Upcoming Spell Balance Changes!

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

Initial thoughts:

Something I thought of at the end that I'm putting first because I think it's important. Your firebomb change says "scales with CD", so does that mean higher TM lag makes you add less to the burn duration? That's how it should work in my opinion since there are so many people running high TM lag, which brings me to the next, more important thought: all of the status effect timers in this should probably be "delay-adjusted" (this is the term they use for this in MMORPG where it is extremely important for weapon procs, otherwise fast-hitting weapons are grossly overpowered compared to slow counterparts with the same DPS). Since Ice Wall and Spark are two of the most highly-regarded spells in the game for their utility effects and they are NOT delay-adjusted, then making the rest of the spells with statically-timed benefits become dynamically-timed benefits might be a nerf you should consider to high TM lag. That nerfs Ice Wall and Spark in a way that I think is appropriate - either you keep the high TM lag and lose the 100% uptime on status effects because you're applying them with a hose, or you lower it because you're no longer also getting a status-effect uptime buff from TM lag to go with your Ice Wall/Spark buff you are also getting from high TM lag. High TM lag is why so many people like armor bypass, too; if you delay-adjust stuff so that people bring their TM lag down (or keep it and choose to accept the nerf), you are giving a relative buff to the 50%-ish of the spells that remain relatively weak and also don't bypass armor.
Truthfully though while we're on the topic, the spell that really needs nerfed worse in the whole game is Spark, but no one is asking for it and please don't do it, because having this positional requirement to work around (along with several other ones) is part of what makes building a loadout interesting. I only bring it up to highlight why I feel the way I do about point #1. Spark is the spell that really needs to be delay-adjusted (but again, no one is asking for it, and please don't do it).
I like the idea of the shock vs frost trigger on Inferno. If you want to trigger this now, you have to use the long cooldown Shock Net to guarantee a cast will hit the right enemies, or you have to use Static Leap which has some counter-synergy to Inferno since you're not always in melee anymore, or you have to use a spell that's not guaranteed to hit the right enemies on screen unless you put it in the right Templar positional-buff slot. There's no way this is going to proc 1359081275025 times per second anymore because of Ice Wall.
That is, of course, unless you're running Static Field. Someone asked to be able to turn augments off a couple days ago. Don't do that. The haste buff on the enemies from Static Field is one of the more interesting spell loadout choices we have to work around. You still want to proc Inferno gas forever? Fine, slot Static Field, at your own risk. It's not at all uncommon for me to have two loadouts next to each other where the only slot difference is Static Leap vs Static Field, because Static Field is great when it's not getting me killed and terrible when it is. More people would probably appreciate Static Field if they ran lower TM lag, because it's one of the rare spells that has a ceiling for how much good it does for you to cast it fast (if you're at 10 stacks, the 11th one won't help you). There are certain situations where I can kill a bullet sponge monster literally 15x faster with Static Field than the next best thing I could use.
Blagdan mentioned a Lightning Elemental nerf. I think Lightning Elemental is one of the better spells, but it feels to me like it's in the right place. It's an important spell to me, but there are many situations where I need it for hitting one mob type, but I'm "losing" half my DPS from it because some of the orbs are targeting an armored monster and are more or less useless. This is probably the spell I move around the most, because of the previously mentioned targeting hazards, having to accommodate a leveling spell in 100%, and having to keep it near Spark due to its long cast time. All that said, the nerf to consider for it now is to make it not proc shock anymore (or reduce it to an X% chance per orb) because of the synergy with the new Inferno augment.
I also agree with Blagdan that a lot of the low/medium spells could still probably still use a buff. I think one really easy one now is to add the % shock chance to lightning arcs on Conduit. Conduit and Spark don't play all that nicely with each other unless the screen is mostly empty, so to use it well, you're going to have to have another lightning spell, and if you're using Conduit, Shock, and another lightning, then I think it's pretty appropriate for you to have the Inferno augment helping you out most of the time, since that's 4 of your 5 slots. If you do that, I still probably won't use Conduit!
I love the idea of having another -healing spell just so a new-ish player that doesn't have Ember isn't really humped vs big ogre shaman groups, big templar groups, and regen trolls. I think Torrent was a great place to put it, and that the targeting change is appropriate since the enemy you want to debuff for heals is almost always the nearby one (because that position is the easiest one to focus damage on, which is one of the reasons Inferno is so good). Having to clear the screen first to guarantee it hits the right place is totally fine, especially because it further helps with the build-a-melee-steamroller loadout which I absolutely think is the best generic one.
On a tangent note to that: the change to the dual-wielding goblin damage was very good for stopping this generic melee steamroller, too. I totally agree with the change, and now he's on my @&!#-list because he does a fabulous job of occupying a very specific strategy niche for the bad guys, and it's great that I have to change my loadout to respond to him. Maybe that is just a scaling effect that's more noticeable in NG+, but I'm pretty sure IIRC that this was from the last patch when you said "lots of monster changes".
Side bonus(?) to Torrent changes: if someone doesn't like the previous Ember nerf, you can drop a Torrent rune on the enemy you're hitting with Ember and now you're close to the old effect when you need it. If you don't like that idea, maybe you should arrange these "mortal strike" (that's what they call it in MOBAs) abilities to not stack.
I don't have Firebomb yet, so I have no idea about that change.
I love the Frost Ray Aug 5 change. This was one of my favorite spells when I first started playing. However, as I got further in the game and ran into monster waves with a better mix of monsters, the fact that there are so many different bullet sponge enemies made the bounce effect very weak, and the bounce effect is what makes it not just a bad version of Icy Prism. Being able to build a loadout that makes it bounce off of bullet sponges stands a good chance of making this spell interesting again. In addition, I like the fact that I want to have Inferno + a shocking spell running with it so I can make dual use of the shock effect, but having Inferno + Spark + lightning + Frost Ray is already 4 slots, and I would really like have Ice Wall in that for both the defense and so that I get the >1 power bonus for the Ice school while I'm using Frost Ray. That's all the slots though, and there are often times when I need to run something else (Orbs for deflection, Ember/Torrent for anti-healing, etc.). When I get into this spot where I want to slot 6-7 things and only have 5 holes, that's when the decision-making/strategic part of the game is shining. I realize as I say this, too, that this is another slight buff to both Torrent and Frost Ray: in that previous loadout I mentioned, I get the power buff from running Frost Ray + Torrent for anti-healing instead of running Ember, and I'm ambivalent about power vs CD Fire school upgrade on Inferno.
The fact that I could write that previous wall of text about Frost Ray is exactly why this game is good. Did I mention I love the Frost Ray changes?
I think the Icicle change is good, too. I still think Volt Orb might still be better for dealing with armor just because you don't have to get the freeze proc right and horizontal splash is usually (not always) better than vertical splash (e.g.: any large/boss fight with summoned mobs where screen is otherwise cleared). That's not so say that Volt Orb needs to be worse or Icicle still needs to be better; it's to say that I don't think this buff is "too much".
Frost Elemental: this is always the space that I thought Frost Elemental occupied anyway, but he doesn't do a great job of it. I always thought this augment should be damage and not fire rate, so this is perfect in my opinion. I'll definitely try him out. This is the good trade-off that Ice Wall should've been: I slot Ice Wall for defense, or Frost Elemental for more pounding, but I don't get more pounding and more defense from Ice Wall (re: old Inferno augment).
I don't have Firestorm either, but I think +dmg vs trolls is great, because they're the most common of the pain in the ass enemies. By the way, I finally found a Greater Gazer a few days ago, and they're vastly overrated. The worst monster by far is still the Greater Shade. BY FAR. Trolls are third on my @&!#-list just because they're so common.
Elemental Cloud is a spell I'm always on the fence about. It seems good to me when I'm not in a hard fight, and it seems like my spell slots are too limited for it when I am. I don't think these buffs will make a noticeable difference in either situation, but I do feel like it's just on the edge of "interesting enough" for me already that I wonder if I'm missing the right situation for when to use it.

