Curse

Rieselle · Feb 13, 2006, 07:49 AM // 07:49

After reading Ensign's "Why nuking sucks" post on GWGuru, I got to thinking about what could be done to make elems useful as damage dealers (non-spike).
Disclaimer: Append ", in my opinion." to every sentence in this post :P
Disclaimer 2: I'm only talking about damage Elems. Not utility elems or other elems.
Disclaimer 3: This is a major change, and a specific idea, so I have no delusions that it might get implemented. But I'm interested in game design and I was bored, so here we are.

Here are some issues that any solution needs to address:
- Elems are generally ranged damage dealers. However, improving their single target nukes too much may crowd out Rangers, who are also ranged single target damage dealers. Therefore any changes to single target nukes needs to make sure they have unique strengths and weaknesses compared to rangers.

- We want to prevent multiple elems from multiply casting the same spells for easy kills, a'la old Air Spike. I dont really see why it's any worse than multiple warriors "raging someones face", but people seem to dislike it.

- We want elems to be able to do more sustainable damage, not just spikes.

- We dont want to screw up PvE anymore than it is.

Anyway, onto the suggestion, the various parts are interlinked so please consider them together as a whole.

Reasoning: I believe the Way of The Elementalist lies mainly in AoE DoT nuking. Maybe it's just my fetish, but it's a gameplay niche that's not currently filled at the moment.

Melee/Ranged combat is currently "more complex" than nuking. Positioning, Blocks, Evades, Weakness, Blind, High ground, Low ground, etc. etc. There should be some more game mechanics to make spell casting more complex and strategic. Currently the resistance vs. fire etc. isn't good enough, especially since you're stuck with your equipment etc, and only mesmers have element-specific defense.

1. Make all (most?) AoE nukes do damage over time, rather than direct damage. And the DPS of a single chain casted spell should large enough to be a threat, at least comparable to normal warrior damage even if only 1 person is being hit.

2. Make these AoE nukes function in a similar way to wards - in other words, they dont stack with themselves.
Eg. Meteor storm causes a ward-like effect to form around the target. For 10 seconds, every 3 seconds a meteor randomly falls on an enemy inside the ward.Multiple Meteor Storms in the same area do NOT cause meteors to fall more frequently.
Eg2. Deep freeze causes a ward-like effect to form around the target. For 3 seconds, every second, enemies in the ward take damage and are hexed with the deep freeze slowdown. (I thought about making the deep freeze slow them down directly, but that would replace Ward Against Foes). Multiple freezes in the same place do not do more damage, nor do they snare more often, than a single one.
Eg3. Inferno surrounds the caster with a ward like effect. It does a big chunk of damage at the start, and several smaller chunks of damage in rapid succession during the animation. Multiple infernos dont stack etc.

3. These AoE nukes should have long casting times(3-5secs), but fairly short cooldowns. In the order of 5-15 secs. They should also be costed reasonably, with most in the 10-15 energy mark. It should be reasonable to chain-cast nukes for a while without running out of energy.

4. Possibly the stronger AoE nukes should be "easily interruptable".

5. Now, currently there are no counters to "wards" in this game, so there needs to be a few more ways to counter them. (of course, you can interrupt them as well, but after the spell is cast...) Cue complicated game mechanic!

6. To make the next point useful, these AoE nukes can be targeted on both enemies or friendlies. So you can choose to centre your AoE spell on either an enemy or a teammate.

7. Elements are arranged in both an opposing and circular fashion. ie. Fire vs Water, Air vs Earth. etc. But also Fire > Earth > Water > Air > Fire.
(Or maybe Fire > Shadow > Earth > Water > Holy > Air > Fire. But more on that later.)

The AoE damage "wards" (or maybe all Elem wards?) then interact with each other in the following way:
Where two wards of different elements overlap, their effects in the overlapping area change depending on what elements they are:
- Opposing elements cancel each other out. Neither spell takes effect. Eg. Fire vs Water
- An Fire ward would nullify an Earth ward, whilst still retaining its effect, as based on the 1st circular relationship above.
The above effect occurs REGARDLESS OF WHO CAST THE AOE NUKE. (ie. you or your teammate can accidentally nullify each other's nukes if you dont choose your spells carefully)
- Stacking AoEs of the same element: Whilst the same spell does not stack (eg. Firestorm + Firestorm) different spells from the same element stack according to the following rule: Each subsequent spell is halved in damage. So if you cast Firestorm, Meteor Storm and Searing Heat on the same target, Firestorm will do 100% damage, Meteor Storm will do 50%, and Searing Heat will do 25% etc. If Firestorm expires whilst the other two are still active, then Meteor Storm will do 100% for its remaining duration, and Searing Heat 50%. And so on.

8. Other thoughts:
- Perhaps Holy/Shadow damage can be added to the element system. In this way, a Balthasar's Aura can be both a damage spell and a mobile shield to protect teammates from Necro AoE spells.
- Might need some more pure anti-elem defense wards than just Ward Against Harm.

- Rotgort's Invocation is partially an example of my idea, in that it's a large AoE with a non-stackable DoT effect (burning).

- Hmmm, spammable AoEs might totally destroy AI opponents, Guild NPCs, and PvE monsters. I dont know how hard it will be to code AI elems that can counter-cast Elem spells or otherwise move out of the way effectively.

- What about Single Target nukes? Well, I wont go into detail, but I think for single target, hex-like spells such as lightning surge are the way to go, because they dont stack with themselves either. Or otherwise very small AoEs with very short durations that do their damage in one or two ticks.

- I think high Energy Storage should increase the rate of Exhaustion recovery.

Conclusions:
The intended effect of these changes is to make damage elems play a big role in controlling the shape of the battlefield. Damage elems will play a role both in doing damage to the opposing team, and also protecting their own team from enemy elems. To use Ensign's analogy, an unchecked Elem should be a serious "threat" to the enemy team, by dealing significant DoT/Degen style damage over multiple areas at will, forcing the enemy to move, spreading their healing around etc. Depending on the situation, to avoid aoes you might spread out, be more mobile, or ball up under the cover of a elem spell cast for defensive purposes (eg. standing in a friendly firestorm as shelter against deep freeze etc), thus leading to interesting stuff with positioning, formations etc.

However the mechanics of the proposed system should hopefully move Elem gameplay away from 321Spike and into more tactical directions. I've tried to make sure that multiple elementalists dont stack their damage together in a too-simple/stupid fashion. Also multiple different element lines are usually required to counter all possible enemy elementalists. I've tried to design something that makes it extremely useful to have at least 1 or 2 elems, but less and less useful to have more, especially clones. I think variety is a good thing.

Any thoughts? (Apart from "I can't be believe I wasted my time reading your stupid essay"