This is what I was personally hoping for. It's nice to see some of the 3-4 slotters knocked down to a more reasonable cost. The cost is primarily what's kept me from choosing Vivi and VS in particular. Also looking forward to playing with Blood Burst.

Great changes, thanks for the update!

>Nice, a net gain of three spell slots. I just need more spells to spend them on!

My thoughts too! Maybe there will be some spells specific to Risen?

So I popped into test with a bunch of folks earlier/yesterday and messed with Heavy TM a bit.

BLB still feels anemic (heh). Especially when you hold it up next to TOTRS, which not only reduces the DO floor at which HE/HH affect a target but ignores their shield and armor -- which I realize isn't really a totally fair comparison, but did make me wish we had a comparably heavy hitter. We weren't noticing it doing significantly more damage to vitality upon a hit (Maybe ~5% more on average?) and while it was causing worse wounds on average (cuts and bruises vs scratches on roughly at-level targets) it still didn't really feel...oomphy? DB suffers from similar issues due to the lack of targeting, but has other things going for it (namely preloading) that arguably make up for it.

I think BLB could benefit from an additional secondary effect of some kind on top of the splash damage. Either direct vitality damage or some kind of ongoing DOT that continues to cause increasingly nasty wounds would both be nice. For its costs, the spell should be very dangerous if it lands, and right now it's just...not. Yeah, it's better than an equal-mana ACS, but not enough to justify extra spell slots and a not-small vitality hit and a DO hit.

The rest of the changes are very solid, however. I'm really pleased with how the adjustments to mana are shaking out with the attunement changes. The changes to AoEs has given USOL (already an impressive spell) a lot more oomph from my brief testing as well. I still need to mess with it more but overall I'm pretty happy with how things are moving along.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

With all the changes and tweaks to magic is it possible to reconsider the min prep on Vivi and USOL? Vivi has gone from 18 to 20, and USOL remains at 15 mana. USOL I can sort of understand, it is very potent however Vivi's min prep seems more then a little high.

I recall some concern about Vivi being used 'too much' in the past and it was tweaked UP to 18 to make it a less used tool. However it adds an artificial limitation to our snipe that neither of the other forms of snipe have to consider.

Thank you,

Condran

> It's very frustrating to have an inferior form of the same tool.

Kind of like having inferior ranks since we don't have a bonus.

I've always been an advocate of having increased spell power with higher DO. It would make an interesting and very necro-esque bonus.

Hmm. I'll look into it - it should apply to creatures but I didn't know we had a handy test subject and creature casting is super weird.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Shylvics too. Maybe blood wraiths, I don't remember.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>Anyhow, the cool down is suppose to apply (I coded that) but now that I think about it I'm certain I didn't code the actual AI to know what to do with the cool down.

Raesh, you can't trick us, we all know how you love to see us squirm as we fall over dead.

>Based on these tests, I'm still finding BLB extremely underwhelming, especially when held up against where everyone else's Heavy TM is ending up.

Why?

I understand being disappointed with Heavy TM in general (still mulling on that one) and BLB due to the extra costs and vestigial splash mechanic but the only real comparison, performance wise, it has right now are all very non-standard spells. Dragon's Breath would be the best straight up comparison.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>What about Beckon the Naga makes it a bad comparison?

The fact that, aside from using the Heavy TM timer, it shares no mechanics with Heavy TM. (BTN also just hit test and will likely need additional tuning.)

>DB also suffers penalties from being nontargeted and has a lot of other nonstandard mechanics,

While this is true the code is largely shared. We're talking about a 90% match. (We are trying to move to a unified mechanic for pulse spells, but not in 3.2, that should standardize some of this behavior.). There's simply are no other 'simple' Heavy TM spells yet since Moon Mages still lack one and Flashfreeze hadn't been written yet.

>But even that aside, I'm disappointed because it is frankly barely outperforming standard TM spells even now.

That's a completely fair stance, but that's true of all Heavy TM, not just BLB. I was trying to separate the feedback between the two topics.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>>Speaking from a player perspective, when I look at performance, I'm basically looking at "how fast is this killing things, how hard is it hitting, how many times am I needing to cast to drop something." From that perspective, BTN is shredding stuff in a single cast of the spell and frequently lasts long enough to hit other stuff too. Setting aside the latter, that's still very impressive performance even if it's due a downtweak.

From a development side the work needed to balance one has very little to do with the work needed to balance the other - therefor feedback on one isn't terribly useful when trying to balance the other.

>>TOTRS has comparable performance for other reasons, and while I do not expect BLB to ape TOTRS by any means, I do wish we had a comparable nuke in our arsenal.

Harm Evil/Horde are extremely specialized killing spells. I don't see a future where other classes get anything comparable, at least not that would ever be castable on a player. That was true before TOTRS and it's true after.