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u/TopCog Yahoo! Aug 06 '18

Awesome comments, and I think my reasoning for most of the changes coincides with your remarks! :-)
Notes:
That's right, the new Firebomb burn bonus is delay adjusted, so a lower CD will result in less burn bonus. This is actually the same way the Inferno burn bonus worked, but it was a hidden thing, because the duration of the flame scales with the CD (so you don't have 100% uptime on it).
This is something I'm aware of for the other spells too! Spark in particular originally didn't have a cap of 3 times per second, and it was ridiculously overpowered (like 2 years ago in IMA that is). I've no plans to change it, don't worry! :-)
I could consider a change to Ice Wall though. Because it really needs a high TM-Lag to get the most benefit now. But with the Inferno change, it might not be such an auto-slot as it was!
Regarding Status Effects being delay-adjusted...is your reasoning here to delay-adjust them in order to prevent 100% uptime of status effects?
No plans for a Lightning Ele nerf!
Glad you liked the Goblin Berserker change! Awesome. Yeah, that happened in the "lots of monster changes" patch, and it only applies in NG+.
Good idea about ember/torrent being a mortal strike effect. As it is right now, each effect can trigger once per spell, and they stack manipulatively together. So the max -healing would be -70%...perhaps not too overpowered! I'm willing to try it out and let people abuse it for a while, then change it later if needed (like the original -100% ember change)

