More Skill Spam-Proofing
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 9:27 am
Okay, so Storm Cloud was recently spam-proofed with something out-of-the-box: a general Storm Cloud limit. Because of this, I think it's reasonable to try more out-of-the-box spam-proofing solutions for other potentially-spammable skills: Arrow Hoard and Grenade. Here's what I got.:
Arrow Hoard:
Currently as it stands, Arrow Hoard has the highest skill-to-base DPS rating in the game. A full arrow hoard, combined with a full sharp hoard, deals 10.5x an archer's base DPS (arrow hoard matches an archer's base attack rate of 132 attacks/minute). That's higher than full Power Smash combined with full base Rage for Warriors, which would sit at 6x a warrior's base DPS (Power Smash was calculated to have 90 hits/minute through much testing, which is lower than 120 hits/minute for a warrior's regular attack). Of course the DPS comes with the trade-off of having to get up close to an enemy, but that doesn't really mean anything when an archer's range is nine sidewalk blocks, allowing them to keep their distance from any enemy they wish. Man, I need to make some sniper monsters.
One archer had stated that Arrow Hoard was meant to be a crowd control skill. I'd say let's give it that quality by having the skill spread horizontally as opposed to vertically like it currently does. That way it would actually work for crowd control.
As for spam-proofing, I have an idea on how it would work. As Blind Hit and Storm Cloud were reworked for viability purposes, I figured, let's try a viability-based rework for Arrow Hoard as well. Here's how it will work.:
Arrow Hoard will be a dynamically-charged skill. What this means is Arrow Hoard will only fire off its maximum arrow count when fully charged, but it will also fire off a certain amount of arrows depending on how long you've held the B key for. This will reset each and every time you use the skill. How long will you have to charge the skill up? Well, about 0.3 seconds, or 18 frames, for each extra arrow you wanna shoot. For example...
1 Arrow: No charging
2 Arrows: 0.3 seconds
3 Arrows: 0.6 seconds
4 Arrows: 0.9 seconds
5 Arrows: 1.2 seconds
6 Arrows: 1.5 seconds
Of course archers will have a hissy-fit if they waste 10 MP on one lousy arrow, so how about this? Make the skill use 2 MP for every extra arrow you fire out. This formula would provide a more mathematical explanation of what I mean.:
Arrow Hoard MP Cost=2*(Arrows Fired-1)
See? More manageable, huh? Of course that will make Sharp Hoard weirder to utilize. I think the ideal way to fix any worries about the issues with Sharp Hoard that could result from a more dynamic Arrow Hoard would be to increase Arrow Hoard's cost to 3 per arrow, but at the same time making Sharp Hoard a passive that doesn't increase MP cost whatsoever. Of course that will take a bit more experimenting on paper, but that's my best idea for now since skill MP usage doesn't follow the ax+b formula yet.
Oh yeah! The ax+b formula! This is what I mean by it.
Skill MP Cost: ax+b; a=skill levels after Level 1, x=MP increase, b=base MP cost
Implementing ax+b would allow Arrow Hoard to work like this:
Base Arrow Hoard: 2 MP per arrow
With Sharp Hoard or Cupid Hoard: 3 MP per arrow
With BOTH Sharp Hoard and Cupid Hoard: 4 MP per arrow
That'll make balancing out Arrow Hoard and all its branches much easier to do.
Of course a Max Arrow Hoard with Sharp Hoard would reduce the DPS from 10.5 DPS down to 3.181818, so... How about a tiny buff for Sharp Hoard in exchange? Let's say... 20% increased damage per level instead of 15%? That way, the DPS decrease would instead go from 10.5x base DPS to a more manageable 3.636363x base DPS. That should make it less broken but still viable.
Grenade:
This one's an odd skill. It has the highest base damage for any skill, at 9x base damage at maximum level. It also branches out to Multi-Grenade, which allows you to throw 3 grenades at once. I haven't seen any gunman try and use the skill out in the field, with their main reason for not using it being cumbersome aiming (you throw grenades by walking... What?). Aside from that, grenades can be thrown at a rate of 90 per minute if one were to repeatedly press the B key.
Reworking this skill will feature both a buff AND a nerf. For the buff, I will recommend improving the aiming of a grenade. Magic Breath did skill-aiming just right, so I would base Grenade's aiming mechanic off Magic Breath's aiming mechanic.
However, to prevent grenade spamming, I will suggest a cooldown. Grenades sit idly for 2.5 seconds at a time (I checked) before exploding. As such, I will recommend a 2.5 second cooldown before a gunman can throw another grenade (or three if they got full multi-grenade).
