Spell Balance

[x4000]

Yes, there are various modifiers in there.

First of all the base attack numbers you see in the game are multiplied by your character's stats already.  So if you're seeing 900, you probably have a character with 150% magic power.  These numbers are the base versions, unadjusted by anything.

Secondly, for the casting speeds, these are the base versions for a casting speed of 1 on a scale of 1-10.  If you'll recall, we "took out" casting speeds a while back, but what we really did was hide it and set everyone's casting speeds to 0.5.  Just in case we wanted to bring that back, which I don't think we do.

Anyhow, so all of the numbers you are seeing there are the literal raw values from in the game, unadjusted for anything for any character, and you can use them to look at their powers relative to each other.  You can NOT use them to look at the values compared to what you see in the game itself, of course.  Too many possible modifiers there.

[Terraziel]

This is my point 900 is after taking off power adjustments, my character has an attack of 125% and tier one fireball does 1125 damage (with no enchants equipped). Even when starting a new character it definitely comes out to 900.

Edit: As to the casting speeds, fully accepting the hidden multipliers, doesn't that make it hard even from your end to judge what the spells are doing? would it not be easier to fix it so that the default input number is what comes out the end in the game?

[x4000]

Out of curiosity, does changing the difficulty of the combat change that for you?  Thought I'd fixed that one.  Beyond that, I'm not sure where the modifier is coming from.

[Terraziel]

I checked the difficulty, it's definitely not that.

[x4000]

I'm not sure, then.

[Terraziel]

For the record it's not just fireball, all the spells that i checked have a base damage exactly 50% higher than the base in you list.

[x4000]

It would be a good one to mantis; I'm not sure why that is happening and it would probably be good to know.  But whatever it is shouldn't stop the relative comparisons based on that export.  In the meantime I'm trying to focus on fixing up some more generalized enemy behaviors and getting at least two new mission types out the door today, if we can.

[Terraziel]

Alright, I've Put it in Mantis.

As an aside, for the specific suggestions noted earlier in this thread it should obviously be noted that they were based on changing the figures i took straight from the game.

[x4000]

Fair enough -- would you mind revising those to be based on the unadjusted numbers below so I can look at them in that context?

[Terraziel]

Alright, I'll Put the detail in as well.

Ball Lightning - Damage 1333.00  - Cooldown 1.38 - DPM 15.15 - DPS 969.70 - DPSPM 11.02
Fireball           - Damage 600.00    - Cooldown 1.00 - DPM 15.79 - DPS 600.00 - DPSPM 15.79
Forest Rage   - Damage 966.67    - Cooldown 1.25 - DPM 14.87 - DPS 773.00 - DPSPM 11.90
Plasma Bolt    - Damage 383.33    - Cooldown 0.63 - DPM 10.95 - DPS 613.33 - DPSPM 17.52

[KDR_11k]

I'm not sure what DPSPM is supposed to indicate. What does that mean for practical purposes whether it's high or low? The mana consumption in that formula is per shot while DPS is over time so an attack that fires one every ten seconds for 10000 damage at 50 mana per shot has the exact same DPSPM as one that fires twice per second, deals 500 damage and also costs 50 mana per attack yet the second one would be a real raw deal compared to the first.

[zebramatt]

I'm not sure what DPSPM is supposed to indicate. What does that mean for practical purposes whether it's high or low? The mana consumption in that formula is per shot while DPS is over time so an attack that fires one every ten seconds for 10000 damage at 50 mana per shot has the exact same DPSPM as one that fires twice per second, deals 500 damage and also costs 50 mana per attack yet the second one would be a real raw deal compared to the first.

Those two spells sound pretty equivalent. If you're fighting three enemies each with 3000 health, the former spell would take 30 seconds to kill all three; the latter 9 seconds, although at six times the mana cost. Conversely, when fighting one enemy with 26000 health, the former would take 30 seconds at a cost of 150 mana; and the latter 26 seconds at a cost of 2600 mana. Both of quite some utility but in different situations.

[KDR_11k]

That was an extreme example, in the game it'd be more like 2000 damage, 2.0 cooldown, 100 mana vs 1000 damage, 1.0 cooldown, 100 mana. The point is that DPSPM is a completely useless number because there's no real meaning to it. DPS is how quickly you can deal damage, DPM is how efficiently you can deal damage but DPSPM?

[Terraziel]

DPSPM is a not something to be judged on it's own, it is mana efficiency over time, you sort of need to rephrase it, Damage Per Second Per Mana, becomes "For X mana I get X damage per second"

CircleOfFire   - Mana cost 60   - Damage 1000 - Cooldown 2 - DPM 16.67 - DPS 500 - DPSPM 8.33
CreepingDeath   - mana cost 200 - Damage 3000 - Cooldown 4 - DPM 15   .00 - DPS 750 - DPSPM 3.75

Now if these were figures for comparable spells (those two spells just happened to have some good numbers) what these numbers would demonstrate is that if you want to do damage quickly, then Creeping Death is your guy, but if you are expecting a prolonged fight then Circle of fire is a considerably better option, indeed a much better option than the difference in DPM alone might imply.

[KDR_11k]

The problem is that the mana and the damage are measured differently. What you're combining there is "I do this much damage over time" and "I have to use this much mana per shot". The cost is for one shot but the effect is for however many shots you fire per second. These numbers are unrelated. The example with the three enemies with low health measures the damage chunking (how the DPS is spaced out), nothing else. Dealing damage in big chunks is a disadvantage but it depends on the target.

DPSPM is an utterly nonsensical number. The CoF vs CD discrepancy (ignoring both spells' ability to land multiple hits per shot) is not as large as DPSPM claims and if you assume different chunking (e.g. making CoF have a cooldown of 0.5 with 250 damage per attack) then DPSPM becomes misleading (CoF gets a DPM of around 4 while its DPSPM stays at 8.33).

If you want damage efficiency you need to measure both over time, damage per second vs mana consumption per second. That shorts down to damage per mana.