I am one of the very few people, that play ARPGs, or any other games, with popping damage numbers completely turned off. I couldn’t care less how much damage my character is doing, that is just math and numbers, which I have no direct control over.
This is a game, not an Excel spreadsheet.
I want to be looking at cool visuals and listening to cool sound effects, not look at numbers (however big they might be).
So I’d like to give some feedback on some Acolyte’s skills (more specifically Warlock) and how I think they can be improved.
Rip Blood
There are already nodes in it, which add Poison chance. Maybe add some visual effect, or a slight green color hint, which indicates that it now also poisons.
Also, I think that a slight red glow to all bloody effects would make the whole skill (especially the splatters and the coagulated blood) look even cooler.
Marrow Shards
I haven’t specced into this skill, because I don’t like how it looks. The particles move too fast, so fast that I can’t distinguish what they are. The visuals are just not as “bony” as I would like them to be. Or maybe the particles are just too small?
Wandering Spirits
I somewhat don’t like what the spirits look like. Some torsos with heads missing their top half. To me they are not ghostly enough. Also it kind of gets a bit cluttery when fighting lots of mobs, and you also have the spirits roaming around and you are distracted by them.
Bone Curse
The “Bone Eruption” node sounded so awesome, until I picked it. It was just a meh marrow shards explosion in the middle of it.
Transplant
The “Bone Armor” visuals couldn’t be more meh. It’s just a bunch of small, barely visible bones, circling around you.
“Ethereal Body” also needs a better sound, it still sounds like a corpse explosion.
“Siphon”, which leaves pools of blood which I can walk over, seem very useless to me. Most of the time, traversal skills are used to go somewhere far, or to escape from danger. In very rare cases you will go back to the original transplant location (in less than 3 seconds mind you!), so you can pick up that blood pool. I expected that with this node I will be able to heal myself if I walked over pools of blood created by “Rip Blood”, but no, only Transplant’s pools of blood.
Hungering Souls
Kind of cool looking skill, but it sounds so unimpactful. The sound is almost like some passive effect just procced. It’s no fun spamming it.
Since this skill can also be specced into poisoning enemies, it would be cool if they had some green color too.
Spirit Plague
Very meh looking. By default it’s a single target spell, so the visuals kind of make sense. But even if you make it an AOE curse with “Contagion” node, it still uses the same visuals.
Also, why are there bleed nodes for this skill? It makes zero sense.
Infernal Shade
I tried to use this skill on a Bleed build, with “Blood Shade” node, but it looked so boring and unimpactful, that I ended up switching to other skills.
Chaos Bolts
I don’t like this skill at all, it doesn’t look interesting enough, just a bunch of damage balls splattering on the ground and doing damage.
They also fly way too fast for my taste.
Soul Feast
This has got to be the worst looking one period. The visuals look like they were made by some VFX intern, that just learned about sprites and tried to utilize them in 3D models.
This skill looks very boring and repetitive to spam.
Chthonic Fissure
Hands down my favorite Acolyte skill, and the reason I have two warlocks - one with poison fissure, the other with blood fissure.
What I love the most about the blood fissure (Blood Gulch node) is the amazing lighting effects it creates. Wherever you are, everything around you is lit up with an ominous red color.
The “Valley of Defilement” also looks amazing, but I think the lighting could be improved a bit, so it lights up the surrounding in the same cool way the blood fissure does.
The default visuals (Necro and Fire) seem to not have a very good lighting, I think this could be improved.
I would also love to have an option to make it pure Necrotic, or maybe pure Fire?
What I don’t like about this skill is the spirits that are released from it. They don’t look like spirits at all, but more like chaos bolts, and they are hitting the ground with a very weird sound effect, like something is splattering. Why is a spirit splattering?