Hello there!
Unfortunately, I am not an Influencer without an alphaentry, which means my whole Feedback is coming from reading Talents, Interviews and watching Alpha Videos.
As I recall from one of your interviews, one of your first design philosophies with empowered spells were, that it is not always necessary to hold down the button to reach the highest empower level, depending on Situation and Spell. You said, this would give more depth into the class due to the perfection of timing and the higher skill level necessary to optimize those spells.
Empowered Spells with their whole new mechanic shouldn’t feel like a standard spell with cast time X.
Devastation:
Now Let’s look at how this works in game:
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Fire Breath (Red) - Inhale, stoking your inner flame. Release to exhale, burning enemies in a cone in front of you for [ 145% of Spell Power ] Fire damage. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets. (Costs 2.6% of Base Mana, 2.5 sec cast, 30 sec cooldown)
- I: Deals [ 70% of Spell Power ] damage over 4 sec.
- II: Deals [ 140% of Spell Power ] damage over 8 sec.
- III: Deals [ 210% of Spell Power ] damage over 12 sec.
- IV: Deals [ 280% of Spell Power ] damage over 16 sec.
Fire Breath, one of the staples in the toolkit, has gotton a great Design! Due to the base dmg and the dot dmg are both staying the same, and only the duration of the Dot increases linear, you can decide if you’d like to have a longer duration of the Dot or if a shorter duration is more than enough.
Depending on the situation and talent choice (Everburning Flame) you could make the decision to only use the first Empowered Level if you’re confident enough to keep the Dot up with your other spells.
Until now everything works exactly like you would imagine it too work in the devastation tree, but now there are talents which provides a MASSIVE buff to your gameplay. With “Power Swell” you will get 50% Essence regeneration for up to 8 seconds depending on the empower level. With “Tyranny” you reduce the CD of your 2 major DPS CD’s by up to 8 sec depending on the empower level.
These are two MASSIVE buffs to you and the way you’re able to deal damage and play more smoothly overall. Tyranny, as one of the top tier talents might be skipped to talent into something more promising, but “Power Swell” is in the middle of the pack and grants you heaps of essences to put into new damaging abilities.
Enough of that for now, Fire Breath would work great too decide, but some players would go for the highest duration of dot anyway, just to get a more relaxed gameplay.
The other empowered ability in the devastation tree demonstrates the problem with “Power Swell” and “Tyranny” even further:
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Eternity Surge (Blue) 1/1 - Focus your energies to release a salvo of pure magic, dealing [ 369% of Spell Power ] Spellfrost damage to an enemy. (2.5 sec cast, 25 yd range, 30 sec cooldown)
- I: Damages 1 enemy.
- II: Damages 2 enemies.
- III: Damages 3 enemies.
- IV: Damages 4 enemies.
This ability turns those talents into obscure versions of themselves and forces you too do, what doesn’t feel good at all. Those talents force you to wait even in single target situations to get the highest empower level, because those buffs are way to insane.
Solution:
My idea of a solution to those problems with these talents is quite simple. Instead of a linear 2 seconds each empowered level this should be a fixed number improved by a higher empower level.
For example:
Increase the base duration from “Power Swell” to 5 seconds and increase it by 1 second for each empowered level. The highest benefit of 8 seconds would not change and you would still be rewarded to cast the highest Empower Level. The difference would be not as big of a deal as it is right now. There is no scenario right now where you would not take that talent due to the high resource regeneration and therefore no choice as of it is right now someone wouldn’t like to charge the abilities up the most.
Preservation:
A similar Problem is occurring in the preservation tree of the evoker class, even though the problem is baked in into the ability.
Dream Breath Green
Talent
4.5% of base mana
Channeled (2.5 sec cast) 25 sec cooldown
Requires Evoker
Inhale, gathering the power of the Dream. Release to exhale, healing 5 injured allies in a 30 yd cone in front of you.
I: Heals for [2 * (185% of Spell power)] and incurs a 25 sec cooldown.
II: Heals for [2.25 * (185% of Spell power)] and incurs a 20 sec cooldown.
III: Heals for [2.5 * (185% of Spell power)] and incurs a 15 sec cooldown.
IV: Heals for [2.75 * (185% of Spell Power)] and incurs a 10 sec cooldown.
This Ability is such a strong heal in the Toolkit of the Preservation Evoker, and it got both positive effects build into the highest empowered level.
You would always wait to get the highest empower level due to massively more heal AND the lower Cooldown to recast it asap.
Solution:
I think, the higher the cast time is, the more it should heal, like it is right now. But it does not make any sense, that the CD is decreasing as well. Just look at it from a fantasy (and gameplay) point of view:
When you take a deep deep dream breath, you’re not able to instantly do it again, you would need a small break from those deep breaths. But if you just take a smaller breath, you’re more likely to do it again in a shorter period of time.
If we bring that thought into the game, this would mean that you should have a smaller empower level 1 with small heal and lower Cooldown, but a way higher level 4 heal with a bigger Cooldown.
This would enable you too make a decision depending on the situation. Your group is taking less damage take the first empowered level, but if your group is taking a heavy amount of damage use the highest level of that spell.
Those changes would massively increase the flavor of those empowered spells cause as of right now, there is no decision making at all, you’ll always want to cast the highest empower level what so ever.
I hope that someone from blizzard is reading this and consider those changes.
Dear Greetings
Zauberpüppí
EU-Nathrezim