Final Skills - What would YOU like to see?

Vilya made a Blog Post about final skill and what the Pixel Ferrets imagine them to be. Said Blog Post can be read over at: http://vilyaroo.blogspot.de/2015/03/skills-what-would-you-like-to-see.html

A small part is: "For example, our idea for the fireball is for it to be bigger and more phoenix-like in its form graphically, quickly followed by a set of smaller fire balls. This means that it's still, in its essence, a similar long-range single target spell, but it looks way cooler, deals more damage and has some additional functionality (it's now more than one ball)."


So, do YOU have any Idea for a Final Skill?
Please read the whole article first and then post your ideas here.

 

Fireball - Explodes dealing large AoE damage around target upon hitting a target. Optionally, strikes through multiple targets.

Whirlslash - Player can move around while spinning for # seconds at their normal attack speed, similar to the Autumn Knight, with a small tornado around them that draws nearby enemies closer.

Piercing Dash - Player can reverse the dash by hitting the arrow for the opposite direction (or any direction?) the original dash went in at the apex of the dash, then do so once more, similar to Marino's special ability or Winter Knight's special ability.

Weapon Throw - Few ways this skill could go. A) Player can press the skill button again to cause the weapon to uproot and 'throw' back at the player, damaging anything in the path between it and the player. B) The weapon uproots after landing in the ground, swiping at any enemy that approaches until it is picked up. C) The weapon's location is wreathed in a circle of spinning steel, damaging any that comes near that circle with the player's basic attack damage. D) Like the Excaliber being drawn from the sword, when the thrown weapon is plucked from the ground a burst of divine light / a bolt of lightning rains down to strike AoE damage around the player.


Meteor - Summons a meteor to the target specific. Then bombards the general area around it at random with additional meteors for # seconds, leaving behind lingering meteors on the ground that burn any enemy who walks over them.

Flamethrower - Player's avatar turns into a fiery phoenix, still capable of flying around to spew flames, but with vastly increased range, damage and movement speed. Any enemy that touches the phoenix takes large damage.

Plant - Grow Bloomo / Halloweed in size. Can send roots underground to nearby enemies that encircle them, gradually dragging them towards the plant similar to the Purple Crystal's ability that sucks the player towards it's center. Spits seeds at farther away enemies, like a turret.

Cloud - Capable of building up electrical charges over time. Every # seconds the cloud does not shoot a crackle of electricity surrounds it, growing in size / speed. Can rapidfire lightning strikes based on how much electrical charge has been built up.

I can think of more, I just don't have the time to type them right now.

 

"Our guidelines right now is to keep the spells doing what they currently do, but in a more epic way - meaning a single target spell is still a single target spell, and an aoe crowd control ability remains dealing aoe damage and can still be used for crowd control." -Vilya

I'm not sure if we should suggest effects for the Final Versions aswell but here are some of the visuals I would like to see on the Final Versions.

Shadow Clone: Depending on what weapon your using the shadows take different forms.
1H Swords and Maces: The shadows look like ninjas.
1H Wands: The shadows look like badass mages.

Heroic Strike: The weapon grows to a ridiculous size and a white light shines outwards from the player. I don't care much about how he swings the weapon, I just wanna see a massive Slime Hammer that beats the loot out of the Giga Slime.

 

Earth Spike: A large golem fist bursts up out of the ground, pounding enemies high into the air. The fist crumbles into a proper spike, as the enemies fall to do additional skewering damage. Optionally, the fist pounds the ground to do damage and knockback to things nearby before crumbling.

Chain Lightning: A bolt of lightning crackles down to strike the player when the spell is cast, creating a electric bubble field around them without damaging them. Chain lightning can now bounce off of the player, if there are no other enemies nearby to bounce it off of and the player is near enough to the target enemy. Optionally, when the lightning bolt strikes the player, it causes bolts to fire off at every nearby enemy which can in turn bounce between all other enemies.

Wind Slash: I'm gonna admit, I haven't seen anyone who even remotely enjoys or uses this skill. It's slow, it's easy, it's hard to aim, it requires you stand still and be vulnerable. It's all risk with very little reward. It's difficult to learn, difficult to master and once you master it... you would still be better off with any other magic skill, it seems like. The only way to redeem this skill would be to make it so that once you charge it up, you can't get your EP back from canceling it - but the arrows spinning around you can damage enemies who come into contact with them at a reduced amount of damage, causing that arrow to pop. At least then I could have some sort of protection while I waited for my arrows to get in a good position. That said...

Wind Slash's final could be akin to the Season Autumn Mage's special skill, causing the arrows to launch out hurricanes that suck up enemies they rip through, damage them so long as they're in the hurricane and launch them far away.
That, or it causes the wind slashes to ricochet off of enemies and obstacles to bounce around.

