Spell balance!

[keith.lamothe]

* The amount of time you can hold a charge shot at full charge is no longer limited to 5 seconds.

Where's that picture of the megaman overload (that nonetheless doesn't kill the little dude with the construction hat) ?

[x4000]

[Penumbra]

Wow, all this time, I thought either my finger was slipping or my controller was faulty..... 

[x4000]

No, no, it was totally you in your case.  I just fixed a bug affecting other people.

[Penumbra]

And I thought Arcen had great customer service before, but custom builds on a per-user basis, wow!! 

[x4000]

Oh, yeah -- I knew your fingers tend to slip and/or that you have gamepad hardware problems, so I fixed the bug just for you long ago so that it wouldn't be twice as bad for you.  Glad I could help!

[Panopticon]

One major thing for the melee spells:   Pleeeeeease make it possible to just hold down the button with these and keep firing them.   I say this mainly because I almost literally cannot use them the way they are;  constant repeated button presses, done too many times in a row can make my arm flare up bad.   I end up just trying to crash through Shallows areas (or putting them on Featherweight and skipping them outright) just to avoid that.   Also, there are situations where the player might want to use it like on a slope and repeatedly punch at an angle to keep hitting something there.... and the current implementation means you're GOING to slide down a bit or just move a little during all the punching no matter what you do, if you have to do it at an angle.   I've had more than a couple of otherwise totally avoidable deaths because of trying to punch/whip at an angle.

I agree with this completely. It would make angled shots with melee a viable tactic instead of a risky, more tricky than it's usually worth attack. Since they aren't high caliber anymore it doesn't seem like it would overpower them defensively.

[x4000]

Yep, that change is already in the next release.

[Penumbra]

I am finding the Entopicist's Flying Entropic Finger to be really strong for a tier 1 class. 0.2 second cooldown, decent speed and a large shot with a caliber of High makes it amazing for blocking everything.

I mean, I love it, but... Maybe it's just a little special something for my game! 

[x4000]

Thanks!

* The eight "flying fist" spells that do negtive status effects on the enemies (plus having awesome high calibers) have been toned down into having a 1-second cooldown.

[Psyren]

With 1.0 out I thought i'd give this a bump...

With the caliber changes, the Illuminologist got a massive nerf. Its primary is far too unreliable now that its caliber is low, and simply put its unusable in all but open space...

Caliber for the primary needs to be high again.

[Gallant Dragon]

I have to agree with this one, although when it could block shots it tended to be just a little OP.  The way it is right now, though, the Illuminologist is pretty much a suicide class in tight spaces or against enemies that fire multiple shots (like the bosses!)

[Psyren]

I wouldn't say it was ever OP.

While it was great that the primary could pierce most shots, it still has mediocre DPS and the inherit risk of hurting yourself (good luck with not shooting yourself when running up/down slopes). Illum wasn't really DPS-centric, and I liked the utilitarian nature of its kit in exchange for damage...

Buffing the primary back to its old power seems like the best/simplest idea without having to make tweaks everywhere else.

[Panopticon]

Light Rockets were definitely OP when Valley 2 first hit beta. They'd block pretty much everything and did some crazy high damage. I think they are feeling about right now, and the other spells in the Illuminologist class work fine indoors, particularly Light Snake in caverns. The Flare spell is good too. And even with the additional danger of throwing rockets around indoors (which makes total sense when you think about it), I still find lots of situations inside where I'm happy I have it, like Boss fights or some of the more open slices that have flyers in them.

[Psyren]

Only started playing the beta around the time the control issues where fixed, so can't really comment on issues before then... If you're going to make one piece of a class kit unreliable in a common situation (indoors/tight passages) the rest of the kit needs to make up for it.

As it stands Illum has no defense outlet except for its Ultimate, and the Special attack is far too slow to be used as a DPS/bulleteater option. So in most tight situations you're stuck with the option of:

- snake spell shenanigans
- block using your Ultimate
- suicide rockets, using your invisibility window to AoE enemies
- hoping to land a hit with your slow, tiny Special

That's a pretty rotten deal. Even if Illum's Primary gets a damage, AoE, and/or cooldown nerf, its Caliber does need a buff.

EDIT: @Panopticon. I totally understand what you mean . Its AoE is quite useful as a pinger over long-ranges without drawing enemies towards you, but outside of those situations, Illum is horrible in tight mid-range situations and the snake/flare require a lot of skill to be used to get hits on small targets & bypassing projectiles.