Bomb, other magic AoE effects applicable

[amitst]

Bomb used to work pretty good.

The description of bomb runs like this, effects center on target mob and radiate outward at a factor of 0.x for a radius of y meters effecting a maximum of q mobs. The original intention of the effect would be that full damage is taken by the target, and every y/z meters the effects diminish by 0.x. Before patch one you often heard healers telling melee to stand close together so they could be healed. The other effects had similar descriptions and worked accordingly, but
bomb could ield the best effects, for mobs standing close together could all be on the inner tier of damage, and rarely do mobs stand in a good pattern for spread effects.

For some reason after patch 1 it appeared as if the total damage done to the q mobs was close to equal to the total damage that would be done by the spell without the bomb effect to a single mob.

This isnt entirely true, the orange number(which represents the total effect of the one spell) that hovers above the group of enemies after I cast a double fire bomb spell if i hit the maximum number of mobs, q, is often 5-10% higher than my normal maximum damage, which I can not entirely explain. In this exmaple the mobs were in very close proximity to each other, <4 meters, and the radius of the bomb spell was 16 meters. In contrast, often when I cast the same firebomb spell and hit only one enemy, I often get a completely random and miniscule damage result, as if the spell damage was still being divided by q, the number of mobs.

My opinion is that bomb should be reinstated as before, because an AoE spell is rarely useful for hunting because aggroing multiple mobs usually equals certain doom, and is probably harmful for PvP because it is possible to hit your friends in PvP zones. These nerfing effects compensate for the ability to heal multiple melee characters significantly, and make AoE spells something that can once again be strategically used. After all how can you stop a massive invasion if you can only hit one Elite Reaper Kirosta at a time.

It bugs me cause I have reported it a couple times, but the day before yesterday, the first timeI reported it on Arispotle, the GM sound intersted and even told me that he send some people to test it out in the lakelands and that they were also coming up with strange results. Its been months like this and they didn't know? That just proves players need more interaction with the dev team...

[bobturke]

Agreed.

To me it looks like they almost divide the damage between the people effected. So say i cast a 2000 HP heal which would normally almost fully heal player X. Then when I bomb with this player at the center of the 2000 HP bomb they only heal what looks to be about 300-400HP with others in the radius healing about 200-300 also. The numbers aren't scientific but you get the idea. Either way bomb is pretty bloody useless.

First thing I would look at if I were a dev improving this is the degredation being per 1 meter. I would try putting the degredation increments out to 2 or 3 meteres and look at the changes. How often to combat groups (melees/casters) stand only 1 m a part? Not very often.

When retail started healers were urging ppl to stand together, not to increase the amount they healed but to have them even within the AoE! This makes me think this whole radius and degredation rate per unit distance thing needs to be reaccessed.

Just a suggestion.

[trenker]

When I first started playing last October I spent ages fiddling with all the combinations of bricks and enchantments. After a while I realised that the only cool thing you could do was make a 'free acid spell' just like the manual said, and everything else interesting was simply not allowed or didnt work. My final frustration was when I put Stun (cost me 50 SPs back then) on a weapon and was saddened to the core when it was virtually usless.

I am guessing that we only have the boring basic bricks - the foundation as it were. All the cool bricks are locked away in rites I guess, which of course we are overdue for. Bricks that sacrifice your hp to keep a source stable for example (known). I am really looking forward to bricks that let ranged fire two shots or polearms knock down or focus bricks for hit 'accuracy'.

On topic... and of course something that helps bombs to be more usefull, like 'range of blast' or 'percentage drop to next target' or 'number of targets to spread to'. Surely the whole idea of bricks is that we can edit the spell to suit the need and be really clever and flexible. Nevrax can release these bricks and in time they can fine tune the cost of the bricks in order to balance play.

[amitst]

Trenker... were you commenting on bomb?


Are you sure?

You have been playing since october so what do you mean by "in time"?

[ncrijns]

I can't help but throw in some thinks I found out, and some things that I would like to see with AoE effects.

First of, putting 2 AoE effects on a spell makes it work better. Weird? Yes, I didn't believe it when it was told to me. But fact is when I tried combine, Bomb + Ricochet, Bomb + Spray and Spray + Ricochet, the damage/healing value increased significantly. For the first combination even 100% more output, the other combinations around 50%, then only 1 AoE effect.

The drawback is ofcourse pretty clear, it costs every single credit you can muster to even cast such an AoE, and that's even when you're using single spells. With double spells there is now way to use the best AoE effect, and best spells, it simply is to much.

So 'good' AoE spells are totally reserved for the high level mages, they have high enough spells to not notice the difference of using lower level spells (much) and have the credits to pay for the spell.

Adding other effects to AoE's, like vampirism, seems like a nice idea, but is totally insane. Due to the insane costs. But vampirism is something for that other thread.

What I like to see is that the costs of the AoE is reduced, or a AoE specific credit is introduced (read: only usable if you add a AoE stanza), to make the spell contruction more viable. This would help to allow the better range bombs be used.

Secondly what I'd love to see is a real good description of spray! The spell is described as a cone spell. A cone from what?! The caster? On hit at the target? Somewhere in between? It's not clear, and my testing left me even more confused to be honest. Anyone?

I forgot 1 thing, the range of AoE at impact, this is directly depended on the level of the AoE effect used. Because AoEs are so expensive to cast, specially with double spell stanzas, which most healing and elemental casters prefer to use only the lower range of the stanzas is used, with the crappy range and damage modifier they have.

To give an example, the heal bomb I have constructed for myself using a level 140 and level 120 heal and 85 level bomb and ricochet. It allows me to heal 4 people for around 1500 hp in a 5 meter diameter area. I am level 159 healing at the moment and have trained a level 120 bomb and ricochet and level 160 heals, but I'm stuck using the lower ones because it's using every single credit I can scrape together. Leading it to be a spell I hardly use and very slow to cast.

Hope it makes abit sence...

[aelvana]

Bomb used to be completely uber. I don't even keep a heal bomb up anymore :P

[kratos84]

Bomb heal is fun to watch I have been trying to find out how to throw the biggest bomb I can, my current record is 13180 hp.