Transformation Cooldown

So I really like the wearbear form and can see the utility of the spriggan form, but I think it feels really bad when you come out of form and then you have to wait for all of your other skills to come off cooldown. I am okay with the wearbear and the spriggan skills being on cooldown, but having leap, totems and heals on cooldown is not good.

I feel like having everything on cooldown takes away a lot of strategic gameplay of popping out of wearbear for a quick heal, reposition, casting totems/buff, mana regen and then jumping back into form to get back in the fight. You basically have two separate builds since you choose either wearbear form or your other skills. You already lose the functionality of using the other skills while in bear form and only get the benefit of that one skill tree (wearbear) while other builds get to take advantage of multiple skill trees.

Is there a possibility this will change? I think this would make the shapeshifter druid much more appealing and interesting to play.

Maybe there is a technical reason or balancing reason that this can’t happen, but in theory it sounds like a big QoL improvement for this build.

Let me know your feedback. Would love to hear from a dev on this.

This is indeed a technical limitation currently.

Thanks for feedback. I also appreciate that you say currently. Is this on the roadmap once the tech become available? Or is the dev team happy with how it is currently implemented?

This is something that won’t happen anyway because of the cooldowntimers of the shapeshifts. You might play a castbear with the nodes in the tree and swap from human to bear back to human cast human form skills and swap to spriggan but with the long CD on shapeshift skills there is no back and forth swap anyway ;).

The CD when you leave the shapeshift was something that was asked 2 times already iirc and yes it’s terrible that leaving a shape will put every skill on cd and you can only walk or swipe if you haven’t skilled cd on it. With the new mastery changes this will hurt like a truck because it’s nice to have the shapeshift eraly but in low levels you are most probably fubar when you run out of mana fast and end up with skills on CD. That’s for example on thing I’m eager to test when it’s time for it ^^.

I dont quite understand this, but -

I´m all in for removing (as a future Goal when its technically possible) the cooldowns on skills when coming back to human form.

On that note, I totally agree and can see how the form you came from has a CD (e.g. when you leave werebear form, the skill “werebear form” will be on CD). But the other skills I`m using being on cooldown - it just feels bad. It feels so bad that further discussion on balance Point or whatever becomes super secondary to me personally, because it kills the flow (as the OP already stated).

On another note, having spriggan form be on cooldown after you come back from werebear form just also feels like a whole limitation in itself, bringing up (for me) several more cons than pros (this might also just be because of the technical). If it is intented though, I`d really think about changing this. Unless you really want to avoid people playing with both forms in the same build.

Because, there are cons to taking both forms (that is, only 3 active skills when in no form). And I neither see super-high “pros” to taking both forms as to justify one form Setting the other form on CD. Because when I`m coming out of werebear form, and I have to wait for spriggan form to get ready - that totally kills the Purpose of taking both forms. Because werebear will be ready once spriggan is ready, and I have one less skill Slot to use in the meantime. It also doesnt allow you to play situationally or tactically.

I`d really like to see both of these changes, because I really do enjoy the forms a lot, and that reallllly kills it.

This is good conversation.

There may be a design decision to not allow you go back and forth between bear and spriggan which I think I would be okay with but I definitely think the shapeshifter fantasy and gameplay would be very interesting to allow you to switch between bear and spriggan.

I just think that making the decision to go with a shapeshifter build means you only use a fraction of the build power at this point with the current system. Hopefully the tech comes along and Druid can be changed to allow some improvements to the system.

I feel it does have pros in itself to be a pure bear/spriggan and being a hybrid bear/spriggan-druid is just different - not better in a way that imo would necessitate a prohibition of that playstyle.

Pure form means 4 skills Chosen for that playstyle. Hybrid means you have to make sacrifices for both to work intelligently, and in human form you´ll have huge short-cuts.

I see the upside of having immense fun and diversity, and no downside other than a philosophical or existential one maybe :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not, and I’m the one that set it up like that. It is an option that we are working to have as a tool for balancing at the very least. The intent behind shapeshifting is that we would have a way that you can build where you are switching in and out of forms fairly regularly. That’s probably only going to feel good if your other skills don’t all go on cooldown or at least ones that would have come off cooldown based on the time you spent in transform. (so you can’t cheat big cooldowns by quick switching)

Personally I really like the idea of viable druid builds that use 0, 1, 2 or 3 transform abilities regularly.

This is good. Yea I don’t want to be able to circumvent cooldowns. For instance D3 became of game of cooldown reduction to keep wrath of the beserker and archon up near 100% and it just was not interesting gameplay in my opinion. I like having game changing skills at meaningful times because it feel REALLY good when you nail the timing just right and execute your build potential.

I think especially with the different forms having different purposes provides for some interesting gameplay decisions especially when multiplayer is implemented. It seems that the werebear is more of a DPS form while the Spriggan is more for support. Being able to interchange between the two depending on the scenario would be a lot of fun.

