I’ve had my eye on this game for a long time, becoming aware of it sometime in 2019. Which feels like genuinely ancient times due to, well, everything. I loved the idea of the Runemaster then and held back from making a “main dude” until they showed up. It… took a while, but now it’s here, and while it’s clearly cool I can’t help but see it as, well, flawed.
I’ve boiled my issues down into 3 broad points: that the invocations are simply too powerful when compared to other skills, especially when looking at defensive and utility spells, that invocation, while cool as hell, just fundamentally doesn’t work with the game’s main hook of ability choice and customization, and that the other classes all now pare in comparison to the Mage.
On the first topic, I’m sure people who spend a lot of time optimizing and tinkering with skills may disagree with the idea that the skills are too powerful. I’m well aware that I’m a neophyte in the game’s meta and build construction. But it’s just hard to ignore just how absurdly powerful the skill feels. Frost fire frost gives you an effect that would take 10 points in flame ward to come close to reproducing, and it lasts longer and doesn’t have a cooldown. Fire fire fire gives you a mini-comet with a much lower mana cost. The versatility and power is what’s cool about the skill, but it’s also just way too much.
The second problem is that it just doesn’t fit into how the game is designed. In order to fire off the effects, you use spells corresponding to the elemental rune. This means you are best served by getting 0 cooldown, low or 0 mana elemental spells on 3 other keys. Now while this wouldn’t be a problem in another game, it’s a huge issue in this one. The way the game works is by giving you a few slots for abilities that you highly specialize in. The growth you experience isn’t just through new abilities or your abilities getting stronger, but being able to make the things you do exactly what you want them to be. Leveling up skills is like leveling up your dude, an important part of the process that gives you satisfaction. Invocation asks you to sacrifice all but one key to it, to take any CC or defense or utility you had invested a slot for and throw it away so that it can use that spot for a rune. It, quite frankly, feels bad.
The third thing is that seeing the vast amount of art and ability design, I realized that the runemaster was a MASSIVE investment of development time and effort. With the game being 0.9, how in the world can there be a plan for the other classes to come anywhere close to the completeness and investment of the RUNEMASTER, let alone the Mage. Every other class has fewer skills, many skills don’t have a tree, and no other one has a mini-mechanic attached. You can’t possibly say there’s no favoritism here.
But, I think these things can all be addressed. The first one, power, feels like it was supposed to have been already. The individual invocations have cooldowns, but they just don’t work. The most powerful invocations being something that cannot be done at will seems like a change that could bring the skill in line with others, instead of just being the superior choice. But I simply don’t see a way out that doesn’t involve some harsh number changes and restrictions. A 40-in-1 skill must have limits placed on it, and this isn’t Magicka. You don’t have to mash out qfqffqfqffq to do something, you use 3 attack spells and then hit go. Too much power for not enough investment.
On the second, there’s a few ways to go. Getting rid of invocations is stupid, cause it’s an enormous amount of dev time. But keeping things the way they are now feels bad. I’m sure there’s plenty of ideas, but here’s a couple of mine.
1: Make invocation like a druid form or stance spell. You enter into Invocation, and your ability bar is replaced with one skill to leave the state, 3 spells for the separate runes, and 1 rune cast confirmation. Deciding to invoke takes away a lot of your inherent versatility to give you access to the varied and powerful invocations, allowing your other abilities to still matter and making the deployment of invocations a deliberate and calculated choice.
2: Move Invocation to the end of the Runemaster tree, and make the mastery ability Runebolt or Glyph. Remove the +elemental damage passive and replace it with one that has the runes invoked, but give passive benefits, similar to the node within Invocation. This way, by the time the player is able to use Invocation, they will already be at a place where they are more able to create builds to take advantage of it without sacrificing most of their bar. Runebolt itself feels tailor made for this purpose, but instead of it being a tool the Runemaster learns how to use first, it’s thrown in far along the journey. I believe this the far less work intensive option and the one I would suggest using.
Because for the last point, there’s simply no way around it: the other classes really need to be worked on more. Healing Hands doesn’t have a skill tree. Sentinel skills require a specific subclass to get benefits out of some nodes. Nobody got as many abilities as the mage before the runemaster, and now they have hands-down the most, even if you’re another specialization. FFS look at the poor Rogue, who only gets 3 abilities from their passive trees. Everyone else is in a sorry state, and while I can see that an enormous amount of effort went into the Runemaster, you’re nearing the end of your numbers and nobody else feels anywhere near as finished as the Mage. This is, well… bad for an ARPG.
I am, honestly, rooting for this game. I wouldn’t type out all these words if I wasn’t. I think the skill customization idea is great; apparently so did Blizzard cause they stole it from you. I really dig the classes, they feel familiar but new, with the Big Barbarian also being the nature wizard, the Mage being more than a fireball machine with abilities like Focus and Preperation, the Paladin being the same guy as the Void Knight… it’s cool. I like them, I like the whole idea of traveling across time and dimensions, learning all sorts of weird secrets along the way. I like how improving your gear with crafting elements is just built into the game, giving you a way to make a thing you like better instead of just having to throw it out for something else. So I hope this doesn’t come off as unfair or hostile. I just really think Invocation missed hard enough for it to be a problem, and hope it gets fixed.
