My thought on skills in Solomon Dark beta
This is my opinion of some of the skills.
Channel Mana & Battle Mage: I feel like they got nerfed in solomon dark because it was op in the previous games (battle mage definitely, channel mana maybe) and the new addition of concentration system.
Fireball and its upgrades: It feels like it is way weaker than other solomon game. Explode raidus at lvl 1 got very small and you must put skill points on explode to increase the radius. The fireball's hitbox feels much smaller than before (it sometimes passes through enemies without hitting them). The damage of the fireball and ember seems underwhelming. The summoning imp skill, on the other hand, has really decent dps and it FOLLOWS ENEMIES. After all the horrible nerf that fireball recieved, this one is the only hope that remains in fireball.
Ring of Fire: Same as usual. I wouldn't spend skill points in this.
Firewalk: In my opinion, it is useless. The trail is small and does not last long enough to deal damage. I regret myself for spending two skill points on this on the first run. It really needs some buff on its duration and size.
Lighting and its upgrades: It's pretty much same. The disintegrate(instant kill on low health enemies) seems interesting though but I think hurricane is still better (hurricane deflects arrows).
Prismatic Shock: This ability increases lighting damage a lot. Very useful for lighting and magic storm user.
Magic Storm: Even though this is a successor of one of the worst skills in previous games (acid rain), this one is really good. Its dps is really powerful and the cooldown is pretty quick. It is very useful aoe damage dealing skill now and it even has an upgrade (magic tornado). Hugh potential for late game.
Magic trap: pretty good skill but the visual effect is very annoying.
Magic Circle: Dire Alice's Magic circle(tragic circle) is strong but you aren't Dire Alice. So...NO.
Call Leviathan: Somewhat useful ally but not good enough
Enchant staff: here is the problem, our character is mage, not a tank or a warrior. You need to get point-blank range to use this ability and that is never good in this game. However, if u are earth mage, this skill can help get through enemies.
Stoneskin: few seconds of invulnerability. simple and good. Be aware that the cooldown for this ability is high
Meditation: It got slightly buffed(when meditation is concentrated, it does regenerate faster while walking without firing) but still not useful.
Boulder: pretty decent damage but too slow to charge up. you have to use the golem wisely to survive with starting this ability. Once you start getting some upgrades, its fine I think. For the flourish(the final tier), rock surge is better in my opinion because it allows you to spam big boulders instantaneously.
Raise Golem: Deals decent damage and taunts nearby enemies. Pretty useful in early games.
Magic Shield and Explosive Shield: With the addition of explosive shield, this skill just got way better.
Magic Missile: Pretty same. The new final tier, piercing is really good though.
Planewalker: It looks cool. Duration is fine.
Siege Mage: More damage, better it is. Just as good as usual
Resist Magic: I never got far enough to make good use of this but it will be quite useful when there are mass lightning mages with impenetrable magic shields.
So far, I love this game, though I feel like fire skills, my fav, got too nerfed. It would have been great if that unfortunate event that made this game abandoned never happened. Thank you Mr. Raptis and keep up the good work :D
P.S. Lightning is too good.
Comments
Sadly, I never got to the "final balance" pass... some of the balancing is a little raw because I was finding the sweet spot between story mode and survival when Acid Rain hit me.
Also, even though the Dark Cloud sharing doesn't work, you can still create levels and share them manually with dropbox, etc. The story levels that exist so far were made within this editor-- it's fairly powerful, but part of finishing the game would have been to eliminate the quirks from the editor. The quirks are still there and will have to be worked around.
I also tried meteor shower. All i can say is that the mana usage is ridiculous. But hey, we can just tweak all that away, I guess.
Glad you liked the three mages... they'll be back in Keep, as will Heartmonger, the portals, and the maggot-coffins.
FYI, talk to the wizard at the college that is casting experimental spells in the safe circle.
Talk to the witch too.
There's a lot more in this game than just "play and die."
Pepper, what happens when you try to play a map in the editor?
And then the Discorporeal... His normal attack is interesting to dodge and takes some getting used to, but is it actually possible to dodge the laser? I've seen only three possible means of surviving it: 1. Having Teleport with a low cooldown to get out of there and hopefully out of his reach, or 2. Having lots of health positions and hopefully a strong Magic Shield or 3. Being lucky that he doesn't use the laser much. I've actually managed to defeat him once with a high-powered Storm Mage which was very exciting, but judging the game design I think it's very weak with only so few options of defeating him.