Please allow characters to move while casting skills with very short cooldowns that are often cast as soon as they are off cooldown (e.g., Devouring Orb). Having your character stop every few seconds to cast these types of spells disrupts the flow of the game and makes it feel like your character is constantly stuttering.
I would actually counterargue that and say, make these skills take even longer to cast, but make them more impactful.
So it feels like they have a huge impact.
And when scaling into cast speed it will lessen the effect, but still be impactful.
There are still a lot of short to medium cooldown skills in LE, that often times feel necessary to keep up 24/7 to make them useful and I rather hope they overhaul these skills into making them feel good on use, so it warrants the cast time.
I really think instant casts should only be present on reactionary and utility skills, but not on damage skills.
There could be some exceptions within skill spec trees with some appropiate downside, but the problem I would like to avoid is, that having one or multiple instant cast damage skills that need to be used 24/7.
We only have 5 skills in LE and these should count. And having a damage skill, that is proposedly your main damage skill or one of your main damage skills that is just being cast on cooldown without any cast time is just very boring.
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I agree with @Heavy. I donât think that stutter-walking while you spam cast DO is the problem here.
The real problem is that some of DOâs skill upgrades are designed so itâs possible and desirable to build around spam casting it, even if itâs to the detriment of your characterâs movement.
Notice that I didnât say instant cast. I suggested that you should be able to move while casting skills with very short cooldowns that are frequently cast. That is not the same as instant cast because you still have to wait until you finish casting before you can cast another spell.
It also seems like youâre focusing on Devouring Orb whereas I was talking in general. Devouring Orb was just an example.
I disagree that increasing the cast time of all skills with a short cooldown is a good design. Having some long-cast-time-heavy-hitters is fine, but I wouldnât want all spells to be that way. Having a variety of skills is much better in my opinion. Stutter is currently an issue with short-cooldown-frequently-cast type spells and allowing you to move while casting those spells fixes that issue.
It sounds like you want Devouring Orb to be a long cast time skill, but that would probably be best to discuss as a separate topic.
Out of curiosity, could you give another example then?
As soon as I read the title of your thread, before even opening it, Devouring Orb came to my mind. Because this is my only character who noticeably stutters, canât think of any other skill doing that.
It is not so much because of the skill itself, more because the lazy bugger keeps it on autocast.
And having the main damaging skill on autocast feels just (morally) wrong anyway, so I am rather glad the stutter is here to limit the power of autocasting.
It would be different for aura-like, purely defensive skills. But I donât remember having problems with these.
[Edit: no offense meant at all. Genuinely curious about which skills have this effect.]
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Thorn Shield. I had a character that just spammed that and everything that touched me died, but it stutters real bad.
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TL;DR: Iâm ok with it so long as it comes with balance, and I think this can definitely be added to the corresponding skill tree.
Details:
For me, stutter stepping is a craft to hone. A player with the dexterity to stutter step while accurately dogging projectiles and aiming should be rewarded for doing so, with abilities that hit harder, further, faster, etc.
Iâm not against abilities that donât require stutter, thereâs already plenty of them, like warpath (cyclone) just name the most emblematic. These abilities require practically not dexterity are otherwise balanced: low range, low mobility, low damage, etc⌠Pick your poison.
Whichever ability you want the âstop the stutteringâ on could be achievable by addition to the skill the tree, with an associated nerf so you pay a cost for the convenience (unless the opportunity cost of investing points in it is already deemed sufficient).
The bolded part is the definition of instant cast.
It doesnât matter how fast a skill is cast, if itâs not instant cast, your character will briefly stop.
I did not solely focus on DO, but itâs a prime example of this issue.
If you donât want the discussion to focus on one particular skill, just give a few more examples.
I worded my statement a bit poorly. English is not my native language and the point I tried to illustrate didnât come across properly.
My suggestion was deliberately on the extreme side of the opposite spectrum. I donât think that skills like that should have longer cast time.
But the skills should be overhauled in such a way that:
- The cast time feels impactful and worth it
- Give the skill base functionality or skill spec tree nodes that reward or incentivice not spamming them immediately, when they come off cooldown. (e.g. DO deals more dmg for the entire duration, when it hit enemies in the initial area it spawned)
That is what instant cast means though.
