[Suggestion(s)] Passive skills

Orion

Green Slime
With the passive skills looking so empty, I can't help but feel like having one or two of these threads bumping around is a good idea.

What I would personally like to see is healing skills. I mentioned this on a steam post as well, but figured this would be a better place to be heard / round up other feed back, as the devs stated in that discussion that skills are one of the next things on the docket and they would be doing a poll soon. Wouldn't it be nice if we could put together a list of things we want to see on that poll?

If anyone else has ideas for passive skills they would like to see, throw them out there.
 

Orion

Green Slime
More on the point of healing; It's by no means an essential aspect given the health orbs and how the blocking works, but when it comes to getting into grinding huge groups of mobs or even the occasional frustrating boss fight, It would be nice to have a healer on hand. Even a melee attacker could make use of a small regen skill.
The other bonus would be in hard mode. The issue would typically come in for arcade mode, because self healing would defeat the point. However, there's nothing that says the skill couldn't be changed or removed from arcade entirely. The way the percentages in the game work, it wouldn't be too difficult to implement a hard heal, status cure, and regen. Possibly even an insta-cast revive (Was grinding the toy factory w/ someone, they died and we were stuck in the room until I gave up and died too. The other solution would be letting ghosts leave a room.)
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
The reason the devs have restrained themselves on this so far is because in lots of games, healing is vastly overpowered. I don't think they have any plans to implement anything, but if they did the only way I think it will work (and subsequently be balanced for arcade mode, where health is incredibly sparse) is by blocking off a portion of your mana. This works in story by not having permanent consequences (like permanently removing some max health) and for arcade by not being regenerative.

In fact, I already made a post on it here. However, I'd like to give it a bit more thought and come back to it, because I never had a decent idea for the silver and gold charges, so thanks for bringing it to my attention :D
 

Orion

Green Slime
I do like your idea of an EP block, and I was thinking if it equally as provisionally.
I was more thinking of restricting your ability to use the heals as opposed to restricting the potential though, like a high cost or long cool down. I guess an example would be:
Heal
Base Lv.
Heals 20% HP to caster
EP Cost: 30
Charge time: Long

Bronze Charge
Heals 25% HP to caster and allies (inclusion of Frosty friend unknown; haven't used it much so I don't know how rigged that would be)
EP Cost: 35
Charge time: Long

Silver Charge
Heals 35% HP to caster and allies, and leaves a buff healing 1+Applied SP/sec for 10 seconds
EP cost: 50
Charge time: long

Gold Charge
Heals 50% HP to caster and allies and leaves a buff healing 1+applied SP/sec for 15 seconds, and shortens casting time.
EP cost:65
Charge time: medium

Something kind of like that, or in place of higher casting cost, a 1minute cool down.
 

tkld178

Rabby
I'd say the biggest problem for any healing skill is that the game is not balanced around it. In fights where healing is not available as orbs from boss spawns being able to heal would be way too powerful. Fights like those typically give you plenty of time to get attacks in or transition to a new phase. If healing is made there has to be a downside or it will break the game and make certain fights easy.

One example is Gun-D4m where he has a normal phase and if you get him to below 50% he does a special move but he only gets one before the death salvo. It goes back to normal with nothing too difficult to deal with after his special after 50%. The main difficulty of the fight is that it is hard to have much health before his death salvo because of his 50% attack. If you can heal after the first hard part you can go into the final with full health.

Also the heal you gave looks op. That much hp is a lot. At higher levels the gold could be 500+ if you build health also 165 guaranteed health from the extra effect.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Agreeing with TK here. Any sort of regenerative healing skill will break the game in quite a significant way. The reason I like my own idea is because the only thing it does is give you a bit more leeway in terms of health, at the cost of blocking EP. I reckon the trade of 50% of your health back for not being able to cast a single spell is a worthy one - hence why I called it "Emergency Tradeoff". It puts you at a significant disadvantage for some temporary survivability, perhaps until another health orb drops, until you get to the next arcade floor or until your next level up.

