The Weapon Balance in general can we break down to
Slow Weapon = Big Focus Gain per Attack
Fast Weapon = Small Focus gain per Attack
BUT
With a Stone or/and Weapon Enchant Focus % on Damage its absurd.
A Rune Skill Cost 100 Focus.
My 7% Focus on Damage Proccs from a Rune art.
With 200 Focus i regenate around 54 Focus from my Weapon Art with 4 hits.
Thats a fundamental flaw because its favors Multihit Runes and fast Weapons. With 200 Runepower i can chain casting 3 Rune Attacks, break the Stance of the Heaviest Knights and can regenerate enough Runepower for another 1-2 Runeskills with Auto Attacks.
Solution:
RuneArts can never activate Focus gain effects.
Focus % per Dmg needs a (UP TO Modifier) calculated with Weapon Speed.
Focus is strong, maybe the strongest stat in the moment. Because its change the Gameplay from a Souls like to a Diablo Ability Spam.
yeah pretty much…however, i think devs will naturaly balance it out in terms of numbers…x% on dmg dealt/focus generated mods are simple to balance…what concerns me are core mods like focus gain on focus spent and focus cost on all runes, except staffs… rune focus cost will be the tricky one to balance.
I dont think that balancing is easy with the current Stat system.
The Focus Pool can be massive different between two players.
1% for some one with 400 Focus is the same as 4% with 100 Focus Pool.
The focus stat currently benefits way more than other stats, which they could change. The first 3 points you put into it raise your max focus by 55%, where as something like stamina is closer to like 15% and it drops off a cliff after that. So that’s one thing that could change.
The focus rings that add 100 focus could be nerfed as well.
Focus on damage, should just be a focus increase to basics and not count rune attacks. That way things like rapid attacking runes, or spreadshot like effects don’t end up giving more focus than they cost.
The bizarre thing about focus on damage is that it’s a percent of your focus pool and not damage done, if they changed this, I think the probably would be solved.
Rune attacks do the highest damage though, so if it’s based on damage done then you still gain more focus from runes than you do basics. What we want is for abilities to feel like something special you do, not the main or only thing you do.
I don’t really view that as being a problem, it’d be similar to a spell vamp type of function. As long as it can be tweaked so there’s basically not an infinite loop.
This is actually kind of confusing here, because there are abilities that feel like something special we do. Meanwhile there’s some pretty basic rune abilities that just feel like a different type of normal attack… oddly those moves tend to cost 100 focus >_>
As it stands currently, and this is the case with many runes but I’ll just us spreadshot on the bow as an example, why would I ever do a basic arrow instead of 5 arrows, if it kills everything and it gives me back the focus it cost?
Why would I ever do a mix of basics and heavies to stun a foe, if lightning furry will do it quicker, do more damage, and make back the focus it cost?
The game has cool movesets with the basic attacks, but if they’re the weakest option in your arsenal, why would you use them?
Tier 1 and 2 active abilities (balance by stamina cost and Focus gain multiplicator)
Generic buffs and boosts (balance through stamina cost and cast speed), don’t generate Focus
Focus:
Tier 3 / Ultimate active abilities
Abilities that affect resources that are supposed to be strictly limited (healing, focus regen, repair, consumable conjuring, …) // based on design choices these can be changed
I think Focus is in a bad spot because it tries to be Mana as well as special power… We could remove the Mana aspect and accept Focus as a universal ressource for Power Moves and resource gain. Which would also make magic a lot more fun.
I think they should get rid of pretty much all “icreased focus/Gain” mods…rebalance basic numbers with staffs in mind, cuz staffs is the thing focus mods should be based around…the idea is that staff basicaly changes your main ressource from stamina in to focus cuz like youre suppose to blast shit with fireballs all the time. All other weapons should get pretty much the basic focus/gain with allaround increase in focus cost for runes.
Also, i dont know if theres hyper armor system and how it collerates with rune skills, but theres some bs going on with atleast some runes not able to tank a fu**** crab, like the fire skill from talwar, a long ass animation which locks you in to it to actually do dmg but not able to tank a hit…so you end up spending 150 focus and instantly getting slapped out of the animation.
So imo ALL rune skills outside of a staff should get some form of hyper armor and yes, i think runes are suppose to be a special, strategic option where you cant just spam it more then like 3 times.
I think the main culprit is that Gain Focus % on Damage Proccs from Rune Attacks when the Weapon intern Focus Gain on Damage dont Procc from Rune Attacks.
Auto Attacks > Generator
Rune Attacks > Spender (with Focus % on Damage Generator too)
And this heavy preferred Multihit AOE Attacks.
How can you balance a Multihit Aoe Attack that gives you 50-100% of your spended Focus back vs a Single Hit or Selfbuff Rune?
The passiv Focus regeneration effect on equip, paired with a big Focus Pool is a massive Burst potential and a big buff for “slow” players. The gain of Focus from Rune Attakcs must be deleted in my opinion.
Yeah thats a part of the problem…the other being a pure overload of “focus gain on dmg dealt” rolls you can get…like 150% increased gain is not even hard to get. Anything over like 20% is just crazy (the mod itself is not really needed outside of staff weapon class imo)…should get hammered in to the ground or replaced with another mod if you ask me
Yeah focus gain on damage dealt is one problem. The other problem is flurry attacks stagger the boss way too easy. Stun locked Echo Knight at level 23 for easy clear-and I don’t consider myself a great player.
I think flurry attacks should slow the mob or make stagger slow but not stun lock. Heavy hitting weapons (2 handers) should do the knock down. It’s more logical (risk reward).
Focus gain on normal attacks also needs to be brought in line or you can fill up your bar too quickly if you have 200% focus gain increase.
I will say I love the game though, have over 130 hours into it! Well done devs!
We are only seeing a small chunk of what the game is. Most runes are only tier 1.
My hopes are that future content and monsters are going to be harder and the damage from our tier one runes are gonna fall off.
So you’ll have to get tier 2 or 3 runes to be able to kill with as much efficiency as you can right now. Say they cost 400 or more focus to use might balance it better
Or you can spam your tier one runes and damage enemies slowly
The way i see it is that they could up the stagger damage with basic attacks and as you all point out balance focus please somehow, but the idea I guess is to build up to the stun phase where you get to unleash rune power when it’s safe to do so, animations and all.
I don’t think rune attacks should give focus, out.
Basic attacks should obviously give focus
Focus gain - stays
And just added focus per basic attack, but it scales with weapon type, maybe?
So you roll a weapon and it says: 5 extra focus on attack for a one handed (idk, it’s an example)
2 for duel weapons
10 two-handed
Fuck, i forgot bows - bows now have basic attacks ok devs?! Lol
5 for bows or something or did I break the game? Probably.
I mean, easy and you can stack focus gain and that obviously increases the on hit effect and with focus regeneration and it’s seems kinda balanced.
I think we’ve seen all the runes actually, more or less, because at the enchanter there is an crafting table called Scrying or something and there’s nothing to do there at the moment and I think we get the option to upgrade the runes there in the full version of the game so they’ll stay pretty much the same, of course the focus cost might increase as you point out.
They’re also tier numbers on the runes. So logically you’d think they can get higher. And there’s probably a zero percent chance that this is it for runes. of course they are gonna add more the head developers have already said this.