Combat system test - Amun - Phase 2

[chilko]

Originally Posted by e30ernest

Then why destroy ranged instants? In my case for example my ping is generally in the high 300's on a good day and in the 500-600 on a normal day due to my location and service provider. The changes you made to my class' support spells will make it impossible for me to play effectively. Conjurers need to have fast support spells because we have to find who needs it, then select the person then cast. I don't want to sound arrogant but over 2 years of playing primarily this class tells me that 1 second can dictate whether or not someone survives or not in this game.

Another spell rendered useless with cast time is mind push. The faster movement speed + instant cast times of warriors will make mind push useless if it had a cast time. If your putting a cast time on mind push then increase it's range. It's far too short ranged for the 1 second cast.

guys we did say that there is nothing final right??? (stuff such as cast times GCD)? please let's talk about bigger issues.

[Radian]

Hmmm. Maybe change the "clock" cooldown animation so that 0 - 30 is casting, and 30, back to 0 is cooldown?

Make the "cast" half (0 - 30) of the clock a different color from the cooldown half.

Precasts would pause at the 30 mark until in range, then the spell would fire, and the cooldown would continue on.

If you want a penalty to go with that particular spell, have mana or HP tick off while the clock holds at 30.

LOL. Better yet. Have an bar like the O2 sensor. If someone holds a precast too long, it fires on themselves

[e30G]

Originally Posted by chilko

mmm... we might be facing a design flaw on the new pre-cast implementation but there is something else that i would like to ask you guys.

we need to have a "penalty" for launching certain important/powerful spells...
This is not only part of the balance but of the actual challenge involved in playing melee classes too...

if you can cast while moving there is no penalty at all... whats the difference between that and instant casting? that you have to click a certain ammount of time before???

maybe you want us to do this casting while moving and triple the mana consumption of those spells?

we just don't understand.

Actually, I think casting while moving can be a good improvement in the game. For a few minutes in amun last night all classes can cast while moving. I realized that it could make an interesting RvR dynamic with armies charging in and flowing combat.

Here are my thoughts on possible implementation:

Melee
- Allow positive spells (self and ally buffs) to be casted while moving but witth a speed penalty.
- Require the character to stop to cast offensive spells with cast times.
- Allow the character to cast instant offensive spells while moving.
- Increase duration of Spring and Onslaught.

Ranged
- Allow positive powers (self and ally buffs) to be casted while moving but with a speed penalty during the cast time.
- Require the character to stop to cast negative powers (offensive spells/auras) for the duration of casting time (like the current)
- Require the character to stop 0.5 seconds to cast instant offensive spells (if any instants are left)
- Allow normal attacks while moving forward (to stop runners).
- Allow normals while turning in place (to prevent dancing around preventing attacks).
- Reduce strafing speed by 25% (to allow melee to attack properly)

[_Enio_]

Originally Posted by e30ernest

Then why destroy ranged instants? In my case for example my ping is generally in the high 300's on a good day and in the 500-600 on a normal day due to my location and service provider. The changes you made to my class' support spells will make it impossible for me to play effectively. Conjurers need to have fast support spells because we have to find who needs it, then select the person then cast. I don't want to sound arrogant but over 2 years of playing primarily this class tells me that 1 second can dictate whether or not someone survives or not in this game.

Another spell rendered useless with cast time is mind push. The faster movement speed + instant cast times of warriors will make mind push useless if it had a cast time. If your putting a cast time on mind push then increase it's range. It's far too short ranged for the 1 second cast.

The 1 sec casttime = fix for piggyback. While that makes sense for marksmen&hunters which had a huge increase in burst dmg & general dps by using this with instants its making things bad for nonsm mages who need the quick effect of some spells (mindpush, heals, dispell).

Since the piggyback of those spells doesnt bring in any imbalances (like eg.huge dps increase) i vote for making them instant. The slower gcd compared to fast staff+attackspeed already is a drawback.

While on that i also suggest to make the gcd be affected by either the +castspeed or +attackspeed stat.For balancing you could add a minimum gcd and let the gap min to normal be scaling with eg. +castspeed. (eg. Gcd =1.2s min gcd= 0.5s | gcd with 64%cs = 1.2 - (0.7* 0.64) = 0.752s )

This would allow locks and conjs some less limited scaling with gear/different configs, the fixed gcd limits them pretty much.

Setting different values per classes for min gcd would allow balance too.

[_Enio_]

Originally Posted by e30ernest

- Allow normal attacks while moving forward (to stop runners).
- Allow normals while turning in place (to prevent dancing around preventing attacks).
- Reduce strafing speed by 25% (to allow melee to attack properly)

Could work.

Normals while turning already works.
Strafe speed penalty, im against it since it only diminishes dynamic, a quick mouseturn will still allow side movement witt full speed. Normals while moving forward is not good idea imho. Sure the effective range on running ones is smaller now, still the fastest classes being able to shoot while chasing i dont like. Maybe strengthen movement penalty on ensnaring arrow..

[e30G]

Originally Posted by _Enio_

Could work.

Normals while turning already works.
Strafe speed penalty, im against it since it only diminishes dynamic, a quick mouseturn will still allow side movement witt full speed. Normals while moving forward is not good idea imho. Sure the effective range on running ones is smaller now, still the fastest classes being able to shoot while chasing i dont like. Maybe strengthen movement penalty on ensnaring arrow..

