NEUS Projects
Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) - Printable Version

+- NEUS Projects (https://neus-projects.net/forums)
+-- Forum: Sigrogana Legend 2 (OOC) (https://neus-projects.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=8)
+--- Forum: Balance Fu (https://neus-projects.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) (/showthread.php?tid=7011)

Pages: 1 2

RE: Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) - Noxid - 06-29-2020

There needs to be some kind of restriction on spells cast from ST for the simple reason that you are spending 5sp to get up to 35sp worth of spells. I do agree though the spell thief could use some other offensive options other than the stolen spells.

RE: Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) - HexGirlBestGirl - 06-29-2020

I'll stick to wanting to keep three turn cooldowns for spells. If it were two, then if I go last then it's effectively 1 turn of a cooldown depending on how it works. So.You get enough potency out of the spells for minimal SP Investment and all that. Stolen Spells should keep their cooldown for now. Any cooldown reduction on that would make you opt to not have to think as much.

If we just increase the power of stolen spells, then we've got nothing more than "I have your spell but BETTER." primarily. Which, when you account for the CD, is perfectly fine. BUT.

What if it already has a cooldown? Then y'know. And while I don't have much to suggest or add to much that's already been said here. I can sure say what I do want and don't want.

What I want? Simple. Spellthieves to one way or another end up focusing on stealing spells or utilizing their spellthieves in unique way due to their limitations with it. I'm fine with fundamental changes due to honing their own stolen spells, maybe don't allow them to use other spells and rely HEAVILY on stealing spells or copying them mid-fight. Increase Spell Snatch range as a result or make them capable of nullifying/dampening the effects/damage. What if they got bigger AoE or more flexibility or more effects rather than more base power as an example? Anything really that's not "lol spell with more raw damij" would be fine by me. But i'm fine with Spellthieves being average if not fighting against someone to siphon spells from and pretty good at countering mages as a whole.

Dagger skills also should get looked at since. Outside of Goose Bite debuff stacking, you realistically won't see anything much other than flying dagger because "i have 1m and can use it" or "lol bye your barrier/morganite" and all that. They're all also pretty bad to use for damage overall. Final Flare is completely ignored despite how powerful it is solely because it's all or nothing. More of a finisher move that most don't consider worth it unless they know it'll kill. (That and most people just get status inflict skills or buff spells rather than actual damaging spells and 50% of spells just don't work on Final Flare)

HOWEVER. Offensive Potential for a Spellthief in my eyes should at the very minimum focus around their stolen spells overall and working with that in a unique way and making it clear that a Mage's Worst Enemy is potentially a Spellthief. After all, imagine knowing someone can just temporarily suppress your magical abilities down to the raw spell and then use that same stuff against you?

With that out of the way, here's what I don't want. Short list, really.

I don't want Spellthieves to be 'better' mages. I want them to be their own independent tricky counter to Mages that don't necessarily have to be garbage if they're not going up against one. If they get any level of flexibility or uniqueness as I mentioned above, I think they shouldn't mesh well with having overall normal, non-copy spells. Why? Since if anything of the sorts occurs, they'd become horrifying (and potentially mandatory) when tacked on with a Mage Tree Class or something. I don't know how i'd do that. But it's a general idea.

I also don't want any buffs to how copy spells function to simply be "more power" or "less cooldown" or "more status inflict potency" or anything as simple as that. There's a lot of potential here, and at the simple front then anything can do that. Is the simple route good for balance? Sure, makes it far easier while alleviating lots of problems, but Spellthief right now just feels like the most budget as all hell version of "Select Your Magic Loadout" featuring longer cooldowns for no real big gain or difference than some wandering chad with normal spells. Literal opting in to inferiority. They can remain inferior, sure. But I want them to be DIFFERENT, which is what i'm NOT feeling when I play Spellthief. The "difference" is the selection of spells granted to me from all the different classes. But they're individually usually not potent enough to really mean much.

So, hell. I'd take copy spells having LONGER cooldowns if I could fucking maybe manually change how the range functions or how it moves or fundamentally change it or something. I'd even take Spellthieves being able to jankly replicate SL1's Dreamcatcher and mix and matching spells to produce some amalgamation of a fucked result. Imagine if you could have spells that give different bonuses depending on how they're used in some jank formula or something so you could have like a Black Bubble infused Miu that can move in any direction up to five tiles but only has 50% Damage Potency and only Silences for 1-2 Rounds instead of 3 and creates a line of Dark Water tiles based on the tiles it moved over.

Sounds absolutely horrible, I know. But knowing a Spellthief could do shit like that at the cost of not meshing well with other mage classes and they have an entire combo of spells within the game to worth with and could custom tune it to their own liking? I'd fear that FAR more than what they are now.

tl;dr:
pls make spellthief more unique rather than necessarily potent and make them anti-mage focused and their offensive capabilities namely revolving around their stolen spells or anti-magic and pls preferably dont commit to just lowering cooldowns or increasing damage of spells/dagger skills as the 'fix' to their offensive struggles thx

RE: Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) - SolAndLuna - 06-30-2020

One thing I'll note is for this:
(06-29-2020, 09:41 PM)HexGirlBestGirl Wrote: I'll stick to wanting to keep three turn cooldowns for spells. If it were two, then if I go last then it's effectively 1 turn of a cooldown depending on how it works. So.You get enough potency out of the spells for minimal SP Investment and all that. Stolen Spells should keep their cooldown for now. Any cooldown reduction on that would make you opt to not have to think as much.

