost exclusively, I have a few thoughts on what it needs. These are detailed after the linked screenshot further down so if you don't feel like reading everything please skip to there.

First and foremost I love this skill for all the fun it can be. However it needs work if it is to be both effective and remain interesting after extended use.

Its major faults are:

Lack of control
Unless a specific enemy is targeted the player has no control whatsoever. This skill can quickly put you into a bad situation far from your party and often gets you killed. Without any control there is no sense of tactical play, this quickly becomes very boring.

Disorientation
Instantly shifting the view to an unpredictable location throws out the player's sense of location. Rapidly doing this is even more disorienting and may cause...

Nausea, Headaches, Epilepsy
It's great fun to stack attack speed and tear around the battlefield with a set of badass claws but there are some real world health issues that come with doing it. Granted a player shouldn't do this in 10 hour shifts 2 days straight but even in an hour's play I felt ill watching the screen.

Interruption
Using it without a target it often just stops. You have mana, you're still holding the button down, there's things to hit right next to you, but nothing happens or the character tries to walk over to a monster at the back of the pack. This gets very frustrating and reliably causes death for a build that depends on landing hits to survive.

Summary
In it's current state it's ok as a utility skill to hop up and down ledges or close in on a single targeted enemy but using it against a group will far too often get you killed for lack of control or make you sick from rapid screen changes. Even when it works game play is invariably reduced to holding a button down, watching your health and mana globes and hitting a flask key when required.

Now for my thoughts on what would make it more useful and really interesting.

Temporary note: if someone can tell me how to get a scrolling image within a post please pm me. I had to break this into 3 posts as a work around.

Gameplay Scenario

In the screenshot the player is using Flicker Strike to fight a group at C. The situation turns bad and the player wants to pull back from an approaching horde at D. The player repositions the cursor and now only mobs A and B are viable targets due to a target radius around the cursor. Mob A is given priority as it is already within a strike radius around the character. The character flickers to mob A and the camera moves smoothly to center on the character. As the camera moves the player adjusts the cursor position to keep the target radius in the vacinity of mobs A and B. Subsequent executions of Flicker Strike target either mob A, mob B or any other mob now within the current target radius.

Behaviour Details

Take note the description below relates to skill behaviour when a player has not specifically targeted a mob. All references to a targeted mob relate to the next single execution of the skill and no mob becomes selected as though the player had clicked directly on it.

The skill should work with two radii; a target radius centered on the cursor (shown in green) and a strike radius centered on the character (shown in red). These radii could be the same size or different sizes depending on what feels right in testing.

The target radius allows a degree of control for the player. Each time the skill is executed a mob is targeted randomly from all mobs within the target radius provided it is possible to flicker to them (ie not blocked by walls). Priority is given to mobs within both the target radius and the strike radius.

The strike radius is the skill's range. The character can immediately flicker to any target within the strike radius. If a target is outside the strike radius the character will run towards the target and flicker as soon as it is within, provided the button is held down until the target is within the strike radius. If the button is released the character will stop moving.

If there are no mobs within the target radius when the skill's bound key or button is pressed, the character moves towards the cursor position but will immediately target the first mob to enter the target radius while the button is held. The character will immediately stop moving towards the cursor position if the button is released.

If the player clicks directly on a mob it will be targeted repeatedly for so long as the bound button is held. If the mob dies and the button is still held the character will immediately target a new enemy according to the behaviour detailed above.

Camera Reaction

When a character flickers to a new location the camera should accelerate towards them and decelerate as it centers on them. This serves firstly to reduce player disorientation and secondly to prevent the target radius from changing position in the world too quickly. In this way a player can react to the change and keep the target radius within proximity of the mobs they wish to fight. It also prevents the player from flickering too quickly across great distances within the game world.

Summary

This behaviour allows the player to effectively kite the edges of a swarming horde, disengage from a suicidal fight or focus attacks on specific events in the battle like stray mobs harassing ranged party members. It achieves this while maintaining random targeting of individual mobs.

Advantages

- The player must now influence the character's position in battle and has more to do than just hold a button and chug flasks. Subsequently the player feels more involved in what the character is doing and has more fun.

- The player cannot be displaced to a random far off location in an instant, normally in the middle of an overwhelming horde of angry mobs.

- The player does not get disoriented or feel ill attempting to follow rapid screen changes.

Closing

It is now noon. I have been up all night playing this game, using this skill and have spent since 6 am considering and producing my feedback. I would greatly appreciate some comment on whether this proposed behaviour might be possible in game. If you read this far, thank you for your time and for a great game. I hope PoE realises all it could become and sees the success it deserves.

good work!
FS is my favorite skill atm...

but i think it's somewhat ok as it is now. because too much control over it will render it strictly OP. as it is now, it's chaotic and dangerous to control the drifting effect and thus it's not OP but stay as a powerfull skill.
it's not for every players mainly because you don't have the control of the fight but also because it's nervously stressfull to use it.

So? I'll will keep on using it even if it stay in this state (mainly because i'm addicted to it ^^).

I agree the chaotic nature of it adds a certain something that too much control would take away but I imagine the current implementation to be too dangerous in hard core mode and the screen flicker is very uncomfortable regardless.

Using the behaviour I detailed player control reduces as the target radius increases so control vs chaos could be balanced in testing.

An alternative with no player control would follow the same targeting and camera rules I described but the target radius would be fixed on center screen and enlarged to nearly full screen. This way the character would be unable to flicker too far too fast in any given direction because it would be restrained somewhat by the screen's ability to follow and rapid screen changes/flashing are removed.

Yep, a specific code to introduce some delay in the camera would be extremely welcomed here :)
I'm often afraid to use this skill because of that ^^;

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BlastMonkey wrote:

<Brilliant feedback>

I agree completely.

Most Flicker Strike builds seem to go with frenzy charges, and the combination of 200% IAS and Flicker Strike is tough to deal with. Like others have stated, I try to find a spot on the screen that stays still (like the health orb) and not to look at the battle at all, because otherwise I get motion sickness. This is due to A) the jumpy camera and B) the lack of control over which mobs you target, which again leads to A.

I think BlastMonkey has some excellent suggestions on how to fix these issues.

Currently around level 30, I think this skill is too OP.

You're in a bad situation? No problem! Use Flicker Strike FTW!
With some life leech, you get back to life quickly and kill everything while drinking a nice cup of tea...

A lot of people said they felt Dual Strike was lacking in damage compared to Flicker Strike, but the problem is you don't have to do anything to kill everything with Flicker, it's completely no-skill.

Sadly, I don't have any recommendations to fix this.
Maybe you should drain 1 frenzy per jump, then add a 1sec delay if you don't have any orbs.

I completely disagree with any previous feedback suggesting that Flicker Strike is in any way 'underpowered' due to 'lack of control'. In its' current incarnation Flicker Strike is the safest skill to use in the beta, particularly as your attack speed increases through frenzy or passive bonuses. Fast flicker speeds allow you to move long before enemies turn to strike you or arrows hit you; as long as you can maintain the mana cost of the skill it is completely without danger.

On the other hand I completely agree with previous concerns about potential epilepsy issues. This skill as constructed can unwittingly lead the player into unhealthy physical behavior without any sort of warning; at high attack speeds even someone with zero potential epilepsy issues can develop serious eyestrain just from repeated use.

Possible suggestions:

Change the attack speed to a short buff (2 seconds) and put a short cooldown (1/1.5 seconds) into the skill. Make it a complementary skill as opposed to a primary damage dealing ability. The other option would to severely limit the range so that you can't shift your camera during usage to prevent the actual 'flickering' visual effect.