An increased penalty for Ensnaring Arrow won't help the melee classes. As for the fastest classes being able to shoot while chasing, they can do it anyway if they wanted to now. It will at least make it harder for hunters to escape another hunter. I was also thinking a reduction in the passive speed bonus of hunters is fair. Coupled with a longer spring and Onslaught, warriors will at least have a better chance of actually landing a hit on hunters.

Strafe penalty can be ignored yes with the new system where ranged classes need to stop a bit longer to cast the first hit.


I'm all for more movement in war. Having to stop for everything you need to do in order to fight seems a bit old school. It's time for Regnum to move into the modern era and implement faster and more flowing gameplay instead of the static stuff we are seeing in Amun right now.

[Klutu]

Originally Posted by chilko

mmm... we might be facing a design flaw on the new pre-cast implementation but there is something else that i would like to ask you guys.

we need to have a "penalty" for launching certain important/powerful spells...
This is not only part of the balance but of the actual challenge involved in playing melee classes too...

if you can cast while moving there is no penalty at all... whats the difference between that and instant casting? that you have to click a certain ammount of time before???

maybe you want us to do this casting while moving and triple the mana consumption of those spells?

we just don't understand.

As a Penalty while the casting for these spells that have a Casting Time.

Having a -15% Movement Speed

I wouldn't consider this to be a design flaw of course while we are casting these spells the Character would not be allowed to attack until there spell is full casted and there weapon speed would come into account.

to me this would work perfectly for warriors and possibly Archers.

[Dannboy]

Well, came back and tried again, this time im pleased ^^
Only bug I have experienced is that Spells on the hotbar shows lv 1 no matter what lv they are.
Except for that, you have been able to make me happy.
First update I can look forward to, no nerfs, just adds or fixes. Just the way I want it.

Regards from a Happeh Dannboy

[Arafails]

I'm getting cooldown resets - ie. whenever I cast a spell the cooldown of every other cooling spell resets to 100% cooldown time remaining, however this only affects the quickbar (cooldown continues as normal in the spellbook).

Example:

1. I cast Frenzy
2. I cast Accurate Swings -> Cooldown for Frenzy restarts on the quick bar
3. I cast Caution -> Cooldown for Frenzy and Accurate Swings restarts on the quick bar
4. I cast Thirst for Blood -> Cooldown for all three previously cast effects restarts.
5. I switch to the next spell bar with my offensive casts on it
6. I (successfully) cast South Cross -> Cooldown for Every previously cast spell restarts
7. I try some more attacks, everything restarts its cooldown period
8. Eventually the buffing effects wear off with cooldowns still nearly at 100% remaining
10. Check spellbook -> Everything in the spellbook has cooldown times displayed as normal, disagreeing with the spell bar.

This is, for me, 100% reproduceable (64 bit Linux, for what it's worth). I'm not inclined to test anything further until this is no longer happening.


There is no precasting. There is no spell queueing. This applies to all spells, instant or not. This makes playing at least from a relatively high latency, unreliable connection quite difficult.

---

Originally Posted by _Enio_

Couldnt test yet, but for me offensive spells should not make you stop when your about to precast them.

Eg. I want a quick ambush on someone chasing me. I precast ambush and turn+stop -> cast should go off.

Otherwise you will get troubles hitting a spell in time when you have to turn same second. (eg. You strafe out of some tree to instantly freeze which is eg, on bar1 slot 10. Without precast you have to either klick (Cant turn same time) or release arrow keys (no movement).

Originally Posted by chilko

this is an exploit that only a very experienced player can get advantage of... you want to start casting when you are not meeting the criteria of FACING THE ENEMY and its only a couple of hundred milliseconds.

this kind of things generates unbalance between people with LOW PING and HIGH PING. Stuff that we also want to fix.

Sorry Chilko, but what Enio's saying makes sense, from the point of view of a person with HIGH PING (being on almost the exact opposite side of the Internet from your servers), who desperately wants to be able to prefer melee characters again. In actual fact I think it closes the gap between low and high ping somewhat to be able to do this.
Why? Even (especially) at close range, you can't guarantee that the target is going to be in range for long enough for a human reaction, and besides which you can only act on what you see (which is always out of date). At the delay time for an instuction packet to get to the server and, well you should be able to see where I'm going with this.

[-Edge-]

Originally Posted by chilko

if you can cast while moving there is no penalty at all... whats the difference between that and instant casting? that you have to click a certain ammount of time before???

maybe you want us to do this casting while moving and triple the mana consumption of those spells?

we just don't understand.

I think you understand wrong. What we mean, is that in the current system, it is very relaxing to have your spells cast beforehand, this adds a whole new type of battle scheme in building and timing attacks.

Moreover the thing is that in the current system, while running and clicking a spell, you just stop, and do not continue running, or do not cast. You should cast at this point. Then when the cast is done, you should start running again. For me it was very hard to have to re-click everything like 10 times just because I attacked and ran. This doesn't help at all in ranged versus melee, the melee can now stall itself too.

To be honest, I would accept it if you tripled the mana consumption and allowed them to be cast while moving. It is just so much more organized, it is above the old system, and under the current one. It just doesn't make casting such a burden. Because right now, like I said, someone can easily dodge and move out of range of areas and arcs. So either you should increase area, or implement casting while moving.

Keep in mind I'm talking about warriors mainly here, as I saw there were few problems with it yesterday.

Originally Posted by Klutu

Having a -15% Movement Speed

Yes!