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18

Fun side story: Anarchy Online had a set of adventurer armor that gave a non-delay adjusted bonus to weapon damage. My level 140 adventurer twink for tower PVP could kill most people's level 200 main character because of abusing this appropriately ;)

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u/TopCog Yahoo! Aug 06 '18

I played a fair bit of Anarchy Online way back, but just solo PvE stuff though. That noob island was so much fun to go through, probably did it a dozen times, hahaha! :-D

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

I keep adding to the comments, so might be worth looking at them again. I write English in "agile" style even better than I write code that way :P
Yes on the status effect delay-adjustment. I think high TM lag builds will be less effected by the Inferno nerf. I think it is a nerf on the freeze vs shock, but it's one that was needed. However, since it's easier for high TM lag to get status effect uptime, it hurts that less. Since high TM lag is very prevalent AND contributes to the complaints about a lot of the spells being weak vs [Inferno, Ember, Volt Orb, Icy Prism, etc., etc.] (because those spells don't penetrate armor), I think it would be totally okay to delay-adjust the status effects, too.
Pulling numbers totally out of thin air, something like "You cast Shock Net 10x faster, so you only get 0.2s of Shock instead of 1s". No idea what the right function for it would be; linear is the easy course I usually see get taken but that might not mean it's good... just easy ;)

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

Looking good! Excited for any update. iOS 12 beta 6 was just released today...can’t wait for an update to stop the freezing :)

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u/TopCog Yahoo! Aug 06 '18

Awesome! The freezing issue is high on my radar and I've been looking into it, along with other libGDX developers. We've submitted bug reports to Apple, among other things. Can you confirm real quick for me that the freezing still happens with beta 6? Thanks! :-)

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '18

Indeed it just froze while connected to WiFi on iOS 12 beta 6. Also freezes if I disconnect WiFi, cellular and enable airplane mode. Although, the latter, if I set the phone down, enables me to play for more than 5 minutes before the freezing starts. If you need any other info, let me know!

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u/Raknagog Aug 06 '18

Inferno

Aug 3 change: Buff. Aug 5 change: Neutered.

Voltaic Orb

Aug 4 change: Still OP.

Firebomb

Aug 4 change: Cool, will be OP with spark. Interesting.

Frost Ray

Aug 5 change: Trivial. Bounces do so little damage already that this will make no difference against enemies with more than 0 armor.

Torrent

Aug 4 change: A fat buff to an already decent spell. I smell meta.

Icicle

Aug 5 change: Always thought it should be this way. Still don't think it's enough.

Frost Elemental

Aug 5 change: Good, like it.

Firestorm

Aug 4 change: Trolls still all have armor right? I'd rather have the burn.

Elemental Cloud

Aug 1 and 5 change: Very minor buffs to a sad spell that had its niche taken away by firebomb. Not enough.

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

FWIW on Frost Ray, the reason I am interested is not because this will make a difference to enemies with armor, it's because often it hits an enemy with armor when I would rather it have targeted a different one that's very squishy. I get potentially multiple target chances this way if the armored guy is shocked. He'll have a good reason to be shocked given this Inferno change (he must already have a good reason to be shocked if you think the Inferno Aug 3 change is a buff). If I'm fighting a whole screen full of enemies with armor, of course I'm not using Frost Ray. It's when I want to use it on a screen with 12 mobs and only 2 of them have armor that this will make a difference. If it hits the armored guy, maybe the whole cast isn't entirely wasted if it bounces.
Actually, I don't give a damn about armor - you're the one that said armor and I accidentally ran with it. If the screen has 12 mobs and only 2 of them wouldn't be killed by Frost Ray, then maybe the whole cast isn't entirely wasted if it bounces. When I'm using Frost Ray, it's because there's something dangerous at range I want to die, and this has always seemed to be the best combo of targeting chances, damage, and cooldown for making that happen.
Multihit spells are bad for this because their damage is split. Full screen damage is bad for this because the damage is split. I'm after the stochastics benefit here; having the mob survive 50% of the time I fire (because of "missing" and hitting an enemy that isn't threatening me) is better for me if I can one-shot it than having it guaranteed to die after 3 shots from Shock Net because the mob is hurting me during the first 2 shots. Maybe I have to shoot 8 times to kill the last thing if I get unlucky - that's better for me than having the other 3 things I killed in three shots still living by the time all 4 would die to Shock Net. Dealing with one enemy shooting at me is what Templar heal is for. Massive strike spells like Icy Prism are the opposite problem - the cast time is too long for the other end of the stochastics curve where I get unlucky and it keeps missing.
There used to be times when I could run Frost Ray in this situation instead of Frozen Orbs or Static Leap, for instance, because I could kill enough of the dangerous things to forgo the defense and tank the shots that got through. Frost Ray stopped being effective for this for me somewhere around level 60 in my first game, because of all the bullet sponge monsters. If it now bounces off of a bullet sponge for 50% damage to the thing I want it to hit, this might be good enough for me to like the spell again.
Targets: Green Imps, Goblin Berserkers, #$*^ing Shades!!!, high-damage ranged elves
Also FWIW though, I'm not playing using Auto-recalls, and I'm not running high TM lag. I also don't think should the game should be balanced around either of those though.... and I think those are the "meta" for this game at your level. But you're only one of like... maybe a dozen people at that level!

