Golems, Mana Shield, Curse supports, Soul Flask, Blessing of Death, skill gem recipe, and more!
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Summary
New Additions
Minion Improvements
New Features
New Additions
New Death Penalty – Blessing of Death
In Standard League, characters would no longer lose 7.5% experience in Cruel or 15% experience in Merciless when they die. Instead, a town NPC would offer to bless them with a new, semi-permanent buff: " The NPC can remove this boon, but it will only take effect after leveling or dying. This turns the original penalty into a choice, rewarding those who can avoid dying while offering a reprieve to anyone who has hit a wall. For Hardcore: " Characters are still moved to Standard League after death. The intention with this is to help stymie the economic corruption that Standard league endures from HC leagues.
New Minion Type – Golems
Like totems and spectres, you would be limited to 1 golem at a time. Three types vie for attention on your hotbar: 1. Clay Golem (support gem) Uses supported melee skill. Unlike totems, he can hold 3 [endurance/frenzy/power] charges. Anticipated balance question: "Compared to the Spell Totem and Ranged Attack Totem, would this be unbalanced? Melee skills are stronger to offset their risk, and a minion has no risk!" No, melee is balanced around not only the skill, but also the player's melee weapon and melee passive nodes. The stats of the Clay Golem would be much lower than a melee player. This includes attack speed, reducing the effectiveness of Infernal and Dominating Blow due to their short-lived debuff. 2. Iron Golem (skill gem) Gains properties of slotted item. Has a melee attack, unless slotted in a ranged weapon. Functions like a more flexible version of Necromantic Aegis, but does not remove the item's effects from the player. The purpose of this golem is to get players thinking in fun, creative ways. Item attributes that wouldn't normally benefit a summoner, and therefore feel like a waste, could now be utilized. 3. Blood Golem (skill gem) Raised from a corpse (the other two are summoned). Damage dealt by the blood golem gives partial flask charges to its master. It has a slow ranged attack, throwing globs of caustic plasma at enemies. These attacks leave a blood pool at the enemy's feet. Detonate Dead, Raise Zombie, Raise Spectre, Devouring Totem, and any other corpse-targeting ability can utilize these pools as a normal corpse. Pools have the base properties of the corpse that the Blood Golem was originally raised from (similar to Raise Spectre, so you can't get an Additional Health modifier from a blue/rare for Detonate Dead). If raised from the same monster type as your favored Spectres, pools act as a way to get them back if they die.
New Support Gems – Curses
Adds a support gem version for each existing curse: " Those who normally use a single curse can slot its support version into their main damage skill, reducing the setup time of each fight and improving game-feel at the cost of a linked socket. The game would apply the curse first, before any other damage is considered. Those with non-permanent curses would benefit from a simpler skill rotation, saving time -- and DPS -- that would normally go toward manually reapplying the curse. For double, triple, quad, and penta Cursers, they could apply all of their curses simultaneously with one linked skill, dramatically saving time, but must sacrifice most or all other support options. Normal curses retain value with their innate fast casting and large AOE without any other supports, able to be slotted into any spare socket. Skills tied to a curse support would be weaker, due to the loss of one or more linked slots. A penta-curse linked skill would have absolutely no room for any other improvements, such as Faster Casting or Increased Area of Effect. In the end, each option would fulfill different build needs.
New Skill – Mana Shield
" If you do not have enough mana to absorb the full mitigated half, it comes out of your health instead. Examples where your current health is 1000 and mana is 400: A. You take 100 damage. You lose 100 health. Nothing happens because the damage was less than half your current health. B. You take 500 damage. You lose 250 health and 250 mana. C. You take 1000 damage. You lose 600 health and 400 mana. You did not have enough mana for that last 100 damage, so it went back to your health. The purpose of this skill is to defend against large hits using your max mana, differing from Arctic Armor which excels against small hits using your mana regen.
New Skill – Precision Strike
Developed with dlrr in this thread.
" Flicker Strike set the design tone with its cooldown. When trying to think of DEX-melee's identity, I imagined an emphasis on combo'ing several abilities. Under this mindset, Precision Strike would serve as a finisher. You would need a setup ability, something to incapacitate the target, then use Precision Strike to finish the job with a massive crit. Against bosses, who are not normally stunned or frozen, Blind would be your most reliable option. The Cannot Miss mod goes along with its title (Precision) and ensures its cooldown is never wasted (with Flicker Strike you still get the teleport). The attack speed isn't what it seems, due to the 2 second global cooldown. Its purpose is to minimize the hit delay, to help you land your crit while the target is incapacitated (which might last less than a second). Essentially, the attack speed and cooldown work to back-load the attack delay, so you deliver the massive blow in a satisfyingly fast manner but cannot spam it (global means all copies go on cooldown). The cherry on top is that the Critical Strike Multiplier is a MORE multiplier, just to make people drool at a single-target ability. However, it is actually less than it appears, due to the skill's Damage Effectiveness.
