Suggestion Caster Fireball-Replacement Spells

[Dazureus]

There's been some talk of new skills for Caster specs, as a new standby to replace Fireball. I would like to discuss them and produce some quality suggestions for the staff to look at.

This isn't exclusively about my ideas, go ahead and critique or add your own. I just want to be part of making this addition to the classes awesome as possible (assuming they haven't already been finalized).

• Geomancer- They have a fire-and-ice motif. It may be interesting for both Fireball and Icebolt to become standby skills, and I feel good about one spec emphasizing Fireball instead of totally moving away from it.
• Fireball could remove Icebolt's slow effect, and Icebolt could douse flames from Fireball. This could make for interesting decisions for Geos, either sticking to fire skills for the DoT, the ice for the slow or a combo of both.

~~~

• Wizard- They seem to have a lightning theme, with their Bolts and teleportation. I posit Jolt, a skill that's similar to a toned-down Chain Lightning. Mid-to-long range, about 15 damage, and it deals around 50% of it's primary damage to all foes within a short radius (1-3 blocks).
• Jolt should be weaker and have a longer cooldown than Wizard's current Fireball, in exchange for being able to hit more than one target and not relying on whipping snowballs around.

~~~

• Beguiler- For the Dovahkiin among us, I see Beguilers as Alteration-style Casters. Their standby attack could have a short-lived secondary effect. It can't be super-powerful, that's what higher level skills are for. My current idea for Beguilers is Distort. Mid-to-long range, 14ish damage and it applies a short-lived swooshy screen effect, the kind you get from using portals.
• Probably should only last 1-2 seconds, but be annoying enough for a foe to misfire a skill or take a wrong step. Perhaps this should have a slightly longer cooldown than other skills suggested here. Heck, it may be shouted down as overpowered the way people complain about fire distracting them.

~~~

• Necromancer- Disease and the undead. And spiders and the Nether. I'm less sure about what they should get, a DoT is obvious but they have a lot of that as it is... Perhaps a PoisonShot, replacing the skill Poison in it's current form and instead tossing a snowball projectile which then puts a poison status effect in the victim.

 

[look_out]

Kainzo mentioned Geomancer becoming Melee... So I'm pretty sure they losing fireball all together and getting melee skills based around magic

 

[Dielan9999]

• Necromancer- Disease and the undead. And spiders and the Nether. I'm less sure about what they should get, a DoT is obvious but they have a lot of that as it is... Perhaps a PoisonShot, replacing the skill Poison in it's current form and instead tossing a snowball projectile which then puts a poison status effect in the victim.

Well the story behind the Beguiler's plauge bomb, we can't make projectile skills that inflict poison, only those insta-hit skills like the Necro's Poison, or living entities (like cave spider melee hits) so plauge bomb was orig a skill like "poison shot" but instead of giving up due to impossibilities it was coded to be a mob, the sheep, gently forcepushed, and exploding on a timer to seem like you THREW A POSION SHEEP-BOMB.


Which... is amazing!

 

[Dazureus]

So in the space of four minutes it becomes apparent that my base of knowledge is far from all-encompassing.

I love Plague Bomb, it's awesome.

 

[Dazureus]

Kainzo mentioned Geomancer becoming Melee... So I'm pretty sure they losing fireball all together and getting melee skills based around magic

IMO they ought to keep Fireball as a long distance attack, even if it's their only one. It just seems fitting that one class should keep on with the fireball skill. Close-range attacks have potential as well. What about:

FrostWave- Cleave-style (shorter range? Haven't used Cleave), deals around 10 damage and slows all affected targets.
Ignite- Single-target, deals 18ish damage and lights them on fire for 8 ticks, dealing 1 damage per tick.

Cooldown ought to be longer than Fireball's current cd, maybe 4 seconds each. Retains the douse/remove slow traits that I suggested with Fireball and Icebolt.

 

[TheTMTrainer]

IMO they ought to keep Fireball as a long distance attack, even if it's their only one. It just seems fitting that one class should keep on with the fireball skill. Close-range attacks have potential as well. What about:

FrostWave- Cleave-style (shorter range? Haven't used Cleave), deals around 10 damage and slows all affected targets.
Ignite- Single-target, deals 18ish damage and lights them on fire for 8 ticks, dealing 1 damage per tick.

Cooldown ought to be longer than Fireball's current cd, maybe 4 seconds each. Retains the douse/remove slow traits that I suggested with Fireball and Icebolt.

Ignite would, if Geos become melee, shift to a short-medium range, non-snowball attack.
FrostWave is fine.

