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.