Synergistic supports
Power Charge on Critical
As a dagger ability, it suits the Shadow, who is a DEX/INT hybrid next to power charge nodes. Multistrike The triple attack is unaffected by Precision Strike's cooldown, and the MORE attack speed multiplier would scale with the built-in Increased Attack Speed to deliver those three strikes lightning-quick. If the first hit is a crit, due to how Multistrike works, they would all be crits. Melee Splash If it splashes crit damage, this would be very potent. Added Lightning Damage With Multistrike giving three crits in a row, and Precision Strike guaranteeing a crit, you would triple shock stack. Throw in Elemental Equilibrium to triple stack a whole pack. Increased Critical Damage Pretty obvious. =o) Since Precision Strike has a crit damage multiplier, this combo would result in phenomenal damage.
New Currency – Orb of Rebirth
Extremely low drop rate. Grants a full passive tree refund. We can already achieve this with <=120 Orbs of Regret, but doing so would be tedious.
New Currency – Orb of Exchange
Very low drop rate. Swaps the random affixes of two rare or magic items of the same type (Item A gets Item B's stats, and Item B gets Item A's stats). The required level changes to match the highest affix on the item. This orb would allow you to move affixes from an undesirable base piece to one you want to use, such as from an armor chest to an energy shield chest. If you find an unlinked upgrade to a piece of gear, you could transfer its stats to your own linked gear instead of trying to re-link. If you have fantastically rolled affixes on a low-level base item, you could move them to a higher level base, though this would not affect the tiers of those affixes.
New Vendor Recipe – Skill gems
Combine any 3 gems to get an unidentified gem of equal or lower average base level. Base level is the level the skill gem starts at, so Fireball would have a base level of 1 and Cyclone would have a base level of 24. This means selling 3 Fireball gems will never give you a Cyclone gem, but 3 Cyclone gems might give you a Fireball gem. This is to prevent abuse of the free starter gems you get on a new character. Any gem can be rolled. This includes supports, even if skill gems are used; all that matters is the average base level of the sacrificed gems. As such, it would be an excellent sink to dump unwanted gems for a chance at more useful gems. Quality rolls could be an option, with a base chance modified by the accrued experience of the sacrificed gems. This roll would not be affected by your gear, similar to barrels and chests.
New Flask Type – Soul Flask
Takes up 2 flask slots. Gains charges from nearby monsters dying (you do not need to make the killing blow). On use, replenishes the charges of all other flasks. Ideal for support characters who have a difficult time getting flask charges in a party. For general characters, you trade adaptability for improved specialization. Your 3 remaining flasks can act as 6 flasks, but you are limited to three types. Will it be Health, Mana, Hybrid, Granite, Quicksilver, Diamond, or Elemental flasks? Because you can only have three other flasks, your variety of affix options are also limited. Do you want Of Warding, Grounding, Heat, Dousing, Staunching, Iron Skin, Adrenaline, etc? Minion Improvements
Visual Effect Redo: Dominating Blow
Instead of a huge, glowing ankh that obstructs vision, apply a shader to raised monsters. Similar to Spectres, but should be colored a dark, neutral color (e.g. gray/black) so normal monsters stand out among them. These are disposable minions; they do not need attention drawn to them. As it stands, you cannot see normal monsters in a pack of dominated monsters, greatly annoying parties who are trying to target those monsters. Too often, players try to attack dominated monsters, both because the skill is so underused that they've never seen the effect (and is underused because of said annoyance factor), and because the visual indicator is not an adequate change to the monster's appearance. If a normal monster and a dominated monster were standing right next to each other, could you tell the difference in the heat of combat?
Deployment 'Damage'
Skills that place an object into the world, such as traps and totems, would apply a zero-damage AOE when created. This would allow traps and totems to break clusters of urns and barrels, so pure trap/totem users are not totally screwed out of a quick way to break multiple objects. Similar to how an Ancestral Bond user can still break objects with their zero-damage skills.
