The buffer class

[jaladreips]

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.

[CrusaderDeleters]

I really think that the bard class is a really common suggestion, but I actually enjoyed reading this.

[DarkSideMymind]

nice touch there. Looks really good.

[jaladreips]

Thanks for nice replies. I wanted my class to be almost completely designed (I hate when people just throw in a general idea) and different from classes that already exist, both in concept and in mechanics. I hope I succeded.

Btw, always wondered what do devs think about those ideas. "Laaaaame"?

[ZarroTsu]

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.

As someone who has rarely used vitality upgrades, I'm going to say this makes them even more useless, unless the price is relative to the amount added (new to the game, not sure).

Plus, HP drops are a thing, and they give +5 each, so you could luck out and get the bard up to triple digits without upgrading once.

"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.

Is there a limit to number of penetrations? Would this be handled by upgrades? If it were 'infinite', you could theoretically kite a group of enemies at a boss and string the attack through them all to do a wiked-high amount to the boss itself. Mind you this does sound fun strategically.

Silence:
[...]
Consumes 20 mana per second.
Bard suffers from 50% speed penalty when active.

I'd imagine this would make the skill very difficult to use starting out, and it might discourage people from upgrading it at all. Maybe it shouldn't effects speed too much (Only a 20% penalty instead?), and the upgrades reduce the mana consumed instead. Sounds more fun that way. Perhaps the counter-balance would be that the ability ends when the player attacks or uses another ability?


Other things listed seem like they'd require actually playing the game as the character idea before it could be determined 'good' or 'bad'. However, I wonder if maybe the mana costs should be relative to the number of allies actually affected by it - otherwise this class would be crippled by solo play, and possibly overpowered in full parties. I suppose this is what you were going for, but why should I play the class at all if, say, I'm in a party of only two people?

The other thing I wonder is what would happen if all party members were bards...

[jaladreips]

As someone who has rarely used vitality upgrades, I'm going to say this makes them even more useless, unless the price is relative to the amount added (new to the game, not sure).

HP upgrades get quite important on hard level, but I have to agree, price will have to be adjusted. I wanted to make this class more mana oriented, even more than warlock.

[/quote]
Plus, HP drops are a thing, and they give +5 each, so you could luck out and get the bard up to triple digits without upgrading once.[/quote]
Upgrades should be tweaked separately, because:
they are lack oriented.
their value is dependant on the class.
That's why I simply didn't take them into account, because you can get so much armor that cannon fodder will be even more cannon fodderish.

Is there a limit to number of penetrations? Would this be handled by upgrades? If it were 'infinite', you could theoretically kite a group of enemies at a boss and string the attack through them all to do a wiked-high amount to the boss itself. Mind you this does sound fun strategically.

I hope so. I want smart play to be rewarded. We have paladin for mindless wushwushwush action, bard rewards for doing something that is opposite to wushwushwush.

I'd imagine this would make the skill very difficult to use starting out, and it might discourage people from upgrading it at all. Maybe it shouldn't effects speed too much (Only a 20% penalty instead?), and the upgrades reduce the mana consumed instead. Sounds more fun that way. Perhaps the counter-balance would be that the ability ends when the player attacks or uses another ability?

I don't know if by difficult you mean "hard to use effectively" or "ineffective".
Realize how long is 5 seconds in an action based game. IIRC level 1 electrostorm has a duration of 5 seconds. And that's quite long. At act 1 you don't find anything hard enough to deal with. And I've actually started thinking that this skill might be OP. Still, left some numbers to be tweaked.
As for "hard to use effectively", we have 2 classes that require close to none skill. I know that this is hacknslash, but come on, how can stealth be hard to use.

Other things listed seem like they'd require actually playing the game as the character idea before it could be determined 'good' or 'bad'.

True. I have crazy ideas all the time, but this time I amazed even myself.

However, I wonder if maybe the mana costs should be relative to the number of allies actually affected by it - otherwise this class would be crippled by solo play, and possibly overpowered in full parties.

That's a good point. I had a nice struggle about skills that support both solo and coop play. And I came up with nothing. It's impossible to reach the compromise for me. Even priest is more of a solo play, maybe with occasional healing after fight and sometimes saving someone's ass.

Right now coop looks like solo but done n times faster, where n is the number of people. Everybody goes their way and clears his part of the floor. Bard has the potential to unite the team, because being near him is better than being away from him. And same vice versa.

The other thing I wonder is what would happen if all party members were bards...

Depends on if and how buff effects would stack. Still it would be perfect speedrun team.

So, the question appears: is the bard OP and if yes, then why?