It doesn't actually matter whether you're first or last in this case, I don't think? Just means that you can't spam a spell, and that you can't use it next turn regardless of whether you were first or not. Your turn ends and the counter progresses at the same time everyone else's does, after all, the only case where that changes is if someone finds a way to double turn someone else, unless I'm missing something.

Past that, the ideas you offered sound interesting, to be honest? I definitely wouldn't have too many issues with that as long as I still get to keep enough copy spells inbetween fights, and it sounds like it'd be really interesting to be able to combine spells in some way. There are a few reasons I didn't offer those kinds of more detailed solutions, though.

First one is simply that it takes a lot of time and effort to implement, and I'd imagine there are other overall less effective/interesting classes that need a rework way before Spellthief does. Second is that... well, any large change to things runs the risk of existing builds suddenly losing effectiveness and needing to have their skills/classes changed, which is never fun, and having it happen to a class that's already relatively weak in some aspects would probably make some people fairly sour. Third, and likely most important, is that I'm afraid it could go down the same road things like Ghost did - unintentionally powered up by far more than initially expected, people complain about it being overpowered, and eventually it gets nerfed again and again.

Granted, these are concerns that can be addressed, if something like this ends up happening - updates can simply come in an order of most to least important, and a quick look over what Spellthief is currently used for should resolve any issues with new setups invalidating old ones entirely. As for the possibility of overbuffing the class, that could likely be checked with either a test server or just letting people talk about the balance for the proposed changes, potentially.

So, all in all, I wouldn't mind this sort of solution, either, but I figured that looking at the simplest solutions should be done before trying to include never before seen mechanics or reworking the class completely.

RE: Spellthief's offensive ability (or lack thereof) - Miller - 06-30-2020

I don't disagree with lowering the cooldown, one or two rounds is perfectly fine and won't really tip the balance of power too much but the core issue still remains.

Spellthief has always felt like it was intended to be a trickster rather than just a blue mage with a majority of it's skills utilizing illusions and tricky skills like Mystic Dagger, Bluff, Smoke Screen and Snatch Spell. However, most of these skills have either little practical use or became outdated over time.


So I'd like to offer my own suggestions to alleviate this,

Snatch Spell
This is a skill that sees little to no use outside of scenarios where someone uses bluff on someone not paying much attention to what their opponent is doing. Hilarious situations like making someone guard, run away or making them act in a way that's disadvantage to them is the main draw to this skill; outside of that, it functions as a magic geist to draw comparisons.

My suggestion for this would be to simply increase magic DR by a % equal to rank or momentum used when the skill is used. This plays into it's anti-magic niche and adds a magic guard as utility which is what Spellthieves should excel at in my opinion.

Mystic Dagger
Another skill with it's only niche being on-hits. Mystic Dagger is an underwhelming dagger skill that has decent synergy with Final Flare, the latter skill being rarely used. I don't think it needs anything overly special aside from removing the reduced damage on the second hit and possibly giving it more range but I'm not opposed to having a status being tied to it. It functions well against single hit evade buffs like Miragewalk, Disengage and Nest Flight, removing the buff with its first hit before striking again.

Final Flare
In terms of destructive power and conditions to utilize said power, Final Flare falls short for a variety of reasons; the main reason being that Final Flare requires a hit check for a single target ability which limits the amount of opponents you can feasibly use this on without being pigeonholed into lightning and ice, two elements that are tied to hit boosting stats. The second reason being that, for a skill that effectively needs 9 momentum minimum which is the cost of a rank D invocation, you only get three spell casts normally and four with spirits; which forces you to run a Final Flare spirit to get the most out of this skill.

I don't really have any suggestions on how to improve this aside from maybe a hit buff being attached to Final Flare, but this is an extremely underwhelming finisher compared to invocations with the main benefit over invocations is being able to use it while silenced. Hot Potato on the other hand, is fine in it's current state in my opinion.

Spell Snatch

There's no real reason to use this skill in battle aside from setting up your initial stock of spells.

A way to make it more usable and add onto the spell stealing gimmick is to refund the momentum used if you successfully steal a spell from your opponent. Given this is one range and non-damaging, I think this wouldn't get out of hand and play well.

Another thing that would need to be added is to remove the most recent copy spells at the end of a battle, rather than a random one; so stealing spells doesn't actively hinder you in consecutive battles.


Goose Bite

I think the proposed addition of silence is perfectly fine. Goose Bite is a fairly underwhelming autohit other wise.


Smokescreen


After the changes to smokescreen along with better sources of its formerly unique tile, smokescreen could use some love. It could do with either a momentum reduction with a cooldown or have an increased area of effect to make up for it.



I know what I listed isn't mostly inherent to the topic of this thread, but being a trickster and stealing spells is the identity of spellthief for me. It doesn't need to be overly offensive, but it does fall short on what it tries to do outside of being the most versatile spellcaster in the game. Sorry if this comes off as a derail though, I did consider tossing this into another thread; but I've seen others throw their own changes around.

As a final note, I think Spellthieves should be able to use daggers as a casting tool, even if it's less effective than a tome.