Support skills

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Seen as the support skills section is fairly empty, I thought I'd contribute a few ideas. Also, I didn't see any section for creating completely new skills, so I thought I'd just make a new thread. Anyway, here goes.

A few initial notes

Currently, the only two support skills we have are in the defensive section, although they act more like passive skills. If you think about it, they simply give you a passive buff for a short duration no matter what you do, until the time runs out, rather than most of the things I'm gonna suggest here.

Instead of all the support skills acting like this, we could have some more AOE type support skills, which instead put a static "ring" on the ground, in which you or your enemies need to stand to receive the effect.

I won't be delving into EP costs, as that's a little too far for my balancing knowledge.

Defensive

[Hyper gravity]:

This works like the effect described above. At base charge, it puts a small ring on the ground in which enemy movement speed is slowed. Has a quick charge time.

Base charge: Goes about 2 steps in each direction, and reduces movement speed by 40%, +1% per skill point. Lasts 30 seconds.

Bronze charge: Reduces movement speed by 45%, +1% per skill point. Lasts 30 seconds

Silver charge: Goes 3 steps in each direction, reduces movement speed by 65%, +1% per skill point. Lasts 35 seconds.

Gold charge: Goes 3.5 steps in each direction, reduces movement speed by 80%. Lasts 40 seconds. Upon creation, it knocks all enemies around you back ~2 steps, and stuns them for ~2 seconds.

Only reason I started this at 40% is because the Ice Nova gives the chilling effect, which is an instant 50% anyway. We could also have this decrease attack speed, making it a little more useful, and easier to implement. If wanted we could have it chill enemies instead. I just wanted a little more variety ^-^

[Decoy]:

Having tried and failed for an idea involving an orb which sucks up nearby projectiles, as it wouldn't be useful anywhere apart from the FF, and would be incredibly overpowered there too, I decided to have something which acts on normal enemies. For most smaller enemies (so we forget bosses, as then it'd be too OP (our excuse here could be that larger enemies are more advanced in knowing what to attack)) you can throw out this decoy, which, if enemies are closer to it than you are, they will attack in preference. Perhaps it takes on the appearance of a ghost chicken, as arcade enemies seem to have a fun time attacking them. It has a set amount of health, and when killed, makes the same sort of poofing animation you get when you kill a bloomo. Has quite a slow charge time.

Base charge: Chicken fired out infront of you about 2 steps. Has 300 health, +5 per skill level, and doesn't run away. Disappears after 30 seconds if not already killed.

Bronze charge: Chicken fired out 2 steps. Has 350 health, +5 per skill level.

Silver charge: Fired out 3 steps infront of you. It is slightly bigger in size and now has 500 health, +5 per skill level, and a small amount of DEF, eg. 5. The chicken can slowly run away from any attackers that hit it, and wanders around slowly as chickens do. When it dies, it implodes into a cloud of feathers, leaving all enemies in a 2 step radius stunned for two or three seconds.

Gold charge: Fired out 3 steps infront of you. Is now slightly bigger still, almost the height of the player. Has 700 base health, and now has 10 DEF. Its clucks now alert nearby enemies, it runs away at its normal speed, and upon death, it explodes, dealing a small amount of damage to all nearby enemies, as well as a 4-5 second stun.

Now, I have a few more ideas, but I'd like to get something done this morning, so I'll pop those down later. Hope these get considered, and seen as I'm no expert on balancing, please point out weaknesses in these ideas that I may have overlooked, that make them all too OP.
 

HexZyle

Boar
These sound pretty neat. Can I suggest some abilities too?

Abilities that come to mind are:

The ability to create a temporary wall, be that one that
  • mobs can't pass
  • mobs can get past but only once they've attacked and destroyed it as if it were a crate or something
  • mobs can pass but they take damage from walking through it
Depending on the AI of mobs and how easily they can be derped into getting stuck.

I was going to suggest a timeslow ability, but dear god I can imagine how stupendously difficult that is to program into games. Even if it only applies to something like projectiles. And then there's the case where you're basically messing with veteran's experience with bullets and perfect shielding and whatnot, and at the end of the timeslow ability everything speeds up and can really mess people up.