Insect Swarm: Become the Lord of the Flies. You can carry one fully charge swarm of insects with you that take a long time to die, only truly starting to die off once they descend on an enemy. Optionally, you summon a Plague Mother Insect that flies over to attack an enemy. When she bursts a massive swarm of insects descend on the enemy.

Frosty Friend: Frosty Friend gains the size of and attacks of a yeti. It can slow enemies with icy breath, pound the ground to knock them awake or just punch them like usual. Optionally, it just gets massive and attacks normally like usual, but becomes like a Russian Nesting Doll. If the giant snowman dies, it melts into a tier 2 snowman. If the tier 2 snowman dies, it melts into a tier 1 snowman. Tier 1 snowman, after a short while of being at full HP, can regrow automatially into tier 2. And in the same way, tier 2 back into tier 3.

Ice Nova: A small, localized blizzard forms around the player for several seconds, damaging and slowing any enemy that comes into the blizzard. Potentially freezes them solid.

Ice Spikes: Causes a chain reaction of increasingly larger spikes to burst out away from the player, farther an farther, then shatters into a flurry of snowflakes all at once that slow all nearby enemies.

Smash: Creates a sound like the smash attack from Smash Bross and a tiny explosion from the impact, sending the enemy - regardless of it's size, flying around the area like a pinball to bounce off of anything it takes up to # times or # feet, receiving damage from every ricochet.

Heroic Strike: Adds a third hit to the end of the strike, ripping open and resealing a chasm in the ground that travels in a cone shape away from the player, hitting the target enemy and enemies within the cone shape. Optionally just creates tons of cracks in the ground with fire/lava bursting up from them for the third strike, that quickly vanish.

Dodging Strike: The player vanishes outright for a full second, then rapidly appears and disappears all around the enemy with a series of lightning fast slashes, dealing # damage total, finishing with a dash through the enemy on the other side - a flutter of feathers or cherryblossom petals left in their wake. It is a 'stylish' skill, after all.

Spirit Slash: The spirit gains a finishing move chosen at random from one of the other 1-handed skills. It can dash through an enemy, blade flurry them or leap back, forward and slice into them. Also, maximum charged Spirit Slashes will wait # seconds for an enemy to come into range before looking around, shrugging and vanishing. If an enemy does come into range, it will immediately trigger as normal. Optionally, for it's finishing move it surrounds one / all enemies in range with 4 spirits that slash at once for large damage?

Berserker Style: A fiery red aura pulses from around the player, increasing with their combo. At large combos enemies create small explosions on death, maybe just for visual style or actually causing additional damage to nearby enemies.

Shadow Clone: Adds one last, incredibly slow clone that deals massive damage with each slow swing. If you can keep an enemy contained to one spot long enough for the slow clone to reach and swing at it, it's worthwhile. Maybe the final shadowclone could have a unique shape - the shadow of your father or mother, maybe?

Haste: An hourglass forms over each player's head, then shatters and scatters hourglass sand immediately nearby players. On top of speed being increased, nearby enemies all have their ATKSPD decreased. Optionally, increases all player's movement speed until a hit is taken.

Protect: Causes divine light and Gridnea Goddess feathers to flutter down around players, leaving behind one feather that floats around each player. This feather dramatically reduces damage taken, but vanishes after # hits, leaving only the base Protect spell.

 

Some of my ideas have been owned by Own, but here's what left:

Blade Furry
Attacks are even faster, you can tap skill button to continue stabbing, but this will drain your EP.

Spirit Slash
Range increases greatly and one more spirit appears to attack. It also gains effect of your weapon.

Shadow Clone
4 clones appear and clones affect other 1H skills.

Smash!
Enemies hitting other enemies will also send them flying, causing chain reaction.

Berserker Style
You can use other 2H skills charged instantly and with lower EP cost.

Fireball
Creates a giant fireball that will leave a fire trail on ground and fly through few enemies. With every enemy hit, it shrinks in size and shoot smaller fireballs.

Meteor
Summons a huge meteor that will create massive shockwave and set great ring of fire around and kill dinosaurs.

Flame Thrower
Flame cone is much wider and with length of entire screen.

Ice Spikes
Spike trail is wider and travels much further, finishing with giant iceberg with 120% chance to freeze enemy.
OR
Spikes form few "snakes" that will home to nearby enemies.

Ice Nova
Effect is (almost) screen-sized and leaves a long-lasting trail of special ice, that slows only enemies.
OR
Absolute zero, freezes the game.

Frosty Friend
Frosty appears with two it's children and they can revive each other.

Summon Plant
Plant will bite enemies, draining their HP so it can live as long as it has something to eat. After some time it can also spread new plants, and with enough enemies, you can create a bloodthirsty garden >

Chain Lighting
Lighting will split into few "branches" targeting multiple enemies independently. Can jump ~10 times per branch.

