Wave Throw Art Balance Issue and Possible Bug.

[Favmir]

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From my experiments, nonesome of the "Snipe type" Wave throw arts doesn't get additional damage from "Mark", and Ether Snipe(lvl 3 Wave Throw) is currently seriously underpowered.

The other option(Wave Motion Beam) does more damage, inflicts Mark, can hit multiple enemies, and almost never misses. The only downside is losing a portion of your health, which isn't really a big deal compared to Ether Snipe's "Sometimes misses completely" downside.

I don't think this is Wave Motion Beam being overpowered(although I do think it's bit too strong). Even when compared with other lvl 3 arts in other elements Ether Snipe is one of the hardest arts to use and one of the least powerful. It only attacks one enemy, and you'll be doing too little damage for a lvl 3 skill if you fail to bounce it on multiple walls. It is literally worse than lvl 2 throw if you don't bounce it, since you can't hit multiple enemies!

The extra damage from bounces should be a reward for skillshots, not a requirement for having a standard(similiar damage to other lvl3 skills) result.

Damage Experiment Sheet (Using level 57 character)

Wave Throw Type #1 - Health Tree

Marked / Not Marked

• lvl1: 700 / 470 (heals you)
  
• lvl2: 1800 / 1300 (heals you)
  
• lvl3(Wave Motion Beam): 8000~10400 each(inflicts Mark by itself)

Wave Throw Type #2 - Damage Tree

Marked / Not Marked

• lvl1: 1100 / 620
  
• lvl2: 1800 / 1840
  
• lvl3(Ether Snipe): 3000-4300-5600-6700 / 3000-4200-5500-6700

To give you a reference, Lvl 3 Shock throw did 3500~4000 damage each for multiple enemies. Lvl3 Shock Melee did 6000 damage for a single enemy.


My suggested change is this:

1. Wave motion beam doesn't inflict Mark. Assuming the previous damage was affected by Mark this will nerf its overall damage as well(I think around 60% of its current damage - 10K to 6K in my case - should be enough damage for this skill).
   If you want to get the extra Marked damage against groups of enemies like before now you'll have to use (lvl2 dash art) + (Motion Beam), which costs 3 more SP bars.
   
   
2. Ether Snipe does 30% more minimum damage(so that it's clearly better than lvl2. It's either this or make it go through enemies) and twice as much maximum damage.
   Shorter aiming time.
   All Wave throw arts now benefit from Mark to receive extra damage.
   
   It's still a single target skill and requires precise aim so it balances out. The aim of this change is to make sniping require more skill, but much more rewarding. It'll add more depth to the combat and introduce higher skill ceiling. Players who are not confident in their quick aiming can bouce only once on a wall for standard lvl3 art damage(about 6000 for example above).

But feel free to balance it as you wish if you have better ideas, of course.


Another skill I think is underpowered is lvl 3 Cold Throw, but that's perhaps for another time. I never really experimented with that skill in detail so can't say for sure.


Update:
For a moment I felt like making Ether Snipe go through enemies could make it feel much better to use. You don't have to be frustrated by other enemies blocking your intended target, and the skill becomes direct upgrade from lvl2 rather than side-grade so you won't have to worry about that part of balance. Instead of buffing damage, you can make it so that the enemies it hits receives 2000, the ones it hits after one bounce receive 3000 and so on. But then again it will ttake the uniqueness of Ether Snipe controls away. Hmm yeah nevermind with this one.

Update2:
It just struck me that, since Ether Snipe didn't get affected by Mark, it's possible that I got such low damage because the skill didn't receive any buffs from ranged damage upgrades. Can you look into that please? Um...Mr. Lachsen?

Update3:
I did some testing, and those other ranged damage buff passives seem to be working fine. Only Mark isn't working.

[muxmeister]

Mechanics-wise, Aether Snipe is next to useless in outdoor areas since the walls are rarely right-angle and uniform enough to plot the trajectory path in time. I get that the devs intended this to be used mainly in boss rooms and instanced fights (i.e. with flame walls acting as barriers). But I feel that the setup and timing is still severe, especially when enemies later on get even faster. Maybe after a bounce, there is a weak homing effect that gets stronger if you have additional bounces? Or maybe we can get even faster aiming dots, as the current ones are still too slow to mitigate the latency of tracking by the second and third bounces.

In terms of actual damage I think the art is okay, but the logic behind it throws me off. Visually it looks like a bomb, and it explodes much like the guard art where Lea goes to 1HP and, if successfully hit, creates a Wave explosion around her that damages all nearby enemies (forgot the name atm). Wouldn't AS make more sense being the same, even if you have to make the blast radius much smaller or spread the base damage to compensate?

Favmir, without a dedicated "lock-on" or "mark target" mechanic (that would work comfortably for gamepad users as well) I don't think the game has a logic engine good enough that would predict your intended target 100% of the time, so I'm not sure having the art go through enemies would work without changing the intended effect completely. I agree though that enabling Mark status on this as well would also make more sense.

[Favmir]

Originally posted by muxmeister:

Mechanics-wise, Aether Snipe is next to useless in outdoor areas since the walls are rarely right-angle and uniform enough to plot the trajectory path in time. I get that the devs intended this to be used mainly in boss rooms and instanced fights (i.e. with flame walls acting as barriers). But I feel that the setup and timing is still severe, especially when enemies later on get even faster. Maybe after a bounce, there is a weak homing effect that gets stronger if you have additional bounces? Or maybe we can get even faster aiming dots, as the current ones are still too slow to mitigate the latency of tracking by the second and third bounces.

Yeah shortening the aiming time wan't probably a good idea considering how hard it is to use it outdoors. Homing could be really good improvement too, but I'm not sure if it won't affect people who are already good at aiming in negative way.

