[Balancing] Balancing of casts (like the 'super steam beam')

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^Tis true. A super beam cannot solve all problems. I prefer other methods as well. Makes the game fun.

What I'm saying is, most everyone who plays online knows this spell, and it becomes a beam fest real quick. Anything steam/light/arcane usually does massive amounts of damage compared to it's other elements, being strong is good, but not when it's at that point. In just ONE tick it does the same amount of damage as a 5 D tap. Or more, I don't care to crunch numbers. While exploding the things it kills, which it will kill, and doing damage to others from the explosion. Nerfing is an excellent solution(or rather buffing of the other elements), if only for the fact that it makes the game what it was supposed to be, harder both by requiring strategy and quick wit. No more qfqfqfas(or fqfqfqas ) rmb DIEEEEEEEEEE. It will force you to use other things in the game. I for one enjoy finding intelligent solutions to situations the game may throw at me.
Though difficulty options are needed. With correct balance, extra numbers difficulty, health wise or number, will require extra skill and knowledge to play. Thus providing a more enjoying experience to those well versed in this game. Unless you consider extra skill and knowledge to = Super beam memory and execution.

 

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Steam Beam is super powerful, but I like it that way. If you feel its over powered then there is nobody forcing you to use it no?

This. If you think super steam beam is too powerful, just use a steam+lightning+arcane instead of steam+steam+steam+lightning+arcane.

If it weren't for the super steam beam, I'd die a lot more often! xD It *is* a little OP, but we kinda need something a little OP. It still takes a minute to charge it up, and since its a beam you can only point it in 1 direction and its kinda slow to aim, so I think its pretty balanced still. Similarly, the blizzball and the ice shards take a long time to charge, so even if they do stupid damage, they're pretty balanced. I like most of the elemental spells as they are.

I guess the problem is the combination elements. Steam *should* do more damage than either water OR fire individually, since you have to charge both together, it takes an extra key tap, but if it does do more damage, then there's no reason not to always do steam over fire.

I guess maybe instead of steam doing more damage than fire or water, it does more direct damage than fire, and more damage than water, but has less of a knockback than water, and doesn't light them on fire and doesn't do damage over time like fire does. Its probably already like this some, need to play with it more and look at the exact numbers comparing elements, but yeah, I guess it could use a little more balance.

I end up varying my elements anyways just for shits and giggles.

 

[DaFranker]

I'm also of the opinion that sprays should get a duration increase, perhaps if necessary with a decrease to the duration of beams. Auras should also last longer, considering that they take a full five elements to have decent range and they're so easy to lose (or dispel, if we're keeping smart enemy spellcasters or a future versus mode in mind).

Also, keep in mind that if/when versus mode appears it'll be a whole new balance. Suddenly the "Steam Beam of Death" won't seem so overpowered anymore. Thrown around too carelessly, it'll just bounce with a fresh shield your enemy puts up and that'll be gg - the knockdown from the recoil blast will give ample time to your opponent to pull off a mighty deadly move.

 

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Just make a target solid frozen (water it down then freeze it), and then cast a fully charged earth x5 on it. It will deal more than 9000. You might need a friend to keep your target frozen solid while you charge up.

Yeah, i think that is more how the devs intended to deal with large threats. if you watch the dev diaries etc, there's one part i think of in particular.
They all hit a target with water, then 2 used frost x 5 and one charged a rock x5 (one was dead at this point).
That sort of team work strikes me as a lot more fun than just having the sort of combo where one person can just kill everything really easy (given, i think they were playing local of some kind)

Another maybe balance might be shield+cold+lightning+lightning+lightning. Freezes everything in the one spell.

Back to balancing the supercharged bubble shield, i can think of two ways to balance it, either setting a life timer (how long it can last) or, the better way, capping the hp at a level where perhaps one heavy hitter and some smaller things will still be able to break through, forcing you to relocate with teleport, or defend yourself with say water x 5 area blast.

And of course to the people concerned that the devs will go crazy with the 'nerfing' and make the game no-longer fun to play, of course they aren't. this is their first game and baby. i'd imagine all these sorts of big balance changes would go to an alpha, beta build before it hit live.

I'm also of the opinion that sprays should get a duration increase, perhaps if necessary with a decrease to the duration of beams.

Sprays probably need a boost of some kind (damage/duration) I did notice that the fire spray got a slight boost this build.

Auras should also last longer, considering that they take a full five elements to have decent range and they're so easy to lose (or dispel, if we're keeping smart enemy spellcasters or a future versus mode in mind).

I do think aura's MAY want a slight increase to duration, maybe not. I think the point is that you put one on to deal with a situation, not to constantly have on all element resists and physical resist.
I don't really use nulify, so i wouldn't know (from what i hear, it is rather useful, so i think i should start experimenting.)

 

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Steam Beam is super powerful, but I like it that way. If you feel its over powered then there is nobody forcing you to use it no?

This is nonsense.

The whole point is that this is a co-op game, and OTHER PEOPLE will use it. Thus making my own gaming experience poorer as everything is annihilated without trouble.