Summon All Minions
A new hotkey, like Detonate Mine, that allows manual teleportation of your minions to your current location. Players could compensate for poor pathing decisions made by the AI in cramped areas, or immediately summon their minions after using movement skills like Lightning Warp.
Permanent Minions
Just as an item stays with your character when you log off, all non-duration minions would now persist with your character on disconnect or logoff. When you log back in, all of your zombies and specters would be present and accounted for. This would remove the tedious setup that must be done as a summoner every time your connection drops. Losing all your minions in this way serves no adequate gameplay purpose, and simply takes away from the experience by wasting your time. It would be akin to having all gems unsocket when you log out, requiring you to re-socket them every time you log back in.
Minion Info
The new health bars are great, but we summoners still want to know how much damage our minions do. In the character panel, there is a fantastic tabbed display listing all modifiers on your character and each individual skill. Why can't the minion's tab show us what we want to know? I imagine it is because damage is dynamic based on the level of the zone. Yet, these fields are already dynamic on other skills when you have, say, Frenzy charges. So why not show us what the current damage would be in whatever zone we're in? The mitigation percentage for armor and evasion isn't exact, either, but at least it gives us an idea. Hidden information restricts my ability to make informed decisions. New Features
Party Member Tracking
Rather than removing the portrait of allies from the sidebar who are not in the same instance, how about merely graying out their portrait? Mousing over would then give you a tooltip of their current location. This would feel far smoother and more natural than fiddling with the obstructive party menu. Also, when allies are far ahead in a unexplored part of a large map, it is nearly impossible to find them on the TAB map. Visuals that assist in locating offscreen allies would be very helpful, such as arrows at the edge of the map pointing in the direction of distant allies. This feature could extend to the minimap as well. Avatar bubbles of offscreen allies on the edges of the main screen, scaled by distance, could be an alternative UI option. Players wouldn't need to open the map to understand where their team is.
Clock and Instance Timer
We all have lives outside of the game. An in-game clock would aid in managing my time appropriately. Also: an instance timer above portals, gates, and waypoints would be helpful (on/off in the Options menu). When leveling for the first time and still learning the ropes, too often I'd lose my instance while in town listening to NPCs chatter and staring at my acquired loot, agonizing over whether to sell, stash, or equip. I began to feel rushed in town, diminishing what is meant to be a cooldown period of play. I would personally prefer if your last instance never expired, but a visible timer would at least help keep me from panicking.
Pause
Sometimes I need to answer the door, take the kettle off the heat, or run to the bathroom. There are a number of events that will demand my immediate attention. Even if I clear my immediate surroundings, monsters wander and I will likely come back to a dead character. If I portal out, I risk losing the instance. When not in a party, it would be nice if hitting ESC either paused my game or gave me the load-screen immunity (after ~5 seconds).
Animation Cancelling
For the game to feel more responsive, I need to be able to change actions in the middle of an animation. Being locked into a swing or a cast when a Rhoa is charging at me is just plain frustrating. Multistrike amplifies this. If it is intended as a form of balance, you are losing too much in game-feel. I know you want decisions to be meaningful, but actions in the heat of combat are not on the same cognitive level as decisions made about your passive tree. If it is intended to help server sync, then it is a matter of improving the net code. If 10-player precision games like LoL can do it, I hope GGG can, too.
Line-of-Sight Casting
I try to cast a spell and nothing happens. Am I out of mana? Is the game desynced? No, my mouse was not within exact line-of-sight with my character, or is not over valid terrain, and so could not perform the action I wanted at that location. In the heat of combat, having my character do absolutely nothing when I try to cast -- just because my mouse is a pixel off -- is beyond frustrating. Too often, some random debris that I think I should be able to cast over does not, in fact, let me cast over it. Or trying to use an AOE spell on those twisting, narrow walkways in Lunaris 3? Like a curse? Nope, doesn't work if your mouse isn't over walkable terrain. Personally, I would prefer that my character cast the ability regardless at the closest valid position. This is what Diablo 3 does -- say what you will about its itemization and auction house, they did get combat down really well. At the very least, I need some sort of feedback when my mouse is out of line-of-sight.
