Shaman Rework Ideas?

[Delfofthebla]

I'm not really reading through the thread, but the WoW thing caught my eye. I personally don't see a reason to treat totems here the same way they are in WoW.

In WoW, you have a much larger skillset to compliment such a design. Herocraft is composed of a much smaller skillset and limited roles. Asking for more totems at once is basically saying:

"Hey, I want to use all of my abilities at the same time. Can we make it happen?"

The answer of course is:
"We sure can, but we're going to have to spend 1-3 weeks tweaking the code and nerfing the living hell out of each one so that we don't create any balance issues. Or if you'd prefer, we can add in about 10 filler abilities that have almost no useful function and you can pick and choose which ones you want to use."

The catch on the first one is that you get annoying busywork that you must complete in every fight, and because of your new "totem capacity", all of your previously favorite skills are now simply filler that you are forced to use in every fight, for almost no extra benefit to you.

The catch on that second option of course, is that players will always find the 'best' skills and use those over all others. There would likely only be a maximum of 3-5 totems that would ever be used, even if you had 10+ totem skills.

 

[0xNaomi]

I'm not really reading through the thread, but the WoW thing caught my eye. I personally don't see a reason to treat totems here the same way they are in WoW.

In WoW, you have a much larger skillset to compliment such a design. Herocraft is composed of a much smaller skillset and limited roles. Asking for more totems at once is basically saying:

"Hey, I want to use all of my abilities at the same time. Can we make it happen?"

The answer of course is:
"We sure can, but we're going to have to spend 1-3 weeks tweaking the code and nerfing the living hell out of each one so that we don't create any balance issues. Or if you'd prefer, we can add in about 10 filler abilities that have almost no useful function and you can pick and choose which ones you want to use."

The catch on the first one is that you get annoying busywork that you must complete in every fight, and because of your new "totem capacity", all of your previously favorite skills are now simply filler that you are forced to use in every fight, for almost no extra benefit to you.

The catch on that second option of course, is that players will always find the 'best' skills and use those over all others. There would likely only be a maximum of 3-5 totems that would ever be used, even if you had 10+ totem skills.

Yeah, atm my issue boils down to "it has the smaller skillset AND some/many of them are still useless".
Now if only @Kainzo could properly read the thread...

 

[mikehk]

@Delfofthebla fun post.
anyways, It was a half-thought idea, just an attempt to help the problem with shaman where basically people drop a totem and run in circles around it like some kind of... shaman... anyways, the point still stands basically people drop a fire aspect, run in circles, then blast people away with wind gale, after taking damage, they heal themselves and wait until firestrike's cooldown is off. I'd like to see customizable classes like attributes were supposed to do. such as a shaman with high str, endurance, and a decent amount of int can be like the enchancement shaman from WoW, relying on melee and totem dps for a damage dealing role. at the moment, they don't really fill that role as melee is too low to matter anyway, and running around in circles is more effective no matter what build you make.

 

[0xNaomi]

@Delfofthebla fun post.
anyways, It was a half-thought idea, just an attempt to help the problem with shaman where basically people drop a totem and run in circles around it like some kind of... shaman... anyways, the point still stands basically people drop a fire aspect, run in circles, then blast people away with wind gale, after taking damage, they heal themselves and wait until firestrike's cooldown is off. I'd like to see customizable classes like attributes were supposed to do. such as a shaman with high str, endurance, and a decent amount of int can be like the enchancement shaman from WoW, relying on melee and totem dps for a damage dealing role. at the moment, they don't really fill that role as melee is too low to matter anyway, and running around in circles is more effective no matter what build you make.

Going into str is a waste, you're just taking away from your int and wis.
If we do stick to making it a caster, it's pretty much 100% losing it's melee.
The thing needs to go back to support and have it's totem selection fixed, but it still needs that PrimalTotem change to actually be useful.

 

[Kainzo]

@Balance Team
Well we need to decide .... where does shaman go?

Do we leave shaman in support as a healer-type with support style totems (buff them), more heals and 1-2 dmg moves? then
Split the offensive side of shaman into a "Shaman-mancer" style class that holds the offensive abilities.

It's a hard decision because I can see it going both way, but dont have a clear cut choice in my mind on what to make that class to be or name it. We want to stay away from "minecraft" influenced names as much as we can.

I'm not sure of any RPG that has a caster-style class depend on "totems" style abilities.


If Shaman stays the caster path, we need to axe majority of healing (except healing totem), all melee abilities, etc.

 

[Eldrylars]

I personally am always in favor of Utility classes, but as Shaman could be utility either way, I would suggest Caster/Utility over Healer/Utility.

