Ranting and channeling

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I’ll try to elaborate a bit about why i think Channeled skills seems so underwhelming in LE by first explaning what are the reasons i think make them hard/costly to play around and then explain what i would do to fix these things.

This is not to say all channeled skills are are bad or not playable but to make them more popular with players in general, i’m also not saying all those problems are shared btw all channeled skills, some will have 1 or 2 while others will have 3 and 4, but all of them will endup sharing some of those.

I’m just arguing that they should be a lot stronger.

Why is Channeling a problem in general?

  1. Channeled skills come with some general intrinsic challenges that make then not as easy to play around:
  • They have a cost per second of use, that make them pretty mana intensive, even if you can in most cases mitigate that after building up your character;
  • You are inable to use other skills without stop channeling, except for instant cast skills;
  • In some cases, you need to keep Channeling for a certain amount of time to get some bonus and they usually dont persist if you start chaneling again soon after;
  • Channeling a skill count as using just one skill, even though in some cases there are multiple uses on a single cast (like channeling fireball) and/or you hit the enemy multiple times.
  • You cant move while channeling, and because of that is hard to dodge dot pools and big area damage skills, two of the things that deal the most amount of damage to the player in the game.

  1. Most Channeled skills both for damage and utility dont offer you enough to compensate for those challenges. Damage-wise Channeling skills dont show any big advantages compared to other skills, utility-wise there are multiple utility skills that dont make you rooted while using it, that you can argue offer as much or more and they have more acceptance from players in general.

  2. In terms of defence/survivability is hard for skills that make you rooted to compete with kiting, but for me it seems there isnt nearly enough ways to bridge that gap and to make using those skills more confortable in a game where, in most cases, you have to move constantly otherwise.

  3. When the game offers you all the necessary things so you feel like its worth playing the skill in terms of Damage/Utility and Survivability and the player is able to overcome the sustain issues that may come with those skills, stop channeling the skills become the new issue. It now becomes a problem of: “I dont want to use any other skills that would make me stop channeling”.
    The players usally will have all their build/gear aimed at enhancing their channeled skills and while not using them all of that is worthless making not channeling a bad experience.

As to what are my suggestions:

  1. Channeled skills should always feel Powerfull. If you understand all the problems that come intrinsically from using these skills as a cost, like a big mana cost or a cooldown, i think you understand when i say High cost skills should be highly desireble and feel powerfull. As of right now most of these skills dont seem to have many meaninful compensations for the fact that they are channeled skills.

  2. There should be time constraints so players dont keep using the skill indefinetly and so they dont feel bad for stop using them. Either a Maximum Duration or buffs that last for a specified amount of time (like “if started channeling recently” or “after you stop channeling and for a certain amount of time”), there should be constrains to make the player always change between channeling and not channeling, so they use other skills and dont feel bad about it.

  3. You should be a lot more durable while channeling. There should be a lot more skill tree nodes, passive tree nodes and affixes that give you survivability while channeling and after you stop channeling. Not only against hits (getting more amour while channeling like focus) but against DoTs and one-shots aswell. I think it would be justified even if they endup overperforming against other builds, especially with skills where you are rooted in place.

Example of things already in the game that should be followed:

Transformation builds on Druid class. There are a couple of transformation builds nowadays that keep changing btw human form and a transformed form or btw two transformed forms, and in those builds you have a reason to go back and forth btw them. Tornado Bear for example you gain a ton of benefits when you go into Werebear form like spell damage, more lightning damage, all your mana back and a bigger health pool, but your main way to cast tornado is direct casting it on human form, so you have a reason to play in both forms, and dont feel bad for playing in any of them. All the “buffs” or resons for being in a specific form is also timed, there is a limited amount of tornados you can spam before needing to transform and get your mana back, the big more damage bonus you get when transforming into werebear is also limited and tornandos you cast before going into werebear will have a limited duration so you have to go back to human form to cast more.

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2

Ad. 2. I don’t like the idea of time contraints for channeling. To me it seems anti-thematic or something. I can’t articulate it at the moment.
Ad. 3. Some skills already have such nodes, like extra block chance in warpath.

I think giving them option to move, like warpath, would help with damage pools and area attacks. I’m super hyped for the amulet teased in 1.2 trailer that makes focus a moving skill. It seems like it should be a node in skill though, given how much i want to use it :slight_smile:

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I’m not sure about this, as far as i know Channeled skills have a limited time on things like Tabletop RPGs, so i think it would be okay. I still want them to have a low cd so you can use them a lot, just dont want players feeling that the way to play the game is by breaking their mouse and keyboard while holding down a button to channel a skill, cause if you dont you do no dmg.

Most of those nodes are as good as defensive nodes on non channeled skills, like Vegence having Less Damage Taken for example. They are not that special and usually are not that strong aswell.

I think its okay sometimes, but them people will just play the skill like they play warpath, never stop channeling. And for me thats bad.

4

I think some of this is just players getting their heads round how channelled skills work in LE versus how they work in other games. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, nor does it necessarily need to be changed (differences are good after all).

I do agree with some of your views, such as some channelled skills being underwhelming, more likely the ones that will root you in place.

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5

What do you think about using growing mana costs to address this?

If the mana cost increases as the skill is used for longer, this puts a cap on how long a player can sustain the skill. I suggest this because it makes a sliding scale rather than an absolute cap: the build factors of a character’s mana pool, regen rate, and other mana demands would determine a balancing point where holding the channelled skill is their best available action, compared to dropping it for some other attack.

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6

Its a cool idea but i think it would need to be balanced around max mana instead of fixed mana costs, if not either players would build enough mana to be channeling for a lot longer or they would have to make the cost too high and that would punish builds that dont stack that much mana.

7

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, which I think is, “channeled skills have a costs that often don’t seem to be sufficiently reward via skill payoff”.

In LE this is a large cost, as many of the most powerful builds are powerful because they proc other skills. Channeled skills that can’t/don’t proc need to be worth doing it all by themselves.

Being unable to move is also a large cost. So, for many channeled abilities, we start off with heavy costs and never really make it to the payoff.