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That is what instant cast means though.
Instant cast means the cast time = 0 seconds.
Cast while moving means the cast time > 0 seconds but you are able to move while casting and doing so does not interrupt the cast.
Not the same. Many games implement both.
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Casting while moving is something that does not exist in LE and neither it does in most other similar games.
I donât say it doesnât exist at all, but the only thing where I know it exists is MMOâs.
If you specifically want them to add a entirely new way of casting skills that is a valid request but I think that needs to be very clear from the start for all participants.
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Thatâs just instant cast with more steps mate. You are making a distinction between two things that have no practical or meaningful difference.
That is not true though.
This would have pratical differences.
You could not cast skills that have this kind of âbeing able to cast while movingâ, while channeling another skill.
So in Sentinel example if you do a Warpath Build and wanna do DOâs on top of it, that is a very impactful practical difference.
I am not trying to argue that this should be a thing, but I think there is an issue in this whole discussion here, simply because we found out after like 10 posts, what OP would like to see in this game.
And I think while this might be a solutions so some very specific skills to make them feel more fluid, my points from a few posts above still stand.
Canât you already not cast spells while channeling another, even if theyâre instant, without interrupting the channel? I donât actually know how LE does it, because I donât play channeled skills, but thatâs the precedent Iâve seen in other games.
That doesnât matter a whole lot either way, though. OP doesnât care about channeled spells - OP wants to spam cast a spell while they are running without having their movement interrupted. Thereâs no meaningful difference between âinstant castâ and âshort cast time and you can cast while movingâ in that goal.
But even that isnât the real issue, as I said in my first comment.
Yes you can cast instant skills while channeling.
Very useful for things like Ring Of Shields or Flame Ward, because these are defensive/utility/reactionary skills
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Why default to assuming some negative intention? Maybe the person comes from other games where you can cast things while moving? Maybe some things have a long cast time and you need to be able to move around to not be interrupted by getting hit. There are a ton of reasons that this casting effect would add interesting gameplay.
As someone said earlier, it is a thing in a lot of MMOâs and it adds some excitement to combat. It also makes CC effects more useful.
It could also be beneficial in having another way to balance skills. Maybe a skill is a little too strong to be spammed at 0 cast time, but its not strong enough to force the character to stop moving.
If LE ever plans on having PvP as an option, it might be something to consider.
Maybe the discussion can become more constructive now that people know what everyone is talking about.
No assumption is required here, default or otherwise. OP made it very clear and specific what their complaint is and where it comes from.
âHaving your character stop every few secondsâ due to âcasting skills with very short cooldowns that are often cast as soon as they are off cooldownâ - those are word for word quotes - is not an issue outside of very specific builds that are almost exclusively abusing Numlock to be a Walking Simulator. There is no good reason to pretend that we donât all know OP is talking about the DO autobomber build (and others like it).
There is no good faith intention in this complaint, itâs just asking to remove the only existing downside to playing certain builds that require no input or interaction whatsoever with the game. That it would enable such totally thoughtless builds is more than enough argument against the suggestion.
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Just want to chime in here, Iâm playing a basic lightning blast mage with lots of cast speed. I have the exact same problem. If I hold both left and right click, my character will stutter step between casts of Lightning Blast.
Being able to both walk forward while still casting would make the movement and experience better, and would remove the stuttering animation.
edit** obviously I would still expect this to be slower than actual movement without casting. I just think some threshold value would be good here.
Still trying to figure out if i understand op correctly. So would you also like to see this for attacks? I mean how overpowered would it be for ranged classes to just scale movement & attack/cast speed without getting interrupted? You could dodge every enemy attack while still doing even more dps (because no cast/attack delay).
I kinda like the approach to time all my actions, feels way more rewarding at the end when you do a good skill rotation/positioning.
I like stutterstepping. Gives me a good feedback on how i mechanically improve. Because you can decide how much dps you do while managing survivability by yourself and not by character/skill stats.
Please see above.