In terms of actual damage I think the art is okay, but the logic behind it throws me off. Visually it looks like a bomb, and it explodes much like the guard art where Lea goes to 1HP and, if successfully hit, creates a Wave explosion around her that damages all nearby enemies (forgot the name atm). Wouldn't AS make more sense being the same, even if you have to make the blast radius much smaller or spread the base damage to compensate?

The logic behind my thoughts about the damage was the fact Wave is an element specialized in Throws, and this is supposedly the ultimate sniping skill that is unreliable and can only hit a single enemy. But the damage was so weak that you could just shoot 5 lvl 1 throw arts or just use more reliable skills in other elements to do the more damage.
It does look like and AoE attack. I was surprised that it was single target as well, but I took it as a design choice to make it more badass.

Favmir, without a dedicated "lock-on" or "mark target" mechanic (that would work comfortably for gamepad users as well) I don't think the game has a logic engine good enough that would predict your intended target 100% of the time, so I'm not sure having the art go through enemies would work without changing the intended effect completely. I agree though that enabling Mark status on this as well would also make more sense.

Oh the game doesn't need to know my intended target. My theortical skill works just like current one, but penetrate enemies and bounces three times on walls, disappearing when hitting the wall last time. The enemies that got hit before any bounces will get minimal damage, enemies after one bounce more damage, ones after two bounces even more damage, so on. But I think keeping the same design as now but just tweaking some numbers is probably for the best. My theoretical desing doesn't neccessarily make it better, and it's gonna be bit of waste of time on dev's part.

[Favmir]

I just realized that it's possible Ether Snipe wasn't receiving ranged damage passive buff from the circuit. Put that in on the end of the post.

[lachsen]

I just quickly looked at Ether Snipe and it seems like the damage should receive the ranged damage buffs (and also the Mark Modifier bonus). Maybe there is some other issue here.

The idea really is that Ether Snipe should be the most powerful single target ranged attack, especially if bounced correctly. From what you describe there seems to be a balancing oversight. I'll make sure to have a closer look at it soon. I'd also consider making the damage scaling a bit less linear. That means the first bounce will give you the biggest bonus, while the second and third bounce will have a smaller bonus. In that case just having a single bounce would make the attack already worthwhile and more practical in general. I'd also consider making the attack on par with other lvl3 throws without any bounce.

The thing is though that "Wave Motion Beam" should be powerful as well, since it drains your HP in return. So it at least makes sense for it to be more powerful than other level 3 ranged attacks. Maybe not THAT more powerful though.

EDIT: Are you sure you want to have a SHORTER aiming time for Ether Snipe?
The Aiming Time comes with a very strong SLOWDOWN which means in practice enemies will not be able to do a lot during that time. It also is the only thing that makes tricks shots actually practical since you have time to adjust your aim and try out a few aiming options. Making the aim time shorter would be a DOWNSIDE in practice. What I'd rather do is making the slowdown stronger.

[Favmir]

Originally posted by lachsen:

I just quickly looked at Ether Snipe and it seems like the damage should receive the ranged damage buffs (and also the Mark Modifier bonus). Maybe there is some other issue here.

The idea really is that Ether Snipe should be the most powerful single target ranged attack, especially if bounced correctly. From what you describe there seems to be a balancing oversight. I'll make sure to have a closer look at it soon. I'd also consider making the damage scaling a bit less linear. That means the first bounce will give you the biggest bonus, while the second and third bounce will have a smaller bonus. In that case just having a single bounce would make the attack already worthwhile and more practical in general. I'd also consider making the attack on par with other lvl3 throws without any bounce.

Thank you for taking your time reading and responding! Your take on that change sounds great. It'll make the skill less dependant on the environment you're in. I think balancing the skill around the damage it does after one bounce is the best way, since it's not as no-brainer as direct hit but easy enough to pull off consistantly when you get good at it. Multi-bounce is basically impossible in some areas with complex geometry.

Originally posted by lachsen:

The thing is though that "Wave Motion Beam" should be powerful as well, since it drains your HP in return. So it at least makes sense for it to be more powerful than other level 3 ranged attacks. Maybe not THAT more powerful though.

Wave is the element focused on range, it's notthing wrong about it being strong. My problem was that it could hit multiple enemies and it automatically gathers them so you never miss, they cannot attack back, and it does more damage than single target lvl3 skills for each of them. In my take on the matter where it didn't inflict Mark, the maximum damage(Marking them first, then using the Beam) would be the same but not as good when used alone.

Originally posted by lachsen:

EDIT: Are you sure you want to have a SHORTER aiming time for Ether Snipe?
The Aiming Time comes with a very strong SLOWDOWN which means in practice enemies will not be able to do a lot during that time. It also is the only thing that makes tricks shots actually practical since you have time to adjust your aim and try out a few aiming options. Making the aim time shorter would be a DOWNSIDE in practice. What I'd rather do is making the slowdown stronger.

Oh I was thinking the shorter aiming time as a nerf in compensation. In my version of the skill, it's considerably harder to land those multi-bounce but it does a lot more damage. It's practical to just go for single bounce attacks for typical use, but if you're doing a hardcore run like "One-Hit-Boss Combo" it could be a cool tool in your arsenal that has massive potential.

But I think your version is better than mine. When in practice, such skill would be very exploitable and sometimes a player who was just lucky will hit a multi-bounce, and it's against the rule of effort-reward system in games. Your version is better where it only does a bit more damage. Like I said in response to muxmeister,

Yeah shortening the aiming time wan't probably a good idea considering how hard it is to use it outdoors.

Also, I realized after another test that one of the numbers above was wrong. The lvl 1 throw art(Fairy) does receive bonus from Mark, it's the lvl 2 and 3 that doesn't.