The no code edition restriction makes it tough to make a good balance - specially when it comes to enemy immunity.
Points of difficulty:
Mana costs / Mana growth
Enemy immunity/resistance (specially uniques)
+boni to all skills
Stat synergy (most people use some sort of energy factor)
Respect skills
Double mastery effects bug (for fire skill damage bonus and enchant/auras)
1 point wonders
Area x single target skills
Poor gameplay skills
Casting delays
Useless weapon mods
Here a few solutions (that can be done sofcoded):
Mana costs / Mana growth
--> Fix mana costs for most skills or make skills get significantly cheaper with skill points
--> Most single target skills can be free of mana cost
--> Remove energy per level and per Energy stat point
Stat synergy (most people use some sort of energy factor)
--> Remove energy per level and per Energy stat point
--> Use the sinergy field from skills to put a synergy with the stat
Enemy immunity/resistance (specially uniques)
--> Remove skill synergies (so we don't have fire only sorcs)
+boni to all skills
--> Make it a common mod for "caster" weapons - make it scale (let's say +5 for level 50 items, and +15 for level 80, and so on...)
--> Use math to calculate damage growth
Double mastery effects bug (for fire skill damage bonus and enchant/auras)
--> Create new stats for every elemental (and physical/poison/magic skills while you are at it), that work with the synergy/formulae fields from skills/missiles avoiding all bugs
1 point wonders
--> Use mana / casting delay to balance it
--> Cap all skills to max level of 1
Area x single target skills
--> As a rule of thumb a single target skill should do 3 times more damage than one that aways hit 4 or more targets
--> Use stats like "ranged thorns" or chilling armor to make using aoe spells less wise
--> Higher mana costs can make up for area damage, without decreasing damage
Poor gameplay skills
--> Nova, hydra, chain lightning need some weakness to become interesting (nova does low damage, chain lightning could only rebounce at clustered enemies, or move slowly)
--> Low mana cost + Low damage makes the skill harder to use (as you have to stand still casting several times in a row)
Casting delays
--> They are really boring unless the skill is super strong and unique
Useless weapon mods
--> use calc field from skills with new stats such as:
+% summon health / damage / amount
+% missile amount (specify which skills in their descriptions) / -x% damage
+% Spell/buff duration
-25% elemental pierce (at most) instead of a good elemental bonus
Be careful with -Res mod
Against a target with 75% resistance a -25% doubles up the damage
mmpx222" wrote:
Fire Skills
- Needs a debuff skill(s), preferably one that reduces enemy fire resistance
- Needs a single target/boss killing skill
- Blaze should be a utility spell (increase walking speed?)
- Improve Inferno
- Fire Wall and Meteor have overlapping roles (delayed AoE nuking) -- change?
1 - Try a summon, like a druid spirit, with such aura
2 - Firebolt, Blaze and Hydra are the best for that
3 - Increase duration of the spell, decrease flame duration (it's in missile.txt)
4 - The damage is 2/3 of what's displayed, correct the skill description and increase damage (increases marginlly if you want to keep the range small)
5 - Remove the flame patch from meteor (or make it do 2/3 o impact and 1/3 on flames) or also make the flames last less time
mmpx222" wrote:
Cold Skills
- Too many freezing/chilling skills - separate mezzing and damage dealing
- Also needs a specialized boss killer
1 - Remove cold duration from most skills
2 - Freezing blast would be best, blizzard and frozen orb are good as well
mmpx222" wrote:
Lightning Skills
- Nova and Charged Bolt have similar roles--change Nova to a utility spell?
- Lightning Mastery is boring, maybe change it to "increase minimum damage" so that lightning spells have more even damage output
1 - Charged bolt is good at close range (as more bolts hit the same target) Nova doesn't have such rewards - maybe nova could be stronger when you have more (or less mana) to spice up the gameplay
2 - Mastery skills are boring by definition, that idea is sound (tough it also just accomplishes increased damage)