Spell Balance

[x4000]

Well, that's cost, though, not recharge rate.  But cost would do the same sort of thing.

As you get to higher quality tiers, you'll find stuff that gives you both extra damage and reduced mana costs, though.  And if you get into a fight against a fire-immune boss, you might even find yourself wanting the other one for the duration of that particular fight even now.

[Terraziel]

As it stands I always take the -X% mana costs enchants, my logic is that there other ways of making the spell do more damage, there is no other way to make it more mana efficient, they are even more required with -X% cooldown enchants, where they balance the efficiency back out.

[x4000]

One thing I feel I should make very clear, if it's not currently, relating to this and the other thread (about character progression and monster balance):  I'm in no way claiming the balance is perfect now, and I definitely want feedback on it.  But I feel like the premise of the approach we are taking, and how we're going about developing out, is very valid (if unusual), and will lead to a game that can be satisfyingly balanced across many difficulty levels for long-term play.

Hence my long explanations of what my intents are with how the systems will interact, etc.  That's where we're trying to get to, and we need your help to get there, because we are definitely not there yet.  But I feel we're closer at this point than we've ever been in the past (how much that is saying is debatable, but still ).

[KDR_11k]

With the quick mana exhaustion the only stat that matters for a spell is damage per mana, DPS is meaningless after a few seconds since you'll be waiting for mana regeneration. Back when mana didn't regenerate I used high DPM spells against trash mobs to conserve ammo and high DPS against bosses but now it's always DPM.

[keith.lamothe]

DPS is meaningless after a few seconds since you'll be waiting for mana regeneration.

This isn't always so, but I guess it depends on how much you use upgrade stones and on what.

[KDR_11k]

My last upgraded character died horribly when I tried to run out of a boss tower mission and there was a landspeeder parked outside the door so the missile spawned at point blank. Generally I mostly use unupgraded characters, not that low on mana but no matter what you do with the current mana amounts you're going to run out quickly especially when the more expensive spells get involved that can drain even huge mana bars in a few seconds. Bosses and even the larger regulars take a ton of firepower to bring down so I'm usually running on regeneration there, especially against red amoebas since they absorb the fireballs (the least mana consuming spell in my arsenal).

Overall the DPM stat seems rather uneven. At T1 the fireball has 25 DPM (and fire touch only 21!), ball lightning 17, forest rage 14, tidal pulse 12. Miasma whip is only at 21 despite its short range. The big spells fare better with 24 for creeping death and a whopping 29 for energy pulse but you can't upgrade those very far without some rather advanced ingredients. Plasma bolt is at only 16. That's a really uneven picture overall, especially as fireball is the easiest to upgrade and some of the other, less efficient spells are pitched as cheap alternatives. Well, my pet peeve is still tidal pulse with its horrendous cost to damage ratio, even the piercing doesn't save it because both creeping death and energy pulse offer that effect at significantly better DPM rates.

I'm thinking that singling one spell out as too weak isn't sufficient, it's not just plasma bolt that needs help (though it's the most visible one since it's pitched as a cheap spell but costs as much as fireball per shot which vastly outperforms it in damage).

[x4000]

Here's part of why DPM isn't always even:

1. Spells that slide along walls (ball lightning) get a penalty to DPM because they are way easier to use, and can even be used around corners a bit.

2. Spells that are piercing or AOE (miasma whip, etc) get a penalty of varying degrees of severity because they can hit a lot of enemies at once.  I may need to rethink that with miasma whip in particular, but for energy pulse, tidal pulse, and creeping death that's the theory.


That said, what is there is not perfect, obviously so, but if you neglect those two factors when thinking about DPM then it's going to look more skewed than it is on more spells than it is.  Tidal pulse on one enemy is supposed to be a slightly raw deal.  But against several enemies in a group, it is _massively_ more powerful than fireball.

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but energy pulse is always a great deal, even against one enemy so there's still some major rebalancing between piercing spells needed. Especially since piercing isn't always useful because enemies tend to be fairly sparse and tidal pulse is the only long range water spell (then again water seems to be the most common elemental resistance). Piercing is useful for hitting homing missiles like small fairies and such but energy pulse's higher speed makes it better at making sure the enemies don't move before the spell hits them.

Wall slide is handy but somewhat overrated in the stats, could probably have less of an impact.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'd rather have wall slide be less 'corner-turny' and lower the mana cost if it could just keep spells from impacting on the wall constantly even if you barely graze it. I lose a lot of shots that way. Maybe there needs to be something different that doesn't turn corners but still allows spells to slide along the wall if they hit it at a low enough angle of impact. Don't know, maybe I'm asking for some kind of crazy reprogramming effort that isn't viable.

For overpriced spells, I'd nominate forest rage. It does OK damage, but it doesn't really have anything to justify its efficiency, which is about twice as poor as fireball. Also I wish it had some kind of impact graphic, it just sort of disappears when it hits things. But that's not a balance issue, so never mind. I tried to use it as a main spell for a while just to try it out, and I was constantly out of mana.

[Terraziel]

Can we get another data dump from the spells?
because looking in to it, the data earlier in this thread is wrong already, and getting the base data out of the game is tedious.

Personally, I keep trying to figure out what we should be wanting from the spells and elements. homogeneity is obviously not the desired goal, but...

The question it comes down to is, how should we be comparing these spells?

comparing tidal pulse to fireball, that's sort of apples and oranges.
We need to get the similar spells balanced before we start worrying about that.

At the moment the 4 non-piercing, long range, direct damage spells are all over the place when compared to each other let alone the piercing spells.

Personally I say group the spells, balance inside the groups, then start worrying about group to group balance.