Cloud Strike
Cloud will make rain that will EITHER damage enemies OR make them wet, thus more vulnerable to thunders. Strikes will be longer (few thunders per strike) and cloud gains ability to make a charge attack, flying quickly over multiple enemies striking all the way.

Wind Slash
8 arrows appear and blades are wider, easily damaging all enemies close to you.

 

Just giving my contribution to the skills I tend to use the most...

Shadow Clone: Your shadows gain some sentience and don't need to follow you (range as the Cloud) and strikes enemies near you, but deal the same damage as 'normal' (40%/20% or upgraded to 50%/25%).

Spirit Slash: As KoBeWi suggested, slightly increased attack range and a second shadow/spirit appears to help out.

Dodging Strike: Makes you dash a bit further ahead when you release it, through the enemy you're dodging, and then turning around to slash at their back dealing double damage. (Optional ½ second stun on passing through them to make sure you'll hit them with the finishing strike)

 

Wind slash
'Those four projectiles send two other projectiles in a 90° angle when reaching their end creating a rectangle of doom.

Summon plant
It gets tentacles slapping enemies additionally in larger range!

This time/attack speed thingy
All enemies are moving 10% (or whatever) slower.

Whirl slash
ZELDA STYLE!

 

Spirit Slash - Radius increase of ~10-15% and some kind of slowing mechanic or more slashes.

Shadow Clone - Clones deal 25 (+skill lvl/2) % of your base damage. Visually, make the shadowy aura more prominent and dramatic on idle/attacking respectively.

Whirlslash - Range of attack increase of ~20% and only on the 3rd attack. Maybe make the range amount based upon how far you move during the charging of the ability? This would give reason to players for choose some of those talents that are less used currently.

Meteor - Since Meteor is kind of already super awesome, why not make it a full on nuke ability/enabler? Gold charge could be something like "Damage increase and on critical hit you have a chance (16 x skill level [80% @ 5 gold]) to make the next Meteor cast start at Silver charge. This gives us that shield-orientated nuke build and even add synergy with the talents that deal with shield-related stuff. It also might divert attention to crit-based items in the future as well instead of stacking MATK on certain equipment slots.

Cloud Strike - Player movement and attack speed increased by 10% and both variants of silver/bronze cloud can be active at once. Tweaking the move/attack speed based upon the level of the skill would obviously help, but having multiple cloud strikes on the screen could prove to be an interesting direction for the skill depending on how the AI for the clouds turns out, as in, they don't need to be attacking the same enemy unless that enemy is the only one within X many units of the player/AI range or something to that degree. Visually, something to indicate the movement speed increase would be nice.

Insect Swarm - The animation on the dev blog is beautiful and perfect for the ability, so major props there! I think adding some kind of slowing mechanic to the final version of the skill would be useful since the build is mostly used when kiting faster enemies.

I don't really have much else to add to this since I haven't played with all the other abilities yet. I will edit this should I come up with anything more. Loving the game so far, keep up the good work!

 

Frosty Friend -
Essentially visually a larger version of the previous tier with a slightly more 'muscular' build (but without sacrificing the pudginess). Alternatively a more ape-like quadrupedal appearance might work (a pudgy ape-like appearance, of course). It's largest visual difference would be it being partially and irregularly covered in ice plating (as in flat-ish darker-blue chunks of ice that look imbedded in him/her, but not resembling human armor). (Additionally, I hadn't seen the yeti before now, but no, not resembling its... plating/fur(?) either.)

As far as its abilities are concerned, something to give it more survivability seeing as it's the "tank" of the pet world. Something like the ability to slow movement/attack of its attackers or those it hits (or something along the lines of an aura or an occasionally used nova ability), or a chance to block attacks (or just an overall damage reduction to avoid RNG's) (also it could be explained as the ice chunks deflecting/absorbing blows), or the ability to slowly resurrect itself (which would of course take longer than if the player can do it). Of these my preference would be self-resurrection (finally not a complete waste against bosses... once it's leveled up that high), followed by the block, and finally the slow.

 

Two-handed weapons here:

Heroic Slam - Second strike now deals even more tons of damage, with increased crit damage, stuns enemy and leaves the ground scattered (just visual, to make that hit looks REALLY hard) - still singletarget everythingdestroying strike, but if its used on common mobs, why not give it some stun?

Whirlslash - Gives additional strike between first and last strikes and now it have a little increased range which appears to look like wind cuts (somewhat same as Spirit Slash's slashes).

Titan's Throw - Dramatically increased damage on the landing area, and stuns all enemies hit on the landing area, making its easier to pick up in group of dead enemies. Looks like too much stuns already, but its two-handed weapon, its should strike really hard for enemies! And just look at these EP costs at final charge...

