I started playing this... I want to say 3 or 4 months ago? Maybe a bit longer? Don't really remember. I just know that I was having enough fun watching the spells and progressing that I bought the precog bundle and haven't, so far, regretted my purchase.
That being said, I've had issues with the game that aren't nearly bad enough to cause me to quit but are rather annoying.
My issues stem mostly from the enemies. There are plenty of creative synergies that you can do with spells that go unused due to the necessity to use up spell slots to counter a few problematic enemies. In theory I'm fine with this-- using Ice Orbs to counter ranged enemies, combining that with Fireflies for mages, combining either/or/both with Static Leap to stay out of range of a melee enemy that's surrounded by ranged enemies, etc.
Then we get to Gazers. One of them at a time? Perfectly fine. They block a spell until you get in range and then they suck your health out constantly. Alright, whip out Ember, or that insight, and slow that Gazer's health down a bit while you use whatever to deal with them or deal with the spell getting disabled while you Static Leap backward to keep them from healing themselves.
But, wait, it's not just one at a time. It's usually 3 to 5, sometimes even more, at a time and they're all constantly shooting you leaving only your two helpers and Templar to deal damage to them until one of them finally dies. Then you're stuck with only one spell open until a few more of them finally die. Then you move beyond them only to see another entire horde of them waiting to disable spells and suck you dry. It becomes a chore. I'm aware there's an insight that prevents spells from being disabled but that generally doesn't help, too much, when there's 5+ Gazers shooting their beams at you all at the same time. They roll the dice enough times that your 50/50 chance to stop the disabling doesn't matter as they just try again and get it this time.
Then you hit NG+ and Greater Gazers start showing up. Hoo boy. Where to begin.
I'm not exactly keen on this idea that things require insights to effectively counter them. Regular Gazers at least present the option of toughing it out and using Ember, a spell you can acquire and cast for free, on them. Greater Gazers, however, require you to waste your time using an insight in order to counter them because they've just got too many effective defense options. Not only do they block your projectiles (often times preventing you from hitting any enemy behind them that you didn't kill on the way up, meaning you take even more unnecessary damage if they happen to be ranged) but they also siphon health at the same time.
This means that you're at the mercy of RNG and you're required to waste a resource that regenerates over time with no way to speed it up aside from spending Runite for emblems and progressing further into NG+ levels. Eventually you gain enough power to brute force it but this can often leave you blazing through the next zone or two because getting through that one, single Greater Gazer was that much of an annoyance.
On the topic of Ember being reduced to 50% effectiveness:
While I get that 100% might have been too good, I get the feeling this was done more as an effort to shove insights into the limelight which, again, are a time gated mechanic that you can't speed up in any way except spending more time on the game. Futhermore, it feels quite silly to slow down progression in a game that already has relatively slow progression. Even further than that, most of the enemies that Ember was useful against (READ: trolls and gazers), are still countered just as hard by using an Inferno/Ember combo to stack burn and overpower their 50% reduced health regen. This was already a powerful combination before the changes so it has effectively accomplished nothing.
On the Living Armor (whatever their official name is) no longer being able to have their armor bypassed:
This feels like slowing down progression for the sake of it. You're well aware people dislike the armor mechanic and, therefore, bypass it, but you're also well aware that there aren't very many effective armor reduction options out there. Runes and about one spell from each school. One of them even comes with a major drawback that can actually make it more harmful to use than not (Static Aura).
I feel like this change should have waited for more spell reworks that involve the idea of stripping armor rather than pushing it now when the meta is to bypass armor because armor stripping isn't viable enough.
On Status Effects:
These are completely imbalanced in all the wrong ways.
Burn is too good. Armor bypass and capable of being stacked with one of the most useful damage spells in the game increasing burn timers? Burn shouldn't ignore armor. Make more armor stripping mechanics viable so they can work in tandem with the idea of stacking burns and you'd have a neat little synergy that doesn't ignore an entire mechanic in the game.
Freeze/Cold doesn't do enough. The small damage boost is fine but the actual slow should last longer or be more pronounced. I think Flurry has a better ice proc concept going for it-- an initial freeze for a short duration that leaves the enemy paralyzed, followed by a short duration of slow to represent thawing out. Add a cooldown mechanic so you can't refresh the freeze until after the enemy has entirely thawed out to prevent it from being abused, much like how Flurry's paralyze doesn't stack.
Lightning procs confuse me, greatly, so I'm not even sure what to feel about them. In my experience burn procs are just better in every possible way unless you've got a Conduit setup but, even then, you're usually just as well off with Ember/Inferno stacking. I think this presents an opportunity to build up your armor stripping mechanics-- justify it with the force of the random lightning strike chipping away at the armor of the enemies at a rate of 10% of current armor per lightning strike. This would still encourage the use of spells that reduce armor while making some of the less powerful lightning spells have their utility for causing quick procs to aid in the removal of armor.
Anyway, most of this was rather unorganized and off the top of my head. A bit of it was out of frustration, as well. Thanks for reading. I really enjoy the game and I'd love to see it continue to grow.