 

[0xNaomi]

@Balance Team
Well we need to decide .... where does shaman go?

Do we leave shaman in support as a healer-type with support style totems (buff them), more heals and 1-2 dmg moves? then
Split the offensive side of shaman into a "Shaman-mancer" style class that holds the offensive abilities.

It's a hard decision because I can see it going both way, but dont have a clear cut choice in my mind on what to make that class to be or name it. We want to stay away from "minecraft" influenced names as much as we can.

I'm not sure of any RPG that has a caster-style class depend on "totems" style abilities.


If Shaman stays the caster path, we need to axe majority of healing (except healing totem), all melee abilities, etc.

If you let the buff totem idea through, I have the idea of giving Shaman magic/phys defense/offense totems. Maybe some other buffs, too.
Game it into "The Shaman is supporting, kill/defend them" like any good support (30 of a stat is a nice little buff to sway things with)

If we wanted offense for Totems, I quite literally have an entire class idea (with lore) in my head, but methinks this is not the time place. (I can write it in another thread if you want, just this is a SHAMAN thread =P)

 

[LightningCape]

(Personally) I'd like to see it become a caster class with little to no heals and utility. Kind of like the witch doctor from diablo 3.

 

[0xNaomi]

(Personally) I'd like to see it become a caster class with little to no heals and utility. Kind of like the witch doctor from diablo 3.

Eh, I have an idea involving a shadowy lunatic that worships and follows the orders of the darkness.
But the idea itself is irrelevant, Kain doesn't object to the idea of two totem classes overall.

 

[mikehk]

I'd live a talent system at this point. Since it could be either way, it'd be cool to have a talent system where people can spec more healer than caster, or more caster than healer and make a unique class. @Kainzo 's idea to implement skill books would fit VERY well into this, putting a limit of like 9-11 skills on each class (not including potion and tumble) from a pool of 14-16 would be awesome. just for note, if each class could have max 10 skills from a pool of 15, the total amount of skill combos available would be 3003, easily resulting in a class suited for almost anyone's playstyle.

in-line with current balancing, I'd prefer a damaging shaman, as that's what they basically do at the moment anyhow. although, reduce the range on totems a touch if they havent already been reduced from 24... i'd say about 10 blocks with an AoE radius of 9+.1 per cha on firestrike, and buff totems a radius of 15+.2 per cha.
removing heals would require new skills to be implemented. due to lack of heals, the shaman would need some form of survival now. I have two skill suggestions that would mostly be copy/paste.
Gust:
you launch yourself forward a few blocks and increase move speed for 2 seconds. (about half effectiveness of jump, and scales with int instead. the move speed would be speed 2)
mana: 100~
cd: 10~

EarthenArmor:
earth rises from the ground to guard you, reducing physical damage by 25% and magic damage by 10% for 8 seconds (the split resistance idk if that'd be hard to code, but damage resist can come from skills like harmshield (necro's damage resist) and devourmagic's magic resist.)
mana: 120~
cd: 26~
stamina: 400 (casters dont use stamina much, but u dont want more weight on you when you're famined or something)

 

[Yavool]

Scale Shaman spells differently based off of different stats to buff those spells (cha, int, wis, dex, str, etc). Then people can build them in multiple ways to empower different aspects/spells of the Shaman and diversify the class to be all of the previously-mentioned "types."

 

[0xNaomi]

Scale Shaman spells differently based off of different stats to buff those spells (cha, int, wis, dex, str, etc). Then people can build them in multiple ways to empower different aspects/spells of the Shaman and diversify the class to be all of the previously-mentioned "types."

STR is used for left clicks, INT/WIS are bread and utter used everywhere, END is armor, AGI is speed and nobody uses CHA.
There's already a reason to put a little bit in everything not CHA.

 

[Delfofthebla]

STR is used for left clicks, INT/WIS are bread and utter used everywhere, END is armor, AGI is speed and nobody uses CHA.
There's already a reason to put a little bit in everything not CHA.

Almost all CC skills are based off CHA, unless that changed while I was gone.

 

[0xNaomi]

Almost all CC skills are based off CHA, unless that changed while I was gone.

I wasn't being 100% literal. I realize it's used, but not by much.

 

[Delfofthebla]

I wasn't being 100% literal. I realize it's used, but not by much.

Juuuust checkin.

 

[0xNaomi]

@Balance Team @Kainzo

While my prior ideas in the context of this thread may or may not apply, I think I can get agreement in that Shaman is in an awkward position and needs to be solidified into Support or Caster.

With the NO coming up, it would be a nice opportunity to do so methinks, provided something can happen that Kain gives the OK to.

I'm not against coding things for it to happen, it's just that every time I revived this it's gone nowhere =/