Ability: Group Heal and Ability/Gear suggestion

[Taklu]

I was pretty excited when I found Group Heal on an item, but I couldn't figure out how to use it. After a good amount of fights and switching weapons (from a book to a staff) I noticed the group heal ability in combat. However I was only able to use it once. I also had a cure ability on the staff which well I was hoping it would heal, but it did nothing. I love the idea of finding gear that unlocks healing abilities, however it seems to be practicly unafective at this time to have the Group Heal. I don't know if there is a regular heal though.

My advice is to make it a difficult Intelligence check like Cleave where it's practicly 50% when you have 80% chance normally. This would allow you to add a lot more items for intellect heros that have a varied amount the the items heal. This method would allow for healing "weapons" it lowers your dps, but increases your survivability. On an alternative way to improve gameplay is to have gear have chance to have abilities and have more random features to gear. It seems that you have gear that is all the same, but I find it more fun that there are base stats for gear and a chance for bonus abilities. This could be better stats or actual abilities that you use in combat. Then you can classify based on the stats and allow you to require less gear in game and still have a large variety of options for gameplay and stick with the style of game your going for.

[Abaddon1]

Healing in combat consume a healing herb (Godsbeard) which you have to have in your inventory and impacts a single character. The strength of the heal is based on your current herb-pipe level. Party heal consumes 1 godsbeard but applies the heal effect to all of your characters in that combat based on the pipe level of the person using party-heal.

[Taklu]

Originally posted by Abaddon1:

Healing in combat consume a healing herb (Godsbeard) which you have to have in your inventory and impacts a single character. The strength of the heal is based on your current herb-pipe level. Party heal consumes 1 godsbeard but applies the heal effect to all of your characters in that combat based on the pipe level of the person using party-heal.

I know I'm talking about actual character abilities. You seem to miss my point entirely as Healing classes in RPGs are a thing. I suppose herbalist is what they would consider a peasant healer in this game, but healing with magic shouldn't be out of question as there already is a Group Heal ability that you can find on gear and use it as an action in combat (not an item but a spell). It's simply an alternative option that should be available in my opinion.

Also there is no form of Information for abilities as far as I can tell. A way to view ability discriptions would be nice as well.

[Abaddon1]

No, that was what I was trying to say, group heal requires the use of a healing herb but applies it to the whole party instead of a single character. You probably could only use it once because you likely ran out of herbs.
Unless there's some other skill on a staff I don't know about...

[Taklu]

Originally posted by Abaddon1:

No, that was what I was trying to say, group heal requires the use of a healing herb but applies it to the whole party instead of a single character. You probably could only use it once because you likely ran out of herbs.

That was something that I wasn't aware of and is good to know. Sadly healing items are hard to come by and are quite expensive. Items would still be a more affective way to heal because it would be a guaranteed success and should probably heal more than a spell heal, as a balancing method of the ability.

It's quite possible that the buying and selling could be reworked in the future though along with drop rates. It is Early Access after all new mechanics are open to being added.

[Anelyn]

I don't find healing problematic. I played w/o and w/ herbalist and is not much change really. Your aim should be to gear up and level up stats to minimize the chance of being hit / crit and reduce all damage you could take.

Healing - be it self or group heal - costs a combat turn, a turn where you deal less damage and still take damage from 3 sources. Control wise the only things that work to some success are slows and resets, stuns / dazes aren't reliable CC as the game advances many enemies are immune to those effects.

So, you want to take as little damage as possible while doing as much as you can pretty much :)

[Abaddon1]

Well to some degree it seems that the current balance largely relies on the relative scarcity of healing items. There are cheaper ways to heal out of combat that take time, vs. money. I think a special non-herb based healing skill could be something but it would have to be limited in its scope to not throw off the balance centered around the limited scarcity of healing. I'm also not sure adding another method of healing is absolutely necessary as there are already quite a few.

What I can think of off the top of my head are
-Healing herbs (including party heal)
-on level up you can back HP and focus
-Healing by resting at a camp
-Healing by ending your turn with left-over movement points (1/point)
-Devoting to a sanctum stone fully heals and restores focus
-healing in a town by paying a small amount of gold (this can either be a camp heal (cheaper) or a full heal (more expensive)).

I do think another combat heal could be interesting, though perhaps a health transfer sort of spell could be interesting. Something like damaging the caster to heal the targetted character by a multiple of the damage done to the caster. I would certainly see the strategic benefit to something like that while not really changing the balance around health too much.

A note on the abilities btw. As it is the abilities you can find on weapons are currently the existing class-specific skills. So a scholar can use party-heal if they have a staff that gives that ability but a herbalist can always use it. You can also find a hat that allows you to collect herbs in the open areas like an herbalist, or gain focus back like the scholar etc.

