Proposed Changes to the Sorceress

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Lady Isabelle
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Proposed Changes to the Sorceress

Post by Lady Isabelle » Mon Nov 18, 2019 1:04 am

Brother Laz wrote:An example of a sucky setup is the sorceress' skill tree. Except for the ice blast + firewall combo, everything works with everything. The result is a myriad of builds... that are the exact same. There is no difference between a frozen orb + meteor sorc and a frozen orb + firewall sorc or even a blizzard + firewall sorc. They all play the exact same, require the same items, the same strategies, only the aiming is different.
This is a post Brother Laz made in 2003 and I still strongly agree with. Sorceress is one of my favorite classes, and is considered one of the best classes and yet most dully designed. I found that Necromancer is by far the hardest to work with mechanically, and I feel that Sorceress may be the hardest to re-design. I was hoping to instead make general skill changes to make some skills relevant and balanced between each other. The Necro was very easy to redesign, and despite the higher amount of damage than I intended I'm happy overall with how it came out.

Sorceress however I fear that I can't do this, and I'm going to be doing a much more dramatic overhaul to her skill trees than I will with other classes most likely. Before that I need to talk about Spell Damage changes that I announced in the discord.
In patch 0.2, a new mechanic will be introduced called “Spell Power” (name subject to change). Each caster weapon will have a different amount applied through automagic, which will instead affect how much spell damage you get per character level. In short, in order to deal more damage, you will need a better wand, in addition to getting spell damage. Caster weapons will also require strength as well. Energy will also increase the amount of Spell Power you have. This should be the final nail in the coffin to address the fact that the necromancer deals a lot more damage with spells while levelling than I intended, and should future proof the remaining classes.

The math im contemplating on is caster weapons will scale between 100-1000 spell power. 1000 spell power will equal the strength the skills are currently at, which is a 10% increase per clvl with 20 hard points. 1k would be reached from the highest tier of caster weapons. Each point of energy acts as 1 spell power, giving a reason to stack energy.

The calculation would be
( ( (Spell Power / 100 ) + (Energy / 100 ) * Player Level) / (21 - Hard Points) = % Damage increase
Now for the Sorceress herself. Names are subject to change

The Skill Trees are now Enchantments - Utility (Better Name Pending) - and Offensive Skills

Offensive Skills

Skystrike - Call a Meteor from the sky that lands after one second, it leaves no patch of fire

Firewall - Same as before

Hydra - You can summon X hydras based on your skill level, and they now do physical damage which is converted into fire, allowing you to buff them with Burning Weapon or Freezing Weapon!

Charged Bolt - Same as before

Nova - Same as before

Snow Strike - A much faster falling blizzard but with a small AoE, great for single target. Does not chill. Also better name pending.

Storm Blade - An AoE attack that uses your melee weapon, converting 50% of your damage to lightning.

Eye of the Storm - A melee attack that gives you elemental piercing but restricts all your ranged attacks from being casted

Frozen Orb - Same as before

Lightning - Only hits one target and has the slow cast speed like before, but has quite a lot of damage.

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Enchantments will have a variety of skills that can be casted on you and allies. Only one of the 10 enchantments can be on a target

Burning Weapon - Previously called Enchant, adds fire damage to the target's attack.

Storm Shield - Causes melee & ranged attackers to take lightning damage.

Warmth - Now an Active Skill that grants life and mana regeneration

Warp Speed - Grants a high amount of cast and attack speed, but has a cooldown, a short duration, and high mana cost

Freezing Weapon - Adds cold damage and freeze to the target's attack, dealing less damage than Burning Weapon but freezes significantly longer than Glacial Spike.

Thunderstorm - Short duration but rapid-fire damage. I think you can only apply this to yourself but I want to try and see if it works on allies.

Boreal Shield - Grants high elemental resistances, cannot be frozen, and damage reduction, but has a cooldown, a short duration, and a high mana cost.

Blaze - Also increases movement speed.

Affinity - Grants fire cold and lightning resistance to the target, further improved when you put points into a related elemental skill.

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Utility skills is where the remaining skills are put.

Teleport - As you may of seen already, it has a hefty cooldown and mana cost.

Energy Shield - Hopefully I can fix the bugs related to the skill, because I love the idea of having Blood Mana + ES on a sorc. If I can't then it'll be replaced by a different defensive skill. Either I will make the skill factor resists or make the skill gain better efficiency with hard points instead of telekenisis, as well as linear scaling.

Summon Fire / Lightning / Ice Elemental - 3 different skills, each one lowers enemy resistances related to the element. Can only summon one with items but will be fairly sturdy like a golem. Can only summon one type. Lightning deals the most damage, Fire is the tankiest, and Ice is neither but uses a ranged attack while the other two use melee.

Glacial Spike - Same as before

Frost Nova - Damage will remain low to be treated as a CC skill. Chill length & missile speed is increased with skill levels.

Ring of Fire - Create a Ring of Fire around you, causing enemies to be knocked back and take fire damage

Telekinesis - Instead inflicts a stun that increases in duration with each skill level. Treated as a Lightning skill for affinity.

Fortified Teleport - Passive. After casting teleport, you gain a high amount of flat magic damage reduction for 4 seconds. With maxed Teleport, not including any cooldown reduction, you will have 80% uptime on this.

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