The problem I have with the energy shield idea is that the Wizard is supposed to be far away from the monsters any way. Therefore the shield is not that big of a situation. I understand they still get hit but it seems like a weird concept to me to put on a ranged character. Not to mention the wiz will probably already have weaker defense, lowering it more will make them too vulnerable in my opinion.
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I agree, I was just putting down all of the options I could think of. I think just making your character weaker "more vulnerable" is better. The damage yourself options is tricky because what about hardcore. Nobody would play the wiz if they had a chance of killing themselves.
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That is tricky. There is the possibility of backfire. Your character takes dmg from their own spell. However, if they do this that it has to work on a percentage to ensure that it can't kill you. Or it can reduce dmg dealt causing you to only doing half dmg while it is maxed. Or the last possibility is that it completely stops you from being able to cast (like running out of mana).
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In this system though, there's no benefit to having high Instability. In fact, those suggestions make having high Instability a detriment. So there's no reason that a player would ever build his/her Instability up. Just swap back and forth between generating and draining spells or just use the "neutral" spells. I don't feel like that's a particularly compelling resource system.
I agree that having to cast "lesser" spells is a definite issue for any sort of charge-up based system. Despite its shortcomings though, it forces the player to make more decisions, use more spells, and have his/her head in the game rather than just spamming two skills over and over. I think a unique and intriguing style of gameplay for each class is what Blizz is aiming for when they're spending all this time and energy coming up with specific forms of combat resource for each class.
The benefit to raising your instability is being able to cast those spells. Instability by definition is a negative attribute and therefore probably means it is a bad thing. However, the trade off is casting higher spells. Giant AoE damaging spells and really high single target spells. You want to cast your most damaging spells but there has to be a limit. That is what my system does. It allows you to cast high spells until you are to unstable. Rather than stopping play, the wiz can cast lower spells to lower their instability. To put it in # terms.
You could only cast your high dmg skills 4-5 times before maxing instability. Then you cast a bunch of bolts to lower it. Or you could cast a few lightning while time reduces your instability. This system causes a great use for many different spells.
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It is just too complex. Blizzard wants these systems to be easy to read and function. I think the wiz will simply have some spells that raise instability and others that lower it. The wiz will even have a few that are neutral. If you raise instability too high then either spell can back fire, have no effect, less damage (whatever they decide to make it blanaced). This will allow you to start strong without having to build up anyhing. It will also encourage the player to use multiple spells to keep the instability in check. For anyone who thinks it will FORCE you to use other spells. Think of it this way, when you normally ran out of mana you couldn't do anything. With this system when you raise your instability too high (equivalent to running out of mana) you can at least still cast something.
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I never said weak spells were useless. I said that small spells building up your resource would be useless. You do regain your energy source from the orbs that drop, this can be seen in the gameplay videos. Therefore, if you have spells to regain energy, orbs to regain energy and out of combat regen to regain energy, you would always have energy, thus OP.
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Yea, but that would defeat the purpose of small spells building up your resource. If you had two ways to build it up it would be unbalanced. I don't want the spell build up source, it is just the most simple but it has it's problems too. I have a feeling blizzard might realize that in diablo there is nothig wrong with mana and may scrap the idea of differnig resource mechanics and go back to mana. They already has struggles with the barbs fury and they want to add three more.
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What? I'm talking about energy regeneration o.O You were complaining about not beeing able to "come out swinging" (which I translate to beeing able to fight effectively right away) your way into combat, which obviously requires a lot of energy, thus regeneration.
then you are talking about a simple mana pool which they said wizards are not using. The point of this thread is to discuss different energy sources other than mana pools.
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And you never thought of perhaps a strong natural regeneration that is active when out of combat?
no, why would wizards get more health regen than any other class just because they are fragile, the point is that the power is a trade off for survivability. Limiting there power makes them weaker than any other class.
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I still think most of the systems mentioned in this thread are too complicated for Diablo. Charging up certain spells to cast others, how do you keep track of this. Balancing two different sources of magic to cast different spells. Balancing your life with magic to cast spells, nobody on hardcore would ever play the wizard. Keep in mind that blizzard thought that the simple ball mechanic of the barbarian was too complex for diablo and changed it. So if that was too complicated, most of these ideas are too complicated for diablo. I think the best idea so far was the use smaller spells to build up a resource, and the bigger spells would use that resource. The biggest problem with that is with a fragile class, you need to be able to come out swinging, duration is never good for a fragile class. Wizards need to be able to start off strong.
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Most of these ideas are too complex. In a fast paced game you don't have Enugu time to strategize that much. They even had to fix the simple fury ball mchanic of the barb because it was to hard to read during fights. If I'm fighting 20 fallen I don't want to have to think about any sort of build up of skills. I just want to unleash my power.
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The benefit to raising your instability is being able to cast those spells. Instability by definition is a negative attribute and therefore probably means it is a bad thing. However, the trade off is casting higher spells. Giant AoE damaging spells and really high single target spells. You want to cast your most damaging spells but there has to be a limit. That is what my system does. It allows you to cast high spells until you are to unstable. Rather than stopping play, the wiz can cast lower spells to lower their instability. To put it in # terms.
instability = 100 max
Blizzard = + 20 instability
Hydra = +25 instability
fire bolt = - 5 instability
ice bolt = - 10 instability
blaze = neutral
lightning = neutral
You could only cast your high dmg skills 4-5 times before maxing instability. Then you cast a bunch of bolts to lower it. Or you could cast a few lightning while time reduces your instability. This system causes a great use for many different spells.
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then you are talking about a simple mana pool which they said wizards are not using. The point of this thread is to discuss different energy sources other than mana pools.
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no, why would wizards get more health regen than any other class just because they are fragile, the point is that the power is a trade off for survivability. Limiting there power makes them weaker than any other class.
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