ALSO if someone is Ignited, they could take, say, 1.5 damage with Frost Wave/Icebolt (like a combo). It would remove slow.

 

[Dazureus]

Ignite would, if Geos become melee, shift to a short-medium range, non-snowball attack.

That was my intention, didn't communicate it well I guess.

As far as the combo, I could see that working well.

 

[TheTMTrainer]

That was my intention, didn't communicate it well I guess.

As far as the combo, I could see that working well.

Lose slow, gain a little damage. I don't see a downfall... its more of a finisher.

 

[Aetosion]

I think the sans Fireball skills for each class have been worked out.

Interesting ideas though, I'd like to see if the Distort skill is possible with the coding. It'd be epic if it was. I don't really like the Jolt idea for wizards, they're supposed to be a Burst/Nuke class, not pure AoE.

 

[agentjwall]

Yes, I'd love to see the caster skills need a little more variety and specialization to them.

Just throwing it out there: What if the Necro's added hunger for a short time instead of poison? It would certainly add an interesting dynamic to their fighting style. Although it might work better once stamina-regeneration is implemented...
(And if you wanted it to be really outlandish you could call it something like zombify and if you kill them with it, it spawns a zombie in their place ^^,)

 

[TheTMTrainer]

Yes, I'd love to see the caster skills need a little more variety and specialization to them.

Just throwing it out there: What if the Necro's added hunger for a short time instead of poison? It would certainly add an interesting dynamic to their fighting style. Although it might work better once stamina-regeneration is implemented...
(And if you wanted it to be really outlandish you could call it something like zombify and if you kill them with it, it spawns a zombie in their place ^^,)

Their default fireball has a chance, to turn 1 food item into rottenflesh! >:3

Though I do like the outlandish idea.

 

[Psychokhaos]

I agree with Aetosion about "Jolt". I think that, if possible, maybe have it give a slow effect for however long, and then also 14-ish damage?

 

[SemajArchMage]

I'd actually drop the damage on the Wizard nuke, lower the mana cast, and make Jolt into an arrow-based projectile. Something along the lines of a Thunderarrow. Shocks the enemy, knocks them back a bit, but does low damage. Wizard spams his magic missiles between the big lightning spells.

One of the great things about Fireball is the burn damage causing knockback. Without that, wizards are pretty easy to rush and kill, so keeping some small part of that is essential. By reducing the damage and making it knockback only once per hit, wizards will have to be more accurate and precise with their hits to keep enemies from getting near them, rather than just giving them another spell that autotargets or keeping fireball with it's persistent knockback effect.

Another key element is keeping the range on the spells so the projectile is preferred. However nerfing fireball this severely and keeping it as a snowball would be a critical failure, so changing it to an arrow style would retain the distance + accuracy factors.

 

[Thunderjolt]

Why does this not have more attention?

Excellent layout Daz, I am impressed with how well this is written and put together.

 

[kevinlive]

I'd actually drop the damage on the Wizard nuke, lower the mana cast, and make Jolt into an arrow-based projectile. Something along the lines of a Thunderarrow. Shocks the enemy, knocks them back a bit, but does low damage. Wizard spams his magic missiles between the big lightning spells.

Right there you're suggesting to tune down our main dmg skill, add a little knockback, nerf the nuke skill.
Without the spammable dmg skill killing mobs and grinding for xp is terrible and takes ages to do, especially if the mob is something like a spider.
With the "fireblast" skill casters got now it takes 3 hits to kill a mob, and with a 3 sec cd it takes 9 seconds to kill a mob. Usually more, this makes grinding awful, dangerous and time consuming.

I don't really have something to the suggestion of Jolt, but that wouldn't work out well. Maybe in PvP but in PvE, meh.

 

[Dazureus]

This IS a tad outdated with the advent of Fireblast, plus it's my understanding that the staff already have their own ideas regarding the replacement skills. Maybe we'll see Distort in the future, though...? On to Kevin's topic:


I'll agree that mob-killing is frustrating with Fireblast at it's current settings.
The range is considerably shorter than that of a well-aimed Fireball, it does less damage and doesn't light things on fire. The only major advantage is that you can't miss with it because it won't activate until you have a valid target.

I can't recall it's exact damage or mana cost, but my major gripe is the cooldown. If we can bring that down a bit (1 or 1.33 seconds) I think it would be plenty sufficient. Other than that, increasing the range some would be nice, or giving it a fire effect. But cooldown is my focus.