Now Ironically part of the issue currently is we don't have enough spells, for example, a fairly sensible basic suggestion is that the non-piercing spells should generally have higher single-target damage than the piercing ones, but because we only have "basic" non-piercing spells that's not true at all, all the high damage spells are piercing spells.

Now, with what I think are the right numbers hooked out of the game, taking fireball as a baseline for effectiveness....basic suggestions

Ball Lightning needs it's damage inceased to about 2000, that puts it's DPM in the same ballpark as fireball, gives it the highest DPS of the 4, but the worst DPSPM

Forest Rage I can't really picture what it's benefit is supposed to be. but cooldown to 1.00 and damage to 1450 gives it similar DPM to fireball, but better DPS,

Plasma Bolt, cooldown to 0.5, damage to 575, gives it terrible DPM, ballpark DPS, and the best DPSPM of the 4.

As a group this also brings them all back into competition with piercing spells.

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't have the numbers to look at, and it seems all I can get from the game is the tiers I have right now, but no earlier ones, so it's hard for me to compare exact numbers. That number on plasma bolt sounds horribly low and like a useless spell, but maybe that's just because all I have to look at right now is tier 2, or tier 5 depending on which continent I go to.

I will mention that plasma bolt states that it deal splash damage when landing, and I have never seen it do that. It seems to be single target direct damage or nothing. If it did do splash damage, it would be moderately more useful, although still not great since the number of times that enemies group up to make that sort of effect useful is still pretty rare.

[Terraziel]

Current plasma bolt damage is 525, so 575 is an increase.

It does do splash damage, in the sense that if two skelebots are standing on the same spot it will hit both. but how often does that happen?

Edit: This issue with even being able to find the right numbers to compare is why i asked for them, currently you have to hope you have access to tier one, remove all your enchants then and still have take off the percentage change from your character. Tedious.

Additionally, with the cut in base cooldown for plasma bolt the rate of fire is increased about 25%

[BobTheJanitor]

Oh, I was expecting more of a graphical splash light effect when it  hits. Kinda like what energy pulse does when it impacts the floor right next to you because you weren't aiming at the right pixel and you weren't holding your breath and praying when you fired it. Er, anyway. Some sort of flashy light explosion that actually effected things in the splash radius. It might help to make up for the fact that plasma bolt comes out on a bizarre curve when you aim diagonally, and so it will often end up hitting next to your target if you're aiming at something in an upper corner.

[x4000]

Fresh data dump:

LaunchRock   DPS: 800  DPSPerMana: 6.666667  Atk: 1200  Mana: 120  Cool: 1.5
Fireball   DPS: 600  DPSPerMana: 15.78947  Atk: 600  Mana: 38  Cool: 1
FireTouch   DPS: 1000  DPSPerMana: 26.31579  Atk: 500  Mana: 38  Cool: 0.5
EnergyPulse   DPS: 550  DPSPerMana: 4.583333  Atk: 2200  Mana: 120  Cool: 4
BallLightning   DPS: 640  DPSPerMana: 7.272727  Atk: 960  Mana: 88  Cool: 1.5
TidalPulse   DPS: 750  DPSPerMana: 9.375  Atk: 600  Mana: 80  Cool: 0.8
CircleOfFire   DPS: 500  DPSPerMana: 8.333333  Atk: 1000  Mana: 60  Cool: 2
IceCross   DPS: 300  DPSPerMana: 2.5  Atk: 600  Mana: 120  Cool: 2
ForestRage   DPS: 1120  DPSPerMana: 17.23077  Atk: 560  Mana: 65  Cool: 0.5
CreepingDeath   DPS: 750  DPSPerMana: 3.75  Atk: 3000  Mana: 200  Cool: 4
LaunchMeteor   DPS: 1600  DPSPerMana: 13.33333  Atk: 4800  Mana: 120  Cool: 3
DeathTouch   DPS: 6060.606  DPSPerMana: 25.25253  Atk: 4000  Mana: 240  Cool: 0.66
SplashBack   DPS: 1.25  DPSPerMana: 0.03125  Atk: 5  Mana: 40  Cool: 4
MeteorShower   DPS: 800  DPSPerMana: 5  Atk: 2400  Mana: 160  Cool: 3
Rockslide   DPS: 400  DPSPerMana: 2.5  Atk: 600  Mana: 160  Cool: 1.5
MiasmaWhip   DPS: 1212.121  DPSPerMana: 20.20202  Atk: 800  Mana: 60  Cool: 0.66
PlasmaBolt   DPS: 530.303  DPSPerMana: 15.15152  Atk: 350  Mana: 35  Cool: 0.66
IceBurst   DPS: 3787.879  DPSPerMana: 37.87879  Atk: 2500  Mana: 100  Cool: 0.66
InsectOrb   DPS: 10  DPSPerMana: 0.08333334  Atk: 50  Mana: 120  Cool: 5
GoldBoomerang   DPS: 1000  DPSPerMana: 8.333333  Atk: 2000  Mana: 120  Cool: 2
HealingTouch   DPS: 800  DPSPerMana: 21.05263  Atk: 800  Mana: 38  Cool: 1
StormFist   DPS: 1400  DPSPerMana: 28  Atk: 700  Mana: 50  Cool: 0.5

Not going to change the corner-turny behavior at this stage, just FYI.

[Terraziel]

This is going to seem stupid....

"Fireball   DPS: 600  DPSPerMana: 15.78947  Atk: 600  Mana: 38  Cool: 1"

That's just not true. it's base attack is 900, and it's cooldown is 0.8.

Rather, are there some hidden modifiers that could be affecting the spells? because I challenge you to get fireball to have a 1 second cooldown.