[ZarroTsu]

Realize how long is 5 seconds in an action based game.

The original quote was in two-parts, the second part of it was the "50% movement speed". This is what would turn me off of using it, since you wind up only getting 2.5 "useful" seconds out of that 5 second duration. And you're punishing the player for using it, because instead of doing things with that time, they're forced to lag behind other players - a key factor that makes it detrimental to actually playing with the group.

Another thing to factor into it is the actual mana itself. It's nice that you get 5 seconds out of it the first time you use it, but then you're stuck having to wait for the mana to regen for it to be equally as useful a second time. Until then, it isn't nearly as useful, if even usable.

And a third thing, also regarding mana, is using other skills in conjunction with it. Stealthing around monsters closer to your melee fighters to set off a rally, for example. By the time you get there, you've spent half your mana and your rally will last half as long as it could have - which makes using the 'Silence' ability a bad idea, actually! You'd probably be better off neglecting to use it and just maneuvering past enemy hordes in real-time.

It also comes to mind that you could probably abuse it by toggling it on and off in quick succession while in a party, and near allies. All the enemies would suddenly lose interest in you and target your allies, and you'd only have spent as much mana as the time it takes you to toggle it on and off again. In the event that this isn't your intention, it becomes useless as an ability to use in combat at all, and relies on separating yourself from the rest of a potential party in order to scout into areas you potentially won't recover the mana to sneak back out of.

So in conclusion, your 'Silence' ability as it is could be useful as a part of another character class (Maybe a ninja?), but not so much on something where reserving mana is important to the party.

Maybe the first skill could instead be something like a taunt skill? Alert all monsters in a large radius of your location, and make them focus on you. It would force other players to come to your rescue, and therefore within range of your bard skills. It would be hilarious if nothing else.

[jaladreips]

The original quote was in two-parts, the second part of it was the "50% movement speed". This is what would turn me off of using it, since you wind up only getting 2.5 "useful" seconds out of that 5 second duration. And you're punishing the player for using it, because instead of doing things with that time, they're forced to lag behind other players - a key factor that makes it detrimental to actually playing with the group.

I see my mistake. Starting penalty should be -40%. Remember that later upgrades reduce this penalty + you get passive speed bonus. At act 2 your total speed penalty will be -16%. At act 3 it will be less than 0, meaning that you will be able to chase everybody down even when silence is on.

Another thing to factor into it is the actual mana itself. It's nice that you get 5 seconds out of it the first time you use it, but then you're stuck having to wait for the mana to regen for it to be equally as useful a second time. Until then, it isn't nearly as useful, if even usable.

Yes. At act 1. Where you get already 2 mana upgrades, each gives you 3 seconds more. It's 11 seconds of murdering everything with almost no chance to get struck back. Something has to keep this skill in check.

And a third thing, also regarding mana, is using other skills in conjunction with it. Stealthing around monsters closer to your melee fighters to set off a rally, for example. By the time you get there, you've spent half your mana and your rally will last half as long as it could have - which makes using the 'Silence' ability a bad idea, actually! You'd probably be better off neglecting to use it and just maneuvering past enemy hordes in real-time.

I think you want Silence to be a full-time ability. Remember that you get mana for kills done by other players. In the late game, you can slap Silence and everything else and you will still get your mana back because 3-4 mana per kill is more than enough. And Silence will make it way easier to position yourself.

It also comes to mind that you could probably abuse it by toggling it on and off in quick succession while in a party, and near allies. All the enemies would suddenly lose interest in you and target your allies, and you'd only have spent as much mana as the time it takes you to toggle it on and off again. In the event that this isn't your intention, it becomes useless as an ability to use in combat at all, and relies on separating yourself from the rest of a potential party in order to scout into areas you potentially won't recover the mana to sneak back out of.

I don't think AI targeting works that way. They will always choose the nearest target, so after turning off Silence they will switch back to you.

Also remember that enemies close enough will be unaffected by Silence.

So in conclusion, your 'Silence' ability as it is could be useful as a part of another character class (Maybe a ninja?), but not so much on something where reserving mana is important to the party.

IMO a ninja class would be boring to play. You have no high-value picks and having assassination class to fight off bunch of maggots? :>

Maybe the first skill could instead be something like a taunt skill? Alert all monsters in a large radius of your location, and make them focus on you. It would force other players to come to your rescue, and therefore within range of your bard skills. It would be hilarious if nothing else.

At first I wanted to fuse it with Brown Note, but I decided it would be too many features in one skill that can be already hard to understand. Still, if I had 4th skill slot, it would be some AI attracter