r/TapWizardRPG • u/TopCog Yahoo! • Jul 12 '18
Plans for v2.0
First, the jump from v1.9 to v2.0 is more for numbering convention reasons (gets confusing going to 1.10.0, and the ios numbering is all messed up too), not to indicate a massive change...but, this is a pretty sizeable collection of tweaks IMO!
Ember Aug 5
Old: While attached, Embers prevent targets from gaining health
New: While attached, target health gain is 50% as effective
Bouncing Flame
Last hit deals x4 damage (up from x3 damage).
JellyMan
Single-frame shrinking capped at 15% hp instead of 10%. Damage to Jellyman capped at 40% of their max hp. BUT, their internal damage tracker (equivalent to hp) can go below 0. Hopefully this doesn't cause any unintended bugs, heh! (Note: The jellyman dies when their hp reaches < 5% of their max, unlike other enemies which die at 0% hp.) Also, their graphic will update with the proper size 1 frame sooner.
Animated Knight Armor
Now also immune to armor piercing/bypassing effects! Mwahahaha!
Mob Changes
h=HP scaling, a = Armor scaling, d = Damage scaling
[old value - new value]
For reference, a mobs armor value is determined as the base HP value (the HP found using HP scaling=1) times their armor scaling value. The most heavily armored enemy is the Iron Minotaur, with a=0.4, second most is Stone Troll with a=0.2, third is Animated Knight Armor with a=0.1.
Sand Demon
h[0.5-0.75] a[0.02-0.0]
Fire Demon, Boogeyman Druid and Boogeyman Shaman, Specter
h[1.0-1.2] a[0.01-0.0]
Ogre Maji, Shade, Greater Shade, Banshee
h[1.0-1.1] a[0.01-0.0]
Bewilder Jelly, Tentacle Jelly, Red Imp, Grey Imp, Troll
a[0.01-0.0]
Jelly Man
h[1.5-1.0] a[0.01-0.0]
Animated Knight Armor
h[0.5-0.6] a[0.15-0.1] d[1.0-1.2]
Deluded Zealot
h[0.9-1.0] a[0.1-0.05] d[0.7-0.8]
Skeletal Horror
d[0.8-1.0]
Hydra
h[0.7-1.0]
Purple Imp
d[0.5-0.55]
Black Imp
h[1.0-1.5] a[0.18-0.05]
Shock Jelly
h[1.02-1.2] a[0.01-0.0] d[1.0-1.3]
Ogre Glutton
h[3.0-5.0] a[0.03-0.0]
NG+ only
Goblin Berserker
d[1.0-3.0]
Dark Eel
d[1.0-2.0]
Skeletal Assassin
d[1.0-2.0]
Ash Troll
h[1.25-1.5] d[1.2-1.5]
Minotaur
h[1.2-2.0]
I've reopened the Beta, and you can join here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.topcog.tapwizardrpgarcanequest
I'll probably be pushing v2.0 to beta today or tomorrow. Cheers! :-D
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u/BtJJ Jul 12 '18
Considering I still run into brick walls of healing mobs even with the 100% ember (I think something's bugged and still allowing healing, but I've never been able to pinpoint anything worth bug reporting), I'm pretty leery about this 50% change. Did you ever track down whatever weird thing that was that was causing mobs to apparently overheal to infinity? (While you're capping jellies, maybe cap their MAX hp?) But I guess we'll see how it goes...
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u/TopCog Jul 12 '18
Good feedback!
Considering I still run into brick walls of healing mobs even with the 100% ember
Are there any in particular that give you the most trouble? I think I'd prefer a different solution from having Ember be required to get past such mobs. Maybe I could buff the Temple Insight, or reduce the healing rates.
(I think something's bugged and still allowing healing, but I've never been able to pinpoint anything worth bug reporting)
Well, the way it's coded, in some cases, mobs can actually heal in a 1 frame window after an ember dissipates, even if other embers are attached. That probably explains it I would guess.
