Suggestion, Divine Protection

[masterofra]

The divine protection spell, that the cleric uses, is quite useful, however, there are a few things that are inconvenient about it. The applied buff, weakened soul, that vanishes after 30 second from when the spell was cast. This buff, prevents you from permanently shielding an ally that is under attack from something that can deplete the shield. It kind of adds a cool down to the target. This is fine, however, there is no indicator for when the buff wears off, or otherwise. My suggestion is this:
- Add a shield bar above the shielded units, showing the fraction of shield points that are left
- When the shield fails, if the weakened soul buff is still there, keep displaying the empty bar.
- When the weakened soul buff vanishes, remove the bar.

If you didn't add the bar for a reason such as you don't want people to know exactly how much power the shield has left, make a sfx for the weaken soul buff, or a sfx for when it is removed,

Other: When casting Divine Protection on a target with weaken soul, the mana is not refunded, Though the cool down is.

 

[L2love]

The reason for the soul I believe is so people don't spam shield and make it a extremely OP spell.

 

[masterofra]

.... Before making a comment like that, read my post. I already know that, and agree with that. Also, I am not asking for any BALANCE changes. The thing I am saying is, I find it frustrating that I do not know when soul expires, and when i can rebuff them. And If I cast too early, i lose 18 mana, if i cast too late, they will take extra damage, If i had a method to know exactly when it was removed... Also, I could select the target, but then i would have to go back to selecting my own character to heal, and cast, and it would be really icky.

 

[L2love]

O sorry then I just got to lazy to read the rest of it.

 

[S0ulseeker]

I think this is actually a really good idea. I like the idea of adding a bar that indicates how much longer the buff will remain, or at least the sound effect idea. Maybe it can be applied for other buff skills as well, for example the Bards Song of Vigar (if it's a skill that lasts for a duration a bar for it might be kind of nice as well).


Edit: On a side note, I believe the clerics rage skill should be changed from the AOE heal to Confidence, to make the game more challenging for clerics and to provide better balance. a +100 HP bonus to everyone around the cleric is pretty OP. I mentioned this idea before but the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense to me. Let me quote what I said prior and let me know if you guys think it's a good idea.

I wouldn't know if this is a balance or whatever, just an idea that occurred to me. The confidence 100 HP consistently is pretty OP, maybe it can become a rage skill where like every 10 seconds or so it drains 1 rage point when activated and set it so the # of rage points = bonus HP on confidence. For example if you have 100 rage points everyone would get an additional +100 HP then after 10 seconds or something( or 5 seconds or w/e you want to set it as) they would go down to +99HP. This would still allow clerics to use the other AOE rage skill on top of the Confidence, and a toss up would be losing HP on your confidence aura (though once you start healing again the + HP starts going up again since you are obtaining rage) for a full party heal. This makes Rage more useful for cleric classes and nerfs confidence at the same time, also adding another element of challenge into the game whether or not the cleric wants to save rage to keep HP buff or use it to heal party.

and since Rage would be constantly draining it would also nerf the AOE heal so it would not always be a full HP heal to the entire party balancing that skill as well making the game much harder during dungeons.

 

[Silverest]

Only problem I have with that is when I'm healing large groups of people and they stack up close to each other. It'll be fucking hard to heal anyone with so many bars up. It's bad enough when tanks are fighting bosses that are 5x taller than them.

 

[masterofra]

There, you have a good point, I think that simply making it so that when you try to cast on a target with soul, it should reset the cooldown, and refund your mana, So that you just get the error message.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

There already is a very small sfx for the weakened soul ... but I admit it is so small that people usually dont see it (thords effect ... you know what im talking of).
I will add an effect that can be seen better.

However, adding another bar to the unit is not a good idea, if you ask me. I think that would totally overload the UI, which already has enough additional displays, if you ask me (threat, spell names, casting bar, etc.).


