Ride the lightning: rebalance?

[Cyborg]

I often find myself running out of mana because I keep double jumping. It seems like whenever you press up while jumping, it activates ride the lightning, even when I don't want it to. It costs almost as much as an offensive spell.

I would either like to see the cost decreased or free. Barring that, a way to disable it would be nice.

[KDR_11k]

Don't put it in your active ability bar? Or don't hold up?

[JKDC]

It should be fine once you level up. 7 mp won't matter once you have over 1000.

[Itchykobu]

This game has so much platforming in it, it seems like you shouldn't even have to unlock ride the lightning. I'm not opposed to a mana cost for it, but at the same time I can't think of a time that I don't use it, either intentionally or unintentionally. This isn't a platformer with tight environments and slow moving enemies, but rather a platformer with wide-open levels and things constantly coming at you. Jumps upon jumps are a natural necessity.

[Fiskbit]

I find myself accidentally using this spell all the time because of its special binding to the jump key, which sucks because of its cost. That said, keeping it on its own key would be way less convenient.

[yuastnav]

I find myself accidentally using this spell all the time because of its special binding to the jump key, which sucks because of its cost. That said, keeping it on its own key would be way less convenient.

Yes, I agree with that.
What bugs me is not particularly the cost (especially at the moment since I have plenty of scrolls and potions to recharge magical energy but I am running out of health potions/scrolls) but the delay after each us. I'm kinda used to hit and run e.g. attack and jump out of the way immediately and I find the transition difficult because whenever I attack a boss and want to jump out of the way I cannot because of the delay and vice versa. I jump and in mid-jump I want to attack the enemy because of the good angle but am unable to because of the delay.

[BobTheJanitor]

The mana cost is not noticeable once you level up a bit, so I don't mind that... Although come to think of it, since it's not a spell that scales in any way, and since at higher levels it becomes effectively free, that does create an odd imbalance between the gameplay at low levels, when 7 mana actually matters, and that of higher levels. So now I wish I could go back and change my vote. If it's intended to be a drain on your mana then it should probably scale its mana cost up automatically as you level (although I would rather it not do that, thank you very much!), but if it's intended to be a spell that's so cheap that it's effectively free, just cut out the middle man and make it free.

A couple other things on the subject of Ride the Lightning, though. One, I'd like to see its cooldown decoupled from the other spell cooldowns. It's a maneuverability skill, and it doesn't make sense to have it on your offensive ability cooldown. When you're running and gunning at bosses, this becomes quite noticeable. (Why didn't I dodge that bat! I was jumping! Oh wait, I was holding down my fireball too, drat.) Secondly, and I don't know how much coding trouble this would be, but I'd like to see its self cooldown decreased or flat out removed, and the flying problem fixed by simply not resetting it until you touch ground again. That would match a lot better with the standard conventions of platform games. And while I love to see Arcen innovating, in this case I'm feeling like the tried and true standard is probably the way to go.

Oh, and a final thought for some time down the road, this is a great skill for which to add in cosmetic variations. Green lighting, pink lightning, replace the lightning effect with fire or waves, etc. etc. Just a nice way to allow players to customize their experience. (Oh and when is the in-game hat store coming?)

[JKDC]

If they make it free then the light spell should be as well. Both are necessities.

[c4sc4]

The mana cost is not noticeable once you level up a bit, so I don't mind that... Although come to think of it, since it's not a spell that scales in any way,

What? It does scale, higher levels of Ride the Lightning make you jump higher.

[BobTheJanitor]

The mana cost is not noticeable once you level up a bit, so I don't mind that... Although come to think of it, since it's not a spell that scales in any way,

What? It does scale, higher levels of Ride the Lightning make you jump higher.

Oh, well then. I had no idea. I'd seen a later version of it, but the description didn't seem to imply that there was any advantage. It's possible I just didn't read it closely enough. Although I don't know how much of a point jumping higher has. How high do you really need to jump? And if that scales linearly, very soon you'll be able to jump higher than the largest screen in one bounce. So even then it hits a hard barrier to scaling eventually. So if there are infinite levels in the game, but non-infinite levels of RtL, and mathematically anything finite divided by infinity is 0 then in fact it does not scale. QED!

[OobleckTheGreen]

(Oh and when is the in-game hat store coming?)

Changing the title to A Valley Without Team Fortress would be a necessary step 2. And AVWTF is such a cool acronym 

[Cyborg]

The mana cost is not noticeable once you level up a bit, so I don't mind that... Although come to think of it, since it's not a spell that scales in any way,

What? It does scale, higher levels of Ride the Lightning make you jump higher.

Oh, well then. I had no idea. I'd seen a later version of it, but the description didn't seem to imply that there was any advantage. It's possible I just didn't read it closely enough. Although I don't know how much of a point jumping higher has. How high do you really need to jump? And if that scales linearly, very soon you'll be able to jump higher than the largest screen in one bounce. So even then it hits a hard barrier to scaling eventually. So if there are infinite levels in the game, but non-infinite levels of RtL, and mathematically anything finite divided by infinity is 0 then in fact it does not scale. QED!

You can still have an increase over infinite levels. It could be this(Wikipedia):

[Baleyg]

Ah.  But while the height of your jump may be limited by the height of the room, high level Ride the Lightning has one other trick up its sleeve.  Once you hit the ceiling, you stick up there until the jump duration runs out!  With a powerful enough Ride the Lightning, you can stay pressed against the ceiling all day as you rain rocks down onto your foes.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm cool with it as it stands, and higher jumping is great --- when you're trying to get over a bunch of enemies to cross an overland region, the higher the better.  But decoupling the cooldown would be great; it's odd to be able to shoot a fireball while double-jumping but not a ball lightning.

[Terraziel]

Whilst at first I thought double jump having a mana cost was irritating after you level up a couple of times it becomes so cheap that I didn't really care any more.

My personal issue is the need to have it in the current action bar, it should slotted somewhere else, some sort of passive buffs section, so i don't need 4+ copies of it just because I use multiple action bars