I have been thinking about the current focus system for some time now. And, I have reached the following, probably controversial, conclusion for myself:
Just remove the Focus System, and give Runes Cooldowns.
Some of the issues that I see are too complex to fix with number tweaks. I think that the focus system will introduce META Runes.
- Cone Shot for bows.
- Flurry for dagger.
- Throw for 2-handers.
If not these people will look at, animation time, damage, rune cost to optimize punishment windows. People will default to 1 Rune, since it is the best rune to use.
With the dynamic nature of combat I think cooldowns will feel a lot more natural. Let’s say Rune’s have about a 8-16 second cooldown and their damage is lowered to the point where it deals more damage than an attack but not more than X% of hp relative to the power of the rune.
Players will now have a lot more options to approach combat, and combat will feel more natural. Runes are now limited by a cooldown, but, can be used more intuitively. You can simply use evasive runes when they are off cooldown rather than having to think if you want to spend focus on it. I think this will make combat feel a lot better and fluid in a way.
Right now it feels like I am either not using runes or use them too frequently and combat becomes trivial. Having cooldowns and lowering damage on runes will incentivize varied rune usage without messing with the combat loop too much. Instead, it adds more depth to the combat loop.
For me a lot of the time I feel like I am banking focus on trash mobs to then later 1 shot a more difficult enemy. I’d much rather have Runes become part of my combo to deal with an enemy. I think it will allow for more skill expression. Players will try to use all 4 runes as much as possible rather than thinking about which rune to use, which usually ends up in 1 rune being spammed. I think this will make combat with runes feel more natural and interactive as you can use them more frequently.
I feel like Focus is gatekeeping varied rune usage in a sense. And to me at least, it seems easier to just remove focus and add cooldowns to runes rather than trying to consistently balance focus and focus gain.
With the Focus System I have to consistently think what Rune to use. It’s a tradeoff since Runes share the same resource. With Rune Cooldowns I have effectively more tools readily available, and makes combat feel more fluid. Varied rune usage is more easily achieved which adds more depth to combat rather than disrupting the combat loop.
Swapping weapons will transfer over the rune cooldowns.
A talent tree could have a branch focusing on runes specifically. Like cooldowns, damage etc.
I understand this is probably very controversial, but, I do believe this is a better.
Edits: wanted to add some more things.