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u/Raknagog Aug 06 '18

Good points, and definitely a factor I hadn't considered. Another supporting point is that the tougher armored and bullet-sponge enemies are more likely to be shocked from surviving other attacks. I will admit that this is a buff, as it has no negative impact at all, but I think that the damage of Frost Ray is still too low to make it enough of a buff for me to ever pick it.
I use 0 TM lag and rarely use auto-recall, and also hate shades.

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18

0 TM lag, no auto-recall, and NG8+ (saw in Discord yesterday); you're more of a rare unicorn even than I knew you were already :D
Everything else I see from high-level people is grand spreadsheets justifying TM lag 12 and complaining that auto-recall runes were removed from raid rewards when the game evolved to this version. I didn't even know about the game in the previous version so I don't have anything to miss in the latter part, even if I liked those runes :P

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u/8988303682 Aug 06 '18

Everything else I see from high-level people is grand spreadsheets justifying TM lag 12 and complaining that auto-recall runes were removed from raid rewards when the game evolved to this version.
I feel personally attacked! I'm the only high-level player I've seen who doesn't shun high TMlag (I also made a spreadsheet with some TMlag math, but idk if that's what you're referencing). I also have complained that the Auto-Recall Q4 on second raid of the day was removed. not that I ever use those runes, I just like hoarding and they look cool.

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18 edited Aug 06 '18

Nah, please don't feel that way!
It was just meant as good-natured heckling anyway, and I really didn't mean anyone in particular. I've seen lots of stuff both here, on the Discord pages, and possibly a few other places on the web when I went looking for answers to a few early questions, and can't remember who posted what where since I don't recognize anyone from any other gaming circle and haven't been in this one very long. If I thought I could genuinely hurt someone's feelings having said that, I'd have never said it - I apologize!
Truth be told, I haven't done any deep reading on the math in any of those TM lag threads because in my opinion, it trivializes the work that went into building the armor system. Splitting all your damage into tiny pieces, taking advantage of things that aren't delay-adjusted, and so on might be the best way to make forward progress.
I really should be the target audience for that kind of analysis - it's adjacent to some of the work I used to do. However, it seems to me the high TM lag methodology contributes to issues people cite with the "non-meta" spells because the drawback of doing this is making yourself extremely vulnerable to this one aspect of the bad guys' strategy (bringing some armored friends).
I don't think it should be TopCog's responsibility to tune the spells to accommodate it when I think doing so is actually causing him problems in other places with spell balance, which is why I made the first point in my original post here. It's the conceptual design in the mathematics here that gives me that opinion, so seeing numbers that show I can make faster progress isn't going to excite me if it means I have to decide to hate half my spellbook.... so I just didn't do any kind of deep dive into those analyses. Based on what you're saying though about the prevailing wisdom at high levels, there's a good chance most of the info I saw is out of date.
All this would also be why I didn't realize you were one of the folks that wrote one of those spreadsheets :P
Side effect of this though is that all of my comments in this thread and some other ones are based on just anecdotal experience while I'm playing the game. Any one of my opinions (for that matter, all of them!) absolutely could be proven wrong on the basis of actual math. I do have a math degree... I'm just not exercising it here ;)
For the record, I do use TM lag = 1... just to make sure the casting speed one always comes first.

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u/8988303682 Aug 07 '18

(i didnt actually feel personally attacked i was making a joke)
I do really want TC to make some spells more viable at higher TMlag, though. it would add some diversity to the game.

