Miracles

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Miracles

Postby mbj » Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:07 am

Holy crap miracles are actual garbage. I linked with a Virtue and thought his abilities were too good to be true. I swapped my gandayah's level ~15 ~40 magic ass for Virtue's level 31 100 magic ass and made him my new healer. I thought he would blow my gandayah out of the water with his 150 power heals + total debuff removal (Vitae) every couple of turns. Yet my first battle I went into with Virtue I noticed he was hardly doing anything. Then I noticed the exp based cooldown. Welp so much for that. That's what I get for deleting lifegiver gandayah. Also I'm playing a cunning mask so when I first saw Lux I thought it was practically a straight upgrade to Inquisition. It is if you're only going to cast either spell one time ever.

You get 1 (one) use of either miracle ability every 40% exp (20% with a passive ability). Oh and the cooldowns are linked so both of Virtue's miracles will be on cooldown after either ability gets used. Vitae barely gets a pass just because it's a pure gem plus a big heal for everyone, so it might be ok in a hard battle. Though in such a hard battle you might have to retreat and regroup (i.e. no more miracle), and also considering how you can't control when the AI actually uses it, I just can't advocate wasting an ability slot (or 3!) on those abilities. At least with Eternal Glory (which has a cooldown of NINE levels worth of exp) you get a full heal in the middle of a battle, possibly saving your special demon or even your entire run. Lux especially seems like trash, since you still have to roll to affect your enemies and once it's done, that's it, nothing left. You're stuck with 7 (or god forbid 5) abilities for the next few battles.

TL;DR Abilities with experience based cooldowns are trash.
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Re: Miracles

Postby Ferret » Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:21 am

::winces a little::

Well, I didn't expect I'd nail something new the first time. :D That almost never happens.

How would you feel about them if I reduced the XP recharge drastically? Say, a single average battle recharges it, and you probably can do twice in a fight if you have the passive? This would be 12% and 6% or so, respectively... about a -70% decrease.

I can tweak the AI a bit too (they seem a bit trigger happy at the moment), but hopefully at those frequencies, it will be less of an issue anyway.
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Re: Miracles

Postby wizzzargh » Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:44 am

I got to try out some miracles. I dunno about 'actual garbage' but yeah, they didn't exactly rock me, shock me, overclock me.

It took about 2-3 fights for my virtue to recover, which wasn't bad. I tried teaching it to loadsa demons to see if I could drown an enemy relic wraith in Lux, and it wasn't nearly as miraculous as I had hoped, so I don't think having a slightly faster cooldown would cause every other fight to be auto-won by lux cannons. But then again this was a really tough wraith, and a Lux battery might be a lot more impressive against regular encounters.
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Re: Miracles

Postby mbj » Sat Apr 08, 2017 7:20 pm

Yea I mean they aren't that bad I was just disappointed that it wasn't as insanely good as I expected (and also relied on Vitae for a primary source of healing without reading the manual on miracles first :lol: ). Some AI tweaking might do some good, but there's no way to ensure it's saved for when your team really needs it, which I don't know if you could even program that other than relying on a player signal. I don't think it's necessarily the recharge rate that's the problem though, maybe just that those two miracles (at least Lux) feel underwhelming.
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Re: Miracles

Postby Bormoth » Sat Apr 08, 2017 7:40 pm

Could you make nonpassive spells miracles act on charges as relic abilities. So you might treat them more like miracle special, and have control over them. Like command Lux with few Lux cannons you finish fight you need. Than it may remain its once per level or several mechanic yet be what it feels like strategic strategic decision to pull of miracle.
So:
1)Miracle and soul actives are relic commanded.
2)If you have several summoned demons with miracles you get several charges.
3)It is command action so takes no turn other than saying you use Lux.
4)If several commands issued than each unit would enact action the next time it would get turn. Maybe other similar tactical effects could get good use of this function too(hello mend and that random heal zantys starts with in which case he would use it on target next time it gets of cooldown or cooldown would be removed, though I have no regrets using it as is).
5)It would give more to miracle than smart AI wasting things(sometimes I want this creature die because it is not worth of miracle I would liketo use on other creature.).
6) I dunno about healing miracles unless they give some benefit, in my experience usually you need heal all the time and usual low power heals on good creatures are more precious(reason regenerate and guilt so strong) and just heal once is not really impactful. Maybe if those healed max HP loss, and AI was good enough to relaise when it worth to use it(i.e lots of MaxHP lost or resting(for mend), Like healing miracle could heal unsummoned creatures too.
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Re: Miracles

Postby Ferret » Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:39 pm

It's true that this may be one of those cases where we've hit the limits of what AI can reasonably manage. Being able to command certain abilities to be used is something I've considered before, and miracles might actually be a good fit for it... but, the reason I haven't done it before now is the reason I'm still hesitant are still here: it starts to drift in a more micro direction, though at least it's only a tiny step, if we restricted this to abilities of this nature.

Hmm.. I'll keep thinking on it.
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Re: Miracles

Postby Bormoth » Sun Apr 09, 2017 2:05 am

Ferret wrote:It's true that this may be one of those cases where we've hit the limits of what AI can reasonably manage. Being able to command certain abilities to be used is something I've considered before, and miracles might actually be a good fit for it... but, the reason I haven't done it before now is the reason I'm still hesitant are still here: it starts to drift in a more micro direction, though at least it's only a tiny step, if we restricted this to abilities of this nature.

Hmm.. I'll keep thinking on it.


I understand your concerns about the way it is drifting, plus having ability to micromanage independent creatures not feels likegeneral flow of the game, but miracles could be described like Djinni wishes something you get as advantage for being friend with demon or master.(So even if source of miracle is another demon and it actually required )

Plus micromanagement could be not so big possible uses:Nuke one mob you want to recruit, use to save the day, or heal and buff comming from one fight to another hard one or in ghost fight. If skill is impactful enough there would be no claims if you would use it from time to time or even once per game, after all Player is already has to use fusion, skill tutoring, other mechanics and inventory already, I doubt player would or it is good design to use it every three or four fights like with inventory items. It would give good tool for players to consider to stabilize winning run. Which seems like was original intent or close to it. All short miracles (Three groups o fenemies) are ok imo to include it would be fired every so often and help me to chease few battles, but hardly impactful. (could be even conditional passives(which would make them look like actual miracles.) Worth putting on healer or some of your less important dudes, at least it wouldn't eat turn too often.

Though I made those then deleted or goes on cooldown when copied, so you couldn't abuse it with trash mob copy. Another idea is make copying those strong abilities expensive enough to deter from copy to demon then delete after use exploit currently copying abilities to demon are relatively cheap.((Currently it is also possible exploit, as long as skill not on cooldown))

In fact mend is easy fix and AI is easy to handle should it be made a bit more useful and worth of it's once per battle mechanic and fixing maxHP or something critical as this might be strong , as for miracles, if they impactful enough how often you would use them some distinct catch for AI when they should, the only concern here is MAXHP cure even partial might be too strong to be obligatory. With reform(skill from jelly) which is like miracle in miniature it is easy, you are in critical HP and would die use it. With mend it is harder because it is less controlable of who would get healed and who should be saved.
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