(This post is in response to a brief exchange with Mike)
So, although the instruction is a bit vague, we have a direction to argue in now.
To begin, i want to re-iterate the mechanical issue that prevents the abominations in it’s current form from being balanced, however since this is now the 4th time I’ve explained this, I’m going to opt for the short version:
At present, when the abomination consumes a minion, it gains 30% increased damage, which means that this 30% bonus is meant to be representative of the value of the minion it consumed, however our minions themselves are not equal in power, due to having fundamental population differences, that is to say that a skeleton is not as powerful as a golem, because you can have many skeletons, but only 2 golems, however, the abomination treats both of them as a 30% damage bonus.
because of this, if that 30% is representative of the power of a skeleton, then it’s not gaining nearly enough power from the golem, but likewise, if that 30% is representative of the golem, then it’s gaining far too much power from the skeleton. these things are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled under the current mechanical structure.
Moving on to ideas: Since the goal for the abomination as a spell has been specifically unstated, I will present 3 ideas to make it both usable and more balanced.
Idea 1: We need a divorce…
The basis of this idea is that, because the abominations power is inherently tied to the sum of it’s parts, the abomination fails to behave as it’s own skill in absence of those parts. so in line with this notion, we ought to divorce the abomination from it’s minion reliance by means of giving it a base functionality.
How do we do this?
Well, as it happens, i believe the answer is already present within the abomination skill tree itself, being tied to the node “Devour” (for those of you who don’t know, devour is the skill node that, “you no longer channel the abomination, instead it consumes the nearest 5 minions to be summoned.”) this node gives us a baseline maximum that the abomination can eat, and thus we have a number to balance it around. furthermore, since the abomination already gains built in synergies from the acquisition of abilities from the minions it eats, it need not gain damage for the act of eating, thus allowing it to be balanced under it’s own merit, without forcing you to stack as many minions as possible, while still offering synergy based on it’s own skill tree.
Conclusion Make the abomination no longer gain damage from eating minions, make “Devour” baseline, and retool it to be “Summon an abomination, which will instantly consume up to 5 unique minions to be summoned, gaining a new ability for each minion type consumed.”
with this system, the abomination can be summoned as a “0 minion” abomination, allowing it to operate under it’s own merits, while synergizing with your other minion spells to gain new abilities, which would naturally be empowered through it’s own skill tree in the same way that it is now.
Idea 2: Abominable Boogaloo
the basis of this idea is simple, basically the abomination gains a really long cooldown, but instantly consumes all minions to create itself, with a hard timer instead of health decay. just make it a really big damage cooldown that prevents the re-summoning of other minions while it’s active, and you can make it as overpowered as you want without really breaking the game.
Idea 3: But what if…
What if we were the abomination? Hear me out… this game already has tranformation skills like reaper form, wearbear, and spriggan, so what if WE were the ones consuming our minions to become this big hulking thing. it actually makes a lot more sense than you might initially think, because existing transformation skills already replace your skill bar with abilities specific to the form, and it’s almost like the abomination gains skills by eating things…
So in line with option 1, the skills become baseline by virtue that we ate the things already, then WE become the abomination, which naturally prevents us from summoning our minions back in a way that doesn’t feel bad, because our actionbar is still completely usable, then we run around and smack the people around for days. when the abomination form ends naturally through health decay, it’s husk stays around for a while, taunting enemies to give us time to resummon our army, and on top of that, you could replace wraiths as the necromancer mastery ability, and make it abomination instead (wraiths would still exist, they’d just go where the abomination was) allowing us to become the monstrosity from minute one after the mastery quest.
personally this would be my favorite fix, since it would also allow the necromancer to get into the thick of it without worrying about getting one shot by everything, since our minion stats would actually benefit us personally for a while.
it would reduce screen clutter a lot of the time, which i know you want for multiplayer… it’s just a good idea in my opinion.
This concludes my interlude on the future of the abomination, if you have your own idea, please post below.