 

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Then of course there are things like arcane AoE spam..that sort of thing could be tricky to balance..if you made the cast time or animation longer, you could make AoEs useless for defending yourself when surrounded (bad idea) maybe if you added a slight delay somehow so that after you use an aoe, you can walk around as normal (run away after you cast a defensive AoE) but so there is a delay before you can use another spell (not channel, but cast)

 

[unmerged(257946)]

I'm also of the opinion that sprays should get a duration increase, perhaps if necessary with a decrease to the duration of beams. Auras should also last longer, considering that they take a full five elements to have decent range and they're so easy to lose (or dispel, if we're keeping smart enemy spellcasters or a future versus mode in mind).

Agreed on all points. Duration of the beams wouldn't be too bad if the one in question wasn't around.

 

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I really don't think the beams should be nerfed, they're not that great, not even in the damage department. Take for example a quick combo of Q + S + D (Water Arcane and Earth) then immediately followed by an (S + D + R), the first shot will deal 425 and wet the target, while the second will freeze the enemies and deal 1275 damage(Arcane does 3x more damage to frozen targets, whereas lightning does gets a 2x multiplier versus wet targets). While much more demanding than the simple steam beam, it's indubitably more powerful, being a spammable, area of effect, high damage, perma-freezing combo.

Of course I'd love to see buffs to weaker things such as pure earth, and fire damage, and some other magicks.

 

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I really don't think the beams should be nerfed, they're not that great, not even in the damage department. Take for example a quick combo of Q + S + D (Water Arcane and Earth) then immediately followed by an (S + D + R), the first shot will deal 425 and wet the target, while the second will freeze the enemies and deal 1275 damage(Arcane does 3x more damage to frozen targets, whereas lightning does gets a 2x multiplier versus wet targets). While much more demanding than the simple steam beam, it's indubitably more powerful, being a spammable, area of effect, high damage, perma-freezing combo.

Of course I'd love to see buffs to weaker things such as pure earth, and fire damage, and some other magicks.

Pure earth isn't all that bad imo, it's one of my favorites. A quick tap for 1k, charge for multikill 5k.
I totally agree with fire magick. It's damage still pretty much sucks with the buff they patched in but it has become more useful.

 

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Exactly the game portrayed itself as requireing tactics, for example wetting and freezing targets while someone charges or someone prepares a lighting bolt. But with steam beam you get both the wet effect and the lightning effect. Thats my only gripe really, it would be like having a grease and fire beam or water and ice beam (which i know is sorta possible). It just takes away the whole idea of using different spells to get maximum effect since you get it all in a single beam.

 

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Why use pure earth? It takes too long to queue up five of them and is only good if charged. Just hitting an arcane-lightning nova gets pretty close, while hitting more than one target. I think the best buff to earth is simply making it charge faster though, but not too quickly or it'd deal too much damage for being almost impossible to team kill with accidentally (where beams would cause targets to explode and hurt allies). Not to mention that consecutive 5x Earth combinations can be queued up while charging.

I think fire needs to spread to things in contact with each other, dealing larger amounts of damage over time to multiple targets (I think 250-300 burn damage per tick is good for a 5x fire combo, scaling with the health or size of an enemy, but only because severely ignited targets panic and cause mayhem and thus would compensate for the relatively low damage.)

If fire could spread to others through just grazing them, think of the halarity that would ensue as well.


EDIT:

Exactly the game portrayed itself as requireing tactics, for example wetting and freezing targets while someone charges or someone prepares a lighting bolt. But with steam beam you get both the wet effect and the lightning effect. Thats my only gripe really, it would be like having a grease and fire beam or water and ice beam (which i know is sorta possible). It just takes away the whole idea of using different spells to get maximum effect since you get it all in a single beam.

But the Steamx2 + Lightningx2 + Arcane combo hits only one target, and requires you to be more stationary when queueing up the elements for it (taking a minimum of 4 "cycles" to complete i.e Q + F, A + S, Q + F, A) hitting for only 700 damage and not providing many other useful effects. Or in short: the beam doesn't do everything.

 

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Then of course there are things like arcane AoE spam..that sort of thing could be tricky to balance..if you made the cast time or animation longer, you could make AoEs useless for defending yourself when surrounded (bad idea) maybe if you added a slight delay somehow so that after you use an aoe, you can walk around as normal (run away after you cast a defensive AoE) but so there is a delay before you can use another spell (not channel, but cast)

Lengthening cast times/animations (or adding an after-delay) to AoE would be bad, its already quite slower than projectile casts. Besides, you should be rewarded for being quick to the punch, not punished and if you take a look at the ice/arcane/earth combo it is infinitely more spammable (being a projectile cast) on top of perma-freezing wet targets.

I really don't think the beams should be nerfed, they're not that great, not even in the damage department. Take for example a quick combo of Q + S + D (Water Arcane and Earth) then immediately followed by an (S + D + R), the first shot will deal 425 and wet the target, while the second will freeze the enemies and deal 1275 damage(Arcane does 3x more damage to frozen targets, whereas lightning does gets a 2x multiplier versus wet targets). While much more demanding than the simple steam beam, it's indubitably more powerful, being a spammable, area of effect, high damage, perma-freezing combo.

Of course I'd love to see buffs to weaker things such as pure earth, and fire damage, and some other magicks.

Yes, that combo you mentioned is crazy and but not quite as common. I believe our sense of what high damage should be is inflated due to combos like that. Steam+steam+arcane+lightning+lightning beam does great damage, it's just that other things can be spammed far faster than a beam's tick.

 

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If fire could spread to others through just grazing them, think of the halarity that would ensue as well.

fire+lightningx4?