Passive Tree Enhancements
The web version can be laggy and is outside the game. It should not completely upstage the engine-rendered in-game tree in basic functionality: 1. Search: I can enter a term like "life", and all nodes with that term are highlighted, the amount of nodes with that term is displayed, and I can jump to each one sequentially from the search box. 2. Summary: Lists everything I am getting from my passive tree. [Example] 3. Highlight: –similar nodes; –shortest path. Same as the web version, but lag-free. 4. Tree Links: Just as I can link an item in chat, why not skill builds? Thank you for your time! Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Jun 28, 2013, 10:23:48 PM
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Cleaned up the main post and condensed topics into spoiler boxes so as not to overwhelm the eyes. =o)
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On Soul Flasks: flask should work like this by default since this is a multiplayer game. Still don't see the reason why they designed them like this, very unpractical.
"I'm programmed to say something that is kind and uplifting at this point, but there is apparently an error that is working in my favor."
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I would love to have solo powerful summons rather than the horde we have access too at the moment. Thematically, Golems or even a dire animal near the Ranger's side (charm?). I have never been a fan of the hordes (even thought my summoner is my highest level) but would love to run around with a pet wolf/golem.
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I like the Orb of Rebirth but me and a couple of friends were talking about something like that and we thought it could be a unique chest piece that is like required lvl 90 and when you put it on it dissolves into your skin refunding all your points.
We also thought of a new flask that could be a unique flask that refills your ES or something of that sort. Today I descend to God hood, and your death shall pave the way.
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@Alternalo:
" Honestly, I agree. Often in design, though, you intentionally create problems for the player, then offer them solutions. Assuming GGG wants to stick with "On Kill" flask charging as a default, the Soul Flask would offer players a solution. The Soul Flask is useful in other ways, too. It can essentially double your other four potions. You could try rolling two perfect Granite Flasks with the 100% armor buff, or just get one and use a Soul Flask to fill it back up. Two Seething HP potions become four. The trade-off is you lose adaptability for specialization. That second Granite you replaced could have had a +100% evasion bonus, or that third Seething could have had Curse removal. If you haven't drained all of your other potions, you also aren't getting maximum benefit, so if you use it just to replenish your Quicksilver, you might as well have had a second Quicksilver. If taking up only one flask slot isn't enough, it could disable a second slot like a two-handed weapon, to emphasize the specialization trade-off. Or maybe it prevents other potions from gaining charges through kills (the crit modifiers would still work). @ValkNoel: " You could kind of get that with Raise Spectre on an animal monster (crab, rhoa, spider, monkey), but I know what you mean. To differentiate them from other summons, it'd be cool if you could customize them in some way, either through equipping them with their own items or a new system entirely their own, to go along with them being a companion rather than just a minion. Like a miniature passive tree and a Collar slot that can have up to a 4L for gems they can use. @Olechranon: " I'm confused, what would be the purpose of making it Body Armor that disappears when you put it on? To take up more inventory space? Does it lock out your chest slot? Just to play with your idea, what about a unique chest piece that allows you to create a second passive tree? When you remove it, your default tree comes back. " Yeah, that could be cool. I do wonder if GGG wants to keep ES functionally different from HP in that regard, though, given that ES already quickly regenerates outside of combat. Maybe a potion that forces ES regeneration (bypassing the wait), but causes the next hit you take during its duration to deal double damage (and also stopping the regen)? Quality would then decrease its duration. Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Jun 18, 2013, 1:55:05 AM
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I would love to be able to trade my own passive skills to a singular pet to further their progression instead of mine, but I doubt we will see that anytime soon. Hopefully with the push towards finishing Act 3, and new content, we will get some new less hordy summons.
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@ValkNoel:
" I was thinking more of the pet earning their own passive points for their own tree. As a skill, their power would be distributed on this tree, so you essentially get to customize the skill in unique ways. This approach would allow GGG to make pet-specific modifications independent of general support gems and the player's starting position on their own passive tree. Considering skill gems already earn XP, it wouldn't be that far removed. Instead of the skill gem following a scripted upgrade of +whatever, you decide what gets increased. Now, that's not to say there couldn't also be pet passive nodes on your own tree. It'd be like the WoW Hunter, whose pets have their own talent tree, but then Hunters can also go Beast Master in their talent tree. Pets are a common suggestion, so I don't see GGG not wanting to do this, but, no matter how you slice it, it's going to require a heavy investment of art and code. On the design front, the most important thing is that pets have an identity apart from other minions. As a side idea, Guild Wars had an interesting pet system where Pet Skills on your hotbar ordered your pet to perform the move. Basically, they were skills you cast through your pet. This would be different from totems, who auto-cast whatever you put on them. With pet abilities that you control, there is room for situational and timing-based abilities. |
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Imma gunna bump this because it was no small effort to write.
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Added Party Member Tracking to the New Features section.
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