The problem this might have is that people can use it for an extra 50% viability to get just that short bit further in Arcade, but even then, without skills, which generally take up a large portion of people's builds, you're more likely to die anyway. To be honest, this healing spell might be something most people don't touch because of how unhelpful it's going to be. I personally might put a single point in it towards the end of an Arcade run, but that'd be it.
 

Orion

Green Slime
Arcade is a non issue for me, as I said before there's nothing to stop it from being excluded or changed to a different support spell, although to be honest, I agree with it rigging most boss fights. My personal issue here is I haven't had any issues surviving boss fights to begin with.. Lol. However, the current highest farmable lvl with in game content is around 26-27 (past that you'd be doing a lot of wasteful grinding) and, while the damage recieved in normal would be insignificant by that point, in hard mode you can take enough damage within the casting frame of the heals to still get knocked out. That aside, those were intended to be rough numbers subject to change. Don't get me wrong, every issue being brought up is valid, most of which I considered before posting this. Like I said, I also enjoy the idea of an EP block. I've only been playing for about 1 week with 1 character at 99-100% completion (seems dependant on when I log in) and 1 beta comm'd character with beast mode and all the skills on for when I wanna test a build. Bottom line is, I'm sure there's stuff I haven't noticed yet, or things that wouldn't occur to me.
One thing I've maintained is that it isn't necessary at all, so yes; trying to add it in when it seems they had little intention of doing so from the beginning could be difficult, but I don't think that means these facts are set in stone. I mean, the game's barely half finished, so there's still room for things to get worked in. That being said, this thread wasn't intended for just healing XD I was hoping to get some feedback in different directions too haha
 
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Orion

Green Slime
Side note;
How much multiplayer have you guys been playing? Because that's literally the only time healing ever even popped into my head. In a solo game, I'm the one pitching the skill and even I wouldn't touch it. I'm more of a "Do so much damage you kill it first" kind of guy.
 

Orion

Green Slime
Started an actual Magic-type just now, had some better ideas. Micro heals, primarily. Something based off of magic attack maybe? To keep it balanced for non magic types so that it doesn't get op for boss fights? Either that, or small incremental increases in the heals ability, say +4 hp per lvl, maxing out at 40hp with a group effect. In either case, you'd need to build your character around it to make the skill functionally useful, thereby limiting your ability to damage. That would prevent the ability from getting too op in boss fights for a solo game, but you'd still be able to make solo progress with a multiplayer style character.

Getting off the topic of healing though, I think a straight attack buff similar to haste and protect would be nice. There is an offensive slot in support, so I can only assume this is already planned though.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
I don't think separating skills from Arcade and Story is a great idea. Imagine the disappointment of a keen healer with his regenerative health in Story mode who decides to give Arcade a crack, to find that it's completely different. Furthermore, since Arcade is so fundamentally difficult anyway, anyone who's fallen back on healing in Story is going to be at even more of a significant disadvantage.

There is an offensive slot in support, so I can only assume this is already planned though.

The passive skills section has been practically neglected for the whole time I've been involved with this game. Despite the fact that skills have come and gone, the Bronze-Silver-Gold skill point system has been replaced with the Silver-Gold skill point and Talent point systems and that gold charges have been implemented, after over a year and a half, I haven't seen that section change one bit. Basically, it's a bit out of date, so don't expect anything much.

How much multiplayer have you guys been playing? Because that's literally the only time healing ever even popped into my head.

I've played significant amounts of both multiplayer and single player story and arcade, but that's besides the point. No game should give players an advantage in co-op multiplayer over singleplayer. That's never a good idea, as it's completely unfair on the majority of players, who will play mostly singleplayer. In fact, so far, Grindea has done the opposite and make the game much harder the more people there are. 4-player Arcade is a bloodbath unless at least 1 or 2 of you are the top 1%.

On the topic of healing in multiplayer, I believe the devs never liked aspiring to the idea that one person has to sit back and play support. I completely agree as this puts a lot of pressure on that person to heal.

There are many other threads of passive skills, including that one I linked up, if you want any more food for thought. I'm sure a quick search of the forums could find you some of them :D
 

Orion

Green Slime
I started going down forums, but there's so many o.o I didn't realize how long the game had been around until I really started looking into it.

