Hello,
I have a specific proposal for the Focus skill which I would like to share. First I will describe the change and then describe my ingame experience that lead me to this proposal.
The Proposal
Add a node in the Focus skilltree with the following stats:
Max-Level: 1
You no longer need to stand still during focus. The skill duration is limited to 1,5 seconds, so you can’t keep channeling it for longer.
(The exact wording of course can be adjusted to be better understandable)
The idea is that you can choose to lose on some power potential of the skill, but weigh that out by gaining the ability to keep moving, thus not interrupting “the flow”.
If it’s too strong, you might add a nerf by increasing the skills cooldown.
An alternative, but more radical redesign would be to turn Focus into an aura instead of an active skill. Like other auras it could still have an active component to give a short burst. maybe then focus should become part of the sorcerer subclass instead of generic mage.
The background
I believe in the current way it is implemented the Focus skill is just a terrible experience. I especially believe that the mana management and the necessity to even have a skill like focus is hindering the experience around the sorcerer class fantasy as being “the mana class”.
So you get more dmg by spending more mana, which leaves you to chose skills that are mana heavy. Now you need to get some mana sustain. And here things get nasty. The current design of regeneration being based on a flat value and not depending on your mana pool is so terribly weak and slow, that you almost must use focus in order to use your skills. This is supported by the fact that all sorcerer endgame builds on popular websites contain the focus skill.
I actually kind of like the idea of focus, I just don’t like that I have to stand still for it. It just feels weak.
Thus my above proposal.
Furthermore I believe the mana regeneration should be in parts depending on your mana pool. Some proposal for an adjusted formular could be:
mana per second = (5 + (max Mana / 100) ) * (1 + mana regen stat)
So that would leave you with the following values:
| Regen | Max Mana | Old Value | New Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 100 | 16 | 12 |
| 100 | 400 | 16 | 18 |
| 100 | 1000 | 16 | 30 |
| 200 | 100 | 24 | 18 |
| 200 | 400 | 24 | 27 |
| 200 | 1000 | 24 | 45 |
So you can see that it nicely scales with your max mana pool, which feels like an organic improvement as your character grows stronger.
Alternatively, it could also be based on attunement skill, which would force you to make harder choices.