Spell Balance

[Terraziel]

I was going to post this yesterday, but then i discovered it was 1am (GMT) this morning.....anyway, I was going to complain anyway, but if as 0.586 thread claims you are about to do a press push and bring in a bunch of new players then I thinks it's a good idea to do a spell balance pass.

My basic concern is that playing a game with say fireball or forest rage as your basic offensive spell choice is almost like playing a different game to playing with ball lightning, combat is essentially doubled in length and its much easier to get swamped by enemies.

Variety is of course a good thing, but the massive discrepancy in damage output between the basic single target direct damage spells is crazy, Ball Lightning literally does double the DPS of the others.

Now, there are a number of views to take on this.

1) Ball Lightning is horribly overpowered, and fireball et al should be the baseline for the combat experience

2) Fireball et al. are horribly underpowered, and Ball Lightning should be the baseline for the combat experience

3) Fireball et al. are simply there as finishing moves, first shot with ball lightning to do most of the damage, quick second shot with fireball to kill them off (if this is true it needs to be implied somewhere, even to the degree of claiming in the spell description that they are not supposed to be main combat spells)

For the record if you want to look at what i would consider some well balanced spells then Throw Rock, Tidal Pulse and Energy Pulse are all good choices, they have unique benefits that balance out their costs and weaknesses.

Personally I am leaning towards options 2 or 3. If you consciously create a set of spells as finishing moves, then fair enough, as long as each element has an automatically available (which is what stops Throw Rock excusing Forest Rage) Ball Lightning equivalent then it will work quite well. and lets be clear I do just mean equivalent, it just has to have a similar DPS, or other affects that balance it out. The basic requirement is that people aren't gimped for picking the wrong elements, which I'm sure we can all agree with.


EDIT: I added a sentence portion to the last paragraph, noting that other affects can balance out damage.

[Minotaar]

Yep, Ball Lightning is just superior in every way. DPS, range, projectile speed and trajectory...
It might be that it is in fact plain broken, because to me personally, monsters and bosses don't give almost any challenge on diif 5 (out of 6 that there are now). I'm running around with Ball Lightning 5 and Ice Cross 5. (Tier 5, first continent. Though Ball 4 is just fine for that too.)
Or the other way around: buff all the other offensive spells, but then the monsters too. Actually, the monsters probably need help regardless. With a skelebot lieutenant doing like 1.7 dmg to you per shot while you have 500+ hp, it's laughable. Only way to die is to accidentally use your storm death skill.
Or maybe put health upgrades more in line with others. 30-50% per upgrade might be plenty.

[Martyn van Buren]

Am I wrong to think ball lightning costs considerably more mana?  Anyway I always have it on my hotbar but still seem to use forest rage or miasma whip a lot more.

That said, recently I've been finding that lightning ball does kind of dominate energy pulse, which I think of as belonging to the same high-power high-cost group.  There just aren't enough situations where you get a lot of enemies lined up to justify having it in the hotkey bar over lightning ball's superior damage (especially given how common electricity-weak skelebots are, tho that could change).

[Terraziel]

Am I wrong to think ball lightning costs considerably more mana?  Anyway I always have it on my hotbar but still seem to use forest rage or miasma whip a lot more.

That said, recently I've been finding that lightning ball does kind of dominate energy pulse, which I think of as belonging to the same high-power high-cost group.  There just aren't enough situations where you get a lot of enemies lined up to justify having it in the hotkey bar over lightning ball's superior damage (especially given how common electricity-weak skelebots are, tho that could change).

Ball lightning costs 48 mana as opposed to forest rage at 35, with mana regen that is about 1/3 of a second, so nothing, Rather an entirely insignificant difference.

[Toll]

That "insignificant" difference can mean quite a lot though. From full mana, I can cast 21 Ball Lightning before the first fail. For Forest Rage, I got bored counting after 50, at which point I was at about half mana.

[Terraziel]

That "insignificant" difference can mean quite a lot though. From full mana, I can cast 21 Ball Lightning before the first fail. For Forest Rage, I got bored counting after 50, at which point I was at about half mana.

Except Ball lightning will have killed everything in the room by then, 21 shots is 31,752 damage. Edit: Tier one Obviously.