And to your point of the separating experiences, I've always found that gives games a wider player base with more replay ability, although I can see where it might damage some fundamentals, hence the efforts to come up with a way to make it an option. You know, it's there if you want it but no one really HAS to do it. I personally always enjoyed playing a healer and the ensuing responsibilities, and I know lots of people who do. So saying people are being forced into it or saddled with it is a stretch. But with players like you, trying to find a way to not have it damage any current players experience is important too so I'm glad to have the chance to touch on the subject.
As for the fact that these things haven't changed in quite sometime, that's part of why I want to drum up as much discussion on the topics as possible. I'll be looking in to more threads and stuff a bit later, and see what I find from there. Not that this is closed either, the more that's out there the better the chances of someone new seeing it and blah blah blah.
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
:bag: In the beginning of this post I mostly write about why we won't do certain implementations. :bag:
:naniva: If you're only interested in what we might do, scroll down to the end! :naniva:

We have thought about the issue of healing quite a bit (we did once have both healing items and a spell, after all). I think this discussion encompasses quite a lot of the concerns and ideas we've had.

I'll repeat some stuff in this post that is not entirely relevant to what Orion and G-Meister writes, because I want someone reading just this post to see as large of a picture as possible!

So, here are my some of my thoughts on some suggestions and issues in general:

The gameplay we're going for

As mentioned in the thread, the place where healing really does not fit our game is when fighting bosses. We want the boss fights to be challenging, or at least interesting, and that the player must learn the boss well enough to reach the mythical winning state of being able to avoid enough damage that you can kill the boss with your own output. So how does healing disturb this?

Heal: The Basic

Having healing added in its most basic way (a regular spell that heals) is completely bonkers broken, since EP is unlimited. It would be like playing Dark Souls with unlimited estus. On this point most people seem to agree.

Some people argue "but if people don't like OP stuff, they can just choose not to use it", but making your character bad on purpose is not something you should have to do for the game to be reasonably balanced.

Heal: The Block

An alternative presented here is using EP blocking for healing. This adds a new interaction (EP blocking for a non-sustained spell), and also limits what the player can do for the remainder of the fight. I agree that the trade-off can be interesting, but might not be very fun if you end up with no EP left.

Also, for a support class, it's really bad because you get to cast heal a few times and then that's that.

Heal: ...The Balanced?

But surely there is a way for The Basic heal to be balanced from tweaking some numbers? Maybe add cooldown or something?

I'm skeptical, actually. Consider this: either the spell is good enough that you can out-heal the boss (you're invincible), or you gain/lose nothing (you're wasting time) or you get killed while trying to heal up (it's useless).

Alright, but I want to play support, dammit...

This is the most appealing argument to me. This is totally true. Some players really enjoy facilitating for other people in the party to deal more damage and survive. Right now, playing support in Secrets of Grindea suuucks. I almost wish we had just removed Haste and Protect, or replaced the entire page with "Coming Soon (kind of maybe)".

We do want people to be able to play support, and we're going to make a very serious attempt at coming up with stuff that is interesting. I think people who like to support enjoys it because they like helping people, not specifically because they only want to heal or they want to play a braindead role. I've noticed that the people who play supportive roles in MMOs tend to play support in MOBAs as well, and playing support in DOTA or LoL is not easy, yet these players have a good time.

Traditionally this community is very good at brainstorming and coming up with solutions (just look at this thread), so I have high hopes to at least come up with enough support spells to make the archetype viable, even if we don't fill out the entire placeholder page.

One specific thing I want to prototype and see how it goes is some sort of barrier-type spell. That is, you cast a barrier on someone and that barrier will break after X seconds or after X damage. Picking this spell would give a supportive player a role similar to a healer, but instead of retroactively removing damage, s/he would actively prevent it. This might still prove to be broken, and I fully expect it would find a place in single player builds, but at least it has a fighting chance of becoming balanced! (But if we can't make it balanced, we'll bring it out behind the barn like we did with Heal)

We also want to play around with different ways to cast/target the support spells. Right now, to compensate for how bad they are, the support spells have a super wide AoE. If the spells were more powerful, it would be interesting to reduce it, and/or make it a ground target like the meteor spell so you must work with your team to effectively buff everyone.