Energy Rift
A point blank area of effect ability that drains enemies health, and replenishes EP of all players in the AoE per monster per damage tick (once per second) or something. For reference, the natural regeneration of a player (when not casting) is about 8 EP/s
  • No Charge: 5 EP/s drain, replenishes 8 EP/s for each monster in the AoE. (EP is shared per player in AoE, not duplicated) Damage per tick to monsters in the AoE is only light. Caster cannot move while using the ability.
  • Bronze Charge: 6 EP/s drain, larger AoE, slightly increased damage
  • Silver Charge: 8 EP/s drain, larger AoE, slightly increased damage, the player can now move slowly during the ability, and upon its cancellation, all players who were inside the AoE when it ended gain automatic Silver Charge on their next ability/spell (similar to a perfect guard)
  • Gold Charge: 10 EP/s drain, all listed effects from Silver charge, monsters inside AoE are slowed, and take bonus damage the more monsters are in the AoE
Death's Door
Here's one I'm not 100% on, (because the revive system seems more like a mechanic that was only included to make the game a bit more fun for players that die often, instead of being a system to crutch on) but I thought to bring it up because it seems like an interesting ability

Death's Door is a spell with a large AoE centered on the caster. The caster is immobile while casting, and applies a "brush with death" sort of status to all players who enter the AoE of the spell at any time while it is being cast. "Brush with death" leaves a player with 1hp if they took what would have been a fatal hit.
In addition, any players who are ghosts and enter the spell's AoE, are very rapidly revived
The caster cannot move during the entirety of the cast.
  • No Charge: 4 second cast duration. Large AoE, "Brush with Death" lasts 13 seconds. Ghosts revived in 2 seconds.
  • Bronze Charge: 3.5 second cast duration. Increased AoE, "Brush with Death" lasts 15 seconds. Ghosts revived in 1.5 seconds.
  • Silver Charge: 3 second cast duration. Increased AoE. Players killed while "Brush with Death" was active leave a Skeleton with their stats, who temporarily fights for 10 seconds in their stead. "Brush with Death" lasts 17 seconds. Ghosts are revived in 1 second.
  • Gold Charge: 2 second cast duration. Increased AoE. Player Skeletons lasts 15 seconds, and the player's summons do not despawn on death like they normally do until the Skeleton does. "Brush with Death" lasts 20 seconds. Ghosts are revived instantly. The caster's health will not drop below 1hp during the cast.
Guardian Shield
Applies the "Guarded" status to all players within a short range of the caster. The caster themself does not receive the "Guarded" status, instead receives the "Guarding" status. These two statuses are mutually exclusive (You cannot be both "Guarded" and "Guarding")
When struck by an unblocked attack, a player who has the "Guarded" status instead redirects the damage to the caster.
The damage is initially taken by the caster's shield. If the caster's shield is broken, they themselves take the damage. The ability does not trigger if the received damage would kill the caster. This ability can be combined with the defensive support ability to reduce damage.
  • No Charge: Lasts 15 seconds. Small AoE. Redirects 25% of damage. The redirected portion of damage is not first reduced by the receiver's armor, it is only reduced by the caster's armor, and only if it was not absorbed by the shield.
  • Bronze Charge: Increased AoE. Redirects 50% of damage. The caster's shield takes 30% reduced damage from Redirected damage.
  • Silver Charge: Increased AoE. Redirects 90% of damage. The caster's shield takes 40% reduced damage, which is increased to 60% damage reduction if the caster was shielding upon taking a Redirected hit. Redirected damage becomes Perfect Shield-able for the caster, with the regular Perfect Shield benefits (plus a holographic effect displayed over the player who was Perfect Shielded by the caster)
  • Gold Charge: Increased AoE. Redirects 100% of damage. The caster's shield takes 50% reduced damage, which is increased to 75% damage reduction if the caster was shielding upon taking a Redirected hit. Damage is first reduced by the receiver's armor, before being redirected. Any received damage during the ability is added to the caster's next attack (Saved damage is cleared if the caster re-casts the spell)

The following abilities are copy+paste mechanics of the two current support abilities, and that is that they only affect the caster when uncharged, and apply their "status" to all players in an increasingly large AoE when charged.