Conclusion:
Hopefully what I got would help with spam-prevention, but this is kinda first-drafty. Hope it works.
Arrow Hoard:
Currently as it stands, Arrow Hoard has the highest skill-to-base DPS rating in the game. A full arrow hoard, combined with a full sharp hoard, deals 10.5x an archer's base DPS (arrow hoard matches an archer's base attack rate of 132 attacks/minute). That's higher than full Power Smash combined with full base Rage for Warriors, which would sit at 6x a warrior's base DPS (Power Smash was calculated to have 90 hits/minute through much testing, which is lower than 120 hits/minute for a warrior's regular attack). Of course the DPS comes with the trade-off of having to get up close to an enemy, but that doesn't really mean anything when an archer's range is nine sidewalk blocks, allowing them to keep their distance from any enemy they wish. Man, I need to make some sniper monsters.
One archer had stated that Arrow Hoard was meant to be a crowd control skill. I'd say let's give it that quality by having the skill spread horizontally as opposed to vertically like it currently does. That way it would actually work for crowd control.
As for spam-proofing, I have an idea on how it would work. As Blind Hit and Storm Cloud were reworked for viability purposes, I figured, let's try a viability-based rework for Arrow Hoard as well. Here's how it will work.:
Arrow Hoard will be a dynamically-charged skill. What this means is Arrow Hoard will only fire off its maximum arrow count when fully charged, but it will also fire off a certain amount of arrows depending on how long you've held the B key for. This will reset each and every time you use the skill. How long will you have to charge the skill up? Well, about 0.3 seconds, or 18 frames, for each extra arrow you wanna shoot. For example...
1 Arrow: No charging
2 Arrows: 0.3 seconds
3 Arrows: 0.6 seconds
4 Arrows: 0.9 seconds
5 Arrows: 1.2 seconds
6 Arrows: 1.5 seconds
Of course archers will have a hissy-fit if they waste 10 MP on one lousy arrow, so how about this? Make the skill use 2 MP for every extra arrow you fire out. This formula would provide a more mathematical explanation of what I mean.:
Arrow Hoard MP Cost=2*(Arrows Fired-1)
See? More manageable, huh? Of course that will make Sharp Hoard weirder to utilize. I think the ideal way to fix any worries about the issues with Sharp Hoard that could result from a more dynamic Arrow Hoard would be to increase Arrow Hoard's cost to 3 per arrow, but at the same time making Sharp Hoard a passive that doesn't increase MP cost whatsoever. Of course that will take a bit more experimenting on paper, but that's my best idea for now since skill MP usage doesn't follow the ax+b formula yet.
Oh yeah! The ax+b formula! This is what I mean by it.
Skill MP Cost: ax+b; a=skill levels after Level 1, x=MP increase, b=base MP cost
Implementing ax+b would allow Arrow Hoard to work like this:
Base Arrow Hoard: 2 MP per arrow
With Sharp Hoard or Cupid Hoard: 3 MP per arrow
With BOTH Sharp Hoard and Cupid Hoard: 4 MP per arrow
That'll make balancing out Arrow Hoard and all its branches much easier to do.
Of course a Max Arrow Hoard with Sharp Hoard would reduce the DPS from 10.5 DPS down to 3.181818, so... How about a tiny buff for Sharp Hoard in exchange? Let's say... 20% increased damage per level instead of 15%? That way, the DPS decrease would instead go from 10.5x base DPS to a more manageable 3.636363x base DPS. That should make it less broken but still viable.
Grenade:
This one's an odd skill. It has the highest base damage for any skill, at 9x base damage at maximum level. It also branches out to Multi-Grenade, which allows you to throw 3 grenades at once. I haven't seen any gunman try and use the skill out in the field, with their main reason for not using it being cumbersome aiming (you throw grenades by walking... What?). Aside from that, grenades can be thrown at a rate of 90 per minute if one were to repeatedly press the B key.
Reworking this skill will feature both a buff AND a nerf. For the buff, I will recommend improving the aiming of a grenade. Magic Breath did skill-aiming just right, so I would base Grenade's aiming mechanic off Magic Breath's aiming mechanic.
However, to prevent grenade spamming, I will suggest a cooldown. Grenades sit idly for 2.5 seconds at a time (I checked) before exploding. As such, I will recommend a 2.5 second cooldown before a gunman can throw another grenade (or three if they got full multi-grenade).
Conclusion:
Hopefully what I got would help with spam-prevention, but this is kinda first-drafty. Hope it works.