Lastly, one thing I don't really want to do but could consider if it would solve a lot of problems, is to add a new stat + class of item that improves supportive power. Like WIS or Faith or whatever we'd call it. This would obviously only become a thing if we found ourselves in a spot where the support spells were fun to use, but broken when playing alone.
 
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Own

Moderator
http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/i...lent-suggestion-thread.1065/page-3#post-13622

A while back I wrote up this for why healing is a bit redundant. There's a ton of ways to minimize damage and prolong your life, without undoing the damage already done.

As for supports, yeah, they kinda suck now. Everyone I see pick support spells uses them maybe a few times and then forgets to use them because they're tedious to keep re-casting. I'd say massively increase their EP cost while at the same time increase their duration, that's the only way they'll be used outside of Arcade to any decent effect.

But supports help immensely in Arcade given that you run out of stuff to put points in and those pre-room buffs are a godsend, and they tend to last the duration of a room. Not sure how to make them better to use.

Maybe instead of buffing players, support spells just summon a temporary, immobile buffing totem upon the ground? Players nearby get benefits from the totem? That way it could be balanced to last much longer and you have some strategy as where to place the totem for maximum radius effect. I dunno if that would actually make things better, though. :p
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Perhaps we could gather some players' motivations to play support, eg. "Why do I like to play support?", to draw a clearer picture of what support players want and start off the thinking based on that picture? I hereby encourage everyone to really think about what you want as support - not skills, not "I like to heal", but what you like to achieve in combat.

For me, who mostly plays tanks (no, not world of tanks, RPG tanks), being support is almost as satisfying. My personal motivation is actually being able to balance out other players' mistakes, being able to save someone in a tight spot, with low HP maybe. For example, when I as a healer see someone instead of the tank being approached by an enemy, I try to root, slow it, or CC it otherwise. I think CCing is one of the main lifelines of being a support without being able to heal. Temporarily removing an enemy from combat. Maybe redirecting aggro to a player with more health, or being able to transfer health from a healthier player to a lower one. Yes, one might argue "Well, that stuff is useless in single-player." Well, yes, being a support means to support - you can't support if there is no one to support. So one has to also consider if one wants skills to be viable in both, single and multiplayer, or if one wants pure support skills.

I think there is a possibility to make a supporter without healing. Some kind of a master mind, who is able to move away other players from danger, or the danger from the players, like moving figures on a chess board. That's at least my motivation when choosing to support.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
The thing I think that's going to be difficult is balancing any sort of support skill which affect players (not enemies) between single and multiplayer - like, especially difficult. However, I believe nothing should be restricted to either single or multiplayer, so I'll try my best in this post to explain how we might want to balance them mechanically. I'll focus on trying to come up with sound mechanical solutions before thinking about how fun they might be to use.

Let's start by listing a few things that are somewhat fundamental criteria to a working system. I'll explain them in sections below, but treat this like a contents list in a book.
  1. Each spell must distribute itself evenly among the players it is affecting
  2. The caster should ideally have full control over who receives the effects
  3. Buffs must provide a reasonable trade-off in terms of the offensive capability a player sacrifices by putting points into the skills
Now we need to go through each of these one by one and discuss possible solutions and their respective positives and negatives.

1. Each spell must distribute itself evenly among the players it is affecting.

Seems like something that should be taken for granted, but the current system does not do this. It becomes increasingly more valuable the more players there are as they all receive the same quantity of the buff. Possible solutions to this depend on how the support skill is cast, but for now we'll focus briefly on the maths.

1 i) The strength is reduced. This does the job, but can lead to a bland feeling skills.
1 ii) The time is reduced. Not advisable, as people already don't like how long the current skills wear out.
1 iii) The MP per player is increased. Also not advisable, as we may end up consuming entire mana bars on a single bronze/silver casts on 4 players, and the jump of no effect to effect is so dramatic that it will become overwhelmingly more useful in Arcade than the longer story fights.
1 iv) The number of players is limited to 1. A very workable and easy solution, but removes a lot of potential for decent teamwork. Of course, you'd be able to select who you apply the effect to, but it seems a bit.. too simple, I guess.

