Feedback: Shields

[Itchykobu]

THANK YOU!

I'm no longer pulling out my hair on these amoebas - instead I'm timing my shield bursts to coincide with their waves of angry pain.

[x4000]

Awesome!

[c4sc4]

I think the mp cost may be a bit high, especially when they only last 1.5 seconds. I haven't played around with them much yet, mainly because I've been in low level areas where I don't need them, so maybe the 50 mp cost is alright.

What do other people think about the mana cost?

[Itchykobu]

If your intent is to spam it and negate all damage, then yeah, the MP cost is going to hurt. As a 'use once in a while' to get out of a tricky situation I don't think it's terrible. That being said, a lower MP cost would not hurt or overpower it.

My first thought when I used it was that I wouldn't mind seeing a lower damage threshold before it 'breaks' and just eliminate the timer all together, but I think that also falls under the consideration of whether you're trying to use it as a blanket vs. a quick defense.

[c4sc4]

Well, Chris did say that there will be more shields later, some that are 'permanent' until they adsorb X damage.

The thing on the mp cost I think is that it will drain my mp a lot faster trying to use it and my offensive spells in a big battle. Already with the stat changes, I run out of mana fairly quickly in large boss battles just using offensive spells.

[x4000]

These ones in particular are meant to be a quick defense against major attacks, really -- I could see tuning the cost down a bit, but I have some other changes in the pipe for 0.521 that might make that less of an issue; we'll see.  This sort of shield is the quick defense kind, but there will be some scrolls that are more of a blanket with X amount of hits that can be taken over whatever time interval.

Ah, ninja'd I see.

[BobTheJanitor]

You could steal a page from Ikaruga and have a gameplay element where using the right type of shield against the right sort of shot gives you a bit of mana back. Maybe that wouldn't fit the gameplay that you're going for though. But it would help with mana issues for sure.

[Itchykobu]

That'd be a lot to process though - Ikaruga had 2 shields, one was always on, and a toggle between the two. AVWW has 5 shields? That could get tricky!

[x4000]

AVWW will actually have 6 kinds of elemental shields, and then a 7th non-elemental one.  But yeah, that could be an interesting bonus to give, because then it would be something you could just equip for during certain boss fights -- use the fire shield against the skelebot, or whatever.

[c4sc4]

I believe you mentioned something about shields are suppose to prevent on hit effects like fire dot and ice bat slowing, are shields suppose to do this or am I misremembering? If they are suppose to do this, it doesn't seem to be working right now.

[x4000]

I believe you mentioned something about shields are suppose to prevent on hit effects like fire dot and ice bat slowing, are shields suppose to do this or am I misremembering? If they are suppose to do this, it doesn't seem to be working right now.

Oh, you know what?  I didn't even test that -- should have.  Will look.

[stblr]

I put this in Mantis, but I'd like to see shields taken off the global spell cooldown. Against bosses where you're using all your offensive spells as often as you can, I almost always run up against the global cooldown when I want to shield, and projectiles are usually moving too fast for me to be able to shield myself before I get hit.

[KDR_11k]

I suppose that could be considered a skill element, in melee games you don't get to block while attacking either.

As for attack absorbing shields, I'm not sure that's a good idea as long as enemies have only one attack type. It'd just mean tedium as you have to switch out your shield spell to match each enemy type you encounter. Ikaruga always had enemies fire both types of attacks so no matter which way you shielded you'd always see a bunch of bullets that could still hurt you.

How about directional shields that only block in the direction or the quarter of your hitbox that you aim at? Zelda 2's combat was based on the shield covering only a part of your body and you had to move it around to account for different attacks.

[BobTheJanitor]

I suppose that could be considered a skill element, in melee games you don't get to block while attacking either.

Yes but blocking while attacking isn't the same thing as blocking 1 second after attacking. The cooldowns feel too long sometimes, especially in hectic boss battles. It needs something more like a .1 second cooldown so that you can't keep firing shields and attacks simultaneously (although mana drain really takes care of that by itself). Not to mention putting movement skills on a separate cooldown from attacks, too! Double jumping over skele-bosses becomes a problem when you're spamming attacks at the same time.

[zebramatt]

You could steal a page from Ikaruga and have a gameplay element where using the right type of shield against the right sort of shot gives you a bit of mana back. Maybe that wouldn't fit the gameplay that you're going for though. But it would help with mana issues for sure.

Mantis?