Imbue everyone's weapons with a particular element: Slow, freeze, burn, etc.

Rush, gives players a 3 second 30% increase in speed.
 
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The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Wow, I never got around to replying to this. GG, G, GG :oops:

While there's some really nice skills there, a lot of them seem very multiplayer focused. While Protect is much more useful in multiplayer as you can cast it on all players (might be a little OP in some respects) it's still very useful as a single player skill. If, perhaps, they didn't lock the caster in place once cast, they might become more practical.

Personally I'm not a big fan of "endure a fatal hit if not on 1HP" as it greatly depends on the maximum HP of the player. Early game when you have about 150 HP and not too much DEF it is much more useful than late game when you might have nearing 1000 HP.

Some of the base concepts are really cool, and, with a bit of expansion, could make some really nice mechanics. :D
 
Another ability could be :Self Heal:
In arcade mode heals only for 5+2*x(where X is floor) for 6 secs. and mana cost is 70 MP
In story mode heals for 50*x+(y*1\2) (y is your level,x is charge) cost is still 70 MP
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Any healing abilities are a no-no, as far as I've seen. To be honest, healing abilities in any game make it vastly easier as you can just abort the situation, kite enemies for a bit and heal up. It's very unlikely you'll die in a single Arcade room, so this ability would pretty much guarantee the success of any run.

One thing that might work though:

[Emergency Tradeoff]:

Allows the blocking of EP in order to restore health. This is much more fair as an EP block will not regenerate. Gaining a level up in Story mode could remove the block (because it gives you full HP), but that might be a tad OP. It has a slow charge time and no casting animation. Rather than having separate functionalities for both Arcade and Story, you can have it work something like so:

Base charge: Blocks off 50 of your EP for 25% health back. Can be used until 50 EP can no longer be blocked or restoring 25% health would result in an overflow of HP. Blocks off 1 less EP per skill point. Any skill point refunding while EP is being blocked automatically removes the change gained by putting in more skill points.

EP could be in % as well? Not sure on that one.

Bronze charge: Takes 25% of your health off and claims back whatever interval of the EP bar the skill has already claimed (50 with 1 skill point, 46 with 5, 41 with 10, etc.). Can be used until the skill has no EP left to claim back, or if the player would die from casting. If the whole skill is refunded, this function is automatically activated until the whole EP bar is free.

Not sure what to do with Silver & Gold charge. Many of my ideas involved modifications to the Base and Bronze charges, but that would leave no point in charging up to the higher skill levels.

I think this has potential to be a working healing ability. It needs a bit more input from myself or a few others, and if you have any doubts about this being too OP, please mention them.
 

HexZyle

Boar
In Spiral Knights, another action rpg I play with a "arcade" mode where there is no healing bar the occaisional health drops from monsters, there was a patch a while ago that added passive pets that boost your stats (and don't auto-attack)

One of the pets adds a skill you can use (the game has no "mana", so the pet-dependant skills are on really long cooldowns) that temporarily enchants a group of enemies to have a higher chance of dropping health on death. This is the only way I can see healing being balanced in this sort of game. There has been tonnes of discussion on all sorts of different concepts of healing such as through weapons, armor, and all sorts, but this is 99% likely to be the only truly balanced concept.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
That's not really a viable skill/talent for Arcade though, where health doesn't even drop. If you think that's going to be the only balanced concept, what's unbalanced abut this one then?
 
Any healing abilities are a no-no, as far as I've seen. To be honest, healing abilities in any game make it vastly easier as you can just abort the situation, kite enemies for a bit and heal up. It's very unlikely you'll die in a single Arcade room, so this ability would pretty much guarantee the success of any run.