I reckon both i) and iv) could work, but as different types of skill altogether, like the different sections for elements in the Magic skills section.

2) The caster should ideally have full control over who receives the effects.

This is a biggun'. Lots of workable ideas to talk about. The principle behind this is that they are the one who put the skill points in and therefore should control who it affects. If we have to sacrifice the intensity of the spell to comply with rule 1, then it makes even more sense, as the caster may want the effect entirely for them self, to give it all to a certain player or to distribute it among certain people. However, it can be quite hard to give 100% control for AOE, which is why this is not a must. Anyway, solutions:

2 ai) Player locked, involving a player choice system, which could work for skills giving 100% of the effect to a single player, all the time. Similar to Frosty Friend's menu, a directional menu pops up in multiplayer as you charge the skill. Perhaps up is P1, left P2, right P3 and down P4? However, as you might be using a different charge level (rather than just hold the button and quickly tap to activate the skill like Frosty does it) the menu should disappear once you select your player and allow you to move around while still charging the skill. This makes it fair across single and multiplayer, as the caster can still move around.

2 aii) Alternatively, have the player select menu cast the skill when a player is selected and do not allow the player to move around. Might work as a better solution, as it allows for shorter charge times, but then longer charge times leave you isolated. You could argue that if you're in multiplayer then you friends will draw the aggro, but what about singleplayer then? It seems completely wrong that a player should have to stand still while casting if the only person they are selecting is them self. Not really advised.

2 b) Areas of effect. I'll class all of these as circular areas that stay on the floor and distribute their effects according to how many people are in said circle. We'll get onto other things later. One thing to note is, if we reduce the effect of the skill dynamically depending on how many people are in it, it may be advisable to to increase the area of the circle slightly to avoid the area getting overcrowded. While this adds to their complexity in terms of coding, it increases the amount of strategic play that can be achieved with them, but also may get annoying if someone is actively trying to stay out of the circle.

2 bi)
Player locked AOE. Using the same selection system as in 2 a) above, the skill is cast to a selected player who has the area of effect centred around them. If they move, the AOE moves with them, and players can sit in that circle and receive a portion of the effect. Due to this partial targeting, we can change the proportions of effects differently, as it essentially prioritises one player. For example, a system like so:
  1. If one person is in the circle (the subject of the skill) they receive 100% of the effect
  2. If another person joins the circle, they gain 1/2 of the effect and the subject gets 1/2
  3. If a third person joins the circle, the two people who joined each get 1/4 of the effect and the subject still gets 1/2
  4. If the final person joins the circle, the three people who joined each get 1/6 of the effect and the subject, again, still gets 1/2
I will stress this is an example. In practice 1/6 of an effect won't change much and it won't be worth sacrificing the damage bonus you could get on a couple people instead. However, if these skills have a bigger range, it focuses team playing by sticking together to watch the back of the one with the majority of the effect. Could work well with a combo of melee and casters.

Despite this, it's a bit eh in singleplayer as it just works like a normal 100% effect to 1 person skill.

2 bi) Local ground locked AOE. When the player casts, they spawn a circle around them which applies the effect to anyone in it. Should distribute the effect exactly equally among everyone, as the skill is cast to the ground not a specific player. Pretty simple stuff.

2 bii) Ranged ground locked AOE. When the player charges the skill, a ranged target similar to Earth Spike appears, which can target the skill around the battlefield, as mentioned above. This allows the caster to sit out of the battlefield and apply the effect to the others fighting if they do not want it themselves. Another nice tactical option.

2 c) The current system. And I wish I could give it a better name. When the player casts, each person near the player receives their respective portion of the effect and they carry it with them. There's nothing particularly striking about it and it doesn't give much control to the caster. I'd personally do away with this system.

So, there we go. 3 or 4 workable mechanics, each which can prioritise a different number of people. Satisfies the fascists, communists and the democrats! Political jokes aside however, we still have one more thing to consider.

3) Buffs must provide a reasonable trade-off in terms of the offensive capability a player sacrifices by putting points into the skills.