EDIT 2: Because I was rushed I didn't comment on it the first time but, holding down the fire button is a pretty dubious way of comparing them, if you wait 1/3 of second after the cooldown we are back to parity on mana consumption, and in the course of actually playing thats nothing.

[Penumbra]

I was recently in a continent (on an old build) that had no desert and no lava. I was without Citrine and Magma. I was stuck at Fire Ball 2 and Lightning 1.

I was forced to use a bunch of other spells instead, and while I was a little miffed at first, it was really fun! I got to experiment with using Forrest Rage and and the Entropy spells that I never used before.

However, even at tier 3, I still found Lightning 1 to be useful at times. Maybe the tiers should be widened? I know you can get 1 tier over on the monsters, but with monsters 2 tiers above my spell, it shouldn't be effective at all.

[x4000]

Okay, my changes:

* Fixed up spell balance a bit, based on a new DPS analysis tool we quckly cooked up:
** Attack power of fireball increased from 400 to 600.
** Mana cost of the ball lightning increased from 44 to 88.
** Tidal pulse attack increased from 500 to 600.
** Cooldown on energy pulse has increased from 1.5 to 4 seconds, its mana cost has increased from 60 to 120, and its attack has increased from 500 to 2200.
*** As an added note, energy pulse no longer strikes background objects.  That was annoyingly deforesting areas for a lot of players.
** Forest rage cooldown decreased from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds, and mana increased from 35 to 65.
** Creeping Death attack increased from 2000 to 3000.
** Plasma bolt attack increased from 250 to 350.
** Gold boomerang attack increased from 560 to 2000.
** Miasma whip cooldown time increased from 0.5 to 0.66 seconds, and mana cost increased from 40 to 60.

Resulting DPS file, if you're curious (the ones with multiple particles or piercing are misleading if you look at these numbers alone, FYI):

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: 746.6667  DPSPerMana: 11.48718  Atk: 560  Mana: 65  Cool: 0.75
CreepingDeath   DPS: 750  DPSPerMana: 3.75  Atk: 3000  Mana: 200  Cool: 4
LaunchMeteor   DPS: 800  DPSPerMana: 6.666667  Atk: 2400  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: 400  DPSPerMana: 2.5  Atk: 1200  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

[BobTheJanitor]

Is there going to be anything new to take the place of mass-tree-chopper? I sort of enjoyed that.

[Terraziel]

Is there going to be anything new to take the place of mass-tree-chopper? I sort of enjoyed that.

Miasma whip does pretty well for itself in that regard, but then miasma whip does\did pretty well for itself in every regard.

[KDR_11k]

The thing with ball lightning is that it is (or at least was) the most powerful of the basic attack spells, they all had similar damage/mana ratios but in most situations you need spike damage against single targets because enemies are kinda sparse and killing one quickly is more important than sustained fire. You can recover mana after the enemies are dead.

BTW, doesn't it seem kinda silly to have launch meteor use stats similar to launch rock despite being a more advanced spell and chunkier damage (i.e. dealing damage in bigger but fewer chunks so that missing a shot is a bad thing)?

[BobTheJanitor]

Miasma whip does pretty well for itself in that regard, but then miasma whip does\did pretty well for itself in every regard.

Too short! I need to be able to chop 20 trees at once. I want to make greenpeace cry!

[Terraziel]

BTW, doesn't it seem kinda silly to have launch meteor use stats similar to launch rock despite being a more advanced spell and chunkier damage (i.e. dealing damage in bigger but fewer chunks so that missing a shot is a bad thing)?

Actually judging from those stats at least you have explained, but missed the point, launch meteor is a step to the side rather than a step up, it is for the where the burst damage is most important, generally where it one it will one shot the enemy rather than two shot it.

[x4000]

In terms of replacing the mass-tree-destruction, no, not planning a replacement for that, sorry.

Got it:

** Launch meteor damage increased from 2400 to 4800.
** Meteor shower damage increased from 1200 to 2400.

Actually, though, Launch Meteor 1 needs to be equivalent to at least launch rock 3, because that's the prerequisite for it.  So it is a side-step, but it is a side step that only comes in later and thus needs more base power.

[BobTheJanitor]

You can't cut Environ Logging's funding! You will regret this!

Edit: I hope people get this reference and I don't sound like a crazy person...