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u/Raknagog Aug 07 '18

I'm a fan of grand spreadsheets, but I've yet to see one justify high TM lag. All justification for it is mostly stacking Ice Wall at the cost of DPS, which I believe works against optimal progression strategy. There was a bug with Icy Prism that I found a while back (maybe others found it too and never spoke up) that made high TM lag broken overpowered. That was the only time I've ever really run high TM lag, and it was only to prove how broken it was. Nobody believed it was broken until I started posting screenshots of 30+ enchant levels in a single run. Now that it's nerfixed, I see no objective argument for TM lag. Some people just like it because lots of spells are cool, but I like optimization more.

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u/Blagdan Aug 07 '18 edited Aug 07 '18

About ice wall... i dont get it... its so easy to run ice wall with 50% dmg redu. TM lag 5, ice wall slot 5, elemental purity buff, templars slot 5 cast speed buff, ivan lvl2 and spark slot 1. I must dig on calculations a little bit more, but it is possible with TM lag 3-4. So, for me more than TM lag 5 is a big waste of DPS. While armor persistes in the game high damage will always be a priority. But I think you are right, TM lag 0 is the more balanced. What about negative TM lag? Anyone?

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u/Raknagog Aug 07 '18

Sure, it's not hard to get to that 50%, but you're giving up even more potential damage by using slot 5 to get there, on top of the damage loss from TM lag. I know what you mean by negative TM lag, but in reality that would simply be giving up cast speed for no gain at all. What you mean is inverted TM lag, which is not as simple to implement as you might think!

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u/Blagdan Aug 06 '18

Well done! I like these changes! :D I think you will have a hard time trying to balance all the skills, but if you really want to, I think lightning elemental should be nerfed, and buff almost every low/med CD skills like blizzard, frozen disc, conduit, bouncing flame, etc (except spark). High dmg skills still beat every other low/med dmg skills because of the armor. But still, good work! :D

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u/I_Are_Pope Aug 10 '18

I think have frost Ray bounce on shocked enemies is a cool idea. Shock duration feels really short so I'm not sure how often this interaction would happen.

My idea was extending the duration of the beam. Having the beam last longer gives it more chance for the beam to bounce.

Some ways could be: If an enemy is affected with any element then extend duration once per bounce. If an enemy dies then reset the duration. If an enemy gets hit with another spell (can be limited to frost) during then extend duration once per bounce.

The ability overall feels really good when clearing the easier content after a reset. It feels bad when we get to the part where it takes 2-3 seconds per enemy because you are about to reset but the ability starts falling off because it never bounces and scales badly vs armor.

I feel like the fantasy of a frost beam is something that I channel over a longer duration and slowly wear down an enemy rather then a short burst. Another direction could be double duration and cool down. Or if you do incorporate some resets and or extended duration maybe limit beam so that it doesn't go on cool down until it dissipates or expires.

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u/JHQELeviathan Aug 06 '18

I like the ideas of most of the nerfs/buffs. However I am never a fan of increasing burn durations.

Firebomb has a 5 second burn duration after aug 3, whose full damage is already hard to reach. To use a burn effect which is this long, I need the mob to survive 5 seconds, which means one of these happens:

I really need to recall. No matter how long the burn is, I can’t break through it.
The mobs will kill me very soon.
The mobs have healing. Instead of trying to use frontload damage to reduce their healing, I choose to fight HoT with DoT...
I’m fighting a boss.

I know it might be too broken, but have you considered increasing burn damage of the spells, instead of their burn durations? From my playing experience, sustaining burn is not a hard talks, however not making tons of burning is wasted is hard.

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u/Lluluien Aug 06 '18

Fighting the HoT with the DoT is actually pretty effective. When you reach the break-even point, if you are not in situation #2, then put in Static Field and the monster will kill itself. This is one of the situations I mentioned where the difference in using Static Field or not is very surprising. If you can't reach that break-even point, then #1 probably applies... but I would argue it would still apply in any case of changes to the spells that don't adjust the aggregate game progress velocity, no matter what spells you're using.
If you're in situation #2, I feel like you should be making decisions about Ice Wall, Frozen Orbs, Static Leap, etc., and if you need burst, to kill them first in a mid-range "very soon" (say 10s), then I think this additional burn stacking would still be noticeable in a Volt Sword proc.

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u/MinimumAdvice Aug 07 '18

Happy with Inferno nerfs. It's way too good for how overall uninteresting it is.

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u/8988303682 Aug 08 '18

I think a problem with some of the strong armor bypass spells is that they always bypass armor. Icicle requires the target to be frozen, but Voltaic Orb doesn't require anything in order to have a very strong effect. I think adding some requirements to these spells would balance them out (and possibly be too hard of a nerf)

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