Thoughts on how to fix Boulder
Main issue with boulder
1. Boulder is situationally good at clearing minions but weak at boss due to low and inconsistant dps.
2. Dealing with close ranged enemies are painful especially the Spiders....
3. Everything else outclasses Boulder in some way. (fire has better dps and aoe, ice has better defense and aoe, lightning has better dps and defense, ether has superior dps)
4. Boulder has little to no unique characteristics other than being a hard mode or charge mechanic or boulder projectile. Like how frost defines it for being defensive, ether for being good weld material, fire for being high aoe damage, and lightning for being high dps on small enemies, earth needs something that defines its uses.
5. Boulder requires lots of hasten rock to even be usable.
How can it be fixed?
1. There must be some ways to deal with enemies that can easily get close to you like monoculus or spiders.
2. The maximum charge time should be at most 3 seconds. Anything more than that would make this spell very underwhelming. Also, making this will decrease the dependency of early hasten rock
3. There should be an alternative way to use boulder other than the charge shot to make it viable in various situations.
Here is how I would rework the Boulder
Boulder
1. Always reaches maximum charge after charging at most 3 seconds.
2. Bind Rock effects are increased by increasing boulder level.
Bind Rock
1. removed
Stone Shrapnel(new skill)
1. Releasing attack button within 0.5 second or under while charging will shoot short ranged shrapnel of stones instead(range of steam jet).
2. It shoots 6 stones and each stone deals 1/6 of fully charged boulder at level 1. The damage of each stone increases as you level this skill up.
3. Stones also knocks back enemies slightly.
Rock surge
1. removed due to confliciting with stone shrapnel and its effectiveness.
Lithostasis(new elemental flourish idea #1)
1. Boulder also blocks projectiles and lightnings like chests do but it will decrease its durability.
2. Boulders don't roll away when you release it and it does not damage enemies unless they are knocked back or the boulders are knocked back.
3. Stone Shrapnel will knock them away and it will lose less durability from hitting enemies when you launch it
Stone Barrage(new elemental flourish idea #2)
1. You cannot make boulder but instead can send waves of stone shrapnels instead when charging.
Ricochet(new elemental flourish idea #3)
1. Your boulder now bounces and lose a bit of durability when it hits obstacles.
2. You can also push your boulder with stone shrapnel when it rolls towards you to redirect it and heal its the durability a bit.
Comments
Hm - I think this would just make me use the shrapnel only..
So how about just making it shrapnel?
Unless the boulder blocks arrows by default. Then the defence would be pretty good.
Maybe something like this:
Stone shrapnel
Shoot single short range shrapnel on click, charge to shoot more with longer range, up to 6 after 4 seconds. (Kind of like a shotgun) (attack speed decreases this time as well.)
Increasing level slightly increases size of shrapnels.
- Bind rock: Increase amount of shrapnel upon max charge.
- Momentum: Increase range and damage of shrapnel.
- Fast charge: Decrease charge time.
Stone shield(New elemental flourish):
1. Hitting enemies with stone shrapnel has a chance to drop small rocks.
2. Picking these up builds a stone shield in front of the wizard, blocking attacks from front.
3. Each attack blocked destroys a stone from the shield.
4. Increasing level increases chance of dropping rock.
Extra shrapnel(new elemental flourish)
1. Hitting an enemy with stone shrapnel damages everyone behind as well in a small cone.
2. Damage of extra shrapnel and cone size increases upon level up.
Like this it can both be good for offence and defence, but not both.
I think I have some pretty good ideas for mixing with the other elements as well.
Maybe giving it some spread would be decent, so that you would have to get up close in the beginning.
I didn’t put much detail on why exactly I thought having stone shrapnel and few properties of shrapnel due to stupid character limits... and my laziness.
Oooh! I see! So just as a subskill for crowd control.
But yeah, the current boulder is not really that viable.
The shrapnel idea came to me as I read your post, and I thought it could be cool, as well as easier to make better use of than boulder.
My thought was that it could have a lot of damage potential, with multiple damage multipliers in the subskills, but on very close range.
About stone shield being too good: That would be why you tweak different numbers, as for example the chance of a stone dropping on kill.
I agree that the shrapnel idea’s good potential but it has one flaw: hailstone, which is pretty much a same thing except it has long range, knockback, piercings, and machine gun mode(?), exists.
Just tweeking numbers is a very risky move since you can either make it too strong or too weak if the skill itself is fundamentally strong. What it really need is to make the gargantuan or other elemental flourish he might make to be more offensive and viable(very important part that Raptisoft got wrong with disintegrate).
Hm - you may be right there. But hailstone would still great as combined elements, right?
About tweaking numbers, it isn’t ‘just’ doing that, but yet another job that takes time, and a lot of tries before getting it right. What I mean is that if everything should be equally viable, I believe it is necessary, as it most likely isn’t possible in the first try. In order to make sure that everything has a certain ‘feel’ to it, a certain charistica, but also that they feel right to play. So everything is S-tier if used correctly. (I do realise that this also is a very time consuming task.)
What do you think?
(And do tell if I’m too much, I just find this to be an interesting subject to discuss)
Oh i am not saying you don’t need to test at all. It is that some skills are fundamentally problematic that mere tweaking number would never fix the problem. IMO stone shield is at the level of hurricane which means it is fine as it is. However, things like gargantuan is at the level of meteor swarm which means it requires rework. It is the problem of people picking stone shield not just because it is tasty but aslo because the other thing is just inedible.
I agree that everything should be s-tier if played correctly. The problem is not many are like that or impractical to pull off.
(As long as you are not mad at me, Im all good. It has been so long since i talked deeply about solomon stuff and im enjoying every bit of this discussion)
Hm, I see.
Yeah, some spells don’t really work out properly. I am, however, not sure I have more on this subject right now. I can try thinking of remaking boulder in some way, but I’m not sure it should be a boulder.
And well, if it should, then yeah. Should probably be faster in every aspect. (It rolls pretty slowly as well. Maybe hasten rock could increase the roll speed as well.)