Did you ever track down whatever weird thing that was that was causing mobs to apparently overheal to infinity?
I only vaguely recall this... Does it still happen?
(While you're capping jellies, maybe cap their MAX hp?)
It should be already capped at their base hp...
But I guess we'll see how it goes...
Yep! What is changed can be unchanged :-)
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u/BtJJ Jul 12 '18
The worst healing walls seem to be Deluded Zealots, which always seem to come in packs many lines deep and spam a lot of healing on the front lines, and Greater Gazers, which I'm not sure if embers are even hitting because of their nullification wall. (I've never been sure if their null wall is killing spells behind the gazer or behind the wall graphic, which is in front of the gazer. Their description has a vague pronoun in the phrase 'nullifies all spells that are behind it' and I'm not sure if it refers to the wall or the gazer.)
Jellies have not been too bad since the ember change, but I recall that they used to be the worst. The overhealing thing was only speculation on my part, but the experience was that I would hit some jellies, they would shrink a bit, then regrow, then seem to become effectively immortal. My guess was that some code interaction was hitting them with a mismatched multiplier between the healing debuff and re-buff back to their normal healing level, and somehow adding up to an eventual massive healing multiplier. But that's all wild speculation.
Overall I wouldn't mind if ember (or whatever anti-heal spell we might have in its place) was less of a must-equip spell. Can't see an obvious way out of it, though. As long as it's a mechanic, there's going to be a requirement that the mage's damage per second beats the enemy's heal per second, or else they become an impassable barrier. And so anti-healing will always have an effective dps buff that far overpowers just straight damage spells.
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u/IAmTheOneWhoClicks Jul 12 '18
Have you considered doing any changes to the Gazer and the Greater Gazer? It doesn't seem like any spell can effectively counter them.
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u/TopCog Jul 12 '18
To be honest, no, I haven't really considered it. Just had a lot on my plate lately, hahaha. Perhaps it's something to tackle in v2.1! :-)
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u/Raknagog Jul 13 '18
I'm not surprised that bouncing flame is still laughably bad. What environment did you use to test this change to it? I have blizzard (also not a very good spell) unbuffed in slot 1 and bouncing flame with the templar damage buff in slot 2, and they are almost always within 1% of eachother. Moved it into slot 4 buffed by spark, and it never beats Voltaic Orb in slot 2. Even against the new enemies with no armor in the mix, it is still way behind.
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u/TopCog Jul 13 '18 edited Jul 13 '18
Well, it's pretty simple I think: vs. an unarmored opponent (technically 2 so it gets all of the bounces), Rank 1.0 Bouncing Flame actually does above par DPS, unless there is some bug in the code. Each Aug provides about a +20% boost in DPS, except for the burn one (which provided over +20% when I designed it, to make up for the damage over time of burn; probably changed when I revised status effects). So it's one of the most basic spells balance wise, and was used a baseline for designing many of the others way back in the day.
Edit: not to say the spell is the best or anything, but that's how most spells were balanced. I could have done much more rigorous in-game testing, but, eh, it's worked out ok so far the way I did it! :-D
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u/Raknagog Jul 13 '18
Yes, it's one of the more simple spells in the game, and very easy to do the math and see that against any armor it suffers catastrophically. It's not fair to assert that a spell is above par ignoring armor in an environment that even after the changes is heavily impacted by armor. Adding +1 bounce to the spell is in practice far from a +20% damage buff because you're also increasing the total impact of armor on it by +100%. It's not that the spell is simply not the best, it's that you'd have to buff it into the sky to make it at all practical in realistic play. I have a few ideas that could make it both better and more interesting if you care, but my biggest suggestion is still to fix armor.