Smash! - Uh oh... I really have no ideas...

Berserker Style - You take another 10% additional damage (for 45% total), but your maximum critical strike chance boost increased by 1 per hit (so now is up to +30%) and now each your hit increases your resistance to hitstuns by 5% up to 100% total. Always thought that with Berserker Style I feel myself almost like true berserker. The only problem was I wasn't unstoppable like true berserker should be. That should hit the spot without disbalancing this skill - 145% damage taken tho...

 

I know I already suggested the final tier Earth Spike spell, and it's already been designed in the newest dev update, buuuut...

Would it be worth the art time to do something special? In the Kirby series, every time you transformed into a rock it would take on a different shape, some appearing far less often than others. It might be a cute homage to do something similar in SoG, just as a visual effect. You could have the spike transform into a few different hurty options with different levels of rarity:

- Golem fist.

- Sword's blade.

- Gigaslime statue.

- Phaseman statue.

- Gundam statue.

- Goddess statue.

- Luke swinging axe statue.

- Marino posing with sword statue.

- Tier 3 Snowbuddy statue.

- Vilya, Teddy and Freddy trio statue.

- A pyramid of chickens.

 

Ice Spikes - The spikes that pop out out of the ground instead turn into two spiked curves of a serpent-like Ice Dragon's body, with the third part being a dragon head with fangs.

Flamethrower - Each flame becomes a rain of flaming blades or arrows shooting out at enemies.

 

It's probably been suggested before, but a possible thing is if you max out the skills in a certain section (one handed,two handed, fire, ice etc.) could lead to an "ultimate" skill that does something.

My ideas:
All the skills HAVE to be charged to be used.
One-Handed: Shadow Flurry. This move creates multiple shadow clones around you in a large radius that all do 3 consecutive blade-flurries. Then the enemies would fly out and target enemies for a few seconds.
Two-Handed: Beserk Spin: This move creates multiple shadow clones of your weapon that spin in a large radius (larger than Shadow Flurry). Then the weapons would fly out in 8 directions similar to the throw skill.

Fire: Phoenix. This move would create a meteor shower in a small radius and fireballs flurry out in 12 directions from your character. Your character would glow red and have fire wings during and a few seconds after the move has been used, powering up fire spells by 50% for 5 seconds.

Ice: Permafrost. This move would create a large circle of icicles and small minions of ice surrounding your character. Any enemy in the radius will be frozen in a block of ice for during and a few seconds after the move has finished, and would be instantly killed if sliced with a sword. Your character will glow blue during this and would have ice wings during and a few seconds after the move has been used, powering up ice spells by 50% for 5 seconds.

Earth: Mother Nature. This move would create a large circle of thorns and a lot of grass minions surrounding you. Any enemy in the radius will become "seeded" and slowed down, taking damage for a small amount of time. Your character will grow green during this and would have thorns grow behind your footsteps for a limited amount of time after the spell has completed (these thorns will not damage the player while green). It would also power up earth spells by 40% for 5 seconds.

Air: Gale Force. This move would create a large circle of gusts that pull the enemies in the radius and create a thunderstorm for enemies. Any enemy in the radius will be struck down with lightning (even airborne enemies). Your character will grow yellow during this and would have thunder wings during and after the move has been used, powering up wind spells by 50% for 5 seconds.

Passive buff (Row 1): Bubble. This would be similar to the bubble given in challenges in arcade mode and the drones in the flying fortress. For a few seconds, you will be invulnerable to damage.

 

The Fireball skill shouldn't just be a simple phoenix line thing at the end as it is kind of boring; you should be able to control it all snake styled to guide it. Multiple hit single shot is more like a silver charge spell to me because I never find a moment where I think "Man charging up to fire this boring not so strong and expensive bird is really cool."

 

Or it could explode into smaller fireballs

 

Basically what I suggested.

THAT is a gold charge.

 

There is currently no spells that truly aid summons. So potentially, maybe a spell to enhance magic attack for a timed period?

 

This is because a spell specializing in summon-buffing would be gimped without points spent in a summoning skill: you might as well just put whatever effect you were going to put on the new spell on higher charges of the summon spell instead.

A MATK buffing spell sounds good though. But wouldn't that also buff itself if recasted?

 

Well, what about a direct % buff? Like 2%, 4%, and 6%. Each level decreases the casting time while each unique tier decreases the cost to maybe a flat 30 from like... 60?

 

I'd like to see some healing abilities in the game, that way the party isn't relying on spotty orb drops to heal. Maybe something like a Lay-On-Hands where the caster has to be within melee range for the spell to cast, and higher-tier casts increase the range and health restored. That, or a full group heal that takes up a lot of EP but heals every group member for a chunk of HP.