Suppression gems: making them useful (or replacing them)

[Tom (68inchPianist)]

They really suck, so here's a few thoughts about how to make them suck less. Pick one or more and strap it on!

1) Damage dealt by suppression gems could reduce maximum HP as well as current HP.
2) After a creep has had its regen stripped, the suppression gem could stun it similarly to a Bolt shot.
3) Have a chance for it to strip Marks from struck targets based on upgrade.
4) Replace it entirely! The best suppression is, after all, suppressing fire...

Streakbound: multiplier in the same vein as Blood/Pool, but based on current killstreak.

(sidenote- I've always wondered why Bloodbound and Poolbound affect identical stats. Wouldn't it be more interesting to have Blood modify damage, Pool modify specials, and then you could have Chainbound modify rate of fire?)

Burst: shots orbit the gem (up to X = special value based on upgrade) when no enemies are in range, and are fired off when a target is acquired.

Overload: like Burst, but charges up for one big shot (up to damage*X, Y splash damage) while not firing.

Orbit: like Burst, but with the shots orbiting at range, and with no limit on number- only one on time a shot can be out. (So on firing, the shot would orbit for X seconds.)

[Luca]

my idea: make it so that once regen = 0, any more shots will cause a poison-like effect and cause monsters to constantly take damage. still wouldn't make them useful in endurance, but at least they'd be useful at low (<200) levels like poison and armor tearing are right now.

[Lanore]

For making them useful in endurance, scrap the regen entirely.

Have it reduce monster total HP by a seriously small fraction. We're talking with supression skill at 120+ and supergemming you might only ever get 0.001% total HP. Difference is it takes away from max HP. So their actual max hp number goes down. You have a gem in a trap where endurance runners have used multi-thousand specs and upgrades, and the end result is negligible HP damage, but shaves off 0.003-6% of their max HP. It essentially works like a small WoE. Such a gem with red, black, and in a trap could then hit thousands of monsters at once.

This would not have a long term effect on endurance runs beyond maybe softening the HP curve, and possibly making a few fields worth playing with a level or two of hatred.

An idea for poison gems is to cut their damage but have the poison effect increase the effect of gem specials on those monsters. So your suppression/armor tearing/mana/chain/slow hit works better.

[Dreadmare]

I would remove the gem and add a gem that increases dmg taken on the monster (like how the trait works for dmg taken) up to like 40%. It could be usefull in endurance in different ways depending if you use the trait for dmg taken or not

[Pete]

@Lanore: Hard to make useful without making them overpowered. Say with 90% slow each of the monsters running over it lose 1% max hp. That would be useless. If your killgem can get 99% of their health an additional weaker killgem can cheaply take care of the remaining 1%. Say we make them stronger and they can shave of 15% of the current max hp. One of them doesn't change much but ten shave their hp down to 20%? Sounds impressive but in endurance you go by orders of magnitude reducing the hp to 20% is just half an order of magnitude or like multyplying the damage by 5, not bad but 10 extra gem before the killgem would probably add lots of lag. Well if you have the place 28 of them would buy you about 2 orders of magnitude. Which I think buys you 20-30 more waves on haunted before you can't kill them before reaching the orb.

So sounds like you can make them kinda useful without them being overpowered (if you ignore the lag of having many of them)? Sure until monsters start getting banished and start looping. If they don't have manaburn and your percentual damage gems are strong enough to really make a difference you will wear them over as long as they lower the max hp more than corrupted banishment raises it. Which they do if they lower it by more than 55% per round. But if you can't even half their hp by placing as many as possible of them then they aren't much use. Double damage doesn't buy you more than a handful of waves during endurance.
And then hardcore players would give enemies without manaburn deliberatedly huge amounts of hp so that they can loop and you thus have more monsters for your farm even if every frame takes a minute…

Though I might be missing something

[Ai]

Originally, a long time ago, it was supposed to give a *negative* hp regen effect once the normal HP regen got removed.