This applies more to the effects than the mechanics, really. As a support player has chosen to put skill points into these effects rather than an offensive skill to boost their attack, they should provide a reasonable trade-off. Furthermore (just an extra comment here) as the rest of the skill system is built around offence, I reckon about half of the skills should boost offensively rather than defensively. Otherwise we get the poor kid who puts all his points into defensive skills and he's stuck in a boss fight (that might take him multiple tries) for an hour. Poor guy :(

I don't think there are many actual solutions to this problem, but simply something that needs to be thought about when assigning the numbers.

That's it... for now :fish:

That was a lot of words. Hopefully someone pays attention to this. I'll probably do another post on what effects would work with each of these mechanics later... and we still haven't even touched skills that affect enemies. However, I'd personally leave out skills that affect enemies simply because when you're in a boss battle with a single one, the skill becomes practically useless. Diverting aggro also cannot be done to projectiles, which a few of the bosses are prone to using.

Thanks for being passingly aware of this post I guess. Rip my evening.

~G <3
 
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Teddy

Developer
Staff member
My personal motivation is actually being able to balance out other players' mistakes, being able to save someone in a tight spot, with low HP maybe.

That's quite interesting! The babysitter/mastermind support :D

It would indeed be quite interesting to know more motivations.

Each spell must distribute itself evenly among the players it is affecting

Yeah, this is an interesting aspect. I'll admit I haven't worried that much about it, because to me it doesn't matter that much if some of the support spells actually were weaker in single player. But that a support is twice as good in 4P compared to 2P is not ideal...

The caster should ideally have full control over who receives the effects

If we do go a route where the effects scale, my gut feeling is that we should do away with AOEs, at least for buffs. I must say I do like the idea of selecting players through a summon-style GUI...

If that's too confusing or whatever, just having a small movable target that selects the closest player, and an indicator on what player is currently selected would probably also work decently.

The current system. And I wish I could give it a better name.

Caster locked AoE? :D

Buffs must provide a reasonable trade-off in terms of the offensive capability a player sacrifices by putting points into the skills

Yeah, for sure. This is why I'm worried we're going to need something to balance the support spells. Someone going all-out support should ideally add more or less one player's worth of utility, while not becoming a must-have part for every reasonable single player build as well. A WIS stat is one, and having a very high EP cost that can be reduced with support-specialized items is another potential path.

But we'll see - maybe it won't be as tough to balance as I fear. The utopia would of course be that playing support was fun, meaningful, balanced and that if you were smart about it, some single player builds could benefit from it all, too :D

I'll avoid speculating too much here, since we should probably talk about all this as a group before I say something stupid that people take as promises :bag:
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
I'll avoid speculating too much here, since we should probably talk about all this as a group before I say something stupid that people take as promises :bag:
Oh man I hate that philosophy that seems to be quite prevalent among the human race that I've been starting to notice recently - that being a hypocrite is the worse imaginable offence, and that any one thing you say must always be your opinion because you said it once. It means you basically need to stick "usually", "generally", "most likely" or another word that implies that's a simplification of how you operate, despite that being the quickest and easiest way to get a point across to people.

For that reason I (and I'm sure many other people) understand. It'd be nice to see what the other two think about the topic :D
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Actually I do have something else to add to what's been mentioned while it's in my head.

A WIS stat is one, and having a very high EP cost that can be reduced with support-specialized items is another potential path.

That would certainly be interesting. I guess it really depends on how many of these skills you end up adding to the section. 10 or more and I'd say yeah, as then it's worthy of becoming a specialisation if done well. However, this means you've got to go back through what you've already done so far and add new items, adjust stats and make sure that this WIS shows up somewhat significantly throughout the story.

What I more had in mind was the simple use of percentages. I'm a huge fan of percentages in terms of stats, as it can make things incredibly good if specialised in and is always proportional to the quantity of a stat you already have. This means that as you scale other stats, the increase from the support spell automatically scale anyway.

