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1

Hammerwatch Discussion / The buffer class

« on: September 02, 2014, 11:24:29 AM »

Since I'm bored, I'm gonna present my concept of buffer class, which probably is going to be next. I'm going to attempt to make it reliant on positioning (quite like priest) and dynamic.

So here it is coming:

The bard - yes, it's overused, but it still fits the best as a buffer.

Starting health: 30 - Enough to not get one shotted.
Health per upgrade - 10 - This gives 80 health at the endgame, pretty low, forcing bard to use his skills.
Starting mana: 100 - Bards have generally lots of mana.
Mana per upgrade: 60 - Those numbers will be important later.
Mana regen: 2
Mana regen increase per mana upgrade: 1.6 - this gives 10 mana per second, quite a lot, but we are going to need it.

"Chord" - Base attack: some kind of music projectile, triple the priest base attack range. Penetrates enemies, explodes into small aoe at the end. Pretty slow. Damage increases per enemies penetrated.
Base damage: 5, 2 more per each upgrade.
Increase in damage by penetration: 2, 2 more per each upgrade.

Passives:
March: increase movement speed by 10% per upgrade, available at L1 defence.
Inspire: each enemy killed by buffed ally yields 1 mana per upgrade, available at L2 offence.

Active skills:
Silence:
Active as long as button is pressed.
Makes the bard invisible to enemies that are far enough from him.
Blocks natural mana regen.
Costs no mana to activate.
Consumes 20 mana per second.
Bard suffers from 50% speed penalty when active.
Upgrades reduce speed penalty by 10% per each and decreases range where enemies can still see bard.

Rally:
Activated and deactivated by tapping the button.
Does not block natural mana regen.
Consumes 50 mana on activation.
Consumes 20 mana per second.
Creates an aura around bard that boosts allies' damage and reduces damage they take by 20% per each upgrade.
Range increases per upgrade.

Brown note:
Bard creates an area around him that absorbs all the damage dealt inside (dealt upon both players and enemies). Upon deactivation, all damage contained is released in a form of instant explosion.
Consumes 70 mana on activation.
Consumes 30 mana per second.
Absorbs 25% damage per upgrade.
Range increases per upgrade.

A bit complicated, but I think it's going to be a very fun class to play and it will be actually easy to learn but hard to master.

2

Hammerwatch Discussion / Random suggestions on the forum & the game

« on: July 08, 2014, 09:53:54 PM »

First of all, I'm just going to say 'HI!' casually since this is my first post before a long road of spamming.


Since we have greetings behind us, let us get to work.

Well, this forum looks quite poor. That's literally my first impression. It's not about some wacky images, but how organised it is. Even if you have so few users currently, making three subforums for Hammerwatch instead of one ("General Discussion", "Bugs and Suggestions", "Classes and Enemies" or something like that) wouldn't make it feel so abandoned.

Now, the game. Personally my favourite class is Warlock (I haven't played the new classes yet, but comparing to Paladin/Ranger/Wizard, he is the least braindead), so prolly the most suggestions will be connected to him somehow.
Personally, I'd totally remake the poison system. Right now it's just typical DoT and I personally hate such things. Also, for some reason, you can't use it on bosses, flowers, minibosses and those weird towers. I don't understand it at all, maybe because it would be too easy to hit and run or something?
So that's how I would do it:
Base damage should be 1. Increased to 2, 3... etc at vendors (numbers can be tweaked)
Now, we make it stackable. That's how it would work:
We make certain actions "apply" poison. After poison is applied, game checks for another poison application. If any other event applies poison before certain amount of time (our poison tickrate) passes, monster gains additional poison stack and countdown restarts.  Otherwise, poison deals damage equal number of stacks*base poison damage and number of stacks is reduced by one.
Now, poison stacks would be applied by warlock's basic attack or an aoe effect released when poisoned monster dies (either aoe is released only when monster dies due to poison damage or due to any damage at all).
Current poison system excels at hit and run tactics, but is almost useless against crowds.
Potential stacking poison system wouldn't wreck mobs with high health, unless dealing a lot of damage previously with warlock's weakest attack, and after some smart poisonings, it would allow elimination of entire hoards of cannon fodder. And that would be cool, even if all other spells are way better for it.
Then you could simply throw out upgrading immediate dagger damage (or reduce it) and instead make aoe size upgrade for poison and it's damage per stack.

Next suggestion is not going to be as gamechanging, but still.
Paladin should deal damage dependant on number of monsters currently hitting. Now it's so ridiculous to play as him, especially with maxed out combo regen and combo nova. I think paladin's damage should be multiplied by (n+1)/n^2, where n - number of monsters hit in current swing. This way we don't get 4 paladins steamrolling entire game.

The most gamechanging idea is: make 3 different skills for each class that would replace previous ones.  IMO this would improve the game a lot. And it wouldn't be so linear. Now for each class instead of 1 ways you get 8!


Since now I wrote that loong and pointless post, we can discuss.