So it would work like a poison that lasts forever and only gets better each hit the monster took.

Too bad it was scraped, it could be a great alternative late game *poison* effect wen green gems falls of.

[ventuz]

Peter probably won't change anything in current game, since it's probably "design locked."

He could take note on change / suggestion for next Gemcraft game tho.

[strigvir]

Originally posted by Dreadmare:

I would remove the gem and add a gem that increases dmg taken on the monster (like how the trait works for dmg taken) up to like 40%.

40% isn't much actually, especially for endurance. For example it will increase 1e65 to 1.4e65 damage which is negligible.

[Warmonger]

My proposal is to make Supression Gem reduce monster special abilities (regeneration, spawning stuff, additional bonuses) in a way similiar to Slow gem.

[almoskapitany]

The problem is not the 'weakness' of suppressing special. The problem is the overpoweredness of the Critical Hit... Nothing comes close to the value of those godly Crit Hits.
The solution would be obviously to nerf the Crit Hit (and monster HPs) to not be so ridiculously OP and have better balance. You would immediately see that the design of suppressing is good.
But I guess Peter won't spend more months with further balancings (or you can call those 'nerfs'), because then everyone would be angry as we have seen it several times.

[Zelph]

Originally posted by almoskapitany:

The problem is not the 'weakness' of suppressing special. The problem is the overpoweredness of the Critical Hit... Nothing comes close to the value of those godly Crit Hits.
The solution would be obviously to nerf the Crit Hit (and monster HPs) to not be so ridiculously OP and have better balance. You would immediately see that the design of suppressing is good.
But I guess Peter won't spend more months with further balancings (or you can call those 'nerfs'), because then everyone would be angry as we have seen it several times.

Even without criticals, surpressing really wouldn't be good. Poison also essentially takes away that healing per minute, and does damage to boot. There would be zero reason to user surpressing without critical just the same.

[archmag]

Originally posted by omegareaper7:

Poison also essentially takes away that healing per minute, and does damage to boot. There would be zero reason to user surpressing without critical just the same.

Poison is temporary, suppressing is permanent. Without crit gems it would be useful if enemies have a long path. Especially on enemies that have bonus regen. You supress it once and then keep damaging him while he walks. Well, will only help if you make several damage dealing towers/traps, not single one.

[Zelph]

Originally posted by archmag:

Originally posted by omegareaper7:

Poison also essentially takes away that healing per minute, and does damage to boot. There would be zero reason to user surpressing without critical just the same.

Poison is temporary, suppressing is permanent. Without crit gems it would be useful if enemies have a long path. Especially on enemies that have bonus regen. You supress it once and then keep damaging him while he walks. Well, will only help if you make several damage dealing towers/traps, not single one.

You could easily lay out multiple traps, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Later you have tons of mana anyways.

[hexnessie]

I would say replace it -- it's not needed on lower levels, and not useful in the least on higher levels. Either revert to the old stun behavior of cyan gems (shock? not sure what it was called), or give it a "chance to cast" a random one of the three strike spells, with highest chance percentage for curse, smaller for freeze, and tiny for WoE. Going up in levels would up the percentages.

Or, make poison and cold gems have a tiny percentage to cast curse and freeze, respectively, with suppressing casting WoE. This would make poison marginally useful again for higher Wizard levels. The extra casting abilities should be unlocked as you go past a certain skill level (like 30), OR won by opening tome chambers on higher difficulties.

It's definitely not something we'd see in this installment, though... but one can hope for the future!

[Tom (68inchPianist)]

It could be if we throw money at our screens and yell DLC three times in succession.

[Shadow Mommy]

Suppressing gem needs unique effect that has not been used before...

Push back? It would push monster back slightly on hit.
Banishment chance? E.g.: 40% to banish monster on hit. Would work like that scythe gate.

Crazy idea! Replace suppressing gem with corruption gem that would make monsters stronger on hit. Like dropping gem bombs on stones but automatic?