>>We aren't really being given any indication of how heavy Heavy TM is supposed to be. You're saying BLB has the same problems as "all Heavy TM" but so far "all Heavy TM" apparently only means one of the four Heavy TM spells presently in Test for reasons. I hope that helps communicate why I am confused.

That's because we're still trying to find it's niche, that's part of the ongoing conversation and is complicated by mechanical limits we're having to work within - what we'd like to do in some cases just may not be possible (or ultimately wise) in DR. My intention was for Flashfreeze to be the best Heavy TM spell developed and use it and BLB in tandem to balance the core mechanics but Grejuva had some great ideas that I certainly wasn't going to stand in his way of developing. The downside is that most of the 'Heavy TM' spells we have right now aren't very useful as far as producing feedback on the core mechanics.

>>If it's a nuke, should I be one-shotting things I outclass with it?

Due to how the core mechanics work for damage? Not generally, but it's possible (With with any other attack on something you way outclass).

>>How much damage should this be doing against something I am at-level with, or slightly outleveling? What am I actually looking for? What am I supposed to provide feedback on? I'm apparently not giving good data, but I honestly don't know what data is needed at this point.

I didn't say your data was poor, it's helpful. I was simply seeking clarification. I'm always looking for any feedback. With Heavy TM spells the most important feedback, right now, boils down to "Is this a spell you'd find useful and why/why not?".

>>If BLB is still inferior because it's lacking in some special mechanic to make it good, then please add a special mechanic to it by all means. I would love to have a genuinely frightening spell at my disposal.

I have said since we started this project (And it's in the changelog as well) that the splash mechanic hasn't been changed and we're not happy with it - but that's not central to balancing Heavy TM, and we have to get the balance there right before we can iterate off it. In a perfect world BLB would not have been the spell we started Heavy TM testing on (Due to the drawback mechanics it has) - it just happened to be the lowest hanging fruit to start testing with.

>>I frankly do want an Unholy Harm Evil; I want people I'm PvPing with to do anything they can to avoid it.

That's not going to happen.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

<<It'd help a lot if I had a PC to test with, but f2p can't log into test and I haven't had luck getting anyone to come test with me. :\

Yes they can, assuming they existed before the last copy from prime to test. If you're trying to create a new character/testdummy to test on, then you're right that's not possible.

The goal of BLB historically and the goal of Heavy TM currently are not perfectly aligned, which is why we're discussing the future of the splash effect and its disadvantage.

Let's rewind way the heck back to Magic 2 and the Necromancers' original toolbox. The purpose of BLB was to give you a 4th tier TM spell you couldn't chain-cast, because we wanted you to rely on your pets instead for strong damage output. Your bread and butter spell was 2nd tier, a marked decrease from other guilds that rely on TM. Then Magic 3 happened and the TM paradigm was overturned, leaving BLB in the lackluster position most of you know it for.

Heavy TM in a lot of ways reintroduces the concept that BLB was originally trying to fill, but right now BLB double-downs on it (still with the vit hit) and there's a good question of what, exactly, that should be worth on the offensive end of the spell.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

It might be useful to have an Analagous Patterns Heavy TM spell solely in Test, one with no quirks other than those relating to the Heavy TM template, as a tool against which to evaluate the other spells. The generic spell would allow us to give better feedback on Heavy TM as a concept, and our specific Heavy TM spells relative to that baseline.

Mazrian

I know I mentioned this with DB in particular, but I like the idea of BLB's splash damage not being a +1 hit and more being a "firey blood hit you now you're on fire ahhh hahahahaha"

So DB will provide a high concentration lit naphtha effect where the target got struck while BLB will provide a few low concentration lit naphtha effects on the target.

This would give DB the advantage of being able to burn through a specific body part quickly (unless the fire effect is attended to) while BLB's advantage will be more the vit loss caused by multiple fire effects (unless attended to).

Definitely aware this can't be done yet, but it's where I could see BLB (and DB!) having some unique heavy-TM-worthy mechanics.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I'm super in favor of some kind of ongoing DoT, be it literal burning or just chipping away at someone's vitality in chunks.

>> It might be useful to have an Analagous Patterns Heavy TM spell solely in Test, one with no quirks other than those relating to the Heavy TM template, as a tool against which to evaluate the other spells. The generic spell would allow us to give better feedback on Heavy TM as a concept, and our specific Heavy TM spells relative to that baseline.

I agree with this. Bring back Energy Bolt! Heh.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

And DB?

But BTN was described as 'heavy TM'? Is it not 'heavy TM', but rather, 'a unique sort of TM sort of like a short duration QE' instead?

>>But BTN was described as 'heavy TM'? Is it not 'heavy TM', but rather, 'a unique sort of TM sort of like a short duration QE' instead?

It uses the Heavy TM timer and is a spell. There ends the similarity between BTN and other Heavy TM spells.

The description of it as a shortly lived QE isn't far off mechanically.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things