About Confidence: I agree that it was a bad idea to give it a flat bonus. I have to admit that I just did that because I was very lazy ... (adding HP to units requires a lot of scripts).
I will come up with a better concept for Confidence. Maybe I will completely move away from the idea that Confidence adds HP, as it turned out that having a +hp spell rendered the Constitution stat quite useless for casters.

 

[masterofra]

Yes, I agree, The UI is already cluttered enough, But I Do want the two problems fixed, because they hinder game play.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Fixed. Weakened Soul now has fairy fire buff art; Confidence now gives +15 to all resistances as well as +3 evasion instead of an HP bonus.

 

[masterofra]

Thanks
Did you also fix the Mana not refunded bug?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Thanks
Did you also fix the Mana not refunded bug?

Hmm ... i will have to do some testing on that one before.

EDIT: Okay, fixed. I accidently had the wrong event inside my spells trigger (start cast instead of start channeling). This problem also occured for all other instant spells that had mana cost. I wonder why nobody noticed that.

 

[masterofra]

Perhaps because no other instant spells can fail, or cancel like divine protection? At least that I can think of.

One other question, Were Potions designed to not be able to be carried in a backpack? Because I Think that they should be able to. They also behave oddly, when dropped (only one is dropped, removed from the stack), and you can transfer small amounts of money with them. (hp pots only) They are not saved, Understandably.

 

[S0ulseeker]

Potions never dropped one at a time until the last version 04-02-10 and I believe if I remember correctly they used to only stack up until 5. I agree that potions should be able to be carried in backpacks,and maybe even useable within a backpack, as well as teleport scrolls etc. That would save room in the chars spell bag and would require less flipping back and forth, but I believe the reasoning why they did that with the potions dropping one at a time is so that you can give a potion to someone else if need be in mid fight without losing your entire stack, and I do find that pretty useful. I do think potions should be a little more expensive though! lol


EDIT:

This problem also occured for all other instant spells that had mana cost. I wonder why nobody noticed that.

I actually noticed this before with the bubble and dispel, but it never really occurred to me to report it haha. oops, sorry! The important thing is it got solved now! better late than never :]

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Yeah the potions dropping one by one is working as intended and is far better than dropping the entire stack if you ask me.
However, we decided that potions should not go into the backpack for the following reasons:
1) we wanted to limit the amount of potions players can have
2) we wanted to prevent the player from spamming both mana and health potions. ... players should decide wether they take either mana or health potions. With the current game having 5 different item slots, there is only 1 slot left for a consumable item.
However, if you still think that is not enough reasoning, then maybe you like the third reason, that totally beats every other argument ( ):
3) it is simply not possible. Backpacks have to be non-hero units in order to prevent them from using item abilities and getting item stats. This, however, also disallows them to grab powerups. And potions are powerups (when at the ground).

All in all, it would be way to difficult to allow potions for backpacks. And the inventory system is already complicated enough, if you ask me ...

The important thing is it got solved now! better late than never :]

Please always report such things. Usually, I do not find out such things by myself, as I am not playing this map often enough (To be honest, I never killed the Ancient One in a regular game before).

 

[S0ulseeker]

Yea I agree on the reasons you gave for not putting potions in the backpack, it makes a lot of sense and I completely agree. As for the but with mana being spent, sorry! I usually report all the bugs that I come across, that one just slipped my mind!

 

[masterofra]

Ok, yes, those are good reasons, And I did suspect potion items were rune type items.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Ok, yes, those are good reasons, And I did suspect potion items were rune type items.

Runes ARE powerups.

 

[masterofra]

Yes, But I call them rune type items, being that they activate when you pick them up. Power-ups also is a name for them, which I think is the official name.

 

[Silverest]

I just have a feeling that SC2 version of inventory system will be different. Not limited to just helmet, weapon, shield, boots, armor, accessory, and gloves. Maybe includes pauldrons, grieves, belt, etc. More items to collect, but lesser stats between all of them Bigger inventory slots. Perhaps maybe even a full screen inventory like in diablo. Since the sc2 editor will allow you to more diversify your game play.