[Taklu]

Honestly I've always disliked how games do full heals on level ups it's quite unrealistic. Sure maybe gain the amount of health you increased, but I've always disliked full heals from it. My propisition was primarly combat heals as that is what I feel the game is currently lacking in. A form of leech would work I suppose though, whether that's leeched off of enemies and immunity would be the same as bleed or a transfer method that is hardly touched upon in games as you suggested. My suggestion was also a possible method to add more skills to the hero by adding skills to gear as well, which I don't think would hurt the balancing of the game.

on you note of abilities I did find a refocus put in on a hunter, but it never seemed to proc.

also heavily leaning on evasion is a really bad idea in my opinion. It also makes no sense that your a peasant that all of a sudden masters the art of dodging, but the heros of old that have years of experiance get easily killed off. Armor is a decent understanding. Hunter does need to get nerfed in my opinion, well evasion in general should probably be reworked. It is not a good mechanic to best survival is the method of not getting hit. Especially when I had trouble getting above 7 armor after the first mine. I don't know if the second act is when the timer gets reset, but I didn't last long in the dungeon during that act with only 7 armor.

[Abaddon1]

Originally posted by Taklu:

Honestly I've always disliked how games do full heals on level ups it's quite unrealistic. Sure maybe gain the amount of health you increased, but I've always disliked full heals from it. My propisition was primarly combat heals as that is what I feel the game is currently lacking in. A form of leech would work I suppose though, whether that's leeched off of enemies and immunity would be the same as bleed or a transfer method that is hardly touched upon in games as you suggested.

on you note of abilities I did find a refocus put in on a hunter, but it never seemed to proc.

Its not a full heal on level up for normal difficulty though it is sizable (I think its equivalent to a camp heal).

Actually in the original closed beta build there was no healing on level up, it was added in after people complained about it not being there.

Anelyn touches on one of the major problems with combat heals in the game as it is though. The length of an individual combat is usually few enough rounds that it is better to avoid damage by dealing damage than taking the extra turn to get hit more and heal yourself unless circumstances are particularly dire.

Refocus has a chance (don't remember what % though) at the end of each turn to restore a focus slot, and I think it should work normally on all characters, but I haven't tried that specifically out. It wouldn't proc if you had full focus though.

edit: 7 armor certainly isn't bad. What was your resist at? Having highly assymmetrical armor/resist can make you pretty squishy to the unprotected damage type.

[Taklu]

Originally posted by Abaddon1:

Refocus has a chance (don't remember what % though) at the end of each turn to restore a focus slot, and I think it should work normally on all characters, but I haven't tried that specifically out. It wouldn't proc if you had full focus though.

I don't know how long I had the refocus on for I think I might of switched it for another item, but it was on for at least 5 turns without a proc. It would be good to know the proc chance though.

[Anelyn]

My blacksmith had like 22 armor and 12 resistance at level 6, if she taunted up pretty much not much would get past her (and the minstrel and hunter also had decent armor / resists and 40-60 evade).

Now am trying a group with the trapper, the alchemist and the minstrel, more difficult start it seems, but the trapper should be able to use the rapier ^_^

[Taklu]

I've only been able to get my guys to level 4 and max evasion I've had was just under 40% with my hunter the scholar and ministrle had 20% each and armor was lack lust wasn't really getting anything good. I ended up running out of time before I had to do the mine. Well I finished it, but I didn't have good enough gear for the next zone. I suppose next tactic I'll try is utilizing ambush. I ended up dieing chaos I misjudged the placement of a portal and ended up fighting a giant with 96hp, a smaller giant with 36hp and a wolf with 19hp. Well I had a breakable bow that did 28hp. Learned that breakable items break when they miss. That's why they can last for a good period of time.

never the less I had 14 Lore at the end of that run. I really hope they do fix the difficulty wall that is from jumping from the first zone to the next zone.

[Anelyn]

This time I managed to get all party to level 10. Stats and damage overall very good for what enemies are at lvl 10 in the area, then I made a chain of mistakes and in 4 turns got to max chaos and the "thingie" level 10 simply obliterated my group.

It seems that no matter how beefy you are, if you get to 4 chaos it's game over (90% of times).

[Diro]

^ another problem, again, which negates content, and slows down the progression.

The chaos timer in ALL Settings, is disgustingly fast.

I want to be able to play the game for At LEAST - 30min or so, without this thing breathing down my bloody neck all the time.

As soon as i finally get to do a lil exploring, lil fighting, farming, just general goody stuff, the chaos timer is up, almost maxed, and BOOM, chaos demon thing comes to get you, but its not like you have an actual chance against it.

I love how it states "Killing a certain *Insert name here* will destroy it for good" - yeah, with its 70+ hp, and 25dmg per hit, goodluck!

[Abaddon1]

Originally posted by Sadz:

^ another problem, again, which negates content, and slows down the progression.

The chaos timer in ALL Settings, is disgustingly fast.

I want to be able to play the game for At LEAST - 30min or so, without this thing breathing down my bloody neck all the time.

As soon as i finally get to do a lil exploring, lil fighting, farming, just general goody stuff, the chaos timer is up, almost maxed, and BOOM, chaos demon thing comes to get you, but its not like you have an actual chance against it.

I love how it states "Killing a certain *Insert name here* will destroy it for good" - yeah, with its 70+ hp, and 25dmg per hit, goodluck!

Are you dying a lot? Because chaos goes up whenever you have a character die who isn't devoted to one of the stones.