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That’s a shame. I like to stay in my choosen form and leave all the shift back and forth out of it because it’s clunky, the cooldowns after shifting are meh and I want to play the game to a certain amount like I want to. I don’t want to go for the base spell dmg nodes in bear just to make spriggan viable and run arround with a caster weapon equiped.
If there comes a third form like a “Raptor Form” that’s based on agility things would even be worse.

For cooldowns… why don’t you make CD’s like usual? If you use all your skills in human form they go on CD then you switch to bear and use those skills and if you switch back the CD on the skills is either gone or still ticking because you changed shape that fast.

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We currently can’t due to a technical limitation-- we’ll be looking into it in the future.

Macknum,
Sounds like that is an opportunity for a skill tree item/improvement. I totally agree that it should be possible to just focus on one form. Maybe that can be a node that you spec into which will greatly lengthen the time you can stay in the form. That is some possible now in the bear tree but you have to heavily invest in mana reduction nodes and you don’t get the damage increases or durability buffs.

I also think a raptor form sounds really cool. At the very least a fast attacking form. I tried to make something like this with the bear where I have a low cool down on the dash. I would swipe a few times and then dash. Maybe not so fitting on a bear but developing the shapeshifter fantasy a little more would be cool.

I think this points to the variety and player choice that each of us want to have. I think a lot of games make it so you see a character in bear form and you know that they do X and they do Y. It would be cool to see a werebear and say, ohh how did you spec your bear? Are you a full bear or hybrid build etc etc.

Excited to see what happens in the future on this. Based on the direction of other skill trees and builds I am hoping for some nice improvements.

Hope this feedback is helpful. Let us know if you have questions that would be helpful.

I feel the bear is already fine in itself, in that he offers vaiable ways to be played (e.g. pure phyiscal, fast-dashing, stay longer in shifted, physical caster, mage caster, pure caster, hybric melee/cast). And he can be quite fast and insisting, therefor I wouldnt really need another form such as an agility-raptor or something.

I find Poison to be an ailment he could go with, adding lots of variety. Not a particular form either, but something that is akin to nature:

“Formless form”. It`s like the breeze of the wind, or condensed water, becoming the very Atom of nature - turning water to Poison to ail his enemies. Shifting Elements on the fly.

Cloud of the vaporised -first ability, “W” button

Become formless for up to 3 seconds, spreading more widely across the floor each second passing on poison onto enemies afflicted (e.g. 2 stacks per second). This means, you press the button, then you vaporise onto a poison-cloud that drifts further away from the Ground in all directions (spreading AoE - you cant move during the Duration), poisoning enemies affected each second. After the 3 seconds are over, or when you activate the skill again during its Duration, the Cloud forms back to form (the “formless” form, of Course) at your Cursor (and may do something else then, e.g. poison one enemy hit on Impact more intensely). You probably take much reduced damage during the process, or no damage at all (in which case you also do not Regenerate health).

Spread Invisibility - Right Click button

You spread the formless onto foes, which cracks their very Atoms - poisons x times per second for x seconds, spreading among foes (stackable). This could either be melee, or short-range casted ideally. Few metres from the enemy, so you are close and Always on the go (a Fitting theme within the skills he uses)

Release Tension - “E” Button

Whenever you move or attack or being attacked, you stack “Tension” due to having to hold your formless state, which then Needs to be released. The Tension goes up to 100, and can be released at any time and will grief out to 3 enemys when released (perss “E” button), dealing direct (poison) damage to them. Not a DoT. More Tension = more dmg.

This is an “active passive” ability akin to the one mage is going to get.

Form a Sect - “R” button

You summon insects that follow you and attack enemies with poison-ailment (they will be akin to the small helpers the scorpion can summon, following you around on the floor and being small and nasty) - 3 second CD, 3 summoned insects total.

When all are active, activate this ability for each insect to increase poison-ailment-application 3-fold for 1,5 seconds, so each attack applies 3 stacks of poison instead of 1 (7 second cooldown).

Formless nature-boy! The tree´s could possibly swap stuff in regards to damage type, obviously: physical (wind) and ice/Lightning (storm).

So the insects could be wrath-bees of Lightning, or small stun-tards of physical.
The “W” ability of formless form could roll a thunder-cloud doing Lightning damage or chilling in a frost-mist dealing Cold. etc.

The “Right click” button could do lightnings with increased range - or even Shorter range spawn but higher Impact! Melee-caster) etc.

:smiley:

I feel like this is a cool idea. Very different from anything you see out there.

The poison component would synergize well with venom strike. Currently I think that may be the only thing consistently doing poison damage in the tree without getting it on summons. All other poison chance comes from skill tree nodes.

From what I have seen, it looks like there are a few skills missing from most sub classes so there may be stuff in the works or room for suggestions like this. Not sure how many added skills they plan to have per mastery.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I could have been more clear. I said that you would “have a way that you can build”. I didn’t mean to imply that this would be the only way to build. We want people to be able to pick any playstyle along the spectrum from quick switching all the way to very slow switching. If you want to be a bear and just a bear then that’s cool too. I think that is much easier and is closer to the final goal than the quick switching style.

Well that’s a relief ;).

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