Update notes : GW Discussion

Spirits

We like the concept of Spirits overall, but there were a few things we felt we needed to improve. For example, the fact that so many Spirits could exist in one area caused the frame rate to decrease and created pathing obstacles, as well as making Spirits extremely difficult to counter. Now when you cast a Spirit, all other allied spirits within the newly cast Spirit's range are destroyed. Additionally, Spirits will no longer affect other Spirits. We also tweaked the costs and effects on other spirits, including Nature's Renewal and Quickening Zephyr.


* Nature's Renewal: no longer removes all Hexes and Enchantments when cast; doubles the cost of maintained Enchantments

* Fertile Season: reduced duration to 15..45 seconds

* All Spirits: Spirit effects no longer affect other Spirits (example: Fertile Season no longer adds Health and armor to other Spirits); also, when a Spirit is cast, it destroys all other allied Spirits of the same type within its range


Lightning vs. Fire

The primary difference between lightning and fire damage is that lightning is meant to be a very powerful single target damage line, while fire should be a very powerful multi-target line. We felt that Chain Lightning was a little too powerful in terms of multi-target damage, and we felt that some of the basic fire spells like Fireball and Meteor where a little too expensive for the damage they did. We reduced the damage and effect of Chain Lightning and lowered the costs on some of the fire spells to help bring these more into balance.


* Meteor: lowered Energy cost to 5

* Fireball: lowered Energy cost to 10 and recharge time to 7

* Chain Lightning: increased cast time to 3 seconds; decreased damage to 10..85; lowered maximum distance between targets


Zero Recharge

We were concerned that skills with low casting time and zero recharge time were causing an imbalance, as they allowed players to trigger other spells like Zealot's Fire at an extremely rapid rate. To improve the balance, we added a small amount of recharge time to these spells. We also touched up some other skills (like Putrid Explosion) that had very powerful chain reaction effects, which we felt were difficult to counter.


* Draw Conditions: added 1 second recharge time

* Divine Boon: added 1 second recharge time

* Putrid Explosion: increased recharge time to 5 seconds


Underused Skills

We took some time to look at skills we felt were under-used (like Panic, Spinal Shivers, Dwarven Battle Stance, and a few others) and tried to either reduce their cost or increase their effects. Often we find the best way to balance something is to increase the effectiveness of its counters; this can be a very tricky thing to do, but it often provides more interesting play.


* Panic: increased duration to 10..25 seconds; increased AOE to "nearby foes"

* Spinal Shivers: increased duration to 10..40 seconds

* Dwarven Battle Stance: increased duration to 5..11 seconds

Problem is they didn't get rid of exhaustion, I found it harder because I tend to use those more often now with my nuker and I get exhausted so much faster.