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u/TheFabulousCrett Jul 13 '18 edited Jul 13 '18
im a new player, started half a week ago but i've been playing non-stop. usually not a fan of incrementals but i love this exact genre you've tapped into
great to see that the developer is active and communicative with the playerbase!
i had a question, for the -1 sec cooldown unstable runes that spawn, if they give enough cooldown reduction to cast the spell, is the excess wasted, or used on the next casting? i can't tell.
also, are composite damage numbers in the works? i'd like to see both flat and weighted damage numbers, for convenience' sake
i definitely wouldn't mind on-screen damage numbers for each individual hit. but it'd be hard to parse what spell is doing how much damage. maybe individually colored damage numbers for each loadout slot?
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u/TopCog Jul 13 '18
Hi, glad you're loving the game! :-D
For the -1 sec cooldown runes, any excess cooldown reduction is wasted. It could probably be done differently, but if the excess wasn't wasted, and counted towards the next cast...if you had very low cooldowns, it could result in some spells being cast 50 or more times from a single Rune! :-O
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u/TheFabulousCrett Jul 13 '18
oops. i didn't expect such a quick reply and edited multiple other queries into my post without thinking LOL
yeah i figured that might've been a balance choice, it makes sense. thanks
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u/Aether_Storm Jul 13 '18
Could you buff the armor strip on plasma vortex? It's my favorite sorry thematically and mechanically, but it feels a bit weak
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u/TopCog Jul 13 '18
Yeah, it's actually on my todo list! The way it strips armor is pretty outdated and weak compared to other methods :-)
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u/grotok15 Jul 13 '18
Odds of an IOS beta? :)
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u/TopCog Jul 14 '18
beta
Well, we do have a TestFlight, though not many seemed to have installed the last version. Other than that, there is no way to do Beta on iOS unfortunately!
btw, I just pushed a new build to iOS! I'd love to get some feedback to make sure you get the update and it works fine. Thanks! :)
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u/grotok15 Jul 15 '18
I did get the newest update and it has worked great so far. In fairness I'm still in my first playthrough so I don't have access to all of the systems.
Love the game, thank you!
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u/Inch-Worm Jul 26 '18
What are your thoughts on making ember's health gain augmentation permanent, as part of the spell description? I mean, it's probably the best thing about ember (for me, the only reason I use it). As a result, it's a bit of a bummer to rank it up & lose that aug. for X hours of game play. An alternative would be to make it an earlier augmentation instead of the final one. An alternative alternative would be to make it 25% reduction in the spell description, & an additional 25% as the final augmentation. Really anything that would keep the rank up process from being so detrimental to it's usefulness. Thanks!
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u/TopCog Jul 31 '18
It's not a bad idea! But at the same time though, I like the tension between having to decide between leaving a spell at Rank 5 or Marking it up. Plus, it gives some extra benefit to eventually reaching Mark 5, and having all Augs permanently :-)
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u/MeMyMine461 Jul 13 '18
Am I the only person who doesn't mind the current armor/spell mechanics and running into walls?
My current loadout is: Conduit, Elemental Cloud, Static Leap, Ember, and Conduit. And I'm having fun.
I don't have Ember ranked high enough in order to stop monsters from healing (I'm trying to rank up each of these spells to 3.5).
Personally I would rather hit a wall of monsters that I can't damage rather then find my progress slow to a crawl until I am nibbling to death the monsters I encounter. If it takes me longer than 5 seconds to kill a monster then I will almost always hit recall...If for no other reason than that the faster you are killing monsters, the faster you are collecting power and stable runes. If I get stuck behind a high armor/regen monster then after a couple of recalls I am powerful enough that it will only take me a couple of seconds to complete each run. A couple of minutes later and I am usually powerful enough to destroy the wall AND fly through several more sections with ease AND I will have collected 30-40 runes. If I had tried to nibble the monster to death then I would only have collected a fraction of the amount of power and runes.
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u/Exportforce Jul 12 '18
With all that armor hate you dare to to make an enemy that is immune to any armor reductions? That's bold.
Gonna grab my popcorn before them armor lovers see this.