The one thing you've got to be careful of is the mixing of percentages though. If you've got a talent giving you +10% ATK, a damage potion giving you +15% ATK and a support spell giving you another +30%, multiplying the percentages can leave you up in the roof with ATK very quickly, so I'd personally say keep a separate, hidden stat which adds the percentages of each stat together.
 

Gnneas

Green Slime
For a support spell, instead of this whole healing debacle - I suggest this.

Casting this spell provides the target player a 360 degree of shielding provided that they actually shield up.
Unranked, you get 1 really fun 360 degree shielding capability for 'x' amount of seconds.
At bronze, you can work it out to .. uh .. whatever.
Silver, same deal but an increased increment in amount of shielding/duration.
Gold - You could make it that past the 'x' amount of base charges that you get on a gold charge it'll start whittling away at the caster's EP per shielding until it hits null.

'Watchful Blessing'
idk, you play around with the naming. Have fun with it.

Some fun things you could tack on to that would be shielded player gets an increase % in perfect guard timing to greater facilitate the ability. Or even shielding damage reduction as well (or instead of. Either or.)
This skill I find would work wonderfully in the game as it does reward timing and good play in attention to teamwork as most other skills tends to do in the risk v.s. reward scenarios.
Considering the projectiles and how mobs love to mob players, the 360 barrier shield would be a lovely addition.

Let me also add in a couple more suggestions. Different skills or add ons depending.
One would involve crowd control capable of bringing mobs together towards the center, much akin to the purple crystal's gravity well - except this would need to be able to target a larger radius to group said mobs as they tend to be all over the place. This would synergize well coupled with the big hitter aoe moves.

Another form of cc could be a strategically placed bubble that would repel enemies within' a certain radius for 'x' amount of seconds. Ideally more for casters and the squishes.

EP reduction buff sort of spell? Higher ranks could provide a silver/gold charge cast on cast much akin to a gold charge piercing dash cancel but more for the team?

Another thing would be aggro attraction. Couple this with a sort of thorn-mail like effect that will reflect damages at higher ranks. This could be a 'link' effect where the caster and the target 'tank' per se may have their armor stack and split the damages while one primarily draws the attention (of course with reasonable scaling).



Last thing concerning 'support' is how heavily EP reliant it will be. Far more so than other class play styles as far as I am concerned. EP Regen and EP % efficiency items, talents and skills would truly help alleviate the burden.

The support class in my opinion is meant as an enabler to allow your team to reach their fullest potential. The invisible backing power of having high morale, that's kind of what it's like to me. A role that supplements a team to a healthy state while they fill in where ever there may be some kinks.

But let me be clear. I'm huge fan of the "road less traveled." A solo carry character with mainly a support skill set? Sign me up. I like unorthodox builds of such fashion.

I hope what's said is taken into consideration. I would greatly appreciate it.
 

Own

Moderator
I don't think support should ever be a 'class' that can stand on it's own. Because support is uninteresting (to watch and to play) and everyone who says they want to be a support winds up never actually casting their support spells. It's there to enhance your normal fighting skills, not be something you do in place of fighting the enemy. Grindea's entire combat system is designed around everyone beating the crap out of the enemies, and maybe occasionally popping a support spell if they have nothing better to put points in. :p

Support only usually works as a standalone thing when it comes to PvP gaming, usually mobas, or PvE on a grand scale. Like an MMO.

That's why I like my AoE Totem support idea. Each Support spell has 5 bars to make clear they're not something to be maxed, uncharged plunks down a basic totem with a radius. Bronze charge increases the radius. Max silver charge increases the radius further and has it slowly hone in on the caster's location.

Totem of Protection - A small totem in the shape of a shield, reduces damage in an AoE.
Totem of Haste - In the shame of a clockface, increases attack and cast speed.
Totem of Might - In the shape of a fist, ATK.
Totem of Magic - In the shape of a book, MATK.
Totem of Slowdown - Non-boss enemies and projectiles slowed within the AoE.
etc, etc

Not every support spell needs to be a totem, of course. And this has the problem of having to stay in an area, until you max the totem at least. Most bosses tend to have you running around the place.

A few talents could synergyize with it. Totem Channeler, increase duriation of totems. Totem Expander, increases their AoE, etc.
 
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