One thing that might work though:

[Emergency Tradeoff]:

Allows the blocking of EP in order to restore health. This is much more fair as an EP block will not regenerate. Gaining a level up in Story mode could remove the block (because it gives you full HP), but that might be a tad OP. It has a slow charge time and no casting animation. Rather than having separate functionalities for both Arcade and Story, you can have it work something like so:

Base charge: Blocks off 50 of your EP for 25% health back. Can be used until 50 EP can no longer be blocked or restoring 25% health would result in an overflow of HP. Blocks off 1 less EP per skill point. Any skill point refunding while EP is being blocked automatically removes the change gained by putting in more skill points.

EP could be in % as well? Not sure on that one.

Bronze charge: Takes 25% of your health off and claims back whatever interval of the EP bar the skill has already claimed (50 with 1 skill point, 46 with 5, 41 with 10, etc.). Can be used until the skill has no EP left to claim back, or if the player would die from casting. If the whole skill is refunded, this function is automatically activated until the whole EP bar is free.

Not sure what to do with Silver & Gold charge. Many of my ideas involved modifications to the Base and Bronze charges, but that would leave no point in charging up to the higher skill levels.

I think this has potential to be a working healing ability. It needs a bit more input from myself or a few others, and if you have any doubts about this being too OP, please mention them.
Silver and gold charge may restore hp f aster but block more EP,like silver charge blocks 70 EP but restores 25% of hp in few seconds.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
The idea was that you use the base charge to get the heal and it's instant, almost like taking a health potion. It then has a slow charge time so you don't accidentally reclaim your EP bar while trying to get health. It working over time would remove that effect, and in the time it takes to cast you might suffer a fatal blow.

This means you can tap it twice for an emergency 50% HP, but you don't have any EP to spare. Postponing the refunding of health for EP would just force players to put it up to silver charge, making people less likely to use it. I guess that might be necessary for something this useful though. In my eyes it could be a price worth paying - I'd have to test it first though.
 

tkld178

Rabby
Soul Syphon: A skill that uses max hp to restore hp.

I think something like this should be a desperation move and should punish the player for using it but still be an ok alternative to keep yourself alive.

No Charge: 20% max health blocked heal 25% of current max health. Cannot use below 50% max health.

Bronze Charge: 15% max health blocked and 5% max ep, heal 25% of current max health. Cannot use below 40% max health

Silver Charge: 15% max health blocked and heal 25% of max health. Cannot use below 65% max health.

Gold Charge: 10% max health blocked and heal 30% of max health. Cannot use below 75% max health or above 40% current health. Lose 5% max health as long as you have gold charge available.

So this is just a general thing and have not really thought out any real numbers but i think this is how the skill should work. The more you use it the less effective it becomes and higher levels eventually get locked out. Obviously restoring max health will work different between modes.

So story obviously has health orb that enemies drop. They also drop faster when you are low health. Some things can overwhelm you before you can kill something/get to an orb so this would very much be a desperate situation move in normal play. Orbs do help you though, at base and bronze level picking up an orb will restore 1/4th of your missing max health but must give at least 5%. At silver it will give 1/3 of missing max health but must give at least 5%. At gold it will give 1/2 of missing max health but must give at least 10% health. At town you will be given your missing health back.

This would be op for bosses as it would give you extra health in a fight that is not supposed to have healing in but maybe it can be balanced for that?

In arcade you get missing max at the start of a new floor and orbs give nothing back.

I don't think using EP for health would really work. You typically need Ep to do damage. Only one skill does not need Ep to use. If you have to use healing 2 times you just can't do much. It would also be practically unusable for mages. Using it once will limit your damage potential and 2 will mean unless you have EP items you just became a melee.

I'm not really good with balancing but i think this could work as a skill.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
I admit 50% Max EP is a bit much to block to be honest. It would probably be better in smaller increments, like maybe 20% EP for 10% HP.

The reason I gave it the option to refund was to give them the flexibility to cut some of their EP, and trade it back once it feels necessary, if ever. That way it becomes more of a skill and less of a last resort.

I guess in Arcade it's slightly different, as rather than relying on EP regen like in story, it's more heavily weighted on Max EP. Having said that, it's much more necessary in Arcade as once you die, you're dead. No second chances. Therefore I think it's still balanced in the mode. It would be useful in story for people who are struggling with boss fights, where health orbs aren't always available.
 
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